The Royal Succession - Maurice Druon

 The Royal Succession is the midpoint of The Accursed Kings sequence (The Strangled Queen, the second installment, is also reviewed on this blog, but my reading of The Iron King predates it).  Louis X, the strangler of queens, is dead, poisoned by his brother's mother-in-law, the giantess Mahaut, Countess of Artois.  Louis's second queen, Clemence of Hungary, is five months pregnant.  The late Louis already had a daughter by his first wife.  If a healthy son is born, the succession is clear.  If there's a second girl ... what then?

In the interim, someone must take charge.  The someone who succeeds is Louis's senior sibling, Philippe, Count of Poitiers.  Philippe is twenty-three; he has the political skills of his father and namesake, the Iron King, but not the military.  Philippe the younger is known as the Myope - he is acutely short-sighted.  On the plus side, he has the backing of his murderous mother-in-law.  By bricking up the cardinal electors in a cathedral, he is also able to secure the backing of the new pope, John XXII, formerly Cardinal Jacques Dueze - a pontiff so notorious that it was over 600 years before Rome dared allow John XXIII.

Most of Philippe's enemies are within the royal family, and therefore controllable.  Most are simply buyable.  But there are others, like Robert of Artois, whose lands have been appropriated for Mahaut and who is not even permitted to be in his nominal county.  Robert is the anarchic backbone of The Accursed Kings and his appearance always livens up proceedings.

Druon is the absolute master of historical background.  His knowledge of political wrangling through the ages is second to none.  His subject matter is so dark, so twisted and amoral, that it is only the rock-solid foundation in fact that makes it credible.  Frankly, it's no wonder that Druon was the literary hero of Republican France.  Not to everyone's taste, then, but certainly to mine.  My only reservation - I'm not entirely sure about the translation by Humphrey Hare.  It's a bit old-fashioned.  I wonder, are there are other translations?

An Officer and a Spy - Robert Harris

Harris is one of those writers it's impossible to ignore.  He sells millions of books yet is neither formulaic nor predictable.  His choice of subject matter is incredibly diverse though I suspect his favourite themes might be boiled down to espionage, political power, and the abuse of both.

Certainly that is the case with his latest novel.  It's no secret that his topic is the Dreyfus Affair (1895-1906) and, obviously, everyone knows the outcome of that, more or less.  Yet Harris is so skillful that he manages to maintain tension for a full 500 pages.  He takes for his hero the young rising star of the military establishment Georges Picquart.  As a reward for his minor role in convicting Dreyfus of treason, Picquart is raised to the rank of colonel, the youngest in the French army, and put in charge of the counter-espionage section which of course played a much rather role.  Early on, Picquart stumbles across a much more plausible candidate for the German spy.  His superiors have such faith in him that they allow him licence to investigate further - right up to the point where Picquart tells them that if his man is guilty, Dreyfus must be innocent. From that moment, his life and career is systematically dismantled.  He ends up dishonoured, imprisoned, disgraced.  The end for Dreyfus we know, but I had no knowledge of Picquart or his subsequent career, and that is how Harris is able to keep us hooked.

The other unusual trait for such a successful writer is that Harris, by and large, gets better with each new book.  There is a section here in which, through Picquart, he diagnoses how the French establishment became so convinced of Dreyfus's guilt on such flimsy evidence.  I suggest that section epitomises quality literature.  Frankly, if the passage isn't a work of genius it's damn close to it,

The Critic - Peter May-

The Critic is the second of May's Enzo Macleod series, one of the many novels he wrote and published abroad before his Lewis Trilogy was taken up at home in the UK and The Blackhouse made him a bestseller.  All have now been rushed out to cash in on his success, thereby flooding the market and putting a lot of people off.

However, because they haven't been written to cash in, the standard is high.  May wrote them to try and become a bestseller, and was therefore both ambitious in his storytelling but careful with his prose.  Once The Critic gets going, this certainly pays off.  For the first couple of chapters, I have to say, I was in two minds.  All the descriptions of landscape were essentially the same, though what else May could have done in describing the intensive wine-making country around Albi in the south of France, I don't know.  Then the trick of the prologue paid off and I realised I was in safe hands.

Enzo Macleod, like May, is a Scottish ex-pat of middle years.  He is colourful: he sports a ponytail, a white stripe in his hair and eyes of different colours.  He is a professor of forensic science at Toulouse University but has (in Book One of the series, apparently) set himself the task of solving the unsolved cases in a book written by Roger Raffin, whose ex is now Enzo's girlfriend and who, in this book, finds an unusual way of evening the amatory score.

Essentially, the story here is that an overmighty US wine critic is found, crudely displayed, three or four years after he disappeared.  In the meantime his remains have been stored in the local wine.  Enzo therefore immerses himself in the lore and process of wine to figure out who did it.

The detail, the science and the local characteristics are well and convincingly handled.  I learnt a few French terms I didn't know which will come in useful in my own writing.  Enzo is a great character but, in this book at least, has too many women around him who are not sufficiently distinguished for easy tracking.  The male characters are little better drawn but at least there are fewer of them.  The final revelation was a bit peremptory but that never really bothers me in crime fiction.  Someone has to do the deed and their motives will always be a bit on the loopy side.  I really liked, however, the very last revelation which opens the door for Book Three, Backlight Blue, which I will happily try for the title alone.