Benbecula - Graeme Macrae Burnet

 Graeme Macrae Burnet broke through when His Bloody Project (reviewed on this blog back in 2017) was Booker nominated.   Benbecula is his contribution to Polygon's Darkland Tales, of which I have read and reviewed Val McDermid's slightly disappointing Queen Macbeth and Denise Mina's triumphant Rizzio.   Benbecula is in no way disappointing.   In fact it is very nearly as brilliant as Rizzio.   The fact is, it is exactly the same as His Bloody Project - bloody murder in the Highlands and Islands, apparently based on historical events.  Burnet has carved himself a niche in historical metafiction and has, so far, two strands: the French one (the Gorski trilogy) and the Scots one (another trilogy if we include this novella with His Bloody Project and Case Study.   I haven't read any of the Gorski books yet, but I wolfed down Benbecula in exactly the same way I devoured His Bloody Project.   In his curious, idiosyncratic way, Burnet is an absolute genius.

As ever, we are told straight away about the dark deed.   Narrator Malcolm MacPhee tells us his brother Angus murdered their father, mother and aunt, causing the isolated island community the shun what remained of the family.   Sister Marion and younger brother John couldn't take it and ran away to the bright lights of the Isle of Skye.   Malcolm lives on alone in his crofter's cottage, not bothering to do anything any more but brood and drink.   His rare visitors include Mrs Macleod, who insists he bathes once a month, and the local cleric who feels obliged even though Malcolm refuses to attend mass.

Malcolm relives his brother's downfall.   Angus was always unruly but he managed fine until Malcolm walked off a temporary job he had taken on a neighbouring island and Angus replaced him for a week or so.   Angus changed when he was away.   No one knows why.   When he came back across the sound at low tide he was chased and mocked by people from the other island.   He refused to work, frightened village girls, and one day started ringing the church bell for no reason whatsoever.  The family had to keep him tied up.   But he seemed to get better, and vigilance was relaxed until, again for no reason, he did what he did.   Now Angus is secure and forgotten in a madhouse on the mainland.

Is Malcolm a reliable narrator?  Who knows.   There is a lengthy Afterword in which Burnet points out differences in Malcolm's account in the book and what he and others said in their precognition statements for the court that tried Angus in Inverness in 1857.   But, of course, it was Burnet who chose to make those inconsistencies.   Are the records he claims to have used real or made up?   That is the beauty of Burnet's technique.   Personally I loved that he chose to cite precognition statements, a unique feature of Scottish Law.  (They do exist - I checked.)

Queen Macbeth - Val McDermid

 Queen Macbeth is McDermid's contribution to Darkland Tales, the Polygon series of novellas that includes Denise Mina's Rizzio (also reviewed on this blog), in which leading Scottish writers of today offer a fresh take on Scottish history.

And Macbeth is history, though many people seem to think Shakespeare made him up.   And his wife was a significant person, so significant that her name survives a thousand years later.   Her name was Gruoch.   She was of royal Pictish blood and thus forced into an advantageous marriage to the Mormaer of Moray.   Macbeth freed her from that marriage - by burning her husband and his warband in their hall.   He then took over, uniting the various sub-kingdoms and formed a version of what is now Scotlnnd.   He was a benign ruler, it is said, and even went on pilgrimage to Rome.

McDermid starts with the facts and does a cracking job of bringing us into Gruoch's world.   Again wisely and well, she uses the framing device long advocated for novellas.   The present is after Macbeth's death in battle; Gruoch and her women have found sanctuary in a remote abbey, but Malcolm Canmore has defeated and killed the new king, Gruoch's son Lulach, and is said to be coming for her; so the women flee for the islands where Macbeth was always strong.   The past is how she and Macbeth first met and fell in love; how they plotted together to kill the Mormaer and how they then ruled Scotland together.

All this is first rate stuff, but then comes the twist - and it didn't work at all for me.   Goethe, who largely created the novella in its modern form, described it as "one authentic unheard-of event" - but there are limits.

Three Fires - Denise Mina

 In many ways Three Fires (2023) is the companion piece to Mina's brilliant Rizzio (2021).   Both, obviously, are novellas published by Polygon.   Both take historical incidents and view them through a contemporary lens.   Three Fires is less immediately engaging.   Its hero, the 15th century Florentine mystic dictator Girolamo Savonarola is clearly less appealing than the (probably) innocent French secretary.   Political murder, in the latter case, is more exciting than a renegade preacher ultimately brought down by hubris.  That said, both are compelling reads - Mina couldn't write boring sentence if she tried.   And she manages to drag out every shred of humanity in Savonarola.   He starts off indifferent to God, then personal setbacks lead him to find God.   He genuinely believes God speaks to him, then he begins to doubt, and the doubts quickly lead to his gruesome death.

The novella is the perfect form for Mina's purpose.   Many have tried and failed to spin the Rizzio story into full-length novels.   Such attempts fail because poor old Rizzio was collateral damage in a political powerplay which happened behind closed doors in Tudor times but today are everyday public fare.   In that sense Savonarola plays better because he is definitely responsible for his own rise and fall.   The canvas is bigger, the protagonist centrestage.  

I for one am really enjoying Mina's mid-career experiments.

The Second Murderer - Denise Mina

 The Second Murderer is a Philip Marlowe novel.   Yes, that Philip Marlowe, the Raymond Chandler one, continued by the fabulous Denise Mina.   It is, unsurprisingly, fabulous.   Mina does not put a foot wrong in recreating the mean streets of LA, the Forties repartee, the tone of the original.   Tone is the key, because Chandler was a lot more cutting in his moral judgments than most people remember.

I've read at least one other Marlowe continuation, the one where he comes out of retirement, but Mina is wise to stick to the Forties.  This is because she is so damn good at establishing period.  I thought her Rizzio was superb and am looking to pick up her Savanarola take, Three Fires.   It doesn't have to be half a millennium ago for Mina, her Peter Manuel novel, The Long Drop, was equally convincing.

Here, Marlowe is summoned by an evil millionaire to track down his errant daughter and sole heiress.   Marlowe finds her dabbling on the art scene - acting as guide for an Abstract Expressionist exhibition for a gallerist who is a brilliant amalgam of Peggy Guggenheim and Big Edie Bouvier in Grey Gardens (and she's just a walk-on character).   From there Marlowe is drawn to the Lesbian scene.   He is in conflict and unofficial partnership with female detective Anne Riordan whose advances, professional and personal, he has previously spurned, and butts heads with Moochie Ruud, rising star of the LAPD thanks to marrying the boss's unappealling daughter.

Key to the book's success is Mina's ability to pull off Chandler's trick - the murder and who did it is only the device that brings the characters together.   It doesn't matter who dies or who did it.   I only finished reading yesterday morning and I have already forgotten who did it.   Interestingly I do remember who the titular second murderer was, but never guessed whilst reading.   Brilliant, I do hope Mina writes more Marlowe.

Rizzio - Denise Mina

 

Polygon have launched Darkland Tales, retelling of Scottish history from contemporary Scottish authors.   Rizzio, by the fabulous Denise Mina, is the first.   It is very short - 117 pages in big, well-spaced print - and it is breathtakingly good.   Mina revels in the artifice of it all, cutting to and fro through the limited timescale and describing her characters with cool detachment.  The whole episode is a sort of pageant, albeit deeply brutal and, as all readers will know, ultimately pointless.

It introduces me, not especially versed in Scottish history, to people like Lord Ruthven, roused from his deathbed to lead the conspirators.   The first question everyone asks him is, "What are you wearing?"   Then there is Lennox, whose descent I knew about but not his personality.   He is apparently the most hated and distrusted peer in Scotland, which is some going considering he is the father of the appalling Darnley.   The standout character is probably Henry Yair, a Calvinist conspirator and thug who is unhinged by the slaughter of Rizzio and finds hunself standing over the body of a murdered priest.

Mina is right to cut her tale short with Queen Mary's escape from Holyrood.   We don't need to explore what happened after.   That is another story.