Madam Crowl's Ghost - Sheridan Le Fanu

The companion piece to In A Glass Darkly, this collection put together by the great M R James, no less, is supernatural fiction that Le Fanu himself did not collect. The other stuff, frankly, is better, and yet there are great pleasures and genuine creepiness among the twelve stories here. Some of it is journalism, or what passed for journalism in Le Fanu's time. We have 'Ghost Stories of Chapelizod' and 'Stories of Lough Gair' which are presented as ghost gazeteers. Others, like 'The Vision of Tom Chuff' and 'The Child that went with the Fairies', give the impression of being local legends retold. The title story and 'Squire Toby's Will' are straight ghost stories and both manage a couple of serious shocks, whereas 'Ultor de Lacy' and 'Wicked Captain Walshawe of Wauling' are more gothic and weird.

My favourites were 'An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street', which is essentially a draft version of 'Justice Harbottle' from In A Glass Darkly, and 'Dickon the Devil' which, like a surprising number of the stories here, is set my native Lancashire - 'Dickon', indeed, iun my native Pendle Valley. Le Fanu explains why: he was a fan of the forgotten bestseller Harrison Ainsworth and was familiar with The Lancashire Witches (1848).

Joe Country - Mick Herron

Joe Country is the sixth in Herron's Jackson Lamb series, the exploits of the 'slow horses' MI5 has dumped at Slough House. It's not as deep as some of the others but on the other hand the black humour is much funnier. It continues the series without advancing the storylines very far.

Lamb is touchy after the way things ended in London Rules - i.e. with a bloodbath in Slough House itself. One thing everyone agrees about Lamb: he looks after his joes. Joes died in London Rules, Lamb's joes, and Lamb is not happy. He is not especially thrilled with his latest recruit, an analyst suspended from the Park after paedophile porn was found on his work laptop. Even Lamb draws the line somewhere. Meanwhile Louisa Guy is approached by the widow of her late partner Min Harper (a joe who died in an earlier novel), whose teenage son has gone missing in darkest Pembrokeshire.

Thus begins the drift of Lamb's entire team into Joe Country as the snows fall. River Cartwright is stalking his renegade father who showed up unexpectedly at the funeral of the legendary Old Bastard. J K Coe is uncharacteristically switched on; Emma Flyte, former head dog at the Park, creates a new partnership with Louisa, and Roddy Ho lends his digital expertise and - unwisely - his car. Back in London, recovering alcoholic Catherine Standish fills her flat with wine bottles, someone carves PAEDO on the new recruit's face, and Di Taverner, now at last First Desk at the Park, learns more than she wants to know about the recent behaviour of a leading royal.

It's all the usual bloodshed and laughter, if a little light on story, and it takes us to the brink of finding out about Lady Di's plan for the slow horses. Which I look forward to.

The Five - Hallie Rubenhold

This book bills itself as "The Untold Lives of the Five Women killed by Jack the Ripper", which is not strictly true as the excellent bibliography demonstrates. What it is, however, is the breakthrough book on the subject, and it is done very well indeed. Rubenhold's thesis is that the canonical five victims (not including Martha Tabram) were not 'just prostitutes'. Even the two who were without doubt prostitutes (Stride and Kelly) were not only prostitutes, but women who had substantial lives, children in some cases, and certainly partners. They might be remembered today solely as Ripper victims but they left traces at the time for other reasons as well.

Polly Nicholls and Annie Chapman were both respectable married women before misfortune struck. Drink was Polly's downfall and Chapman lost everything when her husband died. Rubenhold is right to point out that neither was ever arrested for prostitution and both had legitimate ways of making the few pence needed to fund a bed in the doss house. Today they would simply be regarded as legally homeless and we do not automatically assume that middleaged homeless women are necessarily prostitutes. I can assure you that we see a dispiriting number of them in court and prostitution is never assumed and rarely alleged. Rubenhold's secondary theory is that the Ripper was able to dispatch his victims swiftly and silently not because they were stupid enough to solicit his custom but because he searched them out while they slept rough, in yards and dark corners - compelling reasoning in both the Nicholls and Chapman cases.

Liz Stride probably wasn't a Ripper victim and was certainly an occasional prostitute - she had a conviction for it back in Sweden, and about the only thing eyewitnesses seemed to agree upon was that she was touting for trade on the night of the so-called 'Double Event'. Kate Eddowes, the other victim that night, was a traveller, a female tramp, and an epic drinker. When she was turned out of the police station in the small hours she cheerfully announced that she would soon get her doss money. This has long been assumed to refer to prostitution, but again, relying on my personal court acquaintance with many contemporary women in her position, I would favour either petty theft or plain outright begging.

The weak link in Rubenhold's argument is the final victim, Mary Jane Kelly. For a start, that almost certainly wasn't her name - which Rubehold herself points out - and she was definitely a prostitute with no other means of support, who claimed (unreliably at best) to have recently been a much higher class courtesan with experiences of the maisons closes of Paris or perhaps Antwerp. Clearly the Ripper vented every last vestige of rage on Kelly's corpse. The extent of the injuries suggests, in  modern theories of violence on women, personal acquaintance, a relationship betrayed; but since we haven't a clue who Kelly was, and uniquely among the five no one ever came forward to claim her, we cannot follow up on any leads.

A fascinating book - a rare serious addition to the field of Ripperology and highly recommended. I have read dozens and dozens of books on the subject and put in hundreds of hours of personal research, which I will now have to go through again in light of Rubenhold's propositions.

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It is absolutely about love but it has nothing to do with cholera, other than that cholera was endemic in these parts at the end of the nineteenth century. These parts are never identified. This setting is certainly the northern parts of South America but definitely not Marquez's native Colombia.

We start with the suicide of a photographer of unknown origins. The doctor who views the body is an old friend who lent the unknown cripple money with which to start his business, a loan the recipient long since paid back. The doctor visits the suicide's mistress, a middleaged beauty. Then the doctor goes home, tries to get his parrot out of a tree, and dies.

The doctor is Juvenal Urbino, octogenarian, the most respected citizen hereabouts. Everyone who is anyone attends his funeral. The last to leave is Florentino Ariza, proprietor of the riverboat company, who for the first time in fifty years declares his undying love for the doctor's widow, Fermina Daza.

Half a century ago, Fermina Daza was a teenage beauty, new in town, her father having bought a tumbledown mansion there, having left his upcountry birthplace for mysterious reasons. At that time Florentino Ariza was developing his skills at the local telegraphy office. One day he delivers a telegram to the Daza household and catches sight of Fermina. He is instantly lovestruck. He follows her everywhere, writes to her every day, serenades her every morning.

Florentino's love is hopeless. He is the illegitimate son of a native woman who keeps a sort of all-purpose junk shop, whereas Fermina is the daughter of a man who obviously has money and aspirations. Senor Daza has nothing against Florentino but he wants his daughter to marry the nobly-descended Juvenal Urbino, which she does.

Florentino uses the next half-century to make himself rich and a great lover. He does this via his uncle Leo, who finally acknowledges the young man as the son of his late brother and who trains him up through every level of the riverboat company until, when Leo turns 100, Florentino takes over. Meanwhile Florentino has seduced and bedded dozens if not hundreds of women of all ages and stations, many of whom he remains on excellent terms with. One even helps him run the company.

And ultimately, a year or so after Dr Urbino's death...

The meaning of the book is not entirely clear. This is what makes it a great work of art. My own view is that Marquez is mapping out the reality of love as it subtly adjusts to the rigours of time in contrast to the ideals of romantic love and social convention, the former never changing, the latter never what society pretends it should be. It is a marvellous, magical book, written by a master at the height of his achievement, yet charming, tender and often hilarious.

For me it has been a beautiful read at a troubling time.

Agent Jack - Robert Hutton

I’m always fascinated by what British fascists got up to during the war. Mostly, of course, they did what everybody else did and either fought or supported the fighters. It’s that exceptional few that fascinate. Agent Jack is the story of Eric Roberts, the ultimate Mr Ordinary, who worked for MI5 before, during and after the war, initially as a fascist himself, spying on communists, then as agent provocateur, gathering together those who wished to help Hitler conquer Britain.

That’s the problem – he was an agent provocateur. Despite Hutton’s best efforts, there’s no way round the fact that the people Roberts recruited would almost certainly have got up to no real mischief had he not brought them together. Dutton’s problem is, they didn’t do any harm and were just a bunch of repellent but otherwise ordinary nutters. There’s no denying Roberts’ courage and care; equally we can’t pretend he prevented any outrages against the national interest.

His is a story worth telling, but only as a part of other stories. For example, MI5 were reluctant to push Roberts’ recruits too far because of the fiasco surrounding the failed attempt to intern the well-connected and very foolish Ben Greene. Greene had been set up by an agent provocateur and was promptly released. He did no harm whatever thereafter. The real damage was to Max Knight, who worked with Roberts for the wonderfully named British Fascisti and then brought him to MI5.

The best thing about the book for me was the vivid portrait of Victor Rothschild, whose role had never before been clear to me. It is now, and I owe that entirely to Robert Hutton and this book.

Sirens - Joseph Knox

At last – Manc noir! Deep black crime set in good old Manchester. When all is said and done, whyever not? Manchester has been derelict, the great British industrial wasteland, for over fifty years to my knowledge. When I taught there in 1980-1 the kids were battling racist cops led by a fascist religious maniac in the streets of Moss Side. They broke into the cop shop and stole the Special Branch murder kit the Met had hidden there.

Wait a minute … I’m talking myself into this, aren’t I?

To an extent, Joseph Knox has beaten me to it. Only to an extent. I don’t think he’s old enough to remember the good old days when every copper with aspirations was hopelessly corrupt, certainly in my Northern experience of the time. It is of course a matter of fact with the Met. Pretty much permanently. But I believe the war on the miners and the Hillsborough disaster were what separated proper cops from the scum. Cops are much better now.

But not according to Knox in Sirens. His cop, Aidan Waits, is suspended for corruption (stealing drugs from the station) and trying to save his career by doing a deep undercover job for his Superintendent. His investigation is complicated when a local MP enlists him to find his seventeen year-old daughter. Both jobs mean getting inside the Franchise, the main drug operation of the moment. This Waits does easily. He finds the girl – but then she is murdered. If Waits can’t find who did it, he’s going to get fitted up. Suddenly all the good guys are out to kill him while all the bad guys and gals want to help. In the manner of top quality noir, things become very grey. He sorts it, of course, because he was always intended to be a series lead. The solution is complicated but satisfactory – perhaps one linkage too many.

The main problem, though – and it is by no means a fatal problem – is that neither Knox nor his editor know when to end. It’s a series, guys – we can catch up with folks next time round. Far better, in a noir, to leave a few threads loose.

Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson

This is the third of the original cyberspace novels. It supposes, I suspect, a certain level of familiarity with what went before. I don’t have it, but I nevertheless really enjoyed the book. I like everything by Gibson. I must have read half-a-dozen and haven’t found one yet that falls significantly below standard.

Mona Lisa Overdrive is about the stars of cyberspace, which we of course have had for the last ten to fifteen years. In reality that Gibson didn’t suspect, reality stars don’t become vastly wealthy (Kardashians excepted), they just slip away. The crossover into ‘real’ life isn’t as seamless as many expected. However, our main female protagonist, Mona, is a teenage prostitute who gets sold and chemically adjusted because she looks so much like the big cyber star, Angie Mitchell, has just completed rehab but is somewhat tarnished, so the big idea of those gangsters who control such things, is to stage her kidnap and then seemingly recover the much more malleable Mona to take her place.

Meanwhile the world goes to rack and ruin on a tsunami of drugs. The Yakuza in Japan have a major office in London to which the head Yakuza sends his dozy daughter Kumiko with a virtual friend for company. There are machinations. Hardcore devotees of cyberspace are doggedly working on the questions of what it looks like. Some extremists are hard-wired in. A bunch of these cluster at Dog Solitude, where Slick builds killer monster robots and there’s an apocalyptic battle.

It’s all great fun, beautifully written, prescient, thought-provoking. Gibson is a genius.

Capital Crimes - (ed) Martin Edwards

Capital Crimes is one of the British Library's magnificent crime classics, edited by Martin Edwards, who oversees the entire series. What we have here are Golden Age short stories which share a London location. They range from Conan Doyle ('The Case of Lady Sannox', which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog) to Anthony Gilbert ('You Can't Hang Twice'). Some are naturally better than others but for once there are no duds. My favourite is 'The Hands of Mr Ottermole' by Thomas Burke, 'the laureate of London's Chinatown' apparently, and definitely a breath of fresh air as a working class writer, and 'Cheese', an offbeat item from Ethel Lina White, author of what became Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

John Masefield - Muriel Spark

I never realised Muriel Spark wrote literary criticism. In this case she basically wrote it twice - in 1952, long before she was famous, and a thorough revision in 1991, when she was a literary icon. We are regularly reminded of this duality throughout the text.

It is a short book in which she essentially focuses on three narrative poems of some length, The Everlasting Mercy (1911), Dauber (1913), and Reynard the Fox (1919), none of which I have read. It doesn't matter. Spark convinces me that I ought to and that these are significant of their type. She benefits, of course, from having met Masefield who gave amiable support throughout the first version in 1952. Equally, he benefits from having Spark to defend him, being everything he was not - modern (in the day), young and female.

We think of Masefield as the poet of the sea, and Dauber is indeed the story of an aspirant painter who goes to sea, but it was The Everlasting Mercy that made him famous (very famous, almost overnight), the story of a Victorian rustic hooligan who sees the light. I really must look it up.

Absolute Beginners - Colin MacInnes

I remember the movie coming out - and dying the death as one of the great turkeys of our time. It was so bad, I waited more than 30 years before tackling the original book. It is by no means a bad book but I can see why the movie stank. You don't want to give Julien Temple material that is already glib and superficial.

It is the summer of 1958 and London sizzles in a heatwave. The first generation of British teenagers are coming into their own and our hero (unnamed) is at the heart of the action. He is a street photographer and fan of contemporary jazz. He is entangled with the lovely Crepe Suzette but she gets engaged to her homosexual boss. Our hero professes to be modern but actually his story is as old as time. His mission is to win back Suzette and to defend the vulnerable - in his case, the put-upon black people like his mate Cool who are under threat from racists. Along the way he encounters pop stars, advertising gurus, debutantes, gay people and Teddy Boys.

MacInnes has a buoyant, bounce-along style which convincingly captures the patois without descending into code. His characters have silly names but are nonetheless three dimensional and attractive. He even succeeds with the deeply uncool like the hero's dying father and his randy mother and achieves real depth with the latter.

For me, though, it is the background of the first Notting Hill riots that gives the novel an immediacy and weight that the film so woefully lacked. Absolute Beginners is not really about youth culture, it's about the birth of multiculturism. As such, it deserves a better reputation than the movie left it with.