Mephisto - Klaus Mann

 Superb - unbelievably good, without doubt the best book I have read all year.   Mephisto is a psychological study of how so many of us come to terms with the evil around us.   Mann doubles down on the theme of self-delusion because his protagonist is an actor.  Very cleverly, the actor makes his name with his portrayal of Mephistophiles, the Devil's agent in Goethe's Faust (which cunningly also references the author's father's take on the classic theme) but has to face ultimate failure with his inability to cope with the complexity of Hamlet.

What really drives the narrative, though, is the fact that the real Mephisto was Mann's former brother-in-law, the second rate actor and Nazi favourite Gustaf Grundgens.   Albeit published in exile in Amsterdam in 1936 and banned in Germany until the 1980s, there can have been little doubt at the time who the original was.   'Hendrik Hofgen' isn't much of a disguise, especially given the pretentious alteration of the first name - the 'd' added to Henrik, the 'f' for the common 'v' of Gustav.   Mann is much kinder with the fictional version of his adored sister Erika.   Both of Erika's marriages were farcical - she was lesbian, and after Grundgens she married the extremely gay W H Auden.   Klaus Mann, of course, was gay, and when Erika and Gustaf got engaged, he went through a similar farce with Erika's lover Pamela Wedekind.   This was the avant garde life in Weimar Germany.   Similarly, in the novel, this is the sort of life Hendrik Hofgen enjoys in the Twenties - a Communist who wants to start a revolutionary theatre whilst tap-dancing for his whip-weilding black paramour.

A clever touch is that the key Nazis are not given names.   Hofgen's protector (Goering) is simply the Prime Minister or the fat giant, Goebels the limping dwarf, Hotler the Fuhrer or the Dictator.   The physical description of the latter, in his one and only encounter with Hofgen, would be sufficient to get Mephisto banned in most rightwing countries in 1936.   Did Mann perhaps feel that these monsters would have been forgotten by, say, the end of the century, or did he realise that they were monsters for all time?

A Twentieth Century classic which should be much better known than it is.   Even from major online booksellers I had to have two goes at getting a decent copy.   Finally a word for the translator, Robin Smyth.   That word, again, is superb.   I cannot recall reading a translation, particularly from the German, when nothing ever seems to have been lost.

Caliban's War - James S A Corey

 Caliban's War is the second instalment in The Expanse series - space opera, certainly, but with ambitions.   What space opera often lacks is characterisation and overarching premise.  'James S A Corey' (collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) tackle the problem head-on.   The premise was where it all began as proposed game-play and thus the characters and storylines have all derived from the premise.  The fact that authorship is a collaboration and, moreover, they each write third-person-limited chapters from the viewpoint of certain characters, guarantees differentiation.

Thus our focus characters start with Captain Jim Holden, Earth-born but now working for the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA).   In the first book, which I haven't read but will soon, he is the survivor hero who stops the bio-engineered protomolecule escaping from the lab on Eros. 

Praxidike Meng is a botanist on Ganymede.  As an ecological disaster unfolds his daughter Mei is kidnapped.   His quest to find her is the driver of this novel.   The ecological disaster however is this novel's take on the overarching premise.   Holden soon realises that the protomolecule he is supposed to have destroyed is what caused the collapse of the station on Ganymede.   Mars Marine Roberta Draper already knows this - she watched her corps get literally torn apart by a indestructible mutated monster that ultimately destroyed itself.  

The Eros station crashed onto the surface of Venus.   Now Venus itself is morphing.   This brings in the UN, in particular our final focus character Chrisjen Avasasrala, potty-mouthed Indian granny and high-ranking bureaucrat.

Caliban's War is almost 600 pages long - space opera needs to be epic - but it races along.  There is humour, camaraderie, action, high politics, big business - even elements of romance.   There is real peril. Most important of all, though, there is the underpinning high concept: humankind, even more diverse than in our times, the solar system divided between three fragile alliances (Earth, Mars, the Outer Planets) needing to come together to defeat the existential threat to the existence of all or any.   It works really well.

Abducting a General - Patrick Leigh Fermor

 Basically, Abducting a General is the other half, or alternate view, of the General Kreipe abduction on Crete in the first half of 1944.   Paddy Leigh Fermor and Billy Moss were the British officers in charge and it the initial proposal was Paddy's, developing a much vaguer idea mooted to him by Xan Fielding.   Paddy was a major, senior to and older than Captain Billy Moss but it was Moss who had the big success with his account, Ill Met by Moonlight (reviewed earlier on this blog).  Fermor was himself a literary man but held off writing his account until thirty years or so after Billy's death.   It was partly published in a WW2 magazine and went largely unnoticed.  This version, published by John Murray in 2014, after Paddy too had died, is a reconstruction from the papers he left behind, with helpful introductory notes and extremely useful reports from the field retrieved from the War Office.

The facts don't alter - after all, Paddy was involved with Moss's books and indeed most other accounts.   He translated The Cretan Runner into English and was a source for Antony Beevor's scholarly account which in turn has deep reciprocal links with the works of Beevor's wife, Artemis Cooper, whose biography of Fermor and study of wartime Cairo are both reviewed on this blog.   What makes Paddy's account different is persepective.   He lived a very long life and had time for the deepest reflection.   For much of the time he and Moss were on Crete in 1944 they operated separately, Moss escorting the abducted General while Fermor hurried everywhere across the island meeting contacts and other agents, all of whom he knew, whereas Moss knew none.

In terms of describing the action, Moss is probably the better read.   In terms of understanding the machinations of the Special Operations Executive and the sheer courage of the Cretan resistance, I prefer this.

The Scarlet Papers - Matthew Richardson

 Apparently a debut spying novel, The Scarlet Papers is very impressive indeed.   Matthew Richardson has tackled all the major tropes of the British genre and acquitted himself splendidly.   Moles within the SIS, seedy postwar compromises, double agents, triples, illegals, even the real-life embodiment of super-evil, Mad Vlad.

Max Archer, failed MI6 applicant turned failed academic, is summoned to meet the legendary Scarlet King, first and only female C, active in the field from 1946 all the way to 1992.   Now in her 90s, it seems she wants to publish her tell-all autobiography but needs Max, author of two failed books on Philby and other traitors, to fact-check it.

Obviously, a recipe for disaster.   The powers-that-be can't have that sort of thing coming out.  Some of Scarlet's secrets are big enough to bring down governments, let alone their creepy secret agencies.   The chase is on and it's Max who finds himself on the front-line, with only a dual national private intelligence operative to help him.

Again, Richardson handles this remarkable well.  The theme is preposterous, but then so are all actual spying scandals.   Richardson has not only done his homework, fleshing out the narrative with historical parallels, but he brings it right up to date with the botched Skripol poisoning - one off-the-books op for Scarlet, post-retirement, is accompanying the swapped Skripol to the UK.

The best thing, though, is that the action is suitably thrilling.   I enjoyed The Scarlet Papers hugely and will be searching the shelves for more by Mr Richardson.

The Platform Edge - Mike Ashley (ed)

 From the British Library series 'Tales of the Weird, comes this collection of neglected ghost stories set on the rail system.   Mike Ashley always tries to avoid the well-known regulars, thus there is no 'The Signalman' by Dickens.

There is, however, 'A Short Trip Home' by, of all people, F Scott Fitzgerald, which turns out to be startlingly effective.   Of the Victorian entries I liked 'Railhead' by Perceval Landon, of whom I had never heard but who turns out to have been a friend of Kipling (he lived in a cottage at Batemans) and the author of 'Thurnley Abbey', a ghost story which M R James considered 'almost too horrid.'  I must look it out.

Of the more modern ones, I am always intrigued byR Chetwynd-Hayes, represented here by 'The Underground'.   Of those inbetween, I really liked 'A Subway Named Mobius' which, according to editor Mike Ashley, is the only short story by American astronomer A J Deutsch.

A good collection, then, casting light on several intriguing writers.

The Ariadne Objective - Wes Davis

 This is the story of the SOE in Crete.  It syntheses the personal accounts of Paddy Leigh Fermor and Billy Moss (see various posts on this blog over the last couple of months) with the 'universal' approach of pure military historians like Antony Beevor.   It works well and is probably the best introduction to the subject.  What Davis brings to the party is deeper research than Fermor or Moss could ever have achieved.  Davis, for example, gives us the names of the crew of the bomber that dropped Fermor but was unable to drop Moss onto the Cretan massif in February 1944.   Where Davis differs from other accounts - for example, the type of bomber it was that carried Fermor and Moss - I tend to side with Davis.  In this instance, for example, why would a British crew fly an American bomber?

Davis is particularly could on John Pendlebury, the eccentric British academic who carried out the groundwork for Fermor and Moss (and Xan Fielding, come to that) and who died the ultimate hero's death during the Fall of Crete in 1941.  Pendlebury gets a chapter to himself - richly deserved.   Davis slightly plays down the abduction of General Kreipe in April '44, which reflects its importance with historical retrospect but does not reflect the fervour it raised at the time.

Obviously I am now quite familiar with the central story but Davis adds a lot of fresh detail and has a 100% engaging style.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Ariadne Objective.  I recommend it to generalist and specialist alike.

Nothing More Than Murder - Jim Thompson

 Nothing More Than Murder (1949) is a pulp psychological thriller knocked out by Thompson at the height of US film noir.   It is begging to be adapted by Chandler and directed by Fritz Lang with either Robert Ryan or Sterling Hayden in the lead.   It even has a movie house setting.

Joe Wilmot, a former juvenile delinquent, has built up a thriving picture house in the town of Stoneville.   Ok, he got the premises by marrying the heiress of local bigwigs but he built it up, saw off the competition and negotiated his way through the bewildering and wildly corrupt picture distribution business.   Joe's wife, Elizabeth, has a habit of bringing home strays, the latest of whom is a pubescent Plain Jane called Carol Farmer.   Inevitably Joe and Carole have a fling.   Inevitably Elizabeth finds out.   She wants out - more importantly she wants half the value of the business.

A murder plot is concocted whereby they will lure a housekeeper to Stoneville.   Carol kill her and they will burn the woman's body in a fire in the garage where Joe stores and rewinds and checks his films.   Joe will then claim on Elizabeth's life insurance and mail her the lot.

It sounds like the perfect murder.   Of course there's no such thing.   Suspicion falls on Joe, Carol gets clingy, Joe tries to scam his way out of the jam, only to fall victim to the several scams of others.   Thompson could concoct this sort of story in his sleep.   He keeps it short and punchy and the reader is happy to tag along for the ride.   It's not Thompson at his very best - King Blood is my favourite - but it's still miles better than most of his rivals.

Gold, Frankincense and Dust - Valerio Varesi

Parma is shrouded in autumnal mist.   Commissario Franco Soneri is called to a body found on the verge of the autosrada, where there has been a multi-vehicle pile-up.   A lorry-load of bulls have broken loose and there is a Roma camp close by.   The body has been badly and deliberately burnt.

The victim turns out to be a beautiful young Romanian girl with links to the Roma people.  She operated under various names and had a string of well-off older lovers who have different perspectives on her character.   Whilst they certainly give her presents, she is not a prostitute.   Her day job seems to have been cleaning for a specialist firm of goldsmiths.   She was, however, having an intense affair with the husband of the proprietor and was three months pregnant by him.

Soneri investigates at a leisurely pace.  We are gently introduced to the unique working of the Italian crime and judicial system.   The book was written in 2007 and it is therefore just about credible that a middle-aged commissario like Soneri should still be immune to technological advances.   Soneri does things old-style.   He believes that coincidences happens, that people are fallible, and all will become clear in the end.   His private life is going through a troubled time, so he increases his visits to local bars and trattoria.  He meets a down-at-heel marchese whose aristocratic demeanour gets him carte blanche for his eccentricities.   He too is one of nature's philosophers and his interactions with Soneri are highlights of the story.

I was reminded of Camilleri's Mantalbano novels.  The focus on food, regionality, character - alongside a wry commentary of the current state of affairs.   Reading it was pure pleasure.   I'm no expert on translations from the Italian but I will certainly keep an eye out for translator Joseph Farrell's versions of Dario Fo's plays.  In fact I think I might Google them now...

Patrick Leigh Fermor, An Adventure - Artemis Cooper

 This is a superb account of a long life, well lived.  Fermor was a son of the Raj, brought up by effectively a single mother, who failed at school and, aged 18, set off to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, an adventure which changed his life.

Fermor was great at languages and making friends.   These skills brought him out of Rumania in 1939 and into the Intelligence Corps.   From there it was the Special Operations Executive and undercover work on what the Nazis called Fortress Crete.   Medals and public recognition came with the abduction of General Heinrich Kreipe in 1944 (see my review of Ill Met by Moonlight, below).

After the war Fermor settled in Greece and became a famous travel writer.  Ultimately this led to a knighthood.  He died, aged 96, in 2011.

I have already commented on Cooper's literary DNA and skills (see my review of her Cairo, below).  By the time she wrote this, in 2012, her skills had developed even further.   Once you know about her, it's good fun to see how she underplays her famial links with Fermor in the final third of the book.   Her husband visits him in Greece, but she doesn't mention herself being there.   Her father and grandmother were close friends with Fermor and she herself has a Greek forename.   Coincidence?

But that's just an extra for those in the know.   Anyone would derive tremendous pleasure from this book.   It is a rare gift to be able to write about war, travel and the making of books with equal care and aplomb.

Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata

 Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, so you have to wonder why he is so little known in the West.  It can't be because he is too Oriental, because Mishima can be equally esoteric.  It might be a translation problem (Edward G Seidensticker, who translated this, was undoubtedly a great scholar but that doesn't necessarily make him a great translator), or it might just be that 120-page novellas are not popular here.

I should perhaps point out that 120 pages took me five sessions to read.   I so enjoyed the poetic quality of Kawabata's sparse writing that I wanted to enjoy every paragraph.  It is a leisurely story, and rightly so, as the protagonist Shimamura is a lazy man taking a lazy holiday in the mountains.

He comes to this particular hot springs resort because Komako is there.  Shimamura and Komako have met before and have had an affair, but now Komako has signed a four-year geisha contract to fund care for a young man who she looks after but who is engaged to another woman, Yoko.  Shimamura has encountered Yoko and the sick young man on the train journey north.   His interest has been piqued in more ways than one.

Shimamura is an urbane city man.   He has inherited enough money not to have to work.   He considers himself something of an intellectual and aesthete.  He has cultivated an interest in Japanese dance and collects Chijimi linen cloth.   Komako is not rich.   To get money she has adopted the archaic profession of a geisha.   She fits in a renewed affair with Shimamura between parties at which she drinks too much and filches cigarettes (she doesn't smoke).  In a sense she is flirting with modernity (the novel was written in 1934), but the two lifestyles are always going to clash.   In any event, the casual love affair is never going anywhere.   Shimamura already has a wife and children, who he seemingly doesn't care much about.  Indeed, he doesn't seem to care much about anything.

The allusive, meandering style is deliberately misleading.  The novel in which very little happens is always leading to a tragic climax.  Old and new Japan come together.  An old traditional barn in the mountain resort is acting as a cinema.  The film jams in the projector, sets on fire and burns the place down.  A shocking death finally jars Shimamura into life and Kawabata ends with the most beautiful paragraph of all.