Tag: historical fiction

Day 299: Moriarty

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Cover for MoriartyI thought the idea of a novel written from the point of view of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, was an interesting one, but since I always found the Moriarty plot tedious, I now wonder why I thought so. When I opened the book cover to find that John Gardner is the author of many, many series novels and Moriarty is one of them, I was further dismayed, not generally being a fan of series writing (although I have a small number of favorites) and being even more skeptical of someone who writes many different series. Moreover, don’t be mislead into thinking this is a Sherlock Holmes mystery–this novel is missing Sherlock Holmes entirely and it isn’t really a mystery.

The novel opens with two introductions, both putting forward the pretense that the novel  is based on newly discovered diaries of Moriarty, which cannot be reproduced because of their vile content. I suspect the truth is that Gardner found himself unable to sustain a convincing 19th century writing style, this hunch seeming to be confirmed by the modern writing style of the book and the dialogue.

The plot concerns Moriarty’s attempts to re-form his criminal empire after an absence of several years following the Reichenbach Falls incident, in which, if you’ll remember, Conan Doyle attempted to kill off both Holmes and Moriarty. In Moriarty’s absence, other criminals have taken over his various enterprises.

Although not badly written, the novel completely failed to capture me. I was not interested in any of the characters and in fact thought they made unconvincing and boring criminals. One incident early in the book that is artificially spun out by going back and forth in time and place is confusing, and such a device seems totally unnecessary.

All in all, I found the novel tedious and only finished about a third of it before quitting.

Day 294: Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

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Cover for Death on the Nevskii ProspektGiven my interest in Russia and the time period, this novel should have been a slam-dunk for me, but I was disappointed. Lord Francis Powerscourt is asked to investigate the death of a British diplomat in Russia, who was discovered with his throat cut on a bridge across the Nevskii Prospekt. No one in the British government knows why the victim was in Russia, and the Russians, having reported his death, pretend that they know nothing about it.

Powerscourt’s investigations seem to be pointing to the victim having had a secret meeting with the Tsar. In addition, Powerscourt may be running up against the Russian secret police, the Okhrana.

The book begins with a completely unnecessary chapter or two devoted to efforts to try to persuade Lord Powerscourt’s wife to release him from his promise not to take any more investigations. In addition, the real circumstances of the death seem completely unlikely. Characterization was minimal, and the plot had several unlikely points.

Dickinson’s historical research is commented on in the blurbs, but there was little in the novel that anyone doing the most cursory reading about Tsarist Russia’s last days wouldn’t know.

Day 290: The House of Velvet and Glass

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Cover for The House of Velvet and GlassThe House of Velvet and Glass is a slow starter, which I don’t usually complain about, because if I’m enjoying a book enough, it can move as slowly as it wants. Nevertheless, considering how much I enjoyed Howe’s first book, I was surprised at how impatient I became with this one.

The novel begins with Helen and Eulah Allston, two entirely trivial women, mother and daughter, journeying back from a European husband-hunting expedition–on the Titanic. Although we’re told which ship they are on only at the very end of the first chapter, as if it were an ironic or surprising fact, the ship’s identity was very clear from early in the chapter.

Three years later, Sybil Allston is comforting her grief and anger at the death of her mother and sister on the Titanic by visiting a psychic. She is wholly convinced that she is receiving messages from the afterlife. On one of her visits, the psychic gives her a piece of crystal called a scrying stone.

Sybil’s father Lan Allston is a wealthy man who made his money through shipping, but he seems to spend all his time in his dark back parlor. Her brother Lanny looks as if he may be entering the life of a ne’er-do-well gambler and womanizer.

Not everything is as it seems, but I became extremely impatient waiting for the novel to go somewhere while we occasionally skipped backward in time to Lan as a young man in Shanghai or to Helen and Eulah on the Titanic.

Eventually, the novel becomes about a woman discovering her own powers, and the second half of the novel is much better than the first. But I did rebel against one thing. I particularly dislike it when characters in historical novels behave like modern people. I felt it would be extremely unlikely that Sybil would urge her father to bring home a woman they both think is a prostitute (and by their lights, is one) just because she has her brother’s blood on her dress. And I certainly don’t believe that her father would encourage Sybil to get to know her, although there turns out to be a reason for that. Completely unbelievable is the scene where Sybil takes her to her club or the scene where she goes, however, unwittingly, with her to an opium den.

So, a very mixed reaction to this novel. Ultimately, it became interesting, although the much-vaunted twists at the end were largely foreseeable.

Day 289: Birds of a Feather

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Cover for Birds of a FeatherMaisie Dobbs is a “psychologist and investigator” solving cases in post World War I London. Birds of a Feather is the second book in the series by Jacqueline Winspear. Maisie’s background is unique, in that she is a former serving girl who was taken up by a mentor, educated, and trained in some unusual techniques to use in her investigations.

Maisie accepts the case of a wealthy owner of grocery stores, Joseph Waite, to find his daughter Charlotte, who is in her 30’s, and return her home. As Maisie investigates the case by locating Charlotte’s friends, they begin dying. At each crime scene, a white feather is left. White feathers were traditionally given to young men during World War I to shame them into enlisting, as they are a symbol of cowardice.

I read the first book in this series, Maisie Dobbs, and was not enthralled with it, so I only read this novel because it was chosen for my book club. I finally decided that I like the book a little, but it certainly has its flaws. Winspear is not very good at delineating Maisie’s character, I feel. Maisie also speaks surprisingly modern American English for a British woman in the 1930’s.

The biggest problem I have with Maisie, though, is that the unusual skills she has picked up to use in her investigations are far too New Agey to be convincing for a character in the 1930’s. It does not help my enjoyment of the novel, I fear, that I find many New Age ideas irritating.

In addition, it makes no sense to me at all that no one seems surprised to find the detective is a young woman. Even in P. D. James’ classic An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, written in 1972, characters express surprise to find a woman in that role. All-in-all, this makes too many anachronisms in the series to suit me.

Finally, I know this is a silly quibble, but I feel that Winspear spends too much time describing Maisie’s clothes.

Day 285: Full Dark House

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Cover for Full Dark HouseThe back cover of this mystery calls it “mapcap” and “great fun.” I found it mildly amusing in a silly way.

John May arrives at work in the present time to find the place has been blown up, apparently with his partner Arthur Bryant inside. He investigates this incident while he thinks back to their first case together.

John joined Arthur during the Blitz in World War II working in the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Their case was that of a dancer at a theatre in Covent Garden who is drugged and then dragged into the elevator with her feet sticking out, so that when the elevator moves, her feet are cut off.

There are many gothic touches in this novel, which is not surprising because the author is apparently a writer of horror fiction. However, after references to phantoms, vampires, spiritualism, and so on, the murderer turns out to be human after all. I came away feeling that this book promises more, in the way of humor and the unusual, than it actually delivers.

Day 282: Speaking From Among the Bones

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Cover for Speaking From Among the BonesEleven-year-old chemist and detective Flavia de Luce is back with her latest adventure in Speaking From Among the Bones. An expert in poisons and an accomplished snoop, Flavia has already solved four crimes before the ripe old age of twelve.

Having accompanied her sister Ophelia (Feely) to her organ practice one night, Flavia hears a flapping in the organ pipes that she thinks is a trapped bat. Feely is practicing for the Easter Sunday service, as Mr. Collicutt, the organist, has vanished.

The next morning when Flavia goes back to the church to get the bat out of the pipes (so that she can look at its blood under her microscope), she gets distracted into eavesdropping on a confrontation between the vicar and the bishop’s secretary over the unearthing and reburial of the bones of St. Tancred from his crypt in the church. The vicar has previously received permission to do this and now the bishop is trying to rescind it through a magistrate.

The vicar insists on going ahead, and the men open the sealed crypt enough so that Flavia can look into it. Inside the crypt is the body of Mr. Collicutt, with his head in an old gas mask.

Flavia’s investigations take her as usual all over the village and turn up all sorts of secrets, including a man hidden away in an old house, a secret passageway into St. Tancred’s crypt, and the whereabouts of a diamond that was buried with his body in the saint’s crozier. At the same time she worries about family problems, such as her sister’s impending marriage and the sale of the crumbling family mansion, Buckshaw, for back taxes.

As usual, Flavia herself is the most charming part of the series, as she plunges recklessly into and out of difficult situations, contemplates the structure of blood and the properties of ether, irritates her older sisters, and rides all over the village on her trusty bike Gladys. The novel is funny, the mystery absurd, the writing splendid, and Flavia always entertaining.

Day 281: Gilead

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Cover for GileadBest Book of the Week!
Gilead is the novel that precedes Marilynne Robinson’s Home, although it is set in the same time frame and covers some of the same territory. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

John Ames is an elderly Congregationalist minister in 1956 who believes he is dying. He has a much younger wife and young son, a surprising blessing in his old age. The novel is in the form of a diary addressed to his son in the expectation that he will not live long enough to personally pass on his family history and advice.

Ames lives in Gilead, a small Iowa town on the prairie near the border with Kansas. The town was founded by abolitionists during the Free State wars in Kansas as a refuge for slaves and fighters the likes of John Brown. Ames’ grandfather, also a minister of the warrior-for-God ilk, had visions of God and once preached a sermon in a bloody shirt with a gun in his belt. With that upbringing, his son was naturally a pacifist, who left the church for awhile after that sermon to worship with the Quakers. One of Ames’ most powerful memories is of the journey he made with his father to Kansas, in terrible conditions, to retrieve the body of his grandfather, who had returned there.

Although Gilead is certainly about the history of the town–the wars, the Depression, the Dust Bowl years–it is more about the relationship between fathers and sons, both from the secular and religious points of view. Not only does it explore the relationships within Ames’ own family, but it also looks at that between Ames and the son of his best friend the Presbyterian minister–Ames’ surrogate son–John Ames Boughton.

The story of John Ames Boughton is the one more thoroughly explored in the sequel Home, although interestingly enough, Gilead tells Boughton’s story more explicitly, while Home, narrated by Boughton’s sister Glory, only hints at some of the facts.

The novel, a celebration of life and faith, is beautifully written and full of ideas to ponder. That being said, as I do not particularly have a religious background or bent, I did not fully understand some of the narrator’s ideas and preoccupations. I found Home, although told from the point of view of the same goodness and piety, a more accessible novel than Gilead.

Day 279: The Serpent’s Tale

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Cover for The Serpent's TaleIn the first of the Mistress of the Art of Death series (minor spoilers ahead), Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, a medieval pathologist, solved a series of murders for the English King Henry II and fell in love with one of his soldiers, Rowley Picot. She declined his marriage proposal because he expected to be rewarded a baronetcy as a result of their success and she knew that as a baronet’s wife she would not be allowed to pursue her medical profession. As a more humble citizen she has a lot more freedom. So, they parted and, to his horror, he was made the Bishop of St. Albans.

In this second book, taking place almost two years later, Rowley fetches her for another mission. She is bubbling over with resentment because she has borne him a daughter, Ally, whom he has not acknowledged.

Rowley is on what he hopes is a preemptive mission. Using poison mushrooms, someone has attempted to murder Rosamund the Fair, Henry II’s mistress, and blame it on his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In an effort to avoid civil war, Rowley wants Adelia to help him figure out who ordered the attempt before Henry hears of it.

But Adelia has bad news for him. The basket of mushrooms he brought to show her contains nightcaps, and Adelia explains that Rosamund may seem to have improved, but she is already dead.

In a frozen winter landscape, Adelia and Rowley travel first to a convent and then to the fantastic Wormwood Tower to investigate the crime, where Rosamund’s body lies protected by a labyrinth and an insane lady’s maid.

Franklin’s series is well written and carefully researched. Although she admits to taking a few liberties with historical characters in this book, for the most part it is historically based on Eleanor’s revolt against Henry in favor of her oldest son.

Franklin sets up a vivid backdrop in the icy English landscape, which plays more than an incidental part in the plot. In addition, she has the ability to make us care about Adelia and Ally, Rowley, Mansur, and Glytha, the main recurring characters. It is with sadness that I heard not long ago of Franklin’s death, and I regret that there are only four books in this series.

Day 278: Gentlemen of the Road

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Cover for Gentlemen of the RoadGentlemen of the Road is like a boy’s adventure story for adults. Before 1000 AD, Zelikman and Amram are two adventurers travelling in the Caucasus Mountains. They make money by faking fights to be wagered on. Zelikman is a thin, gawky physician from Regensburg who has broken with his family, while Amram is a giant of an ex-soldier looking for his daughter, who was stolen from his village.

An old man hires the men to escort an unwilling young boy named Filaq to his grandfather. The boy’s father was a bek in Khazaria, a legendary Jewish country on the Caspian Sea, when he was murdered by a rival. The boy wants to return to take his revenge, but the rival is having his entire family murdered and enslaved. Filaq eventually persuades Zelikman and Amram to return to Khazaria and help him retake his father’s position.

Chabon originally published this novel as a serial in the New York Times Magazine, ending each chapter with a cliffhanger. He obviously had a great time writing it and it is lots of fun to read, with colorful characters, exotic settings, and deeds of derring-do.

Day 274: Red Water

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Cover for Red WaterBest Book of the Week!
I read this book on the recommendation of friend Dave Palmer. Thanks, Dave!

In Red Water Judith Freeman has accomplished something difficult–created characters whose beliefs I have no sympathy for, and who I’m not sure I even like, and made me want to read about them.

The novel is about the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, when 120 Arkansas emigrants on their way to California were slaughtered in southwestern Utah. This event is one for which the Church of Latter-Day Saints has never to this day admitted responsibility. In particular, this novel is about John D. Lee, the Mormon bishop who was eventually hanged for his part in the event, from the points of view of three of his wives.

Red Water begins with Lee’s execution in 1877, as Emma Lee looks back at her conversion to the religion in England, journey to Utah, and acceptance of Lee as a husband. Although he is twice her age and she will be his eighth wife, he is charismatic and commanding, and she marries for love.

Once she arrives in southwestern Utah, a barren and harsh landscape, she begins to hear things that disturb her. The initial version she is told of the massacre is that the settlers were slaughtered by Indians. But Lee has their stock in with his, and the settlement has a room stuffed with men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing, some of it badly stained. Other versions of the story come out, ones that point the finger partially, or wholly, at the Mormon men, some alleging her husband was a leader. But Emma feels she must trust her husband.

Emma finds she has other hardships. She is not Lee’s eighth but seventeenth wife, although the other nine have left him. There is jealousy among some of the remaining wives. Lee’s families are so far-flung that Emma often goes days without seeing him. The land is bleak and unforgiving, and the work is hard. But Emma decides to face every hardship cheerfully.

Ann is Lee’s child bride, married to him at the age of 13 shortly after his marriage to Emma. Her narrative begins after Lee’s death as well, when she has long been separated from the family. On a pursuit of a horse thief from Idaho to southern Utah, she finds herself back in Lee’s old territory and reflects upon her life with him.

Ann marries Lee to keep her mother, who has lost faith and criticized the Mormons, under Lee’s protection. Despite their age difference, she is also attracted to him. After an initial rough start with Emma, the two became the closest of friends.

However, by the time Brigham Young sends Lee away from the southern settlements that he helped found and banishes him from the order as a scapegoat for the massacre, Ann has made some disillusioning discoveries and decides that Lee’s driving forces are greed and the pursuit of power. She leaves the family to wander on her own, often dressed as a boy.

Once Lee is thrown off by the Mormons, Emma and Rachel keep faith with him, but only Rachel willingly shares his prison. Her narrative is the last. As an old, bitter woman, she fights to survive in a remote area of northern Arizona where Lee has sent her.

This novel is fascinating for the details of the characters’ beliefs and the hard lives that they must live in settling these wild parts of the country. I also find fascinating the ability of men to rationalize as the will of god whatever foul or greedy things they want to do. Freeman’s portrayal of her characters, however, is amazingly unjudgmental and perceptive.

On a side note, for those who are interested in this subject, an excellent nonfiction source about modern fundamentalists, whose beliefs and rationalizations are strikingly similar to those depicted in this novel, is Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.