The Long Arm of the Law: Classic Police Stories
Martin Edwards (editor)
Mystery
An anthology of mostly-forgotten stories, from the invaluable British Library Crime Classics series. The stories are of widely varying quality: some are purely of historical interest, but there are a couple of semi-precious gems in there. The star of the show is the clever "The Case of Jacob Heylyn", by Leonard R. Gribble--a writer whose name is quite new to me. (The best thing, from a reader's standpoint, is that The Long Arm of the Law gives a chap a promising list of author names for further investigation.)
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Monday, July 30, 2018
Book Review: City of Devils
City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
Paul French
Biography, history, "true" crime
Let's start a representative quote. It's opening night at Farren's, the glittering jewel in the crown of Shanghai's hectic eve-of-war demimonde of nightclubs and gambling venues:
That's City of Devils for you. Lively, beautifully visual, fast-paced, written in the best choppy hard-boiled style, visceral, an incredible sense of place, full to the bursting of cinematic scenes and sharply-delineated characters . . . and it's bollocks. Not all bollocks. Probably a good half of it might be true. Good luck figuring out which half, though.
It's a ripping yarn, mind you. It's written like a combination of Raymond Chandler and Sebastian (The Perfect Storm) Junger. If you made a movie about it, which could easily happen, it'd be a kind of art-deco Blade Runner. Definitely read City of Devils if you like this sort of thing. Just keep in mind that some unknown fraction of it is bollocks.
Paul French
Biography, history, "true" crime
Let's start a representative quote. It's opening night at Farren's, the glittering jewel in the crown of Shanghai's hectic eve-of-war demimonde of nightclubs and gambling venues:
Here's the honorary Cuban consul, a man with his hand permanently out for cumshaw; the slimeball Portuguese commercial attaché, talking up Macao's neutrality with his arm round the honorary Brazilian consul--the Portuguese mobs paid both men three times as much as their government salaries in squeeze every month. Here also is the nest-feathering brigade of officials from swamps like Venezuela, Mexico, Chile, all with passports for sale and letters of transit falling like confetti, no worth more than gold. A Portuguese visa had been a few hundred dollars' cumshaw to a corrupt official a year before; now the price is treble, quadruple. Still they mingle--Portuguese bossman Fat Tony Perpetuo, Macassared hair slicked back with some simmering señorita on his arm, trades gossip with fellow countryman José Boletho, while the consults in white linen suits hover near and smile through nicotine-stained teeth.Here's the thing: "letters of transit" do not exist. They're a plot device made up for the movie Casablanca. Paul French either doesn't know or doesn't care; he refers to them at least twice more.
That's City of Devils for you. Lively, beautifully visual, fast-paced, written in the best choppy hard-boiled style, visceral, an incredible sense of place, full to the bursting of cinematic scenes and sharply-delineated characters . . . and it's bollocks. Not all bollocks. Probably a good half of it might be true. Good luck figuring out which half, though.
It's a ripping yarn, mind you. It's written like a combination of Raymond Chandler and Sebastian (The Perfect Storm) Junger. If you made a movie about it, which could easily happen, it'd be a kind of art-deco Blade Runner. Definitely read City of Devils if you like this sort of thing. Just keep in mind that some unknown fraction of it is bollocks.
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Book Review: The Black Chamber
The Black Chamber: A Novel of an Alternate World War I
S. M. Stirling
Science fiction
S. M. Stirling usually provides reliable entertainment, but not this time. The Black Chamber is derivative, predictable, and almost completely without characterization. It's also marred by frequent intrusions that I can only describe as "thought balloons", where Stirling narrates a character's internal monologue--frequently in wince-worthy fashion. There are the inevitable infodumps, which aren't handled particularly well (though the combination of utopian and dystopian elements in the background was interesting). The dialogue is decidedly stilted.
Finally, the main character does not make any of the crucial decisions in the plot. Other people do, and she reacts. The other problems might be recoverable, but not this one. Give The Black Chamber a miss.
A better alternative-history adventure by the same author--particularly for fans of the inimitable "Flashman" novels--is The Peshawar Lancers.
S. M. Stirling
Science fiction
S. M. Stirling usually provides reliable entertainment, but not this time. The Black Chamber is derivative, predictable, and almost completely without characterization. It's also marred by frequent intrusions that I can only describe as "thought balloons", where Stirling narrates a character's internal monologue--frequently in wince-worthy fashion. There are the inevitable infodumps, which aren't handled particularly well (though the combination of utopian and dystopian elements in the background was interesting). The dialogue is decidedly stilted.
Finally, the main character does not make any of the crucial decisions in the plot. Other people do, and she reacts. The other problems might be recoverable, but not this one. Give The Black Chamber a miss.
A better alternative-history adventure by the same author--particularly for fans of the inimitable "Flashman" novels--is The Peshawar Lancers.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Book Review: The Meaning of Treason
The Meaning of Treason
Rebecca West
History, biography, literature
The Meaning of Treason is about the life and post-war trial of William Joyce, the British traitor (known as Lord Haw-Haw) who broadcast for the Nazis. I read it in my college years; I don't recall much of my reaction. Then Anthony Horowitz dropped a couple of references to it in The Word is Murder, and naturally I had to reread it.
It's an exceedingly odd book. It could have been written by nobody on earth but a member of the British upper classes from before 1960. Imagine a collaboration between Tom Wolfe (the one who wrote The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities) and Lord Peter Wimsey, and you'll have some idea of the style: fluently literate, vivid, intimate, closely observed, and sometimes inane to the point of bafflement. Rebecca West (that's Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield DBE, to you) belonged to that persuasion of writers who suppose that, once you have looked upon a man's face and clothing, and perhaps heard him speak, you are entitled to pronounce with high confidence any judgement you would care to make about his character, psychology, literary tastes, dietary foibles, or what have you. If you in addition know his ancestry, the thing becomes an absolute certainty.
So, for example, we are informed with perfect seriousness that a certain man "had a great head, bulging at the back like the head of a foetus, in a conformation often found in men of exceptional talent." Of a minor witness, West explains that
What makes this book particularly interesting, then, is not exactly its content. West's biographical eloquence is more poetical than informative, for example, and her discussion of the legal issues at question is sophomoric; by her analysis, a person who obtains a British passport by fraud or forgery would be nonetheless entitled to claim its protection. No: The Meaning of Treason is fascinating as a historical document. Rebecca West was of, in, and writing for a social class that basically ceased to exist a few years later. Notice the chummy insularity: "a black-and-lime scarf of the heavy and subtly-coloured sort that used to be sold at the expensive shops at the Croisette at Cannes." Naturally! Observe the unthinking assumption that all humanity can be sorted into fixed categories, predictable in nature, and differing in quality as they approach or fall short of the British Gentry: "He was a not very fortunate example of the small, nippy, jig-dancing type of Irish peasant." Not just an Irish peasant, you understand, but a very particular subspecies of the breed--as if there were some kind of Irish Peasant Fancy, devoted to breeding and showing Irish Peasants, wherein one might amass a modest collection of "Best In Show" ribbons to impress one's friends.
It's off-putting to a modern reader, but it's fascinating as well. The intelligent, sensitive, ex-post-facto writing of the early 21st century can never inhabit the world of William Joyce, of Rebecca West, of the immediate post-war London in which wildflowers grew in the bombed-out buildings around St. Paul's Cathedral, where everyone and everything was tired and a little grubby and still trying to adjust to what had happened. Everything seemed like it was in short supply. Everyone was trying to make sense of it all: what had happened in the War, whose fault it had been, what it might have meant to be pro-Fascist beforehand, what the new world might look like. Considered as reporting, The Meaning of Treason is persiflage. Considered as an entry into that world, it's peerless.
Rebecca West
History, biography, literature
The Meaning of Treason is about the life and post-war trial of William Joyce, the British traitor (known as Lord Haw-Haw) who broadcast for the Nazis. I read it in my college years; I don't recall much of my reaction. Then Anthony Horowitz dropped a couple of references to it in The Word is Murder, and naturally I had to reread it.
It's an exceedingly odd book. It could have been written by nobody on earth but a member of the British upper classes from before 1960. Imagine a collaboration between Tom Wolfe (the one who wrote The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities) and Lord Peter Wimsey, and you'll have some idea of the style: fluently literate, vivid, intimate, closely observed, and sometimes inane to the point of bafflement. Rebecca West (that's Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield DBE, to you) belonged to that persuasion of writers who suppose that, once you have looked upon a man's face and clothing, and perhaps heard him speak, you are entitled to pronounce with high confidence any judgement you would care to make about his character, psychology, literary tastes, dietary foibles, or what have you. If you in addition know his ancestry, the thing becomes an absolute certainty.
So, for example, we are informed with perfect seriousness that a certain man "had a great head, bulging at the back like the head of a foetus, in a conformation often found in men of exceptional talent." Of a minor witness, West explains that
People of this type need to construct around themselves dramas in which they play the leading part, and doubtless she had made her life in a riverside suburb into a very moving and uplifting drama, using her personal relationships as a fiery but solemn argument for love and decencyAs for William Joyce in person, "All though his life he had been anxious, with the special anxiety of the small man, not to make a fool of himself". Good to know!
What makes this book particularly interesting, then, is not exactly its content. West's biographical eloquence is more poetical than informative, for example, and her discussion of the legal issues at question is sophomoric; by her analysis, a person who obtains a British passport by fraud or forgery would be nonetheless entitled to claim its protection. No: The Meaning of Treason is fascinating as a historical document. Rebecca West was of, in, and writing for a social class that basically ceased to exist a few years later. Notice the chummy insularity: "a black-and-lime scarf of the heavy and subtly-coloured sort that used to be sold at the expensive shops at the Croisette at Cannes." Naturally! Observe the unthinking assumption that all humanity can be sorted into fixed categories, predictable in nature, and differing in quality as they approach or fall short of the British Gentry: "He was a not very fortunate example of the small, nippy, jig-dancing type of Irish peasant." Not just an Irish peasant, you understand, but a very particular subspecies of the breed--as if there were some kind of Irish Peasant Fancy, devoted to breeding and showing Irish Peasants, wherein one might amass a modest collection of "Best In Show" ribbons to impress one's friends.
It's off-putting to a modern reader, but it's fascinating as well. The intelligent, sensitive, ex-post-facto writing of the early 21st century can never inhabit the world of William Joyce, of Rebecca West, of the immediate post-war London in which wildflowers grew in the bombed-out buildings around St. Paul's Cathedral, where everyone and everything was tired and a little grubby and still trying to adjust to what had happened. Everything seemed like it was in short supply. Everyone was trying to make sense of it all: what had happened in the War, whose fault it had been, what it might have meant to be pro-Fascist beforehand, what the new world might look like. Considered as reporting, The Meaning of Treason is persiflage. Considered as an entry into that world, it's peerless.
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Book Review: The Amorous Heart
The Amorous Heart: An Unconventional History of Love
Marilyn Yalom
History, sociology
No, I haven't taken to reading Harlequin Romances. The Amorous Heart is an odd little book about . . . um . . . the way the idea and image of "the heart" have been used to symbolize romance through the ages. Sort of.
I liked The Amorous Heart. I'm not quite sure who else would like it. It's not sufficiently scholarly for an academic readership. It's not zippy enough for a popularization (though it's quite readable). It doesn't go deep on a single, identifiable subject, the way the biography-of-a-substance subgenre does. It's chronological in organization, but its material wanders around from the history of the 💗symbol to the Roman de la Rose to the Valentine's Day industry. I guess I'd recommend it to anyone who's got a certain amount of free-floating curiosity and is willing to attach it to more or less any subject.
Marilyn Yalom
History, sociology
No, I haven't taken to reading Harlequin Romances. The Amorous Heart is an odd little book about . . . um . . . the way the idea and image of "the heart" have been used to symbolize romance through the ages. Sort of.
I liked The Amorous Heart. I'm not quite sure who else would like it. It's not sufficiently scholarly for an academic readership. It's not zippy enough for a popularization (though it's quite readable). It doesn't go deep on a single, identifiable subject, the way the biography-of-a-substance subgenre does. It's chronological in organization, but its material wanders around from the history of the 💗symbol to the Roman de la Rose to the Valentine's Day industry. I guess I'd recommend it to anyone who's got a certain amount of free-floating curiosity and is willing to attach it to more or less any subject.
Sunday, July 22, 2018
Book Review: The Word is Murder
The Word is Murder
Anthony Horowitz
Mystery
A well-written and devious book by one of the few true mystery writers active today. There's a clever blending of fact and fiction that extends even into the acknowledgements. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did Magpie Murders--there's no nostalgia angle to speak of--but it's no less expertly crafted. If you're a mystery aficionado, this is a must-read; if you're not, suffice it to say that it's a nifty puzzle with lively characterization and good pacing. The only knock on it that I have is . . . well, shoot, I can't tell you without spoiling the plot. Read this after you're done with The Word is Murder and you'll see what I mean. (It's a mild case, fortunately.)
My well-known decorum and modesty prevent me from capitalizing on the fact, but Anthony Horowitz are professional colleagues. I've published a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and so has he. Other than the fact that he's a well-known author and screenwriter with a bunch of awards and multiple successful series, as well as being an Officer of the British Empire, there's not much to choose between us. Tell him to drop me a line, if you happen to run into him.
Anthony Horowitz
Mystery
A well-written and devious book by one of the few true mystery writers active today. There's a clever blending of fact and fiction that extends even into the acknowledgements. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did Magpie Murders--there's no nostalgia angle to speak of--but it's no less expertly crafted. If you're a mystery aficionado, this is a must-read; if you're not, suffice it to say that it's a nifty puzzle with lively characterization and good pacing. The only knock on it that I have is . . . well, shoot, I can't tell you without spoiling the plot. Read this after you're done with The Word is Murder and you'll see what I mean. (It's a mild case, fortunately.)
My well-known decorum and modesty prevent me from capitalizing on the fact, but Anthony Horowitz are professional colleagues. I've published a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and so has he. Other than the fact that he's a well-known author and screenwriter with a bunch of awards and multiple successful series, as well as being an Officer of the British Empire, there's not much to choose between us. Tell him to drop me a line, if you happen to run into him.
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