A Conspiracy of Violence

A Conspiracy of Violence is the first novel by Susanna Gregory that I have read and it is her first with a new main character. Thomas Chaloner is a spy who used to work for Cromwell's spymaster John Thurloe but now finds himself unemployed. The action takes place in the third year of the Restoration. The newly enthroned Charles the second takes a very pragmatic attitude towards former supporters of Cromwell. Whilst those who had a hand in his father's death are remorselessly hunted down others are either hired by the new government or allowed to slide quietly into retirement. Thurloe is one of this latter category and is still consulted behind the scenes and uses his influence to recommend Chaloner to the Earl of Clarendon who sets him to work searching for treasure supposedly hidden in the Tower of London. Needless to say this only leads to more complex plots and danger for Chaloner. This is a very well written and researched novel which gave me hours of pleasure and I heartily recommend it.

The Affinity Bridge

In The Affinity Bridge George Mann has very cleverly blended two popular genre, the "gaslight" thriller and the "alternative history" into a very pleasing read. The story starts in the fog shrouded streets of Victorian Whitechapel but this is a rather different London. True the gaslights, the handsome cabs and the fogs as well as the top hats, titles and floorlength dresses that are the essential props of the Victorian murder mysteries that we love are all present, but so are steam driven cabs and trams, airships criss cross the skies and clockwork robots do the menial work in offices and well off households. The main characters are Sir Maurice Newbury, Gentleman Investigator to the Crown, and his assistant Miss Veronica Hobbes. Miss Hobbes is what is known as "fiesty" an essential characteristic in females in modern fiction. Sir Maurice and Veronica follow a convoluted trail through an airship crash and murder by a ghostly policeman leading to an arrogant industrialist and a mad scientist. A plague virus that turns people into flesh eating zombies and Sir Maurice's predilection for a drop of laudenam (shades of Sherlock) give this adventure a unique flavour. I liked it and look forward to the next Newbury and Hobbes investigation.

Knots and Crosses

Ian Rankin is one of the most popular and respected of the current generation of British crime writers but until now I had never read any of his work or seen more than a brief glimpse of a TV adaptation. Rankin has written about a dozen Rebus investigations and it seemed to me the obvious thing was to start with number one entitled Knots and Crosses where Detective Sergeant John Rebus is chasing a serial killer. In modern detective stories one murder is no longer sufficient to tickle the taste buds of the reader nothing less than a minor massacre will do. The key to the investigation lies in Rebus' own past in the British Army's elite SAS regiment realisation of which places even greater pressure on a man already carrying enough psychological burdens. Rebus has the obligatory prickly relationship with his superiors and inspires mixed reactions from his colleagues, he is a lone wolf in an organisation were team work is the aim. I must admit that I approached this book with a certain amount of trepidation as the "gritty" style of modern writers is so different from that of my favourite authors but I devoured this at one sitting carried by a powerful narrative flow. Rankin's reputation is well earned.

The Alexander Cipher

There is a long tradition of the Lone Wolf Hero in British fiction. Starting with Sapper's Bulldog Drummond, John Buchan's Richard Hannay and Dornford Yates' Mansell the unofficial adventurer has captured the public imagination for decades. These all had two things in common. They had military experience and independant means and plunged into their adventures either through force of circumstance, as Buchan's Hannay, or to relive the thrills of front line soldiering like Bulldog Drummond. After the Second World War these characters became less and less believable as the post war Labour Government taxed independant means out of existance and retained many of the wartime measures that restricted the freedom of private citizens. However, the public had not lost it's taste for Lone Wolf adventurers and so a new generation was invented who either charged for their services or who, like Hannay, found adventure looking for them. In the Fifties and Sixties Alistair Maclean became the benchmark writer for these tales though inventing a new hero for each story unlike the previous generation who wrote around one. Then came the Americans who had founded a whole nation on the Lone Wolf principle and whose heroes were very definitely outsiders as against the semi-establishment figures of the classic British stories. These characters either had no visible means of support or, as in the case of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt, the writer invents a whole Government departmnet to pick up the bills for his derring do. Since the arrival of the Americans there has been one attribute without which no hero qualifies as a Lone Wolf and that is the ability to seriously annoy the kind of wealthy and powerful people who can send squads of ex special forces hit-men to, unsucessfully of course, end his story prematurely. Here we come to the hero of Will Adams The Alexander Cipher who manages to annoy not one but TWO such men. The hero is Daniel Knox, archeologist, Egyptologist and scuba diving instructor which latter occupation has been forced on him through offending the wealthy and powerful. As the story opens he has been searching the reefs off Sharm-el-Sheik for traces of the lost treasure of Alexander the Great in company with an Australian called Rick. After beating up an Egyptian shipping tycoon he sets out for Alexandria one step ahead of the hit-men. There he hides out with an old friend who is called in to assist at a newly discovered tomb that is partly below the water table and thus requires divers. At this point another tycoon he had previously offended becomes involved. Knox's only chance of survival is to uncover the secret of Alexander's tomb and hope for the protection of a grateful Egyptian government. Will Adams has written a first class page-turner of a story (my highest mark of approval) and I look forward to many more from this writer.

The Blood Detective

In The Blood Detective Dan Waddell has created an original take on the police hunt for a serial killer who leaves cryptic clues on the bodies of his victims. Nigel Barnes, a geneologist, decyphers the clues which relate to a series of muders in Victorian London. If Barnes theory is right then the killer intends to strike no less than five times. The police team always seem to be one step behind the killer who manipulates the investigation by laying clues to duplicate the Victorian case which resulted in a miscarriage of justice. Waddell has linked the past with the present in an intriguing fast paced story with great characters and a cracking climax.

Foreign Body

The modern phenomenon known as "medical tourism" is the theme of Robin Cook's latest novel Foreign Body. Americans who require expensive surgical procedures are traveling to India where there are modern hospitals that will perform the operations for less than half the cost of hospitals in the USA. Even with travel costs to account for the patients can still acheive considerable savings. The Indian hospitals that offer this service are modern, state-of-the-art establishments with first class staff and were set up solely to cater for this market as few Indians themselves could afford to use them. An American company that owns a string of hospitals in the USA is alarmed at the way that potential customers are being lured away and are determined to put a stop to it. A small group of ambitious young executives are given funds and set about the task of ruining the reputation of Indian hospitals with ruthless zeal. They plan to scare away potential clients by producing a death rate that will portray the Indian hospitals as unsafe. Mr Cook has produced another of his ingenious plots backed up with all the medical jargon needed to provide verisimilitude which is hardly surprising as he is a qualified medical practitioner. This book is just the thing for passing a rainy day but not if you are waiting to be called into hospital for surgery.

The Salisbury Manuscript

The Salisbury Manuscript by Philip Gooden is this writers first foray into the world of the Victorian whodunnit and a very creditable effort it is. This is not his first novel, however, as he is the author of a series of Elizabethan murder mysteries. This book opens with a murder on a bleak hillside on the outskirts of Salisbury which is the site of an ancient hill fort and burial mound. The action then turns to the main character in the book, Tom Ansell, a young lawyer from a London firm which represents a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral. Ansell is despatched to Salisbury to receive a manuscript from Canon Slater which comprises the rather compromising memoirs of his late father. Slater requires that these be locked away until after his death. Needless to say this unfortunate event occurs much sooner than the Canon anticipates. Ansell is suspected and arrested and in order to clear his name begins to make his own enquiries among the many unusual characters within the Slater familly and the community that lives within the shadow of the great Cathedral. In this he is assisted by his fiancee, Helen Scott, who is a very independant minded and foeceful character for the period in which the book is set. Would an unmarried middle class young lady be given the freedom that Miss Scott has in the eighteen seventies? Perhaps it is churlish to mention this when Mr Gooden has provided us with such an entertaining story. I am sure that Mr Gooden plans more adventures of Tom Ansell and Helen Scott and if they are as good as this they will be worth waiting for.

Attila: The Judgement

Attila: The Judgement is the third volume of William Napier's engrossing telling of the conflict between the nomadic tribes of the steppes and the divided Roman Empire. The outline of the saga is, I am sure, known to most readers. Attila, inspired by his fanatical hatred of Rome and the civilisation it headed, brings together the normaly divided tribes of the steppes and launches a savage war not of conquest but destruction. The Roman Empire now divided between East and West suffers weak and ineffectual leadership. The Eastern Emperor, Theodosius, is a scholar who believes that negotiation and reasoned argument is the way to solve all disputes and cannot or will not understand that Attila is impervious to reason. In the West Valentinian is at the centre of a corrupt court and spends his time in ever more obscene religious rituals that he hopes will turn Attila away. One thing that both Emporers have in common is a distrust of the one man who can save the situation, Aetius the Master General of the Legions. Although urged by his friends Aetius refuses to do the one thing that could have saved the Western Empire which is to depose the raving lunatic Valentinian and take the throne himself. Had he not been so scrupulous the history of Western Europe could have been changed for the better. In the event he manages to defeat Attila but only at the cost of the destruction of the Roman Army. His reward from a grateful Emperor Valentinian is to be murdered and his body thrown into an unmarked grave. So that is the story of Attila. The West threatened by a rapacious horde contemptuous of the civilised values it stood for lead by a fanatic who believed he was on a God given mission of destruction. Opposing him a divided Europe whose leaders could not or would not grasp the size of the threat they faced and exiling or executing any who advocated serious defensive action. Does this not seem depressingly like todays headlines? Oh well on to the next book.

Jack in the Box

Jack in the Box by Graham Ison is what our American friends call a "Police Procedural" That is, it attempts to provide a story following actual investigatory techniques. Graham Ison, being a retired senior police officer, is in an ideal position to supply this. His lead detective is DCI Harry Brock a long time career copper with no illusions about his job or the society in which he does it. His "sidekick" is DS Dave Poole a very well read black man. Incidentaly, why is it that all black men in fiction are six feet tall? I know a lot of black men who are well under average height but perhaps they do not fulfill the white liberal image of the "noble savage". The story opens with the discovery of a burning box which contains what is left of a body. Brock and Poole are called in and with very little to go on Brock suddenly links this with a report of a missing artist. Oh really! Well it is fiction and very good too. This is a real page turner and I devoured it at one sitting much to my wife's disgust as she wanted me to do some gardening. Thank you Mr Ison.

The Chatelet Apprentice

On the front cover of The Chatelet Apprentice by Jean-Francois Parot translated from the French by Michael Glencross is an extract from a review by the Mail on Sunday "Reads like a cross between a Maigret mystery and Les Liasons Dangereuses". Frankly, I dislike this kind of shorthand description. The Chatelet Apprentice is nothing like Les Liasons Dangereuses apart from it's eighteenth century French setting and it's only resemblance to Maigret is that it is a detective story. Monsieur Parot, who is both an historian and a diplomat, has written a book in a higher league that Simenon's Maigret potboilers. He effortlessly conveys the atmosphere of the period with it's glitter and grace alongside it's casual acceptance of squalor and brutality. The hero, Nicolas Le Floch, is recomended to Antoine de Sartine Lieutenant General of the Paris Police by his godfather the Marquis de Ranreuil. Sartine sends him to work for Commisioner Lardin at the Chatelet prison in order to learn police methods hence the title of the book. The action of the story begins a year later when Commisioner Lardin disappears and de Sartine appoints the young Le Floch to head the investigation. To outline more of the plot would perhaps spoil what is a first class mystery for other readers. Suffice it to say that it contains all the twists and surprises that one would expect and in addition a feast of information on this, to English readers, relatively unknown period of French history. That Parot can introduce this information unobtrusively into his narrative is an object lesson to all would-be historical novelists.

Nightshade

Nightshade is the latest in Paul Doherty's series of medieval mysteries featuring Sir Hugh Corbett. Doherty is a very good writer, in fact he is about half a dozen very good writers as he has written under a different name for every one of his various series of historical mysteries each featuring a different main character. Doherty is very well qualified to take his place in the crowded ranks of those who write historical thrillers as he holds a history degree from Liverpool University and a Doctorate from Oxford. His CV also tells us that he is headmaster of a school in London. How he holds such a responsible post and finds time to write so much leads one to suspect insomnia. Nowadays all his books, both new and reprints, are brought out under his own name which is appropriate now that he is such a well established writer. Nightshade is the sixteenth book featuring Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal to King Edward the First and his assistant Ranulf-atte-Newgate Principal Clerk to the Chancery of the Green Wax. Yes folks, the civil service liked high sounding titles even then! The story begins in the aftermath of one of the most daring robberies in British history. King Edward had deposited his not inconsiderable treasure in a vault in Westminster Abbey (why not the Tower one asks oneself) but this seemingly impregnable depository is entered and the treasure stolen. One item, the dagger wielded by a member of the Order of Assassins who attempted to murder King Edward,has turned up in Essex in the hands of Lord Scrope, a wealthy and detested landowner who had shocked the Court by his massacre of the Free Bretheren a wandering band of religious mystics who he claimed were heretics. Scrope also holds the Sanguis Christi, a large ruby studded gold cross that he had stolen from the Knights Templar as he escaped from the Saracen siege of the city of Acre and which he had promised to give to King Edward. Edward sends Corbett to Mistleham, site of Scrope's Castle to seize these artefacts as he fears the Templars will try to retreive the Sanguis Christi. At this point the village of Mistleham is terrorised by a mysterious bowman who appears able to pick off people at will and then disappear. What is the motive for these murderous attacks? Could it be revenge for the deaths of the Free Brethren or are the Templars softening up Lord Scrope prior to demanding the return of their treasure. This is another Doherty classic for lovers of the historical genre.