Shadow of the Past

The hero (if that is the right word) of Judith Cutler's new mystery Shadow of the Past is the Rev Tobias Campion Rector of Moreton St. Jude, a rural parish in early nineteenth century Warwickshire. Behind this modest front the Rev Tobias is in fact a titled gentleman, a member of a wealthy and influential familly inspired to put aside his priviledged background by his Christian faith. Thsi causes me to wonder if the Rev Tobias is the ancestor of Margery Allingham's Albert Campion also a titled member of an ancient familly who prefers to do his good works of detection as plain mister, but I digress. Lady Chase, one of Tobias' wealthy parishoners, is renowned for her generosity to the poor and as a leading figure in local society but her good works act as a cover for her grief at the loss of her son and heir, Hugo, who is missing believed killed in the Peninsular War. Her late husband's nephew, Sir Marcus Bramhall, then arrives with his familly and invites himself for a prolonged stay obviously expecting to inherit the title and estate as there is no news of Hugo despite the time and money Lady Chase has spent to discover his whereabouts or confirm his demise. When he declares his intention to bring a court case to have Hugo declared dead and himself the heir Tobias is moved to support his friend and parishoner. The discovery of the body of a man who could have been bringing information about Hugo and the disappearance of the Bramhall childrens governess wind up the plot nicely. This is a very entertaining mystery and brightened a couple of damp and gloomy winter afternoons for this reader.

Standard of Honour

Standard of Honour by Jack Whyte is the second volume of his Templar trilogy. The first volume, Knights of the Black and White, showed the founding of the Templar Order as a front organisation for the ultra-secret Brotherhood of Sion. Sixty years later the Templars are the premier Order of Chivalry in the Kingdom of Jerusalem with a steady stream of recruits and ample funds for equipment. The book opens with the catastrophic defeat of the Christian forces at the battle of Hattin, a defeat which owed as much to their inept leadership as to the generalship of Saladin. The action then moves to France where Henry St Claire is persuaded to return to his role as Master-at-Arms to his liege lord Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine when Richard frees Henry's son Andre from a false charge of murder. Ascending the throne of England on the death of his father Henry the Second Richard agrees to head a new Crusade to re-capture Jerusalem with the St Claire father and son as part of his army. Andre, a member of the secret Brotherhood, becomes a member of the Templar Order and takes the opportunity to search for his cousin Andrew Sinclair of the Scottish branch of the familly who has been missing since the battle of Hattin. Jack Whyte has once again written a story that combines adventure with reflection on the deeper issues involved in any conflict. His portrait of King Richard is rather harsh, whilst an accurate description of his actions it does not make allowances for Richard's need to be a canny politician as well as a warrior. The times were governed by a brutal code and the penalties for failure were extreme. Richard's actions and strategems should be judged in the light of this. Whyte is not afraid to show the Christian knights as lacking in the area of personal hygiene and cultural niceties compared to their Muslim opponents which is true but no reference is made to the origin of much of these attitudes in the priests constant lectures on the "sin of pride" and "mortification of the flesh". None of which takes anything away from this novel as a really good read giving hours of pleasure. Roll on volume three!

Fire and Sword

Sometimes when picking up a book by an author with which one is familiar one is disappointed to find that the contents are not as anticipated. Having read all of Simon Scarrow's Roman novels I was taken aback when I found that Fire and Sword was about the Napoleonic wars. My momentary hesitation was overcome from the first page. I already knew that Mr Scarrow was a born writer and I was not surprised to be swept along by this narrative as I had been by his Roman stories. Fire and Sword is not just an adventure in the style of the Sharpe novels of Bernard Cornwell (another of my favourite writers) here Scarrow is dealing with characters whose lives and careers have been the subject of academic enquiry for near on two centuries and he shows us the men behind the uniforms with a sure hand. This book is the third volume of a quartet of novels which tell the story of the war between Britain and France as a conflict of two outstanding characters with remarkable similarities of background and personality. Napoleon Buonaparte cam from the minor nobility of Corsica and used the Revolution to force his way up the political ladder his ambition hardened by the real and perceived slights he had received at the hands of the old nobility. Arthur Wellesley was one of five children of a minor Anglo-Irish nobleman driven by a culture of duty and public service and a certainty that his destiny is to protect Britain from the threat of Napoleon. The book opens with Napoleon's coronation as Emperor of the French in the Cathedral of Notre Dame and follows him through the victory over the Austrians at Austerlitz, which many historians claim was the peak of his career, through to his disastrous decision to mire his forces in the Iberian peninsular. The recently knighted Sir Arthur Wellesley has just returned from conducting a brilliant campaign on the Indian sub-continent but is now caught up in the political attacks on his brother Richard who was Govenor General of India. The book the follows his struggle to convince the government that he can undermine Buonaparte by forcing him to divert men and material to fight a series of battles in Portugal and Spain and ends with his victory over Marshall Soult at Oporto. Napoleon is shown as falling into the trap of believing his own propaganda of invincibility. He is surrounded by a court of familly and old friends none of whom are willing or able to point out the flaws in his strategy and he strides confidently into a trap of his own devising and Sir Arthur Wellesley is there to close it on him. I really must obtain the first two volumes of this quartet prior to the publication of the fourth.

The Dig

In 1939 with the British people filled with apprehension by the newspapers stories of international tension in a quiet corner of Suffolk a discovery of national importance was made. In the grounds of Sutton House the largest boat burial in Europe was discovered. Thought to be the grave of an Anglo-Saxon King of East Anglia the contents, which had escaped the attentions of seventeenth century grave robbers, changed forever historians conception of the so-called Dark Ages. The Dig by John Preston is a vivid novelisation of the discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure seen from the perspectives of key characters involved and is almost guaranteed to encourage the reader to further research.

Dawn of Empire

Dawn of Empire by Sam Barone is an excelent example of the historical novel that relies heavily on the writers imagination to fill in the gaps in the historical record. Sam Barone takes the reader back six thousand years to the first attempts to create settled communities in a land ranged by nimadic tribes of hunters and herdsmen. Every few years war bands of wild tribesmen sweep down from the steppe lands to pillage the defenceless settlements in the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This is the story of the settlement that decided to fight to defend what it had built. The village of Orak on the banks of the Tigris is a prosperous and growing settlement reborn from the ruins left by the violent tribe of the Alur-Meriki fifteen years before. Now word has reached Orak that the barbarians are driving down from the steppes again. Nicar, the leading man of the village, is determined that the cycle of re-building followed by destruction must end and commisions Eskar, a barbarian warrior to organise the defence. Sam Barone has written a fast paced narrative of war and adventure that had this reader hooked from the first page. On the book jacket historical novelist Diana Gabaldon compares this book to Wilbur Smith at his best and I cannot disagree with her. Just the book with which to pass a cold winters night.

The Butcher of Smithfield

The gathering of intelligence has always been of importance to governments through the ages and it was first put on a highly organised footing in England by Lord Walsingham in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First. In the seventeenth century Cromwell, seeing Royalist plots in every corner, appointed John Thurloe as his spymaster and he soon gained a reputation for ruthless efficiency. After the Restoration King Charles the Second, a much more generous character than Cromwell, allowed Thurloe to keep the property that he had acquired under the republic and to live in retirement in Lincolns Inn. Susanna Gregory's creation ,Thomas Chaloner, is a former Thurloe agent and The Butcher of Smithfield is his third exploit. As the story opens Chaloner has just returned from Portugal where he has been sorting out a problem for the Queen and he hastens to the White Hall office of his employer the Earl of Clarendon. Instead of the back pay and expenses he expected he faces Clarendon's wrath. The Lord Chancellor is mightily put out that his spy has been away on business for the Queen as if Chaloner could have refused. Clarendon gives him the task of investigating the death of a shady solicitor supposed to have died from eating cucumber and puts a time limit on a successful conclusion failure to meet which will result in his dismissal. The case leads Chaloner through an overlapping series of inquiries which include horse thieves, protection rackets, the rivalry between the producers of the official newsbook and handwritten newsletters and, of course, murder. In addition he has to save a friend from the mercenary wiles of a gold-digging woman. It is expected in this kind of book that the hero should have to overcome all kinds of obstacles and hindrances from foe and friend alike but Chaloner seems particularly ill served. For example, though called upon for assistance by everyone of his acquaintance no one pays him and he is in such reduced circumstances that he goes for days without food depite doing a considerable amount of physical exertion. He continues in this hazardous mode of existance because he is supposed to be unable to obtain any other employment except that of spy which limits his opportunities. However, one would have thought that a man of his proven physical and intellectual capabilities would have been able to find alternative employment both more congenial and rewarding but then, of course, one would be deprived of these very entertaining books.

Black Butterfly

Since James Bond became an icon of a life of luxury and adventure there have been several attempts to "send up" this type of fiction and Black Butterfly is Mark Gatiss' contribution. His hero is Lucifer Box the aging head of a secret government department known as the Royal Academy. His code name is Joshua Reynolds. The Academy is due to be absorbed into MI6 as part of an efficiency drive but Box is determined to have one last adventure. He gets the chance when the fiendish organisation ACRONIM developes a psychedelic drug from the wings of the Black Butterfly and plan to drug all the members of the Scout Movement by putting it in their orange squash. Box frustrates their plan in a series of Pythonesque adventures which proved an amusing read if one accepts such things as Box's Istanbul contact being a Turkish Geordie named Whitley Bey and that he has a son named Christmas - Christmas Box geddit!