Manna from Hades

Carola Dunn is justly famous for her hugely entertaining Daisy Dalrymple detective stories but in Manna from Hades she moves forward forty years and relocates to the wilds of Cornwall. Her new heroine, and I am assuming that this is the first of a series of books featuring her, is a retired widow, Eleanor Trewynn, who lives in the small coastal town of Port Mabyn. The ground floor of her home is used as a charity shop for which she drives round the countryside collecting donated items. As the story opens she returns from one such trip to find a handful of valuable jewels amongst the cast-offs. This is followed by the discovery of a body in the shop's stockroom. There follows one of Miss Dunn's well constructed and delightfully written stories guaranteed to confound and entertain the reader in equal measure.

The Pere-Lachaise Mystery

The Pere-Lachaise Mystery is the second novel by Claude Izner featuring the bookseller turned detective Victor Legris and a splendid tale it is. The story opens with Victor's former mistress, Odette de Valois, recently widowed and visiting the familly mausoleum to pray for her late husband. Her maid is reluctant to enter the cemetary and waits outside for her but she does not return. Desparate, the maid turns to the only person in Paris that she knows, and that is her mistresses former lover. Victor pursues the solution to the mystery with his usual combination of determination and intelligent inquiry though suffering several brutal assaults on the way. Once again he is both assisted and obstructed by his fiery Russian girlfriend Tasha and his partner Kenji. Claude Izner has written a complex tale full of interesting and well drawn characters and conveying the atmosphere of late nineteenth century Paris as it established itself as the world capital of art, fashion and romance. As before the narrative proceeds at a steady pace drawing the reader through the twists and turns of the plot and part of the credit for this must go to the translators Lorenza Garcia and Isobel Reid. The publisher of Claude Izner's books, Gallic Books, is supported by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London and a very shrewd move on their part it is as no one who reads these excellent books can fail to see the French in a very favourable light.

The Gods of War

The Gods of War is the third volume of Jack Ludlow's Republic saga. It is set in the long running Roman campaign to subdue the Celtic tribes of the Iberian peninsula, a campaign motivated both for a desire for territory and the memory of their support for the Carthaginians. Centre stage again are the main protaganists of the previous two volumes, Aquila Terrentius and Marcellus Falerius still at each others throats and kept in check only by their commander Titus Cornelius. Jack Ludlow has written a very good adventure story which rattles along at a good pace and if one bears in mind that this is an historical novel and not an academic history one can overlook the minor factual blunders. However, one thing puzzles me mightily. Jack Ludlow is a pen name for the well known writer of Nelsonian sea adventures David Donachie. Now I quite understand that if a writer wishes to step outside the style for which he is famous he may well decide to do this under another name and this is a common practice. What I cannot understand is that having done so he gives the game away by revealing this on the book jacket and in a paragraph of personal details inserted before the narrative. It seems to me that this completely undermines the object of having the pen name.

The Angel of Terror

Like many people nowadays I had forgotten just how good a writer Edgar Wallace could be. Of course, anyone who produced thrillers in the quantity that Wallace managed would suffer from variable quality but on the whole his standard was high enough to make him one of the consistantly best selling writers of his day. Modern readers must make allowances for the different style of writing prevelent in the Twenties and Thirties, different even from the novels set in that period by current writers such as Jacqueline Winspear and Carola Dunn for example. The Angel of Terror is a good example both of the Twenties style and the work of Wallace who specialised in seemingly unbeatable villains. The story is set amongst the English middle class and involves an inheritance and a beautiful and ruthless young woman who will stop at nothing to get her hands on it. The location moves from London to the South of France giving Wallace's readers the glimpse of the good life that they craved from writers of that period. The heroine stubbornly refuses the warnings of the hero regarding the villain but all is set right in the end. Well, more or less for Wallace produces an ending that defies the demands of the time for a tidy conclusion that fits the expected moral parameters. I will reveal no more. This novel is now re-issued in paperback by bibliobazaar.com. Read and enjoy!

Requiem

Requiem is the final volume in Robyn Young's Templar trilogy and a very fitting conclusion it is. Acre, the Order's last foothold in Palestine has been captured by the Saracens leaving the surviving knights with no obvious reason to continue. The Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, tries to plan a new Crusade but without the backing of Europes Princes he stands no chance. The two obvious contenders for the role of leader of a new Crusade are Edward of England and Phillipe of France but both are too concerned with events in their own territories to wish to commit themselves to adventures in the Middle East. However, though robbed of their primary role of protecting pilgrims traveling to the Christian shrines in Jerusalem, the Order is still a force to be reckoned with. The knights are among the most formidable in the world and over the two hundred years of their existance the Order has gained immense wealth. In addition to this they are answerable only to the Pope and outside the jurisdiction of the states in which they reside. As long as they were the warriors of Christ fighting for the Holy Land everyone tolerated their priviledged status but with the defeat at Acre this changed. The French King Phillipe, devout to the point of fanaticism, is manipulated by his chief advisor Guillaume de Nogaret and bullied by his confessor Guillaume de Paris both of whom hate the Templars. Desparate for money Phillipe first expels the Jews and confiscates their assets but this can only be a short term solution what he needs is the much greater wealth of the Knights of the Temple of Solomon. How the Knights are brought to destruction and the valiant attempts made by some members to defend their Order is related with great verve by Miss Young who has created a wonderful cast of fictional characters to supplement the remarkable people whose true story this is. Though they can be read as individual novels taken together this trilogy makes a magnificent historical epic story. One hopes that Miss Young will now turn her eyes on other historical episodes.

The Gazebo

The Gazebo by Patricia Wentworth is another fine Miss Silver mystery. Readers of this blog must by now be tired of my unstinting praise of the work of the late Miss Wentworth but I make no apology for a sunny afternoon, a large glass of something refreshing and a Miss Silver novel is my idea of heaven. In The Gazebo Miss Wentworth introduces us to Mrs Graham, as totaly self-centred a person as it is possible to imagine. She regards her daughter, Althea, as an unpaid servant and keeps her in line by throwing heart attacks at regular intervals. She used this technique five years prior to the opening of this novel to break up Althea's engagement to Nicholas Carey but now Nicholas is back and she fears that the relationship is about to resume. A mysterious newcomer, Mr Blount, arrives and offers to buy their house for twice it's market value causing more friction between mother and daughter but then Mrs Graham is found dead, murdered, in the Gazebo. Will Nicholas Carey be accused of the murder? Where does the brash Mrs Harrison and the decidedly dodgy Fred Worple come in? Have no fear Miss Silver is there to point her old friend Detective Inspector Abbott of Scotland Yard in the right direction.

The Time of Terror

The Time of Terror by Seth Hunter is the first volume of a planned trilogy set in the turbulence of the Terror inspired by Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety. Nathan Peake is the commander of a brig based at the port of Rye in East Sussex and is used mainly for chasing smugglers on behalf of the Customs but the Admiralty decide he is just the man for a special assignment. The British Government realising that war with Revolutionary France is inevitable are in touch with opponents of Robespierre's regime and plan to help them by smuggling forged French banknotes into Paris. Peake is to command a captured American ship and to pass himself off as a blockade runner. He successfully lands his cargoe and meets his contact, an American, Gilbert Imlay who is the lover of the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. Through them he meets many of the leading figures in Parisian society such as Georges Danton and Camilles Desmoulins. He also meets and falls in love with the beautiful Countess of Turenne. From riotous meetings of the French Assembly to secret trysts with the Paris underworld Seth Hunter takes his hero through every danger and at a cracking pace that kept this reader hanging on every word. Two more volumes to come. Not half enough if this is anything to go by.