The White Company by Arthur Conan Doyle

On Kindle via Project Gutenburg

It was for historical novels such as this that Doyle wished to be remembered rather than the detective who he tried in vain to kill.   I had read this when I was a boy and could not resist the chance to re-discover it and I am pleased to say that to me it stands the test of time.   The story concerns a young man who was put into a monastery as a boy with the proviso that he must leave on attaining his twentieth birthday and spend a year in the world at large before deciding to take the vows that would commit him to the monastery for life.   Returning to his familly home he is spurned by his brother and turned off the familly farm.   By chance he falls in with a group of soldiers who are heading for France to join the "White Company " under the command of a famous knight, Sir Nigel, and fight under the banner of the Black Prince.  
I enjoyed this book but perhaps not quite as much as when I read it so many years ago.   The dialogue was the main problem.   Written in the style that all authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century used to convey "ancient speak", until it was taken to the point of self-parody by Jeffrey Farnol, the contrast with modern historical novelists was most marked.   However, this will not prevent me from reading the sequel, Sir Nigel, or any other of Conan Doyle's wonderful novels.

Requiem by Ken McClure

Ken McClure is the author of many medical based thrillers and Requiem, written way back in the nineties, is typical of his style.   The book opens as a prominent surgeon is operating to rectify a young woman's facial deformity however he dies before completing the operation.   His female assistant takes over but botches the job and the main thrust of the story concerns the lengths that the hospital will go to in covering it up.   In addition to this the main character,  a journalist called Kincaid, discovers that other patients are dying in circumstances where the expectation would be survival if not complete recovery.   This all turns out to be the work of a "Right Wing" conspiracy.   Why are all these fictional conspiracies "Right Wing"?   All my life all the conspiracies that have been uncovered have been "Left Wing",  the Cambridge Spies for example.   Could it be that all those revolting students from the Sixties are now senior executives of publishing houses and insist that their writers make any conspiracies "Right Wing"   I have read several of McClure's thrillers and they have all been entertaining enough for me to recommend them to others but he has made a great mistake in attempting to introduce politics into what should be merely an amusement.

Ellie Quin: Beneath the Neon Sky by Alex Scarrow

Available only on Kindle

In this third episode of Alex Scarrow's Ellie Quin saga the girls with their friend the shuttle pilot Aaron Goodman are trying to make enough money to leave for another planet by taking tourists to the Arctic.   Edward Mason the man who geneticaly engineered Ellie and who is supposed to be dead, turns up on Harpers Reach to keep an eye on her but at the same time Deacon with his two assistants, Leonard and Nathan, plus three mercenary gunmen has also tracked her down.   Alex Scarrow has really got into his stride now with this story putting Ellie and Jez into dangerous situations and getting them out again but without straining credulity more than is acceptable.   His writing is first class and keeps the pages turning, or should I say the Kindle screen flicking, at the breathless pace one expects from this kind of book.   Were it still around I am sure that the old "Adventure"  comic of my youth would sign him up like a shot.               

The Hound of the D'Urbervilles by Kim Newman

The late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is rightly acclaimed for creating the first great private detective Sherlock Holmes but perhaps has not been given sufficient credit for also creating the first super villain, Professor James Moriarty.   As Sherlock Holmes was always accompanied by the faithful Watson so at Moriarty's side would always be found that blackhearted bounder Colonel Sebastian Moran.   Doyle did not write a great deal about Moriarty and even less about Moran often their names are merely mentioned as an aside during discussion of another case.   Kim Newman has decided that it is time to rectify this and so gives us the memoirs of Moran.   Presented in seven chapters each entitled with a variation on a Holmes case,  A Shambles in Belgravia for example, the stories are original not just parodies but do include Holmesian characters such as Irene Adler.   Newman presents Moran's narrative in the self-deprecating, slyly cynical style of the man of the world who has reached the "don't care" age just prior to shuffling off this mortal coil.   Above all it is laugh out loud funny, his annotated version of "The Ballad of Mad Carew" is a classic but is only one example from a book full of black humour.   I had thought that George MacDonald Fraser had cornered the market in this kind of thing with his Harry Flashman books but Newman has shown that he is a match for the old master.

The World According to Ellie Quin by Alex Scarrow

Available only through Kindle.

This is the second book in the Ellie Quin series and Scarrow is getting into his stride and the pace of the story is picking up.   At the end of book one Ellie had finaly made it to the City of New Haven and promptly been mugged and left destitute.   Into her life rides a saviour in the shape of Jez, a street-wise pole dancer at a seedy night club.   Both girls have an ambition to get off this backwater planet but their every attempt to raise themselves above subsistance level seems doomed to fail.   In the background Scarrow runs a second story line which must surely become more prominent as the tale progresses.   The Administration, the self- appointed government of the human occupied part of the galaxy, has discovered that due to the genetic pattern of the embryo from which Ellie was born she poses some, as yet unspecified, threat to them and they send their top assassin Deacon to dispose of her.   As the book ends the girls, unaware of the danger that is approaching, team up with Aaron, the shuttle pilot who rescued Ellie in book one, in a money making venture that they hope will provide the cash to take them off the planet.

This story is classed in the trade as "Young Adult" but I have found it very enjoyable which is all that matters!

Trouble Brewing by Dolores Gordon-Smith

Dolores Gordon-Smith has written a Golden Age detective story for the present day that really works, a feat that many have tried but few have accomplished.   Jack Haldean is a writer of detective stories who is also a private investigator with close links to the highest reaches of Scotland Yard and he is called in by Harold Hunt to solve the mystery of his nephew's disappearance.   Hunt is the ageing head of Hunt Coffee Ltd, the market leader in Britain, and his nephew Mark Helston was being groomed to take over the firm but, with everything to live for, in January he had walked out of his flat never to be seen again.   On the same night, Ariel Valdez the manager of Hunt's Brazilian coffee plantation also disappears.   In addition to this Hunt is convinced that someone is perpetrating a fraud on the company.   Haldean's chum at the Yard, Inspector Rackham, provides him with the files of the original investigation which leads him to Patricia Jaggard, Mark Helston's sister and wife of a manufacturer of expensive sports cars.   Patricia reveals that she and Mark were beneficiaries of a trust fund worth over two hundred thousand pounds, the distribution of which will be affected by proving the death of Mark Helston.   Haldean tracks down the solution to this mystery with a combination of solid detective work and deductive reasoning allied, of course, with having a good friend at the Yard.   Mrs Gordon-Smith has written a most entertaining novel which kept me up until the early hours as I could not put it down.   I look forward to more from this talented writer.

Soldier of Crusade by Jack Ludlow

This is the fifth novel in Jack Ludlow's saga of the de Hauteville familly.
This book covers the arrival in Anatolia of Count Bohemond of Taranto to join the Crusade called for by Pope Urban with the aim of recapturing Jerusalem from the Muslims.   Accompanied by his nephew Tancred his first task is to visit the Byzantine Emperor Alexius who is in no doubt that Bohemond is the most formidable of the European warriors who have joined the Crusade.   Alexius is determined to use the Crusaders to drive out the Turks and other Muslims who have occupied Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine all of which used to belong to the Empire whilst holding his own much depleted forces back to defend Constantinople.   Bohemond is not helped by the other leaders of the Crusade none of whom have his experience of warfare but who demand to be included in all decision making.   All the leaders have spent immense sums in equiping and transporting their armies to Byzantium and all are looking to recoup this expenditure by plunder and establishing themselves as rulers of the territories that they conquer and naturaly this was a certain recipe for conflict among the commanders.   The Crusaders find that the terrain poses as many problems as the enemy varying from sunbaked desert to torrential downpours and freezing mountains and Bohemond is constantly struggling to find sufficient food and forage for his men and their mounts.   Jack Ludlow has written another first class adventure here keeping the pages turning as he brings to life some of the most amazing men of the day and their incredible exploits.   Best of all there is another volume to come.

Tom-all-alone's by Lynn Shepherd

This, according to one John Carey, is a re-write of Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House but as I have never read it I am unable to confirm or deny this assertion.   What I can say is that this is an excellent Victorian "Gaslight" thriller complete with all the fog and the filth, the dark alleys and even darker villains that one expects.   Ex-policeman Charles Maddox is trying to earn a living as a private investigator when he is offered a commission by Edward Tulkinghorne lawyer to the rich and famous.   The fee is handsome by Maddox standards and the investigation straightforward but from the start he is sceptical and, as the story reveals, with good reason.   Like all good private detectives Maddox finds more than his client wants disclosed and Tulkinghorne has powerful friends, not least in the police force, to call on.   This is a well constructed and well written book that will give hours of entertainment to lovers of Victorian drama. 

Gladiatrix by Russell Whitfield

Female gladiators were a popular novelty act in the Roman arenas towards the end of the first century AD.   Women versus dwarves was a good filler in between the serious bouts giving the crowd someting to look at whilst buying an ice cream or whatever their favoured snacks were.   Russell Whitfield's book is set in the Eastern Empire in the city of Halicarnassus where, he would have us believe, gladiatrices were as popular as men.   The story opens with Lysandra, a Spartan priestess of Athene, being shipwrecked and washed ashore where she is picked up by men from the ludus of Balbus the premier trainer of gladiatrices in the area.   Despite her protests that she is a free woman he enslaves her and puts her to training for the arena.   However, as she has already been trained in martial arts as a priestess, no Mother Teresas in Sparta, she quickly becomes a rival to the Prima Gladiatrix and also the lover of her girlfriend.   This rivalry is the backbone of the book and around it Russell Whitfield has written a splendid blood and guts saga that keeps the pages turning which is all that one can ask.

The Legend of Ellie Quin by Alex Scarrow

Brought to my attention by Kate Atherton of the bookblog "For Winter Nights" I decided to give this a try although what is classed these days as "Young Adult" fiction is not normaly my thing.   This is the first volume of the adventures of Ellie Quin a farmer's daughter who lives on the planet Harpers Reach  in the thirty third century.   Like farmers daughters through the ages she is bored with living in a rural backwater and longs for the big city, called New Haven, or even other planets if possible.   She sets out to walk to New Haven but collapses in the desert where she is rescued by Aaron Goodman, a space age trucker.   He takes her to New Haven where she is promptly robbed of all her money but is then "befriended" by a streetwise young woman.   Here endeth the first volume but numbers two and three are already available on Kindle.   This is very reminiscent of the kind of stories that I lapped up in my school days when my Grandmother treated me to a copy of "The Adventure" comic every Saturday.   Of course, then the hero would have been a boy and Mr Scarrow would not have been allowed the mildly bad language and slight sexual references in this story.   Will I progress to volume two of Miss Quin's saga?   Why not, as they say growing old is inevitable but growing up is optional.

The Dream Killer of Paris by Fabrice Bourland

London 1934 and the detective partnership of the cerebral Andrew Singleton and the muscular James Trelawney find themselves without a case to investigate.   Singleton decides to use his free time to go to Paris as he is obsessed by the death, at the time designated as suicide, of the nineteenth century poet Gerard de Neval.   Relaxing on the deck of the cross channel ferry he first sees a mirage of a castle in a wooded valley and encounters a young lady who may not actually exist.   In Paris he is contacted by an old friend, Superintendant Fourier of the Surete, who asks him to assist with the investigation into the mysterious death of the Marquis de Brindillac.   Bourland proceeds to spin a fantastical tale with many elements of the supernatural which may not be to everyones taste but which I found vastly entertaining.   The translation from the French is by Morag Young.