A Penguin a week

Penguin no. 1107: X v. Rex by Philip MacDonald

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 05:10:00 +0000

'I said wrecked,' said the Secretary of State for War. 'And I meant wrecked. Don't you see, man, where this may lead us? Aren't there thousands of men and women, some vicious, some foolish, some lustful, some mad, all of whom have been praying night and day for some such collapse of authority as we're faced with? Don't you realize, man, that it wouldn't be beyond the truth to say that the whole of England's social fabric rests upon her trust in policeman? For trust in policeman is trust in the Law, which means the country's trust in herself.

The first police officer is murdered in Farnley which ten years before had been a small country town near London, but which had undergone a dramatic increase in population during the intervening years. At work in the new police station, a marker of the town's recent prosperity, and unaware of the danger he is facing, the police sergeant sends all three of his on-duty constables to investigate a burglary reported to be under way at a nearby house; they return to find him still sitting at his desk, and suspect him of having fallen asleep. But he is dead, having been shot through the forehead. It soon becomes apparent that Sergeant Guilfoil's murder is only the first in a series specifically targeting policemen in uniform. One month later a patrolling police officer is found dead in a deserted Mayfair street, having been strangled with a white handkerchief. A few days later another deceased policeman is found, this one the victim of a knife attack.

The account of these consecutive murders is interspersed with excerpts from the murderer's diary in which he records the mounting excitement he feels with each success. He is intent on collecting police officer victims and commemorates each successful kill with a knot tied in a ribbon. There is no thought of the men whose deaths he has caused as individuals with lives independent of the uniforms they wear while at work.

The diary is also a record of his arrogance and his certainty that he is too clever to leave behind a useful clue. The variation in the method he uses on each victim is intentional and carefully planned, as is the varying location; he plans to alter both method and location with every murder so as to not leave any footprint or pattern which could be used to track him. But he feels such pride in his successes that it is a frustration for him not to be able to own them publicly. His diary therefore becomes his confessor, also providing him with the pleasure of thinking on the shock people will feel when they eventually read his tale after his death. For now he contents himself with listening to the conjectures of strangers and reading the theories of the journalists, and enjoying his secret knowledge that they are all wrong.

And so the murders continue, and in time the public and the press begin agitating for 'strong measures', but what these would actually entail is always left unspecified, as there is a gulf between those content to call for solutions and those who must provide them. No new measure the police implement seems to have any effect in preventing the murders, as they must institute measures which will protect against any possible contingency, but the murder need only detect a single flaw in their defences. And because it is his obsession, the challenge of finding a way to get around the defences is something he enjoys. Every knew measure increases the degree of difficulty of the subsequent murders, which only enhances his pleasure and reinforces his sense of superiority with each additional success.

One point being made is here is that policemen were fairly vulnerable in the 1930s. They patrolled quiet and dark streets on their own, armed with little more than a whistle and a torch, and with no means of alerting anyone not immediately nearby should they come under attack, yet the presence of the police on the streets provided the citizens of London with an illusion of security. This story explores the implications for society when the police are revealed as being incapable of defending themselves.

I found the tone of the book a little too jaunty and facetious for my taste; the characters seemed always inclined to display a lot of attitude in their conversations, and I could never conceive of any of them as real people. But it is an interesting premise, as there is no clever, disinterested and altruistic amateur detective in this story to provide the police with a solution to their problem. We have instead the opposite - a man whose possibly unethical interests lie in bringing the spate of police murders to a close.

Penguin no. 1788: Just for the Record by Stanley Price

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 04:38:00 +0000

And that's today's message of hope. Uplift in the mire. For some barmy reason these days everybody seems compelled to prove they're alive, really alive. I've read it in a load of books, and seen it in a heap of plays. It's like the boy who cried 'Wolf'. They go shrieking they're alive till, poor bleeders, they drop down dead. I shall never dig all this 'our life to live, every minute of it' school of art. I suppose it's an O.K. message because that's just what everybody's doing anyway. It suits me fine. If I'd had to write something about Ted Mulvery getting a quick yen for Zen, or a sudden vision of Christ on Charing Cross, I'd have been scuppered, but this LIFE bit is easy. Everyone reads it and nods knowingly because it all sounds so deep and yet so obvious, but really nobody understands what the hell you're on about.

Stanley Price's protagonist explains the increasing popularity of fiction which concentrated on the grittier aspects of working class and provincial lives during the late 1950s via its obverse - that readers not so much embraced the new literature as suddenly ceased to be interested in the alternative of correctly-punctuated classic tales. Just for the Record is a satire on this emerging interest in stories which featured protagonists who were often aggressive, rebellious and self-obsessed working class men aiming for something more. The trend is referred to as the British New Wave, and by taking advantage of the possibilities for exposure offered by the new mediums of television and popular journalism, the novelists involved could become celebrities.

James Breedin is one of these aspiring writer-celebrities, and his plan is to ride the wave as far as can along a path to fame and fortune. He entered into adulthood with little ambition and no thought of being a writer, but he is pragmatic and shrewd and quick to spot an opportunity, and so he is perfectly happy to write what people think they want to read, and to tell them what they think they want to hear, irrespective of whether it provides the reflection of reality his readers assume they are being given. He is not even aiming for authenticity, because he is aware that his audience lacks the knowledge to assess how true to life his stories are, and he suspects that all they are really looking for is some respite from their dull lives. They hope to find it temporarily in the safe exposure to a seedier life which such novels and films purport to provide.

The premise of Just for the Record is that Breedin needs another publicity-inducing gimmick to keep his name in the papers, and so he locks himself away from the public for a few weeks while he grows a beard - 'the new face of James Breedin'. He spends this time alone reflecting on just how he has made it this far, determined to commit such thoughts to paper as an inexpensive form of therapy. And so this survey of his literary career is ruthlessly honest: he makes no claims about being original or insightful, and he acknowledges that he simply takes advantage of what he finds around him. He transcribes dull conversations, overheard on the bus and of no interest to anyone present; he borrows characters from amongst those he has met, people of no interest to others in everyday life. He combines these observed samples of life with a bit of made-up jargon, knowing in advance the critics will hail it as insightful. It is a game, and he has worked out how it can be played very successfully.

So he is a man with no illusions, no special talents, no plans to leave a legacy, and no faith that the fashion for 'language-of-the-streets-and-morals-of-the-gutter' writing will continue to be popular for long: he suspects it to be simply a phase to be taken advantage of while it continues. His passion is money and the things it can provide - decent accommodation, an easy life, and an abundance of willing women. And as he sits in his Chelsea Mews apartment he reflects that his plans are proceeding particularly well: he has recently been awarded 'most promising TV playwright of the year' and his first novel Out of the Hole has already earned a small fortune, and will soon be filmed. Now he has written a musical with the barely-credited help of someone who actually knows something about music, and if it is picked up by an American impresario his future will be assured.

I assume that the point being made is that literary fame was open at that time to anyone with few principles and a little application, and no one sufficiently astute or knowledgeable to detect the fraud cared as long as there was money to be made. In a market which apparently undervalued talent and literary ability while putting a premium on lived experience, despite being incapable incapable of distinguishing the real from the simulated, success depended to some extent on luck, and on being the person the critics chose to endorse. A few years earlier James Breedin had been average George Plumb of Birmingham, a man who looked like the bank-teller he was. His childhood had been conventional and middle class, in that he had bored his parents just as much as they had bored him. He argues, however, that whatever the critics and theorists may believe, such a childhood provided a much better background for success as one of the new breed of novelist than any deprived working class childhood could have done.

I found the writing difficult to bear, but then Price was clearly parodying the style of the moment. The book is short, funny, and fast paced, and Breedin, despite his self-obsession and lack of principles, is an appealing narrator because he is honest and amusing, and because he sees the humour in things he comments upon, and the role of self interest and self absorption in many of the social and cultural trends of the late 1950s. And though he may think of himself as a fake for pretending a working class heritage he lacked, he does embody all the unpleasant traits of the protagonists of the novels being satirised.

Penguin no. 1655: At Home by William Plomer

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 06:03:00 +0000

As a child I had seen Chinamen wearing pigtails; at Mukden I saw in the street a richly dressed Chinese woman tottering along on tiny bound feet, a belated martyr to an uncommonly perverse fashion. I supposed it was the mingled appearance of helplessness and affectation which these broken, crippled, trotter-like feet gave to the gait that had caused them to be thought beautiful. Possibly for the male the sexual attraction lay in the certainty that, if pursued, no woman with such feet could run away. But behind this woman loomed smoking factory chimneys. On their black stilts the Satanic mills were after her. They would soon overtake her. She would never be seen again.

William Plomer has such an interesting way of describing the things he has observed, that after having read the first few pages, I never suspected that this was a book I would struggle to finish. I loved his first two chapters in which he describes his journey to England in 1929 to begin what he refers to as a process of re-Westernization. He records fragments of his experience; small moments observed during the nine day train journey from Japan to Ostend, via Siberia, aware that he is glimpsing a fast-vanishing world that few will have the opportunity to witness again.

He is 26 years of age at the time, and thinks of himself as heading home while never losing the sense of feeling like an outsider. He recognises that his attitudes are likely to differ from those of his contemporaries, as his have been conditioned by all the years spent living in Africa and Asia. He has no sympathy with the insular European idea that barbarism begins 'where Europe, or European civilization, has its ostensible boundaries.'

William Plomer was born in South Africa in 1903 to English parents. He spent only four years at school in England, including one year at Rugby, before returning to Africa to work at farming, and then spent some years teaching in Japan, before heading to London. He began his first novel, Turbott Wolfe, at the age of nineteen, and had it published in 1925 by Virginia and Leonard Woolf. At Home is his autobiography covering the period from his departure from Japan to the conclusion of the second world war.

The only dramatic event that he recounts occurs soon after his arrival. He rents some rooms in a house in Bayswater owned by a woman he describes as 'a lively, pretty, fresh-looking Jewess in her early thirties', and one weekend, when he is staying elsewhere, she is butchered by her husband in the presence of her six year old daughter. The husband's jealous feelings had become obsessive, and he could no longer bear the thought of any man, including the uninterested Plomer, gazing upon his wife. William Plomer believes that he has been fortunate in escaping the same fate as his landlady, and uses the experience as the basis of his third novel, The Case is Altered. He also sets about looking for somewhere else to live.

Over the next thirty years he lives a largely nomadic life, moving from one London suburb to another. Although he thinks of himself as a poet and novelist, he writes very little, maintaining that his primary interest has always been in the pursuit of personal relationships, however fleeting. There is the sense that he feels the need to justify his choices, perhaps because he clearly conceives of himself as a person of superior ability who may not have succeeded in a way others expected him to. He classifies himself as a man of reflection rather than of action, emphasising that this is the more impressive character-type, although noting that a desire to cultivate understanding 'may make a man feel superior, smug, priggish, and fill him with that intellectual vanity which is a form of spiritual pride..'. I find that I agree with him, as he is inclined to mix quite a bit of sermonising in amongst his recollections, and smug and condescending is how I felt he came across.

His admiration seems saved solely for those with a talent for poetry or writing, and perhaps for other artistic pursuits, and he seems to cast himself as a person of unerring discrimination in sitting in judgement on who is admirable and who is not; for him, popularity and merit are incompatible. Most people are written off as mediocrities, described in terms such as 'gaping self-improvers'. He clearly counts himself amongst the elite, and then seems to be ready to judge the whole of (English) humanity on the basis of the one thing he believes he does well. I found his attitude very condescending, particularly the following paragraph -

It was, and still is, a delusion widely held by persons who ought to know better that antiquity is in itself a virtue. Those eighteenth-century letters from a member of Parliament, that diary of a carriage tour kept by a young lady who visited the field of Waterloo in the 1820s, may serve, dear sir or madam, to inflate your over-estimate of your own forebears, but I do assure you that wigs, flowered waistcoats, and shoe-buckles were often inseparable from pompous mediocrity, and that bonnet and shawl were no less often the ornaments of skittish inanity; and, further, that dullness is often hereditary. Ancestor worship, when examined, is sometimes found to be an inflation of nincompoops.

I though this was a little harsh, particularly when large sections of this book seemed a little dull.

The more interesting chapters and sections are those devoted to his remembrances of the writers he knew during the 1930s, and for the most part - provided he admired their literary talent - he is generous with his recollections, concentrating particularly on appearance and manner. He gives brief references to writers such as Elizabeth Bowen and Rose Macaulay, and far longer ones to Hugh Walpole (whose writing he didn't admire), E.M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf, amongst others. This book may therefore be of some interest to those who wish to read first hand accounts of the personal characteristics of the better-known literary figures of the 1930s, or the story of how Kilvert's Diary came to be published, and what it meant for the village of Clyro. Fortunately, there is an index at the back of Plomer's book (at least in the Penguin edition) so that this can be done without any need to wade through the entire book.

Penguin no. 1369: Thin Ice by Compton Mackenzie

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 26 May 2013 02:41:00 +0000

I began to study the phenomenon of homosexuality and was amazed to discover that so far from being the sign of a decadent society it was conspicuously prevalent in England during the first quarter of the eighteenth century when the national vigour was at its height. If the penalty of death was no deterrent then, what effective deterrent could the law devise to-day? ... One day at my club I heard a top-notch Treasury counsel aver his belief that three-quarters of the male suicides in England were due to blackmail for homosexual offences. I was appalled. Yet I have to confess with shame that I remained silent because I fancied that if I showed too much interest I should be suspected of habits that exposed me to the possibility of being blackmailed myself.

In the context of the time it was written, this story probably provides a fairly sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality. Henry Fortescue is certainly an appealing character: he is forthright, capable and determined, and exceptionally attractive to women, but they hold no interest for him, as his inclinations are the other way.

Apart from some distaste expressed for those with an exaggeratedly effeminate manner, there is never any criticism of the inclination itself nor of the associated behaviours, but nonetheless homosexuality is being presented as an affliction, comparable with a propensity to alcoholism. The idea is that both are degenerate tendencies which could and should be fought, both for the benefit of the individual and for those who know them and, in this story, for the benefit of the country as well. As alluded to by the title, indulging in such behaviours carried risks which could have long-reaching consequences at a time when the commission of homosexual acts was still a criminal offence. Abstention from homosexual activity, or at the very least discretion in this regard, is therefore being presented as a moral choice.

But it is clear from the passage quoted above that the author is also arguing that it should be nothing other than a matter of private morality. He suggests that the criminal sanctions which applied at the time were ineffective and inappropriate, and encouraged the commission of far more serious crimes including blackmail and corruption. Moreover he implies that such laws could impose risks for men who were not homosexual as well, as suspicion alone could sully a reputation. An unknowing visit to the wrong club, or an unfortunate choice of companion, and anyone could find themselves the inadvertent victim of gossip and innuendo, and therefore potentially of blackmail. These were subjects of public interest at the time this book was published in 1956, as the Montagu case of a few years earlier had led to the establishment of the Wolfenden committee which was contemporaneously considering aspects of legislation which regulated sexual activity.

We know from the beginning that Henry Fortescue will be killed in the Blitz at the age of 62, having failed to reach the level of success predicted for him in his youth. It had always seemed evident that Henry was destined for great things, and perhaps no one was more certain of his vocation and assured future than Henry himself, for he had charm and talent, and very definite views on how to maintain Britain's position in the world and avoid war in Europe. He had his career mapped in advance: a few notable speeches while at Balliol to ensure his election as President of the Union, followed by a good showing on behalf of the Unionist party in an unwinnable seat, and then the reward of a safe constituency, with the interim years spent travelling widely in order to build up his knowledge and expertise. He was aiming for a position in the Cabinet, and ultimately the Prime Ministership, and nothing was to be allowed to interfere with his progress. He was determined to sublimate his homosexual inclinations, and practise absolute self denial.

And it is never clear exactly what goes wrong. Perhaps he had made enemies, or perhaps he had been aligned with the wrong faction within his party, but by middle-age he found himself overlooked for promotion with his career stalled, and this makes him bitter about the experiences he had denied himself on account of his ambition. Failure induces a recklessness in his behaviour which the narrator finds shocking. But a middle-aged homosexual is also being presented as a rather tragic figure, for he admits himself that a man in his position must pay for attention. It is being suggested that the same factors which drive other men to drink, drive Henry to imprudently seek the company of younger men.

The aspect I enjoyed most was the detail sketched out in the background to this story of the impact of Henry's homosexuality upon his family and friends. Compton Mackenzie provides a survey of the political events of the final years of the 19th Century and the first forty years of the 20th, focusing both on England and on the Empire, with the scene shifting between London, Morocco, Kenya and the Seychelles. The passage of time is conveyed through the rhythms of political life, with specific references to general elections, the political personalities of those years, and questions in the House on contemporary topics of interest such as Irish Home Rule and tariff reform, providing some perspective on the times in which his story is set.

Penguin no. 2024: Maigret Mystified by Simenon

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:29:00 +0000

     Maigret did not bat an eyelid. He was up to the neck in this everyday squalor which was more sickening than the drama itself.
     The old woman facing him wore an appallingly jubilant and menacing expression. She was talking! She was going on talking! Out of hatred for the Martins, for the dead man, for all the tenants in the house, out of hatred for the whole of mankind! And out of hatred for Maigret!
     She stood there with her hands clasped over her great flabby stomach. She seemed to have been waiting all her life for this moment.

Maigret Mystified was originally published in 1932 with the title L'Ombre chinoise, which translates as 'the shadow puppet show' or 'the silhouette'. It alludes to what Maigret observes when he first passes through the archway at 61 Place des Vosges in the Marais district of Paris. He has been summoned by the concierge, and as he stands in the darkened courtyard he looks up upon a series of well-lit apartments with curtained windows displaying the shadows of their occupants. One shows a man pacing backwards and forwards, and another has a woman gesticulating in anger. There is a laboratory adjacent to the residential building and its frosted window reveals the shadow of a man slumped across his desk. The concierge knows the man to be dead, shot through the chest while sitting in an armchair.

And if Maigret is mystified, it is not by the murder in the laboratory, but by the behaviour of the occupants of the adjoining block of apartments. The concierge is unhelpful, resenting the disruption the murder brings and more concerned with ensuring a peaceful environment for the woman upstairs giving birth. And when Maigret meets Madame Martin, the aggrieved woman whose silhouette he had glimpsed that first evening, he is appalled by her obsession with money. Accounts suggest she has gone through life causing misery for both her first and second husbands with her endless harping on their respective failures to provide her with the level of comfort she had anticipated. And then there is her neighbour Mathilde who spends every spare moment creeping along corridors and listening at doors, and drawing her pleasure from the unhappiness of others. He sees dull, drab lives being consumed in bitterness.

In contrast he finds himself feeling quite an affection for the unfortunate victim Couchet, and also for his girlfriend Nine, a cabaret dancer living on the Rue Pigalle. He admires Couchet's indifference to his to his wealth and his refusal to abide by bourgeois values. After trying his luck and failing many, many times he had unexpectedly found his fortune in the production of serums. His response had been to marry a cultured wife, perhaps as some marker of his wealth, but he had never given up his taste for ordinary things. A search of his home reveals the expensive and the commonplace sitting side by side, and Maigret suspects it is the same with women: the refined wife sits at home, while Couchet seeks the company of the working girl Nine.

Maigret identifies a few potential suspects including the wife, the girlfriend, and the embittered Madame Martin, for Couchet had had the misfortune of being her first husband. She had left him for someone she mistakenly believed to be a better long term prospect, and so his continuing presence in the laboratory downstairs is a constant reminder that her gamble misfired. They have a degenerate son, living in Pigalle, and slowly wasting his life and destroying his health through the consumption of ether.

Maigret Mystified is only a short book, and easily read in a single evening. There is little detection and no seeking after physical clues, with Maigret simply watching this small group of suspects. He has an intuitive sense of how people typically behave, and he looks for deviations from what he is expecting. The emphasis throughout is on analysing the characters and behaviours of those who may have benefited from Couchet's death. But we are also shown how Maigret feels about each of them, and particularly the contempt he feels for those who would make money the centre of their lives.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 1419: My Friend Maigret
Penguin no. 1680: Maigret has Scruples
Penguin no. 1854: The Little Man from Archangel
Penguin no. 2253: The Widower

Penguin no. 1928: The Fig Tree by Aubrey Menen

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:21:00 +0000

He felt that it was only by some irony of fate that his schoolteachers and professors were living in this Christian - or post-Christian - world. They would have been so much more at home among the Greeks. Some of them, as he knew, felt this so strongly that they spent their whole lives in classical studies, barely troubling about the rest of the world or the remainder of history. Their calm assurance that the Greeks invented all that was worthwhile was thus fortunately undisturbed by the successive discoveries that the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Sumerians, the Indians of the Five Rivers, and the Chaldeans had, in fact, invented nearly all of the things centuries before.

Harry Wesley had always wanted to save people and so he decided to become a scientist. He had been taught as a child that humanity was doomed: it was certain to die out either through war or starvation, the latter an inevitable consequence of the world's population growing at a faster rate than the food supply. With no hope of preventing war, he dreamt instead of preventing the alternative catastrophe by discovering an effective contraceptive. The real focus of this dream, though, was the acclaim which he felt would certainly be his when he succeeded. He hoped for statues erected in his honour.

In time he decided to attack the problem from the other direction, by studying biology and seeking to increase the food supply. He was to find, however, that success brought no statues; he received instead a Nobel prize at the age of 32 and all that brought was the resentment of his colleagues.

Harry Wesley had discovered a compound which, when injected into plants and trees, stimulated the fruit to grow to a substantial size while still retaining its flavour. He took his compound to Italy where it suited the government to make a show of doing something for the peasants, but while those in charge were keen for quick results, they were less enthusiastic about providing any funding, and so Harry opted to trial his compound on a lone fig tree, doubling the usual dose. His experimental fruit grew to an enormous size, and the trial seemed a success, but the real test would be in the eating, and this revealed that he had created something beyond his expectations.

Harry Wesley was an innocent; in his dedication to science he had led a sexless life. His American next door neighbour Joe was similarly inexperienced, having sated any longing for sensual pleasure through gluttony. These two men were completely unprepared for what was to befall them through sampling Harry's giant figs, for he had unknowingly created a potent aphrodisiac. Their nights were henceforth to be disrupted by licentious dreams, their days by libidinous thoughts. They lost all interest in their former pursuits and found themselves unable to resist temptation as these two, who had never had any success with women, could now seduce them with ease. But while this brought some pleasure, it also brought torment, for they now experienced jealousy and competitiveness, and guilt induced by the constant awareness of deception and sin. They perceived their problem as a moral one, and set off together in search of a solution.

The Fig Tree is acerbic in tone and pessimistic in outlook. It is written in the plainest prose, so that it reads almost like a story written for a child. It seemed to be a satire on Western Civilisation, at least in an Italian context, in that it concerns the two historical pillars of the Catholic Church and Science, while being critical of the reverence for Greek thought. He has many targets, but there is a particular focus on the self regard and vanity of those who would cast themselves as saviours of their fellow men, whether in this life or the next. He notes their enthusiasm for building monuments to themselves, their rivalry, their willingness to take the credit for other's work, and their tendency to be absolutely certain while completely wrong. And he repeatedly alludes to the corruption, inefficiency and superstition inherent in Italian life.

I found it interesting, but unsatisfactory. It is amusing in parts, but the story seemed rather weak, and an inadequate scaffold for the ideas being discussed.

Penguin no. 62: The Missing Moneylender by W. Stanley Sykes

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Fri, 10 May 2013 01:02:00 +0000

If this was a Father Brown story it would here be described how the inspector gazed over a bleak hill-top, rounded like a grinning and sightless skull and covered with purple heather, which encroached upon its stark nudity like a fungus growth of decay and death...In this atmosphere of evil his thoughts would turn to vampires and werewolves, those monstrous Undead rejected of heaven and hell alike, until a casual remark by Father Brown would reveal the key to the whole mystery. But the unromantic and unchestertonian truth must be told - in real life and in actual fact Ridley looked out of the shop door, past the serried ranks of quack medicines and baby foods, on to a cobbled street lighted by electricity and sludgy with drizzling rain. And instead of the illuminating remark of the Deus ex machina of the novelist there was merely the sound of a man spitting noisily on the pavement.

Judging from Google, W. Stanley Sykes seems better remembered as the author of Essays on the First Hundred Years of Anaesthesia, which was comprised of three volumes, two published posthumously. But despite being an eminent anaesthetist, he was also the author of three detective novels^[1]written during the 1930s, and in his obituary^[2]it was noted that the first 'achieved such a popularity that it was eventually published in the Penguin series'.^[3]

The missing moneylender of the title is a Jewish man by the name of Israel Levinsky who one weekday morning, for the first time in thirty years, fails to arrive at his office on time. Inspector Ridley is diligent in investigating his whereabouts but is unable to solve the mystery of his disappearance and so calls in Scotland Yard for assistance. They assign Inspector Drury who concludes that Levinsky is more likely to have been removed than to have disappeared, and the investigation becomes instead a search for a murderer and a victim.

It is difficult to sketch the plot further without revealing too much, as the details of the murder lie at the centre of the story. It is suggested in the blurb that Sykes' motivating intention in writing the book was to plan a theoretically perfect murder, one which could be relied upon to despatch the intended victim while leaving no detectable traces to reveal how it had been done. He draws on his knowledge of contemporary medical practices and recent scientific discoveries, and fills his story with references to newly developed medical technologies, and exhumations, pathology and X-rays. He also manages to weave in discussions (or perhaps lectures) on topics as diverse as how to calculate the probability of a series of independent events, and why rugby is a better game than soccer. There is the sense that he sees himself writing for the intelligent reader who feels some pride in being well informed.

But I think this assumption may also be the book's principal flaw, for it is always clear that Sykes believes he is writing for an audience who share his prejudices^[4]. At the milder end this manifests as a disdain displayed towards every person employed in a menial occupation. Waitress, chauffeur, delivery driver and housekeeper are all mocked on account of the idiosyncrasies of their speech and their assumed ineptness. They are presented as sour, incapable or unnecessarily inquisitive, and thwarting them seems to be considered almost a type of sport. There is no sense of people being differently skilled, or any recognition that the more pleasant aspects of his own lifestyle must necessarily be underpinned by the drudgery of others. At one point a detective is chastised for describing his work as hard because it makes it sound like unskilled labour, and these men (and presumably the audience) are too important for that.

A similar contempt is directed towards the Jewish victim, and towards his brother and his clerk. It seems considered sufficient to describe these three men entirely by reference to their religion, and somehow all their stereotypic virtues are treated as traits worthy of derision. Their diligence and fastidiousness, and their determination to be reliable, are all mocked, so that the victim's habit of punctuality is described as a 'fetish' rather than as an admirable attribute implying respect for others. We learn of (and are encouraged to be amused by) their enthusiasm for ostentatious displays of wealth, their tendency to be overwhelmed by emotion, and their covetousness with regards to money.

But it is the condescending tone which is most unappealing - the author's unshakeable confidence in his own superiority pervades this book. Yet while he may well have formulated the perfect crime given the medical knowledge of the time, I thought the surrounding story was replete with flaws. I spent the first half of the book wondering why the detectives were having so much difficulty drawing the obvious conclusions from their assembled clues, and the second half thinking the author was trying to be a little too clever: he wanted to both plan the perfect crime and to undermine it so that it could be solved, and to do this he relied upon a series of implausible coincidences.

Despite all these criticisms, I didn't think the story was uninteresting. I found it perplexing and frustrating, and I could never reconcile myself to the author's smugness and anti-Semitism, but his premise was an intriguing one. I remained interested in the story of the murder and the attempts to solve it, though I thought its telling was ruined by the author's intolerance for other people.

[1] The Missing Moneylender, The Ray of Doom & The Harness of Death.
[2] Br. J. Anaesth. (1961) 33 (6):324.
[3] It seems to have been popular as a Penguin as well, as my 1940 copy is from the ninth impression, with the first issued in 1936. (And he may have been in captivity when this wartime copy was issued, as his obituarist further states that he joined the 26th General Hospital R.A.M.C. as anaesthetist in 1939, and spent four and a half years as a prisoner of war in Greece 'practising his anaesthesia under most difficult and primitive conditions, administering a hospital and inspiring his junior colleagues.')
[4] Robert Graves was born the year after Sykes and describes in Goodbye to All That (Penguin no. 1443) how he accepted without question the inferiority of the working classes, only rejecting such ideas as an adult, so this belief may have been perfectly reasonable.

Penguin no. 133: Watkins' Last Expedition by F. Spencer Chapman

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 05 May 2013 09:38:00 +0000

Read this book and you will know something of the life of that fantastic land, of its ascetic nakedness, of its strong weather, of its laughing people and of the feelings of an impetuous Englishman who has lived there. To know more: throw away your job, your friends, your cares, beg a quarter of the money you will need and an eighth of the food you will eat, learn the language and go there; not as a great white man to teach, but as inferior to learn from these people something of their way of life: how to get a living from their barren country, how to share as they share, how to endure as they endure, to live for the day caring nothing for the morrow, as they have have done since before the time when we were painted blue. (Augustine Courtauld)

In 1932, after a disappointing year spent trying and failing to raise sufficient funds for an expedition to Antarctica which would have attempted to establish if it was comprised of one continent or two, Gino Watkins was offered 500 pounds by Pan-American Airways to take a small party to East Greenland to undertake meteorological work. He asked ornithologist and photographer Freddie Spencer Chapman, meterologist Quintin Riley and surveyor John Rymill to accompany him.

The four men had all been there the previous year as members of the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, and Watkins had followed this with a 600 mile journey in an open boat surveying Greenland's southern coastline. Their preparations for the substantially smaller 1932 expedition were hurried and underfunded, but by July 14th they were all sailing to Angmagssalik, a small settlement on the east coast of Greenland, on the only boat making the journey that year. They intended to base themselves 112 miles away at Lake Fjord as Watkins believed this region had potential as a future landing site for aircraft.

But even with the additional funds which had been offered by the Royal Geographic Society and The Times newspaper, it was necessarily a budget operation. Their plan was to take advantage of the abundant local resources and to hunt using both harpoons and guns in order to provide sufficient food for themselves and their sledge dogs.They had learnt many of the hunting techniques of the local native population during the previous expedition, principally how to use a harpoon and how to roll a kayak. They would also be able to rely on the assistance of a local native named Enock who had decided to establish a winter home near their base, lured by the prospect of hunting for polar bears.

It was this need to lay by sufficient provisions before the dark winter months which led to the death of the expedition leader. Gino Watkins was only 25 when he died a month into the expedition. He was hunting seals in a kayak on his own, which was known to be a dangerous undertaking, and no one was present to witness what occurred. His fellow expedition members came across his unoccupied and drifting kayak later in the day, with the harpoon still loaded, his gun missing, and his paddle floating 150 yards away. They also located some of his abandoned clothes, but despite searching for days they never found his body. Their theory is that he stepped out of his kayak, perhaps after it was knocked by falling ice or perhaps for some other reason, only to have it wash away, and was then overcome by the cold when he swam to retrieve it.

Chapman tells the story of how the expedition progressed after the death of its most experienced and skilled member. Rymill took over leadership of the expedition, and they continued with the daily meteorological work which was their primary task, but they had to abandon some of their surveying plans. With much improvisation and practice they became adept at hunting, but it took most of their time. They found that their ability to successfully hunt seals was determined by the season, as some parts of the year a dead seal is more likely to float so that it is easy to retrieve, while at other times it will sink immediately. They also hunted for sea birds, sharks, foxes and (with the assistance of Enock) polar bears. During winter they used dynamite to blast holes in the ice covering the nearby lake in order to establish a permanent net under the ice and supplement their diet with fish.

Chapman quotes heavily from his journal giving at times day by day descriptions of the weather, the appearance of the ice, the success of their hunting, the behaviour of their dogs, and the varying nature of the plants, animals, insects and birds they encountered over the course of the year. While the story itself was broadly interesting, I found these detailed daily descriptions fairly tedious to read, and I would have preferred a shorter summary of their experiences, rather than a day by day account of their observations. However, these duller passages were interspersed with a few interesting discussions including one on the implications of population growth in the region for the traditional East Greenlander lifestyle. The first few chapters were absorbing, but it was a difficult book to read all the way to the end.

Links:
Penguin Cerise Travel

Penguin no. 2109: The Man on the Rock by Francis King

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:09:00 +0000

The staff consisted, for the most part, of pious, well-intentioned and hardworking English and American women, and Greek men, who like myself, took advantage of them. We borrowed money off them, and then forgot to repay it: we sold the petrol, the stationery, and even items of furniture; when a parcel arrived for distribution, we substituted worn-out clothes or shoes of our own for the clothes and shoes inside. The office station-wagon took us to the beach or to football matches. From time to time, one of us would be caught out, and then the rest would have to pretend to exclaim in horror at his crime.

Spiro Polymerides lies in his bed in a small flat in Battersea, suffering cystitis and feeling sorry for himself. His immediate problem is not his illness but the prospect of hours without any company, as it seems that Greek men hate spending any time alone. Even more than this, though, he resents the predicament he finds himself in: he is living in a foreign country without any hope of employment, and he is forced to hide from his creditors, and juggle what little money there is to pay some of the bills so that he and his heavily-pregnant wife can keep their small flat and get a little food. And all this through marrying a woman he doesn't love and barely cares about.

He knows that he alone is responsible for this fate. He married Kiki because she was the only daughter of Vrissoglou, a well-known and very wealthy Greek businessman living in London, and he was banking on a substantial dowry. His one goal in life has been to find someone who was willing to pick up the tab while he took it easy, unconcerned with whether they were young or old, male or female, and irrespective of what was required in return. He suggests that this is all any Greek peasant is ever seeking. But Kiki's father has chosen instead to disown his daughter as long as she continues to live with Spiro

And so Spiro is the man on the rock; a man without options. The metaphor is taken from Blake's The Mental Traveller, and it is being used here to describe his marriage, and the idea that he has traded his freedom for the prospect of a fortune, but perhaps the bargain was never going to be worth it.

As he lies in his bed he thinks back over his life, and the various people he has known and subsequently betrayed. He is honest in his reflections, never averring from a recognition of just how badly he has behaved, though caring more about the consequences for himself than for any cost borne by others. There have been people in his past who have genuinely cared for him, but he has always been self-concerned, and he has only ever pretended to return their affection; it has always been about what he could get for himself. He is hot-tempered, extravagant, and manipulative, but he is also well aware of all these faults, though perhaps he would consider them simply as attributes. There is not a single happy story here: everyone who has cared for him has been ruined in consequence.

He could find excuses for his callous disposition in the experiences of his childhood, for they were certainly traumatic. His parents and elder brother were killed in a Communist raid upon their village when he was a child. He recalls watching as the men of the village were lined up against a wall and executed, and seeing the village ransacked and then set alight. He was kidnapped by the rebels along with the other children of the village, with the young boys led away to be trained as militants, and the adolescent girls facing rape and sexual slavery. While he could reasonably claim to be traumatised by these experiences, that is not how he understands the underlying motivations of his behaviour.

He always views it as a clash of cultural values. He explains his behaviour logically in terms of the values imbued in him during his poor, rural upbringing, where being self-interested and willing to take advantage of the weaknesses of others is recognised as the way to get ahead, and finding someone with money is perceived as the only way to escape from the village. In such an environment to be viewed as cunning is to be considered clever; he says it is an attribute Greek people admire rather than condemn. The people he has injured have been either English or American expatriates: they are easily deceived and manipulated for they see in any situation the world as they wish it to be, rather than how it is, which makes them easy prey. As the passage quoted above makes explicit, he behaved the way he did because no one ever held him to account. But Kiki's father is Greek and presumably has a far greater understanding of Spiro and his values. He is the only one in the story who sees through him and doesn't give him what he wants.

Of course Spiro was also being used by those expatriates, who were beguiled by his good looks and charming ways and who sought to buy his affections, so it is hardly surprising that he was willing to give them everything except his loyalty. With its portrayal of the Greek civil war and the appalling implications for the villagers, and its analysis of the incompatible values of Greeks and Westerners, it is an interesting book, but also a difficult one to read. Spiro's story is told in the first person, and he never hides from what he has wrought, never seeking to justify it, but only to explain. It is impossible not to feel some pity for this man, while also feeling abhorrence for all he has done and his inability to care for anyone other than himself.

Penguin no. 1230: The Alleys of Marrakesh by Peter Mayne

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0000

I am resolved never to run, to walk always with a slow measured tread, and that when I choose, or am actually compelled, to look to right or left, I shall do so calm and tranquil. I shall gear down my jittery European reactions to those of a Blueman riding his camel across the Mauretanian deserts. I shall refuse to be hustled - why hurry? All the evidence about me points to the fact that it is for ever NOW. You can't go skipping into the future, however much you hustle. I shall be content, as the Moors are, with me in the centre of my universe and leave the universe to do the spinning.

Peter Mayne is never very clear on why he chose to travel to Marrakesh. When anyone puts the question to him he avoids answering it, reluctant to admit that he allowed chance to decide, choosing his destination using a pin and a map. But when the question is really pressed, he reveals it had something to do with a feeling of being over-civilised. He is seeking some respite from what he perceives to be the constant Western emphasis on progress and achievement, and he believes he will find it living amongst the Moors. As he makes clear in the passage quoted above, he wants to learn to live in the moment.

He travels to Marrakesh with an idea about the kind of life he wants to live, but with no clear plans as to what to do when he gets there. An unsought encounter in a cafe in Tangier en route provides him with the name of a hotel owned by Moulay Ibrahim. (In a different context he notes that a Moulay is someone descended from the Prophet, and therefore a person of some importance.) It is to this hotel he heads with a letter of introduction when he gets to Marrakesh, but it is a journey he makes with some difficulty, for he cannot read the address which has been written in Arabic, and his victoria driver cannot read at all. They find the hotel eventually, with the assistance of a passerby: it is located down an alley within the historic centre of Marrakesh. His room comes with no facilities for washing, and as a Christian he is not permitted to use the communal baths.

Peter Mayne plans to write a novel while living in Marrakesh. He also keeps a record of the small incidents of his daily life there, and it is this journal which forms the basis of this book. During his first months he passes his days in a cafe writing, his evenings taking lessons in Arabic, and his nights walking about the Djema'a el-Fna, a large irregularly-shaped courtyard which in earlier times was used for the display of salted decapitated heads. The courtyard's name translates as Congregation of the Departed, but the decapitations ended when the French established their Protectorate in 1912. By the early 1950s it had become the crowded home of storytellers, singers and snake charmers, and of an ostrich who pecks around amongst the beaks and bones of his former companions.

Peter Mayne finds that the locals observe him silently at first, but gradually they acknowledge his presence in their world and he begins to form friendships. He finds much to admire in his Moorish friends and acquaintances: they are generous, they seem incapable of feeling malice, and they never become aggressive when consuming alcohol. He also notes the complete absence of any concern for the future, which derives from their belief in the omniscience of God. Every tentative plan is accompanied by the words Insha' Allah - if God wills; should anyone forget, the words will always be spoken by someone close by. It means there is no call to feel pride on account of achievement, or disgrace on account of poverty: nothing reflects on the individual because it is all the will of God. It is this quality which enables Mayne to feel such contentment in living amongst them.

In the end he learns to live in the moment a little too successfully, and he finds the life to be incompatible with writing; while he intends to work, he can always find a reason not to. Instead he publishes this account of his year in Marrakesh, which he readily acknowledges as biased. He had no interest in providing a survey of the city, telling of its history, or providing descriptions of the cultural treasures of the type which could be found in any guide book. His interest was always in the local, and it is the everyday happenings which he uses to build up his picture of life as it is lived in the alleys of the older parts of the city, concentrating on the habits and superstitions of his neighbours and friends, both expatriate and local, and telling of the small incidents in their lives.

Penguin no. 78: Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:13:00 +0000

There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is within us, busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness some hint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is to feel at times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well with him? - not the feverish confidence of men in danger from a blow of fate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an unsought conviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that success is in hand in some great or little thing. The general suddenly knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory, the man on the green knows that he will suddenly put down the long putt. As Trent mounted the stairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty of achievement.

Trent's Last Case is an Edwardian novel. It was first published one hundred years ago at a time when the short-story was the typical format of the detective story. My favourite moment comes when the Oxford graduate Marlowe finds that it is necessary to describe the form and purpose of a rear-view mirror, and then does so using oddly precise and formal language which is at odds with the ordinariness of the subject, at least for a modern reader. That there is a need to do this, and the way in which it is done, both emphasise just how long ago this book was written, and just how different the world was at the time. Such differences underpin the whole story, as the protagonist's actions are guided by a set of values which seem all but unrecognisable today, and which weight the preservation of someone else's reputation above all other considerations.

The co-authored Penguin I read last week, Trent's Own Case, was published more than twenty years after this one. I think the most striking difference between the two stories, at least initially, is in the personality of Philip Trent. In both stories Trent is a successful artist, one who actually manages to sell his paintings, but here he is also an occasional journalist. The man who arrives in Marlstone intent on investigating the murder of Sigsbee Manderson is young, untidy, and excitable, and fairly eccentric in his habits and in his way of speaking. He seems at first to have far more in common with Ellery Queen or Gervase Fen than with the more sober Philip Trent who investigates the murder of Randolph in the later book.

This younger Trent possesses the easy confidence of a man accustomed to succeeding; someone who is used to finding himself in possession of the right answer, and who thinks on excelling without effort as the natural order of things. This innate ability is illustrated by his start in journalism, when using nothing more than the published reports in the newspapers, and therefore with information equally available to everyone, he solves a case which had clearly baffled the police, identifying an overlooked witness as the culpable man. His crime-solving career has never looked back, and he has a reputation now as the man to be relied upon when there is a mystery to be unravelled. It is for this reason that he is welcomed into the home of the recently-deceased Manderson.

Yet despite his amateur status and his frequent successes, his relations with the police remain cordial; their rivalry is treated on both sides as a kind of sport, and mockingly codified with its own set of rules. It is as if they both recognise that their shared goal of having the crime solved is benefited by the competition, and that it is the solving of the mystery rather than any attaching glory which is really of prime importance. But nonetheless it is always clear that Trent has the advantage: he is a gentleman with an Oxford education and therefore imbued with a level of insight inevitably lacking in his rival. But in this story Trent is to become aware of his limitations, and while he is a content and satisfied man by the end of the book, his confidence in his exceptional abilities has been damped.

This is the story of Trent's maturing told as a story of detection: the victim is the American businessman Sigsbee Manderson, and as with Trent's Own Case he is a man no one feels inclined to mourn; even Trent is momentarily disinclined to investigate his murder. Manderson had lived a life in which the accumulation of wealth for its own sake was all that mattered. He had always been wealthy; by the end of his life he was even wealthier: first speculation had increased his wealth, then a period of conservatism had consolified it. He had been murdered during a holiday in England, shot through the eye on the grounds of his English estate, apparently after leaving his bedroom unobserved sometime during the night. One theory is that it was an aggrieved American trade unionist who had brought about his demise, but Trent is distracted by elements of his attire which don't quite fit the known facts.

I expect that most of the plaudits for this book reflect its influence, as the remote setting, the unpopular victim, and the gentleman sleuth are all integral elements of detective fiction in the following years. I enjoyed it more for this story of the gradual maturing of Trent. And because of the complex and shifting nature of the solution, although his cannot be explained further without giving the whole thing away.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 543: Trent's Own Case

And by his son, Nicolas Bentley:
Penguin no. 1548: Third Party Risk

Penguin no. 543: Trent's Own Case by E.C. Bentley & H. Warner Allen

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:16:00 +0000

The house of Clerihew Bros. and Co. inspected, purchased and offered rare and ancient wines with a reverent dignity which made precious stones seem commonplace by comparison. The shop was an oasis of peace in the noise and mercenary bustle of the West End. Its panelling and its ancient floors, which dived capriciously in any plane but the horizontal, the collection of quaint historic wine bottles, and the unequalled excellence of the wines that were tasted within its precincts, made it a place apart. While the rest of London was demolishing the old and masking the beauties of the past under the unsightly dullness of modernity, Mr. Clerihew had been quietly busy preserving the traditional simplicity of his premises, and rescuing from the overlay of later bad taste the peculiar charm of the original building.

It is always a delightful moment when I see a box of Penguins waiting for me at the end of the driveway. I had such a moment recently when twenty-one old and predominately green books turned up in the mail, a very kind gift from Patrick O'Sullivan. They arrived only a few days before I was leaving for Europe and there was no time to look through them properly, but my attention was particularly attracted by this one, as it bears, on the inside front cover, an impressive list of plaudits from an impressive list of reviewers.

I realised a little too late that the commendations were for E.C. Bentley's earlier and similarly-titled book, Trent's Last Case. It was this earlier book which Agatha Christie asserted as 'one of the three best detective stories ever written' and which G.D.H & M.I. Cole jointly claimed to be the best detective story they had ever read. I have since read it and plan review it next, so I understand the reasons for their praise. This one, co-authored with H. Warner Allen, is fine: it is entertaining and well written, but it is seems fairly conventional when compared with the earlier book.

James Randolph is murdered early one evening when he is shot from behind in the bedroom of his small London flat while dressing for dinner. His body is found a few hours later when his butler Simon Raught returns around midnight from his scheduled night off. When the police arrive they discover that Randolph's safe has been ransacked and discarded wrapping paper litters his bedroom floor. Other items throughout the house which are clearly of value remain undisturbed.

Randolph had been known to the world as a philanthropist. He had been born into humble circumstances but had gone on to accrue a fortune through shrewd investments in real estate, and he had always lived relatively frugally, choosing to devote most of his income to the support of a vast array of charities, many bearing his name. It was suggested by some, however, that the motivation for his generosity may have derived more from the accolades than from any desire to improve the lot of his fellow men, for he seems to have been a man who wanted to be well thought of, who desired the awards which are bestowed by foreign governments, and who enjoyed being the guest of honour at dinners held by organisations he supported. Acclaim seems to have been the recompense he sought for his munificence.

And if he did have any compassion for others, then like Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House it was a feeling entirely limited to those he had never met. His caring was at a distance, while those who knew him, with a single exception, were wary of him and notably disinclined to express any admiration for a man they clearly viewed as disagreeable. Even his only son had chosen to forsake the family wealth at a young age rather than remain in close contact with his father. A letter received by the police the day following the murder may hint at the reasons those who knew Randolph were inclined to dislike him. It was a signed confession from the butler detailing his involvement in an unsolved burglary; it had been suppressed by Randolph while he lived and forwarded to the police by his solicitors when he died, and it can only be guessed what penalty he extracted from Raught as a consequence of this knowledge.

Philip Trent's crime-solving days are long behind him, and his main interest now is his painting. He had recently painted Randolph's portrait, but even more recently he had called on Randolph on a personal matter, and had been witness to the man's unpleasant temper. Perhaps by chance or perhaps by design, he seems to have been the last person, other than the murderer, to see Randolph alive.

But this is only one aspect amongst many which connect Trent with the murder and stimulate his interest: his friend Inspector Bligh is the detective in charge of the investigation and he wishes to make use of him as a sounding board, and then a long-time friend readily and perplexingly confesses his guilt, just after attempting suicide, and immediately before succumbing to mental collapse. As much as he respects the abilities of Inspector Bligh, Trent's personal knowledge has him doubting the confession and intent on finding the truth. It is soon clear that it had been the murderer's intention to create a false trail suggesting himself as the perpetrator, a plan which miscarried from the start, but which gives the book its name.

The disparity between how a man can be perceived by the world and how he really is, in this case assumed benevolent when really frugal, and caring when truly controlling, is an interesting sideline in what seems otherwise a fairly conventional detective story featuring an appealing and capable amateur sleuth and a victim no one seems too concerned to mourn. These latter elements also appear in Trent's Last Case, but this is in itself more interesting historically as it is such an early book, and he also puts them to a much more interesting use, with the easy confidence of the amateur sleuth integral to the story being told. But that is the story for next week.

Penguin no. 1279: Fair Stood the Wind for France by H.E. Bates

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 10:48:00 +0000

1st edition, 1958,
Cover by Imre Reiner.

Franklin looked at the revolver and saw it suddenly as a pathetic and useless thing. He saw his own belief in it as pathetic. He had become so used to handling a weapon as big as a house, and carrying enough power to wipe out a small town, that he had forgotten there are other types of power. He looked at the three people sitting in the lamplight waiting for a sound. He saw them, the three generations of one nation, as part of a defenceless people, as part of the little people possessing an immeasurable power that could not be broken. He saw them suddenly as little people who had lain on the ground and had their faces trampled on but whose power was still unbroken. He knew it clearly now as a more wonderful, more enduring and more inspiring power than he had ever believed possible: the power of their own hearts.

H.E. Bates was drafted into the RAF as a writer during the second world war, commissioned initially to write a series of short stories with the aim of improving the morale of a war-weary civilian population. He knew little of aeroplanes or flying, but he was given considerable opportunity to observe the airmen closely, and this included the chance to interview a pilot who had been shot down over France, and who had then managed to escape with the assistance of the French Resistance. This was clearly his inspiration for Fair Stood the Wind for France, which is an inspiring story of a bomber pilot's assisted escape from the German-occupied northern region of France during the latter part of the second world war. It is part-romance, part-adventure story, and perhaps a little melodramatic at times. But it is also a book in which a simple summary of the plot would seem rather inadequate in conveying what it is about.

It seemed to me to be principally a story about the inherent decency of ordinary people. Not all of them, clearly: inevitably some people think only of themselves, and it is the difficulty of distinguishing between the treacherous and the trustworthy which heightens the tension all the way through this novel. H.E. Bates inverts the common action-oriented approach to war fiction which is centred on a tale of personal heroism; instead of one man as hero saving a community, this is the story of a communal effort to help one man.

His escape depends upon a whole series of small acts of defiance, and the selfless acts of many strangers. The people involved come from differing walks of life - they are young, old, and middle-aged, accomplished and uneducated, English and French. Some are motivated by the recollection of tragedy in their own lives, some by a belief in the future, and others by a simple and unshakeable faith in God. And perhaps there is an underlying desire to be part of something bigger which has each one of them risking their own lives, and possibly the lives of those they love, and yet giving their assistance unhesitatingly. It is all uncoordinated and haphazard - simply a collection of people who, when given the opportunity, choose to behave compassionately and courageously.

3rd impression, 1964,
Cover photo by Peter Theobald.

The story is mostly told from the perspective of John Franklin, a man suffering considerable pain. One moment he is involved in the war effort, calmly flying back from a bombing mission with his thoughts only on getting home, and the next he is looking for somewhere to land his Wellington Bomber because of a mechanical failure in one of the engines. He finds the ground to be softer than he expects, and the landing consequently harder, and when he regains consciousness after the crash he is aware that his arm is badly injured and he has lost a lot of blood. He knows that such a wound is a serious complication in these circumstances, when hospital care must mean capture.

But he is well-practised in constraining his attention to matters of immediate importance, and for him the only thing which matters is the safety of his crew. Everything of value in the plane must be salvaged or destroyed, and then they must find food, determine their location, and work out how they are to keep from the notice of the German soldiers, and later the gendarmes, while they make their way to Spain.

These five men impose a life-threatening burden on anyone who offers them assistance. All they have to fear is the loss of their freedom, but the locals face execution if they are even suspected of helping the downed airmen. And yet they are given shelter by the isolated mill-owning family of Françoise. Grandmother, father, daughter and employee immediately dedicate their efforts to concealing and feeding the men, sourcing passes to facilitate their escape, and arranging the medical treatment Franklin desperately needs. But even so he continues to weaken, slipping in and out of consciousness, and sleeping for long periods. He struggles to maintain his sense of himself as a man of action, but gradually realises that he must step back, and learn to trust and rely on others. This is the story of Franklin's escape, underpinned as it is by many courageous acts, and it is also the story of the romance which gradually develops between Franklin and Françoise.

H.E Bates is also attempting to convey something of the experience of life in occupied France during the latter part of the second world war, and he does this through a focus on detail. His story is like a mosaic built up from fragments of Franklin's experiences; it is a collection of moments. He records the things Franklin observes: the silence of trees unmoved by wind, the unfocused gaze of a waiter staring vacantly down an empty street, the imprint of a girl's thumb on a ripening peach. But it was this background story of decent-hearted, selfless humanity which I enjoyed the most; it is illustrated in the concern the airmen had for one another, and the resilience, stoicism and bravery of an occupied population.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 2130: An Aspidistra in Babylon

Vintage Penguins in Eastbourne (courtesy of Camilla's Bookshop)

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:34:00 +0000

I didn't get to see a lot of Eastbourne.

There was no time during my recent two-week stay in Europe in which the weather was particularly conducive to sight-seeing, but the day in Eastbourne was particularly unpleasant. I arrived in the rain on a day when the wind was so fierce no one seemed able to get the door of the hotel shut, and I saw the pier only because it was across the road from the hotel. Now I look back rather fondly to last year when I walked along the cobb at Lyme Regis early one morning and naively reflected on how much more tranquil the pebbled beaches of England were compared to the beaches of Perth. It is the problem with extrapolating from small samples.

But Eastbourne is the home of Camilla's Bookshop, and that made my brief visit worthwhile.

The first thing I saw of Camilla's was an outside bookshelf which clearly operates on an honour system: there was a large bookshelf running alongside the side of the shop which was filled with paperbacks, and people are trusted to take a book and leave whatever is required, just as you see in Hay-on-Wye. There were no Penguins here, but as the bookshop was open there were other books in front of the shop available for sale, including a box of inexpensively-priced green-spined Penguins, and so finding several that I wanted to purchase, I was enticed inside.

The photos below show how Camilla's presents: it seems completely disorganised, and there are books stacked anyhow on the shelves, and surplus books stacked anyhow on the floor. There is a bookshelf of green Penguins not far from the front door, but then downstairs there is a whole bookcase filled with orange-spined books, a mixture of vintage Penguins and those published more recently. The books which don't fit on the shelves are stacked on the floor, so it meant a pleasant afternoon searching through them for the ones I wanted, with all the books I saw priced below two pounds each.

I think I found about 40 more Penguins (and therefore faced a heavily-book-laden search for my hotel). Many from of these dated from the late-60s which, with their less-interesting covers, are often surprisingly difficult to find.

Links:
Half a Million Books (A Fiction Habit)

Penguin no. 2080: Silence Observed by Michael Innes

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 00:07:00 +0000

Sir Gabriel had died in an enormous and cavernous room like a mausoleum. One end was taken up by tall windows which proved to be only of the slightly subterraneous order. The other was occupied by a vast historical painting by John Martin. It was called The Destruction of Carthage and depicted a huge harbour crowded with grappling vessels, surrounded by colossal moles crammed with improbable pylons, cenotaphs and fortifications, garnished with three or four hundred drowned, stabbed, crushed or dismembered human bodies and illumined throughout by a lavish display of fireworks diversified by skyward-roaring flames. All this now made a kind of backcloth to one additional corpse, that of the late Director of this imposing institution.

This is an older John Appleby: he is now 53 and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and therefore the most important policeman in the country. But while this new role has brought respect and recognition, it has also distanced him from the excitement of investigative policing. His seniority tends to preclude a direct involvement in solving cases, for any move to step in would be interpreted as suggesting a lack of faith in his staff. His tasks are now mostly administrative, and he finds himself kept informed of the progress of investigations rather than taking an active role in solving them.

But when two murders are committed in London less than twelve hours apart, both sharing certain similarities which suggest they may be associated, he finds himself drawn into the investigation through the possession of information which has inadvertently come his way. The murdered men had both been involved in some capacity with the world of collecting, one dealing in books, the other an expert on painting. And both men seem to have been taken unaware, each dispatched by a bullet through the back of the head.

Trenchman was the first to be killed, and he seemed a most unlikely candidate for murder victim. He was the owner of a dusty and disorganised secondhand book store located close to the British museum, and he had specialised in old leatherbound volumes of past centuries, which made robbery an unlikely motive for the killing. But Appleby had learnt something more about Trenchman earlier that day while trying to pass a quiet moment at his club.

His fellow member Gribble, a collector of forgeries, had been brimming with enthusiasm over a recent acquisition which he understood to be a Manallace forgery of some verses by Meredith. Appleby had watched as Gribble's excitement had turned to consternation when he spotted a small detail which established without doubt that his newly-acquired forgeries had themselves been faked. Trenchman had been the dealer, but Gribble was not considered a suspect in his death: no one in the collecting world would be tempted to murder by stakes as low as the one he had paid. They are more likely to be tempted to silence, to ensure that no one would ever hear of how they had been duped.

And it is this tendency for keeping quiet which Appleby notes is so conducive to the fortunes of forgers and fraudsters. The story turns on what is real and what is faked, and how it can be known with certainty, and there is perhaps some amusement that in the perversity of the collecting world some forgeries can be more valuable than the originals, and others completely worthless . When he asks around his club discreetly, in his capacity as head of Scotland Yard, he hears many variations on the same basic story of deception, with some members well aware they have been had, and others continuing in ignorance of their error. He suspects the criminals he seeks have something of a sporting instinct - money may be one incentive, but they are clearly entertained by their ability to outwit these successful old men.

I found Silence Observed to be one of the better Michael Innes' titles. He maintains the momentum by telling his story efficiently. There is no character introduced who is not integral to the plot, and similarly no surplus event is described, and no unnecessary conversation recorded. Appleby's every action, both conscious and inadvertent, provides another piece of information which helps him draw the separate threads of this complex plot into a cohesive narrative. And this he does with calmness and authority. Like most of the Michael Innes titles I have read, this is a thriller, but it is one which almost seems to take on the characteristics of the protagonist. There is no deviation into farce, and Appleby always seems in control.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 1286: Death at the President's Lodging
Penguin no. 1299: Stop Press
Penguin no. 1576: Appleby Plays Chicken
Penguin no. 1577: Appleby on Ararat
Penguin no. 1578: The Weight of the Evidence
Penguin no. 1640: Hamlet Revenge!
Penguin no. 1960: A Use of Riches (as J.I.M.Stewart)
Penguin no. 2037: The Man Who Won the Pools (as J.I.M.Stewart)
Penguin no. 2201: Hare Sitting Up
Penguin no. 2533: The Last Tresilians (as J.I.M.Stewart)

Penguin no. 1857: Famous Trials 7 - Oscar Wilde by H. Montgomery Hyde

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:35:00 +0000

'"The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name", and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.'

Penguin's Famous Trials series comprised 10 books, all published with green crime covers, except for this one, which describes the three trials of Oscar Wilde at the Old Bailey, and which has an orange spine. It is interesting to speculate on why they made the alteration for the 7th book while returning to green for the following three. Perhaps it was because Oscar Wilde was a writer, or perhaps it was because the misdemeanours with which he was charged were relatively trivial, notwithstanding the comments of Sir John Bridge when he remanded Wilde and the co-accused Alfred Taylor in custody, that 'there [was] no worse crime than that with which the prisoners [were] charged.' Or perhaps it was simply an oversight, as I have seen a later ISBN edition bearing a green spine.

Oscar Wilde's first trial was his unsuccessful prosecution for libel of John Sholto Douglas, eighth Marquess of Queensberry, which Lord Queensberry had intentionally provoked by leaving a card bearing the words 'To Oscar Wilde, posing as a somdomite', misspelling included, with the porter of the Albemarle club. This prosecution was Oscar Wilde's undoing, as the evidence presented in justification of the libel triggered his arrest on charges alleging the commission of acts of gross indecency (and initially, conspiracy to procure the commission of such acts). Interestingly, the magistrate delayed issuing the warrant for his arrest until the night boat had departed for the Continent, and so it seems he was given the opportunity of getting away, but Oscar Wilde chose to stay in England despite knowing that his arrest was imminent. His arrest led to the following two trials and his eventual imprisonment for two years with hard labour.

His problems began with his friendship with the much younger Bosie, Lord Alfred Douglas, and stem largely from the animosity existing between Bosie and his father Lord Queensberry. Hyde suggests that the eccentric Queensberry was probably mentally unbalanced. He was known to be a bully, having pursued the prime minister with a dog whip on hearing that his eldest son had been raised to the peerage.

Queensberry became a man with the single obsession of severing the friendship between his third son and Oscar Wilde, and for more than a year he threatened to disinherit and to thrash his son if he continued to go about in Wilde's company. He visited hotels and restaurants in London warning that he would cause disruption should they be permitted to dine together, and he once attempted to intimidate Wilde by turning up at his home uninvited in the company of a prize-fighting boxer. The card left at Wilde's club was a provocation designed to cause a public scandal. His allegation was not that Wilde was a sodomite, but that he posed as one, and it left Wilde with few choices, as Queensberry showed no sign of abandoning his ongoing harrassment. The prosecution was an attempt to get some respite from his bullying behaviour.

Queensberry's defence had only three weeks to prepare their case, and in this they were given considerable help from Charles Brookfield, another man obsessed with Wilde. Perhaps motivated by jealousy, he set out on his own initiative to track down the names and addresses of any young homosexuals who could testify against Wilde. The defence was further helped by carelessness on the part of Bosie which provided them with two letters Wilde had written to him in overly affectionate language. They were quoted to devastating effect in each of the three trials.

With the exception of sodomy, the law had not been concerned with indecent acts involving adults and committed in private before 1886, and so the offences for which he was tried had been considered criminal acts for less than 10 years. While the moral sensibilities of the Victorians were no doubt offended by the acts in question, they seem to have been equally appalled by the fact that Wilde enjoyed the company of young men who were beneath him socially. Part of the hostility seems to relate to these social transgressions, and the perceived inappropriateness of providing dinners, holidays and presents to men who worked as valets and grooms, irrespective of whether anything more was involved.

The problem with information on events from the past is that it can come down to the present filtered, Chinese Whispers fashion, with some detail retained and much of the context lost. The story told here is very different to the one I expected to read, particularly in terms of the series of unfortunate events which conspired in bringing about Oscar Wilde's imprisonment. Here Montgomery Hyde uses the transcripts of the three trials to tell the story of Oscar Wilde's downfall in detail, and to place the events in their historical context, and the edition also includes the reflections of Sir Humphrey Travers, recorded in 1948, when he was the last person involved in the trial who remained alive. Irrespective of his guilt, and noting that many others were known to be guilty of the same behaviours, Oscar Wilde comes across as the unfortunate victim of a feud being carried on between a father and a son.

More vintage Penguins in Newcastle (from the wonderful Keel Row Bookshop).

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:07:00 +0000

Last year when I visited the UK with Pam, we had only a few hours in Newcastle and had to confine our search for old Penguins to the city centre. We found plenty, though, because they had boxes and boxes of them for sale at Books for Amnesty in Westgate Rd, perhaps 100 metres from the main train station, all for a pound each. This year I returned to find that their prices were now even cheaper, at three for a pound and eight for two pounds, but the Penguins were not nearly as plentiful. I found only one vintage Penguin of interest, but it was one with a wonderful Alan Aldridge cover.

Penguin no. C2339, cover by Alan Aldridge.

This year I wanted to stay a little longer in the area, so I booked a night in the small seaside village of Whitley Bay, located about 30 minutes away by metro. And three stops on from Whitley Bay is North Shields, home to the wonderful Keel Row Book Shop. Taking into account the breadth of their stock, the friendliness of their staff, and their wonderfully reasonable prices, I think it is my favourite second hand bookshop in all of England. I'm very grateful to Steve Lowe for suggesting it.

The Keel Row Book Shop is like a multi-storey house comprised of many rooms, with every wall in every room lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves completely filled with books. On the top floor they have a room predominately devoted to Penguins. It can be seen in the photos below that they carry an extensive range of many of the various vintage Penguin series, including the main series, the Penguin Classics, the Penguin Poets, and the Pelicans. And then across the landing, in a different room, they have a double-stacked shelf of green vintage crime. Almost every book I picked up was priced between one and two pounds, and I left the store with 34 more Penguins.

I was fortunate enough to be in the area on a Saturday morning when they hold the Tynemouth undercover market across both platforms of the Tynemouth metro station, two stops on from Whitley Bay. It is an eclectic market of books, antiques, records, home-cooked cakes, gourmet foods, and the ever-present cupcakes. But there was one wonderful stall there stocked with a variety of old books, including Penguins, Pelicans, Ladybirds and hard-backed Enid Blytons. And the Penguins were all very old, and very low-numbered, and so I found 7 more books to add to the collection.

A small section of the wall devoted to Penguins.

Blue Penguin Biographies, cerise Travel and Adventure, & the variously coloured spines of Penguin Science News.

In another room, a double-stacked shelf of Penguin Crime.

Pelicans.

Penguin Classics.

Penguin Poets.

Tynemouth metro station, Saturday morning.

And my favourite stall, offering vintage Penguins, Penguin Classics, Pelicans, hard-backed copies of Enid Blyton titles, and early Ladybirds.

Penguin no. 686: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 09:42:00 +0000

'Because your job deals very largely with what we call right and wrong - and I'm not at all sure that there's any such thing. Suppose it's all a question of glandular secretion. Too much of one gland, too little of another - and you get your murderer, your thief, your habitual criminal. Clement, I believe the time will come when we'll be horrified to think of the long centuries in which we've indulged in what you may call moral reprobation, to think how we've punished people for disease - which they can't help poor devils. You don't hang a man for having tuberculosis.'

Agatha Christie has such a simple and conversational prose style, along with a strong focus on plot, and often provides a perplexed narrator to guide the reader through the altering course of clues and suspects, so that one of her books seems a fairly reliable choice for a long haul flight. Twenty-three hours of enforced idleness, disrupted sleep and increasing restlessness mean that anything requiring more than the most minimal concentration is best avoided. And so when I flew from Perth to London earlier this week I took along the most battered Agatha Christie vintage Penguin I could find on my shelf, planning to discard it once I arrived.

The Murder at the Vicarage was originally published in 1929. It is set in the small backwater of St Mary Mead, a village which seems oversupplied with ageing unmarried women of unworldly but inquisitive dispositions. Nothing occurs which escapes their notice, and there is no detail so insignificant that it will fail to excite their interest. They pass their time watching their fellow villagers, inferring the motives and intentions behind every action, and sitting in judgement upon those they have observed. The best, or perhaps the worst, of these is Miss Jane Marple.

Many in the village dismiss her as a meddlesome old woman, but such animosity may be a reflection of her skill, for she has an uncanny ability to speculate accurately; Miss Marple differs from the other village spinsters in possessing a shrewdness they all lack. Her putative hobbies are gardening and bird watching, so that she is often out of doors concealed behind her shrubbery, able to observe others without herself being seen, but it is clear that her real passion is the study of human behaviour. Through constant observation of the most insignificant details she hopes to find underlying patterns which will help her to understand why people think and behave the way they do. So far she has tested her theories by solving a few small village mysteries, but now a murder has been committed next door at the Vicarage, and Miss Marple has taken a keen interest in the progress of the police investigation.

The victim is Colonel Protheroe, resident of the Hall, and local church warden and magistrate. He was shot through the back of the head early one evening while seated in the study of the Vicarage awaiting the imminent return of the vicar. He had always been a fairly disagreeable man, inclined to be dogmatic in his ideas, and with a particular enthusiasm for imposing punishment in the interests of serving justice. He is not generally liked, not even by his nearest relations. His wife is having an affair, his daughter is longing for financial independence, he has just sent a local poacher to gaol, and he was about to embark on a thorough investigation into a few pounds missing from church funds. It means that the village is filled with potential suspects, at least seven by Miss Marple's reckoning, many of whom had actually been overheard wishing for the Colonel's demise in the hours preceding his murder.

The police response is enthusiastic but ineffective, as while Inspector Slack is intent on getting a conviction, his preferred accused is any person against whom he can build a convincing case. Miss Marple is more concerned with identifying the person who is truly guilty.

Agatha Christie weaves into her simple story an interesting exploration of the motivations of criminals and the best approach in dealing with them. She creates two characters with firm but opposing viewpoints: Colonel Protheroe with his unequivocal ideas about justice and punishment, and Dr Haydock, content to ascribe all crime to glandular dysfunction, and to believe that malicious intentions and unethical people do not exist. She illustrates the flaws inherent in both sets of beliefs, and is clearly suggesting that the answer is far more complex, and something more pragmatic is required.

***********************
My trip didn't begin quite as I'd planned, as I arrived in London to find that I couldn't continue on to Brussels, as all Eurostar services had been cancelled due to heavy snowfalls in France and Belgium. It was a little daunting to be stranded in London, jet-lagged and longing for sleep, with no organised accommodation. I made it to Ghent the following day, and since then have travelled onto Bruges, Newcastle and Edinburgh, visiting some lovely bookshops along the way, and finding about 50 Penguins. Today I head to Glasgow.

Penguin no. 1671: Jack Would Be a Gentleman by Gillian Freeman

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 03:40:00 +0000

(Cover by John Sewell - more here).

He glanced across briefly at Beatrice. She was enjoying it all right, she was loving every bloody minute of it. It didn't matter how he felt or what he wanted to do so long as she could sit about like Lady Muck. Well, she didn't look like Lady Muck, she looked like Beat Prosser, and the sooner she realized it the better, giving herself airs ever since they won the money. He blamed James for all these fancy ideas. That la-di-dah voice and fairy manners. It made you sick.

Gillian Freeman takes her title from a proverb which she gives as 'Jack would be a gentleman if he had money', but which is more commonly given as 'Jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French'. Both expressions describe a working class man with aspirations, but the Jack in this story has no ambition at all. He is quite content with things as they are: he enjoys his work as a house painter, and is perfectly happy as long as his children are doing well and he can spend a few hours each evening in the local pub drinking with his friends. He would have everything he wanted in life if his wife Beatrice would leave off nagging.

But Beatrice has always aspired to something more. She knew she was marrying beneath herself when she became the wife of a house painter, but she had reasoned that with a little application Jack would soon would rise to foreman, and then one day he could establish a decorating business of his own. She never thought to ask if this was what he wanted too.

The need to get ahead has been the motivating principle of her life, and she views the ownership of bigger, better, and newer things as essential markers of their status. She lives within a competitive working class world in which all contentment is dependant on having more than the neighbours, and the size of a family's television screen seems to be some proxy for their worth. But Jack is happy as an employee, and he cares nothing for the acquisition of new possessions, giving in only when necessary to keep the peace at home. Beatrice can never forgive him for what she sees as a lack of enterprise.

This is the story of a working class family living at a time when class distinctions are still important, but things are beginning to change. Beatrice's ambition manifests itself in a disdain for everything which is associated with, or enjoyed by, members of her own class. She wants wine bars rather than pubs, hotels instead of boarding-houses: where Jack wants to feel comfortable, Beatrice wants to feel superior. It means she has little time for Jack's friends, considering them all beneath her. These two have nothing in common but their history: her idea of happiness is a bigger house in a better suburb, his is an evening buying drinks for his friends.

So, thwarted in her pursuit of status by her husband, she concentrates instead on her children, successfully imbuing them with this idea that life is about getting ahead. Her son is a mechanic working hard towards owning his own garage, and her daughter was educated at the Grammar school and is now at secretarial college. But loneliness seems to be the price which must be paid for being educated out of your class, together with a feeling of shame when you think on your relatives and your home. Beatrice is unaware of something which is completely apparent to her daughter: middle class people have a different set of values, and a desperate aspiration to know them means having to accept second class status.

And then Jack wins the pools, and the family suddenly have more money than they can ever conceive of spending. Even though it is only fifty thousand pounds, in 1959 this seems to be a fortune that can almost never be spent. The possibilities they consider seem so small: chicken for dinner every night, a house with a bathroom, a holiday in Bournemouth. Jack needs barely 10 pounds per week to maintain his lifestyle, and so he need never work again.

There is always a sense that it can only end badly. Whether it was the corrupting influence of unearned wealth, or the emptiness of a life devoted to acquiring possessions, money was never going to be the answer to Beatrice's unhappiness, and her dissatisfaction never abates, as there are simply new things to trouble her. Her problem is perhaps really about opportunity, for it seems that an ambitious married woman of the '50s had to rely on others to cover ground unavailable to her, as all she had to compete with was the cleanliness of her home, and the success of her husband and children. And Beatrice lacks the critical ability to recognise that just as she rejects those she perceives to be beneath her, she will be rejected by those who perceive themselves above.

Penguin no. 791: Gilbert and Sullivan by Hesketh Pearson

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 06:29:00 +0000

It would be no doubt true to say that, while Gilbert was the more remarkable personality, Sullivan was the rarer artist; but it would also be true to say that, while neither can be described as great without the other, together they are unique. And here we perceive the futility of comparing their individual merits and the cause of their inseparable gift. The strength was Gilbert's, the sweetness was Sullivan's, each providing his partner with something he lacked. Gilbert kindled the fire of genius in Sullivan, whose flame irradiated Gilbert.

Their names are permanently associated, and yet it seems that in life W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan had very little in common. According to Pearson's biography of the two men, they shared little more than a desire to create a new, wholesome form of light entertainment for a London stage they believed to be dominated at the time by bawdy French burlesques. It was Sullivan's view that music was superior to all other art forms because it could not be used to suggest anything immoral, and Gilbert was determined to never 'let an evil word escape [his] characters, and never to allow a man to appear as a woman, and vice versa.' Cruelty and mockery were clearly fine, but lewdness they staunchly opposed.

Gilbert and Sullivan were contrasts, differing in appearance, temperament, and personality, and Pearson contends there was no possibility of such dissimilar individuals ever becoming friends (although rather curiously he ventures the opinion that had one been female, such a partnership would probably have formed the basis of a successful marriage). Gilbert was controlling and bullying, extremely litigious, sensitive to criticism, and inclined to hold grudges for years; Sullivan was well-liked and charming, and drew great pleasure from socialising, although he frequently neglected his work for months to pursue royalty-chasing and gambling, alternating his periods of idleness with short episodes of creativity during which he worked day and night, at a cost to his health, in order to meet his obligations. And yet while Gilbert may have possessed the more difficult personality, it is clear that Pearson felt considerable sympathy for him, and I finished the book believing that he was the more interesting of the pair.

The other member of their collaboration was Richard D'Oyly Carte, and while he may have been principally motivated by the accumulation of wealth, he also shared this vision of an alternative 'clean' form of comic entertainment. He introduced Gilbert and Sullivan to each other, raised the capital to form a company producing their works, and established the Savoy Theatre in London as a dedicated venue for their comic operas. He bound them in a contract which ensured they would produce a new work at six months' notice whenever he required it. Gilbert provided the plots and librettos, Sullivan set Gilbert's words to music, and D'Oyly Carte seems to have applied the pressure which brought into being 15 successful Gilbert and Sullivan productions.

Gilbert described the partnership he shared with Sullivan as one between master and master, and it was therefore probably inevitable that it would be marked by frequent episodes of discord and disharmony. Gilbert is presented here as taking a leading role: he had a vision for how he wanted each libretto presented, and he would tolerate no deviation from his plan, involving himself in every aspect of the production. He would insist that every pronunciation, every inflection, and every movement corresponded with his wishes. No actor was allowed to improvise or interpret, and this meant he preferred to employ novice actors who were less inclined to argue with his views. Pearson implies it was having to withstand the rigours of the Gilbert-supervised rehearsals which in part lead George Grossman, the leading man in many of the productions (and co-author of Diary of a Nobody), to take to injecting morphine.

Pearson's biography dates from 1935 and he acknowledges that the contemporary view at that time downplayed Gilbert's contribution, giving the greater share of the credit for their success to Sullivan, and perhaps reflecting a bias against playwrights and towards musicians, or possibly an example of the establishment taking care of one of their own. But Pearson argues that Gilbert's influence on Sullivan was akin to that of a muse, in that Gilbert brought out the best in him; nothing either one of them produced outside the partnership was as successful as the works they produced together. He also argues that Sullivan resented his dependence upon Gilbert, and found himself increasingly subject to pressure from friends within the musical establishment who were concerned that he was wasting his talent on trivialities. Gilbert and Sullivan were both affected to some extent by the Victorian belief that earnest works were of far more value than popular ones, but while Gilbert sensed that the public weren't able to appreciate his more serious works, Sullivan continued to aspire to produce worthier works.

As a biographer, Pearson seems to sit in judgement upon his subjects, not only describing the details of their lives and personalities, but also inferring their motives and characters from their actions, and delivering his assessments without hedging or hesitation. He presents his conclusions as though they were unequivocal facts, rather than the conjectures they must be. In this biography he casts D'Oyly Carte as a Napoleonic figure, Sullivan as a feminine man, and Gilbert as a typically belligerent Englishman of the time. At times it read as if his narrative had been established in advance, and the facts were being shoehorned into the story he wanted to tell, and not always matching. But his style was engaging, and I found it a lively and interesting story, even though I knew very little about their comic operas.

Penguin no. 269: Canon in Residence by V. L. Whitechurch

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:25:00 +0000

When we erect a building nowadays to the glory of the Supreme Being, we generally employ an architect who has done something in town halls or other objects of utility. We limit his imagination, because imagination is often expensive, and then we invite tenders for the execution of his plans. The cheapest contract is signed, and up goes a structure of red and yellow brick, and the Bishop of the Diocese opens it with a sermon on worshipping God 'in the beauty of holiness,' and afterwards, at the public luncheon, expresses his gratitude to the local millionaire - who has previously done great things in pork, or shipping, or something - for so nobly heading the list of subscribers 'with his munificent donation of five hundred pounds.'

Victor Lorenzo Whitechurch was a vicar who wrote many works of fiction, although this seems to be the only one which was published as a vintage Penguin. The only copy I have is in such poor condition that I doubt I would have been tempted to read it, for fear it would disintegrate in my hands, if I hadn't received a message from Simon last year telling me that he thought it was brilliant, and having now read it I have to agree with his assessment. Whitechurch offers a delightful and mildly farcical story which gently promotes the virtues of tolerance and charity. Although it seems largely forgotten now, it was clearly popular once, for it went through 15 impressions between its original publication in 1903 and the Penguin paperback version issued in 1940.

Reverend John Smith is a rather conventional middle-aged vicar who writes books on ecclesiastical history in his spare time. After undertaking some research in Zurich, he is intent on a few days relaxation in St Moritz, and is delighted to learn while en route that he is to be the next Canon of Frattenbury, a (fictional) cathedral town in the south of England. But Rev. Smith is on the cusp of an adventure which will radically alter his views on his vocation, so that the man who arrives at Frattenbury Cathedral to take up the post of Canon is fairly changed from the restrained and scholarly vicar who had left for the continent only a few weeks earlier.

His transformation begins with a late night conversation with a fellow hotel guest. The stranger had suggested that the clergy were precluded from ever understanding human nature by having consciously set themselves apart, partly by the sanctimonious disposition they were inclined to adopt, but also by the uniform they chose to wear. In insulating themselves they had ensured that all they would ever experience were the masks people donned in their presence. The stranger proposes an experiment: Rev. Smith should continue on to St Moritz incognito and see for himself if he is treated differently when he goes about without his clerical collar. But the thoughts of the Canon-elect were for his new appointment, and he barely heeds the stranger's suggestion.

It is a different story the following morning when he awakes to find the brightly-clad stranger has decamped by the earliest train, but not before switching their clothes. The Rev. Smith's clerical garments were now on their way to Paris, and he had been left with the stranger's unthinkably garish check knickerbocker suit and turn-over stockings. At first he worries about scandal and impropriety, and the probable condemnation of his superiors should they learn of what has befallen him, but then something of an adventurous spirit stirs within him, and he dons the showy apparel and heads off on his holiday anyway. There he is surprised to find evidence which supports the stranger's assertions, particularly when he learns of the disdain his fellow holidaymakers feel for another censorious vicar holidaying in their midst. As time goes on he not only observes this disdain, but begins to feel it himself. The most important outcome of the week is his realisation that in affecting moral superiority, the clergy alienate the very people they seek to influence. But also, for the first time in years, he finds that he is having fun.

He arrives in Frattenbury with a new conception of his mission, and the determination to energetically embrace his new role. His reception is mixed, with some residents of Frattenbury unexpectedly delighted with their new Canon, and others look forward eagerly to the day he will depart.

It read to me like an example of benevolent propaganda. The residents of Cathedral Close are without exception small-minded, prejudiced, concerned with trivialities, and inclined to rely on old notions of propriety to control the behaviour of others; the younger adults in the town are free-thinking, effective, and determined to make a difference. Whether society ever really partitions into good and bad quite so neatly is probably doubtful, but Whitechurch has fashioned his characters to facilitate his argument. His case appears to be that a change in thinking was required, and that such a change could simultaneously serve the interests of the church and the poorer members of the community. The clergy needed to be less concerned with being respected, and more intent on delivering to the community what they needed. And along the way he questions the appropriateness of the Church as landlord of the poor, and contemporary approaches to church architecture. With this story, he creates a very appealing character to help sway his readers to his point of view.

Links:
Read the ebook: Canon in Residence
Brief review at Stuck in a Book

Penguin no. 887: The Mysterious Mickey Finn by Elliot Paul

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 02:29:00 +0000

Dear Reader,
My purpose in writing this book is to entertain you. I do not think that purpose is served by starting with the murder of a character who must necessarily be a perfect stranger to you. Do not be afraid, as you read the first few pages, that no one is going to die. The casualties are going to be fairly heavy before we get through.
If, however, you do not like this departure from the mould into which such stories unhappily have fallen, I promise you that next time I will introduce a dead body into the preface, before the book is properly started at all.
The Author

Although it is set in Paris, The Mysterious Mickey Finn seems to be a story about Americans, and perhaps also about the promise of the new world compared with the corruption of the old. Every character of importance hails from the United States, while the French-born characters are, with a single exception, bumbling, self-interested or corrupt. Sergeant Frémont is the exception, and he acts effectively but often reluctantly, and is inclined to be pessimistic and morose. The Americans are portrayed as thinking of others, while he tends to be concerned with himself.

Even the mysterious Mickey Finn, the agency used to bring about the only death which can be unequivocally blamed on those on the wrong side of the law, has an American provenance. It is described as a concoction discovered by the Incas, with a secret recipe known only to bartenders - and to the dilettante chemist and amateur sleuth Homer Evans. It is a soporific favoured here by a few philandering husbands as a way of temporarily dispatching their French wives while they indulge their preference for American women. It is demonstrably harmless to all living things, no matter how insignificant, and yet it causes the death of the sleep-deprived Ambrose Gring. But he was neither American nor French, so no one seems too concerned.

The story begins with a harmless hoax instigated by Homer Evans, but proceeds to the far more serious one he later uncovers. His friend Hjalmar Jansen is a talented Norwegian-American painter who is being funded in his French sojourn by the philanthropic American businessman Hugo Weiss. Jansen has enthusiastically embraced the bohemian lifestyle, living in a garret in Montparnasse, and devoting his evenings to drinking and running after women, and his days to painting.

While Jansen shows dedication to his painting, he is never satisfied with his work, and typically feels compelled to destroy each finished canvas by hurling it from a window of his apartment. Only three paintings have survived the year, and as such a rate of output is unlikely to impress his American patron, he borrows the finished works of his friends and passes them off as his own, hoping to thereby secure a continuation of Weiss's patronage, and a second year in Paris. The hoax succeeds, and Jansen and friends head off to celebrate.

It was Homer Evans who thought up the idea of fooling Weiss by borrowing paintings, and, in fact, every problem thrown up during the course of the story is solved by Evans. He is also the person who proposes every innovation, plans every contingency, and foresees every complication. This is all against his plan, though, for unlike the presumably more typical American expatriate living in Montparnasse, who has grand plans despite meagre talent, Evans is a man of indubitable talent who chooses to be idle. He strives not to make his mark upon the world, but events forestall him.

Weiss is kidnapped shortly after leaving Jansen's premises, and the French police respond with exaggerated ineffectiveness, drag netting Montparnasse and arresting almost everyone. Evans manages to avoid arrest and heads off to find the kidnapped Weiss, taking on what seems like hundreds of opponents, foiling a series of counter-attacks, and eventually uncovering a racket involving El Greco copies and income tax evasion. The plot is complex, frantic, and confused, and as the author promises in the passage quoted above, there are many, many casualties.

Perhaps a little unusually, these casualties are all shot by the good guys. There seems to be a Wild West mentality prevailing where if you are on the right side you can shoot whomever you please without consequence. The oddest moment in the story has a young child accompanying Evans and his sidekick, for no good reason, given permission to go and view the corpse of someone they had recently shot. If nothing else, this story demonstrates that what entertains one generation can completely perplex a later one.

It is evident from the first page that none of this is to be taken at all seriously. As the author makes clear in the passage quoted above, his intention was to entertain, and specifically to entertain by amusing. My problem was that I didn't find it very funny, and in such circumstances it is a very long book, and something of a chore to get through.

Penguin no. 538: Memoirs of a British Agent by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 04:37:00 +0000

The revolution took place because the patience of the Russian people broke down under a system of unparalleled inefficiency and corruption. No other nation would have stood the privations which Russia stood, for anything like the same length of time. As instances of the inefficiency, I give the disgraceful mishandling of food supplies, the complete breakdown of transport, and the senseless mobilisation of millions of unwanted and unemployable troops ... Obviously, the Emperor himself, as a supreme autocrat, must bear the responsibility for a system which failed mainly because of the men (Sturmer, Protopopoff, Rasputin) whom he appointed to control it. If he had acted differently, if he had been a different man ... These arguments are childish.

Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart lived in Moscow during the tumultuous second decade of the 20^th Century. He was a witness to the final years of the pre-war Tsarist Russia, the start of the First World War, the short-lived Kerensky regime, and life following the Bolshevik revolution of October/November 1917. Memoirs of a British Agent is largely his account of these years, together with his views on the factors which led to the events of this important period in Russian history. It is a fascinating though detailed and complex book, written assuming the reader's familiarity with contemporary events and personalities, much of which I lacked. It deserves a more thorough consideration than is feasible after a single reading.

In addition to describing the events of importance and analysing their causes, Lockhart discusses the leading figures he met or observed during his time in Moscow, sketching out their personalities. He knew Trotsky, for example, meeting with him daily for many months during 1918, and he describes an eloquent man with a volatile and changeable nature, and a bellicose temper. He met with Lenin less frequently, but noted the reverence with which he was always treated. In contrast with Trotsky, Lenin was invariably calm, confident, and controlled. He met Stalin only once, and found him unremarkable. And he describes being present in a restaurant when Rasputin made a scene which could not be controlled, as there was no one willing to intervene. Djunkowsky, the Assistant Minister of the Interior and head of the police, eventually authorised his arrest, and found himself relieved of his post the following day.

Lockhart was clearly a man of exceptional abilities, but good luck seems to have played a considerable part in his life as well: he often found himself in the right place at the right time, or made a random comment on which his fortune turned, or took a gamble which paid off, or at least that is the story he tells. He was sent to Moscow as British Vice-Consul in 1912, after finishing first in the Consular Service examinations, despite having only weeks to prepare and competing against others who had been studying for years. He was made Acting British Consul-General a few years later, at the age of 28, as it was evident to the Ambassador that he knew more about Russia than any alternative candidate. He was removed from his position and returned to Britain a few weeks before the Bolshevik revolution on account of an extra-marital affair, but was sent back to Russia shortly afterwards by Lloyd George heading an informal diplomatic mission to encourage the Bolsheviks not to sign an independent peace treaty with Germany.

He suggests that this pressure on Russia from the Allies to remain in the war, and therefore maintain an eastern front, was perhaps the most important amongst several reasons for the failure of the democratic first Russian revolution of 1917. The Russians were a war-weary population by that time, and the Bolsheviks were promising immediate peace. He argues throughout the book that the Russian temperament (of the time) was an integral factor in all that occurred. He observed the elation and pride of the Russian population in response to their army's early wartime victories, and their later disaffection when the losses and inconveniences started to mount, and notwithstanding the observations quoted in the passage above, he believed that it was the national character to think only in extremes. In his opinion the Russians, the great majority of whom were illiterate, felt only exhilaration or despair, and there was little hope of them enduring the ongoing privations of the war stoically. He also places much of the blame for the ensuing events with the Empress, believing that her principal concern throughout the war was to maintain the autocracy in an undiminished form for the benefit of her son. From late in 1915, Lockhart believed revolution was probable if the war continued.

Lockhart spent his final weeks in Moscow as a political prisoner detained in the Kremlin, suspected of instigating what came to be known as The Lockhart Plot which allegedly had as its aims the assassinations of Lenin and Trotsky, and the destruction of the Russian railways. His confinement was at the start of the Terror, and at a time when no one held in the Kremlin by the Bolsheviks had ever been released. But he was lucky in this as well, finding himself returned to London in exchange for Litvinoff, the unofficial Soviet representative in Britain.

In search of more Penguins (& heading to the UK again)...

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:23:00 +0000

(A fraction of the Penguins I found on my last UK trip.)

It may be that there are only so many snow-blanketed images of London and Europe I can view on Instagram, while sweltering in above-40 degree heat, without wanting to be anywhere but here. But it also seems to be an opportune time to take a holiday, as my PhD thesis has been submitted and it will be months until I can expect to hear from the examiners, and just now no one in Perth seems to be looking to hire a biostatistician, so today I booked a flight to the UK for middle of March.

My plan is much the same as it was this time last year. I am heading off alone and looking forward to spending a couple of weeks doing little other than visiting secondhand book shops in the UK in search of the vintage Penguin titles I haven't yet found, although this time I intend to make it to some of the places I missed last time. I think I will spend a few days in Belgium, catch the ferry to Hull, and then travel to Edinburgh and Manchester, before re-visiting Hay-on-Wye. Beyond that I am yet to decide.

I found hundreds of old Penguins last year, which was many more than I expected to find. The success of that trip was almost entirely built on the assistance I was given by readers of this blog in tracking down book shops which carried a decent stock of vintage Penguins (together with the opportunity I had to meet Simon, and Adam, and Pam). And this was also true of my trips later in the year to Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney: each time I was guided to wonderful book shops I otherwise wouldn't have found.

And so I thought I would take the opportunity to pose the same question I asked last time. Is there any village I should particularly head to? Any shop that I shouldn't miss? If you have any advice or recommendations, I would love to hear them, and if you have seen a stash of old Penguins for sale anywhere in the UK I would love to know.

Penguin no. 1710: The Case of Torches by Clark Smith

noreply@blogger.com (Karyn Reeves) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 06:26:00 +0000

(Cover design by George Dauby)

It began one morning in July. It was a hot, airless morning with a haze over the city and the streets soft with tar. I remembered it afterwards with the clarity subsequent events sometimes give to their beginnings, and there were times later when I imagined that from the start I had sensed trouble to come. It was a quiet job, judged by some of the others I have worked on, but it had a deadly quality about it that I haven't forgotten nor found easy to live with since.

I have never been in London in July so I cannot be certain that the weather at that time of year isn't stiflingly dry and dusty, and the 'streets soft with tar', although I cannot recall anyone else ever describing it that way. Searing summer heat is the norm where I live, and I tend to think of England as a place of comparatively mild summer temperatures, and perhaps cold and dismal winters. Yet the two Clark Smith crime novels I have read have both shared this obsession with England's apparently dry summer weather and its accompanying heat. It is mentioned frequently, with the harsh light and oppressive conditions filling in the background of both stories. Perhaps he was trying to invoke an atmosphere more in keeping with the harsher American hard-boiled style he emulates, or perhaps London really did seem hot to him when compared to Glasgow.

Alexander Clark Smith was a chartered accountant who wrote only three crime novels, all published between 1955 and 1957, and all later issued as green Penguins, with The Case of Torches being the final one. His sleuth is Nicky Mahoun who hails from what was then the tough Gorbals district of Glasgow. He is created in the tradition of the private investigator, being independent, uncompromising and incorruptible, though with perhaps fewer flaws than the typical hard-boiled sleuth, as he abstains from cigarettes and alcohol, keeps regular hours, and has an aversion to overly made up women. He spends his working days as head of the auditing department of an engineering firm, and this actually works surprisingly well, although it was difficult not to feel slightly amused by the image of the hard-bitten Mahoun (at least in The Deadly Reaper) setting out to solve a crime by getting out his pens and taking up the paperwork.

The Case of Torches begins very slowly, and there were times when I marvelled that anyone had ever managed to read beyond the first few chapters. The problem comes from the use of first-person narration, as Mahoun spends a lot of time early in the story reflecting on how to write a good audit report, or how to appropriately assess a tender, or thinking on how the boss of production views the boss of finance, or how the boss of finance succeeded in manoeuvring his way to the top. All of this is important in the context of the later story, but rather dull to read through, and it means that nothing seems to happen for a very long time.

And when something does happen, it is trivial, merely an aberration in the paperwork. A box of torch cases, imported from Belgium without batteries, and of very little value, is found to be missing during a regular stocktake, and then found to be present during a later recount. The possibility that the mistake was in the counting never seems to be considered. But suspicion and thoroughness are perhaps the essential attributes of an investigative auditor, and so this seemingly insignificant discrepancy in an audit report is enough to capture Mahoun's interest, and he begins an investigation, mostly in his own time, and without the support of his boss.

It turns out that the imported torch cases are of little interest, but the batteries which will power them matter. The sourcing of these batteries provides abundant opportunities for the various division bosses to exercise power, scores points off each other, and attempt to thwart everyone else's ambitions. And there is one person who cares so much about how the batteries are to be sourced that they are willing to commit murder to ensure it happens in the way that suits them. Nicky Mahoun uses the skills he has developed as an investigative auditor to first determine that a crime has been committed, and then to locate the murder victim, and identify the murderer.

As thrillers go, the motivating premise of this one lacks excitement, and yet Clark Smith does eventually turn the book around so that it becomes quite interesting to read. But as the story unfolds, it is clear that there is another point he wishes to make, and one which perhaps explains why he wrote no more Nicky Mahoun books. There is a difference between the auditor and the men he works with, and it is a difference which he finds increasingly troubling. He is honourable, and interested in people, but the rest of the bureaucracy is preoccupied with money, power and success. This is a novel in which the protagonist's sympathies are with the workers, and there is a criticism of corporations and the callousness which guides the actions of the individuals who control them.

By the same author:
Penguin no. 1605: The Deadly Reaper