Book log: Edward Marston -- The Frost Fair

Book 75

I bought this because it was by the same author as the Railway Detective series, which I'd found enjoyable at the "read once" level. This is the fourth in the Restoration series, a mystery series about architect Christopher Redmayne and constable Jonathan Bale, set in Restoration London in the years following the Great Fire of 1666. I haven't previously read any in this series, but found that this worked well as a standalone, with enough backstory worked in to be able to follow who people were.

A naked corpse is found frozen into the sheet of ice that has covered the Thames, and the most obvious suspect is Christopher's rake of a brother, who wakes up after a drunken night to find himself arrested and flung into Newgate. Christopher is convinced of his brother's innocence, not just out of family loyalty but because he is only too aware of his brother's vices -- and violence is not among them. His friend Jonathan, on the other hand, is convinced of Henry's guilt, and not just because the Puritan Jonathan disapproves of Henry's lifestyle. The evidence at the scene is all too damning. But both men feel that justice will not be done unless the matter is properly investigated. And investigate they do, following parallel lines of enquiry and sharing their information. Along the way there's some excellent world-building about the re-building of the world of London after the Great Fire. I don't know the period well enough to say how accurate it is, but Marston has created an enjoyable picture of a culture that is both alien and familiar.

I think I like this one a little better than I did the Railway Detective series, possibly because rather than in spite of coming in part way through the series -- there's far less overt info-dumping in this one than in the first Railway Detective book I read. I'd be happy to read more of these, although I'm not going to rush out looking for them; in part because a quick look at the blurbs on the author's website suggests there is very little character arc development through the series for the continuing characters and their lives outside the mystery-solving, something I found rather frustrating in the Railway Detective books.

LibraryThing entry

Book log: MC Beaton -- Death of a Perfect Wife

Book 76

Fourth in the Hamish Macbeth mystery series. I've read the first two, and skipped the third because the shop didn't have it when I picked up 1, 2, 4 and 5. I have no intention of looking for the third, because this is the last of the series I'll bother reading.

As with the other books, this has the lazy, amiable village policeman having to deal with murder coming to his otherwise sleepy village. In this case, Hamish spots Trixie Thomas as a potential murder victim fairly on, thanks to her behaviour. Trixie is the perfect housewife, who is so competent that she has time to run her new bed and breakfast business, scrounge up furniture from the locals to furnish her b&b that just happens to fetch a nice penny at the antiques auctions back in the big city, and take the other housewives in the village in hand -- frequently to the chagrin of their husbands, who liked life better before healthy diets, lack of smoking, and the taking up of causes came to the village. Hamish is not in the least bit surprised when she's found dead of poison.

While it's entertaining enough with some good set pieces and social observation, the characterisations are very thin and very stereotyped, a good many of the characters are not very likeable, and much of the humour is rather spiteful. And in this volume, it's much more noticeable that the characters the author doesn't like are predominantly women. I didn't comment on this in my main posts on the first two books, but it came up in discussion on one of the blog posts that you can see that MC Beaton dislikes other women. As I said in that comment thread, it wasn't that blatant in the first two I read, because a lot of her male characters are very unsympathetic as well. This is why I wasn't sure if it was authorial snobbery or misogyny in "Cad" -- it could well have been the author's dislike of certain types of people, where gender wasn't a factor in the types. But it's gratingly obvious after my third one that the author is contemptuous of other women, and I don't want to read any more of the books, even though I adored the tv series and do like some aspects of the books.

LibraryThing entry

Book log: Erich Maria Remarque -- All Quiet On The Western Front

Book 77

I chose to start re-reading this particular book on November 11 this year, and having finished it the next day, to post my log entry on Remembrance Sunday, for reasons which will be be clear if you know anything about the book at all. This is the fictionalised memoir of the Great War, based on Remarque's own experiences as a German Army conscript stationed on the Western Front.

My own copy is a battered cloth-bound copy from the year of first publication, though from the twentieth print run some six months after its first publication in English translation. I bought it in, I think, 1988, because I had heard a little about it and wanted to read it for myself, and so when I ran across a cheap copy in a second-hand bookshop I picked it up. And was devastated by it. At school I had studied the Great War, and the lead-up to it, starting with the intricate balance-of-power treaty jigsaw created by Bismarck and its later unravelling. I had watched in respectful silence the old men at remembrance parades. But this book took the war out of the realm of history, and made it real in a way I'd never encountered before. It gave voice to the ordinary soldier at the Front, without taking sides. It was all here -- the harsh conditions, the need to dehumanise the enemy simply to be able to cope with the killing, the sense of dislocation felt by soldiers returning from the front line to their homes far from the battlefield, the uncomprehending jingoism by those at home who had never seen battle.

The book was banned by the Nazis, and no wonder. It was a threat to their mythology, and a vivid undermining of their glorification of war for the Fatherland. The relevance of its message has not diminished down the years. War is neither glorious nor romantic, and the comradeship of soldiers is bought at a very high price indeed. And yet bleak as it often is, there are many moments of high humour in the book. Remarque was a skilled writer, and knew very well how to contrast the horror with the moments of emotional peace and even joy that could be found in quiet times in the trenches. This is an emotionally wrenching read, but very much worth the time.

LibraryThing entry

Book log: Sam Storyteller -- Your Face Is Turned (re-read)

Book 78

And because I was in the mood this morning for something that reflected on war but was a little less traumatising than All Quiet On The Western Front, I went and re-read Sam the Storyteller's novel-length Torchwood fanfic story Your Face Is Turned. Torchwood's not shy about the price of war, and neither is this story, but it has a rather happier ending. Previously reviewed on April 12 this year.

Your Face Is Turned.

con-going, lack of

Damn it, I'd been thinking about going to Novacon, and then completely forgot it was on this weekend until I saw a tweet just now. Which probably means that I wasn't in a fit state to go anyway. Redemption is highly unlikely to happen for me, which means I'd better start thinking about exactly how incompatible next year's Eastercon hotel is with my dietary and sleeping requirements. ("Highly" as far as diet goes, going by memories of reports from past cons, but I may be mixing it up with another hotel.)

I miss the Ashford. I usually managed to get a reasonable night's sleep there, and there was a large supermarket plus several fast food restaurants within walking distance, which meant I had a sporting chance of finding something I could eat at the time I needed to eat it, even before we managed to train the hotel in the concept that bar snacks needed to cater to the people who wanted *fast* food, as well as the people who wanted cheap food. The Radisson Edwardian at Heathrow isn't quite as good on the food front, but I am looking forward to going back there for Eastercon 2012.