#Blogtour #Review - Living is a Problem by Doug Johnstone

Living is a Problem (Skelfs, #6)
Doug Johnstone
Orenda Books, 12 September 2024
Available as: PB, 276pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788268

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Living is a Problem to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Living is a Problem sees the Skelf women - grandmother Dorothy, mother and daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah - perhaps face their toughest trial yet in this series. And if you've been following the brilliant #SkelfSummer recap of the previous 5 books, you'll know that's saying something.

The challenges that confront the three here don't arise, at least not directly, from perplexing mysteries. If you've read any of the earlier Skelf books you'll know that the family are undertakers in Edinburgh, but also private investigators. Naturally, the latter role can create complex scenarios to unravel, and there are some of those here. The funeral of an Edinburgh gangster, disrupted by parties unknown. The grave of a child disturbed. A missing woman, a refugee from Ukraine.

For once though, these cases are "solved" fairly straightforwardly. There isn't a lot of subtle detecting. But in these books, and never more so that in Living is a Problem, just establishing the facts is only the beginning. The harder part of the Skelfs' work only begins after that. The cases aren't really "solved" till parties are reconciled; difficult decisions made; compromises reached. Because it's not really about the crime, it's about the opposite of crime, to paraphrase the title of the last book, The Opposite of Lonely. Peace is not the same as the absence of war. How will the networks of people affected by all these events learn to live with themselves - and with each other - after what's come out?

That question hangs heavy over Living is a Problem from the start. The Skelfs, and their associates - Archie, Brodie, Thomas - still have to reckon with the events of the earlier books. Dorothy's and Thomas's relationship has been particularly strained after the dangers and violence in The Opposite of Lonely. Thomas has taken things hard. The antagonists in that book, corrupt police Webster and Low, have been taken down, but continue to exert a malign influence. Hannah, knowing that her father was a wrong'un, still mourns him and the life that she and Jenny might have had if he had been a decent man. It's complicated. Living is a problem, as Scottish band Biffy Clyro sang, Because Everything Dies. To which I might oppose Bruce Springsteen singing Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, But maybe everything that dies some day comes back. (Sorry, I am going to work The Boss into any review I can, of course I am). 

To be less oblique, the funeral side of the Skelf business might seem like the last word in finality - what is more final than death - but this book teases the idea that due to our interrelatedness, death is not the end. A dead child affects the living, and how we deal with the death may be important. Or how we fail to deal with it. Death has a way of fossilising, of sanctifying, from Old Dead White Guy statues in Edinburgh which belie the deeds of those men (they are always men) to the trouble of living with the legacy of a war hero in the family to dealing with unacknowledged grief.

And that is really the essence of the Skelf books. It may be convenient to see them as crime fiction, because I'm not sure there's a label for what they really are - moral fiction? human fiction? Something like that? Whatever it is has at its heart the wonderfulness and the sadness of being human and the need to be on the side of those in need. That's what the Skelfs are about and long may they continue it.

For more information about Living is a Problem, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Living is a Problem from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones. Other online retailers are available.

#Review - The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Seventh Veil 

Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Arcadia, 6 August 2024 
Available as: HB, 312pp, audio, e   
Source: Purchased
ISBN(HB): 9781529431001

The Seventh Veil of Salome is a clever juxtaposition of the story of Salome, daughter of Herodias who is the wife of the tetrarch Herod Antipas in first century Palestine, and Vera Larios, a Mexican actress in 1950s Hollywood who has been chosen to portray Salome in a sword-and-sandals epic.

The background of the historical Salome is one of power politics involving Ancient Rome and its client states. Rome is expanding its influence but not yet ruling absolutely. Its allies and collaborators therefore need to tread carefully, and Herod is concerned about a fiery preacher who been denouncing his rule (and morals). Salome, however, by Jokanaan...

Larios also inhabits a complex world. She has come into an increasingly paranoid Hollywood, a place  stalked by the House Un-American activities Committee and still subject to the Puritan moral hypocrisy of various self-appointed censors but also one, haunted by racism (Larios, as a Mexican, is firmly an outsider and looked down on). Things are starting to change as the studio system declines, but this uncertainty only makes everyone even more insecure. Gossip sheets exploit this, trading in innuendo and stereotypes.

Beyond this dichotomy, the book is structurally fascinating since the film Larios is involved in is clearly the same "story" as that which the Salome sections tell (for example, some of the dialogue echoes). But the story is being rewritten as the book progresses (in a late episode, we hear the screenwriter describing the closing scene as he would have had it, the studio bosses having insisted on somethings else). The historical Salome's life is not, therefore, fixed, but mutable, a matter of contention and at the mercy of those same prejudices, Puritan constraints and political and commercial imperatives that rule Hollywood itself. That's appropriate for a character being portrayed by another woman, Vera, who is in turn manipulated and (mis)represented by family, publicists, witnesses, and the Press.

Witnesses? I use that word because while there are lengthy narrative sections where the camera follows Vera (if I can use that analogy) of Samole, there are also interventions in the voice of the many characters who play a part in this story - other actresses and studio figures, for example, and people who were lucky or unlucky enough to witness the events - and they all have their own spin, often informed (again) by prejudice and jealousy. 

Vera has - as soon become evident - stepped into a nest of vipers, with others convinced that she doesn't merit the part - or that she doesn't, morally, deserve it. A Mexican? Surely not! The outworking of jealously and resent meant in an industry that embodies whim and fashion is both fascinating to see unfold and awful to anticipate, giving a real edge of noir as scenes unfold in seedy hotel rooms and down-at-heel diners, all leading up to... well I don't want to be spoilery... all leading up to the inevitable conclusion in the final reel. As a nasty chain of events unfold, innocents will be caught up, reputations ruined and the truth left to wither.

All in all and exciting, complex and atmospheric novel with a steely core of accusation.

For more information about The Seventh Veil of Salome, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Witches of World War II by Paul Cornell et al

The Witches of World War II

Paul Cornell (words), Valeria Burzo (pencils), Jordie Bellaire (colours)
TKO Studios, 25 July 2023
Available as: PB, 160pp, e
Source: Purchased
ISBN(PB): 9781952203183

The Witches of World War II tugs at one of the many loose threads of that conflict - persistent rumours that alongside the familiar heroism, sacrifice and application of industry and science to winning the war, alongside the more shadowy departments of unorthodox warfare and military deception, the Allies used even stranger means - notably witchcraft.

You don't have to accept the supernatural or the power of magic to see that this is something that could really happen. Deep in the layers of psyops, it would surely have registered that at least some high-ranking Nazis fervently believed this stuff, and that very belief could be used against them. 

That paradox is at the heart of The Witches of World War II. Cornell has assembled here a crack team of practitioners and theorists from the occult world of the first half of the 20th century, and posed a "what if...?" about their potential use in warfare, and beyond that, about the nature of their own beliefs and the power of belief itself. Cornell acknowledges, as does the Afterword by Prof Ronald Hutton, that this group never actually met (unless the records of that meeting have been even more than carefully weeded) but we might imagine similar characters carrying out the actions described here, some of which are based on those persistent rumours...

So the premise is intriguing. That wouldn't though be enough, without Cornell's excellent story and its interpretation by the brilliant comic artists here, to produce the immersive and fun narrative that The Witches of World War II is. I felt it captured the spirit of that dangerous time, all done in muted khaki, green, brown and grey, as it introduces us not just to the would-be witches themselves but also to their world. That world includes the would-be upper class Quislings and fellow-travellers who would have sold their country out at the drop of a hat, if they could. Against these fifth-columnists, our hero, Doreen Valiente, shows steely nerve as she negotiates a maze of mirrors, never sure who is going to back her and who will betray her. 

A sceptic herself, Doreen encounters dangers including a curse that can only affect those who don't believe, and slippery customers like Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed Wickedest Man in the World. (Who, exactly, believes that they are themselves wicked? I was reminded of the "are we the baddies" sketch...) The double crosses, hints of things below the surface build tension, with the poignancy of Doreen's lost sweetheart giving the story real bite by reminding us that this isn't all some fantasy, that regardless of the occult and its reality or otherwise, real people suffered and died in those years.

With a complex plot, many twists and turns and layers of deception, it all makes for a rewarding read, with just that hint of mystery as to what really went on...

For more information about The Witches of World War II, see the author's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Reunion by M. J. Arlidge and Steph Broadribb

The Reunion

M. J. Arlidge and Steph Broadribb

Orion, 5 September 2024

Available as: PB, 304pp audio, e   

Source: Advance e-copy

ISBN(PB): 9781398716575

I'm grateful to the publisher for sgiving me access to an advance e-copy of The Reunion to consider for review, and to Tracy and Compulsive Readers for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Oh this one is very good. 

It's set in the town of Whitecross, somewhere in the English Chiltern Hills. I think I know where the real Whitecross is - that isn't of course its actual name - and the authors bring to life the character of this district, protected for its natural beauty and riddled with twee little villages, but also full of new housing estates and also surpsingly deprived town centres where depressed youth find an escape in the time honoured ways: drink, drugs and sex. 

This is Jennie Whitmore's world. Jennie never left Whitecross: her dreams of doing so shattered when her beloved friend Hannah vanished as they were on the cusp of escape. Instead, Jennie has hung around, and decades later she is a DI in the same town. Interesting - did she simply lose heart and never leave? Or, unconsciously, did she hang around, choosing a career that might one day give her an opportunity to find out what happened to Hannah? If so, she is still shocked when that possibility crystallises. This occurs suspiciously soon after her unwise experiment of joining in a school reunion. (Personally, I stay away from such things). Has the reunion jolted something among the little group of "friends"? Or was the clock already ticking?

The resulting investigation will see Jeannie throwing away beliefs she's held for three decades, taking uncharacteristic risks, and running into danger. I found it absolutely gripping how she justified, and undertook, an investigation she absolutely shouldn't be part of (her closest friend!) and the effect that doing so has on her relationships with her colleagues (she hardly has any friends). The impact of what is discovered, and Hannah's way of opening it up, will shatter the little group who see themselves as Hannah's mates from all those years ago, bring secrets into the open, and change Whitecross for ever.

It will also change Hannah's life. This is not a story - at least I don't think it is - that can kick off a series of small-town mysteries. I can't see Hannah returning to this dark Midsommer any time soon. Too mush will have changed. I did though find myself desperately hoping that things would turn out well for her in the end, I don't recall a recent main character I've so wished would come through unscathed - though this seems increasingly unlikely as the story proceeds...

Arlidge and Broadribb are at the top of their game (their games?) in this collaboration, a book that demands to be read in a single sitting if you can possibly manage that.

For more information about The Reunion, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Reunion from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

#Review - The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Banner

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank

Megan Bannen
Orbit, 4 July 2024
Available as: PB, 380pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356521923

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me an advance copy of The Undermining of Twyla and Frank to consider for review.

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank is set in the same world as The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, which wowed me last year, and is a fantasy romance in the same vein.  

And, yes, we do bump into Mercy Birdsall and Hart Ralston and their circle again here, although they're not the main characters in this book. That would be Twyla Banneker and Frank Ellis. They are partners, Tanrian Marshals employed to police that strange space, once a prison for gods, that opens from the island of Bushong, part of the Federated Islands of Cadmus. Now, after the events of The Undertaking of Hope and Mercy, the drudges (zombies) that threatened Bushong from Tanria are gone, and some are even questioning the need for the Marshals. But there are other threats in Tanria, and assets there to be guarded, as Twyla and Frank are about to find out.

I loved this book. The comfortable relationship between middle-aged Twyla and Frank - work, but not life, partners - is realistic and well portrayed, their lives to this point sensitively sketched with all their pluses and minuses. A failed marriage. A dead spouse. New lives rebuilt, the best made of things. Children to nurture and see over the threshold of adulthood. The backgrounding of hopes and dreams in the face of practical concerns - money, health, family. As a result we have two beautifully drawn and largely content characters...

...who are about to have their cosy world turned upside down in a blaze of conspiracy, murder - and dragons.

It was both moving, and hilarious, to see how Twyla and Frank cope with the various eruptions into their lives that follow from what's brewing in Tanria. These are both large and small. There's the fact of a totally unexpected and previously mythological species of creature. There's crime. There are new colleagues - in this case a dangerously sexy scientist who upsets what turns out to have been a carefully balanced relationship that only survived by not asking certain questions, not thinking certain things. But, it seems that relationship rested on certain assumptions, and once these are challenged it's clear that for Twyla and Frank, nothing will ever be the same again.

Oh, and just who's trying to blow the pair up?

In some ways, Twyla and Frank have very ordinary lives. In some ways, they are very extraordinary people. But once the balance of the ordinary is upset, will they ever find it again? Will they even want to?

STRONGLY recommended. More like this, please.

For more information about The Undermining of Twyla and Frank, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze by Tom Mandrake, DJ Ben Ha Meen and Mellow Brown

Purple Haze

DJ Ben Ha Meen and Mellow Brown (writers), Tom Mandrake (artist)
Titan Comics, 27 August 2024
Available as: HB, 128pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787731899

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the graphic novel's blogtour.

From the publisher

This is a pure rock and roll space opera featuring the legendary Jimi Hendrix as you’ve never seen him before. 

Fully sanctioned by Experience Hendrix L.L.C.; Authentic Hendrix, LLC - this is the first ever full-length graphic novel inspired by the music of the legendary Jimi Hendrix – arguably the world’s greatest guitarist. 

This 21st Century psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll odyssey sees Jimi Hendrix embark on a quest to the very centre of the universe in search of a magical talisman powerful enough to unlock the incredible latent power of his music so that he can share it with a universe starved of the rock ‘n’ roll by a tyrannical intergalactic force hellbent on silencing all music from the universe and enslaving all life. 

What I thought

Space opera. Rock opera. Seemingly unrelated genres which the collaborators behind this graphic novel nevertheless pull together with aplomb. The result is great as an example of each, but put together, something much more.

Yes, we get zoomy spaceships, vivid alien worlds, combat and awesome vistas, that genuine sense of wonder that space opera must deliver. But we also get what is actually - so far as such a thing is possible - a pretty vivid visualisation of a musical high (is that a thing? I think it's a thing) as the central character here, Hendrix, takes to the stage on a galaxy-crossing tour. Lyrics stream by in a kind of diagetic cloud. The music ignites in the intense shades of a fiery sun, blazing across the page. At once, deeply SFnal, deeply musical.

But, as I said, there is more here too. The story finds Hendrix, mysteriously, playing on an endless tour in this far-future dystopia. The how and why of that's never explained, but that doesn't actually loom large in the story and it doesn't really matter. Rather we have this guitar hero pushing his message of peace and brotherhood in a galaxy embroiled in brutal war. He's doing all he can, he thinks.

But of course he's not (I had vibes here of Springsteen's No Surrender "There's a war outside still raging/ You say it ain't ours anymore to win" and there's a moment of realisation with attempts to coop the tour  for sinister purposes, a moment of truth and decision which leads to a fascinating quest. The ultimate test here is then very much one of those "surely there must be another way?" setups where, behind the spaceships and the zooming, the point is that the hero must, will, reject the constraints imposed on them and do the different thing. The Kobayashi Maru moment, in Star Trek language.

And who better, in such a moment, to use their humanity, their sympathy, their courage, than Jimi Hendrix?

A fine graphic novel with a powerful, beating heart. Recommended.

For more information about Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.