#Review - The Vengeance by Emma Newman

The Vengeance (The Vampires of Dumas, 1)

Emma Newman
Solaris, 8 May 2025
Available as: PB, 386pp, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781837861644

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Vengeance to consider for review.

While I feel I'm reviewing this way ahead of its release date next Spring, I'm so excited to see something new from Emma Newman and I want to shout about it. I expect this to be a highlight of 2025's reading for many!

The Vengeance is a really enjoyable adventure romp, taking us the Caribbean and to 18th century France and throwing vampires and werewolves into the mix. The story follows Morgane, a young woman who's grown up at sea as a pirate, believing herself to be the daughter of Anne Marie, fearsome captain of the Vengeance. Anne Marie has a particular hatred for the French "Four Chains Trading Company", whose vessels she hunts down without mercy. One day, this vendetta will that lead Morgane to surprising knowledge, and to danger and a quest for revenge.

Basically a "fish out of water" story as Morgane is forced to travel to France to discover who she really is, The Vengeance is at its very best showing the young pirate absorbing the ways of the land, discovering love, and trying to learn about her own origins. Her determination and courage are never in doubt, though her wisdom and self-restraint may be, as she stirs up enemies she never dreamed of. (You know, don't you, that when Anne Marie warns Morgane never to try and find her family, that the warning will be ignored, and that there will be Consequences?) 

By telling a story from an outsider's viewpoint, Newman is able to show up many injustices and wrongs in her imagined (but not so far from history) version of France, and the complacency and resignation of those involved. It's not only wrongs and tyrannies we will be familiar with from history, but a whole layer of the supernatural too. This sets up formidable obstacles for Morgane, but they don't overshadow the story, rather at its centre is a complex and tender portrayal of someone who is still a very young protagonist and who has to find her way as an adult in the world. That theme is given room to breathe, with due space too to a comedic subplot where Morgane, as a notorious pirate, thinks herself much more adult, much more experienced and much more capable than she really is. 

Witnessing this sea dog offered the services of a governess when her father eventually catches up with her is hilarious, but Newman doesn't only play it for laughs, the relationship with Lisette will be important to Morgane in future.

(Indeed it will I think be a strained relationship in some ways - Morgane, as a pirate born and bred, is clearly relaxed with the idea of a life driven by theft and murder. While this is something Newman perhaps chooses not to emphasise, Lisette is alive to it and will not, I think, tolerate it for long. I expect sparks to fly...)

Introducing and setting up many threads that will I'm sure be important in future stories, The Vengeance is a fun read with the sense of moral and psychological complexity I always expect from this author.

For more information about The Vengeance, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Elusive by Genevieve Cogman

Elusive
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan/ Tor, 23 May 2024
Available as: HB, 400pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance e copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529083774

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Elusive to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The sequel to Cogman's Scarlet, Elusive features the characters, and setting, of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series in which an English nobleman and his friends, acting anonymously, rescue French aristocrats from the Terror during the Revolution.

In Scarlet, the premise was established, with our reluctant hero, housemaid Eleanor, being "lent" by her vampire (I'll come to that in a moment) employer, Lady Sophie, to Sir Percy Blakeney (the Pimpernel) and his crew to that she can impersonate Marie Antoinette to facilitate a rescue. (Yes, Eleanor closely resembles the French Queen, something which I speculate may be a future plot point). All Eleanor wants is the opportunity to set up as a modiste, earning an honest living through her needleworks skills, but it is not to be.  Cogman draws Eleanor as a convincing protagonist who's not afraid to think for herself, albeit the position she's in is precarious due to the vagaries of the English class system and, of course, patriarchy. Any fear I had that that exploring Orczy's "rescue the aristos" angle might seem dated or crass was rapidly dispelled by the intelligent and engaged way in which Cogman presents the realities of Revolutionary France and the crimes of the ancien regime. She also overcomes that fact that she's probably the only person living now who's read the Pimpernel books and that for many, knowledge of them will be limited to the "They seek him here, they seek him there" verses and the Carry On parody. (Is there a proper literary term for works better known from derivatives and parodies than from the original text?) 

With Elusive, Eleanor pretty much gets her own adventure, driving much of the action (albeit she has to be somewhat underhand about this) and getting back to France, in the absence of Sir Percy (hence the book's title) to stage a diversionary raid on Mont Saint Michel, where a large number of prisoners are held hostage. 

As we learned in Scarlet, vampires are a thing in this world, indeed they're one of the evils against which the people of France rose. The vampires formerly had enemies in the order of magicians/ sorcerers who they defeated and had expunged from history. Eleanor just happens though to have the should have the last remaining sorcerer, Anima, hitching a ride with her. And Anima has her own plans, which also involve Mont Saint Michel...

I loved Scarlet, but now I find I actually enjoyed Elusive even more. Eleanor has much more licence here and is less subject to others' machinations and orders. The relationship with Anima, her unexpected passenger, grows and develops, the two very different women struggling with, but learning to understand and trust, one another. Eleanor has grown, and deepens further here in her understanding of the world, and wherever her story is going, it isn't leading to her becoming an enthusiastic lackey of the British Establishment: she can see the reasons for the Revolution, and enthusiastically urges another young woman, freed from captivity, to strive to make it a better Revolution. There's a questioning side to Eleanor's nature which contrasts with the other members of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. They may be perfectly affable, honourable young men by their own lights, they are brave and by no means stupid, but nor have been servants and so they are comfortable with a level of privilege and wealth which is only maintained by repression. 

Eleanor sees more clearly.

This story is both more straightforward and more layered than its predecessor. More straightforward, in that it's clearer from the start what Eleanor faces, and what she is doing. We don't have to wait for it to be revealed where the story is going. More layered, because with different factions in play - several different groups of vampires, including the late Marie Antoinette, now one of the undead, the French authorities, personified by Citizen Chauvelin, who has his own difficulties, the sorcerers, whose motivations and fate become clearer and who have some remaining power via Anima, and lots more besides (spoilers!) - Eleanor has to dig deep into her store of knowledge, talent, and courage, and also broaden it with new abilities. She has power, up to a point, but much of her success in this adventure comes rather from persuasion, empathy and quick thinking, in circumstances where a false step could see her and all her friends sent to the guillotine.

As ever in Cogman's books, there is some sharp writing here, both to convey to us the reality of things from Eleanor's viewpoint and to keep the story moving. I especially enjoyed the way that Cogman will have her characters describe a plan, and then jump to the aftermath of its execution, giving the essence of the story without needing to repeat herself. She also often visualises opportunities, situations and schemes as fabrics to be worked rather than timelines, using needlework metaphors to show Eleanor grappling with the difficulties she's in. That's not something I'd come across before and it is a very effective and economical way to portray things.

So - if you loved Scarlet I think you'll love this even more, if you haven't read Scarlet, go and do that!

For more information about Elusive, see the publisher's website here, and of course the other stops on the blogtour, listed on the poster below.

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

#Blogtour #Review - Skin Deep by Antonia Lassa

Skin Deep
Antonia Lassa (translated by Jacky Collins)
Corylus Books, 30 April 2023 
Available as: PB, 136pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781739298906 

I'm grateful to Corylus for sending me a copy of Skin Deep to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

About the Book - from the Publisher

When police arrest eccentric loner Émile Gassiat for the murder of a wealthy woman in a shabby seaside apartment in Biarritz, Inspector Canonne is certain he has put the killer behind bars. Now he just needs to prove it. But he has not reckoned with the young man’s friends, who bring in lawyer-turned-investigator Larten to head for the desolate out-of-season south-west of France to dig deep into what really happened. 

Larten’s hunt for the truth takes him back to the bustle of Paris as he seeks to demonstrate that the man in prison is innocent, despite all the evidence - and to uncover the true killer behind a series of bizarre murders.

Skin Deep is Antonia Lassa’s first novel to appear in English.

My review

Skin Deep is a short but addictive novella, of a length to gobble down in one or two sittings and written with an urgency which kept me wanting to know more. We're introduced to several spiky, interesting characters and I relished the way that the detective we meet first - Canonne, sparring irritably with the new know-it-all pathologist while lamenting his own dental problems - isn't, in the end, the focus of the story.

Rather, we're led to two equally - or even more - intriguing personalities. 

There's Larten, the private investigator and former lawyer, who operates from his mobile home - he likes to drive it to the scenes of his enquiries - which contains his office and wine cellar. And then there's Gassiat himself, the suspect, who shows an odd reluctance to talk, despite the legal danger he's in. What does he do on his mysterious nighttime boating trips? Is he a heartless gigolo, preying on elderly ladies - as Canonne believes? - or is there something stranger going on? Larten's investigation turns on his ability to walk the streets and uncover facts, but even more, on a sensibility he has which Lassa conveys as almost eerie, a sensibility for people and a willingness to see more than others do. It may be related to a certain unconventionality Larten shows (not giving details because I think the reader should discover this themself but he has depths to him! I felt of him as something of an outsider and one with a degree of daring, giving him a perspective that eludes those who exist in a more mundane rut.

Whatever, this is an excellent mystery, one which also poses questions about relationships, about convention and the value - or not - of appearances. It also examines our need for love and how that makes us vulnerable, while moving between superbly rendered locations in Paris and on the southern coast of France, as summer fades away and winter rolls in.

Great fun to read, and - when they ultimately come on the stage - there is a truly despicable villain here, see if you can spot who it is!

About the Author

Born in Paris, Antonia Lassa is an enologist who works as a consultant for different private wineries around the world. This passion for wine has been instilled in her singular detective Albert Larten, for whom each new investigation is like a meticulous tasting. Wine is savoured through the eyes, the nose and the mouth, just like the crimes found in Skin Deep, with readers being invited to get involved with their five senses.

Antonia Lassa is the pseudonym of Luisa Etxenike.

About the Translator

Dr. Jacky Collins, lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Stirling University, is the Festival Director for Newcastle Noir. As ‘Dr Noir’ she regularly interviews a range of internationally acclaimed and emerging crime fiction authors at national and international events. Her series of author ‘consultations’ on the Newcastle Noir YouTube channel - The Doctor Will See You Now - is where lovers of everything crime fiction can catch up on news about latest publications.

For more information about Skin Deep 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 Skin Deep from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Review - Confidence by Denise Mina

Confidence (Anna and Fin, 2)
Denise Mina
Harvill Secker (Penguin Random House), 7 July 2022
Available as: HB, 3044pp, e, audio
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787301740

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Confidence via Netgalley to consider for review.

Confidence returns us to the world of podcasters Anna and Fin, whom Mina introduced in Conviction - the events of which turned Anna's middle class suburban life upside down. 

At the beginning of Confidence, Anna seems to have retained some of that safety - holidaying with her now ex, Hamish, and their girls, alongside his new wife and Fin and his new partner. All in an isolated lighthouse, where they can cosy around and bond with one another. What could go wrong?

Of course it doesn't work - the weather is horrendous, the heating fails and soon Anna is fleeing into the teeth of the gale, putting domesticity behind her again to pursue Lisa Lee, a young urban explorer who's gone missing (Anna and Fin have received a tip-off about this). Anna had never set eye on or even heard of Lisa before this evening, so what is it about Lisa that makes Anna abandon family and even safety and head out into the night?

Readers of Conviction will know that Anna did something similar there, although she did have the excuse that there was a direct threat to her. And that Anna had a secret, and a buried identity, both of which came back to haunt her. It may be that she's still dealing with the trauma of those events, and of their being known - and that the pressure has just got too much? Or is something else going on?

Whatever, Anna flings herself (and Fin) into the search for Lisa, who disappeared after posting an online video which seems to reveal a lost secret, something she found while exploring a forbidden French chateau. A chateau that the owners seemed to have abandoned at short notice...

Teaming up with the mysterious Bran van Wyk, South African drug smuggler, dealer in shady antiques and member of the super-rich and his sulky teenage son Marcos, Anna and Fin plunge into a complex trans-European quest seeking the origins of a religious artifact, the whereabouts of Lisa, and the truth behind a series of deaths and misfortunes that have attended the progress of the silver casket from its discovery in a Hungarian field to the Parisian auction house where it is now to be sold. The casket is the focus of conspiracy theories, religious fanaticism and, apparently, criminal gangs. Anna's obsession with it seems to have an element of playing with fire, with risk.

This story is in the end not I think a mystery in quite the same way as Conviction was. I don't think that by the end we are a great deal further on with understanding who the actors are, who is doing what to who and who is working for who else. Perhaps there isn't, here, a devious conspiracy, despite the Vatican being namechecked, so much as a muddle of greed, lies and desire for power. It's hard to take what anyone says as straight, except perhaps the little people, such as Lisa's friends with whom she made her video. 

As Anna and Fin become more and more confused, as Anna smokes more and more and evades questions from her daughters, it seems that they may be getting swallowed up in an unreality far from the comfort and safety of home. As they are following, not leading? How will they ever extract themselves from this dangerous world? Anna and Fin are in many respects witnesses, tagging along as events toss them now to Rome, now to Paris, back to London and so on. They are, perhaps, the man (and woman) in the street, aghast at the segment of society where organised crime, vast inherited wealth, religious obsession and a ruthless art-smuggling market overlap and bleed into one another. But at the same time they are voluntarily joining in events, passing up several opportunities to bail out and go home. Why they are doing so is for me the real mystery in Conviction, and that's part of (especially) Anna's longing story which is a long way from being resolved but I hope will be explored in further books.

I enjoyed Confidence. You need to accept that the "truth" behind events here barely matters - then you can sit back to enjoy and the ride and in particular Mina's exquisite character studies: chiefly Bran, the plausible rogue who seems to delight in telling six lies before breakfast (and then it will be a top of the range breakfast in the smartest of hotels, served in the room - or the suite - if you want). But she's also very good with the minor characters, especially the women. A new mother in a disordered flat, breastfeeding her infant in a haze of exhaustion and bliss. An apparently haughty auction house employee, confined in tight skirt and high heels, who jostles uncomfortably with Anna and Bran over a tray of champagne flutes. And more, all of them lifting the story beyond merely being a sequence of "things happening".

Through it all, Anna is at the centre of things, clearly distracting herself from facing some truths about herself and the questions that are bound to come from her daughters. (But I think there's more there). Her observations of the relationship between Bran and Marcos provide her with a stream of ongoing internal prompts, questions and moral touchstones which she uneasily takes to heart even as she refuses to answer calls form her own girls. There is more than a hint here, as I have said, that for Anna, this crazy adventure can actually stop at any point, if she wants. Say once she has found firm ground to stand on and can face her girls? The question is, will she do that before things take a turn - constantly hinted at and threatened - for the dangerous? You don't know who you are dealing with, Bran says at one point, and that's clearly true. Will Anna find out while there's still time, though?

Very entertaining and fun to read with some real moral heft (and a whole religious dimension I haven't said much about but which provides another ethical counterpoint to the whole story).

For more information about Confidence, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Great Witch of Brittany by Louisa Morgan

The Great Witch of Brittany
Louisa Morgan
Orbit, 17 February 2022
Available as: PB, 432pp, e, audio
Source: Advance copy and audio subscription
ISBN(PB): 9780356516820

I'm grateful to Orbit for an advance e-copy of The Great Witch of Brittany. I also listened to parts of the story as an audiobook, ably and atmospherically narrated by Polly Lee (who rises magnificently to the challenge of portraying the range of accents that the setting and characters demand).

The Great Witch of Brittany is I think the fourth in Morgan's "Witch" series (the others being A Secret History of Witches, her first, which I haven't yet read, The Witch's Kind and The Age of Witches). It follows the life of Ursule Orchière, who at the start of the book, in 1741, is a young Romany woman living with her mother and her wider clan in Brittany. Through the course of the story, Ursule and her mother suffer many trials. Ursule discovers and grows over decades into her magical abilities, while her mothers suffers an appalling ordeal that leaves her with mental scars, eventually becoming speechless. 

The story spans decades, including the birth of Ursule's own daughter and, eventually, her grandchildren. We see death, birth, prejudice, the impact of wider events, and always, always, the little details of life, whether's Ursule's tasks on the farm where she has settled or the particulars of her magical practice. Morgan is good on details - whether Ursule is churning milk, tending a sick goat, meaning a wall or brewing a simple to assist in childbirth, there's a directness to the descriptions here, celebrating all those moments which make up a life well lived, despite challenges that may seem overwhelming.

The story is given in several parts, structured around short, legendary narratives of of Ursule's witchy predecessors, their names and titles - 'The Prophetess Liliane, The Lady Yvette, Irina from the East' - recited almost as a liturgy in her magical ceremonies (recalling the names of saints in the Mass) and leading inexorably up to a final section of the book which summarises the deeds of 'The Great Witch of Brittany' herself, Ursule, somewhat embellished, as the reader will realise, after the manner of legendary material.

There is, then, a certain pre-determinedness to the outcome, but Morgan doesn't let that undermine the sense of jeopardy for her characters or, indeed, the losses and reverses they suffer. Nor does she allow Ursule to be all-powerful, all-knowing or invincible: she may come into great power but she isn't, especially at first, particularly wise and she makes innocent mistakes that cause great harm to herself and those around her. Indeed, almost to the end she's prone to fly into a rage when her family is threatened. and in late 18th/ early 19th century France, there are many threats and, as I have said, much prejudice against the Romany. But there is also kindness, solidarity and friendship though it can take Ursule some time to recognise it for what it is.

Overall, an engaging and heartfelt story using Ursule's position and powers as a witch to explore the place of women in a turbulent age. 

I only had two reservations, neither of which really detract from the story. 

First, in a book set between 1741 and 1820(ish) I expected a little more impact from historic events - yes, the story is set in a remote country district and yes, there is an eruption of banditry due to the "Terror" but no other impact on Ursule and Agnes's lives from what was a series of wars, invasions and political turmoil. 

Secondly, Morgan goes further than just making Ursule a (rather powerful) witch and has her practicising what I think is pretty much modern paganism/ Wicca or something like it (complete with feast days borrowed from both Celtic and Norse mythology and indeed - Lammas - Christianity) and portraying it as the religion of her Romany. I was a bit uneasy about that in principle (in her other books that I've read the protagonists are not members of similarly marginalised groups and they are not given such a detailed belief system) but I suppose this is in the end a fantasy, the Romany people described here may I think be inspired by groups in our world, but this is not our world. It is I think done very respectfully. 

And Ursule's outlook is in the end basically syncretistic - in another plot strand, she purloins a relic of St Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary ("Holy Annie, God's Granny" as I've heard her described). The sliver of bone, housed in its reliquary, is fully integrated into (and clearly, in some way, cooperates with) Ursule's ceremonies  and workings, and "Anne" is recited along with the names of the other "grandmères". A certain pragmatism suits Ursule's character in the end, I think: she is about survival and protection of her family above all, rather than any kind of social or theological purism, and I will therefore take the belief system described as fairly personal to her, in this world, regardless of its resemblance to something in our world..

I'd recommend The Great Witch of Brittany overall. (It was great to see that in Morgan's afterward she gives a shoutout to a book I loved as a child, Rumer Godden's The Diddakoi).

For more information about The Great Witch of Brittany, see the publisher's website here.

 

#Blogtour #Review - Little Rebel by Jérôme Leroy

Little Rebel
Jérôme Leroy, trans by Graham Roberts
Corylus Books, 1 July 2021
Available as: e
Source: advance copy provided by the publisher
ASIN: B097KCVCKY

I'm grateful to Corylus Books for an advance copy of Little Rebel to consider for review, and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

It's said you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I think the magnificently dark cover for Little Rebel captures its mood perfectly.

Who, exactly, is to blame for a tragedy, an outrage? The terrorist who pulls the trigger? Those who support, who radicalise, who encourage? Culture warriors who see an opportunity to gain by setting up the Other as threatening, dangerous? Bystanders who don't really care but just want to get on with their complicated lives and don't read the signs? All of us for our prejudices and our little, thoughtless slights?

Leroy's novella sets up all these, and more, in an unnamed port city in Western France. It's a tense place, ruled over by a far-Right administration which has installed cronies in the Police ('Sergeant Richard Garcia, who sees himself these days as a defender of the West against the Great Replacement') yet also with a radical Islamic faction and plenty of simply disaffected youth. Add to that Alizé Lavaux, a jaded author of Young Adult fiction, so very hungover and so very desperate for a smoke, Flavien Dubourg, a twenty seven year old teacher who's still a virgin but fantasises about Alizé, the elusive Little Rebel, a bartender who's about to have a Very Bad Night, and... well, you get a powerful mix.

One of the things I loved about this book was the way it frankly portrays life as messy, as knotted. Leroy is completely cold-blooded - he'll introduce somebody sympathetically and then have them die with little warning. (Or, sometimes, the other way round). Then he'll zoom forward ten, twenty years and show the consequences, what became of the survivors. Both victims and perpetrators are allowed to have rich, complicated, perplexing lives - lives extending into the lives of others, and reflected back in them. It's quite a feat to do that at all, let along in such a short book (I think it took me an hour to read Little Rebel).

There is also the terse, slightly noir-ish tenor to the book, leavened as it by a sense of the absurd and the fatalistic: this is what's going to happen, what can you do? That's accentuated by, as I said, the book's bouncing forward to tell us what eventually happens or, in the authorial voice, assuring the reader that, no, character X won't survive and their story was only there to make a point - about life, about people, about that unnamed city.

It is, as I have said, a short read, but one with some vividly drawn characters and which gives an equally vivid picture of a particular time and place. And it's shot through with dark humour. I'd recommend.

You can buy Little Rebel from Amazon here. To find out more about the book, see the stops on the tour poster below.

#Review - The Lost and the Damned by Olivier Norek

The Lost and the Damned (The Banlieues Trilogy, 1)
Olivier Norek (trans Nick Caistor)
Maclehose Press (Quercus), 12 November 2020
Available as: HB, 304pp, e
Source: Advance e copy via Netgalley
ISBN: 9780857059628

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Lost and the Damned via NetGalley to consider for review.

Content warning: this book does depict some very unpleasant events, both instances of torture and sexual assault. I don't describe these in my review below.

The Lost and the Damned is an explosive police procedural/ thriller, set in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the scuzzy northern outskirts of Paris. The place is all tower blocks, dereliction and the camps of refugees and outcasts. It's not a tourist district or a smart shopping quarter. 

Here, Capitaine Victor Coste is about to lose one of his most experienced officers, fleeing the city for a quieter life in the country, and to gain a new recruit in his place. This happens just as a perplexing series of murders begins - murders with a hint of the supernatural, murders that seem staged, with the Press informed of every detail. At the same time, Coste starts to receive anonymous letters, pointing to something rotten in his own department.

I loved this book - the characters, the seedy atmosphere, the air of cynicism. Coste is an honest cop, as these things go, but he's living in a very dirty world and it's impossible to pretend that all is well. Sometimes corners have to be cut. But we know - Norek uses several viewpoints in this book - that Coste and his team are crossing paths with monsters whose depravity would astound even him, world-weary detective or not. Stumbling around in the same maze are a crusading journalist and a hard-bitten PI. Each has fragments of the story, but very different interests.

It's an enjoyable book on several levels. 

There is the unfolding of the devilish events - events Norek takes his own good time to trace to their roots. There is the depiction of Coste and his team (in which I include pathologist Dr Léa Marquant, who clearly fancies the pants off him only he doesn't realise). They are real characters with foibles and a true sense of a shared history. Introducing them through the arrival of Johanna, the new member, gives us an outsider's view of the squad on which Norek then builds with deeper insights.

Also vividly portrayed is Seine-Saint-Denis - almost a character in its own right, lovingly (if that is the world - it's a grim place) described and explored. The cop's-eye view (Norek is a former police officer) is unsentimental, but still manages to be both empathetic to the the plight of those who wash up there and knowing of the political shenanigans that make that plight worse.

Re-reading that last paragraph you might doubt my use of the word "enjoyable". This isn't, as I have said, "nice" Paris, "tourist" Paris, "smart" Paris. But it feels real, it tells a truly gripping story and it makes you care about the people there.

Nick Caistor's translation is open, readable and strikes a good balance, I think, between retaining the sense (for an English reader) that this is a book about a foreign and different place and making the text familiar and readable. 

I'm very glad this is the start of a trilogy, I am looking forward to meeting Capitaine Victor Coste and his team again.

For more information about The Lost and the Damned, see the Quercus website here.

Review - Divine Heretic by Jaime Lee Moyer

Design by Patrick Knowles

Divine Heretic
Jaime Lee Moyer
Jo Fletcher Books, 20 August 2020
Available as: PB, 390pp, e
Source: Advance PB copy
ISBN: 9781787479265

I'm grateful to Jo Fletcher Books for an advance copy of Divine Heretic to consider for review.

Following from last year's Brightfall, which gave us a fantasy focussed on Maid Marian, Moyer moves into more historical territory with a story inspired by the life of Jeanne d'Arc, Joan of Arc to the English although as they (we) were her enemies I will stick to Jeanne.

When I heard about this book I was really intrigued and keen to see how, exactly, Moyer would treat the subject. It was clear that there would be fantasy elements. It's equally clear, if you think for a moment, that the religious and social atmosphere of the medieval wars between England and France - let alone the specific subject matter of Jeanne's life and terrible death - makes for quite difficult subject matter. It would be easy, on the one hand, to avoid this and completely fantasy this story up - but also easy to write something very, very grim indeed (grimdark doesn't have to be made up!)

Moyer manages, I think, to tread a middle course here. She resists making the book too genre-y. Her Jeanne's world is one with definite magical and fantasy elements. In an early scene we see tree-spirits in a grove, and the rural people make offerings in remote shrines to vaguely described spirits or saints (with one eye out for the baleful local priest, Father Jakob). But Jeanne is no kick-ass fantasy heroine, there's no route for her to learn magic or turn all this to her advantage (other than making those hopeful offerings, alongside her prayers to the Blessed Virgin). And when three spirits turn up, claiming to be Saints Michael, Margaret and Catherine, though Jeanne immediately sees through them and henceforth refers to them as "monsters" she has no special powers or knowledge to resist them.

Nor, though, is the grimness celebrated. It's there - the heart of this book is the extent to which Jeanne is constrained, compelled, abused both by the society around her - most dramatically in an attempted forced marriage and rape - and by the monsters. (They wish to use her for their own strange ends, influencing history and the war but for reasons that are never really explained.) But it doesn't, in the end, predominate.

Jeanne's trials are many. The foretold martial role of Maid of Lorraine which the three spirits want to force her into (almost like an inversion of Macbeth) is not one that suits her nature or upbringing and the deceptions it entails strain her conscience. She is the subject of vicious, misogynistic rumour and of jealousy and she feels guilt over joining in the war and particularly leading men to her death. (I think this latter aspect is something that we could have been shown more of - while the stunning cover art shows Jeanne holding a bloodied sword, and there are scenes of her trying to use it, much of the battle is skipped. I'm not saying I want to see lots of bloodshed but it seems a central aspect of the story and key to creating the wearied, jaded Jeanne we see in the later sections of the book).

Through all this though she struggles to own herself, to be more than the puppet that the three spirits or the Dauphin want. The story is nicely calibrated here, demonstrating just how little agency Jeanne has, her life and future in the hands of men - the priest, the village council, various nobles, ultimately the Dauphin Charles himself - as well as those manipulating spirits. Her achievement  is to endure, to love even when it is forbidden, to remain loyal to those who are loyal to her, above all to retain some sense of herself, some control over herself and her actions. It is a constant fight and one that can never be fully successful involving sacrifice both physical and spiritual - this isn't just a matter of Jeanne and her fate, the wicked spirits bind up others, too, people she cares for, and they are ruthless in leveraging this.

As I grew more and more absorbed in Divine Heretic, I came to love the way it isn't conventional fantasy. There aren't, as I have said, tools and techniques to be sought to achieve a neat solution. Many questions are left unanswered (the three spirits operate to a strangely specific schedule - why?) But that leaves the story space to grow, to breathe, to show us Jeanne's courage and to show her growing and becoming more assured and understanding. It's that portrait that is at the centre of the book, really, and it is a masterpiece of storytelling. Moyer gives us a fully rounded and complex portrayal of a figure who tends to be viewed, in a very one dimensional sense, as merely a tragic victim.

In short Divine Heretic fully lived up to my expectations and I'd strongly recommend it.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here.

Review: A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by HG Parry

Cover design by
Lisa Marie Pompilio

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians

HG Parry

Orbit, 25 June 2020

Available as: PB, 516pp, e

Read as: PB advance copy

ISBN: 9780356514703

Snap verdict: It's complicated...

(CW for mention of enslavement and enslaved people).

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of A Declaration of the Rights Of Magicians.

Following up The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heap, which saw literary characters escape their bindings to cause trouble in New Zealand, Parry's A Declaration of the Rights Of Magicians focuses on a very different kind of mayhem in late 18th century West Africa, France, Britain and the Caribbean.

It's an absorbing and at times harrowing historical fantasy. Parry imagines a whole overlay of magical oppression that reinforces the racial and cultural oppression of the period, and integrates it all into a history which well reflects - to this non-historian reader - the atmosphere, personalities and events of the time. It is very well done, making for an intriguing and, ultimately, engaging narrative. This is a book I enjoyed reading, although I do have some reservations - which I'll come to shortly. 

First, though, what is going on in A Declaration of the Rights Of Magicians? 

Well, to begin with, a young (six years old) girl is kidnapped in West Africa, enslaved, and trafficked to the Caribbean. She comes to be known as Fina, although that's the name her enslavers give her, not her real name.

A few years later, in Europe, magic is forbidden to Commoners. Nevertheless a young French boy, Camille Desmoulins, summons shadows and finds himself in trouble with the magical authorities. Provincial lawyer Maximilien Robespierre seeks to defend a young Commoner accused of a trivial act of magic. Barrister William Pitt does the same in London. We are also introduced to William Wilberforce, a young Englishman and a friend of Pitt, who is seeking a purpose in life. Perhaps he will join the Knights Templar who enforce the anti-magic laws?

Fina, landed in Jamaica, is subjected to magical control on a planation and to decades of backbreaking physical toil. Meanwhile the relationship between Wilberforce and Pitt develops as the former takes up the cause of ending slavery and the latter becomes Prime Minister. Robespierre rises through the ranks of revolutionaries as France teeters on the brink. Things come to a crisis as enslaved Africans in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rise in revolt, France declares itself a Republic and frees its magicians, and war with the United Kingdom looms - a war which will challenge all the constraints on magic that currently obtain in Europe.

As I have said, I enjoyed this book which is engaging and informative. Wilberforce and Pitt, on the one hand, and Robespierre, Desmoulins, Danton and the rest on the other, are of course real characters and as far as I am aware their "history" presented here in considerable detail is accurate (up to a factor of magic, obviously). Similarly while Fina is, I assume, an invested character, what happens to her is clearly representative of a wider catastrophe for Africa and its people (again, setting aside the magic).

It's impossible to ignore the fact that the book comes with almost spooky timing, being published only a few weeks after the toppling in Bristol of a notorious enslaver's statue during a Black Lives Matter protest (and amidst wider ongoing protest and debate). That makes it very of the moment, something that might not stand out so much if it was less rare for fantasy to deal with real world issues like this (it is getting less rare, but not yet so much that a book like this won't attract some attention for that reason). It's good to see a fantasy novel that avoids being another "Regency magic" story, engaging instead with the unpleasant realities of the period. I also enjoyed the focus given to the slave rebellions which are fully acknowledged as a source of freedom, as well as Wilberforce's Parliamentary efforts. 

However, I would qualify this a bit, for a couple of reasons. 

First, Pitt, Wilberforce, Robespierre et al get a lot more attention than Fina and her comrades. So there is exhaustive focus on the developments in the Parliamentary campaign against slavery, including lengthy (generally late night, well oiled) political and philosophical discussions between Pitt and Wilberforce, and equally detailed material on Robespierre's politics and actions. 

Meanwhile Fina's story - which covers some twenty years in contrast to a handful of years for the others - gets rather brief updates. It clicked with me about halfway through the book that this is because the book is primarily about the evolving relationship - politically and as friends - between Pitt and Wilberforce and about how these very different men cooperate to tackle slavery. It's a sign of how good Parry's writing is that the lengthy discussions between them are actually very, very interesting and the characters and humanity of the two men come fully alive. I have no idea how true they are to the reality, but as an able, energetic and principled Prime Minister, Parry's William Pitt certainly shines in contrast to more recent holders of the office, and Wilberforce's religious motivation is given respect and space to develop. The strain of realpolitik on this relationship and its eventual fracture is also a powerful theme. (Pitt as Prime Minister must pay attention to the practicalities and wider while Wilberforce, as a freewheeling idealist, need not). However, this does mean that while Fina and her comrades and their rebellion are in the end key to the story, it in in no way centred on them. 

There is also the place of the magic. Magic features here in several ways. As there are harsh laws in Europe against "commoners" using magic, and harsh punishments for breaking those laws, the position  of magicians as an oppressed group adds a new factor to, especially, the pre-revolutionary situation in France. Accordingly, when the Republic is declared it is "The French Republic of Magicians" (though most of the citizens are not actually magicians). 

Similarly, magic is used to control Fina and the other enslaved people, who are forced to consume an alchemical compound that robs them of their will (this is in addition to the chains and whips that feature in historical slavery). But in neither case is the outcome very different from the historical one (oppression stokes a bloody revolution in France and a harsh and exploitative slave trade in Africa and the Caribbean). For much of the book the magic is, in a sense, superfluous. While well thought out, it doesn't seem to be adding anything essential to the story or making a difference to it, except in the detail. 

In the end, it turns out that isn't quite right and I came to understand why parry has added magic to this version of the 18th century. it is there for a reason, rather than simply to drive a kind of "What if...?" game, and it does affect the fates of Fina, Pitt, Wilberforce, Robespierre and the rest. Moreover in the final few pages of the book (but almost not until then) we see that it will affect the future of San Domingue and of Europe. That's tantalising, though, because the story closes almost as soon as this is established. I think I smell a possible sequel and I hope that comes, because I really want to see how things play out and how characters who have been established so vividly might go forward into what looks like a much more magically-shaped world.

Overall, this is a powerful book with powerful themes. It wasn't perhaps quite the book I had expected but in discovering what it actually was I had a very enjoyable read.

For more information about the book, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Coming Up For Air by Sarah Leipciger

Coming Up For Air
Sarah Leipciger
Doubleday, 19 Mar 2020
Available as: HB, e, 320pp
Read as: e-copy via NetGalley
ISBN: 9780857526519

I'm grateful to the publisher and to NetGalley for a free advance e-copy of this book.

And now for something (for me) completely different.

Coming Up For Air tells three stories, taking place in late 19th century Paris, mid-20th century Norway and late20th/ early 21st century Canada.

We see a young woman - never named, she is literally referred to as L'Inconnue (the Unknown Woman) - travel to Paris and take up a post as companion to Madame Debord, a suspicious ('She may have been paranoid but she was still a Parisienne'), irascible older widow (older than L'Inconnue, that is, and by the judgement of the time, "old").

In Norway, Pieter Åkrehamn is a young child in the 1920s and later a grown man in the 40s and 50s. It becomes clear that he is narrating his life story - a story balanced between a love of the Northern seas and lakes, of swimming in the cold water until just before it begins to kill and between a constant, haunting grief.

And in Canada, Anouk grows up in the 80s, a girl with cystic fibrosis. Leipciger describes, not a tragedy bravely borne or any other cliche, but the day to day practical difficulties for her and for her parents. Again there is a fascination with the outdoors, with swimming now in the rivers and lakes, even the polluted Lake Toronto. (The chapters focussing on Anouk interleave with those on her mother, Nora, but these two sections are much closer to each other than the rest of the book).

Each story - and they are very different - is narrated with a crystal clear eye for detail ('the hard rainfall of a piano being played mezzo-forte', 'granite like the story of the Earth'), a studied appreciation of, and empathy for, the tiny events and incidents of everyday life. L'Inconnue's takes place over the shortest period but documents her growing up - coming to Paris as a "provincial", learning how to live there ('this was my first city, and it was Paris': there that sense here of Paris as more than a place, as a civilisation) becoming increasingly confident and self-assured, discovering love ('She had a beautiful potted belly, and if a hundred cakes would have given me a belly like that I would have eaten every one of them') but - not a spoiler as this is the first scene we encounter - throwing herself into the Seine in despair. Anouk's story parallels L'Inconnue's, we see her growing up, a happy child, through medical crises, finding her feet, weathering her parents' increasing distance, but, also, coming to a crisis point where her condition requires a lung transplant.

Bridging the two, Pieter's story spans the longest period and forms a critical bridge in the book though it also forms the shortest part of the book. Pieter's account is wrapped round a loss and is perhaps the most intense of the three, telling of a grief, almost while not addressing it. It was incredibly moving.

Three different stories yet they have some common themes. Both Pieter's and Anouk's stories touch on men - husbands, fathers - who seen self reliant and in control but who at critical moments are actually absent or absent-while-present: they don't know what to do, they freeze. It's Anouk's mother who deal with the dead deer, it's Pieter's wife who saves the house from fire (and who copes with the difficult child when he can't). These are significant moment but Leipciger doesn't make them simplistic turning points in the narrative or in relationships.

Similarly, the idea of water, of immersion, runs through all three narratives. For Anouk it's both a balm, helping her live with her condition and - if the warning signs are not heeded - a danger. The margin is slight, as we see also with Pieter when he swims out too far. And L'Inconnue too develops a fascination for the Seine before that final plunge.

And, of course, there is death. Actual deaths, as the loved are borne away, sometimes overtly marked - a joyous funeral in Canada - sometimes not, as when unclaimed corposes are exhibited in the Paris Morgue, visited by L'Inconnue and her lover - sometimes simply passed over, as with a boy who dies unseen. Deaths garnished with rumour and fancy. Deaths that afford life to others, as transplant donors or the inspiration for life saving innovations. Potential deaths, close escapes: the book explores that margin, that grey area, discussing the idea of resuscitation, the limited time when death can be averted, undone.

There's an idea behind this, I think, the symmetry of life and death - life as a brief interruption to death, rather than the other way round: 'Where we are, I think it's like a river and you're the flow. And every so often, out of the flow, you, me - all of us - we crawl up on to the bank and we do life... River is life and death both'.

At a time of uncertainty and indeed death, it's actually a rather uplifting thought to take from this very beautiful, absorbing book. I would strongly recommend.

For more information about Coming up for Air, including links to places where it can be bought, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Summer of Reckoning by Marion Brunet

Cover design by Eleanor Rose

Summer of Reckoning
Marion Brunet (trans Katherine Gregor),
Bitter Lemon Press, 16 March 2020
PB, 224pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Summer of Reckoning to consider for review - and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

Summer of Reckoning is a crime story - in that it contains a crime. However, it's not a story of mystery, detection or deduction. There's no know-it-all detective here. Rather, the revelations come in the delicate, closely observed interactions between generations of a family, and their friends, rivals and neighbours. It's a book to be read slowly and carefully, observing the little twists and turns of characters who are not embarked in some grand scheme but simply watching their own lives and wondering how it came to this. They're not even watching those lives unravel, so much as seeking viewpoints that preserve the ability to believe that everything is, really, OK.

At the centre of the book are two teenage sisters, Céline and the slightly younger Jo, daughters of Manuel and Séverine - who are though referred to for the few few chapters as 'the father' and 'the mother'.  This, and the opening - in which Manuel beats Céline in an attempt to discover who is the father of her unborn child - set the scene for a family which is emotionally distant and where the parents (at least Manuel) are preoccupied with matters of appearance, face, honour. It's a family where the adults look back with regret, rather than forward at the future of the girls.

It is the South of France in the preset day, but patriarchal attitudes and misogyny imbue attitudes and behaviour. Women are thumped (or worse) to keep them in line (or simply because some man feels like it). Some of the scenes in the book are painful (there is a rape) but they are I think necessary. You need to understand the motivations, the energies that keep these protagonists in motion. It's all I think about place and status: Manuel feels less, because his grandfather was a refugee from Franco's Spain, because he works as a labourer unlike his land-owning inlaws, because he can't keep his daughters in line.

In turn, he looks down on other outsiders such as the 'Arabs'.

In this world, slights - a bashed car mirror, a word out of place - can have bad consequences.

Yet alongside this, Céline and Jo continue their lives, going to parties, breaking into empty villas to use the swimming pools. They desperately want not to become like their parents (Jo, in particular, dreams of getting away from the area) even as they seem destined got do just that (we see Séverine meet an old schoolfriend, and hear about their younger days, and the similarity with Céline seems striking).

There is a heavy sense of ennui, of the thick summer days. We may think of the South of France as a glamorous playground but here are the people who don't inhabit the glitzy world, whose days are spent working hard in the heat. There is a brutal side to their lives, there are pressures which Céline and Jo are just starting to perceive, pressures which have crushed Manuel and Séverine even if they hide that fact from everyone including themselves.

This is painful, insightful writing, writing that explains and sympathises with its characters while not excusing what we see. The translation by Katherine Gregor is lucid and readable throughout.

I'd recommend this novel - it has a lot going on in what is quite a short book.


About the Author and Translator

Marion Brunet, born in 1976 in the Vaucluse, is a well known Young Adult author in France. Her YA novels have received over 30 prizes, including the 2017 UNICEF Prize for Youth Literature. Summer of Reckoning is her first novel written for adults and her first work to be translated into English.

Katherine Gregor lives in London and has recently translated works by Alexander Pushkin from the Russian and plays by Carlo Goldoni and Luigi Pirandello from the Italian.

You can buy Summer of Reckoning from Hive Books, which supports local bookshops (especially important at this difficult time), from Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon. 

For more about the book, visit the publisher's website here.

And don't miss the rest of the tour - see poster below for details.

Review - Conviction by Denise Mina

Conviction
Denise Mina
Harvill Secker (Penguin), 16 May 2019
HB, 384pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance e-copy of Conviction via NetGalley.

I love Denise Mina's books. Just when you think you know what's coming, she wrongfoots you with a move sideways, shifting from crime series to true life based crime to - as here - a chilling standalone psychological thriller.

This was a grabby book - by which I mean a book that grabs you, though it is one you will also want to grab! It's the sort that keeps you sitting up into the small hours just to see what's next. Following a gripping road trip undertaken by two lonely, desperate people who start off hating one other, but each of whom gradually comes to trust and support the other, it's a marvellously convoluted, tricksy read.

"There has to be a reason to tell the truth. I stopped some time ago..."

Anna is the happy mother of two girls, partner to Hamish, a seemingly dull (but rich) Scottish lawyer, and living a quiet life in Glasgow. The most exciting recent event in her life was the campaign for a new laminator at the school. It is clear, as she narrates this story, that there's something a little... odd... about her. She won't travel abroad. There is an anger in her. Hamish resents her habit of getting up early to wander the house alone, and the two are going through relationship counselling. Perhaps a life of cosy domesticity is grinding Anna down?

There are secrets in this book, things Anna has pushed into unswept corners of her mind, people she's hiding from. She knows they must never, never come to light. But there's no reason why they ever should - is there?

Conviction launches on an ordinary day, but an ordinary day when everything goes wrong. Anna's world collapses that morning, just as she's trying to get the kids out to school. There is a knocking, and Anna tries to ignore it but there is something trying to get in, something from her past. There's nothing she can do but run again - accompanied by anorexic musician Fin, who's been shipwrecked by the same storm that left her adrift. Thrown into each others' company, what can the two do but get in a car, bickering, and set off into the Scottish night, still bickering, to solve a notorious mystery, the sinking of luxury yacht the Dana? (And yes, they are still bickering all through that).

Ricocheting between locations - a ghastly tourist trap haggis restaurant, an upmarket Highland hotel, an exclusive French resort and a Venetian slum, to name only a few, while running through a pile of Hamish's cash and dodging assassins, the pair take as their guide a podcast series about the sinking of that yacht, and follow up the leads. In the course of this we learn more about the ghastly events that sent Anna into hiding, about the origins of Fin's anorexia, the notorious Sophie Bukaran - and the truth behind the Dana. The book is strong stuff in places, with references to rape, eating disorders, and to a real sense of mental disintegration. Anna is at times very scary. Some of the events here are told in fragments as she edits out what she can't bear; she drives like a fiend; and all through the book are the warning signs of the danger she and Fin are running towards - even as she imagines she's running from something that not only destroyed her faith in justice but left her at the mercy of baying mobs - in real life, and online.

Anna starts, then, low on trust, and the very gradual thaw between her and Fin (not a sexual thing, it's mush more interesting than that) is a deeply moving theme of this book, even more interesting and enthralling perhaps than the solution to the mystery (although that is itself a complex, twisty and satisfying crime story in its own right). They are very well imagined, well portrayed characters with a lot of depth, a lot of truth to them.

So there's a lot going on in this book, which is never less than deeply, deeply readable, and often brilliant. It's also frequently grimly funny, as with the scene where the pair, drunk on a train, encounter a hitman who telegraphs his intentions through a dark fairytale, or when Anna refers to "the beige uniform of American money"or describes her time working in that hotel for the super-rich (sacked, in the end: she didn't have the "personality for service"). Fin's fame also produces some funny - if frustrating - episodes: it's hard to go under the radar when people keep spotting and Instagramming you.

As you'd expect, Anna is something of an unreliable narrator ("It's an odd out-of-the-way place for odd out-of-the-way people, often incomers pretending to be Scottish. The whole area is awash with fictions. I loved it there.") She has of course edited her own past, giving her unreliability a solid narrative justification - rather than just deriving from an unexplained character quirk. She's few illusions left about life - for example, saying, of men "When [they] talk about a daughter it's often a coded way of saying they are not planning to attack you" or commenting on the less celebrated moments of Andrew Carnegie, often noted for his philanthropy: "It didn't show him ordering Pinkerton men to shoot at strikers... [or] mutilating accidents in smelting plants." Indeed, that last points to a general theme in this book - the ghastliness of the super rich, variously benefiting from loot gathered by Nazi forebears, committing murders to cover up crimes, behaving badly to underpaid staff... or just showing ghastly taste.

This is a pacy read, covering lots of ground - literally, emotionally, and conceptually. At its heart it has - well, lots of heart, in that central relationship between Anna and Fin. Both are damaged, and the book doesn't promise that everything will be or can be "fixed" for them. But they do find something.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Conviction, see the publisher's website here.

To buy the book, try your local bookshop, including via Hive! Or you can look at Blackwell's, Waterstones or Amazon.

Review: Spook Street by Mick Herron

Spook Street
Mick Herron
John Murray, 9 February 2017
HB, 340pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

I hadn't read a full blown spy thriller for a while, and had never read any of the Jackson Lamb series (this is no 4). I know those who've read the previous books will snap this one up and won't need to bother with reviews like this. But for those yet to meet Lamb and his crew of "slow horses" you've a real treat coming (and Spook Street is a perfectly accessible place to get on board).

The "slow horses" are Security Service assets who aren't quite... up to the mark. Maybe a copybook was blotted in a particularly blatant way? Maybe it's anger management issues, gambling or substance misuse? Whatever, there's a place for you in Slough House, a decrepit block in Central London where careers (and heating systems) go to die. Slowly.

The whole rickety edifice (I'm speaking literally and metaphorically) is presided over by Lamb himself, a magnificent monster of a spy, the apotheosis of the raddled, maverick operative: unkempt, unhealthy, rude, foul mouthed, hard drinking, lacking all respect for authority or procedure, he's the embodiment of the Slough House ethos: you sense the Service would have put a bullet in him long ago if they didn't know full well that he'd cause more trouble dead than alive. (Probably by smoking in the hearse, then clawing his way out of the grave again).

A bullet though the head... loose ends and retirement of assets is the central theme of this book. River Cartwright, grandson of renowned spy David Cartwright (who never quite made First Desk) becomes concerned that his grandfather is beginning to wander, and may become a problem for the Service. Cartwright senior is beginning to see stoats all around - not the furry kind, but watchers. And he's not as defenceless as they might think.

So it's no surprise when someone ends up dead. The Service would like to clear up quietly, but someone brought Lamb onto the case and he does nothing quietly.

Told in convincing insider jargon and through pretty much non-stop action, this book takes you to a world of bitter internal struggle, disillusionment and private warfare. Switching between France and London, it follows Lamb's team in their stumbling attempt to tidy things up, presenting some unforgettable characters in the under-paid, under-performing millenials of Slough House (think, Bridget Jones administering a waterboarding) struggling with their 20s disappointment one minute, engaging in life and death combat the next.

It's far from the world weary sophistication of George Smiley, even as the tentacles of the Cold War reach out to shape the future. New enemies and new threats may abound but their seeds were sown long ago.

I loved this book just for the characters and the setting. It would have worked almost as well if there hadn't been a plot or an immediate threat driving things: Herron has a real gift for people, even if, as here, he happily uses the setting to say something about his people (that glugging, sputtering heating system in Slough House, contrasted with the gleaming glass of the Service's HQ, says it all really). Indeed I wasn't completely persuaded by the threat, but that really didn't matter.

(I also smiled at the scene set by Blackfriars Bridge and the passing mention of the nearby banks, publishers and other undesirables. There does Hodder have its offices again...?)

Looking forward to more Jackson Lamb, and more of Shirley, Rod, Louisa & Co - and pleased I can get an instant fix from the preceding books right now!

A stranger in a foreign country

Yes, I literally was that.

This week I had to go to Paris for work - the third or fourth time since last summer. And I found it pretty stressy.  And I have been thinking about why.

Yes, I know.  A tough job but someone has to do it.  #Firstworldproblems.

How can that be stressy?

Well, it wasn't the work. The work was sitting at the back of a conference room, taking notes, waiting for them to get to my stuff then occasionally feeding in a point or checking something. No, what was stressy was the being there, the getting there.

I am not a natural traveller. As a student, I never went Interrailing (does that still happen). Never did a gap year. Given the choice, I'll always stay at home. I am boring, boring boring. I know that. But I enjoy travelling - getting on the Eurostar, the faff with passports and security, waiting at St Pancras, going through the Tunnel, watching the fields go by.

What challenges me is simply being there, in a foreign country, a foreign civilisation (France is a civilisation, not a country, isn't it?) Part of it is being absolutely crap at French.  Yes, I got an O level many years ago.  I learned to give memorized answers to memorised questions, in an appalling Cheshire French accent. I learned to little essay including as many as possible of the clever constructions that scored extra points. I read a Maigret book, in French, over the summer holidays and summarised it, in French. None of that equipped me, though, to sit in a restaurant and order a simple meal, or go into the hotel and ask for my room. Instead I cope with such things by pointing at the menu, walking up to reception and offering my work-booked room reservation and saying "Merci" a lot.

It is OK, just about, but really it's OK because the French are (in my experience) wonderful people and put up with bumbling English clots like me who don't speak their beautiful language and insult them by bringing English into their capital. In other words they make allowances and adapt, and therefore enable me to survive when otherwise I wouldn't (well, that's a bit over dramatic, but you get the point).

Nevertheless, in some situations I'm adrift. When the Metro train I was on stopped between stations and the driver explained what was wrong I hadn't a clue.  Was he saying we were being held at a red signal to regulate the service and would be moving shortly, or had a rail broken up ahead and we would be stuck for hours?  When, on my last trip, there was a security alert at Gare Du Nord and we were kept outside, just how serious was it, really?  I didn't know and had no easy way to find out.  To a degree I read these situations because I am familiar with urban travel and they are common ones.  If I'd been from a bit further afield I'd have been even more baffled, and without someone to make allowances, it would have simply been bewildering. No way to communicate, no idea what's going on, basically no way to function.

Which was why I was struck, this time and for the first time, by a comparison with my daughter.

My daughter is an adult.  She has autism,with learning disabilities. She is nonverbal (does not speak*). We don't know how much speech she understands, but it is quite a bit. Like any human being, she is a complex person with preferences, needs and opinions. Like me in Paris, she isn't able to articulate these well and so is, much of the time dependent on the forebearance, the grace, the common sense of those around her to understand her needs and let her in, as it were, to make a space and enable her.

Except, of course, it's not really the same at all.  It is a thousand, a million times harder for her. And she can't just hop back on the Eurostar to a country where all those issues go away.

We are so glad that Daughter has a supportive place to live and that her life is, generally, good. She moved away from home a year or so ago and we miss her dreadfully (we see her most weekends) but that separation does bring perspective.  I can't say - it would be so arrogant and wrong to say it - that I understand what the world is like for her (not sure I'd even dare say that for another neurotypical) but by analogies like this I sometimes think I can imagine, at least, the faintest outlines of how it might sometimes be for her.

And that includes (though to an almost homoeopathically diminished degree) the this-is-all-too-much/ what-now/ too-much-sensation/ make-it-stop-now panic and meltdown which I saw so many times when daughter lived at home but which (and it's galling, but true) doesn't seem to happen to her these days.

All of which is very humbling.

Anyway, hopefully we'll be taking Daughter to see Pitch Perfect 2 this weekend.  It's going to be good.  I hope you have a great weekend too!

*She did use a few words: "Guck" for any bird, "gog" for a dog, "an'dat!" as a general exclamation. And she could name the Teletubbies, in order. (If we were in a shop with toy Teletubbies and they were out of order, she'd rearrange them).  But that all went.