Review - The Strange Casebook by Syd Moore

The Strange Casebook
Syd Moore
Point Blank, 31 October 2018
e-book only

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of The Strange Casebook via NetGalley.

These are short stories which mostly, though not all, take place in the world of Moore's Essex Witches novels - supernatural thrillers focussed on Rosie Strange and her family's museum in the village of Adder's Fork, Essex.

If you've read and enjoyed those books you'll have the chance to spot how the stories fit in to that world - either featuring moonier characters, member of Rosie's family, forming testimony given to the Museum or just appearing in Adder's Fork itself.

Death is a common theme here.

Death Becomes Her focuses on a policewoman we have seen before, and perhaps explains a bit about her.

Snowy is a gentle hymn to death and loss and perhaps - perhaps - to consolations beyond.

Madness in A Coruña is probably the longest story in the book, and is an effective and creepy ghost story, perhaps with an MR Jamesian bent. An unwary traveller to the Spanish city (yes, the same as in the poem by Charles Wolfe) discovers mysteries there. The city seems to be guarded against something. But is it guarded well enough? As this story came to a climax I found myself sitting forward and gripping my Kindle so tense did it get.

She Saw Three Ships is a delight, a whole story featuring Ethel-Rose and taking place in that most ghost haunted, uncanny of English counties, Cornwall. What happens when the locals make you unwelcome on the eve of a creepy local festival? Well, you dig in and see what peahens, obviously. This slice of folk hour is calculated to raise a shiver as Hallowe'en approaches.

Jocelyn's Story and The House on Savage Lane, are a different kind of story, the sort where the revelation of what is really going on is what drives the horror (even if you'd begun to guess as I did for the second, not the first) so I won't say much about them. I did, though, find Jocelyn's Story (which looks ahead to Strange Tombs, the next Essex Witch Museum book) to be genuinely strange and unsettling, a different sort of horror. The House on Savage Lane was a bit more conventional but still had a couple of effective twists.

So, great stories - whether read while you wait impatiently while you wait for Strange Tombs, or if you just want something a bit creepy for the lengthening evenings.

Review - White Dancing Elephants by Chaya Bhuvaneswar

White Dancing Elephants
Chaya Bhuvaneswar
Dzanc Books, 9 October 2018
PB, 208pp

I was very honoured that Chaya Bhuvaneswar asked me if I would like to review her new collection of short stories, White Dancing Elephants, and grateful to her for an advance copy to review.

About the Author

Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a practicing physician and writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, The Millions, Joyland, Large Hearted Boy, Chattahoochee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Awl, jellyfish review, aaduna and elsewhere, with poetry in Cutthroat, sidereal, Natural Bridge, apt magazine, Hobart, Ithaca Lit, Quiddity and elsewhere.

Chaya Bhuvaneswar

Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of colour.

In addition to the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection prize under which her debut collection WHITE DANCING ELEPHANTS will be released on Oct 9 2018, she recently received a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a Henfield award for her writing.

Her work received several Pushcart Prize anthology nominations this year as well as a Joy Harjo Poetry Contest prize.

WHITE DANCING ELEPHANTS has also been nominated for a Kirkus award and NBCC award (first stage of each as candidate for the long lists).

My Review

This is a collection of seventeen excellent, eye opening stories, written with a sharp understanding of characters' background, motivation and self image (perhaps the author being a doctor helped here?)

These stories often revolve around loss, abuse and identity and the range of stories in the volume means these themes are visited from different directions and through different eyes. There are missing parents, siblings, lost children and abuse as well as missed (or simply, not taken) turns in life - but also friendships and hope.  Cultural identities clash, both between and within protagonists, and these characters and their worlds are often caught in the long shadow of colonialism.

The titular story, White Dancing Elephants, heaves with loss, written almost as a love letter by a woman to - well, you'll have to read it to find out who. On a visit to London and then Oxford she turns over what is gone, what might be to come and how things might have been different. It's so poignant but also strong, hopeful. (I live near Oxford and on a personal note appreciated a glimpse here not of the honeyed stones and dreaming spires but of the bustle of the Cowley Road.)

The Story of the Woman Who fell in Love with Death tells of a boy and his missing sister. She's an absence that mustn't be mentioned, a gap he questions and mourns as he grows up. Bhuvaneswar skilfully makes this woman who never appears in the story as much of a filled out character as anyone who does. Again there is a sharp sense of loss here, and a mystery that's never (I think) completely cleared up.

Kalinda, in Talinda is "not long for this world". While she slowly dies of stomach cancer, a little tragedy plays out with her friend Narika and husband George. Again the theme of children, of childlessness and - child fulness??? - plays out. This is a sad story, the countdowns of death and birth overlapping and Bhuvaneswar convoys a chilling, even wicked sense of stolen lives, of alternatives lost, her characters waiting for what will happen.

Some of the stories in this book are very painful, though it isn't always clear at first. A Shaker Chair  is one of those. It documents the relationship between a psychotherapist and her client, delicately tracing the web of alliances and prejudices in Boston between those of African and of Asian heritage, the tension made pointed as Sylvia, the therapist has a father with a Ugandan African background, bringing with him a certain outlook and issues. ("Like most Indians Sylvia had ever known - actually like most Asians in general - this girl Maya... was conscientious, consistent... Paying for each psychoanalysis session... with bedraggled wads of cash that looked like the contents of the cash register at some filthy curry restaurant.") The relationship that unfolds between the two women is painful, tender, delicate as they negotiate their way through unspoken truths - but it ends in catastrophe, perhaps one that Sylvia always felt coming?

Jagatishwaran is a story, perhaps of a lost brother... but Jagatishwaran has not gone but stayed, after some illness or episode in his earlier life he's becomes settled at home, stuck, perhaps suffering from something but still observant of the currents and tensions in his Bombay [sic] home. Unlike many of the characters in this book he hasn't got out to get on but in not doing so he creates a kind of statement. Well observed, well paced, this story charts Jagatishwaran's life in exquisite detail.

The Bang Bang is the name of the New York bar where immigrant chauffeur Millind wanders into a poetry slam and changes his life for ever. Told from his daughter's point of view - a daughter who loses her brother and mother and almost fades out of existence herself as her father unexpectedly takes the spotlight - this is a novel in miniature, a probing, haunting account of cultures and lives and ultimately of hope.

Orange Popsicles is a story whose content will be clear pretty much from the first page. It is about a woman, Jayanti, who has been raped on her university campus. The story tells us what went before and what happens after. It's, perhaps, a starkly relevant story not only because of the present climate but - as I read it - in timing, I'm writing this review as the US Senate votes on filling their Supreme Court vacancy.

Bhuvaneswar spares nothing here as she shows how the situation was set up, how is preyed on, blames herself, and what she manages to collect together of herself afterwards. I fine story but one I'm sure some readers will find very hard to bear.

Neela: Bhopal is also hard to bear, for different reasons. It's another where the reader will think they know from the start pretty much what's going to happen, but Bhuvaneswar manages, if anything, to make this tragedy of four siblings even more haunting than you'd expect.

Chronicle of a Marriage, Foretold is the story I enjoyed most in this collection. It's about Mikki, a young woman taking part in a retreat for "indigenous or Third World woman writers". The retreat takes place in what seems like most uncomfortable surroundings, a series of caves on a remote island. (Men used to attend as well, but have been excluded ("in the early years, some men were caught lurking at the entrances of certain women's caves, or following especially lovely women home...") Despite the uncomfortable sounding surroundings, it gives Mikki an opportunity to reflect on her life, partly through the medium of an imagined (or is he?) - what? Lover? Interviewer? - with whom she gradually builds a relationship. This person, Harry, may or may not have played many roles in her life. Mikki compares and contrasts him to her husband, reflects on their lack of children - and moves into a future. Treading a line between romance and horror, this is one of the strangest stories in the book.

Heitor is also unusual in the collection in being historical rather than set in the present day. In 1545, Indian slave Heitor awaits punishment at the Portuguese convent where he serves. We gradually learn how he was trafficked there, and why he's to be punished. I don't want to say much about what takes place but it does seem to me to be an absolute affirmation of love and hope in the face of terror and oppression. A fine story.

Newberry is the story of a disregarded, undervalued person - Vinita, who works in a hairdressing salon to pay for her fathers' nursing care - and of how she uses where she is and what she can get to make a life for herself and to safeguard her family. It's a clever story and one with a real sense of tension.

Asha in Allston reminded me of an episode of Black Mirror. A story with science fictional overtones, it features an enthusiastic engineer who's created, it seems, a perfect substitute for his wife ("you have her download stored somewhere permanent").  Bhuvaneswar gives us the wife's perspective on this situation, and her eventual response.

The Life You Save Isn't Your Own is about a moment in the life of Seema Venkatramanan who has made "all the wrong choices" leaving her childless ("On top of that, Anand was sterile") and in a job she doesn't really enjoy ("Seema has sold out and gone into managed healthcare"). Coincidence means she visited the Uffizi in Florence a few weeks before a bombing and fire that took the life of a child. Could she, Seema asks herself, have made any difference had she been there when it happened?

The Orphan Handler is a really, really creepy story, again on the cusp of being horror, with aspects of child trafficking, magic and abuse. I found it a deeply ambiguous story, both as to what really happens and what one is to make of the situation. Very though-provoking.

In Allegheny is told from the point of view of Michelle, a doctor, and opens as she attends a festival by invitation of "a neighbour" at the local Hindu temple. As Michelle intervenes in a medical emergency, she has an opportunity to reflect on her relationship with John, who has been in India and considers he understands that culture. I found it a very moving and touching story.

I, personally, found The Goddess of Beauty Goes Bowling a very hard read. It's a clever story, exploring several different themes: as in much of this book, the contrast between East and West, arrival and acclimatisation (not assimilation), the place, or absence, of a child in the family and also the behaviour of men and women. Lakshmi and Gopi are parents of two children, son Romesh who has been sent away to school and daughter Shree who has learning disabilities. I found it hard to distance myself from this situation as I have an adult daughter with learning disabilities. It can be a very hard situation and I found it impossible not to judge Gopi for his failure to grasp the situation: he comes over as petulant, selfish and lacking empathy. I think Bhuvaneswar is actually being more nuanced and saying something about the whole situation, about the other family members and about Shree herself. It's a vivid story well worth pondering and one that left me very uneasy.

Adristakama, the final story in this volume, is about Lauren and narrator Nisha, two young women who have been lovers. Nisha broke off their relationship and returned to India to marry. Another story full of might-have-beens, or possibilities unrealised and maybe yet to come, this is a bitter, moody little piece to end the collection on, yet not without hope. An enjoyable story.

Follow Chaya on Twitter at @chayab77 including for upcoming readings and events.

Buy White Dancing Elephants from Amazon UK
But White Dancing Elephants from Amazon US
Buy White Dancing Elephants from Waterstones

Review - A Blade So Black by LL McKinney

Design by Julia Lloyd

A Blade So Black
LL McKinney
Titan Books, 25 September  2018
PB, 396pp

I'm grateful to Titan Books for an advance copy of A Blade So Black.

I love "Wonderland with a twist" novels so was delighted to be offered this by Titan (thanks, Lydia!) and it didn't let me down.

In this imagining of the story, Alice is a young black woman living in Atlanta. Alongside the exploration of Wonderland and the trips there and back, and the revelation of something nastier and more threatening in that world, there is a perceptible sense of worry, almost claustrophobia due to the social reality that brings. Another young black woman, Brionne, has been killed by the police.

People are angry.

Parents are worried.

Alice's mother isn't happy about her being out at night - it's not safe.

So where the blurb compares the book to Buffy (a young woman on patrol for demons that have slipped through into our world), yes that's part of it but... it's different too. Alice faces other dangers than the Nightmares that she hunts down with Addison Hatta, more prosaic dangers perhaps but no less real. What are the risks of being caught wandering in the small hours with a pair of deadly sharp daggers? You can see how that might go. Buffy might get out of this - Alice won't.

It's a refreshingly modern, refreshingly different take on Alice. All of the familiar elements are there - sometimes easier, sometimes harder to spot (my favourite was Maddi, the incarnation of the Dormouse). McKinney throws things up in the air a bit, so as well as the White Knight becoming an "armoured hottie" we have not one but two Black Knights, both with Vorpal Swords, and a considerably more athletic pair takes the roles of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

It is all, I sense,  done with a great deal of love and respect for the original material but not without criticism of the nursery bound, slightly weird world that carroll span. McKinney creates something all her own, something utterly new, fun, and above all, sharp - one might even say, vorpal sharp.

For example, when the fights happen, boy are they fights - you don't only get a recitation of the moves and counter moves, you get the feelings, the exultation, despair and fear as things go first one way then another. And the characters and relationships here are all so well drawn, too, they pull you in right from the first page where we see Alice running in fear from... what? Towards... what?

This book is clearly the first in a series and I can't wait to see what comes next. I don't think McKinney has exhausted the storehouse of Wonderland yet, but even more importantly, I think she has a lot more to say about Alice, Court, Chess, and the rest.

Bring it on.

Review - The Corset by Laura Purcell

Cover by David Mann

The Corset
Laura Purcell
Raven Books, 20 September 2018
HB, 416pp

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

The Corset stitches together the lives of two young women in (I think) the early Victorian period.

Dorothea Truelove is an heiress in her mid 20s, unmarried, socially isolated since her (deceased0 mother converted to Roman Catholicism and in danger of being labelled a spinster. While she fills her time productively with prison visiting and the study of phrenology (the notion, long since disproved, that character and behaviour could be inferred by measurements of the head) this isn't enough to satisfy her father that she has a decent place in Society and she's being encouraged - rather, pressured - to find a husband.

Ruth Butterham has fallen on very hard times. Raised in genteel poverty, she has lost both her parents and, though a truly awful chain of circumstances, ended in prison, still in her teens, accused of murder. The irony of this is that as we gradually learn, her situation in New Oakgate Prison is less precarious - the charge apart - than much of her life to date.

We hear Ruth's story as told to Dorothea, who has her own agendas and prejudices - trying to reconcile what she's told with head measurements, musing on how far the character is fixed or can improve (we learn the reason for her obsession with that very late in the book) and, very gradually, falling apart because of the tension between her love - or perhaps infatuation - with David, a handsome (but poor) police constable, and the pressure to marry some fusty (but rich) suitor.

I found Dorothea, for much of a book, to be a rather annoying character. At first she seems introduced mainly as a device to narrate Ruth's much more interesting (and often harrowing) story and as such, she often seems to slow down, comment on or filet what Ruth's trying to tell us. While Dorothea's own family situation is less than ideal she seems, to use a modern concept, very unconscious of her privilege and it's easy to dislike her.

That would, though, be a mistake. I won't say much because of spoilers but Dorothea does have her own interest in Ruth's story and while her situation may seem less desperate, she is also a woman in a nakedly patriarchal society, unlikely to be able to find happiness or indeed, any life at all in which her own choices are respected.

In that respect Dorothea's in the same situation as Ruth. Purcell is an adept at plotting, and you can only really appreciate how the two women's experiences intertwine and question each other once you've finished the book. In the same way, you can only understand the hints of the supernatural which runs like a silver thread through the story when all the acts of this tragedy are completed. And when you grasp both those things I think you'll forgive a lot - not least Dorothea's air of self-satisfaction ("David lacks my discipline, even with his police training") and judgement, and Ruth's fatalism and self-doubt - because it's clear these things have been instilled in the two. Dorothea notes that "As with most female subjects, a hollow is apparent at Self-Esteem". Ruth is convinced of her own guilt, and who's going to take the trouble to review what really happened and decide whether that actually is the case? The arm of the patriarchy here is indeed long, and strong. A great theme of this book is the way men treat women and indeed, the way they treat women with whom they have become bored, or who are inconvenient or socially embarrassing: the book is scathing and illustrates this cruelty from many different angles - without ever yielding men the chief place in the story. What happens here is sometimes painful to read, but I found my reading sustained by a sympathy for Ruth and a growing sympathy for Dorothea. They are great characters.

What I found slightly harder at first was what I saw as a sense of unevenness in the language. This is a Victorian set novel, and the characters generally behave and speak as Victorians yet we also sometimes get what to me look like very modern phrases: "I'm going to check you",  "set it up", "crime scene" or "We're in this together, now". It's hard to think Purcell would be sloppy about such matters - much of the prose in this book is so on point: (repeated references to the copper smell of money, "The spirit went but the filth lingered", "It whispered of revenge and power, of taking back control" and many, many more) that I suspect either she knows from her research that these phrases are perfectly apt (I recal my reaction the first time I came across the mention of baseball in Jane Austen) or, perhaps, more daringly, that they are a hint we should be a bit more generous in seeing "historical" characters as "people like us".

After all, unless you were Boris Johnson, you wouldn't pick up a book set in Ancient Rome and expect it to be in Latin. And there's little that is worse that an over-fusty pastiche, Wilkie Collins style.

I hope this is, in the end, a minor criticism.  The book as a whole is so convincing, has so much truth and, to continue the (relevant) fabric metaphor, is so deftly woven together. It is a heartfelt book, a damning book, an exciting book and above all, a thoroughly enthralling book which simply demands to be finished.

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

What I Did at the Weekend (or at least, Saturday)

I was very, very lucky to receive an invitation (thank you, Clare!) to the Hot Key bloggers' brunch which took place at their offices in Wimple Street, London last Saturday. I didn't see any Barretts or for that matter any Brownings, but there were a LOT of enthusiastic bloggers and two great authors on top form - Alexandra Christo, reading from her latest, To Kill a Kingdom (and, though avoiding spoilers, from her next book too) and Sebastien de Castell who read from Soulbinder, the fourth book in the Spellslinger sequence, which is out shortly. (I've read it and I think it's the best so far).

Enthusiastic bloggers....

My morning started of frustratingly because my train was cancelled so I arrived late - but there was food left, the authors were still to talk, and I managed to squeeze inside (just - it was a very tight fit: this was a popular event).

And the frustration soon evaporated as Alex and Sebastien (are Hot Key authors chosen for their impressive names?) read from their books and took questions.

Sebastien had come wearing a shirt and tie, so tried to insist that any questions to him were formal, grammatically correct and polite. But he then undermined that by telling a complicated story about the time he appeared in public with a guitar and dressed in a toga.

It didn't get any more genteel. The two authors seemed to competing for some kind of gore prize. In Soulbinder, Sebastien, told us, Reichis finally gets to eat an eyeball. But he's got nothing on Lira in Alex's To Kill a Kingdom. She's an assassin mermaid who collects hearts ("I have a heart for every year I've been alive"). That got a cheer from the assembled bloggers.

Happily (I was still eating my breakfast) the questions after that were less... gutsy... and more... writer-y. How do you write a book? How do you get it done, and how do you produce something readable? As to the first - write something every day, easy Alex. But deadlines help - HAVING to get finished. She admits though that she prefers writing the first draft (when it's a "jumble") to polishing (which Sebastien enjoys). Both authors agree it’s not about a writing formula, as “how to write your book” advice often says. It’s about characters, and the writing. Great characters and crap story works; the other way doesn’t.

Sebastien talks about the moment when he knows "what the book is about" and things get easier. But It’s taking longer and longer for this to happen with the Spellslinger series - only at the proof stage with Soulbinder!

Sebastien reading

Getting back on topic, she's asked whether she will write any more set in the world of To Kill a Kingdom. That story is done, she says, but she does have more to say about some of the characters in that world (this was warmly received by the audience). With that, the talking was over and the signing began. It was impressive how many bloggers had
Asked about the relationship with an editor, Alex says this is key. Writing is so solitary, sharing with an editor is vital. Sebastien agrees, praising Jo Fletcher (who is the toughest editor in the world - she once foiled a bomb plot!) he does say, though, that he doesn't read the edits, he accepts all - then when he reworks he won't know whether he's amending the edits or his own stuff ("As a dude you learn there’s a propensity to overvalue your own opinion").  There's a secret revealed here - a Greatcoats reference in the Spellslinger series, though Jo had forbidden him to link the worlds up. In Sebastien's mind though they clearly are and he explains just how...

Alexandra reading

Alex admits she DOESN’T want “I have a heart for every year I’ve been alive” carved on her gravestone (don’t ask how we got to that) but Sebastien says he’ll program an android to inscribe it... Unsettling...

Getting back on topic, she's asked whether she will write any more set in the world of To Kill a Kingdom. That story is done, she says, but she does have more to say about some of the characters in that world (this was warmly received by the audience). With that, the talking was over and the signing began. It was impressive how many bloggers had brought in armfuls of books and both authors took their time, answering further questions (I can reveal that so far two illustrators have tried and failed to draw maps of the Spellslinger world).

It was a great chance to connect with two fantastic authors, to find out more about how they worked and to see what they've got coming for us.

And I brought some books home too...

Review - Soulbinder by Sebastien de Castell

Soulbinder (Spellslinger 4)
Sebastien de Castell (illustrated by Sam Hadley)
Hot Key Books, 4 October 2018
HB, 432pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Soulbinder via Netgalley.

This is the fourth in de Castell's fantasy series featuring exiled Jan'Tep mage Kellen Argos and his formidable "business partner", squirrel cat Reichis. It follows Spellslinger, Shadowblack and Charmcaster (mild spoilers for which may follow).

As was clear from the end of Charmcaster, Kellen is now alone (apart from Reichis) and when we meet him again at the start of Soulbinder, he is at his wits' end in the desert ("the desert is a liar"). It's the moment when in previous books Ferius would have pulled off some stroke or other and saved the day - but Ferius isn't there. Kellen has left her. He is forced back on his own resources, and they're running very low. Soon even more challenges arrive, combining family loyalties, Jan'Tep plots to wipe out those infected with the shadowblack, and counterplots by a whole community of the shadow touched.

Soulbinder is in many ways a bleaker book than those which came before, as Kellen makes a journey into darkness on several levels. The shadowblack continues to spread. Kellen doesn't know who to trust, or how to save what he loves. Not only must he cope with all this alone, bearing a crushing loss and suffering the pain of betrayal ("I hated my sister. I loved my sister") even more sharply than before. Not only being treated as a spy, and being unable to manipulate the shadows, just as he can't use Jan'Tep magic.

More than all this, I think, Kellen sees again what he is missing - the home he was exiled from and the friendships he can't be part of because he is hunted and outlawed. For much of this book he's trying to work out how, if at all, he can fit in with a whole pack of new shadowcasters but Kellen's not used to this (as we have seen before) - Jan'Tep society is much more hierarchical and since he left it he's been in strange company and generally fighting for his life. Not the best way to learn social graces.

Yet a great deal hangs on Kellen's success. Not only Kellen's own life, but that of someone else very close to him, and potentially those of the new "friends" and their community in Ebony Abbey, to which exiles cursed by the shadow black make their way for sanctuary. There's also the question of what's wanted from him - this book sees the powerful trying to tempt him to their side with plausible arguments and it's as much Kellen's moral compass that is tested as his courage and ingenuity. (We can see what de Castell feels about these blandishments fro m the chapter headings, where various nuggets of folk wisdom are expounded and then dismissed scathingly:

"A king rules not for himself, but for his people. Thus he can not be bound by conscience, but must instead be guided by every deed necessary for the survival of his realm.

- Platitude frequently used by arseholes to justify their actions"

I think Kellen steps up to all these challenges very well, much better than in the previous books - effectively he has much more responsibility now, even if he still despairs at what he has to do as he walks The Way of Thunder ("I hate this. I hate this. I hate this") and he has clearly learned a great deal from Ferius as well as from Reichis and even his own family. There is a sense he's growing, even if he hasn't had a decent night's sleep or a square meal for months. It probably needed Kellen to lose his companions for this to happen, but I do hope he meets up with some of them again soon because while it's still very entertaining, there isn't so much fun without, say, Ferius to annoy Kellen.

Finally. Being very careful, again, about spoilers, there's something that happens in this book that had me practically cursing de Castell. Which is a kind of backhanded tribute, I suppose, to how real he makes his characters and the events in the books, and how much the reader cares about what happens.  It's an ability not all authors, even good authors, possess so I can only be grateful that he's writing these books and that there are more to come. But - SEBASTIEN, SEBASTIEN!

So. Buy this book. Read this book, and look forward to Queenslayer.

Oh, and Kellen now has an Argosi name, which I think we didn't know before (maybe I missed it). We learn it at the very end of the book and I won't tell you  what it is but I think it's very appropriate.

Review - In a House of Lies by Ian Rankin

In a House of Lies (Rebus, 22)
Ian Rankin
Orion, 4 October 2018
HB, 384pp

I'm grateful to the publishers for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

In a House of Lies is, of course, the latest book about John Rebus, sometime DI with Lothian and Borders Police. That will be enough for most people to just decide to read - it would (was) be enough for me. But as this series evolves, Rankin continues to develop his characters  and to address new challenges and there is a fair bit here to analyse, so please indulge me.

Rebus is now retired and in declining health. Ill with COPD (the two flights of stairs to his flat becoming "a definite issue"), he has given up smoking - couldn't get too grips with vaping, too tech - and is largely off the booze (the Oxford Bar hardly features, and we even witness Rebus visiting a pub... for a coffee).

Lothian and Borders Police has gone, too, swallowed up into Police Scotland, a unitary force run from the glossy "crime campus" at Gartcosh, miles from Edinburgh. Instead of local detectives investigating murders, a mobile squad - MIT ("Major Incident Team") is parachuted in as required with experienced cops like Siobhan Clarke squeezed out. It's not hard to see Rankin's frustration with this situation ("This was the way things were now, thanks to the changes at Police Scotland - local CID reduced to a secondary role..." "Police Scotland's process of centralisation meant a lot of local information-gathering either didn't happen or went ignored") especially since in recent books he's had to devote a lot of ingenuity not only to making Rebus's presence, but even that of Clarke, the other real regular from the old days, plausible, even before getting the story itself moving.

In a House of Lies achieves the former by making one of Rebus's old cases relevant again when a missing person is found long dead. Rebus can therefore be brought in to elucidate the botched enquiry from 2006 and as a bonus, Malcolm Fox gets to give the original case papers a once-over. Clarke is attached to the enquiry for her local knowledge. In terms of plausibility I think this is one of the better set-ups of recent books (Rebus doesn't have to keep trying to blag his way into the enquiry room) even if it does mean repeating what feels like a bit of a running theme: Rebus in the sights of Complaints for past failings and potentially taking the rap for the corrupt and lazy - even though (as we know well) he may always have been unconventional, but was never corrupt or lazy.

It's perhaps in keeping with this somewhat backward-looking and even elegiac mood that a recurring theme here is memory and its trickiness. Clarke stores names on her phone, in case she forgets them. Rebus accuses her and her generation of having short memories, and having "forgotten how to store information". He wonders about the point of "dusting off people's memories" from the earlier enquiry, and how soon they will forget the body found in the woods. Amidst all this loss of memory, despite the vague promise that soon it will all be "kept in the Cloud, whatever that is", it's not surprisingly Rebus - and his old nemesis Cafferty - who know what's what even if "it was hard [for Rebus] to remember the person he'd been, new to the city and new to the job" (a bit of a sly joke there, perhaps, given the way that Rankin has reinvented and reinterpreted Rebus over the course of this series).

But this series is far from becoming a showcase for grumpy old men (whether characters or author). There is a considerable freshness to In a House of Lies whether it's the greater sense of equality between Clarke, Rebus and Fox (in previous books, there has been a hierarchy which has dotted about a bit with one or the other of the three on top at different times depending who is investigating who, whether Rebus is in or out of the police and where Clarke is in her career), Rebus (finally!) taking more care of his health or - oddly - Cafferty, who clearly has Plans (and is considerably more adroit with the tech than Rebus, as Rankin makes clear when describing his infosec measures)

The story itself is pacy, twisty and substantial. Apart from the body that comes to light, Clarke is being threatened, giving her an early excuse to bring in Rebus with a relatively self-contained task. I thought for a while that was going to be Rebus's main role in the story, with the focus on her. That might not be before time (personally I'd love a series of Siobhan Clarke novels with Rebus backgrounded) but perhaps Rankin knows his audience too well for this. At any rate, Rebus gets plenty to do here, and on the main case, though perhaps he doesn't quite own the stage as in the past.

I only had a couple of reservations. First, in a couple of places the portrayal of secondary women characters seemed a bit perfunctory, with a main feature being how much make-up they wore - either too much, or little or none because "she really didn't need it" (of course, it may be she just didn't bother with it, or was in a bit of a hurry that morning...)

And there's reference to Cafferty's investment in a low budget British film in the mid 2000s having produced a profit. No way was there a profit - that investment would have been for tax purposes, designed to produce a loss. However, perhaps that's not a lapse by Rankin and Cafferty knew this all along - or the producer would have received an unwelcome surprise of some sort - and is spinning a line for Rebus.

OK, maybe I'm being a bit picky here. Overall, for me, this is one of the best, if not the best, Rebus story since Rankin brought the character back after Exit Music. It has a complex, satisfying story, plenty of atmosphere and lots for my favourite three detectives to do, with, apparently, plenty of life still in the series.