Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

In 1921, larger than life figures in history - including Winston Churchill, Lady Gertrude Bell and T E Lawrence - gathered in Egypt to thrash out the Cairo Peace Treaty, the building blocks for a modern Middle East. It was from here that the nations of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan would come into being following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Imagine being a fly on the wall when that was happening!
    Well, actually, in Mary Doria Russell's Dreamers of the Day, we have a kind of fly on the wall in the form of American spinster Agnes Shanklin. Agnes is forty and has led a sheltered life, at first under the thumb of her mother and then as a primary school teacher in Cleveland, Ohio. When the Spanish flu that followed the First World War robs her of her family, she finds herself bereft. But the need to take care of three estates pulls her back to reality and when she finds herself of independent means, she quits her job and goes shopping.
    Slowly her mother's admonishing voice in her head is replaced by shopgirl Mildred, who not only sends her home with the new shorter dresses of the twenties, a bob and a bundle of confidence, she also encourages her to travel. Agnes's destination is the Middle East because her sister and brother-in-law worked at a Christian mission near Beirut, and she has always wanted to see the Nile and the Pyramids.
    When she reaches Cairo, both the too-short dresses and her little dog cause mayhem at the hotel she has booked, but T E Lawrence comes to her rescue. When she reveals that he knew her sister, the two become friendly. Next thing you know she's invited to dine with the dignitaries, and Winston Churchill, who admires her North American frankness, invites her to accompany him on a jaunt into the desert where he brandishes his paintbrushes.
    She gets chatty with Clementine Churchill and Gertrude Bell and is soon adding her pennyworth about how one country dominating another through colonisation only causes grief for both parties. Lawrence eggs her on and enjoys the stir caused by her no-nonsense opinions.
    Agnes also befriends the dashingly handsome German official, Karl Weilbacher, who likes to walk her dog, takes Agnes to the tourist traps and encourages her to tell him all about her encounters with the diplomats. As Agnes becomes more and more besotted with Karl, there are niggling fears that perhaps he is a German spy and is simply using Agnes for political reasons. But Agnes is eager, for once in her life, to live for the moment and throw caution to the winds.
    Dreamers of the Day captures a hugely important moment in history through the eyes of an ordinary person. The foibles and peculiarities of historical figures are richly described - Russell notes in her acknowledgements that where possible she has used their very words and there is no doubt the novel is meticulously researched. Agnes is smart and educated enough to give wise and eloquent assessments of these people and their deeds in a way that is both informative and entertaining. This is another terrific read from an author who breathes life into history.
 

Night Train to Jamalpur by Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin might well have called this novel 'Snakes on a Train'. His railway detective, Jim Stringer, has been sent to Calcutta  to investigate corruption and security arrangements on the East Indian Railway. It is 1923 and with Lydia and their sixteen year old daughter Bernadette in tow, his secondment was supposed to be a kind of working holiday.
    But someone has been secreting venomous snakes in first class carriages and the body count begins to climb. Jim feels that this should be something he could look into, and of course he does, hampered as he is by fellow investigator, the cigar smoking and monstrously rude, Major Fisher. The two are on the night train of the title, when a murder takes place - Jim rudely awakened by sounds outside his compartment and then gunshot.
    The Anglo Indian, John Young, with whom Stringer had been chatting and sharing an evening drink just hours before, is found dead while horsemen ride off into the night. It is difficult to suggest a motive for the killing unless Jim himself is the target, a means of stalling any investigations into railway corruption.
    And Jim can only wonder who has stolen the folder of potentially damning information that had arrived on his desk the day before. If only he'd had the chance to read it first. Jim is inclined to suspect Fisher, who is uncooperative and who he believes is carrying a gun, which for some reason fails to appear when their carriage is searched by police.
    If that isn't enough to be going on with, Jim begins to worry that his daughter Bernadette is about to be swept off her feet by the son of a Maharajah, known to the family as the RK. On top of this Bernadette is out almost every night dancing with her posher pals and spending small fortunes on hats. Meanwhile Jim's wife, Lydia, is eager to spread the word about the women's movement in India at a time when revolution is in the air. But Jim worries that there is something else niggling her.
    Jim's investigations take him from balls held by Anglo high society and golfing with the RK to clandestine meetings with snake charmers. There is a host of potential suspects, most of them peculiar in some way - the strangely faceless William Asquith in charge of the traffic department who spends more than he could possible earn,  his subordinate Dougie Poole, who has a brilliant mind hidden by his tendency to be off his face most of the time, as well as Professor Hedley Fleming who knows an inordinate amount about snakes, to name but three.
    While this novel isn't as pacy as some Jim Stringer novels, there is a lot going on and enough action to keep the reader well amused. And laced through everything is Jim's knack for wry observations and local colour. The India situation in itself is interesting, with whisperings about that upstart, Gandhi while Lydia has plenty to say about British colonial domination.
    Night Train to Jamalpur is the last in the Jim Stringer series to date, its author seemingly beavering away on other projects. We've seen Jim delve into all manner of cases in a range of interesting settings. Will there be more in the series? I certainly hope so as this is probably my favourite current mystery series - where it doesn't really matter 'whodunit', as the story is all in the telling. Which is just as it should be.

The Separation by Dinah Jefferies

The Separation is one of those wonderfully escapist novels that packs in an atmospheric setting, in this case, 1950s Malaya. It conjures up the somewhat dissolute expat way of life, the gin-slings and infidelity, which was probably just a way of coping with the heat. It reminded me a little of those old black and white movies where you can hear jungle drums and crickets in the background while the plantation owner mutters, The natives are restless tonight.
    Although half of the novel is set in England. This is because it is told from the point of view of two main characters. First there is Lydia Cartwright, who with her Rita Hayworth looks, has been a bit naughty and started an affair which she hasn't kept very secret. She has been visiting a friend who is ill, when she returns to find hubby Alec and her children gone, the house left empty with no note, so she begins to panic.
    The British District Officer tells her Alec and her young daughters have gone north to Alec's new posting in Ipoh, where the natives truly are restless - with Communist insurgents undermining British rule with guerilla tactics. So Lydia, must make the dangerous journey to join her family alone, even having to borrow cash from her worldly friend, Cicely, as Alec has taken most of their money.
    We read about Lydia's desperate journey where she witnesses atrocities when her bus is attacked. She finds herself taking care of a small boy, Maznan, whose mother has joined the rebels, when a striking man of mixed race joins her and helps her; I imagined a kind of Yul Brynner.
    But while Lydia is making this arduous journey, her daughters, Emma and Fleur, are travelling by cargo ship with Alec to England. This part of the story is narrated by eleven-year-old Emma, who with her wild red hair reminds her father too much of Lydia and as such she never seems able to please him. On the journey the family becomes friendly with amicable Veronica, who seems to have an attraction for Alec, and her creepy brother, Mr Oliver, who has wandering hands.
    In England, Emma finds it hard to settle in the cold climate and cramped house that they share with Alec's parents. Grandma fortunately is a kindly old soul but Emma is always in trouble, until boarding school seems to be the only solution. The school, run by nuns, is particularly bleak, and Emma finds it hard to cope with bullying on the one hand, and the harsh regime on the other, but at least she makes a friend in perpetually naughty Susan. On top of everything, her father has led his daughters to believe that their mother has abandoned them and is missing, believed dead.
    There is a lot going on in the story - we have Emma's dealing with adolescence and her missing mother, who she never really gives up on, amid difficult relationships with the adults in her life. And then there's Lydia's desperate search for her family, and a terrible bombshell that causes her to teeter on the edge of madness. How she copes and pulls herself together when one awful thing happens after another gives her a chance to grow strong and is a key part of the story. But how to navigate a path to the truth when everyone seems to be either lying or hiding a woeful secret of their own makes Lydia seem doubly blighted.
    The Separation is a captivating story which makes you keep reading to see what happens. Feelings run high, there's a ton of drama and missing links that make for tantalising if not very demanding reading. The Malaya setting is brilliantly recreated here, a testament to the author's research and her own childhood years spent in the colony.

Black Faces, White Faces by Jane Gardam

I came across this collection of short stories in a second-hand shop and what a joy! First published in 1975, Black Faces, White Faces is a book of interconnected stories about mostly English people on holiday in Jamaica. There's a law conference on, so many of the guests are lawyers, silks and even judges - and their wives - and there's a fair bit of kicking up of heels and disturbing desires that don't usually surface in the cooler English climate.
    Each story follows the point of view of a character, who we may meet again from another character's point of view, and as usual there's Gardam's dry wit and gift for the telling phrase. There's a huge span in age among the guests represented here.  At one end of the scale is the young Egerton lad, whose story, 'The Best Day of My Easter Holidays', is a school exercise that sharply captures the oddity of the English on holiday in an exotic location.
    Chaperoned by Jolly Jackson, their guide, the Egertons are taken on a lightning fast tour of the island, interrupted with car crashes and tropical storms. It throws up the racial unease that exists as well as the disparity between the wealthy tourists in luxury accommodation and the poorest islanders and their shanty-town existence. Of course the boy's teacher doesn't believe a word of it.
    At the other end of the scale is 'Something to Tell the Girls', where two ancient school teachers go on an outing where they naively rub shoulders with the rougher Jamaican elements and are rescued in part by friendly locals but also by their inability to notice they are in trouble.
    There is a honeymoon story that could be a bit Mills and Boon if it weren't for the couple's names (Boofy and Pussy!) and the droll style of the writing - particularly the appreciative comments from the old Jamaican hired to rake the sand at the hotel beach. There's a mildly creepy ghost story and a glimpse of a long-ago murder that has put a kind of hex on the beach after dark.
    As usual it is the details that make people seem so ridiculous out of their usual environment - the little preoccupations with things like raffia dinner mats, and very English clothing that isn't suitable in the heat. Many characters aren't very happy, in spite of the luxury accommodation - even the gorgeous Mrs Santamarina from Bolivia, or the newly titled Lady Fletcher.
    It's a collection of contrasts, with some interesting themes that are handled with great humanity and a light touch that lets the humour and irony shine through. And all the more readable for that. If there were more stories like this, I could happily read nothing but short stories and it is no surprise that this collection won prizes - the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.

A Treacherous Paradise by Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell writes two kinds of novel: dark and moody detective novels, usually featuring troubled Swedish policeman, Kurt Wallander, or stories set in Africa. I've read quite a few of the Wallander books, which are never anything short of terrific, but A Troubled Paradise is the first I've read of Mankell's Africa books.
    As a historical novel this seems a new departure for this author. It is set over a hundred years ago in Mozambique, at that time a colony of Portugal.  But there is at the heart of the book, a kind of mystery, which is based on a little known fact that Mankell came across: that a Swedish woman was for a brief period the owner of a flourishing brothel in the port of Lourenco Marques -  now Maputo. Where she came from and what she did after that, no one seems to know.
    Mankell teases this out into the story of Hanna Renstrom, a teenage girl from an impoverished rural family in the north of Sweden,  sent by her mother to the city to make her own way in life. After a stint as a maid, Hanna is given the opportunity to work on a steamship as cook. Soon after, she is married to the third mate, only to be widowed a short time later when her husband dies of an unknown fever off the coast of Africa.
    Unable to contain her grief, Hanna decides to stay at the port where her husband is buried at sea, escaping her ship by night and making her way to what appears to be a hotel. Hanna suffers an illness here herself, is cared for by the exotic looking female staff and only realises a few days later that the hotel is really a brothel. As the weeks pass, Hanna feels unable to leave, the decision to return to Sweden is too difficult to make, but no obvious alternatives appear either.
    Fortunately Hanna has some money, a widow's pension given her by the shipping company, so no immediate departure is necessary. This gives Mankell the opportunity to describe through Hanna's eyes the environment created by the white Portuguese colonists, where blacks far outnumber the whites who have all the power and use harsh measures to maintain control.
    There is an intense discomfort in this relationship, and Hanna is appalled at the treatment of blacks by their bosses, their lack of rights and the brutal punishments that meet the merest of misdemeanours. But making friends with the black prostitutes and other native staff also creates distrust and uncertainty. Many of her efforts to help backfire, and she is shocked to find she reacts violently when one of the prostitutes drops a tray.
    Mankell creates some wonderful characters: the unpleasantly evil nurse, Ana Dolores; the lovely and worldly prostitute, Felicia, who becomes as close to Hanna as any of the girls; the wise yet volatile brothel owner, Senhor Vas; the crocodile farming, guard-dog breeder, Senhor Pimenta, who makes a fortune out of people's fear. Even Vas's pet chimpanzee, Carlos, has loads of personality, and Hanna recognises in herself his same the sense of displacement.
    Over the course of the novel, Hanna has to grow up. She has come from an incredibly sheltered background, but learns to read and speak Portuguese, to run a business, to figure out who she can trust and who she cannot. She gains enough confidence to champion the cause of a black woman who murders her white husband, and this doesn't earn Hanna any favours.
    There is certainly much to think about here, but the extraordinary setting, the engaging character of Hanna and the events that happen to her provide a very absorbing story. There is as much pace in the book as any of Mankell's gripping detective novels, with the bonus of taking you to a very different place and time, albeit a grim and tragic one.