Civil to Strangers by Barbara Pym

Published posthumously, I was quite prepared for Civil to Strangers to be somewhat ordinary, by Barbara Pym's standards, that is. It was her second novel, after Some Tame Gazelle had unsuccessfully gone the rounds of the publishers, and like this one, no doubt languished in the attic - until recently.
    Of course if you don't like Pym, this won't bother you at all, and if you do like Pym, then you have the pleasure of a new one, decades after her death. And also the sorrow of realising that she could never be aware of the success she would enjoy today.
    Civil to Strangers is wonderful in that it doesn't appear to have been written by someone still perfecting her style. The writing has all the features we recognise in Pym, the small village, in this case it is Up Callow, where a lot of the action is centred around the rectory and its clerical types. There's a lovely scene in church where the sermon about embroidery, of all things, is mulled over by various members of the congregation. And there is Pym's trademark irony and her likeable if rather silly village characters and their little concerns, all bound together in a light, elegant style.
    Mostly, this is the story of Cassandra, who is really nice. She's quite nice looking, does things properly without fuss and always manages to say the right thing. She's married to Adam Marsh-Gibbon, a writer of difficult to understand novels, and as such the couple are much admired because Adam gives their village a bit of fame in the broader world. But Cassandra worries that she loves her rather self-centred, artistic husband more than he loves her.
    When an exotic Hungarian stranger takes up residence in one of the village's more notable properties, the village is abuzz with gossip. Thirty-year-old Angela Gay, who fears she may be left on the shelf, has found charming the austere young curate, Mr Paladin, an uphill battle so she soon switches her attentions to Mr Tilos the Hungarian. Unfortunately, Tilos falls for Cassandra instead.
    In the background the village characters ponder and discuss these goings-on, particularly Mrs Gower, who as the widow of an academic enjoys a degree of prestige, and Angela's uncle, Mr Gay, a handsome man of sixty who never quite realised his dream of marrying for money. With characters like these it isn't surprising Pym is sometimes likened to a modern Jane Austen.
    The drama moves to Hungary and there are amusing scenes on a train when Cassandra befriends some churchly types in an attempt to avoid Mr Tilos's advances. There are misunderstandings, dawning realisations and reconciliations, while one or two new romantic attachments develop in the background. Who knew village life could be so dramatic?
    You come away from reading a Pym novel feeling warmed and amused without any affront to your intelligence - there's even a smattering of literary quotations for fans of the classics. And with Pym's lively dialogue and whimsical style you can happily reread a Pym novel because like Cassandra's embroidery, it is so much richer for the inclusion of plenty of stitches.

The Corners of the Globe by Robbert Goddard

I could develop quite a taste for spy novels, having just finished the second in Robert Goddard's trilogy featuring James 'Max' Maxted, a returned POW and ex-Royal Flying Corps fighter pilot. We first met Max in The Ways of the World, when he rushes to Paris to uncover the facts behind his father's death. A member of a team of delegates sent to help broker a stable settlement after World War One, Sir Henry was pushed off a building, a death made to look like suicide. Sir Henry was obviously aware of secret and damaging information and had to be silenced.
    Everything seems to come back to one man - Fritz Lemmer, onetime spymaster for the Kaiser, and now apparently determined to turn events in favour of Germany and its allies. By the end of the first book, the only way Max can discover what's going on is to enlist as an agent with Lemmer's network, secretly aided by Horace Appleby, a top man in the British Secret Service.
    The Corners of the Globe starts out in the Orkney Isles, where Max is sent by Lemmer to retrieve a document held by a German battleship commander. If you know about this area of history, after the war, the German fleet of battleships was interned here at Scapa Flow.
     Max soon realises the importance of the document he has been sent to get, particularly when people around him begin to die. A cryptically encoded list of Lemmer's agents seems too good to hand over so Max decides to make a run for it and return the document to Appleby, if he can just get to London. There are some hair-raising scenes involving jumping on and off trains and dodging Lemmer's henchmen.
    Meanwhile back in Paris, Sam Twentyman, Max's old flight mechanic, is carrying on with his work maintaining the ambassadorial motor fleet, when a meeting with Sir Henry's Japanese policeman friend, Commissioner Kuroda, causes Sam grave concern. Kuroda warns him that Friz Lemmer believes certain documents are in possession of le Singe, an Algerian thief and seller of secrets. Sam's acquaintance with le Singe in the previous book surely puts him in danger.
    And then of all people, Max's Uncle George gets caught up in the action, when some ancient artefacts sold by Sir Henry to raise money in a hurry turn out to be fakes and the buyer wants his money back. George agrees to go to Paris to hunt out the dealer, Soutine, who wouldn't you know is a close pal of le Singe's. Could he be dealing in secrets too?
    There are some very embarrassing secrets worth protecting, and quite a few eager to use them to advantage, among whom are our three American friends, Travis Ireton, the mysterious trader in useful information, his able colleague Schools Morahan and their savvy secretary Malory.
    I  found the Malory/Morahan/Sam team a particularly engaging set of characters, caught up in some intense skullduggery at the hands of the Japanese contingent. Everything seems to go back to Sir Henry's time in Japan; even Lemmer was on the scene there. While Max is legging it around Britain, Sam and the Americans are holding the fort in Paris, discovering what le Singe has been hiding.
    Max is really put through the mill, as Lemmer's agents come out of the woodwork at every turn. If he is somewhat too much the perfect upper-class hero, he is easily forgiven for being a little two-dimensional when you see what Goddard throws at him in a sequence of thrilling action scenes, leading eventually to Marseilles. By the end, Max is up against the wall as we reach one of those agonising last pages that finishes with those dreaded words 'to be continued'. Although it might seem impossible, the reader can be sure things will turn out just fine for Max, but unfortunately, we will have to wait until some time next year to find out how.

The Reckoning by Rennie Airth

The Reckoning is the fourth crime novel featuring John Madden, a retired policeman from Scotland Yard, happily ensconced in the country. It is 1947, and the National Health Scheme is imminent, a royal wedding is in the wings and England seems to be looking forward to a new post-war era, in spite of ongoing rationing.
    An execution style murder on the banks of a Sussex river has the local police stumped. The killer, a youngish man in a red sweater was spotted by a farmer so you'd expect he'd be easy to catch, and yet he seems to have vanished. His victim, retired deputy bank manager Oswald Gibson, was a quiet, inoffensive chap who enjoyed fishing and belonged a local music society. Who could possibly want to kill him?
    Scotland Yard is called in and Madden's former colleague, Billy Sykes, is just as perplexed although there are a couple of useful clues: the murder is oddly similar to the death of a Scottish doctor and so may be the work of the same killer.  The second clue is even more astonishing. It seems, Gibson was writing a letter, which he never posted, addressed to John Madden. He'd had something he wanted to discuss with the ex-detective, but Madden has no recollection of having met the man.
    The death of Tom Singleton in Oxford, with a similar shot to the neck, indicates a serial killer is at large, while the similarity of the victims' ages suggest that all of them may have served in the First World War, like Madden. He decides there must be a connection in their past and what that link is must be found quickly or very soon there are likely to be more deaths.
    Madden pops into London to help an elderly aunt with some renovations - also an excuse to check in with his old colleagues who are running the case. Airth has produced some terrific characters here - along with ex-army Sykes, there's DCS Chubb, a plain-spoken but endearing bulldog of a man, and stout hearted Lily Poole, recently plucked from uniform and with buckets of nous. But it's 1947 and an uphill battle to be taken seriously as a female detective.
   The Reckoning had me completely riveted - so fortunate to have a wet Sunday as I couldn't put the book down. Not only has Airth concocted a satisfying mystery, but there's a good supply of action and plot-twists to keep the reader hooked. What's more the writing is superb and there is plenty of thought given to the ongoing trauma created by the first war to end all wars, but this never bogs the story down.
    You can quite happily read The Reckoning as a stand alone novel, but it is a pleasure to know that there are several more books featuring John Madden and his smartly intuitive detective work.

The Lost Luggage Porter by Andrew Martin

I don't often pick up mystery novels involving organised crime or gangs of thieves, but I felt happy to make an exception with the third Jim Stringer railway detective novel by Andrew Martin. I knew I wouldn't be disappointed and I was right.
    Martin throws Jim in at the deep end when he turns up for his first day as a detective, having lost his one chance at his dream job as an engine driver because of a terrible blunder that wasn't his fault.   Lydia, 'the wife', is pleased about this as she is smart and she knows Jim has a good brain and thinks he should use it. She is ambitious and modern, a working woman in her own right and pregnant with their first child.
    But back to Jim's first day. Instead of getting to know the rest of the team of York railway police, Chief Inspector Weatherill, a large, messy looking cigar smoker, sends Jim off to buy a scruffy suit so he can go undercover. His brief is to ferret out criminals involved in a spate of burglaries at the station.
    Jim buys a tired old suit from a second hand dealer, as well as a pair of spectacles, and promptly pushes out the lenses. He plonks the glasses on and his disguise is complete. Which is just as well, because an incident the previous day, has shown Jim just where he can begin. This involved the lost luggage porter of the title, a pale, sickly creature named Lund. It was Lund who not only produced Jim's missing railway magazines, but alerted Jim to a pickpocketing duo he referred to as the Brains and the Blocker.
    Perhaps it should have been Lund who joined the detective ranks, as Lund also tells Jim the pub, the euphemistically named Garden Gate, where he would find them. Jim declares his eagerness to join the gang, and after proving himself as a willing if not skilful pickpocket is soon taken on.
    But Jim hasn't bargained on the ruthless nature of the gang's leader, one Valentine Sampson, who has boasted of killing two policemen. When the gang pulls off a heist at York station after dark, a piece of action that involves some shooting and two potential casualties, Jim is hauled off to Paris with the Brains and Sampson. It seems likely that one of the gang has betrayed them, and Jim is put on watch.
    How Jim attempts to make his escape and return home makes for some entertaining reading, and the story rollicks along nicely. But what makes this book work so well is the way Martin builds up his characters, Jim's perky narration, the smart dialogue laced with humour and the period detail which makes you really feel you are in a railway station in the north of England, circa 1905. It is all of this that makes the series such an absorbing read and utterly original.

Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes

Cold Flat Junction follows on from Hotel Paradise which was a mystery novel complete in itself, but leaving enough for its young detective, Emma Graham, to uncover in a follow-up book. If you remember, Emma's curiosity was piqued by a photograph showing a family of stern looking aunts, their pretty younger sister, Rose, and their niece, Mary Evelyn, who drowned in mysterious circumstances forty years before.
    It is also the story of two murders, the first twenty years ago, when Rose was discovered stabbed in the chicken house. Taking the blame for her killing, her husband, Ben Queen, has just been released from prison, when their daughter, Fern, is shot dead near Lake Noir.
    Taking up where her inquiries had left off, Emma is determined to prove Ben Queen innocent, while also discovering the identity of the mysterious pale girl, who looks exactly like Rose. She is pretty sure that the key lies way back in the past, before the drowning of Mary Evelyn, who she is certain was killed by her aunts. But what reason would they have to hate her so much?
    The novel meanders its way around Emma's interviews with a wide cast of characters - many of whom we've met before: Sheba and George Queen, Miss Landis the schoolteacher and the regulars at the Windy Run Diner at Cold Flat Junction. Much closer to home, she teases out more stories from nonagenarian Aunt Aurora who reveals a potential scandal.
    Dwayne the mechanic will help out with transport to Lake Noir, and the spooky Brokedown House, while Ulub and Ubub and Mr Root will be among those few who take her seriously. Meanwhile Emma's mother, her martini guzzling business partner, Lola, and Lola's daughter the vapid ReeJane, all take a holiday leaving the hotel's few guests in the hands of Emma, her brother Will and the dishwasher dogsbody Walter. Good old Sheriff DeGheyn is patently upset on Emma's behalf, but the holiday gives Emma more chances to slip away and investigate in places that would appal her mother if only she knew.
    But DeGheyn is reluctant to heed Emma's concerns when it comes to Ben Queen's innocence and he remains a person of interest. This gives the story enough urgency to keep us all on our toes as things move along to a very surprising ending.
    Blended in with the story are some nice literary touches such as the deus ex machina, which is a crucial part of the musical production of Medea that Will and his friend Mill (Brownmiller) are putting together. Then there are the references to William Faulkner, a favourite author of Dwayne's, particularly the novel, Light in August, which gives Emma a clue to her mystery. There's also a lot of cigarettes and alcohol - truly Emma doesn't have a typical childhood - and endless meals. This gives the book plenty of colour as clues to the past slowly unfold.
    This is another satisfying read from Grimes, who is a whizz with atmospheric settings and quaint small-town characters, producing an imaginative story that shows just how the present can be mired in the past. But then the best stories so often do.

The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard

There's nothing like a map at the beginning of a book, snuck in between the title page and Chapter One to whet your curiosity. And what could be better than a map of central Paris complete with the Isle de la Cite, Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower? Robert Goddard's novel The Ways of the World has exactly that being set in the city of light, during the spring of 1919, when Paris hosted many of the world's diplomats and heads of state in order to discuss the fate of the nations caught up in WW1 and set the tone of the new peace. Or something like that.
    When one James 'Max' Maxted - formerly of the Royal Flying Corps - discovers that his father has died suddenly in suspicious circumstances, he and his brother, Ashley, journey to Paris to bring the body home. Sir Henry, a minor diplomat, had fallen from the top of a building in Montmartre, upstairs from the apartment where he would visit his mistress, Corinne Dombreux. They'd met in Russia prior to the revolution, and Sir Henry, stationed in St Petersburg, had been a shoulder to cry on when Corinne's late husband had been unmasked as a traitor.
    Ashley, heir to the Maxted fortune, is happy to hush the incident up as an unfortunate accident and return their father for a quick and discreet burial. But James is determined to discover what really happened - he suspects foul play - and stays in Paris to avenge his father's death.
   It seems Sir Henry had contacts with a Russian organisation hoping to overturn the Bolsheviks and was in touch with an American seller of secrets, Travis Ireton. Also on the scene is Lionel Brigham, another diplomat who happens to be the lover of Max's mother. There are loads of suspects plus a cryptic document that would indicate Sir Henry was trying to raise some money. A quick search of his hotel room reveals a small key - the kind that is used for a safety deposit box - but what has happened to his diary? Max is up against the French police and the British Secret Service who don't want to cause any diplomatic upset that could stall the peace talks.
   Fortunately for us Max is determined, smart and fairly fit, in spite of his time as a POW - he'll need to be, particularly when up against Fritz Lemmer, former spymaster to the Kaiser, and Tarn, a particularly ruthless assassin who can kill and vanish into the night. It's also good news that Max has his old flight mechanic mate, Sam Twentyman, on hand to help out when things get tight.
   The two make a great team - Max, a man of action, has a privileged background, so he knows how to talk to the diplomatic lot. Sam comes from a family of bakers - he hopes he and Max will realise their dream of starting a flying school so he doesn't have to join the family shop - and he's a lot more down to earth and good fun, though smart too.
   But The Ways of the World is really too busy delivering a ripping yarn to worry much about its characters, which are interesting enough, but not particularly complex. It is a story loaded with atmosphere both of the post WWI period and the setting of Paris during a not very warm spring. It also gives quite a good picture of the sort of diplomatic wheelings and dealings, the favours and bargaining that underpinned the Treaty of Versailles. A quick and diverting read, this is the first in a trilogy, which is good news and better still, the second book, The Corners of the Globe, has been recently released.
 

Mercy by Jussie Adler-Olsen

What is it about maverick Scandinavian detectives that we like so much? Eager to read beyond Nesbo and Mankell, I took a punt on Danish author, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and read the first in his Department Q series.  Mercy introduces us to his taciturn, difficult detective, Carl Morck. Of course we expect him to be taciturn and difficult (aren't they all?), but this guy is verging on antisocial, and who can blame him?
    Morck has just come back from extended leave, after a shooting which left him wounded, one fellow officer dead and another paralysed for life. He is bitter and burdened by guilt when he turns up at work, where he discovers he is to be in charge of Department Q. The government wants some high profile cold cases solved, and are happy to throw money at a police force which is critically under resourced, while Morck's boss is happy to siphon off a chunk of the funding to other departments.
    Morck's new office is in the basement and his only staff will be a kind of janitor dogsbody, a Syrian refugee named Assad. This is fortunate, as Assad is everything his boss isn't: willing, cheerful and polite. Assad is also smart, methodical and has contacts who know about forged documents. Somehow this comes in handy later on. Clearly he's a character full of mysterious potential that will slowly unfold as the series progresses.
    The two make up one of those oddball couples which detective fiction is peppered with, going back to Holmes and Watson. And it works really well, giving a potentially harrowing story a bit of light relief.
    By chance, one of the first cases that interests them is the disappearance of prominent young politician and party hopeful, Merete Lynggaard, assumed drowned. This is just as well, as all the while we have been getting to know Morck and his new set-up, Adler-Olsen has been feeding us scenes from Merete's imprisonment. For five years Merete has been locked in an underground bunker, which her captors leave in darkness, unless they feel like turning the lights on 24/7. You can imagine what that does for Merete's body-clock.
    Her captivity is lacking in basic sanitation, she's on minimal rations, and there is periodically an increase in the air pressure. Meanwhile she is left to try and figure out why she is being punished in this way. The reader is soon aware of two possibilities. In her political career Merete seems to have annoyed quite a few people and stirred up some potential jealousy. Or does the reason go back to her teens, when she was involved in a terrible car crash which destroyed two families? Her private life has been secretive, revolving around caring for her younger brother, whose mind was destroyed by the accident - a situation she tells no one.
    Whatever the reason, Merete's time is running out, and what seems to be a cold case has a sudden urgency which Morck and Assad take time to discover. There's nothing like a dose of dramatic irony to ramp up the tension in a story and it certainly delivers the goods in Mercy. The plot surges towards a dramatic showdown that makes the shooting described at the beginning of the book seem like a minor scuffle.
    Mercy is a brilliant opening to a very promising series, with enough page-turning action and nail-biting suspense to keep you interested, nicely balanced with interesting characterisation and wry humour. It is as well that the story tends to sweep you along, because I found some of the writing a little clunky - probably due to the translation into English - something I've never experienced reading Mankell. It won't stop me picking up the next books in the series though.