Book Review “Murder at Traitors’ Gate” by Irina Shapiro

This is the second of the Tate and Bell mysteries, I loved the first one The Highgate Cemetery Murder and this is also a cracker. You don’t have to read the first book to enjoy this but it will give you more background to the main characters and for me it was also a five-star read. This book begins with the discovery of the gruesome murder of Jacob Harrow, a journalist hung up by a meat hook at the Traitors’ Gate of the title. Sebastian Bell is the police officer assigned to investigate the murder, like in the previous mystery there is a connection to the Crimean War and Bell seeks to renew his acquaintance with Gemma Tate, who had served as a nurse in the Crimean War and knew the victim.

This is London in the late 1850s, the nurses who had returned from the Crimea are viewed unjustly with suspicion, as what honorable woman would go to such a place? There is a lot of prejudice against women shown throughout the story; a woman’s reputation was precious and could be easily be besmirched through no fault of her own. Inspector Bell has to tread carefully when meeting up with Miss Tate as her boarding house landlady doesn’t approve of any male guests even if they work for the police.

Sebastian Bell needs a result or his job is on the line, his superiors are not too bothered if the wrong man is arrested provided the case is ‘resolved’ but Bell is dogged in pursuing the truth and follows up each lead with due diligence.

Tate and Bell make a good team, even though Gemma Tate has no hope in those times of working for the police in an official capacity, she has a position as a nurse in a Foundling Hospital for orphans and abandoned children. Gemma is keen to help the investigation despite Bell’s misgivings “the thought of investigating gave her something of a rush.”

There are many people happy Jacob Harrow is dead as aside from his journalism he had a lucrative line in blackmail often coming from information learned at the Scutari hospital in Turkey, where wounded soldiers would confess their darkest secrets to their nurses, who might share that incriminating information with Harrow for a price.

The story is gripping and fast paced, the historical detail is for the most part very good, I particularly liked the description of the smells of 1850s London. There was again one anachronistic reference to Botany Bay (the last convicts were shipped to New South Wales in 1850 almost a decade before the events in the book. The ending was satisfying and I look forward to future books in the series.

Expected publication June 24, 2024

Thanks to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for the digital ARC, I leave this review voluntarily.

My rating 5 out of 5

Book Review: “Gilgamesh the King” by Robert Silverberg

I read a lot of science fiction by Silverberg in my teens, this book was different it was a mix of the historical, the mythological and the fantastic. The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest pieces of world literature, this is a reimagining of Gilgamesh’s story in the form of his memoir. Gilgamesh sees himself as two parts god and one part man, he was an ancient hero king of Uruk who was likely a historical figure, living sometime between 2800 BC and 2500 BC.

This is partly a Coming of Age story of an arrogant protagonist, Gilgamesh is very full of himself from an early age, the son of King Lugalbanda, who dies when Gilgamesh is a boy. Gilgamesh is a giant among the people of Uruk, tall and broad shouldered with a hungry appetite for food and women. Uruk is a city with divided loyalties between its king and priestess. Gilgamesh is also very lonely, he turns down the suggestion of marriage from Inanna, the high priestess, and meets a wild man Enkidu, who matches Gilgamesh in strength and the two become close friends or something more. In Silverberg’s tale he emphasises Gilgamesh’s womanising, not wishing to state a homosexual bond between the two men, although Gilgamesh tells us “He was to me my other half”, their relationship like that of David and Jonathan is certainly ambiguous. The book also gets philosophical as Gilgamesh leaves the city on a quest to find an answer to death and whether he can overcome death. I didn’t warm to the central character, who was too arrogant and lacked respect of those around him. Apart from Gilgamesh, the characters aren’t well fleshed out and seem a little two dimensional. I prefer Silverberg’s sci-fi.

My rating 3 out of 5

Book Review: “The Devil in the Red Dirt” by Michael P Smith

This is an Australian noir novel set in the early to mid sixties. The action starts in Darlinghurst, the dark heart of Sydney, where drug addiction, bar fights, prostitution and alcoholism is rife. James Harris the right hand man of gangster kingpin Ronnie Prince, he is known as the “Ten Bob Pom”, he is also “working” for the police and taking copious quantities of drugs.

I lived in Sydney in the eighties and it was nostalgic to read the names of districts of Sydney I frequented like Woolloomooloo, Coogee and Darlinghurst. Darlinghurst had been gentrified by the time I arrived for rather more than 10 bob.

Two aboriginal children have been found dead and “posed” post mortem in the back of a Rolls Royce in Darlinghurst, the NSW PD corrupt to the core are trying to frame an aboriginal man for the murder and Harris is assigned the case. He figures it is a set up, most aboriginals didn’t drive and the idea of one driving a Rolls Royce was crazy. Harris asked two of the line up of an ID parade to change places, both “witnesses” identified number four as the driver of the car barely looking at the man.

Unlike his colleagues, Harris is interested in getting to the bottom of the crime but often distracted in finding his next fix. He teams up with Lescott another broken man from the Missing Persons department and they take a road trip to Alice Springs at the centre of the red dirt via Adelaide, Woomera and Coober Pedy. In Alice they are joined by Charlie, an aboriginal riddled with guilt over the disappearance of the children. The three make an interesting trio.

In 1963 Australian Aboriginals weren’t even Australian citizens (that came in 1967) and there was a lot of prejudice directed at them, they were not allowed in most pubs and the police weren’t interested when their children went missing.

This is a dark and disturbing mystery, with well drawn characters. The historical detail seems authentic you can almost smell the smoky interiors. It was a terrific read, building to a chilling climax, it would make a great movie.

Thanks to the author and BookSirens for a review copy, I voluntarily leave this review.

My rating 5 out of 5

Book Review: “Out Front the Following Sea” by Leah Angstman

This is a debut historical novel publishing in January 2022.

This is a great book if you like a fast paced plot in an authentic historical setting.

Ruth Miner our protagonist is in a difficult position as an independent self-educated spirit in the suffocating patriarchal society of late 17th Century New England, she has been physically branded a witch, as a result of a fire in which her parents died and because some animals died coincidentally around the same time.

You think I am a witch? This you call me? Then witch I am! I’ll be that devil conjuror you must blame for your deaths and poor crops and sick children.

When her grandmother dies she chooses to flee the township, where she was branded and met with only scorn from her neighbors. 17th Century New England is not a place to move about safely, there are the Pequots, savage natives angered by their mistreatment at the hands of the colonists, there are pirates and highwaymen, there are bands of militia and there are natural hazards like storms at sea. In addition the conflict in far off Europe between old England and old France, has spread to New England and New France, speaking the French language and loving a French sailor can get Ruth into serious difficulties.

There are some wonderful layered characters as well as Ruth there is Owen, her romantic interest, who has to suffer much being of French blood and being loyal to Ruth despite everything. There is the cruel and vindictive recently-widowed Samuel Whitlock, interested in Ruth because she is young and of child bearing age, even though his own wife is not even “a week in the ground.”

“Samuel, you didn’t even ask her name.”
He looked at her blankly and gave a small shrug.
“Soon enough it will be Whitlock.”

I found the title difficult to remember and I also question a historic detail, early on Ruth has coffee for her breakfast, and I would have thought coffee at the time would have been an expensive luxury not commonly available. Coffee was not grown in the Americas until 1720 when coffee seedlings were first brought to Martinique in the Caribbean. There is a wealth of other historic detail, which seems authentic from the description of the different sails on the ship to the materials kept in the house for starting a fire.

I was surprised by the pacing, it kept me gripped, even to the point where I missed my bus stop, it has been a while since that has happened, when I’ve been reading a book. I’ll be looking out for future books by Leah Angstman.

The ARC was provided by the publisher via BookSirens in exchange for an honest review.

My rating 4.5 out of 5

Book Review: “Cry of the Innocent” by Julie Bates

Cry of the Innocent

Faith is an inn keeper in Williamsburg in 1774. Revolutionary mumblings are in the air, Boston is suffering from the aftermath of their Tea Party, but Faith has more immediate concerns. One of her regulars, Phineas Bullard, has been murdered, a regular to whom she owed a lot of money, a nasty man with a lot of enemies. The Sons of Liberty had left their calling card in the form of a banner by the corpse. The initial suspect, Stella, the slave of the victim, has run away and is captured by a lynch mob and only saved from said lynch mob by a gallant British Captain, Stephen Grant. The book starts well plunging the reader straight into the mystery as to who killed Phineas Bullard, a wealthy storekeeper involved in the shady practice of capturing and reselling freed slaves. Shortly after the murder there is a fire at the inn, burning the room of the murder. So we have a lot of action at the start. Faith is keen to solve the mystery as not only she but also her slaves Olivia and Titus could well be suspects and the murder is bad for business. But the pacing is odd for a murder mystery after a dramatic beginning, Faith makes almost no progress on solving the mystery until 80% into the book. There is a lot of historical detail and the Wiliamsburg of 1774 is brought to life. We also get a lot about how the owning of slaves grates with Faith’s Quaker beliefs, the slaves were a present from her late husband’s family and now with her husband gone, she would like to free them but lacks the means, and even freed Virginia is not a safe place for African Americans with those like Phineas Bullard and his ilk looking to make a quick profit from human cargo.

This was an enjoyable read, the character of Faith was well drawn but I’d have liked more development of secondary characters like the printer’s indentured servant, Will MacKay and Faith’s difficult mother-in-law Eugenia. The historical detail appears authentic, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have cameo roles, when they meet up in the inn with Faith’s father-in-law, Ezra. The book feels like the opening of a series with more to follow as the Revolution becomes more widespread.

Thank you NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

My rating 4 out of 5

Book Review: “The Cartographer’s Secret” by Tea Cooper.

Maps. Secrets. Australia. Ok, I have taken the bait will the story reel me in?

At the beginning of the novel there are two time frames. In 1911 we meet Lettie in Sydney, a young woman reeling from the accidental death of her brother Thorne. And in 1880 we have Lettie’s aunt, Evie at Yellow Rock in the Hunter Valley, north west of Newcastle in New South Wales.  Evie has been left by her father to collate his notes and create a map to unravel the mystery of what happened to German explorer, Leichhardt. Evie’s father, Lettie’s grandfather, William is obsessed with the explorer Leichhardt whom he had met in 1842. A fateful meeting, which results in a series of misfortunes for his family.

Desperate to get away from Sydney, Lettie takes her new-fangled Model T Ford to Yellow Rock to find her great aunt Olivia, who has been estranged from her mother, Miriam for 30 years. Olivia doesn’t turn out to be the dreadful woman her mother had led her to believe and it turns out there are a lot of secrets in the family. Lettie is drawn into the mysterious disappearance of her aunt 30 years previously. Her aunt, Evie, had seen a reward offered by a newspaper for evidence of where the explorer met his fate. The reward could help restore the family’s finances depleted from funding Leichhardt’s expedition and then an unsuccessful second expedition to find the vanished explorer.

The setting of Yellow Rock and the Hunter Valley is well drawn by the author. I wonder if the call of the koel, an Australian cuckoo, has some symbolic meaning.  The mysteries are slowly revealed as the book progresses. There is a romantic element in the shape of Nathaniel, a drover with a lopsided grin whose look made Lettie’s heart “skip a beat”, but it is the mysteries that keep you turning the pages. Lettie is a very independent young woman but she does somewhat reluctantly appreciate being rescued when her car hits a culvert out the back of Bourke.

The book combines mystery, adventure and family drama with strong female characters against a stunning background of the Hunter Valley of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The story had me hooked.

With thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Australia for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

My rating 5 out of 5

The Kindle version is available now, the paperback and audio CD will be released on November 16, 2021.

Book review: “Jonathan Strange and Dr Morrell” by Susanna Clarke

“Magic is returning to England. Strange has found a way to bring it back.”

This book took me an age to read, I began on 1 August 2018 and finished it yesterday (October 28, 2019). It was just so long (1006 pages) and so slow paced. The updates I posted on Goodreads of my progress couldn’t all fit on one page.

Updates on Goodreads for the first 70% of the book

Set in the Regency Period, this is a story of English magicians, particularly the two of the title. If you are expecting a Hogwart’s for grown-ups you will be disappointed. Clarke has clearly read many Victorian and Regency writers and has the literary nous, but J K Rowling is much better at drawing you into her fantasy world created with characters who you really care about. We begin with Mr Gilbert Norrell, a keen collector of books on magic, who sees himself as the only practical magician in England, the others like those of The Learned Society of York Magicians are merely theoretical magicians. He impresses government ministers when, with the aid of a villainous gentleman with thistledown hair from the land of Faerie, he manages to bring an influential politician’s newly deceased fiancée back to life. He is then employed to contribute to the war effort against the French and he manages to create an illusory fleet out of rain to keep the French ships blockaded in their ports.
The book, I feel could have done with a good editor, it is incredibly long weighing in at over 1000 pages, there are flashes of brilliance but it is a long slog from beginning to end. We have to plough through a quarter of the book until we meet the second character from the title, Jonathan Strange, a second practical magician, who seems more of a natural at magic than the more scholarly Norrell. This book has copious footnotes, unusual in a work of fiction, relating often to fictitious tomes on English magic. There are also a few pencil drawn illustrations to give the book that 19th century look.

Illustration by Portia Rosenberg and footnote

The language is a kind of faux-Victorian with archaic spellings sprinkled liberally throughout the text like “chuse” and “shewed”. Some of the characters names like Drawlight, Childermass and Honeyfoot seem to have walked straight out of a Dickensian novel. Real historic characters like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Byron enter the story but do little to enhance the story. The characters are rather dry and chaste, the reader doesn’t get emotionally attached to them.

that is one thick book…

My rating : three out of five