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Anthology #32
The Raging Storm, by Ann Cleeves
This is only the third in the Matthew Venn series by this expert author, but already, it has the feel of a well-established series, with familiar characters; the second of the previous two stories, the Heron’s Cry, is reviewed here. Venn is a Detective Inspector in the Devon [England] & Cornwall police force, based at Barnstaple, and he enjoys the beauty of the surrounding coast & countryside, but he is still working his way out of the guilt he feels at abandoning his Christian faith, after a childhood brought up as a member of the élitist Barum Brethren, who are still very much present in the area, including the locus of the story. His latest case concerns the murder of a local celebrity, a seaman & adventurer, by the name of Jeremy, aka Jem, Roscoe who, after having been away for some years, had come back to the area of his origin, and rented a cottage overlooking the sea in a fictional Devon village. He told the pub locals, who were thrilled at his presence, that he was waiting for someone special to arrive, but wouldn’t reveal whom. His body is subsequently found in a small boat, anchored by the coast in a spot which is haunted by doom-laden folklore. In conducting the investigation, Venn must counter the inevitable resistance, and even suspicion of the locals, although his husband, Jonathan, proves to be helpful [again], with his easy-going manner which always seems to put people at ease. As usual with this author, the characters are plausible, and the procedural action develops slowly, but inexorably, towards a satisfying conclusion. Also as usual, at the front of the book there is a monochrome map of the area, albeit not including the fictional village and its nearest town of any size, to help the reader. This canon has already been dramatised, so I look forward to seeing this one, if it occurs, and how well it is adapted from the book. The hardback I read was published in 2023 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, ISBN 978-1-5290-7769–8.
The Hanging Garden, by Ian Rankin
Rebus is very busy: it’s 1997; or thereabouts: the exact date isn’t specified, and there are jumps back into the past; and he is still a Detective Inspector with the Scottish police, based at the St. Leonard’s station in Edinburgh. He is investigating whether a respected retired professor of languages could have been a war criminal, responsible for initiating a massacre of civilians in France during the second world war; it is proving extremely difficult to find any evidence which would support that hypothesis. He also become involved in a developing conflict between two vicious gangs in the city, which threatens to escalate into full-scale war. On one side is the outfit controlled by an awkward Nemesis of Rebus, Morris Gerald Cafferty, who is having to run his empire from a cell in Barlinnie gaol in Glasgow, subsequent to a successful conviction on Rebus’s evidence. The other gang is run by a relative newcomer, the amusingly named Thomas Telford; he has enlisted the help of a Newcastle gangster who is originally from Chechnya, but there is also most recently a Japanese Yakuza presence, which is very disturbing for the Scottish police: especially as the primary object of the upstarts appears to be the total elimination of the established order, namely Cafferty. The latter seems content to regard Rebus as his ‘man’, referring to him as “Strawman”, as a result of events which took place in previous stories, but Rebus is very conscious of the implications, always looking for an opportunity to disabuse Cafferty of this contention. Rebus is now divorced from his wife, Rhona, who lives in London, but their daughter, Samantha, is back home, and she & Rebus seem to be getting along well. Unfortunately, an incident occurs which causes Rebus to risk almost everything to make amends, and he is forced into an unholy alliance with Cafferty. It’s a convoluted plot, but as ever, Rankin ties all the strands together very skilfully, and there are no loose ends. The paperback I read was published in 2021 by Orion Fiction [1998, Orion Books, London], ISBN 978-1-3987-0640-8.
Picture You Dead, by Peter James
The subject of this most recent entry in the Dead series of novels featuring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is avarice; probably not a word in common usage these days, but everybody is aware of greed, and the pernicious effect it can have upon people. It is probably a given that career criminals will allow this unpleasant personality trait to determine their actions, because they have decided that the conventional lifestyle of work for minimal reward, especially if they have no academic qualifications, is not for them; but greed can affect ‘ordinary’ people as well, even if only indirectly. When a respectable builder buys an old painting for peanuts at a car boot sale; not for the art itself, but for the frame, which has a certain aesthetic appeal; the life of the man, his wife, and their adolescent & diabetic son is changed dramatically. Serendipitously [or at least, so it seems at the time], he discovers that there is another, more interesting painting hidden behind the ghastly daub he had seen originally. Naturally, it is worth checking if this first image has any monetary value, so the man starts making enquiries. Unfortunately, people with fewer [or no] scruples become involved, and when it transpires that the painting could be a highly sought-after example of the fête galante school, by the eighteenth century French artist, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, it becomes an object of desire to which life-threatening danger becomes attached; an earlier murder also features. Roy Grace, who is still mourning a son only recently discovered, but lost in a tragic accident, and eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new baby with his second wife, Cleo, solves the crime and, of course, it is a moral tale, but it is well told, as ever. The hardback I read was published in 2022 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, London, ISBN 978-1-5290-0436-6.
Summerland, by Hannu Rajaniemi
I found this story rather confusing; I wouldn’t go so far as to describe it as impenetrable, but there were aspects of it which impeded my enjoyment of it. The plot is conventional enough: an espionage narrative set in an alternative universe, dateline 1938, but the main difference, apart from the technology [read on], is that Adolf Hitler and his monomaniacal mission is never mentioned, so the reader can only wonder why, and if the consequent destruction of Germany and the desolation of much of the rest of the world will ever happen. The action is based in London, England, and the foreign focus is Spain, where the civil war which happened in our world is raging. The main enemy, however, is Russia, which is meddling in the war in the ways familiar to us; however, Joseph Stalin, in the guise of his real birth name Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, from Georgia, has gone to Spain, according to a communist British local asset, to stop the war. To achieve this, he intends to take over the government, reject the Soviets, and make a deal with the British, which would ensure the defeat of Franco: needless to say, he is being hunted by the Russian NKVD. The protagonist is an SIS operative by the name of Rachel White, who is hunting a mole, after receiving information from a Russian defector, but there is a connection with the imbroglio in Spain. Where the narrative diverges from ‘reality’ is that death has been conquered, and the eponymous Summerland is where the dead go, so that they can live on, in a manner of speaking, if they are lucky: not all do. The confusion arises, for me, in the plethora of quasi-technical terminology surrounding this metaphysical development: it could be the analogous embodiment of the Steampunk lifestyle, albeit updated from the Victorian/Edwardian era. Some explanations of the technology were sprinkled into the narrative, but more, or even an attached glossary, would have enabled me to enjoy this story more. The paperback I read was published in 2018 by Gollancz, London, ISBN 978-1-4732-0328-0.
Wilfred Books 