2021/067: The Postscript Murders -- Elly Griffiths

'...plot is overrated,’ says Lance. ‘I try to get beyond describing what happens next.’ Edwin reminds himself never to read Lance’s book. [p. 168]

This is the second novel by Griffiths to feature Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, who is gay, Sikh, and lives with her parents despite being in her thirties. Harbinder is visited by care worker Natalka Kolisnyk, who believes there's something suspicious about the death of an elderly lady who was a client of hers. Peggy Smith died in Seaview Court, apparently of natural causes, but when Natalka is clearing out her flat she finds a plethora of crime novels, many of them dedicated to Peggy -- and a card saying 'we are coming for you'. Turns out Peggy was a 'murder consultant', inventing ingenious new murder techniques for successful crime writers.

Natalka shares her suspicions with Peggy's elderly friend Edwin, another Seaview Court resident, and Benedict, an ex-monk who runs a seafront coffee hut. What Natalka doesn't mention is that there are suspicious characters following her, too, and her past in Ukraine may be about to catch up with her. Could that be connected with the murder of another author, one of Peggy's clients?

This is quite a cozy mystery. The characters are likeable, their interactions are friendly and supportive, and their trip to a literary festival in Aberdeen is hilarious. We get narratives from Natalka, Harbinder, Edwin, and Benedict; of these, I liked Edwin (gay, former BBC, well-dressed despite not always recognising the old bloke in the mirror) the best. Harbinder's unspoken observations on her partner Neil Winston, who's obliviously racist and who she can't help thinking of as a small woodland creature, are amusing, and Natalka's shady cryptocurrency past in the Ukraine adds a contemporary element. To be honest I was more intrigued by the wartime exploits of Peggy and her friend Weronika than by the (unresolved?) Slavic subplot.

This was a pleasant read but it didn't engage me as much as The Stranger Diaries (which introduced Harbinder Kaur) or Griffiths' 'Ruth Galloway' books. Nice vignettes of Sussex life (Seaview Court is in Shoreham-by-Sea; Harbinder goes on a date in Brighton) and an evocative depiction of Aberdeen, which I've never visited. And it's always fun to read a mystery set in the world of publishing, with authors and festivals and misguided promotional gimmicks.

2021/066: The Angel of the Crows -- Katherine Addison

“Crow is better since your advent. More. . . I hesitate to use the word ‘human,’ but less like a machine devoted to murder.” He looked at me, his gaze steady and his eyes very blue. “Less like someone who might Fall.” [loc. 8155]

London, 1888. A doctor returns from service in Afghanistan, wounded and without purpose. A friend introduces him to an unusual individual who is looking for someone to go halves on a flat in Baker Street. A partnership is born.

Perhaps it's not the partnership you're expecting: the doctor's name is J H Doyle, and the person looking for a flatmate is a black-winged angel named Crow, an angel without a dominion, prone to describing himself as the Angel of London. Doyle's secrets, revealed only gradually to the reader, are like an open book to the angel. And London is peopled by vampires, hellhounds, werewolves and ghosts, as well as the angels both named and Nameless (but not Fallen -- the Fallen destroy whatever they touch) who protect their dominions and largely tolerate Crow.

Steampunk London, familiar cases given new twists (Addison's transformation of The Hound of the Baskervilles is especially divergent), and the case that Conan Doyle's Holmes never tackled: a serial killer in the East End, murdering and mutilating prostitutes.

It'd be easy to read this as 'casefic', like the original sequence of Holmes and Watson stories: the detective solves a case with flashes of brilliance, while his loyal sidekick acts as an intermediary to the mundane world. But that reading would miss a great deal of the charm of this novel: the growing respect, affection and cooperation between Doyle and Crow, and the ways in which their natures and secrets interact with the old stories to produce something new. This Crow is gentler and kinder than Holmes: this Doyle has more (and also, in a way, less) agency, and more independence than Dr Watson.

The prose is measured and old-fashioned: not quite Conan Doyle's style, but a pleasing riff on it. Perhaps there could have been more exploration of the world Addison's built: airships, an America without the United States, the hive-mind of the Nameless, the involvement of the Fallen in human wars ... But the focus is on the evolution of Doyle and Crow's relationship, and that was thoroughly satisfying.

I had already decided that The Angel of the Crows owed as much to the TV series Sherlock as to Conan Doyle's original canon: I was pleased to read the author's note in which she confirmed that it began as Sherlock wingfic.

2021/065: Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line -- Deepa Anapparna

‘The police told Bahadur’s ma that he ran away on his own. They said the same thing to Omvir’s ma-papa too,’ Pari says. ‘It’s good for them, right? They don’t have to lift a finger. If anything happens to us, it’s because we did it ourselves. If a TV goes missing from our homes, we stole it. If we get murdered, then we killed ourselves.’ [loc. 2251]

180 children go missing every day in India. About a third of them are never found. Many of them are street children, like the children of the basti (shantytown) in which Jai, aged nine, lives. Jai loves to watch police shows on TV in their one-room house, and when his schoolmate Bahadur goes missing he is determined to become a detective and solve the riddle of his friend's disappearance. He enlists his two best friends, Pari (female) and Faiz (male) in the quest to discover what has happened to Bahadur -- and then to Omvir, and to Aanchal, and to others ... Jai is convinced that the missing children have been taken by djinns. He's brightly oblivious to the real-world predators who stalk the basti.

The novel's opening -- about the ghost of a man known as Mental, who looked after street-boys -- made me think I'd be reading magic realism, or a story with supernatural elementss: while there is plenty of superstition here, nothing magical is made manifest. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is a vivid depiction of poverty, corruption and inequality, peppered with unfamiliar words (basti, chutti-maro, chacha, paka, didi ...) The police are not on the side of people in the basti: they take bribes but do nothing, though the reappearance of the police commissioner's lost cat is a newsworthy event. Jai, desperate to replace some money he took before the theft is discovered, earns a pittance by working hard in a tea shop. His sister Runu is a star athlete who's always told that she'll grow out of running and settle down. The people of the basti are largely Hindu, but there are Muslim families too (including Faiz's), and religious tension simmers between the two faiths as accusations fly.

The city is nameless, beset by choking smog, and though characters occasionally mention Mumbai or Manali, nobody from the basti seems to have any expectation of ever leaving their own city. There is wealth, to be sure, in the hi-fi tower blocks that overlook the basti, but none of it will ever filter down to Jai or his friends.

Anapparna describes the basti in realistic, compassionate terms. It's not without beauty or kindness, though the deprivation and the sheer population density are uncomfortable to read about. I found this a difficult novel, because although Jai is bright, determined, joyous and playful, his opportunities are very limited: and because the abducted children, and thousands more like them, will never receive true justice.

The author's afterword made me think more about this: "I didn’t want to minimise the inequalities I had witnessed around me, but a story about a horrific tragedy risked becoming part of a stereotypical narrative about poverty and India that equated people with their problems." I didn't find the narrative stereotypical, and the vivid depictions of the men, women and children (and a buffalo, and a dog) of the basti made it clear that most of them were doing their best to live good lives: individuals, not statistics, not victims, not lacking agency or free will -- only powerless.

2021/064: Rodham -- Curtis Sittenfeld

“Just to be clear,” I said, “this isn’t about race.”
“Well, sure.” There was an edge to Gwen’s voice I hadn’t heard even when she’d tried to convince me not to move to Arkansas. “This isn’t about race for you.” [loc 3510]

A fictional alternate biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton that imagines "What if Hillary didn't marry Bill?": I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about American politics to appreciate the machinations and manouevring here, but I found this a compelling read. There's a strong sense throughout of Hillary as a decent person, a determined and energetic woman who wants to make a positive difference and thinks she can do it better than the men she knows.

The first third of the novel deals with Hillary's student days and her relationship with Bill. Apparently many American readers are squicked by the sex scenes, but I didn't find them offensive and they didn't interrupt the narrative: they are well-characterised and ground Hillary's breakup with Bill due to his sexual infidelity. There's a strong sense that the two of them love one another, despite everything, and that's echoed later in the narrative.

The middle third of the book deals with Hillary's life as a senator, as a single woman in politics, as someone who has to be extremely careful of everything she says or does -- because, as a woman, she will be held to higher standards than any man. The crises and scandals that occur during these years are, I think, different to actual events, though there is common ground. (I'd love to have the incidents in this novel tabulated with comparable incidents in the real world.)

The final third, rather amusingly, has Hillary and Bill (the latter now a Silicon Valley technocrat after a sex scandal derailed his 1992 campaign) contesting the presidential election of 2016. Bill's supporters chant 'shut her up! shut her up!' (milder than lock her up, but still wanting to silence a woman and remove her from discourse) while Hillary finds herself advised to seek the support of someone she can't take seriously. Hence this tweet:

At 1:01 P.M. on August 10, 2015: Sleazy Bill Clinton should drop out of the race, unless you want Blowjobs in the oval office!
At 11:43 P.M. on September 4, 2015: Hardball Hillary is a great leader that wants to put our economy first. Do not vote for Cheatin’ Bill! [loc 5828]

Bill, with his billions and his sleaze, becomes more Trumpish than Trump himself: Hillary, in contrast, 'redeems' herself (should she even need to?) by acknowledging her mistakes, owning her privilege and her poor judgement, and apologising to those she's wronged -- those who believe they've been wronged. Unlike her male counterparts, who seem to be motivated by power, greed and sex, she has a true vocation for politics, a desire to make the world better for those without white cis male privilege.

A surprisingly enjoyable read: it was my first encounter with Sittenfeld's work, and though I must have missed quite a lot of nuance due to my ignorance of US politics, I was engrossed by Sittenfeld's portrayal of a woman dealing with sexism, hypocrisy, infidelity and the conflicting demands of career and personal life.

Fulfils the 'About a woman in politics' prompt of the Reading Women Challenge 2021.

2021/063: The Last House on Needless Street -- Catriona Ward

Killing things is hard, sure, but keeping them safe and alive is much more difficult. Oh boy, do I know about that. [loc. 256]

Ted Bannerman lives in a house with boarded-up windows, the last house on Needless Street. He shares the house with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia, both of whom narrate chapters in this novel. Ted is not like other people: it's hard to tell whether he has learning disabilities, or is on the autism spectrum, or is simply misunderstood. He labels people by characteristic rather than name: the Bug-Man, the Chihuahua Lady, the Little Girl with Popsicle. Eleven years before, when Little Girl with Popsicle went missing at the nearby lake, he became the town's scapegoat. Was Ted responsible for the girl's disappearance? Quite a few children have gone missing over the years.

Ted's narrative is cobwebby: vague and full of holes. What happened to Mommy? What happened to the missing girl? Why does Lauren have to go away? What are the gods in the forest?

Olivia the cat has a different perspective on things ("Anyway the trick to life is, if you don’t like what is happening, go back to sleep until it stops." [loc 458]). Lauren seems sweet: did she really try to poison Ted? And Ted's new neighbour, Dee -- who has been searching for her sister's killer for eleven years -- is more rooted in reality than any of the inhabitants of Needless Street.

I've enjoyed and been chilled by Ward's two previous novels (Little Eve and Rawblood) but this was a whole new dimension of uneasiness. Again, an unreliable narrator, except that this time there are multiple narrators; again, a rural setting, but this time it's somewhere in America; again, a strong sense of the supernatural, the gothic. The echoes, the ankou (a Breton 'god with many faces who lives in the graveyards', familiar to Ted from his mother's stories), the gods in the forest, the matryoshka, Dee's compulsive rereading of Wuthering Heights, the way that things in the house are never quite the same from moment to moment ... As the blurb promises, 'You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong.'

I keep thinking about the story -- the stories -- told here, and the subtlety with which Ward guides us through it. I keep thinking about Olivia, whose resolution distresses me, though not for the reasons you might assume. (Spoiler: Olivia does not die.) There are other distressing aspects, including child abuse, alcohol abuse, murder, suicide ... And yet, despite some truly horrible moments -- mostly alluded to, rather than explicitly described -- this is a hopeful story, a story about survival, a story with happy endings. I keep telling myself that this is a story with happy endings.

Marvellously written, deeply unsettling, a masterclass in subtle storytelling and distinct narrative voices.

2021/062: Spoiler Alert -- Olivia Dade

The guy playing Aeneas had tweeted to her. Followed her.
And ... he appeared to have asked her out. On a date.
"I read a fic like this once," she whispered. [loc. 438]

Marcus Caster-Rupp is the star of a TV show called 'Gods of the Gates', very loosely based on the Aeneid. He works hard on his role, physically and mentally, but has cultivated a friendly-but-dim persona, in part so that he won't have to discuss the failings of the script. (The show is based on a series of novels: the show writers ran out of source material and ... did not maintain quality.) April Whittier is a successful geologist, who conceals her fandom activities from her colleagues for fear of appearing unprofessional. Book!AeneasWouldNever is a fanfic writer, who betas for fellow ficcer UnapologeticLaviniaStan: their online friendship is vitally important to both of them, but they have never met in real life.

When Marcus-the-actor invites April-the-fan on a date -- in part as a response to the online trolls who have mocked April for being (her word) fat after she posted photos of her cosplay -- they are drawn to one another despite the secrets they're both keeping. Because Marcus is Book!AeneasWouldNever, and April is UnapologeticLaviniaStan.

April and Marcus both feel they have something to hide: in Marcus's case, his intelligence, and his opinion of the show, in April's case her fandom persona (though she's just switched jobs and has decided not to hide who she really is any more). Both have parents who misunderstand and belittle them. Only one of them has a reputation that would be destroyed if his fix-it fanfiction was discovered ...

This is a surprisingly hard novel to review. I enjoyed it a lot, possibly because I'm familiar with the fandom milieu, but I also found the keeping of secrets and the toxic parenting very uncomfortable. I really liked the way that the interstitial chapters -- fanfic by both protagonists, excerpts from the scripts of some of Marcus's less intellectual roles (Sharkphoon!), online chats between Book!AeneasWouldNever and UnapologeticLaviniaStan -- illustrated their pasts and the growth of their online friendship. And -- though I was never part of 'Game of Thrones' fandom -- I enjoyed the sly allusions to and gentle mockery of that show. And I very much appreciated how the characters' issues (Marcus's dyslexia, April's fatness) were written: unapologetic, uncritical, accepting.

This was great fun and thoroughly grounded in its setting: Dade knows her way around online fandom. It did make me realise just how much of a problem I have with unspoken secrets in a relationship, especially when they're one-sided. But I almost cheered out loud at the finale, when Marcus, in the most public setting possible, makes his feelings known (and supports his best friend and co-star Alex, who's dealing with problems of his own -- to be revealed in Dade's next novel, All the Feels).

April and Marcus are thoroughly credible characters: they feel familiar and likeable. And, just like real people, they sometimes make the wrong decisions. I wasn't always comfortable with their choices but they felt organic, realistic, likely.

I did want Dade to do more with the blurring of actor and character: with April's feelings about having sex with a man who literally embodies the character who's inspired her to write hundreds of thousands of words of (often explicit) fanfic. But that's not a problem with the novel, just a personal observation. I'll look out for more by this author.

2021/061: Scandalous Alchemy -- Katy Moran

"What on earth will you do now that the war is over? Lurch from scandal to scandal and then try to forget it all in majoun shops like the one you were in last night?" loc 779]

Sequel to False Lights (now republished as Hester and Crow, by Katy Moran) and Wicked by Design, both of which I enjoyed a great deal. (I'm not super-keen on the rebranding, as it makes these seem far lewder, and less alt-historical, than they are.) The premise is that the French won at Trafalgar: False Lights / Hester and Crow began in occupied England, with 'Crow' Crowlas, Earl of Lamorna, and his young brother Kitto surreptitiously aiding and abetting two distinct rebellions, and Hester Harewood, whose father was Black, becoming embroiled in their schemes. Wicked by Design turned its focus on Russia, where Kitto encountered the bastard daughter of the Tsar: less Hester here, as for much of the novel she is presumed dead. Now Scandalous Alchemy gives Hester and Crow some peace, and makes Kitto -- Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable Kit Helford -- the protagonist.

Kit has had a good war, which Hester glosses as his skill and enjoyment at killing people, and is now at somewhat of a loose end. After a scandal, he's despatched to France as the bodyguard of Princess Sophia, formerly known as Nadezdha -- the girl with whom Kit fell in love on the wide Russian steppes seven years before, now off to meet her fiance, Louis Charles Habsburg-Lorraine, before her ascension to the throne as Queen of England.

There is, as usual, plenty of swashbuckling here: there is also another redoubtable female protagonist, Clemency Arwenack, Kit's childhood friend ('accomplice', says Crow) who has become 'a blackmail artist and extortionist par excellence, like all the most fashionable women' [loc 853]. Clemency used to do intelligence work for Crow, but now she's under the thumbs of the bourgeois Boscobels, who clearly have some power over her. When she's employed as Mistress of the Robes to Princess Sophia's entourage, it's the perfect opportunity for the ruin of several reputations.

Kit Helford is a very Heyeresque hero (I was reminded of Vidal in Devil's Cub), and Clemency also brings to mind some of Heyer's heroines, though she's nowhere near as pure-minded as any of them. There are other influences here: for instance, I was reminded of Dorothy Dunnett (though that may just be the French palace and the royal hunt). Excellent characters, too: vile Valentine Boscobel, the Frenchman D'Harcourt with his African blood, the woodsman who would rather prepare for his marriage than pander to the aristocracy ...Hester, sadly, stays in the background, though Crow gets to sweep in and, as usual, rearrange everything to his liking.

There were some athletic leaps of logic (to be fair, Kit has always been ruled by his heart rather than his head) and a couple of dangling threads: but there is also a surprisingly happy ending, and a great deal of excitement, amusement and drama throughout. A cracking read, thoroughly enjoyable.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an Advance Review Copy in exchange for this honest review. UK Publication due on 10th June 2021.

2021/060: Heartbreak Incorporated -- Alex de Campi

"I break up marriages for money ... but I ruin abusers for free." [loc. 852]

Evie Cross, who dreams of becoming a prize-winning investigative journalist, gets a temp job at a small consultancy which specialises in ending relationships. Her boss, Misha Meserov, is immensely charismatic and alluring, but Evie suspects he's hiding a dark and dangerous secret -- one that might make Evie's career if she can get the story into print. Ethics, what ethics? So it's probably not the best time to develop a crush on her boss.

Evie was likeable and credible, struggling to survive in New York City, trying to keep hold of her dream and insisting to her friend Claudia that Meserov and Co is just the day job. Misha would have been too good to be true, but he's appallingly untidy and disorganised: enforced organisation leads to much enjoyable bonding (and stationery buying) between Evie and Gemma, the blonde receptionist with perfect make-up who's not as superficial as she first appears. The supporting cast -- Misha's clients, his sister Masha, the staff of the law firm that has Meserov and Co on retainer, the wealthy tech billionaire with his nasty habits and immaculate wife -- were diverse and characterful, and the plot kept me guessing -- especially as I was unaware of one particular aspect of the novel.

This was very enjoyable, suspenseful and romantic and steamy, with some intriguing gender twists and plenty of gritty realism to counter the more fantastical elements.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an Advance Review Copy in exchange for this honest review.

2021/059: The Man in the Queue -- Josephine Tey

No thorough Englishman used such a weapon. If he used steel at all he took a razor and cut a person’s throat. But his habitual weapon was a bludgeon, and, failing that, a gun. This was a crime that had been planned with an ingenuity and executed with a subtlety that was foreign to an Englishman’s habit of thought. The very femininity of it proclaimed the dago, or at the very least one used to dago habits of life. [p.12]

A man is stabbed in the press of a theatre queue: it's the last week of 'Didn't You Know', a musical featuring ingenue Ray Marcable, and everyone is keen to see the show once more. The dead man is Albert Sorrell, a small-time bookmaker, and none of the people in the queue saw -- or realised they were seeing -- the person who stabbed him with a silver-hilted dagger.

Published in 1929, this was Tey's first crime novel, written under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot, and is rife with period-typical racism. (The 'dago' of the quote above has an Italian grandmother. Horrors! a foreigner!) It's also not very satisfactory as a whodunnit: Inspector Alan Grant, esteemed by the Metropolitan Police for his insight, pursues the obvious suspect doggedly, but has a lingering sense that he's missed something. Which he can certainly be forgiven for, since when the murderer's identity was revealed I felt somewhat cheated.

A spendid evocation of London (and Scotland, and 'trim' Eastbourne) nearly a century ago; an unsatisfactory whodunnit; unsavoury opinions; great characterisation. It hasn't put me off Tey, but I can't say I really liked it.

2021/058: The Frightened Ones -- Dima Wannous, translated by Elizabeth Jaquette

The revolution erupted in an instant. And in that instant, monsters appeared. They filled our city, our homes, our living rooms. They hit and slapped and insulted and killed and destroyed a whole history of human relationships. [loc. 1083]

Suleima's family fled the massacre in Hama in 1982: then fled again, to Beirut, after the Syrian revolution of 2011. Suleima makes frequent trips back to Damascus to see her therapist, Kamil, in whose waiting room she meets and begins a relationship with Naseem. Naseem, like Suleima, like everyone who has survived the revolution, lives in a state of constant fear. Despite his fear of the sea, he flees across the Mediterranean, winding up in Germany, from where he sends Suleima the manuscript of a novel he's been working on -- a novel with a narrator, Salma, whose life seems to echo Suleima's own.

Apparently in the printed version the alternating chapters, Suleima's narrative and excerpts from Naseem's novel, are printed in different typefaces: that might have helped to distinguish them. While there are distinct differences between the two women's voices -- Suleima has more self-awareness, I think, and more subtlety -- it wasn't always easy to tell whose account I was reading.

Hard to crystallise my reaction to this novel: I felt pity for the characters, but didn't especially engage with them, and ... was uncomfortable reading about war and revolution and atrocities: far too real. There was a strong sense of the characters' constant fear, of Suleima's entirely rational anxiety (she takes Xanax to suppress the symptoms), and of her forlorn hope of discovering the fate of her missing brother, abducted by security services some years ago. She hopes he's dead, because the alternative is worse. 'My mother never asks me about [Naseem]. Just like she never asks about Fouad. Maybe she assumes that in war it’s men’s duty to disappear, whether on the battlefront, in prison or in exile.' [loc. 1893]

Some really interesting translation here, especially of rural dialect: there's a passage about an officer vetting visitors that sounds very familiar to me as a Londoner."...if the guest swallowed his T’s and said ‘A jug of wa’er,’ the conscript would tell him the officer was busy and show him the door" [loc. 1876] But I don't know enough about the Arabic language, or about regional dialects in Arabic, to appreciate this translation properly.

Fulfils the 'Arab author in translation' prompt of the Reading Women Challenge 2021.

2021/057: At Hawthorn Time -- Melissa Harrison

'Where are the primroses that used to carpet that wood?' he’d written, in the end. 'Why don’t you coppice it if you say it is yours? You think it doesn’t matter, that it is just a wood. You think things will always be the same. You think you have dominion – that you’re not part of things. Like in that book. But if there is no light the primroses can’t come. Is it spring you are afraid of or something else? Life finds a way but not like you think. I am still here.' [p. 59]

It starts where it ends: an early-morning car crash on an A road, a Roman road, just as the sun is rising. The crash ties together three stories: the story of Howard and Kitty, incomers who've retired to the countryside; the story of Jamie, who's grown up in the village, knowing every lane and leaf; and the story of Jack, an indigent wanderer, who's always felt close to the land, 'less like a modern man and more like the fugitive spirit of English rural rebellion'. At Hawthorn Time is above all a novel about connecting to the natural world: not the airbrushed pastoral fantasy that Kitty imagined, but a place where humans live and work and love and die. Jack, when he encounters Kitty in the wood, tells her she's not looking properly, and it's true that her art blossoms after that, from anodyne paintings of bluebells to pictures that show the countryside as it is, a plastic bottle bobbing in a woodland pool, new growth around the steel base of a pylon.

Howard, Kitty's husband, would like to belong in the village, but doesn't. He and Kitty sleep in separate beds (though they'll have to pretend that they don't when their children come to visit) and Howard drinks too much, mends vintage radios, and yearns for the life he left behind -- but doesn't have a place there any more, either. Jamie, who's nineteen, works in a windowless distribution centre and spends his spare cash on customising his car. He still misses the childhood friend with whom he roamed the countryside. (Alex's father, a farmer, killed himself.) Jamie loves listening to his grandfather's stories of the old days, before the war, but he knows his grandfather is declining.

And Jack ... Jack hates being indoors; makes a living of sorts doing casual farm work; has walked the length and breadth of England, navigating 'by a kind of telluric instinct, an obscure knowledge he had learned to call on even when the land he walked through was unfamiliar: the wind on his face; the pull of the water table deep beneath the ground; the change from chalk to greensand to lias under his feet'. He's constantly aware of the land around him, and the stories it tells: a patch of nettles marking the site of an ancient midden, the reflections of human life in birdsong, the double-trunked oaks that have grown from stillborn babies buried with an acorn in each hand, the memory of his mother telling him never to bring hawthorn blossom into the house ... I can make a good case for Jack being something more than a mere tramp, but -- like much in this novel -- it's never explicitly stated, and I think the book is better for that sense of immanence.

I've been craving a country walk this spring (unlike Kitty, I did grow up in the countryside) and reading At Hawthorn Time both assuaged and sharpened that urge. I love Harrison's ability to evoke the unpleasantnesses of the natural world -- landfill, litter, neglect, poverty -- as well as its beauty and the way it can surprise humans with simple joy. I enjoyed Harrison's All Among the Barley, but At Hawthorn Time drew me into it, and maybe into my own memories of spring away from main roads and traffic and noise. I'll look out for Clay, Harrison's first novel, which is set in London but shares the focus on nature.

Fulfils the 'about the natural world' prompt of the Reading Women 2021 Challenge.

2021/056: Buried for Pleasure -- Edmund Crispin

An observer – of that dispassionate sort which novelists summon to their assistance when direct description begins to pall – would have attributed her vehemence, on this uncommonly hot day, to a pride in workmanship. But such an observer, like the majority of his spectral and deluded kind, would have been seriously mistaken. [p.172]

Oxford Don Gervase Fen, recently emerged from editing a definitive edition of Langland, is in need of a change: his solution to this is to stand for Parliament in the small town of Sanford Angelorum. Fen's energetic and idiosyncratic campaigning is punctuated by blackmail, murder, an escaped nudist lunatic who thinks he's Woodrow Wilson, and a domesticated poltergeist. I found the lunatic and the poltergeist more interesting than the crimes, the perpetrator of which became obvious to me around the same time as Fen worked it out, which was of course well before he mentioned it to anybody else.

The novel is set in rural England in summer 1947, there is little reference to the recent war. (Rationing? Land girls? Military installations? Scars on the landscape?) A cast of charming and eccentric folk -- Fen's election agent; a Cockney pub landlady and her non-doing pig; a comely female taxi-driver who owns her own car -- aid, abet and distract from Fen's investigations: there are quotidian tragedies and timeless comedies. And there is, hurrah!, plenty of mollocking, a term coined by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm (a previous Lockdown Book Club selection): Crispin, in conscious homage, also refers to one of his cast as 'a sullen-looking Cold-Comfort-Farmish sort of man'.

An entertaining read, but more for the little details and acerbic observations of rural life than for the murder mystery.