The Appeal – Janice Hallett

Roderick Tanner QC presents a file of information to two of his students, Olufemi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd, with the challenge ‘see what you think’.

The collection of recovered e-mails, text messages, transcripts, and assorted printed material is incomplete but in rough chronological order. At the heart of the correspondence, initially, are the plans of the Fairway Players for their next amateur production, which will be Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.

The Players are led by the wealthy Hayward family. Patriarch Martin is chair and director in chief; his wife, Helen, is secretary and perennial leading lady. Their son, James, and daughter, Paige, both take key roles. Of the rest of the group, Sarah Jane MacDonald is to the fore as a serial organiser and favoured gofer, while Isabel Beck is no more than a willing wannabe.

However, for this production, events off stage are distracting the Haywards. James’ wife is expecting twins, and news has broken that Paige’s daughter, Poppy, is seriously ill with a rare form of cancer. Expensive private treatment abroad offers her best hope. The Players respond by setting up a funding appeal, the proceeds of All My Sons will be donated and further events are planned.

Despite all this, the show must go on. And Issy Beck introduces some new blood into the cast – new arrivals and health workers like her, Samantha and Kel Greenwood.

Events unfold. Olufami and Charlotte periodically exchange notes, which help to keep track of the complex relationships revealed by the file, and Tanner drops in the odd additional nugget to help them (and us) along. The students realise this case is for real, not an exercise. Someone has been convicted of murder, and Tanner is working on an appeal.

It makes for compulsive reading as message follows message, unfolding events that go well beyond the play. The plotting is deceptively complex with sufficient misleads and blind alleys to keep the solution to the murder hidden in plain sight.

It is an unusual vehicle for a whodunnit but one that works very well.

The Dying Day – Vaseem Khan

The bookpacking journey arrives in the subcontinent, albeit seventy years ago when Mumbai was known by a different name

Bombay 1950: post-war, post-independence, post-partition, and the scars remain, as do a raft of white men, hanging on with their colonial attitudes. But Persis Wadia is a symbol of the new India, its first female police inspector, complete with uniform and gun. Not that she wants to be a symbol, she just wants to get on with the job of solving crimes and serving justice.

The case looks simple enough, a missing British academic – John Healey – and a missing rare book he was working on – an early edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. It turns out to be nothing like simple as Healey has left a trail of cryptic clues, riddles, and puzzles. The hardest question is why has he bothered? Particularly when he turns up dead quite early in the chase.

Persis tackles the case with ingenuity and dogged determination, picking the brains of experts and drawing on the resources of her father’s bookshop. She also has the assistance, and close attention, of Archie Blackfinch, forensic criminologist on loan from the English Police. He is one of few who don’t treat her as a curiosity. She appreciates that and likes him – but it is complicated. He is white, which does not sit well with her anti-colonial views

As Persis criss-crosses Bombay seeking answers, the backdrop is brought to life with interesting historical nuggets about the buildings and the people of her city, some relevant, some not. Her character – spiky and flawed (a necessity for fictional detectives) – is nevertheless appealing, and we root for her as the investigation spirals into unexpected territory.

Once the artificiality of laying a convoluted trail of clues is parked, the chase is engrossing and pacey. There are enough sub-plots involving professional jealousies, a fractious family, and a previous boyfriend to add variety. And though the minor characters remain that way, that of Persis is strong enough to carry the book.

This is the second book in the series featuring Persis’ police career, and I could be tempted to sample the first, “Midnight at Malabar House”.

Things in Jars – Jess Kidd

It begins (though it has long since began) with the abduction of a girl (if it is a girl) from Maris House, ancestral home of Sir Edmund Berwick, baronet. Also missing is the child’s nurse, Miss Bibby; has she been taken too, or did she do the taking?

Mrs Bride Devine is engaged to investigate. Private investigation is one of several strings to her bow, along with minor surgery (esp. Boils, Warts, Extractions) and the occasional consultancy for Police Inspector Valentine Rose. Bridie works alone, supported at home by her seven foot tall housemaid, Cora Butter, and in the current case by newly acquired, insubstantial, assistant, the ghost of Ruby Doyle, tattooed seafarer and champion boxer (deceased). Bride does not believe in ghosts but doesn’t let that stop her discussing the case with Ruby, nor of developing affection for him.

The book moves forward in two timelines: the current (1863) where Bridie soon gets on the trail of the abductors; and the past (1841) that tells of nine-year-old Bridie’s purchase (for a guinea) and training as apprentice by Dr Joshua Eames, physician and collector of jars of unusual specimens.

No spoilers here. It all moves forward splendidly with spells of tension, action, and reflection, set in an atmospherically seedy London both wary and dismissive of a female dabbling in medicine and detection. The prose is unhurried, delivering measured portions of gothic locations, colourful characters, and twisting plot. The resolution is uncertain to the end, but credible and satisfying (though Ruby Doyle remains an enigma).

There is a hint of a sequel, which would be welcome.

Mayflies – Andrew O’Hagan

The summer of 1986, James is eighteen, between school and university and unencumbered by parents having responded to their separation by ‘divorcing’ them from his life. Instead, he dips into his friend Tully’s family life. Tully’s ambition is shaped by his father – he wants to be nothing like him, crushed by Thatcherism and still sulking.

Where Tully leads, others follow, and this summer that will be to Manchester for a music festival celebrating ten years since the Sex Pistols played the Free Trade Hall. Friends - Tibbs, Limbo, and Hogg - come on board and soon the five of them are heading south on the bus from industrial Ayrshire to sample the delights that 1980’s Manchester holds for those into their music: The International, Piccadilly Records, The Hacienda, and the GMex Festival.

It is an innocently hedonistic weekend of music, drinking, drugs, and women (if not sex). I was in Manchester in the 80’s, but a decade too old for that scene, which means for me the references to groups, songs, and drugs are obscure and frankly interchangeable. Not that it matters, you still get the drift – youth at one of its magic moments, ending sat on the roof of the YMCA with the city spread out below.

From that night the book skips thirty years. The boys have gone their separate ways but remain in contact, so it is no surprise for James to get a phone call from Tully. The shock comes with the news that his friend is seriously ill and needs to ask a favour.

The book is a perceptive portrayal of male friendship at both ends of adulthood. It is full of contrasts: the feelings of invulnerability in youth and mortality in age; the love of life and the poignancy of realising its limits; the joy of friendship and the pain of letting it go that sometimes requires selflessness.

The first half is written with great joie de vivre; the second half with heart-wringing sensitivity. All well worth the emotional investment.

The Shining – Stephen King

The first tick off the Booket List.

Jack Torrance is down on his luck, at least he thinks so, having lost his teaching job in New England due to an unfortunate incident with a student. Of course, if he could just finish writing his play, all would be fine, but now he has writer’s block too. It’s not all bad, he has a wife, Wendy, who is attractive but recently distant, and a son, Danny, whom he loves ferociously but with whom he sometimes gets frustrated.

Truth is, Jack’s drinking (now paused) and anger issues are the problems, as Wendy and Danny (oddly perceptive for a five-year-old) know all too well.

But there is a solution. Jack’s ex drinking buddy has pulled a few strings to get him a job on the other side of the country – off-season caretaker at the Overlook Hotel. The hotel is high up in the Colorado Rockies, snowed in and inaccessible in winter, so it closes down from October to April, but needs someone to maintain the heating and keep an eye on things. The bar is cleared of stock (and therefore temptation) and there will be plenty of free time to finish that damned play, so it is perfect. Wendy and Danny are not so sure, but accept that what is best for Jack, is best for them too.

As soon as Danny arrives his heightened perception goes into overdrive. Dark deeds have occurred in the Overlook’s seventy year history. Stains remain, invisible to most but indelible to Danny, who has the ‘shining’. Among the departing staff is Dick Hallorann, the chef, who recognises Danny’s psychic awareness and shares it to a lesser degree. He warns Danny off certain rooms and areas of the grounds, telling him to ‘shout’ if he needs help. He will be in Florida but will hear anyway.

Alone at the Overlook Jack, Wendy, and Danny settle, along with the snow that cuts them off completely. Jack finds the basement full of archives and delves into the hotel’s history; he finds himself drawn to and even into its past. Things go bump in the night, and worse. Danny sees more horrors, Jack fears for his sanity, and Wendy fears for their lives. Will Danny’s ‘shout’ for help be heard in Florida? If it is, could Hallorann get to him in time?

It is a classic for a reason. King is the consummate story-teller who creates real and complex characters and puts them through hell for our entertainment. In his hands the tension ratchets up degree by degree, the unbelievable becomes all too credible, and pages turn fast and furious.

The Booket List

Not a review but the name of a new reading journey.

The next birthday being of biblical significance concentrates the mind on unfinished business, in this case unfinished reading. Hence the new reading journey, the Booket List, to be started at once to give it a chance to finish. That means an overlap with the dawdling Bookpacking journey, which is not a problem as both are virtual and can co-exist.

Unlike the other reading journeys, which encouraged new reading experiences, the Booket List will tread some familiar paths, pushing some to their natural conclusion. Trilogies, longer series, and some full works will be completed. Books whose fame demands that they should have been read by now will get their opportunity. An initial fifteen, in no particular order are:

The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel; completing the Wolf Hall trilogy.

Testament of Friendship – Vera Brittain; companion to Testaments of Youth and Experience.

The Labyrinth of the Spirits – Carlos Ruiz Zafon; completing the Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

Exit Music – Ian Rankin; the seventeenth and final novel, seeing DI John Rebus into retirement.

The Duke’s Children – Anthony Trollope; the sixth and final volume of the Palliser novels.

Barnaby Rudge – Charles Dickens; the only unread long work of the master storyteller.

Last Things – C P Snow; outstanding from the Strangers and Brothers series, avidly read in the 1970s.

The Shining – Stephen King; one I never got round to, and a film avoided for that reason.

Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier; have seen this film, but the book is on the shelf.

Emma – Jane Austen; the last of the big four unread (but would still leave Persuasion and Northanger Abbey).

Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson; been holding out for a hardback copy but will go paperback if necessary.

Dubliners – James Joyce; been reading it for ten years but still not halfway through!

Emotionally Weird – Kate Atkinson; an early work to catch up on, having read the rest.

Adrian Mole, the Prostrate Years – Sue Townsend; never got round to this last diary.

MaddAddam – Margaret Atwood; concluding part of the trilogy of the same name.

Becoming Inspector Chen – Qiu Xialong

The bookpacking journey visits China, where Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police is in retrospective mood. He has been told his state medical insurance no longer covers the nursing home fees for his mother. She needs care but instead of moving in with her son, she insists on returning to her own tiny apartment. That puts Chen in the cramped attic bedroom of his childhood, prompting a night interrupted by dreams that both echo his life and reflect his current insecurities. He worries that the cancelled insurance is a first sign of political disfavour.

As he wakes from successive dreams, he recalls key incidents in his education and career that led to his appointment in the police service and his rapid promotion to inspector. This was despite his ‘black’ family background due to his father, a Confucian scholar, being labelled and persecuted as a bourgeois intellectual and class enemy during the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

The incidents illustrate that Chen’s talent for investigation started early but had to be combined with carefully treading the minefield of political correctness, that correctness forever changing over the decades as the Party continually reformed and reset the rules.

The criminal detection element takes second place to the historical context in this, the eleventh book of the Inspector Chen series, though one early case provides a meaty chunk in the middle. The Shanghai setting, particularly the Red Dust Lane community, is atmospheric and the impact of unfolding politics on such individuals is interesting enough to sustain attention over the two hundred pages.

A reader more familiar with the series may get more from this delve into the character’s development than I did. Am I tempted to pick up an earlier volume, more representative of the series? Maybe, but not any time soon.