wot i red on my hols by alan robson (Paedopotus Rex)

May I Pole?

T. Kingfisher has enthralled me all over again with her new novel Wolf Worm and I’m sure she will enthral you as well – though beware, the novel is full to the brim with horripilation inducing creepy-crawlies (delightfully charming insects to the more entomologically inclined among you).

The story takes place in North Carolina in 1899. Sonia Wilson is a talented scientific illustrator, specialising in producing detailed drawings of insects. She has illustrated many scientific papers written by her father, but after his death she has found it difficult to get work.  Faced with the prospect of no job and no security, she jumps at the chance to work for the reclusive Dr Halder, illustrating his enormous collection of insects for a book that he is writing. The job offer feels like a lifeline and she embraces it eagerly. That’s her first mistake. It won’t be her last...From the moment Sonia arrives to begin her new job, she feels that she is being enveloped and suffocated by the dark, Gothic atmosphere of Dr Halder’s house and the surrounding environs. There are stories that the Devil lives in the woods and there are dark tales of blood thieves who leave the mutilated bodies of their victims displayed for all to see. But, perhaps worst of all,  it is clear to Sonia that someone else had been doing the illustrator’s job before she arrived and nobody will tell her what happened to her predecessor.

As Sonia slowly works her way through Dr Halder’s insect collection she comes across a specimen drawer full of plump caterpillars, all of which have to be neatly sketched and accurately painted. She learns that in order to preserve the caterpillars in the collection, all of their insides have had to be removed to stop the specimen decaying. Sadly this procedure flattens the caterpillar carcass out and makes for a most unattractive display. Fortunately there exists a thing called a patented caterpillar inflation device which can be used to bring the displayed caterpillar corpse safely back to its former glory.

In an afterword to the novel, the author records her enormous gleeful delight on first learning of the existence of the patented caterpillar inflation device. Her immediate reaction was to say to herself, "I have got to put one of these into a novel."  And so Wolf Worm was born. It seems to me that a patented caterpillar inflation device is both the oddest inspiration for a novel that I’ve ever come across and, at the same time, one of the most believable!

While exploring the woods, Sonia comes across a dilapidated hut which is firmly shut with a large padlock. Clearly something sinister is going on in there. And then one day somebody accidentally leaves the hut unlocked so of course Sonia has to poke her nose in to see what is actually going on. What she finds in there is unutterably gross. It will teach you more than you ever wanted to know about what insects do to corpses and (worse) to semi-corpses. But by then you will be completely unable to stop reading because you really, really, really want to know what happens next and how it will all work out. Trust me, you will not be disappointed, though you may be slightly sick. There is certainly a devil (though not necessarily the Devil) living in the woods and the blood thieves are very, very real.

Along with teaching us many grotesque facts about insect behaviour, the novel also has a lot to say about daily life in late nineteenth century North Carolina and, by extension I suppose, the American South in general. (Don’t let the name fool you – North Carolina long with its twin South Carolina is very much part of the "confederate" South). Misogyny and racism are simply a fact of life and, for good measure, T. Kingfisher introduces an unhealthy dose of the South’s prejudice towards miscegenation as well. It’s very clear where the author’s own sympathies lie, and it is certainly not with the attitudes expressed by many of her characters. However she does not shirk from letting the consequences of those attitudes play out tragically on the page. That she can bring this off as well as she does is a huge tribute to her skills as a writer.

And the whole disgusting and delightful story (in every sense of both of these words) is told with T. Kingfisher’s usual elegantly witty and insightful prose. Every sentence is truly a joy to read. If you can stomach it, I’m sure you’ll come to agree with me that Wolf Worm is one of T. Kingfisher’s very best novels.

* * * *

The three novels that make up Peter Swanson’s Henry Kimball trilogy are perhaps best described as murder un-mysteries in the sense that there is never any real doubt about who did what to whom and, generally speaking, why they did it in the first place. The stories are told in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of the murderers, the murderees and the detective, Henry Kimball himself.

We as readers often find ourselves getting very close to the victims before they meet their untimely end and while we generally feel some slight sympathy (more or less, depending on the character of the corpse) for the victims we also fully understand why the murderer felt compelled to kill them. At least we think that we understand the reasons for the murders and sometimes we agree with these reasons. And sometimes we don’t.

The strength of these novels comes from the fact that despite what I’ve just said, we constantly find the rug being pulled from underneath our feet as our understanding of what is happening right before our very eyes shifts and twists and turns itself inside out in front of us.

I don’t really know why the novels are considered to be a trilogy about the detective Henry Kimball. To my mind they are much more about the character of Lily Kintner, the villainous murderer of the first novel and the saviour of the day in the second and third books. Oh well, so it goes…

But however you look at it, the novels are all cleverly plotted and deviously twisted stories. Of course, I’m biased. In the third novel, one of the characters lives with a cat called Gilbert. Since I too live with  cat called Gilbert, I have no choice but to like these books. Gilbert told me I had to. Make of that what you will.

* * * *

Rachel Amphlett is a very prolific writer of detective novels. So far I’ve only read two of her books, but I enjoyed them a lot and so I can easily imagine myself becoming addicted to her stories.

In None the Wiser we meet Detective Sergeant Mark Turpin who has just been transferred to a new police district. He’s currently living on a narrowboat while he gets himself together and as far as he knows he still has a week to go before he is required to report for duty. So he’s rather surprised when Detective Constable Jan West, his partner-to-be, turns up to explain that he is needed. There’s been a rather gruesome murder. A priest has been killed...

It isn’t long before more priests join the list of victims and it’s clear that Mark and Jan are faced with tracking down a brutal serial killer with a strange obsession.

In Her Final Hour a championship jockey out for a training run comes across the body of a young woman. Jessica, for that is quickly revealed to have been her name, had been only nineteen when she was killed and, if everyone is to be believed, she had been a girl who was universally loved. So why has she been murdered? Mark and Jan quickly become frustrated by their lack of progress. Even after interviewing everybody who had been in the vicinity they have no real idea of which way to turn. And then another body is discovered and the evidence suggests that there is a link with Jessica’s death. Here they go again…

So far so straightforward. All the standard serial killer tropes are here and normally I’d dismiss these stories as being just routine bits of thud and blunder. But somehow Rachel Amphlett has managed to subvert the tropes and grab my interest so that I had to keep reading because even though I found the crimes to be melodramatically unconvincing I still found myself wanting to know whodiddit and why. That’s a clever bit of writing on Rachel’s part.

I think it boils down to the convincing nature of the characters. Mark and Jan feel very real, I care about them and I want them to succeed. It also helps that Mark and Jan are strictly colleagues – there is not even a hint of anything deeper in their relationship which makes a refreshing change from the norm. The characters that Mark and Jan encounter in their investigations, both villains and non-villains alike, do sometimes flirt with caricature, but somehow Rachel Amphlett manages to make them keep at least one foot in her version of reality which makes the suspension of disbelief all the more willing.

And Mark has been adopted by a wonderful dog called Hamish. What’s not to like?

* * * *

Rebecca Philipson’s novel How to Get Away With Murder is just plain weird, which is probably why I liked it as much as I did.

Detective Inspector Samantha Hansen has been on medical leave for six months, recovering from an incident in which, for all practical purposes, a work colleague had raped her. Not surprisingly, she has PTSD and trust issues. And, also not surprisingly, an official blind eye has been turned on the incident and her rapist has essentially got away with it, suffering only minor consequences. As a result, Samantha is not in the happiest of places. When she learns that a fourteen-year-old girl has been murdered in a local park, she jumps at the chance to return to work. She feels that she needs to prove that she's still got what it takes, that she is still Scotland Yard's most successful detective. No-one has ever solved as many murders as she has – she has an enviable ability to peek behind the curtain and see connections that nobody else has noticed. She’s really going to need that skill in this case. It’s one of the oddest that she’s ever come across.

A book has been found in the victim’s backpack. It’s a self-published (and presumably pseudonymous) self-help book called How To Get Away With Murder. The author calls himself Denver Brady.Brady claims that he is the most successful serial killer of all time. His brilliant success, of course, can easily be deduced from the fact that nobody has ever heard of him. So consequently he must be extremely good at what he does. The tautology that lies behind that statement seems to have escaped him, but no matter. In chapter after chapter, he describes his varying methodologies for murder, the reasons that lie behind his different approaches to the problem of killing and how he has applied his methods successfully to the murders of all his many, many victims. Chapter by chapter he gives the reader detailed lessons in how to do what he has done, how to become a successful serial killer. Perhaps a better title for his book might have been Serial Killing for Dummies...

The novel is told in alternating chapters – a chapter detailing the current state of Samantha’s investigation, followed by a chapter from Denver Brady’s book which contains ominous parallels to what Samantha is discovering. Brady’s chapters are unsettling, intelligent, and laced with just enough dark humour to make it all feel wickedly smart. Eventually, of course, Brady’s narrative and Samantha’s investigation intertwine completely in a manner that will definitely take your breath away. I promise you won’t see it coming. Samantha’s peculiar talent for getting to the heart of things stands her in excellent stead.

My only complaint is that Samantha’s rape seems a little bit gratuitous. It doesn’t really connect to the main plot other than to be used as an excuse for some of Samantha’s less endearing character traits, and of course it lets the author make a few rather obvious points about the relative worth of men and women in hidebound male-dominated hierarchical organisations like the police. Oh well, never mind. The plot is more than strong enough and ingenious enough to carry that weight.

* * * *

Enough Said is the latest, and very probably the last, instalment of Alan Bennett’s diaries. The entries cover the years 2016 to 2024, bringing us pretty much up to date and of course the title speaks for itself. Given his advanced age (he was born in 1934) it may well be that he really does feel that he has said everything that he wants to say though paradoxically he still continues to write plays. Perhaps talking through your characters is different from talking in real life.

We have a lot in common, Alan Bennett and I. We were both born in the West Riding of Yorkshire – me in Halifax and he in Leeds, towns that are literally just up and down the road from each other. We both came from stolid working class families and we are the only members of our respective families who ever went to university. He went to Oxford, I went to a redbrick, but a university is a university as I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge. Of course, he went on to have a glittering career as an actor, a satirist and a multi-award winning playwright. I never managed any of those things. So it goes...

He still lives in Leeds, sometimes commuting daily to London when he has a play in production. His diaries recall many amusing incidents on his train journeys. I, of course, shook the dust of Yorkshire off my shoes half a century ago and I haven’t been back there for longer than I care to remember. Maybe he and I aren’t quite so similar as I first thought, though I do believe that he would agree with me when I say that you can take the man out of Yorkshire, but you can’t take the Yorkshire out of the man. As a result, many passages in his diary still resonate with me.

There is a certain contradictory poignancy about some of his musings. He devotes considerable space to discussing his feelings about his friend Jonathan Miller. Alan Bennett Jonathan Miller, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore first came to public notice as the writers and cast the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe and his subsequent career owes a lot to all of them. Miller’s death in 2019 left Alan Bennett as the only surviving member of that hugely influential team and it is clear that he feels the isolation keenly.

Like Bennett, Miller himself soon forsook the stage. He embarked on an influential career as a producer and director. One of his major successes was guiding the production of the BBC’s project to produce every single one of Shakespeare’s plays. This occupied the years from 1978 through to 1985. Known colloquially as the Bardathon, it was a huge success, though some of Miller’s decisions were seen as being controversial – his casting of John Cleese as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew was much criticised before the play was broadcast and highly praised afterwards. Cleese, of course, performed brilliantly in the role.

Miller and Bennett remained close friends throughout their lives and Bennett’s diaries make for moving reading as he recalls his friend’s gradual decline into dementia and death. Nevertheless, he clearly still felt some cattiness about their relationship. In 2016 Miller boasted to Bennett that his production of The Mikado has been performed 300 times around the world, which makes it "a great success". Bennett records that he had to bite his tongue to avoid blurting out that his own play The History Boys had by then been performed more than 2,000 times. He said nothing, but remarks that his silence did not make him feel any better. Their rivalry may or may not have been friendly – "I never saw one of his operas and I’m not sure he ever saw one of my plays" says Bennett – but there is no doubt that they did admire one another.

When Bennett casts his thoughts wider and muses on the state of the world he is more than a little scathing about the political menace of the resurgent right. "I imagine this must have been what Munich was like in 1938", he remarks as he reflects on the result of the EU (Brexit) Referendum in 2016. He sees a country at war with itself and he finds it almost too divisive for words. He observes that "Half the nation rejoicing at a supposed deliverance, the other stunned by the country’s self-serving cowardice."

And the less said about Donald Trump’s first term as President of the USA the better. Bennett points out that "No one is yet saying this will mean the end of the world". But deep down there is no doubt that he is sure that it will.

He is quite candid about his sexual preferences. His love for his partner Rupert Thomas is open and obvious. Time and again Bennett tells us how much he depends on Rupert to get him through the day. But that doesn’t mean he can’t still have a roving eye. When travelling with Rupert through Leeds one day he recalls "a nice moment" when half-a-dozen twentyish boys waved at them. He is mildly disappointed,  "[they were] not alas showing their bums." Bennett has no problem justifying himself. "I have a ribald imagination," he tells us. "Or to put it another way, I have a dirty mind."

And that describes Alan Bennett in a nutshell.

* * * *

I was still a baby when King George VI died and his daughter Elizabeth became the Queen. I have no memory of the event though I do vaguely remember watching her coronation on my father’s brand new television set in full and glorious gloomyscope and flickervision. So to me she had always been there on her throne, fixed and right and proper. Her death in 2022 came as a huge shock, impossible to come to terms with. Intellectually I knew that Queens died, but I didn’t know it emotionally. Memento mori had always sounded like a lie to me.

Elizabeth II is Robert Hardman’s fourth biography of the Queen but almost by definition it is the most complete for it is the only one that deals with her life from birth to death. So does that mean that it supersedes the earlier books? Hardman claims not, insisting that it is complementary. I am not convinced of that. It is complete in itself, rounded and grounded in its presentation of the person who was a Queen but who was also, a wife, a mother and a fun loving human being. Hardman brings both sides of her personality brilliantly to life and I was left feeling that he had done it so well that surely there was little more left to be said.

Elizabeth was many people all in one body. One of those people was a fun loving lady who enjoyed a joke. Hardman records that at a private party the royal family and some courtiers were playing charades. One courtier, risking a charge of lèse-majesté, pointed at the Queen and pulled an imaginary chain. "Royal Flush," Elizabeth guessed correctly, and she laughed with delight at the clever mime.

Even her public persona was not averse to a bit of fun. At the opening of the London Olympics in 2012 a helicopter flew over the Olympic Stadium. James Bond and the Queen (stuntman Gary Connery wearing a dress, hat, jewellery and carrying a handbag) parachuted out of the helicopter and as they disappeared from view the Queen, wearing the same dress, hat and jewellery and carrying the same handbag appeared in the Royal Box to mighty applause as she waved at the crowd.

Ten years later, as part of her platinum jubilee, the Queen was filmed sharing marmalade sandwiches with Paddington Bear when he attended an afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace.

Elizabeth clearly hugely enjoyed both these stunts and entered into them with great enthusiasm. But of course the more important aspects of her role, although bound up with ceremony and protocol, were much more serious and she always recognised just how important they were to the stability of the institution that she headed. She was the Queen of 56 independent countries that made up the British Commonwealth, and each of these 56 Queens was a separate individual with her own responsibilities. When a military coup took Fiji out of the Commonwealth in 2006, the Queen actually had to formally abdicate her throne. And when I took New Zealand citizenship I had to formally swear allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Queen of New Zealand despite the fact that I already owed allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Queen of England. All three of these Queens are distinctly different people, and that difference is important. To mis-quote Walt Whitman, she was large and she contained multitudes and she was very conscious of all of her roles and very conscientious about maintaining them.

Hardman does a brilliant job of chronicling the ups and downs of Elizabeth’s reign and of putting all aspects of her life into the social and political contexts of the time. I closed the book feeling that I now knew and understood so much more about Elizabeth’s life in particular and the Royal Family’s life in general than I ever had before I started reading it. I have never described myself as a Royalist. Indeed, I’ve always vaguely disapproved of the institution. But reading Hardman’s book at least made me respect it and accept it a little bit more.

With thanks to SF author Charles Stross who coined the dog-latin tag used in this article’s title and who has actively encouraged other people to use it.