Tag: romance

Mike Berry, Turn, Turn, Turn (The Conrad Press 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58968868-turn-turn-turn

The saga of a neighbourhood in Melbourne as it survives two world wars

Back home now in Melbourne, Jim thinks everyone around him on Ross Street are ‘idiots’. He’s been through hell in Flanders; he’s an absolute wreck from his POW experience.
Ted and Betty and their daughter Patty are at Number 24. The Mattingleys are moving in, Viv, Bob and son Brian.
Then Ricky from across the street, on his motorbike, saves little Patty, but another girl Becky is kidnapped. The neighbourhood just isn’t the same after that.
Later, Brian finds something that may be a clue to the kidnapping. ‘A shiver pass[es] over the street.’
The Great Depression hits. ‘The bright promises of a new decade faded quickly.’
But there are some glimmers of happiness.
This is more or less a family saga, the story of a neighbourhood rather than just one family, and we’re not really sure which family or individual is the protagonist, though it’s mostly Betty, Ted and Patty. I was expecting a follow-up on the case of the kidnapping, but it falls quietly into the background while we examine all the neighbourhood gossip as the seasons turn, turn, turn.
Something momentous is about to happen. The world goes through Hitler and then Pearl Harbor. WWII eats into the lives and psyches of Ross Street as WWI had done. The men seem to be ‘running, running to whatever will keep [them] from remembering’.
The trauma of war on the lives of people and their families is a major theme. Over three generations, complex events in the world affect these three families in ways they cannot possibly anticipate. People’s trauma from the war plays out in their peacetime lives.
It’s worth noting the last line of the song from which this novel takes its title: ‘A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late’.

Rajes Bala, Journey to Jaffna (The Conrad Press 2024)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220711322-journey-to-jaffna?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=bHbxauRwO2&rank=2

Happily married Tamil immigrant Param is travelling to see his family in Sri Lanka, after a 12-year absence. He is the eldest son, and as such will be required to perform the last rites for his dying father. Param is estranged from his father, who refused to accept his marriage to Englishwoman Mary.
But there is ‘someone else’ in Sri Lanka whom Param dreads meeting, his former girlfriend Karthiga, whom his father forbade him to marry because she was from a lower class. He had promised to return to her after graduating from a London university until Mary found out she was pregnant with their daughter Meera.
Param’s struggle will be familiar to many immigrants. While still holding onto the values of the home world, his new world faces him with different challenges and possibilities.
He meets on the plane the modern-minded Liz, and a forced landing in Tbilisi throws them together, opening new worlds for Param. He struggles to reconcile his newly changed life with his duty to his family.
The feared reunion with Karthiga brings home to Param just how much his people suffered during the persecution of the Tamils in the 1970s. He feels guilty for breaking his promise to her, guilty for doing nothing to save her.
After his father’s funeral, Param is determined to do his duty by his sisters but finds that his attitudes toward their marriage prospects are different from his parents’ more traditional Hindu ones. In post-pogrom Sri Lanka, the sisters’ attitudes are different, too.
The three women—Mary, Karthiga and Liz—represent different things to Param, and he is emotionally pulled to and fro. Each of these world-views affects him differently, and Bala paints his psychological journey beautifully.
For me, Param is kind of an Everyman, and his summer vacation provides a cautionary tale. He is no philanderer—a thoroughly good guy—but he coasts through life, not making any decisions, not having any opinions, just letting things happen, until a remarkable experience changes him.
Will his indecision mean he misses his chance at life?
This book is a must-read for Diaspora Tamils and will be enjoyed by non-Tamils. Immigrants from all cultures will identify with Param’s journey.

Charles Cordell, The Keys of Hell and Death  (Myrmidon Books 2024)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210234361-the-keys-of-hell-and-death?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_26

5 July 1643, 5 pm. The Parliamentary cause is in peril. The Earl of Essex is in retreat. In the north, the King’s Army; his Catholic queen Henrietta Maria marches south. Another Royalist force is on its way to Oxford.
Francis Reeve and his half-brother Ralph, from Book 1, are fighting on opposing sides.
The multiple viewpoints take some work to follow, but whichever side they were on, they faced hardship and fear. The huge cast enables a minute-by-minute reportage, where we see the battles from all angles.
I was much impressed by the authenticity of the religious thought which was so characteristic of this conflict, and it’s rich with pertinent biblical references. People of the time must certainly have felt that the End of Days was upon them. The men wad their muskets with pages torn from prayerbooks. Reading from the Bible about Abimelech, the women of Bristol offer their bodies and their children as human shields, rather than to surrender the city to the ‘accursed Cavaliers’.
The first few chapters set the scene for the battles, and the huge cast of characters is introduced. Once the battle begins, it is non-stop excitement. We hear the trumpets and the drums and the screams of horses, feel the heat of the battle, the pain, fear, death, and lice, the do-or-die determination and the fierce partisanship of each participant group.
Phenomenal attention to historical accuracy, so much so that it’s hard to call this fiction, if it weren’t that it’s very much a story, full of passion, and not a dry history book. Most of the characters are taken from history.
The author was a career soldier himself and participates in (and probably directs) historic battle reenactments; he really knows his stuff. We learn absolutely everything about 17th century weaponry and warfare.
In the very heat of the battle, the point of view goes back and forth one paragraph at a time—Francis, Ralph, Francis, Ralph—very effective!
This is three weeks of the English Civil War, from the Battle of Lansdown Hill 5 July to the Storming of Bristol 26 July 1643. War is hell; there’s no happy ending whichever side you’re on. Any Royalist victories have been largely pyrrhic. The king’s forces are in such poor shape it encourages a final victory for Parliament.

Orlando Pearson, The Redacted Sherlock Holmes Vol VIII  (MX Publishing 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215075825-the-redacted-sherlock-holmes—volume-8

Continues the recounting of Sherlock cases, emulating the original Victorian style

This book, 8^th in the series, follows on from Arthur Conan-Doyle’s stories about the famous fictional Baker Street detective by revealing ‘what happened next’.

In six new cases, as reported by Dr Watson, we learn some things we had always wondered about: why Moriarty was ‘the Napolean of crime’; what happened before Holmes and Watson met; what happened to Holmes’ fiancée Agatha; and just what was the nature of Watson’s war injury.

Holmes rescues aristocratic sinners from blackmail, cracks codes, saves royal families from potential assassination, lays ingenious traps for ne’er-do-wells, undertakes tricky espionage missions during WWII and calculates cricket batting averages. As is common with many fictional detectives, a seemingly random comment or an incidental observation often sparks his immense intellect.

To the enjoyment of modern readers, the writer emulates the wordy Victorian elegance of Conan-Doyle, though the style is less stilted. It also features a similar understated, self-deprecating, very British humour. An adorable example: French président Félix Faure, who died ‘in the embrace of his mistress’, was said to have ‘struggle[d] with the fourth line of the Marseillaise’ (the one about raising the flag).

Often the cases and their solutions are so understated you almost have to read it twice. The fictional narrator decries ‘sensationalism’. The point is not so much the solution to the case but the very Holmesian way Holmes handles it. He says things like, ‘by Jove’ and ‘this is quite a three-pipe problem’. They smoke cigars and ‘have elevenses’. Character is everything. Watson, Lestrade, Mycroft and Mrs Hudson are also great characters.

Readers will also find pleasure in discovering by Google searches that many of the odd details such as the Prince of Wales’ fauteuil des voluptés are taken from history.

Some familiarity with Holmes’ past cases will help but is not essential. An easy read, perfect for bedtime or beach.

This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Orlando Pearson, The Redacted Novels II, A Study in Statecraft-The memoirs of Mycroft Holmes  (MX Publishing 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182109331-a-study-in-statecraft?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=stQioF2RUg&rank=1

We’ve not heard much about the older brother of the famous Baker Street detective. Mycroft is mentioned in only two of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories, where it is said that he ‘IS the British government’.
His specialism, he says in these memoirs, is not in the ‘minutiae’, ‘the forensic area of crime’ or in ‘lying on my face with a lens to my eye’ like his famous brother, but rather in statecraft—‘getting people to agree to what they might not otherwise agree to’. Another difference is that brother Sherlock often acted a judge as well as detective, personally exonerating some criminals he considered worthy. Mycroft doesn’t make the decisions—he advises.
Intending to leave behind a textbook on the art of diplomacy, Mycroft chronicles how he manoeuvred the belligerent nations into signing the Armistice after WWI, how he convinced Edward VIII to abdicate.
Many of the stories are narrated by Sherlock’s biographer and crime-solving partner Dr Watson, keeping the familiar format. The flowery, verbose prose style of the time is somewhat replicated, through which the modern reader struggles, yet it does achieve a feel for the period. Despite the wordiness, the episodes are interesting, although the resolutions aren’t spectacular. The ‘episodes’ weave the fictional diplomacies around real historical people, making the stories credible.
Some are follow-ons from previous cases. The first case ‘An Individual of High Net Worth’ is a sequel to ‘The Beryl Coronet’. So, it assumes some familiarity with the Conan Doyle stories.
There are little nods to present day circumstances. Mycroft uncovers evidence of ‘jollifications’ at Number 10 during the Spanish Flu pandemic. He advises the Prime Minister on the ramifications of the King marrying a divorcée. The connections to our modern day are spelled out in ‘afterword’s’, which I would have preferred to instead remain inferred.