Artemis by Andy Weir

Source of book: I own this

A combination of camping and my concert schedule kept me from attending the last three book club meetings. I made this one, though.

Andy Weir is best known for writing The Martian, which became a popular movie. The premise of this book looked interesting, and it got enough votes for our club to choose it this year. 

Artemis is definitely genre fiction, not literature, but it works pretty well for what it is intended to be.

Artemis is a moon colony, established by a Kenyan company who managed to solve some of the technical problems in getting enough mass into moon orbit. In this version of our world, earth nationalities have essentially become professional guilds (or monopolies) when it comes to the colony. The Kenyans have the transport monopoly - and essentially own and rule the place. Brazil...okay, the Brazilian mafia...runs the aluminum smelter which provides the building materials and oxygen for the colony. And, the Saudis run the welding guild. Jazz Bashara is the protagonist, and she is the daughter of a skilled welder. She’s the black sheep, and kind of but not quite estranged from her father.

She works officially as a porter, and unofficially as a smuggler. Things like cigars are her main trade - anything flammable is forbidden on Artemis. She aspires to be able to join the EVA (spacesuit) guild, and lead tours. This more lucrative job could let her escape her poverty.

Then, she gets an offer she can’t refuse from wealthy businessman Trond Landvik - a rather sizeable fortune. All she has to do is sneak out of the city, hitch a ride to the place the automated rock harvesters are working, and destroy them. So that Landvik can take the oxygen monopoly away from the Brazilians. Which might have to do with a mysterious new technology. No big deal…

Naturally, things don’t go quite according to plan, things blow up, people get whacked, and Jazz is a target of the mafia.

So, first the good. Wherever science comes into the book, it is at least plausible. I am particularly impressed when the chemistry isn’t laughable. (Seriously, chemistry is almost as much of a black box to most authors as math.) Most of the science and technology is believable, and seems to be the way that it would develop in real life. Thus, things mostly work, but they are utilitarian, not objects of great beauty and sophistication. Cost and weight are more important than either style or engineering perfection.

The plot idea itself was interesting, although not spectacular.

Where I felt the book was weakest was in its characterization. Weir doesn’t really make characters who feel like real people rather than types drawn from central casting. I realize this is a standard thing in genre fiction as a general rule, but it still was a bit of a letdown. Given another 100 pages, perhaps an author used to writing complexity might have improved things. As it was, Jazz feels like a cookie cutter hero, with her gender, race, and religion there as accessories like her boots or purse. And likewise with the other characters. Weir could have avoided describing them altogether, and they wouldn’t have lost much. I can’t even really remember who was gay, and which eastern European country the computer geek guy came from. So that part was disappointing.

There were also some really awkward scenes that seemed thrown together with just enough in sexual references to check off the PG-13 list. It got in the way of the narrative without adding any real depth. It is an imperfect book in that sense.

On the other hand, the last few weeks have been filled with a lot of symphony stuff - including time I had to spend learning Petrushka and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances. Great works, but really challenging. So my brain power was in decline in the evenings, and it was nice to have something light and easy to use to wind down.

I should also mention a couple of things regarding food and drink. Since growing fresh food is challenging in space, ordinary people got by on “gunk,” an algae flavored with various substances. I was reminded of an Isaac Asimov short story, “In Good Taste,” in which ordinary food was replaced entirely by “prime,” a fungus-derived food, which is flavored by chemicals. The point of that story was the competition to come up with new and delicious flavors using computer-driven molecular synthesis and careful blending. But the winner is disqualified when the judges discover he has used real flavors from things which actually grew in dirt (gross!) So that was an interesting parallel. I’m not sure which is more realistic: unappetizing food for working class people - or an industry devoted to making addictively tasty synthetic food.

The other food related touch was kind of fascinating. Because liquids are heavy - and thus not efficient to ship by rocket - alcohol is made by reconstitution. Alcohol powder actually does exist, but isn’t commercially available yet as far as I can tell. (And it has some significant safety risks, to say the least…) Weir gets this right, for the most part. I agree that, in general, the flavors would be suboptimal. Kind of like the difference between fresh milk and powdered milk. However, the idea that beer is the closest to drinkable, while the hard booze is far worse seems to me to be backwards. The more alcohol, the easier to mask poor flavors. Has Weir never had a shot of Everclear? Or store brand vodka? I would also say that it seems that beer could be brewed on the moon more easily than the others. Barley and hops aren’t that inefficient. Someone would be willing to pay for the good stuff, in any case. It is telling that every civilization seems to have developed some form of wine or beer as one of its first inventions.

Anyway, not my favorite book of the year, but not a total dud either. Light, genre fiction, with some good, some not so great, and not a big time suck.

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

Source of book: My wife owns this and introduced me to the author

In general, I am not a big fan of genre fiction. However, I do have a weakness for mysteries - particularly those in the British tradition. (I devoured Agatha Christie as a child - following in my mother’s footsteps.) Just this year, I read and reviewed the fourth installment in Alan Bradley’s Flavia series, and A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd. McCall Smith (that is his actual surname - the McCall is not a middle name) is one of those truly eccentric characters that seem to be too odd even for fiction.

He was born in Rhodesia (in an area that is now Zimbabwe), came to Scotland to study law, taught law for a few years while writing short stories and children’s books, returned to Africa to co-found the University of Botswana, returned to Scotland to teach - and become a recognized expert in - medical law, and finally found his present career as a novelist at nearly age 60.

He served for a time on the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee and the Human Genetics Commission for the United Kingdom. During the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote or co-wrote a whole bunch of scholarly books on bioethics and related issues.

Oh, and he plays bassoon and contrabassoo in The Really Terrible Orchestra, a group he helped found. For some reason, his photograph on the book shows him with a tuba. I suspect he may fill in on that if necessary…

Alexander McCall Smith with his more proper instrument, the contrabassoon

The Sunday Philosophy Club is the first in the series of the same name, featuring the middle aged Isabel Dalhousie, independently wealthy editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, which is pretty much what it sounds like. From what my wife has told me, Isabel’s maid, Grace; her niece, Cat; and Cat’s ex-boyfriend Jamie are all recurring characters in the series. Cat has terrible taste in men (having rejected Jamie, of course). Jamie is still in love with Cat, while Isabel is in love with Jamie, but doesn’t realize it.

The book is filled with references to art - particularly Scottish art, music, and philosophy. The good news is the McCall Smith has enough background in these areas to get the details right. (It’s best that those who never listen to classical music refrain from saying anything about Stockhausen, for example.) The author also gets bonus points for introducing me to a (relatively) obscure Scottish composer, Hamish MacCunn. (Mostly unknown in the United States, as far as I can tell.) However, thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to find clips and information.

I’m not enough of an art expert to be quite as picky as I am about music, but those details I did know, he got right. Philosophy is the big theme in this series, for obvious reasons. I enjoyed Isabel’s mental games as she analysed her options through the lens of philosophy. (And totally sympathized when all her careful ethical plans went out the window in the heat of the moment. Never done that before…)

The plot itself isn’t anything particularly striking, but it works. The characters are the interesting part, and their personalities drive the plot.

The best lines are the little observations in the mind of Isabel, as the story is told from her point of view (third person subjective, for those who care). Here is a good one regarding a particular article submitted to the journal:

It appeared to be written in English, but it was a variety of English which Isabel felt occurred only in certain corners of academia, where faux-weightiness was a virtue.

I also found her musing on the connection between manners - those deeper than the surface - and virtue to be interesting, although not universally true.

Good manners depended on paying moral attention to others; it required one to treat them with complete moral seriousness, to understand their feelings and their needs. Some people, the selfish, showed no inclination to do this, and it always showed. They were impatient with those whom they thought did not count: the old, the inarticulate, the disadvantaged. The person with good manners, however, would always listen to such people and treat them with respect.

Definitely food for thought. When compassion becomes condescending, it is usually because of this failing.

On a related note, this line:

The world, it seemed, was based on lies and half-truths of one sort or another, and one of the tasks of morality was to help us negotiate our way round these.

I’ve mentioned in the past that we tend to want to impose narratives on history to give us a sense that everything makes sense, and can be fully explained and understood. Often these narratives contain a good deal of falsehood - and all contain incomplete truth. When we let those falsehoods and half truths become more important than our basic morality, when we let our necessarily imperfect understanding of the world lead us to cause harm to others, we have done wrong, even when we have a political or religious philosophy to back us up. (The theological justification for the institution of slavery comes to mind, but there are plenty of modern examples too. One could turn on C-SPAN and listen to either party and come up with a hundred examples.)

I wasn’t really expecting to get off into that in a review of a relatively light book, but I did find myself thinking in that direction. Isabel has to negotiate some tricky dilemmas - such as how much she should involve herself in what may have been a murder - and the author intentionally avoids the easy cases. In that respect, I see some commonalities with G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. (I don’t think anyone has bested Chesterton, though. His are still the best for their psychological penetration, in my opinion.)

Note on The Really Terrible Orchestra:

The Orchestra makes an appearance in this book, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that it actually had that name in real life too.

McCall Smith wanted to play in a group that was like a school orchestra, where everyone played for fun, not as a career, and marginal musicians were welcome. Since such an orchestra did not exist in Scotland, he founded one. The orchestra has a website, which is worth a visit.  There are some fun clips and interviews and such. McCall Smith is featured prominently, of course. Always leverage celebrity power. The orchestra is truly terrible, and fulfills its goal marvelously.

One thing that was pretty clear to me after reading McCall Smith’s account of its founding was that Scotland is vastly different from the United States. We have a longstanding community orchestra tradition, and such groups exist in most reasonably large communities throughout the country. Some of these are in the spirit of the Really Terrible Orchestra, while others are of higher musical quality, but all have the goal of allowing those who do not wish to pursue music as a profession to make music anyway. In addition, our junior college system encourages older and “enrichment” students to participate in their music programs. I know a number of players who lack the chops to go the professional route who nonetheless have great enthusiasm who have found places to play.

Even the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra, while it is a professional organization, employs primarily those who have other “day jobs,” as it is a very part-time gig.

So, I certainly appreciate the thought behind the Really Terrible Orchestra, and am thankful that the tradition of community music remains in my own country.

Note on Hamish MacCunn:

Here is his best known work. Pleasant enough, but not in the class of the very best, which is probably why it is primarily played in the United Kingdom.

Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré

Source of book: Book on CD borrowed from the library.

Originally, I wanted to listen to one of le Carré’s earlier works, preferably The Spy Who Came In From the Cold or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Unfortunately, our library didn’t have these checked in when I need them, and really only had a few of his most recent works. This particular book was published in 2010, and is the author’s next-to-most-recent novel.

A bit about John le Carré. (Pronounced like “carry.”) His real name is David Cornwell, and he did indeed serve in MI6 before his books sold well enough for him to write full time. He draws on his experiences in intelligence work; a few books are believed to be partly autobiographical.

In contrast to Ian Flemming’s James Bond books, le Carré’s are morally ambiguous, and tend to feature everyday people. His spies wrestle with the ethics of what they do, and truly untainted good guys are pretty hard to find. These books are not really action books either. Sure, action does occasionally happen. Sometimes the action even involves the main characters. But they are not superhumans like Bond.

These books are also completely different from those written by another author believed to have spent time in the intelligence world, Patrick O’Brian, whose novels are set in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, rather than the present time.

I’m not sure how representative this book is of le Carré’s other works. After reaching the thoroughly abrupt and unsatisfying ending (more on this later), I did a little poking around on the web, and it appears that it has some unique characteristics. Also, the time difference between this book and the most famous works of the author is significant. Le Carré was a much younger man when he started writing. (He is now 81.) The world has changed dramatically from the height of the Cold War, alliances have shifted, and politics look much different. Certain social morés have changed as well, and I wonder if this book reflects that. I’m sure that, even in England, an unmarried couple would be less likely to vacation together in the 1960s; but the language may or may not have been different in a book set in those earlier times.

With respect to the language, there is a significant amount of vulgarity and profanity in this book. (See note below for the difference. Yes, I care about this.) It is mostly limited to two main characters, but it is pretty constant with them. There is also some (non-graphic) sexual content. Less, in my view, than in James Bond.

The basic plot is this. (No significant spoilers.) English professor (actually a don, but that is a British distinction) Perry Makepeace is vacationing in Aruba with his girlfriend Gail when they meet a mysterious Russian, Dima. (Short for Dimitri.) After a tennis match with Perry, Dima decides to take Perry into his confidence. Dima is a big time money launderer, who has decided to cooperate with British intelligence after his friend and protegé is whacked by his fellow Russian mobsters. He thinks that Perry either is a spy, or knows one. Perry is talked into seeing what he can do.

Dima’s information implicates several important banking officials in England, including a member of parliament. Thus, the case is assigned to Hector Meredith on a semi-unofficial basis. Perry and Gail assist in the attempt to provide Dima and his family protection in exchange for his information. That much of the plot is on the back of the book, so I don’t mind revealing it.

Even from that bit of summary, it is pretty clear that the moral issues are as murky as they are in the real life version of intelligence. Dima is clearly a criminal, but he is also oddly sympathetic. His family, particularly the minor children, are even more so. They will likely be collateral damage if Dima’s gambit fails. One could certainly dislike the British government for multiple reasons. Its complicity with the big banks that were largely responsible for the near-collapse of the Western financial system is loathsome, of course. (Not that our own government was innocent - or that much of any government was. Is it okay to hate them all?) The dithering and political infighting that delays everything while lives hang in the balance. Actually, it is details like this that are the most realistic thing about this book. Anyone who has had to deal with an unresponsive bureaucracy will recognize the difficulties.

The two truly likable characters are Gail and Perry, the innocents who get in way over their heads in the whole caper. Unlike the others (the apparatchiks, as Dima calls them), they care about the humans involved as people, rather than just cogs in the machine of statecraft. (Not that the actual spies are callous, just that one can’t let personal stuff cloud one’s judgment.)

Things I liked about this book? Le Carré is a good, skilled writer. He has excellent command of the language, a great feel for pacing, and the ability to draw the reader into the world. I also loved that he is able to differentiate his characters using their dialogue. Each person has his or her own voice, vocabulary, favorite words and phrases, and so on. He is able to sustain pages of dialogue without identifying each speaker more than occasionally, but you always know who is speaking, because of how they talk. (All it takes is a book where the author fails to do this for one to realize how difficult yet crucial this is.)

I also thought that the events of the plot were interesting (and relevant). Russian capitalism and Russian gangsterism have been enmeshed since the fall of the iron curtain, and dirty money will always need to be cleaned in such situations. Even decades after his stint in the intelligence world, le Carré is able to capture the feel of the situations that develop.

Things I didn’t like as much? I thought that the first part was very strong, but that it got bogged down a little when the author had to fill in the backstory on the international stage and also on the agency’s internal politics. I suspect that it would have been easier to follow if I hadn’t been driving, or if I were British myself. Still that one is a minor quibble.

The one thing I really hated was the ending. Because it wasn’t an ending! It’s like the author just decided to end the book two chapters before he finished his plot. [Spoiler warning.] A disaster occurs at the end, but it only directly affects two characters. Sure, the fallout will affect everyone. But we never learn how. No loose ends are ever tied up. There are plenty of loose ends, too. What happens? We’ll never know.

Another book that ends like this is Giant by Edna Ferber. I wondered when I read that one if she couldn’t figure out how to end it, or if she just got tired of the book, and decided to stop abruptly.

The worst part of it is that, since both books had characters that I cared about, it was horrible to not know what happened to them. I mean, if you are going to kill them off, kill them off. Don’t just leave them dangling. 

I should mention a few lines worth remembering. (And I had to, since I was driving.)

One is by Gail, after a peculiar experience with Dimo’s wife, who is shell shocked and irrevocably damaged by the torture she underwent in the past, and has become compulsively religious. Gail notes that she has gone from being an Anglican atheist to being an Orthodox atheist.

Another line comes from a very minor character, one of Perry’s academic colleagues, who Perry seeks out when he wants to give his information to MI6, but has no idea how to start. This colleague has connections. He asks for Perry’s cell phone number, and writes it down. He says, “I never commit anything to memory. It’s insecure.” I love that! Paper can be shredded, but memories endure.

The unforgettable Hector gets the final line. Perry is trying to feel out exactly how truthful Hector is being as he tries to recruit Perry and Gail to assist in the case. After Perry suggests that he may be lying to save the country, Hector states that Perry is mistaking him for a diplomat. He then goes on to say that he also would not lie to save his own skin, which is the behavior of a different creature altogether: the politician.

This was an engrossing book. Perfect for driving. Just realize that the ending is missing, and enjoy it, I suppose. (I could also imagine that the author died before finishing it.)

Note on the audio:

This book is read by Robin Sachs, who was in Galaxy Quest and Ocean’s Eleven, among others. I think he did a really fine job with this book. He adopts different voices for each character, male and female, and he is convincing. The sounds fit the language (see above) and the personality in a marvelous way. A truly delightful book to listen to. 

Note on vulgarity, obscenity, and profanity:

Maybe it’s a lawyer thing. It bothers me when people use “profanity” when they refer to vulgarity or obscenity. So here are the distinctions.

Something is “obscene” in general when it offends the basic prevalent morality of its time and place. Thus, obscenity changes from time to time, and from place to place. Generally “obscenity” refers to the sexual, but it could conceivably apply to other things.

Legally speaking (here in the US), something is “obscene” if it appeals to the prurient interest and lacks artistic, literary, political, or scientific value. So, generally sexual.

Thus, references to sexual parts or acts might be referred to as an “obscenity. F---, for example.

An obscenity can also be a vulgarity, but there are vulgarities that are not obscene. Vulgarities can refer to sex, but also to bodily functions. Thus, “crap” is a mild vulgarity, but is not an obscenity.

Profanity, on the other hand, is language that is desecrating to the sacred. References to deities, holy things, and holy symbols are all profanity. (My favorite obscure profanity is “zounds,” which I discovered a few years ago to be an old word referring to “His (Christ’s) wounds. Who knew?)

So there you are. Whether you indulge in “colorful metaphors,” as Spock put it, or not; use the right word to describe it.

In this book, Dima and Hector are the two profane and vulgar characters. Dima’s language sounds menacing, but is also oddly comical. Swearing sounds more sinister in a Russian accent, just as it sounds completely laughable in French. But Dima also hasn’t really figured out the idiom in English. (“Jesus God!” Only Russian gangsters swear like that.)

The other is Hector, whose casual British vulgarity rolls off his raspy tongue naturally. (And, it is much more imaginative than Dima’s version. Nobody does vulgarity like the Brits. Americans pick a favorite word or two, and use it early and often. The Brits occasionally make one gasp with the audacity and creativity of their usage. And then you want to take a shower.)

Note on string bass players:

String bass players? Actually, I thought of this because one of our Symphony players is from Russia. Igor just looks like a gangster, with his bald head and thick neck. Igor is a fun guy, actually, with a delightfully dry sense of humor. He is also a great musician. But, if you needed someone to play a Russian gangster in your play, just paint a tattoo or three, and he would be ready to go.

It’s not just him, though. John looks like the long lost twin of my cousin-in-law Todd, the professor of theology. They could switch places, I’m sure. John just looks like he could be a priest, given a proper cowl.

And then there was Keith, who used to play for the orchestra when I was a new player. I swear, he looked like he belonged in the days of Sir Walter Raleigh. Except he would have been the evil duke. The beard, twirled mustaches, and the curly hair. It was amazing.

So there you go, within one string bass section, we had the Russian mobster, the evil duke, and the priest.

(I hope you guys don’t mind a little teasing. We rely on the bass section to keep us all together…)

I Am Half-sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley

Source of book: Borrowed from my wife, who introduced me to the Flavia books. 

I have previously written about the earlier books in this series:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag

A Red Herring Without Mustard

Those new to Flavia should start at the beginning, as the later books assume knowledge of the persons and events of the previous books.

I remain impressed with the fact that Bradley, a Canadian author, took to writing late in life. In fact, the first book in this series was published when he was seventy. The list of classic authors who were long dead by that age is far longer than the list of those who wrote any significant work after that age. One of the many benefits of our modern age.

The basic premise of the books is that Flavia de Luce, an eleven year old with a passion for chemistry, and powers of deduction and observation beyond her years, solves murders, which conveniently happen within her village. (I don’t mean to be snarky. This is a necessary convention of the murder mystery genre - particularly the British tradition.)

Flavia is a delightful character for many reasons, particularly her impulsiveness and candor which make her believably young. She also has a sharp tongue the ability to make quick, if not always wise, decisions. Her family and those relationships are also interesting. This book continues the development of those relationships in a more nuanced direction that was started in the last book.

The title of the book, like the others, comes from a literary quotation. (In this case, it comes from The Lady Of Shalott, by Tennyson.)

This particular mystery reminded me a bit of the second in the series in that nearly half of the book goes by before the murder occurs. Thus, there isn’t much time to unravel the mystery. In fact, things happen a bit too fast for my taste at the end. However, as in the other book, this does leave time for more development of the characters before the plot takes over. Also, like the second in the series, the plot revolves around the entertainment industry.

I am not going to give any spoilers, since I feel that is a mean thing to do when discussing a mystery. All of what I say regarding the plot can be found on the back of the book.

The De Luce family  is heavily in debt, partially due to the maintenance of their property, Buckshaw; so in an attempt to stay out of bankruptcy, Flavia’s father rents it to a movie studio for filming. This brings a whole hoard of people together, so there are plenty of suspects when the murder occurs - particularly since a snowstorm strands everyone at the estate. Unlike the other books, where the village itself figures prominently in the story, this one takes place entirely at Buckshaw. I did miss the village a bit, but it was fun to read more about the old house and its history. As I noted before, Flavia’s relationship with her sisters and father was explored more in this book, and the close proximity helped with that development.

As in the other books, chemistry plays a role in the plot. I really appreciate that Bradley took the time to get the facts right. In too many books, science, math, and other verifiable facts are treated carelessly. (Don’t even get me started on music. Particularly music in movies.) It is nice to know that the author cares enough about the details to look things up.

As with each of these books, there are a number of delightful lines. Bradley is obviously well read - my favorite Victorian, Anthony Trollope gets a mention in one of the others - and both literary and musical references abound. (He gets the music right too.)

I like the one delivered by the vicar, who, to his wife’s neverending annoyance, has an irreverent streak. He enters from the increasing snow.

“It’s coming down as if all the angels and archangels are plucking chickens.”

That one made me smile. And also this one, by Flavia, who is not exactly sure how babies are born.

The fetching of water at a birth was, I had learned from the cinema and countless plays on the wireless, a ritual that might as well have been the Eleventh Commandment, though why boiling water was invariably specified was beyond me. It seemed hardly likely to be used to baste the mother without risk of serious burns, and it was simply beyond belief that a newborn would be immersed in a liquid having a temperature of 212 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale - unless, of course, that was the reason for newly delivered babies having that lobsterish color I’d seen in the cinema.

I also learned a fun British word from this book: pantechnicon. Apparently, this is what we Americans would call a “moving van,” or something similar. The original ones were horse-drawn, and were tall and narrow so as to fit in the small streets of the older sections of town.

As with all of the Flavia books, this one is a nice light read, perfect for a summer vacation book. (I read it while camping with the kids.) 

A horse-drawn pantechnicon.

A pantechnicon from the 1950s, the setting for the Flavia books. (Technically a 1947 - but it would have been in common use in the 1950s.)

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd

Source of book: Audio book borrowed from the library

I am not really a reader of genre fiction, but I do have a weakness for British murder mysteries. Naturally, I will blame my mother. Agatha Christie books lived at our house as far back as I can remember. I think my mother let me read And Then There Were None when I would have been ten or so - and it creeped me out. Not so much that I had nightmares, but it was a bit intense. Kind of like when my dad showed us Jaws around that time. So, my mom and I would discuss our Christie, and look for books we didn’t have, whenever we would go thrift shopping.

Maybe I should go even further back. My mother bought a bunch of Nancy Drew books at a yard sale, I believe, and I devoured them, as did my younger sister. And whatever Hardy Boys books we could find at the library. And Tom Swift Jr. books as well. I cut my literary teeth, so to speak, on the mystery.

Later, I would read the entire Sherlock Holmes novels and stories, Poe and Stevenson’s short stories, the complete Father Brown (G. K. Chesterton), Wilkie Collins, and some Sayers and a few minor authors on the side. Our family would also listen to the old radio shows on tape when we traveled on vacation, so I was exposed to the American tradition as well. Dragnet, Raymond Chandler, The Shadow, Tales of the Texas Rangers, and many more. Readers of my blog might note my enjoyment of Alan Bradley’s recent books.

I ended up with this book because my wife couldn’t find it in its printed version in our library system except on special order. Thus, she checked out the audio book. I had a case up in Napa County - eleven hours of driving, so it fit the bill perfectly.

I will give fair warning at this point: in order to discuss this book, I will have to give some spoilers. If you don’t wish to know some plot points, just know that I liked the book, really enjoyed the narrator, but found some plot elements to be unrealistic even for the genre.

The protagonist is Bess Crawford, a young nurse serving in World War I on the hospital ship Britannic. This part of the story is historical fiction, following the actual events closely, and including several real life persons. The Britannic was one of three sister ships, each ill-fated in its own way. The first, and most famous was the Titanic. The third was the Olympic, which collided with a warship in 1911, but was repaired and managed to survive for a long career. The Britannic never saw service as a liner, but was converted to a hospital ship in 1915. It was sunk when it either hit a mine or was hit by a torpedo - no one knows for sure - but with a minimal loss of life due to the better conditions and the changes made to equipment and procedure after the Titanic disaster.

HMHS Britannic

Historical note: believe it or not, a nurse named Violet Jessup survived all three disasters. She was on the Titanic, but was rescued. She was on the Olympic when it collided, but made it back to shore. Finally, she was a nurse on the Britannic when it was sunk. The author of this book quotes (or at least paraphrases) Jessup’s description of the final sinking:

"She dipped her head a little, then a little lower and still lower. All the deck machinery fell into the sea like a child's toys. Then she took a fearful plunge, her stern rearing hundreds of feet into the air until with a final roar, she disappeared into the depths, the noise of her going resounding through the water with undreamt-of violence...."

This part of the story was riveting, but only set the stage for the rest of the book.

In the story, Crawford cares for a dying soldier, who makes her promise to deliver a cryptic message to his brother. When she does so, she begins to stumble upon dark family secrets, and a murder from years ago. I will go no further than that, for fear of ruining a tight and intriguing plot.

As would be expected, there are plenty of interesting characters, plot twists, and a heart pounding conclusion. Pretty standard stuff for the genre, but I would say well written for the most part. Whereas Christie would always follow the rules of the British murder mystery perfectly, there are a few minor violations in this case. Some are minor, and probably enhance the author’s purposes. (I won’t reveal them - read for yourself.) One is a bigger problem, so I will discuss it later. Again, this is a big spoiler, so avoid that paragraph if you haven’t read the book but plan to do so.

There are some elements of the plot that I really loved, both as a reader, and as a lawyer. First, the central fact around which everything else revolves is that there are four children with different parentage in the family. The oldest is the child of the father and his first wife. The next three are legally from the second wife, but may or may not have another biological father.

Not only is this a venerable plot device for a novel, it makes for interesting drama in real life. I remember a particular case that I had that matches many of the details of this tale (minus the murder, thankfully!) In my case, a man had an affair, his mistress conceived a child, who was born gravely disabled. The man left his wife for his mistress, and they married. The guilt was bad enough, but the belief that the child had been born disabled as punishment for their sin tainted their dealings with his ex-wife. Torn between shame and defensiveness, and combined with the ex-wife’s justifiable anger and hurt, it was difficult to bring the parties together enough to make the situation at least less bad for the kids. It was one of the more difficult cases I have had, and yet I knew that my best plan was to grant each party their pain. Once we got beyond that, we were able to work on the practicalities that we had the power to change for the better.

In this book, the issues are never addressed, and only come to light after the family has completely destroyed itself.

Another issue raised by this book that was of personal interest was the ethical duty of a nurse. Since my wife is a nurse, she has had to face this issue directly; but I would add that attorneys have to as well. A nurse (or a lawyer) must seek to do good for those we care for (or represent) regardless of their past. Thus, my wife has given medical care to prisoners who have done unspeakably awful things. It is her duty (and in my opinion moral duty as well) to seek to heal those she can. Likewise, I must give the best legal representation to my clients, whether or not I like them, or feel they deserve punishment. (I don’t practice criminal law, but these issues arise in even small civil cases and estates, to say nothing of divorces.) The protagonist, to her credit, serves faithfully even at risk to herself, and tries to do good even to those she believes to have done horrid things.

Bess Crawford is one of the best things about this book (which is good, because this is apparently a series). She reminds me a great deal of my own amazing woman, who is also capable of determined action even working without sleep, while ill, or under less than ideal conditions. She would be at the top of my list of people I would want in charge in an emergency situation. (And I come from a family with many of this sort of people.) Crawford likewise embodies that spirit that ignores the urge to panic, and takes logical yet intuitive action in difficult situations throughout the book. One of things that used to irritate me about Nancy Drew was that she usually ended up needing to be rescued by a man in the end. (The faithful Ned, usually...) The Deus ex Homo, so to speak, the close relative of Deus ex Machina. In this book, the cavalry doesn’t ride to the rescue, at least until the danger is over, and she needs help getting multiple victims to a medical facility.

The one truly false note, though, comes in the resolution. SPOILER ALERT!

The eventual murderer turns out to be a child. In the original murder, this makes sense. I could definitely see it. However, there are multiple successive murders. The author leaves me with two possible explanations. Either a child was able to commit other murders while creating the appearance of accidents - something only an experienced - and strong - sociopath would be able to do; or, the child waited until adulthood before the next murder, doing nothing to blow his cover until then. This too me does not match my own observations, which is that a young violent murderer would not suddenly gain the craft necessary to commit stealthy murder. Rather, he would become more violent, and thus be caught much sooner.  Given the specifics of the plot, the identity of the murderer makes sense, but it would have been more realistic had the perpetrator turned out to be a clever adult, rather than a precocious child.

Finally, I want to commend Rosalyn Landor, who reads this audio book. Although I was naturally skeptical about her decision to attempt to read each characters lines in the voice he or she would use, (it’s always risky for women to attempt men’s voices and vice versa) she pulled it off. There are multiple characters, with different ages, regional dialects, social status, and nationality, and she made them stand out well. I found that as I went along, I could even distinguish between brothers in her characterization, without being told who was speaking. A highly impressive performance, in my opinion. Well done.

This was a perfect book for a long and somewhat boring drive, and would have been a good read under any circumstances.