The Grave's a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley

Source of book: I own this.

Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce books need to be read in order, or they make no sense. They are intended to be, in addition to murder mysteries, a story of the de Luce family, and later books assume you know the details from the earlier ones. Conveniently, I started reading the series shortly after starting this blog, so you can read them in order and then read my thoughts on each book. Here they are in order:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

A Red Herring Without Mustard

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Speaking From Among the Bones

The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place is therefore the ninth installment. After the original, Bradley contracted to write a total of seven, then extended it to ten. I have no seen any further news, so the next might well be the last. And, after all, Bradley is age 81, having taken up novel writing in his retirement. 

This book picks up soon after the end of the last one. Flavia is now officially an orphan, after the death of her father. (Her mother died shortly after her birth.) Along with her older sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, she is on a vacation planned by her family’s faithful servant Dogger. Rather than her hometown of Bishop’s Lacey, Flavia gets to solve a mystery in a different (although somewhat similar) small post-war British village. Well, four murders, actually. 

While enjoying a pleasant fishing excursion, Flavia manages to catch a body - a young actor named Orlando. It turns out he is the son of the late vicar - who was hanged for the murder of three gossipy women who were snidely referred to as the “three graces.” 

There are plenty of possible suspects, of course. And a lot of skeletons in the closets of more than a few people. 

This being a murder mystery, I won’t go any further than that. 

I wouldn’t mind mentioning a few details, however. As in the other books, Bradley’s love for literature and music are apparent. A minor character complains about Daphne, saying that you can’t trust a person who reads Trollope. I obviously disagree with this assessment - and I suspect Bradley does too, since he manages to get a mention of this underrated Victorian author into most of the books. 

Another fitting book reference comes from Dogger, quoting Milton’s Areopagitica.

“A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

The musical selections are always interesting too: not too obscure, but not exactly mainstream either. Rather, they are the sort of works that Classical buffs know and love, and that might be passingly familiar to everyone else. 

In this case, Bradley uses Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Clocking in at about an hour and fifteen minutes, it serves to give Flavia a window of time to do some sleuthing. 

While these books aren’t exactly high literature, Bradley does write well. I find them a cut about typical genre fiction. 

I should mention a couple of witty lines I liked. This one is courtesy of Mrs. Dandyman, the proprietor of the circus, allegedly quoting the late vicar. 

“There’s nothing so deadly as an acid tongue driven by a pious mind.” 

True that. 

And finally, a line from Flavia herself, who makes an educated assumption, and wins a gasp from the new vicar. 

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Feminine intuition,” I replied. Which was an outright lie. Feminine intuition is no more than an acceptable excuse for female brains.” 

Very true indeed. It can’t be that women are as smart (and often smarter) than men, right? It has to be some mysterious “intuition” they are born with, rather than that. And Flavia is both smart and observant, two traits which are necessary to make a good sleuth. 

I had fun with this light, quick read. But definitely start at the beginning.

***

How about a bit of Bach? 

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Source of book: I own this, but we listened to it on audiobook

Years ago, in my teens, The Moonstone was the first Wilkie Collins book I read. After that came The Woman In White, because we owned it. A few years later, I was given two additional books by my violin teacher’s husband. (He had extra paperbacks he didn’t need - and introduced me to P. G. Wodehouse and Anthony Trollope as well.) Those two were Armadale, and my favorite Collins, No Name. 

We had a couple of long road trips planned for this year, so I got the audiobook version (narrated by Peter Jeffrey, who does a good job of making the Victorian language flow, as well as distinguishing between the different narrators and characters.) The reviews from the kids were mixed. Some found it interesting, others not so much. Win some, lose some.

First a bit about the book itself. The Moonstone is generally considered the first true detective novel. True, Poe wrote a couple of short stories which had many of the elements. And Sarah Burney’s novel, The Hermitage lent some key elements to Collins’ plot. But it really was The Moonstone that brought all the elements together, and would go on to influence detective stories from the Sherlock Holmes books on down. 

The Moonstone follows a common Collins pattern in that the story is told by multiple narrators. In this case, the story is set up by the hero, Franklin Blake, who asks the other characters to tell the part of the story they have personal knowledge of. He himself contributes a section as well. No knock on Franklin, but he is the straight man, so the other narrations are more amusing than his, although all of them serve to illuminate the plot - and eventually the mystery. 

The plot itself is a classic: a mysterious diamond, the Moonstone, is stolen from its Hindu shrine by an unscrupulous British officer. From then on, it appears to be followed by a curse, with evil (and often death) pursuing those who possess it. This history is told through the eyes of close associates of the thief as well as those who inherit the diamond. When the main story opens, the reclusive owner of the stone leaves the diamond to his niece, Rachel Verinder, and Franklin is tasked with delivering it to her. She wears the diamond at a party, and it is seen by all, including the three mysterious Indians who are undoubtedly determined to return it to India. 

That night, the diamond disappears, and the best efforts of the local police are insufficient to solve the mystery. Franklin calls in the renowned detective, Sergeant Cuff (a precursor of both Holmes and Joe Friday, so to speak), who presents his theory, but cannot completely solve the case. 

 Sergeant Cuff investigates...

Later, it becomes clear that the moonstone has been placed in a bank vault in London, pledged by an unknown person to a shady moneylender. But who? And how did he or she get the diamond? 

The story is told in turn by three main narrators. The first section is told by Gabriel Betteridge, the Verinder’s head servant, and one of the most delightful characters in Victorian fiction. He is obsessed with Robinson Crusoe, which he believes to be an oracle, a cross between the Bible and Nostradamus. It is his comfort, his guide, and his inspiration. Which he is eager to inflict on those around him. He is also a bit of a misogynist, having had a rather unpleasant marriage, and finding relief in his wife’s death. But, he is loyal, perceptive, and observant, which makes him an excellent servant and a useful narrator. He isn’t exactly a reliable narrator, as he is openly biased, but his attention to detail allows Collins to set the stage with most of the clues needed using just his story. 

The narrative next shifts to Drusilla Clack, Rachel’s impoverished cousin. Miss Clack is a puritanical sort, who pushes her religious beliefs on others with a rather assaultive fervor. 

The final narrator is Franklin Blake, who gets to explain his own investigation into the mystery. He has a particularly personal interest, as he is in love with Rachel, yet she appears to hate him - while refusing to explain why. 

There are other, shorter sections, essentially narrated by other characters: Mr. Bruff, the family attorney; Ezra Jennings, the doctor’s assistant; and Mr. Murthwaite, an adventurer who tells the epilogue. 

While it is pretty tough to spoil a 150 year old book, I will refrain from revealing the solution to the mystery. Suffice it to say that the essential elements of the British tradition of detective story are mostly in place. The “inside job,” the red herring, the bumbling local police, the celebrated investigator, the least likely suspect, and the final twist. It is in bringing all of them together - and in the skillful plotting and writing - that Collins came to be considered the first to do it. 

A couple of things only marginally related to the plot itself stood out. The most notable is the use of opium and addiction. Collins himself became an opium addict, and wrote certain sections of this book from experience. This may have contributed to its sales, as dramatic and lurid opium dreams were all the rage at the time. 

Second, although Victorian literature as a rule (and English Victorian literature in particular) tends to be colonialist and casually racist, I was struck by how little stereotyping Collins did. (For its era - obviously it would have been written very differently today.) The Indians - the three Brahmans tasked with recovering the Moonstone - may be “exotic” in some ways, but they are not savages. Rather, they are skilled at blending in, shapeshifting as necessary to accomplish their goals. Collins also portrays their goals as noble: it is the British officer who has stolen the gem, after all. Sure, the Indians may be ruthless and even murderous, but they are morally consistent and admirable in their own way. 

Third, Collins is a master of obliquely discussing female “purity” in subversive ways, even while maintaining plausible deniability. The Moonstone is a bit of an obvious stand in for virginity, and Rachel’s decision to refuse to defend her own honor is fascinating. Indeed, she feels insulted that she should have to. This is hardly the only Collins book to go there - indeed, the question of purity (and the hypocrisy and double standards of Victorian society) runs through many of his books. His heroines refuse to conform to nice submissive stereotypes. They fight for what is theirs, they pursue love - and money - as they wish. They take risks that only men were allowed to take. The decline to play the game. 

The fourth observation is that Collins had a real eye for the swindlers of his era. No Name skewers medical cons as well as financial. In The Moonstone, it is religious hucksterism in its fundamentalist form that Collins takes on. Collins was religious, but rather unorthodox in his personal life. (He eschewed marriage, choosing instead to live with a woman and raise her daughter as his own, while having a second mistress and three children with her.) He had no patience, however, for Puritans and their determination to create labyrinths of rules. To this end, he lets Miss Clack have enough leash to humiliate herself in her attempts to convert others. Here are some highlights from that. 

I sat down in the hall to wait for my answer--and having always a few tracts in my bag, I selected one which proved to be quite providentially applicable to the person who answered the door. The hall was dirty, and the chair was hard; but the blessed consciousness of returning good for evil raised me quite above any trifling considerations of that kind. The tract was one of a series addressed to young women on the sinfulness of dress. In style it was devoutly familiar. Its title was, “A Word with you on your Cap-Ribbons.”

Betteridge’s daughter, Penelope, to whom the tract was directed, gives an acid response:

She looked at the title. “Is it written by a man or a woman, Miss? If it’s written by a woman, I had rather not read it on that account. If it’s written by a man, I beg to inform him that he knows nothing about it.” 

Yep, the more things change...there is no end of the policing of female clothing. Hey, I wrote a whole series on that! It is pretty hard to disagree with Penelope’s response. MYOB. 

Later in the narrative, Miss Clack tries desperately to convert Rachel’s dying mother with more and more and more books and tracts and sermons. 

Here was a golden opportunity! I seized it on the spot. In other words, I instantly opened my bag, and took out the top publication. It proved to be an early edition--only the twenty-fifth--of the famous anonymous work (believed to be by the precious Miss Bellows), entitled The Serpent at Home. The design of the book--with which the worldly reader may not be acquainted--is to show how the Evil One lies in wait for us in all the most apparently innocent actions of our daily lives. The chapters best adapted to female perusal are “Satan in the Hair-Brush”; “Satan behind the Looking-Glass”; “Satan under the Tea-Table”; “Satan out of the Window”;--and many others. 

“Give all your attention, dear aunt, to this precious book--and you will give me all I ask.” With these words, I handed it to her open, at a marked passage--one continuous burst of burning eloquence! Subject: Satan among the Sofa Cushions.

One wonders if Bill Gothard and Jack Chick took inspiration from this. So many demons lurking in the corners of everyday life. I’d laugh a bit more heartily if I hadn’t had to live through too much of this - and hadn’t been handed the equivalent of these books to convince my wife of the joys of patriarchy. Sigh. Nothing new under the sun, though. 

One final observation. Collins has tremendous sympathy for the outcasts of society, and takes care to show that often our prejudices against people have to do with their appearances, or their socioeconomic status. Rosanna has done time for theft, but is hired by the Verinders, who look past her past. But she is never completely out of suspicion, in significant part because she is deformed. Her tragic end contrasts with the way Godfrey is assumed to be good because of his genteel birth, his charitable work, and his slick manners. Oh, and his handsome face. The lame Lucy is suspected of madness or malevolence because of her deformity as well. Ezra Jennings is a particularly good example. Jennings has a mysterious past which is hinted at, but not stated. Probably, he has an illegitimate child to support, but this is merely an educated guess. He is also of uncertain race, being apparently of mixed heritage. He also describes himself as having a “female constitution,” and being somewhere between male and female. Whether Collins means to hint at intersexuality, homosexuality, or merely some “defect” in “manliness” is unclear. Whatever the case, Jennings is ugly, and thus distrusted and hated by everyone. In each of these cases, though, appearances are deceiving. Rosanna has her demons, but she is ultimately more generous and kind than you would think. Lucy is fiercely loyal and good hearted. And Jennings turns out to be one of the most scrupulously moral and decent people in the book. Godfrey...well, you will have to read the book to find out his fate. 

You never truly know sometimes how a book you enjoyed as a kid or teen will age. There have been a few which were disappointing to re-read as an adult. (Looking at you, H. Rider Haggard…) Others turn out to be even better than remembered. (As in The Great Brain or anything by Beverly Cleary.) I can say, however, having re-read two Wilkie Collins books, that he has aged well. The plots are tight, the characters memorable, the writing good. And, while still of an era, they are less sexist and racist than I feared - Collins humanizes his characters too well for that. The Moonstone is rightly considered a classic. 

Such A Strange Lady by Janet Hitchman

Source of book: I own this. 

My wife has outstanding taste in books, and never fails to find me great used books for various occasions, including Christmas of 2016, when she found this one. 

Such A Strange Lady is a biography - the very first written - of Dorothy L. Sayers. (The “L” was important to her - it was from her maternal ancestor Percival Leigh - one of the founders of Punch.) Most will know her, if at all, for her Lord Peter Wimsey murder mysteries, although the number of people I know who have heard of her is disappointingly small. Fewer still will know of her amazing feminist essays, collected as Are Women Human? And yes, you absolutely should read them. 

My history with Sayers starts with her short story “The Inspiration of Mr. Budd,” which I read for 7th or 8th grade literature. I was smitten, but didn’t really follow up on her at the time. Later, in law school, a good friend happened to bring Murder Must Advertise along to a law school conference. I borrowed it, and read it before we had to return to our respective coasts. (There is a reason I wasn’t an A+ law student. I cared...enough. But not enough to work that hard and give up reading for fun. Oh well, no real regrets.) 

So anyway, it was interesting to read more about her life. She was the child of a country clergyman - one who actually exemplified the Christian ethic, often giving away more of his modest income than he could afford to help the poor. He also was determined to give young Dorothy - an only child, and a bit peculiar - as good an education as a boy. She wasn’t exactly a model student, although she was obviously highly intelligent. She was also socially awkward, tall and big boned, louder than people thought she should be. She got through school fine, and managed to get into Oxford. She completed her courses there with moderate distinction. But she was given no degree - Oxford didn’t get those to women at the time. (She would eventually get her degree many years later, and Oxford would see the error of its ways after she left.) 

Sayers struggled after graduation to find her place in the world. She taught. And hated it. She wrote, but took a while to find success - which she did by writing genre fiction - the Lord Peter mysteries, which she felt were beneath her, but they paid the bills. She worked for a while in advertising, where she was actually pretty good. Although most of us are too young (and in my case too American) to remember it, there was a fantastically successful campaign for Colman’s Mustard, featuring the fictional adventures of the “Mustard Club.” While the idea wasn’t hers, she ended up writing most of the copy. And, she later used her experiences in Murder Must Advertise.

Later, Sayers would return to her more scholarly roots, with a series of plays (performed mostly on radio) with religious themes, several books on theology and religion, and a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Predictably, this last drew some undeserved derision - how could a mere writer of mystery novels attempt a translation. Sayers reminded the critics that long before she was a writer of fiction, she was a scholar - and the fiction served to pay her bills. 

Sayers had little luck in love, alas. She had a child out of wedlock. The father is unknown to this day - she was extremely private about it. She gave the boy her name, although she outsourced the raising for the most part. She later married a flaky sort, who slept around on her, and drank. They seemed to get along after a fashion, although she didn’t exactly mourn his death openly. (To be honest, I wonder if she was on the Autism spectrum. It would make sense of many things about her. As the author puts it about her childhood, “Like the cat, an animal she dearly loved, she tolerated, rather than embraced, civilization.”)  

There are some highly interesting things in this short book. First is the fact that the author had to make do with a relative minimum of information. Her family refused to cooperate at all, leading to an absolutely fantastic line in the introduction:

“I must absolve from any errors Miss Sayers’ family, close friends, and executors, from whom I had no assistance whatsoever.”

I also must quote a few things regarding the religious plays. During World War Two, Sayers wrote a radio production for the BBC on the life of Christ. It was a multi-part series, to be performed by actors (horrors!) and in modern English. Predictably, this was met with great pearl clutching by the Fundies of 1940s British society, and much pressure was put on the BBC to cancel it. This was particularly silly as Sayers wrote a rather respectful play, in keeping with her devout beliefs - but also her modern artistic sensibilities. As with modern Fundie boycott campaigns, this rather backfired. The BBC stood firm, and the campaign gave free publicity to Sayers. As she put it in her tributes to the actors and producers, with her characteristic wit:

It is moreover irresistibly tempting (though is it kind or Christian?) to mention the Lord’s Day Observance Society and the Protestant Truth Society, who so obligingly did all our publicity for us at, I fear, considerable expense to themselves. Without their efforts, the plays might have slipped by with comparatively little notice, being given at an hour inconvenient for grown-up listening. These doughty opponents secured for us a large increase in our adult audience and thus enabled the political and theological issues in the most important part of the story to be treated with more breadth and pungency than might otherwise have seemed justifiable...The irony of the situation is, however, not of my making--it is part of the universal comedy. Let us record the plain fact: the opposition did us good service; let our gratitude for that go where all gratitude is due. 

Also fascinating to me regarding the plays is her nuanced take on one of the underrated characters in the Gospels: Judas Iscariot. To portray him as a cartoon villain is indefensible in my mind. Sayers wrote about this to her producer when the project was in progress. 

Judas is an insoluble riddle. He can’t have been awful from the start, or Christ would never have called him. I mean, one can’t suppose that He deliberately chose a traitor in order to get Himself betrayed--that savours too much of the agent provocateur, and isn’t the sort of thing one would expect of any decent man, let alone of any decent God--to do. And He can’t have been so stupid as to have been taken in by an obviously bad hat;--quite apart from any doctrinal assumptions. He was far too good a psychologist. Judas must have been a case of corruptio optima pessima; but what corrupted him? Disappointment at finding that the earthly kingdom wasn’t coming along? or defeatism, feeling that the war was lost, and one had better make terms quickly? Or just (as the Gospels seem rather unconvincingly to suggest) money and alarm for his own interests? If we can get a coherent Judas we can probably get a coherent plot.

I have wondered along the same lines since my youth. It is so refreshing to hear Sayers talk of the same questions. In fact, I must say that whenever I read her writing, I find gems like this, where she understands the nuance and asks the hard questions. It was unsurprising to discover that she flirted with agnosticism in her teens and college years, before finding a more mystical and complex version of faith. 

For those who haven’t discovered Sayers, she is an underrated writer and thinker. She is also a member of my Fantasy Dinner Party. (You have one of those, right? Past and present people you would invite to the greatest dinner party of all time?) Sayers has been on my list for decades, and I still think she would be fantastic. 

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

Since we listen to a lot of audiobooks during our road trips, I decided a few years back to use the Newbery Award list (including honor selections) for ideas for books I was not personally familiar with. This has been particularly useful for books published after the mid 1980s, since most of the contemporary ones were written after I stopped checking out children’s books from the library, and started on adult selections instead. Thus, while my kids may well have read some (such as The Tale of Despereaux), there are others that might not have caught their eye.

The path to our choice of Over Sea, Under Stone was a bit circuitous. Susan Cooper won a Newbery in 1976 for The Grey King, so I put that on our list. However, after requesting it from the library, I discovered that it is actually the fourth book in a series. And, if you know me, I like to DO THINGS IN ORDER. (Feel free to snicker.) Fortunately, our library system has the entire series on audiobook, so it was easy to pivot to start properly with the first book. 

Over Sea, Under Stone was published in 1965, and the sequels weren’t written until years later. This book, therefore, can stand alone easily - and apparently it is different in character from the others. Specifically, while all of them can be loosely classified as fantasy, Over Sea, Under Stone is more of a straight-forward mystery, lacking swords and sorcery except for a few brief allusions to the semi-mythical past. From what I can tell, the later books have more true fantasy in them.

The book features a trio of siblings, Simon, Jane, and Barney, who come with their parents on vacation to stay at a fiction Cornwall beach town. The Grey House is owned by an absent sea captain, who is a friend of Great-Uncle Merry, who isn’t actually a relative, but an old family friend who is also a respected academic.

While at the house, the children discover a passage to the attic, and there find an old telescope case containing an ancient manuscript. With the help of Great-Uncle Merry, they determine that the manuscript refers to the time of King Arthur, and may lead to the location of an artifact that just might contain magical powers. But there are others seeking it - and they are rather nefarious and ruthless. As “Gumerry” explains it, there has always been an eternal struggle between the light and dark, and while the light never wins, it never completely loses either, and the two sides remain in conflict.

As for the rest of the story, it can be summed up as a chase to see which side can decode the clues and find the artifact first. There are plenty of twists and turns along the way, and enough excitement to entertain.

I had a few thoughts while listening to this book. First, the whole “Yay Britain, Hail King Arthur, Celts are cool, good versus evil, repel the invaders” was sure a hell of a lot more fun when this book was written - or even in my own childhood. These days, there is just a bit too much of Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon coming to mind. It sucks when something fun and wholesome and entertaining gets co-opted by racists and xenophobes. It really is a shame, because the Arthur legends are still relevant and full of fascinating inspiration for stories. (Mark Twain certainly put his own twist on them.) I am sure in 1965, a mere generation after World War II, the idea of the Brits fending off the German (Saxon) invaders was morally less complicated. Now, with the same language repurposed to stir up hate against immigrants, it is hard not to wince just a little.

That said, there is absolutely nothing xenophobic in this book. The Arthur legend is used in its more metaphorical sense - even as the book assumes that Arthur was a real person. And, as any good metaphorical legend about good and evil, it pretty clearly identifies evil with the lust for power, and good with the benefit of all mankind.

Another thing that was striking about the book was its rather advanced use of language. To a degree, I think we tend to take this for granted in books for children these days, but many of the books from the past that we consider “children’s books” were actually for adults, while the simplistic and moralistic books for kids largely haven’t remained popular. The vocabulary is pretty extensive in this book, and the children are thoroughly believable, compared to the often angelic sorts you see in books of a certain era. Because of these traits, I actually guessed that it was written in the 1980s, until I looked up the date.

There are a couple of interesting facts about the genesis of the book. First, Susan Cooper originally wrote it in response to a contest by Edith Nesbit’s publisher - the contest was to write a “family adventure” in her style. While Cooper didn’t enter the contest, she turned her initial effort into this book. Also of interest is that the places described in the book, while fictional in name, strongly resemble an actual place which was a favorite vacation destination of hers.

The kids definitely approved of Over Sea, Under Stone, so we will be continuing with the series.

Sovereign by C. J. Sansom

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This is book number three of Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series of murder mysteries set in the days of Henry VIII. As with the previous ones, they are filled with political intrigue, exhaustively researched, and full of authentic detail. The previous installments are:

Dissolution

Dark Fire

I was introduced to these books by a legal colleague for obvious reasons: we both write for our local Bar Association magazine, we both read interesting books, and Matthew Shardlake is a lawyer who lives a much more exciting and terrifying life than we ever wish to. More recently, a friend and fellow blogger took my suggestion and wrote about them herself.

This third book centers around several real-life events, specifically Henry’s Northern Progress, his marriage to Catherine Howard, and her subsequent execution for adultery. Shardlake is manipulated by Archbishop Cramner into accepting a rather unpleasant job: making sure an accused traitor is kept alive until he can be transported to the Tower of London and tortured. This is in addition to his more pleasant job of sorting through the local justice petitions to be presented to the king, along with a respected local lawyer. Come to think of it, this last job IS kind of a dream job in a way. Kind of like the 16th Century version of clerking for a judge...a really powerful one...but with small claims cases. Yeah, I think that would be great. Except for the chance of getting whacked that came with about any job back then. Oh well.

So, what was the Northern Progress? Heck, what even IS a “Royal Progress?” I’ll admit my knowledge was a bit sketchy here, despite my early exposure to John Bunyan’s most famous work. A “Progress” is certainly not a minor affair. More like a tour by a king and a few thousand of his followers, servants, and soldiers. In this case, the Northern Progress was intended to awe and cow the mostly Catholic northern provinces in England out of their plans to rebel. Henry packed up a huge hoard, and went north, visiting York, among other places. The bulk of the book is set in York, and concerns a nascent rebellion and its fallout.

A couple of interesting things come to mind in this connection. First, I hadn’t really connected the idea of the Royal Progress with Pilgrim’s Progress. Now, I have to wonder if Bunyan wasn’t making an interesting point. A king touring his realm is a Progress. But for Bunyan, who was too radical even for the Puritans, the idea of an everyman’s journey to paradise warranting the term “Progress” must have been part and parcel of his anti establishment beliefs. Pretty radical. Which might have contributed to his unpopularity with the powers that were.  

Secondly, the nightmare of logistics surrounding celebrities apparently have always been a problem. This rock star could behead you, obviously, but other than that...this had a lot in common with Woodstock. Insufficient provisions for sanitation, problems with food supply, threatening weather, prostitution, and so on.

Sansom is at his best describing the reality of these conditions. Like a good lawyer (and Samson was one before hitting it big with his writing), he envisions the downsides of everything. As with his descriptions of London, he unfailingly finds the stink.

Set in this crazy setting is a real-life controversy. As anyone who knows his or her history (or his or her Shakespeare), knows: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. The number one cause of death for royalty often seems to be assassination, and deposition is always just one error away. Henry had managed to quash one Northern rebellion, and didn’t want to risk another. It didn’t help, of course, that his father (Henry VII), had a rather tenuous claim to the crown in the first place. After Richard III was killed, the succession was kind of up for grabs until Henry VII enforced his claim with violence. (And murder of most of his competition. There is some evidence that it was Henry, not Richard, who murdered the princes in the tower. It would certainly help his case.) But, it should not be forgotten, Henry VII was most directly descended from the previous dynasty not in his own right, but because he married into the line. So, in a just world, his wife should have been queen. Henry’s claim was as the heir of an illegitimate son of John of Gaunt (see Richard II…) on the Lancaster side of the War of the Roses. Henry VII’s wife Elizabeth, was on the York side. So he could claim to unite them. And he had a really big, badass army. Which was pretty much the deciding factor.

Then add in this: there was a claim that Henry’s wife’s father was actually illegitimate, the son of a no-name archer, and Richard of York’s wife Cecily. This theory is what drives the book.

I mention all this, not just because it is key to the plot, but because we lawyers find the whole inheritance rules fascinating. (You have insomnia? Ask a lawyer to explain the Rule Against Perpetuities…)

Anyway, the would-be rebels have documentation of the alleged truth of this claim, which would arguably render Henry VIII an illegitimate king, and install a rival from another branch of the family, who happens to be...strongly Catholic. You can guess where this is going.

Shardlake and his able (and part Jewish - in an era when the Jews had been evicted from England) assistant, Jack Barak, are asked to investigate a suspicious death, find a box with this documentation, which is then stolen from them by an unknown personage, and they are embroiled in a political maelstrom once again.

In this world, politics and religion have become inseparable. To be in favor of protestantism, one must support Henry. To oppose him is to embrace Catholicism. Unless one is a true dissenter, in which case, expect to be tortured and executed by both sides. Oh, and the strange bedfellows. The Northerners attempted an alliance with Scotland, which was torn between the Catholics and the Presbyterians (which hated the Church of England), so even making an alliance was a political decision for Scotland…

In our own era too, religion has become bound up with politics, which is why I, like Shardlake, find myself outside of any one camp these days. At least in our days, so far, this isn’t a life or death situation. What seems more likely is that the branch of religion that has aligned itself with Donald Trump is going to lose the next generation or two for the most part.

Which leads me to this: in this book, we see the old, obese, vindictive Henry VIII. Not the young, handsome, and politically astute. His political skills, like his physical (and sexual) prowess, have faded, and all he has left is power and brutality. There is some historical truth here. Certainly, Henry was bloody. As I pointed out regarding the first book in the series, over the course of his reign, Henry VIII killed one in forty of his subjects for political reasons. In our modern US, that would mean a murder of 7.2 million people. More than the population of a majority of our states. I’m glad not to live in those times.

But what does strike me here is the unpleasant parallels between our current political era. Trump is no Henry VIII. But he would certainly fit in to the Tudor Era as an egotistical, petty, vindictive narcissistic sociopath. The sort of people kings tend to be. Although I believe he is far too incompetent at anything other than demagoguery to actually succeed in those times, you can tell he craves it. He craves the fawning. He craves the power to silence those who disagree. And he governs based on patronage just like the old kings. This doesn’t work so well in the 21st Century

This leads me to what I think is the central quote of the book. Shardlake and Barak are discussing the political (and religious) implications if the king were proven to be illegitimate.

“God speaking through the King’s voice,” Barak shook his head. “That has always seemed to me as stupid an idea as that he speaks through the Pope’s”

And thus we have much of human history. The insistence that God speaks through certain privileged humans. Not just in Catholicism. Not just in the days of Church and State being combined. We see it today in the way that particular interpretations are used as weapons against vulnerable people around the world - and to remove dissenters who point out the evil that is being done.

I won’t get into the plot any further than this. I will say that I smoked out the major plot twist at the end about halfway through the book. But it was satisfying when it finally came to full light. (Hey, I was raised on Agatha Christie. And I’m still not as good as my wife at this…)

A thoroughly satisfying book, well above average in both the historical fiction and murder mystery genres.

Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

Time somehow got away from us, and it has been nearly two years since we listened to an Alexander McCall Smith book. How did that even happen? Anyway, it’s nice to be back.

As I noted before, we have listened to these all out of order, due to what was in stock at our library. However, having time to plan ahead, the last couple have been chosen to fill in the gaps. I still haven’t read or listened to the first one, but my kids have, so we haven’t gone back to do that one. 

Morality For Beautiful Girls is the third book, and comes directly after The Tears of the Giraffe, which we listened to most recently. Mma. Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni are engaged, and they have essentially adopted a couple of orphans. However, not all is well.

First, the detective agency is having difficulty making a profit. This leads Mma. Ramotswe to consider laying off her assistant, Mma. Makutsi. This is problematic in part because Mma. Makutsi not only relies on her income for her own support: she is supporting a dying brother as well as her family back in the village.

Second, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has lapsed into clinical depression, and isn’t bothering to eat or come into work, leaving the repair shop in the hands of the lazy and incompetent apprentices. What is to be done?

And then there are the two cases. A wealthy and powerful government official seeks the aid of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency to gather evidence that his brother’s wife is trying to poison her husband. This plot takes Mma. Ramotswe to a distant cattle ranch - and into a hive of unhealthy family dynamics. Meanwhile, Mma. Makutsi is left to mind the agency (and manage the repair shop until Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni recovers.) She is handed a large retainer, and an intriguing task: can she determine which of the finalists for a beauty contest is likely to bring honor, and not disgrace, to the contest?

As usual, McCall Smith handles the complex moral issues at stake with humor and subtlety. I particularly appreciated in this case the focus on Mma. Makutsi, who is more perceptive than she appears at first glance. She fully understands the patriarchal dynamics at play in the contest, and the way that women are punished for sexual behavior that men get away with every day - particularly in a “traditional” culture.

Also interesting in this book is the dynamic between the wealthy and their hired help. I don’t want to spoil the way one case ends, but I will note that there is often a tendency for the wealthy to take advantage of their economic power and treat their underlings as subhuman - and indeed to try to control their lives.

McCall Smith also shows, once again, a keen understanding of family grievances. Having spent the last 18 years assisting families in settling their ancestors’ estates, I certainly have seen many of these in play. Some days, one feels less like a lawyer and more like a therapist.

I also appreciated that McCall Smith addressed mental illness. I was raised in a belief tradition that had (and still has) a tendency to make all psychological issues into “moral” or “spiritual” issues. Thus, many I know have been shamed and condemned, rather than treated with compassion - and modern medical understanding. I think this is improving in our culture as a whole, but for my religious tradition, it has rather gone backwards in the last few decades, which is sad. I hope for better things with the next generation.

This is my 5th (and the kids’ 6th) of the Mma. Ramotswe series. There are quite a few, and I hope to keep them in our regular rotation.

***

Here are the other Alexander McCall Smith books we have listened to previously (in the order we experienced them):

The Kalahari Typing School For Men (#4 in the series)

Blue Shoes And Happiness (#7 in the series)

The Full Cupboard of Life (#5 in the series)

The Tears of the Giraffe (#2 in the series)

The Sunday Philosophy Club (from another series - read without the kids)

Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley

Source of book: I own this.

This is the eighth book in Alan Bradley’s Flavia series. Here are the others:

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag

A Red Herring Without Mustard

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Speaking From Among the Bones

The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

As I noted in the very first review, Alan Bradley turned to writing fiction late in life. The first six books were part of his original contract, which has now been extended after the significant success of the first books. I strongly recommend reading both the books and my reviews in order, as the later ones assume the earlier ones.

Like all the books in the series, this one has its title taken from a line in an old book. This one continues in the Shakespearean vein with a well known quote from the Scottish play.

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison'd entrails throw.

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witches' mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,

Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab:

Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Anyway, this quote gives the book its title, and a few other details. (A cat, a woman who fosters rumors she is a witch.)

Since the last book, Flavia has returned from a rather awful sojourn in Canada, only to find her father deathly ill. Soon afterward, while running an errand for the vicar’s wife, she discovers yet another dead body. (Well, this is a murder mystery series…) In this case, the victim is an old wood carver with a mysterious past, who apparently has some sort of connection to the (fictitious) children’s author Oliver Inchbald.

I did a little poking around regarding this character, and while he is definitely fictitious, he is a bit of a tribute to real-life authors. I would list perhaps Edward Lear (for the nonsense verse) and A. A. Milne (for the Christopher Robin type son.) But Google moves in mysterious ways, and I think I discovered where the name “Oliver Inchbald” came from. I perhaps don’t need to introduce author Oliver Goldsmith, best known for The Vicar of Wakefield. But the other half of the name appears to come from actress and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. It appears that back in the day, among her other projects, she provided the “critical and biographical notes” to a collection of plays, including Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and The Good Natured Man. I suspect Bradley saw this somewhere and decided it was a perfect name. And it is.

The previous book was really quite dark - the series has generally gotten darker as it has gone on. This one isn’t exactly light, but the emotional territory isn’t as unrelentingly negative. Flavia is, after all, back on her home turf, and thus surrounded by familiar people. Dogger, her sisters, the vicar and his wife, her frenemy the police inspector. So she doesn’t feel as forlorn and alone as she did in the prior books. That said, all of the bad things happening in her life are still there, with more added. I’m still not sure how I feel about all of this - there was something charming and more innocent about the earlier books that I miss. But it has also been fascinating to see Flavia struggle with growing up. While she was always independent, she has had to learn some self control and social niceties - and she is getting there.

Just a few quotes I liked. One is when Flavia visits the office of the publisher of Inchbald’s books:

“Not surprisingly, his office was like a cave carved into a cliff of books.”

I plead the fifth as to how much I resemble that remark.

Regarding growing up and gaining independence:

“Growing up is like that, I suppose: The strings fall away and you’re left standing on your own.”

Regarding a sudden burst of communication from her reticent middle sister:

It was a longer speech than I’d ever heard Daffy make in my entire life. Unless she was reading aloud to us from one of her favorite books, my sister was the kind of person who is sometimes described as “monosyllabic.”

Actually, my middle daughter is kind of like that right now.

I will also note with approval the mention of Gorgonians. Because those are cool.

There is one more book in the series that has been published, and the contract runs for one more after that. Given Bradley’s age - this was a second career after retirement - he may decide to hang it up. But who knows? He originally agreed to six, and then ten, so things could change.

As I noted above, best to read these in order. They are kind of quirky, bookish, and snarky. But they are fun as a light read.

The Woman In Black (play) by Stephen Malatratt

Just to be clear, this post is about the 1987 stage play by Stephen Malatratt, not the original 1983 book by Susan Hill, the 1989 television movie with the screenplay by Nigel Kneale, or the 2012 film starring Daniel Radcliffe. I believe the book is the source for all three, and the films are not based on the play.

The Woman In Black has been playing continuously in London since 1989, making it the second longest running play there - second only to The Mousetrap, which has been running since 1952 (!) By the way, I have seen The Mousetrap in London (back in 1999). Yes it is good. No I won’t reveal the ending.

The stage version of The Woman In Black is interesting in that it is intentionally minimalist. There are only two credited actors - more on that later. The setting is a theater, and while some props are used, most of the props are expected to be imagined by the audience, from the existence of a dog on down. There is no real “set.” Sound effects fill in the gaps. Even the way the parts are played is kind of unusual.

Let me see if I can coherently explain the framing device. Arthur Kipps is a solicitor (one of the British kinds of lawyers, for those not familiar with that system) who is trying to recover from a traumatic experience that happened to him when he was young. He seeks out the assistance of an actor (who remains unnamed) to help him “perform” the story for his friends and family, so they can understand what has happened - and so that Kipps can, he hopes, finally put his trauma to rest. The actor insists that the best way to do this is to have himself (the actor) perform the part of Kipps, while Kipps plays all the other parts in the drama. Yes, this is a bit confusing at first, but it actually works, and makes for an interesting interplay between the two.

Because of this framing device, the actor playing Kipps has to be an actor playing a non-actor acting multiple parts. Which isn’t easy. Kipps also has to develop from a rank amateur who is a terrible actor into someone who convincingly plays a whole range of characters, all while watching the other person play his own character.

At its core, however, The Woman In Black is fairly standard Gothic Horror - it uses all the proper tropes from the foggy and remote location in northeast England to the dead child to the lurid backstory. It isn’t exactly groundbreaking on plot or atmosphere, but done well, it makes for an effective play.  

Here is the basic setup: Kipps is sent by his boss to sort through the papers of a recently deceased client, the reclusive and mysterious Mrs. Alice Drablow. At the funeral, Kipps sees a mysterious woman in black - one that everyone else denies seeing. Later, while at the house out on the marsh, he sees and experiences more supernatural manifestations, which eventually lead him to the truth of the past - and a deadly threat. I won’t reveal more than that.

I saw this play in large part because my second daughter loves scary and suspenseful stuff and really wanted to see this one. I also took my eldest daughter and eldest son, as they were old enough to enjoy a scary thrill. All three loved it.

I have mentioned The Empty Space in many prior posts. It is, shall we say, a gem of our local community, and one of my favorite places to see live drama. Small size, modest budgets, but high artistic values and devoted actors and staff make for consistently excellent and imaginative productions. In this case, the acting was strong, and the staging made for great suspense and atmosphere.

The part of Mr. Kipps the person was played by Paul Sosa, who we previously saw at Cal State Bakersfield’s production of Pippin. In this play, he had a lot to do. The opening scene, where he is (very awkwardly) reading the introduction to his own drama is fantastic. You honestly could believe that Sosa cannot read a line to save his life. Of course, we know better, but he was entirely convincing at the beginning. Later, he has to cover a plethora of parts. This he does hesitantly at first, but gradually grows more and more comfortable with acting. This to me was the most impressive part of the play. To portray the development of skill and enthusiasm like that took superb control and focus throughout. Sosa has professional experience in Los Angeles, but is now teaching English at a local middle school. 

 Daniel Korth in character as Mr. Kipps, and Paul Sosa as Mr. Kipps playing "Keckwick," a local villager.

The other part was played by Daniel Korth, who I do not believe I have seen before. This was his Empty Space debut, and I do not recall seeing him anywhere else locally. Korth was apparently one of the founders of Pop Up Theater LA, so he too is a professional veteran. He also gave a compelling performance. His job required that he sell the horror and suspense despite the lack of spooky music or special effects. His voice, his body, and especially his face had to convey all that. And this while he was playing an actor playing the part of Mr. Kipps. So he switched in and out of character, so to speak. The rehearsals of the “play within the play” often went wrong when the “real” Mr. Kipps forgot lines, or fell out of character, so Korth had to go from portraying the terror of the moment right back into the actor trying to coach the non-actor. My kids commented that it must have been difficult to keep a straight face while doing all that. I agree. This is one reason I love live theater - particularly in a small venue where you can see every detail. There is something visceral about seeing good acting up close. 

 Daniel Korth and Paul Sosa

There is one other part in the play, but it is not credited. There is an actual “Woman In Black” in the play. She appears where her character should, but does not speak until the climactic scene. However, she is not “officially” a part of the play. She is not supposed to actually exist, and the fact that we, the audience have seen her is a portent of disaster for us. In the Empty Space version, they do not even credit the actor as “Vision” as she is credited in the London production. And honestly, between the makeup and the black veil, I am not sure who the actor was. Furthermore, she does not appear in the photo gallery at all, let alone with a tag. Her existence is a mystery, I suppose. Whoever she is, whether she exists or not except in our collective imagination, she played her part well.

The Woman In Black runs this Friday and Saturday, and then it is gone. If you live here in Bakersfield and need an idea for a creepy date, go see it.