“The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August” by Claire North (2014)

“The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996.”

Reincarnation has been dancing around the collective minds of humanity for millennia. In some forms, we get put into a new body and can live out a whole new life. In others, we simply go back to the beginning and start our same life again, but perhaps with the memories of our last one still in tact, allowing us to have another go. Time loops are curious things, perhaps the most famous one in popular culture now being Groundhog Day. However, that was just one day. Imagine having to live a whole life over and over again.

Harry August is always born in the same place – the ladies’ toilet at Berwick-upon-Tweed train station on New Year’s Day 1919. Around the age of six, he begins to remember his previous lives and everything he learnt in them, having a particularly powerful memory even for one of his kind. Every time he dies, he restarts here. He is an ouroboran, one of a rare group of humans who live their lives over and over again. In his third life, he encounters the Cronus Club, a society designed to find and help those with this condition and who use their abilities to pass messages back and forth through the timeline. In his eleventh life, however, as he lays dying, a young girl comes to him with a message. Further up the timeline, the world is ending, and always ending a little earlier. The ouroborans must stop this coming to pass.

Thrown back into his early life once more, Harry becomes aware of huge shifts in the timeline, with technologies appearing long before they used to, and society shifting in ways he couldn’t have imagined. One of his former students, Vincent, however, seems to be having an impact, investing in all sorts of companies that are speeding along with science and technology, and when Harry learns that Vincent is trying to create a quantum mirror that will allow him to see all possible universes, it becomes apparent that he has found the source of the changes. But Vincent is dangerous, and even with nine hundred years of life under his belt, Harry is going to use all his ability to stop him.

The idea is a really fun one, and I enjoyed seeing it played with, even if sometimes my brain doesn’t feel wired in quite the right way to understand all of it perfectly. The fact that Harry and the ouroborans remember their previous lives (although only a few, including Harry, are mnemonics who can remember absolutely everything) is played well, and allows Harry to become something of a genius, studying a different subject every time he goes to university including physics, biology, chemistry, law and history. Is his perfect memory something of a cop-out? Maybe, but I’ll let it slide. It would be worse if he was the only one. I also particularly like, despite its morbidity, the reaction of himself in his second life. When the memories come flooding back, he goes mad and ends up killing himself while young. This seems a curiously rational response to me, rather than having him just accept things from the off. It also doesn’t help that because he’s born in 1919, psychiatric medicine still has a long way to go.

It’s interesting to see him grow up in various versions of the twentieth century, although for the most part they remain the same as the ones we know, and the level of research is staggeringly good. The arguments as to why the ouroborans don’t change history and do the usual time travel tasks of killing Hitler and saving JFK are nicely explained with the Cronus Club adage, “Complexity should be your excuse for inaction.” The timeline is so unpredictable that it’s hard to remove the one single factor that caused or prevented something, because more often than not there isn’t one simple switch to flick.

I felt the book was a little let down by the ending – it’s one of those where you realise there aren’t enough pages left for everything that needs to happen – but it’s nonetheless an interesting and exciting journey full of unique concepts, interesting characters and more ethical philosophy than I perhaps expected. It’s not necessarily a quick read, and parts of it drag a little due to the denseness of some of the scientific concepts, but despite all that I’m not in the least saying it’s a bad book. It’s clever and sharp and accomplished, just not one to be dashed off in the dentist’s waiting room.

Did you know that as well as reviewing everything I read, I also write novels, too? My books blend black humour with light horror, crossing genres with ordinary characters dealing with extraordinary circumstances. Head over to wherever you buy books to take a look at my two offerings. The first, The Atomic Blood-stained Bus, introduces you to a cannibal, an ex-god and the last witches of Britain, while the second, The Third Wheel, follows a man who is tired of being single while all his friends get married, but has a change of priority when aliens invade the planet. I hope you enjoy!

“Unnatural Causes” by Dr Richard Shepherd (2018)

“Clouds ahead.”

Death comes to us all. It is the great equaliser. Cultures all deal with death in different ways, but generally the deceased are treated with absolute respect. In many cases, this also means ensuring that if the death wasn’t natural, we do our best to deliver justice. That is where the world of forensic pathology comes into play, and Dr Richard Shepherd is one of the best.

In this staggering memoir, Shepherd explores his career at the forefront of the morgue, with over 23,000 autopsies to his name. He has taken on the mantel of a detective, using his expertise to work out how all those who come before him have died. In his time, he has dealt with serial killers, freakish accidents and natural disasters, been pivotal in some of the most important and famous cases of the last forty years, and has freed the innocent, jailed the guilty, and turned whole cases upside down. All of it, however, has come at an enormous personal cost.

So, first up, this certainly isn’t for everyone. Shepherd does not gloss over much of his work, so there are a lot of details about the process of death, what dead bodies look and feel like, what happens to us after we die, and what illness really does to the human body. He is also frequently involved in cases that feature infant mortality, which are not the easiest things to read. That said, it’s nonetheless a fascinating insight into the world of pathology.

I’ve often contemplated the notion that, in another timeline where I did all my education differently, I may have ended up doing something about death. It’s important work, and at least you know (however morbid this sounds) you’re not going to run out of it. I find the whole thing really interesting, and the book is very engrossing, allowing you to stand at Shepherd’s shoulder as he dissects the deceased. He has been involved in some big cases including the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the aftermath of 9/11, the Marchioness disaster, and was even instrumental when the case behind the death of Princess Diana was reopened years after her death. It is quite something to read about these cases from someone who was there.

A stunning, candid and impressive memoir.

Did you know that as well as reviewing everything I read, I also write novels, too? My books blend black humour with light horror, crossing genres with ordinary characters dealing with extraordinary circumstances. Head over to wherever you buy books to take a look at my two offerings. The first, The Atomic Blood-stained Bus, introduces you to a cannibal, an ex-god and the last witches of Britain, while the second, The Third Wheel, follows a man who is tired of being single while all his friends get married, but has a change of priority when aliens invade the planet. I hope you enjoy!

“Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

My journey through the Western canon has been sporadic. Sometimes I stumble onto something I like very much. Other times, I read Thomas Hardy. The trouble is that when everyone is telling you something is really good, it raises your expectations. You also come to think that you know the story. However, as I learnt from the likes of Frankenstein or Catch-22, what I thought I knew barely touched the surface or was wildly incorrect. That was how I felt about Rebecca – I know all about the woman who overshadowed her husband, I know about Manderley, and I know all about the terrifying Mrs Danvers. But, it turns out, I knew nothing.

Our nameless narrator begins the novel dreaming of visiting Manderley, the house where she lived with her husband, Maxim de Winter. The de Winters are now living in Europe, in exile, living a dull life, and we wonder how they got there. Skipping back through the past, we find our heroine serving as a companion for the bad-tempered and status-obsessed Mrs Van Hopper in Monte Carlo. She finds herself interested in the quiet, brooding gentleman who dines next to them every night. Mrs Van Hopper informs her that this is Maxim de Winter, who owns the exquisite country seat of Manderley and has never got over the death of his devoted wife, Rebecca. By the time the holiday is over, our narrator finds that she is to become the second Mrs de Winter, with Maxim determined to give her a more exciting life.

When they arrive at Manderley, however, things do not seem as rosy as promised. Maxim is distant and somewhat harsh, and everything about the house is reminiscent of Rebecca, with the staff – particularly the skeletal and domineering housekeeper Mrs Danvers – still determined to do things just as Rebecca did them. Trapped behind the reputation of Maxim’s first wife, our heroine tries to forge her own path and make a name for herself in this world. How can one woman retain such power from beyond the grave, and will it ever be removed?

The story is naturally about a woman seeking to find her identity, which makes it all the more ironic and fitting that we never find out what her name is. Indeed, aside from a few hints at her hobbies and appearance, we know very little about her. It is Rebecca who dominates the book, which should be obvious given she’s the title character, but it’s unusual to have a story named for a character who never actually appears. Waiting for Godot is the only other one that springs to mind. Despite not really existing, Rebecca’s personality shines through the text and it seems that no one will ever be over her death, although as the novel progresses and more is uncovered, it seems that perhaps not everything was as it seems at first glance. The new Mrs de Winter is shy and doesn’t want to tread on any toes, but when the time comes to be severe and take on a more commanding presence, she does so with aplomb.

There are, however, two real stars of the novel. The first is Manderley itself, regarded as one of the most important houses in the area, if not the country. Legend surrounds it and people clamour to be invited to one of the famous parties that Rebecca frequently held. Maxim seems less keen on them, but his apparent devotion to his wife suggests that he will let her do as she pleases to keep her happy. The second is Mrs Danvers. Almost certainly a monomaniacal psychopath, she is the one with the strongest loyalty to Rebecca. She has never got over the death and knew Rebecca for much of her life. They were close, and I’d argue that Mrs Danvers may even have been in love with her employer. She is cruel and manipulative, tricking the narrator into humiliating herself and at one point trying to convince her to kill herself. She is terrifying at first, but she certainly has a human side, too. She’s got a misplaced devotion, a resistance to change, and a fierce need to protect the woman she loved, even from beyond the grave. She is an utterly fascinating character, made all the more interesting by the fact that she only seems scary to the narrator when they are alone. As soon as she sees Mrs Danvers in the company of others, it is clear that she is not so intimidating.

I know no one’s asking me to curate the list of what “counts” on the list of canonical Western fiction, but if they did, Rebecca gets a spot without question. My advice to everyone is to head back to this and maybe some of the other classics that you think you know so well and see if maybe you weren’t a bit wrong after all.

Did you know that as well as reviewing everything I read, I also write novels, too? My books blend black humour with light horror, crossing genres with ordinary characters dealing with extraordinary circumstances. Head over to wherever you buy books to take a look at my two offerings. The first, The Atomic Blood-stained Bus, introduces you to a cannibal, an ex-god and the last witches of Britain, while the second, The Third Wheel, follows a man who is tired of being single while all his friends get married, but has a change of priority when aliens invade the planet. I hope you enjoy!

“The Next Person You Meet In Heaven” by Mitch Albom (2018)

“This is a story about a woman named Annie, and it begins at the end, with Annie falling from the sky.”

I rally against sequels a lot. More often than not they serve as a way for someone to cash in on a previously great story with a slightly worse story that wasn’t really needed. Of course there are exceptions – Toy Story 2 and Shrek 2, for example – but it’s a good rule of thumb. Sometimes we have to let stories standalone. The trouble is, of course, no story really is told in a vacuum. It links to thousands of others. Mitch Albom has used this technique to the full in the beautiful sequel to the truly excellent The Five People You Meet In Heaven.

In the original book, we focus on Eddie, an elderly war veteran who dies saving the life of a little girl. He ascends to the afterlife where he is met by five people who impacted his life and teach him a lesson he must learn from it. At the end of his novel, he takes his place in the queue to meet the girl he saved. This is her story.

Annie has just got married, but the marriage is doomed as within hours, she and her husband Paulo are in a devastating hot air balloon crash. Annie feels herself go under the anaesthetic when she gets to hospital, but she wakes up in the afterlife, meeting the first of her five people. She now undertakes the same journey as Eddie once did, meeting five people who changed her life, including the doctor who reattached her hand after it was lost in the accident, her strong, protective mother, and Eddie himself.

There aren’t many books that bring a tear to my eye, but this one certainly did. The original tale is one of my favourite books and while I’d not held out much hope, I think I’d always been curious to know what had happened to the little girl. I’ve always been a bit obsessed with the idea of sonder, that feeling that everyone you meet has their own story and a life as complex as your own, but you only get to play a part in a few of them. This book, and the previous, play that up to the max. Annie is a sweet person, not perfect, but more courageous than she lets herself believe and the sort of woman I would like to be friends with. It’s nice to see Eddie again, less grizzled than we first knew him. The story is by its very nature quite tragic, but like all the best books, hope still shines through.

That’s always what goodness boils down to – hope. There is always hope. Belief in an afterlife in itself is a hopeful act, and while I’m not religious and don’t really think there is anything after “this”, there are worse things to encounter on the other side than five people with important messages.

A beautiful, powerful story. I love it.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

“Thunderhead” by Neal Shusterman (2018)

“Peach velvet with embroidered baby-blue trim.”

Last year, fiction conquered death. I’m now back with the sequel. As ever when reviewing a sequel, spoilers are abound so if you haven’t read Scythe or don’t want to know what happens next, look away now. We’re about to dive in. For those who need a refresher, however, recall that this series is set several centuries into the future where natural death has been eradicated, everyone only dies when chosen by a scythe, and the otherwise fairly utopian world is governed by the Thunderhead, a sentient AI that remains neutral and neither can or will interfere.

A year has passed since the events at the end of the last book. Rowan has been off-grid all this time, and has managed to turn himself into an urban legend, using the skills he learnt in his apprenticeship to hunt down corrupt scythes and glean them for good. No one has ever caught him, and for now it seems that no one ever will. Elsewhere, Scythe Anastasia – formerly Citra Terranova – is getting into the swing of her role, and has developed her own way of gleaning. She gives people a month’s notice to get their affairs in order and then lets them choose their own method of death.

Things in government, however, are not so rosy. A schism is forming in the Scythedom, with some believing the old ways are best and others looking for total reform. Worse still, it seems that someone is trying to glean Scythe Anastasia and Scythe Curie, and no one is quite sure who. The Thunderhead might know, but it is forbidden from speaking to the scythes. Instead, it nudges Greyson Tolliver, a neglected young man who was all but raised by Thunderhead into acting on its behalf, but the consequences are severe.

With confusion reigning across the Scythedom, and with High Blade Xenocrates standing down as the leader of the MidMerica region, there is a time for change ahead. But when an old face that everyone thought they’d seen the last of reappears and another lost figure has solved a centuries old puzzle which could save the world, nothing is certain anymore.

The first book in the series very much dealt with the nature of being a scythe, explaining how their government works, how they are trained, and what rules surround their jobs. This time, the focus shifts slightly and we get to learn a lot more about the Thunderhead. As sentient AI systems go, it seems one of the most benevolent. It provides for people and can control most aspects of the world including the weather and unemployment levels, but never interferes with anyone specifically. The Thunderhead and the Scythedom also cannot speak to one another, which feels like a massive oversight in the system, and this comes into play here.

As before, it’s a fascinatingly complex world that Shusterman has designed here. Set far enough into the future for everything to be slightly too weird, it is a world unlike ours in many ways, but humans will always be humans, so their failings continue even if their deaths have ended. The viewpoint jumps around considerably, but that just makes the world richer, as if we were following the action from just one or two places, the story wouldn’t have nearly as much depth. Like Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series, it feels like one of those worlds where morality is not tied to the “black and white” philosophy, and where you can see points on both sides. One can imagine how the series will end, but I’m not sure quite how we’re going to get there, as the book ends on a superb cliffhanger, and with several of the characters we’ve grown to know and love, well, if not dead then deadish.

The Toll, the third and final book in the series is out next week, and I will be getting to it sooner rather than later.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll take a look!

Six of the Best … Books about death

Death is one of the certainties of life. Everyone and everything will die, and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it. While in the real world, the two constants seem to be death and taxes, in fiction it’s death and love. Every book I think I’ve ever read contains at least one death and one person in love. Today, however, with Halloween on the horizon, we’ll just be focusing on one of those.

No one knows what happens when we die. I like to imagine that whatever comes next is some kind of library. Because the answer is unknown, however, it has given writers of all stripes free reign to go wild with their imaginations. Throughout history, death has been talked and thought about, and it’s perhaps one of the main reasons we ended up with religion, as a lot of it seems to centre around what happens to us after we die. We are lucky as a society now that we rarely brush up against death. There are people dedicated to dealing with it, life expectancy is high, and hospitals and doctors are on hand when things begin to reach there end. Things were not always this way, though. In earlier times, death rates were much higher, and infant mortality was just a tragic but commonplace fact of life. People were used to seeing and dealing with dead bodies. One would guess that our ancestors were not as squeamish as many of us today may be, but we can’t really know for sure.

Death as a process is fascinating, and some scientists have even asked why it evolved in the first place. Is there an evolutionary reason for growing old and dying? Certainly there must be, or it wouldn’t have happened. Most people assume that older generations die off to allow there to be food and resources for the upcoming ones, and that seems to make the most sense to me. If nothing ever died, the world would be pretty crowded by now.

In 2011, a piece in Psychology Today even suggested that death is just an illusion. Maybe it is. This could easily just be a phase that we pass through between others we don’t remember and ones that we’ve yet to experience. Maybe we all keep going round and round. I suppose one day we will find out. For now, though, I think it is important to talk about death. Maybe not in casual conversation on the bus, but it is important not to fear it, to be able to come to terms with its existence, and to help comfort those who are dealing with it. It would be heartless to say we should just “get over it” and I don’t agree that’s the right way to go about things. Literature, as ever, comes to the rescue. By seeing something in fiction, it gives us a lens to view reality in a new way. We can understand death by how our favourite fictional characters react to it.

Let’s press on to six of the best books where death takes centre stage.

Scythe

Hundreds of years from now, humanity has managed to eradicate death. There is no more illness or injury, and the only way to die is to be gleaned by a scythe – someone who has been trained in the art of killing. You never quite know when your time will come, and there is no arguing with a scythe. The only rule is that no one would wants to be one can ever achieve the role. Citra and Rowan are two young people who both are against this normality and find the idea of murder abhorrent, but when they are both selected as apprentices to Scythe Faraday, they have no choice but to enter a new world and have their whole lives turned upside down.

A story that removes death from the world is not unique, but there was something particularly chilling and fascinating about this one. Neal Shusterman imbues the novel with great detail and a lot of lore that really makes the world, ironically, come alive. It’s a great worldbuilding exercise, and despite the potentially dark subject matter, there are some really fun moments. Without death, crime has vastly decreased as everyone lives so long as to be on a similar footing in society, and religion has faded because there’s no discussions on the afterlife anymore. The introduction of tonal cults – sects that worship sounds and smells – is one that feels very unique and is an example of what can be achieved in storytelling when you take away something as fundamental as death.

R.I.P.

There seems to be a taboo in Western society that says death is not something that we should consider funny. Granted, in certain circumstances I agree, but I’m also someone who believes there is comedy to be found in pretty much anything and that context is key. Nigel Williams is a funny writer, and he tackles death with just as many laughs in R.I.P. as he does in any of his other books. George wakes up one morning feeling absolutely fine, with the slight exception of the fact he’s dead. His mother, Jessica, has also died in the house that day, on the eve of her ninety-ninth birthday. The house is full of guests, and when it is revealed to the police that Jessica was worth twelve million pounds and no one has seen the latest will, it appears that both she and George may have been murdered, and everyone else in the family is now a suspect. Bittersweet and working as a genuine murder mystery despite being narrated by one of the victims, it’s a great look at ghosts and how our consciousness may carry on once our body shuts down for good.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven

It’s rare that a novel opens with a death, but Mitch Albom manages it here. Eddie is eighty-three when, while trying to save a small girl’s life, he loses his own. He finds himself in the afterlife, where he meets five people, one at a time, each of whom had a huge impact on his life. Between them, they will help Eddie explore and explain his time on Earth, and only when he’s met them all will he be able to move on to whatever comes next. I’ve read it twice, and just bought the long-awaited sequel as well, and think it’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Albom has a stunning way with words, and conjures up great images from his precision and expertise. It is a book that reminds us that while we are the protagonist in our own story, everyone else has one too, and we’re just side characters in those. All stories are interconnected and nothing happens in a vacuum.

Sum

Of course, Mitch Albom’s version of the afterlife is only one possibility. In David Eagleman’s astonishingly beautiful Sum, he presents forty possible versions of the afterlife, each as beguiling, entrancing and magical as each other. In one, we find that power over the universe was handed over to a committee quite early on in the process. In another, we don’t die until we are entirely forgotten on Earth, which means the likes of Shakespeare are still there unable to move on for good. In one you meet all the different versions of yourself, and in yet one more, you can only spend time with people you knew on Earth. Some are fun, such as becoming the actors in the dreams of the living, and some are desperately weird, such as every atom in the universe being made up of the exact same quark that is attempting to be everything and everyone, and will eventually just wind itself down. It is, without question, one of my favourite books of all time and for such a slim novel contains so many lessons and ways of looking at the world.

Mort

I’m not particularly a Discworld fan, but I didn’t think I could let a post like this pass without mentioning Mort. Terry Pratchett’s character of Death is, despite everything I feel about the series, one of the greatest inventions in literary history. Dedicated to his job and quietly fascinated by the humans he has to deal with on a daily basis, the only time I can ever really bring myself to the world is when he’s in a starring role.

The title character of Mort is unsuited for the family business, and instead gets an apprenticeship under Death himself, leaning to take souls and deal in the business of death. When Mort fails to collect the soul of Princess Keli but instead kills her assassin, he sets in motion a parallel universe that will eventually collapse and see her dead anyway. Death, meanwhile, is taking a well-earned break while his apprentice holds down the fort and is learning what it’s like to be human. Mort must seek advice from Albert, Death’s assistant and former wizard, in protecting fate and seeing the universe restored to normality. Like all Discworld novels, it’s packed with jokes, silliness and some of the most phenomenally intricate world building ever attempted. While it’s the fourth book in the series, even Pratchett himself said this is the first one he actually liked.

Duck, Death and the Tulip

Death to many is scary, and children in particular may not understand the finality of the process. Duck, Death and the Tulip is a German book by Wolf Erlbruch and has been translated into many languages. In it, a duck meets the character of Death, who has been following her all her life. The two strike up a friendship and discuss life, death and a potential afterlife. Although Death seems unable, or perhaps unwilling, to directly give the duck any answers, the conversations seem to bring about a certain peace, leading to a very moving ending where the title’s tulip comes into play. It’s short and sweet and has utterly adorable illustrations. It’s one of those books that is great for children and adults alike. I didn’t discover it until I was in my mid-twenties, but it charmed me immediately. With a touch of humour, the book provides a great deal of comfort and is a vital tool for all ages.

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Thanks for joining in and reading this new entry in my new series, Six of the Best. This is a twice-monthly series in which I take a look at fiction and books more generally and explore the fictional worlds I love so much. If you’ve got any suggestions for things you’d like to see me talk about, then please comment and let me know!

“Whose Body?” by Dorothy L. Sayers (1923)

“‘Oh damn!’ said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.”

There were three personalities that really created and gave life to the Detective Club, which is ironic given they they dedicated the rest of their lives to ending lives. Anthony Berkeley, I’ve read a little of. Agatha Christie, I’ve read the lot. That leaves the third – Dorothy L. Sayers. Just as mysterious, macabre and magnificent as the others, Sayers was responsible for gifting the world Lord Peter Wimsey, so I felt it was about time I introduced myself.

Lord Peter Wimsey, aristocrat and detective, has been called to investigate the bathroom of Mr Alfred Thipps. It’s a pleasant room, except for the fact that there’s a dead body in the bath. Thipps has never seen the man before, and can’t explain how he ended up in his bath. The body is also, surprisingly, naked, save for a pair of pince-nez.

Elsewhere across town, Jewish financier Sir Reuben Levy has gone missing, last seen walking out of his house apparently without any clothes on. To Inspector Sugg, it seems an open and shut case – the body is clearly that of Levy. However, Wimsey is pretty sure that it isn’t and so begins a mission to find out where Levy went and whose body is in the bath…

As ever with the murder mysteries of the twenties, it’s a surprisingly modern and funny tale. Wimsey is a character I was immediately charmed by and find him silly and whimsical but immensely sharp and good company. It turns out that he saw active duty during World War One and Sayers does not shy away from this, as in one scene, Wimsey wakes up in the night convinced that he is still in the army. His butler calms him and returns him to bed. This is referred to as Wimsey’s “shell shock”, but of course we would know it better now as PTSD. It’s vital to remember that this book was published just five years after the war had ended, and there wasn’t a soul in the country who wasn’t cognisant of the effect it had had on the serving population.

Of course, the book is still somewhat bound to sensibilities of the time. The plot is actually based on a true case, but in that one, the corpse was identified as not being Jewish by the fact that it wasn’t circumcised. Sayers did not include this specific detail, instead having the identity hang on a couple of scars and some badly-bitten nails, but if Wimsey was any sort of detective, he would have spotted this immediately. Funny, certainly, but of its time. There are a couple of choice remarks relating to Jewish people, although none necessarily out-and-out offensive, just coming from clueless characters. The fact alone that Sayers named her character Reuben Levy seems to point out that she didn’t want you to forget at any moment that he was Jewish.

The plotting is clever and the solution immensely satisfying, even if Wimsey is sometimes prone to deductions that even Sherlock Holmes might find a bit fanciful. His butler, Mr Bunter, is also a great foil for his erratic behaviour, but I reserve a particular fondness already for Wimsey’s mother, the Dowager Duchess, who seems just as insightful as her son and quite a force to be reckoned with. It’s a very sharp, tight story and has a really wonderful, easy structure that pulls you in and ensures you want to stay and find out what happens.

I’ll definitely be back here again. Sayers is clearly one of the Grand Dames of the Murder Mystery.

My second novel, The Third Wheel, is now available on Amazon and Waterstones! It tells the story of Dexter, a twenty-something teacher who is struggling with the fact that he alone among his friends is single and isn’t ready to grow up. But when aliens invade, it puts a lot of his problems into perspective. Mixing comedy, science fiction and horror, the novel promises to have something for everyone. I hope you’ll check it out!

“The Mysterious Affair At Styles” by Agatha Christie (1921)

“The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as ‘The Styles Case’ has now somewhat subsided.”

Ninety-eight years ago this January, a book was published that changed everything. It wasn’t the first murder mystery, and it wasn’t the first bit of detective fiction, but it would revolutionise the genre, introduce one of the most compelling and loved characters in fiction, and lead to its author staking her claim as the bestselling author in history. The Mysterious Affair at Styles is not just a great book because of its content, but what it stands for and what it led to. I begin my re-read of Agatha Christie the only place that is good and proper – at the beginning.

We find ourselves in England at some point during the Great War. Arthur Hastings has been invalided out of the army and is back home, at a loss, until he bumps into his old friend John Cavendish. Hastings takes up the offer of going to stay at his family’s country house, Styles, but when he arrives, things aren’t particularly rosy. Tensions are high as John’s mother, Emily, has recently remarried and her new husband, Alfred Inglethorp, isn’t particularly popular with everyone else, not lead Emily’s sons or her companion Evelyn Howard.

Things reach a head, however, when Mrs Inglethorp dies one evening, apparently having been poisoned. It seems now that several of the residents would happily have seen her dead, and no one knows who they can trust. Hastings calls in Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective of his acquaintance who happens to be living nearby with some fellow Belgian refugees. Poirot is regarded as one of the sharpest detective minds in the world, and with his fastidiousness and gentle touch, he begins investigating the murder, taking into account far too much strychnine, a suspicious doctor, a burnt will, a broken coffee cup and a smear of candle grease. Can he bring the villain to justice before it’s too late?

As the very first time we meet Poirot, this book does have a little bit of early weirdness, such as when we see Poirot run and gambol across a garden, something he’d never do in later books – particularly without his hat on. He is already an old man here, which Christie would come to regret when she then continued writing about him for fifty years. It gives a little of his backstory though and explains what he is doing in England, although none of this detracts from the plot, which, as ever with Christie, is king. I hadn’t read this one for many years, so I couldn’t remember the entire solution, but I could pick out half of it, and when you know, you can see the clues more obviously. Everything you need to know to solve it is there, but emphasis isn’t necessarily placed on the most important clues. When you get to Poirot explaining his solution at the end, he ties up absolutely every clue, be them major or throwaway lines that you didn’t take notice of, into a neat answer.

Christie worked as a pharmacy dispenser during both world wars, and the influence of that is very clear here, as a hospital dispensary and a young pharmacist both feature somewhat prominently in the story. She naturally uses poison as her weapon of choice for her first murder, as she knows a lot about them, and would continue to do so through much of her career. The book also manages to tie in the Great War well, with even the setting providing more clues about the solution, and giving us an explanation as to why Hastings – who inexplicably is only thirty here, far younger than I recalled or the TV show suggested – isn’t currently on the front lines.

It feels neatly cyclical to be here again, as the last one I read was Curtain, which is Poirot’s final case and also takes place at Styles, with Hastings. It is a brilliant book, and the beginning of an unrivalled career. I’m so happy to be diving back into this world again. One down, seventy-nine to go…

Looking for something different to read in the new year? My second novel, The Third Wheel, is available to pre-order at Amazon and Waterstones now, ready for launch on January 17th. If you like tongue-in-cheek stories about aliens and the struggles of being single in a world built for couples, it might just be up your alley. I hope you’ll take a look and enjoy it! Thanks!

“God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian” by Kurt Vonnegut (1999)

“My first near-death experience was an accident, a botched anaesthesia during a triple bypass.”

And the year rushes to a close with one final slim volume slipping through the gate, also bringing the decade’s current total up to a nice round seven hundred.

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian is another one of those Vonnegut classics where you’re not quite sure what’s real and what isn’t, as he seems to be a considerable part of the plot. Originally taken from a WNYC broadcast, the collection has expanded a little and is a set of very short stories where Vonnegut is taken to the brink of death to pass up “the blue tunnel to the Pearly Gates” to interview the famous and departed. The Dr. Kevorkian of the title was a real man, an American pathologist who believed in euthanasia.

On his journeys to the edge of Heaven, Vonnegut meets and speaks with many famous people including Isaac Asimov, Mary Woolstonecraft Shelley, Philip Strax and, of course, the ever-present Kilgore Trout. He doesn’t quite hit it off with William Shakespeare, who speaks only in quotations from his plays, and he learns that Isaac Newton isn’t satisfied with all his scientific discoveries and is furious he didn’t also come up with evolution, germ theory and relativity. Adolf Hitler meanwhile reckons that he and Eva also suffered because of the war, and hopes that there is a memorial to him on Earth. Vonnegut doesn’t let him know how that turned out.

There’s not much to say about the book really. It’s cute, silly, funny and quite poignant in several places as Vonnegut explores the potential thoughts of these people once they’d departed from Earth. There’s also a lovely foreword by Neil Gaiman in which he too claims to be taken to the afterlife to meet Vonnegut in order to get a quote for the book. Unwilling to think up anything new, he’s told to use something that he’d said elsewhere. Gaiman shares the following quote, which seems even more important in these divisive times:

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

There we have it. Happy new year, everyone – hope 2019 is a delight and full of amazing books. Don’t forget, you can always pre-order mine to get yourself in the mood. See you on the other side!

“Bats In The Belfry” by E. C. R. Lorac (1937)

“As funerals go, it was quite a snappy effort!”

My re-read of the Agatha Christie back catalogue is almost upon us, and I’ll be kicking off with it as soon as 2019 rolls around. For now though, I turn to another writer from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, a woman who has almost entirely been forgotten until the British Library dug her up again for reissue – E. C. R. Lorac.

At the funeral of Bruce Attleton’s cousin, talk naturally turns macabre between some of the guests. Young Elizabeth Leigh comments that there’s a game she’s played at her club – they take turns to suggest the best way to hide a dead body. Everyone seems content to join in, not taking it very seriously, but apparently all keen to share their theories. A short time later, Bruce is called away to France on urgent business, it seems that that’s the last anybody sees of him.

But then his suitcase and passport show up in a crumbling Notting Hill artist’s studio. There’s still no sign of Bruce himself, but there are many secrets that seem to be surrounding him. His friend Neil Rockingham was meant to see him in France, but he never turned up. Bruce was once a respected novelist, but has fallen on hard times, much to the embarrassment and annoyance of his actress wife Sybilla. His young charge, Elizabeth, would love to be married to Robert Grenville, but it’s yet to be allowed. And then there’s the difficult issue of the strange artist Debrette, who might just have been blackmailing our missing man. Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard is put on the case and begins to learn more about the Belfry and quite who had the most cause to see Bruce Attleton disappear…

This novel, like apparently all of Lorac’s work (her real name was Edith Caroline Rivett) slipped through the cracks of literary history but it’s no sad thing that she’s been rediscovered for the modern era. While her characters don’t particularly stand out as greats of the genre, they’re distinct from one another, and Inspector Macdonald is a very fine policeman and a man I would trust wholeheartedly. Other characterisation is still quite clever though, making use of tropes and ideas that perhaps a lesser author would have done something obvious with. Debrette, for example, has an enormous and distinctive beard, which would be quite useful as a disguise should someone be pretending to be him. But are they?

Actually, it’s London itself that sticks out most of all. It’s a very real version of the city in the thirties, with thick fog and people hidden round every corner. Not much has changed in eighty years in fact, as best indicated when Macdonald makes a comment that it’s quicker to walk through London than take a bus during rush hour.

A fairly good example of the genre, with the clues neatly seeded and all there for you if you’re paying attention – the early conversation about how best to dispose of a body becomes particularly prescient – and one that I’m pleased the British Library has dug up from the archives. Long may they continue to do so.