"Then We Take Berlin", John Lawton

This seems to have been a year for Berlin. A reacquaintance with the city thanks to the arrival of the last in David Downing's "Station" series has led to a familiarity with it which particularly resonates in John Lawton's "Then We Take Berlin". While it covers ground that will be familiar to readers of "Lehrter Station" and "Masaryk Station", and the topics of survival, occupation, and the black market are common, there is still clear ground between the two authors' work.

Lawton without Troy doesn't always sit especially neatly, 2002's "Sweet Sunday", while a satisfying read in its own right, is oft forgotten when set alongside his series of Troy novels which have evolved from period police procedural to something a lot richer. While "Then We Take Berlin" is clearly located in the Troy universe, including direct crossover with the latter parts of "Black Out" it stands readily on its own feet and a reader could readily come to it with no knowledge of Lawton's previous work; indeed it would be fascinating to see what their intertextuality did to their understanding of the Troy universe and how they went on to approach Lawton's other works.

Holderness as a lead character takes a little getting used to. Thief, spy, and somewhat unsuccessful rogue, he is the sort of character who more often might be found as a more minor, morally ambivalent, player in a Troy novel. Where Lawton succeeds here is in drawing out the interesting threads in this sort of part and using this different perspective to allow him to weave more of the mid 20th century tapestry than is possible within the relatively narrow constraints of a Metropolitan Police officer. 

With chronological coverage running from 1944 London to 1963 Berlin, the contrasts in living conditions and style are picked out, little details bringing a period that is increasingly foreign to most readers to more vivid life. Written with a wry sense of humour, and punctuated with links to other elements of 20th century culture, from the obvious Leonard Cohen reference at the start (with initial elements of the novel taking place, you guessed it, in Manhattan), to a slightly contrived but still effective nod to "The Third Man" in Vienna, this is a book that rewards taking time over it and appreciating the many subtleties that run through the otherwise well paced narrative.

Over time Lawton seems to have taken steps away from the mainstream. "Black Out" could almost be likened to an episode "Foyle's War", while more recent works, most notably "A Lily of the Field" or "Second Violin" are altogether more cerebral and almost abstract. "Then We Take Berlin" probably isn't a reboot of the series that brings it back to a more populist audience, and indeed several other reviewers seem baffled by the ending, but it's probably a step back towards greater accessibility. It probably won't sell like hot cakes, Lawton never really seems to; this is a shame, "Then We Take Berlin" is a very real contender for most satisfying book of 2013.



Don't just take my word for it. Listen to Lawton himself talk about and hint at some of the real richness you'll find in here.

Alexander Fullerton and the Mariner of England

In many ways I'm surprised it's taken me so long to come across Alexander Fullerton. In my teenage years during the 1980s his work was the sort of fodder that I used to devour by the bucketload (Douglas Reeman being a particular favourite). Every once in a while though, it's fun to revisit old stamping grounds, and late last year while nosing through a list of historical naval fiction I came across a reference to his “Patrol to the Golden Horn”, which piqued curiousity. Having sat in the to-be-read pile for longer than it should have, it eventually got picked up and proved a pleasant surprise, as was the discovery that it formed part of a much larger narrative describing the Royal Navy during the two World Wars primarily through the lens of Nick Everard (the 'mariner of England'), with nine novels published between 1976 and 1984.

Rather than attempting to be comprehensive, the series chooses a number of seminal points between 1916 and 1943 to highlight how the conflicts evolved. Bearing this in mind the Mariner of England collection will probably be a little hard to approach unless the reader already has a fairly solid grasp of how the naval elements of both wars played out. Armed with this level of contextual familiarity the reader will however find a wealth of interesting detail embedded into the novels, which while clearly fictional, serve to emphasise some core historical points which have escaped more general histories (for example highlighting the impact of Nagumo's presence south of Java in early 1942 and how this affected the ABDA defence of the Indonesian archipelago).

Fullerton's choice of events flagging up the Royal Navy’s activities in the two World Wars is interesting. Running in order we see Jutland, the raid on Zeebrugge, a fictional submarine attack on the Goeben in 1918, Narvik and the Norwegian campaign in 1940, Crete in 1941, a fusion of the battle of Java Sea and an adapted version of the Operation Pedestal convoy to Malta , the raid on St Nazaire and the submarine war in the Mediterranean, and the Torch landings in North Africa (all during 1942), before concluding with the Arctic convoys and midget submarine attacks on the German surface fleet in 1943. While it's possible to think of some additions which could usefully be made to this list (Taranto? Bismark? Force Z?) all of this serves to effectively tell the back story to some of the most significant events in RN history that go to build the tradition so proudly held by the service.

The nine novels are textually interesting, Fullerton is incredibly strong in writing action sequences, in particular involving submarines, presumably reflecting his own wartime experience. He succeeds in conveying tension and the mixture of terror and calm experienced in combat, but the device of telling the Everard back story, through background mention and reflection, while it does the job, at times can frustrate. Let's focus on the strengths however, the unflinching account of naval warfare, and a stark refusal to sugarcoat the narrative makes for a memorable experience and paints a much richer picture than is sometimes found elsewhere. Be warned, there are not novels that always provide a happy ending.

As with any series of novels written over a prolonged period of time, the changing style of authorship is clear. Initially the novels are written explicitly from the perspective of the protagonists, so if an event takes place beyond their field of view, it is not referred to. This evolves over time, with different narrative styles being used, some of which work better than others, the elements ashore in Constantinople in "Patrol to the Golden Horn" being reminiscent of John Buchan's "Greenmantle" (and suffering by this comparison) perhaps being a low point. By the end there’s an impression that Fullerton may have been a little tired of the Everards, and tries to do something a little more conceptual, which now, thinking about it, is surprisingly effective.

Does it work as fictionalised narrative history? It probably does. For all the bitty recounting of the personal back story, and the leaving of several threads hanging can frustrate the overall effect serves to deliver a memorable story. I suspect had I come across them as a teenager they’d have fallen short in comparison to Reeman in particular, but as a richer long running tapestry there’s real satisfaction to found in reading them. It’s easy to end up caring about the wider Everard family, and in that light the stylistic shift in the concluding volume, “The Gatecrashers”, is both appropriate and welcome. It provides a fitting closure to the Everard story, as the narrator fittingly puts it, "the end became the man".

The Mariner of England Series 
"The Blooding of the Guns", Jutland 1916 
"Sixty Minutes for St George", Zeebrugge 1918 
"Patrol to the Golden Horn", Raid on Goeben in Constantinople, 1918 (fictionalised) 
"Storm Force to Narvik", Narvik 1940 
"Last Lift from Crete", Crete 1941 
"All the Drowning Seas", Java Sea / Operation Pedestal 1942
"A Share of Honour", Mediterranean Submarines / Raid on St Nazaire 1942
"The Torchbearers", Torch 1942
"The Gatecrashers", Arctic Convoys / Tirpitz 1943

"Saints of the Shadow Bible", Ian Rankin

It's been a rainy weekend, the first proper cold of winter, so the fire's been lit, Jackie Leven's been played, and there's been a new Ian Rankin to read. It's fitting, I've read Rankin in the sun before, but something about a slate grey sky, a chill wind, and the prospect of a warm fug inside that makes his ever noirish Edinburgh inherently more accessible.

"Saints of the Shadow Bible" serves to remind you that crime fiction can be so much more than a police procedural, giving you a sense of place and personality that reminds you why reading is such an immersive pastime. In terms of plot Rankin manages to successfully merge his Rebus/Clarke universes with that of Malcolm Fox, the rapprochement achieved here being considerably more credible than the hostility between the two camps we saw in "Standing in Another Man's Grave". The ageing of John Rebus is handled in an effective way, reflecting both a level of increased  vulnerability, but also some of the power that comes from being a beast from an earlier era, a premise that underpins the entire novel. As Rebus himself says, "I'm from the eighties ... I'm not the newfangled touchy-feely model". It's to the point, and carries more than a hint of "Life on Mars" with it.

Hand on heart is this the best in Ian Rankin's literary cannon? The answer is probably no, not for any precise shortcomings that can be identified, but more a sense that it's not quite as tight an offering as you'll find elsewhere in the Rebus series, and somehow Rory Bell doesn't make quite as solid a villain as Cafferty in all his magisterial darkness. Even taking all this into account it's still a very good book which makes you much more demanding of other crime fiction, and to be honest everything else you'll read this year.

Most encouragingly when I picked up "Saints of the Shadow Bible" in my local bookshop there were a stack of them lined up as customer orders behind the till. Maybe, like Rebus, the hardcopy book and the independent bookshop have a bit of life in them yet.

"To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Railway", Christian Wolmar

In the summer of 2008, travelling from Nizhnyy Novgorod to Kaliningrad my Russian colleague dropped me at Nizhnyy Novgorod airport and sent me on my way, apologising for not knowing the airport all that well, laconically opining, "Russian airliners very unsafe, much better to take the train"...

I survived that bumpy flight, but Christian Wolmar's entertaining and authoritative history of Russian railways, focusing on the long ribbon of track between Moscow and Vladivostock, makes the point that travel in Russia may well be better by train. Weaving a compelling narrative, Wolmar tells the story of the railway's evolution, debunking some myths such as the "Tsar's Finger" along the way, and succeeding in locating the railway in wider Russian social and political history, most pertinently linking its construction with the Russo-Japanese War, the 1905 revolution, and the ultimate fall of the Romanov dynasty. 

"To the Edge of the World" is about a lot more than railways. Most strikingly it highlights how the construction of the Trans-Siberian served to create communities along its line, with a common architecture serving to establish something new in the heart of Siberia with 23 new towns emerging along the line in the first decade after its opening, as well as encouraging the growth of towns like Omsk, Irkutsk, and Chita. Applying this to a contemporary context, it will be interesting to see if a similar pattern of community creation occurs with the opening of the Northern Sea Route across the top of Siberia.

Those in search of detail and anecdote concerning the railway will not be disappointed. Accounts of the early trains and attempts to attract a largely Western clientèle are highly amusing. Despite the trains being described as "ambulant palaces of luxury", we read of pianos being used for storing dirty dishes and indifferent food, although one can't help wondering if Baedecker's advice that travellers should pack a revolver and a portable India-rubber bathtub might be a little excessive.

In merging transportation and social history Wolmar has succeeded in providing an entertaining and thought provoking work which in compact form succeeds in making the reader much more informed about how the railway shaped Russia. Perhaps next time in Russia I'll take the train. 

Disclaimer, a review copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Atlantic Books.

"The City of Strangers", Michael Russell

“The past didn’t only come up at you out of the ground in Ireland; it walked around the streets following you, and if you turned around to complain it spat in your face.”

I’ve been looking forward to “City of Strangers” for quite a while, I was excited when it arrived, and rightly so. It’s really good, and having enjoyed reading it over the weekend I’m very much looking forward to more.

Michael Russell skilfully navigates the challenges of following up a highly satisfying first novel with an accomplished sequel to “City of Shadows”. Splitting the narrative between Dublin and New York, and drawing in elements of modernity such as flying boats he weaves a story wrapping up multiple crimes in a highly enjoyable novel that once again transcends the boundaries of ‘police procedural’ and encourages comparisons with the likes of Alan Furst or John Lawton.

With historical crime fiction achieving a sense of place is critical. Russell is on surest ground in Ireland, where there is a real sense of authenticity, bearing this in mind it’s a mild disappointment that quite so much of the novel takes place in New York. The Irish-American community and the struggles within the United States regarding neutrality and the coming war is effectively portrayed, but somehow feels more of a stage set in the novel than a richly featured location.

What is absolutely achieved is a sense of how history wove around Irish society in the late 1930s. The ghosts of the independence struggle and the bloody civil war affect everyone and shape how society works through the plot. In this light it’s almost a shame that four years separate the events in this work from “The City of Shadows”. It feels as though there should be more to be mined from the rich seams of DeValera’s Ireland in the 1930s, and while I am sure Russell will be able to do so in the back story to subsequent novels, missing out on seeing how Stefan Gillespie handled some of the absurdities of autarky is a source of some regret.

At its heart this is a novel about memory and history and how this binds together people and what it meant to be “Irish” as the fledgling state established what it wanted to be. As one of the characters sagely advises towards the end of the book, when Stefan’s son wrestles with his German background in the light of the outbreak of war:

“Let’s make do with being Irish, Tom. God knows that’s hard enough”.

Did Clausewitz Drink Coffee?

Over the last day or so the otherwise unremarkable arrival of another cake product at Starbucks has blown into a social media storm of moderate scale.

With some splash, Starbuck's proudly announced the "invention" (and that word's important) of the "Duffin", essentially a doughnut, made from more muffin like substance, and shaped like a muffin. Could be okay, like Starbucks' coffee in general, could be awful, a little like their Pumpkin Spiced Latte. Chances are most people would be blissfully unaware of the Duffin, ordering what they always do, and long term survival of the said cake would have been utterly dependent on whether the store staff we interested in pushing it, and whether it managed to get enough traction to sit alongside the usual Blueberry Muffin style things. My gut feel is it would have struggled, and come Easter we'd hear no more of it, but that's not the point.

The point, as has been adroitly raised by Bea Vo, who runs a quartet of nice coffee shops in Central London, is that Starbuck's didn't invent the Duffin. Not even close. Bea's of Bloomsbury have been selling them for over 3 years. It appeared in their cookbook in 2011. Countless food bloggers and reviewers have written about them. I've been to Bea's a number of times, I must confess to not having sampled a duffin, but overall the experience of going is lovely, friendly staff, nice surroundings, and very good coffee.

Bea is highly accomplished in using social media tools to build her business. Her twitter feed has the thick end of 10,500 followers, and the tone taken is consistently conversational and friendly, ranging from passing the time of day to promoting film evenings. It's unsurprising that her response to the duffin incident harnessed this, and what a job she's done. In a series of tweets opinion has rightly been roused against a big corporation appropriating the hard work of a small independent and then compounding matters by trademarking 'Duffin' - which given the amount of prior art out there seemed a particularly pointless act.

There's something interesting about this though. Bea's four shops are dwarfed by Starbucks presence in London, let alone the UK. More than this however, the experience of going to Bea's is entirely different to that of going to Starbucks. Indeed, I'd argue that the two don't compete in any meaningful way, Bea's isn't really taking custom from Starbucks, and I don't see Bea's target customer base being realistically tempted by Starbucks; certainly in Bloomsbury the existence of a Nero just down the road doesn't stop Bea's being pretty full a lot of the time. In the greater scheme of things, right now these two companies don't matter to each other, and I suspect that may well have driven Starbucks and their suppliers thinking when appropriating the Duffin, and making claims such as 'only available at Starbucks'.

But - there are winners and losers when engaging in the battle for hearts and minds, and the results to date, with extensive twitter (#duffingate) and main stream media (Guardian) coverage, are clear. Starbucks once again look like a faceless behemoth, lose the chance to get some positive coverage, and all in all look staid and unresponsive, caught with their hand in the cake tin, and not really having much to say about it; a small independent comes across with integrity intact and showing they've got the courage of their convictions.

It's easy to brush over this, remember, right now I don't think the two parties in this disagreement really compete against each other. But competitors come from somewhere, and all empires end, and when Starbucks falls it might be because someone is fundamentally better at figuring out what the centre of gravity is, seizing the zeitgeist and making their products desirable  Bea Vo's only got four shops at the moment, but what happens when she breaks out of her City/East bastion and opens one in Victoria? Or King's Cross? Or New York? There's a part of me that thinks Bea's have played Starbucks undeniable misstep with considerable aplomb.

Did Clausewitz drink coffee? I don't know, just in the same way I've no idea what colour the boathouse in Hereford might be.

“A Home on the Rolling Main: A Naval Memoir 1940-1946”, A. G. F. Ditcham

Representing life as a junior officer primarily aboard Royal Navy destroyers during World War Two Ditcham’s autobiography provides a frank, accessible, and unflinching account, highlighting the wry humour and periodic human tragedy that's inherent with any life spent when momentous historic events take place. In this way the matter of fact delivery is reminiscent of Fitzroy Maclean's marvellous "Eastern Approaches".

One of the things I have always found fascinating about accounts of naval life is the less dramatic description of what ordinary life below decks was like, and here Ditcham's account provides a vast amount of valuable local colour, with critical details such as the Gunroom not being slept in by junior officers when at sea aboard HMS Renown, and sailors having to find any available square inch giving a real insight into the realities of being at sea.

The work throughout is punctuated with a rich vein of understated humour, such as his introduction to drinking beer and other such substances, which he clearly took to with some gusto! This is coupled with a welcome level of self-effacement; in the face of Norwegian barbarity, when he recounts how a Norwegian cabin mate ashore "blundered into the cabin, sat down on the edge of his bed, and pee'd on his bedside rug like a horse in a stall". Ditcham took this as an opportunity to request a move in quarters, which in retrospect he sees as the move of a prig.

A keen aircraft spotter it's striking that he managed to see such rarities as a Messerschmitt Jaguar and Dornier Seeadler in the course of his career at sea. Continuing in the vein of the unusual, the work contains accounts of some lesser known aspects of the war, such as Vichy France's bombing of Gibraltar in retaliation for the Allied Operation ‘Menace’ against Dakar in 1940.

It's always hard to avoid being too gushing when you encounter a book as genuinely good as this. Ditcham's autobiography simultaneously adds valuable narrative material to our understanding of the war at sea and the experience of the ordinary people who made up its cast of characters while remaining an enormously entertaining read. The late John Keegan, on the cover endorses "A Home on the Rolling Main" as "one of the most vivid and immediate war memoirs I have ever read", it is very hard to disagree with this. No library on the Second World War at sea should regard itself as being complete without a copy of this on its shelves.

Disclaimer: A copy of this book was provided gratis for review purposes by Pen and Sword Books.