Not Quite Review Corner: Book and Dagger

Book and Dagger: the untold story of the academics who became the Spies, invented modern spycraft and helped turn the tide of the war. 2024, Elyse Graham, Harper Collins

I still don't know what to make of this one. 

It's proven harder to read than I thought. I didn't take to it right away. I found it too easy-going, a little facile. I'm still not sure why the text rubs off on me the way it does. Maybe it's just writing style. If that's the case, then your milage will definitely vary.

However, the story it's telling is remarkable (though I question the 'untold' bit). Well worth your time, particularly if you ever intend to run or play Bookhounds of London, or Delta Green. This is the story of how the intelligence services in the West became true intelligence services. How they picked up those peculiar skills that would become the obsession of spy novelists in the decades to come. 

How the booksellers and academics turned into spies.

Most importantly it tells you who they were and what they got up to. I like to think I know a little bit about the subject matter, but I'd not heard of Adele Kibre before, for example. It's one of those times when you're reminded that actual spy work is not like a Bond novel. That John Le Carre had a point. Here's someone who did very important work, but who did it by talking, by finagling, by paying attention and taking notes. Not for Kibre the daring car chases and escapes across rooftops. She bought or acquired books. Lots and lots of books, and papers, and news. 

Judging by what is known of her she seems to be the kind of researcher who would have driven Barbara Tuchman to distraction; the kind that accumulated a wealth of knowledge but seldom put anything down on paper. There was always one more scrap to be had, one missing piece, and Kibre, by the looks of it, would rather have squirreled away that academic nut than published a single word.  

Kibre isn't the only character, of course. Graham covers a wide range, focusing mainly on American sources. Her subjects are recruited from their dusty academies, set to training with the likes of Fairbairn and Colonel Applegate, and then off they go to the war, which might be in Spain or Switzerland or France or a dozen other places. There they hoover up knowledge both academic and military, funneling it back to their shadowy bosses. 

From a Mythos perspective, or anyone with interest in running a supernaturalist spy campaign, this is definitely something you want to be looking at. This is Bookhounds taken to its logical extreme, where instead of the profit motive the squirrely bookish types are driven by loyalty to country and cause. Who knows what peculiar secrets they might uncover in that library collection?

I just wish I liked it better than I do. I've gone headlong into the likes of Barbara Tuchman and Liza Picard, and those are far more academically rigorous works. I rank Tuchman's March of Folly as one of the finest works of scholarship in the English language, and that covers about as broad a topic as you could wish for, with as much imagination - far more, I'd argue - than Graham displays here.

I suppose it could be writing style, or it could be a lurking suspicion that Graham's attention to detail is a little off. Never anything major, but several minor clangers that threw me out of the narrative. 

There's a bit in the section about breaking codes where Graham imagines a conversation between two bigwigs shortly after a successful North African campaign. One asks the other whether the academics figured out how to read Hitler's plans from the flutter of ribbons in little girl's pigtails.

"No," the other responds. "They thought they'd break U.N. custom and actually apply intelligence to their intelligence."

Which works as a comeback, just barely, but all I could think was 'U.N.? As in United Nations? But they don't exist yet, surely? Or is this meant to be U.S.N. as in U.S. Navy - presumably Naval Intelligence?'

It's things like that which throw me off. The minute I start wondering whether the author can be trusted to tell the story straight - the author, mind, not the narrator - I lose interest in the work. 

Part of the problem is Graham's use of fictionalized narrative to fill in the gaps, where historical information is lacking. It's a handy device in moderation. However, there's a lot of gaps, so moderation flies out the window.  You're never entirely sure which bit is backed by some kind of record (any kind, please our lord Herodotus) or whether it's emerging full-formed like a Greek God from a historian's head. You have to have a lot of trust in the author before you can easily swallow that kind of thing. 

It's a bit like the rant at the end of Murder by Death: 'You've all been so clever for so long, you've forgotten to be humble. You tricked and fooled your readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now the tables are turned ...'

Murder By Death (1976)

Which brings me back to the likes of Tuchman and Picard. I trust those authors, but they earned their trust by being academically rigorous from the start. Graham never did. She starts with fictitious narrative and carries on in that vein. 

Do I recommend it? Yes. After all, I've recommended far worse works, both fiction and non-fiction, precisely because even the bad stuff can be a source of inspiration. The Book of Spies and Army of Thieves, to name but two, are absolute stinkers. They can still be mined for useful ideas. 

The same applies here. I do not consider this a serious work of history. It's the historical equivalent of a summertime beach read. But it does have some interesting features and has enough of relevance to Keepers and Directors to warrant a read. 

Tho maybe not buy the expensive hardback version? Borrow it from the library; that's the better option by far.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Books! Glorious Books.

 I arrived home poorer financially, but not poor in spirit. I brought home a cargo of books, as you can see. But what, you ask, was the result?

Well!

David Wellington, 99 Coffins and Vampire Zero. If you remember Wellington, that’s because you read his Monster Island series of zombie apocalypse novels. I think I may have mentioned him in a Bookshelf, lo, these many moons past. In Monster Island, followed by Monster Nation and Monster Planet, he started off with a great idea: dude from UN shanghaied during zombie apocalypse is sent to NYC to pick up meds for a Somali warlord afflicted by AIDs, since the UN building is the only place anyone can think of where someone can reliably get said meds. Sold. Job done. Problem being, that plot didn’t quite sustain the novel, never mind the following two books. Here we have a situation where reluctant modern-day vampire hunter is, first, sent off to deal with Civil-War era shenanigans, and then, in the next novel, has to deal with her former mentor who’s gone rogue and joined the fang gang. I admit, this was a gamble purchase. I'll have to see whether it was worth the $7 or so the Strand charged me for them. [spoiler alert: ehhhhhh ... *shrug*]

Christianna Brand, Green For Danger. Classic crime from the British Library. I’ve already seen the film so I kinda know whodunit, but that shan’t stop me enjoying this one. World War Two drama in which a mysterious person is unceremoniously offed on the operating table. The person who says she knows what happened is stabbed to death moments later …

Agatha Christie Mallowan, Come, Show Me How You Lived. Period archaeology, and yes, it is that Agatha Christie. If nothing else this will be excellent research material, but Dame Agatha is always readable so I’m expecting great things.

Arthur Machen, The Three Impostors. I’m going to delve deeper into this in a separate post. Briefly, excellent horror fiction that GUMSHOE Directors should be poaching ideas from left, right and center. A group of disparate acquaintances discover that they’ve all had close encounters with mysterious forces, apparently led, coordinated or otherwise involved by the young man with spectacles – whoever or whatever he may be …Even if you've never read the novel you have almost certainly read The Novel of the Black Seal and The Novel of the White Powder, both of which are part of the Three Impostors and both of which have been anthologized in many publications since.

William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland. Often called a classic of the genre, this is one I actually wouldn’t recommend to most people. It has a strong premise but no follow-through: two friends on a fishing expedition discover a mysterious house, and a diary written by the man who lived there. Expect much luminous and hallucinogenic imagery and almost no plot whatsoever. Worth picking up if you enjoy delving into the history of horror.

Bartholomew Gill, The Death of an Ardent Bibliophile. A policeman pays what amounts to a welfare check on a notorious bibliophile only to find him dead and naked. Or naked and dead, whichever way you’d prefer to read that sentence.

C. Daly King, Obelists at Sea. Another classic crime novel, with the added bonus that this is set on a classic cruise liner. Neatly involving two of my personal obsessions in one package. Job done.

Paul Halter, The Mask of the Vampire. A locked room mystery master tackles supernatural murder. This is a translation of the French original. Vampires and a Frenchman’s interpretation of the English countryside murder mystery? Oho!

Seishi Yokomizo, The Village of Eight Graves. I’ve mentioned his work before. Yokomizo-san struggled to find a market before the War and very nearly starved to death during it, but post-War found fame with his series of historical mystery novels. Once upon a time greedy villagers murdered eight samurai for the stolen gold the samurai were supposedly guarding. Nobody ever found the money; many died from the samurai curse. Now, it seems, the bloody work of vengeance is to begin anew as unlucky heir BLANK comes back to his birthplace, a village he has never seen in his life.

Ken Weber, Maximum Entertainment 2.0. Bought at Tannen’s Magic Shop, a place I thoroughly recommend to all visitors to NYC with even a passing interest in stage magic. I bought this for research purposes; I couldn’t card trick my way out of a rabbit’s hat. However, if you’re going to write about something – say, if you intend to write a novel with a magician as a main or major character – you need to know the business of performance. You need to know what it is to put on a show. That’s what Weber does, and he does it very well.

Lafcadio Hearn, Chita. I admit without shame that I'd buy/read anything Hearn ever wrote and I await the day when someone gathers all his newspaper columns in one anthology. This is his account of the hurricane of 1856 and, speaking as someone who lived through hurricanes: 110%, no error. Horror writers ought to at least read the first chapter, if you read nothing else. 

Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop If you want to understand how the US became what it is today, you need to read books like these. Balko charts the militarization of America's police, from its earliest days to the no-knock present. The downfall of the Castle Doctrine, one coffin nail at a time.

Not Quite Book Review Corner: Mick Herron (Night's Black Agents)

via Waterstones

Mick Herron's Slough House series, a must-read for Night's Black Agents players and Directors alike, has two major themes that it rams home again and again.

1. The English are their own worst enemy.
2. Boris Johnson is an arsehole.

Which is fair enough so far as it goes. I don't think anyone would disagree with point 1. Point 2 depends largely on whether you believe Boris is a Blofeld or an idiot. Or both, but personally I lean towards idiot and have done for many years. For that reason I think Herron gives Johnson too much credit.  

The Slough House series is set in modern Britain of the mid-to-late 2010s. It presumes there is a dead letter office for spies, Slough House, where the cack-handed and past-it are sent to while away the days waiting for retirement. Its nominal leader is Jackson Lamb, a cold warrior whose glory days are so far behind him you couldn't see them with a telescope. He's the anti-Bond, charmless and bullying, who somehow manages to get things done despite everything. Underneath him are an ever-changing band of misfits. One or two may drop off the twig from book to book, but Slough House survives.

Despite being a spy series unlike a le Carré narrative nearly all the action takes place in London. The George Smiley lookalike is dead by his own hand after selling Her Maj's secrets to the Russians, and the current leadership is more Judi Dench M than anything else. Though you presume all these actual spies doing real jobs over at Park House - the ones who haven't been shitcanned to Slough House - have adventures in foreign lands, the ones at Slough House are lucky if they get a day trip to the Barbican which, as it happens, is right next door.

The main antagonist of the series is Joris Bohnson, aka Peter Judd, who crops up again and again in several different roles across the series. He doesn't have it in for Slough House per se, at least not in the early books (I haven't read the entire series). However, his latest wheeze always seems to involve Jackson's lambs somehow, whether on the periphery or as the main event.

Herron had a very tedious trick in his first novel, Slow Horses, which I'm glad to say he has dropped. Slow Horses revolves around a kidnapping by a British terror group, BNP-adjacent white supremacists who've decided to execute a British Pakistani Muslim in retribution for some tedious thing or other. In that novel Herron would strongly suggest in the narrative that X has happened when in fact it was Y, and when Y is revealed Herron does a little dance to show how clever he has been. This misdirection is fun once. Fun twice. On the three-hundred and forty-ninth repetition it gets wearisome. 

Thankfully he does not overuse it in the other Slough House novels. 

He does do one thing he deserves praise for: he mentions Brexit. Not by name. Rather like Yog-Sothoth, Brexit must not be named. However, it does turn up as a plot point, which is something I've not seen other authors working in modern-day settings do. 

Real Tigers has a plot device that Night's Black Agents Directors, and possibly Dracula Dossier Directors, ought to steal. Without giving the game away, the device is this: the British Secret Service keeps what it calls Grey Books, a series of files about conspiracy theories and the people who believe them. They do this for two reasons. First, the people who believe that the Queen was in fact a Reptilian are sometimes one Armalite away from doing something tragic. Second, there might (just might) be some useful intel in there somewhere. 

The villains of the piece want those Grey Books and coerce Slough House into getting it for them.

The Grey Books are plausible. You can imagine every intelligence service keeping something like them, and there are real-world examples. In Night's Black Agents there's every reason to think those Grey Books contain useful intel about everyone's favorite conspiracy theory: the vampires that secretly Rule The World. They'd be prime targets for every Night's Black Agents group and the great thing about it is, every national government would have something like those Grey Books. You don't have to restrict this to a London setting. It could as easily be the Vatican, or France's DSGE, or German's BND. 

To that end:

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright     

Your tiger team is tasked with breaking into the national intelligence agency's archives and stealing the Grey Books, their version of the nutjob files. Every conspiracy theory that gained traction is in there. It's considered a relatively safe thing to steal; not exactly the crown jewels of the nation's security secrets, but important enough to be kept behind a door with more than one lock.

Your supposed Mr. Johnson (no, not that Johnson) is a high-ranking politician who wants to tweak the tail of the security services. They think that embarrassing the current Head of Security will get them leverage in their latest political scheme. What Mr. Johnson doesn't realize is that his second-in-command has personal reasons for wanting that file and will take the first opportunity to steal it from the group.  

That leaves the agents swinging in the wind. Mr. Johnson, seeing how his scheme has fallen apart, will deny all knowledge. Hire a tiger team to test national security services? Never! Not our Mr. Johnson. Meanwhile the second-in-command is in the wind and the agents are effectively on the run - unless they can somehow get that file back. Even if they do, will they be able to buy their way back into the government's good graces or are they permanently ruined?

On top of all this: just what's in that nutjob file that everyone seems to want so badly?  

Thieves of Book Row (Bookhounds of London)

This is going to be a little cheeky, since as of time of writing I haven't finished the book I want to recommend to Bookhounds Keepers: Thieves of Book Row (New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring And The Man Who Stopped It), by Travis McDade. My copy's the 2013 Oxford Uni Press paperback. 

OK, there are now two books and two books only I highly recommend if you want to run Bookhounds of London, and both are about the US book trade. Frustrating, I know. I work with what I've got. 

The first is Ruth Brown Park's Book Stores and How to Run Them. The second is Travis McDade's Thieves. 

I want to say right up front that this is an academic text. That means, as you might expect, the text is occasionally dry. However the subject's a kicker, and Travis McDade's a clear and clever writer. He's not going to pound you to death with polysyllables or bore you silly with academic trivia. These are thieves, bad guys, the villains of the piece. 

They come off the page just as bad as you'd hope. 

Sneaks with lists and capacious coats or bags, they drift from library to library looking for likely targets. Once stolen any identifying marks are cut away or, if they're prepared to take a little care, bleached right off the page. Then off they go to the booksellers, more or less witting conspirators in the trade, and sell their loot for a fraction of its value. It's a trade that continues to this day, though of course the methods have changed since the 1920s and 30s. 

You will never look at libraries the same way again. Constantly under siege, they had to develop extraordinary protocols to keep their books safe - and even the most secure, like the NYPL, suffered losses. If ever there was a setting for a particular kind of heist movie, this is it. 

I'm not going to go into the hows, whos or whats because, as hinted in the opening paragraph, I haven't finished the blasted thing yet. Just take it from me, if you like this setting you will find at least a dozen period story ideas in the first two or three chapters. Edwin White Gaillard's career alone is worth its weight in plot gold. 

What I will do is steal a throwaway bit from the early chapters and give you a plot seed.

At the end of his work, Gaillard came to believe that at least three men were operating together as a sort of book theft team. One man did the initial investigating of the library, another did the stealing, and a third sold the books ...

Three Blind Mice

The London trade knows them as Percy, Blunt and Nash, though they have half a dozen different identities. Legend has it they met during the war when all three flew for the jolly old RFC, and later teamed up as thieves when civilian life turned out to be less than they'd hoped. Whether or not this is true they're closer than brothers, and just about the most efficient book thieves the characters know.

Percy always pretends to be clergy, and scouts out the job. He's the one who poses as almost blind, so he has an excuse to totter around and ask questions. Blunt, gifted with a face that remains perpetually young, is the one who actually steals the stuff. He pretends to be a fellow of Oxford, Cambridge or, in a pinch, Trinity. The stuff vanishes into his capacious carrying case, which is equipped with several hidden pockets. Nash is the dealer. To the outside world he's a Dilettante with occult leanings who 'inherited' his collection, parts of which he occasionally sells to fund other purchases. He has a rather nice house in Bloomsbury, where he hosts parties and generally bolsters his reputation as a well-heeled lover of literature.

There's not many places they won't go to make a score. On more than one occasion they've gone by boat and train to the Continent, but their knowledge of libraries private and public in the UK is prodigious.

Rumor has it the three are, if not falling out, certainly at risk of a rift. This makes everyone nervous. If one of them should peach to the authorities it won't just be the Blind Mice who suffer. Everyone they've sold a hooky first edition to - including the Hounds - might find themselves up before the beak for receiving stolen goods. Embarrassing, certainly - the sort of Downfall a shop might not recover from.

What upset the Three Blind Mice? 

• A recent theft proved toxic, when one of the Mice read a section of the Cultes des Ghoules. Now they have an appetite for human flesh, and though they're trying to keep their impulses in check it isn't going well. The other two are trying to help but realize the consequences if they fail are severe, so they're simultaneously planning exit strategies. The two who aren't tainted won't say which one of them is. 
• One of them has started dealing on the side to a prominent member of one of London's cults. It might be the Brotherhood of the Pharaoh, Keirecheires or some other organized group, but the key point is they're dangerous as hell and the Mouse didn't appreciate how dangerous until they were already in the trap. The other two are furious and looking for a way out, but they don't want to leave their pal in the soup if they can help it. Meanwhile the cult is aiming the Blind Mice at their most valuable prize to date, and the consequences if they fail are unthinkable. That said, the Hounds are just as interested in the prize as the cult is, and if they're clever about it they might be able to sneak off with the loot - so long as they don't mind leaving the Mice to rot.
• There are no Mice. There is one Mouse with three faces, that he (?) got through eating the other two's brains years ago. That worked fine for a long while, but nothing lasts forever. The Mouse is losing grip on at least one of its personalities, and wants to ditch its failing personas for younger models. Plausible, bookish models. After all, it doesn't do to abandon a con game it's been working for so many years. Perhaps some fresh faces can be found in the marketplace. One or more of the Hounds may find themselves targeted by the surviving Mouse, as potential replacements ...

Enjoy!

Not Quite Book Review Corner: The Ruins (Scott Smith)

I spent rather more time than I would have liked in hospital during my recent UK trip, but it gave me time to read a book I'd bought to entertain me on the flight: Scott Smith's The Ruins (2006). It was one of three I'd bought, the other two being a Michael Slade and a Jack Higgins. I don't look for aesthetic or intellectual entertainment when I fly; I want something interesting enough to make it worth my while turning pages, and that's it. It's different when you're comfortable, awake and alert, but those three things are not what flying is all about.

The Ruins was an unknown quantity. I didn't recognize the author. I later discovered he's the guy who wrote A Simple Plan (1993), a thriller I very much admire, but at the time the name Scott Smith plucked no forgotten strings of memory. The Ruins is his second, and to date he's only written two. The man does not believe in rushing things along.

He's an MFA Fine Arts who's got a few screenwriting credits behind him, and is currently working on Civil, a TV drama-cum-thriller-cum God Alone Knows in which nation-shattering violence breaks out after a hotly contested election. He seems to prefer obscurity; he's given few interviews and in those interviews he says little about how he works or what he's working on. He likes bookstores. So there's a plus.

The Ruins begins deep in Mexico's tourist heartland. Four Americans meet a German and three Greeks. The German has a problem; he and his brother fell out after the brother met a pretty archaeologist and the brother ran off to join her at some dig out in the boondocks. Now it's almost time for their flight home, and the brother hasn't come back. What, he asks the Americans, do they think he should do?

To them this all seems like a fantastic side adventure with a hint of illicit romance. Besides, going out to see some picturesque antiquities was on their To Do list, even if these particular antiquities seem to be a not very remarkable mine far from the comforts of civilization. So they pack a hearty picnic lunch, rent a taxi, and zoom off to the ruins. Ignoring the taxi driver's Borgo Pass-style warning - 'this place no good. Give me fifteen dollar, I take you somewhere better.' - they get off where they think the footpath to the ruins ought to be. There their problems begin.

The locals in the village nearby are as unfriendly as it is possible to be without actually shooting them. The locals pretend not to understand what they're talking about, and don't encourage them to stay. However by luck and some deductive reasoning they find the right footpath, which has been carefully camouflaged with leaves and brush. Following that path they find a pleasant hilltop covered with greenery and beautiful flowers, surrounded by a wide strip of what seems to be burnt out landscape, not unlike a moat cut out of the jungle. They can see what seems to be a tent at the top of the hill, presumably belonging to the archaeologists.

In short order the locals arrive, and they are not best pleased. Many of them are armed, and more are on the way. The leader seems to be about to let them go, but then one of the Americans accidentally sets foot on the flowery hillside. That contaminating foot is enough, and they're all ordered to climb the hill. No questions, no going back: climb.

Then things really get weird, but to go any further would involve major spoilers.

This, like Smith's previous novel, has also been made into a movie. While I have not seen that movie the trailer gives me no confidence whatsoever, and I'd avoid watching the film before reading the book as it might ruin things for you. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a pretty mixed rating, for what that's worth.

I like smart horror. By that I mean I like the characters to be strong characters who don't do anything dumb for reasons that are transparently plot related. Everyone has to behave in keeping with their character and everyone has to make reasonable decisions. Not necessarily correct decisions - in horror there aren't many of those - but reasonable according to the facts available at the time.

This is very smart horror. Even the locals, who might otherwise be faceless cyphers, are interesting, and behave very much in keeping with a group of people who've found themselves living next door to Satan's Left Buttock. Having found a way to keep the wicked emanations at bay they dedicate their lives to ensuring nobody goes near, and if somebody does, they make sure the unlucky wanderers never get out. Perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances. After all, we know what happens when you rely on the authorities to solve your problem for you.

Seldom have I read anything quite so much in the present tense. The only comparable I have is Andy McNab, and you know how I feel about him. Yet in this everything relentlessly flows from moment to moment, less like a narrative and more like a rising flood, carrying everything before it. Nothing in this novel happens without you silently witnessing it; there are no off-camera segues.

The antagonist is pleasingly Lovecraftian. By that I mean it is unknowable, alien, and malign. You get the sense that it's just biding its time up there on the hillside, waiting for the locals' guard to drop. It voraciously devours everything it can get - birds, animals, insects - and human targets are o-so-tasty, but perhaps a little large and feisty to be swarmed in a frontal assault. So it resorts to trickery and illusion to get the job done, luring them into dangerous situations where they can be picked off one by one.

Narratively it reminds me of John Wyndham and while some of you may be leaping towards a certain novel I'm actually thinking of the criticism levelled by Christopher Priest, who called Wyndham 'the master of the middle-class catastrophe.' The main characters are all nice college kids with money and all the nice things that money can buy. They've had good educations, they're smart, they can handle themselves in most situations and soon they'll be going off into the working world.

Here they are enjoying an exotic vacation. Here they are going off to rescue their friend's brother from a silly romantic misadventure. Here they are climbing a flower-covered hill, threatened with death if they try to come down again.

One of them thinks wistfully about her nice things, left in the hotel back in Cancun. Perhaps the maid will steal them.

It all speaks to a kind of invulnerability middle class Westerners think they enjoy. Nothing can seriously go wrong, not to them. After all, they're on vacation. They're having a good time. They just want to go out for the day, have a picnic, see some scenery and go home again. What's so difficult about that?

The other two books I bought for the trip are long gone. I don't believe in carrying excess baggage, and I brought too much stuff home with me to want to burden myself with even a fraction of a kilo's weight. I don't think the Harris even left Bermuda's airport; I dumped it for someone else to find, and same goes for the Slade. I believe in being a Johnny Appleseed of books, and English pubs are quite good places to spread the love.

I almost took the Smith to Dragonmeet to pass on to some unwitting host. I didn't. I almost passed it on some other way - after all, I had three days in London after Dragonmeet before getting on a plane.

It's with me now, on my desk in front of me.

You don't get rid of the good stuff.

Not Quite Book Review Corner: Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff

I've been reading Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, a relative newcomer to the scene. He's been writing for a while, but keeps dropping off the map, and so his publication list isn't that long. First published in 1988, then nothing until 1997, then a gap, then a gap, everywhere a gap gap, old Matt Ruff he had a farm, and so forth. My copy is an uncorrected proof. When published, it will be via Harper Collins, and is expected to be a February 2016 release.

The central idea is fascinating. Ruff takes the tropes of Lovecraft's Mythos, and re-imagines the stories with African American protagonists. The setting is 1950s America, heartland of noir fiction, and the collection of short, interconnected stories opens with the tale of Atticus Turner, off to Chicago with a copy of the Safe Negro Travel Guide in his pocket, hoping to find his father. Except his father's gone missing, and all the clues suggest that he's gone to Arkham, Massachusetts, home of Lovecraftian horror. It soon develops that Montrose Turner is mixed up with a peculiar Order of the Ancient Dawn, who are themselves very interested in Atticus since he might be a direct descendant of the founder of their Order.

Things, as you might expect, get very complicated from that point forward.

I mentioned interconnected stories earlier. It wouldn't be entirely fair to call this a short story collection, even though it is a collection of several short-ish stories. There is a common long-term plot, however, and the characters are all related either by blood or by bonds of friendship. So in the first story Montrose is a relatively minor support character, but in a later story he becomes the main protagonist. Childhood friends, cousins, Brothers from the local Lodge, may all appear as fleeting glimpses in one story, only to reappear later as main characters. The Braithwaite clan and its magical machinations make up the main antagonists, along with its allies and rivals in the alchemical Orders that seem to spring up like weeds across America.

In and of itself the concept would be intriguing, but by combining it with Lovecraft Ruff manages to hit a very particular and sensitive nerve. After all, this is Howard Phillips we're talking about, the man who gave us Cthulhu but also gave us the comic verse On The Creation of Niggers, as Ruff reminds us very early on.

Recently the World Fantasy Awards statuette hit the news again. It's been pointed out, particularly in recent years, that having an award of this type made in Lovecraft's image is sending, at best, a mixed message to the world at large, and fandom in particular. "This is something people of color, women, minorities, must deal with more often than most when striving to be the greatest they can possibly be in the arts," said award winner Nnedi Okorafor, on discovering Lovecraft's reputation after receiving her award. "The fact that many of the Elders we honor and need to learn from hate or hated us."

It's been announced that future awards will not bear Lovecraft's image. Noted Lovecraftian scholar S.T. Joshi has been particularly outspoken in his disgust at this decision. "Evidently this move was to placate the shrill whining of a handful of social justice warriors who believe that a 'vicious racist' like Lovecraft has no business being honored by such an award."

I lost a great deal of respect for S.T. Joshi after reading that piece.

There's no denying Lovecraft's hatred, of women, of African Americans, of pretty much everything and everyone except white Anglo Saxons and Gothic Revival architecture. He has created some very compelling art, worthy of study, worthy of approbation. That does not excuse the rest of it.

Perhaps it's time to admit that having his face on an award is exclusionary. That it sends a message, intentionally or not, and that message is an unpleasant one. 

Having touched on that nerve, however, Ruff lacks follow-through. There are many dark and complex scenes in these stories, but at the same time there's an undercurrent of light-heartedness that is at odds with horror. Frankly, there's more angst and despair in The Hobbit than there is in this book, and the main character of The Hobbit is a jolly little fellow whose sole ambition in life is to eat more dinners.

That's not to say the stories are bad. They're very cleverly done, and as a counterpoint to pure Lovecraft there's pleasure to be had in re imagining those stories with these protagonists. Even so, you have to go into this expecting that it won't be horror, as horror is usually understood. There's the suggestion of shoggoths off in the darkness, and weird things do happen, but these shoggoths have a low-fat label on the side with an encouraging nutritional message from the FDA.

An example, hopefully avoiding as many spoilers as possible: in one story, a character is told to choose whether or not to accept a benefit. That benefit, we discover, comes at someone else's expense, and that someone else is kept inside a large machine, apparently unconscious. We're told by the antagonist that this person is in a permanent coma thanks to a head injury, and feels no pain. What would make this really work would be if we didn't know whether the antagonist is telling the truth. Perhaps there is no coma, no head injury. Except as the reader we know that the antagonist is telling the truth. We saw that head injury in a previous episode, and from that we can infer the coma. Trouble is, knowing that undercuts the horror by removing the uncertainty. 

So would I recommend Lovecraft Country to Lovecraft fans, when it finally debuts? Yes. Just bear in mind, as I've said, that this is not a frightening collection. It has horrific scenes, and its depiction of historical events is all the more shocking because we know the truth of the matter. We also know that it didn't happen very long ago, in the grand scheme of things. For that alone it's worth reading. 

Even if it doesn't keep you awake at night, captivated by existential bleakness and despair.

Not Quite Book Review Corner: The Book of Spies (NBA)

Silly, but entertaining, and with a very interesting plot hook. Which isn't something I was sure I was going to be able to say about Gayle Lynds' The Book of Spies. I picked it up mainly to data mine it for Night's Black Agents, and it's perfectly serviceable in that role. If you happen to be a Director and want some inspiration for your campaign, this is a good place to look for it, as it plays out much as you'd want a good RPG to: lots of travel to exotic locations, fun combat moments, and engaging villains. Just don't expect all of it to make sense.

The central hook is what lured me in, and that didn't disappoint. Rare book curator Eva Blake is drawn into a conspiracy surrounding the mysterious Library of Gold, once owned by Russian despot Ivan the Terrible, now thought lost to history. Eva's dead husband was a foremost expert on the mysterious library, but it seems his death isn't as kosher as first thought; not only is he alive, he's now the head librarian. But what's the connection between this most secretive of book clubs and Islamic terrorism?

Things I didn't like: oh, brother, it's a gimmick book. You know the type: Mysterious Clues have been left by Eva's long lost husband that, if pieced together, will lead to the Library itself. Mysterious clues like the tattoo on his head, or the ancient Latin code kept secret in Rome, or the annotations in the main McGuffin, Ivan's fabled Book of Spies. Piece together the picture formed by the moles on Washington's buttcheecks, as revealed to the righteous in the fabled naked Washington portrait painted by his secret lover, Andrew Jackson, and you too will receive a Wally Walrus decoder ring of your very own. I have so little patience for that kind of thing. It reminds me irresistibly of Calvin and Hobbes'  G.R.O.S.S., and while I enjoy that stuff when a kid and his stuffed tiger do it, I find I have less patience for it when grown adults try the same thing.

Plus, the clues can only be pieced together by his wife, which means that if his wife hadn't been conveniently dragged into the plot, nobody would have the slightest idea what the hell's going on. Added to that, there's no convincing reason why he should leave behind the clues he does, beyond a quick handwave, and there's one particular clue that, as far as I can see, he had absolutely no business knowing about. Poor plotting drives me mental.

There is a Mysterious Assassin With a Conscience. Kinda like a Hooker with a Heart of Gold, these fabled beasts only appear when the writer's up shit creek without a paddle. Naturally the main villain lies to the MAWC to get him to go after the book's heroes, and naturally the MAWC ends up turning against the main villain because the heroes seem so nice and righteous. Sweet jumping jellybeans, Batman, why the hell didn't you hire one of those assassins who don't have a conscience? Surely there are one or two of them left?

The plot is introduced when one of the conspirators has doubts, and meets with his old CIA buddy in a D.C. public park. He literally has just enough time to say, 'important clue concerning the nature of the McGuffin' before a sniper takes him out. I think the last time I saw that gag, Sax Rohmer was writing it. Life must get very frustrating for those poor snipers, who have to wait just long enough for the victim to say something significant before they can blow the victim's brains out.

So I don't recommend this book for its plot. You could drive a sixteen wheeler through the damn thing. No, I recommend it because of its McGuffin, the fabled Library of Gold, and the mysterious power brokers who own it. That whole set-up could be stolen wholesale by a Night's Black Agents Director. All you have to do is put Dracula in charge of the Library, and you're golden.

Plus, Lynds clearly seems at her most comfortable when talking about the Library, and other ancient sites. It's when her prose starts to come alive, and the character seem at their most human. Even the villains seem interesting, once they get to the Library and start sipping the brandy. Entire scenes could be taken from this book and transplanted into your campaign, and there's a very useful appendix where Lynds talks about the history behind the myth.

So on the whole, a qualified recommendation. It's worth bearing in mind that I did finish it, in spite of my vehement dislike of its structure and plotting. It's the kind of book you can probably devour in a few hours, or a long plane journey. In fact, it's exactly the sort of book you're likely to find in an airport newsagents, so if you should spot it, and it's going cheap, by all means give it a shot. Just don't expect too much from it beyod a few rollicking action scenes and a McGuffin so good, it really ought to have been in a better book.

Enjoy!

Not Quite Book Review Corner: The Strain Hogan/Del Toro

This time out I'm going to be talking about the Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan vampire collaboration, The Strain, first of a trilogy. It's also going to become a TV series, allegedly, though since this is in development and it is Fox behind it, the deal may collapse under its own weight before it hits the small screen. Del Toro I assume you've heard of by now, if you've any interest in horror at all. Hogan is less well known, though if you're a fan of crime then you may have come across his novel-turned-movie The Town. I'm not sure how the two of them got together, though if I had to bet money I'd say it was thanks to a kindly publisher.

The novel is set in current day New York. A Boeing 777 has just landed at JFK and everything, right up to the landing itself, seems normal. Except soon after its last transmission everything goes dark, and when the authorities finally board they discover all the passengers and crew are - seemingly - dead. The CDC's Dr. Ephraim "Eph" Goodweather discovers a small number of survivors, including a rock star, a kid, a co-pilot and a tort attorney, all of whom are whisked off to safety while the dead are packed off to several nearby hospital morgues. Except those corpses don't stay there very long, and the survivors start exhibiting some very peculiar symptoms. Before you know it the dead are walking, and a wizened survivor of Nazi concentration camps appears telling anyone who'll listen that Vampires are invading the Big Apple.

So far, so very cinematic, and there are plenty of touches here that scream Del Toro. I'm not as familiar with Hogan's work as to be able to pick out his contributions from the rest of the text, but I'll go out on a limb and say he did the majority of the writing while Del Toro was the ideas man. There are moments that would look magnificent on screen, but have little or no narrative use, like the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse event that has no purpose other than to let people use the word Occult very knowledgeably. There's also an early cut-away to the International Space Station that exists for no other reason than to let the action be pictured from above by characters who will never be plot-relevant again. You can almost picture Del Toro looking down his nose at a production company's accountant and saying 'it is vital to my vision! Without it, there is no film!'

The central idea is almost too large for comfort. When Stephen King does the same thing with Salem's Lot about two thousand people are wiped out; an unimaginable tragedy, but a small one in the grand scheme of things. About as many died when the Titanic sank. The small scale also allows King to set up several main-character-development vignettes, and establish backgrounds for the dozens of minor players who are about to get caught up in events. You can't do the same thing when 8.4 million people potentially are at risk, and the City itself lacks life thanks in part to the impossibility of conveying the identity of all the different locations the novel touches on. It all becomes very blurred. You don't get the same sense of place, and as a writer there's a risk - which I suspect the creative team fell foul of - that you'll end up broad-brushing a few iconic scenes in the hope that the reader's seen enough TV shows to fill in the blanks. 

The motivation of the central antagonists is also a little shaky. We're told there are several elders operating behind the scenes, and that the one who's causing all the trouble is a rogue who doesn't play by the rules. We're also introduced to an elderly financier whose willingness to cheat death no matter the cost is the spark that sets off the fireworks display. Yet the financier lacks any kind of motivation or characterization, and I can't help wondering if we're not supposed to dislike him because Duh, Money Men Are Teh Evilz, and not because he's willing to get everyone killed so he can live forever. You have to wonder why he wants eternal life if, as seems entirely plausible, civilization will come crashing down soon afterwards and the piles of cash in his money bin are about to become worthless. Who wants to live forever as a pauper?

Why, for that matter, is the rogue master buying in? If the novel's central conceit is to be believed, it never needs the financier. The money man's sole purpose is to buy the rogue master a plane ticket and make sure his coffin gets on board the Boeing. But if that's so then anyone could have done what the financier does; not as efficiently, true, but who cares about efficiency when you can slaughter every one of the Boeing's passengers and crew in five seconds flat? And how did it pull off that trick? There's nothing in the novel that suggests it has that kind of power, apart from the inciting event, and you'd think that if it could just knock everyone out and kill them within seconds then the rest of Manhattan ought to be about ten minute's work. Yet clearly that isn't so. Again, I see the hand of Del Toro in that magnificent, cinematic moment when the CDC team boards the aircraft and finds everyone dead, lying there as if asleep; but although the scene looks good, it'd seem that neither Del Toro nor Hogan really knew what to do with the idea after it germinated.

Where this novel kicks off is in the initial investigative scenes, where Dr Goodweather and his team start putting the pieces together. Many of the subsequent action scenes are also very fun to read, and the vampire physiology - which I won't spoil here - is an intriguing mix of folklore and biological fantasy. This is also one of the novel's less solid conceits, since it means reconciling ideas like 'they can't cross water' with 'holy water and crucifixes are just superstitions, and it's all working like a disease, really.' The two philosophies don't work well together, and eventually the wizened concentration camp survivor has to fling up his hands and say, 'look, I don't know why it's so, I just know that it's so, okay?'

I'd recommend this novel to anyone looking for Night's Black Agents inspiration, particularly for those trying to get away from the usual vampire tropes. There's a lot of inspirational stuff here, and though in the end Del Toro seems not to be wearing any clothes, he does naked very well. There's an artistic brilliance in the idea, even if it does fall apart on closer inspection. Without knowing Hogan's style better than I do, I don't want to say that one thing or another is his fault or his idea, but were I Hogan I suspect I'd be closing my eyes to the problem and cashing a well-deserved paycheck. It is, at times, an excellent vampire novel and any horror fan will find things to like about it. Whether they like the finished product in its totality is something else again, but it's well worth a look at even so.

Not Qute Book Review Corner: Patient Zero, Jonathan Maberry

Before I begin, I'm going to say up front that I liked Jonathan Maberry's Patient Zero. I'm saying that now, to balance out what's to come. I picked this up on the free shelf of my local store, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys pulp horror with a modern twist. Night's Black Agents gamers may find it especially useful, particularly since it demonstrates exactly the kind of Vampyramid - and its collapse, as per Double Tap - that they'll be fighting against.

Maberry is a relatively new author. He's been a professional writer since 1978, but it wasn't until his 2006 Pine Deep series - the first of which earned him a Stoker (Best First Novel) Award - that his fiction really started to get noticed. He's also written a string of non fiction and comics stuff, but the book I'm concentrating on here is the first in his fantasy bioterrorism series. There are five in print so far, with two more known to be on the way in 2014 and 2015, and he's been publishing one of these a year since 2009's Patient Zero.

Patient Zero kicks off with an action-packed armed raid on a terror cell operating within the United States. In a pitched gun battle, series hero Joe Ledger puts two .45 calibre rounds into a suspicious crazy who tries to bite him. All seems well, and the corpses are taken off to the hospital for autopsy. Except all isn't well; that dead fella Ledger shot gets up again and starts eating people, causing an incident that eventually results in the death of everyone in the hospital, up to and including a substantial number of the Department of Military Intelligence's best agents. The DMI, anxious to get on top of this ASAP, starts recruiting new blood, and Ledger's top of its list of potential candidates.

Ledger - all together now, in the key of E - is a smart-mouthed maverick loose cannon who gets results. Before he's been on the job ten minutes he's offered a chance to become leader of DMI's new Echo Team - Bravo and Charlie being somewhat dead - so he promptly marches into the room, kicks seven shades out of all the other candidates, and promotes himself commander by virtue of being biggest kung-fu badass. From there, it's a crazy romp through a world of mad science, as the team tries to find out how terrorists got hold of the zombie virus, and to stop whatever mad scheme the terrorists have in mind.

It's pulp in the Sax Rohmer tradition, with the Fu Manchu role taken by super terrorist El Mujahid, and the sexpot Fah lo Suee played by his devious wife, Amirah, who devises the zombie virus. They have the help of self-made pharmaceutical billionaire Gault, who thinks he can use their cause to make a fortune for himself by selling anti-zombie meds to the US after the outbreak. Gault provides the technological expertise and capital, while the husband-and-wife team supplies the genius and the muscle. Will Gault and Amirah hoodwink her cuckolded husband, or is this all part of some greater scheme?

It all hangs together fairly well. It's a little too jingoistic for my taste, and while I'm not going to quarrel with the science, I do have to wonder why on earth Maberry thought it necessary to have a female SAS front-line combat officer as a major secondary character when the SAS famously doesn't accept female recruits. Well, I know why, I suppose; the SAS is the one British regiment American readers will recognize as being reliably badass, and therefore worthy to fight alongside Joe Ledger.  It just seems so silly.

I did enjoy this book, but I'm not sure I'd rush to pick up the rest of the series. If I did, it would have to be on sale; I'd hate to pay full price. In part that's because of the unpleasant itch at the back of my head, that maybe this really is just the Yellow Peril reskinned with a more acceptable - if that's the right word - enemy. But it's also because my heart sank when I realized that Maberry's been publishing one a year of these ever since Patient Zero.

Maybe he does write that fast. Some authors do; I can't remember if it was Raymond Chandler or his contemporary Hammett who said that a writer who doesn't publish a book a year isn't really trying, but whichever it was, the dictum stands. But I can't help feeling that this output is less Maberry's speed than it is the publisher's diktat, much as fantasy authors now seem always to have to write a trilogy rather than just one very good book. Trilogies sell, but more importantly they ensure an author's name is kept fresh, and the revenue stream keeps flowing. Liked Attack of the Killer Cliches? Then be sure to look out for Attack of the Cliche Killers, coming out next May!

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but it does seem as if that's the only song the publishers know by heart. It means the story never ends, and anything like structure is thrown out the window. After all, if the story actually had a satisfactory conclusion then there'd be no reason to tune in next week and see how Doc Shadow managed to evade the clutches of Sinister Claw. It also means that plot points get reused, since there really isn't time to work out a new McGuffin or plan out a different style. Villains will come and never really go. 'How did you escape the exploding volcano, Doctor Devastation? Seems like your goose was cooked when the bombs went off.' 'Ah, thereby hangs a tale!'

No. There's precisely where the tale doesn't hang. It sags. It lies there, limp and deformed, bereft of purpose. It might have some superficial appeal, but who's going to remember it a month or so after they finish reading it?


  

The Bookshelf

Now I want to talk about the book review segment I contribute to Yog Radio.

I started doing it because I thought it would be fun, which is probably the motivating factor behind most of the things I do. At that time Yog Radio didn't have many contributors, and those it did have only occasionally sent in stuff. I thought it shouldn't be difficult to produce regular content, particularly since Paul of Cthulhu preferred segments that were no more than six minutes long.

I decided on book recommendations because I'm a voracious reader. I always want to tell people about good books, particularly if they're horror or horror-related. I'm a huge fan of ghost stories, especially Jamesian ghoulishness, and whenever I get the chance I infest second hand shops and antiquarian stores looking for material. I personally find the older stories far more enjoyable than the ones written today, possibly because contemporary authors tend to explain too much and are addicted to gore. I don't mind bloodshed, but I'm not in this for the ketchup; I'm in it for the chills.

I see The Bookshelf as a series of recommendations, rather than reviews. I'd never talk about a book (or a series) I didn't like. There'd be no fun in that. However I acknowledge that my tastes don't suit everyone, which is why I always include a short list of negative points: the cons, to be weighed against the pros. Hopefully people find them useful.

I also tend to avoid talking about books other people recommend to me. I've had a few Yog Radio listeners try to persuade me to talk about their favorite novels, and while I don't mind doing it if I like the book, I'm always a little wary because there's every chance I might hate it. I don't want to upset a listener by ragging on an author or story that they love. That doesn't seem fun at all.  

So, that's what I do and why I do it. Next post, I'll be talking about an old favorite of mine: The Beetle