It’s 1940 and most of the men in the village of Chilbury have gone to war and so the local choir will be disbanded, but not if music teacher Prim Trent has anything to do with it and she persuades the vicar to let a group of ladies carry on.
 
The choir is almost secondary to the various subterfuges and romances of the local residents, some of whom are up to no good while others hide their lights under bushels. Told in the form of letters, diaries or journals it has a mix of humour and seriousness. As with so many novels written from many viewpoints or in an epistolary style there are always some passages that work better than others, plus the inevitable credibility problems with swathes of description and fictional dialogue in letters that would never normally appear in such writing.
 
The dodgy midwife Edwina’s absurd baby-plotting antics in particular feel like part of a comedic “Agatha Raisin” cosy-crime plot while the journal entries of the lonely widowed Mrs Tilling, whose only son has gone to war, offer a much deeper and reflective style. The two sisters, Kitty and Venetia, are inconsistent. Kitty has adult perceptions that the average thirteen-year-old girl in 1940 was unlikely to have and the flighty Venetia’s transformation from irresponsibility and flirtatiousness to a more serious mien in a matter of days is implausible. Other characters are clichéd fare so often found in twee novels set in English counties such as a mysterious Cary Grant look-a-alike, the upper-class Mrs B who finds fault with everything yet becomes a stalwart, the rigid and sadistic Brigadier, the sneaky maid Elsie, plus a range of young “hooray Henry” chaps off to war (including one called Henry). The major tragedy that hits the village is another contrivance to ensure that certain characters are eliminated in order that all ends well for others.
 
The earlier cover with its genuine 1940s flavour is what drew me to this book initially whereas the second version is trendy and perhaps more fitting for a book about World War II written from a modern viewpoint.
 
If you don’t worry about flaws and just want an enjoyable read, then this will fit the bill. 3.5 stars.

Just when I’d decided I couldn’t face another World War I story for quite some time, this title and lovely impressionistic cover caught my eye and also the fact it is a translation. I thought perhaps here is a point of view that differs from so many WW1 novels written by English authors who tend to have similar voices because of their educations or backgrounds.
 
Written by Flemish poet and novelist Stefan Hertmans, with translation by David McKay, this is based on some notebooks written by Hertmans’ grandfather, Urbain Martien, shortly before he died in 1981. (This New York Times review gives the best summary.)
 
While it has passages of poetic beauty and tenderness deflecting off others packed with fiendish and grotesque horror, I do wonder how faithful this is to the notebooks themselves; how much is romanticised and intellectualised, how much is enhanced with splattered guts for those readers who prefer over-the-top-with-the-flag-boys fiction to introspection, art and philosophy? (If you aren’t already a vegetarian the descriptions of Urbain visiting a gelatine factory are enough to turn you into one.)
 
Urbain found his release from war, grief and disappointment in love through painting copies of masterpieces and portraiture, so somehow the excessive details of his war service don’t quite fit. It is a well-known truth that the majority of those who survived the trenches of World War I were silent or reserved about their actions and, even if they did share what they had been through, they would resort to macabre humour or allusion rather than describing squelching brains of comrades left on one’s boots. Perhaps rather than polishing and expanding the raw words of Urbain, there may have been greater honesty if the memoir had been lightly edited and left as written.
 
All this aside, I acknowledge that this is a magnificent piece of writing (evidence of a superb translation too), and it works best when the author’s own voice comes through as he wanders through the modern landscape trying to place it within the context of his grandfather’s past, such as in this passage where he is trying to visualise an ethereal nude girl who rose out of a lake and captured Urbain’s soul:

“ … but it can’t be done: the ring road, the buildings, the industrial sites, the fences, the streets, the railway, everything runs straight through it, as if an old songline had been ruptured by the brute force and mindlessness with which modern technology has flattened memories everywhere.”
 
And in the closing pages …
 
“… paradox was the constant in his life, as he was tossed back and forth between the soldier he had to be and the artist he’d wished to become. War and turpentine. The tranquillity of his final years made it possible for him to slowly overcome his traumas.”
 
No matter how good your research and imagination are, if you weren’t there you can’t ever really know what it was like and first-hand accounts remain the best (as in All Quiet on the Western Front, Testament of Youth, A Farewell to Arms, etc.). There are echoes here of that reality but like some of the old masters that Urbain copied they are hidden under the varnish.

Four stars.

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Anthony Horowitz wrote one of my favourite TV series of all time, Foyle’s War, and he has also been responsible for quite a number of scripts for Midsomer Murders and Hercule Poirot, plus he’s written versions of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, books for children and young adults such as the Alex Rider spy series as well as stage plays and goodness knows what else. He has a fiendishly clever mind for plotting, so I knew even before I started Magpie Murders I would be in for a roller-coaster of a ride and this novel-within-a-novel didn’t disappoint me.
 
Without giving away too much of either plot, editor Susan Ryeland of Cloverleaf Books has the manuscript of the last title in a detective series written by the late Alan Conway, but its final two chapters - the ones who tell you whodunit - are missing. Why? And is there in any connection between Alan’s presumed death by suicide and what is contained in those missing chapters?
 
The Alan Conway manuscript carries all the traditional aspects of a 1950s Miss Marple or Poirot plot; a cute English village with its cricket and crumpets for tea and classic characters such as the over-bearing lord of the manor, an unfaithful wife and her dashing lover, the resident nosey-parker, a creepy gardener, dodgy antique dealer, wide-eyed ingénue in love, etc. Enter the foreign-born detective who will solve the case, Atticus Pund. It is absolute pastiche, absolutely fabulous.
 
Susan’s modern story contains lots of observations on the publishing world and even throws in real-life individuals such as Agatha Christie’s grandson into cameo roles. She discovers things about Alan Conway and his Atticus Pund series that even she as its editor hadn’t spotted: anagrams, word plays and cryptic codes. When she finally realises that Alan was murdered her own life will be in jeopardy when she discovers the truth.
 
This is a delicious book to be gobbled up in one manic extended session because if you leave it aside for any time you risk losing the momentum and forgetting who’s who or recalling some of the hidden clues that so cleverly juggle one story with the other. I must admit to not guessing the culprits in either of the two stories and that made it a terrific reading experience. Unlike Midsomer Murders on TV which has been known to get so slow and convoluted it can send me to sleep, this sparkling and clever tale kept me wide awake for many enjoyable hours.

Loved it. Five stars.
 
(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the opportunity to read a review copy.)

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