Hamish McKenzie runs a trading fort at Delgoa Bay, Mozambique, in the mid-1750s. How, or why, he ended up there is not talked about with his family, but lurking in the background is a sinister character who has been hunting him down for years. Eventually, he discovers McKenzie’s whereabouts and hires a mercenary to do his dirty work for him.
 
Hamish has plans for his elder son, Lachlan, believing a better life awaits him working for the East India Company, but Lachlan would prefer to stay in Africa. When disaster and death strike the family and he barely escapes with his life, Lachlan vows revenge. He will find himself in Madras, on the Carnatic coast of India, and where he will not only face the McKenzie’s family nemesis but also military challenges far beyond anything he could imagine.
 
This is a rousing, swashbuckling tale that will have you glued to the pages. Exotic places and people are described with vibrancy and colour. It is extremely gory in places, and with a massive body count, but this is historical adventure writing at its best. My only quibble is that a couple of maps might help readers unfamiliar with the regions, also some author’s notes on the historical background, especially as regards the Carnatic Wars during this turbulent period in Indian history.
 
Four and a half stars.


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​I’ve been endeavouring to try and read older books in between recent releases and this Virago reprint of a 1961 classic drew my attention.
 
Dulcie Mainwaring has been dropped by her fiancé Maurice and decides on attending a conference of editors and indexers as a way to distract her thoughts. There, she meets the abrasive indexer, Viola Dace, who seems to have some kind of romantic connection to the middle-aged, handsome (and married) editor, Aylwin Forbes.
 
Dulcie is intrigued by the alleged relationship and embarks on a private investigation into the lives of Aylwin, his estranged wife, Marjorie, and troubled clergyman brother, Neville. This borderline obsessiveness is further complicated by Viola having to move in with Dulcie who is also accommodating her attractive teenage niece Laurel, who draws the eye of the much older Aylwin.
 
Various other characters are woven into the story that grows increasingly complex with both Dulcie and Viola embarking on skulduggery and contrived encounters with do-gooders, erratic family members, fussy housekeepers or “dailies”, a male florist and a kilt-wearing Brazilian. Perhaps it’s odd that two women who aren’t particularly nice to one another should end up living together, but this is an aboveboard platonic relationship of convenience.
 
In reviewing this novel through modern eyes, the machinations of Dulcie might well fall into the category of stalking, even if there is no menace in her actions. She doesn’t interfere; it’s more that her vicarious pleasure in these other lives helps her get over her own unsatisfactory romance. Some readers might see Aylwin’s interest in Laurel as prurient or distasteful, even if there is no overt physicality and it remains quite innocent.
 
As to its structure, the novel has a ridiculous number of accidental meetings and immediate friendships that border on the absurd. The abrupt and dizzying switches in points of view, often several within paragraphs and chapters, are also disconcerting to anyone who prefers clearly marked delineation between the thought processes or actions of individuals.
 
This novel does offer a reflection of how people behaved in a gentler, more mannered, age that was destined to disappear within half-a-dozen years of this book’s publication and with the revolutionary Swinging Sixties. As a result, it is rather dated, and uninitiated readers may struggle to identify with Dulcie’s concerns and actions, or simply find it a bore.

Three stars

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Virago (and for other titles by Barbara Pym)

This sixth instalment in Lucinda Riley’s often irritating but always compelling blockbuster Seven Sisters has glared at me from my TBR (to be read) shelf for months. Even for a paperback, it’s heavy to hold and I attempted it twice before finally deciding I must woman-up and complete this marathon – if nothing else as tribute to the author’s admirable dedication to keep the epic going even when faced with her own mortality.
 
Electra the supermodel is a mess. She has everything, and nothing. Her latest romance with a rock star has ended, she can’t get through the day without lashings of vodka and coke (not Coca Cola). She’s angry all the time and envies or despises the other adopted sisters with whom she was raised in Switzerland by the mysterious Pa Salt, always feeling like the odd one out.
 
As with the other books in this series, each sister has been given clues as to how she came to be adopted by Pa Salt, but Electra is the most reluctant to follow the route. Until a mysterious woman called Stella arrives, claiming to be her biological grandmother.
 
Stella tells the story of Cecily, a wealthy young New Yorker, who escapes a couple of failed relationships in the 1930s and is taken under the wing of her flighty godmother Kiki, who lives in “Happy Valley” in colonial Kenya. What happens to Cecily there has a direct bearing on Electra.
 
Even if Cecily can seem annoyingly naïve at times, her experiences and relationships are far better to read about than those of the destructive and unpleasant Electra. The atmosphere surrounding the expat community in Kenya during this era is well conveyed, with Bill Forsythe, the farmer who “rescues” Cecily, being the best portrayal.
 
Of course, Electra does turn her life around eventually, but it comes way too late for me to care much about her, although one of my concerns that other reviewers have remarked on, is perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision of the author to make the least likeable sister a woman of colour – and one who seemed to be grossly unaware of what others of her race have to endure.
 
The two final books are still smiling at me from the shelf: “The Missing Sister” and “Atlas. The Story of Pa Salt”. I’ll get there at some stage, but not just yet.
 
A bit less than two stars for Electra, three plus for Cecily.

 
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Dymocks