As war clouds gather over Europe, Gertie Bingham is struggling in running her bookshop without the help of her late husband, Harry. She is on the verge of selling up when a good friend asks if she would consider taking in one of the Jewish child refugees fleeing from Germany.

She has never had a child of her own and is at first reluctant to help but relents and accepts the teenaged Hedy, who also has emotional struggles having been separated from her parents and brother. Initially, their relationship is prickly but as time passes and Britain is drawn into war, they manage to resolve their issues.

The community rally around Gertie as she starts a book club in the air raid shelter. Frosty individuals thaw, some even find romance, and when Gertie is faced with more losses and trials, she knows she has the support of her many loyal customers who are now firm friends.

I must admit I came to this novel with some uncertainty, being yet another title in the seemingly unending trend for World War II fiction (with the obligatory cover image of a faceless woman looking at planes) and combined with that other sub-genre in danger of being overcooked, i.e. the “book club”. However, with its easy narrative and cast of old-fashioned, good-intentioned characters who are filled with optimism in spite of the trials affecting all of them, I shook off my doubts and rather enjoyed what is a comforting ride.

If you’re in the mood for a romantic novel that is uplifting, relays positivity and generosity of the human spirit in hard times, then this is it.

(With thanks to Good Reading magazine for the free copy.)
 
Four stars


Amazon.com (different cover)

Amazon.co.uk (Kindle)
​
Big W (Australia)

​Shortly after diamond magnate, Wilhelm de Vries, dies, Mrs King is dismissed from her post as his housekeeper and decides to extract her revenge by planning a heist, removing all valuables from his mansion during a costume ball being planned by Wilhelm’s daughter, Miss de Vries.

To help in her plans, Mrs King calls upon other women who also once worked in the house and are now involved in various shady enterprises of their own. The plan requires a cast of what seems like hundreds of men and other women.

Initially, the novel is quite refreshing with its rapid and unvarnished narrative that has just the right amount of Edwardian background for flavour without going into florid exposition (although it does slip up with a few anachronisms).
​  
Alas, in spite of some humorous passages, this style ultimately suffers as it fails to give more depth to the characters which is vital in holding a reader’s attention for almost 400 pages. It takes just too long to get to the actual heist with its overloaded implausibility and off-kilter switches and twists, including a needless incestuous lesbian encounter, and a dispiriting sub-plot on sexual exploitation.

Apart from the inventive and amusing duo of the drab “Janes” who do much of the hard physical work and the flamboyant actress, Hephzipah Goodcourt, the other female gang leaders – Winnie, Mrs Bone and Mrs King – are fashioned from the same mould into a blur of middle-aged (even though they may not be) housekeepers. The males are nondescript and include a handsome footman, a lacklustre prospective aristocratic bridegroom, a dodgy lawyer and a “weasly-looking” boy who is some kind of spy. The way the imperious heiress, Miss de Vries, is written, I had to keep reminding myself “Madam” wasn’t some withered Miss Havisham type but was in her early twenties!

You can’t complain about plot holes in a parody novel like this, although a little more explanation wouldn’t go amiss. How the Housekeepers had sufficient clout in the tough masculine underworld and other vast resources at their disposal to carry out the practical side of the heist is never properly delineated; let alone how was it even possible that they could trust everyone in their massive gang of dubious individuals, that at least one of them wouldn’t squeal. I kept asking myself why isn’t there an appearance of some canny Scotland Yard detective who has had a whiff of the goings-on from a snitch? A lost opportunity for more mayhem!

In summary, although fun in parts, this ambitious far-fetched tale could have been saved by solely concentrating on its lighter side with more whimsy or wit. It’s a book that may well be adapted into a great TV or film script with the input of other creative individuals. Hence, three-plus stars for what is a cracking good idea, but borderline two stars for the way it has been told.

 
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Big W Australia (paperback)

In 1882, Laura Webster lives with her father Leo and stepmother Miriam on a remote island in Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. Leo has charge of the island's lighthouse, helped by Laura and a somewhat unreliable assistant manager, Rorie.

During a horrendous storm, the vessel Alvarez is wrecked on the island's treacherous rocks and Laura and her father must do what they can to rescue any survivors. These include the mate and a crew member, also a Mr Jones, a Mrs Munro and an English remittance man, Edmund Bailey. It is not long before strange things start happening, when Rorie seems to recognise one of the survivors. Against her own instincts, Laura finds herself drawn to Edmund. 

In 2020, Nina is project manager of a heritage group consisting of employees and volunteers sent to the island during the Covid pandemic to help with maintenance and conservation. She is dismayed to find Jude Rawlins is among them, her one-time lover. Their break-up was especially traumatic and Nina has never got over it. The mix also includes her good friend, Paul, but also the jealous Lis who knows of her past history with Jude. When a satellite phone, their only contact with the mainland, is found destroyed, followed by further sabotage, it is clear someone in their group may have a hidden agenda.

I am ambivalent about dual timelines as this often means one narrative can be more interesting than the other. In this case, the island atmosphere, stronger characters and mysterious happenings of 1882 are far superior to the contemporary story. This is largely the fault of Nina who seems weak and dithery compared to the stoic Laura and so I failed to be moved by her woes. Also, I found some aspects of the modern story didn't really ring true. It is hard to believe that Nina and her chums had no other way of contacting the mainland other than by one solitary satellite phone. Bass Strait isn't that remote any more!

This author has written some good historical novels - "Sweet Wattle Creek" is one example - so I was a bit disappointed in this one.

Three stars.

amazon.com.au
​(the book does not appear to be listed yet on amazon.com or amazon.co.uk)

Booktopia  

 
I always approach books that are mega-bestsellers or prestigious prize winners with a great deal of caution, sometimes only reading them after the initial buzz has died down.
 
Books that have garnered excessive or lavish praise tend to make me wary, as I’ve read far too many that have failed to move me as they did others as they can be filled with experimental styles, artful manipulation of the reader and often a sense of the author’s own self-aggrandisement. I couldn’t get into the famous “Wolf Hall” trilogy by Hilary Mantel, although I am assured by other readers who are far more intellectual than me that it is brilliant if one can deal with the difficult prose. I disliked “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” and “A Gentleman in Moscow” for their skewed history, and “Where the Crawdads Sing” was a shocker, for too many reasons to list here. “Gone Girl” left me fuming.
 
Hence, I bought a copy of “Lessons in Chemistry” with some foreboding that once again I’d find myself swimming against the tide of opinion. And to some degree I am - baffled, yet unsurprised, by its success.
 
I won’t take up space with the storyline here, as countless others have reviewed this book and you can read all the five-star gush in newspapers, magazines, book blogs and sites like Goodreads. I see there is a mini-series on the way as well.
 
In a nutshell, in the 1950s, Elizabeth Zott is a frustrated chemist who becomes a TV cook and inspires feminism in her viewers. Prior to this, she has endless problems with the male hierarchy in science institutions, falls in love with a fellow outsider, Calvin Evans, has his illegitimate daughter, Mad(eline), owns a dog called Six-Thirty, and with her stubbornness, insensitivity and incapacity for conciliation is often her own worse enemy in her handling of other people. Sure, she is justified in getting her own back on sexual assaults, stolen research, and religious folk, but she is hardly a character that you warm to.
 
I’ve never liked novels (or movies) with overly smart kids, so I was off on the wrong foot with Mad, who is unbelievably precocious, reading adult books and having adult philosophical discussions from the age of four. Really! The dog, who regularly gives his opinions on life, is more schmaltz that is beyond ridiculous.
 
Is this book supposed to be funny and charming, as so many have described it as? Sure, there are a few one-liners that made me smile, but this isn’t funny, not with all the accidental deaths, suicide, rapes, child abuse and deceits that comprise the backgrounds of the various characters.
 
Is it insightful, a comment on the early struggle for women’s rights? Partly, but being of an age to remember the 1950s and 1960s, there is much here that smacks of 21st Century feminist “wokeism” and doesn’t really get women of that era. There are many women who successfully managed to negotiate male-dominated professional careers back in those days. (Just this week, I read the respectful obituary in the British press of one of them who I admired and worked closely with in the 1960s. She was a trailblazer in her profession and, while never a shrinking violet nor acquiescent victim, she had an impressively dignified way of standing up to the men in higher office as she proved her worth.)
 
The research into chemistry and rowing (the most boring parts for me) might be impressive, but there are historical anachronisms that have slipped through.
 
In spite of all this, the book was an interesting, if somewhat frustrating, read and thus memorable in its way, but I can only give it a borderline three stars.

 
Amazon.com (audio)
 
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Booktopia (paperback)

This is a dual period novel set in Singapore in the late 1890s and during World War II.

Identical twins Mae and Harriet Grafton arrive from Simla, India, in 1897, the subject of much gossip and innuendo among the Colonial establishment as to their parentage. The girls are largely at the mercy of one man, David Keeley, who will inherit a fortune from their guardian if and when he marries one of them.

David sets his sights on Harriet rather than Mae and tells the twins that nothing will stand in his way to get who and what he wants. Meanwhile, both Harriet and Mae fall in love with the trader, Alex Blake, and it is this, combined with the machinations of David, that will drive the twins apart.

In 1941, Ivy Harcourt, an expert in languages and radio "listener" is undergoing counselling following a traumatic experience during the London Blitz. Her grandmother is Mae. Ivy is also grieving over the loss of her love, Felix, and hopes that the transfer to a new position in the Far East listening to Japanese radio communications may restore her mental well-being. To her surprise, it seems various people in Singapore, including the elderly Alex, knew her grandmother, but all are reluctant to explain the connection. In spite of the very real possibility of Japan taking Singapore, Ivy falls in love with Australian soldier, Kit. 

This is an absorbing novel that has its twists and turns, not all of them plausible, and one can guess at the outset with identical twins there's bound to be some sort of identity switch between Mae and Harriet. A plot by the contemptible David borders on the outlandish, but it is the hinge on which everything turns. Ivy's past trauma will be compounded by what happens to her after Singapore falls to the Japanese and this part of the novel might be difficult for some readers, although it is probably less graphic than the reality of life in Changi and other prisoner of war camps.

The historical research is thorough, but there are issues with the style of narrative that includes unwieldly sentences and the unnecessary over-use of brackets to the point of distracting the reader. Strangely enough, these faults seem to dominate the first one-third or so of the book before improving considerably later. This suggests that maybe different editors had a hand in the final proof. Points of view are also ragged, with me having to re-read several passages to sort out which twin was the subject. Again, an editing issue. These construction quibbles aside, I remained involved in what is one of my favourite genres, i.e. epic stories of Empire, war and romance, and I plan to try other books by this author.

Three-and-a-half stars.

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

​Booktopia

 
Two highly successful and enterprising business women dominated the world-wide beauty business throughout the 20th Century. One was Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden, the other, Helena Rubinstein, who was from Poland and with Jewish heritage. Their names are still synonymous with luxurious beauty products today.
 
This is the fictionalised tale of their famous rivalry that often went to extraordinary lengths of one-upmanship with few limits and stretched to character assassination, spying, deliberate obfuscation and even poaching one another’s managers and staff.
 
Elizabeth came from an impoverished background and did everything to hide that fact from the famous and high society women she catered to. She was a ruthless employer who had fixed ideas on a traditional style of presentation for her products. She believed that was what women wanted and this reflected in how her packaging was designed and displayed and how her salons must be run. She’d regularly “bounce” (sack) any staff member who crossed her, even for minor infringements. Yet her personal life was her Achilles’ heel and she was surprisingly naïve when she left herself open to exploitation by those she trusted. It was only her love of horses that sustained her when things went wrong.
 
Helena was equally forceful, having left Poland for Australia when her father refused permission for her to marry outside of the Jewish faith. With some experience in chemistry, in Australia she began experimenting with lanolin from sheep in order to produce the creams for which she would become famous. In time, she established salons elsewhere, in Europe and North America, and also counted on high society women to buy her products. Known for her passion for avante garde art, she took a different approach to that of Elizabeth, bringing 20th Century modernity to her salons. She married twice, but also had issues with personal relationships. Although she had two sons, she displayed little maternal affection towards them.
 
Helena’s Jewish background had often caused prejudicial issues for her long before the world teetered towards World War II. Elizabeth’s questionable anti-Semitic connections would escalate the rivalry to new heights.
 
This is an entertaining read and the author has skilfully negotiated through the inevitable commercial aspects of the two businesses in a concise way so that it doesn’t slow down the outrageous competitive strategies of both women. The reader will no doubt come to favour one character over the other. Both had their faults, but they do stand as role models with their dynamism and fierce belief that, with the right attitude, women can succeed in business in spite of seemingly unsurmountable obstacles.
 
(With many thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.)
 
Four stars
 
 
Amazon.com
 
Amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

Sergeant Akal Singh, formerly of the Hong Kong police, has taken up a new post with the Suva Division of the Fijian Constabulary. He was forced to leave Hong Kong after an embarrassing and near-career-destroying error on his part. In his new environment, Akal hopes to restore his good name but will come up against many challenges, not least bigotry and prejudice, in what he considers to be a colonial backwater.
 
His only friend since arriving in Fiji is his good-humoured Corporal Taviti, relative of an important chief but his boss, Inspector-General Thurstrom, is tough and much less accommodating. When a coolie woman goes missing on a sugar cane plantation, Akal is seconded to investigate. Normally, such a case wouldn’t warrant high priority, but with a delegation coming from India to investigate the conditions of the indentured workers and a local missionary writing to the local newspaper that she has been kidnapped, Thrustrom wants it solved as soon as possible.
 
Akal has many obstacles to overcome in order to find out what happened to the woman, Kunti, and also the overseer, Mr Brown, who disappeared around the same time - some thought he’d gone to join the war effort in Europe. Did Kunti go with him? The arrogant and snobbish wife of the sugar plantation’s owner, Mrs Parkins, is rude and dismissive of Akal, clearly due to his race. In company with the more tolerant local Dr Holmes, Akal travels to the plantation where together they investigate further as to what really happened.
 
Set in 1914, this is a detective novel that carries some echoes of Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe series, but with perhaps more bite as it accurately and unflinchingly faces the exploitation of indentured workers and general racist attitudes of the early 20th Century in British Colonies.
 
Even Akal, as a proud Sikh, has his own caste difficulties when it comes to dealing with the coolie families. “The [indentured] were not the kind of people he would have dealt with in India. Although his countrymen, they were not his people.” And “Suva’s façade of civility showed as many cracks as its roads had potholes.”
 
With a limited number of suspects and motives, the conclusion is not that surprising, but this is still a satisfying read. There is scope here for further adventures for Akal Singh, and maybe even a TV tie-in that could bring a fresh South Pacific setting to the cosy crime genre.
 
Four stars.


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Booktopia

Rumours about illegitimate children of the Duke of Windsor (King Edward VIII) have abounded for years but none have ever been proved as far as I am aware. This novel explores that possibility. 
 
Cleo Davenport is abandoned as a baby at the famous Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo in 1918 where she is raised by an archaeological scholar, Serafina, one of the hotel’s permanent residents. On the brink of adulthood, Cleo starts to question her origins, but is met with silence or conflicting reports. Could her mother be the mysterious Marguerite, a French courtesan obsessed with jewels, and her father one of her lovers, the Prince of Wales?  
 
Cleo has artistic skills, her own passion being the design and creation of the kind of jewels adored by both Marguerite and Wallis Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor. Her childhood friend, Brodie, is another disadvantaged child who is raised at the hotel. The two of them are fortunate to be taken under the wing of an aristocratic British couple and given opportunities for inclusion in upper-class society while undertaking education in England and France.
 
With her impulsive nature, Cleo can seem to make arbitrary decisions, especially regarding the long-suffering Brodie. Marguerite’s devious manipulation extends to the reader as, for much of her story, we don’t know which of her actions are real or fake.
 
The clunky title is a curious choice. While it might catch the eye of those looking for a lightweight romance about the royals, it does not do justice to a novel with so many disparate threads that include the dubious loyalties of the self-absorbed Windsors, details of French jewellery design, manufacture and sales, a notorious London murder trial, WW2 secret activities in Lisbon, Anglo-Egyptian politics, and even the founding of the SAS (Special Air Service) - not to mention how the status of women and society changed as the 20th Century progressed.

The resolution and ending are neatly tied and will satisfy the romantics, but for others wanting to know what is truth or fiction, the thorough author’s notes detail background sources and which characters were real people and those she invented.
 
Four stars.

(With thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Book to be published in most countries by October, 2023.)
  
Amazon.com
 
Amazon.co.uk
 
Booktopia

Inspired by the early life of Catherine I of Russia (not to be confused with the more famous Catherine II, or the Great) the novel’s early chapters tell the story of how in the late 17th Century, a lowly washerwoman called Marta from the Baltic States would find her way into the heart of Tsar Peter I and eventually become his wife.

Knowing a little of the history of the rule of the Romanovs in Russia, I was not expecting this to be an easy or lightweight read and some of the earlier chapters held promise, including this rather accurate paragraph on the Russian character:


“How strange the Russians were, forever caught between a zest for life and seeking penance of their sins; filled with deep religious belief, yet capable of heathen violence and full of disdain for common decency, swaying between hair-raising cruelty and deep, tearful regret that might haunt them for years. A Russian soul knew no calm, no balance and no peace, ever.”

But the promise soon deteriorated into an agonising, bodice-ripping, tortured and torturous gory shambles of a book. I stuck it out, admittedly scanning through much of its repetitive and gratuitously violent descriptions of rape, sadism and cruelty of an order that defies description.

Any admiration I might once have had for Tsar Peter, who pulled Russia out of the dark ages, and built the magnificent city of St Petersburg, was soon dampened by his war-mongering, his merciless and endless brutality, especially towards his son and heir, who was eventually executed (as was anyone associated with him) – but that’s if this book can be relied upon for a true reflection of history – and that’s where I have a big problem with historical fiction that is written purely for lurid sensationalism rather than any measured interpretation of what might really happened.

Marta/Catherine is the narrator, but there is little to recommend her – at least in this telling. She’s an ambivalent character, occasionally showing determination but much of the time she’s an acquiescent brood mare, bearing numerous children, most of whom died young. While it was a time when people didn’t invest too much in their offspring until they survived the dangerous early childhood years, more narrative is given to her sexual encounters (consenting and non-consenting) rather than to expressions of maternal grief.

The interminable wars that Peter waged between Sweden and the Ottomans are covered in passing, but there is little on his famous reforms that also included dragging Russia towards Western enlightenment and in establishing industries and the navy.
​
Apart from a brief epilogue, there is nothing here either on the life and achievements of Catherine after the death of Peter. Even if she was no saint, she certainly deserves a better legacy than this disappointing novel.
 
One-and-a half Stars

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Booktopia

Anna May Wong (1905-1961) may not be a name that is familiar to the present generation, but she was once world-famous as the only “real” Chinese actress to star in major movies in Hollywood. She also appeared in movies and on the stage in England and Europe.

At a time when anti-miscegenation was enshrined in law in America, it was impossible for her to play any romantic roles with a white actor. She was inevitably cast as the duplicitous or tragic second “oriental” woman who is never destined to get her man and, more often than not, has to die at the end.

Born into a Chinese-American family, she was caught between two cultures. Her father was opposed to her career path and lifestyle, considering it disgraceful for any daughter of his to make her own way in life, that her first duty was to marry and become subservient to her husband. Thus, Anna’s determination to be a successful actress led to monumental clashes with her father.

But that was only part of her struggle. Hollywood producers had a blinkered, even ignorant, concept of China and its people. In conjunction with “blackface” in which white actors were made up with dark make-up to play African-Americans, or “redface” to play First Nations people, there was “yellowface” as well for Asian characters.

Perhaps one of the most famous films in which two white actors played Chinese characters in “yellowface” was the 1937 Oscar-winning “The Good Earth”. (European Luise Rainer won Best Actress in a role that really belonged to Anna May Wong.)

What’s more, some of the roles Anna appeared in caused offence and consternation in China where her reputation took a battering for clichéd depictions of Chinese culture and characters.

No matter what she did, Anna just couldn’t win. Her personal life was fraught with other problems, including alcoholism and doomed relationships. She found far greater acceptance in Europe but always yearned for her Californian home.

Anna was definitely a pioneer and born ahead of her time. In more recent years she has finally been recognised in the United States for her achievements.

This novel reads like a personal memoir and is most engaging. Her character is so well-drawn by Gail Tsukiyama that one can sympathise with Anna’s frustrations and disappointments, feel deeply her indignation and outrage at her treatment, as well as celebrate her successes.

​Highly recommended.

Four-and-a-half stars.

(With thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.)
 

 
Amazon.com

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Booktopia

​
I feel I reached my personal saturation point with World War II novels some time ago and yet they are still being published by the hundreds. Thus, I let this title languish on my TBR (to-be-read) pile for ages. While it is based in those war years (1939-1945) it is not about spies, code-breakers, the Blitz or battles, but rather about a modest ordinary family living on an English farm.

In June, 1939, Jack is on the run from his home on Tyneside and is wandering the back roads of Berkshire looking for somewhere to lie low and where he might be safe. He rescues a young woman, Gwen, when she is thrown from her horse and helps her home to the farm where she lives with her widowed father, Jim.

Grateful for his help, Jim offers Jack a temporary job. Jack is unsure, having only ever worked in a shipyard as a riveter, but unexpectedly finds satisfaction and peace in farm labour and the fresh country air. He also starts to fall in love with Gwen, but she has eyes for someone else and, almost against her wishes, Jack will come to play a vital role in her life although he knows she will never love him. As war looms, he decides it is best that he leaves to enlist and to put himself in the firing line in battle as the only way out for him and Gwen. However, Jack does return and has to face his greatest challenge of all.

The characters are likeable, with their own individual flaws. Jack, solid and dependable, yet also capable of rage. Gwen, whose youth and inexperience create traps for her. Jim, the strict, yet loving father. Muriel, the irritable but wise housekeeper. Nora, the flashy and flirty Land Army girl. Ted, the lonely neighbour who also carries a torch for Gwen. And members of the haughty entitled Allingham family who look down their noses at those who till the soil and grow their food.

The descriptions of rural life in meadows, fields and woods carry echoes of Thomas Hardy and everything from the simple routines of milking the cows to threshing the grain are crafted in such a way that they are an intrinsic part of the tale and never feel like padded research.

I read a great deal, but it’s been a long time since I’ve loved a book so much that I almost didn’t want it to end and wish I’d read it much earlier. With her tender and astute observations of human foibles, I very much look forward to other books by Anita Frank.

Five Stars

Dymocks

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Amazon.co.uk

​Shortly after the end of World War II, Miss Elinor (Linni) White – known to the locals as simply the “White Lady” - keeps to herself and lives a quiet life in a Kent village. Of Belgian/English heritage (and born with the surname of de Witt), she served in the underground in both World Wars and carries the scars. When she witnesses a local family being threatened by heavies from London, she becomes embroiled in trying to protect them. This brings her back in contact with individuals from her past in the SOE, the government and Scotland Yard.
​
Readers familiar with the author’s earlier books featuring Maisie Dobbs, will immediately detect echoes of that character in Elinor: an independent woman of courage and determination with an astute understanding of human nature.

Rather slow to get started, once Elinor is faced with the London gangster family and the strange doings of her former policeman lover and his possible links to a dubious member of the government, the story does pick up.

Winspear is always thorough with her research and descriptions of life in Britain during the mid-20th century. The criminal connections help to reflect a different angle on post-war London, but primarily the book is yet another tale of female wartime heroics which have saturated the publishing market for rather too long now and the impact is lessened.

(Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC)

Three-and-a-half stars.

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Dymocks Australia

,
We’ve all seen movies or read books in which someone in the family is a secret spy, usually for the CIA, MI5/6 or the KGB. Often, this individual keeps their job secret from their loved ones and go it alone.

Not so in this real-life story about the Australian Doherty family which, in the mid-20th Century were all in the spying game for ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), the three young kids, Sue-Ellen, Mark and Amanda, included. Only to them, it was a kind of game they played whenever they were out with their parents, sworn to everlasting secrecy while checking number-plates, houses and closely observing people, making friends with Chinese or other unusual emigrant groups and fringe communities, or visiting the headquarters of ASIO in a building that had a secret floor.

The family even went on holiday during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics with the notorious Petrovs, two Russians who had defected. (Read about them here.) 

I have no idea why the publicity blurb on the cover of this book describes it as “hilarious”. There is nothing funny about it. Dudley Doherty was a typical 1950s father, authoritarian and not above giving the kids a beating. He visited prostitutes and was an associate of that notorious gangster figure, Abe Saffron, which draws all sorts of questions that are not really resolved here.  After Dudley’s death, the family never spoke again about their involvement until the lifting of some of ASIO history in recent times.

There is intriguing material in this, but somehow the book just doesn’t cut it with a great deal of repetition about how the children didn’t really know what their parents were up to when they took part in the games. Instead of reading the book, just look up the two YouTube links below on the subject. You will get enough of the story from them.

Two and-a-half stars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWQ9MqoWuHY
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0VLYNx8ZPc
 

Amazon.com

Dymocks Australia (e-book)

Bookdepository

The basis of this book is the story behind the urgent search by Britain prior to World War I for its own direct source of oil, free from the tight controls of other businesses such as America’s Standard Oil or the Dutch company Shell. The three principal characters involved in bringing this about were all fringe-dwellers, or misfits, in the social order of the day.

Jacky Fisher was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and often snidely thought to have Indian blood due to a dark complexion that was actually caused by illness. By sheer determination and skill, he rose up through the ranks of the Royal Navy to become First Sea Lord. He wanted to modernise and use new technology to improve the Navy, to have ships powered by oil rather than continuing to rely on the dirtier and unwieldly coal. It was inevitable that this passion for innovation would get up the noses of the conservative factions in the armed forces and politics.  

Gertrude Bell was likewise unique, a single and adventurous woman who had cultivated profound knowledge of the languages and culture of the Middle East, and became a mediator between the local inhabitants and the posturing European powers. Depending on the viewpoints of those whom she encountered, she was either despised or admired for her audacity, intelligence and perceptiveness.

The lesser-known of the trio, the rotund self-serving, William Knox D’Arcy, made and lost fortunes in gold mining in Queensland before venturing into oil exploration in Persia. He struggled to shake off the erroneous tag of being an Australian as he strove for acceptance in the English upper classes. It galled him that, in spite of his Anglo-Irish heritage and friendship with those in high places, he still couldn’t crack the glass ceiling.

The book is marketed as adventure and/or historical fiction, but it lacks cohesiveness in its construction that results in a disjointed combination of factual historical and/or biographical snippets interspersed with imagined conversations and scenarios. In the middle of discussions, we are abruptly diverted by asides into miscellany. All such facts might be interesting in their own right, but they take away the immediacy and focus that drives all good fictional narrative.

Jacky Fisher has been extensively written about, as has Gertrude Bell. She was even fictionalised in a recent movie (Queen of the Desert starring Nicole Kidman) that concentrated more on her unrequited love life than her political manoeuvres. Perhaps the best thing about this book is that the reader might become curious about the true stories of these two extraordinary individuals and seek out better-articulated non-fiction.

D’Arcy, on the other hand, has few redeeming features, is shallower and less-attractive and as the Australian Dictionary of Biography notes: “He had few, if any, ideals, his main aim being to win and then maintain wealth and social esteem.” (Not unlike many business entrepreneurs in our modern time.)

Three stars.

amazon.com

Bookdepository

Dymocks Australia

As a fan of The Great British Bake Off and some cosy crime, I was drawn to the synopsis of this being a murder mystery tied into a television baking show.

Six keen contestants gather at the remote Vermont home of Betsy Martin for the recording of Bake Week. Betsy is known affectionately as “America’s Grandmother” for her many best-selling cookbooks. What few people know is that she needs the regular proceeds of the program to survive and fund repairs for Grafton, her crumbling ancestral mansion.

The format of the popular show is going through change, however, with the introduction of a new male co-host, Archie Morris, and Betsy feels her position is threatened. The story is told through the points of view of the six contestants as well as Betsy and it is clear not all is going as it should before someone loses their life.

This was an easy enough read, but the use of so many points of view and not having the principal murder occur until the last quarter of the book makes it a slow burn. With perhaps the exception of the older contestant Lottie, who has a justified ulterior motive in being at Grafton, these are all unpleasant, self-centred characters with few redeeming features or warmth and when a certain individual gets their comeuppance there is no surprise. Again, there is the usual problem with many books of this genre having a rushed and somewhat confusing ending.

The publicity comparison with the skilled work of author Anthony Horowitz borders on impertinence. The descriptions of the recipes, baking processes and dialogue are all a blatant rip-off from scripts of the GBBO. Betsy’s character is a reflection of ageing cooks such as Martha Stewart or Mary Berry, while Archie Morris seems to be a combination of those other real food celebrities, Paul Hollywood and Gordon Ramsay.

A pity the story didn’t have more originality and a stronger focus on the narrative, with maybe just one or two points of view to carry us along rather than the overly fruity mixture that it is.

The best I can say about this cake is that it: “Fails to rise and has a soggy bottom.”

(Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.)

Two stars


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On 12 October 2002, an Islamic terrorist group attacked the Indonesian island of Bali: 202 people would die in the explosions which ripped through the Sari Club and Paddy’s Irish Bar in the beach resort of Kuta, with 88 victims being Australian. One of the survivors was a nurse, Therese Fox, who came to be known as the “Miracle Woman of Bali”.

“She had sustained a fractured skull and had suffered burns to 85 per cent of her body. Around 65 per cent of them were serious third degree full-thickness burns.
The heat from the explosion had been so intense it had calcified her elbow joints, and melted the skin from her face, hands and feet.”

Specialists said that she was the most severely burnt patient they had ever treated. No-one expected her to survive and yet against all the odds she did.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombings as Therese wandered dazed and disoriented looking for her missing friend Bronwyn, several individuals came to her rescue including two Australian schoolteachers, Cath Byrne and Rada van der Werff – who is a cousin of mine.

I had been aware of some of Rada’s story previously, but not until I read this extraordinary book did I come to appreciate the extent of her selfless and devoted involvement in the aftermath of the bombings with all their horror and devastation, how she and Cath cared for the survivors and the subsequent tight bond she formed with Therese and her family. (In spite of her own personal tragedy, Rada has found strength in devoting her life to humanitarian work with survivors of disasters and I am so proud that she is part of my family. I hope she writes her own book some day.)

Therese is an heroic and admirable woman whose fight to live in order to be reunited with her children demonstrates her indomitable strength and how the human body is capable of repairing itself. It has been truly humbling to learn about this amazing woman.

At the time of reading this book and writing the review, a warts-and-all expose by a privileged and self-absorbed prince is making millions. If you want to learn about how real ordinary families deal with issues in the face of immense tragedy, mental health breakdowns brought on by loss and emotional heartbreak, then spend your money on this book instead.
 
Five stars
 
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PS     On a practical note, the book does need tighter editing to fix spelling and grammatical errors and reduce areas of repetition. They don’t detract from the overall power of the story and perhaps these minor issues will be corrected in any future edition.

 
Unsolved true crimes often make compulsive reading. This book explores the life and death of a young soldier, Warwick Meale, who was found severely bashed under a bridge over a creek in Townsville, Queensland, on 15 August 1944. He later died in hospital.

Written by his nephew who grew up with considerable curiosity about his uncle, this book delves into the possible motive for the murder, i.e. that Warwick was gay in an era when homosexuality was unacceptable and that he may have been the victim of a hate crime.

In spite of an intensive investigation by Queensland police and detectives from other States, no-one was ever charged with the crime although there were similar assaults on, and murders, of servicemen around the same time. Likely suspects include members of both the Australian armed forces and the US Navy.

The book is well-researched and frank about hidden homosexuality in the ranks during the War. It also brings to notice the frustrations and obstructions that civilian police forces came up against when dealing with military and naval authorities in tracking down likely suspects.

The author’s own experiences growing up and coming out as gay are intertwined in the book but apart from family suspicions (unspoken about until fairly recent times), one photograph of a small boy playing dress-ups and a single query in an investigative document, there was never any absolute proof that Warwick was gay and that he might have been killed for making an unwelcome approach – which was the motive in the brutal murder of another soldier, Jack Lloyd, whose attacker confessed.

There are areas of “creative non-fiction” with imagined conversations which are always problematic in the historical context but the research is thorough, the writing is impassioned and the narrative flows well. It is an interesting exposition on the hidden layers of society in a very different era, but being based on an assumption that can never be proved it fails to be totally convincing.
 
Three-and-a-half stars.


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The island in question is Crete, with narratives set both in the present day and earlier during World War II and into the 1960s.

Angie (Angelika) lives in England and is planning her wedding to Nick. Her big dream is to have all her family there but her mother Poppy has been estranged from her Cretan family for decades and refuses to explain why. Angie decides to visit Crete and see if she can bring about a reunion but no-one in her ancestral village of Amiras wants to tell Angie what happened and it’s an ongoing battle to get her relatives to open out.

As she works hard at breaking down the defences, her grandmother, Maria, relents and begins by telling her the story of what happened in Crete during World War II and the atrocities committed by the Nazis, although the reasons for Poppy’s departure many years later take much longer to establish.

This is a slow burn of a book as it switches between the past and the present revealing secrets one by one and ultimately the reasons for a devastating family feud. The earlier chapters detailing the confronting tragedies of World War II are strongly written and feel authentic as they are largely based on fact (as shown in the author’s notes at the end). However, the last third of the story set in contemporary times descends into a soap-opera plotline that is both implausible and labyrinthine. (Perhaps it comes with the territory as Crete is the site of the famous original Labyrinth of King Minos at Knossos.)

The inter-related Greek characters all have similarities with their stereotypical fiery temperaments and keeping track of who’s who can be tricky. Angie gets tiresome as she bustles about trying to force revelations from her mother and others, all of whom would rather let sleeping dogs lie. She admits to herself early on that she leads an easy, shallow and self-absorbed life compared to the stoicism and endurance of her family, but this gets repeated far too often. The ending turns into such a farce that it diminishes the exceptional telling of the earlier World War II story which is powerful enough to have been the basis of a thrilling novel in its own right.

(This book starts out so well before deteriorating into light-weight fluff that giving an overall star rating is difficult. Four stars for the excellent serious chapters based on truth, one star for the rest.)


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(Note: This is not a recent title. The book was first published in 2013.)

I am often drawn to stories that would have been contemporary with my own childhood in a far-flung part of the fading British Empire as I have an appreciation of what those societies were like. This novel about India has two narratives, one at the time of partition in the late 1940s and the second ten years later in 1957.

In 1947, Sophie is the only daughter of Dr George Schofield and his wife, Veronica. Aged just seventeen she finds herself largely left to her own devices in the palace of a Maharajah where her father is one of the medical officers. Her mother is a bitter and twisted woman who often makes Sophie’s life hell, whereas her father is a gentle, kind man and is Sophie’s rock. By chance, while wandering the marble halls she meets Jag, the son of one of the palace servants and a friendship ensues, eventually turning into a love affair. There are the inevitable results when the scandalous cross-racial romance is discovered and Sophie must pay a high price for her actions.

By 1957, Sophie is married to Lucien Grainger whom she met while working in the Foreign Office in London. With much trepidation on Sophie’s part, he is posted to Delhi. The marriage is unhappy but Sophie has a position to uphold and she is forced into the supporting role of a “diplomatic wife” with all the superficiality, gossip and mind-numbing entertaining that entails. Unbeknownst to her, Jag has discovered her whereabouts.

The first two-thirds of this novel are excellent, certainly as regards the smooth flow of narrative and the accurate capturing of historical events and social mores of the 1940s/50s. But towards the conclusion, some editorial chaos creeps in with flashbacks that should have been part of the earlier narrative. The shocking, pivotal climax is written in such an abrupt manner that I had to read it twice to grasp what had occurred.

Although it is easy to be irritated by her naivety, one must also have sympathy for Sophie. Her father George has positive qualities but knowing what his wife was like and how she treated their daughter makes you wonder why he didn’t have the courage to kick her out years before. Jag’s character is likeable but remains shadowy in many ways. Lucien has no redeeming features.

Otherwise, the lush descriptions of landscape, the perceptive observations of pre- and post-independent India and life among the British ex-pat society still make this worth reading.


Three stars

PS   The sharp-eyed reader with knowledge of India during this era may well pick up on anachronisms but, if there are any, they are beyond my scope of knowledge. However, I did note the erroneous use of “British Embassy” instead of “High Commission”. All Commonwealth of Nations countries represent one another via High Commissions, not Embassies. To be pedantic and/or technical, Lucien most likely would have been seconded from the 1950s successor to the India Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office. The Foreign Office deals with all non-Commonwealth countries.

 
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The 17th Century hasn’t been fashionable in historical fiction for some time, so the synopsis of this novel drew me in: a hunt for the regicides who executed King Charles I. After the death of Oliver Cromwell and when King Charles II was restored to the crown, there was a campaign to find all the men who had signed the order of execution and to make them pay.

Although there may have been some suggestion of clemency if they truly repented, the fact was many of them were executed in the most gruesome way by being hung, drawn and quartered with their heads placed on spikes.

Two of the regicides managed to escape to the American colonies, being Colonels Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, William Goffe. But hot on their heels is Privy Council clerk Richard Nayler, who is not only committed to tracking down all the regicides in an official capacity but also has personal reasons to find these two men in particular. Part of the novel involves a journal that Edward (Ned) writes about his connections to Cromwell.

In the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut the two men are semi-protected by Puritan friends but the pressures brought to bear from England prejudice any hope of them being able to escape justice.

Much of the story involves running from one safe house, or barn, or cellar, or cave, to the next, often just a few steps ahead of Nayler and/or his mercenaries. Any initial tension or excitement is soon lost and, frankly, the narrative slows so much it is like wading through the heavy snows of New England.

Also, it is impossible to write about the Cromwellian/Restoration period without including the question of religion. While the author does tackle this head-on it is often difficult for the contemporary or secular mind to appreciate the complexities and beliefs of the era. The rules of behaviour in Puritan Cromwellian England would have made it a restrictive, dreary place and it is perfectly understandable when most of the population welcomed a return to a more joyful existence. As a result, it is hard to get a handle on the two Colonels. Edward has less faith than his son-in-law, but even so, they are dull characters. Depending on one’s point of view, Nayler isn’t such a bad guy, searching for men he considers to be murderers, yet he also remains elusive. In a lesser role, is Frances, the wife of Goffe who was left behind in England and she only comes into her own too late in the book.

I have enjoyed several of Robert Harris’ other novels, especially An Officer and a Spy about the infamous Dreyfus Affair which delves deeply into moral questions yet this one didn’t manage to have the same impact.

(With thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.)
 
Three stars
 
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