Baker’s Dozen: The Thirteenth Apostle by Michel Benoit (2007)

I read this book last year, but for some reason never posted the review I wrote at the time, but as we’re coming up for Easter it seemed appropriate to post it now. At first glance this appears to be yet another example of the Dan Brown bandwagon. I read these when I need some brain candy, but I don’t often review them because they don’t tend to be particularly well written, and reviewing bad books can be tedious. This is different: I’m not sure that it is even on the DBB; for a start it’s a translation. I suspect it’s more in the tradition of the likes of Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Dumas Club Whatever its origins, it’s being marketed to the Dan Brown crowd, although I suspect they may be a bit nonplussed by it.

Red express: Last Train to Kazan by Stephen Miller (2007)

This is another sequel. I read Miller’s UK debut, A Game of Soldiers last year and loved it. This, if anything is even better. Miller continues with his gritty depiction of early 20th century Russia, here in the grip of the revolution. He is showing himself to be a master at the sort of historical plot I adore where a fictional story is woven imperceptibly between what we know of real events.
Everyone knows something about the last days of the last Tsar of Russia even if it is only that he and his family were murdered. But there were always stories that one of more of his children survived, such as the notorious case of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia. I recall seeing advertising in a magazine from the twenties using a testimonial purportedly from Tatiana about how useful she found so and so’s cough mixture now that she had to earn her living as an opera singer! Miller uses this tradition and brilliantly pulls it off.

It is July 1918. Miller’s morose protagonist, former secret policeman Ryzkhov has spent the last few years in the trenches fighting for the French. Now circumstances and blackmail have brought him back to Moscow, where further blackmail forces him to work for the nascent Soviet secret police, and gives him the task of identifying what has happened to the Tsar and his family. Heading to Yekatarinburg, he is caught up in the bitter conflict between the Whites and the Bolsheviks, but continues with his task, only to discover all is not as clear cut as it first appears…

The only disappointing thing about this book, which I read in the UK paperback edition, was the simply appalling proofing. I’ve read self-published novels from Publish America with better proofing and that’s saying something. This really is unfortunate as it detracts from what is an excellent and thoroughly gripping read. It’s real edge of the chair stuff, and had me turning the pages as fast as I could read them to see if Ryzkhov pulls it off. I loved the twist at the end. Strongly recommended.

End of the Romanovs

Stephen Miller

The height of mystery: The Tower by Valerio Massimo Manfredi (2006)

I found The Tower rather an odd book. I have previously seen Manfredi’s books on the shelves but have never felt sufficiently inspired to pick one up and read it, but I gathered he usually writes straight historical novels about the ancient world. When I picked this book off the library shelf and looked at the cover I would have been forgiven for thinking that this was more of the same. But the cover bears no relation to the story whatsoever. After a brief prologue featuring a Roman expeditionary force getting done in by mysterious forces in the Sahara desert, it’s set in the late 1920s or thereabouts. The protagonist, Garret, is the son of a currently missing Indiana Jones type archaeologist. He starts following clues left by his father trying to find out what has happened to him. These clues seem to initially lead to the Vatican where nobody is talking. So far so Dan Brown. This part of the novel was actually quite enjoyable, and the depiction of the search for the ancient mystery very plausible. The old enemy of the protagonist’s father, Selsnick, makes a good villain, and the idea of an ancient villa buried beneath Pompeii leaving wind chimes hanging to warn of future earthquakes was nicely done.

But then it started to fall apart. Manfredi seems to have had some idea of a chariots of the gods scenario, but it was never adequately realised (or perhaps the translation was so awful it didn’t come over properly), and it detracted from much of the latter part of the novel. Was it a thriller or a horror story? Who can say? There were certainly Lovecraftian overtones towards the end, but the ideas seemed all over the place.

When I put the book down having finished it, I was left none the wiser – there were an awful lot of loose ends not tied up, and the dénouement wasn’t worthy of the name. Sadly I can’t even say it’s worth a look.

Frozen season: Winter in Madrid by CJ Sansom (2006)

I’ve read all of Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake Tudor novels and thoroughly enjoyed them, but for some reason I wasn’t initially attracted to this straight historical novel, and decided to pass on it, as it wasn’t historical crime, but the library got the audio version in and I decided I might as well listen to it in the car. Had I been missing a treat! Winter in Madrid is a marvellous novel. It’s rich and many layered, displaying a complete familiarity with its period.

It’s set in Madrid (as we can obviously tell from the title) during the early part of the second world war. The only previous acquaintance I have had with Spain in this period was in the marvellous Pan’s Labyrinth, which I saw last year, but going by my previous knowledge of Sansom’s writing, I’m confident he knows his stuff. Sansom gives a wonderful evocation of a shattered city – shattered in both infrastructure and spirit, and captures a brooding sense of hate, fear and hypocrisy that lends the novel much of its tension.

Former Cambridge lecturer Harry Brett has been invalided out of the army after Dunkirk suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. He is recruited by the British government to work undercover in Spain, spying on a former school friend who has some involvement with the Spanish government and some rather unsavoury types. The British are desperate to keep Spain out of the war; Sandy Forsyth could jeopardise this. Harry has a long familiarity with Spain – he travelled there ten years previously with another school friend who subsequently became a communist and died during the Spanish Civil War.

This is not a novel of black and white, but of many shades of grey, and these characters, and others, all reflect this. Harry is not exactly a dashing hero – he has his problems, and Sandy Forsyth, as the ostensible villain, is one of the most interesting characters in the novel. Other characters, such as Harry’s handler at the British embassy, who initially appear as single faceted, ‘good’ characters subsequently appear to have other motives and desires, which makes them appear much less attractive.

I liked the ending – it was not what I expected, but seemed appropriate for the style of novel this is.

Playing around? A Game of Soldiers, Stephen Miller (2006)

A Game of Soldiers ,the debut novel of Canada- based scriptwriter and actor Stephen Miller is a superb historical thriller. Set in the Russia of 1913 it presents a believable, if conspiracy-based twist to the outbreak of the Great War. But then my knowledge of Russian society at that time is fairly limited, and doubtless someone more versed in the setting than I am would be able to pick up on any historical inaccuracies.

The protagonist is a government agent named Pyotr Ryzkhov, who works amidst the corrupt society of St Petersburg, keeping his head down and doing his best not to attract the wrong kind of attention. He fails in this aim when he is prompted to question the perfunctory investigation into and cover up of the murder of a child prostitute. As he starts to dig, those involved seem to be more and more influential until they include the Minister of Justice himself. Another murder then leads him to Serbia and involvement in the event at Sarajevo in June 1914.

This was a great read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In Ryzkhov Miller has created a sympathetic character – a man struggling to balance pragmatism with idealism, and whose failure threatens his life. I was interested to see that Miller is currently working on a sequel set after the war; I will certainly get hold of it when it comes out.

I was surprised not to find much in the way of reviews online but an expanded synopsis is available from the publisher.