Monthly Archives: November 2020

Tormented Souls: The White Feather Killer

30 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: The White Feather Killer, by R. N. Morris
Severn, 2019. 284 pp. $29

Like many young men in London in summer 1914, Felix Simpkins feels the tug to serve king and country by enlisting in the crusade against the Germans. It would be the only individual act Felix can think of, the sole rebellious gesture against his emasculating mother (and typically self-defeating), but he can’t quite bring himself to, which flattens his self-esteem even further and risks public shame. For in these mad days when the populace has become intoxicated by jingoism and xenophobia, women of patriotic temperament press white feathers, a sign of cowardice, into the hands of physically fit men not in uniform.

Edgar J. Kealey’s 1915 recruiting poster contrasts the feminine softness within the window and the hard masculinity outside–and manipulates men and women both (courtesy British Library)

Meanwhile, Detective Chief Inspector Silas Quinn of Scotland Yard feels unsettled too, for other reasons. He’s just returned from psychological sick leave, which has further damaged his reputation among police officers of all ranks, many of whom resent him for his brilliance as a detective, his independent methods, and his insistence on truth rather than convenience. Apparently, the resentment goes right to the top, for Quinn has been relieved from command of a special crimes unit and been relegated to a pen-pushing job in which no one need pay attention to him, except to note his lapses.

Military security now requires keen focus on enemies within. Guilt no longer matters. If a crime takes place, arrest someone of German lineage, connections, or alleged sympathies. Justice will be served, and the public, placated. Naturally, this directive rubs Quinn the wrong way. And when he hears that a minister’s daughter has been killed shortly after a patriotic meeting at her father’s church — at which women collected white feathers to hand out — he itches to solve the case. But he’s forbidden to; and the men who’ve supplanted him are watching, waiting for him to step out of line.

Morris excels at characterization, historical atmosphere, the requisite “no — and furthermore,” and the craft of whodunit, with which he keeps you guessing until the end. So many scenes in his novel start out one way and shoot off unexpectedly in another, the essence of tension, because something touches a nerve in his legion of fragile people. Some readers may find these tortured souls off-putting, and I admit, the near-universal willingness to abuse others creates a bleak mood. But the rewards here are many, not least an unvarnished portrayal of police work in 1914, and a similar depiction of a great metropolis straining at its bounds. The famous English credo of decency and fair play seldom applies; that’s an ideal, existing mostly in Quinn’s mind and nowhere else. But with one notable exception, Morris lets his flawed people strive for connection, which shows their fullness and lets you feel for them.

Exhibit A here is Quinn, who’s difficult in his way, though not cruel. He’d like to unburden himself if he could, and his impulses are decent and generous, but he can’t always express them. A psychologically minded detective among colleagues for whom perception and deduction are blunt instruments, he comes across to them as cocksure, even arrogant, yet inside, he’s anything but. Whether it’s his halting overtures to a pretty police secretary or his reluctance to return to the house of a former landlady who realizes he needs care, Quinn makes an unusual male detective, vulnerable and cerebral at once.

The White Feather Killer also conveys London in war fever, whether it’s spy mania or naked anxiety about the adventure that has just begun:

The world had suddenly become a dangerous and uncertain place. A drastic shift in perspective had brought Death into the foreground; the dim figure on the horizon, drifting in and out of sight, had become an insistent, looming presence, so close its stinking, clammy breath could be felt on the back of the neck. Sons and brothers, husbands and fathers, in answering the call to the colours, had brought this dark stranger into the family.

Morris allows himself deeper, more rounded descriptions and motivations than many mystery writers, yet you never feel disconnected or impatient with the narrative. Quite the contrary; I wish more mystery writers trusted themselves (and their readers) to write like this. My only complaint centers on Coddington, Quinn’s nemesis within the police; he’s the notable exception to the generosity granted the other characters. The psychological portrait remains blurry, so I don’t know much about Coddington, except that he’s unreasonably jealous and pigheaded.

The White Feather Killer delivers a terrific story with fully realized characters and an authentic historical background, depicted with precise care. Bravo.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Who Are We, and Where Do We Come From?: The Great Unknown

23 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: The Great Unknown, by Peg Kingman
Norton, 2020. 324 pp. $27

In 1845, Constantia MacAdam, just delivered of twins (one of whom died), serves as wet nurse to the large, ever-growing Chambers family, temporarily residing outside Edinburgh while their city home undergoes renovation. Constantia, unable to be with her beloved husband, makes the best of her grief over her lost son and her struggle to make ends meet, but she has lucked out. Not only has she landed among the kindest people in Scotland, who treat her like a family member rather than a servant, she’s never found such intellectual stimulation in her life, and she thrives on it.

Mr. Chambers, a newspaper publisher, takes a keen interest in the natural world and urges his immense brood to do likewise, even (if not especially) the girls. He impresses Constantia, who also loves natural science, because of the breadth of his knowledge and the liberality of his mind. A sensational book has appeared, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and its unorthodox views receive a warm welcome in the Chambers household. The reader will guess that Vestiges anticipates Darwin’s influential book almost fifteen years later.

Figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith, depicted here at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, were part of the Edinburgh Enlightenment, often presumed to be an eighteenth-century phenomenon. But their nineteenth-century counterparts included such scientific and cultural luminaries as Thomas Carlyle, Mary Somerville, Charles Lyell, and James Clerk Maxwell (courtesy Kim Traynor, via Wikimedia Commons)

While this is happening, the Chambers’ gardener, who has been at this residence all his life, has derived similar revolutionary ideas from observing the randomness of life and death, thriving and deformity, among his beloved plants. And on a Scottish island reasonably near in mileage yet isolated and hard to reach by even the fastest transport, a quarryman seeks to split apart a limestone ledge, in which, he believes, important fossils lie.

To say, therefore, that The Great Unknown is a philosophical novel about the origins of life restates the obvious. The story, at first glance, may seem thin. Constantia longs to rejoin her husband. She also strives to learn who her father was, which the Chambers family, being the soul of tact, infer is a troublesome matter, a secret best left unprobed. Her good character is plain; what more need anyone know?

That doesn’t satisfy Lady Janet, a distant relative of theirs who possesses neither tact nor sensitivity, though she does express much righteous superiority. (When Constantia finally gets the courage to talk back to Lady Janet, it’s delicious.) Lady Janet is the foil for the good-hearted spirit of inquiry that reigns chez Chambers, and a reminder of how different they are from most Britons.

But there’s much more besides the evocation of a country on the brink of a moral upending through scientific discovery, or the excellent, personal portrayal of the conflict between religion and science. We have a thought-provoking daily drama playing out chance and consequences, fortunate or tragic, and people trying to figure out whether these outcomes mean anything or merely display the benign indifference of the universe. (Note the name Constantia in this regard.) Add to that what makes a person human, and how we differ (or don’t) from other species; or is it just our vanity that we do?

In sentences that have a Victorian ring, Kingman has crafted a plot that often turns on Dickensian coincidences, perhaps too fortuitously, at times. But she’s also created a family as a perfect test case for her themes, and not just because of their scientific curiosity. The male species of Chambers are born with a sixth finger on each hand and a sixth toe on each foot. Random chance, indeed, as with the success of surgeries necessary for these digits’ removal. As for Mr. Chambers, imagine a Mr. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice as a witty, urbane man of science who’s more immediately concerned with his daughters’ grasp of Linnaean nomenclature than how to attract a husband—though, rest assured, they have dancing and music lessons too.

Further, when anyone in the household has a musical idea that grabs them at any time, they are encouraged to try it out immediately:

It was understood by all that musical ideas were so fragile, so evanescent, and so precious that they were to be snatched from the thin air upon the very moment of their wafting into existence; they might otherwise as evaporate as quickly as they had precipitated, never again to be recovered. No chances could be taken with them; it was a duty to bring them into the world. Constantia became accustomed to seeing an inward distracted stillness fall over the faces of the girls; any of them might, even in the midst of nursery-supper noise, fall silent for a moment; then spring from her chair, to run to the pianoforte—the harp—the violin.

Not everyone will gravitate toward a quiet, reflective story like this, a daguerreotype of the moment when brave thinkers began to ask the most earthshaking questions without fear of divine retribution. But readers who take The Great Unknown for what it is will be greatly rewarded.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Looking for Meaning: The Cartographer of No Man’s Land

16 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: The Cartographer of No Man’s Land, by P. S. Duffy
Liveright, 2013. 366 pp. $26

There’s no real reason for Angus MacGrath, a Nova Scotia coastal shipping captain, to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916. Canada has no conscription; Angus, a onetime seminarian, has a wife and teenage boy; he’s an artist, so the natural beauty of his home matters to him; and there’s no pressure to join up. In fact, his father, Duncan, is a pacifist, so Angus should be primed to sit out the war.

Yet Angus’s brother-in-law, his closest friend, has been missing in action in France, and Angus wishes to search for him. An officer Angus knows assures him that his mapmaking skills will secure him a desk job in London, from which he figures to make inquiries. Nobody’s happy. Duncan’s furious, and Hettie Ellen, Angus’s withdrawn wife, gives merely tacit approval, hardly a rousing endorsement. Their son, Simon, who craves closeness from his father, tries to keep a stiff upper lip.

Turns out there’s no room in the cartography department—who could have guessed?—and Angus is made a lieutenant of infantry, a job for which he’s unprepared. However, to his surprise, he becomes a capable field leader, befriends his brother officers despite his natural aloofness, and gains the respect of his men. Gradually, his search for his brother-in-law takes on epic proportions.

Richard Jack’s painting, ca. 1918, The Taking of Vimy Ridge, Easter Monday 1917, suggests a stylized version of a nineteenth-century battlefield, too clean and romantic to represent war accurately in any era (courtesy Canadian War Museum via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States and Canada)

Meanwhile, back in Nova Scotia, Simon tries to assert his independence, especially from his tyrannical grandfather, Duncan. Simon keeps a scrapbook of newspaper articles on the war and casts his father as a hero. He also befriends his favorite teacher, a German-born polymath, testament to the tolerance he’s learned at home and his ability to think for himself. Ominously, Simon’s friends and neighbors show neither quality.

The Cartographer of No Man’s Land is a lovely novel, the more remarkable for being Duffy’s first; and as a historian of the First World War and its fiction, I can attest to its authenticity. Duffy has researched her ground meticulously, but, as I’ve said before, spending years in libraries and archives doesn’t guarantee a gripping narrative. Still, I defy anyone to find a dull, wasted page in this extraordinary tale. And much as I salute the author’s impressive grasp of detail, it’s how she deploys her knowledge that counts. Moreover, her seductive prose takes you by the hand and shows you what she wants you to see, as in this scene at a French estaminet:

Sweat, damp wool and liquor suffused the air as talk turned to the wonder of nurses, spotted that morning in their blue capes, managing to look wholesome, healthy and entirely unapproachable. Having stayed far longer than he’d intended, Angus headed for the latrine. Jostled in line, he thought back to the upper room in London — a sanctuary of measures, grids, coordinates and intersecting lines of longitude and latitude — where the cartographers he’d hoped to join bent over their stereoscopes, transforming aerial photographs into maps. There was something elemental and pristine about it, the careful, dispassionate execution, that called up the calming effect of drawing his birds — a tamping down of emotions too deeply felt. Sorry as he’d been not to join them, he was glad now not to have been part of their remote, sterile world.

Duffy effortlessly captures the camaraderie of men at war, the search for meaning amid the violence, the tension and release of battle. Even readers who shy away from such stories may find much to keep them glued to this one. For those interested, Duffy has re-created the Battle of Vimy Ridge in Arras, a source of such national pride in Canada that she feared to tackle it, she writes. However, her authorial bravery pays off, and the novel must rank among the best from recent years about the First World War.

Oddly, though, her home-front narrative feels somewhat less compelling. It belongs, because Duffy links the parallel journeys of father and son, as each strives to understand who he is. But Duffy’s soldiers steal the show, hands down. Hettie Ellen’s inner life never comes through (perhaps Angus might agree), and none of the women leave an echo behind them, except one in a cameo role. They’re not stick figures, by any means, just less full than the fighters. The home-front men do better than the women, but few have much scope, and though the Canada story has its moments, it doesn’t reach as high.

Nevertheless, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land is a very fine novel and an excellent addition to First World War literature.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Anthems for Doomed Youth: The First World War in Fiction

09 Monday Nov 2020

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Imagine a time and place when the dominant popular belief supposed that truth, beauty, justice, and progress not only existed but seemed within permanent grasp. National leaders deserved confidence until proven otherwise. Science, which had discovered how to cure centuries-old scourges, held unbridled promise. Technology had invented everything from electronic communications to engine-driven land transport to the zipper and the safety razor, and would continue to improve daily life and make drudgery a thing of the past. International cooperation in all these efforts, as well as in finance, commerce, the arts, and philosophy, would bring about unheard-of amity.

This was Western Europe in 1914, and the war beginning that year would crush this optimism forever. The transformation shook every conceivable facet of life and, I believe, altered twentieth-century history like no other event.

Wilfred Owen, one of my favorite poets, was killed a week before the armistice. This photograph illustrated a posthumous collection of his poems in 1920 (courtesy https://archive.org/details/poemsowenwil00owenrich, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Today, in honor of Armistice Day (this Wednesday), I’ll devote this week’s column to my favorite fiction about the war, most of which I’ve reviewed or soon will. All feel authentic to me in their re-creation of mood and attitudes, language and thought, historical accuracy, and, as strong fiction must, offer protagonists with flaws, villains with virtues or at least depth, and subtle exposition of themes and background information. My choices are character-driven, though not all would qualify as literary. For fans of All Quiet on the Western Front and its kind, fear not; I’ll devote a separate section to fiction contemporary to the war.

The first book reviewed on this blog, The Lie, has all I look for and more. The late Helen Dunmore paints an exquisite story of a veteran returning to Cornwall in 1920, worried (with reason) he’ll be homeless, a metaphor for his struggle to find a place in the world and one within himself. Beautiful and painful, and though it’s not for the faint of heart, we’re talking about emotional suffering, not blood or violence.

Regeneration, by Pat Barker, the first of a trilogy, is the gold standard for many, a compelling tale of a real-life British Army psychiatrist, who treats Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, among others. (While under treatment, Owen drafts the poem that inspired the title of this column.) But literature’s not the point here: Nearly all the doctor’s patients (and superiors) assume that “shell shock” can only mean weakness — and therein hangs a tale.

A Long, Long Way, by Sebastian Barry, tells the story of a young Irish soldier betrayed by circumstance and his own trusting nature. Known for his angelic singing voice, he lifts his melodies over no man’s land, so that music haunts the narrative. The Easter Rebellion and the burden of Irish history also play a key role in this compelling, memorable novel.

The Heroes’ Welcome, by Louisa Young, takes two intertwined survivors’ stories and follows them past the war’s end. One’s damaged emotionally and can’t love his wife, who becomes disturbed in her own way; the other vet’s had drastic facial reconstructive surgery, yet finds greater happiness than he — or anyone — expected for him. A brave book that confronts human failings head-on.

The Poppy Wife, by Caroline Scott, involves the search for a missing soldier, presumed dead by all save his wife and his brother, who has loved his sister-in-law for years. An elegant premise deftly developed, and unusual among First World War novels, in which a woman is neither nurse nor bandage-roller nor keeps the home fires burning.

Recently reviewed here, The Shooting Party, by Isabel Colegate, delivers a classic rendering— a 1913 hunting party on an Oxfordshire estate, a metaphor for the slaughter to come. All’s on display, with remarkable economy and punch: characters, attitudes, the world of caste, deference, and ways that would soon cease to exist.

Andrea Molesini’s characters, larger than life yet plausible, show force, ingenuity, weakness, strength, and mordant wit, reacting to the Austrian occupation of their home north of Venice in 1917. That’s Not All Bastards Are from Vienna, storytelling at its finest, about how to live when death rides high, and with a vigor seldom seen during wartime.

P. S. Duffy effortlessly captures the camaraderie of men at war, the search for meaning amid the violence, and the tension and release of battle among the Canadian Expeditionary Force in The Cartographer of No Man’s Land (to be reviewed here soon). Her home-front storyline, back in Nova Scotia, seems less powerful, but parallel journeys of a father and son link the two convincingly.

The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason, tells a singular story about a successful medical student who’s thrust into a military hospital, where he’s immediately over his head. He has to relearn everything, from a nurse, which runs contrary to the system that instructed (and restrained) him. Despite a strenuous section of back story and an ending I find dubious, Mason knows how to write character, and his prose will stay with you.

Mystery fans need look no further than The White Feather Killer, by R. N. Morris (soon to be reviewed here as well). Morris excels at characterization, historical atmosphere—London hysteria at the war’s outbreak—and whodunit. Some readers may find his tortured souls off-putting, and the near-universal willingness to abuse others creates a bleak mood. But the rewards here beyond a superb mystery are many, not least an unvarnished portrayal of police work in 1914, and a similar depiction of a great metropolis straining at its bounds.

In The Redeemed, Tim Pears returns to England’s West Country for his last volume of a trilogy, to relate how the war affects his two protagonists, a lord’s daughter and a former servant on her father’s estate. The discursive narrative doesn’t hold together as well as its predecessor, but Pears’s prose creates a physical world as few authors can, and the class and social attitudes leap off the page with authenticity. The romance wins too.

Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road provides a glimpse of the Native contribution to Canada’s war, a subject unfamiliar to me, and perhaps to most readers. As a trench novel, it’s terrific, showing how, over time, incessant killing destroys good men from within. Unfortunately, the backstory, narrated by the protagonist’s aunt, often feels shoehorned in.

Clare Clark portrays minor Hampshire aristocracy who keep the twentieth century at bay in We That Are Left. It’s rare that a book full of disagreeable characters can be riveting, especially at 450 pages, and Clark’s people feel entirely, satisfyingly grounded in the time, which tells you all you need to know about Britain’s social conflicts. A needless prologue and an implausible, even Dickensian, ending mar the total effect, but the book is still worth reading.

The Daughters of Mars, Thomas Keneally’s narrative about two Australian sisters who become nurses, captures the violence and fear in an unflinching, unpredictable way, while keeping their sibling rivalry front and center. If it weren’t for the author’s habit of telling rather than showing, and the provincial attitude that all British officers are stupid incompetents, while Aussies just do things better, I’d recommend the novel more highly.

August 1914, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s portrayal of the war’s disastrous beginning for Russia, provides the sweep you’d expect and issues that you know will eventually consume the empire from within. It’s been years since I read the novel, but it’s stayed with me, including a negative, how pat the author’s conclusions feel, especially the historical ones. Nevertheless, the Russian perspective seldom reaches print in translation, so it’s worth your time.

Now, onto the contemporaries. Beyond All Quiet (1929), and also from the German point of view, consider Arnold Zweig (no relation to Stefan), whose keen psychological insight shapes six First World War novels, one of which I read decades ago, Education Before Verdun (1936). And if you haven’t tackled the 900-page Magic Mountain (1927), Thomas Mann’s masterpiece about Europeans seeking treatment at a sanitarium, a metaphor for a society bent on destroying itself, dip into it.

Q: What do these three authors have in common, aside from their nationality? A: The Nazis burned their books.

As for Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, Joseph Roth’s Radetzky March (1932) shows the decline and fall of an Austrian family just before the war, and the stultifying existence they led. The Good Soldier Švejk (1921-23) is Jaroslav Hašek’s unfinished satire about a middle-aged simpleton eager to serve in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and the scrapes he gets into.

Moving over to the Allies, I recommend Gabriel Chevallier’s Fear (1930), my only French entry. With an unsparing eye and steady hand, the author tears the heroic mantle off the army, re-creating the war as an exercise in survival, getting by, and suffering, whose depths and absurdity the home front never hears about.

On the British side, for a similar clear-eyed, even savage, portrayal, try Death of a Hero (1929), Richard Aldington’s scathing attack on the Victorian belief system on which he blames the war. In bitter, often darkly funny fashion, he ascribes the conflict to sexual attitudes—an arresting analysis. Less overtly biting, yet as honest and straightforward an account of the trenches as you’ll ever find, The Middle Parts of Fortune (1929), by Fredric Manning, captures the spirit, feelings, and language of the common soldier. Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916), H. G. Wells’s novel about a civilian who copes with the demanded sacrifices, provides a window on the time and sets out the author’s religious philosophy.

Many American authors known chiefly for other themes or subjects wrote about the war, including Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, and Willa Cather, with largely forgettable results. When I was seventeen, A Farewell to Arms (1929), knocked me over, but I doubt Ernest Hemingway’s popular romance would stir me today, given what I’ve learned since about women, Hemingway, and the war (in no particular order). His one-time friend, John Dos Passos, gives Three Soldiers (1919) an early version of the electric passion found in his celebrated trilogy, U.S.A., and a similar theme, alienation.

That’s my current take on First World War fiction. But there are new entries all the time, and I’m always on the lookout.

Drinka Pinta Deatha Day: Murder by Milk Bottle

02 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: Murder by Milk bottle, by Lynne Truss
Bloomsbury, 2020. 320 pp. $27

The summer of 1957 has witnessed plenty of deadly violence in Brighton, England, and Constable Twitten longs for a respite. But he’s not going to get one. Three more victims soon bite the dust in rapid fashion, sending this seaside resort town into a tizzy over the August Bank Holiday weekend. What’s more, all three met their end courtesy of milk-bottle shards. This is a rather unfortunate coincidence, since the Milk Girl, a lovely young woman hired by the dairy industry, will be making a publicity appearance, opening a milk bar. Or is it a coincidence?

Consider to the influence of an ice cream competition, judged by the local police inspector, Steine. Don’t forget the beauty contest, widely believed to be rigged, or the barber competition, which has a similar reputation. For good measure, we have a stampede of docile milk cows, a girls’ school with a troubled past, and Mrs. Groynes, char lady at the police station, whose real profession is running organized crime in Brighton.

Incidentally, she’s the only organized person in the station, for the police are utterly incompetent. Constable Twitten, though he sees much, as his first name, Peregrine, would suggest, makes a hash of interpreting it, as his last name implies. He’s perennially blind to the attractive young women who keep falling in love with him, the anti-James Bond. He also has a gift for saying the wrong thing at precisely the wrong moment, so these women may be better off without him. More educated than either Sergeant Brunswick or Inspector Steine, he correctly assumes he’s got more on the ball. But he can seldom convince them of anything, and his manners don’t help. Mrs. Groynes mentors him, when it suits her purposes, fully aware that no matter what Twitten says, he’ll remain the only copper in Brighton who knows she’s a criminal.

As I hope you’ve gathered by now, Murder by Milk Bottle is a riot. I’ve never laughed so often at a mystery, one that recalls British film comedies from the 1960s about blundering police, criminals, or both. (See, for example, The Wrong Arm of the Law, released in 1963, in which Peter Sellers plays a mobster named Pearly Gates.) But Truss has her own style, often witty, very often madcap, never taking itself too seriously. The plot churns merrily, with wry twists and clever turnabouts. You know that the bunglers will bungle, yet will somehow triumph in the end; you just don’t know how. The mystery narration itself is so clever that you’ll keep guessing (wrongly) until the end. And will the characters learn anything? I doubt it.

Truss’s prose is a treat, full of commentary, as with this passage about a dispatcher for roadside assistance:

Mr. Hollibon was an ardent smoker with all the hallmarks of a man who has inhaled warmed-up toxins continuously for more than thirty years. The puckered skin, deep-stained fingers, disgusting cough: he flaunted them all with pride. An army doctor had once asked if his cough was ‘productive,’ and he had replied, truthfully, ‘Yes, very.’ Leaning forward now, he alternately coughed and struggled for breath until (yes!) A veritable torrent of expectoration was produced. And then, pleased with himself, he lit a fresh fag to celebrate.

But there’s also plenty of wordplay. My favorite is the Cockney rhyming slang, in which the phrase “best whistle” refers to whistle and flute, meaning suit; or “boat,” short for boat race, meaning face. But there’s also Twitten’s predilection for psych talk, which is ridiculously funny, and the name of the girls’ school, Lady Laura Laridae (Laridae is the class of sea birds that includes gulls). And finally I’ll cite the author’s play on the famous advertising phrase of the dairy industry, Drinka Pinta Milka Day, which a waggish Brighton newspaper publisher, considering all the mayhem, turns into Drinka Pinta Deatha Day.

None of this surprises me, given Truss’s fame for Eats, Shoots & Leaves, her plea against the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, as Professor Higgins put it in My Fair Lady. But I tell you, if she wishes to write a mystery revolving around death by comma (Oxford or inverted), I’m down for that.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher through my work for Historical Novels Review.