Faithful Unto Death by Caroline Graham

I’m not a regular reader of crime fiction and would probably not have strayed from my usual beat of Ian Rankin and Agatha Christie had Caroline Graham’s books not been dramatised as the highly successful series Midsomer Murders. Watching a repeat of an early episode prompted me to pick up the source material from the library.

The book starts with a missing person. Simone Hollingsworth, wife of a local businessman, disappears from their home in Fawcett Green. Her vanishing act causes her husband to lock himself in the house and hit the bottle, although he doesn’t go so far as to call the police and tell them his wife has gone. The vicar, dropping by to ask why she has missed bell ringing practice, notices that he’s in a bit of a state:

“Now Alan,” said the vicar, “If I may call you that?” His kindly glance was momentarily distracted by the sight of a splendid silver tray holding two cut-glass decanters and several bottles including a Jack Daniel’s, nearly full, and a Bushmills, half empty. There was no way, on his stipend, the vicar could afford either of these splendid beverages. He heaved himself upright again saying, “You look as if you could do with a drink...”

Obviously Hollingsworth thinks so to and very quickly reports come back that he’s living off microwave food and whiskey:

Later, further verification of Alan Hollingsworth’s debauched state was provided when a stream of bottles descended from his wheelie bin into the masticating maw of Causton Borough Council’s refuse lorry. Avis Jennings said it sounded as if someone was disposing of a greenhouse. The vicar, put in the picture by his spouse, thought of all that Jack Daniel’s consumed in lonely isolation and wondered if he should once more attempt to offer solace.

Eventually the local plod are asked to check on him, and more importantly, Simone. Hollingsworth opens the door to the village bobby:

“You’re plainly not very well, sir.” “I’m pissed, you stupid idiot...” Hollingsworth picked up the nearest bottle, which was uncapped, poured a stream of liquid into a smeary tumbler and sloshed it down.

It’s soon after this that Causton CID are involved and the book’s hero, Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby is on the scene. Though when they get to the house it’s a little too late for Hollingsworth:

A man was lying on a brightly coloured rug in front of an empty fireplace. Barnaby crossed quickly over and knelt beside him. Troy stood on the threshold, his fastidious nature affronted by the mixture of stale offensive odours about the place, not least of which came from the pool of urine beneath the recumbent figure. Troy noticed a tumbler lying on its side a short distance from the man’s right hand.

It’s clear to the DCI that foul play is afoot:

...Barnaby felt certain that Alan Hollingsworth had not succumbed to a stroke or heart attack. Or alcohol poisoning even though, according to Perrot, he’d been lowering gallons of the stuff for days.

When Polaroids of Simone appear showing that she’s been abducted, the plot thickens... It’s great stuff and frequently very funny, but having been spoiled by over a decade of John Nettles chewing scenery, I’m having trouble adjusting to Graham’s original creation.

King Of The City by Michael Moorcock

I find Moorcock an extremely frustrating writer, sometimes brilliant, but so ridiculously prolific that editing and quality control often go completely out of the window. His Pyat Quartet is wonderful, but I’ve tossed at least one of his books to one side after less than three pages, and his input into Hawkwind’s back catalogue has been distinctly shaky at times too.

King Of The City is typical of his work; not Moorcock at his best, but full of wonderful vignettes and turns of phrase, although it can get wearing. It’s probably meant to be that way, Dennis Dover, underground rock guitarist and intrepid photojournalist is such an intense character that being subjected to a relentless 400 page monologue is more trial by ordeal than reading. It is not without reward, however.

Dover starts the book suspended from a hot air balloon, taking paparazzi shots of the supposedly deceased zillionaire Sir John Barbican Begg, who is in a compromising position in a hammock with someone else’s wife. It’s the tabloid scoop of the year, well worth maxing out the last credit card to get.

I only had one crack at the shots. Drunk or sober, mad or sane, I only needed one. As we dropped lower over the convulsing soul mates, I clipped on the D-ring so that I could lean further out and take some side views, hoping that in their ecstasy they couldn’t hear the thump of batty-gangsta rap vibrating from my pilot’s pulsing boombox and amplified by our vast silver canopy, or catch a whiff of the roiling cushions of reefer smoke probably keeping us airborne. Not that you could do much about steering or speed in an FG-180. Plus the volume was busted on the blasta. Plus Captain Desmond Bastable, the pilot, had insisted on bringing two magnums of champagne for the trip as well as a pound of ganja so strong you could get cheerful just being in the same city with it. Also a bottle of Stolichnaya. I never drink on the job, it interferes with what I put up my nose, so Captain B had enjoyed both magnums and now lay spread eagled on the bottom of the basket chewing on his dreadlocks and cackling at his own smutty porkboy stories. Every so often he did something amusing with his burner. I didn’t care. I had three full rolls of FX-15+ with digital back-up and was on my fourth. The smoke pacified my mind. I relaxed so much I almost went completely over the side. I started to laugh. Captain Bastable found the vodka bottle. Life was never going to be better.

He’s got his shots, so now all he has to do is relax, get home safely and all his money worries are over:

I dropped our penultimate sandbag, and we rushed rapidly upward and back the way we’d come... I waved farewell to the Isles of Greed and sat down on the floor, zipped up my camera, sealed my film bag, flipped back at the digitals, secured my disc, lit a spliff, popped my last E, sipped the dregs of the Moët, ate my wholefood patty, threw the bottles over the side and saluted the soft emerging stars, wondering vaguely whether Captain Bastable would wake up in time to get us down somewhere near Kingston or if by tonight we’d be trying to bribe ourselves out of Havana with eight dollars, some seeds and stems, and old climbing harness and about six thousand yards of second-hand balloon silk.

Unfortunately, Dover comes home clutching his paparazzi shots to an icy reception:

I’m not the first conquering hero who returns home expecting a big welcome only to discover that in the meantime the social climate has gone a bit radical and the mates who sent him off with wild applause are not all that pleased to see him now. Embarrassed silence as Lawrence walks into the mess. I had left the bosom of my nation, or at least Marriages new Wharf, Wapping, one of the lads, popular with my peers, credit at every pub, a well-respected pro people were proud to know. I’d returned to feel like Herman Goering popping in at his local to down a last stein before going on to his trial at Nuremberg. “Well, mates, wish me luck.”

What an earth could have happened? While Dover has been snapping his scoop in the Cayman islands, there’s been a rather nasty road traffic accident in Paris:

...an over-tired driver did a few pills too many, had a few extra Scotches and decided to take the tunnel rather than the bridge.

In the post-Diana landscape, nobody wants to know him or what he’s seen. The celebrity snapper is now a social pariah and Dover is out of a job and frighteningly broke...

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

Like the Cold War in previous decades, the post 9/11 years have produced their own fiction dealing with its various themes and conflicts, of which The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a fine example.

Hamid’s second novel is written in the form of a long conversation between Changez, a young Pakistani man, educated in at University in the US and once employed in a high flying New York firm, and an unnamed American who gets increasingly jumpy as the evening goes on.

Scion of a once wealthy family in Lahore, Changez graduates from Princeton and is soon interviewed for prestigious valuation firm Underwood Samson. This is not before he and his fellow graduates set out for a holiday on the Greek Islands. Among their group is Erica, whom Changez falls for. She tells him that she is grieving for her boyfriend who died about a year before. He tells her about his life growing up in Lahore:

She ordered a beer; I did the same. “So what’s Pakistan like?” she asked. I told her Pakistan was many things, from seaside to desert to farmland stretched between rivers and canals; I told her that I had driven with my parents and my brother to China on the Karakoram Highway, passing along the bottoms of valleys higher than the tops of the Alps; I told her that alcohol was illegal for Muslims to buy and so I had a Christian bootlegger who delivered booze to my house in a Suzuki pickup.

Life soon takes over after their return to New York and Changez is scooped up into the high spending lifestyle of Underwood Samson. He is amazed that spending a large amount of company money on drink is not only permitted, it is actively encouraged:

But for me, at the age of twenty-two, this experience was a revelation. I could, if I desired, take my colleagues out for an after-work drink – an activity classified as “new hire cultivation” – and with impunity spend in an hour more than my father earned in a day! As you can imagine, we new hires availed ourselves of the opportunity to cultivate one another on a regular basis. I remember the first night we did so; we went to the bar at the Royalton, on the Forty-Fourth Street. Sherman came with us on this occasion and ordered a bottle of vintage champagne to celebrate our induction... Sherman left when the champagne was done, but he told us to charge our bill to Underwood Samson. We did so, staggering out into the street around midnight.

Changez is a great success in the firm, a number one valuator, and he also meets up with Erica again. He is introduced to her friends and family and is served wine at home with her parents. He takes a moment to explain the relationship between Pakistanis and drink to his unnamed companion at the table:

You seem puzzled by this – and not for the first time. Perhaps you misconstrue the significance of my beard, which, I should in any case make clear, I had not yet kept when I arrived in New York. In truth, many Pakistanis drink; alcohol’s illegality in our country has roughly the same effect as marijuana’s in yours. Moreover, not all of our drinkers are western-educated urbanites such as myself; our newspapers regularly carry accounts of villagers dying or going blind after consuming poor-quality moonshine. Indeed, in our poetry and folk songs intoxication occupies a recurring role as a facilitator of love and spiritual enlightenment. What? Is it not a sin? Yes, it certainly is – as so, for that matter, is coveting thy neighbor’s wife. I see you smile; we understand one another, then.

The attacks on September 11th 2001 leave Changez feeling increasingly alienated and distracted as the world around him takes arbitrary positions. Erica, who had a severe bout of mental illness when her boyfriend died, becomes unwell again and their relationship disintegrates. As the America slides into conflict with Afghanistan his emotions become increasingly polarised:

My reaction caught me by surprise; Afghanistan was Pakistan’s neighbour, our friend, and a fellow Muslim nation besides, and the sight of what I took to be the beginning of its invasion by your countrymen caused me to tremble with fury. I had to sit down to calm myself, and I remember polishing off a third of a bottle of whiskey before I was able to fall asleep.

A trip home at Christmas causes him to finally take sides and he leaves his firm soon afterwards, and comes back to Pakistan on a permanent basis. There he lectures at the local university, encouraging students to break with the west. One of his protégés has been involved in an outrage and as the evening draws to a close, the identity of his American companion and why he is there becomes apparent...

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

I was initially disappointed with The Lacuna, mainly because I just didn’t feel it measured up to her previous novel The Poisonwood Bible. In fairness, very few books I’ve read measure up to The Poisonwood Bible, and leafing through The Lacuna a second time for quotes, I came to appreciate its slightly more subtle tone.

Harrison Shephered starts life as the son of a Mexican mother and an American father who is a civil servant in the Hoover administration. The book starts in Isla Pixol, Mexico in the late 1920s where Harrison and his mother have come to live with her new beau, oil man Enrique.

The solitary Harrison spends his days floating in the sea with goggles on, burning his back to a crisp while watching the fishes. His mother Salomé ought to be worried about his long disappearances, but seems more interested in the contents of her glass:

He refused to come out of the sea all day, until the colors began to go dark. Luckily his mother and Enrique had enough to drink, sitting on the terrace with the men from America turning the air blue with their cigars, discussing the assassination of Obregón, wondering who would now stop the land reforms before the indios took everything. If not for so much mezcal and lime, his mother might have grown bored with the man-talk, and thought to wonder whether her son had drowned.

Far younger than Enrique, Salomé celebrates her birthday in style, just not the style that her new man and his guests are used to:

Afterward Salomé tried to get them all to cut a rug. She cranked up the Victrola and waved the mezcal bottle at the men, but they went to bed, leaving her fluttering around the parlor like a balloon of air, let go. It was her birthday, and not even her son to whom she had given life would cut a rug with her. “For God’s sake, William, you’re tedious,” she diagnosed. Nose in the books, you’re nothing but a cancelled stamp. Flutie, green apples, wet blanket, this is only a sample of the names that came to mind when Salomé was stewed to the hat. He did try to dance with her after that, but it was too late. She couldn’t hold herself up on her own stilts.

Nearly always juiced of a night, and fast falling out with Enrique, Salomé is quickly propelling herself and her son to disaster:

Everything about Salomé came from a jar or a bottle: first, the powder and perfume, the pomade for her marcel wave. Next, the headache, from a bottle of mezcal. Then the cure, from a bottle of Bellans Hot-Water-Relief. Maybe some other bottle gave her the flapper-dancing, crank-up-the-Victrola Twenty-Three Skidoo. Stashed under a table drape in her room, something to help her keep it up.

Well, she can’t keep it up forever and after getting the heave-ho from Enrique’s they eventually end up in Mexico City. There Harrison becomes cook to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Salomé dies in a car crash on the way to see Howard Hughes. Young Harrison, cast adrift in the world, becomes the part time secretary of the fugitive Lev Trotsky, and slides into the history books, complete with a run in with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and a walk on part by Richard Nixon...