Review of "The Light and the Dark: A Strangers and Brothers Novel" by C.P. Snow

I first read C.P. Snow's 'Strangers and Brothers' series some time ago, and it became a favorite. The novels focus on an English barrister/civil servant, Lewis Elliot, who rises from poverty to a position of influence in the early-to-mid 1900s. Elliot is present in the entire eleven-book series, but he's not always the central character.

The Light and the Dark is part of the series, but it works fine as a standalone. The story is about Roy Calvert, a young Cambridge scholar who studies Orientalism and linguistics. Roy is a brilliant researcher, but his moods alternate between profound depression and exuberant elation, probably due to (what's now called) bipolar disorder.



The novel covers the period from the prewar mid-1930s until 1940, when England has entered WWII.

*****

As the story opens, narrator Lewis Eliot is a 30-year-old law don at Cambridge, and has rooms there as well as a home in London with his wife Sheila. Roy Calvert resides on the same staircase as Lewis, and the two men have become close friends.



As members of the college, Roy Calvert and Lewis Eliot socialize with the Master, John Royce, and his wife Lady Muriel. This leads to acquaintance with the Royces' daughter Joan as well as Lady Muriel's aristocratic brother and sister-in-law, Lord and Lady Boscastle, all of whom are important to the story.



Calvert and Eliot are amused by the snobbery of the aristocrats, who are obsessed with family, breeding, social standing, and knowing the 'right' people.



Lewis feels the sting when the Master's wife, Lady Muriel, consistently addresses Roy by his given name and Lewis as 'Mr. Eliot.' Lady Muriel favors Roy's company because he's more socially acceptable: Roy's family is wealthy, he's at ease among the upper classes, he's witty and polished, and he's a sought after dinner guest. Conversely, Lewis pulled himself up from poverty and is self-conscious and guarded.



Nevertheless, over time the other aristocratic woman, Lady Boscastle, comes to like Eliot, and to engage him in private tête-à-têtes. Describing Lady Boscastle, Lewis writes, "She was fragile, thin with an invalid's thinness, and she helped herself along with a stick; in the other hand she carried a lorgnette...she had aged through illness...but it was easy to believe that she had once been noted for her beauty."



Lewis writes, "I had twice visited Lady Boscastle by myself. She invited me so that she could indulge in two pleasures - tell stories of love affairs and nag me into being successful as quickly as might be." Lady Boscastle trusts Lewis, and tells him about her lovers, marriage, and youthful affairs, which made her husband jealous and unhappy.



Dinners at the Master's table are important because the guests discuss Cambridge affairs as well as other topics. They exchange gossip about college appointments, elections, academic reputations, rivalries, indiscretions, and so on. There are also discussions of politics, Germany, Hitler, Nazis, the prospect of war, what stand Britain should take, etc.



Roy Calvert becomes a 'dinner topic' when he's nominated for a college fellowship. Roy is an exceptional linguist whose specialty is Manichaean Sogdian, an ancient Eastern Iranian language. Roy deciphers Sogdian manuscripts, reconstructs the language's grammar and vocabulary, translates texts, and publishes papers about the language and the Manichaean religion.





In part, Calvert uses intense scholarship to mitigate his periods of despondency. Eliot describes Roy's sitting-room as follows: "There were all kinds of desks in a glazed and shining white - an upright one, at which he could work standing...several for sitting at...and one very low which he could use by lying on cushions on the floor....Most days he worked in this room for seven or eight hours without a break. The whole room was full of gadgets for work, most of which he had designed. There were holders for his manuscripts, lights to inspect them by, a small X-ray apparatus, card indexes which stood up and could be used with one hand."



Calvert's suave appearance, pleasant demeanor, and superb research make him a favorite with the Master and Tutor Arthur Brown (Roy's mentor). Thus the Master and Brown push for Calvert to get a college fellowship, citing Roy's well-received Sogdian publications. A fellow is accorded academic status, a stipend, permission to keep rooms at the college, and freedom to do research.



New fellows must be voted in (like academic tenure). The voters are current fellows of the college, usually senior academic members and clergy. The election strongly resembles a political election, and Roy's candidacy takes up a good portion of the book. Tutor Arthur Brown is like a campaign manager: he lobbies, counts heads, sounds people out at college dinners, tries to persuade doubtful fellows, and arranges for two respected linguists to attest to Roy's much-hallowed work. Through all this, Eliot (who's a 'yes vote' of course) agonizes over how it's all affecting Roy's moods.

The biggest stumbling block to Roy being elected are staid conservative fellows who disapprove of Roy's lifestyle. Roy is a womanizer and has a lively nightlife, drinking and partying. In part, this behavior stems from Roy's neurodivergence, which isn't understood at the time. The book is almost a suspense novel around the issue 'Will Calvert be elected or not?'



There's more going on in Roy's life as well:

➤ At separate times, two women - Rosalind Wykes and Joan Royce - fall in love with Roy and scheme to marry him. Roy can't bear to hurt a woman, which makes this especially difficult for him.



➤ Calvert yearns for religion, to no avail. Calvert wants there to be a God and wants to be able to believe, but he just can't make himself. This is a source of tremendous anguish for Roy, and contributes to his depression.



➤ Roy is fluent in German, spends a lot of time in Germany, and supports Hitler and the Nazis. Roy abhors Hitler's brutality and treatment of Jews, but he believes a German led-Europe will be beneficial in the long run. This puts Roy at odds with some Cambridge fellows, as well as many of his friends and acquaintances.



The most humorous scene in the story occurs during Calvert's visit to Berlin in 1938. Roy is a jokester and mimic, and likes to tease people and make them smile. On the other hand, Roy has little patience for social snobbery and enjoys puncturing the pretensions of those who take status too seriously. Thus when the University of Berlin wants to give Roy the title 'visiting professor' - to acknowledge his expertise in Orientalism and linguistics - Roy agrees to speak at a seminar.

Lewis Eliot is in Berlin at the time, and attends Roy's presentation. This is Eliot's description: "Roy dressed with exquisite care...He put on his most fashionable suit, a silk shirt, a pair of suede shoes. As he sat on the Rector's right in the oriental lecture room at the university, he looked as though he had strayed in by mistake. Most of the attendees were homely, academic, middle-aged [men], dressed in sensible reach-me-downs." When it was Roy's turn to speak, he began in English, saying 'the subject is intricate and I have to use my own language, which of course you can understand' (most couldn't).

Eliot writes, "Roy lectured for an hour and twenty minutes. His face was imperturbably solemn throughout - except that twice he made a grotesque donnish pun, and gave a shy smile. At that sign, the whole room rocked with laughter. When he frowned, they shook their heads. When he sounded triumphant, they nodded in unison. Even those who could understand his English must have been little the wiser. For he was analyzing some esoteric problems about words that he had just discovered; they were in a dialect of Sogdian which he was the only man in the world to have unraveled. To add a final touch of fantasy, he quoted long passages of Sogdian, so much of the lecture seemed to be taking place in Sogdian itself. He would recite sentence after sentence in the language, completely incomprehensible to anyone but himself."



Eliot goes on, "I was sitting with a handkerchief pressed to my mouth. It was the most elaborate, the most ludicrous, the most recherché, of all his tricks."



Through the entire story, Calvert has debilitating periods of depression, made worse by the fact Roy knows they'll never stop, that he'll be plagued for his whole life. As Calvert's best friend, Eliot is privy to Roy's low moods and tries to help him, but knowledge at the time is inadequate to the purpose.

Inevitably, Britain enters WII in 1939. Lewis becomes a government minister (this story is covered in another book) and Roy becomes a flyboy. The aristocrats know they have a duty to their country, and act accordingly.



I'd recommend the novel to readers interested in historical fiction and WWII.

 Rating: 4 stars 

Review of "A River Red With Blood: A Charlie Parker Thriller" by John Connoly

  

In this 23rd book in the 'Charlie Parker' series, the private investigator looks into the death of a troubled teen.



Background: Charlie Parker was a police officer when his wife Susan and daughter Jennifer were brutally murdered. Charlie quit his job to pursue the killers, and subsequently became a private investigator. Jennifer is now a spirit who visits Charlie on occasion, usually to warn him of danger.



Ghostly activity is prevalent in this book, with Jennifer and other dead souls appearing throughout.

*****

Seventeen-year-old Scott Theriault was a 'student' at the Spero School - a behavior modification facility located in Maine's Kennebec Valley.





Scott had a habit of running away from the facility, and after the last time Scott ran off, he was found drowned in the Kennebec River.



The police call Scott's drowning an accident, but Scott's father, a convict named Ward Vose, is suspicious. Using an attorney, Vose hires Charlie Parker to investigate. When Charlie visits Vose in prison, Vose suggests Scott's death is connected with the disappearance of 19-year-old Mallory Norton, a Kennebec Valley waitress who's missing.



The Spero School is really a reformatory where parents' send boys they can't handle or don't want around. When Parker starts looking into the Spero School, he makes some men very nervous. It turns out the school's principal and founder Dante Santopietro has two pernicious acquaintances. Santopietro's associates are Roger Teal - who works for the Maine Department of Education; and Edward Kenney - who owns a garden supply company.




Santopietro, Teal and Kenney engage in an activity they call 'The Game', which involves abducting, raping, and murdering women. The three killers fear the investigation into Scott's death will expose them, and they're determined to prevent that happening.

Much of the story takes place at the Spero School, which - like many such facilities - has a steep pecking order. Sixteen-year-old sadistic bully Leonard Levesque is at the top, and a young bedwetter is at the bottom.



Actually, Levesque harasses almost all the students, and some of the bullied boys have an additional problem. They're being accosted by 'dead boys' - an aggregation of spirits that seem to want something, but it's not clear what.

As Parker gathers information about Scott Theriault, he becomes convinced the boy's death is connected to the disappearance of Mallory Norton. Parker tries to discover what happened to Mallory, and is assisted by Sabine Drew, a psychic who's helped find missing children in the past.



In an adjacent storyline, Parker's best friends Angel and Louis are seeing ghostly Jennifer in their dreams, warning of danger.



Louis learns someone put a price on his head, and he takes measures to find out who, what, and why.



The novel has a tiny bit of humor. Parker hires Paulie and Tony Fulci - a couple of bruisers good at surveillance AND the rough stuff - to help with the Scott Theriault case. Tony gets a date with a woman for the first time in his life, and (of course) he invites Paulie along.



As things play out, the ghostly appearances in the story lead to a supernatural villain who's been a thorn in Parker's side for a long time.



For me, this novel isn't among the best in the series. It's too 'all over the place' and the climax isn't completely satisfying. That said, it's always great to visit with favorite recurring characters, and fans of the series would probably enjoy the book.

Thanks to Netgalley, John Connolly, and Atria for an ARC of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Review of "Probable Caws: A Meg Langslow Mystery" by Donna Andrews

  

In this 39th book in the 'Meg Langslow' series, Meg - who's a blacksmith, wife, mother and amateur sleuth - helps a horse rescue operation and investigates the murder of a thug. The book can be read as a standalone, but knowledge of the characters is a plus.

A nice feature of the Meg Langslow cozy mysteries is the evolution of the characters, who mature and change as the years go by. The main protagonists in the books are members of Meg's large extended family, all of whom live near each other in Caerphilly, Virginia.

*****

As the story opens Meg is heating her blacksmith forge, thinking about making a gargoyle for her friend Ragnar Ragnarsen.



Ragnar owns a huge farm in the Caerphilly countryside, and he's fashioned his estate into an enormous medieval attraction called Ragnarshjem, which he plans to use for large gatherings and special events. Ragnar's mansion now looks like a castle, complete with towers at every corner and a working drawbridge over the moat.



As Meg is about to begin working she gets a call from her father, Dr. James Langslow, who asks Meg to hurry over to Ragnar's farm. Dr. Langslow explains that the equine rescue operation 'Hoof and Hearth' lost access to the pastures they'd been using, and Ragnar gave them permission to bring nearly 50 horses to his property, which has expansive fields and large barns.



Meg texts her family and friends to solicit additional volunteers, then gathers up her 12-year-old twins Jamie and Josh and hurries over to Ragnar's farm. Some of the equine rescue animals come from horse auctions and must be quarantined and checked for diseases; some sport injuries; some have been terribly neglected; some need attention to their hooves; some are malnourished; one is pregnant and fearful of men; and some have recovered and are doing fine. In any case, all the horses need food, water, and loving care.



While Meg is helping with the horses, she asks Helena Bannerman, the founder of 'Hoof and Hearth', what happened. Helena explains that the equine rescue group had been using elderly Ezra Abernathy's farm for ten years, but Ezra died, and his sons Abel and George each inherited half the property. Abel is fine with the horses using his pastures, but George plans to sell his portion to developers, and he wants the horses gone. There are even suspicions George and his thuggish pals have been harming the horses, to speed their departure. Lawsuits are threatened, and until things are resolved, the equines are being taken to Ragnar's farm.



As it happens, George Abernathy and his nasty sidekick Lefty come by Ragnarshjem right about then. George - who's wearing a yellow jacket with a picture of a pitbull - makes a scene and threatens to sue for damages the horses did to his pastures. Meanwhile, Lefty gazes around, seeming to memorize the layout of Ragnar's farm. Ragnar tells the trespassers to leave, and he's backed up by Police Chief Henry Burke, whose grandson Adam is volunteering for 'Hoof and Hearth.'



That night, Meg and her husband Michael are sleeping in a tent near one of the barns, to be near the horses stabled there. When Meg is awoken by thunder and hears horses nickering, she checks the barn and finds Lefty dead, wearing George's pitbull jacket.



Police Chief Burke investigates, and quickly learns George Abernathy has an unshakeable alibi. George was staying in his RV, which he parked in a church lot for the night. At the time Lefty was killed, a police deputy was actually speaking to George about being there without permission.



With George out of the picture, suspicion falls on the people staying on Ragnar's property, including Abel Abernathy; Helena Bannerman; an ex-jockey who works for 'Hoof and Hearth'; volunteers helping with the horses; and others. Meg takes it upon herself to investigate, planning to share any evidence she discovers with Police Chief Burke - who's busy interviewing persons of interest.



Though the novel is billed as a murder mystery, it's more about horses and the happenings at Ragnarshjem. Meg learns that horse nomenclature is partially based on color (Appaloosa, bay, gray, black, palomino, etc.); that it's dangerous for a mare to have twins; that horse biscuits are healthier treats than apples and carrots; that horses can sleep standing up but need to lay down for REM sleep; and more.



Other scenes in the novel feature different critters. In one vignette, Ragnar's militant black swans trap someone in a cupola, threatening severe bodily harm. Luckily, Meg's aunt Rose Noire, a wiccan animal whisperer, comes to the rescue. In another sketch, Meg's grandfather Dr. J. Montgomery Blake, who has a small private zoo, teaches crows to find food beneath cards with specific colors (like blue cards, for instance).



Some of my favorite action takes place in the castle's dining room, where Ragnar's marvelous chef Alice serves gourmet meals. Alice currently favors Italian cuisine, and she prepares pizza, spaghetti, gnocchi, ribollitta, arancini, arrosticini, and much more, for everyone on the farm.



By the end of the story, some of Ragnar's animals - horses, goats, cows, and crows - help nab the murderer, and the equine rescue situation is successfully resolved.

The Meg Langslow books make great light reading, and this horse-themed book is an enjoyable addition to the series.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Bernadette Dunne, who does a fine job.

Thanks to Netgalley, Donna Andrews, and Macmillan Audio for an ARC of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars 

Review of "The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon: A No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Novel" by Alexander McCall Smith

In this 14th book in the 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' series, Mma Ramotswe has two cases to solve. The book can be read as a standalone but knowing the characters is a bonus.

*****

Mma Ramotswe's first case, brought by a lawyer named Mma Sheba, concerns the inheritance of a local farm. The deceased farmer's heir, a nephew, has shown up to claim the property. However Mma Sheba fears 'the nephew' may be an imposter, and asks Mma Ramotswe to investigate.



The second case involves Mma Soleti, owner of "The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon." When Mma Soleti moves her salon to a desirable new location she receives a package containing the feather of a ground hornbill - a symbol of bad luck. Soon afterward a rumor campaign starts, claiming that women who get facials at Mma Soleti's salon suffer irreparable damage. Mma Ramotswe agrees to look into the matter.



Normally, Mma Ramotswe's associate, Mma Grace Makutski, assists with investigations. But Mma Makutski is pregnant and about to take maternity leave. Thus, Mma Ramotswe has to tackle most of the inquiries alone.....though Grace offers valuable advice. As always, Mma Ramotswe uses her intuition and insight (along with a bit of luck) to solve the cases.



Like all books in this series, the story is more about the characters than the cases. Mma Makutski and her husband, Phuti Radiphuti, have moved into an elegant home. Unfortunately, venomous snakes like it too!



And Phuti's unpleasant elderly aunt is determined to enforce 'the old traditions' when Mma Makutski gives birth, which clashes with Grace's modern views.



Other ongoing characters make an appearance as well. Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, decides to be a 'more modern' husband and help with the cooking. (His heart is in the right place, but he tries to mash the potatoes before he cooks them. LOL 😃). Apprentice mechanic Charlie, known for chasing girls, takes an unexpected shine to Mma Makutski's new baby. (Can he be thinking of settling down?) Orphanage manager Mma Potokwane offers tea, fruitcake (and serendipitously.....a valuable witness). And so on.

In the course of the story Mma Ramotswe realizes how much she appreciates Mma Makutski's friendship, intelligence, and help. So, at the end of the book, Mma Ramotswe gives her employee a nice surprise.



I'd highly recommend the book to readers who like cozies, especially fans of Mma Ramotswe. I wouldn't suggest reading this book as a standalone though. It's best to start at the beginning and 'grow' with the characters.

Rating: 3.5 stars