Adam Hall. Knight Sinister (1951)

     Adam Hall. Knight Sinister (1951) Supposedly a crime story. The style stuns with its preciosity, the characters lack interest, the puzzle fails to convince. I read this book amazed that such piffle could find a publisher. (2003)

Martin Gardner. Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries? (2003)

     Martin Gardner. Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries? (2003) Collection of occasional pieces for die-hard Gardner fans, drawn from The Skeptical Inquirer to The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Gardner as always writes lucidly, with an occasional, very rare, snort of derision. Most of the time, he merely reports what’s known, and lets the reader draw his own conclusions about the vagaries of human gullibility. He also reveals an odd affection for the Oz books, and has contributed to a fanzine published for such folk. This book was not worth what I paid for it, but was pleasant enough. ** (2003)

P G Wodehouse. The World of Jeeves (1931; repr. 1988)

     P G Wodehouse. The World of Jeeves (1931; repr. 1988) Thirty-four stories of the inimitable Jeeves and his efforts to get Bertie Wooster out of the scrapes his gormlessness constantly land him in. The narrator in all but one is of course Bertie himself, and he is not nearly as much of chump as he appears to be. True, he doesn’t foresee the consequences of his schemes, or confuses wishful thinking with planning, and Jeeves has to intervene to ensure the happy e., as Bertie would say. But Bertie’s narrative style, his skill at presenting the plot points in just the right order so that we see what will happen, his comments on life and its vicissitudes, all these bespeak a much more lively, if misdirected, intelligence than Aunts Agatha and Dahlia give him credit for. As Jeeves comments in the story he tells, Mr Wooster is unable to deal with the Unusual Situation; it paralyses him; it turns him into a goggle eyed rabbit.
     The lightness of touch misleads in another direction, I think. Many people believe that farce is not a serious form of literature, and by serious they mean one given to proffering great insights and moral guidance. I disagree. Farce depends for its effects on a well-defined moral world view. Without such a world view, the farcical elements would be merely puzzling, or even silly; consider the datedness of the sex farces of the 40s and 50s, for example. We laugh because the characters in farce violate the morality and etiquette of their time. Thus farce is an infallible guide to the expectations of the society in which it is set and for which it written. It provides us with a critique of both manners and morals.
     The world of Wooster did not exist in real life; it is abstracted and simplified in much the same way as the Art Deco posters of the time abstracted and simplified the visual world. But like those posters, it shows us an ideal existence that is worth striving for. Bertie, with all his faults, stands for decency, good manners, kindness, loyalty, modesty, humour, and the innocent pleasures of food, drink, and sports. Not a bad ideal, in my opinion. Besides, the stories are great fun. *** (2003)

M. C. Beaton. Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam (2000)

     M. C. Beaton. Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam (2000) Beaton is the author of the Hamish McBeth series, so I expected some wit and farce, but this is a perfunctory potboiler. The fairies of the title are mentioned a few times, but have no bearing on the plot, which involves the murder of a wannabe squire by his wife. Agatha has rented a cottage in the Norfolk village of Fryfam to get away from James Lacey, a cold fish of a man with whom she is desperately in love (or lust). Her friend Charles comes down to help her out, but she doesn’t recognise his good qualities compared to James. Nevertheless, the two of them solve the riddle, there is a brief moment of lethal danger, and everything ends more or less happily. The book is clearly part of a series whose connecting thread is Agatha’s love life, but that’s treated as superficially as the crime story. Mildly amusing, if you let your attention wander a bit. Not nearly as good as the Hamish books. ** (2003)

Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday (1943)

     Stefan Zweig. The World of Yesterday (1943) I picked this up at a yard sale, and have read the preface, chapter 1 and parts of chapter 2. Chapter 1 is an interesting survey of Viennese life around the turn of the century, when the “better classes” of the Hapsburg Empire (and indeed all of Europe) were enjoying the last few decades of a secure and pleasant life. That Zweig seems oblivious to the actual conditions of the working classes that supported this petit-bourgeois lifestyle (one that was also enjoyed by the aristocracy, actually) is symptomatic: he loves grand generalisations, which no doubt express his impressions accurately, but don’t tell us much about what was really happening.
     For what was happening was of course the working out of ideas that would cause revolutions and the overthrow of the old order. Europe sleepwalked into the First World War, and Zweig seems unable to accept the fact that the ideals that he espouses (centred around personal freedom) were largely irrelevant to these events. I’ve not read any of his other work – he seems to have had a small reputation as a historian of ideas and literature – and I probably won’t. I may read a few more pages of this work, but there are other books I want to read first.
     Zweig’s talent seems to consist mostly of making accepted platitudes sound profound, which was no doubt a comfort to his readers. His childhood reminiscences have some value as a record of the way life felt before the First World War, but the absence of concrete details unfortunately robs them of real interest. One has to have some prior knowledge in order to understand Zweig’s generalities, which is always a bad sign. * (2003)

James Churchward. The Lost Continent of Mu (1959)

     James Churchward. The Lost Continent of Mu (1959, but published earlier) Churchward is a crank. He believes that there was a continent in the Pacific Ocean that sank some 20,000 years ago, and he jackdaws facts from all over to support this thesis, as well as inventing all kinds of “explanations” to account for the phenomena for which he has no facts. Wonderfully silly stuff, but I fear (after a google on the title) that there are lots of people who believe it. A goldmine for writers of fantasy.
     Churchward also believes in reincarnation, the special creation of humanity (with a soul, of course, which is the only “real life” on Earth), planes of existence, and the superiority of the white race. Besides reincarnation, he also believes that all modern religions are corruptions of the original, pure religion of mankind by a scoundrelly caste of priests who want to enslave people. And so on.
     There is no clear line of argument, but much assertion of “incontrovertible” facts as conclusions. He reproduces what he claims are “glyphs” and “vignettes” from old clay tablets and stone sculptures. These, he says, are really a form of writing, and guess who knows how to read them? As I said, wonderfully silly. It belongs with the class of writings about Atlantis (which Churchward mentions in passing as a colony of Mu) and The Chariots of the Gods. I can see the attraction of such pseudo-archeology, but it's depressing to think that so many people feel the need to believe it. * (2003)

Edited 2026-05-26

Lillian O’Donnell. A Wreath for the Bride (1990)

     Lillian O’Donnell. A Wreath for the Bride (1990) A romance built around a mystery. Three women are killed shortly after or before their weddings, so their husbands are the prime suspects. But Gwenn Ramadge, going on nothing more than a vague hunch, connects the three murders and unmasks the murderer. Along the way she meets Her Man, a pleasant cop by name of Len Sackler. The style is typically romantic, with constant references to clothes and hair, and vague gestures in the direction of police procedural, supported by copious use of technical terms when they aren’t needed. The plot almost falls flat, some essential clues are deliberately withheld, and there are a few careless mistakes. I won’t be reading another by this writer. *½ (2003)