Ruth Rendell. From Doon with Death (1964)

     Ruth Rendell. From Doon with Death (1964) First of the Wexfords; it shows Rendell’s fascination with deviant behaviour, her skill at plotting, and her ability to make even outlandish motivations seem plausible. Neither Wexford nor Burden are fully developed here (their personal lives form a perfunctory backdrop to the puzzle and its solution), but their basic characters are clear enough and their later development is consistent with what we see here: a stolidly conservative temperament crossed with the tolerance that comes from wide experience in Wexford, and a narrower emotional range in Burden, who can still be surprised as well as shocked by the vagaries of human nature. The reader solves the puzzle well before the coppers do, but Rendell’s skill at trailing red herrings across the 'tec's path is already evident. *** (2004)

Ngaio Marsh. Death in Ecstasy (1936)

 

     Ngaio Marsh. Death in Ecstasy (1936) Bathgate, bored, walks in on a murder in a weird sect. Alleyn (pre-Troy) and the imperturbable Fox tease out the threads of truth, discover the usual almost-impossible method of murder, and find the murderer. A classic puzzle from the classic period of English puzzle mysteries. Marsh, like Christie, moves her story forward by means of dialogue; unlike Christie, she invents characters with some substance to them, but she sticks pretty close to formula all the same. In later books, she exploits the social comedy aspects of crime fiction, and develops her characters in some depth; here, she is still finding out what she can do with the mystery form. Aunt Rosemary gave me this book to fill out my collection; it was printed in 1941, on cheap newsprint that has held up remarkably well, and the author’s note indicates she had written only half a dozen or so of the series that later earned her a comfortable income and enabled her to devote herself to fostering theatre in New Zealand. **½ (2004)

Gregory Benford. Matter’s End (1995)

     Gregory Benford. Matter’s End (1995) A collection of Benford’s short stories, some dating back to the 60s, and most featuring straight SF, done with an engineer’s and physicist’s knowledge. Benford, as befits a modern physicist, likes to play with reality: in several of his stories realities turn in on themselves and fold over one another. He also manages to give his characters enough solidity that we believe the society which shapes them. The title story raises some nice philosophical issues about the relationship of the observer (us) to the universe, and how our supposed knowledge of reality may in fact shape it. I didn’t know much of Benford before reading this collection; I will look at a couple of his novels. ** to **** (2004)

Sparkle Hayter. Nice Girls Finish Last (1996)

     Sparkle Hayter. Nice Girls Finish Last (1996) A mystery of sorts, told in a coyly naughty way that lives down to the author’s name. Forgettable. (2004) Update 2013: And totally forgotten. the only reason I include this note is because I wrote it.

Edgar Wallace. The Twister (1928)

     Edgar Wallace. The Twister (1928) OK, so I read another one. The title character seems to be a villain, but the denouement (after a cleaner plot than usual for Wallace, involving business and diamonds as well as crooked chemistry and stupid crooks) reveals him as a true blue gentleman, despite his foreign origins. Wallace also avoids the more blatant racism and jingoism of his books (or else it’s been edited out to allay modern squeamishness), but his adolescent treatment of love and “honour” mars an otherwise enjoyable adventure fantasy. ** (2004)

R. D. Wingfield. Hard Frost (1995)

 

R. D. Wingfield. Hard Frost (1995) Frost has to tackle several cases at once (what else is new), and keep Mullet and an envious ambitious colleague at bay. He succeeds despite himself, as usual. The cases seem related, which tangles the investigation into an almost untyable knot. A couple of cases are solved inadvertently, and only because Mullet shoves off all the picayune stuff onto Frost. These picayune cases also provide the key to the child murder that propels and unifies the story. The TV Frost is a nicer, more likeable man than the one in the book, with a more interesting love life. Still, these books do the job they are intended for: they provide a way to while away the hours of international air travel (what a misnomer for being stuck in an aluminum alloy tube with a couple hundred fellow sufferers for half a day or so). **½ (2004)

Update 2021 April 19: I reread this book yesterday, a page turner, but not Wingfield's best. Structured like a TV script, with scenes moving the plots forward at more or less the same pace. Frost is a much rougher character than in the TV series. The other characters are 1.5 dimensional, with Mullet and Cassidy nasty careerists and little else. As with many second-rate fictions, dramatisation improves the story: script writers and actors can add the visual clues that the fiction writer has to include as asides and  descriptive detail. In a complex multi-plot tale such as this, those touches could bloat the book beyond enduring. I now rate the book a mere **. 

Ronald Lewin Hitler’s Mistakes (1984)

      Ronald Lewin Hitler’s Mistakes (1984) Lewin had a good reputation as a military historian, so it’s not surprising that this book focusses on Hitler’s mistakes as a “warlord”, which were many, all derived from a hubristic belief in his own military skills, compounded by his impatience with and contempt for the professional soldiers who could, if he had left them to fulfill their mission, have won the war for him.
     But the fundamental error was in his conception of the Thousand Year Empire. He conceived of imperial power as pure oppression. Despite his professed admiration for the Roman (and British) empires, and his claim that he had studied their histories, he did not grasp that these successful empires lasted for hundreds of years because they brought law and order, and hence a measure of peace, to the nations they controlled. True, they both suppressed anything that looked like organised opposition or rebellion, but they were more concerned with maintaining order and promoting trade than with establishing totalitarian rule. Both also afforded the subjugated people the advantages of citizenship, the Romans explicitly, the British implicitly by assimilation, especially of the conquered ruling classes.
     In contrast, Hitler’s vision was that of raw power, exercised by the Aryan colonists over the Untermenschen of the conquered lands. Lewin, following other people’s attempts at writing a psychological profile of Hitler, claims that Hitler’s character made it impossible for him to imagine any other form of empire. He was an egotistical, narcissistic psychopath, incapable of conceiving of anything beyond his self; but that self was empty at its core. The external trappings of power, even when he despised the toadies who flattered his ego, were all that sustained Hitler. He existed only as reflected by his environment; and so he had to build an environment that assured him that he was the most important object in the world, at its very centre, the hub that held together the wheel that turned and turned around him.
     The misconception of imperial power as oppression was one of the two primary socio-economic mistakes. The other was the eradication of the Jews, which from a purely practical point of view was stupid, for Hitler thereby eliminated a vast pool of labour and talent. It was conceptually stupid, too, because of course the Jews did not have the power and influence that Hitler ascribed to them. His belief in Jewish control in a way was a distorted reflection of his self-concept as the man of iron will, who made things happen merely by willing them. That it was a moral horror compounded the error, for it gave his enemies one more reason to attack him.
     Reading Lewin’s carefully laid out case for the errors that cost Hitler the war, one is left wondering how he could impose his will on a nation, and on a cadre of professional soldiers who obeyed him despite his obvious incompetence. How could such a stupid man get so many smart people to do what he wanted?
     One reason, in my opinion the main reason, was that he surrounded himself with thugs and psychopaths and then set them at odds with each other, thus ensuring that they would do whatever they thought he wanted merely in order to gain and hold power and the spoils of power. This method also prevented anyone from building a power base from which to claim the succession. But in preventing anything resembling a succession plan, Hitler also undermined his vision of a millennial empire. Even if he had won the war and established Nazi rule over Eastern Europe, the thugs and psychopaths would have engaged in ruinous internecine warfare as soon as Hitler died. The empire would have disintegrated almost immediately.
     Several times while reading this book, I was reminded of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. The state of constant “competition” described by Screwtape as the natural order of things (in contrast to the Enemy’s maundering on about Love) is, I think, a perfect image of the world that Hitler created. It also explains why that world was doomed to end in abysmal failure. The tragedy is that while it lasted, it cost millions of lives; and destroying it cost millions of lives more.
     Lewin also mentions that Hitler was a coward. He visited a front only once. In 1944 he travelled to consult with the generals commanding the defence against the Allied advance in France. When an Allied bomber dropped a few bombs a couple kilometres from where Hitler and his generals were holed up, Hitler promptly turned around and went back to Berlin.
     A good book worth reading for the lessons it teaches. If you want to found an empire, do the opposite of what Hitler did, and you’ll likely succeed. A few too many typos mar an otherwise excellent text. ***