wot i red on my hols by alan robson (augustus imperatorius)

Simultaneously Eight and Six

Galaxies Like Grains of Sand might be a collection of short stories by Brian W. Aldiss. On the other hand, it might not…

The book was first published in the UK in 1959. It was called The Canopy of Time and it was presented as just a set of short stories some of which went on to become quite famous in their own right and at least one of which (Who Can Replace a Man?) appeared with alarming regularity in anthologies and collections. The American edition of the book appeared in 1960 and was called Galaxies Like Grains of Sand (Aldiss’ preferred title) and like its British counterpart it was just a story collection. Interestingly though, it omitted some stories that appeared in the British edition and added some extra stories in their place.

And there things languished for nearly seventy years until Gollancz published the book again using Aldiss’ preferred title and with all the stories collected together for the very first time. In addition, the stories are now linked to each other with quite a lot of previously unseen interstitial material which shows clearly that Aldiss considered the stories to be fragments of a history which taken together tell one long tale about the destruction and redemption of the human race across millennia.

That was all the fashion back in the mid-twentieth century of course. Asimov did it with his Foundation trilogy which, like Aldiss’ book was simply a set of short stories with linking material to provide continuity. And Heinlein was working hard on his Future History stories as well. Clearly Aldiss could see no reason why he shouldn’t do the same thing.

I have no idea why the book was only ever published in an abridged form. But it’s very nice to see it back in print at long last in the form that Aldiss always wanted it to be published. It’s a shame that he himself never lived to see it…

How well has it stood the test of time? Very well indeed – Aldiss was always a much better writer than his SF contemporaries, much more in control of his material and with a deeper understanding of human psychology. Reading these stories now as one continuous pseudo-novel that dips in and out of a coherent multi-millennial history, and paired with the deeper insights provided by the linking material somehow makes the whole thing very much greater than the sum of its parts. The individual stories can still largely be read without wincing (no visits from the suck fairy here) and the overall theme continues to make convincing sense. It’s pretty much perfect.

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Steffanie Holmes writes humorous cosy detective stories with a supernatural twist and, just to keep the interest going, her novels also have some of the most explicitly detailed and steamy sex scenes that it’s ever been my pleasure to read. In other words, her books have something to appeal to every possible taste possessed by every possible reader. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing at all – I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of the ones I’ve read so far.

You’re So Dead To Me is the first novel in her Grimdale Graveyard series. Ever since she had an accident when she was a small child, Bree has been able to see ghosts. She has spent a lot of time travelling the world, soaking up experiences and chatting with ghosts, but now she has returned to her home town of Grimdale to cat sit for her parents while they are off enjoying what may well be their last holiday together – her father is seriously ill and they want to make as much as they can of what little time might remain to them.

Bree renews her relationships with the three ghosts who looked after her when she was a child. There’s Plautus, the slightly psychotic Roman soldier who loves watching The Great British Bake Off on TV, Edward, the decadent, aristocratic prince of the blood who has a huge sliver of glass stuck in his bottom (don’t ask, Edward finds it far too embarrassing to explain), and Ambrose, the blind Victorian gentleman adventurer who wrote a book that was never published. In the years that Bree and the ghosts have been apart, all of them have grown older and wiser and Bree is starting to find them infuriatingly attractive, though it’s not clear (yet) how that attraction can be consummated since, being ghosts, they are ectoplasmically insubstantial and have a nasty tendency to fall through solid objects like walls, floors, and Bree.

In order to keep herself occupied, Bree takes a job giving guided tours of the historic Grimdale Cemetery where lots of important and interesting people are buried. Unfortunately, on her first day on the job she stumbles across the corpse of a murder victim and his somewhat distraught ghost. The ghost appeals to Bree to solve his murder so that he can rest in peace. What’s a poor girl to do?

It has to be admitted that Bree herself is more than a little dim – she barely has two brain cells to rub together and they are so busy fighting each other for third place that there’s nothing much left over for more intellectual pursuits like solving murders. Nevertheless, she does her best and more by good luck than good judgement, she eventually manages to bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion. And along the way she also gets a lot of great sex.

Normally I wouldn’t give this sort of nonsense the time of day, but the writing is such an absolute delight that I simply couldn’t help myself. The book is funny, it’s clever, it’s witty and sometimes it’s even subtle. As I asked at the beginning, what could possibly go wrong?

One of the places that Bree goes to for help in her quest is the Nevermore Bookshop. It turns out that this bookshop is also the setting of another series by Steffanie Holmes. The bookshop itself is very old with at least one rather odd room that might be a portal into older (and newer) versions of the shop itself. One thing is inarguable – the shop has the ability to bring to life characters from literary works. Currently the shop is owned (well, administered at least) by Heathcliff Earnshaw, the Byronic anti-hero from Wuthering Heights. Assisting him are Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime and nemesis of Sherlock Holmes, and Quoth, the Raven from the eponymous poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Quoth has the nasty habit of shitting copiously on customers who quote from Poe’s poem while shopping, a habit Heathcliff approves of because it keeps the customers away. He doesn’t like customers…

In the first book in the Nevermore Bookshop series, A Dead and Stormy Night, we are introduced to Mina Wilde (yes, the surname has clearly been deliberately chosen), a strikingly intelligent person who turned down the offer of an Oxbridge scholarship in order to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer. She and her best friend Ashley get a job with a fashion house in New York and the future looks rosy. But then Mina is diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease which will inevitably send her blind. It will be the end of her fashion career if her colleagues learn about her illness, so she does her best to keep it secret. But Ashley spills the beans and all of Mina’s dreams come crashing down. Her best friend is now her ex-best friend and Mina returns home to live with her mum, and to try to come to terms with her encroaching blindness. Somehow she manages to wangle herself a job at the Nevermore Bookshop (she has always loved books and much of her childhood was spent happily browsing the shelves of Nevermore). But then catastrophe strikes – Ashley is found horribly murdered on the floor of the bookshop and naturally Mina is the prime suspect. She has very clear means, motive and opportunity for the murder. With the help of Heathcliff, Moriarty and Quoth, Mina sets out to solve the murder and clear her name. Along the way she grows very close, both emotionally and sexually, with the three bookshop employees and she starts to learn some of the deeper, darker secrets of the bookshop itself.

Of Mice and Murder is the second book in the Nevermore Bookshop series. A group of ladies in the village have formed themselves into The Banned Book Club – a book club specifically dedicated to reading and discussing books that have been banned for one reason or another. One of the group members is Mrs Ellis, Mina’s favourite teacher from her schooldays, so when the group lose their meeting room, Mina is more than happy to volunteer to host the group at the Nevermore Bookshop.

But then, one by one, the members of the book club start to die. Someone in the village, it seems, does not approve of the club’s aims and is more than willing to commit murder in order to stop them from pursuing their interests. And so once again, Mina, Heathcliff, Moriarty and Quoth find themselves closely involved in a murder investigation. Will they find the murderer before Mrs Ellis joins the list of the dead? Of course they will.

The Nevermore books are enormous fun. They are stuffed full of literary references and jokes with, of course, lots of messy sex to stick the pages together. It seems fairly clear to me that they are also the author’s favourites – not only has Steffanie Holmes written a lot of books in the series itself, but the fact that the bookshop, and Mina of course, also turn up in other non-Nevermore stories suggests that Steffanie Holmes enjoys writing about the shop rather a lot. But the most telling fact of all, which brings the books very close to home, is that like Mina, Steffanie Holmes herself is legally blind.

Steffanie Holmes is New Zealand author. Her web site explains that she was born in the Hawke’s Bay (where I now live) but these days she, her husband and her cats live on a lifestyle block in the Kaipara district on the North Western coast of the North Island. Steffanie suffers from a genetic condition called achromatopsia which means she has poor depth perception, extreme light sensitivity, and she cannot see any colours. She is also severely short-sighted. Interestingly, she has chosen to give Mina retinitis pigmentosa rather than the achromatopsia that she herself suffers from because, as she says on her web site, it's a more well-known condition and and is therefore easier to explain to sighted readers.

Steffanie Holmes is a bloody good writer. I recommend her books very highly.

* * * *

I’m somewhat ambivalent about Ross Greenwood’s novel Death on Cromer Beach. I think I might have enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons and the bits I didn’t like may well have been better than I thought they were.

I started reading the novel out of a sense of nostalgia. Cromer is a seaside town on the Norfolk coast. For several years in the 1960s my family spent our summer holidays at Cromer and I remember the place fondly. I was actually quite surprised at how many memories came flooding back as I read Ross Greenwood’s descriptions of the town – the shingly beach, the pier with the theatre at the end of it and, of course the statue of Henry Blogg. Blogg is Cromer’s local hero. He was a lifeboatman and he was the most decorated person in the history of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution because of the enormous number of lives he saved. Henry Blogg’s statue is world famous in Cromer and the statue’s nose is very shiny because of the number of people who, over the years, have rubbed it for luck. I’m one of those people.

The novel starts out very satisfyingly with a beautifully grisly double murder. A lady out walking her dogs comes across two buckets on the beach. Beneath one of the buckets is the severed head of a man. Beneath the other bucket she finds the head of a woman poking out of the sand. The woman has been buried alive, leaving only her head exposed so that she can watch and hear the incoming tide slowly approaching, eventually to flow over her and drown her. And there’s nothing she can do to escape her fate. "Help me," says the buried woman, despairingly when the dog walker finds her.

The dog walker calls the emergency services and tries to dig the woman out. But it is far too late. The rising tide is inexorable and the woman slowly and inevitably succumbs to it…

So far so great. I was hooked. But as the police investigation continues and as more ghastly and macabre deaths occur on Cromer beach I started to become a little disenchanted.

The person in charge of the investigation is Ashley Knight, a woman of a certain age who has just been lumbered with a wet behind the ears assistant called Hector Fade. Ashley has lived in Cromer all her life and is very familiar with the local scene. For no very good reason (or at least for very tenuous reasons that are not at all convincing) she zeros in on a number of the local low-lifes who, she firmly believes, know more than they are willing to tell about what has been happening on the beach. Initially at least, her approach to these people almost amounts to police persecution until finally small cracks in the case start to suggest that she might have been on the right track all along. The complex conspiracy she eventually uncovers turns out to have its origins about thirty years in the past.

I was a bit annoyed to find that her assumptions about the nature of the crime(s) were so correct right from the get go even though there was no real evidence to support what she was thinking. Some people just have all the luck…

I was also less than impressed with Ashley’s relationship with Hector. They have to work closely together so of course it is important that they get to know each other. They do this by holding long conversations which far too quickly become far too intimate as they each reveal a lot of personal information about their backgrounds. It all seems stilted and artificial. Real people don’t talk that way, particularly when they’ve only just met each other. I presume that the author is using the technique as an alternative infodumping mechanism, a way of presenting information without lecturing, but it quickly turns clumsy and unconvincing as the dialogue became more and more ridiculous.

The eventual explanation for the crimes, and the identity of the killer, were both very depressing indeed. The corpses and the protagonists all turn out to have been suffering from a variety of mental illnesses and drug addictions. To that extent the novel certainly shines a very bright light on aspects of our society that are all too often overlooked or brushed under the carpet, but that, by definition, does not make for entertaining reading. Quite the reverse, actually. It’s all very uncomfortable and squirmy and I couldn’t help feeling that the people deserved my sympathy far more than they deserved my condemnation.

* * * *

OxCrimes is an anthology of short stories written by just about every major crime writer you can think of and perhaps a few you can’t. These days I don’t read very many short stories – I much prefer novels – but a friend recommended this one to me and so I gave it a go. By and large it was pretty good. The quality of the stories was a bit variable as you might expect and at least one of the authors cheated slightly – in an afterword to his story An Afternoon Ian Rankin admits that it it was one of the very first things he ever wrote and I have to admit that it reads like a long forgotten bit of juvenilia with no real hint of what Rankin’s writing would become as he matured.

I also have no idea why Neil Gaiman’s story The Case of Death and Honey was included in the collection. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. It was the only story in the book that I gave up on reading.

On the other hand, Anthony Horowitz’s Caught Short was an absolutely brilliant gem of a story.  Who can possibly resist a tale of death and toilets? Clearly it’s a story about life, the universe and everything. I loved every smelly word of it.

As far as I am concerned, these stories represent the high spots and the low spots of the collection. The stories in between were never less than readable and most were enjoyable and sometimes clever. Like most anthologies, OxCrimes is a curate’s egg of a book. But very edible nonetheless.

* * * *

Blood, Rust, and Steel  by Stuart Macbride is the third book in his series about the appallingly repulsive Acting Detective Inspector Roberta Steel, but don’t let that worry you. It works perfectly well as a stand alone novel.

After thirty years of desultory dedication to Police Scotland, Steel is finally preparing to retire. Her wife, Susan, is looking forward to it and is full of ideas as to how Roberta might productively fill her days. Steel herself is not so sure about Susan’s plans – there’s only one thing she knows how to do really well and now the rules and the regulations are taking it away from her.

And then, one day when (as is so often the case) she is catastrophically hungover with "a mariachi band of hobnail-booted scumbags fiesta-ing it up inside her skull" she is called out to a grim discovery. A decomposing body has been found stuffed into a wheelie bin in a lay-by on the A96.

Accompanied by her long-suffering sidekick, DC Stewart (Tufty) Quirrel, Steel finds herself confronting a choking fog, an almost literal murder of crows, and a stench so potent that even her cherry vape can’t cut through it. "Eeek!" to quote Tufty.

But there are other problems brewing on the sidelines. A political protest erupts into violence and a bomb blast that almost brings a premature end to Roberta’s career  and which lands her in hospital for the last few weeks before she retires. While in hospital she experiences a lot of interesting bird related hallucinations which eventually she learns to (almost) ignore.

She finds her retirement very frustrating. There are too many loose ends in her life. And so Roberta rallies a bunch of her "Queen Street Irregulars" in an effort to crack the case and lay her demons to rest.

The book is far too long for its length. Every page is so chock full of Roberta’s characteristic gross-out horribleness(es) that at times it seems as if the investigation is playing second fiddle to an exploration of Roberta’s eccentricities and outrageous behaviours. But strangely I didn’t mind at all because her grotesqueries were so entertaining that I just sat back sniggering to enjoy the ride. The eventual resolution of the mysteries actually seemed rather anti-climactic by comparison with what had gone before, even though it was anything but. And that’s Stuart Macbride’s strength as a writer. He manages to hold your interest even when he’s exploring irrelevancies. Or perhaps I should say especially when he’s exploring irrelevancies.