Cookery and Crime - Venetian Style

The return of the Bucentaur to the Molo on Ascension Day,
by Canaletto shows an 18th century view of Venice.

I’m a vegetarian, and whilst I do cook meat for people, it takes a lot to make me feel that I’d like to eat it – but that’s exactl what Donna Leon’s Wilful Behaviour did. Now I know it may seem strange to write about food when reviewing a detective novel, but eating and drinking looms large in the life of Venetian policeman Commissario Guido Brunetti, and the food sounds so wonderful it cannot be ignored.

For example, early on in the novel Leon tells us:

In keeping with the change in season, Paola had made rissotto di zucca and into it at the last minute had tossed slivers of grated ginger, its sharp bite softened to amiability by the chunk of butter and the grated parmigiano that had chased it into the pot. The mingled tastes drove all dread of Raffi’s music from Brunetti’s mind, and the chicken breast grilled with sage and white wine that followed replaced that music with what Brunetti thought must be the sound of angels’ singing.

The Brdge of Sighs.

I just love the description of the ginger ‘softened to amiability’, and I can taste the flavours of the pumpkin risotto, and smell the chicken as it cooks. Then there’s the Braeburn, slice of Montasio, and glass of Calvados which Brunetti has to follow. It’s the exactitude of the menu that I enjoy: this is not any old apple, cheese or brandy - they are specific varieties, and excellent varieties at that. And the theme of special food continues when Brunetti tells his wife Paola ‘I will cover you in diamonds the size of walnuts, place pearls as white as truffles at your feet, pluck emeralds as large as kiwi fruit’.

Another day when Brunetti goes home for lunch he finds Paola has

... bought an entire sea bass and baked it with fresh artichokes, lemon juice and rosemary. With it she served a platter the size of an inner tube filed with tiny roast potatoes, also lightly sprinkled with rosemary. Then, to clear the palate, a salad of rucola and radicchio. They finished with baked apples. 

Life is obviously different and more leisurely in Venice. Can you imagine a British policeman (or anyone else for that matter) having the time to go home for a mid-day feast like that, cooked from fresh ingredients, and followed by a glass of Grappa?

And evening meals are just as wonderful. On one occasion, after a starter of spinach and ricotta crepes, Brunetti watches

... an enormous frying pan filled with stewed rabbit with what looked to him, as she set it down in the centre of the table, like olives. “And walnuts?’ he asked, pointing to some small tan chunks that lay on the top..

In it is some celery ‘for the taste’ and the ‘usual spices’, and as he eats Brunetti tries to decide if Paola has added bay leaf as well as rosemary. In addition there is a ‘platter of small roasted potatoes and zucchini cooked with thin slices of almonds’ and a sip of plum liquor after the meal.

A Venetian vaporetto, or water bus.

Food and drink are just as important to other characters. A doctor recommends linden tea and honey to help a murder victim’s flatmate recover from shock, and while talking to the police the girl remembers how the dead student sometimes brought home cookies, or cake with almonds in it.

This almost obsessive detail about food and drink is present in all the Brunetti books I’ve read, and is very much part of the Commissario’s character. I adore Brunetti because he’s so reassuringly normal and human. Unlike many fictional detectives he’s not a flawed human being battling his own deep-set psychological problems: he’s well read, intelligent, sensitive, loves his wife and children, is loyal to his friends, and enjoys the good things of life, not just fine food and drink, but flowers, beautiful paintings, and a sunny day. His son and daughter bicker about silly things, while he and Paola disagree on many issues, but obviously love each other. He is, above all, an honourable man, who sticks to his principles and is not afraid to stand up for what he believes is right – not always easy in a Venice where corruption seems to be commonplace.

Views of the city are part of the charm of the books. Brunetti travels the canals by vaporetto and walks through streets and squares, giving us glimpses of churches, bridges, the Arsenale, a stone relief of a turbaned merchant leading his camel.

Where, you may ask, is the crime in all this? Well, the crime is there, as much a part of Brunetti’s life as his family and the city itself. This particular novel begins when a student of Brunetti’s wife asks if a person who has died can be pardoned for something they were put on trial for. Brunetti has little to go on, but things take a sinister turn when the girl is stabbed to death, and his investigations reveal a web of deceit and lies stretching back to Italy’s Fascist past, looted works of art, and an old love affair.

Along the way he ponders the nature of truth, beauty and honour, reflects on human nature, and considers the reasons for crime and killing. Now I realise I’ve said very little about his methods, or his relationships with his colleagues and contacts, but that provides me with plenty of scope to write about the wonderful Commissario Guido Brunetti on another occasion. And in the meantime, if you’ve never read one of these books please, please, give them a try – they really are worth it. 

This Book is Bonkers but Brilliant

A book featuring Sherlock Holmes living in retirement in rural Sussex, keeping bees, and taking as his apprentice a stroppy, super-intelligent, American girl of 15, sounds bonkers, especially when you realise is set firmly in the 20th century. It won’t work, I thought. It can’t work. But, amazingly, it does work, and The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R King is very good indeed.

King is a very intelligent writer, who has researched her period (the action mostly takes place during the First World War) and knows her Holmes – the plot is the equal of anything written by Conan Doyle, and is a real nail-biting affair, but I’ll try not to give too much away. The story is recounted by orphaned Mary Russell, who is 15 when she first meets Holmes. Feisty, and independent, her quick wit and intelligence are a match for Holmes’ own mental powers. The pair form an unlikely friendship, and gradually he teaches her about his methods of deduction, and explains the art of disguise (she spends a lot of time dressed as a young lad). Together they solve a case where four hams and the day’s takings are stolen from a local pub, find the cause of a landowner’s mysterious illness, rescue the kidnapped daughter of an American senator.

But there are more serious matters afoot: Holmes is injured when a bomb explodes in a beehive, and Mary, who is now studying at Oxford, also find her life is threatened. As the two sleuths embark on a chase to find who is responsible, their adversary always seems to be one step ahead, but when they finally discover the identity of their attacker a shocking secret is uncovered, revealing hidden links with an old enemy. The story is fast paced with plenty of action, moving from the Sussex Downs to Oxford, London, the isolated Welsh countryside, and Palestine. However, there’s enough mental puzzling to keep you guessing about the outcome, as well as a plethora of quotes and allusions on a range of topics, including religion, mathematics and philosophy.

One of Sydney Paget's illutsrations for Arthur Conan Doyle's
Sherlock |Holmes stories , showing Holmes (right) and
Dr Watson.

Mrs Hudson is there, housekeeping for Holmes as she did at 221b Baker Street, and Dr Watson puts in an appearance, older and stouter than he was, but still given to drawing the wrong conclusion. Holmes’ brother Mycroft, his high-level political connections as mysterious ever, also has a key role to play, but Inspector Lestrange, from Scotland Yard, has been replaced by his son, who works alongside Holmes.

Oddly enough, Holmes’ retirement to the country, is not as ridulous as it initially sounds. As far as the bees go, studying their behaviour patterns and social structure would, I think, provide a perfect interest for Holmes with his obsessive eye for detail and accuracy. It is, somehow, in keeping with his character. And the move to a cottage in the country is just as plausible if you believe the aging detective has become disillusioned with humanity. But as the book progresses it becomes obvious that he is still called on to solve crimes and that he also undertakes some kind of covert intelligence work.. His mental faculties are as strong as they were, he is still a master of disguise, his network of spies and informants is as reliable as ever, and his ‘bolt holes’ provide a safe hideaway at a moment’s notice – which made me wonder if his ‘retirement’ is just a ruse enabling him keep a low profile. King makes him more humane than he appears in Conan Doyle’s stories, but manages to preserve the original characterisation, whilst altering it in a credible way – after all, people do change over the years.  

I don’t always like prequels or sequels written by authors themselves, let alone those penned by other writers, but I make an exception for this. I really enjoyed it, and it left me wanting to read the rest of the series.

Haunting Horrors of WWI

So much has been written – and continues to be written – about the First World War that sometimes it’s difficult knowing what to say about a book, especially when the volume in question has become a classic, but Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth remains one of the most definitive accounts of the war that decimated the lives of a generation.

In the immediate aftermath Bright Young Things partied as I there were no tomorrow, for nothing seemed to matter any longer. They drank and danced and took drugs to forget what they’d seen and heard, to dull the grief for those who had gone and, perhaps, to kill the fear that death and destruction lay just around the corner, and there were no longer any certainties in life. Many artists and writers seem to have viewed life in a similar way, living for the moment, doing what they wanted, and pushing the boundaries in their artistic and private lives and using their wartime experiences as the basis for their work.

But Vera Brittain was one of the people who hoped a better world would evolve from the slaughter and desolation, and she poured her energies into campaigning for peace, in a bid to ensure there would never again be such a terrible conflict. And, while authors like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Graves wrote unforgettable fiction about the war, she wrote an autobiography which contains some of the most haunting – and moving – descriptions about the horrors of WWI that you are ever likely to read.

Her book covers the period from 1900 to 1925, and there are tremendous contrasts between the war years, and what happened before and after. She had a sheltered and privileged upbringing, and overcame family opposition to gain a place at Oxford at a time when women were still struggling to be considered as serious scholars. However, a year later, in 1915, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) and spent the rest of the war nursing in military hospitals in London, Malta, and close to the front line in France.

Her fiancé, brother, and two other close male friends were all killed, and her description of conditions in the hospitals, and the terrible injuries suffered by the men, and the grief and anguish of those who survived, is still shocking.  Almost a century has elapsed since the outbreak of the First World War, but the passing of time has done nothing to lessen the impact, and Brittain’s words moved me to tears, as well as evoking rage and pity.

As the war progresses notions of idealism, patriotism and glory are blown to shreds, just like the men who died on the battlefields of France. In March 1918, ‘standing in a newly created circle of hell’ she gazes:

... half-hypnotized, at the disheveled beds, the stretchers on the floor, the scattered boots and piles of muddy khaki, the brown blankets turned back from smashed limbs bound to splints by filthy blood-stained bandages. Beneath each stinking wad of sodden wool and gauze an obscene horror waited for me – and all the equipment I had for attacking it in this ex-medical ward was one pair of forceps standing in a potted-meat glass half full of methylated spirit. 

Part of the  military camp and hospital
 at Etaples, where Vera Brittain was based
for a time during WWI.

She manages to get some medical supplies from the stores, a sister arrives to help and they cope, sending newly bandaged men to be shipped back to England and laying out the dead ‘too hurried to be reverent’. For nearly a month, she says, the camp resembled a Gustave Doré illustration to Dantes’ Inferno:

By day, a thudding crescendo in the distance, by night sharp flashes of fire in the sky, told us that the war was already close upon their heels. Nearer at hand, a ceaseless and deafening road roar filled the air. Motor lorries and ammunition wagons cashed endlessly along the road; trains with reinforcements thundered all day up the line, or lumbered down more slowly with their heavy freight of wounded. Even the stretcher cases came to us in their trench-stained khaki, with only the clothing round the wound roughly torn away; often their congealed blood fastened them firmly to the canvas, and we had to cut it before we could get them free.

There is no time to tidy the wards, for the work is never finished, as one convoy replaces another, and she is glad not to be nursing German prisoners any longer, for she feels ‘social tact’ would be too difficult on both sides.  Elsewhere she tells of the effects of mustard gas in its early stages, when she could see:

...  the poor things burnt and blistered all over, with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes – sometimes temporally (sic}, sometimes permanently – all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke. The only thing one can say is that such severe cases don’t last long; either they die soon or else improve- usually the former... 

Part of the Etapes cemetery and monument..

Overall, it’s a harrowing read, but it’s not all as dark and grim as you might think. There’s a touching moment when Brittain picks a pink geranium from the grave of a young soldier, and sends it, carefully wrapped, to his mother. And, despite the horror, and the grief and pity, there are comic moments, jokes are shared, friendships formed and there is occasional time for enjoyment - in Malta she admires the profusion of wild flowers and attends the opera.

In a way the final part of the book, charting Brittain’s life after the war, is almost unnecessary – or, perhaps, it should have been another book altogether.  For when the war ends she cannot celebrate or feel joy. It is too late for her, she says, as those she loved have gone, and her past life has vanished with them and she adds: “The War was over; a new age was beginning; but the dead were dead and would never return.”

This was posted for the War Through the Generations WWI Challenge - click on the picture to find out more.

The Nine Tailors

The opening of The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L Sayers, has to be one of the most atmospheric of any novel. Here we are in the wintry, bleak, isolated East Anglian fens with Lord Peter Wimsey:

Coming a trifle too fast across the bridge, blinded by the bitter easterly snowstorm, he had overshot the road and plunged down the side of the dyke into the deep ditch beyond, where the black spikes of a thorn hedge stood bleak and unwelcoming in the glare of the headlights. Right and left, before and behind, the fen lay shrouded. It was past four o’clock and New Year’s Eve; the snow that had fallen all day gave back a glimmering greyness to a sky like lead.

He and his man Bunter set off to seek help.

They wrapped their coats about them and turned their faces to the wind and snow. To left of them, the drain ran straight as a rule could make it, black and sullen, with steep bank shelving down to its slow, unforgiving waters. To their right was the broken line of the sunken hedge, with, here and there, a group of poplars or willows. They tramped on in silence, the snow beating on their eyelids. At the end of a solitary mile the gaunt shape of a windmill loomed up upon the farther bank of the drain, but no bridge led to it, and no light showed.

They are rescued by the Rector of  Fenchurch St. Paul, who puts them up while the car is repaired, and Lord Peter sees in the New Year by replacing a sick campanologist so a marathon bell ringing session can go ahead. Before continuing on his journey he hears the story of 20-year-old crime involving a missing emerald necklace, a jail-break and a murder…

Months later the body of a man with his hands cut off is unearthed while a grave is being dug. The corpse is recent, but no-one knows who the man is, or how he died – so the Rector writes to Lord Peter appealing for help. The plot is complex and there are dead ends and red herrings aplenty as Lord Peter tries to unravel the truth. Finally a coded message is cracked, an old mystery solved, and the identity of the dead man is revealed, but the cause of his death and the name of his murderer remain unknown. However, when Lord Peter makes a third visit to the village the stage is set for the final, shocking explanation during an apocalyptic flood.

Dorothy L Sayers

Wimsey himself is a wonderful creation, with his slightly foppish and diffident manner masking a keen intellect, but it is the bells which dominate: Sabaoth, Gaude, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas, and Tailor Paul. From the outset they are faintly sinister and disturbing as they sound the death-knell of the old year. Then we learn that according to local legend, Tailor Paul has been responsible for two deaths. And there’s a premonition of danger when Hezekiah, the oldest bell ringer, warns: “They bells du know well who’s a-haulin’ of ’un. Wunnerful understandin’ they is. They can’t abide a wicked man. They lays in wait to overthrow ’un.”

Wimsey feels ‘the patient watchfulness of the bells’ and stands beneath them.

There he stood for a moment, gazing up into their black mouths while his eyes grew accustomed to the semi-darkness. Presently their hooded silence oppressed him. A vague vertigo seized him. He felt as though they were slowly collapsing together and coming down upon him. Spell-bound, he spoke their names: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul. A soft and whispering echo seemed to start from the walls and die stealthily among the beams. Suddenly he shouted in a great voice: “Tailor Paul!” and he must somehow have hit upon a harmonic of the scale, for a faint brazen note answered him, remote and menacing, from overhead.

Apparently, Sayers kept meticulous notes on her research into change ringing, and the novel has many details about the history and customs of bell ringing, while the terminology and lists of instructions have a mesmerising, magical quality – like the strange far-off places of the shipping forecast, or the peculiarly named teams you only know from the football results. In addition, Sayers includes quotations about the tradition, and her chapter headings reference the techniques involved in this ancient art, as well as reflecting the action.

Like all her plots, The Nine Tailors is as well constructed as a good cryptic crossword – and as fiendishly difficult to solve. I’d read it before, and the ending still took me by surprise. But it’s a ‘slow burn’, for Sayers takes her time setting the scene and, like the pattern of the bells, the story cannot be hurried along, but must move through various permutations before the final note is sounded.

Posted for Cornflower Book Group - just click on the picture above to see what other people thought of this book.

Love and Secrets of a King and his Mistress

Sex, love, murder, revenge, betrayal, ambition and hidden secrets are key components of all good sagas about feuding families – and England’s Plantagenet Kings provide enough drama for an entire library of such books. So here’s a round-up of three, which I haven’t got round to writing about before now.  All are set in the turbulent 14th century, with much of the action taking place during the reign of Edward III.

King Edward II

First up is The Wheel of Fortune, by Susan Howatch, in which she uses her trademark technique of taking historic characters and re-interpreting their story in a different time and place. In this case she recreates Edward III as Robert, the head of an upper-class family living on the Gower in Wales. She follows their fortunes as they scheme and quarrel, seeking control of Moonacre, the beautiful old family home (a representation of the English throne), until Hal (aka Bolingbroke) finally restores order. Howatch sets her story in the period between the end of the 19th century and the 1960s, with various sections written from the viewpoint of different people (another of her regular devices). The great figures of the day are all there, though it has to be said some are not easy to spot, because they are very different to the way I imagined them, and to their historical context.

Writers have always taken old stories and given them a new twist, but personally I didn’t find this particular tale very convincing, and while it is interesting to see the action from different perspectives, you are never with any one character for long enough to feel you know them, and they don’t develop to the point where you begin to understand the reasons for their actions. On several occasions I had to flick back through the pages to check who people were, and refresh my memory about their relationship with others. And I was puzzled as to why some historical characters kept their own, or very similar, names while others were renamed. I thought it was unnecessarily confusing. 

Geoffrey Chaucer pictured as a pilgrim
in  the Ellesmere Manuscript, an
early edition of Canterbury Tales. 
(Huntington Library, California). 

Emma Campion’s The King’s Mistress and Vanora Bennett’s The People’s Queen both focus on Alice Perrers, who was the mistress of Edward III towards the end of his life, and was blamed for many of the country’s ills. Traditionally, she is portrayed as a woman who was not particularly good-looking, but had an attractive voice and magnetic personality, and used her sexual powers to manipulate the aging king – she was even accused of using witchcraft to enslave him.

But recent research has uncovered new information, which both these authors have used to throw fresh light on her character, presenting a strong, intelligent, independent woman who secured a good life for herself at time when few options were available to women. According to them she amassed – and managed – a huge portfolio of property, some of which she kept after her fall from grace, and she did return to court eventually, and was on friendly terms with Edward’s successor, Richard II.

Central to Campion’s story is the theory that Edward II was not killed, but lived in exile. Sadly, however, it was one of those books where the idea is more intriguing than the end product. She is an experienced writer (having published other medieval novels as Candace Robb), and has written some fascinating pieces about her inspiration and research for this novel, but it remains stilted and never quite comes to life.

Bennett’s book was by far and away the best, and was very enjoyable. Her Alice seizes life with both hands and emerges as selfish, feisty, intelligent, brave, kindly, humorous – and surprisingly likable. The booked is packed with detail about medieval food, clothes, medicine and home décor: you can almost smell the wet wool and the sour wine. Bennett touches on the role of medieval women, corruption at court, financial scandal in the city and the political unrest of the day. I’m not sure I bought the friendship between Alice and Wat Tyler, but it was in keeping with character Bennett has created, and she was the only author who successfully placed her characters in a credible context for their time.

John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster

Campion and Bennett both have Geoffrey Chaucer as a friend of Alice – plausible, since they moved in the same circles. Many other characters appear in both these books (and some in all three) but the treatment varies from author to author. Curiously, however, the dominant figure in each novel, although he is never the central character, is John of Gaunt, a younger son of Edward III. In all three books he is charismatic, devious and shrewd, with a complicated personal life – two wives died before he eventually married his long-time mistress Katherine Swynford. He remains an enigma: the motives for his actions are never clear. But with each book it was he who remained in my memory long after I’d read the final page.