Atalanta by Jennifer Saint

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Having enjoyed Jennifer Saint’s first two novels, Ariadne and Elektra, I was looking forward to reading her third one, Atalanta. Like the others, it explores the life of a woman from Greek mythology, in this case Atalanta, famous as a hunter, a runner and the only female Argonaut.

Daughter of the King of Arcadia, the baby Atalanta is left to die on a mountain because her father had hoped for a son. Rescued by bears and raised along with their cubs, Atalanta grows up under the watchful eye of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, who later takes her to live amongst the nymphs in the forest. As she reaches adulthood, it is clear that Atalanta possesses special skills in hunting, shooting and running. Elsewhere, Jason is preparing to set out aboard the Argo on his mission to obtain the Golden Fleece from the King of Colchis. With the blessing of Artemis, Atalanta joins the quest, but it won’t be easy to persuade Jason and his men to accept her as a fellow Argonaut.

I won’t go into all the details of the myth here, but Saint incorporates most of the elements that are often associated with Atalanta: the Calydonian boar hunt, her relationship with the Argonaut Meleager, the footrace and the golden apples. I say ‘often’ because, as with many Greek myths, there are different versions of Atalanta’s story. In some, she isn’t mentioned as part of the Argonaut legend at all; in others, she is the daughter of the King of Boeotia rather than Arcadia. I have read about Atalanta before, in Emily Hauser’s For the Winner, and I think overall I preferred that book which was more of a ‘reimagining’ with lots of extra little touches rather than this one which I would describe as a straightforward ‘retelling’. Still, it’s interesting to see how different authors choose to approach the same myth, what they include and leave out and how they interpret the actions and motivations of the characters.

I liked this book more than Elektra, but not as much as Ariadne. I felt that it was a bit slow to get started – the section set in the woods with the nymphs seemed to last forever – but once Atalanta joined the Argonauts on their quest it all became much more compelling. Although romance isn’t a big part of Atalanta’s story, I also enjoyed following her relationships with first Meleager and then Hippomenes and I appreciated the way Saint found a way to retell the myth from a feminist perspective without portraying all of the men in a negative light. And it’s always good to read a book about Greek mythology that doesn’t involve the Trojan War – not that it’s not interesting, but there have been so many Troy novels in the last few years I don’t think there’s really any need for any more.

This is not my favourite Jennifer Saint book, then, but it’s still an interesting read, particularly if you know nothing about Atalanta and her story. Now I’m looking forward to seeing which Greek heroine Saint will write about next.

Thanks to Headline for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Historical Musings #79: The CWA Historical Dagger Longlist 2023

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Welcome to my series of posts on all things historical fiction!

Just a quick post this month as the Crime Writers’ Association revealed the longlists for their 2023 Dagger awards yesterday. I don’t usually follow the CWA awards, but noticed that I had read three of the books longlisted in this year’s Historical Dagger category and this made me curious about the other titles, particularly as I haven’t even heard of some of them!

The Historical Dagger is awarded to ‘the best historical crime novel, first published in the UK in English during the judging period, set in any period up to 50 years prior to the year in which the award will be made’. Here are the twelve books on the 2023 longlist:

The Darkest Sin by DV Bishop
Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards
Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray
The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys by Jack Jewers
The Bookseller of Inverness by SG MacLean
The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola
Death at the Dolphin by Gretta Mulrooney
The Homes by JB Mylet
The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra
Blue Water by Leonora Nattrass
Hear No Evil by Sarah Smith
The Mushroom Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

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Of the three books I have read, two of them – The Clockwork Girl, an atmospheric Gothic novel inspired by the real life case of the ‘Vanishing Children of Paris’ and the 18th century advances in the creation of automata, and Blue Water, a wonderful historical mystery set during a long sea voyage in 1794 – were on my Books of the Year list for 2022. The other, The Bookseller of Inverness, I found interesting for the setting (Scotland in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion) but not a particularly strong mystery.

I know very little about any of the other longlisted books. I probably won’t read Blackstone Fell as I wasn’t all that impressed with the previous Martin Edwards book, Mortmain Hall, but if you’ve read any of the others please let me know what you thought!

The shortlist will be announced on 12th May and the winner on 6th July. More details and the full lists of nominees for all of the other Dagger categories can be found on the CWA website.

The Black Spectacles by John Dickson Carr

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This is only the second book I’ve read by the very prolific John Dickson Carr, who also wrote under several pseudonyms including Carter Dickson. The first one I read was It Walks By Night, one of his Henri Bencolin mysteries, and although I enjoyed it overall, I found the plot too far-fetched and I didn’t much like Bencolin himself. The Black Spectacles, first published in 1939 and recently reissued as a British Library Crime Classic, is from a different series, featuring a different detective – Dr Gideon Fell – so I hoped it would be more to my taste. And it was – I loved it!

The novel is set in the small English village of Sodbury Cross, where a child has died after eating poisoned chocolates. The culprit has not been found, but suspicion has fallen on Marjorie Wells, because she was the one who sent the little boy to the shop to buy chocolates that day. Marjorie’s uncle, Marcus Chesney, believes that most people see the world through ‘black spectacles’, unable to correctly observe what is right in front of their eyes. To prove his point, he decides to stage a performance showing exactly how the real chocolates were substituted with the poisoned ones – and invites Marjorie, her fiancé George Harding and a family friend, Professor Ingram, along to watch. The performance is being filmed with a cine-camera and Marcus has compiled a list of questions to test the observational skills of the three people watching. But when he is found dead, murdered in full view of both the camera and his audience, each of the three witnesses seems to have seen something completely different!

I’ve said that this is a Dr Gideon Fell mystery, but Fell himself doesn’t appear until halfway through the novel. Until that point, the investigations are handled by Inspector Elliot of Scotland Yard, who seems quite competent and thorough…until we discover that he is not being entirely honest with the reader. By the time Fell is brought into the story, most of the clues are in place, but Elliot and the local Sodbury Cross police have failed to interpret them correctly. I’m not surprised they were struggling, because this is a very clever mystery with lots of twists and turns and an ingenious solution. I certainly couldn’t solve it and had to wait for Fell to explain it all, which he does bit by bit as each piece of the puzzle falls into place. I was particularly impressed by a clue involving a clock, which I would never have worked out for myself.

There are so many other things I loved about this book. Carr does an excellent job of capturing the mood and atmosphere of a little English village where the people are trying to come to terms with the discovery that there’s a poisoner in their midst. Some references to real life crimes and poisoning cases are worked into the plot – in particular the case of Christiana Edmunds, who was known as the ‘Chocolate Cream Killer’. I was also fascinated by the descriptions of 1930s film and camera technology, with the recording made of Marcus Chesney’s dramatic scene playing a very important part in the solving of the mystery.

Having enjoyed The Black Spectacles so much, I’m sure I’ll be reading more of the Gideon Fell mysteries soon. You may want to note that this book has also been published in the US as The Problem of the Green Capsule, just in case anyone buys the same book twice!

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household

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Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel, Rogue Male, was the book selected for me in the recent Classics Club Spin. Not knowing much about it, I had added it to my Classics Club list after seeing it included in The Guardian’s Top 10 novels of the 1930s. It sounded very like The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, which I thought was fun, if a bit repetitive, but while there are definitely some similarities, I found Rogue Male a more satisfying book.

The novel opens in 1938 just after our narrator has been caught aiming a gun at the dictator of an unspecified European country. Despite insisting that he wasn’t planning to pull the trigger and was just enjoying the thrill of ‘hunting the biggest game on earth’, the narrator is tortured and thrown over a cliff, where he is left to die. Somehow, he survives and manages to make his way back to London. On his arrival, he discovers that agents of the dictator he’d tried to shoot have followed him to England. Staying in London is obviously now out of the question, so he heads for the Dorset countryside where he is sure his pursuers will never be able to find him.

The identity of the protagonist’s target is kept carefully hidden, with very few clues throughout the novel, but it’s not difficult to guess who it was supposed to be and Household later confirmed that it was Hitler. As the book was published just before the start of World War II, it’s easy to see why he decided to be vague about it. His reasons for also leaving the narrator unnamed are less clear, but it does add an extra layer of mystery to the novel; while the narrator hides himself from the enemy agents, he also reveals very little of himself to the reader, leaving us wondering who he really is and what his true motives were for carrying out the assassination attempt.

For such a short book (around 200 pages), there’s a lot of plot packed between its covers and the tension builds as we wait to see whether he can continue to evade his pursuers. There’s a sinister villain, Major Quive-Smith who, like everything and everyone else in the book, is shrouded in mystery: we don’t know his nationality, his background or who he represents – all we do know is that he’s determined to force a confession from the narrator that the British government was behind the assassination attempt, something the narrator continues to deny even while his real motives are slow to emerge. Yet although I did enjoy the book, I still felt that there was something missing. The vagueness of it all, and the guarded and secretive nature of the protagonist, made it difficult for me to care what happened to him on an emotional level and this meant I found the story slightly less thrilling than I would have liked.

This book was adapted for film in 1941, under the title Man Hunt, and again as a BBC adaptation, Rogue Male, in 1976. The BBC version stars Peter O’Toole, with Alastair Sim as the Earl (a character who doesn’t appear in the book). It’s on YouTube and definitely worth watching. I’ve also discovered there’s a sequel to this novel called Rogue Justice, published much later in 1982, which is more open about the target being Hitler. I’m not sure if I want to read that one as the reviews aren’t very positive, but it seems Household was quite a prolific author, with more than twenty books published for adults and young adults, so I’ll see if any of his others appeal.

This is book 37/50 read from my second Classics Club list.

Rivers of Treason by KJ Maitland

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This is the third book in KJ Maitland’s 17th century mystery series and continues Daniel Pursglove’s search for the mysterious Spero Pettingar. If you haven’t read the first two (The Drowned City and Traitor in the Ice) I strongly recommend that you do so before starting this book. Even though I’ve read both of them, the plot is so complex I found it difficult to keep track of what was happening at times, so I think coming straight to this book could be quite confusing.

The series is set in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt by Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate the King (James I of England and VI of Scotland). In the first book, Daniel Pursglove was released from Newgate Prison by the King’s advisor, FitzAlan, on the condition that he would hunt down and identify one of the escaped conspirators, a man known only as Spero Pettingar. As Rivers of Treason opens, Daniel has still not caught Spero but the mystery surrounding his whereabouts continues to deepen.

It’s now 1607 and the Great Frost that has held England in its grip during the winter is beginning to thaw. Without FitzAlan’s permission, Daniel has headed north to his childhood home in Yorkshire, not on the King’s business this time, but hoping to find answers about his own past. When an old woman is found murdered, however, Daniel finds himself under suspicion and is forced to flee across the country, pursued by a sinister man with a distinctive black and white beard. Has Daniel stumbled upon the trail of Spero Pettingar at last or has he become caught up in another, even bigger conspiracy?

I enjoyed this book, despite feeling that there was too much going on, a criticism I’ve had of the first two books in the series as well. I would have preferred a tighter focus on the central mystery, which often seems to get lost under the numerous subplots Maitland throws into the story. Having said that, some of the subplots were quite fascinating, such as one involving a London apothecary commissioned by the King to make an antidote to poison. After narrowly avoiding death in the Gunpowder Plot, it’s understandable that James has developed a paranoia about further attempts on his life! During Daniel’s time in Yorkshire, meanwhile, we learn a little bit more about our protagonist’s past and although I still don’t feel that we know him very well, it was good to have some questions answered.

I also love the atmosphere Maitland creates in this series, making it easy to feel immersed in the early 17th century, particularly where she describes the lives of the ordinary people Daniel meets on his travels but also in her descriptions of the Jacobean court. In this book, we follow the preparations for an elaborate masque (play or entertainment) written by the playwright Ben Jonson, with the set and costumes designed by the architect Inigo Jones. Jonson and Jones really did collaborate on many court masques, but this is the first time I’ve read about their work together, so I found that aspect of the story interesting.

Rivers of Treason finishes on something of a cliffhanger, leaving us wondering what Daniel is going to do next. I hope we won’t have to wait too long for the next book so that we can find out!

Thanks to Headline Review for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 13/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Spanish Bride by Georgette Heyer – #1940Club

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My final read for this week’s 1940 Club, hosted by Simon and Karen, is by an author you can nearly always count on to have had at least one book published in the relevant year! Two Georgette Heyer novels appeared in 1940 – The Corinthian, which I read a few years ago and loved – and this one, The Spanish Bride. I did try to read The Spanish Bride once before and couldn’t get into it, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to attempt it again.

The first thing to say is that this is not a typical Heyer novel at all, which I think is partly why I struggled with it the first time; being very new to Heyer then and enchanted by her witty dialogue, entertaining plots and portrayal of fashionable Regency society, I had expected more of the same and been disappointed to find that this book was so different. This time I was prepared and managed to finish it, but it certainly hasn’t become a favourite.

The Spanish Bride is set during the Peninsular War, the conflict fought on the Iberian Peninsula by the British, Spanish and Portuguese armies against the French, forming part of the Napoleonic Wars. The novel begins with the siege of Badajoz which ended in a French surrender in April 1812. With the victorious troops on the rampage, drinking, looting and raping, fourteen-year-old orphan Juana and her sister seek refuge outside the city at the camp of the 95th Rifles. It is here that Juana meets Brigade-Major Harry Smith, who falls in love with her instantly, and the two are married within days.

Refusing to be parted from her new husband, Juana remains with Harry for the rest of the campaign, riding with him from camp to camp, from battlefield to battlefield. She finds life in the Duke of Wellington’s army challenging – the terrain can be difficult, particularly under the blazing summer sun or in the depths of a freezing winter – but she’s determined not to complain and in the process she wins the hearts of not just Harry but the rest of the regiment as well.

Harry Smith and Juana María de los Dolores de León Smith were both real historical figures. Harry’s life and career is well documented, including in his own autobiography published posthumously in 1901, while Juana is commemorated in the name of Ladysmith, the city in South Africa where Harry later served as the governor of Cape Colony. However, this book doesn’t cover any of that period, concentrating mainly on the Peninsular campaign (with a brief interlude in England where Juana is sent while Harry takes part in the War of 1812 in America) and ending at Waterloo in 1815. In her Author’s Note, Heyer describes her research for the novel, which involved reading the diaries and writings of various members of the Light Division, as well as officers of other regiments and even the Duke of Wellington himself.

The age difference between the two main characters could be a problem for some readers – Harry is twenty-five when he marries Juana, who is eleven years younger – but that’s how old they were in real life and it must have been considered acceptable in nineteenth century Spain even if not today. The ‘romance’ aspect of the book is quite understated compared to the military aspect (and as they get together so early in the story, it’s more of a portrait of an unconventional marriage than a traditional romance in any case). Juana does feel very young and often immature, but at other times she displays wisdom, compassion and courage beyond her years and it’s easy to see why she was so well liked and respected.

No, Harry thought, remembering long marches under molten skies, bivouacs in streaming woods, the fording of swirling rivers, mattresses spread in filthy, flea-ridden hovels, the washing of gangrenous wounds which would have made an English miss swoon with horror: she was not like the girls at home.

This book is as well written as you would expect from Heyer and, as I’ve said, amazingly well researched; my problem with it is entirely down to personal taste and no reflection on the quality of the book itself. I’m just not very interested in military history and while I can cope with a few battle scenes and some brief discussion of tactics and strategies, there was so much of that in this book that I struggled to stay interested at times. But books like this one and An Infamous Army show that Heyer was a much more versatile author than she is often given credit for and I think anyone who has avoided her because they don’t like romantic fiction would be surprised if they tried one of these. And don’t forget she also wrote several mystery novels – although I haven’t read all of them, the three I have read were very enjoyable.

This is book 12/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B. Hughes – #1940Club

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I’ve read and loved three books by Dorothy B. Hughes – The Expendable Man, Ride the Pink Horse and In a Lonely Place, all of which featured on my books of the year list in the respective years in which I read them – so when I was looking for possible titles to read for Karen and Simon’s 1940 Club my eye was immediately drawn to The So Blue Marble. Published in 1940 (obviously), this was Hughes’ first novel and although it doesn’t feel as elegant and polished as her later ones, it’s still very enjoyable.

Twenty-four-year-old Griselda Satterlee has abandoned a promising career as an actress and returned home to New York to start a new life as a costume designer. Walking along Fifth Avenue one night on her way back to her ex-husband Con’s apartment, where she is staying in his absence, she is accosted by two young men who force their way into the apartment with her. The men, whom she later learns are twins Danny and David Montefierrow, seem to know all about Griselda, although she’s sure she’s never met them before. However, it’s not Griselda herself that they are interested in – all they are looking for is a blue marble, which they insist must be somewhere inside the apartment.

Griselda has no idea why they are so desperate to find the blue marble – the very blue marble or the so blue marble, as they always describe it – but she is determined that, whether it’s in Con’s apartment or not, it must not fall into the hands of the twins. But David and Danny are equally determined to obtain it and will stop at nothing to get hold of it, including murder.

This book doesn’t seem to be very highly thought of by Hughes readers – there are lots of one and two star reviews on Goodreads – and I can understand why, but I did still enjoy it. It’s true that the plot is ridiculous, yet I don’t think it’s intended to be taken too seriously and if you go into the book prepared to accept it for what it is, The So Blue Marble is a lot of fun to read. It’s also quite creepy in places – the Montefierrow twins, identical but for their different coloured hair and eyes, who charm everyone else around them and move in the highest circles of society, make very sinister villains, as does Missy, Griselda’s teenage sister, who arrives from Paris and becomes caught up in the search for the marble.

Although I would describe this book as more of a thriller, there’s still a sense of mystery surrounding the importance of the very blue marble and why so many people are so keen to find it. Once these questions have been answered, I felt that things began to fall apart slightly and the story lost some of its impetus. Still, there’s plenty of suspense from beginning to end, some unexpected plot twists and some characters who are not quite what they seem, all of which makes this a very entertaining read.

If you’re new to Hughes, don’t start here – start with one of the other three books I’ve mentioned instead, but if you’re ready to explore some of her lesser known work this one is definitely worth reading. I’ve discovered that Hughes also wrote a second novel featuring Griselda Satterlee, The Bamboo Blonde, which I’ll have to look for at some point.

On Monday I reviewed The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge.

And here’s my list of previous 1940 reads.