Tag: Reading Challenges

Book Review – The Madras Miasma by Brian Stoddart

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About the Book

Book cover of The Madras Miasma (Le Fanu Mysteries #1) by Brian Stoddart

Madras in the 1920s. The British are slowly losing the grip on the subcontinent. The end of the colonial enterprise is in sight; the city on India’s east coast is teeming with intrigue. A grisly murder takes place against the backdrop of political tension. Superintendent Le Fanu, a man of impeccable investigative methods, is called in to find out who killed a respectable young British girl and dumped her in a canal, her veins clogged with morphine.

As Le Fanu, a man forced to keep his own personal relationship a secret for fear of scandal in the face British moral standards, begins to investigate, he quickly slips into a quagmire of Raj politics, rebellion and nefarious criminal activities that threaten not just to bury his case but the fearless detective himself.

Format: Paperback (296 pages) Publisher:
Publication date: 8th September 2014 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime

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My Review

The Madras Miasma (previously published as A Madras Miasma and now reissued with a new cover design) is the first book in the author’s Superintendent Le Fanu historical crime series set in 1920s India.

As the book opens, Madras is a city of political unrest with a rising independence movement and a population divided along class, ethnic and religious lines. It’s also a magnet for the so-called ‘fishing fleet’, young women who have travelled from England in search of a husband. But behind the dancing, the cocktail drinking and the partying, there are darker things going on as the reader will discover.

The author gives Superintendent Christian Jolyon Brenton Le Fanu (known as Chris to his friends or LF for short) a comprehensive back story so he feels like a fully fleshed out character even though this is the first book in the series.

He’s separated from his wife and his traumatic experiences during the First World War, including the death of a close friend, have left him with a sense of despair and anger at any pointless waste of life. Being more tolerant and open-minded than many of the other British in Madras, he is suspected of pro-independence sympathies. Like many other fictional detectives, he has a boss with whom he doesn’t see eye to eye, and frankly who could blame him because the man is an idiot, and a dangerous idiot too. But fortunately Le Fanu has a highly competent sidekick in the form of Sergeant ‘Habi’ Habibullah. And while Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse has his Jaguar, Le Fanu’s pride and joy is a1000cc Indian Powerplus motorcycle. Le Fanu’s blind spot is his inability to express his feelings or commit to a permanent relationship with the woman who often shares his bed. He also seems easily swayed by a lithe body in a silk dress.

Initially an investigation into the murder of one of the ‘fishing fleet’, the case rapidly becomes more complicated. ‘A dead white woman, political trouble, a belligerent Commissioner, an anxious and aggrieved British community, and a truculent police force made the worst possible combination.’ Le Fanu also unearths a deadly trade that reaches to the very heart of British colonial high society. The plot is satisfyingly complex so that it will keep you guessing until the final chapters. And with Le Fanu pondering his future, the end of the book sets things up nicely for the next book in the series, The Pallampur Predicament.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of (the now sadly defunct) Crime Wave Press.

In three words: Intriguing, atmospheric, assured
Try something similar: A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

About the Author

Author Brian Stoddart

Brian Stoddart is a writer of fiction and non-fiction who is now based in Queenstown, New Zealand. Born and educated a Kiwi he has worked around the world as an academic, university executive, aid and development consultant, broadcaster,commentator and blogger. He has written extensively on sports history, politics and culture as well as on India and south Asia in which field he completed his PhD.

He is now also a crime novelist. A Madras Miasma was the first in a series of books set in 1920s Madras in India, and featuring Superintendent Chris Le Fanu. The Pallampur Predicament was the second and A Straits Settlement the third. A Straits Settlement was longlisted for the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best New Zealand Crime Novel. A Greater God is the fourth in the Le Fanu series and appeared in 2018.

He has published extensively in non-fiction, too. A House in Damascus: Before the Fall recounts his experience of living in an old house in the Old City of Damascus immediately before the outbreak of the war in Syria. That memoir became an Amazon #1 in Middle East Travel, and won gold and silver medals at the 2012 e-Book Awards for Creative Non-Fiction and Travel respectively.

Brian Stoddart also works as an international higher education consultant on programs in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Syria and Jordan as well as in the UK and USA. This work follows a successful career as university researcher, teacher and senior executive which culminated in a term as Vice-Chancellor and President of La Trobe University in Australia where he is now an Emeritus Professor. That academic career took him all over the world including long periods in India, Malaysia, Canada, the Caribbean, China and Southeast Asia. He also writes extensively for mainstream and new media as well as expert commentary for press, radio and television. Brian is also a cruise ship lecturer, specialising in international affairs and history.

In his spare time, he enjoys photography, reading (especially crime fiction),travel to new places, and listening to music, especially gypsy jazz. (Photo: Goodreads author page/Bio: Author website)

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Book Review – A Tapestry of Treason by Anne O’Brien

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About the Book

book cover of A Tapestry of Treason by Anne O'Brien

Her actions could make history – but at what price?

1399: Constance of York, Lady Despenser, proves herself more than a mere observer in the devious intrigues of her magnificently dysfunctional family, The House of York.

Surrounded by power-hungry men, including her aggressively self-centred husband Thomas and ruthless siblings Edward and Richard, Constance places herself at the heart of two treasonous plots against King Henry IV.  Will it be possible for this Plantagenet family to safeguard its own political power by restoring either King Richard II to the throne, or the precarious Mortimer claimant?

Although the execution of these conspiracies will place them all in jeopardy, Constance is not deterred, even when the cost of her ambition threatens to overwhelm her.  Even when it endangers her new-found happiness.

With treason, tragedy, heartbreak and betrayal, this is the story of a woman ahead of her time, fighting for herself and what she believes to be right in a world of men.

Format: ebook (509 pages) Publisher: HQ
Publication date: 22nd August 2019 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

One of my missions this year is to read the oldest titles on my NetGalley shelf with a view to getting the position where I can smugly say I’m reading and reviewing every book I’m approved for in advance of publication. A Tapestry of Treason has been on my NetGalley shelf since June 2019 and until today was my oldest approval.

Unusually for me, as a history lover, I found the first half of the book which focuses on the detail of the various plots to overthrow Henry IV rather a slog. I actually toyed with giving up on the book at one point, a rarity for me. However, once the author started to give us Constance the woman rather than the political machinator, it grabbed my interest.

That’s not to say I didn’t find Constance infuriating at times. Her pride, ambition and desire to be at the heart of things caused her to make many rash decisions, placing herself at risk of execution for treason. As she admits, ‘Had I not, for much of my adult life, been at the centre of a tapestry of treason, drenched in blood and death? I had stitched with my own hands and intellect to undermine and destroy.’ And the author’s description of her family as ‘magnificently dysfunctional’ is spot on. As Constance says, ‘in this household we talked politics and power’. But she was also the subject of betrayal herself, more than once, including at the hands of someone she should have been able to rely on.

For much of the book Constance comes across as stony-hearted, ferociously ambitious and desperate to be at the heart of events. That is until her icy heart is unexpectedly melted. Historical romance isn’t a genre I’m attracted to but even I found myself more and more invested in Constance’s affair with a member of the Royal Court, an affair which had to remain secret.

The book is packed with detail, not just about historical personages and events, but about clothing (where a glossary would have been useful), food, social customs and royal palaces. It has to be said the lives of ordinary people are consigned to the background; they’re largely unnamed figures at the beck and call of their masters.

If you like your historical fiction packed with history, have the stamina for a chunky read, and are not averse to a romantic element to a storyline, then I think you will enjoy A Tapestry of Treason.

As a side note, there is a local link to Constance’s story, as she was buried in Reading Abbey, Reading being my hometown. Also the burial place of Henry I, Reading Abbey was largely destroyed in the 16th century during the dissolution of the monasteries but you can still explore the Abbey Ruins.

Anne’s latest novel, A Court of Betrayal, was published on 29th February 2024.

I received a digital review copy courtesy of HQ via NetGalley.

In three words: Absorbing, detailed, well-researched
Try something similar: Cecily by Annie Garthwaite

About the Author

Author Anne O'Brien

Anne was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire. After gaining a B.A. Honours degree in History at Manchester University, a PGCE at Leeds University and a Masters degree in education at Hull University, she lived in the East Riding as a teacher of history. Always a prolific reader, she enjoyed historical fiction and was encouraged to try her hand at writing. Success in short story competitions spurred her on.

Leaving teaching – but not her love of history – she wrote her first historical romance, a Regency, which was published in 2005. This was followed by nine historical romances and a novella, ranging from medieval, through the Civil War and Restoration and back to Regency, all of which have been published internationally.

Since then Anne has sidestepped historical romances to write about the silent women of medieval history.  As Virginia Woole once said: ‘For most of History, Anonymous was a Woman.’  For this reason, she decided to shake the cobwebs from some of these medieval women of interest and allow them to take the stage, three-dimensional and with much to say.

Anne now lives with her husband in an eighteenth century timber-framed cottage in the depths of the Welsh Marches in Herefordshire, a wild, beautiful place on the borders between England and Wales, renowned for its black and white timbered houses, ruined castles and priories and magnificent churches. Steeped in history, famous people and bloody deeds as well as ghosts and folk lore, it has given her inspiration for her writing. Since living there she has become hooked on medieval history. (Photo/bio: Author website)

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