Decline and Fall - Evelyn Waugh

Author: Evelyn Waugh

Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics

First published:1928

Setting: Oxford, Wales, London, Hampshire UK
Read in February 2014

My Rating ★★★★  4.4

My Waterstones Review

Paul Pennyfeather is in his third year as an undergraduate at the fictional Scone College, Oxford. One evening he is returning across the quad to his rooms when he is discovered by the Bollinger Club, debagged and consequently sent down for indecent behaviour. Losing his guardians allowance he takes a teaching position in a small inferior public school based in a castle in North Wales. Here he meets a motley crew of teachers, staff and pupils. Dr Fagan the headmaster, his two daughters Flossie and Dingy, their butler and professional conman Mr Soloman Philbrick, and fellow teachers Captain Grimes, ex-public school pupil of Podger's who goes through life from one crises to another being saved from "the soup" by the old-boys network, and wig wearing, pipe smoking, ex-clergyman Mr Prendergast who has developed insuperable Doubts.

Decline and Fall is a rich comedy of carefully selected  narrative and dialogue that is loosely based on Waugh's time at Oxford and as a teacher in Wales. This was his first published novel and he must have had great fun conjuring his characters, including the Countess of Circumference and their son Lord Tangent, and the Honourable Mrs Margot Beste-Chetwynde the attractive and wealthy mother of Peter who engineers Paul to become his private tutor and then to be engaged to his mother. Throughout there is a tongue in cheek poking of fun at the establishment and comparisons can be made to the writings of P.G. Woodhouse. Evelyn Waugh meant this to be a funny book, it is!

City of Women - David Gillham

Author: David Gillham

Publisher: Penguin Books

First published: 2013

Setting: Berlin, Germany
Read in February 2014

My Rating ★★★★  4.1

My Waterstones Review

Early in 1943 the German 6th Army has surrendered in Stalingrad and doubts are beginning to grow on the outcome of the war. Goebbels' propaganda machine calls for 'Total War' and in Berlin Jews are being rounded-up.  Against this backdrop we find Sigrid Schröder, a stenographer, living with her mother in law while her husband, Kasper, is fighting on the Eastern Front. Her life seems tough, living off meager rations that is made into soup, frequent air raids by the Tommies, nights spent in the basement with the other residents of the apartment block and evenings spent in a small flat avoiding her mother in law who despises her for not providing her with a grandchild, her duty as a married woman.

Sigrid often escapes to the cinema and here she meets a man who is to become her lover, Egon, a Jewish lover. Here she also befriends Ericha Kohl who is the young duty-year girl for her neighbour Frau Granzinger and her six children; Mrs Granzinger had been awarded the Mother's Cross. Ericha is being pursued by plain clothes officers of the SiPo (Security Police) and desperately asks Sigrid to help her. This is the first difficult choice that we see Sigrid make, help Ericha or be a good German. Sigrid starts to help Ericha who is working in an undercover network hiding Jews, deserters and others escaping the Nazi regime and in fear of their lives. Against advice Sigrid is drawn to a Jewish mother, Anna Weiss from Vienna, and her two young daughters, she is sure that they are the wife and family of Egon, if she betrays them she could have Egon for herself.

City of Women paints a realistic view of life in Berlin at this time and from this aspect is on a par with the detective novels of Philip Kerr (Bernie Gunther stories). What I found extraordinary about this book is that it is a debut novel written by a man, and convincingly taking a woman's story. It feels that difficult choices are made by ordinary women every day. Who can you trust? There are party members and servants of the Police and Gestapo everywhere, many are willing to become an informant in order to avoid torture and imprisonment, and if someone is breaking the law then recriminations will be felt by family members. For the poor Jew they are just as likely to be denounced by another Jew employed as a Catcher. The theme on who to trust and who can be used drives the book through to its end, it is certainly gripping.

Operation Massacre - Rodolfo Walsh

Author: Rodolfo Walsh

Publisher: Old Street Publishing

First published: 1957

Setting: Argentina
Read in February 2014

My Rating ★★     2.3

My Waterstones Review

Late on June 9th 1956 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a dozen men were arrested and then executed a few hours later. Martial Law was not introduced until the 10th and so it was illegal to execute the men without trial, murder in fact. But there were witnesses to the execution, several survivors, 5 men lost their lives leaving wives and 16 children behind. 

When Rudolfo, a journalist, hears several weeks later that there was a survivor to this relatively unreported incident he sees an opportunity for a scoop and starts to investigate. In a country run by dictatorships and a military junta, with kidnapping, disappearances and killings commonplace, pursuing a possible police cover-up is difficult and dangerous for all involved. 

We therefore have a strong plot, one based on an actual event. Where for me this book struggles to engage is that it becomes too obvious that Rudolfo’s mission is to bring down the Chief of Police, a colonel, who was responsible for ordering the executions, it feels personal, it feels political. The other negative is that it is difficult trying to keep up with the people involved in the drama, who was murdered, who survived, who was in the police, government or judiciary. There is a useful character list at the back, but a diagram at the front would have been an advantage. On 24th March 1977 Rodolfo sent an open letter to the Military Junta and the following day he was kidnapped not to be seen again, presumed murdered.

Published in 1957 this book is recognised as the first book in the genre of investigative journalism. There is no doubt that Rodolfo undertook a monumental task tracking down survivors who did not want to be found, especially as nobody really knew how many people had been arrested and taken to the garbage dump to be executed. His perseverance and bravery in following through on the publishing of this book is to be highly commended. My expectation from the hype on the cover was unfortunately not delivered.

A Foreign Country - Charles Cumming

Author: Charles Cumming

Publisher: Harper Collins

First published: 2012

Setting: France and Tunisia
Read in September 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.2

My Waterstones Review

The book opens with a flashback to 1978. Amelia Weldon, a 20 year old au pair in Tunisia, has been missing for 6 days, she has been having an affair with her employer Jean-Marc Daumal. Back in the present day an elderly French couple are brutally murdered in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Thomas Kell, a 42 year old disgraced ex British Intelligence officer is recovering from a friends birthday celebrations when his mobile rings, 'We've lost the Chief'. Amelia Levene is due to take over as the first female head of MI6 in six weeks, she has disappeared, feared to have been abducted in Paris, Tom is back in the game. Amelia is soon found to have checked into a hotel near Nice and is reportedly on a painting course but Tom tracks her down to a hotel in Carthage, Tunisia where she has met up with Francois Mallot the son of the murdered french couple.

This is an easy to read and gripping thriller that creates a great sense of pace through 80 short chapters, at an average of 5 pages per chapter. Charles Cumming had a short career in MI6 and he brings a realistic sense of a modern spy to this book. It is no surprise that it has won awards and has been voted Best Thriller of the Year by newspapers.