Sparrowhawk Close

Camera Critters

Our neck of the woods sees quite a bit of sparrowhawk activity. There always seems to be one lurking about, checking out our little birds. And the not so little birds. We've seen them take out wood pigeons on the front lawn and magpies on the back field. These guy really do punch above their weight. Unfortunately they still haven't worked out what glass is. We've seen many a sparrowhawk fly straight into our windows front and back. Mostly it's the juveniles though not always. Sometimes they are killed instantly. Sometimes they are just stunned. And sometimes they do themselves an injury. This chap didn't have an audience for his mishap so I can't be sure what happened but when we got him some professional help it seems his wing was damaged.

Anvil Gate

The third book in the Gears of War series by Karen Traviss follows on directly from events at the end of the last book Jacinto's Remnant and is still building up to the finale of the video game Gears of War 3. Delta Squad and remaining Cog Forces have settled alongside the inhabitants of a sheltered naval outpost at Vectes. They maintain an uneasy truce with a group of Indie refugees who hold a valuable source of Imulsion. The two sides struggle to bury an enmity that burned for generations during the Pendulum Wars. Bands of Stranded pirates nibble at the order that both sides crave. And if that wasn't enough, boats are going missing or found bereft of crew, mysterious holes punched through the hull.
For all you lovers of Damon Baird (there must be someone out there...don't all holler at once) you'll love this one as Traviss has a good go at poking around in Baird's uber-cynical smarty pants noggin.
Possibly less effective are the flashbacks featuring a young Adam Phoenix pining over lost reliquaries while fighting in an urban hell of war theatre. In the same timeline a young Hoffman commands the defence of Anvil Gate and resorts to questionable though pragmatic tactics that will haunt him forever. I did love the story of Bai Tak, the Pesanga volunteer with his team of grinning machete wielding hill men. You'll remember him from the Aspho Fields flashbacks in book one.  The main timeline moves along a bit more with the CoG learning how to combat Lambent and that data disc from Gears 3 finally turns up to wallop an even bigger wedge between Hoffman and Prescott.As ever the characterisation is superb, with great dialogue alongside more introspective examinations of the main players and the effects of war on human morality.   Oh and there's a fair bit of backs to the wall Gear on Glowie action... and with Lambent involved that means plenty BOOOOOM!!!!  Enjoyable stuff.

Hard-Hearted

A beautiful woman lies in the middle of the road stabbed through the heart, an eighteenth-century book clutched in her hand and  wrapped in a bloodstained hand-stitched silk shawl.
Franck Guerin of the Brigade Criminelle is soon on the scene, making a welcome fourth outing in David Barrie's intricate Parisian and decidedly noirish detective series.
 In the past the novels have been characterised by  Franck having to immerse himself in a specialised aspect of Parisian society that he knows absolutely nothing about. Previously he's had to become an unlikely student in the rarefied worlds of lingerie connoisseurs, luxury perfumers and elite ballet dancers but in Hard-Hearted the author breaks the formula.Which is a good thing considering the main suspects are deeply imbedded in the world of high finance. Franck's very deliberate refusal to engage or try to decipher the mechanics of the trading machinations going on is the source of some of the more humourous exchanges. A scene where Sylvie boils it all down for him in a room wallpapered with diagrams is a standout.
In contrast the other area that Franck's investigation leads is one of academia, specifically French eighteenth-century literature and even more specifically the ancient book found in the victim's hand; The Tales of Madame de Villeneuve, Volume one. It's the first part of a story that would eventually be rehashed and made famous by another writer and renamed Beauty and the Beast. David Barrie gets lots of mileage thematically and philosophically from some of the symbolism that can be drawn from the ancient fairy tale, weaving them through his plot, the characters and even perhaps Paris itself, as Franck's investigation, in between the posh frocks and lavish soirees, takes him to the city's seamier side. 
I like Franck. He's got a wry sense of humour, he's very easy to relate to and best of all he's ever present in the narrative. He's still a man without much in the way of history though, beyond his previous employment fighting eco-terrorists, so it was a bit of a shock to finally meet his father, though the youth of Franck Guerin remains heavily veiled. 
With everyone scrambling to be the one who discovers the next big euro-noir these days you could do worse than give Franck Guerin a try. They also have the benefit of not being fed through the literary tea strainer of translation as they 're written in English. And they keep on getting better as the author hones his style. I look forward to the next one.

Mrs Robinson's Disgrace

In Kate Summerscale's previous book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher the author demonstrated that if you are going to try marketing what was essentially an extended essay you could do worse than find a subject that included a notorious Victorian murder, family secrets and a celebrated Scotland Yard Detective. It was a massive bestseller. If you expected Summerscale to choose another such mystery, perhaps another murder and another dashing detective then you might be a little disappointed that this time the focus is on one of the most notable of the early divorce trials of the 1850s.
Henry Robinson is a middle class businessman who discovers his wife's secret diary, the contents of which form the basis of his legal attempts to divorce her. The case hinges on whether the illicit affair detailed within the pages is truth or some elaborate fiction. Also on trial is the professional and personal reputation of the object of Mrs Robinson's obsession,  Edward Lane, respected by the great and the good as a brilliant practitioner of hydrotherapy working from his clinic/spa at Moor Park. The verdict is less important, to the reader at least, than the study of a period of history focusing on social aspects like the law, marriage, health, class, family, sex, the psyche, morality, science and religion. Lane and Mrs Robinson have a large and eclectic circle of contacts and friends that reach deep into British literary circles and the Victorian scientific intelligentsia; Darwin is one of Lane's patients and George Combe, a  proponent of phrenology, is a frequent correspondent of them both.
Sumerscale melds the different sources into the essay with care and the proper focus for the themes explored. The tone is certainly engaging and never dry. As a slice of  social history the book works very well. It might be the case that some people might be more inclined to read the diaries in question and make their own mind up without Summerscales commentary but as a fuller snapshot of the times Mrs Robinson's disgrace would be my choice. Divorce case aside the book also celebrates the early history of diaries, their place in the British home and like the crux of the trial, the line between factual journal and their place among fiction as entertainment.

The Ghost Writer

Gerrard Freeman is a young Librarian living in Australia with his secretive mother. As a child he found a mysterious photograph and a strange ghost story written by his great-grandmother Viola Hatherley. The discovery causes his mother to abandon any mention of her former life in England, a life until that point lit up by sunlit tales of an idyllic country house named Staplefield. Gerrard believes there is a dark secret to be discovered which he shares with his only confidant and object of near obsessive devotion, pen friend Alice Jessell - a woman he has never met. Discovering more stories by Viola, Gerrard soon becomes aware of strange similarities and portentous detail.
John Harwood's The Ghost Writer is a complex puzzle of a story within a story with an unclear distinction between truth and fiction. It's very hard to keep the two separate and at times I tended to let Gerrard try to figure things out for me, which probably wasn't the wisest of actions on my part. Some aspects are much more clearly false to the reader than they are to our questing librarian which makes you rather want to give the poor guy a slap. Harwood switches styles pretty effortlessly between Gerrard's uncomplicated though bewildered narrative and the evocation of a hybrid chimera of  Sheridan Le Fanu,  Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James to breath style into Viola's macabre stories. The only real gripe I'd have is the rather abrupt ending, though in defense of Harwood there is very little left unresolved. The lack of any real concluding end-note had me holding up the blank end-pages and considering the possibility of hidden passages in lemon juice.

Swan Lake

Camera Critters

Swans at the Tranquil Otter last year.

x2 Pinkness

A friend of mine bought a new camera recently. He does this from time to time. He tells me how much zoom it has, and all the features, delighting in the numbers, the higher the better. I suggested he take some pictures of the cherry blossoms that are in fine bloom all over the place at the moment... and there's even been some sunshine in patches to bring colour to the usual Blackburn greyness.
"What's cherry blossom?" he replied.
I give up.
Anyhow, the next time he disappeared into another grey building to gaze in awe at some more mechanical monstrosities with outrageously large specification numbers adorning their shininess, I stayed in the car in the car park, stuck my little camera out of the window (zoom x2) and clicked it hopefully at the nearest pink blossoms.