“The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches”, by Alan Bradley

 

336 pages, Bantam Books, ISBN-13: 978-0385344050

At the end of Speaking From Among the Bones, the fifth installment of the Flavia de Luce mysteries, we learned that the long-lost matriarch of the de Luces, Harriet, had been found and was coming home – but not, as one would have hoped, alive. Her body having been discovered at the bottom of the Himalayan crevasse that she fell into a decade before, we find at the beginning of The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches the entire clan – the father Havilland, his daughters Ophelia, Daphne and (or course) Flavia, Aunt Felicity, and even cousins Lena and her daughter Undine de Luce from Cornwall – as well as denizens from their household and Bishop’s Lacey awaiting her return. Upon the train’s arrival, Flavia is approached by a tall stranger who whispers a cryptic message into her ear – and who, moments later, “falls” beneath the wheels of the train but, this being a story starring England’s answer to Nancy Drew, we all know he didn’t fall, don’t we? Oh, and Winston Churchill is also there, asking Flavia about “pheasant sandwiches”.

And so The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches gets going right away, but the bulk of the tale is not directed towards the death of the stranger, but rather by the upcoming and long-delayed funeral of Harriet de Luce and the mystery of her life. This is peculiar, to say the least, and the death of the stranger only gets mentioned here and there as the funeral arrangements and the de Luces reactions to the same move forward – oh, and as Flavia attempts the resurrection of her mother via chemistry. I kid you not. But this book is more than all that, for Flavia, while following a trail of clues sparked by the discovery of a reel of film stashed away in the attic, manages to unravel her family’s deepest, darkest secrets – which involve certain organs of the British government. So there’s a lot going on in this book that has nothing to do with the apparent main murder from the beginning and which promises some interesting developments in the lives of the de Luces – with Flavia being affected most of all, as one would expect.

Flavia herself, the 11-soon-to-be-12-year-old heroine and sleuth is, as usual, a joy in this book, and all of these mysteries should be saved and savored in one’s own bleak moments. But there are…issues with this latest instalment. Without spoilers, Bradley completely reverses course and has Flavia embark on her utterly bizarre mission to bring her mother back to life while apparently enlisting otherwise reasonable adults as accomplices (it put me in mind of her quest to capture Santa Claus in I Am Half-Sick of Shadows). Furthermore, after the “life or death” message is passed from a stranger on a train platform to Flavia in the first few pages, she does not deliver said message until far into the book as she forges ahead with her plan – a plan that she abandons without any hullabaloo when mysterious men from the Home Office appear. All rather confusing and not a little disappointing, and if it were not for Flavia’s observations and inner monologue it would have been infuriating. But I can’t hate on the girl, ever.

Overall I found that The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches lacked much of the drama of many of the past titles, and frankly wasn’t as interesting or humorous as many of the prior books. However, upon completion, I think that the purpose of this book became obvious: it serves as a transitional piece, taking Flavia’s story in a brand-new direction, and for this reason Bradley should be applauded (it reads rather like the second, bridge book of a trilogy, in which the purpose is to set up the last book or, in this case, future books). After all, there’s only so much murder and mayhem that can take place around Buckshaw and Bishop’s Lacey, so it will be nice to see that we’ll soon get a change of scenery for our favorite preteen detective, and that Flavia’s role in the world is about to transform. As to what will happen to the other characters in Flavia’s life, I can only hope that they will make appearances in future books. I, for one, look forward to the next adventure with interest which I would not have had the author just offered us more of the same.

It’s easy to see from this novel where the setting for the next one will start, but all the same I wonder where will it take us? Will we eventually get to see this fearless child as a grown woman? And just what kind of a woman will she grow up to be? The stage is being set.

“The Man in the Red Coat”, by Julian Barnes

 

288 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN-13: 978-0525658771

Julian Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat refers to one Samuel-Jean Pozzi, a French surgeon and gynecologist who was in the thick of La Belle Époque and rubbed shoulders with several of the shooting stars of that tumultuous-yet-inspiring era of French history. Using Pozzi as a kind of guidepost to this fascinating time – along with Prince Edmond Melchior Jean Marie de Polignac and Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac – we meet several (if not all) of the personages, famous and infamous, that make this era resemble a kind of galaxy in miniature, what with all of the streaking comets that flew across the firmament only to burn out much too soon. Don’t they always.

But perhaps what Barnes has done can best be expressed by Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, the French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt who, writing in Journal des Goncourt (along with his brother, Jules), summed up what they were trying to do with their newspaper:

 

What we have tried to do, then, is to bring our contemporaries to life for posterity in a speaking likeness, by means of the vivid stenography of a conversation, the physiological spontaneity of a gesture, those little signs of emotions that reveal a personality, those imponderabilia that render the intensity of existence, and, last of all, a touch of that fever which is the mark of the heady life of Paris.

The Brothers Goncourt could not have known that, publishing this declaration on December 2^nd, 1851 (the same day that Napoleon III overthrew the French Second Republic), they were also describing a history of their time written by an Englishman born almost a century later. But this is so, for in writing what are essentially a series of thumbnail sketches and sparkling vignettes about these beautiful – and flawed; oh-so flawed – people he has resurrected the era as a whole (to help with this, the book has been decorated with reproductions of trading cards – similar to the cigarette cards popular at the time – of these personages, produced by the French businessman Félix Potin through his eponymous mass-distribution retail business).

Barnes is nothing if not an excellent writer, and while The Man in the Red Coat reads more like a work of personal reflection on La Belle Époque that he wrote for his own pleasure than for the public at large, many readers I’m sure will nonetheless find as much pleasure reading it as I did. The book jumps around in time, from anecdote to anecdote, from person to person and from place to place, often with little or even no connection between said times, anecdotes, people or places. Thus, if you are unfamiliar with La Belle Epoque or recognize many of the main players – seriously, they all seem to make at least one appearance each – you'll spend a lot of time trying to remember when was when or who did what to who or who was who or what happened where and why (or whether) you should care.

Overall, while I enjoyed reading this book, I was baffled by its lack of chapters (there are just breaks in the writing here and there), index, foot-or-endnotes, chronology or bibliography. These are rather minimal requirements for any history (and make no mistake, this is a history) but there are none to be found here. Furthermore, while the writing is engaging and never dull, it can sometimes slide into self-importance and too-clever references to original source material, as if Barnes were trying to show off his erudition (and don’t get me started on his condescending “Author’s Note” at the back of the book in which he bemoans his countrymen’s regaining their independence by taking Britain out of the European Union). I’m glad I read it, would maybe reread it but can’t be certain that I would buy it.

But enough negativity; once more quoting from a work of this era, what Barnes has succeeded in doing with The Man in the Red Coat is what Joris-Karl Huysmans did in his novel À rebours (Against the Grain):

 

Leaving our petty modern civilization far behind, he conjured up the…glories of distant epochs, their mystic ardors and doldrums, the aberrations resulting from their idleness, the brutalities arising from their boredom – that oppressive boredom which emanates from opulence and prayer even before their pleasures have been fully enjoyed.

As I read this book, for one brief shining moment La Belle Époque was reborn, these beautiful, fascinating, maddening and unforgettable people breathed once more and the world was just a little more elegant than before. Just a little.

“The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook; An Illustrated Encyclopedia”, by Stewart P Evans & Keith Skinner

 

Robinson Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1841194523

There was a time, many years ago, when I was into everything Jack the Ripper (perhaps I speak for many?). I read damn near every book I could find on the subject and watched every TV special that came on about this still-unknown maniac. While I can’t remember all of the books I read, I remember this one, The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook; An Illustrated Encyclopedia by Stewart P Evans & Keith Skinner (Illustrated Encyclopedia is a line of books). If you’re studying Jack the Ripper then this book has everything you need to launch your own investigation: newspaper articles, photographs and scads of information that other Jack The Ripper books just do not go in to, probably because of time constraints.

What all of this detail lacks are author speculations on who Jack the Ripper was, leaving that up to the reader for the ultimate decision. I have to say, however, that there are only so many times that you can read about a “special allowance” being paid for extra police before you come to the decision that it’s just to make the book look bigger; I must have read about a hundred or more Times correspondence about “special allowance”. I mean, c’mon, is there a need to keep including every one? But this is a sourcebook only, not a novel or history of Jack; something to be consulted if a question arises. And if so, then The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Sourcebook is the handiest source of information one could ask for on this shadowy madman.

“The Murder of Napoleon”, by Ben Weider & David Hapgood

 

266 pages, Book Sales, ISBN-13: 978-0312925482

Back when I first became interested in history and All Things Napoleon I snatched up every book I could find on the Corsican Ogre, even this one, The Murder of Napoleon by Ben Weider & David Hapgood. The premise is simple: that Napoleon’s death at only 51 was not the result of natural causes (probably stomach cancer like his father) but rather through nefarious means, more than likely arsenic poisoning. This is a shocking assertion to make, of course, but the authors wrote a well-thought out thesis that, utilizing patience and the scientific method, managed to make its case rationally while remaining free of any political nonsense or nationalistic prejudice.

This whole theory was launched when David Hapgood, a dentist by trade, came across the memoirs of one Louis-Joseph-Narcisse Marchand, Napoleon’s valet, and became convinced that Napoleon not only died from arsenic poisoning, but that he was murdered by one of the faithful entourage who had followed him into exile. Reaching out to Ben Weider (of bodybuilding fame), the two men conducted their research across the length and breadth of Napoleon’s many travels; their main piece of evidence being a locket of his hair that proved to have more than natural levels of arsenic, even for the 19^th Century when it was much more prevalent (supposedly).

Napoleon would have agreed with their claims, having stated in his last will and testament of April 1821 that “My death is premature. I have been assassinated by the English oligopoly and their hired murderer”. After he died on May 5^th, 1821, sixteen witnesses (including seven doctors) attended the autopsy where it was unanimously declared that Napoleon had, in fact, died of stomach cancer. Well, naturally, some would say; if the Brits had just done away with Old Boney through poisoning, then of course they would cover up their crime through a kangaroo court in which their theory was validated and their crime covered up.

And what of their evidence? There are 31 possible symptoms of arsenic poisoning discovered by scientists since 1821, and Napoleon presented 28 of them. The authors took samples of Napoleon’s hair dating from 1816, 1817 and 1818 to a Scottish university to conduct a Neutron activation analysis on them, a newly-invented (for 1987) arsenic-detection test. The results revealed fatally high levels of arsenic in his system, meaning that Napoleon had been murdered…right? I mean, the science can’t be wrong and the proof appeared to be pretty incontrovertible. The Brits had done him in, wot, and there was no mistaking the facts and what they presented.

Well…not necessarily, for even if arsenic in fact killed Napoleon, this did not mean someone had killed Napoleon with arsenic. You follow? Here, it’s like this: Napoleon could simply have absorbed enough arsenic from his environment to kill him off, as a 19^th Century house was saturated in the stuff: cosmetics, hair tonic, cigarettes, sealing wax, cooking pots, insect-repellent powders, rat poison, cake icing – the stuff was everywhere. Even the wallpaper at Longwood, Napoleon’s house/prison on St. Helena, contained poisonous gases exhaled by a mold growing behind it. Suddenly, the picture opened up and the potential poisoners multiplied.

Adding to all of that, in 2007 researchers from Canada, Switzerland and the United States applied modern pathological and tumor-staging methods to historical accounts and found that Napoleon in fact died of a very advanced case of gastric cancer that stemmed from an ulcer-causing bacterial infection in his stomach, rather than a heretofore belief of a hereditary disposition to cancer; it also points to gastrointestinal bleeding as the likely immediate cause of death. Those believing the murder theory will no doubt disbelieve this assertion as much as those who disbelieved the poisoning theory discounted all of those other “facts”.

So which is it? The Murder of Napoleon was published almost 40 years ago, and many of the facts it was based on had solid scientific backing – but this was not the only plausible claim, as the original theory that Napoleon had died of stomach cancer also fit the symptoms that he complained about. The study from 2007 also would appear to cast doubt on the poisoning theory. At the time, I was hooked and thought that Napoleon was, in fact, murdered; of course, I was young and naïve and willing to believe anything. Now that I’m older and cynical and believe nothing, I have to say that this book is wrong, and that Napoleon’s life was cut short through natural means.

Perhaps Julia Blackburn in her book The Emperor’s Last Island: A Journey to St. Helena (reviewed on July 12^th, 2024) had it best when she noted simply that, after having ruled most of Europe for even a brief amount of time, thence to be reduced to the circumstances of being made prisoner on a rock in the middle of nowhere and subjected to heartfelt despair, societal absurdity, abject boredom and personal loneliness – and then, agonizing physical pain – would in and of itself be enough to kill anyone without the need of arsenic. This, combined with his very real and natural physical ailments, is what truly killed Napoleon.

“The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (2-vol Set)”, by John Toland

 

1176 pages, Random House (Book Club Edition), ISBN: 978-0812968583

There was time, in my misspent youth, when I bought damn near any and every book I came across, just to have it and, maybe, even to read it. Later. Like this: The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 by John Toland that I got at a neighbor’s garage sale. This was actually a special edition printed by Random House in two volumes for the Book Club, so the paper quality is rather pulpy and the dimensions are a little small, especially compared to the original, first edition that they resemble. Don’t know why Random House did that: I mean, I suppose they saved money on the materials, but then they had to print it in two volumes, which would imply greater cost. Or maybe not. Dunno. Okay, then…

The Rising Sun was first published in 1970 when there were few works that sought the Japanese side of the Pacific War, and so, for that reason alone, it was an important milestone in the historiography of the Second World War. But there is sympathy and there is apologia, and all too often Toland slips into the later. In one of the first chapters he attempts to explain Japanese culture and attitudes to his audience, but except for the fact that it is a positive narrative, it reads for all the world like Allied propaganda: the Japanese come across as semi-mystical beings whose thoughts and beliefs were so alien to the average Westerner as to be wholly impenetrable. This, of course, is nonsense: while there were, of course, cultural differences between East and West, there were many more all-too recognizable human impulses and strengths and weaknesses which shaped the war for the Empire of Japan that are familiar to even an amateur historian.

Toland’s attempt to write a more sympathetic, non-judgmental narrative also means that the actions of the Japanese are forgiven in ways they would not have been if one of the Western colonial powers had committed them. The refrain that “Americans don’t understand the Japanese mentality and culture” and it was this “misunderstanding” that led to the war becomes tedious right quick, with Japanese decision-makers like Prince Konoe – and other militaristic firebrands of the 1930s – being portrayed with a certain hazy romanticism (while the book starts in 1936 most knowledgeable people know that the march to war really began with the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1932). Japan’s imperialist, racist elite by-and-large get let off the hook as Toland dwells on the supposed pan-Asian liberation ideology used to justify Japan’s actions while excusing Japan’s decades of atrocities in China, Korea and the Philippines.

This last bit really stuck in my craw, especially when Toland goes on to state that the aspirations of the Japanese Empire were in sympathy with the aspirations of all of the nations of Asia of the time; namely, to escape Western colonial domination. The Japanese desire to chuck the round eyes from the East was well-known and trumpeted by their propaganda, but not because of any kind of altruistic drive or desire to stick it to whitey. No, the principle reason the Empire of Japan wanted the Western barbarian empires to fall was because they stood in the way of their own empire – or should I say, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Toland also claims Japan was constantly menaced by the Soviet Union which accounted for its ultra-right-wing attitudes, a patently inaccurate assessment as he also goes out of his way to distance Japan from Nazi Germany, but I found most of his assertions unconvincing.

The military took control in the 1930s, but Toland doesn’t really say how, almost as if the country woke up one day and…there it was. He describes in detail the February 26^th Incident of young officers in 1936 and how they were willing to kill without compunction and how fanatical they were…yet we are then told that they supposedly opposed expansion into China and that the repression of this coup attempt would lead to an expanded war. Toland defines the Japanese term Gekokujō as being some sort of insubordination that led to the Kwantung Army to feel it could move, presumably without orders from Tokyo, into Manchuria. However, he doesn’t explain how this could happen for there is little description of the power structure in Japan; we do know that there was some attempt to create parliamentary democracy but there were also the giant oligarchs who had much power, to say nothing of the military hierarchy.

And on and on and on…The Rising Sun could have been an invaluable insight into the minds and motivations of those who ran the Empire of Japan as it embarked on its conquest of Asia…but alack, he wrote what was instead an apologia for war, death, human suffering and geopolitical catastrophe that has not aged well at all.