Review: THE BAGHDAD RAILWAY CLUB, Andrew Martin

• first published by Faber & Faber 2012
• ISBN 978-0-571-24965-7
• 290 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Baghdad 1917. Captain Jim Stringer, invalided from the Western Front, has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a nasty case of treason.
He arrives to find a city on the point of insurrection, his cover apparently blown - and his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes.
As Baghdad swelters in a particularly torrid summer, the heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. The recently ejected Turks are still a danger - and many of the local Arabs are none too friendly either.
For Jim, who is not particularly good in warm weather, the situation grows pricklier by the day. Aside from his investigation, he is working on the railways around the city. His boss is the charming, enigmatic Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, who presides over the gracious dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club - and who may or may not be a Turkish agent. Jim's search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence in a heat-dazed, labyrinthine city where an enemy awaits around every corner.

My Take

Most historical crime fiction related to World War One focusses on the Western Front so it is refreshing to find one that has a different setting. Captain Jim Stringer's introduction to Mesopotamia is a talk at the Victoria Street London Railway Club on the Berlin-Bagdad Railway. The railway had been a German scheme to connect with Asia Minor. Control of the railway becomes important to the British after they take Baghdad because it has the potential to give access to the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. Turkey and Germany have collaborated in building the Berlin-Bagdad railway, a narrow two foot gauge, since 1888. Control of the railway would give Germany the ability to bypass the Suez Canal. Currently the railway is incomplete by about two hundred and fifty miles.

So control of the railway, and particularly over its completion, is particularly important to the British war effort and seems to be within their grasp. But there appears to be a traitor in the ranks who is collaborating with the Turks.

So Jim Stringer receives an assignment to Baghdad to see if he can discover whether the rumours are true. But when he gets there it turns into a murder investigation, which is right up his alley, because in civilian life he has been a detective associated with British railways in York and London. He can also drive steam trains.

I must confess that I read this book by mistake - thinking in fact that it was part of an entirely different series by an entirely different author.

There is an impressive amount of historical detail in this novel, and indeed the author says that his "description of the British occupation of Baghdad is roughly accurate". I think however that I would have benefited by getting to know Jim Stringer better through reading earlier titles (see the list below). 

My rating: 4.1

Andrew Martin won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award for the previous title in the Jim Stringer series THE SOMME STATIONS.

Series (listing by Fantastic Fiction)

Jim Stringer
1. The Necropolis Railway (2002)
2. The Blackpool Highflyer (2004)
3. The Lost Luggage Porter (2006)
4. Murder At Deviation Junction (2007)
5. Death on a Branch Line (2008)
6. The Last Train to Scarborough (2009)
7. The Somme Stations (2011)
8. The Baghdad Railway Club (2012)
9. Night Train to Jamalpur (2013)

Lest We Forget - 11 November 2011

I'm always fascinated by palindromic dates and today we have an extra special one - Remembrance Day observations at 11 am on the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011, 93 years on from the original declaration of the Armistice that signalled the end of World War One. After over four years of war, what a huge relief that must have been.

Yesterday I noticed in the shopping centre the RSL were selling little red poppies, and they will be used world wide in specially created "gardens", on war memorials, and on wreaths, today to signify that we haven't forgotten.

And at 11 am in schools, at war memorials, and various public places, the bugles will blow and we will have a minute's silence for the fallen.

Those of us who weren't there really can't know what it was like but even in the crime fiction world there are books that can contribute to our understanding. Just last week I reviewed A LONELY DEATH by Charles Todd. There are some terrific passages in there that describe what it was like on the Front.

While World War One wasn't, as was hoped, "the war to end all wars", it had such a cataclysmic effect on the world that we inherited, that it is really important that we and our families don't forget, whichever "side" our ancestors were on.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

The Ode comes from For the Fallen, a poem by the English poet and writer Laurence Binyon and was published in London in The Winnowing Fan: Poems of the Great War in 1914. This verse, which became the Ode for the Returned and Services League, has been used in association with commemoration services in Australia since 1921.

Download/Play Bugle Calls from Anzacday.org
The following downloads are in .wav format and may not be usable on all systems. Please note that, depending on the speed of your connection, files may require several minutes to download.
[Last Post - 214kb] [Reveille - 181kb] [Rouse - 72kb]

Acknowledgement: Sound files courtesy of the Australian Army Band, Brisbane.

Review: A LONELY DEATH, Charles Todd

• Published by Harper Collins 2011
• ISBN 978-0-06-172619-4
• 343 pages
• source: my local library

Publisher's blurb (from author's site)

Three men have been murdered in a Sussex village, and Scotland Yard has been called in. It’s a baffling case. All the victims are soldiers who have made it home alive from the Great War, which ended two years ago, only to be garroted, with small ID disks left in their mouths. And shortly after Inspector Ian Rutledge arrives, there’s a fourth murder. The killer is vicious and clever, leaving behind few clues. As the stakes ratchet up, Rutledge is determined to find answers, even as he puts his job, his reputation, and even his life on the line.

My take

A LONELY DEATH is #13 in the Ian Rutledge series and I am guilty of dipping in and out of the series (see my reviews below). #1, A TEST OF WILLS, was set immediately after the war in 1919 and it does seem that, with A LONELY DEATH, historically we haven't come very far. The story begins in June 1920 and most of the action takes place within a few weeks of that beginning.

The Great War is still fresh in people's minds, missing soldiers are still being found in hospitals near the Western Front, and England is still coming to grips with the economic impact of such a terrible loss of manpower. It does seem wrong that soldiers from the Eastland Company, some terribly wounded during the conflict, have survived only to be murdered near their homes. That it is murder can't be doubted. After Rutledge is appointed to the case a fourth murder occurs, but it is only when he begins to toy with the idea of a pre-war connection that progress is made.

Even so Rutledge is removed from the case, even gaoled, in mid-stream, by his old enemy, Superintendent Bowles, his superior at Scotland Yard. Bowles dislikes Rutledge, his education, his reputation as a war hero, and his pre-war history as an intuitive clever detective.

As with the others from this series that I have read,  A LONELY DEATH is a good read, well crafted, with an excellent feeling of authentic detail. There was one thread in particular, the case of a missing elder son, which didn't feel tied off, but maybe I just missed something.

Rutledge still has Hamish on his shoulder, the ghost of his court-martialled and executed Corporal, who talks to him and suggests ideas. To Rutledge Hamish is very real, and he often converses with him aloud which must at times be disconcerting for others who can't "see" Hamish. I must admit I was a bit taken aback when Rutledge and other policemen piled into a car to go somewhere and the comment was that there was no room for Hamish in his usual place. I'd be interested to know if a reader, new to the series, perhaps starting with A LONELY DEATH, actually manages to work out who Hamish is.

You'll notice also that I am counting A LONELY DEATH as a "British" read, despite the fact that the author, Charles Todd, is in fact an American mother and son.

my rating: 4.7

Reviews on MiP
SEARCH THE DARK (Rutledge #3)
A PALE HORSE (Rutledge #10)
A TEST OF WILLS (Rutledge #1)
4.5, A DUTY TO THE DEAD (Bess Crawford #1)

ANZAC Day Adelaide 2009

The photo on the right is of the Adelaide War Memorial on North Terrace. Not today though, and the photo is not by me. (see acknowledgement in the foot of this post)

ANZAC Day observations began for us last night at the footy match (at which Port Power were soundly trounced by St. Kilda unfortunately) with a small ceremony with The Last Post and the Rouse being played, the Australian flag lowered and raised, and the Ode spoken.

The person speaking the Ode To the Fallen must have been a bit nervous and will long be remembered, probably to his eternal embarassment, for "at the going down of the morning, and in the sun".

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Today in Adelaide is a bit damp and overcast.
My account is through the eyes of a camp follower of the Enfield Brass Band. It began for us with the Dawn service at the Walkerville Cross of Sacrifice, followed by a gun-fire breakfast at the Walkerville RSL.
Today the Mayor of Dernancourt in France was with us, so the band played the Marseillaise as well as the Australian National Anthem. [I wrote last year about our close association with French towns like Dernancourt, after which a nearby suburb is named, and Villers Bretonneux.]
The gun-fire breakfast consisted of bacon, eggs, a meat patty, and baked beans, and the gun-fire part, a tot of rum in our coffee. Gerdt, Enfield Brass Band's Belgian import, had never come across it before, but that didn't inhibit his enjoyment.

We have just come back from the 2 hour Anzac Day March through the streets of Adelaide. Enfield Brass had to play and march twice, and it rained lightly from time to time, and at one stage an F-111 roared overhead.
Just now we've been watching the dawn service at ANZAC Cove in Gallipoli on television, and now the service at Villers Bretonneux, with the Unley Concert Band as the band.

Last year I posted about some fiction associated with World War One.
The books I wrote about in that post were

• THE FIRST CASUALTY by Ben Elton. My rating 4.6
• MURDER IN MONTPARNASSE by Kerry Greenwood. My rating 4.6
• THE SHIFTING FOG (aka THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON) by Kate Morton. My rating 4.7
• BIRDS OF A FEATHER by Jacqueline Winspear. My rating 4.6
• PARDONABLE LIES by Jacqueline Winspear. My rating 4.6

In that posting I also listed a couple of films to look out for, and a play to hunt down.
Read the post to learn more.

I haven't read a lot since then set in the period, but I have read the first 10 Agatha Christie novels and have come to recognise in her an astute observer of the relief, social dislocation, and general fear that followed the cessation of hostilities at the end of 1918.

For example THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES, published in 1920, is set towards the end of World War One, and Christie makes a number of observations about the privations of life in England during the war, rationing, and shortages, and a style of living that is fast disappearing. The house at Styles once had a much larger domestic, household and garden staff, but is now "making do". The Cavendish brothers have inherited money, John lives the life of a country squire, and Lawrence, the younger brother is delicate and follows literary pursuits. Other members of the family are working in "acceptable" occupations, for war time that is, a nurse, the land army, and a companion. The War features not only in Hastings' convalescence, but also in the fact that one of the characters is a German spy.

More links to check out:

• A new resource has been released this week for Anzac day by the ABC
  It is an interactive 3D exploration of Anzac Cove and the events around 25 April 1915.
• The Australian Department of Veteran Affairs has a page called Commemorations and the Australian War Memorial has a page with, among other things, the sound files for the Last Post and the Rouse.
  
• Another page to check is the Anzac Site, a government sponsored page of resources.
  
• Check also ANZAC - newly created by SouthOzSue.
  
• Visit the The London War Memorial site. Click on Australians in World War I and hear the Last Post, World War II and you hear O God Our Help in Ages Past. Search for the name of your town on the wall.
• There is also an edna theme page which contains a number of customised search links drawing on the edna database.
• More on ANZAC DAY at Wikipedia.

Just some stats:

• 46,000 Australians died on the Somme
• 62,000 Australians died altogether in World War One
• 18,000 Australians who died on the Somme have no known grave.
• 113,000 Australians were wounded on the Somme.

Photo courtesy http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2044/2303609908_696f7daea7.jpg

November 11, Remembrance Day

Originally called Armistice Day, this day commemorated the end of the hostilities for the Great War (World War I), the signing of the armistice, which occurred on 11 November 1918 - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Armistice Day was observed by the Allies as a way of remembering those who died, especially soldiers with 'no known grave'.

Image: Red Poppies, Australian War Memorial, Canberra ACT Australia

On the first anniversary of the armistice, in 1919, one minute's silence was instituted as part of the main commemorative ceremony. In London, in 1920, the commemoration was given added significance with the return of the remains of an unknown soldier from the battlefields of the Western Front.

The Flanders poppy became accepted throughout the allied nations as the flower of remembrance to be worn on Armistice Day. The red poppies were among the first plants that sprouted from the devastation of the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. 'Soldiers' folklore had it that the poppies were vivid red from having been nurtured in ground drenched with the blood of their comrades'.

After the end of World War II in 1945, the Australian and British governments changed the name to Remembrance Day as an appropriate title for a day which would commemorate all war dead. In October 1997, then Governor-General of Australia, Sir William Deane, issued a proclamation declaring:

11 November as Remembrance Day and urging Australians to observe one minute's silence at 11.00 am on Remembrance Day each year to remember the sacrifice of those who died or otherwise suffered in Australia's cause in wars and war-like conflicts.

The red poppy – or Flanders poppy – is an international symbol of remembrance for those killed on the battlefield. Its symbolism dates back to Napoleonic times, but its association with WWI and WWII is mainly due to the poem “In Flanders Fields”, written by Canadian medical officer Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae during WWI:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

See my other blog for Villers-Bretonneux and ‘L’Ecole Victoria’ (Victoria School).