Harriet Devine's Blog

Hide My Eyes

A couple of months ago I re-read Margery Allingham's great classic crime novel Tiger in the Smoke for the Cornflower Book Group. It was one of her last novels, written in the 1950s, and wonderfully evocative of post-war London. I had read it before, but I had never read this one, which could be described as its companion piece. Published in 1958, it is not a whodunnit but, like Tiger, a psychological thriller. Set, again, in London, the main action of the novel takes place over a single day. At the start, though, a bizarre and well-planned murder takes place in an alley behind a London theatre -- witnesses describe seeing an ancient one-decker bus backed in, with two old people sitting quietly in the front seat, and when it is gone, a violent shooting is found to have taken place, concealed by the presence of the coach. We know at once who the perpetrator is -- Gerry, a charming, ruthless con man, whose life, as we discover, has been littered with similar incidents. Gerry has one friend, Mrs Tassie, an elderly lady who, widowed and childless, has developed a deep love for him and wilfully blinds herself to any suspicions that he might be in any way connected with a series of murders that have been puzzling the police for several years. Although these are all very different in execution and have taken place in different parts of the country, Detective Charlie Luke has an idea there may be a connection, as each one is linked in some apparently minor way with the rather seedy district of London where Gerry's friend and patron lives and runs her eccentric museum. As the story proper begins, a young girl has arrived at the museum from the country -- she is a relative of Mrs Tassie, who has hopes that she may marry Gerry and help him to settle down. The action of the novel then moves between her day with Mrs Tassie, Gerry's trajectory through London, leaving a trail of well-planned destruction behind him, and the efforts of Charlie Luke and the private detective Albert Campion to solve the puzzles and home in on their prey. I enjoyed this enormously, and found the depiction of Gerry's complex, amoral, troubled character fascinating, as indeed is Mrs Tassie's sad unswerving devotion to the man she knows in her heart is not worth it. Beautifully observed -- a real classic indeed.

The Doves of Venus: Sunday Salon

  

I seem to have always known about Olivia Manning without ever having read any of her books, though I remember a very good TV series, made in 1987, of her Balkan Trilogy, which was called The Fortunes of War and starred Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. So when I saw this in a charity shop recently I snapped it up, even though I'd never heard of this title before. The book was first published in 1955 and is set in that period, but it is clearly based on Olivia's own experiences of moving to London from Portsmouth in the early 1930. She had gone to art classes at Portsmouth Technical College but had to leave because her parents couldn't afford the fees, and in London managed to get a job painting and "distressing" wooden furniture. This is just what happens to Ellie in the novel, though Portsmouth has become the fictional Eastsea, and Ellie's mother is an impecunious widow. Whether Olivia, like Ellie, got involved with a married man and was made very unhappy by him I do not know, but certainly that is Ellie's misfortune. As the novel starts, though, she is euphorically happy, making her way back late at night to her Chelsea bedsit where, despite her exhaustion, she dances "as wildly as she could, to celebrate the end of her virginity". Her middle-aged seducer Quintin Bellot, meanwhile, is lying in his comfortable bed, musing, in some irritation, on the fact that he "had involved himself with Ellie from habit, and it was a habit he would soon have to break". He is almost at once called out, to his further irritation, to collect his estranged wife Petta, who has been rescued from a suicide attempt on nearby Westminster Bridge. She has left her latest lover, Theo, and manages to force Quintin to let her move back into their flat. All this, which takes place in the first two chapters, really sets the tone for what happens in the rest of the novel. Ellie -- eighteen, beautiful, insecure, intelligent, and determined at all costs not to move back to the dreary, loveless home she has left behind -- tries hard to fill her life despite, eventually, having to come to terms with the loss of Quintin. Petta, meanwhile, is increasingly depressed by her fast-approaching middle age and the loss of her own spectacular beauty. The theme of ageing, old age and, finally, death, really dominates this novel. Ellie, despite her difficulties, her poverty and her problems at work, rejoices in her extreme youth and freshness, and of course men are drawn to her because of it. But Petta is, in a sense, a terrible reminder of what could be her fate in another twenty or so years, as she has to make a huge effort to keep herself looking good and often catches terrifying glimpses of her reflection in the mirror. Of course Ellie has a career of sorts, and perhaps that will save her to some extent from becoming another Petta. As for Quintin, attractive, selfish, shallow, taking from women whatever suits him and throwing them aside afterwards, he is a most convincingly unpleasant character. All this is, I found, quite dark and depressing at times, despite the upbeat ending of the novel.

Olivia Manning writes well and perfectly catches the many fluctuations of mood and feeling that flit through the minds and hearts of the various characters. I also really enjoyed the picture of life in Chelsea in the early 1950s -- the pubs, the parties, the bedsits, the cheap cafes, and the generally sad and disillusioned artists and intellectuals who inhabit it -- and of Clopals, the grand country house belonging to the aged Tom Claypole, where Ellie is taken to visit by her friend Nancy (said to be based on Olivia Manning's own friend the poet Stevie Smith). Definitely worth a read.

Helen Hollick

"Hello Harriet – thank you  for inviting me onto your blog! "

So says Helen Hollick, the author of Kingmaking, which I reviewed yesterday. She kindly agreed to answer some questions.

1. Hi Helen, welcome to the blog. Now -- when did you first realise you were a writer?
I have three answers to this – the whimsical, the technical  and the truthful one! ☺

Whimsically, I realised I wanted to write when I was about 13.  I wanted a pony but my parents couldn’t afford one – so I invented one. I must have written a library full of books about me and my pony, Tara. Sadly I do not have any of them now. Mind you, that is probably for the best as I doubt they were written all that well!
Technically, I became a writer when I was officially accepted by William Heinemann (Random House UK) a week after my 40th birthday. I’ll own up – I will be 56 in April. I’ll  leave you to do the math.
And truthfully? It has only been in the last two years that I have had the confidence to believe in myself as a writer.  I was forced to go self publish with my books when Heinemann decided not to keep my backlist in print (this included dropping the Pendragon’s Banner Trilogy). When my agent simultaneously dumped me I was devastated. I really thought that was the end of my writing career. I spent two weeks heart broken and utterly shattered, then someone suggested self publishing. As I had the copyright back for my books I thought, well, why not? Even if I only sold one book a week it would be more than nothing.  So I went ahead and brought out the Trilogy and Harold the King (which now is on the road to becoming ‘1066’ a movie!). I also decided to self publish my latest venture – but more of that below.
I went with an independent company, which has now diversified into having a small mainstream imprint, in which all my books are included so I am no longer self published. And of course, Sourcebooks Inc made an offer for the Trilogy so I am mainstream in the USA and Canada.
Going it alone and making a reasonable success of things made be look at my writing differently though. I am a good writer. People do like reading my books -  and that knowledge (and the desire to prove my ex agent wrong) has given me the confidence to see myself for what I am. A good writer.  Which is perhaps just as well as I have no idea what I would have done instead!

2. What do you enjoy most about writing?
One thing is meeting so many nice people – I have such wonderful friends because of my writing, both physical and “virtual”.  But  I think the prime enjoyment is creating my characters – who are also my good friends.
To me they are very very real. I hear them speak to me and I talk back – my present project is a series of pirate novels. I mean how many people can truthfully claim they have their very own pirate?
Or maybe I am just demented? ☺

3. What's your writing routine (where, when, how do you write)?

Oh I’m hopelessly disorganized and get easily distracted (just one more game of scrabble: me v the computer, before I start …)  I tend to catch up with my e-mail and check my various Myspace profiles in the morning after I have driven my daughter to the livery yard where she keeps her three horses.  (She is 26 but for various reasons does not drive yet) and taken the dog for a walk. I do a lot of thinking while walking Rum (the dog) and I have a small Dictaphone that I carry so I can keep a record of anything I want to remember. I used to be able to recall whole passages of dialogue, but I think my age is catching up on me somewhat.
I usually start writing at about 3 pm and will often write through to the early hours of the morning.
If I am doing an intense read-through I tend to have a “duvet day” and stay snuggled in bed with the manuscript. This is mainly because it is quiet in my bedroom so I can concentrate, I know I will not be disturbed and it is a comfortable way to sit.
My computer is in the spare room, which I grandly call “my office”.  The desk is beside the window which looks out onto a patio and our raised goldfish pond, lots of trees and the bird table, where the local feathered hooligans come to have a daily punch-up over the bird food I’ve put out. And no, I don’t spend all the time gazing out of the window, only some of it.

4. Why historical novels?
As I said I started with pony stories, then I moved to science fiction and fantasy (this was the era of Star Wars first time around when Harrison Ford was a new unknown.) When I discovered that Arthur was not the character in the Norman Medieval Tales, but very probably a war lord from the fifth century I got hooked on the subject. I found that I was getting more and more frustrated with the novels about him – all the magic and fantasy – so taking the view that no one else was going to write the book I wanted to read, I decided to write it myself. 
I enjoy historical novels because I am interested in the past. I like doing the research and more than this I get a great deal of pleasure in bringing these people to life again, of writing the ‘what might have really happened’ as my own nod to setting the record straight.

5. What attracts you most about the Arthurian period?
I have partially answered this above – I wanted to write what might have really happened. I do not like the Medieval tales at all; they have never interested me. Nor am I particularly interested in history after 1066.  I’m not too keen on the Normans I’m afraid – which is why I wrote Harold the King, the story of 1066 and the Battle of Hastings from the English point of view. Harold II was our legitimate King. Duke William was a psychopathic tyrant - Harold was murdered by his men on that battlefield. As you may be able to tell, it is a subject I am passionate about.

 6. How much of the novel is informed by research and how much is fiction?
A good bit of it is fiction – well most of it, I suppose, when you consider there is no evidence to support that Arthur actually lived!  The everyday life details are accurate, I spent a good while looking into what they would have worn, eaten, etc. What weapons, the type of buildings – it is those sort of details that bring an historical novel alive.  I researched the horses in depth as well – being that we are a horsy family this was an area I very much enjoyed. The battles I portray are detailed, (and yes quite bloody. What is the point of  writing a realistic historical novel then making the battle scenes more like a tea party? Battles were brutal and bloody. I suppose you could say that the skeleton framework of the plot was all research. The muscles are also research while the skin, hair colour and characterization are fiction.

7. What's the next book we can expect from you?
Sourcebooks inc will be bringing out book two and three of the Trilogy in the Fall and next Spring, so you have those to look forward to. Meanwhile my other books are available – and A Hollow Crown and  Harold the King which are both about Saxon England. I am also having great fun writing a series of pirate-based nautical stories set in the early 18th Century. I describe them as adventure fantasy, Jack Sparrow, Indiana Jones and Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe all rolled into one.  My sailing detail is as accurate as I can get it, and the historical events are, more or less, factual, though I have cheated a little bit in places. 
I wanted to write something that was not plain historical fiction but a bit of fun to write and read – a rollocking sailor’s yarn in fact. It is so nice having invented my hero – a rogue of a pirate captain – and not have to kill him off in the final chapter! 
If you enjoyed the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and like Jack Sparrow you will undoubtedly fall for my Captain Jesamiah Acorne and the love of his life, Tiola Oldstagh. (pronounced Tee-la Old-staff). Who just happens to be a midwife, a healer – and a white witch!
I am also co-scriptwriter for the proposed movie 1066. While not exactly based on my book, as co-scriptwriter and a high-profile member of the production team, the details are very similar. And as the production team is determined to make this movie as a tribute to Harold, and stay as faithful as we can to accuracy and fact, I think my novel and the movie will compliment each other enormously.

Thanks, Helen -- very interesting answers!

Thank you for having me aboard your blog!
Helen

Interested in finding out more? You can read more about Helen on her own pages.

The Kingmaking

When I say King Arthur, what do you think of? Gorgeous men in gleaming armour, maybe (this one is Clive Owen), the Round Table, Merlin, the quest for the Holy Grail? Or maybe you are of a literary bent and remember Tennyson:

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
    Of bold Sir Lancelot.
A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
    Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter’d free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
    As he rode down to Camelot:
And from his blazon’d baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
    Beside remote Shalott.

I think of all these, and also of that wonderful medieval text, Malory's Morte d'Arthur, which I first read as an undergraduate and which is still capable of bringing tears to my eyes:

Then sir Lancelot was brought before her. Then the queen said to all the ladies: 'Through this same man and me hath all this war be wrought, and the death of the most noblest knights of the world; for through our love that we have loved together is my most noble lord slain....And therefore sir Lancelot, I require and beseech thee heartily, for all the love that ever was betwixt us, that thou never see me more in the visage....'. 

 

If this is the kind of thing you are expecting, you will be rather surprised by this impressively large novel by Helen Hollick. First published in 1979 and now reissued by Sourcebooks, this book promises to show King Arthur as he really was -- or might have been, since of course there is no actual historical evidence that he ever existed at all. If indeed he did, he would have been alive not in that great period of medieval chivalry with which we tend to associate him but in the earlier, much murkier and more brutal era known as the Dark Ages. This is when Helen Hollick sets her story. The novel begins with fifteen-year-old Arthur on board ship, heading across the Irish Sea from Hibernia (Ireland) to Gwynedd (Wales). The year is 450 AD. Soon he will meet the feisty twelve-year-old Gwenhwyfar (say it our loud and you'll get it), daughter of the great Welsh King Cunedda. This is the story of their relationship, in part, but it is also the story of Arthur's coming of age, and coming into his inheritance. He has been brought up by Lord Uthr Pendragon, though his actual parentage is unknown. Now Uthr has set sail for Britain with the intention of overthrowing the tyrant Voltigern and establishing himself as king. 

Arthur grows into a strong man and a fine warrior. Many bloody battles later, after Uthr has been killed by Vortigern, he discovers his true parentage -- he is in fact Uthr's own son -- and comes into his inheritance. But, despite having pledged himself to Gwenhwyfar, he has made a tactical marriage to Vortigern's duplicitous daughter Winifred. He must somehow extricate himself from this situation so that he can marry the woman he truly loves. Quite how he does this is not for me to say, but I can tell you that it is all very exciting and action-packed, and I don't think I am giving anything away when I say that the ending is a happy and triumphant one. 

Helen Hollick has researched this little known period thoroughly and there is no doubt that the setting is far more authentic than the more usual one of medieval romance. If Arthur, or someone like him, did exist, he was undoubtedly what Helen Hollick calls "a down-to earth, ruthless war leader". Some of the characters and some of the battles are based on historical fact, and what is not has been vividly imagined. So if you feel like losing yourself in an exciting, drama-filled historical novel, this is the one for you. And what is more, it is only the first of the "Pendragon Trilogy" to be reissued, so you will have lots more to look forward to. And, tomorrow, I will be posting an interview with the author, so watch this space.

Book Meme

That entertaining and learned blogger Litlove, over on Tales from the Reading Room, shares my love of the occasional meme. She posted this one the other day and I couldn't help myself. Here are my answers. If you fancy doing it yourself, please do.

The book that’s been on your shelves the longest.

I have got one book that I have had since I was a child. It is an early twentieth-century story collection called Greek Myths and Legends, and it has an inscription inside saying it was won as a school prize by my mother's older brother Norman in 1912. This is especially poignant as Norman was sent soon afterwards to Dartmouth Naval College, and when the First World War broke out he and his fellow pupils were called up as midshipmen. But he never saw the war as he and many of the rest of the crew died in a tragic accident -- a explosion -- while the ship was still in port.

A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time).

This has to be my ancient and battered edition of Wordsworth's verse autobiography The Prelude, because it reminds me of the time when, as a final year student, I took this book on a train journey. The train broke down and stayed stranded for a long time, during which, with nothing else to do to pass the time, I started to really study the text of this poem in a very detailed way. This not only resulted in my finding a subject for my undergraduate dissertation but also formed the basis of a later M.Phil thesis.

A book you acquired in some interesting way.

That would be my first edition (1922) of Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party. When I was in France a few years ago I went to a 'vide grenier' (attic sale) in a nearby village. There were loads of tables and stalls and also a few people just sitting on the ground with some bits and pieces spread out on a blanket. One such was a young French girl who had a small pile of books which, when I looked at them, turned out to be in English. She was selling them for 10 francs (£1) each, so I bought them all, the Mansfield among them. I had no idea it was a first ed. till later, but it is, completely genuine and not in bad condition, so worth several hundred pounds if I cared to sell it, which I don't.

The book that’s been with you to the most places.

This is hard. I suppose anything I've had since I was a student will have been in two different houses in London, two different houses in Oxford, and two different houses in Lancashire where I now live, and several probably on holiday with me as well. Let's go for Bleak House, which I certainly remember carting around with me a lot.

The most recent addition to your shelves.

That's Margery Allingham's classic crime novel Hide my Eyes, which arrived a couple of days ago via Bookmooch.

Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next.

I'm just finishing Henning Mankell's first Wallander novel, Faceless Killers. Before that I read Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger. I think my next read might be Olivia Manning's The Doves of Venus, bought in a charity shop last week.

Sunday Salon: The Lost Estate (aka Le Grand Meaulnes)

      When I was about nine years old, I saw this book lying on my father's desk -- well, not this exact book, because the one he had was in French -- and for some reason now lost in the mists of time I took the title, Le Grand Meaulnes, to mean 'the large sand-dune'. I think it must have had something to do with whatever the picture was on the cover, though that can hardly have been an image of sand dunes -- perhaps it was a landscape with hills depicted in a sort of yellowish light? Anyway, whatever the cause, I remember thinking what a very boring book it must be. I don't remember when I discovered my mistake, and realised that Meaulnes is not French for dune (in fact dune is French for dune) but the name of a character in the novel. 'Big Meaulnes'? 'The Grand Meaulnes'? 'The Great Meaulnes'? Robin Buss, the translator of this Penguin edition, goes for Great, as in The Great Gatsby, and he's probably right. A few years ago I saw a copy in a French secondhand bookshop, bought it, and started to read it in French. I can just about do this (legacy of the Dad) but I needed a dictionary because so many objects with unfamiliar names kept popping up. I persisted, and got about three-quarters if the way through, but at the end of the summer I left it behind in France and never did pick it up again. So I was very pleased when the Cornflower Book Group announced it as February's choice. Reading it in English was fascinating and seemed to me to be a very different experience, and not just because I didn't have to keep stopping to look things up.
So -- what's it about? First published in 1913, and its author's first book, it tells the story of a young man, Augustin Meaulnes, who, at the age of about seventeen, takes time off from school and loses himself in the remote countryside. On his return, he tells of coming upon a strange, half-ruined estate where a party is going on to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of the son of the house. Everyone is in fancy dress, and Meaulnes dresses up too and joins in. During the course of the party he encounters a most beautiful young girl and falls deeply in love at once. But news comes that the wedding is cancelled and everyone disperses, Meaulnes getting a lift on a cart back to the village where he is at school. But this experience, and his passion for the girl, become a complete obsession, and he searches unsuccessfully for the estate, which seems to have disappeared like a  mirage. He leaves school, goes to live in Paris, and little is heard of him for some time. Eventually he reappears, but events turn out rather differently from his (and indeed the reader's) expectations.
There certainly is something very magical about the first half of this story, though it does rather require what Coleridge called 'the willing suspension of disbelief".  The second half is more realistic and you might feel that the two halves sit slightly uneasily together. But of course this does echo Meaulnes' own inner journey, from idealistic adolescent to sadder and wiser young adult. The story is narrated by Meaulnes slightly younger school friend Francois Seurel, whose vision of events is coloured by his great love and admiration of the older boy -- it is Francois and his fellow pupils who call Meaulnes "great". So, though he is telling Meaulnes' story, we, in a sense, are invited to see it as his own story -- or that is how it seemed to me on this re-reading. The depiction of rural France in the early years of the twentieth century is wonderfully evocative, and indeed the whole atmosphere of the book carries a strange magic which draws you in and keeps you wanting to know more.

It's easy to pick holes in this novel, to call it unrealistic and uneven. I myself was not wholly positive about it over on Cornflower, though several other very intelligent readers have disagreed with me. However, there is no doubt that there is something here that takes hold the the mind and the imagination -- it's a book that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

Moon Tiger, the Booker Prize

I've always had this rather romantically vague idea that you could not go wrong with a Booker Prize winner. In actual fact I have just been looking at the list of past winners and find that a) I have read remarkably few of them and b) I have not invariably enjoyed the ones I have read. If you are interested, here are the statistics, with the ones I liked in pink and the ones I didn't in blue. I have read:

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains of the Day
1990: A S Byatt, Possession
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
2001: Peter Carey, The True History of the Kelly Gang
And now I can add another one -- 1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger -- and yes, folks, it is blue. I have read a few P Lively's before and liked them a lot, so why did I dislike this so intensely? Because that is what I did. I am not saying that it is a bad book, mind, and in fact I am sure it is a very good book and that in 1987 it was probably astonishing. By that I mean that the multiple narrators and the jumping around through time must have seemed a great deal more innovative and challenging than it did to me reading it in 2001. If you have not read it, this is the story of a 76-year-old woman, Claudia Hampton, who is on her deathbed. Visitors come and go, the nurses periodically patronise and irritate her, but the novel is concerned with her memories of her past life. She has been a successful popular historian and, in her own mind, is now writing what she calls a history of the world, based on her own past. We learn of her childhood, her wartime experiences in Cairo, her passionate love affair with a young soldier which ends with his death, her pregnancy and miscarriage, a second love affair resulting in a daughter, and, quite late on, we learn of her early intense and passionate incestuous relationship with her brother. All this is done with immense skill, mainly transmitted through Claudia's own consciousness but interspersed with the reactions of her friends and family, so that some events are retold several times from different points of view. Clever stuff, undoubtedly. And, if I'm honest, the reason I didn't like it was because I disliked Claudia so much. Now if I had been teaching this to a bunch of students -- and thanks goodness I am not -- and someone had said this, I'd have been the first to say that this was not a valid reason for disliking the novel. Yes, Claudia is opinionated, headstrong, inconsiderate, bitter, a terrible mother and absolutely beastly to her poor silly sister-in-law, but surely that is what makes the novel so interesting. But I'm afraid all that went out of the window and I could hardly bring myself to finish the book, even though I could see how well written it was. Sometime I will tell you why I disliked the other blue ones!

Now I have music!

After yesterday's post, a kind reader pointed me in the way of Playlist which has enabled me to put up some music. If you don't like it you can just turn it off! Thanks, Heather.

Musical blogs

           
Once upon a time I used to use a wonderful site called Sonific that made it possible to have music playing when someone clicked open my blog. It was fun to do and much appreciated by people who called by -- I used to try to match the genre of the music to the book I was talking about, though I don't know if anyone ever noticed that. Anyway, sadly Sonific had to fold its operations owing to copyright issues, I think, and the best I have been able to do as a substitute is to put that bar down the right hand side with some pictures of CDs and some 'Bookmarked Songs' I like. But alas nothing happens when you click them, or nothing musical, anyway. So I thought I'd give you the occasional link to them, or to other music I like. Here's the first (though the last on the list) -- I'll Fly Away. This is the wonderful Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch singing, taken from the soundtrack of that inimitably delightful movie O Brother Where Art Thou. Click that link up there and you will also see a few scenes from it.

Chilling Effect

I've been enthusing about Marianne Wesson's crime novels for a while now -- there are three of them in all and I have already written about the first two here and here. Sadly, no one I know seems to have heard of her or to share my enthusiasm, though I gather her books have sold well in the US, at least.This is the third, and the last so far, though it was first published in 2004. I hope she is writing another one, though if you check out her biography you can see why she doesn't exactly churn them out -- she is a celebrated scholar, a university professor and a practicing lawyer into the bargain. I do love a good legal thriller, and though you might think Grisham had rather cornered that market, you'd be wrong. Mimi, as she likes to be called, is an expert in feminism and the law, and that expertise informs all three of her novels. This last one is no exception. As the novel begins, her central figure, the lawyer Lucinda (Cinda) Hayes receives a fax on her office machine. "It was the ghastliest fax I had ever received", she tells us, and we soon discover why. The photo she has been sent is of the tragically mutilated body of a young girl who, Cinda learns, was murdered by a mentally disturbed man who had been watching a particularly horrific pornographic video in which a young girl is assaulted and finally killed. The man has been tried and imprisoned, but the girl's mother, who turns out to be a woman Cinda knew as a child, wants the makers of the tape to be traced and brought to account. After much agonising Cinda decides to take on the case, even though she knows it will be extraordinarily challenging. This is not only because it will be very hard to find out who actually made the tape, and perhaps even harder to prove that the tape was the direct cause of the murder. The other problem Cinda has to grapple with is the fact to suggest that such tapes should be banned amounts to censorship, and as such will contravene the First Amendment. If you are not familiar with US law, suffice it to say that this Amendment is usually taken to prohibit any legal action that infringes freedom of speech. Cinda is not one to give up easily, though, and mustering a useful, if rather quirky team around her, she is soon on the track of the film-makers, has sent a psychologist to interview the convicted murderer, and is deeply immersed in reading all the relevant research about pornography and its effect on peoples' actions. This is something she comes to know rather too much about from her own painful experience. Early on she acquires a copy of the tape, and watches it with her lover, the African America lawyer Sam Holt. But her reactions while watching it are so disturbing that she feels unable to continue in a sexual relationship. As she zaps back and forth between her home town of Boulder Colorado, Chicago, and Los Angeles, she becomes increasingly stressed and exhausted, but also increasingly determined to pursue this issue to the very end.

There is some truly disturbing and thought-provoking material here. Cinda's discoveries about the pornographic film industry and its relationship with legitimate movie making are pretty hair-raising, and the legal detail -- obviously very full and accurate -- is fascinating. Cinda is a most attractive protagonist, and I really enjoyed the novel's background -- yuppie-fied Boulder, laid-back California, seedy Chicago -- and the appealingly odd characters that populate it. The ending is quite a shock, but obviously that is something I can't talk about here. This is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys an intelligent novel with a good deal of excitement thrown in.