Constable, 2013, 394 p. First published 2007.

There is a certain sameness to modern crime fiction; which is to say modern detective fiction. Gone are the days of the gentleman sleuth such as Poirot or Wimsey, and the even more gentle woman, Miss Marple, solving crimes almost at leisure and in relatively salubrious surroundings. Now we have the hard-bitten, hardened police detective dealing with contemporary (well, in this case twelve years old) psychopathic criminality in all its grisly detail.

I would not normally have read this but it is set almost exclusively in Fife, where I live, (with such familiar locations as Boarhills, Kingsbarns, Crail and St Andrews,) and was recommended by our nearest local librarian as an introduction to the author prior to his visit to the library this November. Suitably enough it was published by Constable.

The short Chapter One features a young woman fleeing from a brutal captivity along a Fife coastal path on a freezing night. That is the last time we are given her point of view. It is her body DCI Andy Gilchrist, a widower, and his new DS Jessica (Jessie) Janes, are called to investigate a few days later, dead from a blow to the head, possibly after a fall from the path, and subsequent exposure. They trace her back to a cottage in Kingsbarns where they find two more young women dead, decapitated, and evidence of enslavement into prostitution.

Janes has a sideline in stand-up comedy which she undertakes to try out jokes written by her deaf son, Robert. Her mother has a criminal record but is a constant thorn in her side trying to gain legal access to Robert.  Gilchrist and the forensic pathologist Dr Rebecca Cooper have a mutual attraction complicated by the fact that she is married to someone else (albeit not happily). One of the other female detectives has a problematic relationship with a man who turns out to be unknowingly involved in the case, another has a booze problem.

I thought Janes’s background as teased out by Gilchrist in their conversations and his investigations into her mother’s origins would have made it unlikely for her ever to have been accepted into the police but maybe their standards aren’t too high these days.

This is pretty much the standard police procedural offering but some of the details were perhaps unnecessarily gruesome (of course this may be what the crime fiction market now demands) and there was a cliffhanger scene which stretched credulity by being kept going too long.

On putting this book onto my Library Thing account I found this was actually DC Gilchrist’s fourth appearance in print. I may try one more to confirm my thoughts that it’s not really my thing.

Pedant’s corner:- In the Acknowledgements “whne” (when.) Otherwise; “change in tack” (x 3, the phrase is usually ‘change of tack’,) “chaffed and reddened by a cold Scottish wind” (chafed and reddened,) “all was not as it seemed” (not all was as it seemed,) “oblivious of his presence” (it’s ‘oblivious to’ not ‘oblivious of’,) “as his drove on” (as he drove on,) “the Kingsbarns’ killings” (Kingsbarns here is adjectival, not possessive; ‘the Kingsbarns killings’,) two police acronyms used and immediately explained within two lines (both could have been avoided or worked around without loss of clarity,) “not to help him breath” (help him breathe,) facia (fascia,) “and looked at Gilchrist’s way” (and looked Gilchrist’s way,) “seemed to be order of the day” (to be the order of the day) “toodle-do” (the formulation is usually ‘toodle-oo’.)

Travellers’ Library, 1931, 315 p

This is a collection of poems and short stories set in Ancient Greece among the wars between Athens and Sparta. The stories range in date from 500 BC, to 498 BC, 461 BC, 456 BC, 446 BC, 427 BC, 415 BC, 412 BC, 399 BC, 396 BC, 374 BC and finally 373 BC. A few of the poems directly relate to those times but a couple are not so specific.

We start things off with two poems and then each story is followed by a single poem until the last, designated as a song.

Mitchison’s usual facility as a writer is in evidence. There is nothing particularly startling in the contents and she seems to know these times well though bearing her research lightly, but then she did cover similar ground in Cloud Cuckoo Land, and set other books in ancient times: The Corn King and the Spring Queen, Travel Light, Blood of the Martyrs.

She is perhaps strongest when focusing on relationships involving women – the one where one man deceives an ingenuous young girl for his own ends could resonate still, women’s care for each other is displayed but not overly stressed – though those between men are also given weight, in the title story an act of kindness which could be seen as treason being neatly resolved.

While the Ancient Greeks reverence for poetry is not mirrored nowadays there is no reason to suppose human nature two and a half thousand years ago was any different to today. These stories could underline that perfectly.

Pedant’s corner:- shrunk (shrank,) “Hippokleas’ shoulder” (Hippokleas’s: all names ending in s are given s’ as their possessive rather than s’s,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “by and bye” (‘by and by’ as it was rendered later,) a missing end quotation mark after a piece of dialogue (x 2.)

Vintage, 2023, 343 p

Lux was brought up by her mother in a house by the forest. Her mother was a healer and maker of poppets and possets, subject to suspicion because her baby had arrived suddenly with no man on the scene. Her mother gone, and Lux returned to the house after a sojourn in a sanctuary subject to strict religious rules, she is living alone when a woman, Else, arrives seeking her help to poison the local lord “‘who calls women witches so that he has an excuse to kill them.’” That same night Lux’s house is attacked by some of the local boys. They are driven off by a wolf, which may be Else in transfigured form, but not before the house is set on fire. Lux and Else set off together into the forest. The rest of the tale follows both – but mainly Lux – until she eventually finds employment in the lord’s castle, with Else tending to the herb/poison garden, and their misadventures there. I note here that Logan attributes to the lady of the manor more agency than a woman in her situation is likely to have had.

After a “Before” prologue which is unpunctuated (apart from dashes) and printed in italics and with no capital letters, the story is told in five parts. Parts One and Three have section titles all beginning with “Now She Is” followed by one word (in order these were Outcast, Prey, Maiden, Servant, Sacrifice, Whore, Poisoner.)

Part Two is “Lux’s Story” and is given to us also unpunctuated and printed in italics with no capital letters (apart from the words He and Him when describing the lover she had in the sanctuary.) Part Four, “Else’s story,” was similarly unpunctuated but had capital letters where appropriate.

Part Five’s sections have no titles and are in numbered order.

We are here, though, firmly in default faux-mediæval fantasy territory though there is some additional colour, a land bridge between the south and the north, the sea rising, there has been fire in the sky, poison vapours, ash, a sickness spreading supposedly from the north, whose sign is black roses on the skin.

Logan’s almost relentless theme is man’s inhumanity to woman.  “Women are, as Father Fleck used to tell them at the sanctuary, less intelligent, more suggestible, and have more entry points into their bodies. All those orifices ready for a devil to creep into.” In Else’s story she tells Lux “it turns out all that really matters in this world is what a man wants because you either give it to him or he takes it and gives nothing in return” but “Beauty is dangerous. Beauty has power. Beauty has violence.” She outlines “the only available options, Maiden, Wife, Nun, Widow,” adding, “And I could not be any of these even if I wanted to. But there is one other option for a woman and it is the worst of all. Witch. Witch. Witch.”

The plot unfolds slowly to the point where we find the reason for Else’s attachment to Lux.

I suppose it is difficult to write in a contemporary setting a story about the best option for a woman being a witch but I’m really tired of tales such as this adopting a historical template.

On a sentence level Logan is good and her characterization is more than adequate. The whole thing seemed a little bit by the numbers though.

Pedant’s corner:- “Jesus’ birth” (Jesus’s,) “her tongue would not lay still” (would not lie still,) “aren’t I?” (Logan is Scottish; the correct usage is “amn’t I?”)

Collins, 1950, 510 p, including 2 p Note, 3 p Contents and 4p list of Characters.

This is the second of Barke’s Immortal Memory sequence chronicling the life of Robert Burns. He is now in young adulthood and has moved to the farm of Mossgiel, near Mauchline, with brother Gilbert and the rest of his family. We meet Jean Armour before Burns does, and she is presented as an obedient, dutiful daughter.

Burns is in trouble with the local minister, known as Daddy Auld. He has already fathered a child to Betty Paton, but his penance for this, on the cutty stool, takes place in the nearby parish of Tarbolton since that is where the offence occurred. He was fined one guinea and his sin considered absolved. (This strikes me as akin to those indulgences of the Catholic Church which so enraged the early Protestant reformers.) It is his poems and intellect which most worry Auld, however, who realizes that the best way to undermine Burns will be through his sexual misdemeanours. To that end he enjoins two of his elders, Willie Fisher and James Lamie, to collect evidence against Burns. Fisher is that hypocritical individual about whom Burns would write Holy Willie’s Prayer. (Another long poem, about Mauchline’s Holy Fair, also excites Auld’s ire.)

Burns and his cronies disparage these prurient creatures as the houghmagandie pack, and the fascination of the Church with controlling sexuality (which seems to be the goal of all religions) is noted. “Auld had long been made aware of the peculiar fact that when any of the congregation had to appear on the sessional carpet for a sexual offence, he could count on a full attendance from his lay-shepherds. No other sin so excited their holy zeal for probing into the mystery of the passionate relationship between man and woman and the theological relationship between both and the Presbyterian conception of God.”

When Burns meets Jean he is immediately smitten (though he does have a weakness for imagining himself in love.) Jean’s father dislikes him on reputation alone and has already forbidden her to have anything to do with him. But the attraction is too strong for both of them and she and Burns sign a paper to the effect that they have married. This is without benefit of clergy but would apparently have been recognised legally. He is too poor to support a wife though. The song in the green thorn tree of the book’s title is the one Jean sings at their trysting site.

The inevitable happens and Jean’s father and mother prevail on her to disown him, paper or no. Incensed, Burns turns to Highland Mary (Campbell) for solace and resolves to leave for the Caribbean, arranging a passage for himself and Mary whom he dispatches to Greenock to hide her pregnancy. Some boy, as they say.

In the meantime his poem some of which Barke has Burns conjure up on the spot, have been gaining a reputation and it is arranged for a book of his poetry (Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect) to be published by subscription, or at least promise of payment. He wrestles over which verses to publish as some may be considered too controversial, publishers then, as now, reluctant to take too much of a risk.

Barke’s writing is workmanlike, with occasional veerings into purple prose when describing landscape. Several of the quoted poems have their verses written as speech which detracts from the ability to read them as poems but since Burns was reciting them to others I suppose that’s fair enough. The characterisation is broad brush.

I note that the Church’s strictures against houghmagandie seem to have been spectacularly unsuccessful as several instances of compearing are mentioned in the book – including that of a couple who married before the evidence blossomed, though their marriage did not in any way mitigate the offence. When Burns has to stand for his “fornication” with Jean Armour there is no room on the cutty stool. He is one of five people, including Jean, arraigned on the same day.

Pedant’s corner:- Barke still spells the town Machlin rather than Mauchline, “womankind were crowding in” (womankind is singular; ‘womankind was crowding in’.) Surgeoners! (it was possessive not plural; ‘Surgeoner’s!’,) “knit his brows” (knitted.) “The company were soon in a grand mood” (The company was soon in a grand mood,) staunched (stanched.)

Poems in Scots. Picador, 2024, 124 p, including 4 p Afterword

In her afterword, Jamie, a former Scottish Makar, says these 43 poems are her effort at a literary, lyrical Scots. The poems are mostly quite short (none strays over more than three, sparsely covered, pages) but pack a punch. Each is provided with a translation into English on the lower part of the even numbered pages opposite them. Those English versions tend to seem insipid when set beside the more vigorous originals. Jamie thinks that has something to do with the vowel sounds. For myself I think Scots, as a language – which it still is, however neglected since its heyday as one of the great languages of mediæval Europe – tends to be more earthy, rooted as it was in the land. Also, its consonants are more to the fore.

Four of the works here are Scots versions of poems by others, two by Friedrich Hölderlin (tailored from the English translations of Michael Hamburger) and two by Uyghur writer Chemengül Awut (now sadly disappeared into a re-education camp) translated into English by Munawwar Abdulla. Jamie has adapted Hölderlin poems before.

Jamie had initially envisaged this publication as a pamphlet but her editor at Picador saw no reason why a major London publishing house shouldn’t publish a whole book of poems in Scots, so she “scrievit some mair.”

I’m glad she did. They’re worth reading.

Pedant’s corner:- No entries

Polygon, 2023, 187 p.

This is another of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales.

One summer day in 825 AD the red sail of Helgi Cleanshirt’s longship appears on the seas surrounding Iona. Helgi is intent on procuring the bones of Saint Columba for their supposed mystic powers. It turns out only one relic, a finger bone, remains, but Abbot Blathmac has buried it somewhere on the island’s only hill, Dùn Ì, so that none of the brothers can reveal its whereabouts. This, of course, does not end well for the monks and the lay people of the island.

While the rest of the longship’s crew is causing mayhem, the slightly tardy Grimur has come upon the island’s smithy, killed the blacksmith (somewhat luckily,) and been plied with her potent concoction by the meadwife. In his subsequent stupor he is taken for dead by his shipmates and buried.

There are thus only three survivors of the raid: Brother Martin, who hid in the latrine pit, that meadwife, Una, who had made herself scarce, and Grimur, who, on wakening, manages to dig himself out of the shallow grave with his knife.

The three then have to make do as best they can. Martin resolves to be the best monk he can be and to complete the illuminated manuscript he had been working on, Grimur to rub along with the other two and to understand the strange religion of the islanders, Una to survive. What livestock remains has to roam the island more or less untended.

When a delegation from the mainland arrives the three are told they cannot be protected and ought to leave but all are unwilling to do so.

Later, an Irish princess, Bronagh, turns up, attempting to escape an unwanted marriage and asking to become an anchoress. Brother Martin complies with her request but finds her presence a sinful distraction. Bronagh soon enough, though, finds the monastic life too irksome. Una and Grimur manage to find solace in each other.

We are, here, in a clash of cultures; between the single-minded focus of the Norse warriors, exploiting the usefulness of their brutality, and the Christianity of the monks, that intense faith manifested in the face of extreme adversity, exemplified by Grimur’s incomprehension of its sheer oddness and Martin’s redoubling of his devotion despite its failure to protect the monks; but also between that Celtic Christianity, its call to utter dedication, and our modern individualistic eyes. Greig conjures it all well. Like all the Darkland Tales so far this is beautifully written, with economically well-drawn and believable characters.

There is still Helgi Cleanshirt’s return to come, the aftermath of which hints that there may have been a miracle occurring on that island in the interim.

(A foreword mentions that Iona has previously been known as I, IO, HII, HIA, IOUA. IOUA was in the 18^th century corrupted to IONA by a typographical error.)

Pedant’s corner:- gulley (gully – used later,) “his prophesy” (the noun is spelled prophecy; prophesy is the verb,) “He wanted …. to dissolve in the enormity of God” (surely Brother Martin would not think of his God as monstrous? ‘He wanted …. to dissolve in the immensity of God’, then,) “Jesus’ head” (Jesus’s head.)

Polygon, 2018, 241 p, plus vii p Introduction by Brian Morton and iv p Foreword. First published 1976.

Some people swear by Spark. For myself I struggle to see what the fuss is about. There is just something about her writing that strikes me as off.

I suspect this one was meant to be a comedic novel. Its tone would certainly suggest that. However, its bittiness and lack of characters with whom the reader can be sympathetic – the book is peopled with an assortment of chancers, frauds, swindlers and charlatans – make it something of a chore to read.

Hubert Mallindaine claims to be a descendant of the union between the Roman Emperor Caligula and the goddess Diana. He is renting a villa at Nemi from Maggie Ratcliffe, fairly recently the new Marchesa di Tullio Friole, who also has a house in the vicinity as well as residences elsewhere. Maggie is much exercised by her collections of jewellery and valuables – paintings, Louis XV chairs etc. The local Italians are not too pleased about these foreigners having houses in the town.

Maggie wishes to evict Hubert but he has various ploys to avoid this, among them setting up a religion based on his claim to be descended from Diana. He treats his secretary Pauline contemptuously and is also systematically replacing Maggie’s paintings and chairs with copies/reproductions.

Maggie meanwhile is having sex with her factotum, Lauro, who is, Brian Morton’s Introduction tells us, “a priapic opportunist” (for which read ‘all-but rapist’) “and kleptomaniac.” In addition, Lauro has fathered a child on a local girl (but blames her as a calculating bitch) and without warning jumps on Maggie’s daughter-in-law Mary, giving her little choice but to succumb to his advance. He tells her that next time she should relax. Not one to brook dissent.

That Introduction describes the motley crew of thieves and conmen surrounding Maggie as, “All as respectably dressed and gentlemanly as the Devil must be in a Scottish narrative.”

Things get murkier as the narrative proceeds; it seems there are other claims on the land the houses are built on, while a dodgy financial adviser worms his way into Maggie’s affairs.

There was a review and article – one each – in The Guardian Weekend supplement on both Sat 07/06/25 and 14/06/25 about the latest biography of Spark (Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark – The Enigma of Muriel Spark. Personally I find her the complete opposite of electric.) The review comments on her elision, “Spark knew what to leave out.” Perhaps it is those “odd gaps” which I find so problematic about her œuvre.

Pedant’s corner:- More than a few USian usages, vide infra.

Inter alia pantyhose (tights,) “a vodka-tonic” (vodka and tonic,) boy-friend/girl-friend (several times: both all one word; boyfriend/girlfriend,) station-wagon (estate car.)

Otherwise; “as if treading a mined field” (why not ‘minefield’?) “set at nought” (set at naught. Nought is the number, zero; naught has the meaning of ‘nothing’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2.)

B&W, 1996, 246 p, plus 2 p Introductory Note. First published in 1952.

Being the last in the saga of the Moorhouse family as outlined in the Wax Fruit trilogy and Aunt Bel.

This instalment starts in 1900 and focuses on Robin Hayburn, adopted son of shipyard owner Henry Hayburn. Though Robin is Henry’s natural son from a liaison he had in Vienna and has been officially adopted by Henry and his wife Phœbe (the youngest of the Moorhouses) after his mother died in a fire at the Opera House, his true origins have been kept from him. Henry wishes his son to follow him into the shipyard business but Robin is more inclined to poetry and writing, a prime source of conflict between them. To give some temporal colour, Aunt Bel is worried by the fact her son Tom Moorhouse is a soldier serving in the war against the Boers in South Africa.

When Robin develops signs of consumption it is decided to send him to Mentone in the south of France for its beneficial air. While there he meets Denise St Roch, friend of Lucy Hamont, the former Lucy Rennie, with whom Robin’s uncle David Moorhouse nearly made a fool of himself in The Philistines. At thirty, the experienced Denise is much older than Robin but she is a writer herself and has contacts in publishing. She offers him encouragement and a place to write in. Of course he falls for her.

There is nothing demanding about these books. They are designed to be easy reading and to bolster the sense of Glasgow its middle classes held of the city and themselves. None of the characters are drawn with sufficient depth to be more than pawns in the author’s hands. Sometimes that is all that is needed, though.

Pedant’s corner:- plus marks for the ligatures in Phœbe and mediæval. Otherwise; a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, a missing end quotation mark after a piece of direct speech, “Robert Burns’ poems” (Burns’s,) Dumbartonshire (the county is usually spelled ‘Dunbartonshire’, and was so officially in 1900 – and 1952,) “‘or anything, dear.’-Bel had not offered it-‘But it’s just’” (‘or anything, dear,’ – Bel had not offered it – ‘but it’s just’,) wistaria (wisteria,) a strait jacket” (a straitjacket.)

Polygon, 2021, 123 p.

This is another of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales which re-examine Scotland’s history from a modern perspective.

David Rizzio, secretary to the heavily pregnant Mary, Queen of Scots, was famously murdered in her presence by courtiers – and especially her husband Lord Darnley – jealous of Rizzio’s supposed influence on her.

This recounting of that incident is necessarily told in the present tense in order to underscore the inevitability of the ongoing rush of events once the assassins’ plot had been set in motion – and the inability of Mary or Darnley to affect those events.

Mina manages to invoke the feelings of the various characters she focuses on but usually by telling not showing. Hers is an omniscient narration laden with the benefit of hindsight.

The novella is perhaps mistitled, though. It is not primarily about Rizzio (he is dead by a third of the way through) but instead charts the relationship of Mary with Darnley and with her Lords. It is also of course an indictment of the misogyny of the times. In that respect Mary never stood a chance. She had flaws enough of her own even without that to contend with.

I note that at the back the description of the Darkland Tales project has Alan Warner’s then forthcoming contribution titled as The Man Who Would Not Be King. It was eventually published as Nothing Left to Fear From Hell.

Pedant’s corner:- “Here the change of seasons are dramatic” (the changes of seasons are,) “and snakes his arm right around her waist until his hand on her swollen belly” (is missing a verb after ‘hand’; rests? lies? settles? is?) “Lady Huntley” (Huntly, as it is always spelled elsewhere in the text.)

Paul Harris Publishing, 1982, 253 p, plus vi p Introduction by P H Butter. First published in 1932.

Edwin Muir is better known as a poet but he wrote three novels of which this is the third.

The plot centres round the conflict arising when Tom Manson finds out his brother Mansie has begun seeing Helen Wiliamson, a girl whom Tom had previously walked out with.

This causes tension within the family, the brothers stop speaking to each other and Tom starts drinking to excess.

For a book published in 1932 and set in 1911 there is a considerable emphasis on sexual matters. Of the imaginings of becoming intimate with a woman we are told, “Such secret pleasures are exciting, but they leave a sense of guilt towards the object that was employed to produce them. Tom was filled with shame that such thoughts should come into his mind when he was with Helen, and told himself he was a waster.”

There is stress too on the attractions of Socialism to those of Mansie’s persuasion and social standing, and of the similarity of its tenets to Christianity.

Tom has a bad fall under the influence of drink and thereafter suffers a series of headaches which increasingly incapacitate him. Both he and Mansie (but not the reader) are confused by the doctors they consult about Tom’s condition asking whether he has ever associated with loose women.

As the illness progresses reconciliation occurs and we are treated more to Mansie’s reflections on having an invalid in the house.

As a novel this is not entirely successful. As an insight into aspects of life in pre-Great War Glasgow (the Mansons had moved there from a farm some time before the novel begins) it is certainly better than Guy McCrone’s books about the extended Moorhouse family.

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction; superceded (superseded.) Otherwise; threatingly (threateningly,) Maisie (elsewhere always Mansie,) inimaginable (usually ‘unimaginable’,) excretary (excretory,) “he turned and literally flew downstairs” (not literally.)