Quickie Review: Secrets in Death by JD robb

Years ago I used to say that JD Robb's In Death series was guilty pleasure reading. You know what, I enjoy these books and don't feel guilty at all. They are a quick and consistently fun read.

What's It About
"Social information reporter" (ie professional gossip) and TV personality Larinda Mars, staggers into the bar in a trendy nightspot, Du Vin, bleeding profusely. Eve Dallas happens to be in the restaurant meeting a colleague and tries to save Larinda but it;s too late. She bleeds out. Having literally caught the case, Eve takes over as the primary investigator. As Dallas and Peabody begin peeling away the layers of Larinda's life, they find more than they expected. Besides dishing out the dirt on celebrities on her TV program, Larinda was a highly successful blackmailer. And the list of suspects grows.

What Did I think
Bottom line: if you enjoyed the previous In Death books you'll like this one too. Despite the futuristic setting, these books are solid police procedurals and, for the most part, use techniques we recognize from contemporary proceduals—collect evidence, deep background,  interview, confirm, eliminate. Sure there are droids around and some gee whiz electronics but the post-mortem and forensic anthropological techniques are realistic.

There are elements you know you will be there: Roark continues to be ridiculously rich, perfect, and able to leave his business to crack safes and encrypted electronics; Roark will own at least two or three buildings in the story; Eve and Roark will have a minimum of two steamy sex scenes; Eve continues to misunderstand idioms; Eve continues to be amazed at the clothes she finds Roark has bought for her; Peabody will be perky requiring Eve to threaten her; there will be excellent cop banter that will yield at least six laughs; there will be reflecting on the nature of good and evil; some detail of Eve and/or Roark's early life will emerge.

Despite what seems to be a formula for the series, Robb is very good with her plots which I always think are interesting. It is interesting to note that not much time has elapsed in the series. I don't have previous books handy but I think that over 45 books, only 3 or 4 years have passed. And Robb does grow her characters. Eve and Roark used to have at least one major fight per book but are now able to communicate more freely.

So, all in all, a solid addition to a fun series. If you like the others, read this one. If you haven't read any in this series, don't start here, go back to Naked in Death. Over 45 books, Robb has carefully added layers not only to Eve and Roark but to the recurring supporting characters as well.

Secrets in Death is the 45th book in the series, the first of which was published in 1995. The latest, number 46 Dark in Death is out which puts the In Death series in the running for longest mystery series based on a single theme. Ed McBain's Eighty-Seventh Precinct series has 54 book plus short stories and Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series has 47 books plus short stories. It is a remarkable achievement on Robbs part, producing this series, when you consider that she is also romances under her real name, Nora Roberts. Secrets in Death is available from Amazon.

The Camp whore by Francois Smith

I enjoyed The Camp Whore and recommend it but I find it very difficult to review. I'm sure I'll re-read it later and revise this review but I want to get these first impressions down right away. This book was translated from the Afrikaans edition by Dominique Botha but I don't ascribe my review difficulties to that. Botha's English is smooth, flowing, and clear. Aside: I may order the Afrikaans edition as an aid to my personal interest in studying Afrikaans.

What's it about
The Camp Whore is based on the true story of Susan Nell who was brutally raped by two British officers and a joiner (ie collaborator) in a concentration camp near the end of the Anglo-Boer War. Thought to be dead, she survives and moves to the Netherlands where she becomes a psychiatric nurse. 16 years later during WWI, while serving at a military hospital for shell-shocked soldiers, she discovers that one of the patients is one of her rapists.

In structure, the chapters alternate between Susan Nell's first person account of what happened to her in South Africa and a present day third person narrative. The third person view is necessary to see what is happening to Susan.

What's my take
I started this book with a preconceived idea of what it would be about and it was totally different. Not a bad and disappointed sort of different, just that the author took a different approach than I expected. My notions about the book came from reading the Amazon blurb which describe it as "...a psychological thriller that will hold you in its icy grip till the very last page".  Gripping to the last page I wholeheartedly agree with, but psychological thriller— as I understand the term— not at all.
This may be a bit of a spoiler but Susan's actual encounter with her rapist occupies a relatively small part of the book. For me, it is a much, much more.

Susan becomes a psychiatric nurse in response to what happened to her in the camp. She wants to brighten the life of others and "ensure that life triumphs". The Camp Whore is a deeply interior and reflective of her life. Her reason for leaving neutral Netherlands for a temporary posting in Devon in the UK is to study new techniques for treating psychological trauma. But there is something else going on.

There is a strange, vague sort of disquiet in her, not exactly to this country [England] and its war, but rather to her inability to connect fully on anything outside of herself. She is plagued by a persistent feeling that there is something else, just outside of view, that actually merits her attention.

It is this disquiet that propels her to come to terms with her war— which wasn't over for her when she went to England— and to claim her own story.

The author says that The Camp Whore is loosely based on Nico Moolman's novel The Boer Whore which was inspired by his conversation with a survivor from another war who came to think of Susan Nell as her mother. Sadly, an affordable copy of The Boer Whore is not available in the US because I'd really like to read more of Susan Nell's story.

The Boer War I don't know how much people in the US know about the Anglo-Boer War but it was a brutal conflict. Two South African States, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State went to war over the expansion of British influence in the region after the discovery of gold in the Transvaal. The British forces were initially overconfident that their superior numbers would quickly end the war, The Boers were able to maintain a successful guerrilla operation for several years. Eventually the British adopted a scorched earth policy, burning farms and moving families into concentration camps. The Boers were worn down by the massive numbers of British troops and the destruction of their lands.

Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, served in South Africa in a medical unit. The British army was accused of atrocities and war crimes, particularly in the establishment of concentration camps. Doyle became an apologist for the army conduct and wrote an pamphlet, The War in south Africa: Its Causes and Conductt which justified conduct during the war. Among other things, he rebranded the concentration camps as refugee camps. The British government was quite happy with Doyle's pamphlet and paid to have it printed for world-wide distribution and hopefully counter international condemnation. In response to Doyle's publication, one writer referred to him as "fictionist as historian". Most people probably think he was knighted for his Sherlock Holmes fiction but it was actually his support in print for the conduct of British troops during the war.

The Camp Whore is available from Amazon.

My Life in Scans, Part 3: Memories

I listen to several true crime podcasts and eyewitness accounts are often problematical. As I have been sorting through and scanning over 7 decades of images I have been pondering my own memories.

So, while I'm reading new books, here is another slice of my life as revealed in my scans.

For years, I had a clear and vivid  memory that my father had taken a photograph of me and my brother sitting on the porch of a country store with some locals near where my maternal grandparents lived out in the countryside of rural Southwest Virginia. I could see the weathered boards, the dark interior of the store, smell the dusty shelves, feel the chill of the old Coke water cooler, see the locals with a Coke.

I found the photograph but it wasn't what I remembered. At all. Here are the actual color photographs from that day. The older gentleman is my maternal great grandfather, Paw Paw, on the porch of his house. I think they are still good images but I do have a little regret that my original memory didn't happen. The original slides have faded so these have been color corrected. I 'm still undecided if they look better in black and white.

Oh, and my wife likes to hum Dueling Banjos when she sees these photos.

Dancing the Death Drill by Fred Khumalo

My copy of Dancing the Death Drill arrived from Cape Town recently. I had the opportunity to have a copy personalised by the author, hence the long distance order. No matter where you get your copy, it is a wonderful read. It is available in pring and Kindle from Amazon.

Dancing the Death Drill opens in 1958 with a Paris waiter, Jean-Jacques Henri, stabbing two patrons to death. However, Jean-Jacques is not, as everyone thought, an Algerian but a South African named Pitso Motaung. His story is told by a friend to a reporter.

This is an excellent and often moving portrayal of the life of Pitso Motaung, a man straddling two worlds. His father, Cornelius de La Ray was a deserter from a Boer Commando during the Anglo-Boer War and his black mother is from the tribe that takes him in when he rides away. Born of this union and falling into the coloured racial division,  Pitso isn't at home with either race—higher in status than the Blacks but lower than the Whites. Being of mixed race does have some benefits and Pitso gets a decent education and develops his affinity for languages which will stand him in good stead later. For reasons vague even to him at the time, Pitso volunteers for the South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC) and heads to France on a troop ship to support the Allies during World War One. The SS Mendi transporting Pitso and over 800 of his fellow soldiers sinks in the British Channel after a collision and Pitso is one of the few survivors. The sinking occurs occurs slightly more than half way through the book and bridges the two parts of the narrative. During the  struggle of the survivors, Pitso observes something that will drive later parts of the narrative. His intelligence and language skills have Pitso thriving when he finally joins his unit in France. Another tragic event in the course of his duties as a translator changes Pitso's life forever and, many years later, has him on trial for murder.

The books has a stirring and affirmative ending though, I confess, I would have liked a few more chapters.

The author beautifully builds a nuanced life for Pitso beginning before his birth with the unlikely pairing and doomed love between Boer and a young native woman. As a coloured, Pitso exists between two worlds and Khumalo shows what it must have been like, not really accepted by anyone. Some black Africans see him as uppity, others wonder why he doesn't move away and pass as white. He even has his own doomed love affair.

Most of the story takes place after the end of the Anglo-Boer war in 1902 and you can see the seeds being planted that will later emerge in apartheid. Africans volunteered for the SANLC for various reasons: the pay was good, they needed to escape the legal system. But for many, it held out the hope that service would lead to freedom. If they went to war, they would be rewarded with freedom and the vote. This optimism is especially moving because we know how it turns out.

The SANLC and the sinking of the SS Mendi are historical facts (see links below) and I really like how the author worked history into the story in a nuanced fashion. The story itself emerged because the Mendi sinking had long obsessed the author. It was a story that wasn't well known and the sacrifice of the black troops not recognized. No black troops were rewarded for their valor during the sinking or service in the SANLC. It would have been awkward to South African Government.

For the black troops there were many revelations. The SS Mendi stopped in Sierra Leone and the troops were escorted into town. they were amazed to see other blacks well dressed, educated, and going about daily business in stark contrast to what they experience back in South Africa. When they arrive in France, they find that the French people don't particularly care that they are black and accept their presence. The South African government recognized that this would be a problem and required that all black troops be accompanied by a white soldier. they had to be kept "away from the white women".

The B.P. Willan academic article linked below isn't listed as one of Fred's sources but if you read it you will see how well Fred researched the SANLC and worked its history into his story. A part that I find especially moving is the optimism among the native troups that their service will change things back in South Africa after the war. Their enthusiasm after a speech by King George V is enough to make you cry.

OK, I'm a retired academic librarian and I can't resist looking up the background material behind a work that included historical events. Below are some links I found informative and interesting. 

Links
Interview with Fred Khumalo (youtube)
Interview of the author of We Die Like Brothers, an historical and archeological account of the sinking of the Mendi.

BBC article, Dancing the Death Drill
The South African Labour Contingent, 1916-1918 by B. P. Willan
World War I and the South African Labour Contingent

Fred Khumolo was born in 1966 in KwaZulu-Natal and is an award winning novelist as well as journalist, columnist, reporter, and short story writer. He has an MA in Creative Writing from Wits University and is the recipient of the Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University.