The Plot
In 1941, before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into WWII, Britain made a treaty with Nazi Germany and abandoned Europe to the Third Reich. Eight years later, Hitler is still in power, most of Europe is under his control, and the Jewish people are being systematically exterminated. The British Empire remains free, but hanging out with the wrong crowd for so long is beginning to tell. When Sir James Thirkie, the architect of the peace treaty, is found murdered in his bed during a country house weekend, Scotland Yard is dispatched to find out who did it.
My Thoughts
I’m not sure how realistic I find the scenario proposed in this book. The turning point in this alternate history is the peace treaty Britain signs with Germany in 1941, around the time the Blitz is ending. Why would Germany propose peace at that time? Why would Britain agree? I’m not sure. Germany clearly gets something out of the deal — they no longer have to fight a war on two fronts. But they started the war in the first place, so they surely thought they could win. There are hints also that Japan was not defeated either, and certainly things are going oddly in the United States, as Charles Lindbergh is president instead of becoming a pariah. I don’t feel like enough information was given to make a conclusion as to how logical this was or not. The history is just presented as is, without any real information given other than the existence of this peace accord.
In addition to these broad issues with the whole timeline, there are a few problems in the specifics of the characters. Bisexuality and homosexuality appear to be rampant among the cast of characters assembled. I’m all for presenting these things as common, but it starts to feel like a BL manga when the whole cast is sleeping with or has slept with someone of the same sex. There were about 10-12 characters who had more than a walk on appearance in the story, and of those, half were either currently or previously involved in a same-sex relationship.
The solution to the mystery was also presented in a confusing fashion. In the grand tradition of the golden age crime novel, the solution was presented at the end by the detective. He gives a grand monologue to his superior, going over all the things he’s managed to learn and how they relate to the crime. But the Inspector presented the case in a pretty wishy washy fashion, with very little actual evidence and lots of conjecture. He never managed to actually acquire several important facts which would have strengthened his conclusions. I don’t doubt that his lack of information, contrasted with the similar but different lack of information of Lucy Kahn, the book’s other protagonist, was part of the point, but it just made it seem like he wasn’t particularly competent.
I also have to say that I found it jarring to keep skipping back and forth between first person chapters from Lucy’s point of view to third person chapters from Carmichael’s point of view. It’s a very odd style choice.
The writing itself, I can find little to gripe about. It was plain and to the point, without a lot of frills and pointless description cluttering it up. If not for the depressing subject matter making it difficult to read for an extended period of time, the book would have been a reasonably quick read.
In Short
Overall, I think this book was trying to be too many things at once. It was a country house mystery, it was an alternate history, it was a political intrigue, it was a social commentary. Unfortunately, the author was not quite up to the task. What suffered the most was the central mystery plot, which was full of holes and unresolved threads. Many of the rules of the Detection Club were broken. There were a number of other far-fetched bits which also detracted from the whole, though given the idiotic behavior of politicians in the real world, that was more a case of fiction needing to be less insane than reality. It’s difficult to evaulate the book on its own, though, as in spite of the mystery seemingly wrapping up by the end, it’s really not a stand alone novel. If you like alternate histories, you may like this one; I wouldn’t recommend it for straight up mystery fans.
I also take exception to the classification of this book as science fiction. It is not science fiction; there is no science whatsoever involved in the plot. The correct classification would be speculative fiction, of which science fiction is a subgenre along with fantasy, alternative histories and a few other hybrids.
I didn’t really notice the change between third person and first person. So either I didn’t find it jarring, or I subconsciously did and didn’t pin it down to that being the reason. Thinking about it now, I do think it would’ve been better if they were both the same. First person might’ve spiced up the boring detective bits more, and also allowed for some skipping/summarizing of the most boring bits.
And you definitely have a point about the bisexuality thing. While I think it’s possible most of the world is potentially bisexual, it is hard to buy that so many characters in the book would be actively expressing it. Even taking genetics into account only applies to a couple of the characters.
I can’t say as I found the detective bits particularly boring. They were generally necessary to the plot, though the whole visit to Thirkie’s mom was really a bit strange now that I think about it. It was a bit tacked on.
It was, but I actually liked Thirkie’s mom, since she was willing to state things straight-out to the detective and back them up and stuff.
Yeah, but her whole appearence was pretty deus ex machina from the mystery point of view. Carmichael would never have had any answers at all if he hadn’t gone to see her. It feels… sloppy somehow that he had to go and see her once, at the end, when she was not at the house nor was she a player in the rest of the book.
It really negates the efforts that they all went to to lie about it and conspire if there was this one non-involved person lying around who knew everything!!
That’s the same problem with the girl in the photo that I mentioned in my review. They potter around and when they finally go see her, she has the answers.