Tower and Town, November 2021

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A Good Read

I'm steeped in crime and espionage this month, lurking in the shadows and learning how to perform GBH using everyday household objects. Don't cross me. I started with the latest Mick Herron novel, Slough House, which was everything I hoped it would be. If you're a fan of this series, you won't need convincing to read it, and if you haven’t read them, go away, start with Slow Horses, and get back to me when you've caught up. Did you see Mick Herron speak at the Literature Festival last month? What a charming, interesting, quietly funny man, and how very unlike his characters!

I picked up Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden  because I'm a sucker (in a romantic and unrealistic way) for Native American history and culture, and I lapped up this crime novel. Set on a reservation in South Dakota the narrator, Virgil Wounded Horse, is an 'enforcer' – aka vigilante, or as he's dismissively described, 'hired thug', paid to deliver justice that's been denied by the federal or tribal law agencies. When the drug and alcohol problems on the reservation begin to affect him personally our damaged-but-essentially-good hearted-and-honourable hero embarks on a twisty mission to find the dealers and the source. And of course, on the way he re-connects with an ex-girlfriend, finds his own peace with his cultural heritage, and comes to an appreciation of the struggles of his people to maintain their integrity and way of life. It's not, to be honest, an especially startling whodunnit, even I spotted the baddie fairly early on, but it's very readable and feels convincing. If you think it sounds like your kind of thing, I do recommend it.

Several people have recommended Box 88 by Charles Cumming, and it is a thoroughly absorbing spy novel. Our hero finds the past catching up with him as the storyline alternates between the very end of the 1980s, the final days of the Cold War and the Lockerbie bombing, and the present day. An agent of an even-top-secreter organisation than MI5, Lachlan Kite is captured by Iranian intelligence and faced with the stark choice between revealing the secrets of thirty years ago,or risking the lives of his family. No, I don’t know how it ends, I’m half-way through and have to keep stopping to, you know, go to work and write my column for Tower and Town. It’s really engrossing, and the second of the series Judas 62 has just been published, hurrah.

Debby Guest