I am giving a
five-star recommendation to a novel which I found difficult to read
at times. Why? Well, because it gives an insight into a criminal
justice system which has evolved to an unscientific state where it is
normally only capable of detecting and convicting stupid people. Now,
criminologists patiently tell us that most criminals are amazingly
stupid. The trouble with that little factoid is that huge numbers of
completely innocent persons are also a bit stupid at times, which
means that they are all too easily convicted by a system which, by
and large, does not believe in clever criminals, let alone
scientifically-minded ones, and whose own concept of “forensic
science” revolves around a determination to introduce “single
particle evidence” to increase, rather than improve, the conviction
rate, ignoring that it’s an axiom of science that a single particle
proves nothing. A conviction rate bolstered by wrongful convictions
can only be improved by being reduced.
This novel is
difficult to read at times because the primary villain is a clever
and calculating necrophiliac murderer who lies, skilfully and also
sadistically in pretty well every conversation he joins and the minor
villains are senior police officers who apply Lardarse’s Razor to
every conundrum, whereby the conclusion that leads to the path of
least thought and effort is always reached. The tension in the plot,
and there’s a lot of it, derives from the way the clever
necrophiliac interacts with institutionally-irrational senior police
officers to constantly ratchet up the scale of the disaster
afflicting the primary heroine and several other innocents. And this
strikes a chord with me, as it will with many other readers, because
you cannot live in the modern world and not know, or know about,
policemen like this. There is also a well-drawn secondary villain
whose most devastating tactic against those victims he seeks to
destroy is to marry them. He, too, will strike a chord with many
readers. It’s the grains of truth which make this novel both
compelling and uncomfortable.
The author knows her
stuff and she knows the Devon landscape the story is set in. She
knows terrifying truths about teenage girls and isn’t afraid to
tell them. The story is well-told but not gently told. The solution
is as shocking as it is surprising, but it is well crafted around the
limitations of the senior investigating officer.
Breakneck Point by
T. Orr Munro is published in the UK by HQ on the 14th of
April 2022.
A novel take on the
disappearance of Agatha Christie.
This is a
well-crafted novel based on a real-life mystery where the truth is
unknown to anyone in the present day. As such the author can do more
or less as she likes and her chosen course is an interesting one,
showing the way that women tend to form alliances in stressful
situations rather than making enemies. This is true, sometimes; it
may even be true quite often, but it’s definitely not always true.
It will also be
controversial in that the story suggests that Irish independence was,
if not built on hypocrisy, far too tolerant of hypocrisy and
injustice from the outset and for decades afterwards, right up to the
nineteen seventies and in some cases beyond. Single mothers had fewer
rights than criminals and institutions for them genuinely were worse
than jails. The author tries to soften the blow by pointing out that
England and the United States also had institutions of equivalent
function, but these were never quite as bad, never had such a
complete grip and certainly did not endure for anything like as long.
Although, anyone seeking the Roman Catholic Church at its absolute
worst on this particular subject in the 20th century
should look to Franco’s Spain and Galtieri’s Argentina and not
Ireland.
This is a mystery
story where the usual moral certainties have been altered: the men
who have survived the Great War, even those in high authority, are
perfectly willing to fudge the truth and even break the law in order
to minimise actual harm while the “fallen” women are willing to
break the law in order to obtain justice for themselves and their
children, whether the latter are lost or dead. Crimes against
humanity make other crimes seem perfectly reasonable.
This novel deals
kindly with Agatha Christie whilst possibly taking liberties with the
unknown facts, but it deals kindly from a 21st century
viewpoint. Which is why I can’t give it a five-star recommendation.
The Christie Affair
by Nina De Gramont is published by Pan Macmillan (Mantle) on the 20th
of January 2022.
A romantic fantasy
set in a recognisable Yorkshire landscape.
In the early
nineteen-nineties, a famous commissioning editor proclaimed that his
reading of the future fiction market was for “Erotica in a
horror/fantasy landscape.” Thirty years on, this novel turns his
specification upside-down.
The author allows
herself only one fantastical premise (and this is a very traditional
one) in that some individuals can be two different species and change
forms at will, or according to their need. Pretty much everything
else is solid and decently-researched eighteen-nineties Yorkshire.
The landscape of this novel is born of observation and not fantasy.
The local industry is correct (there was an episode of “Landscape
Mysteries” by the Open University about this!) and we even see how
pawnbrokers of the time manipulated prices to avoid the legal
requirement to auction high-value unredeemed goods.
There are a couple
of erotic scenes amidst all the Victorian morals, but while these are
fantastical, they are not perverse.
The characters,
regardless of species-shifting, are believable and the heroine’s
heart versus head dilemma is complicated by the fact that her heart
goes a bit in both directions, as does her head. There’s also a
clear divide between being thoughtless or limited in scope and actual
cruelty: both occur in the story but the author does not confuse the
two.
The stories within
this story question whether happy endings are real, but the real
question is what is the heroine prepared to do for her happy ending
and how does she even define “happy?”
Daughter of the Sea
by Elisabeth J. Hobbes is published by Harper Collins “One More
Chapter” on the 20th of December 2021.
This is a
well-researched novel about a confused and yet pivotal period in
European history.
It involves several
characters from the author’s previous novel “Hitler’s Secret”
but isn’t exactly a sequel because there is no reference to that
story, even though it could have been relevant.
In the immediate
post-war period there are shortages and hardship in a Britain
struggling to return to peaceful progress but still not perceiving
that the defeat of Hitler might have left Stalin poised for further
advance in a westerly direction. In Germany and Austria there is
still chaos and effective anarchy, in that soldiers of the allied
powers trying to impose “rule by laws rather than fear” are able
to act arbitrarily and even murder as they please. One of the “good”
characters is determined to use an investigation into Hitler’s real
fate and current whereabouts as a sort of one-man witness
extermination programme. More than one of his superiors threatens him
with retribution for this, but the threats, for one reason or another
are all empty. Life is very cheap in occupied Germany and Austria.
Life in liberated France is governed by an unhappy mixture of
self-righteous retribution and hypocrisy: the corrosive aftermath of
NAZI conquest.
The OSS and MI6
decide to send professor Tom Wilde, from the previous novel, to
Berlin, Nuremberg and Bavaria to find out what really happened to
Hitler in his bunker and Wilde is encouraged and skilfully
manipulated by a senior Russian SMERSH officer. For most of the novel
the only real evidence that something might have happened other than
the official narrative of Hitler’s suicide in the bunker, consists
of lethal action against anyone asking questions. SMERSH, of course,
“firmly believe” that Western intelligence agencies have Hitler
in secure and comfortable custody and are planning to use him for
their own wicked purposes. There is a twist in the tale about the
outcome of the search for Hitler, but there’s also a twist in the
tale about what, exactly, SMERSH wants to get out of the OSS/MI6
search for Hitler.
The Man in the
Bunker by Rory Clements is published by Bonnier Books on the 20th
of January 2022.
You (should) know
you’re dealing with a psychopath when someone else is to blame
The above headline
does not betray the plot of the second Joel Norris/ Lucy Rose novel
(the author is clever), but in real life this is a good guide to
dealing with psychopaths. The problem the two detectives in the novel
have with their psychopathic killer is the level of sophistication
with which blame is transferred -and that also translates to real
life.
This is an effective
page-turner of a thriller and much of the urgency comes from the poor
relations the two leading characters have with colleagues: it’s a
race against incompetent or uncaring intervention as much as it is a
race against a clock set by the murderer. (One is reminded of the
real life case of Stephen Port, now being examined in the coroner’s
court, where a less dramatic but equivalent race was lost.)
What the public sees
is a police service rendered helpless by its own rules, procedures
and above all, assumptions. What they want are police detectives who
will cut through all these to get to the truth and this is what
Charlie Gallagher supplies in this novel. Doing the same thing in
real life is going to be much more problematic, but if this novel
succeeds to the extent that I think it will, it will be proof that
the public are currently very frustrated with the police. “Dixon of
Dock Green” spoke to a public who could trust the police and not be
let down all that often. The Joel Norris and Lucy Rose series speaks
to a public who expect senior officers to queer the pitch for any
officer who’s actually trying to do the right thing against the
odds. Full marks to the author for tapping into this, but the fact
that the public is receptive to such a narrative is a serious
problem.
Lethal Game by
Charlie Gallagher is published by Avon Books on the 11th
of November 2021
This novel contains
many moments of peace and beauty, but all of them are menaced in some
way. It is in the nature of Victorian society that most people should
go to Church and that “Christian” phraseology be widely used,
even to justify abuse. Persons in authority ignoring the awful
warning of Matthew 18.6 are commonplace throughout the story.
Kindness, where shown, is not always accompanied by sufficient
courage either. Probably, no matter what century you are in, the
number of people going to church and dedicating their lives to “good
works” in the name of Christ is a distinctly unreliable guide to
the number of true Christians around at the time. Consciously or not,
the author illustrates Matthew 18.6 almost perfectly.
Those characters who
show both kindness and courage shine through, despite their flaws and
sometimes ambiguous status in Victorian society. The author also does
a very good job in presenting the importance of the performing arts
in an era where life can be dreary and grim even for the wealthy. In
our our lives of constant music and almost unending entertainment, we
have lost this and I think it’s a loss that matters.
Lily: A Tale of
Revenge by Rose Tremain is published by Vintage of the 11th
of November 2021.
This article is not intended to deter anyone from having a necessary or recommended vaccination, against Covid-19 or anything else. The article's purpose is to provide supporting material for an intended Parliamentary Petition asking the UK government to reconsider its policy of NOT using a quick, simple and almost cost-free procedure known as "aspiration" which ensures that an injection which needs to be intramuscular in order to work properly and safely, does indeed go into muscle tissue and not into a blood vessel, which can cause occasional serious complications and, probably much more commonly, may simply stop the injection working properly and lead to reduced or nil protection for the recipient. If a vaccine is designed to be administered by intramuscular injection in order to work, and if its safety has been assessed by regulators on that basis, then it would seem completely reasonable to require the use of a well-tested and very simple procedure for insuring that this is what happens. The Danish government requires exactly this!
This article is necessary because the rules for a Parliamentary Petition place a severe limit on the number of characters (80) which may be used for the petition itself, whilst the "more information" box is limited to 300 characters and the "additional information" box may contain no more than 500 characters. This isn't a lot when you're trying to argue with public officials enjoying almost unlimited access to media time and column inches.
The following YouTube video, by Dr John Campbell, has been embedded as the best way of summarizing what the argument is about, whilst respecting his copyright. There's a bit more material and some tidier links below the video.
The first (and most recent: August 2021) of the studies to which Dr Campbell refers is this one:
Intravenous Injection of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) mRNA Vaccine Can Induce Acute Myopericarditis in Mouse Model
Can Li, Yanxia Chen, Yan Zhao, David Christopher Lung, Zhanhong Ye, Wenchen Song, Fei-Fei Liu, Jian-Piao Cai, Wan-Man Wong, Cyril Chik-Yan Yip, Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan, Kelvin Kai-Wang To, Siddharth Sridhar, Ivan Fan-Ngai Hung, Hin Chu, Kin-Hang Kok, Dong-Yan Jin, Anna Jinxia Zhang, Kwok-Yung Yuen
And this is a link which goes directly to the relevant URL (Dr Campbell gives a link which includes his own search information, which whilst very scholarly is never going to fit in a 500-character box on a petition!)
This article set out to discover whether inadvertent intravascular injection of an mRNA vaccine could induce Acute Myopericarditis and the researchers found that it indeed it could, in a mouse model. (It being unethical to kill people to find this out.)
The second study referenced in the video was started in 2006 and published in 2007:
Adenovirus-induced thrombocytopenia: the role of von Willebrand factor and P-selectin in mediating acceleratedplatelet clearance
Maha Othman, Andrea Labelle, Ian Mazzetti, Hisham S. Elbatarny, David Lillicrap
This study requires more in the way of explanation: the researchers were trying to answer a fairly complex immunological question about the use of adeno-virus vectors in both vaccines and gene therapy. They administered an adeno-virus antigen to mice (which had been genetically modified in different ways) via a tail-vein intravascular injection. This induced thrombocytopenia (there was a panic about the AZ covid vaccine also doing this in humans in very rare instances) with mice modified in one way and not in those modified in the other. But where the thrombocytopenia was induced, it was when the antigen was given in an intravascular injection and in the case of a vaccine (but maybe not a gene therapy agent) it could have been given therapeutically as an intramuscular injection. The complex immunological process leading to thrombocytopenia involved the innate immune responses to an antigen circulating in the bloodstream, most of which would not be encountered by an antigen entering the lymphatic system via muscle tissue.
There are two implications here:
Firstly the use of adeno-virus vectors in gene therapy may be more problematic than their use in vaccines, but gene-therapy is only given to people who definitely already have a severe illness, whereas a vaccine is given widely to all sorts of people to prevent illness.
Secondly, to avoid thrombocytopenia with adeno-virus vector vaccines, it might be as well to ensure that vaccinations intended to be intramuscular in order to work properly and safely are indeed given that way, avoiding inadvertent intravascular injection.
Conclusion
While the first study explicitly finds in favour of aspirating intramuscular mRNA vaccinations to ensure that they are not inadvertently given intravascularly, the second study indirectly leads to exactly the same conclusion for Adeno-virus vector vaccinations as well.
Other types of covid vaccine exist and some of them are being used. The Chinese have two inactivated virus vaccines, which might be exempt from the above logic. However, "authorised news footage" of Chinese nurses administering these vaccines to the masses shows them quickly and efficiently aspirating the injection every time. So even though they may well be using the least problematic type of vaccine in this respect, the Chinese authorities appear to regard aspiration as good practice, fit to be seen in glossy propaganda footage. The Chinese government has certainly not banned aspiration! The Danish government mandates it.
The UK government's main argument against aspiration is that a small number of vaccines would be wasted. However, any intramuscular vaccine that is wrongly given into the bloodstream will not work and be wasted anyway: the real waste is any vaccine believed to be correctly given that wasn't, and therefore does not work, because that wastes the opportunity to protect that patient from illness.
A link to the petition will be posted here if and when it goes live. There are several hoops to jump through first and this may take a few days.
