Book Review of Slaughterhouse Farm by T. Orr Munro

 

 Second forensic thriller in the Ally Dymond series.

* * * *

 

(This review is based on a free review copy from the publisher via Net Galley UK.)

In the aftermath of the traumas suffered by Ally Dymond and her daughter, Megan, in “Breakneck Point” “Slaughterhouse Farm” is a fast-moving and compelling story of how long-buried traumas and abusive relationships can lead to crimes decades or even generations after that initial trauma.

What unravels is not one thread of a single mystery, but a web of interlocking crimes committed by different people from three generations and several families and for a wide spread of reasons, which means that the pressure on CSI Ally Dymond and her family, and the tension for the reader, never let up till the very end. This wouldn’t be an Ally Dymond story if it did! And if you don’t know everything that’s going on, how can you ever know who to trust?

This is a very good read, but so much goes on that you more or less have to read it from cover to cover in order to keep everything in your head.

 

Slaughterhouse Farm by T. Orr Munro is published by HQ on the 25^th of May 2023.

Book Review of Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

* * * * *

This review is based on a free review EPUB from the publisher via Net Galley UK.

This is a fictionalised history of several people’s stories, intertwined with each other, the Vietnam War and its aftermath. It is well-written and deeply-researched. The themes include sexual exploitation, racism and bullying, from a realistic rather than a “woke” perspective. Fear of the impending communist regime turns out to be worse than the reality, though no-one specifically targetted by the regime is likely to think so! All of Vietnam’s regimes, so far, have been authoritarian and one thing which an authoritarian or totalitarian regime does not normally do is crack down effectively on bullying, which makes bullying the key problem for most of the protagonists in this story. (Authoritarian regimes tend to be coalitions of the culpable which find themselves obliged to let their accomplices get away with stuff -and, of course, they then have to go on letting the bastards get away with stuff no matter how bad things get. Marshal Tito was the sole (and belated) proponent of socialist economic liberalism to survive the Soviet era largely because he was the only communist leader to run a tight-enough ship to be ABLE to change course.)

The author shows us what’s wrong with sexual exploitation by showing us all the other things the exploited ones knew how to do and how much happiness and prosperity was possible when they were able to do those things instead. And always, education and new skills, acquired throughout life and not just in childhood, are a better escape mechanism from poverty and exploitation than the panacea of a US Visa. The moral arguments against prostitution are essentially the same as Adam Smith’s economic arguments against slavery: the waste of resources is always a moral issue when the resources being wasted are human ones.

American servicemen are shown as treating Vietnamese women extremely badly and there’s plenty of historical evidence of that. It’s partly because they were so much younger on average than the men who’d fought the Second World War, but also because the only goal they were ever given was to complete their “tour” and go home. The absence of any published definition of success emphasised the lack of any extant strategy for achieving success and led to a lack of much, if any, sense of responsibility on the part of American soldiers to those they left behind in Vietnam when they achieved their goal of going home. Nothing they did was seen as making anything any worse; the author’s skill is to show us that, actually, it did make things worse.

Reading this book left me with a feeling of admiration for the Vietnamese who seem to have recovered from the Vietnam war rather better than their neighbours in Cambodia and Laos. And gratitude for the post war British leaders who saw Vietnam as a hot potato which, like Aden and Yemen, simply needed to be dropped. Which makes the sell-outs of their successors, Blair and Cameron, to the mindless White House incumbents of their day all the more galling.

Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is published in the UK by One World Publications on the 6^th of April 2023.

Saving the BBC Singers from the BBC

 

The BBC has decided to abolish the BBC Singers, who are the only full-time professional chamber choir in Britain. There is no particular evidence that "The Government" put the BBC up to this, and in fact the whole plan seems quite arbitrary and devoid of costing, or indeed anything beyond closing the singers down. Those responsible for the decision claimed, to an over-trusting press corps, that they were closing the singers down in order to do something "much better" in support of choral music across the whole of the country etc. etc. but when challenged they provided no details before walking away, leaving a senior colleague in tears, and it's quite apparent that the "better alternative" simply does not exist and probably never will. 

 There is a petition against the decision, which is still open and which I have signed. Here is a link to an update to that petition which includes a long letter to the BBC leadership detailing the true facts behind the decision and the shockingly disrespectful conduct of certain of the individuals concerned.

https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-planned-closure-of-the-bbc-singers/u/31407371

This shorter link should allow readers to add their own signatures:

https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-planned-closure-of-the-bbc-singers

The decision matches the templates of recent decisions to cut back ethnic community radio programming and local TV and radio news programmes in favour of "regional" news. If you live in Peterborough, Milton Keynes or Leighton Buzzard, the "regional" news is the world as it appears from Norwich, which is sometimes very distant indeed. There were petitions against those decisions too, which I also signed. However, since I'm not part of an ethnic minority it's hardly for me to comment on, let alone lead, a campaign to preserve ethnic community programming, but I would say that although it undoubtedly feels to many of those affected as if they are being singled out for cuts by the BBC on racist grounds, the mere fact that the presentation of so many different cuts to BBC community and cultural services conforms to the same template indicates pretty strongly that this is a purge against distinctiveness in any form and that excellence is just another unwanted "distinction" in the eyes of the BBC's managerial elite. And it probably is "managerialism" rather than socialism or conservatism which is behind all this.

The thing about managerialists is that it's a bother to them to see us as belonging to different ethnic, religious, social or even geographical groups and they are affronted when asked to perceive us as individuals. Whereas Bolsheviks and even NAZIs were capable of recognising, nurturing and exploiting talented individuals when it suited their purposes, managerialists simply cannot grasp the concept of a member of the "irrational masses" having a talent, or any other property, unique to them. So, in circumstances where Lenin, Stalin or even Hitler might have given Mr Simon Webb a few words of polite recognition or kind encouragement, a BBC executive, whom we shall call "Ms Kreb," simply left the room. And it probably was the realisation that the accumulated talent and learning of the BBC Singers, which he had helped nurture and was pleading for, meant nothing to Ms Kreb and her peer group which reduced him to tears. 

So why, given that this post is really about what to do next if the BBC managerial elite refuse to change course or even acknowledge that they have pursued an arbitrary policy in a supremely arrogant manner, do I recommend that everyone who reads this signs the petition and supports the campaign to save the BBC Singers within the BBC, to the bitter end?

There are three reasons for this: 

Firstly, though I believe a change of heart where no hearts beat to be profoundly unlikely, it would be a famous victory if it happened and the positive ramifications might rumble on for a gratifying amount of time.

Secondly, campaigning to the bitter end will not only raise public awareness of the BBC Singers and their genuine worth to the nation (rather than provoking fleeting sympathy over how foully they are being treated); it will give the managerialists the maximum possible number of opportunities to show the public -and even elected politicians- their true face. That is both a benefit and a duty.

Thirdly, what the BBC Singers will need to do next if there is no change of heart is going to take some steel and a lot of resolve. A bit of a fight will teach them about themselves and each other and how much support each of them will be able to give and how much each might need. And taking the matter to an industrial tribunal might even shake loose a few useful shillings.

What to do when the BBC relinquishes control

The first principle is that the funds needed to keep the Singers flourishing as a creative and artistic community must be raised separately from any redundancy payments or compensation for breaches of contract or other forms of corporate misconduct. Money owed to individuals by the BBC must be reserved for the needs and comfort of those individuals and their dependents. The second principle is that the Singers and their trusted managers and support staff are the talent and as such they must be given and retain control of any donated funds and the entity created by combining funds and talent.

There are some popular business and especially "charitable" structures which will conflict with the second principle and must therefore be avoided.

The purpose of the exercise is to allow the Singers to practice, develop, teach and pass on their art, for their own good as well as that of the public. It could be done on a non-profit basis, but any attempt to conform to the laws governing registered charities would make it more or less impossible for the talent to keep control of the enterprise for their own benefit. Indeed, conforming to charity laws, some of them rewritten in the past couple of decades by Gordon Brown, could well put the Singers back in the hands of the managerialists. 

A partnership might allow greater privacy than a company, but is it really desirable to allow the management of the Singers and their finances to disappear into a dark corner like those of the Blair Foundation? The discipline of a company, filing accounts, on time, where they are available for scrutiny, is often a protection rather than a burden. I wouldn't take advice from any financial expert who advised me to write my accounts in invisible ink, shall we say: because that might benefit the expert a lot more than me!

Cooperatives, trusts, endowments and so on are all prey for the sort of highly-organised people who regularly pore over archive records looking for trusts and endowments they might take control of. A company can defend itself against that sort of thing whereas in practice trusts and endowments often prove to be sitting ducks. The benefits of a public limited company in this instance are non-existent: the scale is all wrong and the Singers would be exposed to speculators and take-over artists manipulating traded shares.

A private limited liability company can be constituted either to make a profit or to be a non-profit. In either case, it can issue both preference shares and non-preference shares which actually come with a vote. The issue of non-preference shares should be limited (by a clause in the articles) to the talent and their trusted managers and support staff. Preference shares should be issued (if at all) sparingly and only to raise funds for a clearly-specified and agreed need. 

It makes sense for each Singer to have the same number of non-preference voting shares as the others. If a Singer wanted to invest more money than the others, they'd probably benefit financially by taking preference shares in any case, if the company had to be wound up.

And if the company (profit or non-profit) did need to be wound up, the Singers would be able to retrieve at least some of their invested funds for their own benefit or for a further venture. This would be more complicated (and very time-consuming) in the case of a trust, and potentially illegal in the case of a charity.

In the case of a non-profit company, remuneration would be on a salaried basis, related to work done. This might not be as tax-efficient as many schemes popular with certain highly-paid BBC figures, but it's pretty simple, transparent and also pretty safe: "tax-efficient" schemes do tend to end up in court, where the Crown has a uniform tendency to triumph over smooth-talking financial advisers, to the surprise and dismay of the clients who have to pay the resulting bills.

PS:

Those who think that George Orwell had it in for NAZIs, Bolsheviks and "Intellectuals" might want to read his remarks about James Burnham and the cult of managerialism which he founded!

Book Review of The Loch by Fran Dorricott

* * * * *

A gripping mystery with several twists and a shocking but redemptive conclusion.

This review was based on a free review Epub from the publisher via Net Galley UK

 

Set in Scotland over a bitingly cold holiday weekend (Dear readers, you’re identifying with this already, aren’t you?) three female graduates from the University of Leicester are trying to maintain their friendship now that they have (or have just lost) different jobs in different fields. One of them wonders just who she is and what her roots are, because all her adoptive parents have been able to tell her is that she was left outside a police station as a baby. The holiday arrangements and bookings are in the hands of a friend who’s secretly plotting to help her find out the truth about herself, which turns out to be the most dangerous plan possible. (Actually, we all learn much faster by doing dangerous things than we do by being sensible and keeping things safe.)

The underlying themes are love and courage rather than blame and “justice.” Both the least culpable and the most culpable adult characters spend their final moments trying to protect someone else. Even the reckless plan which places the three young women in danger, is born out of love. It is not a cosy read (the characters don’t manage to heat their holiday home effectively or even feed themselves) but it is an intellectually and morally engaging one.

The Loch by Fran Dorricott is published in the UK by Avon Books on 16/3/2023.

Book Review of The English Fuhrer by Rory Clements

 * * * * *

The best of the Tom Wilde spy series so far.

(This review is based on a free review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

A political-context spy thriller set in England during the run up to Hugh Dalton’s first post-war budget when the future of Great Britain was about to be redefined for generations to come, even if there were neither external threats nor internal plots. The Chinese see such moments of uncertainty as having the potential, for those willing to take action, to change the future when at most other times such actions will fail no matter how hard the protagonists strive. The Chinese appear in this story only as victims of Japanese atrocity, but I find it interesting that the author chose to set his novel at a time when Chinese philosophy might expect such a plot to be potentially decisive, whereas the Gunpowder Plot, for example, was probably destined to fail in its ultimate objective whether the explosives did their murderous work or not.

This is about biological warfare and “Camp 731” in Manchuria, where ruthless experiments on many innocent people were used to develop a number of deadly diseases as weapons. The author has done his research well enough to know that “Porton Down” was actually two separate establishments at the time: MRD Salisbury was the Biological laboratory and CDE Salisbury was the much older Chemical Research Establishment: they shared a canteen building and, post-war, a civilian director. But staff stuck to their own laboratories in their own buildings (in whose technical procedures they were experts) for very compelling safety reasons as well as any reason of national security.

Neither MRD or CDE ever exclusively concentrated on military work, let alone chemical or biological warfare work and in the story the main contribution which MRD experts make is to contain a disease outbreak, understand what the causative agent is and supervise the care of those afflicted by it. This is perfectly credible, when so little of what is written about Porton Down is.* And it is worth noting that while Japanese scientists at Camp 731 were committing countless atrocities to develop the most demonic biological weapons possible, the mundane sanitation and hygiene work done by MRD and CDE to protect Commonwealth and Allied soldiers from naturally-occurring tropical diseases was credited by Lord Louis Mountbatten with being the single most important factor in the Fourteenth Army’s success in liberating Burma from Japanese occupation.

This is also a story about the main protagonist’s experience and extensive knowledge of fascists and NAZI’s being exploited to mislead him, and there are very considerable plot twists (which might challenge our assumptions about the present day) towards the end of an exciting, gripping and readable story. Which also gets the period social background about right.

* The exception is Alistair Maclean’s “The Satan Bug”. Someone who worked at MRD at the time read a copy I gave her and said that he got everything right except that the high security fence was around CDE and he put it, for dramatic purposes, around MRD -and in one sentence he confuses “toxin” with “virus” which is a mistake you’d expect a classical languages teacher to make, because in that context they both mean “something that makes one ill.” The same former MRD researcher also said that almost none of the “investigative reporting” of the journalist Chapman Pincher about Porton Down was accurate and that staff played a game, via a noticeboard in the canteen whereby, every Christmas, the employees who’d got Pincher to publish the most ridiculous story AND buy his informant a nice meal won a share of a kitty that had accumulated throughout the year. You pinned up the article you’d got him to publish with a summary of the meal he’d paid for and put a few shillings in the kitty towards the handsome prizes.

The English Fuhrer by Rory Clements is published by Bonnier Books UK on the 19^th of January 2023.

Where To Buy The Farshoreman

 

Amazon Kindle and Paperback versions:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B47FLBDS
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B47FLBDS
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0B47FLBDS
https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B0B47FLBDS
https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0B47FLBDS
https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B0B47FLBDS
https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0B47FLBDS

 

Paperback via Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-farshoreman-matthew-k-spencer/1141809025

Smashwords Store (choice of E-book formats):

 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1291276

 

(NB: the Smashwords mobi version is formatted to Smashwords specs rather than Amazon specs; but works fine on an original Kindle. Depends what you prefer.) 

Smashwords Affiliates (EPUB format Ebooks):

Apple:

https://books.apple.com/us/book/x/id6445158728

 

Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940165985522

 

Kobo:

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-farshoreman

Odilo:

https://marketplace.odilo.us/opac/?query=9781005315016

Scribd:

https://www.scribd.com/book/614856445/The-Farshoreman

Elon Musk: Energy Density is More Important than Twitter!

Dear Mr Musk.

What was important about Twitter: the corruption, bias, censorship, ruthless data harvesting and the so-far unexplored reality that personal data being harvested by AIs is indistinguishable from that which an AI might fabricate and is therefore not worth anybody paying money for (which Twitter has in common with all social media save Flickr (where people share beauty rather than opinions)), was important only as long as it remained unexposed. Now it has been exposed, anybody who seeks to address those evils is probably well-equipped to do so. As for AIs fabricating (with or without the knowledge of the relevant CEO) personal data with a market value, it is likely that by exposing the huge number of completely bogus accounts on Twitter you have already done enough to give those footing the gigantic bill for the Social Media Oligarchs and their agendas pause for thought! The business model of ALL the big social media companies depends on the data they are selling being genuine stolen data and not synthetic data on individuals who do not actually exist. Assuming that your purpose in getting Twitter to force you to take control of it, was to destroy the business model of social media companies your work there is either already done, or no longer the best use of your time.

The projects that you are known and widely respected for, have all been in the real world or at least the real outer space surrounding it. PayPal and anything else which makes the internet a tool for people to use in real life, is of more value than social media, whilst the "Metaverse" seeks to create an income-stream entirely divorced from any reality, especially any economic reality. I have a feeling that the Metaverse is about to make Richard Branson's move into the airline business look financially astute! It is time for you to get back to the real world, even if you believe the real world to be a simulation. (There are some cosmologists who think it might actually be easier to create a new real universe than to build and sustain a simulation of one.)

Critics of your real-world activities complain that they cannot tell the difference between many of your business plans and Science Fiction. As a Science Fiction author I am actually rather pleased with you in that respect, because proper Science Fiction should ideally be one scientific or technological change away from becoming reality. In the case of the "far-fetched" projects of yours that matter to the real world, what stands between you and their realisation always boils down to an "energy density of the complete solution" which you have not got. 

You've got a good-enough energy density for electric cars, but to really make a breakthrough into electric trucks (HGVs, not pickups) you need something like one order of magnitude better than you have got, especially in the wide-open spaces of Canada, Australia and South Africa. With Space-X, the energy density of the complete solution you've already got, will get you to the moon. But to get to Mars and back quickly enough for humans to survive the trip, again you need an energy density about an order of magnitude better than what you have got. 

Now then. If you were to make the breakthrough that stands between you and your "far-fetched" dreams becoming reality, so many other things would become possible, for so many other inventors and entrepreneurs, that problems which currently terrify half the world would be solvable and solved. When we do difficult things in the real world, the world does change and the general trend is, despite the never-ending chorus of doom, towards change for the better. For all the hatred and anger against "Big Pharma" engendered by some pretty blatant (and inexplicable) wrong-doing by very powerful people over the Covid Pandemic, it remains true that before the anti-ulcer drug, "Tagamet" was developed and licensed in the mid nineteen-seventies, complications from stomach ulcers were the single most common cause of death, worldwide, in peacetime for persons under fifty years old. Nowadays, almost no-one dies from stomach ulcers and Tagamet and its successors save more lives than any of the vastly more expensive anti-cancer and anti-HIV drugs do, especially in the developing world. (It's not just about funds: publicity for the efficacy of established and non-controversial medicines is absolutely nil; that is both why Big Pharma so frequently does the wrong thing and why it is hated even when it is doing the right thing.)

The potential for good exists in every breakthrough in the real world. But those breakthroughs do have to be made. If the one order of magnitude breakthrough in energy density for both space launchers and electric trucks were made, not only would climate-changing emission targets that are currently politically and economically unthinkable become achievable, but whole fields of endeavour in climate-management which are currently not even doable, such as lofting either huge solar-power arrays or even larger "solar-shades" into appropriate orbits would become not just doable but affordable, too. It must be noted that we might not want the solar shades to orbit the Earth, but the Sun. This really would need a step-change in the energy density of our satellite launchers!

So, Mr Musk. I am not opposing you, or trying to drive you in any direction you do not want to go: I just think you can do the most good for yourself and the rest of us if you return to making a reality out of Science Fiction rather than sense out of politics! Because, with both our environmental and our economic problems (and the latter are quite capable of killing the most people) no application of existing technology, no matter how fervent the support or how much ideological correctness attends its application, is going to get the job done. 

Here comes an appropriate plug:

Mr Musk: to help you and your supporters I have written a Science Fiction novel (at 85,000 words it is hardly an exhausting read) which shows (amongst many other things) how improving the energy density of the complete solution by one order of magnitude, transforms our ability to achieve our dreams. (And if you increase the energy density of electric road vehicles by one order or magnitude the braking distance should at least halve (because the vehicle would be much lighter) and that might save quite a few lives!)

Smashwords (release date, by a happy coincidence, 22/12/2022):

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1291276

ISBN: 9781005315016

 This title will also be available on Smashwords affiliates, such as Barnes & Noble.

Paperback & Kindle (already in print and available):

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B47FLBDS

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B47FLBDS

ISBN:  9798837658099

Merry Christmas!