On my latest dive into my pile of Ace Doubles I came up with a pair of novels about which I had mixed feelings. Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium is one that I have long wanted to read, as it's considered an early classic of alternate history. I've never been a fan of Laumer's work, though, and while there were elements of the story I enjoyed (in which an American from our world is kidnapped by another timeline in order to fight his dictatorial double on another world), it never felt like it lived up to its reputation.

Reputation also was a factor in how I judged Marion Zimmer Bradley's Seven From the Stars. While it seems as though the books of her Avalon series were everywhere when I was growing up this was the first of her novels that I've read. It's a more conventional sci-fi tale written early in Bradley's career in which seven human-looking aliens crash land in Texas, where they're forced to find ways to survive. This premise alone offers enormous possibilities, yet Bradley layers it with the efforts of an undercover observer to rescue them and the looming threat of an amorphous Big Bad. It felt like a case of too much plot getting in the way of a good story, and while I try not to hold an author's early work against them, given Bradley's horrifying personal actions I doubt I'll seek out any more of her novels.

Last night I had some anxiety-related difficulty sleeping, so I decided to start one of the Ace Doubles I have lying around. I began with Keith Laumer's Worlds of the Imperium, as it was an early alt-history novel that I had read about but never had the opportunity to read for myself until now.

I've never been a big fan of Laumer's work, and this novel didn't do a lot to change my opinion. In it, the central character gets kidnapped from our universe by an multi-world-spanning Imperium, because his alternate in another timeline is waging an inter-temporal war. It's an interesting premise that was pretty fresh when JFK was in the White House but it's been done quite a lot since and it wasn't difficult for them to improve on what Laumer does. What was potentially a rich premise ends up being squandered in what could have been a non-sci-fi adventure without too much tweaking.

Now I have to work out whether I'm going to read Marion ZImmer Bradley's book, as I have to decide whether I can separate the art from the artist.

The 1969/1970 comedy Up Pompeii starred British comedian Frankie Howerd as put upon slave Lurcio always ready and willing to spread a little gossip from his adopted Roman household. Now in no way am I trying to suggest or draw a comparison between Lurcio and Tiro (personal secretary to Cicero) but using a member of Cicero’s household to act as narrator we have a wonderful  “fly on the wall” storyteller. Cicero was an excellent lawyer, orator, shrewd politician and through his own speeches and letters Robert Harris is able to construct a powerful unforgettable story of Rome at a time of great turmoil and change. By using the voice of Tiro, first a slave then a freeman of Cicero, he effectively invites us the reader to enjoy a private view of the Roman Republic.

The first part of Imperium shows Cicero develop his skills both as orator and advocate using his talents to expose the tyrannical reign of Gaius Verres, Roman magistrate, notorious for his misgovernment of Sicily extorting local farmers and plundering temples for his own personal gain….”Gaius Verres has robbed the treasury and behaved like a pirate and a destroying pestilence in his province of Sicily. You have only to find this man guilty and respect in you will be rightly restored”….His most heinous crime was the crucifixion  of Publius Gavius accused of being a spy and sentenced to death….”and had Gavius stripped naked and publicly flogged before us all. Then he was tortured with hot irons. And then he was crucified”….Civis romanus sum were the only words uttered by Gabius as he slowly died.

The second half of the book is given over to Cicero’s bid to be elected one of Rome’s two governing consuls and by so doing achieved “Imperium” absolute power. It is wonderful to be party to and to understand just how difficult oppressive and cruel life could be for the ordinary populace of Rome in the latter days of the Republic. Wealth was king, wealth was the stepping stones of a life of influence, status and honour. We meet the great players of the day, Pompey and Crassus efficient killing machines, at advancing the rule of Rome spreading citizenship for and wide. Success in battle resulted in wealth, (plundered) power and influence….”Crassus, said Pompey at once his old enemy was never far from his thoughts”….”Well I suppose if you are really worried said Cicero we could always specify that the supreme commander should be an ex consul whose name begins with a P”….

Imperium is the first of a trilogy about the life of Cicero, It is a brilliant piece of writing, taut, informative, alive with the sights and sounds of everyday Rome….”Rome is not a question of blood or religion: Rome is an ideal, Rome is the highest embodiment of liberty and law that mankind has yet achieved in the ten thousand years since our ancestors came down from those mountains and learned how to live as communities under the rule of law”…

Highly, highly recommended!

A big thank you to Moonlight Reader for yet another fun, inventive BookLikes game!  I had a wonderful time, while also advancing -- though with decidedly fewer new reads than I'd origianlly been planning -- my two main reading goals for this year (classic crime fiction and books written by women).

Harry Potter - The Complete Series

This was a long-overdue revisit and obviously, there isn't anything I could possibly say about the books that hasn't been said a million times before by others.  But I've gladly let the magic of Hogwarts and Harry's world capture me all over again ... to the point of giving in to book fandom far enough to treat myself to the gorgeous hardcover book set released in 2014 and, in addition, the even more gorgeous Gryffindor and Ravenclaw anniversary editions of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

That said, particular kudos must also go to Stephen Fry for his magnificent audio narration of the books, which played a huge role in pulling me right back into to books, to the point that I'd carry my phone wherever I went while I was listening to them.

As for the rest of my KYD books ... roughly in the order in which I read them:

Ngaio Marsh: Death at the Dolphin (aka Killer Dolphin)

Also a revisit: One of my favorite installments in Marsh's Roderick Alleyn series, not only because it is set in the world of the theatre -- always one of Marsh's particular fortes, as she herself was a veteran Shakespearean director and considered that her primary occupation, while writing mysteries to her was merely a sideline -- but because this one, in fact, does deal with a(n alleged) Shakespearean relic and a play based on Shakespeare's life, inspired by that relic.

Freeman Wills Crofts:

The Hog's Back Mystery

 Part of Crofts's Inspector French series and my first book by Crofts, who was known for his painstaking attempts to "play fair" with the reader; which here, I'm afraid, hampered the development of the story a bit, in producing a fair bit of dialogue at the beginning that might have been better summed up from the third person narrator's point of view in the interest of easing along the flow of the story, and in holding French back even at points where a reasonably alert reader would have developed suspicions calling for a particular turn of the investigation.  But I like French as a character, and as for all I'm hearing this is very likely not the series's strongest installment, I'll happily give another book a try later.

Dorothy L. Sayers: Unnatural Death

Not my favorite Lord Peter Wimsey book by Sayers, but virtually the only one I haven't revisited on audio recently -- and as always, I greatly enjoyed the narration by Ian Carmichael.  That said, here again Sayers proves herself head and shoulders above her contemporaries, in devising a particularly fiendish, virtually untraceable method of murder (well, untraceable by the medical state of the art of her day at least), and perhaps even more so by hinting fairly obviously at two women's living together in what would seem to be a lesbian relationship.

Margaret Drabble: The Red Queen

Ummm ... decidedly NOT my favorite read of the month.  'Nuff said: next!

Walter Mosley: A Red Death

I'd long been wanting to return to the world of Easy Rawlins' mid-20th century Los Angeles, so what with Mosley's fiction making for various entries in the KYD cards, including at least one book by him in my reading plans for the game seemed only fitting (... even if I ended up using this one for a "Dr. Watson" victim guess!). -- This, the second installment of the series, deals with the political hysteria brought about by the McCarthy probes and also makes a number of pertinent points on racial discrimination and xenophobia, which make it decidedly uncomfortable reading in today's political climate.

Agatha Christie: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Another revisit, and in no small part courtesy of Hugh Fraser's narration, I liked the book a good deal better than I had done originally.  This is one of several entries in the Poirot canon where we learn about Poirot's phobia of dentist's visits, which obviously makes for the high point of the book's humour ... and of course it doesn't exactly help that it's Poirot's dentist, of all people, who turns out the murder victim. -- The plot features several clever slights of hand, and you have to play a really long shot to get the solution right in its entirety (even if strictly speaking Christie does play fair).  Well, that's what we have Monsieur Poirot's little grey cells for, I suppose!

Robert Harris: Imperium

The first part of Harris's Cicero trilogy, and both a truly fast-paced and a well-researched piece of historical writing; covering Cicero's ascent from young Senator to Praetorian and, eventually (and against all the odds), Consul. 

The first part of the book deals at length with one of Cicero's most famous legal cases, the prosecution of the corrupt Sicilian governor Verres, and Harris shows how Cicero employed that case in order to advance his own political career.  Notably, Cicero quite ingeniously also ignored established Roman trial practice in favor of what would very much resemble modern common law practice, by making a (by the standards of the day) comparatively short opening statement -- albeit a supremely argumentative one -- and immediately thereafter examining his witnesses, instead of, as procedural custom would have dictated, engaging in a lengthy battle of speeches with defending counsel first.  As a result of this manoeuver, Verres was as good as convicted and fled from Rome in the space of the 9 days allotted to Cicero as prosecuting counsel to make his case. 

The second part of the book examines Cicero's unlikely but eventually victorious campaign for consulship, and his exposure of a conspiracy involving Catiline, generally believed to be the most likely victor of that year's consular elections, who later came to be involved of conspiracies on an even greater scale, and whose condemnation in Cicero's most famous speeches -- collectively known as In Catilinam (On, or Against Catiline) -- would go a great way towards securing both Cicero's political success in his own lifetime and his lasting fame as a skilled orator.

Agatha Christie: Murder Is Easy

Another Christie revisit, and I regret to say for the most part I'm down to my less favorite books now.  This isn't a bad book, and the ending in particular is quite dark ... but the middle part, much as I'm sorry to have to say this, simply drags.

Val McDermid: The Distant Echo

Holy moly, how did I ever miss this book until now?!  Even more so since the Karen Pirie series is actually my favorite series by Val McDermid ... OK, Pirie herself has little more than a walk-on role here; we're talking absolute beginning of her career, and the focus is decidedly not on her but on her boss and  on a quartet of suspects involved in a 25-year-old murder case -- in fact, the whole first half of the book is set 25 years in the past, too, describing the immediate aftermath of the murder and its consequences for the four main suspects, chiefly from their perspective.  But still!  Well, I sure am glad I finally caught up with it at last ... definitely one of the best things McDermid ever wrote.

Juli Zeh: Unterleuten

A scathing satire on village life, on post-Berlin Wall German society, on greed, on the commercialization of ideals ... and most of all, on people's inability to communicate: Everyone in this book essentially lives inside their own head, and in a world created only from the bits they themselves want to see -- with predictably disastrous consequences.  The whole thing is brilliantly observed and deftly written; yet, the lack of characters that I found I could like or empathize with began to grate after a while ... in a shorter book I might not have minded quite so much, but in a 600+ page brick I'd have needed a few more characters who actually spoke to me to get all the way through and still be raving with enthusiasm.  If you don't mind watching a bunch of thoroughly dislikeable people self-destruct in slow motion, though, you're bound to have a lot of fun with this book.

Werner Böcking: Von Köln zum Meer

Local history, a read inspired by conversations with a visiting friend on the history of shipping and travel by boat on the Rhine. -- A richly illustrated book focusing chiefly on the 19th and 20th centuries, and the mid-19th-centuriy changes brought about by diesel engines and the resulting disappearance of sailing vessels (which, before the advent of engines, were pulled by horses when going up the river, against the current): undoubtedly the biggest change not only in land but also in river travel and transportation, with a profound effect on large sectors of the economy of the adjoining regions and communities.

And last but not least ...

Dennis McCarthy & June Schlueter: "A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels" by George North -- A Newly Uncovered Manuscript Source for Shakespeare's Plays

The lastest in Shakespearean research, also a read inspired by conversations with the above-mentioned visiting friend, and a February 7, 2018 New York Times article on a possible new source text for passages contained in no less than 11 of Shakespeare's plays.  The story of the discovery itself is fascinating; the research methods applied are in synch with modern Shakesperean scholarship ... and yet, for all the astonishing textual concordance, unless and until someone proves that Shakespeare not only had the opportunity to see this document but actually did (at least: overwhelmingly likely) see it, I'm not going to cry "hooray" just yet.  According to the authors' own timeline, Shakespeare would have been about 11 years old when this text was written, it was kept in a private collection even then, and there is no record that the Bard ever visited the manor housing that very collection -- which collection in turn, if the authors are to be believed, the text very likely at least did not ever leave during Shakespeare's lifetime (though it was undoubtedly moved at a later point in time).  And Shakespearean research, as we all know, has been prone to a boatload of dead-end streets and conspiracy theories pretty much ever since its inception ...

Robert Harris's Imperium has white lettering (and the lower part of the cover is black).  In addition, the holders of Ancient Rome's public offices -- including this book's protagonist, Marcus Tullius Cicero -- had to organize a variety of games to entertain the citizens, so the words "game" and "games" appear repeatedly throughout the text.