Brief Note, THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE TRAITOR GEORGE WASHINGTON, by Charles Rosenberg

Legal thriller author Charles Rosenberg steps away from the American courtroom in his new release, THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE TRAITOR GEORGE WASHINGTON. As the title reveals, this one is an "alternate history" of what might happen if General Washington were kidnapped by the British as the height of the American Revolution. Would liberty still prevail? And how would the British twist the reasoning to try their captive with a death penalty ahead?

Mystery readers may get frustrated with a plot that doesn't provide many unexpected twists, beyond the kidnapping caper itself, a rather grim expedition in rough terrain (but featuring one of my favorite "Washington Slept Here" locations, the Dey Mansion in Wayne, NJ). History and historical fiction buffs will note the blurbs from Steve Berry, Max Byrd, and John Jakes, and take the plunge. Don't expect period language, but Rosenberg does a meticulous job presenting the military efforts of the era, and his notion of "what could have happened" is a pleasant read. New from Hanover Square Press, which is diversifying its list boldly this year!

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

World War I and the Werewolves and Priests ... Book II of Tarn Richardson's Darkest Hand Trilogy

I swore I'd never read those crazy books that mingled crime fiction and the paranormal -- until I picked up one of John Connolly's and realized the hauntings and lines of evil portrayed were really good metaphors for the kinds of crime that even rural areas find poisoning the well of life from time to time. And then I more or less tripped over Tarn Richardson's first book in his "The Darkest Hand Trilogy," The Damned. As I wrote in my review of The Damned last year, Richardson's choice to use an enduring Catholic Inquisition, warrior priests, and accursed werewolves turned out to be an apt way to portray the blood-soaked years that made up World War I.

Now the second book is available: THE FALLEN. Crusading inquisitor Poldek Tacit suffers the most horrific tortures of the Inquisition as the book opens -- while the dark forces he once battled are in motion from within the heart of the Vatican, laboring to be sure the killing grounds are truly saturated with the blood of Europe's finest generation.

As Tacit reflects on the secrets and maneuvers that resulted in his imprisonment -- for preventing carnage at a "Mass of Peace" in Notre Dame attended by international peacemakers -- he's well aware that if he'd been true to his depressed, angry, despairing self, and less susceptible to a nun's kindness and integrity, he might not be in this plight.

In a world fuelled by hate, at the end it was a love Tacit thought he never could feel again, this time for Isabella, which brought salvation for him and save Isabella. Making sure she was out of harm's way, Tacit had bounded alone into the Mass for Peace and blasted Cardinal Monteira from the pulpit just moments before he had slipped the stinking wolf's pelt over his head and transformed into a bloodthirsty werewolf. Tacit wondered if he could have done anything differently to save himself, to avoid arrest. ... No, he would have changed nothing.

Meanwhile, Isabella too is examining the events and catching up with their causes, in the company of a young officer and his partner, less tortured but also in danger:

"Stop!" she said. "Stop! ... You're telling me great swathes of people have sided with the Devil? That it originates from within the Vatican? That they are attempting to see his return to the world? ... I will not believe it for a moment!"

"And that is why they are allowed to grow, fester like a disease in a wound. For long we have investigated. They are preparing his domain. But he will only return when the world is truly ready, and his lieutenants are in place ... they must be stopped."

Fear not, the Poldek Tacit/Isabella romance never has a chance to heat up the way that a certain vampire series did a decade ago. THE FALLEN swiftly turns into a series of battles on the Italian front of the First World War ("the war to end all wars") that author Tarn Richardson notes (at the book's end) have been seemingly forgotten -- yet were held in extreme conditions and cost the lives of almost half a million men.

The abrupt, short chapters of the book -- there are more than a hundred -- fit this battle-by-battle crushing force of history well. And Richardson's use of his alternate history makes more sense out of the insistent killings than any dry narrative could. Tacit's determination to stop the forces of evil swiftly leads to his own position as a piece to sacrifice in the game. Can he make the sacrifice effective enough, worth the dying?

When I finally came up for air after reading this, I felt like I understood the cost of that war much better. Horror is sometimes the truth of those millions of deaths, isn't it? I'm looking forward to next year's finale. Meanwhile, I have a satisfyingly different point of view from which to look at some other powerful World War I narratives again, from those of Charles Todd's guilt-haunted mysteries to the heartbreaking clarity of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy.  And, of course, some nonfiction on the Great War -- even if that's not as strong a historical narrative as Richardson's own. From Overlook Press, publisher once again of the uncannily insightful.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Britain + 1952 + Nazi Occupation = DOMINION, Espionage Thriller from C. J. Sanson

My father, who adopted England as his homeland in 1933, was veddy, veddy British when he arrived in America in 1948; as a small child in the early 1950s in New Jersey, I used to correct his accent to "standard American."

He's long gone, but I can almost hear him tapping the dottle out of his pipe, catch the scent of vanilla-blended tobacco, hear him exclaim, "Damn and blast! Five more books you need to purchase, after reading C. J. Sansom's latest? How do you expect to make a living, my girl?!"

Good thing I'm not reviewing for a living. Because it's true: Sansom's alternate history, turned suspense thriller with plenty of espionage and investigation, makes me determined to pick up all his earlier work.

DOMINION already took a British award for alternative history, and Mulholland Books (a Little, Brown imprint) issued it in the United States this week. The premise is this: Suppose Churchill hadn't ever taken the leadership of England, and instead, Chamberlain's appeasement strategy had continued ... all the way to a reluctant agreement that Germany's forces monitor English politics, and Germany take over the former colonies known as the Dominion. It's "Remembrance Day," now a day to memorialize England's defeat:

.. the King had sat expressionless, only raising a hand occasionally, his body angled away from Hitler's. Afterwards David's father has said "enough," that was it he was off to live with his brother in New Zealand, and David would come too if he knew what was good for him, never mind his Civil Service job. Thank God, he added feelingly, David's mother hadn't lived to see this.

Sarah was looking over at the Queen. "Poor woman," she said.

David glanced over. He said very quietly, "She shouldn't have let them make her their puppet."

To David Fitzgerald, the occupation by Nazi Germany is intolerable. What can he do? Almost without meaning to, he joins the Resistance -- protecting his wife Sarah from that knowledge. Soon he's engaged in trying to rescue his old college friend Frank Muncaster, who (in a very fragile mind, in a mental hospital) may have the secret that the Resistance forces need to change the balance of power.

But David has a secret of his own, one that's almost intolerable in the anti-Semitic world that the Germans have enforced. And it destabilizes him into an almost-affair, as he lurches into espionage and action.

He knew he was not a physical coward, his service in Norway had shown him that, and it had needed courage to spy at the Office. Yes in a curious way, although what he did there was treasonable, he had still somehow felt enfolded, protected, by the Civil Service. What he was about to do now was utterly different and he felt exposed. He looked at his watch. Time to go.

I resist the notion of alternative history -- and yet Orwell's 1984 is often on my mind, when the news is on TV, and when we all use the social media. I think DOMINION will stay with me in much the same way. Looking at it again for this review, my stomach clenched in the same tension as at the first reading. Well-written suspense, in a believable framework -- with a huge amount at risk, and characters who don't understand why it's their task to carry, but ... who go forward because they are trying to do the right thing, even though all the choices are wrong. That's noir.

(PS: Had my father stayed in England ... he'd have had David's secret to contend with.)