Material Witness

REVIEW: The Roots of Betrayal by James Forrester

What is it about pirates that so enthralls us? In other criminals the murder, mayhem and misogyny would be regarded as repulsive. But pirates are increasingly romanticised in fiction - from The Pirates of Penzance to Jack Sparrow, they are no longer the terrifying villains of old but now are viewed as swashbuckling heroes.

William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, the herald at the centre of James Forrester's excellent series, confronts this question of pirates himself. Clarenceux (as he is known), now in his second Elizabethan conspiracy-thriller The Roots Of Betrayal, is thrust into the pirate life when he finds himself in the company of the wonderfully named Raw Carew, a privateer prowling the English channel in search of "Catholic treasure".

Clarenceux too is seeking the same treasure, although he understands that it is not gold, but a document whose content is so explosive it threatens not just Elizabeth's legitimacy on the throne but also the lives of those who have it in their possession and even those who see it. 

As their twin quests collide, so do their very different world views. Clarenceux is essentially an academic, a researcher who travels the land documenting the heraldic claims of the landed gentry. He has had adventure forced on him by his protection of, and subsequent loss of, said document. (For back story, see Sacred Treason).  Carew, by contrast, is the bastard son of a nobleman who fled a life of poverty in Calais - where he had been abandoned to his fate with his prostitute mother - for a life of crime on the high seas. Carew is a charismatic man of action, governed only by his desire to make a living for himself in his chosen profession and his Robin Hoodesque credo of looking after the poor and oppressed.

Despite witnessing Carew's violence, philandering and piracy - and indeed being its victim - Clarenceux, a religious man, cannot help but be drawn to the man, and ultimately they end up allies of sorts, drawn together by a mutual quest for survival.

The relationship between the two men and their adventures is the heart of an enjoyable novel that moves along at a good enough pace, with action and intrigue balanced by Forrester's natural inclination towards detail - political, social, historical. (In real life, Forrester is historian Ian Mortimer).  

Both men have also been betrayed. Carew has been betrayed by his father; but Clarenceux is not entirely sure by whom he has been betrayed. The document, much sought after both by crown loyalists and rebellious Catholics alike has been stolen from him, placing his life in danger. The Queen's attack dog Francis Walsingham - still smarting at being out-manoeuvered by Clarenceux in the original quest for the document - seeks to pin treason on Clarenceux, who is left without a soul to trust until he runs painfully into Carew.

If on occasion Forrester gets bogged down in period detail, he can be forgiven because ultimately the vivid Tudor canvass he paints enriches a lively story. And if the plot is perhaps just a little too reminscent of Sacred Treason, it doesn't matter too much as Carew arrives to give it a steroidal shot in the arm.

This is a fine historical novel, full of intrigue and drama and I look forward to the promised third part of the trilogy, The Final Sacrament, when it is published next year.  

 

REVIEW: Purge by Sofi Oksanen

Shortly before I read Purge, I heard an academic on the radio talking about how, for all its dangers and privations, the 1939-45 war was "straightforward" for Britain and its people. This remark was made in the context of a former Ukrainian soldier and UK immigrant, who had essentially survived the war only because he had chosen, when captured, to fight for the German army rather than go to a camp.

"At least the British always knew who the enemy was," the academic said, and I paraphrase, "for many Europeans on the ever-moving front line between Germany and Russia, life was much more complicated."

I kept this thought in mind throughout Sofi Oksanen's Purge, a clever, subtle psychological thriller which tells the story of two women trapped between nations and ideologies, forced into compromise and crime in the desperate battle for survival. The first, Aliide, is an Estonian peasant who spends the latter part of the war and then the Cold War locked in a loveless marriage with a Party official as she seeks to hide a secret past and present that represents imminent danger to her. The second, Zara, is a young Russian woman who leaves poverty and boredom in the east for freedom in the west only to find that her freedom holds its own awful price - sexual slavery.

The story evolves in parallel with the relationship between the two women, after Zara arrives on Aliide's doorstep bloodied and beaten, fleeing for her life. As the two women spar their way through a suspicious and largely silent introduction, their stories unfold through trips back to their earlier lives. Zara has her head turned by a flashy friend returning to their hometown, dripping with gold, telling stories of the riches within her reach.

Meanwhile Aliide journeys through Estonia's painful past and the transition from German occupation to Soviet state to fledgling democracy. Each regime demands its own sacrifice for personal survival, and throw Aliide into conflict either with the state, her neighbours even her family. The Soviet era is particularly fraught with danger as petty jealousies and ancient grudges are pursued through insidious betrayal to the secret police.

The banality and pointlessness of so much of the surveillance and snitching is in direct contrast to the devastating impact it has on lives and families. The climate of fear and suspicion reduces individuals either to party clones or to shells of their former selves - terrified of everyone and everything, even their own thoughts.

And so this is not just the story of Aliide and Zara, of course, it is the story of Estonia and countless other nations caught in the frontline between conflicting ideologies and eras.

Purge has a sort of stealthy brilliance that crept up on me and took an iron grip that I didn't notice until I neared its breathless finale. But brilliant it undoutedly is, seamlessly combining the agonising struggling of the individual with the crushing weight of important themes.

Inevitably, given that the writer - a young woman of Finnish/Estonian extraction - is from the Nordic region, she will be lumped in with the great Scandinavian crime wave currently taking over the globe. And while that might well help build Sofi Oksanen's profile and sales, on the evidence of this book she does not fit into this category (just as Finland is not part of Scandinavia). And that's not a value judgement, just a warning: don't come here expecting the new Larsson or Nesbo. Oksanen has a fresh voice, one that I look forward to hearing more from.