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Nov 4. THRONES,DOMINIONS by Dorothy Sayers. The last Sayers mystery novel, left uncompleted by Sayers in 1936 and finished
by Jill Paton Walsh in 1998. The only novel that considers Peter Whimsey and Harriet Vane after they married. A beautiful
woman is murdered in a lonely country cottage. The principal suspect is a would-be lover, one of the principal red herrings.
Well-written novel with much more extensive social and political commentary than the previous works. The attitudes towards
Nazis and Jews is noticeably post war, the work of Walsh, obviously.
Nov 7. KEPLER by John Banville. This Irish writer was totally unknown to me until he won the Booker prize this year. He
has the ability to take the reader into an alien mind set, such as Kepler, who had one foot in mysticism and the other in
modern science. Keep a dictionary to hand if you read him. The most shocking sequence occurs near the end, when Kepler's mother
narrowly averts being burned as a witch.
Nov 14. DEATH OF A MYSTERY WRITER by Robert Barnard. Barnard is a very clever and amusing mystery writer. The characterization
is well done. The plot is standard--a nasty highly successful writer, hated by dozens, is poisoned. His eldest son, who has
threatened his father in a pub, is the prime suspect. The real killer, however, is a bastard son, whose mother was cast off
by the writer. This is brought out in the last chapter, and leaves the reader feeling let down.
Nov 20. SCHOOL FOR MURDER, by Robert Barnard. Burleigh is an English prep school. The staff, for the most part, is apathetic
and over the hill. The headmaster, Crumwallis, is a miser and a terrible judge of character. He chooses Hilary Frome, a psychopathic
senior, as Head Boy. Carnage ensues.
Dec 6. THE SEA by John Banville. Max Morden, an art historian, following the death of his wife, returns to the seaside
Irish town, where he vacationed as a boy with his family and where he fell in love with the two women of the Grace family--mother
and daughter. We learn two secrets about this long ago experience, involving the two women. According to Banville, "We imagine
that we remember things as they were, while in fact all we carry into the future are fragments which reconstruct a wholly
illusory past."
Dec 11. DEATH OF A PERFECT MOTHER by Robert Barnard. Lillian, a working class English mother of three, is a monster. Everyone,
including her two sons, daughter, and neighbors hates her for her interfering ways. One night she is strangled. Who, out of
the dozens who hate her, was responsible?
Dec 21. DOCTOR COPERNICUS, by John Banville. Living in the Baltic areas was harrowing in the early 16th century, as witnessed
by Copernicus, who travelled about Poland and Prussia for his uncle, the bishop. In his spare time he showed that the planets
revolved about the sun, in contradiction to the long held belief that the universe revolved around the earth. The fear and
uncertainty of those days, as the Teutonic Knights roamed around, decimating the countryside, is brilliantly brought out.
Don't expect to sleep well after reading some of this book. Whew!
Dec 28. THE UNTOUCHABLE by John Banville. The story of a gay spy among the top echelons of the British secret service.
The spy has many of the characteristics of Anthony Blunt--he is a Cambridge leftist of the thirties, an art historian who
specializes in Poussin, a man who identifies western spies in Russia, so that they can be eliminated. The only major departure
from Blunt is the existence of a wife and two children. Possibly a cover to avoid legal action by the Blunt estate. The most
amazing feature of the story for Americans is how the British establishment at the top of the secret service protected him,
knowing that he spied for three or four decades. 
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