Thinking

Keep Calm

Smoke And Ashes (Sam Wyndham Series) by Abir Mukherjee

Paperback: From the winner of the 2017 CWA Historical Dagger Award comes the third novel in the bestselling Sam Wyndham series, the follow-up to the Waterstones Thriller of the Month, A Rising Man (2016) and its explosive sequel, A Necessary Evil (2017).

India, 1921.

Haunted by his memories of the Great War, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force.

When Sam is summoned to investigate a grisly murder, he is stunned at the sight of the body: he has seen this before. Last night, in a drug addled haze, he stumbled across a corpse with the same ritualistic injuries. It seems like there is a deranged killer on the loose. Unfortunately for Sam, the corpse was in an opium den and revealing his presence there could cost him his career.

With the aid of his quick-witted Indian Sergeant, Surrender-not Banerjee, Sam must try to solve the two murders, all the while keeping his personal demons secret, before somebody else turns up dead.

Set against the backdrop of the fervent fight for Indian independence, and rich with the atmosphere of 1920s Calcutta, Smoke and Ashes confirms Abir Mukherjee as one of the most exciting new authors of historical mystery writing today.

Set in a Calcutta the Telegraph called ‘so convincingly evoked that readers will find sweat bursting from their foreheads’, Mukherjee brings India’s past back to life with startling vivacity; throwing fresh light on a unique city shaped by the competing influence of British and Indian cultures.

Throw in a nail-bitingly tense mystery and two compellingly realised central characters and you have a recipe for a truly gripping thriller.

About the author: Abir Mukherjee is the Times bestselling author of the Sam Wyndham series of crime novels set in Raj era India. His debut, A Rising Man, won the CWA Endeavour Dagger for best historical crime novel of 2017 and was shortlisted for the MWA Edgar for best novel. His second novel, A Necessary Evil, won the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing and was a Zoe Ball Book Club pick. His third novel, Smoke and Ashes, was chosen by the Sunday Times as one of the 100 Best Crime & Thriller Novels since 1945. His latest book in the brilliantly conceived Captain Sam Wyndham series - Death in the East - was published in November 2019. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in London with his wife and two sons.

Rating: 5/5

Sunday Thoughts

Consciousness

Teju Cole (1975- ), American Writer, Photographer and Art Historian

The Carmelites: A History of the Brothers, of Our Lady, of Mount Carmel Volume II, The Post Tridentine Period 1550-1600 by Joachim Smet, OCarm

Paperback: The Carmelites is the most complete history of the Order, compiled by Fr Joachim Smet for over forty years. Volumes were printed and released individually from 1977 until 1985. Each volume contains extensive notes and an index. Volume I covers circa 1200 until the Council of Trent; Volume II the Post Tridentine Period (1550-1600); Volume III, comprising of two parts, covers the Catholic Reformation (1600-1750).

This volume, The Carmelites Volume II: The Post Tridentine Period 1550-1600, was published by the Carmelite Spiritual Center in 1976.

About the author: Father Joachim Smet, Order of Carmelites, the oldest Carmelite in the Chicago Carmelite Province, died 4 October 2011. He was 95. Father Joachim was born in Chicago, IL, on 9 October 1915.

He entered the Province of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, Order of Carmelites, and was ordained a priest in 1942. He held a bachelor's degree in Library Science from the University of Chicago, a master's degree in Latin from the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Ecclesiastical History from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy.

Among his assignments were Latin and English teacher at Mount Carmel High School in Chicago, IL, Assistant Novice Master at New Baltimore, PA, founding member of the Institutum Carmelitanum at the Collegio Internazionale de Sant' Alberto in Rome, Italy, editor of Carmelus, a journal of Carmelite Studies, President of the Institutum Carmelitanum in Rome; Assistant General of the Carmelite Order at the Carmelite General Curia in Rome. A gifted writer, he is well-known for his four-volume work The Carmelites and his Life of Saint Peter Thomas.

His other works are Familiar Matter of Today-Poems (2007), The Mirror of Carmel: A Brief History of the Carmelite Order, (2011), various publications on Carmelite Nuns, Carmelite Liturgy, Carmelite Libraries of Spain and Portugal and the Carmelites of Medieval England.

I've Been Thinking

Agent Running In The Field by John le Carré

Hardback: Nat, a forty-seven-year-old veteran of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, believes his years as an agent runner are over. He is back in London with his wife, the long-suffering Prue.

But with the growing threat from Moscow Centre, the office has one more job for him. Nat is to take over The Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie.

Nat is not only a spy, he is a passionate badminton player. His regular Monday evening opponent is half his age: the introspective and solitary Ed. Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed, of all unlikely people, who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all.

Agent Running in the Field (2019) is a chilling portrait of our time, now heartbreaking, now darkly humorous, told to us with unflagging tension by the greatest chronicler of our age.

Agent Running in the Field has been hailed Times Books of the Year, New Statesman Book of the Year, Guardian Books of the Year, Sunday Times Books of the Year, TLS Books of the Year, Daily Mail Books of the Year, Mail on Sunday's Best Books of the Year and Apple Best books of 2019.

About the author: John le Carré was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British Intelligence during the Cold War. For more than fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.

Rating: 5/5

The Prison Doctor: My Time Inside Britain's Most Notorious Jails by Dr Amanda Brown

Paperback: Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent being a doctor behind bars.

Violence. Drugs. Suicide. Welcome to the world of a Prison Doctor.

Dr Amanda Brown has treated inmates in the UK’s most infamous prisons – first in young offenders’ institutions, then at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs and finally at Europe’s largest women-only prison in Europe, Bronzefield.

From miraculous pregnancies to dirty protests, and from violent attacks on prisoners to heartbreaking acts of self-harm, she has witnessed it all.

In this eye-opening, no-holds-barred, inspirational memoir, Amanda reveals the stories, the patients and the cases that have shaped a career helping those most of us would rather forget.

Despite their crimes, she is still their doctor, a doctor devoted to caring for those most of us would rather forget.

About the author: Dr Amanda Brown was a regular NHS GP with a comfortable, suburban practice, before she made the move to working with prisoners. She has worked in a teenage detention centre and Wormwood Scrubs, and she currently works at Bronzefield, the largest women-only prison in Europe. The Prison Doctor (2019) is her first book.

You Read For The World

For My Books

Murder In Matera: A True Story Of Passion, Family And Forgiveness In Southern Italy by Helene Stapinski

Paperback: A writer goes deep into the heart of Italy to unravel a century-old family mystery in this spellbinding memoir that blends the suspenseful twists of Making a Murderer and the emotional insight of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels.

From the age of four, Helene Stapinski heard lurid tales about her great-great-grandmother, Vita. In Southern Italy, she was a loose woman who had murdered someone. Immigrating to America with three children in 1892, she lost one along the way. Helene’s youthful obsession with Vita deepened as she grew up, eventually propelling the journalist to Italy, where, with her own children in tow, she pursued the story, determined to set the record straight.

Finding answers would take Helene ten years and numerous trips to Basilicata, the rural "instep" of Italy’s boot - a mountainous and undiscovered land rife with criminals, superstitions, old-world customs, and desperate poverty - filled with badlands-like hills, ancient caves, and fertile valleys with silver-tinged olive trees, whose isolation is matched by its forlorn, incredible beauty.

Though false leads sent her down blind alleys, Helene’s dogged search, aided by a few lucky - even miraculous - breaks and a group of colourful local characters, led her to the truth.

Yes, the family tales she had heard were true: There had been a murder in Helene’s family, a killing that roiled 1870s Italy. But the identities of the killer and victim were not who she thought they were.

In revisiting events that happened more than a century before, Helene came to another stunning realization  - she was not who she thought she was, either, sparking an upheaval of her own identity and sense of history.

Weaving Helene’s own story of discovery with the tragic tale of Vita’s life, Murder in Matera (2017) is a deeply researched and reported literary account about one family's hidden secrets. It is also a powerful and timeless story of immigration and motherhood - a profound testament to how far one woman would go in search of a better life in America, not only for herself, but for her children and the preservation of her family.

About the author: Helene Stapinski is the author of Five-Finger Discount: A Crooked Family History, which recounts her family’s criminal history, and Baby Plays Around: A Love Affair, with Music, which chronicles her years playing drums in a rock band in Manhattan. She has written extensively for the New York Times as well as for New York magazine, Salon, Travel & Leisure, and dozens of other publications and essay collections. On the documentary based on Five-Finger Discount, she has worked as a producer and writer. Stapinski has been a radio newscaster in Alaska; has appeared on National Public Radio; was a featured performer with The Moth; has lectured at her alma mater, Columbia University; and has taught at Fordham University. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

Author's note: Vita was illiterate, so she left no diaries or letters, only stories passed down through the generations. Miraculously, the six-hundred-page criminal file exists and provided me with vivid details of what transpired more than a century ago. My historical re-creations are based on those pages, on archival materials, interviews with historians, residents and experts on the time period, in addition to the work of those writers who came and researched before me.

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