In Gnomon's land: Powerlessness, politics and predators

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so powerless.

I’m living under a dangerously incompetent UK Government. But worse than that, it’s weak, at war with itself, beset with lies, half-truths and cynical self interest. It has permitted some really toxic elements in British society not just to express their opinions, but to weaponise them online through unaccountable spending, to engineer the electoral process for their own nefarious purposes. It has encouraged an atmosphere where vicious, violent crime against people, even elected members, whose opinions are not shared by the bullies and bigots, can be promoted and perpetrated. And all of this in a technological context where control, surveillance and manipulation of the public is being allowed to run rampant.

I live in Scotland, a Scotland which even a year ago seemed capable of taking a different path. Which had, in the European referendum, voted - if not as resoundingly as one might have hoped - for cohesion, inclusivity, co-operation and openness. I felt embarrassed by my previous campaigning, in the far-off days of the Scottish Independence Referendum, confidently asserting that a vote for independence would remove us from Europe. I shifted my view towards what seemed a possible solution - Scotland in Europe, separate from a UK which seemed to be slipping towards an appalling mixture of brutal stupidity and tyranny.

But since then there has been political stasis in Scotland, with an SNP leadership uncertain how to proceed and a Labour Party apparently intent on savaging itself from within into irrelevance: And I understand the problem for Nicola and her cohorts: everything indicates that in the current climate of abject terror about the future, any second referendum for Scottish independence would bring defeat for and possibly a major fracturing of the SNP. The last thing the EU or this tottering Westminster administration wants now, as negotiations on Brexit range from flailing idiocy to dumb intransigence, is for that to be complicated by events north of the border. If there was a determined push for indyref 2, I could see London taking really drastic steps to stop it, moves that would make events in Catalonia seem like an episode from I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Apart from anything else, the UK cannot afford to lose Scotland - it’s oil and gas, its whisky, its strategic geography, its nuclear weaponry - in the face of exit from all that Europe is and represents. For the time being, Scotland will simply not be allowed to secede.

But Nicola has the Braveheartian elements within her party to consider. The anti-tax rise tartan Tories. The immigrant-hating element of escapees to ‘pure’ Scotland. And those who despise England, along with all who sail or sailed in her. There’s realpolitik. And there’s a need to keep the saltires fluttering and the bagpipes inflated.

Meanwhile, Labour is in the grip of romantic leftism - to which I am not immune - I mean, Jeremy Corbyn, like me,once owned an MZ motorbike and rode it to Portugal and back; no-one else in politics, aside possibly from the legendary Hugh Kerr, can say such a thing. But come the crunch of yet another general election, can Labour, hopelessly compromised on Europe and beset with ugly internal conflicts ranging from anti-semitism through  sexual harassment to the shameful vilification of Kezia Dugdale (but not by The Beloved Jeremy), actually win? In this torrid atmosphere of hate crime and the ruthless, moneyed exploitation of social media by so-far unidentified forces of the extreme right?

And whither Scotland? The SNP Government seems to be desperately pushing for the retention of Holyrood powers that could easily be sacrificed by Boris, ‘Red Mike’ Gove and their chums. While facing a meltdown in public services, notably health, which can only be addressed by tax increases. A route it is poised to take, but understands could alienate yet another element of nationalist support. 

I am writing this after finishing Nick Harkaway’s hugely disturbing, vastly entertaining and - let’s be honest - quite difficult and very long book Gnomon. On the face of it, and to simplify drastically,Gnomon is a doorstop of dystopian sci-fi which reads at times like a brainstorming session involving Neal Stephenson, William Gibson and the late Iain (M) Banks. But it’s really a book about Brexit Britain, about the surveillance state, about how we ignore digital manipulation by Government at our peril. At how the evil  in our society lurks, waiting to assume control. It’s also about nationalism, dictatorship and how worldwide, we are reaping the whirlwind of identity politics.

Which of course brings me back to Scotland. Is the unutterable mess the UK wallows in right now a result of Scotland’s kicking against the Westminster pricks? Did Scotland’s drive for independence, all starry-eyed and moral, liberating and socially liberal,  unleash the poisonous forces of brutal, racist, skinhead Little Englandism?

There was undoubtedly  an element of reaction. But amid the Greek gods and Ethiopian art, the demons, sharks and books (because Gnomon is about books as much as politics, including arcane pulp references such as the word ‘Forsythean’ as in Frederick, and a submarine called Rebus) Nick Harkaway identifies a worldwide retreat into parochialism, fuelled by the ever-encroaching power of the internet. Scotland’s wee story is more symptom than cause.

What to do now? What can we do? My faith, I have to say, is in the power of words. Not this book, or not only Gnomon, but the fantastic journalistic work being done to uncover the way the Brexit referendum was corrupted and manipulated by those who stand to gain most from it. And I don’t just mean the Russians.

There are sharks everywhere. 

“What’ll I tell the kids?” 

“Tell ‘em I’m going fishing...”

Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway. Published by Heinemann. £14.99

Welcome to Myersworld: These Darkening Days and the Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, with detours to Glasgow and New York

These Darkening Days by Benjamin Myers (Moth, £7.99)

The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers (Bluemoose, £7.99)

McGraw by Reg McKay (B&W, £9.99)

The Force by Don Winslow (Harper Collins, £9.99)

I get my various Yorkshires confused: Leeds, where I went to buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee from a dealer in used police cars. Leeds, setting for Alan Plater’s magnificently, hilariously grim Beiderbecke Trilogy. There’s the David Peace/Red Riding /Damned United Yorkshire. Leeds again. Then you’ve got your Brontës and your Hughes and your Plath and your James Herriot. Wait, don’t diss The Herriot: veterinary doings have made Thirsk’s ‘World of Herriot’  one of the UK’s top visitor attractions. Haud me back. And then of course Harrogate, where I get my tea. Yorkshire Gold, the greatest argument against Scottish independence. 

If I ever travel to Yorkshire again, I will go mainly for Betty’s, and to see if Hebden Bridge is really the epicentre of rugged, hand-made-breeks bohemianism it portrays itself as. Or if it’s more like Sally Wainwright’s superlatively scary (and millstone-grit-hard) Happy Valley.

Thirsk is North Yorkshire, technically. Myersworld is West: The Upper Calder Valley, the Pennines, and yes, Hebden Bridge. Myersworld is mired in blood, mud, grimy mythology, twisted history, poverty, extreme rural violence - haplessly loyal dogs are ALWAYS under threat -  and sheer, grinding grimness. It reminds me a bit of RS Thomas’s bitter and gloomy hill farming Wales, but with a much older, dirtier religiosity.

Having read Myers’s other fiction - including the eye-wateringly fierce Pig Iron, the unforgiving Beastings, the intensely moving Richard, and his first venture into ‘rural noir’ genre fiction, Turning Blue (reviewed on Thrillfilter last year), I thought I was ready for anything this former specialist music press correspondent in black metal could throw at me. But I have to admit that the sex scene early in The Gallows Pole (pregnancy, lots of hydraulic detail) was, well, bracing. I can see the interactive display in Hebden Bridge’s World of Myers...no, on second thoughts, perhaps not.

The Gallows Pole tells the story - tackled in fiction previously - of the Cragg Vale Coiners, an episode in the inexorable move towards industrialisation in 1760s England, which saw a kind of rebel state of forgers and ‘coin clippers’ established in the Upper Calder Valley, led by the ruthless, brutal and charismatic ‘King’ David Hartley. The forces of modernity, symbolised by the building of a new turnpike road and the threat of mechanised looms, stand ready to invade the valley, and tax collector William Deighton is determined to stamp out the ‘yellow trade’ and bring Hartley to justice.

At first there’s a touch of the Cold Comfort Farms/Python’s You-Were-Lucky in the combination of ultra-grimness with some of Myers’s more poetic flights of descriptive writing: Is he entirely serious? I settled for seeing an element of very dark humour,  and once you get used to the style, which goes for mythic portentousness a little too often, the narrative’s inexorable momentum carries you along, albeit with some rather lumpy moments. Notably the pidgin dialect thoughts of Hartley himself, which preface each chapter, and fall into the trap (common in written Shetlandic, for example) of painstaking phoneticism. 

I was left with powerful flashbacks of some scenes, some I wish to retain, some I don’t, and a real sense of the central story’s contemporary political relevance. But my feeling - and to be fair, this isn’t reflected in other, almost universally enthusiastic reviews - is that this book, with its astonishing cover and great immersion in the details of an historical landscape, sees Myers allowing the fascinating source material, and the location, to overwhelm him and his characters.

I was, however, now thoroughly prepared for the sequel to Turning Blue, These Darkening Days, ‘the second Mace and Brindle novel’, which arrived not long after I’d finished The Gallows Pole. This is Modern Myersworld, set in an affectionately parodied Hebden Bridge, with its yurts and houseboats, prayer wheels, dreamcatchers and a gloriously right-on music venue where they won’t serve bottled water on ethical grounds, man.

Everything here, from the now-familiar landscapes to the description of life at the local newspaper and the behaviour of parachuted-in Sun reporters, is note perfect. Where Turning Blue had a tendency to sprawl, brilliantly, the economy and precision of These Darkening Days, and its flinty humour, takes this sequel onto a new level. And fascinatingly, like The Gallows Pole, it’s central plot - the whodunnit element - is based on local historical events.

Mace is an alcoholic, gay local hack, moved ‘down into the valley’ from his high moorland horrors in Turning Blue, living on an ex-hippy houseboat. Brindle, OCD-afflicted and unwilling to admit his desperate loneliness, is on long-term suspension following his meltdown as a result of the horrific events in that book. A local woman in ‘the Valley’ suffers an appalling knife assault, and as her background in amateur pornography and prostitution emerges, things spiral into bloody mayhem.

There is a convincing portrayal of the media in action, from the callous cruelty of YouTubing smartphone adolescents to the full panoply of ‘multimedia’ Sun teams and the slide into economic doom of local newspapers. But the book goes much further, delving into society’s hysterical  narcissism and the way its tendrils snake all the way back into myth, legend and half-forgotten community history. The lynch mob pursuing an almost-innocent boy (his life a twisted reflection of John-John’s in Pig Iron) could comprise the same gnarly characters who followed ‘King’ David in The Gallows Pole, along the same streets, in some of the same hostelries.

Perhaps there’s not quite enough Brindle. Maybe the final wrapping-up is bit too pat, but there’s no question that this is a superb piece of work which combines wonderfully fractured, eccentric characters (more of the transgender pathologist, I think, next time) a fantastic eye for landscape and great political and cultural insight. Good dog, too. It’s funny, brutal and properly thrilling. 

But that’s no way to skin a rabbit. When the school parties are touring Myersworld, they’ll need to be shown the unzipping method.

Meanwhile, back in my everyday world of research, I have been immersing myself in Glaswegian ‘true crime’, courtesy of memoirs by an assortment of detectives, criminals (mostly, but not all, with the aid of ghostwriters) and Reg McKay's (one of said ghostwriters) very odd and utterly compulsive McGraw: 'The Incredible Untold Story of Tam ‘The Licensee’ McGraw'. Featuring the wholly unappealing farting Rottweiler Zoltan, who comes to a very bad end.

Most of the slew of books I’ve been reading centre on the major Glasgow gangsters of the 70s, 80s and 90s - Walter Norval, Arthur Thompson, McGraw and the enigmatic Paul Ferris, with the pivotal event in the modern history of Glasgow crime undoubtedly the horrific 1984 arson attack on a house in the Ruchazie housing scheme, which killed six members of the Doyle family, part of the so-called Ice Cream Wars. 

McKay’s posthumous biography of McGraw contains so much torture, murder, rape, arson, abuse, drug dealing, betrayal, bombings and police corruption it makes Myersworld seems like Narnia after the Return of Aslan, and

Don Winslow’s New York epic The Force (powerful, but fatally undermined by its Spielbergian sentimentality and endless nods to The Sopranos, Serpico and The Godfather) like a Famous Five novel. 

When it comes to Glasgow, you quite literally could not make it up.

Drinking for Scotland: Rachel McCormack's Chasing the Dram

Chasing the Dram: Finding the Spirit of Whisky
By Rachel McCormack
Simon and Schuster, £16.99

Rachel McCormack is someone I am in contact with only through her acerbic Twitter presence, but she is the only person in my sphere of even virtual acquaintance who has ever heard of, let alone read and critiqued (very forcefully), the Catalan author Manuel Vazquez Montalban. Who was so admired by the Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri he named his protagonist Inspector Montalbano after him. 

Rachel did live in Barcelona and is well known for her Spanish and Catalan cookery expertise, some of which may have permeated down from the otherwise (apparently) loathsome Sr Montalban, who was both a gastronome and writer of several cookbooks, notably La Cocina Catalana. He was (at different stages of his life) also a Marxist, a CIA agent and writer of some of the most peculiar detective novels in the genre. If you want to know what may be going on in the dark underbelly of both the Catalan and Scottish independence movements, his last book, The Man Of My Life, is available in English and I’d highly recommend it. Nobody else likes it.

Anyway, Rachel herself has just published a book which is, and she won’t appreciate me saying this, not dissimilar to some of the Montalban canon in its enormously entertaining eclecticism. Just as Pedro Carvalho, Montalban’s detective, veers from political pondering and philosophy through gourmandizing on a grand scale to cooking, unearthing criminal activity and making impenetrable jokes, Rachel has produced a whisky travelogue which purports to be a ‘road trip’ through Scotland searching for ‘the meaning of whisky’. While championing the inclusion of whisky in food through a series of recipés, some of which are  appealing, some  hilarious, while others appear to be spirit-fuelled culinary fire hazards. There is also quite a bit of politics, some very funny and piercingly sad family encounters, and a lot of extremely entertaining drinking, much involving the conversion of whisky-haters to lovers of at least some version of the cratur. And there is truly wonderful travelogue. The sojourn in Kilmarnock is worth the price of admission alone. Hogmanay  with her mother and blue-rinse pals is the funniest and most accurate piece of writing about Milngavie I’ve ever read.

There are some great character studies, notably of broadcaster Billy Kay’s hair, beard and voice, as well as  an occasional (knowing) submission to the PR blandishments of things like the risible Keepers of the Quaich ceremony (a Masonic Lodge/Orange Order for upmarket drinks retailers). But there are some really splendid insights, too  - and while some of the less worthy in whisky geekdom have already tried to trash the book (jealousy, I’d guess, in particular of the Simon and Schuster imprint, and now removed from the Amazon listing) one of the most erudite and experienced of topers I know was hugely impressed by her wheedling out of dark secrets concerning what Ben Nevis’s Japanese owners actually do with their new-make spirit.  I ended up spending £37.70 on a bottle of Ben Nevis 10-year-old, for reasons you’ll have to buy the book to discover.

Rachel’s breezily clear descriptions of whisky making, its legal and historical  context and maturing processes are accurate and careful, and it’s only her initial and typically belligerent dismissal of ‘terroir’ that both misleads and, in the end, is contradicted by the book itself. In the early sections she argues that nearly all of a whisky’s character and taste comes from its ageing in wood, and that all that stuff about distillery location, sea breezes and water is romantic nonsense. As her journey progresses, though, Rachel inadvertently marshals various facts against her own argument: Malting barley turns out to be crucial, as is the design of the stills, the methods of heating them, and yes, location. 

We move towards an admission that there’s perhaps a 70-30 split in the effect of wood against other factors, or maybe 60-40...but by the end of Chasing the Dram we know, as this Glasgow woman who left Scotland and then came back surely does, that whisky is all about place, and people; history, myth and magic as well as science. And for Scotch Whisky, that can only happen in Scotland. It’s our terroir, pal, and we’re gonnae use it. You could even write a book about it.

Provided with a superb, note-perfect cover by Sarah Mulvanny though it is, I can’t help feeling Chasing the Dram deserved the kind of large-format, copiously-illustrated presentation the late, great Leslie Forbes (artist and writer) produced so well with things like A Table in Tuscany and her masterpiece, Recipes From The Indian Spice Trail. That design approach might have made the abrupt arrival of the ‘whisky recipés’ , which at times have little to do with Rachel’s actual textual adventures, a little less jarring.

Still, this is an enjoyable, erudite, funny, sometimes brilliant book full of passion, insight and ebullient, feisty, boozy sarcasm. And chips. Mustn’t forget about the chips. She is very good on chips. Or patatas fritas we call them in North Lanarkshire.

Not Very Cheap Thrills: Kindling a price war over Rankin, McKinty, Moore and Ben-David

In the crack cocaine world of the  long-running detective series, waiting for the next Rebus or Duffy can be excruciating. I haven’t decided if Adrian McKinty’s habit of blogging teaser chapters of upcoming books is a good or a bad thing - personally I couldn’t face the gap between the opening chunk of Police At The Station And They Don’t Look Friendly (Tom Waits song) dangled online by McKinty and the rest of the book, which I consumed on release day at a single sniff. Ian Rankin’s I’d Rather Be The Devil (John Martyn/Skip James song) was another much-anticipated sequel, though it’s a case these days of slumping with a pleasurable sigh alongside a crumpled, semi-retired and ageing Rebus  (and his dog and assorted retinue) as he more and more measuredly ponders mortality,  slouching along the crime-ridden streets of Disneyburgh, grumbling.

With Duffy, whose journey through the Troubles has reached the late 1980s, there’s still an aghast, stomach-churning sense of being in an out-of-control car heading for unfathomable horror, even as the drugs and wisecracks flow, the intellectual references and gunfire rattle out and the BMW 535i V8 (derestricted) hits 140 mph on the M2 outside Belfast, either NWA or Arvo Part on the stereo.

But here’s a thing. I admit to being a McKinty addict. Which is why paying £9.09 (as I write; it was £12.99 earlier) in paperback -yes,  paperback -  from Amazon might have been a genuine option, had the Kindle version not been a more agreeable £4.74. Go on, Serpent’s Tail, take ruthless advantage! The Rankin book is in a more peculiar position. You can get it in hardback - yes, hardback - on the Big A for £7.00, while the Kindle version is a frankly lunatic £9.99.

I know Amazon prices are set partly by algorithms depending on sales as well as whatever deal the publisher has struck with Bezos and his acolytes, but some of the Kindle prices on high-demand books are frankly disgusting attempts to rip off the hopelessly addicted - or, if you prefer, the faithful fan. Publishers are, on the whole, short-sighted idiots who just don’t get digital; even the vicious fools in the record industry, while punting the dead format of vinyl in pursuit of the vast mark-up an LP offers, will offer you a download code as part of the deal. But seek an offer of a souvenir hardback with a free Kindle edition, and the Neros of print will laugh in your face, and fiddle their launch-lunch budgets as their industry smoulders.

Another example. Alan Moore’s amazing (and badly under-edited, not to mention logorrheaic) Jerusalem came to me as a gift in the single-volume hardback edition. That would be 1100 pages of tiny type, 600,000 words. I wanted badly to read it but it was too heavy and it hurt my eyes. Easy, I’d download the Kindle version and beef up the font. How much? £14. FOURTEEN QUID? Nope. A Kindle version as part of the hardback (£17) deal would have saved sprained wrists and damaged eyesight for thousands.

Grumping about pricing aside, Rather Be the Devil is Late Rebus (Continuing), and extremely enjoyable. Far more concise and focused than the early Rankins, and, dare I say it, relaxed. It offers considerable pleasure alongside a nagging sense of doom. Rebus must die, will die and you sense the author knows that, but can’t bear the thought. The wait for cancer results may be pushing it a bit, though...great music choices, the delights of various restaurants and of course the Oxford Bar. Rankin’s cruising here, but Rebus undoubtedly knows there’s an iceberg ahead,

Police At The Station And They Don’t Seem Friendly - a ‘Troubler’ as some call Northern Irish political thrillers - is among the best of the superb Duffy series from McKinty. Some find these books a bit broad-brush but the speed, wit, sense of place and history are, to my mind, irresistible. Duffy’s Catholicism is very much on display in this latest book, which looks at some extremely unpleasant aspects of Ulster’s past policing, in the form of the infamous ‘B Specials’. Assured plotting, the best gunfight descriptions in the business, vast quantities of drink, drugs and fast cars...that was Royal Ulster Constabulary life in 80s, folks! I absolutely loved this book which in its hectic, full-on humour, constant threat of violence and looming  tragedy, captures the more lurid aspects of Norther Irish life you will find nowhere else in literature. And it doesn't even come close to Altnagelvin A&E on any Saturday night.

Pricing problems looming again, this time for a text which, as I write, isn’t out yet. I loved (see Thrillfilters past) the first  Mishka Ben-David book to be released in English, Duet in Beirut. Now Final Stop Algiers, which I read pre-release, offers even more insights into the strangely casual world of Mossad missions

At first, this tale of a would-be artist recruited into counter-intelligence seems oddly deliberate, then romantic and unlikely. But Ben-David writes as a former Mossad officer and has always stressed in interviews that he keeps his books as realistic as possible. Finally, it occurs to you that this is what it’s really like, right down to the matter-of-fact approach to death and violence, meted out as part of the job and described with great candour.

The final section of the book, detailing a mission to Algeria, grips not because it’s particularly well written (and I don’t think the translation is as colloquial as Duet in Beirut) but because you know it’s really like this. Terrifying, compulsive and uncompromisingly patriotic, there is nothing like Ben-David’s work in the thrillersphere. Powerful, memorable stuff.

But expensive. £11.99 in paperback on release to pre-order and £9.49 on Kindle. Then again, I got mine for nothing...