Just Finished Reading: The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry (FP: 2019) [406pp]
Edinburgh, 1849. Will Raven is back in Scotland. After a year in Europe and now a newly minted MD, he’s looking to a bright, or at least brighter, future. The only fly in the ointment he can see is Sarah Fisher. When he left for the Continent, she was a housemaid in Dr Simpson’s house and, although they were close, he couldn’t see a way forward at that time without putting his career in jeopardy. With Dr Simpson on a call, he asked after Sarah and his heart fell – in the intervening 12 months she had married, not only married but married well, to another doctor. Still working in Dr Simpson’s house as his assistant the two were inevitably thrown together on a daily basis. But bigger issues needed both of their attentions. Sarah’s new husband was ill, very much so, and a new disease seems to be sweeping Edinburgh leaving a trial of bodies behind it. Raven is convinced that uncovering the origin of this strange malady could make his reputation. Sarah is not so sure and is convinced of a much more mundane if disturbing possibility – that one person is responsible to the growing death toll, not as an unknown carrier of a new disease but as a killer, one who dispatches men, women and children with equally chilling efficiency. Worse the killer, whoever they are, is a woman...
This is a second book in the Fisher and Raven series. I enjoyed the first book a great deal with its mix of medical mystery and a great feeling for the time and place where the events transpire. Despite looking forward to future works it's taken me an age to catch up – as, no doubt it will, for the next books! I was, actually, slightly less impressed by the second book. Part of that was that I thought it was a little slow at times with a little too emphasis on the European ‘backstory’ which, despite being quite interesting, didn’t add a whole lot to the narrative (I couldn’t help thinking that the European angle might have been the author’s initial idea for the whole book but that the publishers wanted the focus to be back in Edinburgh – just my thoughts...). The other thing that slightly irritated me – despite agreeing with every word – was the preaching about the position of women at that time and the hurdles (essentially Great Wall of China sized) stopping them – and Sarah in particular – from progressing as they could if they had been born male. I’ve LONG held the belief that human civilisations across the planet and since the dawn of time could have progressed much further and much faster if half of their population hadn’t been sidelined, under-educated and dismissed as nothing more than vessels to fill with babies. That being said, the *odd* mention of Sarah’s frustrations would have been enough.
OK, back to what I LIKED about the book. As I had expected both the characterisation (yes, THAT again) was very good and I liked the way that Will Raven’s character developed throughout the novel. He certainly learnt a lot between these covers and not all of it medical. Sarah is an excellent character and I’m looking forward to her progressing as a medical professional in a VERY male dominated environment – both inside and outside the hospital. The secondary characters were well drawn and even the criminal elements managed to be sympathetic ones. One of the MOST interesting was the killer herself. I really liked the way that we spent quite a bit of time inside her head to understand the WHY of what she ended up doing. This didn’t justify the deaths, but we at least got an insight into HOW her mind became so twisted. That was interesting if, at times, rather creepy.
Overall, despite a few (rather minor) niggles, this was a fun pager-turner. I very much like that fact that the ‘detectives’ are in fact medics rather than the police. I also very much liked the forensic side of things – just emerging as an actual profession – with its emphasis on science as a means to actually PROVE who did what with what method. Oh, one final thing... I did that the impressions that the authors took a particular delight in getting Will Raven splashed with various bodily fluids much to his annoyance and embarrassment. Some readers might want to skip over those bits. Recommended and more to come.
[Highest page count of the year so far: 406pp][+5pp]
The Last 10 Books (I added to my Wish List) - June 2026
I ordered a book off my Wish List last week and almost before I realised it had added three more to it. This happens a LOT, at least to me. One of the things that prompts such behaviour is, of course, the ‘useful’ feature of “people who bought/viewed this also bought/viewed” which leads me down a book adding rabbit hole powered by the surge of a sudden tsunami. The other major gateway drug to book adding is the growing number of BookTubers that regularly show up on my feed. Most of their videos don’t cause me to go on an adding frenzy, but some... oh my.... Only one recently added book was from another source. I had just re-watched the classic 1964 movie Zulu (which I remember watching at the cinema bit COULDN’T have been IN 1964 as I don’t think my dad would’ve taken a FOUR-year-old to see it!) which go me wondering about the real battle... So, the new additions are:
Zulu Rising: The Epic Story of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift by Ian Knight
Ricochet: Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence by Mike McIntire
Hinterlands: Journeys through Europe’s Unfinished Frontiers by Hannah Lucinda Smith
Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati
The August Coup: The Destruction of the Soviet Union and the Making of New Russia 1985-1991 by Robert Service
1873: The First Great Depression and the Making of the Modern World by Liaquat Ahamed
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
Stealing Hitler's Rocket: The Incredible Mission to Smuggle a V-2 Rocket Out of Nazi-Occupied Europe to Britain by Guy Walters
Pearl Harbor: Japan's Greatest Disaster by Mark Stille
Alexander: God, King, Man by Edmund Richardson
It's the usual history heavy mix but still a fair range of subject areas. But, as usual, I’ve ZERO idea when I’ll get around to actually reading them – if I ever do... But that’s all part of the fun.
Born in Kaunas, Lithuania (then within the Russian Empire), to a Lithuanian Jewish family, Goldman immigrated to the United States in 1885. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair in Chicago, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Frick survived the attempt on his life in 1892, and Berkman was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.
In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with 248 others—in the so-called Palmer Raids during the First Red Scare and deported to Russia in December 1919. Initially supportive of that country's October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power, Goldman changed her opinion in the wake of the Kronstadt rebellion; she denounced the Soviet Union for its violent repression of independent voices. She left the Soviet Union and in 1923 published a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. It was published in two volumes, in 1931 and 1935. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Goldman traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1940, aged 70.
During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and denounced by detractors as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman gained iconic status in the 1970s by a revival of interest in her life, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest.
Just Finished Reading: A History of Britain in 21 Women by Jenni Murray (FP: 2016) [276pp]
It is a truth (generally acknowledged) that many women have been ‘written out’ of History. Part of this is through ignorance, but part of it is intentional and at least part of the authors intentions with this interesting book was to put part of that oversight right. Another part was to showcase women she admires and who she took as examples to aspire to. Most of the list was pretty obvious – indeed unavoidable – given British history. Women such as Boadicea (using the old spelling that both the author and I grew up with) and Elizabeth I are shoe-ins on any such list as this. Others I was either unaware of – like Aphra Behn (a 17th century playwright) or Ethel Smyth (a 19th century composer) or only knew in passing.
Naturally a good chunk of the text, and a good number of the women listed, revolved around the movement for and the gradual increase of the Rights of Woman, with an expected chapter on Mary Wollstonecraft, and included Emmeline Pankhurst, Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Constance Markievicz who was the first woman MP elected in the 1918 General Election. Nancy Astor (also getting her own chapter here) was actually the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons as Constance Markievicz had refused to do so as a member of Sinn Fein who boycotted the English parliament in protest at the lack of Home Rule for Ireland.
The last few women on this list had the extra ‘wrinkle’ of having actually being interviewed by the author during her career as a journalist. These included Labour politician Barbara Castle (who I liked), Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (who I voted for TWICE) and fashion designer Mary Quant (who I definitely want to read more about). Rounding the list out was Scottish SNP Leader Nicola Sturgeon whose political career has been.... ‘interesting’ to say the least, especially lately!
Overall, this was an interesting read which introduced me to a few objects of further interest as well as showcasing the fact that women did actually exist in the historical past and did actually have an impact on British history. One of the things I find most gratifying, even in just the 10 years since the publication of this work, is the number and range of women's biographies from across the globe that have plucked important (and often fascinating) women from the previous obscurity they had been condemned to inhabit. Definitely worth your time for both snapshots of British history and as an introduction to some of the women who helped shape it. More to come.
