- Walton, Jo.
Farthing.
New York: Tor, 2006.
ISBN 0-7653-5280-X.
-
This is an English country house murder mystery in the classic mould,
but set in an alternative history timeline in which the European war
of 1939 ended in the “Peace with Honour”, when Britain
responded to Rudolf Hess's flight to Scotland in May 1941 with a
diplomatic mission which ended the war, with Hitler ceding the French
colonies in Africa to Britain in return for a free hand to turn east
and attack the Soviet Union. In 1949, when the story takes place, the
Reich and the Soviets are still at war, in a seemingly endless and
bloody stalemate. The United States, never drawn into the war,
remains at peace, adopting an isolationist stance under President
Charles Lindbergh; continental Europe has been consolidated into the
Greater Reich.
When the architect of the peace between Britain and
the Reich is found murdered with a yellow star of
David fixed to his chest with a dagger, deep currents:
political, family, financial, racial, and sexual,
converge to muddle the situation which a stolid
although atypical Scotland Yard inspector must sort
through under political pressure and a looming deadline.
The story is told in alternating chapters, the odd numbered
being the first-person narrative of one of the people in
the house at the time of the murder and the even numbered
in the voice of an omniscient narrator following the
inspector. We can place the story precisely in (alternative)
time: on p. 185 the year is given as 1949, and on p. 182
we receive information which places the murder as on the
night of 7–8 May of that year. I'm always impressed
when an author makes the effort to get the days of the week
right in an historical novel, and that's the case here. There
is, however, a little bit of
bad astronomy.
On p. 160, as the inspector is calling it a day,
we read, “It was dusk; the sky was purple and the air
was cool. … Venus was just visible in the east.”
Now, I'm impressed, because at dusk on that day Venus was
visible
near the horizon—that is admirable atmosphere and attention
to detail! But Venus can never be visible in the East at
dusk: it's an inner planet and never gets further than 48° from
the Sun, so in the evening sky it's always in the West; on that night,
near Winchester England, it would be near the west-northwest horizon,
with Mercury higher in the sky.
The dénouement is surprising
and chilling at the same time. The story illustrates how making peace
with tyranny can lead to successive, seemingly well-justified,
compromises which can inoculate the totalitarian contagion
within even the freest and and most civil of societies.
November 2007 