NIKMORTON-AUTHOR

  Andrea Camilleri’s sixth Inspector Montalbano mystery The Scent of the Night was published in 2000; its English translation released in 2005. Montalbano is reluctantly drawn into investigating the disappearance of a financial adviser Gargano who has vanished along with millions of lire entrusted to him by several unwitting citizens of Vigata. The financier’s lovelorn secretary Mariastella still believes he will turn up. Yet again we enjoy the antics of his loyal team, the priceless Catarella, the long-suffering   Mimi and the put-upon   Fazio as they assist their chief. Along the way we meet the usual mixture of witnesses – or potential murderers – among them the occasional eccentric. One such witness made the observation, ‘I don’t wear a watch. During the day I go by the sun; at night I go by the scent of the night’ (p148). Montalbano’s girlfriend Livia is absent yet again, only communicating by telephone. Some of their conversations veer towards the chilly kind...

In retrospect, Fido is an inappropriate name to give to a fish. However, my wife and I decided that if my Open University Biology, Brain and Behaviour home experiment involved a Siamese Fighting Fish in the activity of swimming through hoops to virtual command, the cognomen was not all that misplaced.   The experiment’s theory was simple enough. Siamese Fighting Fish display by erecting fins and deepening their colouration at sight of another male. This aggressive response can be triggered by a mirror. Fido soon became accustomed to the mirror-image and would swim the length of the tank to display to the mirror-image. Then, after about a week, when the mirror was not presented, he began to pine for the mirror-image. ‘Pine’ is totally wrong, of course. Psychologists would say I am being teleological: attributing anthropomorphic drives and purposes without proof. Our enlarged neo-cortex probably has something to do with the capacity to produce adaptive and flexible behaviour, wher...

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – A Biography was published in 1928 and has garnered praise and countless studies, and was n enormous success on publication. Sadly, this is one of very, very few books I have not finished, probably to my regret. Then again, not every book is for everyone. I’ve read plenty of fantasy and science fiction so the idea that the young male Orlando can live for three centuries does not bother me, even if it was not explained how this occurred. The fact that he transformed from male to female is not an issue, though yet again it wasn’t explained. It’s not a real biography; it is fiction, so why explain anything? This fake biography begins with Orlando aged sixteen in the late reign of Elizabeth I. ‘Orlando was a trifle clumsy’ and ‘naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone’ (p6). I must confess I didn’t particularly like Orlando or even found him/her endearing. This may be the fault of the ‘biographer’ or ...

J G Ballard’s debut novel The Wind from Nowhere was first published in the USA in 1962; my copy was published in 1974. Apparently he later disowned it as ‘hack work’ to make a ‘fast buck’, written in ten days. He was about thirty-two when he wrote it. Yet it prepared the ground, so to speak, for his subsequent eco-disaster novels. It begins in a rather pedestrian manner, with Dr Donald Maitland being stranded in London because high winds have grounded flights. We enter Soap territory as he breaks up with his wife Susan, and then it turns bizarre as the strength of the worldwide wind increases, with tragic consequences for her. Maitland seeks sanctuary with a War Office pal Symington and his PA, Deborah Mason. These latter two are attached to the Central Operations Executive, which was set up by Simon Marshall, its intelligence chief. Between each early chapter we see a great deal of industrious building underway; we don’t know what this means, however. Next we meet US submarine ...

Eric Ambler’s novel Judgment on Deltchev was published in 1951. It’s narrated in the first person by Foster, an English playwright who is co-opted by an American newspaper to be a journalist for a series of articles on the show trial of Yordan Deltchev, an Eastern European ‘hero of the people’. Foster is met at the railway station by his employer’s local representative, Georghi Pashik, a man he takes an instant dislike to; Pashik is a cautious man and doesn’t want Foster to cause any trouble for the new regime. Quite frequently, Ambler provides hints about hovering doom nearby, whether that’s relating to a character’s ultimate death, or some of Foster’s actions which he considers foolish in retrospect. Ambler succeeds in revealing the oppressive nature of the unnamed Communist state. Indeed, it is believed he based his book on the show trial of the Bulgarian politician  Nikola Petkov. This byzantine story, the true nature of Pashik, and the repercussions of Foster’s meddli...

  James Houston’s historical novel Ghost Fox was published in 1977 and takes place during the French and Indian Wars of 1756 between England and France and their respective native allies. Seventeen-year-old Sarah Wells lives with her mother, father and siblings. Her brother Josh has been recruited, taking the king’s shilling, and now he has to leave his home. ‘His raw recruits tried to line up after him, bumping into each other like farmer’s geese that scent a fox’ (p25). The family own a bondsman, a Scot called Peleg, who secretly meets Sarah in the barn’s loft. While the parents are away at the market, an Abnaki war party descends on their homestead and abducts both Sarah and Peleg with the intention of selling them into slavery. They travel north into cold inhospitable Canada. ‘The clouds grew heavy, hanging low like blue-grey boulders frozen along the far horizon of the lake. By the evening, the first big flakes came floating down, each one slowly turning like a falling st...