The Adventures of Lord John Grey

Lord John and the Private Matter, Diana Gabaldon

Gabaldon’s Lord John series is a spin-off from her very successful Outlander series, about Claire Randall, a woman from the 20th century who travels back in time and falls in love with a minor Scottish laird named Jamie Fraser. The Outlander series is set during and after the battle of Culloden. After Culloden, Jamie Fraser, as a Jacobite leader, is held in captivity by the English, and during this period develops an unlikely friendship with one of his English jailers, Lord John Grey.

Lord John is a recurring character in the Outlander series, and has evidently become such a favourite character that Gabaldon has given him a series of his own, detailing his various exploits during the large parts of his life that are not woven into the story of Claire and Jamie.

Certainly, I’d have to agree that Lord John was one of my favourite supporting characters, and I quite thoroughly enjoyed this first episode in the adventures of Lord John. At the opening of the novel, Lord John becomes privy to some disturbing information – his cousin’s fiancé, Joseph Trevelyan, appears to be infected with syphilis – and it becomes a matter of utmost urgency that he find a delicate way of derailing the marriage without causing scandal. While Lord John is worrying about this very private matter, his commanding office asks him to undertake an investigation into the murder of the primary suspect in a case of suspected espionage involving stolen ordnance requisitions. Lord John’s investigations take him into the darkest corners of London’s sexual underground – a place that, as a gay man in a time where his sexual preference is punishable by death, he is already somewhat familiar with – as he finds to his surprise that there is a connection between his private matter and his official investigation.

The novel is less of a standard mystery story, with clues, unsuspected villains and innocent accused than it is a historical novel of suspense and, in a most unlikely turn, romance. Lord John makes a very likeable hero, The portrayal of the rigid class system, and of the vast differences in economic and social conditions between rich and poor was far more realistic than in many historical novels. As well, I thought that Gabaldon painted a very strong picture of the life of a man who, by class and occupation, should be one of the insiders, the elite of his society, but who must live a life of misdirection, deception and vigilance lest his secret be revealed – a story of an honourable man who is, as he ought to be, respected for his actions – but only as long as he succeeds at passing and preserves his reputation.

The heart of rock 'n' roll is still beating

Ungrateful Dead: Murder at the Fillmore, Patricia Kennealy Morrison

Morrison is primarily known to science fiction and fantasy devotees such as myself as the author of the Keltiad sequence of books, in which many of the great themes of Celtic tradition, from the story of Arthur to the Book of Invasions, are recast in a science fictional setting.

However, her first professional writing gig was as a rock critic during the late 60s – one of the first women to break into the predominantly male world of music journalism – and in Ungrateful Dead: Murder at the Fillmore, the first of the Rennie Stride Mysteries, Morrison goes back to those roots in great style.

Rennie Lacing, neé Stride, is a young woman who has it all – at least the pre-feminist version of “it all.” She has a devoted husband - the youngest scion of a wealthy San Francisco family - who loves her and is very, very tolerant of her idiosyncratic desire to “be herself” as long as the important things, like living up to his mother’s expectations of how a Lacing bride should act, come first. But Rennie is more ambitious for herself than that. She has a degree in journalism and a passion for the powerful new music that’s filling the airwaves, and nothing is going to stop her from being a rock ‘n’ roll critic. But when she is assigned to interview rising star Prax McKenna, it’s not just music she ends up investigating, but murder.

There is so much about this book to love, and the murder mystery, as interesting as full of plot twists as it is, is just the beginning. Morrison lived through the hey-day of the San Francisco music scene, and in this book she recreates the feel of what it was like to be hearing the new sounds of cultural revolution all over again – the excitement, the surge of creativity, the passion for a new way of thinking and seeing the world and expressing that through the power of music.

Even more potent for me, however, was Morrison’s spot-on portrayal of what it was like to be a woman just as the lives of women in North America were starting to change forever. What Rennie experiences - either in her own life or through the experiences of others – is nothing short of a catalogue of the epiphanies of the 60s women’s liberation movement: the clash between ingrained traditional expectations of women’s roles and the growing awareness among women that taking care of home and family wasn’t all there was for a woman to do; the casual sexism and chauvinism of men of all classes, races, professions; the ever-present spectre of sexual and domestic violence; even the sexist foundation of the supposed sexual revolution. It’s all here, and it’s important to remember how recently it was that women like Rennie Stride took the first steps into a world that had no place for women other than what they fought for with all their heart and soul.