2006 historical mystery, third of Shaw's series. In 1896, Vanessa
Weatherburn (now a mother of twins) investigates the murder of a
professor of history at King's College.
Shaw drops the epistolary style for this book and frames the
story as Vanessa's diary, though in effect it is plain narration with
occasional date headings just as before. It rapidly becomes clear that
the deceased professor was a rabid anti-Semite, and this is an excuse
for lengthy infodumps on Judaism, in particular the Hasidic sect, as
well as the Dreyfus affair (with extracts from letters and reports).
It is a standard problem for an author wanting to write about
unpleasant historical things, like the pervasive anti-Semitism of this
period, that if your viewpoint character has an implausibly modern
attitude you risk losing the sympathy of the reader with historical
awareness; whereas if she doesn't, you risk losing the sympathy of
the reader who doesn't want to think about a character they like
having nasty aspects. This book handles it badly, I think: all the
Bad people are anti-Semitic, and all the anti-Semitic people are Bad,
and I felt as though Shaw were trying to lecture me out of an attitude
I don't even hold.
(Next paragraph in rot13 because it gives away a minor plot point.)
V nyfb fvzcyl qb abg oryvrir gung na nagv-Frzvgr qbvat erfrnepu ba
npphfngvbaf bs evghny zheqre ol Wrjf, v.r. fbzrbar onfvpnyyl va
flzcngul jvgu fhpu npphfngvbaf jub jnagrq bgure crbcyr gb oryvrir
gurz, jbhyq hfr gur grez "oybbq yvory" va uvf svyvat flfgrz. Ur'q pnyy
vg "evghny zheqre" be fbzr fhpu. Zber frevbhfyl, gur grez "oybbq
yvory" qbrfa'g rira nccrne gb unir orra va nal fbeg bs pbzzba hfr
hagvy gur 1950f;
gur grez hfrq ol gubfr flzcngurgvp gb gur Wrjf jbhyq cebonoyl unir
orra "oybbq npphfngvba", juvpu fgnegf gb trg hfrq va gur 1890f.
When the action stops for several pages to wedge in the titular
paradox (here described by Bertrand Russell some years before he
propounded it historically, and explicitly stated to be a
reformulation of the Burali-Forti paradox) it's something of a relief.
I'd love to read a mathematical-historical paper arguing for this
tight connection; here in a work of fiction it feels a bit like the
unsourced contentions in The Daughter of Time, though as usual for
this series there's a decent endnote giving more detail.
It doesn't really have anything to do with the plot, though, except
that there's paradoxical evidence and the murder happened in a
library; and it's not worked into the narrative the way The Three
Body Problem managed the trick. So soon enough we're back to how
everybody hates the Jews. (And yet… I don't know whether Shaw is
Jewish herself, but she comes across here as an outsider writing about
these quaint native peoples and their fascinating customs – a
sympathetic outsider, certainly, but one writing from an assumption of
superiority. That might be cunning characterisation of Vanessa, of
course, but it doesn't feel like it.)
The actual solution to how the professor died is distressingly
obvious; the reason for it becomes so too, and when Shaw has Vanessa
dreaming of a connection that our heroine hasn't yet made I got the
impression that Shaw wanted to shout at Vanessa and get her to think
a bit harder, nearly as much as I did.
Ah well. I may read another of these, or I may not, but I can't
recommend this one. Followed by The Riddle of the River.
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