Book reviews: new fiction from Piers Paul Read, Vaseem Khan and Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin
Read probes a murky corner of recent Roman history, Khan launches an engaging new detective and Ehrlin says don’t listen to his book while driving
by Piers Paul Read (read by Leighton Pugh)
Audible (audiobook)
Historical Rome is, to use a phrase, very now. Mary Beard’s excellent new history SPQR is a lively account of its ancient history. Piers Paul Read alights on one dark corner of its more recent past – Vitellio Scarpia, or Baron Scarpia as Read has him, chief of police to Pope Pius VII at the start of the 19th century. Famed for his cunning and brutality, Scarpia is no stranger to artistic representation – most famously, in Puccini’s opera Tosca, where he comes across like Shakespeare’s Iago and Dracula, only really mean. For Read, Scarpia has clearly been misunderstood. Born in Sicily, he is something of a swashbuckler a la Errol Flynn. Good-looking and skillful with a sword, he rescues one damsel from pirates, before seducing most of Italy. Tosca he beds under nothing but a starlit Sicilian sky. Read seems most interested in the contents of Scarpia’s trousers, but contextualises his fascination with some fraught European politics: Napoleon, war, religious schism. Leighton Pugh seems an aptly laid-back chap, which suits the endless of talk of Scarpia’s pistol. Whether the one he shoots or the one he enchants the ladies with sounds a matter of supreme indifference to his louche, attractive tones. Hot.
by Vaseem Khan (read by Sartaj Garewal)