BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

The Black Spider (1842) Jeremias Gotthelf I have a general rule that, once I have started to read a book, I must continue with it to the end before I can claim the right to comment on it. In the case of The Black Spider , I was beginning to get depressed by page 20 of this classic early nineteenth century Swiss horror novella. One fifth of the tale gone and I had been treated to a lengthy, rather dull and wholesome account of a christening feast for the child of a prosperous Swiss peasant in the first half of the nineteenth century. But Gotthelf knows what he is doing. He has set the reader up for a multi-layered morality tale that loosely bases itself on pre-modern folk interpretations of the causes of the plague. He weaves, from the security of the first section, a genuinely horrific and disturbing tale of a demonic black spider that punishes all those who have defied God and who have tried to short-circuit authority with an appeal to the Devil. The spider, a truly nasty

Nearly all the books below are so light a read that they could be blown away with just a breath of desert wind. The exception is Robert Harris' Fatherland which is very good indeed.  I have added a review of his well above average historical crime drama Pompeii but the bulk of these books are conspiracy thrillers that fed simultaneously off post-9/11 paranoia about the Middle East or the barely taboo chance to disrespect organised religion and/or an interest in cashing in on the Da Vinci Code (published in 2003). Two of Dan Brown's own follow-up books are included below. Fatherland (1991) Robert Harris Deservedly a thriller classic which postulates an alternative universe in which the Nazis won. Almost certainly in any 'Top 100' thriller list, somewhere alongside Len Deighton's much earlier SS-GB.      Knights of the Blood (Knights of the Blood, #1) (1993) Scott MacMillan and Katherine Kurtz This is cliched - Nazi vampires meet quasi-Templar vampires