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Summary: Rose
Review: Martin Cruz Smith finds a new land of intrigue with Rose, that of a coal-mining town in 1872 England. Jonathan Blair, a mining engineer brought from the Gold Coast of Africa back to the town of his birth, Wigan, by his patron, the Bishop Hannay, is charged with the task of determining the whereabouts, dead or alive, of a missing Curate, John Maypole, who was engaged to be married to the Bishop's daughter. Blair encounters many mysteries in his search, the most intriguing being Rose, a 'pit-girl' who is every bit the fascination to him that she was to Maypole. Rose teases Blair with tidbits of information regarding the life Maypole led in Wigan, as do many other of the town's inhabitants, leading Blair to believe there is a deeper meaning to his presence in Wigan than merely finding Maypole's whereabouts. Deftly displaying Blair's aptitude in the workings of a coal mine, as well as his shortcomings as a detective, Martin Cruz Smith weaves an intriguing tale, as Blair encounters mystery after mystery leading him to brawls with local miners, roadblocks at every turn in his search, and brief physical liaisons with Rose before the answers to his question are found.
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Summary: This is a 5 star book!
Review: Jonathan Blair is a mining engineer who wants to return to Africa. However, in order to do so, his wealthy patron insists that he first travel to the English coal-town of Wigan and investigate the disappearance of Reverend John Maypole. Once there he becomes enmeshed with the pit girl, Rose, and the Reverend's fiancee Charlotte as he tries to unravel what really happened to Maypole. The above description really doesn't do this novel justice. The mystery itself is well done but what really makes this book shine is the suberb writing. I've read many of Mr. Smith's books, and enjoyed them all, but he's really outdone himself in this one. Blair is a wonderful character, richly drawn, full of foibles, but very likeable as the engineer who wants nothing more than to leave Wigan and return to his beloved Africa. Mr. Smith also has a sharp ear for dialog and it truly is realistic. He also paints a wonderful picture of what life was like in a 19th century coal-town. I give this book a 5 star rating, which I don't give out lightly. Don't miss this one.
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Summary: Renko in Victorian England
Review: Mr. Smith here does for Victorian England what his Arkady Renko series has done for Russia over the last twenty years--renders it accessible & makes it fascinating. It's 1872 and Jonathan Blair is a disgraced African explorer & mining engineer who longs to return to Africa & find his half-black (hence, the disgrace) daughter. His patron, Bishop Hannay, offers him the means to return if he will first undertake a bit of detective work. Bishop Hannay's daughter is engaged to marry a young cleric, John Maypole who has gone missing in the coal mining town of Wigan. Blair takes up the search, but soon finds that he's the only one who actually wants to find the missing man. As in the Renko series, one of the great strengths of the book is that Blair is so powerless in the face of resistance from the mine owners, their henchman, the Bishop's daughter, the Church and the miners themselves. This aspect of having the "detective" work outside of the powers that be, rather than be an agent of those powers is an extremely effective device in adding an extra layer of tension to the story. GRADE: B+
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Summary: Best novel I've read in the last decade
Review: While written as a misssing person mystery, mystery is merely the vehicle to uncover the terror of mid 18th century coal mining in England and the class warfare it created between the mine owners--interestingly here the owner is a Bishop--and the miners. Fair to both sides and seen through the eyes of a cynical American expert for hire, this novel is beautifully written. As an employee of a British owned company I especially appreciated its very accurate insights into British culture and their strange but very real sense of class envy and class disdain. The best surprise novel I've read in a decade.
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Summary: Location and plot twist rescue a lackluster storyline.
Review: (3½ stars actually, but not 4. I do wish Amazon would adopt a more flexible rating system!) In ROSE, it is 1872. Jonathan Blair, a down-on-his-luck explorer/mining engineer/surveyor, is sick with malaria in miasmic, damp London. His only desire is to return to his beloved Africa. To that end, he approaches his sponsor on a previous surveying expedition to the African Gold Coast, Bishop Hannay, and pleads for renewed employment. Hannay agrees, on the condition that Blair first visit the bleak coal mining town of Wigan in the English county of Lancashire to investigate the disappearance of the local Anglican curate, one John Maypole. (Here, I must briefly digress. Bishop Hannay is also Lord Hannay, the family head of a huge industrial empire that manufactures everything from bricks to locomotives, and owns the principal mine in Wigan, itself a Hannay company town. I'm not sure why the author, Martin Cruz Smith, bothered to make Hannay a bishop, since no reference is ever made to his episcopal see, cathedral, or duties.) In any case, Blair reluctantly accepts the task. In Wigan, he encounters mysterious deaths, local thugs, the rest of Hannay's dysfunctional family, and the enigmatic "pit girl" Rose Molyneux. Our hero soon discovers that the missing Maypole, though engaged to Hannay's cold and waspish daughter Charlotte, had become amorously obsessed with Rose, a passion eventually shared by Blair, and which complicates his life enormously. If the plot of this potboiler had taken place in a contemporary time in, say, New York or Los Angeles, or even rural Appalachia, it would not have gotten off the ground. The action tends to plod. What saves it, in this case, is the period and location. I trust Smith researched the environment of 19th century, English coal towns and mines before undertaking this novel. Inasmuch as his research is presumably accurate, the local color is instructional and interesting. Moreover, there is an unexpected plot twist at the end when Blair discovers Rose to be ... well, you'll find out when you read it. And, if you come to harbor any sympathy for Blair whatsoever, the very last sentence of the tale is particularly satisfying.
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Summary: Brilliant historical novel
Review: I have not read any of MCS's previous works because I don't like the genre. This book was a real surprise. It is very well researched, full of real characters, especially the all-too-flawed main man, and humane. I sincerely hope MCS becomes a full time historical novelist!
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Summary: Thought-Provoking Period Piece -- Just Enough Mystery
Review: Six Stars! Martin Cruz Smith proves his mettle as a novelist in this unusual outing. If you are like me, you are probably expecting another novel along the lines of Gorky Park, Polar Star, and Red Square. And one in sense you would be right, and in another sense, wrong. The skills and qualities of those books are present here, but the setting isn't. Instead of the Soviet state, you are transported to a sooty coal mining community in 1872 where you get to meet a cross section of characters from those times. In some ways, this books reminds one of Germinal, except the core here is the solution of a mystery about the disappearance of a cleric who was engaged to the owner's daughter. The mystery is not the reason to read this book. So if you want the best mystery you could ever hope to find, go read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. The mystery's okay here, but just barely. The really interesting aspect of the book is the view of how a class structure can be harmful to everyone in a society. Although some are rich and comfortable, they are hardly leading exemplary lives. The poor are really down-trodden. The working conditions are appalling. At the core of this story is an examination of love, something that can and should bind us together. Smith lets that magic emotion work its power over the characters and us. The results are irresistible and unforgettable. This book has the potential to become a classic, quite an accomplishment for a writer of detective-like fiction. Have a great time in Wigan! You'll be the only one who does!
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Summary: Very compelling but weak in some key areas
Review: First off, I enjoyed this book a great deal. This book was interesting, informative, with a great sense of "place", the place in question being a coal mining town in Wales in the later part of the 1800s. It is clear that Martin Cruz Smith has put in some quality time on research for this book. Speaking as an amateur historian, the details here ring true. I very much appreciate stories that teach me things about the world, without hitting me over the head. This book is a wonderful teacher. The main character, Blair, is a good one. Blair (for those readers who know Arkady Renko) is the standard Martin Cruz Smith hero: spiritually wounded but still, a man of great personal integrity whose actions seem self-serving or immoral to the "established" society around him. Some of the minor characters are wonderfully drawn, the mining pit "underboss" in particular. However the main character Rose, well, her mystery doesn't work for me. The fundamental problem with her character is: Who would willingly do her work? Given a real choice would any person with half a brain do coal sorting for 12 straight hours, 6 days a week? The plot also, was not that completely successful to me. The mystery was good, that I grant. I was fooled all along as to the reasons people were doing things. However, it was just so inevitable that our hero was going to get kicked nearly to death. That seemed like it was coming from a long way off, and its so typical of Martin Cruz Smith's stories. The main character always gets beaten to hell. And the final resolution to the mystery, it didn't hold water. The "bad people" (trying not to give everything away here folks) are willing to commit multiple murders to hide their secret, but their secret, once revealed, isn't very horrible at all. Rose's actions at the very end also seemed to come out of left field. Where was she while our hero is recovering in the hospital? Bottom line: not quite in the same league as "Polar Star" (which I think is perfect), but much better than "Red Square" (which I found incomprehensible).
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Summary: Rose: An Engineer's Review
Review: What is a novel? The easy definition is: "a story that takes you somewhere and teaches you something about human experience." A lot of books do this. Travel books and our grammar school history books do. Tom Clancy books do. Even cookbooks can. But to be a really good novel, a book should teach something factual and unique, and do it with a lot of pleasure for the reader. Take you there and pay you for going. Martin Cruz Smith is my choice for master of painless, fun learning, and this book is a perfect example of his art. Rose is set in the English coal-producing town of Wigan in the 1870's. The intricate mystery of what happened to a young clergyman who suddenly disappeared takes and holds our attention, while the background of the story gives us the sound and grit and blackness of the coal mining life. Being an old engineer myself, I especially appreciate the author's impeccable easy-flowing explanations of how and why things were. (Why do the coal miners have so many blue scars on their forheads? Why should you never run carrying a lit coal-miner's lamp?) The common man worked very very hard in previous centuries. From sailors on wooden ships to the subsistance farmers and fishermen: life was damned hard. Coal miners were some of the hardest working of people anywhere. It is a puzzle why the enormous gulf between these incredibly tough common people and their imperious rulers, the upper classes, never caused a revolution like that in France or Russia. Feeling myself almost participating in this work made me marvel at my luck for my present condition, as well as feel a little shamed to think I could never have been able to do what those men and women did. We really are such wimps, nowadays. Hooray for us, I guess. Rose herself, the namesake of the book, turns out to be the kind of woman that many of us poor males would almost die to have, and we urge our reluctant and imperfect hero Jonathan Blair onward to solve the mystery and get the girl. Yes, it sounds trite put in that way, but Mr. Smith's clean uncomplicated language slyly sucks you in before you notice it. This is one of those books that gets in the way of doing all those important dull jobs we face daily. If you have the idea that "purring" only has to do with cats, read Rose to discover what purring was a century ago in the coal fields of England.
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Summary: Victorian England Comes Alive
Review: Rose was an amazing book. I am a huge fan of the Rnko books and thought that Rose would be ok because of Cruz Smith. Victorian England never excited me as an era. Cruz Smith brings the characters life and Victorian England and its dula faces and lives were fascinating. This book was charming and suspenseful and kept you guessing until the end. I highly recommend Rose as both a thriller and historical fiction, Cruz Smith did wonderful work with the charcaters, suspense and background.
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