Deja Fu

Author: Jo Walton
Pages: 336
Year Published: 2006

When the body of Sir James Thirkie is discovered at Farthing, the ancestral estate of Lord Eversley, Scotland Yard dispatches Inspector Peter Carmichael to investigate and find out who killed the architect of England’s “Peace With Honour,” ending its involvement in World War II.

That’s right. Farthing is an alternate history, set in a world in which the United Kingdom made peace with Adolph Hitler in the early summer of 1941, thus allowing Hitler to attack the Soviet Union with his western flank secured. Farthing is also a “country house” mystery (which most readers might be familiar if they ever played Clue) and a political thriller.

Like a lot country house mysteries, Farthing can be both a bit dry and dull at times. I normally never touch them, but I am a sucker for alternate histories when they are done well. It’s also notable that the alternate history is really used as a backdrop to the main story, rather than explored in itself such as in a Harry Turtledove novel. Don’t expect a lot of attention to be paid to how this world diverged from our own. Anything you get is mentioned in passing. (Although interesting.) The real meat of the novel is the mystery and the politics.

The narrative is split between Inspector Carmichael and Lucy Kahn, the “black sheep” daughter of Lord Eversley who insisted on marrying a Jewish man. I enjoy multiple points-of-view when they are handled well (see Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire) and Walton is more than up to the task. Only occasionally does the pacing slow to yawning point, but that’s a price to be paid when a conversation traces the lineage of a family who received their titles from Henry VII. Otherwise, the story remains taut and the mystery pretty well done.

A sequel, Ha`Penny, was released last year with a third novel, Half a Crown, due out in August. Although I’ll probably wait until they are in paperback, I look forward to reading what else Walton is going to do with her milieu.

Other participants in the “52 in 52″ meme who reviewed books recently include:

• Jeremy reviews Brian K Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man.
• Jamie reviews Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson.
• Heliologue reviews Christopher Hitchens’ Thomas Paine’s ‘The Rights of Man’.
• Natasha reviews The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

-K