Gemini and the House of Niccolò, by Dorothy Dunnett

Gemini is the eighth and last book in Dorothy Dunnett's second series, "The House of Niccolò." When it was published in 2000, I read the Michael Joseph UK edition, specially ordered from an Edinburgh bookseller, because like a lot of us in the US I didn't want to wait for the North American edition.

I'm not sure I've read it again since then.

The Nicholas books were my introduction to Dorothy Dunnett. Almost 30 years ago, I came across the first book, Niccolò Rising, in the library. The cover images from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry caught my eye, because I had studied and fallen in love with medieval art in college. I was fascinated with the story inside, of the young apprentice Claes, who takes his mistress's dye-yard business into a much larger world of trade and finance - and espionage. I loved the setting of 15th-century Bruges, like seeing a Van Eyck painting come to life. I enjoyed the journeys that take Claes (later Nicholas) beyond Flanders, to Geneva and Florence and Lorraine. And then there are the family complications. Claes, raised in the Charetty family, is known to be the son of the late Sophie de Fleury, but her husband's family, the St Pols of Scotland and France, have always rejected Claes as a bastard, not the son of her husband Simon. His position, as a bastard, an apprentice stinking of the dye-yard, makes his rise in this story all the more compelling.

I think Niccolò Rising is one of Dorothy Dunnett's best books, with King Hereafter, her novel of Macbeth. I've read it countless times, as well as the second in the series, The Spring of the Ram, which follows Nicholas to the court of the Byzantine Emperor in Trebizond. There is a tragedy at the end of the second book, though, that shook me when I first read it, and I did not then continue with the series. It was only after I was introduced to (and became obsessed with) Francis Crawford of Lymond and his story that I came back to the Nicholas books (set earlier but published later).

A main focus of this second series is the international business that Nicholas builds, on finance and trade and an excellent mercenary company. He gathers a company of men and women, drawn to him by his personality, his gifts, his genius (for trade, for sailing, for music). There are others, rivals in business, and the competition between them is intense, sometimes violent. His encounters with the St Pol family are always fraught, to say the least.

There is so much packed into these stories, as they move between trade and war, across Europe, to Africa and Egypt. They are full of the politics of the different countries where Nicholas's company trades, into which he is sometimes drawn. The complicated stories, the masses of detail, can be overwhelming at times. But where I struggle with some of the later books is with the personal. The men and women around Nicholas, who form a kind of surrogate family, have high expectations of him, and they make demands on him. Nicholas often thinks of them as his nurses, or his keepers. They constrain him, and all too often they misjudge him. They see part of his complicated family history, they see his actions, they make assumptions, and they get angry with him. We the readers know the truth, know more of the story than they do, and it's clear to us where they are wrong, unfair, misguided. Nicholas often takes the blame for things that are not his fault, with punishing consequences. It is true that he doesn't always explain himself, though we see much more of his mind and heart that we do of Lymond. And he does make mistakes, he does things wrong, often with great deliberation. But unlike his companions I can't fault him for guarding his privacy, and their self-righteous judgements grate on me. There is also one particular feud, a war carried out over more than eight years, based on a completely wrong premise. I realize this may sound ridiculous, but I get so irritated on Nicholas's behalf that I have trouble with the later books.

Which is why I may have only read Gemini one time. I clearly remember, the last time I read the series, holding out to the seventh book, Caprice and Rondo, and then giving up.

The other day, I was thinking of an incident in Caprice and Rondo ("Date stones, sweetheart!"),  which happens toward the end of the book. When I went to check it, I ended up reading the last chapters, and then I picked up Gemini, to look at the first chapter. And then there I was, reading Gemini again. It felt wrong, on one level, because I am normally a strict series-order reader. But how quickly I fell back under Dorothy Dunnett's spell. And how lovely it was to see the end of Nicholas's story. I know its beginnings so well, from umpteen readings of the first two books. Here she brings it to a very satisfying conclusion, answering questions and tying loose ends together, and ending feuds. One character in particular is completely redeemed, in my mind. Of course, being Dorothy Dunnett, she puts her people through hell in the process.

About half-way through the book (which is more than 600 pages), I had the heretical (to me) idea of reading the series in reverse. One of the great pleasures in the series in seeing Nicholas grow and develop and expand. It's a crucial difference between this series and the Lymond Chronicles. There we meet Francis Crawford, only a few years older than the Claes of the first book, but fully developed, fully mature. Nicholas we see becoming. His story is also more complicated, and for me, it's a challenge to keep all of the plot lines (even the personal ones) straight, much more so than with Lymond. I think reading backward might help with that.

And besides, I've fallen again under that familiar spell. When in its grip, no other stories will satisfy. So here I am, surrounded by expiring library books and tottering TBR piles, deep in 15th-century Poland with Nicholas.

Evil characters in literature

I am currently reading two books, or rather a book and a play: Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings, and William Shakespeare's Richard III. Both readings were inspired by Carola Hicks' book on the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, which led me to a book on the Paston family (A Medieval Family, by Frances and Joseph Gies).  I've also had Dunnett's Francis Crawford of Lymond in mind since I read an article by Marie Brennan, "Five Things Epic Fantasy Writers Could Learn from Dorothy Dunnett" (it's posted on Tor.com here).

Reading these two together is a weird experience, because they both include a great literary villain.  Moving from book to play and back again is like being caught in a call and response of evil.  And that got me started thinking about evil characters in literature.  I love making lists, but I can't come up with others who measure up to these two.

I have seen at least one production of Richard III, the 1995 film with Ian McKellan.  I can't remember if I've ever read the play before, though.  As a history major concentrating on British history, I read about the Wars of the Roses, and about Richard's reign, both in historical works and in novels.  Just the other day I was looking through Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, because I remembered a reference to the Paston Letters.  Of course I ended up reading through my favorite parts, marveling again at the passion Tey brought to her defense of Richard.  I remember Dorothy Dunnett taking a more measured view of him, when he appears as a character late in the House of Niccolo series.  But the pure evil of Shakespeare's Richard came as a bit of a shock.  When I read his aside on Clarence in Act 1, I felt a chill:

Exit Clarence
Richard:
Go tread the path that thou shalt ne'er return.
Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so
That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
If heaven will take the present at our hands.

And then he goes from there to court the Lady Anne, over the body of her father-in-law Henry VI, whom Richard cheerfully admits to having killed, as well as her husband Edward.  All for love of her, he says.  When she accepts his ring, I want to Cher-smack her.

Dorothy Dunnett's villain is a woman, like Richard based on a historical person: Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, the niece of Henry VIII and eventually the mother-in-law of Mary Queen of Scots.  When we meet her in The Game of Kings, she and Lymond already have a history together, which is only gradually revealed.  Their relationship plays out across the six novels, to the very end of the series. "From her jealous concupiscence at twenty-seven for a boy eleven years younger had come all of the ills that dogged him."  And it's not just Lymond who suffers.  In this first book alone she is responsible for the death of three innocents, and the toll will continue to mount. (Two people that I talking into reading The Game of Kings have never forgiven me [me?] for one of those deaths, and have refused to read any further in the series.)  Margaret Lennox is such fun to loathe, and I always enjoy the last glimpse of her in the final pages of Checkmate.

So those two are my list of not just villains, but literary evils.  I haven't been able to think of any others to add to the list - and I'm not counting serial killers or psychopaths, because I don't read about them by choice.  I was considering Mrs. Norris in Mansfield Park, who I do believe is evil, but she doesn't have as much scope for her talents (appropriating cream cheeses and green baize rather than crowns, and really with only Fanny to torment). Also smaller in scope is Charlotte Mullen, of E.O. Somerville and Martin Ross's The Real Charlotte, but then she is truly an evil woman, unredeemed even by her love of her cats.  Maybe I will complicate my list with a second rank, the lesser of two evils.  In the meantime, I will be keeping my eye out for other villains, and welcome any nominations.

Diagnosing a doctor

Dolly and the Doctor Bird, Dorothy Dunnett

This is the third book in Dorothy Dunnett's series of mysteries and espionage thrillers centered around Johnson Johnson, whose career as a portrait painter of international repute provides cover for his work in British Intelligence.  It was published in 1971, and like other books in the series, under more than one title: besides Doctor Bird, it is also known as Match for a Murderer and Operation Nassau. 

As that last title suggests, this book is set mainly in the Bahamas, with side trips to New York City and Miami.  The "bird" of the title is Dr. B. Douglas MacRannoch.  The B is for Beltanno, but no one except her father calls her that; most call her "Doctor."  Her father is James Ulrich MacRannoch, also known as The MacRannoch, the 45th chief of Clan Rannoch, widowed and in his 60s.  Unfortunately, he is "subject to nasal polyps and asthma in winter, during the Perth bull sales, and when the stock-market wavers."  On medical advice, he has leased out the family seat, Rannoch Castle, "a small but finely-preserved twelfth-century castle" in Argyll, and setted in the Bahamas.  Beltanno, his only child, gave up a promising research career in Cambridge to join him.  She is now the Medical Officer at the United Commonwealth Hospital in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas. Her father has for years carried on a blatant campaign to get his daughter suitably married off, before the family fortune and the chieftanship fall to the next heir, Mr. T.K. Rannoch, a native of Tokyo.

Returning from a brief trip escorting a patient to New York, Beltanno is waiting for her flight at Kennedy Airport when she is called to a medical emergency.  The new patient is Sir Bartholomew Edgecome, a retired ambassador now living in the Bahamas with his wife.  Though Beltanno suspects nothing more sinister than food poisoning, she takes samples before he is transported to the hospital, where he improves overnight.  She agrees to escort him home on the morning plane, and he has another attack on the flight, despite having eaten nothing unsupervised.  When Beltanno has him safely installed in her own hospital, he asks her to take a letter to Johnson Johnson, staying nearby on his yacht Dolly.  Before she does so, she runs tests on the samples she took, which show that he was poisoned with arsenic.  Taking that news with Edgecome's letter to Johnson, she is drawn into helping him discover who is trying to kill the former ambassador.  Her father, meanwhile, is continuing not just his matrimonial schemes but also planning a MacRannoch Gathering, Tattoo and Highland Event, drawing clan members from around the world, including his unwelcome heir.

It has been many years since I read this book, and I had no real memory of it, so the developments of the plot often caught me by surprise.  There are two main stories here.  The first is the mystery involving the attacks on Edgecombe.  It takes Beltanno to various islands around the Bahamas and to Miami, to nightclubs, the dog-track, and some very fraught rounds of golf.  There is a moonlit chase up a water tower, and a white-knuckled sail under pursuit through a maze of inland water channels.  Johnson is in full 007 mode here, though without Q's gadgets.  Sir Bartholomew describes him at one point as "a personalized Army assault vehicle with amphibian characteristics."

Woven through these perilous events is a second story.  Working with Johnson brings Beltanno into more than one dangerous situation, she is threatened and in one case cruelly attacked.  But it also brings her out of what some might consider a rather restricted life of work, her one recreation golf.  She has no real friends, she avoids emotional relationships and refuses to consider marriage.  She and her father are in a constant state of war as he tries to maneuver her into marriage, embarrassing her with blatant offers to eligible men.  She retaliates by refusing his financial help, supporting herself frugally on her salary, and frequently announcing that she will marry Mr. MacRannoch of Tokyo (whom her father refers to in very un-PC terms).  Johnson diagnoses it as "a hell of a family life."  Beltanno has to admit that, accept the problems and her share of the responsibility, before she can move on.  Though the mystery is solved neatly in the end - well, no, the ending of that is pretty messy, actually.  But there is resolution, while Beltanno loses something that meant a great deal to her, but equally is left with new choices, new possibilities.  I can't make up my mind what she will choose, or even what I would advise her to choose.

An eventful cruise aboard a yacht called Dolly

Dolly and the Bird of Paradise, Dorothy Dunnett

Dorothy Dunnett used to relax from writing her intricately-plotted, multi-character historical series with urbane, inscrutable heroes by writing intricately-plotted, multi-character mysteries with an urbane, inscrutable hero.  The central character of the Dolly books is Johnson Johnson, a tall man with a set of bifocal glasses that effectively screen his face and his thoughts.  He is a world-renowned portrait painter (like Lady Dunnett herself), and a yatchsman, whose boat Dolly plays a big part in the series.  Most of the stories are set on the water, in locations like Ibizia, the Hebrides, and in this book, Madeira and the Caribbean (idyllic settings for tax-deductable research, as Lady Dunnett admitted).  For Johnson, both his work and his hobby provide cover for his other career, in British Intelligence.

Each of the seven Dolly books has a different narrator, a young woman, the "birds" of the American titles (each book has at least two titles, and some have three - this book was also published as Tropical Issue).   Most of them are stand-alones, and except for two they can be read in any order, keeping a couple of things in mind.  First, the publication dates don't match the internal time-line of the story.  This book, Bird of Paradise, was the sixth published (in 1983), but it's the first of the series, filling out the background hinted at in the previous books.  And each book is of the time it was written.  So Dolly and the Singing Bird, the first published in 1968, is very much a book of the 1960s (Johnson does the Watusi!), as Bird of Paradise is of the early 1980s, yet the action in Bird of Paradise takes place before Singing Bird.  It may sound confusing, but it really matters just with the last two books, the only two that are connected.

The "bird" of this book is Rita Geddes, who arrives at Johnson's studio flat one day.  A well-respected make-up artist, working with private clients as well as in film and TV, she is there to prepare TV personality Natalie Sheridan for a photo shoot.  The photographer Ferdy Braithwaite has borrowed the flat because his own studio is being re-wired.  The flat's owner is nowhere to be seen.  He is recovering from serious injuries sustained in a plane crash.  His wife Judith, who was travelling with him in the private plane, was killed, along with the crew.  Disregarding his physical and emotional condition, Natalie forces an introduction on him, bringing Rita in as well.  Later, they meet again on Maderia, where Rita is now working for Natalie at her villa.

I don't want to say too much about the plot, because the fun of the Johnson books is meeting the woman telling the story, figuring out who she is, and watching her try to figure Johnson out, while a complicated plot involving international intrigue unspools around them.  Johnson can be as opaque and maddening as Lymond at his worst, though the narrators have their own secrets too.  He shares with Lymond not only a love of the sea and ships, but also cat-like reflexes and the skillful handling of weapons.  He has a caustic tongue and a wicked sense of humor, which sometimes finds expression in pranks to rival the roof-top chase in Lyon or Nicholas's theft of the ostrich.  Unlike Lady Dunnett's other heroes, though, he seems to lack a real fashion sense,  frequently appearing in elderly cardigans and woolly vests that he is accused of knitting himself.

It's been a good while since I've read these books, and I really enjoyed meeting Rita and Johnson again.  In fact, I might find myself back on Dolly again before too long.