Description: Freelance Writer
Four years ago, the day before Trump was elected, I remember clearly what I was doing. I spent the day finishing off the last book in Jo Walton’s Small Change trilogy , which is a superb series of books built around a very small change in history, as the title suggests. In this timeline, England made peace with Hitler in 1941 – which England came so close to actually doing that this other version of the world feels so close you can actually touch it. England succumbed to fascism and the world changed.
Except the world didn’t change, really, for the protagonist of each book in the trilogy. Not at first. Not so noticeably. The first book of the trilogy, Farthing , starts out like a Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie story, what I like to call a puzzle box plot. A puzzle box plot is the sort that starts out looking a little opaque, but gradually the author guides you through all the missing pieces of the narrative and everything resolves with a nice satisfying snick at the end. The box opens at the author’s
Like I said Farthing is not a puzzle box mystery, it just tricks you into thinking it’s one by using all the right tropes. We find ourselves in the English countryside, in the latter 1940s. There is a gathering of the upper crust at a manor house. There has been a mysterious murder, in the night. Enter a police officer, come from the city to interview everyone and get to the bottom of things, arrest the guilty and tie up the story in a neat bow, maybe with a little bit of social commentary on the way.