The Most Interesting thing about King Charles the First —

— is that he was five foot six inches tall at the beginning of his reign and four foot eight inches tall at the end of it. (“Oliver Cromwell,” Monty Python’s Flying Circus)


For Christmas, Mum and Dad gave me Rebels and Traitors by Lindsey Davis. I had finished the last of Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death books (Grave Goods) Christmas eve — in time to give it to Mum Christmas morning. Any how got to work on Davis' 741 page epic novel of the English Civil War straight away.

It's big. I kept dropping it on my face when I read it before bed.

Lindsey Davis is a master of the Ancient History murder mystery. Her hero, Marcus Didius Falco, ranks among my favourite detectives. He is a Sam Spade for the first century. That is if Spade had functional relationships with women and a very large extended family.

Davis wrote Rebels and Traitors before she created Falco but publishers weren’t all that interested at the time. She wrote another one The Course of Honour, also set in Ancient Rome, before striking gold with Falco.

Rebels and Traitors is not as tightly crafted as the Falco books — or packaged as compactly, they make nice pocket paperbacks — but it has a lot of the same spark. Juliana Lovell, the heroine, is an adventuresome, intelligent and practical woman. Gideon Jukes, the hero, shares M.Didius Falco’s republican politics if not his poetic flare. Jukes is a printer and he is well aware that poetry does not pay. Orlando Lovell is a rakish, charming nemesis for Jukes. Col. Sexby and Bevan Bevan are both good and villainous, nice and despicable.

Here’s the thing — what I loved about this book is also the biggest problem with this book. It sprawls across time, geography and politics. It isn’t very evenly paced. Half a dozen narratives intertwine. Davis walks us through the milestones of the war, the plots, the battles, the debates, whether important characters were involved or not.

Despite that, I ate it up. The strategic overview of the campaign slows Davis’ usually brisk pace to a crawl but I really appreciated the primer —So that’s why the Irish hate the English —So that’s why England doesn’t have a standing army. Before this, nearly everything I knew about the English Civil War I learned from the Monty Python bit quoted above and The Children of the New Forest.

Stray Observations
-Juliana inherits a house on Fountain Court!
-Ranters, Levellers, Diggers etc. — downright Italian in its factionalism.
-When was the Great Fire? Jukes’ London doesn’t sound anything like the London I have visited.
-I’m almost certain that printed embroidery patterns do not go back that far. Knitting patterns certainly do not. but I suspended my disbelief til just now.