Reading this supposed thriller was a lesson — in what a thriller, or any work of fiction for that matter, should not be. It is set during the years of the Commonwealth in England, with Cromwell as Lord Protector. In a historical novel, you would expect some atmospheric effect to plunge you into the past. Here there’s none. And we are not even thinking of Hilary Mantel’s brilliant Wolf Hall , which recreates the Cromwellian era so masterfully that you start seeing people walking the streets of London in wide-topped boots and sombre jackets.
Murder in the Maghreb jumps from dialogue to dialogue with little or no connecting description in between. So you rack your brains to find out what exactly is happening, who are these people talking away and what, for heaven’s sake, is the mystery. In between, you also wonder whether this is really the 17th century you are in, what with characters saying things like, “No worries, General!” And it would be an understatement to call the characters wooden — they are more like shades. Since Geoff Quaiffe spends no effort in building up the characters, he has to interpose between dialogues pointers like, “replied an honest but insensitive Luke,” or “observed a not-too-pleased count”.
The Luke is Luke Tremayne, whom Cromwell sends as his ambassador-at-large to Maghreb in Northwest Africa to sort out matters of trade and solve a mystery. But all that he is seen doing most of the time is chatting over food, sipping wine or mint tea, and then dozing. Given such dashing qualities, it is baffling that beautiful women drop like ninepins all over him. And here I have the biggest objection to the novel.
The women who matter in the story are femme fatales: they wear “flimsy, see-through garments,” which is taken as a sign of their moral depravity, have catfights over men among themselves, and quickly revert back to being arm-candy when the men appear. Perhaps it is in its portrayal of women that the novel comes closest to depicting the 17th century sensibility.
anusua.m@thehindu.co.in
Murder in the Maghreb: An Islamic Interlude North Africa 1657-8; Geoff Quaiffe, Trafford Publishing, ₹1,403
