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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780765358080
ISBN number: 0765358085
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: July 01, 2008
Publishing house: Tor Books
Release Date: July 01, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 69625
Studio: Tor Books
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Product Description:
In 1949, eight years after the 'Peace with Honor' was negotiated between Great Britain and Nazi Germany by the Farthing Set, England has completed its slide into fascist dictatorship. Then a bomb explodes in a London suburb.
The brilliant but politically compromised Inspector Carmichael of Scotland Yard is assigned the case. What he finds leads him to a conspiracy of peers and communists, of staunch King-and-Country patriots and hardened IRA gunmen, to murder Britain’s Prime Minister and his new ally, Adolf Hitler.
Against a background of increasing domestic espionage and the suppression of Jews and homosexuals, an ad-hoc band of idealists and conservatives blackmail the one person they need to complete their plot, an actress who lives for her art and holds the key to the Fuhrer's death. From the ha'penny seats in the theatre to the ha'pennys that cover dead men's eyes, the conspiracy and the investigation swirl around one another, spinning beyond anyone's control.
In this brilliant companion to Farthing, Welsh-born World Fantasy Award winner Jo Walton continues her alternate history of an England that could have been, with a novel that is both a critique of the classic detective novels of the thirties and forties, and an allegory of the world we live in today.
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Rated by buyers -
Apolitical acress Viola Lark is reluctantly drawn in to a plot to assassinate Hitler. She becomes even more reluctant to get involved when she finds out who else is likely to be affected. Inspector Carmichael is upholding the law for a government he dislikes while investigating an explosion that killed a different actress. Both are sympathetic characters trying to do the right thing in morally ambiguous situations. Since this is an alternate history and anything could happen, Walton keeps the suspense high right until the end.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a solid, and in some respects cleverly constructed, alternative history story. This book , set in an alternative 1948, and its predecessor are set in a Britain that sought peace with Germany in 1941 and is becoming an authoritarian-fascist state. The book concerns a plot to assassinate Hitler and the British Prime Minister. Walton uses a clever piece of plot construction. One of the primary characters is an actress appearing in Hamlet. Walton makes good use of the play within a play device specifically with Shakespeare's own device of a play within a play and plot to kill a king in Hamlet. This is similar to her last book where she used a traditional country house murder mystery format as the basis for the plot. Walton also uses a clever appropriation of history for some of her characters. Several of her important characters are based on the notorious Mitford sisters, the daughters of the notoriously reactionary Lord Redesdale. Again, this is similar to her last book where she based characters on the prewar Cliveden set.
Other aspects of this book are less impressive. The plot is not particularly suspenseful, character development and prose are competent, as opposed to really interesting. As a alternative history, this book has problems. Its certainly plausible that Britain might have sought accomodation with Germany. Walton, however, has this happening after the Blitz. The most likely time when Britain would have attempted a peace treaty was after Dunkirk, when the British cabinet had serious discussions about opening negotiations with the Germans. I don't find the slide to authoritarianism convincing. For example, Walton presents the Labor Party as complaisant. The Labor leader Clement Atlee was hardly a "sheep" (among the admirers of his character is Margaret Thatcher, not someone predisposed to say nice things about Labor politicians) and the Labor Party included individuals like the powerful and pugnacious Ernest Bevin. Walton also has the Germans fighting the Soviets in the Western Soviet Union, hardly likely. Finally, Walton shows the Hitler of her 1948 as the vigorous Hitler of the 1930s. Hitler had Parkinson disease, was significantly affected by 1945, and would have been a wreck by 1948.
I have to address some remarks made about Nazism and its relationship to conservatism by a prior reviewer, SM Stirling. Mr. Stirling's comments deserve serious consideration as his alternative history books show him to be a serious and astute reader of history. In this case, however, Stirling is wrong. This assessment will depend on the definition of conservatism but Fascism was a logical, though not inevitable, development of several trends in 19th century conservatism. The rejection of modernity, reason as a principal value, democratic political institutions, and the ideas of universal human values and rights were held in common by all 19th century conservative strains. Stirling errs as well in stating that Nazism was an attack on the middle class. The Nazis received considerable support from many middle class groups and presented themselves as defenders of traditional values. German physicians, for example, were strong supporters of the Nazis and the Nazis also received strong support from a substantial fraction of the Protestant clergy. The disaster of the Second World War had the effect of discrediting a large spectrum of conservative political movements and contributed to making Western Europe the center to left political society it is today.
Rated by buyers -
Great alternate history and a gripping thriller. The two protagonists (a rebel aristocrat-turned-actress--with a gaggle of eccentric, high-profile sisters obviously inspired by the real-life Mitford women--and a police inspector with 'county' roots and a few secrets of his own) are well characterized throughout. I hope Walton has more of this series to come!
Rated by buyers -
I read a lot of junk; I'll admit it. But every once and awhile, I have to read something that causes me to think. Ha'penny fits this category. A sequel to Farthing, this alternate history continues that fine book's exploration of what may have happened if the U.S. did NOT help Great Britain during WWII. Profoundly chilling, beautifully written--and challenging, Ha'Penny is a subtle and personal exploration of how individuals in postwar London are affecting by the wave of facism which has reached Britain's shore. Each successive tide strengthens the power of the wave, yet lessens the resistance. British citizens start to accept the unacceptable.
The plot is complex; I won't reveal it here. But the resistance features a pitiable, almost laughable combination of military patriots, peers, terrorists and theatre types who try to assassinate the fascist leaders of England and Germany with inept plots, and amateur explosives.
Fascinating. One of the things that amazed me is that I kept rooting for the "wrong" side! Like the protagonist, I did not know which side were the "good" guys. The Scotland Yard Inspector who becomes the "hero" realizes that he may have done more harm than good. I can not wait for the subsequent installment of this literary jewel of a series, which combines alternate history, real history, mystery and social commentary.
Rated by buyers -
Once again, Jo Walton has written a book with a gripping plot, interesting characters, and good period flavor. It's a notable addition to the list of alternate histories centered on WWII and the 'German Question', thoroughly well-written, and I recommend it.
If there's a weakness in this book -- and its predecessor -- it's a misunderstanding of the nature of fascism.
Fascism wasn't an extreme or radical form of conservatism, which is more or less how Walton portrays it. Fascism led by aristocrats and the Establishment, which is approximately what Walton has happening in Britain, is more or less a contradiction in terms.
Fascism was, at least in every country where it actually took power on its own or came close to doing so, a form of plebian radicalism.
It was hostile to both the middle classes as the term was understood in Europe at the time, and especially to the groups which had traditionally been socially dominant, like the aristocracy. Everywhere it took power there was a 'turnover of elites' with 'new men' replacing the former old-boy networks with new ones of their own. Its aim was not to shore up traditional hierarchies but to smash them and institute new ones.
The German variety called itself "national socialism", and for good solid reasons. Organizationally and in terms of its internal political culture and general worldview it had far more in common with Third International-style Leninist parties than either did with social democrats or the ordinary conservatives of the time.
And fascism was a mass movement, numbering its supporters in the millions in the countries where it came to power, drawn mostly from rootless 'popular' elements, small farmers, and the like.
The typical modus operandi of the aspiring fascist wasn't plotting in aristocratic clubs, it was brawling in the streets or trooping _en masse_ to the voting booth, or both. Its characteristic institution was the para-military party militia in colored shirts.
Note that the only people in Germany who actually tried to kill and overthrow Hitler were Prussian military aristocrats, and most of their class had despised him from the beginning as an unspeakably vulgar parvenu, the "Bohemian corporal". He, in turn, had always hated and (with good reason) distrusted them.
Hitler, the private soldier and declasse street-artist, Himmler the chicken farmer and all-around weirdo occultist, Mussolini the sometime-socialist journalist, all these were typical fascist leaders of the interwar period. Many of them were also veterans of WWI, but usually as private soldiers and noncoms.
Fascists were sometimes _allied_ with conservatives, and conservatives sometimes opportunistically used fascist symbols and slogans, both most notably in Franco's Spain, but this was an alliance of convenience, like ours with Stalin's Russia during WWII. About the only thing that fascists and true conservatives, even ultra-conservatives, had in common was nationalism and hatred of communism.
German conservatives and big-business figures who thought they could 'use' Hitler found out to their cost when he turned on them that conservatism and fascism were enemies. The fascist Falange found out the same in Spain, where they were used and then betrayed by Franco, a perfectly traditional clerical-conservative Iberian caudillo, who was no more an actual fascist than he was a Unitarian, and who had never had the slightest intention of allowing them any real power.
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