Review: Corpus

Corpus by Rory Clements
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was hard work. When a publisher advertises a novel 'for fans of Robert Harris' I expect more. Harris is a master at taking historical events, building believable characters, bringing dialogue to life and creating real suspense - even when the reader knows the outcome. Rory Clements doesn't.

The synopsis was very promising - the abdication crisis, Europe on the brink of war. A skilful novelist could get into the heads of Stanley Baldwin, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (and the suspicions of Nazism around them), George VI. A novelist can go places that a historian cannot. What were they thinking? What were the motivations? Instead we get a central character, Tom Wilde, Cambridge history professor, who is as tedious and unsympathetic a protagonist as I have read in a long time. We get a cardboard cutout Baldwin. We get Nazi and Communist caricatures. We learn less about the crisis than a quick Wikipedia search would provide. A tangental plot involving Spanish gold which adds nothing. And dialogue of which Dan Brown would be proud (Brown can create suspense however...).

Very disappointing. I struggled to finish it and may have done just to see if some character, the Midsomer policeman perhaps, would ask Tom Wilde who he was and why he was here...

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