James Fleming, White Blood (Atria Books, 2006)
We requested a review copy of White Blood from the publisher (a Simon and Schuster imprint) after finding it on the new book table at Borders during a recent foray. It looked interesting, and indeed it is. But, I warn you, stay away if you have a delicate sensibility. This book is chock full of violence, crude language (first novel I ever read that uses the c-word -- in both its descriptive and derogatory senses), and situations that press the limits of grossness. As I read it, I couldn't help but think of Bartle Bull, especially Shanghai Station and maybe a bit of Boris Akunin's Erast Fandorin series. Read on and you'll see why these comparisons are so apt.
White Blood is a historical novel, set primarily in Russia during the years leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution. Its protagonist and first-person narrator is a bloke named Charlie Doig. I use the word 'bloke' because it connotes a certain kind of male, one given to, well, rough sport and earthy speech. Charlie is the son of an English father, a businessman who worked in the Moscow office of a cotton-brokerage, and a Russian mother, a member of one of those terribly wealthy old aristocratic families that at this point in time was just starting the final decline toward oblivion.
Charlie grew up and attended school in London, largely supported by his mother's family after his father died while on a business trip in Central Asia. He parleyed his boyhood fascination with creepy crawlies into a career as a naturalist, partnered at the start of the novel with an eccentric German named Goetz. Together Charlie and Goetz travel to all kinds of exotic places in search of rare fauna that they typically try to kill, preserve, pack and ship back to some natural history museum or private collector -- whoever happens to be paying the bills for the particular trip. They work hard, get really, really filthy and sleep in tents.
This way of life is going along fine and looks like it could continue for a good long while, until one or the other of them tires of it or dies of some dreadful tropical disease -- given where and how they travel, the latter seems a good possibility. But then World War I breaks out, and Herr Goetz decides to hie himself back to Berlin to be of service to the Kaiser. At about the same time (at this point our boys are hanging out in the Civilians Club in Samarkand, in what is now Uzbekistan), Charlie gets word that his beloved great-uncle Igor is dying. He decides to travel to the family estate in Smolensk (on the Dnieper River southwest of Moscow) to spend time with the old man. Coincidentally, his equally beloved cousin Elizaveta is also at the family estate. Their reunion changes the dynamic of the novel quite a bit, introducing a love/sex element that was not heretofore present at all. I am reluctant to tell you more than this about the plot, other than to say that Fleming's view of the Bolsheviks, like Bull's, is not particularly charitable.
Fleming does a masterful job of staying with Charlie's viewpoint, which means sometimes the reader doesn't make discoveries until Charlie does, and there are plenty of discoveries to be made. A number of the secondary characters are not who or what they appear to be at first sight. Fleming also has a distinctive way with words and imagery that makes for a highly entertaining read, if you've got the taste for it. One of my favorite scenes takes place relatively early in the novel, when Charlie is still traveling with Goetz. In a post office in a remote town in Burma waiting in line to mail a letter to his mother, he spots a rare beetle on the wall. He immediately enters into a state of total maniacal intensity, bent on capturing said beetle without damaging it. The scene is quite hilarious. I can easily imagine it in an action adventure film, à la Indiana Jones, only an R-rated version. So intense is Charlie's excitement at finding and capturing the beetle that he gets an erection. His next stop after the post office is the local whorehouse, where he relieves himself in an acrobatic romp with three women at once. Well, there's more to the scene than that, but I don't want to spoil it for you.
Not that I think it matters, but James Fleming is the nephew of Ian Fleming, author of a rather famous series of novels about the master spy James Bond. He's held a number of jobs in his life (none of which, as far as I can tell, involved tracking down and capturing unusual life forms) and has written two other novels.
