Nineteen in '19: The House of Rumour

I've read far less in recent years than I would like. To help remedy this, I've set myself the modest target of reading nineteen books in 2019. When I finish one, a thumbnail review here will follow.

8/19: The House of Rumour by Jake Arnott

The blurb: In 1941, Larry Zagorski was a naïve young writer of science-fiction. Seven decades on, he looks back on that crucial year and traces his place in a mysterious web - one that connects the Second World War with the Space Age, stretches from London to Cuba and Southern California, and links Ian Fleming with Rudolf Hess in a conspiracy that reverberates in the present.

Could this be the secret history of the 20th century? In a mesmerising novel peopled by spies and propagandists, the conned and the heartbroken, dreamers and fanatics, the question is: who will you believe?

The review: where to start? Arnott has woven together multiple stories that entwine a cast of fictional and fictionalised characters, centred on SF novelist Zagorski. The real-life characters include Ian Fleming, Rudolph Hess, Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, L Ron Hubbard, Robert Heinlein, Philip K Dick, and more. On occasion, I had to check with Wikipedia as to the reality of some of the protagonists, such is the breadth (and skilful blend) of fiction and fact. There's a real spotter's fun to be had for the reader here too, most notably in the scenes with Ian Fleming, spotting references to events that later turn up in Bond novels: a boss called M, a character called Trevelyan, conceiving of a spy breaking a crime syndicate by bankrupting them in a casino, and more...

But what of the actual story? There are so many sub-plots here, and so many narrators, it's not always clear what the underlying story is. That fiction can inspire real events? That is certainly a recurring theme, notably that a (fictional) story might have been the inspiration for Hess's trip to Scotland. Or have foretold, as is often alluded here, as there is a recurrent motif in this novel of cults and the occult, tarot, the supernatural, the alien. Plenty of the protagonists buy into one or many of these schools of thought... but the real theme, to this reviewer at least, is disinformation - the black art of seeding just enough credible nonsense to divert or misinform. This recurs throughout the book, from pre-war paranoia, through Hess's flight to Eaglesham Moor, to UFOs and Area 51, goings on in Cuba, McCarthyism, Dianetics and Scientology, the Jonestown Massacre and secret service agents who could make or break people on one hand but be caught out by sexual predilection and a petty chancer on the other. So yes, there's a lot going on. Sometimes it's hard to keep up. And you might gather from the amount of time since my last review in this series, I've hardly raced through The House of Rumour. But it's works, ultimately, even if the story sometimes pays second fiddle to the storytelling. Not one for dipping in and out of, but a book that rewards your attention.

The bottom line: a decent slice of meta-fiction that succeeds because the real and the imagined are blended so well, you cannot see the join.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★☆☆