Hardly any time has moved on since Inspector Peter
Carmichael solved the murder of Sir James Thirkie and been told to come to
a different conclusion in Farthing. He
quickly finds himself looking into another case, this one involving bombs
and the Jews-anarchists-communists that new Prime Minister Mark Normanby
came into power decrying. While it appears to be a run-of-the mill
investigation, Carmichael brings his full attention to it, driving Jo
Walton's novel Ha'penny.
Just as the previous novel alternated between first
person chapters focusing on someone tied to the murder and third person
chapters focusing on Carmichael's investigation, Ha'penny uses
Viola Lark, an actress who was to have appeared in a play with one of the
deceased, Lauria Gilmore. Despite Gilmore's death, however, the show
must go on, especially as it has been declared that Prime Minister
Normanby and the visiting Führer, Adolf Hitler, would be
attending opening night.
Although Carmichael’s portion of the story
is a straightforward mystery procedural, there is little sense of mystery
since the reader knows who is behind the plot.
The suspense comes from the tension between Viola-as-narrator and
Carmichael and protagonist. Will
Carmichael figure out what is happening in time to stop it? How successful
will Viola be, either in the plot or in her desire to just be an actress?
Most importantly, Walton makes the reader care about these issues.
There is a desire to see Viola succeed given the fascist régime
she is facing, yet at the same time, the reader also wants Carmichael to
succeed.
While the alternative world Walton has
created forms a background to Walton’s story, it does play an important
role, both in the plot and in the characters’ motives and perceptions.
Carmichael’s homosexuality, revealed in Farthing,
in a world in which homosexuals were more than just discriminated against,
gives the ruling elite a hold over him, and makes him chafe.
However, that same hold means the government feels it can trust
Carmichael and offers him a position. With another book in the series yet
to come, this may indicate Walton’s examination of how good men are
seduced by evil, even when they have the best of intentions.
Walton’s characters
are all likable, although they have a tendency to be pawns of larger
forces, whether it is Carmichael who is working in a system he believes in
for a government he doesn’t, or Viola, brought into a conspiracy she has
no desire to be a part of. The
villains are mostly off-stage, their evil seen more through its
macro-repercussions rather than anything as simple as a murder. When
Walton does have to depict Hitler, Himmler, or Normanby, she does so
cognizant of Hannah Arendt’s description of Adolph Eichmann: the
banality of evil.
As she did in Farthing,
Walton has written a novel in which the characters are the centerpiece,
although their world, so different from our own, continuously intrudes on
their lives, although not in an obtrusive manner. While many alternate
histories have a tendency to dump information about the differences
between their world and ours, Walton weaves it, almost organically, into
her story, only showing the reader what is necessary for flavor and plot.
