I’m not really a dog person. Cats are more my thing. I like dogs, though. In the last year or two I have acquired two as close canine family members and I always engage with friendly dogs I see on trains or in the park. I just have no wish to take full responsibility for one.

Veteran crime writer Peter James, unlike me, is clearly every inch a dog man and his new Roy Grace title spells out the horror of dog crime –  now apparently, even more rampant than drug crime first, because  there’s a lot of money in it and second, because the pandemic has triggered a huge thirst for dog ownership which in some cases is shortlived.

I’m a sucker for crime fiction. It’s my go-to for light reading, Peter James is always a curl-up-on-the-sofa treat. And I suppose the gripping, overarching narrative from novel to novel, now de rigeur in all crime series, is the reading woman’s answer to TV soaps. And in this case I also enjoy the Brigton setting because it’s a city I know pretty well.

As always there are several story lines in Stop Them Dead which eventually come together. A genuine, decent farmer who has bred a litter of puppies is killed in his yard when he tries to stop a gang of thieves stealing his dogs. A (usually) sensible family deny common sense and advice and buy a puppy for cash in a lay-by after which their beloved, only child becomes seriously ill. Meanwhile Grace and his wife Cleo want a second dog … and there is a spate of dog thefts (to order) in the streets and parks of Brighton. This is Peter James so, of course, it’s a perfectly plotted page turner and will eventually attract millions of viewers when it’s televised for ITV with John Simm as Grace.

I like this novel particularly because James evidently wants to spread information about the cruel, dark ruthless world which forms the background. Yes, in real life as well as in fiction, there are still gullible people who find “breeders” online and buy dogs from them in motorway service stations for cash only to find that all the paperwork is fake and that, often, that the dog is weak or, at worst, seriously ill. At a time when a proper pedigree dog from a registered breeder costs thousands it’s not surprising that a half price bargain seems attractive to some. But some of the puppies are imported from abroad, or bred in terrible conditions in Britain and they’re almost always too young to be taken from their mothers. Caveat emptor or buyer beware. The only way to stop this dreadful trade is to boycott and report it.

You’ll be pleased to know, by the way, that my granddog (pictured) was born and rescued  in Cyprus before finding a new home in Britain via a reputatable charity.  My nephew-dog meanwhile came from a registered breeder and my sister saw the whole litter with their mother, more than once.

But, another relation who has kept dogs all her life bought, in order to rescue, a three year old “Covid dog”,  who had never been chipped, vaccinated or checked by a vet after producing eleven puppies. That particular dog has now landed on all four paws but they aren’t all so lucky. These horrors really do go on. Read Peter James’s gripping novel and pass on the information.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

I started reading the Booker shortlist as an annual project in the 1980s. I saw it a personal, horizon-widening exercise. As a reader, as with so much else in life, it’s all too easy to like what you know and know what you like. And some of the discoveries were wonderful. I first read, for example, David Lodge, Carol Shields and Peter Carey because one of their titles was shortlisted. I then went on and read everything else of theirs I could lay hands along with their new titles as they appeared.

In early 1989 when Salman Rushie and The Satanic Verses hit the headlines because of the fatwa demanding his execution for blasphemy, I was the only person I knew who had actually read it. it had been shortlisted for Booker the previous autumn. It didn’t win although Chairman of the Judges, Michael Foot, made it clear that he thought it should have done. Personally, I didn’t enjoy it very much but took the view as that if you don’t like it, or don’t think you will, then don’t read it. But nothing gives you the right to stop, or try to stop, other people reading a book – any book. Of course, though, I am not a religious extremist and see things differently.

Another good reason for reading those shortlists was that I was teaching secondary English to GCSE and A Level, and it meant I could talk to my students about current titles as I tried to encourage them to follow my example and try books which were not necessarily within the habitual comfort zone – because therein can often lurk new treasures. I always regarded developing wider reading as almost as important as getting everyone through the exam although, naturally, I did that too.

Since I stopped teaching to become a full-time writer in 2004 I have got out of the Booker shortlist habit although I have usually read the winner and sometimes one or two of the others if I liked the sound of them. This year, however, the final announcement is not until 26 November. The shortlist was announced on 21 September which meant there was full two months to get acquainted with the books. So I did.

It’s strong, beautifully diverse list:

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (Canadian)

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (American)

The Other Eden by Paul Harding (American)

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Irish)

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Irish)

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (British Indian).

I found things to like in them all but the one which moved, shocked and haunted me most was Prophet Song.

We’re in Ireland in the present day when a totalitarian regime is elected. Changes are small to start with, as ordinary citizens’ rights begin to disappear. It made me think, initially, of the pandemic, lockdown and government emergency edicts. Of course the situation rapidly gets worse and you know that nothing is going to get any better for the family at the heart of it: Eilish, a scientist, her husband Larry who’s a teacher/trade unionist and their children Mark, Molly, Bailey and Ben. Suddenly it’s a world of torture, death, sudden disappearance, corruption and suffering. And the arrival of the rebels to overturn the regime doesn’t make any discernible difference for families on the ground.  What Lynch has done is to retell the story of Syria in a European context and I’m deeply ashamed of what it says about me that I found this much more disturbing than anything I’ve ever read about horrendous atrocities thousands of miles away.

The depiction of Eilish’s despair and declining mental health is masterly. I suffered every shred of the horror with her – especially when she goes in search of 12-year-old Bailey. That will stay with me for a very long time.  The novel ends in bleak, ambiguous hope, tempered with horror and anxiety.

I read it in just a couple of days – it’s very compelling. On the first night I slept for an hour, then woke up instantly alert because I thought sometime was flashing a torch and shouting up aggressively from the garden.  It took me a few minutes to recognise that I’d been dreaming. Perhaps I shouldn’t read novels as powerful as Prophet Song just before I put the light out but it is testament to its strength.

So this is the book which would get my vote, if I were on the judging panel. I suspect, though, that the prize will go to Sarah Bernstein for Study for Obedience which is original, edgy, topical because its protagonist is Jewish, and written in an unusual style, It just didn’t hit me between the eyes me as much as Prophet Song did.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Stop Them Dead by Peter James

I wouldn’t normally write about a single short story here but this one is such a gem I think it deserves a space all of its own. Actually it’s a miniature masterpiece structured like a tiny novel in twelve mini-chapters. So that’s my excuse –  if I need one.

Written in 1920, The Daughters of the Late Colonel was published in 1921 by John Murry to whom Mansfield was married. She was from New Zealand but settled in England in 1918. She and Murry were close friends of DH Lawrence and his wife Freda – all four of them convention breakers. Aged 34, she died of tuberculosis in 1923  as Lawrence would seven years later. It was a hideously common disease.

The titular daughters are Constantia and Josephine whose domineering father has just died. They are virgins in their fifties – their younger brother is old enough to have an adult son. Their mother has been dead for 35 years.  But they have no emotional maturity so they still share a room, giggle like nervous teenagers and struggle with everyday tasks and decisions. They are, moreover, limited by genteel poverty. It’s beautifully imagined and observed – and extraordinarily poignant.

These women were terrified of their father, who has dominated their lives, and Mansfield drips in flashbacks to show how awful it was as the reader is allowed to look “past” them objectively. Now they are frightened even to “trespass” in his bedroom even though he’s dead. He’s been the dominant presence in their arid lives for so long that they can’t switch him off.

They are frightened of the nurse who looked after the old man and allow her to take advantage of them. They’d like to sack the insolent maid Kate, who sees them as “old tabbies” but they haven’t the courage. They have never met their sister-in-law who lives with their brother in Ceylon but get occasional duty visits from their nephew, Cyril and these are painful, tortured occasions.

I think of The Daughters of the Late Colonel a lot when I struggle to communicate with deaf friends. It is true that once you have, perforce, repeated a piece of everyday, conversational trivia three times it begins to sound ridiculous so you give up usually to the fury of the person you’re trying to talk to. Then I remember Katharine Mansfield, Cyril and the meringues.

I know this story well because it features in many school anthologies and I used to teach it. Coming back to it now I marvel at the tension of sentences like this: “They only gave the blind a touch, but it flew up and the cord flew after rolling round the blindstick, and the little tassel tapped as if trying to get free.” Of course, Mansfield, despite her early death, was a prolific story teller and since I first read this one – still my favourite – I have read most of the others in various collections and more recently in  Katharine Mansfield: The Collected Stories with introduction by Ali Smith (Penguin Classics,2007) which is a fat 700-page volume They’re all worth reading although some are stronger than others. And I don’t think she ever bettered The Daughters of the Late Colonel.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Whichever title of the six on the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist I have, by then, decided I like best!