Cloudland, a new novel by Joseph Olshan , is clever but ultimately disappointing. A plot taken from the unfinished work of Wilkie Collins promises much more than this story delivers. Stick figures, not real characters, populate the pages. I read with interest a tale hoping I would care about the people tripping over each other. I didn't. To quote Gertrude Stein, "There's nothing there there."

William Ryan has chosen as his milieu a most difficult period, the Soviet Union during the 1930s. What we know in hindsight of this period raises the bar considerably for the novelist, the "willing suspension of disbelief." He almost pulls it off with a clever plot, the death of a young woman, a Party member who is a "close" friend of a high ranking commissar. The mood is dark and the chill soon enters the readers bones as the Captain Alexi Korolev tired and worried about his role in the investigation navigates the treachery of the warring sides, the counter-revolutionaries, the Thieves, and his bosses. His character is sympathetic, but he is the only one even minimally fleshed out. The dialogue often sounds like a poor translation to depression-era American idiom. This is a shame because the blurring of good guys and bad, heroes and terrorists, winners and losers could have been terrific, just not quite there.

Generally, the use of flashbacks or alternating chapters by time periods are irritating, annoying and a sign of poor writing. "In Search of Rose Notes," does not fall into the latter in spite of the alternative narratives. The contrast presented are different strands of the story and never get in each others way. The author builds the emotional ties to Nora, the putative narrator, by letting us see her at two times of life, and allows the events of an earlier day come clear as she works through the confusion of the past and teenage angst. A good read.

After a slow beginning (for me, a senior citizen) bringing younger readers up to date with the extraordinary and true spy ring which began at Cambridge in the 1930s, this strory picks up speed and considerable interest. The author, Charles Cumming, manages to draft an exciting and well written yarn (an old word, well deserved) that holds ones interest to the end with a lovely suggestion of a sequel. The history is right on as well.

A bit like the author, Wesley Stace, this book is a compilation of parts. Musical history, early twentieth century political and social history, and a history of a murder, the whole is indeed better than the description of its parts. Stace is the alter ego of composer and musician John Wesley Harding, a name itself created from that of a 19th century gunslinger. (John Wesley Hardin is perhaps better known to us in Texas.) Although there were some slow stretches, the period speech and detail are terrific and form the ribbon which wraps this witty and very clever tale. I shall have to avail myself of Hardings music along side Hardins legends after this roundabout.