Today was the second day of my last week off work and I spent it doing some errands and then having some nice lunch at Turtle Bay. Nice fries and very nice drinks! I also got my contract in the post so that was a bonus too.
As I finished another book yesterday I though it best to stick to the review schedule as best a possible. I do not want to have to start in adding a line of "To be reviewed" at the end of every review. It is taking all the mathematical skills that I have to keep on top of the to be read numbers.
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The Scarlatti Inheritance - Robert Ludlum
Once again my opinion on a book is divided. The main part of the story is really good and interesting. Then Ludlum goes and spoils it by adding bits that you do not really need and it makes it less good.
The story starts with a nervous Brigadier General who has come across a bit of information he is not sure how to deal with except that he knows it is big and potentially dangerous. We then get what I would call a quick who's who of the main players and then we get the story of how we got here in flashback. It is almost as if Ludlum wants to set the scene for some great revelation. However, he has already given us the revelation and now we are just going back to the beginning and getting the "how did we get here". It is like Ludlum has constructed a few scenes as a reason for him to tell this incredible story of this family and how they had their part to play in the Second World War but it seems a bit contrived. He could have just given us the final chapter of the book and then go back from there without throwing about 10 names in two pages at me and expecting me to remember them all for when they eventually turn up. Be that as it may... the story Ludlum then tells is fascinating and engaging. It tells the tale of a young immigrant and how he worked his way to the top of society. There is more double cross, violence and intrigue in this book than in many others I have read and it keeps going and going until the last page. In between all that action Ludlum has also managed to give us some really interesting main characters in the shape of Elizabeth Scarlatti, Matthew Canfield and Ulster Stewart Scarlett (who has been a very very bad boy!) . All the other character are kind of on the side and not that relevant or interesting.
One example of this is Ulster Scarlett's son. He is mentioned as being born, is "on screen" in the first and last couple of pages and that is it. It seems that for a very long time whilst mum is off her and there with her new lover and the mother in law trying not to get killed her son is....???? Who knows where. I hope she got someone to pop round every now and then to feed the little guy. It seems to me that she has a remarkably absent sense of motherhood and zero parenting skills. Yet, someone loves her and wants to protect her so she must have something going for her. It just struck me as really strange. The son is just not mentioned in the whole main of the story. He seems to be only useful at the beginning and end and when he briefly turns up even that is a disappointment. Ulster Scarlett makes a thing about needing to meet his son but in the end the meeting scene is a bit of a let down it is nothing to do with restoring the father son bond or even destroying it. It does not even seem to have anything to do with the story. Surely if Mr Ludlum can write such a good core story he can invent a better set up around the son than what we have ended up with?
So we have our main players. Elizabeth is a formidable woman who rules her family with an iron fist. She and her husband have built an empire together through cunning, determination, good timing and luck. They have 3 children. Roland is the shy one.. probably the most promising one so naturally he gets killed in WW1. Then we have Chancellor who is described as studious (=boring). Last but not lest there is Ulster. He is the bad seed and that is made clear from the start. The bulk of the story deals with Ulster but once we do get more of Elizabeth she shows us that despite her age she is a woman you do not cross. She is still a cunning business woman and figures out what Ulster is planning to do way before anyone else. What is more, she is the only one who has the skills and cunning to out-fox the fox and she does it in style. Scenes with Elizabeth and the Thirteen are very good. You can just picture her lording it over all these "businessmen" most of them probably in nappies whist she was building her empire. the great thing about Elizabeth is that she is driven to do the right thing. She sees the evil that her son is trying to do and is willing to stop it as whatever cost to herself personally or her business and that deserves respect. She may have made mistakes in raising her children, indulged them and be partly responsible for the human beings they have become but she is willing to do whatever if they go too far.
The second main character is Matthew Canfield. He is an intelligence officer who has a talent for getting out of sticky situations and is not afraid to turn a blind eye for the right kind of reward. In other words, he has his morals and he sticks to them but occasionally he will bend the truth and play the game. In the beginning of the story all we know is that Canfield has been selected to be the liaison at the special request of a man who calls himself Kroeger. There is a file that Mr Kroeger wants and it also seems that Kroeger is not really who he says he is. Canfield is to bring someone to the meeting called April Red (who turns out to be Ulster Scarlett's son). The meeting goes ahead at the end of the book and you kind of wonder why. What kind of makes it okay is that Canfield himself wonders this as well as the information that Kroeger is selling is old and irrelevant.. so he kills him. Not the first time he tried to kill him either! Canfield is really not that interesting at the end or beginning bits. He comes to life a bit more in the core of the story. Canfield is called in when Ulster Scarlett mysteriously disappears and seems to be involved in some illegal stock deals (and possibly more). Canfield does his bit to get close the Ulster's wife as she might have some information but it seems that mum is actually more likely to be able to oblige. To cut a long story short Canfield and Elizabeth end up getting better acquainted due to an incident with a burglar and they decided to pool their resources. Together they figure out what Ulster is up to and how he plans to basically fund the Third Reich through some ingenious business construction. It is a good thing they know what they are doing because all the business stuff just made no sense to me at all. Once they decided to stick together you can see that a sort of respect develops between the two of them. I actually think that Elizabeth likes Canfield. She likes his cunning and his persistence. The fact that he manages to save her from a few bullets and keeps her alive to deliver the death blow to Ulster probably helps her appreciation of him more. Canfield comes across as a guy who kind of does what needs to be done. He mainly wants to get Ulster for the way he treated his wife and family and I do not thin that getting him a slap on the writs for stock trading fraud is too high on his list but hey... whatever motivates you. In the end Canfield seems more hell bent on revenge for himself and Janet than anything else. He wants to destroy Ulster and although he has to have a few goes at it he does succeed in the end. Why Canfield gets involved with Janet (Ulster's ex wife) is not really clear to me but I guess it is a reason to develop a vengeance motive to get him to go after Ulster and it serves the story up to a point.
So we come to the last main character. Mr Ulster Stewart Scarlett. He is a real piece of work. He is a nasty self centred kid, a bully and acts like people owe him just because he is a Scarlett. When he gets to the front in WW2 he decides that all this fighting business is just stupid and gets out but not before he kills a few of his own platoon and makes a pact with a German officer. Ulster wants Power. Real power... not the make believe power his mother has in business but real Power to make and break people and empires. He believes that the Germans can get that for him. So, with his German friend (r is optional) he devises this plan to get Power. He almost succeeds as well. There is not too much more to say about Ulster. He is a bad boy and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He symbolises true evil. I do not feel sorry for anything bad that happens to him and I think that is exactly the way Ludlum wants it.
So, any good. Well... yes. Although some bits seem a bit irrelevant (beginning and end scenes and Ulster's wife and son in general) the main story of the family and how they get Ulster has got some pace and moves along well. Yes Ulster is a stereotypical bad guy, Elizabeth is the stereotypical Matriarch and Canfield is the stereotypical flawed hero but I like them and they keep me entertained.
Title: The Scarlatti Inheritance
Author: Robert Ludlum
354 pages
Bantam Books
ISBN #0-553-11427-1
Books to be read: 145
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