The House of Rumour [Unabridged] [Hardcover]

First - there's no gangsters here. If that's what you're expecting, you're in for something very different. In fact I suspect that whatever your expectations regarding 'House of Rumour', they'll be totally and utterly confounded.

This book is unconventional in its structure, cryptic by nature, demanding, engrossing; at times it sucks you in, at other times it spits you out. With force. And it's science fiction. It's almost as if it had exploded out of Jake under pressure and splattered across the pages, propelled by the collected weight of a legion of gangster stories as it finally got a chance to emerge, rather than written routinely - it feels like it HAD to come out.

At its core lie the hearts of writers like Philip K. Dick and J G Ballard - science fiction masters who, whilst always remaining entertaining, attempted at times in their books to convey realities and concepts that would simultaneously baffle and delight; anyone who has read most of Phil Dick's work will be familiar with the wonderfully disorientating and vividly psychedelic nature of his books, and the dark paranoiac center that often hid within.

There are many different time settings to the tale, and it gleefully jumps from one to another, chapter by chapter, as it progresses; each one is headed by a tarot card (the significance of which is not often clear (even, I would guess, if you have a good knowledge of them). Here, Jake gets to showcase one of his major strengths - he's able to evoke each era very clearly and convincingly (readers of his previous books can attest to this), and the presence of real-life characters like Ian Fleming, Alaister Crowley (he's popped up in a few books recently) and Rudolf Hess only add to the authenticity.

The title refers to the world of espionage, propaganda, intelligence and misinformation. Very apt, as you'll feel like you don't know which is which at times. It convinces in a way that only very well-researched stories do, and there are literally hundreds of little nods and references to authors and others that SF fans - and anyone who is well-versed enough to 'get' them - will heartily enjoy.

However, this multi-period setting does have its drawbacks: the chapters are quite short, and it can feel at moments like you're in a strange theme park - one minute you're in the 1940s, the next the 1980s... then the 1960s - often, just as you're getting comfortable and hungry for more, the chapter ends and you have to reorientate yourself to start on the next one. It took me half the book just to figure out how the different - disparate - elements related to each other, and there were moments where I felt a bit lost and confused. The structure also made it difficult to pick up from where I had left it, and I had often to go back to the chapter before just so that I could try to orientate myself a bit.

This is, more accurately, speculative fiction - as most good SF is. The subjects being speculated upon include multiple universes and the 'crossroad' moments that happen at major turning points in history where a choice is made, and a new future possibility created (these are known as 'Jonbar points' - a concept derived from the Jack Williamson SF novel 'The Legion of Time', written in 1938, where the utopian or dystopian future is decided upon whether the central character, John Barr, chooses to pick up a magnet or a stone). Am I confusing you yet?

At the start of the book, a girl writes the story of Hess's flight to Scotland two years before it happens; Arnott later examines his motivations, and asks us the question: Could authors, by creating a vision of the future, also be creating a reality of that future somewhere?

I've been trying to write this review for a week now - if you get the chance, read this book and you'll see why I've found it so difficult to do. I suspect this will make a lot of the gangster fans irate - it will also make a lot of science fiction fans who like a challenge very happy indeed.

Hard work at times, but rewarding to those who stick with it. I defy anyone to do a short review for this book!

House of Rumour is satisfyingly dense with 20th century alternative history; interwoven storylines and themes chiming as and when they will. The death of science fiction lends an over-arching sadness to this one. Yes it is a complex read, thank goodness.

"The House of Rumour" is Jake Arnott's tour of 20th century curios taking in some of its most defining moments and including some of its most interesting and notorious individuals. Reality and fiction blur as created characters mix with real people, and events have a habit of connecting to other events with tenuous links - "jonbar points", to use sci-fi vernacular.

A classified paper detailing a secret government operation in World War 2 to use black magic and astrology to lure Hitler's second in command, Rudolf Hess, to leave Germany for Scotland is stolen by a transvestite prostitute in late 80s England from a retired spymaster. From there Arnott sends the reader back to the dark year of 1941 where the war was firmly in favour of the Nazis and a young Ian Fleming, commander in Naval Intelligence, utilised his contacts to arrange a meeting with Aleister Crowley, once known as "the wickedest man in the world".

Crowley agrees to Fleming's bizarre plan (or is this disinformation?) to hold magical gatherings to lure Hess to Britain, sending word to his cult centre in California to do the same. And so on to California where we meet a young (fictional) author, Larry Zagorski, who is introduced to Robert Heinlein and his Manana Society where he meets L Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons. I won't go into the various strands of the story because there are too many to list but they include the Nuremberg Trials, the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple, UFO conspiracies, and culminating in space with the Voyager 1 probe.

Jake Arnott has written some tremendous books so far in his career but "The House of Rumour" is his best yet and definitely his most ambitious. It is structured in the style of tarot cards with 21 chapters each named after a face card ("The Hanged Man", "The Hierophant", "The Female Pope", etc.) with each chapter told from the perspective of the rich and varied cast of characters.

It's a beautifully written novel full of fascinating people and events. I loved the parts in the 40s highlighting the Golden Age of science fiction and reading about the exploits of Jack Parsons (a rocket scientist who would die in mysterious circumstances) and L Ron Hubbard (who would go on to found the controversial religion Scientology), Arnott captures the spirit of the age showing the naivety and excitement of the times. The communes and free love read like the 60s but this was the 40s, a time that wasn't as innocent as some would make out.

Across the pond, the Ian Fleming chapters were my favourite. You get a great sense of the man he was and how frustrated he was that he wasn't the suave, manly character he wanted to be. In a particularly funny section he saves a Moneypenny-like colleague from an assassin in a bungling way before sitting awkwardly with her afterward, cursing that he hadn't the courage to take her to bed immediately after killing the assassin. He thinks that one day, with words, he will make this right.

Years later after his Bond novels have made him rich and famous, he gives a clue as to the meaning of this novel. "The House of Rumour?" "At the centre of the world where everything can be seen is a tower of sounding bronze that hums and echoes, repeating all it hears, mixing truth with fiction." (p.244). The House of Rumour is deception and counter-intelligence - disinformation fed to the enemy. And that's what this book is full of: deception. A transvetite who looks like a woman but is a man; a troubled female David Bowie groupie becomes a man; a writer whose life influenced his fiction (Fleming) and a writer whose fiction influenced his life (Hubbard); a prescient novel called "Swastika Night" allegedly written by a man is revealed to have been written by a woman (this is real novel); and a fictional writer, Zagorski, writes a novel with each chapter named after a face card in the tarot...

The novel talks about utopias and dystopias and is full of examples: the Cuban Revolution which tried to create a socialist paradise before becoming a bankrupt third world country; Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple which promised paradise on earth but ended in mass suicide. Each character is looking for truth in their own way - but what is true in this twisting hall of mirrors story?

There is so much about this novel I enjoyed but this review is already too long to talk about them. I will say that a number of reviews have said this novel has no plot as if this is a critique against it; I agree that the book has no plot but disagree that this is a bad thing. When a novel is this entertaining, where each chapter takes you into another fascinating life, bringing colour to episodes in history previously unexplored (where else will you get such a description of what Hess must have felt inside the cockpit of the plane as he prepared to parachute out over the Scottish Highlands?), who cares that there's no plot? Does a novel always have to have a plot to be considered "good"? I think "The House of Rumour" proves resoundingly that it doesn't.

"The House of Rumour" is a wildly ambitious, perfectly executed novel full of secrets, conspiracies, anecdotes featuring the occult, and a veritable cast of anti-heroes and oddballs that spans both space and time, layering the novel in meaning and dead-ends. It's a novel that's thrilling to read but also contains so much that it invites repeated readings and no guarantees that there are answers to it at the end. Jake Arnott has created in "The House of Rumour" a mesmerising, meditative, and vexing story whose secrets always seem within reach to the reader - but always just out of reach too. It's an amazing accomplishment and a masterpiece - "The House of Rumour" is definitely my favourite novel of 2012. Bravo, Mr Arnott!