Perhaps I am borderline obsessive,¹ but I’m always struck when I send an email to somebody, don’t get a reply within, say, a week, send a follow up and then get ”Sorry about that! Went to my spam.” My spam filter is simply glorious, but that doesn’t mean it catches everything, nor that everything...

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It isn’t a good idea to complain that someone else hasn’t treated some topic in the way you would have treated it. Nevertheless, I want to put down a marker. I listened to two podcasts this week each of which, in my opinion, left a big question unasked.

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Back in the saddle, and a very comfy one it has been too. A delightful month enjoying the emptiness of Rome as a reward for suffering the sweltering heat. The Squeeze succumbed to the desire for coolth and splurged on what they call here a pinguino, a stand-alone air conditioner that is nominally mobile but that needs to have its exhaust hose fixed into a hole in a window, which rather limits the opportunity to move it around. Still, it cools the little studio very effectively, and when needs must, as it did a couple of times, I could retire there too with a portable machine. The terrace flourished as I can scarce remember, there was parking when we needed it, trips out to the lake mid-week kept us cool. A delight, and now here we are cat-sitting again in the depths of the Umbrian countryside. Truly, I am grateful for my life.

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Music in podcasts is one of those divisive topics on which few people agree. My own view is that most American shows have far too much music for my taste, and that my own episodes have too little. I'm not talking about continuous soundbeds, as done so well by Benjamen Walker. I'd never even try that. No, I'm talking about a bit of music to set the scene, mark transitions and, where possible, maybe heighten the narrative, but that is darned hard work.

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If I were a character in this terrific novel, I would remember exactly who had recommended it to me, under what circumstances, and everything else about them. Alas, I am not, nor do I really wish I were, but as a story it has that kind of appeal, of making me think, what would I have done. The plot covers a dozen or so years, from Bulgaria in the early 1930s to America in 1946, and it concerns a group of NKVD recruits whose allegiance to one another is stronger than their allegiance to the NKVD. Or is it?

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