Now forward a century more, this time to Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy. There is no record of whether the animal used an obscenity.) (And on an animal-harm note-the mule survived the fall, managed to climb back out of the ravine, and rejoined the pack train. Did he simply not think in profanities? Or did he exercise a lifetime’s eye-watering self-control? Answers, please. The veteran knight is just fine with calling his own prince and future king a bull’s pizzle, whereas Grant, let’s not forget, was a Victorian army officer. Excuse me? A career officer of infantry, soldiering through some of the most bloody alarums and excursions of his century, who doesn’t own up to ever having used a cuss word? Lordy! Then again, these things do go in cycles Grant’s profanity-free progress through the military would have staggered Shakespeare’s Falstaff as much as it does us. Though, he adds, darned if he can recall ever using a profanity himself not in his entire life. So frustrated that he’s even ready to overlook his men’s profanities when yet another mule takes a tumble over the lip of a steep ravine. Young Ulysses is a captain of infantry, galled by the antics of his mules packing supplies over the mountains on the long march to Mexico City.

Grant, recounts his time in the Mexican-American war.

In his memoirs, ex-commanding general-but by then, president-Ulysses S. Now move some decades on, to an admission that’s truly astonishing. Give up? Why, she called him Mr Hegel, silly. Hegel call her husband around the house? I mean, seriously, how did she address him? After all, she had a choice. Don’t think for a second that this is trivial. It’s about Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Godfather of Dialectic and head-and-shoulders giant of the opaque. Here’s one for all you 19th-century German philosophy scouts. In the essay below, she muses on the challenges modern fictionists face in determining how much period atmosphere and detail is needed in historical novels.) Shamus Dust is her first novel, though she already has a sequel on its way, The Gumshoe’s Freestyle. She’s also a great fan of mid-20th-century films noirs, which she describes as the “groundbreaking cinema of its time, peopled with an unforgettable cast of the era’s seen-it-all survivors, slick grifters, racketeers, the opulent and the corrupt.” Roger lives on a small island off the coast of Africa. Roger claims an educational background in archaeology, history, and English Lit, with a particular interest in the early Cold War era. She’s the author of Shamus Dust, a brand-new crime novel set in the City of London in 1947 and starring Newman, an expatriate American private investigator who’s hired by a City councilor to keep his name from being connected to a recent killing.

(Editor’s note: Please welcome to The Rap Sheet Janet Roger.

Shamus Dust by Janet Roger