Tales from Two Centuries - by Paul Westmoreland
This is the fifth novel to be published by this author and, like his previous efforts, there is much to like and admire in his writing.
As in previous works, for example, “Raineland” and “Shaped by Memory”, the author has produced a story which concerns the present and looks back at the past.
The first of the tales is the longer of the two and is set in the 18th century and has, as its major theme, the comings and goings of the mysterious ‘Captain Midnight’, a highwayman, his associates and his adversaries. The second tale, appears to be set in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and focusses on the affairs of ‘Johnny Midnight’, a gang leader whose nefarious plans involve and affect his friends and enemies alike.
Both stories concern the abduction and imprisonment of two sets of sisters – Elinor and Arabella, in the eighteenth century tale and Alison and Sophie, victims of Johnny Midnight, in the second narrative and the tangled processes by which the girls are rescued, the villains punished and the guilty parties pursued and justice (of a sort) is administered.
Throughout the novel, the author very skilfully interweaves the action in the first story with its parallel narrative in the second story and the reader is left to discover and note the many coincidences of name, context and location. Adding to the reader’s enjoyment, there are some unexpected and ‘game changing’ twists and turns in the story.
Essentially, this is a romantic novel and principally involves two or more love stories with the earlier tale having echoes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott – indeed one of the latter’s most famous quotes could well be applied to these two tales – “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!”
Scott also has another aphorism, appropriate to this author’s work “those who are too idle to read, save for the purpose of amusement, may in these works acquire some acquaintance with history, which, however inaccurate, is better than none”.
As with his previous works, Paul Westmoreland displays two enviable talents as a writer – his gift for story-telling and a great sense of ‘pace’ in the many action sequences.
If the characters in a novel fail to engage with the reader and do not compel him to read on to find out what happens to them, then there is no attraction, no fascination and the finished work is sterile and inchoate. Paul Westmoreland achieves this objective as he has done in his previous works. Similarly, where a story depends heavily upon the action sequences, these must be vivid, exciting and inculcate a sense of astonishment to be effective and memorable, and that is certainly the case here.
We might finish by quoting from the other of the two authors mentioned above – R. L. Stevenson - in a sentiment with which Paul Westmoreland might find affinity:
“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish..”
Nick Lloyd: September 2025