A few short novels

Watchman by Ian Rankin (first published 1988; reissued 2003). This book didn't make much splash when first published, and probably wouldn't have been reissued without Rankin's best-selling Rebus novels. Watchman represents Rankin's foray into the spy novel, a route he didn't pursue after his success writing mysteries. Watchman is a bit of a time capsule, a spy world minus cell phones, GPS,or easy access even to word processors. Miles Flint is a spy in the Watcher service who must throw off his passivity when his superiors want to make him the fall guy. I thought it was a good fun read, and the tech limitations actually make it a much more understandable world.

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy, a novella followed by short story "The Bohemian Astrobleme," by Kage Baker (2010). As far as I know, this is the last work from Baker's hand we'll ever have, since she died in January 2010.

The Gentlemen's Speculative Society, an early incarnation of the Company (familiar to Baker readers), has a sister organization: Nell Gwynne's, an exclusive brothel where the whores have secret identities as spies. Lady Beatrice undergoes tragedy with no course left but to become a prostitute, and is glad to be recruited from the streets into such a fine, and fascinating, establishment.

Lady Beatrice's spy adventures are highly entertaining, and involve what I guess could be called steampunk, such as an early Victorian contraption called the Ascending Room--an elevator. As usual, Kage is funny, empathic, and compulsively readable.

The short story is a further adventure connected with the doings of the Society and the brothel, taking place in far Bohemia, and as with the longer story, the reader only wishes there were more of it.

I'm still so sad about Baker's death. She was only 57. Dammit, dammit, dammit.