Monthly Archives: December 2009

2010 – The Challenges

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I like my fiction reading to be pretty unstructured so I can act on whatever whim takes my fancy at any time. However I am signing up for two reading challenges in 2010 though, if I am totally honest, neither will be particularly onerous for me.

The first is the 2010 Global Challenge which aims to get people reading books set in different places. I’m aiming for the expert level of this challenge which will require me to read two novels each from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America (incl Central America), South America and Antarctica. They have to be from fourteen different countries or states. As I think I can achieve about 75% of this challenge with books already on my TBR shelves (depending on whether you put Turkey in Asia or Europe) I’m adding a personal extra twist that all the books have to be by new-to-me authors. I like reading books set in different places so I’ll enjoy this one. The challenge is being hosted by Dorte of DJs Krimiblog but the challenge is not restricted to crime fiction so please join in the fun and expand your horizons at the same time. There are two easier levels if you don’t fancy reading quite so many books in strange settings.

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The other challenge I’m joining is probably less of a stretch for me. Hosted by The Royal Reviews the Audio Book Challenge has an obsessed level which requires me to read 20 audio books for the year. As I’ve read 25 (and a half) of them so far in 2009 I should be able to manage this one without too much trouble. I really do enjoy audio books, which I listen to while walking which is about the only exercise I get and I find it very motivating to have an interesting story unfolding in my head as I walk. Again there are easier levels of this challenge for those who are not quite as obsessed as I am so please do join in if you’re at all interested in audio books.

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My main reason for signing up to both challenges is that I am really interested to see what other participants read and listen to as I’m always on the lookout for good reading suggestions. It’s true that I’ve been reading crime fiction almost exclusively for the past couple of years but this hasn’t always been the case and I may just find some recommendations that inspire me to read other genres again. I also like the idea that both challenges will keep me motivated in continuing to read books in a wide variety of settings and in maintaining my exercise regime (I don’t let myself listen to audio books other than when I am walking).

Thankfully I don’t have to list the books I plan to read for either challenge as I want my reading to still be a fluid thing that allows me to respond to whims, recommendations and moods but I’ll certainly be reporting in regularly on my progress for both challenges.

Thanks to both hosts for all the effort of putting these challenges together.

Two cosies and a Christie

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My reading has whisked ahead of my reviewing of late. I’ve been scavenging reading time in between preparing food for festive feasts and managing a few pages at the end of each tiring day but I haven’t found much time to sit in front of a computer. So here’s some mini reviews of the last 3 books I’ve finished to bring me up to date.

The second book in Julie Hyzy’s White House series, Hail to the Chef again features Olivia (Ollie) Paras in the role of Executive Chef at the White House who also manages to become embroiled in the building’s latest security crisis. The White House is subject to several bomb scares during Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday season while the First Lady is being pressured by some old friends to sell a business that she inherited a stake in after her father’s recent death.

The main thing that annoyed me about the first book in the series was the eye-roll inducing dialogue about how world-shatteringly important everything that goes on in the White House is but happily that element was largely absent from this one. The things I liked about the first book are still present though, including the extremely well researched details of the daily activities in the building and the plucky but believable nature of the heroine. The setting also adds to the credibility of this series as it’s a little easier to believe that security threats would be routine events in Washington DC than in the small towns in which many amateur sleuth novels are based. My rating 3.5/5

I also listened to Agatha Christie’s Thirteen at Dinner (originally published as Lord Edgware Dies) narrated by Hugh Fraser who has played Captain Hastings in several of the Agatha Christie’s Poirot TV movies which feature David Suchet as Poirot. It’s a typically complicated Christie plot involving the death of a man whose actress wife, Jane Wilkinson, was seeking a divorce from him. Having been reported at Lord Edgware’s house moments before his death Wilkinson was immediately suspected of his murder by Inspector Jap but proved to have a strong alibi. Even Poirot is confused for some time by the presence of impersonators and liars among the potential suspects but when a second then third murder are committed he finally solves the case.

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot of this story which wasn’t as dated as some of Christie’s can seem and it’s quite nice to see Poirot humbled for a while. I’ve never liked Inspector Jap terribly much but he doesn’t play a huge role and the rest of the characters are interesting. In particular the character of Jane Wilkinson is quite intriguing as she changes over the course of the book.

I’ve listened to several Christie stories narrated by David Suchet and thought it might be interesting to compare this book narrated by Fraser, especially as this story is told from Hastings’ point of view. Surprisingly, because the Suchet narrated stories are wonderful, I found this narration comparable in quality and again found myself quickly lost in the story.  My rating 3.5/5

Valerie Wolzien’s We Wish You a Merry Murder was the last christmas-themed book I’ll be reading until next December. In it housewife Susan Henshaw is up to her eyeballs in visiting mothers-in-law, shopping and preparing for an alarming number of festive events but is also worried about one of her neighbours, Kelly, who seems unable to come to grips with the fact that her ex-husband has married another woman. When they stumble upon his body and that body then disappears before anyone else sees it Susan moves into investigating high-gear.

I have to admit I didn’t really warm to this book. Normally I quite enjoy settings that are different to my own world but collectively the people in this story spend the equivalent of a small country’s GDP on presents and other seasonal paraphernalia (one woman receives a sports car as a gift for example and they all buy expensive gifts for virtually everyone they’ve ever met) and I found this off-putting and distracting as it made it difficult for me to like any of the characters. I also found the plot stretched credibility somewhat as no one in officialdom seemed remotely interested in the reported sighting of a dead man and the solution relied a bit too heavily on random guesswork for my liking. If you’re not turned off by rampant consumerism then give it a go for next Christmas as it’s definitely got lots of Northern Hemisphere seasonal traditions well depicted. My rating 2.5/5.

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I don’t know why I tend to read cosies at this time of year, it’s definitely not all to do with holiday themes although that does play a part. It’s probably got something to do with the fact they tend to be shorter and smaller (easier to carry around). Anyway now that things have slowed down (festively speaking) and I can read more than three pages of a book at a time I’m back to reading darker crime fiction having picked up Asa Larsson’s The Black Path from Mt TBR this morning. What a pity I have to return to work tomorrow.


Review: An English Murder by Louise Doughty

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Title: An English Murder (published originally in the UK as Honey-Dew)

Author: Louise Doughty

Publisher: Dell Publishing [originally 1998, this edition 2001]

ISBN: 0-440-23687-8

Length: 228 pages

Setting: England, present-day

Genre: Whydunnit

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My rating: 2/5

One-liner: An odd little book with the hint of a good idea but lacking anything particularly engaging

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A middle-aged couple is found murdered in their home in their tiny English village and their teenage daughter Gemma is missing. Alison Akenside is a reporter for the local paper who lives in the village and is one of the first on the scene.

According to Doughty’s website this book is a satire of the traditional English mystery but if so it’s using a different definition of the word satire than I’m used to. I certainly missed any comedic element Essentially the book uses a series of vignettes to take us backwards from the murder through the lives of several women involved including Alison, Gemma and both of their mothers. These vignettes are connected loosely by a brief narrative of events following the murder. For me this interesting technique would have worked better if I had been more engaged by the characters but they were a collection of terribly self-absorbed women who I had little curiosity about. A book can survive a complete lack of suspense if there is something else to interest the imagination but knowing who the culprit was from the outset didn’t help maintain my level of engagement with An English Murder.

Review: The Amazing Mrs Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

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Title: The Amazing Mrs Pollifax (the 2nd of 16 Mrs Pollifax novels)

Author: Dorothy Gilman

Narrator: Barbara Ronsenblat

Publisher: Clipper Audio [originally 1970, this edition 2003]

ISBN: 978-184197-896-3

Length: 6hrs 45 minutes

Setting: Turkey, present-day

Genre: Spy novel

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My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A .

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Mrs Emily Pollifax is an unassuming American grandmother who recently became a spy for the CIA. In her second job for The Agency Mrs Pollifax must travel to Istanbul to make contact with a Russian spy, Magda Ferenci-Sabo, who is a double agent for the Americans. However with half the world’s spies descending on Turkey to be the ones to capture the apparently defecting woman to learn her secrets trouble soon finds Mrs Pollifax. Unperturbed she makes use of a series of unlikely allies that she meets in her journey across Turkey while finding and losing Magda Ferenci-Sabo several times and enduring several harrowing near-death experiences.

Despite having an entirely ludicrous premise I found myself thoroughly enjoying this story. Mrs Pollifax is a delightful character who is able to face whatever life throws at her with remarkable aplomb and she befriends a wonderful assortment of quirky people on her journey. There seems to be a decent enough flavour of the time period (my memories of 1970 being those of a 3-year old I can’t be certain) without the book being too dated and there is definitely a sense of the real Turkey depicted. Although it was 20-odd years later I’ve taken the same kind of bus rides as Mrs Pollifax took across that marvellous country and had much the same experiences as were described in the book.

Although unrealistic, the plot hangs together very well and even though you are certain things will all work out for Mrs Pollifax in the end there are enough escapades along the way to offer a decent amount of suspense. If you like realism in your crime fiction then this story isn’t for you but if you like the Amelia Peabody novels or the occasional guaranteed happy ending after a smashing adventure then I can recommend this book. The narrator for this audio version adds an extra half point to my rating as it was excellent and really helped me get lost in the story.

Review: The Fourth Watcher by Timothy Hallinan

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Title: The Fourth Watcher (the 2nd Poke Rafferty novel)

Author: Timothy Hallinan

Publisher: William Morrow [2008]

ISBN: 978-0-06-125725-4

Length: 320 pages

Setting: Bangkok, Thailand, present-day

Genre: Thriller?

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My rating: 4.5/5

One-liner: A fast-paced story with characters to fall in love with. And jokes.

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Poke Rafferty is an American travel writer living in Bangkok and about to settle down with his girlfriend Rose, if she’ll marry him, and his adopted daughter Miaow when things in his life start to go terribly wrong. His father, whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years, arrives in town with Poke’s half-sister and a load of trouble which all lands on Poke’s doorstep and threatens the survival of his new family. To save his family and friends Poke has to bring down a North Korean counterfeit scheme and stop the merciless Chinese Colonel whose retirement savings Poke’s father stole before leaving China.

Going by the book blurb The Fourth Watcher is not really the sort of thing I would expect to like, being more hard-boiled and gangster-y than my usual reading. Which is why I try my hardest not to judge a book by its blurb. Because I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Hallinan captures the weather and the noise and the people of Bangkok perfectly with his simple but wonderfully descriptive writing so you really do feel transported to this exotic location. On top of that there are terrific characters who, though far from perfect, are the sort of people you can’t wait to learn more about and when you do you spend the rest of the book wishing fervently for their survival against the odds. At the centre of things Poke Rafferty is credibly complex as the gruff ex-pat writer who has fallen in love with a country, a woman and a child and watching him realise just how important these people are to him and the lengths he’ll go to in order to ensure their safety is an exercise in satisfying character development. I also adored his relationship with policeman Arthit which is full of sarcastic humour and deep respect in equal parts. Rose, a chain-smoking ex-prostitute who now runs a domestic agency, is a delight being neither too saccharine nor too sharp and Miaow manages to be fragile and strong at exactly the same time and if she doesn’t tug at your heart-strings then it’s unlikely you have a heart at all.

The storyline could have tended towards the sleazy or cheesy but did neither because Hallinan really is a terrific writer. He throws in humour and excitement and sadness at all the right moments and avoids all the clichés nicely. I did struggle a teensy bit to keep track of the final complicated swirl of events that enabled Poke to be reunited with all his loved ones but this is a minor criticism of an otherwise excellent book that will appeal to lovers of edge-of-your-seat thrillers and those who like characters with depth and warmth in abundance.

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The Fourth Watcher is the second book to feature Poke Rafferty. The first was A Nail Through the Heart and the third, Breathing Water, was published earlier this year. I shall be tracking them both down.

The Fourth Watcher has also been reviewed at Cheryl’s Book Nook

Crime Fiction Alphabet – L is for Lost

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We’re nearly half-way through the Crime Fiction Alphabet and I’m highlighting my favourite book by former Australian ghost-writer turned crime fiction author Michael Robotham. It’s the second of Robotham’s four loosely related books which feature several of the same characters but in each one a different person takes centre stage. Lost opens with Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz having been shot and nearly drowned in the Thames. He has also lost his memory of the previous days in which critical events took place in a kidnapping case that has tormented him for three years.

Obviously amnesia isn’t a new plot device but it’s used with great skill here. The way Ruiz re-creates the events conveys his frustration and fear beautifully. The story cracks along at a rapid pace while at the same time including detail and back story where necessary so that the characters are wonderfully complex. Robotham is a dab hand at getting to the nub of writing people because even minor characters that only appear for a page or two are so perfectly depicted that you quickly develop a real sense of them. For fans of Robotham’s earlier novel, Suspect, this book provides an enjoyable opportunity to meet up with Joe O’Loughlin again, although this time he is more competent professional than the rattled major-crime suspect he was in the earlier outing.

Michael Robotham takes risks with his crime writing and while it doesn’t always pay off equally well I applaud his approach. Rather than sticking with what can be formulaic series-writing he tries new things and makes each book different from its predecessor and, as someone who has tired of many series due to their predictability, I really appreciate that.

You can read the first chapter of Lost at Michael Robotham’s website.

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My previous entries in the Crime Fiction Alphabet are

Another Christmas title – Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood

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I had planned to wrestle Kerry Greenwood’s Forbidden Fruit from Mt TBR on the lazy long weekend following Christmas day but recently learned it’s set at Christmas time so thought I’d settle down with it in the lead up to the holiday instead.

Although branded crime fiction it’s stretching the bounds of the genre’s definition to call it that. There’s not a dead body in sight and until the last few pages there’s not even a hint that a single crime has been committed. The fifth book in Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman series sees her boyfriend Daniel, a private investigator, trying to trace the whereabouts of two teenage runaways. The girl, Brigid, is heavily pregnant. Of course Corinna becomes involved in the search in between running her successful bakery, fending off a troupe of carol-singing vegans who are opposed to all the companion animals that share the apartment block where most of the book’s characters live and dealing with a donkey addicted to her rose-syrup flavoured muffins.

Given that there’s no real crime or detecting going on and given that much of the action is of the incidental, non-plot developing kind I can appreciate this reviewer’s disappointed response to the book. However I like this series. I enjoy the odd assortment of characters and the way the series celebrates a whole range of lifestyles and doesn’t just feature the traditional families and loner alcoholics that populate much of crime fiction. In lots of ways it reflects my own real world environment and I appreciate dipping into the lives of these people every now and again. Even so, I don’t think this is the best example of the series given that its plot is so weak in comparison to the other books in the series. (I’ve rated it a 3 out 5).

For Christmas-y ness though the book has some unique things to offer. Being set in Melbourne, Australia the book really does a great job of depicting a Southern Hemisphere Christmas where often scorching heat replaces chilly snow. I don’t think Northern Hemisphere dwellers (except perhaps native Californians) really appreciate how tedious all the frosty snowmen and dreaming of white Christmases can be when it’s often hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement on Christmas morning. And Corinna, who hates the trappings of Christmas but can get into the spirit of things when pressed, depicts a fairly realistic attitude to the season. The ending of the book, with its nativity references abounding, is a bit too cheesy even for me but overall I still enjoyed catching up with Corinna and her good-hearted friends once again.

I reviewed the first three books in this series in a single post last November and the most recent book, Trick or Treat, back in January.

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol narrated by Tim Curry

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This book has been included once already for the Suggest a Christmas title meme but I hope allowances can be made for Dickens to be included twice. To make things a little different I am suggesting a new audio version of the book, wonderfully narrated by actor Tim Curry.

I don’t suppose there are many people who aren’t familiar with the basic outline of A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being A Ghost Story of Christmas which was first published in 1843. Miserly and bitter old Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and the ghosts of Christmases past, present and those yet to come in an effort to remind Scrooge of his own more innocent times then show him what might eventuate if he doesn’t change his ways. But if all you know of this story comes from one of its many cheesy and inane film adaptations then I would urge you to read the book instead. It’s a damned good story with more than a hint of darkness and Dickens’ ever-present social conscience. It is also beautifully written, as evidenced by our introduction to Scrooge himself:

Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.  The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.  A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.  He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

Can anyone point to any of the movies that did half as good a job of painting a picture of horrid old Scrooge?

The original unabridged story narrated beautifully by Tim Curry is currently available free to audible subscribers but if you can’t get your ears on that then curl up with a print version of the book and enjoy.

Review: Blood in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope

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Title: Blood in the Cotswolds (the 5th Thea Osborne mystery)

Author: Rebecca Tope

Narrator: Caroline Lennon

Publisher: Isis Audio Books [2008]

ISBN: N/A (downloaded via audible)

Length: 8hrs 54mins

Setting: The Cotswolds region of England, present-day

Genre: Amateur sleuth / police procedural

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My rating: 3/5

One-liner: A gentle English village murder mystery that delivers exactly what you expect.

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Thea Osborne is a historian and house-sitter whose current job takes her to the village of Temple Guiting. Her boyfriend, senior policeman Phil Hollis, joins her for the weekend but while there slips a disc in his back and has to stay on longer to recuperate. He is therefore present when a large tree is uprooted and a skeleton is uncovered. The bones turn out to be relatively recent and a full-blown murder investigation ensues, though Hollis is on sick leave and has to sit painfully on the sidelines while the official investigation is carried out.

My primary reason for selecting this book was fond memories of staying in the Cotswolds several times (although no blood was spilled during my trips there) and in that respect I was not disappointed. The story’s village setting is depicted exactly as I imagined where any crime is relatively gentle and the suspect pool consists of a handful of characters who share complicated family connections and long histories and everyone is very civilised. Even when one of the suspects holds one of the protagonists at gunpoint it’s all done in quite a gentlemanly way and it never feels like anyone is in much actual danger of getting hurt. To take one’s mind off the criminal element there’s a pet snake, snippets of Templar history and an English version of a hot summer (where I live several days of 28°C-30°C temperatures would qualify as a cool change during our summers).

Thea Osborne is quite a strong female character, especially as her civil libertarian leanings are at odds with her boyfriend’s job and she doesn’t automatically fall into a nursemaid role when Hollis is injured but Hollis is a bit wet. Having experienced the same back injury myself I can appreciate that the author has captured his pain and frustration well but there is a limit to how interesting someone else’s ailments can be and, for me anyway, that limit was reached before the end of this book.

Although it was a pleasant enough tale it didn’t really have anything terribly original to offer but if you’re a fan of Misdomer Murders I think you’d probably enjoy this book. If you like audio books I can recommend this narration as Caroline Lennon does a rather good job of drawing you into the story and differentiating the characters in an understated way that suits the tone of the story.

Review: Death, Lies and Apple Pies by Valerie S Malmont

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Title: Death, Lies, and Apple Pies

Author: Valerie S Malmont

Publisher: Dell Books [1997]

ISBN: 0-440-22634-1

Length: 280 pages

Setting: The fictional village of Lickin Creek, Pennsylvania, present-day

Genre: Amateur sleuth / cosy

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My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A fast-paced, light read with fun characters.

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Tori Miracle is a struggling horror author in New York who plans a week-long vacation in Lickin Creek Pennsylvania with her beau who is the town’s Sheriff, Garnet Gochenauer. On her first night in town one of the residents dies in her arms, but not before whispering that he was poisoned. Tori can’t make Garnet or the town’s doctor or anyone else believe the man died of anything other than natural causes so she starts investigating on her own. In the process she visits the town’s enigmatic herbalist, learns about plans for a nuclear waste dump in the town and uncovers a potentially historically significant graveyard.

This book has everything you’d expect in a cosy: a motley collection of quirky characters, a decently plotted if slightly absurd story and an amusing protagonist who hasn’t got the common sense of a 3 year-old (but if cosy protagonists were sensible there wouldn’t be cosies). I particularly enjoyed the exotic (to me) setting of the small Appalachian town (the local linguistic oddities that Tori explained as she went along were quite fascinating) and the fact that issues like the environmental and economic impacts of a waste dump weren’t just glossed over.

The story was fast-paced and kept my attention through a day of back-strain inducing queues and noisy waiting rooms (which is a task that other books have tried and failed) and is recommended as a light but far from silly read.