Monthly Archives: March 2010

Review: Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie

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I have set myself a mini challenge to ‘read’ all the Agatha Christie books that I can find in audio format narrated by David Suchet and the latest to find its way onto my iPod is Sad Cypress, a novel I can’t remember ever having read before though I often claim to have read all the Christie novels featuring Poirot. One of the joys of old-ish age is that old books become new again :)

Sad Cypress opens in a court scene at the trial of Elinor Carlisle for the murder of Mary Gerrard. In the dock Elinor starts to reflect on events which have led up to this moment and readers are taken back to when she received an anonymous letter suggesting that a young lady is ingratiating herself with Elinor’s bedridden Aunt Laura with the aim of being left the considerable fortune that Aunt Laura possesses. Elinor and her Aunt’s nephew by marriage, Roddy,  to whom she has just become engaged leave London for Maidensford and find that Aunt Laura has become very fond of Mary Gerrard, the lodgekeeper’s daughter. Although they leave things unresolved for the moment a further stroke leads to another visit during which Aunt Laura dies.  Activities involving the subsequent winding up of her estate ultimately lead to Mary Gerrard’s death and the arrest of Elinor for her murder. Hercule Poirot is called in by the village doctor, Peter Lord, who is somewhat smitten with Elinor and wants her acquitted.

As usual with the best Christie tales the intricate plot is the standout feature of Sad Cypress. Although one always knows that the obvious answer cannot be the real solution everything points to Elinor’s guilt and I did wonder how Ms Christie (or M. Poirot) would work their way out of this particular corner. The resolution is clever and, at least by me, unexpected. The final portion of the book took readers back to the courtroom where the case for the defense is laid out and we see what Poirot made of all the odd little facts he has accumulated with his seemingly random conversations with all the players in the drama. I did find the ending a bit drawn out with several unnecessary repetitions of key information.

I’m struck once again by the themes that recur in Christie’s work including her observations of how different classes of English society rub along together and her depiction of the damage that old family secrets can do. Although I sometimes find her characterisations a bit dated and stereotypical here she does an above average job of depicting interesting and believable people and Poirot seemed to be at his best: egotistical but not over the top.

Finally, I’ll admit that though I (alone) voted for Peter Ustinov as the best Poirot (but only in Death on the Nile) I am myself smitten with David Suchet’s narration of Christie books. He makes reading them a delight.

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My rating 3.5/5

Narrator: David Suchet; Publisher: Harper Collins [this edition 2007, original edition 1940]; ISBN:n/a; Length 6 hrs; Setting: England, 1940′s.

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For a far more professional and insightful look at Sad Cyrpess check out the excellent post from Margot Kinberg at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist who chose this book as her contribution to the letter S in the Crime Fiction Alphabet. The book has also been reviewed at Melissa’s Bookshelf .

The other books I’ve listened to so far in my mini-challenge of David Suchet narrated audio books are

and, for comparative purposes

Crime Fiction Alphabet – X is for X Esquire

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OK I admit it I am beaten. In homage to Sue Grafton I attempted to put together a crime fiction alphabet of one word titles (of books I have read) but the dastardly letter X has stumped me. Though I have seen this title written with a hyphen: does that count?

Leslie Charteris published his first book, X Esquire, in 1927. You don’t have to look too hard to see the genesis of the series Charteris’ is most famous for featuring Simon Templar (a.k.a. The Saint) which started two books later. X Esquire starred a chap by the name of Terry Mannering who took it upon himself to knock off some evil doers who were attempting to flood Britain with poisonous cigarettes (more poisonous than usual that is). Signing himself anonymously X, esquire in his communiqué’s Mannering matched wits with an unconventional Scotland Yard detective by the name of Bill Kennedy who also appeared in Charteris’ second novel.

If the world is divided into Bond fans and Saint fans then I am definitely in the second camp. I suspect it’s because my older brother had all the books in a box which he inherited from some distant male relative and never looked at but I slowly worked my way through them when I’d run out of everything else to read and it wasn’t time to go back to the library yet.

One of the useless (unless I’m at the right quiz night) facts swimming around my brain is that Charteris had a Chinese father and was therefore excluded from gaining residency in the US under something called the Chinese Exclusion Act until an act of Congress granted him and his daughter permanent residency. If you want to know more about the man and his works check out Leslie Charteris and the Saint: An Appreciation at the excellent Shots Magazine website.

Review: Death in a Far Country by Patricia Hall

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Police in Bradfield struggle to identify the body of a young woman found in a canal. While DCI Michael Thackeray, newly returned to work after leave to recover from an injury, is busy getting the investigation underway his girlfriend Laura Ackroyd, the features editor for the local paper, becomes involved with reporting on the local football team’s unexpected success. Eventually (and not at all surprisingly) the interests of the two meet when someone identifies that the dead girl was seen at a function held at the football club. Laura becomes even more embroiled in the case when she runs across a young woman who is an illegal immigrant and this gets her into trouble with her boyfriend.

The only other Thackeray and Ackroyd book I’ve read is Devil’s Game which is two books after this one in the long running series and I must say there’s quite a difference between the two. In my review for Devil’s Game I remarked on how refreshing it was to come across a series book that didn’t require prior knowledge of the characters and events in their lives but the same cannot be said for Death in a Far Country. A good deal of it is devoted to what everyone would say at an official inquiry that was being held into events which took place in a previous book and I found this quite distracting as I didn’t know what had happened and couldn’t work out much apart from the fact Michael Thackeray must have been injured. The rest of the plot was perfectly serviceable but I have to say it held few surprises and tackled its disturbing themes, including human trafficking, fairly superficially.

The characters are all quite believable though I didn’t really warm to any of them particularly. Michael Thackeray seemed almost eager to think the worst of his girlfriend and was quite unable to see things from her point of view though he expected her to see his point of view always. I thought the author was struggling to know what to do with Laura who at times was a strong-minded woman and at other times seemed particularly insipid. But my impression was tarnished a bit by the fact that quite a lot of the scenes involving Laura were to do with the events of the previous book that I had no knowledge of.

I know it’s difficult for writers of series to maintain the balance between keeping old fans happy and engaging new readers who haven’t read all the previous books but I thought this book did a pretty poor job of achieving that balance. However, having thoroughly enjoyed the later book I read I will give Patricia Hall another go.

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My rating 2.5/5

Narrator: Michael Tudor Barns; Publisher: ISIS Audio Books [2007]; ISBN: n/a; Length 8hrs 40mins; Setting:England, present-day.

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Death in a Far Country has been reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence

Review: Awakening by S J Bolton

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I picked up Awakening a couple of nights ago and planned to read for 10 minutes before heading to bed. Before I knew it I was on page 162, had a crick in my neck from sitting so still and was semi-seriously pondering whether I could call in sick the next day. I’m not (quite) that irresponsible but I did stay up way too late the next night because I simply had  to  know. It’s been a while since a book hooked me like this and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Awakening is set in a small English village. One morning, Clara Benning, a wildlife vet who lives in the village, receives a desperate plea for help from a neighbour who reports a snake has made its way into her baby’s cot. Unfortunately, incidents involving snakes only increase and become more dangerous and Clara gets caught up in events in a quite terrifying way.  I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot because one of the things that made the book so gripping for me was that I didn’t know anything about what to expect next and if you should choose to read the book you should have the same chance. All I’ll say is that it was full of suspense and unexpected turns and it’s one of very, very few of the many 500+ page books I’ve read recently that I haven’t mentally edited as I read.

Another  aspect of the book that hooked me was Clara, from whose perspective the story is told. She’s clever and brave but a bit of a curmudgeon (though a young one) which would all be good enough but there’s an additional element provided by her badly scarred face.  Bolton has done a terrific job of depicting how the presence of the scarring has influenced Clara’s development and behaviour and choices in life and I found myself interested in Clara for her own sake as well as for her contribution to plot development.

There are some other good characters, including the local Assistant Superintendent and a Steve Irwin-style reptile expert and documentary maker but the other ‘character’ that really stands out is the village itself. It’s people as a collective and a dark event in its history play a key role in the story which is yet another reminder that rural life isn’t always as idyllic as the postcards would have us city girls believe.

I enjoyed S J Bolton’s first book, Sacrifice, but found Awakening even better. Once again Bolton has created a credible picture of a remote setting, filled it with interesting people and has elevated her storytelling abilities to an even better art form.

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My rating 5/5

Publisher: Transworld [2009]; ISBN: 9780552156141; Length 538  pages; Setting: England, present-day.

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Awakening has also been reviewed at Euro Crime and at D J’s Krimiblog where Dorte explains how she experienced a credibility issue with the book that spoiled it a bit for her.

Where’s my filter Google?

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I use Google Reader to view all my blog and mainstream media subscriptions. When I’m very busy, as has been the case over the past few days I tend to it pile up as reading these articles is an activity reasonably low down on my list of priorities. As I subscribe to a fairly large number of feeds, it doesn’t take long for there to be hundreds of unread articles awaiting my attention and what I invariably do at such times is click mark all as read.

But what I’d really like is for Google to filter out the posts I know I won’t want to read, leaving behind the stuff that interests me. Then instead of 891 unread items I’d only be facing the 10% or so of articles with content I know I’m interested which is a far more manageable number to peruse at my leisure.

And no I’m not expecting Google to read my mind (like they can’t do that anyway with all the information I give them one way or another).

But they could come close. For example I could filter out a heap of posts from the book blogs I love. For me most of the meme posts are immediately deleted (Teaser Tuesday and Library Loot and that sort of thing*). Nor do I read the author interviews, blog tours and posts about book giveaways that I invariably can’t enter because I live in Australia. I do adore book reviews and opinion pieces though.

The news sources I subscribe to tend to offer broad subject feeds like sport, news and entertainment when I want much more granularity so that I can weed out the 99% of sports news that relates to football or cricket and read the 1% of articles about tennis and swimming.

Technology is supposed to make my life easier but at the moment it just feels like it’s cluttering up my life. If anyone knows of a better RSS reader that offers genuine filtering of the kind I’ve mentioned drop me a comment.

*I really don’t mean to offend anyone who creates such memes or loves participating in them. I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist or that people shouldn’t post for those memes, they just don’t interest me.

Review: Bold Blood by Lindy Kelly

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For my sixth book in the 2010 Global Challenge I chose the debut adult novel by New Zealand author Lindy Kelly. I first read about the book on the excellent Crime Watch blog from Kiwi crime fiction fan and journalist Craig Sisterson.

Caitlin Summerfield rushes home to Nelson on New Zealand’s South Island when she hears her mother is in a coma. Despite being a doctor there’s not much she can do for her mother’s health but she can take care of her farm. Shirley Summerfield, along with five other businesses, is in competition for a lucrative contract to provide eventing horses to an American outfit so Caitlin, helped by the farm’s neighbour Dom and a young girl who loves horses, Kasey, attempts to keep things afloat until her mother is back on her feet. Unfortunately it seems one of the competitors is using dirty tricks to get rid of the competition and a series of ‘accidents’ and near misses befall Caitlin and the horses.

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the characters in Bold Blood who, apart from the killer(s), all seem like people you wouldn’t mind meeting in real life which is not always the case in crime fiction, even with the good guys. Caitlin’s homecoming is traumatic as she doesn’t have a good relationship with her mother and she is reminded everywhere she turns of her father and younger brother who both died years earlier. Despite this though she gets stuck into the work that needs to be done and is very practical and appears to be just the sort of woman you’d want in a crisis. Dom and Kasey share similar troublesome issues with at least one parent each yet are both optimistic people who display a good dose of humour in the face of adversity which is one of my favourite things about the book. Jean is a wise older woman who has been like a mother to Caitlin and she adds a nice dimension to the book though it annoyed me that she kept trying to mend the rift between Caitlin and her mother when common sense would suggest letting sleeping dogs lie.

The main story is well crafted and, especially towards the end, very exciting. However as a mystery it’s not terribly complex (a simple process of elimination really) and while I wouldn’t quite call it a ‘cosy’ there’s not much of a procedural element to speak of either. However the people were interesting enough and events unfolded at such a pace that I was always keen to find out what would happen next to all the characters, including the poor horses. I like to see worlds different to my own depicted in fiction so enjoyed learning about the different aspects of eventing, which I assume were shown realistically as Kelly is a former participant in the sport. Very occasionally the book goes overboard with insider jargon and for me there’s a bit too much time devoted to pairing all the players off neatly in a romantic sense but these are minor quibbles with an otherwise solid story.

The book had something of a sense of its New Zealand setting including some glimpses into elements of Maori culture and some mentions of local wildlife but in the main I thought we could have been in any farming or ‘horsey’ community in the world. Though perhaps I am not familiar enough* with the place to have picked up on other things with are particularly New Zealand-ish.

Bold Blood is a fast-paced and entertaining tale with many likable characters and a humourous feel. I’d especially recommend it for animal loving readers and those who like a dash of romance with their crime.

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My rating 3.5/5

Publisher: Harper Collins [2009]; ISBN: 9781869507336; Length 288  pages; Setting: New Zealand, present-day.

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*Yes I know it’s the closest country to me but, due entirely to my own appalling choice of boyfriends and having nothing to do with the beautiful country or its friendly people, I once spent a perfectly horrid holiday in New Zealand and tend towards panic attacks if anyone ever suggests me going back.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – W is for Watchdog

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I’ve chosen a cosy by Laurien Berenson for this week’s contribution to the Crime Fiction Alphabet. Watchdog is the fifth of 15 books in Berenson’s series featuring Melanie Travis: a special education teacher and new-ish owner of a show-quality standard poodle called Faith. In this outing Melanie’s brother Frank has gone into a shonky moneymaking scheme with a property developer named Marcus Rattigan and when Rattigan is killed Frank becomes the number one suspect. Wanting to clear her brother’s name (and of course not trusting the police to be able to find a single clue as is the way of things in cosy-land) Melanie soon discovers Rattigan had an angry ex-wife, an unhappy mistress and a swag of residents who are none to keen on Rattigan’s aim to ‘yuppify’ their neighbourhood.

The series isn’t likely to set the world on fire but it is well written, solidly paced and, most important for my cosy reading, full of gentle humour. Melanie’s Aunt Peg is a judge of champion poodles and Melanie’s staunchest supporter. She’s a great character and, for my money, funnier and more interesting than Stephanie Plum’s loopy grandmother. Melanie is a single mum (though she does have a love interest) with lots of irons in the fire and her juggling of work, family and poodles is credibly portrayed. I grew up in a dog-showing household and the antics and obsessions of dog showing fanatics depicted here are very realistic and offer lots of humorous potential. My recommendation for a lazy afternoon for dog lovers who can see the funny side of their obsession is to read Watchdog then check out Best in Show (a comedy movie about dog shows).

Review: Hardball by Sara Paretsky

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While I don’t wait with quite the anticipation I used to have for a new V I Warshawski novel, I do still have a soft spot for the first female character I ever identified with in a work of crime fiction and so borrowed Hardball from the library recently.

In the thirteenth novel to feature Chicago private detective V.I. Warshawski she is hired by a pair of elderly sisters to find their son/nephew Lamont Gadsden who disappeared 40 years previously during a wild winter storm that brought the city to a halt. V.I. reluctantly agrees to take on the case despite her misgivings about the huge time gap since the Gadsden was last seen and his probable involvement with the Anacondas, one of the city’s roughest street gangs which remains active though its leader is in prison. Just as she embarks on the investigation which takes her back through the city’s history and that of her own family, V.I.’s young cousin Petra arrives in the city to work on the senate campaign of an old friend of her father’s and soon becomes embroiled in V.I.’s life.

As I mentioned in a post last year I was a huge fan of the early novels in this series but had grown a little weary of the unrelenting lecturing to be found in the later installments. Happily in Hardball though the politics is present it’s not nearly as strident as in novels like Blacklist and, more importantly, is woven into the tale as it should be: with deft characterisations and great storytelling rather than the repeated bludgeoning with Important Messages that occurred in a couple of the previous novels.  The novel does tackle tough subjects such as police corruption and institutional racism but these themes are woven into an intriguing tale that contains an unorthodox mix of characters and links the present day back to the late 1960′s when racial tensions were high. The book is all the more poignant because of  its very realistic portrayal of this part of history.

As always V.I. is far from perfect, being quick to let her anger show and one of the most stubborn women on earth, but far more believable because of her imperfections. To balance things out she’s fiercely loyal, smart and almost bursting with a social conscience that she translates into practical action in a way that I imagine many of us would envy. In Hardball her working class family’s history, a constant theme across the series, is further revealed as her now dead father’s early years on the police force are highlighted and, toughest of all for V.I., his integrity is questioned. Paretsky has always done a terrific job of showing snippets of V.I.’s past to reveal how it is she has grown into the woman she is and this book adds beautifully to that character development. None of the familiar people in V.I.’s life do much more than make appearances in Hardball which might be a little disappointing for die-hard fans. However young Petra, a new character to the series, is introduced nicely and without the older person’s disdain for the youth of today that populates many novels by ‘people of a certain age’. I imagine Petra might just have done enough of interest to make a return in future books.

This is a return to Paretsky’s finest form and was a thoroughly unexpected treat for me. It’s pure guesswork on my part but I suspect that Paretsky’s own anger at the world and its many injustices has diminished a smidgen since the changeover in the American presidency and it is perhaps this that has enabled her to return to the high standards of her original work. Whatever the reason I’d highly recommend Hardball to both fans of the early Warshawksi novels and those who’ve always been curious about the series but don’t have the energy to start with the first book as it can easily stand on its own. I could not put this down for the last 150 or so pages and am now eagerly anticipating the next book which according to Paretsky’s blog is to be called Body Works and is well under way (you can read chapter 1 here).

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My rating 4.5/5

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton [2009]; ISBN: 9780340839157; Length 446  pages; Setting: Chicago, USA, present-day.

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Hardball has also been reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence

Review: A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley

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A human body that has been picked over by hyenas is found near a resort in a remote part of Botswana. There are few clues to the person’s identity other than it’s a white person. Assistant Superintendent David ‘Kubu’ Bengu needs to use all his ingenuity to find out who the person is and how they ended up in such a predicament. His investigations take him in many directions including to the most influential company in the country which incorporates diamond mines among its many interests.

The character of Kubu is one the outstanding features of this novel. He is a happily married, opera-loving, overweight chap whose childhood nickname of Kubu (meaning hippo) has stuck through to his adulthood. He is also a tenacious and clever detective who is willing to access help from whatever source he can find it. Although he does have a couple of odd quirks that crime writers love to give their protagonists (singing opera while driving across the country for example), Kubu is still a very natural and realistic character. He gets on well with his boss (who is neither a moron nor a monster) and even hosts a dinner party with his wife Joy for family and friends. Such things are perfectly normal in real life but stood out for me here as being the kind of thing you don’t see a lot of in crime fiction.

Given that I primarily read A Carrion Death as part of my fulfillment for the 2010 Global Challenge I was pleased it evoked such a sense of its location. The vast distances that Kubu has to travel in order to carry out his investigations and the remote desert setting for several key events acted together to give a strong sense of the relatively sparsely populated and land-locked country. Although in some ways it is quite different to the country depicted in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series the importance given to all family relationships is a common trait between the two Botswanas. Here the family element is demonstrated repeatedly, most memorably for me when Kubu travels to South Africa and observes many beggars which he says would never happen in his country as people would be too ashamed to let even distant relations resort to such measures.

The book did suffer a little from ‘first book syndrome’ where every idea the authors had seemed to be thrown into the mix with the consequence that some of the threads were not terribly well thought through or relevant (the witchdoctor for example really added neither local flavour nor plot development). Tighter editing of these portions and the several repetitions of ‘the case to date’ segments might have made a dent in the book’s excessive length which would, in my humble opinion, have made it a better product. However the complex story does unfold well, including the time jumps in the first third of the novel, and the main thread is resolved in a manner in keeping with the rest of the story which is becoming something of a rarity these days.

Michael Stanley is a pseudonym for two authors, Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, but however they apportion the writing tasks their collaboration appeared seamless to me. A Carrion Death is a thoroughly enjoyable romp of a tale and you’d be hard pressed not warm to the character of Kubu. I’m certainly looking forward to reading the second novel in the series soon.

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My rating 4/5

Publisher: Headline [2008]; ISBN: 9780755344062; Length 557 pages; Setting: Botswana, present-day.

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A Carrion Death has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise and at Euro Crime

Am I a traitor to my gender?

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Daisy Goodwin, the Chair of the judging panel for this year’s Orange Prize for women’s fiction, has made a bit of a media splash with the announcement of this year’s longlist today. Several of the UK papers including The Independent and The Guardian are quoting Goodwin as saying that she despaired over the number of the submitted novels (129) which were what she termed ‘misery memoirs’. Covering such topics as rape, bereavement and child abuse a lot of the novels, according to Goodwin, were lacking any pleasurable or joyful element.

I just want to say thank you Daisy. I don’t know you from the proverbial bar of soap but thank you from the bottom of my heart for expressing what I have been feeling for several years now.

Ever since I poured a jug of water over my copy of Helen Garner’s The Spare Room at my face to face book club a couple of years ago I’ve virtually stopped reading all ‘literary fiction’ written by women. To be fair it wasn’t the worst example of the ‘misery memoir’ that we read over our years of meeting but it was, for me, the last straw (it tells the story of two women, one of whom has terminal cancer and comes to stay with her acquaintance and however powerful the prose might be there isn’t a laugh or a smile to be found). “LIGHTEN UP”  I wanted to scream, “I know cancer is not a day at the beach but do you really think you are helping?”

I ought not to make disparaging generalisations about my gender (there are others who will do that for us) but this trend for grim despair isn’t all the fault of writers and publishers. Someone is buying the gloomy tomes and I’m pretty confident it’s not the blokes.

I’ll finish up before I start laying into Oprah (is not her blasted book club at least partly to blame?) with the hopeful thought that with someone of Daisy’s opinions on this matter guiding the choices for this year’s longlist it might be safe for me to venture back to the ‘literature by women’ shelves without needing a new prescription of Prozac.