Monthly Archives: November 2010

The Aussie Readers Group Summer Reading Challenge

Posted on by
7

The Good Reads Aussie Readers Group of which I am a member has posed a summer reading challenge in which the aim is to read books from at least 5 of the 10 listed categories from 1 Dec 2010 to 28 Feb 2011. As I’m making a concerted effort to get my ridiculous TBR pile under control (it’s teetering near 200 now) I’m using the challenge as a prompt to read books I already own. I’ve made some predictions about what I might read below though reserve the right to swap some titles depending on my mood.

1. Celebrate Australia! Choose one book from our Aussie Readers group bookshelf from your preferred genre shelf). Of the 263 books listed on the crime fiction shelf these are the ones sitting unread on my own shelves or eReader. I will pick one for this leg of the challenge

  • Lindy Cameron – Bleeding Hearts, Blood Guilt and Redback
  • Garry Disher – Snapshot
  • Brian Kavanagh – A Canterbury Crime
  • Gabrielle Lord – Lethal Factor
  • Michael MacConnell – Maelstrom
  • P D Martin – Kiss of Death and Coming Home
  • Leigh Redhead – Rubdown
  • Kel Robertson – Dead Set
  • Michael Robotham – Bombproof
  • Felicity Young  - Harum Scarum

2. Lighten the load! We’ve all been complaining about it. Those mountainous TBR shelves! Choose one book from your TBR list. As I’m doing the whole challenge from my TBR I’ll pick another title from the above list of Aussie crime writers for this leg of the challenge.

3. Choose a book that’s been made into (or referenced in) a movie, TV series or play. Robert Harris’The Ghost has been on my TBR for about 18 months, a movie was released earlier this year though I didn’t see it.

4. Choose a book with a word related to Summer in the title (e.g. Summer, heat, beach, holidays etc., I‘m sure you can think of many examples). My TBR pile must subconsciously reflect my tastes in other areas of my life because I hate the beach and other things summery so I’ll have to read my lone appropriate title which is Simon Brett’s Body on the Beach.

5. Oprah’s visiting Australia in December. Pick a book from one of the following two Oprah Book Lists: Complete List of Oprah‘s Book Club Books or ‘O’ Magazine’s Summer Reading List 2010 (20 books). I’m going to skip this one. Frankly neither she nor her recommendations for reading hold any interest for me and I am already sick of hearing about her impending visit to our shores.

6. A few of our group members have just had a baby or are due any second! To help them celebrate choose a new release book from 2010 or 2011 to read. I have a bunch of new releases I could choose but will probably not be able to wait much longer before I listen to, Rolling Thunder, the last (so far) of Chris Grabenstein’s wonderful John Ceepak novels narrated by Jeff Woodman which was released a few months ago.

7. Uh Oh!! It’s Schoolies week!!!! Lock up your kids and choose a YA novel to read or a book that features some teenage characters. I don’t have any YA books TBR but I believe the main character’s newly adopted teenage daughters feature quite heavily in the second of Tom Rob Smith’s book, The Secret Speech, which has been sitting on my shelves for far too long.

8. Ho Ho Ho! Santa’s on his way… Choose a book that has a Christmas/Winter theme or reference to Christmas/Winter/Cold/Ice/Snow in the Title, story or cover. Although I am well-known for my Scrooge-ness I usually end up reading a Christmas-y book or two each year and have got Cleo Coyle’s Holiday Grind set aside to read this December.

9. Have you checked out the excellent Literature Map Website? Type in the name of a favourite author, choose the author closest to him/her and select one of their books to read. I chose to input the author Elly Griffiths who is a new favourite of mine with only 2 books to her name. Only a handful of authors appeared in the results but one was Michael Connelly and people have been telling me to read more of him for ages. I will either read The Overlook which I recently mooched or listen to The Brass Verdict which is ready for download in my audible library.

10. It’s Valentine’s Day in February! Choose a book with a touch of Romance. I don’t have a romantic bone in my body (whereas I often feel murderous) but perhaps the second installment of Ariana Franklin’s Adelia Aguilar series, A Serpent’s Tale, might count? The first novel certainly had a romantic thread and I believe this is carried into the next book. Otherwise I might have to skip this one.

You don’t have to be Australian to join the Aussie Readers Group so feel free to join in the fun.

Review: My Soul to Take by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Posted on by
7

The second novel to feature Icelandic lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir opens with a chilling prologue from 1945 in which a young child appears is locked in some kind of cellar. The story proper takes place in contemporary times when Thóra is asked by the owner of a health spa, Jónas Júlíusson, to see if she can renegotiate the property’s sale price because it is haunted which is affecting staff and guests. When the architect working on the property’s extension is murdered and Jónas becomes a suspect her legal skills are tested. She and German lover Matthew, in Iceland for a holiday, investigate both the murder and its possible relationship to events from the past which may also explain the property’s haunting.

As with the first book in this series, Last Rituals, the most enjoyable aspect of this novel with much to offer is the dry, slightly cynical approach to life displayed by Thóra. Whether she is tackling the prickly staff and guests of the health spa or handling her problematic family which includes a 16-year old son who is about to make her a grandmother, Thóra is independent, inventive and witty. I suspect it’s no secret to regular readers of this blog that I like my female characters to be strong and interesting and Thóra is a definite favourite. The other characters, of which there are a plethora, are not quite so well developed and in particular I’d like to have seen Matthew do a bit more than tag along with Thóra playing the quirky but largely silent love-interest. That said, the dialogue between the two is terrific and its wholly natural feel is part of the evidence of an excellent, nuanced translation.

My Soul to Take is extremely well-plotted, linking present-day events with those of the past very cleverly and in a way that keeps the reader fully engaged. The book was a however little too long at 450+ pages and I think some of that length might have been saved by the inclusion of an old-fashioned family history chart to prevent the need for several repetitions of the complicated familial relationships involved in the events of the past. In the main though the traditional whodunnit with a pool of suspects who all seem to have hidden secrets is first-rate and the incorporation of a possible ghost and ‘those bloody Nazis who always make an appearance’ add nice touches.

I am a sucker for books that make me laugh at the same time as telling me a great story and so far Sigurdardottir’s series does both. Particularly with regard to its plot I think My Soul to Take is an improvement on its predecessor (which was a very good debut) and I’m very keen to read the third novel, Ashes to Dust, which happily for me has already been released (at least in the UK). A combination of a strong female character, intricate plot and dry humour is to be celebrated, especially when of this quality.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My Soul to Take has been reviewed at DJs Krimiblog, Euro Crime and Reviewing the Evidence

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Translators Bernard Scudder and Anna Yates
Publisher Hodder [this translation 2009, original edition 2006]
ISBN 9780340920664
Length 456 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it

What the heck…another Global Reading Challenge

Posted on by
12

I managed to achieve the Extreme level of this year’s global reading challenge which involved reading 21 books set in different parts of the world. I added a personal twist that all the books had to be by new-to-me authors. I really enjoyed the way this challenge expanded my reading.

So I have decided to tackle the 2011 version of the challenge, though I’m only aiming for the medium level this time around which requires the reading of a total of 14 books, 2 each from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America (incl Central America), South America and ‘The Seventh Continent’ (the past, the future, space or the much dreaded Antarctica). The reason for this reduced ambition is that my personal reading challenges for next year are to get my various TBR piles (physical books, audio books and eBooks) to a more manageable level and also to read second books by many of the 165 new-to-me authors I have tried since the start of 2009.

The bright side of having a ridiculously large TBR pile (it’s hovering around 200 if you include pre-ordered titles that will trickle in over the next 12 months) is that it should allow me to participate in several challenges without troubling any retail establishment. Some of the titles I will set aside for next year’s global challenge include

  • Leighton Gage’s Blood of the Wicked set in Brazil
  • Ernesto Mallo’s Needle in a Haystack set in Argentina
  • Xavier-Marie Bonnot’s The First Fingerprint set in France
  • Michael Stanley’s The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu set in Botswana
  • Zygmunt Miloszewski’s Entanglement set in Poland
  • Qiu Xiaolong’s A Case of Two Cities set in China
  • Timothy Hallinan’s A Nail Through the Heart set in Thailand

What about you?

Are you going to join the 2011 Global Reading Challenge?

Does your TBR pile offer a good start to one of the three levels to try for?

You can read whatever kind of fiction you want and this year you don’t have to read anything set in Antarctica unless you really want to so I recommend the challenge as a great way to extend your reading out of whatever comfort zone you find yourself in.

Review: The Night of the Mi’raj by Zoë Ferraris

Posted on by
5

This book is also published as Finding Nouf

This is a difficult book to review because I had mixed reactions to different aspects of it. As pure storytelling I have one response but this is underpinned by a some doubts about the authenticity of the setting Ferraris has depicted and as these doubts, which might be unfounded, grew I think they affected my enjoyment of the story itself. As always though these are one person’s thoughts and if you don’t like them there are plenty of other opinions to be had.

When 16-year old Nouf ash-Shrawi disappears from the home of her wealthy Saudi Arabian family her brother Othman asks his friend, Palestinian born Nayir ash-Sharqi, to look for her. Nayir, often mistaken for a Bedouin, is a desert guide and is only too willing to assist his friend. Unfortunately though Nouf is found dead in a desert Wadi and the autopsy reveals she has drowned. What remains to uncover then is whether she ran away or was kidnapped. Nayir takes on the role of the family’s investigator but when Othman’s fiancée Katya Hijazi, a lab technician who assisted with the autopsy, also becomes involved in the investigation Nayir struggles because, being a conservative Muslim, he is not allowed to talk to a single woman.

From a pure storytelling standpoint this is an entertaining, if somewhat slow-moving novel, though probably not one for die hard crime fiction fans as it’s really not much of a mystery. However I think Ferraris’ intent is to paint a picture of the exotic location and society and the plot device of solving a possible murder was simply the most convenient way to achieve that end. It is hard to imagine for example too many circumstances other than the unexpected death of his friend’s young sister that would have prompted someone as conservative as Nayir to interact with a single woman in the way he ultimately interacts with Katya.

Nayir, Katya, Othman and even Nouf to the extent we learn about her after her death are thoughtfully depicted character studies. The competing desire to conform to their society’s strict rules and their frustration at having to do so is shown from both a female and male perspective which is unusual and worth exploring. The kind of claustrophobia that some people, women in particular, must feel in these surroundings especially when they have had some exposure to different cultures including less strict Muslim ones, was very well shown and the highlight of the novel for me. In particular the sad resolution to the mystery was very fitting in that it demonstrated what people will do when there are such limited opportunities for them to change their circumstances.

But on to my qualms about this book. Let me first state I am no expert on either Saudi Arabia or Islamic life but as I read the book I kept picking up on little details that didn’t sound right to me from my limited knowledge of the country and culture. Not only did this make me wonder what else might I be missing, but I couldn’t help but ponder if the book was doing less ‘lifting the veil on a culture we know little about’ and more reflecting back some entrenched stereotypes about that culture that westerners are largely comfortable with. If this is what’s happening I have no idea how much is to do with the author’s mistakes and how much might be due to publishers asking for changes that fit in better with the target audience’s existing knowledge but either way I didn’t fully buy into the story because of my perception of inaccuracy about some fairly fundamental details.

At one point for example there is mention made of a pious young girl who came to visit the family for a short time but has stayed for 2 years and repeated the Haj (or Hajj)12 times. The Haj is an annual event that happens during specific dates on the Islamic calendar and I think that even if the young girl had visited Mecca at other times (unlikely in itself) it would be called an Umrah. Another language discrepancy that I picked up was that the women were referred to as wearing burqas whereas the face covering in Saudi Arabia is of a different kind and is known as a nikab. Even more troubling though than these kinds of inaccuracies were things that I felt served no purpose other than to perpetuate some good old-fashioned stereotypes. The one that immediately springs to mind is when Nayir is pondering whether two particular men might be gay which serves no purpose whatsoever other than an opportunity for readers to be told what horrible things happen to gay people in Saudi Arabia.

I’m not for one moment suggesting that everything in the book is wrong or that I don’t have severe misgivings about the way women can be treated when the strictest interpretation of Islamic law is applied. I’m just not entirely convinced that this book, regardless of how good the story might be, adds much to the western understanding of the culture it is depicting.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Night of the Mi’raj has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3/5
Publisher Little, Brown [2008]
ISBN 9781408700952
Length 357 pages
Format trade paperback
Source borrowed from the library

Review: Containment by Vanda Symon

Posted on by
7

The third story to feature detective constable Sam Shephard opens memorably as a container ship runs aground near Dunedin on New Zealand’s South Island and the contents of several of its containers are strewn across the beach. Sam wakes up to  witness locals descending en masse to make off with the spoils and when she tries to break up a dispute between two men arguing over the same box she is knocked unconscious by one of them. The bizarre Sunday morning incident turns out to cause more problems than this for Dunedin police as a skull is among the detritus and later a body is found in deep water nearby.

Sam Shephard is definitely the star of this series, fairly universally described as feisty and not someone who always does the smart thing, though her motives are pure and her heart is definitely in the right place. I like her a lot, being able to relate to someone who doesn’t always shut up even when she knows it would be the sensible thing to do. As well as her complicated work life, where she is in a constant battle with her DI, she has some trials in her personal life and I thought the depiction of her reaction to her Dad’s problems was particularly touching. In this novel some of the supporting cast of characters were more well-drawn than in the first book in the series (2007′s Overkill) especially Sam’s partner Smithy who is struggling with a family crisis at the same time as he works on the complicated cases arising from the container ship’s accident. There are also several minor characters who offer some lightness and humour including Sam’s housemate Maggie and a new friend/suspect Spaz.

The story in Containment is another one of those that at first seems like it will follow a predictable path but then veers off in several surprising ways and I really liked the way the different threads unfolded here. There is the deceptively simple case of the assault on Sam, the attempts to locate all the items ‘salvaged’ from the beach that were part of a wealthy (and apparently extremely gorgeous) immigrant’s household items which were being shipped to his new home and of course the investigation into the murder that resulted in a body being found at sea. In each case the police have several false endings where they think they have found the solution then uncover yet another half-truth being told by one of the players which leads them off into another direction which is very satisfying as a reader (though undoubtedly annoying if you were an actual police officer).

Although I enjoyed the first book in this series I think Containment is a better novel, requiring less credibility stretching and displaying more humour which seems to be in keeping with Sam’s character and the team of Dunedin detectives. I really enjoy Symon’s novel openings which are full of great imagery and are very memorable and her storytelling is engaging (I read this book in one sitting). I could do with a little less concentration on Sam’s relationship woes but this is a minor grizzle about an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable read.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Containment is one of three novels on the shortlist for New Zealand’s inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel, the winner of which will be announced on November 30

So far I’ve only reviewed the first book in the series, Overkill. Containment has also been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise

The fourth novel in this series is called Bound and is due out next February and the author showed us its cover on her blog earlier this week

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Penguin [2009]
ISBN 9780143202295
Length 309 pages
Format paperback
Source I bought it

Weekly Geeks 2010-38: Antique Books

Posted on by
10

This week’s Weekly Geeks question asks us

to write a post sharing with us what old antique books you may have on your shelves, and tell us the story behind them. Did you inherit from a relative? Are you a collector of old and rare books? Did you just discover a certain book in a used book store and couldn’t pass it up? What’s the very oldest book you have? Do you even like old books? Or do they creep you out? Do you read and enjoy your old books, or is it more a “look and don’t touch” thing?

Reading for me is about the stories and the words and I don’t much care what container they come in. So I am not a collector of antique books (or any other kind for that matter). But I do have this set of 20 leather-bound classic novels. They are not antiques and have no publication date inside them but a little googling suggests they were published around 1950.

The books belonged to my paternal grandmother who I never met because she died before I was born but I do feel oddly connected to her due to these books. The set used to live on the top shelf of the hallway bookshelf in my parents’ house. Being an early booklover and having read every other book in the house (we didn’t have that many, most of my books came from the library) I used to beg my mother to be able to read these and for a long time she said I wasn’t old enough. It wasn’t that the content was too mature for me but I had a habit of taking books everywhere with me at an early age (bath, beach, tree house, shoved in back pocket while riding to the park to read…) and my mum thought these deserved better treatment. In the summer holidays before I went to high school I apparently displayed enough sense for my mum to feel confident I wouldn’t take these to the bath and I read them all at least once during that summer break. My favourites at the time were Wuthering Heights (hey I was a teenage girl, it is a rite of passage to fall in love with Heathcliff) and Tales of Mystery and Imagination (yep I started my crime fiction obsession early).

Although the books have a lot of sentimental value for me they are definitely for reading (I have even loaned them to people) (but only people I trust not to drop them in the bath). I don’t really get the ‘look don’t touch’ thing when it comes to books. For me a book that is never read loses its lustre in the same way that a pearl never worn next to the skin is said to do. For a book to be the best book it can be it needs to be taken down from its shelf every now and again. Right?

What about you, do you own any antique books? Are you a collector? Do you have books that are to be seen and not read?

Review: A Colder Kind of Death by Gail Bowen

Posted on by
9

The 8th book I will count towards the current Canadian Book Challenge is the fourth in its series and won the 1995 Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel.

It has been six years since Joanne Kilbourn’s husband was bashed to death by the side of the road while driving home from a funeral but she is forced to re-visit the event during the publicity over the death in a drive-by shooting while in the prison exercise yard of the man convicted of his murder . When, a few days later, the man’s girlfriend who had been with him at the roadside murder but who was thought not to have had any involvement in the death is also killed, Joanne finds herself a suspect. Fearing the police might not look further and believing the answers to the murders lie in the events that transpired immediately before her husband’s death Joanne sets out to find out who the killer is.

At first it appeared that the plot of this novel would follow a fairly predictable path but it soon veered off into far more interesting territory involving the hopes and fears of the group of lifelong friends and colleagues that Joanne and her husband had been part of. She is forced to confront some unpleasant possibilities such as the notion her husband had been keeping secrets from her in the lead up to his death and even whether or not his death was something more sinister than a random killing. In doing this she uncovers more than one well hidden secret among the group of friends who were once all political colleagues who have a mixture of personal demons and professional troubles they are trying to hide.

In all her roles, as a college professor, mother of four, political activist and amateur sleuth Joanne manages to be both believable and sympathetic and I enjoyed meeting her. Amateur detectives normally stretch the bounds of credibility fairly early on but here both her motive for becoming involved in the investigation and her methodology made sense. She is the person with most to lose of the truth is not uncovered and she is also able to talk to her friends and her husband’s former colleagues in a way that police might not be able to. I’m not sure how this would play out in the 11 other books in the series (none of which I’ve read) but in this story anyway everything fell into place very well.

There are other well-drawn characters, including a couple on the nastier side of the psychological spectrum, and some lighter moments chiefly provided by Joanne’s cat-loving six-year old daughter Taylor, in this entertaining read. Aside from a little local politics there wasn’t a heck of a lot that made this book stand out as Canadian for me but it definitely stands out in the mystery stakes.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher McClelland & Stuart [this edition 1995, original edition 1994]
ISBN 9780771014833
Length 217 pages
Format mass market paperback
Source I mooched it

Review: The Serpent and The Scorpion by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

Posted on by
2

Be warned: in order to sensibly discuss this novel I do have to talk about one of the major events that took place in the first book, this is a spoiler if you haven’t yet read the first book.

The second novel to feature wealthy women’s suffrage campaigner and amateur detective Ursula Marlow takes place in 1912, two years after the events depicted in Consequences of Sin. Ursula is still grieving over the loss of her father (who was murdered) and is now struggling with the demands of keeping his considerable business interests afloat given the pervading belief that a woman shouldn’t be involved in business at all and a suffragette is an even less desirable business partner. When she travels to Egypt to work on textile contracts essential for her business she witnesses the murder of a friend of hers and is not convinced it was politically motivated as authorities suggest. Shortly afterwards she learns there has been a fire in a factory she had established near her home which offered work to destitute women and she returns home to ensure the investigation is carried out thoroughly.

The opening of this book provides a little too much detail about events that occurred in the first novel which slows the start down (and would also make it a fairly dull exercise for a new reader to go back and read the first novel if they hadn’t already done so). However the last three quarters of the novel offer a cracking read. The plot is complex but the various links and connections between people and events are logical, and the tension builds well as personal stories play out against the backdrop of world events such as the probable imminence of a war against Germany. There were several big plot twists that I didn’t predict and there was a realism in the fact that not everything was resolved happily.

Although it’s only a backdrop to the main story one of the things I enjoy most about this series is the way Ursula’s struggle to be taken seriously in business and her need to demonstrate she can do things on her own before she considers marrying the man she loves has a very credible feel to it. This book in particular captures a feeling that the women’s suffrage movement was about more than obtaining the right to vote, but was about trying to fight against the pervading attitude that women were not capable or intelligent enough to perform such a task. One interesting social element that shines through here is the way that people who might not normally see eye-to eye or even come into contact socially were drawn together by their support for or opposition towards the movement.

The Serpent and the Scorpion has terrifically drawn characters, absorbing historical details and a rollicking mystery that has personal and political elements for the players. The cliffhanger ending was a bit abrupt but I have to admit it has me hooked into waiting eagerly for the next installment.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Publishing [2010]
ISBN 9781101391815
Length 256 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Source I bought it

Review: The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths

Posted on by
16

My reading fairy godmother sent me her copy of this book several months ago and yesterday, as I remembered how much humour there had been in the first book, I decided it was time for a laugh.

Having thoroughly enjoyed Elly Griffiths’ first novel in this series, The Crossing Places, about six months ago I looked upon this second novel with an equal mixture of delicious anticipation and ‘second book trepidation’. Thankfully the trepidation was unnecessary as the book is a delight.

The story is told in the present tense which is an unusual choice but it suits the pacing and two strong voices from whose perspective the story unfolds. The first of these is Ruth Galloway, head of forensic archaeology at the fictional North Norfolk University, who occasionally becomes involved in police investigations which require her expertise. Here she is called in when some bones are discovered on the site of an old house which is being turned into what the developer calls 75 luxury apartments and the rest of us would probably call dog boxes. Ruth is simply wonderful. Her intelligence, personal strength and lack of political correctness shine through her actions and her ever-present internal monologue. Although she can be acerbic she can also be gentle, kind and even a little fragile and these different facets of her personality are all depicted realistically. There is a significant element of her personal life that has continued from the previous book which is expanded with heart and humour here but I’m not going to share any more details in case you haven’t yet read The Crossing Places.

The other major voice of this story is DCI Harry Nelson who appeared in the first book but seemed to me to have more presence in this story. He too is an engaging, realistic character. He loves his job, his wife and his two teenage daughters and he respects and admires Ruth. At one point he reflects on his different capacities for forming relationships with men and women which provides a good example of the way Griffiths manages to quickly but cleverly reveal a lot about the people and places she writes about.

I guess it is one of those first-world problems that I should feel guilty for even raising but the page-long description of the play that several of the characters attend was only one of the passages in the book that made me laugh out loud (I have sat through more than my share of equally pretentious twaddle in my time). It begins

The play is as bad as Nelson fears. A man in a mask appears in front of the curtain and drones on about January. Then he puts on another mask and drones on about lottery choices and whatnot. At least this reminds Nelson that he hasn’t bought his ticket for Wednesday’s draw yet. Then the curtain goes up and there are these people in togas having an orgy, only they can’t have much of one because the production obviously can’t stretch to more than four actors.

The book is full of such wry, observational humour.

I have hardly touched on the story itself which was an enthralling tale involving missing children, loyalty, family and secrets. The many historical and archaeological details are incorporated seamlessly and enrich the story while the cast of characters that support Ruth and Harry offer terrific depth in terms of perspective and variety.  In short, there’s not much I didn’t like about The Janus Stone and can even forgive it for including one of my pet peeves, passages in italics which depict a killer’s voice, as these are few and mercifully short.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Janus Stone has been reviewed by my aforementioned godmother at Petrona who was equally circumspect as I have been in sharing details of events from the first book. It’s also been reviewed at DJ’s Krimiblog and Euro Crime (Rik and Pat) but from these you might learn more than you wanted to know about the first book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4.5/5
Publisher Quercus [2010]
ISBN 9781849161589
Length 327 pages
Format hardcover
Source my reading fairy godmother

Comfort Reading Times Three

Posted on by
11

Over the past couple of weeks my mind has been more than usually occupied by family matters and my reading time shrank to almost nothing on some days. But reading has always been my way preferred way of escaping for a few moments or winding down when necessary so I was still looking for things to read, even if not the new adventures and challenging tales that I enjoy most.

The second to last book that Dick Francis co-authored with his son was Even Money. As always it features a bloke who has something to do with horse-racing (in this case he’s a bookmaker) who experiences some unexpected unrest in his life (here it is the appearance of the father he’d thought long dead followed closely by witnessing the man’s murder) which he has to resolve to his peril while dealing with day-to-day life’s tribulations (a wife with severe mental health issues and rough treatment by the ‘big boys’ of his business). I could probably have re-read any of Francis’ 41 earlier books and gotten roughly the same amount of enjoyment and comfort as I received from reading the new one but that’s kinda the point of reading Dick Francis. At least for me. While the details might change the basic formula doesn’t and when you need an engaging if not particularly surprising story which contains enough of a puzzle to keep you interested and characters you are going to enjoy watching overcome their problems (because they undoubtedly will) then Dick Francis is your man. As with most of his books, Even Money is well-written, containing enough detail about a new subject (bookmaking) to keep it interesting, and its characters are engaging. There’s even some humour which might be the influence of Francis’ son and co-author because it’s not been much of a feature of previous novels, and the depiction of someone with mental health problems and the impact this has on loved ones is very credible which shows off the good research, another feature of the Francis novels. Rating 3/5

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I have never read any of M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series before which makes it an unusual choice for comfort reading. However the audio book of Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House is narrated by Penelope Keith who, aside from being a terrific English actress, is someone synonymous with my childhood. There always seemed to be one of her shows on our TV and her voice is one my ears would know anywhere and I thought I might enjoy hearing her again.

The story is almost laughably simple, Agatha Raisin is a middle-aged woman who has left London for a small English village where she has gained the reputation of being an amateur sleuth. Her new next-door neighbour is handsome Paul Chatterton and when they hear that the house of an elderly lady is being haunted the pair decide to investigate. I’ll leave the remaining few surprises up to you to discover should you have a yen to but I wouldn’t hurry. The plot has significant holes and the characters aren’t likable enough that you’d be genuinely interested in the endless boring details of their lives. Agatha Raisin is plain silly, dithering about changing her outfits every time she is due to meet her neighbour and fantasizing about him asking her to marry him despite the fact he is already married and has shown barely a ripple of romantic interest in her. Her crime solving skills are negligible at best and if I met her in the real world I’d have to fight the urge to slap her as she is pretty much everything I despise in a woman all wrapped up in a single package. I don’t actually think it’s much of a recommendation that the book was suitable for paying minimal attention to while sitting in hospital waiting rooms and keeping me awake while driving late at night. However much of my attention was held by the book is due to Penelope Keith’s acting talents and not Beaton’s storytelling ones but even Keith can only do so much with such poor source material. Rating 2/5

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The last comfort read might seem an odd choice because I am not a huge fan of PD James (I know that’s a heretical thought for a crime fiction buff). Apart from the fact I think her chief protagonist Adam Dalgliesh is an insufferable bore I find James’ books beautifully written but incredibly slow which is usually a turn-off. However slow was just what I was looking for on this occasion and again I chose an audio book, this time narrated superbly by Tammy Ustinov.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is the first of two books James has written about a young female private investigator Cordelia Gray, though Dalgliesh does make his presence felt. Cordelia is the business partner of former policeman (and colleague of the aforementioned Dalgliesh) Bernie Pryde and she arrives at work one day to find Bernie has killed himself. Just as she is trying to work out how to keep the business afloat without her senior partner she is approached by a woman acting on behalf of noted scientist Sir Robert Callender who wants Cordelia to investigate his son Mark’s suicide. In accepting the case Cordelia becomes wrapped up in the lives of wealthy Cambridge students who were Mark’s friends in order to unravel the reasons behind Mark’s death. I enjoyed meeting Cordelia who is quite determined to succeed despite not having much experience (and to prove wrong every second person she meets who makes some comment about the job of detecting being unsuitable for a woman). She uses as her guide the lessons that Bernie learned from his former boss Dalgliesh so his influence pops up throughout the book and the man himself makes a brief appearance at the end. The story is quite slow to unfold but in contrast to the Beaton book the details of the lives of the players are more interestingly revealed and the people themselves more believable and engaging. Rating 3.5/5

What about you? Do you have series or authors that you  turn to for comfort reading?