Stage magician Eli Marks is booked at the last minute for a charity function, the Zombie Ball, after the scheduled magician had to pull out. Top of thStage magician Eli Marks is booked at the last minute for a charity function, the Zombie Ball, after the scheduled magician had to pull out. Top of the bill is legendary comic Joey D, with whom Eli’s Uncle Harry once shared a stage in the distant past. Behind the scenes are the event organisers, rushing to make sure everything runs smoothly, and the corporate sponsors, rival drugs firms whose CEOs both want to be treated as top dog. Eli is somewhat discombobulated to discover that his ex-wife, Assistant District Attorney Deirdre Sutton-Hutton, and her new husband, Homicide Detective Fred Hutton, are out front in the audience, though this will turn out to be convenient when the first murder happens…
This is told as a flashback, with Eli recounting the story to a journalist who is doing a feature on his Uncle Harry, and takes us back to slightly before the first book in the series, The Ambitious Card. This means that the characters who have been added to the regulars as the series has gone on don’t appear, and we’re back to having Eli and Harry living together as a kind of affectionate odd couple after Eli’s divorce and the recent death of Harry’s wife. That worked well for me since the relationship between Eli and Harry gave the early books much of their charm, and (whisper it) I’ve never really taken to either of their romantic partners in the later books.
For most of the book, the plot takes a back seat as we are shown what goes into making an event of this nature work, and get to know the backstage characters in their varying degrees of likeability or comic potential. There is a long build-up to the crime happening – too long, I felt, with too much detail about the minutiae of organising the event. And then when the crime does happen, the subsequent investigation feels rushed and superficial, with Eli seeming to leap to the conclusion almost magically. It couldn’t be called fair play since the info Eli uses to come up with his theory isn’t available to the reader. Despite this, I had guessed who the culprit would be, although not the motive.
Normally I complain about books being too long and overpadded, but in this case I felt the important bit – the investigation – had been left out. An extra hundred pages or so, with various motives being put forward and a few red herrings strewn around to conceal the real clues, would have made it more satisfying as a mystery. But largely what this series relies on for its success is the appeal of the central characters and the stage magic setting. The humour is gentle, in line with the cosy nature of the series, and Eli and his Uncle Harry are always fun to spend time with. In every book a magic trick features in some way, and in this one the trick shares a name with the event, the Zombie Ball. So the cosy aspects work well and keep the books light-hearted and enjoyable, even when the mystery aspects are somewhat weak, as in this one. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up....more
This collection brings together nine of Benson's stories, chosen and wonderfully narrated by Mark Gatiss, and provWhich are scarier – ghosts or slugs?
This collection brings together nine of Benson's stories, chosen and wonderfully narrated by Mark Gatiss, and provides a good sample of the various styles he could employ with equal skill, from the standard ghostly haunting, to the folk horror of Pan and the natural world, to the weird, mostly, in this collection, in the form of truly horrid slug-like creatures who are and yet aren’t quite of this world. I gave eight of the stories four or five stars, and the ninth got a reasonable if unspectacular three. So it’s fair to say I thought this was an excellent collection overall. I suspect that Gatiss’ narration may have boosted each story by perhaps half a star – he brings out all the creepiness and growing horror and his timing for the occasional jump scare is immaculate. I loved listening to his voice, or that should really be voices, and so hope that he might record more classic horror stories in the future.
As always, here’s a taste of a few of my favourites, although it was hard to choose this time…
The Man Who Went Too Far – A young man is living a life of hedonism in the woods, seduced by the music he sometimes hears of pipes playing in the distance. But gradually the pipes grow nearer and the young man will get his wish to meet the player – Pan! The motto of this one should be – be careful what you wish for! A wonderful story, full of lush descriptions of the natural world, and with a dark ending.
The Room in the Tower – The narrator has a recurring dream about a house and the family who live there, which always ends with the mother of the family saying “Jack will show you your room: I have given you the room in the tower.”, at which point he has a sense of terror which wakes him. Then one day he goes to visit the family of a friend and recognises their house as the one from the dream! A more traditional ghost story of the Gothic variety, and Benson builds the tension beautifully to a truly horrid climax!
Spinach – A brother and sister, both mediums, have rented a cottage. They are contacted by the ghost of the previous tenant, Thomas Spinach, who was killed in a storm. Spinach tells them he left something lying around but can’t remember where. They decide to help the ghost by searching for the object, though they don’t know what it is. It turns out to be… no! I’ll leave you to find that out for yourself! This one is played mostly for laughs, with some nicely shivery moments added in. Good fun!
Negotium Parambulans – Our narrator lived for some years as a boy in Polearn, a fishing village in Cornwall. (What is it about Cornwall? Half the horror stories in the world are set there!) There is a house there, built from the remains of a church, and the original inhabitant sacrilegiously used the altar for feasting and gaming. He came to a sticky end. But was it madness brought on by drunkenness? Or was there something more sinister behind his death? Now our narrator has returned to the village as an adult and his elderly aunt tells him a similar tale about the next occupant. And now an old schoolmate of the narrator, John Evans, lives there… Lovely crossover between Gothic and weird in this somewhat dark story, and some great horror imagery, especially for those of us who are not too keen on slimy things.
And No Bird Sings – Our narrator is going on a visit to a friend and his wife, Hugh and Daisy Granger, in a house they have recently acquired. He decides to walk from the train station, and takes a short cut through a small wood that lies in their grounds. But once in the wood he is seized with a feeling of unease – there are unexpected shadows where there shouldn’t be, sometimes he notices a horrible smell as of decaying living things, and then he notices the oddest thing of all – there are no birds in the wood. It turns out both Hugh and especially Daisy have also felt this sense of something wrong in the wood, and their dogs won’t enter it at all. So Hugh and the narrator decide it is time to find out what is in there… This one is most definitely weird, and Benson develops a really great atmosphere of creepiness and unease. The climax is deliciously horrible! Great stuff!
So loads of variety, excellent writing, lots of shiveriness but nothing too gruesome – I loved this collection, and felt the narration made it even better. One I’ll listen to again!...more
Unfortunately I'm finding Robert Hardy's rendition of the heavy rural dialect in this one incomprehensible, so I'm abandoning this version and will geUnfortunately I'm finding Robert Hardy's rendition of the heavy rural dialect in this one incomprehensible, so I'm abandoning this version and will get a different audiobook version at some point. I didn't listen to enough of it to make any comment on the book itself....more
Bright young biochemist Diana Brackley works at Darr House, a research facility owned by Francis Saxover. They are together whA cake with 500 candles…
Bright young biochemist Diana Brackley works at Darr House, a research facility owned by Francis Saxover. They are together when they accidentally spot a strange effect of a rare lichen. They carry out parallel but separate investigations, which reveal that the lichen has properties which slow the ageing process at a cellular level, meaning that people could live for anything up to 500 years. While this seems like great news, there’s a catch – the lichen only grows at one spot on Earth, and only in small quantities. Diana and Francis react differently to the discovery, and through them Wyndham explores some of the possible effects on society of such a discovery.
One of the main themes Wyndham looks at is how the lives of women would be affected if their youth wasn’t entirely eaten up by the role of motherhood. It’s a brave attempt by a ’50s man to consider aspects of feminism, but oh dear, it can be tooth-grindingly painful in places. We start with Francis and his wife discussing whether they should hire a pretty young female scientist, or if it will prove to be too distracting for the men. Diana, however, is cool and rather aloof, so they decide she shouldn’t be too much of a temptress. Diana is the feminist, a woman who wants to work in her chosen field but whom her parents and society see as having reached the age when she must marry and procreate, as that is the natural function of women. When she cottons on to what the lichen can do, she realises this would extend the child-bearing years of women for decades, even hundreds of years, allowing them to have a full career before or after breeding. All good, but the other benefits Wyndham envisages for women include that they’ll remain attractive for longer, thus lowering the divorce rate! (I wonder… if women remained attractive for three hundred years or so, don’t you think they might want a bit of variety in that time? Personally, I find most men pall after the first six months or so… ...more
After attending a theatre performance given by the latest sensation, impressionist Carlotta Adams, Poirot is approached by a famous Lords and luvvies…
After attending a theatre performance given by the latest sensation, impressionist Carlotta Adams, Poirot is approached by a famous actress, Jane Wilkinson , who asks for his help in a matter of some delicacy. She wants a divorce from her present husband, Lord Edgware, so that she can marry the young Duke of Merton, but her husband is refusing. She hopes that Poirot can persuade him to change his mind. Not Poirot’s usual kind of thing but he's intrigued to meet Lord Edgware and anyway Jane is very beautiful and very persuasive. But when he finally gets an appointment, Lord Edgware surprises him by not only agreeing to divorce Jane but informing him that he had already written to her some months to tell her so. When Poirot brings the good news to Jane, she denies ever having received Lord Edgware’s letter. And then, the following morning Inspector Japp informs Poirot that Lord Edgware has been murdered. Japp is inclined to suspect the wife since her desire to get out of the marriage has been the subject of gossip, but Poirot can show that this motive no longer existed. And so Poirot and Hastings join with Japp in seeking out the murderer…
It's ages since I last read this one, and one of the benefits of having a rotten memory is that I frequently can't remember the solution to mystery novels. With this one I remembered some major parts of the plot, but couldn't remember whodunit nor the significance of the plot points that I did recall. So I had all the pleasure of being baffled by the mystery all over again!
Christie's plots really are a delight. When the solutions are revealed, it's always possible to see how she revealed all the clues as she went along, and yet the poor, dull reader missed them all! Well, this poor, dull reader, anyway! She is also excellent at selecting both her victims and her villains, so that the reader feels no need to grieve for the former and by the end is quite happy to see the latter sent off to the gallows. This book is a prime example of that. Lord Edgeware is an unpleasant man with a sadistic streak, and most of the people who have been under his control in any way are rather delighted at his death. When all is revealed, it also becomes clear that the villain is particularly cold-hearted, despatching people without guilt or remorse for no reason other than that they are in the way.
It's always fun, too, to have Hastings along for the ride. He and Poirot are on top form in this one, with Hastings as baffled and misdirected as the reader, while Poirot hands out elliptical hints that are more tantalising than helpful. Why Hastings never murdered Poirot is a real mystery!
I always enjoy those occasions when Christie takes us into the world of actors and performers – she has such a wicked way of showing them up as shallow and narcissistic, feeling that the rules of society don’t apply to them. Carlotta is new to the profession so hasn’t had time yet to completely lose her likeability, but Jane and her ex-boyfriend Bryan really deserve all the cattiness Christie employs so well. The aristocrats don’t come out smelling of roses either – sadistic Lord Edgware, the naive and overly-mothered Duke of Merton, and the aforesaid mother, determined to control her son in every aspect of his life. Christie has the full panoply of middle-class prejudices, and they’re such fun! (I always imagine she’d get the Telegraph for show and the Daily Mail to read – sorry, that’s a very British joke!)
I’m finding it more difficult than usual to say much about the plot of this one without straying into spoiler territory, mainly because every element is so intricately connected. It requires attention if the armchair detective is to have any hope of solving it, but I never really try – I let Poirot do all the hard work while I sit back and admire. I had forgotten how good this one is – thoroughly enjoyable and therefore highly recommended!...more
I'm in a terrible reading slump at the moment, and I'm sure that's affecting my opinion of the books I'm struggling through, so this review should be I'm in a terrible reading slump at the moment, and I'm sure that's affecting my opinion of the books I'm struggling through, so this review should be treated with caution!
There's no doubt about the quality of the writing. Everett sets his scenes and creates his characters well. I was listening to the audiobook, and the narration by Dominic Hoffman is excellent. I was completely onside with the idea of giving Jim a voice - I hated the way Twain treated him in the original, and couldn't see why so many white Americans see that book as a masterpiece of anti-racism or, indeed, literature.
So what went wrong, causing me to throw in the towel halfway through? Two things, primarily. Firstly, James is another in the recent long list of slaves who not only teach themselves to read (how?) but then go on to acquire a university level of education by snatching quick forbidden moments in their masters' libraries. Sorry, don't buy it, not in this or any of the other revisionist slave histories of the moment. In his quiet moments, James likes to mull over the works of the great Enlightenment philosophers, which he seems to have committed to memory, questioning and debating their ideas with himself. I could only think he mustn't have been worked too hard if he'd managed to spend enough time in the library to master all this information while still a young man.
Secondly, and this was the real killer which should have been obvious to me before I began, having read the original, of course I know the story. Yes, Everett shows it all from a different perspective, but it's the same characters and events. I couldn't be bothered with the silliness of the Duke and the King in the original, and changing the viewpoint to James didn't make them any more amusing. Somehow I had convinced myself that Everett could make me like a rewrite of a book I didn't like - I was wrong. I swore an oath to stop reading Twain a few years ago, and I hereby extend that oath to rewrites, fan fiction or revisionisms. My fault, then, that this one ended up on the abandoned heap - I'd happily try another of Everett's novels though. Rating at three stars, because I feel my usual one star for abandoned books is too harsh in this instance....more
A very early one from PG Wodehouse, from 1906. Struggling author Jeremy Garnet allows his friend Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge to persuade him to A very early one from PG Wodehouse, from 1906. Struggling author Jeremy Garnet allows his friend Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge to persuade him to become a partner in a chicken farm. Since neither of them knows the first thing about chickens or farming, this plan is doomed to failure, providing much humour along the way, not to mention a romance for our hero.
This shows some of the charm that would be a feature of the later novels, but I felt he hadn’t quite hit his stride. The situation wasn’t quite ridiculous enough, so that it read a bit like straight fiction with added humour rather than the true comedy he became so adept at. The joy of Bertie Wooster’s world or Blandings is that neither feels like the real world. It’s always summer and the sun always shines, and even the bad guys are basically good eggs. In this one, it all felt too real and that included, I fear, some not very nice stuff about the fates of the chickens. No animal is harmed in later Wodehouse books – a dog may chase a cat but he will never catch her, and the cat will have her revenge. So I enjoyed it, but didn’t think it had the sense of carefree joy I normally associate with his books. The fact that the always excellent narrator, Jonathan Cecil, kept pronouncing Featherstonehaugh wrong didn’t help. It’s pronounced Fanshaw – one of those strange upper-class British pronunciations I’d have expected Cecil to know, like Cholmondeley being pronounced Chumley and Fotheringay being pronounced Fungay (as in Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps). Wodehouse loved to use these names for the intrinsic humour of the detachment of the pronunciation from the spelling and for the sing-song effect of double-barrels, etc., so it caused a twinge each time Cecil painstakingly sounded out Feth-er-stone-haw. Picky, aren’t I?...more
A short collection of four Miss Marple stories, each with a listening time of roughly half an hour. The stories have all been collected many times, soA short collection of four Miss Marple stories, each with a listening time of roughly half an hour. The stories have all been collected many times, so will be familiar to dedicated Christie fans. But listening to the wonderful Joan Hickson's performance of them is pure pleasure! These recordings are old now and not always of the best technical quality, but I'm glad they're still available. No modern actor can replicate those Edwardian tones that make Hickson the ultimate Miss Marple.
The four stories are: The Herb of Death The Thumb Mark of St Peter The Affair at the Bungalow Death by Drowning...more
The Home Secretary, Sir Derek O’Callaghan, is in the middle of steering an important bill through Parliament to counter the His life in their hands...
The Home Secretary, Sir Derek O’Callaghan, is in the middle of steering an important bill through Parliament to counter the threat from anarchists and Bolshevists. So although he is suffering from intermittent abdominal pains, he is ignoring them until he has more time to deal with personal issues. And the personal issues are piling up! As well as his health and threats against his life from those Bolshies, his doctor, Sir John Phillips, is furious at the way he has treated a nurse who works in Sir John’s clinic, having seduced and then dumped her. It’s probable his wife won’t be too happy if she learns about that little episode either! His sister, meantime, thinks that all his woes and ills can be cured by one of the many patent medicines she acquires from her pharmacist friend. It all comes to a crisis when Sir Derek collapses while giving a speech in the House of Commons. He is rushed to Sir John’s clinic where he is diagnosed with peritonitis requiring immediate surgery. Hmm… surgery carried out by the doctor who’s furious at him, the nurse he seduced, an anaesthetist who previously accidentally killed a patient, and another nurse who is a Bolshevist in her spare time. So when he subsequently dies, it’s not altogether surprising that suspicions of murder arise! Enter Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of the Yard…
It’s a long time since I last read a Ngaio Marsh, but I was very fond of her books back in the day, and happily this was a pleasant revisit. It’s a nice mix of whodunit and howdunit, and the investigation is mostly carried out through a series of interviews Alleyn has with the various suspects. It soon transpires that Sir Derek had been poisoned with hyoscine, a drug that had been used as part of his preparation for surgery. So suspicion naturally falls on Sir John, since he gave the hyoscine injection. But Alleyn quickly realises that many other people had the opportunity to give him another injection or perhaps to have given him the drug in another form. So it all comes down to motive and method – who wanted him dead (lots of people!) and who could have given him the drug, and how.
The one thing that makes me not wholeheartedly love Marsh as much as I do, for example, Christie, is the snobbishness in the books – a fault she of course shares with many of the Golden Age writers. Alleyn is one of these aristocratic policeman (did they ever exist in real life, I wonder?) and his sidekick, Inspector Fox, is a “common man”. Alleyn is very fond of Fox but is horribly patronising towards him, as is Marsh herself. When thinking about it, I wonder if part of the reason that Christie has remained so popular is that Poirot’s sidekick is a man of the same or even higher class than Poirot himself, so that while Poirot may mock his intelligence from time to time there’s no feeling of snobbery. Alleyn’s Fox, Sayers’ portrayal of Wimsey’s sidekick, Bunter, and Allingham’s Lugg, sidekick for Campion, all make the books feel much more dated than Christie and in a way of which modern audiences are less tolerant, I feel. Although I do often wonder what contemporary working class readers, who surely made up the bulk of the readership for all these authors, made of their mockery of the working classes. We were more deferential, for sure, back then, but even so. Anyway, I digress.
Alleyn also has another occasional sidekick in the person of a young journalist, Nigel Bathgate, and he and his fiancée, Angela, appear in this one. Alleyn sends them off to infiltrate an anarchist meeting, and has fun with the portrayal of these bogeymen of the era, complete with stock bearded Russian Bolshevist. Nigel and Angela are Bright Young Things, and provide some levity which lightens the tone. Alleyn himself is quite a cheerful detective, who enjoys his job and has a keen sense of justice. So while the books aren’t quite cosy, nor are they dark and grim.
The eventual solution veers over the credibility line but the general tone of the book means this doesn’t matter as much as it would in a darker style of novel. I was rather proud of the fact that I spotted one or two clues, but I was still surprised when all was revealed.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Philip Franks, and he did a very good job, getting into the spirit of the more caricatured characters (the Bolshevists, for instance) while making both Alleyn and Fox likeable, as they are on the page.
Overall, an enjoyable reunion with some old friends, and I’m looking forward to revisiting some of the other books. This is an early one, and I may try a late one next, to see if the snobbery gets toned down as time passes.
The Home Secretary, Sir Derek O’Callaghan, is in the middle of steering an important bill through Parliament to counter the threat from anarchists and Bolshevists. So although he is suffering from intermittent abdominal pains, he is ignoring them until he has more time to deal with personal issues. And the personal issues are piling up! As well as his health and threats against his life from those Bolshies, his doctor, Sir John Phillips, is furious at the way he has treated a nurse who works in Sir John’s clinic, having seduced and then dumped her. It’s probable his wife won’t be too happy if she learns about that little episode either! His sister, meantime, thinks that all his woes and ills can be cured by one of the many patent medicines she acquires from her pharmacist friend. It all comes to a crisis when Sir Derek collapses while giving a speech in the House of Commons. He is rushed to Sir John’s clinic where he is diagnosed with peritonitis requiring immediate surgery. Hmm… surgery carried out by the doctor who’s furious at him, the nurse he seduced, an anaesthetist who previously accidentally killed a patient, and another nurse who is a Bolshevist in her spare time. So when he subsequently dies, it’s not altogether surprising that suspicions of murder arise! Enter Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of the Yard…
It’s a long time since I last read a Ngaio Marsh, but I was very fond of her books back in the day, and happily this was a pleasant revisit. It’s a nice mix of whodunit and howdunit, and the investigation is mostly carried out through a series of interviews Alleyn has with the various suspects. It soon transpires that Sir Derek had been poisoned with hyoscine, a drug that had been used as part of his preparation for surgery. So suspicion naturally falls on Sir John, since he gave the hyoscine injection. But Alleyn quickly realises that many other people had the opportunity to give him another injection or perhaps to have given him the drug in another form. So it all comes down to motive and method – who wanted him dead (lots of people!) and who could have given him the drug, and how.
The one thing that makes me not wholeheartedly love Marsh as much as I do, for example, Christie, is the snobbishness in the books – a fault she of course shares with many of the Golden Age writers. Alleyn is one of these aristocratic policeman (did they ever exist in real life, I wonder?) and his sidekick, Inspector Fox, is a “common man”. Alleyn is very fond of Fox but is horribly patronising towards him, as is Marsh herself. When thinking about it, I wonder if part of the reason that Christie has remained so popular is that Poirot’s sidekick is a man of the same or even higher class than Poirot himself, so that while Poirot may mock his intelligence from time to time there’s no feeling of snobbery. Alleyn’s Fox, Sayers’ portrayal of Wimsey’s sidekick, Bunter, and Allingham’s Lugg, sidekick for Campion, all make the books feel much more dated than Christie and in a way of which modern audiences are less tolerant, I feel. Although I do often wonder what contemporary working class readers, who surely made up the bulk of the readership for all these authors, made of their mockery of the working classes. We were more deferential, for sure, back then, but even so. Anyway, I digress.
Alleyn also has another occasional sidekick in the person of a young journalist, Nigel Bathgate, and he and his fiancée, Angela, appear in this one. Alleyn sends them off to infiltrate an anarchist meeting, and has fun with the portrayal of these bogeymen of the era, complete with stock bearded Russian Bolshevist. Nigel and Angela are Bright Young Things, and provide some levity which lightens the tone. Alleyn himself is quite a cheerful detective, who enjoys his job and has a keen sense of justice. So while the books aren’t quite cosy, nor are they dark and grim.
The eventual solution veers over the credibility line but the general tone of the book means this doesn’t matter as much as it would in a darker style of novel. I was rather proud of the fact that I spotted one or two clues, but I was still surprised when all was revealed.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Philip Franks, and he did a very good job, getting into the spirit of the more caricatured characters (the Bolshevists, for instance) while making both Alleyn and Fox likeable, as they are on the page.
Overall, an enjoyable reunion with some old friends, and I’m looking forward to revisiting some of the other books. This is an early one, and I may try a late one next, to see if the snobbery gets toned down as time passes.
Meredith Mitchell has left the Cotswolds to live in London, where she works at the Foreign Office. Her friend and would-like-tMurder in the Cotswolds…
Meredith Mitchell has left the Cotswolds to live in London, where she works at the Foreign Office. Her friend and would-like-to-be-more-than-friend, Alan Markby, is missing her, so when his sister is looking for a house-sitter for a couple of weeks, he asks Meredith if she’d take on the job. Meredith is happy to comply, feeling that a short holiday back in the Cotswolds is just what she needs. But then a body is found in a ditch on a building site, and Alan, a detective with the local police, is leading the investigation, so doesn’t have much time to spare. Meredith finds herself quietly snooping around the village and surrounding farms, trying to help find out who the murdered man was and what he was doing in the neighbourhood.
This is the third in a long-running series about Meredith and Markby, though it’s the first I’ve read. It has lots of elements of the cosy – the village environment, the sort-of romance between the two main characters – but it also has a darker edge of cruel acts carried out in both present and past, and buried secrets that tear families apart. It is also incredibly slow, though well enough written for that slowness to be bearable – just. The narration by Judith Boyd is excellent, which also helps.
Although Markby is the police detective, it’s really Meredith Mitchell who is the focus of the book, and she acts in the tradition of the amateur caught up in events. She does snoop and pry, but for the best of reasons – she is worried about Jessica Winthrop, a young woman living on the farm near to where the body was found, who seems to be suffering badly from anxiety. Meredith wants to know what it is that is worrying her and to help her if she can. The Winthrop family seems unusually tight-knit, almost to the point of excluding all outsiders, and there are a lot of pent-up disagreements among them over the question of whether they should go on struggling to make the farm profitable, or sell up to the builders who want to build houses all over the Cotswolds. To give her an excuse to spend time at the farm, Meredith starts researching an old tragedy that took place there over a hundred years ago, when the meeting-hall of a religious sect was burned to the ground. Meredith begins to find odd parallels between that old event and the present.
Pros and cons in this one for me. I liked Meredith very much as a character. She is determined without being aggressive, and is a kind person so that she finds herself getting involved in the lives of anyone with troubles. Her interest in other people’s business stays this side of pushiness – she’s one of these people who really ought to become the vicar’s wife or even the vicar, to give her a legitimate reason to stick her nose in. Markby on the other hand is not handled as well. The police investigation really doesn’t amount to much, and in the end he has the solution handed to him on a plate, several hours after Meredith had got there by her own more insightful observations. I thought the depiction of the village and farming life was very well done, and there’s a real sense of place, with the prettiness of the tourist side of the Cotswolds contrasted with the hard and often unprofitable life of the farms. On the other hand, the romance between Meredith and Alan didn’t convince me at all. I could see nothing that they had in common – neither interests nor ambitions. To be fair, Meredith too seemed to feel this, but that made me wonder why she didn’t just put Alan out of his misery once and for all. He, constantly being rejected, comes over as pathetic and needy, and also somewhat grumpy. The idea that this romance would be the focus of the series, currently running to sixteen books, rather appalled me!
The plot is very well done, and it becomes quite dark in the end. There is a kind of thriller climax, but in line with the tone of the rest of the book, this is rather subdued and reasonably credible – Meredith does not suddenly change into Superwoman, karate-chopping baddies, for which I’m grateful. The darkness is alleviated by some more humorous aspects, such as the vicar dealing with a troublesome youth who has been sentenced to community service, namely keeping the church’s grounds in order. Despite the crimes, the community is generally shown as one where neighbourliness still exists, and most people are basically good.
In the end, I enjoyed it, although that slowness did make me consider giving up once or twice. It may be the audiobook format, where skim-reading is not possible – perhaps on paper the slowness wouldn’t have been such an issue. On the other hand, it may be that it was only the excellence of the narration that kept me going. The question is would I read/listen to another? The answer is – I’m not sure......more
Miss Simpson is hunting a rare orchid in the woods when she hears strange noises. Peeking through the bushes, she If you go down to the woods today…
Miss Simpson is hunting a rare orchid in the woods when she hears strange noises. Peeking through the bushes, she sees something she ought not have seen, something that shocks her elderly spinster soul to its socks. As she tries to hurry silently away, the noise of a cracking twig gives her away, and she races home convinced she’s being chased. Next day she is found dead. In view of her advanced age, the local doctor happily signs a certificate giving the reason for death as natural causes. But Miss Simpson’s lifelong friend, Miss Bellringer, can’t accept that and persuades Inspector Barnaby to request an autopsy. It transpires Miss Simpson died of hemlock poisoning…
This, of course, is the series that inspired the long-running cosy TV series, Midsomer Murders, the early ones of which were based on the books. Here the story is almost identical (meaning there were no surprises for me as to whodunit) but the tone is entirely different – much darker and not cosy at all. The TV series was always a bit odd in that the murders tend to be gruesome, often gory, and the motivations rest on some of the darkest aspects of human nature. But the Barnaby family are all lovely and loving, and Sergeant Troy, Barnaby’s original sidekick, is an enthusiastic puppy dog of a man, admiring his boss and nursing a not-so-secret passion for Barnaby’s daughter, Cully. These central characters are quite different in the book! Barnaby is grumpy and cynical, coming to the end of his career, but still fascinated by the reasons that lead people to murder. Joyce Barnaby doesn’t really have a personality beyond being the worst cook in the world, but she has the most important quality of any wife – she’s a good listener. Cully is sarcastic and annoying, and her parents don’t like having her around. And Troy! He’s a male chauvinistic, homophobic, thick-headed, mean-minded pig of a man! It all works in the book which isn’t trying to be cosy, but I can quite see why the TV people changed them all so dramatically. The first time I tried to read the books long ago, I was so put off by my lovely Troy having morphed into the ultimate boor that I gave up. Now, not having rewatched the series in a long time, I was better able to tolerate the differences.
The investigation is of the old-fashioned kind, where Barnaby and Troy wander round the village of Badger’s Drift, chatting to the various residents to check where they were at the time the murder probably happened, and soon Barnaby gets on to the idea that Miss Simpson may have seen something in the woods, so they want to know where everyone was then too. This turns into a series of rather wonderful character sketches, occasionally skimming close to caricature, but for the most part quite credible. The portrait of Miss Bellringer’s feelings of loss on the death of her oldest and closest friend is sympathetic and moving. But most of the other respectable-seeming characters have secrets to hide behind the doors of their idyllic country houses and cottages. There’s the goodtime girl who has finally caught her rich man, but is risking it all by having an affair. The daughter, jealous of her father’s passion for his new wife. The artist, rude to all and sundry and feeling that his art means the world owes him a living. The young girl about to marry an older man – for love? Money? Security?
And then there are the Rainbirds, Iris and Dennis, mother and son. Here, unfortunately, we are given a very unpleasant portrait of the only gay character in the book, Dennis, effeminate, sly, weak and with the once prevalent link to sexual perversion, in this case of a particularly perverted kind. Troy might be the only one who uses openly homophobic language about Dennis, but sadly the impression is that both Barnaby and the author probably agreed with his sentiments if not his language. (It struck me as odd that this book was published in 1987, nearly a decade after Sergeant Wield “came out” in Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe series, and yet in terms of attitudes towards homosexuality this book feels closer to the 1950s than the end of the millennium. Reminded me again what a frontrunner Hill was in changing the portrayal of gay characters in crime fiction.)
The plot is very good, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have worked it out if I hadn’t remembered it from the TV version. But even knowing the solution, I found the way Graham got to it through a slow reveal of the characters’ various secrets was very well done. There are red herrings a-plenty and lots of interesting side issues that arise during the investigation, such as the sex workers (much more sympathetically portrayed than Dennis), all of which add to the interest. I’ll probably listen to more of these – John Hopkins does a very good job with the narration. My hesitation is only because I know the plots so well from the TV adaptations and because I really have difficulty with the book version of Troy. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
Isolated in the Garden of Eden for the duration of Covid, a perfect mother enlivens the time by telling her three perfect daughters of the summer she Isolated in the Garden of Eden for the duration of Covid, a perfect mother enlivens the time by telling her three perfect daughters of the summer she fell in love with Peter Duke, who went on to become a famous actor, before she married their perfect father.
Sadly, for me this was like being stuck in an 11-hour episode of Anne of Green Gables Meets the Waltons, over which the director had poured a couple of kilos of syrup in case it wasn’t sweet enough. The perfection of this family is cosier than being wrapped in a quilt stuffed with feathers fallen from the wings of guardian angels. Each day in this perfect setting is more perfect than the day before, and we can only be thankful that the deaths of seven million people around the world gave this perfect family the chance to experience their halcyon summer of mutual adoration and share it with us. I had to skim several chapters in the middle for fear it would tip me over into diabetes.
A few people seemed surprised when I suggested that this sounded too much like “women’s fiction” for my taste, but what on earth is it if it isn’t that? Women telling women about the experience of being women, written by a woman and read overwhelmingly by women. It’s not a term of disparagement, is it? However, it’s really also not the kind of thing I enjoy. Which doesn’t make it a bad book – it’s beautifully written and it does what it does very well. I’d have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who does like women’s fiction and is looking for a comfort read (also not a derogatory term!), although I suspect everyone has already read it. The narration by Meryl Streep is excellent, her soft, soothing rendition bringing out the full sweetness and somnolence of the story.
2½ subjective stars for me, so rounded up. Goodnight, John-Boy!...more
Two girls approach a woman at a bus stop and ask when the bus to Woodstock is due. She tells them that they’ve missed the last bus. TheAsking for it…
Two girls approach a woman at a bus stop and ask when the bus to Woodstock is due. She tells them that they’ve missed the last bus. They decide to hitch a lift and walk off up the road. A bus arrives and the woman realises she was wrong – this is the bus for Woodstock. She looks after the girls but they are too far away now for her to call them back. A sad mistake, for later that night one of the girls will be found in the car park of a pub, murdered.
The writing is great, I must say, with real literary touches but never going over the top into pretentiousness. The setting is Oxford, and this story sets up what I assume from the TV adaptation will be a pattern of the plots involving members of the academic community in that ancient seat of learning. Academia is only lightly touched on in this story, but he gives a good picture of the social character of the city and of the class divides within it.
Most of his characterisation is excellent too, full of credible psychological insight. Every character is flawed, but there’s a sympathy for most of them – a recognition of human fallibility. Avoiding spoiler territory, but one character in particular moved me in the way only a really well drawn character can. Is Morse simply unlikeable, or are we supposed to assume that his obnoxiousness arises out of his profound dedication to finding the truth, at all costs? I couldn’t decide – I’d have to read another couple of the books to see how he develops. Lewis is certainly a much nicer person and, although Morse is shown as the more intelligent, Lewis is no dunderhead either. Why does he put up with Morse’s rages and tantrums? I don’t know – even in the ’70s I don’t think that kind of behaviour would have been tolerated in the police, but maybe I’m wrong. So a bunch of interesting characters, both the recurring ones and the various suspects.
But – and this is a big but – when it comes to young women (aka “girls”), Dexter drops to a level of contempt that goes way beyond sexism, and is startling even for that era. All “girls” are temptresses, all desperate for a man, all lacking any kind of morals. Every one of them is betraying someone in some way, usually sexually – either being unfaithful to their boyfriend or having affairs with someone else’s husband. No sympathy or understanding is shown to these characters – that’s just how young women are in Dexter’s eyes, it seems, sexual animals perpetually on heat, the alley cats of the human race. Older women do better – once they’re too old to be “attractive” (which seems to happen about the mid-thirties) they are permitted to become human.
But – and this is an even bigger but – it is in his attitude to rape that Dexter’s deep misogyny shows through. He has his characters discuss more than once whether rape is even possible. The theory is that a women can run, kick and scream, making it impossible for the poor rapist to ravish her successfully. A girl in a skirt can run faster than a man with his trousers round his ankles, they joke, hilariously. So, in a surreal version of Catch-22, any woman who says she has been raped can’t have been, because rape is only possible if the woman – sorry, girl – allows it, and therefore it isn’t rape. Logically, therefore, if one claims to have been raped, one is effectively admitting to being a slut. Dexter allows no character to argue against this – all the arguments given are on the side of this conclusion. I was a teenage girl when the book was first published in 1975 and I assure you we all believed rape was possible, so Dexter’s denial of rape was out of date even then, if it was ever in date.
The working out of the plot is done well, though it takes a little too long. I felt I’d known for at least half the book what the solution would be and I wasn’t wrong. However, there’s an inherent lack of logic in it that left me feeling an extra chapter was required to explain the murderer’s psyche, and to answer a couple of unanswered questions.
I’ve decided that I’ll give the series another chance – I did, after all, criticise the first book in my beloved Dalziel and Pascoe series for its outdated sexism (though not misogyny) – so I’ll listen to the next one and see if he tones his contempt for young women down a bit. Certainly the writing and general characterisation is well above average, and many debuts have weaknesses that the author improves on with experience. The narration by Samuel West is excellent, and got me through some of the harder to take passages. Four stars for the good bits, but one star deducted for Dexter’s attitude to women, and frankly I feel I’m letting him off lightly.
Maurice Castle seems quite comfortably settled in his job as an office-based agent in MI6. He’s dubious about the worth of the worA Study in Amorality
Maurice Castle seems quite comfortably settled in his job as an office-based agent in MI6. He’s dubious about the worth of the work and sometimes considers leaving, but he’s not unhappy. He gets along well on a superficial level with his subordinate, Davis; the two of them making up the entire South African section. And his home life is good – he loves his wife, Sarah, and she him, and they both dote on Sam, Sarah’s young son from a previous relationship. But when his superiors begin to suspect that there is a leak coming from his department, this contented façade begins to crumble, and Maurice has to face up to his past…
I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith, and I suspect that coloured my view of it to some degree. While the main narrative is fine, Pigott-Smith’s accents in the dialogue are not, especially Sarah who is supposed to be South African but sounds like no accent I have ever heard and is seriously irritating. So I feel I may have liked this better if I’d read rather than listened.
Maurice and Sarah met when he was stationed in South Africa as a spy in the field, and since Sarah is black, their love was forbidden under the apartheid rules then in force. So racism is one of the themes of the book – both the overt, legalised racism of apartheid, and the more subtle racism that Sarah and especially young Sam face in Britain. This expands towards Maurice too as, while mixed marriages may have been legal in Britain, they were still unusual and not well-regarded. (The book was published in 1978.)
Back in South Africa, Sarah had got into trouble with the authorities and had been helped by the Communists, and as a result Maurice felt he owed them a favour. We quickly learn that it is not Davis who is the double-agent, but Maurice. So when the MI6 investigation pins the blame on Davis, Maurice should feel guilty. He doesn’t really seem to, though – he’s so wrapped up in his own peril and that of his family that he doesn’t seem to feel anything much about the effect on poor Davis. His boss, however, new to the role, is rather shocked to discover the lengths that MI6 will go to when they suspect a traitor in their ranks. This is the major theme – the amorality at the heart of espionage, not just in Britain but among the Soviets and South Africans too, and by extension to all who pursue that shadowy profession.
There’s also a background commentary about the murky power politics going on in Africa, with Britain unwilling to break with the South African government however much they deplore apartheid, for fear that the Soviets will fill the vacuum and become the major power in the continent. The black Africans are stuck in the middle, at the mercy of these two colonial powers, with their rights ignored or trashed by both. This was all shown a bit too subtly, I felt – it may have been more obvious to a contemporary audience, but I wasn’t really clear for a long time about why the Soviets were involved in the story, or what Britain’s stance was.
There’s also a strand that takes us to Moscow, to the world of the double-agents who have become defectors, and this would have been very relevant in the era of Philby, Burgess and Maclean. Greene shows that some at least of the men who ended up as defectors weren’t really dedicated to the cause of Communism, but had drifted into becoming double-agents for a variety of reasons that weren’t very well defined even to themselves. The dreary isolation and constant supervision they face as they live out their lives in Moscow seems like almost as much of a punishment as imprisonment would have been. Without explicitly stating it, Greene also gives the impression that the secrets they were trading during the Cold War were rather unimportant anyway – that it was all an unsavoury game.
There is some humour in it, but not much. Mostly I found it a rather grey and depressing read, where people sold their souls and their countries for very little reason, and where morality and humanity were both in short supply. For the benefit of animal lovers, I shall say there is one hideous scene of horrible cruelty to a dog, which I felt was entirely unnecessary – it seemed to be there purely to show us that innocents suffer in the spying game, a point I felt had been made effectively enough with the human characters.
So not my favourite Greene, though it’s well done and gets its points over. Simply not really to my taste, and the narration didn’t help. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
When summer cop Danny Boyle and his friends decide to party on the beach late one night, they fall victim to what seems at first like aNot quite cosy…
When summer cop Danny Boyle and his friends decide to party on the beach late one night, they fall victim to what seems at first like a practical joke as someone starts firing paintballs at them. The police would probably dismiss the incident as a bunch of kids on a prank except that Sea Haven’s big Labor Day beach party is due in a few days and they don’t want anything to happen that might put off the mass influx of tourists the town is hoping for. So Danny’s partner and mentor, John Ceepak, is detailed to find out who’s behind the attack and prevent a repeat. But then there’s another attack and it seems that this time the intention is to do serious harm, and it looks like Danny and his friends are the specific target. Will Ceepak and Danny be able to stop the attacks before someone gets seriously hurt? And will Sea Haven be safe for the thousands of people descending on its beach and boardwalk?
This is the second in this now long-running series. Although John Ceepak takes top billing, the series is as much about young Danny, who is our narrator. He’s still a temporary cop taken on for the summer months in this one, but he’s hopeful he’ll get a permanent job at the end of the season. He’s still partnered with Ceepak whom he rather hero-worships. But Ceepak is a worthy hero! An army vet who lived through some harrowing times in the Iraq war, he has a strong personal code of honour – he will not lie or cheat and expects the same standards from those around him. He is totally dedicated to his job, working within the rules at all times. He might be very irritating, in fact, except that his efficiency makes him a good officer while his generosity, loyalty and kindness make him a good man. For Danny, he’s like a surrogate big brother, someone to look up to and emulate.
Both Danny and Ceepak have romantic interests in this one. This works well at humanising Ceepak, who can occasionally seem a little robotic otherwise. Danny doesn’t need humanising – he’s a fun character and a very likeable narrator. A local who grew up in Sea Haven and knows everyone, he’s one of those easy-going types who makes friends easily and keeps them. Like Ceepak, he’s fundamentally a good guy who cares about other people and wants to do the right thing. But he lacks experience so needs Ceepak’s guidance in the job and even, to a degree, in life.
It transpires that someone may be out for revenge for something that happened in the past, but unfortunately Danny and his friends can’t recall what they may have done to provoke such vengeance. While they try hard to remember whom they might have crossed, the seriousness of the attacks keeps increasing until eventually someone is murdered.
I said this about the first book too, but while the overall tone is of a cosy – seaside resort town, likeable characters who behave well, small town relationships, touch of romance – there’s an odd jarring element that doesn’t quite let the books sit comfortably in that category. The plots are a little darker than I think of as “cosy” although this one isn’t quite as dark as Tilt-a-Whirl, and sometimes the victim isn’t as “disposable” as cosy victims usually are. The other element is that Grabenstein peppers the books liberally with entirely unnecessary F-bombs. In this one he goes even further, using the C-word more than once (my personal pet hate and more or less a red line for me). It’s a complete misfit with the overall style and tone of the books, and is the single reason for me deducting a star.
Apart from those niggles, though, this is another entertaining story and both Ceepak and Danny continue to be likeable characters. The narrator, Jeff Woodman, is excellent and the books work very well in audio format (other than the swearing issue which always stands out even more in audio than on the page). The plot gets a little unbelievable in the end, but not so much so that I couldn’t go along for the ride. And it all ends up in a thriller-style ending with plenty of danger and suspense. I’ll be looking forward to taking another trip to Sea Haven in the not-too-distant future.
Our unnamed narrator is a literary critic, writing a biography of a long-dead American poet of the Romantic school, Jeffery Aspern. His inteObsession…
Our unnamed narrator is a literary critic, writing a biography of a long-dead American poet of the Romantic school, Jeffery Aspern. His interest in Aspern has become so intense it is a passion – an obsession, in fact. So when his writing collaborator tells him that some letters of Aspern’s may exist in the possession of a woman he once loved, the narrator’s desire to obtain them is irresistible. But Aspern’s lover, Juliana Bordereau, now a very old lady, has become a kind of recluse, living in a dilapidated old Venetian palace with only her niece for company. Direct appeals having failed, our narrator turns to subterfuge – under a false name and identity, he offers the old lady an enormous sum of money to be allowed to rent some rooms in the palace for a few months. And then he turns to wheedling himself into the good graces of the niece, Miss Tita…
Novella-length, this is a wonderful depiction of the morally destructive power of obsession, shown through the interactions of the three characters who fill the stage – the narrator, the old lady and the niece. The narrator would consider himself a gentleman and would generally be considered so by others, but we see how little by little his moral scruples are weakened and destroyed by his self-justifying belief that the papers should be available to the academic world – in other words, to him. Partly this is so that he can write the definitive biography of Aspern – justification: to bring his work back to public prominence; reality: to make the narrator’s name and fortune. But there’s another part which is never spelled out and of which it appears the narrator himself may be unaware – that his feelings for Aspern go well beyond artistic admiration. When his thoughts linger on Aspern, the unexpressed homoeroticism tingles in the air.
Perhaps this explains his blindness to his own narcissistic cruelty. Obsessed by his own desires, he sees the desires of the two women as mere obstacles to be overcome, and increasingly he is willing to cross the ethical boundaries he initially sets himself. He sees the old lady as grasping and greedy, as she extorts money from him at every turn. Although Miss Tita tells him repeatedly that Juliana wants the money to safeguard Miss Tita from poverty after the old lady’s death, the narrator never gives Juliana any credit for this. To him, she is cold and unreasonable, clinging on to her precious papers as if she has a greater right to them than the world – it never occurs to him to wonder why she might not want her lover’s letters to her read by strangers.
But it is to Miss Tita that the narrator’s behaviour is increasingly cruel. Seeing her as the weaker of the two, he bombards this faded, lonely, middle-aged woman with flowers and flattery, seeking out her company and faking interest in her dull preoccupations, trying to persuade her to go against her aunt’s wishes and give him access to the papers. Poor Miss Tita – the narrator’s tunnel vision doesn’t let him see what we, the readers, see – her little spark of hope, unexpected after so many years alone. And yet James doesn’t quite make her tragic – he gives her a kind of resigned strength, born of years of being overlooked by the world, that in the end saves her from being a simple object of pity.
Given the simplicity of the plot – will the narrator get his hands on the papers or won’t he? – James creates real tension, all building up to a quietly dramatic climax. Along the way he forces us to consider the ethics of literary criticism and biography, of prying into the private lives of public figures, and raises the question of how much is “owed” to the pursuit of knowledge. As someone regularly made uncomfortable by revelations in biographies of things that the subject tried to keep secret in his or her lifetime, this theme resonated strongly for me, and James’ refusal to answer the questions he raises leaves space for the reader to think for herself.
I listened to this as an audiobook, perfectly narrated by Jeremy Northam. He brings out all the depth and layers in the characterisation, not just of the narrator but of the two women too, and he does a wonderful job with the building tension and the underplayed drama of the climax. A great performance of a masterful piece of writing – highly recommended!
Clearly lots of people love long lists of names followed by which bits of their bodies get chopped off before they die. I wonder if they'd read and woClearly lots of people love long lists of names followed by which bits of their bodies get chopped off before they die. I wonder if they'd read and worship a modern book that followed that model or if it is the antiquity alone that makes them praise this? Tried two narrators and two translations. This emperor has no clothes. I'm out....more
It’s taken some time for Jack Treadwell to make his way back to Highbridge after the end of the First World War. Now he’s looking The show must go on…
It’s taken some time for Jack Treadwell to make his way back to Highbridge after the end of the First World War. Now he’s looking for a job. His mother, who died while he was serving, has left a recommendation that he tries the Empire, a theatre part-owned by Lily Lassiter, whom she worked beside when they were young, before Lily became an actress and then the wife of rich Sir Barnabas Lassiter. Jack also served beside Sir Edmund, grandson of Sir Barnabas, who is the other part-owner following Sir Barnabas’ recent death. So Jack gets taken on as stage door keeper and quickly learns to love life in the theatre, and also begins to fall in love with Grace Hawkins, Assistant Manager and the person who really runs the whole show. But the theatre is in trouble. A rival theatre impresario has decided to force them out of business so that he can buy up the Empire and add it to the string of theatres he already owns. Can Grace and Jack fight back and keep the Empire independent?
Michael Ball has been a star of musical theatre for decades, so he is most certainly falling into the category of “write what you know”. And he does it wonderfully well, bringing the Empire to life! All the glitz of the performers and shows, the contrast with the rather grimier and rundown backstage area, all the work that goes into a successful show from the writing, casting, music, costumes, directing, rehearsals – all are shown with great authenticity and affection. The book is as cosy as cosy can be, and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Yes, Jack and Grace have difficulties to face and yes, there will be drama and even danger along the way, but this is the type of book where the reader knows that ultimately happy endings are on the horizon for the people we care about, and so we can simply relax and enjoy the journey.
There are about a million characters, since each show has its own cast and there are all the backstage people too, plus a few non-theatre people. But it gradually becomes clear who the main characters are and they form a much smaller and more manageable group. Once I stopped trying to remember who everyone was and just concentrated on these main characters, I found it much easier to follow. (I believe in the book there is a full character list provided for reference, but of course this doesn’t work in an audiobook.)
It would be possible to call the characters stereotyped – the old Shakespearian-style actors, the glamorous female stars, the self-important doorman, the backstage cleaners with hearts of gold and endless cuppas, etc. - but actually it’s all done so affectionately that it feels more like homage to a milieu the author clearly loves. Michael Ball narrates the audiobook himself, brilliantly, and I felt that occasionally an element of impersonation crept into his performance of some of the characters that made me feel as if I could recognise the people, or at least the types, that he had based his characterisations on.
The plot gets quite complicated at times, but in a sense it almost takes second place to the descriptions of how a show is created and brought to the stage. There is a huge amount of humour in it; for example, when the only show that Grace can book turns out to be a musical version of Macbeth so bad it’s unintentionally hilarious. (I think I saw that show at the Edinburgh Fringe one year… ...more
When Tom Parker drives into a ditch on Stompy Heywood’s land, Tom and his wife Mary strike up a friendship wWelcome to Sandytown’s Festival of Health!
When Tom Parker drives into a ditch on Stompy Heywood’s land, Tom and his wife Mary strike up a friendship with young Charley, the Heywoods’ daughter. Charley has just graduated as a psychologist and wants to study the psychological effects of alternative medicine, so when she discovers that Tom is on a mission to make his little town of Sandytown into a health resort, she’s intrigued. Tom and Mary invite her for a visit. Meantime, Andy Dalziel is on the slow road to recovery from his “death” in the previous book, and has been persuaded by Cap Marvell to spend a few weeks in a nursing home, the Avalon, in Sandytown. Both Charley and Andy are keen observers of human nature, and it’s through Charley’s emails to her sister and Andy’s therapeutic revelations to Mildred, his digital dictaphone, that we meet the many personalities that make up Sandytown life. And then, during the annual hog roast, one of the most prominent of those citizens is murdered…
If any of that blurb is ringing bells for you, it may be because this novel is Hill’s homage to Jane Austen’s unfinished novel, Sanditon. Many of the names are the same or similar, and initially the various relationships between the people in the town mirror the set-up in Austen’s book. And of course Sanditon too was based around a town that was hoping to cash in on the fashion for health resorts. However, Sanditon is a mere 70 pages long – tantalising but with the story barely begun – so Hill has plenty of room to develop a plot in his own style on this meagre foundation. He liberally references Sanditon via the setting and characters but happily doesn’t try to copy Austen’s style of writing, and the characters’ behaviour is strictly contemporary with lots of hanky-panky going on that would have shocked Ms Austen to her socks.
Hill’s writing is always a pleasure, and Andy is my favourite character so I particularly enjoyed spending time in his head. His thoughts, as to be expected, are full of humour, but we also learn more about how he feels about things – his own health, his relationship with Cap, etc. Often we only see Andy through Peter’s eyes, so it’s quite a rare perspective in the series. This time we see Peter through Andy’s eyes, and I must say Peter rather suffers from it. He’s in charge while Andy is on sick leave, and although he’s perfectly competent he lacks that spark of inspiration that turns a good, painstaking detective into a great one. Andy is trying not to tread on Pete’s territory, but he has to guide him occasionally to stop him making a fool of himself. Given that Hill usually seems to favour Peter, it’s an odd and rather disconcerting change in perspective, and for once makes it very clear that Peter’s reputation for greatness derives mainly from the reflected glory of being Andy’s henchman.
Charley’s emails are done well, but are a matter of taste. I got tired of her obsession with sex – or rather, the sexiness or otherwise of every man she meets. But otherwise I found her quite fun to be with, and Hill does a reasonably good job of catching the tone of a young woman just starting out on life’s adventures. They do go on for a (very) long time before the murder happens, though, and it can get a bit wearing. I pictured her poor, long-suffering sister in Africa, receiving a twenty-five page email every day full of information about people she had never met and in all likelihood never would. She had my sympathies! But from the reader’s perspective they give a great outsider’s view of the town and its inhabitants, and Charley has the knack of wheedling out gossip from all and sundry – very useful when the investigation begins.
Unfortunately for me, this is another Franny Roote novel. I have mentioned before that I never enjoyed the character of Franny Roote nearly as much as Hill clearly did, and by this stage he’s appearing as a major character in nearly every book. By now, he has developed almost into a Moriarty character in Andy’s mind, and the ambiguity around him – is he a villain or a misunderstood victim? - has been overplayed. There’s an air of unreality around him, and while I can see that Hill is doing that intentionally, it still doesn’t quite work for me.
The actual plot is fun, though, with a murder method that manages to be both gruesome and funny – a Hill trademark! The various relationships gradually veer off at tangents from Austen’s originals, and we learn the many secrets that are hidden in this small community. Plenty of twists and it all comes to a satisfying conclusion. Not quite one of the best in the series, but close, and the homage element is an added bonus for Austen fans. It’s not essential to have read Sanditon, though – the first time I read this I hadn’t heard of Sanditon, much less read it, and yet I enjoyed this book just as much. While this could theoretically be read as a standalone, I really wouldn’t recommend it – it works much better if you know Andy and Peter and their history well, and also the background to the Franny Roote strand. And the very fact that Andy is alive is a bit of a spoiler for the previous book, The Death of Dalziel! But definitely recommended to those who have made it this far in this wonderful series. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.
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