My Friday Post: The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

Published on by Margaret

Book Beginnings Button

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

I’m currently reading The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths.

The Stranger Diaries

‘If you’ll permit me,’ said the Stranger, ‘I’d like to tell you a story.’

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 54 and page 56:

Ty could be drunk or on drugs for all I know. high on something, the modern equivalent of opium, like Wilkie Collins.

Blurb:

A dark story has been brought to terrifying life. Can the ending be rewritten in time?

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. As a literature teacher specialising in the Gothic writer RM Holland, she teaches a short course on it every year. Then Clare’s life and work collide tragically when one of her colleagues is found dead, a line from an RM Holland story by her body. The investigating police detective is convinced the writer’s works somehow hold the key to the case.

Not knowing who to trust, and afraid that the killer is someone she knows, Clare confides her darkest suspicions and fears about the case to her journal. Then one day she notices some other writing in the diary. Writing that isn’t hers…

What do you think? Would you keep reading?

12 thoughts on “My Friday Post: The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths”

  1. ooh Wilkie Collins, I didn’t know he was an addict, I must find out more! I wonder if that’s why his books were good? lol He was quite prolific!

    I like the sound of this, and that fact that the protag is a gothic horror author fan – and the writing in the diary that’s not hers! Well, just about everything about this lol

    Here’s my Friday post. Have a great weekend, Margaret!

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    1. Wilkie Collins took laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol, prescribed by his doctor. It was widely available as a patent medicine, but according to Peter Ackroyd’s biography, Collins took it in ‘larger and larger quantities until it was said that he could swallow in a single glass enough to kill twelve people.’ He was never free of it after 1861 or 1862.

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  2. I like Elly Griffths’ work very much, Margaret; so, on that score, I’d definitely read on. It’s a fascinating premise, too, and a different direction to take her writing. Interesting, and I very much look forward to your review.

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  3. I have heard really good things about this book and I have it – just unread as yet. Hope you enjoy it a lot! It would be tough for her to top her Ruth and Nelson series in my eyes, but one never knows. Ha!

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