Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is Title contains a number or colour – I’ve chosen a mix of numbers and colours.

The links in the titles of each book go to my posts on the books – where they exist.

O is for One Two Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp investigate the apparent suicide of Mr Morley, Poirot’s Harley Street dentist, who was found dead in his surgery, shot through the head and with a pistol in his hand. This really is a most complicated plot, and even though the facts are clearly presented and I was on the lookout for clues, Agatha Christie, once again fooled me. Not all the characters are who they purport to be and the involvement of international politics and intrigue doesn’t help in unravelling the puzzle.

Written in 1939, this book reflects the economic and political conditions of the time, with  a definite pre-war atmosphere of a world on the brink of war. But Poirot is concerned with the truth, with the importance of the lives of each individual, no matter how ordinary or insignificant they may seem.

C is for The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

Historical fiction set in London in 1924, with Britain still coming to terms with the aftermath of the First World War. Evelyn Gifford, one of the few pioneer female lawyers, lives at home with her mother, aunt and grandmother, still mourning the death of her brother James in the trenches. Evelyn is woken in the early hours one morning to find Meredith and her child, Edmund, aged 6 on the doorstep, claiming that Edmund is James’s son. Evelyn and the other women are thrown into confusion as Meredith upsets their memories of James.

T is for Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

Moving at a fast pace the book follows the events during the thirteen hours from 05:36 when Rachel, a young American girl is running for her life up the steep slope of Lion’s Head in Capetown.  The body of another American girl is found outside the Lutheran church in Long Street. Her throat slit had been slit. An hour or so later Alexandra Barnard, a former singing star and an alcoholic, wakes from a drunken stupor to find the dead body of her husband, a record producer, lying on the floor opposite her and his pistol lying next to her.DI Benny Griessel is mentoring two inexperienced detectives who are investigating these crimes.

The two cases move along parallel to each other, keeping me desperate to know what happened next in both. The book also reflects the racial tension in the ‘new South Africa’ with its mix of white, coloured and black South Africans. There is a strong sense of location, not just from the cultural aspect but also geographical because although I know nothing about Capetown I had no difficulty in visualising the scenes from Meyer’s descriptions.

O is for One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

This is a beautiful, poetic novel about England in 1946 after the Second World War had ended. It was written in 1946 and published in 1947 and although it recalls an England that had disappeared with the war it also looks forward with optimism to the future. It’s a novel vividly evoking life in the post-war period. I was fascinated and drawn into this book right from the start. Part of my fascination was because it made me think of what life was like for my parents, picking up their lives together after the war and part was because of the wonderful imagery and sense of time and place.

B is for The Black Book by Ian Rankin, the fifth Inspector Rebus novel.

When a close colleague is brutally attacked, Inspector John Rebus is drawn into a case involving a hotel fire, an unidentified body, and a long forgotten night of terror and murder.

Pursued by dangerous ghosts and tormented by the coded secrets of his colleague’s notebook, Rebus must piece together the most complex and confusing of jigsaws.

But not everyone wants the puzzle solved – perhaps not even Rebus himself…

E is for Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel

Life in Saudi Arabia seen through the eyes of Frances, the wife of an ex-pat British engineer. The streets are not a woman’s territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begins to dissolve. This was her fourth novel, inspired by the four years she lived in Jeddah.

The regime is corrupt and harsh, the expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are secretive, watchful. The streets are not a woman’s territory; confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self begin to dissolve. She hears whispers, sounds of distress from the ’empty’ flat above her head. She has only rumours, no facts to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease. As her days empty of certainty and purpose, her life becomes a blank – waiting to be filled by violence and disaster.

R is for Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong, the first book featuring Chief Inspector Chen.

Chen is a reluctant policeman, he has a degree in  English literature and is a published poet and translator. This is as much historical fiction as it is crime fiction. There is so much in it about China, its culture and its history before 1990 – the Communist regime and then the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s – as well as the changes brought about in the 1990s after the massacre of Tiananmen Square.

It’s a fascinating book on several levels and one I enjoyed reading. I liked the characterisation, Chen and Yu in particular are clearly drawn, distinctive characters, and the setting is superb. I also liked the many descriptions of food.

The next link up will be on November 4, 2023 with the theme: Books about music/musicians.