Margaret

Bats in the Belfry: A London Mystery (British Library Crime Classics ) by E C R Lorac

Published on June 7, 2018June 29, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

Poisoned Pen Press 2018 |233 pages|e-book |Review copy|4*

This was first published in 1937 by Collins Crime Club. This edition has an introduction by Martin Edwards.

Description:

Bruce Attleton dazzled London’s literary scene with his first two novels – but his early promise did not bear fruit. His wife Sybilla is a glittering actress, unforgiving of Bruce’s failure, and the couple lead separate lives in their house at Regent’s Park.

When Bruce is called away on a sudden trip to Paris, he vanishes completely – until his suitcase and passport are found in a sinister artist’s studio, the Belfry, in a crumbling house in Notting Hill. Inspector Macdonald must uncover Bruce’s secrets, and find out the identity of his mysterious blackmailer.

This intricate mystery from a classic writer is set in a superbly evoked London of the 1930s.

E C R Lorac was a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894-1958) who was a prolific writer of crime fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a member of the prestigious Detection Club. Little has been written about her life. By the time of her death she had produced more that seventy books but she seems to have been a forgotten author and I hadn’t heard of E C R Lorac until quite recently.

I’m pleased to say that I enjoyed Bats in the Belfry, which is set in London in the 1930s. There is the occasional anti-Semitic comment, offensive now but it seems to reflect the period in which Lorac was writing. However, it’s full of descriptive writing painting vivid pictures of the streets of London and in particular the spooky, Gothic tower in which a corpse is discovered, ‘headless and handless‘. For a while the identity of the murdered man is in doubt – is it that of Bruce Attleton who had unaccountably disappeared or that of the mysterious stranger, Debrette who it seems had been blackmailing Bruce?

Chief Inspector Macdonald of New Scotland Yard is called in to investigate Bruce’s disappearance. I liked Macdonald, a ‘long lean faced’ Scot. He’s a shrewd detective, not easily ruffled or fooled. The other characters are well defined, including Bruce’s wife Sybilla, both of whom are having affairs, and his friends, one of whom, Robert Grenville, is in love with his ward Elizabeth, a lively and resourceful young woman. The plot is complex, with enough twists and turns to keep me guessing until very nearly the end of the book.

I think this is one of the better Golden Age Mysteries that I have read, and I’m now looking forward to reading another of her books, Fire in the Thatch, set in Devon.

Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

First Chapter First Paragraph: The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton

Published on June 5, 2018 by Margaret24 Comments

Every Tuesday First Chapter, First Paragraph/Intros is hosted by Vicky of I’d Rather Be at the Beach sharing the first paragraph or two of a book she’s reading or plans to read soon.

On Sunday I thought I’d just have a quick look at Sharon Bolton’s latest book, The Craftsman and was immediately hooked and had read 20%. I’ve had to put the other books I’m reading on hold as I just have to know what happens next.

The book opens with a letter from Sharon Bolton:

Dear Reader,

On a spring day in 1612, a mill owner called Richard Baldwin, in the Pendle forest of Lancashire chased two local women off his land, calling them ‘witches and whores’, threatening to ‘burn one and hang the other’, and in so doing, set in motion events that led to the imprisonment, trial and execution of nine women on the charge of murder by witchcraft: the infamous Pendle Witch Trials.

Like Sharon Bolton the north of England is my homeland and just as she has always wanted to write a book about witches, I have always been fascinated by such books. So it’s no wonder that I am now immersed in her book. It’s not about the Pendle Witch Trials as such, but is set in the shadow of Pendle Hill and moves between the events of 1969 and 1999.

Chapter One

Tuesday, 10 August 1999

On the hottest day of the year, Larry Glassbrook has come home to his native Lancashire for the last time, and the townsfolk have turned out to say goodbye.

Not in a friendly way.

Blurb (Amazon):

Devoted father or merciless killer?

His secrets are buried with him.

Florence Lovelady’s career was made when she convicted coffin-maker Larry Glassbrook of a series of child murders 30 years ago. Like something from our worst nightmares the victims were buried…ALIVE.

Larry confessed to the crimes; it was an open and shut case. But now he’s dead, and events from the past start to repeat themselves.““

Did she get it wrong all those years ago?
Or is there something much darker at play?

What do you think – would you read on?

Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner

Published on June 3, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

Description:

Second literary thriller from bestselling author of MISSING, PRESUMED.

A brutal murder. A detective with no one left to trust.

As dusk falls a young man staggers through a park, far from home, bleeding from a stab wound. He dies where he falls; cradled by a stranger, a woman’s name on his lips in his last seconds of life.

DI Manon Bradshaw can’t help taking an interest – these days she only handles cold cases, but the man died just yards from the police station where she works.

She’s horrified to discover that both victim and prime suspect are more closely linked to her than she could have imagined. And as the Cambridgeshire police force closes ranks against her, she is forced to contemplate the unthinkable.

How well does she know her loved ones, and are they capable of murder?

I loved Missing, Presumed (link to my post) so I was keen to read Persons Unknown. They are both written in the present tense which, if you read my blog regularly you will know, I usually find irritating. But for some unknown reason it didn’t bother me and as I read the books I completely forgot about the tense and was totally immersed in the mysteries. Persons Unknown is just as good, if not better than Missing, Presumed.

Although it’s the second Manon Bradshaw book I think it works well as a standalone book, particularly as her circumstances have changed since the end of the first book. She has moved from London to Cambridge and she and her adopted son Fly, aged twelve, are living with her sister Ellie, and Ellie’s nearly three-year-old son Solly. Fly is struggling to fit into school, a vast comprehensive school where he is the only black boy in the school, and Manon is five months pregnant and working on cold cases. She would have loved to be included in the investigation into the murder of Jon-Oliver Ross who was found stabbed to death in the local park. But that’s not possible when Ellie identifies him as Solly’s father and Fly is a suspect after he is spotted on CCTV near the body.

What I particularly like about this book is that it follows the events as they occur without flashbacks and although it’s a complicated story I found it easy to follow all the twists and turns and the multiple viewpoints. The characters are totally believable, their personalities clearly defined and explored with psychological depth. A number of issues are raised, such as the mix of work and home life, childcare and motherhood and racial prejudice. Manon, as the main character, stands out but some of the other characters, such as Birdie, the shopkeeper and Mark Talbot, a lawyer, who agrees to help Manon, are also memorable. At the same time it is tense and gripping as the events that led up to the murder are revealed.

Susie Steiner is currently writing the third Manon Bradshaw book – I hope it’ll be published soon!

Many thanks to The Borough Press/Harper Collins for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Six Degrees of Separation from The Tipping Point to Five Red Herrings

Published on June 2, 2018 by Margaret15 Comments

I love doing Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month the chain begins with The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell, a book I haven’t read. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

My chain is made up of a mixture of books that I’ve read or are on my TBR shelves and they are all crime fiction.

The Secret Place: Dublin Murder Squad: 5 (Dublin Murder Squad series) by [French, Tana] A Lesson in Secrets (Maisie Dobbs Mysteries Series Book 8) by [Winspear, Jacqueline] Dead Scared: Lacey Flint Series, Book 2 by [Bolton, Sharon] Time is a Killer: From the bestselling author of After the Crash by [Bussi, Michel] Five Red Herrings: Lord Peter Wimsey Book 7 (Lord Peter Wimsey Series) by [Sayers, Dorothy L.]

My first link in the chain is to the word ‘point’ in the book title – The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah, also a book I haven’t read. It’s a psychological thriller in which Sally Thorning has a secret affair.

The Secret Place by Tana French is another book about secrets that bind a group of adolescent girls together in a girls’ boarding school when they become involved in a murder investigation. It’s the 5th book in the Dublin Murder Squad Series. Another book I haven’t read yet.

A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear – historical crime fiction set in 1932. Maisie Dobbs directed by Scotland Yard’s Special Branch and the Secret Service goes undercover as a lecturer at Cambridge University to monitor any activities ‘not in the interests of the Crown.’ Yet another TBR book.

Another crime fiction book set in Cambridge University is Sharon Bolton’s Dead Scared in which DC Lacey Flint is posted at the University, after a spate of student suicides, with a brief to work undercover, posing as a vulnerable, depression-prone student.

Sticking with the theme of crime fiction takes me to my next link – Time is a Killer by Michel Bussi, a murder mystery set in Corsica. Clotilde is determined to find out what happened in a car crash that killed her parents and brother 27 years earlier. There is a plan showing the Revellata Peninsula, a wild and beautiful coastline, where Clotilde’s grandparents lived, and all the key locations.

I think maps and plans are really useful in crime fiction. Another book that has a map is Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L Sayers. Lord Peter is on holiday in Scotland, in a fishing and painting community when Campbell, a local landscape painter and fisherman is found dead in a burn. The map at the beginning of the book helped me follow the action – I needed the map!

~~~

My chain this month is linked by: crime fiction, books about secrets, books set in Cambridge and books with helpful maps. And in a way the books all link back to The Tipping Point as they all demonstrate how the little, minute things in the details of each case add up to help solve the crimes.

Next month (July 7, 2018), we’ll begin with Tales of the City, the first in the much-loved series by Armistead Maupin – yet another book I haven’t read or even heard of before!

Off Topic – Scenes in our little wood

Published on May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 by Margaret11 Comments

There is a little wood at one end of our garden with a stream running through it.

img_20180531_144448596 And over the other side of the little stream there are several old trees and decaying tree stumps.

It’s rather overgrown across the stream, ideal for wildlife.

img_20180531_144406352_hdr

img_20180531_144219342

img_20180531_145535444 — Close up of the base of the old tree stump in the photo above

We wondered if anything was using the holes at the base of this old tree stump, so David set up a wildlife camera – and found that rabbits have taken up residence, running in and out of the holes at the base of the tree.

rabbit-may-20182
The rabbits have made a path at the side of the tree up to a grassed area where Heidi, our cat, sits for hours on rabbit watch waiting for them to come out and play. Unfortunately her ‘play’ is a little rough for the baby rabbits and we have had to rescue a couple.

10 Books of Summer

Published on May 30, 2018July 12, 2018 by Margaret12 Comments

Cathy at Cathy 746 Books has an annual challenge, 20 Books of Summer, to read twenty books over the summer months starting on 1 June 2018 and running until 3 September 2018. The aim is to read from your TBR books already on your shelves.

There are also the options to read 15 or 10 books and as I’m very good at listing the books I want to read and very bad at sticking to the list I’m going for the 10 book option. I’ve never managed to stick to my list before so here’s hoping this year I’ll manage it. But the beauty of this meme is that if you change your mind you can even change your list!

So for now here are my 10 books:

10 Bks Summer 18

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell
Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor
On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill
Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole
Darkside by Belinda Bauer
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
Coffin Road by Peter May
Absent in the Spring by Agatha Christie
End in Tears by Ruth Rendell

I’ve not listed them in any particular order but I shall start with reading On Beulah Height.

So, any thoughts on my choices? Have you read any of these books? Are you taking part too?