20 Books of Summer – Page 3

Review and Quotes: Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

Published on July 12, 2024 by Margaret7 Comments

Close to Death is the fifth in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series. I have read all the earlier books, and I think it really is best if you read these books in order to fully understand the main characters and their relationship. Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-policeman, is now a private investigator, who the police call in to help with their more complicated cases. Anthony Horowitz himself appears as a fictional character, recruited by Hawthorne to write a book about him and the cases he investigates. It’s one of the books on my 20 Books of Summer list.

Book Beginnings quote:

It was four o’clock in the morning, that strange interval between night and morning when both seem to be fighting each other for control of the day ahead.

Friday 56 quote:

‘We’re not going to let them get away with it,’ Roderick exclaimed. ‘Someone should do something about him! Someone should … I don’t know! Ever since he came here, he’s been nothing but trouble.’

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In New York Times–bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound.

Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquillity from behind the security of a locked gate.

It is the perfect idyll until the Kenworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kenworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and they quickly offend every last one of their neighbours.

When Giles Kenworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case. Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?

My Review:

In the earlier books Horowitz works with Hawthorne on current murders. In this book he is looking back at one of Hawthorne’s earlier cases, using Hawthorne’s case notes and recordings. Set in Riverside Close, a gated community, this is a variation on the locked room type of mystery, with all the residents being suspects for the murder of Giles Kenworthy who had been found dead, shot with a crossbow. He and his family had disrupted the peaceful lives of all the residents in one way or another, when they moved into the largest property in the Close.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, with interesting and believable characters, two of whom own a bookshop/cafe, The Tea Cosy, which specialised in the Golden Age of Crime detective stories, or modern novels that reimagined it. This link to the Golden Age of Crime novels reminded me not only of Agatha Christie’s novels, and in particular Murder on the Orient Express, which is also a version of a locked room mystery, but also of John Bude’s The Cheltenham Square Murder in which one of the residents of the Square is also killed with a bolt shot from a crossbow. Needless to say, really, there are plenty of twists and turns, numerous complications and red herrings before Horowitz gets to the bottom of the case.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Rose City Reader. Share the opening quote from the book.The Friday 56 is hosted by Anne@ MyHeadisFullof Books. Find a quote from page 56.

Publisher‎ Penguin (11 April 2024)
X-Ray Enabled
Word Wise ‏Enabled
Sticky notes ‏On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ :411 pages
Source: I bought my copy
Rating: 4/5

The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe

Published on June 29, 2024 by Margaret5 Comments

Description from Amazon UK

How do you survive the unthinkable?

Passengers boarding the 10.35 train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston are bound for work, reunions, holidays and new starts, with no idea that the journey is about to change their lives for ever…

Holly has just landed her dream job and Jeff is heading for his first ever work interview. Onboard customer service assistant Naz dreams of better things as he collects rubbish from the passengers. And among the others travelling are Nick with his young family; pensioner Meg setting off on a walking holiday with her dog; Caroline, run ragged by the competing demands of her stroppy teenagers and her demented mother; and Rhona, unhappy at work and desperate to get home. And in the middle of the carriage sits Saheel, carrying a deadly rucksack . . .

And in the aftermath, amidst the destruction and desolation, new bonds are formed, new friendships made… and we find hope in the most unlikely of places and among the most unlikely people.

The Silence Between Breaths is a book I’ve been meaning to read for ages, so I am really pleased that at long last I have read it. It’s on my 20 Books of Summer list and has been for several years and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. This is one of those books that is difficult to write about without giving away spoilers. You know early on both from the description on Amazon and from the back cover that one of the passengers, Saheel, has a ‘deadly secret’ ie a bomb, in his rucksack. So, the tension is there from the beginning of the book and I was wondering when he was going to the let off the bomb and what would happen to the passengers.

Chapter 1 introduces the main characters with little snippets about each of them. They are Jeff, who nearly missed the train, sitting next to Holly, who is going to London for training for her new job as an Event-Management assistant; Caroline who is worried about her mum who has dementia; Naz who wants to own his own restaurant; elderly Meg and Diana with their dog, Boss, going on a walking holiday; Nick, Lisa and their young children Eddie and Evie, going to a wedding; Rhona travelling with her boss Felicity and colleague, Agata, worried about her little daughter Maisie at home; and Saheel trying not draw attention to himself. One other person is Kulsoom, Saheel’s younger sister at home, who plays a big part in the story.

The next chapters, 3,4, and 5 give more information about each character, as the train makes its way to London. The tension builds and I became increasingly anxious about all of them as they became real people to me. I knew what was going to happen and I was willing something to happen to stop it. The remaining chapters, 6 to 10 complete the story, telling the harrowing and heart breaking consequences of Saheel’s actions. I just couldn’t stop reading even though it was so hard to read. The characterisation is superb, so that I cared about each person, the setting is so well described in such detail that it all happened before my eyes and the drama and tension grew as the events played out. One of the standout books that I’ve read this year.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Constable (22 Sept. 2016)
File size ‏ : ‎ 3360 KB
Print length ‏ : ‎ 291 pages
Source: I bought my copy
My rating: 5*

20 Books of Summer 2024 Reading Challenge – Revised List

Published on June 13, 2024June 13, 2024 by Margaret2 Comments

Cathy over at 746Books is hosting her 20 Books of Summer challenge for the tenth year. You can choose to read 20, 15 or 10 books from your TBR shelves and the challenge begins on Saturday 1 June and finishes on Sunday 1 September. You can find the rules and sign up details for this year here.

This is my second list, mainly because I realised that I’d included two books of over 600 pages and with the best will in the world I can’t see me managing to read both of them, so I’m saving Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale for later this year and substituting Beowulf by Michael Murpurgo. I’d also included a book I’d already read a few years ago, Put On By Cunning by Ruth Rendell and substituted The Tree of Hands.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde
The Children’s Book by A S Byatt
The Black Tulip by Alexander Dumas
Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney
The Innocent by Matthew Hall
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
Killing the Lawyers by Reginald Hill
Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
I’ll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
Beowulf by Michael Murpurgo
The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell
Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers
The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe – currently reading
Where Water Lies by Hilary Tailor
Black Roses by Jane Thynne
Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton
A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
The Lady of Sorrows by Anne Zouroudi

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

Published on June 7, 2024 by Margaret9 Comments

The Black Tulip is historical fiction, a love story, mixing historical characters with fictional ones. It was first published in 1850. I loved The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, so I was hoping to enjoy The Black Tulip too. I did, but not quite as much. I think it’s because I don’t know much about Dutch history and so I found the early chapters, about the brothers Cornelius and Johan de Witt, a bit difficult to follow. They were Dutch statesmen, accused of treason, who were brutally killed by a mob in the Hague in 1672, during a period of political upheaval, when they escaped from prison.

The story centres on Cornelius von Baerle, the fictional godson of Cornelius de Witt and his desire to grow a black tulip. He became involved in the de Witts’ affairs when Cornelius de Witt left a sealed parcel of his correspondence with the French war minister, with him for safekeeping. He didn’t open the parcel and didn’t know what it contained.

When the Tulip Society of Haarlem offered a prize of a hundred thousand guilders for the development of a tulip ‘without a spot of colour‘, this set the tulip growers into a frenzy of activity, including Van Baerle and his neighbour, Isaac Boxtel. Boxtel spied on Van Baerle’s experiments to grow a black tulip, which were having more success than his own efforts. Indeed Boxtel was obsessed with what Van Baerle was doing, neglecting his own tulips to wither and rot as he observed, through a telescope, what his neighbour was doing both in his garden and in his laboratory.

Whilst observing Van Baerle’s laboratory, Boxtel had seen the meeting between Cornelius de Witt and Van Baerle when he entrusted his papers to his godson. On hearing that the de Witt brothers had been arrested Boxtel realised he could inform against Van Baerle and get him arrested, thus giving himself the opportunity to steal the bulb Van Baerle had produced. And the hundred thousand guilder prize would be his.

And so Van Baerle was thrown into prison, wrongly convicted of treason and under sentence of death. However William of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland granted him his life but condemned him to imprisonment for life. He was sent to the fortress of Loewestein and there kept in solitary confinement. What follows is a dark and somewhat farcical tale, as aided by the jailer’s daughter Rosa he continues to cultivate his tulip bulbs. He and Rosa fall in love, despite all the difficulties that assault them.

It’s a great story, full of drama and emotion. It’s a love story, a story about passion, hatred, jealousy, obsession and injustice. After the difficulties I had with the first four or five chapters (I had to re-read them to work out how the rest of the story was connected) I found it difficult to put down, keen to find out what would happen next. I didn’t love it like I loved The Count of Monte Cristo, but I really liked it.

20 Books of Summer 2024 Reading Challenge

Published on May 8, 2024 by Margaret20 Comments

I first took part in 2015 and I have done it most years since then although not last year as I wasn’t well. Part of the pleasure in taking on this challenge is compiling the list of books I’d like to read and looking through my unread books.

And here are the books I may read – because the ‘rules’ of this challenge allow you to swap any book if you want to, change your list half way through, or decide to drop your goal from 20 to 15 or 10! And I expect I’ll be doing some changes as I’m very good at listing the books I want to read and very bad at sticking to the list.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde
The Children’s Book by A S Byatt
The Black Tulip by Alexander Dumas
Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney
The Innocent by Matthew Hall
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
Killing the Lawyers by Reginald Hill
Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell
I’ll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
Put on by Cunning by Ruth Rendell
Unnatural Death by Dorothy L Sayers
The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe
Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale
Where Water Lies by Hilary Tailor
Black Roses by Jane Thynne
Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton
A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
The Lady of Sorrows by Anne Zouroudi

20 Books of Summer 2023

Published on September 3, 2023September 3, 2023 by Margaret6 Comments

Cathy’s 20 Books of Summer Challenge 2023 has ended. There were options to read 10 or 15 books instead of the full 20. And you could swap a book, or change the list half way through if you wanted. And you could drop your goal from 20 to 15 or 10 if you wanted to.

As I’ve not been well since last year I’ve not been reading as many books as I usually do, so I dropped my goal to 15 books and I did read all 15. But it is only a partial success as I only managed to review five of them.

These are the books I read, the first five are linked to my reviews.