Category: Book Reviews

The Warrior’s Princess by Barbara Erskine: Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Recently, I wanted to read something other than crime fiction, but chose The Warrior’s Princess by Barbara Erskine, which just happens to include a couple of rapes, kidnappings and a murder. However, it’s really a time-slip book, switching between the present day and the first century AD in Rome and Britannia, a mix of historical fiction, fantasy and romance.

It starts dramatically as teacher, Jess is raped in her flat. She has only vague memories of her attacker. She then resigns from teaching and flees to her sister’s house in Wales, which is haunted by a young girl. She becomes interested in discovering more about the girl and her sister, Eigon, the daughters of Caratacus, the king of the Catuvellauni tribe who led the British in their fight against the Romans. He was captured and taken as a prisoner to Rome, together wife his wife and daughter. Actually she becomes obsessed to the point of absurdity, regardless of her own safety, so much so that the past and the present merge in her mind. She travels to Rome to continue her research into Eigon’s life.

There was much I enjoyed in this book – the suspense as Jess gradually begins to remember who her attacker was and the danger she finds herself in both in Wales and Rome were initially gripping.  I also liked the historical references, such as the persecutions of the Christians by Nero, and the Roman and Welsh locations. I remember walking around the Roman Forum imagining what it must have been like so I could identify the picture of ancient Rome that Jess is able to construct.

However, I thought it was too drawn out, and would have been better if the plotting had been tighter. I was also sceptical about the way Jess and Eigon “communicated” through Jess’s dreams and trances. It seemed an artificial way of telling the story. The mix of supernatural and historical however, was quite intriguing even though I had to suspend my disbelief a little too much for my liking and there were too many coincidences and contrivances. Although I thought the ending was rushed and kaleidascoped in comparison with the rest of the book, it did hold my attention to the end.

Poetic Lives:Shelley by Daniel Hahn

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

I didn’t know much about Shelley before I read Poetic Lives: Shelley by Daniel Hahn. This biography gives brief details of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s short but extraordinary life, from his birth in 1792 to his early death in 1822, shortly before his thirtieth birthday.

The opening paragraph caught my immediate attention in pointing out that Shelley was not that far away from the present day. Although he was born during the reign of mad King George III when there were struggles for independence in Europe – the French Revolution and then Napoleon’s rise to power, his granddaughter saw the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War and the Great Depression.

Shelley was an unhappy child, an unconventional teenager, an atheist and a radical reformer. He was expelled from Oxford University before he could complete his degree and was at odds with his father. He eloped with the daughter of a coffee-shop owner in 1811 but after three years the marriage was over when he met Mary Godwin. He was constantly in poor health and for much of the rest of his life they lived a nomadic existence travelling around Italy and France.

Hahn also quotes extracts from Shelley’s poems and prose. He also uses various sources such as Shelley’s friend Thomas Hogg, who wrote his Life of Shelley in 1857, Shelley’s cousin Tom Medwin who published a memoir of Shelley and a two-volume Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1847 and another friend, Edward Trelawney who wrote Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron in 1858.

I found parts of the book moving, Shelley’s  reaction to John Keats’s death for example and the events of his own death, but on the whole it is a prosaic account of Shelley’s life. Hahn’s repetitive use of the word “would” was irritating. It has interested me enough to want to read more about Shelley and his poems. I have started reading  Ann Wroe’s book Being Shelley: the Poet’s Search for Himself, which promises to be a much fuller account and also more about him as a poet. More about that book another time.

I received Poetic Lives:Shelley from the publishers via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers’ Programme.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: T is for The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve read two books by Josephine Tey – The Daughter of Time and now The Franchise Affair. Josephine Tey was a pseudonym for Elizabeth Mackintosh(1896 – 1952). She was a Scottish author who wrote mainly mystery novels.

I read The Daughter of Time a few years ago and thought it was an excellent book, a mix of historical research and detective work. Inspector Alan Grant is in hospital and to keep his mind occupied he decides to discover whether Richard III really did murder his nephews – the Princes in the Tower.

Franchise Affair001When I saw this hardback secondhand copy of The Franchise Affair on sale last year (on a hospital book sale trolley, for £1) I had to buy it and have been going to read it ever since. So as Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet series has reached the letter T I thought now was the right time to read it.

It is also an excellent book, one I devoured and enjoyed immensely. It was first published in 1948 and it’s set in a post Second World War England reflecting the social attitudes of its time. It’s actually based on a real case from the 18th century of a girl who went missing and later claimed she had been kidnapped.

The Franchise is a “flat white house“, isolated on a road out of the town of Milford, surrounded by a “high solid wall of brick, with a large double gate, of wall height” – “the iron lace of the original gates had been lined, in some Victorian desire for privacy, by flat sheets of iron, and the wall was too high for anything inside to be visible”, except for a distant view of roof and chimneys“. It’s where Marion Sharpe and her mother live.

DI Grant is just a minor character in this story, the main investigator is local solicitor, Robert Blair, of Blair, Hayward and Bennet. He doesn’t normally deal with criminal cases but Marion appeals to him for help because she and her mother are accused of kidnapping Betty Kane, a girl of fifteen, of holding her prisoner for a month in their attic, and of beating her unless she agreed to work for them.  She’d escaped one night and arrived back home, covered in bruises.

Even though Betty Kane is able to describe them,  their house and its contents accurately the Sharpes completely deny her story. Reluctantly Robert agrees to give legal advice and is then drawn into investigating what had happened to Betty during the time she claimed she had been held captive, becoming convinced of their innocence. His life is completely changed. The problem is that it is possible to believe Betty’s story and also to find it a complete invention from beginning to end.

Betty is described as an innocent with baby blue eyes, intelligent and truthful – how could she have invented such a story? Marion and Mrs Sharpe on the other hand are a bit odd, a bit eccentric, keeping themselves to themselves and distrusted by the locals. Mrs Sharpe is intimidating – Robert thinks  she is “capable of beating seven different people between breakfast and lunch any day of the week“, but he rather likes Marion’s “habit of mockery“. In fact he is rather smitten by Marion.

Then the press get hold of the story and public opinion is outraged at the tale of Betty’s ordeal. The case goes to trial as the Sharpes are vilified and their house attacked. The letters to the newspaper shock Robert with their contents:

… he marvelled all over again at the venom that these unknown women had aroused in the writers’ minds. Rage and hatred spilled over on to the paper; malice ran unchecked through the largely illiterate sentences. It was an amazing exhibition. And one of the oddities of it was that the dearest wish of so many of these indignant protestors against violence was to flog the said women within an inch of their lives. (page 103)

But worse is to come as the trial comes to an end and hatred results in actions. I found it an irresistable book. I just had to know what happens, all the time convinced of the Sharpes’ innocence but somehow wondering if they really were guilty. I liked Tey’s style of writing, straight forward, with touches of irony. Her characters are believable, well developed and unforgettable. The locations are well described, although as I used to live near some of them I may be biased there.

Now I want to read more of Josephine Tey’s books. She didn’t write many, but I hope to read at least some of these (list copied from Wikipedia):

  • The Man in the Queue also known as Killer in the Crowd (1929)
  •  A Shilling for Candles (1936) (the basis of Hitchcock’s 1937 movie Young and Innocent)
  • Miss Pym Disposes (1946)
  • Brat Farrar [or Come and Kill Me] (1949)
  • To Love and Be Wise (1950)
  • The Singing Sands (1952)
  • Kif: An Unvarnished History (1929) (writing as Gordon Daviot)
  • The Expensive Halo (1931)
  • The Privateer (1952)
  • Claverhouse (1937) (writing as Gordon Daviot) (a life of the 17th-century cavalry leader John Graham, 1st Viscount of Dundee)

Not Safe After Dark by Peter Robinson

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Not Safe After Dark and Other Works is a collection of twenty short stories by Peter Robinson. There are three Inspector Banks stories, one of which Going Back is a novella that had not been published before. The other stories are varied in length, technique and style.

 Of them all I prefer the Inspector Banks stories, in particular Going Back. There isn’t much mystery in this story, but a lot about Banks himself, his youth, relationships with his parents and brother Roy and about his old girlfriend, Kay. It’s his parents’ golden wedding anniversary and Banks goes home for the weekend for the party. He sleeps in his old bedroom with its old glass-fronted bookscase containing a cross-section of his early years’ reading, finds old records he’d forgotten he had, his old school reports, photos and his books of adolescent poetry. His mother treats him like she did as a child, prefering his younger brother Roy and his visit is spoilt by the presence of a new neighbour, the ever-helpful and charming Geoff Salisbury. He is suspicious of Geoff from the start – and with good reason.

Some are historical –In Flanders Field, Missing in Action and The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage. The latterwas inspired by Robinson’s visit to Brockhampton in Dorset where Thomas Hardy was born and also by his interest in Hardy. In 1939 the narrator of the story as a young man first met Miss Eunice and Miss Teresa, who had known Thomas Hardy – was she really the Tess on which he based Tess of the D’Urbervilles? She denied it but then it turned out that Miss Teresa was charged with murder, although  nothing was proved. Years later Miss Eunice had a shocking tale to tell.  This reminded me I still haven’t finished reading Claire Tomalin’s biography of Hardy – The Time-Torn Man.

Of  the other stories I also liked Some Land in Florida, in which Santa ends up in the pool with his electric piano thrown in after him – still plugged in. A private eye, there on holiday isn’t convinced it is an accident. April in Paris is a poignantly sad love story about happened when love turned to hatred.

Some of the stories were written when Robinson was asked for stories on a specific topic – Gone the the Dawgs, about American Football and The Duke’s Wife, a modern telling of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

I enjoyed some of these stories more than others – mainly the longer ones. I do prefer novels where characters and plots are more developed than is possible in a short story. I wrote more about this book here.

The Hollow by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Hollow by Agatha Christie is a country house mystery in which Hercule Poirot comes across what he decribes as “A set scene. A stage scene”; a murder scene specifically staged, he thinks at first, to deceive him.

Gerda and her husband John Christow, a Harley Street doctor were visiting Sir Henry and Lucy, Lady Angkatell at their house, The Hollow. John is an agressive dominant personality. Also down for the weekend were Lucy’s cousins Midge, who works in a London dress shop, Henrietta, a sculptress, Edward, a rather pale character and David, a student.

Lucy is sure it will be a difficult weekend – Gerda always appears vacant and lost, completely dominated by John, who is having an affair with Henrietta. Edward is in love with Henrietta and Midge is in turn in love with Edward. David is too intellectual  and Lucy herself is vague, charming and completely eccentric. As a distraction she has invited the “Crime man“, Poirot, whose weekend cottage is next door, to lunch on the Sunday. She describes Poirot’s house disparagingly as

… one of those funny new cottages – you know, beams that bump your head and a lot of new plumbing and quite the wrong kind of garden. London people like that sort of thing. (page 13)

As Poirot arrives and is taken through the garden to the swimming pool all the characters are there, with Gerda, revolver in hand, standing over the dying body of her husband, as his blood drips gently over the edge of the concrete into the pool. Poirot hears his final word “Henrietta”.

I found Lucy’s reaction amusing. It’s typical of her vague, almost detached nature. She says:

Of course, say what you like, a murder is an awkward thing – it upsets the servants and puts the general routine out – we were having ducks for lunch – fortunately they are quite nice eaten cold. (page 102)

Later she observes:

There would be something very gross, just after the death of a friend, in eating one’s favourite pudding. But caramel custard is so easy – slippery if you know what I mean – and then one leaves a little on one’s plate. (page 113)

This is now one of my favourite Agatha Christie books. She herself described it in her autobiography as “in some ways rather more of a novel than a detective story.” I agree, the characters are well drawn and the setting of both The Hollow and Ainswick, the larger country house Edward has inherited from his uncle, Lucy’s father are described with nostalgia. Agatha Christie also revealed that she thought she had ruined the book by the introduction of Poirot:

I had got used to having Poirot in my books and so naturally he had to come into this one, but he was all wrong there. He did his stuff all right, but how much better, I kept thinking, would the book have been without him. So when I came to sketch out the play, out went Poirot.(page 489-490)

Poirot has a small role, the investigation into John’s death is headed by Inspector Grange and it is a comment he makes that leads Poirot to discover the culprit. I’m used to having Poirot in her books too, so I didn’t find too much wrong with him being there.

It seems that everyone could have committed the murder and I swung from one to the other as I read, no doubt as Agatha Christie intended, but I did work it out before Poirot unveiled the killer.  As Poirot  says:

That is why every clue looked promising and then petered out and ended in nothing. (page 249)

Crime Fiction Alphabet: R is for Ian Rankin

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

letter_RThis week the letter in the Crime Fiction Alphabet Community Meme is R, so of course it just had to be Ian Rankin, who is fast becoming my favourite crime writer.

I’ve previously written a bit about Ian Rankin after I went to a talk he gave in January – see here.

R is also for Rebus. There are 17 Inspector Rebus books (a a book of short stories) and I’m reading them in sequence starting with the first one Knots and Crosses. Currently I’m reading the tenth book, Dead Souls. As well as the Rebus books Rankin has written a few others, the latest being The Complaints, featuring a new cop Inspector Malcom Fox. The complete list of Rebus books is on Ian Rankin’s website and on Wikipedia. Both places give more information about the man and his books. Just as a taster the author details on the latest book I read  The Hanging Garden reveal that after graduating from the University of Edinburgh he  had been employed as

a grape picker, swine-herd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist and punk musician.

The Hanging Garden is full of characters, sub-plots and plenty of crime from the local gang leader Tommy Telford, vying for supremacy over crime boss, Big Ger Cafferty, currently imprisoned in Barlinnie but still in control of his empire through his second in command, the Weasel, to Chechian and Yakuza villains. Then there is Mr Pink-Eyes, a Newcastle gangleader to contend with. It’s a mix of prostitutes, drug running, money laundering and attacks on Cafferty’s territory and associates, with retaliations on Telford’s strongholds.

Rebus is struggling to keep off the alcohol, aided by his friend Jack Morton, when his daughter, Sammy is the victim of a hit and run. Who is trying to warn off Rebus and is he in the pay of Big Ger?  At the same time he is investigating a suspected Nazi War Criminal and helping a Bosnian prostitute, Candice who looks so like his own daughter and who pleads with him for safety. Added to all this his ex-wife Rhona and his lover Patience meet over Sammy’s hospital bed.

It’s grim and tough and as Rebus involves Jack in an undercover operation it all goes wrong – dramatic and tense right to the end.