Book Reviews – Page 34

Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith: A Christmas Crime Story (British Library Crime Classics)

Published on April 19, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

Portrait of a Murderer was first published in 1933. Anne Meredith is one of the pen names used by Lucy Beatrice Malleson (her other pen names are Anthony Gilbert and J Kilmeny Keith). This Poisoned Pen Press edition has an introduction by Martin Edwards. It is crime fiction where you know who the murderer is and the motive and how the victim was killed quite early on in the book.

On Christmas Eve 1931 Adrian Gray was violently murdered by one of his six adult children. The murderer had acted on impulse in a fit of rage. Adrian had not got on with any of his children and they all wanted him to lend them or rather give them money for one reason or another. From then on it is a character study of the family and of the murderer in particular, who works out a plan to put the blame on one of the other family members. The setting at Christmas seems to be purely because this family don’t get on and it was only at Christmas that they gathered together at the Gray family home.

It begins slowly and I was beginning to wonder if I wanted to finish the book, but I found I was thinking about it when I wasn’t reading and wondering whether the plan would work. As the suspense increased I realised that I was hooked and couldn’t wait to get back to the book to find out. Will the wrong person be convicted or will justice be done?It’s an excellent character study, told in the first person by the murderer and in the third person by the other characters.

I was also fascinated by the picture Meredith paints of the society and culture of the 1930s. It’s set in the Depression and the Grays had come down in the world, no longer the owners of a large landed property. This was accompanied by a steady deterioration in character as their point of view changed and they aspired to possessions and a place in society with authority, consumed by jealousy and criticism of others.They are an unlikeable set of characters and probably one of the reasons this book works so well is that each one is described with precision and insight, so that they come across as recognisable people and not as caricatures.

I also enjoyed reading about life in London in the 1930s, with descriptions of the River Thames, the traffic and the talk of electricity and speed, ‘the age’s God‘, and the desire for cars resulting in air pollution from the petrol fumes. The newly rich are financiers, such as Gray’s financial adviser and son-in-law, Eustace Moore. Although his appearance isn’t that of the traditional conception of a Jew, Meredith reveals the casual and nasty anti-semitism typical of the period in referring to his race. In addition she shows society’s attitude to women from the unmarried daughter expected to act as housekeeper and look after her father, to the scandal attached to divorce.

From a slow and unpromising start Portrait of a Murderer developed into a fascinating novel that I thoroughly enjoyed.

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

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A Dying Note by Ann Parker

Published on April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

I’ve read the first book in Ann Parker’s Silver Rush Mysteries, Silver Lies (see my review post) set in 1879/80 in the silver-mining town of Leadville, Colarado in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I loved it and fully intended to read more of the series. Somehow that hasn’t happened. A Dying Note is the 6th book in the series, so I have some catching up to do. I wondered if this would be a problem, but it reads very well as a standalone book.

A Dying Note is set in the autumn of 1881. Inez Stannert is still the co-owner of Leadville, Colorado’s Silver Queen saloon, but she has left Leadville and is making a new start in life in San Francisco with her young ward, Antonia Gizzi. She is managing a music store, hoping to become an equal partner with the store’s owner, Nick Donato, a celebrated local violinist. In addition to managing the store she also gives piano lessons and is in silent partnership with some of the small businesses run by women in the city.

All is going well until the body of a young man, Jamie Monroe, is found washed up on the banks of Mission Creek canal. He had been beaten to death. Jamie is one of the musicians who frequented Nick’s music store and was in love with Carmella, Nick’s sister. So Inez and Antonia are drawn into the investigation into his death.

Then some of Inez’s old acquaintances from Leadville, including Harry Gallagher, arrive in San Francisco, threatening to expose her past. Harry is looking for his son, Robert and has brought with him Wolter Roeland de Bruijn, also known as ‘Mr Brown’ who he’d employed to find Robert. He insists that Inez helps Mr Brown which results in putting them all in danger.

It’s a fast paced mystery (that actually is not that difficult to figure out) and I enjoyed very much. I also liked the setting and all the details about San Francisco in 1881 – the scenery, the layout of the city with its dangerous areas of the Barbary Coast and Chinatown, where Inez, Antonia and Mr Brown search for Robert and follow the suspects of Jamie’s murder. The details about the efforts to set up a musicians union and the work of Frank Roney (a real life figure) involved in the Seamen’s Protective Union also add a lot to the story. The characters are also well defined and I was very taken with Antonia, a teenager with an inquisitive mind and lots of daring!

In her Author’s Note at the end of the book, Ann Parker identifies what is real, based on historical facts and what is the result of her imagination, with a warning that this contains spoilers – so don’t read it until after you’ve read the book! She also gives details of the sources she used in writing her book, all of which I think is fascinating, especially for me, knowing nothing about the history of San Francisco.

I shall certainly seek out books 2 – 5 in the Silver Rush Mysteries:

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2. Iron Ties (2006)
3. Leaden Skies (2009)
4. Mercury’s Rise (2011)
5. What Gold Buys (2016)

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

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The Fire Court by Andrew Taylor

Published on April 15, 2018 by Margaret2 Comments

I loved Andrew Taylor’s The Ashes of London so I was eagerly looking forward to the next book, The Fire Court set in 1667, eight months after the Great Fire had swept through London. And once again I was immediately transported back in to the 17th century as Londoners set about rebuilding the city.

It continues the story of James Marwood, working for Master Williamson, under-secretary to the Secretary of State, and of Cat (Catherine) Lovett, whose father, Thomas Lovett, was one of the Regicides of Charles I. It is a standalone novel – you don’t have to have read The Ashes of London to enjoy this book, but I think it helps to understand the background if you do.

James’s father, Nathaniel who was a Fifth Monarchist, an extreme Puritan sect, suffers from dementia. The book begins as Nathaniel follows a women he believes is his dead wife and finds a murdered woman. James thinks it is just a product of his deluded mind but when Nathaniel is killed in an accident, run over by a wagon he feels guilty for not believing him. And then a witness to his father’s death tells him that he had seen Nathaniel coming out of an alley leading into Clifford’s Court where the Fire Court was sitting. And the more James thinks about this and makes inquiries, particularly into the work of the Fire Court, he becomes convinced that his father had been telling him the truth

The Fire Court was set up to settle disputes between landowners and tenants as the work of rebuilding and developing London gets underway. Cat, now going under the name of Jane Hakesby works for Simon Hakesby, a surveyor and architect and both are involved in the work of the Fire Court. As you would expect these disputes are complicated and open to intrigue and dishonesty at all levels. James renews his acquaintance with Cat, a spirited independent young woman, and they work together as James tries to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding his father’s death and the identity of the murdered woman.

In fact this is one of the most satisfyingly complicated books I’ve read recently, equally as absorbing as The Ashes of London, once again weaving fact and fiction into a complete whole. I love it. Taylor’s research is impressive, bringing to life the complexities of Restoration England, drawing in all levels of society from Charles II, the aristocracy, politicians, to the ordinary people and those living in poverty. I particularly liked all the details of the work of the Fire Court and how London was rebuilt – and once again there is a fire – not as widespread geographically as the Great Fire, but dramatic and with devastating results for James.

Many thanks to Harper Collins for a review copy via NetGalley.

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The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penny

Published on April 9, 2018 by Margaret14 Comments

The Tenderness of Wolves

Quercus| 2006|450 p|2.5* rounded up to 3* on Goodreads

The Tenderness of Wolves was first published 2006 when it won the both the Costa First Novel Award and the Costa Book of the Year. It has been on my TBR shelves since May 2007 when I first heard about it and thought it sounded fantastic. And yet it has sat on my shelves ever since, mainly because it’s in such a small font. And then at the beginning of March I included it in my S and T post of TBRs and encouraged by the comments began to read it.

Stef Penney is a screenwriter and the author of three novels: The Tenderness of Wolves, The Invisible Ones (2011), and Under a Pole Star (2016, winner of the 2017 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize). She has also written extensively for radio, including adaptations of Moby Dick, The Worst Journey in the World, and, mostly recently, a third instalment of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise series.

It’s set in Canada in 1867 beginning in a small place called Dove River on the north shore of Georgian Bay, narrated in part by Mrs Ross in the first person present tense (*see at the end of the post) and also occasionally in the third person past tense. Mr and Mrs Ross were the first people to settle in Dove River – the name she gave to it. Other people came later and settled near the river mouth.

It begins dramatically as she describes the last time she saw the French-Canadian trapper, Laurent Jammet alive ‘he was in Scott’s store with a dead wolf over his shoulder‘. He was the Ross’s closest neighbour and the next time she saw him was in his cabin, lying dead on his bed, his throat cut and he had been scalped. Francis, the Ross’s adopted teenage son is missing and is immediately suspected of being the murderer. But Mrs Ross is convinced of his innocence. With no police force as such it is the Hudson Bay Company (the Company) employees and the local magistrate, Andrew Knox who lead the investigation. William Parker a half Indian tracker is also a suspect and is taken into custody. But Knox isn’t convinced Parker is guilty and releases him. Parker and Mrs Ross then set off to follow her son’s tracks into the wilderness.

That’s it in a nutshell, but it is much much more complicated than this. There’s a large cast of characters and at first I found it confusing, unsure of their identity and how they interacted. In fact some of them are just minor characters that don’t feature in the main plot, which is a problem when you’re trying to sort out who is important.

Following Mrs Ross and Parker are the Company employees, Donald Moody and Jacob, another half Indian. Then there is Thomas Sturrock, who says he had business with Jammet who had agreed to sell him something. He describes himself as a lawyer and an archaeologist by inclination and the object he is looking for is a bone tablet inscribed with strange markings that could be some sort of writing. Sturrock was also involved in the search for two young girls who years earlier had disappeared from their home presumed to have been abducted by Indians. Added into the mix are Susannah and Maria Knox, Andrew’s teenage daughters, a group of religious Norwegian settlers, and the employees of the Company, some of them very strange, in an isolated outpost deep in the wilderness.

This is one of the most difficult books to summarise in a coherent way and without giving away too many spoilers.

The plot moves very slowly, switching between locations and characters as very little progress is made in the search for the murderer. I found it frustrating. I never quite acclimatised myself to the use of the present tense which kept distracting me from the story. But when the pace picked up nearer to the end of the book I was keen to find out what happened – and by that time I had worked out who all the characters were. But I was left with a few questions – I really would have liked to know more about the relevance and meaning of the bone or ivory tablet, for example.

Overall, despite my criticism of this book, I did enjoy it and the descriptions of the landscape and climate set it in geographic context, but it just took so long to read particularly with so many sub-plots to hold in my head! I think some of the sub-plots that don’t contribute much to the story could easily have been developed into books in their own right. And the ending seemed so abrupt. I’m not sure I want to read any more of Stef Penney’s books.

* I want to analyse why I find the use of the present tense a problem as I hardly notice it in some books but in others such as this one I find it so irritating that it clouds my judgement. Perhaps it will help if I write my thoughts in a separate post … *

The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor

Published on April 3, 2018 by Margaret10 Comments

Andrew Taylor is one of my favourite authors, so I had high hopes of The Ashes of London. And I was not disappointed – I loved this book, set in 1666 in London. It was just six years after the Stuart Monarchy had been restored – Charles II was reinstated as King after twelve years of the Interregnum under the Cromwells’ reign (Oliver succeeded by his son, Richard) as Lord Protector and there are still sympathisers of their regime at large.

What struck me most is just how real it seemed as people struggled after the Great Fire had reduced a large part of London to ashes and rubble. It brings home the reality of being homeless – a refugee in your own country – and I could hear the noise of the fire, smell the smoke and almost feel the heat and the pain of the victims of the fire.

The novel is narrated in the first person by James Marwood, working for Master Williamson (under-secretary to the Secretary of State for the South) as one of the clerks on the London Gazette, and also from Cat (Catherine) Lovett’s viewpoint in the third person. James’s father, who was a Fifth Monarchist, an extreme Puritan sect, and a supporter of Cromwell, has recently been released from prison, and is now suffering from dementia. Whereas Cat’s father, Thomas Lovett, was one of the Regicides, excluded from the pardon granted to those to those guilty of most crimes committed during the Civil War and the Interregnum, now in hiding, after Charles II took the throne. They meet briefly as they both stand watching the fire engulf St Paul’s Cathedral when James snatches Cat, dressed as a boy, away from the flames. Their stories later combine when the body of a man is found in the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral – stabbed in the neck, thumbs tied behind his back, followed by the discovery of a second murder victim in the Fleet Ditch.

Andrew Taylor has written a complex story interweaving the murder mystery, the hunt for the regicides responsible for the execution of Charles I and the historical details of the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. Both James and Cat meet Master Hakesby, a draughtsman working with Dr Wren – that is Christopher Wren – on a design for rebuilding London, including St Paul’s Cathedral.

I found it all fascinating, fully engaged in the plot full of suspense and tension, loving the detail of its setting and the characterisation. I particularly liked James Marwood and the glimpses of Charles II as he directs the work to prevent the fire from spreading and his engagement in scientific research. It is an impressive recreation of the period, full of historical detail without overwhelming the story. In short, I loved it.

There is a second book continuing the story, The Fire Court, to be published on 5th April, which I have just started to read.

Many thanks to Harper Collins for a review copy via NetGalley.

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The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie

Published on April 1, 2018 by Margaret2 Comments

Description

Can you hide a secret with the whole world watching?

When an explosion rips apart a Chicago building, the lives of three women are forever altered.

A year later, Cecily is in mourning. She was supposed to be in the building that day. Instead, she stood on the street and witnessed it going down, with her husband and best friend inside. Kate, now living thousands of miles away, fled the disaster and is hoping that her past won’t catch up with her. And Franny, a young woman in search of her birth mother, watched the horror unfold on the morning news, knowing that the woman she was so desperate to reconnect with was in the building.

Now, despite the marks left by the tragedy, they all seem safe. But as its anniversary dominates the media, the memories of that terrifying morning become dangerous triggers. All these women are guarding important secrets. Just how far will they go to keep them?

My thoughts:

This is the first book by Catherine McKenzie* that I’ve read and I was immediately drawn into this story, wondering who I could believe. The narration alternates between the three woman, Cecily, Kate and Franny as their stories are gradually revealed. Franny’s story is told through the transcripts of her interviews with Teo, who is making a documentary about the tragedy and its impact on the families concerned both at the time of the explosion and also a year later.

Cecily, immediately comes across as trustworthy – and yet there is something she is obviously concealing. It’s obvious right from the start that Kate has a secret and Franny appears to be the most fragile and desperate to find out more about her biological mother. With a title like the ‘good liar‘ I was suspicious about all three women; which one is lying, can you believe any if them, and if so who? Catherine McKenzie built up the suspense, providing back stories for each woman, revealing reasons to distrust their stories and the way they present themselves.

I enjoyed the suspense, and trying to work out who was lying. It kept my interest to the end, even though I thought some of the ‘secrets’ were easy to detect. It builds up to a satisfying conclusion with a twist right at the end – a book of lies and deceit from start to finish.

My thanks to Lake Union Publishing for a review copy via NetGalley.

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*About the author (copied from her website)

A graduate of McGill University in History and Law, Catherine is a partner in a litigation boutique in Montreal, where she was born and raised. Catherine’s novels, SPIN, ARRANGED, FORGOTTEN, HIDDEN, SMOKE and FRACTURED, are bestsellers and have been translated into numerous languages, including French, German, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Slovakian and Czech. SMOKE was named one of the Top 100 Books in 2015 by Amazon and one of the Best Books of October 2015 by Goodreads. FRACTURED was named one of the Best Books of October 2016 by Goodreads.

Catherine’s first book writing as Julie Apple (the protagonist in FRACTURED), THE MURDER GAME, was released in November, 2016. SPIN has been optioned for a television series. A short film of ARRANGED was made in 2014 and won a Canadian National Screen Institute Award. Catherine was on set while they filmed it. It was one of the highlights of her writing life.

Catherine’s next novel, THE GOOD LIAR, will be published on April 3, 2018.

An avid skier and runner, Catherine climbed the Grand Teton in 2014.

And if you want to know how she has time to do all that, the answer is: robots.