Category: Books

The Cosy Knave by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Last week I read The Cosy Knave: A Gershwin and Penrose Mystery by fellow blogger Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen. I always find her blog fresh and interesting and as I expected her book also has those same qualities. It is, as the title suggests, a ‘cosy’ mystery and it’s an easy, fun read. But it’s not as simple as it seems for I was completely baffled about who the killer could be until very near the end. I swayed towards one character and another until I realised that’s who did it. And then there was a final revelation that I hadn’t foreseen at all!

The book is set in the Yorkshire village of Knavesborough and begins with the return of Colonel Baldwin’s son, Mark. This causes quite a stir because Mark has bought Netherdale Manor. He had become a famous violinist and was now calling himself Sir Marco Bellini.

The FIFA World Cup has just started and a group of locals, including Sir Marco are gathered at Ye Cosy Knave, the village tearoom to watch the England/Germany match on Tuxford Wensleydale’s new flat screen TV.  During the match nosey-parker Rose Walnut-Whip was stabbed to death and no one heard or saw anything. It’s down to Constable Archibald Penrose to discover who killed her, helped by his fiancée, the enthusiastic vicar’s daughter, Rhapsody Gershwin. More crimes and another murder follow before Rhapsody and Archie uncover the murderer.

The Cosy Knave is peopled with whimsically-named characters, including the retired headmistress Miss Olivia Cadbury-Flake, the Kickinbottom family and Rhapsody’s sisters, Psalmonella and Harmonia. It’s the relationship between the characters that holds the key to the mystery. It’s not often that I enjoy humorous crime fiction, but with this book Dorte has gone a long way to convert me. It’s a most entertaining mystery.

The book is available from Smashwords in a variety of eBook formats and here’s a coupon code, provided by the author, which brings the price down to $2.99US: PN22N

Birthday Presents

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

Today is my birthday and I’ve had flowers!

and jewellery!

and books!

From top to bottom they are:

  • A Kindle gift voucher – a lovely present because I can enjoy choosing as well as reading!
  • Blood Harvest by S R Bolton – I’m currently reading her first book, Sacrifice and I’ve read that Blood Harvest is even better. It’s about the disappearance of a little girl two years earlier. A fire had devastated her home but her mother is convinced her daughter survived.
  • How the Girl Guides Won the War by Janie Hampton – this looks absolutely fascinating. I was a Brownie and then a Girl Guide (not during the war – I was a post-war baby), and it made up a large part of my childhood and teenage years. This looks a very comprehensive book. In the introduction Janie Hampton reveals that she had intended to write a satire on Guides and Brownies, making fun of them (how could she!) but the more she read and the more former Brownies and Guides she met she came to realise what an important part of 20th century history the Guide movement was (hurray!) with Guides playing a crucial part in feminist history and the women’s equality movement. I can see that I’ll be reading more from this book very soon!
  • The Distant Hours by Kate Morton – historical fiction featuring a dilapidated castle, sisters and dark secrets. I can hardly wait to read this one as well.
  • The Confession by John Grisham. It’s been years since I read any of John Grisham’s books – I binge read his books some years ago. This one is another of his legal thrillers about an innocent man days from his execution, with the guilty man deciding whether to confess. Should be good, I think.
  • A Companion to the History of the Book edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose. This book was a complete surprise! A mammoth book, covering many aspects of the history of bibliography, literacy and the future of the book. It includes the history of the materials used – clay tablets, papyrus rolls etc,  book culture around the world, book issues, such as censorship and  finally there is a chapter on the book’s digital future. This looks fascinating and no doubt it will keep me occupied for some time to come.

Thanks everyone for these lovely gifts.

I think of all of these I may start How the Girl Guides Won the War first. Time to go reading! and later on a meal out to celebrate (this will be the second one – the first was on Friday with our son and his family).

(Click on the photos to enlarge.)

Saturday Snapshot

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

I posted photos of a ruined castle last Wednesday. Today I’m featuring a much larger castle – Alnwick Castle, which is the second largest inhabited castle in England.  The Duke of Northumberland and his family live here; the family have lived at Alnwick for 700 years. The castle was used to film parts of some of the Harry Potter films – the castle was Hogwarts in the first two films and Harry’s broomstick flying lessons were filmed in the Outer Bailey. Other films made there include Elizabeth and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

We went there the week before last with our grandson, a lover of Harry Potter. He liked the historical setting, the battlements and the canons,  but most of all I think he liked the Knights’ Quest and the Harry Potter magic show, with Harry and Professor Dumbledore:

We’ll have to go back for another visit as there is so much to see and we only had time for a quick walk round the State Rooms, which are very grand, although I was amused to see a Table Football in the Library (I think that is where it was), definite proof that Alnwick Castle is also a family home.

See more Saturday Snapshots at Alyce’s blog At Home with Books.

Saturday Selection

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

It’s been a busy time these last two weeks with visits from all three grandchildren. Apart from the quick read here and there and reading quite a lot of bedtime stories for the 5 year-old (at least two a night) I’ve not progressed very far with my current books – shown over on the sidebar. So now I’ve got back to normal reading hours I’m keen to look forward to what I’ll be reading next.

My choice is between the following from my to-be-read books:

  • An Agatha Christie – either They Do It With Mirrors (Miss Marple), Complete Parker Pyne, The Golden Ball (both short stories), Taken at the Flood (Poirot), They Came to Baghdad (Victoria Jones), A Murder is Announced, The Moving Finger (both Miss Marple), The Clocks, or Third Girl (both Poirot). I think I’ll read the earliest full book, which is Taken at the Flood (1948).

or Historical Crime Fiction:

  • Death Maze by Ariana Franklin – (the second in her Mistress of the Art of Death books). I loved the first one.
  • The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland – I loved the first one of hers I read too – Company of Liars.

or a Light humorous book such as Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo by Julia Stuart. Maybe I could do with a change from crime fiction.

So maybe a Biography would be good, such as Mrs Jordan’s Profession: the Story of a Great Actress and a Future King by Claire Tomalin. It looks really interesting and I love Claire Tomalin’s books.

As usual I just can’t decide – it could be a completely different book when the time comes.

Read in July & A Glimpse of The Cosy Knave

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

It doesn’t look as though I’ve read many books in July going by the number of books I’ve finished:

  1. Whistling for the Elephants by Sandi Toksvig
  2. The Tinder Box by Minette Walters (library book)
  3. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (library book)
  4. Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon (library book)
  5. Gently by the Shore by Alan Hunter (library book)

but I’ve also been reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates which is as long as about two/three  books in itself. it will be a while before I finish it.

The links on the titles go to my posts on the books. I wrote about the opening of Whistling for the Elephants by Sandi Toksvig in a Book Beginnings post. I was rather disappointed by it – I didn’t think it was funny or even very humorous. It’s about Dorothy, an English girl of 10 who has gone to live with her parents in Sassapaneck, New York in 1968. She finds it difficult to fit in – not only because she has to learn about America and the basics of school life, so different from what she knew, but also she has to work out what opinions she should have and whether she is a boy of a girl.

Whistling for the Elephants is packed with eccentric people, but it was hard to distinguish between some of the characters and it was only at the end that I had  discovered who they all were, so the characterisation isn’t too good. And I never really cared much about any of them either. The story kept getting submerged in facts about a variety of different topics, as though this is a collection of short essays or stories roughly linked together to make a book.

I think my book of the month, by a whisker, is Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, which I thoroughly enjoyed even though I knew the plot and who did the murder.

I’ve have a few other books on the go at the moment including Dorte Jakobsen’s new e-book The Cosy Knave. Dorte blogs at djkrimiblog and her book is released today. I’ll write about it when I’ve finished it – all I can say so far is that I’m enjoying the story very much and am completely  baffled about who the murderer can be! For more details see Dorte’s blog – here.

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Miss Arundell died on May 1st. Though her illness was short her death did not occasion much surprise in the little country town of Market Basing where she had lived since she was a girl of sixteen. For Emily Arundell was well over seventy, the last of a family of five, and she had been known to be in delicate health for many years and had indeed nearly died of a similar attack to the one that killed her some eighteen months before.

But though Miss Arundell’s death surprised no one, something else did. The provisions of her will gave rise to varying emotions, astonishment, pleasurable excitement, deep condemnation, fury, despair, anger and general gossip.

These are the opening lines of Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness. And because it is an Agatha Christie book, it is obvious that Miss Arundell’s death should be cause for suspicion and that it was most unlikely to have been a natural death.

From the fact that the date of her death is specified in the first sentence makes me think that must be significant. And the surprising contents of her will also indicate that Miss Arundell had perhaps changed her it – why was that?

I’m still reading Dumb Witness and as the title indicates and the cover picture on my copy shows, a dog has an important part in the mystery – one which Hercule Poirot has to solve, with very little to go on.

Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Katy, at  A Few More Pages.