Category: Books

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

The Moonstone is one of those books that I thought I’d read because I know the story, but actually I hadn’t. I know it because years ago I watched a TV dramatisation and the images of the Indians, the jewel, the shifting sands and Sergeant Cuff have remained in my mind ever since.

I downloaded the free e-book  to my Kindle.

I was surprised by how easy it is to read, written from several viewpoints and all so individual.  The Moonstone, a large diamond, originally stolen from a statue of an Indian God and said to be cursed is left to Rachel Verinder. She receives it on her 18th birthday and that night it is stolen from her bedroom. Chief suspects are three Indian jugglers, who are Hindu priests dedicated to retrieving the jewel. Suspicion also falls on Rosanna Spearman, one of the maids, who later drowns herself in the quicksands.

I loved the way Collins has written this book from so many different perspectives, giving a rounded picture of the investigations into the Moonstone’s theft. I particularly liked the first narrator Gabriel Betteredge, the house-steward and his reliance on Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe for comfort and enlightenment:

I am not superstitious; I have read a heap of books in my time; I am a scholar in my own way. Though turned seventy, I possess an active memory, and legs to correspond. You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years’”generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco’”and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad’”ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice’”ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much’”ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service.

Then, there is Sergeant Cluff, the detective who loves roses who leaves the mystery unsolved. A year later matters move on, the investigations pick up and eventually the culprit is revealed. There are many red herrings, false trails and plenty of suspense and tension before the denouement. I loved this book for its wealth of vividly drawn characters, its mystery and atmospheric settings and also its humour. Now I want to read more from Wilkie Collins.

ABC Wednesday – O is for On the Balcony by Berthe Morisot

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

I only ‘discovered’ Berthe Morisot a couple of years ago, but I really like her paintings, especially this one,  On the Balcony, which is of her sister and niece on a balcony in the Passy suburb of Paris, looking out at the city – shown in the distance. It’s a small painting in oil, 1871 – 1872, now held in the Ittleson Collection in New York.

She was one of the French Impressionists and was married to Edouard Manet’s brother, Eugene. Her paintings are often studies of women, either out of doors, as in this one, or in a domestic setting.

An ABC Wednesday post.

House of Silence by Linda Gillard: Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments
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I’ve read several of Linda Gillard’s books and House of Silence is definitely one of her best. It’s only available on Kindle but you can download it onto your computer to read if you don’t have a Kindle.

It’s one of those books that makes you want to carry on reading although you know you’ve lots of things you should be doing apart from reading, but you read on anyway.

It’s a novel about families and their secrets – in particular one family, the Donovans. When Gwen Rowland met Alfie Donovan she becomes interested in his family and persuades him to let her spend Christmas with them at the family home, Creake Hall. Gwen comes from a dysfunctional family – mother died of an overdose, aunt from drink and uncle from AIDS, whereas Alfie is the youngest and much-loved younger brother of four sisters and the model for his mother’s best selling children’s books about Tom Dickon Harry.

But  their family life  is not as Gwen imagined it. Although Gwen immediately finds a kindred spirit in Hattie, Alfie’s sister nearest to him in age, and Viv his oldest sister she soon finds there is a secret they’re all hiding. The only person who seems to be open with her is Tyler, the handsome Polish gardener. Alfie, himself seems different and his mother keeps mainly to her room, her mind drifting back to the past. Gwen is puzzled by an old photo of Alfie and then discovers scraps of letters that eventually lead her to the truth.

This is a book in which it is so easy to lose yourself, at once emotional and mysterious. I really enjoyed it – the characters are so distinctive and complex, and the setting in an old Elizabethan manor house is perfect. It raises issues of memory and identity, mental illness, loss and love.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 1125 KB
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B004USSPN2
  • Source: I bought it

Ticket to Ride by Janet Neel: Book Review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I recently finished reading Ticket to Ride by Janet Neel.

Author details taken from the book:

Janet Neel is the nom de plume of Baroness (Janet) Cohen of Pimlico, who sits as a Labour peer in the House of Lords. She started out as a solicitor, then went into the Board of Trade, then to Charterhouse Bank. Her first novel, Death’s Bright Angel, won the John Creasey Prize, and Death of a Partner and Death Among the Dons were both shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.

From the publishers’ blurb:

On the beach, west of Kings Lynn, a dog discovers eight bodies—all young and male, with their identifying papers removed; all suffocated to death and hastily dragged through the mud to their temporary graves.

Jules Carlisle, the youngest and most recently qualified member of Paul Jenkins Solicitors, knows very little about illegal immigration and would like to keep it that way. But when she takes on the case of Mirko Dragunoviç, an illegal immigrant claiming his brother is one of the eight found dead, she finds herself intrigued by his plight and concerned for his welfare.

Although Mirko has knowledge of the human traffic operation that was bringing his brother to the United Kingdom, he’s reluctant to talk, leaving Jules torn between protecting him and following correct procedure.

But it seems the case is even more complicated than she first suspects. It isn’t long before Jules finds herself drawn inexorably into great danger, and back into the territory of the abused childhood she thought she had escaped forever….

My thoughts:

This is a complicated murder mystery with much detail about illegal immigrants from both the legal and personal viewpoints. I thought it was maybe too detailed. Its strength lies in the characterisation. Jules stands out as the most rounded character, with details of her earlier life revealed as the story unfolds, but the other characters are also believable, from her adopted mother, a peer in the House of Lords, to Gwyn Jones, the Welsh social worker. As well as the deaths that pile up (not much graphic detail) there is also a bit of romance and the involvement of MI5 is a further complication. From a relatively slow start, the pace picks up towards the end, which is fast and furious. I was surprised by the ending, which I hadn’t foreseen at all.

I borrowed this book from the library.

Other books by Janet Neel include 7 books in the Francesca Wilson and John McLeish series:

  • Death’s Bright Angel
  • Death on Site
  • Death of a Partner
  • Death Among the Dons
  • A Timely Death
  • To Die for
  • O Gentle Death


Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King’s Daughter by Simon Brett

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

This is the first in what is described as ‘a gloriously silly new series set in the 1920s and featuring a pair of aristocratic siblings: the honorable and handsome Blotto, who has all the brains of a billiard ball, and his sister, the beautiful and brilliant Twinks.‘ The dedication, ‘To Pete, who always had a taste for the silly‘ is also a give-away that this book is not to be taken too seriously.

I rather liked Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King’s Daughter. It is indeed silly in the P G Wodehouse style of Jeeves and Wooster silly, full of slang and poking fun at the amateur detective who is an expert in identifying toxins, reading clues and being several steps ahead of the plodding police. It begins when Blotto, the rather dim son of the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester, discovers a dead body in the library. The police, represented by Chief Inspector Trumbull, who although ‘deeply stupid‘, knows his place:

The role of the police was to do a lot of boring legwork and paperwork, to trail up investigatory cul-de-sacs, to be constantly baffled, and dutifully amazed when an amateur sleuth revealed the solution to a murder mystery. (page 9)

The body just happened to be that of one of the Ex-King of Mitteleuropia’s entourage,who are all staying at Tawcester Towers. Then the Ex-King’s daughter, the beautiful Ex-Princess Ethelinde is kidnapped and Blotto, together with his chauffeur Corky Froggett, sets off across Europe to rescue her. It does escalates into farce with Blotto fighting off canon balls with his cricket bat. There are also some pointed remarks about class, race and forms of government, such as this about the royal family and the British government because as Blotto explains as well as the monarch there is also:

…  this bunch of chappies called the House of Commons …  which is actually rather well named … because a lot of the boddos in there are rather common. You know some of them didn’t even go to minor public schools. Anyway they do all the boring guff … you know, making laws and increasing taxes and all that. But then there’s the House of Lords, which is where our sort of people go, and they do important things … like seeing that their own particular bits of the countryside get looked after … and finding ways of avoiding all these taxes that the little oiks in the House of Commons keep raising. It all seems to work rather well. (page 128)

And

… [democracy is] a system based on the illusion of consultation with the common people. (page 129)

As I said – I rather liked it.

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Felony & Mayhem; Reprint edition (16 Feb 2011)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 9781934609699
  • ISBN-13: 978-1934609699
  • Source: Review copy

What’s In a Name Challenge 2011 – Update

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

The What’s In a Name Challenge is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Challenge: to read one book from each category. I’ve now completed five out of the six categories – one more to go! The links go to my posts on the books:

1. A book with a number in the title – One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
2. A book with jewelry or a gem in the title – The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
3. A book with a size in the title – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
4. A book with travel or movement in the title – Exit Lines by Reginald Hill
5. A book with evil in the title –
6. A book with a life stage in the title – Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deirdre Madden