Category: Books

Crime Fiction Alphabet – G is for …

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

… Erle Stanley Gardner

I was wondering what to choose to illustrate the letter G in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet, but as I was writing how I began reading crime fiction I realised that it had to be Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason. My introduction to Gardner’s books was the TV series with Raymond Burr as Perry Mason.

Gardner was born in  1889 and practised as a lawyer in California. He began writing detective fiction and gave up his practice in 1933, after publishing The Case of the Velvet Claws. He wrote under numerous pseudonyms, writing non-fiction as well as fiction. He died in 1970.

All his detective novels have a legal background, most reaching a climax in a court scene. In the Perry Mason novels (I haven’t read any of his other books) Mason is a lawyer-cum-detective who achieved fantastic results by using his legal knowledge together with fast talk, bluff and double bluff.

I have two Perry Mason books, The Case of the Lame Canary and The Case of the Substitute Face,  published by Penguin Books in green and white paperbacks. This description of the latter, first published in 1938, is taken from the back cover:

C Walker Moar used to be a book-keeper to the Product Refining company, Los Angeles: then one day he walked out and the office missed twenty-five thousand dollars. Mrs Moar sought Perry Mason’s help on a journey from Honolulu to the United States mainland, and Perry got to know the other travellers – their pretty daughter Belle, two other girls, a man with a broken neck, and a millionaire. Then things started to happen – a storm, a murder, a man washed overboard, and an accusation that launched the lawyer-detective into battle as soon as the ship docked. Bluffing, threatening, and fighting with a typical disregard for the niceties of the law, he rushes his adversaries onward to a brilliant cross-examination and the dramatic end of the story.

As I expected this book is fast-paced with lots of action and as I was reading it I had difficulty in solving the mystery as Perry Mason switches from one tack to another as the case progressed. I loved recalling what were once familiar characters – Mason himself, powerful, confident, who works hard to get to the truth and to defend his clients. At one point in this book, it seems to Paul Drake as if he’s ‘going off half-cocked’ and Della Street explains that it’s no use arguing with him because

His mental system is deficient in mystery vitamins, and fighting calories, and he’s out to balance his diet once and all. (page 71)

Paul Drake, who runs his own Private Detective Agency is on hand to help Mason, together with Della Street, Mason’s secretary. Although the other characters are described in detail there is little physical description of the main characters, which leaves me free to visualise them as I remember them from the TV series. The relationship between Perry and Della is most interesting and he obviously wants to move on from employer/employee but at the end Della protests:

Let’s not get too sentimental. You know as well as I do that you’d hate a home if you had one. You’re a stormy petrel flying from one murder case to another. If you had a wife you’d put her in a fine home – and leave her there. You don’t want a wife. But you do need a secretary who can take chances with you – and you have another case waiting in Los Angeles. (page 222)

A most enjoyable book.

ABC Wednesday – E is for …

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

184709… Enid Blyton

I seem to be going back to my childhood with my ABC Wednesday posts, but I make no apologies for writing about Enid Blyton, whose books gave me so much pleasure as a child going right back to her Noddy and the Magic Faraway Tree books. I also had a few of the little magazines she wrote called Sunny Stories. I could never decide which of her books I liked the most:

  • The Naughtiest Girl series
  • The Famous Five
  • The Secret Seven
  • Malory Towers
  • The St Clares books
  • The Five Find-Outers
  • The Adventure series

I thought they were all marvellous.

Later when I worked in a library I discovered that not everyone thought like me and that some libraries banned her books – not the one I worked in though! The Wikipedia article on Enid Blyton also relates how her work was also banned by the BBC, criticising her work as being ‘stilted and longwinded’. I have to say at the time I was reading them I certainly didn’t  find them so. Other criticisms are that the books are formulaic, xenophobic and ‘reflected negative stereotypes regarding gender, race, and class.’ Her books are very much of their time – she was born in 1897, died in 1968, her books dating from the 1920s, most of the series dating from the 1940s, when lives and attitudes were very different from those of today. I never noticed any class, racial or sexist prejudices when I read her books. I haven’t read her books for many years but I dare say I could very well do so now.

She wrote about children whose lives were very different from mine and that was one reason I liked them. I loved the fact that her books took me to magical places, places of adventure where children could solve mysteries, thwart criminals, be independent of adults and have great fun, a world of mysterious castles and islands, exploring secret passages and hidden chambers and finding buried treasure.

There are a number of websites with information about Enid Blyton – the Enid Blyton Society and Enid Blyton.net to name but two. By all accounts her life was not always a happy one – as the 2009 TV film about her portrayed. Enid with Helena Bonham Carter as Enid, shows her as a mother who ignored her own daughters, an arrogant, selfish and insecure woman. Sometimes it’s not a good thing to know too much about an author’s personal life. I’d rather just enjoy her books.

I don’t have a photo of the real Green Hedges in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire the house where Enid Blyton lived for many years, but the Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield includes a model of the house complete with Noddy in his little car parked at the front.

Enid Blyton's House in Bekonscot Model Village
Noddy at Bekonscot

When did you begin to read crime fiction?

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Recently Kerrie wrote about when she began to read crime fiction which made me think about my own story. Although I didn’t think of them as crime fiction at the time, I began to enjoy crime fiction whilst reading Enid Blyton’s books. Later on my interest in crime fiction came through TV programmes, watching Raymond Burr as Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason, and in Ironside, Rupert Davies as Simenon’s Maigret, and Leslie Charteris’s The Saint.

I don’t remember when I first read Agatha Christie, but as a teenager I devoured as many of her books that the library had in no time at all. Then I had a huge gap when I didn’t read any crime fiction – I was reading historical fiction mainly and classics. At that time I didn’t own half as many books as I do now and most of my reading came from the library and I can’t remember much of what I read. I started to do Open University courses partly to focus my reading and crime fiction just dropped out of my life. Later on I read John Grisham’s books until they all merged into one in my head and I stopped reading crime fiction.

Then about 5 years ago I began to read other people’s blogs.  That was when I began again with Agatha Christie and Ian Rankin and then found so many authors I’d never heard of before – like Kate Atkinson, John Baker, Simon Brett, Martin Edwards, Ariana Franklin, and Peter Robinson to mention just a few. Now crime fiction makes up about half of my reading.

This morning I went to Barter Books in Alnwick and remembering the Perry Mason books I looked for some and found a few of the green and white Penguin paperbacks, including The Case of the Substitute Face and The Case of the Lame Canary by Erle Stanley Gardner. I also bought Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit and Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner, an author I’d never come across before. It looks good, about a woman who collapses and dies on the brand-new Eiffel Tower in 1889, apparently because of a bee-sting. Victor Legris, a young bookseller determines to find out what actually happened.

So, now I’m even more spoilt for choice for my next book to read, especially as I also bought two more books – Margaret Drabble’s debut novel, A Summer Bird Cage and a book I loved when I first read it as a teenager – C P Snow’s The Masters.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter F

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

This week Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet has reached the letter F and I’ve chosen to highlight Frances Fyfield and in particular her novel The Art of Drowning.

Frances Fyfield is a British crime writer who as a lawyer worked for the Crown Prosecution Service. She has written a number of books and won the following awards:

  • Edgar Awards – Best Novel Nominee (1990): A Question of Guilt
  • Dagger Awards – Best Novel Nominee (2006) Safer Than Houses
  • Dagger Awards – Best Novel Winner (2008) Blood from Stone

The Art of Drowning

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Sphere; New edition edition (4 Oct 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0751536202
  • ISBN-13: 978-0751536201
  • Source: Library Book

Description from Amazon:

Rachel Doe is a shy accountant at a low ebb in life when she meets charismatic Ivy Schneider, nee Wiseman, at her evening class and her life changes for the better.

Ivy is her polar opposite: strong, six years her senior and the romantic survivor of drug addiction, homelessness and the death of her child. Ivy does menial shift work, beholden to no one, and she inspires life; as do her farming parents, with their ramshackle house and its swan-filled lake, the lake where Ivy’s daughter drowned. As Rachel grows closer to them all she learns how Ivy came to be married to Carl, the son of a WWII prisoner, as well as the true nature of that marriage to a bullying and ambitious lawyer who has become a judge and who denies her access to her surviving child.

Rachel wants justice for Ivy, but Ivy has another agenda and Rachel’s naïve sense of fair play is no match for the manipulative qualities of the Wisemen women.

My thoughts:

This is a very edgy and tense crime thriller as Rachel determines to find Carl and bring about a reconciliation between him and Ivy and her parents. Right from the start I felt all was not it seemed to be on the surface and actually disliked most of the characters. But that didn’t prevent me liking this book.  The story is compelling, well paced and full of that creepy feeling of something not quite right – sinister references to past events signalling that not all the characters can be trusted – just who is telling the truth and how did Ivy’s daughter die?

Sunday Salon – This Weekend

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Not a lot of reading has been done this weekend as we have been visiting our son and family, walking and babysitting.

I’ve had a very brief session with True Grit by Charles Portis, which is progressing nicely. This novel has a very realistic feel about it, not that I’m at all familiar with the American West, US Marshalls and tracking down killers of course. What I mean is that the dialogue is lively and fresh – even if I don’t understand all the Westernisms – and the characters come over as real people. It won’t take me long to finish it and already I’m wondering what to read next.

My choices are:

  • An Agatha Christie book – maybe The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
  • Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – inspired by our walk today on Yellowcraigs Beach with its view of the Island of Fidra, Stevenson’s inspiration for the book (more on this beautiful place in another post).
  • Molly Fox’s Birthday by Deidre Madden – because I keep meaning to read this book!
  • The Small Hand: a Ghost Story by Susan Hill – because it’s due back at the library soon.
  • The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney, which I’ve started and not finished.

Coming up tomorrow – Crime Fiction Alphabet – the letter F.

LibraryThing and Good Reads

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Recently I saw on Bernadette’s blog that she had joined the Good Reads 2011 Reading Challenge, which asks members to nominate the number of books they would read during the year and if you did so then every time you log in to the site you see your own progress towards your goal.

This reminded me that I had joined Good Reads in April last year and had done very little with it, just adding a few books because I’ve got most of my books entered in LibraryThing. I’ve never set myself a target of books to read in a year and I’m not too fussed about doing so, mostly because that depends on a) the number of pages in each book – I’d read short books if I wanted it to look as though I read loads and b) I don’t actually care whether I read more or less than I did in other years or how it compares with other readers. But it seems an interesting exercise to set a target and see yourself moving towards it – or not as the case may be. So I had another look at Good Reads and realised that I could import my list of books from LibraryThing, which I’ve now done and signed up for the 2011 Reading Challenge.

2011 Reading Challenge

I’m not too familiar with Good Reads and I’m wondering what benefits it has over LibraryThing – or vice versa! Can anyone let me know what they think?