Category: Crime Fiction

The Hangman's Song by James Oswald

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

The Hangman’s Song by James Oswald is the third in his Inspector McLean series set in Edinburgh.

DI McLean, seconded to the Sexual Crimes Unit (SCU) by Acting Superintendent Charles Duguid (nicknamed Dagwood) finds himself working on two separate cases – one for the SCU  investigating a group of prostitutes and the subsequent death of their pimp, Malky Jennings, who was beaten to death – and the second, two suicides, which he and his DC, MacBride consider to be suspicious, and continue to investigate against Duguid’s instructions.

I think you need to have read the first two books in the series to fully understand the background or at least have read their synopses, as I found some elements of this book confusing – a small example being the name of the Acting Superintendent and his nickname, as it is not clear that Duguid and Dagwood are one and the same person. At times both names were used within a few paragraphs, making me think they could be two people.

The Hangman’s Song is a dark, tense book; crime fiction with elements of the supernatural  and parapsychology thrown in. The police force is undergoing great change as it prepares for unification as Police Scotland, adding to McLean’s own difficulties with his colleagues, most of whom dislike him, regarding him as a pain in the arse and a troublemaker. He views them as incompetent, lazy and in some cases corrupt. I did get a bit tired of his constant battle with Duguid, which detracted from the story at times. All is not well in McLean’s private life either. His girlfriend Emma (who was nearly killed in the previous book, The Book of Souls) comes out of a coma, but she has lost most of her memory, regressing to an eight-year old. She moves into McLean’s house to help with her recovery.

It is a complicated book with three storylines to keep in mind, and a large cast of characters, not all of them clearly distinguishable. It’s not a book for the faint-hearted or the squeamish as there are details of some gruesome deaths, murders and beatings that the characters go through. At times I had to read with my imagination turned down – a bit like watching something gory on TV from behind my fingers.

Having said that, it was still a compelling, if disturbing, book (particularly the last chapter) that kept me turning the pages to find out what happened next.

James Oswald runs a 350 acre livestock farm in north-east Fife. In addition to his DI McClean books he has also written a fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro, set in Wales. I have the first book in the series, Dreamwalker, which I have yet to read.

Thanks to www.lovereading.co.uk for the uncorrected advance proof of this book for review. The published book will be available in February 2014.

Not Dead Enough by Peter James

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I read the first Detective Superintendent Roy Grace book, Dead Simple nearly two years ago now and have been meaning to read more of the books, so because I’m now concentrating on reading books I’ve owned before 1 January 2014 I thought it was time to read Not Dead Enough by Peter James. It’s the third Roy Grace book and whilst I don’t think it’s as good as Dead Simple I still enjoyed it – mainly because of the characterisation and the detail James goes into. It’s a long book and I see on Amazon that it’s been criticised for being too long and too detailed, but I liked that. For me it gave added interest and verisimilitude. Some people also criticised it because it has short chapters – to my mind that’s much better than having long chapters!

It’s set in Brighton and begins with the murder of Katie Bishop. The immediate suspect is her husband Brian Bishop, but it appears that he couldn’t be the murderer unless he could have been in two places at once. Then Sophie Harrington is killed. She had been having an affair with Brian thus intensifying the police investigation into his movements and background.

James takes his time setting out the details and the characters, so it’s quite slow to start off, but then the pace picks up, which makes this a quick read as I really wanted to know what happens next. It isn’t difficult to work out who the murderer is, but this didn’t lessen my enjoyment  – and there is just a little twist at the end that I hadn’t foreseen earlier on.

Roy Grace comes across as a real character, concerned about his work and his colleagues, even if he doesn’t get on too well with his boss, ACC Alison Vosper. Grace’s wife, Sandy, had disappeared nine years earlier and he is still wondering what happened to her even though he is now involved with Cleo Morey, the Chief Mortician and he takes a quick trip over to Munich when his friends tell him they had seen her there. This takes his attention away from the murders and he has to defend his visit to Vosper.

This is very much a police procedural, detailing how the detectives go about their work, including Grace’s ideas about whether eye movements indicate whether a person is telling the truth, which I’ve read about before, and what happens when a person is charged and arrested, which I know very little about (only from books and TV – and want to keep it that way)!

Vengeance by Benjamin Black

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

The first book I’ve finished this year (I began reading it at the end of last year) is a library book, Vengeance by Benjamin Black. I still have a few library books on loan from last year and I’ll be slotting in them between reading my own unread books.

Vengeance is an interesting book, ostensibly crime fiction, because there are two deaths investigated by Detective Inspector Hackett and his friend, pathologist Doctor Quirke, but it’s more of a character study, with Hackett playing a minor role. It has a slow, steady pace throughout and the mystery is not complex or difficult to solve.

As often happens when I borrow books from the library I have read a book that is one of a series of books – Vengeance is number five in Black’s Quirke Mysteries series (there are currently 6 books in the series). I think it stands well on its own, with enough back story included to keep me happy.

Benjamin Black is a pseudonym used by John Banville (an author whose books I’ve enjoyed before). His Quirke Mysteries are set in Ireland in the 1950s. Vengeance begins with a suicide – Victor Delahaye, a business man who takes his boat out to sea and shoots himself. He had taken his partner’s son, Davy Clancy out to sea with him. The Delahayes and Clancys are interviewed – Mona Delahaye, the dead man’s young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; Marguerite his sister; Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner and Sylvia, Jack’s long-suffering wife.

Then there is a second death. Why did Victor kill himself and who is the murderer, wreaking vengeance on the families?

I liked Black’s style of writing – clear and concise, the characters are distinct and the setting is excellent, both in location and time, with the characters wreathed in cigarette smoke, and having to find public telephones for example. At one point a journalist comments on detective stories, comparing them to ‘real life’ investigations:

‘I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes and Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey all rolled into one. I knew I could be. I knew I’d get all the clues and work out who had done it and at the end would get to point my finger at the culprit …

And then I grew up.’ … ‘ Everything doesn’t get explained,’ he said. … ‘You find a few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, some of them fit together, some of them you just leave lying on the board, by themselves. That was the point of those detective stories I used to read – there was nothing that didn’t mean something, nothing that wasn’t a clue. It’s not like that in real life,’ (pages 213 -214)

A nice touch, I thought.

I liked this book enough to make me want to read the earlier books in the series:

  1. Christine Falls (2006)
  2. The Silver Swan (2007)
  3. Elegy for April (2010)
  4. A Death in Summer (2011)
  5. Vengeance (2012)
  6. Holy Orders (2013)

The Santa Klaus Murder by Mavis Doriel Hay

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

When I saw that The Santa Klaus Murder was available for loan from the Kindle Lending Library I wondered if it was worth looking at. I’d never heard of Mavis Doriel Hay before, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, one of the British Library Crime Classics.

Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979) was a novelist of the golden age of British crime fiction. Her three detective novels were published in the 1930s and are now rare and highly collectable books. She was an expert on rural handicraft and wrote several books on the subject.

Summary from the British Library:

A classic country-house murder mystery, The Santa Klaus Murder begins with Aunt Mildred declaring that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gathering at their country residence Flaxmere. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered€”by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus€”with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos.

Nearly every member of the party stands to reap some sort of benefit from Sir Osmond’s death, but Santa Klaus, the one person who seems to have every opportunity to fire the shot, has no apparent motive. Various members of the family have their private suspicions about the identity of the murderer, but in the midst of mistrust, suspicion, and hatred, it emerges that there was not one Santa Klaus but two.

My view:

This was first published in 1936 and it is a classic locked room murder mystery. There are lots of suspects, especially as there were rumours that Sir Osmond was about to re-write his will. The story has several narrators, including – Sir Osmond’s daughter, Jennifer and her fiancé, Philip (Sir Osmond has withheld his blessing to their engagement), his daughter Hilda, a widow, Mildred, his sister, Grace, his young and vivacious secretary, and Colonel Halstock, the Chief Constable, investigating the crime. The suspects all seem to have alibis, but are they all telling the truth?

In short, it seems impossible to be sure of anyone’s exact movements during that half-hour.

No one admits seeing anyone enter the study after Oliver Witcombe left Sir Osmond there, until Witcombe returned and found him dead. (page 81)

It is a complicated plot and I enjoyed all the twists and turns. The opening chapters are rather detailed setting out the family background, but the characters all came to life as they arrived at Flaxmere.

There is a map showing the layout of the ground floor of Flaxmere, to help the reader and I kept referring to it as I read, together with the list of characters and their relationships.

To help you even more, if you haven’t worked out who did it there is a Postscript by Colonel Haverstock listing the questions and clues to identify the murderer. So don’t look at the end if you don’t want to know how and why Sir Osmond was murdered.

Hay’s other two murder mysteries Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell are due to be published in June 2014 – I’ll be looking out for them.

Book Beginning: A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The library van came round this week and I borrowed another Ruth Rendell book: A Sight for Sore Eyes, first published in 1998. I don’t really check what the book is about when it’s one by Ruth Rendell, as I usually enjoy her books. This one begins:

They were to hold hands and look at one another. Deeply, into each other’s eyes.

‘It’s not a sitting,’ she said, ‘it’s a standing. Why can’t I sit on his knee?’

He laughed. Everything she said amused him or delighted him, everything about her captivated him from her dark-red curly hair to her small white feet. The painter’s instructions were that he should look at her as if in love and she at him as if enthralled. This was easy, this was to act naturally.

This could be the opening to a love story, but this is a Ruth Rendell book and I’m expecting it to be something darker and more mysterious. Indeed, the information on the back cover warns that this is ‘Masterfully spooky. Don’t read this alone.’

For more Book Beginnings see Gilion’s blog Rose City Reader.

My Kind of Mystery Challenge

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Here is yet another reading challenge for 2014 – the My Kind of Mysery challenge which is being hosted by Riedel Fascination, who explains her idea:

Mystery needs no murder! Hidden passageways, ancient places, eerie phenomenon€¦ ‘Dan Brown’ meets Nancy Atherton! Gothic greats of the 1960s-1980s, modern releases. I am launching a reading challenge that welcomes the lot: tutorials, mystery author biographies, fiction€¦ Any form of mystery and its authors fit my all-encompassing theme.

Keep an eye out for fun riddles to solve throughout the year!

The categories are:

Any format.
Any demographic
Non-adult must be published by 1990 or earlier.
Limitless length.
A short story, compilations; bring them to the table!
Reviews wanted.
A link to Goodreads, Book Depository€¦ just to show you finished. One line is fine.

Catch your breath: we launch February 1st, 2014 €“ February 28th, 2015!

I’ve gone through my list of unread crime fiction/mystery books and found I have over 40! So, I’ve decided to go for the category ‘Lost Artifacts’.