Category: Crime Fiction

Recent Reading

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve read some books recently and haven’t written about them – ‘real life’ keeps getting in the way! So here are a few brief notes on three of the books I’ve read this month:

  • The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi 4/5 – the first in the Hermes Diaktoros, Greek detective series, set on a remote Greek island. Hermes investigates the death of a young woman. It’s great on location and characters, but a bit slow in parts. Each of the books in the series features one of the Seven Deadly Sins – in this one it is the sin of lust. I’ve read the third book in the series – The Doctor of Thessaly – and have the fifth one, The Whispers of Nemesis. I just need to find the second and fourth books to complete the series.
  • Before the Poison by Peter Robinson 4/5. This is a stand-alone book, about Chris Lowndes, a widower who has bought a house in the Yorkshire Dales. Sixty years earlier a man had died there and his wife Grace was convicted of his murder and hanged. Chris wants to discover whether she really was guilty. This is a convincing mystery, told alternating between the present day and the past. Another book well grounded in its locality and with great characterisation.
  • The Inspector’s Daughter by Alanna Knight 3.5/5 – the first in the Rose McQuinn Mystery series. Set in Edinburgh in 1895, Rose, recently returned from America’s Wild West, steps into the shoes of her father, DI Faro (another series of books features this detective). Her friend Alice ask her to investigate her husband’s strange behaviour as she is convinced he’s having an affair. Meanwhile there is also the mystery of the brutal murder of a servant girl to solve. Rose lives in an isolated house at the foot of Arthur’s Seat and is helped by a wild deerhound who appears just when she needs him. An interesting historical murder mystery, convincingly set in the late 19th century, when Edinburgh was developing and the Forth Railway Bridge had just been opened.

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Kerrie’s community meme – The Alphabet in Crime Fiction – is back for 2012 – for full details see her blog, which includes a schedule showing the date that the week’s page will be posted and the letter of the week. It begins on May 21, with, of course, the letter A. Could that be a post about Agatha Christie, or one of her books, I wonder?

The rules are that each Friday you write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book’s title, the first letter of an author’s first name, or the first letter of the author’s surname, or even maybe a crime fiction “topic”. But above all, it has to be crime fiction. It is ok to skip a week.

I’ve signed up and will be posting each week where possible – some letters are always tricky!

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Labours of Hercules is a collection of 12 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot, first published in 1947. Poirot is thinking of retiring, but before he does he wants to solve 12 more cases and not just any cases. These have to correspond to the Twelve Labours of Hercules, specially selected problems that personally appeal to him.

Most of the stories are quite easy to work out, but that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of reading them. And so that he can complete his twelve cases, Poirot does some uncharacteristic travelling around the world – he can’t rely solely on his ‘little grey cells.’

The labours of Hercules were set for the classical Greek hero by King Eurystheus of Tiryns as a penance. On completing them he was rewarded with immortality. On the face of it, Poirot and Hercules are vastly different, both in character and appearance and after immersing himself in classical lore, Poirot decides he is definitely superior, as he looks at himself in the mirror he thinks:

Here, then, was a modern Hercules – very distinct from that unpleasant sketch of a naked figure with bulging muscles, brandishing a club. Instead a small compact figure attired in correct urban wear with a moustache – such a moustache as Hercules never dreamed of cultivating – a moustache magnificent yet sophisticated.

Yet there was between this Hercule Poirot and the Hercules of Classical lore one point of resemblance. Both of them, undoubtedly, had been instrumental in ridding the world of certain pests … Each of them could be described as a benefactor to the Society he lived in … (page 14)

  •  The first case is my favourite of the twelve. It corresponds to killing the Nemean lion a frightful beast. It’s a mystery concerning the kidnapping of a Pekinese dog. At first Poirot is reluctant to take on the case, disapproving of such dogs – ‘bulging-eyed, overpampered pets of a rich woman.’ But there is one small detail that is unusual and he is curious. And as one of the characters tells him. ‘according to the legend, Pekinese were lions once. And they still have the hearts of lions.’
  • The Lernean Hydra was a monstrous snake with many heads. In the second case Poirot’s modern equivalent is malicious gossip, spreading rumours of murder, which he ‘kills’ by discovering who the real culprit was.
  • The Arcadian Deer – Poirot helps a young mechanic, who is ‘a simple young man with the outward appearance of a Greek god’  reminding him of a ‘shepherd in Arcady’ to find a beautiful young woman who has disappeared – the Arcadian deer.
  • Poirot’s equivalent of the fourth labour of Hercules in the Erymanthian Boar is to capture a violent murderer. Set high in the Swiss Alps, Poirot is in great danger as he contends with an infamous gang leader and in doing so he is uncharacteristically physically active!
  • In the Augean Stables Poirot gets involved in politics, averting a scandal using a force of nature, as Hercules used a torrential river to cleanse the stables belonging to King Augeas. Poirot’s equivalent is a sex scandal to divert attention from political chicanery.
  • The Stymphalean Birds – man-eating birds. In this case Poirot is in Herzoslovakia where Harold Waring is having a restful holiday when he meets a delightful English couple – an elderly woman and her pretty daughter. Also staying at the hotel are two other  women – who are not English and who seem to him to be ‘birds of ill omen’. Harold soon finds himself a victim and it is up to Poirot to chase away the ‘birds’ from their hiding place.
  • The Cretan Bull – in the legend Hercules captures the bull, which was possibly the father of the Minotaur. Diana Maberley appeals to Poirot for help after her fiancé breaks off their engagement as he fears he is going mad. The connection with the legendary story is very slight.
  • The Horses of Diomedes – the eighth labour of Hercules was to capture the wild horses that were fed on human flesh. Poirot’s equivalent are human beasts who supply drugs – ‘the person who deliberately profits from the degradation and misery of other people is a vampire preying on flesh and blood.’
  • The Girdle of Hyppolita was captured by Hercules after he had defeated the Amazons and either killed their Queen or had captured one of her generals. Poirot’s ‘Girdle’ is a Rubens masterpiece, stolen in broad daylight. Initially it doesn’t interest him very much, but it brought the case of the Missing Schoolgirl to his attention – and that interested him much more. She had apparently disappeared off a train, leaving a pair of shoes on the railway track.
  • The Flock of Geryon – in the legend Hercules kills the monster, Geryon, to gain control of the flock. Poirot, of course, doesn’t kill anyone. He meets Miss Carnaby (who is also in the first story, the Nemean Lion) who tells him how worried she is about her friend who she believes is being victimised by Dr Andersen, the leader of a religious sect, The Flock of the Shepherd.
  • The Apples of the Hesperides. There are several versions of this. The apples grew on a tree guarded by a dragon – Hercules either killed the dragon, or sent Atlas for the apples, in the meanwhile holding up the world on his own shoulders. Poirot’s apples are emeralds on a tree around which a dragon is coiled, on a missing Italian renaissance goblet. It seems that Poirot may have to go on a world tour to retrieve the goblet – to investigate locations in five different parts of the globe.
  • The Capture of Cerberus – a three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades, or Hell. In Poirot’s final case Hell is a nightclub run by the Countess Vera Rossakoff, an old friend of Poirot’s. This nightclub is guarded by the ‘largest and ugliest and blackest dog’  Poirot has ever seen. Entrance to the club is only after throwing a ‘sop’ to Cerberus from a basket of dog biscuits. The police believe it’s the headquarters of a drug racket involving the fencing of stolen jewellery. Poirot can’t believe that Vera, for whom he has a soft spot, can be involved. I liked the ending of this story when Miss Lemon queries a bill for roses sent to the Countess. He responds:

‘There are moments,’ he said, ‘when one does not economise.’

Humming a little tune, he went out of the door. His step was light, almost sprightly. Miss Lemon stared after him. Her filing system was forgotten. All her feminine instincts were aroused.

‘Good gracious,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder … Really – at his age! … Surely not…’

I enjoyed this book both for the linking of Poirot’s cases with the Labours of Hercules and for the personal snippets of information about Poirot, scattered throughout the text.

February’s Books: Little Boy Lost

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

February was a good reading month. I read 9 books. The full list is on my Books Read in 2012 page (see the tab above).

My Book of the Month is Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski. It is a beautiful book. Once I started reading I didn’t want to put it down; I just had to know what happened. It’s the story of Hilary Wainwright, who is searching for his son, lost five years earlier in the Second World War. Hilary had left France just after his wife, Lisa, had given birth to John. Lisa, unable to leave France, worked for the Resistance, but was killed by the Gestapo and her son disappeared.

After the war ended Hilary is contacted by Pierre, a friend of Lisa’s, who told him he may have found the boy, living in an orphanage in rural France and Hilary sets out to discover if the boy is really his son.

It’s written in such clear, straightforward language and yet at the same time it is emotional, heart-wrenching and nerve-wracking, full of tension, but never sentimental. The depiction of post-war France is chilling conveying the deprivations, suspicion and bitterness of the times. Hilary is a solitary person, a poet and an intellectual, who has difficulty with relationships. This makes it difficult for him to accept that the little boy is his without an instinctive feeling or conclusive evidence – looks, mannerisms or the child’s own recollections. Whilst he is longing to find his son, after he Lisa had died and he had lost the boy, he had closed himself off from feelings:

I couldn’t endure being hurt again: I’d sooner feel nothing. I don’t like children as such; they bore me. I used to think that a child of my own would make me happy, but I know that isn’t true any more. I’ve got nothing to offer a child … I just want to be left alone so that I can’t be hurt again. (page 75)

It’s not only the little boy who is lost, it is also his father.

He goes through mental agonies once he meets the child, unsure that he is his son, and in several minds about what he should do. The boy is adorable and by the end of the book I began to think it didn’t matter whether he was his son or not, I just wanted them to be happy together.

My rating: 5/5

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Persephone Books Ltd (23 Oct 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1906462054
  • ISBN-13: 978-1906462055
  • Source: I bought my copy

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is collecting crime fiction ‘picks of the month’. During February I read 4 crime fiction and my Crime Fiction Pick of the Month is Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie – Miss Marple’s last case.

After the Armistice Ball by Catriona McPherson

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

After the Armistice Ball is the first book in the Dandy Gilver series. I’ve read a couple of the later books in the series and had to read this one in order to find out how Dandy (short for Dandelion) first became an amateur detective, or Society Sleuth, as she is called on the book cover.

It all began when there is an alleged theft of Lena Duffy’s jewels at Daisy Esslemont’s annual Armistice Ball in 1922 and Daisy asks Dandy to find out what really happened. Dandy is a bored wife, whose husband, Hugh is the ‘hunting, shooting and fishing’ type. The theft of the jewels is rapidly pushed to the sidelines after the death of Lena’s daughter, Cara in a lonely beach cottage in Galloway. Accompanied by Cara’s jilted fiancé, Alec Osborne, Dandy is faced with the puzzle of Cara’s death. Was she killed, or did she commit suicide? She had died in a fire, whilst on her own in the cottage – why was the cottage always kept so hot, so hot that the coal that was supposed to last all winter had been finished in one week?

The setting in the 1920s is convincing, the sense of dislocation after the First World War, the class divide and the contrast between the idle rich and the poor. The locations are beautifully described, and the characters are lively and come to life, particularly Dandy, although Hugh does seem to be a cardboard cut-out, but the book dragged in the middle as Dandy and Alec went over and over, and over the events and theorised about what had happened and why.

I too puzzled over the mystery and I did find the ending rather confusing, so much so that I had to re-read parts of the book to sort out what I thought had happened. I’m still not sure, but I think I know. Having said all that, I did enjoy the book, and apart from the middle section I raced through it and that’s probably where I missed some salient points.

My Rating: 3/5

I borrowed the book from my local library

Death Comes To Pemberley by P D James

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

I read Death Comes to Pemberley over the weekend and although I thought it was OK I was disappointed. I love Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and I like PD James’s books, so this book should have been just right for me. But maybe it was just the wrong book for me because I have yet to read a sequel/spin-off by a different author that I have enjoyed. They never live up to the original and if this had been written by anyone except P D James I probably wouldn’t even have looked at it.

The book is set in 1803, when Elizabeth and Darcy have been married for six years. It begins with a rather lengthy Prologue in which P D James summarises the events told in Pride and Prejudice and tells what has happened in the intervening years. Eventually the mystery is revealed when Lydia arrives at Pemberley and shrieking hysterically tells how Wickham and Captain Denny had disappeared into the Pemberley woods, shots were fired and she is sure Wickham is dead. In fact it is Denny who is dead and a drunk, and distraught Wickham babbles that he has killed him.

It should have been good, but the characters were flat. Six years of marriage had changed Elizabeth beyond recognition, Darcy was a pale, ineffectual figure and Colonel Fitzwilliam was no longer the likeable character he is in Pride and Prejudice. It’s plodding and repetitive. P D James has done her research into the early 19th century murder investigations but it’s clumsily written as exchanges of conversation between the characters – for example would Darcy, a magistrate really need to be told how the system worked? As for the murder mystery, it just fizzled out with a less than convincing result.

On the plus side there are some good descriptive passages, mainly of the Pemberley Estate and a vignette where Mr Bennet is found by Darcy in his library reading the Edinburgh Review.

My rating: 2/5

I borrowed the book from my local library.

As a result of reading this I’ve now started a re-read of Pride and Prejudice and the first chapter convinces me that my recollection of Jane Austen’s sparkling writing is accurate. I shall never read another spin-off again. It was worth reading Death comes to Pemberley to be reminded of Jane Austen’s brilliance.