Category: Crime Fiction

Portobello by Ruth Rendell: A Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Portobello is one of Ruth Rendell’s psychological studies of obsessional and eccentric characters, with a touch of insanity and crime mixed in. I can’t say I ‘enjoyed’ it as in parts it really irritated me, but I did wonder how it was going to end and so read on. The setting is good; the description of the Portobello Road in London brings the area to life, making it a character in its own right:

The street is very long, like a centipede snaking up from Pembridge Road in the south to Kensal Town in the north, its legs splaying out all the way and almost reaching the Great Western Street main line and the Grand Union Canal.

… The Portobello has a rich personality, vibrant, brilliant in colour, noisy with graffiti that approach art, bizarre and splendid. an indefinable edge to it adds a spice of danger. There is nothing safe about the Portobello, nothing suburban. It is as far from an average shopping street as can be imagined. those who love and those who barely know it have called it the world’s finest street. (page 2)

The plot promised to be good, with Eugene Wren finding an envelope filled with money and sets in motion a chain of disastrous events. But it failed to live up to that promise. The money belonged to Joel, a very strange young man who after being attacked in the Portobello Road and losing the envelope, suffered a heart attack and a near-death experience in which he went through a tunnel and was then brought back.  Joel is accompanied by Mithras who came back with him through the tunnel. He descends rapidly into an unreal world shunning the light and doing nothing at all.

Eugene is a secretive man who owns a Fine Art Gallery and is engaged to Ella Cotswold, a doctor. Ella takes on Joel as a private patient even though it’s clear his problems are psychological rather than physical and even when she refers him to a psychotherapist he continues to consult her.

Eugene in an attempt to lose weight and give up smoking tries eating low-calorie sweets and becomes addicted to Chocorange, a sugar-free pastille containing just 4 calories. This is one of the parts of the book that irritated me – it is repeated ad nauseam  how he wants to give up, tries to and fails, how he hides packets everywhere.

A third set of characters are Lance Platt, a petty burglar (who told Eugene the money belonged to him) and his Uncle Gib. Lance Uncle Gib is a reformed burglar, now an Elder in the Church of the Children of Zebulon, who only puts up with Lance living in his house for the rent money. Uncle Gib is another unpleasant character:

… a tall, emaciated old man with his Voltairean face and his fluffy white hair singing hymns as he bounded along. Eccentricity is the norm in the Portobello Road. (page 134)

It’s descriptions like that, that kept me reading this book, for Rendell is expert in depicting sad and seedy individuals, the mentally ill, and obsessed and strangely addicted characters. I wasn’t impressed with the way she tied up all the loose ends; it seemed too sentimental and not in keeping with the rest of the book. Overall and having thought about since finishing it I think that the prose drags the book up beyond the two stars (meaning it was ok) I gave it on Goodreads, so if I could I’d upgrade that to two and half  – I nearly liked it! :)

I’d identified this as a book to read for Carl’s RIP IV Challenge but I’m not sure it fits, although there is some suspense in it and a touch of dark fantasy.

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Arrow (13 Aug 2009)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0099538636
ISBN-13: 978-0099538639
Source: I bought it (in a 3 for 2 in Waterstones)

Awakening by Sharon Bolton: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I read Awakening  very quickly because once I started reading I didn’t want to stop.

If you don’t like snakes this book won’t help you get over your phobia! Clare Benning is a wildlife vet who’d rather be with animals than with people. She was facially disfigured in a traumatic childhood accident, which isn’t explained until nearly the end of the book. She has recently moved to a quiet country village in Dorset, where she is soon drawn into more contact with other people than she had bargained for, when a man dies following a supposed snake bite.

To make matters worse this snake is not a native British snake but a  highly poisonous snake from Australia, a taipan:

Taipans can be very aggressive snakes. They’re fast and strong. Each one of them has enough venom to kill a whole battalion of policemen. People die within hours of being bitten. (page 62, Location 998)

Then more, and more snakes surface and it gets really scary. There is an awful lot of information in Awakening about snakes and yet none of it is out of place, nor does it slow down this fast-paced novel – it adds to the tension. And it’s not just because of the snakes – there are some very strange people and unexplained events that scare Clare, but she is relentless in her search for the truth. I really liked Clare; Bolton has depicted her so well drawing out how her physical scarring has caused her emotional fragility and how she deals with it. The relationships between the characters is also believable and the setting is very dark and atmospheric.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 595 KB
  • Print Length: 544 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0312381875
  • Publisher: Transworld Digital (23 April 2009)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B0031RS22C
  • Source: I bought it

The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I loved The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths, which is just as well as I’d been looking forward to reading it after I’d enjoyed her first book The Crossing Places. Sometimes, a second book does not live up to the promise of the first, but in this case I think her second book is even better than the first. I just wish Elly Griffiths hadn’t written them in the present tense. I always have to overcome my dislike of it, until I become engrossed in the story and forget the tense.

From the Back Cover

Forensics expert Ruth Galloway is called in to investigate when builders, demolishing a large old house in Norwich, uncover the skeleton of a child – minus the skull – beneath a doorway. Is it some ritual sacrifice of just plain straightforward murder?

The house was once a children’s home. DCI Harry Nelson meets the Catholic priest who used to run it. He tells him that two children did go missing forty years before – a boy and a girl. They were never found.

When carbon dating proves that the child’s bones predate the children’s home, Ruth is drawn more deeply into the case. But as spring turns to summer it becomes clear that someone is trying very hard to put her off the scent by frightening her half to death…

My view

Once I’d become engrossed in this book I read it very quickly, eager to find out what happens next. It does follow on from The Crossing Places in that it features the main characters in that book and continues their story. Ruth is now pregnant, but she’s not sure she wants the father to know, although it’s obvious she’s pregnant and Harry has his suspicions about the identity of the father.

Two archaeological digs are in progress, one in Norwich where the body of a child is found under a doorway, which is where the book’s title comes from. Janus is the two-faced god of doors and openings and also of times of transition and change  as he could backwards and forwards at the same time. The Celts and sometimes the Romans used to bury bodies under walls and doors as offerings to Janus and the god Terminus.  The other is on a hillside outside Swaffham, where bones have also been found under a wall.

I like the mix of archaeology, mystery and crime fiction in Elly Griffiths’s books. This one has a double dose, with mythology and Catholicism running through the narrative as well as the police procedures.  Ruth is an interesting character, not your usual detective, she’s overweight, self-reliant but also feisty and tough. She has to be with everything that’s thrown at her and as her investigations lead her into great danger. Another interesting character, also found in The Crossing Places, is Michael Malone, also known as Cathbad, a lab assistant and sometime Druid:

When he is in his full Druid outfit, complete with flowing purple cloak, Cathbad can look impressive. Now, with his greying hair drawn back in a ponytail, white coat, jeans and trainers, he looks like any other ageing hippy who has finally found a nine-to-five job. Ruth is pleased to see him though. Despite everything, she is fond of Cathbad. (page 87)

Cathbad plays an important part in the tense ending to this book as Ruth is abducted, resulting in a dramatic if slow chase through the fog-bound Norfolk rivers:

It is like voyaging into the afterlife. they have left behind the solid world and entered into a dream state, moving silently between billowing white clouds. There is nothing to anchor them to their surroundings: no landmarks, no sounds, no earth or sky. There is only this slow progress through the endless whiteness, the sound of their own breathing and the lap of the water against the sides of the boat. (page 309)

It’s the suffocating, unearthly nature, the grey nothingness and the uncertainty that makes this so frightening and tense. I have Elly Griffiths’s next book, The House at Seas End, lined up to read very soon.

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

In Evil Under the Sun Poirot is on holiday in Devon staying in a seaside hotel – a seaside mystery instead of a country house mystery!

Here’s the blurb:

It was not unusual to find the beautiful bronzed body of the sun-loving Arlena Stuart stretched out on a beach, face down. Only, on this occasion, there was no sun! she had been strangled. Ever since Arlena’s arrival at the resort, Hercule Poirot had detected sexual tension in the seaside air. But could this apparent ‘crime of passion’ have been something more evil and premeditated altogether?

My thoughts:

It’s August, the sun is hot, people are enjoying themselves, swimming and sunbathing and yet Poirot remarks that the sight of the recumbent figures on the beach reminds him of the Morgue in Paris, ‘the bodies – arranged in slabs – like butcher’s meat!’  The other guests remark it’s an unlikely setting for crime but Poirot disagrees:

‘It is romantic, yes,’ agreed Hercule Poirot. ‘It is peaceful. The sun shines. The sea is blue. But you forget Miss Brewster, there is evil everywhere under the sun.’

And so it turns out, with the discovery of Arlena’s dead body. Arlena, who Major Barry describes as ‘a personification of evil’.

‘She’s the world’s first gold-digger. And a man-eater as well! If anything personable in trousers comes within a hundred yards of her, it’s fresh sport for Arlena!’

Her step-daughter, Linda hates her and wants to kill her, wishing she would die.

Arlena was strangled. Poirot  maintains that her murder has resulted from her character, and his investigations revolve around understanding exactly what type of person she was. The suspicion of guilt is cast over one person after another; either a man or a woman could have been strong enough to strangle Arlena and there are plenty of suspects. And even Poirot is puzzled because from the beginning it had seemed to him that one person was clearly indicated as the murderer but at the same time it seemed impossible for that person to have committed the crime.

Poirot describes the murder as a ‘very slick crime‘ and indeed it was perfectly planned and timed. At the end he explains at length how he collected together all the isolated significant facts and events to make a complete pattern to discover the identity of the murderer. Although I enjoyed this book I did think the explanation was too long and the characters  were a bit sketchy and sterotypical. It all seemed to be more of a puzzle solving exercise, than a captivating mystery.

Agatha Christie wrote Evil Under the Sun during 1938 and it was published in 1941, having first appeared as a serial in the USA at the end of 1940. I read it on my Kindle.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 416 KB
  • Print Length: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Harper (14 Oct 2010)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B0046H95QS
  • Source: I bought it

Reading this book completes the What’s in a Name 4 challenge.

The Hanging Wood by Martin Edwards

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Hanging Wood (Lake District Mysteries 5)The Hanging Wood is another great book from Martin Edwards. It’s his 5th Lake District Mystery, and although each one can be read as a stand-alone, I think it’s good to read them in order of publication. Full details of his books are on Martin’s website.

Historian Daniel Kind is carrying out research at St Herbert’s Residential Library where Orla Payne works. She is obsessed by the disappearance of her brother Callum,  twenty years earlier when he was a teenager and she was a child of seven. When her uncle was found dead in Hanging Wood, the police assumed he had committed suicide after killing Callum, even though his body was never found. Daniel encourages Orla to speak to DCI Hannah Scarlet, who heads the Cold Case Review Team at Cumbria Constabulary about her brother’s disappearance. However, a drunken Orla fails to convince Hannah to reopen the case and it is only after Orla’s death that the police decide to review Callum’s disappearance. As Hannah tries to discover what happened to Callum, she begins to think their deaths are connected and were not accidental or suicide.

I really enjoyed this book, with its interesting characters and atmospheric Lake District setting. The Hanging Wood itself with its towering wych elms, rowan, ash and oak trees, and old paths obscured by grass, heather and brambles is not a pleasant place:

The sun was barely visible through the canopy of leaves and there was an earthy primitive smell in the air. Even on a day like this, the Hanging Wood had the odour of decay. Purple foxgloves supplied a scattering of colour, but for Hannah, the flowers conjured up sinister memories. They were poisonous, and when she was small, a thoughtless uncle warned her that nibbling the stems in his garden would kill her. She’d spent the rest of the day in a state of terror. She remembered his name for foxgloves: dead man’s bells. (location 2225)

The case is intriguing and cleverly constructed. I thought I’d worked it out and I did, but only after several red herrings threw me off track for a while. I like the mix of cold and new cases, the sense of history and the characterisation – a most satisfying read.

I also like the sub-plot of Hannah and Daniel’s relationship. Both of them are now living on their own, but Marc is still trying to patch things up with Hannah and Hannah is just not sure. I think for this strand of the novels it really does help to read the books in sequence.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 518 KB
  • Print Length: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Allison & Busby (25 July 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B005C1AMFU
  • Source: I bought it

Agatha Christie Blog Carnival

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

The August edition of the Agatha Christie Blog Carnival is now posted at http://acrccarnival.blogspot.com/2011/08/acrc-carnival-2011-7-august-24-2011.html

Next month we will celebrate Agatha Christie’s 121st birthday on September 15. In 2010 we celebrated the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birthday on September 15 with a month long blog tour. This year’s celebrations will be a bit lower key and will give participants the opportunity to put a celebratory post up on their own blog, and then link to it on the Carnival site through a special post on September 15.