Category: Crime Fiction

Happy Birthday BooksPlease!

Published on by Margaret17 Comments

BooksPlease is 4 years old today!

I find it hard to believe that I’ve been writing this blog for 4 years. It seems like it was only yesterday I tentatively clicked on ‘publish’  for the first time.

Over these last 4 years I’ve read almost 400 books and have written about the  majority of them. I’ve also written about places I love to visit but my blog has stayed mainly about books.

The greatest change in my reading has come about gradually over the last two years or so, in that I now read a lot more crime fiction than I ever did before and that’s down to other bloggers, but also because I find crime fiction books are about so much more than crime. There is such variety in crime fiction – dealing with contemporary issues, historical crime (true and fictional), moral and ethical issues, personal and psychological crimes, and organised crime and so on. There are police procedurals, private detectives, amateur sleuths, serial killers and racial and political crime thrillers. And I love variety in my reading.

Books Please Me

I’ve also found that blogging isn’t a solitary pursuit, although it can be if you want. I’ve ‘met’ so many kindred spirits on book blogs and other blogs too. There are numerous reading challenges and memes to join and the opportunity to discuss books with people world wide. I’m very happy that I ventured into the book blogosphere. Thanks to everyone who reads my blog and especially to those who’ve taken the time and effort to make comments.

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter N

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

This week we’ve reached the letter N in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet. My choice is a medley of ‘N‘s.

  • I had thought I would review Peter James’s Not Dead Enough, and I started it a while back but put it down to read other books. Not because I didn’t like it, but it’s a very long book – 610 pages of very small font, which is difficult for me to read, especially late at night when my eyes get tired quickly. From the back cover:

On the night Brian Bishop murdered his wife he was sixty miles away, asleep in bed at the time. At least that’s the way it looks to Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who is called to investigate the kinky slaying of beautiful young Brighton socialite, Katie Bishop.

  • Another choice for the letter N that I considered is A Necessary End, an Inspector Banks mystery by Peter Robinson but I haven’t finished that book either. From the back cover:

In the usually peaceful town of Eastvale, a simmering tension has now reached breaking point. An anti-nuclear demonstration has ended in violence, leaving one policeman stabbed to death. Fired by professional outrage, Superintendent ‘Dirty Dick’ Burgess descends with vengeful fury on the inhabitants of ‘Maggie’s Farm’, an isolated house high on the daleside.

  • My third choice is Not the End of the World by Christopher Brookmyre. I started reading this after enjoying Quite Ugly One Morning. The bookmark shows I’m up to page 30. I think I didn’t finish this book because I was expecting it to be set in Scotland like Quite Ugly One Morning and was put off by it being in Los Angeles – silly I know!

 

  • Then there is Agatha Christie’s Nemesis, which is the last Miss Marple mystery. I only bought it recently and I’m itching to read it soon. Mr Rafiel, an old acquaintance (see A Caribbean Mystery), has died and left Miss Marple instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death.

 

  • And finally the book I’m currently reading is Janet Neel’s Ticket to Ride, which so far is making very interesting reading. But I don’t want to write much about it before I’ve finished it. Ticket to Ride features Jules Carlisle a newly qualified solicitor. She takes on the case of Mirko Dragunoviç, an illegal immigrant who claims that one of the eight dead bodies, found on the beach west of King’s Lynn, is that of his brother.

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

Teaser Tuesday

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.

I’ve just finished reading Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit, which is one of her earliest books. It has a very complicated plot about a diamond robbery, an accidental death at a London tube station and a murder in a remote country mansion. I’ll write about in more detail about in a later post, but for now here is a teaser:

For in each suspicious instance Pagett had been shown as the directing genius. It was true that his personality seemed to lack the assurance and decision that one would suspect from a master criminal – but after all, according to Colonel Race, it was brain-work only that this mysterious leader supplied , and creative genius is often allied to a weak and timorous physical constitution. (page 148)

And the last few sentences in the book show Agatha Christie’s interest in anthropology:

‘Congratulations and love to the latest arrival on Lunatics’ Island. Is his head dolichocephalic or brachycephalic?’

I wasn’t going to stand that from Suzanne. I sent her a reply of one word, economical and to the point:

‘Platycephalic!’ (page 238)

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter M

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie is my choice to illustrate the letter M in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

This is Agatha Christie’s 6th book, published in 1926, one of her best known books and possibly one of the most controversial because of its solution to the mystery. I hadn’t read it before, but I knew a bit about it from reading Agatha Christie’s Autobiography, in which she wrote:

Of course, a lot of people say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is cheating; but if they read it carefully they will see that they are wrong. Such little lapses of time as there have to be are nicely concealed in an ambiguous sentence … (page 352)

I won’t write any more about the controversy – no spoilers!

Set in the village of King’s Abbot, the story begins with the death of Mrs Ferrars, a wealthy widow and the local doctor, Dr Sheppard suspects it is suicide. The following evening Roger Ackroyd, a wealthy widower who it was rumoured would marry Mrs Ferrars, is found murdered in his study.

Poirot has retired to King’s Abbot, to grow vegetable marrows, not very successfully. He’s missing Captain Hastings who is living in the Argentine, so when he is asked to investigate the murder he enlists Dr Sheppard, who lives next door with his sister Caroline, to help him and it is Dr Sheppard who narrates the story. Caroline is a most interesting character who takes a great interest in other people and likes to know everything that goes on in the village. She is, possibly, a forerunner of Miss Marple as Agatha Christie wrote in her Autobiography:

I think it is possible that Miss Marple arose from the pleasure I had taken in portraying Dr Sheppard’s sister in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. She had been my favourite character in the book – an acidulated spinster, full of curiosity, knowing everything, hearing everything: the complete detective service in the home. (page 448)

This has to be one of my favourite Agatha Christie books. It’s full of believable characters, suspects aplenty including Major Blunt, an old friend staying with Ackroyd, Flora, Ackroyd’s niece and her mother, his sister-in-law and poor relation, Geoffrey Raymond, his secretary, Ursula Bourne, a parlourmaid who may not be all she appears and Ralph Paton, Ackroyd’s adopted son who has large gambling debts.

The setting is that of the quintessential English village where Poirot appears as an mysterious foreigner. Dr Sheppard’s first impression of him is that he must be a retired hairdresser because of his immense moustaches. He also doubts his ability to solve the mystery and described his as

… ridiculously full of his own importance. It crossed my mind to wonder whether he was really any good as a detective. Had his reputation been built up on a series of lucky chances? (page 80)

Of course, it hadn’t and Poirot meticulously works through the timing of events, and disposes of all the suspects to find the culprit. It was only towards the end of the book that I began to realise who it had to be.

  • Hardcover: 237 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins; Facsimile edition (2011)
  • Language English
  • Source: My own copy, part of an issue of The Agatha Christie Book Collection partwork published by Agatha Christie Limited

Crime Fiction Alphabet – Letter L

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Donna Leon’s Drawing Conclusions is my choice to illustrate the letter L in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.

This is the 20th book in her Commissario Guido Brunetti series. Brunetti is somewhat of a rarity in crime fiction novels – a detective who is happily married with two children. He doesn’t smoke or drink to excess and often goes home for lunch to his beautiful wife Paola.

It’s set in Venice where Donna Leon has lived for many years. I was immediately drawn into this book, with its wonderful sense of locality, believable characters and intricate plot.  Anna Maria Giusti discovers her elderly neighbour Constanza Altavilla lying dead on the floor of her apartment. Apparently she has died from a heart attack but Brunetti, called to the scene because there was blood on the floor, suspects that she may have been attacked as there are bruises on her neck and shoulders. His boss, Vice-Questore Patta wants to close the case but Brunetti decides to make further investigations.

He meets Signora Altavilla’s son and visits the nursing home where she had been helping out. His suspicions are further aroused when the nun in charge of the home is reluctant to answer his questions and by the conversations he has with some of the people she visited. With the help of Inspector Vianello and Signorina Elettra, Patta’s secretary, he discovers a network of deception and lies.

This is a reflective and thoughtful book and I was completely engrossed in it. I haven’t been to Venice, but it came to life as Brunetti walks the streets:

As he walked alongside Rio della Tetta, Brunetti was cheered, as always happened when he walked here, by the sight of the most beautiful paving stones in Venice. Of some colour between pink and ivory, many of the stones were almost two metres long and a metre wide and gave an idea of what it must have been to walk in the city in its glory days. (page 63)

It’s well-paced and there are several unexpected twists that kept me wondering almost to the end what had actually happened to cause Signora Altalvilla’s death. It’s more than crime -fiction as Brunetti ponders on life, the problems of ageing, and the nature of truth and honesty. I didn’t want the book to end – that’s how good it is.

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: William Heinemann (7 April 2011)
  • ISBN-10: 0434021431
  • ISBN-13: 978-0434021437
  • Source: Review copy

Crime Fiction Alphabet – K is for …

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

… Karen Maitland

Karen Maitland writes medieval mysteries. She has a doctorate in psycholinguistics and has done all kinds of jobs from cleaner to lecturer, egg packing to dance-drama, before she started writing for a living in 1996. She has travelled and worked in many parts of the world, from the Arctic Circle to Africa, and now lives in the medieval city of Lincoln in England. She is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association, the Historical Novel Society, the Society of Authors and of International Thriller Writers. And she is now one of the Medieval Murderers.

The first book of hers that I read is Company of Liars: a Novel of the Plague, set in the 14th century about a group of nine people travelling to escape from the plague and suspected of concealing the killer of a little girl. It’s a memorable book, with a colourful cast of characters. Although it is a long book (over 550 pages) and there are many other characters than the group of nine I had no difficulty keeping track of who was who. It’s full of suspense and drama and I loved it.

Her second medieval mystery is The Owl Killers: a Novel of the Dark Ages. Again this is set in 14th century England, this time in ‘an isolated village where pagan Owl Masters rule through fear superstition and murder’ (from the back cover). I haven’t finished reading this yet but it’s promising to be equally as good as Company of Liars. Karen Maitland is a wonderful storyteller and her descriptions of the place and period draw me in as though I was actually there.

Her latest book is The Gallows’ Curse, set in the reign of King John (1210). The ‘plot involves people-trafficking, murder and, oh yes… a very feisty dwarf and a eunuch with a hunger for revenge’.

For more crime fiction ‘K‘ entries see Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet.