Category: Crime Fiction

Teaser Tuesday – Missing Link by Joyce Holms

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Share a couple or more sentences from the book you’re currently reading.

On Sunday I was wondering which book to read next and eventually decided upon Missing Link by Joyce Holms. She is a new writer to me. I liked the description of her at the front of the book:

Joyce Holms was born and educated in Glasgow. The victim of a low boredom threshold, she has held a variety of jobs, from teaching window dressing and managing a hotel on the Isle of Arran to working for an Edinburgh detective agency and running a B & B in the Highlands. Married with two grown up children she lives in Edinburgh and her interests include hill-walking and garden design.

Val McDermid’s blurb on the front cover reads, ‘Holms is a magician – the reader is so busy laughing, the clues just slip by unnoticed.’ More words by other authors are on Joyce Holms’s website , like this from Ian Rankin: Joyce’s humour is sharp without being nasty, her characters well drawn, and her Edinburgh a place you’ll want to spend time in….. read her books.

I began reading and was immediately drawn into the mystery. Mrs Sullivan wants to be proved guilty of murder and asks Fizz Fitzpatrick, a lawyer to help her. This extract is from the Prologue describing the murder of Amanda Montrose. Amanda is  driving home when the narrow country road ahead is partially blocked by old Volkswagen and someone has the bonnet up and is leaning under it. Amanda goes to see what’s the problem:

The driver straightens and turns, smiling, and fear surges through Amanda’s body like an electric charge. She sees the hammer. She sees the gloating, resolute eyes. And she knows she is looking at her own death. (page 14)

The question is did Mrs Sullivan kill Amanda or was it Terence Lamb, a known criminal, or one of the other people who also claimed to have killed her?

A Detective at Death’s Door

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

A Detective at Death’s Door is the first book by H R F Keating that I’ve read. I was expecting it to be good because Keating, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature  is a winner of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger Awards. From the information in the book I see that his most famous novels are the Inspector Ghote books. A Detective at Death’s Door is the fifth Harriet Martens novel. For more information about Keating see this article by Martin Edwards.

Source: borrowed from the library.

From H R F Keating’s website:

A Detective at Death’s Door (2004)
ISBN: 1405048069

In her most traumatic case yet, Harriet Martens finds herself placed in grave danger at the hands of a deft and cunning poisoner. Whilst relaxing with her husband at the Majestic pool one hot August Bank Holiday, Harriet does not expect the refreshing glass of Campari soda at her side to conceal a deadly drug. When she awakes from a doze she is no longer by the water, but in a hospital bed recovering from a near fatal dose of Aconitine. As Harriet makes her slow recovery, she tries to come to terms with the terrible fact that someone wanted to kill her. Even more difficult for her to face is the knowledge that she must find the person responsible, if anything for her own peace of mind. But no sooner has she mustered enough energy to begin making tentative enquiries and initial investigations, than the poisoner strikes again. And this time he is successful€¦ Will Harriet have the strength of mind and body to find the murderer before he finds another victim and before the local population begin to panic?

I suspect that this is not one of Keating’s better books. The pace was slow as Harriet regains her strength and tries to get involved in the police investigations, against her doctor’s advice and her husband’s wishes. It was repetitive as one by one more deaths occur with little build up of tension.  Harriet is known as the ‘Hard Detective’ but for most of this book she  is in ‘a state of fluffy confusion‘. Still, I liked it enough to borrow One Man and His Bomb, the sixth Harriet Martens book, from the library last week.

Following the Detectives

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

From the back cover:

Following the Detectives follows the trail of over 20 of crime fiction’s greatest investigators, discovering the cities and countries in which they live and work. Edited by one of the leading voices in crime fiction, Maxim Jakubowski, each entry is written by a crime writer, journalist or critic with a particular expertise in that detective and the fictional crimes that have taken place in each city’s dark streets and hidden places. Following the Detectives is the perfect way for crime fiction fans to truly discover the settings of their favourite detective novels.

Following the Detectives is a beautiful book both to look at and to read. It’s full of information about each detective, with colour photos, details of film/theatre/TV dramatisations and clear maps showing the locations, plus links to useful websites. It’s just what you need –  a cross between a crime fiction companion and a travel guide.

The detectives include:

  • Ian Rankin’s Rebus  – Edinburgh by Barry Forshaw
  • Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe – Los Angeles by Maxim Jakubowski
  • Donna Leon’s Brunetti – Venice by Barry Forshaw
  • Sara Paretsky’s Warshawski  – Chicago by Dick Adler & Maxim Jakubowski
  • Arnaldur Indidason’s Erlendur – Iceland by Peter Rozovsky
  • John Dee MacDonald’s Travis McGee – Florida by Clive Cogdill
  • Colin Dexter’s Morse – Oxford by Martin Edwards
  • Henning Mankell’s Wallender – Sweden by Barry Forshaw
  • George V Higgins’s Eddie Coyle – Boston by Michael Carson
  • John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick – Nottingham by John Harvey
  • Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano – Sicily by Peter Rozovsky
  • George Pelecanos’s Washington DC by Sarah Weinman
  • Peter James’s Roy Grace – Brighton by Barry Forshaw
  • James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux – New Orleans by Maxim Jakubowski
  • Georges Simenon’s Maigret -Paris by Barry Forshaw
  • Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadwell – Shropshire by Martin Edwards
  • Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade – San Francisco by J Kingston Pierce
  • Declan Hughes’s Ed Loy – Dublin by Declan Burke
  • Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer – Southern California by Michael Carson
  • Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes – London by David Stuart Davies
  • Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder – New York by Sarah Weinman

It’s a treasure trove of information.

My thanks go to the publishers who kindly sent me a copy of this book.  Following the Detectives is published by New Holland publishers, price £17.99. Enter the discount code BooksPlease at the checkout to receive 20% discount and free p&p (offer valid until 31 December 2010).

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

In Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery, published in 1964  Miss Marple is on holiday, arranged for her by her nephew Raymond West after her doctor had prescribed sunshine. Whilst staying at the Golden Palm Hotel on the fictitious island of  St Honoré, she is listening to Major Palgrave droning on about his life, reliving days when he’d been happy. He was about to show her a photo of a murderer when he stares over her shoulder and sees someone, stops his story and hastily returns the photo to his wallet. Then hours later he is found dead. Miss Marple suspects he didn’t just die in his sleep and investigates his death, involving old Mr Rafiel, a man who looked on the point of death himself, and who delighted in contradicting anything anyone else said.

She also wants to find out about the murderer the Major had mentioned. The question she needs answered was who was it the Major saw that disturbed him so much. Once again it is her knowledge of human nature, gleaned from living in peaceful St Mary Mead that leads her to uncover the truth. She considers the other guests at the hotel in turn, and not sure whether the murderer was a man or a woman everyone is a suspect, from the elderly Canon Prescott and his sister, a thin severe-looking woman to the hotel owners, a young couple, Molly and Tim Kendal. There are plenty of misleading false trails and hidden relationships to discover before the murderer is revealed.

This is not my favourite Agatha Christie but it’s still an entertaining book, which I enjoyed. I didn’t guess who the murderer was until quite near the end, but that is not a bad point. I liked the descriptions of the island and Miss Marple’s thoughts and observations on human nature. At the beginning Raymond mistakenly thinks his Aunt Jane has her head buried in the sand, living in an idyllic rural life when it is real life that matters. Jane silently disagrees:

People like Raymond were so ignorant. In the course of her duties in a country parish, Jane Marple had acquired quite a comprehensive knowledge of the facts of rural life. She had no urge to talk about them, far less to write about them – but she knew them. Plenty of sex, natural and unnatural. Rape, incest, perversion of all kinds. (Some kinds, indeed, that even the clever young men from Oxford who wrote books didn’t seem to have heard about. (page 9)

Sunday Salon – Book Connections

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Sunday Salon is the place to meet and blog about the books we’re reading.

This morning I read some more from Agatha Christie’s book An Autobiography. It’s now 1917 and Agatha is working in a hospital dispensary in Torquay and also studying to take her Apothecaries Hall examination so she could dispense for a medical officer or a chemist. As part of her training she had instruction from a proper commercial chemist – a Mr P, one of the principal pharmacists in Torquay. She described him as

… a rather funny-looking little man, very roundabout and robin redbreast looking, with a nice pink face. There was a general air of childish satisfaction about him. (page 261)

He once showed her a piece of deadly curare that he carried around with him in his pocket. Curare once it has entered the bloodstream paralyses and kills you. He said he carried it in his pocket because it made him feel powerful. Agatha often wondered about him afterwards. In spite of his cherubic appearance she thought he was possibly a dangerous man and years later used her memory in writing The Pale Horse.

I then picked up H R F Keating’s book A Detective at Death’s Door and started reading it, whilst drinking a cup of coffee. I had intended reading one of my own books but this library book was closer to hand than any of my own books. In this book Superintendent Harriet Martens is just recovering from a nearly fatal dose of aconitine. Her husband, John recognised the symptoms from reading their description in an imaginary Agatha Christie book, Twisted Wolfsbane – aconitine is also known as wolfsbane.  Then a few pages later I came across this coincidence – Harriet quoted the passage in Agatha Christie’s An Autobiography about the chemist carrying round a piece of curare – the same passage I’d read half an hour or so earlier.

Exit Music by Ian Rankin: Book Review

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Exit Music: an Inspector Rebus Novel

Paperback: 496 pages
Publisher: Orion (7 Aug 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0752893513
ISBN-13: 978-0752893518

Exit Music is the 17th Inspector Rebus novel.  The Crime Thriller Award for  Author of the Year 2008 was awarded to Ian Rankin for this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Having read all the Rebus books in sequence I feel I’ve come to the end of an era as Rebus comes to the end of his career. Actually I felt that he was overdue for retirement, much as he was dedicated to his job he was also weary and disenchanted. At the beginning of this book Rebus is 10 days from his retirement and is anxious to tie up all the loose ends in his current cases, trying to get DS Siobhan Clarke interested in them. So when the body of the dissident Russian poet Alexander Todorov is found dead this is Rebus’s last case. He throws himself into the investigation, desperate to take his mind off the end of his career.

Was it a senseless mugging or was it politically motivated? The Russian Consulate want  Todorov’s death to be seen as a mugging gone wrong but a group of Russian businessmen in Scotland are concerned that the attack was racially motivated. Scottish MSP Megan Macfarlane is also concerned that nothing jeopardised the links and relationships between the two countries.

Todorov had been giving a poetry reading earlier in the evening and was found with his head bashed in. A trail of blood lead to a car park where he’d been killed. Later the body of Eric Riordan, the sound recordist at the poetry reading is found burnt to death in his house. Are the two deaths connected? Various links with the Edinburgh gangland boss, Cafferty further complicate the case.

Rebus is his usual obstinate and difficult self ending up being suspended from the investigation three days from his retirement and it is left to Siobhan to lead the case. Rebus, of course pursues his own investigations regardless -argumentative, opinionated and relentless to the end. He is also obsessed with his battle to take Cafferty down:

Cafferty, he realised, stood for everything that had ever gone sour – every bungled chance and botched case, suspects missed and crimes unsolved. The man wasn’t just the grit in the oyster, he was the pollutant poisoning everything within his reach. (page 170)

It appears that Cafferty is reformed and is now involved in legitimate business transactions with the Russian, but Rebus doesn’t believe it.  When Cafferty ends up in intensive care after a lonely meeting with Rebus on a canal footbridge, Rebus is suspected of attacking him. Has Rebus gone too far in his desire to bring Cafferty to justice?

Exit Music, in which the worlds of crime, politics and business interconnect, provides a fitting end to Rebus’s career, although somehow I don’t think this is the last we’ll see of him. Rebus is the perpetual outsider, and the job has been his whole world. It had cost him his marriage, friendships and shattered relationships and he feels he will just become invisible. But will he?