Category: Crime Fiction

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?

Library Loot

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Library Loot:

From top to bottom they are:

  • A Detective at Death’s Door by H R F Keating. I haven’t read anything by H R F Keating, so I’m not sure what to expect. There’s a long list of his books at the front of the book and a brief summary of his work. He was the crime reporter for The Times for 15 years and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors as well as President of the Detection Club. With such credentials I’m hoping to like this book, the fifth Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens novel. Martin Edwards’ page has much more information about Keating.
  • The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl. I’ve recently read Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood and am keen to read more of Dicken’s books and books about Dickens (both fiction and non-fiction). So, even though I wasn’t too keen on Pearl’s novel about Edgar Allan Poe, I thought it was worth borrowing this book to try it. From the back cover this novel seems to be about Dickens’ final instalment of his last manuscript that disappeared after his death in 1870.
  • The Turning of the Tide by Reginald Hill. This was originally published under the pseudonym Patrick Ruell in 1971 called The Castle of the Demon. It looks as though it’s a sinister thriller when Emily discovers a body lying in the water at a sleepy coastal town. I like Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe books and am hoping his earlier book won’t disappoint.
  • Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder. ‘Move over Wallander‘ it says on the front cover. Camilla Ceder is a Swedish writer who also works in counselling and social work. This is her first novel; a murder mystery featuring Inspector Christian Tell, a world-weary detective with a chequered past. I picked this book off the new book stand attracted by its cover.
  • The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe. I’ve never read anything by Coe but I keep seeing his name on various blogs, so my eyes were drawn to this book in the library. The book’s blurb attracted me, describing the book as ‘intensely lyrical in its evocations of rural Shropshire and post-war London, and extremely moving in its portrayal of the nature of love and happiness.’ It looks like my sort of book.

Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre begins with a graphic description of a particularly nasty murder scene, which is normally guaranteed to make me stop reading. But it would have been a great shame if I’d let it put me off this book, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was published in 1998 when it won the First Blood Award for best crime novel of that year.

The dead man is Dr Ponsonby, a well- respected doctor working for the Midlothian NHS Trust in Edinburgh. Investigative journalist, Jack Parlabane gets involved as he lives in the flat above Ponsonby and the terrible smell (think blood, poo and sick) coming up from below leads him into the murder scene. It soon becomes apparent to the reader who did the murder and it is the motive behind it that needs to be ferreted out.

The book alternates between current events and the back stories of the characters – Dr Ponsonby, his ex-wife Sarah, Stephen Lime, the Chief Executive of the Midlothian NHS Trust and above all Jack Parlabane. This is not a police procedural, and Inspector McGregor, in charge of the investigation, has just a little input. It’s fast, full of action, and surprisingly funny. There are some really despicable characters and Jack himself is not a shrinking violet – but I liked him.

I went to see Christopher Brookmyre this week at an author event in Livingston. He’s an excellent speaker and very funny too.  He read an extract from his latest book, Pandaemonium, but he’s written quite a lot more which I want to read first. Fortunately my son has all his books, so I’ve borrowed a few.

Heartstone by C J Sansom: Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Mantle (Macmillan) 2010
Pages 640
ISBN 9781405092739
Dimensions 234mm x 153mm   Weight 0.95 kg

Publisher’s blurb:

Summer, 1545. England is at war. Henry VIII’s invasion of France has gone badly wrong, and a massive French fleet is preparing to sail across the Channel . . .

Meanwhile, Matthew Shardlake is given an intriguing legal case by an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr. Asked to investigate claims of ‘monstrous wrongs’ committed against his young ward, Hugh Curteys, by Sir Nicholas Hobbey, Shardlake and his assistant Barak journey to Portsmouth. There, Shardlake also intends to investigate the mysterious past of Ellen Fettiplace, a young woman incarcerated in the Bedlam.

Once in Portsmouth, Shardlake and Barak find themselves in a city preparing for war. The mysteries surrounding the Hobbey family and the events that destroyed Ellen’s family nineteen years before, involve Shardlake in reunions both with an old friend and an old enemy close to the throne. Soon events will converge on board one of the king’s great warships gathered in Portsmouth harbour, waiting to sail out and confront the approaching French fleet. . .

This is the fifth novel in the Matthew Shardlake series and to my mind although it’s good, I think it’s not quite as good as the others. Compared to the earlier books it’s a bit plodding as Shardlake goes on numerous journeys. But that aside it’s great on detail about life in Tudor times. There’s the war against the French, details about how the troops were recruited and trained, about the French attack on Portsmouth and the sinking of the Mary Rose. Actually I found that more interesting than the mystery surrounding Hugh Curteys, which I’d guessed quite early on, although it began well with Shardlake out of his usual area of expertise, going through the records at the Court of Wards.

The story about Ellen Fettiplace is more intriguing. Ellen had been an inmate in the Bedlam for 19 years and Shardlake discovered that there was no order of lunacy to authorise her imprisonment. His searches lead him to Rolfswood, the place where Ellen had lived. There he eventually discovers the terrible truth. Shardlake is dedicated to protecting the underdog, championing those unable to help themselves and above all to justice and truth, disregarding his own safety. But his dedication has become obsessive and there were times when I agreed with Barak that he should let go and return to London.

As usual, reading Sansom’s historical novels there is the echo of the past repeating itself. In this one I found myself thinking of the nature of war, the power that national leaders have in making decisions and the effects it has on ordinary people who get dragged into the battles willy-nilly. His research is excellent, his characters are well drawn and the atmosphere and sense of place are convincing. Whilst I was reading I was transported to Tudor England at a time of war.