Category: Crime Fiction

Library Loot

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Here’s a pile of books I’ve recently borrowed:

From top to bottom they are

  • Brat Farrar by Joesphine Tey. Patrick had committed suicide, so who is the mysterious young man claiming to be him and calling himself Brat Farrar? I borrowed this because I enjoyed Tey’s books, The Daughter of Time and The Franchise Affair.
  • The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble: a story of first and last love and the ebb and flow of time giving shape to our lives. I borrowed this because it’s been a long time since I read anything by Drabble, the last one being The Witch of Exmoor.
  • Naked to the Hangman by Andrew Taylor. Detective Inspector Thornhill is under suspicion of murder and his wife and former lover join forces to try to help him. The only other book by Taylor that I’ve read is The American Boy, historical crime fiction, set in 19th century England, with links to Edgar Allan Poe.
  • The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber. This was on display at the library in a section of books called ‘Thrills and Chills’, not normally the sort of book I read, but this looked interesting about an art dealer with a dark past and the discovery of a previously unknown masterpiece by Velazquez. When I got the book home I realised I’ve got another book by Gruber – The Book of Air and Shadows, which I started once and put to one side, so I don’t expect much from this book.
  • Truth to Tell by Claire Lorrimer. I fancied reading something different by an author I’d not heard of before. The title appealed to me. The Library Journal blurb tells me it’s ‘Nicely done pyschological suspense, firmly in the cozy tradition.’ It looks more like a historical romance though.
  • Green for Danger edited by Martin Edwards, a collection of short crime fiction stories on the theme of ‘crime in the countryside.’ I’ve become quite a fan of these short story collections. This one includes stories from Robert Barnard, Reginald Hill, Ruth Rendell, Ann Cleeves and Martin Edwards, himself. I think I’ll start with this book.
  • The Death Ship of Dartmouth by Michael Jecks, a medieval mystery set in 1324. In Dartmouth a man is found lying dead in the road and a ship has been discovered half ravaged and the crew missing. I first came across Jecks when I read King Arthur’s Bones by The Medieval Murderers, in which he wrote one of the short stories. I hope this is just as good.

Have you read any of these books – are they any good?

Library Loot is hosted by is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

Sunday Salon – Today’s Books

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

This morning I’ve been reading The Border Line by Eric Robson, of interest because we live near the border – the one between England and Scotland. This is the account of Robson’s walk following the border line from the Solway Firth to Berwick-upon-Tweed. It’s also interesting because Robson includes anecdotes, snippets of history and personal memories as well. For all the disputes over the border and the reivers’ raids there is a similarity between English and Scottish Borderers:

For more than four centuries the Borderlands were seen as the scrag end of their respective countries, the frayed edges of monarchy. English borderers and Scottish borderers at least had that much in common. The Border was a remote battleground where national ambitions could be fought over. Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland were excluded from the Domesday Book. They were regarded as a military buffer zone. They became a bearpit. (page 51)

The Reivers were romanticised by Sir Walter Scott,  who gave them ‘the spit-and -polish treatment’ and a ‘romantic bearing and heroic stature.’ Robson also sheds light on the derivation of words, such as ‘reiver’: a ‘reef” in Old English meant a line, a Shire Reeve was a man who protected boundaries, thus the reiver raided across the Border Line. ‘Blackmail’ has two possible derivations – greenmail was agricultural rent and blackmail was money taken at night, or protection money. Alternatively it could be that it came from the fact that the reivers blacked their armour to ride as shadows in the moonlight (page 49).  I prefer the alternative derivation.

Then I moved north of the Border Line into Scotland with my reading and finished Ian Rankin’s book The Falls, a book I first read a couple of years ago. I wrote about it at the time and I haven’t much to add to that post. The Falls combines so much of what I like to read – a puzzling mystery, convincing characters, well described locations, historical connections and a strong plot full of tension and pace. Rebus has morphed in my mind into a combination of the actors who’ve played him – John Hannah and Ken Stott – and his creator Ian Rankin. But there is no doubt that the books are far superior to the TV productions. The next Rebus book I’ll be reading is Resurrection Men.

Set in Darkness by Ian Rankin:Book Review

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Set in darkness

Set in Darkness was the first Inspector Rebus book I read, nearly three years ago. I’m currently reading all of them in sequence – this is the 11th in the series. I was pleased that I remembered so much about it and it didn’t spoil the tension at all, but then I hadn’t remembered all the details. I think I enjoyed it more the second time round as I knew the main characters and had seen them develop in the previous 10 books.

There are three cases Rebus and his colleagues are investigating. The first is the discovery of a corpse in one of the old fireplaces at Queensberry House, Edinburgh during the works to build the new Scottish Parliament building. The body, nicknamed Skelly by the police, had been bricked up around 1979, twenty years earlier. The second case is the murder of Roddy Grieve, a candidate for the Scottish Parliament, found in a summer house in the grounds of Queensberry House, and the third is the suicide of a tramp who had jumped off North Bridge over the deep gully that housed Waverley Station. The press nicknamed him Supertramp after a building society pass book was found in his belongings that revealed he owned £400,000. At the same time the police are investigating a rapist who is targeting singles clubs.

Rankin’s skill is in interweaving the cases. At no time does this seem contrived or forced, the links seem to unfold naturally as the investigation progresses. Rebus is out of favour with his boss, Farmer Watson, which is why he’d been seconded to the Policing of Parliament Liaison Committee to advise on security for the Scottish Parliament, but also why he was on the spot when Skelly was discovered. DS Siobhan Clarke is working on the rape case and on her way home from the singles club she witnesses Supertramp’s suicide, and is then assigned to his case. Siobhan is becoming more like Rebus, dedicated and obsessed cops, who like working on their own. The cop instinct defines them – always on the lookout, their lives not their own, but made up of other people’s lives (page 223 paraphrased).

This is a dark book; there is darkness within Rebus himself, as well as in the crimes he investigates. He doesn’t sleep at night, aand as one of the other characters says to him

‘We all come from the darkness, you have to remember that, and we sleep during the night to escape the fact. I’ll bet you have trouble sleeping at night, don’t you?’  He didn’t say anything. Her face grew less animated. ‘We’ll all return to darkness one day, when the sun burns out.’ (page 157)

He is a troubled soul, with ghosts in his life – past family and past friends who come to him as he sit sin darkness on long nights when he’s alone. He can see his career crumbling around him and ends up beaten and bloodied. He only survives with help from Big Ger Caffety, released from prison and still Edinburgh’s crime boss.

I loved this book.

Library Loot

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

It’s been a while since I did a Library Loot post. This is my latest haul from the Mobile Library that called round this morning (as usual click on the photo to enlarge):

I really appreciate the mobile library service, the van stops just along the road from our house and has a varied, if small selection of books. I chose:

  • The Lighthouse by P D James, an Adam Dalgleish mystery, set in an imaginary, remote island off the Cornish coast.  It’s been a few years since I read one of P D James’s books – I hope it won’t disappoint.
  • Have Mercy On Us All by Fred Vargas. I haven’t read any of his books before. According to the blurb on the back cover this is ‘an unusual and eccentric thriller’  and Adamsberg is ‘one of the most fetchingly weird detectives … a bit like Morse, but much more French.’ That’s odd as Morse isn’t a bit French!  I’m not sure I’ll like it, but that’s the beauty of library books – I don’t mind giving up on them. On the other hand, if I buy a book that’s very disappointing.
  • The Scent of the Night by Andrea Camilleri, an Inspector Montalbano Mystery. I’ve read one of his before which I enjoyed, so I have high hopes for this one.

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths: Book Review

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

When I started reading The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths I nearly didn’t bother carrying on because it’s written in the present tense, but I’m glad I did because I did enjoy it and at times didn’t even notice the tense. This is a debut crime fiction novel, even though it’s not the author’s first book.

Set in Norfolk it’s an interesting mix of investigations into a cold case – the disappearance of Lucy, a five year old girl ten years earlier and a current case of another missing four year old girl. Are they connected and just how does the discovery of a child’s bones from the Iron Age fit in? The police ask Dr Ruth Galloway, who lectures in archaeology at the local university and lives near the finds in a remote cottage at Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea, to date the bones. She becomes more involved when DI Harry Nelson asks her to look at the anonymous letters the police have received ever since Lucy disappeared – strange letters full of archaeological, biblical and literary references, taunting the police about Lucy’s whereabouts and details of ritual sacrifice.

There’s a satisfying amount of information about Ruth’s earlier life and just enough about the archaeological digs to whet my appetite, plus some whacky characters like Cathbad who lives in a decrepit caravan on the beach. I liked Harry Nelson, a gruff northerner obsessed by Lucy’s disappearance and I became very fond of Ruth, an overweight woman nearing forty who lives on her own with two cats. I found the setting in Norfolk  in winter with its immense skies was very atmospheric – its remoteness, treacherous mud flats, marshlands and driving rain made feel as though I was there. In fact there were parts of the story involving quicksand that reminded me of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, in which Rosanna Spearman drowns in quicksand on the marshes and there is a remarkable similarity between the names of Sergeant Cuff (in The Moonstone) and Sergeant Clough (in The Crossing Places).

The mystery isn’t too difficult to solve and I’d guessed the culprit quite early on in the book, so the ending wasn’t a surprise. I thought there were maybe just one too many coincidences in the connections between the characters, but none of this spoilt the book for me and I’m adding the next Ruth Galloway book, The Janus Stone to my list of books to look out for.

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Agatha Christie didn’t enjoy writing The Mystery of the Blue Train (first published in 1928). In her autobiography she wrote that it had not been easy writing it and that she had always “hated” it:

To begin with I had no joy in writing, no élan. I had worked out the plot – a conventional plot, partly adapted from one of my other stories. I knew, as one might say, where I was going, but I could not see the scene in my mind’s eye, and the people would not come alive. I was driven on by the desire, indeed the necessity, to write another book and make some money.

That was the moment when I changed from being an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing and aren’t writing particularly well. (pages 368-9)

As she was writing this book at the time of her disappearance and divorce from her first husband, Archibald Christie it’s hardly surprising. It may not be her best book, but it’s still a good read. Ruth Kettering, the daughter of millionaire Rufus Van Aldin, is married to Derek, against her father’s advice. Agatha’s views on divorce are clear when Van Aldin tells Ruth she should divorce Derek, who he thinks is no good, rotten through and through and had only married her for her money, saying:

Have you got the grit to admit to all the world that you’ve made a mistake. There’s only one way out of this mess, Ruthie. Cut your losses and start afresh. (page 20)

Later Ruth is found strangled in her compartment in the Paris-Nice train, known as the train bleu, on its arrival in Nice and the fabulous ruby, the Heart of Fire that Van Aldin had given her, has been stolen. Fortunately Hercule Poirot is also travelling on the train and he of course unravels the mystery. There are a number of suspects ranging from Derek and his mistress, the dancer Mirelle, who had both the motive and the opportunity, to Ruth’s lover, the Comte de la Roche, suspected of stealing the jewels.

I liked the reflections on detective novels through a conversation Poirot has with another passenger on the train, Katherine Grey, from St Mary Mead who has inherited money from her employer. She is reading a roman policier when they meet at dinner and Poirot comments that they always sell well. She replies that may be because they give ‘the illusion of living an exciting life’ and that ‘nothing of that kind ever happens to me.‘ From then on however, she is drawn into the mystery along with Poirot, that

 small man, distinctly foreign in appearance, with a rigidly waxed moustache and an egg-shaped head which he carried rather on one side. (page 80)

It may be that Poirot is a bit of a caricature in this book, but the characters are in the main believable and the book certainly has a 1920s feel to it.