Category: Crime Fiction

The Hollow by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The Hollow by Agatha Christie is a country house mystery in which Hercule Poirot comes across what he decribes as “A set scene. A stage scene”; a murder scene specifically staged, he thinks at first, to deceive him.

Gerda and her husband John Christow, a Harley Street doctor were visiting Sir Henry and Lucy, Lady Angkatell at their house, The Hollow. John is an agressive dominant personality. Also down for the weekend were Lucy’s cousins Midge, who works in a London dress shop, Henrietta, a sculptress, Edward, a rather pale character and David, a student.

Lucy is sure it will be a difficult weekend – Gerda always appears vacant and lost, completely dominated by John, who is having an affair with Henrietta. Edward is in love with Henrietta and Midge is in turn in love with Edward. David is too intellectual  and Lucy herself is vague, charming and completely eccentric. As a distraction she has invited the “Crime man“, Poirot, whose weekend cottage is next door, to lunch on the Sunday. She describes Poirot’s house disparagingly as

… one of those funny new cottages – you know, beams that bump your head and a lot of new plumbing and quite the wrong kind of garden. London people like that sort of thing. (page 13)

As Poirot arrives and is taken through the garden to the swimming pool all the characters are there, with Gerda, revolver in hand, standing over the dying body of her husband, as his blood drips gently over the edge of the concrete into the pool. Poirot hears his final word “Henrietta”.

I found Lucy’s reaction amusing. It’s typical of her vague, almost detached nature. She says:

Of course, say what you like, a murder is an awkward thing – it upsets the servants and puts the general routine out – we were having ducks for lunch – fortunately they are quite nice eaten cold. (page 102)

Later she observes:

There would be something very gross, just after the death of a friend, in eating one’s favourite pudding. But caramel custard is so easy – slippery if you know what I mean – and then one leaves a little on one’s plate. (page 113)

This is now one of my favourite Agatha Christie books. She herself described it in her autobiography as “in some ways rather more of a novel than a detective story.” I agree, the characters are well drawn and the setting of both The Hollow and Ainswick, the larger country house Edward has inherited from his uncle, Lucy’s father are described with nostalgia. Agatha Christie also revealed that she thought she had ruined the book by the introduction of Poirot:

I had got used to having Poirot in my books and so naturally he had to come into this one, but he was all wrong there. He did his stuff all right, but how much better, I kept thinking, would the book have been without him. So when I came to sketch out the play, out went Poirot.(page 489-490)

Poirot has a small role, the investigation into John’s death is headed by Inspector Grange and it is a comment he makes that leads Poirot to discover the culprit. I’m used to having Poirot in her books too, so I didn’t find too much wrong with him being there.

It seems that everyone could have committed the murder and I swung from one to the other as I read, no doubt as Agatha Christie intended, but I did work it out before Poirot unveiled the killer.  As Poirot  says:

That is why every clue looked promising and then petered out and ended in nothing. (page 249)

Crime Fiction Alphabet: R is for Ian Rankin

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

letter_RThis week the letter in the Crime Fiction Alphabet Community Meme is R, so of course it just had to be Ian Rankin, who is fast becoming my favourite crime writer.

I’ve previously written a bit about Ian Rankin after I went to a talk he gave in January – see here.

R is also for Rebus. There are 17 Inspector Rebus books (a a book of short stories) and I’m reading them in sequence starting with the first one Knots and Crosses. Currently I’m reading the tenth book, Dead Souls. As well as the Rebus books Rankin has written a few others, the latest being The Complaints, featuring a new cop Inspector Malcom Fox. The complete list of Rebus books is on Ian Rankin’s website and on Wikipedia. Both places give more information about the man and his books. Just as a taster the author details on the latest book I read  The Hanging Garden reveal that after graduating from the University of Edinburgh he  had been employed as

a grape picker, swine-herd, taxman, alcohol researcher, hi-fi journalist and punk musician.

The Hanging Garden is full of characters, sub-plots and plenty of crime from the local gang leader Tommy Telford, vying for supremacy over crime boss, Big Ger Cafferty, currently imprisoned in Barlinnie but still in control of his empire through his second in command, the Weasel, to Chechian and Yakuza villains. Then there is Mr Pink-Eyes, a Newcastle gangleader to contend with. It’s a mix of prostitutes, drug running, money laundering and attacks on Cafferty’s territory and associates, with retaliations on Telford’s strongholds.

Rebus is struggling to keep off the alcohol, aided by his friend Jack Morton, when his daughter, Sammy is the victim of a hit and run. Who is trying to warn off Rebus and is he in the pay of Big Ger?  At the same time he is investigating a suspected Nazi War Criminal and helping a Bosnian prostitute, Candice who looks so like his own daughter and who pleads with him for safety. Added to all this his ex-wife Rhona and his lover Patience meet over Sammy’s hospital bed.

It’s grim and tough and as Rebus involves Jack in an undercover operation it all goes wrong – dramatic and tense right to the end.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: Q is for Quintin Jardine

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

letter QThis week in the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise we’re up to the letter Q. My contribution is:

Quintin Jardine. I found his books in my local library – the one in Scotland, which is most appropriate as Quintin Jardine is Scottish. He was born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire and has homes in both Gullane, East Lothian and Trattoria La Clota, L’Escala, Spain. He has been a journalist, government information officer, political spin-doctor and media relations consultant before becoming a crime fiction writer with two  series of detective novels – the Bob Skinner novels set in Edinburgh where Skinner is a Deputy Chief Constable and the Oz Blackstone mysteries, in which Oz is a movie actor trying to forget that he was ever a “private inquiry agent”.

For more biographical details and list of books see his website.

Fallen Gods is the 13th in the Bob Skinner books. It’s set in both Scotland and  America. The beginning of this book is quite confusing, which is down to me and not the author as I’ve jumped into the Bob Skinner books mid-stream as it were. It’s confusing because at the beginning of the book it appears that Bob is dead, ‘dropping in his tracks’ at his wife’s parents’ funeral. Sarah, his wife, says

His heart stopped, just like that. Makes you think, doesn’t it. There is no Superman; there is no Planet Krypton. Not even the great Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner was invulnerable. (page 6)

I had to double check.  I’d  read  the blurb before I started to read Fallen Gods and that stated that Bob’s career is ‘hanging by a thread’; that his brother’s body has been found in the detritus of a flood – a brother whose existence he has kept a secret for many years;  and that a valuable painting was burnt in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Whilst he and his team are investigating these events, his wife, Sarah is left in America with their children, recovering from the death of her parents. She finds comfort in the arms of an old college lover and then is faced with ‘a seemingly inevitable murder conviction’.

So how could Bob Skinner be dead? All was revealed as I read on and what a tangled web Quintin Jardine has woven (as Sir Walter Scott would say).

So, I have found another detective series to read. This is a complex book, with believable characters and it switches seemlessly between the crimes in  Scotland and America with ease. I was never unsure where I was or who I was with and there are a lot of characters to get your head round. It kept me guessing throughout as to the culprits and is really more about the characters and their personal lives than about the crimes.

I enjoyed this book and will be reading more of Bob Skinner in the future – there are 19 in total so far.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: O is for …

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

letter OThis week my choice for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders by Gyles Brandreth (published in the USA as Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance), John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2008, 355 pages). I read this in April 2008 and these were my thoughts about it at the time.

This is an ‘historical whodunit’ set in 1889 €“ 1890, fin-de-siècle London and Paris. The mystery begins with Oscar Wilde finding the naked body of Billy Wood, a 16 year old boy in the candle-lit room in a small terraced house in Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament. Billy’s throat has been cut and he is laid out as though on a funeral bier, surrounded by candles, with the smell of incense still in the air. It’s a combination of fiction and fact, with both real and imaginary characters. Wilde with the help of his friends Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Sherard sets out to solve the crime. Sherard (the great grandson of William Wordsworth) who wrote poems, novels, biographies (including five of Oscar Wilde) and social studies is the narrator.

The story reads quickly and is full of colourful characters such as Gerard Bellotti, who runs an ‘informal luncheon club for gentlemen’. Bellotti is

‘grossly corpulent’ giving the impression of ‘a toad that sits and blinks, yet never moves’ wearing ‘an orange checked suit that would have done credit to the first comedian at Collins’ Music Hall and on the top of his onion-shaped head of oily hair, which was tightly curled and dyed the colour of henna, he sported a battered straw boater.’

Wilde is a fan of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories so much so that as the mystery is unravelled he picks up clues in the manner of Holmes, observing and deducing, exclaiming when questioned by Conan Doyle ‘Come, Arthur, this is elementary stuff €¦ Holmes is where my heart is.’ I think it is this combination of fact and fiction that I enjoyed most in reading the book. I knew little about Wilde or Doyle and nothing about Sherard before reading it, but I think I learned a lot about all three people, about their characters, their views on life and love, and their works, as well as about the society in which they lived.

According to The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries website the book is peppered through with quotes from Wilde, or Brandreth’s versions of Wilde’s words, together with Brandreth’s own inventions. I couldn’t tell which was which, as I’ve only read Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and seen a TV production of The Importance of Being Ernest, but it all seemed perfectly in character to me. I found the details of Wilde’s love for his wife Constance particularly interesting in contrast to his trial for gross indecency in 1895. In fact I came away from the book really liking Wilde and wanting to read more about him and by him. Fortunately the biographical notes at the end of the book give more details of works by and about Wilde, Conan Doyle and Sherard.

I didn’t find the mystery too difficult to work out, with lots of clues throughout the book, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment. On the contrary it made it all the more pleasurable. There are two more books in the series Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death and Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: N is for Not Safe After Dark

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

My choice this week for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme is N for Not Safe After Dark by Peter Robinson.

This is a collection of twenty short crime stories, including three Inspector Banks stories and an Inspector Banks novella (90+ pages). The title story Not Safe after Dark is just six pages long and yet those six pages are full of tension and suspense as an unnamed man enters a park after dark, even though he knows that such big city parks are dangerous places.

Peter Robinson’s introduction is interesting for me in that he explains how he writes and compares writing a novel to writing short stories. He’s used to thinking in terms of the novel, with it’s ‘broad canvas’ and finds it hard to ‘work in miniature’. Short stories don’t come easily to him.

I carry a novel around in my head for a long time – at least a year, waking and sleeping – and this gives me time to get under the skin of the characters and the story. Also, plotting is probably the most difficult part of writing for me, and being asked to write a short story, which so often depends on a plot twist, a clever diversion or a surprising revelation, guarantees that I’ll get the laundry done and probably the ironing too.

In short stories there is no space to develop the characters or the plot, nor to give different points of view as in a novel. But, as far as I’m concerned, with the stories I’ve read so far in this book Robinson has succeeded in creating convincing stories with believable characters in real settings.

Often reading short stories I’m left wanting more, which is what happened to Robinson with one of these stories. Innocence is a haunting tale of a man accused of murduring a teenage girl. After writing Innocence, which won the Crime Writer of Canada’s Best Short Story Award in 1991, he couldn’t let the story go and went on to write a whole novel expanding on the events of the story. This eventually became Innocent Graves, featuring Inspector Banks (who is not in the short story).

The other stories include a private-eye story set in Florida, a romantic Parisian mystery, a historical story inspired by Robinson’s interest in Thomas Hardy and the place where he was born, and stories about such varied topics as American Football and Shakespeare.

Note: Peter Robinson’s website is here.

The Sunday Salon – Books and Cross-Stitch

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

This week I’ve been reading just two books. Often I read more than this but I’ve decided for the time being to stick to one or two at a time. It’s been easy this week as one of the books is compelling reading – Black and Blue by Ian Rankin.

It’s a real page-turner and very complicated. I’m reading it quickly because I want to know what happens next and to see how Rebus gets himself of the terrible mess he is in – suspected by his superiors of being a killer(!) and of corruption back in his early days as a detective, along with Lawson Geddes, his boss at the time. He’s being investigated by a TV company and also by the police themselves in an internal enquiry and all the time he’s spiralling downhill under alcohol and cigarettes. I’m thinking that when I get to the end I may go back to the beginning and read it again more slowly to appreciate the detail.

This contrasts so well with the other book I’m reading – Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey. I’m reading this one slowly, one or two chapters at a time, because it is quite intense. It’s comprised of letters between a group of  women writing from the 1930s to the 1980s about their “ordinary” lives, but it’s by no means mundane or ordinary at all. It’s  social history, as told by the people who lived their lives through the Second World War and into the late 20th century. It’s a bit like eavesdropping on private conversations, reading these personal letters between woman who became friends through their Correspondence Club.

Both books are ones I’ve owned for a while and so are books off my TBR mountain. I have bought one new book this year, but as it’s a craft book it’s not adding to the pile to read, but adding to the pile of cross-stitch projects I want to do! The book is The Portable Crafter: Cross-Stitch by Liz Turner Diehl, a beautiful book full of designs for small(ish) items that you can work on anywhere.

One that caught my eye is a corner bookmark. But it looks quite tricky with Kloster blocks – you have to cut out the centres and it might be a bit bulky for a bookmark

There’s a design for a little  Persian rug, finished size 3½” x 5″ I’d like to make.

But the one that I’d like to start first is a Garden Clock, the only thing is I don’t know where I can get a wooden clock in which to insert the design.