Crime Fiction – Page 75

Six Degrees of Separation from Tales of the City to Fear in the Sunlight

Published on July 7, 2018 by Margaret10 Comments

I love doing Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

Tales of the City (Tales of the City, #1)

Completely Unexpected Tales Don't Look Now and Other Stories The Man in the Picture The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders Fear in the Sunlight (Josephine Tey, #4)

This month the chain begins with Tales of the City, the first in a series by Armistead Maupin – yet another book I haven’t read or even heard of before! But it brought to my mind another book of tales –

Completely Unexpected Tales by Roald Dahl, described on the back cover as a collection of macabre tales of vengeance, surprise and dark delights. I used to enjoy these tales in the TV series, Tales of the Unexpected, years ago.

That takes me to the second link in the chain which is another collection of short stories, Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier. The title story is a supernatural tale involving a British couple on holiday in Venice to escape the pain of their young daughter’s recent death.

Another book set in partly in Venice is The Man in the Picture: a Ghost Story by Susan Hill . The narrator is having a meal with his old college professor one bitterly cold January evening in Cambridge, listening to a strange tale of a Venetian painting, of death and damnation.

And so to the fourth link both by its title and its subject – a story of the supernatural, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, a Gothic horror story in which Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty.

Oscar Wilde is the main character in Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders by Gyles Brandreth, a detective story of corruption and intrigue in which Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle investigate a murder. This is a book that mixes fact and fiction by using real people as characters. As does my last book –

Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson, set in the 1930s, in which writer Josephine Tey joins her friends in the holiday village of Portmeirion to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, are there to sign a deal to film Josephine’s novel, A Shilling for Candles.

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My chain is made up of a mixture of books that I’ve read or are on my TBR shelves and a mix of short stories, ghost and horror stories and crime fiction. Books about the supernatural, books set in Venice and books that mix fact and fiction.

Next month (August 4, 2018), we’ll begin with Atonement by Ian McEwan. Hurrah – a book I’ve read and loved!

Looking Forward to Reading …

Published on July 1, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

Some of my favourite authors have new books coming out this year! Here they are in order of publication:

26 July 2018

Careless Love by Peter Robinson – the twenty fifth in his DCI Banks series.

Careless Love (Inspector Banks, #25)

‘With a deceptively unspectacular language, [Robinson] sets about the process of unsettling the reader.’ Independent

A young local student has apparently committed suicide. Her body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. She didn’t own a car. Didn’t even drive. How did she get there? Where did she die? Who moved her, and why?

Meanwhile a man in his sixties is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. He is wearing an expensive suit and carrying no identification. Post-mortem findings indicate he died from injuries sustained during the fall. But what was he doing up there? And why are there no signs of a car in the vicinity?

As the inconsistencies multiply and the mysteries proliferate, Annie’s father’s new partner, Zelda, comes up with a shocking piece of information that alerts Banks and Annie to the return of an old enemy in a new guise. This is someone who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wants – and suddenly the stakes are raised and the hunt is on.

6 September 2018

Wild Fire (Shetland Island, #8)

Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves – the eighth, and final book, in her Shetland series featuring Detective Jimmy Perez.

Shetland: Welcoming. Wild. Remote.

Drawn in by the reputation of the islands, an English family move to the area, eager to give their autistic son a better life.

But when a young nanny’s body is found hanging in the barn of their home, rumours of her affair with the husband begin to spread like wild fire.

With suspicion raining down on the family, DI Jimmy Perez is called in to investigate, knowing that it will mean the return to the islands of his on-off lover and boss Willow Reeves, who will run the case.

Perez is facing the most disturbing investigation of his career. Is he ready for what is to come?

18 October 2018

Tombland (Matthew Shardlake, #7)

Tombland is the seventh novel in C. J. Sansom’s Shardlake series.

Spring, 1549.

Two years after the death of Henry VIII, England is sliding into chaos . . .

The nominal king, Edward VI, is eleven years old. His uncle Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford, rules as Protector. The extirpation of the old religion by radical Protestants is stirring discontent among the populace while the Protector’s prolonged war with Scotland is proving a disastrous failure and threatens to involve France. Worst of all, the economy is in collapse, inflation rages and rebellion is stirring among the peasantry.

Since the old King’s death, Matthew Shardlake has been working as a lawyer in the service of Henry’s younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of Edith Boleyn, the wife of John Boleyn – a distant Norfolk relation of Elizabeth’s mother – which could have political implications for Elizabeth, brings Shardlake and his assistant Nicholas Overton to the summer assizes at Norwich. There they are reunited with Shardlake’s former assistant Jack Barak. The three find layers of mystery and danger surrounding Edith’s death, as a second murder is committed.

And then East Anglia explodes, as peasant rebellion breaks out across the country. The yeoman Robert Kett leads a force of thousands in overthrowing the landlords and establishing a vast camp outside Norwich. Soon the rebels have taken over the city, England’s second largest.

Barak throws in his lot with the rebels; Nicholas, opposed to them, becomes a prisoner in Norwich Castle; while Shardlake has to decide where his ultimate loyalties lie, as government forces in London prepare to march north and destroy the rebels. Meanwhile he discovers that the murder of Edith Boleyn may have connections reaching into both the heart of the rebel camp and of the Norfolk gentry . . .

Also 18 October 2018

A new Detective John Rebus novel – In a House of Lies – the 22 in his Rebus series.

In a House of Lies by [Rankin, Ian]

IN A HOUSE OF LIES…

Everyone has something to hide
A missing private investigator is found, locked in a car hidden deep in the woods. Worse still – both for his family and the police – is that his body was in an area that had already been searched.

Everyone has secrets
Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is part of a new inquiry, combing through the mistakes of the original case. There were always suspicions over how the investigation was handled and now – after a decade without answers – it’s time for the truth.

Nobody is innocent
Every officer involved must be questioned, and it seems everyone on the case has something to hide, and everything to lose. But there is one man who knows where the trail may lead – and that it could be the end of him: John Rebus.

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I am really looking forward to reading all these books!

Fire in the Thatch: A Devon Mystery (British Library Crime Classics ) by E C R Lorac

Published on June 29, 2018October 10, 2019 by Margaret9 Comments

A Golden Age Mystery

This was first published in 1946 by Collins Crime Club. This edition, published in association with the British Library, has an introduction by Martin Edwards, and it has a beautiful cover.

Description:

The Second World War is drawing to a close. Nicholas Vaughan, released from the army after an accident, takes refuge in Devon – renting a thatched cottage in the beautiful countryside at Mallory Fitzjohn. Vaughan sets to work farming the land, rearing geese and renovating the cottage. Hard work and rural peace seem to make this a happy bachelor life.

On a nearby farm lives the bored, flirtatious June St Cyres, an exile from London while her husband is a Japanese POW. June’s presence attracts fashionable visitors of dubious character, and threatens to spoil Vaughan’s prized seclusion.

When Little Thatch is destroyed in a blaze, all Vaughan’s work goes up in smoke – and Inspector Macdonald is drafted in to uncover a motive for murder.

E C R Lorac was a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894-1958) who was a prolific writer of crime fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a member of the prestigious Detection Club. She also wrote under the name of Carol Carnac, but she seems to have been a forgotten author and I hadn’t heard of her until quite recently, when I read Bats in the Belfry.

Fire in the Thatch is set in rural Devon in 1944 and the atmosphere of life in the Devon countryside is highlighted by Lorac’s rich description of the landscape, the traditional ways of farming and the characters. It shows the clear distinctions between the social classes and the tensions between them and the conflicting moral values of the town and country folk. She conveys the sense that change is on the way as the war moves towards its conclusion. The war forms the background to the book – June’s husband is a prisoner of war in Burma, evacuees have been billeted in the countryside and rationing, in particular petrol rationing (which plays an important role in this book) is making life difficult.

The book begins in a leisurely way describing the isolated community of Mallory Fitzjohn and introducing the characters, Colonel St Cyres, his daughter Anne and daughter-in-law June living at Manor Thatch, and Norman Vaughan, a new tenant at Little Thatch, invalided out of the navy with damaged eyesight. Other main characters are Thomas Gressingham, a wealthy stockbroker and a friend of June’s, staying at Hinton Mallory, in the valley below Mallory Fitzjohn, and his friends Howard Brendon, a lawyer interested in buying property and Raymond (Rummy) Radcliffe, a ‘rotund’ speculator.

And then in chapter 5 we learn that Vaughan’s body was found in the burnt-out debris of Little Thatch and Chief Inspector Macdonald of New Scotland Yard has been asked to investigate the case. From that point on the book follows his comprehensive and detailed methods of trying to establish whether his death was accidental and if not what could be the motive for his murder, and if indeed the dead man was Vaughan or someone else. Why had Vaughan, a north country man decided to settle in Devon and who was the woman he had indicated to the St Cyres that he intended to marry?

All of Macdonald’s skills are needed to get to the bottom of this complex mystery which confused me right up until the end of the book. I preferred Bats in the Belfry, but Fire in the Thatch is still an enjoyable book. It’s just that Macdonald’s investigations seemed to drag on a bit too long, and I found it confusing as he described the details of how and when Vaughan had died. But I loved the setting and the characters.

I do hope the British Library will publish more of E C R Lorac’s books – there are plenty to choose from as she wrote forty-eight mysteries under her first pen name, and twenty-three under her second, producing two books a year from 1931 until her death in 1958.

Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

Published on June 26, 2018June 26, 2018 by Margaret3 Comments

The Three Evangelists (Three Evangelists, #1)

I love Fred Vargas’s books. She writes such quirky crime fiction, with eccentric characters and intricate plots that I find so difficult to solve.

The Three Evangelists, set mainly in Paris, is an excellent example and the three title characters are thirty-something historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien, all specialists in three different periods of history and all down on their luck. Together with Marc’s uncle and godfather, Armand Vandoosler, an ex-policeman, they have just moved into a ‘tumbledown disgrace’ of a house next door to retired opera singer Sophia Siméonidis and her husband Pierre. When a tree unexpectedly appears in Sophia’s garden she asks for their help in digging around the tree to see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil.

Then Sophia disappears and her body is found burned to ashes in a car. The evangelists and Armand use their expertise to find out what happened. Did her husband kill her, or her best friend; had she run off with an ex-lover and how does her niece figure in the mystery?

Sophia’s past life comes under scrutiny by the three historians, helped by Vandoosler and his friend, a current policeman. The trail leads back into Sophia’s past as an opera singer, a past full of intrigue, jealousy and desire. I loved all the characters in particular the three historians, each one unique, entertaining and completely eccentric. The clever plot had me completely bamboozled and the ending was so unexpected as the twists and turns had led me up the wrong garden path, so to speak.

Now, I’m keen to read the other two books in the series – Dog Will Have His Day and The Accordionist.

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage (4 Jan. 2007) (First published in 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099469553
ISBN-13: 978-0099469551
Source: Library book
My rating 4.5*

Come a Little Closer by Rachel Abbott

Published on June 25, 2018 by Margaret3 Comments

Once again I’ve fallen behind with writing reviews! This is the first post in a series of short reviews of the books that I’ve read this year and not reviewed.

Come A Little Closer (DCI Tom Douglas #7)

Come a Little Closer by Rachel Abbott. I had high hopes for this book as I’ve seen Rachel Abbott’s books praised on other book blogs and highly rated on Amazon and Goodreads, but I’d never read any of them. This is the seventh in the DCI Tom Douglas series, but I was encouraged by Rachel Abbott’s reassurance (on Goodreads author questions) that ‘each story is entirely standalone, but the character of Tom Douglas does run through the whole series. There are bits in each story about his life, but nothing that would require you to have read previous books. So please feel free to read them in any order you like. Many people do.’

Synopsis:

They will be coming soon. They come every night.

Snow is falling softly as a young woman takes her last breath.

Fifteen miles away, two women sit silently in a dark kitchen. They don’t speak, because there is nothing left to be said.

Another woman boards a plane to escape the man who is trying to steal her life. But she will have to return, sooner or later.

These strangers have one thing in common. They each made one bad choice – and now they have no choices left. Soon they won’t be strangers, they’ll be family…

When DCI Tom Douglas is called to the cold, lonely scene of a suspicious death, he is baffled. Who is she? Where did she come from? How did she get there? How many more must die?

Who is controlling them, and how can they be stopped?

My thoughts:

I have mixed thoughts about this book – I didn’t ‘like’ it (although I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads), but it held my interest and I read to the end. It reads OK as a standalone, although it probably would have helped to have known more about Tom Douglas, but the police investigation isn’t the main focus of the book.

The main focus is on Callie and the mess she gets herself into. Her relationship with her boyfriend, Ian is awful, he’s just sponging off her and treating her like a doormat. Although she tells him to leave, by the time she returns from a trip to Myanmar, he is still living in her flat. She then goes to stay with a couple she met on the cruise ship, without knowing that she is letting herself in for a nightmare scenario.

Here’s where the two women mentioned in the synopsis come into the story – a story that left me feeling sick. It’s not blood thirsty or gory – it’s just sick as the protagonists set about manipulating their victims. It’s full of action and barely credible coincidences. About halfway in I could see where this was going – and I didn’t like it. I was glad to finish it. It’s easy to read, but the characters seemed shallow and the only ones I liked were Tom his team and his brother, Nathan – now that sounds as though it’s a more interesting story.

What do you think? Should I read any of the other Tom Douglas books – or are they all like this one?

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 6326 KB
Print Length: 406 pages
Publisher: Black Dot Publishing Ltd (15 Feb. 2018)
Source: Kindle Users Lending Library
My rating: 3*

My Friday Post: Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac

Published on June 22, 2018 by Margaret14 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

The book I’m featuring this week is Fire in the Thatch by E C R Lorac, which is the book I’m planning to read next. It’s set as the Second world War is drawing to a close, but it was not published until 1946.

It begins:

Colonel St Cyres stepped out of the French window on to the terrace and drew in a deep breath of frosty air, conscious of the exhilaration of a glorious December morning. He always felt better out of doors. In the open air the worries and irritations of life seemed less immediate, and he felt that he lost a burden when he closed the window behind him.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56 These are the rules:

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.
Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
Post it.
Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

56%:

Well, the plain fact is this: gossip around Mallory Fitzjohn is saying that Gressingham was out in his car on the night of the fire, and that he’s denied the fact.

Description (Amazon)

When Little Thatch is destroyed in a blaze, all Vaughan’s work goes up in smoke – and Inspector Macdonald is drafted in to uncover a motive for murder.

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I enjoyed Bats in the Belfry by E C R Lorac, so I’m hoping I’ll enjoy this one too, another case for Chief Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard.

What about you? Does it tempt you or would you stop reading?