Category: Fiction

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves is the first book in her Vera Stanhope series. I’ve been thinking (and writing) about my difficulties in reading books where I think the detail and description swamp the characters and plot, but I had absolutely no problems with that in The Crow Trap – I think Ann Cleeves has got the balance just right.

It begins with chapters about three of the female characters, Rachael, Anne and Grace all staying at Baikie’s an isolated cottage on the North Pennines whilst they carry out an environmental survey. When Rachael arrives at the cottage she is confronted by the body of her friend Bella Furness, who it appears has committed suicide. I was so drawn in by the character portraits and the vivid descriptions of the setting, that I almost forgot that this is a murder mystery. Then Grace is found dead and the mystery really begins.

There is a full cast of characters, all clearly distinct, and a very intricate and clever plot, with plenty of red herrings subtly masking the important clues. Vera is a great character and even though I do like Brenda Blethyn’s portrayal of her in the TV series, I prefer her as she is in the books –  a woman in her fifties, who looks like a bag lady. Here’s a description of her when she first interviews Rachael and Anne:

She was a large woman – big bones, amply covered, a bulbous nose, man-sized feet. Her legs were bare and she wore leather sandals. Her square toes were covered in mud. Her face was blotched and pitted so Rachael thought she must suffer from some skin complaint or allergy. Over her clothes she wore a transparent plastic mac and she stood there, the rain dripping from it onto the floor, grey hair sleeked dark to her forehead, like a middle-aged tripper caught in a sudden storm on Blackpool prom. (page 230)

And this description too:

Vera was wearing a dress of the sort of material turned into stretch settee covers and advertised in the Sunday papers. (page 406)

The identity of the killer foxed me. I kept changing my mind about who I thought it was and when it was revealed I was surprised, because although I’d worked out the motive, I’d got the circumstances completely wrong!

The My Kind of Mystery theme began on 1 February and this book really is ‘my kind of mystery’. A most satisfying book.

First Chapter First Paragraph

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

First chapterEvery Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where you can share the first paragraph, or a few, of a book you are reading or thinking about reading soon.

Today’s pick is a book that I’m currently reading from my TBR books, Playing With Fire by Peter Robinson, a DCI Banks book (incidentally a new series of DCI Banks started last night on ITV1 – I haven’t watched it yet).

Chapter 1 begins:

‘The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, burn’d on the water,’ Banks whispered. As he spoke, his breath formed plumes of mist in the chill January air.

Detective Inspector Annie Cabot, standing beside him, must have heard because she said, ‘You what? Come again.’

‘A quotation,’ said Banks. ‘From Anthony and Cleopatra.’

‘You don’t usually go around quoting Shakespeare like a copper in a book,’ Annie commented.

Banks and Annie are watching as two narrow boats are burning on a dead-end stretch of the Eastvale canal – inside they find the remains of two dead bodies. Was this an accident or murder?

The Classics Club Spin

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

The Classics ClubIt’s time for another Classics Spin. To take part in the Spin you:

  • List any twenty books you have left to read from your Classics Club list.
  • Number them from 1 to 20.
  • Next Monday the Classics Club will announce a number.
  • This is the book you need to read during February and March!

Here’s my list chosen by using a random number generator:

  1. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
  2. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  3. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
  4. The Old Wives Tale by Arnold Bennett
  5. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
  6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
  7. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
  8. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
  9. The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling
  10. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
  11. Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford
  12. Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor by R D Blackmore
  13. Notre-Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo
  14. No Name by Wilkie Collins
  15. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  16. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E M Forster
  17. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
  18. Walden by Henry James Thoreau
  19. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
  20. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

I don’t really mind which one comes up in this Spin, although there are some I’d prefer over others. What would you chose off this list?

2014 Sci-Fi Experience Wrap-Up

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Carl’s Science-Fiction Experience came to an end on 31 January. I enjoyed it much more that I anticipated and whilst I’d thought I’d give it a go, reading one book, I ended up Sci-Fi Experiencereading four:

  1. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham €“ review 3 December 2013
  2. Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham €“ review 16 December 2013
  3. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell €“ review 7 January 2014
  4. The Uncertain Midnight by Edmund Cooper €“ review 11 January 2014

I used to read a lot of science fiction many years ago but hadn’t read much recently. I began by reading The Midwich Cuckoos, first published in 1957, and then remembered that we had some old sci-fi books in a box up in the loft, none of which I’d read, so I had several more books to chose from.

Apart from Cloud Atlas, these are all old books, and very different from Cloud Atlas. My favourite is Stowaway to Mars, even though it’s so very dated – it was first published in 1936. I enjoyed it immensely. Another plus is that all four books are ones I’ve owned for years and thus have reduced my huge TBR Mountain!

My thanks to Carl, for hosting this Experience, which has encouraged me to go back to reading science fiction!

 

In the Woods by Tana French

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

I have had In the Woods by Tana French on loan from the library since last November – fortunately I was able to keep renewing it, until I got round to reading it. It’s Tana French’s debut novel first published in 2007.

When I began reading I thought this was going to be a really great book. It has all the elements I like – a current murder mystery to solve and a cold case from 20 years earlier, well drawn characters and a writing style that contains enough description to visualise the action easily. It’s set in Ireland mainly around an archaeological dig of a site prior to the construction of a motorway. Most of the wood that covered the land had already been cleared, but a small section remains. A little girl’s body is discovered on the site. Is her death connected to the disappearance of two twelve year-olds 20 years earlier? And it just so happens that the detective, Rob Ryan,  investigating the current murder was the third child who was involved in the disappearance – except he came back and has no memory of what had happened.

I was immediately drawn into the book, enjoying the mystery and wondering how long Ryan can keep his identity hidden and whether he will remember what happened. However, as the story progresses, the descriptive passages get longer and more complicated as the characters’ back stories are revealed, in particular the dead girl’s family and other peripheral characters. And whilst I still think this is a good book, it isn’t a great one. I like the psychological elements and the twists and turns, although I think some of them were predictable. I’ve seen criticism about the way the book ends, but I didn’t find that disappointing at all, in fact I think that is the only credible way that it could end. And I liked it well enough to look out for French’s second book – The Likeness.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

As soon as I began reading Cannery Row I thought I could be in for a treat – this is the opening sentence:

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

There are some books that begin well and then tail off so I was hoping this wouldn’t be one of those. There are some books, just a few, that have everything, rich descriptions of locations, wonderful characters and a storyline, even though in this book it’s really a series of stories with a thread running through to connect them to the whole, that grabs my attention and makes me want to know more. Cannery Row is just such a book.

I knew nothing about the book before I began reading (it’s my book group choice) and that made it even more enjoyable. Steinbeck’s style is perfect for me, I could see Cannery Row itself, a strip of Monterey’s Ocean View Avenue, where the Monterey sardines were caught and canned or reduced to oil or fishmeal, along with all the characters – no, it was more than that -I was there in the thick of it, transported in my mind, whilst I was reading and even afterwards as I thought about the novel.

The characters include a group of down and outs, lead by Mack, whose well intentioned actions usually end in disaster for himself and others. Then there is the shop keeper, Lee Chong, who also owns the Palace Flophouse where he lets Mack and the boys live, Dora, a woman with flaming red hair, the madam who runs the Bear Flag Restaurant, Doc who lives and works at the Western Biological Laboratory and Henri the painter who is building and never finishing a boat. There is humour and tragedy, meanness and generosity, life and death all within Cannery Row‘s 148 pages.

I loved this description of Cannery Row:

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out and the weeds are a brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or old pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest. Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground looking for fish heads. (page 64)

This paragraph continues in the same vein for almost a whole page. For me it conjures up such a vivid picture of the place, its light and sound and the sentence comparing the movement of cats dripping and slithering like syrup is just perfect.

It’s not just a visual delight, the book contains many gems, the frog collecting expedition and the party scene that end in chaos and wreckage, and the words of wisdom from Doc. Here is just one example:

‘It has always seemed strange to me,’ said Doc. ‘The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness and honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants  of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire, the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second.’ (page 107)

This is the best book I’ve read so far this year and one I shall read again. I loved it and I definitely want to read more of Steinbeck’s books (I may have read, or at least started to read The Grapes of Wrath when I was at school and didn’t appreciate it at the time – the opening seems so familiar!).