Category: Fiction

Crime Fiction Alphabet: H is for The Hanging in the Hotel

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

The Crime Fiction Alphabet has reached the letter H this week and I’ve chosen Simon Brett’s The Hanging in the Hotel. I listened to the audiobook read by Simon Brett. This is the fifth book in his Fethering Mysteries series.

Synopsis from Fantastic Fiction:

A young solicitor is found hanged from his four-poster bed in a country house hotel following an all-male society dinner the night before. Jude doesn’t believe it was suicide, and with her friend Carole’s help, it would appear that The Pillars of Sussex are involved in a grand collusion. 

Jude and Carole are neighbours and they often find themselves involved in solving murders! They’re an interesting pair, Carole a retired civil servant, cautious and analytical, Jude, impulsive, an alternative healer and very inquisitive (nosey). Jude perseveres in believing the young solicitor’s death was murder, despite the police insistence that it was suicide. Her belief is reinforced when her friend Suzy Longthorne, the hotel’s owner, wants to keep things hushed up and accepts it was suicide. There are too many inconsistencies for Jude to accept that idea. The Pillars of Society are an obnoxious bunch, misogynists, who drink too much and are very fond of themselves, and they are the prime suspects.

Jude and Carole go over and over the events, discussing the whys and wherefores, talking to everyone concerned, who all seem to have impeccable alibis, and following up lots of red herrings.There was just too much speculation and introspection which slowed down the action.  The murderer could have been anyone and by the end I didn’t much care who it was.

I didn’t like this book as much as the others that I’ve read, namely The Body on the Beach, the first in the Fethering series, The Stabbing in the Stables and Murder in the Museum. It may be because I was listening, rather than reading, so I shall still read more of the Fethering books.

Best new-to-me crime fiction authors: a meme: April to June 2012

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

This meme about the best new-to-you crime fiction authors (or all) you’ve read in the period of April to June 2012 is hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise.The books don’t necessarily need to be newly published.

Out of the 54 books I’ve read this year 17 are by new-to-me authors. I reported on the first 10 (2 of which were crime fiction) in April. Four of the 7 are crime fiction writers and they are:

M R Hall: I read two of his books – The Coroner, the first in the Jenny Cooper series and The Redeemed, the  third in the series.

In The Coroner, Jenny Cooper, a newly appointed Coroner, divorced, and recovering from a nervous breakdown gets involved in investigating the deaths of several teenagers at local detention centres. Has her predecessor neglected some crucial information in this area? As Jenny digs deeper, she encounters a solid wall of bureaucratic resistance. But however screwed up her own life is, Jenny is not going to give up on the uphill task she’s set herself. (Synopsis adapted from Amazon)

I liked both books by M R Hall, but I preferred The Redeemed. 

Synopsis from M R Hall’s website: Coroner Jenny Cooper doesn’t just have an accusation of murder hanging over her head’¦

The discovery of a dead man lying outside a Bristol church with a sign of the cross gouged into his flesh looks to her like another grisly, routine suicide. But the unexpected arrival of an enigmatic Jesuit priest reveals deeper levels of mystery.

Father Lucas Starr is protesting the innocence of a convicted prisoner who made a doubtful confession to the murder of Eva Donaldson, a former adult-movie actress turned world-renowned anti-pornography campaigner. Persuaded by him to look at Eva’s death afresh, Jenny uncovers a sinister series of connections between her killing and the body at the church.

As her investigation links to yet another tragic death, Jenny’s suspicions turn towards a powerful new global phenomenon: the politically ambitious and intoxicatingly charismatic Mission Church of God.

Answering to no one but the dead, Jenny’s lone quest for justice takes her to the heart of the fight between good and evil, sex and the supernatural, and on a dark inner journey to confront ghosts that have haunted her for a lifetime.

 Arthur Conan Doyle:  I’m surprised that I’m including Conan Doyle in a new-to-me authors post, but it is the first time I’ve actually read one of his books. I wrote about The Sign of Four in June.

Ngaio Marsh: another well-known author whose books I’ve not read before now. A Man Lay Dead was her first crime fiction novel featuring Inspector Alleyn, in which guests at Sir Hubert Handesley’s weekend house-party play the ‘Murder Game’, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a ‘murder’ in the dark and everyone assembles to solve the crime. This ends in a real murder for Alleyn to work out who-did-it. I wasn’t overly excited or puzzled by the mystery.

Dana Stabenow: I read her first in the Kate Shugak series, A Cold Day for Murder. Synopsis from Amazon:

Somewhere in the hinterlands of Alaska, among the millions of sprawling acres that comprise ‘The Park,’ a young National Park Ranger has gone missing. When the detective sent after him also vanishes, the Anchorage DA’s department must turn to their reluctant former investigator, Kate Shugak. Shugak knows The Park because she’s of The Park, an Aleut who left her home village of Niniltna to pursue education, a career, and the righting of wrongs. Kate’s search for the missing men will take her from self-imposed exile back to a life she’d left behind, and face-to-face with people and problems she’d hoped never to confront again.

The other books by new-to-me authors are (with links to my reviews):

The Secret River by Kate Grenville: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Every now and then I read a book that completely captivates me and transports me to another world and The Secret River by Kate Grenville is one of those books. I know a book is a good book for me if I abandon any other books I’m reading and can’t wait to get back to it each time I have to put it down. This is one of those books.

It begins:

The Alexander, with its cargo of convicts, had bucked over the face of the ocean for the better part of a year. Now it had fetched up at the end of the earth. There was no lock on the door of the hut where William Thornhill, transported for the term of his natural life in the Year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and six, was passing his first night in His Majesty’s penal colony of New South Wales. There was hardly a door, barely a wall: only a flap of bark, a screen of sticks and mud. There was no need of lock, of door, of wall: this was a prison whose bars were ten thousand miles of water.

This is historical fiction, straight-forward story-telling following William Thornhill from his childhood in the slums of London to Australia. He was a Thames waterman transported for stealing timber; his wife,Sal and child went with him and together they make a new life for themselves. It’s about struggle for survival as William is eventually pardoned and becomes a waterman on the Hawkesbury River and then a settler with his own land and servants.

The novel raises several issues – about crime and punishment, about landownership, defence of property, power, class and colonisation. The settlers take land owned by the ‘blacks’ – the Aborigines – with the inevitable resulting conflicts and atrocities on both sides. It begins with confrontation between William and the ‘blacks’ as William tries to negotiate a relationship with the Aborigines who unknown to him owned the land he had been granted. But it’s not the only conflict he has to deal with because he also has to contend with some of the  other English settlers on neighbouring land who have a much more violent attitude towards the Aborigines. Although William has a longing for the land he does not have the same identification with it as the Aborigines do:

‘˜Jack slapped his hand on the ground so hard a puff of dust flew up and wafted away.  This me, he said. My place. He smoothed the dirt with his palm so it left a patch’¦ Sit down hereabouts.’ …

… there was an emptiness as he [Thornhill] watched Jack’s hand caressing the dirt. This was something he did not have: a place that was part of his flesh and spirit. (page 344)

It’s a well-paced narrative with good descriptive writing setting the scenes vividly in their locations. It’s rhythmic expressing moods, the differences in cultures and the mounting tension. There are some stereotypical characters, but the main characters, William in particular, are convincing. Their dilemmas they face come over as real as they struggle to come to terms with their situations.

I found this book difficult to put down and it has lived in my mind for days – a dramatic and vivid story and thought -provoking as well. There are two more novels by Kate Grenville about Australia’s history – The Lieutenant, published in 2008, and Sarah Thornhill, published earlier this year. I hope they’re as good.

Best Crime Fiction January-June 2012

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is collecting readers’ best crime fiction reads for the year up to the end of June. She asks for the title, author and year of publication of your best 10 (or so) reads. They do not need to be recent publications.

These are the titles that I’ve rated at least 4/5:

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month – June 2012

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

The Crime Fiction Pick of the Month meme is hosted at Mysteries in Paradise by Kerrie. I read 5 crime fiction books this month and my pick of the month is:

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

Red Bones is the third book in Ann Cleeves’s Shetland Quartet. It’s set on Whalsay, where two young archaeologists, excavating a site on Mima Williams’s land, discover human bones. They are sent away for testing – are they an ancient  find or are the bones more contemporary? Sandy Wilson, Inspector Jimmy Perez’s sergeant is Mima’s grandson. He is visiting his family when late one night he finds Mima’s body. It appears she was shot accidently by his cousin Ronald, out shooting rabbits. Then one of the archaeologists is also found dead, and even though it appears to be suicide Jimmy and Sandy are not convinced, thinking it could be murder.

I really like these Shetland mysteries. They are complicated and slow-moving books that enable you to immerse yourself in the mystery. The characters have depth and the locations are superbly described. In this book Ann Cleeves explores both the history of the island, its close-knit community, its traditions and the intricacies of the close family relationships. In contrast to the rest of the series the novel is narrated by Sandy as well as Jimmy and consequently both their innermost thoughts and feelings are revealed.

Red Bones is currently being filmed for a two-part TV drama. More good news – Ann Cleeves’s website reveals that there is another Jimmy Perez mystery in progress  – Dead Water to be published in January 2013.

The four books in the Shetland series are:

Crime Fiction Alphabet: F is for Fatherland

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

This week it’s the letter F in Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet. I’ve chosen Fatherland by Robert Harris.

It’s a fast-paced thriller set in Germany in 1964, but not the historical Germany of that date, because Hitler is approaching his 75th birthday, and Germany had won the Second World War ‘“ it’s historical fiction that never was ‘“ an alternative history. And yet many of the characters actually existed, their biographies are correct up to 1942 and Harris quotes from authentic documents in the book. The Berlin of the book is the Berlin that Albert Speer planned to build.

What is definite is that this is a murder mystery, beginning with the discovery of the naked body of an old man, lying half in the Havel, a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. The homicide investigator is Xavier March of the Kriminalpolizei (the Kripo) and the victim is Josef Buhler, one of the former leading members of the Nazi Party who had been instrumental in devising ‘˜the final solution’. As March digs deeper, despite being taken off the case by the Gestapo, he discovers  a larger conspiracy as more of the former leading Nazis are murdered.

March is in some ways a typical cop, disillusioned, sceptical and suspicious of authority. He’s also divorced and losing the respect of his son, with disastrous effects. He isn’t the only one investigating the deaths. Charlie Maguire, a female American journalist has her own reasons for wanting to uncover the murderer and together they travel to Zurich to inspect the private Swiss bank account of one of the victims.

It’s a complex book and leads March into a very dangerous situation as he discovers the truth. It’s a real page-turner, full of suspense and consequently I read it very quickly, eager to know what happened next and what lay behind the murders. The ending is suitably ambiguous – it’s not the sort of book where all the loose ends are neatly tied up. Neither is the alternative history element dominant, although I did find all the little details fascinating. For example Churchill and the Royal Family have gone to Canada and Joseph Kennedy is the US president. It is predominantly crime fiction, that makes you think about the nature of good and evil and about the ways in which society handles corruption.