Category: Fiction

The Cosy Knave by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Last week I read The Cosy Knave: A Gershwin and Penrose Mystery by fellow blogger Dorte Hummelshøj Jakobsen. I always find her blog fresh and interesting and as I expected her book also has those same qualities. It is, as the title suggests, a ‘cosy’ mystery and it’s an easy, fun read. But it’s not as simple as it seems for I was completely baffled about who the killer could be until very near the end. I swayed towards one character and another until I realised that’s who did it. And then there was a final revelation that I hadn’t foreseen at all!

The book is set in the Yorkshire village of Knavesborough and begins with the return of Colonel Baldwin’s son, Mark. This causes quite a stir because Mark has bought Netherdale Manor. He had become a famous violinist and was now calling himself Sir Marco Bellini.

The FIFA World Cup has just started and a group of locals, including Sir Marco are gathered at Ye Cosy Knave, the village tearoom to watch the England/Germany match on Tuxford Wensleydale’s new flat screen TV.  During the match nosey-parker Rose Walnut-Whip was stabbed to death and no one heard or saw anything. It’s down to Constable Archibald Penrose to discover who killed her, helped by his fiancée, the enthusiastic vicar’s daughter, Rhapsody Gershwin. More crimes and another murder follow before Rhapsody and Archie uncover the murderer.

The Cosy Knave is peopled with whimsically-named characters, including the retired headmistress Miss Olivia Cadbury-Flake, the Kickinbottom family and Rhapsody’s sisters, Psalmonella and Harmonia. It’s the relationship between the characters that holds the key to the mystery. It’s not often that I enjoy humorous crime fiction, but with this book Dorte has gone a long way to convert me. It’s a most entertaining mystery.

The book is available from Smashwords in a variety of eBook formats and here’s a coupon code, provided by the author, which brings the price down to $2.99US: PN22N

Read in July & A Glimpse of The Cosy Knave

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

It doesn’t look as though I’ve read many books in July going by the number of books I’ve finished:

  1. Whistling for the Elephants by Sandi Toksvig
  2. The Tinder Box by Minette Walters (library book)
  3. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (library book)
  4. Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon (library book)
  5. Gently by the Shore by Alan Hunter (library book)

but I’ve also been reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates which is as long as about two/three  books in itself. it will be a while before I finish it.

The links on the titles go to my posts on the books. I wrote about the opening of Whistling for the Elephants by Sandi Toksvig in a Book Beginnings post. I was rather disappointed by it – I didn’t think it was funny or even very humorous. It’s about Dorothy, an English girl of 10 who has gone to live with her parents in Sassapaneck, New York in 1968. She finds it difficult to fit in – not only because she has to learn about America and the basics of school life, so different from what she knew, but also she has to work out what opinions she should have and whether she is a boy of a girl.

Whistling for the Elephants is packed with eccentric people, but it was hard to distinguish between some of the characters and it was only at the end that I had  discovered who they all were, so the characterisation isn’t too good. And I never really cared much about any of them either. The story kept getting submerged in facts about a variety of different topics, as though this is a collection of short essays or stories roughly linked together to make a book.

I think my book of the month, by a whisker, is Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, which I thoroughly enjoyed even though I knew the plot and who did the murder.

I’ve have a few other books on the go at the moment including Dorte Jakobsen’s new e-book The Cosy Knave. Dorte blogs at djkrimiblog and her book is released today. I’ll write about it when I’ve finished it – all I can say so far is that I’m enjoying the story very much and am completely  baffled about who the murderer can be! For more details see Dorte’s blog – here.

Teaser Tuesday – Blonde

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Currently I’m reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve been reading it for a while as it’s a long book of over 700 pages. I’m about a third of the way into it. It’s a fictionalised account of Norma Jeane Baker – also known as Marilyn Monroe and it is absolutely fascinating.

No doubt I’ll be writing more about this book. For now here is a little teaser quotation:

Her problem wasn’t she was a dumb blonde, it was she wasn’t a blonde and she wasn’t dumb. (page 232)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly event hosted by MizB of Should be Reading.

My Sunday Selection

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Today I’m looking at my recent selection of library books.

When I went to my local library this week the librarian had just finished processing a pile of new additions and passed them over to me to look at. I love new library books, so clean and fresh. I chose two out of the pile and then browsed the rest of the books. These are the ones that I brought home:

The two new books are:

Great House by Nicole Krauss. I have her earlier book, The History of Love in my to-be-read piles and I’ve read one or two reviews of this book on book blogs recently and thought it sounded interesting. It’s a story centred around ‘a desk of many drawers that exerts a power over those who possess it or give it away‘ (taken from the book cover).

Being Polite to Hitler by Robb Foreman Dew. I’ve never heard of this book, or the author but the title caught my attention and I wondered what it could be about. It’s set in Ohio in mostly the 1950s and follows the experiences of a widowed schoolteacher and those around her. Described on the book cover as a ‘moving, frank and surprising portrait of post- World War Two America.’

I had gone to the library, specifically to look for books by Nigel Tranter, a Scottish author whose books I’d read many years ago. Reading Katrina’s post on Pining for the West about Right Royal Friend by Nigel Tranter reminded me how much I’d enjoyed them and I wondered if I’d still like them. Tranter wrote very many books, mostly historical fiction based on real people and events. There were several of his books on the shelves and I chose Envoy Extraordinary, set in the 13th century following the lives of Patrick III, Earl of Dunbar and Alexander III. Patrick played a major part in Scotland’s affairs, although he was more interested in the welfare of his people and ‘encouraging the wool production of his sheep-strewn Lammermuir Hills‘. I chose this book because the Lammermuir Hills are not too far from where we live.

The other two books I chose are:

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, a book that had Annie of Senior Common Room ‘hooked’. She wrote:

Aaronovitch brings just the right amount of cynicism about both the police service and the current social climate to his writing and as a result the book is not only very funny but also, despite the magic, recognisably about the world in which we live.  It is also, if you happen to know the parts of London about which he is writing, very well researched.

It’s a mixture of crime and fantasy – Detective Constable Peter Grant is also a trainee wizard, dealing with ‘nests of vampires, warring gods and goddesses of the River Thames and digging up graves in Covent Garden.‘

A Kind Man by Susan Hill, another one of her novellas, described as ‘a parable of greed and goodness and an extraordinary miracle.’ It’s set in an unspecified time period, but before the National Health Service was set up. I know from the book cover that it is the story of the marriage of Tommy Carr and his wife Eve. Tragedy strikes when their little daughter dies.

The Tinder Box by Minette Walters: Book Review

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I really enjoyed this novella by Minette Walters. Being a short mystery it is succinctly written and yet I could still imagine the characters and settings from the descriptions. The Tinder Box is aptly named – about a situation set to burst into flames at any moment.

Description from the book cover:

In the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O’Riordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patrick’s parents and cousin, who report incidents of vicious threats and violence.

But friend and neighbour Siobhan Lavenham remains convinced that Patrick has fallen victim to a prejudiced investigation and, putting her own position within the bigoted community in serious jeopardy, stands firmly by his family in defence of the O’Riordan name.

Days before the trial, terrible secrets about the O’Riordans’ past are revealed to Siobhan, and the family’s only supporter is forced to question her loyalties. Could Patrick be capable of murder after all? Could his parents’ tales of attacks be devious fabrications? And if so, what other lies lurk beneath the surface of their world?

As the truth rapidly unfurls, it seems that Sowerbridge residents need to be very afraid. For beneath a cunning façade, someone’s chilling ambition is about to ignite . . .

My thoughts:

In some ways this is a theme-heavy book, dwelling as it does on prejudice, incitement to violence and vigilantism as the inhabitants of the village unite in their dislike of the O’Riordan family living in their midst. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that misunderstanding and ignorance are really the problem. I liked the way Minette Walters has structured The Tinder Box using flashbacks,  moving between events that lead up to Patrick’s arrest and the aftermath.

For such a short book it is remarkably complex and layered and the ending with its alternative scenarios is excellent. I think I enjoyed it so much because it is so condensed – it made a refreshing change from the long and detailed books I’ve been reading recently.

  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Macmillan (14 Jun 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1405048557
  • ISBN-13: 978-1405048552
  • Source: Library book

 

The Bell by Iris Murdoch: a Book Review

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I first read The Bell years ago and it remained in my memory as an excellent book, but this time round I think my reading tastes have changed because, although I still liked it, I no longer found it so enchanting. Iris Murdoch wrote beautiful English, with detailed descriptions of the location – Imber Court, Imber Abbey and the lake and woods around them. But I just couldn’t work out the layout and that is actually relevant in this book. There was also too much detail about the thoughts and feelings of one of the characters – Michael Meade – for my liking, and yet for all the description he didn’t seem a real person, but more a mouthpiece for Murdoch’s philosophical thoughts. In fact most of the characters, with the exception of Dora, come across more as stereotypes than real people.

A lay community lives next to an enclosed order of nuns, a new bell is being installed and then the old bell, a legendary symbol of religion and magic  is retrieved from the bottom of the lake. The legend of the bell is that it fell into the lake after a 14th century Bishop had cursed the Abbey when a nun was discovered to have a lover and had drowned herself. The various characters include Dora Greenfield who is staying at Imber Court whilst her husband Paul is researching the Abbey archives. Paul is thirteen years older and is an art historian. Dora had left him six months earlier because she was afraid of him and was returning for the same reason. She is a young woman, a rather silly young woman who thinks one thing and immediately says the opposite, but Paul is probably the most obnoxious character in the book – he is a manipulative bully. The other residents at Imber Court are a mixed-up bunch, there for both religious and other reasons. As the date for the installation of the new bell approaches their weaknesses begin to be exposed.

Much of the book is taken up with discussions and examining the thoughts of the characters about the relationship of goodness to power. On the surface everything appeared to Dora to be peaceful, but underneath stresses and strains are causing the community to diverge into two parties. It’s not just a matter of organisation but also of morals and there is an impending sense of evil and menace.  Bearing in mind that The Bell was first published in 1958 this must have been quite a shocking book at the time – about the relationship between religion and sex and the angst and self-denial that it depicts.

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (2 July 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099470489
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099470489
  • Source: I bought this book

For a rather more positive view of The Bell see The Senior Common Room.