Category: Fiction

Crime Fiction Alphabet: Z is for Zouroudi

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

For the last letter of Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet I’ve chosen The Doctor of Thessaly by Anne Zouroudi. It’s a good book to end this round of the Alphabet, by an author whose books I’ve seen on the bookshelves but have never read before.  I enjoyed it.

Anne Zouroudi was born in England, has lived for some years on the Greek islands and now lives in the Derbyshire Peak District. The Doctor of Thessaly is the third in the series of her Mysteries of the Greek Detective, about Hermes Diaktoros, a mysterious fat man. I was never sure who he worked for, or how he knew of the mystery to solve. Each of the books in the series features one of the Seven Deadly Sins – in this one it is envy, a tale of revenge and retribution.

Set in the little Greek village of Morfi, it begins with Chrissa, a jilted bride weeping on the beach, and then moves on quickly to the discovery of the local doctor, the victim of an attack that has left him horribly scarred and blind. He is the absent bridegroom. Meanwhile Hermes has arrived in the village, waiting to be served at the kafenion:

Adonis, riding by, stared at the man – a big man, perhaps even fat, whose curly, greying hair was a little too long, and whose glasses gave him an air of academia. Beneath a beige trench-coat, he wore a suit without a tie; beside him lay a holdall of green leather. In Eva’s comfortable chair he seemed relaxed, drawing on a freshly lit cigarette, one foot crossed over the other; and it was the stranger’s feet that drew Adonis’s eyes. The fat man was wearing tennis shoes – old fashioned, canvas shoes, pristinely white. (page 9)

Hermes involves himself with the mystery of who attacked the doctor, made more puzzling because the doctor doesn’t want his attacker to be found. At the same time the village is expecting a visit from a government minister, an event that not all the locals want to be successful, and the family of the garage owner is going through some traumatic experiences. Hermes helps out in some unorthodox ways.

Just who is Hermes Diaktoros, I wondered as I read this book? My knowledge of Greek mythology is very rusty, but the clue is in his name, I think – Hermes, the messenger of the gods. He wore shoes with wings, and this Hermes is indeed fleet of foot in his pristine tennis shoes.

There are many things I like about this book, not just the mystery and the references to mythology, but also the characters and the setting which evoke the scenes of a little Greek village so well and the close-knit almost claustrophobic relationship of its inhabitants. And there is a map of the area and a list of characters.

I really must read the other books in the series:

  • The Messenger of Athens
  • The Taint of Midas
  • The Lady of Sorrows
  • The Whispers of Nemesis

Thanks to Kerrie for organising the Crime Fiction Alphabet.

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

Whistling for the Elephants by Sandi Toksvig, first published in1999 is my book group’s choice for July. It begins:

There are two basic types of creature in Nature’s kingdom. The first, like frogs and turtles, produce many offspring and simply hope that some will survive. The second, like elephants and people, produce one or two, at long intervals, and make great efforts to rear them. My mother belonged in a class of her own. She produced two at short intervals and made no effort to rear them whatsoever. Some people agonize over these things but I thank God. A hint more attention from my own family and things might never have turned out the way they did. (page 11)

This is Sandi Toksvig’s first novel and I haven’t read much more than the first few pages. I’m expecting it to be an amusing book, if not laugh-out-loud humour, from seeing Sandi Toksvig on programmes like QI. She is a Danish born comedian, broadcaster and author, who studied law, archaeology, and anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge, where she was a member of the Footlights at the same time as Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Tony Slattery, and Emma Thompson. As well as Whistling for the Elephants she has also written books for children and Flying Under Bridges, The Travels of Lady ‘Bulldog’Burton, and Gladys Reunited: A Personal American Journey (none of which I’ve read).

From the back cover I gleaned that Whistling for the Elephants is a novel about Dorothy, aged ten, living with her English parents in Sassapaneck, New York in 1968. She comes across a small faded zoo and gets to know an eccentric group of women and ‘begins to discover a world way beyond the one she has glimpsed so far.’

Book Beginnings is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages, where you can leave a link to your own post on the opening lines of a book you’re currently reading.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: Letter Y

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

My choice for Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet this week is Margaret Yorke’s Intimate Kill.

Margaret Yorke has written numerous crime fiction novels and is a past chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). In 1999 she was awarded the CWA’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for her outstanding contribution to the genre.

Intimate Kill was first published in 1985 and I think it’s an excellent example of her work  Margaret Yorke writes in a fluent style, one that draws you into the story effortlessly. Stephen Dawes has been released from prison after serving 10 years of a life sentence for murdering his wife, Marcia. Her body had never been found. Stephen knew he was innocent and believed that she had killed herself, making him out to be the murderer, devastated when he had asked for a divorce. He is determined to find out how she did it.

The book is divided into three parts. Part One deals with Stephen’s search for the truth about Marcia’s death and for his daughter. Stephen’s marriage had not been a happy one and he’d been having an affair with Ruth Watson which resulted in the birth of his daughter, Susannah. Part Two moves back in time eleven years, dealing with the events that led up to Marcia’s disappearance and subsequent events. In Part Three Stephen discovers the truth and nearly loses his own life.

It’s not difficult to work out what actually happened but that doesn’t detract from the pleasure of reading this book. Margaret Yorke is so skilled in characterisation that she has captured the emotions and feelings, as well as the weaknesses and ambitions of all the characters. I believed in all of them. The plot moves swiftly and with a real sense of evil as the tension mounts.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake: a book review

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Titus Groan 001

Sometimes it’s dangerous to re-read a book you loved the first time round. There’s always the possibility that you’re going to be disappointed that it wouldn’t live up to to your expectations, especially if the first time you read it was whilst you were in your teens.

With Titus Groan I needn’t have worried. I thought it was fantastic the first time and absolutely fantastic this time too.

The world Peake created in Gormenghast is real on its own terms. It has history, culture and its own rituals and traditions. The novel is poetical,  rich in imagination, description and characters. It all came alive as I read on and the same magic I felt the first time was still there.

It was first published in 1946 but because it’s about an imaginary world it hasn’t dated at all. Yes, it’s slow-moving, but with a book like this that’s essential as there’s so much to absorb. The names of the characters are Dickensian, farcical and eccentric. It’s a story of good and evil, raising issues about equality, age versus youth, tradition versus change, destruction and violence, and insanity. It’s grotesque in parts, sensual and tender in others. It is brilliant.

It’s impossible to summarise in a few paragraphs. It begins with the birth of Titus, soon to be the 77th Earl of Gormenghast and ends when he is almost two years old. His father, Lord Sepulchrave has endured despair and then madness after his beloved library was burnt down and Steerpike, a disrespectful youth, has clawed his way out of the castle’s kitchen to a position of some power, by manipulation and deceit.

Titus thus inherits that immense structure – Gormenghast Castle and its surrounding kingdom and the possibility of change is in the air:

There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment.

And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. and love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day – and Titus has entered his stronghold. (pp 505-6)

I wrote about the first few chapters with a list of characters in an earlier post.

Titus Groan:

  • Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics; New edition edition (6 Oct 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0749394927
  • ISBN-13: 978-0749394929
  • Source: I bought the book

And now, on to part two of the trilogy – Gormenghast.

Follow the Gormenghast Read-along on Jackie’s blog.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: X

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Kerrie’s Crime Fiction Alphabet has now reached, for me at least, the most difficult letter of the alphabet. Last year I wrote about Qiu Xiaolong’s  A Loyal Character Dancer and I had intended to read another of his books for the letter X – Death of a Red Heroine. But time and inclination overtook me and I haven’t read it yet.

So, I was going to pass on this letter until I came across X, Y, Z: a Story Told by a Detective (1883) by Anna Katherine Green, a short mystery free on Kindle. It’s only 97 pages and didn’t take long to read.

I hadn’t heard of Anna Katherine Green (1846 – 1935), but according to Wikipedia she was an American poet and novelist and was one of the first American authors to write detective fiction. She published about 40 novels and her first book, The Leavenworth Case was a bestseller, praised by Wilkie Collins. Looking at Amazon, I think most of her books are available free as e-books.

The narrator, an un-named detective has been assigned to investigate a gang of counterfeiters and being told of a number of suspicious-looking letters addressed to X, Y, Z, Brandon, Mass., discovers a completely different crime. (We’re told at the end that the counterfeiters were discovered but not by the narrator.) After waiting to see who collects these letters the detective follows the trail to the house of the wealthy and secretive Benson family where a fancy dress ball is to take place that evening. When  Mr Benson is found dead it is up to the detective to unmask the guilty person.

It wasn’t difficult to work out who the culprit was. Its greatest attraction for me is that it is an example of crime fiction written before the ‘Golden Age’, a forerunner of detective fiction. It’s written in a somewhat formal and stilted style, and is melodramatic as this extract describing Mr Benson’s death shows:

Mr Benson at once turned the key, but no sooner had he done so than he staggered back. For an instant or two of horror he stood oscillatiing from side to side, then his frame succombed, and the terrified eyes of his children beheld his white head lying low, all movement and appearance of life gone from the form that but a moment before towered so proudly above them.

With a shriek, the daughter threw herself down at his side, and even the cheek of Hartley Benson grew white as he leaned over his father’s already inanimate body.

“He is dead!” came a wild cry from her lips. “See! he does not breathe. Oh! Hartley, what could have happened? Do you think that Joe -”

“Hush!” he exclaimed, with a furtive glance around him.

But it moves swiftly along, with clearly defined characters and a well-described setting and it interested me enough to want to investigate more of Green’s novels.

Book Beginnings

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

This morning I finished reading Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, a fantastic book, which I’ll write more about soon. And as I’m nearing the end of the other books I’m currently reading I’m thinking about what to read next.

One, of course, will be the next book in the Gormenghast trilogy – Gormenghast. The opening paragraph is:

Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned as it were on webs of  rituals: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other – other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and foremost he is child. (page 7)

This sets the scene, following on from Titus Groan, which began with his birth and ended with his second birthday. Five years have passed since the ending of Titus Groan and this book promises to develop his story as evil spreads throughout Gormenghast. I just know it’s going to be good.

But I like to have more than one book on the go. As well as my own books, I’ve got a fair number of library books out at the moment all vying for attention and some are due back soon. So I was thinking of reading one of those next. But out shopping today I went into the British Heart Foundation charity shop and bought We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve been looking for this book for several years as I read somewhere it’s one of her best books. I was so pleased to find a good copy in the shop. It begins:

We were the Mulvaneys, remember us?

You may have thought our family was larger, often I’ve met people who believed we Mulvaneys were a virtual clan, but in fact there were only six of us: my dad who was Michael John Mulvaney, Sr., my mom Corinne, my brothers Mike Jr. and Patrick and my sister Marianne, and me – Judd. (page 3)

That’s a good start – introducing the family. I like family sagas. Described on the back cover as a ‘book that will break your heart, heal it, then break it again‘, it may be a roller-coaster ride and I’m anticipating it will be very good.

Book Beginnings is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages, where you can leave a link to your own post on the opening lines of a book you’re currently reading.