Category: Fiction

Crime Fiction Alphabet: W is for Dan Waddell

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

I’m not sure whether  The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell is historical crime fiction or genealogical crime fiction. One thing is certain it is crime fiction and one that I was thoroughly immersed in. If I gave books stars on this blog I would have given it 5 stars, if only the ending wasn’t so graphic. It’s the sort of scene that if I was watching it on TV it would have had me peeping through my fingers or even covering my eyes completely until it was over. There are bits of graphic violence earlier in the book, which I could just about cope with, but the grisly stuff at the end was a step too far for me.

That said it’s a fascinating fast-paced book linking the crimes of the past – the events of 1879 – to a series of murders in the present. DCI Grant Foster enlists the help of genealogist Nigel Barnes to track down the killer who has left cryptic clues carved into his victims’ bodies.

I used to work with archives, much of it helping people track down their family histories and so was very familiar with the sources Nigel uses to discover the original killer. I loved the way Waddell wove this into his story. Nigel Barnes is a convincing character and manages to solve both the modern day murders and the historical ones too, not only through family history but also through working out the topography of London through the years.  I loved that part of the book.

Dan Waddell as well as writing crime novels is the author of Who Do You think You Are?, the accompanying book of the TV series – one of my favourites, so it’s no surprise that The Blood Detective is so good on genealogy. He has his own website and also writes regularly on the Murder is Everywhere blog. His next book featuring Nigel Barnes is Blood Atonement and despite my phobia about graphic violence I’m planning to read that one too.

The Blood Detective

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin (7 Aug 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 9780141025650
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141025650
  • ASIN: 0141025654
  • Source: library book

The Crime Fiction Alphabet is hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. All you have to do is write a post relating to the letter of the week – either the first letter of the book title or of the author’s first or second name.

The Sunday Salon – Currently Reading …

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

The Sunday Salon is a place to talk about the books you’re currently reading.

My rate of reading has slowed down. I keep a record of books I’ve read on Goodreads with a target of reading 100 books this year. It’s not really my target but I just wanted to try out the widget on my blog (see the sidebar) and that meant I had to state a target. I’m not bothered if I don’t meet my ‘target’, but according to Goodreads I am now 3 books behind at my current pace, which does make me a bit self-conscious and think I’m not reading as fast as I should – which is ridiculous! My ‘slowness’ may have something to do with the fact I’ve got four books on the go at the moment and that two of them are long books – Titus Groan and The Bell, both of which I’ve read before.

[And I have been spending quite a lot of time bird-watching! Today I’ve been watching the baby collard dove being fed – video to follow later.]

On Friday I wrote about the beginning of The Bell, when I’d read about 25% of the book and I was full of enthusiasm for it. Reading on in the book since then my enthusiasm as waned as the action became bogged down in long descriptive passages on the characters’ thoughts and almost ground to a halt. This doesn’t seem to be the book I remember, or maybe those tedious passages went in one eye and out the other as rapidly as I read them. I’ll finish the book, though, to see if it improves towards the end. Maybe this is a book I shouldn’t have re-read!

Titus Groan, however, is standing up to the test of re-reading and is still as enjoyable as it was when I first read it. It too has long passages of description but they are far from tedious. I’m reading this as part of Farm Lane Books Readalong, where there’s an interesting discussion in progress. I shan’t be writing about this book each week, but reserving judgement until the end.

Other books I have on the go are lighter reads:

  • Gently by the Shore by Alan Hunter – the second Inspector Gently book. This isn’t as captivating as the first Gently book, but it’s ok. It’s really a period piece, originally published in 1956. A naked dead body is found on the shore, with no means of identification. Inspector Gently investigates, eating his peppermint creams and smoking his pipe.
  • The Doctor of Thessaly by Anne Zouroudi, the first book by this author that I’ve read. so far I’m finding it an excellent book if a little slow in getting to any action. The doctor who was supposed to be getting married didn’t turn up at the wedding ceremony in a little Greek village. Later on he’s found, having been blinded. It’s up to a mysterious fat man called Hermes Diaktoros to solve the crime.

I’m plodding along nicely with these books but still find myself thinking about what to read when I’ve finished them. I fancy an Agatha Christie and have a few to choose from, including this book which I bought last week:

Miss Marple and Mystery: the Complete Short Stories, some of which I’ve read in other collections, but still plenty of others I haven’t read.

I should be able to slot in a few of these this next week.

Book Beginnings: The Bell

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I love starting a book. There’s such potential to find a book that really satisfies the imagination, that draws you into its world and also makes you think. It’s even better when you can start a book you’ve read before, knowing that you enjoyed it but not remembering all the details and have it unfold before you still with the power to enchant. Such a book is The Bell by Iris Murdoch.

I first read it in the early 199os (I think), so my memory of it is only of the outline story – a new bell is to be installed at an Abbey, which triggers the discovery of the old bell and then tragedy strikes. I also remember that it was peopled by some interesting characters, but I couldn’t have told you who they are.

Here is the opening paragraph:

Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence. (page 7)

Now, that’s not a good marriage, but it is a great opening to this story of a lay community at Imber Court, a beautiful house outside Imber Abbey, the home of an enclosed order of nuns. Paul is a guest at Imber Court studying some 14th century manuscripts which belong to the Abbey. You know straight away that Dora and Paul’s marriage is a disaster area, that Paul is a man to be feared and that Dora is a mass of contradictions, a complex character – will she be able to stand living with Paul? My immediate reaction was that she is making a big mistake.

So far I’ve read about a quarter of the book and it’s just as good as I remember. Iris Murdoch’s writing is so good, full of description so that you can see the people and places as though you were there and also full of insights into the characters thoughts and feelings. There is an impending sense of evil  and menace, for below the peaceful surface stress and tension abound.

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.

New to BooksPlease

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

New in today is Patronage by Maria Edgeworth, thanks to the publishers Sort of Books.

Maria Edgeworth (1768 – 1849) was a contemporary of Jane Austen, publishing novels at the same time – Patronage was published just 5 months before Mansfield Park in 1814. It will be a while before I read this book, which is to be published on 6 July 2011, because there are already quite a few in my reading queue. But it does look interesting, described as

… one of the most eagerly anticipated novels of Jane Austen’s day. It sold out within hours of publication.

… an adventurous soap opera about the trials and fortunes of two neighbouring families in Regency England, both of which had sons and daughters setting out in the world. … a bright and mischievous critique of the way young men gained careers and young women gained husbands. (from the back cover)

I might just have to bump it up the list.

I also received newbooks magazine a few days ago. This has all sorts of book news, interviews  and articles, plus lots of reviews and extracts from six novels – you can choose one for just the cost of p&p. This issue the free books are:

  • Tony & Susan by Austin Wright, his fourth and overlooked novel, originally published in 1993, about a divorced couple. Tony asks Susan to read the manuscript of his first novel.
  • The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, about the link between food and our emotions.
  • Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller, in which Sylvia finds herself following in her mother’s footsteps into an affair she feels powerless to resist.
  • Drums on the Night Air: a Woman’s Flight from Africa’s Heart of Darkness by Veronica Cecil, set in the Congo in the early 1960s as civil war breaks out.
  • Collusion by Stuart Neville, a crime novel featuring DI Jack Lennon caught up in a web of official secrets and lies as he tries to find the whereabouts of his daughter.
  • The Collaborator by Margaret Leroy, in which Vivienne decides to escape from Guernsey to England in June 1940, as the German invasion is threatened, but stays and finds herself in danger.

Tony & Susan looks interesting, as does Drums on the Night Air, but I think I’m going to get The Collaborator.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: V is for Val McDermid

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Until now I’ve steered clear of reading any of Val McDermid‘s books and the reason is that I can’t stand to watch the violence and torture scenes in TV series such as Wire in the Blood. But recently I’ve been thinking that maybe I wasn’t being fair to judge a writer’s work on films based on the books. So I decided to check out a Val Mcdermid book from the library to see for myself.

There are many to choose from but I picked the shortest one, thinking if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t waste much time reading it.

Cleanskin is one of the Quick Reads series, aimed at “adults who’ve stopped reading or find reading tough, and for regular readers who want a short, fast read.” 

Summary (adapted from the back cover where Jack Farrell is erroneously called Jack Farlowe!):

When career criminal, Jack Farrell’s body is found washed-up on a Suffolk shore, it looks to the police like a clear-cut case. Broken-hearted at his daughter’s death, he has drowned himself – good riddance and one less crime to solve, according to CID. Then again, maybe not. For, one by one, Farrell’s enemies are being killed. And the horrific manner of their deaths makes drowning look like a day at the beach!

My thoughts:

Val McDermid’s style in this long short story is clear, straight-forward and chatty. The narrator is DCI Andy Martin. He’s the world expert on Jack Farrell, a criminal known as a ‘cleanskin‘ because he had no criminal record:

Farrell’s crew ran just about every dirty racket you could think of: drugs, guns, hookers, porn. You name it they were into it. They bought and sold human lives like they were bargains on eBay. (page 2)

Martin identifies Farrell’s body from the vivid tattoos still visible on his battered and bloated body. Being a novella the action is fast paced, the characters are briefly sketched and although I had worked out some of the mystery, the final dénouement came as a surprise. And there is a certain amount of  graphic description of the gruesome methods of killing and torture, so I’m still not sure about reading any of Val McDermid’s other books.

Can anyone recommend where I should start – bearing in mind that I am squeamish?

Cleanskin:

  • Paperback: 128 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins; World Book Day edition edition (18 May 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0007216726
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007216727
  • Source: Borrowed from the library

A Crime Fiction Alphabet post – for more posts featuring the letter V see Kerrie’s blog.

Abandoned Books Meme

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

This meme was started by Mrs. B at The Literary Stew. She was reading Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust when this passage set her off thinking about abandoning books:

“..your mood has a lot to do with whether or not you will like a book. I always leave open the option of going back to a book that I haven’t liked (especially if someone I respect has recommended it to me) sometime later. I’ve begun many books, put them down unfinished, then returned a month or two, or years, later and ended up loving them. This happened with Mathew Kneale’s English Passengers, John Crowley’s Little Big, and Andrea Barrett’s The Voyage of the Narwhal.”

Here are my answers to her questions.

1. What would cause you to stop reading a book ?

I never used to give up on reading books, but now I have few qualms about it. I start a book and if it doesn’t appeal within 50 or so pages I put it down. I give up if it becomes a chore to read it, or if the writing is bad, if it irritates me or makes me squirm. Sometimes it may just be that I’m not in the right mood at the time for that book, or it may be that another book is grabbing my attention.

 

2. Name a book or books you’ve abandoned in the past that you ended up loving later on.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel immediately springs to mind. When I first started I groaned because it’s written in the first person, which often grates with me. It’s also very big and heavy. When I went back to it I soon forgot about the irritating first person and became entranced. I loved it.

 

3. Name a book you’ve abandoned in the past that you hope to finish someday.

There are several I could name. The first one I thought of is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, followed closely by Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, which has an excellent beginning  but as I read on all the stops and starts became disjointed. I’d borrowed the book from the library and had renewed it a few times so eventually I gave up and returned it.

I’ve started Cloud Atlas at least three times and found it interesting at first and then confused by the changes in the narrative. These are both books with novels-within-novels. I have nothing against such books – I loved the Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, another book that uses this technique – but both Cloud Atlas and If on a Winter’s Night are maybe taking it a step too far for me. I’d like to think I will read them both but I doubt it.

Another book I’m much more likely to start again is The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf. This is her first book published in 1915. It’s about a young woman aboard the Euphrosyne, bound for South America, travelling with her aunt and uncle, a coming-of -age novel. One of my favourite books is Mrs Dalloway and Clarissa Dalloway makes her first appearance in The Voyage Out.  I can’t remember now why I stopped reading this book. It may just have been simply that other books took precedence at the time, but it’s one I definitely want to read.