Category: Fiction

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh, a book I’m currently reading. It won Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016, beating J K Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith. I’ve had this book since 2017 and I started to read it then but as it begins with a tragedy I didn’t feel up to reading it and put it back on the shelf for a while. I picked it up again recently when I discovered that Clare Mackintosh, a former police officer, is a member of Crime Cymru, a consortium of Welsh crime writers to promote Welsh crime fiction. And as March is Reading Wales Month I think it’s a good time to read it now.

Book Beginning:

Prologue: The wind flicks wet hair across her face, and she screws up her eyes against the rain. Weather like this makes everyone hurry: scurrying past on slippery pavements with chins buried into collars.

and then Chapter One:

Detective Inspector Ray Stevens stood next to the window and contemplated his office chair, on which an arm had been broken for at least a year.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

Ray sighed. Puberty had turned his son into a grunting, uncommunicative teenager, and he was dreading the day the same thing happened to his daughter. You weren’t supposed to have favourites, but he had a soft spot for Lucy, who at nine would seek him out for a cuddle and insist on a bedtime story.

Description from Amazon:

A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn’t have prevented it. Could she?

In a split second, Jenna Gray’s world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh. Desperate to escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast, but she is haunted by her fears, her grief and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.

Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating . . .

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

Stacking the Shelves March 2024

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Several years ago I used to take part in the Stacking the Shelves meme. This meme is now hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality and the details are on her blog, as well as a huge amount of book reviews. Why not visit her blog if you haven’t already found it? The gorgeous graphic is also used courtesy of the site.

It’s all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may they be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical stores or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course e-books!

These are the latest e-books I’ve bought:

The descriptions are from Amazon.

Homecoming by Kate Morton

A breathtaking mystery of love, lies and a cold case come back to life, Homecoming is an immersive, twisting epic from the bestselling Kate Morton, told with her trademark intricacy and beauty.

Adelaide Hills, 1959. At the end of a scorching hot day, in the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most mystifying murder investigations in the history of Australia.

London, 2018. Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for nearly two decades, a phone call summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in hospital.

Seeking comfort in her past, Jess discovers a true crime book at Nora’s house chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. And within its pages she finds a shocking personal connection to this notorious event – a crime that has never truly been solved.

~~~

This Impossible Brightness by Jessica Bryant Klagmann

After the mysterious disappearance of her fiancé, Alma Hughes moves to a remote island in the North Atlantic, where she hopes to weather her grief and nurture her ailing dog. But the strange town of Violette has mysteries as well.

Townsfolk say that the radio tower overlooking their town broadcasts messages through their home appliances, their dreams, even the sea itself. When lightning strikes the tower, illuminating the sky in a brilliant flash, Alma finds herself caught in the unexplainable aftermath of one of Violette’s deadliest storms.

As the sea consumes the island, threatening its very existence, the deaths and lost memories of the recently departed also devastate the community. Alma, with a unique link to the lost, may be the only one who can help them move on. But to do so, she must confront a tragic loss of her own.

On this doomed island haunted by echoes of the departed, Alma searches for meaning in her future—and dares to discover the power of hope among the living.

~~~

Everything is Everything: a Memoir of Love, Hate and Hope by Clive Myrie

As a Bolton teenager with a paper round, Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cover to cover and dreamed of becoming a journalist. In this deeply personal memoir, he tells how his family history has influenced his view of the world, introducing us to his Windrush generation parents, a great grandfather who helped build the Panama Canal, and a great uncle who fought in the First World War, later to become a prominent police detective in Jamaica.

~~~

An Instance of the Fingerpost: Explore the murky world of 17th-century Oxford by Iain Pears – Oxford in the 1660s. Sarah Blundy stands accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College. Four witnesses describe the events surrounding his death: Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. Each one tells their version of what happened but only one reveals the extraordinary truth. Brilliantly written and utterly convincing.

~~~

The Great Deceiver by Elly Griffiths – book 7 of 7 in the Brighton Mysteries

Magician Max Mephisto, now divorced and living in London, is on his way to visit daughter Ruby and her new-born baby when he is hailed by a voice from the past, fellow performer Ted English, aka the Great Deceiver. Ted’s assistant, Cherry, has been found dead in her Brighton boarding house and he’s convinced that he’ll be accused of her murder.

Max agrees to talk to his friend, Superintendent Edgar Stephens, who is investigating the case. What Max doesn’t know is that the girl’s family have hired private detective duo Emma Holmes (aka Mrs Stephens) and Sam Collins to do some digging of their own.

The inhabitants of the boarding house, most of whom are performing in an Old Time Music Hall show on Brighton pier, are a motley crew. The house is also connected to a sinister radio personality called Pal. When a second magician’s assistant is killed, Edgar suspects a serial killer. He persuades Max to come out of semi-retirement and take part in a summer show. But who can pose as his assistant? Edgar shocks the team by recommending someone close. . .

The Invisible Man by H G Wells

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

The Invisible Man is my Classics Club spin book The rules of the Spin are that this was the book for me to read by 3rd March 2024 and I did. In fact I finished it about two weeks early and only got round to writing about it a few days ago. The Invisible Man was first published in 1897, a science fiction novel, originating in Pearson’s Weekly. But it was not quite what I expected. And I certainly didn’t expect it to turn into slapstick comedy.

Synopsis from Amazon

‘The man’s become inhuman … He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head.’

One night in the depths of winter, a bizarre and sinister stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in a remote English village. His peculiar, secretive activities in the room he rents spook the locals. Speculation about his identity becomes horror and disbelief when the villagers discover that, beneath his disguise, he is invisible.

Griffin, as the man is called, is an embittered scientist who is determined to exploit his extraordinary gifts, developed in the course of brutal self-experimentation, in order to conduct a Reign of Terror on the sleepy inhabitants of England. As the police close in on him, he becomes ever more desperate and violent.

In this pioneering novella, subtitled ‘A Grotesque Romance’, Wells combines comedy, both farcical and satirical, and tragedy – to superbly unsettling effect. Since its publication in 1897, The Invisible Man has haunted not only popular culture (in particular cinema) but also the greatest and most experimental novels of the twentieth century.

My thoughts

Griffin, a scientist, is a stranger to the village of Iping in West Sussex, staying at the Coach and Horses Inn. His story is a sad one. Whilst experimenting he has managed to make himself invisible, and dresses from top to toe in clothes, which even in winter makes him stand out from the crowd. Everything he does leads everyone to wonder what is wrong with him and draws attention to himself. What follows grows in intensity, as Griffin causes first confusion, then panic and finally madness. There’s a lot of shouting, pushing and fighting and surprisingly (to me at any rate) quite a lot of comedy – after all the invisible man is as naked as a new born baby.

I enjoyed it. There’s not much to the plot, it’s mainly a character study really, but what an amazing personality. And being invisible is not what he had thought – having to walk around with no shoes or socks on, especially in winter is not funny, neither is the sight of undigested food floating around mid-air. But it is worse than that because Griffin is only at the start of his escapade. By the end he is stark staring bonkers. Wells demonstrates the dangers of using science beyond control. Griffin has succeeded in lowering the refractive index of his body to make it invisible – ‘Either a body absorbs light or reflects it, or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible.’

Sadly, the end is all violence and drama!

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: The Secret Life of Bees

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd one of the books I hope to read soon.

Book Beginning:

At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how the bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew in circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head if Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

We stared across the water at each other. In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms.

Description from Goodreads:

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old. Now, at fourteen, she yearns for forgiveness and a mother’s love. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh and unforgiving father, she has only one friend, Rosaleen, a black servant.

When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily chooses to flee with her. Fugitives from justice, the pair follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

The Fledgeling by Frances Faviell

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Dean Street Press| 2016| 211 pages| My own copy| 4*

Karen @ Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy @ Lizzy’s Literary Life are hosting #ReadIndies for the fourth time. This is my first time taking part. And as I have several books published by the Dean Street Press I decided to read one of their books – The Fledgeling by Frances Faviell.

I enjoyed Frances Faviell’s memoir, The Dancing Bear, which is set in Berlin just after the end of the Second World War, so I was looking forward to reading another one of her books. The Fledgeling (first published in 1958) is her third novel. It appealed to me because it’s also a book about the post war period, but set a few years later in Britain in the late 1950s. National Service was then in force meaning that all men aged 17 to 21 had to serve in one of the armed forces for an 18-month period. It was discontinued in 1960, with the last servicemen discharged in 1963.

It tells the story of 19-year old Neil Collins , who deserted from his National Service for the third time taking place over the twenty four hour period following Neil’s desertion. When the book begins and sets out to go to his grandmother’s small basement flat in London. Mrs Collins is bedridden and dying. She has strong ideas about duty and thinks Neil should go back and finish his National Service. Nonie, his twin sister, supports him, despite the fact that Charlie, her husband, thinks he is a coward and should finish his National Service. But Nonie makes plans to get him to Ireland where their Great Aunt Liz lived. The flat is small and Neil has to stay hidden whilst several people visit during the day – Miss Rhodes the social worker, some of the neighbours, and Linda, a little girl who regularly climbs in through the basement window to see ‘Gran Collins’.

Neil is in a ‘sickening state of collapse’, is desperate to get away, and he lives in fear of the military finding him and taking him back. And adding to his terror is his fear that Mike, a bullying fellow soldier who has made Neil’s life a nightmare, will catch up with him, to escape with him to Ireland. It all seems hopeless to Neil.

In an Afterword by John Parker, Faviell’s son, he writes that each of her books were inspired by episodes in her own life. And The Fledgeling, about a National Service deserter was based on an actual incident. I enjoyed this book. As I read it I could imagine the reality of the fear and desperation that the family were experiencing. It gives an excellent insight into what life was like in Britain in the 1950s, and in particular into the impact National Service had at that time.

The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Croft

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

I’m trying to catch up with writing about the books I’ve read so far this year. So this is a short post about one of them.

The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts, the 10th Inspector French book 4*.

This is a British Library Crime Classic, first published in 1933, during the Golden Age of detective fiction between the two world wars. Dr James Earle and his wife live near the Hog’s Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. At first he suspects a simple domestic intrigue – and then begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple’s peaceful rural life.

I’ve only read two Inspector French books before. They’re puzzle-type mysteries. French is a most meticulous and methodical detective – maybe too meticulous and methodical, but he is a very likeable character. It begins leisurely introducing the characters and setting the scene. He pays great attention to all the information as he discovers it. This slows the pace down, going over and over the clues several times and he even lists them, giving the page numbers they appear on towards the end of the book. Crofts’ descriptions of the countryside are outstanding, giving it a great sense of place.

The more he (Inspector French) had explored the country, the more it had appealed to him. He loved the tree-edged out lines of its successive ridges,showing up solid beneath one another like drop scenes in a theatre. He loved its quaint villages with their old red-roofed half-timbered buildings and their still older churches. He liked following the narrow twisting deep-cut lanes. But most of all he delighted in the heaths, wild and uncultivated, areas of sand and heather and birches and pines over which one could wander as entirely cut off from sight or sound of human habitation as if one was exploring a desert island. (page 61 in my paperback copy)

Ideal countryside for burying a dead body.

Although this is a slower paced novel than I usually prefer to read and the detail is rather repetitive in places, I really enjoyed reading this book, and I’ll be looking out for more of Inspector French murder mystery novels.