Category: Fiction

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Random House UK, Cornerstone Digital| 19 August 2021| 368 pages| Review copy| 4*

Synopsis:

There has never been a murder on Alderney.

It’s a tiny island, just three miles long and a mile and a half wide. The perfect location for a brand new literary festival. Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne has been invited to talk about his new book. The writer, Anthony Horowitz, travels with him.

Very soon they discover that not all is as it should be. Alderney is in turmoil over a planned power line that will cut through it, desecrating a war cemetery and turning neighbour against neighbour.

The visiting authors – including a blind medium, a French performance poet and a celebrity chef – seem to be harbouring any number of unpleasant secrets. When the festival’s wealthy sponsor is found brutally killed, Alderney goes into lockdown and Hawthorne knows that he doesn’t have to look too far for suspects.

There’s no escape. The killer is still on the island. And there’s about to be a second death…

A Line to Kill is the third in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series. I have read the earlier books, The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death and I think it really it best if you read these books in order to fully understand the main characters and their relationship. Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-policeman, is now a private investigator, who the police call in to help with their more complicated cases. Anthony Horowitz himself plays a major role as one of the main characters, recruited by Hawthorne to write a book about him and the cases he investigates and he’d agreed to a three-book contract with Hawthorne.

This third book is about the third case they investigate. I loved the setting on the island of Alderney where the literary festival is being held. I enjoyed the interplay between Hawthorne and the fictional Horowitz, a somewhat difficult relationship as Hawthorne is particularly secretive about his personal life and about the reason he left the police force. In a way he is a Sherlock Holmes type of character keeping Horowitz very much in the dark about what he thinks about the identity of the murder. He is not an easy person to like, single minded with a somewhat superior air about him, but he does get results.

Like the two earlier books this is a complicated murder mystery, with a type of ‘locked room’ puzzle to be solved. As you would expect it is full of red herrings and multiple twists and turns. I was soon totally immersed in this fascinating novel. The characters are fully formed, all with secrets they want to keep hidden and clues are all there, but so well hidden that I was once again totally bemused by it all.

The fictional Horowitz is by now, thoroughly intrigued by Hawthorne himself – just what is he keeping hidden about himself, why did he really leave the police force? Will the writer Horowitz reveal the secret is his next book – if there is to be one? I do hope so.

Thank you to Anthony Horowitz, Random House and NetGalley for an ARC of A Line to Kill.

My Friday Post: Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret9 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.

This week my book is one of the books I’m currently reading, The Queen’s Spy by Clare Marchant, a dual time period novel set in Elizabeth England in 1584 and in the present day.

June 2021

The loud noise as she exhaled sharply, a violent ‘pssw’ of air and spittle, echoed around the almost empty, cavernous border control area. A cathedral of modern age, welcoming all to its hallowed halls. Or possibly not all, Mathilde thought as she stood before the sour faced man in front of her. Incongruously, behind him a dusty sign announced: ‘Welcome to England’.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your  ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

Page 56, set in 1584 :

Tom shuddered as what Hugh had explained, sank in. Being at court had felt like an honour but the memory of fleeing to France when his adopted father fell foul of the monarch reminded him of exactly how precarious it could be.

From Amazon:

1584: Elizabeth I rules England. But a dangerous plot is brewing in court, and Mary Queen of Scots will stop at nothing to take her cousin’s throne.

There’s only one thing standing in her way: Tom, the queen’s trusted apothecary, who makes the perfect silent spy…

2021: Travelling the globe in her campervan, Mathilde has never belonged anywhere. So when she receives news of an inheritance, she is shocked to discover she has a family in England.

Just like Mathilde, the medieval hall she inherits conceals secrets, and she quickly makes a haunting discovery. Can she unravel the truth about what happened there all those years ago? And will she finally find a place to call home?

Throwback Thursday: 5 August 2021

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

This month I’m looking back at my review of The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens which I first posted on 20 September 2010.

Here’s the first paragraph:

It’s been a few weeks now since I finished reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, his last and unfinished book. I was surprised that it took so long before the mystery actually began to emerge and that it’s more the story of Edwin Drood’s uncle, John Jasper, than it is of Drood himself.   I was also surprised that much of it is written in the present tense, a style that I’m not too keen on. I haven’t read a Dickens novel for a few years and found the difference in style between this and modern mystery novels interesting. The build up to the mystery is so much more leisurely and descriptive than in modern novels, and I had to tone down my impatience for something mysterious to happen. Once I’d passed these hurdles I enjoyed the book immensely, even though I knew that the mystery is left open.

Click here to read my full review

The next Throwback Thursday post is scheduled for 2 September 2021.

Above the Bay of Angels by Rhys Bowen

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Lake Union| February 2020| 323 pages| 3*

A single twist of fate puts a servant girl to work in Queen Victoria’s royal kitchen, setting off a suspenseful, historical mystery by the New York Times bestselling author of The Tuscan Child and The Victory Garden.

Arriving as Helen Barton from Yorkshire, she pursues her passion for creating culinary delights, served to the delighted Queen Victoria herself. Best of all, she’s been chosen to accompany the queen to Nice. What fortune! Until the threat of blackmail shadows Bella to the Riviera, and a member of the queen’s retinue falls ill and dies.

Having prepared the royal guest’s last meal, Bella is suspected of the poisonous crime. An investigation is sure to follow. Her charade will be over. And her new life will come crashing down—if it doesn’t send her to the gallows.

Set towards the end of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1896/7 I thought this sounded interesting when I read the synopsis on NetGalley, and it is. It’s a pleasant easy read, but rather far-fetched.

The novel is based on facts to a certain extent. Rhys Bowen’s Historical Note explains that many aspects of the story are true, including the details about Abdul Karim, the Queen’s Indian Munshi. The Hotel Regina Excelsior above Nice was built for Queen Victoria – she had a separate wing with its own entrance – and she took a team of her cooks with her when she visited each winter.

I thought the beginning of the book was slow and predictable, and there are a few convenient coincidences. Isabella (Bella) Waverley’s father was a member of an aristocratic family, the second son of a second son, who fell on hard times and eventually died an alcoholic. Bella had gone into service and found she had a talent for baking. So when she had the opportunity to take Helen Barton’s position as an under cook at Buckingham Palace, she presented herself as Helen at the Palace. Keeping her real identity a secret was a problem that continued through the book, providing an element of suspense. Then when one of the Queen’s German relatives died, Bella is suspected of poisoning him, and I enjoyed the intrigue and the puzzle of who killed the Count.

Overall I did find the book entertaining. I enjoyed reading about the meals the Queen Victoria’s household were served and the settings both in Buckingham Palace and in the French Riviera are beautifully described. Compared to the slow start the ending is packed with action and romance as well as mystery.

With thanks to NetGalley and to the publishers for my review copy.

My Friday Post: Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

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.

This week my book is Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge, a novel about the four days of Titanic’s doomed maiden voyage in 1912.

15th April 1912

He said, ‘Save yourself if you can,’ and I said firmly enough, though I was trembling and clutching at straws, ‘I intend to. Will you stand at my side?’ To which he replied, ‘Remember, Morgan, not the height, only the drop, is terrible.’ Then he walked away, gait unsteady, the cord of his robe trailing the deck.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your  ereader . If you have to improvise, that is okay. *Find a snippet, short and sweet, but no spoilers!

Page 56 – 57:

Since I was nineteen my uncle had been trying to fix me up with employment. How often had I heard him thunder that it was the duty of the wealthy to work? A poor man without a job, he held, was less despicable than a rich man who became idle.

Morgan is the nephew of J.P. Morgan the American financier.

From Amazon:

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the Titanic sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers are played out, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty, as Beryl Bainbridge’s haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

This is another ‘catching-up’ post about a book I read a while ago. It’s one of my TBRs and also one of my 20 Books of Summer. It’s a novel with an under current of psychological suspense.

Description

Wartime Liverpool is a place of ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her two aunts Nellie and Margo, is emotionally naïve and withdrawn. When she meets Ira, a GI, at a neighbour’s party she falls in love as much with the idea of life as a GI bride as with the man himself. But Nellie and Margo are not so blind …

My thoughts:

I read The Dressmaker because I’ve enjoyed other books by Beryl Bainbridge. It’s a novella, really, as it’s only 160 pages. I love her style, clear, concise prose, with fully realised characters and descriptive settings. It was first published in 1973 – my copy is a Fontana edition published in 1985.

The Dressmaker was runner up for the 1973 Booker Prize and also for the Guardian Fiction Prize. The Sunday Times, is quoted on the back cover: ‘ Like the better Hitchcock films Miss Bainbridge suggests a claustrophobic horror … An impressive, haunting book.’

It’s a wartime story of life in Liverpool in 1944, where Rita, aged 17, is living with her two middle-aged aunts, Nellie (shown on the cover of my 1985 copy) and Margo, also called Marge. Her mother had died in childbirth, and she had lived with them as her father, their brother Jack, was unable to bring her up whilst single-handedly running his butcher’s shop. Rita, although she knows he is her father, calls him ‘Uncle Jack’. She is naive and innocent, and after meeting Ira she fantasises about being a GI bride, but her aunts are not taken in by him and view him in a very different light. She dreams about life in America as Ira’s wife:

After the war he would take her to the States, and they’d have a long black car and a grand piano with a bowl of flowers on the table. There’d be a house with a verandah and wooden steps, and she would run down them in a dress with lots of folds in the skirt and peep-toed shoes. Auntie Nellie would tell Mrs Mander how well-off they were, how Ira cared for her, the promotion he kept getting at work. (page 59)

The opening chapter signals with the word ‘afterwards‘ that something significant had happened, but with no indication of what it was. It left me wondering where this book was going. At first it seemed a rather mundane story of everyday life, but as the story played out I began to feel it was leading up to a tragedy – something terrible was coming towards this working class family.

And indeed it was – and it was shocking, particularly given the domestic setting. It’s only with the final denouement that the mystery hinted at in the opening chapter is revealed in a savage and violent climax. Even though I was expecting a tragedy the actual nature of it took me totally by surprise.