Review Copy – Page 33

The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes

Published on March 24, 2018March 24, 2018 by Margaret4 Comments

‘A hodge-podge of fantasy and harumscarum adventure’

The Daffodil Affair was first published in 1942.

Description

Light after light goes out, including two luminaries from Scotland Yard.

In the midst of the Blitz, a house in Bloomsbury disappears. In York and London, two young girls have been kidnapped. And in Harrogate, a cab horse named Daffodil has gone missing.

Appleby is sent to look into the Daffodil affair, while vice detective Hudspith investigates the cases of human trafficking. But they must work in tandem to piece this mystery together. And they soon find that the links among the disappearances are odder than they could possibly imagine: the house is haunted, one is girl a witch, the other has multiple personalities, and the horse can count. Whoever is behind this is trafficking in marvels.

Appleby and Hudspith pursue their victims deep into the South American jungle where they discover the terrifying sprawl of this bizarre vision. Surrounded by rivers filled with alligators and the swirling mist of the Amazon, the pair are confronted with questions of magic and the supernatural. But when the madman’s machinations turn to the two police officers, Appleby must race against the clock to stop this weird experiment before it costs him his life.

Master mystery writer, Michael Innes, turns his hand to an adventure tale, and sends his Inspector Appleby to the exotic jungle of the Amazon.

My thoughts:.

This is the 8th Inspector Appleby book and the 3rd one I’ve read. Each one seems very different. This one is pure escapism and I think Michael Innes must have enjoyed himself immensely whilst writing it. It’s full of literary allusions and quotations and has a completely unrealistic plot. I think his writing is an acquired taste with long, meandering sentences, and formal language, including many unfamiliar words to me that I wasn’t sure of their meaning.

But I enjoyed reading it, once I’d come to terms with Innes’ style – and the crazy plot. I enjoyed spotting many of the literary references, although I probably missed as many as I recognised. There are allusions to Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils, to Moby Dick, Ulysses, Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Shelley, Dr Johnson, Australian Aboriginal mythology, Browning, Yeats and Shakespeare amongst others. And in the South American jungle with its alligator–infested rivers, their ‘plop’,’plop’ as they disposed of Mr Wine’s victims reminded me of the crocodile in Peter Pan. The characters’ unlikely names, such as Mr Wine – Mrs Nurse, a high-class medium, seemingly nice, honest and capable, the enigmatic Miss Mood, with her ethereal, gibberish talk, husky and glamorous and Mr Beaglehole, Mr Wine’s secretary, whose name is a corrupt form of Bogle Hole, Scots for the lair of the demon, who lures his victims in, all contribute to this allegorical tale.

I particularly like his thoughts about detective stories, referring to them as stories that take one out of oneself, and as Hudspith tells Appleby they are in ‘a sort of hodge-podge of fantasy and harumscarum adventure that isn’t a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes.’ ‘Innes? I’ve never heard of him.’ Appleby spoke with decided exasperation.’

Throughout the book Innes drops in his thoughts on a variety of topics including philosophy, the nature of evil, witchcraft, paranormal manifestations, telepathy, superstition versus scientific inquiry, and multiple personalities. The arch-villain, Mr Wine, is a madman attempting to conquer the world with his physic circus of mediums through superstition and the supernatural.

I wasn’t at all sure where this book was taking me. It’s more a book of suspense than a detective story. There is nothing straight forward about it; it’s richly descriptive and surreal as it proceeds from one absurd situation to the next, but with serious undertones. It predicts that under such a madman as Mr Wine weird fantasies would spread, and sub-rational deceits and mumbo-jumbo would put power in the hands of whoever had control of a vast and efficient organization.

The ending of the book continues the fantastical aspects of this book and as Hudspith considers how they can escape from Wine and his gang he concludes that their only hope is for a ‘deus ex machina to wind everything up happily after all.’ And that is precisely what Innes provided.

The Author

Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (1906 – 1994), a British scholar and novelist. He was born near Edinburgh, the son of a Scottish professor, and attended Edinburgh Academy, then Oriel College, Oxford where he won the Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize in 1939 and honours in English. He was a Lecturer, then a Professor in English at different universities, including Adelaide University in South Australia from 1935 to 1945. He became an Oxford fellow in 1949 and finished his academic career in 1973 as a Student (Fellow) at Christ Church Oxford.

As Michael Innes, he published numerous mystery novels and short story collections, most featuring the Scotland Yard detective John Appleby.

My thanks to Ipso Books for a review copy via NetGalley.

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The Smiling Man by Joseph Knox

Published on March 18, 2018 by Margaret2 Comments

Description

Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift. An endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends. Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter ‘Sutty’ Sutcliffe, are summoned to The Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city.

There they find the body of a man. He is dead.

And he is smiling.

The tags have been removed from the man’s clothes. His teeth filed down and replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into the inside of his trousers gives any indication as to who he was, and to the desperate last act of his life…

But even as Waits puts together the pieces of this stranger’s life, someone is sifting through the shards of his own.

When the mysterious fires, anonymous phone calls and outright threats escalate, he realises that a ghost from his own past haunts his every move.

And to discover the smiling man’s identity, he must finally confront his own.

My thoughts:

I wasn’t sure I wanted to read this book, the second Aidan Waits novel, as I haven’t read the first book, Sirens. But I was interested by the description of The Smiling Man and the fact that the books are set in Manchester. So, I thought I’d see what it’s like – and I needn’t have worried as it reads well as a stand-alone book. Be aware though (if this bothers you), there are some violent scenes, and one strand of the story concerning a particularly loathsome and brutal character called Bateman and an eight year old boy and his little sister is very chilling.

Aidan Waits is a Detective Constable working night shifts with Detective Inspector Peter Sutcliffe, known as Sutty. They don’t like each other – at all. The only thing they have in common is that they each try to make things as difficult as possible for the other. But strangely their partnership gets results.

The book description sets out the main strand of the plot – the police investigation of the death of the ‘Smiling Man‘ at disused hotel, The Palace, the question of his identity and the motive for killing him, but there are various other strands woven into the narrative that make this a fascinating and complex novel. Waits and Sutty are plain clothes detectives on patrol duty in the city dealing with fires set in steel dustbins when they’re called to Owens Park, student halls of residence, to a complaint of sexual harassment and threats to post a sex video on the internet. Then there’s the mystery of the death of Cherry, a sex worker fished out of the Manchester Canal, and the further complications caused by the owners of the hotel, Natasha and Freddie, at loggerheads over the sale of the hotel.

But overarching the cases he is working on is Waits’ troubled background, some of which I assume was in Sirens. In this book we learn so much about what has made him into such a disturbed and complex character and why other police officers don’t trust him or want to work with him. He plays very close to the edge and has little regard for his own safety.

The location is superb – Manchester in a heatwave – students taking degree courses they’ll never pay off, muggings and drug pushers and the ‘missing missing’ – people who disappear but are never reported missing, so they’re not in any databases. No one is looking for them and if they’re found dead there’s no way of finding out who they were. It’s as they they had dropped off the face of the earth, almost as though they had never been born. Or, as in the case of the ‘Smiling Man‘, their identity has been deliberately obfuscated.

I was totally convinced by Knox’s storytelling, fully absorbed in the characters and intrigued by the various strands, only gradually seeing how they were connected. I had little idea about the culprit until the end. Quite simply, I loved this book and will read more by Joseph Knox, starting with Sirens.

My thanks to Transworld Publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

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Bump in the Night by Colin Watson

Published on March 11, 2018December 11, 2018 by Margaret5 Comments

Description

Tuesday nights have suddenly turned quite ridiculously noisy in the country town of Chalmsbury, where the good folk are outraged at having their rest disturbed.

It begins with a drinking fountain being blown to smithereens – next the statue of a local worthy loses his head, and the following week a giant glass eye is exploded. Despite the soft-soled sleuthing of cub reporter Len Leaper, the crime spate grows alarming.

Sheer vandalism is bad enough, but when a life is lost the amiable Inspector Purbright, called in from nearby Flaxborough to assist in enquiries, finds he must delve deep into the seamier side of this quiet town’s goings on.

Witty and a little wicked, Colin Watson’s tales offer a mordantly entertaining cast of characters and laugh-out-loud wordplay.

My thoughts:

Bump in the Night is the second book in the Flaxborough Mystery series, originally published in 1960. It’s entertaining, if rather absurd, with characters with silly surnames, which made me wonder if I was reading a spoof rather than a crime fiction novel. But no, this is crime fiction full of wordplay, innuendo and murder.

It’s set in the neighbouring town of Chalmesbury where a series of explosions have rocked the inhabitants. First a drinking fountain is blown up, then the statue of Alderman Berry is decapitated in another explosion, followed by the destruction of the sign outside the optician’s premises, then culminating in the death of the local haulage contractor. Eventually Inspector Purbright is brought in from Flaxborough to investigate the murder.

On the surface this is an understated story but Watson’s turn of phrase and descriptions of the characters lifts it above the ordinary as the intricate relationships and secrets are revealed. The practical joker (and haulage contractor), Stan Biggadyke (what a name!) is a ‘big, loosed-leg man‘ with ‘hands clasped behind him … like a pair of courting Flamborough crabs‘ and the ‘back of his neck had the colour and texture of peeled salami.’

The other characters are equally finely drawn, just falling short of caricature – a local councillor, Councillor Pointer; the local police Chief Inspector Larch (who tells Purbright the town is ‘chock-a-block with lunatics‘ who will ‘chatter and natter as long as you’ve a mind to listen‘) and Sergeant Worple; Josiah Kebble, the newspaper editor, Leonard Leaper, a young keen reporter with ambitions to work for the Sun newspaper; Cornelius Payne, a jeweller; a cinema commissionaire, Mr Grope with a large face like a feather bolster who writes doggerel verse and ‘edifying slogans‘, such as ‘No Knife Cuts Like a Sharp Word‘ and ‘Remember Someone May Want to Use this After You’; and Mrs Crispin, a landlady, who is described as ‘mildly Guinness-glad‘, with a ‘gasometer-sized bosom‘ and the face of a ‘rubber doll, enormously inflated‘.

Inspector Purbright, he of the ‘high forehead crowned with short but unruly hair of preposterous king-cup yellow‘, is new to the town and has to feel his way through the details of the explosions and the puzzle of the memorial notice in the newspaper written in verse, cobbled together from two different poems.

Once I’d got into the swing of Watson’s style I raced through this delightful novel, trying to see beyond the red herrings and follow the twists and turns, but it was only very near the end that I managed to identify the culprit.

About the author

Colin Watson was educated at the Whitgift School in South Croydon, London. During his career as a journalist he worked in London and Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was a leader-writer for Kemsley Newspapers.

His book Hopjoy Was Here (1962) received the Silver Dagger Award. He was married, with three children, and lived in Lincolnshire. After retiring from journalism he designed silver jewellery.

As well as a series of humorous detective novels set in the imaginary town of Flaxborough, featuring Inspector Purbright, Watson also wrote and later revised a study of detective stories and thrillers called Snobbery with Violence.

My thanks to Farrago for a review copy via NetGalley.

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The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey

Published on March 7, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

Jonathan Cape, Vintage Digital| 1 March 2018|304 p|Review copy|4.5*

Description

15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can’t?

Moving back in time towards the moment of Thomas Newman’s death, the story is related by Reve – an extraordinary creation, a patient shepherd to his wayward flock, and a man with secrets of his own to keep. Through his eyes, and his indelible voice, Harvey creates a medieval world entirely tangible in its immediacy.

My thoughts:

The Western Wind really is an extraordinary book. I was drawn into the story right from the start. Samantha Harvey’s writing brings to life the sights, smells and sounds of the daily life of the ordinary people living in Oakham, a small village in Somerset in 1491. So often in historical fiction it’s about the notable historical figures of the period that are the main characters – here there none (although there is a reference to their bishop who is in prison for trying to put a pretender on the throne (Perkin Warbeck had first claimed the English throne in 1490).

A man disappears, presumed drowned – but how and why did he die? Oakham, an impoverished village is isolated, cut off from the surrounding villages and from the monks at the abbey in Bruton by the river with its bends and oxbows, and the long woody ridge to the north-east edge of the village. There are no outsiders.

I thought the way Samantha Harvey reveals how Thomas Newman died telling the story moving back day by day to the day of his death was very effective, although at first I was a bit puzzled. By the end – that is – on the day Thomas Newman disappeared – we know so much about him and his neighbours, mainly through the confessions they made to the narrator, John Reve, the village priest. And the sequence of events, the why and the how are revealed.

The people are superstitious, living in fear of the whims and punishments of God and taking everything as a warning. Reve tries to reassure them that the creatures they fear, such as wolf-men and grotesque sea creatures don’t exist, but that there are ill spirits to test us and strengthen us; that what we call good or bad luck are spirits, that live in the air or in the water and that we can conquer them. Reve prays for a sign that Newman was on his way through purgatory safely to heaven. The wind is blowing from the east, a strong and bitter wind, so he prays for a wind from the west to blow the ill spirits away.

This is in some ways an allegorical tale, with the characters standing for symbolical figures, and events as symbols of change. Hence there is Newman, a relative newcomer to the village the bringer of change as he gradually bought land off Townshend, the lord of the manor, now impoverished. Does this make him a suspect for Newman’s death?

The monks, who it is said are keen to buy the village land, also foreshadow the changes that are to come in the next half century or so. Reve, the priest (my Local Historian’s Encyclopedia tells me a reeve was usually a man of villein status who organised the daily business of the manor) is concerned that people are no longer coming to him for confession but paying a travelling friar, who didn’t know them, for a confession incognito. The people are losing their faith in God.

I loved other details, setting the book in the 1490s – the techniques of bridge building, the traditional games such as ‘campball’ (the precursor of football) played by all the young men of the parish with a pig’s bladder up and down the village road, the cock-fighting, the food and drink – spiced beer and metheglin (a variety of mead), giving out the sweetness of honey, and the music – the tinkling of tambourines, pipes and drumming on goat-hide.

I came to the end of this book and immediately wanted to start it again. What seems at first to be a simple tale is actually a multi-layered and complex book. I really enjoyed reading it.

About the author

Samantha Harvey is the author of four novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind.

Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award and the James Tait Black Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Prize and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She won the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize. She lives in Bath, UK, and is a Reader in creative writing at Bath Spa University.

My thanks to Jonathan Cape for a review copy via NetGalley.

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Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan

Published on March 2, 2018 by Margaret18 Comments

Square Peg, Random House UK|1 March 2018|336 p|Review copy|4*

Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan will appeal to all bookworms, but it’s more than an account of what Lucy read, it’s also a history of children’s books, details of their authors and a memoir of Lucy’s childhood. I loved it – it’s full of the joy and love of books, the intensity of reading and the ‘instant and complete absorption in a book‘. She writes with verve and humour, in a chatty style that makes it so readable. Reading her book is like being in conversation with a friend.

As I am older than Lucy, inevitably she mentions books I didn’t read as I was growing up (but have read some of them in later life) , especially in the later sections of her book, books she read as a teenager, but I was quite surprised and pleased to find that our reading in early childhood was so similar, and just like her, books have made me the person I am – why else would I be writing a blog called ‘BooksPlease‘.

As long as I can remember I have loved books and I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read. So I was delighted to find that she too loved Teddy Robinson by Joan L Robinson. This is the first book I remember borrowing from the library. I loved it so much I was dreadfully upset that I had to return it. Teddy Robinson was owned by a little girl named Deborah and I am so envious that Lucy Mangan has actually met Deborah, who showed her the original drawings for the books her mother wrote.

And then there are some of my most loved books when I was young such as Milly-Molly-Mandy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Katy books, Little Women, Good Wives and Jo’s Boys, The Borrowers, the Narnia books, Ballet Shoes, and The Secret Garden. I re-read them many times over.

There’s a whole section on Enid Blyton – The Blyton Interregnum. I was very interested to see her view of this writer whose books I too adored. Blyton wrote around 760 books during her fifty-year writing career! Despite the criticism of her books as mediocre material, formulaic books with fantastical plots Lucy considers, correctly I think, that they are books that provided comfort reading during and in the aftermath of the Second World War. Not only that, they are satisfying stories that lay down a base for future reading, providing books that are fun to read and opening up the ‘pleasure-filled world of reading’. Then there are the questions about prejudice, sexism, class snobbery and racism, in Blyton’s books, which Lucy (and I) missed completely whilst reading as children.

She writes about re-reading the books as an adult as a ‘discombobulating experience‘ – stories that once wholly enraptured you no longer have that same magic, and about her disappointment in returning to Enid Blyton’s books and finding them unreadable. It’s the main reason I don’t go back to the books I loved as a child – I really don’t want to lose the magic they held for me then.

There is so much in this book I could write about, it’s packed with the magic of books and reading it has given me hours of nostalgic pleasure – but the best thing I think is to leave you to read this lovely book for yourself.

Many thanks to Random House UK for a review copy via NetGalley.

The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen

Published on February 22, 2018February 22, 2018 by Margaret3 Comments

Lake Union| 20 February 2018|352 p|Review copy|3*

In 1944, British bomber pilot Hugo Langley parachuted from his stricken plane into the verdant fields of German-occupied Tuscany. Badly wounded, he found refuge in a ruined monastery and in the arms of Sofia Bartoli. But the love that kindled between them was shaken by an irreversible betrayal.

Nearly thirty years later, Hugo’s estranged daughter, Joanna, has returned home to the English countryside to arrange her father’s funeral. Among his personal effects is an unopened letter addressed to Sofia. In it is a startling revelation.

Still dealing with the emotional wounds of her own personal trauma, Joanna embarks on a healing journey to Tuscany to understand her father’s history—and maybe come to understand herself as well. Joanna soon discovers that some would prefer the past be left undisturbed, but she has come too far to let go of her father’s secrets now…

I enjoyed The Tuscan Child up to a point. I liked the historical setting of 1944 and the descriptions of Tuscany and Italian food are beautiful. It’s easy reading and the dialogue gives a good impression of people speaking in a foreign language in which they are not fluent. Although I love Italian food I did begin to groan when yet another meal was being prepared and described in detail.

But the split narrative between Hugo and Joanna didn’t work too well for me. I liked Hugo’s story more than Joanna’s and I wanted to know what happened to him which kept me reading. But I thought the book was more of a romance than a historical mystery. And I thought the mystery element wasn’t too difficult to work out with rather too many convenient events that revealed what had happened to Hugo.

My thanks to Lake Union for a review copy via NetGalley.

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