Category: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog

Today the topic is a Freebie and I’ve chosen books Books Set in the 1950s.

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd. The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.

After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit and set her sights on the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea. Why there? Why now? Instinct tells her it’s better not to reveal her reasons straight away. She takes a room at Gulls Nest guest house and settles in to watch and listen.

I enjoyed this. It’s quirky with some odd characters. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance. The setting is good in a fictional 1950s British seaside town.

 Fludd by Hilary Mantel. I enjoyed this immensely – partly about religion and superstition, but also a fantasy, a fairy tale, told with wit and humour and with brilliant characterisation. It’s one of her earlier novels, set in Fetherhoughton, a drab, dreary town somewhere in a magical, half-real 1950s north England, a preserve of ignorance and superstition. The story centres on Fludd, a young priest who comes to the Church of St Thomas Aquinas to help Father Angwin, a cynical priest who has lost his faith. The Bishop, a modern man, is concerned about Father Angwin and wants to bring him and the Catholic community up to date – so the statues in the church have to go. This has a most disturbing effect on all concerned – not just the church and Father Angwin, but also the the nuns in the convent, and the school, both under the stern eye of Mother Perpetua.

An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor, the first book in his Lydmouth crime series. The setting is Lydmouth, a small market town on the Welsh/English border in the early 1950s, just after the end of the Second World War. It begins as journalist, Jill Francis arrives to stay with her friends, Philip and Charlotte in Lydmouth, to recover from a bad experience.  Also new to the town is Inspector Richard Thornhill, who is finding it difficult to adjust to working in the local police force. Workmen digging out a drain discover a wooden box containing baby’s bones, an old brooch and some scraps of yellowed newspaper. When Major Harcutt, the local historian is consulted he found that there could be a connection to an old murder trial. 

Vengeance by Benjamin Black (a pseudonym used by John Banville), number five in Black’s Quirke Mysteries series set in Ireland in the 1950s. It begins with a suicide, that of Victor Delahaye, a business man who takes his boat out to sea and shoots himself. He had taken his partner’s son, Davy Clancy out to sea with him. The Delahayes and Clancys are interviewed – Mona Delahaye, the dead man’s young and very beautiful wife; James and Jonas Delahaye, his identical twin sons; Marguerite his sister; Jack Clancy, his ambitious, womanizing partner and Sylvia, Jack’s long-suffering wife. Then there is a second death. Why did Victor kill himself and who is the murderer, wreaking vengeance on the families?

The setting is excellent, both in location and time, with the characters wreathed in cigarette smoke, and having to find public telephones for example. 

 Death Has Deep Roots: a Second World War Mystery by Michael Gilbert. Set in 1950 it’s a mix of courtroom drama, spy novel and an adventure thriller. Victoria Lamartine, a hotel worker, and an ex-French Resistance fighter is on trial for the murder of Major Eric Thoseby, her supposed lover, and alleged father of her dead child. She is the obvious suspect – she was found standing over Thoseby’s dead body in his room at the Family Hotel in Soho, a room that was only accessed by one staircase – making this a variation on a locked room murder mystery. It was written not long after the end of the Second World War and it conveys a vivid impression of what life was like in both France and England, with memories of the war still fresh on people’s minds.

An Awfully Big Adventure, a semi-autobiographical novel set in 1950, based on Beryl Bainbridge’s own experience as an assistant stage manager in a Liverpool. A Liverpool repertory theatre company are rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan. The story centres around Stella, the assistant stage manager. On the face of it this is a straight forward story of the theatre company but underneath it’s packed with emotion, pathos and drama. And it’s firmly grounded in a grim post-war 1950s England, food rationing still in operation and bombed buildings still in ruins overgrown with weeds.

Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie, a Poirot mystery, first published in 1955. It’s set in a crowded London house, owned by Mrs Nicolstis, a Greek and full of a mixed group of young students from a variety of backgrounds and cultures – from America, West Africa and India as well as an assortment from the British Isles.Items have gone missing and then one of the students commits suicide – or is it murder? And more deaths follow.

Agatha Christie reveals contemporary attitudes (1950s) to race and politics, as the characters’ prejudices come out in their discussions. There are some interesting reflections on crime and the psychology of behaviour. 

Fresh from the Country by Miss Read, set in the 1950s, this is a stand-alone novel telling the story of Anna Lacey, a newly qualified teacher, as she spends her first year teaching in Elm Hill, a new suburb in London. It highlights the differences between life in the country and the suburbs, which transported me back to the 1950s, when children were taught in large classes and the pace of life was slower than today. It was a bit disconcerting to read that Anna enjoyed smoking, but then the dangers of cigarettes were not emphasised in those days and many people did smoke.

The Blood Card by Elly Griffiths, the third book in the DI Stephens and Max Mephisto series. Known as the ‘Magic Men’ they had been part of a top-secret espionage unit during the War. This book captures the atmosphere of 1953 – a time of great change and optimism. Britain is looking forward with eager anticipation to the new Queen’s coronation. The newspapers and newsreels are full of it and more than half the homes in the country have bought a television in order to watch the coronation live- it was the first British coronation to be broadcast on television, a momentous occasion. But there are fears that an anarchist group is plotting to disrupt the coronation.

I enjoyed the insight into the history of television as Max is sceptical about performing magic on TV thinking the ‘smug grey box’ will be the death of the days of music hall, that magic tricks needed to be performed on stage not in close up with a camera over his shoulder. But he is persuaded to take part in a new show after the coronation.