My Friday Post: Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Book Beginnings Button

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, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill is one of the books I’m reading at the moment.  It’s one of my TBRs, the third Dalziel and Pascoe book in which Pascoe finds his social life and work uncomfortably brought together by a terrible triple murder. Meanwhile, Dalziel is pressuring him about a string of unsolved burglaries, and as events unfold the two cases keep getting jumbled in his mind.

Ruling passion

Brookside Cottage,Thornton Lacey. September 4th.

Well hello, Peter Pascoe!

A voice from the grave! Or should I say the underworld? Out of which Ellie (who gave me the glad news of your existence when we met in town last month) hopes to lead you, for a while at least, back into the land of the living.

As soon as I finished reading the 2nd book in the series, An Advancement of Learning, I just had to start the third. I’ve read some of the later books but not the early ones, so I’m keen to know more about Dalziel and Pascoe. In An Advancement of Learning Pascoe and Ellie (his wife in the later books) had just renewed the relationship they’d had at university and so I’m pleased to see in the opening chapters of this book that they are together. In this first chapter a friend from their university days has invited them to stay for a weekend in the country.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘We got on very well from the start. I’d only known her and Colin a couple of months, but we soon got on friendly terms. That’s why it came as such a shock … I still can’t believe it.’

The weekend in the country has turned into a nightmare!

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

The 20 Books of Summer Challenge 2019 Is Over …

Published on by Margaret15 Comments

20 bks of summer 2019

Yesterday the 20 Books of Summer Challenge, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books,  came to an end … and once more I didn’t manage to read all twenty of the books I’d listed. Although over the 3 months of this challenge I read 24 books, only 8 of them were ones I’d earmarked, as shown below, with links to my reviews.  All 8 are books that were on my TBR shelves, so although it could have been better, I think that is a good result.

  1. Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop 4.5*
  2. Anything You Do Say by Gillian McAllister 4*
  3. Beneath the Surface by Fiona Neill 4*
  4. Blood on the Tracks edited by Martin Edwards 3*
  5. Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers 4*
  6. The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley 5*
  7. Operation Pax by Michael Innes 4*
  8. An Advancement of Learning by Reginald Hill 4.5*

Of these my favourite is The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley and now I’m eager to read the whole series beginning with next one, The Storm Sister.

Of the remaining books on my list I have started 2 of them – Ruling Passion and Life After Life, and I intend/hope to read the others before the end of the year:

  1. The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
  2. Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
  3. The Silver Box by Mina Bates
  4. The Moon Sister by Lucinda Riley
  5. No Tomorrow by Luke Jennings
  6. An April Shroud by Reginald Hill
  7. Ruling Passion by Reginald Hill
  8. The Island by Victoria Hislop
  9. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
  10. Becoming Mrs Lewis by Patti Callahan
  11. The Rose Labyrinth by Tatania Hardie
  12. Daughter of Earth and Water: a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley by Noel Gerson

An Advancement of Learning by Reginald Hill: Mini Review

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

An Advancement of learning

An Advancement of Learning is Reginald Hill’s second Dalziel and Pascoe novel, first published in 1971. It’s much better than the first one, A Clubbable Woman and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s set in a college, Holm Coultram College, where Dalziel and Pascoe investigate the discovery of a body found as an eight foot high bronze statue of Miss Girling, a former head of the College in the grounds is being moved. As the base of the statue is lifted earth falls away together with a shin bone followed by part of a rib cage and then a skull, still with a mop of dark red hair attached. Miss Girling had red hair – but she had died in an avalanche in Austria – so whose body was buried under the statue?

The plot is by no means straight forward and for most of the book continued to puzzle me, even though I thought the ending was rather weak. But the strength of this book is in the writing and the characterisation. It is a character-driven murder mystery, with a cast of characters including Girling, Halfdane, Fallowfield, Cockshut, and Disney, known as ‘Walt’, of course and I had no difficulty in keeping who was who clearly in my mind. It’s interesting to see the early relationship between Dalziel, shown as a rude, boorish character, and Pascoe, the university educated young DS. Dalziel is very much out of his comfort zone with the academic staff and looks to Pascoe to understand how the college operates, whilst mocking him. Pascoe renews his relationship with Ellie Soper, an ex-girlfriend from his university days – a feisty young woman, but a minor character in this book. 

Written in 1971 it is very much a book of its time. I read it quickly, as the two detectives uncover plenty of disagreements and power struggles in both the staff and student bodies – from rivalries to revelries on the beach, and more dead bodies turn up before the mystery is solved.

And reading it has made me keen to get on the next book in the series, Ruling Passion, which I’ve started almost straight away! I’ve been reading this series totally out of order, beginning with some of the later books – much more detailed and complex than the first books.

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: HarperCollins (25 Jun. 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 9780007313037
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007313037
  • Source: I bought it
  • My Rating: 4.5*

Reading challenges: Mount TBR, Calendar of Crime, 20 Books of Summer

Readers Imbibing Peril XIV Begins …

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

There’s a chill in the air, the leaves are beginning to fall and autumn is definitely on its way. So, it’s no surprise to see that tomorrow the 14th Annual  Readers Imbibing Peril begins, running from 1 September to 31 October.

The aim is to read books in these categories: 

Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Horror, and Supernatural.

rip14

As usual, there are different levels to choose from and I will be aiming for Peril the First, which is:

Read four books, any length, that you feel fit (our very broad definitions) of R.I.P. literature. It could be Stephen King or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Shirley Jackson or Tananarive Due…or anyone in between.

I have plenty of Mystery, Suspense, Thriller and Gothic books on my shelves and Kindle to choose from, including these:

  • The Lying Room by Nicci French
  • Stone Cold Heart by Caz Frear
  • A Beautiful Corpse by Christi Daugherty
  • Murder by Matchlight by E C Lorac
  • The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
  • A Song of Stone by Iain Banks
  • Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie
  • The Rottweiler by Ruth Rendell
  • The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy by Barbara Vine
  • With Our Blessing by Jo Spain

What usually happens when I make a list like this is that I end up reading other books instead. But I like to think I’ll read some of these.

My Friday Post: The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Book Beginnings Button

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, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley is one of the books on my 20 Books of Summer list and it’s also one of my TBRs. I recently finished reading it. It’s the first book in her Seven Sisters series of books based on the legends of the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades. 

seven sisters ebook

I will always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard that my father had died.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice.

30879-friday2b56These are the rules:

  1. Grab a book, any book.
  2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
  3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grabs you.
  4. Post it.
  5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda’s most recent Friday 56 post.

Page 56:

‘Presumably, you had a tough night last night, Maia, dealing with Electra’s usual histrionics? said Ce-Ce.

‘As a matter of fact, for Electra, she was relatively calm,’ I answered, knowing there was little love lost between my fourth and fifth sisters. Each was the antithesis of the other: Ce-Ce so practical and loath to show any emotion, and Electra so volatile.

Blurb:

Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, ‘Atlantis’ – a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva – having been told that their beloved father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died. Maia and her sisters were all adopted by him as babies and, discovering he has already been buried at sea, each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage – a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of where her story began . . .

Eighty years earlier, in the Belle Epoque of Rio, 1927, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is working on a statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela – passionate and longing to see the world – convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafés of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

My thoughts:

I knew very little about this series when I began reading the book, but I was soon caught up in this family saga. It’s not crime fiction but there is plenty of mystery – first of all why are there only six sisters, not seven? Who was Pa Salt and why did he adopt these  girls from the four corners of the globe when they were babies? He has died before the book begins and immediately buried and, as I read a lot of crime fiction, my first thought was –  why was he adamant that as soon as he died his body was to be buried at sea, with none of the girls present? And I wondered if he had really died? Please don’t tell me the answers to my questions – I intend to read all the Seven Sisters books, when I hope all will become clear.

Pa Salt has left clues for each girl so that if they want they can discover who their parents were and the circumstances of their birth. Having introduced all the sisters Maia’s story unfolds and it is an amazing story, taking her back to Brazil, the country of her birth. It’s beautifully written and completely convincing and I raced through it eager to find out the details of Maia’s family history.

I loved all the details about the building of the statue of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain in the Carioca Range, overlooking the city of Rio de Janeiro and how Lucinda Riley incorporated it so seamlessly into Maia’s story.

Have read this book? What did you think about it? And if you haven’t, would you keep on reading?

For more about the series see Lucinda Riley’s website, where she explains why she based the books on the legends of The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades and about the details of her extensive research for each story.

I’ll be reading the next book – The Storm Sister as soon as possible. The six books in the series are:

1. The Seven Sisters (2014)
2. The Storm Sister (2015) – Ally (Alcyone)
3. The Shadow Sister (2016) – Star (Asterope)
4. The Pearl Sister (2017) – CeCe (Celaeno)
5. The Moon Sister (2018) – Tiggy (Taygete)
6. The Sun Sister (2019) – Electra

The seventh sister is Merope – in the cast of characters at the beginning of the first book she is described as ‘missing’ …

The Seven Sisters:

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 2822 KB
  • Print Length: 641 pages
  • Publisher: Pan; Main Market edition (6 Nov. 2014)
  • Source: I bought the book
  • My Rating: 5*

Latest Additions at BooksPlease

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

BB bks Aug 2019

Yesterday I brought this little pile of books home from Barter Books in Alnwick, my favourite bookshop.

From top to bottom they are:

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott, his first novel, first published anonymously in 1814. It is set in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and tells the story of Edward Waverley, an idealistic daydreamer whose loyalty to his regiment is threatened when they are sent to the Scottish Highlands. I’m inspired to read this by a recent visit to Abbotsford, Scott’s home in the Scottish Borders.

The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, the eighth in the Martin Beck series – once more I’ve plunged into a series without reading the earlier books. But it appears that shouldn’t matter as each book is focused on one particular case. I’m not sure what to expect as the blurb on the back says it transforms the police force into the police farce.

The Daughters of Cain by Colin Dexter, the eleventh Inspector Morse mystery. Morse must solve two related murders — a problem complicated by a plethora of suspects and by his attraction to one of the possible killers. I’ve read several of the Morse books, so far, so I was pleased to find another one I haven’t read.

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time. Hitchcock’s 1951 film is based on this book. Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno meet on a train. Bruno manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.” 

Sleeping Beauties by Jo Spain, the third Inspector Tom Reynolds novel set in Dublin and the surrounding areas. I’ve read the fourth book and have copies of the first two to read, so I was pleased to find this book on the shelves. Five bodies are found in woodland and a young woman is missing. A search is under way – can she be found before she too is killed?

The Headhunters by Peter Lovesey, second book DCI Hen Mallin Investigation (I haven’t read the first!)  Mallin and her team investigate the discovery of a dead body, found on the beach at Selsey. Gemma had joked about murdering her boss – and now her boss is missing.

The Vault by Peter Lovesey. I’ve read one of his Peter Diamond books before and enjoyed it. This book is the sixth book in the Peter Diamond series. A skeletal hand is unearthed in the vault under the Pump Room in Bath, England, near the site where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Then a skull is excavated. The bones came from different corpses, and one is modern.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. I’d borrowed a copy of this from the library but hadn’t finished it when I had to return it. In 1986, The Panama Hotel in Seattle has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made a startling discovery in the basement: personal belongings stored away by Japanese families sent to internment camps during the Second World War. The novel goes back and forth between 1986 and World War Two. 

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, a book I’ve often wondered about reading. As the title reveals it is about Frank’s music shop, full of records, vinyl, that is. It’s set in 1988 and is a story about love and about how important music is in our lives. When Ilse asks Frank to teach her about music she is not what she seems and for Frank it opens up old wounds from his past.