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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.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

My Friday Post: The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M Harris

Published on March 23, 2018 by Margaret13 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, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

This week was the week for the library van to visit (it comes once a fortnight on Tuesdays) and I borrowed a few books, including The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M Harris.

The Gospel of Loki (Runemarks, #0.5)

ALL OF US CAME FROM FIRE AND ICE. Chaos and Order. Light and dark. In the beginning – or back in the day – there was fire coming out of a hole in the ice, bringing disruption, turmoil and change. Change isn’t always comfortable, but it is a fact of life. And that’s where life as we know it began, as the fires of World Below pierced the ice of World Above.

Blurb:

The novel is a brilliant first-person narrative of the rise and fall of the Norse gods – retold from the point of view of the world’s ultimate trickster, Loki. It tells the story of Loki’s recruitment from the underworld of Chaos, his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master, Odin, through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard itself.

Using her life-long passion for the Norse myths, Joanne Harris has created a vibrant and powerful fantasy novel.

The first adult epic fantasy novel from multi-million copy bestselling author of Chocolat, Joanne Harris.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. These are the rules:

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

Page 56:

I found the smiths in their workshop. A cavern, deep in World Below, where a series of cracks in the earth gave vent to a seam of molten rock. This was their only source of light, it was also their forge and their hearth. In my original Aspect, I would not have suffered, either from the fire or the fumes, but in this body I was unprepared, both for the heat and for the stench.

~~~

At the beginning of the book there is a list of Characters, with a word of advice – don’t trust any of them. Loki describes himself as the Trickster, the Father of Lies … Not the most popular guy around. I’m really looking forward to reading this – hope I won’t be disappointed!

What do you think – should I carry on reading – or not?

My Week in Books: 21 March 2018

Published on March 21, 2018 by Margaret18 Comments

This Week in Books is a weekly round-up hosted by Lypsyy Lost & Found, about what I’ve been reading Now, Then & Next.

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A similar meme, WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

Currently reading:

The Tenderness of Wolves

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, set in Canada in 1867. A man has been brutally murdered, a woman finds his body and her seventeen-year-old son has disappeared. She has to clear his name, heading north into the forest and the desolate landscape that lies beyond it, Also tracking him is what passes for the law in this frontier land: trappers, sheriffs, traders. As the party pushes further from civilisation, hidden purposes and old obsessions are revealed.

I’m not enjoying it so far as much as I hoped, or expected. It may be because I can’t get the characters clear in my head and have to keep turning back the pages to identify them.

I’m also reading a rather strange book, The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes, one of his Inspector John Appleby mysteries. It’s not at all what I expected but I am enjoying it. Set in the Blitz there’s a haunted house that has vanished, a horse, called Daffodil that has been stolen and two girls have been kidnapped. Appleby and another detective, Hudspith investigate. It is bizarre with elements of the absurd.

Recently finished:

The last book I finished is The Good Liar by Catherine McKenzie. An explosion rips apart a Chicago building, the lives of three women are forever altered.

Cecily whose husband and best friend were inside the building. Kate, who fled the disaster and is hoping that her past won’t catch up with her, and Franny, a young woman in search of her birth mother, who she says was also in the building. The story is told through each woman’s perspective. They all have secrets – but who is the liar?

I’ll post my review soon.

Next:

I have so many books I want to read next, but right now I can’t decide. I really should start Little Dorrit, my Classics Club spin book soon. It was originally published in nineteen monthly instalments, each consisting of 32 pages and I can’t imagine being a reader in 1855 keeping track of a story in monthly instalments over 2 years! I hope it won’t take me that long.

Little Dorritt

Blurb (Amazon):

When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea prison. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Panks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, “Little Dorrit” is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity.

Have you read any of these books? Do any of them tempt you?

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.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Snow Scenes in the Garden

Published on March 17, 2018March 18, 2018 by Margaret9 Comments

The snow from the beginning of March had nearly all gone, with just a few areas in the back garden still covered in snow, when it started snowing here today. We’ve had snow flurries all day but it’s all gone now.

This is what it was like at the beginning of March in the heaviest snow fall we’ve had since 2009. This view is from the kitchen of the decking where the snow had piled up in front of the patio doors.

Heidi looking at the snow

The photo below is of the end of the garden next to the field.

And this close up shows how the snow had blown into drifts along the back fence.

The view from the front window – blackbirds, chaffinches and sparrows. At one point there were six blackbirds and lots of little birds – I tried to get a photo of all them together, but they kept flying away.

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Below, a close -up of a nuthatch on the fat balls.

Nuthatch

We had a couple of rare visitors too – first a woodcock

And then an otter – the first time we have ever seen one in the garden. I watched it come up from the stream, dripping wet early one morning. It made its way to the back door and had a look at Heidi’s cat flap! She was scared stiff.

My Friday Post: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Published on March 16, 2018 by Margaret21 Comments

At least two of my blogging friends, Cleo and Helen, have written reviews of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which have tempted me to at least have a look at this book. I hesitate because it’s written in the present tense, which often irritates me. So I decided to borrow a copy from the library and I collected it yesterday.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Day One

I forget everything between footsteps.

‘Anna!’ I finish shouting, snapping my mouth shut in surprise.

My mind has gone blank. I don’t know who Anna is or why I’m calling her name. I don’t even know how I got here. I’m standing in a forest, shielding my eyes from the spitting rain. My heart’s thumping, I reek of sweat and my legs are shaking. I must have been running but I can’t remember why.

Blurb:

‘Somebody’s going to be murdered at the ball tonight. It won’t appear to be a murder and so the murderer won’t be caught. Rectify that injustice and I’ll show you the way out.’

It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.

But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot.

The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath…

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice. These are the rules:

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

Page 56:

How can I explain that a strange chap in a plague doctor costume warned me to keep an eye out for a footman – a name that means nothing to me, and yet fills me with a crippling fear every time I hear it?

‘I’m sorry, Evie,’ I say, shaking my head ruefully. ‘There’s more I need to tell you, but not here and not quite yet.’

~~~

The endpapers show a plan of Blackheath House and the various cottages in the grounds, together with plans showing the locations of the rooms and where each guest is staying. It reminds me a bit of the game Cluedo.

What do you think – should I carry on reading – or not?