No Man’s Nightingale by Ruth Rendell

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

Last month I read books from my own shelves for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge (books owned before 1 January 2016) and the 20 Books of Summer Challenge, but then the urge to read other books took over, mainly because I’ve been adding books to my shelves. For the time being I won’t be reading for the Mount TBR Challenge as I have several books that I’ve acquired this year that I want to read first.

One of them is Ruth Rendell’s No Man’s Nightingale.

Blurb:

The woman vicar of St Peter’s Church may not be popular among the community of Kingsmarkham. But it still comes as a profound shock when she is found strangled in her vicarage.

Inspector Wexford is retired, but he retains a relish for solving mysteries especially when they are as close to home as this one is. So when he’s asked whether he will assist on the case, he readily agrees.

But why did the vicar die? And is anyone else in Kingsmarkham in danger? What Wexford doesn’t know is that the killer is far closer than he, or anyone else, thinks.

My thoughts:

I like Wexford, so I was predisposed to like this book (who in my mind looks like George Baker in the TV Wexford series) and I did enjoy it, although not as much as some of her other books.

Maxine Sams has several cleaning jobs, including cleaning for Reg and Dora Wexford – she talks all the time and regales Wexford with stories about her family, interrupting his reading of Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which she thinks is a holiday guide to Rome. One of Maxine’s clients is the Reverend Sarah Hussain – and it is Maxine who finds her body, lying on the living room floor. She had been strangled.

Wexford, although enjoying his retirement, is pleased when Detective Superintendent Mike Burden asks if he would like to be involved as a consultant in the investigation into Sarah’s murder. It’s interesting to see how Wexford approaches this as he does not agree with Burden’s methods, thinking he has too many team meetings and ignores things Wexford would have concentrated on, nor can he express his opinions openly. And he isn’t sure just what he should or should not report back to Burden. As most of the book is written from Wexford’s point of view we can see how his mind works and the way he views his former colleagues and society in general and I was glad to see that as a retired person he is portrayed with an agile and observant mind.

There are plenty of red herrings and sub-plots that had me wondering as I read. At times it was rather confusing and I noticed a few continuity problems. Various issues are raised, not just the position of the elderly in society, but also questions of race and gender, religious intolerance, rape, single mothers and family relationships. I liked Wexford’s thoughts on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, his musings on religion – he is a’committed atheist’ ( I don’t remember that from earlier books) and the self-doubt he reveals. I also liked the comic elements as Wexford tries to escape from Maxine’s non-stop chatter.

Overall I enjoyed the book, but think I prefer Ruth Rendell’s standalone books and those she wrote under the name of Barbara Vine.

Six in Six 2016

Published on by Margaret14 Comments

Jo at The Book Jotter  is running this meme again this year to summarise six months of reading, sorting the books into six categories ‘“ you can choose from the ones Jo suggests or come up with your own. The same book can obviously feature in more than one category.

Here is my version for 2016, with links to my posts on the books where appropriate. I’ve not listed the books in order of preference and some of the books could just as well fit into more than one category:

  • Six books I loved
  1. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
  2. A House Divided by Margaret Skea
  3. Asta’s Book by Barbara Vine
  4. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
  5. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
  6. Slade House by David Mitchell
  • Six new authors to me:
  1. In Bitter Chill by Sarah Ward
  2. A Month in the Country by J L Carr
  3. The Madness of July by James Naughtie
  4. The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark
  5. The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home
  6. Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham
  • Six authors I have read before
  1. Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie
  2. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
  3. Bones and Silence by Reginald Hill
  4. Crystal Nights by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen
  5. Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
  6. Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey
  • Six historical fiction books 
  1. Lustrum by Robert Harris (Ancient Rome 63 ‘“ 58 BC)
  2. Dictator by Robert Harris (Ancient Rome 58 – 43 BC)
  3. Six Tudor Queens: Katherine of Aragon, The True Queen by Alison Weir (England 1501 ‘“ 1536)
  4. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Gilead, Iowa, America 1956 and earlier)
  5. Styx and Stones by Carola Dunn (England 1920s)
  6. The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers (France past and present)

Six Crime Fiction Books

  1. Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie
  2. The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey
  3. Wycliffe and the Tangled Web by W J Burley
  4. Before the Fact by Francis Iles
  5. A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey
  6. The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie

  • Six authors I read last year ‘“ but not so far this year and their books that I have sitting on my shelves waiting to be read
  1. Dorothy L Sayers ‘“ Clouds of Witness, Hangman’s Holiday
  2. Sadies Jones ‘“ Small Wars
  3. Frances Brody ‘“ Murder in the Afternoon
  4. Colin Dexter ‘“ The Wench is Dead
  5. Charles Dickens ‘“ Little Dorrit
  6. Bill Bryson ‘“ The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island

Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin by W J Burley

Published on by Margaret

It’s that time of year again when I have less time for blogging – summer when the grass and the weeds grow in abundance. So what with that and a host of other things this post is shorter than I would like it to be.

I like W J Burley’s Wycliffe books. I’ve read several of them up to now and enjoyed each one. Set in Cornwall, they have a strong sense of place, and Wycliffe is a quiet, thoughtful detective.

In Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin Chief Superintendent Wycliffe is staying with a Penzance lawyer, Ernest Bishop and his family for a few days over Christmas at the Bishops’ hill-top house. With his wife away in Kenya, Wycliffe is not looking forward to Christmas, and the welcome from the family is polite rather than welcoming. The situation only gets worse when a young girl goes missing after playing the part of the Virgin Mary in the local nativity play, and then her father also goes missing and her mother is found dead in their cottage. Wycliffe moves out of the Bishops’ house as it appears they may be suspects.

What follows is Wycliffe’s investigation which goes back to a crime committed five years earlier, involving many twists and turns. It was a quick and entertaining read with a lot of characters, but all are clearly distinguishable. The plot is complex and it was only as I was getting near the end that I began to have an inkling about the identity of the murderer.

W J Burley (1914 – 2002) lived near Newquay in Cornwall and was a teacher until he retired to concentrate on his writing. He wrote 22 Wycliffe novels. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin was the 13th, first published in 1986 and as such fits into Bev’s Vintage Mystery Cover Scavenger Hunt in the Silver Age (Vintage Mysteries first published any time from 1960 to 1989) in the category of ‘Spooky/House’ on its cover. It is also one of my 20 Books of Summer 2016.

More TBR Books

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Whilst I’ve been busy reading books from my own shelves, I’ve also been busy replacing them with more TBRs.  These two piles are the result of a visit to Barter Books in Alnwick, my favourite bookshop, and from the secondhand book table at my local village hall.

I’m not completely sure just how many TBRs I have, but the figure on LibraryThing stands at 304. There may be more books hiding on my shelves I haven’t added and then there are the e-books which I have never attempted to count.

These are my recent additions:

TBR Bks June 2016 P1020053

 

These books are all by authors whose books I’ve enjoyed in the past. From top to bottom they are:

  • The Minotaur by Barbara Vine – a psychological suspense drama about a sinister family who wish to remain isolated.
  • Another Part of the Wood by Beryl Bainbridge – a short novel about a holiday in Wales where ‘catastrophe lurks behind every tree‘.
  • Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge – a novel about the sinking of the Titanic.
  • Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh – the second of her Plague Times trilogy, set in a dystopian England ravaged by the Sweats pandemic.
  • The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Kate Mosse – set in 1912 in a Sussex village where a grisly murder has taken place, this is part ghost story and part psychological thriller.
  • The Heiress of Linn Hagh by Karen Charlton – set in Northumberland in 1809, a beautiful heiress disappears from her locked bedroom.

TBR Bks June 2016 Picture1

 

  • The Plot Against America by Philip Roth – alternative history in which the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh becomes President of the United States.
  • ‘Tis by Frank McCourt – a sequel to ‘˜Angela’s Ashes‘, in which McCourt tells tales of his life.
  • Swimming to Ithaca by Simon Mawer – 1950s in Cyprus, a ‘world of carob trees, cocktails and rebellion‘.
  • The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Simon Mawer – historical fiction, a gripping novel set in wartime France.
  • An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas – a Commissaire Adamsberg investigation. Severed feet are found outside Highgate Cemetery and a violent murder is committed in Paris.

I’m not going to run out of anything to read yet!

Mount TBR Mountaineering Checkpoint #2

Published on by Margaret6 Comments
Mount TBR 2016
Now it’s July and the year is half-way over so Bev, our mountaineering guide, is calling for a second quarterly check-in post and asking how we are getting on.

1. Tell us how many miles you’ve made it up your mountain (# of books read).  

I’m on my way up Mt Vancouver , having read 28 books. I’m well on target to reach Mt Ararat (48 books) this year and hoping to get a fair way up Mt Kilimanjaro (60 books).

2. Which book (read so far) has been on your TBR mountain the longest? Was it worth the wait? Or is it possible you should have tackled it back when you first put it on the pile? Or tossed it off the edge without reading it all?

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf has been on my TBR mountain the longest. I’m not sure when I bought it, but it was one of the books I listed when I first joined LibraryThing in 2007.  I do wish I’d read it before this year but I enjoyed it so it was worth the wait.

My Life According to Books 

Use titles from your list to complete as many of the following sentences below as you can.  Feel free to add or change words (such as “a” or “the” or others that clarify) as needed.

1. My Ex is/was [reduced to] Bones and Silence (by Reginald Hill)

2. My best friend is Doctor Thorne (by Anthony Trollope)
3. Lately, at work [I’ve been] Talking to the Dead (by Harry Bingham)
4. If I won the lottery, [I’d be on] The Voyage Out (by Virginia Woolf) [cruising around the world]
5. My fashion sense [is because of the] Heat Wave (by Penelope Lively)
6. My next ride [will take me to a]  Destination Unknown (by Agatha Christie)
7. The one I love is [in] The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
8. If I ruled the world, everyone would [know] The Secret of Chimneys (by Agatha Christie)
9. When I look out my window, I see The Mill on the Floss (by George Eliot)
10. The best things in life are [found during] A Month in the Country (by J L Carr)

Books Read in June

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

I read seven books in June, all of them ones that I’d included on my 20 Books of Summer Challenge, six of them books that qualify for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge (ie books I’ve owned prior to 1st January 2016). And I’ve managed to write about six of them – see the links to the books listed below.

  1. High Rising by Angela Thirkell (TBR) – an entertaining and witty social comedy, set in the 1930s.
  2. Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham (TBR) – crime fiction introducing DC Fiona Griffiths, one of the most original fictional detectives I’ve come across.
  3. Asta’s Book by Barbara Vine (TBR) – a murder mystery, a missing child, a question of identity and overarching it all are the stories of two families ‘“ the Westerbys and the Ropers. A brilliant book.
  4. A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey (TBR) – Inspector Alan Grant investigates the apparent suicide of a young and beautiful film star, Christine Clay, who was found dead beneath the cliffs of the south coast.
  5. The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (TBR) – a gripping novel that had me on tenterhooks as well as being a beautifully written book, set in a Europe at war and its aftermath. I loved it.
  6. Heat Wave by Penelope Lively (TBR) – an in depth study of angst, frustration and conflict, set against the changing landscape of the countryside, the effect of the heat on the land, the crops and the people.
  7. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin by W J Burley – a search for a missing person turns into a murder case. (My post on this book to come later.)

During June I continued reading Andrew Marr’s A History of Modern Britain, which has reminded me of all the difficult times we have lived through in the years after the Second World War and continue to experience.

I’ve been reading some excellent fiction and my favourite book has to be Asta’s Book by Barbara Vine:

closely followed by The Glass Room by Simon Mawer: