The 1970 Club

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

It’s time for the 1970 Club, the bi-annual event where Simon and Karen ask readers across the internet to join together to build up a picture of a particular year in books. Any book published in 1970 counts – in whatever format, language, place.

I’ve previously read and reviewed read three books published in 1970:

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie – not representative of Agatha Christie’s books and not one I’d recommend to anyone who hasn’t read any of her books. Although there is a degree of pessimism and cynicism running through it there is also a strain of humour, a sense that you shouldn’t take it all too seriously and I did enjoy it.

Sir Stafford Nye, a diplomat is on his way back to London, sitting in an airport lounge in Frankfurt. He was thinking that “life and journeys by air were really excessively boring” when he met a dark haired woman whose life was in danger and his own life changed for ever. The woman wanted his passport to get her safely to London, disguised by his dark purply-blue cloak with its scarlet lining and hood.  He agreed. So far, so good. From then on Sir Stafford is dragged along, somewhat unwillingly at first into a world of espionage, and world-wide organisations dedicated to anarchy and violence.

A Clubbable Woman by Reginald Hill, his first published book and the first book featuring Dalziel and Pascoe. My first encounters with Dalziel and Pascoe (played by Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan respectively) were the TV adaptations that began in 1996 and I was pleased to find out that Warren Clarke’s portrayal of him was a good match for Reginald Hill’s description.

Connon, known as Connie, was set to play rugby for England before an ankle injury ended his career. He is no longer Wetherton Rugby Football Club’s star player but he still plays occasionally. After a match in which he returns home dazed and confused after a blow on the head he finds his wife, Mary watching television, leaving him to get his own meal. Feeling sick he goes upstairs, then passes out. Later he realises that she is still downstairs, apparently still watching the television – then he discovers that she is dead, with a hole in the middle of her forehead. Dalziel, who is a member of the rugby club, and Pascoe investigate the murder. 

Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat by W J Burley is the second book in the Wycliffe series. It’s set in Cornwall in the late 1960s, specifically at the time of the astronauts’ first moon landing in July 1969. Superintendent Wycliffe, despite being on holiday, can’t help getting involved when a young woman is found murdered in her seedy hotel bedroom. She’d been strangled and her face had been savagely smashed in. A thousand pounds was still in a drawer, hidden beneath her clothes, so the motive wasn’t theft. I like Wycliffe, a quiet man who works on instinct and I’ve read a few more of the books in the series.

I have two other books published in 1970 to read in my TBRs:

I’m the King of the Castle by Susan Hill, which I am currently reading and The Sovereignty of Good by Iris Murdoch.

Classics Club Spin

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin.

Before next Sunday, 20 October 2024 create a post that lists twenty books of your choice that remain “to be read” on your Classics Club list. On that day the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The challenge is to read whatever book falls under that number on your Spin List by the 18th December, 2024.

Here’s my list:

  1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  2. The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
  3. The Stars Look Down by A J Cronin
  4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
  5. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
  6. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
  7. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
  8. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning
  9. The Birds and other short stories by Daphne du Maurier
  10. I’ll Never be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier
  11. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
  12. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  13. The Go Between by L P Hartley
  14. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
  15. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  16. Daisy Miller by Henry James
  17. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
  18. Friends and Heroes by Olivia Manning
  19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
  20. Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

I hope it’s one of the shorter books! Which one/s would you recommend?

The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell: Book Beginnings & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret6 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. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

I’m featuring The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell, one of my TBRs, a book that’s been sitting on my bookshelves since 2016. It’s one of her later novels, a stand-alone book.

Chapter One:

He was a handsome man. A handsome boy, his mother called him, because she started praising his looks when he was five.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Unlike other users of Baldwin’s Hill, who were afraid of pregnancy or, in the case of the girls, of not being virgins when they were married, he and Daphne went ‘all the way’, as the phrase had it. She didn’t get pregnant, though he had done nothing to prevent it.

Description from Amazon UK

Beneath the green meadows of Loughton, Essex, a dark network of tunnels has been dug. A group of children discover them. They play there. It becomes their place.

Seventy years on, the world has changed. Developers have altered the rural landscape. Friends from a half-remembered world have married, died, grown sick, moved – or disappeared.

Work on a new house called Warlock uncovers a long buried grisly secret: the bones of two severed hands are discovered in a box, and an investigation into a long-buried crime of passion begins.

The friends, who played together as children, begin to question their past. And a weary detective, more concerned with current crimes, must investigate a case of murder.

Spell the Month in Books – October 2024

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The optional theme this month is Your Favourite Genre. I’ve chosen books combining two of my favourite genres historical fiction and crime fiction into Historical Crime Fiction.

The links in the titles of each book are to my own posts.

O is for Once Upon a River by Dianne Setterfield

An intriguing and mystifying book that entranced me from the beginning to the end. The story has a timeless feel to it but it is set somewhere towards the end of the nineteenth century. It’s a mystery beginning in the Swan Inn at Radcot, an ancient inn, well-known for its storytelling, on the banks of the Thames. A badly injured stranger enters carrying the drowned corpse of a little girl. It’s mystifying as hours later the dead child, miraculously it seems, takes a breath, and returns to life. The mystery is enhanced by folklore, by science that appears to be magic, and by romance and superstition.

C is for Catching the Eagle by Karen Charlton

Set in Northumberland in 1809, this book is based on a true story –  that of Karen Charlton’s husband’s ancestors. Kirkley Hall manor house is mysteriously burgled. When suspicion falls on Jamie Charlton, he and his family face a desperate battle to save him from the gallows. Stephen Lavender, the detective employed by  Nathaniel Ogle, the owner of Kirkley Hall was also a real historical figure, a detective, who later became the Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester after the formation of the police force by Sir Robert Peel. This is the type of historical fiction that I like. The characters come across as real people, with real problems in a real time and place (Northumberland 1809 – 1811). 

T is for Tamburlaine Must Die by Louise Welsh. This is a novella, written in the first person and set in May 1593. It’s a tense, dramatic story of the last days of Christopher Marlowe, playwright, poet and spy. Accused of heresy and atheism, his death is a mystery, although conjecture and rumours abound. It conveys the claustrophobic atmosphere of danger surrounding Marlowe; who can he trust, and who is behind the pseudonym of ‘Tamburlaine’, who posted a libellous handbill referencing Marlowe’s plays? In such a brief book Louise Welsh has managed to convey the political and the seedy underworld of the Elizabethan period, the dishonesty and love of intrigue, the dangers of the plague and the threat of war. 

O is for Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders by Gyles Brandreth. It’s set in 1889 – 1890, fin-de-siècle London and Paris and the mystery begins with Oscar Wilde finding the naked body of Billy Wood, a 16 year old boy in the candle-lit room in a small terraced house in Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament. Billy’s throat has been cut and he is laid out as though on a funeral bier, surrounded by candles, with the smell of incense still in the air. It’s a combination of fiction and fact, with both real and imaginary characters. Wilde with the help of his friends Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Sherard sets out to solve the crime.

B is for The Body in the Ice by A J MacKenzie. It’s the 2nd Hardcastle and Chaytor Mystery set in Romney Marsh and the surrounding countryside in 1796-7. This is the period after the end of the American War of Independence, so Britain and America are at peace, but Britain and revolutionary France are at war with the constant threat of a French invasion. That winter was exceptionally harsh and cold and on Christmas Day in the village of St Mary in the Marsh, on the Kent coast Amelia Chaytor is spending the day with her friends, spinsters Miss Godfrey and Miss Roper when their maidservant bursts in and announces that she has seen someone at New Hall stables, frozen into the ice face down. Previously two men had been seen arriving at the Hall and at first it looks as though one of them has killed the other as they have both disappeared.

E is for An Expert in Murder, a very detailed and intricate murder mystery by Nicola Upson. She has a passion for the theatre and it shines through to great advantage in this book, set in the theatrical world of  the 1930s – March, 1934 to be precise, as the final week of Josephine Tey’s play Richard of Bordeaux begins. Josephine is travelling from her home in Inverness to London by steam train when she meets an enthusiastic fan, Elspeth Simmons, who boarded the train at Berwick-upon-Tweed. They arrive in London, but then Elspeth is murdered and soon afterwards Bernard Aubrey, the theatre owner is also found dead, poisoned. Detective Inspector Archie Primrose, a friend of Josephine’s investigates. It’s a blend of fact and fiction.

R is for A Rustle of Silk by Alys Clare, first in a series featuring Dr Gabriel Taverner, set in the early years of 17th century England. It begins in April 1603 when former ship’s surgeon Gabriel Taverner has settled in Devon near his family and he is trying to set up a new practice as a physician. The local coroner, Theophilus Davey asks him to examine a partially decomposed body found beside the river. At first it looks as though it was suicide, but on realising that it’s his brother-in-law, Jeromy, Gabriel and Theophilus are convinced that he was murdered.

The next link up will be on November 2, 2024 when the theme will be: Food or Autumn Decorations on the Cover

Six Degrees of Separation from  Long Island by Colm Tóibín to Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter

Published on by Margaret17 Comments

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month starts  with ColmTóibín’s Long Island, the sequel to Brooklyn. I haven’t read this book, so this is the description on Amazon UK:

A man with an Irish accent knocks on Eilis Fiorello’s door on Long Island and in that moment everything changes. Eilis and Tony have built a secure, happy life here since leaving Brooklyn – perhaps a little stifled by the in-laws so close, but twenty years married and with two children looking towards a good future.

And yet this stranger will reveal something that will make Eilis question the life she has created. For the first time in years she suddenly feels very far from home and the revelation will see her turn towards Ireland once again. Back to her mother. Back to the town and the people she had chosen to leave behind. Did she make the wrong choice marrying Tony all those years ago? Is it too late now to take a different path?

My first link is from the word ‘Island‘ in 100 Days on Holy Island by Peter Mortimer. The island is also known as Lindisfarne. This sense of being an outsider pervades the book. He always felt an ‘outsider’, not accepted by the locals. He wasn’t there as a tourist, nor had he gone to settle there, but he went with the intention of seeing how he coped with living there  for one hundred days and writing about it.

My second link is The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves, the 10th Vera Stanhope mystery novel. It’s set on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne a tidal island just off the coast of Northumberland, only accessible across a causeway when the tide is out. DCI Vera Stanhope and her team investigate the death of Rick Kelsall who was discovered hanged from the rafters of his small bedroom on Holy Island. He is one of a group of friends who have met for a reunion each year on the island for the past fifty years

My third link is another book with the word ‘tide‘ in the title – A Dark and Twisted Tide by Sharon Bolton. This is such a terrifying novel, particularly if like me, you have a fear of drowning. Police Constable Lacey Flint thinks she’s safe. Living on the river, she’s never been happier. Until she finds a body floating on the surface, as she wild-swims in the Thames.

My fourth link is The Marlow Club Murder by Robert Thorogood a ‘cosy’ murder mystery. Seventy-seven year old Judith Potts is happy with her life, living in an Arts and Crafts mansion on the River Thames, although there are hints that there is something in her past she wants to forget. It’s the height of summer, in the grip of a heatwave, and Judith decides to take all her clothes off and go for swim in the Thames. She was enjoying herself when she hears a shout from her neighbour’s house on the opposite riverbank, followed by a gunshot. Later, when she goes to investigate, she finds him, dead in the river, with a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. Judith is a crossword compiler, who writes cryptic clues.

So My fifth link is Puzzled: Secrets and Clues from a Life in Words by David Astle, a real life cryptic crossword compiler, a Melbourne-based writer of non-fiction, fiction and drama. He co-hosts Letters and Numbers (the Australian version of Countdown) as the dictionary expert, and his crosswords appear in Australian papers The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Beginning with a Master Puzzle, he leads us through each of the clues, chapter by chapter, revealing the secrets of anagrams, double meanings, manipulations, spoonerisms and hybrid clues. More than a how-to manual and more than a memoir, Puzzled is a book for word junkies everywhere.

My final link is Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter the second book in the Inspector Morse books. Inspector Morse is perplexed when a letter of reassurance arrives from young Valerie Taylor, missing for more than two years and presumed dead, in a case that takes a bizarre turn when a mysterious body turns up. This book, like all of Dexter’s books, is a most complicated mystery, one of the ‘puzzle’ types. Dexter, himself, constructed crossword puzzles and made Morse a crossword aficionado. Morse is puzzled by this case, his brain seething in ceaseless turmoil, until he realised that if he shuffled the suspects and possibilities like the letters in an anagram the answer would come to him.

The books in my chain are a mix of crime fiction novels, and non fiction (Puzzled and 100 Days on Holy island). What is in your chain, I wonder?

Next month (November 2, 2024), we’ll start with Sally Rooney’s latest release, Intermezzo.

Top 5 anticipated reads for Q4 2024

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and it is now being hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads. It’s time to talk about all the shiny new books coming out in October, November and December 2024. What are the books you can’t wait to hold in your hands the most? For details of all of the latest prompts for October to December, see Meeghan’s post here

Here are five books I’m looking forward to reading and they are all coming out this month! They are all by authors whose books I’ve loved.

Death Rites by Sarah Ward – 3 October. This is the first in a new series, a dark and atmospheric crime thriller (Carla James Crime Thrillers Book 1).

Archaeology professor Carla James is reeling following the death of her husband. Desperate for a change of scene, she takes a job at an elite New England college. On her first day, Carla is asked to represent the department at a murder site. She initially believes there is nothing notable about the scattered debris that surrounds the body, but there is more to the case than meets the eye. This victim is just the latest in a series of unsolved deaths. Nothing obvious links them but Carla is convinced – there is a methodical killer operating in the shadows.

Can she uncover the truth before she becomes the next victim?

Midnight and Blue by Ian Rankin – 10 October. It’s the 25th Inspector Rebus book. I’ve read all the others, so I have to read this one!

John Rebus spent his life as a detective putting Edinburgh’s most deadly criminals behind bars. Now, he’s joined them…

As new allies and old enemies circle, and the days and nights bleed into each other, even the legendary detective struggles to keep his head. That is, until a murder at midnight in a locked cell presents a new mystery. They say old habits die hard… However, this is a case where the prisoners and the guards are all suspects, and everyone has something to hide. With no badge, no authority and no safety net, Rebus walks a tightrope – with his life on the line.

But how do you find a killer in a place full of them?

The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse – 10 October The fourth book in the Joubert Family Chronicles series. I love the cover!

Olifantshoek, Southern Africa, 1688. When the violent Cape wind blows from the south-east, they say the voices of the unquiet dead can be heard whispering through the deserted valley. Suzanne Joubert, a Huguenot refugee from war-torn France, arrives in search of her cousin — the notorious she-captain and pirate commander Louise Reydon-Joubert — who landed at the Cape of Good Hope more than sixty years before, then disappeared without a trace . . .

Franschhoek, Southern Africa, 1862. Nearly one hundred and eighty years after Suzanne’s perilous journey, another intrepid and courageous woman of the Joubert family — Isabelle Lepard — has journeyed to the small frontier town once known as Oliftantshoek in search of her long-lost relations. Intent on putting the women of her family back into the history books, she quickly discovers that the crimes and tragedies still shadow the present. And now, Isabelle faces a race against time if she is to discover the truth, and escape with her life . . .

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller – 24 October

December 1962, the West Country.

In the darkness of an old asylum, a young man unscrews the lid from a bottle of sleeping pills.

In the nearby village, two couples begin their day. Local doctor, Eric Parry, mulling secrets, sets out on his rounds, while his pregnant wife sleeps on in the warmth of their cottage. Across the field, in a farmhouse impossible to heat, funny, troubled Rita Simmons is also asleep, her head full of images of a past life her husband prefers to ignore. He’s been up for hours, tending to the needs of the small dairy farm he bought, a place where he hoped to create a new version of himself, a project that’s already faltering.

There is affection – if not always love – in both homes: these are marriages that still hold some promise. But when the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards – a true winter, the harshest in living memory – the two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.

Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, could you run to?

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks – 27 October because I loved his English Pastoral.

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.

Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.

This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold.

Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.