Teaser Tuesdays

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

We’re still not in our new home, but still have access to the internet and I’m still reading! Next week it’ll be more difficult with all the unpacking and settling in, so I’ll probably be missing from the blogosphere then.

Currently I’m reading Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin.

About the book (from the back cover): It is August in Edinburgh and the Festival is in full swing… A brutally tortured body is discovered in one of the city’s ancient subterranean streets and marks on the corpse cause Rebus to suspect the involvement of sectarian activists. The prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a city heaving with tourists is almost unthinkable. When the victim turns out to be the son of a notorious gangster, Rebus realises he is sitting atop a volcano of mayhem – and it’s just about to erupt.

My teaser is from page 54:

Rebus shrugged. I’m just wondering how professional all of this really was. I mean on the surface, if you look at the style of execution, then yes, it was a pro job, no question. But then things start to niggle.

I always enjoy reading the Rebus books.  Although you can read each one as a stand alone book, reading them in order helps with understanding the background and the characters as they develop. I prefer reading to watching the TV series, but inevitably it is the faces of the actors I imagine as I’m reading.

Sunday Salon -This Weekend’s Books

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

tssbadge1I’d sorted out some books to take with me whilst we are between houses, but sadly there wasn’t room in the car for the box, so it had to go into storage. I kept out the ones I was already reading:

  • A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin, which I finished yesterday. This is historical fiction set during and after the Wars of the Roses. It’s very good – more about it later.
  • Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin – crime fiction, the sixth Inspector Rebus book.
  •  Can Any Mother Help Me? by Jenna Bailey – this is a fascinating book of letters written by a group of women over a period of fifty years. Their letters are part of the Mass Observation archive, forming a record of everyday life during the last century.
  •  Billy by Pamela Stephenson – a biography of Billy Connolly, written by his wife.

On 1 December I began Emily’s TBR Challenge – reading books I already owned from before then. So it was lucky for me that we went shopping in Milton Keynes last Sunday – 29 November and I bought three books to add to to the little pile I have with me until we can unpack our books, which won’t be for a while yet. The shopping centre was absolutely solid with people last Sunday, which makes me feel very claustrophobic and just want to go home, but I managed to buy these:

  • Black and Blue by Ian Rankin – another Inspector Rebus book. D is ahead of me in reading these and this is the next one he’ll be reading.
  • Portobello by Ruth Rendell – a thriller (not an Inspector Wexford).
  • Drood by Dan Simmons – I’ve been wondering whether to read this after reading about it on the blogs. As it’s so long it should keep me going for quite a while. A novel of 19th century England, this is a fictionalised account of  Charles Dickens’ last five years as narrated by Wilkie Collins. I haven’t read Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, so I hope that won’t matter.

Today I’ll be reading Mortal Causes and maybe start Drood.

Crime Fiction Alphabet: I

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Continuing with the Crime Fiction Alphabet,  I is for Ian Rankin and Inspector Rebus.

Earlier this year I decided to read Rankin’s Inspector Rebus books in order, starting with the first, Knots and Crosses, published in 1987. Recently I finished the fifth – The Black Book, published in 1993. In all there are 17 in the series, so I’ve a few to go yet. I have read a couple out of sequence – Set in Darkness (2000) and The Falls (2001).

My copy of The Black Book is packed away with our belongings in storage, so this is going to be a bit brief. This is the first book in which both Big Ger Cafferty the ruthless gangster boss, organiser of crime in Edinburgh and DC Siobhan Clarke appear as main characters. DS Brian Holmes has been mugged and is in a coma in hospital, so Rebus with the help of Siobhan, is investigating his attack in the carpark of the Heartbreak Cafe.  (I liked the references to Elvis in this book, with dishes such as ‘Love Me Tenderloin”.) When Rebus finds Brian’s little black book, with his coded notes on various criminals and old cases he is drawn back to investigate the fire that five years earlier had destroyed an Edinburgh hotel leaving an unidentified dead body. His team are also running Operation Moneybags, aimed at busting Big Ger’s moneylending  business.

Rebus has plenty of personal problems in this book. His girlfriend, fed up with his unreliable hours has locked him out of her flat and his brother and ex-con Michael has turned up in Edinburgh, sleeping in the box room in Rebus’s flat. So Rebus, who has let his flat to students has to sleep on the sofa in the living room. As usual with the Rebus books there are a number of twists and turns, with different sub-plots running at the same time as the main plot.

You don’t have to read the books in order as they each stand alone, but I think it helps to see Rebus’s character as it develops. The next book in the series is Mortal Causes, and as I have kept this handy (not in storage) I’ll be reading this next.

Teaser Tuesday

Published on by Margaret11 Comments

I finished reading The Light of Day byGraham Swift yesterday. Table Talk asked in the comments on my Sunday Salon post whether to try books by Swift. Well, maybe. This one turned out to be a bit drawn out towards the end, but I felt compelled to finish it. I’m still not sure I like his style of writing, nor the enigmatic way of introducing characters. As Jane said in the comments on Sunday it’s hard to start a book sometimes because of the learning curve and it was.

Here is the teaser:

Back to being you.

There are times, there always will be, when you still wish you weren’t, you’d never been you. Or when you could almost believe it really was some other person, not you – how could it have been you? – who did what you’re supposed to have done. (page 197)

For more teasers, visit Should Be Reading.

Sunday Salon – Today’s Book

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

tssbadge1We’re not moving into our new house for a while yet and I’m writing this in a rented barn conversion, which is just beautiful. I’ll take a few photos later. For now, I’m just writing a short post about what I’m  reading today, which is not what is shown on the sidebar under “Currently Reading”.

I brought some books with me but as there are some here I had a look at them and started to read The Light of Day by Graham Swift.

I shouldn’t like this book – it’s written in the first person present tense, a style I don’t like much, it begins very enigmatically referring to characters and events when I have no idea who or what  they are and there are quite a lot of short sentences without verbs – my English teacher wouldn’t have let me get away with that. And yet it works, it builds up suspense and tension. The cover is different from the one I’ve shown here, but I can’t find the same one on line, so this will have to do.

So far I’ve gathered that there has been a murder, and I know who did it. Now it’s a matter of discovering the why and the how.