Loch Down Abbey by Beth Cowan-Erskine

Published on by Margaret7 Comments

Hodder & Stoughton| April 2021| 300 pages| ebook| Review copy| 4*

Description

It’s the 1930s and a mysterious illness is spreading over Scotland. But the noble and ancient family of Inverkillen, residents of Loch Down Abbey, are much more concerned with dwindling toilet roll supplies and who will look after the children now that Nanny has regretfully (and most inconveniently) departed this life.

Then Lord Inverkillen, Earl and head of the family, is found dead in mysterious circumstances. The inspector declares it an accident but Mrs MacBain, the head housekeeper, isn’t so convinced. As no one is allowed in or out because of the illness, the residents of the house – both upstairs and downstairs – are the only suspects. With the Earl’s own family too busy doing what can only be described as nothing, she decides to do some digging – in between chores, of course – and in doing so uncovers a whole host of long-hidden secrets, lies and betrayals that will alter the dynamics of the household for ever.

Loch Down Abbey is a light, quick and easy read that kept me entertained. The pun in the title suggested to me that it would be an amusing novel and the publishers describe it as a playful, humorous novel set in 1930s Scotland. I think it’s quite like a cross between a P G Wodehouse novel and a country house mystery, with elements of farce.

Loch Down Abbey, is a large rambling house with 125 rooms, not including the servants’ quarters, and 5 thousand acres of land on the shores of Loch Down. It has been the home of the Ogilvy-Sinclair Clan for six centuries. I found it quite bewildering at first as there are so many characters. I had to keep going back to the List of Characters to remind myself who they all were.

It’s partly a cozy, historical murder mystery, but mostly a family saga. Lord Hamish Inverkillen is found dead, and at first it looks like an accident, but the housekeeper Mrs MacBain thinks it could be murder. It becomes clear that the Abbey, as well as their whisky distillery is in debt, so much so that the only way they can survive is to sell the house, the distillery and land. There’s a mysterious illness known as Virulent Pernicious Mauvaise spreading around the country. Loch Down Abbey has to go into lockdown! Most of the servants catch the disease and have to be isolated away from the family, meaning that the family have to make their own breakfasts, light the fires in the bedrooms and make their own beds – unheard of for aristocrats! And as Nanny has died the children run wild causing all sorts of mayhem.

As Mrs MacBain and Inspector Jarvis investigate Hamish’s death, lots of secrets and scandals are revealed. I really liked the descriptions of the Abbey itself complete with secret passages, reminding me of Enid Blyton’s novels and I thought the ending, though a bit unbelievable, was inevitable.

My thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

Empire by Conn Iggulden

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Penguin| May 2023| 409 pages| ebook| Review Book| 5*

Pericles is more than a hero. He’s the leader of Athens. The empire’s beacon of light.

But even during times of peace, the threat of Sparta – Athens’s legendary rival – looms large on the horizon. When a sudden catastrophe brings Sparta to its knees, Pericles sees a golden opportunity to forever shift the balance of power in his city’s favour.

For sometimes, the only way to win lasting peace is to wage war. Sparta may be weak, but their power is far from extinguished. Soon a ruthless young boy steps forward to lead the Spartans back to greatness.

As the drums of battle draw closer, can Pericles rise once more?

Or will the world’s greatest empire fall under his watch?

My thoughts

Empire is the second in the Golden Age series, continuing the story told in Lion. Pericles is the main character, now the leader of Athens, appointed as a strategos (a military general). Iggulden brings the period to life as he details the continuing struggle for power between Athens and Sparta. The earthquake that struck around 464 BC destroyed most of the city of Sparta. After the Spartans rejected the Athenians’ offer of help Pericles realised that war between them was inevitable and he decided to rebuild the walls around the city to keep it safe. When the Spartans heard that the walls were rising they demanded they be taken down. The Athenians ignored this demand which, of course, led to war, with the Spartans laying siege to Athens.

Lion is an action packed and a gripping story. Iggulden tells the story, seamlessly incorporating his research into the narrative so that this doesn’t read like a textbook but as a fascinating and gripping epic tale of war and death between the states of Athens and Sparta. It’s an amazing tale of political intrigue and bloodthirsty battles. Equally as fascinating as the story is Iggulden’s Historical Note, in which he expands on the background and detail of the historical record. He also explains how he has compressed some of the years and has omitted some ‘actions, skirmishes, insults and general breakdown of good relations between the two states and their allies.’

I think it’s an entertaining and very readable book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with One-Word Titles

Published on by Margaret23 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog. The topic this week is Books with One-Word Titles. I last did a Top Ten post on this topic in March 2020, so the books I’ve chosen are all books I’ve read since then.

Nucleus by Rory Clements – the second book in his Tom Wilde spy thriller series. This one is set in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War. It is a fast-paced and gripping book, involving murder, IRA bombers, and espionage, with many twists and turns.

Undercurrent by Barney Norris, a novel telling the story of a family’s grief and loss as well as love. This is a quiet thoughtful book that explores the nature of our relationships and emotions.

Foster by Claire Keegan, a novella about a young girl who is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. Claire Keegan’s style of writing is precise, focused, and beautifully written bringing her characters to life – these are real, ordinary people, living ordinary lives.

Exit by Belinda Bauer – what initially looks like a novel considering the ethics of assisted suicide this turns into crime fiction and becomes a borderline ‘cosy’ murder mystery, verging on farce in places. The ending is bitter sweet. I began not sure I really wanted to read Exit and ended it feeling I’m glad I did. It’s unlike anything else I’ve read!

Orlando by Virginia Woolf is a fictionalised biography of Vita Sackville-West, based on her life. It tells the tale of an extraordinary individual who lives through centuries of English history, first as a man, then as a woman; and his/her struggle to find fame and immortality not through actions, but through the written word. 

Prophecy by S J Parris is the second book in her Giordano Bruno series of historical thrillers. Giordano Bruno was a 16th century heretic philosopher and spy. It begins in the autumn of 1583, when Elizabeth the First’s throne is in peril, threatened by Mary Stuart’s supporters scheme to usurp the rightful monarch.

Breathtaking by Rachel Clarke. She is a palliative care doctor and her book recounts her experiences during the first four months of 2020, when she worked on the Covid-19 wards in the Oxford University Hospitals system. It records the compassion and kindness of numerous people, and pays tribute to both NHS staff and volunteers in dealing with such a distressing and immensely horrific situation.

Fludd by Hilary Mantel, a fantasy, a fairy tale, told with wit and humour with brilliant characterisation. It is 1956, set in the north of England in the fictional village of Fetherhoughton, which is loosely based on the village where Mantel grew up. She was brought up as a Catholic and the idea for the story came from a conversation with her mother about her childhood.

Inland by Téa Obreht is a book of two halves, alternating between two storylines. The first story about Lurie is slow and meandering as he makes an expedition across the American West. The second story of Nora Lark and her family, which is more interesting. They are living in Arizona in a homestead. There’s been no rain for months and their water supply is nearly exhausted.

Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu – set in Romania where a serial killer is on the loose. This is a complex novel, a political thriller focusing on the political and social dimensions of the racial conflict between the Romanians and the Roma or ‘gypsies’. 

Six in Six: The 2023 Edition

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I’m pleased to see that 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. I think it’s a good way at looking back over the last six months’ reading.

Six Crime Fiction

  1. Underworld by Reginald Hill
  2. The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor
  3. The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves
  4. Aftermath by Peter Robinson
  5. Shroud of Darkness by E C F Lorac
  6. A Death in Tuscany by Michele Giuttari

Six Authors New to me

  1. The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel
  2. The Dancing Bear by Francis Faviell
  3. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
  4. How to Save a Life by S D Robertson
  5. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
  6. The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas

Six books from the past that drew me back there

  1. Lion by Conn Iggulden
  2. The City of Tears by Kate Mosse
  3. Snow Country by Sebastian Faulks
  4. The Light Between the Oceans by M L Stedman
  5. Elizabeth Macarthur: A life at the edge of the world by Michelle Scott Tucker
  6. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Six Books I Read from My To Be Read List

  1. The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jonasson
  2. Ghost Walk by Alanna Knight
  3. This Nowhere Place by Natasha Bell
  4. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
  5. The Summer That Never Was by Peter Robinson
  6. Not Dead Yet by Peter James

Six authors I have read before

  1. Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
  2. Asking for the Moon by Reginald Hill
  3. Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck
  4. The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson
  5. The Driftwood Girls by Mark Douglas-Home
  6. The Man With No Face by Peter May

Six books recently added to my wish list

  1. The Birthday Girl: (A Mallory Dawson Crime Thriller Book 1) by Sarah Ward
  2. As the Crow Flies (DI Nick Dixon Crime Book 1) by Damien Boyd
  3. The Last Remains: The 15th in the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths
  4. The Missing Sister by Lucinda Riley
  5. Weyward by Emilia Hart
  6. Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

How is your reading going this year? Do let me know if you take part in Six in Six too

Catching Up … Books Read in May

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

I am now so far behind with writing about the books I’ve read this year that the only way to get back on track is to write just a few notes about the books I’ve read recently.

I read 7 books in May and only wrote about one – The Light Between the Oceans (linked to my post) by M L Stedman, the story of Tom, a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island, Janus Rock, and his wife Isabel. Janus Rock is nearly half a day’s journey from the coast of Australia, where the Indian Ocean washes into the Great Southern Ocean. When a boat washes up on the shore of the island it holds a dead man – and a crying baby. Tom and his wife have a devastating decision to make.

The other 6 books are:

Put on by Cunning by Ruth Rendell – a Chief Inspector Inspector Wexford mystery, this was a re-read. The link takes you to my post written in 2014. I didn’t realise at first that I’d already read this book. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first time I read it. It’s a tale of great complexity, of murder and conspiracy to murder. A wealthy old man, Sir Manuel Camargue, one of greatest flautists of his time is found dead. Ankle deep in snow he had lost his footing in the dark and slipped into an icy lake and became trapped. Although it seems a straight forward death, Camargue’s much younger fiancée, puts doubts in Chief Inspector Wexford’s mind and he wonders if it was murder.

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson is a standalone novel and another re-read. It’s about Chris Lowndes, a widower who has bought a house in the Yorkshire Dales. Sixty years earlier a man had died there and his wife Grace was convicted of his murder and hanged. Chris wants to discover whether she really was guilty. This is a convincing mystery, told alternating between the present day and the past. 

A Deadly Thaw by Sarah Ward – I read her first book In Bitter Chill years ago and had been meaning to read more of her books, but only got round to it this year. It’s the second in the Francis Sadler series set in the fictional town of Bampton in Derbyshire, and it is just as good as the first. In 2004 Lena Fisher was arrested for suffocating her husband, Andrew. In 2016, a year after Lena’s release from prison, Andrew was found dead in a disused mortuary. Who was the man Lena killed twelve years ago, and who committed the second murder?

The Road Towards Home by Corinne Demas – I thoroughly enjoyed this book, a complete and welcome change from crime fiction. It’s about the friendship between Cassandra and Noah, two retired people who had first met in their youth. They were reacquainted when they moved to Clarion Court an ‘an independent living community’. Noah invites Cassandra to rough it with him at his Cape Cod cottage, and their relationship unexpectedly blossoms after several ups and downs

The Hairy Bikers Blood, Sweat & Tyres: The Autobiography by Si King and Dave Myers – a fascinating book written in alternate chapters by Si and Dave. It’s funny, informative, sad and happy, revealing the tough times they went through, their health issues, family losses, how they came to work on TV and above all their friendship.

Empire by Conn Iggulden – historical fiction, the 2nd book in The Golden Age series , a thoroughly entertaining book that brings the ancient history of Athens, Sparta and Persia to life. I’ll write about this in more detail in a later post.

Spell the Month in Books – July 2023

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the second 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 theme this month is Red, White, and/or Blue on the cover or in the title. I’m featuring two books with predominantly blue covers and two with white covers.

These are all books I’ve enjoyed – the links to my reviews are in the titles of each book.

J is for The Jigsaw Maker by Adrienne Dines

Lizzie Flynn has a shop in a village near Kilkenny, a sort of knick-knack shop selling a variety of goods, cards, flower arrangements, home-made sweets, that needs brightening up and bringing up to date. Her settled life is turned upside down with the arrival of the Jigsaw Maker – Jim Nealon, a stranger who walks into her shop one morning and asks her to sell his beautiful jigsaws.

This is a beautifully written book, one with pace and tension in just the right places. There are plenty of repressed secrets that come to the surface as Lizzie helps Jim by writing about the scenes in his jigsaws. But who is Jim? Why has he come to the village and why did he ask Lizzie in particular to help him?

U is for The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This tells the story of Her Majesty, not named, but she has dogs, and is married to a duke. She comes across the travelling library, thanks to the dogs, parked next to the bins outside one of the kitchen doors at Buckingham Palace and ends up borrowing a book to save the driver/librarian’s embarrassment.

She borrows books regularly and this changes her life. This little book is full of interesting ideas about books and the nature of reading and society. As the Queen expands her range she realises that ‘Books did not care who was reading them, or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth: letters a republic.’

L is for Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Ursula Todd was born on 11 February 1910 at Fox Corner during a wild snowstorm. But in the course of the book Ursula dies many deaths and there are several different versions that her life takes over the course of the twentieth century – through both World Wars and beyond. Each time as she approaches death she experiences a vague unease, before the darkness falls. As she grows older she experiences different outcomes to the events that lead up to that feeling of unease, and finds that sometimes she can prevent the darkness from falling. By the end of the book I had a complete picture of a life lived to the full.

The whole book is full of ‘what ifs’ – what if this character had behaved differently, what if that had not happened, what if you’d made a different choice of subject to study or a different career, or married a different person?  

Y is for The Year Without Summer by Guinevere Glasfurd

This is a most remarkable book, telling how the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia in 1815 had a profound and far reaching impact on the world. It led to sudden cooling across the northern hemisphere, crop failures, famine and social unrest in the following year, which became known as The Year Without Summer and in North America as Eighteen hundred and froze to death. But it wasn’t until the mid twentieth century that volcanic eruptions were shown to affect climate change.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s more like a collection of short stories than a novel, but it works very well for me, highlighting the global connections. It is of course about climate change, showing the far-reaching effects of the Tambora eruption, which weren’t limited to 1815 and 1816. It led to hardships in 1817 and 1818 with the outbreak of cholera and typhoid epidemics triggered by the failure of monsoons.

The next link up will be on August 5, 2023 when the theme will be Series – Books that are part of a series, or the name of the series itself.