BooksPlease

How to Catch a Mole by Marc Hamer

Published on February 26, 2022 by Margaret2 Comments

Longlisted for the Wainwright Book Prize 2019, How to Catch a Mole and Find Yourself in Nature is a beautiful book by Marc Hamer and illustrated by Joe McLaren. It is part memoir, part a nature study of the British Countryside, part poetry, and, of course, about moles. It is a mine of information. After leaving school Marc Hamer was homeless for a while, then worked on the railway, before returning to education and studying fine art in Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent. He has worked in art galleries, marketing, graphic design and taught creative writing in a prison before becoming a gardener. And before writing this book he had been a traditional molecatcher for years.

I read the book in January and have been wondering what to write about it, mulling it over in my mind. I’ve made several attempts to write this post as it’s not a straight forward non fiction book. He tells the story of his life intermingled with that of the mole, writing about what his life as a molecatcher was like, how it affected him and why eventually he decided to stop. The result is that this book is a mix of recollections and information about moles. He doesn’t write his recollections in chronological order – the harder he tries to remember, the more his memory seems to shift and change as though he is looking into a kaleidoscope where the colours remain the same and although the patterns are slightly different every time, the picture remains true to itself.

He no longer catches moles and says:

Molecatching is a traditional skill that has given me a good life but I am old and tired of hunting and it has taught me what I wanted to learn.

I’ve only seen a mole once when our cat caught what I think, sadly, was a baby one, and I know very little about them. Our garden has mole hills on the edges of it, piles of earth that the moles have turned over, and dug to a fine crumb – ‘the kind of damp rich earth that farmers and gardeners love for its texture and nutrients.’ So, I’m comfortable with having moles in the garden.

Not everybody is happy about them, however as Hamer points out:

Apparently sane people lose sleep over the chaos the moles create. We do not like to lose control of our property it makes us feel uncomfortable, impermanent, weak. Moles can ruin domestic lawns, and I have seen real hatred developing in homeowners as they lose control and ownership of their gardens. An obsession grows and an endless, unwinnable war can take over their lives. (pages 17-18)

Moles are small and powerful, moving at speed in their tunnels hunting worms and digging about 20 metres of tunnel in a day. They pack the soil into the roof and walls, pushing the soil ahead until there is too much to push and then make a diversion pushing the earth out onto the surface making a molehill. They go where the worms go. I was fascinated by this fact:

In times of plenty a mole will dig a little room in the wall of his tunnel, then gather lots of worms and bite their heads off, leaving them all knotted together in a section of tunnel. We call this the worm larder; it is a fairly common sight. A tunnel system could have any number of worm larders. (pages 202-203)

I was also interested in his thoughts on gardening. Here are a few extracts:

Gardening is not nature: it is using the laws of nature and science to impose our will on a place; and for some people this need for control goes to extremes. (page 19)

As a gardener I do not dig any more: I hoe off the weeds and top-dress the gardens in autumn with compost just as nature does with falling leaves and grasses. This keeps the moisture in and the weeds suppressed; it allows the worms to break up hard soil and increases microbial activity, allowing life to expand its range, and lets air and water into the soil. Moles do this for us. Some gardeners still double-dig, but more and more people are coming to understand the importance of microbes and fungi, and often see digging as destructive and prefer to stay off the soil to avoid compacting it. (pages 58-59)

And

A fine-looking garden is a sterile place. A perfect green lawn is only kept that way by continually dousing it with chemicals. A lawn that is not treated will naturally become home to a massive number of species of birds and worms and native wild plants, crane-fly larvae, beetles, invertebrates. (page 223)

I don’t usually include so many quotations and such lengthy ones, but I’ll end with one more quotation:

Having worked all my life, created a family, discovered a home, I feel as secure as a working-class man ever feels, and I feel a sense of equality again with the crow and the toad and the hawthorn, with the rain and wind. I am them and they are me. . . . I am just another animal, another tree, another wild flower in the meadow among billions of others. . . . There is something deeply magnificent in being just ordinary. (page 115)

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvill Secker; 1st edition (4 April 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1787301249
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1787301245
Source: Borrowed from my son
My Rating: 5*

Book Beginnings & The Friday 56: An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell

Published on February 25, 2022 by Margaret4 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.

This week I’m featuring one of the library books I borrowed this week – An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell a Wallender thriller,

The Book Begins:

On Saturday 26 October 2002, Kurt Wallender woke up feeling very tired. It had been a trying week, as a severe cold had infected practically everybody in the Ystad police station.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, where 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.

Page 56:

Linda surprised Wallender by having dinner ready when he came back home. Although it was an ordinary weekday he was tempted to open a bottle of wine – but if he did Linda would only start stirring up trouble, so he didn’t.

I’ve only read one of Mankell’s Wallender books before and that was the first one in the series – Faceless Killers. I fully intended to read more, but then never did, although I have read two other books by him. An Event in Autumn is a novella and, as explained in the Afterword, was originally written and published as a free book as part of a campaign to encourage reading in Holland.

Summary

Some cases aren’t as cold as you’d think

Kurt Wallander’s life looks like it has taken a turn for the better when his offer on a new house is accepted, only for him to uncover something unexpected in the garden – the skeleton of a middle-aged woman.

As police officers comb the property, Wallander attempts to get his new life back on course by finding the woman’s killer with the aid of his daughter, Linda. But when another discovery is made in the garden, Wallander is forced to delve further back into the area’s past.

And this has reminded me that I really must read more of the Wallender books. I bought the second book, The Dogs of Riga four years ago and it’s been sat on the bookshelves unread ever since!

Library Books 24 February 2022

Published on February 24, 2022 by Margaret6 Comments

I love libraries – here are some of the books I have on loan at the moment. I had made a few attempts to take a photo of these books and wasn’t happy with any of them. I’d left the books in a pile on the floor and was delighted to see this photo that my husband had taken – much better than any of my attempts.

Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz – because I enjoy his books, but I’m not sure I’ll like this one as much as his crime fiction books. It’s a James Bond thriller set in 1957 re-inventing the golden age of Bond, incorporating previously unseen Ian Fleming material.

An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell, a Wallender thriller, again because I’ve enjoyed other books by him. This is a novella in which Wallender makes an offer on a house, and then discovers the skeleton of a middle-aged woman in the garden. What a nightmare!

Prague Nights by Benjamin Black. Black is the pen name of John Banville, another author whose books I like. This is historical crime fiction set in Prague in 1599, when the mistress of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, is killed and her body found thrown upon the snow in Golden Lane.

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, the first book in his Kindle County series, because I enjoyed the last book in the series, The Last Trial so much. This is a courtroom drama in which prosecutor Rusty Sabich stands accused of killing Carolyn with whom he had been having an affair.

Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow, historical fiction set in World War Two, described on the front cover as ‘part mystery, part thriller, this is a quietly powerful piece of fiction.’ A courtroom journalist researches the experiences of his grandfather during the War.

Top Ten Tuesdays: Dynamic Duos in Crime Fiction

Published on February 23, 2022 by Margaret9 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, which is Dynamic Duos. I’m a day late with my post as at first I thought I’d skip this week and then I realised that I read a lot of books with very dynamic characters in them – the detectives in crime fiction! So here is my list for this week:

First we have Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, two of Agatha Christie’s most famous private investigators. They’ve worked together on many cases ever since Poirot’s first case, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. A Belgian he came to England in 1914 when Germany invaded his country. He had retired from the Belgian police force in 1904. Captain Hastings narrates the stories and is usually baffled as he assists Poirot in looking at the evidence: until Poirot explains it all to him.

The next duo are a married couple. Tommy and Tuppence, who first appeared in Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary, in which they have just met up after World War One, both in their twenties: ‘an essentially modern-looking couple’. By the end of the book they realise they are in love. My favourite book about them is By the Pricking of My Thumbs. In this they are now elderly, but consider themselves only just past the prime of life, looking for something exciting to happen. And then they found themselves caught up in an unexpected adventure involving possible black magic…

The first Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson mystery is A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson was on nine months convalescent leave from the army, having been shot in his shoulder whilst in Afghanistan, followed by an attack of enteric fever. He was looking for lodgings when he met a friend who introduced him to an acquaintance who was working in the chemical laboratory at the hospital – Sherlock Holmes, who he described as ‘a little too scientific for my tastes – it approaches to cold-bloodedness. … He appears to have a passion for definite and exact knowledge.’

Reginald Hill wrote 25 Dalziel and Pascoe novels. Detective Superintendent Andrew ‘Andy’ Dalziel’s capacity for getting to the bottom of a mystery is shown to be immense. But he is rude, insensitive and not afraid to speak his mind and most definitely politically incorrect in all aspects, whereas Detective Sergeant, later Detective Inspector, Peter Pascoe, university educated, is calm, polite and well mannered. One of my favourites of these books is On Beulah Height. It is a complex book about three little girls who went missing before the little village of Dendale in Yorkshire the valley was flooded to provide a reservoir.

Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope and Detective Sergeant Joe Ashworth in Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope series have a interesting work relationship. Vera is a truly eccentric individual, intelligent, single minded and dedicated to her job, single and with no family responsibilities. She finds it difficult to delegate and is exhilarated by her job. The interplay between the Vera and Sergeant Joe Ashworth is excellent. Joe isn’t as easily managed as Vera would want him to be and yet she likes that in him. Her relationship with the rest of her team leaves much to be desired, but she is human – and she gets results. The Glass Room, the fifth book in the series and I think it’s one of her best.

Detective Inspector John Rebus and Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke in Ian Rankin’s Rebus series are two very individual characters- he is a loner, a troubled soul, with ghosts in his life – past family and past friends – and he never plays by the book. He is a smoker and a heavy drinker. Siobhan is the opposite of Rebus. She gets infuriated by his reluctance to stick to the rules and is English, from a middle-class left-wing background and she has a university degree. But both are dedicated and obsessed cops, who like working on their own. One I really enjoyed is Set in Darkness is the 11th book in the series, set in Edinburgh when a corpse is discovered in an old fireplace in Queensberry House during the works to build the new Scottish Parliament building and then two more bodies are found.

Chief Inspector Morse and Sergeant Lewis in Colin Dexter’s Morse series. Morse is clever, loves the opera, and solving puzzles, particularly crosswords – he can do The Times crossword in under ten minutes. He is not a happy man; he is sensitive, melancholy, a loner and a pedant. Lewis is a Geordie, he left school at fifteen, and is married with two children. He acts as Morse’s sidekick and foil, a counterpart, who does the legwork, drives the car, collars the suspect and buys the drinks. Service of All the Dead is the 4th book in the series and is one of the the most puzzling crime fiction books I’ve read – if not the most puzzling! There are five dead bodies. Lewis uncovers an intricate web of lies and deceit, whilst Morse acts on instinct and proposes several motives for the murders and alternate scenarios of what had happened before untangling the complex mess.

Forensic Archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson – Ruth is not your usual detective, she’s overweight, self-reliant but also feisty and tough. Harry is a gruff Northerner, and an old fashioned policeman who is impatient and quick tempered but also capable of being imaginative and sensitive. Theirs is not just a work relationship but also a personal one – Harry is the father of Ruth’s daughter. The Crossing Places is the first book in the series by Ellie Griffiths, in which the couple first meet. Set in Norfolk it’s an interesting mix of investigations into a cold case – the disappearance of Lucy, a five year old girl ten years earlier and a current case of another missing four year old girl. Are they connected and just how does the discovery of a child’s bones from the Iron Age fit in?

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books. Wimsey is a war-damaged aristocratic sleuth, whereas Harriet Vane is an Oxford scholar, spurned lover, accused murderess and a wealthy author. The two meet in Strong Poison in which Harriet is on trial for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes. Wimsey, attending the trial, is convinced she is innocent and sets out to prove it … and falls in love with her. They subsequently have an ongoing ‘relationship’ in which he annually asks her to marry him and she refuses. Harriet appears in four of the twelve Lord Peter Wimsey novels, my favourite being Gaudy Night, in which she attends the Shrewsbury Gaudy (a college reunion involving a celebratory dinner). She is asked to investigate a series of poison pen letters, nasty graffiti and vandalism. Afraid it will end in murder she asks Wimsey for help.

DCI Hannah Scarlet and Daniel Kind, a historian and the son of Hannah’s former boss, Ben Kind, in Martin Edwards’ Lake District Mystery, series. Hannah is in charge of the Cumbria’s Cold Case Team and Daniel is an Oxford historian. When the series began Hannah was living with bookseller Marc Amos, but during the course of the series she becomes increasingly drawn to Daniel and gradually their relationship develops. I love all the books, maybe The Serpent Pool is my favourite. There’s an apparent suicide in the Pool and a man is burnt to death in an Ullswater boathouse to investigate. It’s a terrific book. It has everything, a great sense of location, believable, complex characters, a crime to solve, full of tension and well paced to keep you wanting to know more, and so atmospheric.

The Man in the Bunker by Rory Clements

Published on February 20, 2022 by Margaret3 Comments

I’ve read two of Rory Clements’ books in his Tom Wilde series, the first one, Corpus and the fourth Hitler’s Secret, both of which I loved. So I was looking forward to reading more of his books – The Man in the Bunker is the sixth book in the series, but fortunately they all read perfectly as standalone books.

This is a complicated novel and I am not going to attempt to describe all the details. In August 1945 an American and professor of history, Tom Wilde is preparing for the Michaelmas term at his Cambridge University college. He had spent most of the last three years in a senior advisory role with the Office of Strategic Services, America’s wartime intelligence outfit. He has quit the OSS and wants to put the war behind him, so when he sees a big American car parked outside his home where he lives with his wife and young son, he is not at all pleased. His three visitors bring news that there’s reason to believe that Hitler is alive and hiding out in Bavaria – and they want Wilde to find him.

The rumour that Hitler didn’t die in the Berlin bunker has always interested me, especially as his body was never found. I remember seeing a TV documentary about it, so I wondered what Clements would make of it and what his conclusion would be. Did Hitler live on after the war or not? His version of events is thrilling and dramatic as Wilde travels across the continent, mainly in Germany and Austria, seeing the devastation the War had brought both to places and to people. There were millions of people without homes – refugees, some living in displaced persons camps dotted around Europe. Some had been slave labourers interned in concentration camps, others were survivors of the death camps.

Wilde was accompanied by a young lieutenant, Mozes Heck, a Dutch Jew who had escaped to England and joined the British Army. Heck is desperate to find out what had happened to his family, loathes the Nazis and Hitler, and he is set on revenge. He is both headstrong and dangerous. They were both co-opted to the US Counter Intelligence Corps in Garmisch, an Alpine town in Bavaria. Wilde has a difficult job restraining Heck, but eventually they work well together in tense and extremely dangerous situations.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. The search for Hitler across Germany and Austria is fast paced, full of action, danger, and violence. Needless to say really, but I was gripped by this novel and I just had to find out what had happened, whether Hitler had died in the bunker – or did Wilde find him in hiding somewhere in the Alps? I’m not telling – you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Many thanks to Bonnier Books for a review copy via NetGalley.

The Last Trial by Scott Turow

Published on February 16, 2022 by Margaret6 Comments

In this explosive legal thriller from New York Times bestselling author Scott Turow, two formidable men collide: a celebrated criminal defense lawyer at the end of his career and his lifelong friend, a renowned doctor accused of murder.

The Last Trial is the first book by Scott Turow that I’ve read. It is a great book and I wish I’d come across his work before now. This one is the 11th book in his Kindle County series (Kindle County is a fictional Illinois county that is based on Cook County). Now I’ll have to read his earlier books, not that I had any problems reading this as a standalone book, but because I enjoyed it so much I want to know more. I love legal thrillers and this is one of the best I’ve read.

There are quite a lot of characters, the main ones being the defence attorney, Sandy Stein, aged 85 and nearing retirement and his daughter, Marta also a lawyer, and Kiril Pafco, his friend and Nobel Prize winner, a doctor, who has developed a drug to treat cancer, which is currently still in its clinical trial period. Sandy is one of his patients whose life has been extended by the drug. Other characters who stood out for me are Pinky, Sandy’s granddaughter, whose offbeat approach to life proves invaluable – I really liked her, and Dr Innis McVie, who had been in a long term relationship with Kiril and until recently had assisted him in his cancer research.

Most of the book is centred on the trial – Kiril is charged with murder after some of the clinical trial patients had suddenly died, and with fraud and insider trading, after he allegedly doctored the research results and sold shares before the details of the deaths became public. Kiril insists he is innocent – but is he?

The details and the of sequence of events is important and gradually becomes clear during the witness testimonies and cross examinations. It all became real to me as I read – I believed in the characters, even the minor ones, and tried to follow all the details of the charges as though I was on the jury. I might not have fully understood all the details of the insider trading, but the medical details were easier for me to follow. This is, however, mainly a character-driven book, revealing their relationships, secrets, motivations and betrayals. It is full of suspense right up until the end.

I loved it and have his first book, Presumed Innocent lined up to read as soon as possible. If you love legal thrillers you’ll love The Last Trial too.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B081YWP83K
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mantle (28 May 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 689 KB
Print length ‏ : ‎ 465 pages
Source: A BorrowBox book
My Rating: 5*