Books 2013 #4 - #9

Since the Kindle arrived chez byrne I have turned some of my nefarious attention away from downloading american crime series and towards downloading books. This means that I recently started reading such titles as "No Cooperation from the Cat" by Marion Babson and "The Chocolate Moose Motive" by Jo Anna Carl not because they were on my wish list but because they were accessible. Shame on me. I read about ten pages of each before coming to my senses - drivel. Fortunately it is not all bad in the epub world and so you'll see one below which I got from the Guttenburg Project as it is out of copyright and was really rather delightful. They have 42,000 free ebooks so I feel a return journey there is definitely in my future.

#4 Death from a Top Hat
Clayton Rawson

Sadly out of print but available either as an ebook or, as I received this one, as an audiobook. The reader was Gregory Gawton who has a good voice for this sort of thing and brings the characters to life. This is the first in the series which book 56 from last year is part of. These stories are complicated so you need to pay attention but it is worth it. I love the former magician who now runs a shop and helps the police solve these crimes. The solution to this one is a little unfair but that hasn't discouraged me from procuring the next in the series. They are set in the early part of the 20th century and describe a calmer side of american life than we often get. I guess in terms of genre this is almost a 'cosy' but isn't as homely as that. 

#5 Die Laughing

Carola Dunn

As you might have guessed from the lurid cover, this involves a dentist but this need not put any odontophobes off as apart from mentioning his profession there isn't much further discussion of drills (eek) or other elements of their macabre arts. These books are definitely cosy's. Daisy, for it is she, is now married to Alec and sharing the house with her disapproving mother-in-law. Much to her husband's annoyance Daisy finds her dentist deaded and is asked by the widow to get involved in uncovering the truth. This particular book was from the Library - but it is a ebook. Borrowing ebooks from the Library. How awesome is that? I'm very happy about it. And anything else that makes me less of a criminal. 

#6 Hilda Hopkins: Murder She Knit

Vivienne Fagan

You all know that I am big fan of JB. So when I saw a free kindle book on Amazon that linked my Fletcher love with my knitting love I was in like Flint. This is more of a novelette than a full blown book but it's actually rather funny. I feel sure we all know someone like Hilda, who kills her lodgers but then knits 18" dolls that resemble them to ensure they are not completely forgotten. Her evading capture by lurking in a charity shop gave me ideas for when I eventually have to live the life of a fugitive and her eventual taking by the police os clearly a scene written by a knitter. OK - it is machine knitting - but that still counts. The rest of the series are an ungodly £1.27 or so each but I dare say I might be getting a couple in time for my holiday to France. 

#7 Glimpses of the Moon

Edmund Crispin

Not to be confused with the Edith Wharton novel of the same name, this is really charming. Gervase Fen is another hero of mine and featured in the books I read in 2012 but this was an audiobook and something I loved coming back to (I have read it before several times). The voluntarily bed-ridden pub landlord with his happy wife, the cavalry major with his distrust of horses, the vicar with his...everything, the tortoise, the pig's head, the pisser...it's all vintage genius. This is late in the series and I've read complaints that Gervase has gone soft in this one but I think he's entirely in character still - just getting on a bit and taking it easy in an english village during the summer. I wouldn't suggest this as a way to start Crispin's ouevre but if you have read Swan Song or another one and liked it you'll enjoy this too. 

#8 The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade

MJ Trow

Awful cover but interesting book. A series of murders follow a children's story book. But that's not the core here - the point is that Lestrade is the much besmirched policeman in the Sherlock Holmes books and here he is as our leading man with both Watson and Holmes coming into the story as side characters and around whom fiction blends with reality. This is one of Liz's recommendations and another audiobook. I found myself intrigued and thinking about the story in between listening to it so I've happily downloaded the next book and will continue to listen with interest. 

#9 That Affair Next Door

Anna Katherine Green

Published in 1896 so well out of copyright and available free and pre-kindle formatted or through the Guttenburgers. This started a little frostily as I was relating the protagonist to someone who I am currently finding very annoying. But once I got over that I really got into this. A very proper lady of the period clearly spends a lot of time thinking about how correct she is and how incorrect others are. She happens to see a man and woman entering the house opposite hers late at night. Improper! She goes over the next morning to see what's what and finds the body of a dead young woman. The plot thickens to the consistency of treacle and doesn't clear until pretty late on. The solution isn't new - but then it probably was when this was written - but it is clever and well written and well worth a read. This is the first in a series so I will, and I seem to have said this a lot, be reading others when I get hold of them. 

Now for some knitting on that scrotum.

 

Books 2013 #1 #3

#1 Have Mercy on us All
by Fred Vargas

That Fred - she's good. In the first two books I grew to rather like her detective Adamsberg. In this book he is still likeable but then he does something SO stupid. So. Stupid. But that is just a side plot. The main plot involves a conspiracy to bring Black Death back to Paris. The story weaves in and out of the refurbishment of the police department and the life of an old sailor discovering a new role for himself. The book is very well written and although you just want to kick Adamsberg I'll definitely be reading the next. In fact I already have a copy and am holding off as I don;t want to finish the series too soon. 

#2 Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol

by Gyles Brandreth

 

Having gone off the boil a bit with these books this one comes right back up to standard. It deals with the period during which Oscar is actually in prison and the way he is treated and lives during that time. It's rather unsettling - even non-history-buffs can take a guess at what the prison system was like back then - but not too weighty and the deaths are approached in an interesting way since Oscar is clearly not at liberty to investigate as he usually would. Some authors want to show off how much research they've done and cram it all in regardless. Not here. The characters of the mainly male cast are well developed and brought to life and the story avoids getting bogged down in historical detail.

#3 The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

by Malcolm Pryce

I've loved this series all the way through. This is what I was reading when I met up with KnittingontheGreen and we discussed them as she's not partial. I think having read Dashiel Hammet and Raymond Chandler in my formative years I can admire how well Pryce writes the hard-boiled detective genre, set in a town in Wales with a caravan park, philosophical ice cream seller and machiavellian mayor. Not afraid to bring in the surreal and super-natural, this book includes much talk of aliens but Louie is so sceptical and hard-bitten about everything that it doesn't matter whether you believe in such things or not. You become so enthralled that by the time the story reaches the point at which the mayoral elections are decided by human cannonball you barely notice anything odd is going on. I adore these books - of which this is the sixth - but if you can't stomach silly or hard-boiled you may not want to read a second. 

On my reading list for the next few weeks is a non-fiction about success, another magical mystery by Clayton Rawson and maybe, just maybe, the next Fred Vargas. Any recommendations?

Books #47 - #58

The images are amazon affiliate links so click on them if you want to buy - but dudes, I'm only in it for the pictures.

At the start of the year I said I wanted to have read 60 books. I seem to have managed 58. I've been using goodreads.com to keep track and was up to 46 when I wrote my last review post in November.

#47 One Man Show
By Michael Innes

Probably one of the best Innes books I've read in a long time. Although there was a lot of long winded description it almost made sense and the plot twists and turns (it was like a freakin maze) were just extraordinary enough to keep me entertained as well as intrigued. In a nutshell - your detective goes to anart exhibition with his wife, sees a painting by a recently dead artist which is then stolen. Except it's all linked up with another stolen painting and it's not clear if the artist was murdered or not and what's happened to the woman upstairs and meanwhile...you get the idea. 

I got this with a bundle of his others from Bookmooch so no surprise that at number forty eight we have...

#48 Appleby on Ararat

By Michael Innes

This book was an early on in the series and was preposterous, racist, farcical and generally not a byrne-pleaser. Your hero is aboard some sort of boat going somewhere when it sinks and only the passengers survive, adrift on the entire entertainment deck with hardly any food or water. No mention is ever made of any of the crew who presumably drowned, but were lower class - or worse! Foreign! The only black passenger is talked about like he'd only just left off evolving from a monkey and later natives don't fair much better. Having only just avoided all going nuts with thirst they pitch up on tropical island which they live on for a while without apparently noticing it has a luxury hotel over the hill. Eventually they make contact and then it starts getting really silly. Let's just forget this book happened and move on...

#49 Come Away, Death

By Gladys Mitchell

After the last book I thought I'd go to the trusty Mrs Bradley as I have enjoyed others in the series. This is number eight in order and I fear I struck out, as sporting people in america might say. The story was interesting but ridiculous. An archaeologist trying to create some sort of Greek spiritual visitation by carrying out certain rights. It was also a very slow story. Not her best. 

#50 Knitter's Handy Book of Top-Down Sweaters

By Ann Budd

The original book, Knitters Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, is my go-to book for my own jumpers so when I heard there was a top down version, and with *contiguous* sleeves, I was right in there. My single criticism of this book is it isn't available as an e version. If ever there was a book you wanted on your phone to use for quick reference it is this. I'm surprised Interweave have missed that but I am equally sure there is a highly commercial reason for it. Sweaters got from 24" to 54" chest and the complete patterns included for each type of sleeve/cardigan/neckline are all satisfactory. 

#51 Tom Brown's Body

By Gladys Mitchell (audiobook)

I'm always a bit hesitant - and this is going to sound weird - of listening to audio versions of books I haven't read. For me, an audiobook is a comforting thing to have on in the background, to dip in and out of, to fall asleep to. So having not read this one first I had to listen to it twice (and it is about 8 hours long) before I felt I'd got the story straight. Kudos to Ms Mitchell for writing realistically about little boys (or at least - they are as I remember them being when I was at a similar kind of mixed school) which is something that can be said about all her novels. She doesn't patronise or make them talk like idiots. The ending was a little confusing and the element of witchcraft felt a bit jarring but all in all a good one. 

#52 The Père-Lachaise Mystery

By Claude Izner

This is the second in the series and unusually I am reading them in order. The first was one was #38 in August. I found this one much better and very gripping - I read the whole thing in 36 hours and went to work in amongst all that as well. Victor's previous mistress's husband has died and she's visiting a spiritualist to try and contact him. Then she vanishes. Meanwhile there's lots of jealousies and intrigues and relationships and so on. Interestingly the author is the pen name of two sisters living in Paris. Well, I thought it was interesting. I'm still getting over Fred Vargas being a woman though. Speaking of which...

#53 Seeking Whom He May Devour

By Fred Vargas

Ooooo, this was good. While #52 was gripping, this one went fully in, grabbed you by the giblets and rang them out like a dishcloth. The wolf on the cover is a giveaway that wolves feature heavily in this story but given recent Twishite type writing I want to assure you that they are wolves, just wolves. Not werewolves, not shapeshifters, just wolves. Our hero, Adamsberg, is in the background for a fair bit of the novel and it is his lost love Camille who leads. Rather sweepingly, I am going to assume most women would say they saw something of themselves in Camille. Or something we would like to see in ourselves maybe. We could all have been free spirits, moving from place to place, befriending smelly women in the mountains and hooking up with Canadian versions of Ben Fogle had our lives gone a little differently. I love these books. I've got the next two in the series but I am afraid to start them in case they don;t live up to the first two. I know - man up Byrne. 

In fact that reminds me - when observed to be cowardly men are often told to 'grow a pair'. I heard this in a number of different contexts recently and it caused me to speculate more about testicles than I think I ever have before in my life, all put together. 

For example, some lizards shed their tails when frightened or can lose them and grown them back. Is it implied therefore that men could lose theirs and it would leave them free to get on with whatever it is they were scared of doing? Could a man grow a set if he lost them? And what if you were in a scary situation with him and they fell off in front of you. What would the etiquette of handing them back? Testicles withdraw towards the body when cold and swing free'r when hot - so when you're scared what do they do? Could you grow a pair of testicles on the back of a mouse, like they did with that ear, and graft them on to the man should the need arise? And would you need a mouse per testicle or would one do both?*

#54 The Long Farewell

By Michael Innes

Another good Appleby story - like #47 but slightly later on the timescale I would guess. Our hero looks up a friend in Italy and when back in England hears that he has apparently killed himself. Two wives, domestics, academic rivals, trophy hunters and various family members appear and it all winds up into a weak ending but a very good story. 

#55 Watson's Choice

By Gladys Mitchell

Maybe I should have a new year resolution to broaden my pool of authors. I seem to be repeating a lot of them. However, having loved all things Sherlockian since I was about 9 I was naturally interested in this and immediately longed for my own party where everyone came dressed as a character from one of the Conan Doyle stories. This book was great, right up until the ending. I realise I've criticised a number of endings and I have started to wonder whether it is me. I find myself watching detective shows on TV and guessing in the first few minutes what the plot will be. I have now been reading and watching this type of thing for 25 years and there can only be a finite number of plots. Having said that I can't work out if I am dissatisfied when the outcome is too easy to guess or when the author puts in a twist you couldn't have predicted (as Conan Doyle frequently did) and so makes the build up in the book seem pointless. Maybe in 2013 I'll find out. 

#56 No Coffin for the Corpse

By Clayton Rawson

Isn't that cover awesome? None of the characters, especially the magician, reminded me of a white rabbit but the symbolism is good. I think Knitting on the Green did a review of this - either that or Goodreads itself recommended it to me. I had it on my wishlist for ages in any case before tracking it down in the deep stacks of Holborn Library. It's a great read except for, guess what, the ending. Maybe I'm too harsh though. Maybe. The style is a little bit Dashiel Hammett but think Thin Man rather then Maltese Falcon. It's essentially a 'cosy' and the magician is a good inclusion. For a book from 1942 it wears its age well. I'll definitely be reading more of these. 

#57 The Murders in the Rue Morgue

By Edgar Allan Poe

This is said to be the first detective story and it was interesting in that light but I'm not a Poe fan. The introductory essay was much more interesting than the story itself. What a strange man our Edgar was. Even excluding the whole judging-by-todays-standards thing. I only read the title story since I was only reading it out of academic interest. 

#58 Where Women Create: Book of Organization

By Jo Packham

I added this to my Amazon queue when it was first announced and bought it with some xmas money otherwise it is essentially Pinterest in print. Lots of full spread photos of studio and craft spaces. Minimal text pointing out little details or speculating about what 'your craft room' looks like. It's printed on what feels slightly like blotting paper - presumably to mop up the tears as you weep when you reflect your 'craft room' is the side of the sofa and your 'creative storage solutions' are largely pieces of tupperware from asda. Having read through the book I did today go out and buy some different storage - plastic boxes...from asda...BUT THE BOXES ARE NOT MEANT FOR FOOD. So it's ok. Besides, if I create some unnecessarily kooky labels for them I'll practically be Martha Stewart so it all works out in the long run. 

If I can pluck up the courage my first read for 2013 will be the next Fred Vargas. Now I've just got to grow a pair and get on with it.

* I do know none of this is possible, except maybe with the mouse, but it was a 'what if' kind of train of thought. Besides - apart from the fertility thing - what woman would mourn if men did lose them? Stupid things really.

My 900th post and Books #32 - #41

The images are amazon affiliate links so click on them if you want to buy - but dudes, I'm only in it for the pictures.

#32 The Saltmarsh Murders
by Gladys Mitchell

Although this is the fourth in the Mrs Bradley series it is my first and something I came across in the Library by chance. (Holborn Library is awesome by the way if you work in the area). I was attracted by the description of Mrs Bradley which I forget the exact words for but was something like "small, shrivelled and remarkably ugly". She sounded like my kind of anti-heroine and indeed in the books she is. My liking for this one caused me to get hold of the TV series starring the really beautiful Diana Rigg as Mrs Bradley. Not fitting a single element of the description in the book I was rather surprised at the casting but she does look f-a-b-u-l-o-u-s in the outfits. Sadly the series is bilge and only to be tried if you're in your second week of flu and have run through all the Murder She Wrote's already.

I rather liked the helter skelter plot of this and the way you weren't quite sure who was who or why they were being so weird. I retained faith that it would all be explained and it was and in a decently entertaining way. I have since read another and plan to read more.

#33 Sweet Death, Kind Death
by Amanda Cross

This would be a great book for someone who likes highbrow english lit and detective stories. Not being a highbrow english lit-er I didn't particularly enjoy it. The story revolves around the autobiography of a professor at an all female college in amercia being written by two men. They start to suspect it could be murder and suddenly our hero, Kate Fansler, is accepting an invite to investigate and sitting on a working group looking at womens studies or something. This is the 7th book in this series so I guess I should have started earlier to get more of the back story. As it was I was a bit lost as I'm not familiar with the american educational system. That aside, as a story this was quite well written but the plot left a lot to be desired as it fell into the Byrne category of "bit silly".

#34 The Ivory Dagger
by Patricia Wentworth

Yay for Miss Silver! Boo for the amazingly stupid, repellant, insipid, mimsy, useless young female. Yay for her friend who had pluck and was therefore a decent female character!

I rather liked the wicked Aunt in this one. I might almost say I aspire to be her. I adore Miss Silver. I definitely want to be her once I get to 70. All that knitting - what a gal.

#35 Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
by Catriona McPherson

Bloody hell this was an awful book. I rather liked the others in this series, of which this is number six, but this one sucked. The story was morbid, which might sound like a strange thing to say about a murder mystery, but seriously it was. With every new revelation I felt like begging her to just stop there as she was clearly making everything worse and as painful as possible for the two families involved. What starts as Romeo and Juliet ends as some Freudian nightmare. Ugh.

#36 Death at the Opera
by Gladys Mitchell

 This is the fifth Mrs Bradley book and one that they tried to televise in that Diana Rigg series but made an awful mess of. The teachers at a small school decide to put on the Mikado and during the performance it all goes a bit pear shaped and one of them dies.

While you could tell that this was by the same authore as #32 it was sufficiently different for you not to be reminded of Agatha Christie or even Patricia Wentworth. Mrs Bradley remained at her ghastly best and romped about psychoanalysing and disturbing people. There is a strange interlude with a man with a tin bath which all weaves neatly in to the plot. A very satisfying and engaging read.

#37 The Documents in the Case
by Dorothy L Sayer

I did this one as an audio book which could have gone wrong ( as it is a series of letters) but actually worked rather well. Letters between various people over a period of time outline the story of a married couple with two lodgers and a female companion slash housekeeper and the interactions between them. I will say no more than to let you know that the husband enjoys eating wild mushrooms. Aha. Exactly.

Dorothy Sayers is most famous for her Lord Peter Wimsey stories but this is outside of that set. If you like a traditional mystery story then you will enjoy this one.

#38 Murder on the Eiffel Tower
by Claude Izner

I am still in two minds about whether to read another in this series. The book overall left me with a little puff of an out breath and a general feeling of 'meh'. But I did get the feeling of wanting to find out hwat happened next so maybe this was just a slow start?

This is the first book in the Victor Legris series. Victor runs a bookshop with a japanese friend who raised him and is his mentor but not in a lame karate kid type way. He happens to be present when a woman apprently dies from a bee sting but of course it's not that straight forward. All good fun and the heat of a paris summer is well evoked.

#39 A Christmas Beginning
by Anne Perry

My eyes! My eyes! Save me from the sight of any other books in this series. No! No! Take them away! Away!!!!!!

I just wanted to hit the main character. Don't ask me how he ever got to the rank he has. This book is only about 50 pages long and every one of them stank like three day old dog poo. I could not have cared less about who killed who or why by the end. God it sucked. And there are loads of them in the Library! I made the fatal mistake of thinking them must be ok if it was such a long running series. Ugh. Stupid me. If it hadn't been a library book I would have taken it to work and shredded it. Ugh.

#40 Mr Tickle
by Roger Hargreaves

I happened to read this when spotting it among Nickerjac's LB's toys at the weekend. I later read it to him, with actions, which only confirmed my earlier opinion. This book is a psychological exploration of the effect of in and out groups in a closed society and how Pavlovian theories can be used to good effect to bring about a change in disruptive behaviour and thus return the community to a state of harmony. I suspect this is how prisons are run.

#41 Death at Face Value
by Joyce Christmas

Who can forget the first of her books I read, "Suddenly in her Sorbet".

Ever since then I have been a devoted fan. I prefer the Lady Margaraet Priam series but I've read all those so now we're on Betty Trenka, retired office manager and looking to not be bored in her retirement. This was a quick read and good travel/beach reading as it was engaging without requiring a lot of thought. The murder of a model in New York triggers a series of events in Conneticut (are these places close to each other? I have no idea but I guess it doesn't matter). Betty ends up with a cat though which can only be a good thing.

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