This year’s Christmas Meg Langslow, Jay to the World, came out this week and it sees Meg investigating a threat to her mother in the run up to hosting the Hollingsworth clan for Christmas. And so it’s an ideal time for me to point you at the post I wrote last year about the Christmas Megs. I don’t think of myself as being a big Christmas book reader, but I do love, love, love Christmas murder mysteries in Caerphilly with Meg. And my admiration for the continuing flow of pun-based titles is huge.
Today’s new release pick, Alice Loxton’s A History of Britain in 21 Paintings, is doing exactly what it says on the tin – using paintings to highlight key moments in the country’s history – starting with an image brought to this country by St Augustine in the sixth century and going all the way through to L S Lowry. I keep picking up Loxton’s previous book Eleanor in shops but the to-read pile is just too big at the moment -but that’s out in paperback now and is about the route of Eleanor of Castile’s funeral procession which took a 200 mile route to London from Lincoln, with stone memorials marking stops on the way – including one only a couple of miles from my home. I’m expecting this new one to be everywhere this Christmas and although this traditional Christmas posts are coming (once I’ve written them!) this would also be a good Christmas book for the history fan in your life.
It’s the second WEdnesday of the month, and I’m back with the Kindle Offers. And I know I’ve had this rant before but honestly it feels like every month Amazon is making it harder and harder to track down what’s on offer in a sensible way. I’ve waded through the same 30 or so books over and over in the quest to get back to the actual list that I used to use.
Figure skating season is well underway now (we’re three weeks in to the Grand Prix series already!) and so I’m starting with Layne Fargo’s The Favourites, which was a bonus review last year and is a Wuthering Heights-inspired ice dance drama. I’m looking forward to seeing what Fargo writes next – she wrote a serial killer thriller before this one which are not my thing at all – because I enjoyed this so much and I hope it’ll be something in a genre I read. Talking of books I loved, Dear Mrs Bird, the first of the Emmy Lake Chronicles is on offer – and I’m also still waiting for news on what next from A J Pearce who said at the end of the last Emmy Lake that she has a new series in mind. Also on offer is Julie Soto‘s Not Another Love Song, and there’s a (rarish) offer on a K J Charles book – How to Fake it in Society, On the mystery front, there’s Jeremy Vine’s Murder on Line One, The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts by Robert Thorogood, which I was assuming was because there was a new Marlow Murders coming (they’re usually a January release) but I can’t see anything listed yet.
Since I saw it in The Broken Binding, but Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice is suddenly everywhere I look – now it’s 99p as well. If you’ve never read the book that inspired the movie Cabaret, then this month might be your chance: Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Novels which includes Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin is on offer. If you want some modern fiction set in Berlin in the 1930s, there’s also Jane Thynne’s Midnight in Vienna which is a standalone mystery set in 1938 – I still have a couple of books in her Clara Vine series to catch up with before I’m allowed to buy any more of her books though! Brit Bennet‘s The Vanishing Half is on offer as is Jilly Cooper‘s Polo, Joanne Harris’s Vianne and Barbara Pym‘s Excellent Women and Quartet in Autumn.
This month’s Terry Pratchett is Snuff, Georgette Heyer’s Snowdrift (which was previously called Pistols for Two), Julia Quinn‘s On a Night Like This and The Sum of All Kisses, and one of my childhood favourites Goodnight Mr Tom. On the non-fiction front, there’s Mary Roach’s Grunt, Patrick Radden-Keefe’s excellent but disturbing Empire of Pain, I like my cook books in physical copies so I can write all over them, but if you like yours electronic, then Rukmini Iyer’s The Quick Roasting Tin is on offer and it’s really good – several of my regular weeknight dinners are from it.
I’ve got a British library crime classic for you today – and another written by ECR Lorac.
If you’ve read the Theft of the Iron Dogs there are some familiar characters in this and not just Lorac’s series detective, Inspector MacDonald. In Lunedale there is more trouble brewing. Giles and Kate are helping Kate’s cousin Caroline buy a farm not far from them. Caroline is an artist not a farmer and she’s been taken with the property and a neighbouring copse and ex-quarry turned pond which she also buys. But there’s something strange at the auction, and soon after Caroline receives an offer for the land. Then her architect is attacked when spending the night at the property to survey it. Inspector MacDonald is in the area on a customs case and starts to help his friends out after the local police prove somewhat sceptical.
This is atmospheric and clever. I love the way that Lorac writes about the Lake District and the way of life there in the first half of the twentieth century. This on we published in 1949 and has the immediate post-war atmosphere with incomers, shortages and people trying to take advantage of changing times. I was struggling with my concentration last week and it was just what I needed to start getting me back on the straight and narrow again. I’m so glad that the BLCC is republishing Lorac (and her Carnac books too) because although they have their dated moments, they are always clever mysteries in a specific setting – whereas some mysteries can feel like they could take place in any old place. More please!
This one is in the newly renamed Kindle+ at the moment – which means you can’t get it in Kobo right now, but as always you can buy the paperback direct from the British Library shop and their delightful three for two offer.
Well. Yes. I had a cold last week and it really, really messed with my concentration and my brain. Even with the train journey four days to help me, the list is short. But on the bright side, the cold is nearly gone and I’m nearly back to normal. I do have a theatre trip and a concert this week so this week may not be hugely better but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!
Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 588
The month started strongly while I was on holiday but without that the list would have been much shorter as the end of the month got very, very busy. There were five theatre trips, a overnight trip to Essex for an event and a weekend day out in London as well as the holiday – but November is looking much quieter (apart from the start of Christmas preparations!) so hopefully I’ll get back on track now the ticket box is emptier!
Bonus picture: I spend a lot of time taking photos of things I think my (nearly 2 year old) niece will like. This is one of them – her response was “Eat it! Eat it!” so that’s pretty much mission accomplished.
*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – this month!
Happy Saturday everyone, and it’s the last day of As You Like It in Stratford today, so I’m back there too – with my bookshop visit from before our theatre trip.
The Broken Binding is a new sci-fi, fantasy and horror specialist bookshop and today is actually the one month anniversary of the opening of their opening – that’s how new it is – and we were in there on Halloweeen which feels like a prime time for a for a fantasy and horror bookshop. And indeed, while we were in there, a huge crowd of people appeared, seemingly all in one group – as you can see from the background of this picture of one of the window displays!
As you all know at this point, I’m not a big reader of sci fi, I don’t read horror at all and my excursions into fantasy are some what limited, but I can appreciate a lovely forward facing display of lovely hardbacks, although there is some T Kingfisher here for people like me!
And among the paperbacks there were authors that I do read – there’s paperback T Kingfisher in this shelf right next to T J Klune in this set of shelves. From my limited knowledge there are loads of authors here that are very popular and that people will enjoy as well as some that I haven’t come across as well. There were Pratchetts (although not the hardback ones) and Philip Pullman and if I hadn’t been in a hurry to get to my dinner (!) and it didn’t suddenly get so busy, I would have a longer look to see what I could find that was new to me. But as it was, I picked up the next in a series that never discounts and when off to my dinner…
It’s been three years since I last wrote about this series and even longer since I did a proper post about them, although I have mentioned a couple in Recommendsday posts. Since that last series redux we’ve had an eleventh and now this week a twelfth book in the series. And I’ve also now read all of them – this is a series that I’ve read severely out of order and have picked up the ones that I’ve missed when they’ve been on offer on Kindle. So now I can give you a proper opinion on the whole series – including the latest book. And I’m going to start with the new one The Voices of the Dead.
In the latest book we’ve reached 1941 and the height of The Blitz as Josephine and her friends gather for Archie Penrose’s wedding. But as soon as the wedding is over Archie is off to Wales to help supervise the operation to move the National Gallery’s paintings to the safety of a slate mine. Josephine is also in the area on holiday in the hopes of spending some more time with Marta who is part of a film crew documenting the operation for newsreels. Also in Wales is Noel Coward who is working on his new play, which will star Margaret Rutherford as a clairvoyant. They’re all hoping for a peaceful time away from the terror of the bombings in London. But as the paintings are being moved in a roof collapses in part of the mine and reveals a body. It’s been there for decades and Archie’s superiors don’t want him to investigate just to move the paintings but that doesn’t sit right with Archie so he and Josephine start to investigate as best they can.
It’s a really good mystery – and if you haven’t read any of the series before it’s actually an OK entry point because all the characters are reintroduced at the start for the wedding and because the plot and secondary characters are fairly typical of the series. And that’s why I’ve started this post with that review of the new book. Because for me the thing that carries through the whole series is that it’s not just Josephine who is a real person being fictionalised – yes most of the people in her immediate circle are fictional (although based on real characters) the secondary characters are real people and the events that are going on are real – in this case it’s Noel Coward and Margaret Rutherford and the real life operation to move paintings to safety. In other books it’s been people like Alfred and Alma Hitchcock who adapted one of Tey’s plays. I particularly enjoyed the paintings plot because we went to Penrhyn Castle on our recent trip to Anglesey so I really appreciated the descriptions of the house which was one of the more boggling National Trust properties we have recently been to.
As I said back in that very first post about the series, they are often darker than you would expect – and this one is no different to that. But then mystery novels written in this era are often darker than you remember – or at least darker than you noticed when you read them as a child and don’t spot the subtext because you don’t understand it. Since I wrote that first series post I’ve read five more in the series – including the latest one – and they’ve all got four stars from me on Goodreads (and I finished this latest one just before the ability to do more than a full star came in) which is a sign of how much I like them.
These are very easy to get hold of – in my experience there’ll be at least one in any crime selection of even a reasonable size in a bookshop and I’m expecting this one to be in the new hardbacks section in shops too. And they’re in Kindle and Kobo too obviously. And it’s worth mentioning that Upson’s standalone Christmas mystery, The Christmas Clue, came out in paperback a couple of weeks ago too and so that should be fairly easy to get hold of as well.
Back in March when I was writing about Murder in the Cathedral I said that I was sad because it was going to be the last new Kerry Greenwood book we were going to have. Well I was wrong – there is just one more and it came out this week. I found out about this a couple of months ago from Kerry’s facebook page, where The Duty Wombat said “We’ve had a lot of edits, and I have helped. This will be noted in the actual books, for reasons of transparency.” But I wasn’t expecting this to be published anywhere near this fast – but I think they’ve gone double speed on it to get it out for the Australian Summer holidays (Christmas!).
Anyway, this is the eighth in the Corinna Chapman series which is set in the modern day. The blurb says that it’s autumn in Melbourne and Insula, the building where Corinna lives and works comes to the attention of some real estate developers and they will need to fight to survive. Elsewhere Daniel, Corinna’s private detective lover is investigating some missing boys. I really like the Corinna books – and I’ll be interested to see the notes about which of the edits are post-Kerry (so to speak). Hopefully I’ll get my hands on a copy relatively soon – and I’m pretty sure I’ll read it as soon as I do!
It was a pretty bumper list of books last month thanks to the holiday,
An Inkling of Death by Anna Beer*
This is the second mystery featuring academic Eve Brook – I read the first one this month as well, but this came out last week. This time Eve is hunting for Tolkien references in the papers of a minor member of the Inklings. Spending New Year at a house in the country should be a break from the heavy material that she’s found in the documents, but the atmosphere at the party is not good and that’s before a body is found. Soon she’s trying to figure out what happened and whether it’s related to her work. The premise of this is good, but I found the start where you’re thrown in to the house party without the context of the case a bit confusing, and sort of wished that it had started at the beginning of the story rather than jumping back two months later after the murder, but I understood why it had been done that way to get to the murder quicker. I find Eve quite a tricky character to get on board with – she’s clearly intelligent when it comes to her work but her emotional intelligence and the way she deals with relationships feels much more like a teenager than a woman with a grown up child of her own. But I thought the mystery plot was clever – the 1930s Oxford politics and the backdrop of the attitudes towards fascism among academics at the time made for a clever set up.
Puzzles of the Parish ed. Martin Edwards
This is another of the BLCC’s collections of mystery short stories built around a theme. This time the linking thread is ecclesiastical – they feature vicars, churches and even a cardinal scheming for the papacy. There are some authors you will recognise in here – like G K Chesterton, Ellis Peters and Edmund Crispin as well as others you may not. And as ever with these collections it is a little patchy – I really liked some of the stories but others left me cold. But if you’re looking for some mystery short stories – or to try and add some more Golden Age authors into your reading diet this isn’t a bad way of spending a few hours if you are in Kindle Unlimited – or Kindle+ as they appear to be in the process of rechristening it.
The Gentleman’s Book of Vices by Jess Everlee*
It’s London in the 1880s, and Charlie is about to marry a woman he can’t love. But before he does, he’s determined to meet his favourite author from his erotica collection. As far as everyone knows, Miles is a shopkeeper – but the shop is actually being kept afloat by his (much more successful) career as an erotica writer. When Charlie turns up in his shop, Miles suspects blackmail – not that Charlie is a fan. Soon they’re having an affair – but there are things in their lives which will need to be overcome. I struggled with this one on a number of fronts. The plot is muddled and the pacing is a bit all over the place. But I think the thing that’s going to bamboozle readers the most is a mismatch of expectations and reality: One of the main characters is a writer of erotica, but most of the sex scenes are off page/closed door and I don’t think that’s what people are going to be expecting, especially with pacing and plot as patchy as they are. Never mind.
