Happy Friday everyone, and to tie in with the theme this week, I’ve got a mystery series set not in Brighton but in the fictional town of Seatoun, somewhere on the south coast within easy reach of London, so you can see why it might fit my seaside-y vibes this week!
Grace is a former police officer, who left the force under something of a cloud, and who now works as a private detective in the town where she used to be a cop – trying to avoid her former colleagues as far as possible. Her career as a PI isn’t really going anywhere – and the cases she gets tend towards the mundane and the ridiculous. Less dead humans, more dead animals or missing people.
At this point it should be noted that I’ve read all but one of the five books in the series in their original late 1990s paperback form. And yes I know there’s only four in the photo (and in two different covers styles) but I couldn’t find a copy of Who Killed Marilyn Monroe on my shelves and there’s a chance I found it on the shelves at one of the hostels that I stay at. But anyway, these days they have been retitled and reissued on Kindle and that’s how I read book three. Now I read these all fairly well spaced out, so I can’t say for certain, but I didn’t notice any major re-working or rewriting between the two versions – just the radical change in title and design.
The new covers look much darker and more thriller-y than the previous ones. But don’t be deceived. Like Ruth Galloway, these are not as scary as the covers would have you expect. Obviously these are books written 20 years ago – so mobile phones are much less common and research is all done in person in archives and not on the internet – but that really works for a mystery series. And as I can remember this era from growing up – and cassette tapes machines, smoking in bars, a time before smart phones – there’s a nostalgia factor here for me too.
Only five are on Kindle at the moment, but they are all in Kindle Unlimited. One of them – with yet another different cover and the original title is available on Kobo. But I have managed to pick up most of these in second handbook shops or book exchanges so the paperbacks are not as hard to find as you might think.
This weeks BotW is one of my purchases while I was writing the Kindle Offers post after I got the sample which didn’t get to the end of the first short story (a Poirot one) and I needed to know who did it! So here we are, an Autumn book read in Autumn – check me.
This is a collection of twelve short stories from Agatha Christie, including all of her most famous detectives among them and with a preface that is a relevant section of her autobiography complete with a poem that she wrote about her childhood. It also includes the original version of Witness for the Prosecution which was turned into a film in the 1950s starring Marlena Dietrich and has been running in a site-specific production at London’ in an actual courtroom’s County Hall for more than five years.
As is always the case with me and Christie (and in fact crime more generally), I enjoyed the ones with the regular detectives more than I enjoyed the standalone ones but they’re all pretty good and I read the whole book in less than a day, which again given that it was a work day says a lot about how much I was enjoying it!
This is on offer at the moment in Kindle, and Kobo. It also comes in a hardback edition. There are also three other short story collections – for the other seasons obviously – and Midwinter Murder is currently in Kindle Unlimited if you want some more.
On the same afternoon as I wandered into Waterstones Piccadilly, I also had a very nice half hour wandering Hatchards down the street, and today I present to you the fruit of my trip. Hatchards has been a bookshop since the last years of the eighteenth century and is London’s oldest bookshop. If you’re a historical romance reader, you’ll be familiar with the name as bookish heroines are always dropping in there to buy books. Sadly it does not have a romance section, but it does have some other stuff going for it!
It won’t be there any more, because the auction is over but I couldn’t not mention the Freddie Mercury window that they had – as they were selling the auction catalogue book (and may well have been the only place to get it other than Sothebys). Other than that the downstairs is pretty much what you would expect from a long established bookshop – lots of serious fiction and non-fiction, which as you know is not my thing, so I’m not going to bother you with pictures of that. What I am going to show you is their crime section – which while not quite as big as the Waterstone’s Piccadilly one (which takes up the other half of the big front room that the romance section is in) but it is one of the biggest I’ve seen in central London (much bigger than Foyles Charing Cross Road) AND has the added bonus of also having some collectable second hand books as well as the new stuff.
I’m starting with this picture because I know most shops have tables of books, but most of them don’t have antique-looking dining tables full of books – if i was to guess how they were picking stuff to go on here I would say it’s the accessible end of detective, but with some wildcards thrown in . I was pretty pleased with how much of this I had read to be honest – including (but not limited to) The Christie Affair, The Maid, The Grantchester series, The Eyre Affair, The Mary Russell Mysteries, Death Goes on Skis, the Richard Coles and the Richard Osman.
This is the start of the alphabet – it goes around from your left as you walk in from the front – and as you can see it’s got a good selection of the classics you’ve heard of – like Margery Allingham’s Campion series, the long running cozy series like M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth, with the thrillers that are too scary for me and everything in between. And on the end you can see the expensive collectible stuff…
And you’ve got the same mix at the end of the alphabet – including the biggest selections of Maisie Dobbs paperbacks that I’ve recently seen, most of the Nicola Upson Josephine Tey mysteries, some Patricia Wentworths and The Three Dahlias along with a Jo Nesbo that’s clearlyin the wrong place!
As well as being in the right place in the alphabet so to speak in the crime room, there’s more British Library Crime Classics in the classic fiction section at the front of the first floor (you can see the Wodehouse and the Agatha Christie in the background) – including a whole bunch that I’ve written about – including Murder of a Lady, Death of a Bookseller, the Cheltenham Square Murder, These Names Mean Clues and more.
I just wanted to throw this in too – it’s the historical fiction selection – which has everything from Georgette Heyer, through the C J Sansom Tudor murder mysteries and the Andrew Taylor Restoration ones, with all the literary fiction bits in between!
And finally, they’ve also got a pretty good selection of the pretty Terry Pratchett Hardbacks that I’m not meant to be buying but find very hard to resist…
And I’ve already got my copy of Amongst Our Weapons in my grubby little hands as you can seee! I told you that I’d got a signed copy pre-ordered from Big Green Books – and they appear to have some of them left if you’re in the market. As it’s the ninth book in the series, it’d be breaking all my rules if it ends up being a Book of the Week – but I’m not ruling it out, although if previous books are anything to go by, you really need to have read at least some of the others to get the most out of. So instead, I’m going to remind you that I have a Series I Love post about them from two years ago from not long after the False Value came out.
It was a bit of a post-holiday come down week in reading, in fact I only bought The Division Bell Mystery in Cambridgeon Sunday, but I read it on Sunday afternoon and evening and it was so good. And also, in case you missed it, it’s an important week for the British Parliament this week, so it seemed an apt pick.
When a wealthy American businessman dies while having dinner inside Parliament, at first it looks like suicide, while he was alone in the room as voting was taking place but the evidence doesn’t add up. Soon a young parliamentary private secretary plays amateur sleuth to try and work out what happened. This is a classic locked room myster, although I think you might need a bit of knowledge of how the House of Commons work for this to make sense. The Division Bell of the title is the bell that rings across the Palace of Westminster (and in some nearby drinking establishments) when MPs are called to go and vote (which is called a division because they divide into two lobbies, the Ayes and the noes) but for the most part Ellen Wilkinson has explained everything you might need to know. In fact Wilkinson, was one of the first female MPs and so the book is filled with insider details about what Westminster was like in the 1930s – and more than a few digs at the male-centric nature of it all.
I love a Golden Age crime novel as you know, and locked room mysteries are always fun. This is quite traditional/of its time in terms of structure – friendly cop, amateur detective with some skin in the game, tame reporter, but that’s probably to be expected! I basically read this in one sitting, which tells you a lot as well. Wilkinson is a fascinating person even before you add writing a Murder mystery into the mix (go google her) and on the basis of this, I wish she’d written more. The Division Bell Mystery is part of the British Library Crime Classics series – which is a fairly reliable source of forgotten mystery stories – I’ve featured several others as BotW before* – some are great, sometimes you can see why they might have been forgotten! Heffers had a whole load of them on Sunday and they were on 3 for 2, so of course I got three.
If you’re not going to Heffers, then you should be able to find a copy from all of the usual sources as well as on Kindle (£2.99 at time of writing). Most bookshops will have a selection of the British Library Crime Classics too if they don’t have this one. I also recommend Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Haye – which seems to be one of the more commonly stocked books in the line.
I am the person who gives everybody they possibly can a book for Christmas. My immediate family all get a book AND a “normal” Christmas present. I buy young relatives books as often as I can. I even gift myself a Christmas book. So I thought that I would give you suggestions for presents – on top of a post about Christmas-themed books. This is the first of four post which I hope cover all eventualities. Most of the links are to Amazon – because quite a few of the books mentioned across the various posts are in their 3 for £10 promotion, thus saving you money to use to buy yourself books on other things.
Non Fiction
Men can be tricky to buy for – or at least I find them hard. I often end up buying biographies of sportsmen. The Boy in my life is a massive petrol head – he devoured motorbike Guy Martin’s Autobiography this last weekend, which had been sitting on the shelf since last Christmas and is out now in paperback. He’s said he’d quite like Martin’s hardback, When You Dead, You Dead. Also on his Christmas list this year is ex-F1 driver turned World Endurance Champion Mark Webber’s book Aussie Grit. The annual Jeremy Clarkson book will have been a fixture on many people’s Christmas lists for years, but if you fancy a change, The Boy really wants And On That Bombshell – a behind the scenes look at Top Gear, written by Top Gear’s script editor Richard Porter, who I’ve been following on Twitter for years without knowing what his day job was!
I have had *such* headaches taking the photos for these posts. I could cry. Honestly I could.
Away from the motorsports books he’s a big Bill Bryson fan – so The Road to Little Dribbling may also turn up in his stocking. One of his favourite books this year has already featured here as a Book of the Week – but A Year of Living Danishly is so good that I think it deserves another mention – particularly as Hygge starts in January and moving to a new country is often one of those things that gets mentioned in New Year’s Resolutions.
Check out my attempts at artistic arrangements of the books. This was the best I could manage.
On the history front, I haven’t read Trumbo (yet) but it’s just been turned into a film and the McCarthy era is fascinating – particularly in the movie industry. I’ve also had quite a good hit-rate with Ben MacIntyre – my dad loved Operation Mincemeat, and Agent Zigzag and Double Cross have also gone down well with him and several other men of various ages that I buy for. His latest is A Spy Among Friends, about Kim Philby, which I haven’t read – but which may well end up in someone’s stocking this year.
Fiction
My Boy has got hooked (like me) on Janet Evanovich this year, so I’ve been on the lookout for pacey and fun thrillers for him. It’s tricky as it very often ends up with me buying books for me! I’m going to try and turn him onto the Fox and O’Hare series next – The Heist is the first one, The Scam is the latest. They’re basically Ocean’s 11 or White Collar but as a book. She’s an FBI agent, he’s a fraudster – but they have to work together to catch con-men.
Try not to look at the dents in the hardback spines, I know once you’ve noticed it’s hard to stop,but…
I’ve already mentioned The British Library Crime Classics series in the BotW post on Silent Night, but it bears repeating that there some really good titles in this attractive looking series which would make good gifts for an Agatha Christie fan looking for Golden Age Crime. And as the series is bring stuff back into print that’s been out of circulation for a long time, there’s much less risk that they’ll have read them already! On top of the ones I’ve already mentioned, try The Z Murders and Murder Underground. Speaking of Golden Age crime, Sophie Hannah’s Poirot continuation The Monogram Murders might also be worth a look.
Try and focus on the retro stylings of the book, and the shine of the table – which I polished specially
This is breaking my own rule about not mentioning stuff I’ve read for Novelicious before the review goes up there, but I’ve just finished reading TV historian Neil Oliver’s first novel Master of Shadows, and without preempting my review there too much, it is basically the novel version of one of those historical epic movies. Set in the fifteenth century. it follows a young man as he flees Scotland, becomes a mercenary and ends up entangled in the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire. It was too gruesome for me, but if you have a Game of Thrones fan in your life, this could be a great choice for them.
The pile of book effect is wearing thin? I know. And this has foil on the cover so its a photo nightmare
My Boy has also expressed an interest in Timur Vermes’ Look Who’s Back, which has been sitting in my Library book bag for ages. In case you’ve missed it, this was a massive best seller in Germany – and tells the story of what happened when Adolf Hitler wakes up in 2011 Berlin. It’s already been made into a movie in Germany and Radio 4 have dramatised it over here. It’s meant to be laugh-out loud funny, but disturbing.
And finally, I’m not big on scary, but The Boy has film director David Cronenberg’s debut novel on his to-read pile. I don’t like recommending books that I haven’t read (or that people around me haven’t read) but Consumed has a good review average on both Amazon and Goodreads and pull quotes from Stephen King and JJ Abrams, so strikes me as a fairly good punt in a genre I’m really not very fluent in.
Still, at least I had enough books for this post to make a stack. Just wait til tomorrow…
Miscellaneous
If you want to give bookish gifts that aren’t actually books, then may I point you in the direction of American company Out of Print. They do the most gorgeous clothes with book covers printed on them and for each purchase they donate a book to a community in need. I’ve gifted their t-shirts to several men at various points – including The Boy, who loves them and stares wistfully at their website every time he sees me looking at it, but tells me he has enough clothes. The tees are soft, the print isn’t crunchy (if you know what I mean) and they wash well and hold their shape. If you’re in the UK I think we’ve already missed the cheap shipping international deadline, although they say you can upgrade, but TruffleShuffle stock a few styles, as do Amazon.
So there you are, hopefully I’ve recommended something for most tastes or situations – or at least provided a jumping off point. Coming next: Books for Her.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 