Tag: mysteries

Book Review: Murder Before Evensong by Rev. Richard Coles – an ecclesiastical cosy that takes you back to the ’80s

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

The cosy mystery genre is as varied as any, and some are definitely better than others. I am always on the lookout for the feel of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories when I pick one up, so this one with its classic English village setting seemed promising. Murder Before Evensong introduces us to the parish of Champton, a village with a lord of the manor, Lord Bernard de Floures of Champton House, and a rectory, the home of our sleuth, Rev. Daniel Clement.

When Daniel suggests the installation of toilets at St Mary’s during a church service, he couldn’t possibly have imagined the fallout. A posse of flower ladies are appalled that the space required will mean the loss of the back pews. Daniel is reluctant to back down, but soon has his hands full with other matters. There’s the arrival of his actor brother Theo doing background research for a new role as a TV vicar in a ‘gentle comedy’. He wants to follow Daniel around to get a sense of what he does.

Then there’s the annual open day at Champton House, with the whole village mucking in, managing the door, running guided tours, serving tea. But the day ends in tragedy, with Daniel discovering Bernard’s cousin Anthony Bowness, who’d been archiving the family’s papers, dead in a back pew of St Mary’s. Anthony, a troubled man, often came here to pray, which is where Daniel’s naughty dachshunds come upon the body, stabbed in the neck by a pair of secateurs. What secrets had Anthony uncovered? And who knew how to kill so effectively, picking the exact spot for the carotid artery?

There are more murders before the last page, and multiple suspects. Nathan, the de Floures odd-job man, has a shady past, and the grandfather he lives with an even shadier one. And no one knows what to make of Bernard’s younger son, Alex, with his wild enthusiasms for art installations and his unsuitable friends. Other characters seem to be hiding secrets, and the village’s role in the war can’t be discounted either.

‘And you took the dogs?’
‘They usually come with me to church. And it’s their wee-wee time before bed.’ What a ridiculous phrase, he thought. How would that sound read out in court? ‘And they like to sniff for mice. If they’re lucky, maybe they’ll find half a biscuit … and I thought they would be particularly enthusiastic this evening because we had a lot of visitors come through church on Open Day and some of them bring dogs. Lots to sniff. And that’s when I noticed. Or rather didn’t notice: they didn’t sound enthusiastic. They were barely making a noise, and that’s what made me think something was out of the ordinary. I called them, they didn’t come.

The story is well plotted, adding enough interest to keep the reader guessing and turning the pages. But the steady humour of the writing and the interplay between a host of quirky village characters lift this cosy above the average. Author, the Reverend Richard Coles, obviously knows well the life of an Anglican priest, and as a former member of the band the Communards, seems keen to evoke the 1980s here – Cagney and Lacey on the telly, Wham on the radio. But in a village like this, you feel it could be any time, that things don’t change a lot.

Daniel is a thoughtful, always considerate rector, at times struggling with the demands of those around him – not just his parishioners. His perceptive but interfering mother Audrey has to be constantly held in check, as do the two dachsunds, Cosmo and Hilda. The tiny general store and post-office is often the scene of gossipy councils of war between the anti-toilet brigade which contrasts nicely with scenes at the old-fashioned rectory and the palatial Champton House.

The writing is terrific too. Coles blends in Biblical and other ecclesiastical references to add authenticity without overburdening the story, which is generally lively and full of wit. I chuckled my way through, not particularly caring whodunit, as I was enjoying the journey so much. I’ll definitely be keen to continue with this series – the fourth is out later this year, so there’s a few to catch up with. Murder Before Evensong is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout – a welcome return to the world of Bob Burgess

~ Judith ~ 6 Comments

The Burgess Boys was the first novel by Elizabeth Strout I ever read. I was soon a fan of Strout’s particular way of storytelling, never missing a book since and catching up with Olive Kitteridge, Lucy Barton and co, the small towns of Amgash Illinois, or as with this book, Crosby, Maine.

But I never forgot the wonderful character of Bob Burgess, the self-deprecating legal-aid lawyer, working the cases that don’t bring in a fat pay-cheque. He’s got plenty of history with his well-to-do, more confident brother, Jim – another lawyer and winner of a famous case people still talk about.

In Tell Me Everything, we catch up with Bob, who in the previous Lucy Barton book (Lucy by the Sea) has become Lucy’s friend. They take walks most days together, Bob having a furtive cigarette. Our other Elizabeth Strout character of note, Olive Kitteridge also enters the plot, having a story she wants to share with Lucy. Bob brings Lucy to visit the elderly Olive in her care facility, and Olive immediately detects that Bob is in love with Lucy. This is awkward, as Bob is married to Margaret, a church minister, and Lucy has settled in Crosby with her ex-husband William.

Lucy is a famous author, though a quietly unassuming one. Olive finds her a bit mousey but the two soon get along well, sharing stories of ordinary folk. They’re often rather sad stories, but the two feel they are worthy of sharing, as being otherwise undocumented lives. I feel this is Elizabeth Strout’s goal too – to write about ordinary folk, their burdens and their hopes, their failures and secrets, as well as the talents they don’t know they have. Some are more ordinary than others.

When elderly Gloria Beach goes missing from Shirley Falls, suspicion lands on her son Matthew, a strange, shy, reclusive man who has always lived with his mother. Bob finds himself reluctantly agreeing to defend Matthew against what seems to be an imminent charge of murder. Again, what is on the surface hides a grim set of family secrets, “lives of quiet desperation” indeed. So Bob has a lot going on with the legal case and his feelings for Lucy. A terrible illness in his brother’s family throws more light onto his relationship with Jim and events from the past.

Forty-five minutes away on the same morning that Susan was reading about Gloria Beach in the Shirley Falls newspaper, here, in the smaller town of Crosby, Bob was having a cigarette. It was a windy day with muted sunlight that was trying to press through the cloud covering, and Bob was standing beside his car in the back parking lot of that same old inn that had gone bankrupt and had vines growing over its windows. Last night his wife had sniffed his shoulder and said, “Bob? Don’t tell me you’re doing that again. Please don’t tell me you are smoking again.”
And he had lied!
He had lied.
Now Bob thought, Keep moving, so that the smoke wouldn’t stick to him, although the wind seemed to twirl itself around and not go in one direction. As he took a step forward, his phone in his pocket started to ring and he stepped right into the smoke he had just exhaled, and he thought, You idiot. Meaning himself.

Poor old Bob. He’s such a nice guy but gets caught up in everyone else’s troubles. He’s what Lucy calls a “sin-eater” – he seems more ministerial than his wife, Margaret, who he’s beginning to have some doubts about. On top of everything else, Margaret is having a difficult time with a partitioner.

I rattled through Tell Me Everything, particularly interested in the murder case and wanting to find out what had happened. But there’s nothing sensational here, it’s all very much like real life, another tragedy in an already tragic family. How Bob spots what happened and deals with it reveals an astuteness that is easily hidden within his seeming ordinariness.

Tell Me Everything is another terrific addition to the canon of novels about characters I have come to care about. They’re so realistic with their good points and bad, but Olive, Lucy and Bob are all people who take an interest in the lives of others, even people they hardly know. The stories of these people that come to the surface are often somewhat bleak, heartbreaking even, but they’re nonetheless fascinating. Tell Me Everything‘s a four-and-a-half-star read from me.

Book Review: The Twins by L V Matthews – a twisty psychological thriller with dark family secrets

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This novel is the sort of psychological thriller that has you hooked from the beginning. Yes, it’s about twins, and I know there have been so many stories about twins, you often feel you’ve heard them all before. But that didn’t stop me picking this one up and getting immersed in the story of Margot and Cora.

For twins, the two couldn’t be more different. Margot is quiet and responsible, a dedicated nanny to a well-to-do London family. She has a comfortable life and makes sure everything is as it should be for her young charges. It’s a twenty-four seven kind of gig, but you get the feeling Margot is creating a warm and loving environment because that seems to have been absent in her own childhood.

Cora on the other hand lives in a cramped flat across town with a flatmate, and the two are complete hedonists, living on the edge, while Cora will stop at nothing to get that big break as dancer. She’s confident, a bit crass, breezy and somewhat heartless. Glimpses of her at school, a decade before, reveal she’d been in with the in-crowd, while Margot lingered in the background, friendless and the butt of jokes.

The Twins begins with a mishap during a family holiday on a yacht which sees Margot lose the medication that keeps her anxiety at bay, and slowly memories start to creep back. These are events from her late teens, when something terrible happened involving the death of the twins’ younger sister Annie. Desperate to know more, Margot toys with the idea of seeing a therapist, an idea that Cora vehemently opposes. What is the secret that Cora wants to keep from Margot?

…I then look at the sea out of the porthole, exhale, and tell myself that I’m safe here. Looking after people is what I’m good at: routine and order and consideration. There is no need to feel anxious.
‘Margot?’ someone calls from above. ‘Can you bring up the oysters?’
‘Absolutely.’
I busy myself with tending to others. People don’t realise you’re not talking to them about your own life if you’re putting food on their tables, if you’re doing their laundry, if you’re smiling at their stories. I like living their lives because it’s easier than living my own.
My life has ghosts.

The story flips between the two sisters as we watch Margot attempt to reclaim the past, questioning her grandmother, in a care-home, her own memory now patchy. She trawls the internet to find the one person who might help her – Cora’s high-school boyfriend and Margot’s secret crush. Meanwhile Cora trains for a role in a dance performance that echoes parts of their story.

As more and more shadowy secrets rise to the forefront of Margot’s mind, you can’t help but feel for her and worry that when she finds out the truth it will be worse than not-knowing. She’s a much more sympathetic character than Cora, who seems like the dark to Margot’s light. Besides which, Margot’s grip on her life seems more and more rickety. This really racks up the tension.

Altogether, this is a nicely escapist read that keeps you hooked. However there was one point at which I wanted to throw the book across the room – a twist that I wasn’t expecting, not at all. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to finish the book after that. But I’m glad I did. It all comes together quite well and it makes the book seem rather more psychologically interesting than it might have been.

So if you like a good twisty, suspenseful read, this one’s worth persevering with, even if it is about twins. There is a really nasty character who makes a good villain; and the story plays with the fickleness of memory and the effects of trauma to create an interesting psychological situation. The plot really keeps you on your toes as a reader, so The Twins definitely does the job. A four-star read from me.

Book Review: Stone Town by Margaret Hickey – atmospheric outback noir and a new case for our troubled cop

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This book is the second of Hickey’s books featuring Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti, whose life was going nowhere in the first book, Cutter’s End, until he was rescued by a case that took him back to where he lived as a boy. Now he’s living in his late mother’s house in Booralama and has taken charge of the local police station with a wider region of small towns to look after. This is rural Australia, north of Adelaide, and Mark soon has a new case, bringing us to the small town of the title.

Mark is called out on a night of torrential rain. Three teenagers have discovered a body on land that was once mined for gold, now popular with bird-watchers. But what was Aidan Sleeth doing, wandering about at night, some distance from home. A property developer, he’d been buying up land to turn what was a haven for wildlife into sections for new homes and making enemies along the way. Which might be why he’s been shot in the head, execution style.

As it often goes in these country towns, no one wants to talk about it. The teenagers are too upset, their families protective. The neighbours are reluctant to get involved. Whether Mark likes it or not, two detectives are sent from Adelaide to help with the case, both in their own ways arrogant, the senior detective taking over his office, the junior detective making brash comments that jar. And they’re more worried about a missing officer than the murder they’re supposed to be investigating.

Stone Town, barely twenty-five kilometres from where he lived in Booralama, may as well have been another universe. Consisting mainly of old farming families and an influx of tree-changers, the area was known for its mines, remnants of settler stone houses scattered about the bush, and significant wheat yield.
Riveting, Mark remembered thinking in Year 10 local history. Take that, Machu Pichu.
But the gold from Stone Town was long gone and it had been years since farmers’ sons returned from boarding schools to make a life on the land.

Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitstead has been doing surveillance work on the wife of an organised crime boss, Tony Scopelliti, currently serving a sentence in prison. When her car is discovered near Stone Town, Mark can only assume she’s dead, her body thrown down a mineshaft. Brief chapters in italic type would suggest otherwise, making the reader feel like a child calling out at a Punch ‘n Judy show, “she’s over here” and hoping the police will find her in time.

Of course the two cases will at some point converge, and Mark, an experienced and sensible officer, will show up the Adelaide cops, who turn out to be more complex characters than first assumed. If that isn’t enough, his old mate Superintendent Conti has warned Mark that there’s a leak to suggest one of his new colleagues is getting information back to Scopelliti. Can Mark keep an ear out?

So Mark has a lot on his plate. To make things more interesting, he’s going through a few personal issues: missing his kids since his divorce, grief for his late mother, as well as that feeling you have when you’re over fifty and back at your childhood home – a sense that life has passed you by. As a reader you can’t but like the guy but also you worry about him.

What I really liked about the story was the way Hickey captures rural life, particularly the old allegiances among people who have grown up in an area and unfortunately for some, know all their secrets. Wherever Mark goes, people fondly remember his mother, a woman who was close friends with fellow members the Country Women’s Association, who to many seem to have a strong say on how things are done. Mark’s interactions with these women and other crusty characters, particularly at the pub, often add to the gentle humour that runs through the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed Stone Town, and will definitely be keen to check in with Senior Sergeant Ariti again. Hickey has written three in the series as well as a couple of stand-alone titles. If you’ve enjoyed other Aussie Rural Noir authors such as Jane Harper, Garry Disher and Sarah Bailey, Margaret Hickey is well worth giving a try. Stone Town is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell – a twisty, psychological thriller sequel that will have you hooked

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Lisa Jewell often explores dark family secrets in her psychological thrillers. This is never more so than in The Family Upstairs, the 2019 novel about the Lambs, a well-to-do family and the interlopers who make their home with them, upending their lives. Mrs Lamb has felt the need to do something useful with the Chelsea family’s wealth, and takes in the Thomsen’s, as well as a couple of homeless musicians. Their London riverside house is luxurious and roomy, but David Thomsen exploits the Lambs, and the children, Henry and Lucy Lamb; Phin and Clemency Thomsen, get caught up in a situation that ends in murder.

The sequel, The Family Remains picks up the story of the younger generation, having been reunited in the first book and who are now trying to each build a future. This includes Libby Jones, the daughter Lucy had as a teenager, brought up by adoptive parents and who inherited the house in Chelsea. But the shadows of what went before still linger and there’s a sense that Henry and Lucy in particular are still looking over their shoulders.

When a bag of bones is found by mudlarkers on the riverbank, DI Samuel Owusu traces them back to the old Lamb residence and all the things that Henry and Lucy hoped would be forgotten about forever may now come to light. But Henry and then Lucy are on a quest to find Phin, Libby’s father, supposedly working in a safari park in Botswana, but who has high-tailed it, for some reason, to Chicago.

So while Henry and Lucy are hunting down Phin, DI Owusu is trying to piece together the life of Birdie Dunlop-Evers, a former member of a pop-group, reported missing in the 1990s. The story also works in the story of Rachel, a jewellery designer, who is told at the start of the book of the death of her estranged husband. We’re well aware of the particularly nasty type of guy Michael was – we met him in the earlier book when he was married to Lucy.

Lucy is a lovely-looking woman. When I saw her last year for the first time since we were teenagers, I was taken aback by the loveliness of her. She has a face that tells stories, she looks all of her forty years, she barely grooms herself, she dresses like a bucket of rags, but somehow she still always looks lovelier than any other woman in the room. It’s something about the juxtaposition of her amber-hazel eyes with the dirty gold streaks in her hair, the weightlessness of her, the rich honey of her voice, the way she moves and holds herself and touches things and looks at you. My father looked like a pork pie on legs and my lucky sister snatched all her looks from our elegant half-Turkish mother.

Golly, there’s a lot going on here, so never before was there a better reason to read the earlier book before the sequel. But somehow it all makes sense, and even if it’s a while since you read The Family Upstairs, you never feel completely bamboozled. Yes, you will have questions, loose ends and half-forgotten pieces of the overall puzzle. But Lisa Jewell will have you hooked, never the less, as I was.

I steamed through this novel in a couple of days, desperate to know if things would work out all right in the end. There’s always the sense that even though Henry and Lucy and even perhaps Phin, have been driven to do desperate and even quite bad things, they were very damaged children. We still feel for them, as well as Rachel, getting caught up in a relationship with a monster. It’s a twisty, original psychological thriller and as such a compelling read, but it’s very empathetic too.

And the characters are just so interesting. DI Owusu is a really nice guy, thoughtful, intelligent and sympathetic, which helps balance out the potential darkness and selfishness of Henry. Rachel’s story takes us into a character who has lived for the moment when it comes to relationships and suddenly in her thirties, feels it’s time to make a commitment. If only she hadn’t settled on Michael. But it’s Lucy I really enjoyed the most – she is so fragile on the one hand and yet has had to be strong and think on her feet for her children.

It is probably the characters and their unique situation that prompted so much demand from readers for the sequel that Lisa Jewell hadn’t planned to write. Which is probably why her books are so good, so moreish. Whenever I feel like a book to unwind with, she’s a top choice. If only I could make them last a day or two longer. This one’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro – an unsolved mystery and a journey back to pre-war Shanghai

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’d had this book on my bookcase from a decade or two before, and thought I’d revisit it in audiobook form. But the writing was just so engaging, the narrative voice of the main character drawing me in, I got the paperback out after all, the better to absorb it all at my own pace.

When We Were Orphans begins with its main character, Christopher Banks, having recently moved to London after graduating from Cambridge, when he bumps into an old friend from school. Over the course of their conversation it emerges that Christopher was considered a bit of odd character as a boy, while the two think about what they want to do with their lives. And it seems that Christopher has always wanted to be a private investigator. We’re in the early 1930s, the Golden Age of the detective novel, which is what may have inspired him.

This may seem a little ridiculous, but Christopher is deadly earnest, and soon sets about fulfilling his ambition. But the big mystery that has dogged his life so far has always been the disappearance of his parents when Christopher was a young boy. The story flips back to his childhood in Shanghai, where his father had a job with a company that was involved with the trade of opium.

It is slightly surprising to me, looking back today, to think how as young boys we were allowed to come and go unsupervised to the extent we were. But this was, of course, all within the relative safety of the International Settlement. I for one was absolutely forbidden to enter the Chinese areas of the city, and as I know, Akira’s parents were no less strict on the matter. Out there, we were told, lay all manner of ghastly diseases, filth and evil men. The closest I had ever come to going out of the Settlement was once when a carriage carrying my mother and me took an unexpected route along that part of the Soochow creek bordering the Chapei district; I could see the huddled low rooftops across the canal, and had held my breath for as long as I could for fear the pestilence would come airborne across the narrow strip of water. No wonder then that my friend’s claim to have undertaken a number of secret forays into such areas made an impression on me.

Eventually, Christopher makes his way back to find his parents, which he is confident he can do, now that he’s become renown as a top detective. He does this regardless of the fact that China has been invaded by Japanese armed forces and nothing from his childhood is the same. Among the expats he meets there is Sarah Hemmings, a girl he’d found attractive at one time, now married to Sir Cecil, an aging diplomat who she is attempting to inspire into stopping the tide of war. Delusion among the expats seems to be catching.

Christopher ploughs on looking for his parents – surely they can’t really still in the house where they were taken all these years later? But he is convinced he will succeed, as is everyone else – he’s a famous detective after all. Yet he’s also something of an unreliable narrator – Ishiguro contrasts the workings of Christopher’s mind, his blindness to reality, with the chaos all around him. Is he a symbol of British interests in the East, of colonialism and the imagined superiority of the British Empire? There are a lot of ideas at play here.

When We Were Orphans was shortlisted for a Booker Prize although it hasn’t been a favourite with the critics.. I found the plot lagged a little towards the end, while the ending itself seemed a little rushed. But I did enjoy the world the author created and the characters, though obviously flawed, are still interesting and engaging enough to spend time with. Ishiguro sets up wonderful scenes, and creates settings you can really visualise. The writing is as it always is with Ishiguro, fabulous. I am glad I picked this up for a second time – another reason to hang on to those old books bought decades before, just in case. Even so, it’s probably only a three-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd – much more than your average spy novel

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

I’m always keen to read anything by William Boyd – his prose is crafted, his characters complex and there is always an interesting historical setting. And story-wise, you can never tell what’s going to happen next.

With Gabriel’s Moon we are in London, at least some of the time, in the early 1960s, and our complex protagonist this time is Gabriel Dax. He’s a travel writer at that time when travel writing was really popular, and at thirty, is already very successful.

The book opens with a prologue describing the house fire that killed his mother and when, as a six-year-old, Gabriel was lucky to escape with his life. Ever since, Gabriel has struggled to sleep – with nightmares of the fire plus troubling missing elements of his memory. He has sleeping pills, and not surprisingly he drinks a lot. A doctor recommends he see a therapist and these sessions lead him to investigate just what really happened that night.

Gabriel’s recent jaunt abroad has taken him to Léopoldville, and the newly independent Republic of the Congo. He takes an opportunity to interview the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who wants to set the record straight. It seems his life is in danger, and there are names he wants recorded, should he be assassinated. This is way out of Gabriel’s usual sphere as a writer, but he does what he’s asked, making taped recordings of the interview.

He was cleaning his teeth when the telephone rang again. He wandered back into the sitting room and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello, Lorraine?’
But no. Silence again.
‘Look,’ he said calmly, ‘you’re wasting your time, whoever you are. I’m not fussed. Not remotely bothered. OK? I don’t care if you call every hour. Goodbye.’
He took his pill, slid into bed and plumped his pillow, thinking back to his two hours spent with Patrice Lumumba and the way Lumumbra would reach out and tap the back of his hand to make a point.
‘They want to kill me,’ he remembered Lumumba had said at one stage, softly, in his accented English, as if he might be overheard by someone.

But Gabriel’s work hasn’t always been just about travel. His brother Sefton, being something in the Foreign Office, has on occasion asked Gabriel to make deliveries for him to the Continent. When Faith Green, a secretive woman Gabriel has clocked reading his book on the plane home, contacts him with a commission of her own, his first instinct is to refuse. Faith works for MI6 and is something of a femme fatale. But the money’s good, and the trip to Spain tempting. Before you know it, Gabriel’s involved in more and more dangerous work for Faith and in spite of his niggling doubts, seems unable to refuse.

Gabriel’s an interesting character and not always likeable. You want to give him a good shake, tell him not to drink so much and get a grip on his life. There are sadly not many people he gets close enough to call friends. His girlfriend Lorraine hasn’t a clue about what is going on in his head, while he and his brother are somewhat distant having been brought up by different relatives after the death their mother. So there’s no one there to offer a reality check. How he handles the increasingly tricky situations he gets himself into sees a new Gabriel emerge.

Undercurrents of the political situation with the USSR, the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as social politics of the time round the story out and the period really comes to life. There are glimpses of the ordinary, such as Gabriel’s ongoing battle with a savvy mouse in his flat; the pest-eradication advice from Tyrone, his streetwise locksmith. The book reminded me a little of A Bird in Winter by Louise Doughty – another really intelligent and nuanced spy novel with a main character on their own and battling for survival. This makes both books really engaging and gripping.

Then there are the settings. As well as Congo, there’s Warsaw and Cádiz, rural England and sixties London. If you’re after a satisfying, pacy but intelligent novel, Gabriel’s Moon might just do the trick. It’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer -a duel timeframe mystery from the cutthroat world of egg collecting

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

Belinda Bauer is a crime writer from Wales who frequently turns up in the crime fiction awards lists – winning a Gold Dagger for Blacklands, as well as the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year for Rubbernecker. I’ve always enjoyed her books, and would find it hard to pick a favourite, but Rubbernecker was, I recall, a cracker – following the story of a young autistic man and his determination to deal, in his own way, with the death of his father. In Rubbernecker, Patrick signs up for an anatomy class, where groups have to examine a corpse to determine cause of death. It’s his mother’s idea – a way to help him get over his obsession with dying. And this is how he gets tangled up in solving a murder.

With The Impossible Thing, Patrick is back. At twenty-three, he is still happily living at home wth his mum, working at a pub and playing computer games badly with friend and former classmate Nick from next door. When Nick and his mother are subjected to a home invasion, the only thing missing is a guillemot egg in an elaborate case, which Nick had found in the attic and advertised on e-bay. He’s selling whatever he can find to pay for a new gaming chair. It seems bizarre that someone would go to such lengths to steal something as unassuming as an egg, until a little digging throws up the illicit world of rare-egg collecting.

It seems guillemots nest on cliffs, clustered in such tight proximity with each other that the mother bird lays a distinctive egg that will be easy to recognise among all the others. The colours are so varied, collectors would vie to obtain the most unusual. This is now quite illegal, but a hundred years or so ago, men would dangle on ropes over cliffs every nesting season to pick out eggs that they could sell. Which is how me meet our other main character, Celie Sheppard.

Celie is so different from her dark, robust looking siblings, her father disowns her and abandons the family to manage Medland Farm themselves. Her mother leaves baby Celie in the care of Robert, the “idiot” boy who helps on the farm in return for bed and board. Celie survives rather than thrives, and the two make an odd pair, both ignored by the other Sheppards. Egg collecting is a nice little earner at neighbouring farms but at Medland Farm there’s a rocky overhang making it impossible. Until skinny little Celie tells Robbie she can fit through a crack in the rock if he’ll hold her rope.

Robert never ventured on to the overhang. He didn’t say so, but Celie guessed it scared him to be on the sliver of rock with nothing beneath it but air and – finally – sea. It scared her too, but she loved to look through this crack into another world.
Now she put her head into the V again and watched a puffin return to its ledge twenty yards down with a rainbow full of quivering sand-eels. From here she could see hundreds of birds pressed against the cliff-face. And, as they shifted about, glimpses of eggs of every size and colour that she could imagine. They had chickens in the yard, of course, but they laid dull little brown eggs, and never enough to eat, only for selling. These eggs were two or three times that size, and speckled and spotted and splattered with brown and black on backgrounds that ranged from cream, through blue to green. Celie had never had a toy, but the thought of holding such eggs in her little hands made her nearly smile, with a feeling that was beyond hunger.

Celie’s story is one of ambition and trust, heroes and villains, love and also tragedy – particularly for the poor bird who gives up her very saleable egg every nesting season. You’re taken into the world of egg collecting – not just the perilous procedure involved, but also the greed and one-upmanship among the traders and collectors.

Nick and Patrick are also an unusual pair, but are oddly complimentary. Patrick is very smart but lacking in social awareness – something he realises and is working on. Nick isn’t all that bright but can be chatty and friendly. As even owning a rare, collectible egg is illegal, Nick refuses to get the police involved, so the two set about tracking down the stolen egg themselves. This will put them in the path of danger, as well as highlighting the motivations of egg obsessives, natural historians, wildlife custodians, and vigilantes.

The Impossible Thing is another cracking read from Bauer. I loved it, although the animal cruelty described is not for the squeamish. Bauer balances Celie’s more poignant story with the humour of Nick’s situation, his often at cross purposes dialogue with Patrick, their hare-brained schemes. There are some madcap action scenes, and the pace picks up to finish the story with a flourish.

This is also a very original novel, not only in its source material but with its two main characters, both outsiders, but both very likeable. And this makes it interesting. I am not sure if Bauer will bring Patrick back for another adventure, but I was delighted to meet him again and enjoyed his quirky smartness. The Impossible Thing is a four-star read from me.

The Impossible Thing will be released at the end of February. I read a proof copy of the book courtesy of Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Book Review: Every City Is Every Other City by John McFetridge – a quirky Canadian update of the classic gumshoe mystery

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Taking a punt on an author you’ve never heard of before can bring up some nice surprises. The title of this crime novel made me curious and I was soon happily ensconced in this e-audiobook about a part-time private investigator.

Gordon Stewart makes much of his name – you can read it either way, he says. A first name that could be a surname or vice versa. Mostly though, he’s just Gord, a location scout for the movie industry. This work means he’s got an eye for detail, and is good at sniffing things out – useful skills in a private investigator which is something he does when the movie work is quiet.

Lana, a work colleague, talks Gord into finding out what happened to her Uncle Kevin, an out-of-work electrician who has left his wife and gone off in his truck with his rifle. Finding the truck on a back road near the woods, police have written off the disappearance as suicide. He may have been depressed but Lana’s aunt is adamant Kevin’s still alive and wants to know where he is.

There’s also the story of the surveillance job Gord takes on for OBC (Old Boys Club) Security Inc – a case that has similarities to the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault case. Gord’s not keen, but Teddy at OBC can help with official records to help find Uncle Kevin so Gord feels obligated. This gets awkward when Ethel, the actress he has started seeing, discovers which side OBC is working for and decides to do some sleuthing on her own.

Every City Is Every Other City is a different kind of crime novel – maybe it’s the laid-back Canadian humour, or perhaps it’s the blend of PI sleuthing with glimpses of the less glamorous side of movie-making. Key elements of the story concern issues of the day – feminism and the Me-Too movement, for instance, as well as men’s mental health and the importance of work. McFetridge is very smart with dialogue, and his characters are nicely ordinary but interesting at the same time. The plot simmers along quietly, packing in enough tension to keep you turning the pages, with an ending that is both witty and heart-warming.

There’s also a lot of interesting detail about the entertainment industry. I love the way Gord knows just the right locations for somewhere in Ontario that can look like a New York street corner or a small town in America. Ethel’s an improv performer which comes in handy later when she’s trying to pretend she has a good reason to be somewhere she shouldn’t. Her world is also quite fascinating.

She held out her hand and said, “I’m Ethel.”
“I shook her hand and said, “Gord,” and she smiled and said, “Of course it is.”
An assistant director, a young woman wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard walked by the craft truck yelling, “Five minutes, we’re up in five minutes.”
Ethel said, “My big moment.” She stopped as she passed me and leaned in close and said,“Nice to meet you, Gord,” and I was hit with the smell of Herbal Essences shampoo and taken directly back to Thomson Collegiate.
I turned and watched her walk away and saw Lana coming towards me.
“Do I have to have the talk with you again?”
“She started it.”
“Never talk to the talent. Don’t even look at them.”
“I know, I know.” But I watched Ethel walk along the row of Winnebagos and trucks and turn into the bar. I said, “She looks familiar.”
“From the commercial, she’s the quirky friend.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“She’s always the quirky friend,” Lana said.

Ethel’s quite a character, the bright-spark extrovert opposite Gord’s low key personality. Both are quite appealing in their own way and their relationship adds another story thread. Even Gord’s dad is quirky in the way a man who has lost his wife a long time ago might be – fixing up his house rather than replacing anything, so that it looks mired in the 1980s, which delights Ethel.

Having characters that are fun to hang out with is always a plus, while I particularly liked the reading of this e-audiobook. This is courtesy of Tim Campbell, who takes you nicely into Gord’s head with a flat, gum-shoe kind of monotone that reminded me a little of old movies, and contrasting this well with Ethel’s more lively delivery and that of other characters. I stumbled upon this audiobook quite by accident and it made me realise I haven’t read a lot of Canadian literature in a while – something I’m keen to remedy, as I’d enjoyed it in the past. Every City Is Every Other City is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson – more fun and games with the latest Jackson Brodie mystery

~ Judith ~ 4 Comments

I have to admit to being a Jackson Brodie fan since we met the beleaguered private investigator in the first book, Case Histories. I’ve read them more than once as well as enjoying immensely the TV adaptations starring Jason Isaacs. So here we are, five years since the last one (Big Sky), with another in the series – something I wasn’t really expecting, and you can imagine my delight.

Atkinson has a habit of not really continuing where she left off in the last book. Instead we seem to catch up with Jackson some years later, or with a completely different set of circumstances. Sometimes he’s flush and others he’s down on his luck. In Death at the Sign the Rook, Jackson is living with his girlfriend, Tatiana, and has had enough income from his PI work to buy himself a lovely big Land Rover Defender. His new case involves the theft of what looks like a Renaissance painting – a portrait of a Woman with a Weasel, which until recently hung on the bedroom wall, out of reach of prying eyes, of an elderly lady who has recently died.

It seems Dorothy Padgett’s carer Melanie Hope has taken it, and just disappeared without notice, leaving only an old mystery novel: Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark by Nancy Styles. Dorothy’s daughter Hazel and her son Ian want Jackson to track Melanie down rather than calling the police – the painting may have some dodgy provenance. We get Jackson’s usual internal sizing up of the situation with Dorothy’s grasping offspring, squabbling over their mother’s possessions.

Hazel was right, there was nothing to see out in the garden. The whole place was in hibernation, waiting to spring back into life in a few months. Dorothy wouldn’t be here to appreciate it. No springing back to life for Dorothy Padgett.
The end of the garden was less manicured, there was a compost heap and a garden incinerator. For leaves, Jackson supposed. He looked inside. Something had been reduced to ash in there. What had been burned? And by whom? He poked around with a twig that he found lying on the lawn. There were a few scraps of paper on which some handwriting was visible. Sir Edmund removed his armoured gauntlets and pulled Marjorie to his breast and said, “You little fool.” And “Where is my theatre nurse? I cannot operate without her. And so on. Dorothy’s romantic stories, presumably. Who had burned them? Melanie Hope? And why?
A big fat clue would have been nice. A bit of charred paper saying, And the murderer is ... But Dorothy Padgett wasn’t murdered. Why was he thinking that?

The story weaves in and out of Jackson’s investigation, bringing in several other main characters, beginning with Lady Milton over at her cash-strapped stately home, Burton Makepeace. LM has similarly lost a valuable painting, this one a Turner, at the same time as her companionable housekeeper Sophie disappeared. She is struggling to keep control of things while her eldest son Piers is trying to turn the big house into a hotel complete with staged murder mystery evenings. She’s an impossible character to like with her old-world thinking and arrant snobbery, but you can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her.

There’s also the boring vicar, Simon Cate, who has had a complete loss of faith, but battles on regardless, a fondness for animals, his only saving grace. And then there’s Ben, ex-military and a bit sorry for himself having lost a leg on his last tour, while missing his mates in the Army. He’s living with his sister, and learning to look after bees. We also meet Reggie Chase again – you’ll remember her from previous books – now a Yorkshire police detective.

These threads all slowly weave the characters into a plot involving a blizzard, a murderer on the run who’s armed and dangerous, and a murder mystery evening at Burton Makepeace. Somehow all of the characters end up there – we’re given a hint of what’s to come in a kind of prologue – and Jackson’s going to feel glad he bought the Defender. As usual it isn’t always the crooks that are the baddies, or not all of them anyway, and Jackson may or may not err on the wrong side of the law.

Atkinson is a master of creating a tantalising story with plenty of humour and surprise twists. However, I did feel this story took a while to get going. We get stuck for chunks of narrative with Simon the vicar, and Lady Milton, both of whom can be a bit tiresome. But once the story gets going, there’s plenty to enjoy and the ending’s a cracker. Not the best Jackson Brodie, but still worth reading. A three-and-a-half star read from me.