OK nearly at the end of my round up of the last couple of months and now we come to Crime and Thrillers.
First up, Sheer Folly by Carola Dunn, another Daisy Dalrymple mystery. This series is being reprinted by Robinson Publishers and I am enjoying them hugely as you will see from my review of some I read last year. I seem to be reading these wildly out of order as Daisy was unmarried when I started, now is, then she isn't and now she is and has twins. So not quite sure what order they are appearing in but they all star the Dauntless Daisy and really it doesn't matter. In this title, Daisy is spending the weekend at Appsworth Hall where she is continuing work on her book of architectural follies. She wishes to check out its grotto which apparently is very fine, but it all ends in tears as it explodes and kills a house guest, Lord Rydal. As the gentleman in question was rude, nasty and disliked by nearly everyone, he was no great loss and because of this we have a long long list of suspects. Great fun and very complicated and twisty this one and I had to concentrate quite hard so that I did not lose the plot. I thought that I had spotted the guilty party quite early on and was pleased with myself, until the last few pages when it turned out I was totally WRONG.
Crooked House by Agatha Christie. An umpteenth re-read for what is, in my opinion, one of this writer's best stand alone novels. Chilling with a murderer at the end that really made me shudder when I first read it. Many of Dame Agatha's thrillers with no regular detective are very good indeed, but they are being high jacked by the makers of Miss Marple etc who have 'adapted' them and bunged Miss M in the middle (Murder is Easy being a recent example). This makes me really really mad and as the Agatha Christie estate is complicit in all this, they should be ashamed of themselves. OK rant over. Crooked House is good. Do read.
Vanished by Joseph Finder First in a series about an international security consultant (this usually means industrial spy I find), Nick Heller who goes in search of his brother who has vanished without trace after a night out with his wife, who witnessed the kidnapping and is herself left for dead in the street. A bit Grisham like in style - cars are 'gunned' away from the kerb, numbers are 'punched' into phones etc etc and, as Roger Heller is devious and deceitful, you can be pretty sure the kidnap is not all it appears to be and that there is a cunning plan in action. Great fun, and whiled away an hour or two but I had to re-check the blurb before writing this as I had totally forgotten the entire book even though I only read it last week. Hmm. Memorable not.
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black. Gave up on this after 30 pages. I then noticed from the blurb that this is a crime novel by one John Banville, a Booker prize winning author. What is the point in writing a book under another name and then telling everyone? I mean, either it is a nom de plume or it ain't. Makes no sense.
I am beginning to worry about me and the Booker, hardly any of which I find readable, and try to put my prejudices to one side, but on this occasion I abandoned the book BEFORE I knew it was in anyway Booker related. So another one bites the dust.
'Sigh'
Death at the President's Lodgings by Michael Innes. First title I have read by this author. Still cogitating on whether I want to read any more. Very wordy, very well plotted, very intricate and with a Oxbridge setting which was atmospheric and intriguing, but I rather felt that the author was trying to demonstrate his erudition to the reader and, as with A S Byatt, this makes me back off pretty quickly. Rather like his Alleyn type detective, Appleby, though so may not give up just yet.
The Missing by Jane Casey. Gather from the blurb on this book that Jane Casey's publishers are so
sure she is going to be a big hit that they have already bought her
next two titles on a pre-emptive deal. Publishers don't usually do that
unless they feel they are onto a big thing and not sure that they might
not have over reached themselves just a tad.
Two Missing Children, Sixteen Years Apart, One Witness - this is
the tag line on the front of the book and it is readable and from page
one you are drawn into the thoughts and life of Sarah, who years ago
waved goodbye to her brother as he left her asleep in the garden and
who never came back. She is suspected of knowing more than she has said
and, as her brother was her mother's favourite child, she suffers
badly. The years go by, her parents divorce, her mother descends into
alcoholism and Sarah's adult life is blighted by this childhood
tragedy. One day a child in her class goes missing and Sarah finds her
body in a wood and from that moment on her past comes back to haunt
her.
Fairly standard plot line, but no matter - there are only so many
crime scenarios around and the narrative moves along at a good pace and
as Sarah's thoughts and actions swing backwards and forwards between
the past and present, we are totally at one with her worries and fears.
Promising and then about two thirds through, the impetus vanished and
it all became a bit convoluted and the pace slowed down and started to
sag badly. By the time we learn the identity of the murderer, sadly an
obvious culprit in today's crime writing scene, and had to read through
an overly dramatic final face off with the killer, it had all got a bit
silly and I had lost interest.
Saltmarsh Murders - Gladys Mitchell. I so wanted to really enjoy this book as this author has written dozens and they would have kept me happy for yonks, but not really sure about them or her detective, Mrs Bradley. The BBC filmed these a few years ago and I have seen the DVD of the series, not very good and they were not recommissioned. The Mrs Bradley on TV was Diana Rigg and, therefore, a very glamorous lady indeed if eccentrically dressed. The mode of dressing was the only thing that married up to the author's depiction of this character who seems to have a 'yellowy crocodile face' and spends most of her time shrieking and digging people in the ribs. That would obviously not do very well on the screen, but the divergence between the written word and the image on the screen twas so marked that I found it very difficult to reconcile the two. Not sure either than I liked this enough to even attempt it. We shall see.
So a fairly mixed bag. I am currently reading another Scarpetta thriller by Patricia Cornwall and still have to make up my mind about these as well, but feel a yearning for D L Sayers to redress the above. I think Gaudy Night may have to be read - again.....
