Random Jottings

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley

"An intricate, delicate, or fanciful ornamentation"

This is the dictionary definition of filigree and it sums this book up beautifully. It is indeed a work which is intricate and delicate with fanciful ornamentation and it is a delight to read.

But before I begin extolling the virtues of this novel could I ask you to say its title The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. Say it softly and quietly and feel how gentle it is on the lips, how it rolls off the tongue. Now try saying the Watchmaker of Charing Cross or the Watchmaker of Shepherd's Bush and you will hear that it sounds harsh and unpleasant.  This thoughtful attention to detail is one of the aspects of this book that make it so rewarding to read.

I will freely admit that when I first read the press release regarding this title I was not sure that this was for me but as it is published by Bloomsbury, who have some simply wonderful titles out this year, I decided to try it and, result, loved it. 

It is 1883 and Thaniel Steepleton, a telegraphist a the Home Office returns to his tiny flat on the banks of the Thames after an ordinary working day, he finds a velvet box on his bed, and inside is a pocket watch. At first he thinks it is a birthday present from his sister, but she did not send it and nobody saw who delivered it.  The watch will not open and seems to serve no useful purpose until one night when Thaniel is in a pub with a colleague it starts to make a 'horrible keening siren noise'.  He rushes outside to see if he can shut it off and at that moment a bomb goes off. If he had remained inside he would have been killed.

Following a trail of clues Thaniel manages to track down the watchmaker in Filigree Street. His name is Keita Mori and he is a kind, lonely Japanese immigrant who sweeps Thaniel into a world of clockwork and music. But though he may appear harmless there is doubt that he is who he says he is and suspicion falls on him in relation to the bombing. Is he the bomb maker?

It is impossible to go into the intricacies of the plot. They are like lacy jewelers' work of scrolls and arabesques  and they twist and turn in the light and the air and leave the reader baffled.  The entire book is of a filigree lightness but with depth in its characterisation and narrative.   I am finding it very difficult to actually put into words just what a delight Natasha Pulley has given us and how enjoyable it is to read so here is a small extract:

"Filigree Street was a medieval row of houses whose upper stories leaned towards each other. At its far end, the gap between the gables became so small that people standing in opposite bedroom windows could have shaken hands.......

'Hello?' called Thaniel into the empty workshop. His voice was spider webbed with cracks....In the light everything around him shone. Across the wall beside him was a tall pendulum clock, its movement regulated by the jointed wings and knees of a golden locust. A mechanical model of the solar system spun in mid-air, floating on magnets, and up two steps in the tiered floor, little bronze birds sat perched on the edge of the desk. One of them hopped onto the microscope and tapped its beak hopefully on the brass fittings. Things glimmered and clicked everywhere.

There was a sign by the door.

Room to let. Ask within"

There. Just a taster. This is a debut novel by Natasha Pulley and I hope that her second will not be too long in the waiting. A gorgous book and beautifully produced as well with a wonderful cover.

Do read.

After the Fire - Jane Casey

I remember after I had read the first title by this author, The Missing, I posted that I had enjoyed it but felt the ending was a bit rushed and not very believable. I then received an email from Jane Casey thanking me for my review though it  'made me wince a bit'.  Of course, I was then stricken with guilt and so glad the following year when her second title came out and I loved it and was able to give it a glowing review. I know critics in papers and seasoned reviewers are there to criticise and are qualified to do so, but as a book blogger I want to write about books I have really enjoyed and would like others to read. Hence, no negative reviews here (there has been the odd one when I have really disliked a book but they are very few) and no chance of anything bad being said about After the Fire by Jane Casey.

It is a cracking read and once more we meet Maeve Kerrigan and her partner Josh Derwent. I admit to a bit of a crush on Josh. He is an unreconstructed male, chauvinistic and sarcastic but over the series, though he won't admit it, he has softened towards Maeve and cares for her.  In After the Fire Maeve is close to a breakdown as her stalker has not given up his relentless pursuit and seems to know where she is and what she is doing at all times. She is being kept from going over the edge by Josh in his own brusque way.

She certainly needs her wits about her after two bodies are found in an 11th floor flat after a fire has ripped through a North London tower block.  But the third body is that of a controversial MP, Geoff Armstrong who, trapped by the fire, preferred to jump to his death than be discovered in such a place. And, indeed, the police want to know what this right wing politician was doing in this deprived estate.

Narrative drive is excellent and keeps the reader on the edge of their seat. As Jane is married to a criminal barrister she has access to inside knowledge into the world of urban crime and her police procedural details are spot on.  This is a simply terrific book with lots of twists and turns, culminating in a face off with Maeve's faceless stalker; we also see a softer side to Josh and another character, Una Birt, not one of Derwent's greatest fans, but a good detective who Maeve is beginning to appreciate and it will keep you turning the pages until the very end.

Great read and I am so hoping that Josh and Maeve get together as her boyfriend has dumped her and left her bereft. She is far too good for him but when I tweeted Jane about the possibility of a future relationship, she said that she had lots of readers saying Don't do it!   Ah well...

If I was giving stars then this is a definite Five Star read.

Already looking forward to the next one.

Recent arrivals

I am in the middle of a feast of reading, so many excellent books and so little time to review them all. But I will. I will. In the interim while I recover from London, grandchildren, heat and hay fever, here is a bijou selectionette of those recently received.

I just want to flag up, before I give it a fuller review, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. I was not sure if it was going to be for me when I started it but ended up simply loving it.

Random Crime - a round up of recent reading

Quite a few crime books in the last few weeks, some excellent, some good, some meh and one or two I did not bother finishing. So I have them piled up in front of me and here goes:

Bernard Minier - Song for Drowned Souls. I read the first book by this author last year, The Frozen Dead, and though I finished it was not exactly overwhelmed and, therefore, when the second one arrived in the post I put it to one side for a while not sure I would read it. However, I decided to give it a whirl and found it much much better than the previous one, my opinion only of course, and this time had no difficulty in reading right through. Set in France, in the Pyranees, a university professor is found murdered and the prime suspect is the son of an old flame of Commandant Servaz. There is rather a bit too much angst over his past etc which gets a tad wearisome but the story and plotting is excellent and, as an adversary from the first book reappears, this is obviously going to be a long running saga. I now look forward to the next one.

The Man who Watched Women - Hjorth & Rosenfeldt. This is billed on the front cover as A Sebastian Bergman Thriller but as this is the first written by these authors and the first to feature this protagonist, this is rather pretentious billing as far as I am concerned though Sebastian has appeared in a TV series.  The story also starts as if we should know something of the background of Sebastian which I found slightly irritating but if you put this to one side, it turns into a good story. Set in Stockholm in the middle of a heat wave, though why we are told about the weather I do not know as it really means nothing, a series of women are found brutally murdered and it is clear that there is a copycat killer on the loose as all the killings bear the hallmarks of a convicted psychopath who is safely in jail. Sebastian helped put him there. The question is whether Edward Hinde is manipulating somebody to follow his path or not. Not exactly an original plot but it works.

One of the writers was the creator of The Bridge a Scandi crime series on TV a couple of years ago which I thought was totally brilliant and it is clear that he sees the action in terms of a camera lens.  This does not hamper the narrative drive at all, in fact it seems to speed it up a bit and keep everything moving. I was not sure when I started reading whether I was going to like this book but ended up not putting it down. Bit gruesome in places, be warned, but worth a read.

The Governor's Wife - Michael Harvey. Latest in a series featuring a PI, Michael Kelly, and set in Chicago. Can't say I know this city terribly well, have only been once, but it certainly helps to set a scene and know where the characters are going. A disgraced governor, guilty of fraud, vanishes from a courthouse on his way to jail. Two years later Kelly receives an email offering him a quarter of a million dollars if he can find the Governor, no questions asked.   His wife Marie has been ostracized since her husband went missing, nobody believing she has nothing to do with it but as Kelly starts to dig into her past life, he discovers an intriguing woman who may or may not be manipulating him. And every step of the way Kelly is being monitored and followed.

Another tight well written story in this series. I enjoyed it very much.

Ok that is it for the moment. I have more to catch up on but hope this is enough to whet your appetite and give you some titles to think about. I have at least another five to bring to your notice but that must wait for another day.

Au reservoir.

British Library Crime Classics - Alan Melville

I am pretty sure that if you searched for the words 'sheer delight' on Random Jottings it would pop up on multiple occasions. I always like a cliche or two, Pure Gem being another, and I have no compunction in using them whenever I want. So here we go with two books by Alan Melville which are both.

I love these British LIbrary Crime Classics. First of all, I love the covers. All delightfully retro (yep another cliche folks) but colourful and attractive and, most important of all, designed to catch the eye and lure you across to the book shelf to grab a copy.  

Many of these writers are a mystery to me (sorry no pun intended) and names that have long been forgotten and such a joy to find all these authors of yesteryear are being rediscovered and appreciated all over again. A recent article in the Bookseller told us that these Golden Age of Mystery titles are being gobbled up by a new audience and I could not be more pleased.

I am not saying that I have liked them all, some of them I have found dull and rather pedantically penned, but most of them I have found to be entertaining and well crafted. These are two I have enjoyed the most.

Quick Curtain -Douglas B Douglas, an aging star of the musical and London stage is starring in Blue Music and playing to a packed house when he is shot dead in the middle of Act Two.  Another member of the cast is found dead and it looks like murder and suicide. We readers merely sniff at the stupidity of the local constabulary. We are only up to Chapter Three so we know that this is not the case. The audience includes Inspector Wilson of Scotland Yard and his son, an enthusiastic young reporter. Think Sherlock/Holmes. Poirot/Hastings etc and you would be correct.  This is a lighthearted murder, if such a description could be used for a violent death, and the shade of PG Wodehouse hovers around the edges in some of the dialogue:

"Remember" said Derek (Son) you're covering the funeral for me. Don't miss anything. What all the actresses were wearing, who was sobbing hysterically, all that bunk. Seven o'clock here. Oke?"

"Please" said Mr Wilson in a pained voice "Not oke Derek. Okay, if you really must give way to those vulgar Americanisms. But Not oke"

"Okay" said Derek obligingly and went upstairs to finish his dressing"

Death of Anton -Seven Bengal tigers are the star attraction of Carey's Circus and in charge of them is their fearless trainer Anton. He is found dead inside the tiger's cage and it is assumed that he has been mauled to death. Once again we readers know better.

Detective Inspector Minto of Scotland Yard who just happens to be in the neighbourhood (odd how this happens so often) disagrees with the local constabulary (again) and decides to track down the murderer.   The discovery of the murderer's identity is never in doubt, we know our hero will sort it all out, but not before another obligatory body or two turn up, and so it is. The Sheer Delight (yes there it is that cliche) of this book is in the style of writing and the humour that appears in both these books by Melville.

Bear in mind, however, the time that these books were penned as some of the humour is not what we would now view as politically correct...

'Mr Minto scanned the breakfast menu.

"Grapefruit sir?" asked an aged waiter "Or porridge"

"What's the name of the chef?" asked Mr Minto

"Bernstein, sir"

"In that case, grape fruit" said Mr Minto "If it had been McKenzie or McDonald we might have risked the porridge. Being Bernstein we will have the grape fruit"

The waiter, unable to follow this line of thought, shuffled off to the serving hatch and reported that one portion of grapefruit was required for a gentleman who was crackers'

Read both these books in an afternoon I enjoyed them so much. Fingers crossed that the British Library produce more by Alan Melville. I shall be first in the queue....

 

 

Random Rants and Twitter

As most of you here know I adore a good rant and Wimbledon provides me with plenty of material to splutter about.  You all know that most of these rants are written with my tongue firmly in my cheek. However, I have just had to take down a post on the first week at Wimbledon because I have had a go at Ms Serena Williams whose style of tennis and snarling aggression I dislike intensely.  Her sister less so.

All my posts are linked to Twitter and I have never had any trouble at all over the last few years. However, this may have to change and I become more selective as my last foray into ranting has resulted in some very unpleasant responses and this is the first time this has happened to me.  I can appreciate that my sense of humour is not for everyone but I have just been accused of bigotry, hatred, jealousy and racism because of my trenchant comments about Serena. My likes and dislikes are hugely irrational for the most part, I freely admit this, Nadal's twitching, Rog and his poncy blazer a few years ago blah blah blah. No rhyme or reason whatsoever and I and you know that.

However, others do not and I have been taught a valuable lesson today. There are trolls and unpleasant people out there and I now have to be aware of this, shame, as up to now I have had no problems whatsoever. Still, my own fault and I should have known better. So in future I will be choosing my posts which are linked to Twitter and will keep these to the bookish and music and cooking variety. 

I have made the decision to keep off Twitter for the time being, or at least till Wimbledon ends. It is huge fun and I love it but it is very easy to start foaming at the mouth and get het up about things, as I know I have done this week, so best I give it a rest.

I think the internet is wonderful and can be, and is, a force for good but there are some nasty people out there and this has been a wake up call.

Au reservoir