Random Jottings

Three from the British Library Classic Crime series

I always try to add a little background to my posts so in order to make you really really interested I am now telling you that I am propped up on my bed, loose kaftan on and that is all, and I mean all, curtains drawn and fan going full blast and here I have been for the last four hours and here I intend to stay until the evening when it gets cooler. We have been promised storms but there seems little sign of rain at the moment.  I find the heat rather saps my willingness to do anything except slob about but I am determined to make the effort. I have just had a snooze and a cup of tea so get on with says I. And I will.

OK three from the British LIbrary Crime series. I simply love these books. I am not saying I love all of them or that I think every single one is for me. In fact, I can understand why a few authors, who shall be nameless, were forgotten for years. My own personal preference of course. But I love them in general because they are so beautifully produced, they are putting books out there that nobody has ever heard of and is a rollicking success and so they should be.

And, of course, the covers are simply drool worthy.

The Arsenal Stadium Mystery - Leonard Gribble.   1939 Arsenal side are playing the Trojans who have as their star player a footballer who is a bit full of himself, treats women like dirt, and takes no notice of what his coach or mates think.   I read this and thought Nothing new Under the Sun. I have been following football for years and can think of quite a few players who fit this mould which I why I not longer watch it.

Half way through the game he falls to the ground. At first nobody takes any notice. They think he is 'putting it on'. Well you would wouldn't you? but then he does not get up so he is carted off to the dressing room where he dies. And it seems he dies of some deadly poison.

I found this book a fun read, featuring the 1939 Arsenal team and their then manager, but slightly far fetched and some of the characters, particularly the main female interest a bit hysterical. She made most of the current WAGS look positively shy and well behaved.   But a good read and, with excellent marketing, it was published as we were all watching the World Cup.

And, I will repeat once again, great covers.

Weekend at Thrackley - Alan Melville. I reviewed two titles by this author a little while back, link here, and thoroughly enjoyed his style, a touch of the Wodehouses I thought at the time and still do.

Jim Henderson is out of work "he got a job, and very promptly lost it through telling the Managing Director, with a commendable but rash frankness, exactly what he thought of him. 'So here were are. Pleasant and extremely good looking young man, aged 34, possessing no talents or accomplishments beyond being able to give an imitation of Gracie Fields giving an imitation of Galli-Curci, with no relations and no money, seeks job"

Out of the blue Jim receives an inviation by a mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding and presided over by a sinister butler.

There is an attempted robbery, a guest disappears, precious gems vanish and the whole thing is really a bit prepostrous but written in such a great style that I loved every minute of it.

It goes without saying that Jim survives and there is also a beautiful girl involved and, really, you have to read it.

The Belting Inheritance - Julian Symons. I freely admit I was really disappointed in this title. The author served as Presideng of the Detection club, won two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and, therefore, is no slouch at the murder game.

Starts off promisingly with, again, a gloomy decaying house, dominated by an aging Matriach who despises the sons she has left and mourns the two she lost in the War. And then, out of the blue, one of the missing sons David, turns up.  At this stage I thought AHA we have a Brat Farrer situation in the making.   It is intriguing, it makes you wonder, there is a murder and all set for a rattling good yarn. And then it all starts to go downhill. The narrator is in Paris tracking down the impostor who has fled and we end up with pages of rather gloomy chat about art and existentialism among the Parisian litterati, absinthe is drunk, nothing seems to happen, the narrative comes to a grinding halt and I began to wonder how it was all going to end (there is a review on Amazon that says more or less the same thing so I feel better now)

Well it ends in a bit of a mess with suicide and bodies and a totally ludicrous solution. I shut it up feeling rather puzzled by it all. 

But, as ever, others will disagree with me, read it and like it and that is how it should be.

Ok that is it for today. A vodka and tonic with ice and lemon is beckoning...

Harry Potter World - a family visit

My daughter is over from Australia at the moment and it has been a mad whirl of activity. One of the things that was on the itinerary was a visit to Warner Brothers Harry Potter World which Kathryn and I had decided to take Florence to see. She is an avid HP fan and her knowledge seems to be encyclopeadic.  She was so looking forward to this outing and I just hoped it would be as good as we hoped.

Well it was a perfect day. When we got to Kew station to get the overground to Willsden where we would change trains, the two guards on duty spotted Florence was in her Hermione outfit and were chatting about Harry Potter and laughing and joking with her. We had to wait fifteen minutes for the train and when it arrive there was an announcement "the train at platform 3 is the train for Willsden and Hogwarts!" Everyone burst out laughing and clapping and Florence's face was a picture of joy. I thought it was a lovely touch.

There is staggered entry which worked very well so that no matter how many people were there it was never too crowded and there was plenty of space and time to look at everything. After an intro we were ushered into a small cinema where the three stars of the films who played Harry, Hermione and Ron gave a short introduction. The final line was from Daniel Radcliffe who said 'prepared to enter the magical world of Harry Potter' up went the screen and there were two golden doors waiting to be opened. When we were asked for any birthday children there Florence went forward, I was honest and explained it was her birthday treat though a bit late, and she and two other children then pushed open the doors into the Hall at Hogwarts. I have a video of her face and the smile said it all. Everyone, and I mean everyone, be they young or old, let out a WOW as we walked in. It was all so familiar and just as it was in the films.

You will have to forgive the rather awful picture, I was so excited my hand wobbled.

The Great Hall

Diagon Alley with all the shops, the wandmakers etc. Enchanting

The Hogwarts Express. Stunning. You really felt you were on a railway platform

A model of Hogwarts. This was the night time moment with the lights twinkling. Quite lovely

There are plenty of films on You Tube all about the Harry Potter experience which are worth checking out as I simply cannot mention every single thing but for me the highlights were the Hogwarts Hall, the Hogwarts Express which was in a huge lot and you felt you were really in a railway station, Diagon Alley, the walk in the Forest where I nearly had heart failure when a huge spider dropped from the ceiling, and at the end an entrancing model of Hogwarts itself.

I am inserting a link here to a video - I hope it works. Interesting little chat about how they did the backgrounds and at the end a Grandma on a Broomstick...

https://www.facebook.com/elaine.simpsonlong/videos/10213250611912554/

It was a long hot day and my knee and back were paining me by the end of it all but it was worth it when Florence turned to me and said 'Grandma this has been the best day of my life' which reduced me to tears as you can imagine. The whole experience was truly magical.

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books - Martin Edwards

I have had this book for a year but have yet to write about it. Why you ask? Well, it is not a book you sit and read through. I have been dipping in an out of it for months now and have only just read the final chapter. But that still does not mean I have read it or finished it. Imagine trying to write a review of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or Encyclopedia Britannica. You cannot. It is ongoing. Right finished that you say closing either of these examples up. Well, no you haven't. OK so I am wittering again. But I deemed an explanation was necessary.

I also feared, and was proved right, what my reaction would be to perusing The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. My copy, signed by the lovely Martin, is bristling with yellow post it notes, and I also have a notebook with a mass of scribbles in. All these are titles which I am determined to find, some of which are proving quite difficult. I have also marked up, in pencil, I hasten to add, those titles I have already read. Out of the 100 named I have only read 32 so I have a long long way to go.  Mark you, of those I have ticked, such as Agatha Christie, I have read all of theirs and in Dame A's case that is 60+ so I am consoling myself with that thought.

The book is clearly divided into headed chapters and there is no reason why you should not read them out of order if you so wish. I did. Then I went back and re-read them in order. So we start with A New Era Dawns in which we find Conan Doyle, Edgar Wallace and Baroness Orczy (of Scarlet Pimpernel fame) to name a few. We then go onto the Birth of the Golden Age, The Great Detectives and then the different kinds and settlings of murder and mayhem. Set on trains, in schools, country houses, etc. Impossible to go into detail so this means that you will have to buy this book if you have not already done so and be prepared to be beguiled.

Prior to the simply wonderful British LIbrary Classic Crime series I thought I knew a lot about detective novels having loved the genre since I read my first Agatha Christie and the age of thirteen, but now realise that my knowledge is infinitesimal. It is several years now since I was contacted, out of the blue, by the British LIbrary telling me of this new venture and would I be interested in receiving some review copies, you will know what my answer was. Never in doubt.   I have received so many gloriously interesting, some not so interesting I must admit, books by authors I had never heard of that it has all been a bit overwhelming.

Of those authors my favourites by far are by Freeman Wills Croft, George Bellairs,  E R Lorac and Alan Melville. I was having lunch with a good friend last year and said I was trying to track down FW Croft and next time we met she handed over a carrier bag of her precious collection of some 30 of his titles which reduced me to a gibbering heap. Add these to those sent to me by the BL and I now only have about 8 or 9 to go. But these ones are proving very hard to find and when I do they are very expensive so I will just have to bide my time and see if I stumble across them in a corner of some old shop. 

E R Lorac has a wonderful detective, Inspector Macdonald who I already love and there are dozens of these to find. She also wrote under the name Carol Carnac and there are about 50 of these as well. I have been steadily acquiring these and will be writing about them in due course.

I cannot imagine if you enjoy the Golden Age of Crime and detective stories in general that you will not want this book on your shelves.  As soon as I had closed it up I was online and tracked down four of the titles I was interested in. I know nothing about them other than what is in the book but enough to make them sound intriguing. Again, more of those anon.

I have just finished reading Weekend at Thrackley and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery but have two others on hand at the moment. Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull and one which I am really looking forward to - The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson. It was published in 1932 and was the only mystery novel to be written by Ellen Wilkinson, one of the first women to be elected to Parliament.

"Through the double clamour of Big Ben and the shrill sounds of the bell rang a revolver shot".

Considering the current state of turmoil in the House of Commons I wouldn't be surprised if a body turned up on the backbenches any day now.

Perhaps somebody will write a story about it "Death by Brexit" perhaps or "The Mystery of the White Paper Amendments"......

Just a thought.

 

The Lie of the Land - Amanda Craig

I have had this book for ages. I kept putting off reading it. Why? No answer comes to mind. I had read all the rave reviews, I am friends with Amanda on Facebook - she sounds fun, witty and warm.  I think I must have been frightened that if I read The Lie of the Land I would not like it and I wanted to like it. I am not great on contemporary fiction, I am a creature who would rather read an Anthony than a Joanna Trollope. I have always been like this. It is not something that has grown on me with old age. I disliked contemporary stuff when I was a teenager. I have never been able to work out why and it used to worry me. Now it doesn't.

So last week I picked this book up. I have been having a Golden Age crime blitz which I will be posting about another time and though I was so enjoying this foray into the past I decided perhaps it was time to emerge blinking into the daylight and try something different.

And so, here I am. I may have come late to Amanda's party but boy did I enjoy it when I got there. I sat down and read this solidly all day Monday and I might point out that it is Wimbledon fortnight and, as many of you know, I am not easily distracted from Lopez and Delpo. Well this book distracted me big time.

I thought it was simply TERRIFIC.

Quentin and Lotte Bredin are on the brink of divorce. He has been unfaithful. Many times. And, natch, it is all Lottie's fault:

"The whole disaster is as much her fault as his. For months after Stella was born Lottie changed from an enthusiastic lover to one who was permanently exhausted, unwell and rejecting; he had been grateful to be living in the age of computer pornography. In the end, however, he had been a starving man offered a steak sandwich. Most normal men would have cracked in such conditions, but he never meant to hurt his wife.

It was just sex"

At this point, which was Page 5 I wondered if I wanted to read any more or be bothered to learn about this selfish excuse of a man. Feeling guilty so try to blame the wife. Typical I fumed. But I soldiered on and glad I did because as the story progresses and we learn more about Quentin, about his lack of a relationship with his father, also a womaniser, we understand him more.

Both of them have lost their jobs in the recession and cannot sell their house for the same reason. So they decide to let it out and rent a farmhouse in a remote part of Devon. It is owned by a local boy made good, a rock star, and they wonder why it is so cheap. Lottie is determined to make a go of it but the rest of the family are not so sure, including her son by an earlier relationship, Xan, who has just been turned down by Cambridge and is positive his life is over.

I am not sure if this is right or what the author intended, but it seemed to me that this story  is more about Quentin, how he comes to terms with his character, how he sees himself and how he realises how badly he has behaved, how wrong he has been. After his father dies Quentin realises "he wil never see his father again, never speak to him, hear him, hold him or hate him.... Hugh had taught Quentin to strike a fire, build a den, fly a kite, track a deer, avoid self pity.... in this version his father was a good man.He thinks of how Hugh's breathing had stopped, then started ....until there was no breath left at all.

It's such a relief and yet - he will never not miss him"

I found that passage very moving.

But, lest you think this is just an exercise in self discovery and an exploration of a disintegrating marriage, I wish to reassure you that it is also an exciting book with an ending that had me on the edge of my seat. There is a reason for the cheapness of their house, a reason for the comments and looks from the locals and it adds such an edge to this story as the layers of countryside beauty and bucolic doings are stripped away and we find Something Nasty in the Woodshed. I spent the last fifteen minutes of reading totally gripped and on tenterhooks. It was scary, it was thrilling and, in my humble opinion, is simply crying out for a film or tv adaptation.

The Lie of the Land is a stonking great read. I am not giving any more details as I want you to go out and read it though I expect you already have by now......

Why did I leave it so long?

 

Random on Wimbledon 2018 - so far

It is 7 am and have been awake since 5 am so thought Elaine get the laptop out and do your Wimbers report. People ask me when I am going to do my yearly Rant so here goes, though my ranting will be muted somewhat as most of the time there has been nothing to get steamed up about. But we will see...

I have to say now that yesterday I broke my own personal record and found I had been watching tennis for nine hours. Yes, NINE hours. I say it with no shame at all. During that time I did other things, got rid of a batch of ironing, and also spent the entire afternoon sorting out and arranging my stamp collection which I am bunging in an auction in a week or so. I am having a Spark Joy week and have box loads of china and stuff ready to go as well. Just had enough of clutter in my life.

Right back to Wimbers.  I entered the ballot this year and came home from Australia to find I had two tickets YAY but because I had not replied, being at the Great Barrier Reef was the reason, they were passed on to somebody else. Gritted teeth and lots of swearing through. Then a few weeks later a friend of mine who had applied for some on my behalf received two. Shock. On checking I discovered they were for ladies quarter finals day and I am sorry, but with the best will in the world, I am not paying out £120 to listen to a shriek fest so I passed on those. I am hoping that next year I might strike lucky again. Incidentally, the tickets I missed were for the men's semi-final day.  Yes I know....

First up the weather so far has been wonderful. It is a glorious sight to see the grass tennis courts bathed in sunlight. Many years ago when I used to attend I well remember being on the Centre Court in the evening with the sun going down watching a men's doubles or a mixed doubles and loving every minute. It is a great place to be.

The seeds have been going out left, right and centre. First match I watched was Wawrinka v Dimitrov. A good match on paper and as I like both players very much, was sorry to see this was a first round clash. Saw Dimitrov the other week at Queens when Djokovic demolished him - he is going through a bad patch it seems - and the same thing happened here. Of course, it probably did not help that most of the crowd were well behind Stan the Man. It is nothing personal, the Brits always like a Plucky Player who has fought back from injury etc, but it mustn't have helped Grigor very much who trudged off a depressed looking figure.

Cilic went out yesterday, he won Queen's and was looking good, but lost to an Argentinian who nobody had ever heard of (they have now) and even I cannot remember his name at the moment. Sad to see as I have rather warmed to Cilic in the last year now he seems to have lightened up a bit and not be so permanently doleful. He slipped and fell over on the grass when it rained (yes they had some rain the other day, none of it reached me) and then lost the set when he was cruising to a win. That seemed to be the turning point as he became wracked with nerves after that. When questioned about this at the obligatory press conference, he refused to blame Wimbledon officials saying that 'both of us discussed it with the umpires and thought we would give it a go'. Classy act and nice man.

Sharapova aka Shriekarova has gone for which we must be thankful. The noise she makes is appalling and I am staggered that she has never been penalised for it. It is pure gamesmanship as there is nary a squeak out of her on the practice courts. One of the newspapers pointed out that since she came off Meldinium, or whatever it is called, which she was taking for her 'heart problem' she has failed to win anything. The point was made that she obviously cannot win without it and that perhaps some of her earlier successes and titles are, therefore, doubtful.  I am glad to see the back of her. I have always found her arrogant attitude pretty repellant and I gather she is the least liked player in the locker room which is really rather sad when you think about it.

Muguruza, the defending champion, is now out. I like her tennis, she is lovely and charming and seems a nice person but, again, the screaming is awful so I cannot watch her. I can put the mute button on but without the sound the whole game loses so I just do not watch.

Johanna Konta - I am saying nothing

Heather Watson - I am saying nothing

Wawrinka only survived one round and then lost in straight sets to a minute Italian I have only seen play once, but he was relentless and had superb ground strokes. Because he is small he uses a huge racquet to extend his reach and it all looked a bit weird.  I was sorry to see Stan go, he is very popular and always seems to be in the shadow of That Man.

Yesterday I watched a match which, on paper, looked a joy. Feliciano Lopez v Del Potro. Now as most of you may know I admire Feliciano enormously for his backhand and his ground strokes (as you can see from the attached picture and please do not leave comments about me drooling and accusing me of sexism, it has happened and I do not care) but I also adore Delpo who seems to be the nicest man on the planet and who has fought back from the most appalling injuries. He is now No 5 in the world after about three years out with wrist injuries and everyone loves him. He came out and wiped Feliciano off the court. OK Feliciano was having a bad day that was clear from the start, but it was exacerbated by the simply staggering play of Delpo. He did not lose a point on his serve for a set and a half and was untouchable. I am hoping that he continues on in this vein as the Two I Dislike the Most are still here - the Smugmeister and the Twitcher and I want somebody, anybody, to knock them out of the tournament.

As the final of the world Cup clashes with the Men's final and let us hope and pray that England are in it (well, we can dream after this week though it may be dashed by Saturday evening) I know what I will watch if these two are facing off at the net. And Yes, I know I go on about them and yes I know they are both superb players but I simply cannot tolerate them. Nadal was warned for his time wasting yesterday, about bloody time but he just ignores it. Rog descended in a golden chariot to defend his title last week. And that is what it felt like. Sue Barker in full gush mode and Rog walking onto Centre Court regally waving with minions scurrying about. I found myself looking for the red carpet and waiting for the Pope to appear to canonise him on the spot.....

Seems I am getting into a rant after all. I have tried hard not to but then yesterday we had the obligatory Andrew Castle shriek 'Oh look there is Pippa' and he got frightfully excited. Pass the sick bag.

I am writing this on Friday and tomorrow we have the usual introducing of all the 'personalities' in the Royal Box. One year we had the Beckhams and though David grinned and smiled and had a great time, Mrs sat with a permanent scowl on her face the entire afternoon and barely reacted to a thing, ditto Anna Wintour. I get so enraged with this. If you don't bloody want to be there GIVE ME YOUR TICKET YOUR MISERABLE COW.

Enough. Too early in the day. Elaine go and put kettle on and shut up....