Random Jottings

Recent reading

I have had problems with the blog the last week or so as my host, Typepad, who I have been with for years, had a new update etc etc and like all updates it caused mayhem and the blog was unavailable. An irritant for me, but checking on Twitter I could see how upset so many users were who were running businesses and were losing customers and orders.

Well they finally got it sorted and my post on Magpie Murders finally was able to be logged on.  SInce posting I have finished Moonlight Murders, a follow up to Magpie, and enjoyed its complexity and fun very much.  I am not sure if there will be another in this series, I do hope so.

I have also re-read the Karen Pirie books by Val Macdermid. I have read all her output and this particular series is my favourite.  I revisited them as I knew there was a tv adaptation coming up of A Distant Echo and I wanted to refresh my memory.  The TV dramatisation was a huge hit with large ratings and I gather another is in the pipeline.  I did not care for the actress who played the title role very much and I thought she was totally unlike the Karen of the books, but I put that to one side a she was very good indeed.   There were minor irritants with the characters, gender changed for one main protagonist for no reasont that I could understand, and the ethnicity of others was changed, presumably to tick diversity boxes as it made no difference to the story at all. I do find this virtue signalling that casting directors go in for rather boring and wish they would not do it but hey ho.   By the last episode it did not really matter as the tension was racheted up and it really had me gripped.   Do catch it if you can. Also if you read the books then please do read them in order.

I then turned to Marple: twelve new stories featuring the famous Christie creation. Twelve writers producing "new" Miss Marple tales.  This really irritates me as it is totally unneccessary and the main reason for this exercise is Money using the Christie name. 

I found most of them heavy going and nearly all lacking the  gentle wit and Marple touch. Oddly enough the only one which rang true in any way was the story penned by Val Macdermid. She got it right. The rest did not.  But it is out in time for Christmas and that is the obvious reason.

I have already written about the Alan Rickman diaries which I found disappointing and revealed a tormented, self absorbed persona in one of my favourite actors. Why they were ever published is beyond me. They were clearly personal and not written with publication in mind. I presume the reason is, once again, money.

As an antidote to this I turned to Patricia Wentworth. I have read all the Miss Silver cases and loved them but the author wrote many other crime stories and Dean Street Press (one of my very favourite publishers) have reprinted many more of these. I read three in one day (well it was raining and my arthritis was playing up so it was a day on the bed with hot water bottles) and they were huge fun. Madly dramatic and a bit over the top but thoroughly enjoyable. I read The Amazing Chance, Dead or Alive and the Red Lacquer Case and gave myself over to sheer in fun.

Left you Dead by Peter James.  I read this mainly because I have waded through all the Inspector Grace books but they really had become rather tedious and on at least a couple of occasions when it seems to me he had no idea what to do with a character he just killed them off. He did it again in this book.  I really enjoyed them when I started and I do wonder why authors carry on when they are clearly tired of churning them out. There was an interview with Lee Child in the paper today and he said that is why he stopped writing the Reacher books. 

Sadly though there will be no more Grace books because when I was writing this post I discovered that the author had died.  He was hugely successful and enjoyed by many including me though, as I said, I had rather lost interest in them.

Another of my favourite authors, Andrea Camilleri, died last year and he left several books behind for publication after his death. He was in his late eighties when he passed and the last few books showed a lack of focus which is understandable.   The final Montalbano book, Riccardino, was, I am sorry to say, really poor.   I have loved the Montalbano books with Catarella and Fabrizio and they have given me hours of enjoyment and many laugh out moments.

I mentioned in an earlier post the novels of Susan Scarlett AKA Noel Streatfield which I simply wallowed in, no other word, and they come once more from the Wonderful Dean Street Press. Well I read a couple more and have one left and am saving it up for a treat. Does that make sense?   Do check them out.

And finally, after a rather disappointing run, I turned to Agatha Christie.  I have recently rewatched the superb Miss Marple series on the TV and I re-read Murder at the Vicarage, Moving Finger, a Pocketful of Rye and A Murder is Announced and loved them all over again. I think Christie was a superb writer with a deftness of touch as well as steel and also she was funny,

There is one line in the TV version of A Murder is Announced which is pure Christie but I cannot find it in the book, so assume the script writer came up with this gem.  Miss Marple is having tea with Dora, and they are discussing a young man on the list of suspects.

"you know he is a communist don't you Miss Marple?"

"Oh dear, he must be very lonely in Chipping Cleghorn"

Priceless.

Inspector Montalbano - Andrea Camilleri

I have just received the latest Inspector Montelbano mystery by Camilleri. The Cook of the Halycon. I buy them, in hardback, as they are published as I love them so much. There are very few authors who I would purchase in this way. (The other being the Sunday Philosophy Club series by McCall Smith and anything by Jane Thynne).  I have yet to read it so cannot review and the reason for my non reading is that I am saving it up for a treat. And if that sounds daft, ah well, I know Dear Readers that you will understand.

Camilleri said several years ago that he had about ten books written for future publication in case "I become senile or die".   Sadly, he is no longer with us and so I am very grateful for his foresight.

When I discovered Montalbano I was not sure I liked him very much but because I am a sucker for a series of books, the knowledge that there were several of them for me to find and would keep me going - simple as that.  I read them in a haphazard kind of way, totally out of order and then after half a dozen found I was hooked and that Montalbano had a dry wit and a caustic sense of humour that appealed to me and I found I was enjoying them. I then did my usual binge, read the lot and was then reduced to waiting for each new title to appear.

I just love the wit and humour of these books. I remember reading one late at night which had me howling with laughter and wondering if my neighbours would wonder what was going on, though I daresay they are used to me by now.  This particular hilarious episode featured the hapless and helpless Catarella who is so endearing and who worships the ground the inspector walks on.

Montalbano loves his food.   One of the joys of reading these books is the description of the meals which his housekeeper, a cook of great skill and taste, cooks for him for him.  He never knows what he is going to get and is always thrilled and delighted to see what is there.  He is also a well known figure in all the local restaurants and trattorias and seems to take incredibly long lunch breaks and then has to fight off sleep all afternoon.

"Back in the house he opened his refrigerator.  Adelina must have come down with a acute form of vegetarianism. Caponata and a sublime pasticcio of articholes and spinach.  He set the table on the  verandah and wolfed the caponata as the pasticcio heated up"

and later he receives a gift of food from the alluring Ingrid, an old "friend":

"He opened it and realised it was insulated.  Inside there were five round, transparent plastic containers in which he could see large fillets of pickled herring swimming in multicoloured sauces, there was also a whole smoked salmon........first thing he did when he got home was attack the salmon. A hefty slice dressed with fresh lemon juice and a special oliver oil given him by the person who had made it  ..the virginity of this olive oil has been certified by a gynaecologist said the little ticket that had come with it"

I adore italy, always have done, history, music, food, wine - the lot.  When I read these books I cannot help but laughing and contrasting them with English detective fiction and the place of food within.  In the Bill Slider stories by Cynthia Harrod Eagles, Slider has a friend who loves to cook, there are mentions of fine food in the Ngaio Marsh stories but these are few and far between, though we are sure that Alleyn must be a lover of cuisine, and Lord Peter of course has a good palate, but on the whole the over riding memory of food and its place in your average detetive fiction seems to consist of rushed meals, Macdonalds, hamburgers and other ghastly food.  In the case of Inspector Frost, a much darker and more unpleasant character than the one we know and love from the TV series, his entire eating habits seem to be centred around fry ups in the police canteen or grabbing chicken tikka masala sandwiches from filling stations.

No contest really but if I have it wrong and anybody can come up with examples of food in Uk and US detective fiction which is worthy of a mention please let me know.  And yes, I know Hercule Porot loves his food so no need to tell me that one....