Review 2691: The Lighthearted Quest

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

I started out Ann Bridge’s Julia Probyn series in the middle after reading two of her nonseries books, which I’ll say right now I preferred. The Lighthearted Quest is the first in the series, and if you can ignore some 1950s attitudes, is a fairly entertaining travel/adventure story.

Julia is a reporter who is able to pick her stories because she has her own income. She is a beautiful girl who has men following her around for most of the novel, but she is described several times as looking like a dumb blonde, which, as she is not at all dumb, does her some service in this adventure, but is also rather offensive.

Julia is summoned to her aunt’s house in Scotland because her uncle has died and so has the man who has been running the estate. Her cousin Edina has been doing the job in the meantime, but she is a highly paid advertising executive, and the family needs her salary in these hard post-war times. The family has lost track of Colin, the heir, who went abroad more than a year ago, reportedly sailing from port to port on the Mediterranean selling oranges. He hasn’t responded to any letters or advertisements asking him to return. So, a family friend, Mrs. Hathaway, has suggested they ask Julia to look for him, as, since she is a reporter, she’s allowed to take more money out of the country than the roughly $300 a year allowed to most Brits at the time.

Julia agrees, and the first thing she finds out is that nine months before, Colin had his bank account transferred to a bank in Casablanca. At this point, her bank informant, who had previously been very helpful, shuts up and advises her not to pursue it. Julia finds it interesting both that the transfer was allowed by the bank and that her source has dried up.

Finding that the best way to Morocco is to take a cargo boat, Julia departs. It’s not until she is telling her story to the first mate, Mr. Reeder, that she realizes her cousin is probably involved in smuggling (something I thought of right away and wondered why she didn’t).

Julia has booked to Tangier, which was listed as the ship’s first stop, but at the last minute it got a load for Casablanca, so she gets off there. She has left with the names of some contacts, but everywhere she goes, people either know nothing or get cagey.

The novel becomes a sort of travelogue as Julia goes from city to city—Casablanca, Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh—following up scanty leads and shocking various people with how much she’s figured out. She also takes a job on a Phoenician archaeology site so she won’t run out of money, as the search takes much longer than she expected. Near the beginning, she even sees Colin from a distance standing on a rooftop with a red-haired man but is unable to get to him.

Because her explanation of her search is not taken at face value, Julia finds herself being followed, and there are hints of a Cold War theme that is much more prominent in the other books in the series.

If you can put up with Julia calling a group of gay men “pansies” more than once and some patronizing attitudes toward the locals along with a discussion of what great things the French have done for Morocco that would probably send shivers down the spine of any Moroccans, the book makes quite a good adventure. What Colin is up to is patently ridiculous, but that is really a MacGuffin. And there’s a romance for Cousin Edina as well as a hint of one for Julia, and a bit of peril. Quite entertaining.

Related Posts

The Episode at Toledo

The Portuguese Escape

A Place to Stand

Review 2690: The Last Word

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

The Last Word is technically the latest Harbinder Kauer novel, although judging by the list of previous books, Griffiths isn’t calling the series by her name, and she is only peripheral to the investigation. Instead, this novel returns to characters who appeared five years ago in The Postscript Murders. This put me off a bit, because I had no memory at all of these characters and had to look up which book they were in, yet Griffiths clearly expects us to remember them.

The characters are Edwin, a gay man in his 80s; Natalka, a young Ukrainian immigrant; and Benedict, Natalka’s boyfriend, who used to be a monk. Natalka runs a care-giving business, but since the events of the previous book, she has also opened a detective agency, and Edwin is her partner. Benedict runs a coffee shop.

Although the death of Melody Chambers has been found to be of natural causes, her daughters hire Natalka to investigate: Minnie and Harmony are convinced their stepfather, Alan Warner, killed Melody by replacing her blood pressure medicine, and they produce as proof a snippet that sounds like she was afraid for her life. The only problem is that Melody was a writer, so the snippet could be part of a novel.

Edwin is an obituary reader, so he has already noticed the death of Malcolm Collins, an obituary writer. As they look into things further, they begin to notice that several writers have died, and they all seem to be linked to a writers’ retreat at Battle. So, Edwin and Benedict sign up for the retreat. On the retreat, another participant, Sue, drowns in the pond. Her fiancé had died a few years before.

I think Griffiths depends a little too much on our memories of these characters to develop them further, and I didn’t have any, although of course things are going on in their private lives. I felt either that I didn’t know them very well or that I was relatively indifferent to them. Also, there are so many suspects in this case that I ended up not even trying to guess what was going on.

I’m beginning to think I’m over Griffiths. She ended the series I liked best, and I just haven’t been that interested in her other ones.

Related Posts

The Postscript Murders

Bleeding Heart Yard

The Stranger Diaries

Review 2689: Jane Austen in 41 Objects

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Oxford historian Kathryn Sutherland has provided an unusual glimpse of Jane Austen in Jane Austen in 41 Objects. It of course explores how little we know of Jane Austen, even to not having a proper portrait of her. In the book, Sutherland assembles 41 objects that have some connection to Austen and discusses each object and its relevance. These objects extend from things she actually touched or owned, like the table she wrote at, her pelisse, or a lock of her hair, to contemporary items such as the check stub of her publisher showing a payment, a silhouette of her mother made in honor of her birth, to more modern objects such as Colin Firth’s “wet” shirt or illustrations of costumes from the first stage production of Pride and Prejudice. Some of them are touching.

The Introduction to the book is scholarly and sometimes opaque. I was hoping as I read it that the body of the book wasn’t like that, and it was not. It was very readable except for a few sentences in the last chapter that get a little esoteric.

The format of each short chapter is to show the photo of the object, tell what is known about it, and in the last paragraph quickly describe its provenance and where it is located now.

Related Posts

The Novel Life of Jane Austen

Jane Austen: A Life

Jane Austen at Home

Classics Club Spin #43

~ whatmeread ~ 12 Comments

It’s time for another Classics Club Spin. To participate, post a numbered list of 20 books from your Classics Club list (here’s mine) before Sunday, February 8th. Classics Club will announce a number on that day, and that determines the book to read before the 29th of March.

I think I’ve participated in every spin since I became a Classic Club member. At this date, I have just eight books on my list, so I’ll be repeating to get 20:

  1. The Tavern Knight by Raphael Sabatini
  2. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  3. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  4. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
  5. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  6. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  7. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  8. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  9. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  10. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
  11. Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
  12. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  13. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
  14. The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
  15. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
  16. The Tavern Knight by Raphael Sabatini
  17. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Duma
  18. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
  19. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
  20. Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Review 2688: What Happened to Nina?

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

We pretty much know what happened to Nina Fraser from the first chapter. That’s not the purpose of this book, which is a fairly big departure from McTiernan’s previous ones. For one thing, it’s set in Vermont instead of Ireland. And it is darker.

Nina has been dating Simon since she was 16, but now that they’re going to different colleges, things aren’t going as well. When Simon comes home from Northwestern, he doesn’t understand that Nina needs to study and help out in her parents’ B&B. And he’s been getting rough with her.

Simon talks Nina into spending a few days at his parents’ vacation property. They are both athletic, and they can hike and climb even though it’s winter. But Nina takes a fall when they are climbing, and she believes Simon let go of his end of the rope when she was rappelling. So, when they get back to the house, she breaks up with him.

Leanne, Nina’s mother, begins to worry when Nina doesn’t return on schedule and she can’t contact her by phone or text. Andy, Leanne’s husband, thinks Nina may just have decided to stay longer, but then they learn that Simon returned a few days before. He has told his parents Nina was sleeping around, so they broke up and he left her at the house Saturday morning. But that doesn’t make sense to Leanne and Andy. So, they go to the police, and Matthew Wright gets the case.

Simon’s parents realize that Simon is going to be suspected if Nina doesn’t turn up. So, after Nina’s parents make a plea for help on TV, Simon’s father Rory gets his PR campaign to “muddy the waters” by doing a smear campaign against the Frasers, implying that Leanne doesn’t love her daughters and that Andy, Nina’s stepfather, is a pedophile.

And that’s just the beginning. A lot of the novel is about misuse of power by Simon’s wealthy parents, who will do anything to protect Simon. It’s also about how much worse such a situation can be with social media involved. The novel is billed as a thriller, which it is not, but it certainly makes compelling reading.

Related Posts

The Murder Rule

The Good Turn

The Drowning Kind

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I Am Reading Now

I just started reading the biography Oscar Wilde by Sheridan Morley. This book was kindly sent to me for review by Dean Street Press. I find Wilde a fascinating personality, so I’m hoping to gain some insight from this novel.

What I Just Finished Reading

I read A Fortunate Man by Henrik Pontoppidan for the Pontoppidan Review-Along in March. By the last few days, I felt as if I had been reading it forever (it’s more than 800 pages long), and I’ll have a lot to say about it in my review. It is a vast novel that attempts to bring in most of the important philosophies and currents affecting Danish life in the mid-nineteenth century.

What I Will Read Next

If I don’t read If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery next, I’ll have to send it back to the library unread! It’s one of only two books I need to read to finish the Booker Prize shortlist for 2022. I’m reading it for my Booker Prize project; hence, I have no idea what it’s about.

Review 2687: The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

In terms of the horror story it’s labeled as, The Empusium may end like one, but it spends more time building up to its climax than on the horrible part. Or maybe horror is the attitudes toward women expressed by the men.

Mieczyslaw Woznicz is a very young Polish engineering student who arrives in a remote mountainous town in Silesia for treatment for tuberculosis in the early 20th century. He is staying in the guesthouse for gentlemen until he gets a place in the sanatorium. The guesthouse is run by Willi Opitz and his wife, but his wife dies almost immediately on Woznicz’s arrival.

I don’t know if it’s helpful from the beginning to understand what empusa are or not. I had to look it up. but from the beginning we are occasionally reminded that someone is watching everything. Still, this is something I tended to forget.

A lot of the novel deals with Woznicz’s sense of unfitness and inferiority, which has been enforced by his father’s constant expression of disappointment in him. But we also get to read lots of philosophical discussions among the men, which always end in misogyny.

Occasionally, readers are told a lot of bizarre folklore or visit some unusual site in the forest, and these incidents are leading up an annual fall event. Woznicz feels he has a shameful secret, but he’s going to learn more about himself by the end of the novel.

Tokarczuk is a writer whose books are totally different from each other. This one isn’t my favorite, but it is atmospheric and full of irony. It is said to share some characteristics, including plot points, with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, a book I haven’t read.

Related Posts

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Flights

The Books of Jacob

Review 2686: Death in Disguise

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

The early programs of Midsomer Murders seem to have stuck fairly faithfully to the original novels. Luckily for my enjoyment, I haven’t remembered all the details. For this one, I thought I remembered who the killer was but got confused by details I forgot.

The novel begins with the death of James Carter, resident of the Lodge of the Golden Windhorse, who has fallen down the stairs. The death is found to be accidental.

As in the previous books, Graham takes her time developing the setting and characters before getting to the crime. We return to the Lodge of the Golden Windhorse, a commune espousing concepts derived, sort of, from various religions and even folklore. There we meet a collection of eccentrics, some of them “mystics,” under the leadership of the Master. Although the Master may very well be truly devout, Graham has a lot of fun with these characters.

A major event is taking place. Sylvia, now named Suhami, is the daughter of a filthy (in more ways that one) rich businessman, Guy Gamelin. And he is a brute, but he adores his daughter. Suhami, though, has been hiding from him at the commune. But it is her birthday, the day she comes into a huge trust fund. She wants to give it to the commune, but the Master has talked her into seeing her parents and has invited them to her birthday party. Guy hasn’t even told his wife, Felicity, about the invitation, and he shows up early hoping to see Sylvia. But Suhami refuses, so he goes back to his hotel and essentially rapes another commune visitor, Trixie.

That night Trixie isn’t at the party, but the other members are. They are May and Arno, two older residents (Arno is madly in love with May); Ken and Heather, an ineffectual married couple; Janet, an older woman with a crush on young Trixie; Christopher, a photographer and recent arrival who is courting Suhami; Tom, a mentally challenged or mentally ill (Graham’s characters seem to confuse the two) young man who worships the Master; and the Master himself. Felicity shows up late blotto with drugs.

During a regression to Roman Britain by May, she has a strong reaction that makes everyone panic. When she is revived, they all see that the Master has been stabbed to death. Barnaby is put on the case.

Barnaby is dismayed by how the different pieces of information fail to lead anywhere. Most of the commune members think Guy Gamelin murdered the Master, but Barnaby is not so sure. In any case, Guy dies of a heart attack that night.

Fairly early on, Barnaby finds out that Christopher is using someone else’s name, because the actual photographer of that name gets engaged to a socialite. “Christopher” explains that he is really Andrew Carter, the nephew of the man who fell down the stairs months before. He has come to investigate, thinking there has been foul play.

Although Graham has a lot of fun at the expense of advocates of New Age ideas (not real ones, I don’t think), she provides an epilogue that is more forgiving. Except for one too many fat jokes (told by the vile Sergeant Troy, of course), I found this one entertaining.

Related Posts

The Killings at Badgers Drift

Death of a Hollow Man

The Sun Is God

Review 2685: The Marlow Murder Club

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

For some reason, I thought I had read The Marlow Murder Club until I began watching the series on TV. Then I realized I hadn’t.

It begins when Judith Potts, a widow in her 70s who lives on the Thames, is skinny dipping (I believe Brits call it “wild swimming”) near the house of her neighbor, Stefan Dunwoody. She hears someone shout and then a gunshot. She tries to pull herself into a blue canoe at the bank but is unable to, so she returns home and calls the police. They find nothing, and no one appears to be at home. But later, Judith returns to Stefan’s property and finds him near the water, shot in the head.

Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik isn’t quite ready to admit foul play. Perhaps Stefan committed suicide and his gun fell into the water. Judith, we learn, is a crossword setter, so she’s not about to abandon a puzzle. She finds out that Stefan had a dispute with Elliot Howard, an antiques dealer, and was threatening him with the police, although some people seem to believe it’s Stefan who is crooked, not Elliot. In trying to learn more about Elliot, Judith goes to the church, where she meets Becks Starling, the vicar’s wife.

Then another man is killed, Iqbal Kassam, a taxi driver. One murder in Marlow is unusual, two unheard of. Judith thinks they may be linked, especially as there are similarities. At the scene, she meets Suzie Harris, Iqbal’s dog walker. Soon, the three women team up to find the killer.

This novel moves along well enough, but I thought it was just okay. I had a few problems with details—for one thing, why no one could figure out a way to get around a downed tree except pulling it when there was an emergency—climb over it maybe and use someone else’s car to continue? And although the writing was okay, I spotted a couple of redundancies within a short period. I figured out the solution well before the end of the book, and I noticed that at the end, no one had told Suzie what happened, but she behaved as if they had. That is, the author didn’t catch this. Or the editor, maybe.

So, I say ho hum. But short, zippy chapters, sure to appeal to many readers.

Related Posts

Death Under a Little Sky

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The Killings on Jubilee Terrace