Tag: England

Review 1689: The Sleeping and the Dead

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

I have to say that it’s very unusual for me to guess the murderer in an Ann Cleeves mystery. For this standalone mystery, however, I guessed the culprit almost immediately, although not from any clues. Nor could I figure out how the person was connected to the murders.

The lake at an adventure camp is unusually low when one of the instructors takes her canoe out. It is so low that she can see a body underwater next to what used to be a pier. When the body is examined, it is deemed to have been in the water at least 10 years.

When Detective Peter Porteus’s team finally identifies the body, it belongs to a teenager named Michael Grey. Although he disappeared in the 1970’s, he was not even reported missing until his elderly foster parents died a few years later, leaving him their house. What is odder is that the team can find no evidence that he even existed before he attended school in Cranford.

Hannah Morton, now a prison librarian, was Michael’s girlfriend in school. The last time she saw him was at a cast party for the school play just before A level exams. But Porteus knows there is something she’s not telling him.

It is not too long before there is another death, but how can Porteus connect these two murders 40 years apart? Another good one from Cleeves.

Related Posts

The Long Call

The Darkest Evening

Wild Fire

Review 1688: The Chianti Flask

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Did she or didn’t she is only part of the concern of this psychological drama that is more of an apres-crime novel. Or was it a crime?

The novel begins with Laura Dousland on trial for the murder of her much older husband. But whether he was murdered or committed suicide is really the question. It all seems to hinge on a missing Chianti flask that the police think may have been used to deliver the poison. Laura says they were out of Chianti, but their Italian servant says a Chianti flask was on the table during dinner. A search for the flask finds nothing.

Laura is found not guilty but is overwhelmed by the attention she continues to get. She has been left nearly penniless with only a gloomy and poorly maintained house to sell, as Fordish Dousland notoriously only spent money on his own interests and his income was only for his life. All the money Laura saved during her years as a governess was spent trying to maintain the household and feed them.

Laura just wants to be left alone after the trial, but her well-meaning but insistent ex-employer, Mrs. Hayward, thinks Laura would be better off engaged in society. Left ill from imprisonment, Laura begins to get worse.

Dr. Mark Scrutton, whom Laura knew slightly before the trial, makes it his business to get her out of the Hayward’s home and into an isolated seaside cottage owned by his family. But soon there is another conflict when Scrutton tells her he is in love with her.

The Chianti Flask is an effective psychological novel that really gripped me. I got so caught up in the couple’s difficulties because of Laura’s notoriety that I almost forgot I was reading a mystery.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

Related Posts

Murder in the Mill-Race

The Murder of My Aunt

The Iron Clew

Review 1685: Our Endless Numbered Days

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Best of Ten!

In 1976, eight-year-old Peggy’s father James spends his time talking with his survivalist friends while her mother, Ute, prepares for a concert tour. Ute has been gone several weeks when James tells Peggy they are going on vacation. They travel from London to Germany camping in a tent, finally arriving at a small cabin that is falling down. James tells Peggy that everyone is dead and they are the only people left in the world, which has been destroyed.

In 1985, Peggy has been returned home to Ute and her brother Oscar, who was born after she and James left. She is struggling to adapt to the real world.

This novel reminded me very much of Paul Theroux’s Mosquito Coast, only with an added twist. Still, it is absolutely gripping, as James gradually loses touch with reality.

Bitter Orange

Swimming Lessons

Educated

Review 1683: The Chalk Pit

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway is asked to look at some human bones that were discovered in old chalk mining tunnels below Norwich. Although at first glance she believes they may be medieval, they also show signs of having been boiled. Tests show them to be more modern, perhaps 10 years old or less.

Around the same time, a homeless man named Eddie visits DCI Harry Nelson because he is worried about his friend Babs, who has not been around for two weeks. As the team asks around for Babs, Judy talks to another homeless man named Bilbo, who says Babs may have gone underground. Within a day Eddie is found stabbed to death in front of the police station and Bilbo has disappeared.

The team’s attention is taken away from these events by the disappearance of Sam Foster-Jones, a suburban housewife who vanished from her home after someone came to the door, leaving her four small children alone. Nelson has a feeling that this disappearance is related to that of Babs and the deaths of Eddie and Bilbo.

This series, always entertaining, has improved steadily, especially in regard to the difficulty of guessing the solution. Ruth remains a likable character, and I still enjoy all the secondary characters in the series.

Related Posts

A Dying Fall

The Outcast Dead

The Woman in Blue

Review 1681: Mamma

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Diana Tutton only wrote three books. All of them feature dysfunctional families, although Guard Your Daughters is a quirky but relatively traditional romantic novel. Mamma is more unusual.

Joanna has been a widow for 20 years, because her husband died unexpectedly in the early days of their marriage. Although only 41, she has a 20-year-old daughter, Libby, with whom she has a close and loving relationship.

Joanna has just moved when Libby comes for a visit and informs her that she is getting married—to an Army major named Steven. The marriage is to be soon, because Steven expects to be deployed overseas within a few months.

At first, Joanna is not sure what attracted Libby to Steven. She finds him unattractive, and at 36, he is closer to her age than Libby’s. However, circumstances throw them together to live with her, and she begins to understand that she and Steven have more in common than Steven and Libby. With her feelings for Steven growing, Joanna must figure out how to navigate this emotional situation.

Tutton depicts these relationships skillfully, in a way that makes you feel only sympathy for the characters. It is an empathetic and emotionally astute portrayal.

I received a copy of this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

Related Posts

Guard Your Daughters

Expiation

Mary Lavelle

Review 1680: The Darkest Evening

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

During a blizzard just before the winter solstice, Vera Stanhope misses a turn on the way home and encounters a car off the road with its door open. Inside is a baby. Vera realizes she is near the drive to her cousin Janet Stanhope’s stately home, so she takes the baby and goes to the house.

Once Vera has established that neither the Stanhopes nor their housekeeper Dorothy knows who the child is, she summons Holly to open up a case. Then Neil Heslop, the tenant farmer, comes in to inform them that he’s found a dead woman in the snow.

The woman, Lorna Falstoner, has been brutally struck in the head. She is established as the baby’s mother, but no one knows what she is doing on the property. She is unmarried, and the team can find no one who knows the identity of the baby’s father. Vera becomes convinced that finding this information will lead them to the killer.

With its frozen setting, The Darkest Evening is atmospheric and mysterious. I had no idea of the identity of the murderer. Cleeves is becoming a master of the red herring.

Related Posts

The Seagull

The Moth Catcher

Harbour Street

Review 1679: Evelina

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

I haven’t read much 18th century fiction, but when I made my Classics Club list, I wanted to pick books from a variety of centuries. So, I picked Evelina.

Evelina’s heritage is unfortunate. Her grandfather married a vulgar woman much below his class and died without providing for his daughter, Caroline, leaving everything to his wife. When Caroline was old enough, her mother tried to force her to marry a cousin. Caroline instead eloped with Lord Belmont, but when her grandmother cut her off without a penny, Lord Belmont threw her off and denied they were legally married. After her mother’s death, Evelina was raised in isolation by the elderly Reverend Mr. Villars, who had been her grandfather’s tutor and had also raised her mother.

When Evelina gets an invitation from Lady Howard to visit London, Mr. Villars is reluctant to let her go because of her family history. But Mrs. Mirvan, Lady Howard’s daughter, offers to take great care of her. Evelina makes some social errors at her first appearances, for example, agreeing to dance with Lord Ormond when she has already turned down Lord Lovel.

Evelina is immediately attracted to Lord Ormond but she is barely able to speak to him at the dance and keeps making mistakes or having people impose upon her, so that she fears she creates a wrong impression. She herself is the typical 18th century heroine, virtuous, compliant, and innocent.

Later, her vulgar and coarse grandmother, Madame Duval, appears in London and demands her attendance. Evelina meets a series of ill-mannered and socially inferior cousins who keep putting her into embarrassing situations.

This novel is a social satire that pits the innocent, gentle Evelina against a number of snobbish or sexually aggressive members of the upper class and against the crassness of her relatives in the merchant classes. Some modern readers may struggle with the elaborate speech. That didn’t bother me, but my patience was a bit tried by the middle section of the book, in which Evelina is on a long visit to her grandmother and rude cousins. In that section as well as those featuring Captain Mirvan, I had a hard time believing anyone would behave so badly.

Related Posts

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

Review 1678: The World My Wilderness

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Seventeen-year-old Barbary Deniston has grown up running wild in occupied France and was a member of the enfante maquis of the French Resistance. Now that the war is over, she doesn’t seem to know the difference and is still involved with the maquis, which is hunting down collaborators. Her mother, Helen, was neglectful while happy with her stepfather, but now that he has died, they’ve had a falling out. Helen decides to send her to London to live with her father, Gulliver. Also going is her stepbrother Raoul, who is to study and learn his uncle’s business.

Barbary is a fish out of water in her father’s upper-middle-class home. He is too busy with work to pay attention to her, and his wife, Pamela, dislikes her. In many ways immature, Barbary believes her parents would reunite if it weren’t for Pamela and her baby son, so she is determined to dislike them. Her father enrolls her at the Sloane and just assumes she goes there, but she and Raoul roam the streets and find a ruined section of London that reminds them of home. Soon, they are associating with deserters and thieves.

Macaulay treats all of her flawed characters with empathy, but it was hard for me to relate to Barbary. However, this novel made me realize how chaotic post-war France and London must have been. I haven’t read any other books that deal with that subject.

Related Posts

The Wardrobe Mistress

The Death of Bees

Warlight

Review 1677: Sisters

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

September and July move suddenly from Oxford with their mother to a decrepit and dirty house on the moors. They have lived there before—the house belongs to their father’s family—but to July the house seems freighted with a depressing atmosphere and full of odd noises.

Something bad happened at school, but July can’t remember what it was. Her depressed mother spends all her time in bed, leaving July and September to fend for themselves. Judging by their games, I thought at first that the girls seemed only about ten or eleven, but we find out later they are several years older. September is the leader, insistent and fiery, sometimes cruel. July is the appeaser, but she has trouble with her memory and sometimes has waking dreams.

In a section from their mother Sheela’s point of view, we learn that she worries September might be demonstrating the same kinds of traits that made Sheela afraid of the girls’ father. Her relationship with him, it appears, was of both love and hatred. Sheela has also worried about the closeness between the two girls, which shuts her out. They behave like twins even though they are 10 months apart.

This novel is a fabulously atmospheric character study. It pulls us forward, making us wonder what is going on. What happened at school? What will happen next? The writing is at times poetic in quality.

Related Posts

Everything Under

Mountains of the Moon

All the Birds, Singing

Review 1669: Young Anne

~ whatmeread ~ 7 Comments

Young Anne is Dorothy Whipple’s first novel but unfortunately is the last one I’ll be reviewing, because I’ve read and reviewed them all. Like many first novels, it is at least somewhat autobiographical.

We meet Anne at age five and see her again at eleven and eighteen before the bulk of the novel when she is an adult, but these ages are enough to get to know her. At five, she is prone to misunderstand her parents. Her father is severely critical of her while he spoils his oldest son. He is a martinet, and Anne becomes defiant of him as she grows older. Her mother doesn’t care about anything happening in the household.

As Anne gets older, she becomes quite naughty, but she is sent away to school because she laughs at her father while he is singing. This is shortly after she destroys her father’s copy of Boswell and knocks all the berries off a holly bush while getting carried away playing schoolteacher.

As a young woman, Anne loses her father, and the household is broken up. She is sent to live with her Aunt Orchard, who constantly complains about her ingratitude. Her only comfort is the maid, Emily, who has always been her staunch supporter and follows her to work in Aunt Orchard’s house. That and her friendships with Mildred and Mildred’s cousin George.

I found the character of Anne very appealing as she, in her straightforward way, has trouble navigating in society. Some of the scenes, especially with Mildred’s kind but social-climbing mother or the one where Aunt Orchard reveals her true self to the rector, are quite funny. This novel seemed true to life and was sometimes very touching. I liked it a lot.

Related Posts

Greenbanks

High Wages

Because of the Lockwoods