Tag: England

Review 2519: Murder after Christmas

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There’s nothing like a nice, cozy mystery to read at Christmas time. This one is so cozy, in fact, that you don’t want any of the characters to be murderers. And what better day to post the review of a book called Murder after Christmas than New Year’s Eve?

When Rhoda Redpath invites her eccentric, elderly, very wealthy stepfather to spend Christmas, none of the Redpaths expect him to come. After all, he has never come before. Uncle Willie is nearly 90 and has lived a rambunctious life, so there are lots of people who want to meet him. Thus, when he agrees to come, the Redpaths decide to throw a real blowout, a Christmas Tree on Boxing Day, and invite everyone.

Once he arrives, his behavior is a bit odd. He eats a lot, stuffing down loads of mince pies and chocolates even though it is wartime. He gets the order of his wives mixed up, and all the Christmas packages disappear. He also starts writing his memoirs, so they have to hire a secretary.

During the party, he is hardly to be seen except when he appears dressed as Santa to pass out the packages. Frank Redpath, the host, also appears as Santa, but having been upstaged by Uncle Willie, his appearance is a bust. Then the next morning, Uncle Willie is found frozen stiff out by the snowman, still in his Santa suit. Was it a natural death or did someone murder him? When everyone learns that his wife died on Christmas day, the timing becomes very important.

Uncle Willie is found to have laudanum in his system. Nevertheless, the coroner’s hearing finds the cause of death accidental, assuming the batty old man took an overdose. Inspector Culley isn’t quite sure, so when Frank and Rhoda Redpath ask him to stay and figure out what really happened, he agrees.

Inspector Culley’s clue collection involves lots of mince pies—sewn into a chair cushion, eaten before Christmas, eaten after Christmas, packages hung from the ceiling, chocolates hidden in the snowman, and a turkey in the wardrobe—among other things. The whole thing is ridiculous and hard to keep track of, so I just went along for the ride.

Lots of fun, this one. I’ll never look at mince pies the same again.

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Review 2516: The Fountain Overflows

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Rebecca West based The Fountain Overflows on her chaotic family life when she was a girl. I understand it is the first of an unfinished trilogy. If so, I’m interested in reading all of it.

Rose Aubrey is a daughter of an unusual couple. Her father Piers is a writer and editor whom many consider a genius, but he is a gambler who continually impoverishes his family. He has a pattern of collecting followers or benefactors who at first seem to worship him, but eventually they break with him, usually after lending him money. However, his family adores him. Her mother is a gifted pianist, formerly a famous concert performer, who is teaching Rose and her sister Mary with the expectation that they will become concert pianists, too. Their oldest sister, Cordelia, has no talent for music but doesn’t know it. She takes up the violin. Their younger brother Richard Quin is adored by all, a toddler at the beginning of the novel.

The novel covers about ten years of the family’s life. There is plenty of incident, from Mrs. Aubrey’s struggles to keep the family financially afloat to the girls’ struggles at school because they’re considered peculiar but also because they hate wasting time at school when they could be playing piano. Cordelia finds a mentor in one of her schoolteachers who encourages her in the idea that she is talented, which Mrs. Aubrey and the other girls deplore. Rose and Mary meet poltergeist activity at a friend’s house, and the family gets involved in a murder case. Also of importance is the girls’ cousin Rosamund.

It’s difficult to summarize this novel, but this family is so interesting, brilliant, chaotic, well-intended, and right behaving. I found the novel delightful.

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Review 2515: Dean Street December! The Late Mrs. Prioleau

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Here’s another one for Dean Street December!

Because of the war, Susan Prioleau never meets her mother-in-law before she dies. Mrs. Prioleau seems to have kept an unhappy home, with children who left it as soon as they could, excepting Austin, her oldest son. She adored him but convinced him he is an invalid with a bad heart, which his doctor says is not true. He is immensely fat and makes his heart an excuse for doing nothing.

Susan hears stories about Mrs. Prioleau that don’t agree. She was adored by her servants of long ago, but she has written people cruel, vindictive letters. Both her daughters say she never gave them any attention, although the oldest, Nonnie, remembers a time when things were different. Her daughter Melissa disliked her, and she was estranged from her sister, Catherine, for years.

As Susan gets to know the family and helps Austin clear the house (although he won’t let her remove much), she begins to learn more about her mother-in-law’s life. Eventually, she learns about events that turned her from a selfish but warm-hearted girl to a spiteful old woman.

It’s a pity Monica Tindall only wrote one novel, because this is a good one. Although some of its secrets are easy to guess, the journey was absorbing.

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Review 2510: The Dark Wives

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Detective Vera Stanhope’s team is still grieving after the death in the last book of (reverse spoiler) Holly. Now they have a new member, brash Rosie Bell from Newcastle.

They also have a new case. A worker in a children’s home, Josh Woodburn, was killed in a vacant lot just outside the home. Round about the same time, 14-year-old Chloe Spence, a resident of the home, goes missing. Is she the murderer? A witness? Is her disappearance a coincidence? All they know is that they must find her and soon.

Joshua’s parents appear unaware that he was working at the home. He’s a student, and he’s supposed to be working on his art and film project. Apparently, he told his ex-girlfriend Stella that he was working on an important project.

At Chloe’s school, the staff seem to be more worried about Chloe’s grades and behavior than that her mother has been put into mental care and she herself is in a group home and missing. To Vera, the home looks like it doesn’t have a penny spent on it, and it is understaffed.

In their search for Chloe, the team finds that she liked going to a village in the hills where her grandfather once owned some land and they used to do rough camping. When the team goes to the small camping hut on the property, they find someone—not Chloe but Brad, another resident of the home, dead from an apparent overdose.

The solution to this mystery isn’t really possible to figure out, because vital information is withheld from the reader. Early on, I guessed what Josh’s project might be, sort of, but I couldn’t see how it would lead to murder. Then I more or less forgot about it. Still, Cleeves really rivets you to the page. You have to keep reading.

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Review 2507: Literary Wives! Euphoria

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Today is another review for the Literary Wives blogging club, in which we discuss the depiction of wives in fiction. If you have read the book, please participate by leaving comments on any of our blogs.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

My Review

Oh, dear, Elin Cullhed and editors, morels come out in the spring. By October, it’s unlikely that any could be found, worm-eaten or not. Chanterelles are what you pick in the fall, among others.

Euphoria is about Sylvia Plath, set in the last year or so of her life. It begins when her daughter is one year old and she is pregnant with her son. It ends a few months before her death.

Before I get into my review, I want to comment on something. When I began reading this novel, I knew very little about Plath except she was a poet, she was married to Ted Hughes, and she committed suicide. Very recently, I read her novel, The Bell Jar, just by coincidence because it filled a hole in my Century of Books project. While I was reading Euphoria, I got the sense that there was a big controversy when Plath died. Some blamed her death on Hughes, who left her a few months before for another women. Certainly, there was a lot of anger against him for burning her diaries. Perhaps I’m seeing some reflection of the opposite side, but I ran across a post by All That’s Interesting, a blog produced by material collected from other sources, that states that Plath was at the nadir of her career when she died. Actually, her novel was recently published (one month before), she had been on BBC reading her poetry, and had recently finished her most famous poem, “Daddy.” So, where did this “nadir” idea come from? Maybe from Ted Hughes’s supporters?

That novel starts with the couple having moved to Devon at Hughes’s insistence. Plath liked living in London and feels lonely in the country, pregnant and left alone with her one-year-old Frieda while Ted goes up to London. Frieda wants attention all the time, and Sylvia has difficulty finding time to work or get anything done. Her marriage already seems rocky to me, alternating sometimes vicious verbal battles with voracious sex. Sylvia admits to liking being mistreated and having a fascination with death. She is extremely needy and jealous. He is always walking away.

The novel is written from Sylvia’s point of view. She is almost always either ecstatic or depressed. With her, as depicted by Cullhead, it is I, I, I. There isn’t so much a plot here as a detailed examination of her feelings as her children grow and her marriage breaks down. Jealous or not, she immediately recognizes that Aissa Wevill is after Ted.

This novel is sometimes difficult to read. Sylvia’s shifts in mood or reactions are sometimes hard to understand, and occasionally her thought processes were hard for me to follow.

What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife?

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Well. Certainly Sylvia would be a difficult woman to be married to. First, she’s possibly bipolar, unsure of herself, and obsessed with Ted. But Ted, I think, is not exactly a model husband, even for his time. He helps out sometimes (which is actually unusual for his time) but he withdraws a lot because he has to write. Sylvia has to ask for time to write even though it is her fellowship that is supporting them at the beginning of the book. There are a few signs that he may be threatened by her as a writer, although other times he celebrates with her.

I know this is a time when men generally weren’t involved much with family life and childcare—and sometimes he cooks, does dishes, or takes care of the kids—but I was shocked when he left Sylvia, sick with puerperal fever but with an infant and toddler to care for, to go fishing, in winter no less.

I don’t think this book says anything about marriage in general, just something about this particular, very volatile marriage. It seems like the volatility that made it exciting at first was what did it in finally.

As so often happens when one person in a couple is attracted to someone else and wants to leave, that person begins finding fault with the person he wants to leave in order to make himself feel better about this betrayal. Often, the very things that attracted him in the first place are the things that irritate him later. You may find fault with my pronouns, but it is often these pronouns that this applies to.

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Review 2503: Death of a Hollow Man

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Caroline Graham does something interesting in Death of a Hollow Man. She spends half the book with an amateur theater group preparing to perform Amadeus, letting readers get to know her characters.

Inspector Barnaby’s wife Joyce works on costumes and plays minor characters. Harold Winstanley is the director, with a high regard for himself. Esslyn is playing Salieri. He has an eye for the ladies and recently dumped his wife Rosa for 19-year-old Kitty. When Rosa finds out Kitty is pregnant, a state Esslyn denied her, she is furious.

Others of the group are Deirdre, much-put-upon assistant director, whose father has dementia, putting her into a constant fret. There are David and Colin, son and father set designers and technicians. Tim and Avery are a gay couple who do lighting. The Everard brothers are Esslyn’s toadies. And young Nicholas is playing Mozart and trying to get into drama school.

Many in the group thrive on rumor and innuendo, and the atmosphere is toxic, what with Harold’s rudeness and his ego that must be constantly fed, Esslyn’s coldness, and the tension between Rosa and Kitty. Nicholas comes in early one day and sees Kitty having sex with someone in the light booth. He thinks it is David because he’s the only other person he meets that early. Rumors about this create more tension and end in a misunderstanding that makes havoc on opening night. But does it have anything to do with the death at the end of the play? For the taped straight razor that Salieri uses to cut his own throat has had its tape removed.

People who want a quick start to their mysteries might not appreciate Graham’s technique in this one of following the group over days, but it really helps develop the characters. I enjoyed this mystery, although being used to the character of Cully from the TV series, I was a little taken aback to find her depicted as acerbic.

Midsomer Murders made Joyce discover many of the bodies. I don’t know if Graham did that or not, but Joyce is right there on the spot for Essyn’s death.

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Review 2499: Novellas in November! Highland Fling

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I read Highland Fling to fill a hole in my Century of Books project but found it also qualifies for Novellas in November!

The novel begins with Albert Gates, who almost on a whim, moves to Paris to become a painter. There, he at least seems serious about it and actually arranges a showing at a gallery in London before returning home to arrange his show.

Now the point of view shifts to that of Jane Dacre. She has been spending time with her married friends, Walter and Sally Monteath, who are having difficulty living on their incomes, Walter, a poet, apparently being unable to hold a job. The Monteaths are asked to travel to Scotland to host a house party at Dulloch Castle, Lord and Lady Craigdulloch having been called out of the country. They are not excited about it but agree thinking it will be a good way to save money. They invite Jane and Albert.

The rest is a no-holds-barred satire of country house parties, sporting people, Scottish customs, and surprisingly, the young people themselves. In Scotland, Albert comes off as an intellectual snob, his remarks rude and his likings absurd, his outfits unsuitable and ridiculous. (He reminded me of an obnoxious artist character in Angela Thirkell’s series, but try as I might, I cannot figure out which book he appears in. If anyone knows who I’m talking about, please tell me.)

Nevertheless, Jane falls in love with him and everything he says is wonderful. This plot point may be explained because Mitford herself fell in love with a young man on a similar Scottish visit, and they eventually split, possibly because he was gay.

This novel seemed a lot less polished than Mitford’s later ones, but it is her first. The caricatures are very broad, and the supposedly bright banter seemed puerile. However, there are some funny moments here, the description of Albert’s art being one of them.

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Review 2494: #RIPXIX! The Raging Storm

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Another book for RIP XIX!

On a terrible stormy night, the Greystone lifeboat crew is called out to rescue a fishing boat in danger. When they reach the boat, it is not a fishing vessel but a tender with a naked body in it. The body is that of Jem Rosco, a former local boy turned famous adventurer who has been staying in the village for a few weeks, saying he was awaiting a visitor.

Although no one knows who the visitor may be, Alan Ford, the father of lifeboat helm Mary, reports seeing a blond woman walking towards Rosco’s rented house in the early hours. However, Matthew Venn’s team can find no leads about the woman or the car that dropped her off.

Rosco’s past is proving hard to track. His apartment hasn’t been occupied for months, and no one seems to know if he has any surviving relatives.

One possible expected visitor, they find, is Eleanor Lawson, Rosco’s ex-flame who married someone else, Barty Lawson, a local magistrate and commodore of the yacht club. Eleanor claims Rosco was her true love, but Barty clearly despised Rosco from the time they were both boys. Barty doesn’t seem to be a likely murderer, though, as he is regularly driven home drunk from the yacht club.

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Venn’s team is having difficulty penetrating the secrets of the village, which contains lots of families belonging to the Barum Bretheren, the cult Matthew grew up in but left. Then Barty Lawson is found dead, apparently having fallen off a cliff. Not only does Matthew think it’s unlikely that Barty was out strolling the cliff trail, but Barty’s body is found at Scully Head, near where the tender containing Rosco’s body was anchored.

I still don’t know what I think about the character Matthew Venn, who seems unknowable. Maybe I prefer Vera or Jimmy Perez because I first encountered them on television, where they immediately assumed distinct personalities. However, Cleeves knows how to keep her readers rivetted as far as plot is concerned.

That said, the motive for the crime in this one seemed absurd and the murders overly complicated. Still, the journey was enthralling.

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Review 2490: #1970Club AND RIPXIX! Passenger to Frankfurt

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Usually, when an Agatha Christie books pops up as a possibility for the biyearly club reads, I am happy to choose it, especially if I haven’t read it before. This year, in looking for books for the 1970 Club (and also for #RIPXIX), I saw Passenger to Frankfurt, one of Christie’s stand-alone espionage novels. Unfortunately, it was not one of her best.

Sir Stafford Nye is a young mid-level diplomat often distrusted by his peers because of eccentric dress and a certain sarcastic sense of humor. He is returning from a trip to Malaya when his plane, bound for Geneva, is rerouted to Frankfurt and thence to London.

In the Frankfurt airport lounge, he is approached by a young woman asking him for help. She tells him that if the plane had landed in Geneva, she would be safe, but since it is going to London, she’ll be killed. She bears a certain resemblance to him. She asks if he will leave the burnoose he’s been wearing with his passport in it and allow himself to be drugged. She will cut her hair and use his passport, and he will wake up long after the plane has landed in London and claim he was robbed. And he agrees.

Back in London, he places an ad hoping to meet her and she ends up sitting next to him during a concert. He is carefully brought into a mission—one that she is already working—by some government officials who are alarmed about a plot that is rousing the youth worldwide to violence and anarchy. Nye travels with the girl, who has many names but might be Countess Renata Zerkowski, to view a Hitler-like rally headed by a young man referred to as the Young Siegfried. He is just a figurehead, but the officials want to find out who is in charge.

The plot of this novel is so ridiculous that I barely had any patience with it. But worse, there is hardly any action, just a bunch of meetings. Once Nye is recruited, we see him traveling with Renata and then he disappears about 2/3 of the way through, only to reappear at the end. The only real action takes place in one page at the end of the novel. This one is pretty much a stinker. The only interesting character is Nye’s elderly aunt, Lady Matilda Cleckheaton.

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Review 2482: These Old Shades

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In trying to fill some of the holes in my Century of Books project, I noticed that These Old Shades, which I haven’t read for many years, would help. This novel is Heyer’s first, and it is also the first of four about the Alastair/Audley family. (The others are The Devil’s Cub, Regency Buck, and An Infamous Army.)

Late on a mid-18th century night, His Grace of Avon Justin Alastair is walking through a Paris slum when a boy collides with him. The boy is fleeing his brutish brother. On impulse, the Duke buys the boy, but it is clear he is up to something. He takes the boy home and makes him his page.

The boy, Léon, has fiery red hair and dark eyebrows. The Duke has noticed this resemblance to his enemy, the Comte Saint-Vire, and takes Léon around to embarrass him. However, he begins to have other thoughts about the resemblance because of Saint-Vire’s reaction.

Soon, though, it is revealed that Léon is really Léonie, disguised as a boy since she was 12. The Duke takes her to England and leaves her with his sister while he arranges a chaperone, announcing that he intends to adopt her as his ward. Léonie is starting to enjoy being a girl when she is kidnapped by Saint-Vire.

This is an adventurous, amusing romantic novel. The Duke is enigmatic and Léonie is charming and feisty. Although the Duke has a bad reputation and is known as Satanas, as his relationship with Léonie develops, he becomes more human. Some of the interviews between Saint-Vire and Avon struck me this time as a little unsubtle, but overall, it is a great start to Heyer’s career and I enjoyed it very much.

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