Tag: suspense

Day 1266: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

~ whatmeread ~ 9 Comments

Cover for The Seven Deaths of Evelyn HardcastleHere’s another book for the R.I.P. Challenge.

* * *

I know that The Seven (or 7 1/2, depending on the edition) Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has been receiving a lot of attention, but I was unable to finish it. Looking back at some of the Goodreads reviews, I see that readers are focusing on the plot, although some complained that it was confusing and that characters kept changing identities.

Certainly when I started out reading the book, it seemed promising as a throwback mystery, with maps of the estate grounds and a floor map of the stately home where the novel is set. But I was only a few sentences in when the overwrought, highly embellished writing style with its inapt metaphors started irritating me. In short, I find it one of the worst written novels I have ever read.

Someone please tell Mr. Turton that bedrooms don’t have lips so they can’t be tight-lipped (p. 16), not even in metaphor. Similarly, sounds a character is hearing at the present time are not memories (p. 2). One’s eyes cannot roam, as they are attached to one’s head (p. 2). This is not colorful language, it’s the inept use of a thesaurus.

link to NetgalleyI also thought characters’ reactions were ridiculously unbelievable. When the main character arrives disheveled at the front door of a house and asks for a phone, and the servant gapes at him, he shakes him and says, “Don’t just stand there, you devil!” What? Then characters who appear subsequently show very little alarm at the news that a woman has been murdered in the woods.

This could be the most brilliantly plotted novel ever written, but I have no way of knowing, because I could not bear to read it. I stopped at page 21. I even stopped reading it and gave it a rest, hoping it wouldn’t bother me so much when I started again. That didn’t work.

Related Posts

Murder at the Manor

The Drop

Death on Lindisfarne

Day 1262: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

Cover for The Disappearance of Ademe BedeauThe R.I.P. challenge surprised me this year, so I thought I’d look at what I already planned to review that would fit the category. The first book was this one. The idea is to spend September and October reading books that fit into specific categories, and mine are most likely to be mystery, suspense, or thriller, but a horror book or gothic novel might creep in there.

* * *

The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau is an unusual character study wrapped around a semblance of a murder mystery. Although it is labeled Inspector Gorski on Goodreads, much of it is concerned with the actions and thoughts of Manfred Baumann.

Manfred is a bank manager in Saint-Louis, a small town in the Alsace region of France. He leads an isolated life of extreme regularity, spending every evening at the Restaurant de la Cloche. He has no friends and spends most of his time by himself.

Manfred does not really date. He takes care of his needs in a weekly trip to a brothel. But he has become fascinated by surreptitiously observing the waitress at the restaurant, Adèle Bedeau, a sulky teenager with a well-developed figure. He even goes so far as to follow her when she meets her boyfriend.

Then Adèle goes missing. Inspector Gorsky can find no evidence of a crime, but he fastens on Manfred because he tells some lies. As far as the reader knows, he has not harmed Adèle, but maybe Raymond Brunet, the fictitious author of this novel, isn’t telling us everything.

Gorski begins to feel there is a connection with another crime years earlier, his first, for which a culprit was identified and convicted. Gorski was never satisfied, however, that they got the right man.

The depth of character portrayal of both Manfred and Gorski is what makes this novel stand out. It is portraying a creepy and paranoid guy in Manfred, however, and that may affect how much you enjoy the novel.

Related Posts

His Bloody Project

When They Lay Bare

Elizabeth Is Missing

 

Day 1255: The Blunderer

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Women Crime Writers coverPatricia Highsmith can be very dark, and The Blunderer is about the darkest of her works that I have read. It appears in the 1950’s volume of my Women Crime Writers set.

The novel begins with a murder that at first seems to have little to do with the main action. After establishing an alibi for himself by making sure people at the movies see him, Mr. Kimmel follows his wife’s bus out of town until it stops for a break. Then he calls her out of the way to talk to him and strangles her.

Walter Stackhouse notices an article about the murder and figures out that Kimmel could have murdered his wife. He places a clipping about the murder in a scrapbook where he keeps notes and articles about different personality types, and he even goes so far as to visit Kimmel’s bookstore to take a look at him.

Walter is unhappily married to Clara, who criticizes him constantly and tries to drive away his friends. Lately, she’s been accusing him of having an affair with Ellie, a woman he has only met twice socially. Walter isn’t thinking of murder, however, but of divorce. When he asks Clara for a divorce, she attempts suicide.

The Stackhouses give their marriage another try, but soon Clara is behaving the same way. Walter does begin an affair with Ellie and makes plans to get a divorce in Reno.

Cover for The BlundererYou guessed it, of course. Clara gets on a bus to take care of her mother’s affairs after her death. Walter stupidly follows the bus to do he knows not what but cannot find her at the bus stop and assumes she has gotten off. Later, her body is found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Detective Corby sees the similarities to the Kimmel case and decides Walter has murdered his wife.

The suspense derives from Walter’s dilemma as he does just about everything wrong, raising suspicion in everyone he knows. Then Corby decides he can solve both cases by playing Stackhouse and Kimmel off one another.

This novel is certainly suspenseful. It may have been a little dark, though, even for me.

Related Posts

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Ripley Under Ground

The Talented Miss Highsmith

Day 1251: Mischief

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Women Crime Writers coverMischief by Charlotte Armstrong is the first novel in the 50’s volume of my Women Crime Writers set. It is an excellent start to the second volume.

Ruth and Peter O. Jones are in New York for a convention at which he is a speaker. Because Peter’s sister cancelled her babysitting gig at the last moment, they have had to bring their nine-year-old daughter, Bunny, with them. The elevator man hears them talking about where to find a babysitter and volunteers his niece, Nell. Once Ruth and Peter leave, though, Nell begins to behave strangely.

Jed Towers is on his last date with his girl, Lyn, before moving across country to take a new job. They have a spat, however, and Lyn walks out. Jed goes back to his hotel determined to find another date for his last night in town. Across an open courtyard, he sees a girl in the opposite window, who seems to be inviting him over.

I can’t say more about this novel without giving away the plot. Suffice to say, it builds up a great deal of suspense as one guest after another starts to worry about what is going on in that room on the 18th floor.

Related Posts

Laura

Finders Keepers

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Day 1235: In a Dark, Dark Wood

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Cover for In a Dark, Dark WoodNora is surprised to be invited to Clare’s bachelorette party (I prefer the Brit term “hen party”). Clare used to be Nora’s best friend, but Nora cut herself off from her old life 10 years ago. She is hesitant to go but agrees to accompany a mutual friend from school, Nina.

All the women meet in a modern house made of glass, which in the wintry landscape seems forbidding. To Nora’s shock, she finds out that Clare is marrying James, the man whose breakup with Nora was traumatic enough to make her change her life.

The weekend is uncomfortable and awkward, led by Flo, who is plainly neurotic and forces all of them into silly games in an attempt to give Clare “the best hen party ever.” But someone might be on the property with them, and it is clear from the beginning of the book that events are converging toward crime.

This novel did lead me along to want to read it, but its secrets were not hard for me to predict. If a predictable book can be suspenseful as well, this is it. I knew well before the crime who the criminal would turn out to be. So, just sort of average marks for this one.

Related Posts

Betrayal

Siracusa

Eileen

Day 1216: The Broken Girls

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Cover for The Broken GirlsMost of Simone St. James’s spooky novels have been set in the early 20th century, so The Broken Girls is a bit of a departure. Some of it is set in 1950, but the bulk is set in 2014.

Fiona Sheridan’s sister, Deb, was murdered 20 years ago and her body found on the grounds of what had been Idlewild Hall, a school for girls. Although Deb’s boyfriend, Tim Christopher, has long been in prison for the murder and Fiona believes he is guilty, something about the case still bothers her. This issue tends to raise tension between her and her boyfriend, Jamie Creel, a cop whose father investigated the murder.

When Fiona drives by Idlewild Hall near the anniversary of her sister’s death, she sees that development work is going on. A reporter, she pitches an idea to cover the local story, including rumors of a ghost on the property. But the body of a girl dressed in the uniform of the old school turns up in an old well, and Fiona begins trying to identify her.

In 1950, four girls are roommates at Idlewild Hall, a school for throw-away girls. Katie was sent away when she was raped by a neighbor boy. Cece is the bastard daughter of a wealthy man. Roberta witnessed her uncle’s attempted suicide and temporarily stopped speaking. Sonia is a refugee from post-war France.

All the girls in the school have periodic glimpses of the ghost of Mary Hand, and there are stories about her written inside the school textbooks. Everyone at the school, including the teachers, is afraid.

link to NetgalleyThe novel begins in the 1950’s with a girl fleeing someone on the school grounds. It takes us a while to figure out who and what from, and that’s a secret of the book.

The Broken Girls is another excellent spookfest from Simone St. James. She and Catriona McPherson are beginning to be my favorite authors for light, scary reading.

Related Posts

Silence for the Dead

An Inquiry into Love and Death

Lost Among the Living

Day 1203: The 1977 Club! The Honourable Schoolboy

~ whatmeread ~ 1 Comment

Cover for The Honourable SchoolboyI actually read this novel before the 1977 Club was announced, but I was pleased to find that it was published in that year. I have a couple of other books I’m reviewing this week that I read especially for the club.

Here are my previous reviews of some other books published in 1977:

* * *

I wasn’t aware that there was a sequel to John Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy until I picked up The Honourable Schoolboy and started reading it. It is truly a worthy successor.

In summarizing the plot, I have to give away a key point of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but a point revealed toward the beginning of the novel. In that novel, of course, George Smiley uncovered a mole for the Russians high up in British intelligence. Because of the mole’s position, as The Honourable Schoolboy begins, all of the service’s spy networks are compromised and must be dismantled.

With a small staff of personnel who were dismissed during his predecessor’s reign, Smiley must figure out a way to make the service viable again. He has the idea that they can look for intelligence in the lacunae of his predecessor’s work, that is, look for promising leads that were suppressed.

1977 club logoThey find one, payments by the Russians to an account in Hong Kong, first small ones but later very large. Since the “spook house” in Hong Kong has been closed, Smiley recalls a journalist, an “occasional” agent, Jerry Westerby, from retirement in Tuscany to investigate this lead. A tangled path leads him from a Chinese businessman in Hong Kong to the man’s former prostitute English mistress, a Mexican drug courier in Vientiane, and some ugly dealings.

It is always amazing to me that Le Carré can evoke as much excitement from a paper chase as from an action sequence. Once again, he is in top form with a taut thriller. This novel is set against a backdrop of Southeast Asia exploding into chaos with the end of the Vietnam War. Westerby’s investigations take him to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, and Saigon.

Related Posts

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

A Perfect Spy

A Delicate Truth

Day 1194: House. Tree. Person.

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for House. Tree. PersonI scented gaslighting very early on in Catriona McPherson’s newest cozy creepster, House. Tree. Person. That did not spoil my enjoyment.

Ali McGovern has a trauma in her past and hints of a nervous breakdown. Her family is in a precarious financial position, too, because her husband, Marco, used her successful salon to prop up his failing restaurant. So, they lost both. When Marco falsifies her credentials to get her a job at Howell Hall, a mental hospital, she goes along with it, thinking she won’t get the job. But she does.

She comes home after her first day at work to a different problem. Her fifteen-year-old son, Angelo, is implicated somehow in the discovery of a body on the grounds of an old abbey across the street from the McGovern’s flat. The police think he knows something about it. Marco seems to know what is going on, but neither Marco nor Angelo will tell her.

At work she meets a cheerful and supportive staff, but her boss, Dr. Ferris, finds fault with her slightest action. In a catatonic patient, Sylvia, Ali thinks she sees signs of consciousness. She also believes that something is going on with Julie, a teenage patient who claims she’s being held there against her will.

Catriona McPherson has become one of my favorite writers for suspenseful and spooky but light reading. Her characters are engaging, and she creates a strong sense of place in small-town Scotland. House. Tree. Person. is another page-turner from her.

Related Posts

Quiet Neighbors

The Day She Died

The Child Garden

Day 1187: Edgar & Lucy

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for Edgar & LucyBefore I start my review, I realized I forgot to check the spin number on Friday morning. It seems as if Classics Club always picks the number for the most obscure book on my list. This time, I get to read Le Morte D’Arthur.

* * *

Best of Five!
Eight-year-old Edgar has no idea about the terrible events that took place when he was a baby. He lives with his mother, Lucy, and his grandmother Florence, who tells him innocuous lies about Frank, his father and her son.

Lucy and Florence have not been getting along lately. Lucy, still traumatized by her husband’s death, has been drinking too much and seeing men, when old-fashioned Florence would like her to be a perpetual widow. But Florence dies, and a series of misunderstandings and accidents at the time of her death place Edgar in danger.

Although I wouldn’t describe Edgar & Lucy as a thriller, it kept me pinned to the page much like a good thriller would, and the novel has some thriller-like plot characteristics. But really, it is a thorough examination of several characters under trying circumstances. And one of them is a ghost.

This novel is highly unusual. At times, it is almost meditative while at other times it reveals its characters’ minds as almost hallucinogenically original. If you decide to read it, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Related Posts

Room

The Burgess Boys

The Good Lord Bird

 

Day 1183: The Widow’s House

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for The Widow's HouseI haven’t read a creepy book in a while, and The Widow’s House is a good one. It is also a complex story where nothing is what it seems.

When she went away to college, Clare Martin moved away from her home in the Hudson Valley and hoped she would never return. She and her husband, Jess, moved to New York with aspirations to be writers, and ten years ago, Jess wrote a critically acclaimed novel. However, another one was not forthcoming, and for the past three years, Clare has been supporting them by taking editing work. They are badly in debt.

Jess suggests they move back into the country with the money from selling their loft apartment, leaving both of them time to write. He has a fancy to live in the same area where Clare grew up. When they go to look at houses, however, most of them are out of their price range.

Their realtor, Katrine Vanderberg, has an idea. Another writer is looking for a couple to occupy the caretaker’s house on his property. The rent would be free in exchange for some help around the property. The main house is River House, a beautiful but neglected octagonal mansion that is said to be haunted. The owner is Alden Montague, or Monty, the writer, who just happens to be the Martins’ old writing professor, and he is glad to have them.

Shortly before the move, Clare finds out that Jess turned down a teaching job at a college near their apartment, an opportunity that would have allowed them to stay in New York, without even discussing it with her. She is so upset by that, and what she thinks is his philandering, that she prepares to leave him soon after the move. But his behavior makes her change her mind.

The main house is supposedly haunted by a woman who had a child by the owner of the house. One stormy night she left the child on the doorstep of the house and drowned herself in the pond. The child was found dead. Clare was fascinated enough by this local story to have written about it in college, and now she decides to write a novel about it.

But almost upon her arrival in the house, she sees the woman standing near the pond and hears a baby crying at night. Clare has a history of psychic experiences and decides the house is haunted. When the caretaker’s cottage is destroyed in a flood, she and Jess move in with Monty.

Early in the novel I suspected gaslighting. I won’t say if I was right, but there are layers upon layers to this novel. It is a well written, suspenseful, spook fest. I had to keep reading it until late in the night once I got started.

Related Posts

Arcadia Falls

The Poison Tree

The Darkest Room