Tag: Yorkshire

Review 2189: Faith Fox

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The cover of my Europa edition of Faith Fox is a little misleading, because although the plot of the novel revolves around a child, the child is a baby, not the young girl shown on the cover. You have to wonder sometimes if the artist ever reads the book or even knows what it is about.

When Holly Fox dies in childbirth, her mother Thomasina can’t bear to see the baby, Faith. The baby’s father, Andrew Braithwaite, seems oddly uninterested in her and anyway works brutal hours in the hospital. So, he decides to take her to his brother Jack, an Anglican priest who runs any experimental farm up in Yorkshire.

Jack is a sort of living saint, whose work barely supports a small community made up of ex-cons and Tibetans. The down side of this is his lack of sense. He trusts everyone, has no concept of a feasible project, and tends to forget the practical aspects of life. His little community lives in extreme discomfort and doesn’t accomplish much. He forgets Faith almost as soon as she arrives and his wife Jocasta has her reasons for avoiding Faith—she has been in love with Andrew since they met, but he could not afford to marry. So, he dropped her and her son off at Jack’s and later got engaged to Holly.

In fact, the only people yearning to see and care for Holly are Andrew’s parents, Toots and Dolly. But they are elderly and Andrew avoids bringing her to visit. Philip, Jocasta’s ten-year-old son, also cares about Faith and worries about her at school, but her care is basically left up to the Tibetans.

In the meantime, Thomasina scandalizes her friends by missing her daughter’s funeral to go to Egypt with Giles, an elderly colonel she just met. And Andrew and Jocasta have revived their affair after he brought Faith up to Yorkshire.

Gardam certainly has a gift for depicting dotty upper-class characters, selfish people, and hopeless charitable projects in the novel, as well as some peculiar lower-class characters. She also clearly understands the workings of grief, both bereavement and the lovesick kind. I’ve discovered Gardam late, but I’m really enjoying her.

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Review 2122: The Mysterious Mr. Badman

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The Mysterious Mr. Badman starts out with an intriguing premise. Athelstan Digby is on holiday in Keldstone waiting for his nephew, Jim Pickering, to be free for a walking trip through Yorkshire. His landlords have to attend a funeral, so Digby offers to watch their bookstore. During the afternoon, three men come in at separate times looking for John Bunyan’s Life and Death of Mr. Badman—the rather shifty looking Reverend Percival Offord, a foxy looking man, and a genial chauffeur. Shortly after Digby has disappointed them, a boy comes in with books to sell, including Life and Death of Mr. Badman.

Naturally, Digby takes the book home. Later that night, someone breaks into the bookstore. Digby confides in his landlord, Mr. Lavender, who suggests they put a note in the bookstore window asking the person who accidentally took the book to return it. That will prevent further break-ins.

The boy who brought the books in says they were given to him by Miss Diane Conyers. Before Digby and Jim have a chance to talk to her, Digby finds a letter in the book that brings to mind a recent crime. A man named Neville Monkbarns was to be hung for murder but he was reprieved and sent to a mental hospital. However, the letter shows that Neville Monkbarns is actually the estranged son of the Home Secretary, Sir Richard Mottram. Sir Richard is Diane’s father, and it’s clear that the letter was going to be used to blackmail him.

Then, the body of the foxy looking man is found on the moor.

If you ignore the unlikelihood that any of the unsavory characters would know about the letter, this situation kicks off a lively and adventurous investigation, with Digby and Jim trying to help Diane protect her father. The main characters are likable and interesting, the dialogue is often amusing, and the book is light and fast-moving. I would like to read more of Digby’s adventures.

The cover explains that the original novel has been exceedingly rare, so I’m glad British Library Crime Classics chose to reprint it.

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

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Review 2018: A Death at Fountains Abbey

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Thomas Hawkins escaped from the gallows at the end of the last book in this series, The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins, but Queen Caroline is still holding a threat over him—her knowledge that his beloved Kitty is a murderess. The Queen has received a request for help from John Aislabie, who has been threatened by mysterious letters. But Aislabie was the mastermind behind the South Sea Company scam, and the Queen fears that he did not destroy the green ledger of its accounts, which would show how much the Crown gained from the scam while so many others were ruined. So, she sends Thomas ostensibly to help Aislabie but really to search for the ledger. He takes with him Kitty, who now poses as his wife, and his dangerous ward, Sam Fleet.

In Yorkshire, he finds Aislabie behaving like a victim of the South Sea scandal instead of its perpetrator, claiming he took the fall for more important people. Yet he seems to have plenty of money, which he is spending on his horses and his grounds. He is not well liked, claiming common land as his own and proclaiming as poachers the families that have farmed and hunted it for centuries. In fact, Thomas finds no lack of suspects for the nasty threats Aislabie has received.

Another strange situation concerns Mrs. Fairwood, who is living with the Aislabies. She has presented herself as his daughter, thought to have been killed in a house fire thirty years before. As her bona fides she has brought along a letter from a servant who disappeared on the day of the fire and a brooch that belonged to Aislabie’s first wife, who also died in the fire. Mrs. Fairwood is also being threatened.

This is another excellent mystery/thriller in this series with its scapegrace hero and heroine. The series books always seem carefully researched and the settings authentic. The ending is quite suspenseful.

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Review 1613: O, The Brave Music

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Seven-year-old Ruan Ashley leads a bleak existence. Her unhappy mother seems to care little for her, preferring her sister Sylvia. Her father is a dour nonconformist minister. They have little money and live in a poor area of a Yorkshire factory town. Ruan is misunderstood, a dreamer who loves reading, especially poetry, and thirsts for beauty.

Things look up when Rosie, the daughter of a wealthy factory owner, comes to visit with David, a boy Rosie’s father has adopted. They take her for a visit to their home up in the moors, where she and David run wild. Family illness calls for her to remain there for the summer.

Ruan’s life becomes one of loss, but it is also mixed with some times of great contentment. Daring it all, she remains herself, a person who refuses to conform to expectation.

This novel is touching as well as lyrical. It is a true ode to life, written in 1940 and looking back 40 years.

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

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Review 1569: The Seagull

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Here’s another book for RIPXV!

Disgraced former superintendent John Brace is dying in prison, so he asks Vera Stanhope to visit him. He tells her he has information about the disappearance years ago of Robbie Marshall. He will tell her where Robbie’s body is if she will check in on his daughter, Patty Keane, a single mother with mental health problems.

Vera does, so Brace tells her he discovered Robbie dead one night and buried him in a culvert on St. Mary’s Island. When the police investigate the scene, they find two bodies in the culvert, a man and a woman.

The team’s investigations seem to indicate that the female may be Mary-Frances Lascuola, the mother of John Brace’s daughter, a junkie who vanished a few years before Robbie did. Then, Gary Keane, Patty’s ex-husband, is found dead. A common denominator that seems to link all of the people the team is investigating is the Seagull, once an upscale nightclub that burned down years ago. Another common link seems to be the Gang of Four, a group of wildlife buffs whose members were John Brace, Vera’s father Hector, Robbie Marshall, and a shadowy character known as the Prof.

This is another complex and interesting mystery by Cleeves. Her novels are always atmospheric with believable characters and difficult mysteries.

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Review 1508: The Gallows Pole

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In a remote Yorkshire valley in 1767, David Hartley and his brothers call together all the clippers in the area. Clippers have for centuries been debasing the coin of the realm by clipping edges off to make counterfeit coin. Hartley is already known as King David in the region for his control of the valley that his home lies above on the moor, but now he declares that they will all become rich by becoming systematic. All the people in the area will send him coins, and in return they will all get a portion of the proceeds. To make more money, he brings in a man called the Alchemist, who will make more convincing coins. Any man who refuses to participate is brought into line.

Within two years, this gang has caused enough disturbance in the local economy that an exciseman, William Deighton, is brought in to try to bring the Hartleys and their gang to law. James Broadbent, a member of the gang who thinks he hasn’t been rewarded enough, decides to turn informant.

On the one hand, this novel is at times lyrical, especially in evoking the landscape, and it is based on true events. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the subject or the brutality. There is a lot of fascination in our society with people who are essentially gangsters that I don’t share. Although Myers tells most of the story in a fair-handed way, he does seem to come down a bit on the side of the thieves, even as he recounts some crimes against innocent men. This book won the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize for 2018, but I’m not sure it’s the one I would have picked.

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Review 1497: Elmet

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Best of Ten!
My very brief research on Elmet tells me that it was a Welsh kingdom in what is currently West Yorkshire, but the Wikipedia article says that Bede refers to it as “the forest of Elmet.” This reference is certainly apt for the novel Elmet.

Daniel, his father Daddy, and his sister Cathy live in the deep forest in a house their father built. Daddy has claimed the land, which the children’s mother owned when she died.

Before they lived there, the children stayed with their grandmother while Daddy was gone for long periods. But Cathy was being harassed by local boys until she finally beat them up. When Daddy took Daniel and Cathy to report the repeated bullying to the head teacher, he could see that she already believed that the attack was unprovoked, believed the middle-class boys’ lies over the poor children’s truth, that is. So, Daddy took them away to the forest and told them he wouldn’t leave them again.

At first, their life seems idyllic as they live mostly off the land, but we know from the beginning that Daniel is running away from some horrible event. So, a feeling of dread builds.

Daddy is an uneducated giant who makes a living fighting illicit bare-knuckles boxing matches. In his past, he also did violent work off the edges of legality, but lately he has used his great strength to help out poor people against injustices by landlords and former employers. Because of his past, however, he can’t seek out legal means to sort out his problems, and the worst one appears with Mr. Price, a man known to have cheated locals out of their land and a poor landlord. He claims that the kids’ mother sold him her land before she left the area.

This novel is stunning in its beauty, full of dread, dark, and wonderful. Set in the present, it depicts life so violent and exploitative for the locals in poverty that you would think it was feudal times. It’s not often I read a book this good. I read this book for my Man Booker Prize project.

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Review 1493: Harbour Street

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Sergeant Joe Ashworth and his young daughter Jessie are traveling on the Metro, returning from a Christmas concert, when the train is halted and everyone is made to get off. Jessie notices that one person doesn’t get off—an older woman who is too nicely dressed to be going to Mardle. She is dead, stabbed by someone on the train.

The woman turns out to be Margaret Krukowski, a 70-year-old resident of a Mardle B&B who helps run it. The B&B on Harbour Street is owned by Kate Dewar, who inherited the house from a relative. When Joe and Vera Stanhope go to interview Kate and look at Margaret’s room, Joe feels that something is familiar but puts the feeling down to his recognition of Kate as Kate Guthrie, who had been a famous singer.

Margaret seems to have led a blameless life. She was very private, but aside from her work at the house, she volunteered with several charities. One of them was The Haven, providing temporary housing for women in need of a place to stay.

It takes a while for Vera and her team to find out Margaret’s secrets, but they can’t get past the fact that no one seems to think badly of her. Then another woman is killed.

Harbour Streeet is another mystery by Cleeves that really kept me guessing. She is good at creating believable characters, and her plots are complex but not beyond belief. This is one series I’m not tired of yet.

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Review 1451: Big Sky

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I always buy anything by Kate Atkinson as soon as it comes out, but I was especially pleased to learn there was another Jackson Brodie novel. I think her last three books have put her in another category altogether, but it’s fun to see Jackson again after an absence of nine years.

Jackson is out with his son Nathan when he spots a young girl being picked up by a man in a car. She is young enough to sport a backpack with rainbows and unicorns, which he finds the next day in a bay near his home in Bridlington. The police don’t seem to be interested.

Later, he is hired by Crystal Holroyd to find out who is following her in a silver BMW. When Crystal’s kids are threatened, this case becomes more serious.

Jackson also stops a man from jumping off a cliff. This man is Vince Ives, who has lost his job and was being divorced by his wife until his wife is found murdered. Now, of course, the police suspect him of murder.

More is going on than that, though, as a series of coincidences leads Jackson to discover a human trafficking operation.

Atkinson’s mysteries are more quirky than otherwise, following lots of threads that end up being connected (some of them) at least by the presence of Jackson himself. In the meantime, we’re entertained by the musings of Jackson and some of his more likable fellow characters. Another entertaining read for us by Atkinson.

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Transcription

A God in Ruins

Day 1298: Hidden Depths

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Cover for Hidden DepthsAfter a rare night out, Julie Armstrong returns home in the wee hours to find her son, Luke, dead in the bath. Her 14-year-old daughter, Laura, is sound asleep in her room.

Luke has been despondent since the death of his friend, Thomas Sharp, from drowning. Julie assumes he killed himself, but Vera Stanhope’s team assures her it was not a suicide. Luke was strangled, his bath filled with scented oil and flowers.

Felicity Calvert is surprised when she meets her son at the bus to find that her teacher has traveled out there to view their cottage with the idea of renting it. Felicity isn’t sure she wants to rent it again but is surprised when the young woman, Lily Marsh, leaves without asking the rate.

Vera’s attentions turn to the Sharps, a local criminal family, wondering if Davy Sharp blamed Luke for his son’s death. But Davy says it was a accident. Soon, another body is discovered in a tide pool by Felicity Calvert’s son. It is Lily Marsh, submerged in a pool surrounded by flowers. The Calverts are at the shore as part of Pete Calvert’s birthday celebration, accompanied by his three best friends, all bird watchers.

This is another clever mystery by Ann Cleeves. Her characters are convincing, and her plots complex without being overly complicated. I am enjoying both the Ann Cleeves series I’m reading.

And by the way, I wish everyone a safe New Year’s Eve and a happy  new year!

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