Review: THE RESURRECTION MEN, Sara Fraser - audio book

• unabridged audio recording from ISIS Audio Books
• available from audible.com
• length: 9 hrs 22 mins
• source: my local library
• originally published 2007
• Narrated by Peter Wickham

Synopsis

It is 1826, and in the town of Redditch in Worcestershire, Thomas Potts, reluctant Parish Constable, battles single-handedly to keep the peace and control crime.

With the notorious "Needle Pointers" up in arms at the news of a cut in their rate of pay, and a mysterious criminal gang, known as the "Rippling Boys", robbing, murdering and body-snatching with impunity, gentle, timid Tom has his work cut out.

At the same time he deals with the daily, unreasonable demands of his shrewish, bedridden mother and seeks out every possible opportunity for courting the pretty Amy Danks.
Unpaid, overworked and derided by the townspeople, Tom must now risk his life to bring the "Rippling Boys" to justice...

My take

Peter Wickham does a wonderful job of the narration of this book and I particularly liked the shrewish voice of Tom's mother.

Several historical issues are raised in this novel: the extent of grave robbing and the selling of "fresh" corpses to hospitals and the like; the hazards of needle making for the woollen mills, a topic I had never given much thought to; the fact that parish constables like Tom Potts were under the control of the Parish council, were poorly paid, and thinly stretched; the lack of procedures that we now take for granted in detection of crimes.

I guess the latter is pretty obvious when you think about it, but Tom is dabbling in finger printing and teaching himself to perfect the technique and to recognise individual palm and finger prints.
According to Wikipedia a Czech physiologist and professor of anatomy at the University of Breslau, published a thesis in 1823 discussing 9 fingerprint patterns, but he did not mention any possibility of using fingerprints to identify people. Tom finds finger and palm prints fascinating and successfully uses them to identify suspects. Similarly he makes sketches and measurements of foot prints for later comparisons.

As my listening partner remarked, we are already familiar with some of this historical background, but placing it against a crime fiction story just makes it seem more real somehow.

THE RESURRECTION MEN is not for delicate sensibilities - there is a lot of crude language at the beginning, which probably seems stronger because it is actually being read to you. The book is #2 in Fraser's Thomas Potts series, of which there are now 4 titles. The author appears to be determined to give readers a historically authentic experience.

My rating: 4.4

Widen your reading horizons: Join the 2012 Global Reading Challenge

This post is a reminder for those who have been vacillating about joining GRC2012, or maybe you have never heard of it and are looking for something that will help you extend your reading..

Challenge Rules

As in the past, the Global Reading Challenge (GRC) challenges you to expand your reading boundaries, go where you haven't been before, move a little outside your comfort zone.

You may read any genre so long as the books are fiction.

Your reading will take place in the calendar year 2012.

You may like to consult Global Reading Challenges for 2011 and 2010 for suggestions of books.

Decide which level you will attempt, although you can change that later if you wish.
Use the Mr Linky to sign up with your name, the level you intend to attempt, and your blog URL.

Feel free to include the logo in your blog posts or on your blog.

You might be interested in creating your own map showing where you use World66
My final post for GRC 2010 shows you what it can look like.

The Easy Challenge

Read one novel from each of these continents in the course of 2012:

Africa, Asia, Australasia/Oceania, Europe, North America, South America (please include Central America where it is most convenient for you), The Seventh Continent (here you can either choose Antarctica or your own ´seventh´ setting, eg the sea, the space, a supernatural/paranormal world, history, the future – you name it).

From your own continent: try to find a country, state or author that is new to you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Medium Challenge

Read two novels from each of these continents in the course of 2012:

Africa, Asia, Australasia/Oceania, Europe, North America, South America (please include Central America where it is most convenient for you), The Seventh Continent

Try to find novels from fourteen different countries or states.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Expert Challenge

Read three novels from each of these continents in the course of 2012:

Africa, Asia, Australasia/Oceania, Europe, North America, South America (please include Central America where it is most convenient for you), The Seventh Continent

Select novels from twenty-one different countries or states if possible. (For Australasia, selecting a different state for your last book will be acceptable)


Sign Up here

Crime Fiction that makes you think

I've decided that I like the sort of crime fiction that makes you think. I don't mean just to solve the central puzzle, but also to think about contemporary issues.

Earlier this week fellow blogger Margot Kinberg was talking about how crime fiction has changed, and one point she made struck me in particular.
Margot was talking about "Golden Age" crime fiction in particular:

There might be more than one murder or crime, but all were related to the central mystery. Christie’s standalones tend to be that way, too (although there are exceptions). We also see that focus on one murder or set of murders in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Those stories too, including the novels, are focused on one case, even when there is more than one murder or crime.

In most of the books I have been reading recently there seems to be a primary investigation which is pursued throughout the story, but in the ones that I've liked best, there are other things to think about too.
For example, from my recent reads...

4.7, BLOOD MOON, Garry Disher

Nearly everyone in Australia is familiar with Schoolies Week and probably has the attitude of "thank goodness it doesn't happen in my town/suburb".
Against the issues of Schoolies Week, we have other issues such as whether people who work together should live together; what causes young people to commit suicide; and control freaks who stalk their spouses.

4.6, THE VAULT, Ruth Rendell

Four bodies are found in a coal cellar and that of course is the primary investigation. But against that thread is the issue of retirement where Reg Wexford is desperately trying to strike a balance and come to terms with the fact that he no longer works. 

5.0, THE BROTHERHOOD, Y.A. Erskine

The primary investigation is into the death of a popular Tasmanian police sergeant in the course of his duties, but a range of side issues come up: an Aboriginal population, the remnants of Australia's original inhabitants, now welfare dependent, and in some cases only too willing to cry victimisation and brutality; an under resourced police force with more than usual difficulties in recruiting and retaining good officers; corruption in all professions, even among those responsible for managing the legal system; and an island state with significant social prejudices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So maybe the fact that I am now looking for side issues in a murder mystery novel explains why last year I found some of the Vintage crime fiction that I read just a bit flat. I think you can see that when you look at how I rated them.

1. 4.4, GIDEON'S WEEK, J.J. Marric (aka John Creasey) (1956)
2. 3.8, BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Rex Stout (1955)
3. 4.4, GIDEON"S DAY, J.J. Marric (aka John Creasey) (1955)
4. 4.2, AN ASSISTANT MURDERER, Dashiell Hammett  (1926)
5. 3.6, X.Y.Z. A Detective Story, Anna Katherine Green (1883)
6. 4.1, DEATH AT THE PRESIDENT'S LODGING, Michael Innes (1936)
7. 4.3, DIED IN THE WOOL, Ngaio Marsh ( 1942)
8. 4.5, DUMB WITNESS, Agatha Christie (1937)
9. 4.4, MAIGRET & the MAN on the BOULEVARD, Georges Simenon (1953)
10. 4.4, IN THE TEETH OF THE EVIDENCE, Dorothy L. Sayers (1939)

What do you think?

Forgotten Book: ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN, Ruth Rendell

As I said last week, when I featured Ngaio Marsh's COLOUR SCHEME, for my contribution this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books I am going to focus on the books I read 30 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

In January and February of 1992 I went through a Ruth Rendell phase.
My records show that I read 12 Ruth Rendell titles, in no particular order really, starting with ONE ACROSS, TWO DOWN, a standalone published in 1971.

Of course, now, 20 years on, I don't remember much about the book at all.
According to Amazon the story outline is

Two things interest Stanley Manning: crossword puzzles, and the substantial sum his wife Vera stands to inherit when his mother-in-law dies.

Otherwise, life at 61 Lanchester Road is a living hell. For Mrs. Kinaway lives with them now—and she will stop at nothing to tear their marriage apart. One afternoon, Stanley sets aside his crossword puzzles and changes all their lives forever... 

In One Across, Two Down, master crime writer Ruth Rendell describes a man whose strained sanity and stained reputation transform him from a witless loser into a killer afraid of his own shadow.

According to my records though, this marks my "discovery" of Rendell, and I have been a fan of her writing ever since.

Review: HAVOC in its third year, Ronan Bennett

• published by Headline Book Publishing 2004
• ISBN 9-780747-564416
• 244 pages
• source: my local library

Book Description (Amazon)

A penetrating and ambitious historical novel, Havoc, in Its Third Year is an ingenious, often deeply unnerving narrative of seventeenth-century England that speaks directly to the fanaticism and fears of today.

The time is the early seventeenth century, as the quarrel between Royalists and Parliamentarians turns toward civil war, and that between Catholics and Protestants leads toward bloody religious tyranny; the place is a town in northern England, set in a grim landscape swept by crop failures, plague and rumors of war, in which rigid Puritans have taken over government and imposed their own rules.

At the center of the novel is John Brigge, the Coroner and a Governor of the town, though not by any means as convinced a zealot as his fellow governors have become. Married and deeply in love with Elizabeth, who is pregnant with their first child, he has a guilty secret to hide in his affection for Dorcas, his wife's ward -- a secret which, in the world of religious prejudice and extremism toward which England is moving, can be lethal.

Determined to obey the law, rather than prejudice and the need to make an example of an Irishwoman accused of murdering her own infant, Brigge draws upon himself the hostility and suspicion of the powerful men who have been his fellow governors and who now set out to destroy him in the name of morality.(more)

My Take

Set in Northern England, in a town that at times almost seems as if it must be London, in what the author claims is the 1630s, HAVOC in its third year gives a grim picture of a disintegrating society. This is not history seen from the top, as we often have with political histories, but seen from the bottom, looking at events from the point of view of the ordinary person. The tension between those trying to keep the peace and those trying to feed their families is very real.

John Brigge is the coroner but lives outside the town, He is also a member of the board of governors, a friend of the Master. Fanaticism is growing. Suspicion that Irish immigrants, secret papists, and an impending invasion are responsible for failed crops, rising prices, disease, and poverty, give power hungry members of the board of governors the opportunity they need to increase their powers and to implement drastic punitive measures. Other members of the board, including John Brigge, become their victims.

As coroner John Brigge works with an ad hoc jury of common citizens to decide the cause of death of all corpses. The jury vote according to their eyes and often reflect the opinions of the townspeople rather based on any expert knowledge. Too often there is no rationale explanation of the cause of death and the reason assigned is "act of god". The starting point of the unravelling of John Brigge's life is his dissatisfaction with the commonly held view that an Irishwoman Katherine Shay has killed her baby. His suspicions are aroused when the serving wench at the inn where the murder supposedly happened, who is cited as a witness to the murder, is mysteriously unavailable.

HAVOC is rich in detail and presents a description of the dystopian society in early Stuart England that will eventually spawn a civil war, the execution of a king, and the rise of Cromwell. Fascinating reading.

My rating: 4.5

Other reviews to check:

• Detectives Beyond Borders
• John Baker's Blog
• Contemporary Literature
• Reviewing the Evidence
  

What I read in January 2012 - crime fiction

I've made an excellent start to 2012 with the some stellar reads and an excellent start on some reading challenges.

My local library has served me well, supplying half the books.

There were two books that I rated at 5.0 and they were so different that I am going to name them both as my pick of the month.

I'm surprised that this month only one of the books was a translated title.

1. 4.7, BLOOD MOON, Garry Disher - library book - Australian
2. 4.6, THE VAULT, Ruth Rendell - library book
3. 4.5, A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD, Alan Bradley - library book
4. 4.6, THE MISSING, Jane Casey - library book- debut title
5. 4.0, Some Agatha Christie Short Stories- Kindle
6. 5.0, THE BROTHERHOOD, Y.A. Erskine - library book - Australian - - PICK OF THE MONTH
7. 4.2, STEPS TO HEAVEN, Wendy Cartmell- Kindle - debut title.
8. 4.2, THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS, Andrew Taylor- library book
9. 4.2, TOWARDS ZERO, Agatha Christie
10. 4.5, THE HANGMAN, Louise Penny - Kindle
11. 4.5, MURDER AT THE SAVOY, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo - audio
12. 5.0,  A TRICK OF THE LIGHT, Louise Penny- library book - PICK OF THE MONTH
13. 3.5, OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, John Le Carre- audio
14. 4.7, HEADHUNTERS, Jo Nesbo- Kindle - translated from Norwegian
15. 4.6, THE MOST DANGEROUS THING, Laura Lippman- library book
16. 4.5, THE END OF EVERYTHING, Megan Abbott- Kindle

Crime Fiction 2012

This year I am running a monthly meme called Pick of the Month.

If you are a crime fiction reader, I invite you go to the link each month to find out what fellow readers are recommending.

If you are a blogger then it would be great if you would take part in the meme each month.

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month January 2012 - a meme

Crime Fiction 2012

Many crime fiction bloggers write a summary post at the end of each month listing what they've read, and some, like me, even go as far as naming their pick of the month.

This meme is an attempt to aggregate those summary posts.
It is an invitation to you to write your own summary post for January 2012, identify your crime fiction best read of the month, and add your post's URL to the Mr Linky below.
If Mr Linky does not appear for you, leave the URL in a comment and I will add it myself.

You can list all the books you've read in the past month on your post, even if some of them are not crime fiction, but I'd like you to nominate your crime fiction pick of the month.

That will be what you will list in Mr Linky too -
e.g.
ROSEANNA, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo - MiP (or Kerrie)

You are welcome to use the image on your post and it would be great if you could link your post back to the post on MYSTERIES in PARADISE.

---

Review: BLOOD MOON, Garry Disher

• published by Text Publishing 2009
• ISBN 978-1-921351-87-7
• 314 pages
• Source: my local library
• #5 in the Challis & Destry series

Synopsis (Amazon)

When hordes of eighteen-year-olds descend on the Peninsula to celebrate the end of exams, the overstretched police of Waterloo know they can expect party drugs and public drunkenness.

What they don't count on is a brutal bashing that turns political. The victim is connected. And for Detective Inspector Hal Challis, newly embarked on a relationship with his sergeant, Ellen Destry, this is not the best time to have the brass on his back. Especially when a bludgeoned corpse is found outside town and it becomes clear something much darker than adolescent craziness is going down.

My take

When I recently read WHISPERING DEATH (#6 in the Challis & Destry series) I realised that I had somehow missed reading #5, BLOOD MOON.

The setting of BLOOD MOON is Schoolies Week, a week at the end of the school year when those finishing their schooling cut loose in various resorts all over Australia. There is an unbelievable level of tension as local residents hold their breath, waiting to see what damage the teenagers cause, how many of them are charged with drug abuse or drunkenness, how many clashes there are with the authorities. The events in BLOOD MOON align well with what the public "knows" can happen in Schoolies Week.

BLOOD MOON is a very authentic feeling police procedural with a number of concurrent investigations balanced against the personal relationships of the members of Hal Challis' team, including his own with Ellen Destry. The investigation into the bashing of a school chaplain moves into the background with the murder of a female worker in the Planning Office whom we already know quite a bit about: that she is constantly stalked and watched by her husband, that she has been a leading participant in an attempt to preserve an old beach front house against demolition.The reader already feels well equipped to leap into this new investigation.

Domestic happenings and small town politics in an Australian setting make for an excellent crime fiction outing.

My rating: 4.7

Other reviews to check:

• Readings
• Aussie Reviews
• Spinetingler Magazine
• Murder by Type
• AustCrimeFiction

Other reviews of Garry Disher titles on MiP
4.7, WYATT
4.8, WHISPERING DEATH

The Challis & Destry novels
The Dragon Man (1999)
Kittyhawk Down (2003)
Snapshot (2005)
Chain of Evidence (2007)
Blood Moon (2009)
Whispering Death (2011)

Review: THE VAULT, Ruth Rendell

• published by Hutchinson 2011
• ISBN 978-0-0919-3710-2
• 266 pages
• Source: my local library
• #23 in the Wexford series

Synopsis (Random House Australia)

‘Don’t forget,’ Wexford said, ‘I’ve lived in a world where the improbable happens all the time.’

However, the impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife, Dora, now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead, belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila.
Wexford takes great pleasure in his books, but, for all the benefits of a more relaxed lifestyle, he misses being the law.

But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintendent, and is very keen to recruit Wexford as an adviser on a difficult case.The bodies of two women and a man have been discovered in the old coal hole of an attractive house in St John’s Wood. None carries identification. But the man’s jacket pockets contain a string of pearls, a diamond and a sapphire necklace as well as other jewellery valued in the region of £40,000.It is not a hard decision for Wexford. He is intrigued and excited by the challenge, and, in the early stages, not really anticipating that this new investigative role will bring him into physical danger.

My take

When Wexford decides to take up Detective Superintendent Tom Ede's offer of being an unpaid serious crimes adviser to him at Cricklewood he really doesn't understand what that will mean. What he does think is that this will put some meaning back into his life. He is not yet ready for the scrapheap of retirement and there is only so much reading and walking that he can do.

What he doesn't immediately see is that he is in essence powerless. He is no longer a policeman and really can't do anything like interview people without permission and without a police officer with him. What Tom Ede seems to need is another pair of eyes, and someone else to take on a little bit of the hack work, and to come up with some ideas of new directions to take. So in many senses Reg is not working with Tom, and add to that the fact that Tom's attention is divided by other cases under his supervision, and he doesn't seem to have the sense of urgency that Wexford expects.

And then family life, problems for their daughter Sylvia, intervene into the Wexfords' retirement and life becomes a bit complicated. This sub-plot adds substance to the book and puts the main plot in perspective.

For a while there, I thought Reg would never get it all sorted out, but in the long run serendipity, itself the result of Reg Wexford's urge to tie up loose ends, reveals the eventual answer.

From what I have read, THE VAULT appears to be an extension of the plot of a stand alone A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES which Rendell published in 1998. I don't remember reading that book, although I probably did a decade or so ago. But I'm going to correct that soon, because I'm intrigued. It doesn't mean however that you can't read THE VAULT independently.

Having retired myself less than a year ago, I was interested to see how Reg felt about it. I felt throughout the novel that Rendell is trying out a new role for Reg. I'm not sure that unpaid adviser to the police force is really for him.

Not Rendell's best book, but fans will enjoy it.

My rating: 4.6

Other reviews to check

• Books to the Ceiling
• Reactions to Reading
• Petrona

Other Ruth Rendell titles reviewed on MiP
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH