Review: THE CREEPER, Margaret Hickey

• 
  This edition read as an e-book on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CRW33KD4
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Australia (30 July 2024)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 343 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

Victim ... or killer?

For the last decade, the small mountain town of Edenville in Victoria’s high country has been haunted by the horrific murders of five hikers up on Jagged Ridge.

Also found dead near the scene was Bill ‘Creeper’ Durant, a bushland loner, expert deer-hunter, and a man with a known reputation for stalking campers . . .

murder-suicide. Case closed.

But as the ten-year anniversary of the massacre draws near, Detective Constable Sally White – the only officer at Edenville’s modest police station – finds herself drawn into the dark world of the notorious Durant family.

Lex Durant, in particular, has started to publicly protest his brother's innocence and accuse the police of persecution.

As Sally combs the investigation to prove him wrong, it becomes all too clear that each murdered hiker had skeletons in their closet - and possible enemies in their past . . .  

My Take

I've read 3 books by this author, all part of a series. 

CREEPER is a stand-alone bearing all the hallmarks of an established author, someone to watch out for. The characters are well drawn, and the scenario is believable. 

Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.8

I've also read

• 4.7, CUTTER'S END - Mark Ariti #1
• 4.6, STONE TOWN - Mark Ariti #2
• 4.5, BROKEN BAY - Mark Ariti #3

Review: THE RUNNING CLUB, Ali Lowe

• 
  this edition made available by my local library
  
• first published in UK by Hodder & Stoughton 2023
• ISBN 978-1-529-34887-3
• 415 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

You pay a premium to live in this town. But someone's paid with their life.

The rules of the running club are the same as they have always been: keep your breath steady, keep your mind sharp, record your laps! Only now there's a new one: don't get killed. The wealthy community of Esperance is picture-perfect. Big houses, stunning views, beautiful people. A brand new running track for the local club to jog around in the evenings. From the outside, it looks like paradise.

But the women of the town know the truth: you can hide anything - from wrinkles to secrets from your past - if you have enough money.

You could even hide a murder. 

My Take

Ali Lowe is one of those newish Australian authors that just grab you with a plot with so many twists, turns, and undercurrents that you just have to know what happens. The fact that it is crime fiction is an extra bonus. You work overtime to make sure you put it all together!

Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

4.8, THE SCHOOL RUN

Review: MISS AUSTEN INVESTIGATES, Jessica Bull

• 
  this edition published by Penguin 2024
  
• ISBN 988-0-241-64210-8
• 452 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Lavish balls, fetching bonnets, and dead bodies...It's time for Jane Austen to put down her pen - and find a killer

Jane Austen is just starting out in society.

The perils of being a woman in this environment fill the pages of her writing. Yet little does she know just how dangerous things truly are…

When the body of a milliner is discovered during a ball, the murder causes uproar.

For Jane, however, it becomes personal when her beloved brother Georgy is accused of the murder.
To clear his name, she must find the real killer.

Her writing is full of tales of questioning motives, and unmasking secrets.

Might her powers of observation help her solve this mystery, and save her brother from the hangman’s noose? 

My Take

This is obviously written by an author who has a detailed knowledge of Jane Austen and the world she lived in. This story though is basically fictitious with identifiable characters.

It reads well as crime fiction, and the author supplies a wealth of accurate historical details. The plot is well constructed, detailed, and credible.

I guess my main objection is a personal prejudice, when an author plucks a character from history, and uses them in a way that never happened in their real lives. Elsewhere I have referred to this practice as "coattails".

My rating: 4.0

About the author

Jessica Bull grew up in South East London, where she still lives with her husband, two daughters, and far too many pets. She’s addicted to stories and studied English Literature at Bristol University, and Information Science at City University, London. ..

Review: BUTTER, Asako Yuzuki

• 
  This edition from Amazon on Kindle
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CBYJNKTT
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate (29 February 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0063236419
• Translated from Japanese into English by Polly Barton

Synopsis (Amazon) 

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

My Take

This novel really isn't crime fiction, despite the fact that the elephant in the room is a person who has been convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen. Manako Kajii is in the Tokyo Detention Centre awaiting the court's confirmation of her guilt. The problem is that each of the 3 businessmen seem to have died from natural causes, nor is there any obvious motives for their deaths, if they were murdered. 

Her mentor suggests that journalist Rika Machida try to write a definitive piece explaining what Kajii's motives were. The problem is that Kajii is refusing all interviews. Eventually Rika, after writing several letters, gets an interview, but then the novel takes a direction which the reader does not expect.

Rika finds that Kajii will only agree to continuing interviews if they talk about food, and in particular, about butter in cooking. Not only that, Rika has to agree to cook the food that Kajii wants her to cook, and then report on how she felt about that experience.  The prime ingredient that Kajii wants Rika to use is butter, currently in short supply in shops and supermarkets in Japan. Kajii determines the recipes and the circumstances under which Rika produces and eats the food.

The novel wears on, and Rika's whole lifestyle changes. And the issue of whether Kajii can be fairly convicted of murder persists.

‘You really didn’t kill them, then? You never actually laid hands on them?’ Kajii shook her head. In that moment, Rika believed her entirely. This is the truth, she thought. This is what I’ve been coming here all this time for – this moment. ‘Did you have the intention to kill them, though? That will be what the trial hinges on.’

My rating: 4.4

About the author 

Polly Barton is a translator based in Bristol. A winner of the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs's International Translation Competition, she has received the Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize and the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize.

Asako Yuzuki was born in Tokyo in 1981. She won the All Yomimono Award for New Writers for her story "Forget Me, Not Blue," which appeared in her debut novel, published in 2010. She won the Yamamoto Shugoro Award in 2015. She has been nominated multiple times for the Naoki Prize, and her novels have been adapted for television, radio, and film. Butter is her first novel published in English.

Review: LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE, Colin Cotterill

• 
  This edition supplied by our local library
  
• Published by Soho Press 2010
• 326 pages
• ISBN 978-1-56947-627-7

Synopsis

An almagamation of several:

The seventh Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery
When a Lao female security officer is discovered stabbed through the heart with a fencing sword, Dr. Siri, the reluctant national coroner for the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, is brought in to examine the body. Soon two other young women are found killed in the same unusual way. Siri learns that all three victims studied in Europe and that one of them was being pursued by a mysterious stalker. But before he can solve the case, he is whisked away to Cambodia on a diplomatic mission. Though on the surface the Khmer Rouge seem to be committed to the socialist cause, Siri soon learns the horrifying truth of the killing fields and finds himself thrown into prison. Can the seventy-four-year-old doctor escape with his life?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Three young Laotian women have died of fencing sword wounds. Each of them had studied abroad in an Eastern bloc country. Before he can complete his investigation, Dr. Siri is lured to Cambodia by an all-expenses-paid trip. Accused of spying for the Vietnamese, he is imprisoned, beaten, and threatened with death. The Khmer Rouge is relentless, and it is touch and go for the dauntless, seventy-four-year-old national—and only—coroner of Laos.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr Siri Paiboun is about to celebrate his seventy-fourth birthday but it looks as though it might be his last. Instead of being at home with Madam Daeng, his wife of three months, he's in jail. It's not your average run-of-the-mill jail either. Siri is chained to some lead piping and conditions are not exactly five star. Meanwhile Phosy and Dtui are having marriage problems whilst he struggles to investigate the deaths of three women, all skewered by an epee and their thighs showing a letter engraved with a knife.

My Take

I had listened to an audio version of the book some years ago in 2012, shortly after publication. My original review is here.

I am now re-reading this book with my U3A Crime Fiction reading group. This book is very different to what we have read so far this year and I became aware as I was reading it that many of our group might struggle with it. So I decided to give their reading a bit of direction by posing some questions and giving them a bit more background information. You will see this supplementary material below. Beware - there may be spoilers.

This is the 7th book in the series, and, had it been up to me, I would probably have started my group on the first book in the series. 

In the front of this book the author says ".. this volume is dedicated to the spirits of the Khmer who perished under Pol Pot and the resourceful souls who survived." I think as readers we need to recognise that he has a dual purpose in writing this book - telling us a crime fiction story, but also conveying a political message.

I would like my group to also appreciate the humour that I think comes through in Dr Siri's approach to life.

My rating: 4.4

The supplementary material:

I am aware that you might be struggling in your reading of LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE by Colin Cotterill so I have put together some blurbs and other information which may help you to keep going.
Here also are a couple of questions you might like to try and answer.
1. When is the book set and where?
2. Who works with Dr Siri in the Coroner's Office
3. What is the meaning of the title? Whose grave is it? why are there love songs coming out of it? Why is the grave shallow
4. Why is Dr Siri invited to Cambodia and what happens to him there?
5. Who killed the young Laotian women and why?

I hope these questions help you keep reading what I think is a challenging book.

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

Dr Siri Paiboun is about to celebrate his seventy-fourth birthday but it looks as though it might be his last. Instead of being at home with Madam Daeng, his wife of three months, he's in jail. It's not your average run-of-the-mill jail either. Siri is chained to some lead piping and conditions are not exactly five star. Meanwhile Phosy and Dtui are having marriage problems whilst he struggles to investigate the deaths of three women, all skewered by an epee and their thighs showing a letter engraved with a knife.

This might be the seventh book in the series and Dr Siri might be getting older but there are no signs that the series is getting tired. All the old friends are there but the star of the show this time is very definitely south-east Asia. There's more than usual about the history of Laos and Vientiane in particular but it's delivered with a light touch. Conditions there might seem to be a little primitive given that it's the nineteen seventies and the Americans have not long left, but compared to Cambodia it's heaven. Laos might be run by bumbling incompetents but it's far better than the situation in Phnom Phen.

Cotterill's writing goes from strength to strength. He's always had the ability to evoke a place or a person in just a few well-chosen words, but in Love Songs… he seems to have surpassed himself. I laughed, I cried and sometimes I just smiled at the rightness of a description as in …frogs were yelling their delight like an orchestra of bedsprings and didgeridoos. Perfect.

And the mystery of the women skewered by an epee? Well, that's one of the most complex in the series so far. It was also more to my taste as the book largely moves away from Shamanism and reliance on the spirit world for solutions and we get an example of good, old-fashioned detection at its best. Methods might be primitive – finger-prints evidence is a hundred years behind the west – and cash for supplies very short, but that all makes the solution to a very complex investigation all the more compelling. It's great stuff. 

Published by Soho Crime
Aug 09, 2011 |

About the Author

Colin Cotterill is the author of The Coroner’s Lunch, Thirty-Three Teeth, and Disco for the Departed, all featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun. He lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He received the Dilys Award for Thirty-Three Teeth from the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Cambodia before 1975

In 1953 Cambodia gained independence after nearly a century of French rule. The country was ruled by a monarch, King Sihanouk, who abdicated in 1955 to pursue a political career.

Angkor Wat – Cambodia

His father became king and Sihanouk became prime minister. When his father died in 1960, Sihanouk became head of state. In the 1960s the population of Cambodia was between six and 7 million, and 95% of the population was Buddhist.

In 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown. The Prime Minister, General Lon Nol, assumed power. He announced that this marked the beginning of the Khmer Republic and sent the Army to fight the North Vietnamese in Cambodia. Sihanouk – in exile in China – formed a guerrilla movement with Cambodian Communists (the Khmer Rouge, headed by Pol Pot from 1962). During the early 1970s, the Cambodian Army faced two enemies: the North Vietnamese and Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas. Gradually, the Army lost territory.

On 17 April 1975, Khmer Rouge forces entered the capital city, Phnom Penh, and defeated the ruling Lon Nol Army. The seizure of Phnom Penh marked the beginning of genocide in Cambodia.

 I have also read

DISCO FOR THE DEPARTED
THIRTY THREE TEETH
4.3, ANARCHY and OLD DOGS
4.3, LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE

Review: THE PALE HORSE, Agatha Christie

• 
  first published in 1961
  
• read this time using both a paperback and the Kindle edition
  

Synopsis (Agatha Christie website)

To understand the strange goings on at The Pale Horse Inn, Mark Easterbrook knew he had to begin at the beginning. But where exactly was the beginning? Was it the savage blow to the back of Father Gorman’s head? Or was it when the priest’s assailant searched him so roughly he tore the clergyman’s cassock? Or could it have been the priest’s visit, just minutes before, to a woman on her death bed?

Or was there a deeper significance to the violent squabble which Mark Easterbrook had himself witnessed earlier? Wherever the beginning lies, Mark and his sidekick, Ginger Corrigan, may soon have cause to wish they’d never found it.

My Take - there may be spoilers..

When I read this book some years ago and wrote my review, I "read" it as an audio book. My review is here.

I am reading it again for my Agatha Christie U3A discussion group. We will follow up our discussion with watching the ITV video with Colin Buchanan in it.  

I was very impressed with a number of features of the structure of this story.

• the way Christie introduced the idea that witches could still exist today, She starts with the witches in Macbeth and then goes on to the idea that witches today could really just be ordinary old women. She prepares the reader to accept the idea that witches do exist and can be very powerful. When the 3 women at The Pale Horse are introduced the idea that they might be witches immediately comes to mind
  
• the idea of a list of people who have all die of relatively common diseases. Is there a connection between them. Why did Mrs Davis give Father Gorman this list?
• Characters in Agatha Christie novels: Ariadne Oliver, a friend of Hercule Poirot's. Mrs Dane Calthrop - a friend of Ariadne Oliver's (The Pale Horse) and Jane Marple (The Moving Finger)
• the final twist in the tale. Who was really the person who carried out "the service" of disposing of the unwanted person on behalf of the client
• the source of Mr Venable's wealth. 

My rating: 4.6

Possible spoilers

The Pale Horse combined two ideas that Agatha Christie had been considering. One, a book "would start somehow with a list of names ... ". The other reintroduced Christie's earlier thoughts about "Voodoo etc., White Cocks, Arsenic? Childish stuff - work on the mind and what can the law do to you? Love Potions and Death Potions, - the aphrodisiac and the cup of poison. Nowadays we know better - Suggestion."

This novel is notable among Christie's books as it is credited with having saved at least two lives after readers recognised the symptoms of thallium poisoning from the description in the book. In 1975, Christie received a letter from a woman in Latin America who had thus saved a woman from slow poisoning by her husband and in 1977, a nurse who had been reading The Pale Horse correctly suggested that a baby in her care was suffering from thallium poisoning. In another instance, in 1971, a serial killer, Graham Frederick Young, who had poisoned several people, three fatally, was caught thanks to this book. A doctor conferring with Scotland Yard had read The Pale Horse and realised that the mysterious "Bovingdon bug" was actually thallium poisoning.

The title of this book comes from the Revelation of St John the Divine, chapter 6, verse 8. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...” It was published in 1961 by Collins Sons in London, and in 1962 by Dodd, Mead & Co. in the US. It was adapted by Anglia TV in the UK in 1996 without Ariadne Oliver and by ITV in 2010 with the addition of Julia Mckenzie as Miss Marple and the omission of Ariadne Oliver, Colonel and Rhoda Despard and Mrs Dane Calthrop. It was dramatised for BBC Radio 4 and released in 2010. The latest adaptation of The Pale Horse aired in the UK on BBC One in February 2020, and is now available on BBC iPlayer. It was released in the US on Amazon Prime in March 2020.

All the Agatha Christie novels that I have  reviewed

Review: BONE LANDS, Pip Fioretti

• 
  this edition published by Affirm Press 2024
  
• ISBN 978-1-922922-86-4
• 378 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Isn't it your job to stop people being murdered?' 

1911, on a winter's night in arid New South Wales wool country, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins discovers the bodies of three young people. They are scions of the richest family in the district, savagely murdered on a road that Hawkins should have been patrolling, had he not been busy bedding the local schoolteacher.

Detectives arrive from Sydney and the disgraced Hawkins, a traumatised veteran of the Boer War, comes under fierce scrutiny. With his honour and sanity at stake, he becomes hell-bent on finding the murderer. But as ever darker secrets are revealed about the people he thinks of as friends, Hawkins is forced to confront an uncomfortable question: who is paying the price for the new nation's prosperity?

My Take

On the night that Australian towns celebrated the coronation of King George V with local balls and dances, 3 young people are murdered on a back road in New South Wales.The motive for the murders is obscure and the murderers are hard to trace. If Constable Hawkins had been doing his job, he might have prevented the murder, or at least that is what their father believes.

Detectives from Sydney are despatched to conduct the investigation but there is little to base an investigation on. Black trackers are sent out to follow some tracks from the murder site. Eventually the truth is revealed but it is a long investigation with truth the casualty in many ways.

Set over 100 years ago, the author does a good job of setting the scene, and helping us to understand how things worked in that time.

An interesting read.

My rating: 4.4

About the author:

Pip Fioretti lives in Sydney, and enjoys hiking, books, friends and family. Bone Lands is her first crime novel.