30 August 2012

Forgotten Book: A GREAT DELIVERANCE, Elizabeth George

For many of my contributions this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books I am focussing on the books I read 20 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

So my recent posts for this meme have largely been about authors that I "discovered" in that year.

A GREAT DELIVERANCE, published in 1988, is the first in Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley series.

From the author's website

A baby's cry echoes on lonely nights through Keldale Valley in Yorkshire. Three hundred years ago, when Cromwell's raiders swept through a village in this valley, not a living creature was to be found on its fog-shrouded streets. The entire population had taken refuge in Keldale Abbey. But then, as the legend goes, an infant began to cry-and the villages knew they had escaped Cromwell's ravages only to be betrayed by a babe. So they smothered the child to silence it.

To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale's lush green valleys.

Now, into this pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes New Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley. Accompanied by Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a particularly savage murder which has stunned the peaceful countryside.

Fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found, clad in her best silk dress, seated in the great stone barn beside her father's decapitated corpse. Her first and only words were: "I did it. I'm not sorry." She has refused to speak since. The priest who found young Roberta insists the girl is innocent. The villagers, who have known the girl all of her life, concur. The local police, however, maintain that she's guilty of the brutal slaying of one of the region's most respected citizens.

As Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of scandals, they uncover a series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley-and in their own lives as well.

In A Great Deliverance Elizabeth George probes the delicate motivations of the heart against a backdrop of buried scandals, unresolved antagonisms and dizzying ambiguities. It was her debut novel, the winner of the Agatha and Anthony Awards for best first novel as well as France's Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. It was nominated for both a Macavity and an Edgar. It has been optioned for television by the BBC.


There's another fascinating reference to it at Mystery Page Turners.

I have enjoyed the series, particularly the mixture of historical threads with current themes, but also the character development that has threaded the books together.

My review of the most recent in the series, #17, BELIEVING THE LIE.

29 August 2012

Review: THE STONECUTTER, Camilla Lackberg - audio book

  • Audio version available from Audible.com
  • narrated by Eamonn Riley
  • Length: 16 hours
  • book published in Swedish in 2010
  • translated into English by Steven J. Murray in 2010
  • #3 in the Patrik Hedstrom series
Publisher's blurb

The remote resort of Fjällbacka has seen its share of tragedy, though perhaps none worse than that of the little girl found in a fisherman's net. But the post-mortem reveals that this is no case of accidental drowning….

Local detective Patrik Hedström has just become a father. It is his grim task to discover who could be behind the methodical murder of a child both he and his partner, Erica, knew well. He knows the real question - and answer - lies with why. What he does not know is how this case will reach into the dark heart of Fjällbacka and the town's past, and tear aside its idyllic façade, perhaps forever.

My take

I haven't read anything by this author before and quite happily read THE STONE-CUTTER as a stand alone. It only occurred to me towards the end that it might be part of a series, as indeed it is. The series are police procedurals set the small seaside town of Fjallbacka, Sweden.

The opening hook of the story is the death of Sara, an 8 year old, the daughter of Patrik Hedstrom's wife's friend. The tragedy seems to become deeper when the police learn that Sara's death is in fact murder and there seems to be no lack of suspects including the girl's own father.

The plot is made all the more complex by the introduction of a historical thread. While this thread is actually essential to the story and to the eventual resolution of the murder, it does seem to take a long time to unfold.

The narrated version has a few consistency problems, first of all with pronunciation of names, and also with the differentiation between voices. The narrator seemed to me to at first decide to use a number of British accents, which felt a bit strange in a Swedish novel, and then to abandon that scheme.

Murder, evil, and damaged personalities lie at the heart of this novel. There is a twist at the end that I really didn't see coming.

I will be looking to read more from Camilla Lackberg.

My rating: 4.5

See other reviews
On EuroCrime by Maxine Clarke
On Reactions to Reading by Bernadette

Books available in the UK market - unfortunately it appears that only 2 (marked **) are currently available to US readers. There are in fact 12 books in Swedish.

28 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet: O is for Octavia


I've decided that for my participation in the Crime Fiction Alphabet in 2012 I will highlight recently read books or their authors.

So they'll all come from my 2012 Reviews. Or at least that's the plan.

So this week my choice is THE NOBODIES ALBUM by Carolyn Parkhurst

Wait, you say. Shouldn't you have run this one last week? That's N!

Aha. Good to see you are on your toes. I realised last week that I was in trouble for O so I decided to take a leaf out of Margot Kinberg's book and use the name of a character instead.

Here is the synopsis of the story courtesy Amazon

Bestselling novelist Octavia Frost has just completed her latest book—a revolutionary novel in which she has rewritten the last chapters of all her previous books, removing clues about her personal life concealed within, especially a horrific tragedy that befell her family years ago.

On her way to deliver the manuscript to her editor, Octavia reads a news crawl in Times Square and learns that her rock-star son, Milo, has been arrested for murder. Though she and Milo haven’t spoken in years—an estrangement stemming from that tragic day—she drops everything to go to him.

The “last chapters” of Octavia’s novel are layered throughout The Nobodies  Album—the scattered puzzle pieces to her and Milo’s dark and troubled past. Did she drive her son to murder? Did Milo murder anyone at all? And what exactly happened all those years ago? As the novel builds to a stunning reveal, Octavia must consider how this story will come to a close.

Read more from my review.

Check what others have chosen for O.

27 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet: the letter O


The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

This meme was run first on this blog in 2009-2010 and was re-run in 2011.

Many thanks to those who have participated so far this year. 

We have an average of about 14 participants a week.

Our journey so far
A   B    C    D    E    F   G  H  I   J   K  L  M  N 

Today we have the letter O

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
You probably won't have to do a lot of extra reading in order to participate, but I warn you that your TBR  may grow as a result of the suggestions other participants make.
Feel free to use either of the images provided in your blog.

Your assistance in advertising this community meme, and pointing people to this page, would be very much appreciated.

By the end of this week  post your blog post title and URL in the Mr Linky below.
Please place a link in your blog post back to this page.
Visit other blogs and leave comments.

Check the Crime Fiction Alphabet page for summaries of previous years.

Thanks for participating.

23 August 2012

Review: ASIA HAND, Christopher G. Moore

  • Format: Kindle (Amazon)
  • File Size: 452 KB
  • Print Length: 273 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0802170730
  • Publisher: Atlantic Books (May 1, 2010)
  • Originally published 2008 (?)
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B003MPA5IC
  • source: I bought it
  • Vincent Calvino #2
Synopsis (Amazon)

Bangkok – the Year of the Monkey.

Vincent Calvino is spending the New Year on a call-out to Lumpini Park Lake, where the Thai cops have fished out the body of a farang cameraman. Calvino traces the American’s murder to an elite unit of old Asia hands – a set of foreigners with bad reputations and powerful friends.

from the author's website

Bangkok—the Year of the Monkey. Calvino’s Chinese New Year celebration is interrupted by a call to Lumpini Park Lake, where Thai cops have just fished the body of a farang cameraman. CNN is running dramatic footage of several Burmese soldiers on the Thai border executing students.

Calvino follows the trail of the dead man to a feature film crew where he hits the wall of silence. On the other side of that wall, Calvino and Colonel Pratt discover and elite film unit of old Asia hands with connections to influential people in Southeast Asia. They find themselves matched against a set of farangs conditioned for urban survival and willing to go for a knock-out punch.

My take

On his site the author lists ASIA HAND as #2 in a series of twelve books featuring private investigator, one time New York lawyer, Vince Calvino. Mainly set in Bangkok, the settings for the novels also venture into Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma. ASIA HAND is set in Bangkok but revolves around documentary footage shot by an American cameraman on the Thai/Burma border which purports to show Burmese aggression.

The cameraman is Calvino's neighbour and when he is found dead in Lumpini Park Lake, Vince attempts to find out how he died. At first he is puzzled why Hutton had not told him about the film footage, and then he begins to wonder the action was genuine or staged.

Another film, soft-porn really, Lucky Charms, is being shot in Bangkok and Calvino learns that his ex-wife is coming over from New York to play a role, and then that his lover also has a part. Finally his teenage daughter is also offered a part. Calvino learns that the team producing the film have made several others in the past few years, set in Asian political hotspots, beginning in Saigon many years before, and he begins to suspect an underlying agenda that has nothing to do with the films being made.

Someone is out to stop Calvino and Thai policeman Colonel Pratt from unearthing the truth behind both Hutton's murder and the documentary footage. After other attempts to stop him fail, Calvino realises that his daughter is their target.

ASIA HAND is gritty and noir, in fact just a little too so for me. I suspect it will appeal to male readers more than it did to me. On the other hand I did feel I was getting some genuine insights into Thai culture. I just didn't enjoy it.

I read ASIA HAND as part of the 2012 Global Reading Challenge.

Read an excerpt of ASIA HAND.
In 2011 ASIA HAND won the Shamus Award for Best Original paperback.In fact the series has been winning awards since 2004.
Check the official Vince Calvino site.

Christopher G. Moore is a Canadian writer who once taught law at the University of British Columbia. After his first book His Lordship’s Arsenal was published in New York to a critical acclaim in 1985, Moore became a full-time writer and has so far written 23 novels, a non-fiction and one collection of inter-locked short stories. (I met Christopher a couple of years back at Left Coast crime in Hawaii.) more

Besides his own blog, Christopher is also part of the International Crime Authors Reality Check Team.

My rating: 4.2

22 August 2012

A bit of a slow month...

If you check my Latest Additions you'll see that I have only managed 4 books so far this month which is a bit tortoise-like for me.

I'm on my 5th at the moment and my Kindle tells me that I'm 64% through and I hope to finish it in a day or two. And then there's the audio book with one CD out of 10 to go, so that will happen too.

I'm not sure what is causing the slow down - a week or two ago I would have blamed the Olympics. Maybe it's the weather.

It is certainly not for a lack of books to read.

Do you get slow downs? Is it just that we get tired of reading?


21 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet: N is for NEXT OF KIN


I've decided that for my participation in the Crime Fiction Alphabet in 2012 I will highlight recently read books or their authors.

So they'll all come from my 2012 Reviews. Or at least that's the plan.

My choice for the letter N is NEXT OF KIN by Elsebeth Egholm

This was the first novel I had read by this Danish author.
Synopsis (Amazon)

Why do we fear strangers when often it's those closest to us who pose the greatest threat?

Fear and anxiety have spread to Denmark in the aftermath of the London bombings. Late one evening, journalist Dicte Svendsen receives an anonymous package containing footage of a brutal murder—a beheading carried out by a sabre-wielding figure dressed in black.

Dicte and her old friend Inspector John Wagner form an uneasy alliance with the Danish secret intelligence service to identify the killer. As media reports unleash a wave of anti-Muslim hysteria across the country, panic escalates, and when Dicte’s teenage daughter is attacked, the investigation gets personal. Dicte has fought long and hard to put her dark past behind her—so how does the killer seem to know her deepest secrets?

See what I thought of it.

See what others have contributed this week for the letter N.
 

20 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet: the letter N


The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

This meme was run first on this blog in 2009-2010 and was re-run in 2011.

Many thanks to those who have participated so far this year. 

We have an average of about 14 participants a week.

Our journey so far
A   B    C    D    E    F   G  H  I   J   K  L  M

Today we have the letter N

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
You probably won't have to do a lot of extra reading in order to participate, but I warn you that your TBR  may grow as a result of the suggestions other participants make.
Feel free to use either of the images provided in your blog.

Your assistance in advertising this community meme, and pointing people to this page, would be very much appreciated.

By the end of this week  post your blog post title and URL in the Mr Linky below.
Please place a link in your blog post back to this page.
Visit other blogs and leave comments.

Check the Crime Fiction Alphabet page for summaries of previous years.

Thanks for participating.

18 August 2012

Review: THE CROWDED GRAVE, Martin Walker

  • Published by Quercus 2011
  • ISBN 978-1-84916-321-7
  • 358 pages
  • Source: my local library
  • #4 in the Bruno Courreges series
Synopsis (Amazon)

Life in south-west rural France is not the sleepy idyll you might suppose. Local duck and goose farms are being attacked by animal rights protestors attempting to halt the production of foie gras.

A senior policeman has been shot by terrorists believed to be the Basque Separatists of ETA. And if that weren't enough, a group of students have just unearthed a 'modern' skeleton during a dig at one of the ancient sites of this famous region and home to pre-historic man - a dig that has brought an influx of foreigners to the Dordogne.

It is up to Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges to get to the bottom of these seemingly unrelated events. Martin Walker spins a surprising and compelling mystery, laced with charm and a deep knowledge and love of France, past and present. It is a combination that will win him many fans.

My Take

Once again Martin Walker has delivered a very readable mystery.
Bruno's quiet locale of St. Denis faces mayhem when archaeologists discover a twenty year old skeleton in the excavation pit of a Neanderthal grave. And then animal rights protesters attack farms involved in the production of foie gras. On top of it all, government ministers from both France and Spain have decided to have a summit locally and Bruno is in charge of making the area secure.

So the pleasant domesticity of Bruno's usually peaceful life is disrupted. Former lover Isabelle comes back to deal with security arrangements and Bruno's English lady friend Pamela is conveniently needed in Scotland to take care of her mother who has had a stroke.

In many ways this is a very complex plot - there are so many things going on. The various plot lines intertwine again and again and unexpected connexions surface. All is skilfully done. Bruno's character is developed a little more and we learn a few new things about him.

If it wasn't for some of the violence towards the end of the book, you'd probably call THE CROWDED GRAVE a cozy.  There's much of the English village mystery about it and then it just occasionally flips into thriller mode, action set against a background of Basque Separationism.

My rating: 4.6

Read another review on EuroCrime.

Other Martin Walker titles reviewed on MiP
4.6, BRUNO, CHIEF OF POLICE  (#1)
4.6, THE DARK VINEYARD (#2)

16 August 2012

Forgotten Book, MURDER IN THE MEWS, Agatha Christie

For many of my contributions this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books I am focussing on the books I read 20 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

So my recent posts for this meme have largely been about authors that I "discovered" in that year.

By 1992 I was already a committed reader of Agatha Christie novels and short stories.
In the last 3 years I have been gradually re-reading Agatha Christie novels in order of publication (through the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge), and short stories as they come to hand.

MURDER IN THE MEWS is a collection of four novellas that I read about this time in 1992.

It was first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club on 15 March 1937.  In the U.S., the book was published by Dodd, Mead and Company under the title Dead Man's Mirror in June 1937 with one story missing (The Incredible Theft)


 The four novellas are
  • Murder in the Mews
  • The Incredible Theft
  • Dead Man's Mirror
  • Triangle at Rhodes

One of the fascinating things about titles that have been published many times are the very varied style of covers used.

The YouTube video below is extracted from the 1989 television production.

Thrill Week September 1 to 8


Marce, one of my blogging friends, is hosting Thrill Week for the second year running, for Bloggers and Authors who love to read and write Thrillers, Mystery, Suspense and/or Horrors. The goal is to find new blogs and bloggers with similar interest in those genres and of course add to our huge TBR and Wishlists.

Sometime during Thrill Week (1-8 September) I will put up some answers to Marce's Thrill Week Questionnaire, as well as run a book giveaway.

Click on either of the images above to be transported to Marce's blog.

14 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet - M is Michael Robotham's SAY YOU'RE SORRY


I've decided that for my participation in the Crime Fiction Alphabet in 2012 I will highlight recently read books or their authors.

So they'll all come from my 2012 Reviews. Or at least that's the plan.


This week it is the turn of the letter M and today I'm featuring the launch today, August 14, of Michael Robotham's latest book SAY YOU'RE SORRY.

Robotham is one of Australia's finest crime fiction authors. At the beginning the books in this series didn't really feel like one, a series that is.

The first book in the series, SUSPECT, introduced psychologist Joe O'Loughlin, a man recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. DCI Vincent Ruiz makes a cameo appearance.

The second book LOST (aka THE DROWNING MAN) appeared to be a sequel, featuring near-retirement Vincent Ruiz, with a lesser appearance by O'Loughlin.
But still readers were not sure this was a series.

In #3 THE NIGHT FERRY DC Ali Barba, a minor character in LOST emerged in her own right, with assistance and mentoring from the now retired DI Vincent Ruiz. And at the end readers were asking whether there would be another. This novel made us wonder whether Robotham was establishing a series or not.

DCI Ali Barber hasn't made any more appearances but the series has rolled on with O'Loughlin and Ruiz seemingly making dual appearances, but rotating in importance.

The Suspect (2004)
Lost (2005)
     aka The Drowning Man
The Night Ferry (2007)
Shatter (2008)
     aka The Sleep of Reason
Bombproof (2009)
Bleed for Me (2010)
The Wreckage (2011)
Say You're Sorry (2012)

So here we are at #8. I think we have now got to the stage where we can expect both Joe O'Loughlin and Vincent Ruiz to make appearances. They complement each other really well.



If you need more convincing to look for Robotham titles, have a look at these awards.

THE WRECKAGE

  • Best General Fiction shortlist - Australian Book Industry Awards 2012

THE SUSPECT

  • International Book of the Month (Bertelsmann's Book Clubs)

LOST (aka THE DROWNING MAN)

  • Winner of Ned Kelly Award 2005 – Best Crime Novel
  • Shortlisted for the 2006 Barry Award – Best British Novel published in the US

THE NIGHT FERRY

  • Shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award 2007
  • Shortlisted UK Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger in 2007

SHATTER

  • Winner of the Ned Kelly Award 2008 – Best Crime Novel
  • Shortlisted UK Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger in 2007
  • Shortlisted in the inaugural ITV3 Thriller Award (Breakthrough novelist)
  • Shortlisted for South Africa's Boeke Prize.

BLEED FOR ME

  • Shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award 2010 - Best Crime Novel
  • Channel 4 Book Club selection (UK)
Check what others have contributed for the letter M in the Crime Fiction Alphabet 2012.

13 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet: the letter M


The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.


This meme was run first on this blog in 2009-2010 and was re-run in 2011.

Many thanks to those who have participated so far this year. 
We have an average of about 14 participants a week.

Our journey so far
A   B    C    D    E    F   G  H  I   J   K  L

Today we have the letter M

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
You probably won't have to do a lot of extra reading in order to participate, but I warn you that your TBR  may grow as a result of the suggestions other participants make.
Feel free to use either of the images provided in your blog.

Your assistance in advertising this community meme, and pointing people to this page, would be very much appreciated.

By the end of this week  post your blog post title and URL in the Mr Linky below.
Please place a link in your blog post back to this page.
Visit other blogs and leave comments.

Check the Crime Fiction Alphabet page for summaries of previous years.

Thanks for participating.

12 August 2012

Review: THE HEADHUNTERS, Peter Lovesey

  • published 2008 by Soho Press
  • ISBN 978-1-56947-490-7
  • 324 pages
  • #2 in the Hen Mallin series
  • source: my local library
Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Gemma loathes her sleazy boss; Jo is her confidante. On a double date with Rick and Jake, they discuss forming a mutual murder society, in jest of course. The next day, Jo, walking on Selsey Beach, discovers the corpse of a drowned woman, a stranger. But one of the men in the lineup at the police station is Gemma's date Jake, who Jo rather fancies.

Then Gemma and Jo discover the corpse of Fiona, Gemma's annoying colleague from work. And Gemma's boss is missing. When an older woman whom Rick was involved with is drowned in her pool, the police begin to close in.

Can this outbreak of deaths by drowning be coincidental? Or has the joke gone too far?

My Take

Although the Hen Mallin series (of which there are only 2 titles so far - the other is THE CIRCLE - see the mini review below) is a police procedural, as an investigator Hen is very different to Peter Diamond. (see my recent review of COP TO CORPSE )

Hen is very conscious of her male superiors just waiting for her to make a slip, constantly threatening that if a case is too much for her it could be handed on. Hen does act on impulse sometimes - in THE HEADHUNTERS she orders out the local divisional helicopter but luckily for her the move pays off.

In THE HEADHUNTERS Lovesey plays with the unreliable narrator. We learn of events from several points of view but it is difficult to pick which one is not to be trusted. In fact there seem to be several candidates. There are also some really good red herrings.

So another good story from Peter Lovesey.

My rating: 4.5

Mini-review of THE CIRCLE which I rated at 5.0

Encouraged by his fourteen-year-old-daughter who recognises his lonely widowhood, Bob Naylor decides to join a writers' circle, believing he might gain some expert help with the poetry which keeps spilling out of his imagination. He discovers a motley collection of wannabe authors who he doubts he has anything in common with, but just as he is deciding not to formally join the group he learns that a publisher who addressed their last meeting has been killed and he stays to see what might develop.

The Senior Investigating Officer, Henrietta Mallin, soon has all the members of the group under suspicion and, under pressure from her superiors, arrests their Chairman. Bob, the only writer who had not met the victim, is persuaded by other members of the group to do some investigating of his own. And that is when the trouble really starts, because another death turns the spotlight of suspicion on to him.

Other Peter Lovesey titles reviewed on MiP
MAD HATTER'S HOLIDAY
SKELETON HILL
THE REAPER
5.0, STAGESTRUCK
5.0, COP TO CORPSE

10 August 2012

National Bookshop Day Australia 2012

Many thanks to Random House Australia which sent me this reminder/invitation.


I must admit I am not buying nearly enough paper books.

And here is a card I picked up a couple of weeks ago for the Matilda Book shop in Stirling in the Adelaide Hills which is celebrating 30 years this year. Isn't it great?


And it is a reminder of how important books are to your family.
Make sure you read to your children and grandchildren.

2012 is Australia's National Year of Reading

And we are getting closer to National Reading Hour on August 25!

The book being read around Australia on that day is Alison Lester's ARE WE THERE YET?


It tells the story of her family's journey around Australia in a camper van. This great adventure captures the essence of the country – the cities and the countryside; the European settlements and the special places of the First Australian.

9 August 2012

Review: THE HOUSE OF SILK, Anthony Horowitz - audio book

Synopsis (Audible)

THE GAME'S AFOOT... It is November 1890 and London is gripped by a merciless winter. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are enjoying tea by the fire when an agitated gentleman arrives unannounced at 221b Baker Street.

He begs Holmes for help, telling the unnerving story of a scar-faced man with piercing eyes who has stalked him in recent weeks. Intrigued by the man's tale, Holmes and Watson find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events, stretching from the gas-lit streets of London to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston. As the pair delve deeper into the case, they stumble across a whispered phrase 'the House of Silk': a mysterious entity and foe more deadly than any Holmes has encountered, and a conspiracy that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of society itself.

With devilish plotting and excellent characterisation, bestselling author Anthony Horowitz delivers a first-rate Sherlock Holmes mystery for a modern readership whilst remaining utterly true to the spirit of the original Conan Doyle books. Sherlock Holmes is back with all the nuance, pace and powers of deduction that make him the world's greatest and most celebrated detective.

My Take

I'm not one generally for "coat-tails" books - that is, books where the central character was not created by the author, but I couldn't resist something read by Derek Jacobi. And of course Anthony Horowitz is pretty well known as a television dramatist, in particular for his work on Midsomer Murders and Murder in Mind, and episodes for Poirot and Murder Most Horrid.

I think Sherlock Holmes followers will enjoy THE HOUSE OF SILK. Sherlock Holmes is long dead and Watson recalls how he very nearly died during this case. Poor old Dr. Watson is writing at the end of his life recalling a story from twenty five years before, set in London in the late 1890s.  Anthony Horowitz was given access to the estate of Conan Doyle and also carefully studied many of the original stories. It certainly has an authentic feel to it, although I am far from being a Sherlock Holmes expert.

Jacobi does, as we would expect, an excellent job of the narration.

My rating: 4.5

Anthony Horowitz' website.

Forgotten Australian author: Joan O'Hagan

For many of my contributions this year to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books I am focussing on the books I read 20 years ago in 1992. By then my reading diet was almost exclusively crime fiction.

So my recent posts for this meme have largely been about authors that I "discovered" in that year.

Today's post is a variant on the theme with two books I read towards the end of 1992 by Joan O'Hagan, an author who was born in Australia in 1926 and grew up in Canberra. She married a diplomat and lived in New Zealand, the South Pacific, the United States and for several decades in Rome.

O'Hagan appears to have published 4 books, all crime fiction

I read AGAINST THE GRAIN published in 1988.
I must have enjoyed it, as I followed it up with A ROMAN DEATH.

Synopsis of AGAINST THE GRAIN

In Australia, a setting far from the author's last outing (Death of a Madonna), plant scientist Dr. Jack Duquesne has worked for years on a tough new strain of wheat he accidentally discovered in the uranium fields of the country's harsh tropical reaches--and now he wants the world to know about this important resource against starvation. Instead, he finds himself in the middle of conflicting, cynical national and global politics. 
Two CIA men have been killed while trying to get a closer look at the experimental crop; a third has almost killed Duquesne; and suave Prime Minister James Blantyre seems to be working a deal with the US to hold back the discovery--a threat to that nation's wheat growers--in exchange for a uranium contract. 
The Aborigines have an interest in that deal, too. Then there are the Russians, in the person of Duquesne's girlfriend Irina, with more to come. Frustrated and angry, threatened on all sides, Duquesne manages to get to an international scientific conference in Rome, where he escapes death a second time and is rewarded, in a nice melodramatic flourish, for his stubborness and dedication. 

Synopsis of A ROMAN DEATH, published in 1989

An historical mystery novel inspired by a fragment of one of Cicero's defence speeches. Two great Roman families are to be linked by marriage, but not all the celebrations go to plan. On the eve of the wedding a murder occurs and the underlying hatred between the two parties flares into open war.

A woman is charged with the crime, but the great Cicero is determined to uncover the true nature of the killing




  

7 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2012: L is for Louise and Lovesey


I've decided that for my participation in the Crime Fiction Alphabet in 2012 I will highlight recently read books or their authors.

So they'll all come from my 2012 Reviews. Or at least that's the plan.

I couldn't choose between two of my "best" reads for 2012.

A TRICK OF THE LIGHT by Louise Penny  and COP TO CORPSE by Peter Lovesey are both outstanding reads and I gave both of them my highest rating.

Both are police procedurals but their detectives are very different.

A TRICK OF THE LIGHT by Louise Penny is #7 in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series.
The books are generally based in the little Canadian village of Three Pines.
In A TRICK OF THE LIGHT the tranquillity of the little Canadian village of Three Pines is again shattered by murder. The artist Clara Morrow is celebrating her successful art exhibition with a party but others in the village and the investigative team are recovering from cataclysmic events, detailed in earlier books, that have changed their relationships forever. The threads of continuity that come from earlier titles in the series do mean that, if you are new to the series, you should read them in order.
However, if you have it to hand, then read it now and then I guarantee you'll look for the others.



Similarly with COP TO CORPSE by Peter Lovesey.
If you can get hold of it, then read it out of order, but be warned you'll be looking for more in the Peter Diamond series, of which this is #11. The Peter Diamond series is set in Bath, England. Someone is killing uniformed coppers patrolling the streets late at night.

Peter Lovesey writes some of the best in British crime fiction, so you'll be in for a treat.

Check what others have chosen for the letter L.

6 August 2012

Crime Fiction Alphabet: the letter L


The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.


This meme was run first on this blog in 2009-2010 and was re-run in 2011.

Many thanks to those who have participated so far this year. 
We have an average of about 14 participants a week.


Our journey so far
A   B    C    D    E    F   G  H  I   J   K

We begin the second half of the alphabet today with the letter L

Here are the rules

By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction.
So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
You probably won't have to do a lot of extra reading in order to participate, but I warn you that your TBR  may grow as a result of the suggestions other participants make.
Feel free to use either of the images provided in your blog.

Your assistance in advertising this community meme, and pointing people to this page, would be very much appreciated.

By the end of this week  post your blog post title and URL in the Mr Linky below.
Please place a link in your blog post back to this page.
Visit other blogs and leave comments.

Check the Crime Fiction Alphabet page for summaries of previous years.

Thanks for participating.

5 August 2012

Review: SAY YOU'RE SORRY, Michael Robotham

Synopsis (from Publisher)

The chilling new psychological thriller - a truly gripping read from one of the most brilliant crime authors of today

My name is Piper Hadley and I went missing on the last Saturday of the summer holidays three years ago.

When Piper and her friend Tash disappeared, there was a huge police search, but they were never found. Now Tash, reaching breaking point at the abuse their captor has inflicted on them, has escaped, promising to come back for Piper.

Clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and his stalwart companion, ex-cop Vincent Ruiz, force the police to re-open the case after Joe is called in to assess the possible killer of a couple in their own home and finds a connection to the missing girls. But they are racing against time to save Piper from someone with an evil, calculating and twisted mind...

My Take

The Bingham Girls, Piper Hadley and Tash McBain, are 15 years old when they go missing.  They have been best friends for years but Tash is a troubled adolescent and has been told not to return to school. Every one assumes that the girls have gone off to London as they said they would, or at least that's what Tash said.

Months pass and the search is scaled back. They have gone without trace. The bad things are forgotten and both families paint their daughters in glowing colours.

Three years later and a body is found frozen in a lake and DCI Drury calls in Joe O'Loughlin to investigate a case where a husband and wife have been killed and burnt in a fire at the farmhouse where Tash McBain used to live. A suspect is in custody, a troubled young man who can hear voices and claims that he saw a girl that night being chased by a snowman. Drury hopes that Joe, by going over the Bingham Girls case from the very beginning, may pick up on clues the original team missed.

For Joe this is a particularly sensitive case because when they disappeared the girls were the same age that his own daughter Charlie is now. Both Piper and Tash had problems at home, separated or unhappy parents, and you can feel the author exploring the issues that surround female adolescence.

The structure of the novel appears to be straightforward but is very clever. Piper Hadley likes writing, but she runs out of paper so there are excerpts from her "mental" journal interposed between chapters describing the findings and events in the investigation that Joe and Vincent Ruiz are carrying out.

As always, a very readable novel, with some heart stopping moments. #8 in the O'Loughlin/Ruiz series. This duo complement each other so well.

My rating: 4.8

Other reviews on MiP

BOMBPROOF
SHATTER
BLEED FOR ME
5.0, THE WRECKAGE 

Check if Michael Robotham is touring near you. He will also be at MWF and at Bouchercon in Cleveland later in the year.

4 August 2012

Reading Next

TBRN (to be read next)

- at any time you can see what I'm reading in the TBRN block in the right hand margin.

It is a bit misleading to list them all like this because I really only read one print book at a time, although I generally have two audio books on the go (two different cars).
At the moment the Olympics are taking a bit of a toll on reading time.
British crime fiction dominates at the moment.
  • next - THE HEADHUNTERS, Peter Lovesey
Published in 2008.
This has made it home with me from the library a couple of times now, and I am determined that this time it won't be returned un-read.
It is a Hen Mallin mystery.

Gemma loathes her sleazy boss; Jo is her confidante. On a double date with Rick and Jake, they discuss forming a mutual murder society, in jest of course. The next day, Jo, walking on Selsey Beach, discovers the corpse of a drowned woman, a stranger. But one of the men in the lineup at the police station is Gemma's date Jake, who Jo rather fancies.

Then Gemma and Jo discover the corpse of Fiona, Gemma's annoying colleague from work. And Gemma's boss is missing. When an older woman whom Rick was involved with is drowned in her pool, the police begin to close in.

Can this outbreak of deaths by drowning be coincidental? Or has the joke gone too far?

  • next on Kindle - ASIA HAND, Christopher G. Moore
    I'm reading this for the 2012 Global Reading Challenge.
    He's also a Canadian author.
 Christopher G. Moore's prize-winning series of Bangkok thrillers featuring Vincent Calvino, a disbarred American lawyer turned PI, have been praised for their captivating plots, engaging characters, and insight into the steamy Thai capital. In Asia Hand, the second novel in the series, Bangkok is celebrating Chinese New Year when Calvino's revels are cut short. The body of an American, an acquaintance of Calvino's, has been fished out of the lake in Lumpini Park. Around his neck are a string of wooden amulets, the kind upcountry Thais wear to protect themselves from evil spirits. Only rather than saving Hutton, these have killed him.

A freelance cameraman scraping by on the margins, Hutton had photographed something shortly before his death that he thought would make his career. Now the footage - a shocking execution on the Thai/Burmese border - is running repeatedly on CNN, and the rights to Hutton's life story have been sold to a Hollywood producer. But who killed Hutton and why? When Calvino investigates, he collides with a powerful filmmaker and an experienced old Asia hand who knows the terrain as well as our man in Bangkok. It's all Calvino can do to stay alive, and find out who killed his fellow American.


  • next Australian - SAY YOU'RE SORRY, Michael Robotham
    A very favourite Australian author. I am very grateful to the publisher for this review copy.
    Publication date 14 August 2012.
    I am reading this one NOW.
    Check if Michael is touring near you. He will also be at MWF and at Bouchercon in Cleveland later in the year.
Two missing girls. Two brutal murders.
One person who knows the truth.

When best friends Piper and Tash disappear one Sunday morning, the investigation captivates a nation but the teenage girls are never found.
Three years later, during the worst blizzard in a century, a husband and wife are brutally killed in the farmhouse where Tash McBain once lived. A suspect is in custody, a troubled young man who can hear voices and claims that he saw a girl that night being chased by a snowman.
Convinced that Piper or Tash might still be alive, clinical psychologist Joe O'Loughlin persuades police to reopen the investigation, but the closer he get to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes.
One girl is counting on them and she's running for her life...

  • next on audio - THE CORONER, M.R.Hall
When lawyer, Jenny Cooper, is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she's hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself? Jenny's curiosity is aroused. Why was Marshall behaving so strangely before he died? What injustice was he planning to uncover? And what caused his abrupt change of heart? In the face of powerful and sinister forces determined to keep both the truth hidden and the troublesome coroner in check, Jenny embarks on a lonely and dangerous one-woman crusade for justice which threatens not only her career but also her sanity.
 
  • also on audio - THE HOUSE OF SILK, Anthony HorowitzI generally don't like reading Sherlock Holmes themed books but who could resist Sir Derek Jacobi narrating it?
Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective in literary history. For the first time since the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a new Holmes story has been sanctioned by his estate, whetting the appetites of fans everywhere. Information about the book will be revealed as deliberately as Holmes himself would unravel a knotty case, but bestselling novelist and Holmes expert Anthony Horowitz is sure to bring a compelling, atmospheric story to life. With access to the estate's archives and careful study of the original stories, Horowitz is sure to weave a tale that satisfies new fans as well as the most dedicated Baker Street Irregular.
 
  • next Agatha Christie: THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS (aka MURDER WITH MIRRORS)
    The next in my quest in the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.
    My 44th novel.
“They said it was an accident, but I think it was just temper!”
Ruth Van Rydock – They Do it With Mirrors

Ruth Van Rydock is very concerned about her sister. Carrie-Louise is living in a vast house that is now a home for 'delinquent' boys and Ruth is worried that her other-worldly sister cannot cope or worse - will come to harm. She persuades their old friend Jane Marple to go and stay just to keep an eye on things. When there is a murder and Carrie-Louise's life is also threatened can Miss Marple live up to Ruth's expectations and bring a murderer to light?

3 August 2012

Agatha Christie Blog Carnival July 2012 now complete

Many thanks to those who contributed to the July edition of Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Blog Carnival.


Several book reviews, some money to be made, and find out why Yvette is happy.

1. Discovery: Poirot book sells for > £40,000 at auction
2. Poirot Investigates, Becky's Book Reviews
3. Review: THEY CAME TO BAGHDAD - Kerrie
4. Happy Days are here again.. Yvette @ in so many words...
5. Why Didn't They ask Evans?@Classic Mystery Hunt
6. Review: DEATH IN THE CLOUDS - Vanda Symon
7. Roberta Rood - THE PALE HORSE, part one
8. Roberta Rood - THE PALE HORSE, part two
9. Review: MRS McGINTY'S DEAD -MiP
10. Nemesis@Classic Mystery Hunt
11. Best Miss Marple Books@Classic Mystery Hunt

We collect the original links for each monthly carnival on the Agatha Christie Reading Carnival site and the August Carnival is now open.

We are interested in book reviews, discoveries, news items and progress reports.
If you are reading the Agatha Christie titles in order of publication, or even just as they come to hand, tell us how you are going.

2 August 2012

What I read in July 2012

Pick of the Month July 2012
An excellent reading month, with a mixture of formats including 4 hard backs from my local library.
I caught up with some favourite authors too - Agatha Christie, Peter Lovesey, Michael Stanley, Ian Rankin, Donna Leon, Aline Templeton, and Elly Griffiths. Regretfully no Australian authors, again, But I'm rectifying that now by reading Michael Robotham's latest.
Two outstanding books contended for my Pick of the Month.
Both are police procedurals but widely separated by setting but the main detectives have a lot in common including their size.

COP TO CORPSE is Peter Lovesey's latest, and I truly think with this one that it doesn't matter if you haven't read the earlier ones, but you'll want to afterwards.

DEATH OF THE MANTIS is #2 in the Kubu series and you really would be advised to read #1 first.

Both are terrific reads.

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