Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Blog Carnival for March

The Agatha Christie Reading Challenge continues this year and the April carnival is now open.

Here is the summary for the blog carnival of March 2014

Agatha Christie Reading Challenge Participants

1. Kerrie - ENDLESS NIGHT 2. Kerrie - BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS 3. Kerrie - MURDER IN THE MEWS 4. Kerrie - A Selection of Short Stories 5. Christie in a Year Extended - Initially 6. Notes on THE MOUSETRAP@ Christie in a Year 7. Official Agatha Christie Newsletter for Feb 2014 8. "They do It With Mirrors" by Agatha Christie (Margaret @ BooksPlease) 9. David Suchet wins Lifetime Achievement Award 10. Watch clips from all 70 Poirot TV shows with David Suchet

Powered by... Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

Review: THE LABYRINTH MAKERS, Anthony Price - audio book

• Written by: Anthony Price
• Narrated by: Simon Schatzberger
• Length: 7 hrs and 45 mins 
• published in 1970
• Format: Unabridged audio

Synopsis (Audible.com)


When an RAF Dakota, presumed lost at sea in 1945, is discovered in a drained lake in Lincolnshire, together with its pilot and a cargo of worthless rubble, it falls to David Audley of the MOD to puzzle out just why the Russians are so interested in the discovery - and what the plane was carrying that is important enough to kill for.


Winner of a Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagge, this is the first of a 19 title series featuring Dr David Audley.

My Take

This has many of the hallmarks of a debut title, not just the first title in the series. We need quite a bit of background about many of the characters and the book takes a while to get to the central plot. I'm not sure that I ever understood the meaning of the title properly.

At the beginning the author attempts to establish that Dr. David Audley, in his mid 30s, has been sidelined by the Ministry of Defence after what he considers to be a successful career in Middle Eastern Affairs. He thinks that he successfully predicted various events such as the Suez Crisis ahead of the pack. He doesn't take kindly to being allocated to investigate events of World War II, particularly incidents of local origin.

The date is 1969 and the plane crash occurred nearly 25 years before. But when a Russian espionage agent shows enough interest to fly to Britain to investigate the contents of the Dakota, Audley's interest is spiked. Even more when the daughter of the Dakota's pilot, a baby when her father died, turns up on his doorstep.

To reveal what the Russian thinks the plane contained would be to tell you too much of the plot, but you might want to look at this Wikipedia article.

Published in 1970, the title is an illustration of how many British authors were interested in the legacies of the Second World War, and the impact on international politics of the Cold War.Very readable thrillers were the result.

Part of the attractiveness of the book is that it is relatively short, and I liked it enough to begin reading the second in the series, THE ALAMUT AMBUSH.

My rating: 4.3

New to Me authors January to March 2014

I've read 5 new-to-me crime fiction authors so far this year.

1. 4.3, HOTEL BOSPHORUS, Esmahan Aykol
2. 4.4, WITNESS THE NIGHT, Kishwar Desai 
3. 4.1, THE DIVIDED CHILD, Ekaterine Nikas
4. 4.4, DRIVE BY, Michael Duffy  
5. 4.6, VISITATION STREET, Ivy Pochoda

Check who others have discovered.

Review: THE GHOST RUNNER, Parker Bilal

• published 2014
  
• ISBN 9-781408-841112
• #3 in the Makana series
• 413 pages
• from my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

It is 2002 and as tanks roll into the West Bank and the reverberations of 9/11 echo across the globe, tensions are running high on Cairo's streets.

Private Investigator Makana, in exile from his native Sudan and increasingly haunted by memories of his wife and daughter, is shaken out of his despondency when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl. In a country where honor killings are commonplace and the authorities seem all too eager to turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the perpetrator. He finds unexpected assistance in the shape of Zahra, a woman who seems to share Makana's hunger for justice.

Seeking answers in the dead girl's past he travels to Siwa, an oasis town on the edge of the great Sahara Desert, where the law seems disturbingly far away and old grievances simmer just below the surface. As violence follows him through the twisting, sandblown streets and an old enemy lurks in the shadows, Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable as the desert beneath his feet.

My take

This really is one of those books that takes the Western reader into a very different world.

Makana is at first engaged to track a lawyer whose wife says she thinks he is having an affair.  The lawyer in turn hires Makana to find out the truth about the death of a young woman in a house fire. The investigation takes him out of Cairo to the desert and he finds himself assisting local police in solving the horrific murders of two local men, one the local Qadi who was trying to make money from selling land that he didn't own, and the other a simpleton who thought he saw a ghost.

Predictably, it is all quite a tangled story, but one that has its roots in the past. In the end I thought the plot became just a little too tangled for the author, and I didn't think the final resolution was all that satisfying, although probably realistic.

My rating : 4.4

About the author
Parker Bilal is the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub. Mahjoub has published seven critically acclaimed literary novels, which have been widely translated. Born in London, he has lived at various times in the UK, Sudan, Cairo and Denmark. He currently lives in Barcelona.

Meme: New to Me Authors January to March of 2014

It's easy to join this meme.

Just write a post about the best new-to-you crime fiction authors (or all) you've read in the period of January to March 2014, put a link to this meme in your post, and even use the logo if you like.
The books don't necessarily need to be newly published.

After writing your post, then come back to this post and add your link to Mr Linky below. (if Mr Linky does not appear - leave your URL in a comment and I will add to Mr Linky when it comes back up, or I'll add the link to the post)
Visit the links posted by other participants in the meme to discover even more books to read.

This meme will run again at the end of  June 2014
 

---

What I read in March 2014

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month 2014

Lots of good well-crafted reading this month.
Five Australian authors** for you to find.

1. 4.6, VISITATION STREET, Ivy Pochoda
2. 4.5, BLOOD SECRET, Jaye Ford** 
3. 4.7, SAINTS OF THE SHADOW BIBLE, Ian Rankin
4. 4.4, DEATH BY BEAUTY, Gabrielle Lord **
5. 4.6, THE MINOR ADJUSTMENT BEAUTY SALON, Alexander McCall Smith
6. 4.8, FATAL IMPACT, Kathryn Fox**
7. 4.4, DRIVE BY, Michael Duffy**
8. 4.8, DEAD CAT BOUNCE, Peter Cotton** 

My pick of the month is Peter Cotton's DEAD CAT BOUNCE but only by a narrow margin from FATAL IMPACT by Kathryn Fox

Synopsis (Scribe)

A federal election campaign is thrown into chaos when a popular government minister goes missing and then turns up dead on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.

With Detective Darren Glass and the Australian Federal Police on the case, the investigation into the minister’s murder quickly becomes entangled in a game of high-stakes politics. And all the while, the body count mounts.

Glass’s suspects include some of the most powerful people in the land. With the nation in shock and wanting answers fast, Glass has to negotiate a murky world of shifting allegiances, half-truths, and finger pointing, where everyone has a motive for murder.

And no one is safe — not even the prime minister. As election day nears, Glass risks everything for a breakthrough in the case, and his life is soon hanging by a thread. But if he thought he’d hit rock bottom, he was wrong … See My Take

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month March 2014

Crime Fiction Pick of the Month 2014

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 March 2014, 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 this post on MYSTERIES in PARADISE.

---