Review: IN A WORD: MURDER, Margot Kinberg (editor)

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 3510 KB
• Print Length: 141 pages
• Publisher: Margot Kinberg (November 3, 2013)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00GFXNZYE

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of Maxine Clarke and proceeds from sales will go in aid of the Princess Alice Hospice, which cares for people with cancer and other illnesses living in a large part of Surrey, south west London and Middlesex. 

Maxine, who died after a long battle with cancer in December 2012, had a huge impact on crime fiction blogging as an editor, blogger, and mentor. She is remembered through the blog Petrona Remembered and also through an annual Petrona Award for best Scandinavian crime fiction translated into English.

The inaugural Petrona Award, announced at CrimeFest 2013, went to LAST WILL by Lisa Marklund.

See the list of "eligibles" for 2014.

About the collection
This collection of stories edited by Margot Kinberg pays tribute to Maxine’s interest in crime fiction and her professional skill as an editor and blogger. All of the stories focus on crime in the writing, reviewing, editing, publishing and blogging world. That leaves open a fairly broad range of possibilities for stories, so you’ll find a variety of takes on the theme here.

Table of Contents

Introduction ……………………..  Margot Kinberg  
The Agency ……………………..  Pamela Griffiths  
The Story…………………………. Paula K. Randall  
The Million Seller………………..   Margot Kinberg  
Hollywood Coverup……………..   Jane Risdon  
A Beach Report From Myrtle Clover…………….. Elizabeth S. Craig
La Lotte .…………..................... Sarah Ward  
The In-Box………………………  Margot Kinberg  
The Killing of Captain Hastings…   Martin Edwards  
Dreamer …………………………  Jane Risdon

My Take

Many thanks to Margot Kinberg for putting this collection of short stories together. I thoroughly enjoyed them all, particularly Elizabeth Craig's Miss Marple spoof A Beach Report From Myrtle Clover. For me the cleverest was The Killing of Captain Hastings by  Martin Edward. Well done folks!

My rating: 4.3

Check reviews from fellow bloggers

• Moira @ Clothes in Books
• FictionFan
• Col's Criminal Library

Review: PIETR THE LATVIAN, Georges Simenon

• Format: Kindle (Amazon) - read an extract at this site
  
• File Size: 537 KB
• Print Length: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (November 7, 2013) - originally published in 1931
• translation into English by David Bellos.
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00EZEC0TG

My Take

The recent decision by Penguin to republish fresh translations of all of Simenon's Maigret novels, in the original order of publication, provides a real opportunity for readers to catch up on titles that have been out of print for some time. Apparently the 75 novels will be published at the rate of one a month. There is even an accompanying 24 page brochure available giving biographical details about Simenon and the characters he created.

I've been a Simenon reader for decades and could not pass up the opportunity to read, on my Kindle, the very first of the Maigret titles.

Maigret comes over as a mountain of a man, with enormous energy, and the ability to push himself to the limits of human endurance.

Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate.

Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands.

But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man. His firm muscles filled out his jacket and quickly pulled all his trousers out of shape.

He had a way of imposing himself just by standing there. His assertive presence had often irked many of his own colleagues.

In many ways PIETR THE LATVIAN gave a good idea of the style that readers could expect in future novels, as well a structure that makes the reader work hard to follow the plot lines.It introduces both Maigret and the long suffering Madame Maigret who at one stage cooks meals for three days without knowing whether her husband will be home to eat them, indeed not knowing what he is up to.

In his exploration of international crime rings that manipulate world-wide economies Simenon shared similar concerns to his contemporary Agatha Christie who was also convinced of the control of world economies and politics by evil forces.

My rating: 4.3

Another review to check:
Mrs Peabody Investigates

Review: NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE, Ruth Rendell

Read a free chapter

My Take

Nearly 40 years on since he emerged in FROM DOON WITH DEATH (1964) Reg Wexford, now retired after a lifetime as Chief Inspector Wexford, is happily reading his way through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Retirement is suiting him better now than it did in THE VAULT where he took up Detective Superintendent Tom Ede's offer of being an unpaid serious crimes adviser. But he still likes to feel needed, doing something important.

This time it is former colleague and friend Mike Burden who asks him if he would interested in a bit of unpaid consultancy following the murder of a local vicar.

Most of NO MAN'S NIGHTINGALE  is written from Wexford's point of view.  Wexford finds for example that Burden is running the the investigation differently to the way he would have done. In his opinion Burden has too many conferences and Wexford finds that in his consultancy capacity he is really not able to voice his opinions freely. Nor can he prevent his friend from making some disastrous errors. Because the murder has taken place in the community in which he lives Wexford finds he at times has to tread a very narrow line. For example, as a private person he learns information that he wouldn't come across as a policeman, and he is not sure whether he is still duty bound to report it to the police.

I think Rendell has taken great pains to present us with an aging Wexford, whose brain is still very much alive and alert, but no longer quite as agile as it used to be. But his powers of observation and deduction are still strong.

So, an aging person myself, that assured my feeling of empathy with Wexford.

And what about Rendell, now 83. How is her writing going? Well, I don't think this is her best book, but it still puts her at the forefront of today's writers. Fans will enjoy Wexford's latest outing.

My rating: 4.5

Other reviews on this blog
FROM DOON WITH DEATH
PORTOBELLO
4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX
4.5, A NEW LEASE OF DEATH
4.6, THE VAULT
4.6, THE BEST MAN TO DIE
4.5, A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES
4.5, THE SAINT ZITA SOCIETY
4.6, THE MASTER OF THE MOOR

Review: A COLD DAY FOR MURDER, Dana Stabenow - audio book

• #1 in the Kate Shugak series
• this edition from Audible
• originally print published 1992
• audio version 2011
• unabridged
• narrator Marguerite Gavin
• length 5 hours 31 mins

Synopsis (Audible)

Eighteen months ago, Aleut Kate Shugak quit her job investigating sex crimes for the Anchorage DA’s office and retreated to her father’s homestead in a national park in the interior of Alaska. But the world has a way of beating a path to her door, however remote. In the middle of one of the bitterest Decembers in recent memory ex-boss — and ex-lover — Jack Morgan shows up with an FBI agent in tow. A Park ranger with powerful relatives is missing, and now the investigator Jack sent in to look for him is missing, too.

Reluctantly, Kate, along with Mutt, her half-wolf, half-husky sidekick, leaves her wilderness refuge to follow a frozen trail through the Park, twenty thousand square miles of mountain and tundra sparsely populated with hunters, fishermen, trappers, mushers, pilots and homesteaders. Her formidable grandmother and Native chief, Ekaterina Shugak, is — for reasons of her own — against Kate’s investigation; her cousin, Martin, may be Kate’s prime suspect; and the local trooper, Jim Chopin, is more interested in Kate than in her investigation. In the end, the sanctuary she sought after five and a half years in the urban jungles may prove more lethal than anything she left behind in the city streets of Anchorage.

My Take

I haven't read many crime fiction novels set in Alaska. Similarly while I have heard of Dana Stabenow I have never read one of her books. A COLD DAY FOR MURDER is the first in her Kate Shugak series of which there are now 20, the latest published just this year. See Fantastic Fiction.

I think I solved the mystery of what had happened to the two missing people, and who was responsible, about half way through the novel, but that didn't lessen my enjoyment. The characters are well drawn and the plight of the Alaskan Aleuts trying to make their way in a "modern" world is well described. As is the concern of the elders to preserve the old ways and their wish to keep the young people from leaving.

So if you are ready for a new series, maybe this is the one for you. I read it as part of my reading for the USA Fiction Challenge.

My rating: 4.2

About the author

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage, Alaska on March 27, 1952, and raised on a 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska.  Read more

Learn more about Kate Shugak on the author's website.

Forgotten Book: THE CAVALIER CASE, Antonia Fraser

My pick this week for Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books comes from books that I read in 1991.

#7 in Antonia Fraser's Jemima Shore mysteries, published in 1990, THE CAVALIER CASE combines love of history with her ability to write engaging mysteries. I was a history teacher at the time, loved English history, and just becoming addicted to crime fiction, so this fitted the bill for me.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Publisher's Weekly

In her seventh Jemima Shore novel, Fraser deftly brings together her two previously separate fortes, history and mystery. In an unusual premise, long-dead viscount and Cavalier poet Decimus Meredith repeatedly exits his portrait on the wall to haunt his 20th-century heirs.

The contemporary viscount, suave and manipulative ladies' man and tennis star ''Handsome Dan'' Meredith, has unconventional visions about keeping up expensive Lackland Court. Dan would model its grounds into very different kinds of courts, where he and his fashionable friends would serve tennis balls and be served ''designer drinks'' between matches.

Shore, a TV commentator, agrees to create a program about ghosts in country houses at the same time that she falls in love with a portrait she has been lent, which, coincidentally, features Decimus Meredith. Meanwhile, preparations for a costumed Cavalier Celebration at Lackland Court are upset by a death, a startling discovery and an attack by the resident ghost. Jemima's clearheaded sleuthing sorts out the many suspects, some of whom fit historical roles in the family history.

Review: ALEX, Pierre Lemaitre

Read an extract at Amazon

My Take

ALEX came on to my reading list as a result of winning the CWA International Dagger award this year, but also because of some excellent reviews that I have read.

Many reviewers have commented on the difficulty of writing a review that does not reveal too much about the novel. That is certainly indicative of the complexity of the novel's structure which is a brachial one. The resolution of the first part of the story, the kidnapping of Alex Prevost, leads seamlessly into the second which is why she was kidnapped, and then comes the story behind that.

But that is not all there is to this novel: Commandant Camille Verhoeven is returning to this kind of investigation a considerable time after his pregnant wife was kidnapped and died as a result. So in a sense Verhoeven is facing his demons, and not even he is sure he should be taking on this case. While following this theme we explore the relationships between the members of his investigative team.

I think what makes this a great read is that it explores psychological issues and in the end questions whether justice has been done.

My rating: 5.0
 
Other reviews to check

• The Guardian
  The winner of countless French crime-writing prizes, Lemaitre is far too canny to join the ranks of thriller authors who merely revel in disturbing details and gory crimes. Where another novel would have finished, Alex is just beginning, and the book moves from read-as-fast-as-you-can horror to an intricately plotted race to a dark truth.
• The Independent
  How easy is it to reinvigorate a shop-worn formula? One way is to shoot each familiar effect full of adrenalin. The other is to inject subtly innovative elements into the detail, subverting the clichés. Alex by Pierre Lemaitre is a book that has it both ways, and succeeds in having its cake and eating it.
• The Game's Afoot 
• EuroCrime 

Author website 
Pierre Lamaitre has won a number of crime fiction awards since 2006, and ALEX is his first novel to be translated into English.

In ALEX, I create a setting in Paris to give a colour and atmosphere to the story, but I try to develop themes that I believe are universal : revenge, family neuroses, violence against women, and so on.

Review: THE CUCKOO'S CALLING, J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith - audio book

• published in 2013
  
• narrated by Robert Glenister
• length: 15 hours 53 mins
• available from Audible

Synopsis (Audible)

When a troubled model falls to her death from a snow-covered Mayfair balcony, it is assumed that she has committed suicide. However, her brother has his doubts, and calls in private investigator Cormoran Strike to look into the case. Strike is a war veteran - wounded both physically and psychologically - and his life is in disarray.

The case gives him a financial lifeline, but it comes at a personal cost: the more he delves into the young model's complex world, the darker things get - and the closer he gets to terrible danger…

A gripping, elegant mystery steeped in the atmosphere of London - from the hushed streets of Mayfair to the backstreet pubs of the East End to the bustle of Soho - The Cuckoo's Calling is a remarkable book. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is a classic crime novel in the tradition of P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, and marks the beginning of a unique series of mysteries.

My Take

To be honest I read this knowing that it was J. K. Rowling's first venture into crime fiction. I'm not a Harry Potter fan although I have read a couple of them.

In THE CUCKOO'S CALLING Rowling has created a sleuthing partnership - Cormoran Strike and his temporary office help, Robin Ellacott - that works really well. Cormoran Strike is a good detective and Robin provides invaluable backup.

The novel has an interesting timeframe in that it is firmly set in the first decade of the 21st century, referring to the war in Afghanistan etc. The characters really come alive and the plot, though it has lots of twists and tangles, is plausible and enthrallingly constructed.

So this is J. K. Rowling for adults and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and Robert Glenister was the perfect choice for the narrator. The blurb says this is the beginning of a series and I certainly hope Cormoran and Robin get a second outing.

My rating: 5.0

Other reviews to check

• Sydney Morning Herald 
• New York Times
• Kelly Konrad

Robert Galbraith site - including Rowling decided to write under a pseudonym (see FAQs)