Review: DYING FALL, Elly Griffiths - audio book

• Book 5 in the Ruth Galloway series
• published 2012
• format - audio book available through Audible
• narrator Clare Corbett
• Length: 10 hours 26 mins

Synopsis (Audible)

Ruth Galloway receives a phone call that bears shocking news. A friend of hers from college, Dan Golding, has been killed in a fire at his Lancashire home. Her shock turns to alarm when she gets a letter from Dan. He has made a discovery that will change archaeology forever but he needs Ruth's advice. Even more alarming, he sounds vulnerable and frightened.

DCI Harry Nelson is also rediscovering his past. Up north for a holiday, he meets his former colleague Sandy MacLeod, now at Blackpool CID. Sandy tells him there are strange circumstances surrounding Dan Golding's death. Many of those who worked with Dan seem to be afraid.

Many have secrets to hide. Ruth is drawn deep into the mystery, and where she goes, so does her toddler daughter, Kate. This time, it's not just Ruth's life at risk.

My take

This book ticked all the boxes for me. It wasn't just that Clare Corbett's narration was excellent, but so was the plotting.

Ruth's friend Dan, whom she hasn't seen since they were students together, contacts her because he wants her to help him to verify the most significant archaeological find of his life. By the time Ruth decides she will go to Blackpool to see what he is talking about, Dan is dead. She goes to Blackpool taking Druid friend Cathbad and her daughter Kate with her. And then she starts to get messages of discouragement, even threats to her welfare.

I like the way the author manages to keep Ruth and Kate's father Harry Nelson meeting up. Their paths     in Blackpool inevitably cross when Dan's death is verified as a murder. There is high degree of tension and suspense in the later stages of the novel.

Excellent reading.

My rating : 4.8

I've also reviewed

4.6, THE CROSSING PLACES
4.6, THE JANUS STONE
4.6, THE HOUSE AT SEA'S END
4.5, A ROOM FULL OF BONES

Review: THE RIVER, Cheryl Kaye Tardif

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 507 KB
• Print Length: 223 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1926997174
• Publisher: Imajin Books; 1 edition (March 5, 2010)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003BLPH6C
• Source: review copy from author

Synopsis (Amazon)

STEM CELL RESEARCH, CLONING, AND WORLD DOMINATION--WITH A TWIST...

The South Nahanni River area of Canada's Northwest Territories has a history of mysterious deaths, disappearances and headless corpses, but it may also hold the key to humanity’s survival―or its destruction.

Del thought her father was long dead. But someone from her past says otherwise. Now she and a group of near strangers embark on a perilous mission...

Seven years ago, Del Hawthorne’s father and three of his friends disappeared near the Nahanni River and were presumed dead. When one of the missing men stumbles onto the University grounds, alive but barely recognizable and aging before her eyes, Del is shocked. Especially when the man tells her something inconceivable. Her father is still alive!

Gathering a group of volunteers, Del travels to the Nahanni River to rescue her father. There, she finds a secret river that plunges her into a technologically advanced world of nanobots and painful serums. Del uncovers a conspiracy of unimaginable horror, a plot that threatens to destroy us all. Will humanity be sacrificed for the taste of eternal life?

At what point have we become...God?

My take

This book won't be everyone's cup of tea: it is a cross between science fiction and Indiana Jones. Not my usual fare, but I enjoyed it. The author does a good job of making the implausible seem plausible, and the tension ramps up nicely.

It also raises some interesting issues, like where we are headed with stem cell research, what are the possibilities with nano bot technology?

My rating: 4.0

I've also reviewed SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET & Other Creepy Stories

Review: A Selection of Short Stories by Agatha Christie

I read this collection of eight short stories on my Kindle.

What follows are not so much reviews as records for the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

1. The Case of the Missing Lady

A Tommy and Tuppence story originally published in 1924. A tribute to Sherlock Holmes.

The Beresfords are working together as a private detective agency, in which Tommy is the detective and Tuppence is his secretary.

An Arctic explorer returns from an expedition to find that the lady he became engaged to prior to his departure two years before has disappeared.

Tommy and Tuppence eventually track her down but neither of them foresaw the reason for her disappearance.

I thought Christie was struggling to make this interesting and the ending was a bit trite.

2. The Dead Harlequin

First published in 1929. A Mr Satterthwaite story.

A slightly longer story that's begins when Mr Satterthwaite comes across a painting of a dead harlequin. He recognizes the location and is reminded of his friend Mr Harley Quin.

He invites the artist and a friend to dinner and the conversation gravitates to the setting of the painting, and to the story of the suicide of Lord Charnley at the house just as his guests arrived. There are a number of legends associated with Charnley House.

At some some stage they are joined by Mr Quin who assists in solving the mystery of the suicide and then disappears again. 

There were elements of this story that were similar to The Second Gong.

3. The Dream

First published in 1938.

A wealthy eccentric Benedict Farley requests Hercule Poirot to call on him. He recounts the tale of a recurrent dream in which he eventually shoots himself. After he wakes up, he feels sure that one dayhe will actually do it.

Poirot comes away from the meeting feeling vaguely dissatisfied, feeling he has been talking to a mountebank. A week later he learns that Farley has actually killed himself and is invited to see the scene for himself.

4. The House of Lurking Death.

Another Tommy and Tuppence story, published in 1924.

Lois Hargreaves comes to consult Mr Blunt (Tommy's agency name) as she believes someone is trying  to kill her.

She recently turned 21 and inherited a fortune.

Tommy and Tuppence decide to investigate but are too slow off the. Mark to prevent Lois' death by poisoning. This time it is Tuppence who solves the mystery.

In this story you can see Agatha Christie making use if her knowledge of chemicals and poisons. 

5. The Man in the Mist

Another Tommy and Tuppence story, also published in 1924.  A tribute to G. K. Chesterton.

The Beresfords investigate the murder of a young actress whom they had seen alive not five minutes before.

The murderer is the very last person we would suspect.

6. The Second Gong

This was originally published in 1932 and then expanded into Dead Man's Mirror in 1937 for inclusion in Murder in the Mews. Basically the story is the same, although the characters have different names, and the murderer is a different character. 

I think Dead Man's Mirror was a lot more polished.

7. Triangle at Rhodes

This was originally published in 1936, and then republished as a novella in 1937 for inclusion in Murder in the Mews. It is a Hercule Poirot story, and there are no discernible differences between the two.

8. Witness for the Prosecution.

First published in 1925 as Traitor Hands. 

I think this is the pick of the bunch, and you've probably seen the film which starred Marlene Deitrich.

A young man, Leonard Vole is accused of having murdered a rich eccentric old woman who befriended him. You will undoubtedly remember how cleverly the story was plotted and the role that Vole's wife played in securing his acquittal.

The story does not feature any of Christie's sleuths.

Review: BRUNO and LE PERE NOEL: a Christmas Short Story, Martin Walker

Read on my Kindle

An e-story published by Quercus 2012

ISBN 978-1-84866-241-4

A delightful "feel good" short story set in St. Denis.

A Lebanese Christian Miriam and her young son Richard have recently moved to St. Denis. Richard has already joined Bruno's rugby squad and Miriam sings at the church. Their background is a mystery to most, but Miriam carries a sadness with her. Bruno learns that her husband is a prisoner on parole who has recently absconded from his job.

It is a couple of days before Christmas and Jean-Pierre Bonnevale makes a rather dramatic entrance when he steals a small charity collection. 

The whole scenario gives Bruno the chance to play Father Christmas in more ways than one.

If you have met Bruno yet, I can't recommend these stories enough.

Review: GETTING WARMER, Alan Carter

• kindle edition
  
  
• published 2013, Fremantle Press
• ISBN 9781922089205

Synopsis (Fremantle Press)

Cato Kwong is back. Back in Boom Town and back on a real case – the unsolved mystery of a missing fifteen-year-old girl. 

But it’s midsummer in the city of millionaires and it’s not just the heat that stinks. A pig corpse, peppered with nails, is uncovered in a shallow grave and a body, with its throat cut, turns up in the local nightclub. 

As a series of blunders by Cato’s colleague brings the squad under intense scrutiny, Cato’s own sympathy for a suspect threatens to derail his case and his career.

My Take

The "hook" in this novel is a Prologue describing a conversation between a serial killer and a female Psychology student who has a lot to learn about listening.

Cato Kwong has returned to Fremantle from the "stock squad", but he knows it would be easy to put a foot wrong and be sent bush again. The novel opens with Cato accompanying a police squad and a murderer, presumably the one in the Prologue, to a desiccated lake, looking for a body. Gordon Francis Wellard is already serving a sentence for murder: they are looking for the body of a previous victim.

Corruption is rife in the police force particularly amongst detectives who are looking for the information that will give them the edge in a case. Deals done with criminals are often long lasting, and even the cleanest cops can find themselves doing something they know they shouldn't.

This is #2 in Carter's Cato Kwong series and he has fleshed out more background for Cato, and I think the novel is written in a grittier style. The new setting in Fremantle brings with it new characters, some of whom Cato has apparently worked with before, some he knows by reputation. Current social issues surface, such as territorial wars between bikie gangs, and Vietnamese protection gangs. 

Cato's family circumstances play a greater role too, and put the dangers of the sort of police work he does into greater perspective.

Carter's first novel PRIME CUT won him a Ned Kelly Award for best first novel, and GETTING WARMER affirms that he is a writer to watch.

My Rating: 4.7

Also Reviewed
4.7, PRIME CUT

Review: MURDER IN THE MEWS, Agatha Christie

Read on my Kindle

First published in 1937

A collection of four novellas all featuring Hercule Poirot

Published as e-book in 2010, ISBN 978-0-00-742251-7

Synopsis (Agatha Christie site)

How did a woman holding a pistol in her right hand manage to shoot herself in the left temple? What was the link between a ghost sighting and the disappearance of top secret military plans? How did the bullet that killed Sir Gervase shatter a mirror in another part of the room? And who destroyed the ‘eternal triangle’ of love involving renowned beauty, Valentine Chantry? Hercule Poirot is faced with four mystifying cases - Murder in the Mews, The Incredible Theft, Dead Man's Mirror and Triangle at Rhodes - each a miniature classic of characterisation, incident and suspense.

My Take

Murder in the Mews

This novella gives the collection it's name.

The investigation of suspicious suicide that begins with Hercule Poirot and his friend Inspector Japp from Scotland Yard walking home on Guy Fawkes Night after meeting for dinner. They speculate that all the noise of firecrackers could disguise the report of a gun, and that a murder could easily go undetected.

Next morning a young lady is found dead in her flat, shot, apparently suicide. Japp invites Poirot to join him on the investigation.

The Incredible Theft

The disappearance of top secret military plans.

A honey trap to ensnare an espionage agent who is a house guest apparently backfires when plans disappear from a study moments before top level discussions of them are to take place. Hercule Poirot is brought in to investigate before the news leaks out.

Dead Man's Mirror

The bullet that kills Gervase Chevenix-Gore shatters a mirror.

Hercule Poirot receives an urgent summons from "the last baronet", Gervase Chevenix-Gore and catches up with his old friend Mr Satterthwaite to learn what he can about the baronet. He learns that Chevenix-Gore is extremely wealthy, very arrogant, very eccentric and the last of his line.

When Hercule Poirot arrives for dinner and Sir Gervase does not appear when the dinner gong is sounded, he realizes he is already too late. Sir Gervase is dead.

It looks like suicide but the shattered mirror points in another direction.

Triangle at Rhodes

Hercule Poirot is sitting on the beach watching the byplay between the sunbathers.mValentine Chantry, recently married for the fifth time, flirts with a new arrival, Douglas Gold, while sending her own husband off on petty tasks. 

As his holiday progresses, Poirot finds what is happening rather distressing.

When Valentine Chantry dies his interpretation of the crime show that others have seen what they wanted to see, not the way he saw it.

-------------

I suspected I had already read these novellas, perhaps not as this collection, and perhaps seen a television version of at least one of them. They all show how acutely Hercule Poirot observes others, and how he often interprets things very differently.

I read this as part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

My rating: 4.4

Review: BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS, Agatha Christie

First published 1968

ISBN 978 0007 111 497

This version published for Kindle (Amazon) 2010

Synopsis (Agatha Christie site)

‘By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes.’ When Tommy and Tuppence visit an elderly aunt in her gothic nursing home, they think nothing of her mistrust of the doctors; after all, Ada is a very difficult old lady. But when Mrs. Lockett mentions a poisoned mushroom stew, and Mrs. Lancaster talks about ‘something behind the fireplace’, Tommy and Tuppence find themselves caught in an unexpected adventure involving a strange inheritance, a mysterious house, black magic, and a missing tombstone.

My Take

This is Tommy and Tuppence Beresford's last "outing". Tommy has worked in "intelligence" all of his life, Tuppence has raised a family, and now they are retired. Tommy still gives lectures and consults in the intelligence field, and is about to go off to a conference for a few days, leaving Tuppence at a loose end.

The story begins when they visit Tommy's Aunt Ada in a geriatric nursing home and Tuppence, rejected by Aunt Ad! Spends her time with a Mrs Lancaster who makes a strange reference to a child in the chimney. Mrs Lancaster subsequently disappears, Aunt Ada dies, and Tuppence is not satisfied with explanations of where Mrs Lancaster has gone. And so the case begins.  Tommy returns home from his conference to find that Tuppence has gone off sleuthing and has disappeared.

What I find interesting about these later Christie novels is how she has returned to each of her major characters and updated what has happened to them. (Although in the case of both Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot these novels were written well ahead of when they were needed.) 

Unlike Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot though, the Beresfords have aged in "real" time. While the Secret Service became Tommy's career, Tuppence has only been allowed "out of the house", so to speak, occasionally, apart from some active service in intelligence in World War II, and here you get a sense of wasted talent. A bit of feminism from Christie?

Another of the quirky things about this novel is that Christie seems to be exploring the nature of senility and dementia. For example some of the residents of Sunny Ridge where Aunt Ada lives are downright cranky at times, and many get their memories muddled up, and some even believe at times they are someone famous. At other times they clearly remember events from decades before, and recognize faces from the past.

What creates a serial killer? You could say that the last few pages of the novel focus on that issue.

An elderly woman  believes that she has been chosen, but that at the same time she is suffering retribution.

"What I'd done was murder, wasn't it, and you can only atone for murder with other murders, because the other murders wouldn't really be murders, they would be sacrifices."

At the end of the novel Tommy tells Tuppence "Don't ever do it again." and she agrees. "I'm too old."

This indeed is their swan song.

I've been looking for signs that Christie's own mental powers were diminishing at this stage of her life, and I've come away feeling that she still had a lot to say. True, this is an unlikely tale, an escapist cozy, but I found it impressive.

My rating: 4.5

I've read this for the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.