His Master's Voice by Ivy Litvinov

This is a detective novel set in Russia in 1926. Ivy Litvinov nee Low was an Englishwoman, who was then living in Russia and married to a Russian. The writing and plot is passable, the main interest is the contemporary view of 1920's Russia. Russia after the Revolution but before Stalin seems very different than post Stalin, the society is not so controlled; the author goes off on little polemics occasionally about the new society cleaning up the debris of the revolution and wars.

His Master's Voice first published 1930

Two Miss Silver books by Patricia Wentworth

Both the The Brading Collection and The Benevent Treasure have jewelry or treasure playing an important part in the plot. I think Wentworth was running out of realistic plots - both these books were written in the fifties, near the end of her life. I enjoyed them both however, finding the characters interesting as usual, and enjoying the romance subplots. I didn't spot the actual murderer in one, only the accomplice, and though I was right in the other it was only because I noticed the fuss they made setting up their alibi.

It seems Umberto Eco was not as imaginative as I had thought in the method of murder used in The Name of the Rose; Miss Silver also predates Christie's Miss Marple.

The Brading Collection first published 1952,The Benevent Treasure 1956

Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon

This was interesting, though a little long. It also had two plot lines which could have been 2 separate stories really.

The first plot line was about being homosexual when it was illegal and you could be executed if you were caught. That was very interesting, and the moral and social issues were covered well. In the eighteenth century what you did affected your family much more than now, even to job and marriage prospects; more pressure and guilt on the homosexual man.

The other plot line covered the mystery surrounding the death of parent many years ago, and efforts to solve it - this bit kept popping in and out of sight in the story line, as the trail went from one person to another. It wasn't as interesting.

Three Miss Silver books by Patricia Wentworth

Wentworth writes mysteries where people are murdered or kidnapped for ordinary human reasons, like money, sex, and being blackmailed; not a mass murderer or terrorist in sight. Lonesome Road is set just before World War II, Out of the Past and The Catherine Wheel soon after. There is a big difference in attitude to money: after the war everyone seems more worried about earning a living and have less expectation of living off richer relatives, and plan on selling large old houses due to the expense of maintaining and staffing them.

I enjoyed The Catherine Wheel most, for its imaginative setting, and because you can see the start of changes in attitudes to female roles. For a start, all the single women are working or running small businesses, in marked contrast to Lonesome Road. The Catherine Wheel also gives an interesting view of class divisions.

Lonesome Road first published 1939, The Catherine Wheel, 1951, Out of the Past 1955

Two books by Ellis Peters

Fallen into the Pit is a detective novel set just after World War II. The author is trying to portray the tensions in the changing society and the emotional aftermath of the war for the people who fought and came home, which is all quite interesting. However to modern readers what is most striking is the children regularly playing unsupervised for hours in an area full of mine shafts. This book gives the definite impression modern children are over-protected physically, though the parent's concerns about manners and obedience and bad influences seem timeless. As soon as the second person died I guessed who had done all the murders and why, usually I have no idea whodunnit. An interesting and recommended book on the whole, though a few too many coincidences.

The Horn of Roland is not recommended unless you are a romantic who can believe six impossible things before breakfast. Like a person who has taken on their mother's vendetta so completely they try to kill a person over something that happened when they themselves were a baby is not mentally ill, but an otherwise normal person. And that a musician/composer has a daughter who does not play a musical instrument. Again, the villain is fairly obvious.

Fallen into the Pit first published 1951, The Horn of Roland 1974

Robb, Lackey & Koontz

Between travel, visitors, illness and other domestic dramas I am well behind in this journal. So I shall dispose of the bad and the so-so in this entry.

Earlier I read a JD Robb novel, the sixth in a detective series. I thought there would be character development over the series, but having tried the fifth and ninth I now know the plot of every one. Dallas is assigned a case, her extremely wealthy husband is involved (his building is blown up, there is a body in his house etc), they have hot sex often, lots more people die before the murderer/s are discovered and caught, the dead will include someone with a personal connection, and nobody changes or learns anything. A wonderful series for those who like to read the same book over and over.

Joust by Mercedes Lackey reads like a YA book, apart from a few mild references to adultery and prostitution. It is loosely based on Ancient Egypt, just add dragons. If you have nothing better to read it will do, but it is a teenage paint-by-numbers fantasy, obviously the beginning of a series.

I tried another book by the very popular Dean Koontz, Forever Odd, but gave up when it took Odd Thomas 2 pages to walk down a street for no plot or literary reason that I could see in the next 3 chapters. Koontz takes so long to get to the point of anything! And the narrator's gloominess is wearing even if he has excellent reasons to be gloomy.

Ceremony in Death first published 1997, Loyalty in Death 1999, Joust 2003, Forever Odd 2005.

Final Witness by Simon Tolkien

A competent detective cum courtroom drama novel. The characterisation is very clear, and even if the police are sure they have the right person, the author makes you wonder mostly by showing how people are acting and reacting. Is the teenage boy making it up or reporting it as it was?

Final Witness first published 2002

Monette, McCrumb and Goudge

Foggy Mountain Breakdown by Sharon McCrumb is a collection of short stories, and well worth reading. The first story is very striking, and there is a Rattler story for Rattler fans, but no Norah Bonesteel, alas. There are Appalachian stories and straight detective stories, and humorous stories too. A few stories are not that interesting, in the usual way of collections.

Don't read Melusine by Sarah Monette unless you like detailed accounts of pain, anguish, betrayal, and violent sex. And other horrible events and people, though some of them can't help themselves because of their dreadful past, or at least that's the excuse. I only managed a few chapters before giving up, though I did check out the end. I requested this book at the library because I read a favourable review, but was doubtful as soon as I saw it. Pretty boy covers rarely presage books I enjoy.

Immediate Family by Eileen Goudge starts with four friends at a college reunion, aged 36, all with sufficient money and fulfilling enough jobs to give lots of attention to their not very interesting emotional lives. One is married, one is divorced with a child, one has a boyfriend and the single one decides to have a child without a partner. By the end of the book there has been one divorce and one healthy baby, two breakups and two deaths (a parent and a still born child), one father found and three weddings - I probably missed a few other events in this action packed 18 months as I got bored and skipped more than half the book. This book reminded me why I so rarely read straight romances (as in books where the whole focus is on finding a bloke to sweep you off your feet).

Foggy Mountain Breakdown first published 1998, Melusine in 2005, Immediate Family in 2006.

Other reading - Perry, Prozchazkova and Dylan Thomas

The Season of Secret Wishes by Iva Prozchazkova is a pleasant but unexceptional children's book of the girl moves to new place and meets interesting people type; only made slightly more interesting by being set in Prague before the Iron Curtain fell.

A Christmas Visitor is a short mystery novel by Anne Perry, and I'm sure I would have found the ending very moving if I hadn't got bored with the plodding pace and poor characterisation and skipped to the last chapter halfway through. And I was pleased to see an ending where they really did think family and justice more important than status and money.

Dylan Thomas' poetry did not fail to enthrall however - well, some of his poetry, he can be a bit opaque. This is my favourite.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.


Dylan Thomas 1914 - 1953; The Season of Secret Wishes first published 1988, first translated into English 1989, Berlin Wall fell 9/11/1989; A Christmas Visitor first published 2004

Stan Lee, Smith and Colfer

We'll go from best to worst here. Alexa is a comic book (or graphic novel if you are under 35), I read the first 3 episodes, and it was quite interesting till the last few pages of episode 3 where it went all obvious and ordinary. Though perhaps I should mention this is the first graphic novel I have read in 20 years or so. Alexa is a comic book artist who objects to the normal depiction of females in graphic novels by wearing skintight jeans and skivvy. This comic is drawn by males, what a surprise.

Behold, a Mystery! by Joan Smith is a Regency romance cum mystery, quite competent (usually they are abysmal) though I skipped a few boring bits. I was only mildly interested in who done it and who the heroine would marry.

The Wish List by Eoin Colfer had a strange view of goodness, in fact a perfectly pukable view of goodness. The heroine's good deeds and bad deeds are perfectly balanced when she dies (this Ancient Egyptian theology is presented as Christian, the Pope and Martin Luther are both sobbing into their soup) so she is sent back to overbalance the scale one way or the other, by helping someone else achieve their wishes. A kiss in a television studio between two elderly people who regret not kissing in their youth is described as a moment of pure goodness (getting there has needed some deception and manipulation), complete with ethereal light. On the other hand, what seemed to me truly a moment of pure goodness later in the book, where someone asks for and receives forgiveness, in the ordinary difficult way, passed without such light. I have not read a decent story ever about someone coming back after death to fix things, they are all revoltingly sentimental at the least.

Alexa (story by Stan Lee words by Steven Roman, pictures by 8 blokes and 3 women, the women did the colouring in and the lettering) first published 2005; Behold a Mystery! first published 1994, The Wish List first published 2000.

Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard

A retired policeman decides to re-investigate a case he wasn't satisfied about, and collects a witness (the usual rootless single depressed middle-aged male) to help him. They wander around asking questions. People start being attacked, murdered, framed, committing suicide etcetera. We are really none the wiser as to why, even though some lost items turn up, until someone decides to Explain All to save someone else. Pretty forgettable.

Lost In A Good Book by Jasper Fforde

The second hand bookshop had this filed under detective. I said I thought it was fantasy or SF. They said they did have trouble deciding. I can see why libraries stick to alphabetical order.

It's best to read The Eyre Affair before reading this book, the second in the Thursday Next series. Thursday is the heroine, a detective in special ops, the literature section, in a rather different world than ours. Except for bureaucracy and people, which are much the same.

These books are fascinating while you are reading them, but I do have trouble picking them up again after putting them down, though less in the second half of this book. I think Fforde is getting better as a writer.

The world of this book is indescribable in a few sentences, but Fforde is worth reading just for the strangeness. Some people can go into books, for example. I do hope there is more of Miss Havisham in the next book.

Lost In A Good Book first published 2002

Under Orders by Dick Francis

I have usually found Dick Francis a nice reliable read, good for convalescence in particular. I like the way you find out something about different industries or professions in most books, and I like the way his characters are shown to be affected emotionally by violence and other wrong doing. Too many detective novels of the more violent sort behave as though the emotional effects of violence and crime don't exist at all. I like the way his villains rarely look like villains from the outside - most real life villains don't, after all.

This is the first novel he has written since his wife died, she researched and edited for him, some people suspect she did the actual writing. Under Orders isn't up to his usual standard. The information about new technology and web gambling is info dumped instead of being integrated gracefully into the text, ditto the information needed from previous books - this is one of his rare sequels, the third book about Sid Halley. There is too much repetition, too much telling instead of showing.

I still enjoyed it, but if you haven't read a Francis before, try an earlier one.

Under Orders First published in 2006

Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie

This novel is set in a detective agency and has two dead bodies and missing people and missing diamonds. However it reads like romance, or maybe chick lit, so is a light fun read, and gets good marks on the style and plot. Characterisation not so hot - most characters were defined by one or two quirks. I kept losing track of which character was which in the pool of potential villains and who they are or were married to, but got them sorted out in time for the denouement.

The dialogue is pretty good, and the musings on relationships are higher quality than most romance/chick lit books - which isn't saying much I know! I borrowed this from the library, having seen Crusie's name recommended.

Fast Women first published 2001 -why it is called that I can't imagine.

Christie, Childs, and other reading

More detective books - I read a 1920's Agatha Christie, Murder in the Mews, and then two from the 1960's, The Clocks and Third Girl. The differences in society in the two decades were very clear. In The Clocks, I felt Christie was having trouble with the 1960's speech and society, it seemed to be set earlier in time, perhaps she had written it earlier in time. In Third Girl, she used the the point of view of an elderly person looking at the 1960's, which worked very well stylistically, even if the elderly person was the irritating Poirot.

I also tried Laura Childs' Blood Orange Brewing, which was an utter failure. I was really bored very quickly. It seems to be one of a series of detective novels set around people who run a teashop.

Otherwise I have read a lot of New Scientist magazines, the most interesting articles being one on how people make decisions, and one speculating how differing oxygen levels in the atmosphere have contributed to evolution and extinctions, with fascinating explanations of how (and possibly why) birds have much more efficient respiratory systems than mammals, and reptiles much less efficient. Some species of ducks fly over the Himalayas when migrating, humans need oxygen to climb them.

The Clocks first published in 1963, Third Girl in 1966, Murder in the Mews 1927, Blood Orange Brewing in 2006

To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey

This is one of Tey's charming detective stories. Like so many of her works it is concerned with identity and how people present themselves. Natasha Cooper puts it better, saying she had an obsession " with the masks people wear and the truths they hide." Tey wrote a famous play in her time; in this book a number of amusing minor characters are from the world of theatre and writing. I expect they all recognised other people but not themselves...

It is scarcely possible for a god to love and be wise - Publicus Syrus (1st century BC)

It is not granted to love and be wise. Francis Bacon (1605)

And the title is definitely a clue to the solution of this detective novel, which is rarely guessed on first reading it, though you can see the clues on the second read. I have read this book several times over the last 20 years, and still find pleasure in it.

To Love And Be Wise first published 1950

Agatha Christie 1920's Omnibus

I have been on a light detective novel binge lately, reading the four Christie novels in this omnibus, which are all from the 1920's and do not feature the irritating Hercule Poirot. She is closer to the type of writing Margery Allingham, whom I like a lot more, did in these novels than in her later works. She also has a turn for more interesting characters, and for humour, than later on. I found the diary extracts in The Man in the Brown Suit definitely amusing.

As was fairly common in detective novels of the era, there are lots of criminal masterminds and events of national & international significance. I've read people saying detective novels show how concerns have changed each decade reflecting what people were concerned about, but I'm not so sure. These days people saving the nation/world and defeating the great criminal mastermind/dark lord are rarely found in straight detective novels, but only because they have migrated to thrillers and fantasy.

I have also read 2 Patricia Wentworths, The Chinese Shawl and Through The Wall. All this has been in between slowly reading an exhausting science fiction novel about the fast moving future, which I will finish eventually. It has been a pleasure to go between it and the slower moving past, where a girl terrifies her male passengers by driving at 50 miles an hour, and people spend several days on a train and a week or two on a liner.

Omnibus first published 2006; The Secret Adversary first published 1922, The Man in the Brown Suit 1924, The Secret of Chimneys 1925 & The Seven Dials Mystery 1929.

Nora Roberts & J.D. Robbs

Roberts and Robb are the same person. I read Vengeance in Death by JD Robb, which is set 50 years in the future, not that you'd notice if you weren't told on page 2. OK, I did notice two items which haven't been invented yet, but other than that nothing much has changed. I found it a fairly absorbing read, though I doubt the motivations of the person/s the detective spends the book chasing - and catching , naturally. She is a police detective, and someone is trying to frame her husband, or possibly his butler, with a series of torture murders. I may read others in the series.

I also read Black Rose by Nora Roberts, which is a romance. It was a bit too much like a soap opera for me, everybody emoting all over the place, and doing things hardly ever done in real life, like asking their mother's new boyfriend his intentions. I kept skipping whole pages of dialogue, but the plot still made sense, which is a bad sign. And why did people have to keep thinking or saying how wonderful the main character was? A definite thumbs down, but if you like the type of TV soapie where everyone goes around confronting each other loudly and emotionally, give it a go.

Vengeance in Death first published 1997
Black Rose first published 2005

The Silent Pool by Patricia Wentworth

Usually I don't care that much about the state of the book I'm reading, only the words matter! As long as the pages are clean that is, underlining and notes in the margin are so annoying. They rarely underline or comment on the bits that strike me, and undoubtedly they don't have a mother-in-law who is a librarian. And other than giving me feelings of guilt if I so much as pencil my name in a book I'm loaning, she is a perfect mother-in-law I assure you.

But I did keep noticing this copy whenever I picked it up to read. I bought it cheap on eBay, and it smells very musty, even to my cold blocked nose. The carefully mended dust cover is very tatty and faded.

I still enjoyed the book though. I like Wentworth because of her characters, the way even minor characters seem such definite people who behave consistently, for example the vicar and his wife in this one. (The recurring characters however, the detective and the police, are not very interesting as characters at all, but usually only have a small part.) However in this book, the murderer and a murderee were definitely unbelievable as real people I thought. The love interest, where the girl worries he has a roving eye, was more interesting than usual as they were contrasted with another older couple where the bloke was a serial philanderer.

What I most like about Wentworth is the glimpse of a past mindset and society - the past is a different country, they thought differently then. This is often clearest for the recent past in those detective novels where they are trying to give you a sense of a whole group of people and the way they think as part of the essential clues for the reader. Not that I use them as clues, I am no good at picking who the murderer is, though my list of people who aren't the murderer is usually correct. A pretty short list in some cases.

The Silent Pool first published in 1954