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I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last sat down to update this blog, but that’s been a constant refrain this year due to a combination of not reading as much as I used to and other distractions (mostly work) leading to me only really thinking about this sort of ting at the weekend when there are competing priorities. But I am determined to catch up on my reviews before I go on holiday to Italy in the middle of September.
And where better to start than with a book I picked up purely on spec in our local branch of Waterstone’s.
I don’t know why it caught my eye – a combination of the cover and the fact that this is a new imprint designed to
showcase unjustly neglected works by great writers from the 1930s – the so-called golden age of crime writing – through to the 1970s
Francis Beeding is a pseudonym for two guys who wrote collaboratively over more than 20 years, and five of their novels have been made into films – haven’t gone looking for those yet – so clearly very successful but until now I hadn’t heard of them at all, and there works seem to have drifted into relative obscurity. Which is a real shame because this is an absolute cracker.
So we have a seaside resort in England, nothing special about it really, except that at least one of its residents has a pretty significant secret. And then the murders start.
This is a classic police procedural; we see the impact from the local angle as well as from the press (a reporter happens to be on holiday here and covers the story) and the detectives from London brought in to help solve the case. There is a real sense of unease as the community turns in on itself, wondering why this is happening to them. Perhaps unusually for this sort of story there is not only an arrest but a court case and a wonderful twist at the end which I will confess I didn’t really see coming and which has a really modern (to my mind) approach. Without giving anything away, I worked out the what but had no idea about the who.
Death Walks in Eastrepps was once apparently described as one of the ten greatest detective stories of all time, and its easy to see why. Highly recommended.
This was my fourth Readathon read.
I am so, so far behind on my reviews that I seriously thought about skipping some (heresy) or having more than one (unrelated) book in a post (anathema). So I’ve decided to do the next best thing and crank out some mini-reviews. no disrespect intended to any of the books at all, of course.
First up is a tiny wee (in size not substance) memoir by Susannah Clapp; she was a long-time friend of Angela Carter, and A Card From…. is her attempt to capture the personality, interests, passions and life of an intelligent and versatile author by using the postcards she sent through her lifetime as a jumping off point for anecdotes and remembrances. The postcards themselves are often odd but it makes sense that Angela Carter would not have taken a traditional approach to dropping a note to her friends, and they make an interesting gateway into aspects of her life.
I really enjoyed reading this for two reasons:
(1) I hugely admire Angela’s work; I read and adored The Bloody Chamber when I was a student and every time I read something about her it makes me regret that I haven’t read more. I have thirteen of her books as far as I can tell and seem to skew towards her non-fiction. I’m mildly astonished (and a bit appalled) that I haven’t read either Wise Children or *gasps* The Magic Toyshop.
(2) I am incredibly nosey about people, I love reading diaries and letters and reminiscences so this was right up my street. She sounds like she must have been a challenging friend but they are often the best kind.
Very enjoyable, though this is the second time this week I’ve felt that the English Lit police will be after me (I may have disrespected Falstaff in a Facebook status update). and this hasn’t turned out to be such a mini after all…
This was my third Readathon read.
The Baskerville Legacy was not at all what I expected. When I saw it in the book shop I was immediately attracted by the cover and the subtitle “A Confession”. Ah ha, I thought, this is going to be a lovely Holmesian pastiche telling the true story of the Hound of the Baskervilles; not a straight retelling because Conan Doyle himself appears all the way through, so not a version of Holmes but a “how it came to be”. Which it was and wasn’t.
There isn’t actually a mystery here. It’s the story of how The Hound came to be written; the germ of an idea by a friend of Conan Doyle, a man called Bertram Fletcher Robinson, worked on jointly or so it would appear. But in many ways the tale being written is incidental, as this is a book about friendship, writing, collaboration, professional jealousy, talent or the lack of it and the impact of a dissolute lifestyle. Oh and of course there is spiritualism.
It’s a really enjoyable short book, and one of the most interesting things (apart from the portrait of Conan Doyle who isn’t always the jovial chap he was often portrayed as) is where the author has taken real events and changed or elaborated on them to produce his novel. because Robinson and Doyle were friends, holidayed together, and appeared to have collaborated though Doyle is the sole author on all published versions. there seems to have been a real controversy over this though as the author says none of the correspondence between the two men (if it still exists) has ever been made public. The author’s note at the end is a fascinating read all by itself.
I very much enjoyed this story, with its unsettling air of creepiness, of jealousy and strong feelings, and would recommend it as something a little bit different on the whole Holmesian thing. So not what I expected as I said, but a very happy accident.
This was my second Readathon read.
Bride of the Book God 