A Couple of short(ish) reviews

Catching up a bit today. First up, The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. It took me a week to read this and I'm not sure why, although it is quite densely written and a trifle complicated! Describing it is going to be fun...

So, the first thing to know about this book is that it's a mixed genre novel and the two genres are fantasy and crime fiction. So it's odd. (Huge understatement!) This is an organic plants/tree world. Walls of houses are made of something made from ferns for instance, you can cool your house with a kind of large mushroom... and grass, plants trees etc. are also a way of killing someone. Dinios Kol, an 'engraver' - meaning he's been altered to possess a photographic memory - and assistant investigator, is called to a house of one of the wealthy families of the region. A man has been killed by a kind of contagion using tree spores and his mutilated body is now part of a tree. (I did say it was odd...) 'Din' works for chief investigator, Ana Dolabra, an older eccentric woman who keeps herself blindfold most of the time and doesn't much like to leave her house. Engraver, Din, is her eyes and ears. It's soon transpires that this death is not the only one that's happened in this manner, recently, and Din and Ana have to travel to another, more dangerous, region to find out more. So, the back-drop to this story is that the coastal area where all this is going on is constantly under attack from Leviathans from the sea, sea-monsters in other words. The blood from these creatures is used to 'augment' the population if they so wish, change various aspects of their bodies, so you can have someone who is very strong, very intelligent or, like Din, an engraver with a photographic memory. There's definitely a Roman Empire slant as well, and some people see a Holmes/Watson relationship in the two main investigators. I personally didn't see much of that, in fact I was reminded more of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin but I think that's probably just me as I haven't seen anyone else mention it. This certainly wins the 'Weirdest Book of the Year' award for me and I read quite a bit of weird fiction. The world building in it is amazing 'but' I can't imagine it being everyone's cup of tea... very far from it in fact. But it was mine... I liked how crazy it was, I liked the back-story of the Leviathans - I'm sure there's a lot more to come on that - I liked Din and how dogged he was, not so keen on Ana and her constant swearing (couldn't see the point of it) but I can tolerate that if the story is strong enough and for me, it was. Book two is out next April and I'll be in the queue.

My second read of November was As a Thief in the Night by R. Austin Freeman, published in 1928, so rather different to the previous book!

The setting for this vintage murder mystery is suburban London. The Monkhouse household consists of Harold Monkhouse, elderly, not in the best of health, his younger wife, Barbara, Monkhouse's secretary, Anthony Wallingford, and Madelaine Norris, an orphaned relation, brought up as Monkhouse's daughter. The old man is often very ill in bed and this time is no different. No one realises he's at death's door, not even his doctor, but at death's door he is and he pops his clogs. It's initially thought his various illnesses have taken him but an autopsy proves otherwise: Monkhouse has been poisoned. Rupert Mayfield is a lawyer and very close friend of the family through Barbara. They practically grew up together and suffered the great loss of a girl that grew up with them, Stella. Thus, the two are very close. So, who killed Harold Monkhouse? Mayfield consults private detective, Dr. Thorndyke, but reluctantly. He hates the thought that one of the household he's so close to has killed a vulnerable old man, but has to do something as the police have drawn a blank. Neither of them realises how complicated this case is going to turn out to be. So, I enjoyed this but gave it just an average 3 stars on Goodreads. Why? Well, it's a bit waffley for my taste. Well written, like most authors from 1920s and 30s, R. Austin Freeman knew how to put pen to paper and write beautifully. But every last thing is gone into, scientifically... and some will like this aspect I'm sure... but for me it got bogged down in too much detail. That said, the case was intriguing, there was very good characterisation, I was very invested in each every one of them and, like Mayfield, didn't really want any of them to have committed the murder. London is very much a real character in the book, good atmosphere, lots of local knowledge, so I liked that aspect too. In all, a solid read, not a 'sing from the rooftops' kind of book, but I enjoyed it well enough.

So, while the snow is coming down outside (not kidding, it 'is') I'm reading this from John Connolly, my favourite author.

 

The Woman in the Woods, like all Connolly's Charlie Parker books, is creepy and thought provoking and no author makes me shudder like him. I'm five or six books behind in this series so my plan for next year is to have a catch-up as one of my personal challenges. This won't exactly be a hardship. 

I hope you're all keeping well and warm and finding some good seasonal books to read as winter closes in.

Books read in October

I just can't believe October is now behind us and we're entering the final couple of months of 2024. (Note: I have not mentioned the 'C' word.) I did a bit better with reading last month than I did in September... 6 books read as opposed to '2' (still haven't quite recovered from that!) So, these are they.

60. Bookworm - Lucy Mangan. A fun book about the author's favourite books of her childhood in the 1980s. Not my generation but close to my daughters' so it was a nice trip down memory lane. 

61. Two-Way Murder - E.C.R. Lorac

62.  The Haunting of Aveline Jones - Phil Hickes

63. The Woods in Winter - Stella Gibbons

64. The Spy Coast - Tess Gerritsen

Maggie Bird lives quietly, running a chicken farm in a village on the coast of Maine. She hasn't always done that however: Maggie is a retired CIA agent. She's not alone, around her are a peer group of similarly retired operatives, so when a dead body is dumped on her drive one night she is not short of assistance. In fact, the police are more of a hindrance than a help but one, Police Chief, Jo Thibodeau, is doggedly determined to discover who this group are and why one of them was presented with a corpse. So the clue here is in the title, The 'Spy' Coast, but for some reason I still expected it to be more of a crime story than a 'spy' one. Naturally, it was the other way around, which would be quite obvious to all but me, but there you go... Anyway, as with all of Tess Gerritsen's books it was very well written, but I'm not a huge espionage story fan so I did struggle a little with it. Plus, it felt a bit similar to Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn, enough that it felt like I was almost rereading that, although there are quite a lot of differences. Anyone, who hasn't read the Raybourn would doubtless enjoy The Spy Coast as it is a good book, but there is considerable use of flash-back scenes, so if that's not your bag, this might not be for you. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads but if 3.5 was available, it would've got that.

65. Saving Missy - Beth Morrey.

Millicent 'Missy' Carmichael, 79, lives alone in a huge house in London. Hardly anyone she loves is around any more - husband, Leo, her son lives in Australia with his family and Missy does not get on well with her daughter who lives in Cambridge. It's a walk in the park that changes everything for her. She meets Angela and her young son, Otis, and then their friend, an older woman, Sylvie. It's not easy for Missy to let them into her life, she's prickly and a bit secretive, but they persist and eventually fostering  a female dog, 'Bob', (you have to know your Blackadder) brings about proper change. This was a delightful contemporary story, a bit heart-wrenching in parts, 'very' in a couple of others, have your hanky ready, but it's also funny and very true to life. There are flashbacks but they're not intrusive and 'fit', if you know what I mean. And it is beautifully written. My cousin passed this one on to me and I'm so glad as I absolutely loved it. 

So that was my reading October. A nice mix of crime and creepiness, some good seasonal reading and an excellent contemporary novel. I'm a happy bunny.

At present I'm reading this:

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett is a fantasy novel that is also a crime story. It is weird. Even for me, Queen of the Weird, it is weird.

I'm also still reading this:

This one is a beautiful read so I'm taking my time reading about the ancient churches of the UK.

I hope you're all enjoying your autumn reading and keeping well?