Catching up

Time to catch up on a couple of reviews... as always I seem to be behind. First up, my 24th. book for Bev's Mount TBR 2016 challenge, The Fellowship of Ghosts by Paul Watkins. This is also my 5th. book for the European Reading Challenge 2016 covering the country of 'Norway'.

I'm pinching the Goodreads synopsis for this one: Acclaimed writer Paul Watkins describes his spellbinding solo trek through the wilds of Norway's Rondane and Jutunheimen mountains—grand but harsh landscapes where myth and reality meet. His adventure takes him through valleys bordered by thousand-foot cliffs, roaring waterfalls wreathed in rainbows, blinding glaciers, and shimmering blue snowfields. Yet this is also some of the harshest, most challenging terrain in the world. Watkins's route follows razor-thin ridges, hair-raising paths, and vertigo-inducing drops. An engaging and reflective memoir, The Fellowship of Ghosts captures the profound connection between the Norwegian landscape and the myths, peoples, and dreams that it inspires.

Norway seems to be one of those countries that doesn't get written about a lot so when I saw this on Goodreads somewhere I nabbed myself a copy from Amazon. The author, Paul Watkins, follows in the footsteps of several walkers and mountain climbers who wrote about their experiences in Norway in the late 19th. and early 20th. century. The area covered is the mountainous part of southern Norway, but Watkins also explores fjords, various towns and a little of the capital city, Oslo. He recounts quite a lot of history as well, ranging from the vikings all the way up to WW2 and the country's occupation by the Nazis. He also talks about those other earlier explorers and what they got up to and how they coped with the conditions. It's all fascinating and I enjoyed it very much, particularly the section where he discusses supernatural experiences people have had in these mountains. Algernon Blackwood even based one of his ghost story novellas on a weird experience he had there. The Willows can be read here and I've downloaded it to my KIndle to read very soon. The Fellowship of Ghosts is a nice addition to the 'mountains' section of my travel writing shelf and not to be parted with.

Next, a crime fiction story, The Frozen Shroud by Martin Edwards.

In the tiny Lake District community of Ravenbank two murders have been committed. One took place before the first world war, the second only five years ago but the similarities are startling. Both women were battered to death in the same spot and a shroud placed over them to conceal their ruined faces. Daniel Kind, historian and friend of DCI Hannah Scarlett, is fascinated by the original murder and talk that the village is haunted by the ghost of the murdered servant girl. There's a lot of digging to be done and head of cold cases, Hannah, eventually becomes involved when another murder is committed. To all intents and purposes each of the killings was separately solved and the culprit found or on the run. Cut and dried. But is it? Perhaps not...

The Hannah Scarlett 'Lake District' series is one of those that every time I pick up a new instalment it never takes more than a page or two for me to sink right into the story and characters and feel right at home. The Frozen Shroud was no exception. I love the setting of The Lakes and author, Martin Edwards, is fantastic at describing the atmophere and landscape no matter what the weather and conditions. These stories are wonderfully atmospheric. This particular story begins around Halloween so is quite ghostly in feel. One aspect I enjoyed was the discussion of the ghost stories of Hugh Walpole, some of which I've read, and the works of Thomas de Quincy who was obssessed with murder of course and lived in The Lake District for a while. Daniel Kind is a historian and very into these kinds of books so this makes the series doubly enjoyable for me. The investigation into the murders made for a good, enjoyable crime yarn... quite complicated and involved. My early guess as to who the culprit was turned out to be correct but I didn't know that until the end. I have to admit to getting a bit frustrated with the complications of Hannah's personal life but that's fine, I think we're supposed to, to be honest. These books are never less than very readable, always well written and one of my favourite crime series of the moment.

~~~oOo~~~

The Santa Klaus Murder

The Santa Klaus Murder, by Mavis Doriel Hay, is another one of the delightful new British Library Crime Classics reissues of vintage crime stories. It's my book 23 for Bev's Mount TBR 2016 and my 12th. book for her Vintage Mystery Cover Scavenger Hunt challenge covering the category 'A yellow object' (star on top of the tree).

The Melbury family have gathered for Christmas at the country house residence of the head of the family, Sir Osmond Melbury. They're all trying to keep him sweet because he's very rich and they want a good share of his money when he dies. What no one expects is that his death will happen within days, but happen it does when he's murdered in his study while Santa Klaus is doling out presents to the family in another room.

The Chief Constable, Colonel Halstock, is assigned the task of solving the murder, he being an old friend of the dead man. It's a poisoned chalice of course. The relatives hate him for questions he has to ask and the amount of delving he has to do. Just about everyone has their secrets and possible motive for killing Osmond Melbury, be it his five children, their various spouses, sundry suitors, employees and ex-employees. The list is endless. Sir Osmond, it seems, was a manipulator and complicated man who thought nothing of playing games with people's lives.

Halstock finds it impossible to trace the precise movements of the large number of people present during the relevant minutes when the murder occurred. Then a revelation throws everything he's learnt into doubt. An actor acquaintance tries to assist him in his enquiries but does he too have an ulterior motive? Is there anyone who hasn't? And why does it appear that everyone in the house is witholding information?

Well, this crime yarn was very enjoyable. It does involve a very large cast of characters and I must admit they were difficult to keep track of at first. Luckily there is a helpful list of who's who at the beginning and I did have to refer to it a few times. Eventually though I did get my head around them all and settled nicely into the storyline which is a traditional country house mystery. And there's nothing wrong with that, especially at this time of year when you're busy and just want a good, fun read.

That said, I thought this was very well written and quite challenging in the whodunnit department. I actually had no idea who'd done the deed until quite near the end and it's good fun when that happens. Perhaps I would've liked a slightly better idea of who the detective, Colonel Halstock, was. He didn't have the depth that we see in, say, Hercule Poroit, with his pedantry and funny little ways that make him so human. But that's being nit-picky. I really enjoyed the story and the setting and thought it was a perfect Christmas read.

The author, Mavis Doriel Hay, is one of those lost authors from the 1930s who has been rediscovered by the BLCC and her books reissued. There are two others available from them, Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell both of which I plan to read now that I've discovered that the author's writing is very good.

~~~oOo~~~

Mount TBR 2017

Time to sign up for Bev's Mount TBR 2017. I find this an extremely useful challenge to do as it does help me get at least a number of books off the hefty tbr pile on my bookshelves. We won't talk about the fact that I usually end up adding as many new books each year as I read off the pile from previous years. 'The spirit is willing' as they say...

Anyway, go here for the sign up post to Mount TBR 2017 There you'll find a list of the rules and so on.

Challenge Levels:

Pike's Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s
Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR piles/s
Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s
El Toro: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s
Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s
Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s

This year I did Mont Blanc - 24 books - but given the first month or two of 2017 will be a bit difficult I think I shall go for Pike's Peak - 12 books - and see how I go. It's likely I'll get beyond that but if I don't then it won't matter in the slightest.

Thanks to Bev, as always, for hosting the challenge.

~~~oOo~~~

Read Scotland 2017

As always around this time of year I've been thinking about which reading challenges to do next year. I'd already decided not to do too many as I've been finding it rather confining... I like to be free to read what I fancy rather than having to read for a challenge all the time. I think I've managed to strike a happy medium by keeping the amount of challenges to three. This year I may even cut that back to two, not sure at the moment. The beginning of next year is going to be difficult as my husband's second knee replacement surgery is happening on the 10th. January, so I know from experience that books will not be a priory for at least three or four weeks after that. We'll see how things pan out.

Anyway, one challenge that I have decided to do again, after a gap of a couple of years, is Peggy's Read Scotland 2017. I enjoyed this one when I did it before, plus I do have quite a lot of books about Scotland and by Scottish authors on my TBR pile.

Peggy has a Goodreads group going for the challenge, here. All the info about the various levels of participation is there. I've decided to go for 'The Highlander' which is to read 6 to 10 books between the 1st. January and the 31st. December 2017.

My Goodreads shelf for Scotland is here and I'm hoping to get some of the unread ones off my TBR mountain. Books read can be read for other challenges as well.

Looking forward to taking part and thanks to Peggy for hosting.

~~~oOo~~~

The Singing Sands

The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey is my book 22 for Bev's Mount TBR 2016 and my 11th. book for her Vintage Mystery Cover Scavanger Hunt covering the category, A Body of Water.

Detective Inspector Alan Grant has been suffering from bad attacks of claustrophobia, so much so that he's been given a leave of absence. He heads to Scotland to stay with his cousin and her family for a few weeks. As the train pulls in to his destination he passes a compartment where the dead body of a young man is just being discovered. Alan inadvertantly picks up a newspaper belonging to the dead man and later discovers a poem he had started in the margins. Intrigued, Alan can't help himself, he has to find out more about who the young man was.

The death is declared an accident, the man had fallen while drunk and hit his head. He was one, Charles Martin, and apparently French. For some inexplicable reason, Alan Grant doesn't believe a word of it. He's supposed to be recovering from an illness, taking it easy, fishing, relaxing, but he can't. Something is just not right about this incident. The trail leads him to an island in The Hebrides to find 'the singing sands' in the poem written by a dead man and thus on to a discovery he could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.

I'm so sorry that this is the last Alan Grant book - I've loved them all, although my favourite was The Franchise Affair. The Singing Sands had a wonderful sense of place, the Highlands of Scotland, absolutely one of my favourite 'places' of all. Alan Grant on holiday was a joy. I loved his cousin, Laura, and her husband, and son, Pat... with his Scottish accent that no one can understand, hero worshipping Alan. Delightful. Poor Alan though is suffering from a bad dose of claustophobia and this is very well depicted. He suffers agonies on the train journey for instance as he forces himself not to open his carriage door during the night. Car journeys are a particular trial and one scene where he has to force himself not to ask the driver to stop and let him out is particularly affective and well written.

The thing that made this story for me though was the investigation. It was fascinating to follow Alan as he made painstaking progress with his inquiries, never giving up even though many of them led nowhere. This is not a hard-hitting, serial killer sort of a crime yarn, it's a gentle, intellectual exercise as one clue after another is followed up and either discounted or added to the stockpile of information. Where it all eventually led was completely unexpected... not the kind of thing I've ever seen in a crime story before. Huge fun.

As I said, it's a shame this is the last Alan Grant book. Josephine Tey only wrote six in the series, this last one published the year of her death in 1952, she was only 56. I still have a stand alone, Brat Farrar, to read and a couple of others that I don't own. What a class act she was as a writer, one of my favourites now, several of her books I will definitely reread.

~~~oOo~~~

Catching up

Yet again another busy month with family committments, so very little reading done. Just two books so far this month, neither of which I've managed to review so will do a couple of mini reviews to catch up. First, Holy Island by L.J. Ross.

DCI Ryan is on three month's sabbatical on Holy Island (Lindisfarne) after a particularly nasty case. He has almost recovered when the body of a young woman is discovered in the ruins of The Priory by a woman walking her dog. Ryan is called upon to help secure the crime scene and, eventually, put on the case. Dr Anna Taylor, who is originally from the island, is brought in as a consultant on pagan rituals as it seems the dead girl has been killed and laid out in a ritualistic manner. She instantly clashes with Ryan, and not helping is the amount of baggage she's carrying in respect of her personal family history on the island. Ryan does not want Anna on the case but when another body is discovered, also ritually killed, it seems he might not have a choice in the matter.

Well, I enjoyed this well enough... liked it, didn't love it, not sure why, sort of thing. The writing is certainly good enough, the sense of place is quite strong - even though I haven't been to Lindisfarne I felt as though I had. I think what didn't work for me was the romance between Ryan and Anna. Ordinarily I've no objection at all to romantic entanglements in whatever I read but this felt a bit contrived, very Mills and Boon, and thus unrealistic because people don't go on that way any more. And yes, I have read my fair share of Mills and Boon books in years gone by, especially Regency romances. But sticking that sort of confrontational relationship into a serious murder investigation just didn't work for me somehow. Shame, but there you go. I also found other elements of the story far-fetched but can't go into that as it would involve spoilers. I have say though that the crime element was well done, kept me reading to the end, and I didn't guess the outcome, so that is definitely a plus. There are four or five in this series and I gather they're quite popular. I don't think they're for me but they do well on Goodreads and are not dear if you have a Kindle, so for some they might be worth a try.

Next, a non-fiction book, Making It Up As I Go Along: Notes from a small woman by Marion Keyes.

Marion Keyes is a well known author of contemporary fiction with about twenty books under her belt. As well as fiction she writes columns for magazines and this collection of essays is mostly taken from those, interspersed with some previously unpublished material. The essays are divided into various sections, so we have (Bad) Health and Beauty, On My Travels, Marian Meets, Soul Searching and so on. What shines through is Marian's sense of humour. I've seen her on the Friday Panel on Strictly Come Dancing's 'It Takes Two', so I know she has the most wonderful Irish brogue and is naturally very funny. I was saddened to hear that she suffers so much with mental health issues, but not surprised as you often find that people who're funny and seem confident are, in reality, just the opposite. Some sections appealed to me more than others. I'm not a girly, make-up sort of a person so the Heath and Beauty section was less interesting to me than say, On My Travels. In that section she travels all over the world so that would appeal to me, a real armchair travel fiend. Her diary of her time in Antarctica was, for me, some of the best writing in the book, really fascinating. It's very easy to identify with a lot of what Marion writes about, a dislike of parties, going mad on Twitter (I don't do it these days but have in the past), crushes on celebrities (she's famously mad about Pasha on Strictly Come Dancing but there are many others) and so on. And even when you don't identify, the subject is always interesting to read about and always amusing. I can't recommend this book of essays highly enough. I nabbed mine in Morrisons for £4... the best £4 I've spent in ages. It reminded me of another simlilar volume, The Chain of Curiosity by Sandi Toksvig. If you like essays, buy that and Marian Keye's book, you won't be disappointed.

~~~oOo~~~

Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics - Ed Balls

I haven't been reading all that much this month... I have months like this sometimes where nothing I pick up seems to engage me and I'm distracted by other things. We had a lovely visitor from Memphis staying for instance and the half-term week, just gone, was *really* busy. So it turns out that here we are at the end of October and all I've read is two books! And reviewed none. Goodness me, I'd better put that right, so this is Speaking Out: Lessons in Life and Politics by Ed Balls.

I don't know how well known Ed Balls is in the wider world but here in the UK he's a household name. For many years he was in politics, first as a political advisor and then as an MP himself for ten years. He was in the Labour cabinet as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and then served as Shadow Chancellor from 2010 to 2015 when he lost his marginal seat in that year's general election.

I have to confess here that I was not much of a fan until recently. He came over in political interviews as rather too convinced that he was right and anyone thinking differently was wrong. But then politicians as a breed often do come over that way, hardly any of them wanting to listen to an opposite point of view, or answering the question put to them, not realising that the electorate would actually quite like to see them doing those things. So what changed my opinion of him? Well, two things did the deed - this book and the BBC TV series, Strictly Come Dancing.

Let's deal with the book first. It's written as a series of essays to his younger 27 year old self. Things he knows now which he wishes he knew then, sort of thing (which of us wouldn't like that?) The book is written in four sections: Learning who you are, Learning what works, Learning the hard way, Learning to move on. Each of these four parts is divided into chapter headings such as Loyalty, Family, Markets, Risks, Spin, Hinterland, Future and so on. So into these chapters is slotted everything you can think of, some family history, political goings on from his early days as a political advisor to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, his time as an MP... right up to the Labour party defeat in 2015, and loads of opinions, interesting anecdotes and so on.

If I'm honest I found the nitty-gritty of his political years with Blair and Brown slightly less interesting than some of the personal stuff. Where the personal stuff was concerned I discovered that he is extremely protective of his family, especially his children, because in his opinion they did not decide to be in the public eye. All power to his elbow for that, in my opinion anyway. I also discovered that he has a stammer. Not the kind of stuttering stammer that's obvious, the kind where you can't get your words out, an 'internal' stammer. For someone who had to make speeches and give interviews that must've been horrendous and I gather at times 'was'. I had no idea he played piano, ran marathons for a charity called Whizz Kidz, enjoyed karaoke (Lord help us), loves reading. I *did* know about the football but am not sure how. You just wonder why it is that politicians hide behind some kind of barrier, not wanting the electorate to know they have another, more interesting, side to them? It's a real shame actually because this is one fascinating chap.

Some while ago I read a comment by the then Political Editor of the BBC, Nick Robinson. He said he thought that at some stage the public would have a complete reversal of opinion on Ed Balls. That they would come to see him in a different light as we now do Michael Portillo, for instance, who was also reviled as a politician but is now loved as a total railway geek in his excellent BBC railway programmes. I wonder if Nick Robinson had any idea that this reversal would come about as a result of the biggest show on British TV, Strictly Come Dancing? I bet if someone had suggested it he would laughed them out of the room. But it is so. Bonkers as it might seem, it is actually so. Millions are now watching Ed Balls, not speechifying at the dispatch box, but learning to dance with his pro partner, Katya Jones. I'll tell you it is electrifying. He's not by any means the best dancer, but nobody gives a damn because he's clearly loving it, trying and working very hard, and is by far the most entertaining celebrity in Strictly this year. His first dance, the waltz, was ok, not amazing but ok. Then he comes out in week two and does this:



He totally won me over with that and, despite all predictions to the contrary, is still in it and getting better by the week. It's joyous and I love it and so, apparently, do plenty of others who are voting in their thousands to keep him in the show. I actually hope he'll get to the final.

Anyway. I'll stop pontificating and just say that if you enjoy political books or are just interested in the current phenomenon that is Ed Balls, get this book and read it. You won't regret it.

~~~oOo~~~