Vintage Crime reads

Goodness this is my 500th post for this book blog! What a journey it's been and by and large I feel very glad that I took the plunge and started blogging here six years ago. I've met some delightful people who I now consider to be firm friends. Sadly, since I started, some whom I met back then no longer blog and I always feel the loss when they give up. Luckily, many are still here and blogging about books is still something I love and would not give up for anything.

All that said, I've turned off anonymous comments for this blog. It's only the spammers that seem to use it and they're getting be a real nuisance once again. If it turns out to have some kind of consequence I hadn't considered then I'll turn it on again but in the meantime it's off I'm afraid.

Anyway, for this post I'm doing two shorter reviews of vintage crime books. First up, Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers. This is my second book for the Vintage Crime Challenge which is being hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block and covers the category for 'A book set in England'. It's also my 5th. book for Bev's Mount TBR challenge.

After the events of Strong Poison, where Harriet Vane was tried for murder, and following the success of her new crime book, Harriet Vane is in need of a holiday. She chooses a walking holiday on the South West coast of England. Stopping on a beautiful beach for a picnic lunch and a nap she wakes to discover a body just around the headland. The body is wedged into a large rock called The Flat-iron and it's fresh, clearly a very recent suicide or murder. The police are inclined to think 'suicide' but Lord Peter Wimsey turns up the next day and confirms Harriet's suspicions that all is not as it should be. The dead man is a young dancer from a local hotel, but of Russian extraction. He's engaged to a much older woman who feels the Bolsheviks must be involved. But the case turns out to be much more complicated than that. Several male suspects are involved and one of the most crucial things is 'timing'. If the dancer was murdered who had a cast-iron alibi? All of them it turns out. This is the most complicated case Lord Peter Wimsey has come across and it takes the combined efforts of himself, Harriet, and the local police to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

I think I can honestly say, without a shadow of a doubt, that this is one of the best crime books I've ever read. It's long, 444 pages, and that's quite lengthy for a crime yarn, especially a vintage one as far as I know. But it just didn't seem that long while I was reading, it fair galloped along plot-wise, a real page-turner. I loved how complicated it was. I didn't always follow the cipher stuff towards the end but that's OK, I like to be mentally stretched and it told me a lot about such things which is always good. It was also hugely funny. The dialogue is very witty and really just a joy... huge fun to read what is quite a serious crime book but to find it doesn't take itself *too* seriously. I felt Dorothy Sayers knew the SW coast rather well. The atmosphere of a sleepy coastal village in that area - I'm guessing Devon but am not positive - was spot on as were the accents and attitudes of the locals ie: being suspicious of strangers. Most of all what I loved about this book was the two main characters, Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Their relationship is a joy and the constant proposals of marriage from Wimsey, hilarious. All in all this was just such a brilliant read. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it doesn't make my top ten at the end of the year.

Next up, Lock 14 by Georges Simenon:

A body is found in a stable attached to an eating place on the towpath of a canal near Dizy in France. It's under the hay and two men have slept beside it, not knowing it was there. Maigret arrives to investigate and finds the case to be very difficult to understand. It seems impossible that anyone could physically commit the murder as the towpath is difficult to get onto from the road and shifting the body would have been nigh on impossible. The dead woman is the wife of an English ex-army colonel. She's been living aboard a yacht with her husband and sundry other unsavoury looking people. None of them seem to care much about the dead woman and when Maigret gets wind of promiscuous goings on amongst the inhabitants of the boat he realises he needs to know a lot more about who this woman actually is. It's extremely complicated and Maigret is hard put to decide whether the key to the woman's murder is to be found aboard the yacht or among the bargees, carters and lock-keepers who use this canal.

I seem to be on a bit of a Maigret kick at the moment. These vintage crime stories are little gems and ideal fodder for the Vintage Crime challenge. This one covers the category - 'A mystery that involves water'. Anyway, this was a very enjoyable crime yarn. Beautiful atmosphere of the canal, the people who live and work on it and the conditions they worked under in France in the 1930s. The mystery was as complicated as the previous Maigret book I read, The Yellow Dog, with lots of unknown information which the reader is slowly drip-fed. I loved the image of Maigret on his bike pedalling away for forty miles to try and catch up with a barge. I don't know why I was so amused by that but I was.

One thing you do need to remember about these books (both of the ones reviewed here in fact) is that they are set in the 1930s and as such, times were different and much less pc than we are today. Thus people get called names that we wouldn't perhaps consider acceptable now. It worries some people I know, but for me it's written history and although I might blanch a bit it's not a problem. I would never want the books updated to be more pc in any way shape or form.

I have to say that I'm thoroughly enjoying the reading challenges I'm doing this year and if I continue the way I've begun am hoping to end the year having done quite well with them. Fingers crossed.

~~~oOo~~~