Catching up

Two quick catch-up reviews today. Having rather a slow reading month due it being August and the school hols and so forth.

First up, The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispen. This is my 25th. book for Bev's Calendar of Crime challenge, qualifying under the September category of 'Setting = Place of Employment'.

A group of actors are putting on a play at the Oxford Repertory Company. The play's author is a famous writer and actor, Robert Warner, the rest of the company are a motley crew, currently coverging on the city to start rehearsals. One of their number, Yseut Haskell, whom no one likes, is a nasty piece of work, given to wreaking havoc wherever she goes. Thus, no one is much surprised when she's found dead in the room of one of the professors at the university. Gervase Fen, himself an Oxford don, lends the police a hand in finding the murderer but it's tricky as it seems as though no one could have done it but everyone had a motive. Somebody did the deed though, but who?

I do like this series, I find the books beautifully written with a nice vein of humour running throughout each one. I suppose Gervase Fen reminds me a bit of Lord Peter Wimsey in his eccentricity and speech and perhaps that's why I like the books so much. This is the first book in the series and I must admit I did get bogged down a bit with the first few chapters, so many characters and rather a lot of waffle I thought... plus, I'm not a theatre buff and it probably helps if you are with this one. Nevertheless, it's an entertaining read and very hard to work out who the culprit was and indeed I did not. Had no idea and the reveal was a surprise, but then it was rather a 'locked room' sort of plot and I'm never good at solving those.


Lastly, The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid.

Jane Gresham who lives in run-down part of London but is from a farm in the Lake District, is a Wordsworth scholar. She's had a theory for a number of years that Fletcher Christian - he of the Mutiny on the Bounty notoriety - was not killed on Pitcairn but instead returned to his birthplace in Cumbria. He apparently knew Wordsworth growing up and Jane thinks he came back in order to get his friend Wordsworth to write down the truth of what happened on The Bounty for him. She also thinks Wordsworth may have turned the tale into an epic poem and that it was suppressed and hidden amongst the poet's numerous papers. A peat-bog body is discovered on the fells so Jane gets leave from work to investigate, theorising that it could be Fletcher Christian due to some unusual tattoos but a killing in London concerning a young friend of hers, Tenille, grossly complicates matters before she can set off. In The Lakes at last and suddenly everyone is interested in Jane's research. The problem is, who on earth can she trust?

Very enjoyable this one. It took a while to get going and some of the detail of the plot in London is very sad, bordering on distressing if I'm honest. Once it got to The Lakes it took off and became very much about Wordsworth's life there, family history, and Jane's search for the truth. I also found the little insertions about Fletcher Christian and what happened to him in the south seas rather fascinating... in fact there're quite a lot of books about the mutiny so I might get one to read. (Proof that one book quite often leads to another and another...) This is only the second book I've read by Val McDermid, the first was the first book in one of her series, can't remember which now, but I notice she has other standalones and I might try more. I also rather fancy Naked Came the Phoenix, a book she's co-authored with thirteen other female crime writers... it sounds like a lot of fun and some very famous names there.

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