Books read in March

So, I read seven books in March, four down on February but seven is much more the norm for me. Plus, I've been jigsawing and knitting and there's only so much time, even now.

The books:

18. A Sense of Place edited by Roly Smith.

An antholgy of favourite places in the British Isles by writers who're members of the Outdoor Writers' Guild. I think they must consist mainly of mountaineers because the choice of essays is very much slanted towards mounteering and hill climbing. Scotland, with its many mountains, features a *lot* but also Cumbria, Dartmoor, The Peak District and so on. I thought it was a bit patchy to be honest, some offerings very good, others not so interesting. One for the charity shop box.


19. Castle Skull - John Dickson Carr

20. Then She Was Gone - Lisa Jewell

21. Dashing for the Post - Patrick Leigh Fermor

22. The Mapping of Love and Death - Jacqueline Winspear.

23. Fell Murder - E.C.R. Lorac

Garthmere Hall is a large farm in an area south of the Lake District known as Lunesdale. It's been farmed by the Garth family for generations and 82 year old Robert Garth, cantankerous but fair with his tennant farmers, is head of the household, although his daughter now runs the farm. His eldest son who should inherit left for Canada after a row with his father. When Robert is found dead, shot in the head, in an old cow barn, the whole household comes under suspicion, even the missing son. Chief Inspector MacDonald from Scotland Yard is brought in to solve the murder but has his work cut out getting past the locals' natural suspicion of strangers. The sense of place in this one is wonderful, I gather the author loved the area and it certainly shows. It's quite an insular story, very much centred on the farm and the family who live there, a few neighbours etc. It means you get to know them all very well. The detective, MacDonald, doesn't appear until half way into the story and that alters the dynamic somewhat. I'd forgotten that a book I read last year, Fire in the Thatch, was also a Chief Inspector MacDonald instalment. In fact there are 46 of them! I'm sure I'll be reading more.

24. The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue - Frederick Forsyth. This was my 4th. book for Bev's Mount TBR 2020 challenge.

British author, Frederick Forsyth has written some very iconic spy/thriller books: The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War and so on. He's also lived rather a colourful life, he was the youngest pilot ever to qualify with the RAF, he was a journalist in East Germany in the Cold War of the 1960s, and he also covered the Biafran War in the late sixties. Returning from that broke and not knowing what to do with himself he decided to sit down and write The Day of the Jackal. The rest is history. Apparently the author didn't want to write an ordinary autobiography so this book takes the form of talks or essays about important parts of his life. I thought it worked pretty well, I found some bits more interesting than others, his spell as a journalist in East Germany was fascinating to read about, we forget what things were like during The Cold War and that brought it all back. I haven't actually read any of his fiction so I downloaded The Odessa File to see if it's the kind of thing I might enjoy.

Not a bad month anyhow. Four fiction - all crime yarns - and three non-fiction. Twenty four books read so far this year, eight of which are non-fiction. Quite content with that. I thought the lockdown would lead to me reading a lot more but that hasn't happened, mainly I think becuase I'm also knitting and jigsaw puzzling, but also I'm taking the opportunity to give the house a good spring-clean.

I hope anyone reading this is taking care and staying safe and coping with the whole 'staying indoors' thing.

~~~oOo~~~