I'm on a crime writing binge at the moment. Sometimes that's all you want, some fun reading about dead people and how they got that way. Trying to figure out who did the dirty deed. So much to love. :-)
First up, A Nice Class of Corpse by Simon Brett.
Mrs. Pargeter, a widow of a certain age, is looking for a place to live. Her husband has left her quite well off so she applies to get a permanent room in the posh, Devereux Hotel, in a town on the south coast of England. On her first night she hears some odd noises but does not get out of bed to investigate. The next morning she discovers that an elderly woman has fallen down the stairs to her death. Did she fall or was she pushed? Her will reveals that she has left her fortune to be divided between the other residents. How many people knew about this? And something is not quite right about her jewellery. Not to mention that the dead woman inhabited the most coveted room in the hotel. Mrs. Pargeter knows a thing or two about human nature and criminal activity and sets about investigating the goings on in the hotel. Well, this was great fun. Mrs. Pargeter is a larger than life character with a personality that is more than a match for the snobby residents of the Devereux Hotel. It was nice to have a cast of elderly suspects and the book is written with a lot of humour, plus a very strong sense of an out of season town on the south coast. This is book one in the series and I'll definitely be reading more.
Next, Dead Men Don't Ski by Patricia Moyes.
Henry Tibbett is an inspector with Scotland Yard. He and his wife, Emmy, are off on a skiing holiday to the Italian Alps. They're part of a motley crowd all staying at the same hotel, perched on the side of a mountain. There's a German family, three young Brits, the wife of a German baron and her two children and nanny, a mysterious chap no one likes, various Italian ski instructors and so on. All goes well until a dead man arrives at the bottom of the ski lift at the end of the day. The Italian police ask Henry to help solve the murder, which is awkward as he hasn't told anyone what he does for a living... This is book one in the author's 'Inspector Tibbett' series. I have to confess that I'd not heard of the series or the author until I saw it mentioned on a YouTube channel I watch. The cover struck me immediately and the review was positive so I checked it out. And I wasn't disappointed. The plot was a trifle convoluted and the cast of characters quite extensive. But Henry and Emmy were good detectives, very unassuming, and it was nice that they're middle-aged and ordinary. There was also a very strong sense of place, I'm a bit of a sucker for a mountain setting and this was depicted very well indeed. I had an idea who'd done the deed but didn't decide too early on so it kept me guessing. People who like a closed circle sort of murder mystery would enjoy this I think. I already have book 2, The Sunken Sailor, on my Kindle and I think there are about twenty altogether, so I'm delighted.
Lastly, a short story anthology, Cyanide in the Sun, edited by Martin Edwards.
As suggested this is an anthology about holidays. I thought they would all be foreign holidays but no, thinking about it, back in the day, most Brits did not have the money to go on foreign holidays, it was Blackpool or Bognor or, if you were very lucky, Devon or Cornwall. Martin Edwards has picked out many excellent authors for this collection: Celia Fremlin, Michael Gilbert, Christiana Brand, Anthony Berkeley... the usual suspects. A few favourites: The Summer Holiday Murders by Julian Symons. An old lady, part of a coach trip, is pushed over a cliff by persons unknown. A crime writing author is also on the coach and the baffled police ask 'him' to keep watch over the passengers and report back. The Summer Holiday by Celia Fremlin. A woman has just become a widow and is so happy that she'll no longer be forced to go on holiday by her husband because she's a home-body and hates holidays. But... Loved this! Two on a Tower by Michael Innes. John Appleby takes up with a couple in Italy, she's young, married to an elderly man and there's another chap with them... A Holiday by the Sea by Will Scott features two tramps hitching a ride to Margate in an empty removal van. The tramps' cant was sometimes a bit hard to decipher but Giglamps was an excellent protagonist. There are more short stories about him but I fancy they're going to be hard to track down. Consider Your Verdict by Anthony Gilbert (female author using a pen-name) was a story set in the Lake District about a conman. Kill and Cure by Guy Cullingford features a burnt-out author whose doctor sends him on holiday to a hotel on the south coast. He can't help but study all of the other guests, their behaviour and how they treat their families or employees. This is a very solid anthology. I marked about 10 as good and all of the rest were never less than readable. Several authors I would like to follow up on, I must read one of Celia Fremlin's republished works for instance, and something longer by Julian Symons.
So that's my latest reading up to date, three good books. Very happy. I hope your summer reading is going well.
