Books in October
It's getting blustery in Montreal, perfect reading weather!
The elderly members of the Thursday Murder Club - Elizabeth, the one-time spy; Ibrahim, retired psychiatrist; Joyce, the practical nurse; and Ron, the fiery union organizer - are happy to start meddling again when one of Elizabeth’s ex-colleagues turns up at their retirement village, on the run after stealing diamonds from a “fixer” who, in turn, was holding them for a mafia kingpin. Quite soon, though, the bodies begin to pile up and the race is on to solve the mystery before our quartet find themselves part of the body count….I thoroughly enjoyed “The Thursday Murder Club,” Mr. Osman’s first novel, to the point where I was almost afraid to pick up this second book because what if the magic didn’t work the second time around? Well, no need to worry, Dear Readers - “The Man Who Died Twice” is just as delightful, poignant, hilarious and compassionate as the first, and our main characters continue to be by turns acerbic, witty, thoughtful and heart-felt - above all, deeply alive. The plot contains many twists and turns, some of which I anticipated but by no means all, but the real joy of this book is once again meeting these characters. And it also contains some of the most polite and gracious bad guys you’d ever want to meet! Highly, highly recommended.
Kate Shackleton is awakened at 4 AM by someone banging on her door; it turns out to be a woman who has heard of her ability to find missing people, whose husband has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. While Kate is not thrilled to be approached in such a manner, she agrees to visit the woman’s village and see what she might be able to do; little does she know that she is stepping into very deep waters indeed…. I’m enjoying the Kate Shackleton series, set in 1920s England and featuring a very competent young woman who is still trying to come to terms with the loss of her husband during the Great War. Ms. Brody obviously does her research - this particular book involves quarry workers, unionizing attempts and the art of stonemasonry - and the stories develop slowly, with lots of time for the reader to get to know the characters. I’ve been calling this a “cozy” series, but I’m beginning to think that’s wrong: for one thing, the books are longer than the average cozy (this one is about 400 pages, for example), Kate is not involved in light-hearted endeavors (her investigations are serious) and there is no cutesy romance or romantic possibility included (which is not to say she’s not involved with someone). In any event, however one wishes to categorize these books, I definitely recommend them!
When a minor aristocrat is found dead in a hotel room, rumours start to fly: he was known to be in the process of divorcing his rich American wife, had a very high-profile lifelong love affair with another young woman, and had been seen at the hotel in the company of both yet a third young woman and a known American mobster. Thus, the possibilities of murder are endless, and when the woman seen with him at the hotel goes missing, the mystery only deepens. Kate Shackleton is asked to find the young woman, while her former lover, Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Charles, wants her to help him sort out the murder - without, of course, stepping on his toes while doing so….This is the fourth Kate Shackleton mystery, and as with the previous books, it’s replete with details of 1920s English life. For example, divorce laws were loosened (somewhat) at that time such that a woman could divorce her husband if he’s been unfaithful, and there sprang up a sort of cottage industry of “unknown” women who acted as the “co-respondent” with the honourable man so that the divorce could be relatively quiet, with less stigma attached to the wronged wife. The characters here are all quite believable, and I especially liked the various tossed off attitudes of the largely Protestant aristocrats toward the Catholic population, particularly the Irish Catholic; those tensions are still somewhat in evidence today, let alone 100 years ago! I don’t think it’s necessary to have read the previous novels in this series to enjoy this one, although I always prefer to read any series in order from the beginning because the tales are that much richer when the reader knows the relationships involved; recommended.
Kate Shackleton is asked to join the search for an Indian maharajah who went missing while hunting on a duke’s estate in Yorkshire; it is necessary to be as quiet about this situation as possible, so as not to ruffle the waters of the relationship between the Empire and its crown jewel of India. When she discovers the body in a place already ostensibly searched, Kate realizes that there are far deeper waters here than she expected - not least the fact that the government needs a simple, non-controversial solution…. It may have slipped the minds of modern readers that England held onto India as a part of its empire until after the end of World War II, although by the mid 1920s, when this story is set, the nationalist cause is gaining credence. I liked the way that Ms. Brody brings in the intricacies of that political situation without letting it bog the story down; instead, we are given a contrast between the opulence of the Princes of India and the squalor of workers on an English estate. Along, of course, with interesting characters, disappearing jewels and complicated family ties. This is the fifth book in the series, although I think it could be read as a stand-alone. I’m enjoying this series a lot, recommended.
Kate Shackleton is asked to find the illegitimate daughter of a society lady, a child adopted at birth by a relative of the lady’s nurse some 24 years earlier. Responses to her advertisements in local papers soon tell Kate that the girl had been known to work at a library, and when she discovers that a woman answering the same description had just been fired from a job at her own subscription library, she thinks she has easily solved the case. But then a monkey shows up in her car and a mathematician is found dead in the library basement, where an immigrant organ grinder has sought refuge whilst suffering from pneumonia, and soon the case becomes much larger than Kate had suspected…. I am enjoying this private detective series, set in 1920s Yorkshire and featuring a widow in her early 30s who is determined to maintain her independence; I always feel that Ms. Brody has done her research in order to showcase the time and place as accurately as possible. In this novel, we learn something about subscription libraries, common at the time although I think almost completely gone now, as well as the habits and living conditions of what used to be called the “respectable poor” - and the attitudes of society in general toward women who step out of the bounds of polite social behaviour. Recommended.
“The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror” consists of 19 stories, some original to this anthology and others reprints, of horror tales rooted in ancient folktales, primarily those of the United Kingdom but also some from the United States and one from India. As with any anthology, some stories are more appealing than others, although I will note that unusually for me, I had to read these in groups of three or fewer because I was scaring myself trying to read them all back-to-back! With writers ranging from Arthur Machen (“The White People,” 1899) to H.P. Lovecraft (“The Hound,” 1924; the first mention of the Necronomican is found here) and forward to Kim Newman (“The Gypsies In the Wood”) and Ramsey Campbell (“The Fourth Call”) and back again to Algernon Blackwood (“Ancient Lights,” 1912), then into the present with Alison Littlewood (“Jenny Greenteeth”) and David A. Sutton (“St. Ambrew’s Well”), this collection has something for every horror fan! Recommended - just be sure all the lights are on if you’re reading this at night!
Kate Shackleton has been invited by her friend Dr. Lucian Simonson to stay with her niece Harriet at his late Aunt Freda’s home in the Yorkshire Dales, an invitation doubly appealing to Kate because Harriet is recovering from a bout of diphtheria and because she and Lucian have tentatively been courting and this visit might move their relationship in a new direction. Once there, however, Kate is approached by the local pharmacist Mr. Wigglesworth, an elderly man who had been great friends with Freda and who knew that Freda had very much wanted to meet Kate before her death because of a murder case 10 years previously in which Freda had been certain that the convicted (and subsequently hanged) man had been innocent; knowing of Kate’s investigative successes, Freda hoped that Kate would want to investigate this miscarriage of justice. Before she knows it, Kate is embroiled not only in that “cold case,” but also in the unexpected death of a local farmer and the disappearance of a mistreated farmhand, despite the fact that Lucian wants her to have nothing to do with any of these cases…. Once again Ms. Brody has brought us a well-researched historical novel set in rural Yorkshire of the 1920s, complete with intrigue, secrets and, well, a romance for Kate. How she deals with all of this, both in her professional capacity and her personal life, comprises the meat of the story, and the investigations kept me guessing throughout the book. I’ve noted before that I don’t think these books need to be read in order (this is the seventh in the series) and that is true here; but the reader who has read the previous novels will have a much better understanding of the relationships between Kate, Lucian, Harriet and others, which will enhance the story that much more. Recommended.
Anthony Horowitz and the ex-detective inspector he has been shadowing and writing about, Daniel Hawthorne, are invited to participate in a small literary festival on the tiny Channel island of Alderney, although it is very quickly obvious that most attendees are interested in meeting Hawthorne rather than Horowitz. The islanders themselves are embroiled in a bitter fight over a power line proposal, seen as a modernizing (and lucrative) scheme to some and as an island-destroying eyesore to others. When the principal mover and shaker of the pro-power line side (and incidentally the wealthiest person on the island) is murdered gruesomely in his own home, Hawthorne is asked by the investigating police team for his assistance and, of course, Horowitz must follow along, asking questions of his own…. I missed the second book in this series (which is referenced here as the book prompting the invitation to the literary festival even though it hasn’t yet been published in the timeline of this story), but aside from a couple of mentions and a hint toward the end, I don’t feel that I missed too much because of that. Once again it is entertaining to wrap one’s head around the concept of the real-life author playing himself in the presumably-it’s-fictional book, but beyond that it’s the witty use of language and the sharp observations of characters and situations that keep the reader enthralled; plus, the mystery is quite convoluted, yet fairly clued and plausible. Recommended!
When Kate Shackleton decides to take a holiday in Whitby to enjoy the seaside and to visit an old school friend, Alma Turner, and Alma’s daughter Felicity who is also Kate’s goddaughter, she does not expect to be caught up in a criminal investigation; yet within an hour or so of her arrival, what does she do but stumble upon the body of a murder victim, the local jeweler from whom Kate’s then-fiance had bought her engagement and wedding rings years before. As if that is not unsettling enough, it seems that Felicity has disappeared: she’s taken a boat with her boyfriend in order to find her long-absent father rumoured to be in Scotland. Alma asks for Kate’s help in locating Felicity, while the local constabulary views everything she does with suspicion, and all Kate really wanted was to spend a couple of weeks lying on the beach in the sun…. I’ve been basically “binge-reading” the Kate Shackleton books (albeit with occasional breaks to read something else), and this eighth book in the series is as entertaining as the rest. It’s odd from our perspective that there is only one very small mention of Dracula in the book, since Whitby is of course where he arrived in England, but in the 1920s the Bram Stoker novel was perhaps not as popular as it later became; otherwise, the descriptions of the town, both as a working fishing (and smuggling) village and as a tourist resort town, are very evocative, and the characters are, as usual, well-drawn and mostly sympathetic. I’ll say again that it’s not necessary to have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this one, although some of the relationships encountered here will be more fleshed out if one has the background from those stories; recommended.
Inspector Michael Green of the Ottawa Police has been sidelined, relegated to an administrative job overseeing security at the courthouse. But that doesn’t mean he’s no longer interested in Major Crimes cases; indeed, his daughter Hannah Pollack has now joined the police department as a rookie officer and when she gets caught up in a possible domestic violence incident that escalates to murder, he is not one to stand around and wait for someone else to resolve the case. Then things take a more tragic, and personal, turn and Michael finds himself struggling to keep his emotions in check while not interfering *too* directly in the investigation…. It’s been six years since the last Inspector Green mystery and the characters, like all of us, have moved on - Hannah, for example, is now fully an adult, and Michael is contemplating the approach of retirement. I was pleased to see that when Michael is sidelined, Hannah steps up with the same combination of impatience, curiosity and intuition, although of course she doesn’t have the experience and expertise of her dad. I would have liked more of Michael’s home life, but the various crimes, suspects and interactions with city versus provincial police and their jurisdictions were all very absorbing in their own right. I think one could just jump into this book without knowing anything about the previous 10 books in the series, because this one *is* more centered on Hannah, who had been fairly peripheral in earlier books; but I expect one would then want to go back and start the series from the beginning! Recommended.
Kate receives a note from an acquaintance, telling her that he has passed her name on to a friend of his, a brilliant musical-hall and opera singer who has some troubles that Kate might solve for her. When the woman asks Kate to accompany her to a viewing of a total eclipse, Kate is pleased to attend but concerned that the woman isn’t actually asking for her detective services. Not, that is, until one of the woman’s company, a famous comedy star, is found ill at the eclipse viewing and subsequently dies, making him the third of her company to succumb to an “accident” in 18 months. Kate begins to look into the matter, but events are about to swirl well out of her control, and other lives may hang in the balance….This ninth novel in the Kate Shackleton series is quite entertaining and informative, as usual, especially with respect to the dying breed of music hall artists who are about to be displaced by talking motion pictures, and the attitudes of the time concerning solar eclipses. I caught one anachronism (“boffin” to refer to a scientific expert, a term that was coined during WWII and wouldn’t have been known in 1927), but otherwise the research is well-done and the characters well-drawn. I picked out the guilty party fairly early on, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the time period and characters; recommended.
Happy Samhain!
The elderly members of the Thursday Murder Club - Elizabeth, the one-time spy; Ibrahim, retired psychiatrist; Joyce, the practical nurse; and Ron, the fiery union organizer - are happy to start meddling again when one of Elizabeth’s ex-colleagues turns up at their retirement village, on the run after stealing diamonds from a “fixer” who, in turn, was holding them for a mafia kingpin. Quite soon, though, the bodies begin to pile up and the race is on to solve the mystery before our quartet find themselves part of the body count….I thoroughly enjoyed “The Thursday Murder Club,” Mr. Osman’s first novel, to the point where I was almost afraid to pick up this second book because what if the magic didn’t work the second time around? Well, no need to worry, Dear Readers - “The Man Who Died Twice” is just as delightful, poignant, hilarious and compassionate as the first, and our main characters continue to be by turns acerbic, witty, thoughtful and heart-felt - above all, deeply alive. The plot contains many twists and turns, some of which I anticipated but by no means all, but the real joy of this book is once again meeting these characters. And it also contains some of the most polite and gracious bad guys you’d ever want to meet! Highly, highly recommended.
Kate Shackleton is awakened at 4 AM by someone banging on her door; it turns out to be a woman who has heard of her ability to find missing people, whose husband has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. While Kate is not thrilled to be approached in such a manner, she agrees to visit the woman’s village and see what she might be able to do; little does she know that she is stepping into very deep waters indeed…. I’m enjoying the Kate Shackleton series, set in 1920s England and featuring a very competent young woman who is still trying to come to terms with the loss of her husband during the Great War. Ms. Brody obviously does her research - this particular book involves quarry workers, unionizing attempts and the art of stonemasonry - and the stories develop slowly, with lots of time for the reader to get to know the characters. I’ve been calling this a “cozy” series, but I’m beginning to think that’s wrong: for one thing, the books are longer than the average cozy (this one is about 400 pages, for example), Kate is not involved in light-hearted endeavors (her investigations are serious) and there is no cutesy romance or romantic possibility included (which is not to say she’s not involved with someone). In any event, however one wishes to categorize these books, I definitely recommend them!
When a minor aristocrat is found dead in a hotel room, rumours start to fly: he was known to be in the process of divorcing his rich American wife, had a very high-profile lifelong love affair with another young woman, and had been seen at the hotel in the company of both yet a third young woman and a known American mobster. Thus, the possibilities of murder are endless, and when the woman seen with him at the hotel goes missing, the mystery only deepens. Kate Shackleton is asked to find the young woman, while her former lover, Scotland Yard’s Chief Inspector Charles, wants her to help him sort out the murder - without, of course, stepping on his toes while doing so….This is the fourth Kate Shackleton mystery, and as with the previous books, it’s replete with details of 1920s English life. For example, divorce laws were loosened (somewhat) at that time such that a woman could divorce her husband if he’s been unfaithful, and there sprang up a sort of cottage industry of “unknown” women who acted as the “co-respondent” with the honourable man so that the divorce could be relatively quiet, with less stigma attached to the wronged wife. The characters here are all quite believable, and I especially liked the various tossed off attitudes of the largely Protestant aristocrats toward the Catholic population, particularly the Irish Catholic; those tensions are still somewhat in evidence today, let alone 100 years ago! I don’t think it’s necessary to have read the previous novels in this series to enjoy this one, although I always prefer to read any series in order from the beginning because the tales are that much richer when the reader knows the relationships involved; recommended.
Kate Shackleton is asked to join the search for an Indian maharajah who went missing while hunting on a duke’s estate in Yorkshire; it is necessary to be as quiet about this situation as possible, so as not to ruffle the waters of the relationship between the Empire and its crown jewel of India. When she discovers the body in a place already ostensibly searched, Kate realizes that there are far deeper waters here than she expected - not least the fact that the government needs a simple, non-controversial solution…. It may have slipped the minds of modern readers that England held onto India as a part of its empire until after the end of World War II, although by the mid 1920s, when this story is set, the nationalist cause is gaining credence. I liked the way that Ms. Brody brings in the intricacies of that political situation without letting it bog the story down; instead, we are given a contrast between the opulence of the Princes of India and the squalor of workers on an English estate. Along, of course, with interesting characters, disappearing jewels and complicated family ties. This is the fifth book in the series, although I think it could be read as a stand-alone. I’m enjoying this series a lot, recommended.
Kate Shackleton is asked to find the illegitimate daughter of a society lady, a child adopted at birth by a relative of the lady’s nurse some 24 years earlier. Responses to her advertisements in local papers soon tell Kate that the girl had been known to work at a library, and when she discovers that a woman answering the same description had just been fired from a job at her own subscription library, she thinks she has easily solved the case. But then a monkey shows up in her car and a mathematician is found dead in the library basement, where an immigrant organ grinder has sought refuge whilst suffering from pneumonia, and soon the case becomes much larger than Kate had suspected…. I am enjoying this private detective series, set in 1920s Yorkshire and featuring a widow in her early 30s who is determined to maintain her independence; I always feel that Ms. Brody has done her research in order to showcase the time and place as accurately as possible. In this novel, we learn something about subscription libraries, common at the time although I think almost completely gone now, as well as the habits and living conditions of what used to be called the “respectable poor” - and the attitudes of society in general toward women who step out of the bounds of polite social behaviour. Recommended.
“The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror” consists of 19 stories, some original to this anthology and others reprints, of horror tales rooted in ancient folktales, primarily those of the United Kingdom but also some from the United States and one from India. As with any anthology, some stories are more appealing than others, although I will note that unusually for me, I had to read these in groups of three or fewer because I was scaring myself trying to read them all back-to-back! With writers ranging from Arthur Machen (“The White People,” 1899) to H.P. Lovecraft (“The Hound,” 1924; the first mention of the Necronomican is found here) and forward to Kim Newman (“The Gypsies In the Wood”) and Ramsey Campbell (“The Fourth Call”) and back again to Algernon Blackwood (“Ancient Lights,” 1912), then into the present with Alison Littlewood (“Jenny Greenteeth”) and David A. Sutton (“St. Ambrew’s Well”), this collection has something for every horror fan! Recommended - just be sure all the lights are on if you’re reading this at night!
Kate Shackleton has been invited by her friend Dr. Lucian Simonson to stay with her niece Harriet at his late Aunt Freda’s home in the Yorkshire Dales, an invitation doubly appealing to Kate because Harriet is recovering from a bout of diphtheria and because she and Lucian have tentatively been courting and this visit might move their relationship in a new direction. Once there, however, Kate is approached by the local pharmacist Mr. Wigglesworth, an elderly man who had been great friends with Freda and who knew that Freda had very much wanted to meet Kate before her death because of a murder case 10 years previously in which Freda had been certain that the convicted (and subsequently hanged) man had been innocent; knowing of Kate’s investigative successes, Freda hoped that Kate would want to investigate this miscarriage of justice. Before she knows it, Kate is embroiled not only in that “cold case,” but also in the unexpected death of a local farmer and the disappearance of a mistreated farmhand, despite the fact that Lucian wants her to have nothing to do with any of these cases…. Once again Ms. Brody has brought us a well-researched historical novel set in rural Yorkshire of the 1920s, complete with intrigue, secrets and, well, a romance for Kate. How she deals with all of this, both in her professional capacity and her personal life, comprises the meat of the story, and the investigations kept me guessing throughout the book. I’ve noted before that I don’t think these books need to be read in order (this is the seventh in the series) and that is true here; but the reader who has read the previous novels will have a much better understanding of the relationships between Kate, Lucian, Harriet and others, which will enhance the story that much more. Recommended.
Anthony Horowitz and the ex-detective inspector he has been shadowing and writing about, Daniel Hawthorne, are invited to participate in a small literary festival on the tiny Channel island of Alderney, although it is very quickly obvious that most attendees are interested in meeting Hawthorne rather than Horowitz. The islanders themselves are embroiled in a bitter fight over a power line proposal, seen as a modernizing (and lucrative) scheme to some and as an island-destroying eyesore to others. When the principal mover and shaker of the pro-power line side (and incidentally the wealthiest person on the island) is murdered gruesomely in his own home, Hawthorne is asked by the investigating police team for his assistance and, of course, Horowitz must follow along, asking questions of his own…. I missed the second book in this series (which is referenced here as the book prompting the invitation to the literary festival even though it hasn’t yet been published in the timeline of this story), but aside from a couple of mentions and a hint toward the end, I don’t feel that I missed too much because of that. Once again it is entertaining to wrap one’s head around the concept of the real-life author playing himself in the presumably-it’s-fictional book, but beyond that it’s the witty use of language and the sharp observations of characters and situations that keep the reader enthralled; plus, the mystery is quite convoluted, yet fairly clued and plausible. Recommended!
When Kate Shackleton decides to take a holiday in Whitby to enjoy the seaside and to visit an old school friend, Alma Turner, and Alma’s daughter Felicity who is also Kate’s goddaughter, she does not expect to be caught up in a criminal investigation; yet within an hour or so of her arrival, what does she do but stumble upon the body of a murder victim, the local jeweler from whom Kate’s then-fiance had bought her engagement and wedding rings years before. As if that is not unsettling enough, it seems that Felicity has disappeared: she’s taken a boat with her boyfriend in order to find her long-absent father rumoured to be in Scotland. Alma asks for Kate’s help in locating Felicity, while the local constabulary views everything she does with suspicion, and all Kate really wanted was to spend a couple of weeks lying on the beach in the sun…. I’ve been basically “binge-reading” the Kate Shackleton books (albeit with occasional breaks to read something else), and this eighth book in the series is as entertaining as the rest. It’s odd from our perspective that there is only one very small mention of Dracula in the book, since Whitby is of course where he arrived in England, but in the 1920s the Bram Stoker novel was perhaps not as popular as it later became; otherwise, the descriptions of the town, both as a working fishing (and smuggling) village and as a tourist resort town, are very evocative, and the characters are, as usual, well-drawn and mostly sympathetic. I’ll say again that it’s not necessary to have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this one, although some of the relationships encountered here will be more fleshed out if one has the background from those stories; recommended.
Inspector Michael Green of the Ottawa Police has been sidelined, relegated to an administrative job overseeing security at the courthouse. But that doesn’t mean he’s no longer interested in Major Crimes cases; indeed, his daughter Hannah Pollack has now joined the police department as a rookie officer and when she gets caught up in a possible domestic violence incident that escalates to murder, he is not one to stand around and wait for someone else to resolve the case. Then things take a more tragic, and personal, turn and Michael finds himself struggling to keep his emotions in check while not interfering *too* directly in the investigation…. It’s been six years since the last Inspector Green mystery and the characters, like all of us, have moved on - Hannah, for example, is now fully an adult, and Michael is contemplating the approach of retirement. I was pleased to see that when Michael is sidelined, Hannah steps up with the same combination of impatience, curiosity and intuition, although of course she doesn’t have the experience and expertise of her dad. I would have liked more of Michael’s home life, but the various crimes, suspects and interactions with city versus provincial police and their jurisdictions were all very absorbing in their own right. I think one could just jump into this book without knowing anything about the previous 10 books in the series, because this one *is* more centered on Hannah, who had been fairly peripheral in earlier books; but I expect one would then want to go back and start the series from the beginning! Recommended.
Kate receives a note from an acquaintance, telling her that he has passed her name on to a friend of his, a brilliant musical-hall and opera singer who has some troubles that Kate might solve for her. When the woman asks Kate to accompany her to a viewing of a total eclipse, Kate is pleased to attend but concerned that the woman isn’t actually asking for her detective services. Not, that is, until one of the woman’s company, a famous comedy star, is found ill at the eclipse viewing and subsequently dies, making him the third of her company to succumb to an “accident” in 18 months. Kate begins to look into the matter, but events are about to swirl well out of her control, and other lives may hang in the balance….This ninth novel in the Kate Shackleton series is quite entertaining and informative, as usual, especially with respect to the dying breed of music hall artists who are about to be displaced by talking motion pictures, and the attitudes of the time concerning solar eclipses. I caught one anachronism (“boffin” to refer to a scientific expert, a term that was coined during WWII and wouldn’t have been known in 1927), but otherwise the research is well-done and the characters well-drawn. I picked out the guilty party fairly early on, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the time period and characters; recommended.
Happy Samhain!