Day: September 21, 2018
The Detection Club: Verdict of 13
An anthology published by the 1970s’ incarnation of the Detection Club, edited by its then-president Julian Symons, featuring 13 short stories all premised, in a very loose sense, on the concept of a jury (even if it’s only a jury of one). Contributors include — in addition to Symons — P.D. James and Christianna Brand […]
Read MoreAnthony Berkeley: The Wychford Poisoning Case
The fifth time, this year alone, that I’ve found myself running into a fictional incarnation of the (in)famous real life case of Florence Maybrick, the American-born Liverpool housewife convicted, in 1889, of having murdered her husband by administering to him a dose of arsenic obtained by soaking flypaper in water — allegedly in aid of […]
Read MorePatricia McKillip: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
My first book by McKillip; a short(ish) fantasy tale substantially in the traditional mold with a strong female heroine — a sorceress living on a mountainside high above the fighting human empires down in the plain; alone but for the company of a number of magical beasts. At the risk of sounding jaded, the basic […]
Read MoreGeorgette Heyer: Penhallow
On the face of it, your classic country house mystery, country estate and horse farm in Cornwall and all; but Heyer wrote this as a contract breaker, and boy, does it ever show. Neither seekers after romance and after knights in shiny armour nor seekers of a genteel country house atmosphere need apply here, and […]
Read MoreJoy Ellis: Their Lost Daughters
Why, oh why did anybody think that this book’s title (!!) needed an appendage such as “a gripping crime thriller with a huge twist” on Amazon (and likely thus also on every other site that draws its feed from Amazon and where there aren’t any librarians to do away with this sort of nonsense) in […]
Read MoreTerry Pratchett: The Colour of Magic
“The discworld offers sights far more impressive than those found in universes built by Creators with less imagination but more mechanical aptitude.” Aaah … Sir Terry. What would Halloween Bingo possibly be without you? Especially this year, what with Wyrd Sisters being the official bingo group read — and having inspired Booklikes’s very own Discworld group, […]
Read MoreGhosts: Edith Wharton’s Gothic Tales
As the title says, a selection of audio narrations taken from Edith Wharton’s collection of ghost stories: big on atmosphere and on Wharton’s lovely, insightful, empathetic writing; negligible to nonexistent on blood and gore. This is how I like my gothic fiction! As in her novels, Wharton relies entirely on subtle means of psychology; on […]
Read MoreDaphne du Maurier: Frenchman’s Creek
If it weren’t for du Maurier’s indisputable gifts as a writer, and for the splendid things that are Rebecca and The Birds, my most recent reads of hers, between them, would have seriously made me doubt if she is for me at all, had these been my only introduction to her writing. While Jamaica Inn […]
Read MoreAngela Carter: Nights at the Circus
You know that scene in Amadeus where the Austrian emperor comments on Mozart’s music that it contains “too many notes”? That’s how I began to feel after a while about the individual episodes, destinies, and narrative detours making up the sum total of this book — they simply started to run into each other. Adjoa […]
Read MoreAlan Bradley: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Sigh. There is a lot to like in this book: the writing, the setting and the atmosphere, the underlying historic research (including appropriate pop culture references as much as a sensitive treatment of post-war PTSD), the opening nod to Jane Eyre, the bickering sisters, the fact that Flavia has given her bike a name and […]
Read MoreSharyn McCrumb: The Ballad of Frankie Silver
Holy hell St. Maloney, what a book. Part of McCrumb’s Ballad series set in the Appalachian Mountains, this is the story of two executions — and the convicts sentenced to death in each case, as well as their (purported) crimes and the lawmen called upon to witness their executions. In modern times, Sheriff Spencer Arrowood […]
Read MoreMavis Doriel Hay: Murder Underground
Hay’s first of the only three mysteries she ever wrote, but the last one I read. Of the three, I’d rate it the middle entry — it’s not anywhere near as enjoyable as The Santa Klaus Murder (Hay’s final book and one of the highlights of my 2017 Christmas reads), but I liked it quite […]
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