Anabel Donald: In At The Deep End

This was lovely crime fic! Donald's heroine, television researcher/PI Alex Tanner, is an intelligent, feisty, independent delight. The kind of person you can actually visualize yourself hanging out with. After reading this (finished it at work, slow day thanks be to God) I ran back to the library to get more books by Ms Donald, but they only had Smile, Honey, which is a novel, not a detective story, and reading the back of it I realised I'd already read this, years ago. I mean years. Maybe 12 or so. Wow, I'm old. Anyway, it made quite an impression on me, since the epilogue has stuck with me all these years, without me being able to quite place it. I recommend Anabel Donald in general.

This book is set in the early nineties. The recession is in full swing. I find it hard now to remember what it was like then - the feeling of hopelessness, how there were no jobs, property value was plummeting... Anyway, the general scarcity of money is what prompts Alex Tanner to undertake a doubtful investigation of a teenager who died in a diving accident at his military-style private school. The boy was the son of an English-French celebrity couple, obviously modelled on Gainsbourg and Birkin, which is freaking hilarious. I saw a documentary on Gainsbourg on the telly once (no the whole thing, because hello? Boooring...), and the man is quite mad. He said "I want to fuck you" to Whitney Houston on television! No wonder the woman is on drugs, he's a creep. Donald creates a bogus tv interview for her fictional couple (the Mouches) in the same vein:

I filled her with my angel-milk and she became a slave to love

I also love that Alex's boyfriend brings her two Sue Graftons and a Paretsky when he returns from a business trip to the US. Alex likes Sue Grafton best, so her instinct is to read the Paretsky first, but

on the other hand you shouldn't read two books by the same author one after another because the mannerisms get on your nerves.

Too true, but that didn't stop me running to the library. *blushing*

Margaret Doody: Poison in Athens

Margaret Doody has written a series of detective stories set in ancient Greece, starring Aristotle the philosopher as detective together with his sidekick Stephanos. I have previously read Aristotle and Poetic Justice, in which Stephanos finds his bride-to-be. Poison in Athens is set later in time, as Stephanos tries to prepare for the nuptials to actually take place, sometime in a near future.

The story centres around several high-profile lawcases. A prostitute is accused of impiety, a well-respected citizen of hogging a female slave for his own sexual pleasures, a widow of murdering her husband with hemlock. Sex and the role of women is a theme of the book. Doody does not make it easier for us by creating a central character with modern views and thoughts. Aristotle and Stephanos are firmly rooted in their society. Women are the property of their families, slaves of their owners etc. Frankly, this became a bit tedious to read at times, which is why the blog update has been delayed. There was a lot of oratory; on why slavery is necessary in society, on morals good and bad, on philosophy. On the whole I think it's well worth it though. This series is not a bad introduction to Ancient Greece. I prefer Lindsay Davis' cynical Falco, but this is well written and well researched.

The final speech by the female slave Marylla is, I suppose, a little too modern - perhaps her ideas are just a trifle too sophisticated for a female slave of the time... but how can I know? Just an idea.

Julie Parsons: The Hourglass

Wham! After reading a few gentle, civilized mysteries I picked up the latest Julie Parsons at the library. Damn, the woman throws you straight in with the wolves, doesn't she? As the cover quote from Irish Tatler says: "You won't be able to put it down and you won't be able to sleep". Too right. The thing with Julie Parsons is that she might just kill everyone, you can't be sure. I was so tense reading The Hourglass that I just had to check the last pages to see who dies - because someone does, count on it. Also, the book starts with a - what's the opposite to flashback? flashfront? whatever - to events occurring near the end, so you know Bad Things are coming.

This book is about Lydia Beauchamp, an old garden designer, all alone in her old house in Co. Cork. Her husband killed himself years ago, and she hasn't seen her daughter for twenty years. She meets a young man, whom she takes into her confidence, but he is there by design, to exact revenge for things that happened a long time ago.

The villain of the piece is superbad indeed, and very scary. Indeed, I was a little disappointed by the end, because with such an efficient killing machine out and about you'd expect more slaughter. She chickened out a bit actually, did Julie. Not that I'm complaining, I'm a wimp. From a literary point of view though it feels almost a trifle unresolved.

I especially love Parsons' books for the insight into a modern, darker Ireland they provide. Growing up half-Irish I had to put up with a lot of "ooo, lovely country, everyone so friendly, lovely pubs, leprechauns" nonsense. Made me want to go "ooo, xenophobia, institutionalized racism, alcoholism". I haven't been to Ireland for over a decade, and I need these glimpses of modern Ireland now and then.

Now, must go help Minima wrap parcel, before she combusts.

Edit: remembered what I wanted to ramble about, really. This is the second Parsons novel I've read where one big theme is the strong love/same sex relationships forged in prison, between people who would otherwise not identify themselves as gay. In the first book, Eager To Please, the relationship was between women, here it's between men, and has more destructive power. Another theme is what prison does to inmates, how destructive it is. I wonder what personal experience Parsons has of prison life? Must try to find some interviews.

The Sunday Philosophy Club

By Alexander McCall Smith.

I've been eager to read this one, because I wanted to see what AMS has to say about his hometown Edinburgh. The novel centres around Isabel Dalhousie, a middle-aged lady of independent means who is editor of a philosophical magazine. She also heads the meetings of the Sunday Philosophy Club, a club that is mentioned but never brought into action here. Anyway, Isabel witnesses a young man fall to his death, and becomes obsessed with finding out how.

I found the book a little lacking in drive, but the exerpt at the end from the next one in the series (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate) looked a lot more promising in that respect. I did like it though. Isabel has a lot of internal discussions about ethics and philosophy, so that's fun. This is the one to make my husband read, to introduce him to AMS.

Kantians would be in no doubt about the answer to that, but that was the problem with Kantian morality: it was so utterly predictable, and left no room for subtlety; rather like Kant himself, she thought. In a purely philosophical sense, it must be very demanding to be German. Far better to be French (irresponsible and playful) or Greek (grave, but with a light touch).

Keith Oatley: The Case of Emily V.

I stumbled across this book in the crime fiction section of the library (all crime fiction obligingly marked with a yellow dot and grouped together, I only have to browse...). My attention was caught by the title, and on the back I read that it's

a terrific quasi-mystery set in Vienna and featuring a melancholic Sherlock Holmes, a smug Sigmund Freud, and an entirely engaging young classics teacher named Emily V.

Well, I had to borrow it then, didn't I? After all, I had to check if it was comparable to Laurie R. King's fantastic Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

Well, quasi-mystery is right. This is not really crime fiction, as the crime is very much by-the-way. The background idea is that three manuscripts from ca 1904 (or something) have been recovered, one by Emily V., one by Dr Watson, and one by Freud. They all centre around the same events, from different points of view. Emily V. was sexually abused as a child, and now blames herself for the death of her abuser. She starts seeing Freud on the advice of a friend. And later Holmes and Watson show up, investigating the death of the abuser, who was also a British diplomat and spy.

The novel combines these three manuscripts into one. It's cleverly done, with Oatley capturing the original narrative styles of Doyle and Freud (no that I've read much Freud, but Oatley's a professor of psychology himself, so I'm sure he knows what he's about). The last chapter is a postscript by a dr Ellen Berger, which analyzes the manuscripts you've just read. An interesting twist! I can't find her name on Google, so I'm not sure if Oatley has made her up entirely or borrowed bits of her from medical accquaintances...

This novel reminds me of Sofies värld by Jostein Gardner, in that it presents an area of learning in a more accessible manner. Or, for that matter, Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa... If you want to be introduced to Freudian theory it might be a good place to start.. or if you want some long-winded flowery descriptions of people having sex. The only good thing with that passage is that it is "put into context" in "Berger's" analysis at the end. (I'm too old to be interested in reading about sex, or seeing it on film. I prefer having it. I am no longer 14.) It took me a while to finish the book, partly because of said long-windedness, not only on matters of lesbian sex. It's part of the early 20th century style the book is written in, but it's a bit tedious. Well, at least if you were expecting more crime novel. The story tends to drive itself forward then.

To sum up, recommended, on the whole.

Finally: In today's DN there is a review of the Swedish translation of Dan Brown's novel Digital Fortress (which I've read. It's crap, but I liked it better than the others, probably because I'm ignorant in computer matters so he was able to feed me shite while calling it soup and I wouldn't have noticed). In the last paragraph the journalist mentions that what is truly terrifying is that Brown previously taught "creative writing". Where will this lead? Will we be flooded with "thrillers" in ten years time?

Scary thought indeed. Let's hope the students surpass the teacher, in that case.

Another dentist visit

Today we didn't discuss literature, but Little Britain. I did however read, namely a brochure that places me in premium group 2 (out of 11, 0 being perfect teeth) for dental insurance thingie.

I am ridiculously pleased with this.

I may have to order

This book seems interesting. Maybe I could find out if there is anyone writing about a male homosexual detective. For some reason there are several lesbian heroines in the genre, but I have yet to come across a gay man. Which is interesting in itself.

FYI, my birthday is in October. :-P

Bryson and Bentley

Hb has commented, on my Bryson post below, that he does visit his family in Notes From A Small Island. And that is true. And that reminded me that I should have updated that blog entry, since after writing it (naturally, why do research before you write, when you can publicly humiliate yourself afterwards) I googled a little, found some interviews, and deduced that he just doesn't write about the family trips. Also he confirms that his books are not meant as, and in fact are rubbish if read as travel guides. (That was a bad sentence. But I can't piece it together in a better way at the moment. Very annoying.) So colour me embarrassed and efterklok.

Spent all weekend feeling sorry for myself as I have a cold. Reread Trent Intervenes by EC Bentley. This is a book I picked up somewhere quite accidentally, and I'm glad I did. Bentley only wrote three books featuring his detective/journalist/artist Philip Trent, and they are hard to find. By which I mean that no library in town has even one copy, and I haven't come across them in any second-hand book stalls. I'm not desperate enough to start trawling the internet for copies, but that day may come. Trent Intervenes is the last in the series. It was published in 1938, and preceded by Trent's Own Case in 1936 and Trent's Last Case (great title, considering!) in (wait for it) 1913.

Apparently Dorothy Sayers was a Bentley fan, which is of course a mark of quality. The book itself is a collection of short stories. Trent sometimes aids the police, sometimes acts alone to help a friend or an accquantaince. He always reserves the right to choose how to act on what he has discovered. They are clever, not complete whodunnits as Trent has more information than we do, but close, as there are enough clues so as to help us guess the truth. Recommended.

Marsvinets paradox

Ur dagens DN:

Det vi inte får se fyller katalogen ut med anspråksfulla curatorstexter. På golvet står ett litet marsvin med propeller på ryggen, knöligt skulpterat av Malin Bryntesson. Varför? Jag har svårt att ryckas med av katalogtextens tal om att verket tvingar till reflektioner över "marsvinets paradox - att det å ena sidan symboliserar begreppet experiment och å andra sidan passiviseras som husdjur i stadsmiljö".

Det är sånt här som ger konstnärer dåligt rykte.

Bill Bryson Thoughts

So while reading In A Sunburned Country I was struck by the fact that Bryson always travels alone. Sometimes he'll have a companion, but it's never family, instead perhaps an old high school friend (Katz, in A Walk In The Woods) or a colleague. Maybe he never writes about his travels with his family? Maybe that's too personal? It would be sad to think that his kids never get to see all the things he sees. I was thinking that while his solitary travelling gives him time to think about what he sees, ponder and take notes, and then write these great books that I love, it at the same time makes them vaguely useless as travel guides for those of us who lug the kids along. Hm. What I'm trying to say is that instead of feeling like I want to follow in Bryson's footsteps, I feel like there is no way I can. At the same time he writes in such a way as to make me feel as though I am there too, and so I've already been where he's been.

If you see my point. Rambling though it may be.

Why is Agatha Christie so popular?

Uh-huh.

My copy of Unnatural Death has about a thousand printing errors in it. I am seriously disappointed. Luckily I have read it before, so I knew that it wasn't meant to be incomprehensible in the places where it was incomprehensible. Now, do I chuck the book (that rhymes, pleasingly)? I can no longer lend it to my editor friend, she'll go into crazy work mode and explode.

Then I re-read Ten Little Niggers. Note: I have never read the book in English, and it's been at least ten years or so since I read it in Swedish. This time around, I was struck by how mediocre it was, really. Not at all as scary as I remember. Plus, the constant use of the word nigger really grates on you. Makes you want to turn up on the island and smack everyone upside the head. In the Swedish translation it was neger, which is not, you know, good, but it's better than nigger. Must've been an excellent translation on the whole, since it made me love the book so much for so many years. She's terribly overrated, Agatha Christie. Don't understand it at all. This is the only book that's ever done anything for me, and now I find out it's all a lot of ... ... ... ... at the end of every single fecking sentence.

Then my husband's colleague (also my former teacher, did I mention that? Pretty cool) lent me 44 Scotland Street, not knowing that I've read it. Still very sweet gesture that I appreciate, and I also got a present! A little Reading Diary. So I shan't be needing to blog anymore, I guess. ;-)

Then I got sick. *coughs* So I'm mostly lying in bed reading Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, laughing out loud. Because, let's face it, Australians are funny without even trying. The accent is enough. Bill Bryson just ices the cake, really.

Blue Shoes and Happiness (and More)

Blue Shoes and Happinessis the latest from Alexander McCall Smith. My darling husband borrowed it for me from a colleague (so this is the first one I've read in hardback, incidentally).

It feels a bit repetitive to gush about how much I enjoy these books, so I was going to say that I first found myself a little disappointed in this one. I think I was a little surprised that there weren't more references to stuff that has already happened, like the adopted children and the Kalahari Typing School (note to self: you haven't read that one). But then I found myself backtracking on that sentiment, since this book is a little more introspective than the others. Just a little, but it seems like the theme is a different - the action takes place as much on the inside as on the outside. And there are still beautiful passages (that yes, make me cry), such as this one:

She thought of her father, the Daddy as she called him, every day. And when she had those dreams at night, he was there, as if he had never died, although she knew, even in the dream, that he had. One day she would join him, she knew, whatever people said about how we came to an end when we took our last breath. Some people mocked you if you said that you joined others when your time came. Well, they could laugh, those clever people, but we surely had to hope, and a life without hope was no life: it was a sky without stars, a landscape of sorrow and emptiness. If she thought that she would never again see Obed Ramotswe, then it would make her shiver with loneliness. [...] And there was somebody else she would see one day, she hoped - her baby who had died, that small child with its fingers that had grasped so tightly around hers, whose breathing was so quiet, like the sound of the breeze in the acacia trees on an almost-still day, a tiny sound. She knew that her baby was with the late children in whatever place it was that the late children went, somewhere over there, beyond the Kalahari, where the gentle white cattle allowed the children to ride on their backs. And when the late mothers came, the children would flock to them and they would call to them and take them in their arms. That was what she hoped, and it was a hope worth having, she felt.

Oh Lord, that has me in tears again. On to something funnier.

I also reread Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison, which is still brilliant. Got so bitten that I'm reading Unnatural Death now. So a quote from the latter:

'I wish you wouldn't talk so much', complained his friend. 'And how about all those typewritten reports? Are you turning philantropist in your old age?'

'No - no,' said Wimsey, rather hurriedly hailing a taxi. 'Tell you about that later. Little private pogrom of my own - Insurance against the Socialist Revolution - when it comes. "What did you do with your great wealth, comrade?" "I bought First Editions." "Aristocrat! à la lanterne!" "Stay, spare me! I took proceedings against 500 moneylenders who oppressed the workers." "Citizen, you have done well. We will spare your life. You shall be promoted to cleaning the sewers." Voilà! We must move with the times. Citizen taxi-driver, take me to the British Museum. Can I drop you anywhere? No? So long. I am going to collate a 12th-century manuscript of Tristan, whole the old order lasts.'

I just realised typing that (whew!) that it might just be several slurs against Jews. The words pogrom and moneylenders in combination... Which would not be funny at all. But I never saw it like that before, maybe largely because I have never viewed DLS as an antisemite. As a matter of fact, in Strong Poison, Lord Peter's friend Freddy Arbuthnot announces his engagement to a Jewish girl, and the whole thing has a anti-antisemitic feel to it. Hm. Must think about that some more.

Anyway, Eurovision in 10 minutes now!

Dental Literature

So today I went to the dentist. At 8 o'clock in the morning no less, which translates into "stupid o'clock in the morning", although not as stupid as 7.40 which is when my youngest went the other week (yawn). So I'm thinking "mutter mutter, brilliant start to the day this" and to ice the turd cake someone I really would rather not meet or even see was in the waiting room... :-((( But anywhoo. I get up on the chair, and we start chatting, and we went from anaesthatic to pulling out teeth to Louis XVI (I thought it might have been) to my dream of future dental care, which will involve the extraction of all my (crap) teeth and then the stimulation (via tricorder or similar instrument) of my genes to grow new, sparkly ones, and then conversation turned to science fiction.

See, I don't like going to the dentist. They always get on my case about not flossing etc., and refuse to listen when I say that it's really hard for me to floss, because my teeth are all cramped into my mouth and the floss WON'T FIT, and I think they should cut me some slack because the dentists obviously let me down bigtime when I was a kid. But when I first walked into this dentist's office I knew he was okay, because he had a Matrix screensaver on his computer. And this was before Matrix 2 and 3, which are rubbish. So he's pretty cool.

We ended up chatting about sci-fi books (I'm going to have to read Asimov now, as per his instructions) and films, and Swedish literature as taught in schools, and

Nurse: "Remember that phase when we read all those Russian authors? Tolstoy, Gogol..."

Dentist: "Gogol...Gogol... Dead Souls... and what was the other one?"

Me, with mouth full of stuff: *points to nose*

Dentist: "Nose? The Nose?"

Me: "Mrgh."

Dentist: "Don't remember it. Hang on, I'll let you speak in a moment."

And so on.

Not a bad way to start the day after all.

More Dorothy Sayers!

Found Strong Poison in the second-hand book stall today! This is the one where Lord Peter meets Harriet Vane, the love of his life, who is on trial for murder. She is accused of poisoning her former lover with arsenic. It is a brilliant little novel, especially enlightening if you wish to learn more about the moral code of the time, and really understand better how people thought re: marriage and free love. Am very pleased.

Moby Dick is not going so well. *blush* Perhaps I should give it a rest for a bit.

Cheating on Moby

So at 2 o'clock Saturday morning my husband came back from Paris. He had naturally (for him) left something behind somewhere along his itinerary, this time his jacket with his house keys - luckily only in the car that gave him a lift from the airport shuttle. Anyway, he had to ring me to let him in. At 2 o'clock in the morning. Brutal.

Anyway, he bought me books. In English. It's funny really, how one of his favourite stops in Paris is Shakespeare and Company, a more or less English-language bookshop, but then he doesn't speak French. He got me The Girl Who Married a Lion by Alexander McCall Smith, which is a collection of African stories/fabels. Probably very good, so I'm glad to now own it, but I'd come across it before and elected not to read it since I didn't want to read fairy tales at the time. But it'll come in handy one day, I'm sure. Also he bought A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson - again, a favourite of mine. I'm always in stitches reading his books, and it's best when he's writing about things I know nothing or little of, as I won't spot any glaring errors then. ;-) This is a good one, of how he and his annoying friend Katz hike the Appalachian Trail. A lot of info, environmental debate, hilarious episodes. Recommended.

Also, yesterday down town I bought myself two books, because they were there. For any out of town readers I have - in Uppsala, on Saturdays, you find second-hand book stalls along a part of the river. Sort of "diet Paris" style. On my way to my bike I peeked, and found two old paperbacks: Ten Little Niggers by Agatha Christie, and Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers.

Ten Little Niggers was obviously renamed Ten Little Indians later for the film (which the cover of my paperback also points out, almost apologetically). It's a truly awful title, I cringe even typing the word. But hey, those where the times, that's the word she used, I can't change it. :-/ Substituting "indians" for "niggers" is really not a great improvement either. This is still one of the creepiest crime stories I've ever read. Admittedly, I haven't read it for years, I might start picking holes in it now, but as a child on summer holidays with my grandparents in Värmland I'd always read their (Swedish) copy, and it freaked me out. Storyline is that ten people are invited to a mansion on an isolated island. They don't know the others or that they are coming, and have nothing in common. They think. Once there, the supposed host is missing. A recording informs them that they are all going to be punished for being murderers that have escaped the law. And then they die, one by one. Most chilling.

Unnatural Death is Sayers' third Lord Peter novel, so he's still very much happy-go-lucky and debonair in character. Not that he ever really was, if you read between the lines. Sayers was much too good a writer for that. I love her work, and have read all her Lord Peter novels, including the one finished by Jill Paton Walsh (Thrones, Dominations). So I've already read this one too, but couldn't pass up a chance to own it for 20 crowns. Anyway, I don't seem to remember every detail of the storyline, so I'll have to re-read it sometime - the snappy Lord Peter dialogue should make it well worth it! It's something about an old woman who dies, and some people suspect her nurse murdered her. The doctor however concludes that there was no foul play involved, but Lord Peter is interested and starts picking at the problem. Then the maid is murdered, and things escalate.

The best thing about this one is the introduction of the estimable Miss Climpson, the shrewd middle-aged lady who sleuths for Lord Peter, writes lengthy italicized letters and runs his secretary school (or whatever it is). She's great. Oh, and there is a Reverend Hallelujah Dawson in this one, that's something to remember.

Du viet, han är polacken

I bloggens begynnelse tyckte Frida att jag skulle läsa Hjälp, jag heter Zbigniew av pseudonymen Zbigniew Kuklarz. Jag var lite avog, för maken hade just fått boken i födelsedagspresent av sin moder, och han tyckte inte den var så fantastisk. Men häromkvällen (innan han for till Paris den lyckans guldgossen) läste han upp ett stycke högt för mig, och nu har jag läst hela boken själv. Om än inte i ordning. Den är väldigt episodisk, och jag bläddrade fram och tillbaks till de roligaste/sorgligaste/mest givande bitarna. Påminner om Baktharis Kalla det vad fan du vill på det sättet.

I alla fall, stycket min man läste:

Tomek är inte ensam om att prata mycket. Det gäller de flesta polacker, i alla fall de jag träffat i Sverige. Framförallt efter att man ställt en simpel fråga. Då får man ofta en föreläsning till svar. De kan inte bara svara ja eller nej, det skulle vara alldeles för enkelt, och ett missat tillfälle att få bevisa sin smarthet.

Här började jag rågarva. Det är PRECIS SÅ DET ÄR. Maken skrattade också medan han läste, och sa vänta vänta, det kommer mer! Så fortsätter han läsa, med en grym polsk brytning:

Jag frågar: "Har du klippt dig?"
Polack svarar: (lång inandning) "Du viet... (lång suck) när min mormor var litten hon bodde i en by. Där fanns en man som rakade alla fåren med en maskin. Så varje år min mormor lät håret växa och sen hon gick till fårmannen och gav till honom en påse potatis så att han skulle klippa lite med maskinen i hennes hår va... bla bla

Jag höll på att krevera. Detta måste läsas med polsk brytning. Det är så exakt. Been there, heard that! Hur kul som helst! Usch, jag kanske är typ lyteskomiker? Det är brytningsskildringarna jag uppskattar mest i Kalla det vad fan du vill också. Läskig tanke. Föredrar att tro att det är mitt stora språkintresse som spelar in. I alla fall:

Vid det här laget ångrar man sin frågvishet [...] Lik förbannat ställer man dumt nog en fråga till som för att avbryta babbelsvaret från den första.

Jag frågar: "Vilket dagis valde ni åt er dotter?"
Polack svarar: "Nej du viet, (lång suck) kommunen har problem va. De diskutierar och diskutierar förbättringar utan att komma fram. Du förstår, det är politik i en nöt. Och var går pengarna, jag frågar sig...?"

Herregud, svara på frågan idiot!

Nu är mitt nya favvouttryck "nej du viet". Bara så ni viet. Vi tillbringade en god stund med att prata om alla polacker vi känner som är precis så där. Och min man hade en stunds ångest över huruvida han var en av dem (vilket jag försäkrade honom om att han inte var).

Moby Dick knallar på. Jag uppskattar geniet bakom, men historien i sig tilltalar mig inte, så det går trögt. Dock ändock, det går.

Elbereth Gilthoniel

My husband and sister are watching The Fellowship of the Ring (extended) on dvd at the moment. Reminds me of how disappointed I was with these films. First one - alright, tough book to film, not a bad effort on the whole. But second one was worse and third one pretty dismal.

The LOTR trilogy are some of my favourite books of all time. They are a huge part of my life, and I cannot understand how they could cut out good bits and leave the goddamned AWFUL computer game "congratulations, you've reached the next level" scenes in. What were they thinking? Sad sad sad.

Issues

One fundamental problem, of course, is that I'm not interested in men going off to sail the high seas and find themselves through gruelling labour and incredible danger. I'm told that this is not what the book is all about, but it feels like it. It's going very badly at the moment. I just want him to stop yapping so fecking much, find Ahab's ship, get on and start harpooning or whatever. For Christ's sake. You rambling selfish prat.

Made my own link list now

And I'm very smug about it. Ha. I'll be working on making a better one sometime. More organized, like.

Sarah Dunant: Under My Skin

Lord, I forgot to write about this one. I actually read it before Moby Dick was started upon (and Lord, it's proving slow work. Work of genius and all, I can see that, but I'm just so grateful that I don't have to spend any time with a drunk Ishmael. The man doesn't know how to shut up, does he? Makes you see where Hemingway was coming from.).

So, this was a delightful detective story, with a snappy, witty heroine - Hanna Wolfe. Never read any of Dunant's before, but must read more. Funny and cool! Dunant respects her readers' intelligence, and doesn't repeat background story ad nauseam. Instead Wolfe mentions what has obviously happened in previous books more in passing, which is more natural.

A health spa is suffering from somebody sabotaging treatments and equipment. Luckily no-one has been hurt badly. Hannah poses as a patient to find the culprit, but even after she has there is more to the story. The book wants us to think about how we view our and other peoples' bodies, to think about cosmetic surgery and the shallow, visual way our society has turned out. Can be a bit preachy, but not much. It's offset by Hannah's wise-cracking sarcasm.

I like.

Long between updates

I started reading Moby Dick. So I may be gone a while... Unless I pop in to write about all the Other Things I Read, like cookery books ("jellied consommé is a traditional summer delight") and newspapers.

Staying off the Internet for Good Friday, therefore in an Update Panic, and how long can the title be? Pretty long, it seems.

That's the plan. So then of course I get really antsy and feel that OMG, I need to blog now, don't I? But I feel so restless and can't focus on giving my books and posts the TLC they deserve. Although, some books don't deserve TLC. I have recently started on two books that I just abandoned due to crapness. This is a skill (?) I have picked up in my old age. In my, like, youth I could not not finish a book, but hitting 30 and starting to sport a fetching moustache has made me realise that life is, indeed, much to short. So the books I ditched are The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern by Lilian Jackson Brown, and The Poisoned Chalice by Paul Doherty. The first one just didn't grip me, but I'll keep it around, just in case war breaks out and I become really desperate for something to read. The second is, according to the cover, the "best of its kind since the death of Ellis Peters". My arse it is. God, I was bored stiff with the narrator cum hero ten pages in. Argh. Could not cope. If you think frolic is a good word to use in a sexual context you might like this.

But this leads me on to Ellis Peters, whom I have read. Again. Yay! An Excellent Mystery is the latest find. I may have read all her Cadfael novels now, but I'm not completely sure. I am especially not sure if I view this as a good thing (job well done, closure) or with a sense of loss... Her other books are much harder to get a hold of, and they are a little less captivating. Her style works so brilliantly in a mediaeval (ha! spelt right on first attempt!) context.

In AEM the abbey recieves two brothers who are refugees from the war. Their home abbey has been burned to the ground and their brethren scattered. One is a former Crusade hero, the other his devoted mute helper. One day a soldier who used to serve under Crusade Hero's command turns up, to ask his blessing as he goes to court the hero's former betrothed. However, it turns out that the woman, who was supposed to have become a nun, has disappeared. And the hunt is on for clues, and meanwhile things are tense in Shrewsbury Abbey...

This book has a "gay" theme, much more explicitly than I expected. One of the brothers of the abbey is tormented by memories of the woman who scorned him and drove him to take vows. He is now tempted by two of the younger and better-looking brothers, and tries to find ways to get physical with them. Since this is Ellis Peters it doesn't get ugly, of course. No rape on her watch. But it's interesting that she isn't afraid to breach the issue. Well, and Brother Sex-Mad isn't gay even, he's just desperate. Which is also nice, that he isn't gay and therefore crazy. He's straight and crazy. Or temporarily so. In general there is theme of scandal in this book - brothers who can't stay away from tempations of the flesh, women in the monastery... I recommend it. It might not be a novel to bring to the Pride Parade... but it's enjoyable and thought-provoking.

After that I read an Agatha Christie I had nicked from Daddy's (who we helped move to a new flat last weekend - a great source of stress and anguish and another reason for not blogging). Murder on the Links, featuring Hercule Poirot. I'm not a mad Christie fan, and this isn't one of her strongest novels, IMO. I can't be arsed to go into detail, suffice it to say that the victim is found in a grave dug in a golf course. In France. It's set in France. However, it gets bonus points for Poirot being a little less of a caricature than usual. Well, not that I've read many Poirot mysteries or anything, but I remember him as a caricature, and I've never been that keen.

I also had borrowed a Margery Allingham novel, The Crime at Black Dudley, but I think I've read it. It starts with a dagger hunt in a dark house - pretty distinctive, and I know I've read that before... but for the life of me the rest is a blank. I can't have enjoyed it that much then, so I probably shouldn't bother re-reading, right?

Anyway, a Happy Easter to all of you who happen to read this! May you all find time for some påskekrim, regardless of where you are!

The Recipe, capital R, from The Best British Mysteries

Well, I haven't finished this short story collection (ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Allison & Busby 2004) yet, but I simply have to post this recipe already. It's from the very first story of the book (and I've been thinking about this tart while reading all the rest...), Martha Grace by Stella Duffy.

She will make him a deep tart of black berries and melted chunks of bitter chocolate, imported from France, ninety per cent cocoa solids. She starts early in the day. Purest white flour mixed in the air as she sifts it with organic cocoa so perfect that her pastry is almost black. Then the fruit - blackberries, boysenberries, loganberries, blackcurrants - just simmered with fruit sugar and pure water over the lowest of heat for almost two hours until they are thick syrup and pulp. She skims the scum from the surface [...]

And then she adds poison, obviously. This is crime fiction.

She leaves the thick fruit mix to cool. Melts the chocolate. Glistening rich black in the shallow pan. When it is viscous and runs slowly from the back of her walnut spoon, she drops in warmed essences almond, vanilla [...] She leaves the pan over hot water, bubbling softly in the cool of her morning kitchen. Lays the pastry out on the marble slab. Rolls it to paper fine. Folds it in on itself and starts again. Seven times more. Then she fits it to the baking dish, fluted edges, heavy base. She bakes the pastry blind and removes from her oven a crisp, dark shell. Pours in warm, thick, liquid chocolate, sprinkles over a handful of flaked and toasted almonds, watches them sink into the quicksand black. [...] When the chocolate is almost cool, she beats three egg yolks and more sugar into the fruit mixture, pours it slowly over the chocolate, lifts the tart dish and ever so gently places it in the heated oven. [...] She cries, one slow fat tear every fifteen seconds. When there are one hundred and sixty tears the tart is done.

My friends, how fabulous is this? Pretty much a lot! Had to look up what loganberries are to find out they are a cross between raspberry and blackberry. Souds damn delicious anyway, dahlinks.

On the whole this is an good collection of short stories. Some are meh, some are very enjoyable. Anne Perry goes on and on for pages, Val McDermid is snappy and to the point, Peter Lovesey also impresses. Simon Brett is amusing. Would be great to bring on a trip. And I'm going to read more Stella Duffy, if possible. And brush up on tart noir.

Dickson Carr and Simon Brett

So I felt I had to read John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, since it's such a classic, and since it was repeatedly referred to in Lovesey's novel Bloodhounds.

See how I've learnt to make links? Go me! Go my husband who explained the process. Of course, after he'd done that I managed to locate the Blogger help section. *eye-roll* Any day now, my five readers, I shall be editing my link list there on the right. Keep checking in to see the updates... :-P

But I digress. Anyway, amazingly enough one cannot find The Hollow Man in English at the library, but they did have it in Swedish. Den ihålige mannen it's called, aptly enough. So I borrowed it.

Book itself - not bad. Not bad. But I think I'll still have to find it in English some time. The translation was good, but distracting. I can't remember, from my last Gideon Fell mystery, vulgarities such as skitprat and håll käften (but in English). The tone doesn't feel right - but then I don't mix in upper-classy circles so what do I know. Maybe it is right.

The book itself is a locked room mystery, but I can't be arsed to summarize it at the moment. Bad me. I'm just going to write snow, three graves and Hungary, and that should be enough to trigger my memory if I ever forget the plotline.

After that I read a Simon Brett novel called The Witness at the Wedding. It's one in the Fethering series, of which I'm rather fond - not that it's Nobel Prize material or anything. Brett does quite a fine job of writing credibly about his middle-aged women, but he doesn't seem to quite trust that he does, but instead keeps over-explaining especially Carole's repressed motivations. Also, there is one major boo-boo. Carole's future daughter-in-law goes to see her neighbour Jude for some alternative physiotherapy, and tells Jude that she doesn't want Carole to know she's been there, because she'd worry. Later in the novel, Jude feels a little guilty about not telling Carole, but her promise to Gaby comes first. Then, suddenly, Carole knows. No relating of the telling. It's weird. And it's obviously the editor's fault, eh?

Right now I'm reading a collection of short stories, and the most exciting thing in it so far has been an amazing tart recipe. I mean, the stories are good and all, it's not that, but the tart sounds glorious. Wow. I'm going to have to post the whole recipe here tomorrow and make Frida look at it.

Kathy Reichs: Cross Bones

I am a huge fan of Ms Reichs' novels. I just love her heroine Temperance Brennan, I love the snappy dialogue between her and Andrew Ryan, I love the sciency bits, I love that I now know what a forensic anthropologist is... I love them so much that I overlook the sometimes annoying habit of pointing out that people speak French in Montréal, the occasional deus ex machina plotlines... They are well-crafted, enjoyable crime novels. Muchly recommended. And the spin-off telly series is starting here in April, I'll have to check it out.

This one takes our heroine Temperance Brennan abroad, to Israel, which is a new move. She and Andrew Ryan are investigating a murder, in which the motive may or not be an ancient skeleton which may or may not have been found at Masada. Once in Israel they get caught up in what appears to be a massive conspiracy to cover up historical facts; but as usual in a Reichs' novel simpler explanations prevail in the end.

Having been to Israel and Palestine I thoroughly enjoyed her descriptions of the country. I too was overwhelmed at the beauty and historical presence of the place. I can see why we fight over it. Ms Reichs does not fall for the temptation to write her books as travel guides. She mentions what is necessary, a refreshing attitude. I like to see that other people have noticed what I noticed there; how strange it is that every person in authority you meet appears to be barely twenty, how humourless the Israelis seem (so odd to us who grew up with Mel Brooks, Seinfeld, Woody Allen etc. - one is far less surprised if an Arab is humourless, considering), how normal it quickly becomes that there are road blocks everywhere and people with machine guns. I was thrilled when my mind's eye can picture the places she mentions: The American Hostel, hey, I've been there! Not inside, but my airport taxi stopped there to pick up some passengers. Hey, Tempe's friend Jake lives in Beit Hanina, I've totally been there! Wow. I get the food, I get the descriptions of buildings.

A good book, on the whole, even though I'm never a fan of the "Jesus never rose" speculative novels - it's been done, is my general feeling. But it was done rather nicely here.

In The Company of Cheerful Ladies

By Rra McCall Smith, of course.

God I just love this series. I know I go on and on about this... but it's true. They're so full of life and charm.

This one is a little bit darker than the ones I've read previously. For example, Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni go to church with their children, and the minister asks them all to pray for everyone who is dead or dying of AIDS. The name of the disease is never spoken outright in the books, but we all know what they're talking about. We join in the grief. And Mma Ramotswe's first husband, the abusive and cruel musician Note turns up again and tries to blackmail her. It is quite sad.

There are many people cleverer than I who have reviewed these books and who can explain better why they are so appealing. Maybe it all boils down to this; that we would all like a Mma Ramotswe on our side. To teach us about decency, honesty, humanity. Not that she is perfect, not really. She's just a nice person. What people should be.

2 x Sara Paretsky

Was very happy to find two early Paretsky novels at the library. I have read several of hers, but I did feel I had missed out on some background since the first ones have been unavailable. I think I'm going to have to do a more thorough check for novels by my favourites in the library catalogue, to see if more are lurking in the suburbian branches.

So I found a volume with Indemnity Only and Killing Orders, no. 1 and 3 in the Warshawski series. Funnily enough I think I have read Deadlock, which is no. 2. I read the synopsis on http://www.saraparetsky.com/ though, and I'm not sure. Not 100 %. I love Paretsky's novels dearly, but to be quite honest I don't always understand the plots, and that tends to make it hard for me to remember them. Not that they don't make sense, oh no, just that they often boil down to some sort of financial trickery and I tend to blank out at that. This time I made a very conscious effort to understand what was going on, but I still think I may have failed.

Indemnity Only introduces V.I. to us. She has been working as a P.I. for maybe 8 years, if my memory serves me correctly, dealing mostly with financial crimes. One night a man turns up at her office asking her to find his son, who has disappeared. V.I. goes looking, finds the son (dead), discovers that the man who hired her is not the father, and starts unravelling a complicated insurance fraud scam with union ties. Well, it might not be complicated, like I said, I'm financially stupid.

I like this one; it flows well, plot is solid and good, interesting characters. Having read the later V.I. novels it's interesting to see how she has developed and changed. She's very much a hard-ass here, she's a little cooler later on in life. Also, a lot of her habits are presented and explained -stuff that I've noticed in the later novels without really getting. Like the obsession with baths and exercising after getting beaten up.

Killing Orders has V.I. taking on a problem for a much-hated aunt, involving forged share certificates belonging to a Dominican priory. The aunt quickly changes her mind and sacks her, but once V.I. has started researching something she doesn't quit, even when she is attacked with acid. (Side note: why doesn't she quit? Surely she should have enough with all those other cases? Why take on a thankless task she won't get paid for? I never really get that. I think in every novel she gets the boot but keeps at it, and I'm not sure I know why.)

Funny quote:

"I stopped for a breakfast falafel sandwich [...] The decimation of Lebanon was showing up in Chicago as a series of restaurants and little shops, just as the destruction of Vietnam had been visible here a decade earlier. If you never read the news but ate out a lot you should be able to tell who was getting beaten up around the world."

Have I ever mentioned, by the way, how greatly instructive detective stories can be? I know, thanks to Ms Paretsky, that there is a roundabout road in Chicago called "The Loop", for example. Stuff like this comes in handy, I'm sure. In Swedish it's called allmänbildning.

Ellis Peters: The Virgin In The Ice

Oooh, the library had a Brother Cadfael novel I hadn't read! Joy and celebrations! The Brother Cadfael mysteries are some of my absolute favourite books. I can see why some people don't take to them, but I enjoy the core of goodness in them. Parts of the series was televised, I believe, but they never showed it in Sweden.

This one features the usual trappings - there is always a young man and a young woman who are very handsome and good and deserve each other, always a sick person who needs Cadfael's care... The oddity here is that Cadfael's son makes his appearance - that's why I've wanted to read this one for so long, since the son turns up in later books, that I have read.

Just before the sack of Worcester, a young boy and his elder sister, both noble, left the town to make for Shrewsbury. A young nun followed them. In the winter storms a band of bandits burn, murder and pillage, and the small group of refugees is separated. One of them turns up dead.

A lovely book, as they all are. It hints at darker things, but focuses on life. I've always liked how Peters weaves in some moral teachings, without preaching them. Her style of writing doesn't work so well in her more contemporary novels, in my opinion; the slightly naivistic tone works a bit better in the escapist setting of mediaeval England.

"But surely our little faults do not deserve so crushing a penalty. Without time to reconsider, to repent, to make a reparation. Youth destroyed for a folly, when youth should be allowed its follies on the way to maturity and sense."

Paula Gosling: The Woman In Red

Nicked this in the clearout at my father's flat. The name Gosling rang a bell, but I couldn't remember what I'd read by her. As usual, eh? So just now, before blogging, I looked her up, and she's written some lovely little mysteries, that I enjoyed very much; in other words my memory served me well on this occassion. I've read The Body in Blackwater Bay (the reviewer on www.mysteryguide.com doesn't seem to like it, but I remember it as being fair enough), and I know I've read The Wychford Murders... but I don't remember the storyline at the moment.

Anywhoo, this one is about a dead man who has fallen of a tall building of luxury holiday homes belonging to foreigners residing in the Costa del Sol (did that sentence just become extremely long?). A man is arrested for his murder, and an embassy employee is told to come help him out. The whole affair has its roots in the arrest and death of the arrested man's son some years before, and the forged paintings Junior produced.

Quite charming, and a niblet-sized account of post-Franco 1983 Spain, before the EU really kicked in. It's also rather funny in parts.

"This time, when he moved his body, it wasn't so bad. It was still agony, but the agonies had sorted themselves out. There was a small agony in his left knee, a medium agony in both elbows, and quite a respectable-sized agony in his chest. Also, his nose itched.
Being alive was not all he'd hoped it would be as he'd leapt out of the falling car."

Ann Granger: Mixing with Murder

Found in a second-hand shop, now read for lack of anything else... features heroine Fran Varady, aspiring actor who does odd jobs to make a living. She is persuaded by strip-club owner Allerton to go to Oxford to make contact with one of his dancers, who suddenly quit and ran off.

Not a bad book, quite varied and enjoyable characters, but on the whole it feels a bit slow and repetitious.

Albert Sánchez Piñol: Kall Hud

Originalets titel La piel fría.

En skräckroman med drag från Conran står det på baksidan, och det tycker jag stämmer bra. Han skriver lätt gammalmodigt (eller är det översättaren som gjort det så?), vilket gör att boken känns autentisk. Den utspelar sig under mellankrigstiden någon gång. En desillusionerad irländsk motståndsman på flykt undan det nya Irland kommer som väderobservatör till en liten ö i Sydatlanten. Där finns en märklig fyrvaktare, men den tidigare väderobservatören tycks ha försvunnit. Redan första natten anfalls irländaren av grod- och människolika varelser, och så följer ett mardrömsår, där han tvingas in i en försvarspakt med den alltmer vansinnige fyrvaktaren.

Klart läsvärd!

Ian Rankin x 3

In an effort to understand the Ian Rankin phenomenon, I borrowed a book called Rebus: The Early Years, consisting of the three first Rebus novels; Knots & Crosses, Hide & Seek and Tooth & Nail. I can now say that I do get the fuss. Rebus, the way he is portrayed here, with his unfulfilled religious feelings and dysfunctional relationships is a much more appealing figure than I found him in Dead Souls. And btw, how the feck do you link when blogging anyway? It's driving me around the bloody bend, and I can find feck all useful in the so-called "help" section. Anyway, in these three I can even cope with the eternal whisky (sic).

This compilation comes complete with foreword by Rankin. He claims that when he wrote Knots & Crosses he had didn't have a clue that he'd written a crime novel. "When the book was published, I found to my astonishment that everyone was saying I'd written a whodunnit, a crime novel. I think I'm still the only crime writer I know who hadn't a clue about the genre before setting out. There were crime sections in bookshops and libraries - news to me - and a healthy number of practitioners extant." Two bones to pick with this though; firstly, if he has no knowledge of the genre, he could hardly have Rebus refer to the plot he finds himself in as something reminiscent of a "cheap thriller" somewhere half-way through the book (QED and all), and secondly, who in their right mind would call this a whodunnit? Beggars belief, dahlinks.

Methinks he is having us on a little. Well, not about other people calling it a whodunnit, but about himself knowing absolutely nothing of the genre. Although, he might be in earnest, and the cheap thriller comment only shows how much of the crime fiction what's-the-word-I'm-looking-for-can't-concentrate-worth-a-damn-here um, attributes perhaps have become such common knowledge that people refer to them without actually knowing them first-hand.

Anywhoo.

Knots & Crosses: Introduces Rebus, who is carrying some sort of dark secret from his days in the SAS. Young girls are being abducted and killed. Rebus is receiving crank letters. We understand in five seconds that the two things are connected, Rebus doesn't, because he is daft. Interesting homosexual theme, am left unsure if Rebus actually had sex with his army friend or not.

Hide & Seek: Junkie found dead, something not right, Rebus finds out junkie hid possibly incriminating photos.

Tooth & Nail: Least favourite novel. A bit complacent. Author looking for television rights? Rankin goes to London to help out on serial killer case. Portrait of killer not bad. Ends with pathetic car chase - God almighty, I do hate car chases. Better on paper than on film, but nevertheless.

Michael Innes: The Daffodil Affair

I've never read any Innes before - not sure why, just never occurred to me. But the other week I met an acquaintance who noticed my Peter Lovesey novel, and we got talking about crime fiction, and he mentioned that he used to read Michael Innes, and I thought I'd give him a shot then.

Reading the novel I fluctuated between thinking it was great and thinking it was pretentious. The first blogging idea that came into my head was that I should write "this is a literary novel - if by literary you mean that there are an awful lot of words in the sentences" - but later I decided that it doesn't really apply. It is literary in the real sense too - oblique-ish references to Ulysses (the Joyce one) etc. On the whole, two days after finishing it, I think it's quite memorable. In a good way. Excellent? Would I say that? I think I must read some more to make sure (but I'm reading Ian Rankin now, so it will have to wait).

The story is that a series of seemingly unconnected events - the disappearance of a counting cabhorse, a haunted house, a multiple personality girl and a Yorkshire witch - turn out to be all part of a scheme to cash in on peoples' credulity in the post-war years (the book is from 1944). The actual crime novel part is very by the way really - it's more a case of the prime characters being police officers than a case of a novel about a crime. There is no detection per se, they sort of stumble upon the right people in a deus ex machina sort of way. Which is disappointing if you're expecting a whodunnit. I suggest the reader just goes with it.

I think some quotes are in order.

"There are openings in all classes [ ... ] In the main it will be spiritualism for the upper class and astrology for the lower. Spiritualism is comparatively expensive - and can be extremely so - whereas astrology is quite cheap. The middle classes will have the benefit of a little of both. For rural populations we shall rely cheifly on witchcraft. What is sometimes called the intelligentsia has exercised my mind a good deal. Yoga might do, and reincarnation and the Great Mind and perhaps a little Irish mythology. But the problem is not important, as there are likely to be singularly few of them left."

It is uncannily accurate, isn't it?

" 'Here is a perfect detective-story motive, and yet we're not in a detective story at all.'

'My dear man, you're talking like something in Pirandello. Go to sleep.'

'We're in a sort of hodge-podge of fantasy and harum-scarum adventure that isn't a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes.'

'Innes? I've never heard of him.' Appleby spoke with decided exasperation."

Niiiice!

This could make an excellent film, in the right hands.

Peter Lovesey: Bloodhounds

This novel takes place after Diamond's return to Bath, while he is trying to settle in with his new team. It features a valuable stamp, a locked-room murder mystery and a circle of crime fiction aficionados calling themselves the Bloodhounds of Bath.

I like this one a whole lot better than The Summons. I found it better crafted, and the far-fetchedness of the plot in some instances matched the theme of the book, which is the discussion of preposterous crime stories. After reading this I'm going to try to read some more of John Dickson Carr; I have read a bit, but not much.

Enid Blyton: Claudine at St Claire's

My father is in the process of moving, and we were over at his flat sorting through books. I found all my old Secret Seven books - I didn't have the complete set or anything, but I have a good few. I liked the Secret Seven better than the Famous Five. Claudine at St Claire's is the only St Claire's book I've got, I kept meaning to find more, but I never did. I used to love reading Enid Blyton as a child. And later aswell - in my teens, if I was depressed and felt lonely I'd re-read one of her books and try to revert to a simpler childhood emotion. Which is false really, childhood emotions aren't simple at all, they just seem that way in retrospect.

Anyway, I re-read this one just the other day. It's terrible really, all the waffle about English honour and sound English values. It was written in 1944, but there is no mention of the war at all - unless we are to understand that this is why Claudine is in England in the first place? But then she surely couldn't talk about sending her oh-so-beautiful cushion cover home to France? Nevertheless, there is something very comforting about fictional boarding school camaraderie - especially for children like me, who were lonely and didn't feel at home at home. HPS - Harry Potter Syndrome, I suppose.

I remember feeling disappointed when I learned that Enid Blyton was a cold and distant mother. But it's not really surprising, when you read her books with an adult's eye. She's not writing about real people, she's writing about archetypes. Sometimes they change, but since she is writing the book she is always in control of their development. She must have found RL difficult to cope with.

Alexander McCall Smith: 44 Scotland Street

This book is unusual in layout, since it was originally a serialised novel in The Scotsman. McCall Smith complained about how there were no more serialised novels, such as Dickens', and he was promptly offered the job to write one.

Now, while Dickens wrote in a time when people happily read immense quantities of text with their morning tea (I presume), McCall Smith lives in an age of much shorter attention spans. hence, his chapters are very brief. When reading all the instalments in one swoop, it therefore lacks flow, and comes across as a little too staccato. Although, as usual when reading his work, I really couldn't give an arse about such minor details. It's so much fun. I am in love with the characters and I want more of them. Please write a sequel, Mr. McCall Smith!

Best part: a hymn to Belgium presented to the Church of Scotland. No.. the best part is the cameo of and incessant references to Ian Rankin. I want to read Rankin now, and I never did before - surely that's saying something!

Jeffery Deaver: The Twelfth Card

A teenage girl from Harlem, researching some family history in a library, is attacked and narrowly escapes being killed. The scene is set to look like an attempted rape, but doesn't add up. Rhyme and Sachs start unravelling the different clues, while the girl's life is still in danger.

This is one of Deaver's best, IMO. Quite riveting, and full of false leads that trick the reader into making presumptions about where the story is going. It does have weaknesses, however. Deaver tends to just tie up all the loose ends towards the last quarter or fifth of the novel, without much consideration for the literary flow of the novel. He repeats previous things that have occurred in the Rhymes/Sachs timeline, to keep the uninitiated reader up-to-date, but for the rest of us it becomes repetitive. He also does his research into the underlying theme of the novel, in this case black culture, Harlem and its history, African-American Vernacular English (abbreviated AAVE, as he is careful to point out), and tends to go on about this at some length - sometimes fitting it into the story nicely, other times breaking the flow of the narrative to lecture us, the readers. Now, to me, it's very interesting to learn all this about Harlem... but it does ruin the literary aspect of the novel a little. It remains very obvious that Deaver is a white man writing about a black man's world - on the other hand, and to be fair to him, it's not like he tries to hide it, really.

Fun detail in this one: Deaver hints that Amelia Sachs may be related to the German police officer we became accquainted with in Garden of Beasts. Less fun detail: a clumsy line about what Parker Kincaid and Margaret Lukas (from The Devil's Teardrop) are up to now (not as well worked into the flow of the book as the German connection above).

ETA: almost forgot to mention one of the most interesting aspects of the book! Deaver uses the novel to speak out against the dehumanisation inflicted by the death penalty. I don't want to give away too much of the plotline, so suffice it to say that his method works quite well. Now I have to go off and have dinner. :-P

Amanda Cross: Sweet Death, Kind Death

After reading six pages of this novel I thought - damn, is the woman capable of writing a setence without a subordinate clause? This has never bothered me before, but this time.. I swear to God, I read half the book before the short sentences started appearing. I'm a strong believer in mixing it up.

Apart from that it's a charming little book, for those of us who appreciate the kind of intellectual sleuth Kate Fansler is, and don't require the crime to be at the centre of things. Kate tends to ramble through the book drinking whisky (sic) , smoking, talking in subordinate clauses galore, and then suddenly, bam! - crime solved. The solving part is really not the important part. What's important is the thoughts on feminism, middle age, womens' roles in society etc. They're also such an excellent introduction to the American Intellectual - a breed a lot of Europeans don't believe exist. But Kate Fansler can out-quote Lord Peter and Harriet if she puts her mind to it - she can certainly outdrink them, in a refined way of course.

Have another drink, why don't you.

Plotline: a professor at a college for women only commits suicide by drowning. It seems straight-forward enough, but something she's written in her journal makes her biographers uneasy about it. To dispel doubts the president of the college invites Kate to do some sleuthing.

Carina Burman: Cromwells huvud

För flera flera år sedan läste jag Den tionde sånggudinnan, och jag tyckte den var mycket bra. Originell, intressanta och varierade karaktärer... men efter det blev det aldrig av att läsa någon annan av Burmans böcker. Men så häromveckan var det en artikel om henne någonstans, så jag tänkte att jag skulle låna någonting på biblioteket. Det blev alltså Cromwells huvud.

Och min Gud, en så tråkig bok. Jag ska genast erkänna att jag bara läst hälften. Jag skumläste den andra hälften idag på jobbet, men jag orkade inte ens uppfatta vad skruven på slutet var (jag bara antar att det var någon sorts skruv, någon som visade sig vara mördare eller dylikt). Den utspelar sig i Cambridge, och är skriven i något slags 40-talsstil, inbillar jag mig - jag är ingen litteraturvetare så jag är inte säker. Kändes oäkta i alla fall. Zzzzz.

Om jag har några läsare som kan rekommendera en Burman som är värd min tid, ber jag er att lämna en kommentar om den!

Patricia Cornwell: Postmortem

I've read a few Cornwells before, mostly because I enjoyed Kathy Reichs' books about forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan very much and according to book cover quotes Cornwell is "the original". I haven't taken to them though, and it all comes back to what Amanda Cross says about liking the detective... I don't like Kay Scarpetta. Really. And sometimes you can not like a character and still like them, if you know what I mean - but I really don't like Kay Scarpetta at all. All she has going for her is intelligence. It just isn't enough.

Anyway, so last Sunday we were at dinner with some of my husband's colleagues, and we got talking about crime novels and the man of the house said he liked Patricia Cornwell. I said I didn't, but admitted to having read only later ones, when the plotlines have all become extremely exagerrated and there are more conspiracy theories than in Alias. HE said that no, it's the early ones that are good. So I went to the library to get some early ones, picked up Postmortem (her first, and award-winning novel) and about six pages in I'm beginning to think that hey, this is familiar, I've read this before haven't I? But I can't remember much, hardly anything. (Once again - blog = good.)

So QED - Patricia Cornwell is a little overhyped. Although I can completely see what a breath of fresh air she must've been in the crime novel business back in 1990. She deserves cred for that alright.

Postmortem introduces us to Scarpetta, her niece Lucy (of later lesbian poor judgement - don't you love reading series in the wrong order?) and Marino. A serial killer is strangling single women in Richmond, in a cruel and bestial fashion. There are almost no clues to go on, and the pressure is on the police force, the politicians and of course on Scarpetta, who becomes the victim of a conspiracy aiming to make her scapegoat. She also becomes the focus of the killer, and it all ends in a shoot-out in her bedroom. I really don't feel bad about giving that away, because if you didn't see it coming you don't deserve to read books.

The book is full of forensic detail, including descriptions of the recently discovered DNA technology. It's quite interesting to read, since we now take it for granted so much that we think we understand it even though we don't (I'm talking of people like me, not majoring in science-y subjects). Postmortem also features some computer hacking, in that pre-Windows XP-on-every-computer era. This is also interesting, but it goes way over my head. I'm mostly bemused by genius Lucy's fascination by the computer, since I myself never took to it until I learnt I could surf the net and talk to people. So what if there's a database? What do you do with it if your Auntie Kay has forbidden you to mess about with it? N.b. that these latter thoughts are not what make me unembracing of the book, they're just thoughts...

It's kind of a classic must-read. I think I'll look for no. 2 and see how I feel about that one before I pass final judgement.

Peter Lovesey: The Summons

An ominous title, but not a very ominous book, on the whole.

Peter Diamond left his job as a police inspector in Bath years ago, and he and his wife are now struggling to make a living in London. When a murderer he put away 4 years previously escapes from life-time inprisonment and takes a hostage, Diamond is called back by his former colleagues. The alleged killer wants Diamond to prove his innocence, and Diamond investigates the case again.

Better (much better) than it sounds, although why Diamond is praised as being such a kick-ass police officer is beyond me - occassionally he seems thick as two planks. But it's witty, and well-plotted on the whole. I've previously read Wobble to Death, and now I feel I must give Lovesey another few chances and read some more of his work.

Peter Diamond as a character is a lot like Inspector Frost, of television fame, but Frost is based on another series of books I understand (by R.D. Wingfield -I should check them out too).

Val McDermid: Report for Murder

This is the first Lindsay Gordon mystery - and it must be a newly acquired by the library, because I haven't seen it before. It looks like a reprint... now that the Hill/Jordan crime novels are such a hit I suppose the publisher is more keen on flogging even the books about the gay journalist sleuth, or so the cynic in me supposes.

Lindsay goes to a girl's boarding school to write a cover piece, which will help the school raise funds to save some of their playing fields. This goes against her principles really, but she's helping her friend who teaches there, and at the same time earning some much-needed cash. Just before the fund-raising concert the star of the show is found strangled to death, and Lindsay's friend is arrested for the murder. Lindsay and her new girlfriend set out to discover what the police obviously must've missed. This is the book that introduces girlfriend Cordelia, who will in later books turn out a bad egg - I'd love to ask McDermid if this was planned from the start or not!

I am, as I've said, very fond of Lindsay, but I have to admit that these novels are not among McDermid's best. Much as I am loathe to admit it, the Hill/Jordan novels have that honour. They are more emotional and descriptive, which makes for a better work of literature on the whole. Since Report for Murder is the first one of all it can be excused for being a little too formulaic, however.

Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

Found this childrens' book and nicked it (back) from my father's the other day. Had completely forgotten about it - it might not even be mine actually. But it is now! Said she smugly.

I have a copy of Garner's Elidor in a Swedish translation somewhere. The story is similar in both books - ordinary children find/find out about another world, parallell to ours, peopled with goblins and wizards and where a battle of good vs evil is being fought.

This one uses a lot of old Norse mythology. Even though Garner writes very well - I can't fault his craftmanship really - the story itself is unsatisfactory and vaguely pointless. Maybe there is a part 2? Because the ending really isn't much good. The whole thing is just over. Meh.

Tack on a better ending and this could make an excellent film though.

Alexander McCall Smith: Morality for Beautiful Girls

Another lovely book about Precious Ramotswe's detective agency.

In this one Mr J.L.B. Maketoni suffers from depression, so Precious and her assistant have to run his business for him while he gets better. It refers a little more to the darker, sadder parts of Africa than the two previous ones I've read, but still remains firmly rooted in optimism and a belief in what is good and true.

Most memorable part: when Mma Ramotswe remembers how happy her maid was when she was told that she would get a job. She thinks "I am lucky that I can make somebody so happy just by saying something." The world would be a better place if more people thought of that as a sign of good fortune.

Deaver and Davis

Jeffery Deaver, The Devil's Teardrop: I'm on a bit of a Deaver-kick at the moment. Unfortunately I think the library may have run out of books now... Anyway, I merrily picked up two non-Rhyme/Sachs novels lately. I didn't really want to, because one gets very attached to an author's detectives you know, but I wasn't disappointed. Anyway, in this one Rhyme has a small cameo, which was nice.

Storyline: a man hides a silenced machine gun in a bag, and fires wildly in a crowd, killing several. The police get a note from someone else, wanting money to stop the shooter. The only lead is the note, so Parker Kincaid, former FBI document expert, is asked to come back to help find the man behind the scheme. Kincaid is a nice hero, I was pleased to make his acquaintance. He is a single father, who has promised to give up his police career in order to gain custody of his children and protect them from a selfish, alcoholic mother. However, he can't help but get involved in the case when the shooter kills children. Juxtaposed with him is Margaret Lukas, a tough-as-nails federal agent. They make a good pair.

The best thing with this book is that it really did fool me. There are several false leads, and I was sucked in and fooled, I admit it. Original yet credible plot, definitely well worth reading! Recommended!

Deaver, Garden of Beasts: For a change, this is an historical novel, set in Berlin during the Olympic games of -36. A New York professional killer (a button man), is covertly hired by the US government to kill the mastermind behind Germany's rearmament scheme. In exchange he's going to get a clean slate and a fresh start. Once in Berlin our hitman, Paul Schumann, can't help but get a little too personally involved as he discovers what fear and oppression people are living under.

I really wouldn't want to give away too much of the plot, because just as with The Devil's Teardrop it was pleasantly complicated and had me fooled. The ending is perhaps a little too sentimental, but I wouldn't want to let that colour my perception of the whole book. On the whole it's very enjoyable, and cleverly explores questions of good and evil, morality and immorality.

The book is marred a tiny bit by Deaver's over-eagerness in showing us that he's done his research well. There are a few too many explanations into German expressions and a few too many dropping of brand names of the times. In my opinion a lot of writers fall into this trap when they are writing about an era or a country not perfectly familiar to them - for example all these American writers who write detective novels set in England; on the whole people drink just a few too many cups of teas, and they're referred to as cuppas just a little too much. If you see what I mean.

Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised an impressed by this one. Obviously a story he was eager to tell. I'd have to say well done!

Lindsey Davis, See Delphi and Die: Another Falco novel! His wife's (Helena's) brother, Aulus, has beensent to Greece to study law. Almost immediately the family receives a letter from him, teling about a murder that has occurred within a group of tourists he came across. His mother becomes worried that her eldest son will be in danger, so sends Falco off to investigate.

As I think I've previously said, I love the characters and historical detail of these books, even though the writing style is really too choppy and disjointed to be perfect. They would have been so much better with better editing, in my opinion. Nevertheless it's charming how Davis manages to insert a modern phenomenon as tourism into Ancient Greece and get away with it. The ending of this one leaves a lot to be desired. It's very abrupt and it almost seems as though she were fed up with the story.

Airth, Crombie and McGown

Rennie Airth: The Blood-Dimmed Tide
I had read Airth's first novel featuring John Madden, River of Darkness. I enjoyed it very much, and it's probably the reason why I could side-tracked into reading Anne Perry, since I couldn't remember the author's name (this was before I started the blog), and had to search for WW1-themed books. I'm very bad with names.

In River of Darkness we were introduced to Madden, as he tried to solve a brutal series of murders and stop the serial killer from killing again. Madden realises that the murderer is drawing on his experience in the trenches of the war, and is motivated by nothing more than the wish to kill. In The Blood-Dimmed Tide Madden has left the police force and his happily tending his farm and his family, when a little girl is found dead and raped nearby. He naturally has to help the police track down the killer, as it is plain this is an exceptionally clever murderer who is likely to keep killing until he is forcibly stopped.

Like Caleb Carr, Airth writes about serial killers in an age before psychological profiling. Both writers manage this well. My only hesitation really is the fact that everyone is a little too open-minded and good. From my own experience I have to say that most people are eejits, and I don't think it was any different 100 years ago at all. But of course, we like the main characters more if they are lovable, and the cliché of the drunken, unpleasant PI or detective is overdone.

Deborah Crombie, Now May You Weep
Another Kincaid-James novel, once again with a supernatural twist. Deus ex machina, anyone? Gemma James goes on a cookery course to Scotland with her ex-neighbour and friend Hazel. Turns out Hazel has emotional ties to Scotland she never mentioned. The bits about whisky-making are quite interesting. On the whole not bad, but this isn't my favourite author. Too soft.

Jill McGown, Unlucky for Some
Now, this is an author I had forgotten. I have read one of her novels before (in the pre-blog era), and had gotten her confused with Crombie, as her main characters are also police-officers-who-are-lovers. These two are slightly more realistic in their human failings and emotions though.

In this one what appears to be serial killer murders, connected to gambling establishments and a successfull TV personality, baffle Hill and Lloyd. It's a very clever puzzle whodunnit with some twists. Plot is well crafted and keeps us all guessing. Must get some more of McGown's, I can see.

Jeffery Deaver: The Vanished Man

In this one an illusionist baffles Rhyme and Sachs (but not for long) by committing gruesome murders. A good plot, well paced on the whole, better than The Empty Chair I'd have to say. The magician theme was interesting since Carol O'Connell has done it too, also set in NY, in her series on Mallory the beautiful foundling cop. A series I kind of like, and then don't.

Not a book to waffle on about though.

Amos Oz: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Ironically I was (belatedly) given this book for my birthday while I was reading Eggers' memoirs. So, although I usually never read memoirs/biographies I've now read two, one right after the other.

I've never read anything by Oz before - I'd never even heard of him until recently, when I read a review of this very book in the paper (the Swedish translation just came out). He does seem an interesting author though, so I might look for his novels at the library some time. Although then I have the dilemma of choosing which language to read him in - English, like the first one I read, or Swedish, which is more likely to be available...

Just like Eggers, Oz writes about the death of a parent/his parents. But where Eggers immediately throws us into the room where his mother is watching TV while dying of cancer, Oz doesn't even mention the tragedy of his mother's death (suicide) until a good bit in. He writes about his childhood and the history of his family, about being Ashkenazi in Israel's childhood, about the insular community they were then. These are this book's strenghts, how he explains the birth of the Israeli state and the mindset of the Diaspora Jews compared to the New Hebrew. All the dreams and ideals. Having been to Palestine and Israel this summer it's also extremely interesting to read about the different opinions different groups of Israelis/Jews have... I can't concentrate enough at the moment to be more analytic, suffice it to say that reading this book it helped to have been there, to have experienced the dust, the heat, the smallness of the country, the suspicions, the fear, the food.

If I have to choose which book is better, I'd have to say Eggers'. Possibly because I can relate to it more. Possibly because he bares everything, gives us all his feelings and shortcomings, and only rarely goes on and on about his professional acheivements and so on. In my opinion Oz deos this a little too often... I get the feeling he could have used a better editor, someone to better balance the personal with the historical. Also, I would swear that Oz repeats himself quite often and tells us the same anecdotes more than once. This is even more ironic as hehas related how his father would do the same, and I can't believe that no-one picked up on it? Am I imagining it? I don't think so.

Another editing issue: there are many cases where Polish names are misspelled and Russian words used by his relatives mis-transcribed and translated. I thought I was going slightly cracked when he referred to the Polish "3d of May Street" as "Ulica Czecziego Maya". I had to ask my husband to help me confirm that I wasn't mad, it should be Trzeciego Maja. This is just such a stupid mistake. Czecziego is a word you can't even pronounce in Polish. And then I was reminded that another Polish name had been mangled repeatedly in McCall Smith's 2½ Pillars of Wisdom - he meets a Polish boy called Tadeusz. For the whole chapter he's written (or some idiot has "corrected" his writing) Tadseuz. Why? Why do people not check these things before they send books off to the printers? *sigh*

Ranting aside, it's a good book and well worth the read. My favourite bits are when his Aunt Sonia talks about their growing up in Rovno, those chapters are well crafted and flow nicely. It's also very moving to read about his mother's illness, but he does seem afraid to delve too deeply into the pain, and the ending feels almost rushed.

Jeffery Deaver: The Empty Chair

In this one Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs go to North Carolina, because Rhyme is booked in for some experimental surgery that may make him more mobile (or less). Once there they get asked for help from the local police. A local teen has kidnapped two girls, and nobody knows where he's keeping them.

This book is just too much. Starts off fine, plot tootles along no problem. It's quite exciting, well-paced, not badly written. But then 2/3 through it's becoming time to tie the bag together, and then it all just starts happening. Conspiracies galore, the usual Southern clichés seem to abound, everybody who's "kin" is in on it together. There are about five "false endings" - and it's not even a film! Yet. They might not get Denzel and Angelina for this one, but I'm sure that won't be for want of trying.

If these conspiracies and plot twists were properly hinted at throughout the book, thus giving us the readers a fair chance of working it out - actually, even as I'm typing this I'm starting to think that maybe they are, and I have myself to blame for not seeing them, so maybe the problem is rather that there are too many instances of Rhyme pulling a conclusion out of his hat in a Deus ex machina way.

Anyway - it was good enough and not a complete waste of time. I'm going to borrow some more of Deaver's.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Booked for Murder

Two very different books today.

Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: We've had this book at home for quite a while. My husband started reading it, and went on and on about how good it was, but then he put it aside and never finished it, and I never "took over". But at long last I did, and finished it too, which is more than he did - and it's fantastic. You get thrown straight in, into the pain of watching a parent die. No time to get used to what's going to happen, to distance yourself. I can completely relate to so many of Eggers' feelings, and even to the experience of being responsible for a younger sibling (although I never did as well as he seems to have done). It is heartbreaking. (I keep typing heartbraking, which is funny and I wonder if it's a Freudian slip of some kind.) It's rare to read books where you can feel such affinity with the author. This is funny, tragic and never dull. What more could I want. I cried buckets, and laughed a lot. If my blog had actual readers I'd quote the funniest passages but as it is I can't be arsed - just trust me, zero readers, when I say this is a must-read.

About Dave Eggers from the McSweeney's website: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/authorpages/eggers/eggers.html

Val McDermid, Booked for Murder: Yay! A Lindsay Gordon mystery! I loves me some Lindsay. An American writer friend of Lindsay's is murdered in a manner she just described in her latest manuscript. Lindsay returns to the UK to investigate.

I have such a soft spot for the LG books, even though I suppose they're her weakest. A little too boxily written and focused on the gay aspect really, but hey, remember what Amanda Cross wrote? About how important it is to love the main characters? Well, I'm with Lindsay all the way. She's feminist, she's Scottish, she's a pain in the arse.

This book also features some nice digs at Sara Paretsky's mistake of selling the Warshawski film rights. It's even funnier when Paretsky praising McDermid is quoted on the cover, and when we know that Val's later books, the more serial killery/profily/gory Hill_Jordan series has been sold and televised. But Val McDermid deserves every penny she makes. Cheers to ya, Val.

Her website: http://www.valmcdermid.com/

Jeffery Deaver: I samlarens spår/The Bone Collector AND Alexander McCall Smith: The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom

Read this (in Swedish) while at my inlaws over Christmas. Quite good - heaps better than the film, a lot more complicated relationships and all. Translation not bad either. Must pick up some more sometime.

The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom is a collection of the three Professor Igelfeld novels. They are absolutely charming, although Mma Ramotswe is still my fave. My husband got me this for Christmas, because he is lovely and he knows what I like.... This is one to read and reread.

Right, what Amanda Cross wrote, and more

Amanda Cross, The Collected Short Stories: Allow me to quote from her introduction: "I am not a particular devotee of the detective short story [ ... ] I have noticed that I tend to read stories when an author's longer works have captured my attention, when I find I like a certain author's style of writing, and, most compellingly, when my interest in her or his detective urges me to search out more adventures in that fictional life. Thus, for example, I have read Dorothy Sayers's short stories about Peter Wimsey, and even those about her wine salesman, Montague Egg, but her stories without either detective appeal less to me."

I can totally relate to this. Would also like to add that Amanda Cross (real name Carolyn G. Heilburn, former (?) professor of literature at some university or other (we can tell Amanda Cross is a pseudonym because it lacks that for an American crucial middle initial)) is a huge favourite of mine. Pity the library has so few of hers. I just love her writing style and the literary inclination. This collection of short stories is very good, recommended.

I've also read Mary Higgins Clark, The Second Time Around. Apparently she is the author of 22 world-wide bestsellers. How on earth? If this book is typical I don't see how. According to the jacket sleeve she's "telling a story that intertwines fiction with the stuff of real-life headlines in a novel of breathtaking suspense and surprises." Um, no. I had to plod my way through this one. I only finished it because I was at work and had nothing else to read. I'm going to have to read me another one to see if they are all this boring - dammit.

In this one the inventor of a cancer vaccine (see, she's lost me already) dies and appears to have swindled his company of money. A journalist starts researching his background and life for a story and discovers it's not that simple after all. The only thing that rings true about the book is the journalist's grief over her son who died at infancy. That's very moving. Other than that this is a negligable work of fiction.

Summary and opinion on a whole load of books...

... I'm so way behind on my blogging.

Lindsey Davis, Scandal Takes A Holiday: I have a soft spot for Davis' books on the Roman informer (PI) Marcus Didius Falco - even though I'm not all that fond of her writing style, if I'm to be completely honest. It's a bit choppy. But the historical learning to be had, the lovable characters and the humour have me coming back for more. It's like Asterix that way. And in another more worrying way - one tends to believe her version of things a bit too much, and it's never a good idea to derive one's knowledge of history from fiction. Almost all the history I (thought I'd) learnt from Asterix turned out to be false, after all...

In STAH Falco goes to Ostia, the port town that forms a sort of entrance to Rome, to look for a gossip-writer named Diocles. Falco's whole family makes an appearance in Ostia, of course, including a long-lost uncle. In his search for the scribe Falco uncovers a kidnapping scheme involving pirates from areas that are now Albania and part of Turkey.

Here's Davis' website (she seems like right craic, she does): http://www.lindseydavis.co.uk/

Maria Lang, Mördaren ljuger inte ensam: Lånade en samlingsvolym med Langs tre första deckare på biblioteket. I MLIE introduceras vi till Puck och Einar Bure, samt vår polishjälte Christer Wijk. På ett sommarställe på en ö i Bergsslagen samlar en grupp människor, och en del oinbjudna gäster orsakar slitningar och spänningar under ytan. Först ett mord, sedan ett till. Det intressantaste med den här boken är "det lesbiska problemet", som Lang försöker vara öppen och fördomsfri inför - åtminstone med tidens mått mätt. Det roligaste, för mig, var en passus där middagsgästerna diskuterar och avfärdar de svenska fyrtiotalisterna (i betydelsen poeter). Detta eftersom en av dessas barnbarn gick på gymnasiet med mig. Annars var det belysande att se hur lite kriget nämns överhuvudtaget, trots att boken skrevs -49. I en samtida engelsk deckare hade det ju fortfarande varit ransonering (väl?)...
Farligt att förtära: Pucks Einar fixar ett vikariat åt henne, som lärare på en gymnasieskola. Under repetition av en skolpjäs kommer spänningar i dagen som kulminerar i ett giftmord på scen under uruppförandet. Ytterligare ett giftmord hinns med senare, samt en dödsskjutning. Folk dör som flugor i en Lang-bok, det är väldigt tröttsamt och orealistiskt. I den här är det mycket prat om "en erotiskt unken atmosfär", vilket känns rätt charmigt - jag menar, det ger en bra bild av tidsandan. Ytterligare plus är skildringen av en gymnasieskola på 50-talet, med examensstress och allt. Onekligen verkar studenterna haft vuxenkrav på sig, på ett helt annat sätt än nu.
Inte flera mord!: Ett yttrande jag helhjärtat instämmer i efter de två första. Men likväl så hittas en död man på gräsmattan när Puck, hennes far samt Einar är på semester i Skoga. Tack och lov mördas inte fler i alla fall. Däremot begår mördaren självmord, men det må vara hänt. Det här var nog den tråkigaste av de tre böckerna, faktiskt.

Som sagt, när Lang är som bäst är hon en bra samtidsskildrare, väl insatt i den akademiska världen. Men på det stora hela saknas djup. Jag kanske läser fler någon gång, men jag vet inte om jag aktivt kommer att söka upp hennes verk.

Deborah Crombie, All Shall Be Well: No. 2 in the Kincaid-James series. I think I've read one of Crombie's before some time, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I like her style. I like her characters. 'Tis all nice, with normal angst-levels. Crombie is American, but seems to have a better grasp on everyday Britons and their society that some other American writers who have taken upon themselves to write detective stories set in The Old World (like, for example, Martha Grimes). There is a bit of place-name-dropping, which is always a give-away that the author is writing for tourists, but not to the point where I'd notice. Not ever having been to London I need those references. I don't think it's overdone. In ASBW Kincaid's terminally ill neighbour Jasmine is found dead. Did she kill herself, as she had previously planned, or was she murdered? Quite good, on the whole.
Leave The Grave Green: No. 3 in the series. Starts off with a young boy drowning, then cuts to the future and another drowning victim, the husband of the boy's sister, now a well-known artist. What I liked best in this one was when one of the suspects talks to Gemma James about the Golden Age detective novel, how it represented order after the chaos of WW1. The detective always got the murderer.
A Finer End: Kincaid's cousin Jack asks for his help after his priest girlfriend is knocked over and almost killed in a hit-and-run. Most of the book takes place without Kincaid and James, and is all about and all over the mysticism supposedly pervasive throughout Glastonbury. IMO this is the worst of the lot I've read so far, too New Age.

Then I accidentally borrowed an Amanda Cross short story collection that I'd already read, but I must still comment on it. But tomorrow, I think.

Marian Keyes: Rachel's Holiday

Aaahhh, chicklit.

This one is very moralistic. It's a 1.01 guide to rehab. Rachel does drugs, and goes home to Ireland to detox after a suicide attempt. This is one in the series about the Walsh sisters. I've already read Watermelon (about sister Claire who has a baby and is dumped by eejit husband at hospital) and Angels (about Margaret who goes to LA when her husband has an affair). I've also read Last Chance Saloon, Sushi for beginners and The Other Side of the Story.

Marian Keyes strong point is her description of the Irish. Growing up I could have used some books like this. They're not literary masterpieces, but fun. Everyone gets a bit of sex and learns about themselves.

Best episode in Rachel's Holiday: when the inmates of rehab centre Cloisters are discussing what chocolate bars to buy.

Faye Kellerman: Moon Music - Maria Lang: Arvet efter Alberta

I have previously read Prayers for the Dead, which is a Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker novel. I loved them as a couple, and am very sad that this is the ONLY Faye Kellerman novel the library has in English. Although, now when I tried to verify that by searching the library catalogue online they appeared to have NONE, but I know I got PFTD there. Weird. It's a crap search function anyway.

Anyway, Moon Music is not a novel in a series, but she has squeezed in a kosher-eating couple anyway, in the form of Romulus Poe's lieutenant and his deli-running wife. They are however side characters. The main character is Romulus Poe, the possibly oddest crime fiction cop I've read about. The whole novel is odd. Not odd in a bad way, but it's fascinating what weird relationships people have with each other in this book. Unfortunately the book veers off in an overly mystical direction, with shape-shifting and stuff. I don't really like this, because it's Been Done. But Ms Kellerman does it well. She is as good as her husband, and it's highly unfair that there are not more F. Kellerman books available at the library. Maybe I'll donate my copy of Moon Music. Or not.

That's it, I'm not able for more blogging on this today.

Arvet efter Alberta är den andra Maria Lang-bok jag läst. Den första var den med mordet på studentbiblioteket. Minns inte titeln. Ska nog läsa mer Lang, för tidsandan är skojig, och det är ju det jag uppskattar nästan mest med deckare. Har lånat en tjock bok med hennes tre första i en på bibblan. Hon verkar väldigt ojämn dock, men det är så snabbläst så det kan jag ta... Arvet efter Alberta är den om faster Alberta som dör och efterlämnar ett rörigt dödsbo. Innehåller mycket name-dropping, vilket är lustigt - Håkan Hagegård är tydligen en hyvens kille.