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.