Books and a good web site for crime novels

M C Beaton's Death of a Poison Pen - a Hamish Macbeth story. Poison pen letters lead to a suicide or is it murder? I wasn't sure about this series at first but I was sufficiently interested to keep reading and it is definitely growing on me.

Rebecca Tope - A Cotswold Killing - the first in her series about Thea Osbourne - a widow - who takes on house sitting assignments and gets involved in investigating murders. The second in the series is A Cotswold Ordeal. I seem to remember reading one of this series some years ago and wasn't keen but I have gone back to them and found them interesting. Thea is growing on me as a character and the plots are nice and complicated.

Currently reading:

Polly Samson - Perfect Lives - this is a book which has been in the news recently because of some Amazon reviews which were less than favourable. I'm not sure I would have bought it myself but it is quite good. It is a book of interlinked short stories and the writing is a little too self conscious for my taste. I shall persevere and hope when I post a review on Amazon it doesn't attract too much criticism.

Rebecca Tope - Death in the Cotswolds - the third in the series and narrated by someone in the village where Thea Osbourne goes to stay with Phil Hollis - a police superintendent. Pagan undertones, village life and the plot centres round a prehistoric barrow and the pagan festival of Samhain.

Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - a very long book about magic in the 19th century with pictures and footnotes. I have mixed feelings about this but I will persevere with it.

Web site - for those of us who like cozy mysteries - www.cozy-mystery.com For the uninitiated - cozy (or cosy if you prefer) are crime or mystery novels which have very little violence and usually feature every day situations and characters often with a theme - such as candlemaking, cooking, knitting etc.. All the above crime novels fall into this category. It is a genre which is perhaps more popular in America than here. The Golden Age authors fall into this category - Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Dorothy L Sayers.

Doesn't time fly . . . .

Reading in the last week:

Coffin, Scarcely used by Colin Watson - 1950s crime in seaside town in Lincolnshire - paperback

Our Lady of Pain by M C Beaton - Edwardian Crime featuring Lady Rose Summer and Captain Harry Cathcart - private investigator - e-book

Pursued by Love by Georgia Hill - love story set against the filming of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - e-book.

The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh which is a new Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane story set in 1951 and featuring a case which is mentioned in other Peter Wimsey books. It is very good and I could imagine Sayers herself writing this one - paperback.

What's Up Doc? by Hilary Jones - the doctor who appears regularly on TV - good but not as good as some - e-book.

Cranford by Mrs Gaskell - Victorian life from a female perspective, e-book.

A Medal for Murder: a Kate Shackleton Mystery by Frances Brody - Yorkshire crime set in the 1920s - very good it was as well - I can thoroughly recommend this series. Paperback

A predominance of crime set in other eras.

Currently reading:

The Hedge Fund Wives by Tatiana Boncompagni - chick lit with bling and shopping but seems pretty well written - paperback

Wives and Daughters by Mrs Gaskell - 19th century literature - e-book

What would Jane Austen do? by Laurie Brown - time travel and ghosts - e-book

59 seconds by Richard Wiseman - sort of self help/popular psychology - e-book - I will be writing a post shortly about this type of book - which I've always enjoyed reading.

Nice sunny New Year's Day and books

It really is a beautifully sunny day - though quite chilly.

I'm currently reading; Dorothy L Sayers' Have His Carcase; Georgette Heyer's The Convenient Marriage; I've also just started a Teach Yourself Book called How to be Happier by Paul Jenner. Not a book I would have bought myself but as it was free I thought it was worth a look. I've read about 50 pages of it and have come to the conclusion that I am happy most of the time so I'm probably not the best person to review this book. It covers things like negative thoughts; always thinking the outcome of anything will be dreadful; negative emotions; comparing yourself with others - unfavourably. It's interesting and easy to read but I suspect the people who could most benefit from it are unlikely to buy it. I do like the cover though and it makes me smile every time I see it.

Murder Must Advertise

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L Sayers is an excellent dissection of an ad agency in the 1930s. I read it first in my 20s when I was reading my way through the Golden Age authors of the 1930s. Re-reading it again I was interested to find the criticisms of advertising even more relevant today than they were when the book was first published. The comment that the rich don't pay attention to advertising because they buy what they want when they want; but the poor pay attention to adverts and stay poor because they feel they have to buy all the things advertised to improve their lives is definitely applicable to the 21st century.

The mystery and the murder - which has happened before Wimsey comes on the scene - are complex involving illegal drugs and the fashionable set who use them - and very much relevant today. I enjoyed this book because it brings in Peter's brother in law - Charles Parker, theology reading Scotland Yard detective. The insight into advertising is fascinating especially the way the exact right words for adverts are decided upon. What is right for one company will be rejected by another. Well worth reading even today.

Reading old favourites

Dorothy L Sayers' Gaudy Night is one of those books which I find I can read and re-read time and time again - and get something new out of it on every occasion. This time I read it for its commentary on personal integrity and the consequences of crime on the perpetrator and on those connected with them. I also noticed how the clues are built up, layer upon layer as well as the red herrings. It is an object lesson in how to plot a crime novel and it actually doesn't matter that there is no murder.

I then started reading Murder Must Advertise which I haven't read for about 30 years and I am finding it every bit as good as I remembered it to be. Peter Wimsey takes a job in an advertising agency for reasons which are not at first revealed. The advertising background is authentic as Sayers herself worked at an advertising agency for a time. The book has some trenchant comments to make about the ethics of advertising which are still valid today.

Gaudy Night

I am listening to a BBC dramatisation on CD of Dorothy L Sayers' Gaudy Night - which is very good though not as good as reading the book. So I started reading the book yet again last night. I was struck when I was listening to the CD about how much information the story contains about the choices women were able to make about their lives. The mystery hinges on whether women should support their husbands or expose them if they do anything wrong. The theme is repeated again and again in various small events. There is also a lot of discussion about women looking for fulfilment in a career and what happens to their intellectual interests when they marry and take on their husband's interests and give up their own.

The book was published in 1935 and yet if you set aside the somewhat different standards of morals and acceptable behaviour the same issues are current today. One of the dons rails against employing a woman with children as she needs time off to nurse a sick child and can't put her work first and again this is a recurring theme. There is much discussion about falsification of scientific results and historical research and whether such things are acceptable if the person concerned does it because they need the money they will earn to support wives and children.

This book has always been a favourite of mine which I re-read on a regular basis but the subtext - if you like - only struck me in the last few days having read several books on a feminism related theme. I didn't think women's rights were such an issue in the 1930s as they faded into the background after universal suffrage was brought in and only resurfaced in the 1950s and 1960s with Betty Frieden, Gloria Steinem etc all. Having said that though Dorothy L Sayers did apparently publish a book entitled Are Women Human? of which I have yet to track down a copy.

Gaudy Night

No absolutely nothing to do with my private life - or even life in general. Martin Edwards - over at Do you write under your own name? - link at the top of the page - wrote about his thoughts on Dorothy L Sayers' Gaudy Night and prompted several comments. It was interesting to see that women were in general far more enamoured of the book than men. It has always been one of my favourites and it is a book I re-read virtually every year.

There is no murder in Gaudy Night - just a rather unpleasant poison pen and a narrowly averted drowning. The main focus of the story is how Harriet Vane manages to overcome her feelings of overwhelming gratitude to Peter Wimsey for saving her from the gallows (in Strong Poison) and starts to see him as someone she can love for himself rather than for what he did.

The descriptions of academic life in the 1930s at Oxford is well done and may well have influenced many people to put the university as their first choice. This may be an idealised portrait but it makes excellent fiction in my opinion.

Even though the poison pen takes second place to the love story it is still well crafted. If you know who did it you can see the clues but I certainly didn't work out who until close to the end of my first reading. The issues aired in the book - should women put career before family and can women have both? - are as valid today 80 years later as they were then. The other issue of importance in the story - is integrity in scholarship vital? - is also still of considerable interest.

If you read the book for its crime content - you may be disappointed. If you read it for the love story you may well decide that its subtlety is much more effective than bodice ripping. If you read it for its depiction of academic life you may form an idealised picture of Oxford. It is a different book completely from Five Red Herrings, The Nine Tailors, Strong Poison or Murder Must Advertise and cannot be compared with them. In my opinion it is an excellent novel which has broken out of the genre mould and can stand on its own merits. It repays more than one reading.

Sleeping better and audio books

The last couple of nights I've slept a lot better which at least makes me feel more with it.

I've been listening to 3 of BBC Radio's excellent dramatisations of Dorothy L Sayers books on CD - 'Have his Carcase', 'Gaudy Night' and 'Busman's Honeymoon' - very good they are too. I know all three books well and can identify what they missed out but they're a good substitute. I've also got 'Rumpole and the Primrose Path' to listen to. I've also found 'Ladies of Letters' - Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge exchanging barbed correspondence very funny. Apparently this is from 'Woman's Hour' but as I'm not usually at home during the day I hadn't heard it. Audio books are well worth trying - they can be found on eBay as well.

I haven't read any more of Maloney's Law Anne because I need both hands to hold it open! I'm awaiting delivery of a 'bookchair' - a rest for books which holds them open for you. The I'll be able to read more. For the same reasons I'm finding it difficult to read P D James's 'The Private Patient.'

Onwards and upwards

Writing progress

I have managed to add some more to Knowledge is Death over the last few days - up to 33,717 words now. We are progressing. Even though I have a plan for the rest of it I keep thinking of things to add, including a new suspect. This means introducing said suspect earlier in the book - good thing I'm just trying to get to the end rather than write perfectly!!

Reading - I have been reading Writers' News and Writing Magazine over the last few days. I am re-reading Veronica Heley's 'Murder by Accident' and seeing things in it I hadn't noticed before. I am still debating whether to write a strongly worded reply to a letter in the magazine saying something along the lines of - writing for publication is a full time job. Well no it isn't or probably two thirds of the books published would not ever be written. So many people combine writing for publication with other jobs because it doesn't always pay well. Doing it as a hobby or part time income does not mean you have an unprofessional attitude to it and a disregard of deadlines. I think all the writer of the letter was meaning was that yu do need to be professional but it wasn't the way it came over.

I have also read 'The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife' by anon - the book of the Sunday Times Country Mole column. Amusing reading and left me wondering about the fine - invisible? - line between fact and fiction.

Still trying to get hold of Martin Edwards' 'The Cipher Garden' from Amazon. They seem to be having difficulty getting it so I may try Waterstone's instead. Or better still - my local independent bookshop - a job for tomorrow lunch time I think.

Martin -thanks for the tip about the companion to Dorothy Sayers - I shall be hunting for that.

Anne B - I will be buying a copy of 'Thorn in the Flesh' when it's released and I've just e-mailed Goldenford to see when it will be available to buy from their website.