The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (1942)

The first Miss Marple book I read was The Murder at the Vicarage and although I enjoyed the book, I wasn’t enamoured by Marple’s character and just thought she was an old gossip. 

I may have stopped there but Ruthiella @Booked for Life made a comment on my post that Miss Marple was particularly catty in that book and suggested I try another one.
Since then I’ve read eight Miss Marple books and she has grown on me. The Body in the Library was Christie’s third Miss Marple book and my most recent one:

Miss Marples good friends, the Bantry’s, wake up one morning to the news that a young woman’s dead, strangled body has been found in Colonel Bantry’s library. No one knows her identity and how she came to be there.
Mrs Bantry immediately rings Miss Marple:

’You want me to come up?’
“’Yes, I’m sending the car down for you.’
“Miss Marple said doubtfully: ‘Of course, dear, if you think I can be of any comfort to you – ‘
“Oh, I don’t want comfort. But you’re so good at bodies.’’
“Oh no, indeed. My little successes have been mostly theoretical.”
“But you’re very good at murders…
What I feel is that if one has got to have a murder actually happening in one’s house, one might as well enjoy it, if you know what I mean. Thats why I want you to come and help me find out who did it and unravel the mystery and all that. It really ‘is’ rather thrilling, isn’t it?”

There was a double murder mystery in this book and its solution was complicated as one of the bodies was burned beyond recognition. Meanwhile poor Colonel Bantry was getting the cold shoulder from people in St Mary Mead. The girl was found in the Colonel’s library, so the gossips said that the girl was his mistress…his illegitimate daughter…that she had been blackmailing him.

Favourite Characters

The Bantrys – Dolly Bantry was adamant the murder must be solved as she understood the devastating effect the implied guilt had on her husband. She had been away with Jane Marple and on her return home her husband seemed to have shrunk. After hearing of dinners that had been put off and a cancellation of the Colonel’s chairing of a council meeting, she pulled off a glove and threw it in the bin. Then she sat down and cut off the fingers of her second glove.

“What are you doing, Dolly?”
“Feeling destructive,” said Mrs Bantry.
She got up. “Where shall we sit after dinner, Arthur? In the library?”
“Well – er – I don’t think so- eh? Very nice in here – or the drawing room.”
“I think,” said Mrs Bantry, “that we’ll sit in the library!”
Her steady eye met his. Colonel Bantry drew himself up to his full height. A sparkle came into his eye.
He said:
“You’re right, my dear. We’ll sit in the library!”

Basil Blake – one of the prime suspects who seems to live up to his bad reputation but there is more to him than is first thought.

Peter Carmody – a nine year old would be detective who loves detective stories, does a bit of sleuthing and gives Miss Marple some clues.

“I’ve got autographs from Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and Dickson Carr and H.C. Bailey.” 

Not a favourite character but I liked this description of Inspector Slack – a misnamed man if ever there was one:

Activity was always to Inspector Slack’s taste. To rush off in a car, to silence rudely those people who were anxious to tell him things, to cut short conversations on the plea of urgent necessity. All this was the breath of life to Slack.

A chilling aspect to this story was the murder of a random sixteen-year-old girl who was lured to her death in order to cover up the identity of the intended victim. As Miss Marple observed, most people are too trusting for this wicked world.

The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer (1933)

 

In addition to her Regency and other historical fiction novels, Georgette Heyer wrote twelve mysteries. I’d read that they weren’t that good but when I found a copy of The Unfinished Clue for 50 cents while we were in Central Queensland, I grabbed it. Just in case. And just as well that I did because it was a delight from start to finish.

General Sir Arthur Billington-Smith belonged to that class of soldier who believed that much is accomplished by rudeness. He had been married to his much younger wife, Fay, for about five years and she had cowered under his bullish nature. The story begins with Fay’s younger sister, Dinah, coming to visit them at their country estate and being ungraciously greeted by Sir Arthur. A group of people which included the General’s son and nephew had also been invited to stay for the weekend. The General was clearly not happy about the presence of some of the visitors, especially when he found out that his son was bringing his Mexican dancer fiancée.

Two sisters couldn’t have been more different. Dinah was completely unfazed by Sir Arthur’s belligerence and baited him mercilessly. Fay tried to keep the peace but after five years of the General’s aggressive domination, she had been reduced to nervous exhaustion.

Between him and his sister-in-law there raged a guerrilla warfare which both enjoyed. They disliked one another with equal cordiality.

During the course of the weekend, Sir Arthur was stabbed to death in his study, and everyone was under suspicion. The local police knew that the General had many enemies. In fact, they believed that you would be hard put to find somebody who had a good word for the man. It was going to be a difficult investigation and Inspector Harding from Scotland Yard was brought in to help solve the crime. 

The Unfinished Clue is a solid mystery with a clever plot. With interesting and very likeable characters, plenty of humour and wit and topped off with a satisfying romance; this was a great read. 

Fay cast a startled glance at the clock, and sprang up.  ‘Heavens, it’s past four! I must fly or Arthur will have a fit. He can’t bear unpunctuality. Are you ready?’ ‘I’m ready,’ said Dinah, ‘but I shall dawdle for ten minutes for the good of Arthur’s soul.’

A description of Camilla Halliday, one of the weekend guests:

‘She had corn-coloured hair, shingled and perfectly waved, a pair of shallow blue eyes, and a predatory little mouth…’

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie (1936)

 

Murder in Mesopotamia is another book that came out of Christie's first-hand experience of working on archaeological sites with her husband. The setting of this book is the excavation a large Assyrian city about a day and a half’s journey from Baghdad. The book is narrated by Miss Amy Leatheran, a thirty-two-year-old nurse who had lately been employed by Dr. Leidner, the leader of the expedition.

Dr. Leidner had been worried for some time about his wife, Louise’s, health. She was suffering from ‘fancies’ as well as recurring nervous terrors and as a result the atmosphere at the dig was very tense. Nurse Leatheran was to keep an eye on Louise and help her to feel ‘safe.’
By the time Leatheran had been at the dig for about a week she had an uneasy sense that something really was wrong and that the sense of strain and constraint among the expedition team was genuine.
Hercule Poirot comes on the scene after a murder occurs. It looks like it must have been committed by a member of the expedition team and Poirot expects the murderer will strike again.
We find out much about the various characters’ backgrounds and their relationships with each other as Poirot conducts his investigations. A red herring is thrown in to confuse everything but eventually Poirot brings his investigation to a surprise conclusion.
Apart from the archaeological setting, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as some of her others, e.g. They Came to Baghdad. Nurse Leatheran was a pain, not to mention a lousy nurse - patronising and full of herself, with a bustling attitude of 'Come, come, that's enough of that.' Followed up by a slap on the face. That didn't endear me to her.
As usual, Christie included a nice little twist to reveal the suspect.

Even though this book is not one of my favourites, it held my interest throughout.

A good website for all things Agatha is https://www.agathachristie.com & if you haven't yet read any of her books here are some suggestions: Nine Christie Novels for Newcomers. I'm reading through her books that have a Middle East/Archaeological setting.

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951)

 

‘Outside in Bank Street it was sunny and full of swirling dust and the noises were terrific and varied. There was the persistent honking of motor horns, the cries of vendors of various wares. There were hot disputes between small groups of people who seemed ready to murder each other but were really fast friends; boys and children were selling every type of tree, sweetmeats, oranges and bananas, bath towels, combs, razor blades and other assorted merchandise carried rapidly through the streets on trays. There was also a perpetual and ever renewed sound of throat clearing and spitting, and above it the thin melancholy wail of men conducting donkeys and horses amongst the stream of motors and pedestrians shouting, “Balek — Balek!”

It was eleven o’clock in the morning in the city of Baghdad.’

It is 1950 and everyone is coming to Baghdad.
Mr. Dakin, the undercover head of British Intelligence in Baghdad, is awaiting Henry Carmichael who is returning to Iraq with evidence to back up his fantastic story of an international plot involving a deadly weapon.

‘In substance, it is exactly like the Fifth Column activities at the beginning of the last war, only this time it is on a world-wide scale.’

Dakin’s best and most reliable man has either gone mad or his story is true. Four men with similar features to Carmichael have already been murdered in Persia and Iraq. He didn’t get away unsuspected and the enemy are on his trail. When he enters Baghdad the danger will be even greater.
World leaders hoping to promote peace are coming to Baghdad for a secret summit and Dakin is desperate to have Carmichael’s evidence to present to them.

Meanwhile in London, Victoria Jones, a young Cockney typist just fired from her job, is sitting in a park eating her lunch when Edward, a handsome young man, strikes up a conversation. Victoria, who considers herself an excellent judge of character, is immediately smitten, so much so that when she hears that he is heading to Baghdad the next day to work for a Dr. Rathbone, she decides that somehow, she would get herself to Baghdad.

They Came to Baghdad is one of the few Christie novels that is a spy/political thriller rather than her typical detective novel.
I think her detective novels are better than her spy thrillers but this book was a fun read with a complicated plot full of people who are not what they seem.
It took me a while to figure out that Victoria Jones was the main character. She didn’t seem very promising at first with her tendency to tell elaborate creative lies to make her life more interesting. Her sudden decision that she was in love with a man she’d barely talked to gave all the appearance of an airhead; but she was also generous, courageous and thoroughly optimistic, and she grew on me.

‘She, Victoria Jones, a little London typist, had arrived in Baghdad, had seen a man murdered almost before her eyes, had become a secret agent or something equally melodramatic, and had finally met the man she loved in a tropical garden with palms waving overhead, and in all probability not far from the spot where the original garden of Eden was said to be situated.’

Victoria’s quick wits and inventive qualities are given plenty of scope in Baghdad where she is caught up in a kidnapping and a murder and manages to talk her way into working at an archaeological dig by posing as an anthropologist. Through it all she matures and learns some truths about human nature while keeping her inherent optimism and revealing her true mettle.

‘Surely those were the things that mattered — the little every day things, the family to be cooked for, the four walls that enclosed the home, the one or two cherished possessions…
Humility is what keeps you sane and a human being…’

They Came to Baghdad was a good Christie book to follow on from her autobiographical, Come, Tell Me How You Live, where she recounts her time working and travelling with her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan, in Syria and other parts of the Middle East.
It also captures a very different Baghdad to that of today, just over 70 years later.

Interesting links:

Mysteries and the Middle East

Agatha Christie in Egypt & the Near East

Crooked House (1949) by Agatha Christie

Crooked House is one of Agatha Christie’s special favourites – she said that writing it was pure pleasure and she considered this book one of her best.

I saved it up for years, thinking about it, working it out, saying to myself: ‘one day, when I’ve plenty of time, and want to really enjoy myself- I’ll begin it!’

There is no Poirot or Miss Marple, but there is Charles Hayward, a young man who comes back to England after five years' war service to ask Sophia Leonides, the woman he loves, to marry him. But a problem arises. Sophia’s rich grandfather, Aristides, dies suddenly and his doctor suspects poison. With the whole household under a cloud, she will not accept Charles’ offer of marriage until the situation is resolved. If it ever can be.

Charles’ father is none other than Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. The Leonides case, being under his jurisdiction, he suggests that Charles get information from the ‘inside’ – with Sophia’s full knowledge, of course. And so Charles is introduced to the family and ends up doing some detecting on the side.

I’d always taken a certain amount of interest in my father’s police work, but nothing had prepared me for the moment when I should come to take a direct and personal interest in it.

Crooked House is a clever story with a very surprising and unsettling end! Agatha Christie displays some psychological leanings in this book – the influence of hereditary being one:

Most people can deal with one weakness – but they mightn’t be able to deal with two weaknesses of a different kind.

Charles asks his father if there is a ‘common denominator’ of murderers and he replies,

‘Yes, I’ve never met a murderer who wasn’t vain…It’s their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten.’

Josephine Tey’s Inspector Grant made the same observation about the vanity of murderers in The Singing Sands and The Franchise Affair.

Death Makes a Prophet by John Bude (1947)

The British Library has been reprinting some neglected old British Crime Classics. I counted 99 in my last check. The last time I looked there were about seventy-four books by a variety of authors including Freeman Wills Croft, George Bellairs, E.C.R. Lorac, John Bude and others. They're rather expensive to buy here but I have found a couple secondhand and picked up some more when I was in the U.K .a couple of years ago.

I've enjoyed a few by John Bude and thought this one looked promising so I bought a new copy. I didn’t regret my pick and thoroughly enjoyed this droll, and at times a little dark, crime novel.

The Children of Osiris was a cult created and led by the High Prophet, Eustace K. Mildmann, a widower with an only son, Terence, who was twenty-one years of age at the time of this story.

The cult, adopting the initials of their full title, referred to their doctrine as the Cult of Coo, or Cooism. Their dogmas included a mixture of Ancient Egyptian beliefs and bits and pieces of lesser-known religions with a modern twist.

The Cult of Coo believed in ‘magic numbers, astrology, auras, astral bodies, humility, meditation, vegetarianism, immortality, hand-woven tweeds and brotherly love.’ Mildmann was a sincere, dreamy man who believed Cooism was the key to all life’s mysteries.

‘His best ideas had always come to him when sunk in a self-imposed trance, or, as he pithily expressed it, “during a phase of Yogi-like non-being.” (“Non-being” figured as a very important factor in the Cult of Coo, though nobody seemed able to define its exact significance.)’

When he moved to the trendy Welworth Garden City in the 1940’s he found the right soil for his ideas and before long a group of intellectuals ripe for the picking. When the Hon. Mrs. Hagge-Smith came on the scene she totally embraced Cooism and became Mildmann’s patron and financial backer.

The author spends the first half of the book building the scene for a murder by introducing the various characters associated with the cult; their backgrounds, quirks, ambitions and petty jealousies. The second half of the book is more serious, although it still has some sparks of humour, and it’s here that Inspector Meredith makes his first appearance.

There are some bizarre and baffling circumstances for Meredith to untangle. This book was quite different to The Lakes District Murder, mostly because of the humorous aspects that Bude scattered throughout, but also because the plot didn’t go into intricate details about things that I knew nothing about.

Some of my favourite parts are those that deal with Terence. Here was an athletic, practical young man with the appetite of a horse and the physique of a boxer. He was the very antithesis of his father who ‘had done everything to undermine his normality.’ From clamping down on his tremendous appetite with a strict vegetarian diet, giving him a very small allowance of sixpence a week, requiring him to wear ‘rational clothing’ which included shorts in the middle of winter, and making him a Symbol-bearer in the Temple.

One day Terence met Denise, Mrs. Hagge-Smith’s secretary and immediately fell in love with her. She didn’t mind him either.

‘Terence…shot a quick glance at the miracle in his midst and asked abruptly:

“I say, don’t think this is rude of me, but do you have manifestations?”

“Manifestations?”

It sounded as if he were referring to insects or pimples.

“Yes, you know – astral visions and all that sort of thing. Spirit shapes.”

“No – I can’t say that I do. I dream rather a lot after a late supper. But I’m not at all psychic, if that’s what you mean.”

“I am,” announced Terence, to Denise’s surprise. “I’m always having astral manifestations. I get quite a kick out of it.” His eyes assumed a dreamy expression and then suddenly narrowed, as if he were trying, there and then, to penetrate the Veil. “It’s marvellous sometimes how clearly I see things. They’re so terribly realistic.”

“Things?” enquired Denise. “What things?”

“Steaks mostly. But sometimes its mutton-chops or steak and kidney pudding. I just have to close my eyes, relax my mind and body, and there they are…You think it’s blasphemous of me to see things like that, don’t you? I know it’s not very high-minded, but -”

“I don’t think anything of the sort. I think it’s very clever of you to see anything at all.”

Terence just couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for peanut cutlets and raw cabbage and he confessed to his new-found friend that he went on the binge the week before and spent ten-weeks pocket money on a good feed.

Inspector Meredith always considered this investigation involving the Children of Osiris to be one of the most interesting, bizarre and exacting of all his cases. I thought it was an unusual mix for a murder mystery but very enjoyable.

Back to the Classics 2020 Challenge: Final Wrap Up

Well, this is the earliest I've ever posted my final wrap-up for the Back to the Classics Challenge! I've managed to fit in a lot of books so far this year, thanks mostly to Covid! I'm very happy to have finally read The Lord of the Rings...and to have enjoyed them so much. They were just the right books to read as we went into lockdown here. I also watched the movies, which I'd put off viewing until I'd read the books.

A pleasant surprise for me out of this list was Martin Chuzzlewit. I've read just about all of Dickens' novels, and wasn't busting to read any of his others but by chance I found this book, had no idea of its storyline, and had never seen it reviewed. I decided to read a chapter and if I found it too rambling I'd give it a miss, but I fell into it headlong and continued. A great read!

A book that made me cry (which doesn't happen very often) was The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A perfect (short) book to pick up for a first introduction to a Russian writer.

Saplings was very different to anything else I'd read by Noel Streatfeild - definitely not for children like many of her other books; a tragic tale of the impact of WW2 on a family.

Sadly, Miss Pym Disposes is the last of of Josephine Tey's crime/detective noels I had left to read. I've thoroughly enjoyed her books.

The only book I didn't really like was The Island of Doctor Moreau. There was a reason it was my abandoned classic!

19th century Classic: Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (1843-5)

20th Century Classic: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957-8)

Classic by a Woman: The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1901)

Classic in Translation: The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886)

Classic by a Person of Colour: To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (1959)

Genre Classic: The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)

Classic With a Name in the Title: Miss Pym Disposes by Joesphine Tey (1946)

Classic With a Place in the Title: Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge (1948)

Classic With Nature in the Title: The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge (1963)

Classic About a Family: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild (1945)

An Abandoned Classic: The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells (1896)

Adapted Classic: The Lord of the Rings by J.R. Tolkien (1949)

A Foray into Some Modern Books

Lila by Marilynne Robinson (2014)

I’ve been interested in reading something by this author for some time but as I’m always cautious about more modern novels and am generally disappointed with them, I wasn’t prepared to buy a new copy. Fortunately, I found a copy of at a secondhand book sale and then I discovered that my local library has other books by Marilynne Robinson, which is wonderful as I enjoyed this book very much.
Lila was a neglected child who found her way into the heart of an itinerant worker. Doll was a single woman on the fringes of life who slept at Lila’s house most nights. One evening she came home and found the young child half asleep outside the house in the cold, after being kicked out because her family was sick of her crying. Doll picked her up, wrapped her in her shawl, went into the house where everyone was asleep, took her bundle of possessions and went out into the night.

‘Doll may have been the loneliest woman in the world, and she was the loneliest child, and there they were, the two of them together, keeping each other warm in the rain.’

From then on Doll kept on the move with Lila, always with the fear that Lila would be taken from her. After a time they they joined up with a group of itinerant families and travelled with them. These were good years with enough food, a sense of security, and a year of school for Lila.
But the Great Depression drew near and the good years came to an end. The itinerant work dwindled and Doll and Lila, left to fend for themselves, were separated.
Lila had a life of misery and ended up in a whorehouse at one stage. After escaping from that place she wandered the countryside until one day she found herself in a small town called Gilead and took shelter from the rain inside a church.
Lila is a beautifully told story that goes back and forward in time revealing the details of Lila’s life as the story progresses. This type of writing doesn’t always work well but the author uses it to great advantage. The flashback technique was also good at showing the fracturing of families and society in the impoverished years of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl times in the 1930’s. The storyline has an aura of mystery surrounding it and was a book I found difficult to set aside because it always had me guessing. Lila is someone you come to care about, especially as she comes to a watershed in her life where her choices will either make or destroy her. I kept hoping her fear wouldn’t keep her on the run.
A major theme in the book is trust and when Lila put aside the fear she had been brought up with and decided to walk into that church in Gilead she started on a pathway where she was to learn to trust.
Acceptance, love and an unusual romance were part of this.
Highly recommended and I am definitely going to read more of this author.


A Dangerous Language by Sulari Gentil (2017)

A Dangerous Language is the eighth book in Sulari Gentill’s Rowland Sinclair Mystery series. I’ve read all eight and each book in the series seems to get better than the last. This one took off from the start and was hard to put down so I read it very quickly.
As usual, the author weaves in Australian history, politics, culture, and news items from the 1930’s. Her writing is extremely well-researched and I really appreciate the Australian history I pick up effortlessly when I read her novels.
Rowland Sinclair and his three friends are embroiled yet again in the dangerous world of political intrigue; this time in Canberra, the nation’s newly developed capital, when a Communist agent is murdered on the steps of Parliament House. (‘Old Parliament House’ as it’s now known opened on 9 May 1927)
Rowland has volunteered to fly an international peace advocate from Fremantle to Melbourne where he is scheduled to speak but the right-wing militia responsible for the agent’s assassination are determined to stop him.
The predicaments and dangerous situations that Rowland and his three friends find themselves in this mystery series are definitely far-fetched but the writing is witty, fun and intelligent.
I’d recommend reading the books in order as many of the characters in previous books make a reappearance and they build on each other. The four main characters are also developed more fully as the series progresses and the longstanding interest that Rowland has for his friend, Edna, is a work in progress. I do wonder how long the author will string out this relationship! I think readers need some closure here and Edna & Rowland really have had plenty of time to get over their pasts and get their act together.
These books afford a unique presentation of our more local history and factional politics in a well done fictional setting.

Death in Holy Orders by P.D James (2001)

Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James is a sinister multiple murder mystery set in an Anglican Theological College on the East Anglican coast.
All through the book there is an underlying tension that keeps the reader in suspense as the murders seem unconnected and random. The author’s strength lies in her exploration of the psychological aspects of her characters and their inherent motives. These explorations open up a Pandora’s box and complicate the investigation process. Part of the enjoyment of James’ writing is the intellectual pursuit she engages the reader in, not to mention her excellent command of the written word.
In Death in Holy Orders, Commander Dalgleish returns to a place he frequented as a child (his father was a rector) and relives some of his boyhood experiences. We don’t often get personal insights into Dalgleish’s life and I always enjoy them when they are included. In this book Dalgleish also finds romance. His first wife had died in childbirth a number of years ago and he distanced himself emotionally.
The murders aren’t described in great detail but she always includes some (often bizarre) element of a s*xual nature. I don’t think these are necessarily gratuitous as James had seen the seamy side of life in her work in the forensic science department of the police force and later in the Criminal Policy Department. She also served as a magistrate in Middlesex and London and worked in the National Health Service and used her varied experience to help her write her books.

There are actually some likeable characters in this book. Sometimes James seems more than a little misanthropic but there was more nuance in the personalities here than in some of her other novels.
One scene was a lovely redemptive act that dealt with the acceptance of guilt in thought:

‘What was there about this place that forced him to confront the greater as well as the lesser lies? He had known she was in danger if death. He had hoped that she would die. He was in the eyes of his God...guilty of murder...How could he continue to minister to others, to preach the forgiveness of sins, when his own great sin was unacknowledged? How could he have stood up before that congregation tonight with this darkness in his soul?

He got out of bed and knelt, burying his head in his hands. It wasn’t necessary to search for the words; they came to him naturally, and with them came the promise of forgiveness and peace. ‘Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.’

Death in Holy Orders is well-written and engrossing crime mystery. It's of the best books I’ve read by this author and apart from the one or two scenes which may not sit well with some readers, I’d recommend it as a very interesting and complex murder mystery.

Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey (1946)

Miss Pym’s mission in life had been to teach schoolgirls to speak French, which she had done for four years until her remaining parent died and left her two hundred and fifty pounds a year. Lucy supplemented her living by giving French lessons from time to time and spent her spare hours reading books on psychology. After reading thirty-seven volumes on the subject, she wrote a rebuttal  of what she considered was idiotic nonsense.
By chance her writing came to the attention of a publisher at a time when the intellectual world had tired of Freud and his ilk and, recognising the appeal that Lucy’s fresh approach to the area of psychology would have, he had her writing published.
Lucy Pym became an overnight bestseller and found herself in demand as a speaker. Life was comfortable, cultured, and pleasant.
A few months after her new found fame as an author, she received a letter from an old school friend, Henrietta, asking her to come and address her students at the Physical College where she was headmistress.
Initially her stay was only an overnight one but the young women enjoyed her company and urged her to stay longer and she did.

'Young in years a few of her acquaintances might be, but they were already bowed down with the weight of the world’s wrongs and their own importance. It was nice to meet a morning-of-the-world youngness for a change.'

'Why should she go back to London yet? What was there to take her back? Nothing and nobody. For the first time that fine, independent, cushioned, celebrated life of hers looked just a little bleak. A little narrow and inhuman. Could it be? Was there, perhaps, a lack of warmth in that existence she had been so content with?'

The crime doesn’t occur until the latter part of Miss Pym Disposes so most of the narrative is taken up with the relationships between the students and the various staff members at the College, their  personalities, and Lucy's interaction with them personally.
I really liked this character assessment of a staff member who couldn’t get beyond her own background and past disappointments. She was unable to clearly see things because of this. Her view was distorted or blurred - she had mental astigmatism.

‘...how can one reduce a mental astigmatism like that? She is quite honest about it, you see. She is one of the most honest persons I have ever met. She really ‘sees’ the thing like that...everything that is admirable and deserving, and thinks we are prejudiced and oppositious. How can one alter a thing like that?’

‘Up to a point she was shrewd and clear-minded, and beyond that she suffered from...’astigmatism’; and for mental astigmatism nothing could be done.’

There was a good bit of suspense throughout the book that has the reader waiting for some nasty crime to occur but it happens in a low key way so much of the 'action' is based on getting to know the various characters, and I enjoyed this aspect. Inspector Alan Grant isn’t a character in this story so it was up to Miss Pym to play amateur detective using her psychological insights to find a motive and a suspect.
Her investigations concluded, the crime atoned for, she is ready to return home when an surprise revelation reveals the true culprit.
As she gets in the taxi to return to London she makes a decision:

'...in London she would stay. In London was her own, safe, nice, calm, collected existence, and in future she would be content with it. She would even give up lecturing on psychology.
What did she know about psychology anyhow?
As a psychologist she was a first-rate teacher of French.'

Josephine Tey spent three years at a Physical Training College in Birmingham, England, herself, and one of the incidents from her life as a teacher is used in this novel. This was the only one of her crime novels that I hadn’t read so now I’m done (sniff!) I enjoyed this one; it is quite humorous in places but I did miss Inspector Grant.


Linking to Back to the Classics 2020: Classic With a Name in the Title

Christian Greats Challenge - Wrap-up Post

On the Incarnation by Athanasius

A Chameleon, a Boy, and a Quest by J.A. Myhre

The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer

Life Under Compulsion by Anthony Esolen

Flynn of the Inland by Ion Idriess

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

The Nine Tailors by D.L. Sayers


The link up page is here if you wanted to add your review of any books you've read for this challenge.
Thank you to those who joined in!

Bookish Catch-up

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860)

The Mill on the Floss is the story of the imaginative, temperamental Maggie Tulliver and her practical and unsympathetic brother, Tom. Their father muddles through life, honest but also ignorant and belligerent. His poor judgement leads to destitution and great emotional pain for his wife and children.

‘Certain seeds which are required to find a nidus for themselves under unfavorable circumstances have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they will get a hold on very unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered over Mr. Tulliver had apparently been destitute of any corresponding provision, and had slipped off to the winds again, from a total absence of hooks.’

‘Mrs. Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person - never cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously.’

I really appreciated Eliot’s evocative descriptions of the joys and pains of childhood, her detailed descriptions, and the deep Christian themes she wove into this story. Considering that the author rejected Christianity as a young woman, her writing suggests that some of the seeds that were sown when she was younger still clung to the hooks and she never quite got rid of them.
A tragic story with a tragic end.

The Dean’s Watch by Elizabeth Goudge (1960)

The Dean’s Watch is beautifully written and incorporates themes of service, sacrificial love and redemption in an interesting and poignant story.
The Dean is a misunderstood man. He is thought to be proud and unapproachable but in reality he is extremely shy. He is married to a beautiful woman who is selfish and distant. He loves her dearly but his love is not reciprocated.
When he encounters Isaac the watchmaker, a crusty old fellow, the two strike up an unusual friendship which changes both of them. There are various other characters in this multilayered book. One of my favourites was the elderly Miss Montague.
At one point she was reflecting on her adolescence and thought back to the moment when she realised she’d been living in a dream world. Crippled by an accident as a youngster and neglected emotionally by her parents who were vaguely ashamed at having produced so unattractive a child, she knew back then that she would never marry and being a gentlewoman, a career was not open to her. What should she do?

'She never knew what put it into her head that she, unloved, should love. Religion for her parents, and therefore for their children, was not much more than a formality and it had not occurred to her to pray about her problem, and yet from somewhere this idea came as though in answer to her question...Could mere living be a life’s work? Could it be a career like marriage or nursing the sick or going on the stage?...So she took a vow to love.'

This is a lovely book and my 14 year old daughter really enjoyed it too.

No Highway by Nevil Shute (1948)

Mr Honey, an overlooked but brilliant scientist, is working on fatigue in aircraft structures. The story is narrated by Dr Scott, Honey’s new boss. Scott initially judges the man by his ugly, dishevelled appearance, eccentric behaviour and bizarre interests, but finds that there’s much more to him than meets the eye.
Honey has a theory that the tail of the plane he’s been testing will crack from fatigue after a certain number of flying hours but he hasn’t proved anything yet. However, on a work flight over the Atlantic he discovers that the plane he is on is the same Reindeer model that he is performing his tests on. He is interested but not alarmed until he discovers that somehow the plane has been allowed to fly hours over his estimate where fatigue would be likely to occur.
He raises an alarm with the crew but they basically think he’s crazy so when the flight makes a short stopover he uses the opportunity to put a spanner in the works, so to speak.

As usual, Nevil Shute takes an unlikely person, fills in all their little details, and makes them the centre of the story. Shute is probably the only writer I know who is able to incorporate technical detail (he was an engineer) and not lose the non-technical reader who prefers a character-driven plot  (e.g. moi) in the process. His characterisations are so well done and people such as the unlikeable Honey become characters we sympathise and identify with in Shute’s hands. Unlike many of his other books, this one has a rather happy ending!

A little quote I liked was when Dr Scott was asked what he thought of Mr Honey after he threw the spanner in the works (metaphorically speaking). Scott’s reply was:

“I think exactly as I did...I think that there’s a very fair chance that he’s right about the Reindeer tail. I think he has a very logical mind. The fact that his interests spread very wide doesn’t mean he’s mad. It means that he’s sane.”

Shroud for a Nightingale by P.D. James (1971)

The title of this book is a clever little play on words. James has set this story in a teaching hospital and I think she captures the atmosphere of the hospital system really well, even if it differs in detail  from a more modern setting.
The plot is cleverly convoluted with twists and turns; multiple murders occur and suspicion changes from one person to another.
As I’ve said numerous times before, P.D. James has a wonderful literary style. Her life experience obviously contributed to her knowledge of human nature but I often get the sense that the only person she has genuine regard for is her Chief Inspector Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh. Everyone else in her novels degenerate into nasty specimens of humanity and the reader doesn’t get into sympathy with any of them, although there were one or two characters in this book who had some redeeming qualities.
There's a good amount of tension with some dramatic events and the ending was completely unexpected. A good read, especially for anyone who has worked in a hospital setting.

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers (1937)

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane are married at last and set off to a quiet country house for their honeymoon.
The story starts off with extracts from the diary of the Dowager Duchess of Denver (aka Lord Peter Wimsey’s mother) and they are just delightful. She goes over some of the details of the development of the relationship between the two lovers and puts in her own funny little interjections.
It continues with snippets of gossip about the wedding from a variety of sources such as a letter written by Lord Peter’s nasty sister-in-law, Helen, who in writing to her friend observed:

‘Peter was as white as a sheet; I thought he was going to be sick. Probably he was realising what he had let himself in for. Nobody can say that I did not do my best to open his eyes. They were married in the old, coarse Prayer-book form, and the bride said ‘Obey’ - I take this to be their idea of humour, for she looks as obstinate as a mule.’

Unsurprisingly, Lord Peter and Harriet’s married life is inaugurated with a murder. The cosy cottage that Peter bought for Harriet and where they went to spend their honeymoon turns out to be not so cosy after all when the body of the previous owner is found in the cellar.
Busman’s Honeymoon is a combination of a detective novel and a romance and is an enjoyable conclusion to the long-running and tumultuous relationship between the two protagonists.

Harriet said: ‘I have married England.’

Wimsey said: ‘We’ve got to laugh or break our hearts in this damnable world.’

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers (1934)

This was a re-read for me but I’d read it so long ago that I’d forgotten many of the details.
Sayers wrote this novel after Strong Poison (where she introduces Harriet Vane) and Have His Carcase (where they work on solving a crime together) and it comes just before Gaudy Night which also features Vane. However, The Nine Tailors has no mention of Wimsey’s relationship with her.
I’ve really enjoyed the Wimsey & Vane novels and thought I might be disappointed going back to Wimsey on his own but I have to say, I found it quite refreshing. It gave Sayers the opportunity to delve into the personalities of the very engaging characters in this story and to concentrate her efforts on an intricate and baffling murder mystery.

The Nine Tailors is set in the remote fen country of East Anglia. It is an original and very clever detective story centred around a church, its practice of the ancient craft of bell-ringing and a twenty-year old unsolved crime. ‘Nine Tailors' refers to the nine strokes which start the toll to announce to the villagers that a man has died.

‘The art of change ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. To the musical Belgian, for example, it appears that the proper thing to do with a carefully tuned ring of bells is to play a tune upon it. By the English campanologist, the playing of tunes is considered to be a childish game, only fit for foreigners; the proper use of bells is to work out mathematical permutations and combinations.’


All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot (1973 & 1974)

This is the second volume of memoirs written by James Herriot and contains Let Sleeping Vets Lie and Vet in Harness.
James is now married to Helen, a farmer’s daughter, and they live in the little Yorkshire village of Darrowby. Its the 1930’s, Britain is on the verge of World War 2, and veterinary science is still in the dark ages in many respects.
I’ve loved these memoirs which started with All Creatures Great and Small where Herriot begins his practice in Yorkshire after his training in Glasgow. By the end of the first memoir, James and Helen were married and spent an unorthodox honeymoon carrying out tuberculin-testing. In this second memoir, they have settled into life as a married couple and James is in partnership with his former boss, Siegfried Farnon, in the veterinary practice in Darrowby.
The author is so good at combing humour and pathos in his writing. I’d be laughing at something hilarious in one chapter and in the next I’d be close to tears.
These memoirs are a window into a way of life that has passed and are great books to read aloud.

'There's another lamb in here,' I said. 'It's laid wrong or it would have been born with its mate this afternoon.'
Even as I spoke my fingers had righted the presentation and I drew the little creature gently out and deposited him on the grass. I hadn't expected him to be alive after his delayed entry but as he made contact with the cold ground his limbs gave a convulsive twitch and almost immediately I felt his ribs heaving under my hand.
For a moment I forgot the knife-like wind in the thrill which I always found in new life, the thrill that was always fresh, always warm.

The Yorkshire Dales, 2019

A Bookish Catch-up

Our recent overseas trip afforded me some good opportunities for lighter reading. With very long flights from here to the U.K and back and a about six hours of train travel in between I managed to get through a few books that I took with me plus some others I picked up on our travels.
Light reading for me tends to lean towards detective/spy novels so I’ll start with those.

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie (1970)

This was a strange one. It often felt more like a half-baked John Buchan story than an Agatha Christie novel with its international intrigue and bizarre characters. It was promising to start off with at first  when an unknown woman approached Sir Stafford Nye, a British diplomat, at Frankfurt airport with a tale that she would be killed if she didn't get to London. She persuaded Nye to give her his cloak and take his place on the flight. Unfortunately, Christie lost the plot a little later which was unfortunate as it could have been a good story if she had stuck to what she was good at.
There was no detective in this story and no crime as such, but there were double identities, spies, fake officials, an assassination, and a romance to top it all off.

An underlying theme was a resurgence of Nazism based on an event which came to light in this story:
As WWII progressed and Hitler was facing defeat, a plan was concocted to get him out of Germany to safety elsewhere.
Towards the end of the war, a German psychiatrist who dealt with megalomaniacs had a visit from a government official and the Führer. The psychiatrist was treating twenty-four ‘Adolf Hitlers’ at the time (as well as fifteen Napoleon’s, ten Mussolini’s, and five reincarnations of Julius Caesar!)
The psychiatrist arranged for the two men to meet and mingle with the most amiable of the Führer  patients and retired from the room. The meeting over, the two visitors left hurriedly.

Not long after this visit one of the psychiatrist’s ‘Hitler’ patients started showing signs of agitation, demanding to go immediately to Berlin. His behaviour was so fierce and unlike his usual self that the psychiatrist was relieved when a couple of days later his family took him home and said they would arrange private treatment there for him.

A clandestine investigation in the years after the war resulted in the belief that the real Führer was left in the asylum by his own consent and was not long after smuggled to Argentina, had a son by a ‘beautiful Aryan girl of good family,’ and died insane, believing he was commanding his armies in the field.
The fake Führer supposedly left the psychiatric clinic with the government official and it was his body that was found in the bunker.
At the time of this story a ‘young Siegfried’ arises, supposedly Hitler’s son, but actually a rank impostor. With backing from powerful people in high places, this young man was harnessing the youth of his country to bring about a new world order by means of violence, anarchy, drugs and what not.

It was a rather convoluted story with an equally baffling ending that seemed to come out of nowhere.
This is definitely not a standard Christie novel and I nearly didn’t finish it, but it did have its interesting bits so I carried on. Not one I’d ever bother reading again and definitely not one I’d recommend for anyone new to Agatha Christie. She should have left this sort of story to authors who knew how to write spy/espionage novels - such as John Buchan or Helen Macinnes.

Speaking of Helen Macinnes, I picked up this title from the gift and secondhand shop at the Armitt Museum in Ambleside for £1:

The Snare of the Hunter by Helen Macinnes (1974)

Helen Macinnes was born in Scotland and went to live in the USA in 1937. Her books are usually set during WWII and the Cold War period. Both she and her husband, Gilbert Highet, a classicist who worked at one time for British Intelligence, travelled widely and this is reflected in Macinnes’ books.

The Snare of the Hunter has its beginnings in Czechoslovakia when Irina Hradek, the former wife of Jiri Hradek, a high ranking official in the Czech secret police, leaves the country to make her way to the west. She is astonished that her former husband, an ambitious and ruthless man, doesn’t hinder her defection but it becomes obvious that something sinister is afoot when those who are involved in helping her get to the west die in curious circumstances.

Irina’s father, a famous author living in secrecy after defecting to the west years before has friends who are helping Irina escape. They enlist the help of David Mennery, an American journalist who had lived in Czechoslovakia years before and had known Irina then.
Mennery had wanted to marry Irina but her mother, a Communist offical, had done everything to prevent the marriage. He left the country and put Irina out of his mind.
Now all these years later he again meets the woman he once loved, learns the circumstances of her life since then, and as he desperately tries to get her to safety, his love is rekindled. But Irina is now her ex-husband’s prime target. She cannot be allowed to reveal incriminating evidence about Hradek and his ambitious designs; evidence he discovers that she is carrying with her.

There’s a good bit of suspense in this story although Macinnes is an old school spy/espionage author who places more emphasis on character, place, and ideals than on the action that modern writers in this genre tend to concentrate on.

And now on to the detective novel. Bookshops in the U.K are wonderful repositories of crime classics and detective fiction. Not just the odd one or two but all the Josephine Tey books were to be found on the shelves in shops such as Waterstones and Blackwell Books. I usually have to order these books online and rarely find them at secondhand book sales. They also had the whole series of the British Library Crime Classics that I haven’t seen here at all. Glasgow, Oxford and London especially, are a book lover’s paradise.

I bought this Tey title in Bloomsbury in London and read it while I was away.

The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey (1929)

This is the first in Tey’s Inspector Grant series of which there are only six, which is unfortunate because Alan Grant one of the most likeable detectives in fiction. Now that I’ve read The Man in the Queue I only have one more book in this series to read: ‘A Shilling for Candles.’

The Man in the Queue is a mystery surrounding the stabbing murder of a man who was lined up outside a London theatre waiting to be admitted to the last performance of a popular musical. No one had witnessed his murder and the press of people around him kept him upright until the doors to the theatre opened and he fell forwards.
He had nothing upon his person to reveal his identity and a loaded revolver was found in his pocket.
Inspector Grant is brought in to cover the investigation and by a painstaking process and some good luck, he manages to identify the victim and from there, the prime suspect.
One of the most interesting aspects of this book was the exploration of circumstantial evidence: how facts, evidence, and motives come together to pinpoint a suspect. In Grant’s mind there was a clear case to incriminate his suspect, but something felt wrong. What if all this was merely a series of accidents that were completely unrelated? What if he had arrested the wrong man?

‘Was the man by any remotest possibility telling the truth? If not, he was the most cold-blooded wretch Grant had ever had the unhappy lot to meet. But the man appeared unconscious of Grant’s scrutiny; he seemed wholly absorbed in his story. If this was acting, it was the best Grant had ever seen, and he deemed himself a connoisseur.’

Josephine Tey’s books are always satisfying reads and I enjoyed this one as much as her others. Being the first book in the series I thought it would lack some finesse but she didn’t disappoint.
The only quibble I have, if you could really call it that, is that her description of Detective Alan Grant in her first book didn’t match another description that stayed in my mind after reading The Daughter of Time. In The Daughter of Time Grant is confined to a hospital bed after an accident on the job and was wincing at the indignity of being thrown around by a small nurse he nicknamed the midget.

‘...she dealt with his six-feet-odd with an off-hand ease that Grant found humiliating.’

For years I pictured Grant as a tall, solid, garrulous type of fellow and then I read this in The Man in the Queue, which didn’t sit with the picture I had in my mind after reading The Daughter of Time:

‘If Grant had an asset beyond the usual ones of devotion to duty and a good supply of brains and courage, it was that the last thing he looked like was a police officer. He was of medium height and slight in build, and he was - now, if I say dapper, of course you will immediately think of something like a tailor’s dummy, something perfected out of all individuality, and Grant is most certainly not that; but if you can visualize a dapperness that is not of the tailor’s dummy type, then that is Grant.’

The resolution of this mystery came out of the blue and was as unpredictable as it was clever. Once again Tey has Grant romping around the Scottish Highlands which is always a treat.
Tey's books are available free for Kindle @ebooks Adelaide.


Death Walks in Eastrepps by Francis Beeding (1931)

Francis Beeding is the pseudonym for the writers Hilary St George Saunders and John Palmer who wrote over thirty crime and thriller novels together from the 1920’s up to the 1940’s.
This book is an Inspector Wilkins’ mystery and is set in a quiet English seaside resort and was once called one of the ten greatest detective novels of all time.
The plot is quite complex but I actually had an inkling later in the book about the identity of the murderer, which is so unlike me! I’m usually hopeless at predicting things like and this was probably a first for me.

At its roots, this is a story of unbridled ambition and festering resentment and the lengths such a person in their pride will go to achieve their aims. The Eastrepps Evil, as the real murderer came to be called, framed a man for the murder of a number of people before he was finally caught but it was too late for the accused...

A good old page turner published by Arcturus Crime Classics who publish unjustly neglected works from the 1930’s (the golden age of crime writing) to the 1970’s.

The Lakes District Murder by John Bude (1935)

This is a book I found on the shelf at a place where we stayed while in the Lakes District. I’d never heard of the author before but when I saw the title and that the book was published by the British Library I got stuck into I so I could finish it before we moved on.

Bude’s detective is Inspector Meredith, a well-respected and hardworking policeman with a quiet domestic life that includes a teenage son who helps his dad out with some sleuthing and a wife who doesn’t want their son to go down the same path as his father. Apart from a couple of mentions, Meredith’s family life is kept in the background and gives him no trouble.

The story begins with the apparent suicide of a young man who is part owner of a garage and petrol station situated in an isolated location. What at first appears to be a fairly straight forward investigation turns into a complex puzzle as Meredith finds that there are things that don’t add up: there is no apparent motive; the young man was happily engaged to a young woman and had no financial difficulties. The circumstances surrounding the death suggested an elaborate pre-meditation, but the man had made his dinner, set the table and left the kettle on the stove just before his death occurred which just didn’t fit in with the suicide theory.

What follow is a fairly complex and technical investigation which unearths a possible fraud. Some of this went over my head as it involved mathematical and mechanical calculations but I took a liking to Inspector Meredith and was interested enough to try another of his books.

A great aspect of a book like this is the insight it gives into the life of a policeman in the days before mobile phones, the Internet, and decent transportation. Meredith could use a landline if it happened to be available but otherwise he had to send someone off on a bike with a message. He relied mostly on a motor bike or the train to get around. In a place like the Lakes District, travel was slow and only the larger towns such as Carlisle were accessible by train.
Police work was a difficult occupation and sleuthing required a steady mind, a dogged persistence, and lots of leg work.
A good read if you like mental gymnastics but don’t let me put you off trying another of his books because this next one is a cracker:

Death Makes a Prophet by John Bude (1947)

A visit to a Waterstones bookstore in London presented me with a dilemma: a wonderful display of neglected old British Crime Classics recently reprinted. I think in all there are about seventy-four books by a variety of authors including Freeman Wills Croft, George Bellairs, E.C.R. Lorac, John Bude and others, but I had to limit myself to one as I already had other books earmarked and the exchange rate between the Aussie Dollar & the U.K Pound leaves us decidedly worse off.

I decided in the end to try another John Bude title and thought this one looked promising. I didn’t regret my pick and thoroughly enjoyed this droll, and at times a little dark, crime novel.
The Children of Osiris was a cult created and led by the High Prophet, Eustace K. Mildmann, a widower with an only son, Terence, who was twenty-one years of age at the time of this story.
The cult, adopting the initials of their full title, referred to their doctrine as the Cult of Coo, or Cooism. Their dogmas included a mixture of Ancient Egyptian beliefs and bits and pieces of lesser known religions with a modern twist.

The Cult of Coo believed in ‘magic numbers, astrology, auras, astral bodies, humility, meditation, vegetarianism, immortality, hand-woven tweeds and brotherly love.’

Mildmann was a sincere, dreamy man who believed Cooism was the key to all life’s mysteries.

‘His best ideas had always come to him when sunk in a self-imposed trance, or, as he pithily expressed it, “during a phase of Yogi-like non-being.” (“Non-being” figured as a very important factor in the Cult of Coo, though nobody seemed able to define its exact significance.)’

When he moved to the trendy Welworth Garden City in the 1940’s he found the right soil for his ideas and before long a group of intellectuals ripe for the picking. When the Hon. Mrs. Hagge-Smith came on the scene she totally embraced Cooism and became Mildmann’s patron and financial backer.

The author spends the first half of the book building the scene for a murder by introducing the various characters associated with the cult; their backgrounds, quirks, ambitions and petty jealousies. The second half of the book is more serious, although it still has some sparks of humour, and it's here that Inspector Meredith makes his first appearance.
There are some bizarre and baffling circumstances for Meredith to untangle. This book was quite different to The Lakes District Murder, mostly because of the humourous aspects that Bude scattered throughout, but also because the plot didn’t go into intricate details about things that I knew nothing about.
Some of my favourite parts are those that deal with Terence. Here was an athletic, practical young man with the appetite of a horse and the physique of a boxer. He was the very antithesis of his father who ‘had done everything to undermine his normality.' From clamping down on his tremendous appetite with a strict vegetarian diet, giving him a very small allowance of sixpence a week, requiring him to wear ‘rational clothing’ which included shorts in the middle of winter, and making him a Symbol-bearer in the Temple.

One day Terence met Denise, Mrs. Hagge-Smith’s secretary and immediately fell in love with her. She didn't mind him either.

‘Terence...shot a quick glance at the miracle in his midst and asked abruptly:
“I say, don’t think this is rude of me, but do you have manifestations?"

“Manifestations?”
It sounded as if he were referring to insects or pimples.

“Yes, you know - astral visions and all that sort of thing. Spirit shapes.”

“No - I cant say that I do. I dream rather a lot after a late supper. But I’m not at all psychic, if that’s what you mean.”

“I am,” announced Terence, to Denise’s surprise. “I’m always having astral manifestations. I get quite a kick out of it.” His eyes assumed a dreamy expression and then suddenly narrowed, as if he were trying, there and then, to penetrate the Veil. “Its marvellous sometimes how clearly I see things. They’re so terribly realistic.”

“Things?” enquired Denise. “What things?”

“Steaks mostly. But sometimes its mutton-chops or steak and kidney pudding. I just have to close my eyes, relax my mind and body, and there they are...You think it’s blasphemous of me to see things like that, don’t you? I know it’s not very high-minded, but -”

“I don’t think anything of the sort. I think its very clever of you to see anything at all.”

Terence just couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for peanut cutlets and raw cabbage and he confessed to his new-found friend that he went on the binge the week before and spent ten-weeks pocket money on a good feed.

Inspector Meredith always considered this investigation involving the Children of Osiris to be one of the most interesting, bizarre and exacting of all his cases.

At the same time I was getting my first introduction to John Bude, Sharon @Gently Mad was getting hers. She has written a review of another of his titles, The Cheltenham Square Murder, which sounds good.

And lastly, I read my first western:

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey (1913)

Apparently this book was a bestseller when it was published and has never been out of print. It made the author famous and created the new Western genre.
Set among the canyons and sage plains of Utah in the early 1870’s, this book has a strong romantic element and plenty of action.

A long running feud between Gentiles and Mormons comes to a head when Jane Withersteen, the daughter of the man who founded the Mormon settlement at Cottonwood, ignores the dispute and offers hospitality to an outsider.
A Mormon elder who plans to make Jane one of his wives threatens vengeance but he underestimates her courage and determination.
One day a lone rider of the plains comes to her house and with the help of the man who experienced hospitality at Jane’s hands, they try to help her hold out against those who seek her ruin.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Western and was surprised it had such a strong romantic element. I thought it was a bit melodramatic at times and ‘Lassiter,’ the lone rider who comes to Jane’s assistance was a little larger than life in his shooting and fighting abilities.

A fairly enjoyable read but I can’t say that I love the Western genre. I’d have to read some more of them to determine that.
Free online at Gutenberg.


What would you choose if you wanted a light read? I probably wouldn’t have picked up a book like Riders of the Purple Sage to read at home but I appreciated a book that wasn’t too demanding while we were travelling. I did contemplate taking a doorstopping epic like Les Mis or War & Peace for the plane trip but I’m glad now that I didn’t.