Cornflower Books

Books of the day

   


    Oh, joy - a new novel by Jane Gardam! Last Friends is the third book in the series which began with Old Filth and continued with The Man In The Wooden Hat, and while they featured Sir Edward Feathers QC and his wife Betty, this one focuses on Terence Veneering, "Filth's great rival in work and - though it was never spoken of - in love. Veneering's were not the usual beginnings of an establishment silk: the son of a Russian acrobat, marooned in north-east England, and a devoted local girl, he escapes the war to emerge in the Far East as a man of panache, success and fame. But, always, at the stuffy English Bar he is treated with suspicion: where did this blond, louche, brilliant Slav come from? ... a tale of love, friendship, grace, the bittersweet experiences of a now-forgotten Empire and the disappointments and consolations of age."

 

    When a blurb says something like "guaranteed to capture the hearts of everyone who truly loves books and literature," I have to read on. So it was with The Bookman's Tale by Charlie Lovett which will be out in paperback next month: "After the death of his wife, Peter Byerly, a young antiquarian bookseller, moves from the US to the English countryside where he hopes to rediscover the joys of life through his passion for collecting and restoring rare books. But when he opens an 18th. century study on Shakespeare forgeries, he is shocked to find a Victorian portrait strikingly similar to his wife tumble out of its pages, and becomes obsessed with tracking down its origins. As he follows the trail back to the 19th. century and then to Shakespeare's time, Peter learns the truth about his own past and unearths a book that might prove that Shakespeare was indeed the author of all his own plays."

 

    Kate Griffin's Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders (also out early next month) won the Stylist/Faber competition - judged by Ruth Rendell, among others - to find the best new and unpublished crime writing talent in the UK. It is set in London in 1880 where, "in the opium-laced streets of Limehouse the ferocious Lady Ginger rules with ruthless efficiency. But The Lady is not happy. Somebody is stealing her most valuable assets - her dancing girls - and they must be found and made to pay. Bold, impetuous and with more brains than she cares to admit, seventeen-year-old seamstress Kitty Peck reluctantly plays 'bait' for the kidnappers. But as her scandalous and terrifying act becomes the talk of the city, she finds herself facing danger even more deadly and horrifying than The Lady. This thrilling historical mystery takes us deep into the underworld of Victorian London. Take nothing at face value, for Kitty is about to go down a path of discovery that will have consequences not only for herself, but for those she holds most dear ..."

This week's books, part 2

         Following on from yesterday's post, here is the balance of this week's arrivals:

    A Commonplace Killing is the last novel by Siân Busby who sadly died in September. The book has an introduction by the BBC's Robert Peston, Siân's husband, who transcribed the final part of the handwritten manuscript in the days after her death, and you can read it here. The novel itself will be broadcast on Radio 4's Book at Bedtime in June, and is about the discovery of a body, that of Lillian Frobisher, on a bomb site in north London in 1946. How did she come to be on the site? Whay was her husband unaware that she hadn't come home that night? "In this gripping murder story, Siân Busby gradually peels away the veneer of stoicism and respectability to reveal the dark truths at the heart of postwar austerity Britain."

    Next, "a Victorian gothic thriller by a master of the genre," The Asylum by John Harwood. "A young woman wakes in a strange bed... a sickly light filters through a metal grille. Dr. Maynard Straker steps into the room, and speaks. 'Have no fear, Miss Ashton. I am entirely at your service.' But that is not her name and she should not be here - in the Asylum. She is Miss Georgina Ferrars, of Gresham's Yard, London. And she can prove it. But when Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, the reply is swift: 'Georgina Ferrars here. Your patient must be an imposter.'"

    A Girl Like You by Maureen Lindley begins in 1939 in rural California. Thirteen-year-old "Satomi Baker is used to being different, being half American, half Japanese. When war is declared, Satomi's father Aaron is one of the first to sign up and is sent to the base at Pearl Harbor. He never returns. The community which has tolerated its foreign residents for decades suddenly turns on them, and along with thousands of other Japanese-American citizens, Satomi and her mother are sent to a brutal labour camp in the wilderness ... At Manzanar, Satomi learns what it takes to survive, and what it means to be American. But it will be years before she will discover who she really is under the surface of her skin."

    Winner of the Athens Prize for Literature in 2008, What Lot's Wife Saw by Ioanna Bourazopoulou, translated by Yiannis Panas, is a story of betrayal, sacrifice and unconditional love in a post-apocalyptic world. "It's been twenty-five years since the Overflow flooded Southern Europe, drowning Rome, Vienna and Istanbul, and turning Paris into a major port. At the Dead Sea, the earth has opened up to reveal a strange violet salt to the which the world has become addicted, and a colony has been established by the mysterious Consortium of Seventy-Five to control the supply. Run by murderers, fugitives and liars, the Colony is a haven to those fleeing Europe, but when its governor dies suddenly and mysteriously, the six officials turn on each other, sparking a terrifying chain of events which threatens its very existence. In Paris, Phileas Book, the greatest crossword compiler of his age and creator of the Epistleword, is recruited by the sinister Consortium. Presented with the epistolary confessions of the six, he is ordered to sift truth from lies to find out who killed the governor. But as Phileas starts to unravel the mystery, he begins to realise that these are no ordinary letters and that nothing less than the course of human history is at stake."

Books in brief

   

    A few words on some recent reads:

    Much has been written about Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, and I found this complex and highly original book - which takes a life through a range of permutations of fate - absolutely stunning. It's clever, it's meticulous, it has foxed and flummoxed some reviewers, but this one loved it.

    

    Elanor Dymott's Oxford crime novel Every Contact Leaves A Trace - which I spoke a bit about here - is ambitious and doesn't quite achieve what it sets out to do. I guessed the culprit correctly, but the case for why a murder was committed in the first place could have been better made, and certain characters and their actions were implausible. That said, I did find it thoroughly engrossing, but I think its reach exceeds its grasp, and a tighter edit would have served it better.

   

    Dancing to the Flute by Manisha Jolie Amin was the subject of a post the other day. This is a charming and uplifting novel about music, life and friendship - it's warm and touching, and was a very interesting and pleasurable read, the musical theme giving it an extra, fascinating cultural dimension.

Crime: the chemist and the Canon investigate

 

    If you're in the market for gritty, realistic crime novels then skip this post now. If, on the other hand, you relish unconventional sleuths, civilised, period settings, mysteries whose raison d'être is character rather than plot, then the books I'm talking about today should suit nicely.

    Speaking from Among the Bones is the fifth in Alan Bradley's very lively, highly original series set in an English village in the 1950s, centred around his eleven-year-old amateur chemist, expert in poisons and eagle-eyed investigator, Flavia de Luce. Living with her father and sisters in their crumbling ancestral home Buckshaw, the precocious Flavia - who has inherited her Great Uncle Tarquin's chemistry laboratory and has an extensive knowledge of most topics, whether scientific or otherwise - uses her powers of observation and ingenuity to get to the bottom of all sorts of goings-on in Bishop's Lacey. In this latest episode of her adventures, the church organist is found murdered at the same time as the tomb of St. Tancred is being excavated and the saint's remains exhumed, her family's financial worries deepen, and the drama of her home life continues to the very last page.

    James Runcie's 'detective' Sidney Chambers is a man of the cloth, of a type with Kenneth More* in Genevieve, and the owner of a black Labrador called Dickens (so who could resist?), and he's back in the second in a planned series of six books which will take him from the 1950s to 1981. On the subject of chronology for a moment, I love the novelist's ability to either stop time - Flavia has been eleven since the books began and she has packed a great deal into that 'year' - or alter its speed for their convenience, e.g. Sidney's daily existence (which often engages him with real events) unfolds at one speed, while other aspects of his life, most notably his romantic liaisons, are conveniently stalled or drawn out over implausibly long periods! But to get back to the book itself, Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night is a series of six interlocking stories in which Sidney, as vicar of Grantchester and fellow of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, helps his great friend Inspector Geordie Keating solve various crimes concerning his parishioners and college associates. As ever, Sidney's conscience guides him, but as he strives to "put his acquired identity, as a man of faith, above his own essential nature," he is faced with difficult decisions. It is these moral dilemmas, Sidney's wisdom and humanity, and his *"mixture of decency and optimism" which are so appealing, and which make these novels a great pleasure to read.

    Whether you are in the mood for a book with brio (Flavia) or something a little more reflective (Sidney), both series are charming and really rather fun.

Weekend reading

 

    Over the past week I've read an impressive but somewhat harrowing book (it's not for the squeamish), a really fun book (the second of the two there), a charming and uplifting one, and one whose characters are all seen in extremis, its three parts linked by plot and theme.

    It's time to slacken the pace a little and open something relaxing and engaging, and I think James Runcie's new Grantchester Mystery, Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night will be just the thing. I read the first in what will be a series of six last year and I loved it, so much so that I went to hear James talk about it at the Edinburgh Book Festival - he is as erudite as he is entertaining.

    In the new book, we are in 1955 and Canon Sidney Chambers is called to investigate the fall of a don from King's College Chapel, a case of arson at a glamour photographer's studio, and the poisoning of Zafar Ali, Grantchester's finest spin bowler. The reluctant sleuth has personal problems, too, as he is drawn to both his socialite friend Amanda Kendall and to Hildegard Staunton, the beguiling German widow. Taking a trip abroad, he finds himself in a web of international espionage just as the Berlin Wall is going up. At least at home he has his lovely black Labrador Dickens for company ....

    That's my weekend reading, and I'm greatly looking forward to it. Which book will you be picking up?

                                                        ~~~~~

    Still on the subject of detective fiction, P.D. James has an interesting theory as to why so many "Golden Age" novelists were female.

Two girls

 

    Many thanks to everyone who entered the draw for a copy of Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring; the winner is Michi, and the book will be on its way to her shortly.

     Incidentally, for anyone who'd like to know more about Tracy's research for the book and about Vermeer's work and modus operandi, do listen to this conversation between Tracy and Melissa Buron, assistant curator of European art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco where the painting itself is currently on show.

   

    Now to a girl of a rather different stripe: Flavia de Luce is back!

    It's a highlight of the reading year when Alan Bradley brings out a new book in his series about the eleven-year-old sleuth, and the latest one, Speaking from Among the Bones, is great fun. I'm nearing the climax as the tomb of St. Tancred, patron saint of Bishop's Lacey is about to be opened and the remains exhumed. Meanwhile, the church organist has been murdered, and Flavia's family is in danger of losing Buckshaw, their ancestral home. Must read on!

Bargain of the day - The Lady of Sorrows

    Today's Kindle deal is Anne Zouroudi's The Lady of Sorrows, the fourth in her Mysteries of the Greek Detective. So far, I've read only the first in the series (I loved it) and I'm greatly looking forward to the rest, but as you'll gather from that post on the book, Anne's central character is no ordinary policeman. Each novel is based on one of the seven deadly sins, and as such - and given the 'nature' of Hermes, the detective - I doubt they'd have to be read in order.

    In The Lady of Sorrows, "Hermes Diaktoros visits a remote island which is home to an ancient icon famed for its miraculous powers. But something about the Virgin troubles him, and Hermes calls on an old friend to confirm his suspicions that the icon is a fake.

    Ready to hand the matter over to the authorities, Hermes intends to leave – until the island’s icon painter is found dead at sea. Did he die of natural causes or by a wrathful hand? What secret is a dishonest gypsy keeping? And what haunts the ancient catacombs beneath the bishop’s house?

    The inimitable Hermes must deal with forgery, betrayal and superstition, and the consequences of all-consuming rage."

Monday miscellany: BOYBN, Rebus, Blackfriars and more

    It happens only once every ten years, but this evening the literary journal Granta announced its latest Best of Young British Novelists. For the purposes of perspective, have a look at the 1983 list and read the related article.

   

    It may be only mid-April, but Christmas shopping planning has started for me with the announcement of the release of Ian Rankin's next Rebus novel, Saints of the Shadow Bible, in November - Mr. C. is already rubbing his hands in anticipation, and I'm glad to have at least one present 'done'.

 

 

    Just arrived today and out early next month is Kate Clanchy's Meeting the English, "a bright story about dark subjects". 

   " 'Literary giant seeks young man to push bathchair. Own room in Hampstead, all found, exciting cultural milieu. Modest wage. Ideal 'gap year' opportunity....'

    So it is that Struan Robertson, orphan, genius and just seventeen, leaves his dour native town of Cuik, and arrives in London in the freakish fine summer of 1989. His job is to care for Phillip Prys, silenced and paralysed by a massive stroke, because, though two teenage children, two wives, and a literary agent all rattle round Phillip's large house, they are each too busy with their peculiar obsessions to do it themselves. As the city bakes, Struan finds himself tangled in a midsummer's dream of mistaken identity, giddying property prices, wild swimming and overwhelming passions. For everyone it is to be a life-changing summer."

 

    Blackfriars is a new digital-only literary imprint from Little Brown and Virago, "created with the aim of discovering and nurturing new talent (or talent that has been away for a while)". It will be launched in June with three titles including The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan, " a heartrending novel set in belle époque Paris, inspired by the real-life model for Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, Marie van Goethem, and a notorious criminal trial of the era".

 

 

    Lastly today, a tongue-in-cheek look at current cover trends, though what they don't say in that article is that on the back of the Life After Life jacket is a dog!

TBR 5: The Beauty of Murder

    We had an Oxford murder a couple of weeks ago, now it's the turn of Cambridge, and A. K. Benedict's The Beauty of Murder:

    "Stephen Killigan has been cold since the day he came to Cambridge as a junior lecturer. Something about the seven hundred years of history staining the stones of the university has given him a chill he can't shake. When he stumbles across the body of a missing beauty queen, he thinks he's found the reason. But when the police go to retrieve the body and find no trace, Killigan has found a problem - and a killer - that is the very opposite of reason.

    Killigan's unwitting entry into Jackamore Grass's sinister world will lead him on a trail of tattooists, philosophers, cadavers and scholars of a deadly beauty. As Killigan traces a path between our age and seventeenth century Cambridge, he must work out how a corpse can be found before someone goes missing, and whether he's at the edge of madness or an astonishing discovery.

    A fast-paced page-turner, this is a speculative crime thriller that travels to the heart of a series of gruesome crimes by way of a city and person that have far too many secrets written in blood."

  (The striking jacket design is by Patrick Knowles.) 

Cornflower Book Group - An Instance of the Fingerpost

   

    Well, then - hands up all those who made it through to the end! If you have read Iain Pears' An Instance Of The Fingerpost, all four parts, all 692 closely worded pages, then I applaud you, and if you haven't finished yet, or you've abandoned it, then I'd say it is worth persevering.

    It's a brilliant piece of writing, a sequence of events recounted through four dictinct voices, four sets of perceptions and preoccupations, four unique presentations of 'the facts'. It encompasses a vast amount of knowledge of life and culture in Restoration England, a time of political upheaval and manoeuvring and intellectual ferment - it's worth reading for its insight into the medical and scientific thinking of the period alone. It is complex and intricately plotted, but is it unnecessarily long?

    At roughly 200 pages in, here's the note I made: "Any impatience with the relative circumlocution should be countered with a reminder that it's there for a reason; sit back and enjoy the ride and don't agitate about reaching the destination quickly or soon." You may disagree! Granted, by mid-way through the third part I was finding it hard going, but the pace picked up in part four, and the ending was surprising and ingenious - worth the wait, I think.

    The author has some fun at his own expense with this passage from early in Prestcott's narrative: "It is my desire to set out clearly my account of events, and not bother with the silliness indulged in by so-called authors trying to earn spurious fame....All those elaborate conceits and hidden meanings. Say what you mean to say, then be silent, is my motto, and books would be better - and a lot shorter - if more people listened to my advice."

    A crime novel and a piece of literary sleight-of-hand, a combination of artifice and scholarship, a work which puts flesh on the bones of real characters of the time, and which takes a single act in the essentially closed world of an Oxford college and uses it as fine focal point and as cause or effect of so much else in the wider world.

    Over to you.

                                                    ~~~~~

    The 'cake' to go with this book is here.

TBR 6: The Scent of Death

    I read Andrew Taylor's The Anatomy of Ghosts a couple of years ago and loved it (as you'll see here), so I'm delighted to have his latest book to look forward to:

     The Scent of Death is set in Manhattan in 1778, and as the last part of America under British rule, "New York is home to a swelling tide of refugees seeking justice from the British crown. Edward Savill is sent from London to investigate the claims of dispossessed loyalists, but he soon becomes embroiled in the case of a gentleman murdered in the city's notorious Canvas Town. An escaped slave hangs for the crime, but Savill is convinced they have executed the wrong man.

    Lodging with the respected Wintour family, Savill senses the mystery deepening. Judge Wintour's beautiful daughter-in-law, Arabella, hides a tragedy in her past, while his son plans a dangerous mission into enemy territory. And what of Mr. Noak, the enigmatic clerk seemingly bent on a dubious course of his own?

    One thing is clear - the killing in Canvas Town was just the start of a trail of murder, and it's leading directly to Savill ..."

New books, old books, writing books, finding books

    A 'what's new' post in which I hope there's something to interest everyone.

    - Virago Press have today re-published several of the best-loved works of Rumer Godden, with more to come soon. Out now are Black Narcissus (that's the only one I've read, and it was of course made into a very memorable film by Powell and Pressburger),  Kingfishers Catch Fire and In this House of Brede, among others. Jenny Brown's 25 minute interview with Rumer Godden is worth watching.

 

   - Lovers of both books and art who are within reach of Edinburgh may like to spend a civilized afternoon later this month viewing the current S.J. Peploe exhibition at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) and then discussing Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street - in which Peploe's work and his grandson feature - over tea at the Gallery Book Lounge.

   

    - M.R. Hall, whose latest book The Flight is in my TBR pile and is currently available at a bargain price, is running a free online course called The Seven Secrets of Successful Crime Writing. To access it go to M.R. Hall's Facebook page and follow the link to the weekly videos, podcasts and to download the worksheets. There's also an associated competition for aspiring crime writers.

   

    - The Literary Consultancy will be hosting The Literary Conference: Writing in a Digital Age in London in June and it's open for booking now. The full programme with its impressive list of speakers is here, and to get a flavour of the event, watch the video from last year's conference which you'll see on the right side of that page.

  

    - You may have heard of bookcrossing, that is where you label a book, 'release it in the wild' and follow its progress to other readers, well a similar initiative has been started in London's Tube. Books on the Underground acts as a 'commuter library', distributing a collection of books for passengers to borrow, read and put back for others to pick up. With Valentine's Day approaching, the theme is Love on the Underground with a selection of Mills & Boon novels for your delectation. By the way, did anyone see the programme How to Write a Mills and Boon which was shown early last month? Novelist Stella Duffy took up the challenge and found there was a lot more to it than she'd expected!

And the winner is ...

   .... Mary!

    Thank you for all your entries to our competition to win Andrew Forrester's The Female Detective, which The British Library have very kindly given as a prize, and thank you for all those wonderful recommendations of crime fiction which came by way of the comments; they include suggestions from an actual crime writer, so many thanks to Martin for giving us the benefit of his experience and intimate familiarity with the genre, and Mary, I hope you'll enjoy the book when you get it.

    Still on the subject of The British Library, Lindsay (in a comment here) speaks highly of the current exhibition there Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire, and says Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction, which he visited briefly, is fun.

    Lastly today, may I mention in passing P.D. James' book Talking About Detective Fiction on which there is a post here, and say that I have yet more books in the pipeline to give away, so look out for a special competition coming up soon!

Recent arrivals: some new fiction

    

      

      A new novel by William Nicholson is something to look forward to, and here is Motherland, out on 14th. February. Alice Dickinson (who was 11 in The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life) begins this book at the age of 23, "triggering a story that focuses on her great-grandmother's love affair in the 1940s". In 1942, Kitty is an army driver in Sussex who meets Ed, a Royal Marine Commando, and his best friend Larry, a liaison officer with Combined Operations. Both men take part in the catastrophic raid on the beaches of Dieppe, and both men fall in love with Kitty ... "An epic love story which captures both the beauty and the pain that love brings, set against a powerful backdrop of war and monumental change."

    "Lipska does for the East End what Rankin does for Edinburgh," says crime writer James Craig, and that's quite an accolade for a debut novel. He's referring to the thriller Where the Devil Can't Go by Anya Lipska, in which Janusz Kiszka, unofficial fixer for London’s Polish community, is given the task of looking into what appears to be a routine missing persons case, but he is soon embroiled in a much more complex disappearance. "After he is threatened by drug dealing gangsters and accused of murder his search for answers takes him on a reluctant visit home to the port of Gdansk, the site of traumatic memories from the Soviet era. There, in the cellar of a former secret policeman, he uncovers evidence of a decades-old betrayal – and a conspiracy that will reach its chilling denouement in a derelict warehouse in London’s Docklands."

    Sophie Hannah's psychological thrillers have an enormous, loyal following, and here is the latest, The Carrier. "When her plane is delayed overnight, Gaby Struthers finds herself forced to share a hotel room with a stranger, a terrified young woman named Lauren Cookson - but why is she so scared and why won't she explain? Lauren blurts out something about an innocent man going to prison for a murder he didn't commit, and Gaby soon suspects that Lauren's presence on her flight can't be a coincidence, because the murder victim is Francine Breary, the wife of the only man Gaby has truly loved. Tim Breary has confessed ... but he claims to have no idea why he murdered his wife."

    Next, from Courttia Newland comes The Gospel According to Cane, "a gripping tale of loss, despair and hope of redemption". Beverley Cottrell had a dream life: a great job, a wonderful husband, a new baby. "But then, one winter afternoon when her son was barely a few weeks old, he was kidnapped from a parked car. Despite a media campaign, a full police investigation and the offer of a reward, Malakay was never found. Two decades later, Beverley believes that she has pieced her life together again - until a young man starts appearing wherever she goes. One dark evening the stalker gets close and tells her not to be scared. He says that he is Malakay, her son."

    Pam Jenoff's The Ambassador's Daughter is a prequel to her novel Kommandant's Girl and is "a beautifully wrought coming-of-age story about a young woman deciding her destiny in a world that is redefining itself". It begins in Paris in 1919 where Margot Rosenthal has come with her German diplomat father as world leaders gather to rebuild Europe after the Great War. "Margot feels trapped and uncomfortable in the city ... but everything changes when she befriends Krysia Smok, a famous yet secretive pianist, a group of radical political activists, and Georg Richwalder, a handsome naval officer haunted by his experiences of the war. Margot finds herself questioning where her loyalties should lie."

    "A multi-layered, deftly observed novel of the fallout of fame and fortune," Little Known Facts by Christine Sneed is a story about celebrity. "Life as one of Hollywood's most handsome, charismatic and critically acclaimed movie stars seems like a glitzy fairytale to the people who orbit Renn Ivins. But for his grown children, their father's fame threatens to permeate every aspect of their lives. For medical student Anna, Renn's exploits are a source of embarrassment and bemusement. Her brother Will is floundering in a quarter-life crisis, the only thing to outlast his directionless career and failed relationships is his trust fund. While Will and Anna are happy to use their father's money, they're less happy to use his influence...." Secrets and lies unravel in this "psychologically exquisite, superbly realised novel."

Murder in the Library and a book to give away

 

    Just opened at the British Library in London is the exhibition Murder in the Library: An A-Z of Crime Fiction. This is a look at the history of crime fiction from its early roots to the present day, and it features familiar and well-loved writers as well as more obscure and surprising ones. The 'A-Z' element takes us from 'A' for Agatha Christie to 'Z' for Zodiac as in Soji Shimada's Tokyo Zodiac Murders, an illustrated Japanese detective novel, and highlights of the exhibition - which is free and runs until 12th. May - include John Gielgud's annotated script for Murder on the Orient Express and photographs, from his personal album, for his appearance in Morse, original material relating to the real-life crimes behind Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, and Arthur Conan Doyle's manuscript of the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (1926).

    The Library is hosting a series of events to accompany the exhibition including, on Friday 8th. February, The Story of Crime Fiction with Mark Lawson and crime fiction writers P. D. James, Henry Sutton and Jason Webster discussing the history of the genre, their favourite classics and their own work, and on Friday, 8th. March, The Female Detective in which a panel of writers discuss what makes the female detective, from Miss Marple to Mma Ramotswe, "an icon of the genre".

   

    You may not have heard of Britain's first fictional female detective Miss Gladden, otherwise known as "G", but in 1864 she appeared in the book The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester where "her deductive methods and energetic approach anticipate those of Sherlock Holmes, and she can be seen as beginning a powerful tradition of female detectives". The Library has recently re-published the book, with a foreword by Alexander McCall Smith, and they have kindly offered me a copy to give away, so to enter the draw please leave a comment naming your favourite crime novels or authors (male or female). I'm looking forward to reading what you write as it should amount to a great list of crime fiction, so please do put your name in the hat - it's open to all - and I'll pick a winner in a day or two.

Holiday reading - 2

    I zoomed in on this scene as the wider picture (which exposed more of the subject) might well scare you away; it's Mr. Cornflower in a hot tub reading the new Ian Rankin which, as you see, he couldn't put down. The white background beyond the balcony railings is thick snow.

Bargain of the day - The Lewis Man

    Lots of us have already read - and raved about - Peter May's thrilling novels The Blackhouse and The Lewis Man, and we're looking forward to The Chessmen, the final volume in The Lewis Trilogy, which is not due out until early January but seems to be in stock at Amazon now. If you haven't discovered these books, or you've yet to read volume 2, the Kindle edition of The Lewis Man is currently on sale at the bargain price of 20p.

Cornflower Book Group - January & February 2013

 

   December can be such a busy month - at least pre-Christmas - that reading may not be high on the priority list, so as we've done before, the CBG will have a month 'off'. To launch us into the New Year, I've chosen our January book and one for February so that we have plenty of time to get hold of copies and fit both reads (one short, one long!) into busy schedules.

    For January, a classic of children's literature which appeals to adults, too. Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was first published in 1962 and is set in 1832, but in a period of English history which never happened. King James III is on the throne, and a newly opened Channel Tunnel allows ravaging wolves, driven by severe winters from Europe and Russia, to enter the British Isles ... At Willoughby Chase, the grand but remote country home of Sir Willoughby and Lady Green and their daughter Bonnie, Bonnie's orphaned cousin Sylvia comes to stay, and the girls are left in the care of the tyrannical, scheming Miss Slighcarp when Bonnie's parents have to go abroad.

    "Dickensian in flavour ... rich in atmosphere and intrigue."

    "A genuine small masterpiece."

    "Thrilling tale...stuffed with atmosphere, adventure, memorable characters and luxuriant Gothic prose. Any child who discovers it will fall in love, not only with Aiken's writing, but with reading... The Wolves sequence has inspired writers from Philip Pullman to Cathryn Constable... Aiken was a genius, and her reissue deserves howls of delight," says Amanda Craig in The Times.

    Our February book is "a novel which combines the simple pleasures of Agatha Christie with the intellectual subtlety of Umberto Eco." It is An Instance Of The Fingerpost by Iain Pears, "a deeply scholarly thriller, but with the learning worn lightly and all the elements of the plot clicking together smoothly."

    Set in Oxford in the 1660s, at its centre is a young woman accused of the murder of Robert Grove, a fellow of New College. Four witnesses give their accounts of events leading up to Grove's death: "Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic intent on claiming credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, the son of a supposed traitor to the Royalist cause, determined to vindicate his father; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, a mathematician, theologian and master spy; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary." Only one version contains the extraordinary truth.

    I very much hope that both books will appeal and that everyone who wishes to will find the time to read them. They should be easy to get hold of, whether from libraries or shops; they are available as e-books and audiobooks; there are US editions; but as ever, in case of any local difficulty, The Book Depository stocks them and will despatch them worldwide, free of postage (they are listed here and here). Let's set our discussion dates as from Saturday, 26th. January (for The Wolves ...) and from Saturday, 23rd. February (for An Instance ...), and if you've never read along with us before but would like to do so now, you would be very welcome.

Ian Rankin and the Case of the Disappearing Detective

    You may remember the post from a few months ago, How do you begin a novel? Anyone who found that interesting (and the comments, particularly Linda's, were enlightening) may get a lot from watching the most recent programme in the arts series Imagine with Alan Yentob: Ian Rankin and the Case of the Disappearing Detective. Filmed here in Edinburgh and up in the north of Scotland during the writing process of the new Rebus novel Standing in Another Man's Grave, it shows how even this most seasoned of writers faces the fear of the blank page.

Bargains for Kindle

    I've spotted a few good things in the current Kindle books promotion, for example, the first four of Elizabeth Peters's Amelia Peabody series as an omnibus edition (they come with glowing recommendations - have a look here), Julian Barnes's The Pedant In The Kitchen (there's a bit about it here), BB's The Little Grey Men (beloved by Mr. C. - and see his post on Brendon Chase), Nigel Slater's memoir Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger (there's a 'crumb' from it here), and Sarah Moss's Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland (which I mentioned re. knitting and quoted again the other day).