Cornflower Books

Have you met Hermes?

   

    Another Kindle bargain for you, this time The Messenger of Athens, the first book in Anne Zouroudi's Greek Detective series:

    

    Hermes Diaktoros is no ordinary investigator.

    For a fat man - that's how he's referred to throughout - he's surprisingly fleet of foot, though it's tennis shoes he favours rather than wingèd sandals, and although he's been sent from Athens to look into the death of a young woman on the island of Thiminos, he's not a policeman but works, as he puts it, "for a higher authority". If I tell you also that he is something of an avenging angel, a man who sees deep into the hearts of others, who has a knack for knowing what ails a person and what might cure their ills, then you'll perhaps appreciate that this 'messenger', this 'intermediary' is not as other men; that said, it's an all too real world in which he finds himself when he steps off the ferry with his capacious holdall on a chilly Spring day.

    Hermes is such an original character and one whose particular gifts will afford his creator great possibilities, but in case you think this book is some kind of myth or fable, let me correct that impression. It's a gritty tale of passion and lust, of jealousy, vengeance and corruption, and of the harsh treatment of women; it's like the picture postcard image of a Greek island but taken in the off-season, with the dilapidation and decay - both physical and moral - which would normally be kept strictly 'out of shot', very much in the frame. So the book works both as morality tale and detective story and makes compelling reading.

    As to the plot, Irini Asimakopoulos has been found dead on an island hillside, and while the local police are content to sign off her death as suicide, Hermes takes a different view. In his questioning of the locals, of the victim's husband and others who were close to her - and his methods here are certainly unorthodox - he builds a picture of betrayal and brutality in a society where love and marriage seem rarely to go together. Behind the white-washed façades of the simple village houses, secrets are kept, shame and dishonour are hidden, and piety cohabits with cruelty. But Hermes is in Thiminos to see justice done and this deus ex machina is nothing if not effective, so that by the time he leaves the island many wrongs have been righted in stylish fashion, and the reader will close the book with a sigh of satisfaction.

Even Dogs in the Wild

    Mr. C. writes:

    Rebus and Cafferty, the Holmes and Moriarty of modern crime fiction, are forced into a wary and volatile alliance in Ian Rankin's latest sharp and unsettling work, Even Dogs in the Wild. Both now officially retired, but both unable to escape the past and its demons, the detective and the gangster are thrown together when the violent death of a respected judge is linked with an attack on Cafferty's home. Rankin unravels the thread which connects the two with his usual wry insight, guiding us along the way to some dark and unexpected places in Edinburgh's history.

Bargain of the day - The Nine Tailors

   

    If you haven't already read Dorothy L. Sayers' The Nine Tailors, it can be got for Kindle for 99p today. There's a post on it here.

Bargain of the day

 

    The first of James Runcie's Grantchester Mysteries, Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, is one of today's Kindle bargains. I wrote about it here and summed up,

    "As with Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe novels, the solving of crimes is neither the hero's raison d'être nor really the main point of the book, it's the prism through which we view the character and his struggle to do the right thing, see him develop and watch him progress - for the series will follow Sidney's career (and I hope his personal life) through to 1981. If you're looking for complex plots and intricate situations you won't find them here, but if you want a gentle, romantic book with a lovely period feel, and at its heart a charming character and a purity of thought that is very appealing, then look out for [it]."

    I haven't seen the television adaptation of the book(s), so can't comment on how faithful or otherwise it is, but in print, certainly, the story has much to commend it.

    For more on James Runcie and the clerical detective, this post gives an account of his and William Brodrick's 2012 Edinburgh Book Festival event.

The Select Book Club

    "The Select Book Club had its offices in a courtyard near St. Paul's Cathedral. [...] On the sunlit side of the court a small bay window was dressed with the Select Book Club choices arranged with carefully contrived casualness against a draped backcloth of purple velvet. The Club had been carefully named. Select Books catered for that class of reader which likes a good story without caring much who writes it, prefers to be spared the tedium of personal choice, and believes that a bookcase of volumes equal in size and bound in exactly the same colour gives tone to any room. Select Books preferred virtue to be rewarded and vice suitably punished. They eschewed salacity, avoided controversy and took no risks with unestablished writers. Not surprisingly they often had to look far back in the publishers' lists to produce a current choice."

    From Cover Her Face by P.D. James.

Another fine one leaves us

    P.D. James, a lady I admired enormously, has died today aged 94. Much has been and will be written about her and her work, but that apart, it was her wit, her sharp intellect, her wisdom, personal courage, and integrity which engendered so much respect and esteem. I've been privileged to hear her talk in person, and rarely have I felt as I did then that I was in the company of someone who was - very quietly and unassumingly - head and shoulders above most others.

    If you haven't read her beyond her novels, do look out for Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography and Talking About Detective Fiction.

 

Edited to add: take a look at the Books at the BBC tribute to P.D. James, a special archive of radio programmes in which she featured.

Popping in and catching up

    Posts have been few and far between lately, and that's set to continue as other commitments take priority, but I must just mention a few things as I pop in briefly:

    The respected bookseller Topping & Company is about to open a branch in St. Andrews. I passed the shop in Greyfriars Garden this morning and found it tantalisingly full of stock but its doors firmly closed until next Monday (the 17th.). I shall look forward to visiting Toppings on my next visit.

    A couple of articles caught my eye over the last few days: A.S. Byatt on Margery Allingham - "she turned puzzles into true drama, but with a conscious artificer's grace" - and an interview with Richard Adams, still going strong at 94.

    As to current reading, I am greatly enjoying Margaret Forster's memoir My Life in Houses - and related to that, do see Liz Wood's comment on this post in which she offers a profound and most fascinating insight; much food for thought there.

The Beat Goes On

   

    Mr. C. writes:

    "I hope you get as much fun reading these stories as I had writing them" says Ian Rankin in the introduction to The Beat Goes On, the complete set of short stories about Edinburgh detective John Rebus. Mission accomplished: both for hardened Rebus fans and for newcomers, this collection is so evocative you can almost smell the malt tang of the Caledonian Brewery and see the grey, glittering city with its dark passions and moral ambiguities. There are tales of high society and low life, tales of bitter depravity and macabre humour, all illuminated by Rebus's glowering intelligence as he pursues a very personal ideal of justice through the bars and drawing rooms and suburban bungalows and grim estates of Edinburgh. A dangerous book to have on the bedside table - you just want to keep reading on and on into the wee small hours of the night - and a dangerous book to lend: make sure you get it back.

The plot thickens

 

The Squire is in his library. He is rather worried.

Lady Constance has been found stabbed in the locked Blue Room, clutching in her hand

A fragment of an Egyptian papyrus. His degenerate half-brother

Is on his way back from New South Wales.

And what was the butler, Glubb,

Doing in the neolithic stone-circle

Up there on the hill, known to the local rustics

From time immemorial as the Nine Lillywhite Boys?

The Vicar is curiously learned

In Renaissance toxicology. A greenish Hottentot,

Armed with a knobkerry, is concealed in the laurel bushes.

 

Mother Mary Tiresias is in her parlour.

She is rather worried. Sister Mary Josephus

Has been found suffocated in the scriptorium,

Clutching in her hand a somewhat unspeakable

Central American fetish. Why was the little novice,

Sister Agnew, suddenly struck speechless

Walking in the herbarium? The chaplain, Fr O'Goose

Is almost too profoundly read

In the darker aspects of fourth-century neo-Platonism.

An Eskimo, armed with a harpoon

Is lurking in the organ loft.

 

The Warden of St Phenol's is in his study.

He is rather worried. Professor Ostracoderm

Has been found strangled on one of the Gothic turrets,

Clutching in his hand a patchouli-scented

Lady's chiffon handkerchief.

The brilliant under-graduate they unjustly sent down

Has transmitted an obscure message in Greek elegiacs

All the way from Tashkent. Whom was the Domestic Bursar

Planning to meet in that evil smelling

Riverside tavern? Why was the Senior Fellow,

Old Doctor Mousebracket, locked in among the incunabula?

An aboriginal Philipino pygmy,

Armed with a blow-pipe and poisoned darts, is hiding behind the statue of Pallas Athene.

 

A dark cloud of suspicion broods over all. But even now

Lord Timothy Pratincole (the chinless wonder

With a brain like Leonardo's) or Chief Inspector Palefox

(Although a policeman, patently a gentleman,

And with a First in Greats) or that eccentric scholar,

Monsignor Monstrance, alights from the chuffing train,

Has booked a room at the local hostelry

(The Dragon of Wantley) and is chatting up Mine Host,

Entirely democratically, noting down

Local rumours and folk-lore.

 

Now read on. The murderer will be unmasked,

The cloud of guilt dispersed, the church clock stuck at three,

And the year always

Nineteen twenty or thirty something,

Honey for tea, and nothing

Will ever really happen again.

 

Send for Lord Timothy by John Heath-Stubbs, from The Watchman's Flute.

 

See also: P.D. James on detective fiction

                Oxford crime fiction

                Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke

                Dorothy L. Sayers's The Nine Tailors

                Cyril Hare's Tragedy at Law

Metafictional

   

     "Agatha [...] invented a character, Ariadne Oliver, who is a fictional take on 'Agatha Christie'. Mrs. Oliver, who first appeared in Parker Pyne Investigates, is a large grey-haired woman who writes murder mysteries, eats apples and is saddled with an imaginary detective - the Finn, Sven Hjerson - whom she cannot bear ('Of course he's idiotic, but people like him'). It is a wonderful joke, and Mrs. Oliver is a wonderful creation, but she is not Agatha; although occasionally she does speak in her authentic voice:

    A deal table, her typewriter, black coffee, apples everywhere ... What bliss, what glorious and solitary bliss! What a mistake for an author to emerge from her secret fastness. Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.

    '...The truth is I'm not very good with people.'

    'I adore people, don't you?' said Robin happily.

    'No,' said Mrs. Oliver firmly.

    'But you must. Look at all the people in your books.'

    'That's different ...' "

 

From Agatha Christie: An English Mystery by Laura Thompson.

Joy in the discipline

    "How did Agatha [Christie] develop from the amateur, 'trying things, as one does', into the creator of this dazzlingly accomplished book*? By degrees. By intelligence; by instinct; by confidence; by courage. By trusting her own judgement about what made her writing work. By having a mind uncluttered with received ideas, and an imagination that naturally ran so free she could enjoy the exercise of its restraint. It was a relief, in fact, to trammel it within a genre. Although the structural work of a detective novel was very difficult, there was joy in the discipline. She was ordering her brain like a well-run establishment. Like Lucy Eyelesbarrow in 4.50 from Paddington, she was shining the silver and scrubbing the kitchen table and making a Spanish omelette with the leftover potatoes. She was living in a world where all could be known, all motives uncovered, all ambiguities penetrated. Where mysteries were within her control."

    That's from Laura Thompson's Agatha Christie: An English Mystery which I'm much enjoying, and I was amused by the following passage quoted earlier in the book and relating to a period when Agatha had fewer novels under her belt; here she looks back on the early years:

    "It was by now just beginning to dawn on me that perhaps I might be a writer by profession. I was not sure of it yet. I still had an idea that writing books was only the natural successor to embroidering sofa-cushions."

 

*The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Books in brief: Hue & Cry

   

     Just to follow on from last Saturday's post, I loved Hue & Cry, the first of Shirley McKay's Hew Cullan mysteries set in 16th. century St. Andrews. It's the perfect mixture of Town and Gown - St. Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking word - so as we walk among the colleges which sit by the ruined cathedral, above the harbour, and with their feet in the stoor o' the burgh, as it were, so we learn about life for the students and their tutors, and the merchants and tradesmen they live among.

    There's a compelling mix of domestic and social detail, legal matters and all things medicinal, not to mention the mores and philosophical thinking of the time, and within this context is the ingeniously plotted murder mystery in which our sympathetic young lawyer hero Hew plays detective and advocate. The author's extensive knowledge of the period and gift for language colour the book beautifully, and in the central character we're given a man of intellect and compassion whose personal story alone should be worth following. I'm greatly looking forward to reading the other books in the series.

At the writing desk with Alan Bradley

    All keen readers will have writers for whose books they put everything aside, the ones who go straight to the head of the reading queue, no matter what else is waiting. I am delighted to welcome one of those writers to Cornflower Books today, and it is a privilege to have been able to ask him a few questions about where and how he writes.

    Alan Bradley is one of those inspiring people who have a successful career but then truly come into their own at a stage of life when others are thinking of putting their feet up. Taking early retirement from academia, he wrote non-fiction before beginning a novel which - on the basis of a synopsis and an opening chapter - won the CWA Debut Dagger Award. A publishers' bidding war ensued, rights were sold hither and yon, and the first of the wonderfully entertaining Flavia de Luce books was published to great acclaim and popular success. The sixth in the series came out recently and, as Alan tells us below, there is more in store!

    Apart from being a great fan of his books, I had another reason for inviting Alan to join us today. He and his wife Shirley are Canadian, but nowadays they live on the Isle of Man which is where I was born and spent my childhood, so I'm proud to have an honorary Manxman as my guest, and I hope he is feeling very much at home in that beautiful island.

                                                    ~~~~~

    Alan, please tell us about your writing desk or table. Is it a special piece of furniture or just a convenient surface? And the room in which you work - a dedicated study, or a corner you've carved out of another room in the house?

    Although I have a lovely study overlooking a churchyard, complete with computer on a Victorian partners' desk and a wonderful reference library at hand, I still do an inordinate amount of writing propped up in bed. The reason is quite simple: since I like to begin work at about 4:30 a.m., it means I can make the transition from sleep to writing with as little jarring effort as possible.

 
    What typically sits on your desk? Piles of books for reference/a dictionary or thesaurus? Photographs or special objects? Can you work with 'clutter' around you or do you need clear space?

    I like clear space, but I usually have a clutter of things that need doing. I feel most comfortable when I'm within reach of my reference books. I must admit to an absolute passion for outdated reference works: the Imperial Dictionary; Whitaker's Almanacks for the early 1950's; the ABC Railway Guides, ditto, Kelly's Post Office Directories; Bradshaw; the Army and Navy Catalogue; Hints for Holidays; Law's Grocer's Manual (1949) and the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edition), marred as it is by the sensationalism of the popular plates. There's an indescribable comfort in being surrounded by things as they used to be.

 
    As you sit at your desk, do you have a view (and if so, of what) or would that be too distracting - do you prefer a blank wall, or a lovely object or painting perhaps, to focus the mind?

    As I have said, my desk overlooks a churchyard where there's often something going on: weddings, funerals, jackdaws, ravens, all of which keep me grounded in real life without proving too much of a distraction to the murder and mayhem on my mind.


 
     Do you write in longhand first, or make notes/plans that way, or do you work directly on the computer? If the former, do you have a favourite notebook and pen, or does any scrap of paper serve the purpose? Do you use a pinboard or whiteboard or similar, either for displaying notes and reminders, sketching out plot points and structure, showing location photographs or other visual cues to characters or interiors, etc.?

    I write directly onto the computer, but only after doing the required research and making notes in pencil. I don't know why a softish pencil is so important - perhaps because it reminds me of my childhood. A hard-nosed ball-point seems so crude in comparison; the way in which it graves the paper seems physically (and even morally) repugnant. There's nothing I love better than a fat fresh pad of A4, even if I only use a few pages of it and start afresh with each new book. In spite of that, I always end up with hundreds of notes on bits of paper: the backs of envelopes, grocery receipts, bits torn from the edge of newspaper pages, and so forth. I don't do a lot of plotting, other than a few key scenes. The Flavia mysteries are character driven and I have learned to let them have their heads.

 
    Do you ever write away from your desk, for example, in cafés, libraries, on trains, in the garden? If so, is that because you happen to be in those places and need to get on with some work, or do you purposely go to other writing locations for inspiration or improved concentration?

    No, I do a lot of thinking while walking by the sea, or riding on the bus, but I write only at home. It would be wonderful to be able to write anywhere, but I can't. To me, writing fiction is like being a deep sea diver: you can't be on the surface and in the depths simultaneously. Which is reality? Whichever one you're immersed in at the moment.

 
     Tell us about sound while you're working: do you like to listen to music or prefer silence, and do you need to be shut away with a virtual 'do not disturb' sign on the door, or can you get on happily with the usual interruptions of phone, doorbell, other people in the house, and so on?

    Silence is golden. Our household is a haven of blessed near-soundlessness. As I write this, the only sound in the room is the sober ticking of the clock. We have no radio chattering away mindlessly and watch television only by appointment: generally on DVD. My wife, Shirley, treasures silence as much as I do, so we're the perfect couple.

    What tends to distract you most when you're supposed to be writing?

    Telephones, doorbells, people who don't realise that your work involves staring densely off into space and looking as if you're waiting for a good old chin-wag.

 
    Could you tell us a little about what's currently 'on the desk', i.e. your work-in-progress or what you are planning to start next?

    I'm happy to announce that Flavia #7 (slated for 2015) will be called "As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust", which I must admit is one of my favourite titles. It's from Cymbeline, of course, and comes with its own haunting baggage. Besides that, I've been asked to write a new YA series. And, oh yes, Sam Mendes (of 'Skyfall' and 'Call the Midwife') will be bringing Flavia to the television screen in 2015. I've seen Harriet Warner's screenplay for the first episode, and it's absolutely brilliant. Who was it said, 'May you live in exciting times"?

 
    What would you say were the best, most rewarding aspects of the writer's life, and what are the downsides, if any?

    The rewards, I suppose, are in being self-employed and being paid for doing what you love to do. The downside is that there are no breaks; no holidays; work is 24/7/365. Travel, too, is a great joy. The Flavia books, which have been translated into about 36 languages, have allowed me to visit Germany, Finland, Croatia, Poland, Malta, and Norway, with upcoming trips to Italy, Sweden and Russia: all of them places I would never otherwise have seen. And the fans, of course! The word I hear most often from Flavia's fans worldwide is 'love'. It is like being immersed in a warm ocean. And there is no downside to love!

 
    Finally, by spending many hours 'at the writing desk' you now have a very wide and avid readership, and a career which although you've come to it later in life has brought you great success. What advice would you give to aspiring writers, or to those already in print and hoping to build on that beginning?

    Keep the bum applied firmly to the chair and the fingers to the pen, pencil, or keyboard. Remember the 10,000 Hour Rule. It sounds tacky, but it's true: you learn to write by writing. Beware the sharks and gatekeepers: there are many more of them out there than there are bona fide agents and editors. Don't ever pay anyone to edit or market your work. Real professionals don't charge; they make a living by selling your work.
My goodness - what a lot of advice! Well, it's taken me years and tears to learn it. I'd be thrilled to hear that it's helped someone else even a smidgen. Now go write.

 

    My thanks to Alan for taking the time to answer my questions, and on behalf of all of us who love his books, may I wish him continued great success - his writing gives us such a lot of pleasure!

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches

    I've been spinning out the last few pages of The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, the concluding* volume in Alan Bradley's terrific Flavia de Luce series, because I didn't want it to end. If you are already a fan of the books, you will not be disappointed with this one, and if you haven't yet discovered them then get hold of the first, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and take it from there - they are so original and such fun!

    I'm not going to divulge anything about what happens in Book VI because to reveal a fact or two would be to give away more than I'd like, but let's just say that - following on from yesterday's post - the loose ends are all neatly knotted, and we now know a great deal more about what is really what in Flavia's world than we did before. Sorry to be so cryptic, but I don't want to spoil a moment's reading for anyone.

    The series as a whole is just a delight with our very unusual heroine, the precocious, quick-witted, pigtailed eleven-year-old sleuth and master chemist (and expert in poisons), and the beautifully rendered 1950s English village setting. Flavia lives at Buckshaw, a vast and crumbling manor house, the ancestral home of uncertain future which she shares with her father and two older sisters, but more often than not she's to be found hurtling about the lanes on her trusty bicycle Gladys, keeping a keen eye on whatever is going on in and around the village of Bishop's Lacey.

    Having had no formal education other than that provided by a series of unsatisfactory governesses, Flavia is an auto-didact, her knowledge of chemistry a product of many hours spent in Great Uncle Tarquin's laboratory in Buckshaw's abandoned east wing. She has pored over his notebooks and carries out her own experiments with an innate curiosity and an admirable degree of resourcefulness, and even for this non-scientist, that aspect of the books is another source of richness.

    Flavia's family situation is one reason why the young girl has acquired the investigative habit - both in and out of the lab - for hers is an emotionally distant household. Her father is a broken man following the loss of his wife in a climbing accident in Tibet some ten years earlier, and his older daughters are perpetually at war with their younger sibling. Bluff Aunt Felicity intervenes on occasion, Colonel de Luce's manservant Dogger holds a watching brief and is usually to be relied upon in a tight spot, but for the most part, Flavia is left to her own devices and so her childhood has been far from conventional.   

    There are blackly comic episodes and moments of great poignancy, but it's Flavia's breezy style, encyclopedic knowledge, and touching independence of spirit which propel the books and make them such a tonic to read.

    *Alan Bradley has created something special here, and so I'm very pleased to see that Sam Mendes and Neal Street Productions (the company behind Call the Midwife) have optioned the TV rights to the books with production in conjunction with the BBC, and that there are to be four more novels which "will allow exploration of other parts of [Flavia's] world", so we haven't reached the end after all. Hurrah!

Arrivals - 2

   

    The arrival here of a new Flavia de Luce book is always a pleasant moment with its anticipation of much reading pleasure. With the latest in Alan Bradley's wonderful series, that joy is tempered by the knowledge that this is billed as the last one!

    I shan't say anything about the plot of the new book for fear of spoiling things for anyone who hasn't yet read the earlier ones, but The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches will be published on 13th. March, and while Flavia fans will be eagerly awaiting it, I'd urge anyone who hasn't yet discovered this clever, nostalgic series to make a start on the books soon as they are too good to miss.

Books in brief: Entry Island

   

    A troubled detective, a small island, a murder, a race memory, these are the ingredients in Peter May's latest novel Entry Island. Fans of his terrific Lewis Trilogy will be glad to know that although the main strand of the plot is set in the eponymous Entry Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the secondary one is back 'home' in the Hebrides, and there is much atmospheric local detail in this historical back-story which gives balance to the contemporary Canadian one.

    Detective Sime Mackenzie has been seconded to a murder investigation far from his Montreal base as his Scottish heritage and linguistic background fits him for this unique English-speaking outpost in an otherwise French area. The victim is a local businessman, his wife is the prime suspect, the case looks open and shut. But when Sime meets the dead man's widow, he is convinced he knows her - and yet they couldn't possibly have met. When he discovers a material link between them, the mystery deepens, and while it gradually appears that his Hebridean ancestry is somehow key, she is arrested and charged...

    Typically gripping, taut and tense - another great read from Peter May.

Friday reads

    I have just this minute finished Peter May's Entry Island and I'm pleased to report that, as you'd expect, it's a great read. Mr. C. will be glad to hear that he can now have it - he's been hovering eloquently, silently urging me to get to the end and hand it over. More on the book soon.

    Now, what to read next?

    While I browse the shelves, do please tell us what you will be reading this weekend.

If you flee fate ... fate will find you

   

    "It is evident from the way the stones are set into the slope of the hill that industrious hands once toiled to make this pathway. It is overgrown now, the shallow impression of a ditch on one side. He makes his way carefully down towards the remains of the village, pursued by the oddest sense of treading in his own footsteps. And yet he has never been here.

    The silhouette of a broken-down drystone wall runs along the contour of the treeless hill above him. Beyond it, he knows, a crescent of silver sand curls away towards the cemetery and the standing stones on the rise. Below him, the footings of the blackhouses are barely visible among the peaty soil and the spikes of tall grasses that bend and bow in the wind. The last evidence of walls that once sheltered the families who lived and died here.

    He follows the path between them, down towards the shingle shore where a ragged line of roughly hewn stones vanishes into waves that cast their spume upon the pebbles, frothing and spitting. They are all that remain of some long-forgotten attempt to build a jetty...."

    I know a lot of us were big fans of Peter May's Lewis Trilogy, The Blackhouse, The Lewis Man, and The Chessmen (which I don't think I wrote about here), so it's good news that he has recently published a new novel. Entry Island begins with the passage I've quoted above, and I've just started reading it today so can't say much yet other than that it links Canada and the Hebrides and features Detective Sime Mackenzie on what appears to be a routine investigation, but one which seems to have another dimension ...

   More on it soon, I hope, but while we're talking about Peter May, I must recommend his pictorial accompaniment to The Lewis Trilogy, the very beautiful Hebrides with photographs by David Wilson, and if you've ever marvelled at his output, in this short video he explains his writing methods and how he 'hits the ground running' with every book.

Where's your reading taking you?

   

    Since I was in Oxford in real life last weekend, I'm 'staying' there for now by virtue of my current reading. Dorothy L. Sayers's 1935 novel  Gaudy Night is set in the mid-1930s, and features Shrewsbury College, a women's college of which Harriet Vane is a member, and to which she returns for a Gaudy only to find malevolence in the shape of poison-pen letters, obscene graffiti, and the burning of a pile of gowns.

    So far, Lord Peter Wimsey has made only an incidental appearance, and at my stage in the book he is abroad and Harriet is investigating the goings-on herself, but doubtless he's set to return soon. I'm loving the period feel of the book and the comparatively closed world it depicts - one which the author knew well.

    Closer to home but a little further back in time, I'm also greatly enjoying Annette Carruthers's The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland: A History. It's so beautifully illustrated that I am taking it slowly and not paging through to look at photographs ahead but letting the images keep pace with the text and savouring both.

    So I'm in a rich, visual world of craftsmanship and artistry between the 1860s and the 1920s, and also in a cerebral one some ten years later, and both are suiting me fine.

    Where's your reading taking you?

To The Morse Bar

    Apologies for the quality of the pictures, but they were taken as surreptitiously as possible across a crowded room.

    This is The Morse Bar in Oxford's Randolph Hotel, dedicated to Inspector Morse, and to his creator Colin Dexter whose portrait you see above.

    I'm sorry John Thaw isn't clearer, but these are some of the photographs of him which decorate the walls of the bar, and below is the special Morse cocktails menu with drinks devised by the staff in tribute to our hero. As it was 4pm when I was there, all I had was a tomato juice, but I suspect the man himself would have preferred a pint of beer.

    If you're interested in Oxford detective fiction, there's quite a comprehensive post on the canon here.