January books
Moonflower Murders, Anthony Horowitz
No Holly for Miss Quinn, Miss Read
The Honour of the House, E M Channon
Charm’s Last Chance, Irene Mossop
Christine of the Fourth, W W Eastways
Over the Gate, Miss Read
Judy, Patrol Leader, Dorothea Moore
Tension, E M Delafield BLWW
Politics on the Edge, Rory Stewart
Early Days, Miss Read
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Wedding Dress Repair Shop, Trisha Ashley
Kristie at College, Mildred Benson
Tyler’s Row, Miss Read
After Horowitz’s Magpie Murders (I read the book and watched the TV series), now jobless literary editor Susan Ryeland throws in her lot with her lover Andreas and decamps to Crete to help run the hotel which is his dream. After two years, she finds hotel work exhausting, they’re short of money and she starts to miss her London literary life. Out of the blue, she’s visited by a wealthy English couple who own an upmarket hotel, now run by their daughters. Eight years previously, a murder was committed there and a member of staff found guilty and convicted. Now, they’ve had an agitated call from daughter Cicely saying that the verdict may be wrong and the clue is ‘staring her in the face’ in Alan Conway’s book Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, which the author had based on that very hotel. Cicely has since disappeared without trace. Will Susan, as someone who edited Conway’s work, come over and investigate? For £10,000?
Tempted by England and the money, Susan takes the challenge. She finds hostility from the other daughter, Lisa, a lot of people lying to her and one trying to kill her. As if that weren’t enough, her sister is in trouble. Susan does eventually work it out, whereupon the psychopathic killer confesses all. Very cleverly done, as always, although it was a surprise to find the whole of Conway’s book printed in the middle.
I’ve been re-reading Miss Read in bed and she’s seeing me through a tricky time. Early Days is actually two books: A Fortunate Grandchild and Time Remembered. The first is about her London life, living with Grandma Read. I looked up the address, 227 Hither Geen Lane, on Google maps. You can see the house quite clearly and imagine Grandma living there with three grown-up children and the two little girls. The second is about what Miss Read calls the happiest time of her life. She and her sister moved with their parents to Kent, near Pratts Bottom. Young Dora didn’t like London; she was frightened of crowds, railway stations and trains and loud noises. Although only twenty miles from central London, the family was now living in real country, where most of Dora’s schoolfriends had parents still working on the land or in domestic service. She loves the country and realises she always wants to live there. Her brief time in paradise ends when she passes the exams to go to the same school as her sister (Bromley High?) and now faces a long journey every day, lots of homework and an end to freedom.
E M Delafield is most famous for the amusing The Diary of a Provincial Lady but she also wrote a number of novels, mostly pretty depressing. In Tension, Lady Rossiter, a ghastly woman who believes in ‘giving out’ and spreading love around is actually a thoroughly malicious witch who seems intent on ruining the lives of two nice people. It’s so little of a page turner that I read four other books before I finished it. The book was published in 1920 and if I had to choose a novel from that period by a middlebrow woman writer, I would prefer one by Elizabeth von Arnim.
Read Rory Stewart’s book and despair of British politics and the whole notion of democracy. I took a great dislike to David Cameron but couldn’t help rather liking George Osborne, in spite of everything. Michael Gove is exceptionally clever but two-faced and can be unkind while Boris Johnson is even worse than you could possibly have imagined already. You wonder why Stewart got so involved in politics and was so ambitious. At the moment, he’s all over YouTube giving interviews. What next for such a gifted man? Yet again, he wins the book of my month prize.
The children’s books were all read as part of the ongoing Children’s Press project.
Oh, to live in the fantasy world of Trisha Ashley’s novels! Almost every book begins with something dreadful happening to the heroine, causing her to flee; usually to Lancashire. Within about a week of her arrival, she will have made about ten new friends and is already part of a happy community. There are also references to places and people we’ve met in previous books. It’s a happy dream and one I enjoy.
