Wednesday is no longer peering through a shaggy fringe
What I read
Finished Battle for Bittora - I was a bit *sigh* that the romance went the way it did, and I thought the ending was a bit, well, rather late in the day for her to have that epiphany. Not sure the elements meshed very happily, in all.
Elizabeth Gill (not, I may say, the currently alive novelist of that name who pops up in the GoodReads sidebar but a crime novelist who died in 1932), The Crime Coast: a Benevenuto Brown Mystery (1929, recently reissued by that publishing co that keeps sending me freebie ebooks. Aka on original publication as Strange Holiday.) Not bad - there is a bit of that info-dumping of back story that takes the form of people going on in a way that does not sound in the least like normal conversational English, but I will entirely give it points for its not being 'the dago dunnit': even if the Argentine brother and sister are both fairly dodgy in other ways. Lush descriptions of the South of France and the arty bohos that hung out there. Perhaps just that bit too much happy coincidence leading to the solution.
George Macdonald Fraser, Flash for Freedom (1971) - I collected my father's Flashman paperbacks when I went to the old homestead the other week - I thought he had more than I found, but may have been wrong about which ones he had. Anyway, I think Flashy still holds up, because, unlike too many characters, he is clearly intended to be reprehensible, so the codfish is not called for.
Molly Keane, Good Behaviour (1981). I have been aware of this book ever since it came out, and feeling fairly meh about it: but read something the other week that inspired me to get a copy, but no, it just doesn't ring my bells. I was thrown quite early on when we had a lengthy episode in more or less omniscient about the governess (and I'm not convinced Aroon is capable of making that up). I can live with unsympathetic characters and unreliable narrators, but have come across plenty I have enjoyed more.
Cassandra Khaw, Hammers on Bone (2016). I will give it points for actually following through on the noir tone with noir tropes, and the mean streets being those of Croydon, even if a) the situation of the central character was not dissimilar from something else I read recently and b) the horror elements didn't do it for me. But don't think I shall be picking up the next part.
Also discovered somewhere I did not expect two of my Florence King collections and did a bit of dipping into these.
On the go
Winifred Holtby, The Truth is Not Sober: short pieces by Holtby, I think previously uncollected - no, first came out in 1934, but I don't seem to have come across it before this reissue by Blackthorn Press, because so far, none of the stories seem familiar. Only part way in - a section of fable-type satirical stories, nice but a bit slight.
Annibel Jenkins, I'll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald (2003) - not far into this yet, but seems like a solid bio of late C18th actress and woman of letters.
Up next
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