Bookblog of the Bristol Library: How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children’s Books by Joan Bodger

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the Bri...:   Reviewed by Jeanne Many, many years ago, a fellow librarian encouraged me to read How the Heather Looks if I had any interest in chil...

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Drowned by William John Banville

William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He’s published around a dozen novels to international acclaim, winning a range of prizes. Under the name Benjamin Black he wrote a historical crime fiction series about an Irish pathologist named Quirke in 1950s Dublin, releasing seven books between 2006 and 2015. The series resumed in 2021 under Banville’s name.

The Drowned (Hanover Square Press, 1 October 2024) is the ninth book featuring Quirke. Detective Inspector Strafford with whom he has an uneasy relationship is also involved. A recluse near the coastal town of Wicklow discovered an abandoned Mercedes in a field, with the key still in the ignition and the engine still running. As he lingers in indecision another man wanders up to say that his wife has disappeared and he is looking for her. He fears she has jumped from one of the nearby cliffs into the sea. The recluse draws him to the nearest house for help, where the residents call the local Garda, who in turn quickly call in reinforcements from Dublin.

The writing is possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen: melodic, flowing, and cogent. About a third into the book is a poignant multi-page meditation on grief. It describes the feeling with the clarity and understanding that only someone who has experienced deep sorrow can have.

On the other hand, the characters conveyed by this exquisitely beautiful writing are among the most unhappy I have ever seen stroll across the pages of a book. They are caught up in sordid situations, some of their own making, and it speaks volumes for the quality of the writing and the intricacies of the plot that I continued to read about these deeply unpleasant people.

The resolution is neatly imagined and completely unexpected, another plus for this complicated book.

Starred review from Kirkus: "Banville remains a master of suspense; it’s not easy to stop turning the pages until the novel’s genuinely surprising end. This is yet another fine thriller from an author at the top of his game. Excellent writing and a clever plot make this one stand out."

 

·       Publisher: ‎Hanover Square Press; Original edition (October 1, 2024)

·       Language: ‎English

·       Hardcover: ‎336 pages

·       ISBN-10: ‎1335000593

·       ISBN-13: ‎978-1335000590

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3Tu1cx7

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2024

 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

The Hard Word: NOT SO INNOCENT: A REVIEW OF JONATHAN CRAIG'S SO YOUNG, SO WICKED

 The Hard Word: NOT SO INNOCENT: A REVIEW OF JONATHAN CRAIG'S SO YOUNG, SO WICKED

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Lord James Harrington and the New Year's Eve Mystery by Lynn Florkiewicz

Lord James Harrington and the New Year's Eve Mystery by Lynn Florkiewicz (Independently published, November 2021) is the eleventh book in a gentle historical mystery series set in a Sussex village in the late 1950s.

Lord James Harrington turned his inherited family mansion into a high-end country hotel, which he runs with his wife Beth. It’s close enough to London to be a desirable weekend jaunt and it’s quite successful. In mid-December 1959 they visit Haywards Heath to see a Wild West touring show run by two sisters, Jane and Shirley Johnson from Texas. It capitalizes on the rash of Western television programming common during the late 1950s. Harrington’s is hosting some of the cast over the weekend as they take a break between shows and is offering a country and western evening in their honor. (The hotel’s French chef is pained to be offering fried chicken and hot dogs to his guests.) A collection of Native American artifacts on loan is accompanying the tour to add interest and Harrington’s will be displaying it during the troupe’s stay.

A pretentious representative from the British Museum expresses interest in the artifacts and an obnoxious member of the Foreign Office wants to buy the lot outright. Someone tries to pick the lock on the case in the reception area of Harrington’s one night, and a few days later one of the Johnson sisters is killed in a clear homicide. Lord James and DCI George Lane work the case together, as they have in earlier books, bringing it all together on New Year’s Eve.

While this title trends cozier than those I usually pick up these days, I found it highly readable. The story line is original, the writing is competent, and the late 1950s timing is unusual. The country inn setting reminds me of the Pennyfoot Hotel mysteries by Kate Kingsbury. The characters are pleasant if not particularly well developed. There are a good many of them, and I had a hard time keeping them all straight.

There is wonderful detail about holiday celebrations in 1950s England, especially in a scene where James and Beth visit the shops in London to see the Christmas displays and decorations.

These books are independently published and not apt to be part of a public library’s collection. Look for them on Amazon, the Kindle versions are quite affordable. Recommended for fans of historical cozies and students of mid-century fiction.

·         ASIN: ‎B09L1BM4V6

·         Publication date: ‎November 3, 2021

·         Language: ‎English

·         File size: ‎1523 KB

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Lesa's Book Critiques: Murder Takes a Turn by Eric Brown

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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill ...

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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Madam, Will You Talk? By Mary Stewart

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Via WELCOME TO HELL ~ by Glenn Walker: Quickies 1-5-2015

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FFB Review: "THE BRAT" (1957) by Gil Brewer--Reviewed by Barry Ergang

Barry is back this week with his review of THE BRAT by Gill Brewer. After you read his review make sure you head over to Patti Abbott’s blog here where the focus for Friday's Forgotten Books today is on “Crime Fiction of the 1950s.” I was born in 61 so I have to leave this topic to my elders.

THE BRAT (1957) by Gil Brewer

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

It’s giving nothing away in the form of a spoiler to report that this is a story of theft, murder, betrayal and pursuit. Readers of the Fawcett Gold Medal edition will realize that by the fourth page, which is the end of the first chapter.

We learn in a flashback that after his fiancée was killed in an automobile accident, Lee Sullivan was a man adrift: “After that my life was a hollow beating back and forth across the country, away from my home in Florida, seeking nothing, slowly spending what money I had.” It was on a trip to the Everglades where he met and became instantly and obsessively smitten with the appropriately surnamed Evis Helling. She was equally taken with him, and was eager to get out of the Glades and away from her nuclear family and a dangerous, literally kissin’ cousin named Berk Kaylor. And so he took her away to the St, Petersburg area, and they moved into an apartment together. Evis got a job at a loan company and Sullivan went to work for a print shop. Evis talked him into buying a house, and still later on into opening his own printing business. She also concocted a scheme to steal a hundred thousand dollars from the loan company.

When the novel opens, a hungover Sullivan comes home to an empty house. Earlier that day he’d told Evis they weren’t going through with the robbery, but now his gut instinct tells him he must get to the loan company to try to stop her. When he does, he finds the slain body of her coworker Ray Jefferies. Evis—and the money—are gone. Sullivan also finds items she planted to frame him for Jefferies’ murder and the theft.

And so Sullivan pursues Evis to try to recover the money and clear himself. Aware that her hubris will take her back to the Glades long enough to let her family know of her new opulent lifestyle before she shuns them again, Sullivan heads there. His pursuit, of course, is not without obstacles, physical and emotional, and some surprises. Among the obstacles is an especially zealous sheriff named Hugo DeGreef. I’ll leave readers to discover the surprises for themselves.  

In his outstanding article about Gil Brewer in Mystery*File, Bill Pronzini writes that Brewer originally aspired to write literary fiction: “…he understood and loved fine writing and hungered to create it himself, to just once write something of depth and beauty and meaning.” There are descriptive sentences and paragraphs in The Brat that substantiate Pronzini’s contention, but there are also some that seem pulpy, overwrought, as though they’re straining for effect, or are downright nebulous. Take, for example, the book’s opening sentence: “When I called her name, it was as if only the faint odor of her perfume occupied the urgent darkness of the house.” Is there a poetic quality to it that creates an atmospheric effect? Perhaps. But at the same time, it stopped me cold for a moment while I tried—futilely, I confess—to make sense of it. Much later on, describing Hugo DeGreef, Brewer writes: “When he spoke, it was as if the sound of his voice was scraped off the edge of thick meat….” A little Raymond Chandler influence? Possibly, but the simile doesn’t work—for me, at least—because I have no idea what such a voice is supposed to sound like.

The aforementioned are, however, quibbles about what is otherwise a brief, tense, and eminently readable novel of action and suspense by one of the acknowledged masters of noir fiction who came out of the era of paperback originals. Probably the worst thing about The Brat is its title, because Evis is a great deal more than bratty.

Barry Ergang ©2014

Former Managing Editor of Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and Senior Editor at Mysterical-E, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s work has appeared in a variety of publications, print and electronic. Some if it can be found at Amazon, Smashwords, and Scribd.