Category Archives: 4

The Murder Rule – Dervla McTiernan

The Murder Rule – Dervla McTiernan

I listened to a short story by Dervla McTiernan while driving to a holiday spot. So when this one popped up on Borrowbox I thought why not?

Here’s the blurb …

For fans of the compulsive psychological suspense of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a mother daughter story—one running from a horrible truth, and the other fighting to reveal it—that twists and turns in shocking ways, from the internationally bestselling author of The Scholar and The Ruin.

First Rule: Make them like you.

Second Rule: Make them need you.

Third Rule: Make them pay.

They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system.

They think I’m working hard to impress them.

They think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row.

They’re wrong. I’m going to bury him.

I listened to this one as well. It was good and unexpected (which is what I want in a crime novel). The characters were well-rounded and sympathetic (the ones that should be sympathetic). It had a nice structure with diary entries from Laura (from the past) and chapters from Hannah’s perspective.

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Funny Story – Emily Henry

Funny Story – Emily Henry

I have read all of Emily Henry’s novels – and I was very keen to get my hands on this one.

Here’s the blurb …

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?

Emily Henry’s novels have heft – the characters have depth and the situations they find themselves in are reasonable. Plus the novels are witty, and the characters are articulate.

A review.

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Sweet Danger – Margery Allingham

Sweet Danger – Margery Allingham

I have joined Kate Davies’ Summer of Mystery Club and this is the first book. I listened to it (from Borrowbox)

Here’s the blurb …

Way back during the crusades Richard I presented the Huntingforest family with the tiny Balkan principality of Averna but since then the kingdom has been forgotten, until circumstances in Europe suddenly render it extremely strategically important to the British Government. They hire unconventional detective Albert Campion to recover the long-missing proofs of ownership – the deeds, a crown, and a receipt – which are apparently hidden in the village of Pontisbright. On arriving in Pontisbright, Campion and his friends meet the eccentric, young, flame-haired Amanda Fitton and her family who claim to be the rightful heirs to Averna and join in the hunt. Mr. Campion and his two young friends, Eager-Wright and Farquharson, posted as the Hereditary Paladin of Averna and his entourage! Unfortunately, criminal financier Brett Savanake is also interested in finding the evidence of the oil-rich state’s ownership for his own ends. Things get rather rough in the village as Savanake’s heavies up the pressure on Campion to solve the mystery before they do. In the course of the hunt, Campion dresses in drag, takes refuge in a tree, is nearly drowned in a mill race, and his friends find themselves bound and gagged in sacks, shot at, and witnesses to a satanic ceremony led by the local doctor. The rural calm of Pontisbright is well and truly shattered.

This was a lot of fun in a very English way – like a grown up Famous Five. I am not sure if I would describe it as crime, but more an adventure with a bit of crime thrown in. I would love to see it as a TV series (apparently it was in 1990)

Next up Death of a Ghost.

A review

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Redhead by the Side of the Road – Anne Tyler

Redhead by the Side of the Road – Anne Tyler

I like Anne Tyler. I have read a number of her novels. This one is quite short, more of a novella.

Here’s the blurb …

Micah Mortimer isn’t the most polished person you’ll ever meet. His numerous sisters and in-laws regard him oddly but very fondly, but he has his ways and means of navigating the world. He measures out his days running errands for work – his TECH HERMIT sign cheerily displayed on the roof of his car – maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is content with the steady balance of his life.

But then the order of things starts to tilt. His woman friend Cassia (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a ‘girlfriend’) tells him she’s facing eviction because of a cat. And when a teenager shows up at Micah’s door claiming to be his son, Micah is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle.

Redhead by the Side of the Road is an intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who sometimes finds those around him just out of reach – and a love story about the differences that make us all unique.

This had all of the hall marks of an Anne Tyler novel – A Baltimore setting, a close look at an ordinary person. Micah is a very orderly man – he has a daily cleaning roster and he drives very carefully – and life has taken a bit of a toll on him. He left college early to start up a tech company, but couldn’t work with the investor, and several relationships have failed (and the one with Cass is looking doomed). He is a good man trying to do the right thing, he just doesn’t know sometimes what the right thing to do is.

A review.

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These Old Shades – Georgette Heyer

These Old Shades – Georgette Heyer

This is the third novel in my read all Heyer’s romance novels in publication order. First was The Black Moth and second Powder and Patch.

This one is still set in the Georgian era – think powdered wigs, high heels, and lots of silk brocade. It has some characters from The Black Moth (the evil Duke of Andover is reformed – somewhat, and he is now the Duke of Avon, so maybe not the same character?).

Here’s the blurb …

The Duke is known for his coldness of manner, his remarkable omniscience, and his debauched lifestyle. Late one evening, he is accosted by a young person dressed in ragged boy’s clothing running away from a brutal rustic guardian. The Duke buys “Leon” and makes the child his page.

Reading the novels in order highlights Heyer’s growth as an author. In my opinion this ‘sequel’ is better than The Black Moth.

I think modern readers will struggle with the age difference (20 plus years) and the fact the heroine is the hero’s ward.

It’s witty, well-researched, and there is a bit of intrigue. A very entertaining read.

A review.

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Kind of Sort of Maybe … but Probably Not – Imbi Neeme

Kind of Sort of Maybe … But Probably Not – Imbi Neeme

I bought this from a lovely book store while I was in Melbourne. I wanted a novel to read on the plane.

Here`s the blurb …

A charming, nostalgic, quirky, uplifting novel of people young and old finding their tribe, gaining courage to be themselves and perhaps falling in love, too.

Librarian Phoebe Cotton lives with misophonia. The sound of other people crunching an apple, slurping their tea or snapping chewing gum fills her with a rage that she buries deep within.

Mortified by her ‘Not Quite Right’ brain, she hides away inside 6 Salmon Street, the family home that her formidable grandmother Dorothy has abandoned for a more convivial life at the Western Retreat Retirement Village. But when Phoebe begins receiving mysterious postcards in the mail, she slowly, but surely, finds herself being pulled back out into the world and towards Monty, the sweet postal clerk.

Across town, Suze, a university student with a high distinction in study avoidance, is clinging to the hope that the neglectful J might actually be her boyfriend. When J’s attention turns to Ky, it sets Suze on a path that leads her to 6 Salmon Street and Phoebe Cotton.

Together with Suze and Monty, Phoebe goes on a mission to solve the mystery of the postcards but ends up finding much, much more, including acceptance, strength and love.

This was enjoyable, well-written and interesting. And the characters (the ones you are meant to like) were great. I particularly liked larger than life Charlie. I found it to be uplifting, with all our various quirks we can still find friends, and happiness.

A review.

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Audrey’s Gone AWOL – Annie De Monchaux

Audrey’s Gone AWOL – Annie de Monchaux

I read about this in the Open Book newsletter – and it seemed like the perfect novel to take on holiday.

Here’s the blurb …

It’s never too late to reinvent your life

Audrey Lamont has happily devoted herself to family life for the best part of 40 years, but lately she’s become aware that she lost herself somewhere between ‘I do’ and the weekly shop.  
Worse, her academic husband Simon has found time for romance – just not with Audrey.
Feeling invisible to everyone, even herself, she flees to her aunt’s home in rural France.  
While waiting for her sudden absence to spark a change of heart in Simon, Audrey finds solace in the charms of the French countryside and the company of her aged aunt and a cast of eccentric Bretons.  
But soon Audrey discovers going AWOL might do more than save her marriage, it might change her life …
 

Audrey’s Gone AWOL is a funny and beautifully observed story about losing yourself, finding yourself, and discovering joy.

I enjoyed it. A book about a mature heroine re-discovering her life after raising a family. And she goes to France and meets a cast of quirky characters (I want it to be made into a film so I can see Lilou’s outfits.). It is easy to read, well-written and has things to say about being a wife and mother (and the differences between how older women are viewed In France and Australia).

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North Woods – Daniel Mason

North Woods – Daniel Mason

I kept seeing this novel everywhere and I finally decided to buy a copy.

Here’s the blurb …

When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and inhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave – only to discover that the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a sinister conman, a stalking panther, a lusty as each inhabitant confronts the wonder and mystery around them, they begin to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

In his transcendent fourth novel, Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason delivers a magisterial and highly inventive tale brimming with love and madness, humor and hope. Following the cycles of history, nature and even language, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment, to history and to each other. It is not just an unforgettable novel about buried secrets and inevitable fates, but a way of looking at the world.

This novel has an interesting premise and structure. First, it’s about a place. We meet all of the people who live in this place over time. From the very first white settlers to sometime in the near future. Second, all of the various accounts are told in different ways; a written history for posterity, ballads, almanacs, medical notes, letters to a friend, etc. I found it compelling (maybe not the ballads), but all of the other sections were well-written and moved the story along. It is also a bit mystical – there’s hauntings. It also has an environmental message; we see the forest slowly destroyed by various pests and diseases, and then global warming is the last nail in the coffin for several trees.

A review.

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Spook Street – Mick Herron

Spook Street – Mick Herron

I listened to this one in preparation for the next TV series.

Here’s the blurb …

What happens when an old spook loses his mind? Does the Service have a retirement home for those who know too many secrets but don’t remember they’re secret? Or does someone take care of the senile spy for good? These are the questions River Cartwright must ask when his grandfather, a Cold War–era operative, starts to forget to wear pants and begins to suspect everyone in his life has been sent by the Service to watch him.

But River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates

Something happens very early in the novel, which made me think I might be done with the Slow Horses novels, but I pushed on, and it was fine. High body count, but would you expect anything else?

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Filed under 4, Audio, Crime, Fiction, Spy, Thriller

Women Food and God – Geneen Roth

Women Food and God – Geneen Roth

As someone who has issues with food and weight, I was interested in reading this one. I read Conquering Fat Logic by Nadja Hermann last year and I found it very liberating. I realised I was in charge of my weight – no excuses.

Here’s the blurb…

Roth began exploring emotional eating in her bestseller When Food Is Love. Now, two decades later, here is her masterwork: WOMEN FOOD AND GOD.

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. No matter how sophisticated or wise or enlightened you believe you are, how you eat tells all. The world is on your plate. When you begin to understand what prompts you to use food as a way to numb or distract yourself, the process takes you deeper into realms of spirit and to the bright center of your own life. Rather than getting rid of or instantly changing your conflicted relationship with food, Women Food and God is about welcoming what is already here, and contacting the part of yourself that is already whole—divinity itself.

This book covers emotional eating (my big downfall), why we do it and how we can stop it. I found it confronting and enlightening.

A review.

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