Friday Five: Books Read in January

The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham (Sphere) - Male authors seem to think that all women want babies and will do anything to have them. Apparently, baby fever drives us crazy, which must be comforting for them to think that it isn't their oppressive patriarchal behaviour which has this effect. Meghan has a baby and Agatha wants it, so she befriends her to steal it (not a plot spoiler because it's obvious from the cover design). Despite being from supposedly different cultural backgrounds and socio-economic circumstances, the two women are written interchangeably in the first person, and its fortunate that each alternate chapter is introduced by their name or there would be no distinction between the two. Apart from the fact that one has a baby and one doesn't. Because, lest we forget, it is motherhood, or lack thereof, that defines the status of women. One of the characters, let's call her Megatha, literally says, "I am not a real woman because I cannot have a baby." Tedious. 

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (Tinder Press) - Maggie O'Farrell has written a story about grief at the death of a child. That's a tricky subject and one she addresses well. She has made the child the son of William Shakespeare, although her refusal to name him as such and refer to him as the playwright in London or the Latin tutor or the son of a glove-maker seems perverse and artificial. There are wildly overblown sections of prose as she tries to talk about Shakespeare without talking about Shakespeare, including descriptions of the layout of the home of his birthplace, the attitude to ghostly figures, the very essence of iambic pentameter. The novel includes several quotes and themes from Shakespeare's plays and is written in the present tense, which becomes cloying as many things are revealed that are obvious with contemporary hindsight. In trying to diminish William Shakespeare and elevate Anne (called Agnes here) Hathaway, Maggie O'Farrell has done a disservice to both them and us in what feels like little more than fan fiction.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Penguin) - Richard Osman created the wildly popular Thursday Murder Club, and now he has published a standalone novel, We Solve Murders, which looks perfectly set to be the beginning of a new series. The main characters are Amy Wheeler, an assassin/ private security officer to billionaires and her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, who used to be in the business but now likes spending time with his cat, Trouble, and his quiz team down the pub. It is a fast-paced thriller packed with guns and humour. Influencers are being murdered in a spat between money launderers, but no one really cares about influencers because they are so shallow, until we meet Bonnie Gregor, one with a family and a conscience. Amy is meant to be protecting famous author, Rosie D’Antonio who loves flirting – with danger and men – as they encounter lots of action in multiple locations. There is a cast of hundreds and it’s quite hard to keep track of who is whom. It doesn’t really matter though, as the action, locations and opportunity for cameo roles all combine to make this novel a dying-to-be-made-into-a-film script, with actors queuing up to play the characters. It’s a very decent book with a central character who talks to his dead wife while sitting on a small bench by a quiet pond and is trying to come to terms with his grief and her absence.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber) - There is so much weight in such a small book (114 pages) as Claire Keegan questions, what is decency and humanity? "Was there any point in being alive without helping one another?" Bill Furlong is a coal and timber merchant trying to do the best he can for his family in a small, rural Irish town where half the population is emigrating. The Catholic Church dominates the village, the schools and the workforce, and folk turn a blind eye to some of their more insidious practices, such as the Magdalen laundries. With a solid nod to Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Bill has his eyes forced opened just before Christmas, and he has to make a decision rather than merely going with the flow. The language is exquisite as it settles into natural rhythms and their inevitable outcomes, with a beautiful Irish tilt. "So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close. He could not say which he rathered: the sight of the town or its reflection on the water." In this instance less is definitely more.

Everyone Knows Tipping Point: We Solve Murders

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman

Penguin

Pp.438 

Richard Osman created the wildly popular Thursday Murder Club, and now he has published a standalone novel, We Solve Murders, which looks perfectly set to be the beginning of a new series. The main characters are Amy Wheeler, an assassin/ private security officer to billionaires and her father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, who used to be in the business but now likes spending time with his cat, Trouble, and his quiz team down the pub. “Steve Wheeler still reads about murder, of course he does. Just as a retired centre-forward still looks at the football scores on a Saturday afternoon. Takes a professional interest, with his feet up.” Amy’s husband, Adam, is mostly absent.

 

It is a fast-paced thriller packed with guns and humour. Influencers are being murdered in a spat between money launderers, but no one really cares about influencers because they are so shallow, until we meet Bonnie Gregor, one with a family and a conscience. Amy is meant to be protecting famous author, Rosie D’Antonio who loves flirting – with danger and men – as they encounter lots of action in multiple locations. The New Forest; South Carolina; Dubai; St Lucia; County Cork. “Amy has been in mortal danger in many countries over the last few years, but St Lucia has to be one of the most beautiful.”

 

There is a cast of hundreds – François Loubet; Henk van Veen; Jeff Nolan; Susan Knox; Max Highfield; Felicity Woollaston; Jo Blow; Andrew Fairbanks; Bella Snachez; Mark Gooch; Gary Gough; Tony Taylor; Rob Kenna; Mickey Moody; Vasily Karpin; Eddie Flood; Carlos Moss; Kevin the ex-Navy SEAL – and it’s quite hard to keep track of who is whom. It doesn’t really matter though, as the action, locations and opportunity for cameo roles all combine to make this novel a dying-to-be-made-into-a-film script, with actors queuing up to play the characters. I read recently about a woman who said she thought being an assassin was a reasonable career due to the number of TV shows, books and films about them. “Needs must, and murder’s not so difficult. Wear gloves, and don’t drive the getaway car too fast.”

 

Pedantry provides humour, such as when Rosie asks Henk if he has proof “in that little envelope of yours?” He replies that is “not a little envelope, it is an A4,… and yes, I have proof in this normal-sized envelope.” A character quotes Eric Cantona, revealing the aimed-at demographic, while another ruminates on property prices. “If he was moving to the village today, he wouldn’t be able to afford it. The only way anyone can afford to buy a house these days is to have bought it fifteen years ago.” There is an allusion to modern social interaction as François Loubet sends emails via Chat GPT in the style of “a friendly English gentleman”. “Most communication is by message or email. High-end criminals are much like millennials in that way.” Meanwhile, another character is obsessed with road routes.

 

“The journey had been a pleasant surprise, if Tony Taylor is honest. The A31 turned out to be clear as a bell – couldn’t believe his luck there. M27, no major problems. The traffic backed up around Junction 2 of the M3 – but when doesn’t it? The usual fun and games on the M25, but then clear from Junction 9 all the way to Letchworth Garden City. So, all in all, Tony couldn’t complain. Should have taken two hours and twenty-three minutes, actually took two hours and fifteen minutes.”

 

It may ostensibly be about Amy, but Richard Osman proves he relates more to middle-aged men than he does to young women. Steve knows crisp flavours, road routes and daytime TV. “Sometimes Steve wonders what world Amy is living in. Everyone knows Tipping Point.” Even when Steve loses his cool with Henk, he does so with self-deprecation. “I’ve put my priorities on hold for a number of days now. I’ve been tied up, I’ve been threatened with a gun, I’ve been in a helicopter, and I’ve eaten kale.” Steve is spoiled, however, by having flown on a private jet. “This private jet – it’s a Learjet – is slightly smaller than the ones he has become used to in the last week and he is feeling a little cramped. He’s also just found out there is no private chef, and he had really been looking forward to a bacon sandwich. So, just as cat food has been ruined for Trouble [after the cat ate leftover roast chicken], so air travel has forever been ruined for Steve.”

It’s a very decent book with a central character who talks to his dead wife while sitting on a small bench by a quiet pond and is trying to come to terms with his grief and her absence. “Steve has learnt you must never resent other people for their happiness. Everyone is taking the best shot they’ve got and some shots are just luckier than yours. Any time you feel your unhappiness turning into bitterness, you have to check yourself. You can live with unhappiness, but bitterness will kill you.” Steve is a character who could be played by someone like Jim Broadbent or Hugh Bonneville, and he will certainly make more appearances in future with his new detective partnership with Amy (and possibly, Rosie): We Solve Murders.

Friday Five: Books Read in July

1. Redback by Howard Jacobson (Black Swan) - I struggled with The Finkler Question, so thought it was worth giving Howard Jacobson another go; he is well-known for being funny and writing award-winning fiction. I suspect, however, his may be a style of humour (self-indulgent, middle-class, academic white man) that has passed me by. Think Tom Sharpe and Kingsley Amis, but more Jewish. Dense paragraphs, picaresque style, random characters, anxious first-person narrator, excessive hyperbole, roughly linear narrative peppered with tangents, flashbacks and digressions, and a barely-there storyline all appear to be hallmarks of the author's practice. The plot, such as it is, is that Karl Leon Forelock receives a double-first in Moral Decenies from Cambridge, is recruited by the CIA, and heads to Australia as a spy where he attends a lot of parties and makes sweeping generalistions about the country and women, whom he clearly doesn't understand. While he claims to have resolutely, "kept my nose out of politics", he feels entitled to comment on such matters, occasionally with amusing results. “Liberal in Australia, incidentally, means Conservative (unlike in England where it means nothing very much in particular), and is not to be confused with Labour. Which also means Conservative only not to quite the same degree.” Written in the 1980s, and set in the 1960s, the tone of this novel is very much last century.
2. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones - The winner of the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction is an extremely engaging and accessible novel, narrated by the main three protagonists. Celestial and Roy are happily and newly married when he is arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison in Louisiana for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. She finds comfort in her childhood friend, Andre, Roy’s best man at their wedding. As their feelings develop, Roy’s conviction is overturned and Celestial has big decisions to make. Celestial is an artist; Roy is a business executive – they are not the blue-collar stereotypes of the American South, but because they are African-American, their lives are destroyed by a system which is prejudiced against them. On the evening of the alleged crime (a woman was raped and claims Roy was the perpetrator and, as a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time, he is almost automatically convicted) Roy and Celestial had had a big fight. This is their last interaction before he is hauled away by the police, and the situation throws their 'perfect' marriage into question. Jones has expressed that her novel is a version of The Odyssey, with Celestial playing the role of the waiting wife, unsure how to handle the return of her man. The men are infuriating as they fight over Celestial - "You don’t have to pee on her like a dog marking your territory. Have some manners.” They may well have suffered hardship and institutionalised racism, but that does not excuse their machismo and their sexism. This was a favourite of Oprah, Obama, and books clubs all across America.
3. The Windsor Knot by S.J. Bennett - This is the first in what has become a series of cosy crime novels, described as ‘Miss Marple meets The Crown’ in which the Queen solves mysteries. It was written in 2020, when the author went on a writer’s retreat during the pandemic to write something else entirely and came up with this instead. It’s highly implausible but thoroughly entertaining, as we are told, “The Queen solves mysteries. She solved the first one when she was twelve or thirteen, so the story goes. On her own. She sees things other people don’t see – often because they’re all looking at her. She knows so much about so many things. She’s got an eagle eye, a nose for bullshit and a fabulous memory. Her staff should trust her more.” At the behest of Prince Charles, the Queen hosts a ‘dine and sleep’ for Russian dancers, composers, and selected glitterati. When a pianist is found strangled the next day, hanged by the cord of his dressing gown in a wardrobe at Windsor Castle, the optics aren’t good. Initially it appears that it may have been a case of autoeroticism gone wrong, although the aides are hesitant to alert the Queen to this fact. She, meanwhile, tells Prince Philip that she is unshockable because “I’ve lived through a world war, that Ferguson girl and you in the Navy.” The MI5 suspect political involvement, but the Queen disagrees and sets out to solve the crime herself. Which, of course, she does.
4. Murder in Paradise by Ann Cleeves - Set on Kinness, an island off the coast of Scotland (bleak and misty with 'traditional values' and sheep), this is billed as a George and Molly Palmer-Jones mystery, but George is on his own, and Molly is back at home. George works with Sarah instead, a new bride who has just got married to Jim and returned to the island (where he grew up) for celebrations. It is difficult for her to adjust as everyone has secret alliances and their own ways of being. There is very little bird-watching (they ring some swans and shoot some geese) and George is cross and irritable with everyone and everything including himself and his feelings about retirement. “How pagan they are still, he thought… They pretend to be Christian, but when they’ve had a few drinks, they still behave like loutish Norsemen.” George is determined to solve the crime – the death of a girl who is believed to have fallen to her death – and even this annoys him. “He felt the weight of responsibility. It was as if the police had given up, and had handed over the task of finding the murderer to him.” The murder seems incidental to the narrative, which is more about adaptability. There is an entire red herring thread about child abuse, but mostly the islanders are afraid of change and the pervasive question is whether they can preserve the island as it is, or does that make it a museum?
5. Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Deborah Lesser - Inspired by a woman at a conference who was exploring 'the power of myth in modern culture' (basically, my university dissertation), the author decides to look at how female stories are interpreted, such as those of Eve, Pandora, Athena. It has a very Western focus.  Her tone is irritating - telling people what to do and treating the audience as if they haven’t considered this before she brought it to our attention. I am not surprised to learn she delivers TED talks; her approach is didactic, individual, and lecturing. She comments,“Everything I knew about European history had to do with wars and kings, trade routes and power plays between religions, royalty and tyrants. Why did we only know and care about those aspects of being human?” Speak for yourself! Maybe stop blaming education from fifty years ago and look into things yourself, like those of us who are interested already have. It may appeal to young people (as the alarming pink jacket suggests) as their first foray into this sphere, but there is nothing in here that I haven't read (in better formats) before.

Friday Five: Books Read in April

1. Come Death and High Water by Ann Cleeves (MacMillan) - This is the second in the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series in which Ann Cleeves acknowledges the influence of the Golden Age mysteries. A group of birdwatchers gather for a committee weekend on an island which is cut off by a storm and a high tide. The first victim is the cartoon-like character (which the author revels in creating) Charlie Todd, who will obviously be bumped off as he has decided to sell off the island and everyone has a motive for murder. Each suspect is interviewed separately by the curt and proessional Superintendent who has been sent over to conduct the investigation, while our man George observes and passes comment on the proceedings. He is dedicated to the task, but also swept away by the brleak and beautiful scenery. “Nothing mattered but the effort of walking against the wind, the sand stinging at his eyes and the surface water blowing around his boots.”
2. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Penguin) - This novel is so similar to Bernadine Evaristo's Girl, Woman,Other that I'm surprised there wasn't a plaigirism case. This was written first and is American, whereas Evaristo's focusses on the British immigrant experice. The book has a family tree in the beginning, which is essential, as it covers the lives of several different characters, each one in a separate episodic chapter, but all related. The stories of the multiple generations descending from Ghana have distinct female voices and a shared focus on the historical and social complexities of the Black female experience.
3. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (Corgi) - In the thirteenth novel of the Discworld series, Terry Pratchett takes pot shots at organised religion, squabbling philosophers and the nature of belief. These are such easy targets that this novel feels lesser than many of his works, like shooting fish in a barrel. The story opens in the city of Omnia, whose chief god, Om, has been reduced to a pitiful existence in the form of a turtle because no one really believes in him anymore. Gods need belief to live and thrive, and they fear becoming small gods, barely existing out in the desert wastelands with no believers at all. Mere mortals struggle to make sense of life – hence the plethora of philosophers – but the gods are literally above it all, playing games with humans as their playthings. The novel was written in 1992, but its discourse on certainty in religion and politics feels particularly pertinent in our post-truth world thirty years on.
4. The Dead of Winter by Nicola Upson (Faber & Faber) - This is the ninth in a series featuring the writer Josephine Tey as a detective. It's a smart concept (I believe it's also been done with Agatha Christie in a similar role) and although I haven't read any of the others, this was enjoyable enough out of sequence. The novel is set in 1939 where Nazis and swastikas abound, and Hilaria St Aubyn is raising money for refugees by hosting a Christmas party at a castle on St Michael’s Mount, which people bid to attend. The mystery guest, accompanied by Tey’s old pal Detective Chief Inspector Penrose, is none other than the world’s most famous movie star, Marlene Deitrich. It’s all a bit bonkers and quite fun as the incongruity of the joy of seasonal festivities mixes with the horror of murder. It’s full of thrilling set pieces, such as being at the mercy of the tides and the weather with all communication lines cut off. There are also some genuine plot twists which keep it intriguing. 
5. The Choke by Sofie Laguna (Allen & Unwin) - This is relentlessly grim; Australian poverty porn with a rape thrown in – in the style of Trent Dalton. Everyone is suffering some form of trauma and neglect, and most of the physical violence is perpetrated against women. Justine lives with her grandfather, pop, as her mother, Donna, died giving birth to her, and her father, Ray, comes and goes at random. She has two half-brothers, who fare no better in the paternal stakes, and their mother, Relle, will not even look at Justine as Ray left her for Donna. Pop is a Korean vet, struggling with PTSD, and Justine’s only friend is Michael, a boy who is taunted at school due to his cerebral palsy. Told through Justine's eyes, this simply doesn't ring true - she is capable and dyslexic, in a world of firing guns, collecting eggs and smoking cigarettes but has no idea about pregnancy. You know where this is going. 

An Obsession with Birds: A Bird in the Hand

A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleeves

Pan Books

Pp. 214

The author of the books on which the series Vera and Shetland are based, Ann Cleeves wrote the first in this George and Molly Palmer-Jones series in 1986. The couple in question are retired, happy to travel the British Isles birdwatching, and solving the murders which invariably occur. George used to work at the Home Office (doing secret business), is good with details and has bouts of depression; Molly is a retired social worker who is good at listening and brings out the best in people. Naturally, they make a great couple. Both are restless with their current life and enjoy a new challenge.

A birdwatcher is found dead on a marsh with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck. This is a great surprise to everyone in the small community because everyone loved him. Or did they? Of course, they didn’t, as this is an old-style mystery and secrets soon come to light complete with multiple suspects, red herrings, precise timings of the murder, poison pen letters, and suspicious alibis. At one point when discussing how the “smooth and cylindrical” murder object might be a telescope, they admit, “It had become something of a game.” After noting the sincere concern of a potential victim, however, George realises it is not so cosy. “Her fear had been wild and irrational. So was murder. He would not find his answers through reason and intellect. This was no crossword to be solved by a gentleman in an armchair. Murder was mad and unreasonable, and gentlemen had no part in it.”

The novel contains lots of interesting birdwatching information – who knew twitchers were such addicts or that they had great rivalries with ringers? Twitching is a way of life, which affects people in dramatic ways when a ‘rarity’ is discovered, and news of which sighting is shared among the community. The impulse nature and attraction of twitching is highlighted, and George considers how far one might take this addiction. “He had always considered his obsession for birds to be relatively harmless, but now his own experience showed that it could alter mood, sense, even personality, like a drug. Did it also have the power to make a person mad enough to commit murder? Twitching was a desire for possession and that was always dangerous.”

The novel offers an interesting approach to retirement, as Molly admits to an unexpected bereavement at giving up her job. “She had thought that she would enjoy a time of quiet, enjoy having the time to do things well. But she had missed work desperately. It was not just that she missed feeling useful, although that was important. It was that she missed meeting people who were different, unusual, unconventional.” Although she has no real interest in the birds, she studies the passions of the people that chase around the country from the Scilly Isles to Scotland.

These two make an interesting couple, and with a background of birdwatching to add colour to the murder scenes and motivations, this could be an engaging series to follow.

Courtroom Drama: The Appeal

The Appeal by Janice Hallett

Viper

Pp. 447

The tagline for this novel is “One murder. Fifteen suspects. Can you uncover the truth?” It is set in a country village, Lockwood, where “life revolves around two interlocking family dynasties... A person’s closeness to the alpha family – the Haywards – determines their social status.” Many of the villagers form the Fairway Players, an amateur dramatic society who are currently producing All My Sons. Martin Hayward is chair of the Fairway Players, his wife, Helen, is the secretary and leading actress, and their son-in-law, James, is directing the play. Martin and Helen raise an appeal for their granddaughter, Poppy, a young child with a rare form of cancer (or has she?) who needs unsubsidised drugs (or does she?). Everyone is dodgy, and there are affairs, blackmail, official work complaints, obsession, past secrets and mysterious circumstances, so when someone is murdered (over halfway through the book), it seems likely that anyone could have done it.

What elevates the novel above the usual run-of-the-mill cosy murder genre is the way in which the narrative unfolds through emails, text messages, newspaper articles and interview transcripts. A couple of law students, Charlotte and Femi, are assigned the case by their Senior Partner, Roderick Tanner QC, and they read through all the documents, trying to keep track of events, motives and alibis. Periodically they paste post-it notes asking pertinent questions or drawing attention to relevant information. Also every now and then they confer to recap events so far with text comments such as “Are you clear what happened at the Yogathon? Could you possibly summarise it for me? Please.”

It is an obvious device and one which the author subtly highlights. Isabel likes to email her every thought so that Sarah-Jane replies, “You were standing right here only moments ago. Why not just speak to me?” After being duped, one character tells another, “It seems there’s only so much you can know from letters. A man can hide a world behind words” and when Mr Tanner supplies extra information, he suggests, “As usual with this case, the meat is all between the lines.”

Into this milieu enter a couple, Sam and Kel, who have returned from Africa where they worked for Medicin Sans Frontiers and left under a cloud. There are scams from people claiming they want to invest in charities and offering quick returns on funds, and Tish Bhatoa, the woman supposedly providing the drugs for Poppy’s treatment, is also suspicious. Tish knows Sam and Kel from their overseas medical exploits, and precious African artefacts are mixed up with heroin addicts and a break in. The summing up ponders, “The African connection, and how something a world away can have such a profound influence.”

Isabel is on the outside and desperate to break in, to which end she joins the drama group and attempts to make herself useful by rehearsing lines with other actors and taking the minutes at committee meetings, but surely she can’t be as ditzy as she pretends. Actually, her version of the minutes are hilarious and a highlight of the book. After she has sent them out (complete with ruminations, recriminations and things that probably shouldn’t be repeated), Sarah-Jane reproaches her, “There’s all sorts of nonsense in there that we never even mentioned at the meeting. What’s more, it’s full of your opinions. That’s not the point of the minutes. No one cares what you think.” Working at the same hospital and eager to find new friends Isabel introduces Sam and Kel to the drama group, and she combines the interests of theatre and law, surmising, “A courtroom is very like a theatre. It has a stage, an audience and actors – it’s just the barristers know their lines while the witnesses improvise.”

The Appeal is an intriguing debut from an accomplished author. With touches of Agatha Christie in a modernist style, it brings a fresh perspective to the epistolary novel and to crime fiction in general. Clever and funny, it has quickly amassed a plethora of awards and is deservedly becoming a book-club favourite.

Cosy Cotswolds Crime: A Season for Murder

A Season for Murder by Ann Granger

Headline

Pp. 310

This novel is subtitled A Mitchell and Markby Village Whodunnit, implying there are more. A quick Google search reveals there are fifteen and this is the second. I would happily read them, as I found this to be what is somewhat dismissively termed, a ‘cosy murder’ novel, but it is perfect for reading on a rainy weekend, and as comforting as a bowl of chicken soup. It is set in a world of village life, country lanes, cosy pubs, and the Boxing Day Hunt where do-gooders attempt to help with varying degrees of success, and men are cruel to women. It was published in 1991 before mobile phones and internet searches – crime was different then; a plot point relies upon bin men collecting the rubbish bags personally. The moors are spooky, the lanes can be too quiet, and myths and superstitions abound along with ancient and pagan rituals. It’s all wonderfully atmospheric.

As usual, a young, attractive independent woman (Harriet) is the murder victim, but there is blame apportioned to her and her behaviour: she had many gentleman callers; she was a harpy and a whore; she had no one special to look after her; “But I wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t driven me to it… It was entirely her own fault, her doing, not mine… She was the cause, she started it all.” Men can’t be trusted apparently, and they certainly can’t be friends with women. Harriet, and women in general, suffer from this dichotomy.

The novel follows typical crime tropes and we are aware that due process must be followed; in law as in literature. “I’m not a barrister, Markby thought, nor judge nor jury. But he was the first step on the path to those persons and he had to get this right! If he didn’t, some clever lawyer would get the boy off on a technicality.” Another of these tropes is that there must be chemistry and tension between the male and female detectives, and so, of course, there is. Meredith is a happily single woman, yet still feels she has to prove herself to others and stake her place in the world, especially at Christmas; a very lonely time.

At thirty-five, Meredith has always “looked after herself”, and now she considers, “It was too late to change and tie herself to someone else. But she knew that was untrue. Of course it could be done. People married or entered into permanent relationships later in life and thrived on them. But it would turn her world upside down.” The perspective often changes from Meredith to Marky as the novel follows the thoughts of one and then the other. At one point they are singing carols (badly) in church, and the focus switches like a harmony in song. This is nicely done, and the style of writing complements the delightful Cotswold setting to make this an enjoyable addition to the genre.

Cosy Cat Crime: The Cat Who Sniffed Glue

The Cat Who Sniffed Glue by Lilian Jackson Braun

Jove Books

Pp. 200

The eighth book in The Cat Who… mystery series is a light-hearted mystery featuring an eligible bachelor, Jim Qwilleran, and two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Qwilleran is biggish, 50-ish, and with a moustache that bristles when he is ‘on to something’. He is a bachelor so he eats out at restaurants every night and has a succession of lady-friends, whom he calls for dinner dates. They are always keen to accept (perhaps because of his inherited fortune) and he has a succession of romantic entanglements with housekeepers, librarians and interior designers.

The cats play a major role in his life, and they are incredibly spoiled, with their own apartment and chef. With feline intuition, they help Qwilleran solve crimes as he explains the details of cases to them, and they respond with clues such as banging into things, sitting on vital evidence, or tripping up villains.

The novel is set in Pickax City, Moose County, “400 miles north of everywhere”, with nearby towns called Chipmunk and Brrr (it’s the coldest place in the county) bursting with folksy characters. Written in 1988, it is a novel of its time, before the digital age. Newspapers are still read in physical form; the town does not have one but Qwilleran, himself a ‘newspaper man’ helps to establish The Moose County Something. It is going to “hit the streets” in a week, and there is no name for it – maybe things were run differently thirty years ago, but this still seems very slack in a corporate world, and is yet another aspect of the novel that is exceptionally homey.

Braun also incorporates theatrical tropes into her mystery, as each chapter is introduced with Place, Time, and Cast – this is both an original device and means to introduce characters, but also an example of lazy description and stereotypical characters. Interior designers and architects see buildings as a set designer would, and places are described like stage directions.

The crime begins with vandalism and drink driving, but all are shocked when it progresses to murder. It is what is described as a ‘cosy mystery’, the increasingly-popular genre of crime that is the literary equivalent to a hot cup of tea; the perfect antidote to the daily onslaught of violence and outrage. The characters are broadly drawn, there will be more description of meals eaten than of wounds inflicted, there is very little violence or pain, but copious cold leads to follow in the quaint little community, and the murders don’t really matter all that much. In these olden times there are no forensics, and red herrings include plenty of opportunities for the cat to sniff glue: snowshoes; bookbinding; taxidermy; model-ship making; theatrical make-up.

Amazon has three sub-categories of ‘cosy mystery’: animals; crafts and hobbies; and culinary. This places itself firmly in the former category, and if you know what to expect, you will not be disappointed.