SPARKS

[Alex Robertson]

Death At The Sign Of The Rook, the latest of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie books, as with all her books there are twists and turns, even if you manage to guess who-done-it in plenty of time ( because I think you are meant to as this is more of a why-did-they-do-it), there are still little twists and surprises along the way. The red herrings are more like red tuna they are so blatant but still manage to involve you. This book has all ( and I mean ALL) the settings of so many books, isolated country manor, occupants trapped inside by an almighty blizzard, a murder mystery weekend complete with terrible actors, a mute vicar, an escaped axe murderer, a host of eccentric characters, stolen valuable art, dead bodies of course and plot convolutions ( maybe that should be convulsions 😜).
I always find her books hard to put down…so although I only collected it yesterday afternoon, it’s already finished!

Luckily I did get another book to tide me over before heading back to the library!

[J. Prufrock]

Emma Southon appears to be making a career of making Roman history interesting and entertaining to read by focusing on particular topics that probably didn't get much coverage in most history classes. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is about murder, including which killings were and were not considered murder under ancient Roman law; A Rome of One's Own summarizes the lives of 21 women from different eras and different parts of Roman society. Some readers may find Southon adds too much modern snarky commentary for their taste, but I find it keeps the text from getting dry and academic - though I'd probably have read dry academic texts just for the different perspectives and topics (and A Fatal Thing... has also drawn interest from a few friends who enjoy true crime stories in between their mystery novels.) Anyway, I look forward to seeing whether she'll continue to find mostly-overlooked aspects of ancient Rome to write about or perhaps start branching out to other ancient societies in future books.

[Alex Robertson]

Crooked Herring by L.C. Tyler as usual with this series, I am a bit late to the party, so there are several before this one and if this is anything to go by I’ll HAVE to read them all in whatever order is available in the library.
Ethelred Tressider, ever so old-fashioned, slightly popular author of “ police procedure” books and his sweet-toothed incompetent yet worldly wise literary agent investigate a possible murder, ignoring yet simultaneously employing every cliche in the (crime) book. Genuinely funny from start to finish…I’m a hooked herring!

[Alex Robertson]

Murder At The Monastery by the Reverend Richard Coles, 3rd book in the series and very enjoyable it is too.
Lots of issues half resolved and hints of further complications in future stories…he even threw in a plug for The Communards. Even though I guessed the murderer early on (apparent an annoying trait of mine) it didn’t make the book any less enjoyable.

[Alex Robertson]

The Fine Art Of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard.
Absolutely enjoyed this, I’m sure someone recommended this to me a while back (or recommended I watch it, if indeed it has been adapted for tv or cinema) but after reading this I wish I’d read it earlier, a real page turner.


My trip to the library this week has again been curtailed by inclement weather…but I’ll have to brave it tomorrow regardless!

[Alex Robertson]

The Maltese Herring by L.C.Tyler, I’m just having to read these in the order I can get them from the library as opposed to chronological order.
So far this is turning out to be every bit as funny as the last one I read, any book that makes me laugh out loud is a winner.
Again if you like your murder mysteries to be clever, funny and well plotted get into this series asap.

[Alex Robertson]

The Monk A DS Cross Thriller by Tim Sullivan
DS Cross is on the autistic spectrum, so is untroubled by emotional ties to cases, which makes an interesting concept.
I’m only halfway through and enjoying it immensely. There are others in the series (again…sigh) so I’ve some catching up to do.
This book as the title suggests is about the brutal murder of a monk, the suspects and those with motive are all in place but I think my main suspect is a little too off-the-wall so I’ll have to wait to the end to see if I’m correct.

[Alex Robertson]

Dying To Tell another offering from Robert Goddard. A mix of global intrigue, murder, assassins and conspiracies, the roots of which stem from stupendous events in 1963.
A roller coaster adventure spanning three continents.

PS…I did have the killer pinned in The Monk after all!

[Alex Robertson]

Cat Among The Herrings by LC Tyler another outing for the hapless author and his chocolate loving (ex)agent.
Still full of sly humour and laugh out loud moments.

[Alex Robertson]

The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer, this takes off where The Satsuma Complex left off (so I would advise reading it first)…it is as surreal and funny yet gripping as you’d expect from the mind of Mr. Mortimer.
He is an excellent story teller, this is the sort of story a decent film producer should be getting onto the screen.
There are a few twists, I guessed at all but one, so well done Bob Mortimer…I hope he has more tales that he can get onto paper.

[Crabby]

Well, l finally finished Finnegans Wake...... It was a wonderful, literary, emotional surreal, poignant, out of body experience... not easy by any means but well worth every minute of the effort. It's a book that is so rewarding, it's just sublime.
Then l read the recently released Randy Newman biography.
So looking forward to it but poor Randy, he deserves much better.... not impressed.

Now l've discovered Flann O'brien. I'm reading The Third Policeman....... just stunning, l would recommend it to all and sundry.

[Alex Robertson]

I thoroughly enjoyed The Third Policeman, read it a few years back…and I went through a Flann O’Brien binge too.
A book I read years ago too that had me by laughing out loud was Spike Milligan’s The Looney it’s probably well out of print and unavailable for being so politically incorrect!
I’ve held on to most of my Tom Sharpe books, I doubt they’ll ever get reprinted…definitely not for the woke, but I do delve in now and again for a real belly laugh!

[Crabby]

Yes, l feel a Flann O'brien binge is creeping up on me!

[J. Prufrock]

Speaking of out of print and politically incorrect, Bitter Bellies (Robert Stansfield, 1946) describes itself on the title page as "The odyssey of Construction Battalion Maintenance Units 572 and 573 from boot camp to the South Sea isle of Banika..." It's by, for, and about the men of those US Navy units and their work maintaining a Pacific island base during World War II so the author does in fact write like a sailor of that time period - a priceless firsthand account of "an unspectacular role in distant outposts that link the active war fronts to sources of man and materiel... If it entails months and months of irritation and "standing by," that is also part of the cost. ...We can't take credit for building the Naval Advanced Base at the Russell Islands, but we changed the face of it considerably and we did bring up Spam" (p. 79-80) Lewis Barrows' cartoons bring a chuckle now as I hope they did to those actually in the situations he drew, and John Sinovich's photos occasionally remind me of vintage issues of National Geographic but also show the units' base*, a few celebrities who came out to put on shows for the troops, and group portraits of the CB units - one of which shows the family member from whom I inherited this book. I never got to ask him the significance of the other names he'd underlined on the photo pages - another relative who fought in WWII never spoke about the war either - but I'm glad to have this much, at least, and 78 years later I guess the warning in the front of the book no longer applies.

*"Some of the material contained here is not suitable for general release to the public press and radio until the end of the war. It is requested that none of the contents be made available to the public press or radio." - printed before title page

[Alex Robertson]

The Vinyl Detective…Flip Back by Andrew Carmel
An interesting premise, a record dealer who specialises in tracking down rare records… this instalment of the series has him tracking down an exceedingly rare album by legendary folk-rock group Black Dog, the original pressing is identified by a flip back on the album cover. Other secrets are being revealed and why is it essential to kill to preserve these secrets?
I’m enjoying it so far despite (IMO) there being rather over described situations, meals and wine pedigrees nothing to the story except extra words!

[J. Prufrock]

While much of Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides, 2002) reads as an ordinary fictional multigenerational saga of immigrants coming to the United States seeking opportunity, a chance to raise a family, and so on, the narrator makes clear in the very first sentence that not all in this story is ordinary: "I was born twice: once as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and than again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petosky, Michigan, in August of 1974." The narrator is intersex, announced as a girl by the delivering physician (who like most folks in 1960 has no concept of intersex people but also happens to be elderly with probably bad eyesight), gets an inkling during puberty that she's not quite like other girls, and after a teenage accident comes to the attention of medical researchers. Other members of the family had their own dramas over the course of 529 pages, but the line that sticks with me most is on page 410: "These live, irreplaceable sons and daughters of God, human beings all, want you to know, among other things, that that's exactly what they are, human beings."