This week’s header uses an image of the eastern tip of Madeira because I’ve on vacation there since Monday. There’s been so much to see since I’ve arrived that most of my reading was done while I was travelling here. We’re settled in now and I’m looking forward to another week of reading in warmer climes than I’m used to in Winter.
Any,way, here’s what this week’s been like and what’s planned for next week
M y best read this week was ‘Water’ a beautuifully written mainstream novel set in Ireland. The other books provided the entertainment that I expected of them.I read a British Police Procedural, another instalment of Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon series and a dark piece of end-of-the-world speculative fiction by C. J. Tudor.
‘Ill Wind‘ (1995) is the third mystery featuring Law Enforcement Park Ranger, Anna Pigeon. This time, she’s working in Mesa Verde National Park amongst the cave dwellings that Anasazi lived in for 700 years before apparently abandoning the structures for reasons that are still hotly debated.
As usual, Nevad Barr brought the location alive and gave an insider’s view of how the Park works. She added a solid mystery and brought back the Columbo-like FBI agent that Anna worked with in the last book, ‘A Superior Death‘.
I enjoyed the mystery, especially the action-packed conclusion but it was the continuing development of Anna’s character that made the book for me. I loved Anna’s very human reaction to the death of a friend. She’s not hard-boiled although she is pragmatic, sceptical, has low inclusion needs and has little time for social niceties. As a widow, she’s too well acquainted with grief and that’s what surfaces when she’s confronted with a friend’s corpse. She doesn’t flip into detective mode, She drags herself through the crime scene mechanics and then gets blackout drunk.
I’m already looking forward to reading the next book. ‘Firestorm‘.
‘The Lost Girls Of Penzance‘ (2023) is the first book in a five-book British Police Procedural series set in Cornwall. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Clare Corbett.
The book entertained me in a mild, low-key way. It was a great listen-to-it-while-doing-something-else audiobook. It was unchallenging, gentle and focused more on the police officers than on the crimes but had enough of a mystery at its heart to keep me curious.
My review is HERE
‘Water‘ (2023) is an Irish literary fiction book that I highly recommend.
It was simply but beautifully written and completely immersive. It’s tale about Willow, a middle-aged woman who is uncertain about her own culpability in the trauma that she fled to a sparsely populated island to escape from. Willow is pawing through the wreckage of her life trying to see if there is anything that can be salvaged, all the time wondering about how much of this wreckage she caused and whether she deserves anything other than penance.
I found it compelling because it felt emotionally authentic. It was filled with trauma and guilt but was surprisingly uplifting to read.
My review is HERE
‘The Drift‘ (2023) was a clever, complex, dark and deeply depressing speculative fiction book that followed three groups of people who were trying to survive the end of their world.
It was well-written, believable and unpleasant. The overall message seemed to be that the world has two types of people: good guys and survivors. One of the lines in the book was: “Everyone loves an anti-hero.” Make that everyone but me. I disliked almost all the characters. It was a cleverly structured story and was vividly told but it was depressingly bleak.
This week, one of my pre-orders hit my shelves. I also added a continuation of a crime series that I started last week and a book of short stories translated into English from Portugese.
It’s Camilla’s first day back at work, her daughter’s first day at nursery.
But husband Luke is nowhere to be seen. The only trace of him is an unfinished note. Camilla tries to put it out of her mind; there must be a rational explanation.
At work, there are welcomes back, and too many distractions.
Then it starts.
Breaking news: there’s a hostage situation developing in London.
The police arrive: Luke is caught up in it.
But he isn’t a hostage. Luke – doting father, successful writer, enthusiastic runner and eternal optimist – is the gunman.
What Camilla does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind says, and the clues it might hold . . .
I pre-ordered ‘Famous Last Words‘ (2025) but it’s still a roll of the dice for me. I’m intrigued by the originality of the premise, I liked the opening pages, and it’s narrated by Emilia Fox who I normally enjoy, so I pressed BUY a couple of weeks ago although the book hadn’t been released yet.
I already have Gillian McAllister’s Halloween thriller , ‘Wrong Place, Wrong Time‘ (2022) on my shelves but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Hopefully, I’ll read both of her books soon (but then, I say that about all the books I buy).
Take Six is a celebration of six remarkable Portuguese women writers: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Agustina Bessa-Luís, Maria Judite de Carvalho, Hélia Correia, Teolinda Gersão and Lídia Jorge.
They are all past-mistresses of the short story form, and their subject matter ranges from finding one s inner fox to a failed suicide attempt to a grandmother and grandson battling the wind on a beach.
Stories and styles are all very different, but what the writers have in common is their ability to take everyday life and look at it afresh, so that even a trip on a ferry or an encounter with a stranger or a child’s attempt to please her father become imbued with mystery and humour and sometimes tragedy.
Relatively few women writers are translated into English, and this anthology is an attempt to rectify that imbalance and to introduce readers to some truly captivating tales from Portugal.
According to Margaret Juli Costa, the editor of this collection, only 3% of books get translated into English and most of them are novels and are written by men. I love getting to see the world through eyes of someone who comes from a different culture and or time, so I wish a lot more books were translated into English. I also love short stories (which I see as a meal in themselves and not just a literary snack). More than half the books I read are written by women. Add in that i’m on a Portugese island at the moment and ‘Take Six‘ became an irresistible buy. It’s the first book in a series by Dedalus Europe which includes Take Six: Six Spanish Women Writers (Dedalus Europe Book 2), Take Six; Six Balkan Women Writers and the upcoming Take Six; Six Irish Women Writers: 4. I’m tempted by all of them.
As the sun sets into the sea over the pretty Cornish town of St Ives, a young woman, Freya Kempston, hasn’t returned home after a day out in the mall at St Austell. Panicking, her husband begs Detective Lauren Pengelly and her team to find her. Has Freya run out on her stable, loving marriage, or has something more sinister taken place?
Grainy security footage from the mall provides the first break in the case – capturing Freya talking intently with a well-known local mechanic on the day she disappeared. But when cornered, the mechanic denies even knowing her. It’s a puzzle that Lauren and her new partner, Detective Matt Price, can’t ignore. They scrutinise the video, hunting for missed clues…
I’ve just read ‘The Lost Girls Of Penzance‘ the first book in this series. I’ve bought the second one to listen to on my next long drive.
My reading has been slower than expected so this week I’ll be catching up on last week’s reading. Even so, I’ve added two books from crime series that I’m reading each month until they run out. I’ve also added a speculative fiction novel set in Portugal.
When glamorous Marina Gregg came to live in St Mary Mead, tongues were sure to wag.
But, with a local gossip’s sudden death, has one tongue wagged a bit too much?
As the police chase false leads, and two more victims meet untimely ends, Miss Marple starts to ask her own questions.
What secrets might link a peaceful English village and a star of the silver screen?
‘The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side‘ (1962) is a Jane Marple mystery that I’ve been looking forward to. Agatha Christie was seventy-two when this book was published and it seems to me that she enjoyed the opportunity to write about an elderly woman living off her wits.
In the first thaw of spring the body of a young woman surfaces in the River Torne in the far north of Sweden.
Rebecka Martinsson is working as a prosecutor in nearby Kiruna, her sleep troubled by visions of a shadowy, accusing figure. Could the body belong to the girl in her dream?
Joining forces with Police Inspector Anna-Maria Mella, Martinsson will need all her courage to face a killer who will kill again to keep the past buried under half a century of silent ice and snow.
‘Until Thy Wrath Be Past‘ (2008) is the fourth book in the six-book Rebecka Martinsson series which I’m reading at the rate of one a month. I’m enjoying the combination of Martinsson, who went through tremendous trauma in the first three books and is not in the best state of mind, with the irrepressible and pragmactic Mella. I hope Martinsson has a slighlty easier time in this book.
The Murder
In the Gare do Oriente, a body sits, slumped, in a stationary train. A high-profile man appears to have died by throwing himself repeatedly against the glass. But according to witnesses, he may not have done this of his own accord.
The City
Lisbon 2021. A small percentage of the population are diagnosed as Gifted. Along with the power comes stigma and suspicion.
The Detective
In a prejudiced city, Gifted Inspector Isabel Reis is hiding her own secrets while putting her life on the line to stop an ingenious killer.
A violent and mysterious crime. Suspected Gifted involvement. A city baying for blood. And a killer who has only just begun….
As I’m doing my reading on Madeira, I looked for novels set there. I could only find some pulp fiction from the seventies when the island was seen as a place for the English middle class to escape to, so I looked for books set in Portugal and found the Inspector Reis series. It’s set in an alternative Lisbon where some people, known as Gifted, are born with unuusual abilities. Inspector Reis is one Gifted and she’s investigating that murder of a Gifted. I’m hoping that I’ve stumbled upon another trilogy to read.
Mike Finn's Fiction 