Mount TBR 2018 Final Checkpoint

I read these books for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

June Checkpoint

October Checkpoint

Final Checkpoint: Mt. Vancouver and some change, for an even 40 books off the shelves. I was really good about not buying books in 2018 and culling mercilessly. But on December 1 I fell off the wagon and bought about 10 books at a UBS; then possessed by a demon I went back the next day and bought a half-dozen more from the same sale.  

Click on the title to go to the review

Night at the Crossroads – Georges Simenon

The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito – Erle Stanley Gardner

The Thirteen Gun Salute – Patrick O’Brian

Double for Death – Rex Stout

The World at Night – Alan Furst

Curtains For Three - Rex Stout

Tales of Terror and the Supernatural - Wilkie Collins

The Honorable Schoolboy – John le Carré

Smiley’s People - John le Carré

Murder Fantastical – Patricia Moyes

This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War - James M. McPherson

Little Novels - Wilkie Collins

Green Grow the Dollars - Emma Lathen

Settled out of Court - Henry Cecil

The Rich Man – Georges Simenon

Sauce for the Goose – Peter DeVries

Mount TBR #29

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

I forgot to post this in mid-October, apparently.

The World at Night – Alan Furst

This thriller tells a spy story in Nazi-occupied Paris. The hero, Jean-Claude Casson, is a semi-successful movie producer who is the object of pressure from the Gestapo to get involved in counter-espionage action against the British. At 42 years of age, Casson is the classic Furstian protagonist: living a silly life until circumstance - such as living under a malicious tyranny run by troglodytes – forces him to face the fact that he won’t have any self-respect if he lets people push him around.

There is, as we’d expect, a love interest, the exotic actress Citrine. But there is also duty to himself and his country. Furst puts Casson through changes, from self-centered man about town to petrified, hesitant spy. The missions remind one of the mess-ups and foul-ups in Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden.

Like other novels of the Occupation of France (e.g., Dirty Snow, by Simenon), Furst’s purpose and concern seems to be to get across the terrified, bleak atmosphere of one of the most wonderful cities in the world occupied by terrible despots and tormentors. Furst explores his favorite theme of ordinary people doing that they can against tyrants and their willing collaborators.

Mount TBR #40

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

On a reading binge since Christmas so I could reach 40 for this challenge. On to new challenges tomorrow!

Sauce for the Goose – Peter DeVries

DeVries (1910 - 1993) had his heyday as a popular writer of comic novels from about 1956 (Comfort Me with Apples) to the early 1970s (Mrs. Wallop), after which his writing probably suffered from the typical shock of turning sixty, “What the hell is happening? Could you tell me what is happening? What the hell?”

This comic novel is from 1981, so it feels dated in 2018 naturally, but one wonders if it felt dated even in 1981. Its view of “Women’s Lib” seems cantankerous, though DeVries had sympathy for women and their dealing with the nonsense and rubbish that men routinely fork out. He also tosses around the n-word in way that makes us wince in 2018, though one suspects that DeVries wasn’t a racist, casual or otherwise.

As in many comic novels, the beginning is the high point, with the heroine comparing dull rustic Terra Haute with the fleshpots of Grand Rapids. The plot, however, never takes off. The best thing going for the book is DeVries’ dazzling way with words. On Thomas Wolfe’s Of Time and the River: “a fat slob of a book.” On diction: “You can’t be happy with a woman who pronounces both d’s in Wednesday.”

Mount TBR #39

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

French title: Le Riche Homme

First published: 1970

Englished: Jean Stewart, 1971

The Rich Man – Georges Simenon

Neighborhood potentate Victor Lecoin is 45, the dangerous age for Simenonian protagonists, liable to losing their heads when change knocks on the door – or kicks the door in. Born poor, Victor has become the “rich man” of the locality through sheer hard work and the determination to lead his life as he sees fit. “You’re big, strong, and rich,” the madam of a homey brothel tells him, “What more do you want?”

A lot more, though he is so estranged from himself that he doesn’t realize it. Victor has the existential blues pretty bad and that’s not good. Losing his mother at age 6, he has grown up without any affection. He can’t talk to his father because born in about 1890 his father is of a generation that endures rather than speaks. He can’t talk to his brother because they are like oil and water, introvert and extrovert. He doesn’t make any effort to talk to the local guys so they don’t make any effort to talk to him. He married the local schoolmarm, but feels inferior to her because of his own lack of education. For a long time, he and his wife have been mere “associates” because they are never intimate. To appease his senses, so to speak, he goes on sprees of drinking and frequenting with professionals and easy-going amateurs.

Victor doesn’t realize how lonely he is until one day a new maid enters the house. Raised in an orphanage run by nuns, Alice is sixteen, a shy country girl and already the victim of sexual abuse by her previous employer. The local rubes, especially the female misogynists, blame her for “letting” her victimizer grope her. Victor - staring into a void that money, prosperity, land, health, and reputation can’t fill – loses his head, feeling strange feelings like the desire to become one, to fuse with her. Is this love? Or just confusion?

As in the other non-Maigret psychological whydunnits, the drama is tight: all the action is limited to two or three settings, to a few characters. I use the word “action” loosely since the plot does not advance at the whim of incidents or twists but by progressive slippage, almost insensible. We readers see the milieu, Victor’s narrow background, the cultural background of blaming and shaming and hurting women for their own victimization. Victor is thinking about getting his wife out of the way, but would he really do it? Little by little, we feel that all this will end badly and it only remains to be seen in what way, exactly, the bubble will pop ... and when it finally bursts, Simenon, as is his way, still manages to surprise us. The characters are utterly ordinary, their dreams trivial, their sins predictable, their cruelty banal, but their tragedy existential.

Simenon lived for many years in La Rochelle, a coastal city famous for fishing and mussels, and greatly appreciated the Vendée, in western France and known for its long coastline and sandy beaches. It is hardly surprising that he has set many of his novels in this beautiful region. This novel, written in Epalinges, Switzerland, dates from 1970, making it one of the last novels he wrote, before he decided to give up fiction for autobiography. 

Mount TBR #38

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

Settled out of Court - Henry Cecil

The English judge Henry Cecil (1902 - 1976) wrote comic legal fiction. Think of John Mortimer’s Rumpole stories. Cecil is more intellectual and gentle and less acerbic and cynical, but just as clever, funny, and enjoyable.

In Settled out of Court, Cecil examines the odd case of Lonsdale Walsh. The wealthy self-made financier has been sentenced to life upon being found guilty of masterminding the hit and run killing of his business partner Adolphus Barnwell. In prison he turns his acute mind to getting out of his predicament. Money is no object to him so with his daughter and a recently released pal Lonsdale arranges for a versatile crook to help him break out of chokey and kidnap a judge, two attorneys, the dodgy witnesses and Barnwell's feisty widow, Jo. Lonsdale’s goal is to re-examine the parties and prove he was convicted on perjured evidence.

Henry James said that Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs had a “hard lucidity.” Cecil’s lucidity is light, with plain prose, dazzling dialogue, and difficult legal points explained gracefully and comprehensibly. Fans of comic novels, courtroom fiction, and dry English humor will enjoy this short novel.

Other Novels – click on the title for the review

·       Ways and Means

·       According to the Evidence

·       The Painswick Line

New Year's Eve

Okay, okay, cousin needs tunes for New Year's Eve. The roots of rock, the manic songs made from after WWII to Elvis, hit the note for me. I love this stuff.

This clip is of Wanda Jackson on Jubilee USA (originally, Ozark Jubilee), a late Fifties TV show that did much to introduce this kind of music to the rest of the country. If Brown Eyes was too country for you, try the more mainstream Let's Have a Party, which was a hit in the early Sixties.

Big Joe Turner – Feelin’ Happy. His voice had everything in it: big band, blues, country shouting, rock music.

Louis Jordan - Choo choo ch'boogie. A man that could find a groove and go.

Wynonie Harris - Good Rockin Tonight. When Elvis hit big, Harris, Mr. Blues, retired, figuring that teenagers would not connect with his music.

The Clovers - Bring Me Love. They proved doo-wop with an edge was not only possible but natural.

Billy Ward & The Dominoes - Sixty Minute Man & its answer song Can't Do Sixty No More. Yow, dirty blues still not ready for the mainstream.

Hank Ballard & The Midnighters - Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go. It's got a country gait till that guitar burns down the barn.

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Little Demon. Does the skull have a blunt? This has got to have the most compelling chorus I've heard in a long time. One probably doesn't have to cut deals with Extra-mundane Forces to make music like this. But it helps.

Johnny Ace - Never Let Me Go. He is unjustly forgotten nowadays.

Roy Hall - Dig Everybody Dig That Boogie. Country and blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll.

Merrill Moore - House of Blue Lights. Boogie woogie, country swing, call it what you will cousin.

Back to the Classics Sign Up

I will read these books for the 2019 Back to the Classics Reading Challenge.

·       Classic Novella: The Nightclub – Georges Simenon (1933)
Posted: April 2

·       Classic in Translation: The Widow – Georges Simenon (1959)

·       19th Century Classic: The Private Journal of William Reynolds: United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842 
Posted: February 2

·       Classic Play: The Devil's Disciple - Bernard Shaw (1897)

·       Very Long Classic: The Way We Live Now – Anthony Trollope (1875)
Posted:  January 17

·       Classic Comic Novel: Independent Witness - Henry Cecil (1963)
Posted: March 14

·       Classic From Africa, Asia, or Oceania: Six Months in the Sandwich Islands – Isabella Bird (1871)
Posted: April 14

·       Classic From a Place You've Lived: This Scheming World – Saikaku Ihara (1692)

·       Classic From the Americas: The Lawless Roads - Graham Greene
Posted: April 26

·       Classic Tragic Novel: The Old Man Dies – Georges Simenon (1966)
Posted: March 26

·       20th Century Classic: Delilah - Marcus Goodrich (1941)
Posted: May 1

·       Classic by a Woman Author: Poirot Investigates – Agatha Christie (1925)
Posted: March 22

European Reading Challenge Sign Up

I will read these books for the 2019 European Reading Challenge.

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991: A History - Orlando Figes

The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914- Philipp Blom

The Winter War: Russia's Invasion of Finland, 1939-1940 - Robert Edwards

Novel TBD - Georges Simenon

Five Days in London, May 1940 - John Lukacs

They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 - Milton Mayer

Mount TBR #37

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

Green Grow the Dollars - Emma Lathen

Unlike Japan where it is a popular genre, the business novel hasn’t had a happy history in the US. Office life in skewered in Something Happened by Joseph Heller and the moral emptiness of fortune and success is examined in The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells. Thank heaven for Emma Lathen mysteries where the business world is treated as a place natural for a range of creativity and ingenuity, quarreling and back-stabbing to unfold.

The Vandam Nursery and Seed Company, the world's largest mail-order nursery business, is charged by an independent lab with theft of intellectual property, in this case a newly developed tomato, a biennial that produces for six months. A murder occurs, and John Putnam Thatcher must identify the perp. Our series hero Thatcher is a Wall Street banker who has rare understanding of both people and money.

The unique charm of Lathen mysteries is that they are comedies of manners disguised as mysteries. The books detail distinctive worlds such as real estate, the auto industry, or the garment industry. The settings are New York City, the Midwest, Puerto Rico, and Japan. The casts are various too: members of family business at each other’s throats, venal scientists and product developers, and Thatcher’s stand-bys such as his canny PA the no-nonsense Miss Corsa. Lathen is not above mildly satirizing the customers of mail-order nurseries, such as gardeners who survive northern winters only by looking through seed catalogs and swearing that this year, the garden will be great.

The Continental Op

The Continental OP: More Stories from The Big Knockover - Dashiell Hammett

Published by Dell in 1967, this pocket paperback bundled about half the pulp magazine long stories that appeared in a collection called The Big Knockover. I re-read these stories in my little free time since I didn’t feel up to reading anything else. The year-end festivities and the end of a semester are exhausting.

Hammett’s hero works in the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency. To make up for not having a name, he has developed an astute sense of how bad guys think. His core competence is using devious, often violent, methods to get the job done.

This King Business (1928). The Op finds himself in a Balkan country where the idealistic son of a rich guy is bankrolling a revolution for a band of crafty Slavs. Seems that the insurrectionists have promised to make the son a king if the revolution is successful. The rousing climax comes out of an action packed series of events which support the notion that the calculations of criminous types and political types aren’t all that different, a fairly common belief in the 1920s.

The Gatewood Caper (1923). A daughter is kidnapped and the desperate father wants her back mainly because it is a blow to his sell-made man ego that somebody has the audacity to extort money out of him. “I’ve never been clubbed into doing anything in my life. And I’m too old to start now.” When the daughter doesn’t return even after the ransom is paid, the cunning Op smells something fishy. The story seethes with vindictive feeling and the setting of the Pacific Northwest – lumbering land – is persuasive.

Dead Yellow Women (1925). Très awkward title in our more enlightened era so we make allowances for the era’s prejudices if that is our inclination.  Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Op and a Chinese Tong Boss match wits. In places it feels like a parody of a Yellow Peril story, especially the elaborate polite language of the Tong Boss. The description of the maze-like interior of the criminal mastermind’s mansion is a tour de force. Also, a theme pops up: political idealism is exploited by venal crooks as in The Gatewood Caper.

Corkscrew (1925). In this bizarre mixture of western and noir, the Op is a fish out of water when he assigned to clean up remote dusty Corkscrew, Arizona. This ought to remind the astute reader of the masterwork Red Harvest, an exercise in violence and horror that rivals Tarantino.  A gunslinger remarks, “A hombre might guess that you was playing the Circle H. A. R. against Bardell’s crew, encouraging each side to eat up the other, and save you the trouble.” The Op replies, “You could be either right or wrong. Do you think that’d be a dumb play?”

$106,000 Blood Money (1927). This presents the sequelae to the story The Big Knockover. Like many aftermath stories, it is overall less satisfying than the original. The best part of the story is how the Op neatly solves a complicated problem. Again like Red Harvest, the plot is complicated with many characters and motivations. The Op slyly manipulates events to tidy conclusion.

The 1967 Dell paperback has an introduction by Lillian Hellman. It’s interesting but it tells more about her and Dash’s rocky relationship more than the stories. She makes a provocative point about the difficulty of living with somebody who is too stoically proud to complain when they are hurting.

Christmas Songs

List of nearly forgotten Christmas songs, for your enjoyment, especially, I wonder, if you're a certain age. 

Click the artist name to go to the link.

Christmas Roses - Frankie Lane & Jo Stafford

Misteltoe and Holly - Jack Jones

Jingle Bells - Glenn Miller

Hello Mr Kringle - Kay Kyser

Shake Hands With Santa Claus - Louis Prima

I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus - Little Brenda Lee

Here Comes Santa Claus - Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters

Click the title go to the link. 
Santa Claus Is Back In Town – Elvis and Wynona Judd

The Coventry Carol – Joan Baez

Holiday In Harlem  - Ella Fitzgerald w/ Chick Webb’s Band

Marshmallow World by Brenda Lee

God Rest ye Merry Gentleman – Barenaked Ladies


Winter Wonderland by Johnny Mathis
Jingle Bells – Les Paul and Mary Ford

Rudolf – Tiny Tim

Santa Claus is Coming to Town – Alice Cooper

Christmastime in New Orleans - Louis Armstrong

Frosty the Snowman – Cocteau Twins

Merry Christmas Baby – Bootsy Collins

Christmas in Jail – The Youngsters

Jingle Bells by The Singing Dogs
Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas? by The Staple Singers. Who is this "House" guy?
Hard Candy Christmas - Dolly Parton
Suzy Snowflake - Rosemary Clooney


Old Christmas Card by Jim Reeves
Another Year has Gone By - Celine Dion
Ding Dong, Ding Dong - George Harrison OK, it's a New year's song.

Please, Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas) - John Denver
Christmas Eve (I Wanna Be Santa Claus) by Ringo Starr
I'll be Home for Christmas by Karen and her brother

Mount TBR #36

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

Little Novels - Wilkie Collins

Collins (1824 - 1889) was a fellow writer and business associate of Charles Dickens and the author of novels such as No Name and The Moonstone. He also wrote stories for the magazine market. These short stories were first bundled between covers in 1887. The collection  was never released in the US because Collins’ stock was so low in the late 19^th century perhaps due to his unconventional personal life: he never married and implied unusual views of marriage in his writing. Anyway, the collection  was not available in the US  until Dover released a facsimile edition in 1977.

Mrs. Zant and the Ghost (1879). A widow suffers extramundane experiences in public, which attract the considerate attention of a widower and his little girl. The widower finds the widow under the unhealthy influence of a rum brother-in-law. One of Collins’ themes was the vulnerability of women, especially due to law and custom.

Miss Morris and the Stranger (1881). A light rom-com with a female narrator. A governess, she is smart and capable but still liable to say endearing things like “I was so mortified, I could almost have cried.” She also says parenthetically, “Miss Melbury was a dark woman. It cannot be because I am a fair woman myself—I hope I am above such narrow prejudices as that—but it is certainly true that I don’t admire dark women.” Delightful.

Mr. Cosway and the Landlady (1881). Beware marriages of convenience. A widow, she wants to get married to hold off men who stay at her inn and nag her to marry them. He needs to get quits on a huge inn bill she has saddled him with. But, of course, it all blows up, as we knew it would, because of the unblushing bride’s malice.

Mr. Medhurst and the Princess (1884). Collins was funny when he orders a clueless narrator to the helm of a tale. In this case, the narrator is a young diplomat assigned to a minor German court. His lack of wit and experience among the diplo sharks disconcerts both his allies and adversaries, prompting one manipulative character to tell him “Give up diplomacy—and get a farmer to employ you in keeping his sheep.”

Mr. Lismore and the Widow (1883). I’d spoil this story if I hinted what kind of story it was. Suffice to say, I’ve heard the Victorians loved this kind of twist in a story. I supply the link, you choose to use an half-hour to read it. You know you want to, you know you’re too far gone to be anything like productive for the rest of the day.

Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman (1875).Narrated by a conscience-stricken clergyman, this story features excellent characterization, besides a coincidence and a ghost. The climax – “I sat looking at the pillar of mist, hovering opposite to me  - is more awe-inspiring than scary, which is alright by me.

Miss Mina and the Groom (1878).The past comes back to haunt a middle-aged lady. To quote “She was near the door, on the point of leaving me. As I spoke, she turned with a ghastly stare of horror--felt about her with her hands as if she was groping in darkness--and dropped on the floor.” Yeh, it’s that kind of sensational story. Fun.

Mr. Lepel and the Housekeeper (1884). A pair of college pals find themselves living out a love triangle right out of opera. One angle is the 17-year-old daughter of a lodge keeper’s widow. Admittedly,  the Victorian complacency about the middle aged male and the not or barely legal maid makes us post-moderns wince. But this is worth reading because in this late-career story, Collins experiments with the ridiculous narrator.  Mr. Lepel’s cluelessness about his housekeeper’s motives and actions is a hoot.

Mr. Captain and the Nymph (1876). Blown off course in the Pacific, mariners land on an island, which the proverbial crusty sea-dog labels a "beastly green strip of a place, not laid down in any Christian chart." The local chief warns the sailor-men off a nearby island, lest they be slain for desecrating holy ground. Does the Captain listen? No. Does he fall for the forbidden island’s nymph? Yes. Does it end happily? Oh hell no but it’s full of action and romance.

Mr. Marmaduke and the Minister (1878). Told from the point of view of a Puritanical Scot clergyman, this story has the narrator concerned about his comely daughter’s marriage to a guy who never stays home in the evenings and has a room upstairs he bars anybody from entering. The unworldly clergyman worries if his son-in-law is a gamester or counterfeiter. All’s well that ends well in a story in which Collins the bohemian pokes fun at the squares.

Mr. Percy and the Prophet (1877). Collins stretches out a bit. The story starts with a weird interlude focusing on a spiritualist’s uncanny prediction of a love triangle. Then, the emphasis changes to the love triangle and the resulting duel (the story takes place in 1817) and the deep friendship that arises between the two duelists. Collins’ examination of politics and government reveals his skepticism about the motives of politicians and bureaucrats. A solid story, if overwrought.

Miss Bertha and the Yankee (1877). A young woman from the colonies finds herself not only an heiress but in a love triangle with an intense English Army officer and a gentle Yankee. At first the two men are friends but love for the unintentionally indiscreet beauty comes between them to the point where they fight a duel. An overheated story that should appeal to fans of melodrama.

Miss Dulane and my Lord (1886). Again, beware marriages of convenience. She wants a title, he wants money – or rather fun stuff money can buy like yachts. But a comely third party – with a past, of course – tears up the pea patch. Some ill-natured anti-Semitism mars the story. It’s clear that Collins doubted that the institution of marriage was all it was cracked up to be; in fact, he never married.

Mr. Policeman and the Cook (1881). A young homicide detective finds himself in a moral quandary. This is a serious, almost gloomy story, of what the conflict between love and duty will drive people to.

The Biter Bit and Other Stories

The Biter Bit and Other Stories – Wilkie Collins

Collins (1824 - 1889) was a fellow writer and business associate of Charles Dickens and the author of novels such as No Name and The Moonstone. He also wrote stories for the magazine market.

The Biter Bit (1858): A comic detective story that gives Collins a chance to smack two things he liked to smack: overweening self-confidence and middle-class pretensions. Probably the best story of the collection.

The Lady of Glenwith Grange (1856): A sad story of a selfless older sister taking care of her ungrateful younger sister. The Victorians liked stories with imposters. Though impersonations were easier in days before modern communications, they still seem unlikely to me. As he sometimes did in his novels, Collins puts in a brief appearance of a disabled child.

Gabriel’s Marriage (1853). This is story is okay, but the description of the storm on the Brittany coast  make this family secret story exceptional.

Mad Monkton (1855): Dickens turned this story down, thinking that it wasn’t suitable for the family-friendly magazine Household Words. We heartily agree when we read this unflinching account of a guy with monomania looking for his reprobate uncle’s unburied corpse in Italy.

A Terribly Strange Bed (1852): In a dodgy Parisian casino, a carefree young gentleman doesn’t know when to quit while he’s ahead and thus finds himself in trouble deep. Collins’ examination of the denizens of a gambling hell brought to my mind a casino I once visited in Macau.

Wrap Up: 2018 European Reading Challenge.

I read these books for the 2018 European Reading Challenge.

The Spies of Warsaw – Alan Furst (Poland)

Posted: January 26

Call It Treason: A Novel - George Howe (Germany)

Post: February 4

Eminent Georgians - John Halperin (UK)

Post: February 28

When Paris Went Dark - Ronald C. Rosbottom (France)

Post: March 14

The Hard Sell – William Haggard (Italy)

Post: April 10

The Disappearance of Odile - Georges Simenon (Switzerland)

Post: April 19

Extra – Unqualified!

Mission to Paris – Alan Furst (France)

Post: June 10

Mount TBR #35

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War - James M. McPherson

This collects 16 essays, most of which were originally published as pieces for the New York Review of Books. The topics range from relatable such as the common soldier’s love of reading newspapers to huge topics such as the Confederate strategy of “the best defense is a good offense.” Along the way, he makes interesting points such as:

[L]ee’s counteroffensive in the Seven Days battles and other major victories during the next year ensured a prolongation of the war, opening the way to the emergence of Grant and Sherman to top Union commands, the abolition of slavery, the ‘directed severity’ of Union policy in 1864-65, and the Gotterdammerung of the Old South. Here was the irony of Robert E. Lee: His success produced the destruction of everything he fought for.

McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize for his history Battle Cry of Freedom so obviously he can write for both the expert and lay audience. But I think this book would mainly appeal to the non-expert, with historians hankering for a little more heft. I enjoyed it because I had not read about the conflict in a long time and it’s one of those topics, along with Eastasia and the history of popular entertainment, that holds endless fascination for me.

As Gertrude Stein wrote in her distinctive way, “So I was interested in being in Richmond and in Virginia and I was interested in hearing what they were all saying and I was interested, after all there never will be anything more interesting in America than the Civil War never.”

Mount TBR #34

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

Murder Fantastical – Patricia Moyes

The members of the Manciple family are considered eccentric because they are, in the best tradition of English oddness. The head of the family is an ex-soldier who is both a crack marksman and a pacifist. The dotty old aunt is interested in supernatural topics such as tabbies astrally projecting themselves. Brothers to the head are a crossword puzzle-obsessed bishop who plays the clarinet (badly) and a physicist with Newt Scamander social skills. A sister-in-law starts a notebook for wildflower collecting to improve the botanizing skills of our series hero Henry Tibbett, Chief Inspector for Scotland Yard.

But the residents of the English village where the family has lived for generations are used to dotty gentry. Off their dots, but our own, after all. Furthermore, it stands to reason for these sturdy country folk that when the newly rich ad unlikable London bookie Raymond Mason is found shot dead in the driveway to the Munciple’s run-down estate that the culprit is not one of the Manciples.

Chief Inspector Tibbett, however, has an unenviable task: he has to take the Manciples, whom he takes to, very seriously as suspect. They are characters of interest because the murder victim wanted to buy their estate very badly indeed. Tibbet wonders why he was so hell-bent on purchasing an estate that would take a fortune to rehab.

I highly recommend this mystery. It combines an interesting plot and the off-kilter humor comes out of the deft characterization. The wacky incidents are not too wacky – Moyes isn’t Craig Rice. For those that like shout-outs to the classic age of whodunnits, there is even an ingenious engine of death that would probably never come off in real life. Thank heaven for mysteries!

Mount TBR #33

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

Smiley’s People - John le Carré

At the start of this novel, set in the late 1970s, former British intelligence chief George Smiley has been retired for about five years. His old frenemy Lacon, however, has tasked him to investigate the murder of an agent put out to pasture. Evidence clearly points to Soviet assassination methods but the mystery lies in why knock off a long-retired spy. The hunt for the killers and their master gives Smiley the unexpected chance to defeat his Soviet opponent Karla, who ruined Smiley’s career and marriage.

The book is divided into 27 untitled chapters. Each contains its own set piece, with allusions to the first two novels in the Karla Trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honorable Schoolboy, which will puzzle readers who have not read them (not to mention spoil their stories).

The prose is a pleasure to read but the tone is gloomy. The morose tone makes the pace seem lugubrious at times. In contrast, in The Honorable Schoolboy the reader was left to infer the sorrow and the pity and be carried along swiftly with many exciting incidents in various locations. The construction of the plot, however, is not as tight as in The Honorable Schoolboy. That is, the steps that lead to the surprising finale are both too pat and slightly unclear. Later in the 1980s the author was better able to pull off a long, long set-up to preface unbelievable tension in the last third of The Night Manager.

So, this long complicated novel ought to be read only after reading the first two. It plausibly examines the world of secret agents and its long planning and waiting times. At the same time, it is a historical novel that brings the time of the late Cold War back to life. Interestingly enough, Le Carré refers to as far back as WWII as its main characters conjure up old eras in intelligence. This gives the book, as we read it in 2018, an exciting second level - you read in what is becoming an old novel  about how they remembered even older times. Important and curious are not only the details we remember about the past, but why we remember things the way we want to remember them.