MYSTERIES in PARADISE

23 May 2013

Australian reading challenges - completed but ongoing

I have already read over 20 Australian crime fiction titles this year which means I have completed a couple of reading challenges, although I will continue to read both types for the remainder of the year.

The full list of Australian titles so far is

There are two levels in this challenge hosted by Booklover Book Reviews.
TOURIST
- Read and review 3 books by at least 2 different Australian Authors
- Fiction or non-fiction, any genre.
FAIR DINKUM
- Read and review 12 books by Australian Authors
- Ensure at least 4 of the authors are male, at least 4 of the authors are female and at least 4 of the authors are new to you
- Ensure at least 2 of the books are non-fiction and at least 4 fiction genres are represented amongst your 12 titles.
Balanced and diverse reading is the objective here.

I don't really meet the diversity criteria as I read only crime fiction.

Within the clutch of titles that I've read, 12 have let me complete the Australian Women Writers Challenge

Level of challenge: read only, or read and review

Stella: read 4 – if reviewing, review at least 3
Miles: read 6 – if reviewing, review at least 4
Franklin: read 10 – if reviewing, review at least 6

22 May 2013

From the POV of a twelve year old

It occurred to me as I was reading this week that I have recently reviewed three books written from the point of view of a twelve year old girl.

In two of them the girl sees herself as a sort of detective, but that is really where any similarity stops. All of them are reminders that children are great observers who don't always interpret what they see in the same way as an adult. At this age too, other things are happening in their lives, their bodies are at times giving rather confusing signals, but they have a great curiosity about their place in the world.

I think it takes a special writing skill to write convincingly from the point of view of a child, especially one on the cusp of adolescence, and each of these authors does it very well. And yet the books are not really meant for teenage readers. It is assumed that the reader is an adult who will be able to fill in the blanks and see a little further than the protagonist. I point out two that two of the authors are female, one male - I think there is another skill we should recognise in the writing of Alan Bradley.

The most recent of the books is THE EARTH HUMS IN B FLAT by Mari Strachan.

Synopsis (Text Publishing)

Up here, far away from everybody, the night is peaceful; there’s no sound except the hum of the Earth. At school, when I sang the note to Mr Hughes he said it was B flat.

Gwenni Morgan can fly in her sleep—that’s how she sees what’s going on in the village, and how she tries to make some sense of her family and her world. But Gwenni’s mother isn’t too keen on her daughter’s imaginative ways; she doesn’t want anyone thinking her odd.

When Ifan Evans goes missing, Gwenni tries to help find him, much to her mother’s distress. And as she begins to put the pieces together, a terrible truth is revealed.

Set in a small Welsh village in the 1950s, The Earth Hums in B Flat is a story of dark family secrets. It’s filled with wonderful characters and written with insight and sparkling tenderness.

See my review

And then on the weekend I finished SUFFICIENT GRACE by Australian author Amy Espeseth.

Synopsis (from the publisher, Scribe Publications, Melbourne)

Ruth and her cousin Naomi live in rural Wisconsin, part of an isolated religious community. The girls’ lives are ruled by the rhythms of nature — the harsh winters, the hunting seasons, the harvesting of crops — and by their families’ beliefs. Beneath the surface of this closed, frozen world, hidden dangers lurk.

Then Ruth learns that Naomi harbours a terrible secret. She searches for solace in the mysteries of the natural world: broken fawns, migrating birds, and the strange fish deep beneath the ice. Can the girls’ prayers for deliverance be answered?

Sufficient Grace is a story of lost innocence and the unfailing bond between two young women. It is at once devastating and beautiful, and ultimately transcendent.

See my review

The third book is a more traditional crime fiction novel, the latest in Alan Bradley's Flavia De Luce series, SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES. I read this one a few months back.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they're found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters' diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies.

Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred's death, the English hamlet of Bishop's Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint's tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked.

Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there's never such thing as an open-and-shut case.

See my reviews:

4.8, THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE
4.5, THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN'S BAG
4.5, A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD
4.7, I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS
4.7, SPEAKING FROM AMONG THE BONES

21 May 2013

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2013: G is for GHOST MONEY, Andrew Nette

Following a pattern established in 2012, my contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet in 2013 will feature authors or books that I have read recently.

My contribution this week is Australian author Andrew Nette's GHOST MONEY.

Synopsis

Cambodia, 1996, the long-running Khmer Rouge insurgency is fragmenting, competing factions of an unstable coalition government scrambling to gain the upper hand.

Missing in the chaos is businessman Charles Avery. Hired to find him is Vietnamese Australian ex-cop Max Quinlan. But Avery has made dangerous enemies and Quinlan is not the only one looking. Teaming up with Heng Sarin, a local journalist, Quinlan’s search takes him from the freewheeling capital Phnom Penh to the battle scarred western borderlands.

As the political temperature soars, he is slowly drawn into a mystery that plunges him into the heart of Cambodia’s bloody past. Ghost Money is a crime novel, but it’s also about Cambodia in the mid-nineties, a broken country, and what happens to people who are trapped in the cracks between two periods of history, locals and foreigners, the choices they make, what they do to survive.

See my review

See what others have chosen for the letter G

Review: THE EARTH HUMS IN B FLAT, Mari Strachan

published in Australia by Text Publishing, Melbourne in 2009
ISBN 978-1-921520-19-8
327 pages
borrowed from my local library

Synopsis (Text Publishing)

Up here, far away from everybody, the night is peaceful; there’s no sound except the hum of the Earth. At school, when I sang the note to Mr Hughes he said it was B flat.

Gwenni Morgan can fly in her sleep—that’s how she sees what’s going on in the village, and how she tries to make some sense of her family and her world. But Gwenni’s mother isn’t too keen on her daughter’s imaginative ways; she doesn’t want anyone thinking her odd.

When Ifan Evans goes missing, Gwenni tries to help find him, much to her mother’s distress. And as she begins to put the pieces together, a terrible truth is revealed.

Set in a small Welsh village in the 1950s, The Earth Hums in B Flat is a story of dark family secrets. It’s filled with wonderful characters and written with insight and sparkling tenderness.

My Take

This is a delightful read, a story told from the point of view of 12 year old Gwenni Morgan. There were so many parts evocative of my own childhood (here in post war South Australia), little references and sayings, like little pitchers have big ears, as adults try to have private gossips and conversations.

Gwenni reads detective stories handed on by her Auntie Lol and Gwenni sees herself as a budding detective in the vein of her hero Albert Campion. Gwenni takes notes which makes her a useful witness at times. She doesn't always understand the events, or their aftermath, that she has witnessed and sometimes adults misinterpret what she thinks she has seen. Gwenni is keen to solve mysteries and is a constant source of aggravation to her mother who worries that people will think Gwenni is "odd". Nor does Gwenni always understand what others have said. That's where the reader comes in with our superior experience and interpretive skills. And that's what makes this book fun to read.

The disappearance of Ifan Evans has far reaching consequences for the little village, and in the end the reader may well ask if justice has been done.

The other aspect of this book is village life, close knit families with secrets, deep running prejudices, and mental instability caused by past traumas.

My rating: 4.7

Other reviews to check:
Blog Critics
Reactions to Reading
EuroCrime

20 May 2013

Review: SUFFICIENT GRACE, Amy Espeseth

published by Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2013
322 pages
ISBN 978-1-922070-02-9
Read an extract
Book Club notes

Synopsis (from the publisher)

Ruth and her cousin Naomi live in rural Wisconsin, part of an isolated religious community. The girls’ lives are ruled by the rhythms of nature — the harsh winters, the hunting seasons, the harvesting of crops — and by their families’ beliefs. Beneath the surface of this closed, frozen world, hidden dangers lurk.

Then Ruth learns that Naomi harbours a terrible secret. She searches for solace in the mysteries of the natural world: broken fawns, migrating birds, and the strange fish deep beneath the ice. Can the girls’ prayers for deliverance be answered?

Sufficient Grace is a story of lost innocence and the unfailing bond between two young women. It is at once devastating and beautiful, and ultimately transcendent.

My Take

At first glance, SUFFICIENT GRACE is really on the outer edge of the crime fiction genre, although at least one crime does take place. Most reviews have emphasised the literary nature of the book. And so it clings to the crime fiction claim by the slenderest of threads.

I'm finding this a difficult book to review in my usual way because I really don't want to reveal too much of the plot. Told from the point of view of twelve year old Ruth, the story is set in a remote and isolated Pentecostal community in rural Wisconsin.The setting is not that old, perhaps at the end of the twentieth century. The time frame covers a small period, about 5 months over Christmas and New Year, and through the harshest season. The small community is family-based, although there are members who are not immediate family, and attempting to live a close-to-nature lifestyle while the technology they have at their disposal reveals modernity. Life is dominated by attendance at church, and a strict sense of sin.

Ruth often interprets what she sees around her in a religious fashion but then frequently sees things more clearly than the adults of the community, who made me angry with what they were prepared to ignore, and their lack of awareness of the dangers they subjected their children to.

This is a book that will provoke considerable discussion in book clubs so I encourage you to consider the Book Club notes provided by the publisher.

In a final word the author writes:
Finally I appreciate that although this is a work of fiction, people close to me - now or in the past - may read this novel as a betrayal of both the family and church in which I was raised. I have not intended to cause any hurt. I wrote what I was given to write.

My rating: 4.8

Other reviews to check

About the author

Born in rural Wisconsin, Amy Espeseth immigrated to Australia in the late 1990s and lives in Melbourne. A writer, publisher and academic, she is the recipient of the 2007 Felix Meyer Scholarship in Literature, the 2010 QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize, and the 2012 CAL Scribe Fiction Prize. Sufficient Grace won the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. It was also shortlisted for the Stella Prize 2013.

Crime Fiction Alphabet 2013: the Letter G

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction - a Community Meme.

This meme is an annual event on this blog. This is its 4th outing.
We already have a strong core of weekly contributors but you can join at any time.

Last week we featured the letter F

This week's letter is the letter G

Here are the rules

The page telling bloggers which letter to focus on will appear on each Monday together with a Mr Linky.

By Friday of each week participants try to write a blog post about crime fiction related to the letter of the week.

Your post MUST be related to either the first letter of a book's title, the first letter of an author's first name, or the first letter of the author's surname, or even maybe a crime fiction "topic". But above all, it has to be crime fiction.

So you see you have lots of choice.
You could write a review, or a bio of an author, so long as it fits the rules somehow.
(It is ok too to skip a week.)
You probably won't have to do a lot of extra reading in order to participate, but I warn you that your TBR may grow as a result of the suggestions other participants make.
Feel free to use either of the images provided in your blog.

Your assistance in advertising this community meme, and pointing people to this page, would be very much appreciated.

By the end of this week post your blog post title and URL in the Mr Linky below.
Please place a link in your blog post back to this page.
Visit other blogs and leave comments.

Check the Crime Fiction Alphabet page for summaries of previous years, and for links to this year's entries.

Thanks for participating.

19 May 2013

On the doorstep, waiting to be read

Currently I have many more books in the "waiting to be read" pile than I really have any hope of reading in the near future. Several of them seem to arrive each week at present, and sit on the shelves making me feel guilty.

So I have decided to feature some of them, (mainly review copies forwarded to me by publishers), in a more or less weekly feature, so you get to consider whether you want to read them.
My postings won't be reviews, just titles with publisher's blurbs.
Some I may actually read in the near future and then do a proper review.

I'd like to also stress that there is no rhyme or reason to my selections.

Please note that this listing is in no way a recommendation for you to read a title, simply a chance for you to assess for yourself whether you would like to read it. I will also try to discover whether the book is available on Kindle, particularly for Australian authors which are not necessarily available overseas.

My focus this week is on some library books I have on the shelves.

A DECENT INTERVAL, Simon Brett, published 2013

Charles Paris returns after 15 years!

After a long period of 'resting', life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and First Gravedigger in a new production of Hamlet. But rehearsals are fraught.
Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root - and the two young stars have rather different views of celebrity and the theatre than the more experienced members of the cast. But when the company reach the first staging post of their tour, the Grand Theatre Marlborough, matters get more serious, with one member of the company seriously injured in what appears to be an accident, and another dead.

Once again, Charles Paris is forced to don the mantle of amateur detective to get to the bottom of the mystery.

THE DEVIL'S SANCTUARY, Marie Hermanson, published 2011

This has been chosen by my face to face reading group for our next read.

Synopsis (Hachette Australia)

A breathless, heart-stopping psychological thriller from one of Sweden's best selling authors. Fear lies around every corner. . .
Estranged identical twins Daniel and Max have a complex relationship, so when Daniel goes to visit his bi-polar brother in a remote and expensive Swiss 'recovery' clinic, he has no idea what really lies in wait for him. Lulled by the routine and peacefulness of the clinic, Daniel finds himself unquestioningly accepting Max's plea for help in taking care of some business, and the brothers swap places for a few days.

But soon Daniel realises Max isn't coming back, and that the clinic is far from a place of recovery. Struggling to get anyone to believe who he really is, Daniel finds himself trapped in a cruel and highly secretive prison: this is no sanctuary, it's a living nightmare.

THE EARTH HUMS IN B FLAT, Mari Strachan, published 2009

another chosen by my face to face group.

Synopsis (author)

The Earth Hums in B Flat is set in Wales in the late 1950s and narrated by twelve and a half year old Gwenni Morgan. Gwenni is not like the other children in her small town. A bookish yet spirited young girl, she is suddenly forced into an unusual situation when a neighbour disappears and no one seems to be asking the right questions. As Gwenni makes her own investigations, she begins to find out more about life than she could ever have imagined.

17 May 2013

Forgotten Book: COMEBACK, Dick Francis

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975.

In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

I was already a fan of Dick Francis by then. My choice this week is COMEBACK which was published in 1991.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

A globe-hopping diplomat comes face to face with a case of fatal corruption, in Dick Francis's suspenseful new mystery-his thirtieth thoroughbred thriller.

Fresh from a posting in Tokyo, young British First Secretary Peter Darwin decides to holiday in England before taking up his next assignment for the Foreign Office. During a brief stopover in Miami, Peter is accidentally caught in a scuffle that leaves two acquaintances beaten and robbed. Peter stands by his new friends until they are safely delivered to their next destination: Gloucestershire, England, his childhood home and scene of long-buried memories. There he walks unexpectedly into a veterinary surgeon's racehorse-related nightmare. As his involvement with the doctor's plight grows, as as more racehorses meet an untimely end, Peter realizes that events from his own past are the keys to saving some decent people- and the things they love-from destruction.

Tact, intuition, wiliness: such are the weapons of diplomacy. Now Peter Darwin must wield them not for political reasons, but rather to unravel the enigma of the cruel fate befalling the local bloodstock. The trick is to stay alive himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dick Francis (1920-2010) was widely acclaimed as one of the world's finest thriller writers. His awards include the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for his outstanding contribution to the crime genre, and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Tufts University of Boston. In 1996 Dick Francis was made a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master for a lifetime's achievement and in 2000 he received a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

From 2007 he published several titles with his younger son Felix who now continues the tradition of writing novels connected with the horse racing industry.

15 May 2013

Review: THE MARMALADE FILES, Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann

published by Fourth Estate (Harper Collins Australis 2012)
ISBN 978-0-7322-9474-8
311 pages
Read an extract

Synopsis (Publisher)

A sticky scandal. A political jam. THE MARMALADE FILES will be the most-talked about political satirical thriller of 2012!

An imaginative romp through the dark underbelly of politics by two veteran Canberra insiders. When seasoned newshound Harry Dunkley is slipped a compromising photograph one frosty Canberra dawn he knows he′s onto something big. In pursuit of the scoop, Dunkley must negotiate the deadly corridors of power where the minority Toohey Government hangs by a thread - its stricken Foreign Minister on life support, her heart maintained by a single thought. Revenge.

Rabid Rottweilers prowl in the guise of Opposition senators, union thugs wage class warfare, TV anchors simper and fawn ... and loyalty and decency have long since given way to compromise and treachery.

From the teahouses of Beijing to the beaches of Bali, from the marbled halls of Washington to the basements of the bureaucracy, Dunkley′s quest takes him ever closer to the truth - and ever deeper into a lethal political game.

Award-winning journalists Steve Lewis of News Ltd and Chris Uhlmann from the ABC combine forces in this arresting novel that proves fiction is stranger than fact.

My Take

Each of the shortish chapters in this novel is headed with a date, starting with June 16 2011, but the reader soon discovers these chapters are not sequential although there is a logic to them. Eventually this sent me to pen and paper to try to make sure I understood the time line.

We begin with Harry Dunkley, press gallery veteran in the National Parliament in Canberra being given a photo that is about 30 years old. He quickly identifies the Cabinet minister who is centre stage but who are the others? Later on the same day Catriona Bailey, once Labour Prime Minister, but now the Foreign Minister, has a very public stroke on national television.

So Labour's Toohey government, already an unpopular minority government hanging on by a thread, and predicted to lose the next election, begins a downward spiral. Can things get any worse?

THE MARMALADE FILES is political satire rather than strictly crime fiction, although crimes, including a murder, are committed. There's a quirky humour from beginning to end, and certainly connections to current Australian politics, even if events have been warped and names changed.

For me, a fascinating read from beginning to end, although the ending strained my sense of credibility.

I'm not sure that THE MARMALADE FILES will have much appeal outside Australia but in case you do want to look for it, try Amazon (Kindle) or the publisher.

My rating: 4.8

And what do Australia's politicians say? (Do they recognise themselves?)

Other reviews: