Full Dark House (2003)
Author: Christopher Fowler
BLM Rating 9 / 10
As I mentioned a few days ago here I've only recently discovered this, the first in Fowler's series about detectives Bryant & May and their adventures. Inspired by watching TV series Foyle's War, I was keen to find some detective fiction set in England in World War II, so this was very much a stab in the dark (ahem...) as I had never come across the authors work before.
The duo work for the Metropolitan Police's little known Peculiar Crimes Unit, an underfunded department thought of by many as a dumping ground for the more irritating or nonsensical crimes that plague London.
At the book's outset, one of the detectives is killed in 2003, and his desolated partner of over half a century sets out to discover the perpetrator of the crime. We are soon taken back to London during the Blitz in 1940, to the duo's first case together, which seems to have some bearing on the modern murder.
The 1940 part of the story is set in a London theatre where a series of murders plague a new production that is set to shock the city. The scenes depicting London in both eras are wonderfully atmospheric, and though I can't speak to the depiction of wartime London personally, the scenery of early 21st century Camden is spot on.
The author's device of representing the main characters in their early twenties at one moment and then in their eighties the next, is cleverly utilised and gives the reader a great sense of the character's personalities and motivations. There is also a refreshingly humorous side to the author's delivery that does not detract from the tense expectation and drama of the genre. The murder mystery element itself is very well constructed with the obligatory twist in the tail being beautifully executed.
This is a great read and I can't wait to get into more of Bryant & May's adventures soon.
Stevie at B.L.M.
I know, I may as well make this a monthly spot and be done with it right? But hey-ho, busy man etc...
So since MWIB last, I've managed to get myself embroiled in the situation of reading five books at once, something I try to avoid but often end up doing anyway, due to my inability to resist starting a book that looks interesting.
I actually find it quite a fun way to read, rather like flicking through a multitude of TV channels to see what one fancies. I can quite happily read a chapter, switch books, read a chapter etc etc. An odd way to do things perhaps but I like it. I also find this style of reading helps my mind to explore tangents and different ideas via the complexity of processing a handful of story-lines at once and helps to fill in background details when I'm reading non-fiction with relevance to the particular time period.
So, what have I been reading? Well, I've finished a couple recently so I'll begin with those.
Geoffrey Blainey's "A Very Short History Of The World" is an abridged version of his earlier "A Short History Of The World", unsurprisingly, and it still runs to 479 pages, although as it covers a few million years of the human story, so I guess that's fairly short.... It's a very good read, refreshingly non-eurocentric in it's perspective. Of course it will cover many of the historical nuggets you've picked up over the years, albeit briefly, but there's lots of our story in there you won't know so well.
Whilst ducking out of a three hour long IKEA trip a couple of weeks ago by disappearing downstairs to Dymocks (I know, chain store book shopping, but I was desperate for escapism...) I came across a great little Penguin Special, "The Badlands" by Paul French. At only 91 pages, I had read most of it before leaving the shopping centre, but what a fascinating glimpse into an entirely unknown (to me) world of the seedy side of old Peking in the 1930's and 1940's. At once dark and horrifying, but as addictive as an opium pipe, this is a great little book.
It lead me to desperately seek out a copy of French's earlier work "Midnight In Peking", the true story of a bizarre murder case in the city in 1937. To make up for chain store buying the other one, I decided I'd enrol the help of our local bookstores to track down a copy of this and was entirely unsurprised to find them very helpful, including plenty of polite friendly responses even if their particular store didn't have a copy.
Beth from Jeffreys Books in Malvern came up trumps for me, getting a copy posted to me within three days!!! Awesome work, thank you! Got to love local bookstores!
As to what I'm working my way through at the moment, as always there's an Agatha Christie in there, "Lord Edgware Dies", indeed murder mysteries are playing a prominent part at the moment as I'm also enjoying "A Morbid Taste For Bones" first in the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters and another great new discovery for me, "Full Dark House" by Christopher Fowler, which introduces the crime fighting duo Bryant & May. This particular novel has a wonderfully irreverent feel to it, with some exquisitely eccentric characters.
I'm still reading Claud Cockburn's "The Devil's Decade" which has taken me months to get through. It's very dry, and more than a little polemic, but I'm determined to finish it as I find the subject matter, (the 1930's) a fascinating period in European history.
Finally I'm also thoroughly enjoying Lloyd Shepherd's latest offering "Savage Magic" that I mentioned in an earlier post.
So that's what's going on in my world of books at the moment, I hope it inspires you to give one or two of those mentioned a read.
Happy reading
Stevie at B.L.M.
As you may remember, I have become a big fan of Lloyd Shepherd, author of The English Monster and The Poisoned Island, in my opinion the best new historical fiction series in the last few years. (You can read my review of The Poisoned Island here...).
Well today I've finally received my copy of Savage Magic, the latest in Lloyd's series of stories revolving around the investigations of Constable Charles Horton, set in the early 19th century.
I've not read it yet, but I'm confident it will live up to the last two stories, so buy yourself a copy and judge for yourself!!
Happy reading.
Stevie at B.L.M.
Ok, so due to a lack of productivity and focus, this is essentially My Month In Books this time around... If anyone can tell me where time disappears to, other than working, reading, sleeping, eating, drinking etc.. I'd be grateful.
Reading:
What have I been reading? Well, quite a mixture, though I'm definitely on a fiction roll at this point in my life I have to confess. In the past few weeks I've finished Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre, arguably the ultimate example of the spy-fi genre. It's twisting complex plot and deeply thought out characters are almost cliched now, but as the grand-daddy of such stories it is only the adoption by later authors of Le Carre's style that makes it appear to be so. The story is all to believable, scarily so in fact, a testament to the author's own time and knowledge in the British secret services earlier in his career. Definitely a must read.
I've also finished Graham Greene's The Power And The Glory. For some this is Greene's greatest work, I'm not prepared to agree with that personally, indeed for the first fifty or so pages I found it somewhat frustrating and difficult to follow. The subject matter plunges deep into Greene's lifetime obsession with Catholicism, which, if I'm honest as an atheist, probably put me in a position of negative bias to start with. I'm glad I stuck with it, for all that, as the human story it portrays is a deeply moving one, even if, with my atheist head on, I found most of the characters so frustratingly narrow minded!
Sticking with the tried and tested authors, I've also read through around a dozen of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot Short Stories from various anthologies I have lying around. I've developed a fondness for these little bites of entertainment, perfect for a read on the train, or for light relief between more 'substantial' works.
Currently I'm about halfway through George Orwell's Coming Up For Air unsurprisingly as an Orwell fan I'm throughly enjoying it. His ability to bring humour to his caustic, often sarcastic description of the lives of others is wonderfully bitter-sweet.
New Additions:
As usual I've not been shy about spending my hard-earned cash on lots more books for the library here at Book Lovers base camp! There are far too many to list here, well it has been a month.... but in summary I managed to get my hands on a collection of twelve Penguin Colonial Facsimiles, produced in the 1970s. Whilst a bit faded and foxed, they are in sound condition and I can't wait to start cramming up on stories of bushrangers, convicts and adventures in the early days of the colony!
I've picked up a handful more old orange Penguins too, as well as a little splurge on four books about my home town, Brighton in England, to feed my genealogical desires that rise to the surface now and again.
That's about it for this time, I will of course continue to feed your desires for pictures of books alongside cats, amusing book-related memes and pictures of libraries, before subjecting you to my next rambling journey through my week in books.
Stevie at B.L.M.
Thanks to an early finish at work I was lucky enough to finally get around to visiting City Basement Books ( www.citybasementbooks.com.au ) in Melbourne's CBD this afternoon!
I added them to our Listings page on the website a few weeks ago at the suggestion of Paul at Allsorts Books in Northcote, ( 275 High Street Northcote) and I can reliably inform you that they are well worth a visit.
As you can imagine, parking is suitably difficult being on Flinders Street, so make sure you're armed with some small change for the meter!
I was met by Verity, the owner, and Kerry who were both very friendly and helpful, Kerry sharing a taste for one of my favourite authors for many years, Bernard Cornwell.
The shop has that wonderful quality I most appreciate in a bookstore, an appearance of organised chaos with every spare inch crammed with pre-loved titles across the whole arc of literary interest. Lot's of good old orange-spine Penguins dot the shelves, a particular favourite format of mine at the moment as many of you collectors may know. I make no apology for starting to collect books based on such trivialities, I still only buy those I intend to read, I just like the style too!
I picked up a copy of Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote, a couple of additions to my Bernard Cornwell collection, Battle Flag and the Bloody Ground, and a hardback copy of Edward Rutherfurd's Russka, one of the few works of his I'm yet to read. Both Cornwell and Rutherfurd feature in my earlier blog on my favourite historical fiction titles, that you can check out here: http://bookloversmelbourne.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/top-ten-historical-fiction-books-of-all.html
Prices are wonderfully low, selection is extraordinarily high and the shop is underground and suitably labyrinthine to appeal to the most fussy of bibliophiles, so please pay them a visit and buy some books!! (Don't forget to tell them I sent you!!)
Happy Book Buying!
B.L.M Stevie
