As an unashamed lover of the detective genre, the fascination of murder as a literary vehicle, for all its horrific significance in reality, is one which has always struck a chord with me.
Equally at home in the 'Golden Age' crime stories of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, or the modern police procedurals of Peter James' Roy Grace series, I love a good murder!
I've never personally got into the 'True Crime' genre for the purposes of a pleasant Sunday afternoon read, but I get the attraction, so Lucy Worsley's "A Very British Murder" definitely appealed to my baser instincts.
Some of you will be familiar with Lucy Worsley's work as an historian, via the medium of TV and a number of books on various elements of historical interest.
The book "A Very British Murder" was written to accompany the TV series of the same name in 2013 and gives the reader an excellent, rounded exposure to murder as an 'entertainment' form over the the last couple of centuries.
To get an insight into where the crime genre has its roots I'd definitely recommend this book.
It's dead good.....
So, once again it's been far too long since my last post on here, though I have been delivering plenty of titbits of bookish stuff at the Facebook page... www.facebook.com/bookloversmelbourne .... So please try not to judge me!
So what's been happening since my interview with Robyn Annear a couple of weeks back? Well, you'll be little surprised to hear I've bought loads of books, mainly focused around crime fiction recently, with a dash of history and just a sprinkle of magic....
With the encouragement of the up-coming TV series, I've bought myself a copy of Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" where 19th century Napoleonic Wars are sent in a whole new direction with the re-emergence of magic! Sounds like an interesting twist!
TV has influenced me once again with the next couple of books, this time in the person of British historian, Dr Lucy Worsley. Worsley is currently Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), and The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014). It will come as no surprise that she is also a successful author in the same field.
I've recently got hold of copies of "If Walls Could Talk" and "A Very British Murder" which I'm eager to get into!
Finally, I recently 'discovered' Josephine Tey, alias Gordon Daviot.. alias Elizabeth MacKintosh...one of the early twentieth century's great writers who is surprising little known these days. Strangely enough, hot on the heels of this personal discovery, before I'd really had time to fully enjoy Ms Tey's work, I discovered another author, namely Nicola Upson.
Now this is interesting, (at least I think so), because it so could have been a very tacky, very try-hard, very... just not the thing.... thing. Nicola Upson writes crime fiction with the aforementioned Josephine Tey as her main protagonist. Yes. She takes an early 20th century crime writer, and turns her into a fictional, (but very non-fictional) crime story heroine. I know, right? Anyway, I've read the first hundred or so pages of "An Expert In Murder", first in the series..... and it's really great! I mean REALLY great!
It's a brave thing to do, but only a third into the book and I'm going to say buy it, borrow it, steal it (ok, don't actually steal it) but read it!
That's it for this week, Happy Reading!
Stevie at BLM.
