Two Novels by Raymond Chandler

 

Raymond Chandler is a very well-known and highly regarded author of hard-boiled mysteries featuring Philip Marlowe. He was also a major influence on future writers in that subgenre. I have read five of the Philip Marlowe novels and I rate all of them very highly. However, it is not the mystery plots that keep me coming back, it is Chandler's writing style that I love.

The Lady in the Lake

Philip Marlowe, a private detective with an office in Hollywood, is hired by Derace Kingsley to find his wife, who has been missing for about a month. The marriage was on shaky ground anyway, and he had received a telegram that she was going to Mexico to get a divorce and marry another man, Chris Lavery. Then a few weeks later, he is told that her car had been left unclaimed at a San Bernardino hotel. He is mostly concerned that she is going to cause some kind of scandal and he will lose his job. 

The plot does get very complex. Kingsley has a cabin on a private lake in the mountains near San Bernardino. Bill Chess is the caretaker for the cabins on the lake; his wife, Muriel, left him about the same time Kingsley's wife supposedly left for Mexico. When Marlowe goes to the lake to interview Chess, they find a decomposed dead body in the lake. Chess assumes it is his wife. There are many characters involved, and an excess of suspects. 

In addition to the beautiful writing and the terrific dialogue, there were several appealing things about The Lady in the Lake. The book was published in 1943, and it was written after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The US was involved in World War II and there is evidence of this throughout the book. This book also seemed to have more humor than other books in the series.

The edition above of The Lady in the Lake is my favorite. It has cover art by Tom Adams, who also illustrated the covers for many paperback editions of Agatha Cristie's mysteries. 

The Long Goodbye

I read The Long Goodbye over two years ago, in 2022. I didn't write a full review at the time and I decided this would be a good time to review it.

In this book Philip Marlow gets involved with two very messed-up men, both alcoholics. Terry Lennox hires Marlowe to drive him to Mexico, no questions asked, and Marlowe goes along with it, because he trusts Lennox. When he gets back to L.A. he finds that Lennox's wife is dead and the police think that Lennox killed her. Following this, Marlowe is hired to find a once successful author, Roger Wade, who has been missing for three days. He finds him and returns him to his wife at their beach house. They want Marlowe to stay with them and keep Wade sober and working on his book. Marlowe doesn't want to get involved with that situation but he keeps getting dragged back into it. That doesn't sound like a complex story but there are many characters, and the two "cases" start to merge. 

These are my notes from two years ago shortly after I read the book:

The writing is beautiful. The reading experience was wonderful, even if the plot confused me (and defies description without spoiling the story). This seemed very different from the first three books. Marlowe never has a real client in this one. He tries to help two different people, over several months time, and neither one seems to deserve his help. The whole experience seems aimless but all the threads come together in the end, with some surprises. 

The Long Goodbye was published in 1953, 10 years after The Lady in the Lake was published. It is the 6th book in the series. 

Sense and Sensibility: Jane Austen

As Sense and Sensibility begins, Mr. Dashwood of Norland Park has passed away. He and his wife, Mrs. Dashwood, and three daughters, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret had lived in a large country estate in Sussex. Now his oldest child, John Dashwood, is the owner of their ancestral home.  John's father had exacted a promise from him to provide for Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters, but John does not follow through on this. His wife does not want to share her home with them, so they have to move out to a much smaller cottage in Devonshire. Here they live near to a distant cousin, Sir John Middleton, who invites them to dinners and parties and provides some social life.

Before leaving Sussex, Elinor (the eldest daughter) has formed a friendship with Edward Ferrars, her sister-in-law's brother. Unfortunately Fanny, the sister-in-law, disapproves, and is determined that Edward will make a better match than Elinor. 

After moving to Devonshire,  Marianne meets a very personable young man, John Willoughby. They have shared interests and quickly become enchanted with each other. Sir John Middleton speaks well of Willoughby's background and his expectations of a future inheritance. But not too long after that he leaves the area with little explanation. Marianne refuses to believe that she has been abandoned.

The story centers around the romantic tribulations of Elinor and Marianne. Elinor is 19 years old, full of sense, and cares much more for propriety and good manners than Marianne. Marianne is only 16, so it is not so strange that she seems to go her own way, not sticking to conventional ways and often being rude and thoughtless with people she does not care for. The younger sister, Margaret, is 13 years old and hardly comes into the story. Their mother, Mrs. Dashwood, is not much involved either, although she is often talked about or written to by Elinor. 

Elinor hides her own feelings and is too ready to consider only Marianne's needs and ignore her own pain and grief when she is snubbed by the man she had considered to be a friend and possible suitor. Marianne on the other hand is more than willing to let the world know how unhappy she is when she is ignored by Willoughby.

This was the last remaining Jane Austen novel for me, and it is the only one that I have not truly liked. Some of that may be due to my mood at the time of reading it. I did not hate it and it covers the interesting topic of the plight of people who feel pressure to marry for money, not love, but I did not have the urge to hurry to get back to reading it or finish it that I usually do. 

For me, Sense and Sensibility did not have the humor of the other novels, and I did not care for any of the characters one way or the other. I could not work up an interest in the main characters, Elinor and Marianne, and we spend almost all of our time with them. I sympathized with their plight, but I got tired of hearing about it. Marianne was a real brat at times, thoughtless and needlessly rude to people. Her youth could excuse this to some extent. Even characters who could be considered villains to some extent were tame villains.

In some of Jane Austen's novels, it is pretty obvious that the romances will work out by the end, but this one was pretty unpredictable, and trying to guess the resolution was a plus. I did like the ending. In general, Sense and Sensibility gets very high ratings from most readers, so I still recommend this novel if you are interested in classic novels and/or romances.

-----------------------------

Publisher:   Borders Classics, 2006 (orig. pub. 1811)
Length:      297 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      UK
Genre:        Literary fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Beast in View: Margaret Millar

Beast in View by Margaret Millar was my pick from the latest Classic Club Spin. I have already read four books by Millar and enjoyed them all, to different degrees. I had avoided this one so far because I thought it would be too tense and scary (for me). It did not live up to my expectations, but it wasn't that tense and scary either. 

Helen Clarvoe is a rich young woman who inherited all of her father's money but lives in a low quality hotel. Her mother and brother live in the family home, but don't have enough money to maintain it. She gets a threatening call from a woman from her past that she does not remember, and calls in her father's old investment counselor to help. That is all the overview of the story that I want to share because I think it is best for new readers to read this story knowing very little about it.

Events get very weird after that and and the author kept me guessing throughout. I guessed what was going on very early in the book, but then was fooled by the author's clever writing into considering other options.

This is a very brief book. My edition was close to 250 pages, but most editions are around 170 pages. The action takes place over a short time, a few days. The story could easily be read in one sitting or in one day. I started it later in the evening and finished it the next morning, and I am a slow reader. The book was published in 1955, and won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1956.

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter, following the threatening phone call:

Miss Clarvoe hung up. She knew how to deal with June [telephone operator at the hotel] and others like her. One hung up. One severed connections.

What Miss Clarvoe did not realize was that she had severed too many connections in her life, she had hung up too often, too easily, on too many people. Now, at thirty, she was alone. The telephone no longer rang, and when someone knocked on her door, it was the waiter bringing up her dinner, or the woman from the beauty parlour to cut her hair, or the bellboy, with the morning paper. There was no longer anyone to hang up on except a switchboard operator who used to work in her father’s office, and a lunatic stranger with a crystal ball.

She had hung up on the stranger, yes, but not quickly enough. It was as if her loneliness had compelled her to listen; even words of evil were better than no words at all.

The entire first chapter is available online, at CrimeReads.

As I noted, I did not find the story that tense but it was very dark. Most of the characters were damaged in some way. Evelyn's mother's treatment of both of her children when they were young and in their adulthood was upsetting. She was not a major character but she had a prominent role. Attitudes toward homosexuality as depicted in this book were archaic, although those attitudes can be found now as well. (I am assuming that those attitudes are not the author's.) Although I did not enjoy reading Beast in View, I thought it was a worthwhile read and very well done. It just wasn't a pleasant read for me. 

I have read other books by Millar, and I liked all of them more than I did this one, even though this one won the Edgar for Best Novel. However, this is a book that I would recommend, for two reasons. First, many reviewers liked it much more than I did. Also, it is a groundbreaking novel, although the plot can be seen as stale and overused now; it is familiar because it as been copied so much. At the time it was very original.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  International Polygonics, 1983 (orig. pub. 1955)

This edition includes a brief Introduction and Afterword by Margaret Millar, written in 1983.

Length:      247 pages
Format:      Paperback
Setting:      Los Angeles, California
Genre:       Mystery, Psychological Suspense
Source:      On my TBR piles since 2016.

In a Lonely Place: Dorothy B. Hughes

I enjoy reading post-war mystery novels, especially those written during those years. This novel by Dorothy B. Hughes was published in 1947 but has a very different style and atmosphere than other novels that I have read from that time. In a Lonely Place is a noir classic, a portrait of a serial killer, written before this type of novel was so prevalent as it is now. The story is told from Dix Steele's point of view, but the killings are not described in the book except by the police after examining the scene of the crime. 

As the book opens, the reader gets a picture of Dix Steele. He was a pilot in World War II, and he misses flying, although he is very cynical about the war. He is standing on a piece of land overlooking the beach and enjoying the feeling it gives him.

It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lifting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. There was something in it akin to flying; the sense of being lifted high above crawling earth, of being a part of the wildness of air. Something too of being closed within an unknown and strange world of mist and cloud and wind. He'd liked flying at night; he'd missed it after the war had crashed to a finish and dribbled to an end. It wasn't the same flying a little private crate. He'd tried it; it was like returning to the stone ax after precision tools. He had found nothing yet to take the place of flying wild.

While he is out, he looks up an old pilot friend from the war, Brub Nicolai, who lives nearby. Dix has been in Los Angeles for seven months but only now calls to let him know he is in town. On the spur of the moment, he decides to visit Brub and the wife he married when he got back from the war. He discovers that Brub is a police detective and seems to be displeased with that information, although he keeps this from Brub. Only later do we learn that Dix is the serial killer attacking the young women in the area... and Brub is on the case.

The book was adapted to film by Nicholas Ray; the stars are Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham. The film is quite a bit different from the novel but is still very good viewing. 

I admire and enjoy Hughes' writing. She is very good with both characters and setting. I have read two other books by this author. The Davidian Report, also published as The Body on the Bench, is a Cold War spy novel, although it doesn't fit that mold perfectly. The descriptions in that book of Hollywood Boulevard are fantastic.  Ride the Pink Horse is set in Santa Fe, New Mexico during the week-long Fiesta celebration and again, the descriptions of the setting and the people are great. All of these books are on the darker side.

This novel was published in the Library of America volume titled Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s. I read this book a year ago, in January 2021. 

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Library of America, 2015 (Orig. pub. 1947)

Length:  184 pages

Format:  Hardcover Collection

Setting:  Los Angeles, California 

Genre:   Mystery / Noir

Source:  I purchased my copy

Foundation: Isaac Asimov

I am intimidated by writing a review of a classic of science fiction like this one, when I am not that knowledgeable of science fiction in general. But I will do my best, and I welcome comments and corrections.

As the Foundation series begins, Hari Seldon is predicting the fall of the Galactic Empire. an extremely large group of planets settled by humans. He also predicts that the breakup of the Galactic Empire will cause 30,000 years of turmoil. He proposes to set up a group of men to write an encyclopedia that will include all human knowledge and preserve it, and claims that the effort will reduce the years of turmoil to 1,000.

The Commission of Public Safety accuses Seldon of treason, but they allow him to carry out his project of developing an encyclopedia. They force him to move this group to a remote planet, Terminus. The rest of the book follows the events on Terminus and adjoining planets over a period of about 200 years.

This book was not what I expected. What did I expect? Maybe more of a space opera, maybe more action. That is not to say that there is no space travel or action. The society is futuristic to a point. This novel is more about society and interactions in society. And a lot of talk. People arguing about ideas, people convincing others to do things.

The book was divided into five sections:

• The Psychohistorians
• The Encyclopedists
• The Mayors
• The Traders
• The Merchant Princes

It took me a while to get into the book, especially while reading the first two sections. The writing was sort of dry, and I could not get interested in any of the characters. Each section is about a new set of characters although some characters carry from one section to the next. But with each part the story improves, although I remained confused through at least the third section. There was humor in the fourth section, The Traders. That section read like a good short story, and only later did I realize why. In the end, overall, I thought Foundation was an exceptional story.

After I finished reading Foundation, I read Asimov's introduction to that edition (written in 1982) which explained that he had put each book in the trilogy together from previously written stories. That did explain a lot about the structure and some confusion I had. The introduction was fascinating and I was amazed that doing that worked out so well.

One complaint I had is the lack of women in the story. No women characters at all until the fifth part, which is over 2/3 of the book. And the only woman in that section has no significant role. I know the stories were written in the 1940's and the book was published in 1951, but I found it irritating, regardless.

Also see FictionFan's review.

Foundation was first published as part 1 of a trilogy. The second book is Foundation and Empire and the third part is Second Foundation. Later, more books were added to the series. I will be reading further in the trilogy, and more books by Asimov outside of the Foundation series.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Del Rey Books, 1986. Orig. pub. 1951.
Length:     285 pages
Format:     Paperback
Series:      Foundation, #1
Setting:     The Galactic Empire
Genre:      Science Fiction
Source:     Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2017.

Grand Hotel: Vicki Baum

This was an easy book to read and to love, but not easy for me to review. There is so much going on, and so many sad people coming together over a few days and nights at the Grand Hotel in Berlin. I don't think one of the characters is really happy, although some of them find some happy moments during their stay, and all of them are in some way changed by the experience.

Here are our characters:

• Grusinskaya, the aging dancer who still has a lovely body but is losing confidence in herself.
• Baron Gaigern, debonair, likable, handsome, loves to dance and gamble, but beneath it all, a thief.
• Two men from the Saxonia Cotton Company in Fredersdorf. Preysing is the Generaldirektor of the company; Kringelein is his minion, a clerk. Kringelein has come to Berlin after finding out he has a short time to live. He has brought all his money and plans to live it up for once.
• Doktor Otternschlag, a man damaged by World War I, who is a longterm resident of the hotel.
• Flämmchen, a typist, who aspires to be an actress and is prepared to give her body away to get ahead.
• In the background of all of this, we follow the hall porter, Senf, whose wife is in the hospital having a baby. I was quite worried about that baby all the way through the story.

As I read the book, I found myself focusing on Grusinskaya and the Baron, but really all of the people visiting the hotel are equally interesting and given quite a bit of background. There isn't really a main plot and subplots, they all rotate around each other and interact. I was expecting a more surface look at the characters and their interactions, but there was depth to each character's story.

So, clearly, I enjoyed this book. It was very thought-provoking, and a pleasure to read. It provides a good picture of Germany in the late 1920s, between the two wars. The characters are very well drawn. The story is pretty dark at times, yet it did not drag me down. 

The film from 1932 is a good adaptation of the story, but I am glad I read the book first. As usual, the book provides more insight into the characters. Some of the actors were: John Barrymore as the Baron, Lionel Barrymore as Kringelein, Greta Garbo as Grusinskaya, Joan Crawford as Flämmchen, and Wallace Beery as Preysing. The sets for the hotel lobby are gorgeous.

Other resources:

At Clothes in Books and His Futile Preoccupations.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  New York Review Books, 2016 (orig. pub. 1929)

Translated from the German by Basil Creighton with revisions by Margot Bettauer Dembo

Length:     270 pages

Format:     Trade Paperback

Setting:     Berlin, Germany

Genre:      Fiction, Classics

Source:     I purchased my copy, 2018.

 

Bleak House: Charles Dickens

I feel ambivalent about this novel. I enjoyed reading much of it, but it was a difficult read, and seemed too long. It was first published in 20 monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853, which was probably an enjoyable way to read it, but how did readers of the time keep up with all the characters? It took me nearly three weeks to read, although I did read other books at the same time, unusual for me.

The story centers around a case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The case has something to do with the resolution of conflicting wills, which I never truly understood, and the case has been in the court for many years. John Jarndyce of Bleak House takes on the custody of two wards, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, who are distant cousins and beneficiaries in one of the wills. At the same time he becomes guardian to Esther Summerson, an orphan who becomes Ada's companion.

The story is told alternately by Esther in first person, and by an omniscient narrator.  In addition to following the characters living at Bleak House, there are other important plots and many of them tie together later in the book. One features Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife Honoria. Lady Dedlock has a secret she wants to keep from her husband at all costs, and the evil lawyer Mr. Tulkington is determined to find out what that secret is. Another subplot I enjoyed involved the Jellyby family. Mrs. Jellyby is a philanthropist who spends all of her time gathering funds to set up a mission in Africa, while ignoring and neglecting the needs of her own family. Her eldest daughter, Caddy, serves as her secretary (unwillingly) and becomes a good friend of Esther.

There is a murder mystery within this long novel. I knew that before I started reading it, but I had expected it to play a small role. In fact, it is an interesting and engaging part of the story, and the detective, Inspector Bucket, is a very good character.

I have complained about the confusion of too many characters in other books, but this book overflows with characters. On the Wikipedia page there are two lists of characters, with 21 major characters and about 40 minor characters. I highly recommend the Wikipedia page for a description of the characters, but I would avoid reading the synopsis of the story before reading the book, because it starts out with a big plot spoiler.

As I mentioned previously, I had difficulty reading this book. But I did not want to take a year to finish it like I did with Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. I preferred the chapters told by Esther; they had more focus and initially they were more interesting. So I would pace my reading by reading up to a point where Esther's narration starts again. There was a point where I was having difficulty reading more than one chapter a day, but that only lasted a few days, fortunately. And then towards the end, I wanted to keep reading along because I wanted to know the ending, how it all turns out.

I would like to share Colin Dexter's thoughts on this book from an article at the The Guardian. The story of how he came to read Bleak House for the first time is very entertaining, so I recommend reading the entire article.

I have since religiously read the novel from beginning to end three times, and with ever-increasing delight and understanding. It was, and is, the greatest novel of the lot. Why? First, the quality of the writing; second, the complexity of the plot; third, the extraordinary insight and honesty of the characterisation.

Here are reviews at other blogs to check out:

• WHATMEREAD
• Brona's Books
• Editor Eric's The Greatest Literature of All Time
• NancyElin
• Carole's Notebook

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Vintage Books, 2012 (orig. pub. 1853).
Length:     866 pages
Format:     Trade Paperback
Setting:     England
Genre:      Fiction, Classic
Source:     I purchased this book.

The Master and Margarita: Mikhail Bulgakov

Katrina (at Pining for the West) and I read this book at the same time. We both had it on our Classics lists and she asked if I wanted to read it now with her. That was a really good thing because without that motivation I don't know when I would have read it or if I would have persevered to read it all.

I always prefer to read a book knowing as little as possible about it. Sometimes that is not possible but with this book I only had a basic overview of the book. It was written in the 1930's and finished shortly before the author died in 1940, at the age of 49. The author's writings were often rejected and he wanted to leave Russia so that he could write. He knew he could not publish this book while he was alive; otherwise he would "disappear." The novel was finally published in Russia in 1966.

I did not read the foreword or the introduction, and for the first two hundred pages I skipped the notes at the end, because I usually find that notes impede the flow of reading or tell too much. However, in this case I should have read all of those. I just did not understand enough about the issues that were at the center of the novel or Bulgakov's writing to understand what I was reading or its intent.

At this point, I will share a summary from Penguin Random House.

When the devil arrives in 1930s Moscow, consorting with a retinue of odd associates—including a talking black cat, an assassin, and a beautiful naked witch—his antics wreak havoc among the literary elite of the world capital of atheism. Meanwhile, the Master, author of an unpublished novel about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, languishes in despair in a psychiatric hospital, while his devoted lover, Margarita, decides to sell her soul to save him. As Bulgakov’s dazzlingly exuberant narrative weaves back and forth between Moscow and ancient Jerusalem, studded with scenes ranging from a giddy Satanic ball to the murder of Judas in Gethsemane, Margarita’s enduring love for the Master joins the strands of plot across space and time.

This is a very weird book. It made little sense to me. At times it is very funny, but in a sad way. Things happen to people and they make no sense. People lose their apartments or jobs for fabricated reasons. And yet life goes on. I realize that this is a satire on conditions in Russia at the time it was written, but I did not have enough context to understand it.

Some of my confusion was due to the names being hard to follow. Some names were similar. Sometimes a person would be identified by his last name, other times by the first and second. Some important characters were identified by different names in different parts of the book. And I did not realize it would read like a fantasy, thus I was not prepared for the tone. For instance, the cat does not only talk, it walks upright its back feet and is the size of a human being.

Some of the writing was very entertaining and most of the time I did not care whether the book made sense or not but there was a large portion, from about page 50 - 200, where I was so confused it was hopeless. It seemed incoherent to me.

The book is in two parts. Book Two begins with Margarita trying to find the Master. Although that half is very fantastical, also, I found it more coherent and less confusing.

Margarita loves the Master and wants to leave her rich husband. She is willing to give up her privileged and easy life. But she cannot find him. The devil, often referred to as Woland in the edition I read, offers to grant her a wish ... and weird things happen. She gets two wishes because her first wish is selfless... to save her maid, Natasha.

Four chapters of the Master's book on Jesus and Pontius Pilate is included in The Master and Margarita. Those four chapters were my favorite part. The writing style in those chapters was entirely different. The chapters are interspersed throughout the book, two in Book One, two in Book Two.

I fear that my review is incoherent and doesn't tell you much about how I liked the book. I liked parts of it, I will reread it again, and maybe one day I will understand it more.

The translation I read was by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The very enthusiastic Foreword was by Boris Fishman and the Introduction was by Richard Pevear.

My husband took the photo of the cover above and it shows the many, many sticky tabs I used trying to keep track of the story.

I highly recommend Katrina's review of The Master and Margarita. Her summary and thoughts on the book are excellent.

-----------------------------

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2016 (orig. pub. 1966)
Length:  396 pages
Format:  Trade paperback
Setting:  Moscow, Russia
Genre:   Classic Fiction (Fantasy, Magical Realism)
Source:  On my TBR since 2017.
Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

And Then There Were None: Agatha Christie

Eight guests are invited to a mansion on an isolated island off the coast of England. As they journey to their destination, they muse about the letters they received and their expectations for their visit to the island. When they arrive on the island, the only two people at the house are Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, the butler and the cook. They have been notified that Mr. Owen, the owner, will be arriving later. They soon realize that they have been tricked and the owner will not be showing up.

A recording is played after dinner on the first night they arrive. The recording accuses each of the guests of a crime. Soon the people on the island begin to die, one by one. Each death is shocking. As the group gets smaller and smaller, the tension ratchets up.

The story pulled me in very quickly. I knew the general setup but had not watched any film adaptations, and was wondering how it all ends. Could it live up to the acclaim it has always gotten? It did for me. The writing is very suspenseful. I could not help trying to figure out not only who was the killer but how it was all managed. I did at one time suspect the actual culprit but Christie is very competent at making you second guess your deductions.

Also the characterizations are very good and slowly revealed. With so many characters there could not be a lot of depth, but still we are provided with backgrounds and sometimes surprised by the behavior of the characters.

In his review in 1001 Midnights (1986), Bill Pronzini says:
"Perhaps the most famous of all Dame Agatha's novels, this is both a masterful cat-and-mouse thriller and a baffling exercise for armchair sleuths—a genuine tour de force. And like all of her best work, it has inspired countless variations—the ultimate compliment for any crime novel and crime-novel writer."

This was my book for the Classic Club Spin #23. I am glad I finally read it.


 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Harper, 2011 (orig. pub. 1939)
Length:      300 pages
Format:      paperback
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      On my TBR pile since 2013.

Tiger in the Smoke: Margery Allingham

I recently realized that I started my journey towards reading this book in 2015, nearly five years ago. That was when I decided to start with Death of a Ghost (Albert Campion #6) and read the series in order up to Tiger in the Smoke (#14). Along the way I have become a big fan of Margery Allingham's writing.

I was a bit hesitant to read Tiger in the Smoke because it is usually described as very different from Allingham's other mysteries (although I have always found that there was much variation within the series). This is definitely a thriller as opposed to the usual detective novel, and fairly early on we know who the killer is. The only mystery is how (or if?) he will be stopped.

A brief summary:

A relative of Campion's, Meg Elginbrodde, is about to remarry five years after losing her first husband in World War II. She has been sent photos of her first husband which seem to indicate he is alive and in London. Campion and Inspector Charlie Luke look into this.

The "tiger" threatening London is Jack Havoc, recently escaped from prison. The "smoke" is the fog/smog hanging over London throughout this story.

My thoughts:

I did like this mystery a lot, although it is not my favorite book by Allingham. What I like about Allingham's Albert Campion series is how she tells a story, her writing style, and her skill with characterization, especially with some of the unique secondary characters that don't show up in every book. All of that was there in this book, so I was very happy with it.

Canon Avril is my favorite character in this story. He is Meg's father, "the priest in charge of the Anglican church of St Peter of the Gate in Portminster Row in London." (see Clerical Detectives) He becomes very involved in the investigation and ferrets out important details that might never have been discovered otherwise. And he is such a wise and wonderful person. The parts with Canon Avril alone made the book worthwhile for me.

Some reviewers note that Campion is not much involved in this story or the investigation but I don't see it that way at all. He was there when he needed to be and he played an important part.

See posts at Clothes in Books (here and here). At Past Offences there are multiple posts on this book, starting here.

-----------------------------

Publisher:   Felony & Mayhem, 2010 (orig. pub. 1952)
Length:      290 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      London, UK. France.
Genre:       Thriller
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2011.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Truman Capote

The story takes place over a year or two in New York, during World War II. A young man, an aspring writer, is the narrator.

The first paragraph of the book:

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a train. The walls were stucco, and a color rather like tobacco-spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman ruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.

This young man soon meets Holly Golightly, a free spirit, who has had a hard life (and she is only eighteen). She also lives in the brownstone, in a larger apartment; she has no job and spends most of her time socializing with wealthy people (mostly men) who give her money and presents. During the time the young writer and Holly are living in the brownstone, she  gradually reveals more about her past and herself. She always calls him "Fred" after her brother who is stationed overseas during the war.

I have seen the movie with Audrey Hepburn and to me it was depressing. I also found the story it is based on to be very sad. The portrait of Holly Golightly is even darker. But regardless of the mood it put me in, reading this book was a good experience. Truman Capote's writing is beautiful. The story is very well told, although I can hardly think of a character that I really liked.

Do I recommend this book? Yes, because it is worth reading Capote's writing. And it is short, just a novella. This edition also contains three stories: 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory'. Which I have not read yet but plan to.

Here are some other opinions:

• The Once Lost Wanderer
• Brona's Books (includes thoughts on the three stories)
• Bibliofreak
• BooksPlease
• Pining for the West

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Vintage International, 2012 (orig. pub. 1958)
Length:       84 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      New York City
Genre:       Fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Cold Comfort Farm: Stella Gibbons

I have heard so much about Cold Comfort Farm over the years. I had to try it, but I was hesitant. The book is described as a parody of rural novels written in the early 1900s. Not being familiar with those novels, I wasn't sure how much it would mean to me. The title of the book conjured up something quite different. So I was surprised to find that I loved it, from the first page.

The book opens after Flora Poste's parents have died:

The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged: and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.

Her father had always been spoken of as a wealthy man, but on his death his executors were disconcerted to find him a poor one. After death duties had been paid and the demands of creditors satisfied, his child was left with an income of one hundred pounds a year, and no property.

Thus, after writing to various relatives, Flora Poste decides to move in with her country relatives, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm.

In various reviews and articles, Flora Poste has been compared to Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse. That never occurred to me because the two stories are so different, but it is a valid comparison, because Flora wants to set everything right and fix everyone's lives. Or at least everyone living at Cold Comfort Farm. And at the Starkadder's farm, everyone does need at least a little help.

I was dubious of her attitude of taking over initially. Who was she to think she knew what was right for everyone? But as she worked her magic gradually with each person, and helped them find their way, I began to enjoy it.

There are so many interesting and entertaining characters that I cannot include them all. Flora is at the top of the list, of course. Then there is Judith Starkadder, the matriarch, who only cares for her son Seth. Seth, in turn, is handsome and sexy but all he is really interested in is the movies at the local theater. Amos, the father, preaches at the Church of the Quivering Brethren and hates being tied to the farm. Reuben, the other son, is the only one who really cares about the farm. None of them are happy. And that just scratches the surface.

This is not a book that is meant to be taken seriously, and I found it a lot of fun. But there are readers who don't find it funny or enjoyable, and I would hesitate to recommend to everyone. I do think it is a book worth trying, and I am sure I will be reading it again.


Some other posts to check out:

• At Clothes in Books, here and here
• My Reader's Block
• Stuck in a Book

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Penguin Books, 2006 (orig. pub. 1932). 
Length:     233 pages
Format:     Trade Paperback
Setting:     UK
Genre:      Fiction
Source:    I purchased this book.
Introduction by Lynne Truss.
Cover by Roz Chast.

On the Beach: Nevil Shute

About On the Beach, from the back of my paperback edition:

Nevil Shute’s most powerful novel—a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication—is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Commander Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life. Both terrifying and intensely moving, On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.

I enjoy reading apocalyptic fiction. There are many different takes on that genre and I enjoy all of them. This one was especially interesting because of when it was written, at a time when the fears of the cold war were prevalent. I was a child when it was written and a teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't have specific memories of the tensions of that time, just general impressions.

The story centers around several men who are assigned to the last functioning American nuclear submarine, the USS Scorpion: the captain, Dwight Towers; the Australian liaison officer, Peter Holmes; and an Australian scientist, John Osborne, assigned to monitor and research the radiation levels. The men are sent out on cruises to check out areas around the United States and further to the north. The novel tells us about these trips but also about their lives when they return to Melbourne, where the submarine is based.


Particular attention is paid to Dwight Towers and his friendship with Moira Davidson, a friend of Peter Holmes and his wife Mary. Moira is in her early twenties and is bitter about missing the experience of marriage and having children and the opportunity to see more of the world. Dwight had a wife and two children in the US and knows that he will never see them again, but sometimes his actions belie this, as he looks for gifts for them.

There is a focus on the somewhat mundane, daily activities of the characters as they continue on with their lives as if they will be around later when the garden that they are planting has bloomed. It may be surprising to think that people would continue in their normal lives, but I think it emphasizes that sometimes it is the small things we do in life that are most important.

The book is a look at how people might handle this impending doom and carry on their daily lives until the end. I like that the story is told simply, without a lot of details about what has happened on other continents. I also liked the combination of some technological aspects of how the situation was addressed, versus the daily lives of the people affected. Some people knew that the end would come but chose to live as they had before. Others were in denial. And a few followed up on dreams that they had, while still carrying on in their jobs.

Reading this story did not affect me emotionally as much as I expected. I read it as one look at what could happen, and it made me think afterwards about how a family with younger children would handle the approaching end of life. It does address families and individuals at different stages of life, taking a deeper look at people in their 20s, 30s, or 40s and what they would miss because of this disaster. I found it more thought-provoking than sad.

In reading about this book and the author, I discovered that Nevil Shute was an aeronautical engineer and that some of his books used that knowledge as a part of the story. I will be looking for some more of his books to read. Suggestions are welcome.

See these reviews, at Pining for the West, Brona's Books, and My Reader's Block.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Vintage International, 2010 (orig. pub. 1957)
Length:       312 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      Melbourne, Australia
Genre:       Apocalyptic Fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Joining the Classics Club

Back in 2016, I posted a list of classic books I wanted to read. At the time I was in the mood to have a loose goal, an open-ended personal project to read more "classics." Since then I have read 10 of the books on that list and written about 8 of those.

Recently I decided I wanted to revise the list, and make it official by joining The Classics Club, an online group that focuses on reading classics and posting about books read. The main requirements are to create a list of at least 50 classic titles that I plan to read and blog about within the next five years.

So here is the new list, now with about 70 titles.  Since I am posting this on November 25, 2018, my goal date to have finished all the titles is November 25, 2023.

Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)
Louisa May Alcott – Little Women (1868) [read and reviewed December 2020]

Margery Allingham – Tiger in the Smoke (1952)

Isaac Asimov – Foundation (1951)
Jane Austen – Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Vicki Baum – Grand Hotel (1929)
Nicholas Blake – The Beast Must Die (1938)
Ray Bradbury – The Martian Chronicles (1950)
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Anne Bronte – Agnes Grey (1847)
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre (1847)
Mikhail Bulgarov – The Master and Margarita (1967)
James Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
Albert Camus –  The Stranger (1942)
Truman Capote – Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1958) [read October 7, 2019; reviewed October 27, 2019]
Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Willa Cather –  My Ántonia (1918)
Raymond Chandler – The Long Goodbye (1953)
Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None  (1939)
Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
Charles Dickens – Bleak House (1853)
Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol (1843)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Sign of the Four (1890)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Adventures of Sherlock Holmes  (1892)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca (1938)
John Meade Falkner – The Nebuly Coat (1903)
Edna Ferber – Giant (1952)
Edna Ferber – Show Boat (1926)
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (1925)
Ford Madox Ford – The Good Soldier (1915)
Kenneth Grahame –  The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Stella Gibbons – Cold Comfort Farm (1932) [read August 19, 2019; reviewed Sept. 25, 2019]
Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)
Graham Greene – The Quiet American (1955)
Dashiell Hammett – Red Harvest (1929)
Robert A. Heinlein –  Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr.Ripley (1955)
Dorothy B. Hughes – In A Lonely Place (1947)
Victor Hugo  – Les Misérables (1862)
Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Christopher Isherwood – Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
Ira Levin – A Kiss Before Dying (1953)
Carson McCullers – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
Margaret Millar – Beast In View (1955)
Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love (1945)
Walker Percy – The Moviegoer (1961)
J. D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye (1951)
J. D. Salinger – Franny and Zooey (1961)
Dorothy l. Sayers – The Nine Tailors (1934)
William Shakespeare – Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
Nevil Shute – On the Beach (1957) [read May 4, 2019; reviewed May 22, 2019]
Betty Smith – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) [read July 16, 2019; reviewed Oct. 16, 2019]
Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle (1948)
Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
John Steinbeck – Cannery Row (1945)
Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
Bram Stoker – Dracula (1897)
William Thackeray – Vanity Fair (1848)
James Thurber – The 13 Clocks (1950)
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina (1878)
Anthony Trollope – The Warden (1855)
Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-Five  (1955)
H. G. Wells –  The Invisible Man (1897)
Eudora Welty – The Optimist's Daughter (1972)
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
Virginia Woolf – Flush (1933)

The definition of a classic is pretty much up to the person creating the list. My list is still primarily works of fiction that were published over 50 years ago that have "stood the test of time." I removed some titles, adding more titles. I did add one title that was published in 1972, so not quite 50 years old. Because the number of titles is greater, I also increased the number of classic crime fiction, science fiction, and fantasy books.

The club acknowledges that readers may want to change the list around over time, and it is allowable to "switch up the titles on your list after you post it, at any time during the duration of your challenge."

How to join the Classics Club

Strangers on a Train: Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith is known for her dark, suspense-filled novels and Strangers on a Train was my introduction to her writing. (It was also her debut novel.) I had been wanting to read it for years and Peggy at Peggy's Porch very kindly sent me her copy. The basic story is that two men meet on a train, and one of them suggests a murder pact. If they each murder a person that the other wants to get rid of, then they can get away with the perfect crime.

Charles Anthony Bruno is the one who proposes the pact; he is a rich young man, dependent on his father for funds, and indulged by his mother. The other young man is Guy Haines; he is embarrassed by the encounter, determined not to take Bruno seriously. Guy is an architect, just starting out, with a wife he wants to divorce and a girlfriend he wants to marry. Most of the story is told from Guy's point of view, although we get to know Bruno's thoughts very well also.

My assessment:

A very good novel, but a disturbing read. I read the first 100 pages enjoying Highsmith's wonderful way with telling a story. I liked the buildup of tension, the introduction of the characters, and the laying out of the story. But beyond that point I had to slow down and only read a bit of it a day. It was too intense and very unpleasant. The ending was a complete surprise to me and I did not find it convincing.

For readers who have not already experienced this novel, I would only recommend it to those who enjoy highly suspenseful noir novels. This novel proves to be more of a character study than the exploration of a crime, and that is usually an approach I like. This time it did not prove to be enjoyable.

The film:

There is well-known film adaptation of this novel, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Farley Granger as Guy and Robert Walker as Bruno both handle their roles very well. Robert Walker's acting is especially chilling. I had seen the movie before reading the book, but enough years had passed that I wasn't sure how much was changed in the film. The basic story and the ending of the film are quite different. I liked the film a lot, but it does not have the emotional impact or the depth of the book. In the book it is hard to have sympathy with anyone, in the film the characters are more likable.

Other thoughts on the novel:

• Marie's review at Goodreads
• At Peggy's Porch
• Moira's review at Past Offences
• Rich's  review at Past Offences
• At Col's Criminal Library

I still plan to read at least one other novel by Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first in a series. I will probably try some of her other stand alone novels. Suggestions are welcome.


 -----------------------------

Publisher:   W. W. Norton & Company, 2001 (orig. publ. 1950)
Length:       280 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      USA
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      A gift.

Persuasion: Jane Austen

This is the story of Anne Elliot, the middle child in a family of three girls; at the time of the book she is 27 years old. She lives with her father and her older sister; her mother died with she was young. Her younger sister is married with several children. The members of her family are pretty ghastly. Her father cares for none of his children except Elizabeth, the eldest, who is the prettiest but not a very nice person either. To them, our protagonist is "only Anne." Not to be considered, not to be consulted in decisions. The younger sister, Mary, is as selfish as the others, a hypochondriac, and given to flighty moods.

Anne is quite different from the rest of her family. She is sensible, intelligent, considerate, and willing to help out where needed. She cares for her family but she does clearly see their faults.

Her father has handled his money recklessly and his need to cut back causes them to have to let the family home to a well-to-do naval officer and his wife. As a result of this event, and related decisions, Anne comes back in contact Frederick Wentworth. At nineteen, she fell in love with Wentworth, and he with her, but Lady Russell, her friend and mentor, advised against their marriage and Anne gave in. Now Wentworth, a successful naval captain, has returned to England, but he continues to bear a grudge against Anne for giving into her family and rejecting him. This summary brings us about about a quarter into the book.

Had I read this book first or immediately after reading Pride and Prejudice, I probably would not have loved it so much. At this point I am more familiar with Austen's style of writing. Persuasion is shorter than most of her books and gets straight to the point (or as much as Jane Austen is likely to do). There is much less repetitiveness. It does point out society's shortcomings, but it does not belabor those elements. It was the last novel Austen wrote and was published after her death. Thus it is a more mature novel, and certainly Anne is a more mature protagonist.

Having read four other novels by Jane Austen this year, I feel more confident in being able to rank them. I have appreciated each one for its unique qualities, but at this point I would rank Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion at the top of the list, and Emma, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey at the next level. I will be reading Sense and Sensibility in 2018.

-----------------------------

Publisher:   Book of the Month Club, 1996 (orig. pub. 1818)
Length:      227 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:      UK
Genre:        Literary fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy.