Reading Summary for October 2021

This month I read seven books. Five of them were in the crime fiction genre, although some of those were more suspense than mystery, with the crime in the background. Most of those books were picked specifically for R.I.P. XVI. For that event, I also read a fantasy novel that borders on horror by Ray Bradbury. The last book I read this month was from my Classics Club list.

This month the communal driveway for our condominium has been torn up and inaccessible. The work started on September 20th and was supposed to be finished in no more than 4 weeks. This was what it looked like on October 22nd.

General Fiction

The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy

This was my pick for the Classic Club spin, and I am glad I finally read a book by this author. It is set in the South, in New Orleans.  Binx Bolling is from a rich family, is a veteran of the Korean War, and has been set up as a stock broker by relatives. He likes going to movies, making money, and going out with his secretaries. He also has a lot of existential angst. Family members pressure him to pursue other careers and get more serious about life. This is one of the few books set in the South where I had some recognition of my own feelings and experiences. We were at a much lower socioeconomic level than the characters in this book, though. I was on the fence about this book until the ending, which I loved.

Fantasy / Horror

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) by Ray Bradbury

A traveling carnival brings evil to a small town in late October. See my review here.

Crime Fiction

The Thirteenth Tale (2006) by Diane Setterfield

If I had to pick a favorite book for this month, this would be it. It grabbed me emotionally and I enjoyed every page. See my review here.

A Little Local Murder (1976) by Robert Barnard

This is a light, humorous satire about the residents of an English village. The ending packs quite a punch. See my review here.

The Quickening (2020) by Rhiannon Ward

Rhiannon Ward is a pseudonym for Sarah Ward, who wrote four British police procedural mysteries previously. Three of those I read and liked a lot. This is a suspense novel with gothic elements, spooky and sort of creepy, not my usual type of reading. It is set in 1925 and highlights how many families lost sons and fathers to World War I. The main character is a female photographer who is documenting the contents of an estate that is in disrepair and being sold. There is an excellent subplot about a séance that took place back in 1896, and its continuing effects on the family, but I did not care for the overall emphasis on spiritualism. 

Skeleton Key (2000) by Jane Haddam

I read this book in October because the story is set at Halloween. It is the 16th book in the Gregor Demarkian series. This was a reread and it was a good choice from the series. See my review here.

Fête Fatale (1985) by Robert Barnard

This book has a lot in common with A Little Local Murder by the same author, which I also read this month. This story is set in a small English village, and many of the characters are quirky and somewhat unlikeable. But, unusual for Barnard's books, the story is narrated by a woman, the wife of the local veterinarian. She claims that the village is run by women and she is unsympathetic to the control they wield and how they use it. Some of the villagers are in a tizzy because a more orthodox vicar is being brought in to take the place of the previous incumbent of that position.

Currently Reading and More

This month I am reading novellas for Novellas in November. I have read four so far and enjoyed all of them.

Currently I am reading Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, a historical novella that starts in 1917 and follows events in a man's life through several decades. Set in Idaho and Washington, mostly.

We still don't have access to the driveway, at least for driving, although now we can walk on it. In this photo, taken yesterday, you can see that the pavers have been installed all the way to the street but entry is still blocked. 

This last photo, also taken yesterday, shows the driveway at our end of the drive. A lot of finishing still needs to be done. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Short Story Wednesday: Stories by Agatha Christie

 

A few nights ago I decided to read some short stories from a collection of Hercule Poirot stories. I read the first two in the book: "The Affair at the Victory Ball" and "The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan," both first published in 1923.

The stories were very good. I enjoyed the descriptions of Poirot, his quirks, and the appearance of Inspector Japp. In these stories the narrator was Captain Hastings. Some of my favorite novels in that series were the ones that Hastings narrates. 

However there was one problem... I have seen all of the Poirot adaptations with Suchet recently and I remembered the stories, who did it, how it was solved. All of it. 

So I moved on to a book that has a few stories by various sleuths created by Agatha Christie. 13 for Luck has stories featuring Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Harley Quin, Mr. Parker Pyne, Inspector Evans, and Tommy and Tuppence. I read three stories featuring Jane Marple. My favorite story was “Tape-Measure Murder,” from the collection Three Blind Mice (AKA The Mouse Trap).

“Tape-Measure Murder” by Agatha Christie

This story begins with a dressmaker, Miss Pollitt, waiting at the door of a house. She has brought a new dress for Mrs. Spenlow to the house because it is ready for fitting. But she has knocked and knocked and gotten no answer, although she had scheduled an appointment. After much discussion, Miss Pollitt and a neighbor, Miss Hartnell, look into the window of the front room and discover that Mrs. Spenlow is lying on the floor, dead.

As soon as the police start investigating, the husband is the main suspect. Miss Marple gets involved because Mr. Spenlow has used her as his alibi, in a sense. He got a call from Miss Marple to come by and consult with her at 3:30. When he showed up she was not at home. Miss Marple tells the police that she never called Mr. Spenlow, but that he did come by when she was out.

The solution to the mystery is complex and satisfying, and there is a very clever clue which should have given it away, but certainly did not alert this reader. Miss Marple figures it all out, of course.

The other two stories featuring Miss Marple were from The Tuesday Club Murders. The stories were good, but I did not like them as well as the "Tape-Measure Murder." Yet I think I will find a copy of that book, because the characters in the stories are a lot of fun.

I welcome suggestions for other short stories or collections by Agatha Christie, if you have any to recommend.

Skeleton Key: Jane Haddam

This book is the 16th book in the Gregor Demarkian series by Jane Haddam. I read this book in October because the story is set at Halloween. It starts on October 27th and continues through to the end of October, so the holiday atmosphere is there although not necessarily any celebrations. So it really wasn't very Halloweeny, not spooky or creepy, but a good mystery. This was a reread and it was a good choice from the series. 

Kayla Anson is a very very rich 19-year-old heiress; her father left his entire fortune to her, writing her mother, Margaret Anson, out of the will. She lives with her mother in a mansion, but only until she can get away to college. She and her mother hate each other. Bennis Hannaford, a well-known fantasy writer, also from a very rich family, is visiting Margaret to request the loan of a piece of art for a showing in Philadelphia. Bennis doesn't like Margaret very much either. While staying at Margaret's house, Bennis finds Kayla's dead body in the Anson's garage. So Bennis is stuck in Litchfield, Connecticut for a while, although it is pretty clear she had nothing to do with the death.

Bennis calls in Gregor Demarkian, her lover, and volunteers him to work with the Resident Trooper in Littlefield to be a consultant on the investigation. Gregor is a well-known retired ex-FBI profiler, so he is always welcome as a consultant. 

This series started out sort of on the cozy side, with some kind of focus on a holiday in each book, but later in the series the books became darker and more focused on issues. Skeleton Key is the last book (I think) to have a holiday focus. Bennis's and Gregor's continuing relationship always plays a part. They both live in the Armenian-American neighborhood in Philadelphia that he grew up in, and that area is sometimes a focus of the books, but not this one.

Except for the first book, Not a Creature was Stirring, every book in the series starts with several vignettes featuring characters who are prominent in the story and may or may not be suspects. Thus we get an introduction early in the book to the key players. Unusually, in this case, the lead up to the murder takes place in that first section, and Bennis and Gregor are involved from the very beginning. 

The setting in this case is a small town in Connecticut, but this small town has a lot of rich residents, and the country club is the focus of the social life of those people. Young female friends of Kayla Anson are at the age to be debutantes but their parents are more excited about that than the girls. Because of the small town setting, there is a good cross-section of character types involved in the crime, if only on the periphery of it. And that is fascinating. 

In the end, Gregor is able to identify the person guilty of the crime and knows why, but there is no evidence to convict the culprit. This is probably fairly realistic but not very satisfying. Still, the other elements of the story are entertaining and kept me interested until the end. Fortunately I remembered none of the story so it all felt new to me.

I started reading this series in 2005 and read the first twenty books in a short time. Since then I have only read four more in the series. There are six books left and I want to read more of them. 

Jane Haddam is the pseudonym of Orania Papazoglou. She wrote five novels in a different series and two standalone novels under that name. She was married to William L. DeAndrea, who also wrote several mystery series and standalone novels.

Another good read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

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Publisher:   St. Martin's Press, 2001 (orig. pub. 2000)
Length:      359 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       Gregor Demarkian, #16
Setting:      Litchfield, Connecticut
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Something Wicked This Way Comes: Ray Bradbury

Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are young boys, aged thirteen years old, and ready for some new experiences. Will is more cautious, Jim is willing to take chances. When a carnival arrives in town after midnight, they escape from their bedrooms and watch it being set up. They gradually see the evil in the carnival that can change people and transform them into unrecognizable versions of themselves. 

The carnival that threatens the town is Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, and the main antagonist is Mr. Dark, or the Illustrated Man, who can control the freaks in the carnival via his tattoos. He works in league with the Dust Witch, and their goal is to gather more souls to power the carnival. And the carnival has an especially scary merry-go-round that can add or take away years from a person's life.

Will's dad, Mr. Charles Halloway, is a quiet and melancholic man. On this occasion he steps up and helps the boys and the town out of a very scary situation. 

My Thoughts...

The set up of the situation in the first half of this book did not hold my interest. It was too poetic and too drawn out. At the middle point as the situation turns from bad to worse and Mr. Halloway is alerted to the problem, I got more interested and the story finally pulled me in. However, I never did get fully immersed and sense the horror of the situation.

I liked the themes of childhood, aging, parenthood. Although books are not a big part of the story, scenes set at the library where Will's dad works are prominent in the story.

This is my husband's book and he loves it. The gorgeous, poetic descriptions work very well for him. He especially likes the small town setting in autumn.

What I learned from reading this: I should have started with another novel or a book of short stories from Bradbury's works. In a Reading Pathways article for Bradbury works, Something Wicked this Way Comes was the last book on the list due to its difficulty and complexity. The first book on the list was The Halloween Tree, a children's book by Bradbury, which I read and reviewed three years ago. It was also more on the poetic side but a lovely children's story. Many years ago I read Fahrenheit 451, but I have forgotten much about it and plan to reread it. 

Next year maybe I will try some of Bradbury's short stories, such as The October Country (suggested by Rick Robinson at Tip the Wink) or The Martian Chronicles.

Another good read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

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Publisher:  William Morrow, 2001. Orig. pub. 1962.
Length:     289 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     Illinois
Genre:      Fantasy / Horror
Source:     Borrowed from my husband.

The Thirteenth Tale: Diane Setterfield

Vida Winter is an author who has had much success in her writing. She has also always concealed the truth about her past–her birth, her childhood, and how she escaped her past. At the time this novel begins, she is old and facing death, and she has decided to tell the true story of her origins. She picks Margaret Lea to write the story. Margaret has written short biographies of a few authors; Vida has researched her and thinks that they could work well together. 

Margaret lives with her mother and father and works in her father's antiquarian book store in London. She enjoys what she does and has not looked for any life outside of the book store and her family, even though she and her mother have a strained relationship. 

Vida Winter writes to Margaret requesting that she write her biography. Margaret visits Vida at her home in Yorkshire. The project is intriguing, but Margaret does not know how much to trust to Vida's veracity. She knows that Vida has invented many stories about her life. Margaret also has mysteries in her life, mysteries she would like to solve. Eventually she is convinced to write Vida's biography and to live with her while they are working on it.

There are two narratives in The Thirteenth Tale. Vida narrates the story of her family and her childhood during sessions with Margaret. Margaret narrates her story of working with Vida to write the biography and her separate research on Vida's past and her home, Angelfield, plus her research into the mysteries in her own life. 

My thoughts:

I have long had the idea that I don't like gothic novels. Maybe my tastes have changed or broadened, but lately I have read several books with gothic elements and enjoyed them a lot. The Thirteenth Tale was a page turner, although parts of it moved slowly. It took me a while to read although it was only a bit over 400 pages long. I loved the journey that Margaret takes to uncover the mysteries in her life and in Vida's, and I loved the ending. It was a very emotional reading experience for me. And the writing was very good; it was a joy to read.

I have read that this book borrows heavily from several classic books (such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Rebecca). Any of those that I read were read long ago, so I did not recognize this. And I am not sure why this would be a bad thing. Obviously, with one main character being a writer and the other working in a book store (and very serious about her reading time), this is a book that will appeal to book lovers, with lots of references to books and authors. 

I was not sure which genre this book fits in. I think it was marketed as a mystery and many readers at Goodreads categorize it that way. There are mysterious elements and there is a crime, but there is no investigation of a crime. There are elements of romance, but that element doesn't overwhelm the story. Just enough romance for me. 

This was another good read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

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Publisher:  Atria Books, 2006.
Length:    406 pages
Format:    Hardcover
Setting:    UK, London, Yorkshire
Genre:     Gothic Mystery
Source:    On my TBR for 15 years.

Short Story Wednesday: "Lantern Marsh" by Poppy Z. Brite

This is my kind of sweet, tame Halloween tale. Not too scary, but a little creepy. And with an environmental message on the side.

The story begins:

"The marsh brooded on the outskirts of town. We children sometimes played there during the day, poling flat-bottomed boats through the dark water, choked with swamp hyacinth, stranding ourselves on any of the hundreds of tiny islands. By day the marsh was a place of filtering, shifting patches of sunlight, cypress and live oak bearded with Spanish moss...

At night the lanterns took over."

Three kids (Bronwen, Phil, and Noel) live in Lantern Marsh, a town near a beautiful marsh. All of them are intrigued by the marsh, but Noel is obsessed with the marsh and its lights. Every night the lights hover above the marsh. The teachers say that it is caused by marsh gas, but none of the kids believes that.

Noel also despises a local businessman, Mr. Prudhomme, who owns half the marsh and wants to take it over and develop the land. Years later, when they go off to college, Mr. Prudhomme very nearly succeeds at doing this, but Nick carries through on his promise to stop the development. The ending is mildly creepy.

I read this story in Halloween Horrors. That book is a 2010 reprint of October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween, ed. by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish, published in 2000.

I also read a few more stories from this anthology, but none of those engaged me. They were not bad, just not the type of story I enjoy. Some combine horror with sadness, some were bland and somewhat silly. I will probably put this book on the shelf and try more stories in it next year.