Hard Going: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

I have been reading this police procedural series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, featuring DI Bill Slider of the Metropolitan Police, Shepherd’s Bush, West London, for many years. Not sure when I discovered it but at the time several were already published and I read them all very quickly.

Recently I was given the opportunity to review this book by Severn House via NetGalley. Even though I was only up to the 12th book in the series, and this is the 16th, I decided to break my rules and take a chance and read the most recent book in the series. I am glad I did.

I like all kinds of police procedural series. I like them traditional, with less violence. I like them gritty with cops with more behavioral or psychological problems. And in between. I see this series as a traditional, cozyish series. There is a strong focus on the lives of the two major characters (Slider and his partner Atherton) in addition to the investigation of the crime; that makes it feel more realistic.

A concise summary of this book in a brief piece on "The British Police Procedural" at the publisher's site:

Harrod-Eagles' sixteenth book in the Bill Slider series, Hard Going, has her detective inspector trying to juggle his personal life while he and his team must investigate the brutal killing of an elderly solicitor who seemingly had no enemies.

In this case, the police can find very little information about the victim. He has many friends and acquaintances in his neighborhood, and he is known for helping out hard-luck cases, but his friends can provide no background on him. No next of kin. Slider and his team must work hard to find where he came from. I think I must especially enjoy the situation where a person's identity is in question, because I just read Henrietta Who? by Catherine Aird and enjoyed that story as well. (See that review here.)

Like many long running series, this one has its ups and downs, but I have found it a series worth sticking with. The characters are likable. I find that the policemen are very well-defined characters, the other persons involved in the crime less so. These books tell the story of the day by day investigation, looking for leads and connections, searching hours of CCTV tapes to trace the activities of the suspects.The series is known for its wit and humor, but this one seemed less humorous to me. Which was fine.

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born in Shepherd's Bush in London, which  is the setting of the Bill Slider series. At her website, you can find a brief history of Shepherd's Bush and a lovely map. She is the author of over 70 novels, including the MORLAND DYNASTY series which extended to 35 books.

War Through the Generations Challenge 2014

Two years ago I participated in a challenge at War Through the Generations for World War I.

For the 2014 challenge at War Through the Generations, the hosts decided to mix things up a bit. The focus will be on 1 war for 2 months rather than a full or half year. Every two months, they will post a new linky for a new war so everyone can share their review links.

To be clear, you don’t have to read just Gulf War books in January and February, for instance, but any of the books that fit the war categories. You can read books from any of the listed wars during the entire year, then come back and post your reviews in the linky for the designated month. If you are interested in signing up, the sign up page is here.

Here’s the schedule:

• Jan./Feb.: Gulf Wars (Gulf War/Operation Desert Storm and Iraq War/Operation Iraqi Freedom)
• March/April: French and Indian War
• May/June: Korean War
• July/August: WWI (100th Anniversary)
• Sept./Oct.: WWII
• Nov./Dec.: Vietnam War

Level of Participation:

• Dip Your Toes: Read 1 book for any war
  
• Novice: Read 1 book per war throughout the year for a total of 6 books on 6 different wars
• Intermediate: Read 2+ books for 1 war, and 1 book for each of the others for a total of 7 books
• Expert: Read 2+ books for each war for a total of 12 books

The books can be fiction or non-fiction. There are list of recommended books and links to book reviews for some wars at the site.

I frequently read books that are set around World War II and there are several books I have that are set around World War I. I don't mind including other wars if I can find books I want to read on that topic. I know that there are some wars I will not be including, so I will join at the Dip Your Toes level.

Henrietta Who?: Catherine Aird

Henrietta Who? is a police procedural, set in the small village of Larking in England, published in 1968 by Catherine Aird. Her protagonist is Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Calleshire C.I.D. The locations are fictional but so well described that they feel real.

This was another short book (about 150 pages), with a very interesting premise. Grace Jenkins is the victim of a hit-and-run, initially assumed to be an accident. Her daughter Henrietta is called home from college but it turns out that she cannot be Grace's daughter because the woman has never had a child. Thus, all that the young woman thought she knew about her identity, and her parents, may be in question.

This is the story of the quest for a murderer where not much is known about the victim. But it is also the story of a very young woman coming to terms with questions about her parents and her origins. And a lovely picture of a village as described in this excerpt from the book:

   An outsider would have said Larking was typical of a thousand other English villages. And, as it happened, this was true, though the people of Larking wouldn't have liked it. It had all the appurtenances of a normal village and the usual complement of important-and self-important-people: two different groups.
   Spiritual leadership was provided by the Reverend Edward Bouverie Meyton (his father had been an admirer of Pusey). He lived at the Rectory on the green by the church (one Diocesan leaflet, three appeals, a Missionary newsletter, the quarterly report of the Additional Curates' Society and an interesting letter from the Calleshire Historical Association).
   Secular leadership came from James Augustus Heber Hibbs, Esquire, at The Hall (an assortment of bills, two closely typed pages of good advice from his stockbroker, a wine list, a picture postcard from his cousin Maude, and a letter from Scotland about a grouse moor).
   Harry Ford, postman, was not deceived. He knew as well as anyone else that real power-as opposed to leadership- was vested behind the counter at the Post Office cum General Store in the vast person of Mrs. Ricks (one seed catalogue: Mrs. Ricks rarely committed herself to paper).
   Larking shared a branch of the Women's Institute with the neighbouring hamlet of Belling St. Peter (Mrs. Hibbs was president) and a doctor with a cluster of small communities round about.
   And everyone thought they knew everything about everyone else.
   In which they were very mistaken.

A review of Aird's only non-series novel, A Most Contagious Game, in the book 1001 Midnights, by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, has this to say about Aird's Inspector Sloan series:

   Catherine Aird excels at portraying the English countryside’s village life with all its petty prejudices, the gentry and near-gentry, and the castles and ruins that dot the landscape.
   Her series sleuth, Inspector C. S. Sloan, deals with them in the fond yet frustrated manner of a native. Sloan is competent yet low-key, a good foil for the oddities of the suspects.

I liked this book a lot and I recommend it.  The search for the murderer, and why behind the murder, is well plotted. There are clues, although I missed them. I suppose the culprit may have been easy to guess for some, but I wasn't close to guessing the solution.

The characters were interesting, and for the most part likable. Sloan is often irritated with the ambitious but plodding assistant assigned to him, and his chief is aggravating, but I found all of them entertaining characters. I don't want to gush, but I found Aird's writing witty and charming, without being sentimental or silly.

This is the 2nd book in a series that now includes 23 books. I have read the first one, The Religious Body, published in 1966, and the third, The Stately Home Murder (aka The Complete Steel).  I liked both. The last book (so far) in the series was published in 2013.

Other resources:

• Catherine Aird is the pseudonym of Kinn Hamilton McIntosh. The website of Rue Morgue Press, the publisher of the edition I read, has a detailed article about the author, if you would like to know more.
• There is a nice review of Henrietta Who? at Mystery File, which has a great cover image and an image of a map included in the original hardback edition (which I wish I could afford to own).

The Naked Sun: Isaac Asimov

The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov is a cross-genre book with an interesting whodunit and an intriguing picture of two dystopian societies. It paints a picture of the possible ills of isolationism, automation, and the proliferation of technology.

From the back of my book:

A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history:  the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. 

On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants.  To this strange and provocative planet comes Detective Elijah Baley, sent from the streets of New York with his positronic partner, the robot R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve an incredible murder that has rocked Solaria to its foundations.

Isaac Asimov was in part inspired to start the series of novels that feature Elijah and Daneel by conversations with John Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction. This excerpt is from the Introduction to The Naked Sun, titled "The Story Behind the Robot Novels."

Campbell had often said that a science-fiction mystery story was a contradiction in terms; that advances in technology could be used to get detectives out of their difficulties unfairly, and that the readers would therefore be cheated.

Asimov set out to prove him wrong with The Caves of Steel (my review here), published in 1954. The Naked Sun followed in 1957. Both books were serialized in magazines first.

I found The Naked Sun especially interesting because Elijah is out of his element on the planet of Solaria. Not only is he on a different planet, but the culture and the development of this planet are very different from the direction that humans on earth have taken. He and the people of Solaria have very little in common and many of the people he needs to interview have contempt for the people of earth and for him.

In the future that Asimov has depicted, the people of earth have protected themselves in huge domes and never (or rarely) experience wide open spaces or the outdoors or even elements of nature.  They have developed a fear of being exposed to these experiences. The humans who have settled on other planets in the galaxy are referred to as Spacers, and each group has developed in different ways. The Solarians seclude themselves from other human contact. Even husbands and wives meet face to face only at appointed times. Humans usually meet with each other by "viewing", which sounds something like a sophisticated type of holographic projection. They can play games or eat a meal together, but not be in the same room physically.

The Solarians consider the society that has developed to be near perfect, and have a small population whose every need is met by specialized robots. Thus they don't even have a police force to deal with crime. Elijah is assigned to this case at the request of a Solarian, but comes into the situation with very little knowledge, and gets little cooperation from the Solarians in his investigation. Robot Daneel, again assigned as his partner, does understand much more about the culture of Solaria, but he is from a very influential planet, Aurora, and does not share all of his knowledge with Elijah. The investigation of the crime is thus very different and challenging for Elijah.

I enjoyed this book a lot. I recommend it highly. The way this book is written, the reader can come into it without knowledge of the first book (I had forgotten a lot about that book myself). The next book in the series, The Robots of Dawn, was not published until 1983. I will be getting that one sometime to follow up on Elijah and Daneel.

John at Pretty Sinister Books wrote an excellent evaluation of this book in this post, which includes some lovely book covers.

2014 Australian Women Writers Challenge

Another challenge. Because one of my goals is to read books set in Australia OR written by Austrialian authors. And another goal is to read more books written by women. This challenge combines the two.

The 2014 Australian Women Writers Challenge was set up to help overcome gender bias in the reviewing of books by Australian women. The challenge encourages avid readers and book bloggers, male and female, Australian and non-Australian, to read and review books by Australian women throughout the year. You don’t have to be a writer to sign up. You can choose to read and review, or read only.

The challenge runs from Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2014. You can sign up at any time. The information for signing up is here.

There are three levels or you can create your own level:

• 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
• Create your own challenge: nominate your own goal

I am keeping my expectations and commitments for all challenges low and attainable, so I will be aim at reading 4 books, and probably review all 4 of them.

I already know of two books I want to read that fit this challenge:

Behind the Night Bazaar by Angela Savage
The Darkest Hour by Katherine Howell
 
I also have books by Kerry Greenwood and Malla Nunn. Other suggestions are welcome; even if I don't read them this year, there is always 2015.

Thanks to Bernadette at Reactions to Reading for alerting me to this challenge and encouraging me to join.

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches: Alan Bradley

It is difficult to review this 6th book in the Flavia de Luce series without revealing spoilers (at least for previous books in the series). It completes one story arc about Flavia's adventures in her 11th year. It ties up loose ends that have been hinted at since the beginning, and I hate to reveal much about the story. 

As I have just recently reviewed both the 4th and the 5th book in this series, it is obvious to readers of the blog that I like the series very much.  I am very fond of Flavia and her adventures. The author develops her character over the six books, and we see her growth in that year that it covers. It is appropriate that she changes a good bit over this time as she is moving toward adolescence and the huge changes this brings. Even though most readers don't mind whether Flavia is a realistic 11-year-old or not, I think she is realistic. She just happens to be on the very intelligent and adventurous end of the continuum. But two other very important factors for my enjoyment are the setting (post-War England) and the author's ability to keep it entertaining and fun.

The only thing I would say specifically about this book is that it does have a different, more serious tone than the other books. It deals with a serious subject and Flavia is forced to grow up a bit in this book. I do recommend this book and the series very highly. I would hesitate to do this, because it seems too cozy for some, but I have noticed that there are many bloggers who read more edgy, gritty books who do like these books, so I would say, if you haven't tried the series, give one of the early books a try.

This series is definitely best read from the beginning, to see the progression of Flavia's development, but it is not necessary. Many readers have started at different entry points in this series, but I would say this book is not the place to start. It ties in too much to what happened in the fifth book.

This book was provided for review by Delacorte Press via NetGalley. The book was published in the US on January 14, 2014. This interview with the author indicates that there will be more books, and even a TV series (which I am not too sure about).

My reviews for the first four books in the series:
 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
 The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
 A Red Herring Without Mustard
 I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
Speaking from Among the Bones