Book Review: Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the 9th instalment in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I haven’t read the whole series, but I did read book 8: A Lesson in Secrets last year.

I found Elegy for Eddie a little less interesting to read than A Lesson in Secrets. However, in that book I found parts of the story a bit unlikely. That was not the case in this book. On the other hand, this book suffered from a weak ending to the mystery, I found.

Elegy for Eddie: What it is about

Maisie Dobbs is a private detective with two members of staff, Billy, who she helped out when he needed a new job and Sandra (same story).  The story takes place in 1933, and Maisie is approached by some costermongers, old friends and colleagues of her father’s who sell fruit and vegetables on the streets of London.

They ask her to look into the death of Eddie Pettit, a man who was known for his gift to deal with horses, calming upset horses and dealing with small ailments. He was a gentle soul, but a bit “slow” and loved by everyone. His death, in a printing facility, seems accidental, but the costermongers are not convinced. As Maisie has known these men, as well as Eddie, all her life, she agrees to investigate the case.

Maisie fiancé James knows people in the highest circles and when they get invited to dinner parties and dances, Maisie uses her time well, talking to the owner of the printing facility and snooping in her host’s office. But Maisie also goes to talk to the very modest people of the country, including Eddie’s mother Maudie. Maisie and her assistants find more and more clues as to what has exactly happened, but there are also some people trying to stop them from gaining any further information.

Meanwhile, Maisie has private problems, too. She’s recently come into a lot of money but finds it hard to spend any on herself, while on the other hand, she uses her money to help out people in her vicinity. But not everyone is happy with her help. Furthermore, her fiancé James lives in a mansion with servants, and Maisie can’t envisage a future in which she is the lady of the manor. She is most comfortable in her own little apartment.

Elegy for Eddie: What I thought

This is a gentle mystery in the 1930s with some historical references. The mystery surrounding Eddie’s death was somewhat contrived and didn’t have a satisfactory conclusion for me. Too few, if any, of those involved with the mystery were brought to justice and much of Maisie’s findings could not be made public.

It was good fun to follow Maisie around London and the countryside, talking to her father’s old mates, to the poor people back home where she came from, as well as the upper classes that she got into contact with via her fiancé James.

I found Maisie too much of a busybody, interfering with everyone’s lives and I never connected with her in this book. Maisie’s private life, that is, her problems with James and her inability to handle the fortune she had recently acquired, could easily have been storylines in a completely different book. I think I might have preferred that.

Even so, the book was fun to read, especially because of the period and place it was set in.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I got this book: for review from Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 352

First published: 2012 (March 27th)

Genre: mystery

R.I.P. VI Wrap Up

I finished the R. I. P. VI Challenge! That stands for Readers Imbibing Peril, hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings.

The challenge ran for two months coming up to Halloween, and participants had to read books in these categories: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Dark Fantasy, Gothic, Horror, Supernatural.

These are the books that I read (click on the titles for the review):

• Taboo by Casey Hill (5 stars)
• The Cosy Knave by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen (3.5 stars)
• What To Do When Someone Dies by Nicci French (4.5 stars)
• The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas (4 stars)

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I had a great time reading these books! Some were more scary than others, but all were good reads.

Book Review: What To Do When Someone Dies by Nicci French

What To Do When Someone Dies was the oldest book on my TBR, so it was time to tackle it. It fitted quite nicely in the R.I.P. VI challenge. It wasn’t even that I didn’t expect to like the book, I just never got round to it.

The book was a nice, easy read. I read it during the 24h readathon, for which it was an ideal book.

What To Do When Someone Dies: What it is about

Ellie gets the shock of her life when two policemen knock on her door to tell her that her husband Greg has died in a car crash. Not only that, but he was in the company of an unknown woman.

Everyone around her immediately assumes that he had an affair but Ellie can’t believe it and she sets out to investigate. She almost accidentally get a part-time job at the office where the “other woman”, Milena, worked. She snoops around trying to find out whether Milena and Greg actually knew each other.

Because she is pretending to be someone else rather than give away that she’s Greg’s widow, she gets herself in some trouble, eventually almost getting arrested for murder.

Both the police and her friends think she’s a little deranged for trying to prove that Greg did not have an affair. It turns out it’s not quite as simple as that.

What To Do When Someone Dies: What I thought

I enjoyed this book a lot. The story was well-paced and I was with Ellie believing that her husband did not have a lover.

Ellie was quite a shy person and I found it not so believable that she would go working at Milena’s office without saying who she was. But everything she did made good sense and I liked her a lot.

My only problem was with the ending. The story’s resolution was not so clear to me – it could have been made a bit more explicit.

I loved the way it was written, I liked what Ellie did to find out about her husband and it was a great read.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

I got this book: from a book swap last year

I read this in: in English, the original language

Number of pages: 344

First published: 2008

Genre: mystery

Extras: This is my fourth and finalbook for the R.I.P. Challenge

Book Review: The Bomber by Liza Marklund

This was the last (fourth) book I read for the Transworld Group Reading Challenge.

I love a good thriller and I had heard of Liza Marklund (but not read anything by her yet), so I was interested to see what this would be like.

Well, I was not disappointed.

The Bomber: What it is about

Annika Bengtzon is a journalist in Stockholm who is woken in the middle of the night because a bomb has gone off in the Olympic Stadium that is being built in the city. A few days later there is a second explosion.

From the start, Annika is spending all her time on the investigation, and with a persistence you can only expect from a newspaper journalist, she digs deep. However, she does have some eye for decency and will not pursue someone who is incoherent with grief.

With her husband and children demanding to see more of her, and some of her colleagues critical of her, their new female boss, she is having a difficult time. Not to mention that it’s almost Christmas and she hasn’t had time at all to prepare for it.

But when her investigation leads her to dangerous territory, the question is whether she will even be home for Christmas.

The Bomber: What I thought

You know the kind of book where you start reading and think “Hey, yes, this is exactly as I like it”? This is that kind of book. I started reading and I felt at home straight away. While I wasn’t constantly thinking about the book when I was not reading it, as soon as I picked it up again I was happy in my little Bomber world.

I thought the atmosphere was brilliant: a wintery Stockholm, just before Christmas. It was cold, very cold, there was snow, there was sleety rain, there was slushy, melted snow. It was no pleasure to be outside. But Annika Bengtzon takes buses, taxis, and walks through the awful weather, a lot. It gives a melancholy, sad, atmosphere to the book.

Annika herself lives the life of successful women: while at work, she has to rush be in time to pick the kids up from nursery, or has to ask her husband to do it for her. At home, she’s rushing off to work. Neither her work nor her home life seems satisfactory. She has to disappoint people, especially herself, a lot of the time. Everything seems a struggle.

In addition, not all of her colleagues like their new female boss. More out of principle than for who she is, really. That seemed very real. Especially as Annika, like a real woman, doesn’t dare to confront her colleagues and stoically undergoes their behaviour towards her. The result is that their behaviour becomes even worse. Luckily she has a boss who believes in her and looks out for her.

The only drawback was the bomber for me: quite a rambling story (by the bomber) about the reasons behind the attacks. That story wasn’t very interesting or comprehensible, and I’m sure it was meant that way, but it also made the reading less compelling for me.

What I really liked was Annika’s intelligence, following up throw-away comments that people make, that turn out to be quite important. I also liked how professional she is in one sense, and how vulnerable in another. Liza Marklund managed to invent a real-life character that is neither a cliché nor too commonplace to be interesting.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

I got this book: from Transworld Publishers (Corgi Books) in their Group Reading Challenge

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 528

First published: 2005 (Swedish: Sprängaren), Corgi Paperback edition November 24th, 2011.

Genre: thriller

Book Review: Taboo by Casey Hill

After a lot of fiction, some fantasy and chick-lit, I was very eager to pick up a thriller again. It had been too long!

And Taboo is such a satisfying read! It was exactly what I needed.

Taboo: What it is about

Riley Steel is a forensics investigator who has recently moved from California to Ireland to lead the Dublin forensics team and teach them some modern methods.

Her father, who was born in Ireland, had moved back a few years before, and Riley being near him means that she can keep an eye on her bottle-loving father. Something in his past has left him unable to cope with life and Riley herself has problems dealing with it too.

Then a young man and woman are found dead on a bed, and Riley is called in to investigate. This is the beginning of a number of horrific crimes by what’s obviously a very sick-minded serial killer. The killer is leaving clues that seem to lead to something. But what exactly?

Taboo: What I thought

This is a wonderful debut novel of a husband and wife writer team. I didn’t quite connect with Riley, although I was curious as to what could have happened in her past that was still haunting her at night.

However, I really liked Chris Delaney, a policeman who was on the case together with his partner Kennedy. Chris warmed to Riley quickly, while Kennedy was unimpressed by the American forensics expert who was hired to tell the Dubliners how to do their jobs.

Chris was a very nice person, good colleague, and he too had something bothering him, a physical problem but he didn’t want to go to the doctor. I hope to read more about it in the sequel.

The story was built up well and although I had some vague ideas about what type of person the serial killer could be, it wasn’t until just before Riley and Chris found out, that I realised how matters stood.

The setting, Dublin, made a nice change from other thrillers I’ve read although I only got a good feel for the location once the story moved to a seaside town nearby.

A fast, compelling read that completely fulfilled my need for a good thriller. A book for anyone that loves mysteries and thrillers.

Rating: 5/5 stars

I got this book: as an uncorrected proof copy from Simon & Schuster UK for review

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 409

First published: 2011 (July)

Genre: thriller, mystery

Extras: This is my first book for the R.I.P. Challenge

Book Review: The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan

As I live in the Netherlands (although not in its capital Amsterdam), I thought a story taking place Amsterdam would be good fun to read. And… it was. Sort of.

The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam: What it is about

Charlie Howard is a writer from the UK who is working on his latest novel in Amsterdam. Not only is he a writer, to supplement his income he is also a thief.

One day, an American man approaches him and asks him to steal two figurines, which are kept in two separate places in Amsterdam. Charlie says no. But as he would be getting 10,000 euros for the job, he decides at the last minute to go for it.

The thefts are not too difficult, but while he is at the second place, another thief comes in to look for the figurine (Charlie manages to hide away). Later, he finds out that the American man is murdered.

He tries to find out what is going on: why did the American want these worthless figurines and why was he murdered?

In the end, in true Agatha Christie style, Charlie gets everyone that is linked to the case together in a room and starts analysing the events and eventually announcing the story behind the figurines as well as the implicated people in the case.

The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam: What I thought

I really liked the cover and I always claim to know by the cover whether I’ll like the book or not.

In this case, I think the cover made this book look too literary. Is it just me? In effect, it wasn’t very literary at all. Not that that is a prerequisite for me liking a book, but I could be as bold as to suggest it’s not far off the other end of the spectrum.

No, the writing wasn’t bad, but the way the story was told (not much was left to the imagination) reminded me of detective novels that my uncle read in the 1970s. They would be large size, floppy, and made of paper only slightly thicker than newspaper. Do you know the kind? It was more or less the Harlequin of the mystery writing.

I feel awful writing the above, but the book had that feel to me.

Although there were some interesting plot twists to the story, I didn’t like the convoluted story that Charlie presented at the end, in a room full of people that were linked to the case in some way. There was no way I could have worked it out by myself. In fact, although Charlie was the protagonist the reader is following through the whole book, I wasn’t given all the information that Charlie had, and I didn’t like that.

For me, this was a disappointment, but still an entertaining read. It didn’t live up to my expectations but would make a good light read on holiday or if you’re sick at home for a day and don’t want anything too taxing.

Rating: 3/5

I got this book: from the library

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 238

First published: 2007

Genre: mystery

Book Review: First Frost by James Henry

This book is a mystery about Jack Frost, the detective from the well-known TV series A Touch of Frost. The original books about Frost were written by the late R. D. Wingfield. Two authors, James Gurbutt and Henry Sutton, have now written a new book about Frost, going back in time, to a younger version of Jack Frost, earlier in his career.

First Frost: What it is about

Detective Sergeant Jack Frost is assigned several investigations. The main one deals with the abduction (the readers knows this) / disappearance (the mother and police think) of a teenage girl, Julie Hudson, from a department store. The day after the abduction, when the police visit Julie’s house, they find her mother severely beaten up while the father cannot be found.

Jack and his colleague are also called out to the house of a much younger girl, who, the mother claims, was attacked in the garden by some sort of beast. Jack Frost doesn’t trust the explanation and puts the mother and daughter under observation at the hospital so the girl is protected from child abuse for the moment.

Then Jack’s colleague, DI Williams, who has been known for his drinking bouts, has been missing for several days. The reader knows he’s wounded in his crashed car on a seldom-used track in the woods.

These, and other, cases are investigated by Frost and eventually he manages to find out what happened to all these people.

First Frost: What I thought

Jack Frost was definitely the Jack Frost from the TV series. I haven’t read the original books by R. D. Wingfield, so cannot compare this book with those. But there was no doubt that this was the Jack Frost that we all know and love from TV.

The way Frost interacted with his colleagues was also spot-on. Jack has a soft spot for his female colleague but takes no nonsense from anyone.

The story was well-written but the build-up was rather slow. Maybe because of this, after a while, I didn’t care much about the details of the cases. The story was similar in build-up to the TV series, though, so if you like those, then this book will be great for you.

I didn’t get a good sense of Jack being younger here than in the TV series. Already, he is neglecting his wife and comes home every now and then. She doesn’t seem to be in his mind very often.

For me, it was a little too slow and not quite interesting enough. However, it was very much like the TV series and seemed a very realistic account of a week in the working life of a policeman.

I got this book: free from Transworld publishers (proof copy)

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 360

First published: 2011 (January)

Genre: Mystery