Historical Romances

M C Beaton is best known for her Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth crime series but she has also written many other books under the pseudonym of Marian Chesney. Some of these are being re-released and they are worth reading in my opinion. They are not crime novels but historical romances and they make good light reading.

The Travelling Matchmaker series of six was published last year and consists of:

Emily Goes to Exeter

Belinda Goes to Bath

Penelope Goes to Portsmouth

Beatrice Goes to Brighton

Deborah Goes to Dover

Yvonne Goes to York

 

The main character is Hannah Pym. She receives a legacy from her deceased employer which enables her to travel on the stage coach to an assortment of places about the country. As she travels she meets various people whose romances she is able to assist to a successful conclusion as she finds an unsuspected talent in herself for matchmaking.

Hannah has a romance in mind for herself but considers the object of her affections to be too far apart from her in the social scale to ever consider her as a possible wife. Can she find happiness for herself?

The main plot device – the idea of a travelling matchmaker – is unusual and intriguing. The books are enjoyable light reading with many touches of humour and some fascinating and eccentric characters. Hannah herself is immensely likeable with her down to earth common sense and practical skills as well as her sense of realism and knowledge of human nature.

The stories are set at the beginning of the nineteenth century and give a fascinating insight into travelling and the problems involved in even simple journeys at that period of history.

The Six Sisters series is currently being released and they are:

Minerva

The Taming of Annabelle

Deirdre and Desire

Daphne

Diana the Huntress

Frederica in Fashion

 The first three have already been released and the second three are to be published next month. Charles Armitage, hunting mad country vicar, has six daughters and two sons. He also has a shortage of funds which is hardly surprising. The first book in the series features his eldest daughter, Minerva, and her fist Season under the aegis of a distant relative – Lady Godolphin who has a brilliant line in malapropisms. Minerva is far from being the typical Regency heroine as she tries to abide by Christian principles and hates the idea of a Season as she does not like vanity and worldliness. Not to put too fine a point on it, she is something of a prig. But she does change during the course of the book.

 I am currently reading the second book featuring the second sister, Annabelle, who is something of a minx – think Lydia in Pride and Prejudice. So far I am thoroughly enjoying the series – they are well written, amusing and light hearted and the characters are well drawn and interesting. Georgette Heyer they aren’t but they are good in their own right with that extra special something which makes them stand out from the mass of Regency romances available.

Another series of six is to be released later this year and that is the School for Manners. There is a complete list on www.fantasticfiction.com under Marion Chesney of other books she has published. I hope Constable Robinson are going to continue to re-publish these historical romances as they are excellent light reading.

Country house murder mysteries

I stumbled across the author R T Raichev by accident from reading a review of The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette written by a reviewer whose tastes I share to a certain extent.  I read it in an evening and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The author has captured the country house murder mystery genre perfectly and translated it into the twenty first century.

 

      

 Antonia Darcy works as a librarian in a gentleman’s club in London.  She was inadvertently caught up in the disappearance of a small girl – the Sonya Dufrette of the title – twenty years ago to the day and wrote down her thoughts and impressions at the time. 

Re-reading her notes, Antonia starts to wonder whether Sonya could still be alive.  When she sees the girl’s father, even though he appears not to recognise her, she starts to ask questions – ably assisted by Major Hugh Payne a member of the club where Antonia works.

 The disappearance happened on the day of a Royal wedding – Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer – and almost everyone at the country house-party is glued to the television.  There are some marvellously eccentric characters and the writing is of an excellent standard.

           

If you like your crime novels in the classic mould then I thoroughly recommend this series.  These are the current titles:

The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette

The Death of Corinne

Assassins at Ospreys

The Little Victim

The Curious Incident at Claridge’s

Murder at the Villa Byzantine

The Murder of Gonzago

Phryne Fisher and Dandy Gilver

I mentioned author Kerry Greenwood in a previous post and having dithered for quite some time over whether ot not to read the Phryne Fisher series I have finally taken the plunge.  I’m part way through the first one – Cocaine Blues – and so far I like it.  Phryne is a marvellous character – beautiful – but not impossibly so and talented.  She drives a car and can fly a plane and she loves adventure.   There is a website devoted to all things connected with the series which is being televised in Australia – www.phrynefisher.com

 

I have also read the first book in the Dandy Gilver series  – After the Armistice Ball  – written by Catriona McPherson- and that seems like another good one too.

 

I was dubious about this sub genre when I first came across it but having started on the Daisy Dalrymple series I am now hooked.

Wycliffe

I can remember years ago watching an atmospheric television series based on W J Burley’s Wycliffe books.  The series starred that underrated actor Jack Shepherd in the title role and featured some marvellous West Country locations.  I have recently started reading the books themselves and found them well written and interesting.

 

They are police procedurals in the classic mode with little on the page violence and only the occasional swear word.  Not every case ends in an arrest and all of the endings are thoughtful and thought provoking.  Charles Wycliffe – who has no illusions about his place in the hierarchy – prefers to form his own theories.  He is not naturally a team player but at the same time he isn’t a loner or a maverick.  He acknowledges that team work is essential and has a hand-picked team with him on most of his cases.  He is something of a puritan but accepts others don’t share his views.

 

Charles Wycliffe has a stable home life – unlike many fictional detectives.  His children – twins David and Ruth are adults for most of the series.  His wife Helen is clearly part of his stability and in the odd case where she is away from home he feels like a ship without a rudder.  Irritable when thinking, he doesn’t like to hear other people’s theories because they distract him.  He doesn’t think in a logical fashion and relies more on his brain making patterns with the information available to him.

 

Reading any series back to back tends to expose the flaws – if there are any – but while small elements of some plots are repeated with different dramatis personae I have not become bored with the series so far and I have reached number thirteen.  There are twenty two books in total and I’m sure I will continue to read them until I reach number twenty two.

 

The series in order:

Wycliffe and the Three-Toed Pussy

Wycliffe and How to Kill a Cat

Wycliffe and the Guilt Edged Alibi

Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place

Wycliffe and Death in Stanley Street

Wycliffe and the Pea-Green Boat

Wycliffe and the School Bullies

Wycliffe and the Scapegoat

Wycliffe in Paul’s Court

Wycliffe’s Wild Goose Chase

Wycliffe and the Beales

Wycliffe and the Four Jacks

Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin

Wycliffe and the Winsor Blue

Wycliffe and the Tangled Web

Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death

Wycliffe and the Dead Flautist

Wycliffe and the Last Rites

Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery

Wycliffe and the House of Fear

Wycliffe and the Redhead

Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine

Time management is nothing new

I stumbled across Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day yesterday and was amused and impressed by it.  Just over fifty pages in a conventional book and free to download as an ebook.  It was first published in 1910 and is still of interest today.  No one - however rich or powerful – has more than 24 hours in a day to use so we all start off with the same resources.  How we use those 24 hours is up to us as individuals.

 

The book is written in a very amusing way but it makes some extremely relevant points.  We all have aims and ambitions but many of us fail to do anything about them because of ‘lack of time’ but as Bennett points out we will never have any more time than we have now – 24 hours.  Often we say we will start a new regime on a particular day but why wait?  Each minute is new, fresh and unsullied – why not start now?

 

The book is clearly aimed at men as there is no mention of basic household tasks but obviously in 1910 men went to work and women stayed at home and looked after the household.  But the philosophy behind the book is relevant to anyone.  We tend, even now, to see the day as the working day and disregard the rest of the 24 hours.  To look at work as only part of the day  is to give us a different perspective on the way we use our time.

 

Bennett shows how it is perfectly possible to free up seven hours out of the one hundred and sixty eight which make up a week in order to accomplish something specific such as learning about the instruments of an orchestra so that you can appreciate a concert as something more than a pleasant sound.  You could also read a passge of philosophy in the evening and then think about it – really concentrate on it – the next morning during your train journey to work.  Train your mind to concentrate on one subject instead of flitting around whereever it wants.

 

If you only ever read one time management book then make it this one.

 

Crime novels set in the 1920s and 1930s

As well as the Daisy Dalrymple series by Carola Dunn, which featured in my last post there are several others set around the same period.  The first one I came across was the Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Brown series by publisher turned author, David Roberts.  These feature another journalist – Verity Brown – a card carrying member of the Communist party and Lord Edward Corinth, younger son of a Duke.  Verity is a hard hitting investigative journalist unlike Daisy Dalrymple’s brand of journalism which produces beautifully illustrated features about country houses.

 

I enjoyed reading the Brown and Corinth series with their interesting and authentic  historical backgrounds and Verity and Edward’s on/off relationship which keeps the reader guessing throughout the series.  I particularly enjoyed Dangerous Sea – set on board ship, and Sweet Sorrow – the tenth and last book in the series which features Virginia Woolf and concludes with the outbreak of World War II.

A new comer to the sub genre is Frances Brody with her three books – so far – featuring widow, Kate Shackleton and set in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the early 1920s.  The three are Dying in the Wool, A Medal for Murder and Murder in the Afternoon.  Kate has developed a reputation for finding missing people and even though she has been left comfortably off financially she still wants some interest to occupy her mind. 

 

She sets up her own private detective agency in an era when women were not really supposed to work. The Kate Shackleton series is well written with an interesting central character who narrates the stories.  It makes a refreshing change to read books set outside London

The Honourable Phryne Fisher is an amateur and aristocratic sleuth who drives a Hispano-Suiza and features in eighteen books by Australian writer, Kerry Greenwood.  I have yet to read any of this series but they seem to be in a similar mould to others in the sub genre.

 

Another series I have come across is the one featuring Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie – an outlying member of the British Royal Family – who manages to embroil herself in various adventures.  There are five books in the series starting with Her Royal Spyness.

 

This is an interesting sub genre which may – or may not – have been influenced by Dorothy L Sayers’ Peter Wimsey series.  Certainly many of the characters are aristocratic or have aristocratic connections and some are journalists or authors.  A private income or a job which can be incorporated into that of sleuth such as journalist or author is almost a pre-requisite for the amateur sleuth in any era.    One thing all these series have in common is their very decorative cover art – some examples of which are shown in this post and in the one featuring Daisy Dalrymple.

The Daisy Dalrymple Series by Carola Dunn

Daisy Dalrymple is a journalist in 1920s England.  She is the daughter of a Viscount – now deceased – and she has scandalised her very straight-laced mother by earning her own living.  When the series opens with Death at Wentwater Court she is living in London with her friend Lucy Fotheringay, who is earning her own living as a photographer much against her own aristocratic family’s wishes.

 

Daisy is far from being an empty headed flapper.  She does not conform to fashion and she has an insatiable curiosity about people which makes her a good journalist.  As is clear from the first book in the series she has also developed an alarming tendency to trip over dead bodies.  Naturally she cannot leave the investigation of the crime to the police. 

These are the days when Scotland Yard would be called in to investigate all but the most obvious of murders and the man called to take charge is Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher.  He is a widower with a young daughter, Belinda, and he and Daisy get on well from the start of the series.

Alec has two colleagues who also feature in the series – Detective Sergeant Tom Tring – as big physically as he is big hearted; and young Detective Constable Ernie Piper with his phenomenal memory for facts and figures.  These are three of the most likeable detectives in fiction and they make an excellent team. 

As with any series there are books which stand out as being better than others.  My own particular favourites are Rattle His Bones – set in the Natural History Museum; The Bloody Tower – set in the Tower of London and The Case of the Murdered Muckraker – set in New York and introducing the incompetent FBI agent – Lambert – who reappears in Black Ship.

 

While this series is light entertainment there is a serious strand to it and some books are darker than others.  Daisy herself is no stranger to tragedy as her fiancé was killed in the First World War while driving an ambulance.  Her only brother Gervaise was also killed with the result that both the family title and the estates pass to a distant cousin.  Alec’s wife died in the flu pandemic of 1919 leaving him with a small daughter to bring up and necessitating him living with his mother.

Daisy and Alec have to battle their families’ opposition to their marriage because they are both marrying out of their class.  Daisy’s family do not think it is suitable that she is marrying a policeman though Alec is university educated and can mix in most circles.  Daisy has also to overcome a great deal of prejudice against her job – especially once she is married.

There are nineteen books in this series so far with number twenty – Gone West – due to be published in February 2012.  I’ve read all of them pretty well back to back over the last few months which is the test of a good series.  They do not have to be read in order but it is better if you do read them in order of publication as all the relationships between the series characters make more sense and it is interesting to follow the development of Daisy and Alec’s romance.

The books in order are:

Death at Wentwater Court

The Winter Garden Mystery

Requiem for a Mezzo

Murder on the Flying Scotsman

Damsel in Distress

Dead in the Water

Styx and Stones

Rattle His Bones

To Davy Jones Below

The Case of the Murdered Muckraker

Mistletoe and Murder

Die Laughing

A Mourning Wedding

Fall of a Philanderer

Gunpowder Plot

The Bloody Tower

Black Ship

Sheer Folly

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Gone West

Future posts

I an currently working on a post about the Daisy Dalrymple series of 1920s mystery novels by Carola Dunn which I shall be posting – all being well – in the next few days.

I’m also thinking about a post covering some of the Golden Age detective story writers such as Anthony Berkeley and Freeman Wills Crofts as I have read books by both of them recently.

Sorry about the lack of posting . . .

I seem to have been overwhelmed with matters medical and have not felt like posting anything recently. No there is nothing wrong with my health I’m glad to say – touch wood. My OH has serious problems with passing out nearly every time he stands up, memory problems and odd behaviour when he is about to faint or just as he comes round. Trying to get anyone to take this seriously beyond suggesting it is low blood sugar because he is diabetic has been a nightmare. Our first thought was that it could be low blood sugar so we were religiously monitoring it and it wasn’t either too low or too high.

Finally we have got our GP to take it seriously and OH is going to have an MRI scan this week. He is also increasingly anaemic and this is leading to another line of investigation as he could have some sort of internal bleeding. As he is on Warfarin this is a potentially very serious problem.

He has also been in hospital for two nights recently to monitor how he is both on and off oxygen and these have conclusively proved he does need oxygen at night in spite of being told he doesn’t need it earlier in the year.

I am really glad that we are both used to dealing with the NHS and doctors in general and I dread to think how some people manage. As it was it took me going in to see the GP with my OH and telling him about the strange behaviour and the memory loss and the fainting as many as a dozen times a day to the extent that I daren’t leave him in the hosue on his own before it was taken seriously.

Naturally we both hope there is nothing major wrong but when GPs start muttering about frontal lobe changes and specialists remind you that low oxygen levels cause brain cells to die then your imagination starts working overtime. . . .

If you want a book to grab you round the throat . . . .

. . .  then watch out for a Claire McGowan’s debut novel The Fall.  I generally read several books at a time and switch between them as the fancy takes me but this one gripped me to such an extent that I have been reading it in any spare moments I’ve had over the last two days as well as in my usual long sessions in the evenings.  It’s not published until February 2012 but it is well worth waiting for.

 

Charlotte and Dan are the ideal couple.  She’s in PR and he’s a banker.  But things are about to change.  A week before their wedding and their luxury honeymoon in Jamaica things go wrong when a night out results in arrest for Dan on a charge of murder.  Charlotte is devastated and her life collapses around her ears when she learns a few things about Dan that she didn’t know.  But she still doesn’t believe he committed the murder.

Keisha was at the same club on the same night and her life isn’t going too well.  Her boyfriend beats her and her daughter has been taken into care.  Then she wonders why Chris came home before her on the night of the murder with blood on his clothes and shoes.  When she finds herself homeless she visits Charlotte and they strike up an unlikely friendship.

The story grabs you from the first page and won’t let go.  The writing is crisp and stylish and it is difficult to believe that this is the author’s first novel.  I believed in the characters from the start and wanted things to work out well for them.  All the characters are changed by the end of the story and in some cases humbled.  Friendship is tested to the limits and many are found to be fair weather friends. What shines through the whole book are the themes of human strength in adversity and belief in your own judgement even against overwhelming evidence.

This would be a good reading group choice as it raises many points for discussion including wider issues of law and justice.  It’s not an easy read by any means and it will inevitably cause the reader to ask what they would have done in Keisha’s or Charlotte’s situation.  Do you do what you know is right or do you take the easy option?