The Crime Fiction Alphabet meme, hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is gathering new participants each week and is a great source of recommendations about a wide variety of crime fiction. Do check out letters A, B, C, D, E and F if you haven’t already done so.

I’m not nearly as well versed in classic crime fiction as other participants of this meme but I have read my share of the older stuff so this week I thought I’d talk about one of my favourite ‘golden age’ characters: Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe who appeared in more than 70 novels and stories. Published in 1962 Gambit is one of the later books of the series (which started in 1934) and so is less dated than the earlier works. As always, the book is amusingly narrated by Wolfe’s able assistant Archie Goodwin. In it Paul Jerin is a chess master simultaneously playing 12 games (blindfolded) at a private club (the Gambit Club) when he dies of poisoning via his hot chocolate. Sally Blount, who knew Jerin, engages Wolfe, a private detective, to prove that her father, Matthew, is innocent of Jerin’s murder which he has been arrested for.

In our house when I was growing up most of my cultural references were English. What little TV we watched was English (all those dreadful 70’s sitcoms like Love thy Neighbour that made me cringe even then), the magazines my mother got her recipes and knitting patterns from were English and the books we borrowed from the library were, for the most part, English (I started my mystery reading with Enid Blyton and moved to Agatha Christie and Dick Francis). When I chanced upon a Rex Stout novel with its dapper hero who lived in a lavish house in mysterious (to me) New York I was therefore intrigued.  The fact that he solved almost all of his cases without ever leaving the house was icing on the cake (perhaps even then I was anti-social) and I also liked the fact he was a larger than life character in so many ways. In the opening of Gambit for example Wolfe is burning the pages of Webster’s New International Dictionary because, among other crimes, it states that the words imply and infer are interchangeable. I adore that kind of eccentricity in fictional characters. Actually I adore that kind of eccentricity in real people just as much.

I haven’t read a Nero Wolfe book for many years and I wondered if I would still get the same enjoyment out of them now that I did as a teenager. However when I browsed a copy of Gambit at the library to reacquaint myself with the story before writing this post I found myself smiling and chuckling at the same things I used to like. I no longer have the same need to prove how different I am from the rest of my family (by reading American books instead of English ones) and think I’d tire more quickly now of Wolfe’s attitude to women (although I don’t think he’s the misogynist some people claim, I just think he’s incredibly socially awkward). However, the books do provide wonderfully complicated puzzles and they are genuinely funny. Also I think this series offers one of the first real partnerships in crime fiction as Archie Goodwin is a far more an equal partner to Wolfe than say Watson was to Holmes. Goodwin as a character is equally as well rounded as Wolfe and he is heavily involved in the investigations, in fact it’s often his contacts such as crime bean reporter Lon Cohen, who provide vital information, and he is far more than a simple foil to demonstrate Wolfe’s superiority.

I don’t seem to see Stout’s work discussed as much as that of Christie, Marsh and others but he’s hugely popular still. At the 2000 Bouchercon the Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century at the same time. Visit The Wolfe Pack for extensive information about Stout and his best known creations Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

Title: A Beautiful Place to Die

Author: Malla Nunn

Publisher: Pan MacMillan [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-405-03877-5

Length: 397 pages

Genre: Historical crime fiction / police procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: A stunningly confronting yet beautiful book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In the early 1950’s in the small South African town of Jacob’s Rest the police captain, Willem Pretorius, is found brutally murdered. When Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate he struggles against the backdrop of the newly instituted racial segregation laws (apartheid) . Pretorius’ Afrikaner family want quick vengeance: they distrust Cooper who is English and assume it is the black community or coloureds who have killed their patriarch. At the same time the Security Police descend on the town and work on the theory that Pretorius was killed by a communist or other political activist and they soon sideline Cooper from their investigation.

Of the many striking things about this book the one that is likely to stay with me longest is the unflichingly honest picture it paints of the time and place in which it is set. So many engrossing details of both the political and physical setting are provided that I easily felt myself in the town of Jacob’s Rest with its roads for whites and its kaffir paths and its segregated Sunday church services with potluck dinners. I felt awkward and angry as the realities of the segregation laws were demonstrated through the story playing out but despite my discomfort I found myself unwilling to leave the place even for a moment and read the entire book in a single sitting.

On top of the setting the book has stunning characters. Cooper struggles with nightmares from his days in the trenches during the war and regularly argues with the voice of his former Sergeant Major. Although white he is distrusted by the powerful Afrikaners but also finds it hard to be accepted by the myriad second class citizens although, ultimately, it is a myriad collection of these people, including captain Pretorius’ Zulu ‘brother’ Constable Samuel Shabalala, who help him with his investigation. But it’s not only the sympathetic characters who are brilliantly depicted: Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Special Branch is one of the most loathsome men you’ll find in crime fiction, all the more so because he’s entirely believable.

Of course none of this would be worth much if the book didn’t also tell a gripping story and there’s a real old-fashioned whodunnit here. In trying to uncover who killed Willem Pretorius Cooper uncovers a series of crimes that have been left unsolved because the victims weren’t white and also learns of Pretorius’ own moral lapses. He races to find what these events may have had to do with Pretorius’ death as he tries to salvage his own career from being ruined by the Special Branch.

This is yet another book that has everything I look for in my crime fiction and had me alternating between indignant mutterings under my breath, heart-in-my-mouth fear and more than a few tears.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Beautiful Place to Die has been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction,  Reviewing the Evidence and Crime Down Under

Malla Nunn was born ins Swaziland but lives in Australia so we’re claiming her as ours. This interview with her on Radio National’s Book Show last December prompted me to go out and buy the book (and it only took me 11 months to rescue it from the TBR pile).

I have been an awfully bad Weekly Geeker this year but as someone who is subscribed to about 40 podcasts (I was reviewing them long before I was reviewing books) I felt I should have something to say about this week’s topic which is to provide links to or reviews of podcasts, especially book related ones.

All but one of my favourite book podcasts are all radio shows that I wouldn’t be able to listen to if it weren’t for the magic of podcasting:

• Radio National in Australia produces The Book Show every weekday and the format is wide-ranging. Some days the entire show will feature an interview with a single author while at other times there will be multiple books discussed. There are also book readings and interesting segments like Off The Shelf where famous Australians talk about their favourite books.
• The BBC Five Live Books Podcast is a weekly show hosted by Simon Mayo which airs on Thursday afternoons UK time and is released via podcast later the same day. The format involves having the authors of two new release books on the show plus 2-3 reviewers who have read the book and there is a 10-15 minute discussion about each book which includes some plot synopsis and review comments.  The show discusses a wide variety of books including from literary fiction to most of the popular genres (though I’ve never heard them discuss a horror book).
• The BBC is also responsible for the World Book Club which is aired once a month (except during the English summer) and involves an interview with a single author about a single one of their books (normally their first). It’s normally recorded with a live audience who can ask questions and it’s also possible to email questions prior to the show or ask by telephone during the show. These shows tend to be with authors of literary rather than genre fiction although several crime fiction authors, including Sara Paretsky and Patricia Cornwell, have appeared in the past.
• Not entirely book related (and not a radio show) but an excellent podcast for those who write is Grammar Girl (or to give it its full name Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing). Even if you’re not a grammar junky you’ll get something from the show which is short, informative and well produced. Host Mignon Fogarty is American but always includes tips for users of both British and American English where there are significant differences.

The rest of my podcast aggregator is filled with non-book related podcasts on subjects like technology, politics, news, movies, TV and music. Among my favourites are

• Coverville which is a music podcast release 2-3 times per week and plays cover songs. Most episodes have some kind of theme, for example covers of one artist or band’s songs, and there are listener request shows too. I would never have thought there’d be enough cover songs to keep me interested for long but the show has been running for over 600 episodes now and it’s consistently introducing me to new artists and interesting music. Last week’s Sesame Street Cover songs episode (to celebrate the 40th birthday of the famous TV show) was a treat.
• Car Pool which is a video podcast hosted by Robert Llewellyn (yes the one who played Kryten on Red Dwarf). Each week he does an interview in his car of someone interesting. Guests can be film or TV stars, comedians, technology experts and, increasingly, scientists and environmentalists. Past guests have included Jo Brand, Stephen Fry, Chelsea Sexton and a swag of others. I always learn something and/or laugh out loud.
• The Daily Giz Wiz is a tech gadget show released each weekday. It’s among the 20 or so shows hosted by Leo Laporte (who runs an internet-based broadcast network focused on technology) and Dick DeBartolo and each day they highlight and review a gadget. I don’t really listen for the tech-y stuff (although I have found some great gadgets via the show) because the show is plain funny. DeBartolo writes for Mad Magazine and has written for TV game shows and comedy shows and he brings the quirky sense of humour to the show.

Hopefully there’s something among all that for you to check out and I look forward to seeing what other podcasts fellow Weekly Geekers have to share.

Title: Don’t Look Back [the second Inspector Sejer novel although the first in the series available in English]

Author: Karin Fossum [Translated by Felicity David]

Publisher: Harcourt Books [2002]

ISBN: 978-0-015-603136-3

Length: 295 pages

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: Thoughtful, captivating and very, very readable.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In a small Norwegian village the near-naked body of a teenage girl is found at the lake. Once they identify her as Annie Holland Inspector Konrad Sejer and Officer Jacob Skarre learn that everyone liked the athletic young girl who babysat for most of the village’s children although many people mention the change in her behaviour some months before her death. Having precious little in the way of evidence they have to determine whether it was just a normal part of growing up or whether there an event in her life that may have had something to do with her death.

I’ve had this book in my TBR pile for over a year and it may have continued to languish there among all the others but for this week’s crime fiction alphabet post by Maxine at Petrona. What struck me particularly was a quote from Fossum about being interested in “‘the good guy who does something evil’ rather than the bogeyman.” Although I have read my share of rampaging serial killer books I generally don’t find them as satisfying as those that explore the circumstances and motivations behind ordinary people reaching some kind of breaking point and so was keen to get stuck into the first Inspector Sejer book translated into English.

I knew absolutely nothing about the story when I started reading (I deliberately didn’t look at the blurb) and was hooked by the twist in the opening. As the book started I thought it was going to be about one sort of crime and just as I geared myself up for that it turned into something completely different. From then on the story was pieced together like an intricate jigsaw with many pieces needing to be turned this way and that before slotting into place to help reveal the whole picture. Without car chases or guns blazing the story managed to be suspense-filled and captivating from beginning to end as Sejer and Skarre teased out important details about village life from its inhabitants

Fossum builds up her characters in a similar way as she does the plot: slowly revealing their secrets, pasts and fears over the course of the book. As you’d expect with the main characters we develop a fairly clear picture of Sejer and Skarre over the course of the novel but the minor characters too are equally well depicted, even if only in one aspect of their lives. Annie’s father’s conversation with the man in charge of the crematorium is one of the most beautiful depictions of a grieving father I have read.

Don’t Look Back has all the things I love most in crime fiction: interesting, believable characters, a puzzle-like plot, a setting I can get lost in and a tangible credibility that sometime somewhere that exact scenario has played itself out in reality. Or will one day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Don’t Look Back has been reviewed at Reading Matters and Thoughts of Joy

Title: Mr Dixon Disappears (the second book in the Mobile Library Series)

Author: Ian Sansom

Publisher: Harper Perennial [2006]

ISBN: 0-00-720700-X

Length: 253 pages

Genre: amateur sleuth

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A gentle, body-free tale for those who enjoy words being put together well.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Israel Armstrong is the librarian for the Tumdrum and District Mobile Library, Northern Ireland. One Saturday morning he arrives at Dixon and Pickering’s Department Store to set up his acclaimed five-panel touring exhibition of the store’s history to find the store’s proprietor, Mr Dixon, has disappeared and someone’s stolen all the cash from the safe. The Police arrest Israel for the crimes and when he’s released on bail he has to try to solve the case using techniques gleaned from a random selection of crime fiction and with the help of Ted the local cabbie (and general odd-job man).

If you are looking for a book with an engaging and intriguing plot to keep you up past bed time I would suggest you go elsewhere because you won’t find one here. Honestly, the entire thing can be summed up in two paragraphs and even then is a bit contrived to be sensible.

However, if you can put aside your need for story for a couple of hours and just enjoy the beauty of funny, well constructed sentences and some charming characterisations then I highly recommend the book. Sansom was (or possibly still is) a columnist for The Guardian and he brings the same kind of wry, observational wit and love of language to the writing here.  Just after he is released on bail Israel is driven back to Tumdrum

Tumdrum! What can you say about Tumdrum?

An impartial observer – and indeed Israel himself until this morning – might perhaps have said that the best thing you could say about Tumdrum was that it wasn’t actually offensive…Tumdrum was not really the kind of place that inspired you to want to stick around for too long: it was  not the kind of place that threw its arms around visitors and offered you a hundred thousand welcomes: it was more the kind of place that made you want to check the bus timetable to find out when the next bus might be leaving.

But to Israel, now, this morning, Tumdrum was like Shangri-La.

There are some delightful characters in the book too and even though they initially might present as absurd you really ought not dismiss them as such because they all, in their way, offer insight on their world and the people in it. Whether it be the Reverend Roberts who cheekily introduces an element of showmanship into his Easter service or Robbo the local version of a radio shock jock Sansom uses his characters to make some shrewd observations about people.

I suspect It’s not the sort of book that everyone will like  but language lovers and people who’ve seen enough dead bodies for a while will enjoy this one.

I used to agree with Ronald Reagan that the 9 scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help” but now I think there are contenders in town: “I’ve written this book, tell me what you think”

Knowing how much I love to read a colleague (who doesn’t) (love to read that is) has provided me an advance copy of his soon-to-be published tome and is awaiting my thoughts.

This is a problem. While I do indeed love to read I am not indiscriminate with my affections. I don’t, for example, read business books. Neither, for another example, do I read self-help books. Ever. Under any circumstances. I’m not for a moment suggesting I need no help, I just believe that actual help is unlikely to be found between glossy covers emblazoned with phrases like ‘life-altering’ in large, colourful fonts. I suspect real help will also cost more than $29.95). Or, as my Dad would put it, “you get what you pay for in this life darling, if you can’t afford quality go without”.

Accordingly you can possibly imagine my total absence of delight when the aforementioned colleague presented me with a book that combines business with self-help and said “I’ve written this book, tell me what you think”. He also mentioned that he hadn’t shown it to other colleagues but that I was getting special treatment because he knows I am a reader.

Why do non-readers assume that readers will read anything put in front of them be it Pride and Prejudice or a TV Repair Manual? It’s generally understood that people have different tastes in food, clothes or movies so why are reading tastes not equally well appreciated?

And why are there so many non-readers who write books? Isn’t it more than a little arrogant to think you can produce something you have no experience of as a consumer? Or are these non-reading writers so gob-smackingly conceited that they think all the books that have come before theirs were lacking the one vital ingredient that they’ve unearthed?

Despite my annoyance and in what can only be described as a complete failure of maturity I have, to date, dealt with this issue by actively avoiding my colleague. Among other indignities this has included bribing my staff (with significant quantities of chocolate) to lie for me and, I’m ashamed to admit, hiding under my desk for a few minutes last week.

But tomorrow is d-day. I will not be able to avoid being in the same room as my colleague any longer.

I’ve decided to tell him that we he was wrong. That even though I am a reader I ‘m really not the target audience for a book about how to be a better sales person ‘even (to quote the blurb) if the only thing I have to sell is myself’.

Because I don’t imagine he wants to know what I really think which is that the kind of pseudo-psychology I sense his book is about (I sense this from chapter titles like “Selling Up: Why Should Your Boss Buy You?”) is just the kind of loathsome waste of dead trees that no human needs to read and I’d rather gnaw off my own arm than spend a moment with the damned thing.

But if he asks…

For my contribution to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme this week I’m taking a look at Australian author Gabrielle Lord’s first novel Fortress, published in 1980. It tells the story of a small school in Sunny Flat NSW (about 500 kilometres west of Sydney) where the sole teacher, Sally Jones, and her 12 students are getting ready for a visit by an Inspector when they are kidnapped by men wearing cartoon character masks. Although neither the teacher nor any of the students are famous or from wealthy families they are held for $1 million ransom. The entire book takes place over the next 40-odd hours as Sally first comforts the children then develops an urge to escape and, ultimately, turn on her captors.

This book is interesting because over the years it has been classified as both adult fiction and young adult fiction and even now I’m not sure where it would belong. I did first read it when at high school but read it again about 10 years later and enjoyed it both times so perhaps it doesn’t really matter. However you classify it the strong psychological elements to the story and unexpected ending made it quite gripping. The students range from kindergarten age to mid-teenage which adds a complexity to the book that is also quite interesting although it doesn’t make it much like Lord of the Flies (despite the many reviews that say it does).

Lord uses real life events as the basis for her book (a 1972 kidnapping from outer Melbourne’s one-teacher Faraday School) although Fortress is far more sinister than the original story. This is an early demonstration of something that has always struck me about Lord’s work: the in-depth research that she puts in. Somehow she manages to strike the right balance between including enough realistic detail to make the story work but not too much as to bog it down unnecessarily. In Fortress the details of remote schooling in Australia are spot on as is the behaviour depicted of both kidnappers and victims.

Personally I think the more subtle elements of the book were lost in the film that was made in 1985 starring Rachel Ward as Sally Jones but, as is often the case, if you ignore the fact it was based on a book it’s not a bad movie in its own right.

Gabrielle Lord is quite prolific having written 10 standalone novels plus having two ongoing crime series and in 2010 she will add to her young adult work by releasing one thriller each month for the whole year in a project called Conspiracy 365. Over the years I think I’ve read most of her books and they certainly do become more polished in terms of writing and structure than Fortress however it’s a damned fine debut novel. Lord has gone from strength to strength since Fortress and her accolades include a Ned Kelly Award in 2002 (for Death Delights) and a Davitt Award in 2003 (for Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My earlier contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme

• A is for Absolution (Caro Ramsay)
• B is for Bones (Jan Burke)
• C is for Contest (Matthew Reilly)
• D is for Deadlock (Sara Paretsky)
• E is for Entombed (Linda Fairstein)

Books Then and Now

This week was a good reading one for me. I finished and reviewed four books starting with a cosy by new to me author Elaine Viets (Murder Between The Covers), moving to a fast-paced thriller by another new to me author Harlan Coben (Tell No One) then an audio version of an Agatha Christie novel that I don’t recall ever reading before (Dead Man’s Folly) and finishing up with the second novel in Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series (The Dogs of Riga).

Arrivals and Departures

So far this month I have shown unusual restraint, acquiring 6 books (3 of them audio downloads) but giving away 23 books to friends and colleagues. I also have found a charity shop that will take as many books as I can give them so I plan to get rid of a lot more books in the next few weeks. My aim is to keep only the books I might one day read again or the ones that have some sentimental value.

Link Fest

This week, most of what I read online made me cranky for one reason or another.

• This post about authors needing to brand themselves started the trend. I certainly don’t disagree that authors should have decent websites and other promotional tools but I am sick to death of the religion that is branding. Books are not burgers and as a reader I am sick to death of being treated like the kind of moron that picks what I want to read based on the pretty covers. The author of the blog post uses James Patterson as the prime example of a branded author and on that issue I agree with him – Patterson is wonderfully branded. However if all authors become Patterson-like I’ll need to find a new hobby because his product is dross and not remotely the kind of thing I actually want to read.
• It’s nothing to do with books but this news article about the plastic bag ban in my state made me crazier still.  It’s only a few lines but for me it epitomised what is wrong with the media, politicians and society in general (what, me over-react?). Earlier this year the government here banned the use of single-use plastic shopping bags and this is what the relevant government minister had to say

SA Environment Minister Jay Weatherill is happy with the outcome. ”Eighty-two per cent of people think that this has had an impact that is on reducing plastic bags to landfill and also getting it out of our natural environment,” he said.

Nowhere so far has there been any reporting on whether the ban has actually had any impact on the environment but apparently that doesn’t matter as long as a majority of people believe it has. It’s not that I’m opposed to the bag ban (hey I’ve been taking my own bags to the shops for ten years) but I am opposed to making law based on the nebulous beliefs of the majority.

• This press release from Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA) about the lack of women in the Publishers’ Weekly top ten books of the year also made me cranky. I’m not thrilled that the PW list had no women writers in it but neither am I convinced that hurling insults and unhelpful labels at PW is going to do much for the cause. Why does this stuff always have to be so confrontational? To my mind WILLA would have been better off just publishing their own list of ten great books by women writers so that commentators might discuss the differences. WILLA is preparing its own list of books by women authors but as it’s happening via a publicly editable wiki it could conceivably contain any (every?) book published by a woman this year and looks petulant rather than considered.

…and one more thing

I don’t know what’s true and what’s not in the great climate change debate but I do know summer is here with a vengeance a whole month before it’s officially supposed to be and I’ve had enough already.

Title: the Dogs of Riga (the second Kurt Wallander novel)

Author: Henning Mankell (translated by Laurie Thompson)

Publisher: Vintage [originally 1991, this edition 2001]

ISBN: 1-860-46959-0

Length: 326 pages

Genre: Police Procedural/Espionage thriller

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: An intense throwback to thrillers like Gorky Park

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A lifeboat holding the bodies of two dead men washes up on the shore near Ystad, Sweden and Kurt Wallander’s team must investigate. They soon discover that the men were dead prior to being placed in the life raft and then that the men were from Latvia. A Major from the Latvian Police comes to Sweden to assist with the investigation but returns home after only a few days. A major event that could be connected then forces Wallander to go to Riga in Latvia where he is like a fish out of water in a murky political world.

I only read my first Henning Mankell book, Faceless Killers, last year (yes, yes I know I am late to the party). While it was a good read it wasn’t a great one and frankly I found Wallander to be a bit of a boring stereotype so I didn’t rush to pick up the next book in the series. However, having bought the first four books all at the same time because they were on special I embarked on The Dogs of Riga, albeit without a lot of enthusiasm. Luckily I found this story much more engrossing and stayed up way past my bedtime to finish it.

One of the things that struck me most about this particular book is what a good job Mankell does of putting readers in the shoes of Wallander the outsider when he travels to Latvia. The mix of curiosity, confusion and fear that Wallander displays seemed very natural to me. Although we often see these traits in amateur sleuths or accidental heroes we don’t often see ‘official’ investigators in situations where this kind of uncertainty would be believable but in this situation it’s entirely credible. The Latvia that Mankell depicts during a time of political upheaval is a world apart from Wallander’s native Sweden and his growing discomfort with the differences is palpable.

Despite all of that I still can’t warm to Wallander as a character. His hypochondria, bowel problems (ugh!) and ‘helpless male’ shtick just don’t grab me and nor does his habit of believing himself in love with various women at the drop of a hat. About the only thing I like about him is his habit of ‘consulting’ his recently deceased colleague and mentor Rydberg which I found quite touching. He is certainly a richly created character but not one I’d care to meet in real life. Far more than the first book in the series this was a book about Wallander alone so the rest of the characters were fairly two-dimensional although as I was so engrossed in the story I didn’t mind this as much as I normally would.

As I read the book I was reminded of Margot Kinberg’s recent blog post about the politics of murder as this book is all about politics which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. With the bulk of the book being set in one of the three Baltic states which were, when Wallander wrote it, yet to achieve their full independence from Russia the book is dripping with big picture politics and how various individuals coped with their highly charged environment. Some took advantage of the changing landscape while others fought to return to different points in the past and I was thoroughly intrigued by this depiction. In fact the book reminded me of the cold war thrillers I used to devour than a traditional police procedural.

I haven’t decided if I will read the rest of the books in this series or not as I suspect my real enjoyment of this one might be an aberration due to the subject matter and I don’t know if I can stand another encounter with Wallander’s teenager-like behaviour. Does the man ever grow up?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Inspector-Wallander.org is a great site with all the information about various incarnations of Wallander that you could possibly want. As well as details about the various books (their publication dates, translation availability etc) there are FAQs, character details and information about the various films and DVDs that have featured Wallander.

Title: Dead Man’s Folly

Author: Agatha Christie

Narrator: David Suchet

Publisher: Harper Collins [This edition 2007, originally 1956]

ISBN: N/A [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 6hrs 1min

Genre: Private Detective

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: A book that simultaneously manages to offer exactly what you expect at the same time as a surprise ending

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Hercule Poirot receives a frantic phone call from his friend Ariadne Oliver, a writer of murder mysteries. She has created a live murder game for a fête to be held in the grounds of Nasse House which is the home of Lord and Lady Stubbs but she believes there is real danger lurking at the House and she begs Poirot to come immediately. Oliver gives Poirot little to go on but her feelings and, perhaps because of this, he fails to prevent the murder of the young girl who was only supposed to be playing the role of victim in the murder game. He subsequently participates in a stop-start investigation before finally solving the crime.

I was prompted to read this book by one of Margot Kinberg’s excellent contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. Margot highlighted the humour of the book and as that is an element of crime fiction I enjoy and hadn’t really associated with Christie before I thought it would be an interesting choice for me. I wasn’t disappointed. The Ariadne Oliver character really does make a nice contrast to the somewhat prissy and proper Poirot with her ability to laugh at herself and it does seem like Christie was having a bit of fun with her genre by using the ‘mystery within a mystery’ twist.

This twist is also a perfect device for Christie’s favourite ploy: misdirection of her readers. Even though I know that her plots are always complex and that the obvious clues are red herrings to be ignored I still didn’t come close to picking up on the key hints that led to the solution. As almost always with Christie’s books, the uncovering of the murderer follows a wonderfully convoluted and unexpected journey. One of the things I liked about this book is that Poirot didn’t seem quite so cocky as he is in earlier stories. He doesn’t inveigle himself into every single interrogation and for some time it seems as if he might not even solve the mystery at all. I found this slightly more humble Poirot more likable than I have in the past.

I notice that some people mention struggling to keep track of all the people who appear in this book and I think this is where listening to the audio book had me at an advantage. David Suchet is a superb narrator and manages to provide all the characters a distinctive voice which is very helpful in such a dialogue-rich story. I must admit I am becoming quite addicted to Suchet’s narrations of Christie’s works.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

If you’ve read the print book and listened to the audio book of Dead Man’s Folly clearly the next step is to play the hidden object game based on the book. This screen shot has me tempted.

Another blog to have reviewed Dead Man’s Folly is Books Please as part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge that Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise is hosting.