Category: Reviews

Tea on Sunday by Lettice Cooper

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Lettice Cooper is a new author for me. I’m aware that two of her books from the 1930s, National Provincial and The New House, have been published by Persephone, but I haven’t read either of them yet. Tea on Sunday, her only detective novel, sounded appealing, though; it was published in 1973, very late in her life, but has the feel of a Golden Age mystery and has recently been reissued as a British Library Crime Classic.

The plot is quite a simple one. On a snowy winter’s day, Alberta Mansbridge invites eight guests to a tea party at her home in London. The guests include her family doctor, her ‘man of business’, an old friend, the manager of her late father’s engineering company, her nephew Anthony and his wife, and two young men she has taken under her wing – an Italian and an ex-prisoner. As the group gather outside her door that Sunday afternoon, they become concerned when their knocking goes unanswered. Eventually the police are called and force open the door to find that Alberta has been strangled while sitting at her desk.

There’s no real mystery regarding how the murder took place. The doors and windows had been locked and there’s no sign of a burglary, so the police are satisfied that the killer must have been someone Alberta knew and let into the house – probably one of the eight guests who arrived early, committed the murder, then left again to return a few minutes later with the others. But which of the eight was it and why did they want Alberta dead?

Tea on Sunday is a slow paced novel where, once the murder is discovered, not much else actually happens. Most of the focus is on Detective Chief Inspector Corby interviewing the various suspects one by one and delving into Alberta’s personal history to see if the answer lies in her past in Yorkshire. Despite the lack of action, I still found the book surprisingly absorbing and that’s because of Cooper’s strong characterisation. Any of the eight could be the culprit as none of them have alibis and this means Corby has to learn as much as he can about each person and whether or not they have a motive.

Corby is a likeable detective and it’s a shame he only appears in this one book by Lettice Cooper as she could probably have built a whole series around him. Although a few of his comments about women are questionable, I could make allowances for the period in which the novel was written and in general he’s respectful towards the people he interviews and doesn’t judge until he’s heard all the facts. It would be easy, for example, for him to pin the blame on Barry Slater, the former prisoner Alberta met through her charitable work and who runs away as soon as the police are called to the scene, but he doesn’t do this and waits to form his own opinion.

Of the eight suspects, the characters who stand out the most, in my opinion, are Anthony Seldon and his wife, Lisa. As the dead woman’s nephew and the only direct family member invited to the tea party, Anthony naturally comes under suspicion, so a lot of time is spent on his background, painting a picture of a young man who disappointed his aunt by refusing to go into the family business and by marrying a woman she dislikes quite intensely. Another interesting character is Myra Heseltine, Alberta’s close friend who lodged with her until discovering that Alberta’s latest protégé, Marcello Bartolozzi, whom Myra distrusts, may be moving in as well.

It’s Alberta Mansbridge herself, however, whose character comes across most strongly. Despite being murdered so early in the book, she is brought to life through the words and memories of those who knew her: a woman proud of her family’s legacy, stubbornly resistant to change and progress, who interferes in other people’s business but at the same time is generous and giving. At first it’s difficult to see why so many people may have wanted her dead, but gradually motives emerge for almost all of the suspects.

The actual solution to the mystery is disappointingly simple and there are no clever twists along the way, like we would expect from Agatha Christie, for example. I felt let down by the ending, but it was still an enjoyable read up to that point and as the first book I’ve completed in 2025 it means my reading for the year is off to a good start.

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust by Alan Bradley

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After a five year gap, Flavia de Luce is back! It seemed that 2019’s The Golden Tresses of the Dead was going to be the last in the series, so I was pleased to see book eleven, What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust, appear towards the end of 2024. If you’re wondering about the title, it comes from the poem At the End by Andrew Dodds.

In this book, our young heroine Flavia de Luce and her fellow amateur detective, the gardener Dogger, are investigating yet another suspicious death in the village of Bishop’s Lacey. Major Greyleigh, a retired hangman, has been found dead after eating a breakfast of apparently poisonous mushrooms – and the police suspect Mrs Mullet, the de Luce family cook, who had picked and served the mushrooms to the victim. Flavia and Dogger are sure there’s been a mistake – Mrs Mullet can’t possibly be a murderer! Before they can prove her innocence, however, they must try to find the real killer.

I enjoyed the mystery in this book more than in the last one – it was less complicated and easier to follow. Mrs Mullet being implicated makes Flavia and Dogger’s investigation feel more personal and relevant than usual, while the profession of the victim – a hangman – provides motives for other people to want him dead. Also, with the cause of death believed to involve poison, there are plenty of opportunities for Flavia to put her knowledge of chemistry to good use!

I do miss Flavia’s interactions with her sisters, especially as after fighting and arguing with them for most of the series it had seemed a few books ago that her relationships with them were starting to turn a corner. Feely (Ophelia), who got married at the beginning of the previous book, is still away on her honeymoon and doesn’t appear at all, and although Daffy (Daphne) is still living at home, we barely see her either. In fact, it’s mentioned that she’s busy completing her application for Oxford University, so presumably she’ll be gone soon as well. I was struggling to work out the ages of the characters in this book; we were told in the last one that Flavia is twelve, but I can’t remember how much older her sisters are – and I can’t believe only a year has passed since the beginning of the series, where she was eleven!

One character we do see a lot of is Undine, Flavia’s annoying younger cousin (I’m not sure exactly how old she is either). Again, Flavia’s relationship with Undine is improving as she starts to acknowledge that in some ways her cousin actually reminds her of herself. Unfortunately, I don’t find Undine at all fun or endearing and she’s really no substitute for Daffy and Feely.

I was surprised to see that the storyline introduced earlier in the series involving the secret society known as the Nide was picked up again in this book. Having formed a big part of the plot of book six, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, and to a lesser extent book seven, it has never really been referred to again until now – and, to be honest, I think it should have just remained forgotten. An espionage/world power storyline doesn’t really fit with the otherwise charming, cosy mystery feel of the series. Still, it meant several big plot twists and the return of a character I hadn’t expected to see again!

Alan Bradley has said that he’s now busy working on the twelfth Flavia book, so it will be interesting to see where things go next.

Thanks to Orion for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Third Girl by Agatha Christie

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This is the final book I’ve read for this year’s Read Christie challenge. I had intended to read it in November, but didn’t have time. I’m glad I’ve still managed to fit it in before the end of the year because, although I don’t think it’s one of Christie’s absolute best, I did enjoy reading it.

Norma Restarick is the ‘third girl’ of the title. The term refers to the practice of two girls who are living together in rented housing advertising for a third girl to take the spare room and share the rent with them. Norma crosses paths with Hercule Poirot when she approaches him for help because she thinks she may have committed murder – but after meeting Poirot in person, she flees, saying she’s made a mistake and he is too old to be of assistance.

Concerned – and insulted – Poirot tries to find out the reason for Norma’s visit to him and learns that the girl is acquainted with his friend, the mystery writer Ariadne Oliver. This makes it possible for Poirot, with Mrs Oliver’s help, to track down Norma’s family at their home in the country and the two girls she lives with in London. But Poirot is still confused. Norma says she thinks she has tried to poison her stepmother because a bottle of weed killer has been found in her room, yet she has no memory of actually doing it. It’s also not the only time Norma has experienced gaps in her memory. Convinced he doesn’t have all the facts and that the murder Norma originally referred to was not the attempted one she’s now confessing to, Poirot begins to investigate.

A common theme in Christie’s later books seems to be that society is changing and the world is moving on and she doesn’t like or understand it. Published in 1966, this book is firmly set in the 1960s and the older characters take every opportunity to complain about the fashions (particularly men with long hair), the music, the culture and what they see as rampant drug use amongst young people. I found this interesting as it gives the book a very different feel from the earlier Poirot novels. I think Poirot, like Christie herself, probably felt much more at home in the 1930s!

Third Girl is also unusual because for most of the book we don’t know if a murder has actually been committed and if so, who the victim is. This makes it less of a conventional detective novel and more of a psychological study of Norma Restarick. As we learn more about Norma’s past, there’s a real sense of her vulnerability and how she could be being manipulated by other people. Even when the true nature of the crime that needed to be investigated became clearer, I still didn’t correctly guess who the culprit was – and to be honest, I thought it was quite an unconvincing solution, which relied on several of the characters being very unobservant.

What I did love about this book is that Ariadne Oliver plays such a big part in it from beginning to end. She is often said to represent Christie herself and gives her a chance to comment on the writing of detective novels! It’s always nice to see her pop up in a Poirot mystery and I wish she was in more of them. In Third Girl, Mrs Oliver adds some humour to the book, as well as inadvertently providing Poirot with some of the key clues. Poirot is also present from the beginning of the book, rather than appearing halfway through as he often does.

I’m pleased to have completed eight of the twelve monthly reads for the 2024 Read Christie challenge. I’m looking forward to joining in again in 2025!

The Ghost of Madison Avenue by Nancy Bilyeau

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Christmas is always a good time to read ghost stories, I think! This one is even set in December – and is also a novella, which makes it a good choice if you’re looking for something quick to read over the Christmas holidays.

The story takes place in New York in December 1912. Helen O’Neill is part of an Irish-American family from the Bronx and since being widowed several years earlier she has been living with her two older brothers. Helen is determined not to be a financial burden on her family and has been working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she has proved to have a talent for restoration. She’s so good at it, in fact, that she catches the attention of the librarian Belle da Costa Greene, who entices her away from the museum with the offer of a job in the private library of the financier J.P. Morgan.

Starting work at the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue, Helen is captivated by the beautiful building with its thick bronze doors, marble rotunda and exquisite murals. But in the street outside, she sees something even more memorable – a young woman in old-fashioned dress, inappropriate for the cold winter weather, who suddenly disappears without trace. As the days go by, Helen has several more encounters with this strange girl whom only she seems able to see. Eventually, she begins to ask herself whether the girl could be a ghost and if so, is she trying to tell Helen something?

Even without the supernatural element, The Ghost of Madison Avenue is a fascinating piece of historical fiction. Morgan, of course, was a real person and his library on Madison Avenue can still be visited, but so was Belle da Costa Greene, a woman I’d never heard of but who seems to have led an interesting life. As I read, I kept thinking that she really deserved a novel of her own, then I discovered that at least two have already been written! They are The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray and Belle Greene by Alexandra Lapierre.

As a ghost story, I thought the book was less successful. Not all ghost stories are scary (and not all need to be), but I didn’t find this one even a little bit eerie. It’s more of a story about Helen’s grief – she has never really come to terms with her husband’s death – and laying to rest the ghosts of her past so that she can finally move on with her life. I also found the book too short to be completely satisfying. A longer novel would have allowed Bilyeau to expand on some of the other topics she touched on, such as the aes sidhe of Irish mythology, and Helen’s relationship with her sister Bernadette, who has become a nun.

Still, I enjoyed this book and it didn’t take long to read! I’ve now read everything currently published by Nancy Bilyeau and will look forward to her next book in the Genevieve Planché series, hopefully coming next year.

Book 54 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

A House on the Rhine by Frances Faviell – #DeanStreetDecember24

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My previous experience with Frances Faviell has been limited to her Second World War memoir, A Chelsea Concerto, so I was curious to see what her novels were like. There are several currently available from Dean Street Press and as Liz is hosting her Dean Street December event this month, I decided it was a good time to give one of them a try.

A House on the Rhine, first published in 1955, tells the story of a family trying to adjust to life in postwar Germany. After their home was destroyed during the war, the family – Joseph and Moe and their twelve children – spent four and a half years living in an air raid shelter and have now been rehoused by the authorities in a village outside Cologne. Moe once received a medal from the Nazis for having more than ten children (large Aryan families being seen as the Nazi ideal), but now it seems that almost every member of that large family is embroiled in trouble of some sort and it’s anything but a happy, harmonious household.

Seventeen-year-old Katie is raising her young son alone after his father, a Belgian soldier, left her and went back to his own country. She sees the little boy as a burden preventing her from getting a job like her siblings and is envious of her older sister, Anna, whose own illegitimate child died. She can’t rely on her mother to help her with childcare because Moe is too distracted these days – she’s having an affair with their lodger, the much younger Rudi, and the whole family knows about it, including Joseph. And so, determined to have some fun and the chance to make some money, Katie has started sneaking out at night with several of her brothers to join a gang of other young people who engage in theft and violence under the cover of darkness.

Katie’s foster sister, Krista, has no memory of her own parents or her early life, having been found unconscious by Joseph during an air raid on Cologne. She has grown up with Joseph and Moe’s children, but is still seen as different and not quite like the others. Krista is in love with Paul, an American soldier, but is afraid to take their relationship any further because she knows her foster father doesn’t approve. Paul is confused. Is it his nationality that’s the problem – or is it because Joseph’s own feelings for Krista are not purely paternal?

I wasn’t prepared for this book being so dark! As well as the affairs, the unwanted pregnancies and the gang violence, some of the siblings also become implicated in a murder, while another, little Carola, is suffering from polio in hospital. It’s very bleak and the only characters I really liked, apart from the very young children, were Krista and Paul. Katie, her brother Hank, and the gang leader Leo were particularly horrible! The narrative moves around from one character to another so we have a chance to get to know all of the major players and I found Joseph, the patriarch of the family, the most complex and interesting. It’s clear that the war – and the time he spent in a prisoner of war camp in France – has affected him deeply, as has the loss of pride he has suffered in not being able to house his own family and the discovery that his children are now earning more than he is himself.

This is certainly not the usual gentle, comforting read I’ve come to associate with the Dean Street Press Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. I found it quite disturbing at times, though also very gripping. It’s a novel with a lot of depth and multiple layers and I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of it here. I can find very few other reviews of it, so if you’ve read it I would love to hear what you thought!

This edition of the book also contains a short story, The Russian for Sardines, originally published in the London Evening Standard in 1956 and also set in Germany after the war – a much more optimistic and uplifting story than A House on the Rhine! I’ll look forward to reading Frances Faviell’s other two novels published by DSP, Thalia and The Fledgeling, as well as her other memoir, The Dancing Bear.

Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong

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I read this last month and it would have been perfect for Novellas in November, but I’ve been behind with my reviews. At 170 pages, this was a quick read but also quite an intense one. It was first published in 1950 and adapted for film two years later under the title Don’t Bother To Knock, starring Marilyn Monroe in the role of Nell. I haven’t seen it so don’t know how the plot and characters differ between page and screen.

Mischief begins with Peter and Ruth Jones in their New York hotel room preparing to leave for a convention where Peter will be giving an important speech. Unfortunately, they’ve been let down by their babysitter for the evening and urgently need a replacement. The hotel elevator operator, Eddie, comes to the rescue, volunteering the services of his niece, Nell, and assuring them that nine-year-old Bunny will be safe in her care. When Nell is brought up to their room, Ruth finds that there’s something about the young woman that makes her feel uneasy, but she can’t put her finger on what it is. Anyway, she tells herself that it’s only for one evening and Bunny will be going to bed soon, so what could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, Jed Towers is enjoying a night out with his girlfriend, Lyn – until a difference of opinion over giving money to a homeless person blows up into a huge argument and Jed goes back to his hotel room alone. Looking into a window on the other side of a courtyard he sees Nell, who catches his eye and invites him up for a drink. Still angry with Lyn, Jed accepts the invitation in the hope that he can still have some fun despite what has happened. However, he gets much more than he bargained for as his evening quickly goes from bad to worse.

I don’t want to say too much about what takes place inside Room 807 that night, but you won’t be surprised to hear that Ruth’s misgivings about the babysitter are proved correct. Nell is a terrifyingly psychopathic character, cold and heartless, seemingly lacking normal human emotions and empathy. Once in the room with her, Jed becomes increasingly uncomfortable, particularly when he becomes aware of Bunny’s presence in the adjoining bedroom. He wants to get himself out of the situation he has found himself in, but senses that Nell shouldn’t be left alone with the child. It seems to him that the problem with Nell is that she lives entirely in the present, not thinking about the consequences of her actions:

“What if the restraint of the future didn’t exist? What if you never said to yourself, ‘I’d better not. I’ll be in trouble if I do’? You’d be wild, all right. Capricious, unpredictable…absolutely wild.”

The tension builds throughout the book as one thing spirals into another and various hotel guests and staff members gradually become concerned about what is going on. I was genuinely worried for Bunny, especially as everyone seemed content to stand around talking about what might be happening in Room 807 and frustratingly slow to actually come and investigate!

As an example of mid 20th century American noir, I think this compares well to books I’ve read by Dorothy B. Hughes and Patricia Highsmith. I would like to read more of Charlotte Armstrong’s books and it seems she was quite prolific, so there are plenty to choose from.

Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd

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William Boyd’s The Romantic was one of my books of the year in 2022, so I was excited about reading his new one, Gabriel’s Moon – although it did sound very different. Unlike The Romantic, which follows the entire life story of its hero, this book is a spy novel set over a much shorter period of time.

It’s 1960 and travel writer Gabriel Dax is visiting what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he has the opportunity to interview the new Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba. During the conversation, which Gabriel captures on tape, Lumumba explains that he has enemies who want him dead and he provides the names of the three people he thinks are plotting to kill him. On his return home to London, Gabriel is convinced somebody has been inside his house in his absence and has been searching for something. It seems that somebody wants Gabriel’s tapes of the Lumumba interview – and their attempts to obtain them become more desperate once news emerges that Lumumba has been executed by a firing squad.

His accidental involvement in the Lumumba conspiracy brings Gabriel into contact with the mysterious Faith Green, an MI6 intelligence officer who sends him on a series of missions, the purpose of which Gabriel doesn’t fully understand. In a secondary storyline – which explains the title of the novel – Gabriel decides to consult a psychoanalyst, Dr Katerina Haas, in an attempt to get to the bottom of the mental health issues that have plagued him all his life, ever since his mother was killed in a house fire when he was six years old. The official cause of the fire was given as Gabriel’s night light, a candle inside a moon-shaped globe, but Gabriel’s memories of what actually happened that night are very different.

I enjoyed this book overall, but I found it a bit slow at times and, as a thriller, not particularly thrilling. There’s a lot of travel to various locations in Europe and Africa (all beautifully evoked), with a lot of sitting around in bars drinking and talking, but I never really felt that Gabriel was in much danger. Having said that, I was never bored and became fully drawn into the world of espionage, spies and double agents that Boyd creates, all set against a backdrop of the Cold War. I found it slightly unbelievable that the spies Gabriel meets all speak to him so openly, readily sharing secret information with him – but then, Gabriel doesn’t always know how to interpret that information and it’s his very innocence and gullibility that makes him so useful to Faith Green and MI6. As the story progresses, he eventually decides it’s time to stop being the self-described ‘useful idiot’ and try to take control of his own destiny.

Faith Green remains a bit of a shadowy, enigmatic character throughout the book and because I felt I never really got to know her, I became irritated by Gabriel’s obsessive infatuation with her, particularly as he already has a girlfriend, Lorraine – whom he looks down on because of her working-class background, while at the same time admitting that he’s only with her because he finds working-class women sexually attractive. Although I didn’t dislike Gabriel in general, some of his attitudes leave a lot to be desired!

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel for me was seeing Gabriel work through his hazy memories and his feelings of guilt about the tragic fire that took his mother’s life. Through his psychoanalysis sessions with Dr Haas, Gabriel is inspired to carry out his own investigations into the night of the fire and begins to uncover the truth. I thought this storyline worked well alongside the espionage one and gave us some more insights into Gabriel’s character.

Although Gabriel’s Moon works perfectly as a standalone, there were some loose threads left at the end that made me think this could be the first in a series – and I was pleased to find that William Boyd is indeed working on a second book. I’ll be looking out for it, but I also have lots of Boyd’s earlier novels still to read. I would be happy to hear your recommendations!

Thanks to Viking for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 53 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024