Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie

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August’s theme for the Read Christie 2021 challenge is ‘a story set by the seaside’, which seemed the perfect opportunity to pick up an unread Poirot novel, Evil Under the Sun. It’s set on an island off the coast of Devon, where Hercule Poirot is on holiday at the exclusive Jolly Roger Hotel.

Christie begins by introducing us to all of the people staying at the hotel, including Arlena Stuart, a beautiful former actress. Arlena is described by one of the other characters as ‘the personification of evil’ – and she certainly seems to be causing plenty of trouble. Fellow guest Patrick Redfern can’t take his eyes off her and Arlena appears to be encouraging his attentions, regardless of how hurtful this is to Patrick’s young wife, Christine. Arlena’s own husband, Captain Marshall, claims he hasn’t noticed her behaviour, but is he telling the truth? Meanwhile, Marshall’s teenage daughter from a previous marriage hates her stepmother and resents the way she has come into the family home, bringing scandal and unhappiness with her.

When Arlena’s dead body is found at Pixy Cove, a secluded part of the island, almost everyone becomes a suspect. It’s fortunate that Poirot is already on the scene and can begin investigating immediately! In fact, as he later tells his friend, Captain Hastings, he had begun even before the murder took place…

Hastings said, staring: “But the murder hadn’t happened, then.”

Hercule Poirot sighed. He said: “But already, mon cher, it was very clearly indicated.”

“Then why didn’t you stop it?”

And Hercule Poirot, with a sigh, said as he had said once before in Egypt, that if a person is determined to commit murder it is not easy to prevent them. He does not blame himself for what happened. It was, according to him, inevitable.

Having just read three Miss Marple novels in a row for Read Christie, it made a nice change to get back to Poirot for this month’s read. I usually prefer the Poirots to the Marples and Evil Under the Sun – first published in 1941 – is another good one. Setting the story on a private island, for the use of the hotel guests only, is not just an atmospheric setting but also a clever one as it immediately limits the suspects to those already on the island at the beginning of the book. With his understanding of the kind of person Arlena was, Poirot is quickly able to pick out one suspect as the most likely culprit, but due to timings and alibis it seems impossible that this person could have committed the crime. As the novel progresses, more clues emerge, along with the usual red herrings and misdirections Christie likes to throw in our way!

I didn’t manage to solve the mystery, but once the solution was revealed I could see how perfectly all of the clues fitted together – like a jigsaw puzzle, as Poirot describes it. It did seem that the way in which the crime was carried out depended on a lot of good luck and on people behaving in a certain manner, but I still think Christie was fair with the reader and I have no complaints. I’m now looking forward to September’s book, which will be Crooked House.

Ready for RIP XVI

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I can’t believe this is the sixteenth year of RIP (Readers Imbibing Peril). I have been taking part since RIP V all the way back in 2010 and have never missed a year! Things have changed a lot since then and it seems that RIP is now something that takes place mainly on Instagram and Twitter. However, it’s always been a very relaxed event and whether or not you use social media there’s no reason why you can’t put a pile of books together and join in. As long as they are mysteries, ghost stories, thrillers, Gothic novels, or anything else suitably dark and atmospheric they will count!

RIP begins next Wednesday and runs throughout September and October. You can find out more on Twitter or on Instagram. For those who want to get more involved, there are bingo cards, photo challenges and a group read of Shirley Jackson’s The Sundial.

Part of the fun of RIP is looking through our TBR piles to see what we could read. Here are a few of the books I’m thinking about reading this year – a mixture of NetGalley review copies, books I didn’t get to last year, and books by some favourite authors.

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
The Grey King by Susan Cooper
Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters
The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart
A Gathering of Ghosts by Karen Maitland
One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters
The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley
Mrs England by Stacey Halls
Tombland by CJ Sansom

I will also be continuing with the 2021 Read Christie challenge and have Crooked House lined up for September and Death on the Nile for October – and I have a classic horror anthology I downloaded for Kindle a while ago which includes stories by MR James, Washington Irving, E Nesbit and others.

Of course, I could end up reading none of the above books and find myself drawn to a completely different selection!

Will you be joining in with RIP this year? What are you planning to read?

The Man Who Wasn’t There by Henrietta Hamilton

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Henrietta Hamilton is an author I discovered recently through Agora Books’ Uncrowned Queens of Crime series. Hamilton (a pseudonym of Hester Denne Shepherd) had four novels published between 1956 and 1959, all featuring the crime-solving husband and wife team of Johnny and Sally Heldar. I have read two of them – Answer in the Negative, which I didn’t particularly enjoy, and The Two Hundred Ghost, which I did. When I was given the opportunity to read The Man Who Wasn’t There, I assumed it was another of the four books, but I quickly discovered that the circumstances behind the publication of this novel are more intriguing.

After Hamilton’s death in 1995, her nephews found some typed manuscripts of thirteen books that had never been published in her lifetime – including several more Sally and Johnny mysteries. This is one of them, made available at last by Agora Books. As one of the author’s nephews suggests in the introduction, it may have been changing tastes in literature that led to his aunt’s books no longer being published; by the late 1950s the Golden Age of detective fiction was largely over and The Man Who Wasn’t There does feel like a book written a decade or two earlier.

Johnny and Sally Heldar are a young married couple who run an antiquarian bookshop and are gaining a reputation for themselves as amateur detectives. Therefore, when Johnny’s cousin Tim discovers that his fiancée, Prue, is involved in a murder case, he turns to Johnny and Sally for help. Prue had been working as secretary to the murdered man, Mr Frodsham, who has been found shot dead in his study and Prue herself has become one of the suspects. Tim is hoping the Heldars can prove her innocent – and it certainly seems that there are plenty of other people with motives, including Frodsham’s mistress and her husband, another woman he was blackmailing, and some old enemies from his days in the French Resistance.

I like Sally and Johnny and it was nice to spend some more time in their company (although I do wish Johnny would let his wife take a more active part in the investigations), but I found the plot of this particular novel a bit too complicated and detailed for such a short book. I struggled to keep track of all the characters, what time they arrived at or left the victim’s house, what they were all doing during the war, even the number of different guns involved. Most of this information is delivered in the form of long conversations as Johnny and Sally ‘think out loud’ to each other or interview suspects, so you also need to remember who said what and to whom. Still, I think Hamilton was fair to the reader and gave us all the clues we needed to be able to solve the mystery.

I probably won’t read any more books in this series as I’ve tried three now and only really enjoyed one of them, but I can see from looking at other reviews that lots of people love her books so I hope the rest of the unpublished manuscripts find their way into print very soon.

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

A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

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This is the third book in Ambrose Parry’s historical mystery series featuring Dr Will Raven and Sarah Fisher. The first two are The Way of All Flesh and The Art of Dying, but if you haven’t read either of those it shouldn’t be a problem – although I would still recommend reading them in order if possible so that you can understand the background of the relationship between Will and Sarah.

Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym used by husband and wife team Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman; Brookmyre is an experienced crime novelist while Haetzman is an anaesthetist and medical historian, which explains why the 19th century world of murder and medicine portrayed in the books feels so real and convincing.

At the beginning of A Corruption of Blood, Sarah travels to Paris and Gräfenberg hoping for a meeting with Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to obtain a medical degree in America and become a doctor. Sarah has an interest in medicine herself and is sure that she could achieve the same as Dr Blackwell if given the chance, but things don’t go as planned and Sarah goes back to Edinburgh feeling disillusioned and frustrated. On returning home, she receives more bad news when she learns that Dr Will Raven has just become engaged to another woman, Eugenie Todd. Sarah has always resented Will for being able to take advantage of the opportunities that have been denied to her because of her gender, but recently they have been on friendlier terms and she is disappointed to hear of his engagement.

Meanwhile, Will is having problems of his own. Through his work with the famous Scottish obstetrician Dr James Simpson, he has become used to witnessing the trauma of childbirth and, sadly, the deaths of children – however, even he is not prepared for the sight of a dead baby wrapped in a parcel being fished out of the river. Soon after this, Will’s new fiancée asks for his help; her friend Gideon has been accused of murdering his father, Sir Ainsley Douglas, and she wants to prove that he is innocent. Will knows and dislikes Gideon from his student days, but agrees to investigate. Could both deaths somehow be connected?

This is such an interesting series, not so much because of the murder mystery aspect (which I don’t think is particularly strong) but because of the Victorian Edinburgh setting and all of the information we are given on the medical science of the period, as well as the challenges faced by women like Sarah and Dr Blackwell who wanted to make a career for themselves in a field dominated by men. This particular novel also includes a storyline involving the unpleasant, distressing but sadly quite common practice of baby farming, where unwanted or illegitimate children were sold to a ‘baby farmer’, who in theory would look after the child in return for a payment, although it was often more profitable for the baby farmer if the child conveniently died while in her care.

It took me a while to get into this book; the pace is very slow at the beginning and it takes a while for the plot to take shape and the different threads of the story to start coming together. Things improve in the second half, though, and there are a few surprises and plot twists that I hadn’t really expected. The relationship between Sarah and Will continues to develop, with the way each of them feels about Eugenie adding some extra interest, and I will look forward to seeing how this progresses in the next book. I hope there is going to be a next book and I hope we don’t have to wait too long for it!

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

Book 11/20 of my 20 Books of Summer.

Book 39/50 read for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

The Sussex Downs Murder by John Bude

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I am now halfway through my 20 Books of Summer list and obviously not going to finish all of the remaining books by the end of the month, but I’m pleased that I’ve managed to read this one, The Sussex Downs Murder, as I’ve had it on my shelf for a few years now and could never seem to find the right time to read it. It turns out that summer was the perfect time, as the story takes place in July…

The novel opens on a Saturday evening with John Rother saying goodbye to his brother and sister-in-law and leaving their Sussex farm, Chalklands, to drive to Harlech in Wales for a holiday. He doesn’t get very far, however, and his car is found abandoned the next morning just a few miles away from the farm. John has disappeared, but there are bloodstains inside the car and signs of a violent struggle. Has he been killed? Kidnapped? Superintendent William Meredith is called in and when human bones are found in a delivery of lime from the Chalklands lime-kilns a few days later, it seems that he is dealing with a murder case.

In his careful, methodical way Meredith begins to investigate, examining every clue and interviewing every possible witness. He forms a theory almost immediately, but when a second crime occurs and proves him wrong, he is forced to think again, and slowly – too slowly for his Chief Constable who threatens to bring in Scotland Yard – starts to piece together what has happened.

John Bude, whose real name was Ernest Elmore, is a popular author within the British Library Crime Classics series, but this is the first of his books that I’ve read. Originally published in 1936, it’s the second Superintendent Meredith novel and I enjoyed it enough to want to read more of them. I liked Meredith, although we don’t get to know very much about his background or personal life – apart from some great scenes with his son, Tony – and I appreciated the way his thoughts are shared with the reader, so that we can follow each step of his investigations and see in which direction the clues are leading him. I also liked the Sussex setting; it’s not an area that I know, but there’s a map at the beginning and all of the towns and villages, chalk hills and rings of trees – are real places and geographical features.

My only problem with this book was that the solution to the mystery was far too easy to guess; I had my suspicions from very early in the story and was proved right. I don’t usually manage to solve the crime before the detective does, so I wonder if other readers found this one particularly obvious too.

This is book 10/20 of my 20 Books of Summer 2021

The Infernal Riddle of Thomas Peach by Jas Treadwell

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READER! – Good-day to you!
And good-morrow, too! for our acquaintance is destined to be long. We are sure of it. We see it in your eye –

Who is Thomas Peach? Why has he fled London to take up residence in a quiet country village in Somerset? What is in the locked chest he keeps hidden beneath the stairs? Why does Mrs Peach never leave her bedroom and why is she not permitted visitors? Does she even exist – and if not, who is it that Thomas talks to at night, when the curious maidservant stands with her ear to the bedroom door?

These are the questions our narrator, an unnamed person who describes themselves as a necromantic historian, sets out to answer in this strange and fascinating new novel by the equally mysterious Jas Treadwell. By the end of the book, we have answers to these questions, as well as some others that are raised along the way, but what makes this such an intriguing and entertaining read, in my opinion, is not the plot so much as the style in which the book is written. Not everyone will agree, of course; I think whether or not you will enjoy Thomas Peach could depend on how you feel about the sort of book it is parodying – the 18th century novel.

Set in 1785, the book imitates the fiction of that time, with the narrator speaking directly to the reader, commenting on what has happened and what is about to happen and providing footnotes where they feel further information is necessary. If you’ve read Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, you will have an idea of what I mean, although the narrator in this book is much more intrusive and is there with us through every turn of the page. Chapter Ten, for example, begins like this:

Like the rustic, who closes his eyes at sun-set, after his day of wholesome toil, and wakes again with the dawn, we omit the night altogether, by the simple method of opening our new chapter upon the following day.

This is probably the kind of writing you either like or you don’t; it does require some patience, as those 18th century authors never used one word when they could use ten! Treadwell draws heavily on the literature of the period and there are lots of references to Samuel Richardson’s huge 1748 epistolary novel Clarissa (which I was glad I had read, as it meant I knew what the narrator was talking about without having to rely on the footnotes!) as well as books by other authors such as Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollett. You don’t actually need to have read any of these books, but a familiarity with some of them will add to your experience of the novel.

Due to the leisurely pace of the novel and all the diversions and digressions, Thomas Peach’s story unfolds very slowly – and when his secrets do eventually begin to be revealed, I felt that beneath the clever writing, the plot was less complex, less magical and less satisfying than I had expected it to be at first. Still, I enjoyed meeting Thomas Peach and the other characters, particularly Clary, a young woman about whom I can’t really say anything at all without spoiling the surprise! Although I couldn’t read a lot of books like this as the style would quickly become irritating, this one kept me entertained.

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 9/20 of my 20 Books of Summer.

Book 38/50 read for the 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Historical Musings #67: August 2021 – HWA Crowns and a reading update

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Welcome to this month’s post on all things historical fiction.

Last week the fiction, non-fiction and debut novel longlists for the 2021 HWA (Historical Writers’ Association) Awards were announced. I’ve only read a few of the longlisted titles and don’t have any plans to try to read all of the others, but it was still interesting to see which books the judges had picked – especially in the non-fiction category, as I hadn’t heard of any of them! Here are the three lists:

HWA Gold Crown Award Longlist

Spirited by Julie Cohen
V For Victory by Lissa Evans
Arrowood and the Thames Corpses by Mick Finlay
Tell Me How It Ends by VB Grey
The Silver Collar by Antonia Hodgson
Cathedral by Ben Hopkins
The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd
The Second Marriage by Gill Paul
Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
The Last Protector by Andrew Taylor
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

I have read four of these (and have linked to my reviews above). I really enjoyed The Silver Collar, Daughters of Night and The Last Protector, all of which are historical mysteries from series that I’ve been following from the beginning and can highly recommend. The Devil and the Dark Water I found slightly disappointing after loving Stuart Turton’s first book, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

HWA Debut Crown Award Longlist

Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten
Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin
The Strange Adventures of H by Sarah Burton
The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
The Puritan Princess by Miranda Malins
Imperfect Alchemist by Naomi Miller
Edge of the Grave by Robbie Morrison
Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
The Company Daughters by Samantha Rajaram
The Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper
People of Abandoned Character by Clare Whitfield

I’ve read four books from the debut list too; my favourite of these was The Puritan Princess, about Oliver Cromwell’s daughter, Frances. The other three were all interesting, but didn’t entirely work for me.

HWA Non-Fiction Crown Award Longlist

Britain at Bay by Alan Allport 
The Gun, the Ship and the Pen by Linda Colley
Crucible of Hell by Saul David
The Paper Chase by Joseph Hone
The Ravine by Wendy Lower
Double Lives by Helen McCarthy
Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden
The Dead are Arising by Les Payne and Tamara Payne
A Stranger in the Shogun’s City by Amy Stanley
A Dominant Character by Samanth Subramanian
Ellis Island by Małgorzata Szejnert, translated by Sean Gasper Bye
The Interest by Michael Taylor

I have read none at all from this list, which is disappointing but doesn’t surprise me as I don’t read a huge amount of non-fiction. Some of these sound intriguing, particularly The Paper Chase and Stranger in the Shogun’s City.

You can find out more about all of the longlisted books on the HWA website.

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My current historical reading:

I’ve just finished The Infernal Riddle of Thomas Peach by Jas Treadwell, a very unusual book written in the style of an 18th century novel; I couldn’t possibly describe it here in just a few sentences, so you’ll have to wait for my review next week! I’m also nearly finished The Green Gauntlet by RF Delderfield, the third book in his Horseman Riding By series and set during and after World War II. Both of these books are from my 20 Books of Summer list and as I’m starting to run out of time to complete my 20 Books, my next two historical reads will also be from that list: A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry and The Women of Troy by Pat Barker.

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New to my historical TBR in the last few weeks:

Black Drop by Leonora Nattrass, a new historical mystery set in Georgian London, Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones, a non-fiction book telling the story of ‘how the world we know today came to be built’, and The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews, a debut novel set in 17th century England and due to be published in February – these are all books I’ve received through NetGalley.

Also, The Huntress by Kate Quinn, an author I’ve wanted to read more of since loving The Rose Code earlier this year, and A Song for Arbonne, a Guy Gavriel Kay book I’ve been particularly looking forward to reading.

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Have you been reading any good historical fiction recently? And have you read any of the books on the HWA longlists?