The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine

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S.S. Van Dine was a pseudonym used by the American crime writer and art critic Willard Huntington Wright, most famous for his series of mysteries starring the fictional detective Philo Vance. Despite being very successful in the 1920s and 30s, he doesn’t seem as well known today as other Golden Age authors, but I’ve come across references to him in several of the Japanese detective novels I’ve read recently and have been curious about his work. Now that I’ve read one of his books, I can see why he was so popular in Japan: it seems that his books are ‘puzzle mysteries’ and inspired the Japanese honkaku style.

The Bishop Murder Case was published in 1929 and is the fourth book in the Philo Vance series. It’s definitely not necessary to have read any of the previous books first (they are mentioned a few times but there are no spoilers). The book is set in Manhattan and gets off to a promising start, with the first murder happening almost immediately. The victim, Joseph Cochrane Robin, has been shot dead with a bow and arrow, and the name of the main suspect is Sperling – which just happens to be the German word for sparrow. If you know your nursery rhymes you’ll remember the line: “Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin.” Coincidence? Philo Vance doesn’t think so and he’s proved right when several newspapers receive a note explaining the nursery rhyme reference, signed only as ‘The Bishop’.

As more deaths follow, all staged to look like nursery rhymes, New York’s District Attorney, John Markham, asks Vance to use his experience of human nature and his knowledge of literature and logic to help solve the mystery. With the murders all taking place in one small area of the city, Vance is convinced the culprit is someone from or connected with the household of Professor Dillard, but can he correctly identify the Bishop before the killing spree continues?

I loved the premise of this book – the nursery rhyme idea was fun and would later be used by Agatha Christie and other authors – but once Vance and Markham began their investigations I quickly discovered that this was going to be the sort of detective novel I tend to struggle with. There’s a lot of focus on times, distances and alibis and lots of discussions of mathematics, physics, psychology and chess, with things that interest me more like character development and motives pushed into the background. I found Vance himself very annoying, a pretentious, foppish know-it-all, similar in some ways to Allingham’s Albert Campion or Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey but without any of their charm. The book is narrated by a friend of Vance’s, whose name is Van Dine like the author himself, but although he accompanies Vance as he investigates, he never seems to actually speak or play any active part in the story at all, which I found very odd. His role seems to be purely to observe the other characters and relay information to the reader.

This book wasn’t a success with me, then, but I’m sure other readers will enjoy it much more than I did, particularly if you like mysteries that involve a lot of complex puzzle solving and logic. I doubt I’ll be looking for more books in the series, but I’m still glad I tried this one anyway!

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

The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson

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This is a beautifully written debut novel set in rural Wales. It’s described as ‘folk horror’ but if that doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry as I found this an unsettling book rather than a scary one.

Carywn and Rhian are a married couple in their sixties who own a sheep farm in the mountains of North Wales. It’s a difficult life but it’s the only one Carwyn has ever known and one that Rhian adapted to many years earlier. The farm is remote and lonely, the winters cold and harsh, but for the most part the couple are happy together – until the day Carwyn discovers an ancient head carved from granite buried in one of the fields on his land. As he continues to dig, he unearths bones, beads and arrowheads, and finally a megalithic stone circle. For reasons Carwyn can barely explain even to himself, he’s reluctant to share what he has found with the authorities; he can’t bear the thought of the head being taken to a museum, of archaeologists and tourists descending on the site. The stones, he tells himself, belong to him, to the land, to Wales.

As winter arrives and snow begins to fall, Carwyn becomes more and more obsessed with the ancient relics, continuing to dig and neglecting his work on the farm. Rhian, however, doesn’t have the same enthusiasm and as their relationship becomes increasingly strained, she begins to feel that she’s married to someone she no longer knows and doesn’t like.

The Hill in the Dark Grove, as I’ve said, is an unsettling novel, with a sense of foreboding that builds and builds as the story progresses. It’s obvious that nothing good is going to come of Carwyn’s single-minded obsessiveness and our sympathies are with Rhian as she’s forced to accept that the kind, gentle man she loves has now been replaced by a stranger. Although they do occasionally cross paths with other human beings – two hikers lost in the mountains; a neighbour Rhian meets at the livestock market in town; the bailiffs who come to speak to them about their debts – for most of the novel Carwyn and Rhian are alone together on their farm. The isolation and loneliness of their situation adds to the atmosphere, particularly as the bad weather closes in and Rhian starts to feel trapped and friendless.

Liam Higginson writes beautifully, but I found the book overly descriptive, which slowed things down to the point where my attention started to wander. There are also a lot of flashbacks to earlier times in Carwyn and Rhian’s lives and I felt that these happpened too often, breaking up the flow of the story. I did love one of these flashbacks, though: a wonderful passage describing the midwinter tradition of the Mari Lywd – a procession led by a skeletal horse – and the impression this makes on the five-year-old Rhian. If you enjoy reading about Welsh folklore and superstition there’s plenty of that in this novel, along with lots of details of sheep farming and an element of Welsh nationalism (the decline in use of the Welsh language, the properties being bought up by wealthy English people as second homes).

I didn’t love this book as much as I would have liked to, but as a first novel it’s quite impressive and I’ll be looking out for more from this author in the future.

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

Completing my second Classics Club list!

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classicsclub Some good news to start the new year – I’ve completed my Classics Club list at last! Yesterday I reviewed my 50th and final book, The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff, and now it’s time to think about posting a new list. Before I do that, though, I want to look back at the list I’ve just finished.

The Classics Club was launched in 2012 with the aim of uniting people who like to read and blog about classic literature. The idea is to make a list of fifty or more classics you want to read within a five year time period. I finished my first list of 100 books in October 2017 – you can see the complete list, with links to my reviews, here. I then started again with a second list (just 50 books this time) and for some reason, even though it was shorter, it has ended up taking a lot longer to complete than the first.

Here are the books I read for my second Classics Club list:

1. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
2. Jezebel’s Daughter by Wilkie Collins
3. The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins
4. Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
5. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
6. La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils
7. Castle Dor by Daphne du Maurier
8. Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
9. Farewell the Tranquil Mind by RF Delderfield
10. Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner
11. Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada
12. Tales from the Underworld by Hans Fallada
13. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
14. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
15. The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse
16. In a Dark Wood Wandering by Hella S Haasse
17. Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy
18. A Laodicean by Thomas Hardy
19. The Trumpet-Major by Thomas Hardy
20. Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy
21. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
22. The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by ETA Hoffmann
23. The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby
24. Goodbye Mr Chips by James Hilton
25. Random Harvest by James Hilton
26. Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household
27. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B Hughes
28. Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B Hughes
29. The Europeans by Henry James
30. A Pin to See the Peepshow by F Tennyson Jesse
31. Dubliners by James Joyce
32. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
33. That Lady by Kate O’Brien
34. The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
35. I Will Repay by Baroness Orczy
36. The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter
37. The Manuscript found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki
38. Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault
39. Bardelys the Magnificent by Rafael Sabatini
40. St Martin’s Summer by Rafael Sabatini
41. Pied Piper by Nevil Shute
42. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson
43. The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff
44. A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
45. Wild Strawberries by Angela Thirkell
46. High Rising by Angela Thirkell
47. The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
48. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
49. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
50. The Fortune of the Rougons by Émile Zola

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I enjoyed nearly all of these books, but if I had to pick some favourites they would be Random Harvest, In a Lonely Place, How Green Was My Valley and In a Dark Wood Wandering.

I hope to post my new list later in the month!

The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff

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After reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth a few years ago, the first book in her Dolphin Ring Cycle, I wasn’t sure which one to read next. I was advised that it wouldn’t really matter as the books are all separate stories, but as I’m interested in reading all of them anyway, I decided to continue with the one listed next chronologically, which is The Silver Branch.

First published in 1957, The Silver Branch is set in Roman Britain more than a century after the events of The Eagle of the Ninth. The two main characters, Justin and Flavius, are descendants of Marcus Flavius Aquila, which provides the link between the two books. Towards the end of the 3rd century, Justin (Tiberius Lucius Justinianus) completes his apprenticeship as an army surgeon and is posted to Britain for the first time. Arriving at the fort of Rutupiae in Kent, he meets the centurion Flavius (Marcelus Flavius Aquila) and the two discover that they are distant cousins.

The Roman military commander Carausius has recently declared himself emperor of Britain and North Gaul. When the cousins overhear Allectus, the finance minister, plotting against Carausius, they try to warn the emperor but he seems reluctant to believe them and instead they find themselves sent north to Magnis, a fort near Hadrian’s Wall, apparently in disgrace. Worse still, they have now made an enemy of the powerful Allectus, who still has his sights set on the throne…

Although I thought The Eagle of the Ninth was the stronger book, I enjoyed this one as well. I knew nothing at all about this particular period of Roman history so I was able to learn a lot from it, not just about the historical and military events, but also about life in general in Roman Britain during and after Carausius’s reign. This is all described in vivid detail, making the novel completely immersive, and Sutcliff never talks down to the reader – it’s marketed as a children’s book, but it doesn’t actually feel like one and it definitely has a lot to offer readers of all ages.

Not all of the characters are Roman – for example, we meet Evicatos of the Spear, an exiled Dalriad hunter (Dalriada was an ancient Gaelic kingdom from western Scotland/north-eastern Ireland) – and although it’s a very male dominated story, Flavius’s great-aunt Honoria has an important role to play. The main focus of the book, though, is always on our two young protagonists and I found both of them very easy to like, particularly the shy, quiet Justin who grows as a person through his relationship with the more confident Flavius. It’s as much a story of male friendship as it is of the politics of Roman Britain.

If you’re wondering about the ‘silver branch’ of the title, it refers not to a tree but to an unusual musical instrument with silver apples on it belonging to Cullen, the emperor Carausius’s Fool, an eccentric man who calls himself a hound and wears a dog’s tail. The silver branch is a motif that appears several times throughout the novel, along with the dolphin signet ring, an Aquila family heirloom, and the lost eagle standard of the Ninth Legion.

This is book 50/50 from my second Classics Club list. Yes, I’ve completed it at last!

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Night Circus to A Small Circus

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It’s the first Saturday of the month – and of 2026! – which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with the book with which we finished last month’s chain (or the last book we read if we didn’t take part last month). For me, this was The Night Circus by Erin Morgernstern. Here’s how I described it in my review:

The Night Circus tells the story of Celia and Marco, two young magicians who have been selected by their mentors to take part in a very special contest. The rules of the competition are shrouded in mystery and even the two illusionists themselves aren’t sure what they have to do to win. And the venue for this magical battle? Le Cirque des Rêves, or the Circus of Dreams, one of the strongest, most vivid fictional worlds I’ve ever come across in a novel.

The Night Circus was a great starting point, with lots of options to move forward with the chain. Usually I choose books that I’ve actually read and reviewed on my blog, but instead I’m going to start with a first link suggested to me by one of my blog readers. Thanks Paul! Round the Bend by Nevil Shute (1), which I haven’t read yet, follows the story of two aircraft engineers who begin their careers with Alan Cobham’s Flying Circus. I would like to read this eventually as I enjoyed the one Shute novel I’ve read (Pied Piper) and am looking forward to reading more.

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson (2) is set in 1919 and features a group of women who buy a damaged fighter plane to restore so that they can begin training female pilots. I enjoyed this book – it’s a fascinating portrayal of life in the aftermath of the First World War when the War Practices Act meant that many women were dismissed from their jobs to make way for the returning soldiers.

I’m going to break my own rule of only including books I’ve reviewed again, because the next book that comes to mind is one I read years before I started blogging: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (3). It was published in 1974, although I think I read it in the 90s. It’s about a man who travels across America with his young son by motorcycle, discussing philosophy along the way. I remember finding it interesting but I probably only understood half of it and wouldn’t want to read it again today.

I want to get away from transport related books now, so I’m linking next to another novel published in 1974 – Cashelmara by Susan Howatch (4). This novel, like some of Howatch’s others, is a family saga retelling Plantagenet history in a more recent setting. In this one, Edward I, Edward II and Edward III of England are recreated as Edward de Salis, his son Patrick and grandson Ned, a fictional 19th century family. It’s not necessary to be familiar with the history, but if you can spot the parallels it makes the story even more interesting!

An author who shares a name with Susan Howatch is Susan Hill, who wrote The Small Hand (5), a ghost story in which an antiquarian book dealer begins to have several unsettling experiences where he feels a child’s small hand holding his own. I found this an eerie, atmospheric novel rather than a particularly scary one, though maybe that’s because I read it in the summer – it’s a story for a dark winter night, I think!

The word ‘small’ also appears in the title of A Small Circus by Hans Fallada (6), which brings my chain full circle this month! I usually love Fallada, but this novel, first published in German in 1931, wasn’t for me. It does have an interesting setting, describing tensions and corruption in a small German town in the period between the two world wars, but I struggled with the unpleasant characters and confusing plot. I read a modern translation by Michael Hofmann.

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And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included circuses, flying, motorcycles, books published in 1974, authors named Susan and books with ‘small’ in the title.

In February we’ll be starting with Flashlight by Susan Choi.

New Year, New plans!

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Happy New Year! As I do every January, I am listing below some reading resolutions for the year ahead. I prefer not to set numerical targets and goals or anything that restricts my reading choices too much, so these are just some loose plans and projects to help shape my year of reading.

First of all, I’m pleased to say that I’ve finished my Classics Club list at last! It’s my second list and seemed to take me a lot longer to complete than the first – I had almost given up hope! I’ll be posting my 50th and final review soon, along with a roundup post, then I’ll be ready to share my new list with you. I’m excited about being able to take part in the Classics Club Spins again after missing the last few due to not having enough books left.

The Read Christie challenge is back again for 2026 and the theme is ‘Biggest, Best, Beloved’. I’ve looked at the books of the month and alternative options for the year ahead and have already read a lot of them, but will probably join in for five or six of the months. Although I’ve read most of Christie’s novels now, I still have some of her short story collections and Mary Westmacott books to read and also need to finish the Tommy and Tuppence series. If you would like to take part, you can sign up for the Agatha Christie newsletter here and will receive an email with a postcard to complete and the full list of titles for the year.

As I mentioned last week, I’ll also be taking part in the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge again (see my sign-up post here). This is never a very ‘challenging’ challenge for me, but I still like to join in and be part of the historical fiction community! I was disappointed to find that I only read one historical novel in translation last year, so I would like to improve on that, as well as expanding my range of time periods and geographical settings.

I read more non-fiction than usual in 2025 – eight books, which may not seem a lot to some people but is good for me! I want to continue reading non-fiction in 2026 and have several books on the TBR including The Story of Tudor Art by Christina J. Faraday, Eleanor by Alice Loxton and Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. First, though, I need to finish Helen Castor’s The Eagle and the Hart, which I’ve had on the go for several months already.

Every year I say I’m going to do some re-reading, but never seem to actually get round to it. The list of books I would like to re-read is getting longer and longer and I’m determined to find time for at least a few of them in 2025. Finally, I want to catch up with my Reading the Walter Scott Prize project. The aim is to read all of the shortlisted titles since the prize began in 2010, but I still have a lot of them to get through. I’m currently reading the 2025 winner, The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, and will be looking out for the announcement of the 2026 longlist in February and shortlist in April.

I’m sure I’ll be joining in with some of the reading events hosted by other bloggers throughout the year, hopefully beginning with Dolce Bellezza’s Japanese Literature Challenge this month. My ultimate resolution for 2026, though, is to choose my books carefully so that every book I read could be a potential book of the year! Wouldn’t that be nice?

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What about you? Do you have any reading resolutions or plans for 2026? I hope your new year gets off to a great start!

My Commonplace Book: December 2025

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For the last time this year…

A selection of quotes and pictures to represent December’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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“A pity she was so fond of snooping. ‘Knowledge is power,’ she used to say, and I used to tell her ‘If you want to be liked, miss, don’t you be a Poll Pry,’ but she only laughed at me.”

The Art School Murders by Moray Dalton (1943)

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She would curl up in a secluded corner and read story after story, while her father worked nearby in companionable silence. For Evie – like her father – old stories and legends meant escape into another world, one of boundless possibilities and far horizons.

Circle of Shadows by Marisa Linton (2025)

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Trent Park House, North London

“Art’s important at a time like this. It gives human life its value. It’s what we’re fighting for.”

Appointment in Paris by Jane Thynne (2025)

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There was something in the Bible about casting out fear. If you could cast out fear, everything would be all right. But you couldn’t do it. Too many people were frightened of too many things.

Alice by Elizabeth Eliot (1949)

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“The most difficult thing in this world,” he said, “is to know where one’s duty lies, for duty is a mechanism of the mind, and the heart is forever stepping in and playing havoc with one’s resolutions.”

The Bishop Murder Case by S.S. Van Dine (1929)

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“Always, everywhere, the Wolves gather on the frontiers, waiting. It needs only that a man should lower his eye for a moment, and they will be in to strip the bones. Rome is failing, my children.”

The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff (1957)

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Santa Catalina Monastery, Peru – By Hans Brian Brandsberg Berg

“You think you are brave, because you do not cry to others to help you, but no one,” and here her voice broke down to a whisper, “no one can withstand cruelty on their own. It is vain to think you can do so. There are times when it is a kind and courageous act to cry out, to tell the world what is happening, to warn other victims…”

The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric (2010)

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We use the same word, ‘story’, to describe a verifiable matter of fact, a self-proclaimed work of the imagination, and the brazen lie. Did we never foresee a problem?

The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi (2025)

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“That’s…very noble of you.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. Because if I’ve learned one thing from history, it’s that there’s no point holding on to something when it wants to be free.”

The Inn at Penglas Cove by Lauren Westwood (2026)

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“The children of Loki” (1920) by Willy Pogany.

Grief is complicated. Doesn’t matter whether you think you have a right to feel it. Doesn’t matter how long you’ve carried it. Grief burrows away inside you and sometimes it helps to talk.

The Shapeshifter’s Daughter by Sally Magnusson (2025)

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He wondered how much kinder all humanity would be if any day the rich and powerful might find themselves the lowest of the low, and those they used to trample suddenly in charge.

The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson (2026)

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Favourite books read in December:

Circle of Shadows and The Inn at Penglas Cove

Authors read for the first time in December:

Moray Dalton, Marisa Linton, Elizabeth Eliot, S.S. Van Dine, Liam Higginson, Thea Lenarduzzi, Lauren Westwood

Places visited in my December reading:

England, France, Italy, Peru, US, Scotland, Wales

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Reading notes: December was a good month of reading for me. I’m pleased that I managed to read two books for Dean Street December (Alice and The Art School Murders) and one for Doorstoppers in December (The Book of Human Skin as well as making a start on my January NetGalley books. I haven’t had time to review everything I read this month, but I do at least have most of the reviews written and scheduled. I’m looking forward to starting a fresh new year of reading tomorrow!

What did you read in December? Do you have any plans for January?

Happy New Year!