Six Degrees of Separation: From The Naked Chef to Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

26 Comments

It’s the first Saturday of the month 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 Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver.

The Naked Chef teaches you how to make beautiful dishes from scratch, whether you’re cooking for guests or simply enjoying good food with your family. Host a dinner party your friends won’t forget with light Vegetable Tempura, followed by melt-in-the-mouth spiced Slow-Cooked Lamb Shank. Or why not try the Chilli, Tomato, Oregano and Pancetta Pizza; perfect for getting the family stuck in.

This book has something for everyone – from those who want great food but want to keep it simple, to those who work for a living and don’t have time to spend all evening cooking. The Naked Chef is all about giving people confidence and getting them to feel at ease in the kitchen, with the help of Jamie Oliver, even if they have never tried cooking before!

I don’t own this book and am not likely to, particularly as I’m a vegetarian (I know he has written another one, Veg), but I thought it was an interesting starting point for this month’s chain.

When I saw that we were going to be starting with the Jamie Oliver book, I thought immediately of a novel I read just this summer that features a celebrity chef: A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz (1), the third in the Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series, in which the author uses himself as one of the protagonists. This book revolves around a murder during a literary festival on the island of Alderney and the chef character – Marc Bellamy – is one of the suspects. Horowitz is attending the festival with the detective Daniel Hawthorne and the two reluctantly team up again to investigate the murder.

Daniel Hawthorne and Anthony Horowitz have had a difficult and uncomfortable working relationship throughout the series. The relationship between the narrator and the detective in A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle (2) – a murder mystery set on board a cruise ship in the 1920s – struck me as very similar, with the detective, James Temple, being a bad-tempered and hostile man who resents the attempts of the bumbling ship’s officer Timothy Birch to help him solve the crime. This was Tom Hindle’s first novel and I really enjoyed it; I’m looking forward to reading his new one, The Murder Game, which is out in February.

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (3) is another crime novel set on a ship. A journalist, Lo Blacklock, goes on a cruise around the Norwegian fjords to see the Northern Lights and is convinced that someone has fallen overboard when she hears a scream and a splash from the next cabin, Cabin 10. When the cabin door is opened the room is empty with no sign that anyone had ever been staying there – yet Lo had met the woman in Cabin 10 earlier that very evening. I found this book quite enjoyable, but too drawn out towards the end.

There are lots of books with numbers in their titles, but the one I’m linking to here is John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps (4). In this classic adventure/espionage novel, Richard Hannay goes on the run across the Scottish countryside after becoming mixed up in a plot to assassinate a Greek politician. I didn’t love this book – I thought it was entertaining at the beginning, but eventually became too repetitive as Hannay makes one last-minute escape after another. I do still want to read more of Buchan’s novels but I’m not sure whether I’ll continue with the others in the Hannay series or try something different.

The Thirty-Nine Steps was published in 1915. Another book I’ve read from that same year is The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (5). Despite being published during the war and having the word soldier in the title, this is not actually a war novel, which I remember finding surprising! It’s the story of two couples, one British and one American, who meet at a German spa town in 1904. A clever, interesting novel with an intriguingly unreliable narrator, but not a book that I particularly enjoyed.

The name Ford leads me to my final book: Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (6). This novel is set in Seattle and follows the story of a Chinese-American boy whose Japanese-American friend, Keiko, is sent to an internment camp with her family during World War II. I found the story both heartbreaking and heartwarming, without becoming overly sentimental. Also, the words ‘bitter’ and ‘sweet’ are tastes, which provides a link back to The Naked Chef at the beginning of this month’s chain. Jamie Ford and Jamie Oliver both share a name as well!

~

And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included: celebrity chefs, unlikely detective duos, mysteries set at sea, numbers in titles, the year 1915 and the name Ford.

In December we’ll be starting with The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

The Winter Garden by Nicola Cornick

18 Comments

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot,
For I see no reason why gunpowder treason,
Should ever be forgot

There are different variations on this rhyme, but that’s the version I grew up with. It refers, of course, to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The name most often associated with the plot is Guy Fawkes, the man caught in the cellars below Parliament on November 5th preparing to ignite the gunpowder, but the leader of the conspirators was actually the less well known Robert Catesby. Nicola Cornick’s new novel The Winter Garden tells the story of not just Catesby himself but also his wife, Catherine, and mother, Anne.

Like Nicola Cornick’s other recent books, this one is set in more than one time period. In the present day, we meet Lucy Brown, a young woman suffering from the long-term effects of a viral infection that have left her unable to continue her promising career as a violinist. Not yet ready to return to her home in London and face up to a life without her beloved music, Lucy accepts an offer from an aunt to go and stay in her cottage in Oxfordshire while she recuperates. Gunpowder Cottage, as it is now known, was once the home of Robert Catesby and almost as soon as Lucy arrives she begins to have visions of a woman dressed in Tudor clothing. Could this be Catherine Catesby and if so what is she trying to tell Lucy?

The other thread of the novel begins in the late 16th century and is written from the perspective of Anne Catesby. The Catesby family are recusant Catholics – they remained loyal to the Catholic church after the Reformation and refuse to attend Church of England services. In 1593, Anne’s son, Robert, marries Catherine Leigh, the daughter of a wealthy Protestant family, who begins to create a beautiful garden in the grounds of her new home. Anne is pleased to see her son and daughter-in-law settling into married life, but the happy times don’t last for long and soon Robert is deeply involved in treason and conspiracy.

There’s so much going on in this novel: an archaeological dig aimed at finding and restoring Catherine’s vanished winter garden, rumours of hidden treasure dating back to the days of the Knights Hospitaller, and a mystery surrounding the death of one of the experts working on the garden project. There’s also a romance for Lucy, which, although it was completely predictable as soon as the love interest made his first appearance, felt believable and never came to dominate the plot. If you’ve read Nicola Cornick’s The Forgotten Sister, there’s a small part in this book for Johnny Robsart, whom you’ll remember was Amelia Robsart’s psychic brother. There are some paranormal elements in this novel too, but they provide the link between the two time periods and again, don’t really dominate.

When a book has two separate storylines set in different periods, there is usually one I like more than the other and in this case it was the historical one. I felt a stronger connection with Anne Catesby than I did with Lucy, maybe because Anne’s story was narrated in the first person while Lucy’s was written in the third. Although there wasn’t as much focus on the actual Gunpowder Plot as I’d expected, I found it interesting to read about the female influence on Robert Catesby’s life and how events at home may have led to him becoming involved in the conspiracy.

Have you read any other books about the Gunpowder Plot or Robert Catesby? I would love to hear about them!

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

Book #58 read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

My Commonplace Book: October 2022

7 Comments

A selection of words and pictures to represent October’s reading:

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

~

“Ah well, we all have our failings,” Capranis said philosophically. “And if failing to return borrowed books was the worst, the world wouldn’t be such a bad place.”

The Butterfly Picnic by Joan Aiken (1972)

~

‘I’m not so old,’ Father said. ‘I’m only forty-six and I must be the most eligible catch in Christendom.’

I smiled, but I was wondering if, with two dead wives and two divorces behind him, the princesses of Europe would agree with him.

In the Shadow of Queens by Alison Weir (2021)

~

“What I have heard comes straight out of a fairy-tale. But that is just what inventors are doing, is it not? They are stealing all the things out of the old wonder-tales and making them come real.”

Fool Errant by Patricia Wentworth (1929)

~

Blue plaque on Enid Blyton’s childhood home, East Dulwich

She said: ‘It is partly the struggle that helps you so much, that gives you determination, character, self-reliance – all things that help in any profession or trade, and most certainly in writing.’

The Real Enid Blyton by Nadia Cohen (2018)

~

Military officers saluting Benazhir. You could cry remembering it, and perhaps no matter how long you lived on this earth you would always cry remembering it. They’d hanged her father, put her in prison, cast her into exile. And now they saluted her, this woman of only thirty-five, because millions upon millions of people went to the ballot box and said they must. Zahra brushed her hand across her eyes. What did all this matter – the school cliques, Maryam’s awfulness, Hammad’s inattentiveness, the scuffed toes of her shoes. Why should any of this matter when the world was transformed?

Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie (2022)

~

‘I understand and would have expected your desire to protect, because that is you, Tom. It is instinctive. My instinct is to abhor any fighting. No good comes from it – only human suffering.’

The Drums of War by Michael Ward (2022)

~

“Why do men like me want sons?” he wondered. “It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance with life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.”

Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck (1929)

~

Large blue butterfly

Again, I should like to know more about the experience of that Chinese scholar, celebrated in Japan under the name Soshu, who dreamed that he was a butterfly, and had all the sensations of a butterfly in that dream. For his spirit had really been wandering about in the shape of a butterfly; and, when he awoke, the memories and the feelings of butterfly existence remained so vivid in his mind that he could not act like a human being.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things by Lafcadio Hearn (1904)

~

PHILPOTT’S NAVAL SUPERSTITIONS

C: The Ship’s Cat is a venerated Personage, and never to be harassed by Dog, Man or Bear. Not only can she keep the Ship’s population of Mice and Rats to acceptable Numbers, she can also predict the Weather, tell when Land is near or raise a Storm if she is displeased.

Blue Water by Leonora Nattrass (2022)

~

Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (1820)

~

He sighed and rolled over. Calm yourself, brain, he admonished. Stop churning away. Don’t examine the what-ifs and the maybes, the wrong turnings and the dead ends in your life. That way madness lies.

The Romantic by William Boyd (2022)

~

Official declaration of the Second Empire, 2 December 1852

He pondered over the growth of the family, with its different branches springing from one parent stock, whose sap carried the same seeds to the furthest twigs, which bent in different directions according to the ambient sunshine or shade. For a moment he thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Marquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.

The Fortune of the Rougons by Émile Zola (1871)

~

It struck Maureen that a person could be trapped in a version of themselves that was from another time, and completely miss the happiness that was staring them in the face.

Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce (2022)

~

‘So much depends upon what it was that she treasured,’ Maud said, thoughtfully. ‘For me it is my health these days, as well as my family. During the war years, it was our liberty above all else. It varies at different times and from person to person: wisdom, money, life and love…’

The Winter Garden by Nicola Cornick (2022)

~

Favourite books read in October:

The Romantic and Blue Water

Authors read for the first time in October:

Nadia Cohen, Lafcadio Hearn, William Boyd, Patricia Wentworth, Washington Irving

Places visited in my October reading:

Greece, England, Ireland, Italy, US, Pakistan, Japan, Madeira, Cape Verde, Wales, Panama, Jamaica, France

~

October reading notes: October was a great reading month for me and included two books for 1929 Club, my Classics Club Spin book, some RIP XVII reads and a few NetGalley review copies. I also visited, in fictional form, lots of fascinating locations around the world.

November is a very busy time in the book blogging calendar, with Witch Week, Novellas in November, Non-Fiction November, AusReading Month, German Literature Month, SciFi Month and Margaret Atwood Reading Month all taking place right now! I’m unlikely to be able to take part in all of these, but there’s a lot going on and I’ll look forward to reading everyone’s posts.

Did you read any good books in October? What are your plans for November?

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

12 Comments

I’ve never read anything by Washington Irving but The Legend of Sleepy Hollow appears in an anthology of classic ghost stories I bought for my Kindle a few years ago and Halloween seemed like the perfect time of year to read it. I thought I already knew the story from the 1999 Tim Burton film but of course it turns out that it’s only very loosely based on Irving’s original work, which is often the case with adaptations. It’s also not very scary, so if horror stories make you nervous, don’t worry – this one isn’t likely to give you nightmares!

Irving begins by describing the valley of Sleepy Hollow, an old Dutch settlement in New York State steeped in legend and superstition.

A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere…Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air.

The most famous of Sleepy Hollow’s legends involves a ghost known as the Headless Horseman, said to be a Hessian soldier who lost his head in battle and goes on a nightly ride through the Hollow in search of his missing head. When Ichabod Crane, an outsider from Connecticut arrives in the valley to take up the position of schoolmaster, he is fascinated by this story. A believer in witchcraft, Ichabod is naturally superstitious and enjoys listening to the tales of local ghosts and goblins.

Soon Ichabod sets his sights on the beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, daughter and only heir of a wealthy farmer. However, he faces stiff competition for Katrina’s hand in marriage in the form of Brom Bones, a ‘burly, roaring, roystering blade…the hero of the country round’. After being rejected by Katrina during a party at the Van Tassels’ home one night, the disappointed Ichabod rides off alone into the night – only to find that he is being pursued by a mysterious figure on horseback…

There’s not much more I can say about this story without spoiling it. It’s a short one, so if you want to read it for yourself it shouldn’t take up too much of your time. Published in 1820, it’s easy to read and to follow and although Irving’s descriptive writing provides a lot of Gothic atmosphere, it’s a fun and entertaining ghost story rather than a terrifying one. It also has a wonderfully ambiguous ending!

I’ll have to read more of Washington Irving’s stories at some point. The only other one I’m familiar with is Rip Van Winkle, but obviously he has written a lot more than that!

This is my seventh and final read for R.I.P. XVII

Cup of Gold by John Steinbeck – #1929Club

22 Comments

It’s always interesting, when an author has become famous for books written later in their career, to go back to the very beginning and read their earliest work. Cup of Gold, John Steinbeck’s first novel, was published in 1929 and is my second choice for this week’s 1929 Club hosted by Simon and Karen.

I’ve previously only read two of Steinbeck’s books (East of Eden and The Pearl) and hadn’t even heard of this one until I started to look at options for 1929 Club. I was intrigued because it sounded so completely different from his other books – not the sort of plot or genre I would have associated with Steinbeck at all. It’s also a short novel (just over 200 pages) so I could easily fit it into my busy October reading schedule!

Cup of Gold opens in 17th century Wales where a fifteen-year-old boy, Henry Morgan, lives on a farm with his parents and his grandmother, Gwenliana, who claims to have second sight. Growing up in a remote part of the Welsh countryside, Henry is growing restless to leave home and see more of the world. When Dafydd, an old farmhand who left many years earlier to go to sea, returns to the farm to tell the family of his adventures, Henry becomes determined to do the same. His mother, who still considers him a child, tells him not to be ridiculous, but his father accepts that this is something his son must do and sends him off with his blessing.

Before leaving, Henry consults the wise, white-bearded poet known as Merlin, who lives alone with his red-eared dog in the hills above the Morgans’ valley. Merlin makes the following observation, words Henry will remember for the rest of his life:

“You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man – if only you remain a little child. All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes caught a firefly. But if one grow to a man’s mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could – and so, it catches no fireflies.”

Arriving in Cardiff – the first time he has seen a large town – Henry secures passage on a ship to Barbados, where he finds himself indentured to a plantation owner. This is not what Henry had been hoping for, but he knows it will only be for a few years and then he’ll be free again to achieve his dream of becoming a buccaneer and making his fortune.

If the name Henry Morgan is familiar to you, then you’ve probably already guessed that this is the story of the notorious pirate of the Caribbean, a real historical figure (and the inspiration for Captain Morgan rum). In fact, the full title of the novel is Cup of Gold: A Life of Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer, with Occasional Reference to History. ‘Occasional reference’ is not an exaggeration because it seems that very little of Steinbeck’s account has anything to do with historical fact – although, to be fair, there are lots of gaps in our knowledge of Morgan’s early life and career so plenty of scope for an author to use their imagination. It’s unclear whether I should even be referring to Morgan as a pirate; many sources describe him as a privateer, although the only difference I can see is that one is declared ‘legal’ by the government who stands to gain from their raiding and pillaging and the other isn’t.

The ’cup of gold’ of the title, which Merlin compares to reaching for the moon, refers to two things – Panama, which Henry sees as the ultimate prize just waiting to be captured from the Spanish, and a beautiful woman known as La Santa Roja (the Red Saint). Henry’s yearning for both of these is what drives him – and the narrative – forward. Yet I found this book to be neither the swashbuckling adventure novel nor the romance I’ve seen it described as and it’s certainly not as much fun as Georgette Heyer’s Beauvallet or Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood. It’s a more serious novel than either of those and never loses sight of its central themes: the quest for happiness and the question of whether we can ever be truly content with what we have or will go on searching for something that’s always out of reach. However, I discovered that I didn’t really care about Henry’s happiness as I found it so difficult to relate to somebody who deliberately set out on a life of piracy and committed so many terrible acts! That was a bit of a problem with so much of the story told from Henry’s perspective.

This is a beautifully written novel, though, and the sections set in Wales – or Cambria, as Steinbeck usually calls it – feel mystical and dreamlike. The inclusion of Merlin in the plot is intriguing: are we supposed to believe that he is really the legendary magician, alive in the 17th century, or is he just an eccentric old man who believes he is Merlin? Either way, Arthurian legend is obviously something that interested Steinbeck and he would later go on to write The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, which was posthumously published in 1976.

I wouldn’t describe this as a must-read classic, but it’s worth reading if the subject or setting appeal or if you’re interested in experiencing the work of a famous author at the very start of his career.

I’m also counting this as book #57 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2022.

The Fortune of the Rougons by Émile Zola

17 Comments

La Fortune des Rougon, originally published in French in 1871, is the first novel in Émile Zola’s twenty-volume Les Rougon-Macquart cycle. It’s also the book selected for me in the recent Classics Club Spin and the edition I read is an English translation by Brian Nelson.

I’ve already read one of the later books from the cycle – The Ladies’ Paradise – but rather than continue picking them out at random, I thought it might be more sensible to go back to the beginning of the series and try to read them in order. I was a bit hesitant about reading this first book, however, because it sounded as though it was mainly concerned with setting things up for the rest of the series – and that was the case, up to a point, but I found that there was still enough plot to make this an interesting novel in its own right.

The Fortune of the Rougons is set in the fictional French town of Plassans and opens on a Sunday night in December 1851 with two young lovers, Silvère and Miette, joining up with an army of insurgents. It’s the eve of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état which will result in the formation of the Second Empire under Napoleon III. Silvère wants to give his support to the Republicans who are opposing the coup and thirteen-year-old Miette finds herself coming along to carry the flag.

We then leave Silvère and Miette behind for a while so that Zola can take us back several generations and introduce us to Adelaide Fouque who, through her marriage to the peasant Rougon and a later relationship with the alcoholic smuggler Macquart, is the ancestor of most of the other major characters in the novel. He then follows the lives of Adelaide’s three children – her eldest son, Pierre Rougon, and his illegitimate half-brother and sister, Antoine and Ursule Macquart – as they grow into adults and embark on a family feud. Finally we meet Adelaide’s grandchildren (of whom Silvère is one) and see how they all fit into the events of the formation of the Second Empire.

Once Pierre, Antoine and Ursule have married and had children of their own, the number of characters in the novel quickly multiplies and I’m glad my copy of the book included a family tree as I found myself constantly needing to refer to it. The Rougon-Macquart family are largely an unpleasant group of people – Pierre Rougon tricks his mother into signing over her house to him, depriving his brother of his inheritance, while Antoine Macquart is a violent, aggressive drunk – but there are still some characters with traits I could admire and some I could pity. It seems that Zola’s aim in writing the series was to explore the effects of heredity, so in this book the legitimate Rougon branch of the family are shown to be scheming, avaricious social-climbers while the Macquarts, descended from a rogue, are leading miserable, sordid lives.

The history of the coup d’état and the Second Empire is quite complicated, particularly if, like me, you come to the book with no prior knowledge of these events. With Plassans (based on Aix-en-Provence, where Zola himself grew up) being so far from the action, information comes to the Rougons via the eldest son, Eugène, who lives in Paris, and the people of the town gather in the Rougons’ yellow drawing room to discuss the latest developments. This keeps the reader at a bit of a distance and it took me a while to get everything straight in my head, but later in the book when we rejoin Silvère and Miette marching with the army we get a little bit closer to some of the action.

I didn’t really love The Fortune of the Rougons, but there were parts that I enjoyed very much and I’ll look forward to meeting some of the characters again in the other books in the cycle. I wish I had read this one before jumping straight into The Ladies’ Paradise as I would then have had more understanding of Octave Mouret’s background (he is another descendant of Adelaide Fouque).

Have you read any of the Rougon-Macquart novels? Did you read them in order or at random and do you think it makes any difference?

This is book 33/50 from my second Classics Club list.

Fool Errant by Patricia Wentworth – #1929Club

25 Comments

This week Karen and Simon are hosting 1929 Club, the latest of their biannual events where we all read and write about books published in the same year. 1929 turns out to have been a particularly great year for publishing, with lots of tempting titles to choose from, but I decided to start with a book by an author I had never read but had been intending to try for a long time.

Patricia Wentworth is better known for her Miss Silver mystery series, but Fool Errant is the first of four novels featuring a different crime-solving character – Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith. Named after three famous British admirals, the mysterious Mr Smith lives in London with his very talkative parrot, Ananias, and carries out some sort of espionage work for the Foreign Office. We learn little more than that about him in this book – in fact, he only makes two or three brief appearances and remains an eccentric, shadowy character in the background.

The novel opens with a nervous, stammering young man, Hugo Ross, arriving at Meade House, the home of the inventor Ambrose Minstrel. He is hoping to apply for the position of secretary and is surprised when Minstrel immediately offers him the job despite his lack of qualifications and experience. Before he even starts work, however, he has an encounter with a young woman in the street who is running away from home to avoid marriage with a distant cousin. When she hears that Hugo is planning to join Minstrel’s household, she is horrified and advises him to leave at once, but rushes off to catch her train before Hugo can ask for an explanation.

Taking up his new position as Minstrel’s secretary, Hugo soon begins to feel that something is not quite right at Meade House. Following a series of strange occurrences – and another warning from the young woman, whose name he discovers to be Loveday Leigh – Hugo decides to consult his brother-in-law’s uncle, Benbow Smith. It seems that he has stumbled upon a plot that could have serious implications for the government – and for his own safety if Minstrel finds out that he has guessed the truth. With the help of Smith and Loveday, Hugo must try to foil the plot while convincing Minstrel and his accomplices that he really is the timid, gullible idiot they believe him to be.

Fool Errant turned out to be a good choice for my first Patricia Wentworth novel; I expect it’s quite different from the Miss Silver books, being much more of a thriller than a mystery, but it was fun to read and the exciting plot kept me turning the pages. My only real problem was with the ridiculous characterisation of Loveday Leigh who, although she saves the day on one or two occasions, behaves like a child, is unable to have a serious conversation and expects kisses at the most inappropriate moments. Women like Loveday are quite common in books from that era, of course, but she has to be one of the worst I’ve come across!

This probably isn’t a book I’ll want to read again, but I did enjoy it and will look forward to reading the other three Benbow Smith novels…eventually!

~

Other 1929 books previously reviewed on my blog:

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer

Dickon by Marjorie Bowen

Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie

~

This is also book #6 read for R.I.P. XVII