Reading in May - Short Crime Fiction Reviews Part 2

The House of Green Turf – Ellis Peters

I’m surprised I hadn’t read this one. I thought I’d read all the George Felse mysteries back in the early 90s.  Cadfael was on the TV and I'm fairly sure Peters' other books were republished on the resurgence of popularity that created, and I enjoyed Felse and Bunty and even their son Dominic and his girlfriend with the unfortunate nickname of Tossa.

I’m also not sure why this didn’t make my ‘books I enjoyed this year’ list. It was quite fun and the set up was certainly interesting. A famous singer is in a car crash and wakes up convinced she’s killed someone – if not in the crash then somewhere in the past.

But Peters has an undercurrent of something I can't always quite believe in. I wouldn’t call it magical thinking but it's in that realm. An semi-telepathy or sympathetic communication between strangers and events that sometimes works for me and sometimes doesn’t, snapping my suspension of belief so violently I’m thrown right out. 

Also, if I was with someone bleeding to death and a collapsing enemy were trying to shoot me I definitely, definitely wouldn’t stand and face them down. Try and tackle them possibly, keep pressure on the injured party's wound and hope the enemy collapses before they have a chance to kill us both, also possibly. Freeze with terror and be useless perhaps. Stand and face them down, no. 

Service of All the Dead  – Colin Dexter

This was far more prosaic, always assuming that the people involved are absolute idiots. By the end you can almost hear Morse wondering What the Bloody Hell These Clowns Were Thinking. I never watched much Morse but he's definitely more active in this 70s book than he was the few times I caught the programme. Morse, like Wexford, can be a bit of an berk (it's 79, and the gender politics are fairly standard for the time), but his main strength here is his determination to ferret about until he has an answer. Not a brilliant flash of insight detective, but not a plodder either. Also he gets a love interest, in a low-key 'blink and you'd miss that they were attracted' sort of way. Very 70s. 

The Sailors' Rendezvous - Georges Simenon

Maigret is always understated, even when he gets cross. Even when he decides to stay up all night on a moored board reaching for some kind of flash of intuition or atmospheric revelation. I’ve read three Maigrets and feel I could do with more padding in all of them. That’s a personal preference rather than a fault with the books, though.

Thrones, Dominions – Dorothy L Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh

I was surprisingly impressed with this. usually books finished by other authors leave me a bit cold and certainly the one written entirely by Jill Paton Walsh (set after the Second World War) didn't convince me (review here).

This though, which was apparently a continuation of a book Sayers began and never finished, seemed seamless. 

The Attenbury Emeralds - Jill Paton Walsh

Over the weekend I read The Attenbury Emeralds, Jill Paton-Walsh’s continuation of Sayers' detective fiction. The story itself is implausible but none the worse for that, I’d rather have a good yarn than something sensible. There are shades of The Moonstone, but more a modern riff and riposte to it, all well constructed, and I whizzed through quite happy.

Whizzed through partly, to be honest, because there wasn’t much meat in it to slow me down. The characters lack complexity, compared to their treatment under Sayers’ hand, and sadly there’s also less humour and what I can only describe as less energy. Maybe it’s the rationing (the book is set in the 50s). Everyone is subdued and just a shade too sensible, especially the new boys. I badly missed St George – killed in action in the war, sadly.

Speaking of the war we also get a namecheck on the Café de Paris (note to authors: many, many places across the country were bombed out during the war, why does everyone fixate on the Café de Paris?) where the particular emerald we’re interested in was worn on the fateful night.

Anyway the pace picks up, Wimsey is hot on the trail, the characterisation of the people he interviews along the way is actually very good, you really start to get hooked and then..

And then suddenly the ancestral home burns down and brother Denver keels over, so Wimsey is the new duke and has to rush off to help, abandoning his investigation. Long faces all round, grump grump grump, goodness aren’t the death duties high.. oh well, I suppose his majesty didn’t expect to have to be king and he managed.

Frankly you would think a dukedom were a glass of not-so-sparkling cyanide from the way he and Harriet react.

So that oddly unnecessary and pace-killing interlude over and we’re back in London to continue the main story. Emeralds retrieved, murderer caught, don’t really believe the motive but never mind, it’s that sort of story.

All nicely wrapped up with a letter from the Duchess of Denver at the end which is worth the entry price alone. And yet.. and yet I know I'll never reread it.