Snow

by John Banville

Banville won the Booker Prize for his book the Sea.  I read it but can't remember it.

This book, Snow, is a mystery book.  Apparently he has written other mysteries under a pseudonym.

The story takes place in Ireland in 1957  A priest has been found dead in a rich family's house.  He was stabbed in the neck and castrated.  We find out the man often spent time hanging around with this family even though class-wise he was out of their league.  He boarded his horse at their stable.

Dept Inspector St. John Strafford and ad assistant come to investigate.  The priest is Catholic, the family is Protestant and there is a lot of discussion in the book about the animosity between the two faiths.

As the Inspector investigates he meets the older man who owns the house.  He doesn't have any explanation of why this could have happened in his house. We meet the man's second wife, a much younger woman, who seems totally strung out on drugs.  We meet the man's daughter who hates her step mother and who is a manipulative, self-centred brat.  The son is also home from university.

As the story proceeds we are also introduced to a reclusive young man who works on the property.  The young woman torments him sexually, teasing him, forcing him to have oral sex on her.  The inspector's deputy goes missing and despite searches by local people he isn't found for several days until he is found dead in the van from a local business.

The inspector had seen the reclusive young man driving the van the day before.  Before they can arrest him they find him dead of suicide.  It comes out that the priest had been the priest at a boy's orphanage where the reclusive young man lived as a youth.  The priest sexually abused the young man and also the son of the family in whose house the priest was killed.  The priest was also sexually abusing the son of the family.  It is assumed that the recluse killed the priest because of the abuse.

However a few years later the Inspector runs into the daughter of the family and things she says hint that she actually was the one who killed the priest, but the recluse was the one who emasculated him.  This was a surprising plot twist.

I really enjoyed this book, the author's descriptions of the settings and the people were superb.  It was a masterful story.

 

The Henna Artist

 by Alka Joshi

This books has been on the Best Seller and Best Books of the Year lists for the past year.  It is about a young Indian woman, Lakshmi who has escaped an abusive marriage and made a life for herself as a Henna Artist in the city of Jaipur.  She knew she had shamed her family but sent them money.  She did not know her mother burned the letters without looking inside.  Unbeknownst to Lakshmi her Mother gave birth to another daughter after she left home.  She had hoped to build a home in Jaipur and have her family come live with them.  However both her parents have died leaving her young teenage sister Radha an orphan.  Radha is tormented by the locals who believe she has a curse on her.

Radha someone finds Lakshmi's estranged husband and they are able to find her in Jaipur.   Lakshmi is surprised to find she has a sister and terrified that her husband has found her.  He demands money from her and she feels he will keep coming after her for more.

Lakshmi is building a lovely house for herself and plans on expanding into being a matchmaker and she almost achieves this but then her wayward sister gets pregnant by the son of one of her influential clients.  Lakshmi had also gotten an in with the palace through helping heal the spirits of the Head man's wife.  However her reputation is ruined, all her clients make excuses for abandoning her.  Lakshmi has people hounding her for payment and goes the the husband of her influential client.  He likes her as she has given him some medicines in the past to help his mistresses not get pregnant or miscarry.  He agrees to give her the money but his wife finds out and is even more furious with her.

Lakshmi's husband eventually finds a role helping out the prostitutes that live in the city and stops bothering her.

Lakshmi cooks a plan to have the palace adopt her nephew when he is born but her sister refuses to give up the baby.  She and her sister go to a town in the country with a friend/relative who is also pregnant.  The friend loses her baby and Radha decides she does not want her baby adopted by the palace but rather by their family friend.

In the end Lakshmi decides to stay in the little village as her medicinal knowledge and skills are appreciated there. 

It was an interesting story.  The main character was so hardworking and scheming but it all fell apart for her.  It certainly kept you interested.  She did a great job of portraying the lives of the rich and poor, the gossipy nature of the rich women and how hard Lakshmi had to work to keep her customers happy.

 

A Bitter Feast

 by Deborah Crombie

This mystery takes place in a small village in England.  A married couple, who are police officers, are invited to come and bring their three children to the family home of a colleague.  The colleague's mother is holding a fund raising luncheon.  The mother of the family drives to the family estate with the female officer.  Her husband plans to drive up on his own later in the day.

The colleague's parents are wealthy, owner's of a newspaper publishing empire.  The colleague is always reluctant to tell people who here parents are.

There is a small pub restaurant in the nearby village.  One evening a local woman is sitting having dinner and notices a distinguished looking man also alone.  Shortly after the man goes into the kitchen and there is a lot of shouting.  The chef tells him to get out.  The man storms out of the pub leaving his coat behind. 

The woman leaves shortly after.  As she is driving home she sees the man from the pub staggering on the road.  She is a former nurse and sees the man is in distress.  She offers him a ride and then quickly sets off to the nearest hospital.  But they don't make it to the hospital.  She crashes into the car of the police officer who had been driving up to join his family.  The woman and the man in her car both die, but the woman mumbles something to the police officer who is injured but not seriously.  

The plot thickens when the police find out the man in the car was dead before the accident and as he has no id on him they don't know who he is.  After interviewing locals no one can explain why the woman would have had the man in her car.  People don't think that she knew him.

It then turns out that the dead man was a formerly famous chef who has fallen on hard times. He had come to try to woe the local chef to join him in a new restaurant endeavour in London.  The chef had wanted nothing to do with him.  We later find out that the chef was the father of her child and has threatened for joint custody if she doesn't agree.

Later the bartender is found dead on the side of the road.  It is clear he was hit on purpose and then bludgeoned.

Throughout the book the police that are visiting are working along with the local police to try to figure out what is going on.  Eventually it comes out that the partner of the local chef has killed the London chef because she doesn't want to lose her partner.  She killed the bartender because he had seen her talking to the London chef on the night he died.

This was the first book I have read by this author.  I enjoyed. it. was a interesting story but there were a lot of characters and an additional plot about the police officer from the wealthy family having a musician boyfriend she ends up breaking up with. There was another plot with two employees of the wealthy family skimming funds from the family.  These were extraneous as far as I am concerned.

Talking Animals

 by Joni Murphy

This book is about an animal society as the inhabitants of New York City. The Mayor is a horse, other city hall staff include a pig.  Alfonzo is a moody Alpaca  He works in the bowels of City Hall in the archives dept.  The basement is mouldy.  Alfonzo even wonders if anyone knows he is there.  In addition to sorting paperwork he also cleans the area. He is the sole employee.  

 Alfonso is working at City Hall in what he thinks is a temporary situation.  He is writing a dissertation, hoping to become a professor. He is devastated when his dissertation is rejected as disjointed by his advisor.  Alfonso has a friend at city hall, a llama.  This llama tries to get him to be less serious and not devastated by his academic results. Eventually Alfonso learns that the basement is being renovated and is invited to a meeting at which he assumes his job will be declared redundant.

Alfonso is also plagued by his father who is very critical of him.  Alfonso meets with his father occasionally and these occasions are always very traumatic for him.  He is terrified to tell his father about the rejection of his dissertation.

As part of the story there is friction between land animals and ocean life.  The land animals believe that the ocean animals plan to flood and take over the world.  This part of the book is the most satirical, possibly reflecting the racial/religious tension in the U.S.

In another plot line, Alfonso is introduced to a radical element in the city by his llama friend. They are trying to prove that the Mayor is using his position to reduce the value of some property and then buy it to make money.  He is awarding a lot of contracts to one country.  Alfonzo had printed his dissertation on used paper his friend  the llama. The used paper contains details on the corruption in City Hall.  This information gets to the media and the Mayor is exposed.

I can appreciate the attempt the author made to use animals as part of her satire but I kept getting fixated on the fact that animals would not be able to type, dress themselves, make coffee, etc.  This distracted me a bit from the story.  I am not sure that this story couldn't have been told as well without the animal characters.  It has been decades since I read Animal Farm but I think Orwell tried to incorporate animal stereotypes into his characterizations.  This wasn't done much in this book.

Fall Down Dead

 by Stephen Booth

This book was recommended for its strong sense of scenery and it certainly did that.  The main setting is Kinder Scout in the Peak District.  The area is a rugged but popular hiking area with many challenges including peat bogs that will suck you in to the knees and steep cliffs.

The book opens with what appears to be and open and shut murder case, a husband has stabbed his wife and admits to doing it.  At the end of the book this isn't really settled, it could possibly be the couple's son.

However, the majority of the book is about the death of a woman, who falls, or has been pushed over the cliff during a fog.  The woman was part of a group that annually hiked the area in tribute to the relatives of the hike organizer's ancestors who did the hike in protest years before.  The group should have turned back when the fog came in but they kept going until they were disorientated.  Then one of the group hurts his ankle, the woman who ends up dead agrees to stay with him while the others split up and go seeking a cell signal or assistance,

The police then have a dozed potential suspects, the members of the hiking group, one of which is the woman's brother.

While this is going on a former colleague of the local police, a woman from another detachment is being investigated by professional standards.  The case seems very weak and you have to wonder why they would bother.  Her sister used to be a drug addict and associated with some very bad people but eventually became a police informant.  It almost seems that they are trying to set this officer up but not sure why... perhaps they thinks she knows something about other crooked cops.  The police officer confides in the policeman who is investigating the death on the cliff.  He goes in to see the investigators and vouches for her and that seems to get her off the hook.

Eventually we find out that a woman the police least suspect killed the woman because she thought there was a romantic relationship between the woman and the group leader (the murderer is in love with the group leader).  The group leader is murdered and his wife is shocked to learn his company is on the verge of bankruptcy.

I enjoyed the descriptions of the scenery but the police intrigue was a bit weak.  The rest of the story was okay.

Whose Body

by  Dorothy Sayers

This is the first book by this author about her amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.  Peter is a man of means who likes to try his hand at solving crimes.  The book was originally published in 1923, there is a great deal of class snobbery and anti semitism in it.

Wamsey has an acquaintance in the police force that he enjoys working with.  There is another police official who does not appreciate him getting involved in cases.

There are two cases that pop up about the same time, one a wealthy financier apparently vanishes from his bedroom.  In the other case a naked corpse, wearing only a monical is found in the bathtub of a London architect.

The police arrest the architect who denies all knowledge of the yet to be identified man.

It is Peter Wimsey who eventually figures out that the culprit in both crimes is a local doctor.  The doctor had a grudge against the financier, and killed him, dressing up as the man and pretending to come home, only to be discovered absent the next day.

The dead man in the tub is a corpse donated to the hospital for medical teaching purposes.  The doctor put the financier in the coffin intended for the donated corpse and crawled along the roofs of buildings to dispose of the donated corpse.  He took advantage of an open window in the architect's house to dispose of the building. However he shaved the corpse and fixed him up so he would appear to be a gentleman and not a worker.  Wimsey had noticed that the man's hands made it appear that he was a labourer.

It was an interesting story but I prefer mysteries where there is a bit more description of setting and character development.  As early mysteries go I think Agatha Christie's are much better written.

Miss Benson's Beetle

 by Rachel Joyce

This was an entertaining tale.  It is about a spinster school teacher.  One day when she is trying to teach she finds the students circulating an unflattering drawing of her.  She has had enough.  She leaves the classroom and goes into the staff room.  She then steals her Principal's hiking boots and leaves the building.

As a child she had had a book about animals and was intrigued by one particular gold beetle that is supposed to exist in Madagascar.  When she got older she was befriended by an older man at at museum who showed her various animals, showed her how to collect insects and mount them.

She decides that she has to do something useful in her life, something which will show people that she is not a waste.  She decides to head to New Caledonia, an island off Australa, to search for the gold beetle.  She applies for funding from a scientific society but is turned down.  She puts and ad in the paper for a companion for her trip.  One man comes, a war vet, she feels he is damaged mentally and physically and is not suitable.  A young woman seems suitable but she backs out at the last minute.  The third applicant was rejected because she was basically illiterate.  But finally Miss Benson is desperate for a companion and invites the second woman to meet her at the train.

The young woman does make it to the train but she does not impress Miss Benson.  She is dressed in a pink suit and does not have suitable attire for the adventure.  However the young woman Enid Pretty proves indispensable in getting them and their luggage on the train and then onto the ship.  Enid also nurses Miss Benson who is very seasick at the start of the voyage.  Miss Benson does not approve of Enid cavorting with men on the ship.  Enid has used her femininity to get around not having a passport. 

Enid tells Miss Benson that she is pregnant but her husband has died.  On the ship she fears she has lost the baby.  She really wants to be a mother. When they finally reach Australia Enid tells Miss Benson that she is going to stay with a man she met on the ship.  Enid and her man friend end up in an immigration camp.

While Miss Benson is trying to get approval and visas for her, she meets the British consul and his wife.  They are not able to help her with her approvals.  She is dismayed that all her scientific equipment has gone missing on the trip from Australia.  She goes to the camp and tries to convince Edid to join her again.  Enid is hesitant/afraid to the leave the man.

Eventually Enid does join her.  She manages to get scientific equipment needed and a jeep (she has stolen these) and they set off for a house in the forest to conduct their research.

While all this is going on two other things are happening.  British police are seeking a young woman who supposedly murdered her husband.  This woman was spotted at the rail station along with an unknown woman.  Police around the world are looking for these women.

Also, the ex-soldier that Miss Benson rejected is outraged that she did not select him and he sneaks aboard ships to get to join her.

Once the ladies are set up they work very hard to fix up their basecamp and fight off mosquitos and heat to climb the mountain looking for the orchids which they hope will lead them to the beetles.  Eventually they both come to realize that they are best friends.

Enid eventually tells Miss Benson that she is being sought by the police.  The soldier catches up with them.  Enid has her baby.  The soldier kills Enid and he himself dies.  Enid is left to raise Enid's daughter.  The British official's wife figures out who the two women are and tries to tell the police and media about them but by then interest in the story has waned.

As the years go by a museum in England periodically receives journals and samples of various bugs.  One young woman after seeing one of the these packages decides she is going to go out and be a naturalist.

This was a cute story.  Obviously there was some criminal behaviour but the development of the friendship between the two women was developed in an interesting way.  The ending was a fitting denoument to the book.