REVIEW: Behold, Here’s Poison – Georgette Heyer

(House of Stratus 2001, originally published 1936)

This is one of my favourites of Georgette Heyer’s mystery novels, since the characters are delightful and the plot ingenious. Like many of her crime novels, however, she doesn’t entirely play fair with the reader, since the murderer’s motivation only comes about in the denouement and at second-hand.

At The Poplars, the Matthews family is shaken by the sudden death of Gregory Matthews, a strong-willed and argumentative man. While Gregory’s sister Harriet and sister-in-law Zoe (together with Zoe’s children Guy and Stella) are quite willing to accept Dr Fielding’s diagnosis of heart failure, Gertrude Lupton, Gregory’s majestic older sister, disputes this and demands a post-mortem and inquest. Accordingly, this is done, and Gregory is found to have been poisoned with nicotine; Scotland Yard – in the shape of Superintendent Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway – are called in. Suspicion, naturally, falls on the members of the family, including Randall Matthews, Gregory’s nephew and heir, who lives in London and is cordially disliked by his relatives. Or could Henry Lupton, Gertrude’s husband, be the guilty party?

Hannasyde and Hemingway find their investigation stymied since they can’t find out how the poison was administered. It’s only when harmless – if eccentric – Aunt Harriet dies unexpectedly, that the solution becomes clearer.

I like the characters in this, since they’re well-drawn and their behaviour realistic; their relationships are often amusing, too. I liked the bit, for example, where Mr Rumbold, neighbour and friend, becomes the recipient of confidences from all the remaining occupants of The Poplars after Gregory’s murder is discovered. The story is ingenious, and Randall, particularly with his rude remarks, is very amusing.

“It is now obvious to us all that he has every objection,” said Randall. “You know, you had very much better withdraw, my dear aunt. I feel sure that Uncle Henry’s double life is going to be exposed. My own conviction is that he has been keeping a mistress for years.”

Giles could not forbear casting a quick look from Randall’s handsome, mocking face to Henry Lupton’s grey one. Superintendent Hannasyde remained immovable.

Mrs Lupton flushed. “You forget yourself, Randall. I am not going to stand here and see my husband insulted by your ill-bred notions of what is funny.”

“Oh, I wasn’t insulting him,” said Randall. “Why shouldn’t he have a mistress? I am inclined to think that in his place – as your spouse, my dear Aunt Gertrude – I should have several.”

(p103)

The family’s solicitor, Giles Carrington, appears from Heyer’s earlier Death In The Stocks (which I also very much enjoy), and Hannasyde and Hemingway are recurring detectives.

Heyer’s contemporary-set crime novels are a bit on the snobbish side: for example, the family consider that Rose’s action in having given an interview to a newspaper (she’s one of the maids) is blatant impertinence and a sacking offence, but there’s a nice bit at the beginning where Mary, the other maid, is collecting shoes for cleaning and musing on the characters and behaviour of all the people she serves.

Entertaining and ingenious as a crime novel, Behold, Here’s Poison also sheds an interesting light on the lives of the upper-middle classes of the time.

REVIEW: Sophie’s Turn – Nicky Wells

(self-published e-book 2011)

Kindle edition cover (image from Amazon)

Sophie is a journalist, more-or-less happily engaged to Tim, an accountant, when she meets up with members of the former rock band Tusk. In her late teens, we discover, Sophie had had a huge crush on the singer, Dan, and spent a night with the band after a gig in Edinburgh, which has proved to be one of the most momentous nights of her life.

The book begins with a prologue, in which we encounter Sophie and Dan in Paris, and in which Dan proposes to Sophie – she accepts, but not seriously, because she is sure he’s not being serious, and because she’s currently engaged to someone else. During the rest of the book, Sophie recounts the story of how she got to this point, while also flash-backing to the memorable Edinburgh gig, and how she resolves the dilemma facing her.

I should confess in advance that Nicky Wells is a friend, but I have tried to be as objective as possible in this review.

I enjoyed the book, though I don’t read a lot of this kind of fiction. It’s well-plotted and the writing is workmanlike rather than descriptive. At first, Sophie is rather a hard character to like, for me – she clearly doesn’t love Tim, but deludes herself constantly about him, simply because she wants a boyfriend and security. Her best friend, Rachel, is much more clear-sighted about Sophie’s relationship with Tim, and the interactions between the two women are realistic and often amusing. The way Sophie cringes with embarrassment at Tim being found out in his determination to kill slugs at midnight is hard for me to sympathise with, as is her insistence on her boyfriend performing the conventional signals and actions of what she sees to be the ideal relationship. Yes, flowers and romantic gestures are nice, but the way Rachel and she criticise Tim for daring to make suggestions for the wedding seems ludicrous – marriage isn’t solely about the bride, despite what they think.

However, during the course of the book, Sophie does grow up, sorts out her feelings for both Tim and Dan, and the book ends very satisfyingly.

There’s quite a lot of comedy in the book, and I liked seeing glimpses of Sophie’s work – so often the work life of fictional characters intrudes so seldom into the narrative that one wonders how they can spend time doing all the non-work activities described – and her concern over money and her budgeting is realistic. Wells shows her inexperience with the sudden introduction of Sophie’s parents in the narrative at a crucial point, which makes their appearance seem a little too much like a plot contrivance: however, they’re written as real people and Sophie’s relationship with them is touching.

To sum up, an entertaining piece of wish-fulfilment which is resolved satisfyingly and realistically, with a flawed heroine who eventually realises what is important in life.

2011: The year in books

I read a few more than 147 books in 2011, since some of the more frequent re-reads did not make it to my official list. Of these, 31 were re-reads: not a bad percentage, for me.

As any reader who has visited here more than once will realise, my blogging dedication sadly fell off after September 2011, as so did my reading, really. I was working abroad and not feeling inclined to review the books I had read, and spending more time writing other things than this blog.

So begins a new year’s resolution, to start blogging again regularly, and to try and clear the backlog of the books I failed to review last year.

Just a summary of the best and worst books read last year:

Best non-fiction:

Too Big To Fail – Andrew Ross Sorkin (2009): An entertaining and riveting account of the 2007 crash, the failure of Lehman Brothers and the bank bailouts. I now want to see the film version. (Review coming)

Best children’s book:

The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy – Penelope Lively (1971): Exquisite descriptions and genuine menace evoked in Devon as the Wild Hunt is invoked. (Review coming)

Best surprise:

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens (1859): A novel by Dickens that I actually enjoyed. Exciting, tension-filled, and with real characters.

Biggest disappointment:

Of Mutability – Jo Shapcott (2010): I had expected much more from this collection of poetry by Shapcott which had won the Costa Book of the Year prize in 2010, but was distinctly disappointed by almost all the poems.

Most inciting:

The Anthologist – Nicholson Baker (2009): Made me want to read more poetry.

Happy 2012, everyone! May it be filled with lots of good books.

REVIEW: Whom the Gods Love – Kate Ross

(Hodder and Stoughton 1996)

Julian Kestrel – Regency dandy, man-about-town and sometime sleuth – begins his third adventure in a churchyard in Hampstead, where Sir Malcolm Faulkland, eminent barrister, has asked for a meeting. Sir Malcolm wants Kestrel to investigate the circumstances of his son’s death: Alexander Faulkland was murdered at a party he and his wife were giving at their home, and so far no leads have been found, nor are the Bow Street Runners entirely happy to be conducting their enquiries amongst Alexander’s rich and titled friends. There seems, on the face of it, no reason why anyone would want to kill Alexander, who was popular, handsome, rich and lucky. Despite his misgivings, Julian agrees to investigate, but warns Sir Malcolm that the truth may not be palatable.

So he begins his investigation, using his social contacts to quiz the party guests, and finding some inconsistencies. As he delves deeper, he finds that Belinda, Alexander’s wife, Quentin Clare, a young barrister, and David Isaacs, a Jewish financier, are keeping secrets, and these secrets reveal the dead man to be quite different to the man his father thinks him.

Whom the Gods Love is a well-written period detective novel: Julian is an entertaining sleuth, and he has a nice working relationship with Peter Vance, one of the Bow Street Runners. Ross evokes the manners, mores and fashions of the time very nicely, though she explores the seamy underbelly of Regency London far more than, say, Heyer does, and doesn’t shy away from depicting real violence and exploitation. Julian is aided, as ever, by his valet, former pickpocket “Dipper” Stokes: one of his strengths as a detective is his ease in all sorts of social situations, which comes about through his own history, which Ross alludes to throughout the four novels which feature Kestrel.

One of the pleasures of the Kestrel books is their characterisation (as well as their clever plots) – the main characters are complex, individual people, with sound reasons for behaving in the way they do. Isaacs and Belinda are particularly interesting, though she, being a woman, is more constrained by the times in her behaviour and wishes – unable to overrule her husband’s decisions to keep Eugene, her half-brother, at home, and unable to prevent him spending her fortune – she’s a tragic figure.

Unfortunately, Ross’s early death cut short her writing career, and there are only four Julian Kestrel mysteries: Cut to the Quick, A Broken Vessel (which was the first one I read), Whom the Gods Love and The Devil in Music. All are excellent, serious in tone, though with moments of humour: The Devil in Music is set in Italy, and has a background of post-Napoleonic Europe, opera – and music and singing in general – and espionage. It helps to read them in order, since characters from earlier novels reappear or are referred to in later ones, but generally the books can be read as stand-alone novels. If you read them in order you can see Ross growing in confidence as a writer, too, more comfortable with her chosen milieu – but even the earlier books are excellent.

I’d recommend these to anyone who enjoys detective novels or historical novels.

REVIEW: Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth – Oliver Hilmes

(Yale University Press 2011)

I picked this up at Blackwell’s music shop in Oxford (along with lots of CDs of twentieth century music) – something of a departure for me, since I don’t tend to read biography, and I’m not a big fan of Richard Wagner’s music.

Hilmes’ biography of Cosima, Wagner’s second wife, turns out to be a fascinating study, both of the woman and her family – she was one of Franz Liszt’s illegitimate daughters – and her role as Wagner’s helper, and later gatekeeper of his legacy. The book covers a lot of ground, since Cosima was a long-lived woman, and introduces many people who were both intimately involved with the Wagners as well as only on the periphery.

Cosima and her elder sister, Blandine, and younger brother Daniel, were born to Liszt and his mistress Marie d’Agoult: when the couple split up, the children seem to have been essentially left in limbo, living with Liszt’s mother and having very little contact with either parent, and their education supervised by two appalling, strict governesses. Hilmes makes a lot of Cosima’s exposure to Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ, and speculates that it informed her tendency towards mental masochism, but I suspect that being brought up to regard one’s father as a genius whose children weren’t worthy of him has a lot to do with Cosima’s later hero-worship of Wagner.

Cosima married the conductor Hans von Bülow, and through him became acquainted with Richard Wagner (who was still married to his first wife). The von Bülows’ marriage was not a happy one, with neither party behaving particularly well to the other, and Cosima became Wagner’s mistress – two of the children she had while married to von Bülow were later acknowledged to be Wagner’s, though never officially, which caused a good deal of unhappiness and strife after Wagner’s death.

She sounds the kind of woman who should never have married anyone as selfish and egotistical as Wagner – Cosima’s tendency to treat Wagner’s every pronouncement as prophecy or truth can’t have been good for either of them. After his death, she took over the running of the Bayreuth Festival, and single-mindedly promoted a Wagner cult of which she was high priestess.

Hilmes drew upon a vast array of archive documentation and his book is full of entertaining detail: Cosima emerges as a fascinating character, dominant and yet subservient, but also thoroughly unpleasant (she was perhaps even more anti-Semitic than Wagner, and treated even colleagues and family friends who were Jewish with barbed comments and faint praise), controlling and snobbish. She seems to have tried to manipulate and influence everyone with whom she came into contact, and appears to have been a major source of conflict in her children’s marriages: not one of the von Bülow or Wagner children were happy or well-adjusted, and a lot of pressure was put on the youngest, Siegfried (the only one of Cosima and Wagner’s children he acknowledged legally) as Wagner’s heir, which he was unable to live up to. The book also covers German cultural history of the time, and Cosima’s contribution to the politicisation of Wagner as a hero of German nationalism.

The book is well-written, and well-translated into English by Stewart Spencer. In general Hilmes seems to be admirably objective, except perhaps having a tendency to be a good deal more sympathetic towards Liszt’s treatment of his children than I think he deserves.

Recommended to anyone interested in music or German history.

REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes (film, 2009)

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

I really like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes – more famous than his creator – and wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to watch Guy Ritchie’s 2009 film version which takes huge liberties with the characters and plot, even if Robert Downey Jr. was playing Holmes.

It was on one of the satellite channels I get in my hotel in Doha, and I thought I’d watch, partly since the Literary Omnivore had reviewed it some time ago and enjoyed it. To my surprise I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. The beginning of the film sets the tone for what is to follow, with Holmes running through the streets, followed by the police in carriages, descent into what looks like the crypt of St Paul’s cathedral, and the prevention of murder by evil Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Three months later, Blackwood, convicted for previous murders and the practice of black magic, is executed. Watson (Jude Law) pronounces him dead after the hanging.

A couple of days later, however, Blackwood appears to have risen from the dead, and Holmes, naturally investigates, aided by Watson as usual. Rachel MacAdams appears as Irene Adler, whose previous besting of Holmes, is only alluded to by Watson, though readers of the short stories will know how she did so from ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. In the film she’s working for someone she fears, and both helps and hinders Holmes in his investigations. Also running through the plot is Watson’s relationship with Mary Morstan (who actually enters the Holmes canon in The Sign of the Four, a completely unrelated novel), which Holmes consistently tries to sabotage.

The plot was fast-moving and slightly ridiculous, with bare-knuckle boxing matches, incendiary devices, supposed magic and a wonderfully grimy-looking Victorian London. One quibble was the use of Tower Bridge, under construction in the film, but seemingly located miles away from its real position on the Thames. It seemed a little odd to have Holmes and Watson travelling from Baker Street to Pentonville prison via east London, and for Irene to appear on the bridge after her brief crawl from the Houses of Parliament through the sewers near the end of the film. It does make a great location for the film’s climax, though. And although Downey Jr. makes a good stab at the English accent, he was often hard to understand – mumbling a bit in some places.

Watson is played much less buffoonishly than he can appear in the stories, a man of action who can wield a sword and a revolver and can kick doors down. Downey Jr.’s Holmes is an interesting take on Holmes – still very intelligent and analytical, but far more physical than he’s shown in the stories. The relationship between the two of them in the film is also quite different – the literary Watson is a good deal more respectful of Holmes’s analytical skills and of him as a person than this cinematic version, where they chaff each other and in which Holmes seems to value his friend more. The attempts to alienate Watson from Mary however are very much not canon, though their relationship in the film is rather sweet.

The music by Hans Zimmer was splendid (so much so that I’ve bought the soundtrack album), and really contributed to the mood of the film, seeming to drive its plot and point the humorous bits. Unlike most of Zimmer’s soundtracks (which are usually fully orchestral), his score for Sherlock Holmes used what sounded like a gypsy orchestra such as Taraf de Haïdouks, with lots of screechy violins and cimbalom.

If you’re a real Holmes purist, this film may not be to your taste, but I found it an engaging and enjoyable riff on Doyle’s classic tales. The ITV versions with Jeremy Brett stick much more closely to canon, and Edward Hardwicke makes a pretty good Watson.

LIST: Lacuna (not the Barbara Kingsolver book)

Apologies for the long gap in my posting – I’ve been overseas on and off since September and not feeling much inclined to review books (though I read quite a few last month, though hardly any so far in November).

Currently on the Kindle to be read is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which I started a few weeks ago, but got a bit discouraged with – I’m barely a tenth of the way through and it feels like more should have happened by now! Also I don’t care much for either Vronsky or Anna, which doesn’t help.

The paperback I’ve got with me is Jennifer Egan’s Look At Me, which I picked up in Blackwells in Oxford a couple of months ago.

And have just finished Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, which was interesting, a bit like Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest in terms of body count, but very like hard-boiled crime fiction except set in the future. Takeshi Kovacs, the narrator and protagonist (great name!) is an interesting but not particularly appealing character.

Hopefully tomorrow a post about the 2009 film, Sherlock Holmes, which I watched on TV recently, and then back to book reviews.

REVIEW: Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson

(Orbit e-book, originally published 1992)

Kindle edition cover, image from Amazon

This was the very first novel by Neal Stephenson that I read, long before Cryptonomicon or The Baroque Trilogy. There’s a lot of similarity between it and Zodiac (which I read for the first time recently), with its eccentric protagonist and initially meandering plot. Although unlike Zodiac, Snow Crash is set in a relatively distant future, where the United States has become a series of corporate enclaves – Mr Lee’s Greater Hong Kong, for example – and the Mafia control all pizza deliveries…

Our hero, the aptly named Hiro Protagonist, former hacker and now pizza delivery operative for Cosa Nostra, loses his way while on a delivery run, distracted by a young Kourier, and crashes his car into an empty swimming pool: to enable the pizza to be delivered within the guaranteed thirty-minute time limit, YT (the skateboarding Kourier) sets off with the pizza, delivers it narrowly in time, and thus earns the gratitude of the Mafia, and its boss, Uncle Enzo, in particular.

Hiro later helps YT escape jail, and they form a partnership to find information. Soon they start hearing things about a drug called Snow Crash, a cult which seems to have its own glossolalic language, and a violent man called Raven who has a nuclear bomb and a grudge, and is very skilled at killing people with knives he makes from glass.

The book is inventive and intriguing, with information about Sumerian culture, for example, computer programming (which Stephenson always refers to as hacking) and sword fighting. There are lots of characters, both human and not, and one of Stephenson’s gifts is to make the reader care what happens to them. He pokes fun at the seemingly unproductive and micro-managed Feds, for whom YT’s mother works as a programmer, with their endless lie-detector tests and conformities. Hiro eventually works out what is going on, and there are moments of info-dumping, but it’s done in an entertaining way and sustains interest: besides, it’s how Hiro is obtaining the information himself.

Snow Crash is one of those books, like Neuromancer, credited with foreseeing or predicting future trends in the computing world: Stephenson’s version of cyberspace is the Metaverse, which is like a huge virtual reality world in which real people can interact through the use of avatars. Since Hiro was heavily involved in the creation of the Metaverse, along with his ex-girlfriend, Juanita, and other hackers, he’s a lot more powerful and knowledgable in this virtual reality than he is in the real world – though he’s a good sword-fighter in both.

I thoroughly enjoyed this, and have re-read it a couple of times: the only minor quibble I have is that the end feels a bit rushed. Otherwise it’s a very entertaining (and often darkly funny) work of speculative fiction. I’d recommend it both as that and as an introduction to Stephenson’s novels, since it’s relatively short in comparison to, say, Cryptonomicon (though that is a fantastic book).

REVIEW: The Emperor’s Edge – Lindsay Buroker

(self-published e-book 2010)

e-book cover (image from Amazon)

This was another recommendation from Erin at Aelia Reads (she recommended Please Ignore Vera Dietz, which I enjoyed), and which I downloaded for my Kindle along with a short story collection and the sequel. The Emperor’s Edge is set in the city of ‘Stumps’ in the Turgonian empire: the book begins with Corporal Amaranthe Lokdon, one of the very few female law enforcers, and her partner Corporal Wholt investigating a fire in the city. While upholding the law in a merchant’s shop, Amaranthe encounters the young emperor, Sespian, but she and Wholt are soon pulled off the fire investigation for more “appropriate” clean-up duties very soon; later that day she’s sent to Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest (who was also the emperor’s regent and is still probably the most powerful man in the empire). He wants her to kill the assassin Sicarius. Despite Sicarius being known to have killed more than five hundred people in the last five years, including a Satrap Governor, Amaranthe takes the assignment.

Though she fails in the assignment, she realises to her horror that she was meant to, and that Hollowcrest – and a shadowy group in the background – have some interest in harming the emperor, who’s more interested in architecture and studies than in the military conquest which has sustained the empire for centuries. Determined to find out what’s planned and to stop it, Amaranthe gathers together a motley crew of lowlifes to undertake a counterfeiting operation, while they investigate the plot and try to stop it.

The world-building is excellently done – sufficiently detailed so that one can envisage the environs, but not so detailed that it overwhelms the plot. There are a few steampunk elements, but not many, and a bit of magic (though the Turgonians officially deny its existence), but they add to the atmosphere rather than being major parts of the story. Amaranthe is an excellent protagonist – she’s a strong, intelligent woman in a largely man’s world (though Turgonian women are allowed to be and many are excellent businesswomen), but the reader sees enough from her point of view that she’s not masculine in any way. The devising of her scheme and the finding of her comrades is both amusing and shows how her leadership skills develop: it doesn’t seem at all unrealistic. She’s credibly slower and weaker than most men, though they often underestimate her because she’s a woman. She shows commendable quickness in devising escape plans, which is needed, although she’s sometimes a little naïve.

I like this example of her quick – lateral – thinking in an emergency:

Amaranthe bent her legs, drew her shoulder back, and hurled her sword with all her strength. Reflexively, both men lifted their blades to block. As soon as they realized her weapon would not touch them, they burst into chortles.

The men were not her targets.

Her sword crashed into the ceiling-high collection of coffee tins behind them. The stack exploded, full canisters pummelling the robbers. Metal thudded against skin and bone, and the men cursed as they flailed, tripped, and inevitably toppled. One hit his head on the counter as he went down, and did not move when he landed. The other fell, scrambled to rise, slipped on a canister, and cracked his chin on the tile floor.

(chapter 1)

There are other nice touches, too, of the monumental architecture, the ice-houses, and the bickering between Amaranthe and her comrades, not to mention the very different settings they visit during their scheme ranging from the rookeries of criminal gangs to exclusive parties to male escort agencies! Sicarius is perhaps a little too much the invincible assassin, but Buroker gives realistic reasons for this, and indicates that he has to train hard to maintain this ability.

Although a self-published production, the book is generally well-edited and proofed, and the formatting has only a few errors – nothing significant. It’s an example to other e-books, in that respect. The only problem I had with the prose style is that occasionally some words are used which aren’t strictly correct: “…assassinations circumnavigated justice…” for example (loc. 392) where it should probably be “circumvented”. But these are minor quibbles: I enjoyed the book a lot and am looking forward to the sequel, Dark Currents.

RECOMMENDATION: Short stories

I don’t read a lot of short stories, and some writers are better than others in creating their worlds, but it’s a form of fiction which I do enjoy. I haven’t read any stories by some of the acknowledged masters of the genre, such as Paul Auster, so this is a biassed and partial selection in no sort of order of short story collections by writers whose short stories I particularly liked. It’s probably no coincidence that I first read longer works by most of these authors (Doyle and ‘Saki’ aside).

Penguin paperback edition (image from Amazon)

‘The Shout’ and other stories – Robert Graves

A very varied selection of stories from the sinister title story of the man with a singular power, to vignettes of the writer’s life in Majorca.

Kindle edition cover (image from Amazon)

Collected Short Stories – Arthur C. Clarke

Clarke wrote a huge amount of short fiction, mostly in the SF vein, and of varying length – most are very short. He likes the last paragraph twist in the tale (sometimes, it seems, for its own sake) but the most memorable are subtly horrifying – ‘The Ninety Billion Names of God’, for example.

Kindle edition cover (image from Amazon)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle

While almost all of the Holmes stories have some merit, my favourites are the earlier ones included in this collection, including ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, ‘The Five Orange Pips’ and ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, which shine a cold light on the seamy side of Victorian society.

Paperback edition cover (image from Amazon)

The Chronicles of Clovis – ‘Saki’

While all of ‘Saki’s stories of the Edwardian upper classes with their effete, witty, heroes are entertaining, I think the best ones are those which feature Clovis, such as ‘Tobermory’ in which consternation arises after a cat is taught to speak English, the triumphal ‘Sredni Vashtar’, or the plain amusing ‘The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope’. Amoral and acerbic and very entertaining.

Penguin cover (image from Amazon)

‘Quantum of Solace’ and other short stories – Ian Fleming

The titles of stories in this volume of collected stories featuring Fleming’s famous spy, James Bond, may well be familiar to fans of the films, but the plots of the stories certainly won’t.

Facsimile hb cover (image from Amazon)

The Mysterious Mr. Quin – Agatha Christie

These probably aren’t the best examples of the short story form, but I’m very fond of them, nevertheless. Mr Quin is a representation of the commedia del’arte character Harlequin, and his interactions with elderly Mr Satterthwaite enable the latter to deduce solutions to tricky murders.

Penguin pb cover (image from Amazon)

Plain Tales from the Hills – Rudyard Kipling

Kipling wrote many books in the short form – one could easily argue that the Jungle Books are simply a collection of short stories – but I do like this particular collection of stories, ranging from the amusing to the horrifying to the moving, and featuring a broad cast of characters both British and Indian. I can leave the Mulvaney stories since I find the dialect hard to understand, but there are many others to enjoy.

Paperback edition (image from Amazon)

A Book of Enchantments – Patricia Wrede

Some of the stories in this volume are quite different to Wrede’s best-known work, The Enchanted Forest chronicles, with their light-hearted tone and upsetting of fairy-tale tropes; I particularly liked ‘The Lorelei’, with its stubborn teenage heroine. That said, there is also a fantastic story called ‘Utensile Strength’ about the Frying Pan of Doom, no less!

I also recommend Robin McKinley’s lovely The Door in the Hedge, but it’s a collection of only four long stories of fairy-tale retellings.

HB cover (image from Amazon)

My favourite anthology is probably The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (edited by Patricia Craig), which contains a wide variety of crime fiction, presented in roughly chronological order , and includes stories by such writes as Arthur Conan Doyle, Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Cyril Hare and G. K. Chesterton as well as modern writers such as Ruth Rendell and Reginald Hill. Each of them is a gem.

If you read short stories, which authors do you like, and why?