« Model Engineers 2013 | Main | Faking it »
Wednesday July 31, 2013
Books in July
- The Patience of the Spider and August Heat by Andrea
Camilleri
[translated by Stephen Sartarelli and read by Daniel Philpott]
Another two Montalbano mysteries as "easy listening" in the
car. In fact they are so good that it got to the point that I was almost
inventing car journeys just so I could listen to more of them.
Both very poignant tales - the mysteries are satisfactorily revealed but
owing to the nature of the stories (murders) the outcomes could never be described as satisfactory.
In August Heat I truly felt for Salvo - he (like me) is of a certain
age and not quite able to come to terms with getting older - hardly believing
he could be attractive to a beautiful young woman - and yet at the same time - believing.
He is still firmly tied to Livia (though she is "away" and blaming
him for all kinds of things outside of his control) so there is just lots
of guilt and real bitter sadness when realisation strikes.
- Port Mortuary and Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell
The plots of these books is strongly linked - almost a continuation
of one another. I was not keen on Port Mortuary to start with - too
much military and cloak and dagger - but it developed into the usual
good story and exciting
climax. I liked Red Mist a little better - it was more personal to "Kay"
- and the "bad guy" was more your traditional run-of-the-mill lunatic
and motivations did not involve some military conspiracy theory plot.
- The Martin Beck Killings: The Locked Room by Maj Sjöwall
& Per Wahlöö [Translated by Paul Brittén and dramatised for Radio
4 by Katie Hims]
Radio 4 has produced the entire Martin Beck series of 10 detective novels by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in the Saturday afternoon drama slot - and with an enviable cast of excellent British actors.
The books about Martin Beck and his colleagues in the National Police Homicide Department in Stockholm were written between 1965-1975, (when Per died), and are police procedural novels.
Unfortunately, I've only managed to catch one of them so far but I think I would quite like to read the books - as usual, it is a challenge to fit a full novel into a 1 hour play.
Posted by Christina at 1:24 PM. Category: Books of the Month
