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Tuesday June 30, 2020
Books in June
- The Broken Shore by Peter Temple [read by Peter Hosking]
This was another great discovery from Michael Robotham's Desert Island book list at the Crime Vault website. A book that is really suited to the spoken word, though it needs to be - and was - excellently read in wonderful conversational style by Peter Hosking.
This novel is from 2005, and won the CWA Gold Dagger in 2007. Robotham says of Temple:"he was truly one of Australia's great writers, who never sacrificed the nuances of character, setting, or back story for the sake of plot or pace, giving equal care and attention to even minor players..... a terrific story full of simmering corruption and prejudice, glorious observations, and some of the best writing in the genre"
I felt I wanted to hear more about these characters, but sadly Peter Temple died in 2018 without revisiting them, but I shall certainly be looking out for more of his books, as well as more narrations from Peter Hosking. - Sleeping Dogs by Chris Simms [read by Dean Williamson]
The usual (how blase I am becoming about excellent writers!) exciting police story from Chris Simms. I'm not so fond of Spicer as a character - pugilistic rugger bugger - can't empathise much - but that makes no difference to the fast paced excitement of the stories in which he features.
Fighting dogs are central to this story, along with illegal activities that go with it. I was very interested in the descriptions of the mystery killer dog, based on the thought-to-be-extinct Alano, and was driven to read about it further - comforting myself that it might be mostly a creation of Chris Simm's imagination... -
Agatha RaisinMysteries:
Pushing Up Daisies, the Witches' Tree, the Dead Ringer, and, Beating about the Bush
by M C Beaton [Read by Penelope Keith]I thought it was a long time since I had read any of these books and sure enough there were 4 waiting in the wings. As another one (Hot to Trot) came out in October, I was surprised and very sad to read that Marion Chesney had died in December 2019. I knew she was an older lady - in fact, as I had suspected, in her 50s when she started the Agatha Raisin series, since Agatha had retired from her high powered (1980s) job on her 50th birthday. But unlike Chesney, Agatha stayed forever in her 50s, pursuing the unattainable dream of true love to the last, with the author retaining a fresh style and keeping well up with modern life.
On the latter theme, although the idyll of retiring to the Cotswolds was always a little tongue in cheek, I noticed in these last few books a much greater implicit criticism of the outsiders moving there expecting to step into some fantasy world of the past. I have to admit I enjoyed this aspect of the fictional village with its Ladies' Society, all addressing each other with formal titles rather than Christian names, and its fêtes and afternoon teas, and was disappointed to find it suddenly labelled anachronistic with the Ladies' Society disbanded. However, having lived in the Cotswolds herself for many years, and clearly no longer a naive incomer, I think she found such people wearing and did not want her now mainstream books to encourage them any further in their folly.
So now it only remains for me to read Hot to Trot with suitable reverance and delight.
Posted by Christina at 11:40 AM. Category: Books of the Month
