Review: Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

Opening lines of the book:

“Maisie Dobbs shuffled the papers on her desk into a neat pile and placed them in a plain manila folder.”

Why I read it:

I read Maisie Dobbs, the first book in this series, a couple of years ago and loved it, so I jumped at the chance to read the second book during the March Is Maisie Month read-along.

What it’s about:

The year is 1930 and Maisie Dobbs, who calls herself a “psychologist and investigator,” has just been hired by a self-made businessman to find his runaway 32-year-old daughter. When three of the daughter’s friends are found dead, Maisie must dig deep to find out what happened to these women. Is the missing daughter the killer or the next victim?

What worked:

Jacqueline Winspear gets two things very right in this series. The first is Maisie herself. I love Maisie. I love her intelligence, her reliance on her intuition and gut feelings, her belief that coincidence is “a messenger of truth,” the fact that she meditates and that she can tell how a person is feeling just by imitating their posture. The daughter of a costermonger, Maisie was sent into service at age 13; however, she has also been educated at Cambridge and served as a nurse in World War I. As a result, she is now neither “upstairs” nor “downstairs,” which gives her a unique perspective on the world.

The second thing that Winspear gets right is the historical setting. I didn’t know much about this period before I read these books, but Winspear does an excellent job of portraying the cost of the Great War on civilians, nurses and soldiers alike. She also manages to make all her characters fully human—I felt for all of them, including the “bad guys” and unsympathetic characters. Having read these two books, I feel like I have a much better idea of what it would have been like to be living in England between the two world wars.

What didn’t work:

Because I reread the first book in the series just before reading this one, I found myself a bit dismayed that the end of Maisie Dobbs, which is so poignant, is recapped so bluntly at the beginning of Birds of a Feather. Mind you, I’m not sure I would have noticed this if I hadn’t literally just finished rereading the first book before starting the second.

[MINOR SPOILER]

I also found myself somewhat annoyed with the possible-love-interests plot points in this book: while it’s pretty obvious what the men in question see in Maisie, it’s not so clear what she sees in them. I found her interactions with them to be totally lacking in chemistry. I can’t help but hope that romance doesn’t become the focus of any of the subsequent Maisie books!

[END OF MINOR SPOILER]

Favourite quote:

“While she walked, Maisie remembered feeling a prickling of the skin on her neck while she stood in the upstairs hallway of [—]’s house, outside the room where her body lay. She had not shied away from the sensation but had instead silently asked, What is it you want me to see? Never before at the scene of a crime had Maisie felt such a duality of sensation, like a fabric that on one side is smooth and satin-like but on the other, rough with a raised pile. She knew that the last person who had come to the house came with a terrible burden, a burden that was no lighter for having taken [—]’s life” (p. 61).

Final thoughts:

Since I read the first two books back to back, I can’t help but compare them and I do think I liked Maisie Dobbs more (especially on second reading). However, Birds of a Feather is more of a classic mystery than the first one, and it kept me guessing until the end (although I did figure out the significance of one element of the story before the final reveal). If you are interested in World War I and the Interwar Period or just want to read a mystery series featuring a strong and quirky female sleuth, I highly recommend the Maisie Dobbs series. I generally never read books in series back to back, but I’m very tempted to dive into Pardonable Lies right away—I can’t wait to find out what happens to Maisie next!

_______________________________________________

To celebrate the hardcover publication of Elegy for Eddie (book 9, out on March 27, 2012) and the paperback publication of A Lesson in Secrets (book 8, out today), Harper Books is sponsoring the first annual March Is Maisie Month, which includes a TLC book tour of all the books in the Maisie Dobbs series thus far.

Visit these blogs for other reviews of Birds of a Feather:

The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader • A Few More Pages • Wordsmithsonia [spoiler alert!]

For a complete list of bloggers participating in the March Is Maisie Month read-along, visit the TLC Book Tours site.

Other reviews:

Booking Mama • Devourer of Books • Hey, I want to read that • Literate Housewife • nomadreader • She Is Too Fond of Books • Shelah Books It • The Written World • We Be Reading • Whimpulsive

_______________________________________________

Review: I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

I picked up I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman while I was at BEA this spring. I happily snatched it up without even looking to see what it was about because I’d read and enjoyed her earlier book, What the Dead Know. So I was more than a little dismayed to realize Lippman’s latest is a serial killer story (have I mentioned how much I don’t enjoy those enough yet? I still keep reading them though!). I’d Know You Anywhere is the story of Eliza, a happily married 38-year-old mother of two, who one day receives a letter from death row inmate Walter Bowman, the man who held her captive for six weeks the summer she was 15—she was the only one of his victims to escape alive. When I hit chapter 2, which is a flashback to 1984 told from Walter’s point of view, I almost put the book down. But Lippman’s writing drew me in and in the end, I’m so glad I kept reading!

I’d Know You Anywhere is not your standard mystery: for one thing, it’s a howdunit rather than a whodunit. Moreover, since the perpetrator has been identified and apprehended, there’s no sleuth of any kind. The novel flips back and forth between the present (told mainly from Eliza’s point of view but also from the points of view of several other people who have been directly affected by Walter’s crimes) and the past (told from Walter’s and then Eliza’s point of view). The story examines the consequences of violent crime on the lives of the people left behind: a survivor (in Eliza’s case), some of the victims’ family members and several other people who get involved in the case.

Two things really struck me about this book and kept me reading. The first is that Lippman does a great job of getting inside her characters’ heads, including Walter’s, who is portrayed as a human being who does monstrous things rather than as a monster. For some reason, his delusions got me thinking about the ways in which we all, to some extent, delude ourselves and the harm we do to ourselves and others in the process. Second, unlike other books I’ve read with sociopaths or psychopaths in them, this book didn’t scare me. I was horrified by Walter’s actions, of course, but ultimately the book is hopeful in a way that all those other books were not.

After reading only two of her books, Laura Lippman is fast becoming one of my favourite writers!

Thank you to Harper Collins for providing me with this book to review.
_______________________________________________

I’d Know You Anywhere is on blog tour with TLC Book Tours in August and September. Visit these other blogs for reviews:

red headed book child • Shhh I’m Reading • Staircase Wit • A Bookworm’s World • Thoughts from an Evil Overlord • Proud Book Nerd • Books and Movies • Wordsmithsonia • Raging Bibliomania • Lesa’s Book Critiques • My Random Acts of Reading • Jen’s Book Thoughts • nomadreader • Book Chatter • In the Next Room • Bibliofreakblog • Café of Dreams

Other reviews:

Booking Mama • Bookin’ with Bingo • Caribousmom • Girls Gone Reading • KellyVision • Life... with Books • Luxury Reading • Material Witness • MostlyFiction Book Reviews • Nashville Book Worm • On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever • Presenting Lenore

Interview with the author: Murderati
_______________________________________________

Reviews: The Best Defense by Kate Wilhelm and Careless in Red by Elizabeth George

The Best Defense by Kate Wilhelm is the second of her Barbara Holloway mysteries and in a word it is brilliant. Holloway is an attorney in Eugene, Oregon, who with some reluctance takes on the case of “Baby Killer” Kinnerman, a woman accused of murdering her young daughter. The case looks hopeless—Barbara’s client has already been tried and convicted by the press. Although grieving herself, Barbara rises to the occasion, and watching her slowly build her case makes for gripping reading. This was a reread for me, but I didn’t remember what happened at all and enjoyed The Best Defense just as much the second time around. Barbara is a great character: she is a strong and intelligent woman who is passionate about justice. This is Wilhelm at her best. If you enjoy courtroom dramas, you won’t want to miss this one.

It’s hard to review Careless in Red by Elizabeth George without spoiling any of the previous books in her Lynley/Havers series (this is book 15), but I will do my best (which means I won’t tell you much about the plot).

Devastated by personal tragedy, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley has been walking along the Cornish coastline for 43 days when he comes across the body of a young man who has fallen to his death. As the local police are short-staffed, Lynley reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation.

George’s strength is her ability to get into her characters’ heads, telling the story from multiple points of view yet still keeping her readers in the dark as to who did it and why. However, I often feel like her endings are a bit anti-climatic, perhaps because she focuses on so many characters and then inevitably drops them at the end to unravel the mystery. Careless in Red is no exception on both counts—although for the first time I found the characters a bit hard to keep track of at the beginning (which I attributed in part to their odd names). Because I was so deeply disappointed with With No One as Witness (book 13)—and skipped the next book, What Came Before He Shot Her—I was glad this book returned to more familiar ground. If you’re still reading this series, I definitely think this one is worth it—it satisfied my George craving and hopefully the next one will be even better. However, if you haven’t read any of her books yet or are reading them out of order, I’d recommend reading books 1-12 before any of the more recent ones.
_______________________________________________

Other review of The Best Defense (contains spoiler of first book): Jandy’s Reading Room

Other reviews of Careless in Red (all contain spoilers of earlier books):

A Work in Progress • Eurocrime • Mysteries in Paradise • Petrona • Reactions to Reading
_______________________________________________

On (Not Always) Finishing Mysteries (Two Reviews of Sorts)

Because I was sick the weekend before last, I didn’t feel up to blogging and so didn’t officially sign up for the Mystery Readathon (even though I really wanted to do it). However, I did unofficially participate, finishing one mystery and reading two thirds of another.

The first mystery I read was Too Many Questions (also published under the title Flynn) by Lesley Grant-Adamson. Unfortunately, this was one of those books that I mostly finished just to say I had: I was sick and couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to pick out another book, plus I was hoping that a satisfying ending would make up for the somewhat lacklustre plot. The story revolves around two main mysteries. First, what happened to private investigator Laura Flynn’s client? Fashion designer Kate Mullery hired Laura to look into a possible business connection and then disappeared without paying her. Second, what happened to Laura’s father, who walked out on her family when she was four? Add to those the odd coincidence that both Laura and Kate were receiving threatening anonymous phone calls. My problems with the book were twofold:
(1) The ways the mysteries connected (or didn’t) seemed contrived and unconvincing, and (2) much of the plot revolved around real estate deals rather than emotional connections between people, so in the end I didn’t really care. I picked up the book because I’d enjoyed The Dangerous Edge by the same author. I recommend reading that one instead.

The second book I started was Until It’s Over by Nicci French and I was immediately engrossed in it. The story is about Astrid Bell, a bicycle courier who lives with six other people in a big house in a somewhat seedy part of London. Astrid is bad luck to the people around her: first she is one of the last people to see her neighbour alive before the woman is found bludgeoned to death, and then she shows up at a wealthy client’s house to pick up a package, only to find the woman murdered.

The set-up of this mystery reminded me of other great mysteries written by UK writers (A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine and The Likeness by Tana French both come to mind) who also mine the creepiness potential of having a group of youngish people who may or may not know each other very well living together in a big house.

[Warning: I reveal something about the structure of the this book in the next paragraph, which is plot-related.]

I don’t know why but it took me a long time to figure out that this was a psychopath / serial killer story. I’ve mentioned before (perhaps ad nauseam) that I don’t enjoy reading such books, but I’ve never explained why. Generally, a good mystery keeps me up half the night and may creep me out a bit but when I’m done reading it, I can close the book and leave that world behind. Unfortunately, psychopaths tend to follow me out of the book, and I get to thinking about the possibility of running into one of these people in real life. (After all, they supposedly make up 1% of the population.) I start to look at the people around me on the subway with suspicion. I feel nervous when walking home alone at night. Mysteries are supposed to be escapist, not to scare me for real. Having said that, when I do stumble into a book inhabited by a psychopath, I generally find it’s better to finish reading the book—that knowing what happens in the end (and in most mysteries, the killer is caught) helps me leave the story behind when I’m done. Until It’s Over has an unusual structure in that two thirds of the way in, the killer is apprehended. (Or is he?) I stopped reading at this point because I realized that part 2 of the book is written from the killer’s point of view. I’m tempted to read the rest—I have this irrational feeling that Astrid remains in danger as long as I don’t finish the book (and it is an engrossing read!). But do I want to delve into the mind of a psychopath? Will it be worth it just to know what happens in the end? I’m not sure.

Have you ever started a mystery and felt like you needed to finish it even though it was either not that interesting or scaring you? What would you do in my shoes?

To read other (less spoilerish) reviews of Until It’s Over, visit these blogs:
Euro Crime • Reading Matters

I bought Too Many Questions by Lesley Grant-Adamson. Thank you to Donna at BookBound for giving me Until It’s Over by Nicci French.

In the Woods by Tana French (a review)

As far as I know, the first person to mention my fledgling blog was Trish at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? who (thrillingly) reported that she had read—and enjoyed—Someone Not Really Her Mother by Harriet Scott Chessman based on my review. So it was about time I returned the compliment and read a book recommended by Trish.*

In the Woods by Tana French is told from the point of view of Rob Ryan, a detective in the Dublin police force whose first murder case brings back memories. A young girl has been found murdered in the woods, in the same spot where, some 20 years ago, young Ryan and two of his friends disappeared. Ryan was the only one found—his two friends were never seen again—but to this day he can’t remember what happened.

It took me a little while to get into this book—for the first 20 pages or so I wasn’t sure I was going to like Rob’s voice. But as soon as he “stopped falling in love with [his partner Cassie] and started to like her immensely” (p. 18), I started to like him too. The dynamic between Rob and Cassie is fun, and Cassie is a kick-ass partner, one of the best female characters I’ve come across in a mystery novel. French’s writing style is literary and yet down-to-earth; her characters are flawed and realistic. Despite the book’s length (nearly 600 pages), I zipped through the novel, wanting to find out what had happened.

In an attempt to find more to say about this book without giving too much away, I’ve been randomly dipping back into it and getting sucked into the story all over again. My favourite passages have to do with Ryan’s struggle to remember what happened to him, such as this one:

I had started trying—for the first time, really—to remember what had happened in that wood. I prodded tentatively around the edges of it, barely acknowledging even to myself what I was doing, like a kid picking at a scab but afraid to look. . . . To some extent, at least, it worked. Unleashed, my mind threw out great streams of images like a slide show running on fast-forward, and gradually I learned the knack of reaching out to catch one as they flew past, holding it lightly and watching as it unfurled in my hands.” (p. 242)

[SPOILER]
Unfortunately, the ending was disappointing. Part of the reason I love reading mysteries is that the mystery is solved by the end and whoever did it is brought to justice. This may be simplistic and unrealistic, but I want that satisfying feeling of closure at the end of the book (especially if it contains fairly creepy elements such as this one does). However, French doesn’t deliver that here.
[END OF SPOILER]

Despite my disappointment with the ending and despite the fact that once again, this was a book that violated my rule of “no psychopaths or serial killers, no terror and no blow-by-blow descriptions of murder or its results,” In the Woods was an intriguing read and I’m looking forward to reading its sequel, The Likeness, which is apparently even better!

To read other reviews, visit these blogs:
Bloggin’ ‘bout Books • Book Addiction • Book Chatter • Confessions of a Bibliophile • Farm Lane Books • Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? • In Search of Giants • Lesley’s Book Nook • Live and Let Di • My Random Acts of Reading • Presenting Lenore • Read Warbler • Rhapsody in Books Weblog • S. Krishna’s Books • You’ve GOTTA read this!


This is the fourth book I review for the New Authors Challenge.


*OK, I have a confession to make. It was only in writing up this review that I realized that In the Woods wasn’t the best book Trish read in 2008. That honour belongs to its sequel, The Likeness!

Beautiful Lies and A Likeness in Stone: Thoughts on two books outside my comfort zone

I recently read two books that fall outside my usual comfort zone: Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger and A Likeness in Stone by Julia Wallis Martin. For different reasons, both books unfortunately didn’t work for me.

Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger is the story of Ridley Jones, who, after appearing on television for an act of heroism, receives a mysterious package that indicates she may not be who she thinks she is. I don’t usually read thrillers and unfortunately reading this one hasn’t changed my opinion that this genre isn’t for me. While the novel was fast-paced and intriguing enough to keep me reading until the end, there were a few plot points that really bugged me:

How is it possible that a relatively well-adjusted and seemingly normal person like Ridley doesn’t have a single friend in the world except her creepy ex-boyfriend and his strange mother?

Why would her parents, no matter what their issues, not tell her what they knew when it became obvious that by keeping her in the dark they were endangering her life?

I guess the bottom line for me was that I was unable to suspend my disbelief enough to really enjoy this novel. There were too many coincidences, too many things that didn’t make sense and I also found the main character whiny.

To read other reviews of this book, visit these blogs:
Book Chase • Confessions of a Bibliophile • Reading without Restraint • Ticket to Anywhere

Thank you to Donna at BookBound for giving me this book to read.

A Likeness in Stone by Julia Wallis Martin is a mystery, a genre I do read and love; however, as I’ve mentioned before, my taste in mysteries is fairly limited. I picked up this book because the author was recommended by Elizabeth George, one of my favourite mystery writers. (I found her recommendations on the Fantastic Fiction site.*) I completely ignored the fact that this novel was compared to those of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters, two authors I carefully avoid as they don’t fit my rule of “no psychopaths or serial killers, no terror and no blow-by-blow descriptions of murder or its results.”

In the first chapter, divers find a corpse in a wardrobe in a submerged house—the dead woman turns out to be Helena Warner, an Oxford student who disappeared some 20 years before. This reopens a case that had remained unsolved despite the fact that the homicide detective in charge at the time was sure he knew who did it. There is no question that Martin writes well and if you enjoy Rendell’s or Walters’ mysteries, then you will undoubtedly enjoy this atmospheric (and creepy) novel as well. Despite the small cast of characters, the story kept me guessing until the very end and completely sucked me in—I stayed up way past my bedtime to finish it. However, it was too creepy for me (it definitely broke the above-mentioned rule), so unfortunately I’ll be staying away from this author in the future too.

A Likeness in Stone was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1999.

*George actually recommends The Long Close Call, Wallis Martin’s third book, but I wanted to start with her first, which may have been my mistake.

The Corpse Will Keep and Farthing (two reviews)

If mysteries fall on a continuum from light and fluffy cosies to dark and gritty thrillers, the ones I read are found on a narrow strip somewhere in the middle. I want a realistic plot (which means most cosies are out) but no psychopaths or serial killers, no terror and no blow-by-blow descriptions of murder or its results. This means that I’m always on the lookout for new authors, since there are relatively few mysteries that fit my specifications. So I was pleased to discover Pat Capponi’s new series featuring Dana Leoni, of which The Corpse Will Keep is the second. (I read and enjoyed the first in the series, Last Stop Sunnyside, a few years ago.) Although this series is a bit more unrealistic than my favourite mysteries, the characters in these books are what keep me hooked. Dana, a budding PI, lives in a rooming house in Parkdale, a fairly down-and-out working-class neighbourhood in Toronto. The other residents in the rooming house help her solve the mystery, and through them, Capponi gives us a glimpse into the lives of some of Canada’s most marginalized citizens without turning them into problems or statistics. This is a fun, relatively light read.

Luanne at A Bookworm’s World also reviewed this book.

Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for sending me this book to review.

Another mystery series I just discovered (thanks to a LibraryThing recommendation) is the Small Change books by Jo Walton, of which Farthing is the first. This novel is set in an alternate history in which the Allies didn’t win World War 2, Britain has “made peace” with Hitler and Lindbergh is president of the United States. For the first half of the book, I felt slightly perplexed as the whole thing reads just like a traditional country house whodunit. Although the story is intriguing, the characters well-drawn and I enjoyed the alternating points of view of the inspector who is investigating the murder and Lucy Kahn, the daughter of the house who has fallen out of favour by marrying a Jew, what was the point of the alternate setting? It turns out I was being impatient because the second half of the book suddenly veers sharply to the right and the results are chilling in their implications. The book definitely lives up to its dedication (to “everyone who has ever studied any monstrosity of history, with the serene satisfaction of being horrified while knowing exactly what was going to happen, rather like studying a dragon anatomized upon a table, and then turning around to find the dragon’s present-day relations standing close by, alive and ready to bite”); however, the ending does feel like a set-up for the next two books, Ha’penny and Half a Crown. Regardless, I highly recommend it and am looking forward to reading the next two instalments.

This was one of my favourite books in 2008.

Other reviews of this book:
bookshelves of doom • Giraffe Days • My Individual Take (On the Subject) • OF Blog of the Fallen • Rat’s Reading • Stella Matutina