Colin Buchanan – FictionFan's Book Reviews

Episode 256

All you people who’ve been worried about my shrinking TBR can breathe a sigh of relief this week – it’s gone up 2 to 198! Still below the magic 200, though, and of course it wasn’t my fault. I tried to stop the postman delivering the box of books, but he insisted, so what could I do?? I’m sure I’ll be back on track soon…

Here are a few more that will be tripping my way soon…

Factual

The Haunting of Alma Fielding by Kate Summerscale

Courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing via NetGalley. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed several of Summerscale’s earlier books, loving her mix of true events and social commentary. This one sounds like a great way to kick off spooky season too…

The Blurb says: London, 1938. In the suburbs of the city, an ordinary young housewife has become the eye in a storm of chaos. In Alma Fielding’s modest home, china flies off the shelves, eggs fly through the air; stolen jewellery appears on her fingers, white mice crawl out of her handbag, beetles appear from under her gloves; in the middle of a car journey, a terrapin materialises on her lap. Nandor Fodor – a Jewish-Hungarian refugee and chief ghost hunter for the International Institute for Psychical Research – reads of the case, and hastens to the scene of the haunting. But when Fodor starts his scrupulous investigation, he discovers that the case is even stranger than it seems. By unravelling Alma’s peculiar history, he finds a different and darker type of haunting: trauma, alienation, loss – and the foreshadowing of a nation’s worst fears. As the spectre of Fascism lengthens over Europe, and as Fodor’s obsession with the case deepens, Alma becomes ever more disturbed. With rigour, daring and insight, the award-winning pioneer of non-fiction writing Kate Summerscale shadows Fodor’s enquiry, delving into long-hidden archives to find the human story behind a very modern haunting.

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American Classic

The American by Henry James

Courtesy of Oxford World’s Classics. One from my Classics Club list. I’ve only read a few of James’ ghostly novellas before, and am not at all convinced his style won’t drive me insane in a full-length book. But we book bloggers must sometimes suffer for our art, so I shall gird up my loins (do women have loins? I should have paid more attention in anatomy classes. I know men have them… and pigs…) and face him bravely!

The Blurb says: During a trip to Europe, Christopher Newman, a wealthy American businessman, asks the charming Claire de Cintre to be his wife. To his dismay, he receives an icy reception from the heads of her family, who find Newman to be a vulgar example of the American privileged class. Brilliantly combining elements of comedy, tragedy, romance and melodrama, this tale of thwarted desire vividly contrasts nineteenth-century American and European manners. Oxford’s edition of The American, which was first published in 1877, is the only one that uses James’ revised 1907 text.

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Vintage Crime

Inspector French and the Mystery on Southampton Water by Freeman Wills Crofts

Courtesy of HarperCollins. To celebrate the publishing centenary of Freeman Wills Crofts, HarperCollins are reissuing three of his books and I was thrilled to receive a surprise box containing them all! I’ve only read one of the Inspector French books before, The 12:30 from Croydon, and loved it, and have been meaning to read more, so here’s the first. Couldn’t wait, so I’ve started it already…

The Blurb says: The Joymount Rapid Hardening Cement Manufacturing Company on the Solent is in serious financial trouble. Its rival, Chayle on the Isle of Wight, has a secret new manufacturing process and is underselling them. Having failed to crack the secret legitimately, two employees hatch a plot to break in and steal it. But the scheme does not go according to plan, resulting in damage and death, and Inspector French is brought in to solve one of the most dramatic and labyrinthine cases of his entire career.

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Dalziel & Pascoe on Audio

Child’s Play by Reginald Hill read by Colin Buchanan

I enjoyed Colin Buchanan as narrator of these books more than I was expecting in Exit Lines (review soon), so decided to go for the audiobook again for the next one in my slow re-read of this great series…

The Blurb says: Geraldine Lomas’s son went missing in Italy during World War Two, but the eccentric old lady never accepted his death.

Now she is dead, leaving the Lomas beer fortune to be divided between an animal rights organization, a fascist front and a services benevolent fund. As disgruntled relatives gather by the graveside, the funeral is interrupted by a middle-aged man in an Italian suit, who falls to his knees crying, ‘Mama!’

Andy Dalziel is preoccupied with the illegal book one of his sergeants is running on who is to be appointed as the new chief Constable. But when a dead Italian turns up in the police car park, Peter Pascoe and his bloated superior are plunged into an investigation that makes internal police politics look like child’s play…

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NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads, Amazon UK or Audible UK.

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So…what do you think? Are you tempted?

Episode 253

Despite the arrival of actual book-post from publishers this week (Yay!!) the astonishing fall in the TBR continues – down 2 to 198! However, if it cheers up any of you who are severely distressed at the idea of a falling TBR, I should perhaps admit to having acquired eight audiobooks in Audible’s sale…

Here are a few more that should blow my mind soon…

Fiction

Sula by Toni Morrison

The final book of my 20 Books of Summer list, but will I get to it in time? It’ll be a nail-biting race to the finish line…

The Blurb says: As girls, Nel and Sula shared each other’s discoveries and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams and Nel got married. Ten years later Sula returns and no one, least of all Nel, trusts her. Sula is the story of the fear that makes people accept self-pity; the fear that will not countenance escape and that justifies itself through myth and legend. Sula herself is cast as a witch and demon by the people who resent her strength. They attack her with the most pervasive weapon of all, the weapon of language and story. But Sula is a woman of power, a wayward force who challenges the smallness of a world that tries to hold her down.

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Fiction

Clouds by Chandrahas Choudhury

A few years ago, I read and adored Choudhury’s earlier book, Arzee the Dwarf, and have waited a long, long time for a new one. This one has been out for a while in India, but hasn’t had a proper publication in the UK, which makes me feel it may have been considered too intrinsically Indian to work well for an international market. But we’ll see – I think the blurb sounds great!

The Blurb says: Recently divorced psychotherapist Farhad Billimoria realizes he will never find love again in Bombay and prepares for a move to San Francisco. On a farewell tour throughout the city, his mind crackles with bittersweet memories and giddy dreams. But is love about to bloom for Farhad just as he has given up on the city? And if it does, will he bring to it the man that he is, or the one he wants to become?

Elsewhere in Bombay, the tribal youth Rabi remains stuck as the caretaker to his parents, two ailing and cranky old Brahmins. Rabi comes from the remote Cloud people of eastern India, a sky-watching tribe that observes the Cloudmaker–the mercurial God who drifts and muses in the skies–and that is dragged into the modern world when a mining company invades their sacred mountain. Rabi’s mentor Bhagaban, a forward-thinking filmmaker, leads their resistance. But will Rabi follow Bhagaban or his parents, who reassert a golden Indian past?

From one of India’s most celebrated young writers, Clouds illuminates the inner lives of characters forging their own paths in the great metropolis and shows a vast, prismatic portrait of modern India in all its tumult and glory.

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Vintage Crime

The Man Who Didn’t Fly by Margot Bennett

Courtesy of the British Library. Another new-to-me author and a Scottish one at that! It sounds like fun, although early reviews are distinctly mixed. (If I find I’m not in the mood for any one of the last few books on my 20 Books list, I might swap this one in…)

The Blurb says: Four men had arranged to fly to Dublin. When their aeroplane descended as a fireball into the Irish Sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the passengers lost beneath the waves, a tense and perplexing investigation begins to determine the living from the dead, with scarce evidence to follow beyond a few snippets of overheard conversation and one family’s patchy account of the three days prior to the flight.

Who was the man who didn’t fly? What did he have to gain? And would he commit such an explosive murder to get it? First published in 1955, Bennett’s ingenious mystery remains an innovative and thoroughly entertaining inversion of the classic whodunit.

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Reginald Hill on Audio

Exit Lines by Reginald Hill read by Colin Buchanan

Continuing my slow re-read of my favourite crime series of all time, I thought it would be fun to try the audio version of this one. I’m not a huge fan of Colin Buchanan’s portrayal of Pascoe in the TV series, so may or may not get on with him as a narrator. But I have the paper copy to fall back on if necessary…

The Blurb says: Three old men die on a stormy November night: one by deliberate violence, one in a road accident and one by an unknown cause,

Inspector Pascoe is called in to investigate the first death, but when the dying words of the accident victim suggest that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the entire Mid-Yorkshire CID is called into question.

Helped by the bright but wayward Detective-Constable Seymour, hindered by ‘Maggie’s Moron’, the half-witted Constable Hector, Peter Pascoe enters the twilight and vulnerable world of the senior citizen – to discover that the beckoning darkness at the end of the tunnel holds few comforts.

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NB All blurbs and covers taken from Goodreads, Amazon UK or Audible UK.

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Quick Reminder: For those who are planning to read A Month in the Country, the date for reviews and comments is Monday, 31st August. I’ll be starting it soon – hope we all enjoy it!

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