The Shetland Series by Ann Cleeves

 I have now read all eight of Ann Cleeves original series of books, and I've seen all TV episodes u to the end of series seven. I know I have two more series to look foward to, with a change of lead as DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshal) is replaced by DI Ruth Calder (Ashley Jensen). 

I have enjoyed all of them, print and screen, which has surprised me a bit. I often prefer books to filmed interpretations, but these differ a lot, particularly in characterisation and I have really enjoyed both. Ann Cleeves is a superb writer, grounded in her locations and deeply involved with her characters. 

The TV interpretation of the Shetland stories is excellent, the cinematography and locations are beautiful, enigmatic and give the entire series a noir atmosphere which really suits the stories, although liberties are taken, and only series one and two are based on the stories in the books. The character of Fran, in particular is very different, she doesn't appear at all on TV, she's just Cassie's deceased mum and Jimmy Perez' dead wife. 

The characters of two other police officers, Sandy Wilson and Alison McIntosh (Tosh) are treated radically differently in the books. Sandy (played on TV by native Shetlander Steven Robertson) plays a major role in print, the action is often from his POV and his character's development over the series is almost as good as that of Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall), whilst Sandy's TV role is subordinate. On the other hand Tosh (Alison O'Donnell) is Perez right-hand woman on TV yet hardly gets a mention in the books at all.

The first, two part TV series is based on The Red Bones, which is probably the best of the books, so I'm not surprised they chose this story to begin with. It worked and was popular so series two involved three more books, Raven Black, Dead Water and Blue Lightening. Each story was given two episodes. After that the TV stories diverged from the remaining novels. 

As a fellow writer I will name the TV writers, no more actors:- episodes were written exclusively for the screen by Gaby Chiappe, David Kane, Richard Davidson, Robert Murphy, Alexander Perrin, Paul Logue and Louise Ironside, Later series 8 - 10, which I haven't yet viewed, are by Paul Logue and Denise Paul.

Meanwhile Ann Cleeves, the author, has just published another Jimmy Perez novel, which I'm excited about and look froward to reading. It's her first Perez story since 2018 and is no longer set on Shetland. Ann has said about the book, that she felt there needed to be more to DI Jimmy Perez story. I agree.

The Guardians by John Grisham - book review

*** 

Well enough written as you'd always expect with John Grisham. The Guardians contains two of his gruesome scenes, although the first is the worst. I don't read his books very often, I have an increasingly delicate constitution!

The Guardians are a crusading group whose aim is to help wrongly convicted prisoners who are serving serving life sentences or worse, sitting on death row. Their tally of victories stands at eight, there are twenty more men and women on their list who need saving.

If the author never wrote about anything else he'd have twenty more stories here!

Good stuff, but only three stars because I wouldn't read The Guardians again.

Reading in the Bath - Final Draft By Shelley Burbank

 Lying in a warm bath, in my right hand my copy of Final Draft by Shelley Burbank - a brand-new novel just imported from the USA - and a glass of sauvignon-blanc in my left, should be sheer luxury. 

Certain facts could diminish these luxurious elements, in some people’s eyes. Starting at the top, the dated Artex ceiling and polystyrene coving are slowly parting company with each other and the plastered walls. The spider plant atop the bathroom cabinet has browning tips, its trailing babies are all brown and mama spider is calling, loudly, for water and light. 

There is the wash basin which doesn’t drain properly no doubt due to something grim lurking down in the U-bend.  The shower cubicle is slowly growing its own dark ecosystem, not helped by the charcoal soap somebody gave us for Christmas. Charcoal soap stains everything grey and is the ultimate gift that nobody needs, ever.  The 1970’s green wall tiles (every random 10-15th of them covered in ambiguous flowers) are detaching themselves from the walls and the corner I’ve painted to pretend it never was tiled doesn’t even convince me. Meanwhile the carpeted chipboard floor is slowly disintegrating just behind the toilet… who puts carpet in a bathroom…?

I'm well aware of all these negatives and I don’t care! I've always loved to read in the bath, whatever the state of the bathroom. Today I have this new book in the genre I’m currently into, detective fiction, written by an author I know, well we chat online.  And the book is immediately engaging, I’ve reached page 56 before I notice that the water is cooling down. I could chose to stay put, deplete the reservoir further and vastly increase the gas bill, but not tonight. 

Washing is in order. I’ve been gardening and don’t fancy sleeping with my pollenated, earthy and leaf mould dusted self.  There is an ingrained order to washing which does seem mostly logical. Around the eyes first, then the rest of the face. Next the hair, then moving down the body ending with cleaning between the toes. My grandmother would not approve of hair washing in the bath. 

In my grandparents household, time was an element to be obeyed. Getting up time, breakfast time, teeth-cleaning time, playtime, elevenses – a time by its very name. Then after lunchtime there was walk time, a march to the creek to feed the swans and ducks with rice, crusts and fly-walk. Teatime was followed by bath-time, with absolutely no reading. All ablutions were timed even more carefully than meals. Hair-washing-time was not the same as bath time. It involved a twice weekly ritual of standing on a stool bent double over the wash-basin while Granny poured enamel-mugfuls of warm water over my head and, inevitably, up my nose.  Grandfather even tried to control his bowel movements to a strict timetable, with pots of senna-pods stewing on the Aga every evening. Luckily he didn’t attempt this regimen on anyone else.

And now I'm clean. I still have 236 pages of this novel still to read. The writing is fresh, easy and engaging, the story intriguing and the protagonist identifiable. I have five more bath times to look forward to, before the pages start to sag in the moist heat. Luxury!

Where Crows Would Die - by Mary Griese

 

Sue Gilbert's Reviews > Where Crows Would Die

Where Crows Would Die
by 

Mary Griese

Sue Gilbert's review

Feb 07, 2022  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: mystery, novels

Described as 'Welsh noir', this novel has similarities to Wuthering Heights, if that was set in the 1950's-60's and in a remote sheep farming community in the Welsh hills. The Heathcliffe alter-ego, named Morgan, is a troubled and dangerous soul, however the story differs. Unlike in the Bronte novel, the woman he obsesses over is Bethan, a strong and independent minded young woman who has no intention of falling for him.
The author is a painter, her love of art spills into the novel and not just because Bethan's father is an artist and her mother's cousin runs a gallery. The wonderful descriptions of the Welsh landscape are bleak, dramatic and painterly. She also knows a lot about sheep and her unsentimental use of her farming knowledge keeps the tale grounded.
Would I recommend this book? Yes, it's very readable and I enjoyed it once I got into it. This is Mary Griese's first novel, I hope she writes another.

Has Being a Writer Made me into a Book Snob?

 English was my best subject at school and I loved reading. From about nine years old I always asked for books for my birthday and Christmas.  I even wrote my first novel at fourteen, but I never used to call myself a writer I just made stories up. Often they were in my head, not written down and when I actually wrote, I did nothing with the story. Gradually I began to send off occasional articles to magazines etc. Going to university as a mature student gave me the ability to judge my writing and the knowledge to improve it, so I gained the confidence to call myself a writer.

As a writer I like to think I understand how to be creative using the English language, and I believe creativity is admirable. However sometimes I can be less tolerant of people who don’t seem to know what they are doing. Carelessness with sentence structure, spelling mistakes, inaccurate punctuation and uncorrected typos are not creativity and these things annoy me, although they never used to. Unfortunately there are writers who can get all of this technical and grammatical stuff correct, can get published and still can’t put a worthwhile paragraph together, let alone an interesting novel.  

I recognise that my tastes have changed over the years, I’m no longer interested in reading the authors I enjoyed in my teens. However my tastes had changed before I ‘became a writer’. I was already enjoying the intensity of Ian McEwan, the narrative drive of Ian Banks and the dreamlike beauty of Helen Dunmore long before I could define those qualities. I still enjoy their work but am now able to put a finger on why certain of their books are wonderful and others just don’t work for me.

Usually, poor writing quality puts me off reading a novel after a few pages, even if I have incentives for wanting to read it.  At the opposite end of the scale, sometimes a novel is terribly 'cleverly' written and that can also put me off, particularly if the style is un-engaging. I tend to prefer empathetic characters telling an engrossing story rather than clever-clever writing. I’m not saying experimentation with style and structure is wrong, I do it myself, but certain well-known authors can get away with an experiment gone too far. Alienating your reader is probably a poor idea even if you're writing about alienation.

I write book reviews on my blog and on Goodreads, but I don't usually review the badly written books. For a start I seldom finish them and anyway what's the point of being rude, it doesn't help the author? If they're already published, somebody likes their stuff. I do sometimes review the clever-clever books, such authors do probably deserve to be told off!

Worst Fears by Fay Weldon - book review

    This cynical saga of Alexandra Ludd's slow awakening to her dead husband's perfidy isn't particularly easy reading. The style of writing in the book is deceptively simple, almost like a folk tale or maybe an Aga saga at the beginning, clipped sentences and characters with vaguely ludicrous names give a distancing effect.  However a lot is going on inside the covers, as well as under them.

      It is a very middle class tale which dates it, 1980's or early 90's in feel, nobody seems obsessed with mobiles and computers. I was determined to finish it, the story line was engaging and the character of Alexandra (nobody calls her Alex) is deeply drawn. I needed to know if she survived the traumas, the tension was gripping . It's riddled with black humour, I just wish I'd been able to enjoy it more.     

   Fay Weldon's genre is bleakly humorous stories of individual women trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society. She does it very well, within a small social spectrum, and Worst Fears fits right in.

   

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin - Rebus #13 - book review

 I really enjoyed this book. I very seldom give a book five stars but it was about time Ian Rankin had five. Resurrection Men fits the bill because I never thought I could describe a Rebus novel as funny, but this one is, at least in places. It's mainly down to awkward situations and excellent dialogue which is concise and full of humour, black and otherwise.

Convoluted plotting is necessary to get to the conclusion and along the way are plenty of dubious characters - most of them policemen - and a lot of agonising for Rebus and Siobhan Clarke. People get killed, most of them are deserving though not all. Not every plotline is filled with humour, after all this is a Rebus novel.

Basically, the High Hedyins are using John Rebus, an awkward and bloody annoying cop, in a sting operation to get some awkward and bloody bent cops. Inevitably it goes pear shaped. Are Big Ger Cafferty and his sidekick, the Weasel, involved? What do you think?

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, read a John Rebus book. I can recommend most of them,  although this may not be the best one for beginners. It's hard to come by well written detective fiction and I wasn't really a fan until I began reading Ian Rankin's work, which is usually extremely well written. This is an author who doesn't just know exactly what each word means, he also knows exactly how to use it for maximum effect.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3515717586?fbclid=IwAR3kgBFz5zQ6oQ6wH9_uc7AI7aM-u4atPu2zKZ1jVUzvzn21vLh7jtPXovI

Strip Jack by Ian Rankin

Not initially a 'whodunnit,' more a 'what has he actually done?' Spoiler - it's a he! Not much of a spoiler though. Flows well, plenty of interesting characters. Strip Jack's well enough written, as expected from Ian Rankin, not my favourite though.
I'm trying to read the Rebus novels in order - a lockdown project - but have already slipped, I read book 5 before starting book 1; will next have to read book 7 as I don't yet have a copy of book 6. Oh well, as Peter Green would say...
Strip Jack is a lot less gory than other Rebus novels I've read. I read a few of the later ones, in a random order several years ago and always remembered the atmosphere and gruesome nature of the stories. This book also lacks some of the atmosphere associated with the series, though scenes set in a tiny B&B and in a detention unit for the criminally insane are engrossingly detailed.
There are just one or two minor glitches in places, repetition of things we already know and, in cinematic terms, a couple of continuity slips. Maybe it was rushed to publication just a week too soon! Note to self - must remember to take off my editing/proofreading hat when trying to enjoy novels which have already been published, and years ago at that!

Landfill by Tim Dee - Book Review

First we must get one thing clear, they are not seagulls they are gulls! They have been encouraged by human activity to live in our towns and inhabit our space, even spaces we don't care about, such as town centre rooftops and landfill sites.

This remarkable, poetic and sorrowful book covers Tim Dee's deep affection, admiration and concern for gulls. Everything you never realised you need to know about these beautiful, slightly alien looking birds, Tim can tell you, or he has a friend who can. He quotes from many erudite enthusiasts. For a start there are many more species of gull than you thought, there are more sub-species than even the most expert gull watchers can identify, and they are still evolving.

An extraordinary chapter tells of Tim's day out at Pitsea landfill site with the North Thames Gull Group. He helps the gullers to net hundreds of gulls feeding on the garbage and ring them before re-release. His description of just handling these birds, the unfamiliarity and intimacy of them, is moving and remarkable.

There are literary gulls, Iceland gulls, feisty gulls, London gulls, ringed gulls, landfill gulls, Bristol gulls, inland gulls and even Jonathan Livingston Seagulls.

Towards the end the book diverges from gulls and landfill and goes in search of a Madagascar nightjar, whose call has never been recorded. While this short chapter seems at first out of place it's a forgivable diversion. The delight of the experience shines through.

The author ends with his encounter with an Iceland gull, near his home.

I could quote from the book, but I wouldn't know where to stop, the writing is beautiful. If you think you don't like gulls, you're really missing a lot.

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan - book review

I've tried to read Black Dogs before and never got into it, this time I did. I even managed to finish it and understand why I've had difficulty before. Ok the plot line goes backwards and forewords in time, that's not the problem. The narrative skips between different characters' versions of the story but that's not the problem either. 

It's a clever book, cleverly and very self-consciously written and the self-consciousness of the author is embodied in the character of Jeremy, the supposed narrator.  This is what irritates me about the story. This character seems superfluous but he forces himself into the narrative as if this is his story, it really isn't.

It's the story of June and Bernard who are Jeremy's in-laws.  We experience their story through the author, via Jeremy and I felt so distanced by this device that I really couldn't enjoy their experiences even though they are very evocative in many places.  I wanted to stay in their minds, not be constantly dragged back to Jeremy's every-day domesticities and anxieties, which I really couldn't care less about.  I suppose for someone who could empathise with Jeremy it could work, I just found him an unsympathetic character. 

I do expect a lot from Ian McEwan's writing because he is so damn good. I know because he often does far better than this. Black Dogs was only his fifth book, but came after the Innocent, which is so much better.

The Tartan Rangers by Jonathan Gash. Book review

The Tartan Ringers
by

Jonathan Gash

Sue Gilbert's Goodreads review

Dec 01, 2019  ·  edit

liked it

bookshelves: funny, mystery, novels, whodunnit

An entertaining read, written and set in the early 1980's so dated in a lot of ways. The story of antiques dealing rogue Lovejoy who's viewpoint it's told from. Shortly after this was written the Lovejoy character became a popular TV series. The shows were slightly toned down from the books, and Tinker became posh! He isn't posh here.

My main problem with the book was that we, the readers, were not there for the climactic auction, because Lovejoy had scarpered, again. He does a lot of scarpering. Plenty happens to keep you engaged; there are murders, thefts, boozing, cons, car chases, lusting, drunken sex, a circus and the fortune (or lack of it) of an unexpected highland laird. Maybe too many character in the plot and the circus convoy for total comprehensibility but who really cares? It's a good ride!

And this book is not PC in any way, get over it!

Swell - A Waterbiography - my review on goodreads

Sue Gilbert's Reviews Swell: A Waterbiography

Swell: A Waterbiography
by

Jenny Landreth

liked it

bookshelves: biog-memoir, funny, non-fiction

Interesting take on the activity of swimming from a feminist rather than a sporting point of view. What has feminism got to do with swimming you may ask? Well up until around 100 years ago almost no women in the UK could actually swim.
Swimming was deemed a purely masculine activity, unsuitable, unseemly and unhealthy for females. Sure, the wealthier classes could hire a bathing machine at the beach and enter the water decourously in voluminous bathing costumes, but they didn't swim, just dipped themselves, while the lower orders would paddle or even, daringly, wade in the shallows. Swimming was for the blokes and the chaps. Over the past 100 or so years this has changed, but it took a lot of determinesd women to make it happen.
Jenny Landreth intersperses a detailed, sometimes humorous take on the history and the heroines of the women's swimming movement - yes it was a movement, you can't swim without movement! - with her own swimming experiences and her love of her local Tooting Bec Lido.
Has got me thinking, I must swim more often, were is my cozzy?

King Crow by Michael Stewart - book review

I started reading this in 2012, I had a signed copy because I've met the author, but I never wrote a review because I never finished reading it. Annoyingly, I left it on a train...

Eventually I bought another copy. This time I read most of it on another train.... the journey went very fast, as did 16 year-old Paul Cooper's journey in the story. It mostly takes place over a few short days and is gripping.

Paul is naively obsessed with birds, his favourite bird changes but is currently the raven, he's a bit of a twitcher and has his lists, but he's much more imaginative than most.  He has just started at a new school, because his mum has decided they need to move house, again.  There are always problems starting at a new school, exacerbated when you are sixteen.  But soon there's a school trip, to the Tower of London, where there are ravens. I won't tell more of the story than this, no spoilers, read the book.

The narrative is in Paul's point of view and very much inside his head. It's an interesting kind of coming of age story, with action, birds, murder, birds, car chases, birds, drugs and girls, well a girl and more birds. 

Ok, I will say a bit more about the birds.  I like birds.  I'm a bit of a birder myself, but I just think that in this particular story there are too many throw-away birds.  Concentrating on fewer species maybe would have been more engrossing for me, each new species mentioned was a distraction.  And fewer species of bird would certainly be less confusing for any reader who doesn't know her jackdaw from her jackass. 

But confusion is part of the plot, so hey-ho!

King Crow is a damn good read, read it!

Professor Branestawm.

Am I stingy towards other writers?
On Goodreads.com I've listed a total of 255 books which I've read, yet I've only given a five star score to 32 of them. The first two of those went to Rudyard Kipling, who died in 1936.

And the third was to the book that made me laugh more than anything I've ever read since. Norman Hunter's "The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm."
With brilliant illustrations by Heath Robinson.

All the Dark Air by Livi Michael - book review

Can't understand why this book has no reviews on Goodreads. It's a very good story, moving if troubling. I picked it up to read on a long train journey, 5 hours and three changes later I arrived somewhat dazed by the emotion of the story.

All characters are strongly drawn and feel very real especially the lonely and uncared for Julie, whose story it is. She loves Michael, or maybe when she began to love him, at school, she was in love with the idea of loving Michael and never managed to shake it off. Whether Michael loves her is another question. She lives with him and his uncle Si and Michael's best mate Darren.

Most of the story takes place during Julie's prolonged pregnancy, which isn't truly prolonged but feels that way to Julie and to the reader. Occasionally the POV seems to slip, but mostly it is Julie's. Her journey ends with a party to celebrate a death that hasn't happened yet, then with her in the hospital for a birth that hasn't happened yet. I understand why the ending comes there, though it seems abrupt.

The author is compassionate to all her characters, even the absurd ones, even the violent ones, whilst being unsentimental describing their flaws. She's non judgemental, just shows the traumas of lives and how people have to manage to get on with things in their own way, alone. It's a sad story, left me wondering how the characters fared afterwards. That's how real it feels.

King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine - Book review

A great story, very well written and increasingly tense and unpredictable, one of Barbara Vine's darkest creations. A feeling of impending catastrophe grows as the story's convolutions wind and wander.

There are a dozen or so characters, all misfits in their own way, but who is the protagonist, the main character? Is it Jarvis, the obsessive railway enthusiast who is writing a history of the London Underground? Is it the poor little rich girl who goes on the tube for the first time in her life and loses her wedding dress? Is it Alice, a talented violinist, fleeing her loveless marriage to Mike? Or maybe it's young Jasper who's careless mother Tina lets him skive off school and ride the underground with his friends? Or Jed, who owns a demented hawk, or Tom the busker with delusions of grandeur, or Axel the dangerous stranger who has a dancing bear. Maybe it's Jasper's grandmother Cecelia, who is in love with her best friend.

Some of these people are more unhinged than others. They and others live in or visit a ramshackle former school where a former headmaster had hanged himself with the bell-rope. By the end of the story his is not the only death.

The main character is actually the London Underground, a surface section of which the garden of the old school backs onto. The presence of the tube permeates the entire novel, the people are all bit players by comparison, their stories depend on it.

Set in around 1980, the book seems somehow old fashioned for that era, the writing style and characters don't feel quite modern enough. But then it was published in 1990 and the author was born in 1930, so it's not so surprising. The faint scent of quaintness doesn't detract from the obsessive grip the story has on its characters, or the reader.

Hard Wired By Kathleen Mckay - book review

Hard Wired  by Kathleen Mckay - 

(my goodreads book review)

The title phrase 'Hard Wired' implies that certain people are inherently
inclined to commit certain offences. The lead character, Charlie, who works in a Newcastle bail hostel, believes this and when Darren, her friend Di's teenage son, is murdered Charlie can't decide who to suspect the most out of all the men in the hostel. To help her friend, she takes on the mantle of private detective and soon finds it just isn't that simple.

A very character driven story, we believe in Charlie, she's convincingly well intentioned and flawed. She's often distracted or exhausted and gets understandably sidetracked by important life events. She is also strong, she has to be. She helps Di who goes to pieces, while herself mourning 15 year old Darren who she's known from infancy. At the same time she holds down a difficult job, often on night shifts, alongside coping alone with her own teenage daughter, following the death of her partner. In other words, Charlie has her hand full before she even takes on the tricky task of investigating Darren's murder when the police appear to lose interest.

Overall, Hard Wired is a good read. It's not the archetypal whodunnit with lots of clues dropped in for readers to try to follow and it's definitely not just engrossed with police procedures, but rather more a study of how grief and loss can affect individuals. And there are a lot if individuals, all drawn with some conviction. The number of realistically drawn people makes the plot line confusing a times, but then murder stories are meant to mislead. I will probably read this one again.

Albert Camus, The Outsider - Book Review

 I've entered this as 'read'  in my Goodreads listings because I can't get rid of the thing otherwise. I  tried reading it twice, haven't finished it and probably never will. Progress stalled, can't get on with it. Involving descriptions in places but no empathy with the characters. This is presumably what the author intended, but I find it off-putting.

I'm sure it's a very clever book, modernist, absurdist, Kafkaesque etc. Subject, alienation. My response was to become alienated, I couldn't be bothered with the protagonist, his surroundings or his life.

So I gave him two stars, maybe because Marie said he had a face like a funeral.

The gobbledegook below is supposed to be a link to the Goodreads post but they never even appear properly, never mind work as links. Which increases my sense of alienation...………….



 href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15686.The_Outsider" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="The Outsider" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1435772042m/15686.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15686.The_Outsider">The Outsider</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/957894.Albert_Camus">Albert Camus</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2525726324">2 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />

More of Me by Kathryn Evans - Book Review

My goodreads review:-

More of Me
by

Kathryn Evans (Goodreads Author)

Sue Gilbert's review

Oct 21, 2018  ·  edit

really liked it

bookshelves: might-read-again, novels, sci-fi

I would have read this in one session but for needing a night's sleep. It's remarkably well written, I can't fault it. Anyone who's ever been a teenage girl will probably recognise the uncomfortable feeling inside their skin, even if this story is teenage angst and weirdness taken to the max and beyond. 

But am I allowed to like it? I was a teenager a very long time ago. If all so called YA fiction is this good, I will read a lot more of it. But I hate fiction being put into these boxes, YA, SF, mystery, crime, fantasy, etc. Good books are good books! I was reading adult's stories and children's stories when I was eight, I didn't differentiate then. I'm certainly not starting now. 

*****************************************

This is the first of my Hastings Litfest prize books which I've so far read. The others will need to be extremely good to be as immediately engaging as this is.