Book log: WJ Burley — Wycliffe and the Dunes Mystery

Fifteen years ago, the son of a prominent MP disappeared whilst on a coastal walking holiday after his release from a psychiatric hospital. The police had assumed suicide. Now his body has been found buried in the sand dunes, and it’s clear his father was right all along — the young man had been murdered.

A flashback prologue makes it clear to the reader from the start that a group of six teenagers having an illicit weekend were the last people to see Cochrane Wilder alive. The fun in the first half of the book is watching Wycliffe’s team slowly piece together the clues that lead them to first one member, then the whole group. But knowing that one or more of the group was almost certainly responsible for Cochran Wilder’s death and burial isn’t the same thing as being able to prove who did it and why — not when all six also have relatively innocent reasons for hiding their involvement in that weekend. And then a second murder is committed, making this more than just a cold case to be patiently unravelled…

As usual, a nicely constructed police procedural where the emphasis is on the characters and how they behave. Much of the appeal in this one is in initially knowing a little more information than Wycliffe does, and so being anticipating how the plot will develop — the amount of extra information you get is nicely played to provide a good balance between the enjoyment of working it out and the enjoyment of being surprised by other developments. I enjoy that style of procedural, so I liked this one a lot.

LibraryThing entry
at Amazon UK
at Amazon US

Book review: Ally O’Brien — The Agency

Note: I received an ARC of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme.

Tess Drake is a high-flying literary agent on the staff of a top entertainment agency. Sufficiently high-flying that she wants to branch out on her own, rather than continue to take a salary that’s a fraction of the money she brings into the business. As the novel opens, she’s just been given one final push in that direction by the death of her boss. Tess liked Lowell; she loathes Cosima, the woman who’s about to take over, and the feeling’s mutual.

The problem for Tess is that she’s made more enemies than just Cosima along the way to success. She’s left frantically trying to put together her new business without letting slip what she’s doing, in the middle of the uproar generated by Lowell’s death from auto-erotic asphyxiation. Oh, and then there’s the police investigation into the suggestion that Lowell’s death wasn’t an accident, and that Tess might have had something to do with it.

It’s fast, funny, and more than a little over the top. It’s also unashamedly for an adult audience, as is obvious right from the first page. There is swearing and there is sex, and most of it is there for genuine plot and character development reasons. There’s also a lot of acidly funny commentary on the entertainment business, with much dropping of real names to add to the realism.

Tess is often unlikeable, but she’s also aware of her flaws, and there’s real growth in her character during the book. She’s also fiercely loyal to a few people for more than commercial reasons, and genuinely regrets the damage she’s accidentally caused to relationships she valued.

The book’s a blend of chick-lit and mystery, and does a good job of both, but is not going to appeal to everyone. I can see why the reviews on LibraryThing range from loathing to loving it. For me personally it was a page-turner, and while I sometimes wanted to shake some sense into Tess, by the last few chapters I very much wanted her to break free of the trap that had been laid for her. The novel is complete in itself and does have a satisfying ending, but I’d love to see what happened next. I’d gladly read a sequel to this book.

LibraryThing entry
ISBN: 978-0312379445 (hardback)

ETA: Amazon and Audible.com links deleted. See this post on my main blog about Amazon’s censorship of LGBT books for why.

Book review: W J Burley — House of Care

Burley is best known for his Wycliffe series, but this book is a standalone psychological mystery, one of his few non-series books. Sixteen years ago Sir Henry Care’s first wife died in a fall from the folly tower on the family estate. In the meantime the estate, and the family, have slowly decayed. Sir Henry’s daughter by his first wife is convinced that she and her twin brother are resented and unwanted by the rest of the family, and resents them in turn. She’s manipulative and delights in stirring up trouble within the family, but she has also long taken an interest in the occult. She uses meditation techniques to recall memories of the day her mother died, leading to an accusation of murder against her stepmother. When she seeks to raise a demon to answer her questions about that day, she too falls from the tower. The drugs she used as part of the ritual cause hallucinations. Is it accident, suicide… or murder?

The characters and their relationships are well drawn and intriguing, but I found that the end of the book fell flat. The solution to the puzzle is offered, but there isn’t enough in the book to support it as the right and natural solution. It feels more as if having set up a number of candidates, the author picked one at random. The book’s worth reading, but I think not really worth paying more than reading copy price for unless you’re a completist.

It’s currently out of print other than in the UK Large Print edition and possibly the audio book, but as Orion are busy working their way through a re-release of the Wycliffe series, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was re-released in paperback in the next couple of years. In the meantime, here are the Amazon links for second-hand copies:

Amazon UK:
The House of Care Walker and Co hardcover (US edition?)
The House of Care paperback (US edition, I think)
House of Care Gollancz hardcover (UK edition)
The House of Care: Unabridged Magna Large Print Books edition, 2001, in print but special order
The House of Care: Unabridged audiobook, which appears to be still in print as a special order

Amazon USA:
The House of Care paperback
The House of Care hardcover

Book review: W J Burley — Wycliffe and the Guilt-edged Alibi

A fairly early entry in the Wycliffe series. This one was written in 1971, which affects the social assumptions underlying some of the plot. A woman’s body is recovered from the river, reviving old scandals that others would prefer to keep quiet. Caroline Bryce was the half-sister of an important politician, and the wife of one of the owners of a major employer in her village — but she had married her much older husband at a very young age, and was already pregnant when they married. Wycliffe has to disentangle the old secrets from the new in his search for the killer. Another death follows when it appears that he is getting close to the truth, and Wycliffe finds himself having to gamble more than once on finding adequate proof for something he suspects on skimpy evidence.

An excellent whodunnit with plenty of suspects and motives for Wycliffe and the reader to disentangle. Burley creates a strong sense of place with his depiction of the Cornish town of Treen, and some fascinating characters in the dysfunctional family that has been ripped apart by murder.

Book Review: Jonathan Gash — Every Last Cent (Lovejoy series)

This is the usual Lovejoy formula, as the amiable, amorous antiques dealer blunders his way through a mystery where everyone but him knows what’s going on. Unfortunately, this one really is formulaic, and the formula isn’t working very well. The plot is incoherent and it’s difficult to keep track of the large cast of characters and their place in the plot. The usual Lovejoy asides to the reader about antiques, women and life still have charm, but they’re getting tired and are not enough in themselves to sustain interest. This one can still provide a few hours of entertainment for long-term fans, but I’d recommend that new readers start with one of the earlier books. They’re better, and don’t require previous knowledge of the series to be able to follow what’s going on.

Fans of the tv show should also note that the tv series cleaned the characters up quite a lot, and the original book versions of Lovejoy and some of the secondary characters are much darker. There’s a lot more sex and violence, and a much higher corpse count. I prefer the book version, but the shift in characterisation could be a shock to those used to Ian MacShane’s version.

Book review: Reginald Hill – Singing The Sadness

This is the fourth of the novels about Joe Sixsmith, a redundant lathe operator turned private eye from Luton. The chapel choir that Joe sings in is on its way to Wales for a choral festival. Things get off to a fine start when the bus first gets lost on the way, and then breaks down in the middle of nowhere.The last incident to mar the journey is a good deal more serious, as they come across a burning cottage with a woman trapped inside. Joe goes to the rescue, saving the woman but putting himself in hospital for a few hours, and putting himself out of the choral competition with the tenporary throat damage from smoke inhalation. That leaves him with plenty of time to investigate the fire, which at first glance looks like an anti-English arson attack that went further than intended. But his digging gradually turns up evidence of other crimes, some petty and others very serious indeed.

As always with Reginald Hill’s novels, this book is both a gripping mystery and a beautifully written piece of prose. Joe is an entertaining character, and the book is very funny without ever trivialising the crime that lies at the heart of the case. The cast of characters is well developed, and there’s a nice exploration of the way middle and upper-class criminals can cover their tracks by exploiting the willingness of others to do a little favour for a friend.

Hill’s series books build a continuing universe, with his characters developing as a results of events in previous books, and later books often refer back to early books in the series. This one is no exception, but there’s enough backstory worked in that you don’t need to have read the earlier books in the series first–at the time of writing this is the only Sixsmith novel I’ve read, and I had no trouble following the references to the backstory.

Singing the Sadness at amazon.co.uk

Book review: R J Burley — Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine

This is the last completed book in the Wycliffe series (Burley had just started a new book when he died in 2002), and revisits the characters from an earlier book. It’s set ten years after the events of “The Quiet Virgin”, but can be read as a standalone. Detective Chief Inspector Wycliffe is in even more melancholy mood than usual, for he has to face both a new, and _female_, commanding officer, and the murder of a young woman he knows from an old case. For Wycliffe the case brings both guilt at not having kept in touch with Francine, and pleasure at seeing other figures from the past. Some strands of the plot are obvious, but as a second murder and then a third violent death interrupt the police investigation the possiblities multiply.

One of the weaker books in the series, in my view, but still no disappointment. As with the series in general, it’s an enjoyable read for those times when you’d like something complex enough to be satisfying but short and simple enough to follow when you’re tired or distracted. Note that there are major spoilers for earlier book “A Quiet Virgin”.

Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine at amazon.com
Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine at amazon.co.uk
Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine at Barnes&Noble

Book review: W J Burley — Wycliffe and the Three Toed Pussy

In the first book of the long-running series, Detective Superintendant Wycliffe has recently moved from the Midlands to Cornwall, and is facing his first case on his new patch. A young woman, Pussy Welles, has been murdered. It becomes clear that the small village she lived in holds a good many people with motive to kill her. It seems that the case is easily solved when the gun used to kill her is found by chance, and a woman comes forward to report a telephone conversation with Pussy on the evening she was killed which implicates the gun’s owner.

Wycliffe has to arrest the man, but is not satisfied–something feels wrong to him. He keeps digging, and finds evidence exonerating the man–and a second potential suspect being offered to him. Someone is playing a game with Wycliffe, and there is more death to come before he manages to unravel the workings of a macabre puzzle.

Burley has packed a good many layers of move and counter-move into this short novel, and draws some fascinating characters–not least Wycliffe himself in this first outing for the detective. It’s an absorbing read, and I’m glad to see it’s being re-released by Orion towards the end of 2006 (ISBN 0752880845).

Book review: Reginald Hill — Arms and the Women

Someone tries to abduct Ellie Pascoe, and the obvious assumption is that it’s to get at Peter — but there’s more going on than meets the eye. Some of Ellie’s activist friends have very interesting connections, and chance brings some of them together in even more interesting patterns. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, one of Dalziel’s unwanted connections doesn’t believe in coincidences…

This is definitely not one for new readers — the opening sequence requires a good deal of patience, and trust that it will eventually make sense. In fact, it’s an excellent example of the sort of thing new writers are advised not to do. Even long-time fans of the series will be left wondering what is going on for the first three chapters. Things gradually become clear, and in retropect the initial section makes a great deal of sense. Whether you like it or not will depend on what you look for in a Dalziel and Pascoe book. This novel focuses on Ellie Pascoe and her friends, and there’s much less of Dalziel and police procedural material than usual. That’s partly because much of the Dalziel and Pascoe page count is in the form of a novella Ellie is writing, with the pair cast as Odysseus and Aeneas. Chapters from Ellie’s novel are woven into the main storyline, eventually tying in with the “real life” location of the main story. I enjoyed the book, and very much enjoyed the story-within-a-story, but I can see why others wouldn’t.

This book is complete in itself, but is strongly tied in to the long term universe development of the series, with references to events in several previous books. There’s enough backstory worked in that there’s no need to have read the earier books, but you’ll probably get more out of this one if you’re already familiar with some of the backstory. It also contains significant spoilers for previous books, including the outcome of An Advancement Of Learning. In turn, some of the later books refer back to events in this one, but it’s not necessary to read this one first to enjoy the later books.

In summary, worth reading but not for everyone, and ideally should not be read before reading the earlier An Advancement of Learning.

Arms and the Women (Dalziel and Pascoe Mysteries (Paperback)) at amazon.com

Arms and the Women at amazon.co.uk

Arms and the Women at Barnes & Noble

Book review: Reginald Hill – A Pinch of Snuff

In the fifth book of the series, Dalziel and Pascoe have been working together long enough to have formed a good partnership. So Peter Pascoe is surprised when Dalziel dismisses a lead Pascoe is given on a porn film that may be more than it seems. Pascoe’s dentist is convinced that one scene in the current offering at the local private film club was not achieved by special effects, but showed a genuine beating–one severe enough that the actress might well have died as a result.

Pascoe pursues the matter in spite of Dalziel’s disinterest, and won’t drop it even when the dentist is accused of molesting an underage patient. When the elderly owner of the film club is found beaten to death, Pascoe suspects a link with his investigation of the possible snuff film. As he digs deeper it becomes clear that there’s something very nasty going on. But there are a good many threads to untangle before he uncovers the full story.

As usual with this series, this book is a well-crafted police procedure with stylish writing and a good deal of humour, though Hill never trivializes the crimes he describes. The book is self-contained and can be read without having first read any of the previous books. There’s some development of the long term story of the main characters, with the introduction of Sergeant Wield, and a look at the early months of Peter and Ellie’s marriage. Ideally the series should be read in order, but this entertaining and thoughtful book makes a good startng point if the earlier books aren’t available.

A Pinch of Snuff at amazon.com
A Pinch of Snuff (Dalziel & Pascoe Novel S.) at amazon.co.uk
A Pinch of Snuff at Barnes and Noble