A. A. Milne is a million times more famous for Winnie-The-Pooh than he is for this neat, compact and fluent little novel of amateur detectives and a body in a locked room. Which is a shame, as The Red House Mystery (1922), while not brilliant or innovative, is of value because it masters the conventions with precision and humour, creating an entertaining mystery, and likeable characters with enjoyably explicit nods to Sherlock and Watson in their dynamic. Mark Ablett is a patron of the arts, an […]
“On sweet silk grass I stretch me at mine ease,…”
Like J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements, reviewed here, Kate Beaufoy’s Liberty Silk is a tale of different eras and generations connected by a single object–in this case, a beautiful, shimmering, colourful silk dress from Liberty of London. Bought in 1919 by Jessie, a young lady of patrician English background who marries a penniless artist and spends her honeymoon deliriously happy in the summery South of France, it’s eventually inherited by Baba, born Lisa, who is a starlet with an empty life in Hollywood in the 1940s, […]
“And I should tell him all my pain,…”
And I should tell him all my pain, And how my life had droop’d of late, And he should sorrow o’er my state And marvel what possess’d my brain; (Tennyson, In Memoriam XIV.13-16) Mad About the Boy, the third Bridget Jones book, is confusing. But then, Bridget Jones herself and her narratives are confusing; there’s the original Bridget Jones of the Independent newspaper columns, there’s Bridget Jones of the films, and there’s Bridget Jones of the books. I’m pretty sure that Bridget Jones of […]
London calling to the underworld
Ben Aaronovitch’s Moon Over Soho was the first book I ever reviewed for Cannonball Read (CBR 4, 2012), and I loved it – it was dark, fresh, funny and deep. Broken Homes pales in comparison–both the light and shadow of Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho have faded, and things seem to be deliberately slowed down rather than allowed to proceed at their natural pace. When the book opens, Peter Grant, Nightingale and Leslie are still on the trail of the Faceless man, London […]