Review of Heirs of the Body, Carola Dunn

Cosy detective series set in the 1920s, with journalist and amateur detective the Hon Daisy Fletcher (daughter of the late Duke of ) assisting her police-detective husband in his cases. In this novel, Daisy and her husband must identify the next heir to the Dukedom before all the rival claimants are murdered.

Chosen because: I'm a sucker for detective stories set in the 1920s, and the village library has a large collection  

Sometimes you just want to curl up with a cosy read and enjoy yourself with a nice murder, and that's just what the Daisy Dalrymple series does. Which is no doubt why the Cambridgeshire library system seems to keep them on permanent circulation around all the village libraries.

The Hon Daisy Fletcher (nee Dalrymple) and her husband, Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher, are at a more than usually tense house party at Daisy's cousin Lord Dalrymple's country pile. With the current Duke childless, the heir to the Dukedom is in doubt. So, in the way of detective stories, the Duke decides to invite all the possible rival heirs to stay while the mystery is unravelled. They're a mixed lot, including a French hotel-keeper, a South-African diamond merchant, a Jamaican sailor and a schoolboy from Trinidad. Who is the rightful heir? And who is trying to bump off his rivals, via a series of failed attempts on their lives?

I'm not entirely sure there was much of a mystery to be solved in this particular novel, and certainly very little chance for the astute reader to spot the clues and uncover the solution before our heroine. In fact, the best way to identify the murderer was by eliminating everyone who seemed like a nice chap, and seeing who was left. But then when you want a cosy read, that's a perfectly satisfactory conclusion.

To be honest, in the hotly contested 'detective novels set in the 1920s and featuring at least one aristocratic amateur detective' stakes, I don't think they're anywhere near as well-written or have as good a sense of time and place as the Dandy Gilver series (to be reviewed shortly). But on the other hand, there are a heck of a lot more of them and they don't have the overwhelming irritation factor of David Roberts' 'Lord Edward Brown' series (which I find so irritating that I might not review them at all).

So if you're in the mood for something cosy, then settle down into Daisy Dalrymple and have fun.

Review of The Machine's Child - Kage Baker

The mysteries of the Cambridge Library's book ordering decisions have reached a new high this week, with The Machine's Child. This excellent book is - I discovered on page 12 or so - seventh in a series of at least ten closely inter-woven novels. Cambridge Library has none of the others, although it does have a book of short stories by the same author. Not much help.

The result was rather like reading some of the middle chapters of a book, without ever reading how the characters got to their present predicament, or how they're going to get out of the even worse predicament that they eventually reach (trapped in a virtual Victorian library filled with improving reading). So it's a real tribute to the excellence of Kage Baker as a novelist that she effortlessly scooped up the naive reader, set out the plot so far without allowing the pace to sag, and got on with the next chapter of the adventure.

Any attempt of mine to sum up the plot is going to struggle. However, in a nutshell, an all-powerful time-travelling corporation is up to no good, and Alec and his Artificial Intelligence companion are out to stop them. In a previous novel, Alec's lover, Mendoza the botanist, was kidnapped by the Company, and Alec must try to rescue her. This is only slightly hampered by Alec being a construction of the Company for their own sinister ends, and by his body being alternately possessed by an Elizabethan martyr and a Victorian colonialist. And did I mention that they're all on a time-travelling pirate ship that runs into Robert Louis Stevenson?
 

I'm not sure that I could actually recommend starting at this point in the saga - not least, because the plot has got pretty far fetched by this point and I would have liked to have been led up through the improbabilities gradually. On the other hand, great plotting and great writing by Kage Baker mean that I'll definitely look out for more. I might even suggest that Cambridge Library buys the first book in the series...

Review of The Ghost and Mrs Jeffries by Emily Brightwell

A Victorian housekeeper and her merry band of servants set out to help their hapless master, an Inspector of Police, solve yet another baffling crime.

Chosen because: found in a charity bookshop

Apparently there are no less than 31 books now in the 'Mrs Jeffries' detective series, so I'm astounded that I haven't come across them before. Cosy and unchallenging, they seem like a natural fit for our village library. On the other hand, this one was dull enough that perhaps some quality control has kicked in to the crime shelves... 

The premise is quite fun - Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard is a lovely man, but an utterly incompetent detective. Luckily, he has his housekeeper Mrs Jeffries and the rest of the servants to uncover the mysteries for him, all the time without letting him know that they are doing the work.

I can imagine that in Book 1 of the series, that premise was enough to keep the plot and characters running along nicely. This one is Book 3 in the series, and to me at least, while the premise is still amusing, the novel itself sagged terribly.

The detective plot is weak, and relies on a bizarre coincidence that no-one could have foreseen.  On the other hand, since I'd lost interest in the plot by that point, I hardly cared that the reader hadn't had a chance to unravel the mystery. Anyway, the unsympathetic characters had done the murder, and the sympathetic ones were innocent, so that was all all right.

A pet hate of mine is unconvincing historical novels, and lets just say that this is a very unconvincing set of people for 1887. There's very little effort to make any of the characters anything other than a 21st century person in a frilly Victorian outfit - the wealthy American woman constantly hobnobbing with her butler, and toting him round as if he were a handbag, is particularly odd. Yes, it can be difficult to make people from another century appealing to the reader, with their totally different set of values and judgements, but it would have been nice to see the author try.

However, given that there are another 28 books in the series all finding eager readers, I'm obviously in a minority on this one. My copy is going back to the charity shop.