I don’t warm to crime novels where the only point is to find whodunnit. Those that resonate with me are the ones that have an extra dimension. It may be taking me into a world I am unfamiliar with, like bell-ringing or a theatre troupe. Or it could be a richly-evoked setting, like Donna Fletcher Crow’s Celtic Christian background. Or a character whose very flaws make them more gripping, such as Rebus or Wallender. I want to come away feeling enriched and not just pleased that I guessed that it was the butler with the candlestick.
I loved both the richly evoked setting of the Lincolnshire Fens and the detailed knowledge of bell-ringing. The latter is not just an add-on. The knowledge of change-ringing is crucial to solving the cipher in a document found in the bell-chamber. It also has a very real bearing on the death of the victim.
I really enjoy books that leave me feeling I’ve been enriched and not merely entertained.
In other books by Sayers I warmed to the character of Harriet Vane and the frisson of the relationship between her and the investigator Lord Peter Wimsey.
When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there.
The lore of bell-ringing and a brilliantly-evoked village in the remote fens of East Anglia are the unforgettable background to a story of an old unsolved crime and its violent unravelling twenty years later.
'I admire her novels ... she has great fertility of invention, ingenuity and a wonderful eye for detail' Ruth Rendell
This novel is enriched by being set in the theatre and based on a real dance troupe. We are caught up in an authentically realized experience of a stage company. It is set in Ngaio Marsh’s home country of New Zealand. Her knowledge of the Maori fertility symbol, the tiki, plays a significant role in the plot.
Her detective, Roderick Alleyn. Is also a gentleman, like Lord Peter Wimsey, but this time a professional policeman, who looks like a cross "between a monk and a grandee."
As with Dorothy Sayers, an extra interest is added in later books, with Alleyn’s edgy love affair with the artist Agatha Troy.
The leading lady of a theater company touring New Zealand was stunningly beautiful. No one-including her lover-understood why she married the company's pudgy producer. But did she rig a huge jeroboam of champagne to kill her husband during a cast party?
Did her sweetheart? Or was another villain waiting in the wings? On a holiday down under, Inspector Roderick Alleyn must uncork this mystery and uncover a devious killer...
Authenticity appeals to me the most. Donna Fletcher Crow shares my love of Celtic Christianity and meticulously researches her deeply evocative settings. She set out to write a nonfiction book about Pilgrimage. It never got written, but the profoundly resonant places she visited inspired A Very Private Grave.
Felicity is studying at a monastery when her favorite monk is bludgeoned to death. Fr Antony is soaked in his blood. Yet soon the two of them are on the run from the murderer. Their flight takes them to some of my favorite places–the holy island of Lindisfarne, Ninian’s hermitage at Whithorn, Hilda’s clifftop monastery at Whitby, Jarrow, that nurtured Bede, and St Cuthbert’s grave in Durham Cathedral. The settings are vividly brought to life, making this book a rich experience.
Felicity Howard, a young American studying at the College of the Transfiguration in Yorkshire, is devastated when she finds her beloved Fr. Dominic bludgeoned to death and Fr. Antony, her church history lecturer, soaked in his blood ... 'A Very Private Grave' is a contemporary novel with a thoroughly modern heroine who must learn some ancient truths in order to solve the mystery and save her own life as she and Fr. Antony flee a murderer and follow clues that take them to out-of-the way sites in northern England and southern Scotland. The narrative skillfully mixes detection, intellectual puzzles, spiritual…
Ian Rankin’s Rebus is a superb creation. We are in the modern era of the flawed investigator. Rebus is a brilliant detective but fails to gain promotion because of his refusal to obey authority. This culminates in Rebus being sent to the Scottish Police College for retraining after throwing a cup of tea at his Chief Superintendent. It is all too plausible, but he is really working undercover to investigate some senior officers suspected of a crime.
They are assigned to investigate a murder, about which Rebus already knows too much. This is vintage Rebus, where his keen detective instincts put him in personal danger, and his unorthodox past comes back to haunt him.
His newly-promoted side-kick, Siobhan Clarke, provides a great foil, taking on a murder involving Rebus’s arch-enemy.
The thirteenth Inspector Rebus novel from the No.1 bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES
'No one in Britain writes better crime novels' Evening Standard
'This is Rankin at his best, and, boy, that's saying something' TIME OUT
Rebus is off the case - literally. A few days into the murder inquiry of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at a colleague. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon.
Rebus is assigned to an old, unsolved case, but there are those in his team…
Mankell’s troubled hero, Kurt Wallender, hits new depths in this final novel. Things have not been well. His handgun left on the seat of his car was to be picked up by a child. Past conversations with his artist father, who paints the same landscape 7000 times while his memory deteriorates. Wallender now has to face the realization that he, too, is losing his memory. I felt for him on this difficult journey.
But there is still a last case to be solved. The father of his daughter’s fiancé goes missing on his morning walk. Dark secrets from Sweden’s Cold War past threaten to resurface. Wallender has to battle with deteriorating health to solve the mystery, fearing the truth may not be welcome. For me, his integrity shines through.
Every morning Hakan von Enke takes a walk in the forest near his apartment in Stockholm. However, one winter's day he fails to come home. It seems that the retired naval officer has vanished without trace.
Detective Kurt Wallander is not officially involved in the investigation but he has personal reasons for his interest in the case as Hakan's son is engaged to his daughter Linda. A few months earlier, at Hakan's 75th birthday party, Kurt noticed that the old man appeared uneasy and seemed eager to talk about a controversial incident from his past career that remained shrouded in…
Suzie Fewings is a keen family history researcher. She’s delighted when she discovers an ancestor with the same name as her teenage son. But what she finds out about the 17th century Thomas casts a darker shadow than she expected. When her own Tom’s girlfriend is found dead in mysterious circumstances, she finds it hard to fight back the doubts. As the family’s search for the killer intensifies, it puts Suzie’s young daughter, Millie, in danger.
This story of discovery and suspense weaves together dramas from the past and the present. And Suzie’s investigations offer a wealth of ideas for readers researching their own family history.
This book is set in Montauk, under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk’s last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has a stake in the outcome, among them Julienne, an environmentalist and painter fighting to save the landscape that inspires her art; Theresa, a bartender whose trailer park home is jeopardized by coastal erosion; and Molly and Billy, who are struggling to hold onto their property against pressure to sell. When Clancy…
The Stark Beauty of Last Things is set in Montauk, the far reaches of the famed Hamptons, an area under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk's last parcel of undeveloped land.
Everyone in town has a stake in the outcome, among them Julienne, an environmentalist and painter fighting to save the landscape that inspires her art; Theresa, a bartender whose trailer park home is jeopardized by coastal erosion; and Molly and Billy, who…
