I’ve always been drawn to books that take place in a single house, so when it came time to write a sequel to my first mystery novel, I was determined to make this happen. In addition to Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, I thought of classic novels I’ve read, books I never would’ve considered to be genre in any way. But you know what? A mystery of some kind is at the heart of almost all novels. Readers love to experience the sense of discovery, of coming to some kind of truth. It's no coincidence that all five novels here feature first-person narrators, very much in the mode of old-school noirs.
After solving her first case, private eye Siobhan O’Brien is hired by Phillip Ahn, an octogenarian billionaire with his own personal island in the Pacific Northwest. Ahn, a genius in artificial intelligence, swears that Duke, his youngest child and only son, is an impostor. Is Ahn crazy, or is Duke really someone else? As Siobhan attempts to arrive at the truth, her biggest challenge will be dealing with Ahn’s family, who all live under the same gilded roof: his current wife, his two ex-wives, and their awful, privileged children.
What is the real reason that Siobhan was brought to this isolated estate? If she can keep her head – literally and figuratively – she’ll learn that family secrets have some very Deep Roots.
No doubt this is a book (and its multiple TV and movie adaptations) with which many are familiar, but its complete title is Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. Sacred and profane – if you are thinking religion, you are correct.
Catholicism lays its heavy hand throughout this stately novel, and when the book begins, our narrator, Charles Ryder, tells us that he’s been to Brideshead Castle before. The estate is housing for British soldiers during WWII, but Brideshead and Charles go back more than twenty years, and this is merely the beginning of the great untangling of this tragic story.
As a sucker for repressed, undercommunicating characters, this one hits the unspeakable spot.
It is WW2 and Captain Charles Ryder reflects on his time at Oxford during the twenties and a world now changed. As a lonely student Charles was captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte and invited to spend time at the Flyte's family home - the magnificent Brideshead. Here Charles becomes infatuated by its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, and in particular with Julia, Sebastian's startling and remote sister. But as his own spiritual and social distance becomes marked, Charles discovers a crueller world, where duty and desire, faith and happiness can only ever conflict.
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” That first line of Rebecca may be as famous as “Call me Ishmael.” And as soon as you come to the end of the very short first chapter, you realize what a haunting line it is, because Manderley is gone, burnt up in smoke.
Does anyone not like Rebecca? I’ve not met a single person who hasn’t liked the book. I know it’s cliché to say a place is like a character, but that’s exactly what Manderley is, a house suffused with the death of the previous wife, Rebecca. When I was writing my book, I wanted my own Manderley, a beautiful mansion that’s also a beautiful prison.
* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .'
Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the south of France, she meets a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory…
I read The Remains of the Day after watching the movie, so I have a hard time separating the two in my mind.
The most attractive part of the book (and the film) for me is the unrequited, unspoken love between Steves and Miss Kenton, the butler and the housekeeper of Darlington Hall. There have been many works that depict the pain of a love that never was, but none can hold a candle to this one. The tension is almost unbearable.
*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available to preorder*
The Remains of the Day won the 1989 Booker Prize and cemented Kazuo Ishiguro's place as one of the world's greatest writers. David Lodge, chairman of the judges in 1989, said, it's "a cunningly structured and beautifully paced performance". This is a haunting evocation of lost causes and lost love, and an elegy for England at a time of acute change. Ishiguro's work has been translated into more than forty languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
Stevens, the long-serving butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on…
You can make a pretty convincing argument that one of the most celebrated books in American history is actually a mystery novel.
You have all the requisite components: the femme fatale (Daisy), a murder victim (Myrtle), a shady rich man (Gatsby), and the narrator/amateur detective in Nick Carraway. The writing is gorgeous, but it’s the thick and juicy plot that drives these pages. This is the first novel I read in school that I actually liked!
As the summer unfolds, Nick is drawn into Gatsby's world of luxury cars, speedboats and extravagant parties. But the more he hears about Gatsby - even from what Gatsby himself tells him - the less he seems to believe. Did he really go to Oxford University? Was Gatsby a hero in the war? Did he once kill a man? Nick recalls how he comes to know Gatsby and how he also enters the world of his cousin Daisy and her wealthy husband Tom. Does their money make them any happier? Do the stories all connect? Shall we come to know…
The house may be named Three Gables, but the title is correct – it is a crooked house, through and through.
As clever as Knives Out and its sequel may have been, this is the OG when it comes to a house full of the most interesting nutjobs. I’m proud to admit that I studied the hell out of Crooked House to write my book. The ending of this one is a doozy, and I tried my best to do the same. As the saying goes, if you want to steal, steal from the best.
A new Agatha Christie thriller, described by her as "one of my best."
The Leonides were one big happy family living in a sprawling, ramshackle mansion. That was until the head of the household, Aristide, was murdered with a fatal barbiturate injection.
Suspicion naturally falls on the old man's young widow, fifty years his junior. But the murderer has reckoned without the tenacity of Charles Hayward, fiance of the late millionare's granddaughter...
Liveaboard sailor Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived when she blags her way into skippering a Viking longship for a Hollywood film. However, this means returning to the Shetland Islands, the place she fled as a teenager. When a corpse unexpectedly appears onboard the longship, she can run from the past no longer: Cass and her family come under intense scrutiny from the disturbingly shrewd Detective Inspector Gavin Macrae.
Even if Cass’s local knowledge and sailing wisdom help to clear the Lynch family of suspicion, they may not be enough to stay ahead of the murderer’s game... and avoid becoming the next victim.
Death on a Shetland Longship: The Shetland Sailing Mysteries
When she wangles the job of skippering a Viking longship for a film, Cass Lynch thinks her big break has finally arrived - even though it means returning home to the Shetland Islands, which she ran away from as a teenager. Then the `accidents' begin - and when a dead woman turns up on the boat's deck, Cass realises that she, her family and her past are under suspicion from the disturbingly shrewd Detective Inspector Macrae. Cass must call on all her local knowledge, the wisdom she didn't realise she'd gained from sailing and her glamorous, French opera singer mother…
