Good Girl, Bad Blood

Unusually for me, I came to this book via television, after watching A Good Girl's Guide to Murder on Netflix. A few days later I came across the next two volumes in Holly Jackson's bestselling series, Good Girl, Bad Blood and As Good As Dead, in a local street library. I left volume three there, but I took Good Girl, Bad Blood because I had seen on Reddit (yeah, yeah, I know) that people adored the books and some felt the TV version was disappointing.

Having now read volume two, I can understand the love for the book character of Pip Fitz-Amobi, though I think Emma Myers did an excellent job of portraying her. She is a dogged, feisty and intelligent sleuth, and if she's rash at times, it just makes the story better. It might stretch credulity that the same village that was the site of two murders five before is currently also home to a serial killer's accomplice, but hey, good girls can't go searching too far for mysteries to solve and it helps if the mystery comes to Pip. Ravi, Pip's boyfriend, and her best friend Cara, are excellent foils, and Pip's parents are remarkably understanding and sympathetic in the circumstances.

I admired Pip's very plausible wrestling with the aftermath of the previous crimes, including the justice system falling short, and her temptation to take matters into her own hands and become some kind of avenging angel. The formatting of the text is a lot of fun, with podcast interviews and text messages woven into the narrative. I can see exactly what the fuss is about, and though I'd half decided not to watch season 2 of the TV version, I just might take a peek after all.

The Model Murder

I am really enjoying Amanda Hampson's series of Tea Ladies mysteries. This latest installment, The Model Murder, is set in 1968 and times are changing. Protests against the war in Vietnam are in the streets, pop art frocks are on the way in, but Hazel and her friends are once again drawn into a shadowy world of crime and corruption, brothels and bookies.

The Model Murder is a clever title, as we're not sure until almost the end of the novel whether the missing model in question is a victim or the perpetrator of the killing. This book abounds with deceptions, lies and fake identities. Stern, self-righteous Merl has been hiding a secret for thirty years, and when the reason for it is finally revealed, it expands the tea ladies' universe a little more. Betty gets caught up in an avant-garde theatre group, whose members are not all they seem, and whose workshops are painfully funny for any student theatre victim-survivors. Irene finds herself a new weapon, which will no doubt feature in future volumes. And I hope there are future volumes. The Tea Ladies are undemanding but highly enjoyable company.
 

We Saw What You Started

 

It's fitting that I've finished the final book the CBCA Notables list during Book Week, just after the winners have been announced. I predicted that Barry Jonsberg's Darkest Night, Brightest Star, with its themes of toxic masculinity, male violence and trauma would be a timely winner this year, so I'm not surprised that it took out the top prize, while I was pleased that Lili Wilkinson's Unhallowed Halls and Jade Timms' Golden were both Honour books in the Older Readers category.

In some ways We Saw What You Started by Carla Salmon is a very typical entrant in the Older Readers list. Set in a coastal town -- tick. Elements of romance -- tick. A mystery/crime plot -- tick (crime is very hot right now). One character with an American background to increase its international appeal -- tick. In fact I didn't mind the American character this time, Otto splits the narration with local Aussie Milly, so the US viewpoint is not overwhelming (apparently as soon as an Australian book mentions the word Mum, it instantly forfeits any chance of US publication).

What gives We Saw What You Started its unique flavour is that the action is centred around the local surf club and the rivalry over championships. Milly's father seems to favour her twin brother Jasper; is Jasper really a bad seed, or just obnoxious? Meanwhile fires are starting all over town, and new arrival Otto keeps being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Who is innocent and who is guilty? We Saw What You Started is a satisfying mystery story, and dare I say it, a great beach read.

A Murder Is Going Down

I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kate Emery's CBCA Notable from last year, My Family and Other Suspects, and I'm delighted to report that A Murder Is Going Down is more in the same vein. It's not a sequel, but an entirely new story, which opens with our narrator, Heidi, and an older woman called Marianne, stuck in a lift together; Heidi begins to tell Marianne the story of a murder that was committed when her sister-in-law was also stuck in a lift -- the murder of Heidi's older brother Felix. 

From here, the story cuts between the pair in the lift, and the story that Heidi's telling. It sounds grim but fortunately Felix was a very unpleasant person, violent, manipulative and cruel, so we can regard his death with a degree of relief and concentrate on solving the mystery (which matters because if Felix killed himself, as the police might conclude, his lovely wife Elena loses out on the insurance payout). Heidi joins forces with Elena's younger brother, the annoying but charming Patrick, to unravel the clues.

A Murder is Going Down is heaps of fun. Heidi's narration and banter zing, the characters are appealing and well drawn, and the mystery (and the mystery within the mystery!) unfolds in a satisfyingly twisty fashion. The copy I borrowed from the library had already obviously been well read, unlike some of the notables I pluck from the shelves, sad to say, and it's refreshing to read a story set in Perth. I am already a big fan of Kate Emery and I hope she keeps producing these enormously entertaining novels.
 

The Locked Room

Adam Cece's The Locked Room was my next read from the CBCA Notables list, and it was such an entertaining ride, I raced through it at top speed. Andy and three other teenagers wake up in a locked room with no idea of how they got there or what they are supposed to do next. It turns out that this locked room is just the first in a series of escape rooms to be solved before they can leave the maze in which they're imprisoned, and discover why they were put there.

Each of the rooms provides a puzzle to solve, challenging enough but not impossible, and each of the teens has their own personal issues to grapple with. Andy, our narrator, has learned passivity and hopelessness from his father; Chad is a bully; 'Nameless Girl' has been struggling with depression, while even popular high achiever Gabriella Lee has her own secrets. And of course there are twists and surprises along the way.

I'm not familiar with Adam Cece's books but apparently he usually writes for younger readers; you can see the traces of that background in the fast pace of the story and broad brushstrokes of the characters. The whole book unfolds over a matter of hours, so arguably there isn't much room for depth or complexity. The Locked Room is an immensely appealing and engaging novel for readers looking for a fast, satisfying plot and, dare I say, some escapism? Upper primary readers will enjoy this, too.

The Impossible Fortune

How lovely to be back with the Thursday Murder Club gang again! Though I must admit that the Netflix movie has irreversibly influenced the way I picture the characters now -- and there was a nice cheeky reference to Pierce Brosnan being the best James Bond (which may be the case, but he still isn't quite how I imagined Ron). 

Sinking into The Impossible Fortune was like stepping into a warm bath -- totally comforting and nourishing, and exactly the kind of book I feel like reading at the moment. My only complaint was that there was not quite enough Bogdan; mind you, there are so many gorgeous characters milling about Coopers Chase by now that it's hard to give them all full air time. There are some lovely Joyce-Joanna moments in this novel that make up for it.

The Impossible Fortune takes our octogenarian crew into the world of Bitcoin and old-fashioned 'cold storage,' a service providing physical storage in an age where digital security has become vulnerable. There are explosions and secret codes and double crossing, but there is also another parallel plot involving Ron's daughter and grandson which is less showy, but possibly more important.

I know the Thursday Murder Club can't live forever, but please, can they have lots more adventures before we have to say goodbye?
 

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire

Eleanor Jones is Playing with Fire is the third novel in Amy Doak's tremendously enjoyable series; the first two are Eleanor Jones is Not a Murderer and Eleanor Jones Can't Keep a Secret. In this book, Eleanor is still a new-ish student in country town Cooinda, but she's managed to gather a group of friends around her and some of her social awkwardness has mellowed, though she still speaks her mind. She's even got a kind of boyfriend! But Eleanor seems to attract trouble -- or does she go looking for it, as her friend Holly the police officer seems to believe? This time, in a tinder-dry rural community, someone is setting fires. But who could it be? And why?

Amy Doak has created an appealingly forthright and funny protagonist in Eleanor Jones, but she doesn't carry the story alone. Doak is adept at exploring issues of friendship, loyalty, small town politics and toxic masculinity in this novel, all wrapped up in a satisfying mystery plot (not actually a murder this time, though initially it seems like it might be). I really enjoy the way that Eleanor has collected some adult allies, and her willingness to ask questions about things that other people take for granted. I really hope there are some further installments to Eleanor's adventures!
 

What Rhymes With Murder

Disclaimer: I made friends with Penny Tangey at a posh school literature festival in Queensland when I was a relatively baby author and she had just published her first novel, Loving Richard Feynman, which I absolutely adored. Already her trademark droll wit was much in evidence, and it's been a consistent element of her work whether she's writing for a middle grade or young adult audience, or now for adults. (Recently I loved Music Camp.)

What Rhymes With Murder? is a mystery story, but the real pleasure of this book lies in the voice of Frida, a new mum who is anxious about everything, especially harm coming to her six month old baby, Finn, after an earlier miscarriage. Tangey is superb at interweaving genuine emotion with humour, and the reader's heart goes out to poor panicking Frida who can't get down the stairs from her apartment, as well as laughing at her put-upon, passive-aggressive hints to her partner about the housework.

 I pop Finn on his playmat and check on the machine. I plonk the clean washing into a basket then carry it to the lounge room, where I wrench open the balcony door. Outside I drop the basket with a thud.

    Ben asks, 'Are you okay?'

    'Yes. Just hanging out the wash.' As per usual.

    'Do you want me to do that?' 

    I shake my head. I don't want him to do it. I want him to have done it already.

There was an extra delight for me in the East Melbourne setting: my elder daughter has just moved into a tiny apartment in East Melbourne and I loved recognising the parks and thinly-disguised cafes of the area (I bought my copy of the book at the General Store which is surely the model for the 'Gipps St Cafe'.) There is a lot of coffee in this novel!

But there are serious themes here too, mostly about reproduction. Frida's post-natal mental health battles, anti-abortion activists, a local reproductive clinic suffering attacks from the same group, a group of three co-parents, a yearning grandmother, a childless professional -- and much of the action takes place at the library! What Rhymes With Murder? is very Melbourne and a lovely read.
 

Sweet Danger

I was prompted to read Margery Allingham's Sweet Danger by Susan Green, and also the Secret Life of Books podcast on the Golden Age Queens of Crime; Allingham was the only one I hadn't yet sampled. Sue was right; Sweet Danger is an absolute romp, with lots of action, a preposterous plot and attractively eccentric (and also sinister) side characters, including the smart and lively seventeen year old Amanda, who is destined to become Campion's wife in a few books' time.

I knew that in the early 1990s, the BBC had made a couple of seasons of Campion, starring Peter Davison, and I found one story, Mystery Mile, (two episodes) on YouTube, which I watched to get the flavour of it. This might have been a mistake, because the two stories were quite similar in feel, and some of the characters from Mystery Mile were even referenced in Sweet Danger, and I might have confused myself about some of the plot details. In Davison's autobiography, he regrets that the BBC didn't make more Campion, but points out that they were quite difficult to adapt for television because the plots were so complicated! Apparently the BBC splurged 25,000 pounds on buying the ancient red Lagonda that Campion and offsider Lugg drive -- it worked out cheaper than hiring it for the duration and they were able to resell it at the end of the production and it cost them virtually nothing.

I enjoyed Sweet Danger a lot, and I think I might check out Tiger in the Smoke, which was the novel discussed on SLOB and is considered Allingham's post-war masterpiece.
 

Silver

Fittingly, I read most of Chris Hammer's second novel, Silver, in a seaside town, though one located on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne rather than the north coast of New South Wales like the fictional town of Port Silver. Silver takes place in the months after Scrublands; journalist Martin Scarsden has finished his true crime book (don't we all wish we could bang out a whole book in a month or so?) and is joining new partner Mandy and her baby son Liam in his old hometown where she's inherited a house. Overlook the coincidence -- there are more to come.

Silver is a well-constructed mystery with the now familiar Hammer ingredients of shenanigans around real estate, buried secrets and unsuspected connections. I really enjoyed the sections where Martin is schlepping around with Liam; we don't often see investigations carried out with a toddler in tow, and the detective having to worry about nappies and baby food (conveniently, Liam falls asleep in the car a lot). Martin's own traumatic family past is fleshed out for the first time, and we meet his uncle Vern and his Aboriginal wife. The pace is less frenetic than in Scrublands, but there's plenty of action -- a corpse in the first few pages, several historic violent deaths, a fist fight on the beach, and a mass poisoning before the novel's end. Martin often acts like a dick, despite his bonding with Liam (luckily there is private childcare available whenever it's not possible for either Mandy or Martin to look after him), and Mandy gets realistically fed up with him.

Silver forms the basis of the second season of Scrublands, available on streaming, and now I've polished off the book I can't wait to get stuck into the TV version. If it's anything like Scrublands season one, it will simplify the plot considerably and delete a few storylines to compress it into four episodes instead of 560 pages. 

Vintage Murder

  

I thought it was about time I sampled one of the Queens of Crime whose books I've never read. Encouraged by the Secret Life of Books podcast, I started with Ngaio Marsh's Vintage Murder, which is actually her fifth book about Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Though Alleyn is based in London, in Vintage Murder, he is on holidays on New Zealand (given the book was published in 1937, that is quite a commitment for a holiday -- about six weeks' sea voyage each way!) Marsh was herself a New Zealander and this was the first time she'd ventured 'home' in fiction.

Ngaio Marsh seems to belong firmly to the puzzle school of murder mystery authors, with the solution turning on entrances and exits and who in the large cast of suspects had the opportunity to access the scene of the crime. The reader can compare each character's account of events on the crucial night and spot the discrepancies, just like a real detective. However, to me, this is the least interesting aspect of the story. I enjoyed Marsh's observations about New Zealand, its incredible scenery and the locals' colonial deference to the Scotland Yard expert. The Maori character of Dr Te Pokiha is mostly sensitively drawn, though there are a couple of moments of wince-inducing racism.

I think I will try another Marsh, mostly for the period detail, but I did enjoy Vintage Murder, even if the mystery itself was on the humdrum side. The murder, however, was truly spectacular, involving a jereboam of champagne smashing down on the victim's head.

The Seven

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'd never read any of Chris Hammer's bestselling crime fiction, though The Seven is number six (ha ha, six seven... iykyk...) This was another score from the Allen & Unwin offices, and my publisher saw me hesitating over it and urged me to take it, saying it was perfect holiday fiction and very readable, all of which turned out to be true. I really enjoyed The Seven and it will prompt me  seek out Hammer's previous novels.

Hammer pulls off a neat trick in The Seven, which is to run three parallel narratives: a current murder investigation (written in the present tense); events around the disappearance and probable murder of two young people in the 1990s (written in the past tense); and the story of the early history of the town of Yuwonderie, told through the letters of a young, well-educated Aboriginal woman. All these layers fold together to build a satisfying mystery, with interesting history and a cast of well-rounded characters. 

Hammer worked as a political journalist for decades before turning to fiction, which has given him both access to meaty plot substance, and a talent for economically sketching people. Terrific gifts for a crime writer. And extremely readable, to boot.
 

Puzzled

 

Another score from the Allen & Unwin book shelves. I love David Astle's columns about language in The Age, and I also hear his evening radio show from time to time, and I like him a lot. But his main claim to fame is as the notorious DA who sets the Friday cryptic crossword, also in The Age, which Melbourne people have long jokingly characterised as Don't Attempt. 

I like crosswords, I do one every day and two on Saturdays. But cryptics have always been beyond my comprehension. I was in awe of a fellow student at college who once tried patiently to explain to me how they worked -- and English wasn't even her first language. So in Puzzled I saw my chance for a crash course in the mysteries of cryptics once and for all.

Alas, after bravely wrestling with the whole book, I can only conclude that I don't have the right kind of brain for cryptic crosswords. Astle starts gently enough with anagrams and double meanings, but soon we're swimming in 'hybrids', 'manipulations' and '&lits' (or perhaps drowning!) Even with Astle holding my hand, I couldn't figure out most of these clues. Fortunately, the course in crossword solving is also interleaved with autobiographical episodes from David Astle's life, which are both entertaining and interesting and which helped me through the difficult patches. Puzzled is a beautifully constructed piece of work, but alas, I'm not much closer to mastering the mysteries than I was before -- my fault, not David Astle's!

A Morbid Taste for Bones

I first remember seeing a Brother Cadfael book when an overnight guest left one in my share house bedroom in 1988, but I've never got around to reading one (there are twenty books in the series!). A Morbid Taste for Bones is the very first one, published in 1977. The wonderful thing about writing books set in the twelfth century is that they don't date at all, or at least, this volume of Ellis Peters' murder mysteries hasn't. There are strong female protagonists, there is sex, there are recognisably eccentric characters, but there is plenty of strangeness about the medieval world, too, including the overwhelming power of the church, a fairly rough system of justice, and the accepted rhythms of agricultural life.

Brother Cadfael is a very attractive character, and I was pleased to see that Derek Jacobi had a go at portraying him on TV -- he seems like perfect casting. Cadfael is a monk, but he has a rich secular past -- he's known women, he's fought in the Crusades and been exposed to other cultures, he is worldly and shrewd. The plot of A Morbid Taste for Bones was a lot of fun, focusing on in particular on the politically ambitious Prior Robert and the ecstatically holy Brother Columbanus, whose performative visions cause Cadfael to roll his eyes. The tussle over the bones of neglected Welsh saint Winifred leads to bloodshed, but luckily Cadfael is around to set all to rights.

I enjoyed this book a lot and the person who recommended Brother Cadfael to me as perfect comfort reading was right on the money.
 

The Trees

Another absolutely extraordinary book, this time a novel. I was blown away by Percival Everett's latest novel, James, and his 2021 The Trees is just as powerful. It's funny and horrific, it gallops along, it's brilliant and deeply unsettling. It starts as a murder mystery, with the mutilated bodies of white men discovered along with a Black corpse who bears a striking resemblance to the body of lynched teenager Emmett Till. Two Black detectives try to unravel what's going on, as the bodies mount up and the circumstances grow more bizarre and inexplicable.

Everett's special genius is for dialogue. It fizzes and crackles like electricity through these pages, pulling the reader inexorably through a landscape of horror and rage that might otherwise be unendurable. The Trees is both furious and droll, eminently readable and starkly appalling. Everett makes the case for the history of lynching in the US as a kind of slow motion genocide, forcing us to confront the unspeakable cruelty that is a continuing reality.

The Trees was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. If great things come in threes, I can't wait to see what Everett produces after this and James.

The Deadly Dispute

We are now up to number three in Amanda Hampson's Tea Ladies mysteries. The Deadly Dispute takes us up to 1967 and modernity is definitely encroaching on the tea ladies' world. Replaced by a coffee machine, Hazel has been unemployed for eighteen months when she's offered a job with a trade union; Irene has given up serving tea altogether and is now a cleaner at a brothel. Naive Betty is exposed to free love, drugs and feminism when she makes friends with a young woman at her clothing factory. Fourth member of the gang, Merl, is somewhat sidelined in this story after she takes offence at the decisions of the Tea Lady association.

But the real action is down at the docks, where Hazel soon finds herself up to her neck in trouble and smuggled Krugerrands. I was reminded that these novels take place in the same locale as Ruth Park's Harp in the South books, albeit somewhat later. Hampson does an excellent job of evoking 1960s Sydney and the social and political currents of the time, as well as an engaging crime story which proves that middle aged ladies can be effective action heroines -- Betty has no need to mourn for her wasted youth.

I'm really enjoying this series and while I'm not sure if there are further adventures in store for the intrepid tea ladies, I certainly hope that they don't hang up their pinnies any time soon.
 

The Westing Game

Ellen Raskin's 1978 middle grade mystery The Westing Game is one of those books that completely slipped under my radar -- as it was published just before I finished primary school, I think I just missed falling into the right demographic at the time, and remained blissfully ignorant of it thereafter. But with over 200,000 ratings on Goodreads, it's clear that other people did manage to find it!

The Westing Game reminded me of how much I adored Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew as a young reader, and I'm sure I would have lapped this up. Sixteen strangers are drawn together to solve the mystery in Sam Westing's will; how are the heirs connected to Sam, and how do the clues fit together to expose his murderer? The heirs are paired together in seemingly unlikely duos, but it turns out that each has something to offer the other. For me, there was more satisfaction in seeing the heirs help each other than in the eventual solution of the mystery.

The Westing Game is a slim novel (another one borrowed from my book group friend, Sian) and I raced through it. It's supremely entertaining, the diverse characters each has an unexpected side, although they're sketched broadly, and the mystery is just complicated enough to be intriguing. And shin-kicking Turtle Wexler is a heroine to love.
 

Angel with Two Faces

Angel With Two Faces, volume two in Nicola Upson's Josephine Tey murder mystery series sees Tey staying in Cornwall to write a new novel, at the childhood home of her closest friends, Ronnie and Lettice Motley, and their police detective cousin, Archie Penrose. Soon they are all deeply entangled in local secrets: the unexpected death of a young man which has left his two sisters bereft, and then the murder of a curate who apparently knew more than he should.

The Penrose estate, Loe Pool and the amazing clifftop Macklin Theatre are all real places, though Upson has taken liberties in allowing her fictional characters to be so thoroughly embedded in their history. The character 'Jospehine Tey' occupies an interesting space between fiction and reality, as it was a pseudonym for writer Elizabeth Mackintosh; 'Josephine' never actually existed. I can see how this light fictionalisation gives Upson a degree of freedom to play with Tey's personal history and character.

Angel With Two Faces centres around some darkly disturbing secrets (at one point I thought it was going to go even darker, but it pulled back), but it's worth it for Upson's assured writing and the intelligent, compassionate characters of Josephine and Archie, who share their own complicated history. I think there are now eleven books in the series, all set in my favourite period between the wars, and featuring real and imagined figures from theatre and literature. I will definitely be going back for more.
 

Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective

I've been looking forward to Miss Caroline Bingley, Private Detective since I first saw that it was on the horizon, and it did not disappoint. It made me appreciate the character of Caroline Bingley in a whole new way; I pictured her as Anna Chancellor in BBC Pride and Prejudice throughout: haughty, slightly arrogant perhaps, but intelligent, determined and curious -- all fabulous traits for a private detective.

Gardiner and Kumar have taken Caroline Bingley's personality and gleefully run with it, setting up a plausible mystery involving Georgiana Darcy's missing ladies' maid, the East India Company, smuggling, the slave trade, and (to paraphrase a long ago Dr Who episode) a wonderfully violent butler. There are some gorgeous scenes on the frozen Thames, lively drawing room banter, and thoughtful social commentary, as well as plenty of criminal action. It would have been so difficult to pursue wrongdoers without the benefit of mobile phones (or indeed any phones), cars or a fully functional police force.

I can't wait for further adventures of Miss Caroline Bingley, and I'm sure Jane Austen, though she might have been nonplussed, would thoroughly approve.

My Family and Other Suspects

Next on my CBCA Notables list was My Family and Other Suspects by Kate Emery. Yet another YA crime novel! This one was a hoot from start to finish: a kind of YA Benjamin Stevenson (Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone), with a lower body count and a dose of teen romance, and knowing asides to the reader. Fourteen year old Ruth is about to go home after a family holiday on her step-grandmother's isolated farm, when a suspicious death forces everyone to stay longer. Ruth and sort-of cousin Dylan set themselves to solve the many mysteries and secrets swirling through the extended family, to a dangerous and satisfying denouement.

Maybe the CBCA judges decided to eliminate all the crime stories from their shortlist, but in my opinion, My Family and Other Suspects should have been on it. It's deft and funny, smart and self-aware (and gets extra points from me for including McCullochs in the story -- one of my own family names). Murder and humour make a winning combination if you can pull it off, and Emery does so brilliantly. A joy to read.