OxCrimes

The pick of Oxfam’s most recent short story collection (available until mid-March 2015 for all episodes in the UK).

Stories by Ann Cleves, Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, Maxim Jaubowski & Stella Duffy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052syk1/episodes/player

 

Hibernian Homicide

Three new stories of mystery and intrigue from some of Northern Ireland’s very best crime writers: Colin Bateman, Claire McGowan and Stuart Neville. (all episodes in the UK available until then of February 2015)

Colin Bateman explores how a woman’s chance encounter in a supermarket reawakens her painful past and stirs an overwhelming desire for vengeance, while Claire McGowan bring us the story of an archaeological dig which becomes a crime scene upon the discovery of a young woman’s body, and Stuart Neville tells of a minister who is asked to commit an unspeakable crime for one of his parishioners. But why? And will he do it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051zxq4/episodes/guide

 

Foyles War

I think that the decision to end the series after last nights episode in the UK is the correct one as I have been profoundly disappointed by this season as the character of Foyle seems perpetually world weary and the plots seem to be merely hanging points for political statements which I personally happen to agree with but I don’t think that they take the place of a good coherent plot which intrigues you.

 

Death in Paradise

What can you say – Death in Paradise is a feel good series; yes, there is a murder each week but the Caribbean background and the characters give you an hour of good quality entertainment with a component puzzle at its heart.

 

Spiral (Engrenages)

The flipside to Death in Paradise – dark & gloomy with some people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and others doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Plot & character-wise it is the best series on TV in the UK at the moment for me with great acting, a strong plot and lots of twists and turns.

 

Broadchurch

I personally like the 2^nd series better than the first although I do acknowledge the procedural issues of policing and law that have been raised by others. This is due to the supporting cast for me and the twisty-turny plot.

 

Silent Witness

I really don’t know how I feel about this – it is an enjoyable enough 2 hours a week (2 x 1 hour episodes) but the plots don’t always make sense and any engagement with the current core cast is minimal – it is a rarity in the TV detective genre in having become less soapy in recent years.

 

Agatha Raisin And The Quiche Of Death was broadcast on Sky 1 on 26th December 2014 and is based on the first Agatha Raisin mystery novel by Marion Chesney under her pseudonym M. C. Beaton.

Agatha Raisin, PR whizz, gives up her successful life in London, landing with a bang in the quiet village of Carsely with hopes of beginning a new dream life. Bored, lonely and used to getting her own way, Agatha finds that life in the Cotswolds isn’t quite the picture-perfect existence she imagined… and when her high-flying city attitude is met with puzzlement and suspicion from country locals, Agatha enlists the few allies she can find

This was not a totally faithful adaptation of the book. Also I will admit that the casting bothered me as Penelope Keith in the BBC radio adaptation has become the voice of Agatha for me and I see Agatha as being that sort of age by default, i.e. retired, whereas Ashley Jensen is a couple of years younger than me. BUT it did win me over as a very enjoyable way to spend 2 hours – it was light hearted fare but there was still a good plot and it was well acted and directed – plus the locations in Wiltshire (standing in for the Cotswolds) looked great.

For information – Ashley Jensen starred as Agatha, with Hermione Norris as long-suffering housewife Jo Cummings, Robert Bathurst as her errant husband Andy, Katy Wix, as cleaning lady Gemma, Mathew Horne as Agatha’s faithful former assistant Roy, Jamie Glover as Agatha’s romantic interest James, Jason Barnett (best known to me from The Bill) as the hapless DI Wilkes and Matt McCooey as lovelorn policeman DC Bill Wong. 

 

Herring on the Nile is the 4^th of the Elsie and Ethelred mysteries by L C Tyler.

Newly wealthy Ethelred Tressider decides to spend some of his inherited wealth by embarking on a research trip for his latest Egypt set book by sailing up the Nile on the luxury paddle steamer Khedive. His intended companion was the attractive widow of the late Lord Muntham (the source of the inherited wealth – see The Herring in the Library) but things rarely go according to plan for Ethelred and so accompanying him is his agent Elsie Thirkettle.

The first passenger Ethelred sets eyes on is inept Private Eye Herbie Proctor who tells him that he is there to protect his client who he does not name. The rest of the passengers prove to be an odd bunch – Mr Pirbright thinks Ethelred is the Ex-MI5 spy turned author Paul Fielder and 2 Egyptians travelling on the boat tell Elsie they are undercover detectives chasing two criminals who they won’t name; overhearing other disjointed conversations, Ethelred and Elsie conclude that all the other passengers are a pretty shady bunch.

What makes L C Tylers books so good is that he keeps the classic crime formula on one level such as playing fair with the reader whilst turning into a farce on another.

The not-quite-pastiche but not-quite-homage to Agatha Christie is excellently done.

 

If you like Simon Brett and are looking for another author in that vein of a good detective story that might also make you laugh out loud at times – L C Tyler is a great choice.

On one hand I wish that I had discovered him earlier but on the other I would have been very impatient about the the gap between this book (published in July 2011) and the next Elsie and Ethelred mystery – Crooked Herring published in September 2014 which is very near the top of my to-be-read pile so there will be a review soon.

 

I am taking part in the Golden Age Card of the Vintage Mystery Bingo in 2015 (Golden Age Vintage Mysteries must have been first published before 1960).

More details are available at the My Reader’s Block website

and my card to date is

I will update this page as I complete cells and will link my reviews of the books read from here as well.

1. Edmund Crispin  – The Moving Toyshop (1946) – L3 entry “Read One Book with an Amateur Detective” – Edmund Crispin – The Moving Toyshop (1946)
2. Dorothy L. Sayers – Gaudy Night (1935) – L5 entry “Read One Academic Mystery” – Dorothy L. Sayers – Gaudy Night (1935)
3. Edmund Crispin – Buried for Pleasure (1948) – N5 entry “Read one book written by an author with a Pseudonym” – Edmund Crispin – Buried for Pleasure (1948)
4. Edmund Crispin – Frequent Hearses (1950) – L1 entry “Read one book set in the Entertainment World” – Edmund Crispin – Frequent Hearses (1950)
5. Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders (1936) – L2 entry “One Book that has been made into a Movie or TV Show” – Agatha Christie – The ABC Murders (aka The Alphabet Murders) (1936)
6. Margery Allingham – The Case of the Late Pig (1937) – L4 entry “Read one book with a man in the Title” – Margery Allingham – The Case of the Late Pig (1937)
7. Agatha Christie – Death in the Clouds (1935) – L6 entry “Read one book that involves a mode of transportation” – Agatha Christie – Death in the Clouds (1935)

Also for those in Ireland or Northern Ireland, it started on Sunday November 10th at 10:30pm on RTÉ 1 moving to 9:30pm from next week

Review- The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah (aka The Brand New HERCULE POIROT Mystery)

The novel is set in the traditional 1920s & 1930s milieu that we are used to both from the majority of the Poirot stories (save those with Ariadne Oliver & Curtain) and from the TV adaptations – I do wonder if it is really possible to see Poirot in your mind’s eye nowadays without thinking of David Suchet.

The synopsis from the publisher is as follows:

“Hercule Poirot’s quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done.

Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at the fashionable Bloxham Hotel have been murdered, a cufflink placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim…

In the hands of internationally bestselling author Sophie Hannah, Poirot plunges into a mystery set in 1920s London – a diabolically clever puzzle that can only be solved by the talented Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’.???

 

The reviews for this have been mixed but I did like it – it is a good read but it does have some fairly major flaws which I will now cover just some of.

It is narrated by a new character – Edward Catchpool who is a 32 year old police detective from Scotland Yard. We don’t know his rank – he is only ever called Catchpool or Mr Catchpool but he must be sufficiently senior to be allowed to go and investigate at Great Holling without asking permission. He is a policeman investigating murders but is scared of dead bodies – is this because he would have been 21 at the end of World War I so presumably would have served and may have been traumatised by the war. The problem with Catchpool is that we know little about him at the start and learn little more during the course of the novel – he is a mere tool for Poirot and not a well treated one at that.

There are some curious changes in the character of Poirot – he now appears to like English food (beef chop and vermicelli soufflé) and thinks that Pleasant’s kitchen in St. Gregory’s Alley in one of the less salubrious parts of London makes the best coffee Poirot has tasted anywhere in the world. Poirot also now likes fresh air and travelling on buses.

The plot does rely on Poirot making some leaps of logic that are a teensy bit heroic if one is being kind and the traditional ‘gather everybody together and show just how clever Poirot is’ drags on for far too long (Chapters 22 to 25 with the explanation to Catchpool so about 1/7 of the book).

There are more issues with the logic, characters and style highlighted by other reviewers – some I agree with and some I don’t – look at Amazon for some fairly damning reviews.

Will I buy a follow-up (Amazon are calling this ‘Hercule Poirot Mystery 1’) – of course I will as this is a new Hercule Poirot novel and I grew up reading Agatha Christie novels but it will be in the hope that they improve the way I feel Jill Paton Walshs Lord Peter Wimsey continuations have from book to book.

 

Just a quick review of two current UK TV crime & detective series.

New Tricks is back for its 11th series. I have less issues with this than some reviewers do as I think the two new cast additions of the last series (played by Tamzin Outhwaite & Nicholas Lyndhurst) have actually bedded in quite well and the stories are still quite good.

The problem for me is that the dynamic is now one of having two old school 70s cops (played by Dennis Waterman & Denis Lawson) grating with 2 more modern cops. I feel that this is not working as well as it should the character played by Denis Lawson is too often pushed to the background while Gerry Standing (the Dennis Waterman character) just seems to moan a lot.

I really wanted to like Chasing Shadows as it had a cast (Reece Shearsmith, Alex Kingston and Noel Clarke as leads with Don Warrington, Adjoa Andoh & Lynda Baron as other regulars) that I have liked in previous dramas and are really good actors with decent material but it was so clichéd with a cop with psychological problems solving missing persons cases with an attractive female sidekick & a tough (yet sensitive) boss.

It looks like I was not alone as ratings started at a lowish 3.4 million and fell to the 2.8m & 2.7m level by episodes 3 & 4.

The problem is that having a sort of autistic hero or heroine is not enough – The Bridge has a good plot so the quirks of the Saga Norén character react with the plot and are not there just to be the plot.

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh (2013)

This is a new murder mystery set in an Oxford college in the 1950s featuring Lord Peter Wimsey – now a Duke – and his wife Harriet Vane,

Along with his dukedom, Wimsey is delighted to find that he has inherited the duties of ‘visitor’ at an Oxford college and when the fellows of the college appeal to him to resolve a dispute, he and Harriet set off happily to spend some time in Oxford.

But this is a very embittered dispute because of the potential repercussions for the future of the college with the voting evenly balanced between two passionate parties until several of the fellows unexpectedly die and the Warden disappears.

Old cases come back to haunt Peter and Harriet as the causes of death of the deceased fellows bear an uncanny resemblance to the murder methods in Peter’s past cases – methods that Harriet has used in her published novels.

This is my favourite of Jill Paton Walshs continuations of Dorothy L Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels and was a joy to read.

Unlike many reviewers I do feel that Peter & Harriet are still recognisable and familiar to fans of the series albeit with more maturity and a degree of evolution in response to the changing times indicated by i) Harriet handling their son’s lack of academic success far better than Peter & ii) Harriets attempts to continue the wartime loosening of the social barriers between the Bunter and Wimsey families.

Okay, the story was a bit fantastic at points and I am not convinced that the Police in the 1950s would continue to give Peter the latitude that they do but to a certain extent I don’t care as I love the characters and this is a well written enjoyable book.

This is another of John Wainwrights excellent meticulous chronicles of every day life for police officers in a Northern town in England.

This focuses on a smaller timescale even than the earlier All on a Summers Day and covers the period from 10pm on Tuesday 1st May to 6am on Wednesday 2nd May for the officers at Radholme police station near the Yorkshire/Lancashire border.

During this time, the police find their normal night time routines on what should be a quiet mid-week night interrupted by a break-in at the local branch of a chemists chain and 2 tearaways in a stolen Jaguar, It is the first of those that has the repercussions that dominate the second half of the book and show just how well Wainwright knew police procedures and the changing world of policing.

If you do like realistic British police procedurals then I would look out for John Wainwrights books in a second hand shop or online (the image above is for the one I bought which is the last published edition)