A Will To Kill (RV Raman): This is our Storysmith bookgroup’s next book (on ‘whodunnit?’ theme). Published in 2020, it’s RV Raman first novel in the ‘Harith Athreya Mystery’ series and is set in a remote mansion within the Nilgiri mountains of modern-day eastern India. A rich, aging and wheelchair-bound patriarch, Bhaskar, has invited relatives to his mansion, knowing that family members expect to gain from his death, so he writes two conflicting wills (which of them comes into force will depend on how he dies). Harith Athreya, a ‘seasoned investigator’, has been called in to watch what unfolds… It’s a classic ‘classic locked-room murder mystery’ that could have been written by Agatha Christie or her contemporaries (but the mention of mobile phones and people going jogging acts as a stark reminder that it’s not the 1920-40s!). Because it uses typical plot devices from the ‘golden age of crime fiction’, I was initially quite sceptical… but it’s quite a clever, detailed mystery novel and I ended up quite enjoying it (escapism from our present world?!)… and I liked the Athreya character.
Devotions (Mary Oliver): I love Mary Oliver’s writing. I love the simple, crafted reality of her words and her ‘take’ on the world. This is a collection of her poems spanning more than five decades (the first published in 1963, aged 28, the last in 2015)(she died in 2019, aged 83). Her most recent poems are at the beginning of the book… and her first at the end. I read the collection quite slowly – perhaps three or four pieces each morning – and frequently out loud (to myself!). Most of her poems are self-explanatory but, for some, I would have loved to have had some additional words to set things in context perhaps. For me (and perhaps it’s part of my own ageing process?), I think I loved her later poems best… they seemed to capture the wisdom and experience of old age with beautiful simplicity. It’s a VERY special book that I know I will dip into frequently over the coming years.
The Secret Lives Of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw): When I first picked up this book, I thought it would be about ladies who ‘do-the-flowers’ at some quintessential English parish church(!). How wrong can you be?! The author is a young, black American woman and the book is a series of short stories exploring the “raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires, and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good” (as the book’s cover puts it). It’s rather wonderful in its way… beautiful, bruised, intimate, sad and very funny. Surprisingly good and very readable.
The Seven Dials Mystery (Agatha Christie): First published in 1929 (we have 34 Christie books on our bookshelves, but this is one I hadn’t previously read!). There’s always room for a classic crime novel as a form of relief from our challenging world. Predictably, it’s set in a world of high society and privilege and features the exploits of Lady Eileen Brent (a highly-intelligent young woman, affectionately known as ‘Bundle’) and Superintendent Battle. Inevitably, there are some deaths and a complex trail of clues and deceptions. Seven Dials turns out to be a seedy nightclub and gambling den and Bundle manages to get into a secret room there, where she hides in a cupboard and witnesses a meeting of seven people wearing hoods with clock faces (as you do!)… I’ll leave things there *no spoilers*. It’s a typical, ingenious Agatha Christie plot but, for my money, I felt somewhat cheated. Instead of being able to make an educated guess at the ‘solution’ on the basis of clues contained within the novel, Christie holds back information which the reader should have had(?) and, on top of that, I felt that the solution itself was pretty preposterous/far-fetched (but I still enjoyed it!). Hey ho!
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