The Green Road by Anne Enright

The Green Road is a little gem of a novel, managing to be entertaining as well as crafted, with engaging characters, all of whom belong to the same family: the Madigans from County Clare. They all converge on the family home one Christmas because their mother, Rosaleen, has decided to sell the old house, a decision that throws them into a chaos of emotions.
    Before all that happens, though, we are treated to the individual stories of Rosaleen and her four children. Dan upsets his mother at the beginning when he decides to become a priest. Years later he's in New York, living with his old girlfriend from home, while dabbling in the gay scene. Enright's perspective on New York in 1991 and the terrible shadow of AIDS is told through the eyes of Greg, HIV positive and lamenting the friends he has lost. The tone is pitch perfect, vivid and moving.
   And suddenly it's Constance, the older daughter, still living near her mother with a family of her own.  Her scattered thoughts as she waits for a mammogram appointment fill in the details of her life and her concerns for her mother and the difficulties around their relationship. For Rosaleen isn't easy. She's deprecating and demanding at the same time - no wonder her children have almost all deserted her.
    After Constance, we are swept to Mali where Emmet, Rosaleen's younger son, works with an aid organisation, living with his girlfriend, Alice. He loves Alice but finds it difficult to show this. Emmet has an offhand manner which helps him deal with the horrors of his surroundings, but it doesn't help his relationship. His younger sister, Hanna, an actress in Dublin, is quite the opposite, full of temper and passion - as a child she had a tendency to burst into tears over anything; now as an adult she is inclined to drink.
    They are a family of contrasts and they bounce off each other wonderfully when they all come together, bound by the awkwardness of dealing with their mother. Sneaking in is the story of Rosaleen's devotion to her late husband, Pat Madigan, a humble farmer and socially beneath her.
    The novel sets the scene for a potent mixture of tense emotions and discord, as well as concern and reconciliation in the family's last Christmas together in the old house. There is a load of humour too - I loved Constance's endless return trips to the supermarket and her outburst when it is revealed that she has forgotten to buy coffee grounds.
    It's so very real but magical none the less. This is because of Enright's wonderful writing. I shouldn't be surprised, she's a Booker winner after all and this book was also long-listed and Costa nominee to boot, and deservedly so. Enright could make a grocery list interesting.
 

The Somme Stations by Andrew Martin

It is the autumn of 1914 and Detective Sergeant Jim Stringer is nervous, to say the least, about fighting in the war, but when a notice appears at York Station calling for men to enlist in the newly formed North Eastern Railway Battalion, he feels he must do his duty. He'll be spending a few months training in Hull with an odd assortment of 'railway pals', there'll be a few incidents highlighting the growing animosity between certain characters, and the friendliness between others.    
    But the reader's curiosity is truly piqued by the opening pages, told in letters from Jim's wife to a friend, that while he is recovering from a serious leg wound, Jim is to be charged with murder. The story switches back to fill in the gaps, beginning with the strange cast of characters Jim enlists with. These include the two young lads - surely they lied about their ages - Alfred Tinsley, a railway nut who doesn't get on with young William Harvey, who is mad about the army and eager to teach the Kraut a lesson or two. Oamer is the philosophical and popular NCO with a secretive private life and cheery Cockney, Bernie Dawson can't drink bitter without losing his temper. The Butler brothers include oily Oliver who is wary of Jim for reasons of his own, and the twins, beefy Roy and Andy who seem mentally deficient but are dab hands with a shovel and laying of track.
    When one of the pals is murdered shortly before they are sent to France, Jim's policeman instincts kick in, but the death is written off as either accident or suicide and the men ship off. They will soon be helping set up the railway system at the Somme that will keep the artillery well supplied with shells at the front. But the military police have not let the pals off the hook for the Hull murder and this makes things a bit jittery for them, to say nothing of the horrendous reality that is the war in France.
    Told through the eyes of a character we've come to know so well, The Somme Stations is a unique war story describing a little known corner of the battlefield, the role of the railways. Jim's war experiences are as evocative as any I've come across, and though in some ways it's a grim read, it is laced with his usual Yorkshire humour, a bit darker this time around. This is partly due to the array of interesting characters on offer as well as the ridiculous aspects of war that resemble a world gone mad. There is also quite a lot of alcohol consumed and contemplations of the qualities of your humble Woodbine as opposed to 'Viginian Select' cigarettes. Stringer's Chief puts in a surprise appearance and a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo has a significant role to play.
    Martin has had a few literary award nominations for his Jim Stringer series, but this one won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award. I am hard-pressed to choose any as better than the others, I love them all, but The Somme Stations is certainly one of the more entertaining war stories I've read.

 

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan

This is the first of what would seem to be a new series of mysteries featuring recently retired Mumbai policeman, Ashwin Chopra and, quite possibly, his pet elephant. The book begins on Inspector Chopra's last day in the force - he has had to retire early for health reasons - and he is daunted by the fact. He will have his policeman's pension, and his wife, Poppy, is looking forward to having him at home to make a fuss over. But he is not ready to retire.
    A final case - the drowning of a young man from a poor part of town - looks to Chopra to be more than meets the eye and in spite of orders to sign it off as a drunken accident, Chopra resists. He can hear the words of the boy's distraught mother ringing in his ears, that there is no justice for a poor woman and her poor son. Surely he can ask a friend to perform a post mortem and visit the family to see what he can find out.
    At the end of the day he arrives home to find there is a baby elephant outside his home. It has been left to him by a favourite uncle and an argument is in full flow between Poppy and Mrs Subramanium, the self-appointed arbiter of what is permitted in their apartment block. No pets is one of the rules, while Poppy exclaims that the elephant isn't a pet, but one of the family. The elephant is tethered in the compound and left with the caretaker, while Chopra figures out what to do with it.
    The elephant is so tiny and, separated from its herd, utterly miserable, neither eating or drinking. You can't help but fear for its survival while curiosity about its role in the plot draws you into the story. Chopra, now with time on his hands, begins his investigation into the drowning. He finds the victim's diary which sends him on a trail into the slums of Mumbai. What can be the connection between a leather shop, an orphanage and an abandoned warehouse?
    While Chopra is involved in his secret undercover work, Poppy suspects he has another woman and hatches a scheme of her own to save her marriage. There are plenty more mad cap scenes involving the elephant at the apartment, also home of Chopra's difficult mother-in-law, while Chopra closes in on a network of criminals, leading up to a showdown with an old enemy.
    The plot just bubbles along and the colourful sights of Mumbai in its infinite variety adds a ton of interest while the monsoon brings new challenges. Chopra is a big-hearted investigator and his elephant surprisingly helpful - is is just as well they are not ready to settle into retirement together. I for one will be looking out for the next Baby Ganesh Agency investigation.
 

The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

The reader at the centre of this novel is Guylain Vignolles, just an ordinary man whose life has been made difficult by the name his parents gave him at birth - a spoonerism away from Villain Guignol which translates as 'ugly puppet'. He suffered the kind of teasing at school that robbed him of his confidence, and now in his thirties Guylain works in a book recycling plant, managing the Zerstor, a monstrosity of a machine that noisily gobbles and pulps the books no one wants to read anymore.
    The work is bad enough for anyone, his boss is abusive, his co-worker sneering and uncouth. And on top of that, Guylain loves books. To make up for what he has to do to them each day, he salvages odd pages and reads from his collection on his daily commute by train, out loud.
    Most of the time it seems Guilain's readings go unnoticed by his fellow travellers, until one day two old ladies collar him and ask him to read at their home. He imagines another Paris apartment, probably a bit more commodious than his own tiny garret, and is surprised to find himself in at a retirement home.
    His readings are very popular and the audience ask questions and take an interest in him. What's more they mispronounce and mishear his name so that it becomes nothing that conjures up the 'ugly puppet' of before. Things are looking up. But when Guylain discovers a lost USB drive on his train, his life takes another course altogether. In order to return the drive to its owner, Guylain downloads its content and suddenly we are in the journal of Julie, who is just as disillusioned with her lot as Guylain. Julie is looking for a white knight to rescue her from her dismal job as a toilet cleaner in a shopping mall.
    The book is a charming fable about the power of literature to uplift and transform people's lives. But it is full of humour too - that particular French style of humour which sees the funny side of the potentially miserable. Take Guylain's former co-worker, Giuseppe, who's legs were lost in an unfortunate accident when he was unblocking the Zerstor. His apartment is lined with shelves of books: identical copies of the same book that was made from the pulp which was the bi-product of his accident.
    Or the security guard, Yvon, who has a passion for reciting French classical literature and speaks in Alexandrine verse. (I imagine in an Englsh story, the character would choose iambic pentameter.) Guylain is a good friend to both which is just as well or the reader could never forgive his inability to find himself a girlfriend or a decent job.
    The Reader on the 6.27 takes an afternoon to read, and once begun I found it difficult to put down. I'm not sure quite what it was that drew me in, possibly it was the 'Amelie'-like quirky Frenchness, or the desire you feel for Guylain's life to turn around. You know there is a happy ending coming up, but there is enough wit to keep your brain happy as well. And the writing is stylish and clever. What more could you want?

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

I was wondering what new problems Simsion would throw at his incredibly smart but socially inept hero, Don Tillman, in his sequel to the runaway hit, The Rosie Project. Don and Rosie, now married, are living in New York where Don has a post in the genetics department at Columbia University, and where Rosie has enrolled as a medical student. They have managed to find an apartment they can afford that meets Rosie's requirements for space and location and married life seems to be, well, rosy.
    When Rosie announces she is pregnant, this unplanned event throws all of Don's careful planning and timetabling into disarray and he reacts badly, causing a chain of events that could spell disaster. They are thrown out of their apartment, Don has to undertake a course of counselling at the risk of deportation and he hasn't figured a way to tell his Aussie mate, Gene, that Rosie is not happy about him staying with them during his sabbatical in New York.
    Don manages to keep all of the above secret from Rosie, yet as Rosie's pregnancy progresses, she seems to be drawing further and further away from him. Soon winning Rosie back is added to his list of challenges.
    That is pretty much the story in a nutshell, and not much more than what you get from reading the publisher's blurb. The book is peppered with a cast of memorable characters and this plus Don's knack for solving one problem with another gives the tale plenty of oomph. The housing problem for instance is solved by Don's promise to look after an aged English rock-star's on-tap beer by moving into his downstairs apartment - it smells a bit, and sometimes the Dead Kings get together for a practise session on the floor above but it is in every other way ideal.
    There are some hilarious scenes around Don's social worker, Lydia, who has decided he is unfit to be a father and sends him to anger management classes where he impresses the lads with his Aikido skills. To avoid adding stress to Rosie's condition, Don uses a daring piece of subterfuge to convince Lydia he is safe to stay in the US. Meanwhile Don's Dean requests his help monitoring a parenting study run by lesbians with a highly political agenda. Don's clinical intellectualism refuses to allow any leeway and he finds himself caught up in a new battle which will have crucial implications later on.
    The story builds up to a wonderful climax in the beery apartment, and Don will be torn in all kinds of directions as he tries to look after his friends while saving his marriage. His big-heartedness in this regard makes him yet again a brilliant and complex hero while the humour never lets up. Narrating the entire story in Don's singular voice takes some doing and Simsion pulls it off brilliantly. The novel is highly entertaining while rejoicing in the things that make us all unique individuals.

The Ghost Riders of Ordebec by Fred Vargas

Vargas throws four perplexing mysteries in not so many more pages in the opening chapters of her most recent Commissaire Adamsberg novel. He quickly solves the cause of death of an old woman who had apparently died in her sleep, but a trail of breadcrumbs leads him to suspect her husband of foul play.
    Soon after that, he rescues a pigeon, its legs tied together so that it cannot feed itself and looks likely to die. Adamsberg swears he will bring the perpetrator of this petty crime to justice, and takes the bird to Lieutenant Retancourt, his Amazonian subordinate - if she can't cure the bird no one can.
    Pacing the pavement distractedly and looking out of place on the streets of Paris, he meets an elderly woman who is too nervous to enter the police department doors. Eventually this Mme Vendermot reveals her peculiar story - that her daughter has seen the Ghost Riders of Ordebec and among them were four doomed men who live in her Normandy town, the first of whom has already disappeared. The local police take her for a madwoman and will not listen, but Adamsberg is fascinated.
    If only he hasn't been suddenly called off to investigate the murder of prominent businessman Antoine Clermont-Brasseur, his corpse found in his burnt-out car. The suspicion falls immediately on Momo, a serial arsonist whose petrol soaked sneakers are found on searching his home. But there are others who might want Clermont-Brasseur dead - his two sons are reportedly dissatisfied with his management of the family business and want to take over, yet torching an old man in his car seems a fearful way to go about it.
    Momo swears his innocence and Adamsberg, who has a knack for being able to detect if someone is lying, believes him. He masterminds a way for Momo to escape and to allow him to investigate the Ordebec mystery at the same time. His twenty-something son, Zerk, whom he has only come to know in recent months, becomes Momo's caretaker, bringing with them the rescued pigeon, hiding out in the house of the first of the Ordebec victims, a conveniently secluded cottage.
   Adamsberg installs himself in the home of another victim, the elderly Leone, felled by a blow to the head and now lying in hospital, unlikely to survive. What was it that Leone knew? He brings with him Lte Veyranc, recently returned to duty and spouting Alexandrine verse as is his way. He'll need the help of Commandant Danglard as well, useful as always for his extensive recollection of facts and fine taste in wine. He and Veyranc hate each other, and Vargas invents a clever scene to create a hilarious reconciliation.
    There is a huge cast of curious characters, in particular the Vendermot family - the son Hippolyte who speaks whole sentences backwards, his famously busty sister, Lina, who can understand him, the younger brother Antonin who thinks his bones are made of clay and the brother, Martin, who concocts nourishing meals out of insects. Adamsberg must work with Capitaine Emeri of the local gendarmerie, who has airs above his station on account of being descended from a famous military general.
    The story is both ridiculous and perfectly logical at the same time, enlivened by the way the characters, particularly those on Adamsberg's team play off each other. The Ghost Riders of Ordebec is quirky, original and such good fun and, best of all, the kind of escapism that manages to be intelligent at the same time. Not surprisingly it has won for the author her third CWA International Dagger award.

The Baghdad Railway Club by Andrew Martin

In this instalment of Andrew Martin's Jim Stringer mystery series, our dogged railway detective finds himself sent to Baghdad to investigate a potential case of treason. It is 1917 and Jim has barely recovered from an injury in the Somme when a chance meeting at a railway club in London plus a word from his Chief in York have him working on a covert mission.
    Not terribly good in hot weather, Jim is flung into a scorching Mesopotamia, where the Allies have chased out the Turks. The local population is unsure whether the British are any better and insurrection simmers in the background.
    It is easy to forget that there was more to World War One than the Western Front and of course Gallipoli. But the fall of the Ottoman Empire is not to be sniffed at. Jim's meant to reconnoitre with a Captain Boyd outside the tea shop at the railway station but discovers the poor chap's corpse instead. Jim slips away, anxious not to be in the frame for his murder and is soon on the hunt for suspects.
     The one with the most likely motive is Lt. Col Shepherd, the officer who has taken Jim on to help run the railways - a debonair, old-school-tie sort with a tendency to be a risk taker in battle. Shepherd was the officer mentioned by Boyd to the War Office as a possible traitor, for apparently accepting a bribe from the surrendering Turks. There's also Boyd's nervous batman to consider who is acting somewhat secretively. Other characters add colour - movie maker, Wallace King, who turns up at the most inconvenient of times with his film camera and the breathtakingly lovely archaeologist, Harriet Bailey, who is an expert on the Arab peoples.
    Jim begins to feel nervous when Shepherd and his side-kick Captain Stevens are eager to take him on a steam train outing up to Samarrah, Jim driving and Stevens as fire-man. Normally this would be a joy, but the intense heat and also the knowledge that Jim's cover is blown give Jim a sense of impending doom.
    The tension ramps up a notch or two with more deaths, and there's Martin's usual blunt North of England humour which describes the characters so well. The tedium of talks given at the railway club meetings, the love-lorn folly generated by the presence of a pretty woman, the reluctant help given by Jim's Arab servant, the ridiculous code devised by Jim's secret service boss that is really no help to Jim at all - all give the reader plenty of chuckles. Meanwhile the plot is driven towards a stand-off during another railway outing, while a surprise twist courtesy of Jim's wife Lydia rounds the book off nicely.
    The Baghdad Railway Club delivers more of what fans of the Jim Stringer series have come to expect - who new that steam railway systems could be such fun? There are only two I have yet to read, but perhaps Martin will get the railway bug again and deliver a few more.

In a Real Life by Chris Killen

In a Real Life is the story of three characters, Lauren, Paul and Ian over two time periods: 2004 and 2014. The novel cuts back and forth between these two critical years, using a lively mix of alternating view points, past and present tense and first and third person narration. The chapters are short so in no time you are swept into the novel which opens with the break-up of Paul and Lauren This happens when Lauren goes to bed having left a list of PRO's and CON's about Paul on the living room table, which of course he happens to see when he comes home from his bar job.
    His bar job is one of the CON's - there are seven in total - while there is only one PRO: that he would never cheat on her. Fast forward to 2014 and there's Paul, having published a novel, teaching creative writing, so no longer working in a bar, but contemplating infidelity with a nineteen year old student, which means he seems to have swapped around some of his good points and bad points.
    Lauren goes off to Canada on the spur of the moment, but begins an email correspondence with Ian, Paul's flatmate. Ian is in the music industry, playing in a band, writing songs, but by 2014 he has lost his job in a record store and has to move in with his more successful sister, Carol. It's a crumby box room and he has to sell his guitar to pay his board. He's also lost touch with Lauren, after a stream of emails that promised more than friendship. All three characters seem to have lost touch, in fact.
    By 2014 Lauren is working in a charity shop, still looking for Mr Right with little hope of finding him. The course of the novel fills in a few of the gaps: what caused the falling out between Lauren and Ian for starters. We have sympathy for Ian in particular: he seems a nice guy but his life has struck rock bottom, Lauren has a knack for getting into situations with men without really thinking them through, while Paul seems to be acting out a role in 'Men Behaving Badly'. It is a toss-up who is worse, Paul or Carol's boyfriend, Martin who gives Ian a job in telemarketing. This is a particularly unpleasant industry and it says a lot for Ian that he is so bad at it.
    The novel highlights the way we communicate/fail to communicate using social media and the Internet, and is an interesting snapshot of Generation Y. There is plenty of humour in the little messes each character gets into, although at times this made me cringe, particularly Paul's hopeless acts of deceit towards his girlfriend, his younger lover, his boss and even his publisher. And surely characters like Paul and Ian should steer clear of Facebook or at least should think rather than drink before posting a status.
    What kept me going with the story was the obvious 'unfinished business' between Ian and Lauren that lurks in the background. Paul shows a willingness to make amends to all and sundry, but seems to be hellbent on picking up more bad points than before. In Paul, Killen has created a classic example of literary pretentiousness reminding me somehow of that Groucho Marx saying: 'Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book - and does.' I am glad however that Chris Killen wrote this book - it is so refreshingly honest and good fun.

Night Train to Jamalpur by Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin might well have called this novel 'Snakes on a Train'. His railway detective, Jim Stringer, has been sent to Calcutta  to investigate corruption and security arrangements on the East Indian Railway. It is 1923 and with Lydia and their sixteen year old daughter Bernadette in tow, his secondment was supposed to be a kind of working holiday.
    But someone has been secreting venomous snakes in first class carriages and the body count begins to climb. Jim feels that this should be something he could look into, and of course he does, hampered as he is by fellow investigator, the cigar smoking and monstrously rude, Major Fisher. The two are on the night train of the title, when a murder takes place - Jim rudely awakened by sounds outside his compartment and then gunshot.
    The Anglo Indian, John Young, with whom Stringer had been chatting and sharing an evening drink just hours before, is found dead while horsemen ride off into the night. It is difficult to suggest a motive for the killing unless Jim himself is the target, a means of stalling any investigations into railway corruption.
    And Jim can only wonder who has stolen the folder of potentially damning information that had arrived on his desk the day before. If only he'd had the chance to read it first. Jim is inclined to suspect Fisher, who is uncooperative and who he believes is carrying a gun, which for some reason fails to appear when their carriage is searched by police.
    If that isn't enough to be going on with, Jim begins to worry that his daughter Bernadette is about to be swept off her feet by the son of a Maharajah, known to the family as the RK. On top of this Bernadette is out almost every night dancing with her posher pals and spending small fortunes on hats. Meanwhile Jim's wife, Lydia, is eager to spread the word about the women's movement in India at a time when revolution is in the air. But Jim worries that there is something else niggling her.
    Jim's investigations take him from balls held by Anglo high society and golfing with the RK to clandestine meetings with snake charmers. There is a host of potential suspects, most of them peculiar in some way - the strangely faceless William Asquith in charge of the traffic department who spends more than he could possible earn,  his subordinate Dougie Poole, who has a brilliant mind hidden by his tendency to be off his face most of the time, as well as Professor Hedley Fleming who knows an inordinate amount about snakes, to name but three.
    While this novel isn't as pacy as some Jim Stringer novels, there is a lot going on and enough action to keep the reader well amused. And laced through everything is Jim's knack for wry observations and local colour. The India situation in itself is interesting, with whisperings about that upstart, Gandhi while Lydia has plenty to say about British colonial domination.
    Night Train to Jamalpur is the last in the Jim Stringer series to date, its author seemingly beavering away on other projects. We've seen Jim delve into all manner of cases in a range of interesting settings. Will there be more in the series? I certainly hope so as this is probably my favourite current mystery series - where it doesn't really matter 'whodunit', as the story is all in the telling. Which is just as it should be.

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

Pym is often described as a 20th century Jane Austen. Perhaps this is more obvious in Jane and Prudence as the eponymous Jane sees herself as a bit of matchmaker. Although she doesn't quite get into as much trouble as Austen's Emma does, and as Pym puts it when describing the modern novel, the ending is not obviously a happy one, with a number of possibilities still on the table.
    The story begins with Jane and Prudence, who were at university together, at an Oxford reunion. Here their old tutor, Miss Birkenshaw, remarks about what her students have gone on to achieve. A number, like Jane, have married clergymen, others have their work in a ministry or have dogs, while a question mark hovers Prudence. Jane feels Miss Birkenshaw might have said that Prudence has her love affairs.
    As she and her husband settle into a new parish, Jane begins to look around for a suitable husband for Prudence, now twenty-nine - an age when she could so easily miss the marriage boat altogether.
    Prudence meanwhile lives in a tastefully decorated flat in London, where she works as an assistant for a Dr Grampion, editing books 'nobody could be expected to read'. She has secretly been in love with her employer who one evening when they were working late, had laid a hand on hers and said, 'Ah, Prudence.'
    Pym creates amusing little scenes around Prudence's workplace, where the older ladies, Miss Clothier and Miss Trapnell, fuss about whether the typists will manage to bring in the tea on time, or if Mr Manifold can be prevailed upon to share some of his tin of Nescafe when the tea has run out. This is the early fifties and rationing is still the bane of everyone's existence.
    Similarly in Jane's village, there is always the worry of what to have for dinner, Jane usually relying on opening a tin, but rescued by the wonderful Mrs Glaze, the housekeeper whose nephew is the village butcher. Mrs Glaze consequently knows whose turn it is for liver, and who will be having 'a casserole of hearts' that evening.
    The scene is set for plenty of humour as Jane lines up potential candidates for when Prudence comes to stay, lured by a fundraising whist drive. The most obvious seems to be the recently widowed Fabian Driver, who has had a few love affairs himself but has a nice house on the green. There is also young Mr Oliver who looks palely interesting when reading the lesson, and the local MP, Edward Lyall. So many possibilities.
    It could all be a bit silly if it weren't for Pym's wit and the lively dialogue that captures the time; the daft preoccupations of parish life, starkly contrasting with quotations from Jane's academic speciality: the poetry of the seventeenth century.  Contrast gives the book a bit of oomph in many ways - the two main characters, one from the town and one from the country - and the contrast between people's expectations and what transpires. Jane and Prudence is a delightful read, redolent with subtle wisdom, that will leave you in a better place.

The Last Train to Scarborough by Andrew Martin

At the start of this novel, railway detective Jim Stringer wakes up in the dark to find himself lying on a pile of coal, unable to remember how he got there. He soon finds out he's on board a ship, the kind of jobbing steamship that runs from the north of England to the south. On top of that he's not too well, suffering terrible nausea, and the captain of the ship and his foreign sounding first mate seem set to kill him.
    Change of chapter and suddenly the reader is with Jim and his family - 'the Missus' and his children, Harry and Sylvia (named after Sylvia Pankhurst, of course), at their new house on the edge of Thorpe on Ouse. It's a bigger house but the rent is reasonable, perhaps because the landlord has taken a bit of shine to Lydia, Jim's wife.
   Lydia wants the family to get on in the world, and with that in mind, Jim is about to ditch railway policing for clerking in a law office, with the view to one day becoming a solicitor. He'll be James Stringer from now on, thank you.
    But the Chief has one more case lined up for him, and this concerns the disappearance of a railway fireman (they're the ones that shovel in the coal to keep the engine running), who was spending a night at the Paradise Hotel in Scarborough. The case is months old, and the local police have been all over the guesthouse numerous times, but no one can account for the whereabouts of Raymond Blackburn, a strong, handsome, silent type with a fiancee waiting for him.
    The Chief sends Jim off undercover as a fireman to the Chief's rifle-club pal, Tommy Nugent, a chatty, nervous driver with guns in his luggage, just in case. The Paradise advertises itself as economical accommodation for railwaymen, and Jim finds himself in Blackburn's old room at the top of the stairs.
    The off-season hotel offers a bunch of suspects: a beautiful but flirtatious landlady and her 'slow' but powerfully built brother who has a fascination for newspaper articles about railway accidents. The other two guests are equally peculiar: Howard Fielding, a finely dressed older gent with a taste for fine wine and cigars who is oddly enough in the railway postcard business with fellow guest, Theo Vaughan. Theo is nowhere as flash and is hoping to branch out into a more racy and potentially more lucrative line of postcards as he soon reveals to Jim in an amusing scene at a local pub.
    As usual there is a load of scope for humorous banter among the inmates with their oddly contrasting characteristics and Jim's need for information. These scenes are interwoven with ones on board the coal steamer that has become Jim's prison. Here there is no comfort and Jim's health more and more precarious. The reader can only wonder how he is going to get himself out of this one.
    The Last Train to Scarborough is another terrific story in the Jim Stringer series. There's still plenty of railway detail to keep the train buffs amused, but if you don't know a thing about it all, the story still rattles along with loads of pace and that wonderful north of England style. With this instalment we are in March of 1914, and only too aware that Jim will be a long way from home in the next book in the series, The Somme Stations. It's bound to be a corker!

Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe

Humour can be so difficult to get right, but Nina Stibbe does it superbly in her novel, Man at the Helm, which is a kind of 1970s Love in a Cold Climate. The story is told by Lizzie Vogel, born with a silver spoon in her mouth, thanks to the fortune her father's business reels in.
    Sadly her parents have fallen out of love - they were young iconoclasts together when they married, but the demands of the family business have turned Lizzie's dad into a different kind of person.
    Divorce sees Lizzie and her mother, her sister and brother (Little Jack) packed off to a house in the country in Mrs Vogel's ancient Mercedes, Geraldine. It's a grand house, with a gardener, Mr Gummo, but it's too far to travel for housekeeper, Mrs Lunt, who hates children but makes wonderful jam tarts, and it is the end of the nanny era.
    What's more the village is not ready for a divorcee among their ranks - even the vicar warns Mrs Vogel that while the family may attend services, she would not be eligible to join their women's fellowship group. The village families discourage their children from forming friendships with the Vogel children so it's just as well they have each other.
    Mrs Vogel, sinks into the depths of despond, sun-bathing and becoming addicted to tranquillisers, which means not a lot of mothering, let alone housekeeping, happens. But she's still young and beautiful (shaking her hand causes men to fall in love with her) so the girls hatch a plan to find a new 'man at the helm'.
    After much debate, the girls gradually add men to the list, most of whom are already married, but that seems to be no impediment.  They are after all desperate not to be made wards of court, and will try anyone. The vicar makes the list and even Mr Gummo - though only if all else fails. Which it nearly does, and love comes, as it always does, from the least likely direction.
    Man at the Helm is a refreshing, delightful novel, gently humorous offering a steady stream of chuckles rather than uproarious hilarity. A lot of this is down to Stibbe's lovely use of language - whimsical and original - which she uses to create the narrative voice of ten-year-old Lizzie. And the 1970's era is nicely brought to life here, along with small town life. It's altogether more-ish, like Mrs Lunt's jam tarts, just the ticket for the silly season.

This Night's Foul Work

Fred Vargas comes up with some decidedly nasty criminals in her Commissaire Adamsberg novels, yet they are always immensely good fun. Perhaps this is because of the character of Adamsberg himself who has a dreamy, irrational way of probing crime.
   This Night's Foul Work begins as Adamsberg is settling into his new house, building a wall in a haphazard kind of way, watched by his one-armed Spanish neighbour, Lucio. The Spaniard is convinced Adamsberg's house is haunted by a murderous nun, who Lucio is convinced will kill again.
    Back at the offices for the Serious Crime Squad, the Commissaire is conniving to prevent a double homicide from the wrong side of town going over to the Drug Squad. He engages the help of attractive pathologist, Ariane Lagarde, a woman he has upset in the past. But the two must bury the hatchet because the usual police pathologist is out of sorts, suffering from 'a touch of the vapours'. Ariane helps Adamsberg along with his case when she declares their murderer is a woman.
    This book also sees the addition to the squad of Lieutenant Veyranc, a moody looking chap from the same part of the Pyrenees as Adamsberg, who thinks he has a score to settle with his new boss. The Commissaire has set him the task of guarding his girlfriend Camille from a psychopath who featured in the previous book. Veyranc spends his days in a cupboard on Camille's landing, waiting in vain for his boss to agree to meet him, but oddly content. The other peculiar thing about Veyranc is his tendency to break into clunky Alexandrine verse.
    But why should we be surprised as each of Adamsberg's team has his or her own quirks of character: Commandant Danglard, extremely erudite and beautifully dressed, is morose and descends into frequent drinking bouts at work; Mercedet suffers from narcolepsy and has a mattress in the coffee room; Retancourt is a shy but Amazonian woman, who inspires devotion from Estalere who can remember everyone's blood type, coffee preferences and birthdays. All these things will come in handy later on.
    While accompanying Camille to a Normandy town where she is playing in a concert, Adamsberg encounters the locals at his hotel bar - quaintly rustic characters who are upset about the brutal slaying of a stag in the woods, shot and hacked at for the removal of its heart. It's an odd story which Adamsberg agrees to look into, little knowing that it will somehow have a bearing on his double homicide.
     There will be many more complications before he manages to solve the case, including the escape of an elderly psycho-killer nurse from prison, the apparent accidental deaths of two virgins in their thirties and the theft of a church's relics of St Jerome. There will be some amazingly diverting scenes, including one where the Serious Crime Squad, equipped with cars, motorcycles and a police helicopter, follow The Snowball - the squad's resident cat - across Paris in order to prevent the murder of one of their own.
    With such a hugely entertaining, absorbing kind of read, it would be easy to think of this as one mad-cap scene after another. You could also be forgiven for thinking that every French person must be slightly batty. But the novel has its own kind of logic, as well as red herrings and a plot that builds to one heck of a surprise at the end. Vargas seems to do the impossible: she obeys the rules of crime novel writing while contriving to be completely original. Surely, this makes her one of the best in the business.

Civil to Strangers by Barbara Pym

Published posthumously, I was quite prepared for Civil to Strangers to be somewhat ordinary, by Barbara Pym's standards, that is. It was her second novel, after Some Tame Gazelle had unsuccessfully gone the rounds of the publishers, and like this one, no doubt languished in the attic - until recently.
    Of course if you don't like Pym, this won't bother you at all, and if you do like Pym, then you have the pleasure of a new one, decades after her death. And also the sorrow of realising that she could never be aware of the success she would enjoy today.
    Civil to Strangers is wonderful in that it doesn't appear to have been written by someone still perfecting her style. The writing has all the features we recognise in Pym, the small village, in this case it is Up Callow, where a lot of the action is centred around the rectory and its clerical types. There's a lovely scene in church where the sermon about embroidery, of all things, is mulled over by various members of the congregation. And there is Pym's trademark irony and her likeable if rather silly village characters and their little concerns, all bound together in a light, elegant style.
    Mostly, this is the story of Cassandra, who is really nice. She's quite nice looking, does things properly without fuss and always manages to say the right thing. She's married to Adam Marsh-Gibbon, a writer of difficult to understand novels, and as such the couple are much admired because Adam gives their village a bit of fame in the broader world. But Cassandra worries that she loves her rather self-centred, artistic husband more than he loves her.
    When an exotic Hungarian stranger takes up residence in one of the village's more notable properties, the village is abuzz with gossip. Thirty-year-old Angela Gay, who fears she may be left on the shelf, has found charming the austere young curate, Mr Paladin, an uphill battle so she soon switches her attentions to Mr Tilos the Hungarian. Unfortunately, Tilos falls for Cassandra instead.
    In the background the village characters ponder and discuss these goings-on, particularly Mrs Gower, who as the widow of an academic enjoys a degree of prestige, and Angela's uncle, Mr Gay, a handsome man of sixty who never quite realised his dream of marrying for money. With characters like these it isn't surprising Pym is sometimes likened to a modern Jane Austen.
    The drama moves to Hungary and there are amusing scenes on a train when Cassandra befriends some churchly types in an attempt to avoid Mr Tilos's advances. There are misunderstandings, dawning realisations and reconciliations, while one or two new romantic attachments develop in the background. Who knew village life could be so dramatic?
    You come away from reading a Pym novel feeling warmed and amused without any affront to your intelligence - there's even a smattering of literary quotations for fans of the classics. And with Pym's lively dialogue and whimsical style you can happily reread a Pym novel because like Cassandra's embroidery, it is so much richer for the inclusion of plenty of stitches.

Cold Flat Junction by Martha Grimes

Cold Flat Junction follows on from Hotel Paradise which was a mystery novel complete in itself, but leaving enough for its young detective, Emma Graham, to uncover in a follow-up book. If you remember, Emma's curiosity was piqued by a photograph showing a family of stern looking aunts, their pretty younger sister, Rose, and their niece, Mary Evelyn, who drowned in mysterious circumstances forty years before.
    It is also the story of two murders, the first twenty years ago, when Rose was discovered stabbed in the chicken house. Taking the blame for her killing, her husband, Ben Queen, has just been released from prison, when their daughter, Fern, is shot dead near Lake Noir.
    Taking up where her inquiries had left off, Emma is determined to prove Ben Queen innocent, while also discovering the identity of the mysterious pale girl, who looks exactly like Rose. She is pretty sure that the key lies way back in the past, before the drowning of Mary Evelyn, who she is certain was killed by her aunts. But what reason would they have to hate her so much?
    The novel meanders its way around Emma's interviews with a wide cast of characters - many of whom we've met before: Sheba and George Queen, Miss Landis the schoolteacher and the regulars at the Windy Run Diner at Cold Flat Junction. Much closer to home, she teases out more stories from nonagenarian Aunt Aurora who reveals a potential scandal.
    Dwayne the mechanic will help out with transport to Lake Noir, and the spooky Brokedown House, while Ulub and Ubub and Mr Root will be among those few who take her seriously. Meanwhile Emma's mother, her martini guzzling business partner, Lola, and Lola's daughter the vapid ReeJane, all take a holiday leaving the hotel's few guests in the hands of Emma, her brother Will and the dishwasher dogsbody Walter. Good old Sheriff DeGheyn is patently upset on Emma's behalf, but the holiday gives Emma more chances to slip away and investigate in places that would appal her mother if only she knew.
    But DeGheyn is reluctant to heed Emma's concerns when it comes to Ben Queen's innocence and he remains a person of interest. This gives the story enough urgency to keep us all on our toes as things move along to a very surprising ending.
    Blended in with the story are some nice literary touches such as the deus ex machina, which is a crucial part of the musical production of Medea that Will and his friend Mill (Brownmiller) are putting together. Then there are the references to William Faulkner, a favourite author of Dwayne's, particularly the novel, Light in August, which gives Emma a clue to her mystery. There's also a lot of cigarettes and alcohol - truly Emma doesn't have a typical childhood - and endless meals. This gives the book plenty of colour as clues to the past slowly unfold.
    This is another satisfying read from Grimes, who is a whizz with atmospheric settings and quaint small-town characters, producing an imaginative story that shows just how the present can be mired in the past. But then the best stories so often do.

The Collected Works of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

If you adore reading, a novel set in a bookshop has instant appeal. If you like good, literary fiction, you will warm to the curmudgeonly owner of Island Books, the A J Fikry of the title.
    A.J. has lost his wife in a tragic car accident, and while she was happy to stock popular titles, talk to book reps and hold author events, A.J. is too much of a purist for all that. So he does't like postmodernism, post-apocalyptic settings, post-mortem narrators or magic realism; or for that matter children's books, especially ones about orphans, young adult fiction or anything with vampires. He explains all this and more when he is being mean to Amelia, the book rep who will later play a major part in his life.
    Obviously, A.J. is doomed not to prosper, even if the tourists that arrive on Alice Island every summer frequently boost sales. But he isn't too worried as he has a copy of a rare edition by Edgar Allen Poe as his insurance policy.  About the same time that a desperate mother leaves her baby in the bookshop, with a note asking A.J. to take care of her, his Poe rare edition is stolen. These catalysts drive A.J. to cut back on his drinking and interact more with the outside world.
    There is a bunch of interesting characters in this book for him to interact with. There's Officer Lambiase, the divorced police chief who used to read nothing but Jeffery Deaver, and starts a book group called Chief's Choice - it's mostly police procedurals read by other cops. A.J.'s friend, Daniel, is a womanising novelist who has never written a best seller since his first break-through novel. He's married to Ismay, A.J.'s sister-in-law, who teaches drama at the high school. She's tough on the outside but a softy on the inside, and quietly makes sure A.J. is OK. The little girl, Maya, is bookishly quirky, rather like you'd expect A.J.'s natural daughter would be.
    This novel could be saccharine, but is far too witty and smart, and with enough ups and downs and reversals of fortune to keep you interested. Each chapter begins with A.J.'s notes to Maya about a particular piece of literature he values in one way or another - another nice little extra for bibliophiles. Roald Dahl, gets a look in as well as American greats such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O'Connor, while there are a few obscure enough to have you searching Wikipedia.
    The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry is a short, Sunday afternoonish sort of novel, but it has a lot of heart and is a good reminder about the pleasure and sustenance to be found in books, and friends as well, of course. Though for some of us, they may be the same thing.

Black Faces, White Faces by Jane Gardam

I came across this collection of short stories in a second-hand shop and what a joy! First published in 1975, Black Faces, White Faces is a book of interconnected stories about mostly English people on holiday in Jamaica. There's a law conference on, so many of the guests are lawyers, silks and even judges - and their wives - and there's a fair bit of kicking up of heels and disturbing desires that don't usually surface in the cooler English climate.
    Each story follows the point of view of a character, who we may meet again from another character's point of view, and as usual there's Gardam's dry wit and gift for the telling phrase. There's a huge span in age among the guests represented here.  At one end of the scale is the young Egerton lad, whose story, 'The Best Day of My Easter Holidays', is a school exercise that sharply captures the oddity of the English on holiday in an exotic location.
    Chaperoned by Jolly Jackson, their guide, the Egertons are taken on a lightning fast tour of the island, interrupted with car crashes and tropical storms. It throws up the racial unease that exists as well as the disparity between the wealthy tourists in luxury accommodation and the poorest islanders and their shanty-town existence. Of course the boy's teacher doesn't believe a word of it.
    At the other end of the scale is 'Something to Tell the Girls', where two ancient school teachers go on an outing where they naively rub shoulders with the rougher Jamaican elements and are rescued in part by friendly locals but also by their inability to notice they are in trouble.
    There is a honeymoon story that could be a bit Mills and Boon if it weren't for the couple's names (Boofy and Pussy!) and the droll style of the writing - particularly the appreciative comments from the old Jamaican hired to rake the sand at the hotel beach. There's a mildly creepy ghost story and a glimpse of a long-ago murder that has put a kind of hex on the beach after dark.
    As usual it is the details that make people seem so ridiculous out of their usual environment - the little preoccupations with things like raffia dinner mats, and very English clothing that isn't suitable in the heat. Many characters aren't very happy, in spite of the luxury accommodation - even the gorgeous Mrs Santamarina from Bolivia, or the newly titled Lady Fletcher.
    It's a collection of contrasts, with some interesting themes that are handled with great humanity and a light touch that lets the humour and irony shine through. And all the more readable for that. If there were more stories like this, I could happily read nothing but short stories and it is no surprise that this collection won prizes - the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.

The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom

You never know what you will find among your library's ebook collection. I discovered Ian Sansom's madcap novel, The Case of the Missing Books, the first in a mystery series featuring overweight, half-Jewish, half-Irish librarian, Israel Armstrong.
    When Israel fetches up at the Northern Irish township of Tundrum, he is already grumpy. He has had a long, nauseating journey involving bus and ferry. To cap things off, he finds on arrival that the library he has been employed to manage has been closed by the Tundrum council.
    Having qualified as a librarian some years before, Israel has never had a library job - instead filling his days working at a discount bookshop in Essex. His ambitious girlfriend, Gloria, has encouraged him to take the Tundrum job, suggesting this will kick-start his library career. It is a case of disappointment upon disappointment.
    Linda Wei, Israel's boss at the council, is more optimistic. It is all merely a resource reallocation and she has another plan for Israel; in effect he will drive the mobile library, with the new title of Outreach Support Officer. He'll be assisted by belligerent ex-boxer, Ted Carson, who runs the local taxi service and knows about engines. It was Ted, after all, who has been hiding the old library bus in a chicken shed.
   The bus's revelation to Israel, rusting and redolent of the hen-house, is yet another disappointment, as is Israel's billet with a feisty redhead named George who thinks nothing of hosing him down while she's cleaning her farmyard, and housing him in a one-time chicken coop that still boasts a rooster.
    Also in the household is George's tee-total, Bible quoting father and her student brother, Brownie who at least attempts to be helpful, lending him his combat trousers and t-shirts with questionable slogans. Israel seems to have packed more books than clothing.
    Discovering that the old library is missing its books and that Israel must track them down is a core part of the plot. As he visits his customers in an attempt to find items from the collection, Israel meets a marvellous cast of odd-ball characters, including Dennis the carpenter and the wealthy hermit, Pearce Pyper. All this is interspersed with hilarious dialogue between Israel and Ted, who certainly make an odd couple.
    The story of a stranger from the city trying to make his way in a remote country town he can't wait to leave and where he is frequently the butt of jokes is not a new one. Israel's bumbling and oversensitive character makes him perfect for the slapstick misadventure that befalls him. Sansom's writing is sharp and weirdly quotable. His summing up of Israel early on says a lot about his character - how books had spoilt him so that 'his expectations were sky-high and his grasp on reality was minimal'.
    It seems Israel has a lot to learn about Tundrum, himself and life in general. I shall enjoy picking up where The Case of the Missing Books leaves off to see how he gets on.

Under the Paw by Tom Cox

Occasionally I permit myself to read a cat book. Last year I read A Street Cat Named Bob - a wonderful true story about how a man's life is turned round by his relationship with a very special cat. The book tugged the heartstrings so much that every so often I check out Bob's Facebook page to make sure that he and his owner, James Bowen, are still OK.
    Under the Paw is far more relaxed reading, recounting Tom Cox's life as what he calls a 'cat man' - from his childhood relationships with Felix, Monty and Daisy to his later household of six cats, with its inherent dramas, mishaps and moments of slap-stick.
    I enjoyed this book for two main reasons. The first is because I  empathised with Tom's odd little cat man habits, like going for a walk and stopping to talk to the cats he came across. I also understand the emptiness he felt when he was at a stage in his life when he couldn't practically keep a cat. We've all been there. It's not pretty.
    The second reason is because the book is very funny. Tom, a rock critic, is clearly an experienced journalist and uses humour to capture that tenuous relationship cat owners have with their pets.
    Interspersed with the story of living with cats are 'Random Selections from the Cat Dictionary'. It was nice at last to have the right words for so many things I have a close personal experience with. Such as: Gribbly bits (the bits of jellied cat meat that escape from the bowl and weld themselves to hardwood floors and kick boards); Sucking the nettle (to lick one's lips with distaste in the aftermath of an unpleasant or demeaning experience); Purple mist (the special kind of unforgiving cat anger reserved for an owner who has experimented by attaching a lead to its collar); or Argle (the noise that accompanies the eradication  - or attempted eradication - of an ear mite).
   The section on 'How to Feed Six Sodding Cats: Instructions for Housesitters' was particularly funny and seemed to capture the key characteristics of all six cats and how they interact. Clearly the 'Troubled Sensitive Artistic Black Cat' is the elder statesman of the household and it is this cat, known as The Bear, who Tom has to work hardest to gain trust and affection. Tom's attempts to understand what motivates The Bear and his sudden need to disappear for weeks at a time adds all the drama of fairly intense sort of novel.
   If you are left wondering about the long term effects of such an involved relationship with one's pets, there are Tom's follow-up books to peruse as well: 'Talk to the Paw' and 'The Good, the Bad and the Furry'. Living with six cats certainly isn't for everyone (I tend towards having just the one at a time) but if someone has to do it I am glad it is Tom Cox, as he writes a cat book that is hugely entertaining.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Debut novels can sometimes be such a breath of fresh air, a new voice with a different story to tell. The Rosie Project is just such a book, at times very funny, but also poignant and certainly romantic in a screwball comedy kind of way.
    The story is told entirely from the point of view of Don Tillman, a genetics professor. He is tall, fit, and looks a bit like Gregory Peck, but at almost forty he is still seeking a woman to share his life with. The problem is he has Asperger Syndrome - this reveals itself in his excessively ordered life, timetabled to the minute, a difficulty with small-talk, and an overactive brain that can turn out complex mathematical calculations at the drop of a hat.
    He has only two friends, Gene, head of the Psychology Department at Don's university, who happens to be a serial womaniser in spite of being married to Don's other friend, Claudia, who coaches Don with relationships and introduces him to her female friends.
    When it occurs to Don he can solve the wife problem with a questionnaire as a way to save time and factor out any unsuitable punters (smokers, women who can't do maths, vegetarians, the list goes on), he launches himself into the Wife Project with zeal. Then he meets Rosie. Suddenly hormones intrude and the Wife Project is put on hold. Rosie is very attractive, in spite of being a barmaid, a smoker and a vegetarian.
   Rosie wants help with tracing her biological father, a daunting problem as her late mother had something of a reputation. They narrow down a list of candidates to around fifty fellow med students who were all at the same graduation ball. This becomes The Father Project.
   What transpires is a series of hilarious scenes as the pair secretly gather samples from each candidate for gene testing. At one point, the two sign up to be bar staff at a conveniently timed med school reunion. Don exceeds all expectations as a newbie cocktail maker and becomes the life and soul of the party. At the faculty ball, Don arrives with a new candidate from the Wife Project who is perfect in every way except for a passion for ballroom dancing with more comic results.
    Simsion cleverly choreographs his scenes so that they have enough sensitivity that Don isn't simply the butt of every joke. This is in large part due to Rosie, who has her own demons and is refreshingly honest. She blatantly enjoys their exploits together for with Don there's never a dull moment - when he isn't being infuriatingly difficult. Which is quite often.
    And it is much the same for the reader. Don is so interesting, and the characters of Rosie and Gene such a contrast, they make his unusual way of looking at life seem even more unique. Yet he still engages our sympathy by being at times introspective enough to examine the aspects of his character that are challenging to others. When he finally embarks on The Rosie Project, he does so with all the energy of his previous endeavours, and becomes a true hero.