The Separation by Dinah Jefferies

The Separation is one of those wonderfully escapist novels that packs in an atmospheric setting, in this case, 1950s Malaya. It conjures up the somewhat dissolute expat way of life, the gin-slings and infidelity, which was probably just a way of coping with the heat. It reminded me a little of those old black and white movies where you can hear jungle drums and crickets in the background while the plantation owner mutters, The natives are restless tonight.
    Although half of the novel is set in England. This is because it is told from the point of view of two main characters. First there is Lydia Cartwright, who with her Rita Hayworth looks, has been a bit naughty and started an affair which she hasn't kept very secret. She has been visiting a friend who is ill, when she returns to find hubby Alec and her children gone, the house left empty with no note, so she begins to panic.
    The British District Officer tells her Alec and her young daughters have gone north to Alec's new posting in Ipoh, where the natives truly are restless - with Communist insurgents undermining British rule with guerilla tactics. So Lydia, must make the dangerous journey to join her family alone, even having to borrow cash from her worldly friend, Cicely, as Alec has taken most of their money.
    We read about Lydia's desperate journey where she witnesses atrocities when her bus is attacked. She finds herself taking care of a small boy, Maznan, whose mother has joined the rebels, when a striking man of mixed race joins her and helps her; I imagined a kind of Yul Brynner.
    But while Lydia is making this arduous journey, her daughters, Emma and Fleur, are travelling by cargo ship with Alec to England. This part of the story is narrated by eleven-year-old Emma, who with her wild red hair reminds her father too much of Lydia and as such she never seems able to please him. On the journey the family becomes friendly with amicable Veronica, who seems to have an attraction for Alec, and her creepy brother, Mr Oliver, who has wandering hands.
    In England, Emma finds it hard to settle in the cold climate and cramped house that they share with Alec's parents. Grandma fortunately is a kindly old soul but Emma is always in trouble, until boarding school seems to be the only solution. The school, run by nuns, is particularly bleak, and Emma finds it hard to cope with bullying on the one hand, and the harsh regime on the other, but at least she makes a friend in perpetually naughty Susan. On top of everything, her father has led his daughters to believe that their mother has abandoned them and is missing, believed dead.
    There is a lot going on in the story - we have Emma's dealing with adolescence and her missing mother, who she never really gives up on, amid difficult relationships with the adults in her life. And then there's Lydia's desperate search for her family, and a terrible bombshell that causes her to teeter on the edge of madness. How she copes and pulls herself together when one awful thing happens after another gives her a chance to grow strong and is a key part of the story. But how to navigate a path to the truth when everyone seems to be either lying or hiding a woeful secret of their own makes Lydia seem doubly blighted.
    The Separation is a captivating story which makes you keep reading to see what happens. Feelings run high, there's a ton of drama and missing links that make for tantalising if not very demanding reading. The Malaya setting is brilliantly recreated here, a testament to the author's research and her own childhood years spent in the colony.

A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie

This is a novel that sweeps you through epoch changing events of history. We experience this through the eyes of those caught up in war and rebellion, but also through the painstaking work and passion of archaeology. And who could be more passionate about the subject than Vivian Rose Spencer who manages to talk her father into letting her accompany his great friend, archaeologist Tahsin Bey, on a dig in Labraunda, Turkey.
    There are many references to the ancients: Pliny and Herodotus, Darius and Scylax, with Tahsin Bey as Vivian's teacher, and the two develop a bond that promises more than friendship. But it is the summer of 1914, with a war beginning that will turn friends into enemies; a time when love can turn so easily into betrayal.
    Vivian returns suddenly to England and becomes a VAD nurse, like her suffragette friend, and dreams of Tahsin Bey and of his great wish to visit the ancient site of Caspatyrus, now Peshawar. It is here he believes he will find the embellished coronet given to Scylax in return for his mission to discover where the Indus ran into the sea. She's a determined young woman, but becoming unhinged by her nursing experiences, she decides her calling is the dig in Peshawar not a war hospital.
    And Peshawar just happens to be where our second narrator comes from. Qayyum Gul was proud to fight for the British but losing an eye at Ypres has become disillusioned and haunted by his wartime experiences. He meets Viv on his train home, sharing cigarettes. Such interaction would be impossible with women from his own culture, but this time it seems quite natural and a moment of understanding passes between them.
    At the train station Qayyum's young brother, Najeeb, has arrived to meet him, but the boy is disconcerted by his brother's grim appearance and ends up helping Viv find her hotel instead. Viv sparks an interest in Najeeb to discover more about the past and his people's ancient history. But more than a decade later, Najeeb's skills as an archaeologist will take a back seat to defining moments in modern history and the three characters will meet again in very different and disturbing circumstances.
    A God in Every Stone is a very absorbing read that is also full of wisdom, creating a picture of a time when British colonisation is teetering, and social change is rushing forward in the wake of a world war that has turned everything on its head. Women will gain the vote in England, but in the north of India they are often not educated and must wear a burqua.
    Viv and Qayyum are each given a moral dilemma, and unintended consequences recur through the book as its characters must grapple with things bigger than themselves. The effects of terrible events like the massacre of Armenians, the casualties in the trenches and the violent quashing of peaceful resistance in India by the ruling British are reflected in the loss experienced by the main characters. Shamsie creates tremendous empathy in the reader for these characters so that you drift from moments to terrible foreboding to shock and even outrage.
    But there is also much to enjoy in the richness of her settings - from Labrounda to Peshawar, the heat and the intensity of momentary sensations: the touch of a hand on a wrist, the soothing quality of water, the colours and tastes. It all adds up to masterful storytelling that makes history come alive and also makes you want to find out more about it.

Death by Water by Kerry Greenwood

For some fun, light entertainment Kerry Greenwood's series of 1920s mystery novels featuring private detective, Phryne Fisher are hard to beat. In Death by Water Phryne and her companion, Dot are cruising around New Zealand on the Hinemoa, a luxury cruise ship - their mission: to uncover a jewel thief. Why am I slightly reminded of Dame Edna Everage and her side-kick Madge? It might be the contrast between the flamboyant employer and her quiet, dowdy companion. Or it might be their Melbourne provenance. Anyway there are no gladioli here nor diamante spectacles. Phryne is far to sophisticated for that.
    And boy does she know her classics and Lalique. She's quite a match for the informative Navigation Officer Green who is given the task to show her round the impressively appointed ship and apprise her of the job at hand. He is utterly smitten of course, as Phryne is beautiful too, in that dainty, flapper kind of way, as well as smart and at times scarily frank about her sexuality.
    Anyway in this story we have the classic whodunit set up of a group of people confined in one setting who each have opportunity to commit the crime. They all happen to be conveniently seated at Table Three for meals in the first class dining room. Dot is of course travelling second class and gets to know the maids and shipboard attendants and all the gossip they provide.
    Table Three has quite a diverse bunch of characters: Professor Applegate is a kind of New Zealand Margaret Meads, which is handy for background detail as she knows all about the Maori and early New Zealand history. Albert Forrester is a photographer who takes pictures of the female form. Enough said! Mr West is grumpily middle aged with a young flirty wife. Mr and Mrs Cahill are retired farmers from the outback. Tetchy Mr Singer suffers from dyspepsia and bullies his wife. Jack Mason is a lively young man desperate to avoid a career in law, which is his father's wish. Marjory Lemmon is accompanying her elderly uncle Vivian Aubrey, both ex British raj.
    And we mustn't forget the all-female band, Mavis and the Melody Makers, who for some reason nobody likes, although they know their stuff when it comes to dance music. Phryne dangles a carrot for the thief in the form of a large, lustrous sapphire, with a supposed provenance from an Indian temple - all quite fake, and the action slowly begins.
    The reader can't but wonder, however, when the murder will take place - the book isn't called Death by Water for nothing - and some might be disappointed that it takes quite some time - at least three quarters of the book. What a blood-thirsty bunch we mystery readers are!
    But with a Phryne Fisher novel like this, it's really all about the journey - and I mean that literally as well as figuratively - because there is so much to enjoy. The writing is crisp and engaging and Miss Fisher always entertaining. And there's quite enough going on with blackmail, Mickey Finns, shipboard romance and infidelity, attempted murder as well as the real thing, and the general marvellousness of the luxury cruise ship setting.
    All this is coloured by the 1920s era which Greenwood has got off pat. It's a bit like a sex-ed up Dorothy L Sayers and as such Greenwood has carved out a niche all her own. There are twenty Phryne Fisher novels, and they make a great stand-by rainy day read as they never disappoint. Her bio on Fantastic Fiction is, by the way, the best I've come across.

Redemption by Jussi Adler Olsen

Adler-Olsen is one of those crime writers who juxtaposes scenes showing his killer - in the case of Redemption he's an evil kidnapper/child killer - with scenes from the point of view of his detective. It's another novel featuring Department Q, a cold-case team led by curmudgeonly DI Carl Morck. This changing-viewpoint narrative makes things uncomfortable for the reader from the outset, and knowing what to expect, I was somewhat reluctant to pick this book up.
    I guess I am still a bit nostalgic for those old crime novels where the reader and the investigator work side by side, discovering clues and working out whodunit together. But really, Ader-Olsen makes the storyline steam along with these narrative shifts because, while Morck thinks he's dealing with a cold case, it is only the reader who seems to know that our killer is still at work and unless the police get a move on, another youngster is likely to die within a number of days.
    What really hooks you in at the outset, however, is the message in a bottle scenario that the author has cooked up. Our killer would have carried on unnoticed if it hadn't been for young Poul, who tied up in a boat shed, believes he and his brother will be murdered. As the elder of the two, he feels he should do something, so he finds paper, an old bit of newspaper, and making a pen out of a splinter of wood and ink from his own blood - all with his hands tied together - he writes a detailed description of his kidnapper and their situation.
    The bottle eventually turns up in Scotland, where it adorns the window sill of a remote police station for a couple of years until it piques the curiosity of a visiting computer expert. When it winds up in Department Q, Morck already has a lot on his hands with a visiting Health and Safety inspector in the pipeline and his basement bolthole out of bounds due to an asbestos scare. There's also a number of cases his team have been struggling with and he doesn't need another.
    Thank goodness Morck's quirky underlings, Rose and Assad, have other ideas. And it's also lucky that a few clues are thrown up by the message,  even though many of the words have become illegible. The team manage to track down the newspaper and that gives them an area to hone in on. It transpires that the boys were part of a large family from a religious community who have long since left the area.
    While the Q team track the family down, our mysterious kidnapper has his sights on another family who belong to The Mother Church and the tension winds up a notch. In the background are grim scenes showing our killer's childhood, his possessiveness towards his own wife and child. There are some humorous scenes from Morck's own private life - the wife who wants to return, his 'thing' for Mona the psychologist and Morck's recurring guilt.
    There's a ton of action too: car chases, stake outs and a particularly tense scene in a bowling alley. And all the while the clock is ticking. It's a gripping story that barrels along, which is a good thing, because sometimes reading a translation like this throws up a few curly phrases you don't want to linger over. That's a small niggle, for overall Jussi Adler-Olsen has created another superb crime-thriller, a surprisingly quick read for a book over 600 pages long. I certainly hope there's a few more Department Q novels in the pipeline as sometimes a good Scandinavian mystery is just the ticket.

Edwin and Matilda by Laurence Fearnley

Subtitled 'an unlikely love story', Fearnley's novel begins with Matilda and Jacob having their wedding photos taken. It's Edwin's last job before retiring as a wedding photographer and from the outset Matilda is strikingly unusual. She's unusual because she is small and thin to the point of fragility, her hair a very short crop and she's wearing a dark blue dress, not the normal white. And while a few insults fly between her groom and some well-oiled members of an adjacent wedding party, she is making a film with her video camera, of leaves.
    Weeks later, the couple haven't collected their photos - this happens from time to time - but Edwin is more preoccupied by the article about Franz Joseph glacier he happened to see in a tourist magazine. It showed a picture of the mother he hasn't seen since he was a child. For Edwin is rather unusual too. He was raised by his father, a doctor at a tuberculosis sanatorium among the hills of Otago where the air is dry and healing. His mother had disappeared when he was seven and he had been told by his father that she was dead.
    Edwin has put off doing anything about finding his mother for eight years, preferring to wait until he is retired. He decides his first port of call is the sanatorium where he lived as a boy, but on the way he drops by Matilda's house to deliver the photos. She doesn't want them of course, her marriage didn't go ahead, and somehow, because she wants to make a documentary, she ends up joining Edwin on his quest.
    The two seem strangely drawn to each other, and the novel gently takes you through their gradual courtship, but the novel has a lot more to it than that. Because the two of them each have a heart-breaking back-story that is slowly and carefully revealed. The story behind the defection of Edwin's mother is told as Edwin clumsily makes his way to Franz Joseph, with Matilda and her video camera.
We discover what he discovers as he discovers it, while Matilda ponders how much she will tell him, and when, about her own past. She too has had a difficult relationship with her mother and then there is the tragedy of her illness.
    Fearnley is a lovely writer, her prose is spare and simple, allowing her characters to tell their own story. It is a very compelling read - I found I couldn't put it down. The atmosphere of the sanatorium through a child's eyes, of the wide open spaces of Otago, the cramped spaces of motel units and the awkwardness of sharing a car with a comparative stranger are vividly laid on the page for the reader through the book's sensitive characters. While yes, the relationship of Edwin and Matilda is unusual - even, as the cover would have it, unlikely - the truthfulness of the story-telling makes it work.