Self's Murder by Bernhard Schlink

Bernhard Schlink's novel Self's Murder is one of those rather good detective novels that lift the genre well beyond simple, page-turning escapism. As you might have expected from the author of The Reader, the writing is thoughtful and elegant.
    Gerhard Self is a private investigator in Mannheim, on the brink of retirement, when he stops to help a motorist and his driver caught in a snow drift.  The grateful passenger turns out to be a Mr Welker, owner of a small, select sort of bank with a long tradition and the subject of a recent tragedy. This is because Welker's beloved wife has recently disappeared while the two were on an alpine walking holiday.
    The police have been stumped as to whether she fell into a crevasse or was pushed, or even kidnapped and murdered. These are the obvious questions you'd expect Self to be exploring, but no, instead he is sent to discover the identity of a silent partner, who just after the Napoleonic Wars invested a fortune in the bank and saved it from ruin.
    Self's investigations take him to visit the bank's archivist, Schuler, an elderly and malodorous hermit whose cottage is crammed with memorabilia. He's a bit put out that Welker has chosen to employ a detective to look into the bank's history when surely it is Schuler himself who would be the best person for the job.
    A number of things turn the case on its head, and Self begins to wonder if he shouldn't really be investigating the disappearance of Welker's wife and soon begins to distrust Welker's brutish looking chauffeur and general factotum, Gregor Samarin. Next thing, Self's personal life begins to get interesting when Karl-Heinz Ulrich turns up on his doorstep, claiming to be an ex-Stasi officer who scoffs at Self's poor security and the fact he seems to have been unaware that Ulrich has been tailing him. On top of all that Ulrich announces he's Self's son.
    We are in the decade just after the fall of the Berlin Wall after all, and there is some interesting east meets west (Germany, that is) stuff going on. Ulrich has made some surprising deductions about Self's case, and both are beginning to wonder if the long lost partner story is just a pretence for something else.
    The case begins to hot up and Self calls in a few mates to help out, including his policeman chum, Nagelsbach, recently retired and a stickler for rules, and his surgeon buddy, Philipp who is happy to put his hospital and a number of drugs at Self's disposal. The team enact a convoluted plan that is dangerous but wildly entertaining as well, and there are a few plot twists before Self discovers who the real criminals are.
    All this is told in the dryly charming style of Self's first person narration. There's quite a philosophical feel to it all, and the story, while entertaining enough in itself, is made all the better for the inclusion of a cast of distinctive characters. Self offers the reader some excellent company - such a shame there are only three in the series and that this is the last. I shall be eager to hunt out the previous two, for sure.

Mr Mac and Me by Esther Freud

Mr Mac and Me is to my mind the perfect kind of book. Set in 1914, it tells the story of Thomas Maggs, whose father runs a pub in a village on the Suffolk coast. There's not a lot of money to spare and pa tends to drink the profits, while his mother copes as best she can. There are two older sisters, including Ann who helps around the pub, with thirteen-year-old Thomas by far the youngest, though there are six older brothers buried in the churchyard.
    Thomas has a club foot, but it doesn't stop him roaming around the countryside, making the journey to school, and being taken on by the local rope-maker as a part-time assistant. It is a dying art, and we are reminded of the changes in store as the nation is drawn into World War One.
    Ann tearfully farewells the boy she loves as he joins the navy and we wonder if she will see him again. Everyone expects the war to be over by Christmas, and the effects of the waiting and wondering, the shock of casualty lists on a small village are nicely recounted here. And then there's 'DORA' - the Defence of the Realm Act, which has the locals on the look out for spies, and prosecutes people for showing light after dark or owning binoculars. Thomas takes Dora very seriously.
    Into Thomas's world a Scottish artist, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, arrives with his wife and the three of them strike up a friendship. Thomas does odd jobs for them, while Mackintosh's wife, Margaret, feeds him up and the two encourage Thomas's own artistic endeavour. Thomas, who yearns for a life at sea, has been covering the margins of his schoolbooks with delicate drawings of ships.
    Mr Mac and Me is very much a coming of age novel and with that there are many dawning realisations for Thomas. There is love too, as Thomas witnesses the pangs of love his sister goes through, and his own over one of the Scottish herring girls who arrive every autumn. And in the background there is the war. Slowly the everyday villager has to come to terms with the horrific casualties, and the sinking of British ships. On a still night you can even hear the guns from over the Channel.
    It is an interesting time, perfectly captured in the microcosm of a Suffolk village, and the small world of a young boy. But I was particularly drawn to the story of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a very real artist and architect who produced exquisite watercolours and designed some of Britain's much loved buildings. Forgotten and ignored in his own time, he is now something of a national treasure. Margaret's work also shines.
    Freud has made the pair quirky, charming and kindly, but also passionate, and even stubborn and difficult, as anyone who has to fight for their art can tend to be. The friendship with Thomas brings many of these qualities to life and Thomas as a thirteen year old, struggling to make sense of the world, is the perfect narrator. Mr Mac and Me is Esther Freud at her best and, to me, something of a living treasure.

Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear has found a niche in the whodunit genre, with her psychologist/investigator, Maisie Dobbs, and an interesting between-the-wars setting. Elegy for Eddie takes Maisie back to her East End days. Some old coster monger pals of her dad's ask for Maisie's help when a friend of theirs is killed in an accident at a paper factory. Maisie is shocked to learn of Eddie's sudden death and suspicious when a number of facts suggest that Eddie may have been murdered. No surprises there.
    Eddie Pettit was a man in his forties who though considered by many to be a bit simple had a wonderful gift for handling horses. He would pick up odd jobs around the East End mostly, at a time when many businesses still used a horse and cart as their main source of transport. He'd also drop in at the paper factory to run errands.
    Maisie discovers that Eddie had been taking reading lessons with a teacher north of the river and had been seen writing in a notebook. What's more he seemed to have something on his mind. Possibly this was due to the arrival of hard man, Jimmy Merton,  at the factory, where Eddie soon became a victim of bullying, reminiscent of his time at school.
   When Maisie begins to investigate the factory, she discovers that it is owned by newspaper magnate, John Otterburn, a Canadian with a finger in many pies and the ear of influential people in Parliament. Even Douglas, the husband of Maisie's great friend Priscilla, knows Otterburn, as does Maisie's beau, James Compton. Maisie meets Otterburn socially, and makes a surprising discovery at his London house.
    It soon starts to look as if Eddie was caught up in a problem well above his capability to understand, and the story has ripples way beyond the East End. Meanwhile the papers are full of Hitler's rise to power, and the rumblings of another war can heard.
    Maisie's own life is upset by new problems as she finds herself criticised for interfering too much in the lives of her staff: side-kick, Billy Beale and her new assistant, Sandra, rescued from a previous case. I've often thought Maisie seemed a bit goody-two-shoes and am happy to see her given the chance to be more human. And her relationship with James is going through a rocky patch, highlighting how hard it is to be a career woman in 1933.
    Ellegy for Eddie is as much a bit of social history as it is a murder mystery and might disappoint those readers eager for a fast-paced whodunit. There are sometimes a few too many details about clothes, the landscape or interior decoration plus a lot of chit-chat over cups of tea. But Winspear creates a great atmosphere, with the malodorous River Thames at Lambeth contrasting nicely with Maisie's country residence at Chelstone. There's a glimpse of the struggles of working class people during the depression era, who nevertheless look out for each other, while a growing educated class of people are eager to see a few changes in the social order.
    I like the fact that the Maisie Dobbs novels aren't all the same and that Maisie has a chance to grow and change as a character as time and circumstances impact on her life. For me it's always good to drop in and catch up with Maisie to pick up where we left off with an interesting if not demanding read.

Return to Fourwinds by Elisabeth Gifford

I was impressed with Gifford's debut novel, Secrets of the Sea House, and was soon happily ensconced in this story about two families across two generations. It's another book about secrets - how we love those - and begins when the Donoghues and the Colchesters get together at the Colchester's home, Fourwinds, to celebrate the marriage of their children, Sarah and Nicky.
    There's a bit of a difference in class between the two families, so it's fortunate that Sarah and Nicky are so devoted to each other, and we are in the late twentieth century after all. Soon you learn that Alice Colchester's family briefly cared for Peter Donoghue as an evacuee during the war, but this fascinating tidbit is quickly put aside when Sarah suddenly loses her voice and does a bunk days before the wedding.
    If that isn't enough to get you interested, the plot sweeps you back fifty years to Ralph Colchester's childhood in Valencia, in the early 1930s, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Young Ralph misses his father, who has fallen out with his mother and taken up an engineering job in South America. Left with scarcely a bean to support herself and Ralph, Lily has found a home for them with English banker, Max Gardiner, working as his 'housekeeper'. Mr Gardiner is kindly to Ralph, and the three socialise with other emigres, while Spain shimmers in the heat and there's a wonderful exotic sensuality about it all.
    I would have been quite happy with just Ralph's story - there is such a lot to explore with his peculiar family arrangement and the political situation in the background. But all at once it's the war (the big one) and we meet Peter, growing up in poverty in Manchester, with a tubercular mother and a drunken Irishman for a father. When he and his brother are evacuated to the countryside, Peter is taken in by the Hanbury family and is given a glimpse of another life, one full of music and learning and plentiful rations.
    While Return to Fourwinds is certainly engrossing, there is maybe a little too much going on, as we have to catch up with Alice's story and later Patricia who meets Peter after the war when he goes to London to study divinity. And of course the novel is switching forward in time to tell us where Sarah gets to, and how Nicky and parents are coping at Fourwinds.
    We chug along, filling in gaps for all these characters, until finally towards the end, there are a couple of bombshells and some fascinating stuff about what people like Max Gardiner were really doing in Madrid during the war. There is so much to like about Return to Fourwinds - Gifford is an accomplished stylist, and she has done her research to create an interesting scenario. However I can't help feeling that maybe just one big secret would have sufficed.

The Droitwich Deceivers by Kerry Tombs

Kerry Tombs writes refreshingly old-fashioned mystery novels set in the late Victorian era featuring no-nonsense, smart thinking Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and his side-kick Constable Crabbe. Samuel Ravenscroft is married to Lucy, who being warm-hearted and impulsive is quite willing to get involved in a bit of sleuthing as well.
    In this case Ravenscroft is called out to Hill Court, the stately home of Sir Charles Chilton, a salt baron whose nine-year-old daughter has been snatched while wandering through the nearby churchyard. Ravenscroft is at a loss to understand why Sir Charles didn't get the local police onto things straight away, as you usually do with missing persons cases, and there is nothing to suggest a kidnapping plot that would lead to a ransom demand.
    But Chilton is an unpleasant bully of a man, used to getting his own way, his wife banished to her room due to her fragile mental state. Ravenscroft is under orders not to talk to her and he can't help feeling there's something odd going on and Lady Chilton may know something useful. And why would the governess, supposedly there to to keep an eye on her charge, slip into the church for five minutes, leaving little Mildred on her own?
    Meanwhile a distraught young woman visits Lucy, asking for help regarding her missing baby.  Alice Corbett has given her baby up for adoption to a Mrs Huddlestone, who has promised Alice she may visit baby Lily in a few months' time. However, unable to wait that long, Alice has gone in search of the Huddlestones, only to discover that she has been given a false address. Because her husband is so busy with the case in Droitwich, Lucy decides to do a bit of investigating herself.
    With loads of dialogue, quaint characters and humour, The Droitwich Deceivers is a quick and easy read. While it sheds a light on the plight of poor, single women with no means to support their babies, and even the more well-to-do ones who find themselves in marriages where they have no control over their destinies, it doesn't preach or tax the brain too much. There's enough action and nail-biting tension to keep the reader eager to discover the outcome of the Ravenscrofts' investigations - two missing children and an astonishing secret give the plot plenty to work with. A diverting read, perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon, and I shall certainly be seeking out more in the Inspector Ravenscroft series.

The Forever Girl by Alexander McCall Smith

The Forever Girl deals with unrequited love, an aching longing in the heart of its main character, Clover, which begins when she is around six years old. The story takes place on the Caribbean island of Grand Cayman among the expat families who make comfortable livings in banking and property development. Clover's father, David, is Scottish, a banker who works long hours, while her expat American mother, Amanda, plays a lot of tennis and swims in their pool. Their Jamaican housekeeper, Margaret, looks after the house and takes Clover and her brother to school.
    This might make the lives of Clover's parents seem rather shallow, but McCall Smith is better than that. He doesn't take cheap shots at accountants or people with more money than they know what to do with. He is empathetic towards Amanda, who feels neglected by her hard working husband and has a brain she doesn't get to use. Her brief dalliance with another man is treated sensitively and with understanding.
    And all the while Clover is growing up, her childhood friendship with James evolving into a crush she doesn't know how to handle, just at an age when James would rather play with other boys. Amanda sympathises and sensibly tells Clover she will grow out of it and to move on. The shift to boarding school in Scotland will surely settle the matter, but through her secondary school years and even when she goes off to university in Edinburgh, there is a lingering sadness about Clover.
   While she makes friends easily and develops a relationship with another student, this sadness seems to put a wall around her - you feel she can never be really close to anyone else. And it shapes her decision making as well, causing her to do embarrassingly awful things, making up stories and even following the object of her affections, just so she can get that little bit closer to James.
    A plot like this could have turned this into a truly dreadful sort of book, unless leavened with slapstick comedy, a la Bridget Jones, which The Forever Girl is anything but. What rescues it is the wonderful wisdom that McCall Smith throws in and the fact that Clover is oddly likeable. The subplot around Amanda is interesting, and the portrayal of a marriage in difficulty sensitively done. And then there is the expat world of Cayman Island - languid and hot, and full of discontent. It is the perfect setting for unrequited love to begin, and contrasts brilliantly with the more serious yet creative city of Edinburgh. A sojourn in Australia livens things up towards the end.
    McCall Smith is always a breath of fresh air with his originality of storyline and the philosophical musings that come through his writing. While the story is still entertaining, you reach the end of The Forever Girl feeling a little wiser - surely the best reason for reading fiction.
 

The Chessmen by Peter May

The Chessmen is the third of Peter May's Lewis trilogy featuring former Edinburgh detective, Fin McLeod. In the first book, The Blackhouse, Fin returned to the island of his childhood to investigate a murder - a crime that turns out to be deeply personal and helps him decide to return for good. Now living with Marsaili, the girl he loved as a lad and never really forgot, and trying to reconnect with the son he didn't know he had, he has plans to restore his parents' house.
    But you can never really leave the force it seems, and Peter May throws a new case his way when a freak storm causes a 'bog burst', draining one Lewis loch of its water. Now a security officer for a landowner whose livelihood is under threat by large-scale poaching, Fin has been caught in the storm along with a small-time poacher and boyhood friend, Whistler Macaskill.
    Having sheltered from the storm in a hut, the two are astonished to discover that the empty loch is the resting place of the long lost plane belonging to their old friend and Whistler's fellow band player, Roddy MacKenzie. Roddy had disappeared in his plane fifteen years ago, when his band was at the height of its success. It was assumed he was lost at sea. The discovery of the body inside means finally a chance to bury Roddy properly but what is it about the discovery that so shocks Whistler that he vanishes into the wilds of Lewis? And what is it about the body that convinces Fin that the plane wasn't just Roddy's underwater tomb, but also a crime scene?
    There is a lot of backstory here, which May fills in with flashbacks to Fin's growing up and his time at high school when he first met Whistler, a flute player with a school band. The brains behind the band are Roddy and Strings, who write the songs, while the music is enriched by Mairead's haunting voice. She's also a bit of a stunner and gives her boyfriends the run around - usually she's with Roddy, but sometimes it's Strings, so you can imagine how that affects the band's cohesion.
    There's a heap of teenage hanging around, rushing off on clapped out motorbikes, experimentation and desperation to leave the island for the thrills of Glasgow and the wider world. Only Whistler - the smartest boy of his year - decides to stay and live the simple life, hunting for food, carving and doing odd jobs, while the rest of the crowd head off to university and life with the band.
    The back story switches back to the present and illuminates issues that dog the remaining characters on the island. Why is Whistler so difficult? And why won't his daughter live with him, preferring to stay with Kenny, something of a hard man and the guy Whister's late wife ran off with?
    May does a great job of shining a light on the little corners of the character's lives, the past and the present, to finally uncover what might have really happened all those years ago to cause Roddy to fly off in his plane for the last time. There's a lot to take in, and in the background is the island - its  beautiful landscape and problematic weather, the big lonely skies and the hemmed in quality it brings to the islanders' lives.
   You get to know a lot about Lewis, and its Gaelic language - there is luckily a pronunciation guide at the back of the book - and May includes some interesting history, such as the wreck of the Iolaire, when over 200 lives were lost. May really knows how to spin a yarn, and builds sympathetic characters, whose crimes are rooted in poor decisions taken at crucial moments, rather than out and out wickedness. This makes The Chessmen all the more moving and interesting, but doesn't stop May from throwing in a couple of big plot twists near the end.
    It's the last book of the series, but I am happy to finally leave Fin to get on with his life on the island and rebuild his family. There is probably only so much crime you can throw at a small place like Lewis, after all.