An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson

Josephine Tey was the pen-name of mystery writer Elizabeth Mackintosh whose book, The Daughter of Time, was voted the greatest crime novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990. An Expert in Murder is the first of Nicola Upson's mysteries that feature Josephine Tey and her friend Detective Inspector Archie Penrose. The two make a nifty crime-solving duo in Upson's traditional, Agatha Christie-style series of whodunits set in the 1930s.
    An Expert in Murder features Tey in her other role, as a dramatist whose play, Richard of Bordeaux, is the huge box-office hit of its day. It begins with a train journey in which Tey finds herself seated opposite an attractive by shy young woman wearing a stunningly smart hat. Eighteen-year-old Elspeth is on her way to London with a consignment of hats from her mother's millinery business and soon Josephine is giving out her autograph and sharing a meal with her young fan in the dining car.
    Elspeth is planning to meet her boyfriend, Hedley White, who is a back-stage hand at The New, the theatre where Josephine's play is nearing the end of its run. Hedley has tickets for the show and is planning a romantic evening, but murder interferes and Elspeth is discovered in the compartment stabbed and dramatically arranged in a tableau featuring two commemorative dolls from the play.
    You can't help wondering if Josephine was the intended victim, but soon Archie Penrose in on the scene and numerous suspects and motives start turning up. When a second murder occurs it seems likely that there is a connection between the two victims and the actors and production team are thrown into the spotlight. The cast of suspects includes the director/lead actor of the play, John Terry, who has a secret to hide about his personal life. Is would-be playwright, Esme McCracken bitter enough to kill and could actor Lewis Fleming also have a motive being so desperate for money? Then there is Elspeth's beau who soon does a runner.
     And what of the mysteries that surround Elspeth herself? As the much loved but adopted daughter of the not very theatrical Simmons, there is the question of her birth and unsurprisingly a back story which extends back to events in the First World War.
     Costume designers Ronnie and Lettice give Josephine a place to stay in London and are full of lively quips and cheeky gossip. They are a good foil for when Josephine is brooding over a recent legal battle with the writer Elliott Vintner who accused her of plagiarism. When he lost the case he committed suicide, an event Josephine still feels guilty about, despite Archie's protestations that none of it was her fault.
     There are plenty of red herrings and possible scenarios for the reader to mull over, but for me this was something of a murder by numbers plot, with no real surprises. What made the book really enjoyable though was Upson's ability to recreate the London theatre scene circa 1934. Taking place in a chilly March, the story has plenty of atmosphere and with its colourful yet sympathetic characters made for a diverting read.  Basing the story on real-life people was a definite plus, too, and I shall be happy to see what Tey and Penrose get up to next.

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

You have to take your time with a book like The Fountain Overflows. The writing is rich and clever and the family it describes are eccentric in so many ways you find your imagination having to work overtime to create an image of their lives. It is all in the detail - and there is such a lot of it, detail I mean. And that is what makes it all so wonderful.
    The novel is a fictionalisation of Rebecca West's own childhood and is told in the voice of Rose Aubrey. It begins when she is around eight and the family are moving again, not just house but cities, from Edinburgh to London. But first there is a country holiday to be got through, just Rose, her mother and siblings: her older sisters, Cordelia who is beautiful but overbearing, and Mary who is her best pal and has a similar talent for the piano, and younger brother Richard Quin who is sweet and knows how to please everyone he meets.
    The reason the holiday is an ordeal is because Rose's mother is awkward with the farming family who have supplied their lodgings, and because her father, a brilliant journalist with a talent for losing money, has gone off to start his new job and find them a house in London. Unfortunately he forgets to tell them where it is and this causes many anxious moments.
    More anxious moments pepper the book, as Rose's father takes on various political causes and loses more money, while Rose and Mary perfect their piano technique ready for becoming concert pianists and being able to salvage the family fortunes. Richard Quinn can survive on charm alone, although he is also musically gifted, while Cordelia struggles with the violin and her pride.
   At first the story seems to ramble along like this, creating a picture of this colourful family and delineating their difficulty in making anything like a normal life in London. But then West throws in several unusual events that bring in even more eccentric characters. These include what seems to be a poltergeist in the home of Mrs Aubrey's old friend, and later on a murder.
    While these events are extraordinary and certainly give the plot a bit of oomph, they also serve the purpose of adding depth to the characters of the Aubrey family. Though my favourite story thread in the novel is the ongoing battle of Cordelia to prove her worth as a musician, while her mother wrings her hands in despair declaring that she plays Bach as if it were Beethoven and has absolutely no taste. Surprisingly this doesn't prevent her from acquiring the aid of a music teacher at school, the odious faux-bohemian Miss Beevor, and even giving concerts.
    There is such a lot to enjoy in the novel, particularly the faultless language which is full of wit and insight. West's portrait of what it can be like to be eccentric in a changing world is at times painful and yet wonderful at others. I can't believe I have never read Rebecca West before. Virago have done a stunning job of recognising the talents of early twentieth century women writers and I shall be hunting out more novels by West and others like her.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

A God in Ruins is an intense, powerful novel written by quite possibly my favourite author writing today. The title is a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote 'A man is a god in ruins ...' and the man at the heart of this book is Teddy Todd, the brother of Ursula, the central character of Atkinson's previous novel, Life After Life. While the earlier book describes Ursula's war, and particularly the Blitz, Teddy's war makes him a Squadron Leader flying Halifax bombers as part of Bomber Harris's campaign to bring Germany to its knees.
    While Teddy's war in the Air Force is a central part of the novel, we get a lot more of his life too: his childhood at Fox Corner, his boyhood devotion to Nancy next door, who becomes his wife after the war, and their life together. The story cuts from early years about Teddy to later years when he is very old from the point of view of several other characters, such as his grandchildren, poor mixed up Sunny who can never please his mother, and sensible Bertie who refused to be called by her first name, Moon, taking her middle name of Roberta instead. You can tell her parents were living on a commune when she was born.
    Atkinson is really good at ghastly characters and who could be more unsympathetic than Teddy and Nancy's daughter, Viola (surely she should be called Vile for short). But she's also complex and interesting and there is a very good reason for her inability to find love in her life or please the reader. This reason is complex and to do with the death of her mother, and the reader will have to wait until the end of the book to truly understand her.
    Teddy is a masterstroke of a character however, because he contrives to be immensely sympathetic,  as well as multi-faceted. He strives always to do the right thing - part of a pact he made with God for surviving the war, when the attrition rate for bomber crews was horrendous. His goodness doesn't make him boring, as he is often hamstrung by decision making and doesn't quite understand the people closest to him when he needs to. He has a comfortable marriage but at times it's a lonely one - his wife and daughter so close to each other he can sometimes feel a bit left out.
    But the heart of the novel is Teddy's war. Atkinson has done a ton of research to capture the scenes of the bombing raids Teddy and crew undertake. There are the characters of the different men and their roles - the navigator, the gunners, the wireless operator and bomb aimer - their quirks and personalities and what happens to each of them during the different missions. It is all vividly brought to life with nail-biting action. You feel for each loss as various men are killed while Teddy survives and you sympathise with his grief.
    And if that wasn't enough, there is Atkinson's marvellous prose - her writing is always witty and sharp and there is never a dull sentence, never any padding. The book is another triumph, and surely a contender among the literary awards for 2015.

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.

Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd

Lynn Shepherd's first foray into mystery fiction inspired by nineteenth century literature reads very like a Jane Austen novel. One of the first things you notice is the pains she has taken to sprinkle through the book occasional outmoded usages - words such as sopha (sofa) and twelvemonth (a year), to name but two. The first half of the book is a bit like a reworking of Austen's Mansfield Park, with an overhaul of the characters.
    Most notable of these is Fanny Price, whom Kingsley Amis described as 'a monster of complacency and pride, who under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel'. Here Fanny is an heiress, with an immense fortune when she comes of age and her pick of suitors. You would think this would make her happy. She's nice looking, has nice things to wear and balls to go to, but all that entitlement seems to have turned her into quite the calculating shrew.
    Fanny's aunt, Mrs Norris, has pushed forward her stepson, Edmund, as Fanny's suitor and the two are informally engaged, but neither seem terribly happy about that. Mrs Norris is snooty or fawning depending on who she is talking to, and the Bertrams whose seat is Mansfield Park are pleasant but not very smart. Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram think Fanny demure and generally lovely, but when Mr Rushworth, a character for whom the term popinjay seems to have been invented, starts paying court to Fanny, her true colours begin to emerge.
    Much of the story is told from the point of view of Mary Crawford, who is staying with her sister, the vicar's wife, along with her brother, Henry, who has been contracted by Sir Thomas to redesign the gardens of Mansfield Park. Mary is attractive, kindly and sensible in equal proportions and soon makes friends with young Julia Bertram while catching the eye of Edmund.
    The novel could quite happily carry along in this vein, a comedy of manners with a bit of social commentary and romance on the side. There's plenty of goings on and intrigue when it comes to who might marry whom. But in the middle of the book Shepherd throws in a murder and the novel takes a darker turn. The Bertrams engage the services of 'thief-taker' Charles Maddox, who you might recall is the uncle of Shepherd's private investigator from her later books, also a Charles Maddox. The older Maddox is uncompromising, stopping at nothing to get to the truth, and suddenly the book has a distinctly different tone.
    Murder at Mansfield Park is another terrific read from Lynn Shepherd - well researched and cleverly plotted. Her characters are multidimensional too. There's nothing like throwing a murder at them to see who shines and who turns into a quivering mess. But what I like best about her books is Shepherd's impeccable writing which so perfectly captures a sense of period, plus a wry Jane Austen humour. She writes the kind of book that is both a lot of fun and remarkably intelligent - is that why so many literary authors are turning to mystery writing?

The Kindness by Polly Samson

I enjoyed Polly Samson's recent novel, The Kindness, more than I expected - it's one of those books where you just have to keep reading to find out what really happened. It is largely the story of Julian, a young English literature student whose life is never the same after he bumps into Julia, a married woman about ten years older than he is.
    Julian can't take her eyes off Julia because she is strikingly beautiful and looks terrifically dramatic when he comes across her exercising her husband's hawk who is named, prophetically, Lucifer. Julian has been reading Milton's Paradise Lost, and there are references to Adam and Eve throughout Polly Samson's beguiling novel. The two soon become lovers and Julian discovers he must rescue Julia from a violent marriage.
    Although young, Julian is more than up for the task and with a baby on the way he remains positive and energetic because he and Julia are so in love. Beginning a family has its ups and downs, but Julian discovers a talent for rewriting the stories of history using the voices of eye-witness dogs. He is a runaway success at this and when his old family home, Firdaws, comes on the market he decides to risk everything to buy it.
    Firdaws really is paradise, but it might just be paradise lost if things don't improve - Julia is hating having to commute to her garden design business in London and then their daughter Mira becomes ill. Her illness creates a turning point and in the story and everything seems to spiral downwards from there.
    Around this ill-fated couple Samson has created a cast of characters that tempt and persuade or generally make things difficult for Julian and Julia. These include Karl, the friend who saved Julian's life when he was attacked by wasps and Katie, Julian's ex-girlfriend, suddenly single again when Firdaws is up for sale. Julian's mother Jenna challenges family members to swim the river that runs through the land nearby and wouldn't you know it, the river is home to a snake.
    There are forbidden fruit too - figs ripening and attracting more wasps, and oranges grown by Julia in her greenhouses. The fields are lush and reflect the changing seasons but Julia also makes beautiful settings for her family in their London flat. All of this adds loads of atmosphere.
    The Kindness is a story about betrayal and misunderstanding where everything hinges on an event that happens early on, with the jumps forward and back in time that have you guessing just enough to keep you reading on. There's even more to wonder about with the similarity of the main characters' names or working out which particular event is the 'kindness' of the title.
    I had my doubts about Julia - is she a terrible temptress or is she just as much a victim of bad luck as Julian? With his imaginative talent and boyish passion for love and life, Julian seems to earn more of our sympathy.
    But in the end it doesn't much matter what we think of the characters as they seem to be the playthings of bigger things like luck and fate, coincidence and bad-timing wrapped up in a carefully wrought storyline. These components are brought together by the fine writing talent of Samson who has created a unique and intelligent novel.

The Lovers of Amherst by William Nicholson

William Nicholson has carved a niche for himself writing intelligent novels about relationships, following a collection of interconnected characters over several generations. He does historical settings really well, and this novel features two time periods, the first is present day from the point of view of Alice Dickinson. She's a London copy writer researching the characters from the second time period for a screen play - the 'lovers of Amherst' of the title: Austin Dickinson (no relation) and Mabel Todd.
    Mabel is the young wife of an academic newly arrived at Amherst College and Austin the much older and unhappily married brother of American poet Emily Dickinson. It is 1885 when the two fall in love, meeting secretly in Emily Dickinson's house. Emily approves of their passion and while she is too much of a recluse to meet Mabel in person, she listens to their trysts through the dining room door. Who could resist writing a screenplay about that?
    Alice has her own issues with love. While she has broken the heart of Jack Broad, they remain friends and Jack offers her a contact in Amherst: the handsome older lecturer, Nick Crocker, who was once romantically involved with Jack's mother. Of course the inevitable happens, and Nick and Alice mirror the story of Austin and Mabel, told in alternating chapters.
    While this would make enough fodder for a reasonable love story, the novel goes a lot deeper than that, with discourses on the nature of love and happiness. Alice begins to learn the workings of her own feelings, chorused with snippets of Emily Dickinson's pithy and insightful poetry.
    It becomes a novel full of quotations and while I enjoyed lingering over the verse attempting to make connections to what is happening and for the glory of the poetry itself, I did tend to skim over Austin's and Mabel's effusive love letters - they wrote all the time to each other apparently. I also had reservations about the awkwardness of Alice and Nick's relationship, their often terse conversations, the see-sawing emotions.
    Towards the end though it begins to make more sense, as other characters step in, offer insight and help Alice grow up a little. I liked the advice Jack gives Alice about her screenplay.  As an English teacher who teaches 'narrative structure', he suggests she needs to start by figuring out how the play will end and that will define the story as a whole. Alice of course finds that the ending isn't quite how she'd originally imagined it and Nicholson ties this in nicely with an interesting conclusion to the novel as well.
     The Lovers of Amherst is well researched and evokes brilliantly its Massachusetts college town setting. The writing is assured and the characters well rounded and interesting, reminding me it is time I read some more of these interconnected novels. You can tell Nicholson really cares about his cast of characters, as he can't seem to let them go. I am reminded a little of Mary Wesley in this respect and wonder where Nicholson will take us next.