Harriet Devine's Blog

The Crooked Shore by Martin Edwards (Blog Tour)

I was very pleased to discover that a new addition to the Lake District Mystery series by Martin Edwards was going to be published. It's been nearly six years since the last one - the seventh in the series - came out, and I've read them all, though I don't seem to have reviewed all of them on here. My review of number seven, The Dungeon House, is here, if you're interested.

Admirers of the series won't need telling that it revolves around cold case investigations. The police department that deals with these is headed by DCI Hannah Scarlett. As a young policewoman she was mentored by senior detective Ben Kind, and from the first book onwards she has been the friend, and later the lover, of Ben's son Daniel. Daniel, a historian, writer and TV personality, often has a part to play in the solution of the relevant mystery, and this novel is no exception. It's his on-off relationship with Hannah that gives the stories an added frisson of suspense, with each novel leaving the reader in doubt about how things will end up between them. As I said in my previous review, I see him as looking exactly like Daniel Craig, which is a plus for me.

 The cold case Hannah takes on in The Crooked Shore is that of the disappearance, some twenty years earlier, of teenage Ramona Smith. Her body was never found, but a bloodstained backpack near the beach suggests that she was murdered. And in fact a local man, Gerry Lace, was charged with her murder but acquitted, only to commit suicide by wading into the dangerous quicksand waters on the beach. As the novel opens, a character called Kingsley is on that same beach, and witnesses a young man doing the exact same thing; uncannily, he proves to be Gerry Lacy's son. It's this link that has prompted the re-opening of the case, and an investigation into possible mistakes made by the original detective - who proves to have been Hannah's adored mentor Ben Kind. Naturally this causes her a lot of grief, but the job must come first.In addition to the primary investigation, a  good deal of the action revolves around Tory, an attractive, wealthy, middle-aged woman who lives in an upmarket retirement community in the area. She has two admirers - Kingsley, the man from the beach, who obviously doesn't stand a chance, and Logan, her much younger pianist lover, with whom she is completely besotted. The interweaving of these characters with each other and with the main plot seems complex, but proves to be surprisingly relevant. More than that I can't say without spoilers.

Of course the unique selling point of this series - apart from its attractive main characters and engrossing plots - is the setting in England's beautiful Lake District. It's an area I know well, and each novel skilfully combines real places with invented ones. The Crooked Shore of the title is not a real location, though it's placed on a real coastline, that of Morecambe Bay in the south of Cumbria. It sounded so real to me that I was disappointed to find out that it wasn't. If you've never visited the Lakes, I defy you not to long to go when you read this or any other in the series.

So yes, it's a series, but if you're not familiar with the previous novels you can just as easily read The Crooked Shore as a standalone. However, don't be surprised if you find yourself seeking out the earlier books to learn more about the attractive central characters.

Two New Shiny Reviews

If you're familiar with my reviewing, either on here or on Shiny New Books, you'll have noticed that I have a strong leaning towards reprints, translated fiction especially French, and non-fiction, generally with a literary or theatrical theme. But of course I enjoy some newly published books too, and I've reviewed a couple on Shiny recently.

 The great American novelist Laura Lippman is a huge favourite of mine, and I've reviewed several of her novels here and on Shiny. Each one has been entirely different from the last, but all equally entertaining and skilful. Dream Girl is billed as a psychological thriller, and Lippman describes it in her Afterword as 'my first work of horror'. It certainly includes some tropes of that genre, but it's also witty and perceptive in its depiction of the central character, successful novelist Gerry Anderson. Throughout the novel he's confined to a hospital bed in his posh Baltimore apartment following a fall down the floating staircase. In a lot of pain, he is heavily sedated, which gives his first person narration an increasingly dream-like and confused quality. The novel's title refers to Gerry's hugely successful novel of the same title, and to the fact that that book's main protagonist appears to actually exist and to be attempting to contact him. Great stuff. My full Shiny review is here.

Another review that's just appeared is Tessa MaWatt's The Snow Line. I have to confess I'd never heard of Tessa McWatt, who is evidently a much admired writer. If The Snow Line is anything to go by, I'm not surprised. I was drawn to the novel by the fact that it's set in India, and deals with a journey up into the snow-capped Himalayas. But it's so much more than that. The novel centres around a group of four people who meet at a wedding in the Punjab. Three are young and of Indian heritage, though both live elsewhere for various reasons. The fourth is Jackson, an elderly white man, returning to the country he worked in many years earlier to find a suitable place to scatter the ashes of his beloved wife. Jackson's quest, aided by the other three characters, forms the backbone of the plot, but it's much more than a travel adventure story. It deals sensitively with colonialism and the Indian diaspora, and beautifully depicts the inner life of the 86-year-old Jackson, who lives more and more inside his own memories, good and bad. Excellent novel, and here's my Shiny review. 

The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Mary Kelly's brilliant 1962 novel, Due to a Death. A central character in that novel is the rather mysterious Hedley Nicholson who, we gather, has taken time off whatever his work may be to process events that he has recently experienced. What those were is never revealed in that excellent novel, but in The Spoilt Kill, published the year before and the winner of the CWA Golden Dagger Award, Hedley is centre stage and narrator. We know from the start that he is a private investigator: he's been hired by the head of a long-established pottery firm in Staffordshire to investigate the leakage of their original designs to foreign competitors, who then flood the market with cheap copies. Posing as a writer of a history of the firm, he's allotted an office and given free run of the factory. This much we know about him from the start, and we also learn that he feels his age - he's in his early 40s but has grey hair about which he is very self-conscious - and that he's had a relationship that went wrong. And it soon becomes clear that he likes women - he's strongly attracted to a young woman who works in reception though he would never approach her, and he soon finds himself falling in love with one of the prime suspects. 

The Spoilt Kill, not unlike Due to a Death, begins with the discovery of a body. Here it is discovered floating in a vault full of liquid clay. But the identity, and even the gender, of the dead person is not revealed until much later in the novel. After this opening come two sections: 'What Happened Before' and 'What Happened Afterwards'. In 'Before', of course, Hedley gets to know the factory personnel, all very pleasant people. He soon realises that the most obvious way the designs could have been stolen would be via the designers. They are of course highly valued in the company, but perhaps one of them might welcome a bit of extra money? He soon homes in on the top designer Corinna Wakefield, an attractive, talented, but obviously unhappy young woman. He soon befriends her, initially with a view to spying on her life and her movements. But it doesn't take long before he realises he is falling in love with her. And the more he falls for her, the worse he feels; she's lonely and welcomes his friendship, but he dreads the moment when she will inevitably discover his real purpose in getting to know her. In 'Afterwards', of course, the identity of the victim is revealed and the process of denouement starts moving inexorably forward. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that someone confesses but is shown to be covering up for someone else. The identity of the killer is a sad shock - sad because of the story that lies behind their actions. Sad too is the ending of the novel.

It's impossible not to be mysterious about the plot. But the plot is only part of what Mary Kelly is doing here. The life of the factory is wonderfully evoked, as is the rather grim landscape of the Potteries. Here's what Hedley sees when he looks down in the valley called Etruria, where the Wedgwoods once had their factory:

I stared down into the pit, at the black buildings silhouetted against the flushed sky, buildings, some of them, flickering within, as if a river of liquid gold were rolling through them. Clouds of steam and smoke drifted across the shadowy vale, rosy steam, lit from the fires below. There was a continuous hollow rushing sound, broken by clanks of shunting. An engine, raised on a bank, black and red, like a slide, moved slowly backwards and forwards. The whole pit seemed to breathe as it worked; for though it was past midnight on Saturday, and the Newcastle neighbours’ windows were dark, naked lights on gantries and signals glittered all over Etruria.

It's not too fanciful to see this as a sort of vision of an Inferno, and it seems to reflect Hedley's gloomy and fearful state of mind. Kelly's portrayal of this is wonderfully strong and evocative, as is that of Corinna, about whose life the reader learns more and more as the novel proceeds. This is superb piece of writing, unquestionably worth its Golden Dagger.

The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Sylvia Townsend Warner Reading Week has come round again. The announcement describes it as the third and last one - I do hope it won't be the last, as I've still got lots left to read by this exceptional author (yes of course I could read them anyway, but I do enjoy the community spirit).

Anyway I knew nothing about this novel before I started it. It was actually recommended recently by a fellow STW admirer, and when I bought it I had completely forgotten about the STW Week. So it was sheer serendipity that I had got it at the perfect time.

The story starts in an unspecified time which we quickly realise must be the early Middle Ages, and this is confirmed by a date that finally appears - 1170. Working backwards I'm guessing the incident that opens the book must be in around 1150. It's a dramatic beginning - a young woman is enjoying a perfect night with her lover when her husband bursts in with a group of friends, kills the lover, beats his wife, and accidentally kills also the old woman who was keeping watch for them. Everyone says he should send his wife to a nunnery, but he doesn't want to part with her dowry, so she lives on, bearing more children. Finally she dies in childbirth, and the husband is overtaken with regret and guilt. In expiation, he founds a nunnery in Oby, one of his distant estates. This becomes the corner that held them - them being a succession of nuns who arrive, sicken and die (or get murdered, or run away) over the course of the next two hundred years. 

The events of two hundred years would seem like a lot to cover in a single novel, and in fact STW takes the reader through a rather breathless fast forward summary of some major events - fires, floods, hornets, an absconding nun, a bishop convicted of carnality with a cow (both were executed) - before coming to rest in 1349, the year the Black Death came to Oby. From here on, the chapters are dated, each generally covering three-year periods, ending in 1382, some 33 years later. A relatively short period, then, and you might think one in which not a great deal could happen to a community of nuns, but how wrong you would be. There are friendships and rivalries, jockeying for position. One nun goes mad, another absconds with a lover, another is deliberately drowned in the fish pond, another is raped and becomes pregnant. Priceless objects are buried in a safe place by a loyal retainer who then dies without telling anyone how to find them. A spire is built on the church and then destroyed, to be rebuilt later. The convent's finances are frequently under threat, and the local bishop has little time for them.  

Is the convent a spiritual place? Few if any of the nuns have entered it by choice. Instead, they have mostly been gifted by their families, having no choice in the matter. Girls as young as twelve arrive as novices and undergo some lessons and training to fit them for the religious life. But it's rare for anyone to have what we would call a real vocation, though there's certainly some piety and of course a great deal of prayer. One nun longs to become an anchoress, to be locked in a tiny room with one window, engaged in endless prayer, but her desire is never fulfilled. And heading the religious life of the convent is the Nun's Priest, Sir Ralph, who is always on hand to hear confessions, take services, and give the last rites. Although he's in many ways a typically lazy, self-indulgent man, he is good-hearted and sensitive, loving nature and music, and one of the few characters who survive through the whole 33 years. However, as the reader knows from the start, Ralph is not a priest at all. Raised in a monastery, and expecting to evolve to the priesthood as his contemporaries were doing, he discovers that owing to his illegitimacy, he can't take holy orders. Arriving one day at the convent hung-over, tired and hungry, he tells the prioress he is a priest to make her feel better, expecting he will only be there for a few days. But one thing leads to another and he stays for the rest of his life, wracked with guilt at deceiving these innocent women, but at the same time often bringing them great comfort.

What, then, is this book really about? STW is too complex and original a writer for there to be an obvious answer. On one level it just looks like a meander through a series of everyday events, with some dramatic interludes. But that seems in many ways to be the point - this tiny microcosm presents a little slice of human life which, though far distant from us in time, represents the way people have always adapted to living together and still do today. Of course it also tells us about the value, or rather lack of it, placed on women's lives at the period: totally at the mercy of their fathers or husbands, they accept their placement in the convent as a natural step, and often welcome it as an alternative to marriage and childbearing. And it interrogates in a gently ironic way the religion still adhered to by many people in the world today.

I'm aware that all this gives little sense of what an exceptionally attractive novel this is. Having finished it I wanted to start all over again - it's crying out for re-reading, perhaps several times. Perhaps when I do I'll be able to do it more justice than I feel I have here. Meanwhile I'm very happy that Helen's STW Week gave me a chance to read and review it.