Murder Most Unladylike & Arsenic For Tea - Robin Stevens

There's been a rather shocking murder at Deapdean School for Girls. Unfortunately, there is no proof; between Hazel Wong stumbling upon a dead science mistress in the gymnasium and going for help, the body has vanished, leaving no evidence that Miss Bell has done anything other than resigned her post and moved away. But Hazel knows what she saw. It is up to her and her friend Daisy Wells, the founding members of the third-form Wells and Wong Detective Society to uncover the truth!

Set in a 1930s girls' boarding school, Murder Most Unladylike is reminiscent of the school stories that made up a lot of children's literature of the 20th century - Malory Towers, the Chalet School, Angela Brazil - mixed up together with the Famous Five or Nancy Drew. Robin Stevens recreates the golden age of children's books wonderfully, with dormitory pranks and midnight feasts, gym tunics and bun breaks, with a mystery to be solved without getting the police involved. But within this old-timey children's story are subjects that wouldn't have been written about in 1934, not for children - the racism Hazel, who is from Hong Kong, faces, two of the schoolmistresses having been in a relationship, and an illegitimate child showing up from someone else's past. Plus murder, of course - I don't think anyone ever actually died in Enid Blyton's writing. A dog might have got ill from eating poisoned food once or twice, but that's about the extent of it.

Daisy and Hazel join a long line of classic detective duos: Like Sherlock Holmes, Daisy is the intrepid detective whose excitement for a case sometimes overlooks human compassion. Hazel is more cautious, and the chronicler of their adventures - Daisy even calls her "Watson" from time to time. The story is a lot of fun, if verging on the ridiculous sometimes as this small private school has an unusually high body count!

The sequel, Arsenic for Tea, takes place away from Deepdean. You can't have too many murder mysteries at one school; it would be closed down! Hazel goes to stay with Daisy at her huge, if slightly faded, English country house. Daisy's birthday falls during this holiday, and her mother throws a big tea party, but as well as the family and school friends, the house has some mysterious and sinister guests. The atmosphere is terrible, filled with unspoken secrets and deceit. And then, one of the guests falls horribly ill and dies. The evidence points to poison. But who might bear such ill-will towards this guest? Perhaps it would be easier to ask who doesn't. Wells and Wong launch another investigation, but Daisy finds it is not so easy to get swept up in the spirit of adventure when her own family members are implicated in murder.

Arsenic for Tea is another instant classic of children's literature, perhaps even better than Murder Most Unladylike. It is Agatha Christie for children: a well-plotted, twisty mystery with plenty of red herrings, a limited cast of suspects, but everyone keeping secrets, even if none of them are the secrets they are suspected of hiding. But Stevens plays fair, and hides the clues within the text, if you only know what you're looking for. I actually picked my suspect quite early on and stored up the evidence against them even while they were seemingly eliminated from the list. I felt very proud of myself when I was proven right - not because the author was sloppy but because I was paying attention. An excellent, very satisfying pair of mysteries, and I hope to see a lot more of Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong.

The Thirteenth Tale & The Girl on the Train

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea, second-hand bookseller and part-time biographer, receives a strange letter one day: the reclusive author, Vida Winter, is dying and wants to open up the mysteries of her life story and true identity to none other than Margaret. Margaret travels to Yorkshire to stay with the strange and capricious Miss Winter and discovers a past full of mystery, a dysfunctional family, wild, psychopathic twins left to their own devices in a mouldering big house. Looking beyond the story Miss Winter tells, Margaret discovers nothing is quite as it seems, and is forced to confront a long-suppressed pain within her own family.

I think I'm going to like it here, I wrote in my review notebook within a few pages of starting The Thirteenth Tale. What's not to love? It's a book all about books and stories, the stories we make and how they come to define us. The whole idea of Vida Winter's first published collection, Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, which featured only twelve stories and was reprinted without a number in the title, gave me a delicious shiver. The mysteries of Vida's past are revealed slowly, each answer throwing up more questions, clues slowly coming together to reveal a truth that hadn't occurred to me, but that was hidden in plain sight all along.

The Thirteenth Tale is a rich, atmospheric novel that calls to mind the smell of old books, the cosy feeling of being wrapped up in a blanket with a hot chocolate while a storm rages outside. It is a self-aware entry into the canon of classic gothic fiction, settling among the classics as though it has always been there. I recommend this book to all book-lovers. One to read and then reread as a very different experience.

Thanks to Bex for sending me this.

Shelve next to: Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Turn of the Screw, The Woman in White

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train is the thriller that has got the book industry talking this year: the tale of Rachel, a troubled young woman who takes comfort in watching a couple whose house she passes on the train one day and making up stories about them. But no one's life is as it appears to be from the outside, and even the most perfect marriage has its problems. Then the wife disappears...

Although there are three narrators in The Girl on the Train, Rachel (the titular "girl") is the most interesting. Her life is a mess. She is divorced, unemployed and an alcoholic, pretending she's holding things together but fooling no one, not even herself. None of the characters were particularly likeable, but I felt desperately sad for Rachel, wanting her to be able to get her life back on track and move on. Her ex-husband has married again, and they live just down the road from the house Rachel picked for her people-watching. And the families are closer-connected than they realise: Megan, the missing woman used to babysit for Rachel's ex and new wife, and that's not all they have in common. I found it interesting drawing parallels with the couples: Megan and Scott, Rachel and her ex Tom, and Tom and his new wife Anna.

Thanks to her drinking, Rachel has huge gaps in her memory, and the chapters from Anna's point of view offer an alternative perspective of Rachel as more dangerous and manipulative than she'd have us believe, or perhaps realises herself. These chapters plant a seed of doubt, and though I wanted to trust Rachel, I did not quite.

The Girl on the Train kept me up until late on a work night because I just had to know what happened next. Perhaps I was a little disappointed, expecting a cleverer plot twist that would leave me breathless. (It was a perfectly satisfactory conclusion, but I was prepared for a shocker.) But it works well as a dark study of toxic relationships, mental health and addiction, and grief either for what was lost or what was never had in the first place.

Shelve next to: Gone Girl, Before I Go To Sleep.

Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey

Maud gets muddled about all sorts of things these days, but she is sure of one thing: Elizabeth is missing. In her obsession to find out what has happened to her friend, Maud's quest takes her back to a long-forgotten mystery from her past.

Elizabeth Is Missing hit close to home, making me think of my own grandmother, who is 92, and growing increasingly forgetful and confused. And like Maud, she has very fixed ideas that no one else can quite work out where they came from. But they make perfect sense to her. It did not help matters that Maud's daughter in Elizabeth is Missing was named Helen - my mother's name - and her granddaughter Katy (though they were very different people from my mum and me.)

It was a courageous choice on Emma Healey's behalf to write this book entirely from the point of view of an elderly lady with some form of dementia. Written in the first person, the prose is in a sort of stream-of-consciousness, a mixture of past and present as Maud gets her thoughts confused, with gaps between scenes, and the search for elusive words (which may turn up in the next paragraph as if they were never missing.) Each sentence is in the present, although we can observe where it contradicts the thought that Maud had just a couple of lines back. We get to experience Maud's frustration and fogginess while seeing what she forgets, as she forgets it. This fictional view inside a fading mind encourages empathy, patience and understanding. Maud's world is not the same as the one she physically inhabits, but is a world of the mind, of past and present perceived as fluid and changing. 

Maud's memories are bound up in repeated behaviour and in objects, which take her back to a time in her past, in the 1940s, when her sister Sukey disappeared. Her recollection of seventy years ago is far more lucid than her short-term memory, which just will not retain information. She will latch onto small details, ask strange, apparently meaningless questions, such as where would be the best place to plant marrows? As well as the memories of her family, their lodger and her missing sister's lodger, a "mad" woman recurs in her flashbacks, making scenes, but for the most part seemingly unrelated to everything else Maud remembers. As well as perhaps being a parallel to her elderly self, one wonders if the "mad" woman's strange behaviour will be the key to unlocking the mystery. And ultimately the clues were in plain sight all along, if only Maud (and the reader) could figure out what they meant. 

Elizabeth is Missing was an excellent book to start 2015 with, a compassionate psychological study, and a compelling and satisfying mystery. A remarkable, perfectly-crafted debut. 

Readers Imbibing Peril IX wrap-up post.

Apologies for the lateness of this post!

This year I took part in RIP IX (Readers Imbibing Peril, organised by Carl Anderson at Stainless Steel Droppings.) My chosen challenge was Peril the First: to read four dark, spooky and intriguing novels in the space of two months, and you can see my sign-up post with its goals and suggested reading list here. I'm pleased to announce that for perhaps the first time since I started this blog, I've managed to reach my goal!

The books:

The Silkworm by "Robert Galbraith." The second of J. K. Rowling's crime novels featuring Cormoran Strike lives up to and goes beyond the standard set by The Cuckoo's Calling, and shows that her magical storytelling is not limited by genre. I could not put this down.

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown by Holly Black. A vampire novel for the reality TV and social media generation, combining the danger of the monsters of old with the glamour of the more recent species - but no, they do not sparkle.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King. A collection of novellas that pose the question: what might drive a person to commit a crime? As I found with his own son's book, Horns, there is no horror quite as unsettling as the perfectly mundane awfulness that can be found in seemingly ordinary people.

My last book did not come from the original to-read pile but was a birthday present from Hanna. I'm not entirely sure that 11.22.63 counts, as it's not exactly horror, but it is written by Stephen King. An immersive, fascinating, world-changing novel. I did not want to finish this book. Definitely one of the best books I've read this year. (I intend to write a full review very soon.)

Mini-Review: Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloane

Clay Jannon takes a job as a night clerk at San Francisco's strangest bookshop. Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore sounds like a bibliophile's dream, quirky and tall, with shelves you need very tall ladders to reach. I imagined it rather like Belle's library in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and the descriptions of the store certainly come under the heading of bookshop porn! But there is another side to Mr Penumbra's: shelves of ancient, uncatalogued books written in code, borrowed but never bought by excitable patrons whose details must be logged for posterity in the bookstore's ledger. Clay's curiosity leads him on a quest of epic proportions and, together with his friends, employs a combination of lost medieval artefacts, Google's headquarters, and Clay's own favourite series of fantasy books to crack a centuries-old code. Mr Penumbra is a light-hearted but unusual page-turner, a celebration of ancient books and new media, friendship and curiosity.

Key Quotes:

The whole economy suddenly felt like a game of musical chairs, and I was convinced I needed to grab a seat, any seat, as fast as I could.

Neel takes a sharp breath and I know exactly what it means. It means: I have waited my whole life to walk through a secret passage built into a bookshelf.

The books I love most are like open cities, with all sorts of ways to wander in. 

I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.

Read it if you liked: The Night Circus by Erin Morgansten, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

From a Buick 8 - Stephen King

In the months after Curtis Wilcox's death, his son Ned spends more and more time around the police barracks among his dad's old colleagues. When he discovers the vintage Buick Roadmaster locked up in Shed B, naturally Ned is curious. But what is inside that shed is no mere car...

From A Buick 8 feels rather like a classic ghost story, the sort told around a campfire by torchlight. It is set out as a story within a story, with the narrator Sandy reporting to the reader the tale he had previously related to Ned. This framing device took me a while to get used to, working out which later of storytelling I was reading at any one time, but it means we get to take our cues from seeing Ned's reaction to the things he is told and shown - and from Sandy's thoughts about Ned's response. This also sets up the final act in the present day.

When I started reading, although I enjoyed getting to know the police team of Troop D, I felt that it was taking a long time to really get started. 150 pages or so in, all the Buick had to show for itself was a perfectly shiny condition, mechanisms that couldn't possibly work, a couple of missing people and a localised lightning storm in the shed. Eventually it became apparent that the car was some sort of portal to another world or dimension, a two-way door. People would disappear in its vicinity, and then a few unearthly creatures or plants appeared after the lightning phenomena, and would promptly die. There is something Lovecraftian in the things that appeared from the Buick, horrifying in their strangeness but I didn't feel overly impressed with the novel as a supernatural tale of terror.

But partway through, I realised, this isn't what it's really about. I ought to know better by now. Although Stephen King is known for his horror stories, what makes him stand out above the rest is everything else, the humanity. From A Buick 8 isn't really about a creepy car, or creatures from another world. It's about family: the families we're born into and the family we make for ourselves. It's about grief, and curiosity, camaraderie and a shared history, about the life of a police troop over a lifetime, and about the connectedness of events. Nothing happens in a vacuum, but life is made up of "links in a chain." Conversely, King reminds us that even so, real life does not work out into a neat little narrative. The world doesn't always give you the answers, and given the cops' reaction to the Buick and its mysteries, I wonder if the message to take away is that we couldn't handle the answers if we were given them.

From A Buick 8 was not one of King's more famous books, and I came to it without any prior knowledge or preconceptions. Certainly it is no Carrie or The Shining - but neither, thankfully, is it a Dreamcatcher. If you come to it expecting a fast-paced, action-packed thriller, you may be disappointed, but if you accept it for what it is - a pensive, brooding examination of storytelling - it's well worth a read.

Bout of Books: Days 3-5

Wednesday:

After a long weekend, I was back at work trying to smother a rotten headache with painkillers. The headache had been bad enough to keep waking me up in the night - and of course, sleepless night made it worse in a downward spiral effect. The school holidays are now over, meaning that the shop has gone very quiet indeed all of a sudden. This doesn't mean I've been sitting on my backside all day, though. Most of the day was spent in removing the seasonal promotions, setting up the new displays, and rearranging the shop in a way that makes some sort of sense.

I finished NOS4R2 on Tuesday evening, which left me with a book-hangover. I needed some time to put that story world to rest, and so I continued with a safe reread: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In the book's early chapters, I picked up on one of the series' unanswered questions.

Dementors caused a person to relive the worst moments of their life. What would spoiled, pampered, bullying Dudley have been forced to hear?

I wonder if J.K. Rowling has ever answered that question, or if anyone has thought to write fanfiction on the subject. It reminded me that even supporting characters have their own secret lives, that even though we only see the Dursley family in the summer holidays, when Harry lives with them, they exist throughout the year, and don't define themselves as supporting roles in the Potter boy's story. The very idea!

I decided Wednesday should be a computer-free day, as I came home very tired, wanted an early night, but still planned to get some reading and writing done without the distractions of the internet. I found it quite liberating to write by hand for a change; there are no word-count widgets, and again, fewer procrastination opportunities this way. I'd like to get back into the habit of writing at least bits of first drafts on paper.

Books read today: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Pages read today: 70

Running total: 342

Books finished: 1: NOS4R2

My life outside books: 4 and a bit notebook pages filled. Fountain pen loves me.

Thursday

Despite setting myself a rule of not adding more books to my to-read pile than I read, I have already acquired two books this year, while only finishing one. Judith lent me Commander Chris Hadfield's book: An Astronaut's Guide to Life (which, in fact, was my Christmas present to her in the first place.) My second book might not count, as it's one I've already read, but I will be strict with myself and include it in the total: it is a second copy of Enid Blyton's Second Form at Malory Towers, found in the Oxfam bookshop. I collected these books when I was growing up, but they changed the cover design partway through, and this one and the last book featured more modern and less faithful illustrations. This was the first time in maybe 16 years, maybe more, that I have tracked down one of the remaining books with the "right" cover, so I couldn't help myself. (Now, if I can find the last book in the same style...)

At lunch time, I made a start on reading Paul Magrs' Something Borrowed, the second book in his series about a couple of old ladies with unusual pasts who solve mysteries of the gothic and supernatural kind. I read the first book about Brenda and her friend Effie when I was on holiday. Like the first, Something Borrowed is an easy read, darkly funny and a literary nerd's dream. I expect to have finished that by the end of tomorrow.

Books read today: Something Borrowed

Pages read today: 63

Running total: 405

Books finished: 1: NOS4R2

My life outside books: Yes, I bought a kids' book I already own, because I liked the cover better. So sue me.

Friday:

I'd made a long list of things I wanted to get done today, but the headache that began Tuesday evening has stuck around and keeps threatening to turn into an all-out migraine. Instead I spent the morning and early afternoon finishing off Something Borrowed. While not as brilliant as its prequel, it was a fun, entertaining read. One character, who did not feature in the book itself, but was there in flashbacks, I rather suspected was loosely based on J. R. R. Tolkien. Named Professor Reginald Tyler, a don at Cambridge university (rather than Oxford), he was a key member of a literary society called the Smudgelings (see Inklings) and spent his entire life working on an elaborate mythology (although this was more Lovecraftian in style.) It made me smile, although I rather doubt that Tolkien had the same sort of dark and horrifying secret life that Tyler led.

Over Christmas I sorted out a load of books, DVDs and clothes that I no longer wanted, and this afternoon I took some of these down to the charity shops: Oxfam bookshop, the Red Cross and the Earl Mountbatten Hospice shop. I've still got another bag to go, but I can only carry so much at a time.

Books read today: Something Borrowed

Pages read today: 261

Running total: 666 pages (haha!)

Books finished: 2: NOS4R2, Something Borrowed.

My life outside books: Quiet day off. Back at work tomorrow.

The Moonstone Readalong, part one: Betteredge and Clack

"When I came here from London with that horrible Diamond," [said Mr Franklin] "I don't believe there was a happier house in England than this. Look at the household now! Scattered, disunited - the very air of the place poisoned with mystery and suspicion."

The Moonstone of the title is a huge, beautiful diamond stolen from India by a British officer and smuggled back to England. On his deathbed he leaves the diamond to his estranged granddaughter Rachel Verinder, but is it a genuine gift and symbol of his repentence, or a curse? This diamond carries a lot of superstition, and its rightful owners want it back, at whatever cost. Then the Moonstone disappears...

The story is told by several narrators, each telling only the part of the story to which they personally witnessed, in order, allegedly, to get a rounded and accurate account of the mystery surrounding the diamond's disappearance. However, the narrators have their own biases and prejudices, and are not entirely reliable; the evidence they present varies from the conclusion they want you to draw.

Take Betteredge, for example. Gabriel Betteredge is the head of the servants in the Verinders' house, and he absolutely adores his mistress and their family. In his eyes, neither Lady Verinder nor her daughter Rachel can do any wrong. He is an old-fashioned sort of fellow, chivalrously condescending, but sweet enough to get away with all kinds of patronising attitudes without more than a raised eyebrow from the reader. His bible is Robinson Crusoe; it is astonishing what comfort and wisdom he can find in that book whenever his peace of mind is disturbed.

Betteredge's loyalty to "his" family puts him rather at odds with the detective, Sergeant Cuff, who seems too eager to actually solve the mystery of the moonstone, inconveniently following all the clues, even those which might incriminate members of the family. It amused me to see Betteredge growing more and more exasperated with Cuff as he continued in his investigations. Betteredge might not like the sergeant at all, but I thought he was a great character; a predecessor to Sherlock Holmes, and a bit of an eccentric, coming to blows with the gardener over their differing opinions about the rose garden. Cuff also made me think of Lt. Columbo; less bumbling but just as irritating to the people around him, with his inconvenient questions - and his thoughtful whistling as the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place.

By the end of the first part of the novel, a lot of the answers seem clear, yet there is still a lot of the book still to go. After Betteredge's section, we relocate with Rachel and Lady Verinder to London, and we meet a new narrator: Miss Clack. This dreadful woman is exactly what you would expect with a name like that: a finicky, pious, interfering old maid who has taken on a mission to convert the entire country with a ready supply of religious tracts. Though rather a caricature, I couldn't help but think she must have been based on some real-life lady or ladies Wilkie must have met on his travels. I'm sure she means well, but she is so heavy-handed, bludgeoning everyone with her evangelism, seeing them only as souls in desperate need of her spiritual wisdom, rather than people who could do with a bit more earthly compassion from time to time. As a result, her effect on people that she met was both sad and funny; it became somewhat of a running joke that just a few words from her would provoke a horrified and profane reaction from each hearer. Her desperate attempts to reach her family by hiding her books and pamphlets ("Satan in the Hair Brush," "Satan under the Tea Table," and "Satan among the Sofa Cushions") in every nook and cranny made me chortle, as did her "Preparation by Little Notes" - if Rachel would not read the pamphlets, perhaps she might benefit from reading some choice passages copied out in letter format? Miss Clack's determination to get her message to its intended recipient reminded me of the barrage of owls carrying Harry Potter's first letter from Hogwarts. Poor dear; tact is utterly alien to her, and despite being hilariously awful, you can't help feeling sorry for her as her efforts alienate everyone she cares for, leaving her all alone.

Since we left Yorkshire for London, the mystery of the moonstone seems to have taken a back seat. Since Sergeant Cuff has been sent on his way, no one seems that concerned about tracking the gem's whereabouts. It is not forgotten, but seems to be treated as an unpleasantness that is in the past and not to be mentioned; that if no one speaks of the mystery, perhaps it will go away of its own accord.

Somehow, I think that's not going to happen.

Bout of Books 8.0: Tuesday

12.10PM

Yesterday's Bout of Books did not produce amazing results for me, but at least I finally finished that Lovecraft book. I found the stories effective and creepy, once I'd got used to the prose, but this is an author who requires a lot of concentration; something I was lacking this weekend.

Today is another day off work for me, and I've had a lot more success reading Reconstructing Amelia in the garden by Kimberley McCreight. (I keep wanting to call it Finding Amelia for some reason, so if that alternative title turns up on the blog - sorry.) This book shows a mother trying to come to terms with her grief and uncover the mysteries surrounding the death of her teenage daughter. At first, it seems that Amelia committed suicide, a thing that her mother Kate can barely get her head around. And then evidence comes to light to suggest that Amelia was murdered.

McCreight uses a mixture of narrative techniques in the uncovering of the mystery, alternating between traditional third-person, past-tense scenes following Kate in November, snippets of text messages, emails and Facebook updates which are uncovered in the investigation, and flashback chapters from Amelia's point of view, which are told in the first person, as if in a diary. These last seem a bit strange to me, as the most intimate and personal voice is that of someone who is no longer around to have a voice. Still, I guess that's the point of the novel: to get posthumously reacquainted with Amelia as a person, rather than as the daughter Kate thought she was. The novel demonstrates the challenges of bringing up a daughter in the contemporary world, especially as a professional single parent, and showing how even a good mother-daughter relationship can hide secrets. Can a mother really know her daughter?

4:30 PM

Finished Reconstructing Amelia, which turned out to be a satisfying mystery (if some characters' actions were somewhat unlikely. Clues were sprinkled throughout the book like a jigsaw puzzle: you might figure out some answers before being told, but it is not until the end that you find out how they all fit together.

I used to want to have a family of my own, somewhen, but in the last few years I've sadly come to realise that I don't think I could be bear to be responsible for bringing up children with the world as it is today. Reconstructing Amelia reinforces that. The world has always been a horrifying and wild place for teenagers - see Lord of the Flies and Heathers, just as a couple of examples. But in this age of inescapable internet, smartphones, and a somewhat self-obsessed culture that encourages everyone to share everything with the world (says the blogger!) the teen's senses of immortality, independence and indiscretion, combined with perhaps not as much wisdom as one might think, can be explosive. We see the results on the news from time to time, and Reconstructing Amelia gives a fictional, extreme, but far from unprecedented example. (And I apologise if this sounds patronising to teenagers. It's not meant that way. I am just grateful that there was no such thing as Facebook when I was a kid and that my internet activities were limited to fangirling on boybands' forums, printing photos of said boyband members, and writing the occasional terrible fanfiction and angsty poetry. Who knows what might be out there if I'd had a Twitter account at fifteen?)

Paper Towns - John Green

In the middle of the night, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen's next-door neighbour and long-term crush Margo Roth Spiegelman appears at his bedroom window and bids him come with her on an adventure - a campaign of revenge. The next day, Margo is missing. It's not the first time Margo has disappeared, but Q is worried. He makes it his mission to find Margo, uncovering some cunningly hidden clues about her whereabouts. But finding Margo's physical location turns out to be just the beginning of the challenge. In their hunt to find her, Q and his friends realise that not one of them can be sure they ever really knew Margo. Paper Towns is as much about uncovering Margo as a real person as it is about finding where she is hiding.

Is it terrible to say that I really like revenge stories? The escapades Q and Margo embark upon are an entertaining take on the usual "bring down the mean girl" high school drama. To give you a sense of the duo's unusual pranks I will duplicate Margo's shopping list. (N.B. random capitalisations are Margo's.)

"3 whole Catfish, Wrapped separately

Veet (It's for Shaving your legs Only you don't Need a razor It's with all the Girly cosmetic stuff)

Vaseline

six-pack Mountain Dew

One dozen Tulipsone

Bottle Of waterTissues

one Can of blue Spray paint."

I will not give the game away about what they do with these items - you can use your imagination or read the book yourself. Needless to say, it was hilarious, with a touch of the guilt you feel for enjoying watching people get what they deserve.

But Paper Towns is not really a revenge story, not after that beginning. It soon becomes a mystery, a sort of treasure-hunt to find Margo, who seems not to want to be found, but leaves obscure clues for Q to figure out nonetheless. And if there's anything I like better in a novel for teenagers than revenge plots, it's mysteries and treasure hunts. Not that I expect to be able to work it out before the protagonists, and nor do I really want to. I enjoy the thrill of being utterly clueless about the author's intentions, of being surprised and trusting them to make it all make sense in the end. Margo's treasure-hunt takes Q and his friends, Ben, Radar and Lacey through Walt Whitman's poetry (note to self: must read some more Whitman) to a seriously creepy office in an abandoned mini-mall, and ends up sending them on a race-against-time road trip from Florida to a non-existant town in New York state, the boys wearing nothing but their graduation gowns. It's a riot, a page-turner, and Q's ticking clock - will they reach New York in time? - adds to the sense of urgency. By this point I was racing through the book as though I too would run out of time.

I may have mentioned before that I really love John Green's books. They have a unique nerdy appeal, with smart, sarcastic and funny characters, and weird little details that just make the books stand out against the rest. In Paper Towns we have Urban Exploring, the world's largest black Santa collection, a teenage boy in a "World's Best Grandma" t-shirt, cross-hatched writing to make a notebook's contents illegible to anyone except the writer. I have since adopted this, as I could find myself in Harriet The Spy trouble if I were to accidentally leave my notebooks lying around.  And of course there are the titular Paper Towns, which are fictional locations invented by mapmakers in order to identify breaches of copyright. All fascinating stuff, and I loved it. But it's not all just quirks and chuckles; Paper Towns makes the reader think about how we view others - as real people or supporting characters in our own lives? Can we ever truly know another person - and if so, how?

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

My best friend, Judith, is only two months older than me, but when we were at school, she was in the year above me. This proved very useful when it came to discovering literature. Many a book I read and loved came second-hand through her talking about what she was studying in English. This was certainly the case for my first Sherlock Holmes stories. I must have been either ten or eleven, and after her raving about Holmes, I just had to find out what all the fuss was about. Even at eleven, I didn't like missing out on a good story. I vividly remember that I read four stories, one of which was "The Speckled Band," which captivated me, appealing to my slightly ghoulish imagination. This must have been one of my first really grown-up stories, and it was like nothing I'd ever read before.

I've read The Hound of the Baskervilles a few times, but aside from that, Sherlock Holmes lay at the back of my mind for many years. I watched a few stories on TV, acquired much of the knowledge through the osmosis of popular culture, but didn't read much until about eighteen months ago, when BBC started airing Sherlock for the first time. The series sent me right back to the original stories: A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of Four. After an unusually long wait for a second series of a TV show, Sherlock returned to the screens once more on New Year's Day this year, and I returned to the next volume of the series: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.


After two novels, the third installment is a collection of short stories. This makes the book easy to dip in and out of, and you need little knowledge of what has come before, but can read the stories in any order - there may be a throwaway reference to "the case of..." but nothing that has any bearing on the tale. In fact, the stories aren't even compiled in chronological order - some are set after Watson's marriage, others before. They are narrated by Dr Watson, as written up long after the event. Though far from simple stories, they are told simply, often to the same formula: The problem is presented, Dr Watson, the client and the reader are all baffled, but not Sherlock Holmes, oh no! He ponders a lot, asks strange questions, goes out, solves the mystery then comes back and then tells us how he did it. My favourite stories in the collection are those which have a little less talking and a little more action, those stories in which Watson gets to go "on location" with Holmes.

Some of the tales are rather silly, such as "The Blue Carbuncle" - a valuable jewel which nearly ends up in the Christmas dinner. Two stories require suspension of disbelief as dodgy characters fool those closest to them with disguised identities, and then there is "The Red-Headed League." A fun, entertaining and cunning tale, but how gullible was Holmes's client, duped into joining this fictitious club, just for gingers?

Adventures also contains some of the most wonderful and memorable cases. We meet The Woman, Irene Adler, the one woman Sherlock acknowledges. There is the gruesome tale of the "Engineer's Thumb," and the "Copper Beeches" mystery, first dismissed by Holmes as his "zero point" for interest, but which turns out to be one of the most intriguing and exciting of all. And of course, "The Speckled Band," my old friend, the original locked-door mystery.

Yes, reading these stories, sometimes I found myself rolling my eyes at some of these cliched tropes - but let's not forget that they were not cliched. These are the original twisty page-turning detective stories, those that helped to invent the genre. I won't say Conan Doyle was the inventor - check out Poe's Auguste Dupin stories that came before - but for twists and thrills and cleverness, I think nothing has topped the Sherlock Holmes series in over a century. Maybe Agatha Christie put up a fair fight.

The Considine Curse, Gareth P, Jones

I don't often buy books on impulse, and I rarely buy books from the 9-12 age group, but in Waterstone's the other day I made an exception for The Considine Curse. The story of a "very normal" Australian teenager who goes to visit her strange cousins in England after the death of their grandmother, it looked like a cross between the Addams family and the Lemony Snicket books. Mariel's cousins are very close, many of them hostile to outsiders, and although they share the same grandmother, they don't consider Mariel to be one of them. Mariel's mother didn't even tell her she had any family, and as she gets to know them, Mariel can see why! Only now her mother wants to take her away from her home, school and friends. Mariel does not approve.

The Considine cousins are certainly a strange bunch, each with their own characteristics. Lily and Amelia are strange but seem friendly enough, but Oberon is threatening, and eight-year-old Elspeth is one of the creepiest children I've come across in fiction, oozing malevolence and speaking only in sinister rhyme, hinting at a terrible fate in store for Mariel. I guessed at the family's secret early on, but this did not spoil the story for me, although one piece of foreshadowing came across as too heavy-handed and unnecessary. The story is a great mix of a page-turning family mystery and a gothic undercurrent that gets darker and more dangerous as the story goes along.

I was quite shocked at the level of bloodthirstiness for a book aimed at pre-teens, but what I found more disturbing was the ending. I think it was supposed to be a happy ending, but it was rather bittersweet and a somewhat morally dubious. Although as an adult I don't mind stories with "untidy" conclusions, if I had read this book when I was ten or eleven, I would have been concerned about the decisions Mariel took. Her story may have ended pretty well, but I would have been - and was, a bit - troubled about the wider-reaching consequences for the family and community. Perhaps I think too much. Still, The Considine Curse is an enjoyable, intriguing and creepy read.

Readalong: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte (i)

Readalong part one: Chapters 1-25

Although I have read Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre at least three times each, I had never read anything by the third Bronte sister, Anne. I’ve had The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on my to-read list for several years but it was only when Whitney suggested a read-along as part of her Bronte Sisters challenge on her blog, She Is Too Fond of Books, that I actually got around to picking it up.

Tenant begins with the arrival of a mysterious young widow at Wildfell Hall, a dilapidated old house in a small village community. Although her neighbours reach out in friendship to Mrs Graham, she is uninviting and aloof, and soon people start to suspect that she has a Past and is Not Quite Respectable. The first part of the novel is narrated by Gilbert Markham, a young farmer , who persists in his friendship with Mrs Graham – Helen – and is soon smitten, despite the malicious rumours.

The opening chapter reminded me very much of the beginning of Pride and Prejudice with its family gossip about the newcomer to the community. Unlike Mr Bingley, however, Helen Graham is almost reclusive, living in just a few rooms of the house with her small son and a single servant. I’ve discovered Jane and Charlotte Bronte’s novels to be rather dark, with a gothic edge, and Anne is no different here, with her gloomy setting of Wildfell Hall and Helen’s mysterious past.

Helen is a remarkable character, very independent and practical. Her skill for painting is more than a “feminine accomplishment,” but a way to earn her living. She seems to have become disillusioned with the world and with people, but is clearly passionate with a fierce temper. A debate about how to raise children, and whether it is right to treat boys and girls differently, reads as startlingly modern for the era.

Gilbert, on the other hand, seems more like a petulant teenage boy than a grown man of twenty four with responsibilities and who is considered the head of his household. His loyalty to Helen when everyone else disparages her is admirable, but his sulky fits and capricious nature are not, and the violence of his temper is quite shocking.

The narrative shifts part-way through, when Helen gives Gilbert the diaries of her first courtship and marriage. Her infatuation for one Mr Huntingdon mirrors Gilbert’s for her; it is rash, ill-advised and frowned upon. Helen’s keenness to overlook Mr Huntingdon’s bad character for his exterior charms are optimistic but naive, and her hopes to reform him look set to lead to misery. They give clues as to the reasons behind the transformation of the bright, romantic and moral girl of the diaries into the reserved and bitter widow that Gilbert and his community have come to know.

Thoughts on chapters 26-53 to follow on 31st May.

Fixing Delilah, Sarah Ockler

Fixing Delilah isn't even available to buy in the UK yet, but thanks to the wonders of the internet I was able to order a US copy of the book. I commented in my review of Ockler's first novel, Twenty Boy Summer, that the US paperback has a different texture to it than a UK one. Fixing Delilah is a hardback book, but I still found enough little differences that interested me: the copyright page has more information in it. Under the heading of Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data a twitter-sized synopsis and hashtag or blog-label-style details of the book's contents, such as Secrets, Family problems and Vermont.

Delilah Hannaford is a troubled teenager who doesn't seem to know who she is any more. We get to see her inner turmoil first:

"Despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm really not the car-denting kind of girl. I'm also not the lipstick-stealing, school-skipping, off-in-the-woods-with-someone-I-barely-know kind of girl, or the kind who loses all of her dignity over a scandalous cell phone picture on a trashy blog."

Like Twenty Boy Summer, this is a holiday book, and we don't get to see Delilah at school. We get an idea of what her school life is, though, and I have an impression of a character I probably wouldn't sympathise with if I didn't get to know her from the inside out, so to speak. If portrayed through the eyes of someone else, or possibly even with a third-person narrator, I would probably see her as one of the popular kids, maybe a bit shallow, messed up, one of the cool kids who I'd probably have nothing to do with if I were in their class. But because Ockler presents Delilah as narrator, I found her, if not always likeable, identifiable. Because I know well enough what it is like to appear like one person and feel like another, to find myself doing things I really don't want to. And reading Fixing Delilah, I found myself thinking, "maybe we're not so different after all," the "cool" kids and the outsiders, the "good" girls and the "bad."

Not only does Delilah feel lost, but her relationship with her mother is a mess. Claire Hannaford sees that Delilah is "seeking attention" but won't give her any, doesn't try to understand why her daughter's gone off the rails; she is far too caught up being an efficient businesswoman, successful but stressed, to think of family. Alternatively, perhaps it is too painful - if Delilah's relationship with her mother is strained, it is nothing compared with the extended family. Eight years ago, Claire, her sister Rachel, and her mother Elizabeth had such an argument that they have never spoken since, and now Elizabeth, Delilah's grandmother is dead. Delilah, Claire and Rachel return to Red Falls, Vermont, to sort through Elizabeth's belongings and make her house ready to put on the market. While there, Delilah starts trying to find out the secrets in the family's past, secrets that appear to be focused on Claire and Rachel's youngest sister, Stephanie, who died before Delilah was born.

Family is the main theme of Fixing Delilah. There are many parallels with Delilah and her dead aunt Stephanie. They look alike, Delilah was Stephanie's middle name, Delilah was conceived not long after Stephanie was buried. Though as far as I noticed there was no hint of a throwaway remark on the subject of reincarnation, the idea flitted across my mind. More realistically, there was the threat of history repeating itself. Delilah worries that perhaps the problems with the family are inescapable, that perhaps her relationship with her mom is doomed to go the same way as Claire's with her mother. But ultimately, this is a story about reconciliation, and taking responsibility for one's own future and relationships. I didn't like all of the characters all the time, especially Delilah's mom, or the memory of her Nana, but ultimately we are presented with a story about realistic, flawed characters who, like Delilah (and like myself) aren't always the person they seem to be, despite all the evidence.

Sarah Ockler excels in setting the scene, in writing simple description that captures a scene, a sound or a moment perfectly. In Twenty Boy Summer, it is the sound of the sea: Shhh, ahhh. Shhh, ahhh. Here we have the cool, robotic voice of the Sat-Nav system: Left turn in four. Hundred. Feet. Like Twenty Boy Summer this is a holiday story, but instead of the California beaches we are treated to a trip to Red Falls, Vermont. Now, Vermont is a state I know nothing about. I imagine it cold and sweet, probably because it  is the home of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Red Falls is certainly sweet, flavoured with maple syrup candy from the trees that no doubt give the town its name. Cold - not so much. It is a summer story, after all. Reading it in a chilly English December, it took a bit of brain-adjustment to get my head around Delilah's romantic interest Patrick working on the house shirtless, or taking her kayaking and swimming on the lake. That aside, I had a vivid image of a small, rather quaint lake town that is increasingly becoming a tourist-trap in summer. I'd quite happily visit it, minus, of course, the Hannaford family troubles.

If you liked this book, you might enjoy:

Twenty Boy Summer - Sarah Ockler
The Sky is Everywhere - Jandy Nelson
Hold Still - Nina LaCour
The Book of Tomorrow - Cecelia Ahern

The Book of Tomorrow, Cecelia Ahern

Cecelia Ahern is best-known for her romantic tear-jerker, P.S. I Love You, which was made into a film starring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. I enjoyed the book, well enough, and also the film, but they were what I classed as Chick Lit, a genre I tend to investigate about once a year. The pastel covers of her other books did nothing to rid me of this impression, and although some of them were pretty, I didn't bother with them.

Then The Book of Tomorrow appeared on the shelves, and what a beautiful book! I am an incurable cover-judger, and this elegant purple volume with its glorious golden shinies could not keep me away. But enough of the swooning, onto the story.

When spoilt Tamara Goodwin's father dies, leaving her and her mother bankrupt, she has to leave her Dublin mansion and move to the middle of nowhere, to live under the watchful eye of her aunt Rosaleen and uncle Arthur. Tamara's mother, catatonic with grief, is confined to her room, and Rosaleen is twitchy and constantly checking up on Tamara. But is she being overprotective of Tamara, Mrs Goodwin, or of her own secrets? With nothing else to do, Tamara explores the ruins of the nearby castle, befriends a bee-keeping nun, and discovers a mysterious journal, whose entries are written in her handwriting, dated the following day, and describing events which have not yet happened.

On my second reading of The Book of Tomorrow, I felt that it would be a good companion novel to Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall. Like the latter, it shows two alternative versions of a day, depending on the choices made by the individual. Tamara feels full of guilt that the last time she saw her father they had fought bitterly, and she wishes she could recall her final words to him. The diary's offering of a glimpse into the future offers her insight into the consequences of her actions, and turns her from a thoroughly unpleasant little madam into the more thoughtful and considerate young lady who narrates the story. The Book of Tomorrow is filed in adult fiction in the bookshops, perhaps containing stronger language than you'd find in most teenage novels, but with a sixteen-year-old protagonist, I don't think it holds anything new to readers of the same generation. The setting, tone and mystery of the novel took me back to my own teens, reminding me of some of the best children's and young adult novels, compulsive, with a sense of adventure and a setting I really wanted to explore. I particularly loved the character of Sister Ignatius, the wise old nun with a sense of humour, who refused to get offended by Tamara, despite her best efforts. My favourite scene depicts Sister Ignatius and her fellow nuns avidly discussing a Mills and Boon novel as if it were great, or at least good, literature.

I have since read one or two more of Ahern's novels, but this is, for me, easily her best so far. One of my great discoveries of last year.

Crescendo, Becca Fitzpatrick

After all the hype about Hush, Hush, I judged it to be a very average teenage novel, with a compelling but not compulsive storyline, decent overall, but nothing that really stood out. I made sure to read Crescendo fairly soon after its predecessor, so that the story-so-far was fresh in my memory, and I could pick up where I left off.

I found Crescendo to be less average than Hush, Hush, but I'm sorry to say that I don't mean that in a positive way. Firstly, there were the inevitable comparisons with New Moon, book two of the Twilight series. In Crescendo, Nora feels insecure about her relationship with Patch, who seems to be keeping things from her, and before we are far into the story, she breaks up with him. Unfortunately, despite Nora being the first-person narrator of the series, I was not seeing the story through her eyes, but rather through the eyes of an outsider, moreover a reader who knows all too well how these stories go. It was far too obvious that Patch's secrets were nothing to do with him not really loving Nora any more, and that he had his reasons for keeping his distance. Nora spent a lot of time feeling angry with Patch for breaking her heart - when it was she who did the leaving in the first place. (Think Sandy in Grease.) She also seemed to have left her common sense (never particularly bright) in Patch's pocket, and I (metaphorically) read from behind my hands as Nora made stupid decision after decision and hoppity-skipped right into danger's pathway. Again, though, I observe this as a genre-savvy reader rather than from the character's point of view.

I thought that the story itself took a very long time to get started. Early on Nora discovers a hint about her father's murderer, but aside from a couple of scenes, that plotline is suspended for about a hundred and fifty pages while she tries to get over Patch, stalk Patch, get to know her returned childhood friend Scott (who is TROUBLE with a capital T and a capital ROUBLE) and work out if Patch really is dating Nora's worst enemy forever Marcie Millar. Once the father story is picked up once more, in the last quarter of the book, the pace picked up and I was able to lose my irritation enough to stop snarking and start caring once more. I was turning the pages quickly, wanting to know what had really happened to Nora's father, and just where Marcie Millar came into it all. After three hundred pages of teenage angst and sneaking about, the narrative returned to the action thriller of the previous volume. Just as it looked as if everything was going to be back to normal, Crescendo ended on a cliffhanger, because after all, you can't have less than three books in a teenage series.

I'm very sorry to Ms Fitzpatrick and all her fans, I want to award more, but Crescendo earns two stars from me.

The Other Alice, Julia Clarke

Ally is like a bad fairy who arrived at the party and cast an evil spell over the world. Everything in my life is fracturing and changing and going wrong, wrong, wrong.

Alice is fed up. It is the night of her elder twin brother and sister's birthday party, and she doesn't want to be there. Sister Nell is shouting, Mum is tired from a stressful week at work and Alice's two best friends have stood her up in favour of a double date. When a strange girl gatecrashes the party, all it takes is one small lie about knowing her. Like a vampire, that small invitation is enough for the other Alice, Ally, to creep into the family's affections. Only Alice (our Alice) feels uncomfortable and doesn't trust the newcomer.

The Other Alice is a simply-written story exploring the issues of family, identity and young romance, with a claustrophobic layer of mystery. Although I borrowed this book from the teenage section of the library, it seems to be aimed at the lower end of the age group, maybe for ten to thirteen-year-olds*, due to its straightforward narrative style which has Alice immediately state the thoughts that other novels might take chapters of hinting and suspicion. This is not a criticism, as I wasn't in the mood for a twisty narrative taking a long time to arrive at an inevitable conclusion. The uncomplicated narrative style, middle-of-nowhere Yorkshire setting and realistic characters made The Other Alice a cosy read that took me back to the books I used to check out of the library ten years ago.

I found it interesting that Julia Clarke decided to give two main characters the same name. There was no confusion as one Alice narrated the story and the other used the short form Ally, but it was interesting to think of the two girls as two sides of the same coin. Alice is a good girl, sensitive and rather idealistic with a vivid imagination, while Ally is unpredictable, wild and rather dangerous. Alice senses that Ally wants something from her family, and while Ally makes herself at home and invites herself into family occasions, Alice feels slowly squeezed out.

It was interesting to read The Other Alice immediately after writing my review of Fallen, as there is a similar love scenario to the former. Alice has a crush on her sister's boyfriend Spence, and her feelings for him, while rather vague and unlikely, cause her to turn down the more obvious candidate in her friend Sam who loves her. (Yes, another love interest called Sam! Good name. My first crush was on a Sam. But that is beside the point.) It was refreshing after all the star-crossed-lover, eternal romances that are out there, to read one that is based on liking, hormones and being flattered by someone paying attention. It may be small-scale, but I could relate so much better than in most teenage romances. My only slight criticism was that, lovely though Sam was - and he was! - he seemed a bit too good to be true among a cast of complex characters.

A quick, satisfying read and an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

*I realised after writing this review that The Other Alice contained a bit of language which would take it to a 12A/PG-13 rating if it were a film.

Rachel Hore, A Place of Secrets

The second in the Richard and Judy Book Club, exclusive to WHSmith (although Waterstones have a suspicious display of New Fiction with the exact same eight titles in one place… cheeky!) But I digress.

A Place of Secrets is a quieter work than the last R&J choice, and one which is difficult to pigeonhole into a single genre: is it primarily literary, mainstream, romance, historical genealogical mystery, realistic or ever so slightly paranormal hinting at something beneath the subject?  Its cover is very similar indeed to a previous R&J novel, Kate Morton’s The House at Riverton, and like the latter, the story is centred around the mystery of something that happened in the past in and around an old, big house.

The viewpoint character is Jude, a widow in her thirties, whose job is valuing and selling antique books. Her job takes her to Starbrough Hall in Norfolk, which happens to be within a few miles from her childhood home. Among the books she finds a manuscript which contains the life story of Esther, adopted daughter of the astronomer to whom the book collection originally belonged, back in the eighteenth century. Fascinated, Jude investigates deeper and finds all sorts of links with her own family’s history.

A Place of Secrets reveals Hore to be a skilled writer, conjuring a vivid picture of Starbrough Hall and the old folly which is central to all of the stories within the novel. She gives an eerie atmosphere to the woodland around it, drawing on images from fairytales, such as Rapunzel and The Babes in the Wood to add to the rather creepy, unearthly feel.

The characters are for the most part sympathetic, with the exception of Caspar, Jude’s boyfriend at the start, who is rather self-obsessed. Jude’s sister Claire is touchy and the sisters’ relationship is difficult, yet despite Claire’s poorly-concealed resentment, there is real love between them. The direction that Jude’s friendship with Euan is frustrating in its obviousness – I found myself shouting at Jude for being unsure of his attraction to her, but that’s more likely me being aware of How Things Work in books, whereas she was unaware of her status as a character in a novel.

A prominent theme is memory, whether it be personal memory, inherited memory in the form of the dreams that Jude and her little niece Summer share, and even, apparently forward memory or premonition. Summer’s recurring nightmares of being lost in the woods come to an end when she sleepwalks and finds herself in that same position. The dream also echoes Esther’s experience at the end of her story, passed on through dreams through family. I think Hore takes the power of dreams too far by using one of the writers’ taboos: revealing the otherwise undisclosed mysteries through dreams. Her eagerness to make sure every loose end is tied up leads to her clumsiest storytelling, although, to be fair, the slightly supernatural dreams and weird tone mean that this device is not completely out of place.

Stars are another motif recurring throughout the novel, and Hore clearly enjoyed her research of eighteenth century astronomy, incorporating it to make an intelligent but easy read. Though a rather sedate read for the most part, she expertly plants questions and hints to keep you reading on, and manages to juggle three or four storylines without causing you to lose interest in any part, until the climax when the subplots are neatly brought together. A minor quibble is that the stories are too tidily drawn together – everything is related and there are too many coincidences, long-lost relatives and so on. Although Hore’s world is vividly brought to life, it’s too self-contained: I found it difficult to imagine anything or anyone there that didn’t further the plot. If someone was walking the dog in the woods, for example, he’d probably turn out to be a long-lost relative who happened to have a family heirloom in his pocket.