The London Eye Mystery

A month or two ago I blogged about MURDER IN THE LIBRARY and mentioned a novel on display there, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, that sounded intriguing. I've read it now and thoroughly enjoyed it. When twelve-year old Ted and and his older sister, Kat, watch their cousin Salim get on board the London Eye, he turns and waves as he gets on. After half an hour it lands and everyone gets off - except Salim. He seems to have disappeared into thin air. Ted and his older sister, Kat, try to get to the bottom of what has happened. Ted,though,is no ordinary twelve-year old. He has Asperger's syndrome and as he says: 'this is how having a funny brain that runs on different operating system from other people's helped me to figure out what had happened.'If you think this sounds a bit familiar, it's because it was Siobhan Dowd's bad luck to have an original idea - novel narrated and crime solved by boy with Asperger's - and be pipped to the post by Mark Haddon with THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT. She put her novel aside and it was published later after she had brought out her first children's book, A SWIFT PURE CRY, which won a couple of awards and was short-listed for others. I think THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY really is one of those novels that can be enjoyed by young people and adults alike. There is a cracking mystery with terrific characters, a satisfying solution and a twist that I didn't see coming. It's funny and touching amd very well written (knocks J K Rowling into a cocked hat). I recommend it and if you do buy it you'll be supporting a good cause. Before her premature death in 2007, Siobhan Dowd set up a charity to support the joy of reading for young people in areas of social deprivation and all her royalties go to it.

Little Women

I must have pretty little myself when I last read LITTLE WOMEN, because I don't think I've read it as an adult, at least not all the way through. I decided to return to it after reading Jane Smiley's THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE NOVEL, which contains some fascinating commentaries on a hundred books, including Louisa May Alcott's classic. I wasn't sure about it at first: the opening chapters seemed clunky and when the girls gave up their Christmas breakfast to feed a poor family, the didacticism seemed too overt. But then it took hold. I raced through both parts and was sorry when it ended. What redeems it is that these are girls with real flaws, capable of behaving badly: I was horrified when Amy burned Jo's manuscripts. Yes, there is sentimentality - the baby talk of Meg's children is nauseating - but mostly it is held in check. Beth's illness and death has an element of realism that you don't find in, say, the death of Little Nell. The pain isn't glossed over. In many ways of course the lives of these four girls are worlds away from the experiences of young women today. As Jane Smiley points out, 'Jo and her three sisters aren't recognisable teenagers any more' . . . and yet and yet . . . The novel opens with Meg and Jo both doing work which they find uncongenial, one as a governess and other as companion to Aunt March and the over-riding theme of the novel is how they are to live and find their way in life. True, both Meg and Amy in the end find their destiny as wives and mothers, but Jo finds some success as a writer and ends by assisting her husband in running a school as well as bringing up her own children. It seems to me that the question of how to combine work outside the home and children still hasn't been satisfactorily solved - and perhaps it never will be in the sense of a solution that fits all. There can only be individual accommodations. I was amused by Jane Smiley's point that when Jo falls in love with Professor Bhaer 'there could be no Prince Charming less appealing in the eyes of an eleven-year-old reader,' though to an older reader he seems a far more suitable husband for Jo. I too remember being disappointed that Jo rejected the proposal of Laurie, the good-looking, wealthy boy next door. This time round I felt she was quite right to go for a professor. After all I married one myself.

Nothing new under the sun

I've been reading about the Fast Diet, which has had so much publicity recently. It involves two days of fasting per week (on 500 calories a day for women, 600 for men) and five of feasting, ie eating what you like. The health benefits, quite apart from losing weight, seem to be considerable and people are saying it has amazing results. It does indeed sound like a ground-breaking idea and yet, as I read on, something began to tug at my memory. I went to the book shelves and got down LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE by Nancy Mitford, published in 1949. Sure enough, when we first encounter the delightful Uncle Davey, the narrator's uncle and a malade imaginaire, he is 'following a new regime for perfect health, much in vogue, he assured us, on the Continent. "The aim is to warm up your glands with a series of jolts. The worse thing in the world for the body is to settle down and lead a quiet little life of regular habits: if you do that it soons resigns itself to old age and death. Shock your glands, force them to react, startle them back into youth, keep them on tip-toe so that they never know what to expect next, and they have to keep young and healthy to deal with all the surprises." Accordingly he ate in turns like Gandhi and like Henry VIII.' No word of a lie, something similar is part of the rational behind the Fast Diet. I remember a few years ago there was a diet in which one wasn't supposed to eat protein and carbohydrates in the same meal: that had a literary precedent too in A HANDFUL OF DUST where Tony and Brenda Last are undertaking the same diet. Of course both novels are set in the thirties, an era of when new ideas about Health and Beauty were much in vogue, before World War II and rationing put paid to the upper orders having much choice about what they ate. Well, whatever the merits of the Fast Diet, it has sent me back to one of my favourite novels. LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE is blissful comfort reading of the highest order and Nancy Mitford's earlier novel, THE PURSUIT OF LOVE is, if anything, even better. Time to read them again.

The scent of a cigar

A while ago I blogged about how much I enjoyed John Mullan's book about Jane Austen. I followed that up by reading HOW NOVELS WORK by the same author. This too is hugely enjoyable and I found a lot of food for thought both as a reader and a writer. I knew I was in for a treat when I read this on the first page: 'When the novelist William Thackeray first dined with Charlotte Brontë, he discomposed her by quoting from memory, as he smoked an after-dinner cigar, some cigar-smoke-inspired lines from JANE EYRE - lines that lead us to the heroine's meeting with Mr Rochester in the garden of Thornfield, and to his first declaration of love for her. "Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower - I know it well - it is Mr Rochester's cigar." Thackeray had been gripped by Brontë's novel, first reading it right through in a single day, and then returning to savour it.' Discomposed she may have been, but what a compliment, too, particulary coming as it did from a writer older and much better established. I love this story, which Mullen uses to illustrate the power of particular passages of literature to stay in the mind. The book's divided into sections: beginning, narrating, people, genre, and so on, right through to - naturally - endings. That makes it sound a bit dry, but actually it's full of fascinating insights and there are categories that you don't normally find in a work of criticism. I especially enjoyed a section on 'Meals' in Mullen remarks that 'Dickens perfected the art of the meal as a fictional set-piece' and gives as an example of 'the chill privilege of mean luxury' the meal at the christening party in DOMBEY AND SON: 'a cold collation, set forth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead dinner lying in state, than a social refreshment.'That made me laugh out loud. Mullen's book has made me want to go back to favourite writers like Dickens and enjoy them all over again, and he's alerted me too to some that I haven't yet read. His reference, for instance, to Conrad's 'wonderful novella YOUTH about not being young any more' has whetted my appetite and that's now on my reading list.

Murder in the Library

If you find yourself near the British Library with some time to spare, they have a small exhibition called MURDER IN THE LIBRARY, which is well worth a look. It's free, too. It's arranged alphabetically, beginning - of course! - with A for Agatha. Other categories include R for railways, N for Nordic Crime, G for Golden Age, T for True Crime, Q for Queens of Crime, and L for Locked Rooms. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is mostly the art of the dust jacket that is on display, but it reminded me of some old friends and gave me some ideas for future reading. Siobhan Dowd's young adult novel, THE LONDON EYE MYSTERY, sounds intriguing: someone disappears from one of the pods on the London Eye. It is a variant of the locked room mystery and I am rather tempted to have a go at one of those myself, not as a full length John Dickson Carr mystery, but just as a short story. After the exhibition I had a look round the book shop and was pleased to see that they had a selection of crime fiction, including THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 10, which has just come out. At £7.99 for 42 stories, it is very good value. I have to declare an interest as it contains one of my stories, 'Vanishing Act.' I am in distinguished company: Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Neil Gaiman, Martin Edwards, Simon Brett, among others, are represented. My own feeling is that really good short stories are rarer than good novels. They won't all be to everyone's taste, but there are some crackers in here.

Bath Book

Surely reading in the bath is one of life's great pleasures? In fact I'd argue that this is one of the best places to read a book. Wallowing in warm water, perhaps scented Neal's Yard bath oil - though I certainly don't insist on that - maybe with a glass of wine or, better, an icy gin and tonic, at one's elbow - what could be more sybaritic? Though actually it is only plenty of hot water and a book that are essential as a way of combining two of my favourite things. Looking back at my first term at university I see myself in a bath on the top floor of Latimer House, a fine Edwardian building in the grounds of College Hall in Leicester, reading Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy for what in retrospect seems hours on end. Did my fellow students get to the point of slipping notes under the door? I rather think they did. I was doing a degree in English Literature, which also encompassed Greek tragedy, American literature and so on, so I suppose I could argue that it was work in a way. But really I was reading widely and voraciously just for pleasure and eighteen is a great age for that. I still read in the bath, though it is rarely for hours these days, and it is one of the foremost reasons why my ebook reader will never completely supersede the printed book. I have been tempted once or twice, but I so far have managed to refrain from reading my Kindle in the bath. That way disaster lies. No, the answer is to have at least two books on the go - I sometimes have more - and make sure one is always appropriate for bath-time reading. So currently I am reading as a paperback, Tail of the Blue Bird by Ghanaian writer, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, in preparation for next week's meeting of my book group. On my Kindle I am reading Seventy-Seven Clocks by Christopher Fowler, the third in the Bryant and May series.

Big in Denmark

There is a wonderful organisation called The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society which collects photocopying rights on behalf of authors. Every year they send me some money - not a great deal - but as with Public Lending Rights, it does mean that I am getting a little extra payment, maybe £100 or £200 for all those copies that end up in libraries or which, for some reason, are photocopied. Some months ago I was surprised to find that a sum several times larger than usual had appeared in my bank account. When the statement came from ALCS it showed that the entire amount came from photocopies made in Denmark, simply listed as 'Crime in Fiction.' Mystifying. I bunged the statement into my intray, meaning to follow it up, but only today got round to ringing ALCS. In my heart of hearts I wondered if it might be a mistake and the money might be owed to someone else. But no, it was mine alright for photocopies of a short story, 'The Lammergeier Vulture,' that appeared in a CWA anthology CRIME ON THE MOVE in 2005, the first one I ever had published, and also for copies from my first novel, DEAD LETTERS. It is a strange thought that somewhere in Denmark - probably in some university - someone has made all those copies of my work, presumably for teaching purposes. It's one of those unexpected and quirky events that gladden the heart of the writer and that makes me wonder where the other copies of my books have ended up. Messages in bottles, most of them. Now and then someone gets in touch to say that they've read something of mine and liked it, but mostly the books and stories just disappear off into the blue and all I can do is hope they find friendly readers.