Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Olive Kitteridge: indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable. A retired schoolteacher in a small coastal town in Maine, as she grows older she struggles to make sense of the changes in her life. She is a woman who sees into the hearts of those around her, their triumphs and tragedies.

We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and a young man who aches for the mother he lost - and whom Olive comforts by her mere presence, while her own son feels overwhelmed by her complex sensitivities.

A penetrating, vibrant exploration of the human soul, the story of Olive Kitteridge will make you laugh, nod in recognition, wince in pain, and shed a tear or two.

The novel is structured to form a series of short stories: case histories through which is woven the character of Olive Kitteridge who may play a significant part, or almost none at all.  All the members of my Dorset group rated this highly.





A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr : Bernie Gunther Mystery 5

Philip Kerr writes an excellent thriller.  He also writes for children.  You can find out more about him following this link: http://philipkerr.org/about/   or

https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/philip-kerr/198811/?mkwid=sSZLll4oZ|dc&pcrid={creative}&pkw=books&pmt=b&plc={placement}&utm_term=books&utm_campaign=Search+%7C+Dynamic+Search+Ad+Test&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing

In A Quiet Flame, posing as an escaping Nazi war-criminal Bernie Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires and, having revealed his real identity to the local chief of police, discovers that his reputation as a detective goes before him. A young girl has been murdered in peculiarly gruesome circumstances that strongly resemble Bernie's final case as a homicide detective with the Berlin police. A case he had failed to solve.

Circumstances lead the chief of police in Buenos Aires to suppose that the murderer may be one of several thousand ex Nazis who have fetched up in Argentina since 1945. And, therefore, who better than Bernie Gunther to help him track that murderer down?

Redolent with atmosphere, this novel ends up asking some highly provocative questions about the true extent of Argentina's Nazi collaboration and anti-semitism under the Peróns.   It is this engagement with political and historical issues that authenticates Kerr's novels and sets Kerr's thriller in a higher rank than the traditional crime/detective/thriller genre which makes for extremely popular reading.               

Murders with a Twist

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s carer in his squalid home and her day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city.

In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a handsome prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her
wildest imaginings.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfega was shortlisted for the Man Booker 2016, nominated for three other literary prizes and book of the year for the Times, Observer and Daily Telegraph.  That is quite an accolade.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish Highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country s finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.

Graeme Macrae Burnet tells an irresistible and original story about the provisional nature of truth, even when the facts seem clear. His Bloody Project is a mesmerising literary thriller set in an unforgiving landscape where the exercise of power is arbitrary.

'The book’s pretence at veracity, as well as being a literary jeux d’esprit, brings an extraordinary historical period into focus, while the multiple unreliable perspectives are designed to keep the audience wondering, throughout the novel and beyond. This is a fiendishly readable tale that richly deserves the wider attention the Booker has brought it.'  Guardian Review.

To read the full review follow this link:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/12/his-bloody-project-by-graeme-macrae-burnet-review

Olde Worlde Murder Mysteries

The Red House Mystery is a "locked room" whodunnit by A. A. Milne, published in 1922. It was Milne's only mystery novel.

Alan Alexander (A. A.) Milne (1882-1956) is most prominently remembered as the author of the well-known Winnie-the-Pooh tales, written for his son, Christopher Robin. Milne was born in London and raised in his father's private school, Henley House, after which he attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge to study mathematics. By 1925 he had published 18 plays and 3 novels, including "The Red House Mystery". This was Milne's first and final venture into the detective and mystery genre, despite its immediate success and an offer of two thousand pounds for his next mystery novel.

The setting is an English country house, where Mark Ablett has been entertaining a house party consisting of a widow and her marriageable daughter, a retired major, a wilful actress, and Bill Beverley, a young man about town. Mark's long-lost brother Robert, the black sheep of the family, arrives from Australia and shortly thereafter is found dead, shot through the head. Mark Ablett has disappeared, so Tony Gillingham, a stranger who has just arrived to call on his friend Bill, decides to investigate. Gillingham plays Sherlock Holmes to his younger counterpart's Doctor Watson; they progress almost playfully through the novel while the clues mount up and the theories abound.

Milne lets his readers inside the head of his amateur detective, disregarding the clichéd romance or violence of other detective novels, as the mystery becomes a puzzling sort of parlour game for the novel's characters and readers alike.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitze

As a professional pasticheur, Anthony Horowitz has already copied (and pasted) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming. Here he turns his attention to Agatha Christie. The first 200 or so pages are a perfect parody of a typical Christie mystery by one Alan Conway featuring his regular detective, a German refugee called Atticus Pünd. It is the Fifties and, in an idyllic country village, a nasty housekeeper and then her employer, the ghastly Sir Magnus Pye, are found dead. There are lots of suspects and lots of secrets. So far so good.

However, Horowitz, much to his credit, wants to have his fake and beat it. The last chapter of the Magpie Murders typescript is missing so Conway’s editor goes in search of it — and, when the obnoxious writer is found dead at the foot of a tower, his killer.

It’s almost half a century since Roland Barthes published The Death of the Author — and Gilbert Adair borrowed the title for his 1993 novel — but Horowitz has great fun showing how art imitates life and vice versa. The narrative is full of in-jokes, allusions and anagrams (and unmentioned typos). Somehow he manages to make all the inconsistencies and interconnections hang together while providing a cynical yet accurate portrait of modern publishing. 

The plot runs as follows:  when editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She's worked with the revered crime writer for years and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It's just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway...

But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but hidden in the pages of the manuscript there lies another story: a tale written between the very words on the page, telling of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition and murder.