Lonely Hearts - John Harvey

A rather formulaic 1980s police procedures detective story featuring Nottingham Inspector Charlie Resnick - a single man of Polish extraction. Something that struck me is the problem that writers have when there is a rapid development in technology. The introduction of mobile phones made an incredible difference to both police and criminal communication speed and reaction. This was also the time before effective use of DNA evidence. Both these changes gave the impression of an almost clunky slowness to the plot. John Harvey is a good detective story writer, but I don't find his Resnick character especially loveable and I don't get the connection I get with a lot of the 'stars' of detective stories. I also don't know a lot about Nottingham either. Anyway this volume is about a murderer who is meeting and killing women he meets through the local paper's personal ads - and that is another change that has happened in recent years - no one writes letters to personal ads columns any longer - it is all done by texts and voicemail messages, not through box numbers. Harvey is a author who develops character sufficiently and the narrative is well paced, but it is all fairly average and competent not exciting and full of suspense. Rating 6/10

The Painted Veil - W Somerset Maugham

I read an awful lot of Maugham books when I was in my twenties, and wondered whether I'd appreciate them today. I wasn't disappointed. Somerset Maugham sums up 'storyteller' to me, all his books are plot driven, the characters so well drawn, his descriptions spot on. I reckon he is so good on human relationships - their spontaneity, their cruelty and deviousness. And yet in all his characters their is just a touch of kindness or goodness. This book is seen entirely from the point of view of Kitty - the 'pretty' daughter of a dull lawyer father and extremely ambitious mother. The latter is determined for a good match for Kitty but when her younger plain sister becomes engaged to an very eligible man Kitty fears being left on the shelf, and she marries in a panic to a man she knows little about and understands less. This microbiologist based in Hong Kong turns out to be a remarkably boring man from Kitty's point of view and although she is probably not intentionally cruel she embarks on a torrid affair with a married man. When this is discovered Kitty's husband presents her with an ultimatum - go with him to a cholera ridden backwater of China (and almost certain death). The alternative is to persuade her lover to divorce his wife and marry her, and then he will divorce her. If she tries to divorce him, then the truth of her affair will come out and both she and her ambitious lover will face shame and humiliation. She goes with her husband. This is a remarkable and very emotional book, with superb realistic dialogue, and confronts the reader with some truly realistic dilemmas. Although we rarely enter into the minds of the other characters we are carried along with the emotional roller coaster of Kitty's life, towards the ultimately surprising denouement. The themes are timeless, and although very much set in a different era and mores very much appropriate to today. Maugham's descriptions are spare but so accurate - his style filmic - you can picture it in your head. My rating 9/10

The World According to Bertie - Alexander McCall Smith

I love this series of books about the inhabitants (and their friends) of a set of flats on mythical

Scotland Road, Edinburgh. The humour is gentle, the events are hardly events in the usual sense of the word - but they are the everyday activities encountered by most (middle class) people. So there is Bertie (the eponymous hero of this volume) a six year old who just wants to be a normal boy, playing sports, having adventures - much against the wishes of his mother - who avidly reads (and tries to implement) all the latest theories of child rearing. There is leisurely painter Angus and Cyril his dog (accused and arrested for biting), art gallery owner millionaire Matthew, remarkably unsuccessful in love, and most of the characters meet at Big Lou's cafe - and she has become involved with a group of latter day Jacobites. Domenica the anthropologist (recently returned from a field trip to a group of modern day pirates in Malacca) has problems with her former tenant, now neighbour Antonia. All light stuff, but very enjoyable, and the episodic style - short, punchy chapters originating from the publication in daily articles in The Scotsman is so appropriate. Rating: 8/10

Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House - M C Beaton

Perhaps I should be reading these books in the right order, but I found this in the library so grabbed it - they are very popular and are rarely found on the shelves! They are very much a series - although satisfying enough on their own. I did get slightly confused though, because between reading this one and the previous one (see below) Agatha has been married (again) and left by her husband, and in this volume a previous lover turned up again - and he'd been married and divorced in the interim too. Hey ho! The love lives of the middle aged! OK, so in this book amateur sleuth Agatha Raisin returns from a spot of PR work in London to find that an elderly woman in a neighbouring Cotswold village has been subjected to a 'haunting' so she and her new neighbour set off to solve the mystery. Shortly after, the old lady ends up dead at the foot of the stairs, and a series of murders are quickly strewn across the countryside. Agatha isn't a very subtle detective and 'blundering upon the truth' sums up her abilities, she's rapidly entangled in two competing (rapidly failing) relationships, and quickly gets put in danger. But its light, its amusing, its entertaining and deserves a 7/10 rating.

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

A slim volume with the first night of a honeymoon in the early 1960s at its centre. Florence and

Edward are innocents in this book about life before the arrival of the permissive society. Like many people they have ended up married and aren't quite sure what is awaiting them. Of course after 1970 couples withour experience were increasingly rare and so the events described in the few hours following their wedding are much less likely. Ian McEwan has written another book describing the minutae of one event and the consequences - how seemingly irrelevant tiny things lead inexorably to an unintended result. He did it almost obsessively in Saturday but tends to do it in all his books. I have several problems with Ian McEwan's writing - I get the impression he thinks and selects each word over carefully, simplicity of language is not his style. His characters, although over described and analysed never seem terribly real. The over obssessive attention to details - in this case, the contents of the food in their meal, details of the rooms in which they are staying, do not really create the atmosphere or conjure the picture of being there - other authors can describe in few words and still bring the image to mind. Rating 7/10

Paying Guests - E F Benson

I was so pleased to receive this book as a present - I'm guessing it is now out of print, and I hadn't heard of it before. It is very much of Benson's Mapp & Lucia style - all about a group of slightly quirky and eccentric people thrown together and reacting to each others foibles in extremely funny ways. Benson's style is very gossipy, almost bitchy, but so accurate in his study of human beings in middle age, dealing with loneliness, trying to get through life, concentrating in a very selfish way about their own problems.