Description
Title: After the Carnage
Author: WINCH TARA JUNE
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 01/08/2016
Imprint: UNI OF QUEENSLAND PRESS
Price: $24.95
Publishing status: Active
Looking for some crime-lit to read in bed, I picked up a book by a Finnish writer that looked just what I was after. The book is called The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency : Death in Sunset Grove, by Minna Lindgren not only my first Finnish crime book, but, Moomins aside, I think this the first Finnish book I have read. And it is a great delight. I found myself laughing as I followed the adventures of three ninety+year-olds who reside at Sunset Grove, a retirement community in Helsinki, run by The Loving Care Agency, a misnomer if ever there.was! The Lavender Ladies are best friends Siiri and Irma, who have rooms next to each other, and Anna-Liisa. When a suspicious death occurs at Sunset Grove, Siiri and Irma decide to investigate. All sorts of strange things start to happen, Irmas medical notes go missing, their rooms are searched, Siiri finds mysterious medications appearing in her room which she hides, and when a fire breaks out in the Group Home where those with dementia are hidden away Siiri is accused of setting the fire. Lots of adventures ensue, as the Lavender Ladies set out to find the real culprit. They are aided by taxi driver Mika Korhonen (Siiris angel) and Omni Rinta-Paakku, known as the Ambassador, a fellow resident – both of whom come to the ladies rescue in their hours of need. And then theres the staff. The director, Siinikka Sundstrom seems to be more interested in helping the orphans of India than the people under her care, nurse Virpi Hiukkanes is a most undesirable creature and husband odd-jobs man Erikki is not much better. This is a great fun book. I loved the old ladies, I loved their joy of life & their attitude to death – these Lavender Ladies prove that there is life after ninety and they give me hope for the future, that I don’t have to sit in a chair all day, that there are still some adventures to have, I hope. I am pleased to say is that this is the first of a trilogy. I am really looking forward to the next one to be translated.
Another crime book I found by accident is The Body Under the Bridge by Paul McCuster. This is a very English outing. It features Father Gilbert, an ex-Scotland Yard Detective, now an Anglican priest in the small English town of Stonebridge. While sitting in his office one day, a staff member calls, saying a man is on the church tower threatening to jump. He rushes to the top of the tower where a man stands near the edge, holding a gold medallion in his hand. As Father Gilbert is pleading with him, the man suddenly throws the medallion at him, pulls a Stanley knife from his pocket, cuts his throat, and falls from the tower. The strange medallion Fr Gilbert is left holding is a very strange thing, with the Crucifixion on one side & a peacock on the other. When the police arrive, they can find no body. However another body turns up under an ancient bridge on the estate of Lord Haysham. This body turns out out be 200 years old, a peat body. Haysham wants to develop the land on his estate, but is opposed by the local Greens led by David Todd, a member of an old Stonebridge family. More bodies, an age-old feud this mix of the occult and village crime is something that I usually dislike. However, it got me in. I was intrigued and kept guessing to the end. A good find.
Now to Ann Patchetts, new book, Commonwealth. Told over five decades, this is a complex story of two families, the Cousins and the Keatings. Both Albert Cousins and Fix Keating are involved in the law, Fix is a policeman, Albert is the Assistant District Attorney. They meet when Albert, married with three children and one on the way and desperate to get out of his house on a Sunday afternoon, crashes a christening party at Fix’s house that he and his wife Beverley are hosting for their second daughter. Albert arrives with a bottle of gin the party descends into drunken-ness – and Albert kisses Beverley. This kiss changes everything for the Keatings and the Cousins – including divorce and the joining of the two families, with the lives of the six children becoming entwined. The Keating children, Caroline and Frances, and the Cousins – Holly, Jeannette, Calvin and Albie are united by their disillusionment with their parents, and a strange kind of bond is forged between them. When Franny, the grown-up baby of the christening party, meets a celebrated author and falls under his spell. He writes a novel using what Franny has told him about their childhoods, and on the publication of the book, their lives laid bare they are forced to face their past, their losses, their guilt, and how a small thing like a kiss, can change peoples lives forever.
ISBN: 9780702254147
Edition: 01