A country wedding with a difference
Cornish Castle Murder. The title already sounds like a scrumptious chocolate chip cookie waiting for you to take a bite. When I started reading at the end of June, eating a cookie, or anything else for that matter, couldn’t have been further from my mind. I was on a bus tour of northern Scandinavia. We had travelled through luscious Finland to the North Cape, and headed into Norway when I caught the bug. From hearsay, a vicious virus brought over from Ireland had already contaminated our bus before we even left the Netherlands. Luckily, it took a while for us to get infected.
We had reached Solvaer in the Norwegian Lofoten when the virus hit my partner Wim and me. Down the drain went the extra day there. Unfortunately, apart from the view from the hotel veranda at the café, where we dragged ourselves to have a cuppa, the hotel walls were the only thing we saw. Fortunately, I now and then could lose myself somewhat in The Cornish Castle Murder.
Instead of sea and islands, I immersed myself in gentle hills, golf greens and the luxurious insides of the castle where our hero Jodie is getting hitched.
This was the first book I read by Fiona Leitch. I don’t go for historical cosy crimes, but this one, although set in an ancient castle, takes place in modern society. Just how modern becomes clear far into the book. No, no spoilers, let’s just say it’s a kind of wedding I have never attended. I very much enjoyed that twist, but first things first, here’s the GoodReads blurb:
The time has finally come for former Met police officer Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker to wed her fiancé DCI Nathan Withers, But their long-anticipated wedding doesn’t quite go to plan…
As their guests descend on a luxurious Cornish castle for a weekend of pre-wedding activities, the happy couple look forward to spending time with friends and family. But celebrations grind to a halt when an arrow flies off-course during the archery session, and they find the body of a young woman floating face down in an ornamental pond.
With the champagne chilling and canapes assembled, and an old London adversary brought in to investigate, it’s up to Jodie and Nathan to uncover the killer, before they strike again.
Could the murderer be on the guest list?
The cast of characters provides a vibrancy to the solving of the mystery. As does the quirky writing style. There are enough clues to help you discover the culprit as well, but it does take a few diversions through the hallways in the castle and on the greens to get there.
Meanwhile, slowly recovering in Norway, the trolls on counters of roadside cafes made me smile.
Thank you, NetGalley and One More Chapter, for providing me with a free copy in exchange for my honest review.
Back to Scandinavia…
Second up, already at home, feeling much better yet exhausted while starting a new day job back in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, I picked up The Woman in Cabin 10. Do things really get harder after you have turned 63? Have I already moaned about this year on my blog? Our mice infestation — yikes, grabbing a tea towel off the kitchen bench and a fat mouse jumping out still haunts me. That was in January. February brought another mysterious dishwasher leakage. No, not caused by the said mice but by a blockage of the incorrectly installed dishwasher pipe by the previous owners. Strange that it took seven years to happen, but there you go.
March came with our tuxedo Max nearly turning seriously ill. The scan at the vets pointed to bowel cancer. He hadn’t poohed or eaten for a couple of days when I took him to the vet on the Wednesday. She flushed his bowels to make him feel more comfortable – afterwards, obviously. He got some horse-milk capsules to add to his food. He was only four years old, and the next day Wim accompanied me to our evening appointment to have him put to sleep. Max was still not eating or drinking, but it was the best ‘put to sleep’ I have ever experienced, because it did not take place. The vet felt for the tumour and it had gone. “It must have been a swollen lymph node,” she said as surprised and as relieved as we were. Max is still going strong, so that one had a glorious ending.
Here’s the blurb for The Woman in Cabin 10:
This was meant to be the perfect trip. The Northern Lights. A luxury press launch on a boutique cruise ship. A chance for travel journalist Lo Blacklock to recover from a traumatic break-in that has left her on the verge of collapse. Except things don’t go as planned. Woken in the night by screams, Lo rushes to her window to see a body thrown overboard from the next door cabin. But the records show that no-one ever checked into that cabin, and no passengers are missing from the boat. Exhausted and emotional, Lo has to face the fact that she may have made a mistake – either that, or she is now trapped on a boat with a murderer…
I will not tell you if Ruth Ware’s book has a happy ending. Let us ascertain, though, that this book turns all your troubles into minor irritations. The main character is a very unreliable yet likable narrator. Her life becomes first a dream then a nightmare when she arrives as a guest reporter on the small luxury cruise ship Aurora. It reads like a train, and I had goosebumps when I got to the scary bits. There is nothing cosy about this thriller, but it holds a whole lot of grand plot twists and good writing. The setting is also spectacular, we again travel to Scandinavia but in fiction this time, and I think our hero Lo might have happily exchanged my virus for her woes. Without giving anything away, the setting does add to the suspense. Just blogging about the book makes me want to reread it, but I think I’ll watch the upcoming movie first. It’s coming to Netflix in October and stars Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce and Art Malik.
The book I wish I’d written
I listened to the fabulous Discontent only last week. Here’s the blurb:
On the surface, Marisa’s life looks enviable. She lives in a nice apartment in the heart of Madrid, her friendly neighbour and lover Pablo lives downstairs, and she’s risen quickly through the ranks at a successful advertising agency.
And yet Marisa hates her job and everything about it. Over one hot summer she finds herself in danger of being exposed when she’s forced to deliver a talk on creativity at a horrendous team-building retreat. Surrounded by psychopathic bosses, flirty facilitators, and an excess of drugs, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.
Discontent is a bold, biting novel about acting on our wilder impulses to reclaim our lives from work.
It’s so good, you want to keep on listening. It’s written by the Spanish Beatriz Serrano and although the hero Marisa is a lot younger than me, she’s using a lot of my coping mechanisms when I was in my 30s. Her discontent with office politics that most probably have not changed, is described so aptly and with so much humour, I wish I had written this book. That I didn’t give it five stars wasn’t out of jealousy but frustration. I willed Marisa to take more of a stand. That she doesn’t is completely understandable, also it is jam packed with so many hilarious incidents, you have got to read it. Without giving too much away, the manner in which Serrano uses an out-of-office reply is out of this world. I thought I would die laughing. Especially embarrassing when you’re on your bike navigating rush hour traffic…
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