Friday, November 28, 2008

Murder in the Lakes

I have just finished reading The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards. It is very difficult to write about crime fiction without spoiling the book for other potential readers, so I try not to read reviews and I certainly won't be offering one here. What I will say is that I loved it.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I bought four Martin Edwards novels and started to read The Cipher Garden until Nan commented that I should read The Coffin Trail first. This was excellent advice because I now feel I know the characters and their background and I will enjoy the other Lake District stories more because of that.

I am not a regular reader of crime fiction but I do enjoy a well-written, intelligent mystery story, especially if it is set in beautiful surroundings. So I like Colin Dexter, P D James and Ruth Rendell and now Martin Edwards is added to my limited list. Anyone who grew up with the Arthur Ransome stories will love reading these books; I was whisked away to the Lakes and can't wait to pay my next visit when I go back to finish The Cipher Garden tonight.

I am deliberately avoiding reading reviews of the rest of the series of books but I am making the assumption that a tiny area of the Lake District has more than its fair share of murders. I was considering the likelihood of the average person ever encountering a murderer, or being involved in a murder investigation when I recalled the coincidence of the two unrelated murders that took place in South Hill Park, Hampstead in 1955. I visited the Magdala pub, where Ruth Ellis shot David Blakely and discovered that four months earlier Styllou Christofi had murdered her daughter-in-law in a house just a few yards away.

Then I remembered that I have met a convicted murderer and I am a very ordinary person, so perhaps crime writers don't have to stray too far into the world of fantasy for their plots. I'll save that story for another time.

3 comments:

  1. You've met a murderer????? I have to get The Cipher Garden now. He's such a good writer. You might like Peter Robinson's Alan Banks series. I've read a few and really enjoyed his writing. And he wrote the little blurb on the cover of The Coffin Trail!

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  2. Not only met but spent a year working with him, Nan. I'll write it up after the weekend. I am going to read the rest of my Martin Edwards books and then perhaps I'll look at the others you suggest. It is difficult choosing between reading and chores right now!

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  3. Ooh, reading wins every time over chores!
    Current reading: Judith Lennox, which is as far removed from crime as you can get ... family saga stuff which, in my humble opinion, would benefit by a little pruning, but if her publisher wants a 400+page novel, I suppose that is what she has to deliver. She might even write naturally to this length, but every so often you feel a bit of padding coming on. And then there's a bit of telling-not-showing, so you get the whole of WW2 speeded up so she can get on with something which I think she thinks is more interesting. WW2 served to despatch the husband of one of the characters, which was rather convenient. Ooh, I sound like I'm not enjoying it, when I am! The book: A Step in the Dark.
    Once I've had my fill of romantic saga I shall again dip into crime. Well, in a manner of speaking!
    Margaret Powling

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