The adventure begins. Anyone less lucky than Tommy and Tuppence would have been dead ten times over by the time it ended, but, as Tuppence said once, “The Young Adventurers take a lot of killing”. So they do. They also outplay the sinister and invincible Mr. Brown – and Tommy, who was believed not to be clever proves otherwise by the end of the story – even the famous Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot could never have done better! But before the happy end and two happy matches ending in accepted proposals we are more than once led to believe we’ll never see this nice couple again. For dessert we are served a nice, delicious red herring… but no, I’ll say no more. Not a word, or I’ll spoil it. The author takes care we only learn the shocking truth at the last moment.

How different this book is from the later works by the same author like, say, “Hallowe’en Party”, where there’s little action but a lot of contemplation and musing! Tommy and Tuppence are too young and active (around the age of 22 each) to waste time contemplating anything – they act!

The book is full of light-hearted humour. Both Tuppence and Tommy are good at making jokes, and their American friend Julius, whose speech is full of idioms of his country, makes me laugh at almost every page. But while all these characters are very thoroughly drawn, the villains are just, well, villains. We learn little more about them.

As the thrilling events come one after another, we keep turning the pages. Agatha Christie always knew how to keep her readers on the hook. If you admire this great writer as much as I do but haven’t read this book yet, I strongly recommend that you do and promise that you will enjoy every moment of it.

He made it to 1882 – first tentatively and carefully, then boldly and recklessly. And finally, once he had a difficult choice to make – to let the project turn into a weapon in the government’s hands, more powerful and scary than the atomic bomb, or to change the future in a less drastic way – he came to 1882 to stay. For he had met his true love in 1882… Kate, his girlfriend in the 20th century got what she wanted – the solution to the family riddle. Julia, the one who belonged in 1882 and couldn’t adapt herself to the New York of 1970 or thereabouts, got Si.

Once I started reading the book I couldn’t stop. Few books affect me this way, but this one did. It reads very easily – there is no character torture as such (which I hate), but there is excitement, when, for example, Si and Julia escape death in a burning building or when they run for their life from a corrupt police Inspector. And the depth of the decision Si had to make in the last chapter is mind-boggling. I can imagine how hard it was for him to do what he did – but I know there was no other way, and I admire Si for his decisiveness.

I disagree with the author on a few important points. It so happens that, as a teenager, I used to think a lot about how the tiniest and most insignificant of events can affect other and more significant happenings, and grow, like a snowball rolling down from a mountain. I just can’t bring myself to believe that Si would come back from the past over and over again and find (as proved beyond doubt during the so-called “debriefings”) the world he remembered completely unchanged. The world, in which – as he had the chance to see for himself – a two-line letter mailed by a man caused a destruction by fire of a huge building just a few days later. Of course, should time travels be real, Si would have returned to a completely new world each time. More likely, he himself would have ceased to exist after his first tentative and short walk in the park of 1882. The idea of being able to jump from one century to another and back by means of a little self-hypnosis seems a bit too far-fetched too. But such is the law of literature: we have to allow the writers to re-invent the world if it helps them write better prose. And Jack Finney, back in 1970, wrote a masterpiece.

Glad to see that instead of shooting words of arrogant ignorance at my country, as so many western writers do, Jack Finney reserves all the criticism for his own country and government. That’s brave and not often met. But that is not why I’m going to re-read the book at least once before returning it to the library – it’s just a very good book, that’s all. The library keeps revealing its little gems to me – just not all of them at once.

The novel starts as Mr Holmes receives a ciphered letter from his informant, one of the trusted people of the sinister Professor Moriarty. The key to the cipher never arrives – apparently the Professor is starting to suspect his underling – so Holmes has to use deduction to read the letter. But he succeeds. A certain Mr Douglas of Birlstone is in danger. And just as he and Dr Watson finish deciphering the mysterious document, Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard enters to announce “that Mr Douglas of Birlstone Manor House was horribly murdered last night”.

Needless to say, Sherlock Holmes undertakes to solve the mystery of his death, so the whole company departs to Birlstone as soon as they finish discussing Professor Moriarty.

Sherlock Holmes succeeds – and not quite in the way we’d expect. Still, when he unravels the mystery, we find out that it has been only the first half of the novel. In the second half the author takes us to the USA of twenty years before, the days of Mr Douglas’s youth, when he was called McMurdo and joined a sinister gang named “The Scowrers”. The gang kept a whole town of Vermissa in terror ruthlessly murdering everyone who stood in their way and always getting acquitted in court. The gang was closely connected with the Eminent Order of Freemen, and McMurdo soon became the Bodymaster’s most trusted man and possible successor. But long before it could happen, a craching blow was delievered to the Scowrers from where they didn’t expect it.

These days we would have called them “the Mafia”, but back then this word meant one particular society in Italy rather than all crimilal societies organised in the same way. But they are no less scary – and the way Conan Doyle describes their organisation, discipline and cynical disregard for the lives of people who were not members of the same gang almost froze my blood. But I wanted to finish the novel if only to find out what would happen to McMurdo and the girl he loved.

The final chapter binds everything together, just as the formidable Professor Moriarty reminds us once again of his presence from behind the scenes. This novel, sadly, has no happy end, but such is life… I’m still glad I’ve read it. Once again, as I always do with detective stories, I’m carefully avoiding spoilers, so those of you, my readers, who haven’t read “The Valley of Fear” yet could do it with all the interest and excitement it deserves.

The sunken plane presents a real problem, its cargo consisting of atomic and hydrogen bombs and a timing device ticking. Should they get detonated, they might cause, apart from their own deadly effect, a strong eruption of a nearby volcano and an earthquake. The consequences might be apocalyptic…

But, needless to say, our brave and in every way admirable men prevent the catastrophe. They always do in books. Too bad it’s not that easy in real life – for example when oil gets spilled into the water and nobody knows how to plug the hole. Commander Talbot and Leutenant Denholm might suggest something, if they were real.

The book itself is full of humour and reads in one go. The plot is perfectly thrilling; the author’s language flows with ease; the character are, as I said above, admirable, each in his own way, and even the villains are somewhat amusing. Hard to believe these people are talking about a possible catastrophe that will destroy most of the world if they don’t prevent it: you’d have thought they discussed a picnic. The author mentions the Russians a few times – in the way typical for the Cold War times, but jokingly, so I never once felt hurt or offended, but grinned every time.

Who will like the book? All those who like political thrillers, for sure, though, perhaps, it’s not tough enough. As I’m reading in Wikipedia, it’s the last work by the author, written just a year before he died, and that his latest works were received by the critics with less approval than his earlier ones. Well, I haven’t seen the rest of them yet, so it’s hard to judge. Even if the plot is indeed improbable, it is, at least, amusing and gave me a few pleasant hours of reading.

But did any of them kill Julia Wolf?

The police seem unusually friendly to Nick. Wynant’s lawyer explicitly says he’d like Nick to take over the case. Mysterious letters come from Clyde Wynant, expressing the same desire. Mimi is rude to Nick one day and makes amends the next day, obviously insecure about her future and in need of protection. The same is true about Dorothy, to a higher extent. Before long she becomes friends with Nick’s wife, Nora, who looks refreshingly sane among all this madness. To earn the right to go back to his quite, routine everyday life Nick has to solve this mystery – though he never officially takes upon the case. And he solves it.

The solution is very pleasantly unexpected – just the kind I like best. I never once thought…

Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out. It’s well written – the author’s style is somewhat sarcastic, but I liked it this way. All is written in the first person – Nick’s person that is – and seeing things as they unfolded themselves to Nick is an exciting experience. I soon fell for Nick and Nora – they are both smart, independently thinking and self-sufficient people completely worthy of each other, which is, in my experience, the best basis for a happy marriage. And though most of other characters are nuts, none of them is exactly repulsive. They make me laugh, not cringe in disgust.

Found by chance in the local library, this book has helped me discover another name – Dashiell Hammett, yet another master of my favourite genre. I hope to find more books by him.

As Marlowe starts investigating the case, he discovers a lot of unpleasant facts about the General’s daughters – and when they both in turn try to seduce him, that’s the least of their sins. Dead bodies surrounding the case multiply with a terrifying speed, and, as I said above, Marlowe once gets very close to becoming the next one. But he survives – and though nobody asks him to, solves the mystery of the disappearance of Rusty Regan, the General’s son-in-law, the husband of his older daughter. Of course, this disappearance turns out to be the key to everything else.

This book is less depressing than “The Little Sister” written ten years later. Marlowe is younger and less gloomy, though his manners already leave something to be desired. The world we all live in doesn’t look as much like a sewer, but the tendency is already here; we can see that the author doesn’t think much of the mankind.

There are a couple of characters from the whole cast who – apart from Marlowe himself – deserve some respect. First, it’s the General, of course. Alas, he thinks he knows his daughters. In fact, he knows little about them. While he believes them to be merely naughty, they are complete monsters, especially the younger one. The other person who deserves at least some respect is Mona Mars, the wife of the local Mafia boss Eddie Mars. Apart from them, everyone is rotten, corrupted, disgusting or, in the best case, just indifferent to good and evil. So Marlowe deals with them as his conscience tells him.

What’s at the end? Nothing – just more emptiness and disappointment. Marlowe has solved the case, but the solution is not happy at all. The dead won’t come back to life; the rotten and perverted won’t reform or improve. The world just keeps going round with Marlowe in it. It does give some hope – there are people like Marlowe: rude, smoking, drinking heavily, exceedingly insubordinate and, according to himself, painfully honest. They keep it going round.

Their relationship is not easy from the start. Lynn has had bad experience with women – his two marriages were unhappy and stripped him to the bone. Besides, he can’t help seeing that Breda disapproves of his lifestyle. And yet they are attracted towards each other and find it harder to resist with every page, though the author doesn’t say so. We can feel it.

Before long they meet Nelson Hareem, a young policeman on leave, chasing a mysterious fugitive who might be from Mexico or from Middle East, a drug dealer or a terrorist, or none of the above. Nelson wants to catch him at all costs, just so his career gets a fresh start. His tendency to be too eager at work – almost fanatically so – has gotten him in trouble more than once, and his career stalled. Nelson maneuvers Lynn into helping him, and soon a new friendship forms.

There are many episodes written from the fugitive’s perspective, too. We soon know he is on a mission, and though he has obviously crossed the border to do something evil, we soon know he has his very good reasons for doing what he is going to do. I couldn’t help wishing him success. At the same time I wished success to Nelson and Lynn too – a contradiction that couldn’t be solved. The author solved it though – in the most unexpected way – and Nelson got his new assignment he dreamed of.

The fugitive is, of course, neither a drug-dealer, nor a terrorist, but I’ll leave it at that. You’ll have to read the book itself to learn more.

I liked the book – it kept me interested throughout. The writing style is such that no matter how sinister the events, it never makes the reader feel depressed or sad – on the contrary, it made me smile and even laugh more than once. I’ll have to return the book to the library in a couple of days, but I know I’ll miss it. Miss them all – efficient Breda, easy-going Lynn, eager Nelson, heroic fugutive and romantic Clive Devon so devoted to his old, sick mongrel dog that he… oops, I nearly spoiled it all! I won’t. The book is well worth reading.

Having narrowly escaped death several times, having been betrayed and having become a traitor, living in a continuous fear for her life, India discovers a shocking truth: good can turn evil one day, and what seemed unquestionable evil may one day prove to have a lot of good in it. Someone desperately loved can become the worst enemy, while someone habitually hated will once turn out to be your only friend. Nearly killed by her former lover and saved by Jack, she finally has to completely reconsider her position and rediscover the people around her. It’s Jack who truly loves her – it’s Jack whom she loves. They forgive each other and start from scratch…

The terrible circumstances in which India finds herself lead her and everyone around her to an amazing discovery: she is made of steel, this girl. The strength of her will and her ability to make spontaneous decisions where most girls of her age would lose their heads and collapse, save her life more than once. She emerges reformed; even her formidable father-in-law has turned to doing good – probably for the first time in his life – under her influence. But I don’t envy her…

Did I like the book? Well, not much. I don’t like books about the Mafia in general, and this one, besides, has too many sexual scenes. It embarrasses me when sexual intercourses are described too straightforwardly; it even makes me feel dirty. It took me a while to finish this book; I read a couple of others while consuming “A Blood Affair” bit by bit, putting it aside and then retreiving it from the shelf again. I think I’ll donate it to the library now; it might have success there, since many people love such stuff, and exactly for the same reasons why I dislike it. But I certainly did like India Grey – even when she sinned. I was especially impressed when she stopped the abortion at the last moment and decided to keep her baby against common sense. The Mafia could have easily killed her for carrying her lover’s child, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to destroy this little life. She loses her child afterwards, but that’s not her fault. And, unexpectedly, Jack forgives her.

The book is not the kind you’d want to read to your young child, but if you like “tough” stuff, this one is for you.

The police don’t help – instead, they chase the two friends because of a few groceries accidentally stolen by Cadogan while visiting the scene of the crime. Two unknown, but sinister men chase them too, and they, in turn, chase a charming girl with a dog. They find themselves in awkward, but funny, situations more than once, get physically abused, rescue the lovely girl from the two sinister men, have a narrow escape from being shot just as one of the suspects gets ready to tell them everything, but dies before he can do it – and all the time they make me laugh. One by one they discover the participants of the night’s drama in the mysterious vanishing toyshop, and even the place where the toys have been shifted to – but they still don’t know the name of the murderer. And when they find out, there’s still the question of “how” – but before it’s answered, there’s an exciting description of yet another chase involving bicycles, a car, a lot of feet and a roundabout.

Then, finally, everything is well, the murders are explained (though a few less important facts are not – for example, I still don’t understand how a completely drunk man could… but I’ll say no more;) ). Two nice people inherit a fortune (but not the real heroes, Fen and Cadogan – these two receive nothing, not even a proper acknowledgement of their achievement). All naughty people get arrested. All good people – except the original victim, Miss Tardy – emerge from the adventure unharmed, so, even if they haven’t inherited a fortune, they should consider themselves lucky. They get together and quote from poetry…

When I finished the book, it left an impression of something grotesque, even phantasmagoric. It feels like a parody, even if that is not intended. The writing style makes me suspect that the author considered it indecent to write a single serious sentence; a giggle is hiding behind every word. According to Kate Fox, it defines Englishness, so I guess “The Moving Toyshop” can be called an English book to the core. Also because many English books are mentioned there, about which I have never heard anything. Well, I should probably avoid those mentioned during the “Unreadable books” game Fen and Cadogan play while being locked in a cupboard with their arms and legs securely tied. I hate unreadable books.

As a detective story, however, it could be better. The mystery was good enough, but the explanation a bit too simple and, consequently, a bit disappointing. This could be explained by the fact that Fen rather prefers chasing various unpleasant personalities to the pure thinking process or at least collecting evidence: various cigarette ashes and such things. But the book did cheer me up.

Little did she know about what was to begin. Bullying from a police officer, fears for the only (and adored) niece, a sinister book found in the victim’s home – then a sudden death of her assistant (was she the intended victim), a terrorist attack on a Power Plant threatening to turn her State into a radioactive desert, an unexpected flight to London and back – and finally, going in person into the midst of the terrorists’ den: such was the start of the new year for Dr. Scarpetta.

The book has its fair share of mystery, but it’s far more about action than about thorough and skilful brainwork. So, it’s not quite my type of a detective novel, but Iiked the book all the same. As a matter of fact, I read it about four or five years ago, but forgot all about it – not just the plot, but even the fact of having read it. So I’ve re-read it all over again to review it, and the forgotten episodes were slowly coming back as I proceeded through the pages.

The book reads very well: the author’s style is easy and even cheerful, despite the grim events she talks about. She uses an occasional obscenity, but I’m not the one cringe when I see those – after all, we live in the 21st century. I like the characters she’s drawn: Dr. Kay Scarpetta is just an amazing human being, at once a doctor, a diver and a lawyer, not afraid to show the strength of her character to anyone – not even afraid of death. Her friend Captain Marino is no less admirable, that huge person with something of a bear in him, a devoted friend and unexpectedly efficient at his job, though not as smart as Dr. Kay (she’s basically the Poirot of the company, though it’s hinted that her niece Lucy has a much higher IQ). Lucy is young and decidedly difficult… and lesbian. The book speaks a lot about being tolerant to alternative lifestyles – not a problem to me, but obviously a problem to many people Lucy encounters, her mother first and foremost, which, of course, makes her even more difficult. She has to be on the defensive most of the time – but not with her aunt who had rased her and understands her.

The book mentions a lot of technical details about computers, virtual reality equipment, ships, submarines and everything else… for instance, the author is not satisfied with saying “computer” – she has to be more specific and say a 486 computer. If I’m not much confused, 486 machines were already considered somewhat obsolete in 1996, even in Russia, though still in use. Apparently, nether Ted Eddings, the reporter, nor Dr. Kay’s morgue could afford to upgrade their hardware often.

Would I recommend the book? Yes, definitely, if you’d like something entertaining and solidly written, but not too profound. Will I read it again? I don’t know. I might. Or I might not.

Time will tell.