Everyone believes her father’s opinion to be just a folly of an old, deaf, excited man, but Wexford, as usual, is stubborn. A man must know his own daughter. And so, having failed to convince anyone (except his devoted Burden) in England, he goes to the USA to get to the bottom of the whole affair.

Soon after he is back, having brought more questions than answers with him, Natalie Arno (the true daughter or the false daughter of the famous musician) is found brutally murdered.

Wexford wouldn’t be Wexford if he didn’t solve the exciting puzzle. He did. As it often happens, the solution will amaze the reader who expected anything but not this throughout the book. Rendell’s skill of a plot-creator won’t betray her. But before we are given the solution we have to follow Wexford and other through a long chain of events, be indignant, be compassionate, be confused. It won’t be possible to put the book down – it never is with Rendell.

This is another of her early works and, therefore, more psychological than social. She still looks into her characters as persons and leaves social issues alone, but her gloomy and beautiful English is here. Well, perhaps, just a little bit less gloomy than usual. She even adds some slight humour, so the reader will smile more than once while reading scenes featuring Mr Haq or Mrs Sessamy. And as usual there is something totally psychologically wrong, with which I’ll never agree – no, never, ever will a woman deliberately cut her fingers in order to have “fun”. Even for a more important reason that wuuld take a lot of will – and a lot of training. I know that becaue I have tried. But for fun… sorry, this I cannot accept. Sorry if this is a little spoiler, but I just had to say it.

But, overall, the book is recommended to those who are aiming at reading all of Rendell (as I recently read all of Agatha Christie). It is a bit different Ruth Rendell – and so, it’s important to see her like this, a bit less gloomy, a bit more humourous – and yet, perhaps, slightly dull in some chapters. Oh yes, you’ll still finish the book – the enigma will make you – but afterwards, remembering the book, you might call it dull, so I won’t recommend it to those who are just starting to acquaint themselves with the creations of this author. If you are looking for the first Rendell’s book to start with, look elsewhere…

The beginning is a bit unoriginal for the genre, I’m afraid: Poirot receives a telegram from a rich man in danger, begging him to come and help. When he arrives, the man is already dead, and it remains for him to investigate his death. The French police are polite and co-operative, except a M. Giraud from Paris who obviously doesn’t believe in Poirot and shows it at every opportunity.

Hastings, who hasn’t yet been with Poirot long enough to appreciate him, admires Giraud and tends to agree with him. Needless to say the end of the novel proves them both wrong. But Hastings hardly cares – he meets the only love of his life and gets happily married, so all is fine and shiny for him.

The solution of the murder, as usual, you’ll never guess. We get several red herrings for the dessert even when we already think we know and when the significant part of the solution is already uncovered. More excitement is added when Hastings forced to choose between friendship and love betrays Poirot – for the first and last time of their joint career. Poirot forgives him quickly though – the whole thing amuses him instead of angering him.

Meeting Cinderella – Dulcie Duveen – has definitely done good to Hastings. This little lady not only played a certain part in the investigation by preventing yet another death, but she changed Hastings himself by laughing at his outrageously old-fashioned ways of thinking what a woman ought to be like. Marrying her was a very good idea, even though it parts him from Poirot. We know he will return yet – to participate in many investigations playing his “Watson” part when necessary and getting out of the way when his stupidity starts to annoy the reader.

Okay, now you might ask who killed the millionaire and why. I won’t tell you this, but will hint that blackmail, several love affairs and a murder of twenty years ago play a significant part in the solution. If you want to know more, just open the book.

“Some Lie and Some Die” starts from a description of a festival at which eighty thousand teenagers gather to listen to their favourite music, offering Wexford yet another opportunity to show his tolerance while his friend and subordinate Mike Burden demonstrates his intolerance. Mike is not really a bad fellow – I’ve always found something healthy about his stubborn conservatism, which is, doubtless, what Wexford notices too and why he is so fond of Burden. Besides, Burden’s views often change throughout the book, unless he is proven right. In this case… but I don’t do spoilers, do I?

When the body of a girl is found brutally disfigured in a quarry near the field where the festival takes place, everyone assumes she is one of the music-lovers. But the doctor’s verdict is, she was not a teenager and she was dead before the festival started. So the festival ends, sad and shocked youths go home and Wexford gets to work to unravel the gruesome mystery.

The dead girl is soon indentified, despite being disfigured beyond recognition, but it’s not just as easy to identify the murderer. Who could have killed with so much hatred an innocent waitress, a girl who was, perhaps, a boaster and a name-dropper, but never did anyone any harm? Does the young people’s idol, the famous pop singer Zeno Vedast have anything to do with the brutal murder, or is the fact that he had been the victim’s classmate just a coincidence?

Wexford doesn’t know, but he will guess everything and come forward with the most amazing explanation, unbelievable, but true. The lyrics of Zeno Vedast’s greatest hit give him the most important clue.

Some people say the solution offered to us and the motive of the murder are simply not realistic, but we don’t know – life sometimes offers us experiences more unbelievable and unrealistic than the most far-fetched fiction. But the question her book asks is very real. “Who is responsible?” – that’s what the book is about. Is it always the same person whose hand struck the blow? Do we always feel and admit our responsibilities? Do we foresee the consequences of our well-meant actions? She leaves a big question mark.

Ruth Rendell always asks questions, which are not so easy to answer. In her later works she becomes political, addressing social issues as well as criminal issues. But “Some Lie and Some Die” was written in 1973, before she turned to being socially active: at that point she was more interested in persons. She made them different – some nice, some loathsome and some just ordinary, applying her usual total honesty to every character she painted. Just a few masterful strokes – and I feel that they can step from the pages of the book and into my room, so easy the author made it for me to visualise them.

Would I recommend the book? To those who like Ruth Rendell’s works, doubtless I would. To those who haven’t yet read any it’s probably not the best book to start with, given the diversity of opinions about it among the readers and the general gloomy sound of the prose, typical for Rendell, but getting lighter in some of her other books. But for someone who loves and appreciates Rendell’s works, it will be like another gem in the collection – and one to remember.

Archy McNally is one of the most charming characters in the genre, unrivalled even by his namesake from Rex Stout’s novels and exactly opposite to the gloomy and decidedly unfriendly Philip Marlowe. No wonder he bathes in women’s love. He himself explains his unfaithfulness to his sweetheart, Cuban beauty Connie Garcia, by possessing faulty DNA, but the reader will only be too ready to forgive him his fauly DNA or whatever, for his humor and charm.

He takes lightly the dangers of his profession, sticks to his professional ethics and shows amazing loyalty to his muddle-headed buddy Binky Watrous by allowing him to join the investigation, even though he quite realized the danger from the start.

Lawrence Sanders puts so much effort and love into drawing the character of Archy that he hardly has any left for other characters in the book – they are mere sketches, but the charm of Archy’s kind heart shines on them and makes them look good. Even the criminals look less sinister than they should, their ugly personalities softened by Archy’s magnanimous perception of the world around us.

Even Mrs Sarah Whitcomb feels like a beautiful woman to us – a wheelchair-bound 70-year-old dying from cancer – when Archy talks about her.

“Lawrence Sanders has honed a voice for Archy McNally that is wonderfully infectious. You can’t help falling for him,” Washington Post wrote once. I couldn’t have put it better.

As a detective novel this book is probably less exciting than other masterpieces of the genre, but you will still keep turning pages – I guarantee that.

Both arrivals are noticed by the omnipresent Miss Marple, almost as antient as the hotel itself, but still curious and shrewd.

The central part of the book is dedicated mainly to the mysterious disappearance of Canon Pennyfather after he unhappily got his dates wrong and missed the Congress in Lucerne. But the good canon is later found safe. The actual murder happens only in the last quarter of the book.

Our attention is driven mainly to the strange doing of a mysterios gang of robbers who disguise themselves to look like someone else – and to the connection between this gang and the expensive, respectable hotel that looks so decent on the surface. Certain actions of the young Elvira also look a little odd: what is the girl up to? But all answers will be given at the end. Both Chief Inspector Davy (nicknamed Father) and Miss Marple guess who the murderer is, but neither of them knows how to prove it, though Father is determined to do his best… in the film it was changed to make the ending more satisfactory.

The book is definitely good – this author never wrote anything but good books – but most of her other works are, in my opinion, better. I enjoyed turning the pages and proceeding from one episode to another, but now I am considering donating it to the library, since it’s very unlikely that I will ever want to read it again. I may reconsider yet…

But the story begins when Bobby happens to hear the last words of a dying man. “Why didn’t they ask Evans?”, asks the man before leaving this imperfect world. Nonsense, it seems to Bobby at the time. He doesn’t know that for having heard these words he will be fed eight grains of morphia. That’s where miracles begin too: he survives, while normally people don’t recover after half a grain.

Frankie is the brain of their team. Soon she comes forward with the plan to engineer a car accident…

The book is very exciting to read – you won’t be able to put it down until the end. All those characters: Roger Bassington-ffrench, his brother Henry, Sylvia Bassington-ffrench, Dr. Nicholson and his wife Moira – are drawn with the same precision and strength which few writers possess, but Agatha Christie does. Bobby and Frankie reminded me somewhat of Tommy and Tuppence of “The Secret Adversary” (no wonder London Weekend Television picked the same actors to portray both young couples), but the rest of the characters are entirely unique. Be prepared to be totally amazed at the end – the Queen of detective stories never fails to do it to us. Another favourite trick of hers – to play with the double meaning of the word “ask” (ask for a favour vs. ask a question). In my native language two different words would have been used, which renders an adequate translation of the novel impossible. Agatha Christie did it often, as well as playing with different spellings of the same word – the problems of book translators, apparently, never bothered her much.

Well, her books deserve being read in original; they are worth the time and the trouble of learning a language just for their sake. “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?” is no exception.

Yet everyone tells her that running a detective agency is an unsuitable job for a woman.

A tragic figure, Cordelia Gray. Left all alone in the world so young, with so little hope for the future, she fights for herself desperately, having no time for complaints. Her name is way too big, too theatrical for her. Her beauty is of no consequence. It’s her strength of will rather than her beauty, which is to save her daily and give her hope.

It’s up to Cordelia to run the main investigation in this book. But the author’s other favourite character, Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh, appears in it too. He’s often mentioned throughout the book – it so happens that poor Bernie was his huge fan, despite having been fired from the police by the perfectionist Superintendent. And at the end of the story Cordelia gets to actually meet him face to face…

But before that she needs to investigate the ghastly death of the young Mark Callender. He was found hanged in his little cabin, and his death was generally accepted as suicide, except by his father. So he hired Cordelia to look into the circumstances of his son’s death once again.

Cordelia did her job thoroughly… too thoroughly. She met an old Nanny, several young and merry Oxford students, an old doctor now safely out of his mind and therefore unable to tell her anything… but still a clue. She survived an attempt on her life – by a miracle. And so, step by step, she discovered the shocking truth, only to conceal it from the rest of the world.

But she couldn’t fool Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh…

The book feels a bit gloomy, which is not unusual for P.D. James. It reads in one go though. Having read it in translation many years ago, I re-read it in English last year, recognising the half-forgotten plot as I proceeded and feeling again that strong, stubborn and not at all feminine Cordelia would haunt me for days afterwards. I’m not sure I want to re-read the book again, but I might some day. This chaacter is drawn a little too thoroughly, too deeply for an investigator in a detective novel, but that’s exactly why this book stands out. It leaves a mixed aftertaste: not altogether pleasant and not exactly bad. Those who like detective stories with a little gloom and doom thrown around will love it.

I find it a pity that P.D. James wrote only two books about Cordelia Gray. This character had more potential – but she was apparently too fond of Dalgliesh (so am I). But I’m glad she wrote this particular book. It’s definitely worth the time I spent reading it.

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.