This political detective story starts when people aboard the British military frigate Ariadne – one of NATO’s most advanced vessels of its time (the book is written in 1986) witness the crash of a mysterious plane they can’t identify. Engulfed in flames, it sinks in the Aegean, in the vicinity of Thera Island. About the same time they witness the last minutes of the plane they receive a SOS message from a sinking private yacht, also burning badly after an explosion. They arrive just in time to rescue six survivors from the yacht, but there is nobody to rescue from the plane.
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The story starts when Dorothy Wynant, a pretty girl of twenty, asks Nick Charles, a retired private detective, to help her find her father and arrange a meeting with him. She hadn’t seen her father since her parents’ divorce and misses him, but knows her mother would strongly disapprove of the meeting. Still, the beginning seems innocent enough until the personal secretary of Dorothy’s father is found dead in her own apartment with four bullets in her body.
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This is the first novel about Philip Marlowe – a young and hard-boiled Californian private investigator. As always, he won’t bend to either the police, the client or the most sinister criminals – so at one moment he finds himself in a very awkward situation – but escapes miraculously. And he never compromises his values.
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This book is a typical American bestseller with a nice collection of testimonials printed on the back of the cover – all rapture and delight. Inside we’ll find a collection of fine characters – half of them total weirdos, but still calling for sympathy, others of a more self-confident, perfectionist type. Breda Burrows represents the second type. So does the mysterious fugitive.
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“A Blood Affair” is yet another book about the Mafia. No, not the Russian Mafia, but the more classic version – American with Italian roots. It’s also about IRA and their deadly clashes with each other, about drug addicts – and about a young, beautiful, fragile woman caught in between.
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“The Moving Toyshop” is a charmingly funny book about the adventure of Richard Cadogan, a prominent poet, in Oxford in 1938. On his arrival he finds a body of an elderly woman in a toyshop, but gets a strong hit on the top of the head. Once he recovers to fetch the police, he can’t find either the body or the toyshop itself. There is a grocery there instead, and the interior is quite different from what he remembers. No wonder the police think he imagined it all as the result of the concussion.
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It happened in the USA, in Virginia, during the last days of 1995 and the first month of 1996. It started when, instead of cooking lasagna for the New Year Eve Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia, had to dive into the cold water of the Elizabeth river just so she could personally examine an apparent drowning victim – and, immediately after that, personally, do the post-mortem.
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The Hallowe’en party for schoolchildren who are over 11 has been a success. The contests have been finished, the winners defined and the prizes given for everything: bobbing for apples, cutting the flour cake and the best decorated broom. After the Snapdragon everyone should go home – there is nothing more to do here. Only nobody can locate that thirteen-year-old girl, Joyce, who always boasts… annoying, isn’t it, that she delays everyone else?
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This is another one of the two huge volumes I received as a gift from an English friend – it’s obvious that Ian Rankin doesn’t fancy short novels. Inspector Rebus never investigates one case at a time – he has to have several, and his friend DS Clarke (Siobhan) usually works on a few more thus making things more interesting. This time Rebus is in charge of the murder of a Turkish immigrant – at first glance it looks like a common racist attack – locals going for an unwanted newcomer “taking their jobs” or whatever – but Rebus suspects there’s more to this murder than meets the eye.
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A young student nurse dies during a demonstration in the Nightingale Training College – she acts as a patient, and two fellow students demonstrate intra-gastric feeding. The feed that is thought to contain milk turns out to be disinfectant, which makes Nurse Pearce’s death extremely painful. It happens in the presence of Miss Beale, the General Nursing Council Inspector – highly damaging for the reputation of the College, but otherwise it’s thought to be an ordinary murder – or even an accident – so Inspector Bailey from the local police force takes charge of the case. Only after another student nurse dies in her sleep – about a week later – the case becomes serious enough to call Scotland Yard, and Chief Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh enters the scene.
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