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.

Finally, as we know, Eliza goes to the party at the ambassador’s, where everyone takes her for a princess rather than a just a duchess, and Higgins wins his bet – but that night, after throwing a lot of reproaches in his face, Eliza runs away from his house, to be found later at his mother’s. There they speak again, Eliza announcing her intention to marry Freddy. Higgins responds with one of his most nasty laughs.

There the play ends; but that’s where the complicated part begins. Bernard Shaw himself was quite opposed to the idea that Eliza would actually marry Higgins. which looked so attractive to theatres and was later hinted at in the famous “My Fair Lady” film. Eliza married Freddy, the author insisted, and even wrote a long afterword describing their married life. All in vain: the readers, the film directors, the Russian translators of the book – all seem to insist that this is the wrong end to the story. Eliza is destined to marry her rude, disrespectful teacher who treats her like dirt but justifies it by the fact that he would treat everyone – even a real dutchess – exactly the same.

I must admit I agree with Bernard Shaw here. Granting that Higgins, despite his awful manners, has certain charm, and that marriage to Eliza might have reformed him over time, why should this fine young girl have sacrificed her one and only life to this monster? Just for a bit of adrenalin? Or for love? But she was never in love with him, though her bitter words on the night of her escape might suggest that. To support the common myth that women are most likely to fall in love with those who mistreat them? If there’s a grain of truth in this myth, I am sorry for those women. We aren’t <em>all</em> like that though. Eliza has a strong character, and is exactly the type Freddy needs to guide and support him; with Higgins it would have been permanent war.

But I can’t forbid people to feel the way they do, if the author himself couldn’t.

I remember reading the book for the first time at the age of 23 or 24 – I liked it enormously back then. I laughed and cried while reading it, the exasperated dialogue between Eliza and Higgins’s housekeeper Mrs Pearce about taking baths being my absolute favourite. Later I lended the book to a friend and never saw it again. Now, as so many years have passed, a colleague has given me another copy of it.

I am holding it in my hands trying in vain to resurrect the old feeling, but I perceive the book very differently now. It’s clever and funny, but the old charm has gone. Probably there are just different books for different ages. But I still don’t understand how a person as highly educated as Professor Higgins can be such an ill-mannered bully. These two sides of his personality just don’t go together well.

But perhaps I just lack the necessary knowledge of human nature, and I’m prepared to admit that.

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.

While Sir Edgar is away, young and rich, but thorougly disreputable Rowley Flint proposes to her too. She rejects him indignantly: this young man has already divorced several wives, and wherever he goes, scandal follows him. Marrying him would be madness; she is now more determined than ever to marry Sir Edgar and as soon as possible. But on her way back home she meets a desperately poor Austrian refugee…

She decides to do this poor guy a kindness. It starts with taking him to her home and giving him food to eat; then they walk in the garden… and then, in a moment of the utmost excitement, unable to control herself, Mary decides to make poor Karl even happier. She gives him the most precious gift – herself.

At first all is well, and Karl is indeed very happy, but as the morning approaches, the fairy tale has to end, and she blurts out the truth to him: it’s not love but pity that made her do what she did. Hurt and humiliated, Karl at first tries to murder her, and when that fails, shoots himself with the revolver Mary takes out of her bag. Sir Edgar’s revolver.

The scandal that is now awaiting Mary is horrible to imagine. And she has no-one but Rowley to call for help.

That night she rediscovers Rowley. Cynical and disreputable as he is, he shares the risks with her, though he doesn’t have to, and helps her dispose of the body. He keeps his head when she can’t and pulls her out of the most unpleasant situation. Of course, in taking Karl’s body away and hiding it in the woods they commit an offence, but the scandal is averted. Mary can carry on further with her plans. If only she had taken Rowley’s advice not to tell anything to Sir Edgar!

But being naturally honest she tells him everything. Sir Edgar is a noble person; he forgives her – or says so – but now marrying her would mean he will have to ruin his career: becoming a Governor now would mean living in a constant fear that the scandal will surface. Mary, who has ruined one life already, can’t ruin another. She refuses to marry Sir Edgar. He goes away, outwardly indignant – but deep in his heart, she knows it, very much relieved. And she has nothing to do now but to marry Rowley, which no longer seems as bad an idea as it seemed a day ago.

After all, who is she to judge him? Not a woman of an impeccable reputation as she thought, but a huge sinner and, in her own words, a fool. She looks differently at herself now – and at Rowley also. Even though she doubts very much that he will ever be able to be faithful to her, she is prepared to take that risk.

Once again, Somerset Maugham proves his immensely deep knowledge of human psychology, instinctively knowing how all his characters will act in these very uncommon circumstances. Of course, if Mary hadn’t given Karl a lift that night, she would have married Sir Edgar, and her life would have been very common; there would have been no excuse to write a book about her, though. Would she have been happier? Hard to say, but I don’t think so. With Rowley she will never be bored, and if there’s ever any danger, he is going to be pretty capable of pulling himself and Mary out of it; he has proven it. He will probably even settle finally, though such men seldom settle until they get really old. It’s up to the reader to decide what is going to happen to all these people now.

It’s not Mary I feel sorry for – it’s Karl. And Sir Edgar, too, but mainly Karl. A young life cut short for nothing – but, after all, there were so many of them, victims of the Nazis. In the years to come there would be millions (judging by the known historical dates, the events in the book must have happened between the end of 1938 and the beginning of 1939, though the book itself was first published in 1953). Karl had little hope anyway – he might have died from starvation, or in the war. At least, Mary made him happy for a few short hours. And Rowley was right about this boy – he was unstable.

The book is quite short – just 94 pages – but it makes me think about so many things! I’ve read 400+-page novels that don’t come even close to this book in depth and literary value. I recommend it to everyone. You’ll find the language beautiful too – it’s easy to read, but it sings.

It’s a library book, and I know I’ll be sorry to part with it when the time comes to return it.