Mark Gatiss, The Vesuvius Club

Lucifer Box is the darling of the Edwardian belle monde: portrait painter, wit, dandy and rake – the guest all hostesses must have. And most do.

But few of his connections or conquests know that Lucifer Box is also His Majesty’s most daring secret agent…

Exactly what you might expect from one of the League of Gentlemen…witty, inventive and ever so slightly disturbing. Essentially, a steampunk James Bond.

Pauline McLynn, Right on Time

Private investigator, Leo Street, is juggling a fraud case in a Dublin nightclub with an investigation of  the disappearance of a teenager.

I’m predisposed to think well of anything written by the actress who played Mrs Doyle in Father Ted, and whose book title suggests a play on the title of Black Box’s biggest hit.

The Irish Times in its cover blurb describes McLynn as an Irish Bridget Jones. I can see the parallel. The focus of the book is on Leo’s chaotic private life as much as on the cases under investigation. Personal trials are overcome and cases are solved with the support of an ‘urban’ family of friends, colleagues and hangers on. Despite the appearance of chaos, there are underlying links between each of the elements of the story, which are drawn together in the suggestion of a romantic conclusion. The romantic strand itself isn’t quite plagiarising Jane Austen, but much of the story involved Leo’s conceptions and misconceptions of the suitable and unsuitable men in her life.

Jonathan Kellerman, Bones

The final entry in my snow-outside-equals-curl-up-like-a-cat-inside vacation.

The discovery of a series of decaying corpses of prostitutes in marshland outside Los Angeles is investigated by homicide detective, Milo Sturgis, with the assistance of psychologist, Alex Delaware.

Scores highly on the cliche-o-meter for this sub-genre of modern crime fiction which rests upon unpleasant levels of throwaway sexual violence to women – surprisingly for an author with a background as a clinical psychologist, there is little psychological depth here. Oh, and of course the crime fighting duo have a quirk, a shared appreciation of food – the old cliche of policemen and their doughnuts is elevated to new levels of gastronomy

Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

Just in case you think I spent the whole Christmas vacation reading trashy crime fiction…this is the epic tale of Saleem Sinai, one of the children born at the moment of India’s independence, whose biography appears to be inextricably linked with the fortunes of his homeland.

A fascinating read, for the combination of the historical and fantastical, for the humour, and for the strong sense of place and time…and particularly, for the evocation of smells as well as sights.

Katherine John, Amber Knight

More of Newcastle’s winter wonderland down on the Quayside on New Year’s Day:

 

…and more hibernation reading:

Adam Salen, director of a museum trust in Poland, receives a ransom demand for a national relic that inspired generations before being stolen by the Nazis.

One part Da Vinci Code, one part Indiana Jones, and not as good as either. Scores well on the cliche-o-meter for the improbable series of events that occur to a couple of amateur investigators within a short period of time, as well as for the romantic interest between the two lead characters.

Birmingham, ball boys and Bananarama…oh, and Matti Joensuu, Priest of Evil

Christmas was spent with my parents in Stoke. One of our Christmas traditions is that Dad and I go to see Stoke play a home game over the Christmas period, which this year meant seeing Stoke being beaten by Birmingham. The ritual of Rory Delap’s long throws have been elevated to new levels in the last season, with ball boys on hand with towels to enable Delap to wipe down the ball before a throw-in. The home fans cheered when one ball boy refused to extend the same service to a Birmingham player. It was the first time I had seen new(-ish) Stoke signing, Tuncay, who has already settled in sufficiently to have his own chant from the fans – an adaptation of an old Bananarama tune, now ’Na Na Hey Hey Tuncay’.

Another tradition is a selection of  ’surprise’ Christmas presents from my parents (’surprise’ as in they ask for a long list of ideas in advance from which they then give a selection). Finnish crime fiction this time with Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpaa of the Helsinki Violent Crimes Unit, investigating a series of deaths on the underground.

Written from multiple perspectives, including that of the perpetrator and a number of the more minor characters in the plot, the suspense comes from seeing how the pieces fit together and from the chase to thwart a suicide attack rather than from the traditional whodunnit.

A bit slow moving in places, but with the positive of a lead detective whose quirk was not having problems in his personal life….until the end when…damn, there goes his USP.

Nicola Upson, An expert in murder

With the snow and ice over the Christmas break, I went into hibernation…or my version of it, eating chocolate, reading trashy novels and watching even trashier tv. The photo above is of the snow on the disused building opposite my flat in Newcastle.

Anyway, the book…

 It is 1934 and celebrated Scottish crime writer Josephine Tey is on her way to London to see her own West End play – but her trip is interrupted by the grisly murder of a young train passenger.

Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to Tey…

Part of the current trend for taking historical and literary characters and making them the subject of thrillers and murder mysteries (see the Jane Austen mysteries and Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series), Upson takes on the world of a ‘Golden Age’ fiction writer, Josephine Tey.

As might be expected given the subject matter, this scores reasonably well on the crime cliche-o-meter – down to the nascent romantic interest between the cultivated policeman and Tey. A couple of notes jarred – in what is essentially a cosy crime tribute, having a ‘respectable’ female character talk about her sex life with a male policeman on first meeting just didn’t ring true. On the other hand, the picture of the division between the sexes not as a gender point but the result of the divisive experience of war, was an interesting line.

Decent enough stuff, but not a patch on the works to which it is said to be a tribute.

Lionel Shriver, We need to talk about Kevin

 In a series of letters addressed to her husband, mother tries to understand why her son, 15-year-old Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow classmates, a cafeteria worker and his English teacher in a Columbine-style school massacre.

Incredibly well written, drawing the reader into the mother’s reflections on the possible reasons for Kevin’s actions, moving seamlessly between time periods, and subtly instilling doubt into the reader’s mind as to the reliability of the narrator’s perspective.

The September Issue

www.theseptemberissue.com

A documentary shot around the production of the September issue of American Vogue. The dramatic tension is provided not through any expose of the woman behind the editorial mask of Anna Wintour, but through the exploration of her working relationship with her fashion director, another British woman, Grace Coddington. While it might be Wintour’s clarity of purpose and decisiveness that makes Vogue not just a brand but an influential force (as shown in Wintour’s matchmaking of designers with brands), it is Coddington’s creative and artistic vision, as well as her lack of the customary deference to Wintour, that gives the film a heart.

Murder on Air, Whitley Bay Playhouse

Three short Agatha Christie radio plays performed in a radio studio setting with live sound effects.

I’m a crime fiction fan so I went along for a guilty dose of Christie and to have a peek at the new Whitley Bay Playhouse.

These weren’t Christie’s finest works – short stories with the requisite twist in the tale,  coupled with a  less than convincing turn from Roy Marsden as Hercules Poirot in one segment (hard to accept Adam Dalgliesh as Poirot!!).

The highlight was the staging – the links from contemporary radio broadcasts set the period,  the sound effects from the foley artist and from the cast were amazing. These also added a comedic dimension…I won’t spoil the ‘plot’ but if sitting in the front row, beware the flying shards of cabbage used as a proxy for a human skull during a murder scene.

It was good to see the new Playhouse, but none too hopeful to see that I probaby helped to lower the average age of the audience, and that for one of the few national productions that this theatre has attracted, the house was less than full.