Penny Reads

Step inside a world of books. Vintage and modern. Children's and Adult.

Fiction

Knots and Crosses – Ian Rankin

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It is years since I read any Ian Rankin. I was always a huge fan of Rebus. Never the TV version of him, but instead the one in my head that had been built up from years of reading stories about him. But then life got in the way a bit and I sort of lost track of what he was up to. Life a relative that you just hear of through others in the family, I knew that he’d retired, but somehow been lured back into police work. I knew I wanted to find out what he was up to, but knowing where to pick up his story seemed a bit tricky. Instead I decided to go right back to the start. But by only following him through secondhand purchases. So, that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Starting again at the very beginning of Rebus’ story with Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses. This version with an introduction from Rankin himself about how he formed Rebus at the time and a bit about how he ended up changing over time. He was supposed to die at the end of Knots and Crosses, and having no re-read the story the ending really could go either way.

What was a bit strange though was that Knots and Crosses doesn’t really introduce the Rebus I know and I love. Instead it told the story of a slightly familiar Rebus, with familiar characters around him, but it was as if he wasn’t quite fully formed. His music tastes were still developing and he didn’t seem quite so sure of himself as he did later on. But that’s all to be expected I guess. You can’t expect any author to completely nail a character in their first book about him. Rebus develops over time and I guess that’s exactly how you get to know people in real life too. You form some initial impressions, but as you get to know them more your opinions change, and as they go through life’s experiences (and let’s be honest, Rebus has a lot of those!) people change too.

I really enjoyed reading Knots and Crosses and love getting caught up with the thrill of trying to stay one step ahead of the bad guys and work out who was behind the whole story. Rankin really made me realise just how much I love crime fiction as a genre and it seems crime set in Scotland in particular. I’m also really keen to know more about the various tunnels under Edinburgh. Another thing to add to my list of topics to research when time allows.

There’s something really nice about being back at the start. Knowing that I’ve got all Rebus’ adventures to come again. And then there’s also the challenge of scouring charity shops and secondhand book stalls with a list to try and complete the collection. But if anyone can please tell me why the third Rebus book Tooth and Nail / Wolfman is proving to be so illusive I’d very much appreciate it!

They Both Die at the End – Adam Silvera

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This is a book that I had been aware of for quite a while before reading it. Let’s be honest, the title is one that jumps out at you somewhat when you see it in a bookshop somewhere. The main reason for reading They Both Die at the End though is not due to how much I’d seen it around, but because my daughter read it. As she’s moving more into Young Adult books I find it really useful to read some of them too as it helps open up conversation topics that might not otherwise crop up. I also think that with the increase in influencer influence on young people today books which are shared widely online (as this one was) can really have a huge influence on children and in some cases can give them unanswered questions that can trouble them for a while.

So back to the book in question. They Both Die at the End is a dystopian tale and not at all the kind of book that I would choose to read. Set in a time when people are told when they are going to die that day in a phone call in the early hours of the morning, it follows two teens (Mateo and Rufus) on their “end day”.

It’s a very strange world where whole industries are built up around what people want to do before they die. Restaurants give people free meals, and whole exhibition centre like places become places where “Deckers” (as they are known) can go to tick off things on their bucket lists before the inevitable happens.

All the time though you’ve got this knowledge that the two characters that you are getting to know aren’t going to live to see the end of the book. That is a weird sensation.

In this world geared towards knowledge of impending death there is also an app which allows people to reach out and have a “Last Friend” to prevent them from living their last day alone. Again it’s a strange thought, but also I suppose is a reasonably natural extension of dating and friendship apps that already exist. It’s how our two main characters meet in They Both Die at the End.

It’s worth noting that neither of the characters come from a straightforward background. Rufus lost his whole family in a recent accident, but survived himself, Mateo has just his father, who in the book is lying in hospital in a coma. It’s also a book with a bisexual character, and whilst his sexual orientation does form part of the story there is lovely acceptance and unconditional love from his friends about it.

I can’t say that They Both Die at the End is a book I would necessarily recommend to someone with reading tastes like mine, but at the same time it was a good read to expand my reading, and an excellent one to promote conversation with my daughter. We both found it a very dark book and were in agreement that we wouldn’t want the ability to be told when we were going to die, let alone have to be told it as the characters in the book were. And we both agreed that there was one character (Delilah) where we simply just never find out what happens to her. We know she’s a Decker, but her actually end seems to either have been left out, or passed both of us by.

More than anything though, reading this demonstrated how wonderful books can be in igniting conversations and bonds between people. I’ll continue to keep track with what my daughter is reading (and my son) and keep dipping into their book choices too.

They Both Die at the End is available to buy online here.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click on them and buy something it costs you no more than if you’d arrived at the site on your own, but I receive a small commission. Any purchases you make are very much appreciated.

Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story – J. Jefferson-Farjeon

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As the subtitle A Christmas Crime Story may reveal, I actually started reading Mystery in White towards the tail end of last year. Over the last year or so I’ve become quite fascinated by the British Library Crime Classics series. Not only do they look lovely and uniform on a bookshelf, but they all also lovely “cosy crime” books, coming from a different age of crime writing. Mostly written by contemporaries of crime legend Agatha Christie, they are a time when without modern technology, crimes had to be solved by old fashioned sleuthing by detectives, police officers, or sometimes just those affected by the crimes. In short, they are the perfect distraction from modern day life. I’m n a quest to pick up as many of the titles in the series as I can from charity shops, and so far I seem to be doing rather well.

Mystery in White tells the story of a group of people who met when they shared a train carriage on a service out of London that ended up stuck in the snow on Christmas Eve. They leave the train and walk a way across fields to find a house. But the house they find appears to be empty. There are roaring fires and tea ready to serve, but no sign of anyone there. Whose house is it? Where have they gone? And what connection is there to an incident that happened in the next train carriage?

Now, being a train obsessive there were a few little details about the train in the story that I wanted to know more about. We know it was travelling out of London, but there seems to be a possible bit of confusion about where exactly it started. In the introduction, written by Martin Edwards, the train is described as “the 11.37 from St Pancras (or should that be Euston? both of those great stations are mentioned in the very first chapter)”. Now. I’ve read the first chapter several times now and I can only find mention of Euston station in it. In fact, two specific mentions of the train specifically being the 11.37 from Euston. The fact that the chorus girl in the carriage is trying to get to Manchester initially backs up the likelihood of the train having left from Euston based on modern-day running routes, but back in 1937 (when Mystery in White was published) trains ran from St Pancras to Manchester. Were both location mentioned in the first chapter and someone has edited St Pancras out? I’m intrigued and feel a need to dig a bit deeper to find out what went on here.

The train’s original departure point doesn’t really make any difference to the rest of the story though. It’s just a niggle for train geeks. What goes on at the house and how the main characters deal with it makes a lovely, gentle story. There is a point where it starts talking about ghosts, and I have to be honest and say that I nearly lost interest then, but it was as if someone then saw sense and brought it back to trying to solve a crime.

If you’re looking for a book to read when snowed in somewhere remote then this is either the perfect read, or will produce sleepless nights. The UK’s winters being somewhat milder than they used to be probably makes that quite unlikely, but then after the last couple of years who knows what is possible!

There are several more titles in the British Library Crime Classics series that I plan to share with you over the next few month. I’m also starting a little pet project about railways in fiction. I’m fascinated to look in more detail at how they feature in stories, in particular crime fiction, and how accurately they are portrayed. As anyone familiar with Agatha Christie’s work will know they feature in several of her books (…) but a quick look at the cover art for the BLCC series also shows trains make a regular appearance. Obviously in this book the train journey is only the start of the adventure, but I’m keen to see if that is true for other books in the series. I will report back.

Mystery in White is available to buy online here. If you want to find out more information about the British Library Crime Classics series then there is an excellent page on the British Library website here that lists all titles. All my reviews of titles from the series are here.

The Amber Shadows – Lucy Ribchester

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A mystery novel set in wartime Bletchley Park. My idea of a perfect book. A £1 charity shop find made it even more so. But then I read it…

I’m really sorry to say that The Amber Shadows just didn’t quite hit the spot. But I’m also thinking that it might have been me, rather than the book at fault. Let me explain.

I have a fascination with Bletchely Park and have visited numerous times, amazingly even before it was officially opened as an amazing visitor attraction. I wouldn’t say that I am an expert, but I certainly know more than many about what went on there in war time and having visited and watched films like Enigma and The Imitation Game I guess I visualise the place in glorious technicolour.

In The Amber Shadows though one of the main things I took away was everything being dark, and in shadows. The work there was secretive. There were blackouts. It’s obvious really as to why things were all dark and mysterious, and the author has done a fantastic job of making it so, but it just didn’t really work with my image of everything. Like I say, it was me rather than the book at fault here I think.

The story tells of a young woman, Honey Deschamps, who works in Hut 6 at Bletcheley. One night a strange man steps out of the shadows near her billet and hands her a package containing pieces of Amber, The package carries a Russian postmark. We follow Honey as she tries to discover why she has been sent the amber, and who has sent it. In doing so there is a delve into various bits of wartime related history which were fascinating, but not so much about what life was really like working at Bletchely which is what I was hoping for more of.

I guess what I’m saying with all this is that it wasn’t quite the book I was looking for, and I was just after something else. The Amber Shadows is still a good book, but I feel like I’m still after a good bit of non-war related crime fiction that just happens to be set at Bletchely. Does such a thing exist?

The Amber Shadows by Lucy Ribchester is available to buy online here.

Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart

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I’m not normally a reader who pays much attention to prize winners, but when several members of my knitting group separately told me about how Shuggie Bain was a must read title, it quickly made its way on to my to read list.

Since Covid hit I’ve generally been reading more and more as a form of escapism. There are times when you just want to disappear into a book, and whilst Shuggie Bain is the sort of book that you can lose yourself in, it’s also not the sort of book you want to lose yourself in. It is a disturbing tale of young Shuggie and his mother Agnes who live in 1980s Glasgow. Agnes’ way of coping with everything that life throws (and it throws a lot in her direction) at her is drink. Yet, as Agnes falls deeper and deeper into drink her children (Shuggie has an older brother and sister) try to save her without much success. As Shuggie ends up saying goodbye to his siblings as they accept their mother will never change, he is determined not to give up hope.

Shuggie’s love for his mother and his dedication to her is utterly heartbreaking. There were several points in the book when I just wanted to jump in the car and drive up to Scotland to help Agnes and her son. The idea that the book reflects real life for some children makes it even more tragic. The only omission from the plot was social services. With modern safeguarding practices you would sincerely hope that they would have been alerted to the situation through Shuggie’s absences from school, but back in the 1980s processes admittedly were not as robust as they are today.

I would challenge anyone who has ever simply said that a parent should “stop drinking” to read Shuggie Bain and then say the same again. Every family and every individual is different, but what this book does is make it crystal clear just how complicated situations can be and also how easy downfall into drink can be. The impact of external factors can be huge, even if the links are not obvious.

I don’t think “enjoyed” is the right word to use when referring to a book that is frankly, uncomfortable and heartbreakingly tragic, but Shuggie Bain is a book that I’m glad I read. It’s a good reminder and insight into a life that might not be like your own, but is just as important. A life that is complicated and full of challenges. One that shows what some children have to deal with from a very young age.

Child poverty has scared me for a long time, and Covid and more recent pressures of lorry driver shortages, rising gas prices and threats of food shortages are only going to make the situation more difficult. We owe it to children like Shuggie to understand what their lives are like and speak up for them. They not only need support in their communities, but also people who represent and campaign for them at the highest levels. Let’s not let them down.

A painful read, but also a must read.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart is available to buy online here.

The Windsor Knot – S. J. Bennett

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As I stood in the local library, waiting for the kids to finally choose which books and audio books were coming home with us, the red cover of The Windsor knot caught my attention from a display stand. I’m not sure where I’d heard about this book, but I immediately knew the basic premise – the Queen turns amateur detective.

It’s a simple idea, but also one that weirdly seems highly likely. HM The Queen has always struck me as having an eye for detail and not missing anything that is going on around her and so I can actually quite believe that she would be very capable of solving a crime if called up on to do so.

I’m a bit of a fan of slightly comedic fiction about The Queen, with one of my favourite books of all time being Sue Townsend’s The Queen and I. After reading that and Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader The Windsor knot seemed a natural progression. And for anyone wondering I like did – SJ Bennett and Alan Bennett don’t appear to be related!

The Windsor Knot is a lovely light read. A sort of modern day Agatha Christie, with the Queen taking over Miss Marple’s role. Her assistant Private Secretary Rozie is also a fantastic character that I really enjoyed meeting in the book.

As someone who is a bit behind the curve and only just working my way through series 2 of The Crown on Netflix my brain kept flipping between the younger Queen in that and the Queen as she would have been in 2016 when The Windsor Knot was set.

It was interesting seeing some the spy theories in the book, especially surrounding the Russians, as they fit in really well with Vigil which I have just finished watching on BBC iPlayer. It’s strange how everything can sort of fit together like that.

Amazon’s listing for The Windsor knot talks about it being the perfect read for people who also enjoyed Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club and I would definitely agree with that. It sort of fits into a modern “cosy crime” genre.

The Windsor Knot is available to buy online here. RRP £8.99, but at the time of writing Amazon appear to be selling it in paperback fro just £2.

Disclaimer: All books mentioned in this post are ones that I have bought myself or borrowed from the local library. Some links are affiliate links. If you happen to buy anything having clicked on one of them I receive a small commission, but it will cost you no more than normal. Thank you for any purchases that you make. All are very much appreciated.