feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2016-03-15 09:50 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2016-03-15 09:50 pm
OVERVIEW/TENNIS/OVERVIEW
I haven’t posted for quite a while, during which time I haven’t read many feather-ghyllesque books. That is, I read Dead in the Water, one of Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple mysteries, in which she and Alec solve a murder over a weekend – a book I happily read while day-tripping.
In the meantime, the news about Maria Sharapova has come out. It was interesting to me that she said she took this drug for illnesses where there was a family history, which included diabetes, and she set up a business selling lollipops. I know that’s not the main issue, and a part of me feels that I don’t know enough not to take what she’s said on face value (another part of me has listened to what others have said and goes ‘And yet...’). You can only hope that the authorities treat her justly, taking all the things they know into account, because it matters that a player of her stature is fairly penalised when doping is such a prevalent problem in sports.
As I said in the review, reading Barbed Wire-Keep Out! made me eager to revisit its prequel Snowed-up With a Secret, also by Agnes M. Miall, which I think I could have bought twenty years ago, which may be why I didn’t remember it.
In this story, sisters Perry and Prue first join forces with Humphrey Philpot – they first meet him a day before the story proper starts. He works for their uncle Paul at Ye Olde Swan Tavern where they’re staying over the new year. Perry, Prue and Hump have some thrills keeping an eye out for some guests he refers to as the Queer Couple, because there’s something that doesn’t quite fit about the Trewins.
They also meet the Honourable Jacynth Mayne for the first time – she’s the young lady their uncle is sweet on. She like the other guests are snowed in,, with a geographical quirk separating the hotel and a few nearby cottages from the rest of the village and the outside world. Then things get worse, when a robbery is discovered. The thief must be one of their number, so can wannabe detective Hump and his new friends find proof on their suspects before the snow melts?
I found this less engaging than the sequel, perhaps because it contains so many of the same themes such as Perry’s being pulled between growing up and being a child and Prue disliking it very much and even the themes of class. I was a step ahead of the young detectives, so the mystery wasn’t particularly gripping.
In the meantime, the news about Maria Sharapova has come out. It was interesting to me that she said she took this drug for illnesses where there was a family history, which included diabetes, and she set up a business selling lollipops. I know that’s not the main issue, and a part of me feels that I don’t know enough not to take what she’s said on face value (another part of me has listened to what others have said and goes ‘And yet...’). You can only hope that the authorities treat her justly, taking all the things they know into account, because it matters that a player of her stature is fairly penalised when doping is such a prevalent problem in sports.
As I said in the review, reading Barbed Wire-Keep Out! made me eager to revisit its prequel Snowed-up With a Secret, also by Agnes M. Miall, which I think I could have bought twenty years ago, which may be why I didn’t remember it.
In this story, sisters Perry and Prue first join forces with Humphrey Philpot – they first meet him a day before the story proper starts. He works for their uncle Paul at Ye Olde Swan Tavern where they’re staying over the new year. Perry, Prue and Hump have some thrills keeping an eye out for some guests he refers to as the Queer Couple, because there’s something that doesn’t quite fit about the Trewins.
They also meet the Honourable Jacynth Mayne for the first time – she’s the young lady their uncle is sweet on. She like the other guests are snowed in,, with a geographical quirk separating the hotel and a few nearby cottages from the rest of the village and the outside world. Then things get worse, when a robbery is discovered. The thief must be one of their number, so can wannabe detective Hump and his new friends find proof on their suspects before the snow melts?
I found this less engaging than the sequel, perhaps because it contains so many of the same themes such as Perry’s being pulled between growing up and being a child and Prue disliking it very much and even the themes of class. I was a step ahead of the young detectives, so the mystery wasn’t particularly gripping.