OVERVIEW: Christmas Reading

[feather_ghyll]

Oops, I didn't post at all during December, not to mention tennis or anything that I read. It was rather a busy month for me, so I was glad of what peace I could get to read over Christmas.



I was reading The Mystery of Alton Grange on Christmas day, actually. First of all, there is no mystery for the reader about Alton Grange. By the end of the first chapter or two, I had sighed over what the book wasn't going to be and accepted it for what it was - the tale of a good woman who becomes a family's 'fairy godmother' it made my eyes prickle at a father's acceptance of terrible losses and I chuckled at the youngest child, Boy (short for Boyne), who is a polygamist in the making, either going to marry Miss Mynt (in her late fifties) or Cook. There are morals about obedience, the heroine is unusual, and although it has many faults, I was in the mood to put up with them.

Despite the title The East End Murders: Killing Time is a Patsy Kelly Investigates mystery - the penultimate one I believe. Patsy blames herself for the death of a teenager who reached out to her for help, but she couldn't get in touch with in time. I thought she was being hard on herself, for she did try, but it all happened as her boyfriend Billy was leaving the country to volunteer for a year in Africa. I have a nostalgic weakness for these books, set when people had just got mobile phones but were referring to 'the line' still. Published under the 'Point Crime' label, it feels like a glancing treatment of an investigation of someone's death and Patsy's romantic, family and career dilemmas, although there's a strong sense of the locale and community.

I also finished reading Ally Carter's Gallagher Girls series with United We Spy, so I felt I should mention it. Cammie, her room mates and her boyfriend have to leave school early to avert World War Three which the evil Circle is seeking to instigate and face their future, although they return there for the climactic showdown. If you don't know how to finish a series you never planned to write, you might as well emulate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I suppose.

I wouldn't say that any of these three books will be making an appearance in my upcoming round-up of of 2016 whenever I write it.

Happy New Year!