feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2013-04-04 08:45 am
feather_ghyll) wrote2013-04-04 08:45 am
Entry tags:
- adult books,
- african setting: rhodesia/zimbabwe,
- authors: c,
- authors: h,
- authors: m,
- authors: w,
- celtic setting: ireland,
- eileen heming,
- eileen marsh,
- genre: adventure,
- genre: children detectives,
- genre: family story,
- genre: girl detective(s),
- genre: holiday adventure,
- genre: mystery,
- marjorie cleves,
- monica marsden,
- overview: books,
- patricia wentworth
OVERVIEW: Easter reading
There were some mysteries: one featuring bored redheaded twins in Rhodesia in Monica Marsden’s A Matter of Clues. The first Rhodesian-set story I’ve read in a while, it's extremely silly. I then read Out of the Past by Patricia Wentworth, a (late) Miss Silver mystery that features many familiar elements, but there is an attempt to reorder them.
There were two family adventures off the Irish coast, both featuring some extraordinary modes of transportation and Irish clichés, plus the handy deaths of some of those Irishmen who were only mourned for a chapter at best. The Golden Galleon by Eileen Heming starts with some irresponsible parents sending six children to an absent friend's house in an isolated village. 15 year old Elizabeth is meant to be in charge of her younger siblings, ranging down to Roger who isn’t yet three. She’s fortunate in a more responsible and placid younger sister, Anne, to do her job, with servants and fishermen helping to babysit too, so that Elizabeth and next-in-age brother Jack can roam free and volunteer, with no experience, to be divers for a submarine owner looking for a wrecked treasure ship. The author did their research about the diving, I thought, but...!
Then there was Jonquil, Test Pilot by Eileen Marsh, about Jonquil and her brother Jack and sister Belinda, who love flying aeroplanes. Jon tests a superjet that is a refined version of the plane that killed their father, who originally designed it. The next generation has split the responsibility, Jack is the designer, Jonquil the pilot and Lindy the see-sawing younger sister. But can the family foil an international criminal gang (almost parodic) that gets in their way? This book featured a lot of illustrations, most of which I didn’t like at all.
Then finally, unseasonally, there was The Merryfield Mystery by Marjorie Cleves about a group of schoolgirls, two mistresses and staff who stay behind at their school over the Christmas holidays. They’re snowed in and ‘haunted’. I wished that the whole mystery angle, in which everyone was a part-time ghost hunter and sleuth, had been dropped by the author just to tell the story of how this mixed group had got on and entertained themselves.
Oh dear, that’s a grumpy overview, and the truth is, the fact that I managed to nearly burn three toasts this morning has nothing to do with it. I had a relaxing break! (A fuller review of a book that I enjoyed more will be coming next.)
There were two family adventures off the Irish coast, both featuring some extraordinary modes of transportation and Irish clichés, plus the handy deaths of some of those Irishmen who were only mourned for a chapter at best. The Golden Galleon by Eileen Heming starts with some irresponsible parents sending six children to an absent friend's house in an isolated village. 15 year old Elizabeth is meant to be in charge of her younger siblings, ranging down to Roger who isn’t yet three. She’s fortunate in a more responsible and placid younger sister, Anne, to do her job, with servants and fishermen helping to babysit too, so that Elizabeth and next-in-age brother Jack can roam free and volunteer, with no experience, to be divers for a submarine owner looking for a wrecked treasure ship. The author did their research about the diving, I thought, but...!
Then there was Jonquil, Test Pilot by Eileen Marsh, about Jonquil and her brother Jack and sister Belinda, who love flying aeroplanes. Jon tests a superjet that is a refined version of the plane that killed their father, who originally designed it. The next generation has split the responsibility, Jack is the designer, Jonquil the pilot and Lindy the see-sawing younger sister. But can the family foil an international criminal gang (almost parodic) that gets in their way? This book featured a lot of illustrations, most of which I didn’t like at all.
Then finally, unseasonally, there was The Merryfield Mystery by Marjorie Cleves about a group of schoolgirls, two mistresses and staff who stay behind at their school over the Christmas holidays. They’re snowed in and ‘haunted’. I wished that the whole mystery angle, in which everyone was a part-time ghost hunter and sleuth, had been dropped by the author just to tell the story of how this mixed group had got on and entertained themselves.
Oh dear, that’s a grumpy overview, and the truth is, the fact that I managed to nearly burn three toasts this morning has nothing to do with it. I had a relaxing break! (A fuller review of a book that I enjoyed more will be coming next.)