Mystery author #2: Hannah March

Title: Death Be My Theme
Year published: 2000
Number in series: 3
Availability: In print
Pages: 278
Settings and time: England: Chelsea (mostly) and surrounding country, London (a little), 1764.
Type of mystery: Murder (whodunit), historical (Georgian era England)
Type of investigator: Amateur sleuth/crime magnet
Deaths: 4
Some themes: Murder, music, obsession, love, false identity, forgery

Summary (no spoilers):
In the summer of 1764, private tutor Robert Fairfax has been sent by his employers to Chelsea, then a rural health spot, to recuperate from a serious illness. He discovers that a woman he is very much in love with (I assume he met her in one of the two previous books), is staying there as well, in the same house as the Mozart family. Herr Mozart is recovering from an illness, and when little Wolfgang claims to have seen a man coming out of a room in an inn moments after the man staying there had a stroke and died, and the dead man’s wife denies the existence of any such man, Fairfax becomes suspicious. When an unemployed housemaid is found murdered, the local magistrate (upon discovering Fairfax has helped Justice Fielding solve a case) hands the investigation over to him. He begins to sniff around, and finds a twisted tale of love and obsession simmering under the seemingly placid surface of the peaceful suburb. (I’m not sure whether Chelsea had become part of London by then – in the book it seems to be a suburb rather than a town).

Review: With interesting twists and red herrings aplenty, the mystery part is good. The Mozarts are shown as typical jolly Germanic stereotypes and could easily have been left out. Sometimes, even if an author can include someone who really existed, it is better not to if they can not be used in an interesting way. Here they merely lend colour.
Unfortunately Robert Fairfax is a rather uninteresting character. Maybe it’s because all the interesting things about him have been said in the previous two books in the series, in which case it is presumptuous of the author to assume that the reader will have read them. As it is, there is nothing in his character that would induce me to want to read more about him.
One minor character sort of gets lost – his thread in the story is not resolved, and neither is Fairfax’s love for a married woman. This being a series, both story threads could (I suppose) be resolved in later books, but the lack of resolution still nags me.
Not an author I would particularly seek out more books by, but neither would I refuse to read another one.

Rating: 3 stars (i.e. not good, but not bad either)

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog