Minette Walters – The Breaker

More crime reading for me.  Kate Sumner’s  body is washed up on a deserted beach in Dorset and  her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away walking the streets of Poole.

There are no shortage of suspects including the particularly strange sex obsessed Steve and Kate’s loner husband whose alibi looks a bit dodgy.  As the investigation continues Kate emerges as a woman with a complicated past.

This is an enjoyable whodunnit but there seem to be the usual comments on women asking to be raped judging by what they are wearing, and I found it hard to tell if this was the author’s view or just that of the characters.  I loved the Dorset setting and it keeps you reading though, so a great one for next to the pool.

My new crime discovery – Colin Dexter – The Dead of Jericho

Pregnancy brain has meant that I can now only seem to read crime books, although I am still struggling on with Winter King, the biography of Henry VII.   I branched out and read my first Inspector Morse.  I hadn’t even seen it on TV before but now I am wondering why as I found it pretty enjoyable.  It was especially nice to have the familiar setting of Oxford in the novel.

Morse is your typical flawed policeman, middle-aged spread, slightly alcoholic, etc.  He goes to a party and meets young and beautiful Anne Scott who seems to be inexplicably throwing herself at him, but Morse manages to resist.  Six months later Anne Scott is found hanging in her kitchen in the district of Jericho.  Anne seems to have lots of skeletons in the cupboard including ex-husbands, an adopted child and a married lover.   At one point the plot threatens to become farcical when Morse tries to relate it the Sophocles tragedy of Oedipus, but generally a nice cosy crime read.  I have already headed off to the charity shop to buy another.  I might even put the DVD on my wish list.

M C Beaton – Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

Carrying on with the crime theme that seemed to dominate my holidays, I tried out this book after hearing that M C Beaton’s crime novels regularly top the most borrowed lists in British libraries. I also used to read Marion Chesney dodgy Regency romances as a teenager. I was particularly interested in the fact that the Agatha Raisin books are set in a fictional Cotswold village but have lots of references to the surrounding area which I love. This is the obviously original inspiration for the not very good Mud Muck and Dead Things novel that I read and did not enjoy very much last year.

Agatha Raisin is an ex-PR agent from London, who moves to the Cotswolds to start a new life. She enters a local baking contest to try to get to know the locals.   She enters a quiche that she bought in London; not only does she not win, but her quiche kills one of the judges. In order to prove her innocence, Agatha begins investigating the crime herself. It’s not great literature but its an enjoyable little read if you like the Cotswolds and a bit of lighthearted crime.