Dark Dawn Over Steep House - grimly entertaining!

Dark Dawn Over Steep House, by M.R.C. Kasasian is the 5th (and I think last) book in the Gower Street Detective series. We are back in Victorian London with Sidney Grice - a personal detective - and his ward, March Middleton, who is also the narrator of the piece. They are asked to investigate the case of a missing daughter, but, as always, there is much more to this case than meets the eye. It leads to the uncovering of a serial offender who attacks women (of course), and a lot of red herrings to chase down - during which, March gets in way over her head and risks it all to solve the case. At the same time, an unsolved mystery from some time ago rears its head again ... that of Steep House ... and as both cases begin to dovetail into each other, they bring Sidney and March to the brink. Full of humour and lots of action and plot twists, this is highly entertaining, though the crimes described can be very gruesome at times. Sidney is as rude and pedantic as ever, and March brings her own highly developed funny bones, which are sprinkled with liberal doses of sarcasm, to the party. These two characters really spark off each other which is always a delight. For me, I was happy to see less of Molly, their ridiculously incompetent servant, as her continual malapropisms can become a tad wearisome when overused. I was, however, delighted to see George Pound back on the scene ... hurrah and huzzah, love is in the air again for March! There was a bit of a shock at the end, which left me reeling - but I won't say any more than that for fear of spoilers. I read the audio edition, which is narrated by Emma Gregory, who has all of these familiar characters down to a T. If this is the last in the series, it was a great one to end on, one of the best in my opinion, and I'm really going to miss these characters!

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Price I paid: £2.98.

Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

Human Traces - Traumatic Epic (another one!)

Human Traces, by Sebastian Faulks, follows the lives of two men and those they love and lose along the way. It's another huge book, both in terms of length and also breadth of the topic - the nature of humanity! It starts in the 1870s with Jacques Rebiere, son of a peasant who lives in Brittany, and Thomas Midwinter, a Lincolnshire merchant's son. Jacques, who is taken under the wing of a local priest who sees the potential in his scientific mind, wants to find a cure for his beloved brother Olivier who is kept in the stable because he hears voices. Thomas, meanwhile, is unwillingly forced into medicine by his father. Both meet by chance in Deauville, forming an instant respect and admiration, and they determine that when they qualify as doctors, they will work together to further the study and cure of people like Olivier. They toil through many years and in trying circumstances, until they finally get their chance to create a new kind of clinic in Austria. By this time, Jacques is married to Thomas's sister, Sonia, and Thomas finally finds love with an ex-patient. However, the strong bond they once had begins to loosen as their thoughts and theories on how to treat the people in their care starts to take different paths. Tragedy is never far away, and, into the mix, the First World War also features. There aren't many laughs in this epic story of two men driven to the point of their own madness by their desire to understand and cure those whose mental health has deserted them. Both Jacques and Thomas are used as cyphers to show how the medical profession at the time dealt with such patients and the new ideas that were coming out about the nature of man, his origins and the reasons behind such conditions as schizophrenia and dementia. Whilst some of this is interesting, the immensity of the details given - which included full transcripts of lectures or papers the characters were delivering - left me a little cold. I didn't quite believe some of the actions of the characters either, including a strange affair by one of the men, which made me lose sympathy and interest in them - I think because it kind of came from nowhere and didn't really go anywhere. I can admire the level of research and the epic nature of the work, but sometimes the work felt more like a lesson than a story and my attention began to wander. There was also, for me, a bit of an imbalance in that so much time and space was given to the early years of both Thomas and Jacques, and the beginning of their time in their clinic, but then the ending felt raced through. It was almost as if the writer had said all they wanted to say and so decided to end the book without a satisfactory conclusion for my part. But then, life often isn't all wrapped up in a neat little bow .. but somehow, I'd like my fiction to do so ... unfair I suppose, but there it is! Hard going at times, but with passages full of feeling and heart, this was a curate's egg of a book for me, but I know others will feel very differently. 

My STAR rating: FOUR.

Length: 615 print pages.

Price I paid: free, borrowed from my husband.

Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook. 

Into the Silence - A True Epic

Into the Silence by Wade Davis is a monumental work in terms of depth, detail and length! At the heart, it is the story of the three attempts to climb Mount Everest by British-led expeditions in 1921, 1922 and 1924. However, the backdrop to this is World War I and the effect it had on the men who took part. They had seen so much death, and many of them were still suffering both mentally and physically from that time. Conquering Everest was also driven by the influence of "Empire" ... despite all the evidence to the contrary, there was still a certain belief amongst the upper class that somehow, the British could still achieve anything they set their mind to - whether they had any experience of it or not. The teams of mountaineers were made up of a hotchpotch of experience and skilled climbers (like George Leigh Mallory) and total beginners, not necessarily in the best of health but who had the "gumpf" to have a go. Much of the first expedition was to try and map out the area and find a potential way to the summit. The next involved specific attempts to reach the top which failed miserably - primarily due to the belief that using oxygen was somehow ungentlemanly and "cheating". On this expedition, George Finch, an excellent climber, who had done the research and built devices to deliver oxygen at altitude and was pushing for its use, was pretty much ignored because he had not gone to the right school or university ... yes, the class system was very much alive (and still is to this day)! This attitude cost lives, just like the idiocy of the generals in the first world war who wasted so many sons, brothers, husbands and fathers through their incompetence and pig headedness. However, the experience of this trip led Mallory to also believe that without oxygen, the climb to the top of Everest would be impossible. In 1924, despite his misgivings, Mallory returned to Everest and on June 6th, he and Sandy Irvine - a 22-year-old Oxford scholar with little experience - set out from their camp at 23,000 feet to make an attempt to conquer the mighty mountain. They never returned. Mystery still surrounds the fact as to whether they made it to the top and met their end on the way back down, or whether they never reached their goal at all. There is so much in this book that it is hard to take all of it in. I found the first expedition particularly hard going as it detailed where everybody went pretty much every day, and I got lost amongst the place names (and indeed, all the people). However, as the book reached the last expedition, it was definitely more gripping. I felt anger, curiosity, excitement and sadness. Yes, there were heroics on show, but also stupidity and ignorance, and the disregard for the local population from many of those involved, without whom nobody would ever have succeeded, was shocking. It has left me understanding a bit of history I was only vaguely aware of, and for anyone interested in Mount Everest, this would be a must read, despite the heavy going at times ... but then, maybe that's in keeping with the challenge it is describing! 

My STAR rating: THREE.

Length: 672 print pages.

Price I paid: £3.00

Formats available: print; unabridged audio download, ebook.

Blood Count - suspend your disbelief!

Blood Count by Robert Goddard is a thriller in which the past catches up with surgeon Edward Hammond in an unexpected and dangerous way. Thirteen years ago, he was paid a substantial amount of money to perform a life saving operation on Dragan Gazi, a unsavoury Serbian gangster, who subsequently went on to lead his men in the slaughter of thousands during the Balkan civil wars. But now, with Gazi on trial for war crimes in The Hague, his family blackmail Edward into finding the Italian financier who knows where Gazi's many millions can be found. If Edward doesn't succeed, his ill-advised operation will be exposed and his reputation and career ruined. But Marco Piravani isn't an easy man to find, and so begins a dash across Europe that Edward hopes will give him some kind of redemption. There is so much action in this book that it can leave the reader a little breathless at times. Lots of characters, not always believable ... in fact, mostly unbelievable ... populate the pages to either place, or remove, hurdles in front of our hero - and sometimes, it seems both! There is a hint of a love interest, both regarding Edward's ex-wife and a former lover of Gazi who gave birth to his child, but it is only a hint. The real star of the book is the break-neck chase across the continent ... with Edward hot on the heels of Paravani, and then Gazi's family hot on the heels of Edward. But honestly, this is a totally bonkers plot, but told really well by the author, who has definitely mastered the art of the page-turner. So, park your logic and common sense for the duration and you cannot help but race through this ridiculous romp of a story.

My STAR rating: THREE.

Length: 336 print pages.

Price I paid: £0.50

Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.