Review: ROSEMARY'S BABY, Ira Levin

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 380 KB
• Print Length: 256 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: B000VZ1HI8
• Publisher: Corsair (June 22, 2011), first published 1967
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0057GIRA2

Synopsis (GoodReads)

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, an ordinary young couple, settle into a New York City apartment, unaware that the elderly neighbors and their bizarre group of friends have taken a disturbing interest in them. But by the time Rosemary discovers the horrifying truth, it may be far too late!

My Take

I don't think I have ever seen the film (1968) based on this book, starring Mia Farrow. That was probably a good thing as I didn't know how the story ended.

The Introduction by Chuck Palahniuk prepared me a little though. He begins

"Before Ira Levin, horror always happened soemwhere else... it was a comfort to know that real life-threatening horror never occurred at home. You had to be baited far, far away. For the century leading up to 1967 the real horrors had been elsewhere in the world, always outside the borders of England and the United States. If you stayed home you'd be safe... Home constituted this safe little island where women could raise children in domestic bliss."

But Ira Levin changed all that, for, on the very edges of crime fiction, ROSEMARY'S BABY  is a horror story, showing that there is no safety in your own home either.

There is a cinematographic quality to the action, and I kept imagining how chilling it would be on the silver screen.

During her early pregnancy Rosemary Woodhouse has incredible pain, and then peculiar dreams. A friend who warned her about the apartment house she and her husband have moved, is taken ill just before meeting with her, and then falls into a coma from which he never recovers. Rosemary thinks her husband has developed an unhealthy affection for their elderly neighbours but continues to trust Guy.

An interesting read.

My rating: 3.8

I've read this novel as my contribution to Past Offences #1967book meme of March this year.

Forgotten Books: THE MAKEOVER MURDERS, Jennifer Rowe

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975.
In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

THE MAKEOVER MURDERS, by Australian author Jennifer Rowe, was #4 in a series featuring amateur sleuth Verity Birdwood, a TV researcher.

Verity is stranded at an exclusive isolated spa on her latest entertaining case. An assignment to take the two-week makeover course at Deepdene and check it out as a possible documentary subject fails to thrill the practical Birdie, who arrives at the start of the rainy season. The staff, including glamorous owner Margot Bell and co-owner hairdresser Alistair Swanson, coddles Birdie and four other women as the unceasing rain threatens to flood the surrounding creek and turn the spa into an island. Soon spa secretary William Dean announces that Laurel Moon, who murdered his fiancee and five other women, has been released from the psychiatric institution to which she was committed. When Margot is killed in the same manner as Moon's victims, Birdie suspects the killer may be among the guests. She calls her friend, Det. Sgt. Toby, who arrives with Det. Constable Milson before the spa is shut off, but both men are quickly drugged out of commission, leaving Birdie, aided by another guest, to solve a series of murders with a nice bit of thinking. Happily the mildly eccentric, thoroughly modern Birdie isn't made over a bit. 

Grim Pickings (1988)
Murder by the Book (1989)
Death in Store (1991)
The Makeover Murders (1992)
Stranglehold (1993)
Lamb to the Slaughter (1996)

 About the author
Australian author Jennifer Rowe is better known by the pseudonym Emily Rodda, and  she has had considerable success with children's novels, in particular The Deltora Quest series, and more recently the Rondo series.. As Emily Rodda she has a string of children's fiction awards spanning nearly 25 years.  See more at Wikipedia.

Forgotten Book: BEAT NOT THE BONES, Charlotte Jay

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975.
In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

My choice this week is a book completed on 15 May 1993:

First published 1952 it was the winner of the First Edgar Award for Best Novel 1954

Available through Wakefield Press in the Wakefield Crime Classics.
It is also available on Amazon for Kindle.
Two other Charlotte Jay titles:
A Hank of Hair
Arms for Adonis

Once Stella Warwick was meant to come to Marapai in Papua New Guinea as a young Australian bride. Now, a little over 6 months later, she comes to find out who murdered her husband.

Although her husband, a distinguished anthropologist in charge of protecting the natives from exploitation, was over 20 years older than her, and in reality she barely knew him, Stella feels that the verdict of suicide after David's death is really out of character.

David Warwick died over 3 days walk into the jungle away, and as Stella attempts to visit there, she becomes aware that everyone is telling her lies. Nobody wants her to uncover the truth.

The novel is as much about how the officials of the Australian protectorate and handling cultural and climatic differences, as it is about whether David Warwick was murdered or whether he committed suicide. The story is played out against the background of interaction and conflict between a supposedly primitive culture and Australian civilisation.

Charlotte Jay lived and worked in Papua New Guinea 1942-1950 and obviously placed BEAT NOT THE BONES in a setting with which she was very familiar. This was her second mystery novel and Anthony Boucher commented on "its deft plot".

BEAT NOT THE BONES gives the reader plenty to think about.

Charlotte Jay was the pseudonym adopted by Australian mystery writer and novelist, Geraldine Halls (17 December 1919 - 27 October 1996).

Forgotten book: A MURDER OF QUALITY, John Le Carre

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975. In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

This time 20 years ago I had just finished John Le Carre's A MURDER OF QUALITY.

Published in 1962, this is #2 in the George Smiley series. It is the title that precedes THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. I can see from my records that I followed up A MURDER OF QUALITY with #1, CALL FOR THE DEAD. I remember reading THE SPY... with an English class so this may well have been my inspiration to read the earlier two novels.

[Fantastic Fiction lists an omnibus, THE INCONGRUOUS SPY,  in 1961 as Le Carre's first publication. This actually contained the two novels CALL FOR THE DEAD and A MURDER OF QUALITY ]

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and so by the time I was reading these the setting was already in a world that has passed. However I remember crossing through Checkpoint Charlie in 1975 when the Wall was truly in effect. The contrast between West and East Berlin was incredible.
The first film made of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD was made in 1965 starring Richard Burton.

But, as you'll see from the synopsis below, A MURDER OF QUALITY was not about spies and espionage.

The novel was adapted for television by Thames Television in 1991. It starred Denholm Elliott as George Smiley and featured a screenplay adapted from the novel by John le Carré himself. It also starred Glenda Jackson, Joss Ackland, Diane Fletcher, David Threlfall and Christian Bale.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husband is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: it's scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.

So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution. 

Review: 4.50 FROM PADDINGTON, Agatha Christie

• aka WHAT MRS MCGILLICUDDY SAW, MURDER SHE SAID
• first published 1957
• This edition published by the Hamlyn group 1969
• 189 pages
• Source: my private collection
• #50 in the titles I have read for the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge
• #9/14 in the Miss Marple series

Synopsis (Christie site)

“A man strangled a woman! In a train. I saw it.” Elspeth McGillicuddy was not a woman usually given to hallucinations. But when she witnesses a woman being strangled on a train, no-one believes her. With no other witnesses and no corpse, she turns to the one person who can help, but how can Miss Marple solve a murder that appears not to have happened?

4.50 from Paddington (1957) is one of Christie’s most celebrated novels. It was here she introduced Miss Marple’s great-nephew, David, to assist her in the investigation. This was also the only time Christie would introduce a female ‘sidekick’ for Miss Marple; Lucy Eyelesbarrow, the young girl who infiltrates the Crackenthorpe family. Critics lauded the appearance of Lucy though this would be the only time she appeared in a Marple novel.

4.50 from Paddington was published in America under the title, What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!  MGM adapted the novel into the film, Murder She Said in 1962.  Starring Margaret Rutherford, a friend of the Christie family, it is loved by fans the world over.  In 1988 it was adapted by the BBC in a more faithful adaptation starring Joan Hickson.  In 2004 it was filmed with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple.

In all the American editions of this book the train time given is 4.54 rather than 4.50.  The original title was going to be 4.54 from Paddington but at the last minute the UK publishers changed it to 4.50 from Paddington. It was too late for Dodd Mead to make these changes as the manuscript had already gone to press.

My Take


There are some interesting aspects of the setting of this novel that place it quite firmly in the mid to late 1950s. The oldest son in the Crackenthorpe family was killed in the war and there is some speculation that he might have had a son who would now be 15 or 16 years old. The house in which most of the action takes place, Rutherford Hall, has seen better days: the grounds are very neglected and there used to be a lot more staff to run it.

There are a number of references to Miss Marple being frail and elderly but it doesn't stop her from undertaking quite extraordinary train journeys to establish a timeline for the murder that her friend Elspeth McGillicuddy witnessed. There are also quite a number of references to both Miss Marple and Mrs McGillicuddy carrying out a "duty" in tracking down the facts and culprit in the murder. There's a sense that they have old fashioned values that the younger generation don't share, although we are offered some hope in the "boys" who sleuth the grounds of Rutherford Hall enthusiastically. There's a sense too of the loss that the war caused - the death of the elder son, the poverty that followed the war, the physical/architectural structures damaged and never repaired, the disillusionment, marriages that never took place etc.

There's romance in the air too in this novel, a bit unusual for Miss Marple, but there are times when she appears to be playing the matchmaker.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read. By comparison with modern day books it is quite short but you'd be wrong if you thought the brevity came at the expense of character development and setting. There are plenty of red herrings - I'd forgotten the solution and it came as a surprise.

My rating: 4.4

I've included this as a contribution to this week's Forgotten Books (Pattinase).
See what others have chosen.

Review: SO MUCH BLOOD, Simon Brett - audio book

• Book originally published 1976
• #2 in the Charles Paris series
• this audio version published 2011
• narrated by the author, Simon Brett
• Length  6 hrs 10 mins
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Audible)

Charles Paris returns again, in a fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival, with another nubile girl to provoke him, his accommodating wife to console him and a gory murder to challenge him.

Edinburgh and the Festival are both background and foreground with Charles flitting between a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a ‘mixed-media’ satire, a late-night revue and his own one-man show on Thomas Hood. Then a fading pop star is murdered, there’s a bomb scare in Holyrood Palace and someone makes a suicide leap from the top of the Rock….

My Take

There is something special about an audio book when the narrator is actually the author, especially when it is really well done as SO MUCH BLOOD is.

This title comes early in the Charles Paris series (which by the way has a new title, the first for 16 years, published this year.) Charles isn't quite the dipsomaniac he becomes in later books, and his marriage still clings to some vestiges of life. All the books in the series are connected to Charles' life as a barely successful actor.

Although there is one gory murder, SO MUCH BLOOD is really a cozy. Charles Paris is rather easily led and makes some basic mistakes in his judgment of those around him. He follows some red herrings, and so for that matter did I. A lovely enjoyable read.

My rating: 4.3

I've written about the Charles Paris series before in connection with Friday's Forgotten Books:
CAST IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE
Who killed Marius Steen, the theatrical tycoon with a fortune to leave his young mistress Jacqui? And who killed Bill Sweet, the shady blackmailer with a supply of compromising photographs? Charles Paris, a middle-aged actor who keeps going on booze and women, takes to detection in Cast, In Order of Disappearance, by assuming a variety of roles, among them that of a Scotland Yard Detective-Sergeant, and the results are both comic and dramatic. As the mythical McWhirter of the Yard, he actually precipitates the crime; as one of the blackmailer's victims, he finds himself in bed with the blackmailer's wife; as a small-part player in a horror film (The Zombie Walks), he gets shot at by a murderer. And he arrives at the solution by way of the petrol crisis and an abortive attack of the German measles. It's a light-hearted frolic that is, at the same time, a beautifully ingenious puzzle, and it fizzes with fun and wit.

Simon Brett is also the author of the Fethering series.
I've also reviewed the following titles from that series.

BLOOD AT THE BOOKIES
THE POISONING IN THE PUB - this review also includes some mini-reviews of 6 other Fethering titles.
4.4, THE SHOOTING IN THE SHOP

Forgotten Book: THE WILL AND THE DEED, Ellis Peters writing as Edith Pargeter

My little green book

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975. In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.
 
My choice this week comes from March 1993: 
In 1960 Ellis Peters writing as Edith Pargeter published THE WILL AND THE DEED, published in the USA as WHERE THERE'S A WILL.

From Good Reads..

The reading of the will of legendary diva Antonia Byrne turns out to hold some unpleasant surprises for her nearest and dearest: one way or another, none of them get quite what they are expecting.

And when a quirk of Fate maroons the mourners in a tiny snowbound mountain village for Christmas, it is inevitable that feelings will be far from festive.

But what no one could predict is that one of their number has lethally sinister intentions and when the final curtain falls, it turns out to be Antonia herself who has had the last laugh…

The only cover images I have found so far actually show Ellis Peters as the author although Fantastic Fiction attributes it to Edith Pargeter.

Pargeter wrote under a number of pseudonyms: Peter Benedict, Jolyon Carr, John Redfern, and Ellis Peters which how she is mainly remembered (the Cadfael novels).

Some recommendations on Library Thing:

This is a non-series mystery, a sort of English-country-house plot picked up and dropped in the middle of Switzerland. Great character studies - Ellis Peters's people are never cookie cutter types. Nice little plot, rife with misunderstanding and misdirection. And the revelation at the end was very nicely done indeed. It's a quick read, but a quality one.

An interesting island-style mystery. When a group of people are going to the reading of a will they find themselves in a plane crash and lost in a small alpine village. The will is read and found to be disappointing on several levels and then one of the inheritors dies. 

A musical mystery. Legendary diva Antonia Byrne has left some unpleasant surprises in her will. Her nearest and dearest are marooned in a tiny village at Christmas time, and feelings run high. (1960) Average - an okay mystery, but not terribly exciting or memorable.

Forgotten Book: A SUITABLE VENGEANCE, Elizabeth George

My little green book

My plan this year for my contributions to Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975. In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

The first two months of 1993 saw a mixture of P.D. James and Ruth Rendell as I caught up with backnumbers in the series that I discovered in 2012.

I began March in 1993 with A SUITABLE VENGEANCE by Elizabeth George.

This was #4 in the Inspector Lynley series, published in 1990.

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton, has brought to Howenstow, his ancestral home, the young woman he has asked to be his bride.

But the savage murder of a local journalist soon becomes the catalyst for a lethal series of events which shatters the calm of the picturesque Cornish community, tearing apart powerful ties of love and friendship, and exposing a long-buried family secret.

The resulting tragedy will forever alter the course of Thomas Lynley's life.

I have continued to read the Lynley series.
Most recently I have reviewed
CARELESS IN RED
4.6, BELIEVING THE LIE
3.9, THE EDGE OF NOWHERE

Series

Inspector Lynley
1. A Great Deliverance (1988)
2. Payment In Blood (1989)
3. Well-Schooled In Murder (1990)
4. A Suitable Vengeance (1990)
5. For The Sake of Elena (1992)
6. Missing Joseph (1993)
7. Playing For The Ashes (1994)
8. In The Presence Of The Enemy (1996)
9. Deception On His Mind (1997)
10. In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (1999)
11. A Traitor To Memory (2001)
12. A Place of Hiding (2003)
13. With No One as Witness (2005)
14. What Came Before He Shot Her (2006)
15. Careless in Red (2008)
16. This Body of Death (2010)
17. Believing the Lie (2012)
18. Just One Evil Act (2013)

Forgotten Book: THE GRASS WIDOW'S TALE, Ellis Peters

I've been neglecting Friday's Forgotten Books hosted by Pattinase so far this year but hope to be a regular contributor from now on.

My little green book

My plan this year is to feature books I read 20 years ago - in 1993- from the records I have in my "little green book", which I started in 1975.

In 1993 I read 111 books and was pretty well addicted to crime fiction by then.

THE GRASS WIDOW'S TALE by Ellis Peters was the third book I read for the year.

It is the 7th title in the Felse series, published in 1968..

When George Felse finds himself called away to London on urgent police business, his wife Bunty is left alone feeling depressed on the eve of her 41st birthday. To shake off her black mood she goes out to the local pub where a chance meeting places her in deadly danger. 

For me Ellis Peters made her name with her brother Cadfael series and of course her contributions to crime fiction are memorialised in the CWA Ellis Peters award for historical crime fiction.

Felse (series list from Fantastic Fiction)
1. Fallen into the Pit (1951)
2. Death and the Joyful Woman (1961)
3. Flight of a Witch (1964)
4. A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs (1965)
5. The Piper on the Mountain (1966)
6. Black is the Colour of My True Love's Heart (1967)
7. The Grass Widow's Tale (1968)
8. The House of Green Turf (1969)
9. Mourning Raga (1969)
10. The Knocker on Death's Door (1970)
11. Death to the Landlords (1972)
12. City of Gold and Shadows (1973)
13. Rainbow's End (1978)
The Dominic Felse Omnibus (omnibus) (1991)
The George Felse Omnibus (omnibus) (1994)
The Second George Felse Omnibus (omnibus) (1995)

Forgotten Books: THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, Josephine Tey

Another contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books theme.

Josephine Tey (1896 - 1952) was dead almost before I began to read. I'm not sure when I first read THE DAUGHTER OF TIME: when I was a teenager I think. And I think I read it for the historical element, not the mystery. I was fascinated by the Wars of the Roses and the Tudors.

The blurb from Fantastic Fiction:
At Scotland Yard, Inspector Grant has a reputation for being able to pick them at sight. Now he is in hospital, knowing that no amount of good behaviour is going to make this anything less than an extended stay. Yet his professional curiosity is soon aroused. In a portrait of Richard III, the hunchbacked monster of nursery stories and history books, he finds a face that refuses to fit its reputation. But how, after four hundred years, can a bedridden policeman uncover the truth about the murder of the Princes in the Tower?

According to my "little green book" I read quite a number of books by Josephine Tey back in the early days including
The Man in the Queue (1929)
The Singing Sands (1952)
and The Franchise Affair (1948)

Forgotten Books (Crime fiction that is)

Inspired by a posting by Petrona who pointed me to a new-to-me blog by Pattinase on a theme called Friday:Forgotten Books, I queried my database (which contains only records of books that I have read in the last 40 months or so) with the following requirements.

• Published before 1970
• Given a rating of 4 or more
• Not Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers or Ngaio Marsh (whom I don't think have been forgotten)

Here are the books the database came up with

• Patricia Carlon, THE WHISPERING WALL (1969)
• Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, ROSEANNA (1968), THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN, (1968), THE MAN ON THE BALCONY (1967)
• Colin Watson, HOPJOY WAS HERE (1962), LONELYHEART 4122 (1967), CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME (1968), THE FLAXBOROUGH CRAB (1968)
• Truman Capote, IN COLD BLOOD (1966)
• John Le Carre, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1963)
• Robert Van Gulin, THE CHINESE BELL MURDERS (1958)
• Friedrich Glauser, THUMBPRINT (1936)
• Fergus Hume, THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB (1886)

I am looking forward to some other recommendations