The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen

Author: Elizabeth Bowen

Publisher: Vintage Books

First published:1948

Setting: London, UK
Read in December 2013

My Rating ★★★  2.8

My Waterstones Review

Wartime London, September 1942, is used as the backdrop for this love affair between Stella and Robert. Stella has been previously married and has a son, Roderick, who has just joined the army and is waiting for action. Robert is suspected of collusion with the enemy and Harrison a supposed government agent is manipulating Stella, certainly for personal gain, but his intentions may not be entirely official. The theme that runs through this book is who can you trust, if anyone, when the country is on the brink of invasion. 

The book starts and finishes with a secondary character, Louie, who has lost her parents in a bombing raid, her husband Tom is in action, she is alone making attempts to meet people and befriends Connie who shares the same boarding house. Louie's story is only loosely connected through random events firstly with Harrison and then later with Stella. The ordinary lives of Louie and Connie and many others like them are trapped by the war, no future can be planned. In contrast the relative wealth and beauty of Stella gives her choices, albeit difficult ones, with a potential for escape to neutral Ireland where her son will inherit an Irish estate.

This book can be enjoyed and detested, many may not complete it. There is more to this book than first appears and it is best read in a quiet environment, it is not suited to bedtime reading at the end of a hard day's work. The themes, motifs and character parallels behind The Heat of the Day may not be apparent on first reading.

The Hustler - Walter Tevis

Author: Walter Tevis

Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics

First published:1959

Setting: Chicago, USA
Read in September 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.2

My Waterstones Review

The rumour about 'Fast Eddie' Felsen taking the Texaco Kid, Varges, the man who invented one-pocket pool, and all-comers out West precedes him, but he will never take a top Chicago hustler like Minnesota Fats. 'Fast Eddie' is hustling his way across country with sidekick Charlie, accumulating a stake sufficient to take on the legend and he will soon arrive at Bennington's pool hall.

Walter Tevis's debut book was quickly made into a hit movie in 1961 starring Paul Newman, but it was the sequel which Tevis wrote 25 years later and published in 1984, 'The Color of Money' which won Paul an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. This was Walter Tevis's last book as he died shortly afterwards from lung cancer.

At just over 200 pages this is a short book, but not short on quality. To be good at pool you need intelligence, confidence and the ability to concentrate, but it takes more to excel and to be the best, you need stamina, nerves of steel and you must read and face down your opponent and choose the right time to increase the stakes. This is an art form, when mastered pool is beautiful.

It takes more than a misspent youth to beat a person like Minnesota Fats. As 'Fast Eddie' discovers his character, so do we. He falls out with Charlie and in the early morning at a bus station coffee bar meets Sarah, a student of alcohol. But what Eddie needs is advice, a manager, a backer, perhaps a person like Bert a professional poker player, but Bert plays for high stakes, perhaps more than Eddie is willing to accept.

Hangover Square - Patrick Hamilton

Author: Patrick Hamilton

Publisher: Penguin Classics

First published:1941

Setting: Earls Court, London, UK
Read in August 2013

My Rating ★★★★  3.8

My Waterstones Review

Click! A shutter has fallen noiselessly in the head of George Harvey Bone, he is not physically deaf, but has fallen into an eerie world like a talkie film where the sound track has failed. Suddenly he remembers what he has to do, he has to kill Netta, but ..why? George Harvey Bone is suffering from schizophrenia.

It is Christmas 1938 and George is crazily in love with Netta Longdon, there is nothing more that he wants than to spirit Netta away to the country as his wife. But Netta is part of a gang that wanders the pubs of Earls Court looking for laughs, drinking and smoking and feeling lousy in the mornings. And then there is Mickey and Peter, 'Taking a little stroll around Hangover Square' is Mickey's crack, and Peter, he is always around at Netta's flat in the boarding-house, always appraising, remembering, bullying. 

It is six years since Patrick has written his trilogy called Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky set around The Midnight Bell pub. Here, his characters are firmly in a rut with not much sense of optimism, even the impending war, a filthy idea, is seen by George as a possible way out. But then Patrick was addicted to alcohol and although he was from a privileged background he was drawn to the darker side of ordinary life and lived in Earls Court himself. Common in Patrick's writing are the comic turns, but ultimately this is a story of loneliness and homelessness of young people who without a job have little purpose in life other than to purchase the hangover.

The subtitle of this book, considered as one of Hamilton's best is 'A story of darkest Earl's Court'!

Norwegian by Night - Derek B Miller

Author: Derek B Miller

Publisher: Faber and Faber

First published: 2013

Setting: Oslo, Norway
Read in October 2013

My Rating ★★★★  3.9

My Waterstones Review

An excellent and well written debut novel with an unfamiliar hero, an eighty-two year old Sheldon Horowitz, recently widowed and now living in the downstairs apartment of his grand-daughter (Rhea) and husband (Lars) in Oslo. Alone, Sheldon hears a violent argument, rescues a young woman and small boy of 7 or 8 and is then witness to her murder. Sheldon and the boy with bright blue Paddington Bear Wellington Boots escape into the woods and now the pursuit is on, who will find them first, the Balkan Gang, Rhea and Lars, or the police who will soon find the body and be alerted to their disappearance?

Sheldon is an ex-Marine who can't forget the past, well at least not those that he can remember, and is haunted by the loss of his son who followed in his footsteps and to his death in Vietnam. He is in a foreign land, can't speak Norwegian and cannot communicate with the boy who he has now named Paul. This is a cat and mouse chase across Norway with only Sheldon's wits, memories and training to fall back on. A sophisticated and original storyline.

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene

Author: Graham Greene

Publisher: Vintage Books

First published:1951

Setting: London, UK
Read in October 2013

My Rating ★★★★★  4.5

My Waterstones Review

On a wet January evening in 1946 Maurice Bendrix, an author, has a chance meeting with Henry Miles a senior civil servant with the Ministry of Pensions and later Home Security. He hates Henry, and his wife Sarah, despite a tempestuous affair which started two years earlier and was suddenly ended by Sarah. But Henry has a problem and is looking for a friend, he suspects Sarah of having an affair.

There are parallels here between Graham and his affair with Lady Catherine Walston. It is a short story, just 160 pages long, of obsession and jealousy, love and hate, and Catholicism. It spawned two films (1955 and 1999) and an opera. But the depth of love was unknown until 2008 when two small volumes of love poems, After Two Years, and For Christmas, were put up for sale, six poems written in Graham Greene's own hand. Telegraph article by Chris Hastings

The Accidental Apprentice - Vikas Swarup

Author: Vikas Swarup

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

First published: 2013

Setting: Delhi, India
Read in October 2013

My Rating ★★★  3.4

My Waterstones Review

From the author of Q&A which became the hit film Slumdog Millionaire, winning eight Academy Awards in 2009, we have a third book which is perhaps destined to also become a film. Sapna Sinha is an ordinary salesgirl in an electronics shop, a graduate without an MBA. In a temple she meets Vinay Mohan Acharya, the owner industrialist of a conglomerate worth ten billion dollars. Mr Acharya is about to offer Sapna the chance to become the CEO of his empire and make herself immensely wealthy. 

Vikas certainly comes to the point quickly, and we are only on page four, we will soon find that Mr Acharya has satisfied Sapna that he and his offer are genuine as long as she passes seven life tests designed to gauge her mettle and potential to be the CEO. Vikas also gives a clue to the end or near end of the story, the Prologue starts with making the reader aware that six months later Sapna will find herself stuck in Jail facing the death penalty. But what sort of game is Mr Acharya really playing?

Written by a man in the first person voice of a young woman, and successfully so, this is a fast paced easy reading book suitable for a long journey or holiday. It is neatly sectioned into the seven tests with a prologue and epilogue and from this point of view could be serialized. From the thickness of the book at just over 400 pages we can guess Sapna is unlikely to fail the first six tests and something dramatic has been signposted for the end, consequently it feels predictable, nevertheless we do get a glimpse of bustling Delhi and rural India

Berlin Noir - Philip Kerr

Author: Philip Kerr

Publisher: Penguin Books

First published:1989 - 1991

Setting: Berlin, Germany and Vienna, Austria
Read in October 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.0

My Waterstones Review

The first three books featuring Philip Kerr's sardonic detective Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther was brought together as an omnibus edition in 1993 under the title of Berlin Noir.

March Violets

In the run-up to Berlin's 1936 summer Olympics Bernie is working as a private investigator and is engaged by a steel millionaire Herr Doktor Hermann Six to investigate the disappearance of jewels and a diamond necklace of over 100 carets; 3 nights before his daughter Grete and husband Paul Pfarr had been murdered, shot, the safe opened and house set alight.

Bernie is a single 38 year old ex-policeman, decorated with an Iron Cross second class, but life outside of the Nazi regime is hazardous and missing persons aren't always found at the morgue. Philip builds a convincing picture of Berlin at this time, seedy and violent, and of our hero a likeable character with featured face, presumably attractive to women, and who drinks and smokes in abundance.

The Pale Criminal

In the prelude to the second world war with Europe hanging on to peace Bernie is hired by a rich widow on a case of blackmail. But there is a serial killer on the streets and Bernie's infamous arrest of Gormann the Strangler 10 years previously will return him to Kripo, the Berlin criminal police, an uncomfortable position for a non-Nazi on a high profile case.

A German Requiem

The slightly longer third book takes us to post war Vienna and to the winter of 1947, this is post Nuremberg trials. Hired by a Russian colonel to investigate the circumstances behind a murder that has placed an ex-Kripo colleague, Emil Becker, in jail awaiting trial, Bernie finds a Cold War Vienna a world apart from his ravaged home town of Berlin. The murder of an American Nazi hunter does not have the Becker hallmark, a prolific black-marketer. Communism is the new enemy and unsavoury alliances are being built, who should Bernie trust and will he unravel the mystery in time to save Becker?

It will be another 16 years before Philip Kerr resurrects Bernie for his fans, another 6 adventures have followed.

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in co
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#5JRXRhlAXGH8PGIK.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#5JRXRhlAXGH8PGIK.99

Driving Over Lemons - Chris Stewart

Author: Chris Stewart

Publisher:  Sort of Books

First published:1999

Setting: Andalucía, Spain
Read in November 2013

My Rating ★★★  3.2

My Waterstones Review

The first of a trilogy; Chris in search of a new life in southern Spain discovers a mountain farm in the Sierra Nevada (Alpujarras region) standing on a ridge vulnerable to the winds of two great rivers and mountain chains. Swept away by its position, the Sussex sheep shearer and original drummer of Genesis, seals the purchase with a cash transaction and handshake, then excitedly phones his wife Ana, in England, to explain where he has sunk their £25K of savings.

The full title of this travel book is Driving Over Lemons, An Optimist in Andalucía - there is no doubt that Chris was feeling optimistic on that day. As a supposed reconnaissance trip Chris must have overstepped the mark. On the positive side we have a valley studded with orange, lemon, olive, blossoming almonds and an old pomegranate tree; for the negative, a bathroom with bidet where the nearest source of water is a trickling hose pipe of poisonous water 20 meters lower than the house, an ineffective solar panel that would be useless in winter, a farm built on the wrong side of a river, and the incumbent owner Romero who has given little thought to leaving. As Chris later surveys the farm, El Valero, from all angles, it occurs to him that the two rivers pouring into a wide valley with a narrow gorge at its mouth would be a natural spot for a reservoir.

But Chris and Ana do change their lives and become a part of Spanish life engaging with neighbors, local farmers and the wider communities. This first book would be essential reading for anyone thinking of setting-up as a farmer or taking on a smallholding in another country where the language and cultural differences will be obstacles to overcome. Equally, the expat communities or tourists to the provinces of Granada, Almería and Málaga would find Driving Over Lemons a complementary diversion and discovery of the real Spain, a little more than an hour from the Autovia A-7.

You can catch up with Chris and Ana at El Valero their online site.

Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky - Patrick Hamilton

Author: Patrick Hamilton

Publisher: Vintage Books

First published: 1935

Setting: London, UK
Read in November 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.0

My Waterstones Review

This is a trilogy of novels written over a 5 year period between 1929 and 1934 under the backdrop of The Great Depression and initially published separately. These are the stories of three principal characters who stem from a pub in the Euston Road which is the title of the first book.

The Midnight Bell

Bob's story is that of a young bar waiter and is semi-autobiographical. Patrick's descriptive style transports you back in time and places you as an anonymous observer inside The Midnight Bell. Jenny, a prostitute, the character in The Siege of Pleasure, enters with her friend under the watchful eye of Ella, the barmaid, and main character in The Plains of Cement. Ella is secretly in love with Bob, but in The Midnight Bell it is the improbable love story of Bob and the beautiful Jenny that is told. Bob is a warm and too trusting character with a growing mission to turn Jenny, but this is not love as we would recognise today, but an infatuation that renders Bob blind to the deceit he is being subjected to. But Jenny must earn her living, she must survive and pay her bills, is it really a game she is playing with Bob?

The Siege of Pleasure

Jenny's story is cast as a servant to two old ladies and an aged brother, a former doctor in Patrick's home town of Chiswick who quickly becomes the ladies Treasure. Her moral story is about the evils of port, flash young gentleman and the lure of a life beyond her station. The shortest of the trilogy at little more than a hundred pages we might perhaps have guessed her destiny but there is always the hope that she will be saved along the way.

The Plains of Cement

Patrick describes Ella as having a good figure, neatly but plainly dressed with hair 'in the fashion', a plain girl and disinherited from the privileges and delights of other girls and women. Her 28 years has been a difficult life, full of ups and downs, when in walks the affluent and ridiculous Mr Ernest Eccles from Pimlico, 20 years her senior, with new hat, visiting card and an eye for the barmaid of The Midnight Bell. It is early Autumn and with Bob acting mysterious Ella succumbs to a trip to the theatre with Mr Eccles. The ever optimist Ella's moon is on the rise and there may be multiple opportunities to change her life, but as Christmas approaches will Bob miss his chance?


This trilogy is a study of social history, of ordinary lives pitched between the two world wars with little but survival to look forward to. It is a beautifully written book with plenty of comic turns, and likely accurate to the bleak atmosphere of those times.

The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); The Plains of Cement (1934); a trilogy entitled Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935);
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000013827,00.html#OGY3PqgzzQgZE4xV.99

The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); The Plains of Cement (1934); a trilogy entitled Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935);
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000013827,00.html#OGY3PqgzzQgZE4xV.99

The Midnight Bell (1929); The Siege of Pleasure (1932); The Plains of Cement (1934); a trilogy entitled Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935);
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000013827,00.html#OGY3PqgzzQgZE4xV.99

Every Contact Leaves A Trace - Elanor Dymott

Author: Elanor Dymott

Publisher: Vintage Books

First published: 2013

Setting: Worcester College, Oxford, UK
Read in November 2013

My Rating ★★★★  3.8

My Waterstones Review

Another murder in an Oxford college but there is no Morse or Lewis on scene. The love story between Alex and Rachel is deep but short lived, when returning to Worcester College to dine at high table Rachel is brutally murdered.

This last act occurs early in the book and in a bereft and melancholic state Alex starts to unravel the mystery of why Rachel became a victim and at whose hands. His lawyer training is called upon as the pieces are pulled together to complete the picture, but the perfect wife has a history and ultimately there is a moral dimension that will unfold.

Elanor Dymott provides a glimpse of a clue and later returns to provide colour and I suspect on second reading these clues will be more apparent. For a first novel Elanor should be commended. This is a deeply constructed thriller with many human emotions on show, jealousy, revenge, grief and deep love. There are few characters but their relationships are entwined and in some cases are shown to be a bit obsessive bordering on the creepy. As the narration concludes one of the main protagonists spins a yarn which seems truthful but how much of it has been fabricated, what are the motives behind the choices made in how the story has been told?