With Pauline Moncrieff, The Book Circle
The latest gathering of The Book Circle was held on Wednesday, 27 August and a variety of books were shared.
Fiction
March - Geraldine Brooks
This is based on the life of the father in the novel Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, imagining his personal life after going off to war.
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It gives a harrowing account of March’s service in the American civil war, his attempts to educate former slaves, and flashbacks to the formative influences leading to his informal education, conversion to Unitarianism and his firm rejection of slavery.
Meanwhile, his family is left at home, living in genteel poverty, after he has donated his whole fortune to the firebrand abolitionist John Brown.
An interesting character study of a flawed man with an all-consuming mission.
A trilogy by Margaret Hickey, featuring Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti:
Cutters End
A mysterious death in 1989 in the South Australian outback town of Cutters End leads to a shocking murder investigation 32 years later.
In July, 2021, Ariti is seconded to this recently reopened case, to which he has a personal connection.
A hitchhiker was found dead in the scrub off the Stuart Highway, and although the verdict then was ‘accidental death’, many people are convinced it was murder.
Mark has no success interviewing witnesses in the old case files, so travels to Cutters End, where he soon discovers this death isn’t the only unsolved case hanging over the town.
Stone Town
In the faded gold-rush town of Blackwood three teenagers stumble upon a body in dense bushland.
Senior Sergeant Ariti was looking forward to a quiet posting in his old home town, but now must investigate this murder.
The victim is Aidan Sleeth, a controversial local property developer with many enemies.
At the same time, the entire nation is absorbed in the mystery disappearance of Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitsted, who had been investigating connections of a notorious crime boss when she vanished.
Mark finds himself involved in this case also.
Broken Bay
This is set along the spectacular South Australian Limestone Coast.
Ariti has taken a few days’ holiday in Broken Bay at precisely the wrong time.
The town is now the scene of a terrible diving tragedy.
A diver, Mya Rennick, has drowned while exploring a local sinkhole.
When the body is recovered, this leads to an investigation of a mysterious disappearance 20 years before.
Suddenly Mark is diving deep into the town’s history and the bitter rivalry between two local families, the Doyles and the Sinclairs.
Then a former actress is murdered in the Sinclairs’ old home, and Mark wonders which is the more dangerous - Broken Bay’s hidden subterranean world or the secretive town above it.
My Man Jeeves - P G Wodehouse (audio on Borrowbox)
An entertaining audio series about an upper-class twit in the 1920s, and his competent and unflappable valet, Jeeves.
The books may still be available in local op shops.
The Unquiet Grave - Dervla McTiernan
The fourth of a series featuring Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly.
Cormac in the previous book, The Good Turn, had dealt with a series of cases involving police corruption.
Cormac became a whistle blower and as such now finds himself in this new book, still as a Detective Sergeant, still based in Galway (West coast of Ireland) and not liked by some of his colleagues.
In this book Cormac is confronted with three murders all seeming related and all connected to the boglands.
But are they?
McTiernan provides some interesting history about boglands and the history of bodies that have been found over thousands of years.
Some murdered, some death by accident and some ritual torture and sacrifice.
To add to Cormac’s problems his ex-partner Emma has turned up asking for Cormac’s assistance.
Her now husband, Finn has gone missing in Paris.
This is out of character for Finn and Emma is pregnant with their first child.
So, three murders (maybe related maybe not) and a missing Finn in another country.
Can anything else complicate Cormac’s life?
Well, yes it can.
Cormac has been offered a long-waited promotion but not in Galway.
It is as Head of Complaints (Internal Affairs).
Cormac is not sure he wants to get his colleagues any further offside and is also not sure he wants to step away from frontline policing or leave Galway.
To add to his woes his friend and colleague, Peter Fisher tells him he is going to resign from the Garda and move to Australia with his girlfriend.
Cormac had hoped, if he took the promotion, that he could get Peter promoted to his second in charge, and move him to complaints.
So, what happens?
Read the book and find out! It is a gripping tale from a great story teller.
Under Occupation - Alan Furst
Alan Furst is an American author of historical spy novels.
He spent some of his life living in France.
In 1942 the forces of German occupation prevail upon Paris.
The dreaded Gestapo are everywhere ready to arrest innocent citizens for imagined or minor offences.
Curfew is a way of life.
There were those who sided with the French Vichy headed by Nazi collaborator Phillipe Petain and those who treated the Germans with utter contempt and disdain.Meanwhile the French resistance is working undercover to cause mayhem with the Nazi stronghold and defeat the evil intent of Adolf Hitler.
The reader is given an insight into the everyday lives of the French under Nazi occupation.
Gestapo living in homes once owned by wealthy citizens including Jews.
Paris becomes the holiday mecca for the Gestapo and German armed forces.
They populated the streets of Paris enjoying wining, dining and nightclub entertainment.
Paul Ricard, a novelist living a quiet life in Paris, strolling home one evening, observes a man fleeing the Gestapo.
He goes to assist the escapee, but before the man takes his last breath, he hands Paul a document.
The contents of this document plummet Paul into a dangerous, life-threatening direction in the world of espionage.
The French Resistance along with MI6 become involved with his movements, including setting up safe houses for spies en route to another operation or escaping over the Pyrenees to Spain.
One in particular, a mysterious woman and professional spy assists Paul in undercover operations as he travels further afield in Europe to gather crucial information for MI6.
His courageous actions portray sheer determination and nerves of steel as he plays a cat and mouse game with the Gestapo.
Initially a reluctant recruit, will Paul now continue his life as spy?
A Hero In France - Alan Furst
Spring 1941, Britain is losing the war, Paris is occupied by Nazis, dark and silent at night.
But when the clouds pass, and moonlight floods the city, a resistance leader called Mathieu steps out to begin his work.
The fighters of the French Resistance will not give up.
These courageous men and women, young and old, aristocrats and night club owners, teachers and students, help downed British airmen reach the border with Spain.
They risk everything to open Europe’s sealed doors and lead Allied Fighters to freedom.
But then Mathieu and his team face a new threat from the Reich.
Mathieu lives on the edge, ever alert, always looking over his shoulder, wary of strangers and being followed.
He is under pressure all the time.
Nothing can be compromised, himself, his resistance comrades, safe houses, escape channels, British agents, and anyone loyal to France.
One of his greatest fears is that French traitors will inform the Gestapo about resistance fighters.
When discovered these traitors are tracked and killed.
It sends a very strong message to others.
‘Do it at your peril because soon, mon ami , you will be dead’.
Finally, The war is over, Mathieu can stand down and begin to regain his former life.
But he will always be a true hero of France.
Non-fiction
The Last Tour - Ann Curthoys
An account of Paul and Eslanda Robeson’s visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1960, and his performance at the Sydney Opera House, the first concert ever to be performed there, before the building was completed.
An American Childhood - Annie Dillard
Autobiography, describing a childhood in the 1950s and 1960s.
All Over Creation - Ruth Ozeki
An account of agribusiness, activism and community in the USA.
Encounters With Animals - Gerald Durrell
Essays by Durrell on his adventures in tropical jungles observing wild animals.
