Friday 30 December 2022
Unknown Ajax Part V
Unknown Ajax Part IV
Unknown Ajax Part III
Thursday 29 December 2022
Unknown Ajax Part II
Unknown Ajax Part I
Wednesday 28 December 2022
Charity Girl Part IV
Thursday 22 December 2022
Charity Girl Part III
Wednesday 21 December 2022
Charity Girl Part II
Charity Girl by Georgette Heyer
Tuesday 20 December 2022
Quiet Gentleman Part III SPoilers
Monday 19 December 2022
Quiet Gentleman Part II
Sunday 18 December 2022
Quiet Gentleman BY Georgette Heyer
Wednesday 14 December 2022
Beds and BLue Jeans
Tuesday 13 December 2022
Rough Music, a story on Amazon
Rough Music eBook : Sutton, Nadine: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
This is one of my works set in the American country and rock music world. Its not a romance; its a story about two members of a country rock band, in the 1970s and 80s.. who are trying to move from the small time to the big time. Its about the compromises that they make along the way.. their love of their music.. and their friendships.. and the strain that touring and working hard puts on their marriages....and the ups and downs of travelling with a band, in the old days. Its based on what I know of the bands back then when I was a kid, and how they worked very hard and gave a lot to their fans... and partied hard. I hope that people can enjoy a story which does not have a schmaltzy happy ending.
Sunday 11 December 2022
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie was a contemporary of Dorothy Sayers and like her a detective fiction writer. She was born to a well to do middle class family in 1890. She studied at home and was a voracious reader. Her father died when she was a child and the family were left not so well off, but Agatha did come out and do the social season, and fell in love with Archie Christie, just before the outbreak of the War. He joined the army and they got married. During the war, she did voluntary work learning to be a dispenser in a hospital, so she acquired a knowledge of medicines and poisons.
This knowledge was useful to her, when she started to write, which she had always wanted to do. Her husband came out of the army at the end of the war and went into business, and Agatha started to write her novels. She created Hercule Poirot, a Belgian refugee who became her first detective. During the war, a lot of Belgians had come to Britain to escape the German invasion.
Her novels sold well and she was a busy worker. Unlike Sayers who only wrote 11 detective novels, Christie produced many novels in this genre and created more than 1 detective, like Miss Marple, a middle aged spinster. Sayers wanted to write more serious novels and also went into writing plays, mainly on religious themes. However Christie stuck to the one genre, for the most part and her works tend to be pure mystery rather than serious novels.
In the 1920s, Agatha's marriage to Archie Christie became unhappy. He had a mistress and wanted a divorce. Agatha disappeared for 11 days, causing a newspaper furore, her car was found abandoned and she had vanished. She was found staying at a hotel under the name of her husband's mistress. She seems to have had a breakdown, but some people thought it was a publicity stunt. Afterwards, she and Archie divorced and Agatha continued with her writing career. She later remarried to an archaeologist, and took a great interest in his work.
She was such a prolific writer and her works still sell and have been made into TV and films, with many different actors playing Poirot and Miss Marple. Sayers, by contrast, was not keen on her works being filmed, and even now, there have only been a handful of TV adaptations.
Thursday 8 December 2022
Strong Poison by Sayers
Strong Poison is the first book with Harriet Vane in it, and it reflects part of Sayers' own life. It is a murder mystery about arsenic poisoning. Harriet, like Sayers herself, is a Bloomsbury writer who writes murder mysteries, and like Sayers she falls in love with a young man.
Philip Boyes, her lover, is a poet and novelist, like Sayers' boyfriend John Cournous, and like John he tells her as John told Sayers, that he does not believe in marriage and does not want a conventional married life with children. Boyes pesters Harriet to live with him and she finally agrees, and moves in with him. Boyes like Cournous is pretentious, a good writer but someone who likes to show off his intellectual abiliites, and who resents Harriet for earning a living for both of them, though the money comes in handy.
Dorothy did not live with John Cournous, but she did have an intimate relationship with him while still hoping that he might marry her. She got tired of his ways, and broke off with him because, although she cared for him, she could not see any future in it. Then she learned that in America, he had married a woman who had children, and gone back on all his principles.
Harriet finds, after a year, that Boyes also goes back on his principles. He asks her to marry him and she is angry and upset, since she felt that he had been testing her love for him, trying to see if she would give in to him and abandon her principles for him. Harriet broke off their relationship and left him.
Then, Boyes is poisoned with arsenic, and it looks like Harriet, who has been writing a book on arsenic poisoning, might have killed him.
Sayers used her backstory with Cournous to provide a set up for her murder mystery, and the novel starts with Harriet being tried for his murder.
Murder stories in Sayers' time were not expected to be fully accurate. The story would centre around a murder by some esoteric method that was not likely to be used in real life. In Strong Poison, the murder is poisoning by arsenic, but the killer ate the same food as the victim. Peter then learn that its possible to build up an immunity to arsenic by eating a bit of it every day and that Norman Urquhart, the murderer had done this, and then shared an omelette with his cousin, the victim.
Sayers was conscientious about trying to find out scientific information for the methods of murder she used, though she did not always get it right as she was not a scientist.
Saturday 3 December 2022
Reluctant Widow Part II
The discussion is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Carlyon's youngest brother Nicky, who is at Oxford. He had been sent down for a prank, and on his way, he met Eustace in an inn.. Eustace was drunk and made unkind remarks about Carlyon, which infuriated the young man. They got into a fight, Eustace tried to attack Nicky with a knife and ended up stabbed himself.
Nicky, shocked and scared, tells his brother that their cousin is dying. Edward Carlyon tells Elinor, that if she comes with him to the inn she and Eustace could be married, and it would save him from having to inherit his estate. Elinor is in a state of shock and agrees. She and Eustace are married, by special licence and Edward sends her back to the house, Highnoons, while he helps his cousin to make his will, and leave his property to Elinor.
The following morning, she wakes up to find she is a widow, and owner of a badly run estate and a shabby house. She sets about getting it cleaned up, and hiring more servants. A couple of days later, she finds a man in one of the rooms, who tells her that he is a friend of Eustaces, and he had come in through a private door, to see his friend.
He is a French emigre, named Louis de Castres who had been brought up in England, and Elinor is highly suspicous of her late husband's conduct.. as it seems odd that he would walk into the house as he has done. The Carlyons wonder if possibly Louis is a French spy, and if Eustace has been selling information about Wellington's war plans to a Bonapartist. His uncle, Lord Bedlington, is an ADC to the Regent and has access to the War office.
Elinor is concerned about the danger to herself if she stays in the house until it is sold, with strange people coming in and out through secret passages, but the Carlyon family, particularly Edward are very cool about it. Eventually, it emerges that Lord Bedlington has been selling information, as he is not very bright and not very well off... Francis, his dandified son, persuades him to retire from his job with the Regent and sell off the family mansion..
Edward proposes to Elinor, who although she finds him exasperating has fallen in love with him. She decides to sell off the estate as quickly as possible, and to marry Edward when her period of mourning is over.
The book has its fun moments, a lot of them related to Elinor's common sense reactions to the intrusion of spies and over large dogs into her house and her desire to concentrate on her housewifely duties.
Thursday 1 December 2022
Reluctant Widow
This is one of Heyer's more adventure style novels. It is set in the countryside, during the Napoleonic Wars.
Elinor Rochdale is a young woman of 26 who has lost her parents and has no money, so she has been working as a governess. She takes up an appointment with a lady, and when she arrives by Stage coach to start her new job, she finds a carriage has been sent for her. She travels to the house and finds that it is rather shabby, and that a man of about 30 seems to be in charge.
He tells her that her new charge is very difficult, and after a long conversation, she realises that she is at the wrong house. Lord Carlyon, who has welcomed her, thought that she was a woman who had been hired from an advertisement in the papers, to marry his wayward cousin, Eustace. Evidently the woman hired did not turn up.
Elinor is shaken to find that she's at a strange man's house, miles away from where her new employer is. She tells Lord Carlyon that her father lost his fortune and shot himself, leaving her almost penniless. Carlyon who has an estate nearby tells her that he is the eldest of a large family, and that he has always had the role of looking after his siblings. She adds that she ended up becoming a governess because her family treated her badly, as a poor relation, and she preferred to be independent, though the life of a governess is far from easy.
He tells her that if Eustace dies without a wife, his estate will pass to him, Carlyon, and he does not want the estate. He and his cousin dont get on, and Eustace has done his reputation harm, by accusing him of bad behaviour. He would rather not inherit the estate as it would look like he had deliberately schemed to get it.
Carlyon then suggests that as Elinor is alone in the world and badly off, she could marry Eustace, and become heir to his estate, and while the estate is almost worthless due to mismanagement, he would provide for her. Elinor refuses.