Sleep No More by P.D. James

I usually have a problem with short stories. The problem is that they are short! All too often I am just getting into the story when suddenly they’re done and I’m sitting there going, but, but, but I’m not ready to leave yet.

Having said that Sleep No More by P.D. James is a little toothsome chocolate box of the best bitter chocolate you could hope for as a present. It’s no coincidence that there are chocolates on the book cover, or at least there are in my version.

The book is subtitled ‘six murderous tales’, and that kind of sums things up. As the back cover says, “When it comes to crime, it’s not always a question of ‘who dunnit?’ Sometimes there’s more mystery in the why or the how.” It is this variation – the different flavours and different approaches to each murderous tale that makes this little collection work so well. For example, in some cases we know the murderer straight away, and even the why, but what is fascinating is the aftermath. And of course sometimes there’s something incredibly satisfying about the twist in the tale.

All of the short stories in this collection are deceptively simple. I think it’s the art of a good crime writer to make things seem effortless so you don’t notice their slights of hand. As someone who used to string words together for a living, pre-retirement, I wanted to dismantle all these stories and try to work out exactly how they were constructed and just it is that makes them go down so smoothly and yet taste so wonderfully bitter. But to try to deconstruct them would be to take away the magic, so I’ll just sit back and appreciate these delightful, twisty examples of a great writer offering up six very elegant examples of her craft.

Sleep No More by P. D. James was published in 2017 and my copy was published by Vintage Canada.

Comments

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

It’s true to say that whether you enjoy a book or not, or even whether you finish it, can often be as much about the mood you were in at the time as it is about the literary, or otherwise, merits of the book in question. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch has been sitting on my bookshelves since 2014 when we had a brief sojourn back to Blighty in an expensive experiment to prove that we’d rather be in Canada after all. Anyway, back to the book in question. It had been recommended by practically everyone I know back in the UK, and that was enough for me to seek it out, and at the time I think it was also a way of connecting back with the UK after years away because Rivers of London is by its nature a very British book. With that in mind and given that our attempt to fit back into British life was not altogether a success, in retrospect it’s perhaps no surprise that I didn’t get on with the book. I mean, I really didn’t get on with it. I started it, but while it was a perfectly ok...

Short hiatus

I’ve decided to put my blog on hiatus for a couple of months. It was always meant to add some fun and thoughtfulness to my reading, but I’ve been finding lately that it’s actually been getting in the way because I’ve noticed that I’ve been reading with an eye on ‘WHAT I’M GOING TO SAY…’ rather than just reading for enjoyment and then deciding what I think after I’m finished. Recently, this has been making me feel like I’m planning a self-inflicted book report for school rather than my general rambling thoughts about a book. I know a lot of this is related to general COVID grumpiness – I’m reading a lot because there is very little else to do and instead of allowing a book to take me on a journey, I’m finding myself stuck in the present because I’m taking notes for what I’m going to say in my comments. So much is out of our control at the moment, but reading and thinking about reading in the time of COVID is within my control because this is my blog. To this end I’m going t...

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

I’ll start by saying unequivocally that The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett is a total joy to read from start to finish. There, that’s my review… Okay, let’s rewind and dismantle that statement a bit, as I should probably say why I feel like that. The Uncommon Reader of the title is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and in this small, but beautifully formed novella (only 120 pages) Alan Bennett imagines that the Queen comes across a small mobile library on the grounds of Buckingham Palace one day while she’s out with her corgis. Always a stickler for etiquette, she borrows a book to be polite, and makes the acquaintance of a pretty unprepossessing kitchen boy called Norman. From such small beginnings, great national events are built. After a hesitant start the Queen begins to relish her forays into literature, aided and abetted by the redoutable Norman who is elevated to a position as a page, much to the chagrin of her private secretary Sir Kevin, a New Zealander of whom ...

Bargain Books and Medicine Chests

Search This Blog