ReaderWriterVille

I’m still woefully behind on my 20 Books of Summer reading, but I managed another Harlequin TBR review which counted, as well as a mystery from the library which didn’t. They were a nice break from the Booker longlist, which while rewarding can get kind of grim.

A Regency Invitation to the House Party of the Season by Nicola Cornick, Joanna Mailand, and Elizabeth Rolls

I was in the mood for another Regency trad and I pulled this anthology out of the virtual stack. I have at least one Rolls full-length novel there as well, but while I’ve always meant to read her I haven’t done so yet. An anthology with one sure bet (Cornick) and two new authors seemed like a good strategy. Unlike the old holiday anthologies, these stories are all intertwined. The setting is, as the title tells you, a house party at an estate, and each story focuses on a different couple with all the other characters recurring across their individual storylines. Cornick’s opening story features a couple whose marriage is being arranged because the hero needs a fortune and the heroine has one. They don’t expect to like each other but of course they do. I preferred the hero to the heroine (she was a bit ditzy and overly naive at times), but Cornick does a very good job of setting the stage and introducing the cast.

The second story, by Maitland, features a young woman who has disguised herself as an abigail in order to look for her missing brother. She meets the hero, who is himself hiding out to avoid being arrested (for something he didn’t do, naturally). Their story deepens the larger story arc. They’re an enjoyable couple, although the maid-masquerade required massive suspensions of disbelief. We also get more of the great-aunt-Gorgon who was announced in the first story, and she’s the real star of this anthology. She plays a major role in the third installment, by Rolls, which uncovers the mystery of the host’s missing wife. She ran away as a newlywed, right before Waterloo, and society generally believes her husband had a hand in his disappearance. Needless to say, they’re wrong and he’s a more than upstanding hero. All three storylines are wrapped up neatly; I could see the wife coming in Maitland’s novella but that was OK, it was a mystery not a romance. I thoroughly enjoyed all three parts and look forward to the full-length Rolls I have (I don’t think I have any by Maitland in the TBR, but the library may be able to help me out). This counted as Harlequin TBR #466.

Malice by Keigo Higashino

And now for something completely different. I really liked the mystery by Higashino that I read a couple of months ago, so when Liz’s read of this popped up in my GR feed I borrowed it. It features the same detective, Kaga, as Newcomer, but it was written earlier. Luckily you don’t really have to read Kigashino’s series in order. This is more of a whydunit than a whodunit, although there were points at which I wasn’t sure if the murderer was really the murderer. An author is killed in his house and discovered by his wife and his good friend. Kaga quickly deduces who the killer is, but the motive is unclear, and the more Kaga investigates the reasons behind the murder the more confusing the case becomes. At various times it’s difficult to decide who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.

I enjoyed all the twists and turns, although Liz’s comment that she had trouble caring much for the characters is completely understandable to me. It’s not that they are just vehicles for ideas or plot twists, but everything seems to happen at a remove, probably because the story is told in flashback or dialogue, rather than the reader being able to watch the events unfold. It’s an interesting approach, and it creates the distance and suppressed emotional tone that I often find in Japanese novels (both genre and non-genre). The way the story and characters were finally wrapped up wasn’t what I was expecting, and I can see why Higashino is such a bestselling author in Japan. I definitely want to read more of his work.