I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it but I think a visit to your GP might be in order.
It started to rain and a most rare and unusual thought entered my mind. Weed your books. I tried to ignore it, obviously. Usually this voice only occurs once every ten years after a Health and Safety incident. OK – let’s call that a big trip and I’m not talking safaris. Sometimes it can be brought on by the fact I can’t find a book I know I have because everything has gone TOO FAR. I stood up and went and looked at one of my bookcases. It was filled with crime.
It was a crime.
First my eye chanced to light on an author I am never going to give away: Kinky Friedman. Any man who titles a book Armadillos and Old Lace will remain on my bookshelves for ever. Then I seized all of Patricia Cornwell and all of Henning Mankell and marched them to the door. Why? Well, Patricia Cornwell irritated me with a book about a hairy man. I can’t remember which one now, and she got a bit grandiose or maybe that was Scarpetta and I vowed I’d never read another. Or maybe I just had ‘great room’ envy.
Don’t touch that drink!
Why Henning Mankell? I suppose because I just know I’m never going to re-read them and those books are fat. I liked the Swedish TV series and the Kenneth Branagh one but re-reading is just not going to happen.
I decided to keep all of Ian Rankin and all of the following: George Pelecanos, Robert Parker, Lawrence Block, Elmore Leonard, Dominique Manotti, Sara Paretsky, Ed McBain, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Jake Arnott, C.J.Sansom, Donna Leon, PD James, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Val McDermid’s Kate Brannigan and Lindsay Gordon series.
What’s with the eyeballs!
I know Val’s other series is the big seller but I never got beyond a torture scene at the beginning of The Mermaids Singing which I have already disposed of. Wimp, you might say, Yes, I would reply. Torture scenes are not really my thing. Having said that I once wrote one in one of my own books, Bloodless Shadow, but I did it with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears and singing la-la-la-la, so I’m not sure it counts.
There are a few there I’d forgotten about – Pernille Rygg for example. A Norwegian writer who wrote The Butterfly Effect and The Golden Section. I enjoyed those.
There are some that have such cool titles I’ve never dared read them: Ken Bruen’s Rilke on Black for example. I just feel I’m going to have to start drinking whiskey and turn into Nick Cave before I crack the spine of that one. Or at least get a hair cut like Tilda Swinton.
I’m sorry but murder can’t be that easy if it involves a spider the size of a canary.
The author I’ve got most of is Ed McBain (21) but Christie (18) Robert Parker (17) and Allingham (17) are close on his heels. The Fontana 3/6 versions of Christie are my favourites because of their camp schlocky covers, that’s why they are liberally scattered through this post. I love the covers in the same way I love the pictures in Ladybird books and Janet and John books. The images must have hit my visual cortex at about the same time and therefore fill me with drooling nostalgia. It’s probably why I became a crime writer.
So now you know if you want to stay on my shelves
- don’t irritate me
- don’t solve your crimes with hairy men
- don’t have torture scenes
- do have a camp/kitsch cover, preferably from the 60s
- do have a good title
- do be published by Fontana for 3/6
- Oh, and make me laugh
And then you’ll be mine for ever. Sorry, that last bit sounds a bit sinister.
Honey, I know you said it had 5* reviews on TripAdvisor but have you seen the doorman?
Finally, I’ll end on my all-time favourite Agatha cover. Can you get camper than a violet cream, held elegantly against a non-sweating palm, a bullet (yes, that’s a bullet not a cigarette) and that nail varnish … a cover to die for!
“Death and mystery among the muffins (could be Caffè Nero) and the best Indian tea … set in a hotel patronised by dowagers and bishops … Miss Marple knits and listens (that’s me crouched over a cappuccino with the crochet).”
The book is dedicated to:
“Harry Smith because I appreciate the scientific way he reads my books.”
I wonder if Agatha would appreciate the scientific methods I use to weed my books?
How do you weed yours? Or don’t you?
victoria blake 
I bet those are the very same Agatha Christies that you used to lend me when we were at school! (Although I imagine the muffins referred to in the blurb are the English type)
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Hi Virginia, thanks for commenting. I’d forgotten that. I hope you enjoyed them! They were my Mum’s. She always had a stack of them next to the bed. And like you say those muffins are not of the blueberry variety that’s for sure. There’s rather a good description at the beginning of Betram’s Hotel about the different breakfast requirements of the American and the English guests. Miss Marple has two poached eggs!
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Great post Vicky and those covers are fantastic, I feel that I should run out to a second hand book shop and try to find some! I do weed my books very occasionally – I’ve been feeling a weed coming on recently – but I find it very difficult to let them go…
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Thanks Andrea – they’re great, aren’t they. I’ve had At Bertram’s Hotel on my shelves for years but never noticed the violet cream before! I aspire to having the kind of palm that can hold a violet cream in it without it turning into sticky mush. Good luck in hunting for those Fontana 3/6s!
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