What I’ve Been Reading This Month – February 2024

Well, this month I did something I had never done before. I started reading a book on Kindle which I had borrowed from the library, and then bought it in hardback! If you are wondering about this unexpected extravagance, it all comes down to photographs. Mensun Bound’s ‘The Ship Beneath The Ice’ is his account of searching for the Endurance in Antarctica. One of the drawbacks of borrowing Kindle books from the library, is that they often don’t have photographs. I once read a biography of the legendary Hattie Jacques and apart from the front cover, there wasn’t a single photo of her, which was unbelievable for such a glamorous and flamboyant personality. Sometimes books need more than just words.

Anyway, back to ‘The Ship Beneath The Ice.’ The author is a marine archaeologist and was Director of Operations for two expeditions to the Weddell Sea, looking for Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance which had been trapped in ice and sunk in 1915. Amazingly, the crew all survived but the exact whereabouts of the ship was unknown. I was absolutely fascinated by Bound’s two expeditions, and the utter despondency and then elation he and the crew felt as they searched the frozen sea. The book is in diary form and comprises the author’s own diaries and blogs together with diaries kept by Ernest Shackleton and his crew.

This is a chunky book and I’m still happily ploughing my way through it, but two things stand out for me. Shackleton’s expedition set out in 1914 and the Endurance was finally abandoned in October 1915. The first expedition to find the ship was in 2019 but the difference in technology is truly startling. The Endeavor was a three masted sailing ship, they used a sextant and the stars to navigate and took dogs and a ship’s cat with them. In contrast, the SA Agulhas II carried a bewildering array of equipment including an Autonomous Water Vehicle which could dive to a depth of 6,000 metres, although from the photograph it looked like a hefty, orange bomb! It also makes Shackleton’s feat even more amazing when you consider how primitive his vessel and equipment were by our standards, yet he and the crew survived to tell their experiences.

The author is a passionate environmentalist and he described the beauty of Antarctica but soberly recorded the damage caused by global warming. In Shackleton’s time, the area teamed with birds, penguins and whales yet by 2019, ice fields have melted and most of the animals have disappeared. We hear a lot about climate change and global warming in the media but his descriptions of a changed world, really bought it home to me.

I try to read a wide range of books and as readers of this blog know, I do like a good crime novel. And if it can have a historical setting, all the better. ‘The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits’ by Alys Clare is the first book in the World’s End Bureau series and I settled down for an enjoyable few hours to read it. Set in Victorian London, it tells the story of Lily who sets up her own private detective agency, and recruits an assistant called Felix.

The story rattles along at a frantic pace with Lily and Felix investigating a clairvoyant who appears to be haunted by evil spirits, and an actress with a disreputable past who is engaged to a young and besotted aristocrat. Needless to say, by the end of the book all mysteries have been solved and wrongs are righted. Great stuff.

I always enjoy reading the first book in any series, as characters are often quite raw and still need to be fully developed. In this story, hints are made about the heroine’s past, details of which will no doubt be revealed in subsequent novels. There is an interesting sub-plot where prostitutes are murdered but their killings are ignored by the police. It even has an alcoholic journalist, Marmaduke Smithers who writes inflammatory articles about the plight of these women and how they are exploited and abused. I wasn’t sure whether the author was putting 21^st century beliefs into her story but there was a crusading journalist called W T Stead who campaigned against child prostitution in the 19^th century and as part of his investigation, arranged to purchase a thirteen-year-old girl, supposedly for sex. He actually went to prison for this, not for buying the girl but for failing to get permission for her purchase from the girl’s father.

This all created massive public interest, not least because he published a series of articles called ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ in the Pall Mall Gazette, which he also edited. He placed the girl in the care of the Salvation Army but changed her name for the articles to Lily. The curious reader (me!) will now be wondering whether there is a connection to the author’s heroine or this is just a strange co-incidence. I shall have to read more of the books in the series to find out.

One series I have been reading over many years is M C Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth books. Set in a fictious coastal village somewhere in the far north of Scotland, it has a truly stupendous murder rate that must rival anything in the world’s most notorious crime hotspots. Hamish Macbeth is a police sergeant who enjoys his peaceful existence with his dog Lugs and wildcat Sonsie but he is always the one to solve the killings with a combination of luck and laid-back detective work.

I have just finished reading ‘Death of A Kingfisher’, which is one of the author’s later works. (It was published in 2012.) The bodies pile up in a most satisfactory manner until our hero solves the crimes. But unlike many other series, he never ages or matures. The first book was published in 1985 but Hamish hasn’t changed a bit since then. He is always in his thirties, lanky with flaming red hair and with a complicated love life, although he frequently gets his heart broken.

There is something oddly comforting when you get to know the characters in a series and know that all will be well at the end. ‘Death of A Kingfisher’ is not the best book I’ve read in the series but enjoyable nonetheless.

Well, that’s all from me this month.

Happy reading.

Sue