Tag: 1950's

Murder in Vienna

~ Jane ~ 16 Comments

I’m sticking with Crime this month, Detectives in December if you will! And my first detective is Lorac’s trusty Superintendent Robert Macdonald, off on holiday to visit an old friend, the psychiatrist Dr. Natzler in Vienna.

First published in 1956, the occupation is over and the Austrian State Treaty has just been signed, so that the 25 people aboard the British European Airways flight to Vienna: twelve British, eight Austrian, two American and three French, are flying into a free, independent country. Which makes for an exciting and quite cutting-edge setting; behind the well to do professionals like the Natzler’s there’s certainly a sense of gossip and espionage in the bars and any one who says they know someone called ‘Auntie’ is obviously not all they say they are.

But as Macdonald flies over England and across France he doesn’t want to think about occupying powers, or the turmoil of East-West powers, or of the many place names he remembers from his time in the 1914-1918 war; he’s on holiday and he’s going to relax. He looks about him and considers his fellow passengers. A self-consciously artistic young man, a young women neat as a daisy, a photographer, a silver haired civil-servant or two. They fly over the Carpathian Mountains and he thinks of the Mongol hordes galloping in; Vienna the gateway to central Europe, from the Romans to the Hapsburgs ‘anyone with a gift for intrigue can make hay in Vienna.’

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Dandelion Wine

~ Jane ~ 30 Comments

‘It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.’

Summer in Green Town, in the backwaters of Illinois, and the summer of 1928 seen through the eyes of twelve year old Douglas Spalding. It begins in June, putting up the porch swing and picking the dandelions to store in the cellar until it’s time to make the wine with his grandfather. It’s a summer that will bring new sneakers, that make him run faster and the disappointment of saying goodbye to his best friend. A summer when a neighbour builds a happiness machine; Mr Jonas, the magical junkman sits under his persimmon coloured umbrella, and Doug and his younger brother Tom save the carnival Tarot Witch from certain death. It’s a summer of warm twilights, freshly made ice cold lemonade, and fear of The Lonely One.

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Uncle Paul

~ Jane ~ 21 Comments

A wet July in a caravan park on the South coast of England, and three weeks of cramped boredom for Isabel and her two young boys. Her elder sister Mildred, enjoys the comfort of the Sea View Hotel and Meg, the youngest sister, after being summoned by Isabel, is staying in Mildred’s tiny, lonely cottage on the cliff road. Summoned because Mildred’s first husband, who they called Uncle Paul, was given fifteen years for murdering his first wife and now that time is up, Mildred thinks she heard footsteps around the cottage. But has he been released? Has he come to the cottage?And did Mildred hear any footsteps anyway? The suspense is dropped, drop by drop into this psychological, domestic drama building to a crescendo of uncertainty and fear.

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Crook O’Lune

~ Jane ~ 15 Comments

Gilbert Woolfall, a Yorkshire business has inherited Aikengill, his uncle’s remote farmhouse in High Gimmerdale; a ‘huddle of ancient stone steadings hidden away in the vast solitude of hill country’ in Lunesdale, in the Lancashire Dales.

Going through his uncle’s papers he comes across some discrepencies with a bequest made by the first Woolfall in 1690, a bequest that ensured a stipend for a perpetual curate to live in the hamlet. Before long the current rector, The Reverend Simon Tupper arrives to ask about Mr Woolfall’s plans for the house and to find out what is happening with the stipend. An elderly man in clerical black with a high dog collar, he carries about him a querulous face and a petulant manner that’s always looking for dignity, and as such is neither liked nor trusted.

Chief Inspector Macdonald has also inherited some money and is in his beloved Lunesdale staying with friends Giles and Kate Hoggett, and looking for a small farm to buy for his retirement. He hears about the sheep stealing from Giles, but when the fire at Aikengill causes malicious gossip and distruction he wonders if the two can be linked and luckily gets involved – because then there’s the body and the attempted murder.

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South from Granada

~ Jane ~ 17 Comments

It’s 1919 and demobilized after the first world war Gerald Brenan, 25, is faced with the return to England and a life of stultifying predictability. Instead he decides to use his army pension to soak up the mediterranean life and give himself an education by reading the two thousand books he’s managed to amass and teach himself Greek.

He chooses Spain because he thinks it will be cheap and after initial disappointment discovers the area of the Alpujarra on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, and a house that he can rent from the owner, Don Fadrique, in Yegen, a village some 89 km south of Grenada. He moves in in early January 1920 and lives there until 1934.

Written in 1957 South from Grenada is part memoir and part travelogue of this time spent in Yegen. With his natural curiosity and the help of his servant, Maria, who comes to him via Don Fadrique he immerses himself in village life; its history and suppression of Moorish customs, the fiestas and fairs and folklore, cultural events and courting rituals.

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Mrs McGinty’s Dead

~ Jane ~ 21 Comments

It’s 1952 and Poirot has just finished a delicious meal at a small French restaurant he’s discovered. But now what? How can he fill a whole evening? He misses his dear friend Captain Hastings and feels tired and out of step with the modern world. He’ll have to go home. He opens the front door with his latchkey and his manservant George greets him with the news that a gentleman, a Mr. Spence is waiting for him in the sitting room.

It’s actually Superintendent Spence of the Kilchester police, a fine policeman who’s worked with Poirot in the past and would really like his help. James Bentley, a drippy young man is soon to be hanged for the murder of his landlady, Mrs McGinty; but he couldn’t have done it, he just isn’t cocky enough. Poirot packs his bags and is on the first train to Kilchester. From there he takes a bus to the village of Broadhinny, and takes a room at Long Meadows the home of Major and Mrs Summerhayes.

Mrs McGinty performed ‘domestic chores’ for a few of the houses in Broadhinny after her husband died, and was well known as a quiet farmer’s daughter who had no enemies amongst this group of ‘nice people’; and indeed, the village is home to a rare mix of thoroughly upstanding members of society including an up and coming play write who is currently adapting one of Ariadne Oliver’s books for the stage and has the author staying with him. But why then, if such an upstanding village, has Mrs McGinty been killed – because everywhere there are secrets, and Mrs McGinty must have recognised one. But what even was the secret she discovered?

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Forbidden Notebook

~ Jane ~ 14 Comments

How interesting that in Rome in 1950 tobacconists weren’t allowed to sell notebooks on a sunday as that would give them an unfair advantage over stationary shops which weren’t allowed to open at all! 43 year old Valeria Cossati, however, has spied some notebooks while queueing to buy cigarettes for her husband and for reasons unknown to her feels that she must have one.

“‘I need it’ I said, ‘I absolutely need it.’ I was speaking in a whisper, agitated, ready to insist, plead. So he looked around, then quickly grabbed a notebook and handed it to me across the counter, saying: ‘Hide it under your coat.'”

For more than two weeks Valeria keeps the notebook hidden, unable to think of anything to write, but constantly moving it around afraid of it being found either by her husband, Michele or their grown up children, Riccardo and Mirella. Hesitatingly, she broach’s the idea of writing a diary to her family who immediately fall on her, cuddling and caressing her, while laughing and asking her what would she write about, before teasing her over a secret diary, maybe she wants to write a love diary. Humiliated and embarassed, Valeria moves the diary from its hiding place smuggled amongst the laundry to an empty biscuit tin and begins to write.

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A Film For February: Lola Montès

~ Jane ~ 8 Comments

Eliza Rosanna Gilbert was born in Ireland in 1821 and died Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld in New York in 1861.

In 1837, sixteen year old Eliza eloped and married but separated five years later and became a professional dancer under her stage name. But with little success in England she left for Paris and became a part of the city’s literary bohemia, mixing with George Sand and Alexander Dumas. Now seen as a courtesan, she behaves as she chooses because she’s beautiful and daring; trailing eminent lovers as well as rumours, which she somehow manages to both encourage and deny, she romps across nations and continents, famous for making herself infamous. Given the title, Countess of Landsfeld by King Ludwig 1st of Bavaria, it’s also possible she had an affair with Franz Liszt and these two relationships provide flashbacks for this peculiar film which opens in a New Orleans circus.

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A Film For January: Imitation of Life

~ Jane ~ 19 Comments

Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) loses track of her daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) on a packed Coney Island beach in 1947. When she finds Susie, with the help of beach photographer Steve (John Gavin) she’s happily playing with a little girl of similar age, Sarah-Jane (Susan Kohner) while the pair are being watched by Sarah-Jane’s mother Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore). But when Lora and Susie get up to leave it’s apparent that Annie and Sarah-Jane don’t have a home to go to and Lora agrees that they can come home with them. Their apartment is small and basic but it has a room at the back off the kitchen that they can share.

So it’s a simple set up that sees two single mothers sharing an apartment with their daughters. Except that the Meredith’s are white and the Johnson’s are black and right from the start, no matter how friendly they are towards each other Annie calls Lora, Miss Lora.

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Someone From The Past

~ Jane ~ 16 Comments

I read this over Christmas and thought, it being the holidays etc. that I wouldn’t write anything, but it was such a good read that I want to make sure I have a note of it!

Basically it’s about two young women, Sarah and Nancy, who meet while working at a magazine in London. Both from humble beginnings they become firm friends and flatmates in their new city. Beautiful Sarah juggles men while ‘presentable‘ Nancy is her ally. But this is Nancy’s story to tell, as very early on she discovers Sarah’s dead body and rather than call the police she does exactly what we all know not to do and starts to tidy up. Now she’s for it.

But before we get completely incensed by her behaviour we start to understand her actions. She’s quickly narrowed the murderer down to one (or more) of three people; Sarah’s past, present and sometime lovers and since Nancy and Sarah shared everything one of these men is now Nancy’s beau and she’s going to hang on to him at any cost.

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