not a book, theatre

Not a Book: End of the Rainbow

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Happy Sunday everyone and I’ve got another theatre trip for you this week. I was going to save this for next weekend when we’re into Pride month, but this is a limited run and the tickets are getting very limited so I thought I’d maximise your chances of getting to see it by posting it sooner.

End of the Rainbow is a play by Peter Quilter about Judy Garland at the time that she was doing a series of concerts at the Talk of the Town. If you know your Judy lore, this is less than a year from her death and at the time that she was engaged to Mickey Deans who would become her fifth and final husband. This is the struggling with her addictions latter day Judy, and her relationships with both Deans and her pianist and friend Anthony are somewhat strained. This is a play with music – with rehearsals with Anthony in the hotel suite as well as performances with a band at the club. It’s also the source material for the movie Judy, which won Renée Zellweger an Oscar back in 2020.

If you’re a drag race fan you’ll know that Jinkx Monsoon did a very good Judy in Snatch Game on her All Stars season and she’s had success on Broadway in the last couple of years in musicals in Chicago, then Pirates! The Penzance Musical and then in the play Oh, Mary! but this is her first non-comedic acting role. And it’s a big one to take on because this play exists essentially as a showcase for whoever is performing as Judy – they need to be able to sing in a good enough facsimile of Garland and act their hearts out across comedic and tragic moments. And Jinkx is really, really good – better in the comedy and the singing than the tragedy, but pretty good all around. The audience that I saw it with went absolutely wild for it – and I enjoyed it just not as much as them!

But that said this isn’t my first time seeing End of the Rainbow – I saw the 2011 tour with Tracie Bennett, ahead of the transfer to Broadway. And my opinion on the play itself hasn’t changed – it’s a great concept and a great showcase, but it’s a bit long and doesn’t quite stick the ending and really hammers home Anthony’s role as an avatar for Judy’s gay fans in the second half in a way that is totally unsubtle and overdone (for me anyway). However it has a great band and great performances and they make up for a lot. If I’m nitpicking, I would say that the lack of height difference between the characters means that part of Judy’s force of nature character is lost. Garland was under 5 feet tall – and Tracie Bennett is about 5’2″ – and the way that Garland’s voice and charisma dominated the room and the people about her despite her diminutive size was part of the wonder of the performance. But Jinkx is the height she is, and male actors are not a tall breed, and they do make great work of the steps on the set to try and set her at a disadvantage to Mickey at various points to help with that.

This production has been getting four star reviews from the professionals – and I would basically agree with that. It’s worth seeing if you’re a Jinkx fan – and the audience reaction (and sales!) have been strong enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes over to Broadway next season and that this time next year Jinkx is factoring into the Tony award conversations.

End of the Rainbow is on at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow until the 21st of June – and it’s worth the trek up the Victoria Line to zone 3 to see it.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Recent releases

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I’ve been in a lot of bookshops recently, so this Saturday I’ve got a quick round up of some of the new releases that I’ve spotted in the shops.

I’m starting with the new book from Maria Semple, because it’s been a long, long time since her last book came out and I’d almost forgotten about her. Which is a terrible thing to say, but it’s a decade since Today Will Be Different and 14 years since Where’d You Go Bernadette, so I don’t think that’s unfair. Accordig to the blurb, Go Gentle is about a midlife transformation of a divorcée complete with romance and globe trotting. I have a mixed record with Semple – I loved …Bernadette, hated This One is Mine and quite liked Today Will Be Different, so I’m sure I’ll read this at some point even if just to see if my assessment back in 2016 of when I like Semple’s books is right or not!

There’s another author back from a long hiatus in this shot of the bestsellers (in Waterstones Gower Street) too. Kathryn Stockett’s The Help was a huge hit when it came out in 2009 – it won a bunch of awards and was turned into a hit movie starring Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis (among many) in 2011. But it was also polarising and Stockett faced criticism for writing the story of black maids through the eyes of a white woman and the controversy over it has only increased over time. In fact in the run up to the publication of The Calamity Club, Stockett told The New York Times that her publishers cancelled her contract in 2020. So after such a big gap and so much controversy The Calamity Club – which is more than 600 pages long and once again set in Mississippi but this time in the 1930s – has had a relatively low key release. I’m fascinated to see how it does. Apart from that, you can also see the new Matt Haig, The Midnight Train, which is set in the same world as his mega hit The Midnight Library, the new Elizabeth Strout and also that Murder at Worlds End is now out in paperback.

On to some murder mysteries in hardback (some of which came out la little longer ago) and we’ve got the Sophie Hannah Poirot continuation that came out in the autumn, the latest Judy Murray cozy crime, and the Jennie Godfrey that I’ve seen everywhere. The House of Fallen Sisters was one I hadn’t come across before – set in Covent Garden and the underbelly of 18th century London and I’ve now seen various of Andrey Kurkov’s Kyiv Mysteries around so much that I think it might be a message for me to try one! Amin Ahmad’s A Killer in the Family sounds interesting – the blurb calls it “A caper, social satire, and propulsive thriller rolled into one” the first two of which are totally my thing – but as we know thrillers can go either way for me! And strangely this also has Elizabeth and Marilyn about the meeting between Elizabeth II and Marilyn Monroe in the summer of 1956 and which I didn’t have down as being a mystery but am even more interested in now that I’ve seen it in this selection!

I mentioned Emma Straub’s American Fantasy when it was released the other week, so it seems only fair to mention that I was right that I would spot it in the shops a lot (this wasn’t the only time I could have taken a picture of it in a store) and also that it’s blurbed by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Also in the now out in paperback is Andrew Lownie‘s Entitled – which as you can see from the cover has had more material added since the hardback edition. This makes me wonder whether if I had bought it on Kindle I would have got the new material added automatically, or whether I would have had to buy it again. As it is, I bought a physical copy at the airport (partly to escape any redactions that might later happen!) and so now I have to figure out how much I want to read Lownie’s take on everything that has happened to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor since Entitled first came out last summer when he was still known as Prince Andrew.

And finally for today we have Katja Hoyer’s Weimar, which is one of the anticipated history books of the year – examining the town that gave its name to the government of Germany from the end of World War one until the Nazi regime took power. It was also a key location in the rise of the Nazi party as well as the home of the Bauhaus movement. Hoyer is looking at the town and it’s people from 1919 until 1939 charting how it all happened. I’ve got a stack of books about German twentieth century history waiting on the various to-read piles but I’m still really tempted by this – as depressing as I suspect it may be.

And sorry to end on that miserable note, but there we are, that’s the way it goes sometimes. Enjoy your weekend everyone – I hope the weather is good where you are.

series

Mystery Series: By the Book

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It’s Friday again and it’s not due to be quite as hot today as it has been earlier in the week, for which we should all be very thankful. Britain is not built for 30+ degree heat – let alone in May. Anyway, I hope you’re somewhere suitably shady, while you read this week’s series post.

The By the Book Mysteries are a series of three books about Tess Harrow, a mystery writer who moves back to her grandfather’s rural cabin in Washington state with her teenage daughter in the aftermath of her divorce. Once she arrives there she stumbles upon a real life murder. The first book in the series was my Book of the Week back in December and by the end of that she’s decided to make Winthrop her permanent home. In book two Tess is renovating her grandfather’s former hardware store into a bookshop when she discovers a body and in book three they’re preparing for the opening of the bookstore when the murder occurs.

As well as Tess and her daughter Gertrude, the other regular characters are the town’s sheriff (who looks disturbingly like the hero of Tess’s books); Nikki who runs the local book mobile and from book two onwards Jared, who works at the local logging concern. As well as the murder of the week, there is a running plot about whether the loggers are up to something illegal and a will they won’t they romance between Tess and Sheriff Boyd. These are very easy to read, with some nice humour and enough going on that they rattle along nicely and make for an enjoyable way to spend sometime.

There are three books in the series with the third coming out back in 2023 – a gap which suggests that Tamara Berry may be done with the series as they were published at a rate of about one a year until then and Berry having published two books in a new series since then. And so I issue a slight warning: book three doesnt’ feel like it was intended to be the end of the series and not all the plot strands are tied up at the end it. I’m fairly used to series that I like just stopping at unexpected points so it doesn’t bother me too much, but it would be remiss of me not to alert you. So your mileage may vary on that front – at least I’ve read them for you and warned you appropriately!

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out This Week: New Annabel Monaghan

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Happy Thursday everyone and this week’s new book to mention is the new Annabel Monaghan, Dolly All The Time which came out on Tuesday. According to the blurb, this is about self sufficient, problem solving, single mum Dolly who moves back to her seaside home town and finds herself in a fake relationship with the wealthy, workaholic son of one of the town’s major families. I loved, loved, loved Nora Goes Off Script back in 2023, and I have enjoyed the three books of hers I’ve read since, although none of them have quite hit the same buttons for me as Nora did. But that’s a very high bar. I had this pre-ordered, so I already have my copy waiting for me but if you weren’t planning that far ahead, it’s out now in paperback, Kindle and Kobo.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Mysteries set on Islands

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It’s Wednsday again, and this week I’ve got a post for you about mysteries set on (usually small) islands. This is a popular setting for detective stories because it gives you a clear group of suspects who can’t escape the investigation. I’m doing this today because the latest Lady Hardcastle mystery came out yesterday and so I’m going to start there with something new!

Murder on the Rocks by T E Kinsey*

Cover of Murder on the Rocks

This is the thirteenth in Kinsey’s Edwardian-set series featuring a female crime fighting duo. In Murder on the Rocks Lady H and faithful Florence are spending a weekend on an island off the Devon coast when (as often happens) murder happens. The weather means they are trapped on the island with no hope of police assistance and so they promptly set out to solve the crime themselves. This has got a good group of characters as suspects as well as our intrepid duo and this is probably the smallest of the islands on this post with the least amount of people and buildings – meaning they really are cut off from assistance. It’s a fun and cozy read but with plenty of twists to keep you guessing about who might have done what.

Queens of Crime on Islands

Several of the Queens of Crime have written books set on islands – which may explain why its such a common device for authors today. I think at this point almost everyone knows that Agatha Christies And Then There Were None is set on an island, but it’s not the only one. If you’re a Poirot fan there is Evil Under the Sun. I’ve watched the movie version of this one loads (Peter Ustinov! Maggie Smith! Diana Rigg! Cole Porter music!) but it had been years since I read the book so I have had a re-read to remind me of the differences between the book and the film and although the movie makes some changes (including moving it from Devon to the Adriatic!) it’s more faithful to the book than I remembered it being and it’s a really good murder plot and solution.

If you’re a Miss Marple fan there is A Caribbean Mystery which sees Miss Marple’s holiday to a resort in the Caribbean (thanks to her nephew Raymond) turn deadly when one of her dinner companions dies – seemingly of natural causes but of course she isn’t convinced. This one of my personal least favourites of the series – but that’s mostly because the Joan Hickson TV adaptation version scared me witless when I was 11 to the point where I had to stop watching the adaptations all together! Even now, it’s the adaptation I rewatch the least – I’ve may be seen that one half a dozen times max, whereas with some of the others I’ve watched them so many times I can almost recite along with them – and have done a compare and contrast with the different edits available across different platforms because some of them are available as one giant episode as well as two or three individual ones. That said, I did go back and revisit it while I was writing this – and it is a pretty good mystery (once I disconnect the bits of my brain that remember the TV version) and really well put together.

If you’re a Ngaio Marsh reader, then Dead Water is set on an island where miracles are supposedly occurring at a spring. Now I’ve mentioned adaptations I should say that although this is one of the ones that was done by the TV series, but it has quite a lot of changes to the plot including the location of the island and the inclusion of Agatha Troy at all (let alone the point in the Alleyn-Troy relationship it occurs at). There’s also Last Ditch, which I have to say is one of my least favourites in the series and features grown-up Ricky (son of Alleyn and Troy) going to an island to try to get away from distractions so that he can write a novel and then getting kidnapped, forcing Alleyn to the rescue. Even later in the series there’s Photo Finish, where Alleyn and Troy are on a New Zealand island where a famous opera singer is trying to escape from the paparazzi. This is from the point in the series where you have to not think about how old Alleyn should be given that it is basically set in a contempoary period to it’s publication (1980!!!) but if you can manage that – which is much easier if you’re reading it in isolation rather than as is my habit as part of a read/listen through of the series – it’s pretty good.

If you want to read a Campion book there’s just the one: the second in the series, Mystery Mile, sees Albert trying to protect a judge from forces that are trying to kill him by hiding him on an island off the Suffolk coast. Margery Allingham set more of her series in London than Christie or Marsh – possibly because they can be more concerned with the criminal underworld and can tend towards the adventure story than the other two do.

Other authors

Islands are incredibly popular for mysteries as you can tell from the Queens of Crime – and so many other mystery authors have done them too it was an embarrasmment of riches putting this together. A lot of the cozy crime series have got island-set entries (as an homage to the Queens maybe?) including the second Meg Langslow book Murder with Puffins, Clammed Up the first in the Maine Clambake series, A Likely Story the sixth in the Library Lovers series and Susan M Boyer’s Liz Talbot series which are set on a South Carolina island. And of course there is (relatively) recent book of the week pick The Murder at World’s End, and Nicola Upson‘s The Dead of Winter which I mentioned in my Series at Christmas 2 post.

I have several island set mysteries on the pile waiting to be read – including Displeasure Island (the sequel to Grave Expectations), the first in the Death in Paradise tv-tie in series (which Robert Thorogood created and wrote before he started on the Marlow Murder series) and Rachel Rhys‘s Island of Secrets which is set on Cuba.

And that’s more than enough for today – Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: The Paris Match

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Happy Tuesday everyone. It’s absolutely roasting hot here so it seems fitting that this week’s pick is summary book with a lot of wandering around Paris and lovely weather

I mentioned The Paris Match on the day that it came out but just a recap for you of the plot: it’s about Layla, who is going to Paris for the wedding of her ex’s sister. Layla has been like a sister to the bride but now she’s divorced the bride’s brother and this is the first test of the “amicable” part of their divorce and whether she can still be part of the family now she’s not officially in it any more. After a night out with the bride and her best friend, the bride decides she wants to break off the wedding and tells her fiancé it’s because of something Layla said. Thus Griffin, the best man, turns up at her room door and tells her she’s got to fix it. And so here starts Layla and Griffin trying to fix what’s gone wrong with the potential bride and groom for their own different reasons and in doing that they get to know each other and maybe fall in love.

This isn’t an all hearts and flowers book and that’s one of the things that I really liked about it. There’s some pretty serious backstory going on for both characters: Layla has her divorce and Griff has got some chronic illness and chronic pain that he’s dealing with. And a real feature of the book is how he moves through the world and how he is perceived in the world. But despite what you might think after reading that, it’s not super heavy or miserable read. And actually one of the things I really like about Kate Clayborn – and she’s done this in other books – is the way that she can manage to have quite serious subjects in the character’s lives and their back stories and yet the books don’t feel like it’s heavy or a slog. It just feels delightful watching these two people find each other and and fall in love – and not be fixed by their relationship per se but their lives made better by it. And I really found that with this.

I basically read it in about a day – I started it one night and finished it the next afternoon which speaks to how much I enjoyed it. I was gonna save it for a time of need but it turns out the time of need came a little bit sooner than I was expecting and I regret nothing about that decision. I love Paris and I loved watching Griff and Layla move around Paris and recognise bits of my experience. Paris is such a great city a great setting for this and works so well with the story. If I have any complaints it’s that I wanted a bit more comeuppance at the end for some people that have done the hero with heroine wrong, but I can live with it because I think that the ending that the characters got was pretty perfect.

This should be a fairly easy one to find. I had the paperback pre-ordered but the Kindle is actually on offer at 99p this month and I’m impressed with myself for resisting the urge to buy a Kindle copy as well as my paperbacks so I could read it while I was away from home so you should be able to get hold of this pretty much everywhere.

books, stats, week in books, The pile

The Week in Books: May 18 – May 24

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A really solid week in reading, helped by a series of football matches that meant that I stayed in watching/listening to them while reading a book rather than going out to the theatre. And then the weather got really hot so it seemed like the sensible thing to do was to stay inside in the cool and read books. This week is due to be even hotter though…

Read:

A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer by F H Petford*

The French Market Murder by Greg Mosse*

Windsor vs Windsor by Bert Tyler-Moore*

Debts of Dishonour by Jill Paton Walsh

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Murder Off the Books by Tamara Berry

The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

Started:

The Bad Quarto by Jill Paton Walsh

Still reading:

Death and Other Occupational Hazards by Veronica Dapunt

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Two books bought.

Bonus picture: A view across the river from the side of St Paul’s Cathedral last week. I was going to say it was old London and new London – but then I realised you can’t see the old London in the picture so you’ll have to trust me on that!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Thespians

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It is an absolutely scorching bank holiday so far – even hotter than it was earlier this month when we were in Colchester. As I said yesterday Colchester was the capital of Roman Britain – and we were there to see a musical about the other great european classical civilisation: the Greeks, brought to you by Mischief Theatre aka the people behind the …Goes Wrong series.

The Plot: It’s 500 and something BC and Greece is being ravaged by drought. The Tyrant who rules the country decrees that every island must send a group to Athens to compete in a prayer competition to bring the rain. The penalty for not going is death. The penalty for not winning is death. And that’s how the five residents of Ikaria (that’s the whole population of the island) come to invent acting.

Now I should say that we saw this on the first preview, so this isn’t really a proper review because that wouldn’t be fair and I’m expecting a few things will have changed since we saw it. But that said it was in pretty good shape. The joke rate isn’t as high as in a Mischief play but you don’t really expect ever other line to be a joke in a musical – and it’s hard to do jokes in lyrics too – but it’s got lots of puns and dad jokes and a lot of pastiches of other musicals, theatre in jokes and stereotypes. I thought it could use a little tightening and that they hadn’t quite nailed the sound balance, but those are fairly typical issues for early preview shows.

The cast were amazing – every one is turning in a good performance – and some of them are great – but they really work well as a company. It feels a bit harsh to pick anyone out in particular because it is very much a group – but if you really, really twisted my arm I would say that it was Rhys Taylor as The Tyrant and Allie Dart and Matt Cavendish’s double act as Bard and Rhapsodes.

I generally like what Mischief are selling (so to speak) so it’s hard for me to judge whether this will work for people who aren’t Mischief fans. This isn’t relying on things going wrong/choregraphed chaos and farce the way that the Goes Wrong shows do and of course it’s a musical. In some ways it reminded me of a (very superior) pantomime – and I mean that as a compliment. It’s all got a nod and a wink to the fact that there’s an audience watching and that there are rules and conventions of theatre that the characters are “inventing” but we are all aware of. I’m not sure it’s a “first grown up show” the way that I think The Play that Goes Wrong is, but it wouldn’t be a bad shout for an early theatre trip for an upper primary school age child – as well as being a good time for the grown ups too who will understand the in jokes.

Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this had its last performance in Colchester last night – but it is a tour – it moves to Bath this week coming and then Swindon, Guildford, Cheltenham, Cardiff, back to Guildford and then finishes up in Manchester for two weeks in July. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it have short West End run, but it’s hard to see where it would go – it’s not a big-big show and all the theatres that are the sort of size that I would think they would want are taken at the moment. But never say never.

Have a great Sunday

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Red Lion Books

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It’s a bank holiday weekend and the weather is meant to be glorious and coincidentally I have posts for you from my trip to Essex earlier this month when the weather was also glorious. Today I have a bookshop for you and tomorrow the show we saw in the evening. You’re welcome.

So some time ago, I used to live in Colchester and this was my regular indie bookshop. I was operating on a more limited budget in those days, but I do think the selection in here has improved – or at least expanded in the areas that are of specific interest to me since I was a local.

As I’m sure many (most?) of you know, Colchester was the capital of Roman Britain, so I very much appreciated the Roman and classical theme to the table display as well as the new releases.

I also really liked the selection of fiction by the till. I’ve got Atmosphere on the pile waiting to be read (I actually tried to read it during the moon mission but it made me too anxious about the astronauts safety!) but if All that’s Left of the World didn’t have dystopian in it’s description I would be very interested in it, and The Library of the Unwritten loos good too. Nestling down the bottom is Curtis Sittenfeld’s Show Don’t Tell which is now in paperback and also An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed which looked interesting.

Of course my primary interests in any bookshop are the crime section and the romance one. So here’s the cozy crime shelf – there were also thrillers and the like, but we all know that my taste in mystery is definitely classic and cozy. I’ve already read the new Anthony Horowitz (and I really need to get around to Magpie Murders 3, but it’s just too chunky to put in my work bag) and I read The Impossible Fortune on holiday just before it came out in paperback. There’s some Tom Hindle here ad the third Antique Hunter’s mystery (I read the first one and didn’t love it and keep meaning to try the second one because it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment) but there’s als Ardal O’Hanlon’s mystery which I’m tempted by – but will likely wait for the paperback. There were a few others on here that I liked the look of – the Philippa Perry for one, the C J Wray and All At Sea, but as you know what I actually bought from here was Crime Rangoon because it’s so hard to get hold of the Noodle Shop books in the UK. The other purchase by the way was the annotated Eyre Affair, which you can’t spot in the photos I’m afraid.

And to finish, here’s the romance section, which veered a little bit too much to the new adult for me – but you’ve heard me on that subject before. You can see the new Alisha Rai down there and the Emily Henry collection – who by the way doesn’t appear to have a release this summer (maybe this year?) in case you were wondering. I did like the look of Anne Knows Everything though and possibly Ex Marks the Spot, but I have a chequered history with romances with treasure hunts in them! This was however where I started to notice some new sports creeping into the sports romance section – we’ve got a small rash of tennis romances coming through as well as polo, which is nicely timed for anyone who is watching series 2 of Rivals!

Have a great bank holiday weekend!

series

Series Redux: Max Tudor

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Cover of A Demon Summer

I know, it’s a bit of a cheat, but I’m finishing off my espionage-themed week with a reminder of the Max Tudor series of mysteries about a former spy turned vicar. They’re not set in the Cold War, so they don’t quite fit, but they do at least have links to the secret services so I’m claiming they count and I’m sticking to it. I’ve read seven of the eight* books in the series at this point and as it’s three years since the last one came out and G M Malliet appears to have moved on to other series, so this may well be a complete series at this point . As I said in that original post, Max’s prior career gives him a great excuse to get involved in murders, which is always a stumbling block for a mystery series, and the village that he lives in has a good variety of secondary characters to add into the mix. If you want a village-set mystery series, this would be a good choice if you can get hold of them!

*I did try and order the eight at one point and the vendor kept not being able to fulfil the order, so I should try that again because the Kindle version never seems to drop in price.