“I’m still me, I want to say to him, your son, but that would hardly help if I am currently everything wrong with the world.” 

Taynement: On to our third author of the year.

Leggy: I know. This was a pretty short read.

Taynement: Yes, it was but I think he did a lot with a short book and more authors could take a page from his book. Pun intended.

Leggy: I actually think he did way too much for such a short book. At some point, I got whiplash like am I reading a different book?

Taynement: Interesting. I disagree. I think he integrated a lot of themes with perfect balance.

Leggy: I really didn’t like the shift in focus to police brutality. It’s rare you get a book from an African author about being a gay, second generation African in America. I would have appreciated the book so…

Ixania, in Eric Ambler’s The Dark Frontier, possibly shouldn’t be included in this gazetteer, because the name is stated to be fictitious. (So is that of the country’s capital, Zovgorod.) This annoys me irrationally. Maybe it still begins with I.

The Dark Frontier is a good deal of fun, however, at the same time sending up and gloriously indulging itself in the tropes of the Ruritanian thriller. The mild-mannered, idealistic, scientist (a stereotype in his own right) gets a knock on the head and becomes convinced that he’s Conway Carruthers, the hero of the pulp novel he was reading before the accident. And there’s a good train journey, all the way from Paris to Bâle and then east from there:

Carruthers watched the mountains of Switzerland and Austria pass in slow review. Then for some hours, they ran across wind-driven plains. On the second night, he again saw…

One rural village; so many secrets…

Blenthorne nestles in a quiet corner of Cumbria and is home to local entrepreneur, Lizzie Lockwood. Lizzie has returned to the home she loves after an unpleasant hiatus.  She is determined to put the past behind her as she concentrates on her thriving business interests and a fledgling relationship.

Her happy bubble is soon burst by the arrival of tainted newcomer, Helen Anderson who is intent on inveigling herself into Lizzie’s life.  Hot on her heels is investigative journalist, Percival Lynton Whitaker.  As he garners gossip for his impending ‘Reasonable Doubt?’ exposé on Helen, a chance encounter takes him back to a macabre event from yesteryear. Has he inadvertently stumbled across someone who was implicated in a notorious unsolved multiple murder?

Lizzie is far from pleased that the journalist’s focus appears to have shifted.  As events play out, she starts to wonder how well…

Remarkable Rocks, Kangaroo Island SA

Dutch Goes The Photo, Tuesday Photo Challenge, Week 153 – Years