John le Carré is a masterful storyteller and listening to his voice telling the stories of his life is epic. In The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, he covers his short years of service in British Intelligence and how that paved the way for the writer he became and the opportunities he had to meet politicians and leaders around the world.
This type of memoir could be a bit of a brag but instead it’s like your worldly uncle telling you his crazy stories. I loved it.
There are funny asides and mishaps, like a certain parrot meeting his end due to alcohol in his feed and wrong number phone calls that lead to late-night bar dates. Then there are serious tales of interviewing terrorists and navigating the security around Yasser Arafat. At every turn, le Carré is giving us glimpses into his life and how you might connect real life people to his story characters.
You can hear the wisdom and humility in his voice, along with the cheek.
Get ready to step into the grittiness of London and the glam (and gangs) of Soho clubs during the period between the World Wars.
Our cast of characters includes:
Nellie Coker who is newly released from prison and back to managing her infamous nightclubs.
Chief Inspector Frobisher who’s cleaning up corruption on the streets and in his own force.
Gwendolyn Kelling who’s in London from York and looking for two runaway girls who are hoping to make their fame on the stage–and are likely to end up at one of Coker’s clubs as a dance hostess.
Nellie’s children: Niven (the eldest and most put together), Edith (the brains of the operation), the twins Betty and Shirley, the youngest girl Kitty, and the youngest boy Ramsey (coke addict and aspiring novelist).
It’s an all-star cast. They are each great in their own way and their lives are woven together like a braid. The storytelling is amazing and I cheered for each of them. The basic rivalry is between the Cokers and Frobisher, with Miss Kelling caught in the middle. But actually they all face another nemesis and that’s what lets readers cheer for them all.
The dialogue is wonderful. The quality of word choice is top notch. The quick wits and pacing of the novel is superb. I can’t say enough. I loved this book.
Who Is Vera Kelly? is a quick witted spy novel set in 1960s Buenos Aries. Vera is newly recruited to the CIA and soon enough finds herself wiretapping congressmen and infiltrating a group of student activists.
Vera is smart, a fast learner, a lesbian, and about to find out what it’s like to be caught up in Cold War politics during a coup.
Vera Kelly Is Not A Mystery is the follow-up story. Vera is back in New York and loses her job and her girlfriend in a single day. But Vera is feisty and sets up shop as a female detective. Suddenly she’s on hot on the trail of a Dominican exile who’s wanted by Dominican Republic President Balaguer (and his goon squad). Vera can’t depend on the CIA (although could she ever). So it’s just her and her wits. And I must say, Vera is witty.
Rosalie Knecht has crafted a tight Cold War spy series. A bit of a nod to the character driven Le Carré style of writing but more modern. If you liked Ben MacIntyre’s The Spy and the Traitor or David Benioff’s City of Thieves, then you’ll like the dark, slow burn of these novels.
A Trace of Deceit is a great whodonit and peak into the world of art auctions. Miss Annabel Rowe is a young painter who’s studying at the Slade in London. She’s set to meet her brother Edwin for their regular Tuesday dinner but he never shows. Went she goes to his apartment, she finds two inspectors investigating his murder.
Annabel isn’t your usual Victorian lady who will demure and defer. She marches down to Scotland yard and demands to speak to Inspector Matthew Hallam. She has a plan and a plea that leads to her job shadowing Matthew.
They have a lovely romance that blooms out of their efforts to solve the mystery of Edwin’s death, recover a stolen valuable painting, and catch the culprits.
The behind-the-scenes look at the art work, auction houses, and the underworld of politics and the shipping industry are highly entertaining. Author Karen Odden draws on some of her personal experience from working at Christie’s auction house in the mid-1990s.
My favourite moments were the descriptions of various paintings throughout the novel. It was a short course in art history and painting techniques.
It’s 1942 in London and the war is raging on, but in a small bookshop Nancy Mitford is toiling away stacking books and writing an autobiography. She moves in literary circles with Evelyn Waugh, is well connected to wealthy families due to her father’s title, and has done a bit of spy work. The story running in parallel is that of modern-day Katie Swift, acclaimed novelist (one book), and fan of Nancy Mitford. Katie finds herself in London visiting a friend and solving the mystery of Mitford’s missing autobiography.
This is a fun novel with interesting characters and a bit of romance. It’s good for fans of historical fiction, WWII, cozy mystery novels, and indie bookshops. It’s not a wild pageturner but it’s a good read.
Lessons in Chemistry is a novel about being on the verge discovery, both in a scientific sense and in a self-discovery sense.
Elizabeth Zott is a chemist on the verge of an amazing research breakthrough about the origins of life. Unfortunately she’s a woman in the 1960s and her male colleagues belittle her, steal her work, and take advantage of their privilege in many ways that are appalling (and familiar to most successful women today).
Elizabeth is resilient. A series of events lead to her being kicked out of Hastings Research Institute and becoming the host of an afternoon cooking show, Supper at Six. She’s a superstar at whatever she does.
Elizabeth is smart. She refuses to pander to the tv executives. She refuses to believe there is an “average housewife” who prefers fun over science. Elizabeth brings chemistry to the kitchen (literally and figuratively), which makes this novel a delightful and educational read.
The marketing copy says it will appeal to fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette. I think that’s a good comparison. Both novels are laugh-out-loud funny and both include shrew observations of society.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is a BookTok fav that I heard about in a BookNet Canada webinar. Olivie Blake totally delivers! I can see why early fans were so enthusiastic and why Tor picked up this self-published novel and re-issued it.
The six are a group of medeians (magicians) handpicked by Atlas Blakely for initiation into the Alexandrian Society, a secret society that protects the assumed-destroyed works of the Alexandrian Library.
TV show Survivor meets Harry Potter? Atlas is the reality show host?
Six are chosen to spend a year at the library in a sort of fellowship. But only five can be initiated into the society and continue on with their studies. Atlas (also a telepath), and his colleague Dalton (animator), act as the program director and esteemed professor.
The six are chosen for their outstanding abilities. Libby Rhodes and Nico Ferrer de Varona are physicists, or rather they can manipulate physical space. They are highly competitive and their love/hate relationship is clear from the beginning. Reina Mori is a Gaia (Mother Earth) figure. She can breathe life into plants, but she’s reluctant to use her powers because it’s draining. Tristan Caine can see quanta. Basically magic is visible to him. Callum Nova is an empath, a manipulative one. He can sense people’s emotions and make them feel things, which in turn makes them act according to his wishes. Parisa is an incredibly beautiful telepath. She uses her powers to seduce people into doing her will. So three with physical powers, two with mental powers, and one who can see power.
The novel is full of secrets, betrayals and seduction. Everyone is seeking power in different ways, so perhaps it’s also about greed. I loved how the story unfolds like a puzzle. Each of the characters can only take out certain books from the library. In many ways as readers we are limited in our access of understanding too.
Absolutely intriguing story.
The Atlas Six is perfect for readers who like the mystery of secret societies, the drama of relationships that unfold in intense situations, and the magic of physics, space, and time.
Could this book be any more funny! Aisling (ASH-ling) is a small-town Irish girl who is desperate to marry her man John. They have been dating for 7 years. Many of their pals have gotten married. She is still waiting.
Ash is desperate for the husband with the house and the road frontage, and the utility room for her, and the man-cave for him. She wants the hotel wedding and the continental breakfast.
She is lovely and sweet, and hilarious about counting her Weight Watchers points. Aisling is an Irish Bridget Jones.
I think there are a ton of insider jokes that you’ll only get if are from Ireland or lived there in the last 10 years. But lots of the sentiments and relationship twists travel well across the pond.
There are many funny moments in this novel. It opens with Aisling taking a fiver in the ladies. She’s gone into a stall to rest her feet when two girls come in, and they are talking about her.
‘Your one Aisling is absolute gas, isn’t she?’
That’s definitely not a local accent. But I know the voice — it’s the brunette with the complicated updo sitting two up from me on Titanic — all the tables are named after Denise and Liam’s favourite films, you see. Lovely idea, very personal. His cousin, I think she is. There are two of them — down from Dublin and very glamorous altogether. Shellac this, that and the other. Nice and chatty too, and not making beasts of themselves with the bread. The only thing worse than being at a zero craic table is when some brazen shnake takes a second bread roll when they think no one’s looking. Well, I’m always looking. Eight Points in a bread roll and worth every single one. But you can’t be getting into bread-basket politics with strangers at a wedding.”
El is in her penultimate year at the Scholomance. The Scholomance is a bewitched school that educates young sorcerers on the fine art of surviving mals (incredibly hungry monsters that hunt magical beings).
El is not well liked. She sounds like the goth girl in high school that was rude to everybody. She’s the kind of girl who wants friends, yet can’t get passed being betrayed too often by people close to her. The problem is that the only way to really survive mal attacks is to work together. Sorcerers who graduate (aka survive) the school tend to live in enclaves (closed communities who protect each other).
Well turns out Galadriel (El) is an all-powerful wizard who is trying to hide her powers because they are mostly the evil-doing, super dangerous kind. Some kids at the school are really good at making things, others are good at forming protective spells. El is good at bringing down reins of terror. Her grandmother’s prophecy says that El is a burdened soul and will bring death and destruction to all the enclaves in the world if she isn’t stopped. Oops. Well good thing she’s the daughter of a well-loved healer. El is working hard to fight against the prophecy. She’s does things by the book in order to not turn evil. She fights against her powers by thinking through every little spell (her powers are a bit like asking a genie for a wish in that she’s going to get the evil outcome of a spell vs. the benign one her classmates might get).
El is used to doing things on her own. But damn it all if Orion Lake won’t stop running around the school saving everyone from mals, including her.
If El is the goth girl then Orion is the football hero. Of course they are destined to be friends. But that path is full of painful laughs.
Sweet Valley High or Archie meets Harry Potter and the X-Men?
Hench is a hilarious and snarky novel about a woman who works for a temp agency. The twist is that the temp agency hires henches for villains. Anna is particularly good at data entry.
There is also a temp agency for meat (hired goons) and it’s called The Meat Market.
Hench was recommended to me by my brother-in-law. It’s the perfect mix of bureaucracy and superhero/villainy.
Since I was already reading A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, I decided to listen to the Hench audiobook during my daily walks. It was definitely a great way to experience this novel.
Anna is bored but also likes to play it safe. Unlike her friend June (who does field work), Anna is happy at her laptop. But she’s soon thrown into the fray when her evil villain boss kidnaps a kid. Anna becomes collateral damage when the kid is rescued by a superhero who collides into her and shatters her leg.
Left unable to work, Anna finds herself ruminating on just how much damage superheroes actually cause to their communities. Her data analysis is surprisingly revealing and soon another mad-genius villain is interested in her work.
I mean, come on, this is a novel about a data nerd who is able to weaponize her snark! Totally up my alley.
