Sarah Lane, abandoning her French lover for the brilliant Lebanese sunshine, believes that the day will belong to her alone. But when a street bomb hurls her into the arms of a dangerously handsome Syrian colonel, she finds herself trapped once again.
Is this a kidnapping? A seduction? Or merely the chaos of the Middle East?
Book Review:
I have been promising myself for a few years now to go back to some of the older classic Australian Crime Fiction books and reread them with a view to noting something about them on the website. Mostly because all of these books were read a long time before I started writing my own reviews, and I really need something to check my reactions against if I re-visit them again (which I'm inclined to do every now and then).
Hence ARMS FOR ADONIS, which Wakefield Press published in 1994, with an excellent afterword by Peter Moss and Michael J Tolley. ARMS FOR ADONIS was first published in 1961, and re-reading it again, there are a number of elements to the book which remain fascinating and somehow still topical. I do note that Jay revised / rewrote some aspects of the book for the Wakefield release, and to be honest, I can't remember the orginal details well enough to know what changed / didn't. But there are particular aspects of the book which really make it an interesting read. Originally written in leadup to the "swinging sixties", it was particularly striking how laid back the characters are about their sexual freedom. Another aspect of the book that was subtly but pointedly drawn is the inter-cultural understanding, or more pointedly, lack of understanding. To the point where some of actions of some of the characters were extremely discomforting.
The political aspects of the book are extremely interesting, given the point in the history of Lebanon in which it is set. Jay wrote the book in the 1956, in the time leading up to the Suez Crisis. She was living in Beirut during a year long tour of duty by her husband, a senior UN official. Her admiration for both the country and the people shines through, as does her observations of the erratic nature of local politics.
The major downside to the book for this reader is the overly romantic ending - which, frankly, you can see coming from very early on. Mildly interesting because of the depiction of cross-cultural relationships, but way too "happy ever after" for my taste.
People like to see something different - a king or a notorious criminal, a starving man. Even a dead elephant.
Dead elephant?
Pel nodded. "Plenty have seen 'em alive. Very few have seen 'em dead.
Dapper Pel Pelham is pulling stunts again, spruiking for Henri Sapolio, World's Champion Starving Man. The circus is in town and the police are on the prowl. After Rena, Queen of the Trapeze, takes a dive, not even Estelle, the Armless Wonder, is safe from their enquiries.
The time is the mid 1890s. The setting, a small outback town. Harry Ford, the postmaster, is opening other people's mail. They say nothing happens in small towns, but there's plenty to set tongues wagging in this neighbourhood of sinners; adultery, blackmail, disappearances, poisonings. And then the Great Boldini comes to town.
A thriller from the Carol Ashton series, in which Ashton is assigned as a bodyguard to a feminist lecturer who attracts publicity as well as death threats from a group who threaten to execute her by any means necessary.
Heaven was written in 1994. I'd just finished Pack of Lies which was narrated by a woman who lies: it occurred to me that she might reveal at the end of the narrative that she wasn't even a woman. That doesn't happen, but it did start me thinking. The eponymous central character of Heaven is a transvestite, and flicks between different worlds: male / female, night / day, past / present. That's pretty much the story.
"Shirker, Chad Taylor's first ever novel published in the UK, is a compelling and disturbing literary thriller set in downtown Auckland. Ellerslie Penrose is a man dealing in futures who becomes lost in the past.
Penrose's descent into the underworld is compulsive and chaotic - and the further he falls, the less he understands. But it is only through this descent that he can finally find what he is looking for.
Surreal and labyrinthine, Shirker's cool and enthralling prose establishes Chad Taylor as one of New Zealand's finest voices."
Noelle Bonaventure was the restless, reckless daughter of a Corsican opium runner. Baptiste Croce was an adventurer, with more charm than scruples. Together they inherited a drugs empire whose tentacles spread from the mist-shrouded mountains of Laos to the financial towers of San Francisco.
Set in the worlds of the Ottoman empire in the 16th century, this book follows the fortunes of a handful of desperate characters whose destinies gradually weave together in a tapestry of passion, envy, betrayal and cruelty.
It is the start of a long, hot summer and Madalena Grimaldi has disappeared. Claudia is hired to find the missing schoolgirl but she's already working on a case - the death of Guy Valentine, her father.
As Claudia searches the streets, looking for the ghost of her derelict father and for the mysterious man who can lead her to Madalena, she finds herself sinking into a world where, for many, rock bottom is only the beginning.
When one of the richest men in Sydney is found dead in his penthouse, feminist detective Francesca Miles teams up with Inspector Joe Barnaby to catch the killer. They find themselves in a mystery that follows the trials and tribulations of a family that should have everything money can buy.
