Harvest Home by Dorothy Lambert

The past couple of weeks I’ve spent reading the new books by Dorothy Lambert that Dean Street Press are republishing under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. Those books come out today! Among them are gentle, funny stories, full of endearing characters, and beautiful descriptions of nature. It’s been a thrill to get to read these books ahead of their publication and review them. Many thanks to the publisher for making this possible! (You can find my reviews of All I Desire (1936), Scotch Mist (1936), and Staying Put (1941) here.) Sometimes I will enjoy a book, but not want to write one of these longer reviews for it. It takes work. An embarrassing amount of work, if we are being honest. But these books of Dorothy Lambert’s are worth the effort on my part. One of the joys of reviewing a book is getting to share my excitement with you! I want as many readers as possible to find these books and fall in love with them, like I have. The other lovely thing is that it enables me to spend a little more time in the world of that book. And Dorothy Lambert’s books are the kind I want to crawl into, roll around, and get comfortable in. So, without further ado, let’s get comfortable in the world of Harvest Home (1950).

Sir Giles’s chief concern is a lack of sufficient help for getting his harvest in. The labour he had during the war has dried up, and the local population is not large enough to produce emergency workers during haymaking and harvesting weeks. His daughter, Lucinda, has been begrudgingly allowed to go to London for a few days to visit her sister, Angela, who is celebrating her birthday. Angela is studying art and shares a flat with Priscilla, who works in a psychoanalyst’s office. Angela and Priscilla have a party and Lucinda, who is not used to drinking, winds up falling down drunk in the hallway, where a man Simon Kingsford finds her. (In her defence, it was also too hot and stuffy in the flat with too many people, many of them smoking, and her borrowed dress was too tight. An unbearable combination!) Quickly assessing the situation he whisks Lucinda up and deposits her in his apartment, then visits next door to explain what has happened. Everyone becomes fast friends. Priscilla comes up with the idea of having a Harvest Camp, inviting another friend of hers, Aylwin Vines, a poet who needs bucking up, to join them. Lucinda goes home the next day, and later the rest descend on Sir Giles and Lady Bradsole at the Place. What follows is a mad tale of romance, flirtation, psychoanalysis, making do, coincidence, misunderstandings, misdirections, and ghosts. Oh, and a bit of farming, too, though we aren’t privy to too much of that. 

The Place was a large red-brick house of Queen Anne date that obviously resented the rows of chicken-runs on the erstwhile croquet lawn, to say nothing of the battered tin buckets containing chicken food standing by the fine flight of steps that led to the handsome front door. Visitors felt it was a pity. “Such a fine place but no attempt to keep it up these days. No cash, of course, but chickens on the lawn—well! But then, Lady Bradsole always was a little odd.” (3)

But a decay in finances and domestic staff, meant a number of adjustments for the couple. “Sir Giles was an enthusiastic farmer and all his time and energy were spent on his cattle and crops.” While Lady Bradsole “never had to do anything but accept her housekeeper’s suggestions”. That is until the day her housekeeper left her. Now, she has part-time help from the gardener’s wife, and she does her own cooking and dusts only when necessary. 

As she told people, the first five years were the worst. After that, nothing seemed to matter. Things just went on—or they didn’t. Anyway, the Place survived and no one was actually poisoned. (3)

It’s a companionably chaotic household, complete with Kenneth the cat who seems to be the best fed member of the family. If anything is left out for a moment, Kenneth is at it. And remember, this book was published in 1950, and food in the UK was rationed until 1954. The cat eating the butter means there is only margarine to offer guests when they drop in. Which in a mad book like this, people are dropping in in need of feeding at all hours.

On one such occasion, Sybil Hargreaves, a bossy, know-it-all neighbour who makes a full-time job of dishing out advice and judgement, in equal portion, drops in at teatime. Etiquette says Lady Bradsole must offer Sybil the cake she has just made. We are privy to both Sybil’s surprise that the cake is not at all bad, and Lady Bradsole’s dismay as Sybil helps herself to yet another slice of the cake that was intended to be served at dinner. Of course, neither breathes a word of these thoughts to each other. When offered cake, Sybil reminds Lady Bradsole of a recent cake of hers that failed and Lady Bradsole silently accepts her neighbours reproof. All I can say is that Lady Bradsole is a saint, and Sybil gets a telling off at the end, but not nearly to the extent in which she deserves. 

I’ve gotten off base, like I knew I would. There are so many characters in this book and side plots that I wasn’t sure what the primary plot of the story was until I was almost finished the book. But I don’t feel I could do justice to all of the characters or plots and keep this review to a manageable length. 

What I feel I must address are the ghosts. I had reached about 55 percent of the way through this book when it momentarily lost me. In many novels, something happens at around the halfway mark to turn the story on its head. Usually it is something that concerns the main character. If things have been going their way up until that point then something comes along and knocks them for six. Likewise, if the main character has been facing setback after setback, then they finally have a win. Often all this happens at a big event where a good number of characters come crashing into each other and disrupting the main character’s life. But here’s the thing. Not every story follows this structure. Also, at 55% I still had no idea which character was the focus of the story. At the start I thought it was Lucinda, because she’s the character we travel with to London. For a moment, I thought it might be her sister, Angela, who she encourages to come home to help with the harvest. Then at 55 percent Aylwin seems to be the focus. Remember, Aylwin? He’s the poet friend of Priscilla’s who she is trying to help buck up through psychoanalysis, or what she calls psychoanalysis.

Aylwin visits one of the neighbours, an old woman with hermit-like tendencies, Miss Kingsford, who just happens to have the same last name as Simon. (He’s the one who rescued Lucinda when she was drunk at Angela’s birthday party.) Aylwin and Miss Kingsford have struck up a friendship, and Aylwin tells her all about himself. Her house is next to the crumbling walls of an ancient Priory, and oldest part of the house had once been part of the original Priory. Aylwin feels “a chilly eeriness in the atmosphere”, but dismisses it as he gets more comfortable with its owner. She tells him the place is haunted by her ancestors, and that she is proud of their ghosts (81). It’s not just Aylwin that feels a strange presence there, many others do as well, including Sir Giles, Priscilla, and a police inspector.

It’s at the halfway point in the book when there is a dramatic occurrence with a “grey mist” that seems to “obscure the room” (105). Someone shows up at the woman’s house, and there is a struggle. At this point, “[t]he mist appeared to Aylwin to grow dense and ‘They’ seemed to press closely round” (106). 

At this point I was thinking, what kind of book is this?! I was pretty sure the ghosts were real, but the ghosts felt out of place within the context of the rest of the story. Without revealing anything, I will just say, stick to it. I won’t say it all makes sense in the end, but it makes more sense. Look, I love a spooky book as much as the next person, but the ghosts threw me off. It distracted me from what this scene is doing within the context of the rest of the novel. And it’s actually brilliant. Lambert adds layer upon layer of misdirections, misunderstandings, confusion, creating a general state of chaos where no one knows if they are coming or going. My advice is to  just go with it and enjoy the ride.

I’ve only just realised I didn’t touch on the romances. And not all of them went as I had expected! There is lots of flirtation, some happily ever afters, and the suggestion of more in the future for these characters. Like I said, too many things happen in this book to cover all of them in one review. But I hope I’ve teased enough of them to encourage you to pick it up your own copy of Harvest Home. 

Like Sir Giles and Lady Bradsole home, the Place, this book is companionably chaotic, full of charmingly batty characters, and coincidence. I loved every minute in this world, even the ghosts, once I got used to them.

 

Thank you to Dean Street Press for kindly sending me a copy of Harvest Home for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

All I Desire, Scotch Mist, Staying Put, and Harvest Home come out today with Dean Street Press’s Furrowed Middlebrow imprint.

*All page numbers are from the ebook and may not correspond to the paperback edition.

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Cyanide in the Sun and Other Stories of Summertime Crime edited by Martin Edwards

Cyanide in the Sun and Other Stories of Summertime Crime is one of the six books I brought with me on our recent trip to Prince Edward Island. I started it on the first day of autumn, which sounds like an incongruous time to be reading a short story collection with a summer theme. However, the stories are not only set in summer, they all feature characters on holiday, too. A fact I was not aware of until I had started reading. This collection turned out to be exactly what I wanted to be reading on my trip. 

Short stories are great for when you only have small pockets of time to read in. And I have to admit that while away I was so overly stimulated by the beautiful landscape and all of the day trips we had lined up, that I was not able to carve out as much time for reading. In what time I did have available, I was often a bit distracted. I still bookended my day with reading, but not for an hour or more at a time, which is what I usually do at home.

In this collection, I discovered lots of new favourites and I have a sneaking suspicion that this book will find its way into my suitcase on my next holiday.

“Kill & Cure” by Guy Cullingford (1958)

A crime writer suffering from nightmares is prescribed a fortnight holiday at a private hotel in Bunmouth. There he just seems to get accustomed to being away from his typewriter when something extraordinary happens with one of his fellow guests. This was humorous, shocking, and very well-told in just a few pages. What a great start to this collection!

“Day Excursion” by Wilfred Fienburgh (1954)

Short and cute scene with Sergeant Pockle on a train with a bunch of “day trippers returning home from Seagate”. All is quiet in the carriage when a little boy claims he spots the man who stole his mum’s purse earlier in the day. Really lovely scene-setting in this story. Despite its brevity we get a sense of Pockle’s humour and general personality, and the other characters are equally well-drawn. 

“The Secret of the Mountain” by C. Bobbett (1928)

A man has a fatal accident on a mountain in the Lake District. His wife, Mrs. Watson suspects it was not an accident, but that an ex-business partner of her husband’s, Mr. Kent, was in some way responsible. Travers, a Scotland Yard detective, investigates. Half the fun of this one is how Travers goes about his investigation and search for the proof of murder. The only thing that didn’t work for me was the framing device, which felt unnecessary and a bit confusing to my tired brain.

“Unlucky Dip” by Andrew Garve (1956)

This is a story that is as clever as it is short. And it is very short indeed. A man dies by drowning during his regular 7:30 a.m. swim, possibly as a result of a muscle cramp. But what of the bruising around his shoulders?

I loved the setting of this one. Just imagine living somewhere with such easy access to the sea that you could enjoy the luxury of a morning swim each day! The downside, of course, is the chance of meeting your death there.

“Quarrel at Sea” by Victor Canning (1956)

This is another one set by the sea. It relies on the victim’s watch to tell the story of time of death, but not in the way you may expect. I just loved it!

“The Holiday” by Ethel Lina White (1938)

I love the start of this one.

Nearly everyone in the small block of old-fashioned mansion-flats seemed to be going on holiday, with the exception of Charles Bevan.

Checked in his ambition to become one of Trenchard’s young men, for the past eight months he had been lying in a back ground-floor flat, which looked out into the well of the courtyard. He disliked reading, so had nothing to do but listen to the rush of bath-water down the pipes from six o’clock in the morning, and to watch the lights appear in the opposite building until the final eclipse. (61)

I assumed “Trenchard’s young men” had something to do with the military, but I had to look it up. Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard (1873-1956) was important in the establishment of the Royal Air Force. So our man Charles Bevan was unsuccessful at becoming a pilot, which I suspect was a disappointment a number of men had to face during the First and Second World Wars.

But let me describe the premise…

What happens when a bank robber holds up in a woman’s apartment when everyone else on her floor is on holiday. This was a surprisingly touching story with a satisfying ending. I should not have expected anything less from Ethel Lina White. After all, she did write my second favourite British Library Crime Classic, The Wheel Spins. I have yet to read something by White I didn’t love.

“Even Murderers Take Holidays” by Michael Gilbert (1950)

This one shows the author’s sense of humour, as much as his sense of justice. It’s a really fabulous holiday read told from the perspective of Croft, a hired killer. At the beginning of the quotation below, he is describing the benefit of never having met his victims before they become “objects of his professional attention”.

Anonymity was one of the advantages of professionalism.

Nevertheless, there’s no denying, he sometimes felt the strain. And when you feel strain you need a holiday. A quiet holiday, with all business barred. A holiday beside the sea.

At random Croft had selected Blymouth, on the South coast.

The season was nearly over and the first gales of autumn were emptying the promenades and bringing down, with the yellow leaves, the prices at the many boarding houses. (82)

This is a perfect story to be reading at the end of summer or in early autumn. And I have to say, that I applaud his timing for a holiday. I much prefer autumn gales to the stiffling heat of the hot summer sun. But you just know that Croft is going to ruin his holiday when he suddenly finds himself on the job.

Several times, in the course of the ensuing days, Croft warned himself not to be a fool. He reminded himself of the old saying that you should never mix business with pleasure. A holiday was a holiday.

Worse, he was stepping outside his own strict line of business. But however hard he argued he could not argue away the tangible figure of five thousand solid, indisputable, Bank of England pounds.

For years he had been acting as an agent. Now was his chance to become a principal.

For years he had been removing unwanted persons in return for—what? A pittance, a salary. Here was the big money, waiting to fall into his hands. (83-84)

This story was so good! Gilbert just lines up all the pieces of this story so brilliantly. It’s full of an inevitability that is no less satisfying when the obvious conclusion comes to fruition.

“‘Mr. Bearstone Says…’” by Anthony Berkeley (1943)

This one kept me guessing right until the end, and it did not end up where I thought it would at all. A man dies while out for his morning swim, and his wife is near hysterical about it. But what of Mr. Bearstone, the ex-business partner of Mr. Hutton? What if Mr. Bearstone and his lover, Mrs. Hutton, were in cahoots? Of course it was possible, but the station sergeant, Roger, met Mrs. Hutton at a party in November 1939 and got the impression that she was a very silly creature. Now, some years later, the question is, could such a silly woman be trusted as an accomplice to murder? This was another goodie!

“In the Picture” by Nicholas Bentley (1956)

There is an atmospheric, almost Ripley-esque feel to this story. Two couples go to France for a holiday, but one of the members of the group has a plan to appease his jealousy towards his admirable wife. This was another short one, of which, there are a number in this collection. Normally, I gravitate towards longer short stories, but I have to say I found all of the stories in this collection to be really strong, and this one was no different. 

“And the Police Were Not Called” by Bernard J. Farmer (1951)

This is a cute little mystery featuring a police constable who is staying on holiday at a boarding house where missing five pounds goes missing. 

“Consider Your Verdict” by Anthony Gilbert (1956)

A woman, our narrator, meets a man on holiday. She makes herself sound wealthier than she is, because she wants to impress him. Meanwhile, he fails to mention he’s a conman. This was a fun one. Moral of the story… One should not tell lies! 

Side note… The conman is named Gil Arnott. I always get a bit of a thrill when I come across a my own last name (Arnett), even if it is a variant spelling and it’s just the character name of a criminal. Is anyone else like this?

“Crooked Harvest” by Shelley Smith (1947)

Nigel Armstrong, an antique dealer imagines himself rescuing a woman that he has recently met and fallen for. When the opportunity arises to save her from a crook he seizes it with unexpected results.

The opening made me laugh.

Nigel Armstrong wondered disconsolately why he had ever imagined that a quiet holiday in the country would be fun. It was dull, unbearably dull. No one to talk to, nothing to do but walk. He kicked an inoffensive stone along the lane. It wasn’t true that country folk were friendly, they were hatefully reserved and stuck up.

That adorably pretty Miss Brown, for instance. Her house was a stone’s throw from his, they saw each other daily, and yet he could not get into conversation with her. (129)

Nigel has basically described my ideal holiday, or life, for that matter. Countryside, dull, no one to talk to, and lots of walks. Add books to the list and you can sign me up. 

You will be glad to know that Nigel’s holiday does pick up quite a bit.

“Cyanide in the Sun” by Christianna Brand (1958)

The problem with having a favourite author is that you come to expect quite a lot from them. Christianna Brand is the author of my favourite British Library Crime Classic, London Particular, so I expected this one to be my favourite story in the bunch. It was not. Her book, Cat and Mouse, took me reading it a second time to really enjoy it, so perhaps I will have to give this one another go, too.

A serial killer who preys on random strangers stalks the seaside town of Scampton. The means of murder, cyanide in the food. The whodunit aspect was obvious to me from the start, so obvious I thought it could not possibly be them. The howdunit was much more interesting, but that it required an explanation dampened the punch. 

“The Fly” by John Bingham (1953)

A man dies while night fishing in Norway. It could be an accidental death, but Superintendent Wills, an experienced fisherman himself, thinks not. This story was short and smart. 

“A Holiday by the Sea” by Will Scott (1924)

Giglamps, a do-gooder tramp, and his new friend, Cheerful—who isn’t—catch a ride to Margate. There they find themselves on the trail of a pretty boy conman, and his band of thieves. This was such a fun one! Giglamps was such a character! I would love to read the collection of Will Scott’s short stories featuring this character, called simply, Giglamps (1924).

The passage I am about to share is a smidge spoiler-y, so skip it if that bothers you. But I had to share it because it’s such a great example of Giglamps’ voice.

“[I]t’s really remarkable the amount o’ good we done by comin’ to Margate for eight hours, although there’s all the cops in Kent lookin’ for us, although the only chance we had to bathe was in trouble. We never got no nearer the sea than the smell, but we done a mighty lot o’ good. Except to ourselves.” (183) 

Doesn’t he sound fun?!

“Two on a Tower” by Michael Innes (1956)

A tidy little story about a couple and a friend who travel together to Italy, with deadly results. Smartly worded, brief, with a strangely satisfying conclusion.

“The Summer Holiday” by Celia Fremlin (1983)

Celia Fremlin just writes the best crime fiction. This was tense, believable, but also completely unbelievable—if you know what I mean. Clever and deceptively simple. There is no mystery here, but with this much tension and atmosphere, it doesn’t need one. I loved it!

She would never have believed that widowhood would suit her so well. She would have said, if you’d asked her, that she was one of those unassuming, dependent little women who would be lost without a man to lean on.

And now here she was not feeling lost at all, not the least bit. It was amazing—and, in a way, rather disturbing. (191)

One of my favourite things about Fremlin’s writing is her ability to write women who subvert expectations. In this one, Emmy will stop at nothing to avoid going on holiday with her family, even if it results in the police getting involved.  

“The Summer Holiday Murders” by Julian Symons (1960)

My favourite of the bunch has to be this long, almost novella length story. It had great pacing, kept me guessing, and I suspected just about every character, but the culprit. 

One of the women on a coach tour is found drowned in a pool, having appeared to have fallen down some rocks and hit her head. It could have been an accident. But what about the copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the pages torn out that was found beside her? When a writer of detective stories who is on the tour researching his next book, inserts himself into the investigation things really start to heat up! It’s just so good! I really must read more by this author in future.

Like a cruise, there is something so sinister about a coach tour. All those people of various backgrounds in forced proximity with each other, being carted around for brief stops, and planned surprises feels like the prime scenario for crime to flourish. And flourish it does in this story!

I love how Martin Edwards signs off his introduction to this collection, not least because I read this book while on holiday. 

If you’re reading this collection on holiday, I hope you enjoy it—but keep your eyes peeled for sinister strangers prowling around your resort or hotel corridors, and if you’re travelling in a group, do watch out for your fellow passengers. They might not be all they seem… (11)

I must admit, it made me feel grateful that I knew who I was holidaying with quite well, and we only had two nights during which we would be rolling the dice with our safety while staying at a hotel!

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Cyanide in the Sun for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

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Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand

This review is a testament to the power of a positive review written by someone whose taste you trust. Before you think I am a massive narcissistic, allow me to explain.

I picked this book up a little over a month ago, and I was so excited. It feels like I reference Christianna Brand’s London Particular just about every time I review a British Library Crime Classic, but it is my favourite book in this collection. Needless to say, when I saw that British Library Publishing were coming out with another Christianna Brand title, I cheered. Expectations were high. Brand’s 1950 novel, Cat and Mouse opens with a dedication to Mary Lewis, one of Brand’s writer friends or perhaps an editor, I assumed. In a letter to this Mary Lewis, which is included at the start of this book, Brand refers to a passage in Northanger Abbey where Catherine Morland, Miss Tilney, and Henry Tilney are all discussing the melodramatic novels of the time. “I thought it would be fun to do a good, old-fashioned mystery melodrama, two tombstones and a lantern and all: and since you told me the true story which has formed the basis of my plot, I hereby dedicate its three duodecimo volumes with all my gratitude, to you.” The joke is, Mary Lewis was Brand’s real name. She has dedicated the book to herself, and clearly gotten quite the kick out of it. In Northanger Abbey, Henry says, “there must be a murder” and so says Brand. Her melodrama is full of the wit any reader of her work has come to expect, and a good dose of murder too.

But there lies the tricky part. For some reason, I read that playful letter and got the impression that the book would be a joke. Not in a derogatory way. I expected Cat and Mouse to be poking fun of melodrama in the same way Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of the romanticised pastoral novels written by authors at the time, like Mary Webb. I’m not sure if anyone, other than myself, would have come to this screwy conclusion, but it is a screwy one. My advice is to read Cat and Mouse as you would any of her other novels, expecting Brand’s sharp wit and panache for plot-y plots and twists galore. My other advice is to get on board with the main character, Katinka Jones. I wasn’t on Katinka’s side when I read this book the first time. Yes, I read this book twice. When I reached the end the first time… Well, frankly, I was relieved the thing was over. I was annoyed with Katinka and it did have a clever ending, but it had not been funny. It had been frustrating. I felt like I had missed something, like I wasn’t smart enough to get it. You can imagine how much I enjoyed that feeling! I certainly had no plan to review it. The book was gifted from British Library, and while when a publisher sends a review copy, it is implied the reviewer is meant to review it. However, a negative review is hardly likely to help with sales. So it was not going to review it then. It was decided.

Then I read Sabine’s glowing review…

Sabine’s favourite British Library Crime Classic is the same as mine, London Particular. Do you want to know what Sabine’s second favourite BLCC is? The same as mine. The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White. From reading her reviews over the years, I know that if Sabine likes a book, I will too. If she loves a book, so will I. And she loved Cat and Mouse. So what could I do? I had to give it another shot. I had to read it again.

When I picked it up a second time less than a month after my first reading, I was a bit concerned I was jinxing myself by not leaving long enough between readings. But it felt like this book and I had unfinished business. I wanted to know where I stood with it. I just could not put it off.

And now, after the longest introduction to a review, in the history of introductions, here is my review of Christianna Brand’s Cat and Mouse. 

Katinka Jones, the Miss Friendly-wise agony aunt for Girls Together magazine, is on holiday in Wales in September. She visits her Great Uncle Joseph where he lives by the giant reservoir some miles outside of Swansea. This passage describing Katinka’s uncle reminded me of something out of Cold Comfort Farm, and is probably what solidified the idea that this book was going to be a parody when I read it the first time.

Nobody remained but Great Uncle Joseph, known in the Welsh idiom as Jo Jones the Waterworks, because of the proximity of his home to the giant reservoir— the nearest he’s been to water for a long time, thought Tinka, eyeing with disfavour his unattractive person. (Cat and Mouse 23)

Apparently, Katinka didn’t tone down the colour of her red lips and nails enough for Wales, and finds herself unwelcome in her uncle’s home, so she takes up residence in a “gloomy little hotel” in Swansea (23). At a loose end she decides to pay a visit to Amista, a young woman who is a longtime writer to Girls Together, asking for beauty tips and love advice. Hard to say you’ve ‘dropped in’ when you’ve travelled six miles by bus and boat and climbed up a mountainside to get to the person’s house. But Katinka does just that. Once there she introduces herself, leaving out the Girls Together bit, as it might sound a bit mad, and says she is calling on Mrs. Carlyon. The only problem is, everyone in the house, including Mr. Carlyon claims there is no such person. Not only that, there are only two servants and Carlyon living in the house. Even Mr. Chucky, the man she met in the village who offered to come with her to see Carlyon, who she thought was handsome when you really looked at him, says he has never seen the woman. “I didn’t even know Mr. Carlyon was married,” claims Mr. Chucky (41). 

Stumbling out of the house and into the “silver rain”, Katinka runs down the mountain hoping to catch a ride across the river with the woman who delivers the milk, Miss Evans the Milk as she is referred (41). Apparently high heels are not all weather or all terrain footwear, and she takes a tumble, twisting her ankle. Sitting on a rock, waiting for the pain to subside, Katinka collects herself. That’s when she remembers spotting one of Amista’s letters waiting to be mailed sitting on a table in the front hall when she came in. Now, the letter is gone. The mail taken by Miss Evans the Milk. And Carlyon, who comes after Katinka, is none too pleased to hear that she has injured herself, leaving him obliged to have her stay the night. 

But he would not smile, and she gave herself up to the struggle. Every touch of her foot upon the ground was agony.

She was worn out before they had reached the top of the path: sick with pain, almost sobbing with dejection and weariness. She had no idea what time it was, but the mist was closing in about the mountain, the fine, soft drizzle of rain made grey evening of September afternoon. The mountain rose up, impregnably stern, behind the fretted decoration of the silly peaked roofs of the house; and at sight of the servants standing in the little porch, like two dogs straining at the leash to come to their master for some news that they knew he carried, her heart failed her. I must go into the house again and into that horrible hall... (48)

The first time reading this I thought I was meant to be poking fun of Katinka with the author, but I wasn’t finding the situation, or Katinka, very funny. Actually, I was finding Katinka a bit frustrating. I mean, she kept oscillating between fear and infatuation, which got a bit dizzying after a time. The whole Amista doesn’t exist, but wait no, I just remembered this thing, so she must exist! And, suspecting Carlyon of everything imaginable one minute and being in love with him the next, was exhausting. Katinka is supposed to be “an old, old lady of very nearly thirty, grown tough and cynical in the service of her profession”, but what she appeared to be is a young girl in her teens, like our heroine from Northanger Abbey, 17-year-old Catherine Morland (17).

However, on my second reading I didn’t notice any of this. It’s not just that I glossed over these aspects of Katinka’s character. I did not notice them. Once I decided to take the novel seriously, I was on Katinka’s side and I could see why she was torn between her attraction for this man and her suspicion of him. Part of her wants to forget all about Amista. If she can do that, then there is no mystery. If there is no mystery, Carlyon becomes a sad, handsome man, who keeps giving her signs that he is as interested in her as she is with him. But there’s the other side of that. If she cannot prove Amista’s existence, then Carlyon will continue to believe that Katinka is a journalist, who has butted into his home with an unbelievable story. 

Along with Northanger Abbey, this novel has a dash of Jane Eyre. Katinka even references Charlotte Brontë’s novel. The descriptions of the landscape in Cat and Mouse reminded me of a very different book, Forest Silver by E.M. Ward. Perhaps, I only made the connection between these two, because I have not read many books set in Wales, but when Katinka runs out into the “silver rain”, I immediately thought of my beloved Forest Silver. Brand and Ward are clearly writing about the same landscape and the use of the word silver is uncommon enough in descriptions of nature that I suspect silver light must be a characteristic of the place, or perhaps the grey from the mountains reflects off other surfaces, giving them a silvery cast. I had to include a favourite quotation of mine from Forest Silver.

From the narrow road they looked down through tree branches to the lake, that lay rippled and silver bright behind the dark trunks. Almost at the top of the hill they turned off by a little path that led to a gap in the roadside wall. Through the gap they could see into the solemn wood of Bainriggs, now colourless and vague but so sodden with the day's rain that, except in the black tree shadows, everything was changed to silver. The moonlit rocks, the wet sponge of moss upon the ground, leaves, lit spaces of the beech trunks and the stems of birches, always silver but now brighter than in any noontide, all these shone and glittered with a light so wan and yet so brilliant that it seemed like the phosphorescence of a world long dead. (Forest Silver 10)

Katinka does not romanticise the landscape in the way Richard Blunt does in Forest Silver, but I got the sense that she would be inclined to, if she was not so consumed with the mystery of Amista.

She wandered over to the window and, parting the curtains, leaned her forehead against the chilly glass, staring out across the opposite mountain. But the rainbow was gone. Nothing to be seen but the shaft of thin sunshine across the hump of the hill, the sullen, silver river in the valley and, at a turn of the mountain path, the two tiny specks creeping upward towards the house. (Cat and Mouse 79)

There’s that word silver, again. I don’t know what it means. I don’t even know what the landscape in Wales actually looks like, because I have not been. But I felt like these two authors were writing about the same place, a place I would recognise if I saw it, and so much of my traveling happens on the page. When I visited London for the first time, it felt like home. It felt like a place I knew, could find my way around, and a place I had created an image of in my mind with the help of countless authors. Likewise, Wales is being written on my mind, and in my heart through Ward, and now Brand. If anyone has any recommendations for books set in Wales that can help me continue to fill in the details of the landscape, I would love to hear them. 

In the meantime, I’ll be reading Northanger Abbey, which I picked up on a whim after finishing this one. (Full disclosure, I'm reading an ebook of this. But I have linked one of the many gorgeous editions I would buy if I had the means.) It appears two readings of Cat and Mouse in a month only whetted my appetite for melodrama. I never would have guessed it.

Give this fun and witty, but dark, indeed, very dark, rollercoaster of a novel a try. Believe in Katinka Jones, as she ferrets out the truth about Amista, even if she must first stumble upon every untruth as she trods the uphill path to get to the precipice of this inventive novel. 

I have to close this post by thanking Sabine for her wonderful review of Cat and Mouse. She says more, by saying less, than I ever could. 

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Cat and Mouse for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

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This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

A Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell

One genre I don’t read often is memoir. I say that like I do read a lot from every other genre, which would be a bit of an exaggeration. All right, all right! It would be a blatant lie. So perhaps I should rephrase that. One genre—from the many—I do not often read is memoir, which explains why A Chelsea Concerto has been on my shelf since 2022 without being read. (Side note: I have an embarrassing number of books that have been on my shelves for well over a decade, but they were almost all purchased secondhand. It is very rare for me not to read a new book as soon as it finds its way into my eager hands.) If it was not for my friend, Gina, mentioning that A Chelsea Concerto was the book club read for the month of April on the Dean Street Press Facebook group, who knows how much time would have gone by before I finally picked it up. I am not on Facebook. But if I was, I’m sure the Dean Street Press group would be the first place I would visit. The mere thought of my fellow readers actively reading a book I had available to me was enough to put me over the edge. Gina mentioned A Chelsea Concerto a couple of times in the past week or so, and as I am both susceptible to suggestion and always want to be reading what Gina is reading, I finally took this one from off the shelf and—after dusting it off—I whizzed through it. Thank you, Gina, for keeping me informed! (If you haven’t already, you should visit Gina’s book blog and while you are at it, why not follow her on Instagram too. But prepare yourself to be very jealous of her vintage book collection!)

Originally published in 1959, A Chelsea Concerto is Frances Faviell’s account of living in London during the Blitz. Frances Faviell was the pen name of the painter and author Olivia Faviell Lucas. The image on the cover of the Dean Street Press edition is from one of her paintings, so clearly she was as talented at painting as she was at writing. And her writing is wonderful!

She was living and working as a portrait artist in Chelsea when World War II was declared and having previous nursing experience she signed up with the Red Cross. Due to its location, being close to the Royal Hospital and the Thames, Chelsea was one of the most heavily bombed areas in London. I believe Faviell records it as being the third hardest hit area of the city. Faviell joined the Red Cross during the Phoney War, while they kept themselves busy with training scenarios, nothing could have prepared them for what was to come.

Although, a few skills Faviell acquired earlier in life prove to be unexpectedly useful to her. On one occasion, after being told to take off her coat and dress, she was lowered head first, holding a flashlight in her mouth, into a hole just wide enough to fit through, at the bottom of which a man was making an “unnerving” sound “like an animal in a trap”.

The blood had rushed to my head from being upside down. Fortunately I had done some acrobatic dancing and had been held in this manner previous to being whirled around in the dance, so that keeping my body stiff was not too much of a strain, but the stench of blood and mess down there caught the pit of my stomach and I was afraid of vomiting and dropping the precious torch. (130-31)

This scene is well described without being gratuitous, as is the rest of the book. But somehow those places in the text with sparse detail, like a rough sketch with a few splashes of colour, are some of the most difficult to get through. Left to the reader to fill in and imagine for themselves, I found it made for difficult reading in a few places where my imagination added a little too much colour than my emotions could handle.

Ever the artist, Faviell presents the beauty alongside the grim reality of living in a war zone. Here she captures the benefits of the blackout and fuel rationing. 

The black-out gave new and fascinating aspects of the Thames against which the outlines of buildings and the whole skyline were imprinted without the former blur of light from the great city. In the day we enjoyed freedom from traffic jams — the streets had suddenly become a joy for walking and cycling, and I now cycled with Vicki perched in a basket on the front. (27)

Vicki is Faviell’s Dachshund, and being a dog lover myself, I took particular enjoyment from any of the scenes that featured Vicki, or Miss Hitler, as she was jokingly referred to by the locals due to her German origin. It is touching that in a time when some people were suspecting anyone who appeared to be a foreigner, others retained their sense of humour. The idea that some people Faviell came across were prejudiced again certain breeds of dog because of being German is crazy to me. But fear can bring out the worst in people, and the illogical.

There are so many accounts of everyday people acting with courage, despite not being courageous by nature. Faviell says there were days she felt she didn’t want to help anyone, though she felt compassion for them, and times when she was all but overcome by fear. After asking the wardens about how they managed, as they were out in the streets during the bombing, one that she was particularly envious of for her coolness under pressure admitted that sometimes she had to “literally drag [herself] from railing to railing to reach the end of [her] beat” (116).

I’ve read quite a bit of historical fiction set in London during World War II, and I have often been left with the impression that the author was romanticising the situation. Usually, I still found enjoyment from reading these books, but when I am reading fiction written by people who didn’t experience the events firsthand I find myself wondering what it was really like. While Faviell did write this book some time after the war had ended, and the artist in her manages to see beauty and loveliness in the world even when on the outside it seems like there would be none, I think she does a wonderful job of relating events without seeming to overly dramatise them.

But how she can see both the beauty in falling incendiaries and the fun in extinguishing them, is beyond me.

On this night Richard and I had a wonderful time. He belonged to a fire-fighting party for our part of the street and incendiaries were falling everywhere. They were small and pretty, like fireflies coming down and the sky looked fantastically beautiful. They were easy to extinguish with sand or a stirrup pump provided they were tackled immediately. (147) 

And it wasn’t just Faviell who felt this way about them. In a letter, her mother, who resided in Plymouth, describes them as “the most beautiful sight I have seen for a very long time” and relates “everywhere I could hear laughter and shouting as people put them out” (148).

Faviell’s knowledge of Flemish put her in the position to help with some of the refuges that were streaming into London. She was assigned an area and saw that they were fitted out with clothes, housewares, and all the other necessities of life when essentially all they had were the clothes on their backs. Can you imagine? Her work with Flemish speaking refugees ranges from moderating arguments, teaching English, dealing with mysterious illnesses, and setting up garden allotments.

There are so many sections from this book that I want to share and discuss and just generally marvel at. I have to applaud Dean Street Press for choosing A Chelsea Concerto as their first book club read. I’m looking forward to reading more of Frances Faviell’s books, especially her first one, The Dancing Bear (1954), a memoir from her time in Berlin from 1946 to 1949. The title alone has me intrigued, but after reading Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, a novel set in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, I am interested in learning more about Germany during the first half of the 20th century. Faviell wrote three novels too, A House on the Rhine (1955), Thalia (1957), and The Fledgling (1958), none of which I have read, but am eager to explore. Thanks to Dean Street Press, these are all currently in print under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint.

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

London Particular by Christianna Brand

London Particular by Christianna Brand may just be my new favourite book among the British Library Crime Classics. While, as Martin Edwards suggests in his introduction, it is up for debate whether Brand strictly follows the rules of a ‘fair play’ puzzle in this book, this was the author’s own favourite among her books for good reason. I do think the murder is solvable for the reader, but it would take someone who is exceptional at discarding the superfluous. And apparently, I do not fit into this category. But I’m fine with that, because this one kept me guessing right to the last sentence.

Dr. Edwin Robert Edwards, lovingly referred to as Tedward, and Rosie Evans, the younger sister of his colleague, are out on a typically foggy November night in London, trying to find their way to a dying man. Tedward has received a strange phone call from Rosie’s house by Raoul Vernet, a dinner guest visiting from Switzerland, urging the doctor to come quick, he has been hit by a mastoid mallet. Tedward and Rosie arrive to find Raoul Vernet is dead.

Rosie enlists the help of family friend, Inspector Cockrill, to aid the police in their investigations, because as dear Cockie is soon to find out, there are only seven suspects and all belong to the Evans family or are close friends of theirs.

There are so many things about this book that I enjoyed. Let’s talk about the setting first. As suggested by its title, this novel begins on a night ravaged by the soot laden fog that was typical of London in the 1950s. In December of 1952, the same year this book was published, London experienced severe air pollution from the combination of cold weather, an anticyclone (high pressure air close to a land mass with lower pressure air surrounding), and windless conditions which trapped airborne pollutants, creating a deadly smog, which killed as many as 4,000 people and made thousands more sick. Coal was mainly to blame for the great quantity of pollutants in the air and the Clean Air Act of 1956 came about in direct response to the event that came to be known as the Great Smog of 1952. All of this is to say that the fog described in this book would have been thick yellow, green, or black fog often referred to as a ‘pea-souper’.

It may be hard for today’s readers to imagine how dense London fog would have been during this time period. The title London Particular, is a reference to chapter three in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. A character says, “This is a London particular” in response to a new-comer to London asking if there was a fire, because “the streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen”. By referencing a novel published one hundred years earlier, Brand suggests that this is the same dense, pollution-filled, fog that Londoners had been suffering since Dickens’ time, and no doubt even earlier than that. (Here's my short and sweet review of Bleak House.)

Earlier this month I read another book set during the 1950s, Patti Callahan Henry’s The Story She Left Behind. In it the Great Smog of 1952 is well-described from the perspective of an American tourist who is not accustomed to a London particular and is unaware that the London air is not always so toxic. This novel is not entirely set in London, the characters quickly flee to the Lake District for their health, but if you enjoy historical fiction I cannot recommend this one enough. The brief description of London’s landmarks veiled in thick fog were of particular interest to me, as I have not read anything else set during this historical event. (You can find my review of that book on Instagram and Goodreads, if you are interested.)

But back to London Particular… Brand describes the family dynamics with vigour and humour, breathing such life into the house that it seems a shame to sully it with the ugliness of a murder.

Tedward strolled out after her, laughing. ‘Never mind, Til! You cope with the old girl, I'll see myself out.’ Gabriel followed him, barking gaily, under the chronic delusion that anyone in an overcoat was necessarily about to take him walkie-palkies, and Annaran, the Siamese cat, who was very sillily called after the film Annaran the King of Siam, poised ready to dart out to certain death under the traffic wheels of Maida Vale. ‘Gabriel! Annaran!’ shouted Matilda in despair above the din. The telephone rang, Emma reached boiling-point, Rosie screamed out from her attic that if that was Damien on the phone she would come down and speak to him, and out of a first-floor window flew a long-sleeved woollen nightie. A strong smell of burning pastry arose from the basement. ‘My God, what a house!’ said Tilda. From the hall came a last shrill yelp of disappointment as Tedward shut the door in Gabriel’s face; followed by a squall as it closed upon Annaran’s shining tail. The fall of the nightgown had been followed by a heavy silence in Mrs Evans’ room. Today of all days! — Granny was always at her most impossible, after Worse than Death. (45-46)

I had to include that hilarious glimpse into the Evans’ household at its most chaotic. It actually made me laugh out loud while reading, which is something I rarely do.

The other thing I really enjoy about this book is Brand’s writing. The plot is so finely tuned that she continues to play with reader expectation throughout. She even teases the reader by foreshadowing events to come. 

In the long, white firelit drawing-room the victim bowed and smiled and reeled off his devoirs before the serious work of the evening should begin; within the radius of one fog-bound mile, were these seven people, one of whom was very shortly going to murder him. (56)

Again, she teases what is to come when early on in the investigation, Cockie is questioning some suspects for the first time.

A little fish of doubt swam into Cockie's consciousness and hung about there for a moment waggling its fins at him; but he was more interested in Thomas than in Melissa Weeks and so he passed on and never knew how much trouble and tragedy might have been saved if he had noticed it. (77)

Although, I usually find this type of blatant foreshadowing is too heavy-handed for my liking, I think Brand makes the technique work because it is both carefully placed, and used sparingly.

Despite Brand’s skill at creating finely-tuned plots full of twists, this does not feel like a plot-driven novel. Everything that happens in this book is driven by believable decisions made by the characters. Even with a number of characters confessing to the crime, it does not feel like some sort of ploy to confuse the reader. It does of course add confusion, but each of the confessions are believable in the moment because there is some truth behind each confession, and because all of the suspects are so closely linked, there is always someone who is trying to protect someone else. 

Speaking of characters, Cockie appears in six other novels by Brand, five of which have been republished by the British Library, including Green for Danger, Suddenly at His Residence, Death of Jezebel, and Tour de Force. London Particular is the fifth book in the series and Tour de Force, which I read before reading this one, is the sixth. (Here’s a link to my review of Tour de Force.) Although, an earlier case is mentioned in this one in which Inspector Cockrill crosses paths with Inspector Charlesworth, the police inspector who is officially working on the case in this book, there are no spoilers for that novel. I had no problem enjoying the books in this series out of order.

While there are some aspects of this novel that date it, there are other aspects that make it feel ahead of its time. We find out early on that Rosie is pregnant and is very open about seeking an abortion. Abortion was not legalised in England until 1967. I’m willing to bet that Rosie referring to her unwanted pregnancy as “a most frightful muddle” and seeking an abortion from the family doctor, while continuing to unashamedly give in to her passion for men, must have shocked some readers when this book was first published. Perhaps all the more so because Rosie is a delightful and charming character, who is living her life unapologetically, and is more intelligent than she makes herself out to be. After all, it was her idea to ask Cockie to investigate, and you cannot help but like and approve of Cockie. 

I cannot recommend this one enough! It has an atmospheric setting, twist, after twist, likeable characters—all of which you will be rooting for, even though one of them has to be the murderer—and some really solid writing. Oh, and no clunky explanation at the end. Thank heavens!

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of London Particular for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!

Murder as a Fine Art by Carol Carnac

After reading Murder in Vienna, written under Edith Caroline Rivett’s pen name, E.C.R. Lorac, I approached Murder as a Fine Art with eager anticipation. But I have spent much of my reading time lately feeling tired, which may explain why this one published under her lesser known pen name, Carol Carnac, at first, failed to grab me. However, I prevailed, got some sleep, and by the midway point I was really enjoying this classic mystery set in March.

After the first and second Minister of Fine Arts died shortly after taking up the position, Humphry David is the third in line. It is his job to get things in order, despite the fact that he thinks the whole idea of a Ministry of Fine Arts is rubbish. In fact, when the idea for the Ministry had been broached, David had voted against it. 

Regardless of personal opinion, he must do the job he has been given. When David spots some irregularities in the Ministry’s correspondence, which lead him to suspect there may be some forgeries in their collection, he invites Henry Fearon, one of the experts from Scotland Yard who specialise in forgeries, to investigate. But before Fearon can get to work, Scotland Yard is called in on a more pressing matter. A civil servant has been found crushed beneath a marble bust. The bust of the last Earl of Manderby is generally hated by the staff. The civil servant was not exactly a favourite either.

On one topic, the Minister and the dead man, Pompfret, were of similar mind and that is regarding that marble bust.

“The thing is too utterly revolting. It offends one's sense of values, and the sheer virtuosity of the treatment renders it the more deplorable. It should not be here at all. It labels us as Philistines.”

“It’s a work of art,” said David unhappily. “One mustn’t let personal prejudice intervene..."

“I’ve often wondered if it would topple off with a little encouragement,” said Pompfret. “It’d be a wonderful sight to see it bounce down the stairs. It must weigh several tons.” (33)

Even the detectives, Detective Inspector Lancing and Chief Detective Inspector Julian Rivers, have a low opinion of the marble bust sculpted by Canova. Although, of course, they are critiquing it as it lays in pieces amongst a crime scene.

Together they lay at the foot of the noblest state staircase in London: both with broken necks. Earl Manderby’s neck had severed below the chin; detached from its monumental shoulders, among chips and blocks of laurel leaves, stylised curls and fragments of outsize features, the marble head lay grotesquely close to Pompfret's, while Pompfret's blood clotted on the black and white blocks of the pavement. (46)

One of the things I would not have expected from a mystery set in a Ministry of Fine Arts is that most of the people who work at the Ministry have a specialised appreciation for art and almost no appreciation for that which falls outside of their specialty. For example, David who is known for being a “passionate addict of the arts”—which is what lead him to being given the job as Minister—has a passion for Holbein drawings and Dürer engravings. Having never studied contemporary art, he admits to feeling a “clinic distaste” for it (18). I got a kick out of all of the jabs at contemporary art and Canova’s sculptures. One gets a sense that Carnac had a great time trashing certain styles of art and artists in the writing of this book.

As I mentioned earlier, David is not the first Minister to be appointed. The two men who held the position before him left their own legacy, shall we say. The first, Joyce-Lawrence, had been given a strict budget in which to stick to, and so he filled the collection with representative pieces of the various schools and periods, and concerned himself less with the actual artists included in the collection. In his office he chose contemporary pieces, referred to by the typists as “the Minister’s “funnies” (18). When Fearon asks about them, David explains,

“You see, Joyce-Lawrence had a sense of humour. These pictures aren’t signed. He didn’t have the name of the painter attached to any of them, and his private list has been lost—if it ever existed. It is my own opinion that they’re all anonymous, for the best of reasons.” (20)

The second Minister was no better. He was not interested in art at all, but he worked wonders in the Ministry’s finances, cutting overspending left over from his predecessor by firing all of the experts. The result is that the Ministry is left with a collection that no one knows much about. The staff who work directly with the art collection might know a painting well enough by sight, but it seems unlikely that most would be able to tell the real thing from a counterfeit. A bit of a problem when pieces in the collection are regularly out on loan to galleries across the country. 

And now, here is the current Minister, David, trying to make sense of the Ministry he has been assigned. He is such a kind and helpful person, that I did not think too much of him—except to suspect him, of course, because he seemed a great deal too good. When I was trying to figure out why the first half of this book dragged a bit, I noticed that just about every scene that David was in my interest started to wane. He is so much of a do-gooder that I found him a bit boring. Although, if he was a person—not just a character in a book—he would be the type to have many friends, and not a bad word could be said about him. 

The second half of this book picks up and feels a lot like a country house mystery to me. The Ministry of Fine Arts may be situated in London, but we don’t see much of the city besides a few scenes near the end where the detectives are rushing around asking questions and chasing leads. Lancing and Rivers spend a lot of time searching Medici House, the building that holds the Ministry, for clues, and ways a person could sneak in or out of the building. And of course, just about everyone who works at the Ministry is a suspect, minus the dear typists, of course.

If you like country house mysteries, I think you would enjoy this one. But don’t expect tea served by a loyal retainer in the drawing room. Refreshment can be found in the canteen with the rest of the house staff, minus the night watchmen, Titmarsh and Smith, who prefer to keep their own company in the bowels of the building.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one. I was impressed with the solution to Pompfret’s death, and while I did not come close to figuring it out, the clues were there in the text, so that one could solve the crime themselves, in theory. Carnac’s skill with description gave me a clear picture of Medici House, but also the crime scene, which I sometimes find writers either gloss over, so as not to make things too gruesome, or go too far with it. Carnac provides a good balance, I think. 

I won't say the tense conclusion made up for the slow beginning, but it did make me want to return to this one again sometime. I would like to see if it was just the mood I was in while reading, or if the first half really did drag. Next time, perhaps, I will have more patience with the ever kind and helpful David. If you have read this one, I would love to hear your thoughts on the pacing and anything else you care to discuss about it!

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Murder as a Fine Art for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

This blog post contains affiliate links for Blackwell’s. As a Blackwell’s Affiliate, I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, if you decide to make a purchase through one of the links on my website. I recommend Blackwell’s because I use them myself. This helps support me in sharing—what I hope is—valuable content. Thank you for your support!