Sometimes it’s hard to get started. I’m sure you’ve had books that you’ve had a job getting into. Or a film that offered so much promise but turns out to be dry and boring.
Sometimes they turn out to be not dry and boring at all. They just take a little longer to set the scene.
And then there are the books that tell you something in the opening that you don’t wish to know and it puts you off reading the rest of it.
Prologue
I’m a fan of the “Herring” book series by L C Tyler, featuring Ethelred Tressider and Elsie Thirkettle. These mysteries about a crime writer and his literary agent solving crimes are told from each characters point of view.
They encountered their first dead body in The Herring Seller’s Apprentice. Since then Ethelred has solved a number of crimes, and has been shot at, kidnapped, arrested, menaced, deceived, abandoned and insulted – the last of these mainly by his agent.
They make a good team, so I was surprised to read in the prologue of Crooked Herring “It is with a heavy heart …….. my friend and sometime literary agent, Ms Elsie Thirkettle……. It will never be possible for her to intrude on the narrative again……..Fortunately Elsie left behind a diary of notes covering roughly the period in question …… She also left a tape of various conversations that she had covertly recorded…..”
Notes left behind? Not possible for her to intrude on the narrative again? Could Elsie be…….dead?
Epilogue
I had a number of false starts reading this book. “Knowing” from the start that one of your favourite characters doesn’t survive can do that to you.
But what do you know, I should have realised that there would be a plot twist at the end!
Spoiler alert – Elsie is alive and well and makes it into the next book in the series.
Crooked Herring is available from City Adventurers Solve The Murder
The Elsie and Ethelred Series
Take a journey through baffling cases of murder with this less than successful writer and his literary agent. Follow their hilarious and less than professional way of solving crimes. Although set in modern times, these books have the feel of the Golden Age of mystery stories.
These make a great read. I suggest you start with the first in the series – The Herring Seller’s Apprentice, also available from City Adventurers Solve The Murder
The whole Herring series can be found at https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/l-c-tyler