Dolken från Tunis
(The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)
Agatha Christie
234 p.

For Decades ‘08.

B. Wahlström, 2002.
(first published 1926.)

Back cover blurb:

Mannen satt som jag lämnat honom, i länstolen framför eldstaden. Hans huvud hade fallit åt sidan. På ryggen, strax under kavajkragen, syntes ett blankt föremål - en märklig dolk.

Dolken från Tunis av deckardrottningen Agatha Christie - en klassiker som trollbundit läsare över hela världen!

I’m not a big Agatha Christie fan, not because I dislike her writing, but because I haven’t read much of it. I have read The ABC Murders and now this one. The first I read because I had run out of books whilst on a boat, and this one I read because I was interested as to how Christie would handle the topic. I already knew who murdered Ackroyd, I just wondered how on Earth it could be written convincingly. Without spilling the beans, I was so amazed. It was so clever! Alright, I wish I didn’t know who was the killer. (That is why I am trying to convince someone who doesn’t know who the killer is to read it. I have been this far unsuccessful.)

To my great disappointment, I couldn’t find an English copy of this book. I lent it at the library, because I wasn’t so desperate that I would pay for it. (I usually am.) However, despite searching high and low, I couldn’t for anything find it in English. I went mad looking in the English section. Therefore, I had to settle with the Swedish translation. I dislike reading in translation, because I feel that it is very likely something’s been lost in the translation. Therefore I try not to. (which is why I read so much in English!) Though, I think, this translation was pretty decent. I mean, I never ever cringed. And that’s something.

The Servants
M.M. Smith
233 p.

HarperCollinsPublishers, 2008.
(first published by Earthling Publications, 2007.)

Back cover blurb:

Things are unreliable. Things break. Things fall apart.

Even at 11 years old, Mark knows this all too well.

By the time he moves out of London to the wintry Brighton seaside, the situation is already bad. His mother is ill, and Mark hates his new stepfather. There’s nothing to do and the new house feels nothing like home, filled with odd sounds and hidden rooms … and a strange old lady in the basement.

Shadows are soon gathering, as life goes from bad to worse. Mark knows he has to do soemthing, but he doesn’t know what. And the only people who might be able to help him … may not even exist.

This book was really expensive and I bought it without even being sure what it was about. Okay, so first I thought I wouldn’t buy it, but after picking up a less expensive book, I just turned around and picked out the book out of the bookcase again. What can I say? I am a very impulsive book buyer, as well as drawn to pretty things. And this was very pretty.

As I often do, I believed the story was set in the nineteenth century. When, on the first few pages, the boy talks about his skateboard, I started to feel a bit suspicious. Obviously it was not set in the nineteenth, but in the twentyfirst century. There were, however, bits of the nineteenth century in it. Through that, I was not at all disappointed. (which I often am, following these misbeliefs.)

And oh, it was such a pretty and homely book. Or, maybe homely gives the wrong impression. In many ways it was unsettling, but it had an atmosphere which felt very safe and at ease. So to speak. The story, about a boy whose mother has cancer, was obviously sad, but everything worked out and, somehow, I knew that would happen all along. It’s a hopeful book, and it is lovely.

A Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin
835 p.

For Here Be Dragons.

Bantam USA, 1997.
(first published by Bantam Books, 1996.)

Back cover blurb:

In A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere.

In a land where summer can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family born to harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a take of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs periously in the balance, as each endeavor to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

I didn’t think this book was so long. I really didn’t. It looks like it’s maybe 500, but definitely not 800. Partly because of this, I guess, I had problems really getting into the book. (I am not a big fan of too long books, when I can’t think of any justified purpose of them being so long.)

Another reason why it took 500 pages for me to get into it was all the main characters. Every chapter was told from a different perspective, and it honestly took hundreds of pages before I for sure knew what was going on. That the main characters all had nicknames which were used interchangably with their given names didn’t make the thing better. There was a different plot for every character. Alright, so, the different doings influenced the rest, but the first few hundred pages I was completely lost. Admittedly, it only took a bit before I got a new favourite character, but after a while I realised she wasn’t really a favourite character, just that I always knew what was going on in her world, and I was thankful for that. Of course, for her nothing happens. She basically thought about dragons and had sex with her husband. It was safe. All the other characters rushed about cutting each others’ heads off. Not very nice.

So, for the first 500 pages, I was unsurewhether I liked the book or not. Now that I’m finished, I feel that I do quite like it, but on the other hand, I feel it was a bit too complicated and too much happening all the time. Or maybe it is just that I am used to a straightforward narrative without any thought required on my part. Still, it is a bit bad that it takes more than the book before I can even know if it’s any good. Before I can tell between the main characters! Yet… the story was cool.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
94 p.

For Decades ‘08.

Giunti Gruppo Editoriale, 2001.
(first published by Longmans, Green & Co 1886.)

Back cover blurb:

It was the cures of mankind… that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling.

I just must say that this edition is so weird. It was bought in Italy, it’s published by an Italian publisher, but still it’s in English and all! It’s crazy. Because of this, I have been completely unable to find the cover. It’s not much to see, really. It’s a picture by Toulouse-Lautrec, which is a little weird, I think.

Me being a human being, I more or less knew what this novella is about. What did not know was the perspective it was told. It is told indirectly, without any real showdown with Jekyll and Hyde. And that was amazing. I didn’t have a clue that it was told in that way. I’ve previously seen the musical version of this story, and perhaps some TV-version as well (I can’t really remember, I see so many strange things), and there it is told very straight-forward. The novella is completely reliant on the suspense that is built up. You know something is strange, but you can’t really see what it is, until just at the end. I suppose that is an element of gothic fiction. In the musical there was women in it (SHOCKING I KNOW), but in the novella, there’s nothing of a kind. In fact, there are very few characters. There’s the narrator, two of his friends, a butler and Jekyll/Hyde. And possibly some other very small roles, as well. It is impressive what an atmosphere Stevenson builds up with only these few characters.

I read this the evening after finishing Assassin’s Apprentice, and if the Forged scared me, it was nothing against how Mr Hyde terrified me. Right, I am very easily scared, but still! Stevenson is more than a little talented. (read, a lot.)