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The Secret of Chimneys. Agatha Christie. 1925/2012. HarperCollins. 336.

I definitely enjoyed The Secret of Chimneys. I picked this one up because I accidentally read The Seven Dials Mystery first. When I learned that Seven Dials Mystery starred so many characters first introduced in The Secret of Chimneys, I knew I would have to read this one right away!!! If I loved Seven Dials so, so, much, I knew I would probably love this one too. And I did enjoy it. And I definitely loved the characters, I probably would have loved them anyway even if I hadn't already known them, so I would definitely recommend these two books--and to recommend them in the proper order. Read Secret of Chimneys first.

The Secret of Chimneys is a bit over-the-top, I won't lie. I suppose you could call it a silly book that isn't exactly meant to be taken seriously. But it was a fun book, for the most part. I probably loved Seven Dials Mystery more than this one. But still, I liked it.

Anthony Cade travels to England as a favor for a friend. If he delivers a certain manuscript--a memoir--by a certain person (recently deceased) living in exile to a particular publisher by a certain day, he receives a good sum of money. Money that will be divided between them (Anthony and Jimmy). But that isn't the only package he's taking with him, he's also got a bundle of letters from a married woman to her lover. Jimmy has told him that these letters have been used (in the past) to blackmail the woman. He's gotten a hold of the letters, and he doesn't want to blackmail her, he wants to see them returned safely to her. Will his mission succeed? Well, it sounds easy enough, in a way, until you factor in all the different political factions that want to see him fail and the manuscript be destroyed.

The setting of this one is an estate called Chimneys. And we do meet many, many lovely characters. Including Eileen (Bundle) Brent, Superintendent Battle, Lord Caterham, George Lomax, Bill Eversleigh, Virginia Revel, Anthony Cade.

Read The Secret of Chimneys 

• If you love Agatha Christie
• If you love British mysteries, classic mysteries
• If you like a little humor/sarcasm with your mystery/suspense

 

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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Montgomery, L.M. 1925. Emily Climbs. Bantam Books. 325 pages.

Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down.

The second book in the Emily trilogy by L.M. Montgomery. This one focuses in on the high school years of Emily Starr. It sees her leaving Aunt Laura and Aunt Elizabeth and going to live with Aunt Ruth in Shrewsbury. Ilse, Perry, and Teddy are all going to high school in Shrewsbury too. (But they get to live in the dorms.) In exchange for being allowed to go, to keep on with her education, Emily has had to promise to give up writing all fiction. She's still allowed to journal, to scribble in her Jimmy Books, but every word she writes must be true. That doesn't mean she can't have fun in her writing. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction after all. But it is a hardship for her nonetheless.

Emily Climbs has its charming moments. Emily is more determined than ever to be a writer. And within Emily Climbs, she begins to find success. She still receives rejection slips most of the time. But she's beginning to receive good news in the mail as well. A poem published here and there. And some of these publications--not all of them, mind you, have paid her for her work! It seems that Emily might just be able to pay her relatives back for her education, a particular dream for Emily so that she won't have to be that poor orphan relation.

There is something delightful about Emily and her friends and family. Even something delightful in her nemesis: Evelyn Blake.

As she grows into a young woman, Emily is beginning to receive some attention from boys--Perry is as stuck on her as ever. As is the much-older-and-slightly-creepy Dean Priest. And then there's her wooing cousin, Andrew. But the one boy Emily has her heart set on, Teddy, seems to be a bit too shy to make the first move.

Here's one of my favorite quotes, taken from a conversation with Mr. Carpenter, Emily's former teacher and quite close friend.

"Nothing good about this but it's title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story--it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn't a story." (91)

There's something so true about that last part. For a story to work, really work, it has to make the reader forget that it's a story. Not easy to do, but the best writers seem to manage it.

Bookshelves of Doom also has a review.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

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