#1. Locked-Room Mystery – Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney (Audible)

 

I love physical books, so it is disappointing that my first “read” is actually a book I listened to! Over the last couple of years I have become an audio book convert; I still prefer sitting down with a paperback, but Audible makes for a solid walking companion, especially on those dull days when you really need to do your steps for the day!

From Sheridan Le Fanu and Edgar Allen Poe to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, the locked-room mystery, or “impossible crime” mystery has enthralled readers and continues to do so. The reader is confronted with a conundrum and sufficient clues with which to solve a murder. What seems impossible can be answered by a rational explanation, but only if you can keep your wits about you. 

“Isolated on their private island in Cornwall, the Darker family have come together for the first time in over a decade. When the tide comes in, they'll be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. When the tide goes back out, nothing will ever be the same again. Nothing – because one of the family is a killer . . .

As the leaves of autumn fall, Daisy Darker arrives at her grandmother’s house for eightieth birthday celebrations. Seaglass, the Darker’s ancestral home, is a crumbling Cornish house perched upon its own tiny private island.

Every member of the family has their secrets. Nana, alone for so long. Daisy's absent father, Frank. Her cold-hearted mother, Nancy. Her siblings, Rose and Lily, and her niece, Trixie, full of questions and without a father of her own. Daisy has never had an easy relationship with her family, but some secrets are much darker than others. This will be a gathering that some of them won't remember.”

 

Reading the blurb, I was excited to read this novel. If you’re a fan of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” this book will resonate with you as there are many similarities that scream “Agatha Christie.” It’s not just the Cornish Island setting and the fact that events take place during a dark, stormy night, but the fact that there is a poem used as an epigraph weaving throughout the course of the novel.

The 52 Book Club 2024 Reading Challenge

 

Time is a strange concept. You think you’ll take a short break from writing, and before you know it a month has passed, then six months, a year, possibly even more. Then the burning question arises - how do I restart my blogging?

To pull myself out of the writing rut I set myself a challenge – read 52 books in 52 weeks and then if it seems like the challenge will succeed, blog about them all. I’ve been partaking in The 52 Book Club’s 2024 Reading Challenge  but with an added blogging twist!

I’m currently on track to get the challenge completed, and so I’m going to share my thoughts about the books I chose to read throughout the year. (As you can see, there are still a few blanks on my list, but once those blanks have been filled, I’ll update the list and add the reviews!) 

The joy of this type of challenge is reading books you might not normally read, finding new authors you love, and perhaps re-reading an old favorite you’ve forgotten about. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read during the challenge, but I’ve still learnt something from it. I might not like a book for a certain reason, but someone else will love it. Never be dismissive of a book with a “bad” review, if the subject piques your interest, give it a go; you might find you enjoy something you would never normally read. (Equally, just because the book is by an established author people rave about, you might find the book as dull as dishwater.) 

This is how my 2024 Reading Challenge has panned out, there were so many titles I could have chosen, and some that haven’t made it on the list will be read in the future! I hope that this list inspires you to add some of these titles to you TBR pile!

A Pretty Sh*tty Love by Katherine Chandler – 12th July 2022 – Theatr Clwyd

"Hayley and Carl. Carl and Hayley. Finding love in the heart of the pretty shitty city. Hayley wanted to fall in love - that was the goal - to find her prince. Because life's about love. Only love. She never found it though, she never looked in the right place. Then along came Carl."

Katherine Chandler’s latest play is not for the faint hearted. Based on a real-life event which shook Wales, the play is about dreaming of love, living in fear and ultimately finding the strength to pull yourself out of the abyss. Whilst the play contains strong language and descriptions of physical, mental, sexual and drug abuse, it is actually a wonderful piece of theatre taking you through the highs and lows of Hayley’s life.

Set in Swansea, South Wales in 2016, the play runs for about an hour with no interval. It is split into five sections which run fluidly from buried, monologues, letters, strikes and back around to buried.

Hayley (Danielle Bird) is a 30-something waitress who just wants a bit of fun in life, so when Carl (Daniel Hawksford) walks into the café one day, she can’t help but innocently flirt with him. He was the guy they all fancied at school, and here he is, Carl Pearce, large as life in her café! Of course it takes him time to recognise Hayley, and that’s only because she was at school with his brother – looked out for him, was the one who would take him to her mam’s for something to eat. The flirting results in a date, Hayley is swept off her feet, she can’t believe how lucky she is. She is totally besotted with Carl.

A Pretty Shitty Love is based on the horrific and shocking events which led to Stacey Gwilliam becoming headline news around the world. In July 2015, Stacey Gwilliam was strangled and left for dead on the coastal path between Bracelet Bay and Langland Bay by her fiancé Keith Hughes. She had woken up trapped beneath a pile of dirt after Hughes had thought he’d killed her and dumped her body in a shallow grave. When Hughes was arrested, he confidently told police “You’ll never find her”, but he was shocked to find out Stacey was still alive and had used her fingernails to scratch and dig herself out of the dirt. This attack left Stacey in an induced coma for 14 days, battling sepsis and multiple organ failure; her body too fragile to be moved to a specialist hospital.

In a TV interview, the 34-year-old Stacey said: “I came round and there were branches and shrubs put on top of me. I could hear my heart beating and I could hear the sound of the sea in the background. It was like everything was in slow motion. All I could see were blurs of green and brown. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. It was like I was paralysed. It was awful really. Trying to get your head together to work out what was going on around you. I tried to get up but couldn’t. I had to use my nails to get out of where I was. That was all I could do. I tried to push but I didn’t have the upper strength.”

Hughes was jailed for life later that year at Swansea Crown Court, and Gwilliam, who had spent time with the playwright Katherine Chandler to help with research and development of the play, sadly did not see the play into production. She died in 2022 following health complications aged just 40.

I scrape at the soil beneath me

Dig my nails into the dirt

I work out what’s going on

The play sounds like it could be a very bleak 70 minutes of theatre, but Katherine Chandler has written a multi-level play, injecting plenty of moments of pure joy and laughter as Hayley and Carl start their relationship. The dialogue is natural and sounds as though the words are being spoken for the first time. The audience is captivated as the fourth wall is broken and becomes gripped to their seats as they watch Hayley’s world start to unravel.

Boeing Boeing by Marc Camoletti – 26th May 2022 – Theatr Clwyd

Set in Paris in 1962, Marc Camoletti’s play Boeing Boeing is a magnificently funny tale about how Bernard, (John Dorney), a successful architect, juggles his complicated love-life, whilst not really caring that he is dragging both his maid and old friend into the chaos against their will.

Bernard has three fiancées, Gloria, Gabriella and Gretchen. All three work as flight-attendants for different airlines, and with the help of his long-suffering housekeeper Bertha, he has so far managed to keep each woman unaware of the other’s existence due his carefully scheduled routine. 

Bachelor Bernard thinks settling down with one person would be too much of a challenge, therefore why not have the best that life can throw at you? Two partners would be a bit boring, four partners too much juggling required, but three? Three is perfect…or so it seems. As careful as Bernard’s calculations are, he can’t stop technology and the launch of a new super-speed jet is about to throw all his high-precision plans into disarray; that and the odd storm and a bit of bad luck. This is one day in Bernard’s life he is never going to forget.

Celebrated Virgins: A Story of the Ladies of Llangollen by Katie Elin-Salt – 24th May 2022 – Theatr Clwyd

Thanks to the TV series Gentleman Jack, many people now know the life story of Anne Lister, (3 April 1791 – 22 September 1840) but hers was not the singular tale of an 18th century lesbian. By the time of her death in 1829, Eleanor Butler had been living with Sarah Ponsonby in Plas Newydd, Llangollen, for half a century. Cast out by society and forced to leave their homes in Kilkenny, Ireland, Eleanor and Sarah assumed residence in the Welsh town of Llangollen where they became minor celebrities.

What is known about the Ladies of Llangollen is that they were two Irish women who met in 1768 who absconded from their hometown with their maid, Mary Caryll. They ended up in Plas Newydd, Llangollen, where they lived together for 50 years entertaining various visitors of Georgian society, including the Duke of Wellington, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. Whilst their story may not be known outside of the area, those from around Llangollen tell the story with pride. These were two ladies who were cast out by their own society, were welcomed and accepted by the people in Llangollen to live a private, peaceful life. The two ladies became minor celebrities, seeing their lives written about by those that visited but who could never understand the nature of their relationship. This play allows them to tell their story on their terms.

Celebrated Virgins maps out the relationship between Lady Eleanor and Sarah from their first unarticulated feelings for each other, to their tender relationship towards the end of their days spent quietly among the beautiful rose gardens they created. This new play has been developed based on the true story of Lady Eleanor Butler and her former student Miss Sarah Ponsonby, and whilst it is based on real events, it is written from the perspective of a 2022 audience, therefore it is a reimagining of their lives rather than a documentary.

Catch Me If You Can by Jack Weinstock & Willie Gilbert – 28th March 2022 – Theatr Clwyd

As a kid growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I can’t say I watched that much TV. In fact, I don’t think we got a colour TV until the end of the 80’s. I think I was the only child in school not to know what colour Posh Paws was on The Multi-coloured Swap Shop, and who understood what Ted Lowe meant when he uttered his immortal phrase about “the pink is next to the green” on a live snooker commentary.  

Whilst I’d hear all the hoo ha about Dallas and Dynasty in the school playground (and of course that major news story, who shot JR Ewing) I never watched either show; as a family we didn’t watch soap operas, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued to watch TV legends Patrick Duffy, Bobby Ewing in Dallas, and Linda Purl, Homeland, if they were appearing on a stage near me!

Now, before we start with the review, let’s make something clear, this Catch Me If You Can is NOT a stage production of the 2002 Leonardo DiCaprio film, this is a very different beast of a story! The play is based on a French play, Trap for a Lonely Man, by Robert Thomas, however, this adaptation written by Jack Weinstock & Willie Gilbert is a thriller which made its debut on Broadway in 1965.

Newly married Daniel Corban (Patrick Duffy) is at a remote lodge in the Catskill mountains; his wife has been missing for a few days, and the local police believe it is nothing more than a lover’s tiff. The cleric, Father Kelleher, visits Corban with the welcome news that Elizabeth has been found and reunites the couple. The only fly in the ointment is that Daniel is insistent that this woman is not his wife Elizabeth, whilst she is equally insistent that she is…and so opens this intriguing thriller in which a baffling train of events in which no-one is who they appear to be and nothing is what it seems to be.

Washington Irving’s - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Phillip Meeks – 8th March 2022 – name of theatre

I love, love, love the comic book effect programme for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but that’s pretty much where my love for this production began to run out.

“Don’t pass by. Stay forever.” Beseeches the sign outside of Sleepy Hollow, but this is not a place you are likely to linger. The show is loosely adapted from Washington Irving’s short story, and unlike Tim Burton’s film starring Johnny Depp, it remains true to the original in that it follows the arrival of schoolmaster Ichabod Crane (Sam Jackson) to the superstitious hamlet of Sleepy Hollow.

The Headless Horseman represents a past that never dies, but always haunts the living.

Journalist and biographer Washington Irving, born in 1783, created arguably the earliest of the American-made horror creatures…The Headless Horseman. Ichabod Crane, a young man from the city of Boston, arrives in the backwater of Sleepy Hollow to open a school, but in reality he has a darker motive for coming to this small hamlet. Irving was obsessed with early American history, the folklore surrounding the Headless Horseman maintained that the Horseman was a Hessian trooper during the American Revoltunary War and killed during the battle of White Plains in 1776. The legend stated that he lost his head by an American cannonball, and whilst his body was collected, his shattered head remained on the battlefield. He was buried in the cemetery at Sleepy Hollow from where he was said to rise as a malevolent ghost, seeking his head, or a replacement from someone else.