Retro Reads discussion

Above Suspicion buddy read, October 2017.

Ok!

Looking forward to this.

Switching the start date to October 1 to accommodate Elinor. See you then back in this thread!

Who is it by? I missed the discussion. I'll look it up and might join.

Helen MacInnes, a very well known suspense novel author in her day. Link to the book is at the top of this thread. I picked up a used copy for like $3.50 on Abebooks several months ago.

Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "Helen MacInnes, a very well known suspense novel author in her day. Link to the book is at the top of this thread. I picked up a used copy for like $3.50 on Abebooks several months ago."

I found it after I wrote my comment. It looks pretty good. I'll check on getting it. Thanks, Tadiana.

Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "Switching the start date to October 1 to accommodate Elinor. See you then back in this thread!"

Thank you so much, Tadiana. I have put it at the top of my October list! I haven't read Helen McInnes for years and I'm looking forward to it.

Peggy mentioned in another thread that the Kindle version of Above Suspicion is on sale right now for $1.99. I just checked and it's still available at that price, if anyone still needs a copy for our October buddy read.

Thanks for the heads up! I'd love to get it for that price. :)

Grabbed it!

Two of her other good ones are also $1.99! The Salzburg Connection and The Venetian Affair. The Salzburg Connection is one of my personal favorites!

Thanks! I have The Venetian Affair on my shelf (still unread) but I grabbed The Salzburg Connection.

I've ordered my copy. I haven't read her books, but MacInnes has been recommended to me by several retired librarians.

Received my copy in the mail today! Should be a terrific book!

I'd like to join in. I enjoy the author's books - I'm sure I've read this before but I like rereading. :) And the library and OverDrive both have copies available, so I should be able to get one when we start reading.

I would like to join in as well. Never read HM so it should be fun.

Great, the more the merrier!

I just finished it this week (getting a jump on my October group reads). Looking forward to discussion! Brat Farrar has certainly gotten us all talking.

I've got my copy. Lordy, it has been absolutely eons since I last read this.

I read the first couple of chapters earlier this summer but I'm ready to start up again.

We're off! I'm looking forward to reading everyone's comments! Please remember to tag spoilers, and it's helpful if you note the chapter they're in, so others know if it's safe for them to click on your spoiler.

I'm excited to reread this with the group - I'll get started as soon as I finish up my two reads in progress. Probably Wednesday would be my guess.

Is anyone else starting this yet? I got about halfway through it last night. I kept thinking "just one more chapter" and it got far too late. :)

Pretty exciting plot so far! I like the husband and wife couple very much. It was published in 1941 but is set in 1939, just as the Nazis were really getting rolling outside of Germany. It's so interesting to get the perspective from a writer who was writing right as all of that was going on.

I'm about 75% and it is fantastic. I wasn't sure I'd like it at first but it quickly sucked me right in. HM does a fantastic job of demonstrating the ominous creeping fear Nazism must have caused every European. And she has a real knack for travelogue.

I read it in September to get ahead. Have been hanging back because I didn’t want to spoil anything for other readers. I like this genre in which ordinary English people show unusual smarts and come up with clever ad-hoc solutions to crises. Like Tadiana, I’m fascinated by the on-the-ground scenes with the activities of the Nazis (even though I doubt they were quite as well-staffed or acute about whom to pursue as they are made out to be). Certainly builds the tension. The sexist stuff reminds me of fifties movies with Elizabeth Taylor, though our heroine here has a bit more grit than that. Not my favorite era for perceptions of women, but am trying to be understanding.

Everyone, I'm assuming right now that we can just tag any spoilers, but if anyone would like a second thread where we can freely discuss the whole book without needing to hide spoilers, let me know. It'd be easy to set up.

My one issue with the whole set up (I don't consider this a spoiler) is that I don't really grok why it's helpful to their final contact in Europe to have people who need to get in touch with him go through so many different layers - places and people - before they can talk directly with him. I know it was explained but I didn't completely buy the rationale. It's not like they're just passing along a message; it's actual people. Mostly it seemed to me like just a good way to have our main characters running all over Europe and figuring out clues to the next step.

I didn’t realize we started. Yikes. Life is hectic this week. I might can start next week.

Tadiana wrote, “My one issue with the whole set up (I don't consider this a spoiler) is that I don't really grok why it's helpful to their final contact in Europe to have people who need to get in touch with him go through so many different layers - places and people - before they can talk directly with him.”

I think the idea was that the network was compromised somehow but the British spies didn’t know at what point, if there was a double agent or just someone who had been IDed by the Nazis. So they had to go through each step to see if they could figure it out. But that idea does seem to get dropped a bit as they go along. And as an underground railroad, which the network was supposed to be, it seems a real bust!

I got to chapter 18 tonight. The plot sure thickens in chapter 14(view spoiler)[ when they visit the house with the red shutters (hide spoiler)]!

Done and my review is posted, along with Abigail's. The second half had some good twists to it.

Just finished it! Zow! I loved it-- coincidences, eye-rolling improbabilities and all. I'll try to get my review done tomorrow. If I tried writing it today I would babble.

As others have mentioned, it was interesting to read something so of the moment. The oppressive sense of impending doom just added to the suspense elements.
I loved Frances and liked Richard (a true product of his times, but much less patronizing than he could have been).

I wanted more at the end. (view spoiler)[I wanted to see the meet-up in Paris. I wanted to see Richard and Frances back in Oxford. (hide spoiler)] That was my only real disappointment

We should read more Innes going forward. But I’m still hoping for some Angela Thirkell soon.

I finished my reread! I do love MacInnes, sometimes quite in spite of myself. I also like Frances a lot - she's plucky, stubborn and strong-minded. Don't you get the sense that she is really bright - as bright as Richard.

There is also an innocence about it, though, that seems very appealing right now. The signal of the red rose, the young marrieds abroad hiking the Dolomites, it's so 1930's. Television has been doing such marvelous work with adaptations of Christie's mysteries, wouldn't Above Suspicion make a wonderful BBC mini-series?

Moonlight Reader wrote: "...wouldn't Above Suspicion make a wonderful BBC mini-series?"
Of course it would! And maybe they could stick to the actual story as written--as opposed to the Hollywood effort of 1943, which changed around rather a lot!
Alas, what they would be unable to capture is the underlying sense of uncertainty. We know how the war starts and ends; a luxury denied MacInnes when she wrote the book. All she had was the sense of impending doom.

I’ve always wished for romantic thrillers based on MacInnes novels!

Abigail wrote: "We should read more Innes going forward. But I’m still hoping for some Angela Thirkell soon."

Abigail, I have read some of Thirkell's Barsetshire novels, and I'd be happy to buddy read one with you. The only ones I've already read are: Wild Strawberries, High Rising & August Folly, so I'd be up for pretty much any of her others. I will say that these look particularly appealing to me: Pomfret Towers, Summer Half, Northbridge Rectory.

Oh, who am I kidding? They all look good.

That would be nice! I’m kinda booked up, reading-wise, in October, but after that I’d be game for just about any of them.

I love Thirkell and have been avidly collecting and reading her barsetshire series for years! I’d be up for a read of just about any of them after October also.

Finally got my copy from the public library and I'm already looking forward to bedtime so I can begin! What's your favourite time of day to read? I am just too busy running around during the day, but I do look forward to a good hour or two of reading every night before I fall sleep.

I finished the book in bed last night. It is just a period piece in every way -- the characters, clothing, setting, social customs, etc. Although Frances was both intelligent and courageous, the men still treated her as if she were made of glass -- yet she was the one who actually experienced torture and didn't break! Richard, on the other hand, had to be some kind of genius to keep all the details of their assignations in his head. I kept expecting one of their cohorts to be a double agent, but I guess Richard and Frances were good judges of character. I did enjoy their romp through Europe -- I googled Persitau and now I want to go there. It is still a gorgeous little town. Finally, the book did give a good impression of the aura of tension that must have gripped Europe just before the war began.

Great comments, Elinor. One of the things l liked best about Under Suspicion is the sense of immediacy I got from MacInnes writing this in the middle of WWII. A couple of comments that Abigail and I shared in our review threads:

- I liked the fact that MacInnes was playing with symbolism with von Aschenhausen's name. It translates as "of the houses of ashes."

- Abigail noticed that (view spoiler)[given von Aschenhausen's key role in the trap in Germany, it's HIGHLY unlikely that he would have jaunted off to London and been at an academics' party. (hide spoiler)] It seems to us that MacInnes included him in that scene purely so the reader could be introduced to him.

Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "Great comments, Elinor. One of the things l liked best about Under Suspicion is the sense of immediacy I got from MacInnes writing this in the middle of WWII. A couple of comments that Abigail and ..."

Re: Abigail's spoiler-y bit-- I think we can chalk that up to 1st book learning curve. She certainly wasn't so blatant in her later thrillers.

Very interesting point about von Aschenhausen's name. I love names in books that have a double meaning.

It is staggering to think that she wrote this book while the outcome of the war was still in doubt!

Neil Shute also wrote novels about the war, during the war -- it's as if these authors were prescient. (By the way, anything by Nevil Shute would be a great choice for Retro Reads).

I just discovered a three novel book of MacInnes -- Above Suspicion, Horizon and Assignment in Brittany. I also have a copy of her non-spy novel set on a dude ranch, Rest and Be Thankful.
Margery Sharp's Cluny Brown is good too.

Has anyone here ever read The Sherwood Ring? It's a delightful 1958 YA book, one of my absolute favorites. An ancestral home from American Revolutionary War times called Rest and be Thankful is the setting. I always think of that book when I hear that name. The main character interacts with her Revolutionary War-era ancestors, and they tell her stories that help her with her current problems.

Not to go off-topic or anything ... :)

Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "Has anyone here ever read The Sherwood Ring? It's a delightful 1958 YA book, one of my absolute favorites. An ancestral home from American Revolutionary War times called Rest and be T..."

Oh, 'The Sherwood Ring'! Just love that book!! I have totally lost track of how many times I've read it. I especially enjoy that one of the main characters is named Barbara--she, of course, is my favorite.

Barbara's my favorite character in that book too. Her scenes with Peaceful Sherwood are to die for!

Maybe I'll propose this for a January group or buddy read. It's not available on Kindle but there are lots of used copies online for $3.50 or $4 (including shipping - I just checked).

Elinor wrote: "Very interesting point about von Aschenhausen's name. I love names in books that have a double meaning.

It is staggering to think that she wrote this book while the outcome of the war was still in..."

Elinor--'Above Suspicion' was written in 1939, though not published in the UK until 1940, the US in 1941. She wrote two other books during the war--Assignment in Brittany (published 1942) and Horizon (published 1945). 'Assignment' is a real keep you on the edge of your seat book, with the same overriding sense of uncertainty that permeates 'Above Suspicion'. I really can't remember 'Horizon", though I know I must have read it, way back when (c1965).

Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ wrote: "Barbara's my favorite character in that book too. Her scenes with Peaceful Sherwood are to die for!

Maybe I'll propose this for a January group or buddy read. It's not available on Kindle but the..."

I'll be right there for a buddy read. Always happy to re-read this.