About reading

    INTRODUCTION:

    Title: Night without end

    Author: Alistair MacLean (retold by Margaret Naudi)

    Genre: Adventure

PLOT:

A British Airways plane crashed on the Polar ice-cap, and three scientists from the weather station had to save the survivors before they died from starvation or exposure. So they decided to take them into their cabin. When suddenly the radio was smashed, Dr. Mason began to suspect everybody and decided to investigate who their guests were.

Soon he discovered that the plane’s pilot had been cold-bloodedly murdered because he found a bullet in his back, and the plane’s radio operator was killed that night. So he had to investigate the crimes and at the same time he had to travel with the guests through the ice towards the coast, without food and with a killer in the group.

CHARACTERS:

The Scientists:

·         Peter Mason: the main character. He is the person who tells the story. Mason is in charge of the weather station in Greenland. He is a brave, strong and intelligent doctor that must lead a group of people through the Polar ice-cap to keep them saved from starvation and exposure.

·         Jackstraw: he is another scientist. Dr. Mason describes him like this: “If you all live to get home again, it will probably be thanks to Jackstraw. He knows more than any other living man about how to survive on the Greenland ice-cap” It’s a brave and very quiet man with a lot of knowledge of extreme situations.

·         Joss: (Joseph London) he is the radio operator in the scientists’ cabin. Joss is younger than his partners. He stays at the cabin waiting for the expedition group.

The Plane survivors:

·         The Plane’s Radio Operator: this man was seriously injured when the scientists saved him from the wrecked plane. His name was Jimmy Waterman and he was murdered in the cabin the first night.

·         Marie LeGarde: is an old woman that is supposed to be a famous actress. She is very helpful taking care of the injured people on the plane. She is a nice, lovable and cheerful person.

·         Margaret Ross: this is the stewardess. She is a very emotional and sensitive person. Dr. Mason distrusted her because she was supposed to be with the radio operator when he was murdered. She had a pain in her back.

·         Nick Corazzini: he is a business man that goes to Scotland to take over a new tractor company. He helped the scientists to repair the old tractor in order to leave the cabin.

·         The Reverend Smallwood: this is the man who wears a priest’s collar. He is a minister of religion who went to London for an important meeting of the Unitarian and Free Churches. It is a very calm, serious and quiet person.

·         Solly Levin: he introduced himself as Zagero’s manager from New York City. He is a little man that was wearing a large jacket.

·         Johnny Zagero: he is a young boxer that travelled with his manager Solly Levin. He is a strong and dark-haired person.

·         Mrs. Phyllis Dansby-Gregg: she is a young woman wearing fur and rich clothes.  She is quite cold and selfish. She appeared in fashionable society pages from a newspaper as a London society woman. She travelled with her personal maid.

·         Helene Fleming: she is seventeen years old. She is from Germany and is Mrs. Dansby-Gregg’s maid. She was one of the injured people in the crashed plane.

·         Theodore Mahler: he is a very silent person. He is a Jewish. To introduce himself he didn’t say anything except his name.

·         Senator Hoffman Brewster: this is an old man with white hair and a moustache. He is an American politician. He goes to Europe to collect information for political committees.

·         Captain Hillcrest:  he is another scientist that was in charge of the expedition group.

OTHER INFORMATION:

I really enjoyed the book. It was an exciting and entertaining story.  The best part of it, I think, was the beginning of the book when the scientists found the crashed plane and they had to rescue the survivors from freezing and starvation, carrying them on their sledge.

The story makes you suspect of any of the characters as possible murderers. Peter Mason is the one who tells the story so when he suspects one person, you are suspicious of them, too. That is because you are reading his thoughts and that makes you think about the behavior of all the characters in the book.

CONCLUSION:

I recommend the book because, apart from exciting and entertaining, it is a nice story that I read without many difficulties, except some vocabulary. A good thing is that many of the “new” words I learned in this book are repeated during all the chapters, and this is helpful to remember and recognize them much more easily.

I haven’t read other books from this author, Alistair MacLean, but I wouldn’t mind reading another one.

AUTHOR: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

PUBLISHER: Orion Books (1968)

GENRE: Police Story

LEVEL: Advanced

I chose this book because of the authors; I did not know anything about them but, as soon as I read the surnames on the spine of the book and I realised that the authors were Swedish, I took it out of the library shelving.

THEME

The theme of Roseanna is the discovery of a killer in a murder which apparently has no clues.

PLOT

When a Swedish canal is being dredged, a corpse of a naked and strangled woman appears. Nobody knows about her and she is not on the lists of missing people. The police start to work on the case but are unsuccessful, so, in the end, the case is slightly put aside. However, a small group of policemen continue working and after hard investigations, they find some tourist´s photographs and information from Nebraska which help them make progress and catch the murderer after setting different traps, because it is not easy to prove that the suspect has really committed the homicide.

PERSONAL OPINION

Roseanna is more than a novel, it is the forerunner of all the Swedish police novels, so it is well worth reading.

In my opinion, the book is a great combination of different but linked facts which give it an outstanding general look. I mean, while you are reading, you can find breathtaking passages that are likely to catch all your attention, making it difficult for you to stop reading -for example, when the murderer is going to be caught. Besides, it is a highly entertaining book to read because it submerges you into an atmosphere where time does not exist. With this story, time goes by and you do not perceive it.

To sum up, I definitely recommended you to add Roseanna to your collection if you are a lover of police stories because it is really stunning.

Blood from a stone is a book from the crime and mystery novel series of Commissario Guido Brunnetti written by Donna Leon and published by Random House. I chose this book because I enjoy crime and mystery novels.

As other books of the Commissario Guido series, the action takes place nowadays in Venice. The fiction story begins on a cold night shortly before Christmas, when an illegal immigrant is killed. A group of American tourists are the closest witnesses of the scene, but they have only seen how the vendor of fake designer handbags has been shot by two men who disappeared among the crowd.

Commissario Brunnetti will have to find the answer to many questions. He wonders why a street vendor has been murdered by professionals . In addition, Brunnetti bumps into racism and absolute ignorance in relation to the African community which the dead man was a member of. He also wonders, why he has to face so many obstacles from his own superior during the crime investigation. But Commissario Brunnetti counts on some loyal workmates and old friends in order to try to solve this case, which doesn´t seem  easy at all.

I had never read a novel of the saga, but it was not a problem. The characters and their relationships are very well described. Nevertheless, and despite the map of Venice in the book and the detailed description of the city by the author, I had some problems with locations at first.

As I said, I like detective stories, and I was not disappointed with this one.