Category: 20 Books of Summer

Throwback Thursday: Diamond Cut Diamond by Jane Jakeman

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme originally created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m revisiting a book that has been sitting in my TBR pile for quite a long time – Diamond Cut Diamond by Jane Jakeman.   It’s the fourth in the author’s ‘Lord Ambrose Mystery’ series, the previous books being Let There Be Blood, The Egyptian Coffin and Fool’s Gold.  Diamond Cut Diamond was published in January 2017 by Endeavour Media and you can find purchase links below.

As you will see from my review below, Diamond Cut Diamond was a really fun, light read.  The fact that it is fairly short was an added bonus. I don’t know about you but sometimes I just don’t feel in the mood to pick up a whopper of a book!

Diamond Cut DiamondAbout the Book

It is 1835, and Lord Ambrose Malfine is outside the walls of the ruined castle of Pribyslav in Bohemia. As he watches his horse graze, he contemplates how he got there…

The story begins at Lord Ambrose’s mansion, where he and Elisabeth are entertaining friends for dinner. They admire a beautiful necklace worn by the wife of Ambrose’s friend Dr Lawrence.  Later, the gentlemen learn that Lawrence has taken credit of £1,000 for the necklace. Elizabeth is shocked; her experience having told her the stones of the necklace are false, albeit very good fakes.

Ambrose takes it upon himself to find the jeweller who sold his friend the false stones. Whilst there, he is introduced to a countess who sold the original necklace to the jeweller and seems also to have been defrauded. As a reward for his services, the lady gives him a small key and a clue to the whereabouts of the lock it will open. This should perhaps have been the end of the matter, but Ambrose’s natural curiosity and gentlemanly behaviour result in him following the countess home, at a distance, and finding out from a local urchin that she is from Bohemia.  And thereby begins Lord Ambrose’s adventure in Bohemia…

Format: ebook (123 pp.)                           Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 17th January 2017                Genre: Historical Mystery

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Diamond Cut Diamond on Goodreads

My Review

Diamond Cut Diamond is a fun, lively historical mystery with reformed Regency rake, Lord Ambrose Malfine, as its engaging hero.   His instinctive curiosity is, luckily for him, indulged by love of his life, Elisabeth: “Well, Ambrose, I know you too well to try and persuade you to act against your nature.”  Soon Ambrose is setting off on the trail of the mystery countess he encountered whilst exposing the jeweller who sold his friend a fake diamond necklace.

His quest involves a journey to Bohemia that turns out to be more perilous than he imagined.  Before long it becomes clear Ambrose has a dangerous enemy on his trail, moreover one with few scruples.   However, as Ambrose admits himself, ‘I have this nature – the more I am warned against doing something, the greater my determination to do it.’   Thankfully, Ambrose gathers some useful allies along the way and there is an unexpected but very welcome encounter with an old friend.    This will prove vital in the exciting, explosive and dramatic climax to the book.

As well as the satisfying mystery, I really enjoyed the humour in the book, such as the running joke that Ambrose is frequently identified as an Englishmen by the quality of his footwear.  For example, on one occasion, a stranger remarks “I have not seen such fine boots.  You must be from London!”

I didn’t feel coming in at book four in the series had any impact on my enjoyment of the book.  In fact, I quite enjoyed spotting the little nuggets of information about events from earlier books the author included.   It did however have an impact on the state of my bookish wish-list because I added the three earlier titles to it as soon as I finished Diamond Cut Diamond!  They’ll be ideal for the next time I feel in need of a historical mystery pick-me-up.

Diamond Cut Diamond is part of my 20 Books of Summer and What’s In A Name reading challenges.

In three words: Entertaining, lively, mystery

Try something similar… Lady Helena Investigates by Jane Steen (click here to read my review)

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Jane JakemanAbout the Author

Jane Jakeman is an art historian who has travelled in the Mediterranean and the Middle East and has had numerous articles on art, food and travel published in newspapers and magazines, including The Independent, The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She studied English at the University of Birmingham and has a doctorate from Oxford University in the architectural history of Islamic Cairo. She lives in Oxford and is at present on the staff of the Bodleian Library.

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Buchan of the Month/Book Review: The Watcher by the Threshold by John Buchan

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Buchan of the Month

The Watcher by the ThresholdAbout the Book

The Watcher by the Threshold is a collection of five stories from John Buchan, author of ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps’. The pagan themes and classic adventures are set in the Scottish countryside.

Format: Paperback (224 pp.)    Publisher: Aegypan
Published: 1st December 2006 [1900]        Genre: Short Stories, Ghost Stories

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Watcher by the Threshold on Goodreads

My Review

The Watcher by the Threshold is the seventh book in my Buchan of the Month reading project.  You can find out more about the project plus my reading list for 2018 here.  You can also read a spoiler-free introduction to the book here.  My copy of The Watcher by the Threshold is part of a hardback compendium entitled Four Tales, published by Blackwood in 1944 (first edition February 1936) which also contains The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Power-House and The Moon Endureth (another short story collection).

The collection is made up of five stories, all set in the Scottish Highlands and with an element of the supernatural.

In ‘No Man’s Land’, superstition turns to reality in a frightening encounter with a legacy of the past.
In ‘The Far Islands’, a small boy, the last in a family that goes back generations, is transfixed by visions of an island beyond the horizon always just out of reach.  Only in the final pages of the story does he attain his dream, but at what costs?
In ‘The Watcher of the Threshold’, a man’s friend becomes convinced that a devilish presence is constantly at his side, plunging him into melancholy and driving him to ultimately desperate acts.
In ‘The Outgoing of the Tide’, a battle between good and evil, love and hate, is played out at a place and on a night of the year when evil forces abound.
Finally, in Fountainblue’, a return to the place of his boyhood brings about a moral and emotional crisis as a man realises that success in the modern world is not enough for true fulfilment.

In the stories that make up The Watcher by the Threshold, Buchan explores many of the themes that he would revisit in later books: self-sacrifice, the virtues of the outdoor life and physical activity and, most notably, the thin line between civilisation and chaos.  For example, in an oft-quoted line from ‘Fountainblue’, the narrator Maitland remarks, ‘There is a very narrow line between the warm room and the savage out-of-doors’, describing the division as ‘a line, a thread, a sheet of glass’.

The stories in The Watcher by the Threshold have an eerie feel reminiscent of the ghost stories of M. R. James but played out in the wilds of Scotland where the physical perils of bog and mountainside await alongside more metaphysical dangers.   The Watcher by the Threshold is one of my 20 Books of Summer and my book for July’s theme of the BookBum Club on Goodreads – That Is So Last Year.

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In three words: Eerie, unsettling, supernatural

Try something similar…Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James

John BuchanAbout the Author

John Buchan (1875 – 1940) was an author, poet, lawyer, publisher, journalist, war correspondent, Member of Parliament, University Chancellor, keen angler and family man.  He was ennobled and, as Lord Tweedsmuir, became Governor-General of Canada.  In this role, he signed Canada’s entry into the Second World War.   Nowadays he is probably best known – maybe only known – as the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  However, in his lifetime he published over 100 books: fiction, poetry, short stories, biographies, memoirs and history.

You can find out more about John Buchan, his life and literary output by visiting The John Buchan Society website.