Reading List
M. C. Beaton
Mystery Novelist
M. C. Beaton was the pen name of Marion Chesney, a Scottish writer best known for two long-running mystery series. Before writing fiction she worked as a bookseller and a crime reporter in Glasgow. She wrote more than a hundred historical romances under her own name and several others, then created Hamish Macbeth, a Highland village policeman, in Death of a Gossip, and Agatha Raisin, a retired PR executive turned sleuth in the Cotswolds, in Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death. Both series were adapted for television. She died in 2019.
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Topkapi
by Eric Ambler
“This really is the funniest, best-written book ever. It’s about a wee silly man called Arthur, a sneak thief, who gets caught up in a plan to rob the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. Peter Ustinov was in the film of the same name and he did it brilliantly. The book is written in such a way that you end up rooting for this awful little man. He’s a great craftsman, Eric Ambler: I think he’s better than John le Carré.” — via Interview, December 2010
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The Franchise Affair
by Josephine Tey
“This book is just so well crafted. Everything seems to be building up against the two women, that it looks as if they really did kidnap this girl, and keep her locked in the attic – and how on earth are they going to get out of it? It’s just very, very well done.” — via Interview, December 2010
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Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson
“Being Scottish, it’s one I can read again and again. I think the difference between the Lowland Scot and the Highlander is really brought out between Alan Breck and David Balfour. It’s very well written, very well done – and I think Robert Louis Stevenson has great charm.” — via Interview, December 2010
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Collected Poems, 1909-1962
by T. S. Eliot
“A lot of his poetry has gone into general usage. Being a city person, I also like the atmosphere of the city, of London, the descriptions of fog that I remember from my youth.” — via Interview, December 2010
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Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
“Before I worked for the Daily Express I thought Scoop was a marvellous work of fiction. Then I found it wasn’t that far from the truth.” — via Interview, December 2010
