A Splash of Red

Bleeeach! I read this straight after her Tartan Tragedy, and I am soooo tired of reading this pre-AIDS period stuff...

Young readers: be aware that in the 60s, 70s, and beginning of the 80s, it was perfectly acceptable to write of men who would be behaving discourteously if, upon first meeting a woman, they do not fondle her thigh, and a woman would be impolite if she didn't go to bed with him. Generally they would both then have a cigarette...

Jemima Shore behaves - very coolly - like this in both books. However, this is a review of the Splash of Red - the first intruder who bursts upon her is drunk and beats her up, then apologises. Because he is drunk, she says and does nothing about the beating; he also plant kisses upon her. The show more second intruder is not drunk, so he twists her nipple hard, and rests his hand on her thigh. They then sleep together. Another lover of her just-dead friend rests his hand on hers during lunch (he doesn't really want her - he's just being polite - though she does toy with the idea of sleeping with him). Yet another lover of the friend (as were also those two intruders mentioned earlier - the friend got about. She also, incidentally, had had 2 abortions - mentioned as a throwaway - and was said to not only enjoy the violence inflicted on her by her lovers, but to encourage and invite it) had made threatening and offensive phone calls to Jemima, and later confessed to spying on her and her friend in the friend's bedroom, through a peephole that he had made through the wall and a painting. "What's a little voyeurism among friends?" was her response.

Ack. I'm not at all a prude, but it is interesting how attitudes have changed over the last 25 years or so. I don't object to reading such things as a historical record of the tempora and mores, but the Jemima Shore trilogy I have just read was republished just a couple of years ago. I love Fraser's biographies, but these books were just tedious. show less

Another enjoyable bit of armchair detecting with Miss Jemima Shore, Investigator. This time it is her friend and temporary ... well, what do you call the owner of a flat who sublets to another? landlord when all they own is the flat and not the land? But I digress. Miss Shore is flat-sitting for her friend and fellow writer Chloe Fontaine, nee Dolly Stover, to take care of both plants and cat while said Miss Chloe is off on a holiday. So imagine Miss Shore's shock when she returns after a day of various activities, including researching at the nearby British Library. She finds Chloe's body, viciously slashed, in the bedroom. And thus the hunt begins.

I enjoyed the romp of discovery and the various characters Fraser defined in bringing show more us this intriguing tale. And, yes as usual, I guessed wrong on the killer. show less

Bleeeach! I read this straight after her Tartan Tragedy, and I am soooo tired of reading this pre-AIDS period stuff...

Young readers: be aware that in the 60s, 70s, and beginning of the 80s, it was perfectly acceptable to write of men who would be behaving discourteously if, upon first meeting a woman, they do not fondle her thigh, and a woman would be impolite if she didn't go to bed with him. Generally they would both then have a cigarette...

Jemima Shore behaves - very coolly - like this in both books. However, this is a review of the Splash of Red - the first intruder who bursts upon her is drunk and beats her up, then apologises. Because he is drunk, she says and does nothing about the beating; he also plant kisses upon her. The show more second intruder is not drunk, so he twists her nipple hard, and rests his hand on her thigh. They then sleep together. Another lover of her just-dead friend rests his hand on hers during lunch (he doesn't really want her - he's just being polite - though she does toy with the idea of sleeping with him). Yet another lover of the friend (as were also those two intruders mentioned earlier - the friend got about. She also, incidentally, had had 2 abortions - mentioned as a throwaway - and was said to not only enjoy the violence inflicted on her by her lovers, but to encourage and invite it) had made threatening and offensive phone calls to Jemima, and later confessed to spying on her and her friend in the friend's bedroom, through a peephole that he had made through the wall and a painting. "What's a little voyeurism among friends?" was her response.

Ack. I'm not at all a prude, but it is interesting how attitudes have changed over the last 25 years or so. I don't object to reading such things as a historical record of the tempora and mores, but the Jemima Shore trilogy I have just read was republished just a couple of years ago. I love Fraser's biographies, but these books were just tedious. show less

Bleeeach! I read this straight after her Tartan Tragedy, and I am soooo tired of reading this pre-AIDS period stuff...

Young readers: be aware that in the 60s, 70s, and beginning of the 80s, it was perfectly acceptable to write of men who would be behaving discourteously if, upon first meeting a woman, they do not fondle her thigh, and a woman would be impolite if she didn't go to bed with him. Generally they would both then have a cigarette...

Jemima Shore behaves - very coolly - like this in both books. However, this is a review of the Splash of Red - the first intruder who bursts upon her is drunk and beats her up, then apologises. Because he is drunk, she says and does nothing about the beating; he also plant kisses upon her. The show more second intruder is not drunk, so he twists her nipple hard, and rests his hand on her thigh. They then sleep together. Another lover of her just-dead friend rests his hand on hers during lunch (he doesn't really want her - he's just being polite - though she does toy with the idea of sleeping with him). Yet another lover of the friend (as were also those two intruders mentioned earlier - the friend got about. She also, incidentally, had had 2 abortions - mentioned as a throwaway - and was said to not only enjoy the violence inflicted on her by her lovers, but to encourage and invite it) had made threatening and offensive phone calls to Jemima, and later confessed to spying on her and her friend in the friend's bedroom, through a peephole that he had made through the wall and a painting. "What's a little voyeurism among friends?" was her response.

Ack. I'm not at all a prude, but it is interesting how attitudes have changed over the last 25 years or so. I don't object to reading such things as a historical record of the tempora and mores, but the Jemima Shore trilogy I have just read was republished just a couple of years ago. I love Fraser's biographies, but these books were just tedious. show less

This book is number three in the series that features Jemima Shore, writer and star of her own television show, Jemima Shore Investigates -- a kind of news program. In this installment, Jemima has decided to disappear for a while so that she can get some research done, and is invited to stay in a flat owned by Chloe Fontaine, who is a well-known writer herself. Chloe, it seems, is going off on a short trip to write an article for a trendy magazine, so Jemima can have the place all to herself. No one knows she's there, so it seems perfect. But not too long after Chloe makes her departure, Jemima receives a mysterious phone call. And then another. And then she finds out that Chloe has disappeared, and that no one knows where she is. As show more Jemima is contemplating all of this strangeness, she happens to return to the flat after some time off to do research at the British Library's reading room, and finds Chloe dead in the bed. So who killed her? Jemima has plenty of people in mind as suspects and wants to get to the bottom of it all.

This series isn't my favorite, and this book was just okay. Antonia Fraser is a good writer, but she's better at nonfiction, I think. Her novels tend to be a bit wordy. I never did guess who the culprit was, so that's a plus, but it seemed so long until we actually got around to it that by the end I just really didn't care. That's a minus. The story moved at a rather slow pace, which was very detracting. Plus something bothered me -- there was one character who was quite violent toward Jemima, hitting her, and then she went and made coffee for him. Not real, not even for the time in which it was written, in the 1980s. You'd think someone as intelligent and as independent as Jemima Shore would have raised a stink or acted differently, but no.

I don't know that I'd recommend this book for readers of modern-day mysteries -- the pace is very slow, the solution isn't very satisfying and it's an effort to slog through the over-wordiness of it all. I'll try more of Jemima Shore's adventures (since I have the whole series here), but it may be awhile. show less

Jemima Shore está anticipando una investigación pacífica en la Biblioteca Británica cuando ocurren cosas siniestras, un asesinato vicioso y una desaparición. Jemima se encuentra involucrada en una maraña de posibles motivos y relaciones conflictivas.