A Beginner’s Guide to Murder – Rosalind Stopps

Three elderly (though they turn out to be spritely) ladies, acquainted through their Pilates class, are taking a post-session cup of coffee in a café when the door bursts open and a distressed teenage girl enters. She asks for help, someone is after her, so she heads for the washroom. Just in time, as an older man comes in asking after ‘his daughter’. He is clearly a nasty piece of work (they subsequently christen him the toad). The ladies feign ignorance and see him off the premises, then spirit the girl, Nina, away.

Thus, Meg, Grace, and Daphne form a band and make a pact to protect Nina at all costs – which may, they realise, extend to eliminating the toad entirely – murder if necessary.

As their amateur efforts (which alternate between protecting and rescuing the girl) ensue, the back story and unsavoury exploitation of Nina is revealed. The back stories of the ladies are not so much given as hinted at, enough though to join the dots and realise this quest has given them new purpose and sorely needed bonds of friendship.

As they pursue the aim of eliminating the toad, they pick up other odd characters that help, or try to, including an incompetent hit man and woman (on which point, is that all there is to a beginner’s guide to murder – hiring an assassin?).

The story is carried forward in the four points of view – Meg, Grace, Daphne, and Nina – which gives some variety of narrative, but not much as while the three old ladies’ histories are different, they tend to waffle on in similar style. It’s all a bit twee, which given the horrific experience of Nina, jars somewhat.

If darkly comic was the aim, it falls short in both. Sex slavery is difficult to joke about, and the murderous plans of the three sweet old ladies (despite murky deeds in their past) lack both credibility and grit.

Act of Oblivion – Robert Harris

It is the year 1660, and after the eleven years under the Protectorship of the recently deceased Oliver Cromwell, the monarchy has been restored in the person of Charles II. And there are scores to be settled. Under the Act of Oblivion, those who were directly involved in the execution of Charles I are to pay with their lives.

Fifty-nine ‘regicides’ signed the King’s death warrant and forty-six are accounted for (executed, awaiting execution, or otherwise dead) leaving thirteen still at large. Among those are Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law Colonel William Goffe, now fled to America where they hope the puritan colonists will shelter them.

Back in London, Richard Naylor, clerk to the Privy Council, reports to the Lord Chancellor that his network of spies and informants have tracked Whalley and Goffe’s departure. His zeal in tracking them down is more than professional, he has an old, bitter score to settle. Cue a hunt as Naylor uses the power of the new king to flush out and pursue the two colonels across New England.

The action alternates between America, where Whalley and Goffe struggle to keep undercover in the sparsely populated wilderness, and London, where their families remain hidden in the teeming city.

It is a long 550 page read, but it covers a lot of ground going forward – including the fire of London and a plague or two – and some history flashbacks as Naylor recollects the Civil War from a Royalist viewpoint and Whalley pens a memoir of his time in his cousin Cromwell’s New Model Army. However, the pages fly by easily with Harris’s fluent prose and narrative flair all the way to an exciting and uncertain climax.

In summary, a good story, based on fact, well told.