Serial killers

If Bridgerton can make it to Netflix, why not the Regency Romances of Georgette Heyer?

Regency Romances have always been my preferred comfort reads. But it wasn’t until Bridgerton premiered on Netflix that I first heard of the woman who wrote the books that the series was based on. Delighted to stumble upon an undiscovered author of this period, I hastened to download my first ever Julia Quinn and settled down to devour her in one gulp. 

 

Well, imagine my disappointment when I found the book very heavy going indeed. At this point, perhaps, I should mention that when it comes to Regency Romances, my benchmark is the late, great Georgette Heyer. Her plots are ingenious, her characters are captivating, her dialogue positively sparkles, and she brings the historical milieu alive with the lightest of touches. Julia Quinn, not to put too fine a point on it, achieved none of the above – well, in my opinion, at least.

 

But as I forced myself to read until the very end, I couldn’t help but wonder why this series of books had found a visual home on Netflix while nobody seemed to have the slightest interest in making a series out of the splendid novels that Georgette Heyer wrote in her lifetime. What I wouldn’t give to watch a series that featured the most feisty of Heyer’s heroines, feminists of their time, who found a way to flourish in the male-dominated world of Regency England? 

 

Can you imagine The Grand Sophy on the small screen? With Jacko the monkey perched on her shoulder, a tiny but lethal pistol tucked away in her reticule, her riding habit clinging to her statuesque form as she cantered through Hyde Park? Or the lovely Venetia, languishing in the countryside with only her disabled brother for company, where she meets – and subsequently, tames – the tempestuous Lord Damerel? Or the infamous Lady Barbara Childe, the scandalous widow who sets all of Brussels talking with her wild ways as the countdown to the battle of Waterloo begins?

 

I could go on, because every book of Heyer’s could provide great material for a TV series; but for some mysterious reason, she just doesn’t make the cut. 

 

The same is true of another great favourite of mine: Daniel Silva and his series of spy novels featuring the Israeli assassin, Gabriel Allon. But though, over the years, we have heard the odd muttering about how a TV series or movie is in the making, nothing has appeared on our screens as yet. And now, with the Israel-Gaza conflict dominating headlines and dividing world opinion, I guess we will have to wait for calmer times until someone is going to risk bring Allon to life on the small screen. 

 

Until that happens, I would be quite content to see Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series, set in beauteous Venice, brought to a small screen near us (there is a German production that has done that, but I’d rather hold out for an Italian or English version). Or, at the very least, I would like to see S.J. Bennett’s series of books in which Queen Elizabeth (yes, the very same!) moonlights as a detective in her spare time translated to TV. 

It would be like The Crown and Christie coming together to create magic, and who wouldn’t pay good money to see that? 

 

What's on the menu?

The best books are the ones that put some thought into food

The books that got me hooked on reading were the ones by Enid Blyton, more 

specifically the Mallory Towers series, set in an idyllic boarding house where 

Darrell Rivers and her band of intrepid friends had the most marvellous 

adventures. But what I loved most about these books were the scenes that

 described food: the midnight feasts that the girls sneaked off to, the ginger 

beer (ginger beer? What was that about?) they guzzled on days out with their 

parents. Some of the food items they consumed were little more than words to 

me — but they were words that transported me to a world far away from mine, 

introducing me to tastes that I could only conjure up in my imagination. 

Ever since those halcyon days of early childhood I have been captivated by 

books that took food seriously (and by that I don’t mean food books — those

 are a different species entirely). As a teenager, even as I was enraptured by 

the love stories at the heart of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances, my taste 

buds would come alive when she began describing what was served at the 

endless balls, routs and masquerades that the heroines attended. I still have 

no idea what ratafia tastes like but the name itself conjures up a different, 

more chivalrous age. 

It’s the same story when I plunge into Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet 

Chronicles, as I do ever so often. Set after the First World War, it describes a 

milieu that is defined by meal times: the nursery teas served to the children; 

the elaborate three or even four course meals the adults settle down to, the 

ritual consumption of sherry and port. All of this with the aid of a devoted staff 

that cuts and chops, boils and roasts, bakes and grills so that those above 

stairs can feed and flourish. 

The most evocative food writing, though, comes from one of my favorite 

writers: Donna Leon. The hero of her detective series set in Venice, 

Commissario Guido Brunetti, takes his food very seriously indeed. He stops by

 for a brioche and a coffee at one of his favoured shops on his way to work. 

He takes a little break for some tramezzini and a small glass of wine (this is 

Italy after all!) half way through the day if he is not traipsing back home for a 

nice hot lunch. And dinner is the highlight of the day, featuring antipasto, 

pasta, a meat course and dessert followed by a glass of Calvados, sipped 

meditatively while sitting on his terrace with his wife Paola and looking 

on to the splendid views of Venice laid out before him. 

At the moment I am reading the new Jilly Cooper novel, Tackle. And even

 though the angelic Taggie, wife of reformed cad Rupert Campbell Black, is 

now a shadow of her former self, being treated for cancer, I find myself 

thinking back fondly to the many meals this gifted cook used to conjure up 

for her oblivious and ungrateful family. 

I know they say that the best books provide food for thought. But I find that

 books that put some thought into food are the best of them all. 

Turn the pages

The funny thing about books is that there is one for every mood, every season - and every locale

It has become a ritual of sorts. Before I set off on holiday, I gather all my book recommendations (from friends, newspapers and magazines, or even from social media), make a short list and then download around five or six books on my Kindle in the hope that they will see me through my vacation. 

This time I was heading to the Maldives and needed something that I define loosely as beach reading. In my case, that usually means a cracking murder mystery, with a plethora of suspects, a couple of twists that I don’t see coming, and a killer (sometimes literally) denouement. 

So it was that I settled down on my sun lounger and clicked on a book cover that read The First Day of Spring. It had been highly recommended by two of my favourite authors, Clare Mackintosh and Paula Hawkins, and I was all set to be hooked. A couple of chapters down, though, I began to get a queasy feeling. This was not the comforting murder mystery that I was looking for. This was a horrific story about an eight year old girl who kills a two year old baby boy. As the sun grew warmer on my back, the story in front of me got darker and darker. And even though I could tell this was a good book, it was a bad book to read on the beach. So, I clicked it shut (telling myself I would finish it back home in Delhi) and opened the tried and tested Anthony Horowitz. This one, A Twist Of The Knife, was a story about murder as well but in the Agatha Christie genre in which nothing particularly gruesome happens and the plot is resolved to everyone’s satisfaction after a few twists and turns. 

See, that’s the thing about books. There is one for every mood, for every season and every locale — and indeed for every holiday. 

The last time I visited Venice, for instance, I set myself the task of re-reading every Donna Leon I possessed before I set out. Her murder mysteries are set in Venice and I had the greatest time following her detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti, as he sets out from his home to go shopping in the Rialto, eats tramezzini in small cafes along the way, interrogates suspects in Castello and Dorso Duro and pays a visit to his aristocratic in-laws in their palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal. I pored over the maps of Venice included in the books until I could find my way in the city as easily as Brunetti himself. 

It all paid off once I arrived in Venice. I knew my way around like a local, knew which touristy areas to avoid and where I could find the best food and drink. And all because I took the time to read an author who lives and breathes Venice. 

I had similarly immersed myself in Peter Mayle’s Provence series of books (start with A Year In Provence and work your way up) before heading out there for a vacation. Even though his books are written from the perspective of a man who has moved into a new place and is trying to make himself at home there, there was enough in the books to give me a flavour of the region and to get me in the mood to sample some tapenade and pastis.

I often wonder which books I would recommend to people who were visiting India for the first time and wanted to get familiar with it before they arrived on shores. Well, here’s a short list, if it helps. Those visiting Mumbai can’t go wrong with Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, which gives an accurate flavour of that megapolis. If you are trying Delhi for the first time then William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns is a good place to start. And if you are heading to Jaipur then get a sense of the history of the place with John Zubrzycki’s The House of Jaipur.

But wherever you are headed, remember to pack some books that are just right for that place. Trust me, it will make your holiday even better. 

Deja vu

I’ve always been a fan of comfort reading; but the lockdown has made me comfort-watch old TV shows as well

Regular readers of this column will know that I tend to bang on a bit about comfort reading. Well, in my defence, it is one of my favourite things to do in times of stress (and even otherwise), and it has kept me sane through many insane moments in my life. So, it wasn’t entirely surprising that the moment we were forced into lockdown by the coronavirus, I fell back on my usual crutch.

So, I spent weeks, and then months, re-discovering some of my favourite books. I read the Donna Leon mysteries set in scenic Venice to get the travel fix I could not get otherwise. I enjoyed the halcyon English countryside that forms the backdrop of so many Elizabeth George suspense novels. I transported myself back in time and space as I waded through all my old Georgette Heyers and Agatha Christies.

And it was only when I had exhausted all the possibilities available on my bookshelves that it occurred to me that I could do exactly the same thing with my TV viewing – and by TV, I obviously mean the various streaming services we are so slavishly devoted to these days. Instead of constantly looking out for something new and interesting to watch, I could hunt down old favourites and binge-watch them instead. And maybe comfort watching would turn out to be just as soothing as comfort reading.

Well guess what? It was exactly that – and more. Even though I had forgotten some of the plot twists and characters involved, just the act of dipping back into a familiar show evoked not just a sense of nostalgia, but also well-being.

The first series that I chose to re-watch was The West Wing. It had been one of my favourite shows when it was first aired on Indian television. And then, a few years later, I had bought the entire box set to introduce it to my husband, who loved it as well. So, it made perfect sense to delve right back into the idealized world of President Bartlett and his merry men and women when we were looking for a series that would take us through the weeks of lockdown (that was before we realized it would be months, not weeks).

And I must say, it worked a treat. Every evening we would enter into the world of American politics, leaving our own cares behind, and watch as Leo clashed with Toby, the sexual tension between Josh and Donna grew so thick as to obscure other plot points, and President Bartlett tried to save the world, one global crisis at a time. What came as a revelation was that so little had changed since we first watched the series. There are still border tensions between India and Pakistan, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is still raging, and the issue of abortion is still a lightning rod in the United States.

Once we had ploughed our way through the entire seven seasons of The West Wing, it was time to move on to another favourite genre of ours: the legal drama. We had been early fans of LA Law (does anyone else even remember that?) and I had been a dedicated viewer of Ally McBeal. But while the first was not available on any streaming service, the latter – when I watched a couple of episodes – seemed curiously dated.

So, we fell back on another show we had enjoyed in the past: Boston Legal. Starring William Shatner, James Spader and Candice Bergen, this is not your standard legal drama. The plot lines – not to mention some characters – get increasingly bizarre with every episode, and political correctness just does not exist in this universe.

In fact, I would go so far to say that this series is very much a product of its time, with women being objectified at every turn, and sexual harassment being treated as normal workplace practice. Nobody would dare make such a show in these post-Me Too times, and some of it certainly makes for uncomfortable viewing. But if you can get past that (though it did get me hot and bothered at times) it is a barrel of laughs.

As we embark upon our fifth month of lockdown, we have started on our next comfort watch. Well, comfort watch for me, that is, given that my husband has never watched a single episode of the Sopranos. Until now he had been leery to take on the commitment of watching six seasons of a show but now that long, empty evenings stretch ahead of us every day, he agreed to take the plunge, saying that we would watch an episode or two, dipping in and out of the show over the next few weeks.

It took just 20 minutes of the first episode to get him hooked on this tale of the depressed mobster, played to devastating perfection by James Gandolfini, who starts going to the psychiatrist to deal with his panic attacks and depression. And now, like two addicts, we spend all day waiting for the TV to come on (never before 8 pm, is my iron-clad rule) so that we can disappear into the world of the New Jersey mob and all the shenanigans it gets up to.

We are down two seasons, with four more to go, and I am already starting to think about my next comfort watch. If you have any suggestions, do let me know.

  

Screen time

There’s nothing quite as fun as seeing a beloved book series make the transition to television

For the longest time ever, I have wondered why Daniel Silva’s creation, the Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon, does not get the James Bond (or even the Jason Bourne) treatment. For those who have not read Silva’s series of spy novels, Allon is a marvelous creation, art restorer by day and assassin by night (and sometimes the other way around), with a personal tragedy in his past life that haunts him to this day, even though a second marriage to a gorgeous Italian woman and a new family has eased his pain somewhat.

Allon always seemed like a character made for the movies to me. But, it turns out that he is destined to make his mark on the small screen, with MGM Television having acquired the rights to the collection of Silva’s Allon novels. So, Gabriel Allon will be arriving on a TV screen somewhere near you nearly 18 years after he first came to life in The Kill Artist (published in 2000) and I, for one, can’t wait.

As if this news wasn’t enough to send me into ecstasies, it turns out that another of my favourite novelists is having her works turned into a television show as well. Production on Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend – the first book of her Neapolitan quarter – is underway in Caserta, Italy. The book will be turned into an eight-episode TV series set in Naples, telling the story of Lenu (Elena Greco) and Lila (Raffaella Cerullo), the two girls who find each other in childhood and go on to have a life-long friendship with its share of ups and downs. (And the best part is that the series – produced by HBO in collaboration with Rai Fiction – will have the characters speaking Italian, which will give it a certain verisimilitude that wouldn’t have been possible with an Italian cast spewing heavily-accented English.)

But no sooner had I finished celebrating all this good news than my inner Greedy Gretel got going. And now, I can’t stop fantasizing about some of my other much-loved book series being adapted for television, allowing me a glimpse of my favourite characters on the small screen.

Here’s just a small sampling of some of my fantasy TV series.

Donna Leon’s murder mysteries

Set in Venice, this series revolves around the career and life of one of the most engaging private detectives of modern fiction. Commissario Guido Brunetti is not your average tortured detective, smoking and drinking too much as he tries to cope with challenging cases and a dysfunctional family. No, that kind of clichéd writing is not for Leon. Her detective is a family man who walks home to lunch everyday to feast on the three-course meals served up by his intelligent and feisty wife, Paola, so that he can enjoy the company of his two children, Raffi and Chiara.

The crimes themselves are interesting enough but the real star of the series is the city of the Venice itself. You can almost smell the dank scents rising from the canali and calli of the city, see the winding streets that lead to the waters of the Grand Canal and the laguna, and marvel at the architecture of the beautiful buildings that keep Brunetti company as he walks to and back from work.

Strangely enough, only a German production house had filmed some of the stories though the series hasn’t been distributed widely. It’s time someone in the English-speaking world stepped up and gave us Venice and Brunetti in all their glory.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Romances

Regular readers of this column will know what a dedicated fan of Heyer’s romances I am. So, it would be no exaggeration to say that I have spent the last two decades of my life waiting for someone to make a TV series based on her Regency novels. But much to my disappointment, while every ‘period’ work from Poldark to Howard’s End is regaling TV audiences across the world, nobody seems willing to give Heyer a shot.

It’s a baffling state of affairs. These are ready-made storylines, incredibly well-plotted, laced with humour and wit, and almost cinematic is their treatment. The characters are very well-drawn as well, both the dashing heroes and the sparkling, willful heroines who are no shrinking violets. And yet, nobody seems to have thought of bringing the lovely Arabella, the masterful Frederica or the amazing Grand Sophy to life.

Well, the first one who does will have a bonafide hit on his or her hands. Meanwhile, I live in hope.

Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers series

These were my absolute favourite books growing up. I would devour them late into the night, reading by the light of a torch that I had smuggled into my bed. And then, when I finally fell asleep I would dream of midnight feasts, night-time swims, classroom pranks, and so much more, waking up even more determined than ever to go to boarding school.

Well, that never happened. So, I guess the next-best thing – now that I am all grown up – would be to be transported to the world of Mallory Towers via my TV screen. Strangely enough, while the Famous Five and Noddy have had their stints on television, Darrell Rivers and her friends at boarding school have never managed to make that transition.

And that’s a pity, if you ask me. It’s time a new generation of children was introduced to the antics of this group of girls: the sensible but hot-tempered Darrell, her best friend Sally Hope, the spoilt little brat Gwendoline Lacey and the resident joker Alicia Johns. And what better way to do that for this non-reading generation than through the medium of television?

The writing is on the, er, screen…

There is no denying the convenience of the e-book but it’s the real thing that still gives me a thrill

I’ve entered the world of the e-book rather late, but ever since I bit the bullet and downloaded the Kindle app on my iPad and Mac, I’ve gone just a little bit crazy. I stay up late trawling Amazon for titles by my favourite authors, buying a Kindle version, marveling at the speed of the download, and at how – wait for this! – I can read them on both my iPad and Mac, syncing them so the book opens where I last left off reading on either machine.

I know, I know, it’s all a bit sad. The wide-eyed wonder at the marvels of modern technology. The compulsive downloading of books with the feverish urgency of an addict. But tell me this, how could I possibly resist when I found the new titles of two of my favourite authors on Amazon just before I set off on holiday? They still hadn’t hit the shops in India. But there they were on Amazon’s shelves: Donna Leon’s The Golden Egg and Jodi Picoult’s The Storyteller. The freshly-minted covers were gleaming up at me, whispering ‘Buy me, buy me NOW.’

And so, gentle reader, I did.

You cannot imagine my smugness (or perhaps you can) when I set out on my travels with two brand-new titles nesting inside my Kindle app. This was brilliant, I told myself. Counting my previous downloads, I had five books on tap – and all within a tiny gadget that weighed about 650 grams. No more weighing down of suitcases with tomes I had to get through on vacation. I could finally do that glossy-magazine thing of travelling light. Score!

But then I made the mistake of wandering into a bookstore on the first day of my vacation. And there it was: the new Donna Leon book, all mysterious black and glamorous gold, mocking me from the shop window. Ha, it said, don’t you wish you had held out for the real thing?

And you know what? I kind of did. Now that the actual, physical book was in front of me, I wished nothing more than to possess it. It would join the 16 (or is it 17?) Donna Leons lined up on my bookshelf at home, and live happily every after in my study where I could pull it out occasionally, re-read the odd chapter (or hell, re-read the entire book) whenever I felt like it. I would feel its heft in my hands, the pages would whisper as I turned them, and I could breathe in that new-book smell, more evocative than jasmine or lily of the valley.

Of course, I couldn’t possibly do that now. The book had been downloaded on my iPad, I had already started reading it on the flight. How could I possibly justify buying the same book twice (albeit in different forms) to my frugal middle-class brain?

But that night, as I lay in bed with my iPad, scrolling the pages rapidly to get to the meat of the plot, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have been happier reading this in print.

Yes, there is a certain convenience to reading your books on an e-device of some sort (so long as you remember to keep it charged). And e-books are certainly a blessing for people like me who live in small apartments that are already overflowing with far too many (if there can be such a thing) books. And who can deny that there is a certain environmental argument for not felling more trees to produce paper on which books (no matter how execrable) can be printed.

I see all that on a rational level. And now that I have discovered the delights – and the convenience of Amazon – I will certainly be lightening my load with e-books whenever I head out on holiday. But that said, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of holding a brand-new book by one of your favourite authors in your hands, and plunging right in.

Old friends

That’s what books are; so how could you possibly give them away?

I’m sorry but I just don’t get people who can read a book, profess to love it, and then pass it on to someone else. I guess that makes a selfish so-and-so who doesn’t like to share. But no matter how hard I try, I find it impossible to let go of a book that has given me hours of pleasure – and will do so again when I get around to re-reading it in a year or so (as I inevitably will).

See, that’s the problem. It’s not that I don’t like to share. It’s just that for me, books are not just objects that you can pass on from one person to another. For me, they are old friends with whom I have an on-going relationship. I turn to them for cheering when I am feeling low. I fall back on them for companionship on a rainy afternoon. I find new delights in them every time I read them afresh. And sometimes, they function as an aide-memoire, reminding me of happier times when I had read them for the very first time.

The books I had to study for my English Honours course in college still occupy pride of place on my shelves. Only now, I can dip into them for pleasure instead of worrying about tricky exam questions I might have to answer later. Hardy perennials like Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer come in handy when I am feeling a tad nostalgic for my youth. Donna Leon, Elizabeth George and Val McDermid are tucked away in case I should ever want to lose myself in a murder mystery (and no, it makes no difference that I already know who did it). Jodi Picoult is the perfect comfort read over a lazy weekend. And then, there are the classics like Jane Austen, which never get old no matter how many times I read them.

Lest you think I only read women authors, there’s also a stack of Daniel Silvas and John Le Carre, which do duty when the spy thriller fan within me surfaces (as it does ever so often). There are the food books – all the way from Nigel Slater to Nigella Lawson – that provide sustenance in more ways than one. And then, there are the likes of Bill Bryson, whom I read whenever I want to be reminded what really marvellous writing is all about.

Given this kind of history with my books, how could I possibly give them up?

All this is, of course, by way of elaborate explanation as to why I don’t like to lend books to people.

Don’t get me wrong. I am as keen as the next person to share the joy of reading a great story. There is something so deliciously life-affirming about discovering a brilliant new author that you want to share that news with everyone you know. And there is a great pleasure in discussing a much-loved book with someone who has enjoyed it as much as you have.

So, yes, I know it makes a lot of sense to lend books out to people who will have as much fun reading them as you did.

In that case, why don’t I do it? And why, on the rare occasions on which I give in to a fit of generosity and loan a much-cherished signed copy of a book to a friend, do I lie awake at nights wondering if I will ever get it back?

Well, mostly it’s because I never do. The problem with lending books to people is that they seldom – if ever – return them. Oh yes, they swear until they are blue in the face that they will. They promise that they are not the kinds who will borrow a book and then keep it. But then one week passes, then a month, and as the year rolls by, you realise with a sinking feeling that you are never going to see that old friend ever again.

As the saying goes: ‘Loan a book; lose a friend.’ Only in my case, the book is the friend I am most upset about losing.

Which is why I refuse to lend my books to anyone. Of course, there are a few honourable exceptions to this general rule, the handful of people who make the cut on my lending scale. My sister, a couple of my cousins, and one solitary friend – all of whom I can rely on to return old favourites and whom I can pester repeatedly if they don’t.

But what if – as happens so often – I want to share a particular favourite with someone who I know will get it just like I did? Well, in that case, I just head out and buy another copy, gift-wrap it and send it across.

That way, everyone’s happy. I get to keep my friend; and my friend gets to make a new one.