The Vine: December 12, 2008 (Bookfest)
Hey Sars,
I’m hoping the TN readership can help me find a book I read years ago. I read it in 1998 when I was an exchange student in Germany for my English class. I would say it is pitched at about 15-17 year olds? A bit older than young adult fiction, but not properly adult.
It is about a Nazi war criminal who has escaped justice for 40+ years by moving between Catholic monasteries and similar in France. He came back to at least one of them every year. I distinctly remember him having hung a St. Christopher from the rear-view mirror of his car, a car he had taken from some Jews (or perhaps one) because they were not worthy of it. I can’t remember how it ended, only that I enjoyed the book in a “make you think” kind of way. There was also some mention of other war crimes in South America and how he didn’t want to go there, and I think a mention of Vatican passports.
I’m sorry this is a bit vague but I’m hoping someone out there will know what I’m talking about. We bought the books new, in English, in Germany so it must have been in print then and not too obscure.
Thanks bunches,
It was either a blue book or a blue car…
Hi Sars,
It’s an old story (both literally and figuratively). There is a book I’ve been trying to find for about five years now. I’ve posted on Abebooks; I’ve Google’d every single word combination I can think of, and many I wish I had never had to. I’ve even dug through my parents’ basement, which is pretty much like going to the ninth circle of hell.
This was a book set in the UK — and I believe written by an English person, since I remember the words “old chap” featuring prominently. It’s a mystery book; I read it when I was about 10 but it wasn’t young adult; it was fairly old even then and that was 20 years ago. Or at least I had a copy that looked really old.
It’s the story of a blackmailer who has been terrorizing and then murdering some subset of English people. Most of the story takes place in an English country home, on a dark and misty night (no, really), and the protagonist is a woman named Elizabeth (maybe? I wouldn’t swear to it). She is there with her father, and a friend of the family named Wally (I think?), who is described as affable and harmless and of course it turns out that he’s the killer and he’s madly in love with Elizabeth. The dénouement occurs because of a handkerchief that Wally planted on a landing to frame Elizabeth’s father.
There are different people at the house, and a bunch of them get killed off. There’s a woman with a small dog (wouldn’t swear to the dog), a man that I believe is Elizabeth’s love interest — maybe a police detective, actually, who’s there to help solve the mystery — and then a couple shows up with car trouble (yes, this book really does feature every single cliché you can possibly imagine). I think at least one of the couple gets killed off fairly quickly.
The only other piece of information I can remember is that Wally is a failed writer with delusions of grandeur (he’s set up as the comic relief but he turns seriously creepy when he’s found out), and that one of the book’s first scenes takes place on a deserted road in the middle of the English countryside, where the blackmailer (who has some “cool” code name, like The Fox but not that) is extorting money, or perhaps killing someone…
The end of the story takes place outside the house, and I think someone ends up shooting Wally before he can escape.
This book scared the pants off me when I was younger, it was heavy on the fog and it was a really tense read. I would love to see how it stood up to the test of time.I’d be so so grateful for any information leading to the safe capture of this book.
Eliza
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Dear Sars,
I don’t know why it never occurred to me to pose a book question on The Vine before.I hope you and your readers can help me with a puzzle that has been haunting me for years.
It’s a young adult sci-fi book.I read it in the early ’80s, but I have no idea when it was published.The story is about a ruling family that consists of a father, a daughter (the narrator) and at least one brother.The children (or young adults) call their father Da.
One day an angler (and I think the first chapter was titled, “The Angler” — I remember having to look the word up in the dictionary, because I’d only known angles from geometry, not fishing) finds a little girl on the shore and takes are of her.At some point he brings her to the ruling family and it turns out that she’s in league with some sea creatures who are enemies of the ruling family.I think she and the brother fall in love.
I have only hazy recollections of this book.I hope you can help, because I’d really like to find it again.
Thanks!
Pigeon Pie
None of these books sounds familiar to me, dear readers.Can you solve the mysteries?
Tags: Ask The Readers popcult
Pigeon Pie, I don’t know the book you’re looking for but ‘Da’ is most common in Irish books/language – does it help if you assume it was set there/written by an Irish person?
I got nothin’, except — @Eliza, if you liked the one you described, you might also like “Whiteout” by Patterson. He’s usually super-trashy, but “Whiteout” is much, much less so, and has a similar premise as what you’re describing. Not high-caliber writing, but good storytelling.
Blue Book: I don’t know the name of the book but it sounds a lot like a movie (whose name I also don’t remember) that came out a while ago starring Michael Caine. IMDB and Wiki tells me it was The Statement based on a novel by Brian Moore.
Pigeon Pie- Try The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea or House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson. Neither fits exactly, but they’ve both got fishermen and Ireland and weird creatures.
Pigeon Pie: I seem to recall from my days working the YA section in a bookstore in the ’80’s that there was a YA book simply called “The Angler” , though I haven’t read it so can’t attest to plot…
Blue Book, I was also thinking that sounded a lot like The Statement. I don’t remember the book as being pitched for that age, but maybe I missed that part.
Eliza…I don’t know the book, but it sounds suspiciously like an Agatha Christie. that would be the right age for the book plus the scary mystery angle plus the Brits.
Yeah, I was going to suggest The Statement to blue book as well.
Blue Book – is it possible you read a fictionalized or dramatized account of Paul Touvier? He was a French member of a pro-Nazi group who was convicted of war crimes. He received support from Roman Catholic Church officials, and hid out at a monastery dressed as a priest sometimes. Some of “his” property was later found to have been stolen from Jews.
Addendum: “The Statement”, according to Wikipedia, is loosely based on Paul Touvier’s life, so maybe MrWhyt is right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Statement_(novel)
Blue book: It looks like The Statement, from the description I found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Statement_(novel)
No Vine-y wisdom – just wanted to pop in and note an extreme increase in the number of allergens in my house. All of a sudden my nose is running and my eyes are weepy – maybe it has something to do with the package I got from Donors Choose. They made me a card and enclosed a couple of pictures…where are my tissues??
Pigeon Pie, I wonder if your book could be “Singer from the Sea” by Sheri Tepper? There ´s certainly a daughter, a father and sea creatures, although I ´m not sure about the angler bit…
PidgeonPie: I know Hounds of the Morrigan was suggested, but and although that came to mind for me, too, I’m pretty sure that’s not it. There’s the Angler, the Dagda, and a brother and sister, but they’re not part of a ruling family, there aren’t sea creatures except an eel and some frogs, and it’s more fantasy than sci-fi. Definitely would recommend it, though, because it’s a favorite, and I’m so glad someone else knows it, felicitythistle!
If the readers don’t come up with answers to these, you might try posting on the livejournal community called whatwasthatbook.
What is the protocol for submitting one of these? There’s a book I read when I was younger that I can’t find now, and I’d really like to know what that book was called.
I went through a list of summaries for Christie’s novels and not one seems to fit Eliza’s description. “Whiteout” by Ken Follett, is set in more modern times but does have a similar premise.
I don’t know what Eliza’s book is, but I’ve read almost every Agatha Christie and that does not sound like any of them. More like a parody or bad imitation of her.
Eliza, the plot described sounds a little bit like Agatha Christie’s They Do it with Mirrors (which I re-read recently and is not bad at all). I don’t think it is the same book, but who knows — the brain can do strange things to half-remembered book plots.
Eliza, I think that might be a Patricia Wentworth book, one of the Miss Silver series. I seem to recall one that had pretty much the same story.
Pigeon Pie, is it possible that it’s one of the books by Patricia McKillip?
The themes you describe are common to a lot of her work (the ruling family, often “bound to the land” in some way, and the mysterious sea-creatures who infiltrate that family, sometimes without themselves realizing that they are not fully human). Some of her books are fantasy, some are sci-fi, and some are somewhere in between. What you described doesn’t sound exactly like any of her books I’ve read, but she’s pretty prolific and I’ve only read a few of her books.
There’s a lot of Donors Choose Flu going around. I got infected when I opened my Saturday mail. Who knew that metronomes could be so contagious? Sniffle! Thank you, Mr. Licciardi’s music students. You made my year.
When I first read Eliza’s post, I, too, thought it was Agatha Christie. The description sounds a lot like her play “The Mousetrap,” which is about a couple who have started a new hotel and get snowed in with several guests plus a detective who warns them that a killer is on his way there. Then one of the guests gets killed. But I don’t think it was ever published as a book.
@Marisa: McKillip’s books, esp. The Changeling Sea, are what re-inspired me to try to track this other book down.
Thanks for all your suggestions. I will investigate the leads posted here. I’m beginning to think I imagined this book, in which case I’d better write it.
@annetten: Pigeon Pie’s book is definitely not Singer from the Sea, no anglers in that one. Murdering misogynists (who live to be hundreds of years old by ritually killing their wives and daughters), yes; anglers, no.
The play The Mousetrap was originally a novella length story, Three Blind Mice. But it doesn’t fit the description other than country house, bad weather, and English couple. The character names are different, there’s no handkerchief, no father character, no dog, etc. I’m 99.9% sure Eliza’s book is not anything by Christie.
Eliza’s book is definitely not an Agatha Christie. I don’t think she dealt in spooky quite so much…
The description sounds kind of like a plot to a Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr’s alternate pen name) mystery… Not 100% sure obviously, because I know his murders usually involve murder victims in rooms locked from the inside and the like. But he does like to deal in cliches and misdirection, and many of his mysteries were set in England (despite him being an American).
Look through his bibliography on wikipedia perhaps. I haven’t read them all, so I can’t be certain.
Blue Book, if it isn’t Agatha Christie, what about Ngaio Marsh? It’s been a while since I’ve read either, but I read them at the same time, and your description is ringing a bell…
Thank you so much everyone! I’ll definitely look into all the suggestions – I’m positive it’s not an Agatha Christie, but it could be a Patricia Wentworth one… the name sounds familiar. I’ll be doing some serious googling tonight. :) Thanks again for all the amazing help.