Maigret at the Crossroads — Georges Simenon
I found this in the library when I was thirteen. It was the first detective novel I read. It is an early Maigret (1931) and reading his later novels (there are 75 in total) I realise his character may not have been fully formed in this one, but his approach to his work as a detective — the way he wanders around watching people until he’s worked them out — is brilliantly realised and still feels fresh today. Because Simenon’s novels are such good yarns, packed with characters you love and hate with the enigmatic Maigret with his wit and charm at the centre, he is a character I have sustained a lifelong relationship with.
Brighton Rock — Graham Greene
I was fourteen when I first read this novel. It made me realise that a serious novel can be an exciting read. Dealing with themes of loneliness and fear, of lives lived teetering on a knife-edge, this chilling expose of violence and gang warfare in the pre-war underworld is as relevant today as it ever was. Gripping and moving, it is told with great humility and Greene is almost prophet-like in his ability to communicate the human condition of morality vs. wickedness: two things, no matter how much the world supposedly develops, will always resonate deeply.
The Pledge — Friedrich Durrenmatt
This is an unusual novel of crime and detection and one I return to time and again. Hugely atmospheric, its settings and scenes along with changes in the weather play like a musical accompaniment to the dramatic storytelling that leads the reader to the shocker of an ending. It is a study of obsession and the precarious balance that exists between good and evil. In a nutshell; I admire Durrenmatt as a writer because he has a talent to create excitement and tension in the reader’s mind by quiet and simple means.
The Collector — John Fowles
Original in its conception, this is an unnervingly acute observation of psychopathic obsession that is repulsive and persuasive all at once. I have a powerful memory of the first time I read this novel — my first thriller. It was summertime, I was fifteen and out riding my friend’s well-behaved pony around the Welsh countryside — reins in one hand, book in the other — totally absorbed. I could not put this book down! The way Fowles juggles the subject of insanity and sanity between captor and the captive is fiendishly clever as the reader sympathises with both. Heartbreaking and thrilling in equal measure, this is a story about a contest of minds of which there can never be a meeting point and therefore no happy ending.
Grey Souls — Philippe Claudel
Melancholy and disturbing and told this is an oddly brilliant crime novel that defies the crime genre. It is a mystery and it is a book about war (even though the war is going on twenty miles away) but more than this it is a book about how death not only robs those who die but the lives of those left living. Set in 1917 the placid daily life of an isolated town in Northern France is shattered by the deaths of three innocents: a schoolmistress who takes her own life; a ten-year-old girl who is found strangled and dumped in the canal; and a local police officer’s wife, who dies alone in labour while her husband is out hunting down the murderer. Claudel cleverly carves out scenes that take place in the dead of winter while the war is still raging in the trenches within sight and sound of the town and when suspicion falls on two deserters, their interrogation and sentencing is brutal and swift. Twenty years on, the police officer, still haunted by his experiences and the death of his young wife, tries to piece together what actually happened the night the girl died. He believes that justice was not done and wants to set the record straight. But excavating the town’s secrets brings him no peace or justice and although you will be punched in the face by the ending, on reflection, and this book will stay with you for a long time, you will see how the ending was there all along.
Rebecca Griffiths grew up in mid-Wales and went on to gain a first class honours degree in English Literature. After a successful business career in London, Dublin and Scotland she returned to rural mid-Wales where she lives with her husband, a prolific artist, their four black rescue cats, two pet sheep the size of sofas and writes full time.
