Tag Archives: Scottish island setting

Nancy at St Bride’s by Dorita Fairlie Bruce

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Nancy at St Bride’s by Dorita Fairlie Bruce was first published in 1933, but my copy is in an omnibus edition published in 1937 along with That Boarding-School Girl and The New Girl and Nancy.

Chapter I is headed On A Clyde Steamer. The boat which will take the schoolgirls to the Scottish island location of their school is waiting for them at Greenock Pier. Nancy Caird is a new girl, a junior who has never been to school before. It turns out that she’s a handful and a half with no boundaries or inhibitions. In fact she thinks that rules are there to be broken and she’s always on the look-out to cause mayhem, no matter what the consequences are. A typical Nancy as we have experienced. Each of us had a mother called Nancy.

Christine Maclean has been given the job of looking after Nancy and explaining the rules to her, the job of monitors and such, but Christine’s good friend Sybil who is a bit of an awkward personality herself,  makes matters worse when she appears to be siding with Nancy and doesn’t take matters seriously at all.

This one took a different turn from what I expected it to as it got close to the end, which was a nice surprise really, as there was a bit of a comeuppance for Nancy.  I was slightly disappointed that given the Scottish setting there wasn’t more of a sense of place somehow, but maybe that was me expecting too much. There were quite a few Scots words used within the dialogue though.

I have most of the author’s Dimsie books in original hardback, but I had to buy them online, I was also sent several of the books by a very kind woman who was looking for a good home for her collection.

I was amazed to find this Nancy trilogy in an Oxfam bookshop, at a very reasonable price too, so it’s still possible to find old books like this when you least expect to.

Sadly my copy doesn’t have its nice dust jacket – but you can’t have everything!

 

 

 

 

 

From London Far by Michael Innes

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This vintage crime book was first published in 1946 which is just about my favourite crime fiction era but somehow this one didn’t hit the spot for me.

The action begins in London where Meredith, an absent minded university professor inadvertently gets involved with a criminal gang who are involved in the procurement of famous works of art. With Europe being in upheaval due to the war there’s a lot of scope for criminal types in that line of work.

I quite enjoy crime mixed with humour but this one just took daftness to the extreme and it began to resemble a sort of Indiana Jones type of storyline, very far-fetched and ‘boys own adventure story’-ish.

The action switches to Moila, a Scottish island which I think is the Isle of Mull. Strangely Mary Stewart uses this island as the setting of her book Stormy Petrel, but Moila doesn’t seem to exist, the Gaelic for Mull is Muile.

Meredith is joined in his adventure by a young woman, Jean Halliwell, who had been a student of his and towards the end of their Mull adventure the whole thing takes on the feeling of a James Bond film, Modernist house with gadgets, stylish swimming pool and scantily clad beauties and all.

I’m sure that Ian Fleming must have read this book and thought to himself that he would have a go at something like that himself – only more so! The first James Bond book wasn’t written until 1952.

Michael Innes often liked to have a storyline involving art and of course as he was a university lecturer in his day job he also liked a university setting. There was, and still is a lot of snobbishness in such circles about the types of novels which they read, novels being seen as a bit of a guilty pleasure. Crime fiction was always seen as acceptable light reading and so Innes wouldn’t have been looked down on by his colleagues, but he is careful to have his books full of quotes and references to literature and art, just so that his books would be seen as ‘high class’ crime.

As I said, this wasn’t really my cup of tea but that’s because it wasn’t the cosy sort of railway station and country house setting which I enjoy most. If you’re into crazy action and nutty situations then you may well love this one.