The Feng Shui Detective
by Nury Vittachi (Chameleon Press, 2000)
This collection of short stories begins with a shout-out to Arthur Conan Doyle, and justly so; Vittachi crafts mysteries that are mostly about setting and character. Feng shui master C.F. Wong and his assistant (17-year-old westerner, Joyce) form a memorable cross-cultural duo.
Rhyme Stew
by Roald Dahl; ill. Quentin Blake (Jonathan Cape, 1989)
Lame poetry that, otherwise treated, could have become classic illustrated short stories. Dahl’s rhymes are too simplistic for grown-ups, yet too adult for young readers (the cover explicitly says so, though everything else about the book’s presentation screams ‘children’). A perplexing offering.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
by Richard Bach; photographs by Russell Munson (Turnstone, 1972)
A novella that came to faddish prominence in the 1970s. Written by a former air-force pilot, awash with artsy seagull pictures, it is both a paean to flying and a parable of individualism. The story is harmless enough, although drifting towards spiritualism.
Service with a Smile
by P G Wodehouse (Simon & Schuster, 1961)
More pig-stealing machinations at Blandings Castle. Wodehouse as ever constructs and demolishes, re-weaves and unravels a plot thick with thwarted marriages and jovial underhandedness. Ickenham performs admirably as Galahad’s understudy, yet the prose and resolutions fall short of Wodehouse at his best.
School Can Wait
by Tessa Dahl; ill. Korky Paul (Hamish Hamilton, 1990)
This story lies somewhere between an overly wordy picture book and a heavily illustrated middle grade novel featuring zany, animal-rescuing adventures. The eight-year-old protagonist is very much along for the ride but Korky Paul’s black-and-white drawings do much to enliven the characters.
Tintin: Red Rackham’s Treasure
by Hergé (Le Soir, 1943); trans. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner (Methuen, 1959)
A Tintin adventure with no villain! Hergé plays on readers’ expectations of peril but casts aside the usual death-defying storylines, netting instead a string of uncommonly dégagé Caribbean escapades. Red Rackham’s Treasure, though undemanding, gleams yet with well-plotted, vivaciously rendered humour. Exemplary.
St Kilda Blues
by Geoffrey McGeachin (Penguin, 2014); audiobook read by David Tredinnick (Playaway, 2014)
Though the investigation itself is commonplace, McGeachin immerses his protagonist in the details of history, presenting a time capsule of Australian—in particular, Melburnian—culture in the late 1960s. Stolid ex-WWII bomber pilot Charlie Berlin shows mettle worthy of the character study.
Dr. Sixth
by Adam Hargreaves (Puffin, 2018)
Poor Colin Baker. Hargreaves captures something of the Sixth Doctor’s voice, and also his rather planless propensity towards grandiloquent bluster as a means by which to defeat evil (in this case, the Rani). Unfortunately, the illustrations in this volume are rather bland.