Time to trawl

I've had a pleasant holiday. M'sister invited the urban terrorist to her NSW home for a week and offered to take him down to the Blue Mountains to see the caves.

I thought it best to accompany him interstate in case there were - shall we say- any unpleasant incidents.

M'sister survived with both her coronaries and her sense of dignity intact although both were tried- the former by the sight of a nine year old dancing along the edge of a 200 metre cliff and the latter by watching same (at the end of a 2 hour guided tour) emptying his bladder on a(world heritage listed) cave wall to the bemusement of half a dozen Japanese tourists.

I wasn't there of course. I judged my duty to be done by being in the general vicinity (ie in the same State).Being a consultant on call has taught me a few things.

I was at M'sisters house surrounded by an inexhaustable supply of good wine and mediocre murder mysteries.

Mediocre mysteries are of course best . Literature is for Booker Prize nominees.A murder mystery must have a pleasant setting, not too much violence of course ,a detective or protagonist with whom I am in sympathy and a certain amount of humour. If there is a young couple in love they must never -under any circumstances - be the murderers. Plot is optional and the ability to guess the murderer with a degree of accuracy is a plus. Although certain cheats are inexcusable - ie use of dreams or psychic powers to explain plotholes, the insertion of new information in the denouement (Agatha was renowned for this ) and ABSOLUTELY the explanation that the hitherto blameless and saintly character was the murderer because of a sudden attack of madness.

Thank goodness for M'sister's collection. I had an unpleasant hour or so trying to find something to read at Angus and Robertson's before we flew out.Why are the "New Release " shelves full of books the covers of which feature the haunted sepia tinted faces of waifs and strays?The covers are indistinguishable but they appear to be divided into tales of despair and destruction (third person, fiction and true crime ) and tales of uplifting I-rose-above-it-alls (autobiography and campaign awareness).There is a triple decker guilt-trip here .Feel guilty if you buy it (vicarious interest in another's sufferings ) and guilty if you don't (passing by a fellow-man's catharsis). The third deck is for people like me who automatically make fun of any genre.

I need a book to be upbeat without being uplifting (or inspiring) and light-hearted without being banal.

Perhaps I should get daughter of mine to expand her blogs (jealously guarded).Even inadvertently she can cheer me.She tells me she had a history essay returned with a query as to which military campaign she was referring to. "Oh well" she shrugged "I knew it was a cleaning product". That would be Operation Ajax dear, not Windex.