If I only had a brain…

I’ve been feeling a bit like the poor Scarecrow today…nothing but straw in my head.

Having had an indolent Christmas, I decided to prepare for the New Year by exercising my Little Grey Cells on a puzzle my husband found this week. And goodness, they certainly need a workout. After two hours trying to do other things while cogitating the conundrum, I couldn’t solve it, till he gave me a couple of clues. And then it seemed so obvious…

So I thought I’d inflict it on everyone else. We’re all going to need our Little Grey Cells in 2012.

Imagine you’ve got two of those old-fashioned egg-timers in which it takes a set time for sand to run from top to bottom of an hourglass-type thingy, (sorry about the technical terminology!) and then you turn the timer over and start again. I always think of them as egg-timers anyhow, and one of these in the puzzle runs for four minutes, but the other runs for seven, which would make for well-cooked eggs.

Anyhow, using these two gizmos alone, the four-minuter and the seven-minuter, how can you time nine minutes exactly? OK, maybe not for an egg…but nine minutes dead, in real time?

I promise you it can be done, and it isn’t a trick question involving, say, looking at your watch while the sand is running, or dashing out to another room to consult a clock on the wall. Nor are you allowed to smash the timers up and re-use the sand in a nine-minute model which you have conveniently to hand. No tricks of any sort: just logic.

If you can work it out, do feel free to boast that you’ve done it… but please don’t spill the solution publicly just yet! I’ll return in 2012 with the answer. If your LGC’s are in the same post-Christmas torpor as mine, when you see the resolution, you’ll kick yourself. I did!

Meanwhile, a very happy and successful New Year to everyone.

Happy Christmas, everyone

I’m snatching a quiet moment on Christmas Eve to wish everyone a very happy Christmas, and a happy and successful New Year.

This has been a good year for me on the whole – the exception being my broken arm, but that’s mending. Next year I hope will be better still. My new book, DANGER IN THE WIND, is collecting some good reviews and some kind words from people who’ve read it already. I’ve plans to meet up with several old friends for significant birthdays (we won’t go into which decade of significance) and Richard and I hope to snatch a week of holiday sunshine this spring. I hope that you’ve good things in store, and that your wishes for 2012 come true.

Meanwhile, there’s the satisfying feeling that we’ve passed the shortest day of the year – in the Northern hemisphere, anyway – so we’ll soon start to notice lighter mornings and evenings. It may take a few days before we can really spot the difference, but it’s coming. If we were in Ancient Rome we’d be marking midwinter with Saturnalia, holidays, family reunions, feasting, giving presents…sound familiar? Yes. We’ll be doing much the same at Chateau Finnis.

And in between all the celebrations, I’m determined to find time – of course – to read a mystery or two to keep away the winter cold. Why is it enjoyable, even comforting, to read stories of danger and murder? I don’t know, but speaking as a reader, it is – and speaking as a mystery writer, long may it continue to be so.

Have a very good holiday, however you spend it, and make some great memories to carry you through the New Year.

Sing an old song

It must be the onset of Christmas that’s making me think of old times and old songs, and I don’t just mean “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” or “While Shepherds Washed their Socks by Night.”

I’ve had a great old music-hall comedy number going round my head all day. Don’t ask me what triggered it, I haven’t heard or sung it for years, but I used to love singing it in the days when I belonged to a concert party and we toured round raising money for charity. It’s a darkly humorous tale of noir crime, and it might make a good horror movie. (Probably already has.) The scene: an old-fashioned fish-and-chip shop. The cast: a chorus of lovable (I think) cockney characters  singing to a waltz-time tune:

Put away the chip-chopper, Charlie,
We’re frying the guv’nor tonight.
There he was standing a-chopping up chips
When he puts his foot out and suddenly slips.
Right into the boiling hot dripping,
He’s tumbled in heels over head…
So put away the chip-chopper, Charlie,
We’re serving the guv’nor instead.

There are several verses – if you google, you’ll find Max Bygraves singing it on YouTube, which makes a nice change from his soppier ditties, like “I’m a blue tooth-brush, you’re a pink tooth-brush” (or is it the other way round?) But I’m sure it goes back way beyond good old Max.

Remembering entertainers called Max, here’s another bit of music-hall nonsense, more of a poem than an aria, from the “cheeky chappie” Max Miller. He was a star comedian, a master of innuendo who sailed very close to the wind of correctness in 1930s and 1940s Britain, and in so doing proved that you don’t have to be aggressively shocking to be funny…something that some present-day so-called entertainers could do to take on board.

One of my favourites is this -  shall we call it an ode to romance?

I like the girls who do,
I like the girls who don’t.
I hate the girl who says she will
And then she says she won’t.
But the girl I like the best –
And I know you’ll say I’m right –
Is the girl who says she never will,
But looks as though she…all right, that’s enough of that!

Quite enough, Max, I agree.

Oh dear, I’ve still got “Chip-chopper Charlie” in my head. Maybe I’ll try a couple of verses of “While Shepherds Washed…”

Four covers and a mystery

This month I’ve a new book out – DANGER IN THE WIND.

It’s the fourth in the Aurelia Marcella mystery series, set – like the others – in Roman Britain, and featuring – like the others – innkeeper and reluctant sleuth Aurelia, who despite her best efforts, keeps getting drawn into solving crimes around York. You can find out lots more about it on my website, http://www.janefinnis.com

The other three Aurelia books are being re-issued too, with brand-new covers, and the first in the series has a brand-new title: SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT. (It was formerly GET OUT OR DIE.)

I’m posting all four new covers, so you’ll know what to look for when you’re doing your Christmas shopping. Remember, if you bought GET OUT OR DIE already, don’t get SHADOWS IN THE NIGHT, unless of course you want to buy another copy to give away – mysteries make wonderful Christmas presents.

Happy reading!