Not a bad whodunit set on the exotic tropical island of Zanzibar where the author was stationed while her husband was serving in the army. It seems a little dated now but it was still quite readable.
The auther provided the unusual aid of a floorplan of the house where the murder was committed.  The release of the clues enabledd one to narrow down the suspect and the ultimate revelation of the guilty party was no great surprise.
The combination of the crime story with a love story seemed a little trite.

A short novel of 112 pages written in the 1950s at the time the author was in a relationship with Jarlot. the story explores male/fema.e relationships. There are three relationships in this story. firstly, there is the relationship between the author and her travelling companion with whom she is visiting a french port on the English channel.  the second relationship is that of a middle aged English couple that they meet in an hotel cafe.  The third relationship is between the female English partner and an admirer.
The English couple communicate with the french cafe proprietor and her daughter.  they do not appear to communicate with the author but it is implied unless the details of the story is communicated to the other cafe patrons.

Whether the English couple are purely ficticious, we may never know.  The story of them sailing to Malaysia may be farfetched.  It is more likely that the English couple existed but than Marguerite constructed the fiction around them.

    "Staying On" might be described as a sequel to the"Raj Quartet", that series of novels set in the last days of British India.  It features characters who were also in the Raj Quartet. 
It is in a slightly different style from the component novels of the quartet, being much shorter.  It does not dwell on the political issues surrounding Indian Independence.  It is shorter.  Almost a long, short story.
It is a Booker Prize winner.  What is notable about this novel is that it explores the problems of old age. Not a subject that interests the young, but a subject that confronts us all sooner or later.  The problems are typically those of an elderly couple hanging on to the past by staying on in India after Independence.
It was a good read. I enjoyed it as I have enjoyed other novels by this author.

    This novel is the finale of the "Raj Quartet" and in a sense is where the various threads of the story come together.  It continues the "Alexandria Quartet" technique of telling the story from diffrerent points of view.  indeed, within this novel different characters speak in the first person from their own points of view.  Not all the characters know all the story; they each know parts of the story.

This novel introduces a new character, Sgt Perron, who plays the role of interested bystander and narrator. One suspects that Perron is speaking for the author and that Perron's experiences are really those of the author.

The story culminates with indian independence from British rule in 1947 and the ensuing partition and communal violence.  However, it highlights the ambiguous position of the several hundred principalities or princely states who's treaties with the british crown are about to be repudiated.  The mostly Muslim princes are left with little practical choice but to declare allegiance to the newly independant Hindu state apparently deserting their own Muslim subjects.

The entire quartet comprises some 2500 pages and can not only be described as a monumental work but one that is absolutely entralling.  what I enjoyed most is that whether the quartet is pure fiction or not, it is utterly credible.

This is the third novel in the "Raj Quartet".  It is said in the forward note that the novel is independant of the other novels in the quartet.  This is so, even though this novel shares some of the characters of the other novels.

This novel is both contemporaneous and succeeds "The Day of the Scorpion".  The novel focusses more on other characters.

This quartet seems to work better than the "Alexandria Quartet" where the format was pioneered by Lawrence Durrell.

This is the author's autobiography in three volumes. They cover the period from her birth in Simla in 1908 until she met her husband when in her thirties. She was working on the fourth volume at the time of her death at the age of 95.

The story of her childhood begins at Simla. At the age of ten she is sent to boarding school in england where she stays until she has finished her education almost ten years later. On completion of her schooling the family moves back to India. On retirement from the Indian Civil Service, her father serves the ruler of one of the princely states in Rajastan. On her father's final retirement, the family sails for Northern China where her father met her mother who was working as a missionary teacher at the time and where most of her mother's relatives lived.

It was while she was staying at Hyderabad, that the author met Somerset Maugham. She was disappointed to find him an unfriendly old gentleman. After Somerset Maugham had stumped off to bed she told his secretary that she has purposely avoided mentioning his books as she imagined that the great man must be sick to death of people saying “Oh Mr Maugham, I simply adored this or that book or story” To which his secretary replied: 'You are quite wrong. It's the only thing he likes to talk about'.  The next morning she got on with him very much better and she admitted that she had just written a very light-hearted novel, but that she was afraid that she would never make a writer. He asked why. She said that it was because she wrote much too slowly and would stick for hours on end over a sentence that she couldn't get right and had been advised by friends that she should leave it, press on, and come back and fix it later. She said that she had to get it right before she could go on and sometimes got held up for hours on end. For every word that she wrote, she might have rubbed out twenty. Somerset Maugham said that this was the one thing she had said that made him think that she would become a writer. He said that he did that, and so did Colette, who he apparently admired.

She asked him if it was true that the plots for all his stories ones he had overheard or had been told by people who had been involved in them in some way or another, and that they were all based on fact. He replied that of course they were and said “Why should I cudgel my brains to invent stories when people keep giving me excellent real-life ones on a plate? If they ever stop handing me interesting stories I may have to start inventing them. But not until then!”

This confirms for me what I had always suspected which is that Somerset Maugham's stories are so realistic that they could be based on fact. I suspect that it was his secretary, who was more communicative than Maugham and did not stomp off to bed early, who obtained the stories, and Maugham merely had to put them into words.

Although the writer's family always seemed to be short of money, they always seemed to be staying at the best places, for example, the Raffles at Singapore and the Taj at Bombay. They also managed to get invitations from to various Government Houses, for example, in Calcutta, through her father's connections with the various governors. It was that shortage of cash that led the family to spend summers in Kashmir on the Dal Lake at Srinagar rather than in the more fashionable but more expensive hill stations like Simla as in the past and it was the beauty of Kashmir in Spring and Autumn that she was particularly taken with.

After China, and a holiday in pre-war Japan, the family return to India where the father died. The author and her mother returned to England to be with relatives leaving behind in India the younger sister who had married. The mother found it difficult to adjust to widowhood in England and returned to India to keep house for the elder brother leaving the author behind in England to embark on a career of being a commercial artist. It was at this time that the author turned to pulp fiction in the evenings for want of anything better to do. She used to merely ask the librarian to select a handful of novels to last a week. The quality of this literature led the author to the conclusion that she could write just as well herself. She decided to give it a go and set about writing a whodunnit. Her first effort was accepted by the publisher who paid her what was a tidy sum in those days. She said that she had not realised that she was selling all her rights because she had not read the fine print in the contract.

From that beginning, she went on to produce a prodigious quantity of work including the three volume autobiography, children's' books, full length novels, and whodunits set in every part of the world.

We left Perth at fifteen minutes past midnight after inordinate hassles, worse than usual, getting through the airport. I managed to get a couple of hours sleep on the flight taking my sleeping pill just before take-off. It must have been at least an hour before it took effect. I was fairly groggy when we arrived in Sydney where we had to get bussed from the domestic to the international terminal.

The time between flights gave us enough time. The aeroplane to Auckland was not as full as the one from Perth to Sydney had been.

On arrival in Auckland the customs and immigration procedure is similar to what we experience in Australia. A minibus from the car hire firm collected us after we phoned them and took us to their premises near the airport. By the time we picked up our car it was getting on for 4pm.

There was just one problem getting out of Auckland where we went straight on instead of turning left to Hamilton. After a mile or two we decided to turn back and got back on the right road. It took us on to a dual carriageway which we followed for the 110 kilometres to Hamilton.

At Hamilton it was just geting dark when we spotted the sign for Rotorua. Surprisingly, a right turn which took us round the Western side of Hamilton before we headed East to Rotorua. After leaving Hamilton the traffic was not so busy even for Friday night and the roads reverted to a single carriageway and became more winding.

We covered a further 110 kilometres from Hamilton to Rotorua arriving there just after 8pm. The timeshare resort was 17 kilometres out of town. After asking directions we found it without too much difficulty. The first thing you notice in Rotorua is the sulphuric smell of the geysers.

Our accommodation is a smart two story town house that has a smell of newness. It overlooks a lake. We are here a month too late as the Autumn colours are just disappearing. The lake is surrounded by wooded hills.

Next morning we set off for town early to do our shopping. Some things are more expensive than in Australia, some things are cheaper and some things are about the same. Petrol might be slightly more expensive than in Australia but diesel fuel is a lot cheaper.

Over the supermarket public address system there was a food warning about the dangers of overindulging on the wrong types of food. Well, we went without breakfast and did not eat lunch until three o'clock in the afternoon.

In the evening Kim and family came round. They are all looking well. The resort property is owned by Thais. As is the custom, they have photographs of the King and Queen of Thailand in the foyer.

There is rugby on the television of one form or another all night. New Zealanders are looking enviously at the tax cuts in the recent budget in Australia and a lot of them would like to move there. Yes, it seems like the whole population of New Zealand would like to move to Australia - for economic reasons anyway.

On Sunday we spent the whole day with Kim and family. We met them at their house and they took us to the craft market on the shores of Lake Rotorua. We took a few photographs across the lake including the old stern wheel paddle steamer. After lunch at the shopping centre we went to Kim's mother's place and met Fred who is Kim's step-father to be. Kamala cooked mince curry for them from the food that they had. They all seemed to enjoy spicy food. Yes,it seems that the whole population of New Zealand would like to move to Australia – for economic reasons – to Brisbane where it is warmer.

We went into Rotorua and picked up Kim and went to the bath house in Government Gardens, a tudor style building designed by a bath expert from Bath, England, now turned into a museum. Afterwards, we carried on around the shores of Lake Rotorua.

On the shores of the lake is a “Woka” which is a Maori canoe. Seven of those large canoes each holding 40 or 50 people brought the Maori from the Cook Islands to New Zealand in the year 1350. Fred told me that the Maori can trace their ancestry to the people who arrived in 1350. The knowledge has been passed on from generation to generation by word of mounth and it forms the basis of Maori claims to the land.

Back in town, we stopped at the thermal park where the geysers are bubbling and the steam is rising. The Autumn colours of the trees around the park are very pretty.

We then left Kim with Les's parents. While we were there Les turned up with his daughters. After this we headed back to Okawa Bay Resort for the complementary drinks and meeting with the other timeshare guests. We struck up a conversation with a couple of American ladies.

Today is Kamala’s birthday. She has cooked a meal and invited Kim and her family including stepfather Fred who was the first to arrive. It turns out that Fred’s daughter is a retired diplomat. She has had postings in Korea and India. Fred has given her his house on the shores or Lake Rotoiti and Fred lives in her garage.

I went for a walk around the other side of Lake Rotoiti this morning but I got rained upon. Kim and Les stayed the night but they had to go quite early in the morning to get to work so they did not really have any breakfast the next morning.

Fred called for me in the morning and took me to the Maori meeting house where I took a few photos of the wooden carvings. In the evening we called on Kim and Les and they took us to the Polynesian baths. These are hot baths in strongly sulphurous water. Although the baths are open air the temperature of the water is 38 degrees. We spent about an hour there. About half the bathers were Japanese tourists.

After bathing Les showed us the old Maori houses on the shores of Lake Rotorua including the church where he and Kim wee married. Les was telling us that the local authority had required people with wells to block them up but they had then found that the subterranean pressure built up and started new geysers in people’s gardens. Les said that Rotorua is in a volcanic crater with mountains all around, Lake Rotorua being a volcanic lake, and that it could blow up at any time.

We bade them farewell as we have made a decision to leave a day early so that we can take the longer route to Wellington going by Napier. It looks like an hour longer but it might be easier going down the coastal plain rather than through the mountains.

We packed up and cleared the resort by 10am. The drive up to Taupo through the wooded hills is easy and Lake Taupo opens before us. It is a huge lake. We cannot see to the far side. The town of Taupo stretches as far as the eye can see. We take the turning to Napier. Before long we are driving through some very rugged mountains. We stop on the summit and it is very tempting to get out the camera for a photo of the distant peaks illuminated by the sun. However, I do not want to waste time getting my gear out for a single shot. There road is not bad as there are many passing lanes but there are a lot of trucks hauling logs on this road.

We reach Napier early in the afternoon and then we settle our accommodation for the night at the tourist information bureau. At 3pm I hit the streets armed with my Art Deco Tour brochure. The guide takes one past 90 – odd Art Deco buildings in the city centre. The walk should take between 60 and 100 minutes but I have photography to do as well. At the outset it appears that the sun is just about to disappear behind the clouds for the evening. Two hours later I have just finished but it is almost dark and I am down to a very slow shutter speed. It is almost night photography without a tripod. I had chosen a slow high resolution film having no idea that I would be using it for low light photography.

I return to our lodgings and then we go for fish and chips. They are excellent and much cheaper that in Australia. Why is Napier so distinctively Art Deco? In 1931, an earthquake of 7.8 on the Richter scale, severely damaged the commercial centre, and killed 160 people, and started several fires. A couple of years later the city centre had been largely replaced with new buildings in the Art Deco style of the 1930’s

We are on the road at 8am this morning leaving Napier and making for Wellington down the coastal plain. The drive through the dairying districts was delightful. There is plenty of grass and the sheep look fat. There is a mountain range to the West and the long white clouds are below its peaks. I chose too go to Wellington via Masterton to the East rather than by Palmerston North. I was hoping that we do not have to go through the mountain ranges to the West. However, my fears were well founded. We eventually got onto the mountain road. I could see vehicles on the road high above us. It was hard to believe it was the same road. The climb seemed to go up for ever. The mountain I went up at Chiang Mai last month was the highest I had ever been up but this may be even higher. The corners were certainly tighter and this time the responsibility for safe passage is mine. It was fortunate that the mountainside fell away from the other side of the road. In spite of this there were rucks with trailers climbing the hill. We had to pass them on the short passing lanes. The descent down the other side was not too bad. The road followed a valley down to Wellington but the mountain range continued all the way to the coast.

On reaching Wellington it took us an hour to find the ferry terminal. We would not have had time to find it the next day as we had to be on the boat before 7.55am. We set out early in Wellington after a hurried breakfast. I thought I knew the way to the ferry terminal but something went wrong in the one-way traffic system. Once we located the railway station we were able to find our way.

We boarded the boat without any problem. It was just a mater of parking the hire car and leaving the keys with the ticket clerk for the ferry. On the ferry we got talking to a chap who was going to Oamaru to take part in a sheepdog trial. He was telling us about a neighbouring farm of 2000 acres consisting of 1000 acres of uncleared land that was sold for $7M because the purchaser had $7M to spend. There was no way that he could make an economic return carrying on an agricultural enterprise. The crossing of the Cook Straits was smooth and the entry into Picton was surprisingly narrow; only a couple of hundred metres between the rocks. We got of the boat and checked in the train. We had plenty of time for a fish and chip lunch at the pub. I do not know if it was the sea air or the scant breakfast but the fish and chips were a meal to remember.

The train journey down the coast was spectacular with snow capped peaks to the west and the sea to the East. There was a brief stop at Kaircoura where I got a shot of the train in the station with the snow capped peak in the background as the sun was setting. Gavin and Hamima met us at the station at Christchurch and took us to their place. Later, we went out to a restaurant by which time it had become very foggy. The Super 14 Rugby Final was being played at this time under lights but the television pictures show that for the TV cameras and spectators the visibility was very poor.

On the Sunday afternoon we set out for Akaroa which was at one time a French whaling station. The drive along the peninsular followed the sea shore for the most part. However, as we neared Akaroa we had to climb over the mountains and down the other side into a most spectacular bay where Gavin’s yacht is moored. Gavin is sailing his 50 foot yacht to Picton where he will take it out of the water for the Winter. He is going with his yachting friend and they will return by hire car in time for their trip to Spain on Thursday. Gavin said that there was a tribe of Maori at Akaroa but a more warlike tribe from North island came down and killed them, cooked them, and ate them.

Gavin has a 1965 Daimler – Jaguar completely restored with new mechanicals including an XK 4 litre V8 that had only done 13000 kilometres. He is also restoring a Fiat 500.

On Monday we went into Christchurch again to put in place the rest of our travel arrangements. We had coffee at the Modern Art Centre. We walked past the upstairs room where Lord Rutherford had invented atomic energy. After that, Hamima roped us off in Cathedral Square where the successful Canterbury Crusaders Super 14 rugby team is signing autographs. We went to the tourist information bureau and they made our bookings for Dunedin. Then we went to the opposite side of the square and finalised our hotel booking for when we get back to Christchurch. With all our arrangements made, we retired to an Indian restaurant we have spotted for a lunch special. Hamima picked us up later in the afternoon at the arranged spot. We had a very nice meal with her in the evening and her son Thomas treated us to a violin recital.

We had to be up early today to get off to Dunedin. It is five and a half hours on the bus including half an hour stop for fish and chips. There are snow capped peaks again to the west as we go down the coastal plain. We pass through and have brief stops at Timaru and Oamaru which are both quite large towns. As we approach Dunedin it becomes more undulating. Dunedin itself is quite steep and the countryside around could almost be Scottish. On arriving at Dunedin we have about half a kilometre to walk to the Leviathon Hotel which was built in 1886. We walk past the most photographed railway station in the world. I hope I will get a better light for my photograph of it tomorrow.

Driving through these towns in New Zealand it struck me that the houses are smaller and older than in Australia. It may have been prosperous enough once but it does not look as prosperous as Perth.

Dunedin is almost as cold as Edinburgh. People are dressed for the cold. They look smarter. The whole town looks smarter than Christchurch. Apart from the railway station the town has a couple of particularly tall church steeples.

Along the country roads there are hedges that are three to five metres high. There are also rows of poplar trees planted two to three metres apart although the leaves have now fallen. The tree that are grown in the timber plantations are Ponderosa Pine for making paper and Radiata Pine for the building industry. The papermakers like the branches lopped to avoid knots in the wood but if the branches are lopped too far up the trunk it kills the tree.

For my day in Dunedin I took a tour on the railway up the Taieri Gorge. Once I am on the train the clouds cleared and gave way to a blue sky and bright sunshine. The gorge is line with Manuka (Tea Trees) which have all died because of a late -10 degrees frost in the gorge that struck after the sap had started to rise up the trunks. The leaves of these trees are used by the Maori to make an infusion that are a health remedy. However, the trees may be re-generating. The temperature in the gorge in Summer can be as high as 40 degrees. The rainfall is only twelve inches.

The railway line commenced in 1870 and was still under construction 16 years later. The area was the scene of a gold rush. Unsuccessful miners with no money ended up working on the railway. With no experience as stone masons they built bridges that the engineers say are as good today as the day the stones were laid.

It was 58 kilometres to the end of the line at Pukerangi where the locomotive was hitch to the other end of the train for our descent. A minibus was waiting at Pukerangi to take passengers on to Queenstown.

The old steam trains used to have difficulty with the gradient up the Gorge but the modern diesel locomotive has no such difficulty. There is a wrought iron viaduct built in the 1870’s that was brought up the Gorge in sections. We went across numerous bridges and through many tunnels. It took two hours each way. At the top end of the Gorge there were no trees; just rock faces with the tops being strewn with boulders.

It is an early start at Dunedin and we are ready to be picked up at 7.05 but the bus does not come. We express our concern to the hotel receptionist who very kindly makes phone calls for us and as a last resort takes us to the bus depot where we are just in time to get on the bus before it leaves. It is a cols morning; three degrees but it becomes a bright sunny day. On the way back we have stops at Oamaru and Timaru. We arrive back in Christchurch at about 2pm and check into Base Christchurch Backpackers in the corner of Cathedral Square which is fine and central.

After settling in we take the free shuttle bus to the Pak’n Save supermarket where we bought food for our evening meal of salmon and lobster salad. By the time we got back to the hotel it was almost dark. I thought Christchurch was more like Fremantle than Perth. It is ripe for redevelopment but if New Zealand is losing population who would want to invest here. Fred had said that Les and Kim would never be able to buy their own house because they spend too much. With wages about two thirds of wages in Australia and twelve and a half per cent Goods and Services Tax on food, what chance do they have. There are only one million people in South Island and half of those are in Christchurch.

And this is the last day in New Zealand. I noticed yesterday as we came up to Christchurch the huge irrigation equipment in the fields. The bus crossed long bridges over wide river beds with little more than a trickle of water. I got the impression that the East coast of South Island is very dry at the moment.

As it was our last day we hung around Christchurch. It rained in the morning which inhibited my photography but it was drier in the afternoon and I took my final shots in Victoria Park in the city centre.

It struck me that there are a lot of old buildings in Christchurch. Although it is ripe for redevelopment, that does not seem to be happening. In the suburbs the houses seem older and smaller than one would see in Perth.

We started out to the airport before daylight. We have two flights to catch today. Air new Zealand to Auckland and then Qantas to Sydney. Unfortunately there is a final sting of $25 to leave Auckland.

“My Trade” by Andrew Marr The author started his career as a journalist for “The Scotsman”. He rose to become the editor of “The Independent”. Then he went on to become a TV journalist with the BBC but also writes for “The Economist”. In this book the author covers the history of journalism. He writes about the newspaper owners - the press barons. Becoming an editor seems to have been an interesting transition from being a mere producer of words and stories to that of businessman with responsibility to the owner to ensure that the newspaper is on the street each day and that circulation is maintained. In fact, the author admits that newspaper circulation has been dropping steadily for quite a few years. The response has been for broadsheets to go tabloid form and to change the content to what is perceived to be in demand. The has been a gradual shift from what the author calls “hard news” to celebrity scandals with the result that world news - foreign news - gets pushed off the front page. Local news is more in demand by the readership. The author also looks at the love - hate relationship between the press and the politicians. They both need each other. Journalists are seeking a “scoop” and the government is paranoid about how and what is leaked to the press. In an open society in which the public have a right to know, all must be revealed eventually. But it is how it is revealed and what opinion the public forms is heavily dependent on how the news is reported by the press. It is the stuff that can make or break governments. The press is usually subject to an editorial policy that reflects the political views of the newspaper’s owners. Politicians are very concerned about the media having the means to advantage or disadvantage one political part or the other. This could result in a political party being kept out of office for a very long period of time. The media therefore plays an integral role in a democracy in shaping the opinion of the electorate. In summary, an interesting book.

“The Day of the Scorpion” by Paul Scott This is one of a quartet of novels on the British Raj. The author was in India for a few years in the 1940’s. He focuses on the lives of the British civil servants and the British officers in the Indian army. I would venture to say that he is like Somerset Maugham in India. Born in 1920, he died in 1979 at the age of only 59. In his later life he suffered from marital and drinking problems. In the 1970’s he won a Booker Prize for “Staying On”; the last novel in the quartet. In addition to the quartet he left quite a large body of work. I enjoyed his style of telling the story through the dialogue between the characters. The characters are vividly sketched. Just brilliant.

This beautifully written Booker Prize winner is unusual in that it deals with homosexuality. There are 450 pages to read before anything much happens and then all hell breaks loose and everybody catches AIDS. If the purpose of a novel is to entertain, I did not quite find enough entertainment in this.