Bellfield Hall – Anna Dean

This was on my paperbackswap wishlist (I don’t remember why); it became available, and I pounced. While still in a sort of “I don’t care, there’s too much crap going on for me to not just read what I want to read” mood I firmly ignored all the Netgalley books clamoring on the sidelines, picked this off the upper slopes of Mount TBR, and settled in.

I loved it from the start. I was a little afraid at first – the Regency period spinster aunt swooping in to Detect felt like a mish-mash of various storylines that Have Been Done. Happily, this was, like Miss Dido Kent, highly individual – and delightful. You know how there are certain words that just aren’t fashionable anymore, aren’t used much anymore, just don’t often apply to much anymore? “Delightful” is one of those. I do enjoy a book I can apply it to. In some ways it does feel like it borrows from everything from Austen to Miss Marple – but I don’t say that to run it down. I say that to grin about how a really fine writer can merrily mix together familiar ingredients and produce something unique and lovely.

Bellfield Hall is a bit of a classic English Country House Mystery (™), in that there is a group of people gathered together in a home not their own, and Miss Kent (coming in after the fact) must work with a topography and schedule and staff new to her to discover whether it is her niece’s fiancé who has committed a dreadful murder – which is certainly what he has made it seem like, since he up and disappeared, breaking the engagement by letter with no real explanation before making his exit. Dido alone supports her niece in the belief that he had some other reasons, reasons of honor, to vanish, and Dido alone begins to dig.

In the process of the investigation she comes to know the other temporary denizens of the house, most of whom must be considered suspects. There are the two sisters being shopped around by their father for husbands, who don’t seem to be what they seem to be; there is the reckless young man who has gambled and drunk away a small fortune he never had in the fine Edwardian style of young dandies, and his honorable father who is going distracted trying to find a way to extricate his son, and himself, from the mess. The latter happens to be an intriguing gentleman, and handsome, and very attentive to Miss Kent …

Dido makes for an interesting, engaging sleuth. She doesn’t stray so very far from what is probable and acceptable in a woman of her period; she adheres to the mores of the time, for the most part, and manufactures plausible excuses for the departures she must make in order to find the truth. There’s no pretense that she’s Sherlock Holmes in skirts – she utilizes her particular skills (observation, good relations with the servants, and a knack for knowing what questions to ask combined with a disregard for unwritten rules that would prevent some of said questions), and gets herself into jams, and doggedly unravels the mystery.

I enjoyed the format, partially epistolary as Dido writes to her sister with news and asking for counsel; the book is entirely from her point of view, and these segments of her first-person voice deepen the picture.

I think the only problem I really have with the story is the love that begins to bloom for Dido. Besides the simple fact that it’s kind of nice to have a mostly-un-angst-ridden spinster as the main character (doesn’t everyone like to read characters they can easily identify with now and then?), the object of her affection, Mr. Lomax, is … inappropriate. His station is acceptable, I believe – but the problem I see with him is one that would be valid today: his son goes through money like water, and he takes very seriously the duty of repaying the son’s debts. It’s another indication of his honor – but it’s also not really a situation likely to change. As long as Father steps forward to take care of his debts, how likely is the son to stop racking them up? However “on the shelf” Dido may feel (and in fact, in her society, be), however much she might like Mr. Lomax, the cold-blooded and practical must be considered: will her life be more or less precarious if she eventually marries this man? Yet at no point does the consideration really seem to trouble Dido. For someone as eminently sensible as she seems, this felt like a wrong step.

Overall, I liked it very much, and I’m looking forward to the series. The mystery was not beyond the capabilities of someone like Dido; her motivations for involving herself didn’t tax my willing suspension of disbelief; I’ll have to deal with the keeps-tripping-over-murder-victims aspect of the cozy series further down the road. I liked Dido and the to-the-point letters from her sister, and the language in general. It’s a keeper.

 

Anatomy of a Murder – Robert Traver

I can’t believe I’ve never seen this book’s movie; I love James Stewart. But at least this way I had no idea what was going to happen next in the book; that was nice. And, funnily enough, I still had the odd little perk of being able to hear Jimmy’s voice in my head for a lot of the lines. (Oh, and Lee Remick is perfect as Laura Manion.) I have a *cough* irresistible impulse to rent the movie. Soon. (Actually, the dvd might be in my mailbox now; I just can’t get to it because of ALL THE SNOW.)

This is a book that requires the right mindset. 21st century feminist prickliness has to be firmly suppressed; all the tv and movie images of young and zealous lawyers working flat out eighteen hours a day to get their clients acquitted have to be put aside. The other images from popular media, though, the ones of lawyers seizing on any slender possibility that could remotely work in their favor? Those can stay.

Well, no, the second par of that’s not fair; once it gets going, everyone begins putting in those eighteen-+-hour days and falling asleep at their desks. It’s only in the very beginning that the main character keeps sloping off to go fishing.

None of which is to say this isn’t a terrifically fun book. It had to be made into a movie; every page screams it. It is so very late 50′s, from the dialogue pattering as easy and funny and sharp as a Gene Kelly – Donald O’Connor dance routine, to Laura Manion’s tight sweaters, to the big old chrome-and-fins cars you just know everyone’s driving. And, of course, former DA Paul Biegler (Jimmy Stewart) (well, not in the book, except in my head) said it himself: “The case has everything. Rape, murder. Even a little dog.” It’s a fictionalized account of an actual trial, “written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver. Voelker based the novel on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defense attorney.” (< Wikipedia)

It looks so simple at the beginning: When his wife Laura woke him up and to tell him she had been beaten and raped, Army Lieutenant Frederick Manion picked up his loaded Luger went out and shot the man she said did it, bartender Barney Quill. It’s pretty straightforward; Laura has been and continues to be courageously open about the assault, and her husband (Manny) quite matter-of-fact about the shooting. The underlying idea is What husband worth his salt wouldn’t kill the man who did that to his wife? Problem is, while perfectly human and understandable, it was still murder, and Manny’s been in jail ever since, trial pending.

Former DA Paul Biegler is pulled away from his fishing to consider taking the case for the defense. He needs a case; he’s not the only defense attorney in his small Michigan town, and the other one’s flashier; his secretary, Maida (the perfect 50′s secretary, sassy and efficient both), would like to be paid her salary, thank you. So he puts down his fishing rod and goes to the jail, and finds it a tough call: the Manions have no money. And it seems like it could be a tough sell: Laura is very frank (too frank) about Manny’s jealousy, and however much empathy there can be for a man going after someone who raped his wife, within the strict letter of the law it simply was not justifiable homicide. It was revenge. Unless… Biegler’s got a few tricks up his sleeve, and his old buddy Parnell has more up both of his, and between them – and some surprising items turned up as they look into the details of the case – they’re ready to put up a fight to get the Lieutenant free.

Cropped screenshot of the film Anatomy of a Murder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I tend to doubt very many writers nowadays would quite have the gall to use phrases like Traver does. A “blouseful” indeed. And the handling of the rape and the discussion of it is … interesting, a blend of euphemism and clinical directness from everyone concerned, with almost no emotion whatsoever. The prosecution – trying to set the victim in as positive a light as possible – has no problem dismissing the rape as either irrelevant or imaginary, whichever’s more convenient, and to tarnish her reputation in any way possible; the defense is concerned that Laura’s beauty might tell against them, but otherwise is determined to stick her on the stand come what may. Her own reactions are the only real weak point of the book, perhaps excusable by the male first person point of view: clueless. I’d be curious to see a more impersonal viewpoint of Laura’s testimony, if such a thing were possible, because if she really did exhibit the level of sang-froid that she seems to in the book, she was a stunningly tough – or toughened – woman.

That being said – and being allowed to take off an invisible half star from the rating (so on LibraryThing it’s 4.5) – I enjoyed the hell out of this book. The film of Anatomy of a Murder was directed and produced by Otto Preminger, but – rape aside – I could easily see this as a Capra film. The blurring of right and wrong – who’s lying? And why? What exactly is the truth, and should this man be allowed out of jail? – side by side with the sort of fervent idealism Jimmy Stewart should have had a patent on … again, whoever was at the helm, it’s the perfect 50′s movie. In a book.

Because Jimmy Stewart plays our hero in the movie, there may be little doubt going in as to how the case will turn out – but it’s not that simple. It’s a pitched battle, this trial, a bare-knuckle no-holds-barred brawl in which just about anything goes as long as you word it right. I’ve never seen or read a better revelation of the nuts and bolts of the US trial system – the mechanics of getting people to say – on and off the stand – what you as either the defense or the prosecutor need them to say, without letting out details that tip things to the other side. The head-to-head expert witnesses, the careful manipulation of the witnesses and the jury, the role of the judge and the use and formation of precedent – so that’s what draws some people to the law. It has to be exhilarating. And it all comes down to a nail-biter, complete with a last-minute curveball and an epilogue that will leave you blinking.

Characterization is vivid and colorful – and so is the setting. Dialogue is natural; supernatural, actually, in its wittiness and quickness – this is the way I wish I could talk (except less chauvinistic). And the story is gripping. It’s terrific.

Side note: I find this other comment from the Wikipedia entry for the movie nauseatingly unsettling: “The Lumberjack Tavern is still in existence today. The murder scene body outline is still there, although it is possibly a restoration and not the original outline.” There’s a picture, captioned “where the body fell”:

Seriously? (And Barney actually died behind the bar, at least in the book – but that wouldn’t be as much … fun, I guess.)

 

A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate – Susanna Calkins

This was a book I requested from Netgalley based on the cover (which despite displaying two of the weird present fashions – “I turn my back on you” and “nearly-headless” – is pretty. I will never learn), and because of an interesting premise.

The latter is fairly basic, really. We have a well-off household, that of a magistrate of London, who has a wife, a grown son (and a daughter, but she’s irrelevant), and a staff of about four: cook, manservant, lady’s maid, chambermaid. This isn’t Upstairs Downstairs, though. This is the 17th century, for one thing, and a smaller household. For another thing, the relationship between Family and Staff is … strange. To me, anyway.

Lucy is Our Heroine, the chambermaid who has an inappropriate bit of a crush on the Master’s son Adam, and whose brother Will is cast under suspicion in a murder. She is a puzzle. In some chapters, she is a proto-Nancy Drew, having intellectual discussions with her master, slipping into places she oughtn’t and sneaking into other people’s rooms to rustle through their belongings, striking off on undercover investigative operations in which she lies (pretty fluently for a good Christian girl) about who she is and/or what she’s about. In other chapters, she seems to be one of the airiest of airheads, getting herself caught out in her suspicious activities, surprised by the same trick over and over, and simply doing the dumbest things possible. See below.

The writing is not, mostly, actively bad, in terms of readability; I was tempted to give the book one star, but I didn’t hate it violently enough, because I was able to actually finish it without skimming too much. It has its moments. But the writing is, rather often, less than great. It’s more tell than show, and somewhat repetitive and redundant. I saw a bit of punctuation abuse/neglect, and at least one editorial gaffe that completely reversed the meaning of its sentence (“They should not be comprehensible even for a young girl” – yes they should). There were some awkward phrasings and word choices that I found very odd … and of course I noted down a few:
- “She was holding a cup of tea to the little girl’s head”, which as Rachel points out sounds like it’s a weapon;
- “the Mayor ordered all of the stray cats and dogs to be rounded up and executed”, which really shouldn’t be a funny sentence and yet is – did they get blindfolds and cigarettes?
- “I did not ask you to take the hand of God as your own!” I … know what this sentence is supposed to be saying. I don’t have a clue what it’s actually saying;
- “the stone … plopped down” … Maybe it did make a plopping sound when it landed, but “plop” is inherently a funny word, and this shouldn’t have been a funny moment (since the stone landed on someone’s head and smooshed it). But it made me snort.

(I have to drag Mark Twain into a review again: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”)

But, really, much as I gripe about it, I have read worse, and recently.

One example of the lack of attention to detail, though (to return to the griping), is this:

@ 49% … a horrible stench assailed her nose…
@ 50% … a great stench assaulted her nose…
@ 51% … the terrible images that had just assaulted her senses…

This violence against Lucy’s senses related to a visit to Newgate Prison (which took place two weeks after her brother’s arrest – and was her first visit. Filial love? Not so much), and on the one hand it’s clever to use violent words to underscore the violence of the prison. On the other hand, using the same word twice and a similar word in a third place, all within a very short span, isn’t so clever.

I have to pull out two more choices the author made, because even with everything else I’m complaining about they struck me as the most absurd things in the book (except for the CPR). One: We reach the climax of the story, and finally the killer is unmasked and confronted. And someone steps in, trying to reason with him. Well, lecture him, really. And he pauses in the middle to wag his finger at the killer. In the middle of what should be a deadly serious, suspenseful, life-or-death scene, “[he] wagged his finger” at the crazed killer as if he’d been a naughty boy and spilled the soup. There are books that make me laugh out loud, and there are books that wring audible sounds of protest from me. This did both.

Newgate, the old city gate and prison (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ll spoilerize Part II of the above groaner, just in case. It did not make me groan; it made me swear at the characters. Lucy: “We have to find a way out! Before Lucas returns!” Lucas, you see, is the killer; yes, I saw it coming (it was either him or the reverend, and I liked the reverend as a suspect better); he’s gone away for a minute, leaving Lucy with Adam – and the reverend’s bloody corpse (I guess Lucas didn’t like having a finger wagged in his face, either). Lucas has, in keeping with grand villain tradition, told them how he’s going to kill them too, and it’s going to happen just about as soon as he comes back, so it would well behoove these two to boogie while they can. Hence Lucy’s exclamation. And Adam’s response? “In a minute”, and they snog. And I really hoped in that moment that Lucas would indeed come back and kill them both.

I have to say learned a few things from this book, I must say – because as I read I kept saying “Wait, what?” and having to go off and search out things like whether Quakers forbid alcohol (I thought they did – they don’t, and didn’t). Because of my protest against the line about Lucy’s mother expecting her to marry by 25 – which seemed terribly old for the period – my friend ^ Sub Nomine pulled up an excellent article about marriage in the 1600′s among servants. And, too, there’s this:

“I have seen many a time when an accused man grows flustered, or is tongue-tied, or simply forgets to pose the right questions to his accusers”

- was one of the most succinct and lucid statements I’ve ever seen as to how and why the legal profession was evolved. It might be silly, but it was a small lightbulb moment for me, and I give full marks for that. So I was properly schooled a few times here, and I promised the book a star for that … My problem with that is if I had trusted the writer more, I wouldn’t have felt the need to keep questioning what I was reading, and questioning what I was reading took a lot away from my ability to enjoy the story. Somehow – whether because it really is inaccurate or because I lost faith in the author early on, or a combination of both – I just didn’t believe the setting.

The truly insupportable incident of the Restoration Era CPR did not help at all.

There are some other blatant anachronisms –
- “My kids are sick” – not referring to baby goats;
- “That is why I run these ideas by you”
- But the most glaring of them, at least as far as my notes go: “We … got bloody hammered once”. Best I can find online is “hammered” first being used to mean drunk in … 1986. (Granted, it’s just online research, but this site has always seemed to be a very reliable resource.) Why not go all out and just say “We got sh**faced”?

I just find it curious that the author chose to set the book in the 1600′s, and very specifically 1665-6. This could have taken place anytime there has existed a master-servant relationship – or, even better maybe, where there wasn’t, since the master-servant relationship in this book is, for 1666, rather bizarre. Maybe.

“When Lucy arrived back at the Hargraves’ house, she found that Cook had tied a wreath laced with black ribbon on their door. She saw, too, that rushes had been laid in the streets to muffle the sounds of carts and the footsteps of tradesmen and gawking passersby.”

This show of mourning is for a dead servant – and one who apparently (in fact) ran off with the silver. I don’t know everything; I wouldn’t even say I know much. But this stopped me in mid-chapter, because it just seemed extraordinarily unlikely.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s true that in 1665 the class system wasn’t so strictly defined, and the rapport between Lucy and the family she works for wouldn’t be so shocking, and it wouldn’t be unheard of for a servant to be the object of such a display. Be that as it may, I was still consistently bemused by the relative informality – not to mention the freedom Lucy has to wander hither and yon in her NancyDrewishness. She seemed to be out and about as much as she was home doing her job.

(As, for example:
“As Lucy wandered, she found herself veering away from town and toward the open fields and glens…She looked around, realizing only at that moment that she had wandered right to Rosamund’s Gate, where Bessie had met her fate.”

Sorry, what? I don’t care how zoned out you are in your grief, if your best friend has just been murdered, and you know of at least a couple of other girls who met the same fate, if you’re a woman in any time period you do not lose track of your surroundings, particularly to the extent that you meander off alone into an open field and in fact right up to the site of your friend’s death. You don’t. Ever. And if you do, you might as well stick a bow on your head and hang a tag around your neck saying “For: The Killer. From: Stupid”.)

My overall impression of Rosamund’s Gate is that two different manuscripts sat together on a desk and the pages became interleaved in chunks. One storyline, which dominates the first part of the book, is about a serial killer going about killing women in historic London, and the plucky chambermaid who tries to find out who it is. The other, taking over most of the second part, is about London in a time of plague. Once the second plotline comes in, the first pretty much tucks itself up out of the way. Nobody thinks about the murders, or talks about them – the suspect that had been taken up is released; the family leaves the city, and is fully occupied in mourning the dead and keeping themselves alive. Murder is irrelevant when so many people are dying all over London, and the point is even made that criminals go free because their accusers or the jury pool or the judges have died. (This section is one reason for the second star – it was very well done. Not well integrated, but of itself well done.) The mystery manuscript seems to be finished with. Then – a few months in book-time, a few chapters in reader-time – it is, abruptly, as though the book suddenly remembers that the killer hasn’t been revealed, and all at once there is a flurry of activity to wrap up the mystery plotline.

It was obvious that there was a lot of research into the period, but it came out in bursts, like a child at the beach running back to show parents the cool shell or piece of seaweed or rock she found. The eye portraits, for example: they were fascinating, and sound beautiful and mysterious – but the author admits that such things were “not popularized until the late 18th century”. So – why, then? They were very cool – but they were not integral to the plot, and in fact did not make a huge amount of sense, as it turned out; so why shoehorn them in?

In an author’s note at the end of the book, Ms. Calkins says this: “At times, I took minor liberties for the purposes of creativity and readability, using far more modern phrasing and spelling than people would have used in seventeenth-century England.” Well. I’ll leave it up to individual readers whether the liberties were “minor” or not, and necessary or not; I think my opinion is pretty clear. I doubt there’s a sane writer in the world who would try to use authentic seventeenth-century spelling (such as it was) or phrasing throughout their novel; of course it would be unreadable. But for my writing my goal is/will be to maintain a consistency, create a flavor of the time and place I’m writing about, and do my damnedest to avoid anything that will pop up in a reader’s face to remind her that, after all, this is just a bunch of words on paper (or whatever) telling a tale that just came out of my head. A story is – unless you’re Guy Kay – a fragile thing, like a soap bubble being coaxed into being, and it doesn’t take very much to pop the bubble.

A final kvetch – would it be too much to ask to have some passing comment as to who Rosamund was and why the Gate is named for her?

 

 

Garment of Shadows – Laurie R. King

Bless Netgalley’s buttons, persistence paid off and I finally got approved. If only it hadn’t taken me so long to get this review written … par for the course, lately.

The story is well set up, with an economy and elegance that should make lesser series writers weep. It is not long after Pirate King. Holmes doesn’t know where Russell is. Russell doesn’t know where Russell is, nor whom for the matter of that. The skills she has worked to acquire startle her as she discovers them – the slightly sarcastic explanation her hurting brain supplies to take all of them into account is thieving circus performer. But because of her skills, she is able to adapt to her situation and launch an investigation based on the things in her pockets.

Amnesia, while a much-maligned plot device, is only a cliché because it’s overused because it’s so gosh darned much fun to read, and I imagine to write about. To pare down a character to her most basic elements, and to send her into a story armed only with her wits and the skills she discovers she has – it’s a little like hitting a reset button in a game, retaining all the muscle memory and intelligence, but being left to wonder why exactly you have these abilities. It was fun to watch Mary try not only to deduce where she was and why as well as who, but to explain to herself why she knew how to pick a pocket and a lock. And her reunion with Holmes was everything that it should be.

It’s a suspenseful read, a wonderful return to the sort of adventure Holmes and Russell shared in the beginning. Great fun.

(Wouldn’t Holmes’s origami go against the Islam strictures against graven images? “You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them.” Oh dear. Ah well.)

Related articles

• Garment of Shadows, by Laurie R. King (moviesandmangoes.wordpress.com)

 

Murder with Peacocks – Donna Andrews

Cover via Amazon

I am sorely tempted to give this five stars, just because. It’s a cozy mystery – a young woman who blacksmiths for a living takes the summer off to plan not one, not two, but three weddings (for her best friend, her brother, and her divorced mother, in that order), and when her mother’s fiancé’s dead wife’s sister (still with me?) is found dead it’s only the beginning of the mayhem. I have prejudices and whatnot that generally keep me from giving a cozy mystery five stars – it always feels like the perfect score should be saved for the truly superlative: Litrachure. Except when I just couldn’t enjoy a book more if there were a twenty dollar bill stapled to the inside cover, and then I throw caution to the winds. And you know? This may be “just” a cozy mystery, but it has no pretensions of being anything but a really fun story really well told, and as a cozy it hits all the right notes and not a single wrong one. There were a small handful of places where the writing hitched slightly – a word used twice in a compound sentence, that sort of thing – but … Abraham Lincoln said “Whatever you are, be a good one”. Murder with Peacocks is a cozy, and a very good one, and it deserves credit for that. Consider it four and a half.

I’ve read several “bridezilla” cozies; with so many of the heroines of the subgenre working as caterers, it’s inevitable that weddings will crop up here and there. And they’ve been my least favorite of their respective series, usually. The women are always rich, entitled, anorexic, vicious, and beyond unreasonable, and usually have mothers to match, and they harry the poor caterer day and night and into the weekend until she wants to frost their cakes with white lead icing and the reader hopes for a funeral instead of a wedding. Here, though, the author pulls off as remarkable a feat as her Meg does: three brides who are thoughtless, demanding, and frazzled, and the only one I hated was the one I was meant to hate. Moreover, I believed this brand of thoughtlessness and heedless mind-changing as I never did in those other cozies.

A little while back I complained bitterly about a book which was advertised as madcap, with which descriptor I disagreed strongly. This? This was madcap. One of the quotes the book used promised the reader she would “laugh heartlessly” – and I sighed, because usually when a book promises to make me laugh it fails miserably. It tries too hard, and before long I picture it as the little man in the bad suit up on stage, sweating and stammering and repeating himself in the spotlight as a drunk heckles him from the second row. Donna Andrews, however, used a light and deft touch, and this book did make me laugh. Not uproariously; not on every page; I wouldn’t necessarily agree with “heartlessly” (there was no cruelty in this book beyond that any thoroughly hassled person might express toward her tormentors). But I laughed, and smiled more than I laughed, and wanted to know what was going to happen, and in the end that’s all I’m looking for in my day to day reading. With the weddings, the murders, frequent power outages, the almost-derailed-before-it-started romance for Meg, and not only a little boy with a pet duck but also the title peacocks, it’s all frothy as a meringue – and I know firsthand how hard a meringue can be. It’s well managed.

On the one hand, I’m pleased that this launched a series: I enjoyed the characters, Meg and David and her

Peacock (Photo credit: BBM Explorer)

family, and I enjoyed the heck out of the writing, and I enjoyed the storytelling. But this was a book about a young woman dropped into a bizarre chain of events, with theft and murder and blackmail, poison and explosives and sabotage suddenly rife as weeds in her small hometown. The plotline is frenetic, and what keeps it from stretching suspension of disbelief to its limits is the skill with which Andrews handles her blacksmith main character’s reactions to the mayhem: in part, with her duties as unpaid and unthanked planner for three ever-changing weddings within weeks of each other, with an attitude of I don’t have time for this. The book adeptly threw flaming torch after chainsaw after live chicken into Meg’s juggling act, and it was fun to watch her grit her teeth and adapt. I don’t know if this will get old over the course of the series, as Meg inevitably becomes one of those cozy mystery heroines who would be utterly alarming to know in reality – “Have you ever noticed that wherever she goes bodies begin to stack up?” We’ll have to see. I liked the characters, and their writer, more than enough to give them some slack.

Related articles

• Friday Favorite: Murder With Peacocks by Donna Andrews (bubblebathbooks.wordpress.com)
• Naming Your Cozy Mystery (janetboyer.typepad.com)

 

The Red House Mystery – A.A. Milne

Long long ago, not so very far away, I read this, completely delighted by the fact that the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh wrote a murder mystery. I loved it then, and so was happy when The Red House Mystery was chosen as a book of the month for the Goodreads English Mysteries Club.

Unfortunately, I didn’t love the reread so much.

The writing was fun, with occasional Pooh-ish moments –

“Perhaps it was true that inspectors liked dragging ponds, but the question was, Did Cayleys like having them dragged?”

- But there were a great many moments that stopped me cold, thinking Sorry, what was that now? The latitude the amateur detective is given is a figment of the mystery writer’s imagination; the ineptitude of the constabulary in their failure to make certain surely routine checks and confirmations was absurd; parts of the mystery itself were more than a little silly.

But still. As a light and undemanding read it was enjoyable. In fact, it rather has to be read as undemanding, the sort of thing you just settle in with a cup of tea and enjoy without questioning. If you think about it too much it all falls apart.

 

 

King’s Man and Thief – Christie Golden

I bought this book not long after it came out in paperback – never mind how long ago – and I loved it (though not as much as the other book I discovered by Christie Golden around the same time, Instrument of Fate). So I was tickled to download it from Netgalley in its new Open Road edition – my thanks.

One thing right up front: some spoilers are, in my experience, good things. That spoiler my brother dropped on me about The Sixth Sense: not good. What I consider a positive spoiler is: don’t get attached to anyone in the prologue of King’s Man and Thief. That’s all I’ll say, though.

It’s been some time since I read both of these, but I was a little surprised that this and Instrument of Fate are part of the same world. The latter was filled with elves and magic, whereas the magic in KM&T is human and elves make no appearance (though merfolk and the gods do).

The prologue sets the stage, and then the first chapter picks up seven years later to explore the changes in Lord Deveren Larath’s life. After the tragedy in the first pages, he set out in a cold fury to find the thief who invaded his house. He has never found that specific thief, but – through a series of events I’m afraid I don’t entirely buy – he has become “Fox”, a member of the guild of thieves among whom he once hunted. Now, as Fox, he is up for election as leader of the thieves of Braedon. His double life, by day the noble lord and by night the bandit just seemed improbable – both that the other thieves (largely impoverished) would accept him (not to mention the other nobleman thief in their midst) (and would not make him a mark) and that he would steal at all. His stealing, at least, is restricted to those who would barely notice their losses, but it’s a little difficult to picture him mingling in society with friends and acquaintances who had been robbed by his other set of acquaintances. It was also a little hard to accept the fact that he steals at all – he has no need, and simply doing it because it’s fun or a challenge or whatever is generally an unacceptable sort of character trait.

Meanwhile, in Byrn (the next kingdom over), the king has died, leaving his teenaged son to take the throne. And all is not well there: the counselor the young king has inherited with the kingdom is not in favor of the proposed alliance between Byrn and Braedon, as he can make a good deal more money and exult in a good deal more power if relations remain strained. He soon determines that the best way for him to maximize his wealth and power is to kill the young king and lay waste to Braedon, and finds a way to levy a curse against Byrn’s would-be ally that will utterly, horrifyingly destroy it.

The curse is achieved through torture, which – fair warning – is perpetrated on a very likeable character, and graphically described. Again, don’t get attached. This, along with the results of the curse and some random psychotic behavior from a group of other characters, is difficult to read, but not without a point. And yet somehow the Evil Counselor of Byrn does not come across as Random Psycho #21, purely evil for no reason at all. He reminded me a little of Count Rugen, actually.

It was fun. Not as much fun as I remember it being; there was a level of violence and as I mentioned graphic grimness I hadn’t remembered. And the ending might have been all wrapped up a little too neatly a little too quickly; it seemed like exactly the sort of situation where the victors would be mopping up and undergoing counseling for months to come, but it seems more cut and dried than that. But – it was fun. And now I need to pull out Instrument of Fate again and see whether that’s aged as well.

 

The Bull Slayer – Bruce MacBain

I started the year in ancient Rome, care of Netgalley (thank you). Well, no, not Rome itself, but the Empire in general and what is now part of Turkey specifically – Bithynia. Plinius Secundus, called Pliny by those around him (or Gaius by those closest to him, just to mess with your head) and Pliny the Younger by history, has been sent to this barbaric outpost to investigate and clean up the corruption that is rampant there among the Greeks – or, as the Romans patronizingly refer to them, Greeklings. The previous governor played fast and loose with lots and lots of money, and when he left – not quite in disgrace – he took a lot of the moveables with him, so now Pliny, his beloved wife Calpurnia, and his household – including the freed slaves he and his wife find indispensable, Ione and Zosimus – not only has to cope with insolent and indolent slaves, a disgruntled and resentful populace, and a corrupt and snobbish Roman community, but also a residence that has been left uncomfortable and ill-kept. It’s a challenge. But Pliny has the confidence of the emperor.

A new roadblock is thrown in his way when suddenly a Roman official is murdered. He was an unpleasant man, and corrupt, but his death is highly inconvenient – and given that less than a hundred years ago there was a rebellion and slaughter of Romans right there in Bithynia, Pliny is anxious to keep things as calm and steady as possible. Did the murder have something to do with this cult of Mithras that keeps creeping in around the edges? Was it because of money, and if so was it business or family? Was it political? Could it have been jealousy? (Nah.) Before Pliny can answer any of this, he is called to another scene of death …

For a good percentage of this book, I had a five-star rating dancing before my eyes. The writing was very fine, and the characters were well-rounded, dialogue felt “period” without being patronizing or archaic. The setting was vibrant in all its sordidness and felt alive and current, both alien and familiar. It was when part of the plot began to devolve into soap opera and a character I had really liked suddenly became Too Stupid To Live, and when it was – in one gut-wrenching scene – revealed that absolutely no one was faithful or trustworthy: that was when my opinion of the book started to slide. Wait. I take it back. One person was faithful and trustworthy. He didn’t last long.

So help me, I can’t imagine why writers still insist on putting boar hunts into their books. The minute someone says there will be a boar hunt I know there is, literally, no exaggeration, at least a 90% probability that someone’s gonna die. It’s ridiculous. It has become a cliché. Someday I’m going to go back through all the historical (and fantasy, for that matter) novels I’ve ever read and put together a compendium of Deadly Boar Hunts. People: STOP IT.

None of this makes it a bad book (hence the fact that it retained four (three and a half, really) of those five stars). But it was depressing. And it took the plot in a direction almost directly opposite from where I either wanted or expected it to go. The synopsis on Goodreads states that the finale is tragic. I don’t think so. “Tragic” would have had me in tears, surely, or feeling something; this … this just had me thinking “wait – you mean – aw, come on, isn’t killing that person off a little convenient, and kind of mean? And what about – oh, you’re kidding.

One smallish thing that did bug me was the contrived cleverness of Pliny’s man Zosimus. He would for the most part remain silent, as befitted a freed slave in the company they were keeping, but when he spoke up it was always pithy, always clever – and often coined those words and phrases used today. Clew = clue, for example. It was a little too cute.

I really enjoyed Pliny, and he’s a great choice to center a series around – he knew everybody. Suetonius was a fun character, and I’d love to read any of his works that have survived. I was looking forward to a first century detective series with these two, with a solid scholarly grounding and a sense of humor… Now I don’t know if I’ll keep going with it. A disappointment.

(However: the audiobook of the first in the series was narrated by Bronson Pinchot. Hm.)

 

 

The Killings at Badger’s Drift – Caroline Graham

I hunted down a copy of this for a monthly read of the English Mysteries Goodreads group; I’d never read any of the Midsomer Murders novels before, and somehow never even saw any of the PBS Mystery! series made from them, so it was all new and different. (Really, though, I don’t know how I managed to miss these all these years.)

The plot summary: an elderly woman is found dead in her cottage in a lovely-seeming English village, and because her best friend will not back down from her assertion that it was not a natural death Chief Inspector Barnaby and his sidekick Sgt. Troy are sent in to look into it. In the course of their investigation, the cozy, charming village cracks wide open to reveal a seamy, sordid gooey interior that would make Miss Marple blanch. (Well, maybe not.) Incest, adultery, murder, attempted murder, blackmail, incest (did I miss anything?) … It all comes spewing out when Barnaby begins to poke into things. (Was anyone other than Barnaby sleeping with who they were supposed to be?)

I’ll admit, I’m not a huge fan of the sort of novel that insists that beneath every idyllic appearance is something awful. And after a while the sheer volume of sordidness began to push the envelope; I mean, really? Nearly every single person in the village had some horrible secret whose discovery might have led to murder? It might have been refreshing if there had been someone besides the victim and her friend (Misses Simpson and Bellringer, respectively) had been guilty of no more than a late library book. But no. The positive side to this is that I never saw the solution to the puzzle coming – with the rather satisfying conclusion that, really, it’s the only answer that really makes sense to the question of “who was it Miss Simpson saw in the woods”: no other pair would, in so-modern 1982, really necessarily care enough or have enough to lose as to be driven to kill someone who saw them.

That being said, some of the characterizations were fun. The best things about the book were Miss Bellringer and Barnaby and his family. The former is unapologetic – she knows there is something wrong about her friend’s death, and she’ll be dashed if she doesn’t see to it that it’s solved. She’s a bit of a heroine. I’d be perfectly happy with a series centered around her.

And the latter, Barnaby and his wife and daughter, are terrific. One of my deepest sources of irritation in any book or tv series featuring these high-stress non-9-to-5 jobs (cop, lawyer, doctor) is the clichéd storyline of the wife (usually) who constantly complains and nags over the unpredictability of the spouse’s job, and usually leaves. I love that Joyce, Barnaby’s missus, is a real partner to him, interested in his work and understanding of the fact that his schedule is not predictable. I hope that doesn’t change.

Speaking of partners … Sgt. Troy, the cynical, sarcastic terrible driver who is Barnaby’s associate on the job, was a surprise. I don’t recall ever seeing a relationship like this in a mystery series. Troy’s prejudices and bitterness, once I got past the initial shock of the pure internal disrespect his external smarminess covered, made for kind of a nice change from other series where the chief can do no wrong, held in the highest esteem. There’s some scope there, with Troy snarking away in his head and Barnaby unable to resist baiting and teasing him.

One aspect I feel is a flaw, but which might have been somewhat unavoidable in a series’ opening novel, is the insistence on providing the two supporting characters, Troy and Joyce, with a Flaw: Troy is a terrible driver and Joyce is a terrible cook. It casts a kind of unsuitably comic light on the story, as Barnaby walks away from a life-threatening breakfast table to embark on a life-threatening drive with his partner. (Aren’t the police supposed to have some sort of intensive driving course?) This bit – and the setting of the Classic English Village – make it feel like a cozy mystery – but for me the graphic descriptions of some of the deaths keeps it out of the subgenre of Cozy. (Also, I always think of a cozy as having an amateur detective lead, but don’t quote me.)

This wouldn’t be a proper review if I failed to mention the Rainbirds. I heard (read) a lot about them as I got ready to read Badger’s Drift … and … honestly? While they were horrors, they didn’t quite live up to their billing as dreadfulness in the extreme . I don’t know whether that was a relief or a disappointment …

I’ve already tracked down the second book in the series, and watched the PBS adaptation of Badger’s (which was great fun, and faithful enough to be going on with). I liked this, and I will certainly read (and watch) more in the series. It won’t, however, be a high priority.

Related articles

• New on DVD – Midsomer Murders: Mayhem & Mystery Files (reellifewithjane.com)

 

 

Face of the Enemy: It’s a Helluva War – Joanne Dobson & Beverle Graves Myers

It’s a good thing I scheduled a whole bunch of posts over last weekend – otherwise, there would be nothing going up this week …Is 2012 over yet?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“2:33. 2:33 on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and nothing will ever be the same.”

This is the second Netgalley offering I’ve read this year which featured an interracial (Japanese immigrant and white American) couple in 1941 who were directly affected by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The two books were utterly different in all other ways, though, apart from both being very good.

Here, the couple is Robert and Masako Oakley, respectively a professor and an artist living in Manhattan. At Masako’s show, which by terrible coincidence opens on just before Pearl Harbor. Much more happens than just the sale of paintings: protesters picket outside, two racist society dissenters invade the show and deface one of the paintings, and Robert – refusing to spoil his beloved wife’s big night by giving in to illness – is literally brought down by the illness he’s been ignoring. Events gallop on from there: Pearl Harbor is attacked, and the FBI round up anyone of Japanese origins for internment. And when the body is found in the gallery, placed under one of Masako’s paintings, the police join in the hounding, pretty darn sure that – tiny and non-violent as she is – she must be the killer.

I’ve been a fan of Joanne Dobson’s Professor Karen Pelletier books for ages, and so I was delighted to get my hands on this through Netgalley (to whom go my thanks). Dobson (along with her coauthor Beverle Graves Myers, of course) does every bit as lovely a job on 1941 New York as she does with present-day academic Massachusetts. The setting is true-to-life, the emotions of even minor characters adding to the entirety of a shocked and angry city changing its mind about war. And the situation Masako is dropped into is horrific. Bureaucratic red tape mixed with a vengeful attitude, righteousness and anger combined with “just doing my job, ma’am” – all swirling around a character who quickly becomes someone the reader does not want dropped into a hideous situation: it’s powerful.

Fortunately, detective Michael McKenna – who reminded me of Riker from the Kathy Mallory novels – is not blinded by the surge of racial hatred; he just wants to find and put away the actual murderer. Whether he wants it or not he has assistance from the nurse brought in to look after Robert, Louise – and also Louise’s roommate at a boarding house that reminded me in ways of Stage Door (and the similar house in the Rosie Winter novels). The latter is Intrepid Girl Reporter Cabby Ward, Louise’s roommate, who is finding out just how hard it is to be a girl in a men’s world – but she’s tough, and determined, and willing to do just about anything for her story. It’s only a little later that she has the realization I wish all reporters would have – that the people in the case, victim and suspect(s) and cops, are people, not just subjects for an article, and that the ethics of a story might just be as important as the sensation.

I like these characters. I like the use of the immigrant ethos of New York to bring the moment in time to life: Masako’s plight, along with that of Louise’s landlady, German-born Helda, and her son. The American homefront of WWII is one of my favorite settings, surprisingly underused in my experience (though See Also Rosie Winter); it makes me very happy to know this is the beginning of a series.