The Winter of Her Discontent – Kathryn Miller Haines

To preface, I started this (a trade paperback) because my Kindle quite simply had a hissy fit. When all’s said and done, unless someone pours glue over it you will always be able to at least open a book: one reason I don’t think “dead tree books” will ever go away.

“Discontent” is right (though the only “winter” is Rosie herself – this takes place in March. Which, all right, is technically winter…); Rosie is discontented, disgruntled, unhappy, and cranky. And miserable. She has every reason to be – her boyfriend (or is he?) is missing in action, and she can’t get any further information; the War and the shortages and rationing and blackout that go with it are making life in general and life in the theatre in particular more challenging, not to mention the constant casualty lists in the paper; the weather is dismal; she is between shows; and her buddy Al has been arrested for murder. Still, it isn’t what you might call fun when the first-person narrator is irritable to the point of chewing out her best friend and barely trying in a role she feels she is miscast for. It’s a tribute to Kathryn Miller Haines and my fond memories of the first book that I stuck with her through the beginning of this one.

Al, it seems, has turned himself in for the murder of a young actress, and part of Rosie’s misery is that she feels guilty: Al showed up to see her just hours before he was arrested, and she can’t shake the feeling that he was trying to tell her something or ask her for help, and she brushed him off (being cross at the time). He doesn’t want her help now, and says and does everything in his power to dissuade Rosie and her good friend and roomie Jayne from helping, but they will not be dissuaded. And off they go into a new investigation, centered around a new production, a mystery-shrouded mob-related situation, interwoven with new progress in the other abiding mystery in Rosie’s life: the problem of her missing not-quite-fiancé.

I’m a bit impressed by the fact that Rosie seems to have grown from the last book, and also does so within this book. She has, in a couple of ways, a more solidly grounded reality to her than do a great many fictional characters who are expected to carry their books: hers is no white-washed Mary Sue personality. When she is miserable – discontented – she can and will take it out on those around her, including her beloved Jayne. She loathes Ruby, the snobbish knock-out who will go far in acting even if she has to destroy everyone in her path, and the two of them have a constant sniping relationship; realistically, neither is blameless in the nastiness. There is real pain on both sides, but they flat out don’t like each other, and that will, apparently, never change: they may end up temporary allies as required, but they’ll never be bosom pals. Rosie says and does things that she regrets, that cause pain, as do others; she learns from what she is feeling, from what is happening around her, and advances. I can’t think of a non-coming-of-age story in which there’s so much development to a character.

I don’t think the slang in the book has changed since last outing, but for some reason I found it annoying in Discontent. “Shut your box” seemed to especially get on my nerves. On the other hand, it strikes me that if the slang of the time was so prevalent then, with no trace of it surviving here and now, then I should feel better about the “like” and the “bro” and all the rest of the stuff that makes me twitch; in a decade or so it’ll start going away, and be gone … when the next generation’s slang takes over. Bother. Oh well.

I only hope in the next books Rosie doesn’t get a role through someone else’s misfortune. That would have a similar feel to the “cozy” mysteries where the main character comes upon a corpse every six months or so; I wouldn’t want to be friends with that person, and I wouldn’t want to be in a show with an actor who was such a jinx.

At the beginning of the book I wasn’t sure I’d make it through; by the end I was friends with Rosie again, and cared as much about what happened to her as ever; in her guilt over and apologies to Jayne for her ratty behavior she is also making amends to the reader, and that’s another sign of growth. This is a very good book in a very good series.

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Three-Day Town – Margaret Maron

I’ve read some Margaret Maron, and collected several in preparation for the inevitable binge. I’ve only read a couple of the Sigrid Haralds, though, and so was pleased that Three-Day Town (which I received from Netgalley, thank you) was part of the Deborah Knott series; these books have been on my radar for a while but somehow never actually wound up in my hands, so I looked forward to meeting Judge Knott. I don’t really like starting in the middle of a series (instant spoilers for every book before it), but I have to say, I found this a great place to break in. And then, to my surprise (not having read the synopsis), who should enter the picture but Sigrid Harald.

I do feel obliged to remark that the book shares one of what I feel are the besetting sins of “cozy” mysteries – to wit, the fact that death follows the featured character(s) around like a stray puppy. It’s inevitable, I know, but stretches my suspension of disbelief more than most fantasies. In these series, Sigrid Harald is a homicide cop, and so has every reason to keep encountering death; Deborah Knott is a judge married to a cop, and is therefore in a situation where she might do so also. However, this book sends her and her husband on vacation – a week in New York, their long-delayed honeymoon. And within forty-eight hours someone is dead in their borrowed apartment.

That out of the way (and, really, who cares?), it’s a great story. The writing is so fluid and full of character I can’t imagine why I haven’t read more Margaret Maron. Coming off a recent stretch of Carol O’Connell’s Mallory novels, read far more recently than the Sigrid books, I’m seeing a resemblance between those two main characters; Sigrid isn’t a psychopath, but she is a social misfit in some of the same ways. This could be one reason I haven’t read more Maron, if my ambivalence toward Sigrid here is evidence. I was a little sorry every time the narrative switched over from the first-person intimate of Deborah Knott to the third-person chilly of Sigrid Harald.

*That* being said, the sure-handed telling of the story is a sight to see. Neither main character has all the facts, and their relationship (all but nil, and not likely to grow warmer) does not see them swapping confidences. In the meantime, other secondary characters go about with bits of information, leaving the reader to wait until either Deborah or Sigrid makes the necessary connection and resulting discovery. There is one aspect of the story (where the obscene statue came from), revealed to the reader in a flash-back prologue, which is never revealed to the main characters. This book is obviously the product of a seasoned writer. I can’t say I adore Deborah, and I can’t even say I much like Sigrid (though I’m intrigued by her); I found the evolution of the murder mystery a little far-fetched; even so, all in all, it was a good read.