Readingomnivore Reviews

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THE LAST PAGE contains a jointly-written novella, THE LAST PAGE, and two short stories, “Your Sweet Man,” and “A Weekend in the Country,” one by each of the authors. The original short stories were published in 2007 in THE CHICAGO BLUES ANTHOLOGY edited by Libby Fischer Hellmann. THE LAST PAGE was a free or inexpensive Kindle edition.

Barbara Adams, director of the Windbrook Village Library in suburban Chicago, dies when she apparently suffers a heart attack, then falls down the basement stairs at the library. She’d left two messages for Mavis Fairbrooks, saying she had discovered information she’ll have to act upon, but giving no indication of what. IT director of the library Mark Wainwright finds a draft of a related e-mail to Mavis from Barbara Adams and forwards it. Mavis’s daughter Julia, a law student at Northwestern, thinks that her discovery led to Barbara’s being murdered. When she goes to the police and gets nowhere, Julia decides to investigate on her own. With the help of maintenance man JJ (no periods between the initials) Jackson, she discovers what Barbara had found and confronts the killer.

As to be expected with the novella length, there’s little character development. Julia is an attractive protagonist, with most of the story presented in limited third person through her eyes. “If you could believe JJ Jackson--and she did--at least three people had serious grudges against Barbara Adams. She knew better, though, than to run back to the police. In fact, maybe they were right. Her mother, too. Maybe her imagination was running away with her. Maybe she was riding off into a fantasy world of crime solving, in an effort to escape the rigor and drudgery of student life.” She pulls a TSTL when she confronts the killer without having thought through all the possible outcomes and without her cell phone, which she’s left in her jacket pocket elsewhere.

Chicago locations are evident throughout. (B+)

“Your Sweet Man” has an interesting twist ending. It focuses on the feelings of Calvin Rollins who’s picking up his father Jimmy Jay Rollins from Joliet Prison. JJ Rollins is dying of cancer and has been granted a compassionate discharge. He’s served 25 years for the murders of his wife Inez and the lover she ran away with. But has justice been served? (A-)

“A Weekend in the Country” focuses on a crooked Chicago cop Patrick Mulhane, who comes up with a sure-fire moneymaking scheme involving renting a house, stocking it with booze, hookers, and gambling, and charging for admission. Things do not go as planned, when he and his partners spend the entire weekend catering to the “guests.” It all goes sour when three uninvited mobsters turn up. (B+)

Three neat quick reads.

 

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THE DEVIL’S GRIN is the first book in A. Wendeberg’s Kronberg Crimes series featuring Dr. Anton Kronberg. It was published in 2012 as an inexpensive or free e-book. It is set in London beginning in 1889.

Dr. Kronberg is a pioneer in the emerging specialties of bacteriology and epidemiology at Guy’s Hospital. He’s often called upon by the police when cholera or other communicable diseases are involved in cases. When workers find the body of a suspected cholera victim in the Hampton Water Treatment Works, Kronberg confirms the cause of death and also meets Sherlock Holmes. Both demonstrate amazing powers of observation and deduction, including Holmes’s realization that Dr. Anton Kronberg is in reality a German woman. Anna Kronberg had, disguised as a man, attended university in Leipzig, then emigrated to the United States where she attended Harvard Medical School before relocating to London. She and Holmes, who guards her secret, work together to identify the cholera patients; they uncover a conspiracy of major medical figures to develop and test vaccines against tetanus and cholera using work house inmates as human guinea pigs. Can they foil the plot? Who is involved, and what is their purpose?

THE DEVIL’S GRIN refers to the rictus associated with patients with tetanus, which is the first germ Dr. Kronberg isolates. With the Ebola outbreak and the rush to develop medicines and vaccines, the subject matter resonates. The pioneering research on tetanus was done at approximately the times indicated, but the pioneering work on cholera--isolating the germ, providing its mode of spread--was done in 1854, and a vaccine had been developed by 1885. References to cell wall proteins are anachronistic.

The first section of THE DEVIL’S GRIN is first person narration through the journals of Dr. Anton Kronberg that reveals Anna; the second section shifts between limited third person narration through Anton, then switches back to Anna’s first person; the third section briefly gives Sherlock Holmes’s point of view, then switches back to Anton/Anna. Wendeberg gives Anna, Anton, and Holmes distinct voices. Characterization is well-done, though the number of characters exceeds that strictly necessary to the plot. Wendeberg mentions Mycroft Holmes only in passing, and Dr. Watson’s role is very minor.

Anna Kronberg is an extreme example of the course forced on some women in their determination to become medical doctors. “I imagined living a normal life. I knew these thoughts were a waste of my time. And yet, I needed to think them, as an experiment of ifs and whys that always brought me back to where I was now. I had chosen a life in disguise because I wanted to practise medicine. I was the only female medical doctor in London. Not officially, though.” (75-6) In her intelligence, powers of observation and deduction, and strength of will, Anna is a match for Holmes. It’s clear that they are attracted; though Holmes refuses to act upon the attraction, it’s significant that, after Dr. Kronberg’s first visit to 221B Baker Street, Holmes puts away the photograph of “the woman” Irene Adler. Anna plans to disappear and refuses to tell Holmes where she’s going because she doesn’t want to anticipate his coming after her, when she knows he won’t. However, the last sentence mentioning Professor Moriarty makes clear that they will meet again.

Kronberg’s perception is that “Holmes was all focus and excitement now. His mimics [?] may have appeared calm and even rigid to the onlookers, but the movements of his entire body were many, very quiet, and very small--eyes narrowing a fraction and opening up again, lips compressing, corners of the mouth pulling up or down very slightly, hands gripping the table just a little harder, then letting go again, breath slowly and speeding up, feet shuffling ever so slightly. He vibrated.” (23-4) He treats Anna as an equal despite his desire to protect her.

Sense of place is outstanding. Not only are physical details of London and its area authentic, but its atmosphere during the Victorian period is more realistically presented than in the Conan Doyle originals. ‘The bumpy one hour ride....was pleasant, as it presented views London could not offer: bright sunshine, fresh air, and once in a while a glimpse of the river that still reflected the light. Once the Thames entered the city it turned into the dirtiest stretch of moving water in the whole of England. Crawling through London it became saturated with cadavers from each of the many species populating the city, including their excrements. The river washed them out in the sea, where they sank into the depths to be forgotten. London had an endless supply of filth, enough to defile the Thames for centuries to come. (8) And “[Barry] lived just around the corner in a two-storey house, of which the mould had taken hostage many years ago. The privy was overflowing, as it had to accommodate for the thirty or so inhabitants, all in various stages of utmost poverty. Without a single window or door intact, the house and whoever lived inside were at the weather’s mercy all year round. Here in St Giles it a a house like all the others. (102)

THE DEVIL’S GRIN is one of the best in the large store of Sherlock Holmes continuations. Recommended highly. (A)

 

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Robert Spiller’s THE WITCH OF AGNESI is the first book in his mystery series featuring Bonnie Pinkwater, who teaches math at East Plains Junior/Senior High School. It was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2006.

Bonnie Drinkwater sponsors the Knowledge Bowl Team so, when one of its stars Peyton Newlin is involved in an altercation with another student on the day of the final competition, she’s concerned. That night Peyton implodes and takes the team down with him, then he disappears from the venue. The police believe he’s run away in shame and disappointment but, when the body of the team’s captain Stephanie Templeton is discovered some miles from her home early the next morning, it’s clear that more’s going on than a young teenager’s disappointment. Police attention focuses on the teenager who’d beat up on Peyton, Jesse Poole, whose distinctive truck has been reported near the scenes, but he’s solidly alibied by the staff at the hospice where his mother is dying of cancer. Because these are her students, Bonnie gets involved, to the point that someone in Jesse’s truck tries to run her down, giving her a concussion and a broken foot. Police discover Peyton’s body in a shallow grave on the family property of a third member of the team Edmund Sheridan. Peyton’s been dead since Thursday night also, and Edmund has gone missing. When Edmund’s body turns up under the trailer in which Jesse Poole lives, the mystery only gets deeper.

Bonnie Pinkwater is a believable character, as are most of those portrayed in THE WITCH OF AGNESI (the title comes from a famous demonstration in real analysis). She’s smart, logical, and invested in her students. She’s been widowed for eighteen months, and a significant part of the story is her developing relationship with new science teacher Armen Callahan, who loyally supports her and provides transportation after her injury. There’s not much direct characterization but plenty of indirect for most characters except for the person responsible for the deaths. That character doesn’t come into focus.

Because the villain doesn’t come into focus, the conclusion of THE WITCH OF AGNESI seems forced and designed to shock. Mental illness and PTSD can explain only so much of a person’s motivation, and the plot has major holes when approached in common sense terms. I can’t say more without doing a major spoiler.

Spiller emphasizes setting, including some bits of atmospheric description: “A weedy path of sand and gravel led away from the barn and into a stand of cottonwoods. From somewhere lost in the trees came the skittering sounds and clean smell of rushing water--a small creek probably. Insects and birds chirped. The last dying gasps of afternoon sunlight fell dappled through the branches. A slurry of shallow footprints gathered at the barn door and disappeared into the trees.” (185)

I read the fourth book in the series before this one, so I know that the quality of the plotting improves. Keeping that in mind, I do recommend THE WITCH OF AGNESI. (C+)

 

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FIRST CASE is a novella prequel to Roger Stelljes’s McRyan mystery series. It was a free or inexpensive e-book.

Michael McKenzie McRyan, “Mac,” is a fourth generation cop in St. Paul, Minnesota. He’s following in the footsteps of his illustrious father Simon McRyan, who may have been the best detective ever to wear the badge in St. Paul. His first case is the murder of lawyer Gordon Oliver, who turns up dead in the alley behind The Mahogany, a bar that caters to lawyers. He’d been killed by blunt force trauma to the head and his body placed in the bed of his truck; robbery had not been a motive because both truck and his valuables are present. As Mac and partner Richard Lich (“Dick Lick”) investigate, they find only two important things in Oliver’s life--his work as a fourth-year associate at prestigious law firm Krueger, Ballentine, Montague and Preston, and banging every female he can, including those at the firm. When Martin Burrows, who objected strongly enough to Oliver’s affair with his wife to assault him and to make threats, turns out to have a solid alibi, Mac concludes that Oliver’s murder must originate in his work. But what is going on that made his death necessary?

I can’t say too much about the plot without doing a spoiler, though the motive is an intriguing one. It’s not quite fair, in that a vital piece of evidence isn’t particularized until Mac and Dick confront the killer. Part of the action involves Mac’s confirming his suspicion that his wife Meredith is involved in an affair and deciding how to deal with the upcoming divorce.

Sense of place is strong in FIRST CASE. “Summit Avenue ran east from the Mississippi River a little over four miles to downtown St. Paul. It was a boulevard filled with stately mansions, synagogues and churches, majestic one-hundred-year-old trees, the Minnesota Governor’s mansion, his law school William Mitchell College of Law, the University of St. Thomas and Macalester College. It was a wonderful stretch of city for a morning run.”

Mac is a bit too perfect to be believable. Former hockey player who led his team to a national championship, summa cum laude law school graduate destined for the fast track, when two cousins on the force were killed in the line of duty, he joins the police to follow in his father’s footsteps. Mac’s much influenced by his father’s record and advice: “If you become a cop, if you work homicide, you speak for the dead. That is the job. You become their voice. That is the obligation and it is heavy one. It is an obligation that not everyone can carry. ...You will have to ask yourself if you can carry that burden. If you can, then you can talk to the family because then you have that investment in the case. You will say, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ and it will mean something to the family. They will trust that you will do everything you can to solve it and give them an answer, closure and maybe even a sense of justice.” Despite law school and four years on the force, Mac’s still less than thirty years old. He’s also made an investment in a chain of coffeehouses that makes him very comfortable financially. Too good to be true?Dick, as his partner, is older, more battered by life, and a fine detective when he chooses to make the effort; he can be a source of wisdom for Mac.

I’m not terribly impressed by FIRST CASE, but I like the characters and the writing well enough to follow up with the first book in the series. (C+)

 

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PRIVATE DECEPTION is the first book in Tamara Ward’s mystery series featuring private investigator Jade O’Reilly. It was published as a free or inexpensive e-book in 2012. It’s set in Sweetwater, North Carolina, near the Atlantic Coast.

Jade O’Reilly is a young private investigator working for Rex Grayson, head of Grayson Investigations, assigned to get proof that lawyer William Lunsford III is unfaithful to his wife Elaine. She does so, photographing the activities in his mistress’s apartment, but later that night someone shoots Lunsford dead. Elaine Lunsford hires Jade to find who killed Lunsford so that she can sue the killer for damages. In the meantime, Lily Grammar, daughter of a close personal friend of Rex’s, has run away; Melissa is distraught, so Rex puts Jade and Mack Blackmon on the case. They’re to drop everything else and find Lily immediately. Jade and Mack stake out father Wade Grammar’s house, since she’d run to him before, but Jade’s poking about in both the Lunsford case and Lily’s disappearance leads her to believe the cases are connected. What’s in the files that local multimillionaire celebrity Benton Rowe wants so desperately to recover from Lunsford’s office? Why is Lunsford’s assistant Shauna still occupying his office, even though she’s not being paid? Then Lunsford’s mistress Candy Perkins winds up dead, shot with the same gun that killed Lunsford. Jade finds out that Lily Grammar had been an intern for Lunsford. What is going on?

The plot of PRIVATE DECEPTION contains a couple of neat twists, but there’s little foreshadowing of the killer’s identity or motive. Jade solves the Lunsford-Perkins murders and finds Lily Grammar, but the secondary story line of her father’s murder is left unresolved. The conclusion clearly leaves this one open for a sequel. It’s hard to believe that the police never gain access to Lunsford’s files nor do full background checks on people associated with him.

Ward is good with atmospheric setting: “A few blocks from Connor’s house, the Shack was at the end of the road, the last establishment on the historic side of Sweetwater before the undevelopable swampland stretched past the creek that drained overflow from the lake. The creek eventually joined a river that flowed into the sound. If the shack hadn’t been such a popular bar with locals, city inspectors would have called for its demolition years ago. Rusty nails popped out of its porch’s wood, the gravel parking lot flooded every time a hurricane passed through, and the walls groaned and shifted in even a slight breeze. A clan of raccoons begged food off diners, watching from the vegetation with hungry eyes and perked ears until the owner fired his shotgun in their vicinity.” (107-8) Despite its setting, there’s no trace of Southern speech or thought patterns in any of the characters.

Jade O’Reilly is the first person narrator, It’s unclear exactly how old she is, but she carries serious emotional baggage from the murder of her father, an investigative reporter, and the subsequent suicide of her mother when Jade was a freshman in high school. She’d been engaged to her brothers’ friend Dale Pickles but ended it two months before the wedding, though Dale still refuses to accept that Jade won’t come back to him. Jade’s attracted to Keith Alexander, a new detective in the Sweetwater PD, and to Benton Rowe, whose business empire her father had been researching when he’d been killed. Jade’s a dynamic character who grows during the course of PRIVATE DECEPTION, finally starting to find some closure on her parents’ deaths; she even finds the courage to invite Keith to an upcoming community Sadie Hawkins dance. It should be interesting to see how Jade continues to grow and change. I’d prefer fewer, better developed secondary characters.

PRIVATE DECEPTION encourages me to look for the next book in the series. (B-)

 

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MURDER IN MYSTIC COVE is Daryl Anderson’s debut novel. It is available as a free or inexpensive e-book. It features Addie Gorsky, former Baltimore Police Department who’s now the Chief of Security for Mystic Cove, a retirement community in northern Florida.

Melvin Dick has always been cantankerous and arrogant, but he’s outdone himself in the past few weeks, going past hubris to megalomania and paranoia. He’s repeatedly told other inhabitants of Mystic Cove that the November issue of the Cove Commentator, news organ of Mystic Cove, will make him more famous than Bernstein and Woodward. Addie Gorsky finds him dead in his golf cart (the preferred means of transport in Mystic Cove) in Birnam Wood. He’d been shot in the head at close range, but there’s no weapon. Sheriff Bubba Spooner of Grubber County wants Addie to stay completely out of the investigation into Mel’s death, but the more they learn, the less sense Mel’s death makes. The autopsy showed he’d been dead already, from a heart attack, when shot in the head, and that he’d earlier had a gunshot graze on his arm long enough before death that the wound had been cleaned and bandaged. What on earth is going on? Anita, Mel’s quiet, diabetic wife becomes almost catatonic, then turns up dead in the bay. Did she shoot Mel and, in remorse for having “killed” him, commit suicide? Addie has to delve deeply into the past to find out who, why, and how Mel and Anita died.

*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****

It’s hard to know where to begin on MURDER IN MYSTIC COVE. The book has so much good potential that I regret it falls far short. I freely admit that most of what I know about police investigations and forensics comes from Law and Order and detective novels, but too many things that seem to be standard procedure are ignored by Sheriff Spooner and the OIC Deputy Berry. Mel’s repeated references to his blockbuster story coming out November 1 should have alerted them to its importance, but the police do not investigate his home computer, from which the killer takes the hard drive, or his computer at the Commentator, where the file is erased. Are not toxicology screenings a standard part of an autopsy? Mel and Anita Dick’s daughter Julia has to have a second autopsy performed on her parents before their unknowing ingestion of datura (also known as jimsonweed or locoweed) is detected; datura produces the symptoms both had shown prior to death. After datura poisoning is detected, should not the police examine the Dicks’ home for evidence of its administration?

The plot involves three major criminal activities: one involving the Weather Underground radical movement, one a serial killer, and one fraud involving land development. As a result, the plot meanders along, unfocused, too long. Cutting the fraud subplot would produce a tighter story. Chunks of exposition required to provide Addie with information of things not happening in her presence are awkward. The conclusion, in which Addie confronts the serial killer alone, is contrived.

The first person narrator Addie Gorsky is potentially a strong protagonist. She’s carrying realistic baggage from her job in Baltimore, in which her partner Joey Spoletto was shot and killed, for which she blames herself. “...Maybe everybody’s past was a minefield--take a wrong step and it blows up. Oh, there were the bittersweet memories of love and youth, but there was also regret, shame, ignominy. Since leaving Baltimore I’d tortured myself, obsessing over lost chances and wrong turns, the awful song of what could have been sticking in my mind like an unwanted jingle. I guess the past was a blessing and a cure, but without it we would not be human.” Addie also must cope with her father losing battle with cancer; he’s about to go into hospice care.

Anderson is good with characterization, but the number of characters exceeds those necessary. Establishing a community does not require introducing every person in it. Characters need to be consistent until/unless significant circumstances from the plot produce believable change. Sheriff Bubba Spooner starts out as a stereotypical Southern good-ole-boy, ineffective, blustery, not about to put up with Addie’s interference, then abruptly with no explanation, he’s taking Addie out for coffee, sharing information on the cases, becomes “Brad” instead of Bubba,” helps her set up the confrontation to get a confession from the serial killer, even offers her a job. What happened?

I don’t expect the residents of Mystic Cove to sound Southern because they come from all over the US, but the locals, including Sheriff Spooner and Addie’s security officers, don’t either. Sense of place is otherwise strong. “The sun blazed in the blue sky, with the piercing clarity peculiar to the South. Just enough of the early morning chill remained to make it perfect walking weather, I felt a brief exhilaration--most of my working day was spent in my dark office, poring over schedules and payrolls. I looked up at the neat brick buildings on either side of the landscaped street. Baskets of spicy-smelling lantana hung from posts. Not many cars, but golf carts hummed along their designated lanes. Not a piece of trash in sight. How could anyone have a problem on such a beautiful day? but yesterday had been just as lovely, and yesterday someone had blasted a hole in Mel Dick’s head.”

I plodded through MURDER IN MYSTIC COVE only because I wanted to see if I’d deduced the killer and the method, which I had. I don’t recommend it for anyone else. (D+)

 

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JoAnn Barrett’s LIVIN’ LAHAINA LOCA is the second in her Islands of Aloha mystery series. It was published in 2012 as a free or inexpensive e-book. It features Pali (pronounced Polly) Moon, wedding planner on Maui.

Pali’s planning an expensive wedding for Nicole Johnson and her fiance Keith Lewis when Crystal Wilson, the red-haired bridesmaid, disappears from Nicole’s bachelorette party. Pali goes looking for her during the next night’s Maui Halloween celebration, known as the Mardi Gras of the Pacific; when she returns to her car, she finds a chopped-off long red pony-tail in the back seat. She reports it to the engaged couple, but they deny it’s Crystal’s and say she’s gone back to the mainland. Disbelieving, Pali reports Crystal missing to Detective Glen Wong; he takes her report but makes it clear that the department doesn’t take it seriously. Then someone leaves Crystal’s faux fingernails in a bag on Pali’s door; again Wong blows her off. Finally, someone puts on her windshield a note demanding $500,000 ransom from Keith Lewis for Crystal’s return. Still no action from the Maui police, and Wong does his best to intimidate Pali to stay out of the whole business. In the meantime, Pali meets Oliver “Ono” Kingston, a friend of Hatch Decker (Pali’s friend with benefits) to whom she’s attracted and through whom she meets fabulously wealthy Tomika Fujioka in Honolulu. When she gets back to Maui, the engaged couple have left the islands, but Lewis leaves Pali $10,000 cash to take care of the cancelled wedding expenses. Before Pali gets it to the bank, she picks up a client at the airport, where a drug-sniffing beagle hits on her purse and the cash, which is saturated with cocaine odors. Pali is taken into custody but released. What is going on? Is anyone who or what he seems?

Characterization is strong in this series, and Pali Moon is a sympathetic, believable character, except for her bull-headedness. She ignores warnings from Wong, Hatch, and Ono himself, pushing the search for the missing woman. “If Glen Wong wanted to throw me in jail for doing the job he refused to do, then so be it. He could argue that Crystal’s death as simply a bad end for a mainland party girl who’d gotten herself tangled up with local dope peddlers, but I didn’t buy it. A young woman--a human being--had been executed, supposedly collateral damage in a beef between a couple of lowlife drug dealers. She’d been buried in the loamy soil of the rain forest where the daily downpours and warm temperatures would quickly reclaim her body to the earth. We had to find her. Her soul deserved to rest in peace knowing the lowlifes who’d brutally ended her short life had been brought to justice.” (207-8) An interesting assortment of the characters--Steve, Pali’s gay roommate; Glen Wong; Hatch Dicker; Pali’s best friend, the psychic Farrah Milton--repeat from MAUI WIDOW WALTZ, so it’s good to read the series in order.

Sense of place is outstanding: “I took the Honoapi’ilani Highway along the edge of the West Maui Mountains, down the coast at Launupoko, past Lahaina Town and then kept going. And going. The highway necks down at Kapalua and becomes a narrow lane that creeps around the extreme north side of the island like a glorified goat trail. The people who live beyond Kapalua are mostly hardcore locals who don’t mind the one-lane stretches and steep drop-offs to the valleys and ocean below. For their trouble, they’re rewarded with a pristine natural setting. The constant offshore winds blow across thousands of miles of ocean bringing in fresh, oxygen-rich air that’s about as unpolluted a any you’ll find on Earth.’ (50)

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

The plot in LIVIN’ LAHAINA LOCA isn’t fair. There’s little reason to suspect what is eventually revealed about Crystal Wilson and her killer. Wong finally explains the main story line, involving drug smuggling, money laundering, and associated crimes, with a federal investigation almost ready to wrap the operation up, is not resolved. It just ends with with Wong’s assurance that there’s an undercover agent in place within the organization, while Pauli in the Witness Protection Program living under an assumed name, so that she has a chance to survive to testify before a federal grand jury. I don’t appreciate resolutions that are obviously setups for a sequel. (B)

 

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Eric H. Cline’s 1177 B.C.: THE YEAR CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED is the first in the series Turning Points in Ancient History being published by Princeton University Press. It was published in 2014 in print and e-book formats.

“The Bronze Age in the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East lasted neavrly two thousand years, from approximately 3000 BC to just after 1200 BC. When the end came, most of the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic end in a world stretching from Greece and Italy in the West to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Large empires and small kingdoms, which had taken centuries to evolve, collapsed rapidly. With their end came a period of transition, once regarded as the world’s first Dark Age.” (xv)

The collapse of the Late Bronze Age was traditionally associated with the incursions of the Sea Peoples, marauding invaders who overthrew the great kingdoms and city states of the period. 1177 BC has been taken as a convenient point to mark the end of the Late Bronze Age, based on the invasion of Egypt in the eighth year of the rule of Ramses III, much as AD 476 is taken as the date of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But the Sea Peoples alone are not adequate to explain the collapse. The Sea Peoples do not represent a single group but at least five groups of different origin and therefore different causality in their population movements; the incursions lasted over a period of fifty or more years; the movement was of whole peoples, moving by land and by sea, who sometimes destroyed and conquered, sometimes settled down apparently peacefully.

Cline uses much of 1177 B.C. to document from Egyptian, Ugarit, Hittite, and other archives the existence of a strong international trading system in place during the Bronze Age. Key to the trade, much as oil dominates modern international trade, was the trade in tin, essential to the manufacture of bronze. Excavated Bronze Age shipwrecks demonstrate the variety of durable goods--tin, copper, bronze, gold, silver, glass, pottery--traded, along with foodstuffs, wood, textiles, and other perishable consumer goods. The archives reflect the importance of this trade, so that disruption of trading networks produced major effects that spread throughout the network.

Geologic evidence exists to support the idea that, during the Late Bronze Age, many areas of Greece and the Near East suffered what’s come to be called an “earthquake storm,” in which major earthquakes occurred frequently in the same areas. Some of the destroyed cities bear evidence of warfare as the method of destruction, others of earthquakes, and some, like Troy itself, of both in a relatively short period. Some seem to have suffered from internal rebellion. Both archives and archaeological evidence (pollen analysis, core sediments) bear witness to a long period of drought during the Late Bronze Age that made previously arable land infertile.

Cline uses the image of “the perfect storm” to explain why great kingdoms succumbed. They might have recovered from one or more of the causative factors, but when they were hit with so many problems in such short order, there was no time to adapt. He points out the number of variables involved in such a scenario, many of which we don’t know and may not be able to know, emphasizing that no one single cause can be isolated for the collapse.

The scary thing is, how many of the factors involved in the Late Bronze Age collapse are in place in the modern world: international trade and global economics where meltdowns affect all the world, political instability producing refugees and ongoing warfare, climate change, loss of faith in established governments.

I recommend 1177 B.C. highly. (A)

 

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THE COSGROVE REPORT by G. J. A. O’Toole was originally published in 1979 and reissued in e-book format in 2009. It is uniquely organized, purporting to be an original manuscript, The True Account of a Confidential Inquiry by Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency into the Circumstances of the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, by Nicholas Cosgrove. Cosgrove’s grandson, attorney Raymond Lawson, after his death has the manuscript sent to private detective Michael Croft with payment and instructions to verify, if possible, the truth of his grandfather’s narrative. Croft owes Lawson, and he’s intrigued by the story. He investigates the people and events discussed in the manuscript, annotates it, resulting in a second manuscript, The Cosgrove Report: Being the Private Inquiry of a Pinkerton Detective into the Death of President Lincoln, by Nicholas Cosgrove, edited and verified by Michael Croft, Col. U.S. Army (Ret). This second manuscript, as provided by Lawson’s original orders, goes to novelist George O’Toole, who saw it through publication as THE COSGROVE REPORT. Whew!

Much of the story in THE COSGROVE REPORT is historically accurate about personnel and events leading up to and following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and his band of conspirators. Croft’s manuscript includes a select bibliography of original sources and revisionist histories of the assassination, the most notable of which are the books by Otto Eisenschiml, who proposed that Edwin M. Stanton and the Radical Republicans were behind Lincoln’s assassination. For anyone unfamiliar with the details of Lincoln’s assassination, I suggest at least a quick run through an encyclopedia article to become familiar with the dramatis personae. I’m not going to attempt a summary of the events--part of the pleasure of the story consists of its twists, turns, surprise revelations, and most characters not being who or what they seem. Suffice it to say that O’Toole provides an unexpected ending.

One of the pleasures of THE COSGROVE REPORT is the distinct narrative voices of Nicholas Cosgrove, who wrote the original report between 1902 and 1905, and of Michael Croft, writing in mid-twentieth century. Cosgrove, born in 1835 and using his personal diaries from 1868-1869 to tell the basic story, has a Victorian voice reminiscent (though American) of the original Sherlock Holmes; he writes in first person. Crofts also writes in first person in the introduction, notes, and conclusion, but in the modern style of ordinary speech.

Characterization is first-rate, often leavened with ironic humor. Cosgrove says of himself,”The greedier a man is, the craftier, the more cowardly--in precisely the same measure the easier he is to bamboozle, and the less likely I am to be troubled by a bad conscience afterward. I have heard it said that an honest man cannot be swindled, but I cannot say if this is so. I had resolved to test the theory if ever i should encounter one of that rare species in my work.” (238) Of General Lafayette C. Baker, Croft says, “Like most other nineteenth-century crafts, lying under oat was generally done with at least a minimum of style, and the Congressmen may have resented Baker’s amateur efforts as an affront to their own professional skills.” (449) Descriptions of historic figures are consistent with what is known of their personalities and proclivities though, of course, O’Toole takes them into highly speculative actions.

O’Toole establishes the setting of Civil War Washington City firmly, also often with humor: “At the summit before me stood the empty Capitol, a beacon amidst the midnight gloom. Its marble face shone by the glow of illuminating gas, a recent addition to the majestic monument of the Republic. (Gas was, of itself, no novelty to the structure, but the gas that had long been commonplace in both chambers of Congress rarely illuminated anything.” (163)

It’s important to read the notes in THE COSGROVE REPORT because they provide historic and personal background to the narrative. I recommend THE COSGROVE REPORT highly. (A)

 

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ONCE UPON A LIE is the third book in Jill Paterson’s mystery series set in Sydney, Australia, featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Fitzjohn and his faithful sidekick Detective Sergeant Martin Betts. It was published in 2013 as a free or inexpensive e-book.

ONCE UPON A LIE opens with Miss Esme Timmons being awakened by an intruder in her home who ransacks the room used as a studio by her deceased niece Claudia Rossi. Claudia, an art restorer, had died two years previously from ingesting poisonous mushrooms. Her twin brother Michael Rossi maintained that Claudia had been murdered. Immediately before her death, Claudia had begun investigating the provenance of her sketch by Arthur Brandt, finding reasons to think the sketch a fake. Immediately before his death, Michael had begun retracing his sister’s activities in the last week of her life, making an appointment with his solicitor to discuss his will and the $1,000,000 life insurance paid to her partner Richard Edwards at her death. Michael’s partner in Rossi and Prentice Yacht Electronics Pty Ltd. finds his body in the sea at the marina where their business is located. Michael died of two massive blows to the head, dead when his body went into the water. Who needed him dead? He was selling the winery owned jointly with his niece, Claudia’s daughter Charlotte (who didn’t want to sell but couldn’t buy her uncle out), to have money to buy out Nigel Prentice’s share of the company. Prentice is having an affair with Michael’s separated wife Stella, who’s still in his will as his major heir. He’d ruined Robert Nesbit’s life a couple of years before, having an affair with Nesbit’s wife, pulling out of a business owned jointly with him and Nigel Prentice, which then went broke. Or is Michael getting close to finding out who killed his sister? Fitzjohn and Betts are seconded to Kings Cross LAC to solve the case.

The plot is satisfying complex, with present events growing out of both Michael and Claudia’s past actions. Paterson does a good job with keeping attention focused away from the identity and motive of Michael’s killer while focusing on Claudia’s death. There’s an interesting subplot of Fitzjohn’s running battle against Chief Superintendent Grieg, who dislikes him intensely; touches of Fitzjohn’s life outside work, in his relationship with his sister Meg and niece Sophie and in tending his dead wife Edith’s orchids, add a realistic note to the story.

Characterization is almost all indirect, but Paterson provides an interesting variety of believable people. I particularly like Miss Esme Timmons, 81 years old, living on her own, and still fascinated with life and people.

Physical details of the Sydney area firmly locate the story, and there are occasional bits of atmospheric description to enliven the sense of place: “Charlotte slowed the car when they neared Five Oaks Winery, its entrance marked only by a small sign moving gently with the breeze. Turning in to the property they continued on along the dirt road, the rows of vines on each side standing like sentinels to the family’s years of wine growing. In the distance the original river stone cottage with its various extensions came in to view. Surrounded by lawns and giant trees, it appeared a cool oasis in the blazing sun.”

ONCE UPON A LIE is a pleasant quick read. (B-)

 

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Peter Allison’s WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T RUN: TRUE STORIES OF A BOTSWANA SAFARI GUIDE was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2008.

Peter Allison is an Australian who embarked for Africa in 1994 at age nineteen, planning to travel there a year. He became a barman at a safari camp at Iduba, then moved to Botswana where he became a safari guide, camp manager, and trainer of safari guides. The title of his book is accurate. It’s a collection of stories, often funny, usually showing himself as less than heroic, revealing an undoubtable love for African wildlife.

He explains his profession: “A specialist guide is someone who has been around long enough that he or she can market a safari to past clients and their associates, and on that alone stay busy and profitable. Some have a specialty to go with their name, like in-depth knowledge of birds or the night sky. The good ones tell stories that enthrall their clients around the campfire, and may even have an element of truth to them.”

Allison occasionally includes dramatic description: “We started driving toward a lagoon that was filled with hippos. It was a spectacularly scenic place to stretch you legs, and the receding floodwaters had left the surrounding areas dotted with wildflowers. Water lilies blossomed in the deeper parts of the channels that fed the hippo pool, and hundreds of storks, terns, herons, and skimmers preyed on the fish trapped in the shrinking ponds. The birds dipped, stabbed, and waded--a festival of color and movement. And as we drove through, they would lift up like balloons released at a carnival, settling again behind us.”

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T RUN is a quick, pleasant read. (B)

 

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Linda L. Richards’s CALCULATED LOSS was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2011. Its first person narrator is Madeline Carter, a day trader in Malibu.

When Madeline Carter’s ex-husband Braydon Gauthier, celebrity chef, restauranteur, and CEO of Gauthier Fine Foods, suicides, his family asks her specifically to come to Vancouver, British Columbia, for the funeral. When she arrives, Bray’s mother Jessica Gauthier and his sister Anne-Marie are dissatisfied with the way Douglas Withers, Chief Financial Officer of Gauthier Fine Foods, has promoted himself to CEO even before the funeral and is stonewalling on carrying out Bray’s last wishes--distributing half of his stock in the company to them and naming a family member to the Board. They ask Madeline to use her expertise to check out what’s going on in the company and she agrees. Doug Withers appears to cooperate, showing Madeline a company that’s having cash flow problems but is fundamentally sound; Doug’s sister Mimi, Bray’s widow, wants nothing to do with her. What will Madeline find out?

Madeline Carter is a believable character, 35 years old, carrying emotional baggage from her early marriage to Braydon Gauthier, both curious and responsible. “It had all come upon me so quietly, small piece upon piece. The plea from Jessica, the growing suspicion that Braydon hadn’t actually killed himself, the understanding that everything was not what it seemed with Gauthier Fine Foods and, in fact, with Braydon’s whole world. And what, I asked myself, did have to do with me? Nothing, I told myself. Everything. Old debts, new curiosities and the curse of a personality that seldom lets me leave well enough alone.” She does pull a TSTL when, instead of going to the Gauthier family’s lawyers with her findings, she enters the company’s building looking for more financial information. Other characters are also well developed.

The plot is multi-layered, but the villains are foreshadowed to the point that most readers will probably discern them before Madeline. Apparently the Vancouver police did no investigation of Bray’s death, accepting a suicide note without checking for forgery. CALCULATED LOSS contains significant information on stock market trading, but it’s handled without overburdening the story.

Sense of place is strong: “...when you live in Los Angeles and visit cities in the Pacific Northwest, you realize that all that rain keeps things very clean. There was a sharpness to all of the lines that you don’t get very often in LA. On this day, the sky was the sort of clear blue you usually only see in children’s picture books, shot through with black-edged puffy white clouds that looked no more real. The air felt sharp and clear and almost touchable.”

CALCULATED LOSS is a good read. (B)

 

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Bruce Rousseau’s FRENCH TANGO was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012. I’m so glad I didn’t spend much for it. It’s set in the town of Saint-Jarde, in the southern French Alps. I’m giving up at 17%.

Father Henri Maarten falls to his death when the old wooden stairs he’s climbing in the bell tower of his church splits into pieces. It’s not clear why he’s climbing the stairs late at night in a storm, nor is much else in FRENCH TANGO to the point I reached. Few of the characters have surnames, and Rousseau seems determined to list every person in the town, giving only minimal characterization for the few who receive any. There’s a suspected gangster Donaldo Lazzara and his cougar wife Olivie; there’s the Moreau family with some undisclosed disastrous change in circumstances dating from three years before; there’s a news team from Channel 29 in Nice, determined to inflate the priest’s death into covert Interpol and anti-terrorist agents and surveillance by the Vatican. Frankly, it’s so disjointed I don’t care what happened to the priest. There's no sense of place.

No grade because I have no intention of finishing FRENCH TANGO.

 

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William S. Shepard’s VINTAGE MURDER was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012. It’s one of his Robbie Cutler Diplomatic Mystery series. Cutler is American Consul in Bordeaux, in the southern French Alps.

The story opens with the murder in Washington, DC, of wine writer Douglas Pryor, widely influential and widely unpopular because of his harsh criticisms. Cutler had been a witness at the Bordeaux Vintage Dinner at the Willard Hotel to Pryor’s death by cyanide poisoning, before Pryor made the major announcement he’d warned his audience was coming. When Cutler returns to Bordeaux, he finds a litter from Pryor to his predecessor, chatty and asking for a briefing on the political situation in Bordeaux upon his return to the region; does this have something to do with Pryor’s announcement? There’s also the problem that Basque separatists, the ETA, are increasingly active on both sides of the Spanish-French border. Then Cutler has a diplomatic pouch carrying the Pryor letter stolen. What is going on?

Unfortunately, at 20%, I don’t care enough to continue. So far there are more than thirty named characters, only one or two of which are developed beyond a name. Cutler is mid- to late-thirties, a graduate of Brown and years in the Foreign Service, and he reacts like a “gee-whiz” teenager. He’s overly communicative with a young French (female) reporter.

Point of view at this point shifts from Cutler to an unnamed Basque terrorist. I don’t like terrorism as a theme. Plot development beyond the fact of the murder and of the theft hasn’t started. Sense of place is good but not enough to carry the story.

No grade because not finished.

 

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Wendy Soliman’s MISS DARCY’S PASSION is the third in her novella series Mrs. Darcy Entertains. It was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2014, continuing the story of Pride and Prejudice. It’s good to read the series in order since characters continue from story to story.

The story opens with the marriage of Colonel Fitzwilliam to Celia Sheffield, a wealthy widow, in the parish church in Lambton. Jane Bingley has recently given birth to a daughter Emma, and Lizzy Darcy is in her last two months of pregnancy. Young Dominic Sanford, son of a local magistrate whose property adjoins Pemberley, has returned to Derbyshire to take up residence and restore his dilapidated home; his parents had been killed in a carriage accident some fifteen years before, and he’d gone to an uncle in Scotland to be reared. Dominic has an M.D. from Edinburgh University and has recently been admitted to the London Company of Surgeons. He plans to establish a medical practice in Lambton. Georgiana Darcy had been taken with Major James Halstead from the Colonel’s old regiment, but she, Lizzy, and Darcy have all come to doubt him as a proper suitor. Halstead is determined to marry Georgiana for her fortune, though he loves Rose Watkins, whose child he fathered. Rose Watkins’s purpose in live is revenge on Dominic Sanford, since Sanford Sr. had been the magistrate who’d sentenced her father, a highwayman, to transportation fifteen years before. When Lizzy goes into labor prematurely, Dominic Sanford is luckily at Pemberley and saves her and young Marcus Fitzwilliam Darcy’s lives. Rose and Halstead’s plans are foiled, Georgiana and Dominic declare their love, and they all live happily ever after.

There’s little suspense in the plot, since by definition the lovers must triumph; the only question is how the miscreants will be taken. Shifts in point of view make the flow of the story jerky. An inordinate amount of lovers’ angst minimizes the sense of much action in the story.

Among the things that bothered me was Soliman’s sending Georgiana chasing off alone to Dominic’s cottage, where he’s living until the manor house is repaired, when she discovers information about the trial of the highwaymen in her father’s journals. Surely a young woman of Georgiana’s class and time would have sent a servant to ask Dominic to call on her. This sets up the obligatory wet-shirt scene (required for all Pride and Prejudice sequels and variants since Colin Firth hit the pond) when Georgiana sees him wet with sweat with his shirt clinging to his chest and arms as Dominic is chopping wood (in November). Not only does Dominic chop his own wood, he also acts as groom for his horse Midnight.

Another thing out of character is Georgiana’s telling Dominic very early in their acquaintance about her relationship with Wickham. At this point, Major Halstead is still haunting Pemberley, trying to fix Georgina’s interest, and Dominic has expressed little interest in her beyond common politeness. She exposes her feelings to him before he makes any declaration of his intentions. Both Georgiana and Dominic come across as much more modern minded than properly Regency.

MISS DARCY’S PASSION isn’t bad, but it’s not especially memorable. (C+)

 

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Sue Ann Jaffarian’s THE CURSE OF THE HOLY PAIL was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2007. It features Odelia Gray, a paralegal in the firm of Wallace, Bose, Brown and Yates in Newport Beach, California.

Odelia is sent by her boss, attorney Michael Steele, to the office of long-time client Sterling Price, head of a major building and development company, to notarize some private papers for him. She does so, and Price gives her a tour of his private collecting passion--children’s metal lunchboxes--including what’s referred to as the Holy Pail, the prototype for the first TV-character related lunchbox. It was prepared for the Cappy Wheeler show in 1949, but Wheeler was murdered and the show cancelled before the line went into production. It’s worth nearly $30,000 and said to be cursed. All its previous owners are dead. That afternoon, Sterling Price is found dead in his office, apparently of a heart attack, but the police are treating the death as suspicious. The Holy Pail is missing. This is the point at which I give up, 20%.

I don’t find the protagonist Odelia Gray appealing. She’s supposed to be 47 years old, saying she was born middle-aged, but she reacts more like Nancy Drew in her determination to pursue the question of Price’s death. She knows the policeman in charge of the investigation, knows that he’s competent, has no reason whatsoever to become involved after discussing her meeting with Price the morning of his death, but she’s determined to snoop. This is one of the main problems with so many cozy mysteries--the lack of reason for the amateur detective to be involved.

None of the characters are much developed. There’s no sense of place. The quality of the writing is simplistic. No grade because not finished.

 

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Joanna Trollope’s SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is an update of the Jane Austen classic, published in e-book format in 2013.

Trollope does a good job of bringing SENSE AND SENSIBILITY into the twenty-first century, which involves much more than simply changing modes of transport and of dress. Most importantly, she maintains the original characters in thoughts and attitudes. She gives them modern occupations that fit their Austen-gven abilities. Brandon operates a treatment center-halfway house for veterans with addiction and PTSD problems, and he hires Edward Ferrars as an administrator; Elinor is training as an architect and gets a job as an assistant to a graphics designer; Marianne is a gifted guitarist who’s planning advanced study in music. Robert Ferrars is a high society party planner, while Sir John Middleton runs a successful business manufacturing and selling high-end sporting clothes. Willoughby is a broker in the super-expensive real estate market.

There are, however, some changes that somewhat alter the story. For one, Henry and Isabella (“Belle”) Dashwood never married. He’d run away from his wife and son John to live with her and to sire three daughters. His uncle’s leaving Norland Park to John as the only legitimate child, and as a male the only one who can pass on the family name, subtly changes the impact of the story. Another is the question of Brandon’s age. Trollope implies that Brandon and Sir John Middleton are the same age, if Brandon’s not the older. This makes the eventual marriage (foreshadowed but not shown) much more May and December than in the original, when a fifteen-year difference in ages was more ordinary than in the present. A third involves the marriage of Lucy Steele to Robert Ferrars. Trollope makes Robert gay, and the two enter a marriage of convenience to cover his sexual preferences from his mother; Lucy’s return is social status, celebrity, and money. A fourth is Marianne being a severe asthmatic, which minimizes the impact of the illness that nearly kills her following her public rejection by Willoughby (which went viral on YouTube.)

All this being said, Trollope’s version of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is bland and runs on too long. Austen’s ironic humor is missing, so comments on characters and situations often come across as preachy that were witty and spot-on in the original. Despite the beauty of Norland Park and the claimed beauty of the valley in which Barton Cottage is set, there’s little sense of place.

Still, the revised updated version of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is enjoyable. (B)

 

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David W. Walker’s THE FINAL DEDUCTION: THE LAST OF SHERLOCK HOLMES was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2011. It is Walker’s contribution to the ever-increasing number of “lost manuscripts” by Dr. John H. Watson about his friend and colleague, the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes.

The time is World War I, shortly after the battle of the Marne. Holmes has returned to 221B Baker Street from his bee-keeping retirement. It’s been ten years since Watson shared an adventure with him, so imagine his surprise when Holmes tells him that Professor James Moriarty is alive and is engaged in a vast criminal undertaking. Two similar suicides, one a racy young aristocratic woman Glenda Chase, the other a young man about town of uncertain sexuality, both living well above their means, bring Inspector Lestrade, now retired and working as a private detective himself, to Holmes for help. Lestrade is attacked and left for dead, rescued only by the actions of Sergeant Robert Wiggins, late head of the Baker Street Irregular, now on medical leave from France; this leads Holmes to Lestrade’s client, Lord Cyril Hill Caterham, who also commits suicide. Holmes is convinced that Moriarty is behind the deaths, but what is his goal? Can Holmes, cut off from his allies at Scotland Yard and denied support by Government officials, foil his plans?

It’s impossible to do a good summary of the plot in THE FINAL DEDUCTION without revealing the huge secret that Holmes has kept throughout his association with Watson, and I don’t want to do that. Suffice it to say that it’s a variant that has not been used before in any of the continuations or sequels involving Conan Doyle’s characters, to my knowledge. The structure of the plot is interesting because this key disclosure occurs early. Much of the rest of the story deals with the shifting relationship between Watson and Holmes in the face of this new knowledge. Holmes’s skills in observation and deduction lead him to the final confrontation with Moriarty, but Holmes doesn’t kill him.

Walker is economical with his introduction of new characters, the most interesting of whom include Mrs. Eugenia Prescott, a society wife whose husband’s regiment is serving on the continent. She’s friends from childhood with Glenda Chase, who’d been living with her at the time of her suicide. A second is Sister Irene Flaugherty, a nun who works in the worst slums of the East End, and whose aid is essential in bringing Moriarty down. “I’ve always had the feeling when dealing with Sister Irene Flaugherty that here was a woman not to be trifled with or detained. She seemed to be perpetually attacking some problem or difficulty, whether an illness unresponsive to treatment or some church official inadequately concerned with the plight of the poor made little difference. She was an inflexible opponent who seemed to draw energy from fatigue itself. Though a small woman in stature, hardly more than five feet without her habit, she could be more imposing than a sergeant major when she wished.”

Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, and Dr. John H. Watson all remain essentially as Conan Doyle created them. Watson is good at revealing character through atmosphere, especially that of Watson: “...I wondered how long horse-drawn conveyances should remain in any degree within the metropolis. Certainly the machine was more efficient and made hygiene easier to maintain along the thoroughfares, and yet i missed the pace and perhaps the manners that seemed to coincide with the old horse-drawn hansoms and still chose them as my means of travel whenever possible. The motor-car was faster and louder perhaps, but the people who drove them seemed to adopt that manner as well.” Sense of place is well developed. Vocabulary and writing style reflect that of the Conan Doyle original stories.

THE FINAL DEDUCTION: THE LAST OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is one of the best of the later additions to Holmes and Watson’s adventures. Highly recommended. (A)

 

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Patricia Wentworth’s MISS SILVER DEALS WITH DEATH was originally published in 1944 and re-issued as an inexpensive e-book in 2011. It features ex-governess, now private investigator Miss Maud Silver. Miss Silver is often considered a knock-off of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple but, in fact, Miss Silver came first.

Someone is blackmailing Mabel Underwood; she goes to see Miss Silver but waffles on hiring her. In the meantime, Meade Underwood, her niece by marriage, reconnects with her fiance Giles Armitage, whom she’d thought killed when the ship on which they were returning to England was torpedoed in the North Atlantic. Living in the other flats in converted Vandeleur House are a group of people, most of whom have secrets: Nicholas Drake, so secretive about his work; Alfred Willard, so taken with Miss Carola Roland in Flat 8; Mrs. Meredith, the elderly wheelchair-bound lady with her maid and her companion Miss Crane, who’s so curious about everything going on in the building; selfish Mrs. Lemming and her downtrodden daughter Agnes; Miss Garside, with her mysteriously-disappearing furniture; Carola Roland, who’s always on the lookout for a joke and a man. When Carola Roland turns up murdered, Mabel Underwood hires Miss Silver, who solves the blackmail and the murders.

Wentworth doesn’t play fair in the plot because Miss Silver’s solution of the murders depends on private knowledge of previous blackmail endeavors by the same criminal. There are hints of the criminal mastermind motif common in many of the crime novels contemporary with MISS SILVER DEAL WITH DEATH. The conclusion is a typical “call all the suspects together and explicate on the case” one.

Characterization is stronger than in most of its contemporaries in MISS SILVER DEALS WITH DEATH. Miss Silver is well-respected by the Scotland Yard officers, Detective Chief Inspector Lamb and Sergeant Frank Abbott: “...[Miss Silver] might be useful, and I’ll tell you why. People--that’s her strong suit--she knows people. Learnt it in the schoolroom teaching kids--I don’t know--but she’s got it. She sizes people up quicker than anyone I’ve known, and she don’t make mistakes.”

As always, there’s a romantic interest in MISS SILVER DEALS WITH DEATH, with an attractive couple, Meade Underwood and Giles Armitage. Wentworth is good at revealing character through atmosphere: “They said good-bye on the steps of Vandeleur House, with the taxi ticking away in the road on the other side of a massive Victorian shrubbery. There was daylight still, daylight falling into dusk--grey daylight--no colour, no sparkle, no sun. There would be a mist again tonight. Meade was in the very mood of the mist, so tired that she could hardly stand. Reaction from the shock of finding Giles, only to find that she was forgotten, had left her as dull and lifeless as the day. They had met, they were saying good-bye, and perhaps they would never meet again. The pain of that came through the dullness and pierced her.”

This isn’t the best of the Miss Silver series, but it’s a satisfying comfort read. (B)

 

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TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX is the first book in the Winemaker Detective series by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balen. It was translated by Anne Trager and published in e-book format in 2012.

The protagonist in TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX is Benjamin Cooker, his father an antiquarian book seller in Notting Hill and his mother from the French winemaking family of Fontenac. He’s fifty year old, one of the premier wine critics and the most famous winemaker in the world. He hires a young assistant Virgile Lanassian just out of school, and they are soon involved with the contamination of six barrels of wine with harmful yeast cultures. Denis Massapain’s Chateau Les Moniales Haut-Brion is too immaculately run for the infestation to be an accident. In the course of looking for a third panel for an overmantel triptych featuring Moniales, Cooker and Virgile uncover the motive and the perpetrator of the outrage.

TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX suggests the motive behind the attack on the vineyard and winery, but there’s no foreshadowing of the person behind it. He doesn’t come into the story by name until the final chapters. Much depends on coincidence--Cooker just happens to visit the art restorer’s studio in time to have the man who is link to the villain pointed out to him. Virgile just happens to know the person responsible and is able to access his computer to find the evidence needed. Cooker just happens to have a friend formerly in the French intelligence service who can get immediate police attention for their discovery.

Characters are a bit slick for my tastes. Cooker is said to agonize over his writing, but somehow he comes across as too perfect. He doesn’t seem to carry the normal emotional baggage of fifty years of life, especially when involved in two of the most competitive occupations in the world--writing and winemaking. “It was essential that the publication of his guide never blemish his reputation as a winemaker and very sought-after, even secret, advisor in the art of elaborating wines. He made it a point of honor, which he proved with his sometimes scathing criticism of wines he himself crafted. To him, moral integrity stemmed more often than not from this astonishing faculty of uncompromising self-judgment, even when it was forced and terribly unfair. He sometimes thought it belonged to another century, a faraway time, when self-esteem and a certain sense of honor prevailed over the desire for recognition.” Virgile is the only other character much developed, and he serves primarily as a blank slate on which Cooker may write.

Easily the strongest point in TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX is the sense of place. “...the Moniales Haut-Brion manor house, built on a hill in front of the cellars...was surrounded by rows of grapevines and dominated the landscape without arrogance. The chateau was not huge, but the balance of its slate roof, the curve of its front steps and the proportions of its facade, with wings that had white Doric columns on both sides, gave the building elegance. A creek called the Peugue flowed at the foot of the knoll, ending among the loose moss-covered cobblestones of a fountain. A small baroque chapel, built in the 17th century, with a pink-marble encrusted pediment, stood in the shade of a chestnut tree. Flashes of birds chirped into the pale April light, and leaves rustled in the breeze.”

TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX revels in sensuous detail of food, wine, cigars, music, antiques, and painting. “[Alain] immediately asked for the recipe. Elisabeth didn’t hold our on him and told him every detail: the puree of carrots, leeks, tomatoes, onions and shallots that she cooked over low heat for 20 minutes before she strained it through a fine sieve; the salt, pepper and saffron she dosed with care, along with the hint of cayenne pepper; how to cook the mussels in a white Graves and train the juice before adding delicate langoustine tails and sea scallops sauteed in hot butter; and the creme fraiche she used to thicken the sauce that reduced for at least three minutes. ... Elisabeth knew [Cooker] too well to commit the faux pas [singing ‘Happy Birthday’], which would have ruined their enjoyment of the Bavarian cream presented on a caramelized sheet of puff pastry and covered with roasted chopped pistachios. They drank coffee in the living room, and no one wanted an after-dinner spirit.”

TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX is a strange combination of mystery with a life-style book. I’ll probably read more to see how the series develops. (B)