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Readingomnivore Reviews

DEATH IN HIGH HEELS is one of Christianna Brand’s mysteries originally published in 1941 and re-issued in free or inexpensive e-book format in 2011.

When Magda Doon is poisoned with oxalic acid, the suspects in her death are the other employees of the fashion house Christophe et Cie, models Judy and Aileen; shop girls Irene, Victoria, and Rachel; gay fashion designer Cecil “Cissie” Prout; womanizing owner Frank Bevan; Bevan’s personal assistant and sometime lover Miss Gregroy; Doon’s secretary Dulsie McEnery; and Mrs. ‘Arris, the charwoman. All sorts of tension underlie the smooth performance of the shop. Gregory, Doon, and Irene all want the plum assignment of working in the Deauville branch of Christophe et Cie. Doon’s interfered in relationships between Judy and her fiance, Aileen and her Arthur, and Cissie and his boyfriend; she’d been Bevan’s lover before he took up with Gregory, and she seemed to be getting him back; she’d accused Mrs. ‘Arris of theft of a brooch; she’d made her secretary’s life a misery. When Rachel buys oxalic acid to clean a summer hat, someone takes advantage of its being spilled in the showroom to poison Doon’s lunch plate. But who hated her enough to kill her in such a painful way?

It’s difficult to read a book the vintage of DEATH IN HIGH HEELS and be fair to it because standards have changed considerably. The plot is paramount, but it doesn’t include all the information needed for the reader to solve the mystery. In this case, the plot meanders to throw suspicion on everyone involved before settling on the most obvious suspect all along. The book’s longer than the story.

Characterization is sketchy at best, with Doon by far the most developed: “The trouble with Doon was that she never stopped to think; she just said or did the first thing that came into her head--that was the secret of her generosity, really; it wasn’t a very deep quality--it was just that her first impulse was to give and she followed it without further to-do.” Other characters, including the police detectives Charlesworth, Betts, and Smithers, don’t even have Christian names; Charlesworth’s rank is not given. Charlesworth’s only distinguishing trait is to fall in love with every eligible (or ineligible) attractive female suspect he meets. His susceptibility is a running joke.

Setting is in London in August, time period not specified but presumably before World War II.

DEATH IN HIGH HEELS hasn’t worn well. (C)
 
A SMALL CASE OF MURDER is the second in Lauren Carr’s Joshua Thornton mystery series. It was published in 2004 in e-book format. Joshua Thornton has recently left active duty as a Commander in the Navy JAG program following the death of his wife the previous year. He and his five children move from San Francisco back to the house in Chester, West Virginia, that he inherited from the grandmother who reared him. He’s going into private legal practice.

A SMALL CASE OF MURDER opens with the murder in 1970 of Lulu Jefferson, would-be rock star, after she discovers a connection between local pastor Orville Rawlings and a dead man whose body she and friends had discovered in a barn the night of their senior prom in 1963. But when the sheriff returned to the barn with them, the body was gone; she and her friends had been treated as liars. Flash-forward 35 years, when Joshua Thornton discovers a letter that Lulu had written to his mother, her best friend, mailed the same day that the Thorntons were killed in a car wreck, the same day that Lulu was killed. Joshua involves his cousin Tad MacMillan, former bad-boy and doper, now the clean and sober town physician and county medical examiner, in the search for information. Thornton involves himself with Tad’s ongoing struggle against Vicki Rawlings, Reverend Rawlings’s seventeen-year-old daughter who’s stalking Tad, convinced he’s her father. Everyone in Chester knows that Reverend Rawlings and his daughter Bridgette Rawlings Poole head up the drug trafficking in the valley and that those who oppose them wind up dead; they’d controlled Delaney, the local sheriff, for years, and now Rawlings’s son Wally is County Prosecuting Attorney. Before Thornton solves the puzzles, there are multiple murders, attempted murders, drug deals, theft, blackmail, police and official corruption, desecration of a burial, rape, black-market dealing during the Korean War, and multiple impersonations.

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

Carr’s plots are always over the top with way more action than is probable in a real-life case. Four different murderers, in cases related to each other is too much. Part is handled as a police procedural, there being no uncertainty about the Rawlingses as drug dealers, but how to prove it? The remainder is straight mystery with Joshua Thornton trying to figure out who’s guilty of murder, with only part of the relevant information provided to the reader before the conclusion. There’s also a major procedural question that’s glossed over. Would Tad MacMillan as county medical examiner be allowed to perform autopsies on murder victims with whom he’d had important personal ties? An experienced reader may well pick out major threads of the plot well ahead of the denouement.

Characters are well done, though Joshua Thornton seems an action movie hero more than a real person. He’s a bit too self-confident and take charge, even if his acquaintance with the West Virginia State Attorney General, a fellow Naval Academy grad, gets him appointed as special prosecutor in the first two murder cases. He pulls a TSTL when, after he, Tad, and friend Jan Martin are supposedly killed by Rawlings’s contract killer, he allows his children to return to their house alone, where they’re attacked by one of the killers. Many of the characters, including the Thornton children, are little more than names.

The setting is small-town West-by-God-Virginia, but there’s little atmosphere and no speech patterns to indicate the mountain locale. If a writer can’t or won’t use the vernacular speech and rhythm of an area, she should not set a story there. Period. Like Mammy Yokum, I has spoken!

A SMALL CASE OF MURDER is an okay read, but it’s nothing like as good as it could have been with proper editing. (C)
 
Sandra de Helen’s THE HOUNDING was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012. It is a transgender version of Sherlock Holmes, featuring the world’s greatest living detective (in her own mind, anyway) Shirley Combs, whose cases are recorded by Dr. Mary Watson. (Get the names???) It’s set in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Priscilla (Cilla) Vandeleur Leoni is worth over one billion dollars; she’s passionately concerned with preservation of old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. She’s spoken publicly about her plan to prevent the logging of the forests while maintaining jobs for loggers, rousing a firestorm of media attention that includes threats from both timber supporters and environmentalists. She’s phobic about dogs, expecting like members of her family for generations to die from a dog attack, so when she dies after being mauled by trained attack dogs on her morning run, her daughter Goldenhawk Vandeleur hires Shirley Combs to find out how and why her mother was murdered. Cilla’s husband Walter Leoni, president and CEO of Leoni Furniture, needs an infusion of cash to keep his company afloat, so one-third of a billion dollars provides much motive. Cilla’s lesbian lover Nancy Margaret has no alibi; there’s a ne’er-do-well stepson Tony Leoni in the mix, and Pat Riley, director of the Oregon City Opera Company that also receives one-third of Cilla’s estate, has a much easier job after Cilla’s bequest. But who killed her?

Frankly, I don’t know, and I don’t care enough to continue reading. There’s no sense of any of the characters as people. I especially don’t like Mary Watson’s Rodney Dangerfield “I don’t get no respect” narrative voice. She constantly kvetches about Shirley’s unappreciative attitude, assumption that May should be eager to drop everything (Mary’s a naturopathic doctor, whatever that is) to accompany her, and her never telling Mary everything that’s going on. At 35%, Mary’s already resolved several times to demand a more equal role. Mary Watson’s attributing the characteristics of Holmes to Shirley is literal enough to speculate on his/her sexuality, which I find off-putting.

Several small points bother me. The police accept the attack on Cilla as an accident, though most jurisdictions do pursue the owners of dogs that attack and maul people. Surely the death of one of the wealthiest women in the world would be investigated thoroughly. Shirley and Dr. Watson find prints and forensic evidence at the scene that police either didn’t look for or didn’t find. Watson walks into Cilla’s bank and is handed a listing of all the transactions in her account since the first of the year, with no real authority from anyone and no argument about confidentiality or due process.

Sense of place is good, but it’s just not enough to carry THE HOUNDING. No grade because not finished.
 
Martin Edwards’s THE CIPHER GARDEN is the second in his mystery series set in the Lake District of England that feature historian Daniel Kind and Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett of the Cumbria Constabulary. It was published in e-book format in 2005.

Daniel Kind is digging and trying to figure out the strange garden at the cottage he and lover Miranda have purchased; he’s given up his Oxford career, but his curiosity about the past is still insatiable. In the meantime, Hannah and the Cold Case Review Team receive an anonymous letter accusing Tina Howe of the murder of her husband Warren Howe, an unsolved case from three years before. Warren Howe had been a ruthless womanizer who had slept with most of the women of his area at one time or another, most notably Roz Gleaves and Bel Jenner when they were teenagers and just immediately past Gail Flint, wife of his partner in Flint Howe Garden Design. Did Tina really not mind his tom-catting ways? Between alibis, apparent lack of motive, and an incompetent inspector in charge of the case, no arrest was ever made in Howe’s death. The anonymous letters lead Hannah to reopen the case and, as Daniel also investigates the garden, their suspicions converge in a revelation of many past secrets.

The plot is a bit over the top, involving multiple murders and murderers, incest, homosexuality, multiple infidelities, a missing person, and a spectacular suicide. Much of the story is involved with Daniel and Miranda’s relationship--she beginning to cool off the idea of the cottage and beginning a new job in London--and Hannah’s with Marc Amos, the antiquarian books shopowner. Daniel and Hannah are attracted to each other but refuse to act upon the feeling. The identity of Warren Howe’s killer comes as a surprise because there’s little foreshadowing of the motive before Hannah’s final confrontation with the killer and David’s confrontation with the woman who knows the motive.

Daniel Kind and Hannah Scarlett are believably human protagonists, carrying baggage, anxious to make their present relationships work but uncertain about the future. They share the need to find out. “[Daniel]loved this garden, but it mystified him. The serpentine by-ways and dead ends made no sense. There was something unnatural about them, a sense of something fashioned with a purpose. Three months after moving here, he still hadn’t fathomed that purpose. Conundrums entranced him. He had this need to know. In the days when he’d read The Times he’d never been able to abandon the crossword until every cryptic clue as solved.” (4) As for Hannah, “This was the moment that Hannah longed for in any investigation, the rush of excitement when a case took a fresh turn. For all her fatigue, it reminded her why she couldn’t conceive of taking any other job. The only comparison was waiting for a lover’s touch. With this difference: she had to conceal what she felt inside.” (101) Supporting characters are also authentic, with shifts in point of view that add to their believability.

One of the pleasures of THE CIPHER GARDEN is the beautiful sense of place, especially atmospheric descriptions: “Outside, darkness had fallen. A lamp cast a pool of brightness over the path leading to the tarn, but the effect was to make the dark shapes of the trees beyond reach of the beam all the more mysterious. [Daniel] caught sight of a movement in the plants by the side of the path. The fox was getting bolder. At night-time the garden became a different place, the kingdom of unseen creatures. The patterns that man imposed on the landscape were only skin deep.” (25-6)

THE CIPHER GARDEN is an excellent read. (A-)
 
Jayne Ann Krentz’s THE HOT ZONE is the latest in her series of futuristic paranormal romances set on Rainshadow Island in the Amber Sea on Harmony, the planet colonized by humans in the twentieth century when an energy curtain opened near earth. The curtain closed, isolating humans on a planet that had been colonized thousands of years before by Aliens who constructed a whole ecosystem underground. Harmony is rich in psychic energy, and humans have evolved some highly specialized paranormal abilities.

Sedona Snow, a young woman on her own, a gatekeeper--a person whose psychic talent is the ability to open and to close the energy gates controlling access to the Underground--has been kidnapped, held prisoner in the Amber Crest Hospital, and experimented upon with drugs by a Dr. Blankenship. She’s found by a dust bunny, a life form indigenous to Harmony that occasionally establishes bonds with humans; they are immune to the psi effects of the Underworld. Lyle helps her to escape, in the process of which she discovers she’s become able to control fire, both physical and psi. She settles on Rainshadow Island, where the Sebastian family owns the strange area known as the Preserve; events in previous books have freed life forms bioengineered by the Aliens, and the psi energy of the area seems to be growing more intense. Cyrus Jones, scion of the Jones family from Old Earth, who has a highly unusual talent of his own--the ability to suppress the psi energy of others, leading to his nickname of “Dead Zone Jones”--comes to Rainshadow as the head of the new Ghost-Hunter Guild and also to find Sedona. He’s convinced that Dr. Blankenship is working on a drug designed to strengthen psychic talent and to produce new talents in an individual. The trouble is, the drug is highly addictive and produces death or total insanity when the subject stops taking it. So, is Sedona healthy? Is she still in danger from Blankenship and his muscle? Of course, she and Cyrus go through several adventures before everything is settled. And they live happily ever after.

THE HOT ZONE has good potential. It features a cute Halloween motif, and much could be done with the Alien’s escaped creatures, but the whole story feels rushed, especially the conclusion. There’s little suspense about who’s involved in the plotting against Sedona. None of the characters are well developed, including the protagonists. Both Sedona and Cyrus are standard Harmony--strong talents, independent, with some emotional issues and instant attraction. Easily my favorite character is Lyle, the dust bunny--six legs; two pairs of eyes, one pair blue when happy and relaxed, one pair amber when hunting; fur that makes them resemble their namesake; and, by the time you see their teeth, it’s too late. There’s not much sense of place.

I think this series has run its course. As much as I have enjoyed Krentz’s writing in the past, the last few books have seemed phoned in. (C-)
 
Barbara Fradkin’s DO OR DIE was published in e-book format in 2000. It’s set in Ottawa, featuring Inspector Michael Green of the Major Crimes Squad. Green is an outstanding detective who hates the desk job with politics, meetings, and paper shuffling; he’d rather be working cases.

When Jonathan Blair, graduate student in cognitive neuroscience and protege of the program’s head Dr. Myles Halton, is found dead in the Ottawa University Library, there’s no forensic evidence. He’d been stabbed once in the abdomen with a large two-edged knife with a sharp point. But what was he doing in the medieval literature section of the library? Who needed him dead? Jonathan had been a gentle soul, honorable, empathetic to others. He’d been abstracted and concerned for the past couple of months; he had broken up with his girlfriend Vanessa Weeks, also a student in Halton’s program, and had been spending time with science groupie Raquel Haddad, a Lebanese undergraduate who “assisted” in the graduate program. Does his death have anything to do with Raquel’s being sent back home to Beirut on short notice the afternoon he was killed? Does his death have anything to do with Jonathan’s recheck of research on two others in the program, Dr. David Miller, a postdoctoral fellow, and Joe Difalco, whose dissertation is almost complete?

Fradkin does a good job of misdirecting attention, using Middle Eastern concepts of family honor and women’s rights as well as questions of falsifying scientific data to guide the reader’s thinking. The killer’s identity and motive are appropriately foreshadowed but still come as a surprise. The storyline for Green’s investigation is one-step forward, two-steps back, complicated by a second murder for which he feels partially responsible, since he didn’t get protection in place for a witness promptly, and by his fear that his marriage is breaking up. My only quibble about the plot is that the autopsy report says there were no bruising or defensive wounds on Jonathan’s body, when he’d been assaulted and knocked down about three hours before he was killed. Shouldn’t that trauma have shown up?

Characters are sympathetically drawn, individuals with enough emotional baggage to make them seem real people. By using Green’s point of view throughout, Fradkin gives the reader much information indirectly; details of family life add verisimilitude. Green and Sergeant Brian Sullivan are very different: “There was no one [Green] respected more. The two had been friends since they started together on the streets twenty years earlier, and although Green had risen further through the ranks, placing strain on their friendship in sensitive moments, he secretly considered Sullivan the better cop. The Deputy Chief was right. He, Green, was only good at detective work. Sullivan was good at everything, paperwork and organization as well as handling people and crises. And in the middle of a case, you couldn’t find a more careful, thorough investigator.”

Sense of place is well developed. “The Village of Rockcliffe Park was not a village in any normal sense of the word, except perhaps in exclusivity. It was a tree-lined enclave perched on a bluff above the Ottawa river, surrounded by the bustling city and boasting the highest per capita income of any municipality in Canada. Mercedes and Volvos sat discreetly on shaded driveways, and massive beds of peonies and irises framed the old stone mansions. Even the heat was tempered.”

I hope this is the beginning of a series, because I thoroughly enjoyed DO OR DIE. (A-)
 
Maggi J. Coxon’s ELIZABETH DARY OF PEMBERLEY is a sequel of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a novel in epistolary form that was a free or inexpensive e-book. The major drawback to this form is that the letters are undated, so it’s not clear the time between the events described in the correspondence. All the main characters of the original are included as writers and recipients of the letters; this shifting point of view enables Coxon to advance the storyline without great chunks of exposition as well as developing the writers’ personalities.

The story opens with Lydia Wickham at Pemberley for her lying-in with her first child. Wickham has run away from his regiment with an innkeeper’s daughter, deserting Lydia, who seems to think it’s a wonderful escapade. She has a daughter Sarah Jane, but takes the first opportunity to run away herself to join Wickham in Ramsgate. Jane goes through a miscarriage before bearing a healthy daughter; Charlotte Lucas Collins has a daughter Catherine Elizabeth and a son William; Lizzy bears a son Fitzwilliam. Kitty spends much of her time with Jane and Elizabeth, becomes fast friends with Georgiana, and improves greatly. Mr. Bennet ages rapidly and dies, leaving Mrs. Bennet prostrate with nerves. Anne de Bourgh is forced into marriage with a distant relative of her father’s, James Heatherington, but she’s content with it as a lesser evil than remaining at Rosings with her mother. Mary Bennet composes hymns and concertos and engages herself to the new curate. Darcy and Uncle Gardiner ship the Wickhams off to America with the money to start a new life. The Darcys and the Bingleys remain gloriously happy in their marriages, and the Bingleys are to buy an estate in the North near Pemberley. And they all lived happily ever after.

ELIZABETH DARCY OF PEMBERLEY is a pleasant fan fiction read. The characters are as presented in the original, though their speech patterns are more modern. Few can do Austen’s style, and it’s better not to attempt it than to fail. The plot is simply slice of life, reporting the news of the household to family and friends, realistically told. As might be expected in letters, there’s little development of setting.

Two brief complaints. The first reference to Mr. Darcy’s gift to Mr. Collins for Christmas is to a fine chess set; it’s later referred to as a backgammon set. Which? Or didn’t Mr Collins know? Matter conveyed through letters is referred to as “epistolatory” rather than “epistolary.” Minor problems in an otherwise solid read. (B+)
 
Frank Hayes’s DEATH AT THE BLACK BULL is the first in his new mystery series featuring Sheriff Virgil Dalton. It was published in 2014 in e-book format as well as print.

Virgil Dalton runs a Sheriff’s office with three-deputies, one dispatcher, one part-time deputy, and himself; normally this is sufficient. But when Buddy Hinton disappears and Virgil finds Buddy’s body floating in his stock tank, there’s obviously something unusual going on. Buddy’s death is premeditated murder, but there seems to be no no trouble with his family, no romantic problems. Something at work? Shortly thereafter, Virgil’s youngest deputy Jimmy Tillman finds the bodies of a man and woman, shot in the head and then decapitated. The girl Sarita had been dating Buddy, and she and her brother had supposedly returned to Mexico shortly after his death. They didn’t make it. As Virgil investigates, ties to the Hayward Ranch--cattle, pecan groves, and a trucking company, for which Buddy had been a long haul driver--and to WadeTravis, whose auto repair business is adding a NASCR team sponsored by the Hayward Ranch as well as a new car dealership, start to add up. Exactly what is going on, and who’s involved?

DEATH AT THE BLACK BULL has the virtues and the defects of being the first novel in a series, but the series has real potential. The characters, especially the Sheriff Department personnel, are appealing and believable, though Virgil is larger than life, as befits a Western hero. Hayes creates a genuine community of individuals, people it will be interesting to get to know. Jimmy is one of the most interesting, a kid growing up dirt poor in a dysfunctional family, in whom Virgil has taken an interest. “...[Jimmy’d] come to understand there was a lot about people that was a complete mystery to him. That was, with the exception of Virgil. To Jimmy’s way of thinking, there was Virgil, then all the others. He would walk barefoot over broken glass for a mile if Virgil asked him. It was as if his life was going nowhere before Virgil came along. Now he couldn’t think of his life as being anything without him.” Rosie, the dispatcher, who can run the department efficiently without anything except Virgil’s signature on purchase orders and reports, is an attractive female character. Cesar, who runs Virgil’s ranch, and Virgil’s grandfather are strong role models.

Sense of place is outstanding, though it’s never specifically stated in which state Hayward is located. Texas is implied because of the references to the border crossing at El Paso/Juarez. “Although [Hayward] was the county seat, there wasn’t a lot to recommend it. The population had hung in for the last decade at about ten thousand. The nonlegals didn’t count in that figure, though everyone knew that without them there would be a lot less reason for the majority of the ten thousand to stay. It was the kind of town where a dog could take a nap in the middle of Main Street during the day with little fear of becoming a traffic casualty.” Hayes is also good with using atmosphere to illuminate character: “A horse named Jack stood quietly alongside the fence, occasionally swishing his tail to chase away a nighttime fly or to stir the warm night air. His tail was the only movement in the landscape. No leaf moved. No breeze blew. The earth held its breath in expectation. Virgil felt this as he sat in the dented bed of the truck. He was not a man to waste time on idle thoughts, or to muse on what might have been, but he did have an innate sense of premonition. When he had ignored such thoughts, or passed them off as coincidences, they had always come back to haunt him, so he had learned to live with them. Never comfortably. Always reluctantly.”

DEATH AT THE BLACK BULL is police procedural format, a gradual unfolding of events leading to a much more complex conclusion than first suggested. Who’s good and who’s bad are pretty clearly indicated, with most of the mystery the nature of the operation. The plot is be a bit overloaded, in that Virgil has surgery to repair an aneurysm in the brain early and receives burns in rescuing a mare and foal from his burning barn. My biggest question about the plot is the probability that Virgil would take the investigation so far personally before calling in the DEA and, if indeed Hayward is in Texas, the Texas Rangers.

The defects include way more characters than essential to carry the plot and more of Virgil’s back story than necessary while leaving gaps. For instance, Virgil refers to himself as a half-breed, he works closely with the tribal police, but his mother’s tribe name is never given (though there is a reference to Apache bands). Virgil Dalton seems an amalgam of Walt Longmire (from Craig Johnson’s fine series) and Bill Gastner (from Steven F. Havill’s Posadas County), very much in the Marlboro Man mystique.

Still, DEATH AT THE BLACK BULL is a strong opener, so I will follow the series to see how Hayes develops it. (B)
 
Finished watching DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY tonight, and my previous condition of being underwhelmed continues. I’m not even sure I’m going to buy the DVD. I don’t know if we saw the original BBC (or whoever) version, or if it was cut by PBS to fit Masterpiece time slot, but it was jerky and felt like chunks were missing. Most of the flashbacks to the murder scene distract from the flow of the story.

I still don’t think Anna Maxwell Martin and Matthew Rhys, fine actors though they be, right for Elizabeth and Darcy. I am much more impressed with Trevor Eve (Hardcastle), Rebecca Front (Mrs. Bennet), James Fleet (Mr. Bennet), and Penelope Keith (Lady Catherine) than with the leads. Jenna Coleman (Lydia), Matthew Goode (Wickham), James Norton (Alveston), Oliver Rix (Cartwright, the prosecutor), and Lewis Rainer (Will) are young actors I’ll be looking for.

A couple of things bothered me in the second episode. Jane Bennet Bingley refers to Darcy and Elizabeth being married ten years; the publicity and reviews says six years; the size of their son Fitzwilliam makes the ten years seem more likely. However, short of a series of miscarriages or infant deaths, it’s unusual that a sexually active couple married for ten years in those days before reliable contraception, would have only one child.

The second problem is Mrs. Younge being Wickham’s sister. Wickham was the son of Darcy, Senior’s steward. George Wickham was brought up at Pemberley. How likely is it that Darcy wouldn’t know about a sibling to Wickham? Wouldn’t he have checked her out thoroughly when hiring her as chaperone for Georgiana (for which she’s too young in DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY) and when dealing with her in finding Lydia and Wickham?

It’s interesting to see new takes on well-loved characters, and with a few quibbles, I enjoyed P. D. James’s book. I’m not so impressed with Julietta Towhidi’s adaptation. (C)
 
Jackie King’s THE INCONVENIENT CORPSE was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2009. It features Grace Cassiday. I don’t know if it’s part of a series and am not impressed enough to look it up.

Grace Cassidy, after a confrontation with her cheating husband Charlie and his secretary/lover Clover McBride, drives from San Francisco to Port Ortega, California, where she rents a room at Wimberly Place, a bed and breakfast. The next day she finds the body of a naked man in her bed; she doesn’t recognize him or know anything about how or why he’s in her bed, but Detective Sam Harper considers her the chief suspect. In short order thereafter, she discovers that Charlie has cleaned out all their personal and business bank accounts, transferring the money into overseas accounts in his name only, and Clover has cancelled all her credit cards. How is she going to pay for the room and the rental car? Because her booked inn-keeper substitute has broken her leg, Mrs. Wimberly hires Grace to in-sit so that she doesn’t miss her scheduled trip to Hawaii. This gives Grace, with the aid of guests Theodora Westmacott and Pansy _____ and permanent resident in the basement Andrew Martin Maynard, three weeks in which to solve the mystery. The next day, Grace finds the body of Maxie, the Downs Syndrome maid, in her bed, clad in the yellow dress Maxie had so admired. What on earth is going on?

I gave up at 39%. Grace is 49 years old, but she acts more like the scared sixteen-year-old she keeps harking back to. She’s willing to trust Theodora, Pansy, and Drew on sight. After the argument with Charlie, in which she reminds him that their prenuptial agreement means their business will belong to her on divorce, Grace does nothing to safeguard her assets, not even calling an attorney until after she discovers his thefts. Is it likely that her father, who dictated the prenup, would have incorporated the business in such a way that Charlie could close and strip accounts without her signature?

There are too many undeveloped characters and even some with only Christian names. I find the “snicker, snicker, nudge, nudge” handling of sexuality in senior citizens (Theodora, Pansy, Drew, Walter, and especially the slug-like Wilbur Wimberly) offensive. It seems obligatory that a cozy writer using a single female protagonist include mutual attraction between the investigating detective and her. The cliched zany friends/assistant investigators are also included.

There’s no sense of place. Where the plot is going has not been indicated. Life’s too short, and there are too many better books to read. No grade because not finished. (F) :mad:
 
Alice K. Boatwright’s UNDER AN ENGLISH HEAVEN is the first in her projected mystery series featuring Ellie Kent, an American academic newly married to Graham Kent, vicar of St. Michael and All Angels in Little Beecham, West Oxfordshire. It was published in print and e-book formats in 2014.

Ellie Kent has major concerns as she adjusts to life in a small English village. Ellie is not only an incomer but a foreigner. When she finds the body of an unknown dead man in the village churchyard on Halloween night, she becomes a person of interest to the police, and the more that’s discovered about the man, the greater grows their interest. The man was wearing Italian underclothes, and Ellie has ties to Italy--she speaks the language, she’d lived for a summer in Tuscany, and her ex-husband Vito Ruggieri is Italian. Ellie’s confident that someone in the village knows the man’s identity, and she feels she has no choice but to investigate on her own, in view of the police’s fixation. Further crimes ensue, and Ellie uncovers the cause of Louise’s death in the process of identifying the killer.

The biggest problem in the plot of UNDER AN ENGLISH HEAVEN is believing that the police would focus so intently on Ellie Kent as a person of interest on the basis of such flimsy connections with Italy. Past that, the plot is well constructed, though an experienced reader may will pick up the identity and motive of the killer. The motif has been used before, and there’s only one character who displays the hubris needed to commit murder. The short epilogue is a satisfying conclusion.

Ellie Kent is a believably human protagonist. “...she had underestimated the task she’d set herself. She and Graham on their own were one thing. Now she was married, and not only to the man, but also to his daughter and his dog, his house, his church, his parish, and his country. And, as if that weren’t enough to take on, she was also becoming aware that she had an unreachable, irreproachable rival, the very thought of whom still affected so many people so strongly: the beautiful, understanding, and oh-so-English Louise. Ellie did not like or approve of the part of herself that could feel jealous of Louise, whose death had brought her a new love and a new life. The problem was she couldn’t figure out what she should feel: Gratitude? Pity? Kinship? None of them seemed quite right either.” (17-8) Seeing everything through Ellie’s eyes helps to bring her to life. Other characters are well drawn, even if some are obligatory village types.

Setting is important and receives due attention: “In Little Beecham, the Vicarage, church, and cemetery were at one end and the village school and library at the other, as if the community were book-ended by religion and education. In between, the high street was lined with buildings constructed from the local honey-colored limestone and boasted a village store, a few shops and a pub called The Three Lambs. On each side, narrow lanes of stone cottages jutted off the high street then gave way to countryside. Compared to city life, the quiet of a Sunday afternoon surprised [Ellie]. They didn’t meet a soul in the village, and not even a car went by as they followed the single-track road past brown fields and bright green pastures where sheep grazed. Brilliantly colored berries and rosehips dotted the hedgerows and shrubbery, while, along the horizon, the leaves wove a tweedy pattern of brown and orange.” (17)

UNDER AN ENGLISH HEAVEN is a strong start to what should prove a good series. (B+)
 
“Almost Persuaded: Miss Mary King” is P. O. Dixon’s short story telling of Miss Mary King, the “ugly, freckled-faced little thing” to whom Wickham was briefly engaged while Elizabeth Bennet visited the Collinses. It was free or inexpensive in e-book format.lizes

Msry King, almost twenty-one, knows herself to be somewhat plain. She prides herself on being sensible, amiable, and generous, but she can’t help being somewhat jealous of the Bennet girls, especially the beautiful Jane and the witty Elizabeth. This becomes more acute when George Wickham arrives in Meryton to join Colonel Forster’s militia regiment. Mary is much impressed with his air and his good looks, and she maneuvers to attract his attention. She’s not successful until her grandfather in Liverpool dies and leaves her a legacy of ￡10,000; Wickham immediately begins his courtship. He so far succeeds that Mary goes almost the whole way with him, only to be interrupted by her father’s unexpected return home. Wickham is denied the house and escapes only to prevent gossip about Mary’s behavior; she’s sent away to her uncle in Liverpool. Mary pines after Wickham until Anne Heston, her companion, gives her the news of Wickham’s unexpected marriage with Lydia Bennet, upon which Mary King realizes that her father had been right about Wickham all along.

Mary King never emerges as anything more than a silly girl who projects her romantic ideas about Wickham onto his face and form; she’s unable to see Wickham’s character or behavior in any objective light until her nose is rubbed in the putrid mess that is his marriage to Lydia. Dixon does not advance Wickham beyond Austen’s characterization, except that she includes a fairly explicit seduction scene. Much of the dialogue between Mary and Wickham is a quote of the story as told to Elizabeth Bennet in the original.

:buttrockI don’t know what I paid for the short story, but “Almost Persuaded: Miss Mary King” wasn’t worth it. (F)
 
Blaize Clement’s DUPLICITY DOGGED THE DACHSHUND is the second in her mystery series featuring Dixie Hemingway, former Sarasota County, Florida, deputy sheriff, now professional pet-sitter. It is available in print and e-book format.

Mame, a long-haired mini dachshund that Dixie’s walking early one morning on Siesta Key, discovers the body of Conrad Ferrelli, a wealthy eccentric for whom Dixie’d been an occasional dog-sitter. He’d suffocated. When Lt. Guidry, whose acquaintance Dixie’d made during a previous investigation, asks her to go with him to break the news to Conrd’s wife Stevie, Dixie becomes involved in the Ferrelli’s business. Conrad has planned to establish a retirement home for circus performers, using funds from the Ferrelli Charitable Trust and ruining older brother Denton Ferrelli’s plans to build a marina for mooring a casino boat belonging to his friend, the unsavory Leo Brossi. Brossi’s running a telemarketing agency that’s currently under police investigation. When Stevie Ferrelli steps up to block Denton’s plans, she also dies of suffocation caused by a massive injection of succinylcholine chloride, which causes paralysis but not unconsciousness as the person or animal dies. Unable to stay out of the case because the killer saw her at the scene of Conrad’s death, Dixie faces death herself before the killer is caught.

Dixie Hemingway is a believable character, moving from entrapment in the deaths of her husband and her daughter toward new beginnings: “While I appreciated that law enforcement officers were the only ones who could or should be doing the investigating, they weren’t the ones who had faced a homicidal truck bearing down on them like a nightmare from hell. Furthermore, they weren’t the ones who had only recently clawed their way from victimized weakness to a semblance of self respect. If I slunk away in meek silence, all the gains I’d made in the last year would be lost, and I would once again be at the mercy of forces larger and more powerful than myself. I would be careful. I would not tread on the law’s toes. But i would not wait for the sheriff’s department to find the person who had killed Conrad and wanted to kill me.” (129) Dixie’s surrounded by an appealing cadre of males: her firefighter brother Michael; his undercover-cop lover Paco; young attorney Ethan Crane; and Lt. Guidry of the sheriff’s department. It’ll be fun to see these relationships evolve.

DUPLICITY DOGGED THE DACHSHUND (title owes more to alliteration than to content of the plot) is more police procedural than straight mystery. It’s clear from the outset who’s guilty of Conrad and Stevie’s deaths; the major questions are what criminal enterprises are involved and how the perps will be caught. It builds to a satisfactorily dramatic conclusion, but unfortunately, the conclusion depends on two major TSTL cliches involving Dixie. One is the eternal cell phone that’s dead at the wrong time. Clement says at least three or four times during the course of the story that Dixie’s cell phone needs recharging, but she never does so. Naturally, when she needs to call the police, the phone’s dead. Hasn’t Dixie ever heard of an adapter that will allow her to charge the phone from her car battery? The second is her going alone to see where Denton lives, then following Denton and Leo Brossi as they travel into the Florida countryside to kill Conrad’s Doberman Reggie. She can’t call the police (see above), and she never considers that Denton might be luring her into a trap. This is especially dumb because Dixie had already arranged with Guidry, Michael, and Paco that she would meet with Denton, wearing a wire to get evidence against him.

Sense of place is outstanding though there’s no story-telling Southern voice. “Up north, especially in landlocked states, it’s illegal to carry a concealed handgun. In swamp-ridden Florida, it’s damn near mandatory. The state’s official stand is, Hey, man, we’re sticking out down here like the country’s hind tit, surrounded by oceans and alligators and Commie Cubans, threatened by hurricanes and tidal waves and foreign tourists, and we by God need to be able to shoot something. Over eight million of us consequently have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, otherwise known as a CCW. That’s why so many retired geezers in Florida wear belly packs over their shorts and knit shirts--they’re carrying semiautomatics.” (75-6)

DUPLICITY DOGGED THE DACHSHUND is a good read. (B)
 
CASINO SHUFFLE is the first book in J. Fields, Jr.’s mystery series featuring Antonio Cruz, Head Butler at the Native Sun Casino in Connecticut. It was published in 2011 as a free or inexpensive e-book.

CASINO SHUFFLE is a men’s cozy mystery, involving Cruz and other employees of the casino dealing with the events and non-events of one weekend. A Million-Dollar Texas Hold ‘Em tournament brings in high-rollers, including Max Allen, brought up in hotels and ill-equipped to operate in the real world. Bad boy rapper Brandon (aka Jerry Gertler) is booked for a Saturday night concert and with him comes his girlfriend, movie starlet Shannon Moon. Despite the casino’s efforts to keep the arrivals secret, one of the casino hosts notifies the press of Brandon’s arrival, so there ensues a riot of BranFans (teeny-bopper fans) and paparazzi, the most persistent of whom is Ang Wang, who’ll literally climb tall buildings to get a revealing photo.

There’s not much characterization beyond what people say and do; there’s no introspection or hint of backstories except for Ang, Max, and Brandon. Antonio Cruz is from El Salvador, from which he and his mother were forced to flee, and he had many different kinds of jobs before becoming a butler. Cruz is almost robotic in his perfection as a butler, so poised he makes Jeeves look like a new-hire footman. He’s mentor to Max Allen and, a little, to Brandon. The number of characters is greater than the minimum required to carry the plot; Fields seems to want to introduce most of the ones who will be developed in the series.

The plot is over the top, funny in places, involves no graphic violence, with all the suspense from what crisis Antonio will face next and how he will meet it. It’s easy to go along and just enjoy the ride. There’s little sense of place except for the casino. (B-)
 
Anthea Fraser’s SIX PROUD WALKERS was originally published in 1988 and re-issued in e-book format in 2014. It is one of her mystery series featuring Detective Chief Inspector David Webb.

The Walker family, owners of Walker and Fairfax Broadshire Porcelain, are the leading family in Honeyford, a small village in Broadshire where Hannah James is housesitting for a month, caring for her friend’s three cats. Her lover DCI David Webb is down for the weekend to visit and to attend the Parish Church of St Clement’s fete, held on the grounds of the Walkers’ home, the Old Rectory. From the church tower, Webb observes an elaborate flower bed in the house’s garden with “murder” spelled out in flowers. He has a premonition and, on Tuesday afternoon, someone smashes in the face of Mrs. Dorothy Walker, matriarch of the clan. Grandson Gavin had been infuriated by her withholding the birthday money he’d expected, to force him to go to Oxford immediately instead of taking a year off in Europe. She’s been worried about her health and the impact of her disease on the family. She’d been less than enthusiastic about her youngest son Robin’s engagement to TV news anchor Eleanor Darby, whom she feared would move him to London. She’d ruled the roost over daughters-in-law Lydia and Ashley, and sons Neville and Howard still deferred to her in business. As Webb and his group work on the case, the unity of the Walker family proves illusory, with hidden secrets and conflicts that result in the murder of Robin Walker. Can the murderer possibly be an outsider?

Telling you my biggest reservation about the plot of SIX PROUD WALKERS would do a definite spoiler, so suffice it to say that, once that improbability is overcome, the plot hangs together well. The format is police procedural, and Fraser plays fair with foreshadowing.

Characterization is good. Webb, his subordinates, Hannah James, all seem believable people, Webb somewhat resentful of Detective Inspector Nina Petrie being brought in new, having to share his small office. He’s irked because concern for Hannah’s reputation (she’s Deputy Head of Ashbourne School for Girls where Neville and Lydia Walker’s younger daughter Fay is a pupil) prevents him from spending the weekend at the cottage as planned. Fraser uses shifts in point of view as a means of building personality as well as avoiding large chunks of exposition.

Sense of place is good, with strong atmospheric descriptions: “The supper was as elegant and delicious as the guests confidently expected. Cones of smoked salmon stuffed with cream cheese nestled pinkly between glistening black caviar and the pale green of asparagus, while white-coated servers stood behind joints of beef, chicken and ham, carvers poised. Heaped bowls of salad concealed melon and strawberries among their more conventional leaves, and cups of cold soup were accompanied by garlic-flavoured croutons and chive-specked sour cream. It was dark now, and small tables had been set up, each with its flickering candle in a protective glass container. Coloured fairy-lights glowed in the trees, and floodlights illuminated the face of the house. The trio who had provided music for dancing now played a selection of musical-comedy numbers, awaking nostalgia in the older guests.”

This is a solid series, and SIX PROUD WALKERS continues it well. (B+)
 
AN UNSUITABLE DEATH is one of J. M. Gregson’s Lambert and Hook mystery series, originally published in 2000 and reissued in e-book format in 2014. It features Detective Superintendent John Lambert and Detective Sergeant Bert Hook of the West Mercia CID, working out of Oldford Police Station.

When the body of an unknown young woman is found displayed in the Lady Chapel of Hereford Cathedral, police and the media think she’s the latest victim of the serial killer dubbed “the Sacristan.” Chief Constable Douglas Gibson sends Lambert along to observe, since the murder occurred in their territory, but the Serious Crimes Squad soon reveals in confidence that important details of the earlier crimes, carefully not revealed by the police, prove the killing is the work of a copycat killer. Her mother Sarah Rennie, a religious fanatic, identifies the body as that of Tamsin Rennie, whom she’d disowned over a year before for her way of life. Tamsin had been a heroin addict, supporting herself through prostitution and drug dealing. She’d been two months pregnant. Had she been trying to get out of the life, as her boyfriend, actor Tom Clarke, claimed? Who are the two older men who had visited the flat regularly? And who is her supplier?

Gregson has created a believable cadre of individuals who make up Lambert’s investigative squad: Bert Hook, who grew up an orphan but managed to get an Open University Degree; WDC DI Curtis, whose pulchritude elicits necessary information; and DI Chris Rushton, at 33 young for his rank. “Chris Rushton was quietly proud of his initiative in encouraging the only dissident voice at Arthur Rennie’s revivalist meeting to contact him. Rushton’s strength were organisation and thoroughness; if you needed to be sure a job would be done conscientiously and by the book, you passed it to Chris. His diligence and his computer literacy made him a valuable member of Lambert’s team, filing and cross-indexing the vast amount of material which accrued from a team of thirty. This enabled Lambert to pursue his eccentric and outdated methods of leading his investigations from the front....” This is a group of individuals it will be good to get to know.

The plot is laid out fairly, with information revealed as the police receive it. Gregson does a satisfying job of bringing Tamsin’s murderer to justice while continuing the ongoing drug-dealing story line. Sense of place, especially the Hereford Cathedral, is good.

AN UNSUITABLE DEATH makes me want to follow the series. (B)
 
BROWNIES AND BETRAYAL is the first in Heather Justesen’s Sweet Bites mystery series, published in e-book format in 2012. It features Tempest “Tess” Crawford, pastry chef who’s recently returned to Silver Springs, Arizona, to open her own bakery.

Tess is on the fringes of the wedding of Analesa Plumber to Tad Richardson because she’s providing desserts for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding cake. It’s clear at the rehearsal that all isn’t well between Valerie, the maid of honor, and the rest of the bridal party. The next day, while finishing the decoration of the cake on site, Tess discovers beneath a festooned table, Valerie’s body stabbed to death. She and best friend Honey, her partner in the projected bakery, decide they must solve the murder to prevent Tess’s being arrested. Valerie had quarreled bitterly with Jeff Calhoon, the best man, over a case she’d won by fabricating evidence and sleeping with the judge, according to Jeff. She’d also quarreled with Analesa over her attention to Ana’s younger brother Shawn; with her sister Lidia; with Millie, the other bridesmaid, whose boyfriend she’d stolen years before; Tad’s mother Caroline dislikes Valerie. No one knows who fathered Valerie’s little girl Dahlia, and her bank records show Valerie was getting large sums of money from someone on a regular basis. Is she also a blackmailer?

Where to start? Characterization is minimal, including Tess as first person narrator. She’s come home after discovering that her fiance in Chicago is a cheater. She immediately assumes she’s the suspect in Valerie’s death, using that as a reason to run around asking questions. She doesn’t allow her tires being slashed, a mugging, vandalism of her store of her apartment, to discourage her pursuit. She pulls a major TSTL when, remembering an oil-change sticker on the car driven by the probable killer, she goes to check the mileage to satisfy herself whether she could be correct; this is AFTER she’s told the detective handling the case the person and the motive. Is anyone surprised she’s almost killed? None of the characters are well developed. The murder victim Valerie, Tess’s best friend Honey, bridesmaid Millie, sister Lidia--none have family names.

The big secret over which Valerie dies is so foreshadowed that it’s not a surprise; the only surprise is that Valerie would assume responsibility for a child. The appearance of Tess’s ex-fiance to try to get her back is a cliche. There’s not much sense of place. There are several rich-looking dessert recipes that are the strongest part of this very generic cosy. Don’t bother. (D)
 
Lynn Shirey’s SUNSHINE ESTATES: RX FOR ROSEDALE was a free or inexpensive e-book purchase. It features as protagonists John and Laurel Cie. John has taken early retirement as a stockbroker, and Laurel is on leave from her group insurance analyst job. They’ve moved from Portland to Sunshine Estates, a community for active lifestyle retirees in Rosedale, California, just outside San Francisco.

I’m giving up at 31% for a variety of reasons. One is that Shirey seems determined to introduce every person who lives in Sunshine Estates. None of the characters are much developed, and most of the women have only Christian names given. Laurel is first person narrator without its revealing much admirable about her. So far, there’s very little plot beyond a day-to-day listing of how Laurel and John pass their time. A neighbor Julia Deeds dies the second day they’d lived in Sunshine Estates, apparently from natural causes, and Laurel goes bananas trying to find out all about her. There’s no suggestion of a crime, and she has no excuse except nosiness. She uses taking care of another neighbor’s cats as a means of prowling and, when she agrees to dog-sit with Gil Armstrong’s Bernese mountain dog Bernice, she snoops though his house. Laurel seriously needs to get a life. There’s no sense of place.

No grade because I can’t take this any longer. I’m just glad I didn’t spend much money on SUNSHINE ESTATES: RX FOR ROSEDALE.
 
THE BUZZARD TABLE is the latest to date in Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series set in Colleton County, North Carolina. It is available in both print and e-book formats.

Sigrid Harald and her mother, semi-retired photojournalist Anne Lattimore Harald, are in Colleton County visiting Anne’s mother, Mrs. Jane Lattimore, who’s dying with cancer. Naturally they spend time with distant relative Deborah Knott and her husband, Major Dwight Bryant of the Sheriff’s Department. Also in the area is Jane Lattimore’s nephew Martin Crawford, an ornithologist who’s photographing turkey vultures for a magazine article. Bryant has a missing person case involving Rebecca Jowett, a realtor who went out for an evening run and never came back, while Deborah hears a case involving Jeremy Harper, an intense high school freelance reporter who committed trespass in a demonstration at the county airport. Affectionately known as Colleton International, the airport is a refueling stop for planes carrying prisoners from Gitmo to other jurisdictions where there are fewer restrictions on methods of interrogation. Jowett’s body turns up near the “buzzard table,” where Crawford has trained the vultures to expect food, and Bryant is convinced that he made the anonymous call notifying the Sheriff’s Department. Then a pilot forced to lay over in Colleton County dies in a motel shower in an apparent fall that broke his neck; the FBI quickly takes jurisdiction in the death, saying the pilot is one of their own. Martin Crawford finds Jeremy Harper at the buzzard table nearly dead after an attack like the one that killed Rebecca Jowett. What is going on? Can the cases be connected?

The plot in THE BUZZARD TABLE distinguishes between the letter of the law and the service of justice. As Dwight tells Sigrid, “...it wasn’t too long ago in this county when a valid defense for some murders was that the victim needed killing.” (291) I can’t explain more without doing a spoiler. Maron plays fair with foreshadowing, and her shifts in viewpoint between first person for Deborah and limited third person for Dwight, Sigrid, Martin Crawford, Jeremy Harper, Anne Harald, even the dead pilot, move the story along without large chunks of exposition. A neat secondary storyline involves Cal Bryant’s desire to be adopted by Deborah as his closest friends Jake and Mary Pat had been adopted by Rob and Kate Bryant, his aunt and uncle.

Maron has created a large believable family of various Knotts, Bryants, and Lattimores, as well as a viable law enforcement community in the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department. It’s like visiting old friends whose lives continue between the segments Maron presents in her books. Because the series is character driven, it’s good to read the series in order. She’s good at succinct summations: “With her dark hair cut short, lipstick, and a smudge of mascara, this odd duckling [Sigrid Harald] had morphed into--if not a swan, certainly into a woman who could hold her own among the more conventionally beautiful women of the family. Remembering a pair of relatively simple emerald earrings in her bank box, Mrs. Lattimore smiled at this granddaughter she had come to value more than ever in the last month. With Sigrid she didn’t have to sugarcoat her condition or keep up a pretense of being pain-free. Sigrid didn’t fuss or moan or avoid the subject of impending death.” (86-7)

Sense of place in THE BUZZARD TABLE is outstanding. Maron uses physical detail as well as atmosphere to evoke Colleton County: “He popped the top on a can of beer that had chilled in his ice bucket, then removed the lid on the foam take-out plate and felt his mouth water as the aroma of vinegar and roasted pork reached his nose. He had been born in Texas, and grilled beef ribs drenched in a fiery tomato sauce with jalapeno cornbread on the side would always be his favorite, but the chopped pork barbecue of eastern North Carolina and its deep-friend hushpuppies sure ran Texas a close second.” (186)

THE BUZZARD TABLE is another strong entry in the long-running series. (A-)
 
Amy Metz’s MURDER AND MAYHEM IN GOOSE PIMPLE JUNCTION was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012.

I’m quitting at 10% in, because I’m not into the plot or characters at all. Tess Tremaine has just moved to Goose Pimple Junction, Tennessee; she’s recently divorced, still hurting, writing a romance novel. Her son is 26 years old, but she reacts to handsome local Jackson Wright like a teeny-bopper when her favorite boy band comes on TV. He’s billed as a mystery writer with nine published novels. Both are writing at a local coffee shop, the Muffin Man. Likely? Characters so far are generic, the locals stereotypes, including waitress Willa Jean, who’s a clone of Florence Jean (“Flo”--”Kiss my grits!”) Castleberry in the TV series Alice.

The plot involves a bank robbery in 1932 in Goose Pimple Junction, the disclosure of involvement by a leading citizen who’s dying in 1979, and the present. Flashbacks are awkward, unrelated to present action with Tess.

Sense of place isn’t coming through. We’re told Goose Pimple Junction is in Tennessee, but not where. Aside from a few words and phrases, there’s no sense of the South. Metz includes some pronunciation guides for words, ala Jeff Foxworthy’s jokes. (“Despurt; adjective, desperate--It was an act only a despurt man would commit.”) It’s cliched and off-putting.

No grade because not finished.
 
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