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Readingomnivore Reviews

Sharon Love Cook’s A DEADLY CHRISTMAS CAROL is one of her Granite Cove mystery series published in e-book format in 2014. It features Rose McNichols, reporter for the Granite Cove Gazette, through whose eyes the reader sees the action.

A DEADLY CHRISTMAS CAROL moves from the opening of the Christmas crafts fair at St. Rupert’s Lutheran Church through the events of Christmas week, including the community production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and the death of Dionne Dunbar, newly-arrived manager of the Granite Cove Document Destruction Services. Dionne had been walking on a dark street wearing black clothes, so the police consider her death a hit-and-run, despite Rose’s finding her body in a shredding bin she’d knocked over while trying to get her car out of a snow-packed parking place. Adding to Rose’s problems are the assignments given her by Yvonne, Gazette editor, which include covering the Lutheran minister’s wife’s classes in being a medium, picking up the pieces when Yvonne’s art contest brings an entry interpreted as a terrorist threat, and trying to warn off the trick-turning niece of an elderly friend. Rose figures out who’s sending threatening messages to the minister’’s wife Hyacinth Chitworth, defuses the fracas over the art contest, and finally unmasks the killer.

Rose is a contradictory character. She’d been high school sweethearts with Cal Devine, now a Granite Cove policeman, but she’d refused to marry him because she didn’t want the confines of being married; “...[Rose] herself had spent the first half of her life devising plans to escape Granite Cove. She’d yearned to live someplace where people discussed topic other than the high school football team and the fishing industry. Later, she got her wish. However, after living in an upscale Boston suburb whose downtown was lined with designer stores but no coffee shop, and whose residents dressed all in black, she changed her mind. Rose had missed the cry of the seagulls and the smell of fish sticks in the air.” (133) Now back in Granite Cove, she’s still got feelings for the now-married Cal, though she’s in a satisfying relationship with Kevin Healey. But she’s essentially a doormat--she accepts being guilt-tripped into doing the dirty work on everything that comes along. Cook seems determined to bring in every inhabitant of Granite Cove, whether they’re essential to the plot or not. Most characters are not much developed.

The plot is disappointing because it’s a hodgepodge of Rose’s stories for the newspaper, the events of the killing, her personal life, and all the extraneous assignments she gets involved in. The book is at least 50 pages longer than effective story. When Rose finds the information she needs to identify the killer, it’s not revealed until she’s in a confrontation, which came about through her TSTL in taking a ride from the suspected killer.

There’s not much sense of place. About the most atmospheric description is: “...Rose navigated the U-shaped street that was Mannory Way, dodging the trash barrels that lay in the road. The city trucks had come and gone, but no one was at home to bring in the barrels. The street looked abandoned under the bleak winter sun, the gaudy decorations devoid of gaiety. The towering inflated Santas and snowmen of the evening now lay bunched in the dirty snow. Like an aging burlesque queen, Mannory Way needed a cloak of darkness to get into a party mood.” (150)

The best part of A DEADLY CHRISTMAS CAROL is the gag letters for advice sent to Aunt Pearlie of the Gazette, who always misses the point of the letters in her replies. Fun, but not enough to redeem the book. (C)
 
John Collier’s “Back by Christmas” is the first short story in the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982.

Dr. Herbert Carpenter is departing with wife Hermione for America for a three-month assignment; she assures her friends that he will be back in time for Christmas. Hermione is known for her superb organizational skills, so their friends believe her. Unbeknownst to her, Dr. Carpenter has other plans.

“Back by Christmas” is very short--less than five full pages in length, but it packs a neat surprise ending. (A-)
 
Woody Allen’s “Mr. Big” appears in the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS anthology of short stories edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982.

“Mr. Big” is a riff on the hard-boiled private eye strain of crime fiction. “I [Kaiser Lupowitz] was sitting in my office, cleaning the debris out of my thirty-eight and wondering where my next case was coming from. I like being a private eye, an even though once in a while I’ve had my gums massaged with an automobile jack, the sweet smell of greenbacks makes it all worth it. Not to mention the dames, which are a minor preoccupation of mine that I rank just ahead of breathing.” (11) Kaiser’s next case is to find a missing person--God.

I’m too whimsy-impaired to appreciate this story, so no grade.
 
“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is the most famous of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories occurring at Christmastime. It was reprinted in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982.

On 22 December, Peterson, a commissionaire going home, came upon a middle-aged man being mugged by a group of street toughs; he breaks it up, but the man loses his hat and the goose he was carrying and ran away. Peterson brings the hat and the goose for Holmes to locate the man. The goose was labeled “Mrs. Henry Baker,” but which one? As Holmes is telling Watson about the case, Peterson rushes in with a blue jewel found in the goose’s crop--the blue carbuncle belonging to the Countess of Morcar, stolen at the Hotel Cosmopolitan on 22 December. A plumber who’d worked in her suite John Horner has been arrested for the theft on the testimony of James Ryder, the hotel floor attendant. The blue carbuncle is unique, so valuable that the Countess has offered a ￡1,000 reward for its return. But how did the jewel get from the Hotel Cosmopolitan to the crop of Henry Baker’s goose? Holmes and Watson go to find out and perhaps free an innocent man.

“The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” gives a extended example of Holmes’s method as he describes Henry Baker, based on the condition of the hat and his deductions from it. As appropriate for the season, it’s one of the stories in which Holmes applies mercy instead of justice. Sense of place is good: “It was a bitter night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped cravats about our throats. Outside the star were shining coldly in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out in smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctors’ quarter, Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into Oxford Street. In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into Holborn.” (29-30)

:welcomeOne of my favorite Christmas stories. (A)
 
Damon Runyon’s “Dancing Dan’s Christmas” is one of the short stories in the short story collection MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. Runyon’s short stories became the basis for Guys and Dolls.

“Dancing Dan’s Christmas” occurs on Christmas Eve when, filled with the Christmas spirit provided by numerous mugs of Tom and Jerry,* Good Times Charley Bernstein, Dancing Dan, and the unnamed narrator collaborate to make a dying old woman’s dream of Christmas come true. She’s the grandmother of Miss Muriel O’Neill, a doll in whom Heine Schmutz takes an interest, and she’s been dancing quite a bit with Dan.

Runyon’s writing is funny and distinctive. “This hot Tom and Jerry is an old time drink that is once used by one and al in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true. But anybody will tell you that there is nothing that brings out the true holiday spirit like hot Tom and Jerry, and I hear that since Tom and Jerry goes out of style in the United States, the holiday spirit is never quite the same.” (79)

Good fun. (A-)

*http://liquor.com/recipes/tom-jerry/
 
SADIE WHEN SHE DIED is one of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct mystery series. It was originally published in 1971 and re-issued in e-book format in 2013. It involves many of the men working out of the squad but centers on Detective Steve Carella and Detective Bert Kling.

When Gerald Fletcher finds his wife Sarah eviscerated in their apartment, it has all the earmarks of a burglary gone bad, one committed by a rank amateur. Carella and Kling are handed the case and, with the help of lab tech Marshall Davies who processes the crime scene, they have fingerprints and footprints of the burglar, injured when he jumped out a second story window as Gerald Fletcher entered the apartment. They soon arrest a young addict Ralph Corwin, who promptly confesses to the murder. Case closed. Or is it? Carella has a hunch that Gerald Fletcher found Sarah stabbed but not fatally, and finished her off. He’d frankly told Carella that he had hated her and was glad she was dead. But can Carella prove he killed his wife?

Plot format is straight police procedural with shifts in viewpoint between several of the men of the 87th, though most is shown through Carella and Kling. It’s clear that Fletcher is guilty, but how will Carella prove it? Most of Kling’s attention is on his breakup with fiancee Cindy Forrest the week before and his growing attraction to witness Nora Simonov, who lives in the building and saw the injured burglar in the basement. Wouldn’t a dating relationship between a police officer and a witness in an active case be a violation of regulations? How likely is it that, with a confessed murderer whose story is backed with physical evidence, Carella would be permitted to continue to work the case, up to and including 24/7 surveillance on Gerald Fletcher and bugging his girlfriend’s apartment and his car? Even when Carella solves the case and arrests Fletcher, there’s no satisfaction for him or for the reader.


I had problems with the characters also. It doesn’t make sense for Gerald Fletcher, who knows that Carella suspects him, to keep after Carella, rubbing it in with hints about his motive and his superiority, which will let him get away with murder. As a well-known criminal lawyer, Fletcher should have been smart enough to maintain a low profile and to keep his mouth shut. Carella himself is curiously uncertain: “The law was his life, but in the midst of lawyers he felt like a menial. The man sitting opposite him [Fletcher] was a criminal lawyer, which was intimidating in itself. But he was something more than that, and it was this perhaps that made Carella feel awkward and clumsy in his presence. It did not matter whether or not Fletcher truly was cleverer than Carella, or more sophisticated, or better at his work, or handsomer, or more articulate--the truth was unimportant. Carella felt Fletcher was all of these things; the man’s manner and bearing and attack (yes, it could be called nothing else) utterly convinced Carella that he was in the presence of a superior being, and this was as good as, if not more potent than, the actual truth.” (45-6) Most of the cops come across as believable humans.

Despite its setting in the week before Christmas, in a New York decorated for the holidays, the atmosphere is bleak: “The city was a monochromatic gray, the backdrop for a Warner Brothers gangster film of the thirties. The color seemed to have been drained from everything--the most vivid billboards, the most vibrant building facade, the most lurid women’s clothing, even the Christmas ornaments that decorated the shop windows. Overhung with eternal grayness, the trappings of the yule-tide season stood revealed as shabby crap, tinsel and plastic to be exhibited once a year before being returned to the basement. In this bleak light, even the costumes of the street-corner Santa Clauses appeared to be a faded maroon rather than a cheerful red, the fake beards dirty, the brass bells tarnished. The city had been robbed of sunshine and denied the cleansing release of snow. It waited, and it fretted, and it grew crankier by the minute.” (75)

SADIE WHEN SHE DIED is depressing. (C)
 
Marjorie Bowen’s “Cambric Tea” is a short story in the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982.

Dr. Bevis Holroyd has been called in as consultant on the illness of Sir Harry Strangeways. Stir Harry is convinced his wife is poisoning him in cambric tea. Holroyd is surprised to learn that Lady Strangeways is Mollie, the woman he’d loved and lost some ten years before, when she couldn’t face life with a poor man just starting out and so married the wealthy Custiss in India. When he inherited his title, Custiss had been required to change his name. Sir Harry knows that his wife loved someone else prior to her marriage, and he’s had his creepy secretary Garth Deane steal her undated love letters. To his horror, Holroyd discovers that Sir Harry is being poisoned; circumstances are in place to blame Mollie and himself as accomplices in Sir Harry’s murder. Can they escape the plan?

“Cambric Tea” occurs at Christmas time, but it partakes little of seasonal festivities. Bowen uses atmosphere to reveal character. “Bevis went angrily upstairs; he felt as if an invisible net was being dragged closely around him, something which, from being a cobweb, would become a cable; this air of mystery, of horror in the big house, this sly secretary, these watchful-looking servants, the nervous village doctor ready to credit anything, the lovely agitated woman who was the woman he had long ago so romantically loved, and the sinister sick man with his diabolic accusations, a man Bevis Holroyd had, from the first moment, hated--all these people in these dark surroundings affected the young man with a miasma of apprehension, gloom and dread.” (99)

The means by which Holroyd and Mollie escape Sir Harry’s plotting seems contrived, not really consistent with what’s gone before in the story. (C)
 
“Death on Christmas Eve” is Stanley Ellin’s short story in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, a seasonal anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey in 1982.

The first person narrator is the unnamed lawyer for the family occupying Boerum House, represented now by Celia and her brother Charlie. Celia has been cleared of causing the death of her sister-in-law Jessie, Charlie’s wife. She insists that she’d loved Jessie and lived in harmony with her. She’s ridding up Jessie’s belongings, trying to make it easier for Charlie to accept her death. Charlie, who’s never accomplished anything he wanted due to the clinging of first his mother, then Celia, is convinced that Celia pushed Jessie down the stairs and caused her death. He wants her executed for the murder of his wife. There’s a bitter confrontation between the siblings.

I can’t say anything else about the plot without spoiling the neat surprise ending Ellin provides. “Death on Christmas Eve” is very short, barely over seven pages, but Ellin packs a powerful punch on the nature of obsession. (A) :welcome
 
“Silent Night” is Baynard Kendrick’s entry in the anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982, MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS. Kendrick’s most noted character is Captain Duncan Maclain, a military intelligence officer blinded in World War I. With partner Spuds Savage, he’s been a successful private investigator for forty years.

Ronnie Connaster, six-year-old son of Alan Connaster, head of Connaster Products, Inc., had been kidnapped on December 13; a week later, Arnold Cameron, Special Agent in Charge of the New York office of the FBI calls on Duncan Maclain for help. The kidnapper has communicated with Connaster through AudioGraph recordings (think Dictaphone); the demand is for the complete, authentic plans for the SF800T missile his company manufactures for the US Navy. Otherwise Ronnie will die. The records had been mailed from different places all over the US; the directions for delivering the plans make it impossible to set a trap at the drop point. The only clues to Ronnie’s location are a low, continuous background noise on the segments he recorded and a brief snatch of Bing Crosby’s singing “Silent Night”, judged to be from a loudspeaker set up somewhere near the location. Can Maclain use his formidable deductive powers to find the boy?

Maclain is an interesting protagonist. “To him being a Licensed P. I. was a dedicated profession. He hoped by developing his remaining four sense, hearing, feeling, taste, and smell to the highest point of proficiency to prove to the world before he died that a blind man with sufficient intelligence could be just as good, if not a little better, than millions of people who had eyes with which to see.” (139) He succeeds. (B)
 
“The Stolen Christmas Box” is Lillian de la Torre’s contribution to the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS collection edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. It features the British lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson, with his biographer James Boswell as the first person narrator.

Dr. Johnson and Boswell are to spend Christmas at the Thrale estate, with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale; Thrale’s sister and her husband, Aldererman and Mrs. Plumbe; their children, Ralph and fifteen-year-oerld daughter Fanny; and Dr. Thomas, minister and schoolmaster. The Plumbe family is upset because Fanny’s pouting over having to give up an inappropriate young lover Jack Rice. To placate her, Adlerman Plumbe gives her Christmas box early; she’s much pleased with an intaglio brooch set with a fine large diamond worth ￡200. But a housemaid is caught with a note written in an a-b cipher which, when Dr. Johnson translates it, produces a meaningless message in French. Then after the carolers and the mummers call at the Thrales, Fanny’s brooch is missing; search of the room discloses nothing. But Dr. Johnson uses the first message to find a second, supposedly written in Ogam (ancient written Irish), which leads him to what happened to the diamond and to the person responsible.

“The Stolen Christmas Box” uses eighteenth century spelling and customs to transport the reader effectively to the eighteenth century. It demonstrates conclusively that human motives have changed little. An experienced reader will probably discern the thief and the plan ahead of the revelation, but it’s an interesting read. (B+)
 
Edie reminds me of Kate Shugak in a good way. This is a series I'm definitely going to check out.

“Edie Kiglatuk’s Christmas” by M. J. McGrath was a free or inexpensive short story published in 2012. It is set in the village of Autisaq, on Ellsmere Island in the high Arctic.

The story opens when a hunter finds Tommy Quataq badly beaten and nearly frozen on 21 December. He’d been quarreling with Willie Killik over Nancy Muttuk. She’d been Willie’s girl friend before Tommy, who lives with her and her parents; Nancy and Tommy have a young daughter Aggie. When Tommy dies, Sgt. Derek Palliser calls on Edie Kiglatuk, his eyes and ears in Autisaq, for information and help. She’s acquainted with both young men, and she’d done her best to help Willie out of the self-destructive path of too many young Inuit men. Willie disappears, and it’s later discovered that he took Aggie with him. No search party was mounted when Willie went missing, but now a search party with questionable intentions leaves to recover Aggie. Can Edie find them before the hunters?

Edie Kiglatuk was a new character for me, and I will be reading more about her. She’s a warm, believable character with significant baggage; she’s a recovering addict who’d taken in Willie when his family and friends had kicked him out and tried to get him help. Her background is intriguing--she’s an ex-polar-bear hunter, now a part-time teacher at the high school. Willie Killik is a realistic, mixed-up young man who nevertheless strives for more than he’s received from his family.

McGrath uses atmosphere to develop both setting and characters: “On Edie’s way back into town she passed the land search tam heading out towards the tundra, the mayor waving o her as they sped by, their headlights cutting wires of light into the darkness. Unless they had some idea of where to look, they’d have trouble finding Willie. The wind was taking away vehicle tracks as fast as they wre made. But Inuit were nothing if not dogged and there was a kind of glee in their voices Edie didn’t much like. She knew that tone only too well. It was the thrill of the hunter on his way out to the hunt.”

The surprise ending of “Edie Kiglatuk’s Christmas” is touching. (A) :welcome
 
Paige Shelton’s MERRY MARKET MURDERS, published in e-book format in 2013, is one of her Farmers’ Market mystery series. It’s set in Monson, South Carolina, beginning about a week before Christmas. Becca Robins is the first person narrator.

Becca runs a stall selling jams and preserves at Bailey’s Farmers’ Market, managed by her fraternal twin sister Allison Reynolds. Both are pleased with the arrival of Denny, Ned, and sister Billie Ridgeway, from Ridgeways’ Christmas tree farm; they have donated trees for the Monson Christmas parade of decorated trees auctioned for charity, so Allison offers them exclusive rights to sell Christmas trees at the market. But Brenton Jones, who makes and sells gourmet dog treats at the market, is profoundly upset when the Ridgeways arrive. The morning becomes even worse when Reggie Stuckey, owner of Stuckey Christmas trees arrives with his load of trees, ready to set up his stall. He and the Ridgeways are not best pleased to see the other. Stuckey’s contract turns out to be forged; he disappears. The next day Becca, Allison, and a vendor find Stuckey’s body in his truck, stabbed in the chest with a metal outdoor tree stake. Becca, who’s in a serious relationship with Sam Brion of the Monson Police Department, is determined to find out who killed Stuckey. To do so, she and Sam must uncover many deep, dark secrets.

The plot in MERRY MARKET MURDERS is so fairly laid out that an experienced reader may identify the killer and the motive ahead of Becca, even though Shelton does a good job of focusing attention elsewhere. It’s rather slow in unfolding, yet the resolution seems hurried, a “let’s get it over with.” A given in the cozy genre, people are willing to answer Becca’s questions when in real life they’d probably send her off with a flea in her ear. It’s also highly unlikely that a police officer would use his significant other to ask questions and would share all the evidence as it turns up.

Becca is a believable protagonist, carrying baggage from her two marriages and divorces: “My life hadn’t been tragic or sad, but I’d made my share of mistake and had my share of lonely holidays. Both my divorces had become final during the month of November. I’d had two particularly strange Christmases where I didn’t want to be around anyone but myself and, after the second split, Hobbit [her dog]. And I’d been the one to prompt the separation. Divorces were usually awful, even if it was necessary. But this year was different and wonderful.” (259) She’s proud of her detecting skills but, after being told that a 1987 affair involving a prominent state politician is involved in the murder, she doesn’t do a Google search or check newspaper archives to find out what happened. Other major characters are well developed, though there’s an overabundance of vendors and others not strictly necessary to the plot.

Though conversations and narration do not particularly recall the South, there is a good sense of place: “The semi-darkness and the few and far between strings of lights had something to do with the peacefulness. Through most of December, the upcoming parade made Monson look like Scrooge had moved in and taken over. It had become tradition not to do much to decorate until the parade, which was always he weekend before Christmas. We’d go from boring and bland to lit up Vegas overnight, and the decorations would stay up through New Year’s. As I skirted the edge of Main Street, I turned the radio off and left the window down a bit to enjoy the quiet, the cold air, and the scents of small town surrounded by farmland.” (78)

MERRY MARKET MURDER ends with a delicious-looking collection of Christmas cookie recipes. Shelton makes it easy to suspend disbelief and go along for the sleigh ride. (B)
 
“A Chaparral Christmas Gift” is O. Henry’s short story in the Thomas Godfrey edited MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS anthology published in 1982. O. Henry, along with Ambrose Bierce, is master of the ironic ending.

Rosita McMullen, daughter of the owner of the Sundown Sheep Ranch, is beautiful and much courted. Her two favored suitors are Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy. She marries Madison Lane at Christmas; McRoy comes to the feasting, planning to kill them both. He’s foiled by Carson, whom he kills, and escapes to become the vicious killer of eighteen men, the Frio Kid. Several years later, he decides to kill Madison Lane in his own home; Rosita has feared McRoy’s return, but she’s pleased by the arrival of Santa Claus.

I can’t say more without spoiling the ending. I enjoy O. Henry’s deadpan humor: “The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding. ... Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the success of his plate-throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy’s bullet from the darkness laid him low. The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for, while the slaughter of a sheepman had not always lacked condonement, it was a decided misdemeanour in this instance. Carson was innocent; he was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard him quote the lines ‘Christmas comes but once a year’ to the guests.” (180)

A neat little story. (B+)
 
“Death on the Air” is the short story by Ngaio Marsh included in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. It features Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn and his sideman Inspector Fox. It all transpires on Christmas Day.

When under-housemaid Emily Parks discovers the body of Septimus Tonks in his study beside his wireless set at 7:30 AM on 25 December, his family and servants express satisfaction. Tonks had been a domestic tyrant to the point of mania, bullying everyone and delighting in their fear and his control. His family physician Dr. Harold Meadows examines the body and, attention being called to a slight burning of two fingers and thumb on Tonks’s right hand, calls for the police. Death was caused by electrocution. Alleyn quickly finds evidence that the radio had been rigged to deliver a massive electric shock when both knobs were grasped; after the death, the set was returned to its former condition. But who wanted Tonks dead and had the expertise to fabricate the trap?

I am disappointed in “Death on the Air.” The only character much developed is Septimus Tonks and he, in the words of my people, “needed killing bad.” There is little sense of place or Christmas atmosphere--the story could have happened most any time of year and almost anywhere. When the characters who are described as being too cowed and terrified of Septimus Tonks to make an attempt on his life are eliminated, there’s only one character left, the killer. Motive isn’t revealed until the resolution of the case. (C)
 
GRAND CRU HEIST is the second in the Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balan Winemaker Detective mystery series translated by Anne Trager. It was published in e-format in 2013. The story opens not long before Christmas, but the holiday season plays no important part.

Benjamin Cooker is carjacked and beaten in Paris; suffering some PTSD, upon his release from hospital, he goes to the Touraine region to convalesce at the Chateau de La Tortiniere. There he meets young concierge Gaeton and Sir William Morton, an Englishman whose Morgan Plus 8 classic sports car he covets. With Morton is a beautiful young Eastern European woman Oksana. After a long luncheon, Morton and Cooker return to the hotel to discover that Oksana has left in a snit; despite being well over the limit, Morton insists on continuing on to a business meeting in Bordeaux. The next morning, Gaetan is missing, and the police soon arrive to question everyone about Oksana, whose body had been found along the Loire River.Later that day, Cooker discovers Gaetan’s body haning in an apple tree; the police at first consider him a suicide after killing Oksana, but Cooker convinces them otherwise. In the meantime, there are two major robberies in which only a specific grand cru is stolen--all major vintages of the Angelus. The winery that produces the Angelus belongs to Cooker’s friend Hubert de Bouard de Laforest, who receives taunting cards saying basically “I’ve got it and you don’t.” He wants Cooker’s help in dealing with the situation, and Cooker wants to find the killer. Is Sir William involved and, if so, how and why?

In recent years, a genre referred to as chick lit has emerged and become very popular. The Winemaker Detective series is guy lit. Benjamin Cooker is so suave he makes James Bond look uncouth. An aesthete, winemaker, gourmet, lover of antiques, fine art, music, cigars, and classic cars, he’s nevertheless faithful to his beloved wife Elisabeth. A devout Catholic, when he learns that his assistant Virgile Lanssian’s younger sister has been diagnosed with colon cancer, he goes to a shrine noted for healing to pray and light candles for her recovery. Cooker’s too perfect to be very believable.

The plot is simplistic. A careful reading of what each character says leads directly to the identity and motive of both thieves and killer. Too much information is confined to the conclusion, making the story out of balance.

By far the strongest element in GRAND CRU HEIST is the sense of place. The story opens in Paris: “Paris finally returned to its splendor at dusk. Lights from the cruise boats caressed the buildings on the Left Bank. The bridges cast wavering shadow on the waters of the Seine. At the corner of the Rue Dauphine, a few patches of half-melted snow, curiously saved from the passing footsteps, were shining under the streetlights.”

The authors excel at using atmosphere, particularly food and wine, to reveal character. “Morton and Cooker finished off two bottles of Vouvray. Their meal was copious, with a coriander-flavored nage de langoustines, mullet filets sauteed with endive, veal tenderloin with morels, and a slow-cooked carrot and orange dessert. Then Artigny’s sommelier dug up some aged rum that called for two cigars--double coronas from Partagas. After everything he had been through in Paris, nothing was more important to Benjamin Cooker’s morale than savoring the present.”

GRAND CRU HEIST is pleasant, if unsubstantial. (B-)
 
“Inspector Ghote and the Miracle Baby” is H. R. F. Keating’s short story in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, published in 1982 and edited by Thomas Godfrey. Its action occurs on Christmas Day.

Inspector Ghote expects retribution for his failure to volunteer for hockey, so when Assistant Commissioner Naik assigns him to a virgin birth case in Tulsi Pipe Road, he expects the worst. A girl, Miss D’Mello, has given birth to a son but says she’s never been with a man. Ghote’s assignment is simple--identify the baby’s father. Head Constable Medholkar from the district, a man with an oddly asymmetrical head and face, gives Ghote two names--Charlie Lobo, a wispy Goan teenager who loves Miss D’Mello from afar and denies he’s even spokn to her, and Kuldip Singh, a Sikh student who’s given up beard and turban, spending his time on political agitation and drinking. Miss D’Mello denies she’s ever been with either of them. But when the baby is brought into her room, Ghote immediately recognizes the father.

Keating’s setting of the story explains the urgency of getting the question of a virgin birth settled: “Tulsi Pipe Road was a two-kilomeers-long thoroughfare that shot straight up from the Racecourse [in Bombay] into the heart of a densely crowded mill district where badly paid Hindus, Muslims in hundreds and Goans by the thousands, all lived in prickling closeness, either in great areas of tumble-down hutments or in high tottering chawls, floor upon floor of massed humanity. Trouble between the religious communities there meant hell, no less.” (213)

Ghote is well developed, especially in such a short format. “Suddenly...to his own utter surprise he found, looking down at the big calm-after-storm eyes of the Goan girl, that he wanted the story she was about to tell him to be true. Part of him knew that, if it were so, or if it was widely believed to be so, appalling disorders could result from the feverish religious excitement that was bound to mount day by day. But another part of him now simply wanted a miracle to have happened.” (217)

The conclusion is particularly appropriate. (A) :welcome
 
Lawrence G. Blochman’s translation of Georges Simenon’s short story “Maigret’s Christmas” was published in 1982 in the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey. Its action all occurs on Christmas Day.

Maigret awakens on Christmas Day expecting a quiet day shared with Mme. Maigret. However, from the building opposite his on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, come Mlle. Doncoer and Mme. Loraine Martin with a strange story. Mme. Martin cares for an orphaned niece Colette, seven years old, who’s confined to bed with complications from a broken leg; when Mlle. Doncoer brings her gifts Christmas morning, Colette explains how Father Christmas visited her room the night before and left her a magnificent doll. She’s got the doll to prove it. Father Christmas had squatted on the floor, bent over as if working, and Colette thinks he was making a hole through which to visit the young boy in the apartment downstairs. Mme. Martin denies that anyone entered the apartment. What’s going on? Maigret agrees to check into the child’s story and from it deduces a crime and secrets from more than five years in the past, mostly without leaving his apartment.

The setting is atmospheric: “It was not snowing. It was nonsense, of course, for a man past 50 to be disappointed because there was no snow on Christmas morning, but then middle-aged people never have as much sense as young folks sometimes imagine. A dirty, turbid sky hung low over the rooftops. The Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was completely deserted. The words Fils et Cie, Bonded Warehouses on the sign above the porte-cochere across the street stood out as black as mourning crepe. The F, for some reasons, seemed particularly dismal.” (222)

“Maigret’s Christmas” also gives insight into his character: “Nine times out of ten his investigations plunged him abruptly into new surroundings, set him at grips with people of a world he barely knew, people of a social level whose habits and manners he had to study from scratch. But in this case, which was ot really a case since he had no official assignment, the whole approach was unfamiliar because the background was too familiar. For the first time in his career something professional was happening in his own world, in a building which might just as well be his building.” (243)

Classic Simenon. (A) :welcome
 
Charles Dickens’s “To be Taken with a Grain of Salt” is included in the MURDER FOR CHRSTMAS anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. It occurs Christmas Eve 1864 and employs the popular nineteenth century “story within a story” device.

Doctor Marigold, whose name is “Doctor” rather than his title, is a cheap jack (peddler). Having sold out of merchandise on 23 December, he returns to his home in London for the holidays before restocking and traveling again. After Christmas Eve dinner and a nap, a languid young gentleman arrives who tells him an amazing story of a murder and trial in which the ghost of the murdered man appeared throughout to the foreman of the jury.

“To be Taken with a Grain of Salt” is vintage Dickens, written in the nineteenth-century literary language so different from modern naturalistic style. It reminds the reader that Dickens was paid by the word. There’s no real mystery, just a strange little incident reflecting the title. Bits reflect the atmosphere and establish Doctor Marigold’s personality: “I am a neat hand at cookery, and I’ll tell you what I knocked up for my Christmas Eve dinner... I knocked up a beefsteak pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It’s a pudding to put a man in a good humor with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat.” (268)

An interesting early example of the short story. (B)
 
Ellen ELizabeth Hunter’s MURDER AT THE HOLIDAY FLOTILLA was available as a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012. It’s one of her Magnolia Mystery series featuring historic preservationist Ashley Wilkes and her realtor sister Melanie Wilkes, of Wilmington, North Carolina.

In sorting family papers from their mother’s estate, Melanie finds a copy of a will from a many-greats-grandfather Samuel Wood that leaves his estate, including the “Wilmington treasure” to his son David Wood and his descendants. Coincidentally, they discover that Dr. Amy Wood, the owner of the old Wood house in Brunswick County who’s hiring Ashley and architect husband Jon Campbell to restore the house, is their cousin. Amy’s feuding with neighbor State Senator Buddy Henry over penned fox hunts, in which trapped foxes are released in an enclosed area to be run down and torn to bits in the process of “training” hunting dogs. Henry’s also involved with local realtors/developers/ campaign contributors Regina and Wren Redfield, but he refuses to introduce a bill to the legislature to legalize a casino for them. Wren Redfield dies that night of a broken neck after falling down the stairs at Melanie’s holiday flotilla party; shortly thereafter, she and Ashley find Buddy Henry’s body in a house for sale that Melanie is showing. Someone’s apparently out to get Melanie, but who? Why?

The plot is fairly laid out, though a bit too much depends on the conclusion in explaining relationships. After leisurely movement through the story, the conclusion seems a bit rushed.

Characters are believable, if not highly developed. Of Buddy Henry, Ashley says: “Henry was much too conservative for my tastes, one of those politicians whose philosophy was that big business could regular [sic] itself, that a free market place would ensure they operated ethically, not cut corners, preserve the environment, pay workers more than minimum wage, yada yada. I didn’t buy into his flimflam. Either he was very, very naive, or the developers had bought, paid for, and now owned his soul.”

Sense of place is far and away the strongest element of the series. “The property known as Airlie was part of a 640-acre land grant from King George II in 1735. A little less than two centuries later, in 1901, Sarah Jones, wife of Pembroke Jones, created the formal gardens. The Joneses were wealthy industrialists well known for their exuberant entertaining and love of lavish parties. Tales of Mrs. Jones’ [sic] inventiveness include a party where she had platforms created in the live oak trees. Guests enjoyed dinners in the tree tops on tables set with fine linens and china. Famous entertainers such as The Great Caruso came to entertain Sarah and Pembroke’s friends who traveled to Wilmington from Newport and New York by private railroad car. Many believe the expression, “Keeping up with the Joneses,’ originated with Sarah and Pembroke Jones.” Though there is little Southern speech patterns, the Southern sense of history and family are spot-on.

MURDER AT THE HOLIDAY FLOTILLA is a good read. (B)
 
“The Adventure of The Dauphin’s Doll” is Ellery Queen’s short story in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, the holiday anthology edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. It occurs mostly on Christmas Eve.

On December 23, Inspector Richard Queen is deep in his cooking for Christmas dinner, and his son Ellery Queen is busy creating beautiful and unusual wrappings for gifts. Attorney John S. Bondling arrives unexpectedly to implore the Queens’ help. As executor for Cytherea Ypson, he’s charged with displaying her fabulous doll collection at Nash’s Department Store on Christmas Eve, including The Dauphin Doll, presented by Louis XVI to his son Louis Charles, an ivory figure of the Dauphin in genuine court robes and a circlet of gold set with a flawless blue diamond larger than the Hope Diamond. After the exhibit, he’s to auction the collection and use the funds to benefit orphan children. However, the Dauphin Doll is the only valuable doll, and he’s had a visit from Comus, the brilliant thief who’s thumbed his nose at the police for more than five years. Comus tells him that he’ll steal the doll, and he calls the Queens’ apartment to emphasize his intentions. Inspector Queen mounts what is thought to be an impregnable defense of the doll, there are some small glitches but, when the doll is retrieved from its display at the end of the day, it’s a copy. How on earth did Comus steal the doll? Who is Comus? As Christmas Eve passes into Christma Day, Ellery explains who Comus is and how he carried it off.

The language in “The Adventure of The Dauphin’s Doll” reminds me of DorothyL. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey novels in its use of tags from foreign languages and tone lofty to the point of silliness. As expected for an Ellery Queen story, the plot drives the story, which is based on what seems to be an impossible crime. The device used to account for the disappearance of the doll has been done before.

There’s little characterization, and most of that is conveyed through details of setting: “Then began the interminable day, dies irae, the last shopping day before Christmas. This is traditionally the day of the inert, the procrastinating, the undecided, and the forgetful, sucked at last into the mercantile machine by the perpetual pump of Time. If there was peace on earth, it descends only afterward; and at no time, on the part of anyone embroiled, is there good will toward men. As Miss Porter expresses it, a cat fight in a bird cage would be more Christian.” (295)

OK, but not very memorable. (C)
 
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