Readingomnivore Reviews

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REKINDLING MOTIVES is the second in Elaine Orr’s mystery series featuring Jolie Gentil, real estate appraiser in Ocean Valley, New Jersey. It was published in 2011 as a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It’s set at Christmastime, but the holiday plays no significant part in the story. Weather conditions are mentioned, but there’s little sense of physical place or of atmosphere.

In the process of appraising the house Gracie Fisher Allen inherited from her grandparents, Jolie (pronounced Zho-Lee Zhan-Tee, and don’t forget it) discovers a man’s skeleton in an old wardrobe in the attic. The body had been Richard Tillotson, last seen in October 1929, but his cleaned skeleton is surrounded by clothing dating from the 1940-50s. How did he die, and where was the body before the remains went into the wardrobe? Jolie pokes around and discovers that former teacher Mary Doris Millner had been Richard’s girl-friend. With permission from Gracie, Jolie takes old photograph albums to show the Mary Doris, who’s living in a nursing home, physically frail but mentally acute. She’s convinced that Richard had been murdered by his brother-in-law Peter Fisher. Then Mary Doris is poisoned with methyl alcohol the night after Jolie’s visit. Is there a connection between deaths so far apart? Jolie is determined to find it.

There’s little direct characterization in REKINDLING MOTIVES, though Jolie, Scoobie, and Aunt Madge are believably developed through their actions. Jolie’s getting over much of the emotional baggage from her failed marriage, and she’s becoming more invested in Ocean Valley as she’s conscripted into leading the First Presbyterian Church’s Food Pantry Committee. A cute on-going story line about chipmunks brought into Aunt Madge’s B&B by her dogs Mister Rogers and Miss Piggy reveals just what kind of person Aunt Madge is. Jolie is less inclined to TSTL moments, and she does share information as she finds it with Sergeant Morehouse of the Ocean Valley PD. Scoobie’s Christian name turns out to be Adam, but his family name still is not given; neither is that of Jolie’s best girl friend Ramona. Too many characters are names without more than an identifying tag. Not every inhabitant in the town needs to be included in every story.

The plot is on the verge of being unfair.

Mary Doris’s murderer has a logical place in the story, hinging as it does on the relationship between the Tillotsons, the Fishers, and the Milners, and is mentioned in passing a couple of times before the climax, but there’s no reason to suspect that person of even being in Ocean Valley at times relevant to Mary Doris’s death or other events. REKINDLING MOTIVES is a reasonable read, nothing spectacular. (B- / C+)

 

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THE CELTIC DAGGER is the first in Jill Paterson’s mystery series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Fitzjohn of the Sydney, Australia, CID and his legman, Sergeant Betts. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2012.

Archaeologist Alexander Wearing is stabbed to death in his office the night following a dinner in his honor given by his colleagues in the Archaeology Department at the University of Sydney. Dogmatic and tight-fisted, Alex Wearing had been at odds with several men in his department, including his brother James Wearing (even though their specialities do not put them in direct competition) and Tristan Harrow; he’s been seeing Simon Rhodes, with whom he was at university, frequently, though they’d not been particularly friends. Fitzjohn’s annual leave is cancelled so that he can lead the murder investigation. He’s assisted by James Wearing, who’s unwilling to let go until he understands what’d been happening to his brother who, inexplicably, has removed three priceless artifacts, including the Celtic dagger with which he’d been stabbed to death, from the Australian Museum, has borrowed money extensively, and had been pressuring James for them to sell the family home at Cragleigh in the Blue Mountains that they’d inherited jointly from their grandparents. Blackmail, two past deaths, art thefts, and affairs come to light before the killer is identified.

THE CELTIC DAGGER reads much like a mystery from the Golden Age. The plot is well crafted, definitely the driving force in the story. It’s an interesting combination of police procedural--a major villain is clearly indicated, so the question is how can Fitzjohn, with James’s help, nab him--and the mystery of who killed Alex Wearing.

Paterson plays fair with appropriate clues to the killer and the motive, so an experienced reader may pick up on “who done it.”

There’s not much direct characterization, but Paterson is effective in showing characters through their actions and especially through James’s thoughts and feelings. Fitzjohn is a believable protagonist. He’s elderly, rotund, balding, a 30-year-copper whose wife Edith died the previous year, so he’s burying himself in work. He knows archaeology and painting, loves music, and decompresses from the stress of his job by tending the orchids Edith had loved. James Wearing is an attractive man, recovering from the death of his artist wife Louise two years before in a hit-and-run, beginning to take notice of a graduate student in the department, overwhelmed by the need to know what happened. He’s a bit too facile for my taste in the speed with which he deals with learning that his wife had been murdered. Other major characters are realistic though, to my mind, too many characters have no essential function in the plot and are sketches or names only.

Since I’m not familiar with the geography of Sydney, I would have appreciated more emphasis on the setting. Opportunities for atmospheric passages are largely ignored. Still, THE CELTIC DAGGER is a solid read, and I will be reading more of the series. (B)

 

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Greg Scowen’s THE SPANISH HELMET was available as a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2011. Its premise is an interesting one--was New Zealand discovered and settled by Europeans prior to the visit of the Dutch and settlement by the British, perhaps even before the arrival of the Maori? The plot is framed by entries from the journal of Francisco de Hoces, captain of the San Lesmes, a caravel in the fleet under the command of Loaisa; the fleet left La Caruna 24 July 1525. Scowen has created a believable journal of events for a sixteenth-century journey of exploration.

The plot hinges on Dr. Matthew Cameron of the University of South-West England being called by old family friend Warren Rennie, to come to New Zealand to authenticate an unprecedented archaeological artifact. Rennie is obsessed with the idea that Celts had settled New Zealand before the arrival of the Maori, and he’s paranoid about both the Department of Cultural Identity and the National Information Security Office (equivalent to the U.S. National Security Agency) suppressing evidence of alternative theories to the “official” history of settlement. Cameron drops everything and goes, in the process meeting on the plane Aimee Kingsbridge, a history Ph.D. student at the University of Auckland, with whom he shares his adventures in New Zealand in pursuit of pre-settlement European contact, another theory of which is the Spanish. He’s involved with secret agents, reunion with his long-lost father, revelations about his own background, murder, and betrayal before his quest ends.

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

I will try not to give away too much of the plot of THE SPANISH HELMET because the plot itself is an interesting one with many possibilities. I wish Scowen had included some suggestions for further reading. That being said, I question some of his archaeology. He gives as a bit of evidence to support pre-British contact the skull of a European woman found in New Zealand dated by mitochondrial DNA to having lived between 1619 and 1689. It’s unlikely that mitochondrial DNA would be the dating method of choice on material so young, and it’s unlikely that it could arrive at so precise a date on young materials. There’s no mention of other, more standard dating techniques in use. The plot is over the top, especially with its two surprise endings.

Where THE SPANISH HELMET falls far short is in characterization, both in Dr. Matthew Cameron, the protagonist, and in Warren Rennie, the main antagonist. It’s simply not probable that Rennie would not know about the research work of Andy Robertson, Cameron’s biological father, who’d been early supporter of the Spanish settlement theory. It’s a toss-up whether he believes the Celtic settlement theory he’s obsessed to prove or if his only motivation is financial and/or racist.

Dr. Matthew Cameron is even more troublesome. He’s presented as a 34-year-old Ph.D. in history from a prestigious Swiss university, working on artifacts recovered from the wreck of a Spanish galleon in the Bay of Biscay with his colleague Julia McKenzie. His father disappeared when he was four years old, and Warren Rennie has been his surrogate father, supposedly paying for his education. So it’s not improbable that, when Rennie calls, Cameron goes to him. By training, a historian must possess critical thinking skills and must rely on evidence: documentary, oral tradition, geological, artifacts. But Cameron doesn’t question ANYTHING Rennie tells him, ever. He allows himself to be picked up by Aimee Kingsbridge without questioning her bona fides. His romantic reaction to Aimee is more like a young girl’s than a grown man’s: “He stood up and reached down to help her up. For the second time that evening, Aimee and Matthew were connected. As she took his hand, electric shocks ran through his body. Matt had never felt like this before. He wanted the night to last forever. He wanted to hold her forever. She walked back to the hotel holding his hand the whole way. He floated. As they said goodnight, Aimee leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek, thanking him for being so understanding. It might never be washed again.” (158)

In addition to Cameron’s naivete, his reactions are inappropriate. When he makes contact with his biological father Andy Robertson, he discovers that, instead of Rennie’s having paid for his education as he’d believed, Robertson had done so. His reaction to Rennie is not changed by knowledge of years of deception and misplaced gratitude. Cameron’s been overjoyed to meet his biological father and excited to have the chance to continue his research, yet when Robertson dies unexpectedly, he doesn’t go to the funeral. But when Aimee’s reveals her identity, he overreacts to her necessary deception.

THE SPANISH HELMET is replete with New Zealand place names, but atmosphere is not well developed. The maps accompanying excerpts from de Hoces’s journal are largely illegible on Kindle--too small and with too little contrast. As formatted, paragraphs are indented only one space. The writing style, as shown above, is elementary. At 383 pages, the book is much longer than the story, which continues after the finding of the journal to the point of anticlimax. Use of 24-hour clock (military time) in the journal is anachronistic.

The shame of THE SPANISH HELMET is that, with better characterization and judicious editing of the plot, it could have been an excellent mystery/thriller. As is, the plot’s overwrought and the characters unbelievable. (D+)

 

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MISS BINGLEY’S REVENGE is the first book in Wendy Soliman’s Mrs. Darcy Entertains series published in 2013. It is a sequel to Jane Austen’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, set some six months after the marriage of Elizabeth Bennet and Ftzwilliam Darcy.

The Darcys are entertaining at Pemberley with a small house party. Their guests include Jane and Charles Bingley, Caroline Bingley, Louisa and Mr. Hurst, Kitty Bennet, Colonel Fitzwilliam and fellow officers Major Halstead and Captain Turner, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and Georgiana Darcy. Lizzy is nervous about her first hostessing event, and she’s almost certain that she’s pregnant with their first child. She hasn’t yet told Darcy because she wants to be sure and also not to take attention away from Jane’s announcement that she is increasing. Lizzy and Darcy are passionately happy. The only apparent problem is the unexpected arrival at Pemberley of Lydia Bennet Wickham. Wickham, caught in an affair with a fellow officer’s wife, has been forced to sell out of the Regulars; he’s departed for London, where he loses the money gambling, sending Lydia to the Darcys as a step toward getting more money from them.

Caroline Bingley has convinced herself that Darcy’s public formality with Lizzy indicates that he is unhappy and regrets having married her. Caroline believes that, if she can somehow compromise Lizzy, Darcy will divorce her and will turn to his proper love, Caroline herself. To that end, she befriends Lydia and uses her to conspire with Wickham. Their plan almost succeeds, but fortunately Darcy has more faith in and love for Elizabeth than either of the conspirators expect.

MISS BINGLEY’S REVENGE is good fan fiction. It is faithful to the characters of the original. The characters added are appropriate, individual, and integral to the story line. The main change is in the character of Caroline Bingley, whose obsession with Darcy and her desire to be mistress of Pemberley has progressed to the point of delusion: “...for the first time [Caroline] had doubts about the extreme action she intended to take to save [Darcy] from his momentary lapse of judgement. Then he turned to face her and his lips quirked, almost as though he could read her thoughts and was giving her permission to act for his salvation and their happiness. It was the sign she had been waiting for, and Caroline’s lingering doubts evaporated. Provided Wickham arrived before the party came to an end, she would find a way to use his desperation and Lizzy’s loyalty to her family to orchestrate her downfall. She chanced another glance at Darcy’s dear profile, relaxed and smiling at something Mr.Gardiner had just said to him, and became absolutely determined. She would use her wits and guile to save this gentleman from his own folly, if it was the last thing she ever did.”

Soliman gives added scope to the character of Kitty Bennet, who’s matured in manners and understanding after spending much of the time since their wedding with Jane and Charles Bingley. She’s developed the ability to see beyond physical appearance and to value inner worth. Lydia Bennet Wickham shows the most growth as, after Wickham’s arrival in Lambton and his scheming with Caroline Bingley, she realizes his faults as a husband and a man. She regrets her part against Lizzy, and sets out to keep Wickham in line henceforth.

Soliman definitely does not write like Jane Austen. Austen’s ironic humor is lacking, and the “feel” is modern. Soliman’s detail of the Darcys’ sex lives is more explicit than necessary, and there are subtle anachronisms in word choice. A few errors slipped through editing--“discrete” and “discreet” are two different words; problems with “lie” and “lay”; whether the Pemberley ladies are visiting Kympton or Lambton--but they do not impede ease of reading.

MISS BINGLEY’S REVENGE is well-written and enjoyable, enough that I will look for the second book in the series, COLONEL FITZWILLIAM’S DILEMMA. (A-)

 

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Kathryn R. Wall's husband died of Alzheimer's in 2011, and ST. JOHN'S FOLLY is her first book since. Without overburdening the reader, she includes much information on the disease and its sufferers.

ST. JOHN’S FOLLY is the latest to date in Kathryn R. Wall’s excellent series featuring Bay Tanner of Hilton Head Island. It was published in 2013 and is available in both print and e-format.

Wall has created an authentic community of believable characters to people her stories. Bay Tanner is a former forensic accountant who now owns Simpson and Tanner, Inquiry Agents. Widowed by the murder of her first husband Rob Tanner, she is now married to her former brother-in-law Redmond Tanner. Red had been a Deputy Sheriff for many years before going to work for Simpson and Tanner. Erik Whiteside is Bay’s young partner and resident ITT expert. He’s engaged to Stephanie Wyler, office manager for Simpson and Tanner, daughter of Bay’s former partner Ben Wyler, who was killed on an earlier case. Lavinia Smalls, long time housekeeper and caregiver to Judge Simpson, Bay’s father, still lives at Presqu’isle, Bay’s family home, and cares for Julia, the Judge’s natural daughter. Julia suffers from PSTD that arrested her mental development at age ten, when she saw her mother murdered. A major component in these characters’ seeming to be real people is their emotional baggage. Just like us all, they have problems for which there are no easy solutions--problems with which they must deal while continuing both personal and professional lives.

The main story line in ST. JOHN’S FOLLY involves Malcolm St. John, an elderly African-American who owns a run-down bungalow on the beachfront on Hilton Head, the real estate worth untold millions. Mr. St. John is 82 years old and suffering from Alzheimer’s. His nephew Hubbard Danforth and niece Clarista Gaines own half interest in the property; they want to sell the property to pay for the assisted living facility that Mr. St. John needs. Danforth hires Simpson and Tanner to observe his uncle and gather evidence as to his mental capacity. Bay soon finds Mr. St. John hit on the head in his back yard; Erick observes a real estate developer Cynthia Danforth Merrill hanging about Mr. St. John’s house. She’s Danforth’s ex-wife. When she’s found dead in her hotel room, Bay immediately assumes that the two attacks are related, connected through the property. Complications multiply before the murder is solved.

Personal problems also abound. A stalker is leaving messages on Bay’s car, at first romantic notes sounding like a teenaged crush, then escalating into threats, a dead squirrel on her deck, vandalism, and prowling around the house. How seriously should she take this? Bay is also worried about her sister Julia. Julia’s caregiver Miss Lizzie Shelly has recently died in a fall. “Suddenly all my old fears resurfaced. Neddie and Lavinia be damned, I knew Julia was capable of having pushed Miss Lizzie down the stairs. I’d seen it on her face in the dim light of the attic, that atavistic smile, almost one of triumph, as if she’d gotten exactly what she wanted with the death of her caregiver: a permanent place at Presqu’isle with no one to interfere with her new life as Lavinia’s darling.” Bay is afraid for Lavinia, who raised her and was much more a mother than Bay’s flesh and blood parent. Red and Bay also face the challenge presented by Red’s ex-wife Sarah’s breast cancer. Without telling Red, she’s been undergoing chemotherapy and has been unable to care for their children. How do Red and Bay deal with this, and how will it affect their relationship?

My main criticisms of ST. JOHN’S FOLLY is its excess.

There’s an unlikely plot twist that seems superfluous to a perfectly understandable motive. The identity of the stalker is heavily foreshadowed, enough that it should not surprise an experienced reader. Quite a few characters are mentioned once in passing, with little or no development, even though two of them seem ideal suspects with potential reasons for the attacks. Bay persists in TSTL moments, including not telling Red, Erik, or the police about the stalker prowling around her house, going alone to meet a potential killer without telling anyone where she’s going, and, after figuring out where the kidnapper is holding Mr. St. John, setting up a rescue operation without notifying the police ahead of time. This ain’t her first rodeo!

Sense of place is good, though ST. JOHN’S FOLLY is not as evocative of the Low Country as most of the other books in the series. “...The back yard [was] mostly overgrown with scrub palmetto. The only clear areas lay beneath the live oak and its crumbling tree house and the swatch of dead grass that bordered the bungalow. The sky out over the ocean had melted into a pale aqua with tinges of rose and orange as the placid surface of the water reflected the last rays of the sun sinking over the mainland. Somewhere off to our left, a squirrel chattered and was answered by the high-pitched screech of an owl.”

Still, ST. JOHN’S FOLLY is a solid read, recommended. (B)

 

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Denise Weeks’s MURDER BY THE MARFA LIGHTS was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. Its first person narrator is Ariadne French of Dallas, Texas. She works for Aqualife Tech Support, The Fishes Lifeline. She’s badly in debt from co-signing papers to help pay for her nephew’s unsuccessful cancer treatment and from financing by credit card the dreams of her boyfriend Aaron Beecroft. Aaron had taken off months before while her nephew was dying, and she’s heard nothing from him. She receives a telephone call from Gil Rousseau, who’s the pastor of the Church After God’s Heart, telling her that Aaron has died near Marfa in West Texas and that she is his sole beneficiary. It appears that he’s left a substantial estate. So off Ariadne goes to take care of arrangements and to pick up Aaron’s belongings. She flies into Midland and is picked up for the trip to Marfa by Rousseau, who is a hottie and acts attracted to Ariadne.

I gave up on MURDER BY THE MARFA LIGHTS at 8% despite the intrigue of its title, for several reasons. One is that for a narrator born in Dallas, Texas, a Southern Baptist preacher, and a setting of West Texas, there is absolutely no sense of being in Texas. Both story-telling voice and Southern speech patterns are missing. Another is that the tone has already begun to be preachy, overtly religious.

Most importantly, Ariadne seems to be a twit. She accepts everything Gil Rousseau tells her over the phone without verifying anything about Aaron’s death before she goes haring off to West Texas alone. Her only assurance of Rousseau’s bona fides is a call to a number he provides, to speak to an anonymous church secretary who confirms that Rousseau is who he says he is. Ariadne’s sister Zoe had tried to caution her, Ariadne has doubts herself when she meets Rousseau, but she still goes on off with him. I don’t like dumb protagonists.

Two somewhat redeeming features in MURDER BY THE MARFA LIGHTS are its humor and its atmospherics. Ariadne says, “The flight was what frequent flyers call ‘uneventful,’ but that was because I had kept a steady upward pressure on both armrests.” (10) Of the trip to Marfa, she says, “We zipped out of the airport, Gil navigating the mazy streets onto a two-lane highway. Not a Dallas-style expressway, but a road typical of West Texas. Rural Texas. Winding two-lane state highways following the property lines that once divided two family farms. Armadillos belly-up on the side of the road wearing dully surprised expressions. Scorpions.” (13) Too little, too late.

 

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FAMILY BLOOD: THE TRUE STORY OF THE YOM KIPPUR MURDERS: ONE FAMILY’S GREED, LOVE AND RAGE, by Marvin J. Wolf and Larry Attebery, was originally published in 1993, then reissued in 2013 as a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It is the story of the murder of Vera and Gerald Woodman by criminals hired by their sons Neil and Stewart Woodman 25 September 1985, the evening of Yom Kippur, in Bel Air, California.

FAMILY BLOOD details the years-long investigation that joined the Los Angeles Police Department, the Las Vegas Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in unusual harmony to convict the Woodman Brothers; brothers Steven and Robert (“Jesse”) Homick; Tony “Sonny” Mojay; and Mike Dominguez not only of first degree murder under special circumstances but also racketeering under the RICO act. Stewart Woodman and Mike Dominguez would turn State’s evidence and testify against the others to avoid the death penalty; Steven Homick was convicted in Las Vegas of an unrelated triple homicide there, for which he received a death sentence.

It’s hard to know how faithful to the facts Wolf and Attebery are in FAMILY BLOOD. They include conversations between family members, the brothers, and the criminals, as direct quotations with no indication of where the information came from. The only member of the criminal conspiracy who cooperated with the authors was Stewart Woodman, not a source expected to be unbiased. They had cooperation from the officers involved in the case: LAPD Jack Holder and Richard Crotsley, Las Vegas PD Tom Dillard and Bob Leonard; Jerry Daugherty of the FBI; Patrick Dixon and John Zajer of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office who prosecuted the cases. Rick Wilson, an executive in the Woodman’s Manchester Productions plastic company, offered some insights in a review of the print edition of FAMILY BLOOD.

Gerald Woodman’s behavior setting the stage for his murder is sordid: systematic tax evasion; unethical treatment of employees, suppliers, customers and competitors; systematic skimming of cash from the business; fraud against lenders; deliberately destroying his son’s business; multiple affairs; gambling; outbursts of rage; senseless acts of revenge; emotional and physical abuse of his sons, who duplicated many of the behaviors in their own lives. Vera Woodman died because the company had a $500,000 life insurance policy payable to the business, and her sons needed the money. FAMILY BLOOD can be read as a cautionary tale on the power of money to corrupt.

Some problems in the Kindle edition include spacing, a map that is too small and mostly illegible, and photographs that are too small and too dark to add much to the text. The authors do, however, have a readable narrative in which there’s little problem in keeping a large multitude of characters straight. (B)

 

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Eric Wright’s SMOKE DETECTOR is one of his Detective Inspector Charlie Salter series set in Toronto. It was originally published in 1984; it is available as a Kindle download in A CHARLIE SALTER OMNIBUS.

Charlie Salter is a sympathetic protagonist. After a meteoric rise early in his career, Salter was dead-ended when he backed the wrong candidate for Chief Superintendent. Everyone else’s being busy got him a chance to solve a murder case in THE NIGHT THE GODS SMILED, which brings him positive attention again; when Homicide is again busy, he’s assigned to investigate the death of Cyril Drecker, whose body was found in the burnt remains of his antiques store, cum junk shop. He’d died of smoke inhalation in an arson fire, so it’s officially murder. He’s assigned to work with another dead-ender, Sergeant Frank Gatenby, “The Oldest Sergeant in the Force,” sidelined by his prematurely white hair and avuncular attitude. As Salter and Gatenby investigate, they discover Drecker as a small-time cheat and a ladies’ man, inclined to shortcuts and taking advantage. The only thing unusual in his immediate past is the purchase of a carved Japanese box and the subsequent appearance of an elderly Japanese man who purchased it and is looking for its contents. Who is he, and does he have anything to do with Drecker’s death? Salter and Gatenby have to delve all the way back to World War II and the internment of Japanese-Canadians to discover Drecker’s killer and the motive.

I like this series despite its age. It reads as a classic mystery, one in which the truth is reached through questioning, listening, knowledge of human nature, and logic. Forensics haven’t taken over as driving force. Wright plays fair with clues, though in SMOKE DETECTOR Salter does withhold the name of a person put into the middle of the murder for a couple of chapters. The identity of the killer comes as somewhat of a surprise, though the motivation is solidly presented when that character is first introduced. It’s satisfying that, with the successful conclusion of the Drecker case, Salter has his career back on track.

Charlie Salter reminds me a bit of Tom Barnaby in the Midsomer Murder series in the importance of his family. “Salter had married above himself--his wife came from and Establshment family in Prince Edward Island, and he met her and wooed her while he was recovering from the wreck of his first marriage. His own background was solidly lower-class. His father had been a maintenance man for the local streetcar company; his mother came from England at fourteen, shipped out by an orphanage to work as a domestic servant. Salter was wary of his wife’s class, and his own middle-class status, and he kept his distance from both by calling the garden the ‘yard’ and by eating his dinner at noon and his supper at night.” (222-3) Secondary story lines in SMOKE DETECTOR include a scare about Salter’s health and 14-year-old Angus’s stash of skin magazines. These add a sense of real life. I appreciate Wright’s economy with number of characters.

Toronto as a setting is pleasantly different, and Wright is good with atmospheric description. “As the noise from the traffic on Parkway faded, Salter took the time to enjoy the quiet lushness of the area. Autumn was at its peak, and there were leaves everywhere, enough on the trees to canopy the sidewalk, and still piled in brown and gold heaps along the sides of the road. The grass was green again after its battle with the summer sun, and the gardens still had enough bloom to make a worthy climax to the season. Some of the houses were surrounded by simple lawns, usually set with two or three trees, or clumps of white and yellow birches like the one outside Salter’s bedroom window. Others tried for more elaborate effects; one house was enclosed on two sides with a superb if slightly incongruous English rose garden.” (344)

SMOKE DETECTOR definitely recommended. (A-)

 

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Victoria Abbott’s THE CHRISTIE CAPER was a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2013. It features as first person narrator Jordan Bingham, new M.A. in English reared by her family of Kelly uncles whose interactions with the police are involuntary and adversarial. Faced with maxed-out credit cards thanks to her ex- boyfriend and with her student loans, Jordan is pleased to be employed by Vera Van Alst, the most hated woman in Harrison Falls, New York, as a researcher. Not only does she get paid, but Jordan has an apartment in the Van Alst mansion and she takes her meals, deliciously prepared by Signora Fiammetta Panetone, with her employer. Vera Van Alst is a rabid book collector who’s heard that there’s an unknown play by Agatha Christie written in December 1926, during the period in which she was officially missing. Vera wants the play, but a homeless man shoved her previous researcher Alex Fine under a subway train in NYC, so she’s starting over with Jordan. Jordan is immediately suspicious that this may be a con, but when people are attacked, she knows that there are unexpected ramifications to the case.

The plot to THE CHRISTIE CAPER has at least one major medical improbability that must be gotten over. How likely is it that Karen Smth, rare book dealer who’s attacked and left for dead with head injuries, not expected to live, comes out of surgery into a regular hospital room (not ICU or PCU), is conscious and coherent enough to tell Jordan about her dog, and then the next day is put into an induced coma to prevent swelling of her brain? I don’t think it happens that way in real life. Still, after that glitch, the plot flows well. Abbott does a good job with red herrings, managing a bit of a surprise at who’s the mastermind behind the events of the plot.

Jordan Bingham is an interesting protagonist--honest in a family of genial crooks, eager to prove herself, self-confident. “I was grateful to my uncles for raising me and making sure I got an education up to the point where the money dried up in recent years, for a number of reasons we won’t go into here. But they trained me to make unpopular decisions. If you’re a Kelly in Harrison Falls, you need to be touch. And sometimes marginally reckless.” “I wasn’t sure what I’d find at Karen’s or what I’d have to do to find it. Be prepared, that’s what my uncles always taught me, although they’re no Boy Scouts. They’d also trained me in self-defense, evasive driving and the age-old act of getting past locked doors. I grabbed my lock picks, a gift for my sixteenth birthday.” Jordan pulls some TSTL moments that lead to her being suspected by the police, perhaps included to indicate her inexperience with crime. Other characters are individualized. Abbott is conservative with the number of characters, in that all have essential roles in the plot.

Abbott is also good at creating atmosphere. “...this [the library at Van Alst House] was an altar to the book gods. It was hard not to be impressed. I didn’t know what had the most impact: the rosewood shelving, the rolling library ladders, the mezzanine floor with the ornate spiral wrought-iron staircases at each end, the carved moldings, the scent of well-loved books, or the silky Aubusson rugs in a soft faded palette of rose, sage, and aqua. More to the point, there must have been twenty thousand books there, each one obviously cherished by the collector. This place was Disney World for the book lover. I inhaled the intoxicating scent of old paper, polished leather, and money well spent.” As an added bonus, several of Signora Panetone’s Italian recipes are included.

THE CHRISTIE CURSE is a strong first novel in a literary-based series.

I’m definitely going to follow it up. (B)

 

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LADY FORTESCUE STEPS OUT is a Regency novel by Marion Chesney writing as M. C. Beaton. It was originally printed in 1992 and made available in e-format in 2010. It is the first in her Poor Relation series.

Lady Fortescue has been widowed twenty years; she’s a poor relation of the Duke of Rowcester, reduced to trying to steal silver candlesticks from him in order to eat. All she has left is a large house on Bond Street. As she sits in Hyde Park and contemplates her future, or lack thereof, elderly Colonel Sandhurst faints at her feet from hunger. She takes him home to feed him, and a plan is born. He mill move into her empty home, and they will pool resources. Soon they are joined by pretty young widow Mrs. Eliza Budley; spinster Miss Letitia Tonks; Miss Harriet James, who had part of a London Season and managed to attract the Duke of Rowcester, but then abruptly disappeared from Society; and Sir Phlip Sommerville, old rogue and thief who’s perfected “liberating” small items and food from the wealthy relatives on whom he descends. Their joint efforts are keeping them alive, but their prospects are still bleak until they decide to open a small exclusive hotel in Lady Fortescue’s house, embarrassing their wealthy relatives to buy them out rather than suffer the indignity of having relatives “in Trade.” When the Duke of Rowcester intervenes, he discovers “his” Harriet James; complications ensue, including the burning of the hotel The Poor homRelation, but true love triumphs.

Beaton writes of a particular aspect of Society life in the Regency period, but her tone on the situation is modern. “The poor relations of aristocrats who lived in London had a lonely and dreary existence, living on the charity of their noble relatives; or on some meagre allowance from a family trust. Once a year, they were taken out and dusted down and conveyed to some stately home where they made themselves as inconspicuous as possible, hoping to be ignored, hoping that regular meals and fires would last as long as possible. But the day would always come when they were packed up and delivered back to London and a life of genteel cold and hunger. What kept them from helping each other, what kept them apart, was pride.”

Beaton is much more realistic in her presentation of actual conditions of life in Regency London than most writers in the genre. “It was a warm evening, with a pale-green sky. The view was magnificent, the curve of the river to Somerset House and St. Paul’s very fine, the glittering bosom of the stream covered by barges, sailboats, and watermen’s wherries, skimming about like dragonflies on a pond. The wherrymen and sailors were all singing, and more music came from a merry party setting off by boat to Vauxhall, and another party amusing themselves by blowing French horns under the arches of the bridge to awaken the strange echoes. The air was charged with excitement, that restless feeling that London always had as its thousands set out to drink and gamble and dance, a devil-take-tomorrow feeling, all too understandable in an age when death daily stalked the streets in the guise of every plague and illness, from cholera to smallpox.”

Except for their spunk in acting to change their miserable existence, the characters in LADY FORTESCUE STEPS OUT are standard Regency: handsome aristocrat who must learn that love is more important than title or position; formidable elderly woman; spirited beautiful heroine; a scoundrel. It’s a pleasant enough read, but it’s not memorable. (B)

 

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Gale Deitch’s A FINE FIX was a free or inexpensive Kindle download originally published in 2013. It features Trudie Fine who, with her partner and best friend Zachary Cohen, owns and operates A Fine Fix catering service. While catering a birthday celebration for Trudie’s college roommate Ally Schwarz’s father, Mr. Schwartz dies of anaphylactic shock from a peanut allergy. Trudy and Zach had been warned about the allergy, and Trudie is certain that the peanuts did not come from A Fine Fix’s food. So who killed him?

*****SPOILERS*****SPOILERS*****

Trudie Fine is the first person narrator, so she’s the only character who’s developed, but that’s not saying much. She thinks herself an expert because she watches TV cop shows, but she interferes with chain of evidence; doesn’t tell the police what she knows and suspects, even though she winds up in bed with Detective Goldman; leaves her cell phone turned off when she’s trying to get in touch with Goldman with information, then when he finally does reach her, postpones telling him. When she’s scared to death searching her apartment after Goldman doesn’t show up as promised, she opens the door without checking to see who’s there. Is anyone surprised that the killer nearly gets her?

Trudie isn’t the only twit in A FINE FIX. Ally Schwartz had been adopted as a baby. There’s no indication that she’s ever tried to get in touch with her biological family. But suddenly a year before, a man whom she’s never met calls her, identifies himself as her half-brother, and she accepts him at his word, no questions asked. She never meets him but pours out all her longings for Zach and her frustration with her father when he refuses to refinance her restaurant, lost through her own infatuation with her restaurant manager who loved her and ripped her off. Is this likely? However, she is useful as a red herring suspect.

There are significant improbabilities in the plot. For one, how would a bartender working for an agency be guaranteed to get himself sent to the Schwartz’s party? Yet Bradley/Steven does. This character might as well have a bulls-eye on his back, his behavior is so suspicious from the git-go. He’s supposedly been stalking Ally for eight years, which would mean since high school age for him. How did he find out about her--she’s older and had been given up by her birth mother immediately. How does he even learn he’s got a sister, let alone who she is? The most improbable item of all comes from my watching the Food Network. Trudie is able to grab her beloved Santoku knife out of the dishwasher and stabs Bradley/Steven to save herself and Goldman. A chef NEVER puts his/her fine knives in a dishwasher--they are handwashed.

Setting is established through place names and streets, but there’s no sense of place, no atmospherics. Characterization is minimal. None of the characters are particularly believable or appealing. Plot is telegraphed, and solution of the murder depends on the coincidence of Trudie’s overhearing things and her blundering around. Apparently Goldman is the only policeman working Schwarz’s murder, even though he’d been a wealthy, socially connected businessman in DC. The recipes aren’t anything special, either.

I realize that I’m being picky, but I’m frustrated because A FINE FIX could have been a good mystery. It needs major editing that it didn’t get. Can’t recommend it. (D)

 

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Shannon Hill’s CRAZY, VA was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. Published in 2007, it is the first in her mystery series featuring Sheriff Littlepage Eller and her Deputy Cat Boris.

Many writers can create believable characters, but some are able to create a vibrant community that, if it doesn’t actually exist outside fiction, should. Shannon Hill has done that with Crazy, Virginia. She physically locates Crazy, Virginia, about forty minutes’ drive from both Charlottesville and Lynchburg: “The forest slides gracefully from summer greens to autumn reds and oranges, with bright gold here and there, dark patches of evergreens, all against a sky that goes from a pale topaz summer blue to a vivid sapphire. There’s no way to explain it, any more than there’’s an explanation for why the Blue Ridge looks blue. Always blue, even in autumn, when it goes sort of purplish, and grayish-blue in winter, and various bluish-greens in spring and summer. People here said it’s pollution (but why then was it the Blue Ridge before anyone dreamt of steam engines, let alone cars?). Or it’s geology. Or it’s refraction. Whatever it is, it means that as you approach the mountains from either direction, there’s a blue tinge to them.” (103-4) Hill also has the ambiance right: “Kim was a victim of what I call the Baptist conspiracy. Let other people worry about the mafia, or gang-related crime. I live in the South. We’ve got Baptists. Their church-women whisper campaigns make J. Edgar Hoover look like an amateur. And anything found in Vogue or, in some cases, Charlottesville, was the lure of the devil and Satan’s snare.” (39)

Sheriff Littlepage Eller, the only known offspring uniting offthe two leading families in Crazy, whose long-lasting feud makes the Montagues and the Capulets look like newbies, is the first person narrator. Reared by her godmother Aunt Marge Turner following the death of her parents, Lil is 35 years old, a summa cum laude graduate of Georgetown University, and former FBI Special Agent. She’s got serious baggage but doesn’t allow it to interfere with her enforcement of the law in Crazy. She’s individual, stubborn and smart, and wants justice for everyone, including the Littlepages and the Ellers, both of whom disown her. Hill surrounds her with a sympathetic group of townspeople. Aunt Marge is a hoot. “Aunt Marge is a long-time bachelorette. A confirmed spinster. Her idea of complimenting men typically runs along the lines of ‘bless his heart’ and ‘he could be worse’. For her to say something like ‘wonderful, caring’ was the equivalent to Gloria Steinem putting on a frilly apron and announcing she had taken Betty Crocker as her patron saint.” (62) I look forward to getting to know them all.

The plot is basic. Along with all the normal crazy, petty crime--mostly involving excess of speed and/or drinking--Lil is confronted with the murder of her first cousin Lisa Littlepage Hunter. Even though the body is found in her jurisdiction, Lil is removed from the case because of the kinship; Chief Rucker of the county police is inept and bungles the investigation. Lisa’s brother Jack Littlepage approaches Lil to find out who killed his sister, which Lll does. It’s straight police procedural, with Hill giving the reader information as Lil uncovers it, so much that an experienced reader can anticipate the identity of the killer. The resolution of the murder case isn’t very satisfactory, in the sense that the malefactor is not brought to justice, but it’s realistic because so few rich criminals are.

Lil is assisted in her crime-fighting duties by a feral cat Boris who, when she feeds him tuna, decides to adopt her, accompanying her everywhere and defending her vigorously. “Any sympathy she [Josie Shifflett] might have won was lost when the story went around she’d thrown Boris into traffic. That Boris escaped without injury wasn’t important. Boris the Deputy Cat gave Crazy that little extra edge of insanity it didn’t really need. Therefore, he was to be treasured, even if some individuals didn’t think much of him, or found his presence in my cruiser to be an embarrassment. When Aunt Marge further spread the tale of my fining Shandra for talking on her cell phone, every parent of every teenager in the county practically cheered. I even got three compliments in the next week’s Gazetteer.” (173-4)

I’ve already ordered the other three books to date in the series. CRAZY, VA is good fun, highly recommended. (A)

 

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Andrew Taylor’s THE MORTAL SICKNESS is the second in his mystery series featuring Jill Francis and Detective Inspector Richard Thornhill. It was published in 1995. Jill is a journalist for the Lydmouth Gazette, owned and managed by Charlotte and Philip Wemyss-Brown; Thornhill is also an in-comer, transferred at his request to his wife’s home area so that their children may know her family.

When Jill arrives at St. John’s Church to measure the medieval Lydmouth Chalice, she and Reverend Alec Sutton discover the murder of Catherine Kymin and the theft of the chalice. There is no physical evidence and no motive, unless there’s some truth in the spate of anonymous letters linking her with Alec Sutton. Surely someone saw something?

At 294 pages, THE MORTAL SICKNESS is longer than the story; fifty pages could have been advantageously cut. The action of the story covers only about a week, but it seems much longer. The identity of the killer and the motive are telegraphed.

None of the characters are particularly attractive personalities, including Jill and Thornhill. Taylor skips about, showing episodes from the point of view of practically every character, producing reader interruptus without adding much to characterization.

Setting for THE MORTAL SICKNESS is after World War II, when rationing is still in effect, since Catherine Kymin has a ration book in her purse, but no specific dates. Nothing in the plot makes this time frame necessary. Because movement between places is important in identifying the killer, a map of locations would have been helpful.

The strongest element is the atmosphere: “Broadwell Drive was a pretty curving cul-de-sac with perhaps thirty houses in it. Those on the left backed on to the grounds of the RAF hospital. Beyond the others were open fields. It was a suburban road, yet the setting was misleadingly rural because on two sides the land rose gently to the hills: on the lower slopes sheep moved like miniature clouds in a lush green sky, and along the ridges of the hills were the darker greens of woodland.” (27)

I tried my best to like THE MORTAL SICKNESS, but I finished it only to find out if my conclusion about the killer’s identity was correct.

(C)

 

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THE KIDNAPPING OF ROSIE DAWN is the first book in Eric Wright’s mystery series featuring Joe Barley. It was published in 2000. Joe Barley is adjunct instructor (to use American terms) in English at Hambleton College in Toronto and part-time private detective who watches people, usually those suspected of insurance fraud. His Portuguese cleaning lady Helena asks him to find out what happened to one of her other ladies, Miss Rosie Dawn, who’s a mistress providing services to her patron in an upscale apartment. Miss Rosie’s been gone two weeks. Joe visits the apartment and discovers nothing not known before.

I gave up on THE KIDNAPPING OF ROSIE DAWN at a fourth of the way through, mainly because the narrator Joe Barley comes across as a pretentious git. Much of what I read concerns the injustice and hypocrisy in the use of part-time instructors for teaching in colleges and universities, especially as expounded by his office mate Richard Costril. Costril does not yet have any role in the disappearance of Rosie Dawn. Barley also produces digs at provincial and federal government in Canada, bilingualism, teaching English, and people who eat marmalade for breakfast instead of cafe au lait and croissants.

I also dislike his telling the story in present tense.

I wanted to like Joe Barley because I am enjoying Eric Wright’s Charlie Salter series, but Joe Barley gets on my last nerve. No grade because book not finished.

 

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Catherine Aird’s AMENDMENT OF LIFE is the latest in her series featuring Detective Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan of the Calleshire CID and his bumptious young legman Detective Sergeant Crosby. It was published in 2012.

Strange things are going on in the Minster in Calleford--a sheep’s head left on Dean Malby Coton’s doorstep, a garroted rabbit on the doorstep of the Right Reverend Bertram Wallingford, the Bishop of Calleford, and a tethered goat in Canon Brian Willoughby’s garden, along with various cabalistic symbols and smaller bones. Calls go out to David Collins and Eric Peterson, partners in Double Felix Lighting Engineers for additional security lights. This is a busy time for Double Felix as they’re already stretched by a son-et-luminere setup for Aumerle Court and by David’s son James’s cancer surgery that’s involved loss of an eye. Then Miss Daphne Pedlinge, owner of Aumerle Court who opposes the light show, sights the body of a woman in the center of the famous maze. She’s Margaret Collins, David’s wife and James’s mother. She’d been poisoned with a sleeping prescription and her body placed in the maze. Everyone knows that the spouse of murder victim is the chief suspect, but Collins’s alibi is backed by the bishop and the dean, as well as his partner. Can Sloan prove he could have been in two places at once? Or is someone else responsible?

The plot is fairly laid out, with a surprise ending that depends on technological understanding. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler. Elements of understated humor enliven the story: “[Sloan] forbore to remind the Superintendent that merely reporting anything was not yet a chargeable offense in anyone’s eyes but his. Not in England, anyway. He couldn’t answer for some police states.” (101)

DCI C. D. (“Seedy” to his colleagues) Sloan is an attractive protagonist. He’s never described physically, though presumably he’s middle-aged. He is tenacious with a good instinct about people and a thorough understanding of human nature. His methods are more traditional than forensics-oriented. “There were those in the Force who thought it rattling good sport to sit at the back of the court and laugh aloud at the evidence of the accused, but Sloan was not one of them. There were other ways of casting doubt on what was said by the guilty, but only after guilt had been firmly established and not before. Fair was fair, even at the police station.” (161-2) Most of the story is seen from Sloan’s point of view. Sloan is sharply contrasted with his boss, Superintendent Leeyes: “Sloan wasn’t quite sure where human rights came into the frame--or whether they should be lumped with all the other do-gooders the Superintendent so disliked--but he did know that Leeyes was all against them wherever they did crop up.” (165)

Despite the opportunities presented by Calleford Minster, the minor manor house of Aumerle Court, and the famous Aumerle maze, Aird does not emphasize the setting; there’s little sense of place. Despite its recent publication, AMENDMENT OF LIFE reads like a Golden Age mystery. (B)

 

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Lauren Carr’ DEAD ON ICE is the first in her Lovers in Crime series featuring Joshua Thornton, prosecuting attorney for Hancock County, West Virginia, and his lover Cameron Gates, Homicide Detective, Pennsylvania State Police. She’s accompanied on her investigations by Irving, her Maine coon cat who’s marked like a skunk. Published in 2012, DEAD ON ICE was available as a free or inexpensive Kindle download.

Saturday night, 3 June 1978, Angelina Sullivan was involved in an altercation with Cheryl Smith at the Melody Lane Skating Rink in Hookstown, Pennsylvania. Local mean girl Cheryl thinks Angie has taken her boyfriend Ned Carter. Angie leaves in her car with her boyfriend Kyle Bostwick, whom she takes to his home; she disappears and is not seen again until her car, her body inside it, is exposed in the drought-lowered Ohio River in 1984. Her skull had been fractured. Who killed her? Fast forward to present day, when the death of Thornton’s distant elderly cousin, local defense attorney Albert Gordon, leads to the bombing of Gordon’s house and the discovery in the rubble of the basement, an old chest freezer containing the body of a woman eventually identified as Cheryl Smith. She’d been high on heroin and cocaine, but her spine had been broken by a blow to the back of her neck, She’d been there since summer 1985. Who’d killed her and why was her body placed in Gordon’s basement? All the people around at the time of Angie’s death are still in the area and are the logical suspects.

The plot in DEAD ON ICE is based on the aphorism that old sins cast long shadows. All the modern day actions flow from the disappearance of Angie Sullivan. Carr plays fair in presenting evidence as it comes to light, and the conclusion is logical. An experienced reader may well pick up on the killer’s identity. Once again, Carr piles crime upon crime, including murders, attempted murder, arson, bomb-building and its use, embezzlement and computer fraud, and attempted sexual exploitation of a minor. I question the survival of matchable trace DNA from a body shut up in a non-functioning chest freezer for 28 years and whether that body would be preserved well enough for fingerprints to be lifted and used to identify the woman’s body. I also wonder whether a vehicle would be kept for 29 years in a police impound lot and whether after its submersion for six years, followed by sitting outside rusting for 23 years, it would still show paint residue from the vehicle that forced it off the road.

Characterization is adequate but nothing special. Many function to supply only one item of information that contributes to the plot, and most are not much developed. I prefer fewer characters who are believable individuals rather than generic plot devices. The title seems unrelated to the story. Formatting indents paragraphs only one space, with no spacing between paragraphs, making for a solid mass of text.

Setting and atmosphere are the strongest elements in DEAD ON ICE. Carr captures the mindset of small towns accurately: “Doris Sullivan is a farmer in Hookstown. In these parts, a word of gossip flies as swiftly as the winter wind off the river, and it cuts even deeper. Maybe it’s the downside of everyone knowing and caring about their neighbor. Some people don’t know where to draw the line between needing to know out of genuine concern and wanting to know in order to cast judgment.” (197)

DEAD ON ICE is an okay read, but it’s nothing special. (C)

 

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DARK WATERS is the latest to date in Susan Rogers Cooper’s mystery series featuring Sheriff Milt Kovak of Prophesy County, Oklahoma. Available as a Kindle download, it was originally published in 2013.

When Milt wins a seven-day cruise for four to Puerto Rico, his wife Jean and their ten-year-old son decide it’ll be a great spring break vacation for them and Johnny Mac’s best friend Early Rollins. Despite a comedy of errors trip to Galveston to meet the ship, the cruise itself seems going well. Johnny Mac and Early are friends with several children their own age, while Milt and Jean fit well with their parents. However, Joshua Weaver is a teenaged Fagin, using the younger children to steal and, when he turns up murdered, Milt is drawn into the investigation. Then Lance Turner, a shipboard hottie, is also murdered. Are the crimes related? Meanwhile, back in Prophesy County, Temporary Acting Sheriff Emmett Hopkins is faced with the murder of Darby Hunt, recently released after serving 25 years for eviscerating his wife in front of their daughter and the wife’s family. Practically everyone who knew Darby wanted him dead, but how to discover who took it to completion?

Point of view alternates between Milt’s first person and limited third person for Johnny Mac, Emmett, and Deputy Dalton Pettigrew. These are, in consequence, the best developed characters, along with Jean McDonnell Kovak. “Dunne said, standing up, ‘I want these little s***s arrested!’ And then Jean McDonnell, doctor of psychiatry, wife of Milt Kovak, mother of John McDonnell Kovak, stood up. ‘You call my son and this boy’--she was still holding on to Early--‘little s***s one more time, and I’m afraid I might have to take one of my crutches to your skull.’ ... You know, you can give a person all the high-faluting education in the world, a whole medical degree in psychiatry, but mess with a woman’s kid and the mama lion will win every damn time.”

Part of what I enjoy about Milt Kovak as narrator is his Southern story-telling voice and humor. “I made it to the bar and ordered a light beer. My jeans were getting a little tight; I figured it was from the regular beers I’d been drinking aboard ship. It couldn’t have been anything to do with my dining-room antics--the food was free; therefore, no calories.” That voice also establishes the atmosphere of Prophesy County: “Yankees and foreigners know nothing about sweet tea, one of the wonders of the modern world. For those of you who remain uninformed, sweet tea is when you put the sugar in the tea pitcher while the tea is still hot from steeping, stir it till the cows come home, then serve it over ice. It’s a kind of sweet you can’t get just pouring sugar into a glass of already iced tea.”

Both plot lines have unexpected twists that I do not want to spoil. Murderers in each case seem to come out of left field, and Cooper gives few hints toward their identities.

Action shifts between the ship and Longbranch, Oklahoma.

DARK WATERS is a solid entry in the series. (B)

 

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Cherri Galbiati’s IMPACT FOR MURDER w?as a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2013. It features Callie Murphy, who works with a cadaver dog Yadar Von Kleinen Zwinger, and her husband Dan Murphy, Chief of Police in Hollow, Texas.

As Hurricane Matilda bears down on Hollow, Callie’s demented neighbor Tilley Bentley goes missing and, with the hurricane slamming the town, cannot be searched for. Because the local storm shelter won’t allow pets, Carrie and Yadar are riding out Matilda at home, along with twin sisters Ms. Mattie and Ms. Ida Burrow. By accidents of the storm, two-year-old Gregory Brock, his nanny Carmen and her husband Mickey Mendoza, and Nina Garcia, Dan Murphy’s secretary, also wind up there. In the aftermath of the hurricane, a woman’s severed foot and ankle are found, clearly indicating murder, but it’s not Tilley Bentley’s foot. Who else is missing, and why?

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

The plot of IMPACT FOR MURDER has great potential. Hiding murder within the casualties of a natural disaster a real possibility, but only if the death appears as its result. Why then would the killer dismember the body? An additional problem is that years before two respected citizens, one in law enforcement, would cover the murder of a third’s wife, passing it off as a suicide, for no reason other than perhaps being ‘good ole boys.’ This improbability sets up the situation in IMPACT FOR MURDER for all three to get rid of present wives. Likely?

Another problem is the use of Yadar as a cadaver dog. Callie goes out alone, no police or others with her, on search. Does search for bodies occur this way? Despite her faith in Yadar’s abilities, she ignores his hits several times when, indeed, he was correct in detecting fresh body parts.

Callie Murphy is the first person narrator, so she’s the best developed character, which isn’t saying much. Despite the setting, there’s no sense of a Southern voice. Callie spends a lot of time kvetching about her imposed house guests, and admittedly the Burrow sisters would drive a saint crazy, and going off hither and thither looking for clues when she’s promised Dan faithfully to stay at home and out of trouble. The ultimate TSTL is when she goes alone to check on Jodi Brock, Gregory’s adoptive mother, and runs into a deranged killer.

Which brings up another problem for me. I know it’s a cliche of Southern mysteries to have at least one local eccentric or worse, but IMPACT FOR MURDER goes overboard: the Burrow sisters, Tilley Bentley, the Gradys at the trailer park, Clive Bentley, and a totally insane killer (whose motive has not been foreshadowed). Too many characters are mentioned without development or being necessary for the plot. When a novel is set in the South, I expect a well-developed sense of place. If there’s not going to be one, why put it in the South?

Physical details of location are lacking, so MPACT FOR MURDER could be anyplace subject to hurricanes.

I hate to assign a grade for IMPACT FOR MURDER because it has the ingredients to be a strong mystery but, as written, it’s weak. (D)

 

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I've recently had a film festival.

MIDSOMER MURDERS, Set 21, is the 2011 season, the first in which Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby has taken over the Causton patch from his cousin Tom, now retired. The continuing characters are John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), Sergeant Ben Jones (Jason Hughes), Sarah Barnaby (Fiona Dulman), and Dr. George Bullard (Barry Jackson); Barnaby’s Jack Russell terrier Sykes is an interesting addition. Each of the four episodes involves Barbaby, Jones, and Bullard learning to work together because, as Bullard tells John Barnaby at the end, “Tom is a tough act to follow.” As always, some of the best British character actors are involved as victims, murderers, and suspects.

Episode 1,“Death in the Slow Lane” was first broadcast 23 March 2011. A classic cars weekend fundraiser at Darnley Park School serves as catalyst; Headmistress Harriet Wingate (Susan Engel) is determined to maintain the school for girls unchanged from its exclusive past, while her daughter Julia and her lover Jamie Cameron (Tim Dutton) want to become part of the local school authority and modernize. The car show involves a death years before of a racing car driver who may be Julia’s father, competition for Best in Show between Kate Cameron (Samantha Bond) and her ex-husband Jamie, drug trafficking, and murder. Other major roles include Peter Fosset, Kate’s father (David Warner) and Kate’s solicitor Hugh Snape (Richard Clifford). (A-)

Episode 2 “Dark Secrets” was broadcast 30 March 2011. It opens in 1975 with a car wreck that kills two of the Binghams’ children immediately after being cast out of the family home; William (Edward Fox) and Mary Bingham (Phyllida Law) had been part of the “if it feels good, do it” generation, so why? Flash forward to present time; both Binghams are eccentric, living as recluses while surviving daughter Salina (Beth Goddard) and her husband Eddie Stanton (Neil Pearson) run the estate. Local social services worker George Dawkins uncovers something involving the Binghams and is murdered; Mary Bingham wants to tell John Barnaby something, and she’s killed by a falling stack of newspapers that causes a heart attack. What secrets are being hidden? Watching Fox and Law in their creepy manor house is like watching an acting master class.

Sarah Barnaby arrives in this episode as the new headmistress of Causton School, where she’s made unwelcome by deputy head Josie Parker (Abigail McKern), who expected to get the job. (A)

Episdoe 3 “Echoes of the Dead” was broadcast 20 April 2011, involving a series of murders based on famous murder cases from the past. Each of the murder victims is gowned as a bride, with a message written in red lipstick on a nearby surface. Bernard Flack (Ron Cook), landlord for several, is a peeping Tom on whom suspicion naturally falls; David Orchard (Adrian Rawlins) helps people in need in the community, be it repairs or errands run or comfort; Malcolm Merryman (Andrew Buckly) who owns a nearby convenience store from which flowers have been left at the murder scenes, seems a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Bullard and Barnaby move toward a good professional relationship. (B+)

Episode 4 “The Oblong Murders” was broadcast 25 May 2011. It centers around a cult, The Oblong, operating out of Malham Hall, rented to the cult by owner Ruth Lambert. Her parents died in an explosion aboard their cabin cruiser just prior to the Oblong’s appearance, and their solicitor was stabbed to death. George Bullard, on behalf of his friends the Olivers, asks Barnaby to look into the disappearance of their daughter Lucy, last seen two months before at the Oblong’s week-long course for inductees. Ben Jones goes undercover at an inductee’s course, The nearby pub, run by Claire (Holly Aird) and Paddy Powell (Keving Doyle) is a gathering place for the Oblongs, and pub patron the Commodore (John Woodvine) is an important source of information on the Lamberts. George’s sister Milly Bullard (Barbara Flynn) is introduced as a dog sitter for Sykes. (B) This was the final regular appearance for George Bullard, who’s going to Ireland for trout fishing at its end; Barry Jackson died in 2013.

It remains to be seen how MIDSOMER MURDERS will continue, but so far the writing is good; the strength of the casting is maintained; and Neil Dudgeon is strong as DCI John Barnaby, who makes it clear from the beginning that he’s NOT Tom Barnaby. The role of Sergeant Ben Jones is more important, since he’s the local man introducing his new boss to his patch. The loss of Bullard is major, but it opens the field for the development of a new, different relationship for Barnaby. It’s not clear whether Milly Bullard will be a continuing character. I look forward to more of the series.

 

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UNDER THE MOON’S SHADOW by T. L. Haddix was a free or inexpensive Kindle download originally published in 2010. It features Beth Hudson, 28-year-old reporter for the Olman County Journal. The prologue shows Beth being shot, then flashes back several weeks to begin the story. Several unexplained things are going on: farmers reporting strange lights in their fields at night, with remains of what look like Satanic rituals; Beth receiving a bouquet of roses with no card; Beth’s apartment broken into and trashed, her underwear stolen. She’s tense around Ethan Moore, detective in the Sheriff’s Department and good friends with her brother Jason, also a sheriff’s deputy. Beth and Ethan are attracted but unable or unwilling to talk about their feelings. Beth has just met Gordon, one of the members of a Wiccan/pagan group meeting locally, who denies the group’s involvement with the farmers’ discoveries in the fields. There’s also a creepy doctor who’s refusing to take Beth’s “not interested” for an answer; a serial killer who refers to what he does as hunting from whose point of view one chapter is narrated; and a woman whose ultimate plan is covered by the rituals. At this point, 21%, I give up.

To begin with, UNDER THE MOON’S SHADOW so far is much more concerned with Beth and Ethan yearning for each other, when there’s apparently nothing to keep them apart. Everyone around them sees the attraction between them, each acknowledges to himself/herself the chemistry, so why the problem? Beth’s emotional baggage involves her feeling that people think her a well-off dilettante instead of a working reporter, and Ethan’s father was Mexican, so he’s suffered ethnic discrimination, but neither seems enough to keep them apart.

Both Ethan and Beth are standard leads with little to distinguish them from protagonists in hundreds of other romantic suspense novels. Beth doesn’t tell Ethan and Jason about the roees delivered to her office or apparently about Chad Ormsby, the new doctor in town who’s pursuing her relentlessly (Haddix’s term). The number of characters are already in excess of the number needed to carry what little mystery plot has been revealed, and they’re almost all just names except for Beth and Ethan.

There are no physical details of setting more specific than south to Louisville, wind off the Ohio River, and a reference to weather in southern Indiana. There’s no sense of place. Point of view moves between Beth, Ethan, the unnamed serial killer, and the unnamed woman so far, without doing much to advance either plot or characterization.

Sorry, but life’s too short. No grade because not finished.