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Readingomnivore Reviews

Julie Hyzy’s DEADLY BLESSINGS, one of her Alex St. James mystery series, was available as a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2010.

Alex St. James is an investigator for Chicago’s second-ranked Midwest Focus Television News Magazine. She’s been researching the story of Milla Voight, a recent immigrant from Poland who found herself pregnant by Father Carlos de los Santos; when she threatens to go to the authorities, Milla’s murdered. Alex is infuriated when her boss Philip Bassett gives the Milla story to new hire Fenton Foss, the owner’s wife’s nephew, leaving her with a story about disastrous trips to beauty salons. She continues, however, to investigate Milla’s story and finds herself caught up in another murder, this one of a young Polish man Matthew whose sister works at the Hair to Dye For salon where Milla had been a shampoo girl.

At 34%, it’s clear that the basic crime is human trafficking, bringing women from Poland and Central Europe to the United States to work as prostitutes. At least two priests, Father de lost Santos and Father Bruno Creighter, are involved. At this point, I give up. I don’t do human trafficking as a theme in reading. Writing is generally above average. No grade because not finished.
 
Ed James’s GHOST IN THE MACHINE was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012. Its protagonists are Detective Constable Scott Cullen and Detective Sergeant Sharon McNeill, who work out of the Leith Walk police station in Glasgow.

When Caroline Adamson goes missing and doesn’t pick up her young son Jack from the babysitter, the sitter Amy Cousens calls the police. Nothing points to foul play until her body is discovered in Room 20 of the Jackson Hotel; she’d been repeatedly strangled with a blue rope, then her throat cut. Detective Inspector Brian Bain, McNeill and Cullen’s boss, fixates on Rob Thomson, Caroline’s ex-husband, as her killer, despite his having an alibi, despite Caroline’s being involved with Martin Webb, a man she’d befriended on the social media site Schoolbook. Then Debi Curtis, Caroline’s friend who’s also been communicating with Martin Webb, is killed in the same way. Cullen tries to pursue the Schoolbook connection, but he’s continually pulled from one task to another by Bain, who’s determined to close the case quick as a step toward promotion. Then Gail McBride dies, the modus operandi the same, followed by Kim Milne. Rob Thomson has ties to all four women, was found standing over Kim’s body with the knife in his hand after an anonymous 999 call routes police to the scene. But Cullen can’t find who placed the call, and he’s more than ever convinced that someone is setting Thomson up. He finally gets the information needed to identify and capture the killer, but not before a fifth woman is abducted and a police officer killed.

GHOST IN THE MACHINE refers to the traces of activities left in computers, cell phones, and servers and seems to be inspired by cases like that of the so-called Craig’s List Killer, where social media are the means by which predators locate potential victims. It’s definitely police procedural in structure, but I sure hope it’s not accurate in its depiction of how murder investigations are carried out. Cullen and McNeill seem the only officers to care about solving the case and getting the right person. Detective Chief Inspector Jim Turnbull is notable for his absences. DI Bain is offensive verbally to both Cullen and McNeill; he actively resents Cullen’s trying to find the truth, since Bain’s decided Thomson is guilty and doesn’t want anything to detract from the circumstantial case against him. Detective Inspector Paul Wilkinson spends his time at the McBride murder scene sitting in his car and listening to sports talk-radio. Police Constable Willie McAllister manages to complete only a small fraction of comparing phone records, and that has to be checked on. Acting Detective Constable Keith Miller constantly disappears from headquarters, apparently accountable to no one; assigned to watch a suspect’s flat, he instead skives off to a soccer match. Way too many police officers are named but never developed; many characters appear only once in no essential role. A tight final edit for characters and length would produce a better book.

Setting is well-developed. “Leith Walk was a long stretch lined by tenements and shops, arterial streets leading off both sides to Viccy Park and Bonnington Road in the north, and Easter Road in the South. Cullen thought that its completion in the 1920s was the final nail in the coffin of Leith’s independence, when the town was finally subsumed into the City of Edinburgh. The Walk had been attempting to gentrify itself for the past fifteen or so years, but struggled to match the New Town at the Edinburgh end or the upmarket Shore in Leith. Style bars were wedged in amongst charity shops and bookies, an old gym had burned into a designer light shop, stuck next to a knock-off KFC clone. Leith Walk police station was nestled between tenements on one side and McDonald Road library on the other, eight wide storeys of glass and stone facing located on the site of a former petrol station and some waste ground.” (47-8)

GHOST IN THE MACHINE presents Leith Walk station as a SNAFU, redeemed only by a few low-ranking police detectives who persevere in spite of their leadership. I will be reading more. (B)
 
WHITE HEAT is the first book in M. J. McGrath’s new mystery series featuring Edie Kiglatuk. It was published in 2011. It’s set on Ellesmere Island in the High Arctic.

Something strange is going on around Craig Island in Jones Sound between Ellesmere Island and Devon Island. Edie Kiglatuk guides qalunaat hunters Felix Wagner and Andy Taylor on a hunt, but they seem more interested in maps and rocks than hunting. Then Wagner is shot and killed. Unfortunate accident, according to the findings of the Inuit elders at Autisaq. Edie has questions, but she’s ignored. Two Russians hunt Craig, more concerned with geology than game. Then Andy Taylor comes back with Bill Fairfax, descendant of the British explorer Sir James Fairfax, searching for his ancestor’s body; Andy Taylor goes with Joe Inukpuk, Edie’s beloved stepson, to search one coast of Craig Island while Edie guides Bill Fairfax on the other coast. Joe and Taylor are separated by a blizzard; Joe makes it back, Taylor does not. Then Joe dies in what’s first accepted as suicide. Again, speedy ruling of probable accidental death and suicide. Someone wants events kept very quiet. All of this ties in some way to Sir James Fairfax’s diary and a strange stone he swapped for with Edie’s ancestor Welatok. As Edie continues to investigate, she enlists the help of Sergeant Derek Palliser of the High Arctic Police Force, and they uncover multiple criminal enterprises: a pot-growing operation at the science station; a meteor-crater that may be the plug on a huge deposit of natural gas; drug running; bribery; grave-robbing; and, of course, more murders.

The plot is multi-layered, each apparent solution opening to a different direction. The motive for the final murderer is unique in my reading. McGrath is fair in foreshadowing, and I love the ironic use of Palliser’s lemming study revealed in the final chapter.

Characters are believably complex and human. Edie Kiglatuk is a recovering alcoholic, former polar-bear hunter, now a teacher and hunting guide. She loves the old silent movies. She and Derek Palliser are both ethnically-mixed, in a culture in which pure blood is valued; Edie’s a woman, in a culture in which females are not much regarded, while Palliser is the representative of the outsiders’ laws. Edie loses her sobriety over Joe’s death; Palliser counts on his lemming population studies to bring him recognition, despite his lack of a degree in Arctic zoology. Other characters, especially the Inuit, are well developed and individual.

Sense of place is outstanding, an area and culture with which few are familiar. “In the far distance the cliffs of Taluritut rose from the sea ice. The Inuktitut name meant “tattoo’, after the ridged and folded cliffs which looked from a distance like the tattooed whiskers Inuit women used to wear on their chins. So much more expressive than the qalunaat name, Devon. A few kilometres to the north, its windswept edges glowing bruise-mauve in the sea ice, set Craig Island, Edie took off her snow goggles, closed her eyes and set her face toward the sun, feeling the first intimations of warmth. How beautiful it was. All over Craig now, under vast hills of blown snow, mother bears would be stirring with their cubs and in a few weeks the eiders would appear, followed by dovekies and walrus. Turnstones, snow geese, knots, snow buntings, and kittiwakes would show up and all at once it would be summer.” (130)

WHITE HEAT is a powerful lead in what I hope will be a long-running series. (A)
 
Nicholas Blake’s THE DEADLY JOKER was first published in 1963 and re-issued in e-book format in 2012. Nicholas Blake is better known as Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis.

John Waterson, concerned about his wife Jenny’s health, takes early retirement in 1959 and moves to the Dorset village of Netherplash Cantorum where they will live at Green Lane when work on the house is completed. Waterson’s been married to Jenny two years, and she gets along well with Waterson’s children Sam, 22 years old, who’s works as a journalist in Bristol, and 16-year-old Corinna, who’s still at school, despite Jenny’s being twenty-five years younger than he. Ronald Paston owns the local manor, having bought out the old squire Alwyn Card whose family owned the land since 1620. Alwyn Card lives with his half-brother Egbert in Pydal, former dower house to the estate. Alwyn had been a noted practical joker as one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, while Egbert, some fifteen years younger, was forced out of his regiment for undisclosed reasons. Bertie has a local reputation for not paying debts and for being a womanizer. Waterson and Jenny witness a series of practical jokes that take on sinister overtones and end in murder.

Despite obscurities created by Waterson’s doubts about Jenny’s attraction to Bertie, Corinna’s infatuation with Bertie, his own attraction to Vera Paston, Ronald’s ethnic Indian wife, and the practical jokes, the identity of the joker and of the killer are fairly obvious from the beginning. The motive is more obscure, and the conclusion seems forced, since proof of identity relies on the killer’s running away. Setting is mostly undeveloped, though the casual racism with which Vera is referred as a “n*****’ is offensive to modern readers.

Waterson as first person narrator is not particularly attractive. He’s immediately jealous of Jenny, always acutely aware of the difference in their ages; he’s bowled over by the exotic, passive beauty of Vera Paston, even after he learns of her affair with Bertie Card. He even blames his wife for creating his desire for Vera: “It never ceases o amaze me, how women can create a situation, even an emotion, out of thin air. I had admired Vera Paston and been interested in her, without feeling any stir of physical attraction. Now, with a faint waft of her jealousy, Jenny had contrived to make me think about Vera in terms of sexual curiosity.” Characters are more types than individuals.

THE DEADLY JOKER is average, at best. (C)
 
Peter Dickinson’s DEATH OF A UNICORN was originally published in 1984, then reissued in e-book format in 2013. Its structure is that of a manuscript written in 1952-1953 by a young woman, Lady Margaret Millet, then put away; in 1983 she returns to it and rewrites it in view of the changed perspective brought by thirty years’ experience of life.

Lady Margaret “Mabs” Millet is heir to the entailed estate of Cheadle in Leicestershire with a townhouse in Mayfair, but there’s little money. Her mother’s ambition is to see her married to a man who can support the estate for another generation. Mabs isn’t interested in the social types, instead wanting to be a writer. She meets A. J. Brierley, a self-made man who’s recently bought Night and Day magazine; he hires her to assist Mrs. Cynthia Clarke (or Darke--both names are used), who writes the “Social Rounds” feature. Mabs soon becomes his mistress.

This is the point at which I’m giving up, at roughly 20%. I don’t find the characters engaging, especially Mabs and Brierley. Nothing in his description or his actions thus far explains why a twenty-year-old aristocrat would fall in love (and she does say specifically that she loved him) with Brierley. He’s only moderately wealthy, less than well-mannered, and literally old enough to be her father. Mabs comes across as doing more drifting than charting a course, her writing career merely accidental.

There has been no foreshadowing of what the problem in the plot is, though the title implies a murder. There’s no sense of place. Dates are given but there’s nothing to evoke events, ideas, or ephemera of the period. No grade because not finished.
 
Joanne Fluke’s APPLE TURNOVER MURDER is one of her Hannah Swensen cozy mystery series. It was included in an inexpensive Kindle bundle.

Stephanie Bascomb, wife of the mayor, is chair of the Lake Eden Combined Charities Drive; she’s planned a three-day gala designed to double the usual contributions. The luncheon speaker is Samantha Summerville, star of Hello Handsome; other events include a talent show, a casino evening, donkey baseball, and a charity auction. Hannah and Lisa Beeseman, partners in The Cookie Jar coffee shop and bakery, are donating half their profits from the sale of apple turnovers at the events. Hannah’s also roped into playing magician’s assistant to Herb in the talent show. Master of Ceremonies for the talent show is Professor Bradford Ramsey, with whom Hannah has previous history--she’d been in love with him in graduate school while he, an assistant professor, was engaged to another woman. Now he’s on the English faculty at the local community college, and he’s not changed his womanizing ways. In addition, he’s appropriated the work of his research assistant Tim Pearson, promising in return the assistant professor position open in the English Department, only to renege. When Hannah finds Ramsey dead after the intermission of the talent show, she’s naturally drawn into the investigation.

*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****i

The plot in APPLE TURNOVER MURDERS is telegraphed from the beginning. Once Sherri Connors is specified as a student secretary in the English Department, what’s wrong with her, who’s responsible, and who kills Ramsey is obvious. All the other suspects are quickly eliminated through too-pat alibis. The climax and falling action aren’t very believable, depending on coincidence (though, to be fair, the means Hannah uses to escape had been set up early in the story.) Two subplots in the Swensens’ personal lives are left hanging--Norman Rhodes, who professes to want to marry Hannah, has just imported “an old friend from dental school’ who happens to be an unmarried attractive woman to be his partner, and Andrea Swensen McCann’s Sheriff husband Bill’s been played a dirty trick, the bogus offer of a job too good to be true by a security company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Both presumably will be addressed in sequels.

The number of characters greatly exceeds the number required to carry the plot effectively. It really isn’t necessary to name every business owner and Swensen neighbor in Lake Eden, most of whom have little or no development. Hannah herself seems naive; she pulls a major TSTL when she goes off alone with the killer, even though she’s not identified him yet. By process of elimination, if no other method, she should have known his guilt. Daily life and family concerns receive as much attention as the murder. It’s not very realistic that Mike Kingston, the deputy sheriff in charge of the Ramsey murder, would give Hannah so much information about the case when she technically should be a suspect, even if he’s dating her.

There’s no sense of place. Lake Eden could be anywhere; Minnesota is implied through references to St. Paul and to Minneapolis. Inclusion of recipes is the strongest feature.

APPLE TURNOVER MURDER is like cotton candy--ultra-sweet and dissolving into nothing. (D)
 
Michelle Goff’s MURDER ON SUGR CREEK is the first in her Maggie Morgan mystery series.* It was published in e-book format in 2014. Maggie Morgan is lifestyle editor of the Jasper Sentinel.

When Mac Honaker is shot during a robbery gone wrong, it doesn’t take long for the Kentucky Highway Patrol to arrest local smalltime thief and drug user Kevin Mullins for the crime. It seems an open and shut case--Kevin had paid off his drug dealer that morning, he’d been seen near Honaker’s store at the relevant time, a recently-fired gun was found in his house, and he had gunshot residue on his hands. Kevin and Maggie’s younger brother Mark had been best friends as children so, in the name of that friendship, Kevin asks Maggie to convince people of that he’s innocent. Maggie persuades her editor to let her do a series of human-interest stories about Mac’s background; she uses this as a gambit to talk to his friends and family and, the more she discovers about Mac Honaker, the shadier he becomes. He’d stolen from customers while an insurance agent, embezzled money when manager of a shoe store, stolen money and materials when in charge of maintenance in nursing homes, and scammed winners when scratch-off lottery tickets from his store paid off. The gun in Kevin Mullins’s home isn’t the murder weapon, and he has an explanation for the gunshot residue (he’d shot at a coyote after his chickens), so he’s released for lack of evidence. So who killed Mac?

MURDER ON SUGAR CREEK is set in Eastern Kentucky, an unincorporated area outside the town of Jasper. Maggie lives there in the house inherited from her grandparents, within calling distance of her parents. Her parents are supposed to be mountain people, but Goff’s presentation of them is an insult. Maggie’s father Robert Morgan uses his house key to clean his ears at the breakfast table; Maggie’s mother Lena is a stickler for appropriate behavior, and she would never allow Robert to behave so at table. On another occasion Goff has Robert filing his toe nails with a file from his toolbox. The only other indication of location is a reference to the etymology of “holler” (a small valley, or hollow, between hills or mountains) and one to the custom of using “branch,” “bottom,” “creek,” and “fork” in the names of roads. (10, 12) There’s no sense of the Southern oral tradition in storytelling, none of the rhythm and very little of the vocabulary of Eastern Kentucky, one of the last strongholds of traditional mountain speech. If a writer can’t or won’t do Southern right, set the story some place else. To quote Mammy Yokum, “I has spoken.”

Goff’s plot effectively focuses attention away from Mac’s killer, setting up a very plausible alternative that stays in focus for much of the novel. She does play fair in providing clues to the killer’s identity and even to the motive. The killer’s request to talk to Maggie after confessing to the KHP seems a contrived way to tie up the plot.

Maggie Morgan has potential as the protagonist in a cozy mystery series. As a newspaper reporter, even if her specialty is lifestyle, she has a valid reason for asking questions. She is independent enough to stand up to cub reporter Tyler, who sees Jasper as only a brief stop on his road to bigger, better papers, and to ignore the advice of friends, family, and police to leave the investigation of Mac’s death to the professionals. She, however, pulls two major TSTLs, one when she confronts Mac’s cousin and partner in crime (literally) Bug Damron alone and tells him she knows all about their thievery. The other comes when Maggie realizes the identity and goes to confront the killer alone, armed only with her trusty tape recorder. She at least shows sense enough to call Seth Heyward, her ex-fiance in the Jasper Police Department, who dispatches the KHP to rescue her. It’s hard to believe that Seth would share so much information on an active case, even if the KHP is officially in charge of the investigation. It’s also hard to believe that bff Edie’s husband would give her information about Mac and Carla Honaker’s bank accounts. Several major characters have no surnames--reporter Tyler, editor Joe, bff Edie and her husband, Mac’s ex-wife Rhonda, suspect Corey, essential witness Jenny; none are much developed. Since MURDER ON SUGAR CREEK is so short by modern standards (148 pages), characterization could be more detailed.

MURDER IN SUGAR CREEK leaves me underwhelmed. (C)

*Amazon does not show any other titles in the series as yet.
 
EXIT HERE FOR MURDER is another of Annis Ward Jackson’s series of novellas featuring Ellis Crawford, chief of police of Battenburg, North Carolina. It’s set in October-November 1980.

Despite a long history of competition and antagonism between the Dawson County Sheriff’s Department and the police departments of Battenburg and Fullerton, North Carolina, Sheriff Cale Robinette calls on Chief Crawford for help. He’s discovered a serial rapist who’s preying on lone women driving I-95 through Dawson County. The first victim refused to report the crime, but the second, Arlene Riggs, is angry and strong enough to do all she can to help catch him. The known rapes both occurred on Wednesday; the man signaled for the woman to pull over because he could see some mechanical danger; he led them to the same crime scene. Robinette wants to “borrow” Battenburg police officer / dispatcher Ruby Lea Sutton, to use as a decoy on I-95, hoping to draw the rapist in. Crawford is dubious, but Ruby Lea insists on taking part. Robinette and Crawford set up what they hope will be foolproof backup for Ruby Lea on the road while they continue to investigate possibles. When the rapist stops Ruby Lea and recognizes her, he has to kill her, and he tells her she won’t be the first. It’s up to Ruby Lea herself and to Crawford to save her.

Jackson has crafted a dynamic law enforcement community in Battenburg and Dawson County, with individuals and relationships evolving as Chief Crawford settles in to enjoy what he’d thought would be a short-term job only. Because stories are character-driven, it’s good to read the series in order. Crawford is realistically flawed; invalided out of a career as a Marine MP as the result of a Middle Eastern suicide bomber, he’s scarred both physically and emotionally. His PTSD is abating somewhat, and he’s in a satisfying relationship with Lacy, Ruby Lea’s niece. I look forward to more visits to Dawson County.

Jackson plays completely fair with her use of limited third person point of view--the reader gets the information as Crawford receives it. She does a good job in EXIT HERE FOR MURDER in keeping attention focused on one (wrong) suspect.

For novella length, Jackson does a good job of creating a distinct sense of place. “...Crawford drove into an area that was completely new to him. Just southeast of Fullerton, Cotton Creek, the largest waterway in the area, ran between open farm fields for miles, disappearing periodically into thickets of willows and sycamore interwoven with honeysuckle vines, then re-emerging at varying distances between the open land. The road that led to ‘Moss’ Mullins’ [sic] address ran parallel to the creek with fields of cotton on each side. Harvest had already taken place but white tufts still clung to the leafless stems, some in wads, some like ghostly gossamer stretched by the wind from twig to twig.” (54)

My main complaint is editorial in nature; use of apostrophes in plurals and possessives is often incorrect. EXIT HERE FOR MURDER is another strong entry in an enjoyable series. (A-)
 
David Dickinson’s MYCROFT HOLMES AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE NAVAL ENGINEER is the second in his The Adventures of Mycroft Holmes series. It was published in e-format in 2012.

Some months after the failure to capture the Graf von der Stoltenberg in the roundup of those involved in destabilizing England by counterfeiting its currency, Mrs. Hudson discovers the body of a man on the hearth of Mycroft Holmes’s rooms at 68 B Pall Mall. The man had apparently been beaten to death with a very hot poker, his face destroyed. She sends for the police and also consults the list of people supplied to her by Mycroft Holmes for use in case of emergency. The men on the list include Dr. Freeman, who lives nearby; Thomas Montague Smith, Treasury Solicitor; his young assistant Tobias; Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard; and his brother Sherlock Holmes, retired to the Sussex Downs where he keeps bees. A new man at the Yard, Inspector Ebenezer Robinson, brought in to modernize the force is the Inspector on Duty. After a brief examination of the body, he discovers Mycroft Holmes in his bedroom, deep in drunken sleep, with blood on his clothing and the bloody poker on his bed. Robinson immediately arrests him for the murder of the man eventually identified as Cornelius Jobson, a naval engineer, but no one knows how he arrived at the house. Mrs. Hudson had not admitted him. Mycroft is arrested and incarcerated at Wormwood Scrubs awaiting a bail hearing. Mrs.Hudson is most upset that Sherlock Holmes refuses to take his brother’s situation as grave, saying that Mycroft’s position as Auditor of all Government departments will secure his release from the trumped up charges. The men on Mycroft’s list get to work, aided by the prisoner who runs Wormwood Scrubs, Chalky The Shotgun White who’s taken Mycroft under his protection, and the Du Cane Road Irregulars, the gang of urchins who do street work for Chalky, to expose the plot against Mycroft.

The complexity of the plot and the variety of characters in MYCROFT HOLMES AND THE ADVENTURE OF THE NAVAL ENGINEER are reminiscent of the original Conan Doyle stories, but the tone and language are modern. Dickinson includes two characters from another of his mystery series, Charles Augustus Pugh and Lord Francis Powerscourt. His Mrs. Hudson is much younger and comelier than generally depicted, but the other original characters are mostly unchanged.

Dickinson creates some appealing new characters. “The Treasury Solicitor, in charge of Government legal business, was a dapper man in his early forties who still looked like the Westminster Abbey choirboy he had once been, though he now had a series of lines running outwards from the corners of his eyes. Many had been deceived by his angelic appearance into thinking he must be a gentle and harmless soul. They were wrong. Thomas Montague Smith, the Treasury Solicitor, in Mycroft Holmes’s own words, had a mind like a steel trap, poised and ready to swallow his enemies whole.”

The conditions Mycroft encounters at Wormwood Scrubs are delightfully ironic. “...Mycroft and Chalky the Shotgun White were enjoying a glass of Chateau Lafite before the choir practice. ... Chalky kept a wine cellar in a forgotten cell in a basement corridor, replenished by regular deliveries from Berry Bros and Rudd to a holding address in nearby Acton. Mycroft expressed the view that this must be one of the finest Lafites he had ever enjoyed. Chalky thought the famous 1870 vintage, which he had tasted after a very successful bank raid some year before had greater body, but he didn’t think it worth arguing about.”

Good fun. (B+)
 
Anthea Fraser’s BROUGHT TO BOOK was originally published in 2003 and reissued in e-book format in 2012.

Only six months after the death of noted mystery writer Theo Harvey, his widow Meriel contacts Rona Parish, who’s just completed a well-received biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to write his biography. Theo Harvey had written a whole series of best-selling mysteries, then endured a painful two-year writer’s block, after which he produced two outstanding psychological novels completely different from his previous books. He’d died under suspicious circumstances, his body found in a stream near the cottage in which he lived while writing; he’d been drunk and could have hit his head on a rock when he fell in. Police investigation turned up nothing, so his death remained an open verdict. Meriel Harvey wants Rona to write a thorough biography, finding out what caused the writer’s block and why Theo Harvey had undergone a profound personality change during the last four years of his life. She offers Rona cooperation, access to Harvey’s papers, and a series of personal diaries he kept from the time he was a schoolboy. Rona’s publisher offers her a contract, so her preliminary work on the biography begins. As she investigates and interviews Harvey’s family and friends, she discovers layers of secrets around Harvey and his death, enough that someone starts to scare Meriel Harvey off. Who fears something that Rona may uncover if the biography continues?

Rona Parish is an interesting protagonist. She’s happily married to artist and art tutor Max Allerdyce, though they don’t live together--since both work from home and require different working conditions, Max lives at Farthings Cottage except for Wednesday nights and the weekends. Her constant companion is her dog Gus. Rona’s independent and thorough. Fraser is skilled at revealing character through atmosphere: “[Furze Hill Park] itself was a large open space on the hill above the town, a popular venue for joggers, dog walkers and young mothers with prams. Quite apart from the need to exercise Gus, Rona enjoyed the daily climb. It gave her a sense of mental as well as physical distance from the problems, personal or professional, that awaited her down in the town. Somehow, looking out from her vantage point over the cluster of roofs and steeples, she was able to put them into perspective, and frequently solutions effortlessly presented themselves.” Rona describes herself succinctly: “...I’m jut insatiably curious. People have always fascinated me; I sit watching them on trains and buses, wondering what kind of houses they live in, what their name are, and where they’re going. Figuratively speaking, I want to take them apart, like clocks, and see what makes them tick.” Other characters are believable.

Fraser is effective in creating sense of place. “Cricklehurst was an overgrown village some twenty miles west of Marsborough, whose main claim to fame was its highly rated restaurant, the Golden Feather, owned by a television chef. Max had taken her there when they were engaged, but it had been on a winter’s evening and she’d seen little of the surroundings. Now, as she approached, she saw that the village straggled along the main road for a couple of miles or so, without any noticeable centre. A midweek market was in progress, and temporary stalls had been set up on the narrow pavements, causing shoppers to spill out onto the road. ... The church...was away to her left on higher ground. Its squat tower proclaimed its Norman origins, but the buildings that surrounded it seemed to be a hotchpotch of different styles and centuries, some in the local stone, some timbered, some mellowed brick.”

The plot in BROUGHT TO BOOK is more like a police procedural than a classic who-done-it mystery, with Rona in the investigator’s role. There’s little foreshadowing of the killer’s identity. An accomplice’s using Lindsey, Rona’s twin, as a source of information on Rona’s work seems contrived, as does the killer’s suicide. (B)
 
DEATH REINS IN is the second in a bundle of e-books by A. K. Alexander published in 2007. It features Michaela Bancroft, breeder and trainer of reining quarter horses.

Michaela’s friend and mentor Audrey Pratt takes her to a prestigious race in Orange County in which her friend Kathleen Bowen has her prize horse Halliday entered and her friend Hugh Bowen, now divorced, is running Flashing Chico. Audrey and Kathleen go back to early days as a singing duo, trying to make it in show business, and Audrey manages the career of the Bowens’ daughter Olivia. Kathleen is determined that Olivia become the next country music superstar, while Olivia wants to be a \jockey. Audrey’s brother Bob Pratt, an equine veterinarian and head of research at Eq Tech, told her he had disturbing findings, but he’s disappeared. During the confusion following Halliday’s breaking his leg on the track, someone strangles Audrey and finishes her off with blows to the head. What on earth is going on? Kathleen, up and coming country star Steve Benz, and his manager Marshall Friedman are pressuring Olivia into a management contract and a sleazy photo shoot for Pleasures, the men’s magazine. Olivia seems to be incapable of standing up for herself and is using drugs. Hudson Drake, CEO of Eq Tech, is suspiciously eager to get to known Michaela. Hugh Bowen is about to divorce his trophy second wife Bridgette. Then Francisco, Audrey’s ranch hand, is found murdered in her house, where he was watching out for things while Audrey was at the races. Who needed him dead?

I am disappointed in DEATH REINS IN for several reasons. The book is longer than the effective story. At least as much time is Michaela’s musing over her relationship with Detective Jude Davis and with veterinarian Ethan Slater, her riend since childhood who’s married to a hateful woman who mistrusts Michaela, as is given to the murders. Michaela’s in her thirties, she’s divorced from a womanizer, but her emotional age seems much like a teenager. After Michaela puts together the evidence and identifies the killer, instead of going to the police, she and school friend Joe Pellegrino (who’s thought to be Mob connected, who does have a seemingly infinite number of cousins who can elicit information quickly) put together a scheme in which Michaela will denounce him publicly. Is anyone surprised that she nearly gets herself killed, again? The number of characters exceeds need, and most of the continuing characters are not developed more than in the first book of the series.

The plot does not play fair, in that all the information is not provided until Michaela’s denunciation, though an experienced reader will probably spot the Sringleader’s identity early on. Foreshadowing is not subtly done. Police apparently are little involved in investigating either murder, and Michaela consistently does not give them information germane to the killings.They apparently did not search Audrey’s house after Francisco’s murder, because Michaela finds a packet of information Bob Pratt had sent via Audrey for Ethan Slate to check. His name is clearly on the envelope, and he police regard Bob Pratt the chief suspect in his sister’s death. At the very least, Michaela is guilty of tampering with evidence and obstructing the police.

Setting is well developed. “[Michaela] rolled down the window, the combined smell of hay, dirt, horse, and manure wafting in as they passed by Audrey’s large pasture on the right, the springtime green just beginning to yellow with the onslaught of the summer months. Rows of date palms lined the pasture fence, their olive-colored fronds casting shadows that one of the foals inside the pasture chased as he tossed his head and pawed at the ground, trying to make some sense of the tricks his eyes were playing on him. All babies seemed to be ever curious of their shadows, human and horse alike. His mother and a few other horses spread out, enjoying their freedom and the grass, a couple of them hard at play, nipping at each other’s rear ends, then whirling and racing down the side of the white-washed fence, tails waving flaglike in the air, a look of wild instinct in their big brown eyes. (264)

DEATH REINS IN doesn’t encourage me to read the rest of the bundle. (C)
 
Bruce Beckam’s MURDER IN SCHOOL is the second in his series featuring Detective Inspector Daniel Skelgill of the Cumbria Constabulary, aided by Detective Sergeant Leyton and Detective Sergeant Emma Jones. It was published in e-format in 2014. It is written in present tense, which is awkward.

When Edmund Donald Querrell, longest-serving Master at the prestigious Oakthwaite School in the Lake District is found drowned in Bassenthwaite Lake, all indicates death by suicide. Unaccountably, Inspector Skelgill’s Chief assigns him and Sergeant Leyton to investigate the death; her son is a first-former at Oakthwaite. Skelgill and Leyton pick up some strange vibrations from Headmaster Goodman, from the Assistant Head Dr. Snyder, from South African Sports Director Mike Grieg, and Dr. C. W. Jacobsen, now the longest-serving Master. Then Royton Hodgson, ex-gamekeeper and school groundsman who discovered Querrell’s body, dies in Querrel’s quarters of what looks like a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Is there a connection between the two apparent suicides? Skelgill and Jones make a quick trip to Singapore to check up on Goodman and Snyder; they discover Goodman to be guaranteeing Oxbridge appointments to “VIP applicants” to Oakthwaite, while Snyder’s curriculum vitae lies about his having worked at the elite Singapore International School. Do the deaths play a part the proposed “modernization” of Oakthwaite? Then young Cholmondsley goes missing, and everything hits the fan--he’s the Chief’s son.

Characterization is improved in MURDER IN SCHOOL. There are no extraneous characters and, despite ample indication of Skelgill’s hobbies and interests, less strictly personal detail. More is detailed of his methods: “...if DI Skelgill gets the merest hint of some irregularity, an errant piece of the jigsaw that doesn’t fit--that might have found its way in by accident from another puzzle altogether--he’ll refuse to be drawn towards what might seem the obvious, convenient and perfectly adequate conclusion. Instead he’ll pursue any number of unpromising leads, explore blind avenues, and concoct improbable theories, giving the impression that the investigation is going nowhere fast, and everywhere else slowly, Then, suddenly, early one morning, he’ll come back from a fishing trip on Bassenthwaite Lake and move in for the kill with all the devastating speed and single-minded ruthlessness of the pike.” (22) Skelgill, Leyton, and Jones form a team which is greater than the sum of its parts.

The plot is fairly laid out, though a bit over the top with a secret cabal within the Oakthwaite Trustees and long-ago murder. Beckham does a good job in keeping attention focused away from the motive and thus from the killer.

Sense of place is outstanding. “Skiddaw and its non-identical twin sentinel Blencathra squat ominously like a pair of great muscle-bound bouncers, guarding the northern gateway proper of the Lake District. The former is one of only four mountains in England that rise above three thousand feet, on a clear day it is visible from the Devil’s Beef Tub north of Moffat, a good seventy miles as the crow flies. However, from an aesthetic perspective Skiddaw would be low on most hill-baggers’ lists of favorite peaks. Though impressive for its sheer bulk, critical examination reveals it to be somewhat nondescript, an undistinguished massif marked in ascending bands of grass, bracken, heather and mudstone scree. Its redeeming feature is the view it commands of almost every other summit in Lakeland, and a good part of Scotland, to boot.” (176)

MURDER IN SCHOOL is a welcome addition to the Skelgill series. (A-)
 
CRIME FRAICHE is the second in Alexander Campion’s mystery series set in Paris and featuring Capucine Le Tellier, Commisare in thePolice Judiciare, in charge of the police operations in the tough Twentieth Arrondissement. She’s married to Comte Alexandre d’Arbormont du Huguelet, senior food critic for Le Monde.

When Capucine and Alexandre go on vacation to Oncle Aymeric at Capcine’s family estate the Chateau de Maulervier in iNormandy for the shooting, they discover that the manager of the neiighboring elevage Philippe Gerlier has been killed while shooting partridges. The police quickly find the death accidental, no autopsy is performed, and no evidence taken. A second death soon folllows when Damien Pelletier, an intern spending a semester at the Vienneau Elevage, is shot during a demonstration against commericalized agriculture in Saint-Nicolas. Again, the police rule an accident, no autopsy is performed, and he only evidence is that he was killed by a rifled slug shot from a shotgun. A third shooting, this one of Lucien Bellec, also employed by Loic Vienneveau, is also ruled an accident, and without physical evidence. Capucine pulls strings to get herself assigned to investigate the deaths on a part-time basis. In the meantime, in Paris, the newspapers have picked up on a strange story--La Belle en Marche Dormant, the sleeping beauty of the market. She lies on the pavement as if she’s collapsed; kindly strangers care for her and take her to their homes, where she convalesces for a few days, then leaves with expensive bits of art.Brigadier Isabelle Lemercier, whom Capucine is grooming for promotion, handles the case in her absence.

The plot in CRIME FRAICHE is layered with street crime and murders in police procedural format. Campion does not, however, play fair with giving the reader all the information Capucine receives. Misdirection keeps attention focused away from the motive for the murders, and manages a neat surprise ending that allows for a miscarriage of justice when Capucine decides not to pursue the case to its final details. More detail than is strictly necessary on the process by which steers are transformed into beef may bother some readers.

Capucine is the major character, a strong determined woman getting ahead in a man’s world. “Capucine snorted and shook her head. She was overreacting again. It was her need to cover all her bets. The thing that went most against her grain was putting all her chips on a single number. But that was exactly what she’d don e. If Momo came up dry, she’d have no case. After all the sound and fury she’d be a laughing stock and her family as well as on the force. And on top of it all, she knew she’d asked too much of Momo. She cringed at the thought of their meeting.” (212) One of the pleasures of this series is the cast of continuing characters, especially Alexandre and Capucine’s subordinates--David Martineau, Isabelle, and North African Momo Bernarouche--people it’s good to get to know.

Campion is outstanding in creating a sense of place, both in terms of physical location and the ambiance: “The restaurant [Benoit’s] was one of those mythical Paris places that are wrongfully believed not to exist any longer. a true neighborhood bistro with cubbyholes for the patrons’ napkins--changed once a week--and only a small handful of items on the blackboard menu on the wall, where the customers, without exceptions, were well known to the owner. There was only one waitress, a corpulent woman whose apron strings disappeared into the folds off her waist, a far bigger bully tan anyone’s ’ mother had ever been. As far as the waitress was concerned, there weren’t a handful of items on the menu; there were only two: for men saucisses du Morteau, thick, smoked sausages with little twigs holding the ends shut,on a creamy bed of lentilles du Puy , and for women a fillet of fletan--the Parisian generic for any flatfish. No discussion would be brooked.” (193) Campion’s evocation of meals and occasions rivals that of Martin Walker.

CRIME FRAICHE is an enjoyable read in a solid series. (A-)
 
LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, Vintage 2003, is the latest season of the long-running British comedy released on DVD. This season introduces several new characters to the line-up: Miss Davenport, the romantically-challenged librarian, played by Josephine Tewson (Elizabeth in KEEPING UP APPEARANCES); Alvin Smedley, who now lives in Compo’s house and affects to believe that Nora Batty is mad for him, played by Brian Murphy; and Entwistle, ethnic Chinese who changed his name from McIntyre because people kept mistaking him for a Scot, played by Burt Kwouk. Most of the earlier characters are still around: Norman Clegg (Peter Sallis), Herbert Truelove, “Truly of the Yard,” (Frank Thornton), Howard (Robert Fyfe), Pearl (Juliette Kaplan), Marina (Jean Fergusson), Auntie Wainwright (Jean Alexander), Ivy (Jane Freeman), Edie Pegden (Dame Thora Hird), and the incomparable Nora Batty (Kathy Staff).

LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, Vintage 2003, consists of ten episodes, plus the 2003 Christmas special. In “The Lair of the Cat Creature,” Alvin literally crash-lands his hang glider outsides Clegg’s home, to become the object of a Truly set-up featuring Waldo (Tom Simmonite’s ventriloquist dummy dog), with sound effects by Billy Hardcastle, direct descendant of Robin ‘Ood, through his mother who was a Bristow. (A-) “Ancient Eastern Wisdom: An Introduction” develops Entwistle, who says there’s no one as inscrutable as a Yorkshireman faced with spending money. Howard, in the guise of El Lobo, the Smiling Bandito, has an unexpected encounter with Billy Hardcaste, aka The Hawk. (B+) “A Pickup of the Later Ming Dynasty” moves from Marina’s going to Aunie Wainwright’s for a hair net and coming away with a camouflage net, which later convinces the policemen that they’ve seen a creature from outer space. (B) “The Secret Birthday of Norman Clegg” finds Clegg wanting a quiet birthday lunch with Truly at the hotel which, unbeknownst to them, is the site of a wedding to which all the rest are invited; it ends with Clegg’s escaping the hotel in disguise as a woman. (A-) “In Which Gavin Hinchcliffe Loses the Gulf Stream” introduces Miss Davenport, who’s driving the van on which he’s perfecting his skiing balance, in preparation for global warming’s shutting down of the Gulf Stream and a creating a new Ice Age. (B)

“The Mysterious Curing of Old Goff Helliwell” has Clegg, Truly, and Billy using Marina to make Helliwell give up his plans to die on Tuesday; it turns out that his acquaintance from years before is Auntie Roz (Dora Bryan). (A-) Billy Hardcastle tries to revitalize the tradition of English archery in preparation for the coming French invasion via the Chunnel, while Barry’s searching for an alternative to golf. (A) “The Man Who Invented Yorkshire Funny Stuff” has the trio looking for former schoolmate Cyril Cooper, who’s left a whole series of women, while Howard receives quite a reaction as he tries to get his surprise gift from Marina home from Auntie Wainwright’s. (A-) At least once per episode, Truly comments on “the former Mrs. Truelove,” and in “The Second Husband and the Showgirls” Truly meets her second husband; Tom and Smiler are looking for Auntie Wainwright’s dating service matches, ex-showgirls Babs and Queenie. That’s Yorkshire Horseshow. (A-) Truly’s love life is the focus in “All of a Florrie,” when he’s pursued by a former neighbor who expects to marry him, now that they’re both free. (B)

The 2003 Christmas Special, “A Short Blast of Fred Astaire” covers preparations for the annual Christmas concert. Norman Clegg has been called on for a comic monologue; he seeks to avoid it by being the human target for Billy’s archery exhibition. Alvin is driving Nora Batty mad with is practicing on a one-man band contraption. Miss Davenport seeks a Romeo for her dramatic reading and manages to conscript Truly. Howard, sulking because he can’t do a concert act with Marina, has to lip sync with Pearl to “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,” in guise as Nelson Eddy and Jeannette McDonald. Tom and Smiler plan to dance ala Fred Astaire in top hat and tails to “Putting on the Ritz.” Entwistle and Marina will do a mind-reading act. Barry will star as Marvel the Magician with Glenda and Auntie Roz as beautiful assistants. Only trouble is, Clegg’s terrified of Billy’s archery, Billy’s not accurate with a bow and arrow; and Tom and Smiler can’t dance, so Entwistle hypnotizes them. The episode ends with everyone at the bus stop, in costume, en route to the church, doing the dance routine. (A)

LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, Vintage 2003, is good fun. (A-)
 
Marjorie Swift Doering’ DEAR CROSSING was a free or inexpensive e-book originally published in 2012. It is a police procedural featuring Officer Ray Schiller of the Widmer, Minnesota, Police Department.

A series of strange deaths hits Widmer. Valerie Davis, wealthy lakefront home owner, bleeds out after someone chops off her left forearm and hand. Hank Kramer, tight-fisted and hateful old farmer, is chased and killed when his prize bull gets free in the barn. Michael Sumner is found, dead for two days in his car in the garage, but the house has been broken into and medicines stolen. Valerie’s husband Paul Davis, who’s had a two-year affair with Dana Danforth, is infuriated that Chet Stockton, his father-in-law and president of Alliance Computer Corporation, hasn’t retired and named him as successor; Valerie’s also had an affair, as has Dana with Nick Vincent. The permutations of partners and motives makes for a mare’s nest of a case. Complicating the situation, Ray Schiller is separated from his wife Gail because of her affair with hardware store owner Mark Haney, whom Ray accidentally shoots and kills while investigating an apparent break-in at the store.

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

The complexity of the plot is over the top. Besides the three deaths in Widmer, iin Minneapolis Dana Danforth and Nick Vincent kill each other in a struggle for a gun, and Paul Davis commits suicide, apparently, when he is not chosen as Stockton’s successor by the Board of ACC. While ironically satisfying, these deaths are gratuitous. Doering does focus attention firmly away from the killer and motive, though there are some clues to the eventual solution. The subplot of Ray’s shooting Haney involves an unanswered question--when Ray enters the store’s basement, identifies himself as the police, and calls for whoever’s inside to come out, why doesn’t Haney comply? It’s his store, he’s there legitimately, and it’s not illegal for him to be drinking on his own premises. If he’s so impaired he doesn’t respond to Ray, how likely is it he’s still taking inventory?

There’s not much characterization. Ray is believably flawed, with major issues involving his father and mother and also his marriage. He’s a good cop. He’s surrounded by a good group of fellow cops, most notably Chief Woody Newell and Detective Dick Waverly of the Minneapolis PD. The number of characters exceeds need. Shifts in viewpoint offer some character development but make plot movement jerky. There is little sense of place except for Minnesota place names.

Because Ray Schiller has potential to be an interesting protagonist, I’ll probably try at least the next novel after DEAR CROSSING.
(B-)
 
Dell Shannon’s WITH INTENT TO KILL is the 1972 entry in her long-running Lt. Luis Mendoza mystery series set in Los Angeles.

As always, Mendoza and the men of Central Homicide--Hackett, Higgins, Palliser, Grace, Landers, Lake--and law enforcement officials from other jurisdictions are busy with multiple unrelated, often unremarkable homicides. They don’t have the manpower or resources to assign each case individually, and more cases come in daily. This outing includes the death of John Hagan, an inoffensive department store bookkeeper who’s shot to death walking his dog; a sniper shooting at people on the street; Patrick Carroll, critically wounded in a heist by two teenaged louts; Richard Flaherty, a telephone lineman killed by a homeowner repelling trespassers; Alfred Carmichael, who got away with the “accidental” deaths of his father and brother, whose wife as just drowned in the bathtub; and the pretty, well but inexpensively dressed, young woman found nude, strangled, on Azusa Street.

One of the neat things about Shannon’s police procedurals is the skill with which she include bits and pieces of personal viewpoint and family life, making the men of Central Homicide believable human beings with lives outside their work. In this selection, Mary Higgins’s baby is born; Alison Mendoza copes with the effect on the family cat of the pregnant stray who gives birth in their garage, while she tries to get the twins to distinguish between Spanish and Englsh; Tom Landers is still courting Philppa O’Reilly; Jason and Ginny Grace are still working on adopting young Celia Ann, orphaned in an earlier case. It’s good to visit these old friends.

Shannon does a solid sense of place. “This was the oldest part of Los Angeles, and nowhere on Central’s bat was there anything that could be described as a good residential neighborhood. There were many street of shabby turn-of-the-century houses, some still wearing the gingerbread trim, few with any vestiges of laws in front; and they ran between the city’s main business streets beset always with the noise of city traffic. Azusa Street was one like that, only shorter and a little farther away from the main drag. It dead-ended down toward the railroad tracks along the Wash, the cement cavern holding the Los Angeles River that wasn’t a river at all ten months of the year. There were no more than six or eight houses along Azusa Street, poor little ramshackle boxes of houses with narrow front yards.” (389)

Shannon’s Mendoza series is one of the most consistent of its period, still well worth reading for its quality of characterization and sense of place. WITH INTENT TO KILL is strong. (A-)
readingomnivor
 
THE JANUS KILLERS is the fourth Ellis Crawford mystery in Annis Ward Jackson’s mystery series set in Battenburg, North Carolina, this one beginning on 4 April 1981.

Nothing major is going on in Battenburg, only some cars hot wired and taken for joy rides and someone’s bending street signs, so Ellis Crawford and Lacy Sutton plan a weekend at the beach. As they’re almost ready to head out of town, two elderly men looking for aluminum cans for recycling find the body of Avery Nichols, wealthy operator of the string of Nichols Sporting Goods stores in the area, in an abandoned tobacco warehouse. He’d been brutally beaten to death but not robbed, though his car is missing. But what was he doing at a warehouse early on Saturday morning? When Crawford and officer Curtis Winstead go to tell Frances Nichols, his widow, they discover that her six-year-old son had been kidnapped from school on the previous afternoon, with a $250,000 ransom demanded. Avery had left the house that morning to take the ransom and had not returned. Both men pick up bad vibes, so they return to the warehouse where Winsted’s knowledge of the building in which he’d worked as a teenager leads them to finding Brack Nichols. He’d been left tied, gagged, and blindfolded in a concealed alcove. Both believe Avery Nichols orchestrated the kidnapping, but who are his accomplices and murderers?

The Ellis Crawford series is a good one. Crawford, a former Marine MP whose career was ended by an IEP in Beirut, is appealing. He’s becoming more confident of his position in Battenburg, winning the confidence and learning the worth of his officers. His PTSD nightmares are becoming rare, and he’s in a good relationship with Lacy Sutton, who’s helped change his attitude about his massively scarred leg. He’s more perceptive than he gives himself credit for: “Suspicions crowded in on him with a sensation somewhere between indigestion and nausea. He struggled to ignore the possibili;ty of a connection between Avery Nichols and the kidnappers/murderers because the idea went against all the mores of decency he could think of. A father using his own son...” (50) Jackson gives Crawford a believable department, focusing attention on different officers so that we get to know them all.

Jackson uses limited third person point of view to present information as Crawford receives it. She uses foreshadowing well. One minor complaint involves proper use of apostrophes in plural possessive last names. The proper plural possessive of Nichols is Nicholses’.

Considering the novella length, Jackson creates a good sense of place: “Monday was starting out on the cool side. The overcast sky seemed lower than the fluffy white against azure blue of the previous day. Only a few yards on to the street, a fine mist dampened a thin layer of pollen on his windshield. His wiper made two clean arcs were surrounded by a coating as thick and the same color as split-pea soup.” (63)

THE JANUS KILLERS is another good quick read. (B+)
 
Michelle Ann Hollstein’s A HARDBOILED MURDER is one of her Aggie Underhill mystery series set in the Palm Springs area of California. It was published in e-format in 2009. Aggie Underhill is an English widow, independently wealthy, who’s moved herself and her best friend Betty Wilcox to America.

A HARDBOILED MURDER opens with the apparent murder of Sabrina Reynolds, who’s pregnant with his child and expecting marriage, by her lover Jeremy Sinclair. Sinclair, in his forties, is married to former film star Esmerelda Sinclair, in her seventies and very much in control of her husband through control of her fortune. He’s determined not to lose out on his reward when Esmerelda finally dies. All this is stated, so I’m not doing spoilers.

This story may have the potential to be a good mystery novel, but I’m not engaged enough at about one-third in to continue. For one thing, the plot jerks the reader around. First Jeremy strangles Sabrina, then she’s not dead after all; she’s lost the engraved watch he gave her for their first “anniversary,” then she has it, then she hands it over to Esmerelda. Then when a woman’s body falls on top of a tram car, it’s apparently Sabrina dead again, but instead it’s Esmerelda. In the meantime, a man’s body is floating in the hot tub at the Sinclairs’ home, found by Betty Wilcox and her cousin Roger Dunlop, who’re at Esmerelda’s to begin work on redecorating a room. The scene shifts between Sabrina, Jeremy, Aggie, Betty, Roger, and Esmerelda without contributing much except jerkiness to plot development. The plot is also padded; for example, Aggie spends many pages looking for a parking place (at a restaurant with valet parking), without adding to plot development. Roger’s fish tank (unrelated to plot so far as I can tell) gets pages of description of mechanics and contents.

I don’t find the characters appealing. Aggie seems self-satisfied, determined to have her own way, a strange mixture of self-confidence and unwillingness to face unpleasantness. The other characters are no more attractive. Aggie’s daughter Sarah is a stick-in-the-mid determined to see the plain and practical side of everything. Sarah’s mother-in-law Anita Ferguson is way beyond the stereotypical Southern belle of a certain age, given to public critique of everyone else in the sweetest tones. None of the characters are well-developed, and neither is the sense of place.

No grade because not finished. Life’s too short.
 
MURDER ON THE EDGE is the third book in Bruce Beckham’s DI Skelgill mystery series. It was published as a free or inexpensive e-book in 2014.

Detective Inspector Daniel Skelgill of the Cumbria Constabulary is in charge of what becomes a serial killer case as three men in short succession are killed and their bodies deposited at local climbing sites in the Penrith area. Barry Seddon, Lee Harris, and Walter Barley are strangled with climbing rope, with no other forensic evidence, no other injuries, no evidence of being drugged, and their bodies dumped after rigor has passed off. Their killer seems the only connection between the men. This case is very much going through the routine inquiries, in effect turning over rocks to see what’s underneath, until Skelgill, in the course of rescuing a young girl trapped on Sharp Edge, where Lee Harris’s body was found, finds out about an outdoor adventure center located in the area some twenty years before. Can there possibly be a connection there? How to prove it?

I like this series. I like Daniel Skelgill, who’s an avid hillwalker and pike fisherman, who very much marches to his own drummer (which may be why he’s still an Inspector and not of higher rank). “...Skelgill’s mind is a mystery even to its owner, and perhaps duty is the stronger drive right now. The enigmatic subconscious can solve a conundrum long before it makes public such success. It does so by piecing together seemingly disparate facts, making connections that defy linear, logical thinking. And, though scant clue there may be, vague forms that lurk in the shadowy recesses of the brain, experience has told him that in later hindsight, their significance will be sharp and bright and tangible.’ (99) Skelgill is ably supported by DS Emma Jones, with whom he may be developing a more personal interest, and DS Leyton, the former London plodder who’s a good man to have his back; DI Alec Smart, who’s jealous of Skelgill’s success rate, adds an interesting counterpoint to boo and hiss.

Beckham is second to none in keeping both plot and characters integrated with the setting. Sense of place is outstanding. “Where the lakes has its verdant oakwoods, soft and inviting, hugging the contours and blending into the fellsides, Galloway is a manmade patchwork of midnight-green conifer plantation, where angular margins challenge aesthetics and slice across bog and scree like the arbitrary borders of African countries. Such austerity is exemplified in the names of many natural features: Loch Doon, Long Loch of the Dungeon, The Black Waters of Dee, Murder Hole, Rigg of the Jarkness, and the Range of the Awful Hand. And where Lakeland towns are thronged with colourful cagoule-clad visitors, who spill chattering from quaint freshly painted pubs adorned with overflowing hanging baskets, an air of melancholy hangs over Galloway; by comparison its villages appear deserted, their buildings in less-than-perfect repair, eaves slowly dripping with black rain; while beyond in the swirling mists mingle the ghosts of Covenanters, lamenting their tragic risings.” (216-7)

This being said, I am disappointed in the plot. It’s clear that the last potential victim is Skelgill himself seeking evidence, but the steps by which he discovered where and how to obtain it are omitted. It’s set up so that he must be rescued by Jones, Leyton, and Cleopatra, the boxer-pit bull mix Skelgill acquired through the Oakthwaite case, and it’s happenstnce that they know where to look.

MURDER ON THE EDGE is a good continuation of the series. (B)
 
Stephen Kaminski’s MURDER, SHE FLOATS is one of his Damon Lassard Dabbling Detective mystery series. It was available as a free or inexpensive e-book.

I’ve read about half of MURDER, SHE FLOATS, and I’m officially giving up. No grade.

The characters are all unappealing. The protagonist Damon Lassard, 31-years-old, still does not know what he wants to be when he grows up. He’s nosing around a death he regards as suspicious, though the police at Nassau in the Bahamas think Philippa Drummiller committed suicide. His only association with her is sitting at the same table during one dinner service on the cruise liner Vitamin of the Seas. He’s both gullible in his relations with women and indiscriminate sexually. He’s sharing a stateroom with his mother on the cruise. All the Drummiller family members are obnoxious and lose no occasion for humiliating each other. None are much characterized.

Writing style is clunky, especially the use of flashbacks. There’s no sense of place. Pace is glacially slow.

I’ve better things to read.
 
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