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Readingomnivore Reviews

Trevor Lowe’s “In Dulce, Disturbed” is a short story available in e-book format. It is one o fhis Cinnamon/Burro New Mexico mystery series.

Cinnamon (no family name given) is a native of Southeastern Virginia working for the New Mexico Department of Education, investigating allegations of violations of the civil rights of students, particularly the failure to provide appropriate individualized instruction for identified special needs students. She’s come to New Mexico looking for her mother, also named Cinnamon, whose last letter placed her at an Apache reservation in New Mexico. Cinnamon’s best friend and investigative assistant is Burro Wesote, a schizophrenic whose visions / hallucinations are controlled by medication and conscious thought. They are at High Ridge Middle School to investigate the treatment of Erik Rule, an autistic Native American seventh-grader; they discover that Erik is missing and that a body identified as his has been found beaten at a cemetery near the school. Together, Cinnamon and Burro find Erik and arrange to help his parents provide for appropriate home schooling. In passing, Ronnie Rule, Erik’s father, remembers Cinnamon’s mother as a friend of his own father and offers her a copy of a picture.

There’s really not much mystery. The treatment of special needs students is unrealistic in the extreme. Teachers like Mrs. Smley and principals like Mrs. Hal would have the system and the state sued before dark, if half their attitude and behavior occurred. The story is also blatantly set up more like a chapter or two of a novel with mulitple installments to follow. Not much characterization or sense of place. Don’t think I’ll be following up. (D)
 
DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS is the latest to date in Margaret Maron’s long-running Judge Deborah Knott series set in Colleton County, North Carolina. It was published in e-book and print editions in 2014.

DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS refers to an informal group of caregivers of elderly relatives who meet for mutual support and occasional relief. Several situations involve various of the group. Frances Jones and her niece are losing their family home because the auction of antiques meant to pay off the mortgage was rigged by an unscrupulous auctioneer; Bruce Connelly has ignored his dying mother and then sues his sisters over items allegedly missing from her home; Laurel McElveen is fading fast until her niece and caregiver unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, when Mrs. McElveen returns to her old self. In the Knott family, Deborah’s Aunt Rachel Morton, Kezzie Knott’s younger sister, is being cared for by her daughter Sally Crenshaw. In hospice care in a coma following strokes, Rachel suddenly begins to talk, repeating stories from the past, with her huge extended family and her friends in attendance. When she’s left alone while the family and aide eat, someone smothers her with a pillow. Who on earth wants to murder an already-dying woman? Does the motive have to do with the person who promised to repay a loan and didn’t? With the man raising a “cowbird egg” as his own? With the fire that killed a neighbor and her two small daughters? With the wife beater? With the death of her own brother Jacob Knott in what might have been a murder when he was fifteen years old?

The plot in DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS recalls Faulkner’s dictum about the past, and Maron effectively keeps attention focused there. The killer and motive are a surprise hidden in plain sight. The revenge staged by Deborah’s auctioneer brother Will and the Designated Daughters to get revenge and some measure of justice for Frances Jones is satisfying.

Characterization is strong as always. Maron’s extensive Knott family, surely must be the largest groups of continuing characters in any current mystery series. She keeps them distinct individuals. Deborah’s father Kezzie Knott, a reformed (?) bootlegger who served a term in prison for income tax evasion, is a focus in the story: “No one in the department except maybe Sheriff Bo Poole would ever come straight out and mention Major Bryant’s father-in-law to his face, but it was a source of head-shaking amusement around the courthouse that a judge and a chief deputy would be so closely related to someone who was a cross between Jesse James and Junior Johnson if half the stories told could be believed.” (127) Alternating between Deborah’s first person point of view and limited third person through Dwight Bryant adds to the sense of them as real people.

Maron isn’t kitschy Southern in her writing, but the sense of place comes through outstandingly well. At one point, Deborah refers to a sister-in-law who hasn’t gotten above her raising; Deborah describes the family gathering to maintain the Knott family cemetery, complete with story-telling during and a weiner-roast afterward. “As is usual at the funeral of an older relative whose death had been expected, once we were away from the grave, the day began to take on the aspect of a family reunion rather than an occasion of real grief.” (53) “Religious or not, anyone who’s spent the first twelve years of life in a Southern Baptist Sunday School never quite forgets the lessons learned.” (263). She’s adept with lyrical descriptions of the countryside.

DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS is a strong continuation of the series. (B+)
 
Margery Allingham’s THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY is the first in her Albert Campion mystery series, in which he appears only as a supporting character. It was originally published in 1929 and re-issued in e-format in 2014. In this introduction, Campion bears a striking resemblance to Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, including the tow-colored hair and talking piffle.

THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY is seen through the eyes of George Abbershaw, a noted pathologist who’s consulted by Scotland Yard. His friend Wyatt Petrie, Oxford scholar, head of a great public school, and published poet, has invited him and other guests to Black Dudley, the home of his uncle Colonel Gordon Coombe, for a weekend house party. The guest list includes a group of Wyatt’s young friends; Jesse Gideon, Coombe’s lawyer; German Benjamin Dawlish, strangely expressionless; Coombe’s personal attendant Dr. White Whitby; and Albert Campion. After dinner, the guests enact the Black Dudley Ritual, a sort of “hot potato” game played in darkness with the Black Dudley Dagger as the undesired object. While the lights are out someone stabs Coombe to death; Dawlish, Whitby, and Gideon compel Abbershaw to sign a cremation certificate on Coombe’s body, and it’s rushed away for cremation. The men are members of a criminal conspiracy carrying out operations all over Europe and the United States, using plans drawn up by a mastermind. Coombe was the mastermind, but who killed him, and what happened to the plans for the latest robbery, one from the British government of at least £500,000.

The international criminal conspiracy theme is a common one in the 1920-30s, perhaps at least in part in reaction to the spread of both Communism and Fascism in Europe. THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY is two-layered--the conspiracy and the murder. The villains in the conspiracy are clear from the beginning; the only question is how they will be foiled. Coombe’s murder is related, but its motive and hence the murderer are not foreshadowed; it’s only in Abbershaw’s confrontation with the killer that all is revealed. By modern standards, this is not fair play, though it is not unusual in books from this era.

Campion receives relatively little attention in THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY. He’s secondary, not known to any of the others (though Abbershaw finally realizes he’s met Campion under another name), and his amiable fool persona remains intact. He finally does tell Abbershaw his mother’s name (so exalted it can only be whispered), and he’s revealed to be a member of one of the most famous and most exclusive London clubs.

The focus of characterization is George Abbershaw: “[Abbershaw] was naturally a man of thought, not of action, and now for the first time in his life he was thrust into a position where quick decisions and impulsive actions were forced from him. So far, he realized suddenly, he had always been a little late in grasping the significance of each situation as it had arisen. This discovery horrified him, and in that moment of enlightenment Dr. George Abbershaw, the sober, deliberate man of science, stepped into the background, and George Abbershaw the impulsive, energetic enthusiast came forward to meet the case.” He’s an attractive character, but most the rest (including Campion) are types.

Easily the strongest element in THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY is setting, especially the atmosphere. “[The trophy] was a vast affair composed of some twenty or thirty lances arranged in a circle, heads to the centre, and surmounted by a feathered helm and a banner resplendent with the arms of the Petries. Yet it was the actual centre-piece which commanded immediate interest. Mounted on a crimson plaque, at the point where the lance heads made a narrow circle, was a long, fifteenth-century Italian dagger. The hilt was an exquisite pice of workmanship, beautifully chased and encrusted at the upper end with uncut jewels, but it was not this that first struck the onlooker. The blade of the Black Dudley Dagger was its most remarkable feature. Under a foot long, it was very slender and exquisitely graceful, fashioned from steel that had in it a curious greenish tinge which lent the whole weapon an unmistakably sinister appearance. It seemed to shine out of the dark background like a living and malignant thing.”

As the first appearance of Albert Campion, one of the great Golden Age detectives, THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY is well worth the time to read or to re-read. (B+)
 
DEATH OF A LIAR is the latest installment of M. C. Beaton’s long-running Hamish Macbeth series, published in print and e-book formats in 2015.

DEATH OF A LIAR opens with a false claim of rape made by Liz Bentley of the Sutherland village of Cromish, policed by Sergeant Macbeth out of Lochdubh station; she’s revealed as a congenital liar. Incomers to Lochdubh Frank and Bessie Leigh make an initial poor impression and seemingly disappear, only to have their bodies discovered a couple of weeks later. Bessie had been smothered and buried under loose dirt in the back garden; Frank had been tortured and his body locked in the trunk of their car left on the moors. Then someone tortures Liz Bentley and shoots her in the back. Hamish is convinced the murders are related and that both involve the attempted recovery of valuables by a criminal gang, probably involved with drug trafficking. He’s largely ignored by the Strathbane police. The case drags on as Hamish continues poking around, gradually uncovering the relationships between the Leighs, Bentley, the Church of the Chosen, and the Wright brothers’ crematorium.

The book is much longer than necessary, for no apparent reason other than to have Hamish kvetch over the continued damper on his love life caused by policeman Dick Fraser’s presence at the Lochdubh station. He’s still faced with the potential closure of the station, which would mean moving away from where he’s happy. He’s still attracted to both Priscilla Halburton-Smythe and Elspeth Grant; he meets new forensics expert Christine Dalray, who’s attracted to him, but he’s more attracted to Anka Bajorak, a Polish baker in Cromish who’s more attracted to Dick Fraser. Hamish repeatedly goes counter to his instructions, then has to conceal his actions from Strathbane. As usual, he’s sabotaged wherever possible by DCI Blair, who still has the ear of their boss Superintendent Daviot. The “hand of God” removal of the gang leader in the penultimate climax is not satisfying. The story could have profitably been cut by fifty pages.

Beaton includes practically every inhabitant ever mentioned as living in Lochdubh, regardless of whether he or she contributes to this plot. None of them are changed since their first introductions years earlier in the series. The total number of characters greatly exceeds that necessary to carry the plot. Only Christine Dalray and Charlie Carter, who replaces Dick Fraser at the Lochdubh station, appear to be continuing characters. It’s hard to believe that Superintendent Daviot is too stupid to recognize Blair’s lies and manipulations or too weak to do something about him. Hamish’s disregard for police procedures and even the law grows--he repeatedly breaks and enters, makes illegal searches, seizes evidence, disobeys direct orders, conceals a body to avoid having to do paperwork on it, intimidates witnesses, and nearly gets himself killed by trying to capture the last of the drug gang on his own. He’s becoming less attractive as a protagonist in each new book.

DEATH OF A LIAR is better written than the latest couple, but it doesn’t compare well with the early books in the series. My continuing to buy new issue, full-price editions is a victory of optimism over experience. (C)
 
A NECESSARY END is the latest in J. M. Gregson’s Percy Peach series set in Brunton in Lancashire. It was published in 2014 and issued in e-format in the US in 2015.

The plot in A NECESSARY END reveals itself slowly as Gregson sets up six characters as victim and potential killers. Enid Frott and Sharon Burgess have known each other for fifteen years, but it’s a bit unusual that they’d agree to form a book club since Enid had been the personal assistant/mistress and Sharon the wife of Frank Burgess. Sharon invites political cartoonist Dick Fosdyke and her adult education instructor Jane Preston to join the club. Enid invites writer Alfred Norbury, who brings along Jamie Norris, his young protege, to the first and only meeting. Someone shoots Norbury to death the next night using the pistol he’d told the club he kept in his car. When DCI Percy Peach and DS Clyde Northcutt investigate, they discover that all the book club members have multiple reasons to want Norbury dead. But which one killed him, and for which reason?

Format is police procedural, but the murder doesn’t occur until almost half through the book. It feels as if Gregson changed formats midway. A NECESSARY END consists almost entirely of Peach and Northcutt repeat interviews with each suspect, each interrogation revealing that the person lied previously but not disclosing how the police knows so. The killer is the least likely suspect, the one who apparently has no deep connection to Norbury. The back story is not revealed until the arrest in the last chapter.

Percy Peach in his unending battle against Chief Superintendent Tommy Bloody Tucker seems to be going through the motions; the usual humor and irony are flat. Lucy Blake Peach, formerly Peach’s assistant, is present only in a home-scene with Peach and her mother that only provides a bit of titillation as Agnes Blake presses Lucy for a grandchild and Percy promises cooperation. Descriptions of Peach and Northcutt seem almost cut and paste from earlier books.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Gregson’s Percy Peach series, but A NECESSARY END is disappointingly clunky. (C)
 
DEVIL IN THE DETAIL is the second book in Ed James’s series featuring Detective Constable Scott Cullen of the Lothian and Borders police, working out of Edinburgh. It was issued in e-book version 2.0.1 in 2014.

Cullen still works under DI Brian Bain, whose reach greatly exceeds his grasp as a detective; his girl-friend DS Sharon McNeil has been transferred to work under DI Paul Wilkinson, who’s no more competent than Bain and equally obnoxious. Cullen is responsible for mentoring Acting Detective Constable Angela Caldwell who replaced ADC Keith Miller. Cullen still feels guilty for Miller’s death (see GHOST IN THE MACHINE). DEVIL IN THE DETAIL opens with the disappearance of Mandy Gibson, a thirteen-year-old girl mentally challenged after a horrific accident, during Sunday night; her body is found several miles from her home the next morning. She’s been smothered with a pillow; the postmortem shows she’d been sexually active. Her family, members of God’s Rainbow Church and its pastor Father Seamus Mulgrew, her brother’s friends, all name bad boy Jamie Cook as her probable killer. Bain joins the bandwagon, his belief reinforced by Jamie Cook’s disappearance. Cullen isn’t so sure. Working with local DS Bill Lamb, whom Bain rides unmercifully but who doesn’t back down, Cullen eventually uncovers the truth.

The plot in DEVIL IN THE DETAIL is much influenced by what’s been in the news in the past few years. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler, but an experienced reader may pick up on the situation ahead of Cullen and Lamb. Suffice it to say that the plot hangs together well, with adequate foreshadowing. There’s even a satisfactory indication that Cullen’s honesty and ability are appreciated at a higher level than DI Bain.

Scott Cullen is an attractive character, if a subversive subordinate. He’s adept at manipulating Bain and his instructions so that he can investigate what he knows should be covered. He deplores Bain’s habit of identifying a suspect, then looking for evidence; Cullen prefers to gather evidence, then see where it points. Cullen is gradually evolving as a character, which makes him realistic. I hope that Scotland’s police are of higher caliber than those James portrays--very few above the rank of Detective Sergeant are more than time-servers, more interested in goofing off and covering their posteriors than in detecting. Excessive use of alcohol and overt sexual harassment are the order of the day; personnel management techniques are Neanderthal at best. Still, James has crafted a distinctive cast of believable cops.

James creates a strong sense of place. “They drove towards Alan McArthur’s parents’ house in the middle of an estate halfway out of town, filled with post-war houses, none particularly well presented. All Cullen knew about Tranent was its focus had been coalmining before the industry was killed off in the eighties. Scotland struggled to generate money at the best of times leaving a huge vacuum during the worst. From years of working in West Lothian, Cullen knew what social cleansing had done to local communities, the redundant workers siring generations of lost kids with no future, prospects or hopes. The social structure of strong patriarchs disappeared along with the men’s self-respect, replaced with cheap alcohol, heroin and crime.”

DEVIL IN THE DETAIL has an attractive protagonist and good plotting. Recommended. (B+)
 
Carol Drinkwater’s THE OLIVE TREE: A PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH MEDITERRANEAN OLIVE GROVES is a the story of her travels through around the Western Mediterranean, the completion of her journey for the origins of the cultivated olive tree. It was published in 2008. The eastern portion of the exploration is recounted in THE OLIVE ROUTE.

THE OLIVE TREE is combined personal memoir, history, folklore, botany, archaeology, travelogue, and meditation on the future of the earth. Drinkwater is thoughtful, inspiring in her passion for the olive and its role in both man’s past and future. “I am not a botanist...nor an archaeologist or historian. Merely a woman who had set out on a journey alone, determined to find a decent, constructive way to live in harmony with her surroundings and who loves olive trees with a passion. What I had been hunting for this time, on the western tour, had been a path forward, constructive pointers that might assist us to alleviate the destruction of the earth’s surface and atmosphere. I now knew that the olive tree had much to offer as a paradigm for drought tolerance, as a major contributor to the reforestation of desert areas...” (328)

Drinkwater is skilled in her evocation of place: “Thirty-one kilometers north of Meknes was Roman Volubilis... Olive groves climbed the sloping, folding hillsides; olive groves specked with flowering poppies. We passed a man lying on his side in a pasture watching over three cows grazing. Alleys of towering olives bordered the roadsides, as plane trees do in Provence. They were leafy and elegant but lacked water. Assan, my driver, confirmed that it had not rained in a year; parched were even these fertile plateaux. Still, it was lovely to behold. Sweeping fields, gently sloping inclines carpeted with yellow flowers. Goats in the groves fed on the wild herbs girdling the trees. Donkeys and men with hoes ploughing fields. Barbary figs as hedges, demarcating the boundaries. And time seemed expansive here. It breathed gently, exhaled slowly. No rush amidst the majestic, proud orchards.” (189)

Dirnkwater also excels in her ability to juxtapose past and present. “The sun had risen on a beautiful day, filling in the spaces between the charred stones with a kindly, diffused light, as it must have done on that mid-summer morning almost 2000 years ago, August AD 79, when the people of this Amalfi coast city awoke, oblivious to their gruesome fate. Pompeii. Such a living and dead place. So many sweet scents and perfumes and delicate living touches pervading a city perished, a charcoaled image of itself. I sat within an olive grove planted with twentieth-century trees beside a fountain whose water stopped flowing 2000 years ago. There were a couple of fresh-leafed apple trees in blossom, too, while, not twenty yards away, laid out in a glass case, were several small, frozen bodies: terrified citizens attempting an escape from the streets flowing with red-hot lava, faces pressed against the ground, faces shoved into another’s long-rotted flesh, incredulous at what was befalling them, caught up in the stampede while overhead the black, billowing clouds cloaked the sky, plunging them into a darkness darker than any night. Stiff, brittle corpses, a diary of a day, a record of nature’s monstrous capabilities. Alongside, tender young petals. (310)

THE OLIVE TREE is worthy addition to Carol Drinkwater’s outstanding series. (solid A)
 
Terrie Farley Moran’s WELL READ, THEN DEAD is the first book in her projected Read ‘Em and Eat mystery series set in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, one of the Gulf Coast barrier islands. It was published in 2014 and features Mary Sassafras “Sassy” Cabot as first person narrator. Her best friend and business partner is Bridgy Mayfeld. It appears that Bridgy’s Southern grande dame Aunt Ophelia will be a continuing character. Together Sassy and Bridgy run the Read ‘Em and Eat Cafe and Book Corner, doing well catering to both locals and snowbirds. When elderly customer and friend Delia Barton is killed, her cousin Augusta Maddox asks Sassy and Bridgy to find out who killed her. This is the only basis for involvement in the murder case.

It’s hard for me to be fair in my appraisal, so I won’t assign a grade. It’s hard to be just because WELL READ, THEN DEAD hits so many of the cliches about the cozy mystery genre as a whole.

The police--Deputy Ryan Mantoni and Lt. Frank Anthony of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department--serve primarily as potential romantic interests, warning Sassy repeatedly to stay out of the case. Other than token questioning of Sassy and a few of Delia’s friends, they appear not to have investigated the murder at all. They allow Aunt Ophie dictate the length of a couple of interviews. They accept the “accident” to Tom Smallwood, despite his being found somewhere other than where he’d been last seen. Sassy is solo in her trying to find the motive for Delia’s murder. The murder of Delia Barton is simplistic. Only one character by actions and personality is capable of murder to obtain his/her own ends, and attempts to misdirect attention are half-hearted at best. There’s little suspense or drama; action is told, not seen. Much of the information Sassy uncovers comes through coincidence--she or someone else overhears vital conversations; Sassy happens to wander through the hospital to visit Tom Smallwood in time to save his life from the killer, whom she identifies only at that point.

Characters are stereotypes--plucky protagonist, faithful best friend, quirky relative, obnoxious neighbor, hunky cops. Way too many characters serve little useful function in advancing the plot in WELL READ, THEN DEAD. It isn’t required to introduce every inhabitant of a community in the first book in a series. Sassy seems younger than her stated age (28), and she pulls a first class TSTL. She receives an anonymous note to meet someone at Delia Barton’s shed and, despite thinking about how heroines in books and movies put themselves in danger, goes to the house, investigates the shed, is hit in the head and left to die as the shed is filled with propane by the killer. It’s the killer’s sheer bad luck that Sassy didn’t die there.

How much daily life is needed to establish characters as individuals? Some is necessary to create verisimilitude, but WELL READ, THEN DEAD focuses more on Sassy and Bridgy’s work in Read ‘Em and Eat than on the mystery itself. Details of the various book clubs and customers do little to develop recognizably distinct participants and distract from the mystery. Length could have been cut by fifty pages without damaging the story.

My final complaint is the lack of a sense of place. Both Sassy and Bridgy are transplanted New Yorkers, so I don’t expect them to sound Southern. But Aunt Ophie (Pinetta, Georgia), fourth-generation South Floridians Delia Barton and Augusta Mayfield, and various other locals do not exhibit Southern speech patterns or habits of thought. The closest Moran comes is to tag Aunt Ophie with several artificial-sounding speeches about what is and isn’t appropriate for a lady. Little is made of the physical setting or the history of Delia Barton’s family on which her murder is predicated.

I kept reading WELL READ, THEN DEAD because I was influenced by the number of positive reviews, and I kept thinking that I must be missing nuances of character and setting. If you don’t mind the cozy genre cliches, it’s an average book; if you do, it’s as dull as cold mashed potatoes without salt or butter.
 
Edith Maxwell’s A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE is the first book in a new series featuring Cameron Flaherty, former IT specialist who’s taken over her great-uncle’s farm and is working to get Produce Plus Plus certified organic. It was issued in hard cover in 2013 and in e-format in 2014.

On Friday morning, Cam Flaherty fires Mike Montgomery when she catches the farmhand with pesticide to apply to her crops rather than remove pests manually; that afternoon, she finds his body in the doorway of her greenhouse, stabbed through the throat with her pitchfork. Shareholders in the Community Supported Agriculture group, most of them members of the Westbury Locavores Club picking up their first consignment of produce, saw the incident, including Mike’s threatening Cam and shareholder Alexandra Magnusson’s threatening Mike with a pitchfork if he contaminates the farm. Mike had been a member of the Patriotic Militia, opposed to immigrants of all varieties, threatening to expose illegal aliens to the INS, including someone prominent in the community. Cam’s friend Lucinda DaSilva, who thinks she’s in the country illegally having entered on a now-expired tourist visa, is arrested for the murder, but Cam is convinced she’s innocent and pokes around to find the killer.

Maxwell does a good job of directing attention away from the real motive for the murder, but her characterization of the killer makes clear who’s the only person with the personality to commit murder. It’s a neat side note that the illegals in A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE are all professionals, not agricultural or industrial workers as is often assumed. The police make little effort to look beyond the obvious, and they miss an important clue when they search Cam’s greenhouse.

Cam Flaherty has potential as a protagonist in a mystery series. Her work background is an interesting combination; she has emotional issues with her frequent-flyer academic parents; she’d been caught in a house fire at age six and had to rescue herself. She has realistic doubts about the wisdom of her decision to take over the farm and whether she can make it a success. She’s attracted to hunky chef Jake Ericsson, but she’s been burned in love before. She’s a loyal friend. But A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE doesn’t develop many other characters in depth, and there are more than necessary to carry the plot.

The story is set in early June in Westbury, Massachusetts, and Cam sells at the Haverhill Farmers’ Market. “The market looked like a scene from another country. Shoppers of all ages carrying string bags and canvas sacks picked over produce and flowers. Newly arrived Cambodians and Haitians rubbed elbows with second-generation Italians, fourth-generation French-Canadians, and Yankees whose ancestors had founded the city. A baker hawked crusty round loaves, long baguettes, and huge cookies. The market was a portrait in contrast to the sterility of a supermarket.” (62-3) Two elements of setting are emphasized: Cam’s crops as she works them and, as appropriate in a book about a farmer, the weather.

A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE is attractive enough that I will try the next book in the series. (B)
 
Susan McBride’s TO HELEN BACK is one of her River Bend mystery series, published in e-book format in 2014. It’s set in River Bend, Illinois (population 200), and features 75-year-old widow Helen Evans as its protagonist.

Milt Grone, most hated man in town, over the opposition of everyone, has sold wooded acreage on the Mississippi River to a developer who plans to put in a water park. Following a town meeting seeking to prevent the park he’s found dead on the lawn of his house; he appears to have suffered a heart attack, striking his head on a rock as he fell. He’d had a major attack some ten years before but refused to take medications or change his life style. But Dr. Amos Melville is suspicious.

I’m giving up at 34% for several reasons. One is the huge number of characters, far in excess of those needed to carry the plot. A second is the change in point of view from chapter to chapter that makes the story choppy without adding much to characterization. Moreover, the characters are stereotypes rather than individuals. The protagonist Helen Evans has no reason to be involved in Grone’s death.

The plot is overly supplied with suspects. While it’s possible to be generally unloved, it’s hard to believe that every person in the town has a motive for murdering Grone, including current wife, ex-wife, neighbors, environmentalists opposed to the land sale, even the preacher. There’s no sense of place.

Most importantly, in a third of TO HELEN BACK there have been three long meditations on the need for Christian charity and forgiveness and two environmental-destruction lamentations. While I personally agree with both, I don’t read mysteries to have my beliefs reinforced. No grade.
 
Jill Paterson’s LANE’S END is the fourth in her Inspector Fitzjohn series set in Sydney, Australia. It was published in e-format in 2014.

Peter Van Goren’s murder at a cocktail party for clients of Carmichael Hunt Real Estate held at the Sydney Observatory is strange, because Van Goren had not been on the guest list, and none of the guests admit knowing him. As DCI Alistair Fitzjohn and his legman Detective Sergeant Martin Betts investigate, they can find no record of Van Goren’s existence before 1983. Also odd is Van Goren’s leaving the bulk of his $50,000,000 estate to Ben Carmichael, who’s never met him. Ben Carmichael, a photojournalist who’s been in Egypt covering the Arab Spring, returns to discover his father Richard Carmichael in hospital dying of a massive heart attack; Emma Phillips, his fiancee, is missing and hasn’t been heard from for several days. Ben discovers that Emma had decided to include his mother, artist Rachael Carmichael, in the book she’s writing on Australian artists; this reopens the question of her 1983 death at the family’s weekend home Lane’s End at Whale Beach. Rachael had gone over the cliff there, but it was impossible for the police to determine if she fell accidentally, jumped, or was pushed. Ben finds Emma attacked and left to die in his mother’s studio at the abandoned estate. As Ben and the local police try to determine who attacked Emma and why, Fitzjohn and Betts’s investigation of Van Goren discloses ties between his death and Rachael Carmichael’s thirty years before.

The plot is police procedural format, completely fair in presenting evidence and Fitzjohn’s interpretation of it as it is discovered. Fitzjohn detects more by interview and knowledge of human nature than by forensics. The identity and motive of the killer are foreshadowed without being obvious. The brief concluding chapters neatly round off both Carmichael and Emma’s story and the latest chapter in Fitzjohn’s greenhouse saga.

Fitzjohn is a believable character, a widower pleased to have won an orchid competition with one of his late wife’s orchids that he’s nurtured since her death; he has a bossy sister and an annoying neighbor who add verisimilitude. He has a good relationship with his sergeant and is perfectly capable of protecting himself against the machinations of Chief Superintendent Grieg. I admire Paterson’s economy with number of characters and her almost-exclusive use of indirect characterization. She’s effective in using shifts in point of view between Fitzjohn and Ben Carmichael to reveal their personalities. Details of physical locations in and around Sydney firmly establish the setting.

LANE’S END (solid B)
 
DEATH OF THE RIVER MASTER is the final book in Alanna Martin’s mystery series featuring Texana Jones, trading post owner in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. It was published in 2004.

Referred to (unfavorably) as the River Master, Zanjiv Mehendru, head of the US Section, International Boundary and Water Commission, is controversial both in Chihuahua and in Presidio County, Texas, siding as he did with Mexico’s refusal to release impounded water into the Rio Conchos as agreed by treaty. As a result, between the drought and the withheld water, farmers on both sides of the border are losing thousands of acres of land for cultivation and going broke. Someone shoots Mehendru execution style in Ojinaga, Mexico, but there’s no progress in solving the murder until Texana’s husband, Presidio County veterinarian Clay Jones is abruptly arrested. Clay had not known Mehendru, he’s alibied for the time of the murder by the rancher whose bull he’d been treating and by Texana, but the prosecutor produces a heroin-addicted prostitute who testifies that she’d seen Clay shoot Mehendru. In what’s obviously a kangaroo court, the magistrate does not allow Clay’s attorney to cross examine the only witness or even to present Clay’s alibi, but remands him to prison. Someone’s gotten at the system. Mehendru had not been popular--he was much too autocratic, too convinced he was always right, too by-the-book--but why was he killed? Does it have to do with his familial connection to the infamous Blancas drug cartel? With the Bonis Avidus conservation group buying land and working for conservation easements in Presidio County? With his membership on the Tri-County Water Planning Board and its hydrology study? With his fondness for reporting even minor malefactors to the authorities? But why is someone pressuring the authorities to hold Clay for his murder?

The plot of DEATH OF THE RIVER MASTER is satisfyingly intricate, and its pieces fit neatly. The process through which Texana discovers the motives for the murders of Mehendru and local ranger Hugger Baines and the killer is logical; the killer’s identity is foreshadowed well. The outcome is believable.

One of the pleasures of this series has been the vivid community of continuing characters: Texana, Clay, Deputy Dennis Bustamante, Casa Azul restauranteurs and friends Claudia and Ruben Ryes, retired priest Jack Raff. They’ve become good friends. Martin is adept at showing people realistically, as mixtures of good and weak qualities, caught in circumstances giving them little choice.

Sense of place in the series is exceptional. Martin evokes the uniqueness of the area: “Ojinaga and Presidio are separated by a bridge, but united by a culture. Border Spanish is our language; citizens on both sides of the river likely have aunts and uncles, cousins, or sweethearts on the other; both towns celebrate the Fourth of July and Mexico’s independence day, the Sixteenth of September. Many families in Ojinaga, using the addresses of relatives, send their children to school in Presidio. Most people shop for groceries, clothes, furniture, and appliances in Presidio and visit doctor, dentist, and druggist in Ojinaga. Strangers to the borderland often ask who we are. ‘Fronterizos,’ we answer. We live in a world apart, where everyone treats everyone else as an equal and the mode of life is set by the heat of the desert and the crosscurrents of the politics of two countries.” (15)

Lyrical descriptions of the country abound: “There’s no place I’d rather be in the early morning than sitting on the front porch of the trading post. ... The quiet was immense. Nor did anything disturb the eye. Beyond the greenbelt, everything around is low-growing and compact. The only signs of life require an experienced vision: the bulky dense shadow of a horned owl in the highest branches of the tallest tree; the low, floating, rufous shape of a late-running coyote; the swift, soundless flight of a roadrunner with a lizard in its bill, gliding from ground to nest. Scents, too, are muted, faint, and familiar: a musky aroma where some javelina has rubbed against the rocks that line the porch; the misty fragrance of creosote bush that the afternoon heat will burn away; and beneath it all, the thick, clean smell of the night-cooled earth.” (114)

Martin’s Texana Jones series is outstanding. DEATH OF A RIVER MASTER ends it at its best. (A)
 
Anthea Fraser’s PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is one of her mystery series featuring Detective Chief Inspector David Webb of the Broadshire CID, working out of Shillingham. It was originally printed in 1986 and re-issued in e-book format in 2014.

The story opens with the murder of an unspecified woman and arrangements to conceal her disappearance. Newlyweds Matthew and Jessica Randal Selby arrive in Westridge to live in Hinckley Cottage for a month while Matthew, a best-selling biographer, researches in the archives of the Sandon family for his next book; Jessica, hampered by a broken leg suffered on honeymoon in Switzerland, plans to relax and learn lines for her next play. Everyone’s surprised that the cottage’s owner Freda Cowley left without letting anyone know. Then begins a series of rapes in the villages, each with the same modus operandi, the oddest feature of which is the rapist forcing the victim to recite nursery rhymes throughout the attack. Some ten days after her disappearance, Freda Cowley’s body turns up in a ditch, complete with a quotation from a nursery rhyme in her pocket. So Webb and his men are looking for a rapist who’s also a murderer.

The plot in PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is police procedural format. It focuses on the potential identity of the rapist and who may be his next victim, though it’s heavily foreshadowed that the ultimate attack will be on Jessica Randal Selby. A secondary story line involves Webb’s ex-wife Susan’s return to Shillingham looking for a possible reconciliation. The identity of the killer and the outcome of the case are not adequately set up, even for a surprise ending. Coincidence plays too strong a role.

There’s a fine line between sufficient characters to carry the story and provide an appropriate number of suspects and too many. PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW has too many with no specific function and little or no characterization. Few of them, including Webb and the Selbys, are very attractive personalities. Webb knows what he’s getting into with Susan, yet he risks a relationship that he values to spend a night with her. Matthew Selby is selfish in leaving his largely immobile wife alone in the cottage after the murder and the rapes are known. Jessica allows him to ignore her legitimate fears. Point of view shifts from the killer to Jessica Selby to DCI Webb.

Setting involves physical details of location almost exclusively, with little atmosphere. PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW is disappointing. (C)
 
MIST WALKER is the third in Barbara Fradkin’s mystery series featuring Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green. It was originally published in 2003 and again in 2009.

MIST WALKER opens with his friend Janice Tanner reporting that Matthew Fraser is missing. Fraser had been tried for and acquitted of sexual abuse of six-year-old Rebecca Whelan some ten years before, but no one, including his defense attorney, believed him innocent. Fraser’s been working to clear his name by identifying the abuser. He’s contacted the Children’s Aid caseworker but doesn’t show up. Sergeant Brian Sullivan is working the death of a fire victim in a cheap boarding house in Vanier; the building super identifies a photo of Matt Fraser as the man who rented the room, and the badly burned body matches his description. As Green and Sullivan investigate, they discover that the Rebecca Whelan case is at the center of the current situation and that very little is what it seems.

The plot is satisfying in its twists and turns. Just as Green thinks he’s figured out what happened and who’s guilty, new evidence demands a new theory of the crime(s). The identity of the abuser is foreshadowed, but the identity of his killer and what happens to Matt Fraser are major surprises. The secondary story line, Green’s daughter Hannah running away from her mother in Vancouver, flying to Ottawa to meet the father she’s never known, ties in well with the main story.

Fradkin is effective in giving enough personal feelings and details of daily life to make Michael Green seem realistic; she has surrounded him with a believable community. “Brian Sullivan and he had been rookies on patrol together over twenty years ago and had remained friends ever since, despite their differences in temperament and rank. Where Green was impulsive and fanciful, Sullivan was practical and meticulous. Green made wild intuitive leaps, while Sullivan steadfastly filled in the gaps. In the past, before the changing face of police work and Green’s promotion to the senior rank had drawn him further and further from the trenches he loved, the two had made a perfect investigative team. Now, Sullivan and his colleagues from Major Crimes conducted all routine investigations without need of Green’s input, while he sat on planning committees and chafed with frustration. Sometimes he bulldozed his way onto a case out of sheer boredom, or the fear that no one else on the force knew what they were doing. Occasionally, Sullivan took pity on him.” It’s good to get to know better Sharon Levy Green, Mike’s wife who’s a psychiatric nurse and important source of information. Because the books are character driven, it’s good to read the series in order.

Sense of place is outstanding. Fradkin excels in melding physical locale and history to evoke the neighborhoods of Ottawa.”Historically, Vanier was the home of Ottawa’s francophone working class community, with roots back in the lumbering days, and it had retained a strong French Catholic flavour. Like much of the inner city, however, it had become an uneasy mix of indigenous French, transients down on their luck, aboriginals from up north, and immigrant families from all over the Third World. Proud shanties stood side by side with cheap apartments and rooming houses which saw a constant turnover of tenants with uncertain pasts and even more uncertain futures.” She’s also good at using atmosphere and details of setting to reveal character.

The Inspector Michael Green series is strong; MIST WALKER is well done. (A-)
 
CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE is the first in Annette Dashofy’s mystery series set in Monongahela County, Pennsylvania, featuring EMT Zoe Chambers. It was published in 2013 and in e-book format in 2014.

After their confrontation at the Board of Supervisors meeting, it is a surprise when Ted Bassi is found dead in Supervisor Jerry McBirney’s truck; after all, it had been Ted who’d threatened McBirney, who’s well on his way to being the most hated man in Vance Township. Does his death have anything to do with a rumor that Jerry’s wife Marcy was having an affair with Ted? McBirney enjoys throwing his weight around, and he’s obsessed with the need to recover an outdated, replaced computer. Someone breaks into the evidence room at the police department to steal it. Why is the computer so important? McBirney soon leaves the suspect list when he turns up bleeding out from stab wounds in the trunk of a car. He has major past history with Zoe Chambers, who’s on the EMT run that tries to save him, and with Chief of Police Pete Adams, whose wife he stole. But who needed Bassi and McBirney dead AND the computer?

CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE has potential. Both Zoe Chambers and Pete Adams are attractive personalities, mature and dedicated professionals, with believable baggage from thirty-five years of life. Action is seen alternately from Zoe and from Pete’s point of view, so they are developed indirectly. Those who appear destined to be continuing characters-- Zoe’s best friend Rose Batti, her teenaged children, her mother-in-law Sylva Bassi; Supervisors Joe Mendez and Howard Rankin; various officers of the police and EMT departments of Vance Township; County Coroner Franklin Marshall--are well drawn and individual. There are more characters than strictly necessary to carry the story line, a common failing in first books in a series. Zoe’s guilty of TSTL with her cell phone not being charged and available and compromising chain of evidence.

The plot is police procedural format, with full disclosure of evidence as it is uncovered and evolving theories of the crimes. An experienced reader may solve the crimes before Zoe and Pete. Three improbabilities bothered me. One is that Zoe would treat McBirney, who’s obviously dying, when she has major history with him that includes assault and attempted rape. A second is that Pete Adams is not immediately been removed from the cases because he’s a suspect for his murder. The third involves the amount of damage a character can sustain and keep on going--Supervisor Matt Doaks is in a major automobile accident in which he sustains a head injury, a broken leg, and the assorted battering and bruising to be expected from totaling his car. The next day, he is out of the hospital, walking on crutches, presiding at a meeting of the supervisors, having no apparent trouble navigating the snow and ice of weeks of winter weather. It hardly seems likely.

Setting is given as Dillard, in Vance Township, Monongahela County, Pennsylvania, which is near Brunswick. There is little to evoke a sense of place. The story could be happening anywhere.

I may try the second book, to see what Dashofy makes of Zoe and Pete. Otherwise, CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE is just okay. (B-)
 
RELATIVELY GUILTY is the first in William H. S. McIntyre’s Best Defense mystery series, published in 2013. It is set in Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland, and features Robert Alexander Munro.

Both his father, retired Police Sergeant Alex Munro, and his older brother Malcolm “Malky” Munro, former football star, expect criminal defense solicitor Robbie Munro to take care of the messes Malky makes. His latest is deadly--Malky was driving the car in an accident that cost the life of his partner Dr. Cathleen Doyle, daughter of Dechlan “Dexy” Doyle. Doyle is former IRA of some rank who moved from Belfast to Glasgow, established the Midnight Raiders gang, and quickly intimidated his way into control of the local club and pub scene. He’s going to see that Malky pays for Cat’s death, but Robbie must somehow defuse the situation, despite Malky’s having seduced Cat away from Robbie three years before. Robbie is also busy with the defense of Isla Galbraith, a nurse being held for the murder of her policeman husband Callum Galbraith, whom she killed after ten years of brutal abuse. She confessed to the murder, but Robbie’s looking for mitigating circumstances to minimize her sentence. To further complicate his life, Robbie’s arrested for passing a counterfeit £50 note that came from Jake Turpie, a serious hard man who owns the flat occupied by Munro & Co along with various illegal enterprises. As Robbie tries to get through the legal jungle, he discovers that things and people are seldom what they seem.

The plot is satisfyingly complex, with layers of deception and surprising twists. It is fairly set up with clues, with information given as Robbie uncovers it. McIntyre ties together the multiple story lines without making the resolution contrived.

Characterization is strong. McIntyre creates a believable cast of associates for Robbie: his tough secretary Grace-Mary Gribben; receptionist Zoe, whom Robbie quite fancies; and young, just-qualified assistant Andy Imray. His brother Malky is single-minded: “...my brother’s primary interest had always been for number one. Even coming to see me for help; you’d think he’d be too embarrassed. Not Malky. It was so simple to him. He was in trouble and now I was expected to drop everything and come to the rescue. The thought that I might be annoyed with him, or even enjoying his paranoid ramblings after what he’d done to me, would never have entered his head. After all, he was the great Malky Munro. Didn’t everyone want what was best for him?” (18-9) The villains are memorable.

Robbie is easily the most interesting character. McIntyre gives him a storytelling voice as first person narrator, complete with a self-deprecating sense of humor: “I tried not to get emotionally attached to my clients, especially those charged with murder--they often disappeared for long stretches--that said, I couldn’t help liking Isla, [even] though she wasn’t a private fee-payer, which is what I tended to look for most in a client...” (25) He’s also unblinking about the law and the legal system: “i didn’t make the laws. I had to work with them, sometimes work around them. The only certain thing about the criminal justice system was that the people who made the rules kept changing their minds. These days, Parliament said it was a crime to smoke in a pub or forget to put on a seat belt. Same with drinking in public. Under the Scottish Government it was a crime to picnic in your local park if you fancied a crisp Chablis with your chicken salad. Religion seemed little better. One days Gays were an abomination, the next they were taking the service. The fact was: times changed, laws changed, morals changed. Justice was a moveable feast; a pie supper wrapped in tabloid newspaper. The only thing that never changed was my duty to do the best for my client. I’d let other people decide if the outcome was justice or not.” (307-8)

McIntyre is skilled using locale and history to create a great sense of place. “The ornate crowned-spire atop St Giles Cathedral loomed ahead as I quickened my westward march along the Royal Mile. Malky broke into a trot, gaining on me, catching up as I veered left, side-stepping the globs of spit I couldn’t see in the twilight of the Old Town but knew to be always present on the Heart of Mid-Lothian, site of the former Tollbooth, which, as the name implied, was where the Town Council had collected tolls. In days of old, the building had also served as a prison and a site for hangings, the heads of the more notorious victims displayed on spikes. Though the Tollbooth had been demolished nearly two hundred years ago, it was still the tradition to spit on the heart-shaped design set into the cobbles that marked the spot; whether as a sign of disrespect to the present Town Council or those long-departed criminals, I was never quite sure.” (117-8)

I will definitely be reading the Best Defense series. RELATIVELY GUILTY is first rate. (solid A)
 
MURDER ON THE LAKE is the fourth book in Bruce Beckham’s Detective Inspector Daniel Skelgill series. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

Caught on Derwentwater Lake in a storm, Skelgill takes refuge on Grisholm Island. He meets young Lucy Hecate, an aspiring novelist who’s attending a writers’ workshop at Grisholm Hall. She’s looking for help because another of the attendees, publisher Rich Buckley, has been found dead in his bed. Skelgill goes to investigate but, when he returns to his boat for his cell phone to summon his team, the boat has been released. Marooned at the Hall for the night, Skelgill awakens Monday morning to discover his team present, summoned by a waterman who discovered his boat adrift on Derwentwater; not only do they have Buckley’s body, but would-be writer Bella Mandrake has died during the night. The police pathologist can’t establish cause of death, and Skelgill’s intuition says murder. As the investigation cranks up, Skelgill and his team of Detective Sergeants Leyton and Jones discover that the company that set up the writers’ workshop, Wordsworth Writers’ Retreats, does not exist; the professionals--agent Dickey Lampey, critic Angela Cutting, and best-selling mystery writer Sarah (aka Xara) Redmond--had been promised major fees for a week’s minimal work, and they are connected in the tightly-knit publishing business. The novice writers are all attending free of charge: chef and would-be cookbook author Linda Gray, retired GP Dr. Gordon Bond, thriller writer Burt Boston; each of them had been recruited via e-mail. But who wanted Buckley and Mandrake dead, and why?

The plot for MURDER ON THE LAKE doesn’t hand together too well. There’s little foreshadowing of the killer’s identity and motive, and the reader does not receive full information as it emerges. The whole set-up for the murder seems unrealistically literary, unapt to work in real life. Skelgill’s bet on catching a massive pike from Derwentwater functions as a plot device for getting him onto the lake at an unlikely time and place. How probable is it that a police officer who was in the house when Mandrake died would be allowed to conduct the police investigation until two days before solution of the case?

Because their abilities are complementary, Skelgill, Leyton, and Jones are an effective team. Skelgill is intuitive, apt to go off on tangents. “...Skelgill...is for the time being casting aimlessly. However, this may be no bad thing; as DS Jones alluded to with regard to the solving of crossword puzzles, the hopeful charge down a blind alley is the first sign that the subconscious has detected an as-yet indefinable pattern.” (158) Jones excels in administrative duties and computers, while Leyton is loyal and persistent. DI Alec Smart is still on the periphery, causing trouble for Skelgill with the Chief Superintendent whenever possible. The police characters are more believable than the members of the workshop, who tend more to be types.

Sense of place is the strongest element in MURDER ON THE LAKE. “Grisholm Hall, a rather austere Victorian edifice at the center of the eponymous isle, lies chronically vacant and shuttered, a situation that has persisted for the best part of half a century. With no caretaker in residence, the peeling and tilted ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ signs nailed around the perimeter held little fear for him and his fellow adventurers, who spent many an illicit hour here in their teenage years. From the mooring a winding footpath climbs through dense woodland to a high point, where the property rests in a clearing of lush mossy lawn, though entirely hidden from the lake year-round by a judiciously planted ring of conifers. It is necessary to climb one of the fells, surrounding lower Derwentwater to discover the hidden mansion from afar.” (8)

MURDER ON THE LAKE is an okay read, but it’s not as strong as the other books in the series. (B-)
 
I was in the mood for a golden oldie, so I pulled out Ngaio Marsh and Inspector Alleyn.

Ngaio Marsh’s ENTER A MURDERER was originally published in 1935; it has recently been re-issued in an inexpensive e-book bundle. It features Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn in the second book of her long-running Golden Age series.

Journalist Nigel Bathgate has been friends with actor Felix Gardener since their days at Cambridge, so it’s not surprising that Gardener gives him two tickets to the play in which he’s starring at the Unicorn Theatre, The Rat and the Beaver. Gardener’d been given the role by producer Jacob Saint (formerly Jacob Simes) over the claim of his actor nephew Arthur Surbonadier (formerly Arthur Simes). Surbonadier is involved with drugs and alcohol, womanizing, and blackmail. During Act III of the play, Gardener’s character shoots Surbonadier’s, a scene carefully staged to prevent injury while looking authentic. Imagine the surprise when someone replaces the dummy bullets in the on-stage gun with real ones. Unfortunately for the murderer, Bathgate’s companion at the play is CDI Alleyn of Scotland Yard. As he investigates, unsavory past deeds emerge: a libelous article about Jacob Saint perhaps written by his nephew six years before; drug dealing; long-term blackmail; seduction. Bathgate is caught in the middle with his friendships with both Alleyn and Gardener.

The plot is almost least-likely suspect in structure, so the killer’s identity comes as somewhat of a surprise. Not all clues are given when Alleyn and his men turn them up, a common feature in many mysteries contemporary with ENTER A MURDERER.

Roderick Alleyn, the protagonist in Marsh’s most famous series, resembles Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion in social class and educational background. in ENTER A MURDERER, he’s frequently facetious in speech; he seems bowled over by actress Stephanie Vaughan, a suspect in the murders. Alleyn treats his subordinates with respect, and he obviously is friends with his primary legmen Inspector Fox and Sergeant Bailey. He clearly states his position: “There’s a murder charge hovering round waiting for somebody, Mr. Saint, and shall we say a drama is being produced which you do not control and in which you play a part that may or may not be significant. To carry my flight of fancy a bit farther, I might add that the flatfooted old Law is stage manager, producer, and critic. And I, Mr. Saint, in the words of an old box-office success, ‘I, my Lords, embody the law.’ “ He goes out of his way to try to protect Bathgate’s feelings as he readies his trap for the killer. It is a bit improbable that a detective allow a reporter to sit in and take official notes at interviews of suspects in a murder, but Marsh makes it easy to suspend disbelief.

Setting is clearly London, mostly within the Unicorn Theatre; Marsh’s skilled in evoking their atmosphere: “The stage of the Unicorn was completely silent and quite given over to the memory of dead plays. Nigel was oppressed by the sense of uneasy expectation that visits all interlopers in deserted buildings. Now, he thought, was the time for the ghosts of old mummers to step out from behind the waiting doorways and mouth their way silently through forgotten scenes. Somewhere above their heads a rope creaked, and a little draught of air soughed among the hanging canvas.”

ENTER A MURDERER is well worth re-reading as a good example of the Golden Age mysteries. (A-)
 
Jennifer Paynter’s THE FORGOTTEN SISTER: MARY BENNET’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE was originally published in 2012 and reissued in e-format in 2014. It tells the story of Mary Bennet’s life from birth through her marriage and the birth of her first child.

Mary Bennet is the odd-girl-out in Pride and Prejudice and most of its fan fiction sequels and variants. She is the first-person narrator of her life story, setting up a background that accounts for her differences from her sisters. She’s turned over to a Mrs. Bushell as a wet-nurse, and she remains with the Bushells until after Kitty’s birth some two or more years later; she was terrified of Mr. Bushell, a poacher and drinker who ended up being transported to New South Wales. When she returns to Longbourn, she is ignored by the rest of the family, Elizabeth and Jane already firmly bonded, with Kitty and then Lydia receiving the attention of her mother and the nursery maid. She feels herself unappreciated, misused, and jealous; she’s lost for two years (ages twelve and thirteen) to what she calls melancholia. She’s sent to live in Bath with Mrs. Knowles, mother of her tutor, where she lives from age fourteen past her seventeenth birthday. Mary feels completely out of place on her return to Longbourn, and she particularly resents Elizabeth as their father’s favorite and his negative reactions to her. She enjoys recounting Elizabeth’s infatuation at age fourteen with an older man, Jasper Coates, who rents Netherfield Hall and lives there with his step-sister and step-mother, each of whom is his mistress.

It’s hard to like Mary Bennet as she presents herself. She’s sanctimonious, quick to judge and condemn, given to eavesdropping and snooping. She blames Elizabeth for Lydia’s elopement since Elizabeth didn’t reveal what she knew about Wickham, forgetting that before Elizabeth goes to visit the Collinses, she herself knew of Wickham’s seduction and impregnation of Helen Long. She is quick to condemn Lydia, but she falls in love with a most inappropriate young man way beneath her social class--Peter Bushell, son of her wet nurse, a gamekeeper who happens to be a gifted musician. (In her account, Mary is a much better musician than presented in the original Pride and Prejudice, composing songs and playing classical pieces that Elizabeth cannot manage.)

The happy ending to Mary and Peter’s romance seems contrived. Mr. Bushell Sr. served his time and prospered in Australia. When Peter explains his father’s circumstances and his determination to go to New South Wales himself, Mr. Bennet permits the lovers to correspond and, when Peter confirms that his father’s farms and store are making him a fortune, consents to Mary’s sailing with Peter’s mother and sister, to be married in Sydney. She doesn’t like her parents-in-law, she’s frightened of convicts and aborigines; she’s very aware of social class, making much of her friendship with Elizabeth Macquarie, the governor’s wife. She names her daughter Elizabeth, she’s quick to say, after Mrs. Macquarie, not her sister. There’s a distinct “making the best of it” tone.

I don’t quarrel with Paynter’s introduction of new characters or even of her moving Mary to Australia. I do dislike Mary’s consistent self-centeredness and her unwillingness to credit either Jane or Elizabeth with good intentions toward herself. Much dialogue is taken directly from Austen’s original, and these excerpts contrast to modern word choice for the bulk of the book. THE FORGOTTEN SISTER is bulky, 434 pages. It profitably could have been cut by a hundred pages by removing some of the repetitions of Mary’s dissatisfaction with her family. Editing should have caught the misuse of “inference” instead of “implication.”

THE FORGOTTEN SISTER is a new take on the most often ignored of the Bennet girls, an account that has much potential. However, as it stands, it’s only average. (C)
 
TWELVE TO MURDER is another of Lauren Carr’s Mac Faraday mysteries set in Spencer, Maryland, in the Deep Creek Lake area of Garrett County. Mac Faraday, the biological son of renowned mystery novelist Robin Spencer who inherited her immense fortune, is a retired homicide detective who now consults for the Spencer Police Department. His half-brother and best friend David O’Callaghan is Chief of Police. Mac also “inherits” Archie Monday, Robin’s research assistant and editor, who’s left a home on the Spencer Mountain estate, and Gnarly, Robin’s gigantic, super-intelligent German shepherd, a former Army dog given a dishonorable discharge for insubordination. Mac and Archie are now engaged. Because personalities and relationships evolve in the series, it’s good to read the series in order.

The murders of Janice and Austin Stillman open TWELVE TO MURDER, but it’s soon clear that the roots of the crime come from the troubled past of former child star and teen idol Lenny Frost. Janice Stillman had been his agent in his glory days and still felt guilty about his ruined life. Shortly after the death of Kate Coleman, Lenny’s girl friend in a well-publicized studio romance when he was seventeen, he’s kidnapped and held for four days. The studio paid $1,000,000 for his release; Lenny named one of his abductors as smalltime actor and drug dealer Carson Drake, but Drake and the ransom disappeared without trace. Already into drugs heavily, Lenny implodes and ruins his career. When Derrick Stillman, who found his parent’s bodies, tells the media that his mother had written “Lenny” in her blood, the manhunt is on. Lenny takes hostages in the Blue Whale Pub, demanding that Mickey Forsythe (hero of Robin Spencer’s mystery series and of the film adaptation for which Lenny won an Academy Award at age eight, ironically playing a kidnap victim) find the murderers. He gives Mac, who goes into the pub with Gnarly in the role of Mickey and his dog Diablo, twelve hours before he begins to kill hostages. Hence the title. O’Callaghan and Mac soon discover the murders originate in the unanswered questions from Lenny’s kidnapping.

The plot in TWELVE TO MURDER isn’t quite as over the top as in some earlier titles, though it’s convoluted with secret identities, hidden motives, drug trafficking, and multiple double and triple crosses. The mastermind behind the whole series of events is foreshadowed adequately; the resolution of the main story line is satisfyingly ironic. The hostage situation at the Blue Whale Pub is funny, well worth the price of the e-book.

Most character development is indirect. Mac is dynamic, coming to terms with scars from his first marriage and setting the date for his marriage to Archie, whom he loves completely. Carr gives Mac a strong supporting cast--David, Archie, Deputy Chief Bogart, David’s girlfriend Chelsea, County Prosecutor Ben Fleming, and, my favorite, Gnarly. There are more characters than strictly necessary, some of whom are first names only; is Special Agent Fredericks DEA as first introduced or FBI as identified later?

TWELVE TO MURDER does not contain much sense of place, but it’s a good quick read. (B)
 
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