Readingomnivore Reviews

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Craig Johnson uses his short stories as connectors between his Walt Longmire novels, not as much for mystery elements as for development of characters. One of the great strengths of his works is this group of very different individuals who nevertheless are dedicated to one another. “Messenger” was published in e-book format in 2013.

Returning from a fishing trip in the Bighorn Mountains on a glorious Indian summer afternoon, Henry Standing Bear, Undersheriff Victoria Moretti, and Absaroka County Sherifndf Walt Longmire are debating the choice of name for Walt’s unborn granddaughter. Cady has asked Henry to bring up the subject because Walt has assumed that she will be named Martha, after Cady’s mother; she prefers Delores, “Lola” for short. They pick up a distress call from Chuck Coon, a forest service ranger. He and Andrea Napier, a tourist from Pasadena who thought it would be nice to feed a bag of caramel corn to a bear and her adolescent cubs, are treed on top of the wooden structure of a toilet in Crazy Woman Canyon. In addition to the bears, something had attacked Andrea from below when she tried to use the facilities. Walt discovers a juvenile female Great Horned Owl, and he and Henry determine that the owl must be saved. With Vic’s reluctant help--she’s the only one who can fit through the hole to reach the owl--they do so.

The story reflects the atmosphere of the mountains and gives a detailed description of the central location of the story. Most of “Messenger” is Henry Standing Bear’s explanation of the role of owls in general and the Great Horned Owl in particular to the Cheyenne belief system. The GHO serves as a messenger from the Camp of the Dead and also as an embodiment of the spirit of as-yet unborn babies (Walt’s granddaughter?). Interesting, heart-warming little story. (B+)

 

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“Divorce Horse” is the short story that bridges the time between Craig Johson’s Walt Longmire novels HELL IS EMPTY and AS THE CROW FLIES. Walt is the first-person narrator, and the story centers on relationships and natural human curiosity about them.

It’s Memorial Day weekend with the American Indian Days Parade and Pow-Wow in Durant. Henry Standing Bear, Cady Longmire, and Walt are having dinner at the Busy Bee Cafe and discussing Cady’s upcoming wedding to Michael Moretti, Deputy Vic Moretti’s brother. Cady tells her father that men are more curious about relationships than women and ask more questions, and a bet is entered. A call comes in that Tommy Jefferson’s “divorce horse” has been stolen. A prize-winning Indian relay race rider, Jefferson’s tempestuous marriage to Lisa Andrews ended because of his addiction to horses and amphetamines. The vicious sorrel he’d bought was the last straw, the divorce horse, proof to Lisa that she meant less to him than the racing.Tommy didn’t take the divorce well, involving Walt, the county judge, the county court clerk and most everyone in Absaroka County in his campaign to get Lisa to communicate with him. But now he’s gotten himself straight and is doing well in competition, only to have the horse stolen. Henry tracks the horse from where it had been hitched, Tommy goes to recover it, and he discovers what most important to him.

Despite the length imposed by the short story format, Johnson highlights the impact of the land on its people: “It was true; the high plains were a pace of transition--people came, people went, a few stayed. Economics had a lot to do with it, but so did the loneliness of the topography. It was as if the land had hollowed out spaces in people until they treated each other with that same distance. Some never come to a truce with that within themselves, but some did.” His creation of the Indian relay race, involving one man and three two-year-old half-broken horses is exciting. (A)

 

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AFTER THE ARMISTICE BALL is the first book in Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver mystery series set in the early 1920s.

When Dandelion Gilver becomes involved with the theft of the Duffy diamonds, she little knows the mess she’s entering. Lena Duffy claims that a thief broke into her room following the Esslemonts’ Armistice Ball and stole the fabulous set, substituting paste replicas. The theft is not discovered for months, not until daughter Cara Duffy takes the diamonds to be valued for sale. The insurance through Silas Esslemont’s company can’t be claimed because no police report was made and, besides, the premiums had not been paid. Yet Lena is demanding that the Esslemonts pay anyway. Why? That’s what Daisy Esslemont hires Dandy to find out. Then Cara Duffy dies in a fire at the Duffys’ seaside cottage, which is so completely destroyed that her body is not found. What happened, and how is it connected to the diamond theft?

The plot in AFTER THE ARMISTICE BALL is over the top. McPherson leaves little doubt from the beginning that Lena is part of the diamond theft, but the matter of Cara’s death is more obscure. Part of this reflects the period in which the story is set--“nice people” are much less willing to suppose that family members can and do perpetrate horrendous crimes upon each other. Dandy’s process of discovery is needlessly drawn out.

McPherson gives Dandy Gilver an interesting story-telling voice, if too many premonitions and “had I but known” moments: “How can I explain...the conviction I held from the earliest state of the Esslemont affair that somewhere here was such hatred, malign and unstoppable, that it must lead, as flood-water up and melt-water down, to violent death? On the surface (my usual habitat) it was a matter merely of commerce. At stake was a good business name--a livelihood at the very most--and while the theft of property might be distressing it does not usually, need not, stir the dust of life to much extent. I am at a loss, therefore, to account for my instant certainty last spring that somewhere near at hand and sometime rather soon blood would spurt and be staunched in murder’s furtive scuffle.” (9) Dandy’s relationship with her husband is curiously stand-offish. She’s a strange mixture of blinding herself to the implication of what she observes and blurting out her thoughts to whoever’s around. None of the characters are very believable in human terms, particularly the lack of emotion. It seems to be neither expressed nor felt.

Setting is well defined. “Most places in this part of the world [Highlands] are at their best in the spring, before the midges awake and begin their savagery, but at Croy the soft uncurling leaf and the peeping primrose are downed out by a display of vulgarity unequalled in Christendom. Daisy’s gardener...the redoubtable McSween, has made it his life’s work to perpetuate upon the bank opposite the front of the house, in splendid view of all of the best rooms, a three-ring circus of rhododendrons and azaleas in every shad, but with a particular nod toward coral and magenta. They jostle like can-can dancers in the breeze off the moor and can make people laugh out loud.” (21) Dandy is not terribly fond of Edinburgh: “We walked through the streets in the growing damp of a chilly afternoon--there is nowhere in the world like Edinburgh for making the same cheerless ordeal out of anytime of the day or season of the year, even early May.” (208) She also has doubts about Scotland’s religious depth: “For all that reading the Bible and feeling glum were still the only Sunday pastimes in the respectable homes of Scotland, one only has to mention felling a rowan tree or eating a wild mushroom to realize that St Columba did not make a very thorough job of it.” (258)

AFTER THE ARMISTICE BALL is okay, but I don’t anticipate following the series. (C+)

 

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Cathy Perkins’s novella HONOR CODE was published in e-book format in 2012. It features Detective Larry Robbins of the Newberry, South Carolina, Police Department. Twenty years on the force, he’s tired and disillusioned, but he does his job. “ ‘Over ten years since the Towers fell,’ Robbins said. ‘I don’t know what we’ve got to show for all the dying.’ At times, fighting those wars [Iraq and Afghanistan] seemed a lot like what he did as a law enforcement officer. He could keep arresting speeders, druggies, and wife-beaters for the rest of his career and it wouldn’t change a thing. New speeders, druggies and wife-beaters would step up and take their places. Just like the wars would breed new terrorists who’d rise up and replace the ones the army killed. But life would be a lot worse if neither he nor the army tried.” (27-8)

Miz Rose Nelson notices that her neighbor George Beason hasn’t taken in his tspaper and doesn’t seem to be at home; she calls the police, and the first responder calls in Detective Robbins. The elderly African-American is missing; his house has been searched; his dog is dead in the house from blunt force trauma. Beason’s car is missing, and neighbors think they heard it leave about 4 AM. Miz Rose is adamant that he wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night or without telling her. Robbins knows and respects Miz Rose, so he takes her opinions seriously and begins the search. News coverage of Beason’s disappearance produces a sighting at the Nippon Center in Greenville, South Carolina, where Beason and a muscular young black man had shown up looking for cylinder seals--artifacts of Mesopotamia, not Japan. A facial recognition software program used on the security tapes from the Center identify the young man as Tyrell Hayes, recently released from military prison in Charleston. He’d been in the same squad in Baghdad with Akeem Beason, Goerge Beason’s grandson. But what are they looking for, and why?

The format is police procedural, and Perkins plays fair with giving the clues as Robbins and his young partner Jerry Jordan uncover them. I like George Beason’s epilogue. There is enough backstory for the characters to make them believable and to explain their actions. Use of limited third person point of view--showing the case as Robbins experiences it--is effective.

Perkins does a good job with setting, especially when considering the novella length. “It was a straight shot down 121 to Saluda, then 121 became Lee Street and he cruised into the small town of Johnston. Another once-prosperous railroad town, the central district had a few of the fancy white-trim old houses tourists liked. One block later, the buildings became small, ranch-style houses on large lots. Everywhere he looked, there were dogwoods and azalea in bloom. Spring in the South never got old. Even if it did mean he had to mow the lawn every week.” (55)

I’d enjoy seeing more of Detective Robbins. HONOR CODE is a solid story. (A-)

 

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BUBBA AND THE ZIGZAGGERY ZOMBIES is the fifth book in C. L. Bevill’s mystery series set in Pegramville, Texas, featuring Bubba Nathaniel Snoddy. Bevill’s skilled in using Bubba as the focus of limited third person narration. Her Southern story-telling voice is impeccable: “Bubba understood about shotgun wounds. Tee Gearheart had been shot by his cousin, catching most of the pellets across his buttocks. He hadn’t sat down for a full month and his cousin had his shotgun returned to him with a bow-tied barrel. (Tee was mostly genial but he hadn’t liked being shot in the ass at all, which had inspired a bout of creativity involving a vice clamp, a blow torch, and a hydraulic pipe bender.) (187)

Bubba is on a quiet picnic in the Longtall Cemetery, ready to propose to his lady love Willodean Gray, when they are interrupted by an invasion of zombies. Kristoph Thaddeus is in town, shooting a horror movie. Kristoph likes Bubba’s looks, so he offers a walk-on part; because he can earn an obscene amount of money (to him) for a day’s work, Bubba accepts. But the next day, when the crew is shooting at the Snoddy mansion, Bubba finds Kristoph dead in the living room of his little house behind the mansion. Bubba’s daddy’s WWII bayonet is sticking out of his back, and there’s a scarf tied tightly about his throat. Who killed Kristoph, and why try to frame Bubba for it? Complicating the situation for Bubba, his mother Miz Demetrice, their housekeeper Miz Adelia Cedarbloom, and Willodean are involved in something with Alonzo and Pilar Garcia and their children. DEA thinks they’re smuggling drugs. Can Bubba figure out what’s going on before someone else gets hurt and/or his mother is arrested?

I love the Bubba Snoddy series. The characters (except for Bubba, who’s the quintessential good ole boy, in the finest sense of the word) are zany, especially Miz Demetrice: “[Bubba] wasn’t stupid and if his mother was doing something illegal with the Garcias, then she almost certainly had a good and moral reason for doing so. If Bubba could count on any one thing in life, it was that Miz Demetrice would run the road of good and moral, until it she could no longer do so. His mother would have been the first fake Indian on the boat at the Boston Tea Party.” (38-9) She’s no pushover, either: “Miz Demetrice patted her cheeks with a pink trimmed handkerchief and attempted to look completely innocuous. She was as innocuous as the offspring of an irradiated black widow spider that had mated with a Velociraptor.” (121-2) Several important figures from earlier books in the series return in this installment.

Plots tend to be over the top, with many scenes enlivened with humor, as Bubba’s leading the DEA tails on a merry chase as he covers for Miz Demetrice and the Garcias. Hidden motives among the film’s cast and crew make for a variety of suspects. Bevill manages a nice surprise ending.

Bevill doesn’t use a lot of physical detail in establishing her setting, but it’s unquestionably the small-town South. “Bubba’s mother, Miz Demetrice Snoddy, probably told Bubba that sitting on a grave was unlucky and rude and conceivably illegal. (The illegal part wouldn’t have made a little mosquito-sized bump in his mother’s conscience, but the other stuff would.)” (4) “Most of Pegram County made the fine art of gossiping seem like a trait learned right after they began to walk at a year old. Rumors got twisted around faster than green grass through a diarrheic goose.” (213) “...Missus Teasdale was Miz Demetrice’s sworn evil archenemy. (There had been a certain incident where both women had worn the exact same hat to a church function. Hat? Dress? Something like that. Words had ensued, which escalated into insults that respectable southerners and Texans would never repeat in polite company. Blood oaths had been sworn that they would never speak to each other again.) Bubba’s mother would cross the street in order to avoid coming close to Susan Teasdale.” (220)

All this being said, there are way too many characters who aren’t essential to the plot. It really isn’t necessary to include every person in Pegramville. At the same time, I miss Brownie Snoddy, Bubba’s young cousin on whom Matt Lauer has a restraining order. (Lauer doubted the effectiveness of Brownie’s home-built Taser, so Brownie demonstrated it, on Lauer.) The series is best if read in order.

BUBBA AND THE ZIGZAGGERY ZOMBIES is a good fun, quick read. (A-)

 

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RUBY HEART is the second book in Cristelle Comby’s Neve and Egan mystery series. It was published in e-book format in 2013.

Alexandra Neve is a twenty-something private investigator in London, in partnership with Ashford Egan, who’d been her history professor at University College London and now works with her part-time. He’s blind. Mrs. Doris Hargrave hires Lexa and Ash to recover a ruby and diamond pendant stolen from her a month previously. Her Jewish grandfather in Magdeburg, Germany, had made it for his bride; it passed to Mrs. Hargrave’s mother, but it was stolen when the Salzmanns were deported to Warsaw. The pendant and other stolen jewelry turn up years later in the ruins of an earthquake-destroyed house in Italy; a month after she claims it, someone steals it again. Lexa and Ash conclude that the second theft must be involved with the original theft in 1942, so Lexa looks for the German theft while Ash concentrates on the modern one. In the process of recovering the pendant, Lexa has an encounter with Ben Cobcart, former boyfriend and leader of the Hackney gang known as the Fivers; Dimitri, a Russian criminal involved in the first book in the series, gives them information on the London thief in exchange for a dance with Lexa; they encounter a master criminal also involved in the earlier case, known as “The Sorter.”

The plot in RUBY HEART has potential, but there are several problems. One is the idea that a newspaper archive would send the only microfilm copy of several years of the paper to an unknown person in another country. The German end of the search takes an unrealistically short amount of time. By an unbelievable coincidence, the policeman-grandfather of the woman Lexa contacts in the newspaper archive worked and remembers a wreck in the Harz Mountains in 1943. The master criminal motif is dated--”The Sorter” might as well be called Moriarty. The man behind the theft of the pendant dies, but there’s no resolution to “The Sorter” business. In fact, after the first case, he’d sent Lexa a pawn; after this one, a bishop with the comment “UNTIL NEXT TIME.” Future involvement with Ben and the Fivers is implied.

Characters are pretty generic, though there are major hints of some horrific story involving Lexa and Cobart. She’s typical spunky, independent, stubborn, trained in Wuchu, a form of Chinese martial arts. She pulls a major TSTL when, having snooped in a police file on the theft, she goes to the home of the man who’d hired the theft of the pendant. Is anyone surprised when she is knocked out and tied up, and has to be rescued by Ash? As for Ash, “...Egan can be charming, when he wants to be, but that’s not very often. He’s the type of man who likes to keep his cards close to his chest and doesn’t let many emotions show through his carefully selected facade. He always maintains a carefully composed checked manner, at all times. It tends to make him come off as rather cold and uncaring. During the past few months, he’s been melted a bit by my much-warmer-even-flaming-at-times maelstrom of a personality, but he’s still rather coldly controlled in the presence of others.” (5-6)

RUBY HEART is clearly set physically in London, but there’s little evocation of time or place. Several mistakes exist in editing, including inconsistency of dating the important newspaper photograph; it’s from 1943 originally, but a later reference says 1933. Don’t think I’ll be following up on this series. (C)

 

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MORE WORK FOR THE UNDERTAKER is one of Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series. It was originally published in 1948 and reissued in e-format in 2014.

When Edward and Ruth Palinode, siblings and intellectuals living in London in the boarding house run by former variety artist Renee Roper, die in mysterious circumstances, the chief of Scotland Yard Stanislaus Oates, Renee Roper herself, and Lugg’s brother-in-law Jas. Bowels, all ask Campion to sort things out. A series of anonymous letters to Dr. Smith, who attended both of the Palinodes, accuse him of concealing murders. Exhumation shows that Ruth Palinode died of hyoscine poisoning. But who wants dead a woman whose only estate consists of stocks in busted companies? Lugg prowls around the Bowels establishment--he and his son are the local undertakers--and concludes that they’re involved in something fishy, but not necessarily murder. Campion observes Bowels and son moving an elaborate coffin at two o’clock in the morning. Why? Suspicion naturally focuses on the three remaining Palinode siblings, all desperately poor, all highly intelligent and massively eccentric. Campion and Lugg pick up distinct traces of a criminal enterprise that must be exposed before they can identify the killer.

The plot of MORE WORK FOR THE UNDERTAKER involves several characters and motifs common in the series. Charlie Luke, who becomes CamCampion’s good friend and a great detective, is a spectacularly young Divisional Detective Inspector. It includes a bizarre family whose members seem to operate outside most social norms, and professional criminals are involved in what seem private crimes. Foreshadowing is subtle, so the identity of the killer may come as a surprise.

Since Allingham introduced Campion in THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY in 1929, he’s changed dramatically. Now in his mid-forties, Campion had operated with distinction behind enemy lines during World War II and is being pressured by “the Great Man” to accept appointment as a colonial governor. He still looks amiably blank most of the time, but the facetiousness is gone. Allingham develops his detective methods: “Campion was still in bed but not asleep. He had been awake for some time and was lying with his hands behind his head allowing his thoughts to boil gently. They eddied and streamed, turned over and spread out, whilst he looked down on them from some aloof and godlike vantage point. They had jostled and contradicted each other, explained themselves, or become more and more unlikely as the days had raced on. But now at last he thought he was beginning to see their pattern. It was still confused in places and the face which must provide the central motif remained obscure, but the basic design was emerging.” The Palinoide siblings are wonderfully outre and distinctive personalities; the friendships and professional relationships between Stanislaus Oates, Superintendent Yeo, Campion, and his man Lugg are believable, enriched by the addition of young Charlie Luke.

Most of the action of MORE WORK FOR THE UNDERTAKER occurs in Apron Street in the house owned by Renee Roper. “The interior of the house, what little [Campion] could see of it, was a surprise. It reminded him of his school days, since all the architectural features seemed several sizes larger than he personally required. The staircase had been designed in pitch-pine by someone who was getting back to simplicity but not all at once, for at intervals a discreet bunch of hearts, or possibly spades, appeared fretted in the solid woodwork. The steps were uncarpeted and would no doubt have been polished had Mrs. Love been thirty years younger. They wound up two floor, following the four sides of a square well and were lit from above by one inadequate bulb hanging from a ceiling rose intended to sprout a candelabrum. Solid eight-foot doors arranged in pairs lined the walls of each landing, and on the faded patch of distemper between each couple hung huge sized sepia engravings after Watts and Rosetti.”

MORE WORK FOR THE UNDERTAKER is one of the strongest of the Campion novels. (A-)

 

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Georgette Heyer’s BEHOLD, HERE’S POISON was originally published in 1936 and reissued in e-book format in 2009. It features Detective Superintendent Hannasyde of the Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard. It’s set in the village of Grinley Heath in May 1935.

Gregory Matthews is a thoroughly hateful man--unreasonable, controlling, ill-mannered, certain he knows best. He lives at the Poplars with his miserly spinster sister Harriet, his widowed sister-in-law Zoe Matthews, Zoe’s son Guy and daughter Stella, and assorted servants. He’s planning to send Guy to Brazil to work at a rubber plantation, which both his mother and his aunt strenuously oppose; he forbids Stella’s engagement to Dr. Deryk Fielding, which she and her mother resent. When he’s found dead, his married battle-ax sister Gertrude Lupton demands an autopsy, one that reveals Gregory Matthews died from nicotine poisoning but not how, since nicotine can be injected, absorbed through the skin and mucous membranes, or ingested by mouth. Superintendent Hannasyde has no physical evidence since Harriet had cleared Gregory’s bedroom and bath the day he died. The family wants the murderer to be Gregory’s heir and now head of the family Randall Matthews, who clearly knows more than he’s telling about Gregory’s business and death. It isn’t until Harriet Matthews dies that Hannasyde puts it all together.

The plot of BEHOLD, HERE’S POISON is dated, in that there’s little foreshadowing of the motive or identity of the killer, depending instead on a tell-all conclusion. The means of delivering the poison is unusual. The focus of the novel is more the dynamics of the dysfunctional family than the solving of the deaths.

Characters aren’t too believable as human beings, but Heyer does a superior job of particularizing types: “[Zoe Matthews’s] only means of gratifying her son’s ambition, and of keeping him at her side, was to sell out some of her own capital for his use, and since her income was already quite insufficient for her needs this expedient was naturally out of the question. She did not even consider it. Nor did she permit her resentment to become apparent to Gregory Matthews, for that would have been very stupid, and might have led to the loss of an extremely comfortable home for which she was not expected to pay as much as one farthing. The home had its disadvantages, of course. It was not her own, and the presence of her sister-in-law was always an irritation, but since poor Harriet was the antithesis of everything Gregory Matthews thought a female should be it needed really very little trouble to enlist his support in any disagreement with her sister-in-law. Patience and the unfailing sweetness had achieved their object: at the end of a five-year sojourn at the Poplars Zoe Matthews had contrived to make herself, if not the mistress of the house, at least the cherished guest whose comfort must be everyone’s first consideration.” (28)

None of the others are more attractive, and two of them are wildly inconsistent. When the story opens, Stella is in love with Dr. Deryk Fielding and intends to marry him despite her uncle’s prohibition; she regards Randall Matthews (who’s her first cousin) as an amiable snake, effete and condescending. Midway through she’s gone off Fielding, and by the conclusion, she’s agreed to marry Randall. All this transpires in less than two weeks.

Point of view is omniscient third person, which makes it difficult to identify with any of the characters. Little is shown of the setting, and there’s no development of a sense of place. Heyer’s contemporary mysteries do not match the quality of her Regency and Georgian romances. (C)

 

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THE DEATH CONTINGENCY is the first book in Nancy Lynn Jarvis’s Regan McHenry Real Estate series. It was published in e-format in 2008. Regan McHenry and her husband Tom Kiley are partners in Kiley & Associates Real Estate in Santa Cruz, California.

When Cyrus Ansari does not show up for the escrow signing for the sale of his house to Regan’s clients the Beltrans, she’s upset lest the sale fall through and because Ansari seems to have disappeared. His nephew and sales agent Kaivan Nasseri doesn’t seem worried, saying that his uncle is perobably living it up n Vegas, and no one files a missing person report on him. Ansari’s body turns up in the Pacific Ocean, apparently ether accidental death or suicide--he had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and death within a few months. The police are suspicious of Kaivan since he inherits his uncle’s estate of some $700,000, but Regan’s convinced he’s innocent. Regan meets and talks with Eleanor Rosemont, Ansari’s next door neighbor and good friend, who tells her of his recent discovery that he has a twenty-year-old son in Iran and of his intention to bring him to America; he plans to revise his will to make his son his heir. Mrs. Rosemont has Ansari’s paperwork to accomplish this, but then she’s killed in a carefully-staged “accident.” Has Kaivan killed her? Why?

***SPOILER***SPOILER***

The plot in THE DEATH CONTINGENCY is more police procedural, even though the police are only peripheral to the story, than straight mystery because there’s only the one suspect Kaivan Nasseri. As in many cosy mysteries, the police are less than effective, failing to check on Mrs. Rosemont’s prescriptions when large quantities of Xanax are found in her body at autopsy. Police ombudsman Dave (family name not given), who’s Regan’s friend and supposedly knows her well, laughs off her idea about the deaths. The motive for the murders is unusual, not disclosed until the climax, and the epilogue is suggestive of further action.

Characters are believable, if standard. Regan is devoted to her clients’ best interests, concerned, and determined to find out what happened to Ansari and to Mrs. Rosemont. “Regan believed people were consistent in their behavior and didn’t act randomly or without thought. People always had reasons for doing what they did. Determining their reasons and using them to the client’s advantage was an art, a dance, one that she did very well. She should be able to do that with Kaivan, too.” (271) Limited third person point of view through Regan reveals her thoroughly. Two characters, however, bothered me. Dr. Samantha Simpson, Mrs. Rosemont’s physician, confirms to Regan that she’d not prescribed Xanax or any other sleeping medicine; Owen Houserling, Ansari’s attorney, answers Regan’s questions about his client’s will and a trust document. Both violate their client’s confidentiality to a person with no legal right whatsoever to the information.

Setting is developed but not much emphasized. “Toilet Bowl [where Ansari’s body found] was a rocky cove next to Steamer Lane, one of the most popular surfing areas in Santa Cruz. Sometimes surfers missed the run at the Lane and were forced into the Bowl, but more often they jumped in as a shortcut to the Steamer Lane breaks or for the thrill of getting flushed, the term local surfers used to describe what happened to them in the swirling currents inside the cove.” (92)


THE DEATH CONTINGENCY is a quick read with much information on the real estate business, but it doesn’t inspire me to read more of the series. (C)

 

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The title says it all in Brian Hoey’s AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN: LIFE THROUGH THE KEYHOLE OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD. It was published in inexpensive e-book format in 2002.

AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN discusses in detail each of the departments within the household of the Queen, the positions within each department, complete with their duties and salaries, and some anecdotes involving the royals or some possessor within that department. Much of the information is public record but, since those leaving the Queen’s service have signed confidentiality agreements, most of the personal stories cannot be attributed. Most of the stories have been widely reported in the media; since its publication date is 2002, much of the information is outdated.

One of the characteristics of the royal family covered in AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN is their frugality: “...while [the Queen] is prepared to pay many thousands of pounds for dresses she wears on official business, most of which comes from the Treasury through the Foreign Office if it’s for a visit to a foreign country, she hangs on to her personal clothes for years, preferring the comfort of familiar suits and skirts to the latest fashion. When her dresses become too old for her to wear, even around the house--and that’s usually after twenty years or more--she hands them to her dressers. They can keep them if they want, or give them to someone else, with provisions: all the identifying labels must be removed and those receiving them must not reveal the source. A lady in Norfolk, who was given one of the dresses because she was the same size as the Queen, wasn’t all that impressed, so she passed it on to her local jumble sale--where it failed to sell.” (8-9)

Much attention is paid to the perfection of the service required of those who serve the royals, but mishaps do occasionally happen: “Shortly after the Queen came to the throne, one of the guests at a State Banquet was the actress Beatrice Lillie (who in real life was Lady Peel), and an unfortunate footman accidentally spilled soup over her brand new Paris fashion evening gown. Before he could apologize, she came up with what has gone down in Palace legend as the best one-liner ever heard: ‘I will thank you never to darken my Dior again.’ “ (38-9)

While their duties are prescribed to the final detail, personal lives for the live-in staff are more laissez faire: “None of the staff bedrooms at Buckingham Palace has its own bathroom; they all have to be shared. Two footmen apparently took this quite lierally when they were found sharing a bath in 1995. They claimed they were doing it to save money--as directed by the Keeper of the Privy Purse who had ordered stringent household economies. They were allowed to keep their jobs.” (47) The royals’ perception of their servers vary: “...Philip’s attitude to his staff differs slightly from that of the Queen’s in that when one of his carriages turned over during a competition, his first concern was for the coachman sitting with him. The Queen’s initial worry would have been for the horses.” (97)

AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN shows royal family dynamics very different from those that most of us experience. “...If Prince Charles is staying at Sandringham at the same time as his mother and he wants to walk in the garden, his Page will first of all ring his opposite number in the Queen’s household to find out if she is in the garden. If she is, Charles will remain out of sight. They all know the Queen likes to be alone when she is walking in the grounds. Similarly, at Buckingham Palace, no one goes in the garden when the Queen is there with her corgis.” (56)

As Americans have realized through UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS and DOWNTON ABBEY, the hierarchy below stairs is at least as rigid as that above. “Prince Michael of Kent once appointed a very able man to be his private secretary. However, it was pointed out to him that this was not possible because the man concerned had not held a commission in one of the services. In fact, he had been a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Navy. Prince Michael stuck by his original choice and kept him in his job, but his aide never received the title of private secretary, even though that is precisely what he was. And he was not allowed to eat in the Members’ Dining Room or take tea in the Equerries Withdrawing Room with the other private secretaries. The ‘Officer’s Mess’ was strictly off-limits to him.” (155)

Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Boo-kay) has made us aware of the importance of the royal warrant to many consumers; once awarded, they generally renew indefinitely. However, “in recent years the most publicized withdrawal of a royal warrant was when the Duke of Edinburgh decided not to renew the warrant he awarded to Harrods. The official reason was that he no longer bought anything from them; unofficially, it is believed that an allegation made by Mr. A1 Fayed, the owner of the store, that Prince Philip had been responsible for the death of his son Dodi (killed in the car crash that also killed Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997) was the reason for the break. Harrods had royal warrants from all four members of the royal family who at that time awarded warrants; and the four coats of Arms were one of the most distinctive displays in Knightsbridge. But on Mr. A1 Fayed’s orders Harrod’s surrendered those of the Queen, the Queen Mother and the Prince of Wales when the Duke withdrew his support. (262-3)

I use this last quotation to illustrate problems with editing throughout AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN: eccentric use of capital letters, odd punctuation, careless proofreading (Dodi’s father is Mohamed Al-Fayed), and inconsistent use of apostrophes. Her Majesty’s servants would not be allowed such imperfection.

Still, for fans of the British monarchy, AT HOME WITH THE QUEEN is interesting background information. (B)

 

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Alanna Knight’s ENTER SECOND MURDERER is the first in her mystery series featuring Detective Inspector Jeremy Faro of the Edinburgh Police Force. It’s set in 1870. It was a free or inexpensive e-book.

Taken seriously ill at the beginning of what came to be called the Convent Murders, Inspector Faro is on sick leave when Patrick Hymes is arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged for the murders of his wife Sarah Gibson Hymes and of Lily Goldie. Both women had worked at the Convent of the Sisters of St Anthony, located in the Newington area; Lily Goldie had been a teacher, Sarah Hymes a maid. Neither woman had been particularly virtuous. The bodies are found in the same place two days apart, and the modus operandi are similar. Patrick Hymes confessed to killing his wife accidentally, but he denies to the authorities, to the priest who hears his final confession, to his sister, and to Faro that he killed Lily Goldie. Both he and his sister Maureen Hymes, who’s dying of consumption, beg Faro to find out who killed Goldie. During Faro’s illness, Constable Danny McQuinn, who’d grown up in and maintained close ties to the St Anthony’s Orphanage, does a cursory investigation, and is perfectly willing to put the second murder on Hymes. As Faro reluctantly investigates, aided by his stepson Dr. Vincent Beaumarcher Laurie, he finds Goldie associated with the suicide six months previously of Tim Ferris, who’d been in the same medical school class with Vince before he flunked out. There’s also a schoolboy who’s been hanging around the gate of the convent, and Sir Hedley Marsh, known as “the Mad Bart,” whom Goldie visited several times. But who killed her? Why?

Knight uses misdirection to keep attention focused away from the identity of the killer and the motive for Goldie’s murder. There’s a bit of foreshadowing, but the conclusion is a surprise. Perhaps because this is the first in the series, the plot contains much of Faro’s back story, including his courtship and marriage to Vince’s mother Lizzie. This could be cut substantially without harming the story.

Faro is an unusual protagonist. He’s the son of Magnus Faro, deceased Edinburgh Police Constable who inspired Faro as a boy to follow him into the Police. Originally from Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, Faro has a touch of second sight that’s been helpful in his job. It’s his professionalism and his need to know that there’s not a second murderer loose that lead him to investigate the Goldie murder long after the case is officially closed. Knight uses details of the geography and history of Edinburgh to reveal Faro’s character: “Faro walked briskly down the High Street, its eight-storeyed ‘lands’ looming above his head. This was market ay and the noise of vendors, the yelling of fishwives in from Newhaven, the jostling of the crowds and the smell of hot, unwashed flesh were too much for him. Aware only that he was badly in need of some air, fresh and bracing, he hurried down past the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The romance and stormy passions lost forever behind those grey walls never failed to move him, associated as they were with the story of his beloved Mary, Queen of Scots, beset by villains, tricked and cheated, betrayed. He often wished he had lived in those turbulent days and had been able to wield a sword in her name. The noise of raucous bustling Edinburgh faded. Salisbury Crags, the distressing scene of the two murders, seemed to stare down at him reproachfully from its lofty heights.” My only complaint about Faro is that his views on capital punishment and sexual mores seem more modern than Victorian.

ENTER SECOND MURDERER is the first in what appears to be a long series, one that I will read more. (B)

 

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THE LAST DETECTIVE introduces Peter Lovesey’s Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Avon and Somerset Police Force. It’s set in the West Country, near Bath and Bristol. It was published in print in 1991 and reissued in e-format in 2011.

When a woman’s nude body turns up in Chew Valley Lake south of Bristol, Superintendent Peter Diamond is in charge of the case as head of the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad. He’s working with Detective Inspector John Wigfall, whom he regards as a plant, reporting to Diamond’s superiors who’re awaiting the conclusions of an inquiry board in the Missendale case. They suspect Diamond of coercing a confession to murder from an innocent man who served two years before the guilty man was found. The current case is complicated for some time by not being able to identify the body and by failure of the autopsy to determine the cause of death or exactly when she died. She’s finally identified as Geraldine Jackman, better known as Gerry Snoo, soap opera star “resting” since written out of The Milners. Progress is slow, Diamond is accused of police brutality by the son of a suspect, and he resigns from the force. Wigfall arrests Dana Didrikson based on forensic evidence, but Diamond doesn’t let go, nearly getting himself killed in the process of uncovering the killer.

The plot in THE LAST DETECTIVE is complex, and it’s slowed down by shifts in point of view. Parts I, III, and V are limited third person through Diamond’s eyes; part II is first person by Gregory Jackman, Gerry’s husband and Professor of English at Bath University; part IV is first person by Dana Didrikson. While the first person segments add characterization, they repeat the same events. The identity of the killer comes as a bit of a surprise, but an experienced reader may well discern it before Diamond. An underlying motif is traditional detective work versus modern “scientific” detection based on forensics.

Peter Diamond recalls Superintendent Andy Dalziel from Reginald Hill’s great series: former rugby player, fat, blunt in the extreme, touchy about his technique and his professionalism. “Diamond had learned to hand off the opposition as if he was still playing rugby. He was proving a hard man to stop, a burly, abrasive character who spoke his mind. Computer technology was ‘gadgetry’, accepted with reluctance as an aid to the real detective work. Some of the career-minded people around him thought it a miracle or a travesty that a man so outspoken and with the Missendale inquiry hanging over his head could have progressed to the rank of superintendent. They failed to appreciate that his bluntness was a precious asset among so many backbiters.” (27)

Lovesey develops a good sense of place, using it to add to characterization: “...Peter Diamond drove into the city at an hour when the sun was high enough to pick out all of the tiered ranks of Georgian housing in the familiar, yet still spectacular view from the slope of Wells Road, the gleaming limestone terraces topped with slate roof as blue-grey as the backcloth of Lansdown. In the foreground, the castellated railway viaduct with its Gothic arches contrived to blend into the scene, dominated from this view by the pinnacled tower of the Abbey beyond it, and softened by patches of gold and copper foliage. A day when Diamond was almost willing to forget that the backs of most of the elegant streets and crescents were eyesores of blackened masonry, abandoned for two centuries to the ravages of the weather, builders and plumbers. Almost, but not quite. The policeman in him couldn’t overlook the hidden side, just as he never took the citizens of Bath entirely at face value. He hoped that cynicism hadn’t taken permanent root in his character. He preferred to think of it more positively, as professional discernment. Experience had taught him that you cannot discount anyone as a possible murderer.” (263)

I enjoyed THE LAST DETECTIVE enough to follow up on the series. (B)

 

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‘TIL DIRT DO US PART is the second book in Edith Maxwell’s Local Foods mystery series. It was published in e-format in 2014. The series features Cameron Flaherty, former IT programmer, now farmer.

Cam’s holding a dinner for her share-holders and local producers to celebrate the end of her first growing season on the farm turned over to her by her Great-Uncle Albert St. Pierre. The dinner’s a success, except that Irene Burr crosses swords with almost everyone there, including her stepson Bobby Burr; Bobby’s friend Simone Koyama, who services and repairs Irene’s beloved 1990 Jaguar; Wes Ames, who vehemently opposes Irene’s plan to buy the Old Town Hall and renovate it a textile museum; and Howard Fisher, local pig farmer. When Irene’s body turns up, partially consumed by Fisher’s starving hogs, Bobby is the police’s first suspect. But Cam can’t imagine him killing Irene in such a way. As Cam’s curiosity grows, she has other run-ins with Bev Montgomery; chef Jake Ericsson’s mistrust and control issues cloud their relationship, and State Police Detective Pete Pappas, newly separated from his wife, expresses his interest in Cam.

It seems that most all the characters from the first book in the series A TINE TO LIVE, A TINE TO DIE are back, most with very little additional development. Cam, since she’s the focus for limited third person point of view, is most believable. “She’d given [Jake] one more chance against her better judgment. She didn’t know why she hadn’t insisted they revert to being friends. She liked things clear. On or off. Black and white. That was why she’d been attracted to software engineering in the first place. Elegant ways to arrange ones and zeros and make them do your bidding felt like a very safe world compared to the confounding fog of interpersonal relationships.” (219) Cam does pull TSTLs. She goes alone, without telling anyone where she’s going, to the home of one of the people who could have tampered with the brakes on her truck, causing her to wind up in a swamp. There’s also my pet peeve--she either doesn’t have her cell phone with her (left it in her purse in the truck) or its battery isn’t charged. Despite her “on-off” preference, she ends up with Jake, Pete, and Bobby all three expressing personal interest, and she’s undecided about her own feelings.

The plot hinges on Cam’s recognizing a slight abnormality that’ ts carried by the female chromosome, one that isn’t mentioned until her confrontation with Irene’s killer. The police fail to find Irene’s iPad when they search her office, leaving it for Cam to find when she uses the cleaner’s keys to enter the house. Pappas then has her sign a contract as an IT consultant to cover her unauthorized entry and removal of the iPad. The mystery story line is about half the plot, the remainder dealing with the day-to-day operations of the farm. ‘TIS DIRT DO US PART needs one final edit to deal with these problems.

Physical details establish the location of Westbury, Massachusetts, but there’s little sense of place. Most of the lyrical writing involves food: “She threw a handful of kalamata olives into the rest of the pesto pasta, to which she’d added chopped cucumber, diced sweet red pepper, some chunks of goat cheese and two diced tomatoes. Now she whisked together a vinaigrette with olive oil, an herbed red-wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and a pressed clove of garlic. Pasta salad on a bed of greens would have to do for lunch.” (210)

‘TIL DIRT DO US PART seems to be the last to date in this series, which isn’t getting stronger. I think I’ll pass on any upcoming installments. (C)

 

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THE BLUEJAY SHAMAN is the first in Lise McClendon’s Alix Thorssen series. It was originally published in 1994 and later reissued as an e-book.

Alix Thorssen, gallery owner and art appraiser in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, has been called in by the Missoula, Montana, police to evaluate a trailer load of art abandoned in an interstate rest stop. She’s also visiting her older sister Melina, whose husband Wade Fraser, a professor of anthropology at the University of Montanta, is arrested for the murder of Doris Merkin. Better known as Shiloh, Doris is part of the Manitou Matrix summer camp, women seeking spiritual enlightenment through Native American ritual. Is her death tied to the wave of vandalisms to the Salish Medicine Tree and to the St. Loyola Mission? Then Charlotte Vardis turns up, connected to a past inquiry about a Salish artifact, the bluejay pictograph, shot to death in front of Melina’s house. Because she’d been in contact with Alix about authenticating a Jackson Pollock painting, Alix is a suspect. Is there a connection between her death and Shiloh’s?

The plot in THE BLUEJAY SHAMAN contains appropriate foreshadowing, though it does use an obvious red herring to conceal the identity of the killer. Motives are reasonable. The epilogue rounds the story off nicely.

Alix Thorssen is a believable protagonist. She’s independent, strong, and self-knowing. “It bothered me how much I’d seen [Melina] cry. More than I did in all the years of growing up. Of course, around Mom a person learned to buck up, not to show the pain. I still was like that, like Mom, and people accused me of being cold. But that’s who I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t care as much as the next person. I just don’t fall apart.” She carries serious emotional baggage from the death years before of her father--his car went into Flathead Lake, and his body was never recovered--and her romantic history with her partner in the gallery Paolo Segunda, now permanently over. She does pull some TSTLs when she doesn’t call her attorney when taken in the second time for questioning in Charlotte Vardis’s death and when she doesn’t tell the police about the bluejay pictograph connection between Shiloh and Charlotte Vardis. She goes off on her own after persons of interest in the killings. Other characters are also realistic.

McClendon is adept at using atmosphere to establish character. “When I pointed my old car north, leaving behind the gallery in Jackson, the hum-the-hymn-of the road gave me the feeling my life going somewhere. Being on the road was like that, a trickster highway. Somewhere in the distance is happiness, satisfaction, whatever it takes to feel good. Over that rise. Just a little farther. The mountains were quiet, sleeping. They never looked the same twice but they always sounded like peace to me. But I crossed the pass into Idaho and drove north. For a Norwegian purity fills a northern mission, like the search for the Holy Grail. The lights shine bright in the North.”

Details of setting create a genuine sense of place. “Polson, Montana, is an odd mix: a reservation town that is also a tourist destination. It can’t decide what sort of a place to be. While snuggled onto the southernmost tip of the expansive blue Flathead Lake, replete with boat rentals and marinas and a golf course, it is strangely grim. There is no joy, no liveliness, no fun. No clumps of pedestrians killing time on the sidewalk, looking in glitzy jewelry stores and junky souvenir sops, like in my hometown. Here the clumps of locals hang out on the sidewalks outside the state liquor store or Social Services or Lake County Chemical Dependency. Reminders of the devastation of the culture of the American Indian, of his hopelessness. A change from the superficial glitter and plastered westernism of Jackson should have been a relief. But Polson saddened me with its despair hard by its leisure class.”

THE BLUEJAY SHAMAN needed a thorough proofreading. Words are run together, omitted, or not spelled correctly. Apostrophes are incorrectly used. Aside from these minor problems, it’s well-written and holds my attention. I will read more of the series. (A-)

 

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FIFTH SON is the fourth book in Barbara Fradkin’s mystery series featuring Inspector Michael Green of the Major Crimes Unit of the Ottawa Police. It was published in 2004.

When the body of a man is found at the foot of the tower of Ashford Methodist Church in Ashford Landing, a rural community absorbed by the City of Ottawa, the local policeman calls his friend Sergeant Brian Sullivan because he’s suspicious. Sullivan asks his boss Inspector Green along for the ride on a beautiful autumn afternoon. Green isn’t satisfied that the man committed suicide, and there are no signs of foul play, but something isn’t right. The unidentified man is tentatively identified as one of the Pettigrew boys, who’d lived on a farm outside Ashford Landing. But which one? Derek is supposed to be working in the United States after leaving for graduate school at Berkeley some twenty years before; Benjamin died in a one-car accident shortly after Derek’s departure; Tom is living in Toronto, in and out of trouble with the law, an alcoholic; Lawrence is in the St Lawrence Psychiatric Hospital in Brockton, where he’s been a patient since the time Derek left; the youngest son Robbie is still in Ashford Landing where he’s the sole contact for their father, who’s incapacitated from a stroke. Their mother committed suicide a couple of years after Benjamin’s death. Green concludes something horrific happened on the Pettigrew place at the time Derek left, but who did what to whom, and why? And how does it account for the current dead man outside the church?

The plot in FIFTH SON is complex, showing every false theory Green evolves. An experienced reader may well pick up on the foreshadowing to identify the killer ahead of Green and Sullivan. A secondary storyline involves Green’s boss Superintendent Jules being transferred with his successor to be Inspector Barbara Devine, for whom Green has little respect; Sullivan has been passed over for promotion, and he’s seriously considering what to do about his career.

Green’s a believable character, dealing with the confusion and inconvenience of his house being renovated while his family is living in it, as well as trying to build a relationship with his teenaged daughter. Hannah’s been with her mother with no contact with Green for fourteen years, and now she’s living with him, his wife Sharon, and two-year-old Tony. He’s also an unusual detective: “Back in the days when Green was in the field, his briefings had been one of the highlights of Sullivan’s day. Green had a way of getting the big picture and ing how the evidence fit together that was pure genius. Even his wild flights of fancy proved right more often than not. In his field days, he loved to pace in front of the chalkboard surrounded by crime scene photos and witness statements, scribbling points and drawing arrows back and forth until his case summary looked like a massive drunken spider’s web.” (161-2) Green is supported by a realistic cast of police officers.

Fradkin skillfully creates Ashford Landing, giving it the feel of a real community. “The village appeared suddenly over the crest of a hill--a small cluster of century-old buildings snuggled on the bank of the river. Glimpses of broad verandas and steeply-pitched roofs showed through the canopy of trees, and battered pick-up adorned the drives. Three old churches surrounded the square at the centre of the village. Two had tall, stately belfries, immaculate lawns, and freshly painted signs announcing the hours of worship. The third, the one surrounded by squad cars, yellow tape and gawking villagers, was abandoned and boarded up tight. Furthermore, the front door sported a padlock big enough for Green to see it clear across the road. It looked as if no one had been near it in years.” (11)

This is a well-written series, and FIFTH SON is up to standard. (B+)

 

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Linda L. Richards’s MAD MONEY is the first book in her series featuring Madeline Carter, former stockbroker, now Los Angeles day trader. It was first published in 2004 and reissued in e-format n 2011.

When her best friend and fellow broker at Merriwether Bailey Jackson Shoenberger is gunned down by a desperate investor, Madeline Carter reassesses her life, leaves her job in New York to become a Los Angeles day trader. She finds a guest house owned by major film director Tyler Beckett, the friend of a friend, and begins her day trading by investing her funds in Langton Regional Group, a manufacturer of glass bottles. The stock is expected to shoot up dramatically in price when Ernest Carmichael Billings, Madeline’s former lover from college days at Harvard and noted rescuer of struggling companies, takes over as LRG’s new CEO. But he doesn’t show up for the announcement. Word is that he’s been kidnapped. As rumors swirl, LRG’s stock prices drop dramatically. With her capital all tied up in LRG, Madeline has a compelling reason to try to find out what’s going on.

The plot is based on a neat manipulation of the stock market, interesting in its own right, with satisfactory twists and turns. I like it that Madeline does finally go to the police instead of confronting the criminals herself. That Ernie Billings is involved in something shady is obvious, but Richards keeps strong suspense about who else may be involved.

Madeline Carter is first person narrator of MAD MONEY, so her personality is the best developed. She’s inconsistent. On the one hand, she’s had a successful ten-year career in New York, she’s intelligent and perceptive, and she’s 35 years old; on the other, she reacts to Los Angeles and film people with a “gosh, golly” naivete that make her seem much younger. She uses the information Billings gives her about his LRG job announcement to do what would be insider trading (and massively illegal) if she were still a broker; she trusts Billings stock tip despite his treatment of her at Harvard, and she puts all her working capital in LRG in her very first trade on her own account. Until the very end of the story, Madeline doesn’t tell the police anything she’s discovered about the Billings kidnapping or the stock manipulation scheme she uncovers. Madeline pulls multiple TSTLs: she tells her mother about the great potential for LRG, and her mother and a friend risk money they can’t afford to lose buying stock. Madeline goes off hither and thither in Los Angeles and its environs without telling anyone where she’s going or why. She’s supported by a believable cast of supporting characters.

Richards uses atmosphere effectively to show character: “...outside the building, thinking about finding a cab, it hit me in an amazing wave. The smog, almost dense enough to cut with scissors, the moist heat after the air conditioned neutrality of the airport, the smell of the sea and, inexplicably and faintly, the scent of something vaguely tropical and sweet. This, to me, is the smell of Los Angeles: thick and moist and slightly mysterious beneath the dirt, though the dirt is real. ...I had never been in the city before, but I knew I was home.” She evokes the ambiance of the individual cities within the Los Angeles metropolis: “Brentwood is where Los Angeles tries to be Connecticut and, clearly, where some of the students at the Hestman School would spend part of their adulthood.. The quiet shops, the tree-lined boulevards, the careful architecture: Brentwood has an old money feel to it, not to mention a what-passes-for-old-money-in Southern California cachet. But Brentwood is pretty and a nice place to visit. It’s super clean, the avenues are very wide and the stores and restaurants quiet and understated.”

MAD MONEY encourages me to continue with the series. (B+)

 

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Annelise Ryan’s WORKING STIFF is the first book in her Mattie Winston mystery series. It was published in e-book format in 2009.

Newly separated from her surgeon husband David after catching him in a compromising situation with surgical nurse Karen Owenby, Mattie Winston is now working for County Coroner Izzy Rybarceski as an assistant; at his recommendation, she accepts a promotion to deputy coroner, which means she will do investigative work as well as gathering evidence and assisting in autopsies. The first murder victim she’s involved with is Karen Owenby, and Dr. David Winston is the person most of interest to Detective Steve Hurley of the Sorenson Police Department. Unable to believe David guilty of murder and to show up Hurley, Mattie pokes around to find an alternative, especially when the corpse’s fingerprints don’t match the ones on Karen Owenby’s nursing license application. Who is this impostor? As Mattie investigates, she turns up shady investment schemes, blackmail, and alternative life styles that explain much..
Mattie Winston is a believable protagonist. She’s physically a large woman, she has considerable emotional baggage from both her mother and her marriage, she’s smart and determined. “I...see Phase I of my payback plan falling into place. If Hurley is that competitive, then the task before me is obvious. I need to beat him at his own game by solving Karen’s murder before he can. And I’m highly motivated. Not only do I have a professional interest and a personal stake in the case, I figure besting Hurley will definitely make him sit up and take notice of me.” (97) She does pull some TSTLs: not reporting being followed by a distinctively colored van; going to check out the investment in which some of the doctors had been involved with Karen, resulting in her finding a body; confronting one of the doctors, who suicides; not telling Hurley most of what she knows until after that suicide; and going back to the scene of a crime alone to check out her theory of the murders. Is anyone surprised that she must be rescued? Ryan surrounds Mattie with quirky individuals. There are way more townspeople named who are only peripheral to the plot.

Ryan uses humor well to develop character. Mattie explains, “The OR was okay, but I loved working the ER. I loved the surprise of never knowing what might come through the door next. I loved working as part of a synchronized team, rushing against the clock in an effort to save a life that hung on the brink. I loved the people, the pace, and even the occasional messiness of it all. The only reason I’d left it for the OR was so I could be closer to David. Well, that and the infamous nipple incident.” (6) I want to hear the nipple story. Humor is also part of developing the setting and the small town ambiance of Sorenson, Wisconsin: “...all Hurley has to do is ask questions at the hospital and he’ll know everything. Gossip spreads through that place at warp speed, and by now it’s likely even the dishwashers in the cafeteria knew all the gory details, right down to the size and shape of the birthmark on David’s Mr. Winkie.” (33)

The plot unfolds much like a police procedural, with Mattie as first person narrator telling what she feels and learns it occurs. Ryan does a good job of keeping attention focused away from the killer and the motive for the murders. I appreciate a cozy that gives the protagonist a legitimate reason for investigating a crime. I had doubts about the probability of an impostor like Karen not being caught, so I consulted my sister who worked in human resources at a medical center for many years. She assured me that it is perfectly possible.

I’ve already read the second book SCARED STIFF, so I know that WORKING STIFF kicks off a good series. (B+)

 

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DEATH ON HIGH is the second book in J. J. Salkeld’s Lakeland Murders mystery series involving Detective Inspector Andy Hall of the Cumbria Constabulary, working out of Kendal. It was published in e-book format in 2013.

Inspector Hall and his team, consisting of Detective Sergeant Ian Mann and Detective Constables Jane Francis and Ray Dixon, have two investigations to cover. One is their creation as the Rural Organized Crime Unit, set up to infiltrate the criminal gangs in the county who are stealing farm equipment, stock, and metals; Mann goes undercover in Carlisle to identify criminal bosses further up the organization than the thieves the police already suspect. The other is a suspicious death, when Anthony Harrison falls or is pushed over the side of a mountain near Ambleside. His wife Vicky is the only person seen near him, but her observed reactions are atypical. Francis and Hall both get bad vibes about the case and pursue it despite the reluctance of Superintendent Eric Robinson, Hall’s boss who goes to church with Tony Harrison.

Salkeld has created a team of detectives who are distinctly different individuals who nevertheless form a successful team. Hall is an effective leader and excellent detective: “Andy Hall felt guilty about all sorts of thing, including multiple sins of omission, but as he looked at Vicky he didn’t feel even a pang of guilt. It was very possible, likely even, that this woman had pushed her husband over a thousand foot drop, and even if she had no specific intention of killing him, she must have known that it was a likely outcome. Tony Harrison didn’t sound like a very nice man, or a good one, but he still deserved justice.” Shifting point of view between members of the team helps make them sympathetic characters, but their superiors are not. Superintendent Robinson, the Chief Constable (who’s not named), and the Chief’s assistant, uniformed Inspector Val Gorham all seem more concerned with public relations and covering their posteriors than with taking criminals out of circulation.

The plot is satisfactorily complex, though the pace is slowed by the shifts in point of view. Salkeld is fair about disclosing information as the team uncovers it, and the conclusion is realistic if disappointing. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler. Setting is mostly conveyed through physical locations and roads, without much emphasis on atmosphere.

DEATH ON HIGH is a solid read, so I will be following up on the series. (B)

 

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THE DEATH SEASON is the nineteenth in the Wesley Peterson mystery series by Kate Ellis. It was published in print and e-book formats in 2015. As always, it features a mystery from the past involving Wesley’s good friend archaeologist Dr. Neil Watson, something that turns out to be related to one of Wesley’s current cases.

When THE DEATH SEASON opens, crime in Tradmouth is slow, with only a spate of burglaries of unoccupied holiday homes troubling the police. Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Hefferman is on light duty, still recovering from a gunshot wound suffered in their last murder case; Superintendent Fitton has assigned him to review open case files and choose ones to forward to the Cold Case Squad. Then a dead man turns up in the Morbay Palace Hotel, drugged, then stabbed through the back of the neck into his brain. He has credit cards in two different names, and his fingerprints are not on file, but his DNA matches that of the suspected killer of Fiona Crab, a ten-year-old girl killed in 1979; her killer was never caught. Security tapes at the hotel show the man being visited by Paulette Reeves, a local cleaner who’s not above a bit of blackmail. But then her body is discovered outside her home, also murdered, and when her house is searched, the body of her mother Dorothy Jenkins turns up frozen in a deep freeze in an outbuilding. What on earth is going on? How does it relate to the bits of diary beginning in 1913 that record the thoughts of a young housemaid Martha at Sandton House, pregnant and convinced that Alfred Tuncliffe, the son of her mistress, her lover, will marry her as he promised? How does it relate to the skeleton of a young child that Neil uncovers in the ice house at Paradise Court, where he’s leading a dig for English Heritage?

Ellis does a good job of keeping attention directed away from the killer’s identity and motive, but the denouement is unsatisfactory. Revelations after the climax of the plot turns it into anticlimax. It may be realistic, but it’s a disappointment. (Possibly setting up a sequel?) The diary excerpts slow the flow of the plot, as do the frequent shifts in point of view.

The community of police officers remains essentially unchanged, with enough personal information to give the sense that their lives continue between installments of the series. Both Hefferman and Wesley are worried about the state of DS Rachel Tracey’s engagement since she’s postponed until spring. Wesley feels guilty at the amount of time his job takes away from his family: “He knew he should be pleased that Pam was entertaining friends in his unavoidable absence and, in a way, he was. But there was something about Jennifer that made him uneasy, an intensity, a neediness perhaps. He told himself that he was being selfish. If Pam liked her, that should be good enough for him.” (150-1)

Ellis evokes places well, and she’s good at using atmosphere to reveal character: “Wesley swung the car into the entrance and saw a small, thatched cottage at the end of the weed-infested tarmac track. His first thought was that it [Woodside Cottage, Paulette Reeves’s home] was a petty house, like something from a fairy tale which represented every city dweller’s idea of the perfect country retreat. Then he noticed that the window frames needed a coat of fresh paint, as did the cream-colored cob walls. However, to Wesley, it was the lonely position that made it unattractive. The thought flashed into his mind that it would be a perfect refuge for someone who had something to hide. As they parked in front of the cottage,Wesley realised why the place felt so oppressive. It was surrounded by trees, the classic cottage in the woods: the witch’s house where children were kept awaiting a dreadful fate.” (86)

THE DEATH SEASON is worth reading. (B)

 

[readingomnivore]

Veronica Heley’s MURDER AT THE ALTAR is the first book in her Elllie Quicke mystery series. It was published in 2000.

Newly widowed Ellie Quicke is fond of the view out of her living room window at the church across the alley from her home. So when Mrs. Dawes finds Ferdy Hanna’s body sprawled in front of the altar, it’s to Ellie’s that she runs to summon the police. The police, and the killer, can’t believe that the only person Ellie saw the previous night is Kate, her next door neighbor. The police believe Kate, who had a long history with Ferdy, going back to their living in the same council block as children, is guilty of his murder. When some rigs a car bomb in Kate’s car, she disappears, as does Ferdy’s mother. As criminals attempt to eliminate Ellie, she must confront her husband’s aunt and her own daughter Diana, both trying to take advantage of Ellie financially.

Ellie Quicke is not very believable despite most of the story is limited third person point of view from her perspective. She’s been belittled by her late husband Frank throughout their marriage, treated like a rather unsatisfactory servant by his disapproving Aunt Drusilla, and disregarded by Diana. She’s constantly saddled with all sorts of unpleasant messes at the church and the charity shop where she volunteers. She doesn’t know how to drive a car, to run a computer, and has no idea what her financial situation will be. But within a week, she’s throwing off the restraints she’s allowed: joining the choir at church, buying new bed and bedding to her own taste, teaching herself to use Franks’s computer, taking her first driving lesson, and deciding to buy a car. The personality change is too quick and too easily accomplished to seem authentic. More characters than necessary to carry the plot are included, many of them not given full names; none of the four criminals, including the killer, are ever named at all.

The plot moves slowly, and there’s no way to identify the killer. Brief communication between the criminals suggest a motive for Ferdy’s murder. Their attempts to eliminate Ellie recall those on the life of Heron Carvic’s Miss Emily D. Seeton series. Ferdy’s murder is secondary to Ellie’s changing attitudes.

Setting is generic. The village is not named. Nothing creates a sense of place.

MURDER AT THE ALTAR doesn’t impress. (D)