Readingomnivore Reviews

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Charlie Roxburgh’s THE CASE OF THE RUSSIAN CHESSBOARD is a novella published in e-book format in 2011. It is another “suppressed story” in the post-Doyle Sherlock Holmes sub-genre of mysteries.

Sherlock Holmes is visited by young Victoria Simmonds, who seeks his help in rescuing her younger sister Angela from Liberty House, a commune of Russian exiles and revolutionaries in Camden Town. A young Russian woman Sophia, who’d lived there, has just committed suicide by throwing herself under a train, and Angela has told her sister that she’s moving into Liberty House to stay, that Victoria is no longer to try to contact her. Both women are influenced by Anna Perovskaya, a dedicated anti-Czarist. Liberty House falls under the influence of Russian nihilist Pyotr Bogdanovich, who advocates terror and extreme violence against British targets. Up and coming young British politician Malcolm Pryde-Anderson offers Holmes’s aid to Colonel Volkshovsky and Major Alexandrov of the Okhrana, the Czarist secret police, as a quid pro quo for their techniques for manipulating and controlling the revolutionaries. Pryde-Anderson anticipates using them against political opposition and labor unions in Great Britain. Can Holmes rescue Angela without becoming involved with Okhrana?

In the modern world political climate, it’s instructional to remember that this is not the first time terrorism has been as an instrument of policy. Involving Holmes in a novella involving the Russian revolutionaries, anarchists, and nihilists of various persuasions should be intriguing. Unfortunately, THE CASE OF THE RUSSIAN CHESSBOARD is not.

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***

Roxburgh shows little direct action, reporting only the assassination of Pyotr Bogdnovich as happening in Holmes and Watson’s presence. Everything else that occurs is told to them in huge, almost dramatic monologue speeches. We’re told that Holmes is investigating, that’s he’s observing Liberty House, but we see nothing of his activity. Double and triple crosses make it difficult to understand who’s doing what to whom, and why.

There’s little characterization, even of Holmes and Watson; the Russian characters are all poorly developed stereotypes. I do enjoy Watson’s take on Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, which supports Liberty House: “At these meetings there were exiled Russian nihilists, rich English liberals who sympathised with the underdog anywhere but home, English Socialists, bluestocking feminists and would-be poets and bohemians of all nationalities--and various Italian and Spanish anarchists on the run from their own governments. From the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom there seemed to spread out all sorts of study groups, reading circles, tea-parties and soirees for intellectuals in Hampstead and Chiswick and goodness knows what else. To my grumpy mind they sounded like an audience excitedly following revolutionary dramas from their own perfectly safe seats in the theatre of life.”

Setting is established only by street names and London suburbs. Roxburgh makes some attempt at Conan Doyle’s style of writing, but modern expressions slip through. The story has good potential, but it needs thorough revision. Not recommended. (D)

 

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CALL & RESPONSE is the first novella in J. J. Salkeld’s Border City Blues series set in Carlisle. It was published in 2014 in e-book format.

Detective Sergeant Samantha “Pepper” Wilson is Acting Detective Inspector in the Cumbria Constabulary in Carlisle. She has new Detective Superintendent Mary Clark, recruited from outside the force, a former supply chain management executive from a major supermarket firm; the detective squad is short-handed and underfunded; she has the largest number of complaints by the public in the entire Cumbria force as well as the highest number of arrests. The only other detective working the number of hours Pepper puts in is DI Jane Francis at the Kendal nick. Pepper’s believably human: “She did enjoy it when she was right and a subordinate was wrong. In fact, the only that she enjoyed more--at work at least--was when she was proved right, and a superior officer was shown to be wrong. And that happened all the time too, now that she came to think about it.”

Pepper’s supported by DC Henry Armstrong and a new transfer from London, DC Rex Copeland. DC Armstrong is young, large, and anxious to reform criminals; DC Copeland is small, black, and has seen it all. Sandy Smith, the SOCO from the Lakeland Murders series, works closely with Pepper.

The Carlisle CID deals with a variety of crimes in CALL & RESPONSE: a theft of metals from building sites where Armstrong catches the thief Gary Flynn redhanded, and the case is thrown out on a technicality; an assault onArmstrong; a complaint by a teenager against the Pakistani man who posted obscene photographs of her on the Internet, which leads to a sex trafficking case involving minors; miscellaneous thefts, shoplifting, and informants grassing on crooks; and the return of David Young, a local would-be crime lord driven out of Carlisle some years before, who’s back from Manchester to take over the town. With ineffective superior officers and policies coming from HQ where the bottom line of cost and the reality of too few policeman to cover the streets, Pepper and her detectives must resort to unorthodox methods.

CALL & RESPONSE shows good potential. It seems more realistic than the Lakeland Murder series in the crimes Carlisle CID handles. However, there’s little character development despite the background on Pepper’s father as a petty crook, alcoholic, and abuser. Shifts in focus between characters chop up the action without adding much to characterization. There’s little sense of place. Had the format been novel instead of novella, Salkeld could have remedied these deficiencies. (C)

 

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Phyllis Smallman’s A BREWSKI FOR THE OLD MAN is the second in her mystery series featuring Sherri Travis, bartender, now owner of the Sunset Bar and Grill in Jacaranda, Florida. It was published in e-book format in 2011.

Sherri Travis is shocked and appalled when she sees the Rena Cagel’s live-in lover. Rena has a sixteen-year-old daughter Lacey, and her lover is Ray John Leenders. Ray John had lived with Sherri’s mother for two years, when Sherri was eleven to thirteen years old, when he molested her and tried to rape her. She managed to escape him; her first experience with the law was when she threatened to shoot Ray John with a shotgun as he beat her mother following the incident. She’s suppressed the memory for years, but she’s determined not to allow him to abuse Lacey. The statute of limitations has run out on his attempt to rape her, but Sherri decides to bring a civil suit that will expose Ray John as a sexual predator. It turns out that Ray John has more going on than Lacey. He’s director of security at The Preserves, a high-end gated community where he wields an unusual amount of power for one of the hired help. Blackmail and intimidation help expand his job description. When he’s shot dead in its recreation hall, Sherri is a prime suspect, especially since one of the security guards got her vanity license plate on a red truck seen leaving the scene; only Sherri knows that her unregistered pistol is also missing. Who shot Ray John?

Sense of place is the outstanding feature of A BREWSKI FOR THE OLD MAN, evoking a past way of life as well as the terrain of south Florida: “There’d be a dozen dogs or more, yapping and calling to each other.... The old stirring, primitive and alive in man and beast, screaming in the blood. We set them loose and they’d spread out, nose to the ground casting back and forth for a scent. Then they’d find one and be gone. But we could still hear them. Knew exactly where they were and what was happening. Man and boy, we all took a seat around the fire, waiting and listening. There’d be iced tea and homemade hooch and sandwiches Grandma packed. We’d talk, lazy and rambling, not important, but mostly we just listed to the calling of the dogs, back and forth, telling other what they’d found. Each man knew his dog, knew if he was in the lead, knew if his dog had caught a good strong scent. It was a good thing to have the lead dog, the dog baying the loudest and holding the scent of game in his nose. We’d sit there with the smell of the fire and the earth and hear the sound change, knew they’d treed something. Or we’d hear something die. Can’t mistake the scream of death.” (185)

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

A BREWSKI FOR THE OLD MAN refers to Tully Jenkins, Sherri’s father, who came home from Vietnam crazier than he’d been before; his presence in Sherri’s life was intermittent, though he hunted, fished, and treasure dived with her first husband Jimmy Travis. She never told Tully about Ray John because she knew her father would kill him. Tully re-enters her life with an accidental meeting at a convenience store, when she’s raw from the encounter with Ray John. Much of the book consists of Sherri’s renewing relationship with her father and honorary uncle Ziggy Peek and what she thinks it will mean. “I’d always kept my life with Clay separate from my life before Clay, kept my various strange relatives well hidden. Neither Ziggy nor my dad had ever been in the penthouse, they hadn’t even met Clay. I didn’t try to fool myself. Bringing in Zig would mean that Tully came too. The sealed compartments of my life were starting to leak secrets--one more thing to worry about.” (172)

The mystery plot line isn’t as well handled as the relationship. To an experienced reader, Ray John’s killer has been an obvious choice, the one with the vanity to kill. The plot structure makes the final revelation anti-climatic, because Sherri first has confrontations with two other characters, each of whom she thinks is the killer; she’d not suspected the real killer. She also pulls significant TSTLs, in not keeping Styles informed of what she’s doing, but especially in accepting a drink (which she doesn’t see made) from the killer. As a bartender, surely she knows about date rape drugs.

I’ll continue with the series, but A BREWSKI FOR THE OLD MAN isn’t as strong as the first book in the series. (B-)

 

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JOINT ENTERPRISE is the third book in Oliver Tidy’s Romney and Marsh File mysteries set in Dover, England. It was published in e-book format in 2012.

DI Tom Romney is back on duty following the injuries suffered in the previous case, visiting Dover Castle to observe the reenactment of a French invasion for Hugo Crawford’s film. DC Peter Grimes has taken a week’s holiday to participate as a re-enactor in the film. As they leave the Castle, they see five men in British uniforms, running across the parking lot, having drink taken and laughing it up. Romney and Marsh are called back because one of the French re-enactors, Paul Henry, has been stabbed to death with a bayonet. Two circumstances hamper their investigation. One is the presence of ex-DS Brian Wilkie, kicked off the force for his unprofessional behavior in the previous case, who hates both Romney and Marsh and heads security for the film unit; the second is the theft of all the film shot of the battle, presumably because it might show details of the murder. Meanwhile, in the town, Edy Vitriol opens his front door and someone stabs him in the chest. He’s just published a highly inflammatory book, All Women Are Prostitutes, and discussed it on White Cliffs FM radio, revealing that he had procured sex with six ordinary women in Dover by promising them what they wanted, filmed them, and is making the videos available for pay on his website. Taken to hospital and treated, Vitriol is stabbed to death in his hospital room that afternoon. What on earth is going on in Dover?

Characterization isn’t as crisp in JOINT ENTERPRISE as in earlier works. Romney’s anxiety about his health makes him more irascible than ever, and he certainly has no use for Hugo Crawford and his bestiality film or for Wilkie. “Marsh strongly suspected Romney’s motives. She believed that as much as finding answers to any genuine questions that may further their enquiries the DI was just as interested in seeing how Wilkie was bearing up after his company’s apparent failings of the previous day. Such behavior would fit with Romney’s unpleasant side that she’d learnt something of first hand when he had deliberately trodden dog excrement into the deep, white and expensive pile of a murder suspect’s carpet during a previous investigation. As they walked she mentally braced herself for more unnecessary and unhelpful spitefulness.” Still, the dynamics of the relationships within the team--Romney, Marsh, Grimes, and DC Spicer--are believable. Focusing on events through the eyes of Romney and Marsh adds to the sense of their being real people.

The plot is very much of the “old sins cast long shadows” type, unifying what initially seems distinct crimes. My only complaint is the uncertainty about Marsh and about Romney left unresolved by the denouement. Setting is mostly through physical locations in and around Dover, with a minimum of description.

JOINT ENTERPRISE is another good read. (B+)

 

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Steve Burrows’s A PITYING OF DOVES is the second in his Birder Murder mystery series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune of the North Norfolk Constabulary. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

Domenic Jejeune is the celebrity of the North Norfolk Constabulary, but his heart lies with birding, with his original plans to become a field researcher in ornithology. His investigation of the deaths of two people at the Free to Fly Sanctuary reopens the question of his career choice. An anonymous tip leads police to the bodies of Phoebe Hunter, graduate student and volunteer director of the sanctuary, and Ramon Santos, political attache of the Mexican Consulate, locked in a large cage in the sanctuary. Phoebe is impaled on a bare branch used as a perch; Santos died of an embolism caused by a stab wound to the neck with a large-bore syringe. The birds from the cage are missing. What makes the birds worth two human lives? Suspects and suspicions abound. Complications involve theft of the birds, Mexican national interests and threats to international relations, plagiarism and inappropriate behavior, what happened to Victor Obregon and his research, and differences over preservation of habitat and captive breeding programs.

To begin with, the plot of A PITYING OF DOVES is long and drawn-out; it definitely could benefit from tightening up. At too many points it appears the truth is known, only to have Jejeune’s intuition lead off into another direction, so that when the final confrontation with the killer occurs, it’s anticlimax. Even then, Burrows brings in other doubts that the killer’s confession covers all the facts. As much of the book deals with the relationships within the investigative team--DCS Shepherd, DCI JeJeune, DS Danny Maik, DC Tony Holland, and DC Lauren Salter--as with the actual mystery. Unless a reader is engrossed by ornithology, the amount of information on bird watching is excessive.

Characterization is strong, though it’s difficult not to become impatient with DCI Jejeune. He apparently still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up. “He knew that it was his job to make sense of these senseless killings, to provide answers as to why two people should die amongst discarded bird feathers and overturned seed dishes. And he knew, too, that regardless of his personal desolation, these two people deserved the attention of someone who was engaged, focused on the task, determined to pursue it to a result. So Domenic Jejeune quietly folded away the pleasures of the previous hours and resigned himself once more to the job that life had chosen for him.” If he’s so discontent, why not change course? Jejeune’s team is believable as individuals and as a functioning unit.

Sense of place is outstanding. A PITYING OF DOVES opens with a long description of the storm of 2006, so important to the plot. Burrows is good at using atmosphere to reveal character. “The landscape was bathed in the subtle shadows of early morning, and the tangled hedgerows were alive with bird activity on both sides of the narrow lane. Jejeune particularly loved this time of year for the promise it held; a new season, new migrants arriving daily, and always, always in north Norfolk, the possibility of a rarity--a Mediterranean overshoot, perhaps, or a vagrant driven inland by the erratic North Sea winds. Add to this a country drive...and the opportunity to chat to a seriously fine woodcarver and birding expert once he reached his destination, and life on this soft spring morning seemed about as perfect as it could get for Domenic Jejeune. As long as you ignored the fact that the reason for his visit was to further his inquiries into a horrific double murder.”

A PITYING OF DOVES is well worth the read. (B)

 

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OLD SCORES is the third book in Aaron Elkins’s Chris Norgren mystery series. It was originally published in 1993, then reissued in e-book format in 2014.

Chris Norgren, curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art for the Seattle Art Museum, is anticipating the arrival of his lover USAF Captain Anne Greene when his boss Tony Whitehead sends him off to Dijon, France. Rene Vachey, noted collector and dealer in twentieth-century painting, famous for his iconoclastic views of museums and art experts, has offered the Seattle Museum a Rembrandt portrait he’d recently discovered in a junk shop in Paris. He offers it with conditions: Chris will have 24 hours in which to decide to accept the painting, it cannot be subjected to any scientific testing, it must be appropriately displayed and clearly identified as a Rembrandt. Is the offer genuine, or is it another of Vachey’s elaborate schemes to puncture the pomposity of the art world? He’s made the same offer to the Musee Bartillon with a painting of Fernand Leger as the prize. Outstanding authority on Cubism Jean-Luc Charpentier pronounces the Leger authentic, and Chris thinks the Rembrandt is also genuine. But why Vachey’s restrictions and his air of gamesmanship? Julien Mann comes forward who says the portrait is actually by Rembrandt’s student Govert Flinck, a painting forcibly “bought” from Mann’s father during WWII by Vachey, who acquired Jewish art for the Nazis. Then Vachey is murdered the morning after his reception, shot in the head. Can Chris decide on the painting’s authenticity and perhaps incidentally who killed Vachey?

Once again, the question of genuine versus forgery / fakes in the art world is key to the plot. If a painting is good enough to fool the experts, if it resonates with the viewer the same way as the original, should it be considered fake even if it wasn’t painted by Rembrandt? Elkins does a good job of keeping attention focused away from the key situation, so that the revelation of Vachey’s game and his murderer coincide, somewhat as a surprise. It is fairly set up with clues.

Chris Norgren as first person narrator is charmingly self-deprecating, but he’s also principled: “There was a queasy sensation deep in my chest as if my stomach had shifted up where it didn’t belong. The Rembrandt--the Flinck?--had been fishy enough from the beginning; and getting myself shoved out of a window had improved my attitude about it. But now it was tainted with something genuinely repugnant [appropriated Nazi loot]. As much as I didn’t want to believe Mann’s story, it sounded like the truth. I didn’t want to be involved in it, and I didn’t want my museum involved.” (91) Several characters continue from earlier books--Anne Greene, Tony Whitehead, public relations man for the Seattle Museum Calvin Boyer, the flamboyant collector and academic Lorenzo Bolzano; French characters are well drawn and believable.

I appreciate Elkins’s setting the story in an unfamiliar city, Dijon. Sense of place is outstanding. “Out on the Rue de la Liberte, the main commercial street of the Old City, it was a mild evening and the sidewalks were filled with shoppers and strollers. The Rue de la Liberte was...eclectic as they come. Rough, half-timbered buildings from the fifteenth century stood cheek-by-jowl with elegant, mansard-roofed nineteenth century townhouses. Even the shops at street level had some odd juxtapositions. At the corner of Rue de Chapeau, for example, was Moutarde Maille, busy purveyor of mustards, on the very premises where messieurs Grey and Poupon first got together for business in 1777. Two doors down was an equally thriving McDonald’s, busy doling out beignets d’ signon and frites, along with the occasional hamburger.” (44-5) As anticipated, food contributes to the ambiance of Dijon: “I watched regretfully as the waiters cleared away the pate before I’d had a chance to taste it, but I cheered up when it was followed immediately by hefty but delicate quenelles in a bearnaise sauce, with an artfully arranged border of curled, rosy shrimp. A round of Clos Blanc de Vougeot was poured--and we fell to. In Burgundy, one is expected to pay attention to the food.” (51)

Regrettably, OLD SCORES is the final book in the Chris Norgren series. It’s a solid finish. (A-)

 

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THE WHISPER OF LEGENDS is the ninth book in Barbara Fradkin’s mystery series featuring Inspector Michael Green of the Ottawa Major Crime Unit. It was published in e-book format in 2013.

The story opens with Hannah Green, who’s been living in Vancouver with her mother for the past six months, on a river-running holiday with three companions: her boyfriend Scott Lasalle, doctoral student in geology at the University of British Columbia; Daniel Rothman, a UBC medical student experienced in canoeing and the back country; and Pete Carlyle, Scott’s friend and fellow geology student at UBC. Hannah’s concussed in a river accident; Scott is acting peculiar, obviously with an agenda not shared with the others. Worried because he’s not heard from her, Mike Green tries to reach Hannah, to discover that the group did not begin their canoe trip downriver where thought, they’d filed no itinerary as required by Nahanni National Park rules, their trip is weeks longer than their families knew, and there’s been no sign of them on the river since a massive flash flood rolled down. He and Brian Sullivan fly into Fort Simpson, Yukon Territory, determined to find Hannah. Starting a search is hampered by the fact that the party isn’t officially missing yet, and RCMP finances and manpower don’t allow for a possibly unnecessary Search and Rescue operation. Green begins the search by trying to find background on the three men in the party. Scott Lasalle has evidence that his grandfather may have discovered rubies in the area where the party went missing; he’s obsessed with finding the original claim and protecting it from commercial exploitation. It’s soon clear that others are determined to open the area for mining. But how can two Ottawa cops deal with trekking the wilderness?

The plot is police procedural format with the active participants pretty well identified from their first appearance, except that the principals in the mining company are essentially off-stage throughout. The identity of the killer is foreshadowed adequately. The conclusion to the mystery plot is satisfactory. The plot also catches us up with other members of Green’s team. Brian Sullivan has recovered from his heart attack and insists on accompanying Green on his search. Constables Bob Gibbs and Sue Peters are honeymooning on Prince Edward Island, but interrupt their holiday to do Green’s research.

THE WHISPER OF LEGENDS is interesting because it puts Mike Green and Brian Sullivan into an environment with which neither is familiar or comfortable, with Green in emotional turmoil over Hannah’s disappearance. Green’s also guilty about leaving Sharon in Ottawa, seven months pregnant with their daughter and having medical problems. He’s frustrated at the lack of active response from the RCMP: “...Green took a deep breath. All his career he had butted heads with the likes of Sergeant Nihls. Men who never took a step without checking the procedure manual, who said no if there was no box to check yes. By contrast, Green followed instinct that often led him into territory for which there were no procedures. The only thing that saved him from the wrath of the senior brass was the fact he was usually right.” (54-5) Other characters are well-developed and believable. (I would like to see a possible series featuring RCMP Constable Christian Tymko, whose instincts despite his inexperience are good.)

Sense of place is excellent, especially since the Yukon Territory is not a familiar locale. “Fort Simpson, population twelve hundred, occupied an island at the confluence of two massive northern rivers, the Liard and the Mackenzie, which at 2,635 miles long was the longest river in North America. The village had once been a bustling fort of the Hudson’s Bay Company during the height of the fur trade, but now served mainly as a base camp for adventurers and ecotourists bound for the Nahanni. In summer months it did a booming business in hospitality, outfitting, and Native arts and crafts. Float planes, wheeled aircraft, and barges ferried the tourists to and from the surrounding wilderness, and a highway connected the village to a civilisation farther south over what was euphemistically called an ice bridge. Meaning you drove across the frozen river and if the river was thawed, you took a ferry.” (47)

THE WHISPER OF LEGENDS is an excellent read. (A-)

 

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Lise McClendon’s BLACKBIRD FLY is a free or inexpensive e-book download published in 2009.

When Harold Strachie dies unexpectedly of a massive heart attack, his widow Merle Bennett Strachie is surprised to discover that she’d not loved him for years, if ever, and that he’d lost the considerable fortune he’d possessed when they married. He leaves her an insurance policy, borrowed against; their house in Connecticut, paid for only by mortgage insurance; and a house and some land in Malcouziac, in the Dordogne region of France, left him by his mother. The trust fund he’d supposedly set up for son Tristan, his pension fund, their savings, have all gone toward his futures trading, along with some $600,000 of clients’ money. She may be sued for its recovery. Merle, a lawyer with Legal Aid in Harlem, does not know what she’s going to do.

I’m giving up at about 12%. There’s no sense of place. Characterization is sketchy at best. I find it difficult to believe a modern woman, a lawyer, would be as uninvolved in her family’s finances as Merle. That Harry was the victim of a criminal is apparent, but the situation seems contrived. The action moves clumsily between the present with Merle and 1949 with Harry’s parents in France.

Frankly, nothing appeals enough to justify the time. No grade because not finished.

 

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Charlotte Moore’s DEEP SOUTH DEAD is listed as a Hunter Jones mystery published in e-book format n 2013.

Hunter Jones is a reporter for the Merchantsville Weekly Messenger, a transplant from Atlanta who’s planning to write a novel while covering the news in small-town Merchantsville, Georgia. Miss Mae-Lula Hilliard is caught up n a crusade to save the Hilliard Conservatory building, built by her grandfather as a finishing school for girls, from destruction so that the property can be developed as a shopping center. Her nephew J. Burton “Jaybird” HIlliard, a county commissioner and realtor, is working with Marvis Flammonde out of Atlanta on the change. When Hunter discovers Miss Mae-Lula’s body in her kitchen and the anti-development petitions are missing, Sheriff Sam Bailey assumes the murder is related to the project. Suspicious-looking college students being paid to get pro-development signatures were seen in her neighborhood about the time of Miss Mae-Lula’s death. Then Tamlyn Borders, receptionist for Dr. Keith Harrow, whose practice is next door to Miss Mae-Lula and who’s married to her niece Claire Hilliard, is strangled to death. Later the Borders house is broken into and searched thoroughly. Are the murders related, and what’s the killer looking for?

The plot in DEEP SOUTH DEAD is “least likely suspect” with minimal foreshadowing of the killer’s identity and motives. There’s the almost obligatory subplot of romantic interest between female protagonist and the sheriff. Shifts of focus between Hunter, Sam, and Deputy Taneesha Martin do reduce the need for large chunks of exposition.

Characterization is basic only. None of the characters are particularly believable. Both Hunter and Sam and standard romantic leads. The number of characters greatly exceeds that necessary to carry the plot of DEEP SOUTH DEAD. Moore seems to have fallen into the familiar trap of introducing all the characters she’ll ever use in the series, with none of them very much developed.

The setting is definitely meant to be small-town Southern, but few details bring Merchantsville to life: “Old River Road forked away from the wider, better paved New River Road, which wasn’t all that now. it had been there since the 1960s--built as the main route to the then-new Magnolia County Medical Center and the Azalea Heights area, where two generations had already gone into debt up to their ears to build Colonial / Williamsburg brick homes with double garages and swimming pools. It never got close to the river. Old River Road, which ran parallel to the river, ending in a boat landing called Sawyer’s Bend, was bumpy and pot-holed, with a few small homes on the river side and a grassy hill with red clay outcroppings and scattered pine trees on the other.” Aspects of small-town life--the importance of food and the sharing of food, the speed of gossip, the importance of the past, the role of major families--ring true, though there’s not a story-telling voice or much in Southern speech patterns.

DEEP SOUTH DEAD is a generic Southern mystery, not memorable in any way. (C)

 

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Katherine Pathak’s AGAINST A DARK SKY is the first in her projected series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Dani Bevan of the Strathclyde Police. It was published as a free or inexpensive e-book in 2014.

A party of five friends--James Irving, Joanna Endicott, Philippa Graves, Amrit Batra, and Daniel Goff--are climbing Ben Lomond when James falls behind the other three with Philippa, who can’t keep up; a mist comes down suddenly, and the three leaders are lost on the mountain overnight. The search mounted the next morning soon finds Batra suffering from exposure but unharmed. Shortly thereafter, the rescuers find Joanna’s body. She’s been strangled. The search continues for Daniel Goff, now the chief person of interest in Joanna’s murder. DCI Dani Bevan and DS Andy Calder go to Ardyle to run the investigation. Joanna’s is the first death in the Trossachs National Park since 1983, when three local school children became separated from their field trip group and died of exposure. Their death were thoroughly investigated and ruled accidental. Obviously something major is going down, since Daniel Goff turns up in the loch, killed by blunt force trauma to the head. A burglar breaks into Batra’s house, steals jewelry and electronics, and beats Batra so severely that he dies during surgery. Bevan decides to look into the 1983 deaths, but Ronnie Sheldon, now retired OIC on the case, is killed in an arson at his home the night before he was to share his notes. The two sets of deaths must be related. Who or what is the link?

The plot is drawn out, reading long. It’s credible in its connection between events in 1983 and the current case. Police procedural in format, many chapters end with Bevan receiving a phone call which is recounted in the next chapter as either flashback or straight exposition as she explains it to the detectives in a daily briefing. This device becomes old. A subplot involves Bevan’s relationship with American detective Sam Sharpe, whom she met on a previous case involving the murder of an American citizen; their relationship gives the defense attorney ammunition for reasonable doubt, leading to the acquittal of the killer.

Characters have believable baggage, they’re hard-working professionals, but they don’t come to life. Bevan’s worried about Andy Calder, a young constable who’s just back on duty following a massive heart attack, who seems to have attitude changes toward her and the job. Bevan pulls major TSTLs. Although she’s been crucified in the tabloid press about her relationship with Sam, she becomes James Irving’s date to his father’s birthday party while the Ardyle case is active. With no idea who’s behind the murders, she encourages Don and Joy Hutchinson, parents of one of the dead children, to ask questions around the village. She doesn’t reprimand Calder for spreading around the pub that Sheldon is to talk to her, thus setting up his murder.

The area around Ben Lomond must be one of the most scenic locations in the world. AGAINST A DARK SKY is not very decriptive: “Bevan stepped out of the town hall into the market square, where the piercing autumn sun was lying low in the sky. She took a few moments to examine the quaint stone buildings of this neat little town. There were a good number of independent shops and busy cafes leading away from he main square. A Celtic cross stood proudly in the centre of the thoroughfare. Dani could easily imagine what this place would have looked like a hundred years ago, let alone thirty, when the school children went missing on the mountain.” 108)

Nothing raises AGAINST A DARK SKY above commonplace. (C)

 

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Eileen Brady’s MUZZLED is the first in her projected Kate Turner, DVM, mystery series. It was published in e-book format in 2014.

Kate Turner, not long out of veterinary school and carrying $150,000 in student loans, has a year-long contract at the Oak Falls Veterinary Hospital while its owner Doc Anderson is on a round-the-world cruise with his sister. When she makes a house call at the Langthornes’ Lucky Eight Kennels, she discovers all 27 of the Cavalier King Charles spaniels loose in the house. Vivian and Thomas Langthorne are in their living room, both shot to death. Their champion stud Charles Too is missing. Kate as a newcomer feels that she’s the suspect. She’s surprised to learn that many people in Oak Falls had ample reason to hate the Langthornes and that their daughter Pippi is cold and callous about their deaths and their dogs.

I’m giving up at 23%. I don’t understand Kate’s paranoia about being suspected of murder when Garcia is treating the deaths as a murder-suicide; he’s personally assured her that she’s not a suspect. I don’t find her believable. Pippi is shaping up as the biggest villain in a dog story since Cruella de Vil. Most of the characters are just names without development. There’s little sense of place. The key to the plot seems to be the disappearance of Charles Too. There’s little direct action.

MUZZLED doesn’t cut it. No grade because not finished.

 

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Ann Cleeves’s A PREY TO MURDER is the fourth book in her mystery series featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones. He’s a retired Home Office bureaucrat whose job was liaison with local police forces, and Molly’s a retired social worker; together they’ve formed an advice agency specializing in the runaway teenagers. A PREY TO MURDER was originally published in 1989 and was re-issued in e-book format in 2013.

When Eleanor Masefield of Gorse Hill fears that someone is going to steal the young falcons from the eyrie at Sarne, she calls on old admirer George Palmer-Jones and his wife Molly to come to her family’s hotel for his advice. Once he’s there, however, Eleanor puts off telling him specifics until after the Open Day at Gorse HIll fundraiser for the Sarne Wildlife Trust. Before then, someone steals the hatchlings, and Eleanor is murdered. George, as an expert amateur ornithologist and officer of the Royal Society for Protection of Birds, becomes a consultant for Detective Superintendent Alan Pritchard who’s investigating the murder. Is Eleanor’s death part of the bird theft conspiracy, or does someone have a personal motive for her death?

In A PREY TO MURDER, Molly is much more than a supportive adjunct to George. “She remembered Eleanor and wondered if her dislike of the woman exaggerated the images she conjured in her head. It seemed to her now that Eleanor had dominated her family ruthlessly. She had purposely made them dependent on her, financially and emotionally. Their home and their livelihood depended on her. The small, beautiful woman had refused to relinquish control over her daughter and grandchildren, and they had only gained freedom with her death. That seemed more real and fundamental than the cartoon-like adventures of evil falconers and the brave heroes who sat in the rain to catch them.” I like Molly’s being more essential to the story. Characterization is good throughout. Superintendent Pritchard would have been a good protagonist for a series of his own.

As always, sense of place is excellent. Cleeves is good at using atmosphere to reveal character. “As they drove down the hill into Sarne it seemed to George that it had scarcely changed since his childhood. They arrived in the early evening and the town was empty. It had been a sunny day in mid May, but now the sun was filtered through a grey haze of thin cloud. The town was surrounded by hills and to the west, beyond Gorse Hill the hills became higher where Powys began. It seemed to George that the town was always in shadow. That was how he remembered it, a series of grey houses and small, shuttered shops, where he would be taken by his aunts who would purchase small items and exchange patronizing pleasantries with the shopkeepers.... Now everything seemed smaller and rather shabby. The high street was narrow and no major chain stores had been attracted there. One of the shops was boarded up.”

It’s hard to say much about the plot structure without doing a spoiler. Suffice it to say that there’s a logical, character-driven surprise in the bird theft conspiracy story line. Cleeves plays fair in foreshadowing the identity and motive of Eleanor’s killer.

The George and Molly Palmer-Jones series is one that reads well despite its years. A PREY TO MURDER is a good read. (A-)

 

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Mavis Doriel Hay’s DEATH ON THE CHERWELL was originally published in 1935 and reissued in e-book format in 2014 by The British Library, with an introduction by Stephen Booth.

Four undergraduates of Persephone College, Oxford--Sally Watson, Daphne Loveridge, Gwyneth Pane, and Nina Harson--meet at the college boathouse on the Cherwell to form the Lode League, the purpose of which is to curse college Bursar Myra Denning. Miss Denning is severe, condemning, maddeningly efficient, and unsympathetic to undergraduate demands for better food, laundry, and housekeeping services. They are surprised to discover her drowned body in the bottom of her canoe Faralone drifting down the river. She’d been hit in the head. Could she have slipped and fallen, striking her head and drowning accidentally? But who put her in the canoe? Superintendent Wythe of the local police and Detective Braydon of Scotland Yard must work out a timetable, locate the scene, and determine who was with Miss Denning in order to decide if they are dealing with murder. The Lode League uncovers evidence useful to DI Braydon, who’s interested in Miss Denning’s niece Pamela Exe. Why has Miss Denning kept her away from Oxford and from all who may be connected wth the university?

When I read one of the Golden Age mystery novels, I try to read it in terms of its own time since obviously the genre has evolved in an almost century. Comparing a 1935 novel to one of 2015 is comparing apples and oranges. That being said, I can’t rate Hay’s DEATH ON THE CHERWELL nearly as highly as Stephen Booth.

Characterization is based on stereotypes, particularly those of female undergraduates at a time when women still were not granted degrees from Oxford University despite the existence of female colleges. None are believable,. The setting on the river is important, and it’s somewhat detailed physically, but there’s little sense of place.

The plot is the strongest element of DEATH ON THE CHERWELL as might be expected from its age. Hay does a good job of keeping attention focused away from the motive for Miss Denning’s death, though an experienced reader is apt to pick up foreshadowing that reveals what happened and why. The conclusion is typical for the period, though it’s often viewed now as a cop out.

The almost inevitable comparison for DEATH ON THE CHERWELL is to Dorothy L. Sayers’s GAUDY NIGHT, which is on a completely higher level. DEATH ON THE CHERWELL is at best average even when taken within its own time frame. (C)

 

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Anthea Fraser’s SYMBOLS AT YOUR DOOR is one of her Detective Inspector David Webb mystery series. It was printed in 1990 and 2000, and reissued in e-book format in 2014.

The village of Beckwrth in Broadshire exists largely around Beckworth House, stately home of the Duke of Hampshire, but it’s become a weekend, holiday home enclave of in-comers. Locals are priced out of the housing market, and jobs are scarce. Police from Shillingham CID are investigating a rash of burglaries along the motorway. Someone’s drawing in green marker the head of a man sticking his tongue out on the front doors of newcomers. Carol Dexter is lonely, not having made friends in the village, and intimidated by the “Beckworth Bruisers,” a crowd of young men with time on their hands. When she disappears and her body is found in a fish pond at Beckworth House, DCI Webb and his leg man DS Ken Jackson must find how and why she died. She had an injury on her head, but was she hit or did she somehow fall and hit her head? If the fall had been accidental, why had she been put into the pond where she drowned? Their problem only worsens when Neil Carey, another incomer who’d given Carol a ride to run errands, has his throat. Are the deaths related to each other, to the graffiti, or to the burglaries?

The plot in SYMBOLS AT YOUR DOOR is uneven. In the Carey storyline, the possible motive is foreshadowed, but the killer comes in from left field, not part of the story until Webb identifies him. The Dexter storyline is adequately foreshadowed, though sympathy for the person responsible makes the conclusion somewhat unsatisfactory.

Characterization is good. Shillingham CID is a believable community. Details of DS Jackson’s concern about his son Paul, who’s ill, lend verisimilitude, as does the sexual harassment of Sally Pierce by DS Harry Sage. DCI David Webb has a unique mental aid in his reasoning process: “Various niggling impressions were swimming in and out of his memory. With luck they’d sort themselves out when he captured them on paper. ...Webb set himself to the task which usually presented itself at some point in an investigation. Mind maps, the boffins called them, but he’d been doing them long before they’d become fashionable practice. And his facility with cartoons, for which the local paper clamoured ceaselessly, made of his sketches not maps so much maps as character studies. The little cartoon figures, easily recognizable though with exaggerated features, often pointed him in the way of the villain.” Shifts in focus between characters add to their individuality.

Sense of place is good. “As a reminder that it was after all only the first week in April, the mild weather they’d enjoyed over Easter had given way to a heavy overnight frost and this morning, though the sun still shone, there was an icy wind. The further you drove along Station Road, Jackson thought, ...the tattier the surroundings became. The cheap chain-stores, betting shops and pawn-brokers, and the crowded little terrace houses that led off it could have been a million miles rather than a few hundred yards from the prosperity of Gloucester Circus and the smart shops in Carlton Road and East Parade. The Whistle Stop was an old-fashioned building on the curve of the station approach. Its faded sign bore a picture of a railway porter in peaked cap holding a whistle in his mouth.”

SYMBOLS AT YOUR DOOR continues the series well. (B)

 

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THE CAT SITTER’S NINE LIVES is the second book in John Clement’s continuation of his mother’s Dixie Hemingway series set on Siesta Key, off Sarasota, Florida. It was published in both print and e-book formats in 2014.

Dixie Hemingway is involved in a chain-reaction wreck and the rescue from his car about to explode of the driver who caused it. She visits nearby Beezy’s Bookstore, treasured in her memories of growing up on Siesta Key, and is instantly taken with L. Hoskins, its current proprietor; she buys an antique gardening book for her brother Michael and pays for it by check. The next morning Samantha McKenzie, lead homicide detective for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department, calls Dixie for help. Beezy’s front door was found open, the cash register is empty, there are bloodstains on the counter, and Mr. Hoskins is missing. So is his large orange cat Cosmo. Dixie is the last person to have seen him. In the meantime, Sarasota Memorial Hospital has called on behalf of Anton Vladim, the man she’d helped rescue, under the impression that she’s his wife; he’s in critical condition and is calling for her. And she gets a summons from impoverished, eccentric local aristocrat Alice Ann Silverthorn to attend on her about locating Cosmo. What on earth is going on?

The plot of THE CAT SITTER’S NINE LIVES requires suspension of disbelief, but Clement makes that easy. The plot isn’t deep; the identity of the killer, if not the motive, is amply foreshadowed. An experienced reader will probably discern it early after the introduction of the character. Clement devotes as much attention to Dixie’s recovery from the devastation of her husband and daughter’s deaths as to the mystery storyline, winding up the Dixie-Guidry storyline and beginning her relationship with Ethan Crane.

Continuing characters remain strong; newer introductions are a bit more stereotypical, especially Alice Ann Silverthorn. Dixie’s story-telling voice is believably Southern. She shows increased self-awareness: “...with Guidry at a safe distance, I could finally admit to myself that I’d been in love with him. For me, that’s saying something. Not that I’m some kind of cold-hearted spinster, but I’ve learned the hard way that love can be ugly. Unrestrained, my heart is as strong and fierce as a wild animal, so I’ve gotten really good at building a wall around it, reinforced with nonstop work and general sassiness, which works just as good as coiled razor-ribbon wrapped around concrete. That way, everybody’s safe.” (64) “Suddenly it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, a weight I’d been carrying around ever since that letter [Guidry’s] had arrived. For a long time, everything that had happened to me, big or small, happened to me and and me alone. I was beginning to realize that no matter what Guidry had to say in that letter I wouldn’t have to deal with it by myself now. That was a feeling I hadn’t had in a very long time.” (198)

One element Clement emphasizes in THE CAT SITTER’S NINE LIVES is the Southern association of food with family and with friendships. “The surprise was Cora’s world-famous chocolate bread... The recipe is top secret. All I know is that she makes it in the bread machine her daughter gave her for Christmas one year, and she could probably make it in her sleep. At some point in the middle of the baking process, she opens up the top of the bread machine and pours in a cup of semisweet chocolate chips. The result is a deliciously crusty bread, with chewy rivers of rich, creamy chocolate running through every slice. It’s scrumptious fresh and it’s scrumptious a week later cold from the refrigerator, but Cora serves it the best way possible: Fresh out of the oven, torn off in steaming chunks and slathered with melting butter.... I took one bite and closed my eyes, drifting off into a state of heavenly bliss. I saw a vision of frolicking kittens flying across a star-filled sky, leaving behind a trail of rainbows and unicorns. It was that good.” (225-6)

Both Clements excel at creating word pictures that put the reader into the setting. “The front window of Beezy’s Bookstore was one of those big rounded affairs that the old shops used to have, with thick iron muntins framing glass panes so old they look like they’re melting. There were all kinds of books in the display, some old, some new; all artfully arranged and lit by two hanging lamps with milky glass shades. In one corner was a small terra-cotta urn with an impossibly vigorous devil’s ivy spilling out in every direction. It weaved in and around all the books, climbing up both sides of the window and intertwining again across the top. In the window pane just next to the door was one of those old OPEN signs with a little clock face and movable hands.” (27)

THE CAT SITTER’S NINE LIVES is a worthy continuation. (A-)

 

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THE BOY IN THE SNOW is the second book in M. J. McGrath’s mystery series featuring Edie Kiglatuk of Autiaq, Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian High Arctic. It was published in 2012.

Edie Kiglatuk, former polar bear hunter, now a guide and part-time teacher, and Police Sergeant Derek Palliser are in Alaska as the support team for Edie’s ex-husband Sammy Inukpuk. Sammy’s running the Iditarod in tribute to his dead son Joe. Edie discovers the dead body of a young baby in the forest outside Anchorage, carefully wrapped in cloths associated with the Old Believers, a splinter group that separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1666; the body had been placed in a spirit house, a tradition from the Athabascans. Simultaneously, Anchorage Mayor Chuck Hillingberg takes advantage of publicity generated by the Iditarod to promote his candidacy for governor of Alaska.

While I like the complexity of the characters of Edie Kiglatuk and Derek Palliser, I’m giving up at page 157 of 370 for several reasons. First is the sheer improbability of Edie and Derek obtaining information from notoriously close-mouthed cultists and First Nations individuals in an area totally strange to them. A more important reason is the Satanism attributed to the Dark Believers, an offshoot of the Old Believers. A third reason is its inclusion of a serial killer of young babies. Most importantly, THE BOY IN THE SNOW definitely involves human sex trafficking. I prefer not to read about Satanism, cults, those guilty of crimes against children, serial killers, or human trafficking of any kind.

No grade for THE BOY IN THE SNOW because not finished.

 

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DEATH OF A TEMPTRESS is the first book in P. F. Ford’s mystery series featuring Detective Sergeant Dave Slater of Tinton, Hampshire, in the West Country of England. It was published in e-book format in 2014.

When DEATH OF A TEMPTRESS opens, DS Slater is suspended pending investigation of his responsibility for a local surveillance operation by the Serious Crimes Unit out of London, one that went pear-shaped. While he’s out of action, his boss DCI Bob Murray passes along a cold-case missing person file for him to check out. Ruth Thornhill had gone missing in London some six months before; the file shows she’d left voluntarily with a boy friend, so case closed. Except that her sister Beverley Green has friends in high places with connections up to the Home Secretary, who want Ruth’s disappearance cleared up. As Slater starts back-tracing on the investigation, he discovers way more than anyone expected, including prostitution, blackmail, police corruption, and murder.

Several Amazon reviewers like the plotting and characterization of DEATH OF A TEMPTRESS but criticize the writing style. I find it charmingly retro. Though forensics are up to date and there’s more emphasis on the psychology of the detectives than is usual for novels of the period, DEATH OF A TEMPTRESS reads like mysteries of the 1950-60s, the period in which much of my reading taste formed. The setting is specified but not emphasized. Ford shows most of the action from Slater’s viewpoint. Format is police procedural with methodical progression as one bit of evidence leads to another. Even the title is reminiscent of the era.

The plot uses a little-known fact to produce a unique murder method. The killer’s identity is foreshadowed and logical, though it may come as a surprise. There is an unresolved question in the conclusion that irritates me with Ford. I like neat packages.

What I enjoy most about DEATH OF A TEMPTRESS is the development of a solid working relationship and growing friendship between three generations of detectives: 38-year-old Dave Slater, 53-year-old DS Norman Norman*, and young and inexperienced DC Steve Biddeford. Norman has been brought in by DCI Murray because he’s a good detective who can help hone the skills of Tinton CID; he’d also been blamed for failure of a SCU operation and exiled to three years in Northumberland that cost him his marriage. Their common experience makes him a natural ally for Slater, and his expertise and contacts make him a mentor for both younger men. Biddeford is keen and able to think outside the box. The three form a team where the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. All three are believable. Other characters are well-drawn.

I’ve already ordered the next book in the series. DEATH OF A TEMPTRESS is the start of a series that I believe I will enjoy. (A-)

*not a typo

 

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THE OTHER WOMAN is the first book in Hank Phillippi Ryan’s mystery series featuring Boston Detective Jake Brogan and investigative reporter Jane Ryland. It was published in 2012.

When the story opens in late October, Jane has been fired from her job at Channel 11 News because she’s cost the station a million-dollar damages settlement in a case brought by Arthur Vick, who’d been in a sex scandal involving Sellica Darden. Darden had been Jane’s source and, by refusing to name her, Jane lost the case. She’s just gone to work as a reporter on the Boston Register, assigned to cover Moira Kelly Lassiter’s sudden disappearance from the US Senate campaign of her husband, former Massachusetts governor Owen Lassiter. Jake Brogan is investigating the death of two unidentified women, each found in the river near one of Boston’s bridges with the same apparent MO, with news media already coining the Bridge Killer as the serial’s name. As both jobs evolve, Jane discovers an unknown woman in many of Owen Lassiter’s campaign photos, and Jake works to identify the victims. When Sellica Darden becomes the third victim, Arthur Vick becomes a person of interest.

***SPOILERS***SPOILERS***

The plot of THE OTHER WOMAN is way too complex. Owen Lassiter has deep dark secrets, including what looks like womanizing (references to Monica Lewinsky abound). Lassiter has not one, but two, stalkers; he’s being sabotaged by his special political consultant Rory Maitland, and his wife, who’s been sidelined by Maitland, knows he’s unfaithful. One of the stalkers has a stalker. Jake denies reports that Boston has a serial killer in operation, suffers pressure from his boss Superintendent Francis Rivera to solve the murders already, and is convinced Vick is his killer. Jake and Jane suffer from unresolved sexual attraction. Even this much is gross oversimplification. I’m giving up at page 242 of 412. Frankly, I no longer give a care.

One of the problems for any writer using omniscient third person point of view is how to show action happening simultaneously in different places. One method is to use large segments, each focusing on one character; a second is to use short, kaleidoscopic segments. THE OTHER WOMAN is so choppy it’s impossible to get an orderly picture of what’s happening or why.

Focusing on the perceptions of many different characters adds little to their characterization. Jake is standard romantic lead, handsome, sexy, rich, Harvard-educated, grandson of former Boston police commissioner, mother a Boston Brahmin. Jane’s spunky, wronged in the lawsuit brought by Vick, pressured by her need for the Register job and its six-months’ probation period, conflicted over her father’s emotional distance. She sets herself up for another story based on insufficient information when she assumes that there’s only one “other woman” involved with Owen Lassiter. Lassiter is standard sleazy politician, Vick is blow-hard sexual predator on every woman who works for him, DeLuca is a cipher.

Sorry, but THE OTHER WOMAN just doesn’t cut it for me. No grade because not finished.

 

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LUCK AND JUDGEMENT is the third book in Peter Grainger’s DC Smith mystery series set in Kings Lake, on the North Sea. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

When oil rig roustabout James Bell disappears off the Elizabeth platform in the North Sea, Detective Sergeant David C. (“DC”) Smith, his constable Chris Waters, and two boffins from the Regional Serious Crimes Unit go to investigate. The SCUs quickly decide that the vanished man doesn’t merit their involvement, so Smith and Waters are left to find out what happened. Bell’d come back onto the platform after two weeks off and a two day extension, on Tuesday evening; between then and the start of his shift at 6 AM on Wednesday, he went missing. The obvious explanation that he, for some reason, went over the side. But was it a suicide, an accident, or an assisted fall? Smith and Waters find little anomalies, and the more they investigate, the more complex the case becomes.

I enjoy this series. Characterization is strong. Detective Sergeant DC Smith, who’d formerly risen to DCI but requested return to lower rank, is admirable and believable. Grainger has created a powerful cast of supporting police, including Smith’s current boss, DI Alison Reeve who’d served under him when he’d been DCI, DC Waters, and DS John Murray. LUCK AND JUDGEMENT introduces DC Serena Butler who blotted her copybook with an affair with a superior officer at Longmarsh, reluctantly transferred to Kings Lake and not at all sure what she thinks of Smith’s informal methods. Her gradual integration into the team is realistic.

Much of the action of LUCK AND JUDGEMENT is seen through DS Smith’s eyes. One of his appealing traits is his dry, ironic sense of humor. “Yes, thought Smith, it’s a Spartan old life out here [on the Elizabeth platform] with single bean rainforest coffees, a desk that cost more than my car, a five hundred pound fountain pen, a PA and a trophy wife waiting back home--and then, no Smith you’re going too far there, you’re only guessing the price of that desk.”

The plot is police procedural in format, and Grainger is scrupulously fair in showing the evidence as it’s uncovered. All the team is involved in building the case, with police work very much as teamwork, not the work of a lone wolf or a grandstander. The conclusion is true to life since more is suspected than can be proved, but we’re reassured that Smith won’t forget about it.

Setting is well established with small vignettes to put the reader on the scene. “It was a street of run-down social housing--there was no kinder way of describing it. From what they could see of the scraps of garden in front of number 46, it was typical of the rest; a rusting iron gate with only one hinge that was permanently open, a tarpaulin half-covered various bicycles, all of which would have flat tyres, and the low wall had gaps like missing teeth where bricks had been kicked out and never replaced. On the house itself, a solitary, shrivelled hanging basket from last summer swung occasionally in the wind...”

LUCK AND JUDGEMENT is a fine book. (A-)

 

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YOU CAN’T GET BLOOD OUT OF SHAG CARPET is the first book in Juliette Harper’s Study Club mystery series set in a small, unidentified town in West Texas in 1968. It was published in e-book format in 2015. I confess that I bought it as much for the title as for the summary and the reviews.

When Wanda Jean Bodine Milton finds her husband Hilton* dead on the new shag carpeting in her living room, where he’s been stabbed in the chest with her ten-inch Old Hickory carving knife, she’s Sheriff Lester Harper’s first and only suspect. Wanda Jean, however, is a member of the women’s Study Club headed by Clara Wyler, who’s determined no member of the group will be arrested for murder during HER term in office. She’s supported by the other Study Club officers: hair stylist Sugar Watson, who owns Sugar’s Style and Spray and swears Aqua Net is the only hairspray powerful enough for use in Texas; Mae Ella Gormley, Clara’s younger sister and County Clerk; and Wilma Schneider, Korean War M.A.S.H. nurse who works for the town doctor. Sugar is supported by her mentor and manicurist Petunia Rose (“Flowers”) Wilkes. They set out to uncover Hilton’s killer.

I’m of two minds about YOU CAN’T GET BLOOD OUT OF SHAG CARPET. On the one hand, there’s little physical setting. The town and county are not named; Dallas and San Angelo are the only genuine cities named, with no indication of location relative to the town. Point of view is third person omniscient, and the storytelling narrative voice is inconsistent. The tone is sometimes in the Honey Boo-Boo idea of Southern. Too many characters in the town are tangential at best to the plot.

On the other hand, the major characters are interesting. Clara Wyler is clearly the leader of the Study Club and one of the social leaders of the town. She’s identified as 29 years old, very young to have attained so much power, especially in a group with Sugar and Wilma, both considerably older and more experienced. The Study Club’s more aware of the change going on in the United States than might be expected: “Why were people supposed to look the other way when a sorry son of a b***h was beating on his wife? Because you were supposed to tend to your own business? And she was getting what she deserved for marrying that piece of trash? That last line of thinking really set Clara off. No woman married a man thinking he was gonna hit her. So...even a conventional woman like Clara Wyler found herself asking unconventional questions these days, which was really the reason she wasn’t going to let Lester Harper or anybody else railroad Wanda Jean Milton. The way Clara saw it, there were plenty of women who had reasons to kill men and showed remarkable restraint by not doing it. Neither Clara nor any of the other Club officers would have called what they were doing as an act of ‘feminism,’ but d**n it all to h**l, men weren’t right nearly as much as they thought they were. Wanda Jean wasn’t going to jail just because a fat-gutted sheriff assumed ‘the wife is always guilty.’ “ Hints of back stories and individual personalities make this a group I will enjoy getting to know.

Physical setting is not developed, but the atmosphere of small-town Southern is spot-on. “[Townspeople] descended on Rolene’s place armed with the typical West Texas bereavement cuisine. Certainly no one would accuse them of trying to catch a glimpse of the prime suspect, also known as the grieving widow, if they showed up with a proper culinary offering. Rolene, who was not the most patient woman on earth even under the best of circumstances, met each one at the door with a Marks-a-Lot in one hand and a roll of masking tape in the other to label the dishes. Not getting the correct dish back to its owner in pristine condition was a social crime that could require years of absolution. Everyone in town knew that Ida Belle Banners, the ‘social’ writer for the paper, was still hot under the collar about the Pyrex casserole dish that disappeared after Leroy Gibbons died. Ten years after the mistake, Sue Beth still hadn’t been able to locate a replacement that met Ida Belle’s exacting standards.”

Harper’s take on a Southern funeral sermon is accurate: “...Brother Bob lapsed into a more doctrinally safe West Texas funeral sermon. Anyone sitting thee that day could have delivered a good facsimile of the remainder of the service, which was liberally salted with tried and true injunctions about Jesus going to prepare a place for us in a house not made with hands, thus alleviating any apprehension about the valley of the shadow, for that threat passed over us as surely as the plagues of Egypt passed over the houses of the faithful, marked by the blood of the lamb.”

The plot unfolds from Hilton’s killing to disclose a multitude of questionable and/or criminal activities: cross-dressing, arson, pot growing and consumption, support of the Kennedys, bribery, affairs, homosexuality, and reading books like The Naked Ape and Rosemary’s Baby. Foreshadowing is adequate, and the conclusion funny.

YOU CAN’T GET BLOOD OUT OF SHAG CARPET convinces me to order the sequel. (B)


*not a typo--his name is Hilton Milton.