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Readingomnivore Reviews

SIREN’S CALL by Jayne Ann Krentz, written under her Jayne Castle pseudonym, is the latest in her science fiction/romance series set on Rainshadow Island in the Amber Sea on Harmony. It was published in 2015.

Ella Morgan is a music talent who works as a dream counsellor, but she’s also something that isn’t supposed to exist, even on psi-rich Harmony. She’s a Siren, capable of singing men to sleep, unconsciousness, or death. She’s resigned herself to being non-marriage material, but she’s still irritated when Rafe Coppersmith promises to call her for a coffee date, then disappears for three months. He shows up in Crystal City to hire her for a special project on Rainshadow Island. Dinosaurs reverse-bioengineered by the Aliens are interfering with Coppersmith Corporation’s exploration of Wonderland, a newly discovered part of the Underworld that lies beneath the Preserve. The dinosaurs use song to immobilize their prey, including humans. Can Ella come up with the song frequencies to allow construction of blocking devices to be used by humans in exploring Wonderland? A cult-like organization Do Not Disturb (DND) opposes all exploration of Alien ruins and technology, and Vortex, a criminal enterprise originating on Old Earth, wants to control Alien technology for their own purposes. Complicating the problem further, Rafe is suffering from severe psi-burnout suffered in the discovery of Wonderland, a burn so severe that he’s lost his talent for finding psi-charged amber and quartz and is afraid he’s losing his mind. Can Ella and Rafe come through the dangers of Rainshadow Island?

I must confess that the Rainshadow Island series is a guilty indulgence, guilty because they are NOT particularly good writing. The characters are standard within the series--strong, spunky heroine who’s convinced her talent makes her unlikely to find love or marriage; handsome hunk of hero who’s such a strong psi-talent that he’s unsuitable as a marriage partner. Both fall into the range of psychic vampires or of mythology. Some problem involving psi-energy requires they work together; drawn together by lust, they are soul mates. Usually they deal with a criminal who’s highly placed within their network, perhaps a major researcher or law enforcement. Despite the exotic locale, sense of place is minimal.

What draws me to the Rainshadow series are the dust bunnies. “Dust bunnies had a cute mode... When fully fluffed they looked like oversized wads of dryer lint with six little paws and two big, innocent blue eyes. The one on the dashboard of the sled, however, was not even trying to look adorable. She was fully sleeked out and her second set of eyes--the fierce amber ones hat were designed for night hunting--were open.” (10) To rescue her dust bunny friends from being targets in a human test of an Alien weapon, Lorelei goes to Ella, thus setting up Ella’s initial meeting with Rafe; she repays Ella with a fabulously valuable piece of ruby amber from the Underworld and becomes her companion. Like all dust bunnies, Lorelei likes glitter--her favorite toy is a bridal tiara and veil. And like all dust bunnies, she can find her human in the Underworld and help defend her from the bad guys.

Two things are a bit different about SIREN’S CALL. One is that there’s more development of the setting than usual. “Wonderland was a surreal crystal-and-quartz landscape. Blue energy illuminated a world rendered in various shades of blue. A cobalt-blue crystalline creek wound through a forest of azure trees. Sapphire leaves glinted in the strange light. Masses of blue ferns sparked and flashed in the psi-heavy atmosphere. All of it, from the silvery-blue rock formations to the cerulean-blue sky, looked as if it had been locked in the heart of an ancient glacier--frozen in time. Nothing moved. The leaves on the trees did not flutter. The creek was still. It was a jewelbox of a world.” (192) The second is that the last few paragraphs are from Lorelei’s point of view.

SIREN’S CALL is nowhere the best of the Jayne Castle sci fi romances or of the Krentz romantic suspense novels; for me, at least, it’s redeemed by Lorelei. (C)
 
CHEF MAURICE AND A SPOT OF TRUFFLE is the first book in J. A. Lang’s Chef Maurice mystery series; it was published in e-book format in 2015. Chef Maurice Manchot is the head chef and proprietor of Le Cochon Rouge in Beakley, Oxfordshire, in the Cotswolds.

When local forager and supplier of wild mushrooms fails to show up on Monday morning with his accustomed delivery, Chef Maurice goes looking for Ollie Meadows. He soon discovers that no one has seen Ollie since Saturday, that Ollie’s cottage has been burgled, and that Ollie has a sack of white Alba truffles, worth tens of thousands of pounds, in his refrigerator. Where did the truffles come from, and where is Ollie? In the meantime, Chef Maurice and his good friend Arthur Wordington-Smythe, vitriolic food critic for England Observer, rescue micro-pig Hamilton from the local animal shelter. Chef Maurice plans to train Hamilton to find the truffle patch Ollie’d been harvesting. On a preliminary reconnaissance, Chef Maurice and Arthur discover Ollie, dead from a shotgun blast in a gully in Farnley Woods. As they investigate, Ollie’s womanizing, his indebtedness and sudden affluence, and his trade in magic mushrooms all become factors in his murder.

CHEF MAURICE AND A SPOT OF TRUFFLE is fairly foreshadowed. An experienced reader may well pick up on the killer’s identity and motive ahead of Chef Maurice.

Chef Maurice is a larger-than-life personality, an authentic feature in many chefs. Most of the action is seen through his eyes. “[Chef Maurice] was enjoying himself immensely. He had truffles to find, a new four-legged friend to train, and now a murder case to solve. Cooking was all very well, but he felt he could do with a little more mental stimulation at this point in life. Besides, he thought, watching Patrick carefully place PC Lucy’s card in his wallet, he had his sous chef’s love life to watch out for. If he could solve this case, it would surely raise his whole kitchen crew in PC Lucy’s esteem. Autumn at Le Conchon Rouge was definitely looking up.” (85) Lang keeps the number of characters to those needed to advance the plot. They are an engaging assortment.

Humor is used to develop characters. “Patrick had tried to get some sleep on the couch [after Lucy becomes sick on their first date], which sagged and creaked tortuously every time he moved a muscle. He had eventually given up and resorted to tidying the kitchen, throwing away the offending risotto, rearranging the pots and pans and sharpening the knives. He’d gone through the fridge too, sorting the contents into three shelves: expiring food, expired food, and food that PC Lucy was presumably keeping for sentimental value, given the far-gone use-by dates. He didn’t dare tell Chef Maurice the sorry lump of hardened cheddar he’d found in the bottom of the fridge, and made a note to present PC Lucy with a wheel of brie de meaux next time he went round. If there was going to be a next time.” (168)

Sense of place is good, also supported by humor. “They were approaching the northern edge of Cowton, Beakley’s nearest large town and home to the county’s smallest watchtower, an annual Goose Fair, and a particular type of local cider that dissolved your teeth and brain cells in equal amounts. Chef Maurice swore by the latter as part of his secret recipe for copper pan cleaner.” (143)

CHEF MAURICE AND A SPOT OF TRUFFLE is an excellent read to enjoy while sitting in the shade and sipping sweet tea. (B+)
 
BLUE WOLF is the fourth book in Lise McClendon’s mystery series set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, featuring Alix Thorssen, owner of the Second Sun Gallery. It was originally published in 2001 and re-issued in e-book format in 2011.

Alix becomes engaged in two mysteries in BLUE WOLF. One involves local horse wrangler Marc Fontaine, manager of the Bar-T-Bar Ranch in Grand Teton National Park who killed a wolf that wandered out of the park to attack him. This is not normal wolf behavior, but a man has the right to defend himself, doesn’t he? This produces a major furor between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency, local ranchers who’re against the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone, and local environmentalists who want wolves protected wherever they range. Alix is busy curating the Auction for Wildlife fund-raiser to support the Teton Land Trust. When she goes to pick up two donated paintings from eccentric artist Queen Johns, she finds Queen obsessed with a wolf that’s approached her cabin in the park; Queen promises Alix two more paintings for her own if she will find relevant documents concerning the death of Derek Wylie some 25 years before in what was ruled a hunting accident. Because she wants the paintings and because she considers Queen a friend, Alix agrees. But as she deals with both situations, she finds murder, lies, cover-ups, and long buried secrets.

Perhaps I’m becoming jaded, but the plot is BLUE WOLF isn’t very suspenseful. From the beginning, there’s only one person despicable enough to be guilty of both the shooting of the wolf and the murder of Derek Wylie. McClendon concentrates more on whether Alix can find evidence to support her conclusions and how the killer will be taken down than on the identity. The conclusion to the murder storyline is not very satisfactory because it’s not clear if the killer will even be brought to trial, much less made to pay. The secondary storyline involves Alix’s personal baggage from the disappearance of her father when she was thirteen years old, from the death of her lover and partner in the gallery Paolo Segundo, and from her breakup (maybe) with current lover Carl Mendez.

As first person narrator, Alix is the most fully realized character. She’s believable in her emotional baggage, willingness to help friends, and desire to see justice served. “The knot on my nose began to tingle. I knew what that meant, that i as curious, or shall I say, nosy. This was a bad sign. I had to finish the auction brochure, figure out the placement, talk to Terry Vargas about procedures. Plus I wanted to hole up and paint next week, even though Carl had other plans. Lots of details, and I, girl once mocked as a snapping turtle with a brain and a bra, could not stop thinking about a forest clearing where a young boy’s life had gone out like an underfed flame.” (36)

BLUE WOLF opens with a prologue in which the fourteen-year-old Alix comes face to face with a wolf, a solitary encounter that helped her deal with her father’s disappearance. Queen Johns has her own wolf meeting that convinces her that she must know what happened to her son Derek Wylie. Wolves as symbols in all forms, as spirit messengers, permeate the atmosphere of the story. “The Bar-T-Bar was a small, meticulous ranch, one of several small ranches left private when the national park was formed. It was the sort of place Americans dream about when they think of going cowboy: golden pastures, mountain backdrops, gleaming horses, weathered barns, log ranch houses, the smell of latigo and the clunky sound of boot heels on boardwalk. ... The first thing I heard was the long, lonely, throaty howl... The cry echoed off the mountain granite and faded. It was the sound of grief, of mourning, and it pierced right through me. I shivered and pulled my coat closer. Where had I heard that before? For a moment I was paralyzed, remembering old pain, old grief, old wounds. The howl was gone. The ranch lay silent again. But somewhere close by, lived a wolf.” (24) McClendon excels at thumbnail vignettes of the natural scene: “The clearing was marshy with reeds and snake grass on the opposite side, and mounds of blue green grass where the spring--uphill somewhere--kept it moist, the sort of magical place where you expect to find a doe and fawn bedded down, or maybe a unicorn.” (45)

BLUE WOLF is another good book for a lazy afternoon read. (B+)
 
A SINGLE TO FILEY is the first book in Michael Murray’s DCI Tony Forward mystery series set in Sandleton, East Yorkshire. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

DCI Tony Forward, formerly a minor professional actor, still is involved in the theatre, currently as director of the Sandleton-on-Sea Players’ production of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard. He’s called away from the dress rehearsal when the body of Mark Coulson turns up at Monks Bay. Coulson’s head has been smashed in, he’s wearing a yellow anorak his wife says he didn’t own, and his wallet and keys are missing. Coulson is the Headmaster of Melthorpe Primary School. Who on earth wanted him dead, and why? As Forward and his team investigate, they discover that Coulson was more than an upstanding educator, and the ramifications of his behavior lead far afield.

Two things in A SINGLE TO FILEY are encouraging. Sense of place is outstanding. While Sandleton and associated towns are largely fictional, the East Yorkshire coastline is not. “The vast curving arc of Yorkshire coastline that is Filey Bay has its furthermost southern point at Flamborough Head. However at the bay’s northern end is a curious promontory known as Filey Brigg which is close to the unspoilt town of Filey. once, when man’s violence was not the dominant force on earth, Filey Brigg was a long headland extending straight out into the North Sea standing as high as the coastline that surrounded it. Geologically this coastline was a sandwich of clay, sandstone and limestone. Over millennia the action of vicious cross-currents swirling over the Brigg eroded the soft clay and later the relatively harder sandstone until all that remained was the adamantine limestone. Now each day when the tide recedes this limestone reef reappears standing several feet above the surrounding sea and extending many hundreds of yards out into the water. With Flamborough Head on one side and the Brigg on the other the bay offers excellent natural shelter for Filey’s fishermen.”

Murray is adept at using atmosphere to reveal character. “The boat continued slowly but relentlessly on its course and Forward found himself contemplating with wonderment the erosive power of the elements. Years of weathering had caused parts of the cliffs to collapse, forming miniature islands called stacks. These lone chimneys of rock towered out of the sea, some of them isolated from the land by quite large stretches of water. In the cliffs themselves were many V shaped inlets that the sea had cut deep into the chalk. And all of this was formed, Forward reflected, before men and women walked the earth. He was reminded of his father’s observation on his deathbed. ‘Minerals mock us,’ he’d said. ‘Minerals mock us.’ They did indeed.”

Tony Forward is a protagonist easy to like, in part because the story is told through his eyes. He’s self-confident, disinclined to accept facile solutions, human enough to be irritated by some of the people with whom he must work, and willing to buck his boss when necessary. He’s also sensitive and self-aware. “Despite the unpleasantness of his forthcoming task, a feeling of deep satisfaction invaded Forward as he drove across the Wolds towards Melthorpe. The cloudless sky was an azure mirror for the sun’s radiance. Spring, which a week before had only hinted at its presence in hesitant shoots and buds, was now in rampant efflorescence. Trees and hedgerows were burgeoning into full leaf, crocuses, primroses and daffodils thronged the verges of the narrow lanes that meandered between the hills. Not that the Detective Chief Inspector could have named any of the flowers he saw for he was no countryman. Nevertheless, this didn’t prevent him from enjoying their beauty. He felt so exalted: spring was in the air; there was the first night of The Cherry Orchard to look forward to; and he also had a challenging, and intriguing murder case to untangle. At once he recalled the pitiful expression on Mrs. Coulson’s face when she’d learned that her husband had been murdered and he castigated himself for his less insensitivity.” He’s supported by a varied cast of believable individuals in the Sandleton police, a team that it will be interesting to get to know.

The plot is the least satisfactory element in A SINGLE TO FILEY. The story runs on too long, at least in part because of nonessential characters. So many hints at the identity of the person responsible make an experienced reader likely to discern it long before Forward. Murray withholds evidence, revealing it only when Forward confronts that person. There is a small unforehadowed twist that weakens the denouement.

Still, A SINGLE TO FILEY is a solid opening for a series. (B)
 
CHICKENS, MULES AND TWO OLD FOOLS: TUCK INTO A SLICE OF ANDALUCIAN LIFE is Virginia Twead’s account of the move from Sussex to the tiny village of El Hoyo in Andalucia, Spain. It is available in e-book format.

I wanted to like CHICKENS, MULES AND TWO OLD FOOLS. I’m not familiar with Spain and its village culture, and the title implies a humorous, self-deprecating narrative. Unfortunately, the amount of actual material is skimpy, especially considering that the story covers five years, the almost complete rebuilding of their original house, and the construction of two houses for sale on the site of the old orchard. Contact with locals seems to be limited. The couple’s attitude toward most things Spanish is one of British superiority.

There are some beautifully lyrical descriptions: “As Joe and I drove toward Lunjaron, we could be forgiven for thinking that Andalucia was so close to paradise as is possible. The craggy mountains jutted against the sky, serving as a backdrop to the ancient whitewashed villages that appeared frozen in time, barely changing since the Moorish times. Rivers cut deep gorges through the countryside, and it was the sheer volume of water that surprised us. Waterfalls fed by snow-melt cascaded enthusiastically through crevices, sending up rainbows through the spray. The rocks were sculpted into fantastic shapes by the constant exuberance of the rushing water.”

CHICKENS, MULES AND TWO OLD FOOLS is one in the “find foreign ruined house, fall in love with, and restore” school of travel and lifestyle writing popularized in UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN and A YEAR IN PROVENCE. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come close to either in quality. (C-)
 
A CRUISE TO DIE FOR is the second in Charlotte and Aaron Elkins’s mystery series featuring art expert Alix London. It was published in e-book format in 2013.

Following her adventure in Santa Fe, where she met Ted Ellesworth, Special Agent of the FBI Art Crimes Team working undercover as Roland de Beauvais, Alix London is recruited as a part-time art consultant for the FBI. Her first assignment is simple and doesn’t involve undercover work. She’s to be the guest expert on Panos Papadakis’s yacht, Artemis, listening for information on his fractional investment plan--investors buy shares in paintings expected to appreciate in value, then recoup their investment plus the added value when the paintings are later sold; it’s actually an elaborate Ponzi scheme. Papadakis’s taking five of his investors on a Mediterranean cruise that will culminate in an absolute auction of his collection of Impressionist and Modern paintings, the centerpieces of which are Manet’s Le Dejeuner au Bord du Lac and Monet’s Rouen Cathedral. But scientific analysis concludes the Monet is a fake, and Alix senses something wrong with the Manet as soon as she sees it. She’s knocked unconscious, and the Manet is slashed. And Ted as Rollie de Beauvais shows up as one of the guests. What’s going on?

There’s not much characterization in A CRUISE TO DIE FOR. Alix carries believable baggage but doesn’t seem to have learned much from her previous case. Little individualizes the other characters. Ted is standard romance-novel hero. Papadakis and his wife Gabriela are clearly based on Aristotle Onassis and Maria Callas. Lorenzo Bolzano from the Chris Norgren series makes a cameo appearance for comic relief with his incomprehensible statements about reality and art.

By far the strongest element is the setting and sense of place. “When she looked around her, at Mykonos town itself, her initial impression was that the decade and more...had produced little change. The look of the city (cubical white houses, narrow, bewildering alleys, bustling streets, the famous, much photographed row of the six squat, blindingly white windmills on the hill) and its smell (bougainvillea and frying fish) were much as they’d been before. But within seconds the changes started jumping out at her. The shops were as tiny as she remembered, virtual miniatures, but they’d changed from grocery stores and cheap souvenir shops into posh designer boutiques. And the people on the streets were different as well. The last time, there had been a dazzling jumble of clothes and lifestyles: elderly black-clad women hauling baskets of live chickens or rabbits or vegetables; men in the traditional outfits of vests, sashes, ballooning knee breeches, and tasseled red fezzes; grungy backpackers and bicyclists; and even the occasional businessman or government worker wearing a suit and tie. Here and there were a few wary tourists, usually in groups trailing behind an up-raised red or yellow umbrella. Now the streets were no less lively, but the people had changed. Not a fez in sight, let alone a chicken, but plenty of baseball caps, tank tops, shorts, sneakers, and sandals. And a penetrating new smell too: sunscreen.” (60-1)

***SPOILERS***

The plot in A CRUISE TO DIE FOR doesn’t decide what it’s going to be when it grows up. About one-third involves the Ponzi-scheme, art forgery, and murders planned and carried out by assorted characters, not just Papadakis. This story line concludes at about 85% of the book, much of its resolution described to Alix by Ted, back in D.C. after it’s all over. It’s not satisfying because Papadakis gets away with his part. The second storyline involves the possible relationship between Alix and Ted, both of whom feel a definite attraction. Alix has problems with Ted’s ease with undercover work, the principle of which is “befriend, then betray.” Can she trust him? The third storyline is the most important, dealing with Alix’s complex relationship with her father, convicted art forger Geoffrey London. The way the three resolutions are revealed, the second two become anticlimax.

A CRUISE TO DIE FOR is an undemanding summer read, but it sinks without a trace. (C)
 
NONE SO BLIND is one of Barbara Fradkin’s Inspector Green mystery series. It was published in 2014 in e-book format.

For twenty years, James Rosten, the convicted killer in Inspector Michael Green’s first case as a detective, has written to Green protesting his innocence. Rosten has refused to apply for parole because to be eligible for consideration, he would have to admit his guilt. Green had been pulled from the case before its conclusion, but the evidence that Rosten had killed Jackie Carmichael was overwhelming even if circumstantial. Green had bonded with the Carmichael family during the case and trial and had remained in occasional contact with them. The death of Lucas Carmichael, Jackie’s stepfather, prompts Rosten’s latest letter to Green, “He wins!” Lucas had been Rosten’s suspect in Jackie’s death. Rosten applies for parole, makes arrangements for halfway house placement and job possibilities and, with support from Green, Marilyn Carmichael, and Chaplain Archie Goodfellow, securs his release on parole. One month later, Rosten is dead, an apparent suicide, though neither Green nor Goodfellow believes it. With his job on the line, Green is faced with the real possibility that he’d helped convict an innocent man. If Rosten didn’t kill Jackie Carmichael, who had, and has that same person now murdered Rosten himself?

This is definitely a character-driven series. Green and the people in the Ottawa Major Crimes Unit are believable. Green carries serious baggage over his relationship with older daughter Hannah; during NONE SO BLIND he’s struggling with his father’s situation. His father Sid Green, a widowed Holocaust survivor, suffers a major stroke and loses the will to live. Green’s also ambivalent about the Rosten case. “His whole career had been launched by this case. After the embarrassment of botched investigations and failed prosecutions, the senior brass had seized the opportunity to praise him to the skies. Only a junior detective, the police chief had crowed, but a man clearly skilled beyond his years Green had found himself fast-tracked into Major Crimes and he had never looked back. Until now. He’d been so damn sure of Rosten’s guilt. Had he been so blinded by his own importance, and by the chance to break this case when the OPP was trying to sweep him aside, that he had failed to see the truth staring him in the face? Had his whole career been based on a lie?” (200)

Sense of place and of change is outstanding. “Warkworth Penitentiary was a brutal grey scar seared into the gently rolling farmland of Northumberland County, but three hours’ drive southeast of Ottawa along country highways slick with salt. ...he hadn’t visited in years, and was dismayed but not surprised by the tightened security. Warkworth had been conceived fifty years ago as a model of hope and rehabilitation, but its recent troubles with riots, lockdowns, and overcrowding reflected the harsher reality. As he approached the first exterior gate, the looming twenty-foot perimeter fence with its barbed-wire cap was a stark reminder that, although this was a medium-security facility, it housed some ed six hundred violent criminals, 40 percent of them lifers. Outbuildings were scattered across sprawling lawns, and in the distance he glimpsed the grassy playgrounds and picnic areas designed to simulate normal family life. Inside, it was still a place of steel, concrete, menace, and despair.” (27-8)

***POSSIBLE SPOILER***

The plot in NONE SO BLIND unfolds slowly as the reader and Green come to the realization that James Rosten had been wrongly convicted. The identity of the killer is almost “least likely suspect,” though character clues may lead an experienced reader to the identity before Green. There’s an unexpected twist in the conclusion of the murder case, and Fradkin leaves Green’s job situation unresolved.

NONE SO BLIND is solid. (A-)
 
Terry Alford’s FORTUNE’S FOOL: THE LIFE OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH is the first published full-length biography of the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. It was published in 2015.

I saw Tarry Alford on CSPAN discussing FORTUNE’S FOOL and, since I’m a conspiracy theorist about the death of Lincoln and who ultimately lay behind it, knew I had to read it. Alford is a good speaker and discussed the book better than it read. One of its strengths is the number of photographs of Booth’s family and other major figures.

FORTUNE’S FOOL (Romeo being one of John Wilkes Booth’s starring roles) covers in great detail the actors, actresses, theatre managers, hangers-on, critics, and fans in Booth’s acting career. The detail becomes tedious. Alford uses multiple quotations from different actors and critics about the same performance in a given city, only to repeat much the same words about the same role in another city by other critics and actors. How many times do we need to be told that Booth was a rising star of his generation of actors, cut off before he’d time to mature in his art? Most of the people in the theatre world remain names only. A list identifying the major individuals would help, as would a timeline showing Booth’s location and activity through his brief career.

Only one very general map with few topographical details shows Booth’s escape route. A map focusing on his travels in the last year of his life, after he had foresworn his theatrical career and focused on his various schemes involving Lincoln, would be helpful. He ranged from Canada through much of the North, conversing widely with all manner of men about his ideas, so that it’s hard to keep straight just where he was and when.

Methodologically, there are problems in FORTUNE’S FOOL. The bibliography gives primary sources exclusively; secondary sources are listed in the end notes with the full citation given in the first note. Subsequent references give only title and page number, which makes for difficulty in locating the source of the citation. Alford relies heavily on materials created by people who knew Booth but whose memoirs, interviews, stories were set down decades after the Civil War period. He seems to accept these accounts at face value, disregarding possible self-serving accounts as well as the mutable nature of memory.

What bothers me most is that Alford ignores a very large hole in the standard interpretation of Lincoln’s assassination. In the almost year after May 1864 when he left the theatre, he talked to men from Canada and throughout the North, including Baltimore and Washington, D.C., itself, about his plans to strike some great blow for the Confederacy, which he described at first as an abduction of Lincoln to force the Union into an exchange of prisoners, then after the election of 1864 as a removal. He’d personally told dozens in addition to the group caught and tried for the crime; he’d bragged about the huge sums of money he expected to gain. Washington was awash in Union soldiers, spies, double and triple agents, police, and Pinkerton detectives, all on the lookout for Confederate plots. How did they all avoid picking up on Booth’s plans? Did the U. S. Government, under operational control by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton with Congress dominated by the Radical Republicans intent on punishing the South, ignore Booth deliberately? Or did Stanton engineer Booth’s plan? Either way, the problem Lincoln posed for Republican plans to reconstruct the South was solved, creating in him a martyr whose death helped to justify the very policies Lincoln had opposed. Who knew what, and when did they know it?

FORTUNE’S FOOL: THE LIFE OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH adds great gobbets of theatrical history to the standard narrative of the Lincoln assassination. It is disappointing in adding nothing new to the interpretation of Booth. (C)
 
THE ONLY CLUE is the second book in Pamela Beason’s mystery series involving Dr. Grace McKenna and her ASL-trained gorilla Neema. It was published in 2013.

THE ONLY CLUE opens over year after the events of THE ONLY WITNESS. Grace has her research compound with three gorillas--Neema, the silverback Gumu, and their daughter Kanoni, all of whom sign--but money is tight and the County Council resents the presence of the project in their area. Following an open house to introduce the public to the gorillas, Grace is horrified the next day to discover all three gorillas missing. In their sleeping barn is a large puddle of blood. The gorillas escaped, were stolen, or perhaps killed. Public fear make it unwise to announce that the gorillas are possibly at large. Detective Matt Finn, Grace’s sometimes lover, agrees to investigate without reporting the crime; his situation is complicated when analysis of the blood show it to be human. Much else is going on in Evansburg: a series of burglaries, the theft of the body of a 95-year-old woman from a local funeral home, the death of an unidentified man in a car wreck, a missing schizophrenic man, and trafficking in exotic animals. How many of these are related, and how?

Characters are realistic, with attractive protagonists in Grace and Finn. Grace’s doubts about her work with the gorillas make her believably complex: “It was always magical to commune with another species, and she felt luck to have the experience of interacting with the marmoset. But she also felt a familiar pang of guilt, the same conflict she felt every time she visited a zoo. It wasn’t right to capture wild animals and imprison them just for human gratification. But would humans appreciate just how precious wild animals were if they never looked into their eyes, never felt the flutter of a bird’s wing or the butterfly touch of a tiny monkey’s fingers on theirs, if they never heard a lion roar or an elephant trumpet. She was a zookeeper of sorts, too. She thought of all the visitors who had attended her open house. Would they realize how smart and imaginative gorillas were if they hadn’t seen Neema express her thoughts in sign language?” (119-20) Beason supports Grace and Finn with an able cast of project workers and volunteers including Jon Zyrnek, Caryn Brown, and Sierra Sakson, all three of whom began by serving community-service sentences for their eco-terrorist acts with the Animal Rights Union. Brittany Morgan, whose daughter Ivy’s kidnapping was the initial crime in THE ONLY WITNESS, is a volunteer. Most of the action is seen through Grace and Finn, with occasional chapters through Neema, who’s definitely a major character..

Beason is good with atmosphere and using it to reveal character. “The weather was clear over Snoqualmie Pass, and for a little while Finn managed to push complicated women and missing gorillas out of his mind. The jagged peaks of the Cascades, still capped with heavy snow, stood crisply outlined against cerulean skies. These brilliant blues and whites were reflected in the shining surface of Keechalus Lake, a long reservoir bordering the highway that was straining at its banks with snowmelt. Firs and cedars wore chartreuse gloves of new growth on their long spiky branches. In three locations, Finn stopped to take pictures, long for his watercolors and time to paint the scenes before him.” (152)

The plot in THE ONLY CLUE hangs on a somewhat unlikely premise but, granting that premise, it is well constructed. It’s police procedural with only brief suspense about who’s arranged the theft of the gorillas; the uncertainty comes from the connections of the subordinate criminals and the possibility of a happy outcome for the gorilla family. The plot is enriched by very current questions about poaching and trafficking in endangered animals, the morality of keeping animals in zoos, and the ethical treatment of animals, especially those of high intelligence.

THE ONLY CLUE is well worth the read. (A-)
 
LORD OF THE WINGS is the latest to date in Donna Andrews’s long-running Meg Langslow mystery series. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

Caerphilly, Virginia, is in the throes of its first Halloween Festival, needed to generate revenue after the previous years’ near bankruptcy and foreclosure on the town. Most of its planning has been carried out by Lydia Van Meter, Special Assistant to Mayor Randall Shiffley. She’s paid little attention to Meg, soliciting her advice and then doing the opposite. Meg’s content to be only the director of the Visttors Relations and Police Liaison Patrol, aka the Goblin Patrol. But hordes of tourists descend, someone puts a faux human foot in the Caerphilly Zoo’s Creatures of the Night alligator swamp, and a murdered man is found in the nearby woods. Things get complicated fast. Break-ins at Dr. Smoot’s Haunted House and Caerphilly Museum, strange small thefts, then arson, theft, an attack on Dr. Smoot and a second murdered man at the Museum, all seem related to some sort of live-action role-playing game going on at the Festival. Then Lydia disappears, leaving Meg to work with Mayor Shiffley and Chief of Police Burke to keep the festival under control and to find the killer.

The plot in LORD OF THE WINGS is simplistic. An experienced reader likely will pick up on the identity of the killer from the first appearance in the story. There are few viable suspects. The motive is indicated early on. Use of the role-playing game is a neat but doubtfully realistic stroke. People who live and die by social media are unlikely to keep their secret away from FaceBook, et al, for long. While there are humorous bits, much of the fun for which the series is noted is lacking.

Characters abound, ranging from merely quirky to barking mad, some of whom are not essential to the plot. Meg’s personality is shown clearly: “...I pulled out my notebook-that-tells me-when-to breathe, as I call my giant to-do list and made productive use of my time. Other people rarely understand how comforting I found it to spend time with my notebook. Knowing that everything on my plate was captured between its cover cleared my brain to concentrate on whatever I was doing. Since the boys’ arrival, life had grown even more complicated than before, and I’d traded in my original spiral notebooks for a small three-ring binder, but apart from that my system was the same. My notebook gave me peace of mind, and all it asked in return was that I tend it for a few minutes here and there.” Meg is the first-person narrator.

One of my favorite continuing characters largely absent from LORD OF THE WINGS (though the title refers to him costumed as Gandalf with attendant ravens) is Meg’s paternal grandfather, noted zoologist and owner of the Caerphilly Zoo Dr. Blake Montgomery. “I’d have been insulted by the implication that Grandfather cared more about protecting his zoo animals than his grandchildren if I didn’t know that more or less lumped them--and the rest of his family--in with the animals. He’d recently remarked that Josh and Jamie were admirable young primates, more amusing than spider monkeys and arguably as clever as baby orangutans--rare praise indeed.”

Sense of place is the strongest component of LORD OF THE WINGS. “The first few miles of my journey lay through farmlands--pastures dotted with grazing cows or sheep, fields with late crops or post-harvest stubble and orchards picked clean of all but the latest fruits. Closer to town, I began to see Halloween and harvest decorations on the gates and fences. I particularly admired the farmer who’d used a collection of scarecrows to simulate a zombie attack on his cow pasture. The contrast between the bloodstained shambling figures clawing at the outside of the fence and the Guernsey cows calmly chewing their cuds inside never failed to amuse me.”

LORD OF THE WINGS is cutely themed for Halloween, but it’s nothing special in the series. (B-)
 
LONG UPON THE LAND is the twentieth book in Margaret Maron’s long-running Deborah Knott mystery series. It was published in print and e-book formats in 2015.

LONG UPON THE LAND operates on two kinds of mystery. One is the murder of Vick Earp, hard-working, unpopular, compulsively neat, a domestic abuser with chilhood ties to and a lasting hatred of Deborah’s father Kezzie Knott. Earp blames Mr. Kezzie for loss of his family’s farm in the 1940s. He and his uncle Joby Earp have tipped off the ATF on men currently associated with the bootlegging business in Colleton County so long dominated by Mr. Kezzie. The other mystery is Deborah’s search for her mother’s past, triggered when older brother Will gives her Sue Stephenson Knott’s Zippo lighter, engraved to Walter Raynesford McIntyre from Leslie in 1934; McIntyre gave it to Sue at Goldsboro Air Field shortly before being shipped to Europe in 1943. He’d never returned, and she assumed he’d died in WWII. Sue’d told Deborah that McIntyre had not been her boyfriend, but his advice changed her life. Deborah wants to know McIntyre’s background and how her mother, from a socially prominent lawyer’s family in Dobbs, came to marry Kezzie Knott, bootlegger and ex-con from Cotton Grove.

Vick Earp’s murder is definitely secondary to the family history, though the Earp family figures in the Knotts’ courtship. The number of suspects for Earp’s murder is small, even counting the Knotts. The identity of the killer and the motive are not hard to pick out. There’s a neat twist in the McIntyre-Leslie story.

Point of view moves from Deborah’s first person to limited third person through her husband Dwight Bryant, second in command to Sheriff Bo Poole of Colleton County. Deborah’s emotional baggage about the death of her mother is the focus of her search for information; she’s also going through major professional change as she transitions from general sessions to family court judge. Characterization for the extensive Knott family, the Bryants, various maternal and paternal relatives, and help remains individual. It’s good to read the series in order since these characters do grow and change as real families do. Some nonessential characters could be dropped without harming either storyline.

Maron’s evocation of place and time is outstanding, and she excels at using atmosphere to disclose character. “A lane might be a shorter drive from point A (his back door) o point B (his destination) than the road, but the lanes also let [Mr. Kezzie] check up on parts of the farm he might not have visited recently. Most farmers still walk or ride their boundaries regularly, keeping an eye on crops, on fences, on drainage ditches that might need cleaning, or for a dozen other reasons. As a boy, he could have walked the family’s hundred acres in an hour, but over the years, he and I and my brothers have added so much land to the original holding that wheels were a necessity. He’s never cared much for what he calls ‘stuff,’ but let an acre of land come up for sale anywhere near the farm and he’s right there with an offer, cash in hand.” (17) Her cultural observations are spot-on. “We walked out to the garden, which seems to have grown exponentially this season. You can give a country boy [Dwight] a town job, but he’s never going to buy all his food in town. Not if he’s go a square foot of dirt to play with.” (44)

LONG UPON THE LAND is a good book for reading in the shade on a summer afternoon, a glass of sweet tea at hand. (B)
 
SEA FEVER is the fifth book in Ann Cleeves’s mystery series featuring George and Molly Palmer-Jones. It was printed in 1993 and reissued in e-book format in 2013. Molly is a retired social worker; George is retired as a Home Office liaison officer with the police; together, they have formed a private inquiry agency specializing in locating missing teenagers. George is an expert birdwatcher.

SEA FEVER opens with George and Molly hired by the Franks family to find their son Greg, who’s not been home in a year. His neurotic mother is frantic to get him back. Though a misdirected letter, she knows that Greg plans to go on a birdwatching week at Heanor in Cornwall; she will pay George and Molly’s expenses if they will go on the trip and communicate her worries to Greg. On the trip out to sea on the Jessie Ellen, George sights a petrel that no one on the boat or their printed guides can identify. When the excitement dies down, everyone realizes that Greg Franks is missing; his body is found entangled in the rope pulling the rubby dubby bag, and all his gear is gone. What happened? Greg had been obnoxiously full of himself, hinting at secrets about various of the birders. He’s suspected of being a drug dealer. He’d been charged but not convicted for burglary, but had spent several months in a bail hostel. As George, Molly, and the local police investigate, Greg’s death is ruled murder, and he’s revealed as a blackmailer as well. Who needed Greg Franks dead?

The plot in SEA FEVER is a splendid job of hiding the killer in plain sight while Cleeves keeps attention firmly fixed elsewhere. Her foreshadowing is subtle. The conclusion is satisfying.

Characters are well-developed, not just Molly and George but the various birdwatchers and Detective Inspector Claire Bingham as well. I like that Molly plays a key role in uncovering the killer. She’s definitely her own person, not blinded by her love for George: “Molly began to clatter mugs and spoons onto a tray. [George’s] detachment, his cool assumption that Muriel and Dennis Franks were not worth bothering about, that they were, if anything, less important than his precious seabirds, infuriated her. It was not particularly that she wanted to meddle in the case. She did not need that sort of drama. It was that she was worried about him. She knew he was trying to protect himself from the destructive guilt and depression which sometimes haunted him but could tell that the self-deprecation would not work. She thought he should do something. He should take the risk.”

Cleeves is adept at using atmosphere to reveal character. “George was enjoying himself more than he had done for years. he sun was high above the horizon and warmer. The cloud had disappeared and the wind had dropped. There was a smell of salt and fish, wet rope, and diesel. The Jessie Ellen was moving in a large circle around the long-lines. They saw more petrels and two great shearwaters skimming and turning over the waves. in all his years of seawatching he had known nothing like it. He was relaxed and exhilarated. The sunlight had tightened the skin on his face, so he felt younger. The deck where he sat was comfortably warm. The others were sitting at the stern watching the rubby dubby bag, but he wanted to be alone and sat...his back against the saloon his legs straight ahead of him. Rb had once described seawatching as a cross between meditation and therapy. George thought about it and laughed. It had been right to come.”

SEA FEVER is another excellent entry in a well-crafted series. (A-)
 
Elizabeth Edmondson’s A MAN OF SOME REPUTE was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2015. It’s set in Selchester, Engalnd, in 1953; its protagonist is Hugo Hawksworth whose field career in the Secret Service has ended with a permanent disability. He’s now employed as a “statistician” at Thorn Hall, where the Secret Service archives are stored.

The story in A MAN OF SOME REPUTE opens in January 1947 when Lord Selchester, following dinner at his home in Selchester Castle, walks out into a blizzard that takes down power and telephone lines and cuts the Castle off for three days and nights. He’s not seen again; there’s no evidence of foul play, prolonged searching turns up no trace of him alive or dead; the police conclude he died in the storm and animals scavenged and scattered the remains. Fast forward to 1953. Hugo and his thirteen-year-old sister Georgia are quartered at Selchester Castle, inhabited by Lord Selchester’s niece Freya Wryton and two servants. Selchester’s son and heir Tom Arlingham had died in Palestine in spring 1947. Tom’s sister and heir Lady Sonia Richmond is waiting out the seven years until her father can be presumed dead so that she can sell the estate. The day Hugo arrives, plumbers looking for a leaky pipe under the floor of the Old Chapel discover a skeleton quickly identified as that of Lord Selchester. Cause of death is not apparent, but obviously a suicide or an accident victim didn’t bury himself. The case is reopened, with the police and Secret Service quickly concluding that the easiest solution is to blame Selchester’s death on Tom, with whom he’d quarreled violently at dinner, possibly aided by Freya, who took Tom’s part. Both stormed out, but either or both could have returned. Because Selchester and Tom had been involved in the Secret Service world, Hugo is ordered by his boss to keep a watching brief on the case. As he pokes around, he finds much to arouse suspicion, and he’s convinced that neither Freya nor Tom had anything to do with Selchester’s death. But who?

The plot reflects the mindset of the early 1950s, right after the defection of Burgess and Maclean when England was still under an austerity program and paranoid about Communist spying. “It wasn’t a pleasant day; [Hugo’d] left a blustery Selchester with scudding clouds, and as he drew nearer to London, the sky had become a solid grey miasma. When he alighted from the train into a dingy Paddington Station, the smell of fog wafted into his nostrils. He’d been looking forward to London. Town was his real home, his milieu, and he expected it to be a haven and a relief after Selchester. But no, he felt his heart sinking as he went out of the station into the grey streets and looked at the dispirited people walking with hunched shoulders along damp pavements.” (138-9) At 296 pages, the book is at least fifty pages longer than necessary. Foreshadowing is so heavy that no experienced reader is apt to need the explanation of Selchester’s death and its motive, particularly if he / she is at all familiar with the history of Communist infiltration in Great Britain.

Characters are not noteworthy or individual. Hugo Hawksworth is standard thriller hero. “Hugo knew something about stitch-ups, didn’t like them like them on principle and mistrusted anyone involved in them. They were as inevitable if disagreeable part of life in most organisations, so he’d objected to them when he could and learned to accept them when he couldn’t. Only he wasn’t going to accept this one. Not just because it outraged ins sense of right and wrong, but because he whole set-up aroused his suspicion. There was something seriously amiss here, something worse than the usual fudge and making the best of a bad business that he was used to in the Service.” (86) Freya, who’s an implied romantic interest for Hugo, pulls a major TSTL that nearly gets her killed. His sister Georgia is precocious and unconvincing as a teenager. Superintendent MacLeod who investigated both Lord Selchester’s disappearance in 1947 and his death in 1953 is the typical plod of cozy mysteries, eager to take the path of least resistance to close the case.

A MAN OF SOME REPUTE is at best average. (C)
 
THE PATRIARCH is the latest to date in Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police mystery series. It was issued in print and e-book formats on 11 August 2015. It features Benoit Courreges, aka Bruno, chief of police in St. Denis in the Dordogne region of France.

THE PATRIARCH refers to Colonel Jean-Marc (“Marco”) Desaix, World War II flying ace for France who fought on the Eastern Front with the Normandie-Nieman squadron that covered the Russian army’s advance into Germany in the closing days of the war; he received both the Cross of the Legion d’Honneur and the Hero of the Soviet Union decorations. He later served as an informal liaison between French presidents and the Kremlin. He is Bruno’s childhood hero, so Bruno is honored to escort the Red Countess to the Patriarch’s ninetieth birthday celebration. But when Marco’s alcoholic friend Colonel Gilbert Clamartin is found dead the next day after suffocating in his own vomit, Bruno’s suspicions are aroused at the speed and efficiency with which his death is ruled an accident, the body is cremated without an autopsy, and his effects are cleared out of the house he’d occupied at the vineyards run by Marco’s son Victor. As Bruno talks to people, he discovers that Gilbert was not the poor man living on his military pension as everyone thought and that his will contains unusual provisions. Complicating Bruno’s life, a local Green extremist Imogene Ducailleu has allowed no hunting on her property until the deer population has stripped it bare and now present a traffic hazard as they move across a main road seeking food elsewhere. One causes a chain-reaction automobile accident that costs a woman her life, with public opinion so outraged that she’s in danger.

Like all the Bruno plots, THE PATRIARCH delves into French WWII history to set up the story. The account of the Normandie-Nieman squad is authentic; Walker includes a brief bibliography in his acknowledgements. The plot includes a number of viable suspects with a good range of motives. The killer’s identity is adequately foreshadowed, as is the trigger that prompts Gilbert’s murder after twenty years. The conclusion isn’t emotionally satisfying, but it’s realistic.

Walker presents everything through Bruno’s eyes, so he is a particularly appealing protagonist. Largely self-educated, a veteran of the French Army who’d served in Bosnia where he was wounded, Bruno’s adept at finding win-win compromises to settle St. Denis problems. “On the whole Bruno enjoyed his work and took pride in being a country policeman. ... But every so often he felt himself standing slightly to one side, observing events with a different eye. It was not that Bruno looked for the worst in people’s behavior and their motives, but he was aware that his profession had over the years kindled a subtle change in his thinking. When anything unusual occurred, his natural curiosity could swiftly evolve into suspicion. And once his doubts had been triggered, Bruno was not the kind of man to shrug and ignore them. Instead, something drove him to keep on asking questions and probing until he was satisfied. It was partly a sense of duty to the uniform he wore, but he knew that there was something deeper in his own character, a need to get to the root of the matter, to learn not just what had happened but how. Above all, he needed to know why, to understand the human dynamics behind the choices and decisions that had been made.” (102-3) Walker’s created not just a believable protagonist but a whole community of individuals. Because the people develop and change, it’s best to read the series in order.

Walker’s evocation of place is extraordinary, especially among writers of mystery fiction. He is adept at infusing setting with the history and culture of the region as well as with characterization. “Inside was a handwritten letter of invitation [for Bruno] to join the Confrerie du Pate de Perigueux, a body whose members were sworn to uphold the traditions and quality of this delicacy. Each winter the confrerie, dressed in medieval robes and bonnets of red and green, awarded prizes for the best duck and goose pates of the year after a morning of tastings that were followed by a lunch whose lavishness had become a local legend. The pate de Perigueux itself was a very special dish that dated back to medieval times, not easy to make but one of Bruno’s favorites. At its heart were foie gras and truffles, which had to be the unique black truffles of the region. These were then surrounded by a pate made of pork, and sometimes with a crust made of pastry. That had been the traditional way to store it in the centuries before the invention of canning. Like many of his friends, Bruno made a point each year of going to the old town square in Perigueux where the name of that year’s winner, usually a local farmer or a charcutier, was announced. He would buy an example of the winner’s product to be eaten at a lunch on New Year’s Day.” (89)

THE PATRIARCH outdoes the series with several major descriptions of the preparation and/or consumption of meals: a luncheon with the new police commissioner for the departement (131); a snack with Marco’s Russian son (147-8); a dinner at Pamela’s (198-9); a working luncheon with the brigadier and local gendarmes (235-40); the autumn feast put on by the local hunt club (251-3); and a quick informal supper. (296-8) It’s impossible to read the Bruno books without getting hungry.

Once again, Walker’s hit a home run with THE PATRIARCH. (solid A)
 
BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD is the latest entry to date in Bill Crider’s Dan Rhodes series. It was published in print and e-book formats in 2015. Set in Clearview, Blacklin County, Texas, Crider uses Rhodes as the focus of his limited third person point of view.

When Rhodes gets a late night call to the Moore house in Clearview, he knows that the house, empty for forty years after the heart-attack death of its owner Ralph Moore, is thought to be haunted. What he finds is the body of Neil Foshee, out of jail on bond with his cousins Earl and Louie Foshee on charges of cooking methamphetamine. He’s been shot twice in the chest. Someone’s been using the Moore house, probably to do drug deals in private, but there’s no physical evidence to help identify who. Rhodes begins with who knew Foshee and wanted/needed him dead. His job is complicated by the Mayor’s nephew Wade Clement who’s asked questions all over town about the drug problem in Clearview; is he really researching for a paper for class, or is he trying to score? Or has Vicki Patton, the girl friend Foshee’d humiliated, taken her revenge? Before he gets far on the Foshee murder case, Rhodes finds an old skeleton of a woman in the attic closet of Moore house. There’s no identification, and no one was reported missing some forty years ago. Who was she and what happened to her?

While the current and the past deaths in the Moore house are the focus of the plot, Rhodes and his deputies face a host of other duties: dogs loose and wandering or stolen; a Brangus bull loose and on his way to Walmart; non-use of automobile signal lights; pursuit of witnesses; the theft of Mrs. Hovey’s lottery ticket; thefts of copper; a suspicious truck casing a neighborhood; a domestic call caused by FaceBook; and the escaped goats Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. Humor is a major component. The killer’s identity comes as a surprise, but one that is foreshadowed.

The whole Sheriff Department gang is present. Hack and Lawton continue their running battle; Jennifer Loam haunts crime scenes with her camera for videos for her news website A Clear View of Clearview; Seepy Benson sets up as a paranormal investigator, his first case being the Moore house; Ivy is still feeding Rhodes a healthy diet, including lasagna rollups made with tofu; County Commissioner Mikey Burns wants drones to surveil the county for meth labs and feral hogs, with at least one armed drone to bomb the hogs. It’s good to visit them again.

Crider’s Blacklin County seems a real place because he infuses the setting with history: “The Blacklin County hospital had grown considerably in the last few years with the addition of two new buildings. Rhodes wasn’t sure about the reason for the growth, but he had some theories. One was that the population of the county was aging and needed more medical care. Young people didn’t stay around the rural counties in Texas anymore after they graduated from high school. They went to college, or if they didn’t go to college, they went to the cities, which was where the jobs were. Long ago, there had been jobs in Blackln County, too, but many of those jobs no longer existed. Even longer ago than that, there had been cotton farms all over the country, and every little town had a cotton gin. A lot of families had made their living by farming. Not anymore. Farming was too uncertain; and it no longer paid. Rhodes hadn’t seen a cotton crop since he was a boy. The gins were gone, with nothing left of them but a few stray bricks.” (167-8)

BETWEEN THE LIVING AD THE DEAD is a satisfying read. (B)
 
TEN SECOND STAIRCASE is the fourth book in Christopher Fowler’s Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery series. It was published in print and e-book formats in 2006. “The Peculiar Crimes Unit was formed... soon after the outbreak of World War II, as part of a government initiative to ease the burden on London’s overstretched Metropolitan Police Force, by tackling high profile cases which had the capacity to compound social problems in urban areas. The crimes falling within its remit were often of a politically sensitive nature, or could potentially cause social panic and general public malaise.” (2) “The unit’s brief is admittedly unusual, their cases rarely provide the opportunity to follow direct leads and name suspects, but their methodology is regarded as altogether too vague, intellectual, socialist, and downright arty by those who work on the ‘coal face’ of crime, an image the detectives have sought to foster rather than disabuse.” (4)

Headed by the oldest serving police officers in the country, Arthur Bryant and John May, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is now under the purview of the Home Office, which is planning to shut it down. When artist Saralla White dies in the toxic chemicals of her art installation Eternal Destiny, reportedly thrown there by a large man dressed as a highwayman riding a black stallion, her murder is clearly a job for the Peculiar Crimes Unit; the gallery has only one entrance, visitors are all accounted for, and surely a horse would have been noticed. Then Danny Martell, declining TV star who’s blown his last chance with his fans, is electrocuted in a gym where he’s the only occupant, and the only electrical equipment is the lighting. A witness across the street saw a man dressed as a highway man. The murders seem linked by the public outrage at the very public scandalous lifestyles of the victims. But why set up an impossible crime and then be so careless as to be seen on both occasions? These are quickly followed by two more murders, both victims also minor celebrities noted for their very public sins, with witnesses seeing the highwayman in the area of each crime. Meanwhile, Bryant and May are pressured to resolve the cold case of the Leicester Square Vampire, dating back to the 1970s, as a necessary part of preventing the closure of the PCU. Oddly enough, the costume worn by the Vampire was curiously close to that attributed to the highwayman. Can the cases separated by so long a time possibly be connected?

I don’t go into a Peculiar Crimes Unit novel expecting a straightforward plot. They are always outre, over the top, and TEN SECOND STAIRCASE is no exception. In the highwayman story line, Fowler skillfully keeps attention focused away from the eventual identification, producing a genuine surprise ending. In the campaign to keep the PCU functioning, Bryant solves the cold case, revealing in the process much of John May’s backstory with his daughter Elizabeth, killed in a PCU operation gone bad, and his granddaughter April, who’s begun work at the PCU as part of overcoming her agoraphobia. There’s much discussion of the modern culture of celebrity, the excesses of the media in that culture, and its impact on teenagers at whom much of it is aimed.

May is the more “normal” of the detective pair, but I love Arthur Bryant. Raymond Land, Acting Head (reluctantly) of the PCU 1973-present, describes him: “...Mr. Bryant is quite impossible to deal with. In the past eighteen months he has destroyed or lost 17 mobile phones and several laptop computers. How he managed to reprogram the unit’s main police transmitter frequency so that it could receive only selections from The Pirates of Penzance is a mystery we have yet to solve. Speaking frankly, he is offensive, awkward, argumentative, and unhygienic. He flatly reuses to follow procedural guidelines, and constantly leaves the unit open to legal prosecution. He insists on employing the services of nonprofessionals, including disgraced experts, discredited psychics, registered felons, unstable extremists, tree-huggers, witches, children, itinerants, actors, practitioners of quasi-religions, and various ‘creative’ types.” (7) May’s granddaughter April will be interesting to get to know as she finds her place in the world and reestablishes her relationship with her grandfather.

One of the things I enjoy most about the Peculiar Crimes Unit novels is Fowler’s evocation of different London locations and their history. “The acres of Clerkenwell, and specifically the Gothic arch of St John’s Gate, was the dwelling place of London’s most venerable traditions and legends, the home of old religions and ancient mysteries. For half a millennium, the Knights Hospitallers had flourished in Clerkenwell. The charitable hospital of St John of Jerusalem had been filled with wounded Crusaders, and its priory church was inextricably bound with the Knights Templars. In 1187, when Saladin retook Jerusalem, he had allowed the Hospitallers to flourish. On the third of October, 1247, the Knights Templars presented King Henry III with a thick crystalline vase containing the blood of Christ. The authenticity of the relic had been attested to by the seals of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and by all the prelates of the Holy Land. The fateful secret of Christ’s blood supposedly lay lost in the ruins of Clerkenwell.” (169)

TEN SECOND STAIRCASE is a fun read. (A-)
 
THE CAT SITTER’S WHISKERS is the tenth and latest to date in Blaize Clement’s Dixie Hemingway mystery series as continued by John Clement, her son. It was published in print and e-book editions in 2015.

When Dixie goes to the Kellers’ home to care for their Maine Coon cat Barney Feldman, the only car she sees belongs to Herald-Tribune delivery man Levi Radcliff, with whom she’d gone to high school. While there, she’s hit on the head and left unconscious, though nothing seems to be taken and police disbelieve her story of what happened. When Dixie later goes to Levi’s trailer to ask if he’d seen anyone else in the area that morning, she finds him stabbed to death. Levi’s rich embezzler father had committed suicide some three weeks before, leaving Levi as his sole heir; his two stepsons from his second marriage are contingent legatees. Could they have killed Levi for the inheritance? Then Linda Keller calls from Rome and asks Dixie to deliver to Wilfred Paxton an artifact he’d sold her by mistake. However, it’s missing. Is there a tie between Levi’s death and the artifact?

I was disappointed in THE CAT SITTER’S WHISKERS. The plot is disjointed, not feeling an integrated whole. Involving Levi Radcliff is a needlessly indirect method of finding the Kellers’ address. Clement does manage a well-set up surprise ending to the murder.

Dixie continues to spend as much time as ever with her anguish over the loss of her husband and daughter even though it’s been five years and she’s in a loving relationship with Ethan Crane. Ethan makes a joking remark about “our children” that reopens the question of her barriers to being vulnerable to such pain again. She tries to avoid getting involved in Levi’s death: “...at that moment, I made a decision. I’d probably never know for certain what had happened to me at the Kellers’ house, and furthermore, it probably didn’t matter. I couldn’t very well go back in time and change it, so the only thing I could do was forget about the whole thing. But I couldn’t forget about Levi.” (106-7)

Siesta Key ambiance is less developed in THE CAT SITTER’S WHISKERS than in most of the other books in the series. There are few lyrical passages describing the island and only one extending discussion of food. “There was a long white platter heaped with Paco’s white bean and radish salad, topped with paper-thin slices of red onion, chunks of fresh mango, capers, and chopped parsley.... There was mound of pencil-thin asparagus stalks, all lined up with their tips pointed at me and glistening with melted butter, resting on a bed of baby greens sprinkled with toasted pine nuts. Next to that was a heap of crispy sweet potato fries, sprinkled with ground pepper and freshly grated parmesan cheese.” (237-8)

Don’t get me wrong, THE CAT SITTER’S WHISKERS is above average as cozy mysteries go. It is not up to the quality of the rest of the series.
(B-)
 
A WICKED SLICE is the first in the Charlotte and Aaron Elkins mystery series featuring Lee Ofsted, a first year pro on the Women’s Professional Golf Tour. It was published in e-book format in 2010.

Lee Ofsted is slicing every 3-iron shot she’s attempted on the first day of the Pacific-Western Women’s Pro-Am Tournament being held at the four golf courses on the Monterey Peninsula. She goes way over par, so spends the afternoon on the practice tee at the Carmel Point Golf Club, then goes to fish her practice balls out of the lake. She finds the body of veteran star golfer Kate O’Brian who’d inexplicably not shown up for her starting time and been disqualified from the tournament. Lee had seen her the previous afternoon about 5 PM at the practice tee. It appears that Kate had been killed shortly thereafter, then her body dragged and dumped in the lake. She’d been killed by a blow to the head that caused a massive skull fracture, perhaps made by a golf club. But who needed Kate dead?

I’m giving up on A WICKED SLICE at 21%. Lee Ofsted is an interesting enough character, struggling against the odds as a “rabbit” on the tour, scrounging for the scraps of prize money left over from the big purses paid to the stars. She’s down to her last two weeks of expense money, so it’s essential that she do well in the tournament.

Both Charlotte and Aaron Elkins are good writers, so the plot is set up with an adequate number of suspects, believable motives, and a variety of personalities in the cast of characters. They have an attractive lead detective on the case, Lt. Graham Sheldon of the Carmel Police Department, a veteran of seven years with the Oakland PD who seems set up as a potential romantic interest for Lee.

There is little sense of place, despite the setting in one of the most beautiful areas of the United States, but what I can’t hack is all the information on golf, a sport in which I am profoundly disinterested. I agree with Mark Twain, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” No grade because not finished.
 
THE LILY-WHITE BOYS is one of Anthea Fraser’s DI David Webb mystery series. It was originally published in 1991 and reissued in e-book format in 2014. The series is set in Shillingham, Broadshire, England, and the surrounding villages of the county.

Gary and Rob White, often referred to as the Lily-White boys for their devotion to the Shillingham football club, are identical twins; they work together as window cleaners and burglars. After seeing a mysterious plane land in a farmer’s field and offload packages late one night, they turn up dead in the back of their old van which ran out of gas outside the home of Monica Tovey. Monica, head of Randall Tovey’s, an exclusive dress shop in Shillingham, saw the man who left the van, and he saw her. She’s a Magistrate, and the twins had come before her in court; she receives anonymous phone calls. Complicated emotional ties connect Monica, her sister and brother-in-law Eloise and Justin Teal, their sons Jeremy and Theo Teal, and Claudia and Harry Marlow. Several are members of the Arts Appreciation Society, and their businesses used the twins’ services. Did the twins see something they shouldn’t when cleaning windows and try to blackmail one of them?

Fraser does a good job of concealing the identity of the mastermind behind the plot that leads to the death of the White twins, though hints suggest that the person is more than appearances indicate. Several characters have secrets to conceal. What bothered me about the plot was the frequency with which Fraser shifted focus from character to character with no transition or particular logic apparent in the change, a problem common with omniscient third person point of view. It kept the plot jerky and hard to invest in.

Characters are reasonably developed though none are outstandingly well-drawn, even DI David Webb. I would prefer fewer, more realistic individuals. Most of the characterization is associated with the few atmospheric passages. “St Stephen’s, North Park, was a large and handsome building, built at the end of the eighteenth century to minister to the needs of the wealthy families who were moving into the new houses round about. No doubt its originator had expected it to be generously supported in perpetuity. Nowadays, however, its normal congregation numbered about fifty, and to Monica’s shame, she was not among them. She was a twice-a-year Christian, she admitted wryly, attending Christmas and Easter, and for the rest of the year expecting the church’s amenities to be available as and when she needed them--for baptisms, marriages and funerals.” Sense of place is lacking.

THE LILY-WHITE BOYS is at best average. (C)
 
THIS HOUSE OF GRIEF: THE STORY OF A MURDER TRIAL is the account of Helen Garner’s attendance and personal reaction to the murder trials of Robert Farquharson. It was published in e-format in 2014.

Robert Farquharson was tried twice for the deaths of his three sons: Jai (born 1994), Tyler (born 1998), and Bailey (born 2002), They died on Father’s Day, 2005, drowned in a dam pool in southwestern Victoria, four or five kilometers from Winchelsea, past Geelong. His wife Cindy Gambino Farquharson had asked him to leave the family home the previous year; she had moved on to a relationship with Stephen Moules, but Rob maintained a good relationship with his three sons. Rob’s account of the accident was a violent coughing spell that caused him to lose consciousness (coughing syncope), the car veered off the road, through a fence, and into the pool. He attempted to get the boys out of the car, but could not. He insisted that the first passersby, Shane Atkinson and Terry McClelland, take him to Cindy’s home so that he could tell her what had happened. Police were not summoned until she and Steve Moules raced to the scene and Steve went into the water. Rob’s accounts of what had happened varied and failed to fit the observable physical traces at the scene.

The first trial opened 20 August 2007, two years after the boys’ deaths, in the Supreme Court of Victoria. Robert Farquharson was supported by his own family and by Cindy Gambino and her parents. Crown Prosecutor was Jeremy Rapke, QC, soon to become Director of Public Prosecutions, with Amanda Forrester as his junior; Peter Morrissey, SC, was defense counsel, with Con Mylonas as junior; Justice Philip Cummins presided. Each side depended on expert testimony to make the case, with the prosecution witnesses generally not damaged by Morrissey’s cross-examination. The jury found Robert Farquharson guilty on three counts of murder. On 16 November 2007, he was sentenced to three life sentences without possibility of parole.

On 1 April 2008 Morrissey filed an appeal, citing 51 errors, most of which were disallowed by the Court of Appeals. The Court did, however, find several errors that deprived Robert Farquharson of a fair trial, so the conviction was set aside and a new trial ordered. The retrial began in May 2010, the only changes in personnel Andrew Tinney, SC, as lead prosecutor and Justice Lex Lasry presiding.

The second trial was not a simple replay of the first. Testimony about Farquharson’s mental state before the boys’ deaths was ruled inadmissable, the jury was specifically told they should not use guesswork to fill in gaps in evidence, and Cindy Gambino, now married to Stephen Moules, changed her testimony. Despite defense pyrotechnics, the second jury found Farquharson guilty on three counts of murder; he was sentenced to three life sentences, to serve a minimum of 33 years. Another appeal in May 2012 failed. When petitioned to accept the case, the High Court in Canberra refused.

I give so much summary because the case occurred in Australia. Most of us Americans won’t be familiar with it, though it is similar to several cases that have occurred in the United States in the past dozen years. To those of us old enough to remember, Farquharson’s explanation of his actions when his car went into the dam sound remarkably similar to those of Senator Edward Kennedy following Chappaquiddick.

Helen Garner didn’t pretend to be objective in her presentation. From her learning of the case and deciding to cover it, she was appalled at the idea of a father deliberately killing his children and hoped against hope that Farquharson will be found innocent. But his condition at the scene didn’t jibe with his account. His skin was cold, he was wet and shivering; his pulse rate was high but blood pressure normal, lungs clear, breathalyzer showed 0 reading; he had no history of blackouts. His first question to Moules when he and Cindy arrived on the scene was, “Where are your smokes?”

Garner later sums up: “...within minutes of the crash he had accepted and resigned himself to the deaths of his children; ...he had left his children in the dam and departed the scene; ...he had refused offers of help or the use of a telephone; ...he took no interest in the rescue attempts and gave no help to the rescuers regarding the likely whereabouts of his car in he water; and...at Emergency, without making even cursory inquiries about the fate of his children, he pressed police for information about what would happen to him.” It’s hard to believe that Farquharson was wrongly convicted.

My major criticism is the lack of supplementary material--no photographs to bring the people to life, no maps of the scene, no graphics or diagrams of the physical evidence. Still, THIS HOUSE OF GRIEF: THE STORY OF A MURDER TRIAL is an outstanding true crime account. Recommended. (A-)
 
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