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Readingomnivore Reviews

Kate Clark Flora’s DEATH DEALER: HOW COPS AND CADAVER DOGS BROUGHT A KILLER TO JUSTICE is the true-crime account of the murder of Maria Tanasichuk, the investigation, and the eventual conviction (twice) of her husband David Tanasichuk in Miramishi, New Brunswick, Canada. It was published in e-book format in 2014.

David Tanasichuk had a reputation in the Mimamishi as a BAD man. He poached game more for the pleasure of killing than for meat; he had an extensive criminal record including violation of gun laws, physical violence, drug use, drug sales, growing marijuana, escaping prison. He idolized mass murderer Allan Legere who terrorized the Miramishi for months. Tanasichuk planned to kill the judge, the prosecutor, and police personnel who’d convicted him on an undercover drug deal, going so far as to hide a sawed-off shotgun to use for the killing. He was an avid outdoorsman, using both gun and bows for hunting, used to the woods and nocturnal activities there. But Maria Tanasichuk loved him, going to prison rather than breaking up their relationship. David had relapsed into drug use by late 2002, and she was ready to leave unless he cleaned up his act.

On Sunday afternoon, 26 January 2003, David reported Maria missing. She’d supposedly gone to Saint John on the 2 PM bus on 14 January. Maria’s friends and relatives had begun questioning her absence. Over the next few days, David’s story changed in many details, including the day on which she’d left. No one in Saint John had seen her. The last time Maria had been seen in Miramichi was the evening of 15 January when she’d had coffee with friend Darlene Gertley; they’d planned a shopping trip for 17 January, but Darlene never saw or heard from Maria again.

When a woman disappears, her spouse or significant other is the first person of interest. Even though there was no body, Miramishi police took Maria’s vanishing seriously. Constable Brian Cummings, Detective Sergeant Paul Fiander, Dewey Gillespie, and Greg Scott all knew Maria and knew David’s capacity for violence. He enjoyed taunting them and threatening their families. David’s actions in dealing with the police, his pawning pieces of Maria’s prized gold jewelry on 16-17 January, his selling her ATV and riding helmet on 24 January BEFORE he reported her missing and giving a title with her name forged, his relationship with a new woman to whom he gave Maria’s distinctive diamond pendant, all convinced the policemen that David had killed his wife and hidden her body in the frozen woods near Miramishi. But where?

Resources in Canada for SAR and cadaver dogs was severely limited. Internet searches led Fiander to the Maine Warden Service and a volunteer organization MESARD (Maine Search and Rescue Dogs) where Lt. Pa Dorian and Sgt. Roger Guay were well-experienced in organizing searches and recovering lost individuals, dead and alive. Under a mutual assistance agreement between New Brunswick and Maine, a search was planned for spring when snow would be melted off and Maria’s body giving off scent for the cadaver dogs. In the meantime, investigation of David Tanaischuk turned up stories that he’d killed a man he’d suspected of sleeping with Maria, one Abby Brown, and caused the disappearance/murder of Maria’s brother Robert Breau. The first MESARD search in mid-May turned up nothing, but on the second day of the second search at the end of June, handler Deb Palman and her German shepherd Alex found Maria’s body.

Tanasichuk’s first trial began in January 2005; he was found guilty of first degree murder in Maria’s death and sentenced to life imprisonment. In fall 2007, he appealed and was awarded a new trial that began in March 2009. His appeal for a change of venue was denied. As before, Tanaischuk’s prior criminal record and his post-disappearance behavior were ruled inadmissible as too prejudicial to his case. The second verdict handed down 22 April 2009 also found him guilty of first degree murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 25 years. He appealed his conviction a second time but it was denied in late September.

General impression of DEATH DEALER is mixed. The story itself is an interesting example of international cooperation between law enforcement agencies. Certainly without the searches by the Maine volunteers and their cadaver dogs, Maria’s body wouldn’t have been found. DEATH DEALER presents training techniques and certification for dogs and handlers and the before-search planning and mapping necessary for success, in more detail than necessary. A timeline would help, as would map(s) of the area and a list of characters. Flora does a creditable job of making the personnel easy for the reader to keep straight. The photos used are small and virtually unrecognizable on Kindle. Still, a solid read. (B)
 
Sulari Gentill’s A FEW RIGHT THINKING MEN is the first in her Rowland Sinclair mystery series set in Sydney, Australia, in 1931. It was published in 2010 and 2011 in e-book format.

Rowland Sinclair is the younger surviving son of the fabulously wealthy Sinclair family of Oaklee near Yass, a painter who’s turned the family home in Sydney, Woodlands House, into an informal artists’ commune. He’s a painter. Through his friends, he’s familiar with the Communist Party in Australia, fighting as it is against the economic hardships of the Great Depression though his family’s fortune hasn’t been affected. His older brother Wilfred condemns both Rowly’s painting and his failure to support right-thinking men like the New Guard, Colonel Eric Campbell’s Fascist front organization that breaks up Communist meetings with violence. Rowly Sinclair is quite fond of his reprobate uncle Rowland Sinclair, for whom he was named. When the older man is found dead in his home, beaten in a home invasion, it falls to Rowly to identify the body.

I’m giving up at 15%. The writing is simplistic; the characters artistic and aristocratic stereotypes, and there’s little sense of place. It’s obvious that Rowly will track down his uncle’s killers. No grade because not finished.
 
Betty Webb’s THE PUFFIN OF DEATH is the fourth in her Gunn Zoo series featuring Theodora “Teddy” Esmerelda Bentley, zookeeper. Teddy’s now engaged to Sheriff Joe Reyes of San Sebastian County, California. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

Teddy’s sent to Iceland to learn to care for and to escort back to Gunn’s Landing an orphaned polar bear cub named Magnus, along with a pair of Icelandic foxes and a pair of puffins. They are all intended for the new Northern Climes exhibit. While visiting the puffin colony at Vik, she discovers the body of Simon Parr, American birder who had won the largest single lottery payment in history, $610,000,000+; he’s brought his fellow birders from Geronimo County, Arizona, on a once-in-a-lifetime trip looking for the vagrant bird species for which Iceland’s summer is famous. He’s accompanied by his wife, successful romantic-suspense novelist Elizabeth St. John, three men with reason to hate him, and at least three ex-mistresses. Who wanted him dead? Despite specific detailed orders otherwise from Inspector Thorvaald Haraldsson of the Reykjavik Violent Crime Squad, at the request of her zookeeper hostess Bryndis Sigurdsdottir whose boyfriend Ragnar Eriksson had smacked Simon around the night before his death for insulting a woman, Teddy investigates.

While I have enjoyed the previous books in the series, I am disappointed in THE PUFFIN OF DEATH. Animals have been key characters in the plots of previous books, but here they are only the device to get Teddy into a new setting. Most of the humor of earlier stories is missing. None of the characters are much developed, though the Icelandic ones are interesting. The motive for Simon’s murder and the identity of his killer are telegraphed. The entire novel seems rushed, needing another revision and proof-reading. Elizabeth St. John is referred to also as Elizabeth St. James.

Easily the strongest element in THE PUFFIN OF DEATH is the setting in Iceland, though it seems a bit much to stage a volcanic eruption in which to place Teddy’s confrontation with the killer. “...the scenery along this part of Iceland’s Ring Road, which looped around the entire country,was gorgeous. As the sun rose, I saw glacier-topped mountains to our left, and lush, emerald-green pastures to our right. Herds of shaggy Icelandic horses grazed peacefully in those pastures, careful to make wide berths around the steaming hot springs the country was famous for. Every now and then a shooting geyser erupted from one of the hot springs, splattering the area around it with scalding water. It didn’t faze the horses, which were known for their steady temperament.” (21)

THE PUFFIN OF DEATH is okay but not up to the quality of the earlier series. (C+)
 
FLORENCE is the third book in P. F. Ford’s mystery series centering on Detective Sergeants Dave Slater and Norman Norman* in Tinton, Hampshire. It was published in e-book format in 2014.

Things have been quiet on the Tinton crime front when Dylan Winter’s milkman asks for a wellness-check on his client; his milk hasn’t been taken in, he’s apparently not at home, and his little dog is missing. Norman and DC Jane Jolly find Winter dead apparently from natural causes. It’s only when Jane, concerned for the still-missing dog, returns to the house some days later to find it completely ransacked, that suspicions begin. Winter had left his entire estate to his sister Julia, who’d disappeared in the 1950s when they were placed in the Hatton House orphanage. The detectives’ attempts to find her lead to Winter’s accusations of a child sexual abuse ring operated out of Hatton House, involving children who were never registered (the “Special Ones”) and prominent townsmen. Reevaluation of Winter’s death produces murder, as does the death of Florence, an elderly woman who wanders Tinton at night looking for “Dougal.” Who’s killing to cover up a long-ago scandal?

Plot is police procedural, and Ford plays fair by disclosing evidence as it’s uncovered. He’s good at keeping attention focused away from the killer. Personnel and budget restrictions on investigations are a major fact of life in FLORENCE. Glimpses of Slater’s private life with girlfriend Cindy and his upcoming chances for promotion help to open out the story.

Character development and sense of place are not as strong in FLORENCE as in the first two books of the series. New details about the protagonists are needed to keep them fresh for the readers; the new characters are standard with few distinguishing characteristics. Physical locations establish Tinton, but there’s little atmosphere.

FLORENCE is a good read but not up to earlier standards. (B-)

*not a typo
 
BETWEEN A CLUTCH AND A HARD PLACE is Gayle Trent’s cozy mystery featuring Myrtle Crumb of Southwestern Virginia. It was published in e-book format in 2004.

Myrtle buys a sleek clutch purse at Marcia’s consignment shop and finds inside the zip pocket, a note signed “Flora Adams,” saying if anything happens to her, Jim is responsible. Her curiosity aroused, Myrtle has granddaughter Sunny check out Flora Adams on the Internet. Flora disappeared a month before, and police have found no trace of her. Myrtle meets Jim Adams at the dance sponsored by the MELONS (Mature Elegant Ladies Open to Nice Suggestions); he claims to be a widower of a year’s standing. Myrtle determines to cultivate him and prove he killed the missing Flora.

I’m giving up at 14%. Myrtle has only the note in the clutch as a basis for suspicion; she doesn’t consider taking it to the police; she apparently doesn’t notice the discrepancy in how long Flora has been gone. This lack of any believable reason for the protagonist to become involved in a police case ia a great weakness of many cozy mysteries.

Characters, including first-person narrator Myrtle Crumb, are not realistic or believable. Most are stereotypes familiar to the cozy genre, including the overbearing wealthy woman (Tansie Miller) who dominates the social life of the small town and her poorer, downtrodden sister (Melvia ____).

In a novel set in the southern mountains, there’s little sense of place. Neither town nor county is named. No physical locations are mentioned or described. Myrtle uses a couple of Southern expressions, but the storytelling voice and speech patterns are missing.

BETWEEN A CLUTCH AND A HARD PLACE isn’t worth it. No grade because not finished.
 
THE NURSING HOME MURDER is an early entry in the Inspector Roderick Alleyn series by Ngaio Marsh. Originally published in 1935, it has been reissued in an inexpensive e-book bundle.

Sir Derek O’Callaghan is hated by the Communist anarchists in London, and the Bill he’s proposing as Home Secretary brings warnings that his life is in danger. He’s suffering from appendicitis, which he’s ignoring until the Bill passes. In the meantime, a brief affair with nurse Jane Harden and the reaction of surgeon Sir John Phillips, who wants to marry Jane, provide more personal motives; both threaten to kill him. When O’Callaghan collapses in the House of Commons and is taken to the hospital, Lady O’Callaghan insists that Sir John perform the surgery. Sir Derek’s death from hyoscine poisoning provides a wealth of suspects: Sir John; Jane Harden; avowed Communist operating room Nurse Banks,; O’Callaghan’s sister Ruth, who dosed him with patent medicine provided by Communist chemist Harold Sage; anesthesiologist Dr. Theodore Roberts; and assistant surgeon Thoms. All had opportunity, but who did it?

THE NURSING HOME MURDER is dated by its Communist anarchists background. Marsh does a good job of keeping attention directed away from the killer and the motive, so that the revelation is somewhat surprising. It is properly set up with foreshadowing.

Characters are sketched only. None seem particularly realistic human beings, but they fit well with standards of the time of writing and within the specific plot. Early Alleyn is too much influenced by Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion; it is only later in the series that he loses his facetiousness. The relationship between Alleyn and his legman ‘Brer’ Fox is one of the more interesting in detective literature.

The setting is obviously London and its environs, brought to life by occasional atmospheric description: “They were...down by the river. The air felt chilly and dank, but exciting. The river, busy with its night traffic, had an air of being apart and profoundly absorbed. There were the wet black shadows, broken lights, and the dark, hurried flow of the Thames towards the sea. London’s water world was bout its nightly business. The roar of the streets became unimportant and remote down here, within sound of shipping sirens and the cold lap of deep water against stone. Alleyn hurried them along the Embankment for a short way and then turned off somewhere near Blackfriars Underground Station. They went up a little dark street that resembled a perspective in a woodcut. A single street lamp, haloed in mist, gave accent to shadows as black as printer’s ink.”

THE NURSING HOME MURDER is a good example of the circa-1935 Golden Age mystery. (B)
 
DEATH AT THE CROSSROADS is the third book in Olive Etchells’s mystery series set in Cornwall and featuring Detective Chief Inspector Bill Channon. It was published in 2009.

Helen Pascoe and her three children have recently moved to Trenoon House, near the Carrick Roads and the village of Pengorra, following the breakup of her marriage to architect Steve Pascoe. All are profoundly affected when the body of young millionaire Paul Stradling is found with throat cut, propped against the Menna, a nearby prehistoric standing stone. Steve Pascoe had been in the area the previous day, with Paul and his father having taken advantage of his firm’s financial distress; Helen hadn’t approved of what she knew of Paul; neither of her parents know that Lucy Pascoe, the older daughter, is his lover and they’d planned to marry despite his formidable reputation as a womanizer. Sixteen-year-old son Jasper “Jaz” had quarreled with him about Paul’s cheating at snooker. Paul had caused parttime gardener Martin Goodchild, who loves Lucy himself, to be fired from another job at Amos Heaney’s boatyard; he’d vandalized the Stradlings’ boat as revenge. And what about the families of the girls whom he’d seduced, photographed, and dumped?

Characters are a definite strength in DEVIL AT THE CROSSROADS. DCI Channon has a formidable reputation as a detective, he’s well respected, and he is courteous and sympathetic with victims and suspects alike. He’s stark contrast with his legman DS Bowles, who’s abrasive, abrupt, egotistical, and who glories in his reputation as a “hard man.” Bowles is a dynamic character, taking a chewing out for ignoring instructions to heart: “In his time in the force, it had been almost unknown for anyone to appeal to him for support, and now he asked himself if he was losing his edge, because though he didn’t particularly like oddball Marty [Goodchild], he had liked being turned to for help. Watch it, Bowles, he warned himself, you’ll be getting a soft centre to your tough old shell. The thing that was niggling him--though it might be stretching it a bit--was that if he could do something so very unlike himself with his meals, could he do the same with the way he tackled his job? Nothing drastic, of course, but suppose he tried to keep the lid on when he felt the urge to be stroppy, and just see how it went.” (185). Channon and Bowles are surrounded by a believable team of detectives, uniforms, and SOCOs; locals are also individual. Etchells uses shifts in point of view skillfully to illuminate character.

The plot in DEVIL AT THE CROSSROADS keeps attention focused away from the killer and the motive. There’s little direct foreshadowing, so they come as a surprise, albeit the denouement is logical and set up. Sense of place is strong.

I will be reading the other books in the series. (A-)
 
BELLA TUSCANY: THE SWEET LIFE IN ITALY is the second book in Frances Mayes’s series about her life at Bramasole, near Cortona, in Tuscany. Originally published in 2000, it was issued in e-book format in 2003; the Kindle edition is available inexpensively.

BELLA TUSCANY is not as strong as UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, in part because it’s more episodic, with essays on memory, death, various road trips in Italy, childhood in Georgia, among others. Mayes’s tone occasionally becomes an unbecoming whine, as when she complains about an unending parade of house guests.

That being said, Mayes excels at creating not only the sense of physical place but also the historical ambiance: “Bagno Vignoni, the tiny hilltop town near San Quirico d’Orsia, and within sight of Rocca d’Orsia, is built around a large thermal pool where the Medicis used to soak themselves. Where the central piazza is located in most towns, the pool (no longer used) reflects tumbling plumbago, tawny stone houses and stone arcades. Not much is going on in Bagno Vignoni. Right behind the village, a hot stream runs downhill, through a travertine ditch. On either sificode you can sit down and soak your feet, just as Lorenzo il Magnifico did in 1490.”

Mayes’s use of food as an element in creating a sense of locale is second to none. “Food is robust and traditional in the whole Trasimino area, nothing vaguely trendy, though pasta sauces made with rabbit or wild boar still seem exotic to us. During cool weather, riballita, a soup so thick your spoon can stand up in the bowl, is my favorite. Most of the special dishes are fish of the lake--carp, shad, perch, frittura (a fried mix of tiny lake fish that look like the minnows that swarmed around my legs in the lake), and tagamaccio, the local fish soup that varies with the catch. Yellow eels are plentiful here and are often prepared in a sauce for pasta (spaghetti al ragu d’anguilla). A highly regarded fish, lasca (the European equivalent bears the unappetizing name of roach), has disappeared from the lake.”

BELLA TUSCANY is a pleasant if somewhat disjointed read. (B+)
 
I finished the first book in my 2015 Christmas-reading season.

THE FOX IN THE FOREST is one of J. M. Gregson’s Lambert and Hook mystery series. It’s set in and around the village of Woodford in Gloucestershire, opening on 21 December and running through Christmas into mid-January. Originally published in 1992, it was reissued in e-book format in 2014.

Reverend Peter Barton is loved and respected by the entire population of Woodford, so when his body is found in the forest between Woodford and Ashbright, police have little to go on. He had no known enemies; his marriage was strained, but wife Clare has ended her affair and rededicated herself to her marriage. Forensics is little help, since Barton had been shot in the check with a 12-bore shotgun, which was not found. A man living in the woods is the best suspect, but his motive? Then the man, discovered to be ex-cop Ian Sharpe, who’d been sacked from the police for brutality toward prisoners and use of unorthodox methods to obtain convictions, is also killed with a shotgun blast. Few have alibis for the second murder, but only one had opportunity to kill both men. But why? Is the killer a lunatic serial killer, dubbed by the media as the Fox in the Forest? Were the men even killed by the same person?

The great pleasure of this series is the relationship between Superintendent John Lambert, newly-promoted Detective Inspector Chris Rushton, and Detective Sergeant Bert Hooks, Lambert’s long-time legman. Very different sorts of men, they form an effective team. I especially like Hooks, who decided to pass up further promotion the better to enjoy his family (he’d been raised in an orphanage) and to pursue his Open University degree in English literature. The men are enough friends that Lambert jokes about it: “I’m going to put in an official complaint to that Open University, if it encourages detective-sergeants toward lateral thinking. I’m not sure that official police policy allows sergeants to think at all.” Woodford residents are a varied lot of distinctive individuals.

Gregson keeps readers’ attention focused firmly in the wrong direction, with the solution hard to intuit because there seems to be absolutely no connection between the dead men. Barton as the good man without enemies who’s wronged no one but who’s murdered anyway is an interesting change on the traditional victim who usually is a thoroughly obnoxious person who deserves killing. The identity of the killer is enough foreshadowed that an experienced reader may pick up on it and the motive early.

Sense of place and atmosphere are strong. “In winter, the forest is a very different place [from summer]. There are no leaf sounds overhead now, and only occasional scratching in the dead, dry leaves beneath the naked trees. The few animals and birds that are still here make few movements over the cold, dark earth beneath the trees. Even the red kite, circling above the leafless twigs of the highest oak, can detect little prey in the winter world beneath him. On the shortest day of the year, little light penetrates to the floor of the woods from a sky sullen with cloud. Only at the few points where wide tracks meet is much of that sunless gray canopy visible. Elsewhere in the forest, this seems hardly a day at all, but rather a mere interval between long nights. Despite the cloud, there is a light north-east wind, driving down the temperature, insuring that yesterday’s drizzle becomes a thin film of ice over the stony tracks. The still, tall firs, which in summer are scarcely noticeable, seem now to dominate this part of the forest, dark and unchanging. It is a place for trolls, or those darker spirits of northern myths.”

THE FOX IN THE FOREST is a good addition to the Lambert and Hook series. (A-)
 
Second book in my Christmas-setting books for 2015.

SEPARATED AT DEATH is the first book in J. J. Salkeld’s Lakeland Murders mystery series. It’s set in the Cumbria Constabulary CID offices in Kendal. featuring Detective Inspector Andy Hall, his legman Detective Sergeant Ian Mann, and newly arrived Detective Constable Jane Francis. The action occurs from Wednesday, 8 December, through Sunday, 20 December. SEPARATED AT DEATH was published as a second edition e-book in 2014.

Two very different crimes open the story. Ian Mann is interviewing local bad boy Ryan Wilson, who’d been picked up in a traffic stop while transporting some £100,000 in drugs down the M6 to Kendal from Carlisle. Only someone tipped off the police about his drug run, and forensics discovers most of the drugs were trash, not even illegal, with only enough genuine to charge Ryan with simple possession. Who went to considerable expense and trouble to set Ryan up, and why? The second crime is the strangulation death in the Serpentine Woods in Kendal of seventeen-year-old Amy Hamilton, daughter of a wealthy local family. She had no known enemies, and there’s no hint of a motive. Only persistent police digging turns up the information that Amy and Ryan Wilson had been lovers. Can the murder possibly be tied to Ryan’s set-up?

Characters are a definite strength. Salkeld creates a believable team of police officers, individuals with suggestions of back stories. Hall’s under stress not only from the job and slow progress on the murder case but also from the break-up of his marriage. “...Even after so many years in Kendal he still felt like a bit of an outsider, and although he was pretty sure that his colleagues rated his abilities reasonably highly Ian Mann was the only one that he saw even half-way regularly outside work. Maybe he wasn’t a ‘copper’s copper’ anyway, and in fact he wasn’t a joiner of things generally. Certainly not the Masons, not even the Round Table when he’d been younger. Hall liked his walking and cycling friends from outside the force, his music, films and his books. But best of all he just liked being with his family. They had been the epicentre of his world since the moment that Alice was born, and if anything that feeling had become even stronger as he’d got older.” Hall and Mann have worked together for some years, so the addition of newcomer Jane Francis makes for interesting dynamics. Salkeld shifts point of view between the police officers and Ryan Wilson, effectively illuminating personalities. Details of personal life add to the verisimilitude.

The plot plays fair with appropriate foreshadowing of the killer and motive, enough that an experienced reader may pick up on both before the detectives. It reveals the reality of modern-day policing in the lack of manpower and of funding, with day-to-day administration handled by accountants and politicians.

The area around Kendal is physically established, but there’s little to create the sense of being in the Lake District. Still, SEPARATED AT DEATH is an excellent beginning for what goes on to become a strong series. (A-)
 
Third book down in Christmas reading program.

THE NINE BRIGHT SHINERS is one of Anthea Fraser’s Detective Chief Inspector David Webb mystery series, set in the English county of Broadshire. It opens the week before Christmas and concludes in January. Originally published in 1987, it was reissued in e-book format in 2014.

Jan Coverdale and her children Ben and Julie fly to England from Australia following the breakup of Jan’s marriage. They are to spend eight weeks at Rylands, Jan’s family home now owned by older half-brother Edward Langley and his wife Rowena, who will be traveling in Peru for most of the time. Edward and Jan are the children of William Langley who, along with Laurence Cody and Reginald Peel, discovered the lost Inca city of Cajabamba in 1950. On a third expedition in 1955 in search of descendants of Manco Inca, Langley returns home critically ill; the explorers come to a mutual coolness, and Langley and Cody never return to Peru. Peel carries on with his daughter Rowena and son-in-law Edward; Jan marries early and goes out to Australia; Laurence’s son Miles Cody is completely uninterested and becomes a successful artist. Meanwhile, the body of a man turns up on a lay-by near Chedbury, his body hidden for some time under a tree fallen in gales on 18 December. He looks like Edward Langley and has Langley’s wallet and identification which had been stolen 1 November from the squash club. Who is the dead man, and what’s his connection with Langley and the explorers?

There’s a fine line between misdirection and just plain not giving the information necessary for the reader to solve the mystery. Fraser crosses that line. Deus ex machina sets up the most of the links essential to solving the murder. Especially early in the story, the sequence of events regarding the Peruvian explorations is not clearly laid out. Another thorough revision is needed.

Characters are not particularly strong. There are no new insights into established characters Webb and his DS Ken Jackson. Those involved in the current murder are sketched only. It’s hard to believe Jan Coverdale at her age would be so naive. Point of view shifts between Webb and Jan without illuminating either much.

Sense of place is the strongest element in THE NINE BRIGHT SHINERS. “To [Jan’s] delight, [the children] were enchanted with [Broadminster], especially Monks’ Walk. This lay in the heart of Old Broadminster, just across the Green from the Minster, and its roofs and chimneys clustered skywards in a glorious lack of uniformity, some crenellated, some flat, some gabled with dormer windows. Many of the old houses were whitewashed, their ancient beams picked out in black paint; others were rosy in weathered brick or stone. On the ground floors, most now housed antique shops, boutiques, and coffee houses, and their brightly lit windows were full of Christmas gifts. With fairy lights strung between the lamp posts, the composite effect was like a scene out of fairyland. An enterprising trader was selling hot chestnuts on the corner of Queen’s Road, and the children insisted on buying some, burning their fingers as they attempted to shell and eat the hot nuts.” Unfortunately such descriptions are few and short.

THE NINE BRIGHT SHINERS simply isn’t up to the weight of most of the series. (C)
 
EVEN CAT SITTERS GET THE BLUES is the third in Blaize Clement’s long -running Dixie Hemingway mystery series set on Siesta Key in the Gulf of Mexico off Sarasota, Florida. Its action covers twelve days before through Christmas Eve. It was published in 2008.

When Dixie gets a call to tend an iguana named Ziggy, she becomes involved in the murder of Ramon Gutierrez, a guard at the home of Ken Kurtz, a gravely ill man with blue skin and nerves twitching so much that skin moves visibly over his body. He has an inguana named Ziggy, but he’d not called Dixie. So who did call her? Who’s the mysterious woman with a miniature bulldog also named Ziggy whom she met outside the house? Does Lt. Guidry, head of homicide for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department, really think Dixie’s a suspect in the murder?

EVEN CAT SITTERS GET THE BLUES is at least as much about Dixie’s re-emergence into life after the death of her husband and daughter some four years before as it is about the mystery. Dixie discovers that she has serious hots for both Lt. Guidry and for local attorney Ethan Crane, so she’s plagued with doubts. “[The cats] both gave me a couple of tail swishes to let me know they approved of my performance and then pretended to ignore me when I left. I love that about cats. They may be secretly gloating that they’ve made a human wait on them like they’re royalty, but they never lose their cool and actually show what they’re feeling. I wish I were more like a cat.” (17) I enjoy Dixie’s self-deprecating sense of humor. “...Cora’s chocolate bread is Webster’s second definition of decadent. She makes it with an old bread machine her granddaughter gave her, and she won’t say what her secret is, but the result is dark and moist, with spots of yummy melted chocolate. Since I love chocolate second only to crisp fried bacon, the devil could leave a trail of it and I’d probably eat my way straight to hell.” (69)
One of the pleasures of this series is the relationship between Dixie, her brother Michael, and his lover Paco. Clement gives enough detail that they seem real people whose lives continue between installments of the story.

The plot in EVEN CAT SITTERS GET THE BLUES is over the top, but Clement makes it easy to suspend disbelief. The science seems improbable, but it’s good fun. Dixie’s never telling Guidry everything she knows does get tiring.

Sense of place is strong, and Clement does a good job of showing Christmas on Siesta Key: “On the way to the Crescent Beach Market, I met several cars with big red velvet Christmas bows attached to their hoods.On every street, Christmas stuff had suddenly appeared all over the place. Wreaths on doors, red velvet ribbons tied to outside security lights, baskets of poinsettias at every doorway. It was as if people had looked at the calendar and panicked when they saw we were only eleven days away from Christmas. Either all the Jews and Buddhists and agnostics and atheists on the key had converted or there was a cosmic conspiracy to make me look Christmas square in the face. Even in the best of circumstances, Christmas on Siesta Key has a surreal quality. We know from TV shows what a real Christmas is like. That’s when families gather in the big house where they grew up, where their dying or divorced-but-friendly parents have festooned everything in sight with swags of fir, and where everybody ends up outside in the snow whooping like kids and rediscovering the true meaning of Christmas. We can never have that. On Siesta Key, our fir swags are fake, our snowmen are Styrofoam, and the closest we can come to a snowball fight is to kick sand on one another.” (54)

EVEN THE CAT SITTER GETS THE BLUES is a pleasant Christmas read. (B)
 
MYSTERY IN WHITE: A CHRISTMAS CRIME STORY by J. Jefferson Farjeon was originally published in 1937 and reissued in 2014 by The British Library. Its introduction by Martin Edwards praises both Farjeon’s importance as a writer during the Golden Age of mysteries between the wars and the high quality of MYSTERY IN WHITE.

While I am aware of the conventions of the crime story during the Golden Age, I do not see MYSTERY IN WHITE as one of the era’s great books. Characters are in no way realistic, to the point that anyone acting as they did would have wound up dead. All are sketched stereotypes only, and the most important figures--murderers and victims--never appear directly in the story. Everything is told, with “facts” usually based on intuition or evidence that has not been disclosed to the reader. Despite the weather and the spookiness of Valley House, there’s little sense of place.

The setting, which should determine the problems and actions available to the characters, is set up, then ignored. The story occurs on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the midst of a raging blizzard so strong that snow has blocked the 11:37 from Euston completely. Temperatures are frigid and falling. No one knows how long the train will be stuck, so five passengers decide to leave the train to walk five or six miles through the storm to reach the nearest station Hemmersby. Desperate, they eventually come upon a house, unlocked, ready to receive guests, with fires burning, kettle on the boil, and tea laid in the drawing room, but totally empty of inhabitants. They are soon followed by two others from the train, one of whom they immediately conclude killed the man in the next compartment on the train and who soon plunges back out into the storm. Factor in at least five more people wandering around in the snow, involved in both current murders and one twenty years ago Christmas morning. Members of the train party also pop in and out into the storm. Nobody even gets frostbite!

I’m sorry, but I can’t suspend my disbelief far enough to appreciate MYSTERY IN WHITE. (F)
 
RED CHRISTMAS was published originally in 1972 by Reginald Hill (Dalziel and Pascoe) under the pseudonym Patrick Ruell. It was reissued in 1995 by The British Library as part of the Black Dagger Crime series. It opens on Christmas Eve at Dingley Dell, an upscale hotel expecting an influx of guests who will experience an authentic Dickensian Christmas.

One of the guests is 23-year-old Arabella Allen, who is immediately suspicious of her surroundings, fellow guests, and hotel personnel. It is clear from the outset that something more than a holiday extravaganza is going on at the hotel. One of the outside workers is gravely injured, and the hotel manager Mr. Wardle disappears. Oscar Boswell, “Boz”, Oxford don who’s the authority on Dickens, is forced to take over supervision, and things become even stranger. Arabella discovers an elaborate setup for spying on the guests in their bedrooms; three surprise guests show up. Nothing and no one are what they seem. Who are all these people, and why are they gathered at Dingley Dell?

Robert Barnard in his introduction calls RED CHRISTMAS “a romp,” and it is a comedy of errors where every apparent truth or hopeful event is a prelude to the situation worsening. The basic premise of the plot is reasonable--much international cooperation and negotiation will be necessary for Europe to achieve what eventually became the Common Market, then the European Union. Humor leavens the violence when everything goes pear-shaped.

Characters are standard to the espionage sub-genre of mysteries and thrillers, with the eventual pairing up of Arabella and Boz obvious from the beginning.The d.foreign guests--the Leclercs from France, the American Bob Sawyer, the Germans Herr and Frau Himmelstor--are British stereotypes of their nationalities. I do appreciate that Arabella, Mrs. Hislop, and Frau Himmelstor are strong women who stand up for themselves.

Hill doesn’t make extensive use of atmosphere despite the possibilities of Dingley Dell. “They had very rapidly turned off the secondary road which passed by the railway halt on to an even narrower road, scarcely more than a lane, though the surface was metalled. The landscape, made breathtakingly beautiful (in every sense) by the gleaming sprinkling of frost, was pleasantly varied without being dramatic. Small hills, woods, folds of land, ploughed fields like frozen seascapes, some sheep, cows, a black horse running down to the hedge to greet its passing fellows, the occasional sheepfold or distant farmhouse--there was very little here to disturb the illusion that this journey was indeed being made in the first half of the nineteenth century.” (11)

The world has changed so much since RED CHRISTMAS was written that it’s hard to read it in 1972 terms. (B)
 
Joyce and Jim Lavene’s A DICKENS OF A MURDER opens two weeks before Thanksgiving, with Simon Canterville and Lisa Wellman working to get their bookstore, Canterville Book Shop open by Thanksgiving, to get the Christmas trade. It’s set in the Olde Townsection of Portsmouth, Virginia. A DICKENS OF A MURDER was published in e-book format in 2015.

I’m giving up at 26% for several reasons. There’s nothing to indicate Portsmouth or, indeed, any other specific location. It could be happening anywhere, any time. So are the characters generic. Simon is elderly book lover who’s bonded with former librarian Lisa, offering her a partnership in his projected book store in exchange for her expertise with books. She’s divorced from Deputy Chief of Police Daniel Fairhaven, who comes to investigate the presence of a dead man on the roof of the shop; it’s clear that each still has feelings for the other and that a reunion is in the works. Lisa doesn’t impress, since she’s gone into partnership with Simon, moving into her house, selling everything she owns, without any kind of written contract. She knows so little about Simon personally that she didn’t know he has a son. Lisa thinks she’s qualified to discover who killed Ebenezer Hart because she’s attended seminars on writing murder mysteries.

As I’ve said before, I am severely whimsy-impaired. The final straw is the appearance of the ghost of Jacob Marley in Lisa’s room that night, to help her achieve her dream of becoming a successful cozy mystery writer. Way too much!!! No grade because not finished.
 
BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD is the eighth book in Barbara Fradkin’s mystery series featuring Detective Inspector Michael Green of the Ottawa Major Crime Unit. It’s set in Ottawa and Montreal, beginning several days before Christmas. It was published in e-book format in 2010.

Dr. Brandon Longstreet, of the wealthy, socially prominent English Longstreets, and Meredith Kennedy, humanitarian aid worker recently back from Haiti, are planning their wedding in less than three weeks, on New Year’s Eve. Soon thereafter, they will go to Ethiopia where Brandon will work for two years with Doctors Without Borders and Meredith will teach. But without warning Meredith goes missing. Brandon and her parents are distraught; Brandon’s formidable mother Elena Longstreet, not fond of Meredith, is more sanguine. Michael Green comes into the situation when, before she’s reported missing, his long-time boss and mentor Detective Superintendent Adam Jules asks him to check quietly for Meredith Kennedy. Finding Meredith and what happens to her eventually reaches Montreal and small villages east and thirty years in the past.

The Inspector Green series is a strong one, marked by strong, individual characters, good plotting, and an outstanding sense of place. Fradkin has created a believable cast of officers at the Major Crime Unit, giving enough back story and glimpses of personal life to make them seem real people whose lives continue between installments of their story. I particularly like Detective Bob Gibbs, shy IT expert whom Green is mentoring, who’s in love with Detective Sue Peters, who’s still recovering mentally and physically from the beating in a previous case that nearly killed her; they’re much stronger together than apart, both as police officers and as people. Green has enough regrets, second thoughts, and occasional sheer bloodymindedness to be authentic.

The plot in BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD is one in which the actions of the past cast long shadows. It’s hard to comment much without doing a spoiler. Fradkin plays fair, giving the evidence as Green and his people uncover it. The somewhat surprising conclusion has been properly set up, enough so that an experienced reader may deduce it beforehand.


Sense of place and history are strong. “Green caught a glimpse of the wide open slopes of Mount Royal as Magliore accelerated up the hill and entered a residential district of dignified old brick homes. Outremont...home of Old French money, Jesuit seminaries and the university. Soon they were crossing raucous, colourful Cote des Neigres, teeming with shops, restaurants and shoppers. Magliore jogged north and continued west along Van Horne Avenue past Chinese take-outs, Korean markets and a Jewish religious school. Beneath tuques and scarves, black, south Asian and oriental faces dominated among the shoppers scurrying along the sidewalks, but every now and then Green spotted an ultra-Orthodox Chassidic family walking home from synagogue.” (161)

BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD is an excellent addition to the series. (A-)
 
Valerie Wolzien’s WE WISH YOU A MERRY MURDER is set in Hancock, Connecticut, opening a few days before Christmas. Its protagonists are Susan Henshaw, from whose point of view the story is told, and her ex-cop friend Kathleen Gordon. It was first published in 1991.

I’m giving up at about 50% from lack of interest. The female characters are upper-middle-class housewives who differ primarily in the degree to which they are catty to each other’s face instead of behind the back. Shopping and one-upmanship seem to fill their lives. Even the in-laws are stereotypes. Kathleen’s mother is concerned only that Kathleen hasn’t had children; Kathleen’s brother has six, but they seem not to count. Susan’s mother-in-law shows up without warning a week early for her Christmas visit, having embarked on a new diet / life style, complete with diet guru in tow. Exposition and foreshadowing come in the form of gossip between characters.

The plot involves the disappearance of a local wealthy businessman Evan Knowlson in the midst of his new wife’s annual Christmas party. When Susan and wife #1 discover his body in the kitchen of his old home and the body disappears before the police get there, the police apparently ignore the whole situation. We see no direct action in the plot. Action shown involves shopping, preparation of food, and description of parties, not the mystery. There’s no sense of place.

No grade for WE WISH YOU A MERRY MURDER because not finished. I didn’t find it very joy-making.
 
JINGLE BONES by Carolyn Haines is a Christmas novella set in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta, during the third week of December and ending on Christmas Day. It features Sarah Booth Delaney, her friend and partner Tinkie Bellcase Richmond, and new love interest Sheriff Coleman Peters. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

Theodora Prince, wife of the minister of the Final Harvest Church and director of its annual Christmas pageant, hires Sarah Booth and Tinkie to find out who stole the Baby Jesus doll from last season’s performance. She knows that Heathcliff and Lord Darcy Rush, twin hellions belonging to the largest donors to Final Harvest, are guilty; unless she can prove they’ve done something wrong, her husband will not allow her to ban them. Sarah Booth and Tinkie are quickly successful, but then Theodora is abducted. Perry Prince gets a note to cancel the pageant or Theodora will be killed. No one has any doubt who’s responsible. Can the pageant be saved? Will the twins get away with a major crime yet again?

Haines doesn’t do much development of the usual characters in her long-running series, but she has an interesting variety in the twins, their mother Marjorie, and Theodora. Who’s responsible for the pageant’s problems and for Theodora’s abduction is clear, but it’s good fun in getting there. The mayhem descending on the pageant through the twins’ efforts is worth the price of the story.

Senses of place and of season are outstanding. “The sky burned peachy gold, and clouds of fuchsia climbed high. A windrow of trees stood silhouetted against the magnificent sky, and a gentle breeze rattled the dying leaves, reminding me of the rustle of widow’s weeds. ... The fields were bare--the cotton all picked, pressed into round bales and loaded onto flatbeds for transport. White tufts, like lost snowflakes, had scattered around the edges of the fields. Next spring, they’d be plowed under and the new crop planted. The cycle of life: planting, growth, harvest, and rest. Christmas brought family and the fallow period of winter. While I loved the holidays, it was also the time I missed my family more than ever.”

I highly recommend JINGLE BONES. (A)
 
LOWCOUNTRY BORDELLO is the fourth book in Susan M. Boyer’s mystery series featuring private investigator Liz Talbot. It’s set on and around fictional Stella Maris Island, just off Charleston, South Carolina, beginning five days before Liz’s December 20 wedding to partner Nate Andrews. It was published in 2015.

Liz and Nate are finishing up their cases prior to their wedding when Liz’s friend and bridesmaid Olivia Beauthorpe Pearson phones her in a panic, that she’s found her husband Robert dead in the front parlor of her aunt Willowdean Beauthorpe’s antebellum home at 12 Church Street. By the time Liz arrives, the body is gone. Olivia fills in details, including that she as half-owner with her aunt is being blackmailed. Aunt Dean and her late sister maintained the family home by running the most exclusive bordello in Charleston, with “nieces” being supported in their academic studies by men from socially prominent Charleston families. But a phone call reveals that Robert Pearson is very much alive. Who died? Who killed him? Liz and Nate take the case.

Several major items bother me about LOWCOUNTRY BORDELLO. One is the unlikelihood of Liz and Nate, engrossed in last minute preparations for Christmas as well as their wedding where 304 guests are expected for dinner and dancing afterward, would take the case or devote three of their five days working it. Wedding preparations are constantly in the foreground of the story. A second involves the number of people at 12 Church Street in the hour when the man was killed and the body moved. Seven men, Olivia, Aunt Dean, and four “nieces” go and come either without seeing or without recognizing each other. Most of these characters are not individual.

The change in the rules involving Colleen, the resident spirit charged with protecting Stella Maris Island from development, irritates me. Originally, she’s visible only to Liz, who’d been her best friend in high school. Her mandate is strictly limited to protecting Liz as one of the primary opponents to change on the island. She doesn’t manifest to others, and her assistance is limited to advice. However, in LOWCOUNTRY BORDELLO, she recruits the spirit of a former resident of 12 Church Street to help her scare the “nieces” out of the house; she helps Olivia and Robert Pearson by extending her assignment to include Robert. She visibly manifests at the wedding and gives Liz permission to tell about her.

Plot devices also irk me. One is the improbability that her good friend Sonny Ravenal of the Charleston Police Department would allow Liz’s suppression of evidence and “anonymous” tips to influence his murder case, particularly one involving an upper-crust local who’s running for Congress in the next election. Virtually nothing is shown of the police investigation. Not ending the mystery story line before the wedding makes is conclusion anticlimax.

Sense of place is good, though there’s little atmosphere that evokes the ambiance of Christmas or, indeed, of the wedding. LOWCOUNTRY BORDELLO could have used another thorough editing. (C)
 
PARTNERS IN CRIME: LOGAN AND STEEL SHORT STORIES, published in e-book format by Stuart MacBride, is a pair of short stories, “DI Steel’s Bad Heir Day” and “Stramash.”

“DI Steel’s Bad Heir Day” opens on 23 December. Roberta Steel is trying to finish her Christmas shopping when CID gets the report of a missing man Charles Griffith. Cursory investigation at his home reveals that he’d been made redundant on his job three months before and had concealed it from his wife; Steel also turns up an IOU for £4,000 from Charles Griffith to Matthew McFee, aka Wee Free McFee, a loan shark notorious for his use of violence. He denies any involvement in Griffith’s disappearance but, when Steel and DC Allan Guthrie catch McFee and Mrs. Griffith’s in flagrante, they’re not convinced. In the meantime, on Christmas Eve, DI Steel learns she stands to inherit £54,000 from Dougie MacDuff, local enforcer for several criminal bosses. All she must do is deliver his eulogy and appropriately dispose of his cremated remains. She at first turns it down but then comes up with an honest way to meet the conditions. And for once McFee hasn’t lied.

“Stramash” is an uproar, a disturbance, a row, or a brawl. Logan, who’s Steel’s significant other--they have a daughter Jasmine together--and also a policeman, meets her on the Isle of Jura where Steel has seen Kevin McGregor, major drug dealer known to be dead. In the same small village of Craighouse, she and Logan find Jimmy Weasdale (aka Jimmy the Weasel), thought to have left Scotland after the murder of Barney McGlashin; Badger McLean, another hard man in the drug trade; and the Riley sisters, drug dealers from Belfast who’d been expelled from the Provisional IRA for being too violent. What are they all doing in a small village, apparently cooperating with each other? How can Steel and Logan foil them?

The short story format doesn’t leave much room for developing character, and back stories are minimal. The plots hop from scene to scene with little connection. Both stories have satisfying conclusions.

Setting is important, but it isn’t clear exactly where Steel and Logan work or even if they work from the same division. Atmosphere is well-developed: “...a bus grumbled past, sending up a spray of grey-brown slush to spatter against the pool car’s windows. A couple of the passengers gave [Guthrie] the two-finger salute on the way past. Like traffic on Union Street wasn’t bad enough at the best of times. A thick rind of dirty white snow was piled up at he edge of the kerb; the road covered in a mix of compacted snow, ice and filthy water. Pedestrians slithered by on the pavement, bundled up in their coats, scarves and woolly hats, fresh snow coating their shoulders like frozen dandruff.”

“DI Steel’s Bad Heir Day” (A-); “Stramash” (B)
 
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