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Readingomnivore Reviews

Robert D. Bass’s THE GREEN DRAGOON: THE LIVES OF BANASTRE TARLETON AND MARY ROBINSON is the standard biography of Lieutenant Banastre Tarleton of the British Legion, the most feared British unit in the Southern colonies during the American Revolution. Mrs. Mary Robinson was a former actress and mistress to the Prince of Wales, a published poet, with whom he lived for many years following the AR. THE GREEN DRAGOON was originally printed in 1957 and reissued in 1973. The title refers to the green jacket worn by the cavalry component of the British Legion.

I’m giving up at 275 of 454 pages of text. Bass goes into much more detail than I need on the officers and politics of the British Army and the almost day-to-day activities of Tarleton and Robinson. Bass publishes long lists of names of officers of various regiments, most of which are tangential at best to the main narrative. He greatly relies on Tarleton’s own A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America, though Tarleton was notorious enough that source material is abundant. THE GREEN DRAGOON is indexed, but a list of characters, a joint timeline of Tarleton and Robinson’s lives, and maps of the various American campaigns would add greatly to its readability. It’s history of the driest sort, presupposing extensive knowledge of the American Revolution and post-Revolution British society and politics.

Banastre Tarleton is a most unappealing person. He and the British Legion polarized the Carolina backcountry, bringing previously neutral or even Loyalist settlers into active rebellion. During and after the Battle of Waxhaws on 29 May 1780, on his orders Tarleton’s soldiers slaughtered American militiamen trying or already surrendered, establishing “Tarleton’s Quarter” as a policy often followed by both sides, including the Americans’ slaughter of British Loyalists at King’s Mountain.

Under Tarleton’s command, the Legion was guilty of rape and unprovoked brutality toward women, looting and burning plantations, summary execution of suspected insurgents, and driving off or destroying livestock. “[Tarleton] spent November 9 and 10 [1780] suppressing disloyalty with the torch. He burned Sumter’s mills on Jack’s Creek and rode on for vengeance upon Widow Richardson. His mood was blacker than the mourning band he woe for [Major John] Andre. In sheer ghoulishness, although many thought he was looking for the family silver, he dug up old General Richardson who had lain in the plantation’s graveyard for some six weeks. He ripped open the coffin in order that he might ‘look upon the face of such a brave man.’ And his final vandalism provoked Governor Rutledge to write the South Carolina delegates in Congress: ‘Tarleton, at the house of the widow of General Richardson, exceeded his usual barbarity; for having dined in her house, he not only burned it after plundering it of everything it contained, but having driven into the barns a number of cattle, hogs, and poultry, he consumed them, together with the barn and the corn in it, in one general blaze.” (111)

Tarleton returned to England in a cloud of glory, notwithstanding his utter defeat at the Battle of Cowpens by General Daniel Morgan. He immediately resumed the life of a man about town, gambling money he did not have, intimate with rakes and hell-raisers including the Prince of Wales and the Royal Dukes, running up debts that he called on his long-suffering family to pay so that he wouldn’t be imprisoned for debt. Tarleton felt that England owed him luxurious support for life and complained repeatedly and publicly of its abandoning him. He managed to alienate many of his Army friends, including Lord Cornwallis; ‘...the impression grew stronger and stronger that on the 17th day of January, 1781, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton lost the battle that lost the campaign that lost the war that lost the American Colonies!’ (207) Tarleton wrote A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America both to refute the accusations and to make money. (Following Finley Peter Dunne’s criticism of Teddy Roosevelt’s The Rough Riders, Tarleton’s book is better titled ‘Alone in America.’) It didn’t make money.

I could go on, but THE GREEN DRAGOON probably won’t appeal to many readers. No grade because not finished.
 
Thomas Hollyday’s SLAVE GRAVES was published in e-book format in 2003. It i one of his River Sunday murder mystery series.

Dr. Frank Light, chairman of the archaeology department at his university, has been summoned to a site near River Sunday, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to investigate what appears to be a shipwreck. The site must be evaluated for historic significance before construction on Jake Terment’s bridge can continue; he’s pushing hard for a quick, favorable decision from Light because he’s finally strapped and his plans for a major real estate development on Allingham Island, owned by his family for generations, depend on rapid completion of the bridge. Preliminary work shows several site anomalies, with some evidence indicating the wreck is eighteenth-century. Allingham Island is a stopping point in the annual migration of monarch butterflies, so conservationist Birdie Posey who owns a parcel of land near the bridge opposes development of the island. Pastor Jefferson Allingham of the Third Baptist Church believes the development will disturb a slave graveyard. Saldado, whose house on the island was taken by Jake Terment, performs shamanistic rituals dressed in ancient Mayan costume, dousing the wreck site for his own purposes.

I’m giving up at 23%. I normally enjoy mysteries based on some historic or archaeological puzzle, but I can’t get invested in SLAVE GRAVES. Writing style is simplistic and repetitive. Maggie Davis, state archaeologist summoned by Jefferon Allingham, explains to Light what she’s done and her conclusions about the site, then later repeats almost word for word the 2-3 page explanation for Terment. It reads like cut and paste.

Characters are stereotypes, in no way individual. Jake Terment, complete with henchman Spyder, is the epitome of a “curse the environment, full-speed ahead” developer who uses his money and power to bulldoze anyone who stands in the way of his project; he’s a manipulator who constantly talks down to people and publicly gloats over embarrassing incidents in their pasts. (Don’t you love Spyder’s name? So appropriate for an evil assistant. Light’s girlfriend, who thinks he’s unsophisticated and advises him of the necessity to go along with Trement, is named “Mello,” which Hollyday at least once spells as “Mellow.” What qualities are implied by “Frank Light”?) The plot is already foreshadowed heavily--the wreck is going to halt construction on the bridge indefinitey, pressure and intimidation will be brought to bear on Light and Maggie Davis, Trement will be killed, and the archaeologists will solve the crime.

What bothers me most about SLAVE GRAVES is the unspecified time of the action. Physical locations place River Sunday geographically, and there are even snatches of atmospheric description, but the year isn’t indicated. The most consistent time reference is to Vietnam. Light had served and still has some PTSD symptoms, dropping to the ground at an unexpected loud noise. But he’s described as about 45 years old at the time of the story. This and the apparent total lack of environmental restrictions on wetlands development make it clear that SLAVE GRAVES is not set anytime close to its publication date in 2003.

No grade because I won’t be uncovering any more of SLAVE GRAVES.
 
Juan Martinez prosecuted Jodi Ann Arias for the first-degree murder of Travis Alexander, her sometime boyfriend, in Maricopa County, Arizona. Martinez’s account, CONVICTION: THE UNTOLD STORY OF PUTTING JODI ARIAS BEHIND BARS, was published in e-book and print editions in February 2016. I occasionally had seen references to the Arais trial but had not followed the proceedings, so I was curious to read the story.

On 4 June 2008 Travis Alexander was murdered in Mesa, Arizona. Martinez, as the homicide prosecutor just leaving his shift, took the call. The murder was one of unusual brutality--Travis had been stabbed, then slashed and stabbed repeatedly in the chest and back; his throat had been cut from ear to ear; he was shot in the head. He had three mortal wounds. The friends who found his decomposing body mentioned former girl-friend Jodi Arais immediately to the police as his possible killer. When questioned, Arias at first denied even being in Mesa that day. The killer’s efforts to clean up the crime scene included dropping Travis’s camera into a washing machine with blood-stained items and bleach, but police forensics experts recovered pictures from the camera. The time and date stamp clearly showed Jodi and Travis engaged in explicit sexcapades on the afternoon of his death, along with the crime in progress and her moving the body. She later admitted being in Travis’s home but claimed that two masked intruders, a man and a woman, broke into the house specifically to kill him. The final version of her story was that she’d been a long-time victim of Travis’s physical and emotional abuse; he’d attacked her, and she killed him in self-defense. Through examination of Arias’s conflicting accounts and following every lead, Martinez and the Mesa Police were able to prove her guilty of first degree murder with aggravating circumstances, required in a death penalty case. The jury hung twice on the sentencing phase, the second time voting 11-1 for death, Judge Sherry Stephens then sentenced Jodi Arias to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Arias is a supreme modern example of hubris. In the words of my people, Arias would climb a tree to tell a lie before she’d stand on the ground and tell the truth. She was convinced that she could spin her stories to negate all the details incriminating her, and she was arrogant enough to repeat lies after Martinez had shown the jury evidence of her lies. She tried consistently to show herself as a victim--of childhood physical abuse by her parents, of emotional and sexual abuse by boyfriends, and especially physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by Travis Alexander. Nothing, including his murder, was her fault.

I assume that the account of Martinez’s preparation and activities in the Arias trial is accurate, despite there being no notes and no bibliography. Martinez is writing of his own actions and decisions, so outside documentation is less needed.

I have major problems with CONVICTION: THE UNTOLD STORY OF PUTTING JODI ARIAS BEHIND BARS. Editing is badly needed. Martinez consistently misuses singular possessive names ending with -s, writing Arias’ and Travis’, instead of Arias’s and Travis’s. The book is written in a conversational tone, reading as if it were dictated, transcribed, and published as is. There’s no sense of revision, which is most obvious in the repetition of the evidence at least three times--as it’s uncovered, then as Martinez uses it to build the case against Arias, and finally when he uses it during the trial. I don’t understand how Arias, while dragging Travis’s dying body down the hallway from and to his bathroom, “inadvertently took” (Martinez’s phrase) the last photos in the camera.

CONVICTION is an interesting account of a heinous crime, but literary quality is sadly missing. (C)
 
DEAD MEN DON’T SKI is one of Patricia Moyes’s Inspector Henry Tibbett series. It was originally published in 1959.

Henry Tibbett is happily married to pleasant, warm wife Emmy. They visit the Albergo Bella Vista in Santa Chiara, a small village in the Italian Alps, for a skiing holiday, purely personal except that Henry’s to keep his eyes open for signs of drug smuggling. Fritz Hauser, a fellow guest with a suspicious background, is hated by the hotel’s clientele; he’s deeply involved in the smuggling and in blackmail. He’s shot to death on the chair-lift connecting the village and the hotel at the top of the mountain. Tibbett works with his local contact Capitano Spezzi of the Montelunga carabinieri to solve both the smuggling and two murders.

Henry Tibbett is a pleasant protagonist. “Henry Tibbett was not a man who looked like a great detective. In fact, as he would be the first to point out, he was not a great detective, but a conscientious and observant policeman, with an occasional flair for intuitive detection which he called ‘my nose.’ There were very few of his superiors who were not prepared to listen, and to take appropriate action, when Henry said, suddenly, ‘My nose tells me we’re on the wrong lines. Why not tackle it this way?’ ... A small man, sandy-haired and with pale eyebrows and lashes which emphasized his general air of timidity, he had spent most of his forty-eight years trying to avoid trouble--with a conspicuous lack of success.” (8) Though Henry and Emmy are essentially static, other major characters are dynamic. Moyes enlivens characterization with humor: “Colonel Buckfast seemed to be suffering from an exaggeratedly delicate sense of de mortui which compelled him to approach the subject of Hauser’s personality like a hippopotamus on tiptoe.” (122)

Moyes plays fair with providing appropriate foreshadowing to the solution of the murders. As expected in a book of its age, DEAD MEN DON’T SKI relies on old-fashioned detective work rather than forensics. For fans of the Golden Age mysteries, timetables play an important role in solving the crimes. The interaction between Tibbett and Spezzi is believable.

Moyes is skilled in establishing landscape and atmosphere. “The Monte Caccia chair-lift...is one of the longest in Europe. The ascent takes twenty-five minutes, during which time the chairs, on their stout overhead cable, travel smoothly and safely upwards, sometimes over steep slopes between pine trees, a mere twenty feet from the ground, more frequently over gorges and ravines which twist and tumble several hundred feet below. About once a minute the strong metal arm which connects the chair to the cable clatters and bangs as it passes between the platforms of a massive steely pylon, set on four great concrete bases and equipped with a fire-broom and a sturdy snow-shovel in case of emergencies. In parts of the trip, the lift travels above the pistes or ski-runs, giving the passengers a birds-eye view of the expertise or otherwise of the skiers below. It is one of the coldest forms of travelling known to man.” (23-4)

DEAD MEN DON’T SKI is a satisfying read. (B+)
 
Michael Innes’s CHRISTMAS AT CANDLESHOE is a stand-alone, not one of his well-known John Appleby series. Despite its title, the story has nothing to do with the holiday season; the Christmas to whom it refers is “Gerard Christmas (d. 1634), carver and statuary, carved funeral monuments, carver to the navy (1614-34), designer of figures for several lord mayors’ shows between 1611 and 1632. Concise Dictionary of National Biography.” (title page) The novel was originally published in 1959 and reissued in 2001.

CHRISTMAS AT CANDLESHOE is strange. On the most basic level, it’s standard innocent American Oxford student Grant Feather and his extremely wealthy mother thrown into a dangerous situation they must grasp as the action goes on. On a different level, it’s a comedy of manners involving the ancient Candleshoe family and its Speedlove cadet branch, created Marquess of Scattergood at nearby Benison Court, and the provenance and present possession of certain Titians brought home by Jack Candleshoe and Robert Speedlove from their joint Grand Tour in 1721. A criminal gang is after the Titians, which are defended at decrepit Candleshoe Manor by a group of children under the leadership of a young teenager, Jay Ray, son of the late last housekeeper at Candleshoe, who seems to run what’s left of the establishment.

On yet another level, it’s an effusion and celebration of language: “[The Americans] are keeping the full measure of their awe for theTower of London, the crypts of the great cathedrals, the birthplace of Shakespeare in Stratford, the cradle of the Washington family at Sulgrave Manor. That the owner of Benison Court should confess the place to be of no great antiquity impresses and pleases them; they see in it the high standard of personal honour which the English aristocracy--they believe--manages to combine with the utmost of Machiavellian duplicity in the political and diplomatic sphere.” (5)

The characters are not believable humans, though Jay Ray is an attractive personality. Jay’s place at Candleshoe is foreshadowed enough that an experienced reader may pick it up well before it’s revealed. Several long passages of exposition are clunky interruptions to the action. Candleshoe is in the full tradition of ancient English manor houses with its hidden rooms, treasures buried or lost, and ancient owner with faithful, equally ancient retainer. But in spite of these caveats, I enjoyed CHRISTMAS AT CANDLESHOE. (B+)
 
“Knock, Knock, You’re Dead” is M. C. Beaton’s latest Hamish Macbeth short story to date. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

Hamish Macbeth, Lochdubh Police Constable, goes through the Sutherland highlands checking on the crofters who live in his district. One of them, Morag McPhie, is considering selling antiques to raise money; later that day, Hamish helps an antiques evaluator who’s run out of gas, so as a personal favor, he asks Harry French to call on Morag. That evening, Morag calls in the death of Sarah Harrison, a nosy neighbor. She’d died in Morag’s front parlor of blunt force trauma to the head, Morag denies seeing French, but a neighbor had seen a knocker (antiques picker, who toured remote areas, knocking on doors and asking if there were any old household goods for sale), a gypsy woman named Sheila Fraser. Detective Chief Inspector Blair, the bane of Hamish’s existence who hates gypsies, arrests her immediately. Hamish, however, has other ideas.

SPOILERS****SPOILERS****

I don’t know why I keep buying the Hamish Macbeth series. Perhaps it’s because I remember the great quality of the early stories. Unfortunately, the quality is gone. There are no characterization, only the briefest sketch of setting, and a simplistic plot. With only two possible suspects, one of whom the idiot Blair has arrested, it doesn’t take Einstein to identify the killer. The time the story is set is not indicated. Hamish is specifically referred to as Constable, but in the novels, he’s been promoted to Sergeant for some years. Adding insult to injury, there’s a major editing failure. The dead woman is first referred to as Sarah Parkinson, but within a page (if the story had real page numbers), she’s Sarah Harrison.

I didn’t pay much for “Knock, Knock, You’re Dead,” but it was more than the story is worth. I see nothing in it to praise. (F)
 
Cindy Brown’s MACDEATH is the first book in her Ivy Meadows series featuring Olive Ziegwart, whose stage name is Ivy Meadows. She’s a would-be professional actress in Phoenix, Arizona. It was published in 2014 and issued in e-book format in 2015.

Ivy auditions for and gets the role of one of the witches in leading Phoenix director Edward Heath’s circus-themed conceptualization of Macbeth. Also in the production as Duncan is noted English actor Simon Black, who enlists Ivy to be the witness to his on-going sobriety as he enters Alcoholics Anonymous again. Black’s not popular, and Ivy finds him dead in his dressing room following the opening night performance. The police determine Simon died of acute alcohol poisoning; the medical examiner rules his death a heart attack brought on by alcohol poisoning, without doing an autopsy. Ivy’s convinced Simon’s death was not from natural causes, so she enlists her private investigator uncle Bob Duda to investigate the case with her help.

I’m giving up at 36%. The characters are bland and generic, even Ivy. She’s carrying emotional baggage from the death years before of younger brother Cody, for which her parents blame her. All told about it so far is that it involves water. Using Ivy as first person narrator does not reveal her as a believable person. Many of the characters do not have complete names yet. The plot is all told, not shown, with no sense of passion or suspense. The only indications of setting are repeated references to the heat in Phoenix in October.

While I’m generally interested in mysteries that feature Shakespeare and the theatre, MACDEATH is as appealing as plain day-old oatmeal. No grade because not finished.
 
THE DUNGEON HOUSE is the latest to date in Martin Edwards’s Lake District murder series; previously the books involving the same protagonists--historian Daniel Kind and DCI Hannah Scarlett--were named the Lakeland Murders series. I do not know the reason for the change. THE DUNGEON HOUSE was published in both print and e-book formats in 2015.

Old sins may cast long shadows. Twenty years before the present case, Malcolm Whiteley, a businessman facing major financial reverses and possible fraud charges, is obsessed with his beautiful wife Lysette and is convinced she’s unfaithful to him. In a meltdown of rage, he shoots her, causes their daughter to fall to her death in a quarry garden, and then shoots himself. Police quickly rule murder-suicide, despite a witness to a bald-headed man in woman’s clothing running away from the Dungeon House and much tension within the Whiteleys’ circle of friends and relations. Fast forward to three years before the present. Lily Elstone, daughter of Malcolm Whiteley’s accountant who knew much more than he ever admitted about the financial fraud, disappears without a trace. Now Shona Whiteley, daughter of Nigel Whiteley, Malcolm’s nephew and ultimate heir, has also disappeared. Is there a connection between the teenaged girls’ disappearances? Are they connected to the long-ago deaths at the Dungeon House? When Shona disappears, Hannah Scarlett’s Cold Case Unit reopen the Lily Whiteley case, looking for links.

While Daniel Kind uncovers the crucial bit of information Hannah needs to solve the case, emphasis is on Hannah and her team. Edwards has created a believable community in the Cold Cases Unit, its success rate largely based on Hannah’s abilities: “Hannah asked herself, not for the first time, whether she simply was not cut out for management. In her twenties, she’d been regarded as a high flyer, and she’d risen fast. Perhaps too fast. Before long her career nose-dived, and before she could catch her breath, she found herself relegated to reviewing cold cases. A career cul-de-sac , yes, but she loved delving into the past. It wasn’t just that it helped her to understand why historical research bewitched Daniel. She had so much more autonomy than colleagues investigating crimes in the here and now, and management responsibilities were price worth paying. With a small, over-stretched team, she had the luxury of getting her hands dirty with proper detective work. How exhilarating to deliver justice to people who had waited years to learn the truth about a crime that once seemed insoluble.” (183) Major characters are dynamic and relationships change, adding to verisimilitude and making it better to read the books in order.

Plotting is fairly laid out, yet it provides for an effective surprise ending.

Edwards‘s evocation of setting is skilled. “Each time Hannah returned to Brookdale, she found something else to love about the narrow, wooded valley, criss-crossed by streams, and surrounded by steep slopes. In the depths of winter, when the fields were silent, and the fells shrouded in snow, you felt you were in a world of your own. Especially at Tarn Cottage, with its mysterious garden snaking below the shadowy bulk of the Sacrifice Stone. Daniel’s home stood close to the coffin trail, where centuries ago the dead were carried over the tops on pack-horses for Christian burial in consecrated ground. Not another house was in sight, and when darkness came, Tarn Fold seemed to Hannah as remote and mysterious as anywhere in England. Spring-time was different. Light flashed through the trees, and danced in the clear water and uneven rocks, making the ancient landscape seem fresh and young.” (71)

THE DUNGEON HOUSE is an excellent addition to a good series. (A-)
 
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE BLACK SWAN SONG is the first book in Andrea Frazer’s Holmes and Garden mystery series, published in 2014 in e-book and print formats. It’s set in The Black Swan Hotel in the village of Hamsley Black Cross. Its protagonists are Sherman Holmes, a middle-aged man who’s unexpectedly inherited a large fortune and must decide what to do with the rest of his life, and John H. Garden, a thirty-year-old transvestite (not gay, not transgender) who means to come out, leave his boring job, and move out of the house he shares with his dragon of a mother, referred to as “Mommy Dearest.” They meet accidentally at The Black Swan, where each has gone to contemplate his future. Discovering that both are major aficionados of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and by the coincidence of their names, Holmes decides to achieve a dream and open a consulting detective agency with Garden. Coincidentally, three murders occur in short order at The Black Swan, the first that of its womanizing, ruthless owner Berkeley Bellamy; though without a client, Holmes and Garden decide that solving the murders will be their first case.

As to be expected in the first in a projected series, much of the story is given to establishing the protagonists and their relationship. Both Holmes and Garden are engaging characters, if not particularly believable people. Holmes is courageous enough to use his good luck to make his dream come true and perceptive enough to recognize Garden’s intrinsic worth. Garden is wise enough to identify a solution to the multiple problems of coming out and to recognize the contribution he can make to the agency; his female personas will multiply the capacity for undercover detection. “Garden sighed deeply. Holmes may be a great name for a detective, but this one didn’t seem to have an investigative bone in his body. It looked like he lived the life of an easily distracted butterfly who couldn’t put two and two together nor make a decision about which suspect was the most likely to be guilty. It looked like, in their future together, Holmes would have the name that would attract the clients and he, Garden, would be the brains of the outfit. It was all the wrong way round but, then, as Holmes had previously pointed out to him, fiction if [sic] fiction. This was real life, not a mirror.” Frazer makes it easy to suspend disbelief and go with their first case. She plays fair with foreshadowing.

Frazer excels at creating the sense of a real place in her books. “Inside [The Black Swan] had much to charm a guest, from its beams that sprouted mysteriously out of walls but went nowhere, and its huge inglenook fireplaces in which one could sit with a drink and survey the rest of humanity gathered there that evening. There was a splendid selection of little runs of steps that led up and down, seemingly at random, to differing floor levels, matched only by the inconsistencies of ceiling height. Strange little dog-leg corridors apparently leading nowhere also led the unwary guest astray, and corridors repeatedly grew incongruous alcoves, the original purpose of which it was hard to guess. On the whole, it was a maze of a building. The Black Swan’s swallowing of the adjoining buildings into its greater whole was evidenced by the number of staircases, mysterious little cubby-holes, and dead ends that littered the establishment... With the installation of en-suite shower rooms and such like, the place was a veritable labyrinth for the unwary, and no handy signs were available to point the sadly astray, whether the tourists or locals, toward their desired destinations.”

Point of view is omniscient third person, mostly divided between Holmes and Garden with occasional glimpses that illuminate other characters. Frazer sometimes uses an intrusive narrator. Editing failed to catch name changes--Berkeley Bellamy is called Ballard, and chef Tony Burke is introduced as Terry. The number of characters exceeds those essential to carrying the plot.

I prefer Frazer’s Falconer series, but THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE BLACK SWAN SONG convinces me to give Holmes and Garden a chance. (B+)
 
Barbara Hinske’s COMING TO ROSEMONT is a thriller rather than a mystery. It involves Maggie Martin, recently widowed, who’s discovered that her college-president husband Paul had embezzled more than $2,000,000 from the school to support a second family. She inherits a mansion in Westbury that she’d not known he owned and goes East to put Rosemont on the market. She falls in love with the house, makes a snap decision not to sell but to live there, and involves herself in Westbury politics. Maggie is a major consulting forensic accountant who offers her services to Tonya Holmes, new City Council member who’s discovered that Westbury’s general fund balance is half what it’s been reported, and the city workers’ pension fund is about forty percent short. Readers know that Frank Haynes is the mastermind behind the shortfalls, aided and abetted by the mayor William Wheeler and the mob-connected construction company owners, the Delgado brothers.

I’m giving up at about 25%. Nothing about the story grabs me. It seems improbable that Maggie would hide Paul’s embezzlement and second family from their adult children; that she would make such a quick decision about keeping Rosemont and moving in--literally as soon as she walks in the door, before she’s seen anything except the foyer; or that she would be universally accepted instantly, particularly in a town fraught with tension and uncertainty over its financial future. The change in Maggie from essentially doormat to Paul to powerful self-directed woman is too sudden to be realistic. There’s the obligatory romantic interest in John Allen, Westbury veterinarian, much taken with Maggie. Characters have few individual traits.

So far the plot seems nothing special. Point of view shifts between characters without revealing much. There’s no sense of place. The state, even the area of the country, is not given; the only indicator is that it’s cold and subject to winter storms. The description of Westbury is generic small town. One of my pet peeves is involved--misuse of apostrophe in the name of the Workers’ Pension Fund, given as Worker’s. Surely the pension fund is meant for all the city workers, not just one.

COMING TO ROSEMONT was published in inexpensive e-book format in 2011. Not recommended. No grade because not finished.
 
Paul Levine’s KILL ALL THE LAWYERS is one of his legal thriller series featuring Steven Solomon and his lover / partner Victoria Lord. It’s set in Miami, Florida. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

I’m giving up about two-thirds through for several reasons. One is the sheer number of characters who are tangentially at best involved in the plot of KILL ALL THE LAWYERS. Why do authors of series feel it necessary to include every continuing character in every book even if they serve no function? Another is common sense. How many times does a lawyer from the lower end of the practice scale encounter a genuine criminal mastermind as a client? A third is parsimony. While details in the characters’ lives are needed to lend them verisimilitude, where does a writer draw the line between meaningful revelations of character and padding? For example, Paul Drake’s con of Victoria’s mother has an interesting premise--distribution of a secret trust established from the proceeds of Sir Francis Drake’s piracy on Spain--it’s not necessary to the plot. Yet another is court procedure. Would a Court, even with an elderly, deaf judge, really assign defendant Steve to be evaluated by a psychologist he’d represented in a murder case? This doesn’t make sense when police and prosecutors are routinely taken off cases where they’re acquainted with victims or suspects.

What’s really turned me off is the introduction of pedophilia into Dr. William Kreeger’s campaign for vengeance against Steve, who sabotaged his case in the murder of Nancy Lamm some six years before. The motive may have been her pre-pubescent daughter Amanda; Kreeger had provided Amanda with drugs and sexually abused her, and Nancy found out. He’s also manipulated so that the Court has assigned both Steve and his nephew Bobby to him for psychological evaluation and counseling. Kreeger tells twelve-year-old Bobby that girls never mean “no” when they say it, to go for it. Enough already!

My stomach’s too weak to continue with KILL ALL THE LAWYERS. No grade because not finished.
 
PRACTICAL SINS FOR COLD CLIMATES is the first book in Shelley Costa’s mystery series featuring Valjean “Val” Cameron. She’s a New Yorker, senior editor at Peter Hathaway’s Fir No Tine imprint of Schlesinger Publishing. She’s been sent to Wendaban, Ontario, to obtain the signature of best-selling author Charles Cable on a contract for his new novel. She’s in profound culture shock when she arrives in the midst of environmental controversy and tension involving the unexplained death two years before of Leslie Selkirk Decker.

I’m giving up on PRACTICAL SINS FOR COLD CLIMATES at 12%. I don’t find the protagonist appealing. She’s supposedly 34 years old, but she’s handling her relationship with Hathaway like a teenager. Val is a snob, feeling infinitely superior in her sophistication: “She looked up and down the main drag, which was also the only drag, called Highway 14, just as a semi flew through like a windstorm, kicking up dust and tossing around her Donna Karan skirt. Apparently, if she wanted to buy moccasins, a fishing license, trolling motor, tackle, or something caed a Bee Burger, she was in the right place. But her next iced decaf quad venti three pump soy no whip white chocolate mocha would just have to wait until she got home. And she wasn’t even going to think about where to find a good kosher dill.” (2) High-end brand names are ubiquitous. Sense of place, in a put-down sort of description, is the strongest element.

PRACTICAL SINS FOR COLD CLIMATES intrigued me by the title. Unfortunately it offers little else that appeals. No grade because not finished.
 
Andrea Frazer’s “A Sidecar Named Expire” is the second short story published in e-book format in 2012 as part of her anthology THE FALCONER FILES--BRIEF CASES. It involves DI Harry Falconer and DS Davey Carmichael of the Market Darley CID; it’s set between the books INKIER THAN THE SWORD and PASCAL PASSION. I like Frazer’s use of short stories to show continuing development in the men’s working partnership and personal relationship. The stories contribute to the sense of Falconer and Carmichael as real people whose lives continue between installments in the series.

“A Sidecar Named Expire” is thriller in format, with Chelsea Fairfield (referred to once as Linda) identified early on as the killer. The plot of the story is Columbo-format, the question being whether Falconer can discover the motive and find evidence to charge her. As expected in the short story genre, the number of characters is limited, and sense of place is minimal. Characterization is well done and indirect. Falconer’s curmudgeon of a boss Superintendent “Jelly” Chivers even plays a positive role.

This is a neat short story. (A-)
 
“Battered to Death” is the third short story in Andrea Frazer’s anthology THE FALCONER FILES--BRIEF CASES. It’s part of her series featuring DI Harry Falconer, its action falling between that of PASCAL PASSION and MURDER AT THE MANSE. The anthology was published in e-book format in 2012.

The title is a reference to the cause of death of Mrs. Sylvia Beeton, cook, server, and bouncer at the Chish and Fips chip shop in Upper Darley. She’s had a rough Friday night with young hooligans; when owner Frank Carrington comes in to the shop Saturday around noon, he finds her dead body. DI Falconer and DS Davey Carmichael are dispatched to solve the case.

Frazer keeps attention focused away from the killer, though there’s enough foreshadowing to make the conclusion believable. She uses elements of humor effectively to illustrate human nature: “Curry” Khan’s father is incensed, not because his son is questioned by the police in a murder case, but because “Curry” bought chips from Mrs. Beeton when the family owns three Indian restaurants where he could eat free.

Another good story from Frazer. (A-)
 
Andrea Frazer’s “Toxic Gossip” is the fourth short story in her 2012 e-book anthology THE FALCONER FILES--BRIEF CASES. Part of the DI Harry Falconer series, its action falls in time between MUSIC TO DIE FOR and STRICT AND PECULIAR.

Miriam Darling looks forward to her move to Market Darley, a chance to begin anew and escape her past. She’s welcomed there by neighbor Carole Winter who introduces her to the town. For a month, Miriam is welcomed, made to feel at home, so that she feels happy for the first time in over a year. Then suddenly Carole cuts her dead socially, Miriam is shunned, and she becomes the victim of a hate campaign--vile anonymous letters and telephone calls, vandalisms at her home, and finally dog excrement through her letter box with the threat that next time it will be gasoline-soaked rags. She won’t be allowed to “get away with it.” The next morning, she goes under the arriving train, and Falconer must deal with her murder.

Frazer sets up a genuine surprise ending that, while not foreshadowed, is logically consistent with the action. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler. Much is shown through Miriam’s eyes, making her strong and believable. Falconer’s feelings and regrets form the most important element of his characterization.

“Toxic Gossip” is better than average, well worth the time. (B+)
 
“Driven To It” is the fifth and final short story in Andrea Frazer’s THE FALCONER FILES--BRIEF CASES anthology published in e-book format in 2012. It’s set between STRICT AND PECULIAR and CHRISTMAS MOURNING and features DI Harry Falconer and his legman DS Davey Carmichael.

Abigail Wentworth enjoys feeling superior to the women with whom she’d been at school, especially the ones who hadn’t lived up to her expectations for a successful life. The only one with whom she’s kept personal contact is Alison Fairweather, who’s her source of information about the others. Driving home from her semi-annual luncheon date with Alison, Abigail knocks down pedestrian James Carling and manages to run him over with both wheels before she gets the car stopped. She claims never to have seen Carling in her life, at the same time claiming to remember nothing from the time she left the hotel until after the accident. First responder PC Merv Green reports to Falconer his observations of Abigail at the scene and his feeling that her story is “off.” Falconer and Carmichael take over to determine if Carling’s death is accident or murder.

Frazer is parsimonious in the number of characters involved in the action, though several others are discussed in the course of gossip between Alison and Abigail. The witnesses to the death are a realistic variety with suitably vague, slightly different memories. The real mystery is why Carling had to die, and Falconer finds out just how much Abigail Wentworth cherishes her social standing.

I found two editing problems. In one place, “it’s” is used as a possessive pronoun; in another PC Merv Green (definitely male) is referred to as WPC Green. Still, it’s a good story. (B)
 
Frances Brody’s DYING IN THE WOOL published in 2009, is a historical mystery set near Leeds following World War I. Its protagonist is 31-year-old Kate Shackleton. Her husband Dr. Gerald Shackleton of the Royal Medical Corps went missing, presumed dead, in April 1918 near Villiers-Bretonneaux, France. Her need to know what happened to him has led to her finding other missing soldiers for grieving wives and families. An acquaintance from the VAD, Tabitha Braithwaite, asks Kate to find her father, Bridgestead mill owner Joshua Braithwaite, who vanished near his home in 1916 following an apparent suicide attempt. As Kate investigates, circumstances around his disappearance suggest that he’d been murdered.

I’m giving up at page 138 of 356. The plot is geologically slow to develop. Though Kate has discovered multiple motives for his disappearance and possible murder, she’s not yet decided if Joshua Braithwaite is even dead. Hints in the Kate-Gerald story line imply hidden troubles in their marriage that Brody may develop later, but I’m not interested enough to wait.

Characters’ behavior and attitudes are anachronistic. Without any information to suggest superior birth, Kate’s parents Superintendent and Mrs. Hook appear to occupy a much higher social class than justified by his job and wealth; Kate smokes in public, owns and drives her own car, lives alone with a housekeeper. Tabitha’s is the first case in which Kate has taken payment for her investigations, and it’s unclear how she’s supported herself. None of the characters are particularly appealing or believable personalities, including Kate herself.

A few bits of atmospheric description of the mill do not create a strong sense of place. Flashbacks are clumsily handled, contributing little to either advancing the plot or to characterization. The title refers to the process in the manufacture of woolen cloth and also to Braithwaite’s profiteering during WWI through his German connections.

DYING IN THE WOOL is the first in a new series, but I’m not tempted to follow up. No grade because not finished.
 
Elizabeth J. Duncan’s UNTIMELY DEATH is part of her Shakespeare in the Catskills mystery series. It was published in 2015. Its protagonist is Charlotte Fairfax, formerly of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-on-Avon, now costume mistress for the Jacobs Grand Hotel Shakespeare Festival held annually in Walkers Ridge, New York.

Young actress Lauren Richmond (aka Leah Patricia Kaplan), cast as Juliet in the season-opening Romeo and Juliet, is tall and beautiful with major attitude. She’s given an overdose of acetaminophen, then later stabbed to death with Charlotte’s fabric scissors, Charlotte’s not a suspect but her intern Aaron Jacobs, nephew of the hotel’s owner Harvey Jacobs, is. Lauren had been part of a group of students who’d bullied Aaron’s cousin to suicide. Lauren’d been involved in an affair with Brian Prentice, British actor whose drinking has marred his career for years. Lady Deborah Prentice (nee Roxborough, daughter of the Earl famous for the Roxborough jewels) isn’t best pleased about the affair. Director Simon Dyer has something in his past that he expects the police to find. But who killed Lauren?

UNTIMELY DEATH is a pleasant, very ordinary cozy mystery. The characters are minimally developed, including Charlotte and her love-interest Ray Nicholson, Walkers Ridge Chief of Police. The number of characters is strictly limited, so there are only five suspects, with three of them only faint possibilities. Most of the actors are not even named but are referred to by their roles. None are believably human.

The plot is very slow moving, almost minute by minute, and feels padded. Foreshadowing isn’t subtle, so an experienced reader should be able to identify the killer long before the climax. The plot turns on a coincidence--of all the jewelers in New York, Charlotte takes a ring found in Lauren’s room to one who just happens to know another jeweler who’d appraised it for Lauren. Charlotte and Aaron’s taking a Trailways bus the 100+ miles to New York City instead of driving or going by train seems improbable.

Walkers Ridge comes through in minor flashes of physical description and atmosphere, but it doesn’t emerge as a distinct place. I don’t think I’ll be revisiting the town. (C)
 
“The Body in the Woods” is the first short story n T. E. Kinsey’s anthology A QUIET LIFE IN THE COUNTRY, published in e-book format in 2014. It’s narrated by Florence Armstrong, maid to Lady Emily Hardcastle, set in summer 1908. After fourteen years in adventuring with Lady Emily and her late husband Sir Roderick Hardcastle, they’ve retired to Littleton Cottrell in Gloucestershire to live quietly. Three days after their arrival, the women discover the hanged body of local man Frank Pickering. He’d argued the night before in the pub with Bill Lovell over “walking out” with Bill’s fiancee Daisy Spratt and with Arthur Tressle, with whom he’d worked at Seddon, Seddon and Seddon in Bristol, shipping agents. When Inspector Sunderland from the Bristol CD arrests Lovell on no evidence except the quarrel, local PC Hancock asks Lady Hardcastle’s help in saving an innocent man.

Flo, or Armstrong as she’s referred to in public, is the more active partner in the duo. They’ve apparently been engaged in espionage of some sort, with Flo still paranoid about leaving a trail across the pasture where they’ve walked and with keeping doors and windows locked. Lady Hardcastle wants a new hat, the current style being very large, specially constructed so conceal a derringer in its crown, but Flo considers it too dangerous. While properly deferential in public, Flo is treated and acts as an equal in private. Neither woman is much described physically, and while there are hints at their back story, Kinsey gives little detail.

Kinsey keeps attention focused on suspects Bill Lovell and Arthur Tressle but foreshadows part of the conclusion, leaving the killer’s identity a neat surprise. While the murder of Frank Pickering is solved, there’s an awkward segue to the next story in the series, bringing back a murderer the Hardcastles had supposedly killed several years before.

Sense of place is not developed. Occasional references to motorcars and the new telephone at the village police station offer little sense of the time period. “The Body in the Woods” is pleasant enough, but it’s not outstanding in any way. (C)
 
Published in e-book format in 2006, Donna M. Lucey’s ARCHIE AND AMELIE: LOVE AND MADNESS IN THE GILDED AGE is the story of John Armstrong “Archie” Chanler, great-great-grandson of John Jacob Astor. He became head of the family on the death in 1879 of his father John Winthrop Chanler, who’d married Maddie Ward, granddaughter of William Backhouse Astor, John Jacob Astor’s second son. Archie was fifteen years old. As the eldest of their children, he inherited the duties of caring for his siblings and supervising their finances. Archie was educated in England at Hillbrow (preparatory) and Rugby; he received Bachelor and Master’s degrees from Columbia University in philosophy and psychology. As one of the leaders of New York Society and one of the richest men in the world, he considered himself a prince and greatly believed in noblesse oblige.

Amelie Rives was the great-great-granddaughter of Colonel Thomas Walker of early Virginia fame. Her family, much reduced financially following the Civil War, still lived at Castle Hill, the manor house Walker’d built. Her godfather was Robert E. Lee. A fragile beauty of infinite charm and charisma, Amelie had already published a well-received story when she and Archie met. He fell in love instantly, but Amelie refused two proposals before accepting him. She made appropriate protestations of love and devotion, but her family’s poverty and the firestorm of negative publicity over her sexually explicit (for the time) The Quick or the Dead? led her to accept Archie’s third proposal. Archie’s family was appalled at his choice, and the marriage was soon in trouble from apparent sexual problems. Margaret, one of Archie’s sisters, suggested the marriage was never consummated. They divorced after eight years, much of them spent apart, then Amelie shocked society again by marrying a Russian, Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, four months later. Her later work was less successful, though she had significant achievements as a playwright following World War I.

About two-thirds of ARCHIE AND AMELIE discusses the events of their marriage, divorce, and subsequent relationship, when Archie continued to support Amelie, the Prince, her family, and Castle Hill. The remaining third deals with Archie’s plans to develop Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, as the site for a model textile factory. The mill, much of the town, and housing for the millworkers were designed by Archie’s good friend, architect Stanford White. Archie used most of his personal fortune as well as monies from his siblings. Disgusted by his marriage and divorce, worried about their financial stakes in Roanoke Rapids, impatient with his neglect of duties as head of the family, in 1898 his siblings, led by brother Winthrop Astor Chanler, tricked Archie into coming to New York, where he was seized and taken before a judge who declared Archie legally insane and incompetent to handle his affairs, incaricerating him at Bloomingdale Asylum for life. It took Archie four years to arrange his escape and many more to be declared sane and legally competent in Virginia. He wasn’t successful in New York until 1919. By the time he died in 1935, he was mentally incompetent, most likely from a bi-polar disorder, and broke. Amelie died in abject poverty in 1945 at Castle Hill.

ARCHIE AND AMELIE is interesting on several levels. One is its depiction of the lives and the social and familial networks within New York City’s “400” at the height of the Gilded Age. Another is the dynamics within the Chanler family, based as it was on the immense Astor fortune and the sense of entitlement it generated. A third is the impact of Amelie’s novel that generated vocal social and moral outrage with its description of a woman’s passion. A fourth deals with spiritualism, so prevalent following the Civil War, and the practice of psychiatry and clinical psychology in the latter nineteenth century. If John Armstrong Chanler with his power and money could be railroaded into an asylum, who was safe? A fifth describes one attempt at a benign industrialization of the despoiled South, a generous attempt to provide jobs, security, and amenities for its workers. It failed, sabotaged by the Committee responsible for overseeing Archie’s affairs.

Lucey annotates her sources but not extensively. She has a large bibliography that’s an appropriate mixture of secondary works, newspaper coverage, and manuscript collections. The organization of the list of private papers is not reader friendly. My biggest complaint is that ARCHIE AND AMELIE seems written from the Chanler point of view. Her presentation of Amelie is negative: “Caught between ambition and propriety, her own talent and the expected life of a conventional wife and mother, Amelie chose her own path. And like a good general, she used the arsenal at her disposal: her beauty and charm. She felt compelled to seduce almost every man she encountered--thus the daisy chain of her flirtations from cousin Tom to Will to editor Aldrich. She used each man to advance her position, to secure her foothold in the literary firmament... She did as she pleased, with her eye always on the prize. The emotional carnage that she wreaked in the process was but the casualty of war.” (72) Neither protagonist comes to life.

ARCHIE AND AMELIE is pretty standard popular history, not bad but nothing special. (C)
 
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