Readingomnivore Reviews

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FAIR TRADE is the 2016 e-book entry in Kate Bedlow’s Darcy and Elizabeth series of variations on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It opens just after the ball at Netherfield and Elizabeth Bennet’s rejection of Reverend William Collins’s proposal.

Caught while out walking by cold November rain, Mr. Bennet falls, breaks his leg, and lies in the open for some hours before found by Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr. Bennet contracts pneumonia and dies unexpectedly. Mr. Collins, indignant at Elizabeth’s rejection, gives the Bennet women five weeks to vacate Longbourn, forcing them into poverty, to livie with Uncle and Aunt Phillips in Meryton. Jane goes to live with her widowed Aunt Gardiner as her companion and governess to the Gardiner children. Determined to remove Elizabeth from Darcy’s consideration, Caroline Bingley buys the premises of Meryton’s recently closed coffeehouse, secretly offering Elizabeth Bennet a partnership to run it, moving her into the social abyss of TRADE. Darcy is still fighting his feelings for Elizabeth, while she’s acutely aware of the decline in social status forced by poverty. With covert help from Darcy via Aunt Gardiner, the Bennet women open Beau Bon-Bon with amazing success based on Lydia’s decorating skills and handling of the front of the house, Kitty’s delicious baking, and Mary’s dramatic reading of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk for the coffee drinkers; Elizabeth handles the accounting and everything else as general factotum. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, she rejects him, and he writes the letter defining his relationship with Wickham. Meanwhile, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam and Colonel Carleton Quartermaine, nephew of Sir Lewis de Bourgh, are in Meryton to look for a French spy connected with the militia regiment whose officers, including George Wickham, frequent Beau Bon-Bon. Attempted rape, robbery, two attempted murders, and a justifiable homicide ensue before the happily ever after.

The plot variant is an interesting one, though the widened gap in social class between Darcy and Elizabeth seems reflective of the 2005 film adaptation that contrasts Pemberley (Chatsworth) with pig-in-the-house Longbourn. Angst is pretty evenly distributed, but almost all the physical action of the plot is confined to the last few chapters. The playing out of the spy storyline is improbable, as is the overwhelming, instant success of Beau Bon-Bon with its mixing of Meryton’s Society women with the female shopkeepers. The falling action and epilogue drag on too long to pair off all the Bennet girls and even Caroline Bingley appropriately.

Characters are significantly changed, most notably Darcy. He’s even more pompous and judgmental in the opening sections, though he does secretly act almost as s wizard godfather out of love for Elizabeth, and his changes in attitude come about much too quickly to be believable. The scene of his and Quartermaine’s joint proposals to Elizabeth and Mary Bennet is way over the top--Jane Austen must have rotated in her grave. Elizabeth constantly changes her mind about what she feels about Darcy and Wiceckham and her reduced status. Her belief in financial independence as the only route to women having some degree of autonomy is modern. Georgiana is more mature and confident socially. Colonel Fitzwilliam as spy-catcher is unlikely to tell Elizabeth fully and frankly what he’s doing in Meryton. Caroline Bingley’s recognition of the error of her ways is not convincing. Bedlow’s Wickham is even more dastardly than Austen’s, and it’s satisfying to see him get what he has coming, especially from an unlikely source.

FAIR TRADE is more twenty-first century than 1813. (B-/C+)

 

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DOING ITi AT THE DIXIE DEW is the first book in Ruth Moose’s new cozy mystery series featuring Beth McKenzie Henry. It was published in 2014.

Beth McKenzie Henry returned home to Littleboro, North Carolina, after Mama Alice, the grandmother who’d reared her, fell down her basement steps and died some six months later. Her medical care used up everything except the house in which Beth grew up, which Beth turns into the Dixie Dew Bed-and-Breakfast. She’s ably supported by cook, housekeeper, and friend Ida Plum Duckett and by restorationist, general factotum, and friend Scott Smith. Wealthy, elderly ex-patriate Lavinia Lovingood returns to Littleboro, but her first night at the Dixie Dew is her last. Beth finds her dead in her room the next morning. Valuable jewelry is missing, making Beth the Chief of Police Oscar DelGardo’s major suspect when he discovers Ms. Lovingood’s death resulted from poisoning with water hemlock. Then someone strangles to death at the altar with one of her silk teddies Father Roderick, the priest at St. Ann’s Catholic Church with whom Ms. Lovingood had lunched. Beth finds his body, reinforcing DelGardo’s suspicions. Beth is convinced the only way the truth will emerge is if she finds it.

The plot is unnecessarily convoluted, and the reason for involving Beth and the Dixie Dew is implausible. As standard in many cozies, the police seem incompetent and doing nothing through most of the story, though the conclusion shows DelGardo did good investigative work. The contrast is too great to be believable.

Beth McKenzie Henry is a generic cozy heroine. She’s just come out of a bad relationship, trying for a new start in life by returning to her hometown roots and beginning the bed-and-breakfast / tearoom that she and Mama Alice had dreamed about. She’s attracted to Scott Smith, and they become lovers. (Any unmarried heroine under fifty years old must have a romantic interest in the cozy genre.) Everything is seen through her eyes, but her vision isn’t very accurate about people and their motives. She pulls major TSTL stunts that include failing to report to the police two serious attempts on her life, nearly getting her friend Malinda killed while they’re looking for water hemlock, and later accepting an invitation to tea with a woman she knows is involved in Ms. Lovingood’s death. In all her poking about, she’s ignorant of requirements of chain of evidence and of its admissibility. I don’t admire stupid.

Many characters are unnecessary to the basic story line, with little development beyond names. Scott Smith is familiar romance hero. As obligatory in cozies set in small Southern towns, most locals range from slightly weird to outright bonkers with deep, festering grievances from the past.

I confess my main attraction to this book grew out of the title. DOING IT AT THE DIXIE DEW reminds me of the numerous “Dew Drop Inns” (usually beer halls or juke joints) with which the South is blessed. Moose creates the ambiance of the South through using a Southern storytelling voice to build both atmosphere and character. Beth, however, does not use overly-Southern speech patterns. (Bless her heart, she lived Up North for fifteen years before coming home to Littleboro.) Her explanation of “tacky” is authentic: “...she was honoring herself. Tacky. Mama Alice would have hooted. ‘Tacky’ was giving yourself a bridal shower. ‘Tacky’ was sending printed thank-you notes for gifts instead of hand-written monogrammed ones. So [she] was being about as tacky as tacky could get.” (193)

Small town Southern attitudes also are authentic. “Ida Plum had gone to Juanita’s Beauty Shop, That’s where you got the news, found out what was going on in town. The Littleboro Messenger [aka “The Mess”] came out every Wednesday, had only the old news...things everybody already knew, just had it confirmed. Everybody felt better to see it spelled out there in black and white. That made it official. Speeding tickets, DUIs, pocketbook thefts, bad checks, grass fires, deaths and weddings.” (51)

DOING IT AT THE DIXIE DEW has many of the problems common to first books in cozy series, but its sense of place encourages me to try the second book. (B-/C+)

 

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Cheryl Bolen’s THE LIBERATION OF MISS DE BOURGH is the third in her novella sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

Convinced that her daughter Anne has mere weeks to live, Lady Catherine de Bourgh buys the mortgage on the London home of Charles St. John, Earl of Seaton. Seaton’s strapped for money because of his late father’s losses on the Exchange and his gambling debts, and he has four e younger sisters to support and to dower. He despises Lady Catherine, but his financial circumstances, as well as his compassion for the dying Anne, force him to agree to her terms--marry Anne in exchange for the mortgage and for eventual inheritance of Rosings and all the de Bourgh wealth. Seaton stands up to Lady Catherine by refusing to live after marriage at Rosings, because he’s convinced that Anne will be healthier in the more southerly climate at Margrove Manor and happier away from her dominating mother. They are married; his tender care builds both Anne’s spirits and her physical strength. She soon realizes she loves Seaton, and he’s falling in love without realizing it when Anne discovers that, not only had Lady Catherine engineered the wedding with her assurances of Anne’s impending death, but that Seaton had been in love with another woman for years. Anne decides to give him a divorce, but he convinces her that his only love (besides his thoroughbred stallions) is his wife. And they lived happily ever after.

As many adaptations and sequels to Pride and Prejudice as I’ve read, for the first time I see Lady Catherine as guilty of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, using Anne’s health to portray herself as the loving caregiver. Nothing more specific than asthma and persistent lack of appetite is ever mentioned, despite Anne’s examination by a leading London physician used to pandering to aristocratic dictates. It is hard to believe that Seaton enters the marriage with such vague knowledge of Anne’s health issues. Within four days of her arrival at Margrove Manor, Anne’s eating more and greatly expanding her physical activities to include riding the estate in an open carriage, visiting the stables, supervising the redecoration of the manor house, and traveling up to London to begin refurbishing the town house. Apparently all much wrong with Anne is weakness from inactivity, psychological bullying from her mother, and malnutrition! Even so, her miraculous recovery happens too quickly to be believable.

Several other things bother me. Lady Catherine asserts to Seaton that she’d never considered any man below an aristocrat as a husband for Anne, when she’d hounded Fitzwilliam Darcy for years with his “engagement” to Anne. As the daughter of an earl, she considers herself superior to the rest of the world, but she married Sir Lewis de Bourgh, a wealthy banker but (gasp!) by definition a man in trade. This makes her criticism of Elizabeth Bennet’s “low connections” with trade more hypocritical. According to Lady Catherine, Anne had never had a London Season, but Anne later tells Seaton she’d seen him six years before at Lady Jersey’s ball where the sight of him swept her and “the other debutantes” off their feet. At the stables while discussing Transcendent, Seaton’s Derby-winning stallion, Anne refers to “rarefied Triple Crown winners,” an anachronism since the English Triple Crown (Guinness Stakes, Epsom Derby, St. Leger Stakes) wasn’t created until 1809. The first English Triple Crown winner was the thoroughbred West Australian in 1853.

The only major character Bolen creates is the Earl of Seaton, who’d been a classmate of Darcy’s at Oxford. Seaton from his introduction is remarkably similar to Austen’s reformed Darcy; he needs only to realize that he loves Ann, even though he married her for her fortune. He’s too good to be true. Characters from earlier books--the Darcys, the Farringtons, the Collinses--are included but serve no essential function to the plot. The plot feels like it is conducted in passive voice. It’s totally predictable.

If inconsistencies don’t bother you, you’ll probably enjoy THE LIBERATION OF MISS DE BOURGH. They bother me. (C)

 

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“I’LL GET YOU!” DRUGS, LIES, AND THE TERRORIZING OF A PTA MOM by Sam Rule and Kelli Peters is the story of the almost six-year torment of Kelli Peters and her family by Jill and Kent Easter of Irvine, California. It was published in 2016 in print and e-book editions.

The story began 17 February 2010 when Kelli Peters, lead volunteer for the after school program at Plaza Vista Elementary School, had a minor (she thought) misunderstanding with Jill Easter. Easter was upset because her son Layton had not been on time at the spot where she’d expected him to be for pickup; she was upset that he’d been brought to the front of the school by the tennis coach in whose class he’d been. She tried to get Kelli to support her suspicions that something was wrong. When Kelli wouldn’t, Easter mounted a campaign that included lies, threats, accusations of Kelli’s abusing children and of the tennis coach’s molesting her son, attempts to get Kelli fired, stalking, slander and libel, filing false lawsuits, lying to obtain a restraining order against Kelli, and terrorizing the Peters family. Easter’s escalating charges were investigated over the course of a year, with no evidence ever showing a factual basis for Easter’s allegations; Kelli had the support of the school administrators, the director of the after school program, and the school system, all of whom urged her to remain at Plaza Vista where she had been recognized as an outstanding parent volunteer for consecutive years 2007-2011 and president of the PTA. Was Jill Easter jealous?

Kent and Jill Easter stepped up the campaign against her by planting a large bag of marijuana, two baggies of pills, and a pipe in her car at school on 17 February 2011, then turning her in to the Irvine police. The police arrived in force, questioned Kelli and detained her in front of parents, teachers, and children, with the seized drugs prominently displayed on top of her car. She was not, however, arrested. The Easters backed off temporarily, but it took the police another year to build a case against them, a year in which the Peters family all developed psychological disorders from the stress, daughter Sydnie lost all her friends and lived in fear of kidnapping, and Bill Peters could not work and nearly died. After the Easters were arrested, Jill pled guilty and was sentenced to four months in jail. Kent Easter went to trial twice, the first ending in a mistrial because one juror refused to find him guilty on a felony charge--she thought him guilty only of a misdemeanor, the second finding him guilty. He served six months in jail. Kelli went through it all a third time in the civil suit against the Easters for damages. The Peters family was awarded a judgment for $5.7 million, little of which they are apt to collect.

I had no knowledge of this story until I saw Kelli Peters’s interview on Dr. Phil. I wasn’t impressed much with Kelli Peters but was curious about what caused the Easters to so overreact to a small misunderstanding.

“I’LL GET YOU!” is totally Kelli’s point of view, much of it literally her direct quotation. Its tone is conversational and repetitiv”e. Each time the Easters do something else, she goes through the same litany of shock, disbelief, weeping, worry about effect on family, worry about personal safety of family and self, worry about what people will think, worry about why the Easters are doing this to her. I don’t mock Kelli’s feelings or doubt the damages to her and her family, but I do criticize using them to the point that they lose their force. The book feels padded. A list of individuals would be helpful. There are neither notes nor bibliography.

Even worse, ‘I’LL GET YOU!” does not answer my question about the Easters’ motive. Police investigation found the reason Jill had been late picking up Layton was an afternoon tryst with a firefighter with whom she had been involved in a two-year affair. She was known about Plaza Vista as the ice queen, with a need to be the center of attention, somehow “off.” She was well-educated (Bachelor’s and law degree from Berkeley), from wealthy parents; she lived in a million-dollar home and enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. Rule implies that Jill tried to develop a cover story for her lateness and, when Kelli refused to go along, decided to punish her. As nothing official happened to Kelli, her fury drove the situation out of her rational control.

Why did Kent Easter became an active participant in the plot against Kelli? He was also well-educated (Stanford under-grad, UCLA law school), annually making $500,00+ as the securities litigation partner at one of the top law firms in Orange County. In both his criminal trials and the civil suit, he presented as a browbeaten, cuckold husband who’d been led astray by his wife’s lies. In fact, he engaged in stalking and terrorizing Kelli, and it was he who made the telephone call turning her in to the police.

Clearly the Easters considered themselves superior to others, above the restrictions that bind ordinary people, entitled. They never thought they could be charged, tried, sentenced to prison, or held responsible for the damages done to the Peters family. Hubris flourishes in Orange County. (D)

 

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FIXIN’ TO DIE is Tonya Kappes’s cozy mystery set in fictional Cottonwood, Kentucky, some 45 miles west of Lexington, by her statement based on Nicholasville. It was published in free or inexpensive e-book format in 2016.

Sheriff Kenni Lowry followed in office her grandfather Sheriff Sims (“Poppa”), but in two years she’s faced no significant crime until Toots Buford calls in the body of her boss Dr. Ronald Walton. Walton had been stabbed multiple times, most of them postmortem and shallow; two bite marks on the body reveal that the assailant had a partial dental plate. A symbol drawn on Walton’s wrist is a Chinese character meaning “family;” the same symbol is spray painted on the carpet at White’s Jewelry store, robbed the same morning as the murder. With two major connected crimes and her only permanent deputy newly retired, Kenni calls in Cottonwood jailer Wyatt Granger and Kentucky State Police Reserve officer Finn Vincent to assist. She gets unexpected help when Poppa’s ghost arrives to help, telling Kenni he’s served as a guardian angel over Cottonwood to prevent crime. Working together, they uncover a convoluted motive and secrets going back many years.

The plot in FIXIN’ TO DIE does not play fair because there’s little indication for the killer’s having a motive. Kappes emphasizes the number one suspect so much that it serves as reverse psychology. There’s little sense of urgency or high pressure for a solution. The supernatural element serves mainly to allow Kenni to circumvent using subpoenas and warrants.

Characters are generic. Kappes does not give Kenni’s age, but she must be at least late twenties; after academy, she’d worked campus security, and she’s two years into her elected term, but her doubts and fears befit a much younger, inexperienced officer. She’s estranged from her parents over her career choice, yet she allows their opinions greatly to influence her decisions. She relies too much on Wyatt and Finn. Her following procedures for creating proper chain of evidence is sketchy at best. She responds to Finn like a simpering romance heroine, while Finn is standard stud-ly hero. As often the case in first-in-series books, the number of characters exceeds the number necessary; few are developed beyond cliches.

The title FIXIN’ TO DIE and Kappes’s introductory remarks encouraged me to believe this would be a genuine Southern story. I’m not so sure about that. Kappes occasionally uses Southern terms like ‘fixin’”, but she also uses terms that don’t fit. I lived in Berea, then Lexington, Kentucky, from August 1961 through May 1970, and I never heard the slave-built dry stone fences that crisscross the Bluegrass referred to as “slave walls;” they were / are “slave fences.” “Hankering” does not mean an idea or concept; it is a significant wish or desire for something, as “I have a hankering for homemade ice cream.” None of the Cottonwood characters display Southern speech patterns. There’s little sense of physical place.

FIXIN’ TO DIE is one of the books that makes me wonder if I read the same text as the four- and five-star reviewers. (D)

 

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NEVER SO BEWITCHED is one of the novellas published in Cassandra B. Leigh’s anthology of fan fiction based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, IT HAPPENED AT NETHERFIELD PARK. The collection was published in e-book format in 2016.

Jane Bennet lies ill at Netherfield Park, attended by sister Elizabeth, still unimpressed with Fitzwilliam Darcy and his lack of manners at the Meryton assembly. Unable to sleep, Darcy’s in the library late at night when Elizabeth enters in night attire to find a book. Darcy apologizes for his boorish behavior, Elizabeth forgives him, and they agree to a courtship. Caroline Bingley confronts them, incensed that Darcy’s choosing Elizabeth. When Darcy asks Mr. Bennet’s permission to court Elizabeth, Mr. Bennet is furious but agrees to a one-month courtship to be followed immediately by the banns and marriage. During this time, Charles Bingley and Jane Bennet become engaged. George Wickham comes to Meryton with the militia, and Darcy makes public all his dastardly deeds, including full details of his attempted elopement with Georgiana Darcy. Colonel Forster warns the Meryton merchants about allowing Wickham credit, and Mr. Bennet bars all militia officers from Longbourn. William Collins arrives to marry one of the Bennet girls and, since the older two are already engaged, settles on Mary, who refuses a lifetime of reverence for his esteemed patroness. He writes to Lady Catherine of Darcy’s betrothal to Eliizabeth, so Lady Catherine descends on Longbourn and Netherfield to forbid the wedding, to be reconciled by a dream of her sister Anne Darcy. Caroline Bingley again attempts to compromise Darcy, only to be foiled by Lady Catherine. And eventually everyone is suitably paired off.

There’s not much change in the premises of the original, and what there is causes few problems. Bingley grows a backbone and sends Caroline back to London. Lady Catherine pitches only one hissy fit before the dream convinces her that Anne Darcy chose Elizabeth Bennet to be Darcy’s wife. The last section of the novella consists of engagement announcements, banns called, wedding notices, and society notes that cover Darcy and Elizabeth; Bingley and Jane; Anne de Bourgh and Judge Andrew Branson; Mary Bennett and Lieutenant Preston Spencer, later Earl of Spencer; William Collins and Charlotte Lucas; and Caroline Bingley and Nicholas Howell, haberdasher of London. Too much information that has little to add to the story. There’s no sense of emotion or suspense

What I object to most is the abruptness with which people change from their canonical personalities. Darcy goes from opposition to Elizabeth’s unsuitable family to amused tolerance literally overnight. There’s no evidence except his requesting the courtship that any of his arrogance has passed. Likewise, Elizabeth has only to hear his apology to fall into his arms and accept him. It’s unbelievable that Lady Catherine gives up her obsession about Darcy’s engagement to Anne simply because she’d dreamt Anne Darcy’s approval. Mr. Bennet is a man of action and authority.

NEVER SO BEWITCHED is bland as cold unseasoned white rice. (D)

 

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RONDEAU is the second novella in Cassandra B. Leigh’s IT HAPPENED AT NETHERFIELD PARK anthology of Jane Austen fan fiction based on Pride and Prejudice. It was published in free or inexpensive e-book format in 2016.

Leigh’s only significant change in the original plot structure has Fitzwilliam Darcy telling Mr. Thomas Bennet the past character and actions of George Wickham, including his intended elopement with Georgiana Darcy, as soon as Wickham appears in Meryton. At the same time, Darcy tells Mr. Bennet of his changed feelings and his intentions toward Elizabeth. Elizabeth meets Wickham at Aunt Phillips’s dinner for the militia officers and is much moved by his story of mistreatment by Darcy. Mr. Bennet forbids his daughters to associate with Wickham in any way but neglects to tell them why, thus increasing Elizabeth’s resentment of Darcy for ruining Wickham financially and socially. By the time of the Netherfield ball, Darcy and Elizabeth apologize and recognize the error of their previous ways. At the ball, Darcy declares his love and proposes; Elizabeth responds appropriately and accepts.

Action in the story occurs between Tuesday, 19 November 1811, through Wednesday, 27 November, 1811, the morning after the ball. William Collins insists on proposing to Elizabeth, then refuses to believe her already engaged. It’s satisfying to see Darcy tell him off. However, the major change both protagonists need to undergo makes this short time implausible. It’s just too quick, even if we accept Darcy’s willingness to share Wickham’s whole connection with his family as proof of his altered attitude. Leigh does not show his struggle to overcome the stigma of Elizabeth’s low family. Elizabeth’s instant acceptance of Darcy’s apology and willingness for courtship doesn’t ring true because there’s been no evidence of any previous attraction to him; she’s thought of him with resentment through most of Monday, 25 November, when she finally learns the full story. Darcy and Elizabeth haven’t even seen each other between Tuesday and Monday because of days of pouring rain prevent visiting. It’s too hurried.

There’s little dramatic action, most of the story internal musing by Elizabeth and Darcy, much of it over Wickham and not themselves or their feelings. Caroline Bingley (whom Georgiana calls Miss Spider) is no serious threat, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh does not appear to forbid the engagement. Wickham takes off for London before the ball, not to reappear. Boring!

I really don’t see the point of RONDEAU. (D)

 

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Cassandra B. Leigh’s ERROR IN JUDGMENT is the third novella in her IT HAPPENED AT NETHERFIELD PARK anthology based on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

The change in premise from the original in ERROR IN JUDGMENT consists of a change of potential partners. At the assembly in Meryton, Fitzwilliam Darcy meets and is attracted to Jane Bennet’s serene beauty, while Charles Bingley is taken with the wit and liveliness of Jane’s younger sister Elizabeth. This swap in roles persists through the ball, though Jane’s attendance and care for Elizabeth while she’s ill at Netherfield convince each man that he’s been paying attention to the wrong sister. In the meantime, George Wickham shows up in the militia in Meryton, and Darcy explains to Mr. Bennet Wickham’s character and history. Elizabeth is not taken in by Wickham’s stories, recognizing how improper is his disclosure of them on such short acquaintance. Caroline pretends friendship and support of Elizabeth in her relationship with Bingley while cutting at Jane at every opportunity. By the end of the evening of the Netherfield Ball, the men have established their preference for the Bennet girls. Darcy tells Jane and Binkley tells Elizabeth that they will only be friends, freeing each other to approach the woman he loves; before the Bennets leave, Jane and Elizabeth have each agreed to courtship by her canonical lover. When Caroline’s machinations keep Bingley and Darcy in London over Christmas, they become the subject of gossip, so that Mr. Bennet temporarily denies permission for courtship, but he’s soon reconciled. Lady Catherine de Bourgh arrives at Longbourn to forbid the engagement, to have Mrs. Bennet criticize her manners and attitude; Darcy and Georgiana cut Caroline socially, with Charles exiling her to the North to live with an old maiden aunt.

Most of the change involves characters. Mr. Bennet acts expeditiously to ban s Wickham, forbids the girls to go outside unchaperoned even on the grounds of Longbourn, and demands that Kitty and Lydia improve their behavior and education. Mrs. Bennet refuses to be overawed by Lady Catherine and defends her older daughters. Bingley has a spine after all and punishes Caroline. His and Darcy’s reversal of choice of wife is paradoxically too fast and too slow. The attraction and the change occur within a month of their meeting, between the assembly at Meryton and the ball at Netherfield, quick to be believable as a basis for marriage; with little physical action, it drags on. A frank conversation any time after Jane and Elizabeth’s stay at Netherfield would have cleared up the misunderstanding; a letter to Longbourn from London would have prevented the gossip. Shifting point of view through the full range of characters adds little development.

Jane Bennet is the daughter who accepts George Wickham’s version of his history with Darcy, changing her mind about him only when Georgiana’s elopement is disclosed. The Bingley sisters refer to her as a smiling simpleton; she’s naive beyond her years. Elizabeth is more sarcastic and consciously impertinent than in the original.

About the only characters who remain unchanged are Lady Catherine, Caroline, and William Collins. They stay themselves, only more so, especially Collins. His and Charlotte’s wedding goes as smoothly as might be expected. It and the men’s clever use of Mrs. Phillips to spread gossip are the high points of this variant.

The story line in ERROR IN JUDGMENT is so unchanged that it encourages skimming and skipping sections. (C)

 

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Graham Phillips’s title THE LOST TOMB OF KING ARTHUR: THE SEARCH FOR CAMELOT AND THE ISLE OF AVALON says it all about its subject matter. It was published in print and e-book format in 2016. Graham Phillips has written extensively on what may be called “alternative history” topics, including the search for the Holy Grail, the Knights Templar, the Ark of the Covenant, the hidden histories of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, and King Arthur. In THE LOST TOMB OF KING ARTHUR, Phillips leads the reader through the process by which he believes he has identified the man whose historic exploits form the basis for the stories of King Arthur, some of his family history, and his actual burial place.

Arthur’s historic time is the late fifth and early sixth centuries, the height of his power circa 490-520 AD. The Roman withdrawal from Britain in 410 left no organized central government; the Britons quickly devolved into small kingdoms based on pre-Roman tribal lands and faced Germanic invaders pushed west by the great migrations of peoples forced out of central Europe. Yet in the 490s, the Britons rallied and fought the Anglo-Saxons to a standstill that lasted a full generation. King Arthur is credited with being the leader of the Britons. Source materials for this period are scant, most of them written down only centuries after the events they describe. All refer to earlier works that no longer survive as their sources. Physical details as given in the medieval romances, the most famous of which is Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, are anachronistic.

Phillips opens with his reasons for discounting Cadbury and Tintagel as sites for Camelot and Glastonbury as the burial place of Arthur and Guinevere. (The monks needed to raise money to rebuild the Abbey following a disastrous fire in 1184 when, in 1191, they claimed to have found a coffin bearing two skeletons, identified on a lead cross as the bodies of Arthur and Guinevere. Holy relics would increase the number of pilgrims and thus Abbey revenue. They’d earlier claimed to have found bones of St. Patrick, which the Irish Church successfully challenged, then those of St. Dunstan.) Phillips moves through his search in the stories of King Arthur, searching for references to the locations of Camelot and Avalon, the sword in the stone, the votive offering to the Lady in the Lake of Excalibar, and to references to the major characters in the stories: Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s father; Merlin; Morgan le Fey; the three queens who carry him to Avalon for healing; Modred, the nephew who mortally wounded him in battle.

Phillips is careful to trace each element of the stories through the earliest written accounts, many of them now-lost Welsh poems and chronicles, as well as archaeological finds. He uses them to reconstruct the events and people of Arthur’s time, a literary detective story. He concludes that Merlin is based on Ambrosius Aurelius, son of a Roman consul; Uther Pendragon on Enniaun, ruler of the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd; Modred on Maglocunus, Enniaun’s grandson and nephew of Owain Ddantgwyn, who is the historic war leader and eventual ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Powys known as “The Arth” (the bear, from his personal epithet/ animal spirit). Camelot is Viroconium, at the time the leading city in Britain and administrative center of Powys. Phillips does not locate Avalon (he doesn’t mention his earlier book Merlin and the Discovery of Avalon in the New World). He concludes that Owain was killed in battle near Baschurch, at a ford where the Roman road to Viroconium crosses a tributary of the River Severn, at “Bassa’s Churches,” family burial site for the kings of Powys, The place where Phillips believes Owain/Arthur’s grave will be found has not been excavated or even undergone geophysical survey, so he has not yet disclosed its exact location to protect it from unauthorized digging and possble looting. He considers the site too important to put at risk.

Though I read some of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (finished AD 731) and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (AD 1136)--two of the most important sources for the stories about Arthur--in a college historiography class, I don’t pretend to know enough about Dark Age literature and history to pronounce on the accuracy of Phillips’s identifications. They seem to hang together, yet with the scarcity of sources and their use of allusion and metaphor, it would be easy for him to misinterpret a statement and thus be led him to false conclusions. Probably many of the figures of Arthurian legend were based on historic men of the Dark Ages. After all, the Hittite archives support the historicity of a war between Troy and the Achaeans--Greeks; Agamemnon’s father Atreus and Paris are identified as leaders. The Iliad reports war traditionally dated to BC 1250, with the poem composed orally circa 750, and written down circa 550. Transmission of historic information over long periods by bards--also a feature of the Welsh and the Scandinavians--was possible.

Phillips leads the reader through his research and thought processes step by step; his writing style is accessible. He includes a chronology of events from 43 AD (Roman conquest of Britain) through 1603 (death of Elizabeth I); endnotes mostly to Dark Age materials; an extensive bibliography that includes many secondary sources; and photographs and maps that are unusually legible for Kindle editions. Fans of literary research or alternative history will probably enjoy THE LOST TOMB OF KING ARTHUR. I did. (A-)

 

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BOY MADE OF DAWN is the second book in R. Allen Chappell’s Navajo Nation mystery series published in 2013 in e-book format. Its protagonist is Charlie Yazzie, an attorney working for the Navajo Nation Legal Services.

The story in BOY MADE OF DAWN occurs some months after the events of NAVAJO AUTUMN, but the Greyhorse murder / corruption case is still pending trial. Charlie, his good friend Thomas Begay, and Begay’s former lover Sally Klee are the most important witnesses. When Charlie is drawn into the search for a young boy who turns out to be Begay and Sally’s son Caleb, he discovers that Sally has gone missing with daughter Ida. He’s convinced that the situation comes from an attempt to prevent their testimony by whatever means are necessary.

The plot in BOY MADE OF DAWN is frustrating. For one thing, characterization and foreshadowing telegraph the involvement of new individuals, reducing suspense. Having one of the conspirators murder his parents years before is gratuitous. In addition, its structure places the climax of the action so early that the resolution is a major letdown. Most annoying is the failure to bring the main storyline to closure despite the three murders, two of them right villains and the third one of the witnesses. The Grand Jury indicts two more tribal councillors, but it’s public knowledge that the Grand Jury holds several secret indictments. The trial is months away. Anyone want to bet on another continuation of the Greyhorse storylne?

Chappell has not continued much development of his main characters Charlie Yazzie and Thomas Begay. Begay has completely turned his life around, now happily living with weaver Lucy Tallwoman, sober, gainfully employed, ready to father Caleb and Ida. Apparently being accused of murder and the love of a good woman are major motivation for getting clean. Charlie remains naive beyond his years, going into dangerous situations unarmed, not anticipating trouble because he thinks someone incapable of violence. He seems as much concerned about his future with Sue Hanagarni as with the crimes. The most interesting character in BOY MADE OF DAWN is the violent, probably psychopathic Hiram Bucks, who’s bad to the bone but struggling to prevent the foreclosure on family lands inherited from his grandfather. I like complex characters who are mixtures of good and evil, as are most of us.

Setting is the strongest element in BOY MADE OF DAWN. Chappell uses bits of history to good effect. “This seemed a fine country to the two Dine. Wooded draws coursed through high meadows, sprinkled with ground-watered swales, gradually falling away to the dark canyons of federal land. The people in this country raised pinto beans and the hard, red winter wheat so favored by the Mormons. They were dry land farmers, for the most part. The area had become quite famous for its beans. The land was well suited for it. The Anasazi farmed corn and beans here for more than a thousand years. The ruins of their ceaseless building dotted the countryside in profusion, causing modern farmers to plow around them to avoid the buried rock walls. Nearly every bean field had a sagebrush-covered mound, hiding what used to be a thriving little complex. It was generally thought the population was actually greater in those times than it was now.” (47)

I don’t know if I’ll read more of this series. The writing does not seem to be improving, but there’s such good potential in setting and characters that I hate to give up. BOY MADE OF DAWN (C)

 

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HIDING THE PAST is the first book in Nathan Dylan Goodwin’s Forensic Genealogist series featuring Morton Farrier. It was published in 2013 in e-book format.

Morton Farrier is the forensic genealogist hired by Peter Coldrick to find the identity of his father James Coldrick; Peter’s mother had died in a house fire in 1987 just as she began researching her husband’s family. The next day after meeting Morton, Peter Coldrick is dead of a shotgun wound to the head, an apparent suicide. Because he’s already been paid £50,000 and because Soraya Buxton, mother of Peter’s son Finlay Coldrick, asks him to continue, Morton decides to solve the genealogical puzzle. He learns that James Coldrick had been brought up in the St George’s Children’s Home, and he immediately discovers that the 1944 admissions register that would show James’s parentage is missing from the East Sussex Arcives.. The children’s home had been largely the creation of the aristocratic Windsor-Sackville family with whom James Coldrick seems linked, a connection that may explain Coldrick’s leaving an estate of £780,000 after working all his life as a farm laborer. During his investigation, Morton is robbed of his research materials, his house explodes after being packed with Semtex, he’s hit on the head, and he’s run off the road and left for dead. He’s broken into the grounds at the Windsor-Sackville estate of Charingsby, into the home of their henchman Daniel Duke, and into Charingsby twice to search for information; he finds police conspiracy with the Windsor-Sackvilles at least since 1987.

I enjoy mysteries with a genealogical premise, but I don’t understand why in most books using this background, the genealogist must needs be an adoptee. Morton Farrier has been emotionally stunted since his father told him for the first time the day after his mother’s death, when he was sixteen years old, that he was adopted. He’s isolated himself from his father and from his “miracle” brother Jeremy, born to his parents several years after his adoption. He’s consumed with angst, his feelings in even more turmoil because Jeremy deploys to Afghanistan (except it’s really Cyprus) and because his father has a heart attack requiring triple bypass surgery. Morton is not an attractive personality; he’s supercilious toward his live-in lover, police officer Juliette Meade, and toward clients. “It all felt a bit...the kind of surmises dreamed up by amateur genealogists determined to find that elusive link to royalty. He’d lost count now of the number of clients who claimed to be descendants of a mistress of Henry VIII, as if that meant anything. Congratulations, your twenty times great grandfather was an adulterous rogue and your twenty times great grandmother was a harlot. You must feel so honoured to have such blue blood running through your veins.” (99-100) Use of limited third person point of view shows us Morton’s reactions and attitudes clearly.

The book is short but reads long, at least in part because little foreshadowing involves one of the principals involved in the conspiracy / coverup of a series of murders from 1944 to the death of Peter Coldrick. Goodwin does not always promptly share Morton’s discoveries with the reader. After such leisurely rising action, the resolution seems rushed. Little is made of the setting and atmosphere.

HIDING THE PAST appeals enough that I’ll read the second book, at least. (B+)

 

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OF FORTUNE’S REVERSAL is Don Jacobson’s novella variant of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, published in e-book format in 2016.

In OF FORTUNE’S REVERSAL, the fundamental change is the death of Thomas Bennet the week after the Bingley oarty arrives at Netherfield. The Bennet girls have no chance to develop a relationship with Bingley or Darcy before they are evicted from Longbourn by Mr. Collins and his odious wife Harriet three weeks after Mr. Bennet dies. Mrs. Bennet takes a cottage in Meryton near Aunt and Uncle Phillips, keeping Kitty and Lydia with her. Mary, Jane, and Elizabeth go to the Gardiners in Gracechurch Street. Mary soon marries First Officer Keith from a ship of Uncle Gardiner’s merchant fleet, soon promoted to Captain; they move to Bristol. Jane becomes the paid companion of an elderly woman in Durham; Elizabeth becomes governess to the children of a canon at Winchester Cathedral. Mrs. Bennet adopts much stricter behavior from Kitty and Lydia, following six months of formal mourning sending each to a select seminary to be educated and “finished.” In Cornwall after graduation, Lydia meets and marries local copper mine owner Jeremy Poldark. Kitty, educated at Sanditon, becomes best friends with Lady Emily Cecil, who helps her become governess to her seven-year-old niece Margaret. Marriage seems an impossibility for the three older Bennet girls.

On Guy Fawkes Day, Kitty walks in Hyde Park with Margaret when a ruffian tries to kidnap Margaret. Kitty attacks him and manages to free the little girl, but she is stomped and kicked in the head, suffering a broken left arm, broken ribs, broken nose, permanently destroyed left eye, and a depressed skull fracture. General Sir Richard Fitzwilliam, national hero following Waterloo and friend of Margaret’s parents Lord Thomas and Lady Mary Cecil, hears and sees the attack, shoots Kitty’s assailant, and organizes her rescue. Dr. Angus Campbell, former Army physician, and Mr. Stephen Maturin, former Royal Navy surgeon, use techniques learned in the war to save Kitty’s life. Fitzwilliam admires the selflessness and courage Kitty exhibits and comes, even before she awakens from coma, to want her in marriage. £50,000 prize money following Waterloo means that he can now afford to marry for love. Kitty is pleased and comforted by his presence and his acceptance of her injuries. After self-doubt on both sides and not-so-subtle pushes from Lady Mary, Lydia, and Mrs. Bennet, Fitzwilliam proposes and is accepted. After their marriage, Lady Kitty (NOT to be called Lady Catherine) arranges a house party that includes her two older sisters, Charles Bingley, and Fitzeilliam Darcy.

Jane, Elizabeth, and Mary Bennet, Charles Bingley, and Darcy are referred to but have no major roles. Lydia and Kitty, both greatly improved by their schooling, mature into strong, appreciative women. The new characters are believable.

What bothers me about OF FORTUNE’S REVERSAL is the number of anachronisms. Mr. Maturin is a pioneer in the use of asepsis during surgery, of trephination of depressed skull fractures, and antibiotics to prevent infection (dressing Kitty’s open skull with mold from grain). Jacobsen has Kitty read Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility while at school, and Fitzwilliam reads Mansfield Park to her as she lies in coma. The Cecils’ ideas on child care are twenty-first century. Attitudes toward Harry Wilson, late Sergeant, 38th Infantry, footman to Lord Cecil, are also modern. Instantaneous friendship between women of such different social classes, even with the Marquess of Salisbury’s explicit public approval commendation of Kitty Bennet, seems unlikely in 1816. The ultimate is Fitzwilliam’s referring to a wine as Chateau Thames Embankment, the favorite tipple of Horace Rumpole of the Bailey. I could go on.

OF FORTUNE’S REVERSAL is a pleasant quick read. (B+)

 

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POINT TAKEN is the latest title to date in Ben Rehder’s Blanco County mystery series featuring Texas Game Warden John Marlin who, when asked, assists Sheriff Bobby Garza on major cases. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

Redneck poachers and petty criminals Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock are enjoying life as gentlemen of leisure, having “invested” their $50.000 pig-killing bounty in Billy Don’s skill at blackjack on the line and won $142,000+ each in Las Vegas. When they are approached by a traveling salesman of frozen beef and seafood, Cody Brock, aka Joseph Lightfoot, they chase him off, setting in motion a crime wave in Blanco County. In the meantime, Sean Hudson’s nude, decomposing body turns up beside a country backroad. He’s been killed by a wiggle stick, a specialized pickaxe used to dig archaeological artifacts and his body dumped. Titus Steele, ranch manager for retired archaeology professor Hubert Walz, has been hassling a pair of diggers on the ranch. As the Hudson murder investigation continues, his role as a digger becomes integral to his death even as Cody Brock moves from attitude to threat to confrontation and more in his customer relations.

One important feature of the last few Blanco County mysteries is the dynamism of Red O’Brien and his gigantic dumb best friend Billy Don Craddock. They’ve evolved from lowest of the low in morals, cleanliness, and intellect to men capable of at least occasionally doing the right thing for the right reasons. In an earlier book, they take up for the gay wedding planner involved with Billy Don’s bigamous wedding when he’s hassled by homophobes, In BUM STEER, Billy Don reveals his previously undisclosed talent for blackjack. In POINT TAKEN, when an elderly neighbor Miss Shirley is hospitalized for food poisoning after eating some of Lightfoot’s “buffalo burgers” (which she had generously shared with them), Billy Don insists that they find Lightfoot and get her money back, that process involving them in the criminal investigations. Billy Don displays totally unexpected skill at using iPhone and computer to research Joseph Lightfoot and his activities. As Rehder has developed them, Red and Billy Don become major characters, no longer comic relief.

Rehder shifts between Red and John Marlin’s point of view. He uses Red’s musings both to reveal character and the famed Texas attitude. “...Red couldn’t help but feel that embracing modern gadgets and gizmos was somehow betraying what it meant to be a small-town Texan. Could you imagine Sam Houston carrying a Kindle around back in the day? Or what about Bob Wills using an iPad? How about Audie Murphy--the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II--wearing one of those Bluetooth things in his ear? Ridiculous. TWsould never happen. Those legends would probably think today’s Texans were no different than a bunch of damn Yankees. Maybe they were right, and that thought made Red sad. Everybody was the same nowadays, or close to it. And it had happened so damn fast. Wasn’t that long ago that when you’d sit around a beer joint with friends, you’d talk about football or women or hunting or those damned Washington liberals. Nowadays you were likely to hear a bunch of rednecks talking about the latest smartphone or bitching about the lack of a good Wi-Fi signal. Pathetic. How had it come to this? It left Red with an empty feeling inside.”

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***

The plot structure of POINT TAKEN is awkward. The turning point of the action, Marlin’s killing Cody Brock in self-defense, comes multiple chapters before the conclusion, in which little happens. There’s a major red herring about Sean’s murderer but it’s mainly tying up loose ends on the case. The conclusion is not satisfying because major figures involved in the crimes get off scot-free, thanks to the vagaries of the legal system.

POINT TAKEN is a good improvement on the previous book in the series. (B)

 

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Renata McMann and Summer Hanford’s COURTING ELIZABETH is another variant on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

COURTING ELIZABETH changes a major episode from the original. After Elizabeth Bennet rejects Fitzwilliam Darcy’s insulting proposal of marriage, he composes the letter explaining his reasons for his attitude toward her family, his interference with Jane and Charles Bingley, and the whole of his relationship with George Wickham. Uncertain about sending the letter or burning it, he leaves it on the desk in his room at Rosings while he takes a walk, to return and find the letter gone. Lady Catherine has searched his room, read the letter, and determined that Darcy must give up any thought of Elizabeth and marry Anne de Bourgh forthwith. Lady Catherine threatens to disclose Georgiana’s proposed elopement with Wickham to disgrace the Darcy family name and ruin her niece’s reputation unless Darcy and Anne comply.

Anne has a plan to ease the pressure on Darcy and herself. It requires Elizabeth’s cooperation, for which Anne offers £5,000. Darcy will ask Elizabeth to accept courtship from him for two months, at the end of which he will propose marriage again. Thus he’s committed and ineligible to marry Anne until after Anne’s twenty-fifth birthday, when she will inherit Rosings and can use it to control her mother. Feeling pity for Anne, Elizabeth agrees.

Lady Catherine does not give up her obsession. She abducts Elizabeth to ship her off to London, but she’s dropped off to await the stage only nine miles from Hunsford. Elizabeth walks home. Despite Lady Catherine’s lies about Elizabeth asking her help, Darcy believes Elizabeth, escorting her and Maria Lucas to London to the Gardiners. Darcy is in earnest about his courtship and, as Elizabeth knows him better, she’s ready to change her answer. The courtship period is, however, by the need to protect Elizabeth from Lady Catherine’s continued threats to her safety.

COURTING ELIZABETH is one of the better interpretations of Pride and Prejudice. McMann and Hanford add few new characters, the most notable of whom are Lord Henry Fitzwilliam, Earl of Matlock, and his widowed sister Lady Agatha Hurst, widow of the older brother of Charles Bingley’s brother-in-law. This is a neat device to bring the Bingleys into the story line. The reader’s first impression of Lord Henry is as misleading as Elizabeth and Darcy’s of each other. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler.

Continuing characters are much the same as in the originals, except some are more so. Lady Catherine is far beyond obsessed, she’s absolutely bonkers. Anne de Burgh’s ill health is not a factor in the story; her plan and her subsequent behavior as she waits out her birthday show that she is very much Lady Catherine’s daughter. Caroline Bingley is ultra insulting to Jane and Elizabeth and immediately goes after Lord Henry as an acceptable substitute for Darcy. Charles Bingley’s tete a tete with a fast young society widow at Lady Agatha’s party supports Darcy’s reservations about the depth of his love for Jane Bennet; his subsequent actions prove him as consumed with improving his social standing and wealth as Caroline. Mr. Collins is an obsequious toad above and beyond. Mrs. Bennet is downright vicious toward Elizabeth until she learns of Darcy’s courtship.

COURTING ELIZABETH is definitely different, with more physical action and an an interesting premise to move the plot along. Recommended. (A-)

 

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“Longbourn Revisited” is Margaret Lynette Sharp’s short story sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set about a year after the weddings of Elizabeth Bennet to Fitzwilliam Darcy and Jane Bennet to Charles Bingley. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

SPOILERS+++++++

I do not understand the point of this story. NOTHING SIGNIFICANT HAPPENS. Elizabeth goes back to Longbourn when Mr. Bennet becomes seriously ill with a fever; her mother, whose nerves fail her, takes to bed, leaving caring for him to handsome, single physician Mr. Hodges, as she laments over what will become of her if Mr. Bennet dies and the Collinses evict her from Longbourn. She’s monopolizes Mary for constant attendance and plans for Hodges to marry Kitty. Mr. Bennet’s condition improves, and Elizabeth is glad to leave Longbourn where she’s experienced a guilt-making attraction for Hodges. En route for Pemberley, Elizabeth stops to visit Jane and her colicky infant Maria.

Darcy had not accompanied Elizabeth to Longbourn because business required he spend a week or two in London. Elizabeth learns he’d been accompanied to London by Charles and Caroline Bingley, who’s not given up her excessive regard for Darcy. Bingley convinced Darcy to attend a London ball with Caroline and himself, at which Darcy dances almost every dance with Caroline. Elizabeth is not best pleased, especially since Jane’s recent confinement, Charlotte Collins’s pregnancy, and Mrs. Bennet’s pointed comments have stirred her worries about her own fertility, since she is not yet pregnant. She’s also upset by the news that Bingley left London for Brighton but Caroline stayed on, planning to return home with Darcy as escort when his business is concluded.

Mr. Bennet suffers a heart attack, Hodges is recalled, and so is Elizabeth. Hodges continues to show his preference for Elizabeth so that, as soon as Mr. Bennet begins his recovery, she immediately returns home to Pemberley. She confronts Darcy with his attention to Caroline and her concerns over not yet conceiving. He reassures her that all is well with their marriage. AND THAT’S IT.

The characters are not engrossing. Mr. Bennet’s illnesses keep him in bed, so he plays little part. Mrs. Bennet is much more concerned about planning a dinner party to welcome the young physician Hodges to their acquaintance, the better to encourage his marriage to Kitty, than she is in Mr. Bennet’s condition. Mrs. Bennet plans for Mary to remain unmarried, at home to care for her parents. Mary is not happy to be at her mother’s side continuously during her father’s illness, much less the rest of her life, and complains constantly. Caroline Bingley had been engaged but found something disreputable about her fiance and his debts before the wedding, so she trades on her broken heart to gain attention from Darcy. Bingley, the loving husband, gladly traipses off to London with Darcy, then off to Brightoen, leaving Jane at home alone with a newborn suffering from constant colic. Most importantly, neither Elizabeth nor Darcy is faithful to the original. Elizabeth’s uncertainty and self-doubt are as foreign to Austen as is Darcy’s sudden concern for Caroline’s feelings and his dancing all evening with her.

The best thing I can say about “Longbourn Revisited” is that at least I didn’t pay anything for it but read it through Kindle Unlimited.Don’t waste the time. (F)

 

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CHICKEN SCRATCH is the first book in Becki Willis’s The Sisters, Texas, mystery series. It was published in 2015 in e-book format.

****SPOILERS****

I’m giving up, having read only fourteen percent. So far Willis has used only cliches from the cozy mystery genre. The protagonist Madison Reynolds is a recent widow, left penniless with fifteen-year-old twins to support, who’s moved back home to Juliet and Naomi, known together as The Sisters, Texas, two separate towns divided by a railroad track. She’s living with her feisty 84-year-old grandmother Bertha Cessna, who recently retired as mayor of Juliet to have some fun “before she gets too old to travel.” Madison has started a business, In a Pinch Temporary Services, both to support her family and to discover a career for the next stage of her life. She’s taken a job from Ronny Gleason, commercial grower of chickens, “walking” the chicken houses during his week of deep-sea fishing, finds his dead body in Chicken House 4.

Which brings onto the scene the second major cliche--Brash deCordova, police chief of The Sisters. He’s Friday night football hero of The Sisters Cotton Kings who played and coached pro football for several years before coming back home. Madison as a freshman in high school had carried a massive crush on him as big-man-on-campus senior. He’s still a hunk, and he remembers Madison as the freshman with killer legs. It’s easy to tell where this is going.

As is common in small town, especially Southern, settings, all the supporting characters range from relatively normal to all-out bonkers. t Madison has the required bff Genesis Baker, who serves as her cheerleader; Genny also serves as a convenient vehicle for expository information.

Though set in rural Texas, with Madison having lived fifteen years in Dallas, CHICKEN SCRATCH is cliche small town, Anywhere. There are few Southern speech patterns in the dialogue. Scant physical details do not particularize the locale.The two most obvious allusions to Texas and Southern culture are sweet tea and the role of high school football stardom as the basis for life-long hero worship and career advancement. Authors who can’t or won’t do appropriate ambiance for their setting should choose a different setting.

It’s too generic to be appealing. No grade because not finished.

 

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CHARLOTTE COLLINS is Jennifer Becton’s sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in e-book format in 2010.

This is an unusual variant because, while Charlotte Lucas Collins and Maria Lucas feature in Pride and Prejudice, their characters and the romantic situation in which they find themselves resemble that of the Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility, with a touch of Anne Elliot in Persuasion in Charlotte’s reconciliation with the man she loves. It’s an examination of the proper basis for marriage, love or social and financial security for the woman. It emphasizes the restricted life available to an unmarried or a widowed woman if she was to maintain her reputation and the strict regulation of appropriate behavior between men and women.

After her unfulfilling marriage to Mr. Collins, Charlotte Collins is a widow, living on a small jointure in a cottage on the boundary of Rosings Park leased to her at token rent by Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Maria Lucas talks Charlotte into offering her a home and serving as her chaperone so that she may go into society, the better to find a husband. The situation becomes complicated when each sister finds herself the object of interest to two men. Maria thinks herself in love with visiting young American James Westfield and cruelly rejects a good neighbor Jonas Card. Charlotte is pursued by Lady Catherine’s distant relative Lewis Edington and by the brash American Benjamin Basford, James Westfield’s chaperone / uncle. Gossip and social ostracism that follow breaches in their behavior teach both sisters valuable lessons about society, men, and love before their happily-ever-afters.

A few things bother me about CHARLOTTE COLLINS. One is the problem of ages and maturity of Charlotte and Maria. Charlotte is at least 35 years old; Maria is at least 25 years old. Neither acts her age. Charlotte, as might be expected after marriage to Mr. Collins, seems old and socially rigid beyond her years. Maria is heedless of convention. They show the same dichotomy of head and heart as the Dashwoods. Another problem is the inconsistency in Charlotte’s character. She’s severely practical and determined to keep her independence, yet she supports Maria and sends money to her parents from her small income. She allows Maria to manipulate her and does not return her to Lucas Lodge when Maria behaves badly. Charlotte misjudges both Edington and Basford despite her pride in her ability to read character accurately. A third problem is the anachronistic relationship between Charlotte and her servants, housekeeper Mrs. Effingham and her intellectually challenged son Edward.

Despite these reservations, CHARLOTTE COLLINS is one of the best Jane Austen fan fiction sequels I’ve read. Recommended. (A-)

 

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DRIVING INTO DARKNESS is the second book in Iain Cameron’s police procedural featuring Detective Inspector Angus Henderson of the Sussex Police. It was published in e-book format in 2014.

I’m giving up at 38 per cent. It seems as if I’ve been reading forever. Cameron’s still introducing new, minimally-drawn characters whose contributions to the plot are insignificant. In particular, there’s little sign of further development of the protagonist DI Angus Henderson either as an individual or in personal or professional relationship. Shifts in viewpoints between characters add more confusion than illumination.

Two main story lines in the plot have not yet begun to draw together. One, the most detailed to this point, involves a band of car thieves who target newly-purchased expensive sports cars. The gang is headed by a psychopath whose violence in the home invasions to get the car keys is growing; he’s hospitalized two victims, one still in a coma with no assurance of recovery. The second involves the Markham Microprocessors company, whose R&D secretly has built the working prototype for a revolutionary processor that will use ambient radio waves to recharge automatically the battery in electronic devices. Sir Malcolm Markham has feelers out for companies wishing to invest. His managing director William Lawton is aghast to learn that Sir Malcolm is already in negotiations with the Korean Han Corporation which, if it buys in, will replace him. Lawton approaches local crime boss and developer Dominic Green to help finance a consortium to buy Markham Microprocessors themselves. But Markham’s finance director David Young has gone missing. Can there be any connection between such disparate elements?

Sense of place is not distinctive. Editing misses use of “it’s” instead of “its” as the possessive pronoun. No grade because not finished.

 

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Kara Louise’s A PECULIAR ENGAGEMENT is one of the more unusual variants on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. While several of the characters from the original are mentioned, and Elizabeth Bennet plays a major role, only Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mrs. Jenkinson, Georgiana, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Anne de Bourgh herself are on-stage characters. Interesting additions to the cast include Sir Lewis de Bourgh, Henry and Lady Anne Darcy, and Johnathan Jenkinson, who owns a publishing company in London. A PECULIAR ENGAGEMENT was published in 2016 in e-book format.

Anne de Bourgh is a novelist. She’s been filled since age four by her mother with the idea that she is destined to marry her first cousin Fitzwilliam Darcy. Her father Sir Lewis de Bourgh and Darcy’s father Henry Darcy both oppose the idea of compelling the marriage, each hoping his child will have the happiness of marrying for love. As families visit over the years 1788 through 1811, Anne writes a story based in large part on her imaginary engagement, The Girl in the Turret Room, which becomes her first novel. She also truthfully records her interactions with Fitzwilliam Darcy and her evolving perceptions of their “peculiar engagement” which Darcy shows no inclination to end with a proposal of marriage.

Louise uses strict third person point of view in A PECULIAR ENGAGEMENT effectively in letting the reader share exactly what Anne perceives about her parents and their relationship and doing so appropriately for Anne’s age at the time. While flashbacks can become tedious when overused, Louise’s use to record Anne’s various epiphanies about Darcy is skilled. The alternative ending, based on reality rather than imagination, recalls the choice of endings in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Anne’s third novel will be the story of Darcy’s courtship of Elizabeth Bennet. Are we to conclude that Jane Austen is Anne de Bourgh’s pseudonym? Pemberley again seems based on Chatsworth, while Louise has Anne echo Virginia Woolf’s dictum that a woman needs “a room of her own” if she’s to be a writer.

The major change in character involves Anne herself. She does think herself in love with Darcy and wants to marry him. However, the rapidity with which she falls in love with someone else, to the point of insisting on eloping to Gretna Green (with Darcy’s help to foil her mother’s opposition), leaves the belief she was in love with love, not Darcy. She never confronts her mother, leaving Darcy to tell Lady Catherine after she is safely married. I regret not seeing Lady Catherine get her just desserts.

A couple of things bother me about the elopement scenario. One is that Anne and her lover ask for Fitzwilliam Darcy’s approval of their marriage, but why? Darcy is her first cousin but not head of her family, the senior male of the de Bourgh family. She’s also 27 years old, of full legal age, so needs no family consent to marry. Related to this problem is the question of her legal rights as heir to Rosings. When she elopes, Anne expects to be exiled from Rosings until her mother dies. No one investigates to find out the conditions under which she inherits or how they may change upon her marriage; no marriage settlements or contracts are mentioned, presumably leaving Anne completely at the financial mercy of her new husband. I don’t see Darcy allowing this.

A PECULIAR ENGAGEMENT is one of the best Jane Austen fan fiction alternative stories I’ve read. Recommended. (A-)

 

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FIRE IN THE STARS is the first book in Barbara Fradkin’s new mystery series set in Newfoundland. It features Amanda Doucette, a former aid worker, and Corporal Chris Tymko of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was published in inexpensive e-book format in 2016.

Amanda Doucette and her friend Phil Cousins as aid workers had been caught in the Islamic terrorism in northern Nigeria a year before, escaping with their lives but scarred by horrors of murder and betrayal. Amanda received therapy, so she can manage her PTSD; Phil refused, and his PTSD has deepened. He’s planned a camping trip with Amanda and his eleven-year-old son Tyler, but he and Tyler go missing in the Great Northern Peninsula without telling her where to meet them. She’s concerned about his state of mind, especially since he’d just found out his wife’s affair with RCMP Corporal Jason Maloney. Amanda goes after Phil and Tyler with the aid of Chris Tymko. Events become stranger with sightings of the Cousinses, a shrimp boat hauls up a man’s body with a stone anchor tied around the waist, fishermen spot a lifeboat carrying several men but it flees from their offer of help, and someone kills an elderly hermit suffering from dementia. Is Phil suicidal or homicidal or trying to help the men from the boat? And where is Tyler?

I am a fan of Barbara Fradkin’s writing, having enjoyed her Detective Inspector Michael Green series set in Ottawa. She uses the same skills of creating believable individuals and a sense of place, often using atmosphere to illuminate character. “As the bleak tundra of the southern tip gave way to the canyons of the Humber River valley, Amanda felt the tug-of-war of this extreme, unforgiving land. Over the centuries, countless explorers had been lured to the soaring cliffs and dark, secretive forests, but its storms were too fierce and its terrain too barren for all but the most intrepid to settle. The first nor’easter to come through blew most of them off the island, leaving only a few stubborn and contrary fishermen clinging to its sheltered coves. But it was this primal challenge of nature that excited her. She was in search of a toehold in something pure and timeless, beyond the struggles and cruelties of man--a sense of awe and inspiration that would lift her above the quagmire of her life and help her see farther down the road. Because she knew she could not go back to Africa.” Amanda is an attractive protagonist, though she pulls major TSTLs in her search for Phil and Tyler.

The plot is one of complications added to the basic problem of finding the Cousinses, taking it in a direction not foreseen. Fradkin sets up a beautiful red herring in the disappearance. I will definitely read more of the series. (B+)