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Readingomnivore Reviews

“The Woods, the Watcher & the Wardings” is the third short story in Ralph E. Vaughan’s collection SHERLOCK HOLMES: CTHULHU MYTHOS ADVENTURES. The anthology was published in e-book format in 2015.

“The Woods, the Watcher & the Wardings” is set in the Hammershire villages of Lower Orm and Upper Orm. Hammershire is unique: “If the county of Hammershire is known for anything, it is for resisting change, despite the onslaught of modern times. The Parliamentary acts of 1885, 1965 and 1974 left its boundaries virtually unchanged. Home to some of England’s oldest villages, it has ruins that make even the most ancient settlement seem quite recent. Hammershire has long been of interest to antiquarians and folklorists, but extracting information from villagers is difficult, sometimes fraught with danger. Hammershire is a place where the past endures, and old things sometimes refuse to die.” (59) Atmosphere is appropriately macabre.

Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade of Scotland Yard summons Holmes and Watson to Upper Orm with a telegram about a mysterious murder. Ignatius Dean has been arrested for the murder of Henry Quint on what seems strong evidence, but Lestrade doubts his guilt. Quint’s body bears hoof marks from a giant goat, but the coroner’s inquest concludes his death is suspicious even though no weapon is found. Dean tells Holmes and the police that Quint died because he “offended the forest” but denies his murder. Orm Wood is associated with the ancient gods, especially Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods. But who, or what, killed Quint?

John H. Watson, M.D., narrates the story in first person. Holmes condescends to him as in the original stories. Watson even comments on their relationship: “During our long association, Sherlock Holmes often withheld information from me. Sometimes he would reveal key facts much later, sometimes after reading my notes, often after a case had been fictionalized in some publication, making me feel quite the fool. I am sure there were times when he held back information entirely.” (83) Vaughan’s riff on the style and vocabulary of Conan Doyle is strong. He, however, consistently misuses the singular possessive form of Holmes’s name, writing it as Holmes’.

Overall, the story is effectively done. (B)
 
LONGBOURN’S INTERRUPTED WEDDING is Helen Stone’s novella variant on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, opening two days before the older Bennet girls’ weddings in Meryton. It was published in free or inexpensive e-book format in 2016.

***SPOILERS***

LONGBOURN’S INTERRUPTED WEDDING is quite short, the story of Caroline Bingley’s efforts to delay the wedding so she’ll have further opportunity to snare Fitzwilliam Darcy for herself. She’s aided by George Wickham, who’s added his forced marriage to Lydia Bennet to his causes for hating Darcy. Elizabeth and Darcy’s wedding is twice delayed before all goes well.

The premise is interesting but undeveloped. The novella reads like a summary of the action. There are no sense of immediacy, no sense of suspense, and no realistic emotional response to the situation from either Darcy or Elizabeth.(For once Mrs. Bennet’s nerves and hysteria seem quite appropriate.) Darcy hires a Bow Street Runner, who uncovers the plot, and promises punishment, but it stays a matter of talk only. Except being cut by the Darcys, Caroline gets away with it.

Inconsistencies and coincidences undermine the impact of the story. Wickham is stationed in the North, but he’s near Meryton two days before the wedding (to which Lydia was not invited) with no explanation of why or how he’s there. He just happens to meet Caroline at a coaching inn while she’s en route to London, and they concoct their plot. He tells Caroline all about Ramsgate, but she makes no use of that knowledge. She confesses to giving Jane medicine on the eve of the original wedding to make her ill. Caroline is rude and demanding enough to guarantee that she and Wickham will be remembered by the innkeeper and his daughter, who are delighted to tell the Runner the story. Having the second wedding interrupted when the ceremony asks about impediments is Wickham’s contribution. The claim that Elizabeth married a soldier some five years before at Gretna Green is even more improbable given that then she would have been fourteen years old. It seems unlikely that Mr. Bennet would allow Elizabeth to reside at Darcy House between the second wedding attempt and their later marriage, especially without a suitable chaperone; granted that gossip in Meryton would be unpleasant for her, wouldn’t he more likely have sent Elizabeth to the Gardiners? Enough, already.

Many better variants exist than LONGBOURN’S INTERRUPTED WEDDING. Read one of them instead. (D)
 
“The Adventure of the Shattered Men” is the fourth short story in Ralph E. Vaughan’s anthology SHERLOCK HOLMES: CTHULHU MYTHOS ADVENTURES published in e-book format in 2015.

Professor Jonathan Wilmarth, retired from the Ancient Manuscripts Section of the British Museum, a longtime acquaintance of Sherlock Holmes, summons the detective to St John Island in the far North of England, a place where “the past never truly died, neither the recent past of a man’s life, nor the distant past where history gives way to myth.” (77) En route, Holmes encounters elderly sailor Aulay Camshronack, formerly captain of SS Ithaqua imprisoned for four months in a Russian prison camp for smuggling, who’s escaped to return to his home on St John Island; he bears tattoos that show his imprisonment, his membership in the international criminal organization the Brotherhood of Thieves, and a much older association with Ithaqua, one of the entities of the Cthulhu Cult. Wilmarth has seen the Ithaqua, and animal and human deaths in the village have frightened him. Camshronack means o regain his family’s supremacy over the villagers, and the Ithaqua he summons needs the return of blood sacrifice. Can, and how, may Holmes stop Ithaqua?

The supernatural element in “The Adventure of the Shattered Men” is less evident than in the prior stories in SHERLOCK HOLMES: CTHULHU MYTHOS ADVENTURES. Perhaps this results from Wilmarth’s repeated sightings, perhaps from the specific physical description of what must be a living animal. Atmospheric effects are developed but are not inexplicable as natural phenomena. Wilmarth and his manservant Emerson are stock Conan Doyle experts on esoteric topics with which Holmes, of course, is perfectly familiar. The title of the story refers to the Ithaqua’s method of killing.

“The Adventure of the Shattered Men” is not as effective as the earlier stories.
(C+)
 
“Lestrade & the Damned Cultists” is a short story from Ralph E. Vaughan’s collection SHERLOCK HOLMES: CTHULHU MYTHOS ADVENTURES which was published in e-bo,ok format in 2015.

****SPOILERS****

Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade is investigating a series of four murders in London, all with a strange modus operandi: slit throat, strange star symbol carved on the forehead, and left hand missing. His Scotland Yard superior reects Lestrade’s theory of the crime, but Lestrade resolutely rejects suggestions that he consult Sherlock Holmes. He and DS Jacket follow Sir Martin Fields to a meeting of the Order of the Eldritch Gate led by Lord Alathon in time to rescue a fifth victim and stop the gate’s opening to Yog-Sothoth, one of the entities of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Lestrade emerges as a strong detective in his own right, able to pick up on hidden connections, courageous to the point of foolhardiness, and proudest of solving such an obscure case without Holmes’s assistance. The conclusion is a beautiful example of dramatic irony. Jacket offers occasional notes of humor: “...all we can prove is that the cultists are preparing the way for the return of a race of monster-gods banished from Earth in prehistoric times, with the intent of achieving a worldwide apocalypse and enslaving humanity, but that’s hardly against the law, is it, sir?” (119)

Vaughan’s atmospheric description is effective. “The ground floor of the warehouse had been transformed into a temple to Yog-Sothoth and the other Great Old s, the minions of Cthulhu... There was something not quite right about the architecture of the place. It lacked parallel lines and had few straight ones... The pillars leaned this way and that, always seeming on the verge of collapse, yet enduring. The corner angles of the stone slabs arranged around the worship area were all either obtuse or acute, and upon those stones were depicted such monstrosities and horrors as never could have crawled from the minds of Bedlam, creatures which should never have lived, and yet were undeniably taken from hideous life. Thick mist drifted along the floor, tendrils of the yellowish vapor seeming to pluck at the supplicants’ robes, almost like serpents.” (133)

Another excellent, spooky story. (A-)
 
“The Whisperer in the Highlands” is the sixth short story in Ralph E. Vaughan’s SHERLOCK HOLMES: CTHULHU MYTHOS ADVENTURES anthology influenced by the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

“The Whisperer in the Highlands” is narrated by Professor Angus Hamish MacCullaich, lecturer in geology at the University of Edinburgh who’s on extended sabbatical, doubtful of his return to the university and of his own sanity. MacCullaich meets in Kilglarig the youthful Sherlock Holmes just after he’d been sent down from Cambridge, while he’s traveling and doing independent research before taking up his career as a consulting detective. A supporter of Professor Otto Lidenbrock’s theory of a hollow earth inhabited by saurians, MacCullaich invites Holmes to be his guest at Slate House to discuss the story of his experiences in the megalithic circle on his estate and the strange whispers he’d heard there.

Vaughan gives MacCullaich a strong storytelling voice, but his use of dialect is inconsistent. He’s intriguing. Holmes as a young man has already developed his powers of observation and ot a deduction and his rational outlook. I want to know the story behind Holmes’s being sent down from Cambridge.

Vaughan’s atmospheric descriptions are effective: “The sun was shining brightly as we put the manor house behind us, but it seemed to impart neither light nor heat. The landscape’s life-long familiarity bled away, like a watercolor drawing left in the rain, leaving behind the shadows and shapes, now ominous where once they had been reassuring. In silence we penetrated the woods’ shunned depths, and were surrounded by a more profound hush, one in which not a leaf trembled and the wee creatures of the woods seemed afeard to move, lest they be noticed by the Whisperer that prowled that ancient realm. We came to the clearing with the sun westering. Shadows of the standing stones grew long, the blackness deepened. Faint stars glimmered in the east and the far horizon seemed stained with blood.” (157-8)

“The Whisperer in the Highlands” is another well-crafted tale suitable for All Hallows’ Eve. (B+)
 
“The Terror Out of Time” is the concluding short story in Ralph E. Vaughan’s anthology SHERLOCK HOLMES: CTHULHU MYTHOS ADVENTURES. The story was originally published in 2002, while the collection was published in e-book format in 2015. All the stories are influenced by H. P. Lovecraft’s works on the ancient gods.

Irish Jack Neville is a sailor headed to London with the mysterious stone idol he’d been commissioned to find for Laslo Bronislav. a mysterious foreigner with occult interests. After he’s attacked, the dying Neville instead delivers the stone to Sherlock Holmes; Inspector Henry Wilkins of Scotland Yard and Professor George Edward Challenger, explorer, ethnologist, and naturalist, are with him at the time, so both become involved in Holmes’s investigation of the murder and of the meaning of the idol. Lord Cecil Whitecliff, British Museum expert, identifies the stone as a representation of the great god M’tollo, worshipped from ancient times in the Maldives. But who or what killed Neville? Is the idol purely from mythology, or is it based on a living beast, a surviving population of animals once regarded as gods of absolute power?

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

“The Terror Out of Time” is similar to the original Conan Doyle stories in several ways. Holmes is generally consistent his creation. What begins with a mysterious murder expands to have him involved not only with Scotland Yard and variouas experts, but eventually with Special Branch, the Home Office, the Admiralty, the Bank of England, the remnants of Moriarty and Moran’s criminal organization, and Irish Separatists using terrorist attacks. There is the remote, seemingly untouchable villain who’s motivation is unclear. Street children under Holmes’s orders make an important contribution to the case. Most of all, there’s the question of supernatural beasts hostile to mankind. Its conclusion is ambiguous enough to allow sequels that are not as improbable as Holmes surviving the Reichenbach Falls.

“The Terror Out of Time” is another good Halloween read. (B+)
 
THE ESSENCE OF LOVE is another of Zoe Burton’s variations on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. iIt was published in e-book format in 2016.

Mary Bennet is in London, visiting with her paternal aunt and godmother Lady Agnes Bennet Baker, Viscountess Watts, for the first time. Mary meets Georgiana Darcy in a bookstore, and the girls become friends. Mary is much impressed with Georgiana’s older brother Fitzwilliam Darcy, whom she believes a good match for her older sister Elizabeth. She maneuvers Elizabeth into a visit to London, she meets Darcy, and both are smitten. A proposal soon ensues, Mr. Bennet gives his consent, and preparations for the wedding begin. Lady Catherine de Bourgh descends on Longbourn and must be dealt with by both her nephew and Mr. Bennet, who threatens to have his servants bodily remove her. George Wickham has joined the militia in Meryton and, seeing Darcy’s love for Elizabeth, determines to use her in his revenge.

It’s pleasing to see Mary Bennet receive positive attention in THE ESSENCE OF LOVE. She’s too often ignored or made a figure of fun when she’s clearly doing the best she knows toward become an accomplished lady; it’s gratifying to see Lady Agnes giving her guidance on behavior, dress, and social skills. Burton perfects Darcy from his introduction. He’s still shy and reserved in company, but he’s not judgmental. He even makes friends with tradesmen. It’s good to see him confront Lady Catherine on the subject of his engagement to Elizabeth and to tell Mrs. Bennet in front of family and guests what he thinks of her treatment of Elizabeth. Elizabeth has no negative impressions of Darcy to overcome, so her belief in her own ability to judge character remains unchallenged. I doubt Colonel Fitzwilliam would deal with Wickham as Burton describes. Lady Agnes is a good addition, even if she’s only sketched, but Viscount Watts remains a name only. Shifts in point of view between characters add little to their full development.

Burton misses at least three opportunities to expand THE ESSENCE OF LOVE into a stronger full-length-novel story. One is Lady Catherine’s only token opposition to Darcy’’s engagement. She just fades away, which Austen’s Lady Catherine would never do, making no attempt even to turn her brother the Earl against Elizabeth. A second is the brevity with which Wickham’s revenge is dealt. If Wickham is as black-hearted as he’s depicted, his treatment of Elizabeth could have been prolonged and more brutal. A third is the brief account of Colonel Fitzwilliam’s search for and dealing with Wickham. Each of these episodes could easily be detailed. All three as written sound like summaries; there’s no sense of immediacy or direct action.

THE ESSENCE OF LOVE has much potential, unfortunately not developed. (C)
 
STALKING GROUND is the second book in Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 mystery series featuring Sherif’s Deputy Mattie Cole and her K-9 partner Robo. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

Mattie and Robo are in a training camp when recalled to Timber Creek because Adrienne Howard. Chief Deputy Brody’s girl friend, has gone missing. He’s so concerned that Sheriff McCoy has authorized search for Adrienne to begin 24 hours early. Adrienne’s car turns up, but she’d not driven it there; the steering wheel had been wiped clean. It takes an anonymous tip before Robo and Mattie find her body. She’d been killed by an arrow that nicked her heart. Adrienne had been working with therapeutic massage with some horses seen by Cole Walker, local DVM, who’s recently taken on a new client Carmen Santiago, owner of Dark Horse Stable where she trains race horses. Her prize stallion Diablo shows strange symptoms, and Adrienne had worked at Dark Horse Stable three times but not on the day she disappeared. Why was Adrienne killed, and who needed her dead?

Mizushima pays as much attention to Mattie’s state of mind as to the mystery element in STALKING GROUND, providing more of Mattie’s family backstory to explain her guilt-ridden and distrustful character. It’s refreshing to see Cole Walker as the one who pulls the TSTL stunt, with Mattie his rescuer. I appreciate the realism of Cole’s family life, his teenaged daughter Angela rebellious and resentful of the time his job requires, he doing his best as a harried single father. Many of the continuing characters are well-conceived, but It is not necessary to include every character from the previous book.

A careful reader will probably discern Adrienne’s killer and motive before Mattie and Cole. The conclusion is realistic in that federal agencies take over the case and Timber Creek authorities have no final say in charges or trial of the killer despite having jurisdiction over the original crime. Mizushima develops few of the possibilities within the setting to bolster the plot.

One thing that bothers me is Mattie’s exact rank within the Sheriff’s Department. She’s a seven-year veteran and the only K-9 officer, while Brody is the Chief Deputy, second in command after Sheriff McCoy. McCoy at first removes Brody from the case because of his personal relationship with Adrienne but reinstates him after his alibi is proved. He is Mattie’s backup for the remainder of the case; she gives and he accepts her orders. If he’s reinstated, shouldn’t he be in charge?

I don’t know if I will continue to follow this series. Characters have potential, but plotting and sense of place are average, at best. STALKING GROUND’s writing style is basic. (C)
 
CONDESCENSION & CONDEMNATION is Perpetua Langley’s variation on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in free or inexpensive e-book format in 2016.

Elizabeth and Jane Bennet are in London visiting the Gardiners when their father John Bennet receives a letter from Mrs. Polly Merriweather and Mr. Archibald Merriweather, late of New York City, seeking his acquaintance. They are connected to the Bennet family through Mr. Bennet’s great-grandfather’s brother who immigrated to North America. Bennet asks Edward Gardiner to investigate the newcomers. In the meantime, on an outing to the theatre for Hamlet, Charles Bingley sees Jane Bennet and immediately scrapes an introduction that sets up the Gardiners, the Bennet sisters, the Merriweathers, the Darcys, and the Bingley party for socializing. Bingley has no doubts of his feelings for Jane, but Darcy is all too aware of the defects in connections, wealth, and accomplishments that make Elizabeth ineligible to become Mrs. Darcy despite his attraction.

*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****

Several things bother me about CONDESCENSION & CONDEMNATION. One is the change in Darcy and Elizabeth. Darcy is even more arrogant, self-righteous, convinced of his own superiority than in the original, and the attitude lasts through fully two-thirds of the story. His first two proposals in CONDESCENSION & CONDEMNATION make the canonical original at Hunsford appear suave, and it takes Darcy forever to understand why Elizabeth finds them offensive. As for Elizabeth, she makes a snap judgment at the theatre that Darcy is “Mr. Dull,” and she stays on the lookout for more to dislike in him. She already despises Darcy thoroughly when she meets and hears Wickham’s tales. Worst of all her mistaken decisions is her failure, after she knows the full Wickham story, to tell one except Jane. After the Merriweathers settle £4,000 on each of the girls and Elizabeth refuses Wickham’s immediate proposal, she knows he will go after the besotted Lydia, but she neither tells her father nor warns Lydia about him, setting up their elopement. Only then does Elizabeth begin to think seriously about Darcy’s changed attitudes and behaviors.

Other characters are fairly true to originals. Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr. Collins are themselves, only more so. Charles Bingley has the intestinal fortitude to confront not just Caroline but Lady Catherine, banning her from his house for insulting his guests the Gardiners; he ignores Darcy’s doubts about the suitability of the Bennets for in-laws. Charlotte Lucas is more materialistic. The new characters, the Merriweathers, offer comic relief and anchor a key plot device. More could have been made of them.

Another problem involves the dating of the action of CONDESCENSION & CONDEMNATION. Several times the Americans refer to the Chesapeake-Leopard affair, an incident in June 1807 when the American vessel Chesapeake was fired upon and captured by HMS Leopard; four American seamen were taken as British deserters, and one of them was hanged. It’s treated as if it is current news. But Jane and Elizabeth are the same ages as in Austen’s creation, where the date is usually assumed to be 1811-1812 or later. So when? Editorial problems include misuse of apostrophes in plurals and possessives of names and the need to proofread as well as using spell-check (“peaked”-”piqued”). Bingley compares Jane’s beauty to Helena, but the further reference makes clear that he means Helen of Troy, the face that launched the thousand ships.

CONDESCENSION & CONDEMNATION is another variarant with under-developed potential. (B-)
 
TELLING TALES is the second book in Ann Cleeves’s police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumbria Police. It was published in 2005.

TELLING TALES opens with news of the suicide in prison of Jeanie Long, convicted ten years before for the murder of her lover’s teenaged daughter Abigail Mantel. There had been no physical evidence against Long, no witness to to the crime, but her London alibi wasn’t confirmed, so she was quickly arrested and convicted. Continuing to protest her innocence, Long refused to play the game of confession and repentance necessary to qualify for parole, then she hanged herself when her latest appeal failed. Soon thereafter, an unimpeachable witness confirms Long’s alibi. Long indeed had been innocent. Vera Stanhope goes to Yorkshire to investigate how the police got it so wrong. She finds Elvet a village given to speculation and gossip. So many people hide secrets: Emma, who found her friend’s body; Emma’s father Robert Winter, who so suddenly dropped architecture, retrained as a social worker, moved his family from York; James Bennett, Emma’s older husband who’s created his life from a plan; Carolyn Fletcher, the OIC of the Mantel murder investigation; Fletcher’s legman Dan Greenwood rwho suffered a breakdown and resigned from the force shortly after Long’s trial; Michael Long, Jeanie’s strange-acting father; even Abigail’s father Keith Mantel with a shady past. But who needed Abigail dead, and why? Is the current killing of Christopher Winter, Emma’s brother, a separate case or part of the Mantel murder?

Cleeves establishes the characters in Elvet firmly before introducing her protagonist, shifting focus to individualize each and to hint at backstories and secrets. Cleeves’s plotting skillfully keeps the reader’s attention focused on the secrets to produce a completely logical and believable, though a surprise, killer. Vera Stanhope is not an ordinary police detective. She’s overweight, physically unattractive with eczema, ill-dressed, lonely, blunt, overbearing, not inclined to suffer fools quietly. Mostly a loner, though not necessarily by choice, she has an interestingly maternal, mentoring relationship with her legman Sergeant Joe Ashworth.

Sense of place is strong. Cleeves creates small atmospheric vignettes that put the reader into the scene. “Goole is a small town, dominated by the docks. The river seems to cut right into the heart of the web of narrow street. It must be strange to look out of a bedroom window and see a huge container vessel sliding past, so close that you feel you could reach out and touch the hull, that the seaman drinking from a mug in the cockpit might offer you a drink too.” (77) She’s adept at using setting to delineate personality.

TELLING TALES is excellent. (A)
 
“Bryant & May in the Field” is the second short story in Christopher Fowler’s anthology LONDON’S GLORY: THE LOST CASES OF BRYANT & MAY AND THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT.” The collection was issued in e-book format in 2015. It opens with an introduction in which Fowler traces the development of detective fiction in general and his particular thought process in creating Bryant and May. He includes brief sketches of the continuing characters in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series.

“Bryant & May in the Field” is the second story in the collection, a passing nod to the “impossible murder” sub-genre developed by John Dickson Carr. An early morning dog walker discovers the body of Marsha Kastopolis in the middle of an empty field on Primrose Hill. Her throat’s been slashed, there’s no weapon, and there are no footprints in the snow for some 150 metres around her body. She’d been married to crooked property developer Phantasos Kastapolis, about to go to the police with her knowledge of his illegal activities. But he’s alibied firmly. Who needed Marsha dead and, more importantly, how was she killed?

“Bryant & May in the Field” does remind me of John Dickson Carr in the explanation of how the crime was committed. The solution is definitely as outre as one of Carr’s. Sense of place is exceptional. Realistic? Of course not, but good fun to read. (B+)
 
LONDON’S GLORY: THE LOST CASES OF BRYANT & MAY AND THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT is an anthology of short stories published in e-book format in 2015. It opens with an introduction in which Fowler discusses the evolution of mystery fiction and the process resulting in his creation of the PCU. Many of the stories are set during the Christmas season but do not necessarily involve Christmas themes. (I am reserving the first story “Bryant & May and the Secret Santa” for the holiday season, and I reviewed “Bryant & May in the Field” separately.) Most of the stories involve some element of the locked room or so-called impossible crime motif so developed by John Dickson Carr. All involve the oldest living detectives in London, Arthur Bryant and John May, various members of the PCU, and some outre criminals.

“Bryant & May on the Beat” centers on William Warren, aging part-time musician and instrument maker who ran a stall in Camden Market. He’s found in his flat, dead from anthrax poisoning. He’d been a vegetarian, so he’d not contracted anthrax from eating contaminated meat; there were no signs of violence, no contact with politics or terrorism. The only clue is that his apartment was tightly sealed to exclude drafts. So how did he contract anthrax?

“Bryant & May in the Soup” contains some of Fowler’s wonderful atmospheric description, this time of the worst fog London had ever seen, beginning on 5 December 1952 and lasting four days with thousands of deaths. One of the victims, Henry Whitworth, was poisoned despite his not having individually consumed or been exposed to anything not experienced by others unharmed. How? The murder method is neat.

“Bryant & May and the Nameless Woman” shows Joel Madden getting his just desserts from a woman who tells Bryant and May in advance that she is going to kill him and does. His casual disregard for the feelings of others proves his undoing.

“Bryant & May and the Seven Points” is all the more disturbing because it does not involve a murder. When MI5 operative and counter-terrorist code expert Michael Portheim goes missing, he’s searched for by both establishments, but it’s Bryant and May who uncover the singular villain Andrei Federov, a dwarf surgically altered to resemble Satan, and his devilish activities.

“Bryant & May on the Cards” opens with Ian McFarland losing his wife, his savings, and his job, only to receive an unsolicited credit card in his name with a £250,000 credit line. Where does it come from, and what happens when he opens its special concierge services? The villain comes to an appropriately grisly end.

“Bryant & May Ahoy!” takes Bryant and May on a week-long cruise off the coast of Turkey on Demir Kahramas’s yacht in gratitude for their saving his daughter from a drug-selling boyfriend. But Demir’s actress wife Yosum falls ill of hemlock poisoning despite having consumed only food or drink shared by others. How is this achieved? The story’s a riff on the “closed circle” stories of the Golden Age mysteries set at house parties, isolated hotels, or, indeed, on board ships. Again, method is neatly different.

“Bryant & May and the Blind Spot” involves DS Janice Longbright as the first person narrator to a strange tale in which she is seconded by request to Security Detail, where she prevents an attack on Madame Natalie Desmarois, wife of the French ambassador, and finds herself mired in interdepartmental politics. The reason for her assignment is unique.

“Bryant & May and the Bells of Westminster” harks to 1969 London where memories of the John Profumo-Christine Keeler affair remain strong. May meets Mia Waleska after she stabs Simon Montfleury, Tory leader killed at a gathering of his male political friends and several beautiful young women; he and Bryant meet her again when she shoots David Stuart-Holmesby, MP for Rotherbithe. Except the bullet that killed him wasn’t from her pistol.

“Bryant & May’s Mystery Tour” has Bryant predicting the exact moment of the arrest of Jane McKay’s killer--11:26 AM the day the murder was discovered. The killer had strangled her, ordered and eaten two pizzas, and spent the night in her flat before leaving that morning. But how does Bryant identify the killer and the time of capture?

As always in an anthology, some stories are better than others. For fans of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, LONDON’S GLORY is not to be missed. (B+)
 
LETTER FROM RAMSGATE is Suzan Lauder’s variant on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It makes major changes in the events and characters in the original, as well as introducing new individuals. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***

Elizabeth Bennet and her aunt Madeleine Gardiner are in Ramsgate on an extended visit with Mrs. Gardiner’s childhood friend Lady Edwina Moore, daughter of an earl; Mrs. Gardiner’s father had been the earl’s personal physician, living on his estate near Lambton in Derbyshire. Through Lady Edwina, they meet Georgiana Darcy and her companion Isabel Younge, and Elizabeth and Georgiana become friends. Georgiana soon confides her relationship with George Wickham and their upcoming elopement. Elizabeth sends Fitzwilliam Darcy an anonymous letter warning him of their plans. He arrives in time to thwart the elopement. He and Elizabeth are greatly attracted; Darcy soon proposes and is accepted, but he convinces himself that Elizabeth had been part of the plot concocted by Mrs. Younge and Wickham. He rescinds the proposal in a scene that makes the proposal at Hunsford in the original look tame. The remainder of the novel consists of various friends and relatives trying to discover what went wrong between Elizabeth and Darcy, rescuing Lydia from the consequences of her elopement with Wickham, Darcy’s determination to marry someone else, and attempts to reconcile him with Elizabeth.

Several things bother me about the plot structure. For one thing, too much exposition comes in letters to and from Elizabeth and Georgiana. They slow the story because each is preceded by the thoughts of its writer and followed by those of its recipient, making for much repetition. Flashbacks abound, reinforcing this repetition. Lauder’s determination to give every character a happy ending lessens the impact of the main story line.

Lady Edwina Moore is an interesting innovation to the story, apparently added to offset the low position of the Gardiners in trade and to provide the necessary link between Elizabeth and Georgiana. She offers a reputation-saving solution that does not involve Lydia’s marriage to Wickham after their elopement. The total number of new characters is much greater than those strictly needed. Shifts in point of view help illuminate their personalities but make for choppy flow in the story. Lauder presents Mrs. Younge as a sympathetic character, showing both her and Wickham receiving a second chance at a respectable life. She ignores the small problem of Wickham’s desertion from the militia, punishable by death, as he openly sails off to Nova Scotia to begin life anew. Lady Amelia Goodhope, whom Darcy fully intends to marry before he discovers his misjudgment of Elizabeth, remains a cipher with her behavior to Darcy unexplained by her true status.

What bothers me most are the changes in Elizabeth and Darcy. Darcy is proud almost to the point of megalomania, unperceptive about women, and paranoid about being married for his fortune. His speed in jumping to conclusions is exceeded only by his stubbornness in holding to his mistaken beliefs. He behaves like a petulant teenager through the major portion of LETTER FROM RAMSGATE, which calls into question how much of his suffering is real and how much exaggerated, especially since his public arrogance and aloofness remain unchanged. He creates his own misery by suppressing without reading a letter from Elizabeth to Georgiana which refuted his erroneous ideas. Elizabeth is too passive after her (justified) explosion at Darcy’s paranoid assumptions, and she’s too quick to forgive his accusations. Elizabeth’s not intellectually honest, insisting she’s kept her promise to Georgiana not to “speak” of her engagement to Wickham because instead she wrote of it in a letter. Neither is particularly likable.

Lauder’s writing style and word choice are similar to Austen’s original, though lacking the wit and ironic humor. LETTER FROM RAMSGATE would benefit from a thorough edit to eliminate characters that aren’t strictly necessary and to tighten the story line. (C)
 
HOPE FOR MR. DARCY is the first book in Jeanne Ellsworth’s Hope series trilogy, variant or sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in free or inexpensive e-book format in 2016.

At Hunsford the day after Fitzwilliam Darcy’s disastrous proposal to Elizabeth Bennet and her infuriated refusal, she becomes suddenly ill of a fever. Caught in the midst of a violent storm while on her morning walk and soaked to the skin, it’s hours before she is able to return to the parsonage. She’s delirious but insists on writing an apology in response to Darcy’s explanatory letter. He immediately comes to the parsonage and, when she’s involved in a near-death experience, calls her back to him. As Elizabeth recuperates, she and Darcy come to know and love each other. Charlotte Lucas Collins, who’s pregnant, writes Elizabeth, who’s visiting the Gardiners after her recovery, that Mr. Collins has died of the fever, asking her to return to Hunsford to help with arrangements for the funeral and subsequent move. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam also return to be of assistance, Darcy hoping to convince Lady Catherine de Bourgh to be more generous in dealing with Charlotte. (Lady Catherine gives eviction notice to Charlotte even before the funeral, but Darcy shames her into giving another week’s tenancy.) The story continues with a few additions to the original story line from Austen, minus the uncertainty about Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship.

****SPOILERS****

Ellsworth changes Austen’s characters considerably. Both Darcy and Elizabeth are initially much more insecure emotionally, going from angst and guilt to euphoria instantly. Darcy is grossly extravagant in his promises and in his marriage settlement on Elizabeth--£50,000 on his death, £4,000 annual income, and full power to control Pemberley in case of his absence, incapacity, or death. He pays Mrs. Younge £1,000 for Wickham’s address in London. More change is wrought in the supporting cast. Mr. Collins is not only a fool but a miser who emotionally and physically abuses Charlotte, but he’s involved in some secret lucrative business that seems to involve smuggling. Charlotte has learned the hard way that security can come with too high a price tag. Lydia Bennet refuses to sleep with Wickham until they are married, so Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s rescue does not result in forced marriage. Wickham is left ill in jail, too sick to be transferred to debtors’ prison. Anne de Bourgh uses her inheritance of Rosings and threat of sending her to the Dower House (rundown and no plans for renovation) to “convince” Lady Catherine to welcome and support Elizabeth in the Fitzwilliam family and Society. Kitty Bennet is a feminist, wanting women to have the right to vote, to own property, and to testify in court. The only major addition to the list is Avelina Gardiner, fourteen-year-old cousin of the Bennet sisters, but she serves no essential function in the plot

HOPE FOR MR. DARCY needs another edit. Word choice is not always felicitous: Charlotte “purrs” over the delirious Elizabeth; “hassle” originated in the late nineteenth century. Would Elizabeth be kept on a chaise in the sitting room still dressed in her wet clothing all afternoon after she’s found, or would she have been immediately put to bed in warm dry nightclothes? The apothecary even examines her in the parlor in Darcy’s presence. How likely is it that Avelina Gardiner be allowed to go to Hunsford with Elizabeth after Mr. Collins’s death, especially since the fever appears contagious, both Elizabeth and he having the same disease? Too many of the letters simply repeat non-essential information or double-meaning witticisms between the lovers. There’s little sense of a conclusion because several story lines are left open--Wickham’s fate, what Collins had been mixed up in, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s change of heart, Charlotte’s pregnancy. Shifts in point of view do little to reveal character

The biggest problem for me is the introduction of overtly Christian beliefs into the story. While Austen was the daughter and the sister of Anglican Church rectors, while all of her novels except Persuasion include at least one minister, she did not include specific religious beliefs. Details and interpretations of Elizabeth’s “going to the sun” as “going to the Son” are repeated at least four separate times. IMO Austen would be displeased with the identification of Elizabeth’s heaven with the gardens at Pemberley (which Elizabeth has neither heard described nor seen). In addition, Ellsworth gives every word of the sermon preached over Mr. Collins’s body. Too much.

HOPE FOR MR. DARCY does not inspire me to read the rest of the series. (D)
 
“Agatha’s First Case” is M. C. Beaton’s short story covering Agatha Raisin’s first murder case. It was published in inexpensive e-book format presumably in 2015.

Agatha Raisin, six months out of slum housing in Birmingham, has worked in Mayfair for Jill Butterfrick Personal Relations as general office dogsbody. When she’s sent to tell Sir Bryce Teller that Butterfrick will no longer represent him now that he may be arrested at any time for murdering his wife Lady Nigella, she impresses him with her toughness and her contacts. Sir Bryce sets Agatha up in her own public relations firm, provided she will represent him and generate positive press. He confesses to Agatha that he’d suspected that Lady Nigella had lovers, they had quarreled the night she was murdered, and he had threatened to kill her; he explains that his fingerprints were on the wooden handles of the cheese wire used to garrote her (but he likes cheese and often cuts a slice to snack on), and he claims that he had heard nothing in the night (but he takes sleeping pills). The police are focused on Sir Bryce and not looking further afield for the killer. Can Agatha solve the crime?

It’s hard to reconcile the 26-year-old, mostly naive Agatha Raisin with the hard-shelled harridan she becomes in the novels. Daughter of alcoholic petty criminal parents, Agatha has been sustained by two dreams--to work in Mayfair and to own a cottage in the Cotswolds. She’s conflicted about her ability to run a public relations firm, but she recognizes a unique opportunity, and she’s already tough enough to intimidate reporters with her knowledge of their secrets. Her motto might well be, “Get ‘er done.”

One name problem bothers me. Detective Sergeant Fred Baxter is introduced when he and his boss Detective Chief Inspector Macdonald are assigned to find out what Agatha Raisin knows about Lady Nigella’s murder. Within a few pages, he’s referred to as Sergeant Clarkson, then as Detective Sergeant Fred. :werd

“Agatha’s First Case” is interesting as the prequel to Beaton’s long-running Agatha Raisin novel series. (B)
 
“Sweet Ginger” is Maria Grace’s first short story in the Sweet Tea short story series based on the works of Jane Austen. Its focus is the relationship between Harriet Smith and Robert Martin in Emma. It was published in e-book format in 2015.

Harriet Smith comes to Highbury at age eight as a parlor boarder at Mrs. Amelia Goddard’s School for Girls. As the natural daughter of a man wealthy enough to provide generously for her education, Harriet has no acknowledged family; she will live at Mrs. Goddard’s school until time for her to leave school and seek a husband. Goddard is a childless widow who comes to regard Harriet as her own daughter. Fast forward some ten years at least, when Harriet is planning her future as a teacher at Mrs. Goddard’s school. Mrs. Goddard is determined to introduce Harriet into Highbury society where she may find a husband and establish a family of her own. Harriet becomes friends with two day students, Rachel and Margaret Martin. Through them she meets their brother, Robert Martin of Abbey Mills Farm, whom she marries after much interference from Emma Woodhouse of nearby Hartfield.

The above paragraph is an accurate summary of what happens in “Sweet Ginger.” All of Harriet’s years between arrival in Highbury and preparation to move from student to teacher are omitted. Grace omitted George Knightley, Robert Martin’s landlord, and Emma Woodhouse, who makes Harriet her social protege. Grace gives no details of what Emma did or why she thought it appropriate to interfere with Harriet’s choice. l

Grace introduces two other parlor boarders at Mrs. Goddard’s School for Girls, Belinda and Wynne, both of whom consider themselves infinitely superior to Harriet. Belinda is especially nasty, trying to alienate the Martin sisters from Harriet. She considers herself above the Martins but wants a flirtation with Robert Martin as a respectable single man, even though neither she nor her family would allow her to marry him. She and Wynne (no family names given) remind me of the title characters in the TV show Mean Girls. Harriet is such a dweeb that she never stands up to them. :rolleyes:

The title “Sweet Ginger” refers to ginger confections Mrs. Goddard enjoys though the candy plays no role in the story. Only Harriet’s being bullied by Belinda and Wynne and her first dinner with the Martins are direct action; everything else is mentioned in passing. “Sweet Ginger” has decent ratings (four stars at least) on Amazon, but it makes me wonder if I read the same story as the reviewers. I was not impressed. (D-)
 
HIDDEN DEPTHS is the third book in Ann Cleeves’s police procedural series set in Northumberland, published in 2007. Cleeves uses a typical male modern police detective (think Morse--middle aged, a drinker, a loner who carries serious emotional baggage, who’s dedicated to the job and successful at it) as the prototype for Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, then adds the complication of her being a physically unattractive woman. Vera is definitely believable.

HIDDEN DEPTHS involves the connections between what seem to be two completely separate groups: the family headed by divorced Julia Armstrong and the crowd headed by Felicity and Peter Calvert that includes three of his bird-watching friends. When Julia finds her dead fifteen-year-old son Luke (autistic? developmentally delayed?) and the Calvert group discovers the body of Lily Marsh two days later, their deaths show a clear linkage. Both victims had been strangled with nylon-covered rope, and both bodies had been staged in water with flowers floating all around. Who or what is the link?

Cleeves’s books open with a long introduction of characters and their situations before introduction of the problem. This can make for slow going at first, but it increases the sense of characters’ authenticity. Cleeves uses mostly indirect characterization through frequent shifts in focus between the major characters. She excels at small vignettes that have atmosphere illuminate character: ‘When Vera arrived home that evening, there was a buzzard sailing over her house. The rounded wings were tilted to catch the thermals and the last of the sun caught it so it shown like polished wood carved in a totem. The buzzards were only just returning to this part of Northumberland. Common in the west of the county, the keepers here had shot them to buggery, stamped on eggs, put out poisoned bait. Vera knew there was a keeper on a neighbouring estate with murdering tendencies. Let him try, she thought. Just let him try.” (40)

Plotting is also skilled. Cleeves manages to foreshadow the identity and usually the motive of the killer so that the conclusion is logical and satisfying but also often unexpected. She’s adept at hiding her villains in plain sight.


I am so glad to have discovered this series. HIDDEN DEPTHS is definitely another keeper. (A)
 
Marianna Green’s COLONEL BRANDON’S WIDOW AND WILLOUGHBY is a novella sequel to Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility; it was published in 2015.

***SPOILERS***

Marianne Dashwood Brandon, after four years of marriage to Colonel Brandon, has been widowed for eleven months when the story opens. Childless, with Delaford entailed on Brandon’s young male relative, she is nevertheless financially comfortable on a handsome settlement. Younger sister Margaret Dashwood is about to be married, Elinor and Edward Ferrars occupy the rectory at Delaford, so Marianne moves back to Barton Cottage to prevent her mother’s living alone. This throws her in the path once again of Willoughby, who’s visiting Mrs. Smith at Allenham. The Willoughbys are notorious in London society for his carousing and womanizing, her drinking and bad-temper, and their very public quarrels. All his regrets over Marianne aroused by her widowhood, Willoughby is eager to know, should by some miracle he be freed, if she would accept him in marriage. She reproaches him for his profligate life style and indicates she’s not interested. He resolves to change and does, spurred on by Sophia’s accident that brings on her death from heart disease. Will Marianne overcome the hurt of Willoughby’s jilting her years before, to return his long-proclaimed love and achieve their happy ending?

I wanted to like COLONEL BRANDON’S WIDOW AND WILLOUGHBY, I really did. Some elements of humor sound almost Austen-esque (or at least Heyer-esque): “...[Marianne’s] name was only raised during quarrels, when Willoughby was eager to restore marital harmony by making those invidious comparisons regarding the temper, understanding and beauty of the two, while his final attempt a conciliation was to enlighten his wife about the amount of love he had ever felt for each or could possibly feel in the future.” (37-8) It poses the real question of what would and should Marianne do.

The problem is, I don’t see either Willoughby or Marianne as very believable. Willoughby had been a seducer, a gambler, a reprobate even before he met Marianne soon after the Dashwoods’ move to Barton Cottage. Though he’s trumpeted to Society even after his marriage his love for Marianne, it hasn’t prevented his involvement with prostitutes and mistresses; he’s ignored his responsibilities to his wife, to Mrs Smith, the elderly relative who’s leaving him Allenham, and to his estate at Combe Magna. Yet we are expected to believe that he begins a complete reformation of character brought on Marianne’s reproaches, this while his wife is still alive and divorce almost impossible, while he’s still associating with his carousing friends who are doing their best to overturn his “melancholy.” Such change isn’t believable from a man as weak and shallow as the original Willoughby.

I have even more trouble with Marianne Dashwood Brandon. Green makes her inconsistent. When COLONEL BRANDON’S WIDOW AND WILLOUGHBY opens, Marianne had come to love Colonel Brandon, enjoyed four years of happy marriage to him, and put Willoughby behind her. She sees herself as a mature adult in firm control of her future. Yet she deliberately walks to a point from which she can view Allenham, setting up her meeting with Willoughby. She reproves his life style but allows him to guilt-trip her with his claim to have been faithful to their early rejection of second attachments while she had been unfaithful by her happy relationship with Colonel Brandon. Marianne recognizes Willoughby’s manipulation but allows it to arouse her old feelings. Green shows her doubts of his long-term commitment to changing his life, yet Marianne again writes to summon him, giving clear indication that she wants to resume their relationship. It seems unlikely to me that the hurt and humiliation of his public rejection and the distrust it engendered in her could be overcome so quickly and completely.

Finally, pet peeves. Green refers to both the Ferrers and the Ferrars. She is consistent in her use of ‘s as the ending for singular possessive, plural possessive, and simple plural names. Are editors now officially extinct? COLONEL BRANDON’S WIDOW AND WILLOUGHBY has potential, but it’s not developed. (C+)
 
VILLAGE OF GHOSTS is the second book in Ralph E. Vaughan’s police procedural series set in fictional Hammershire County, England, in and around the village of Little Wyvern. Its protagonists are Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Ravyn and his legman Detective Sergeant Leo Stark. It was published as a free or inexpensive e-book in 2016.

With financial backing from Sir Phineas Smythe and an anonymous benefactor, Alfred (“Freddie”) Pettibone and Agnes (“Aggie”) Swanner have created FOG (Friends of Ghosts). FOG is an organization whose purpose is to put Little Wyvern on the map as the most haunted village in England and to establish a national center for psychic research, to attract tourists and generate revenue to keep the village alive. Many of the villagers whose families have lived in Little Wyvern for a thousand years oppose their plans for change. The opening event in FOG’s projected Ghost Week is the Ghost Walk guided by author and paranormal expert Simon Jones, who during the tour is found dead in St Barnabas churchyard. Someone or something broke his neck and cut his missing heart out of his chest. The missing heart is the trademark of one of the resident ghosts known as the Warlock--Hezekiah Boil, who’d been hanged in 1645 at the Hopkins Oak. As other victims die, all killed and mutilated in the same manner, Ravyn and Stark face the villagers’ conviction that the Warlock is back from the dead.

The plot in VILLAGE OF GHOSTS is neat in its keeping attention focused on the supernatural elements while incorporating obsession with bloodlines, inherited characteristics, and past very human crimes. However, an experienced reader is apt to recognize the killer well ahead of Ravyn and Stark. Vaughan includes much of the developing relationship between Ravyn and newcomer Stark, giving a few hints about each man’s back story and developing more of Stark’s troubled marriage to pregnant, alcoholic Aeronwy, who was in large (circumstances undisclosed) measure responsible for his forced transfer from the Met to Hammernishire. It will be interesting to see the men’s relationship develops.

Despite the series name as “DCI Ravyn,” much of the action develops through Stark’s eyes. I see Stark as the protagonist. As a born Londoner only recently transferred, he experiences deep culture shock: “...when it came to the xenophobic, isolated and, for all [Stark] knew, inbred villagers of Hammershire County, there was little that made sense to him. He had resigned himself to the fact that he was banished to the Coventry of the countryside, but it was times like these that he missed the Smoke, the Met, and the wretched villainy of the East End. Yes, the crime families and yobs were brutal and vicious, but at least they were not beyond his understanding.” He’s cautious because caught between Ravyn, whom he recognizes as unique, a great detective from whom he can learn much but whom he doesn’t understand, and Superintendent Giles Heln. Heln is obsessed with forcing Ravyn out of police service not only because he thinks Ravyn out-of-date professionally but for (undisclosed) personal reasons. Characterization is a definite strong point.

VILLAGE OF GHOSTS is stronger than its predecessor. I’ll follow this series. (A-)
 
Susan Kaye’s FREDERICK WENTWORTH, CAPTAIN: NONE BUT YOU is the first book in her two-book retelling of Jane Austen’s last completed novel Persuasion. It was published in 2007. NONE BUT YOU begins with Captain Wentworth’s return to Plymouth in HMS Laconia in July 1814 and ends with his notifying the Musgroves at Uppercross of Louisa Musgrove’s injury in November.

I attempt no plot summary because the story line doesn’t deviate from the events of the original. Kaye’s most important change is to use limited third person point of view, showing people and events solely through Wentworth’s eyes. She adds significant details to barely-mentioned episodes to reinforce Austen’s character development.

Kaye’s Wentworth, despite his skill and success as a Navy captain who’s made his fortune in the Napoleonic Wars, is not very perceptive about women and Society’s ways. Bitterly hurt by what he now perceives as Anne Elliot’s deliberate leading him on in ’06 when she ended their brief engagement, he unwisely immerses himself in th’e Musgrove family and raises expectations that he will propose to the younger daughter Louisa. He’s beginning to doubt Louisa’s suitability to wife when his initial visit to Captain Harville at Lyme and his observation of the Harvilles’ happy marriage based on love convince him that he cannot settle for less. Instead of leaving forthwith for his visit to brother Edward Wentworth in Shropshire as planned, he allows himself to manipulated into a Musgrove family visit to Lyme, during which Louise does everything short of using a branding iron to mark Wentworth as her own property, even as his feelings for Anne Elliot revive and grow. He does nothing overt to discourage Louisa’s pretensions, even realizing after her accident that he had encouraged her willfulness by earlier calling it “strength of character.” Kaye ends Book 1 with Wentworth believed by everyone (except himself) to have an understanding with the unconscious Louisa.

Kaye makes sisters-in-law Louisa Musgrove and Mary Elliot Musgrove much more alike than are biological sisters Mary and Anne. Both Louisa and Mary are headstrong, stubborn, self-centered, and careless of the feelings of others. Mary throws off her responsibility as the mother of injured son Charles onto Anne, using her almost as servant and making hurtful personal comments in her presence. Louisa’s maneuvering and determination to monopolize Wentworth in Lyme is ruthless. She clearly perceives Anne as a threat and does her best to keep her occupied with Captain Benwick. Her insistence on jumping off the steps to be caught by Wentworth is part of her campaign to demonstrate their special relationship and his desire to please her.

I do not enjoy books that fail to come to a definite conclusion of at least one major story line, and NONE BUT YOU just stops, making purchase of Book 2, FOR YOU ALONE, a necessity. This isn’t fair. Flashbacks to the time of Wentworth and Anne’s engagement are frequent and not especially well handled. Errors in homophones and similar words (palatte-pallet, waining-waning, discreet-discrete, relived-relieved) show the need for thorough proofreading, not just spell-checking the manuscript. (B)
 
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