Readingomnivore Reviews

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READ IT AND WEEP is one of the Library Lover’s mystery series featuring library director Lindsay Norris of Briar Creek, Connecticut. It was published in 2013.

Violet LaRue is making her directorial debut at the Briar Creek Community Theater with a mixed pro-am production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; its success is essential to the continued existence of the theater. Professional actors include Robbie Vine, who’s to play Puck; Kitty, his estranged wife and manager who refuses to divorce him, playing Helena; and ex-girl friend Lola, playing Hermia. They are sharing a beach house but, in the meantime, Robbie gives every evidence of being attracted to Lindsay, who’s working backstage in costumes. Two “accidents” set up a third attack on Robbie, in which he dies of poison. Did Robbie’s way with the ladies lead to his death? Is it intended to make the production and thus the theater fail, in revenge on Violet? What’s critic Harvey Wargus, who hates both Violet and Robbie, doing hanging around the theater? He is working for Stanley Buchanan, the father of Violet’s daughter Charlene who rejected her before her birth but now wants to be in her life. Is Buchanan behind the murder?

The plot in READ IT AND WEEP is improbable, especially the turning point. I can’t detail it without doing a spoiler, but it’s highly unlikely that police would agree to it. The book would benefit from being cut by about fifty pages; more attention is paid to Lindsay’s musings about her relationship with Robbie Vine and with ex-boyfriend Captain Michael “Sully” Sullivan than to the murder. An experienced reader should identify the killer and motive well ahead of the climax. There are repeated allusions to earlier books in the series so that it’d be best to read the series in order.

There’s an overabundance of characters, most of whom are not much developed. Robbie’s wife and girl friend don’t even have last names. Everything is seen from Linday’s point of view, but this does not add much toward the sense of her being a real person. She must be at least in her late twenties, but she languishes over love lost with Scully like a teenager. For a modern, self-aware woman, she’s oddly passive in her relationship with him. Both Scully and Robbie are stereotypical romance heroes; Sully is the strong, silent type, while Robbie is the smooth-talking charmer. None are memorable.

Setting of READ IT AND WEEP (I’m don’t know the title’s origin) is generic. It’s on the coast somewhere, and it’s not until page 181 that Connecticut is mentioned. There are no references to cities, highways, or other identifiable physical features. There’s little atmosphere.

READ IT AND WEEP is one of the books that makes me wonder if I read the same text as the reviewers who rated it so highly. (D)

 

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THIS BLESSED PLOT is one of M. R. D. Meek’s mystery series featuring solicitor Lennox Kemp. It was published in 1990.

Lennox Kemp takes the case of Mrs. Julie Sorrento, whose Italian husband has disappeared and left her with two small children; Kemp sets in motion trying to find Luciano Sorrento and thinks little about it, even after Sorrento’s body is found in a clay pit outside Newtown. Death is ruled misadventure. Kemp’s more involved with the winding up of the Courtenay Trust, established by Silas Courtenay to pass the estate intact to the eldest son of his brother Charles Courtenay. Vivian and Venetia Courtenay have waited all their lives to enjoy their miserly uncle’s fortune. Vivian inherits, but no one doubts that Venetia, the stronger personality of the twins, will share everything. Small things keep cropping up. Kemp’s secretary sees the Sorrento children, supposedly in Sicily with their mother, in the park with another woman. An American touring England on the cheap makes an appointment with the local archivist that he doesn’t keep. Their mother moves out of Courtenay Manor and wants little to do with her children. What is going on?

Characterization is strong. Lennox Kemp is believable--knowledgeable about both the law and human nature. “[Kemp] looked quiet enough, chubby and unassuming, like a rather worn teddy-bear, but looks could be deceptive. ...he had a sharp brain and a critical eye, and ... he accepted no one at their own valuation. It would be interesting to see what he would make of the Courtenay twins who put such a high price upon their name and lineage that their personal qualities had never been challenged.” (27) Kemp is the most fully fleshed-out of the characters since the action is seen through his eyes.

The Courtenay twin are easily the most interesting characters in THIS BLESSED PLOT. “The twins fell back together in paroxysms of clownish laughter which was in no way good humoured. Kemp fought hard against growing temper, sensing he was the butt of their mockery. It made him more alert to the peculiar chemistry which seemed to work between them and accentuate their worst features. If I had Mr. Vivian Courtenay alon, he said fervently to himself, I could take him apart. I might even be able to handle her if I caught her in one of her better moods. But when they’re joined like this, they’re capable of anything. For the first time he thought of the Courtenay twins as quite dangerous.” (131)

The plot is multi-layered, and Meek brings it together into a satisfying conclusion. An experienced reader may well put the elements together ahead of time, since each is foreshadowed. The motif has been used before.

Meek uses atmospheric details to good advantage: “When [Kemp] reached the Manor the iron gates between the worn stone pillars stood wide open as they had done on the previous night but there was something uninviting about the long drive running away under the dark foliage of copper beeches which made him hesitate. The little chapel behind the hawthorne hedge on the other side of the road was so bathed in sunshine that even the gravestones round it looked cheerful...” (47-8)

THIS BLESED PLOT is soundly written. (B)

 

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Sheila Simonson’s SKYLARK is a mystery featuring Lark Dodge, bookstore owner from Northern California. She’s married to James (Jay) Dodge, former LAPD who’s now head of the law enforcement training program at a local community college. SKYLARK was published in 1994.

In spring 1989, Lark is in London, sharing a flat with fellow American, but relative stranger. Ann Veryan as they enjoy a holiday following a bookseller’s convention at the Hanover Hotel. Lark’s expecting Jay to arrive to present a paper at a conference on DNA profiling. Ann has become acquainted with Milos Vlacek, a Czech waiter at the Hanover Hotel, an entertaining and well-educated man who accompanies Ann and Lark to a production of Macbeth. When Ann offers to stow his plastic bag of papers in her purse to protect them from the rain, they have no idea that Milos will be stabbed and nearly killed on the Underground. Then their flat is burgled, their landlady and her poodle are killed, and Milos disappears from the hospital. Ann and Lark are involved because they are witnesses to the attack on Milos, persons of interest in the death of Miss Beale, and worried about Milos’s whereabouts and condition. What’s in Milos’s papers that make them, and him, so important?

The plot uses real-world events--the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc Communist governments and various terrorists plots including the Lockerbie bombing--as the framework for SKYLARK, lending verisimilitude to the plot. Unfortunately this sense of reality is undercut. The turning point of the plot depends on two American tourists identifying the name of an obscure manor house as pronounced by a Czech-speaker, when the London police are unable to do so. Lark and Ann, doing tourist rounds in London and Yorkshire, keep running into men associated with the attack on Milos. The secondary plot line turns out to be a crime of opportunity, with its solution telegraphed by the foreshadowing.

Characterization is good, though Lark isn’t necessarily appealing or believable. As narrator, Lark’s only explanation of her obsession with Milos’s predicament is “Milos bled all over my raincoat. That makes a difference to me. I care what happens to him. He may be just a waiter, a nonentity by English standards, but he’s a decent human being and he doesn’t deserve to be written off because he’s an alien. ‘Wogs begin at Calais.’ Is that the premise here? ... Something has happened to Milos. I can’t ignore that and neither can Ann, whatever you and Inspector Thorne may do or think, and whatever political expedience may dictate.” (98) There’s an element of “ugly American” who knows best to Lark’s attitude and actions.

Strangest of Lark’s actions is her decision, before turning Milos’s papers from Ann’s purse over to the London police, to copy them; she mails the copies to her father, a college history professor in the US, to have them translated and does not tell the police she’s done so. She pulls a major TSTL when she and Ann find Hambly and discover there Milos’s attackers. Lark does tell Jay and the police where to find them. She is told to wait safely at a nearby pub and not consider leaving it until Jay arrives, but Lark returns to Hambly to warn its occupants. She gets there just in time to be deafened by an explosion that destroys much of the house and to fight the fleeing killer. Because she’d made the 1980 US women’s basketball team for the Olympics (which didn’t get to compete), she’s able to stop a fleeing man, armed with a knife, who’s killed before. Really?

Sense of place is outstanding in SKYLARK, both in physical terms and in atmosphere, much of which deals with culture rather than landscape: “Londoners say sorry with no inflection at all when they cross in front of you in the theater or jostle you on the street, and sometime when you jostle them. It isn’t even a politeness, because there’s no feeling in the expression at all, not even fake feeling. They aren’t sorry. They’re just letting you know Mum brought them up right. They also avoid eye contact. Nobody in the crammed car was looking at anyone else unless they worked in the same office and had gone to the right schools together. Then they murmured. Mostly, they didn’t say anything. They just stood there, swaying against each other, avoiding each other’s eyes by reading their tabloids or the adverts above the windows, or looking down at their feet. Each was enclosed in a sheath of privacy.” (12-3)

If you’re willing to suspend disbelief and go with the plot, SKYLARK will be a good summer read. If not, its improbabilities and attitude are off-putting. (C)

 

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Eric Wright’s FINAL CUT is the eighth book in his mystery series featuring Charlie Salter, Staff Inspector and head of the Special Affairs Center of the Toronto Metropolitan Police. It was published in 1991.

Retired Staff Superintendent Orliff, Salter’s former boss, has been acting as consultant to a film company making a thriller in Toronto but, when a series of sabotaging incidents occur on the movie location, Salter takes over ostensibly as Orliff’s replacement. He’s charged with discovering who’s delaying the completion of the film with false fire alarms, police calls on possible break-in in progress, setting off the sprinkler system, an actor being taken to Niagara Falls for fake publicity photographs, costing time and money that the producer doesn’t have. Salter finds complicated relationships, with Stanley Fisher, the screenwriter, the focus of much of the stress. Salter observes more vandalisms: a house used as a location painted with swastikas, production office torched, the lead actor mugged, and a can of exposed film stolen. Is the damage aimed at closing the film down, having it removed from producer Jack Crabtree’s control by the guarantor, or can it be associated with former Nazi war criminals believed living in Canada who oppose attention being drawn to their existence? Is it a coincidence that naturalized British actor Henry Vigor, director of photography Josef Hodek, and fourth assistant director Helena Sukov are all Eastern European in origin? Salter faces a dilemma when he realizes who killed Fisher and why.

I like Charlie Salter. He’s wise enough to distinguish between law and justice, he’s realistic enough to know what he can and cannot prove., and he’s astute enough to let Special Affairs (i.e., himself) carry the responsibility for leaving the case open. “...the [Special Affairs Center] had long established its usefulness to the deputy chief. The only danger for Salter lay in being envied and resented for seeming to be on a permanent, slightly glamorous special assignment. But when he got the job, he was...aware of the danger and he had always been very careful not to step on the toes of anyone in the regular units--the homicide squad, for instance, into whose territory he had strayed several times--and over seven years he had built up a good working relationship with all the units he came in contact with.” (15-6)

Wright is good with brief summations of character: “Fisher was not so much taking to Salter as letting Salter talk to him. He addressed all his remarks to the air around him, as if Salter were a promising reporter filing up the time for him until a nationally known, prettier, or otherwise more worthwhile interviewer with a better time slot showed up.” (59)

He individualizes even minor characters and uses setting and atmosphere to convey personality: “Above the rank of constable, policemen behind desks are of two kinds. Either they look temporary, caught in flight, as if they are borrowing the desk to make out a report. They keep their jackets on and write square to the desk like someone taking an examination. Their raincoats are ready, often lying across the back of another chair. The other kind look home at last, in shirtsleeves usually; a large, untidy pile of permanent-looking paperwork covers the desk; a coffeepot bubbles; a jacket is hidden away in a cupboard. Parker was of the second kind. His office was his nest, a burrow he had hollowed out that he hated to leave. He did not ever expect to be asked to take part in an outdoor operation again.” (94-5)

The plot in FINAL CUT comes to somewhat of a surprise ending since there is little foreshadowing for the motive for Fisher’s death and for the efforts to sabotage the film. It does hang together logically, and it is satisfying. As alway, glimpses into Salter’s family life provide a humanizing function--Charlie and Annie are dealing with younger son Seth’s sudden interest in a career in ballet.

The Charlie Salter series is strong, and FINAL CUT is a good addition. (B)

 

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Cliff Black’s PERSONS MISSING OR DEAD is the second in his mystery series featuring Geronimo Daniel Corbin, who teaches math at Fort Lewis College in Colorado and moonlights as a private investigator. It was published in e-format in 2012.

Daniel Corbin is still recovering from his previous case (FACE IN THE CREEK) when someone breaks into the trailer he’s bought at a Sheriff’s auction; its previous owner Candace Appleton had disappeared. In installing new lights, Daniel finds two strips of microfilm, copies of photos, birth certificates, and newspaper stories involving Mary McLaughlin; James W. Smith; Cherish McLaughlin, daughter of Mary; Eileen Smith, daughter of Mary and James W. Smith; Maria Dolores Gil, daughter of Maria Virginia Teresa Castillo and Jose Alfredo Gil. Who are these people, and how did this information come to be in Daniel’s trailer? Though classes are soon to start, he decides to spend time investigating. He’s led into multiple murders, faked deaths, grievous bodily harm, kidnapping, illegitimacy, extortion, sale of a baby, and the high-stakes manipulations of a multi-millionaire.

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

Daniel Corbin is over-the-top. He’s insatiably curious: “...now, for want of something better to do, I was nibbling around the edges of the mystery surrounding this trailer. If there was something the cops didn’t want me to know, I was bound and determined to learn what it was.” (7) His Native American heritage (half Cherokee, quarter Apache) leads him to stake out a Kentucky private detective on an anthill to extract information, and he uses it to intimidate his department head. He pulls a major TSTL in going after a man he knows is armed and dangerous without carrying a gun or having a decent cell phone. Daniel, seventeen-year-old daughter Natasha, and Deputy Sheriff Ezzy Miller are the only characters with much development. The number of characters is way more than needed to convey the story.

Black is good at using setting and atmosphere to reveal character. “It was one of those days when rows of cumulous clouds march across an impossibly blue sky, creating a scene more dramatic than the wild canyons and mesas whose colors bounced off the cloud bottoms. Later in the day we could expect lightning and scattered, drenching rains. For now, just the passing sky was worth traveling hundreds of miles to see. I marveled at how the blazing sunlight was switched on and off by the low, fast-moving clouds. I loved this country. I knew people who saved to go to Hawaii, or Paris, or Rome. I preferred a chaise lounge under a ponderosa pine in some secluded canyon, the only sound the breeze sighing in the treetops. I love the high desert.” (13)

The plot in PERSONS MISSING OR DEAD is byzantine in its complexity and improbabiliites. The motive of the chief villain in the piece is not hinted at until the denouement. How likely is it that Natasha Corbin would wind up sharing a dormitory room with the now-grown baby for whom everyone’s looking? Having James W. Smith killed by a Mexican drug cartel in revenge for his beating of two of the secondary characters seems to be taking the easy way out in wrapping up the story line. The missing baby story line is more than sufficient, without adding in the secondary, unrelated disappearance of lawyer Barry Quintana and Corbin’s involvement with his divorced wife Shelly Grafton. How likely is it that a woman guilty of an undetected murder would go out of her way to become involved with a private detective? More isn’t always better. Sometimes it’s just more.

I wish Black had given PERSONS MISSING OR DEAD one more thorough editing to tighten the plot and eliminate the improbabilities. Cutting fifty pages or the Quintana story line would have produced a better book. (C+)

 

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Phil Church’s ROBBERY, MURDER, AND CUPS OF TEA was a free or inexpensive Kindle novella published in 2013. I read 15% and quit. The protagonist Ray is the bored manager of a supermarket in the small English village of Diddlebury. He’s had a variety of dead end jobs but seems reasonably successful running the store. His life consists of visits to the pub, pointless conversations with his wife Laura who’s watching movies on TV and not listening, proper arrangement of grocery shelves, and endless cups of tea. He decides to become a private detective, on a small scale at first--lost wallets and children--moving up to robberies and murder. Then he sees the headless body of one of his neighbors.

At this point, I don’t care enough about the characters or the premise to continue. No grade.

 

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Edmund Crispin’s THE LONG DIVORCE was a free or inexpensive Kindle download originally published in 1952. It features Gervase Fen, professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and sometime criminologist.

Inhabitants of the village of Cotten Abbas are troubled by a series of anonymous letters, most of the accusations of which are true. A mysterious stranger Mr. Datchery arrives and mooches about the village, talking to people and listening to gossip. One of the local gentry, Beatrice Keats-Madderly hangs herself after receiving one of the letters. One of the people suspected as the letter writer is Dr. Helen Downing, whose medical practice has not been financially successful. She’s been cleared of suspicion and just become engaged to Inspector Edward Casby, who’s in charge of the case, when the murdered body of Dr. Peter Rubi turns up. Rubi is a Swiss psychologist on whom local adolescent Penelope Rolt has a crush; Rubi had been convinced that his specialized knowledge would expose the letter writer. But then the murder weapon turns out to have been in Helen Downing’s possession since before the time of death, and she’s Beatrice Keats-Madderly’s heir, to the tune of £50,000. Mr. Datchery, aka Gervase Fen, proves her innocence and sets all right.

Characterization in THE LONG DIVORCE is better developed than in many of its contemporary Golden Age mysteries, though Fen belongs too much to the Lord Peter Wimsey-Albert Campion dillettante tradition to be quite believable. Others, including Helen Downing, Penelope Rolt and her father, even Constable Burns, are more realistic, with personality often revealed through shifts in point of view.

Sense of place is also strong. Physical locations and conditions are specific, and Crispin is adept at using atmosphere to illuminate character: “...the distinction between sin and sinner, so easy to recommend but in practice so difficult to achieve, could be side-tracked very conveniently by the use of allegorical prostitutes; a pretended impersonal abhorrence of evil could be stated in decidedly personal terms; and if the congregation elected to identify those wanton damsels of Ezekiel with actual young ladies living in the neighbourhood--well, so much the worse; no one, at least could accuse the preacher of lacking a proper Christian charity... So Weaver denounced...”

Crispin does not, however, play completely fair on the plot of THE LONG DIVORCE. (It’s not clear whence comes the title.) Solution to identifying the anonymous letter that prompted Beatrice Keats-Maderly’s suicide depends on Fen’s specialized knowledge of a novelist’s habit of using violet ink for her personal correspondence. That letter was a one-off taking advantage of the atmosphere created by the original writer and murderer, whose identity and motive probably will be apparent to an experienced reader before the denouement.

THE LONG DIVORCE is a pleasant read from the Golden Age tradition. (B+)

 

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Summer Day’s ANNE EYRE was a free or inexpensive Kindle published in 2012. It is an updating of Charlotte Bronte’s JANE EYRE. I’ll not assign a grade because I’m quitting at 61%, amazed that I’ve persisted so long.

Abandoned by her mother at age two, Anne’s aunt turns her over to Social Services at age eight; she’s in foster homes until age twelve, when an anonymous benefactor places Anne Eyre at the exclusive Lockwood School in South Kensington, where she endures abuse, both physical and mental, and social ostracism. Put out of school at eighteen with everything she owns on her back, hoping that she’s qualified for admission to university, she’s desperate for a summer job to tide her over until fall term will start. Mrs. Edwina Fairfax, housekeeper at Thornton Hall, hires her as governess for six-year-old Sophie Varens, a young French daughter of Nathaniel Rochester, owner of the manor. The plot, as far as I’ve read, follows (too?) closely the events in the original story.

Certainly references indicate a current date. Anne has a smart phone; Internet access at Thornton Hall is out because of renovations to the house; Nate’s “hobby job” is managing a rock band. But none of the characters seem the least bit modern. Speech patterns, attitudes, and especially Anne’s moralizing are all mid-nineteenth century. Anne tells Mrs. Fairfax: “...you must think I’m very naive for an eighteen-year-old from London, but I’ve been shut up in a girls’ school for the past few years and there was no topic off limits and no cruelty other girls wouldn’t stoop to in oder to rise to the top, so to speak. There’s a kind of serenity to my days here, something missing that I longed for. Sometimes, my judgments are flawed. Perhaps I have been harsh in my assessment of people. You have all been so kind to me here in a way I was not used to and I have learnt to take things at face value and not look for the bad in the good.” I taught kids from foster care and from families where they have nothing positive, and they don’t talk or feel or act like Anne.

Part of what bothers me about ANNE EYRE is sheer carelessness or lack of editing or both. Nathaniel Rochester is given two distinct backgrounds, both told to Anne by Mrs. Fairfax. In the first, as younger son, he defied his father, went to college in the United States, made films, and managed a rock band; in the second, he took First Class honors at University and worked n the City before inheriting the estate. He’s only 28 years old, so doing both is unlikely. His house party involves his old friends the Ingrams, including the socialite Nicola Ingram who’s doing her best to marry him, but they suddenly become the Eatons. Anne refers to all the months of friendship she’s shared with Rochester, when he’d been absent the first weeks of her job, which had begun some weeks after the end of her spring school term, and it’s still summer. How long have they known each other? The final straw is when Anne, whose poverty and lack of funds have been emphasized throughout, crosses the palm of the fortune teller who’s come to entertain the house party with gold coins. I don’t think so.

To modernize an earlier work is much more complex than changing a horse to a sports car and gray bombazine to jeans. ANNE EYRE doesn’t work.

 

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I guess I'm sentimental, but I like to see a sports figure, or someone of achievement, go out a winner. It saddens me to see someone hold on beyond their prime, so they're not remembered at their best but as a has-been. I feel the same way about mystery series.

THE SHROUD MAKER is the eighteenth book in Kate Ellis's mystery series featuring Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson of Tradmouth CID. It was published in 2014 in print and e-format. Ellis's Peterson books always features an archaeological mystery (with Neil Watson as the digger) combined with a modern-day investigation, and THE SHROUD MAKER is no exception. The title refers to the shrouds, or rope rigging, of a sailing vessel; it has a double meaning: a reference to a possible medieval serial killer and the villain / enforcer in the modern fantasy game Shipworld.

Tradmouth is celebrating its medieval glory with the Palkin Festival, named after three-time mayor and leading privateer John Palkin, who died in the late- fourteenth century. At the previous year's festival, Jenny Bercival disappeared; this year, musician Kassia Graylem's body is placed in an inflatable dinghy and set adrift in the harbor. Each women had a tattoo of a medieval cog [a square-sailed trading ship] on her shoulder; each had been involved with a man named William. The badge of fans of an on-line fantasy game called Shipworld is the same as the tattoos. As Wes and the Tradmouth CID investigate the murder, Neil Watson is conducting a dig on property once owned by John Palkin, where he finds the skeletons of two young women, both bearing evidence of murder. What is going on in Tradmouth?

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

My critical question in reviewing THE SHROUD MAKER is, what is enough and what becomes too much? Ellis uses a minimum of 43 named, modern characters; this does not include the names of various individuals who are clearly secondary, named only because people in police investigations are named regardless of the quality of their evidence. Nor does it include the names from the lifetime of Josiah Palkin-Wright, the Victorian historian who wrote The Sea-Devil--the Story of John Palkin (1896), or those from the lifetime of the original John Palkin. There's little characterization, the most sustained of which is a description of Wesley Peterson: "Colin would be performing the postmortem first thing and he and Gerry were obliged to attend. Some people he knew became hardened over the years, but however much he tried, Wes could ever detach himself from the proceedings, never forgot that the thing on the slab was a human being who had lived, loved, laughed and cursed like he did. Some mother had borne and loved him or her. He or she had been in school, made friends, taken lovers, maybe had children of their own. Each was an individual." (40) Fewer characters with better development would improve the book. Each chapter contains several shifts in point of view that do little to reveal character but make focusing on the plot difficult.

The plot is absolutely too much. It operates in three time periods--medieval with John Palkin and his brother Henry, the original shroud-maker, who may be a serial killer to inherit his brother's wealth; the 1890s, with Josiah Palkin-Wright, the historian whose marriage is distinctly strange; and modern Tradmouth with the festival and the Shipworld fantasy that seems to be playing out in real life. The latter two definitely involve serial killers, plus a related modern killing by another person. Besides at least twenty murders (six Victorian, fourteen modern), crimes include stalking, physical abuse, kidnapping, imprisonment / enslavement, smuggling of art and artifacts, blackmail, and assorted lying, theft, and obstruction of justice. The plot seems to be based on modern news stories on the murder supposedly motivated by the Shadowman on-line fantasy and the kidnapping and imprisonment of women in Cleveland, Ohio. The book is 394 pages; cutting at least fifty pages and simplifying the story line would have produced a stronger book. Ellis's cuts between time periods sometimes serve to distract more than to amplify suspense.

Sense of place remains strong in THE SHROUD MAKER. Physical details and atmosphere make Tradmouth a believable city: "Whoever had built the Maudelayne had taken great pains to ensure the vessel's accuracy. The one thing that surprised him was the noise, the loud creak of the timbers as the ship rocked gently on the water. For a moment he visualised the medieval harbour when the quayside would have been packed with wooden hips, scuttling to and fro from France and returning to unload the rich cargos that made Tradmouth wealthy at that time. The sound of creaking wood must have been deafening. All that trade had brought prosperity with it, however, so Wesley doubted if anybody would have complained about the noise." (40)

It depresses me to think that the Wesley Peterson series is ready for its demise. THE SHROUD MAKER is nowhere near the caliber of the early books in the series. I'd rather see it ended than continue to deteriorate. (C)

 

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John Chadwick's THE DECIPHERMENT OF LINEAR B, published in 1958, was one of the first "grown up" history books that I read. I was in high school and don't remember where I obtained a copy of the book (thank God for libraries!), but it fostered a lifelong interest in archaeology. Until THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH, I had no idea that an American woman did the groundwork that Ventris used to decipher Linear B.

Margalit Fox’s THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH: THE QUEST TO CRACK AN ANCIENT CODE was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It is the story of three individuals who managed one of the great archaeological achievements of the twentieth century--the decipherment of Linear B. Linear Class B is the name of the script used in Bronze Age Crete and mainland Greece. The three individuals were Sir Arthur Evans, who discovered the clay tablets preserved by the fire that ravaged the palace at Knossos in 1400 B.C.; Alice Elizabeth Kober, the American classicist whose pioneering work laid the foundations for the decipherment; and Michael Ventris, credited with the decipherment. “What all three shared was a ferocious intelligence, a nearly perfect photographic memory for the strange Cretan symbols, and a single-mindedness of purpose that could barely be distinguished from obsession.”

Soon after Heinrich Schliemann’s dig at Mycenae, Arthur Evans became convinced that the great city-state could not have functioned without written records, so he set out to discover the writing of Bronze Age Greece. Following clues of engraved gems, or “seal stones,” which he traced to Crete, Evans excavated in 1900 at Kyphala (Knossos), where he eventually found three types of script: a hieroglyphic script used 2000-1650 B.C.; a system of linear writing used 1750-1450 B.C., designated Linear Class A, or simply Linear A; and a second system of linear writing, which developed out of Linear A and was used until the destruction of the palace in the early fourteenth century B.C., called Linear Class B, or Linear B. Linear refers to the characters of the script being made with linear strokes, as are the Phoenician and Roman alphabets. Eventually Evans would uncover approximately 2,000 inscriptions, most of which remained unpublished for half a century.

Evans’s attempts to decipher Linear B answered fundamental questions, including that the system was syllabic, with some 50+ characters common to Linear A and Linear B, used mainly to record inventories, read left to right. He recognized the numerical system, which was base ten, using only five symbols without zero. Some words were based on pictographs or logograms, some of which were paired, indicating male and female (though he did not know which symbol meant “male”); Evans concluded that Linear B represented a mixed script using mostly symbols representing a syllable of a word, but with logograms included, much like modern Japanese. Because he was the discoverer, he controlled access to the tablets for years, even after his death.

Most of the work of the decipherment of Linear B was done by a little-known American academic whose personal papers only recently became available at the University of Texas. Alice Elizabeth Kober was a graduate of Hunter College in Manhattan, and she spent her entire academic career at Brooklyn College. She devised the methodology and did most of the preliminary classification used by Ventris in his decipherment. Kober began her work by ignoring the question of what language the script represented (others postulated everything from Hittite to Etruscan (Ventris’s own first choice) to Polynesian) or speculating on a character’s sound value, instead concentrating on the script itself through frequency counts on characters, how characters were used together, and repeated examples of two or three character clusters. This occupied some ten years.

Kober published only three major papers on Linear B. The first, “Evidences of Inflection in the ‘Chariot’ Tablets from Knossos,” showed that it was possible to analyze the script based on the characters alone and that the language recorded by the script was an inflected language. That is, the language indicates usage through changing word endings, as in Latin and modern German. She recognized that identifying the inflection pattern would offer a “way in” to determining the language by limiting the number possible; it also showed that Linear A and Linear B scripts recorded different languages because Linear A’s was not inflected.

Her second paper, “Inflection in Linear Class B,” published in 1946, unravels the bridging characters used to connect stems or base nouns with suffixes, the bridging character consisting of a the last consonant in the base and the first vowel in the suffix. This became the way to establish relative relationships between characters without knowing the sound value of the syllable. This was the key element in decipherment. Her third article was a state of the field paper published in 1948, “The Minoan Scripts: Fact and Theory,” demonstrated her use of grids to show relationships between words, the method adopted by Ventris.

Her personal papers show that, had Kober lived, she might have beaten Ventris to the decipherment. He used her method, her grids, and she’d seen the evidence that he used to make his intuitive leap at identifying the language. But she was a woman academic, teaching a massive class load, doing her work at night. She received only one major award, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946, that allowed her a year’s sabbatical for research. She was severely hampered for many years by lack of access to the unpublished materials, finally doing much of the secretarial and editorial work on Sir John Myres’s Scripta Minoa II, at least in part as a way to gain access to the material. (Myres was Evan’s assistant, charged with publishing the inscriptions after Evans’s death.) She lost her strongest supporter in December 1948 with the death of John Franklin Daniel of the University of Pennsylvania, but by that summer, she’d begun suffering symptoms of the illness (probably cancer) that killed her in 1950. She was forty-three years old.

Michael George Francis Ventris was a generation younger than Kober. He met Sir Arthur Evans when he was fourteen, and Linear B became his obsession. By training an architect, he used Kober’s methodology to analyze the Linear B inscriptions found by Karl Blegen at Pylos on the Greek mainland. From this, he discovered five characters used especially often as the beginning of words, used to write the pure vowels at the beginning of words; the repeated nouns with different endings identified by Kober were town names that looked like phonetic spellings of the names of Classical Greek towns; and the rules by which a non-Cretan language were recorded in Cretan script. He concluded that the language of the inscriptions was Greek, and announced his decipherment 1 July 1952 on BBC Radio. Karl Blegen’s discovery of Pylos Tablet 641, the “tripod tablet,” confirmed this identification. Ventris was soon joined by John Chadwick, specialist in early Greek dialects at Cambridge University, who provided academic respectability. Unable to deal with the celebrity resulting from the decipherment, Ventris died 8 September 1956 in an automobile accident that some believe was suicide by car. He was thirty-four years old.

Kober was not mentioned in Ventris’s initial announcement; he did not acknowledge her fundamental work until a small lecture in 1954, not published until 1958. “The decipherment was done entirely by hand, without the aid of computers or a single bilingual inscription. It was accomplished, crumb by crumb, in the only way possible: by finding, interpreting, and meticulously following a series of tiny clues hidden within the script itself.” Most of that work, including developing the methodology, was done by Alice Kober. Ventris based his intuitive leap that the language recorded was Greek from Kober’s firm foundation of analysis of its structure as expressed in Linear B.

Sorry so long, but it’s difficult to summarize a complex book on a complex subject. THE RIDDLE OF THE LABYRINTH is accessible.. Despite its being a revisionist history, its tone is objective. It is well researched and well documented. Its premise is sound. Two minor complaints. The font used for the Linear B characters is much lighter than that of the text, making the characters hard to see without magnification and/or additional light. A time line with major events in the process of decipherment showing what Evans, Kober, and Ventris were doing contemporaneously would help keep sequence and priority in mind. Recommended. (A)

 

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Nicola Furlong’s A HEMORRHAGING OF SOULS was a free or inexpensive Kindle published in print in 1998 and in e-format in 2009. It’s set in British Columbia. The protagonists are Constable Patrick Painter of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Dr. Tempest Ivory, a clinical psychologist specializing in suicide in children. Both are believable humans, each with baggage from horrific childhoods.

Two series of deaths are involved in A HEMORRHAGING OF SOULS. The first occurs in 1978, when thirteen-year-old Nathan Winsloe hangs himself on St. Patrick’s Day, a week after his mother’s suicide. Nathan is survived by his father, the district superintendent of school, and two sisters. The second occurs in present at the Academy of the Sisters of the Perpetual Soul, with the suicide by hanging of eleven-year old Amelia Penderghast; she’s been bullied at school and living in a dysfunctional home dominated by her mother’s live-in boyfriend. Sydney Mayne is responsible for much of Amelia’s misery at school--Sydney sets fires, lies, and steals the private diary of Sister Winifred, the Mother Superior. There’s a second hanging, young Vita Bell, then a third, Sydney. Something is obviously very wrong, if not evil, at Old Soul’s. Patrick Painter is the officer in charge on the investigations of the deaths, with Tempest Ivory working with the girls at the school. Together they uncover the abuse and madness that lie behind the deaths.

I don’t usually read books that center on child abuse in any form, but it is inescapable in A HEMORRHAGING OF SOULS, in both cases. I continued reading because the protagonists are so well-drawn that I wanted to see how they responded to each other. Painter’s father is a retired Staff Sergeant of the Victoria Police Department, an abusive, alcoholic bully. Painter is dealing with the death of his mother and guilt over having left home at sixteen to leave her alone with his father; he’s shy around women, does architectural drawings, and gardens. “As a police officer and a single man, Patrick’s life was one endless shift on call. Though his schedule was set on a weekly basis, the limited number of staff at the Sidney/North Saanich Detachment necessitated huge chunks of overtime. The money nestled in the bank quickly enough, but he often railed against the relentless demands of protecting society. Gardening gave him unspeakable joy: he delighted in triggering growth, fussing over the vagaries of pruning and struggling organically with insect incursions. Most gratifying was his green thumber’s insight into the earth’s natural order and common sense.”

That Tempest ivory was a victim of childhood sexual abuse is apparent early on. “Tempest watched her [Sydney] carefully, touched by the child’s fragility. You might just as well strip naked as sing in front of another human being, you felt so exposed and vulnerable, she thought. Like turning your back on a stranger and hoping they’ll catch you if you fall. Trust in another human being was a precious gift, one that was stolen from T. She was certain Sydney had also been deprived of this blessing, if not wholly denied.” Tempest is, as well as a psychologist, an aspiring opera singer. She wins her first role in the McPherson Playhouse production of Rigoletto, playing Gilda, and doubts herself and her talent. Both begin to come to terms with their own pasts.

Sense of place is strong, with atmospherics establishing a disquieting mood: “The Perpetual Soul was founded by early Quebec missionaries dedicated to the education of rural children, and grew to become the institution of choice for many of Victoria’s elite Catholic families. In keeping with its charitable founding ethic, however, the academy provided free education to a limited number of deserving girls. At the Academy and other Catholic schools, education was paramount, personal comfort secondary. Cold and austere from the outside, the Old Soul’s interior remained crypt-like, with gleaming oak floors, dove-grey walls and endless, senseless echoes.”

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

The plot is fairly laid out, with events of 1978 and those at Old Soul’s coming together, showing the damage from abuse carried through the years by its sufferers. It depends a bit much on coincidence--that Painter’s father had been the investigating officer on the deaths of Vivian and Nathan Winsloe. I had two questions of procedure. Shouldn’t evidence of sexual abuse been found on Amelia Penderghast as part of the autopsy? And how independently does a RCMP constable work? Staff Sergeant Lalande is mentioned but takes no part in investigating the deaths.

Furlong does not establish firmly the degree of relationship between Patrick Painter, his father Leonard P. Painter, and Sister Winifred. Patrick refers to her as his great-aunt and calls her Aunt Winifred; at one point, Sister Winifred thinks of Leonard Painter as her brother, but she later specifically refers to him as her first cousin. Which? A formatting problem, lack of hyphens at the end of lines where needed, was confusing.

Despite its subject matter, I recommend A HEMORRHAGING OF SOULS. (A-)

 

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Donna Andrews’s MURDER WITH PUFFINS is the second in her Meg Langslow mystery series. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. Meg is the first person narrator of the series.

At the beginning of the summer of weddings, Meg Langslow sublet her house and forge to a sculptor. It’s now fall, the sculptor refuses to move until his current fifteen-foot stone piece is finished, her parents’ house in Yorktown is filled with relatives who came for the wedding and remain for the trial of the murderer, and Meg and handsome drama professor Michael Waterston desperately want privacy to pursue their relationship. Meg has the solution--Aunt Phoebe Hollingsworth is in Yorktown, so they will have a secret romantic long weekend at her summer cottage on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine. A few small glitches interfere with their plans. Meg is deathly seasick on the ferry going over. Meg’s parents, brother Rob, Aunt Phoebe, and Mother’s friend Mrs. Fenniman are all staying at Phoebe’s cottage, unbeknownst to Meg. Hurricane Gladys stalls off-shore, then veers to hit Monhegan. Birders swarm all over the island to take advantage of the seasonal migration to add to their life lists. And local celebrity, the noted painter Victor Resnick, is murdered. Meg and Michael find his body just before the hurricane hits. Almost everyone on the island is a suspect, because Resnick had alienated everyone with his modern monstrosity of a glass house polluting the best view on the island, with his plans to sell to Coastal Resorts to built an ultra-exclusive resort on the island, with his savage critiques of puffin-artist Rhapsody’s work, with assorted blackmail, and with his active persecution of the birds whose droppings pollute his glass house. Both Aunt Phoebe and Meg’s father are suspects.

A common motif in the Meg Langslow series is Meg’s getting involved in some situation, usually at her mother’s insistence, that forces her to deal with events that produce a murder. Protecting her mother’s reputation (no hints here--you have to read the book) and her father’s feelings puts her in the middle of Victor Resnick’s death. “...We were longtime summer people, but we were only summer people. Which in the local hierarchy put us only one step above day tourists, and considerably below lobsters and puffins. And I had a feeling that even the mainland police would rather have their internationally famous corpse bumped off by tourists instead of by some good, solid, salt-of-the-earth Monheganite.” Most of Meg’s family is, to put it politely, eccentric, but charmingly so.

Andrews is adept at using humor as part of character development. “Mother ignored crises as long as possible, on the assumption that of course someone else would take care of them. Usually me. On those rare occasions when Mother felt a situation needed her attention, she would go into what Rob and I called her ‘off with her head’ mode--making decisions and issuing orders with a ruthlessness that made Robespierre look benign. Once Mother took charge, crises tended to work themselves out quite satisfactorily--at least if you agreed with Mother’s definition of a satisfactory outcome.”

Andrews doesn’t quite play fair because she hides the cause of death until very late; once Meg’s father, who’s a retired physician, examines Resnick’s body and discloses it, the killer can only be one person.

MURDER WITH PUFFINS is an ideal read for an afternoon in the shade with a nearby pitcher of cold lemonade. (A-)

 

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Eric Wright’s A FINE ITALIAN HAND is the ninth in his Charlie Salter mystery series set in Toronto. It was published in 1992.

When the stabbed and garroted body of actor Alec Hunter is found in a seedy motel, the people who knew him all tell the police of Alec’s two passions--womanizing and gambling. His lover and agent Caroline Spurling says she’d given him $1,000 to pay off a gambling debt; the motel clerk tells the newspapers that the man who rented the room looked like a gangster and spoke with an Italian accent. Was Alec bumped off by the Mob because he couldn’t cover his debts? Homicide’s busy, and Deputy Chief Mackenzie is flooded with protests from the outraged Italian community, so he assigns Salter to take the flac and maybe even solve the murder. The only trouble is, as the police information-gathering network goes into action, the Toronto Mob at first denies responsibility, then later offers a $50,000 reward for the capture of the killer; the Toronto gambling establishment has no one who’s taken bets from Alec Hunter. If his gambling habit didn’t get Alec Hunter killed, did his womanizing? The Deputy Chief also enlists Salter’s aid in dealing with what looks like incontrovertible evidence of a policeman accepting money from a bookie.

One of the pleasures of this series is the development of Charlie Salter as a believable human being, not just a policeman but also husband, father, and friend. His wife Annie is absent in Prince Edward Island where her father has suffered a serious stroke, and her mother is totally unable to cope. Her absence and its reason lead Charlie into contemplation of his future: “...thinking about the way his mind was working, Salter began to wonder if he was going through a crisis, a change from which he would suddenly wake up, aged. Against all the jaunty bloom of the men who claimed they felt ten years younger now that they were retired, he put the image of one in his early sixties who became an old man within a year of retirement, shuffling about with a soft smile on his face. He comforted himself by thinking about his genes. His own father at seventy had moved in with the widow and made it clear with a dozen winks and nods that he was enjoying full connubial bliss. So that was all right. Then why couldn’t he forget it?” (67-8) What’s going to happen if Annie decides she has to stay on the Island to care for her mother?

Another of the pleasures is the revisiting of characters who appeared in earlier cases. Ranovic is now a sergeant, with a pregnant girlfriend who refuses to marry him. Sergeant Dick Peterman from Homicide is a competition-level ballroom dancer, an avocation zealously hidden from his colleagues. Deputy Chief Mackenzie is humanized as he copes with political pressure from all sides, trying to do the right thing for all concerned while protecting the integrity of his own last years on the force. Salter’s son Seth, over his fascination with ballet, is acting in The Monkey’s Paw, considering acting as a career. Few mystery writers have this gift for creating a viable community of individuals and carrying them forward realistically. I do recommend reading the series in order, if possible.

Wright’s plots are fairly laid out and conclude satisfactorily. He does manage a surprise that changes the whole complexion of the case, that is, nonetheless, logical. There are few atmospheric touches, but sense of place remains strong.

A FINE ITALIAN HAND is another strong entry in the long-running Charlie Salter series. My regret is that there are only two more titles. (A-)

 

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GHOSTLAND is one of Jean Hager’s Mitchell Bushyhead mysteries. He is the Chief of Police in Buckskin, Oklahoma, a half Cherokee. It was published in 1993. The title is a reference to the Cherokee belief that the spirit of a murdered person remains earthbound--in ghostland--until the killer is identified and put to death.

It is almost the end of the school year for the Cherokee boarding school in Buckskin, and it is the long weekend of the Cherokee Heritage Festival, with many Cherokees, other Native Americans, and tourists swarming through town. Charley Horn and his troop of junior gourd dancers are taking a short cut through the woods between the school and town when they discover Miss Polly Kirkwood, who’s fainted from the shock of finding the body of Tamarah Birch, a third-grader from the school. The body, looking as if the child had been sexually assaulted, had been partially covered with leaves. Miss Polly found Tamarah about mid--morning on Thursday; the various visitors will leave by Sunday night, and school students and faculty will scatter by the end of the following week. Mitch Bushyhead and his officers have only a short time in which to discover the killer. When Tamarah’s missing panties turn up under the trash barrel of Dwayne Burns, everyone’s willing to believe he’s guilty. After all, he’s just returned from a three-month psychiatric evaluation following his conviction for exposing himself to women. But Mitch isn’t sure and, when the autopsy shows no sign of sexual trauma, he concludes that the killer must be someone associated with the school. Why was Tamarah killed? By whom? What do her roommate Ruthann Blackfox and faculty brat Kendall Harlan know that they won’t tell Mitch about?

GHOSTLAND is solidly written, with a believably human continuing cast of characters. Mitch Bushyhead is a good cop: “Though Bushyhead moved at a good clip, he didn’t seem to hurry. His expression was disturbed, yet watchful at the same time. The kind of man, Charley guessed, who thought more than he said, therefore, would be easy to underestimate.” (26) And “Mitch took out a small spiral notebook and ballpoint pen. there wes some reassurance in putting events in order, ordering them to time and place. It gave structure, however illusory, to the deeper chaos of evil. It helped one determine what happened, if not why.” (28) Enough is given of his personal life--he’s a widower with a teenaged daughter Emily, about whom he worries, and a woman who’s off to Boston for a six-weeks’ seminar to complete her M.A. and perhaps her time in Buckskin. The other Buckskin police officers are individuals with their own quirks and abilities. Shifts in point of view between Mitch and various of the teachers at the school add to their authenticity.

Hager is effective in using setting, especially atmosphere, to convey both character and culture. “After long consideration, [Crying Wolf, medicine man] had decided on a ceremony to return the evil by fire. Instead of remaking tobacco to infuse i with magic power, he would burn the lightning-struck wood that he carried in a cloth sack slung over his shoulder. He was convinced that only by such an extreme measure could the present evil be dealt with. He had not reached this decision lightly. Returning the evil by fire was a terrible weapon. But he had had no other choice. He had already performed a ritual to protect himself and, during the morning’s ceremony, he would make certain the smoke did not touch him.” (124)

Plot is fairly laid out, police procedural format with evidence laid out as Mitch discovers it. Hager’s misdirection focuses attention on one set of suspects to produce a surprise ending to one of the story lines.

My only complaint about GHOSTLAND is the number of characters who are initially well-developed (the Kirkwood sisters, especially) who become extraneous as the plot develops. I wanted larger roles for Miss Polly and Miss Millicent.
I recommend GHOSTLAND. (B+)

 

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Barbara Paul’s HE HUFFED AND HE PUFFED is a stand alone mystery originally published in 1992.

The organization of HE HUFFED AND HE PUFFED is a bit different. The first section, The Victim, focuses on A. J. Strode, a self-made millionaire who specializes in using secret information (i.e., blackmail) to “encourage” people to deal on his own terms. He’s determined to buy controlling interest in House of Glass, so that he can take it out of competition with his own company. He needs only one of three blocs of stock to have that control, and he has information on all three of the share owners. So which does he approach? This portion is in limited third person point of view, mostly through Strode’s eyes, but a bit through that of his yes-man assistant Myron Castleberry. Strode is thoroughly despicable, almost as a matter of principle for himself.

The second section, The Suspects, introduces the three shareholders: Joanna Gillespie, world-class violinist who, on Strode’s evidence, murdered both her parents; Jack McKinstry, wealthy playboy who solved his money problems, according to Strode’s evidence, by killing his creditor and three others in a staged helicopter crash; and Richard Bruce, head of Bruce Shipping Lines, who scuttled his first ship, the Burly Girl, with 37 crewmen aboard, for the insurance money he used to build his empire. This section is narrated in first person by each of the suspects. When they decline to sell and are confronted with Strode’s promise to publicize all the evidence, they are determined to eliminate him. He’s found dead with three stab wounds to the heart, a knife from each of the suspects. Who killed him?

The third section, The Cops, is limited third person narration from the point of view of Detective Sergeant Marian Larch. She is faced with only three suspects, each of whom names another of the three as the killer. How to prove who killed Strode?

HE HUFFED AND HE PUFFED was an interesting read because of the ingenuity with which Strode sought to control his prospective sellers and their ingenuity in evading his plans. The stratagems are much more complex than I’m able to indicate in a brief summary and without doing spoilers. It’s not quite believable when considered in common sense terms, but it’s good fun and easy to suspend disbelief. The means by which Larch determines who’s guilty is clever.

Characters are well drawn, especially of Strode: “What crazy thing people get excited about, Strode thought. The audience was clearly enchanted; he’d had no idea that there were so many fiddle-enthusiasts in the world. He tried to assess what it meant. If Gillespie lived for music, that ought to mean she was a babe in the woods when i came to monetary matters. But Strode seldom took anything for granted; besides, getting her to see House of Glass stock wasn’t so much a matter of exploiting her financial naivete as it was a matter of personality, of will.” (16) The suspects and victim in HE HUFFED AND HE PUFFED produce the moral question: which is worse, the person who is publicly and unashamedly a villain, or the villain who conceals his/her wrongdoing?

HE HUFFED AND HE PUFFED makes an entertaining summer read. (A-)

 

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Donna Andrews’s THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EMUS is the latest to date in her Meg Langslow mystery series. It was published in 2014.

Meg’s Grandfather, noted zoologist Dr. Montgomery Blake has hired PI Stanley Denton to find his college girlfriend Cordelia, who bore his son Dr. James Langslow. She’d left the baby on the steps of the Charlottesville, Virginia, library, and the baby had been adopted by the head librarian and his childless wife. Denton locates Cordelia Lee Mason, of whom Meg is the spitting image, in Riverton, Virginia, only to find that she’d died some six months before. The reclusive first cousin with whom she lived, Miss Annabel Lee, says Mrs. Delia had been murdered by their next door neighbor Theo Weaver. Miss Annabel promises to share family history with Meg, provided she solves Mrs. Delia’s murder.

The cousins had been major protectors of the emus that Hosmer Eaton released when his Biscuit Mountain Ostrich and Emu Ranch was foreclosed on; the bank had planned to slaughter them, so he decided at least to give them a fighting chance for survival. Miss Annabel and Mrs. Delia planned to purchase the mountain, formerly the site of the Lees’ Biscuit Mountain Art Pottery, to establish an emu sanctuary as well as a cultural center, to bring needed revenue and jobs to Riverton. The bank won’t consider the sale. Why? Dr. Blake and his Blake’s Brigade become aware of the now feral emus and mount an expedition to capture them for the Willner Wildlife Sanctuary where they will be safe. In the midst of all this, Meg discovers the body of Theo Weaver in his house, with an arson setup similar to the circumstances in which Mrs. Delia died. Who’s responsible, and why?

Despite the zaniness of some of the characters, the plot in THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EMUS is well constructed. Andrews keeps attention focused away from the killer while still providing clues to motive and to the eventual identity. She even includes a surprise ending that, on second thought, may seem improbable; her skill makes the reader willing to suspend disbelief.

Characters are quirky enough to be genuine, especially in a region where eccentrics are cherished. One of the most developed is Meg’s Grandfather Blake: “ ‘Do you think there’s something wrong with him?’ Thor [Larsen] as frowning as if he suspected Grandfather of some evil intent toward the emu, like declaring him contagious and euthanizing him. I could have told him that Edward Everett Horton was perfectly safe, especially since, despite being the smallest of the emus, he’d managed to draw blood from two of his captors. Grandfather was a big fan on anything fierce, noisy, and dangerous.” (178) Miss Annabel Lee and Mrs. Cordelia Lee Mason would be great fun to know--steel magnolias in the best sense of the term. “ ‘How lovely to see you again.’ [She] was using her best Southern hostess voice. I could imagine our ancestors using much the same tone to a Union officer who’d arrived intending to bivouac his troops on the front lawn.” (310)

As always, Andrews is adept with setting that enhances the action: “Downtown Riverton was remarkably quiet, and none of the businesses looked open. Of course, they hadn’t looked all that lively yesterday, but today you could have used the whole area around the town square to film one of those post-apocalyptic science fiction grade-B movies where most of the human race has been wiped out and the few survivors would spend the next hour and a half battling invaders from outer space or giant mutant cockroaches.” (147)

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EMUS is another good, light summertime read. (B+)

 

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SHADOW MEN is the third novel in Jonathon King’s Max Freeman mystery series set in Florida. It is available in e-format. I recommend reading the series in order, if possible.

On the death of his grandmother, Mark Mayes finds a cache of letters from his great-grandfather Cyrus Mayes to his wife, written while he and his two older sons Steven and Robert were working on the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades in 1924. The letters indicate slave-like working conditions and the real possibility that men trying to escape from the work crews were killed by a sharpshooter named Jefferson. The Mayes men never returned. Mark hires Billy Manchester to find out what happened to his relatives. Billy calls in Max Freeman, now a licensed private investigator, to investigate. It’s soon clear that someone’s tracking Max’s movements as he looks for clues. Max enlists the aid of Glader Nate Brown, but can they find evidence about the Mayes men’s deaths after so long and in such conditions? What, if anything, does the Mayes case have to do with murders of four criminals in Highland County spanning the last fifteen years?

I can think of few series that even approach the superb sense of place shown in King’s Max Freeman novels. “The morning heat was building. A high sheet of cirrus cloud was not going to offer any respite from the blurred sun. The air was beginning to thicken with that warm, moist layer that rises up from the Glades like an invisible steam. It was as if the earth itself was sweating, and it carried the not unpleasant odor of both wet and drying plants and soil and living things.” (197)

King is also exceptional in his creation of character. He develops Freeman’s character slowly, each novel revealing a bit more about the people and events that formed him. “I didn’t have a mirror at the river shack and sometimes didn’t look at myself for weeks at a time, and even then, not closely or seriously. The reveren’s last words had followed me for the entire drive back, and I looked into the black irises of my eyes. Was my father in there? And if so, which one? The relentless cop who wouldn’t let a child-killer go unpunished? Or an alcoholic racist who beat his wife? Or both? Or neither? ‘We leave more than DNA behind,’ the living William Jefferson had said. But how much more? The answers weren’t in the mirror.” (172-3) Using Max as first person narrator creates the sense of a real person, telling a story. He’s certainly not perfect, since he pulls a major TSTL in that, after having his truck checked for location devices and two being found, he does not check his gear or truck thereafter, allowing himself and Nate to be followed.

The series features a notable group of supporting characters: Billy Manchester, Max’s attorney and friend; Shelly Richards, the Broward County Sheriff’s detective with whom he’s developing a relationship; and Nate Brown, 80+ years old, legendary Glader who’s universally respected by those who know the Everglades. “Brown pulled his billed cap low, shading his eyes so they were difficult to read, and I thought of the similar description of John William [Jefferson]. They were men who worked and lived in water-reflected sunlight all their lives. They chose to exist in a desolate place where sociability was not a part of their everyday existence. The reason they came may have been different, but why they’d stayed was not; they didn’t like anyone else’s rules or some other leader’s vision or expectations. Eighty years of that independent blood had not yet been washed out by the generations.” (196)

The plot is fairly set out, with the reader receiving information as Max and Billy uncover it. The secondary story line of Shelly Richards and abusive cop David McCrary provides a neat counterpoint to the main story line and also provides some segue into the next story. My only complaint is that the abused woman is first referred to as Lynn, then later as Kathleen Harris. Which?

SHADOW MEN, as well as the previous books in the Max Freeman series, is highly recommended. (A)

 

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DEATH BY DEGREES is the tenth book in Eric Wright’s Staff inspector Charlie Salter series set in Toronto. It was published in 1995.

The Search Committee for a new Dean of Related Studies at Bathurst College in Toronto is set up to insure that the administration’s candidate Maurice Lyall will be chosen. With a couple of unexplained vote changes, he succeeds and is named Dean, only to be found shot to death in his home two weeks later, the apparent victim of a break-in gone wrong. Except someone’s sending anonymous letters to the police, accusing the police of covering up his murder. Charlie Salter convinces Inspector Martinelli of Homicide and Deputy Mackenzie to allow him to investigate, not the murder, but the letters. When Henry Littledeer is caught selling Lyall’s watch, Salter’s not convinced the Indian killed Lyall.

Salter is in desperate need of something to occupy his mind as he faces a crisis with his father. Mr. Salter had a stroke and fell down the stairs; he’s in ICU, prognosis uncertain, and Charlie Salter is racked with guilt over the emotional distance between his father and himself. “My father may be dying and I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. I know how I do feel. As if everyone is watching me. But about him? I don’t think we were that close. I feel now as if I’m about to let him down, as if all the times I’ve done it before piling up on me. I feel as though it’s my fault. He makes me feel that way. He always did.” (64)

DEATH BY DEGREES’s mystery element is fairly set out with appropriate clues to the solution. Salter’s feelings about his father add to the sense of Salter and his family as real people, dealing with the problems faced by families everywhere. Details about Salter’s sons reinforse this sense. Angus, the older, now lives in Prince Edward Island with his pregnant girlfriend Linda. He’s happy working with his maternal uncles in the family business, and he and Linda plan to marry. Seth, the younger, still lives at home, but he’s now a professional actor and finding work.

The academics and politics of Bathurst College are authentic. Wright uses the Bathurst College setting to emphasize the diversity and fragmentation of the institution. “It was one of a number of similar non-degree-granting institutions set up in Ontario in the ‘sixties to provide alternatives to university education in a time when a fierce spirit of democratization had swept through the educational system, a time when the phrase ‘higher education’ began to sound elitist was being replaced by ‘further education’, a much more embracing phrase. In the desire to set up as many of these new colleges as possible before the next election, the government in power had chartered some of them ahead of their own building programmes, using whatever spaces were available. Bathurst was housed in a number of old buildings owned by the governments of the city and the province: a disused warehouse, a nineteenth-century home for unmarried mothers, an old Customs shed, and a synagogue and a church, both of which had long ago lost their congregations. These buildings had been refurbished inside, but from the outside only a small sign on each showed them to be a part of the college. Among and around them, the neighbourhood of Portuguese and Chinese cafes and stores, and the houses of the people who used them, still survived.” (38-9)

DEATH BY DEGREES is a solid entry in this long-running series, definitely recommended. (B+)

 

[readingomnivore]

THE LIGHT KEEPER’S LEGACY is the third of Kathleen Ernst’s mystery series featuring Chloe Ellefson, curator at Old World Wisconsin, near the village of Eagle. It was published in 2012.

Chloe is on loan to the Rock Island State Park for a week to do the preliminary curatorial work for the Pottawatomi Lighthouse. Its renovation and preparation as a living history museum has been undertaken by the Rock Island Support Circle, who’re eager for Chloe’s input. She’s looking forward to the solitude of the island and lighthouse where she’s researching the function and appropriate furnishings, but the day of her arrival, she finds the drowned nude body of a young woman wrapped in nets on the beach. Stories of a hoard of gold coins buried somewhere on the island, a simmering feud between game wardens and commercial fishermen, an intense archaeologist, strange holes, and the sound of children’s laughter in the middle of the night all occupy Chloe. She finds a second body, that of Sylvie Torgrimsson, one of the leaders of RCIS, covered with a gillnet. Chloe’s almost killed before she discovers what’s going on.

Tied in with the current (1982) events are two parallel stories from the past. The first involves the lives of Danish immigrants Ragna and Anders Anderson, who settle in the fishing village on Rock Island in 1869; she uses her skill at hedebosom--needle lace--to make and sell gill nets, while Anders fishes. The second begins in June 1871 when Civil War veteran Willaim Betts and his sixteen-year-old bride Emily Rohn Betts, herself the daughter of a lighthouse keeper, arrive on Rock Island to tend the Pottawatomi Light. The women’s lives intertwine, and Chloe focuses on Emily Betts’s story as central to the story of the
light.

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

I was disappointed in THE LIGHT KEEPER’S LEGACY on several levels. One is the pacing of the story. It’s glacially slow. At 343 pages, pruning by at least fifty pages would have produced a stronger story. Another is the repeated interruptions of the modern story by excerpts from Ragna and Emily’s llves. While Chloe finds two letters from Emily, there’s no way for her to know of the details of Ragna’s life except through a couple of references in Emily’s letter. How the Andersons are important to the story is not not even hinted at until the denouement. Yet another is the lack of any indication that two of the villains are in any way related to anyone connected with the island or with the events until the climax of the plot. Chloe doesn’t identify the killer until he attacks her in the lighthouse, though there’s enough foreshadowing, if the past incidents are omitted, that an experienced reader should pick up on the killer’s motive and identity well ahead of the climax. The two back stories are misdirection instead of integral to the deaths.

Chloe’s also a disappointment. She’s still hung up on whether she wants a relationship with Roelke McKenna. She’s stubborn to the point of mulish about staying at the lighthouse despite there being no water except what’s carried in for drinking and, of course, Lake Michigan for everything else; there’s no phone, and except a couple at a remote campground, she’ll be alone every night. The only access is by boat, and she doesn’t have one. Major TSTLs include her telling park manager Garrett Smith and Deputy Stig Fjelstul, officer in charge of the cases, about any of the strange things that happen besides the dead bodies. When she finds a gill net spread over the clothesline at the lighthouse, she still stays on the island after everyone thinks she’s gone, to be cornered by the killer.

The lighthouse is key to the story of THE LIGHT KEEPER’S LEGACY. “The lighthouse was a massive cut-stone structure with a wooden lantern room, and a small frame summer kitchen attached at the south end. This was the building [Chloe] was going to live in, learn about, think about, for the next week. A skeletal metal tower rose from the woods to the west--the modern tower, fitted with a battery-powered light maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard. Even that modern intrusion seemed OK, though. It’s all part of the continuum, Chloe thought, as she walked across the clearing and hitched out of her pack. Pottawatomie people had built signal bonfires on the precipice. A century-plus of light keepers had tended lamps. Today, despite all the modern marvels of 1982 technology, ship captains still relied on the Rock Island light.” (12) Atmospherics, however, are lacking.

THE LIGHT KEEPER’S LEGACY falls short of the previous books in the series. (B-)

 

[readingomnivore]

Andrea Frazer’s “All Hallows” is an e-book format short story published in 2013. It’s one of her Falconer Files series featuring Detective Inspector Harry Falconer and Detective Sergeant Davy Carmichael of the Market Darley CID.

It’s Halloween, and Carmichael has the day off so that he can take his step-sons trick or treating, he in full Frankenstein costume. Detective Constable Chris Roberts, disgruntled at having to work instead of attending the Halloween party at Town Hall, goes to interview a householder in Carsfold and, investigating a stray dog in Masters’s garden, is concussed when horrid neighbor Larry Jordan’s shed explodes with him in it. Jordan is dead, with a pumpkin stuck over his head. He’d suffocated. Everyone on Chestnut Close has cause to hate him. Falconer is called in; he summons Carmichael, and they solve the murder that evening.

Frazer follows her usual pattern of establishing the characters in large part before Falconer and his crew come into the story. She does excellent succinct summations of character: “ ‘Do come in,’ invited [Patrick] Flanagan, not wishing to get involved in a discussion about whether adults accompanying minors on such excursions [trick or treat] should also wear fancy dress. He had no children of his own and, while quite happy to provide those of others with sweets, did not wish to get any more deeply involved with what he considered to be a sub-species of the human race.”

She’s good at conveying character through setting: “In the light of the street lamps, Falconer had already noticed how beautifully tended and tidy the front garden of number one was. The inside of the house was proved to be tended to a similar level, the house looking as if no one had ever lived in it, not a speck of dust sullying any visible surface, and not one item being out of place. Even the Radio Times was sitting tidily in a magazine rack, and not spread open, on a chair seat or table top. A woman, equally spick and span, occupied a recliner chair, her legs tidily crossed at the ankles, and her hair and make-up immaculate, even though they were neither going out nor entertaining at home and, for a split second, Falconer questioned whether he was in Carsfold, or had accidentally strayed into the unnaturally perfect community of Stepford.”

Frazer doesn’t play fair on the plot, however. Identification of the killer depends on information that isn’t shared until after the arrest, when Carmichael asks how he knew. Humor is an important element in the story, with the scene of Carmichael in his realistic Frankenstein costume being beaten over the head with a baguette is worth the price of the story. Good fun. (B)