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Readingomnivore Reviews

A FATAL TWIST OF LEMON is the first in Patrice Greenwood’s Wisteria Tearoom mystery series set in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2012, it features Ellen Rosings, owner of the tearoom and first person narrator, and Detective Antonio Aragon of the SFPD.

Ellen Rosings gives a thank-you tea party for the people who’ve helped her get Wisteria Tearoom ready to open, only to have the president of the Santa Fe Preservation Trust Sylvia Carruthers murdered in the private dining parlor at the end of the afternoon. She’’d been strangled with her own necklace. Who wanted her dead, and why choose such a public setting for murder? “The horror of it made me close my eyes, and I felt a familiar spiral of despair pulling me downward... I could not, dared not let this defeat me. I had to fight it. It would be all too easy to give in to depression after something like this, but I knew that if I did, I would lose the tearoom that I’d worked so hard to create, and in which I had invested everything I had, financially and emotionally. So I’d fight for it. All I could think of was to try to figure out who had killed Sylvia. The police would do their job, but they had no personal stake in identifying her killer. I did.” (39)

I’m ambivalent about A FATAL TWIST OF LEMON. The plot is basic at best, and once the motive is disclosed, who killed Sylvia becomes obvious. It’s doubtful that a policeman (not on the case) would confide so much to a woman casually wandering around in the police department offices.

Characters, especially Ellen and Tony Aragon, carry believable baggage that will make the hinted-at eventual relationship difficult. The romance between female amateur detective and investigating cop is a cliche of too many cozy mysteries. Ellen’s Miss Manners personality seems bland and, despite her financial acumen, she pulls a major TSTL when she goes to call on the suspected murderer just after realizing the identity. At least she does have the smarts to call Aragon and tell him who and why she suspects, so he’s able to rescue her at the last moment. Fewer secondary characters with better development would improve the series to come.

Setting is emphasized through bits of Santa Fe history: “...I crossed the plaza to La Fonda, the historic hotel on the plaza’s southeast corner. La Fonda’s been a magnet for celebrities and Santa Fe socialites not just for decades but for centuries. It’s where the President stays when he’s in town. Everybody who’s anybody goes there, as well as a lot of us who aren’t anybody in particular.... La Fonda is a fabulous, jumbled pile of brown stucco, renovated in the early twentieth century by architect John Law Meem, one of the creators of Pueblo Revival style. Meem’s hallmarks are seen throughout the building in the heavy, carved beams and zapatas, Mexican tile ornamentation and punched tin light fixtures, and many other details that made La Fonda one of the defining pieces of what is known as Santa Fe Style. (89-90)

The reason I’m ambivalent about A FATAL TWIST OF LEMON--the title comes from the necklace with which Sylvia was strangled having lemon agate beads, as well as the association with tea--is a sense of distance from the characters and events of the story. The characters are interesting enough that I’ll read the next book in the series to see if Greenwood’s overcome this problem. (C+)
 
THE SAYERS SWINDLE is the second in Victoria Abbott’s series about Jordan Bingham, curator for the rare book and first editions collection of Vera Van Alst, the most hated woman in Harrison Falls, New York. It was published in 2013 in e-book format. I’m not going to try for a formal review, but comment as things come to mind.

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

THE SAYERS SWINDLE will have huge holes for anyone who’s not read the first book in the series, THE CHRISTIE CURSE. Most of the characters and the premise of the plot originated there, and there’s little exposition to re-set the stage for the current story. Vera insists that Jordan recover her missing Dorothy L. Sayers novels immediately, if not sooner, and Jordan, to preserve her job and her apartment in Van Alst House, must comply. The lengths to which she goes are improbable.

Also highly improbable is that a sociopathic hit woman could disguise herself as a small-town police officer, attend crime scenes, show up in the police station, identify herself by the name of an actual police detective in the same town, and not have somebody spot her for an impostor. The only person who exhibits any suspicion about the faux Candy Mortakis before she reveals herself is Officer Tyler Dekker of the Harrison Falls Police Department, who picks up enough bad vibes from her from a traffic stop (she’s in full disguise) that he takes sick days to follow her on his own time. He doesn’t involve either police department, even in a routine license check.

The premises of Jordan’s uncles’ building, Mike Kelly’s Fine Antiques, just happen to be equipped with all sorts of secret passages and hidden exits, allowing for Jordan’s daring rescue of her uncles and friend Karen Smith (who bought the Sayers novels, not aware that they were stolen, and sold them on to Randolph Smith).

Jordan is not an attractive character. She’s not very perceptive about people, allowing herself to be conned by the faux Candy while all the time feeling superior to the “needy, unattractive” police officer. She believes she’s talked her way out of a breaking and entering charge with Candy, when she should be wondering why a patrol officer would seem to go along with her. She’s perfectly willing to use Candy as a source of information and believes everything she’s told without considering how unlikely it would be for a patrol officer to have that information in the first place and why she would share it with a person of interest in the second.

Jordan emotes over Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, but they are in no way vital to the plot. Any rare or collectible books could have served the same purpose--to trigger the search and to serve as hiding place for Randolph Smith’s notations of overseas bank account information.

I wanted to love this series, I really did. But I don’t plan to read any more. THE SAYERS SWINDLE is an appropriate title. I feel cheated. :buttrock(C-/D+)
 
Barbara Cornthwaite’s GEORGE KNIGHTLEY, ESQUIRE: BOOK 2, LEND ME LEAVE is the continuation of her treatment of Jane Austen’s EMMA from Knightley’s point of view. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle download, published in 2011.

LEND ME LEAVE has all the virtues and all the defects of Book 1. Cornthwaite continues the characters very much as drawn by Austen. Those that she’s added or expanded upon are appropriate and well developed. John Knightley and the Reverend Spencer, curate of Donwell Parish, are particularly believable, and John’s ironic humor leavens the story. She adds verisimilitude to the plot by including the day-to-day activities that occupy so much of George Knightley’s attention. His duties as a magistrate include a local tavern where gambling entices young men and the apprehension of thieves. He has decisions to make as a landowner: whether to drain fields to create arable land, and whether to allow land to lay fallow or to use cover crops like clover to restore fertility. His social position necessitates taking the lead to establish a well-conducted asylum for a mentally afflicted woman and finding appropriate placement for children orphaned by the death of their widowed mother. Life for a responsible country gentleman is no leisurely pursuit.

It also has defects. The pace is glacially slow. The restricted cast of characters and the social constraints of the period make for little external excitement. The exclusive focus on Knightley’s point of view reveals his character but offers minimal insight into others’ thoughts and feelings and is, after a bit, boring.

Still, to those for whom Austen fan fiction is appealing, LEND ME LEAVE is one of the better entries in the field. (B+)
 
THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON is the last novel in Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen mystery series. Originally published in 1977, it became available in e-book format in 2011. Fen is Professor of English Literature at Oxford and a noted amateur criminologist.

The plot in THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON is so outré that it seems more a structure for outrageous comedic scenes than a seriously intended mystery. Granted, there are two murders with decapitations and dismemberments, performed by different killers and different butchers, following a death that passed as an accident but for subsequent blackmail; a second blackmailer; a would-be thief; and grotesque exhibits of and stealing of the detached heads. There is no reason before the detective’s reveal to suspect either of the killers.

Humor, much of it black, pervades THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON. “...The Rector...not only had a first-rate cook but also declined to allow conversation during meals. Explaining this policy to his Bishop, who had been about to dine with him during the course of a visitation, ‘What is the good,’ the Rector had said, ‘of God giving us delicious-tasting foods, if every time we lift a forkful to our mouths we have to break off to cope with the inane prattlings of our guests?’ (The Bishop, though he prided himself on his conversational skill, had taken this very well, on the whole. In any case he found the Rector much less of a burden than the incumbents of some other parishes in his diocese, who were given to composing pop masses, selling Coca-Cola in the vestry, blessing motor-cycles and other similar unedifying practices, thereby offending such congregations as they had without permanently, or even temporarily, recruiting anyone new.) (35-6)

Crispin does, on occasion, make effective use of setting to show character. “[Aller House] was really quite plain, its central mass rising in three well-proportioned storeys to a hipped roof with a bulustrade, its two equal two-storey wings (flat-roofed) elegant, but apart from their balustrades, unadorned; its only serious concession to decorativeness lay in the pair of large circular bas-reliefs, depicting tangles of robust, helmeted Roman matrons, which were situated equidistant on either side of the pillared main door. Though very little had ever been done n the way of upkeep, Clarence Tully having confined himself to replacing two or three broken windows, weathering had been uniform, and the general effect was by no means dilapidated. Moreover, the gardens of the front had been kept in order, some sort of control, even though now reduced to trees, grass and shrubs exclusively. Their main feature was the huge lawn, bisected by the stony, unsurfaced driveway, where rankness had been kept at bay partly by sheep and partly by the occasional attentions of a man with a rotary mower. Clarence Tully was tidy-minded, and even on this white-elephant segment of his property had no intention of letting nature get the upper hand.” (80-1)

While I appreciate humor in a mystery novel, in THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON it quite overpowers the mystery and, in the treatment of the victims’ heads, is distinctly off-putting. (D) :rolleyes:
 
HALF N LOVE WITH ARTFUL DEATH is the latest in Bill Crider’s Sheriff Dan Rhodes mystery series. It was released in e-format in August 2014.

The biggest thing happening in Clearview, in Blacklin County, Texas, is an art workshop set up by Lonnie Wallace who owns the local beauty parlor and an art gallery-antiques shop, Eric Stewart who manages the gallery and shop, and Don McLaren who teaches art at the local community college. Sheriff Rhodes approves because the workshop is bringing people and money back downtown, but Burt Collins complains about the strange people, their strange-er art, the gays who organized the workshop, and the ethnic Indians who run the local hotel. The night after a fracas in which Collins is accused of vandalizing paintings and sculptures in the gallery, he is killed by a blow to the head with his prized bronze bust of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Though the murder is the most serious crime with which Rhodes must deal, there’s also the art vandalism, a small riot, armed robbery at the local Pak-a-Sak store, donkeys loose on the highway, blackmail, a naked woman at a rest stop, taking down a meth lab in a shoot-out, and chickens being killed by either dog or coyotes. Rhodes even has to do a PIT maneuver to stop the fleeing killer.

I was disappointed in HALF IN LOVE WITH ARTFUL DEATH. There is little of the characterization and the great sense of place that marked earlier books in the series. Extensive development of continuing characters isn’t necessary, but something new is needed occasionally to maintain interest. The Abbott and Costello routine by Hack and Lawton, the dispatcher and jailer, has gotten old, as has the business about Rhodes as the prototype for Sage Barton, the two-fisted hero of popular novels. It’s not necessary to bring in every single person who’s ever been named in one of the books.

I understand that a small county sheriff’s department will deal with an assortment of serious and not-so-serious crimes, but simply stacking them up does not necessarily add verisimilitude to the plot. They seem intended to distract from the lack of development of the murder story line. Besides the personality, there’s only one specific clue to the identity of the killer before the reveal.

As much as I hate to say it, Bill Crider seems to have phoned in HALF IN LOVE WITH ARTFUL DEATH. (C-) :buttrock
 
THE LAST HAND is the final book in Eric Wright’s long-running Charlie Salter series set in Toronto. It was published in 2001.

It’s been almost a year since Charlie’s last Special Affairs Case; since he’s turned sixty and faces compulsory assignment at the end of the year, he’s been working in Deputy Chief Mackenzie’s office as basically a clerical assistant. Though Homicide’s short-handed, as always, he’s considered too out of date to help, and his previous successes have soured some of the regulars against him. The murder of Jeremy Lucas, wealthy attorney of impeccable integrity, is politically sensitive because his sister Flora Lucas is a Member of Provincial Parliament and in line as the next Attorney General of Canada. Retired Staff Superintendent Orliff, Salter’s old boss, gives Mackenzie the idea of appointing Salter as special investigator, to take the heat being applied by hot-shot investigative reporter Gavin Chapel, while Homicide solves the case. Salter uncovers strange doings, hoists a group of lawyers on their own petards, and solves the case.

I hate to see this series end because Salter is such a sympathetic character. He’s presented as a believable person, good at his job but devoted to his family. “Salter and Seth had lately started to move into a newer adult relationship, Seth taking on himself the right and duty to ask after Salter’s welfare, one adult to another. Salter found it exhilarating to discover Seth as a friend while being conscious that it was one more diminishment of his paternal role.” (28) He worries about aging and what he’ll do in retirement. He deals with changing family situations. Younger son Seth, finding some success as an actor, and his costume designer girlfriend Tatti want to move in together, so they renovate the basement apartment in the Salters’ home. Older son Angus isn’t happy working for his uncles on Prince Edward Island, and his wife runs away with a folk singer; he and daughter Charlotte move back to Toronto, where Charlotte will remain with Salter and Annie while Angus moves on to Vancouver to work. I like the sense of Salter’s life continuing beyond the series.

I appreciate that Wright introduces one of Salter’s most appealing assistants in Homicide Detective Terry Smith, a recent immigrant from Scotland, who tells Salter: “...I...try to stay away from highlanders--sorry, heelanders--when I’m away from home because they piss me off and I’m sure they piss off everybody else, too. I’m from Glasgow; I’ve never eaten a haggis, or worn a kilt, or done any Scottish country dancing, and I don’t know the words to ‘Charlie is me Darling’. I’m a respectable working chap. Clan Smith, and the tartan comes from the wrapper around the toffees I ate as a wee lad.” (65) I’d like to see more of Smith.

The plot is well constructed, successfully focusing attention away from the killer and the motive, though both are adequately foreshadowed.

Wright maintains the outstanding sense of place that is characteristic of the series. “Louise Wilder lived on Sandringham Avenue, south of St. Clair, west off Yonge Street. The houses on Sandringham are worth a lot of money per square foot, and most of them have been transformed in various ways by people wo want to live on Sandringham but not in the style of a bank manager of the nineteen-twenties. Not all the residents are rich. Some of the houses have been divided into apartments, or even, discreetly, into rooms, to accommodate the life-styles of the single, flat-dweller class--lecturers without tenure, young musicians, assistant editors--who prefer to live in the district rather than pay the same rent for a larger space in, say, Elobicote, because of the easy access to bookstores, coffee bars, cinema and the subway, and most of all, to other people like themselves.” (127)

I’m glad that Wright doesn’t slack off in wrapping up the series but gives us new characters while maintaining tight plotting and great atmosphere. THE LAST HAND sends Charlie Salter off in a most satisfying way--he leaves on top, going into what looks to be a satisfying retirement. (A)
 
Rex Stout’s MURDER BY THE BOOK is one of his renowned Nero Wolfe mystery series. It was originally published in 1951 and is now available in e-format.

I love the Nero Wolfe series, so I’m not an objective reviewer. I enjoy the relationship and respect between the physically inert Wolfe and his energetic, street smart assistant Archie Goodwin, who narrates the series. I like Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather, the independents on whom Wolfe calls when extra manpower is needed. I appreciate both Fritz Brenner, who produces glorious meals for Wolfe, and Theodore Horstman, who helps Wolfe tend the thousands of orchids. I relish the continuing skirmishes between Wolfe and Inspector Cramer and between Archie and Lieutenant Rowcliff, who stutters. These characters are very real for me.

Stout’s plots are tightly constructed, and he plays fair with appropriate foreshadowing of the criminal. That being said, the plot of MURDER BY THE BOOK depends in large part on a confession by a dead man, unsigned but clearly identifiable through its content; this device does away with the necessity of providing means by which Wolfe can verify the killer’s identity, but it’s clumsy. Stout skillfully misdirects attention from the actual motive for four murders, concealing both motive and murderer in plain sight. Of course, the climax comes in one of Wolfe’s great confrontation scenes staged with all the suspects, Inspector Cramer, and Sergeant Purley Stebbins in attendance.

MURDER BY THE BOOK isn’t great Nero Wolfe, IMO. However, Wolfe on a bad day is better than most others. (B)
 
Gayle Trent’s MURDER TAKES THE CAKE was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It features Daphne Martin, a forty-year-old baker in Brea Ridge, iVirginia.

Daphne’s moved back close to her sister Violet Armstrong and her family following her divorce from her abusive husband Todd, who’s in prison for seven years for trying to kill her. Daphne’s carrying major emotional baggage from that relationship and from her issues with her mother. Trying for the third time to deliver a cake to picky Yodel Watson, she discovers Mrs. Watson dead of poisoning. At first a suspect, she pokes around to find out who might have wanted the gossip dead. Yodel kept a diary of the wrong-doings of her neighbors, and she wasn’t above blackmail. Things become only more complicated when the cause of death turns out to be rattlesnake venom and Daphne discovers a family secret involving past deaths and major money.

I want to like MURDER TAKES THE CAKE because Daphne Martin as protagonist is a believable person. She has flaws and emotional baggage just as we all do. “Please forgive me for being so flippant about my mother’s health. I do love her, but making these jokes and laughing to myself about her condition makes it seem less real somehow--I’d be devastated if she were to die, so I simply choose to make that possibility absurd.” Secondary characters like her sister Violet and her mother Gloria Carter are also authentic. Male figures are not as well drawn, but they have good potential for development.

That being said, there are some major problems with MURDER TAKES THE CAKE. It is set in the corner of southwestern Virginia where it meets Tennessee. Cities in both states are mentioned, but there’s no sense of place. There’s no description of the area, one of the most beautiful in the South; there’s no sense of Southern speech patterns or story-telling voice or ambiance, despite Daphne as first person narrator having been brought up in the area and living for years in Tennessee. The events could be happening anywhere.

The plot works as a straight who-done-it, though an experienced reader will probably pick up on the killer and motive well before Daphne does. There are some common sense problems with it, however. One is the means of death. I understand the use of rattlesnake venom as a plot device to set up a particular suspect, but rattlesnake venom does not kill instantly. Even when a person is untreated, death usually takes six to 24 hours, and injection of venom does not lead to instant unconsciousness. How does the killer know Yodel Watson won’t get medical attention? There’s also swelling and discoloration at the site where the venom is injected, a sure tip-off. Why would it take several days for the cause of death to be determined? A second problem involves police department procedures and ethics. Joanne Hayden, wife of Officer Bill Hayden who is a first responder to Daphne’s call, has details of the crime scene circulating in town by the time Daphne gets home from finding the body and giving her statement; she also circulates the cause of death that police are withholding. How long would a policeman last in such circumstances in real life? A third problem is one of my pet peeves--Daphne’s cell phone hasn’t been charged when she needs it most. Grr!

MURDER TAKES THE CAKE shows potential. I may follow up with the second book in the series to see if Trent overcomes these problems. (C)
 
Ellis Vidler’s HAUNTING REFRAIN was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It is part of a series featuring Venice Thurn Ashburton, who comes from old money in Greenville, South Carolina. She’s a psychic involved in research with Dr. Martin Carver, who runs a parapsychology study group at the college. Venice recruited Kate McGuire, a photographer who also has psychic ability. When she touches a headband worn by missing student Kelly Landrum, Kate experiences Kelly’s being strangled; Venice sees the event. Kate wants nothing to do with going to the police--after all, she didn’t see the killer or anything that would point to his identity. But Venice calls reporter John Gerrard of the Greenville Times Herald, who prints a story about the Landrum case and names both Kate and Venice. His attention brought to the women by the story, the killer, who knows Kate, decides something must be done about them. Dr. Carver calls Detective Lynne Waite, the officer in charge of the case, to set up another experiment at the next group meeting. At that meeting, both women see Landrum dead in a lake. That night, when she’s returning home after the meeting, someone tries to force Kate off the road on Paris Mountain. The next day Landrum’s body is found, weighted with cement blocks, in Lake Jocassee in Oconee County, exactly as the women foresaw.

I gave up at 20%, for several reasons. One is that, despite the use of place names in the setting, there’s no sense of being in the South, much less in Greenville, South Carolina, a town with a distinct cultural ambiance. There’s no indication of Southern speech or thought patterns. If a writer can’t or won’t create a Southern sense of place, why bother to give the story a Southern setting?

Another is that I find it hard to believe that Kate McGuire, who clearly expressed her refusal to become involved in the investigation, would so easily forgive Venice and Dr. Carver. She’d previously been exploited by her former husband J. B. and the media for reasons not specified, she’d made her feelings explicit to both Venice and Carver, and both ambush her. Venice sets up a lunch date with Kate and Gerrard and gives him the information about their experience before Kate finds out he’s a reporter. Her easy acceptance just doesn’t ring very true to human nature. I also find Kate’s casual Nancy Drew “I’ll find out what happened to Kelly Landrum” attitude off-putting. A young woman’s death isn’t the place to play games.

Venice and Carver both come across as supremely indifferent to Kate’s feelings, both convinced they know better than she what to do. I question John Gerrard’s ethics (and common sense) in printing the women’s names. Admittedly, Venice is thrilled to be part of a major story, but Kate made it abundantly clear that she wanted no part of it. His story brings the women to the killer’s attention. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

No grade because not finished.
 
DEATH ON THE GREASY GRASS is the third in C. M. Wendelboe’s mystery series featuring Manny Tanno, Lakota Senior Special Agent of the FBI. It was published in 2011.

Manny and Willie With Horn are on vacation, attending the Real Bird Little Big Horn Reenactment in Garryowen, Montana, when Harlan White Bird, one of the reenactors, dies from being shot with live ammunition. Since Manny’s on the scene, the case is assigned to him. Working with Matthew LaPierre, better known as “Stumper” of the Crow Agency tribal police, he soon discovers that White Bird was about to sell the Beauchamp Collection of Indian artifacts, including the journal of Levi Star Dancer, one of the Crow scouts sent away by Custer just before the battle. In it is recorded information that will damage both Star Dancer’s own descendants and those of the Lakota Comte Eagle Bull. His great-grandson Wilson Eagle Bull is running for the Montana State Senate in a closely contested race. As the investigation deepens, the body count mounts, and much more is involved than records from 1876.

I have enjoyed this series. The sense of place is outstanding. “They drove past Strong Enemy Drive to the end of Red Bird Lane to the only s**t brown house on the short block. A once-white picket fence kissed the dirt where it had lain for perhaps decades, rotting wood poking through the weeds, suggesting someone had once cared for the property. Half the shingles had blown off the roof leaving the remaining ones to fend off what little rain Crow Agency got, and the off brown color of the house was as much from mold as from old paint. Nature’s cruel palette.” (86-7)

Point of view is limited third person through Manny Tanno’s eyes, so he is by far the best developed of the characters, still conflicted between the Old Way taught him by his Uncle Marion and modern life. “ ‘We know where he [Tess] lives.’ And Manny did, too, a mile from what he’d once called home in Arlington, Virginia. But had it really been home, or just somewhere that Manny could hide out from the memories of an orphan growing up on the poorest reservation in the nation? Those memories came sneaking back now and again, the bad times mixed with the good of living with a loving uncle after his parents had died in an auto accident. Thinking back, Manny really wasn’t orphaned at all.” (78-9) Other characters are believably human mixtures of qualities, with ambivalent relationships and sometimes questionable motives.

The plot is fairly laid out, though it’s slow in development. My biggest complaint is that THREE times Manny leaves his gun in the car when going into situations where an experienced officer should know he needs to be armed. This ain’t Manny’s first rodeo.

DEATH ON THE GREASY GRASS is a solid follow-up to the earlier novels in the series. (A-)
 
I suffered through this mainly because my stubborn button got pushed and because I wanted to know if I'd guessed right about what was going on with Riley and the identity of the killer. I had.

Heather Webber’s A HOE LOT OF TROUBLE was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It features Nina Quinn, owner of Taken by Surprise Garden Design.

Nina faces a multitude of problems. She’s just kicked out her husband Kevin Quinn, lead homicide detective for the Freedom, Ohio, Police Department, over lipstick on his boxer shorts, when she doesn’t wear lipstick. Her fifteen-year-old stepson Riley not only acts as if she’s the Wicked Witch of the West, but his attitude, grades, and behavior have deteriorated badly, and he delights in her fear when his pet boa Xena escapes. Her friend Bridget Sandowski tells her about the unnatural death of her father-in-law Joe Sandowski, Nina’s mentor, and the campaign to force the sale of their farm to John Demming, a developer looking to expand the most expensive housing area in Freedom. Then, inexplicably, Bridget and her husband Tim try to warn Nina off, but she’s got the bit in her teeth and is running with her snooping.

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

A HOE LOT OF TROUBLE embodies many of the worst features of the cozy mystery genre. There is no logical reason why Nina Quinn should be involved in investigating the death of Joe Sandowski, especially after Bridget changes her mind and asks her to stop. There’s also no reason why anyone should talk to her about the death, including the developer and his crony Congressman Chanson, the major suspects. Nina pulls several TSTLs, including not having her cell phone when she needs it; going to steal rat poison from one of John Demming’s houses still under construction (why would there even be rat poison at a framed-in house?) and leaving her fingerprints all over what becomes the scene of Demming’s murder; and jumping in the trunk of a car belonging to an employee she suspects of stealing tools (the source of the title of the novel). Nina’s the first person narrator, but she’s not much developed as a character, and the rest remain names only.

The plot is over the top with petty theft, two murders, and an undercover operation to take down a gang in Riley’s school. The petty theft turns out to be a misunderstanding. The two murders are least likely suspect, though there is a bit of foreshadowing. However, it doesn’t make sense that the murderer would confide the family’s suspicions to Nina to start the investigation in the first place. After Demming is killed, Kevin Quinn interrogates Nina. Would police procedure allow a detective to interview his own wife, when she’s a viable suspect in the case? Likewise, would the police use a fifteen-year-old boy undercover to infiltrate a dangerous gang, even if he’s a cop’s son? Is it feasible that a woman can pretend to be pregnant for seven months without her husband realizing she’s faking?

There’s no sense of place. The writing style is basic. I won’t be following this series. (D) :mad:
 
A KILLING NIGHT is the fourth book in Jonathon King’s mystery series featuring Max Freeman, formerly a Philadelphia street cop, now a licensed private detective working for his lawyer and friend Billy Manchester. He’s even moved into Billy’s beach cottage at Hillsboro Beach, to have more convenient accommodations than the research shack in the Everglades. It was published in 2005.

Two major cases dominate the action in A KILLING NIGHT. One is Billy Manchester’s representation of Filipino worker Rodrigo Colon and others wounded in an explosion on a cruise liner. The line is unwilling to do more than the minimal for the injured men and hire thugs to intimidate the workers and Billy Manchester. The second is Shelly Richards’s obsession with a series of female bartenders who have gone missing over the past months. There’s been no indication of foul play, but none of the women have been heard from. Though Shelly and Max’s relationship is apparently over, she needs his input because her prime suspect in the disappearances is Colin O’Shea, a former Philadelphia cop in the Academy at the same time as Max, now working security in South Florida; he’d left Philadelphia ahead of an internal affairs investigation with which he’d refused to cooperate, and a young woman involved in a sex scandal with him and three other police officers disappeared. His former wife had filed domestic abuse charges against him. Has he come to Florida and continued a previous pattern?

King uses Max as first person narrator for most of the story, but he tells occasional chapters from the point of view of the unnamed serial killer. For most of the story, he keeps attention focused firmly on Colin O’Shea. There’s ample foreshadowing of the mental character of the killer before he is identified positively. The biggest flaw in the plot is Max’s going into the Glades to look for where the killer dumped the bodies of the murdered women, without a gun.

Sense of place in all of King’s Max Freeman novels is outstanding. He is skilled at using atmosphere as a way to reveal character. “I moved up until I could see the cut-stone steps and the wrought iron rail that led up to the house I grew up in. The second-floor window that looked out on the street was to my room, where I had spent nights reading books and fantasizing about Annette the cheerleader and listening to the Allman Brothers Band on a tinny old record player. It was also the place where I cowered and tried to ignore the sound of my father’s heavy, drunken steps and the sharp slap of a backhand and the muffled protests of my mother. I was one hundred feet away but did not want to see my front door and feel the ugly memories that I’d closed behind it. I had seen both my parents die in that house. My father, a broken and shamed former cop, fell in a slow and deserved poisoning. My mother, who came home from the hospital to die, convinced that God had filled the hole left by her treachery with cancer.” (98) King uses Max and the killer as foils, coming from similar backgrounds but reacting very differently.

King has a way with intriguing secondary characters. Of Mamma Blue’s and its owner, Max says, “A woman with a lot of hard years behind her eyes and a magical way with smothered pork cops and pan-fried chicken, Carline Dennis had opened her little restaurant years before the revival of South Street [in Philadelphia] and had refused to move east to join the new current of money. She had built a clientele that cut across all racial and socio-economic lines because her place was friendly and courteous to everyone who walked across the threshold and her food was unmatched anywhere north of Savannah. The cars on the street in front included a BMW, two Mercedes, a sprung-bumper Cadillac and a sagging Corolla. I ... twice had spotted the mayor inside having lunch.” (41)

King never lets the reader forget the physical location of the story. “I’d paddled myself all the way to the culvert that the water management district had opened to divert canal water into the river. The natural slough of hundreds of wet acres that spread north and west had been the river’s water source for thousands of years before men had started replumbing the Glades to fit their needs. Thirsty cities along the coast, a desire--no, a need--to lower the naturally high water table to create dry farmland for the sugarcane and winter vegetables and dry plots for yet more suburban housing. It was homo erectus in control of something as natural as the flow of rainwater.” (184)

King’s Max Freeman series is one of the strongest I’ve read recently, and A KILLING NIGHT is a worthy addition. (A-)
 
Keri Knutson and Susan Branham’s DEATH BY DEGREE is the first of their mystery series featurin Maddie Pryne, daughter of film and TV star Charlotte Corday. She is trying to break into the business as an actress and supplements her inherited income by working for her friend Irene Shoffitt at the Orpheus Theater. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2011.

When Irene Shoffitt is murdered, followed soon after by the murder of her low-life son Jason, the deaths seem tied to the disappearance of Jennifer Chandler, a drug user and low-level porn movie actress who worked for Bravo Productions, where two other actresses have also gone missing. Someone searches Maddie’s apartment and trashes the Orpheus Theater, obviously looking for something, but what? Maddie’s drawn into the information as a source of information on Irene and Jason and because she’s attracted to OIC Detective Kyle Oberman. In the meantime, she’s acting in a film produced by old friend Evan Mark and directed by another old friend Erik Wellman that may be her big break, if she can manage to stay alive.

I’m ambivalent about DEATH BY DEGREE. The plot is pretty standard, a combination of the serial killer with the “protagonist thrown into situation he/she doesn’t understand but must deal with.” Knutson and Branham focus attention away from the identity of the killer, but an experienced reader will probably see past the misdirection. They do play fair about presenting information when Maddie gets it. One part of the plot that bothers me is the drawn-out nature of the final confrontation between the killer and Maddie; it involves two distinct stages, when there’s no good reason for keeping her alive after the first.

Maddie is a believable character except for her superhuman capacity to take physical punishment and still be able to take out two killers, the man who killed Jason and Irene and the serial killer who killed Jennifer Chandler and four other women. She’s close to Irene, and her death hits Maddie hard: “There would be no matinee today, and it didn’t matter how much vodka I drank or if I never returned to the Orpheus again. Irene had filled those spaces my own family never had, those snapshot moments that never made it into my childhood albums. She was an impromptu celebration when a good thing happened and a hot cup of tea when it didn’t. Now she was gone. No take-backs, no do-overs.” She does several TSTL things--not having cell phone, going off alone and not telling anyone where she’s going, trusting the wrong people. DEATH BY DEGREE does have the standard cliche of female protagonist getting involved romantically with the detective on the case. Kyle Oberman is better developed than most romantic heroes, but I doubt his taking Maddie to the crime scene where the bodies of the five dead women are being processed and removed.

Setting is important in DEATH BY DEGREE, and the authors’ use of atmosphere is good. “The Sunset Strip doesn’t exist during the daylight hours in the same way it does at night. After dark, brilliant yellow fountains spring up at each median palm, fed by silver cans of iridescent light. Each passing car becomes awash with glittery shafts alternating with deep darkness. Celebrities jostle with runaways who live only on this street, dirty with the fragments of a broken boulevard, as much one-dimensional figures as the streetlights and shooting palms.”

DEATH BY DEGREE shows promise. I may read the next. (B-)
 
BLOOD BOND is the first book in Sophie Littlefield’s mystery series featuring Detective Joe Bashir of the Montair, California, Police Department. He is the non-practicing Muslim son of Pakistani immigrants, torn between his more traditional family and his assimilation into American culture. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2012. Run, don’t walk, to get a copy.

Joe Bashir is a believable protagonist, one who carries emotional baggage, whose life was changed by 9/11 and its aftermath, when his father was attacked and beaten almost to death. He dropped out of medical school to join the police, where he’s been successful even if he’s still an outsider. “Since becoming a cop, Joe had been most fascinated by people who didn’t quite fall into the usual boxes, the ones who defied expectations. It made police work easier when people behaved in predictable ways, but it wasn’t the easy days that Joe craved. His most satisfying victories had been the ones that tested him most deeply.” His off-duty life, his devotion to his family, his relationship with Amaris Jessel, a Jewish princess, all contribute to the sense of Joe’s being a real person. Much of the action is seen through his eyes.

Littlefield surrounds him with interesting colleagues like Bertrise Wellington, the newest detective on the squad. “It was unsettling to watch Bertrise work people; she said little, and revealed even less. While on the job, all but the quietest trace of her Jamaican accent disappeared from her voice. She was tireless; Joe had never seen a witness or suspect outlast her in an interview: Joe had wondered from time to time whether people gave up their stories just so Bertrise would stop staring at them. Of course, she was the single mother of two teen girls; that had undoubtedly built up her endurance.” Odell Collier, who came to California from the Missouri Ozarks with a girlfriend but decided to stay when she went back home, is the third detective, the resident computer expert. These are people I look forward to getting to know.

When Tom Bergman is found dead in the driveway outside the home of Gail and Bryce Engler in a pool of blood, it’s not clear what’s happened. He died from a blow to the head, apparently having discovered a vandal pouring sheep’s blood over the Engles’ house in an environmental protest. But as Joe and his squad investigate, shifts to the viewpoint of Gail Engler’s sister Marva Groesbeck reveal some deep secret from thirteen years before seems to have come back to haunt them. Then someone kills Gail. Who? Her husband needs the money from her life insurance and inheritance to keep his business afloat; she’s had a series of affairs, using and discarding men, some of whom didn’t want to be dismissed; she’s been like one of Cinderella’s step-sisters to Marva, who’s lived her life cleaning up Gail’s messes.

Littlefield uses setting to reveal character. “The Bartelak house wasn’t quite keeping up appearances. The lawn was mowed but no one had bothered to weed or fertilize in some time; the flower beds contained a few clumps of dead stalks in the mulch. A section of iron rail on the front porch had rusted through and hung down loose. And the stone trim needed to be tuck-pointed. As Joe rang the doorbell he broke the threads of an elaborate spiderweb.”

The plot is fairly laid out, with the reader sharing information as Joe receives it. An experienced mystery fan may discern the killer before Joe. I have only two caveats about BLOOD BOND. The first is that, when he realizes the killer has Marva at the scene of Gail’s murder, Joe and Bertrise do not call in for a closer patrol to respond immediately but go themselves. The second is that Joe goes into a Cracker Barrel in Des Moines and has breakfast sitting at the counter. All Cracker Barrel restaurants follow the same layout, and they don’t have counters. (My brother used to do interior finishing for new and renovated Cracker Barrels.)

I’m already looking forward to the next book after BLOOD BOND. Because it is so character-driven, I think this series will be best read in order. (A) :)
 
MURDER 101 is the first book in Maggie Barbieri’s series featuring Dr. Alison Bergeron, James Joyce scholar and tenured professor at St. Thomas College in Manhattan. It was published in 2006.

Alison Bergeron is having a horrible week--someone steals her old Volvo from campus parking, her divorce from cheating husband Ray Stark becomes final, and one of her students is missing. When Kathy Miceli’s body is found in the trunk of her Volvo in a ditch, Alison meets Detective Bobby Crawford; they’re attracted. Strange goings-on ensue. Kathy’s father and mother both come from Mob families, so is her death a hit? Her boyfriend Vince Paccione is the Ecstasy connection at Joliet, “brother” school to St. Thomas. She’s having an affair with one of her professors. Or is the motive something else entirely?

The basic mystery plot isn’t bad, though it’s pretty standard least likely suspect. The killer’s identity is foreshadowed to the point that an experienced reader may recognize person and motive ahead of Alison. The last chapters become anticlimax as they deal with a twist in the relationship between Crawford and Alison, to set up a sequel.

Alison Bergeron is first person narrator, so she’s by far the best developed of the characters, but she’s not an attractive one. “I was...upset that I seemed to be falling apart. I had always thought of myself as a relatively strong person: I had weathered the death of both my parents before I was thirty, endured a marriage to a man who humiliated me with his actions at least once a year, put myself through graduate school while working full-time, and gotten a doctorate in the shortest amount of time possible. Now, I was involved in something totally out of my realm of experience, and the thought of it made me sick and more than a little crazed.” (59) In fact, Alison spends most of the book crying, vomiting, fainting, or hung over, sometimes all in one chapter. At their first meeting, she pukes on Crawford’s shoes twice. She seems mostly content to drift along in the wake of her best friend from college Maxine “Max” Rayfield, a high-achieving nymphomaniac who thinks up reality shows for cable TV. It seems improbable that Alison would walk and take the train to work for several weeks before she gets a replacement for her stolen car.

Detective Robert Edward Crawford isn’t any better. He consciously lies to Alison, definitely still a suspect, then begins a personal (though not sexually consummated) relationship with her. He gives her information that the police are reserving; he conceals her and Max’s breaking and entering Vince’s room. Even worse, when his lie is revealed, he doesn’t understand why she is so upset. He may be “Detective Hot Pants,” as Max calls him, but he’s not very trustworthy. In addition, many characters relate only tangentially to the plot and remain names mentioned one time.

Street names and neighborhoods clearly establish the setting as New York City, and Barbieri occasionally uses atmosphere to help establish character: “...’I brought cannolis from Arthur Avenue.’ [Crawford] motioned to a box on the counter and when I opened it, there were four beautiful cannolis wrapped in waxed paper; the ends were sprinkled with chocolate chips. Arthur Avenue as a street in the Bronx noted for its spectacular Italian restaurants and decades-old bakeries, which specialized in pastries like cannolis, napoleons, and eclairs. I stopped myself from falling instantly in love with him; my love of the cannoli was greater than even my love of God and country.” (171)

I am disappointed in MURDER 101, mainly because it has so much undeveloped potential. (C)
 
Linda S. Godfrey’s AMERICAN MONSTERS: A HISTORY OF MONSTER LORE, LEGENDS, AND SIGHTINGS IN AMERICA is available in e-book format, published in 2014.

AMERICAN MONSTERS is a compendium of relatively recent sightings of various cryptids all over the North American continent. Most date since the 1970s, many since the 1990s all the way up to January 2014. These cryptids include flying creatures (Thunderbirds, pterosaurs of various types, Batsquatch, Mothman); sea, lake, and river monsters (alligator-man, giant cephalopods, sea serpents, and freshwater creatures like the Flathead Lake denizen); and terrestrial forms (Sasquatch, wolf-men, chupacabra, other apparent man-animal hybrids). Many have been featured on “reality TV” shows like MYTHS AND MONSTERS IN AMERICA and MOUNTAIN MONSTERS.

Godfrey documents the sources of the stories she relates. Over twenty percent of the book consists of citations, though this, of course, is no guarantee of the veracity of the original report. Most stories seem to come from reputable witnesses not under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. Many sightings seem to cluster in certain areas, many repeated over extended periods of time in the same locale.

Godfrey discusses some of the theories currently in circulation that purport of “explain” the sightings of cryptids, from time and/or other dimensional portals, to UFOs, to unknown species of animals, to known animals behaving in unfamiliar ways, to animals whose exist but whose physical characteristics are above or below the normal range of human perception. (She uses the example of the whistle that humans can’t hear but that dogs hear clearly.) She avoids any single explanation of any of the phenomena.

I don’t take much of this seriously, especially the recent multiplication of the kinds of cryptids being reported, but I do think some of the reports may be based on living survivals. The Thunderbird bears a striking resemblance to the giant teratorns, the largest of which was Argentavis magnificans, which reached 160 pounds and had a twenty-four foot wingspan. The seasonality and location of sightings suggest living birds with two migration paths, one through the Midwest from Mexico into Canada, the other through the Ohio Valley. The recent discovery of the strange hairless canid in Texas that seems to bear coyote and wolf genes but is neither, may well be the origin of the chupacabra. Considering the miniscule portion of the world’s oceans which man has explored, it’s inevitable that there are major species that have not yet been discovered. As for Sasquatch, it’s hard to discount the widespread Native American stories that pre-date Columbus. However, as Hamlet says, “There are more things in heaven and earth than is dreamt of” in our philosophy. I keep an open, if skeptical, mind.

I did find two small errors that bothered me because both are easily checkable. Godfrey says that there are approximately one hundred California condors left, when as of May 2013, according to Wikipedia, there are 435 known individuals, 237 of which have been returned to the wild, with 198 in captivity. She also quotes a story from the 1880s from the Tombstone Epigraph, when the name of the Arizona newspaper is in fact the Tombstone Epitaph. Are there other errors I didn’t catch? Could be.

Still, the writing is accessible. While some of the stories are outre, it’s hard to deny that people think they are seeing creatures that they can’t identify. It’s good fun, sort of like telling ghost stories on Halloween. (B)
 
I've had a movie marathon so far this weekend.

DALZIEL AND PASCOE, Season 9, continues the stories of Reginald HIll’s detectives, Superintendentt Andy Dalziel and Inspector Peter Pascoe, played respectively by Warren Clarke and Colin Buchanan. This season changes the supporting characters, however. Joe Savino plays new medical examiner Dr. Frank Mason; Wayne Perrey plays Detective Constable Parvez Lateef, a Muslim of Pakistani descent, and Naomi Bentley plays WPC Maria “Janet” Jackson. As always, the victims and killers are played by familiar faces from the superb array of British character actors.

Season 9 is made up of four stories, each covering two episodes: HEADS YOU LOSE; DEAD MEAT; THE DIG; and DUST THOU ART.

HEADS YOU LOSE involves Pascoe injured in a wreck while in hot pursuit that leaves him with a grave head injury. He’s taken to Wetherton Royal Infirmary, a public hospital about to be closed to make way for a privately-funded (aka, money-making) one. In the meantime, a woman’s body turns up in pieces in a nearby canal, and she’s discovered to have been the whistle-blower on a quality of care scandal involving the chief of neurosurgery Alisdair Collinson (played by Paterson Joseph, an actor to watch for), who’s supporting the closing of WRI. Dr. McKenzie Mansfield (played by Haydn Gwynne) opposes the closing, while her epileptic daughter’s father Barry Jemmerman (played by Robert Powell) is the chief contractor for the new facility. The production keeps attention firmly misdirected, so there’s an effective surprise ending that is, nevertheless, foreshadowed. (A)

DEAD MEAT opens with the death of animal activist Colin Challoner, who’s found dead and partially eaten in the tiger cage at the Latimer Private Zoo, run by Guy Latimer (played by Christopher Cazenova). He’s the trustee for Lord “Tiger” Harper who disappeared years before after a drunken, drug-fueled party in which Dalziel believes he stabbed to death his homosexual lover. In the meantime, Pascoe discovers that Ellie (played by Susannah Corbett) and Rosie have returned to England without telling him. Ellie’s planning to return to America and to marry her fiance Geoff; Peter’s desperate not to lose them, offering to quit his job and move to the States. There’s also something going on involving the zoo veterinarian William Courtney (played by Peter DeJersey) and his Chinese assistant Maria Chan, but what? The eventual explanation involves what happened in the long-ago murder and an over-the-top medical motive that’s only moderately set up. An actor to look for is Oliver Dimsdale, who plays Guy Latimer’s son Danny. (B)

THE DIG opens with the discovery of a six-months-old corpse in a salvage archaeology dig soon to be displaced by a highway overpass; the only trouble is, Dr. Janet Hix (played by Susan Lynch) of the archaeology department of Wetherton University uncovers a major Roman site. The village is badly divided over the construction, the road crew’s under pressure to complete the work on time, and violence ensues. Dalziel is upset over the release of Clive Jacobs (played by Jonathan Lindsley--Crusher, Ivy’s nephew, in LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE), whom he’d arrested sixteen years before for a particularly brutal murder. His DNA turns up again at the crime scene where Tarzan, one of the road crew, has been murdered in much the same frenzy. Can he possibly have been fitted up for both crimes? The plot includes assorted blackmail, payment and acceptance of bribes, Andy’ interest in medical examiner Dr. Eleanor Brown (played by Juliet Aubrey, PRIMEVAL) who’s otherwise inclined, and a completely unset-up and cliched surprise ending. George Irving plays a unique role that I can’t talk about without doing a spoiler. There’s allusion to the practices of the Irish Catholic Church’s treatment of unmarried pregnant women in the past. Not up to par. (C)

DUST THOU ART involves forged Old Master drawings; the eexual, financial, and leadership politics of the Wetherton Arts Center; the kidnapping of the daughter of a local art dealer Richard Johnstone (played by Julian Wadham); and the disappearance of WPC “Janet” Jackson. Major roles include the Arts Center personnel: Director Paul Boddison (played by great character actor David Burke); his brother Tony Watson (played by Douglas Henshall--PRIMEVAL, INSPECTOR LEWIS), and Emma Collins (played by Tessa Peake-Jones--Mary Bennet in 1980’s PRIDE AND PREJUDICE). Some of the twists and turns seem for their own sake rather than making great contributions to the basic story lines. (B)

Still, DALZIEL AND PASCOE, Season 9, is far better than most of what’s on US television.
 
Lee Hanson’s SWAN SONG was a free or inexpensive Kindle download featuring Julie O’Hara, a speicalist in body language interpretation known professionally as Merlin. She consults and advises corporations on which candidates to hire and lawyers on jury selection. She’s friend, lover, and office tenant of Joe Garrett, a licensed private investigator in Orlando. On an early morning run, she discovers the body of Dianna Wieland in a swan boat in Lake Eola Park; Dianna had bled out from a slashed wrist, and the police accept her death as a suicide. Julie, however, doesn’t believe it. She thinks Dianna was murdered, and the reader knows that Jule’s correct because the prologue shows the murder. Two months following Dianna’s death, her parents are still dissatisfied with police findings, and they hire Joe Garrett to conduct a further investigation. Julie feels compelled to become involved also. As they re-work the case, they discover that Dianna had at least two lovers, one of whom is married and had been about to leave his wife for her; Dianna had been pregnant; she’d made at least one major enemy in her real estate work; she’s estranged from her obsessive father.

I’m not sure why SWAN SONG doesn’t work for me. Hanson gives Julie, Joe, and Dianna baggage, but somehow they do not become believable characters. There’s no real reason why Julie should become so determined to prove that Dianna, a woman she did not know in life and with whose friends and relatives Julie had no prior meaningful contact, did not take her own life. Dianna’s parents hiring Joe to follow up on her death stretches coincidence too far. Would police fail to attempt to identify the father of Dianna’s fetus through DNA or other testing, and would they respect the wishes of the Wielands and not disclose the pregnancy? They do not discover the identity of her married lover or that at least two of the alibis given for the night-early morning of Dianna’s death were unconfirmed. There are physical details of setting, but no atmosphere that creates a sense of place--the story could happen anywhere.

Writing style is elementary. Much of the exposition is handled through flashbacks to events in Dianna’s life, not particularly well done. Point of view shifts break the flow of the story rather than contributing. The number of characters greatly exceeds the number needed, and the pace of the story is slower than molasses in January. The story is a monotone.

SWAN SONG just didn’t engage me enough to continue reading. I quit at 48%, so no grade.
 
MIDSOMER MURDERS, Set 22, continues the series with Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby (played by Neil Dudgeon) and Sergeant Ben Jones, (Jason Hughes), working out of Causton CID. The continuing characters include Barnaby’s wife Sarah (Fiona Dolman) and the new medical examiner, Dr. Kate Wilding (Tamsin Malleson). Neither woman is much developed yet, and writers are still fleshing out the character of John Barnaby. Settings continue to be beautiful, and some of the best British character actors appear as victims, murderers, and suspects.

Episode 1 THE SLEEPER UNDER THE HILL, appeared in the UK 21 September 2011. Local farmer Alex Preston plans to plow and plant the Gorse Meadow, site of the Crowcall Circle of standing stones held sacred by the local New Dawn Druids. A brooch symbolic of their group, an Awen, is found on his eviscerated body. Barnaby and Jones are assisted by Uniformed Division Sergeant Trevor Gibson (Lee Ross) and local historian Caradoc Singer (Robert Pugh), but further deaths ensue before the surprising revelation of the person and motives behind the murders. Attention is misdirected with skill, but the denouement contains a major improbability that I find difficult to overlook. (B)

Episode 2, THE NIGHT OF THE STAG, was first shown 12 October 2011. Peter Slim, a Revenue officer, is investigating the distilling of illegal liquor in the adjacent villages of Midsomer Abbas and Midsomer Herne. His body is discovered in a vat of hard cider being served at their joint May Day celebration. His body reveals that he had been shaken so violently that his neck is broken in several places. It’s clear that local leaders Samuel Quested (Warren Clarke) and Anthony Devereux (Patrick Ryecart) know more than they’re tellling, with local temperance fanatic Reverend Norman Grigor (Greg Hicks) and his cultish band somehow involved. Ancient Beltane customs hide very modern schemes and murders. (B)

Episode 3, A SACRED TRUST, was broadcast 26 October 2011. It opens with a pair of lovers surprised in the woods of Midsomer Priory, a convent composed of three nuns and a postulate; the boy organizes vandalism of the stained glass windows of the financially strapped order. The order is evenly divided between Mother Julian (Joanna David), who refuses to sell the church silver to finance on-going operations, and Mother Thomas Aquinas (Susan Sheridan), who wants to sell it, so Mother Julian’s tie-breaking vote maintains the status quo. It may all be moot, because, if the order dies out, under the provisions of the bequest of the estate, it will revert to the descendants of the donor, the Vertue family. Are the vandal Duncan Hendred (Jaime Bickley--an actor to watch for) and his powerful father Matt Hendred (George Hendred) involved? What about the modern heir of the Vertues? The surprising motive and identity of the killer come out only when Barnaby persuades Mother Julian to talk, there having been some skillful misdirection. (B+)

Episode four, A RARE BIRD, first shown 11 January 2012, centers on obsession. Bird watcher Ralph Ford (James Dreyfus) claims to have seen an extremely rare bird, a blue-crested hoopoe, whose addition to his year’s list will make him the winner of the annual contest. His sighting is unconfirmed and, because it involves a bird native to Uganda, considered fraudulent. His main competitor and president of the local ornithological society Patrick Morgan (Alexander Hanson) is murdered just after disclosing that he cannot be the father of the baby expected by his Russian wife, former prima ballerina Nina Morgan (Genevieve O’Reilly--an actor to watch), because he’d had a vasectomy years before their marriage. So who’s the father? Several local men fancy her, but it’s not until the baby’s father is murdered that Barnaby discovers what’s missing to solve the case. (A)

I don’t think the writing is quite as strong in these episodes as in some seasons past. That being said, MIDSOMER MURDERS, Set 22, is still better than most everything on US network television.
 
Blaize Clement’s CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT SITTER is the first in her series featuring Dixie Hemingway, former deputy in the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department. When her husband and daughter died in an accident three years before, she went on extended leave from the department and is now making her living as a professional pet-sitter. She lives on Siesta Key in the Gulf of Mexico just off Sarasota, Florida.

When Dixie goes to tend Ghost, Marilee Doerring’s silver blue Abyssinian, she discovers a dead man who, hit in the head, had been duct-taped face down in Ghost’s large silver water container. He’d drowned. Dixie does not have contact information for Marilee, and the bedroom has been searched. Where is Marilee, who is the man, and why was he killed? Phillip Winnick, the teenager at the next house, had seen a woman get in a black Miata in Marilee’s driveway about the time of the murder, but then he’s severely beaten. Was it because of what he’d seen, or because his father found out he was gay? Dr. Carl Winnick, local radio psychologist, is a racist, anti-feminist homophobe. Then Dixie discovers Marilee’s body in the woods near her house, killed at approximately the same time that Harrison Frazier, one of Florida’s social elite with whom she has a long history, died in her house. Can Dixie figure out who’s guilty, and of what?

The plot in CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT SITTER is straight forward with enough foreshadowing that an experienced reader will probably discern the killer’s identity and motive ahead of Dixie. The solution depends heavily on coincidental meetings and bits of information emerging from unexpected places. Dixie’s gradual realization that’s she’s emerging from the depression and inertia following the death of her family is as important as the mystery story line. “My anger has settled down from a flaming roar to a dull simmer now, like a volcano that seems calm but may erupt when you least expect it. It’s the volcano part that’s the problem, the part I can’t control--especially if I see somebody abusing a child or a pet. Then I go totally apes**t, and there’s no telling what I’ll do.”

Dixie is a sympathetic character, carrying believable baggage from the early death of her father and her mother’s desertion of Michael and herself. “...[Shuga Reasnor, Marilee’s best friend] had been lying through her teeth. I just didn’t know what she had lied about. I am blessed and cursed with an excellent memory for the things people say and how they say them. It began when I was a kid and had to pay close attention to what my mother said so I could figure out what things were lies and which were the truth. It was the only way I could predict what was going to happen from one minute to the next, and even then it didn’t always work. I got better at it over time, and now it’s second nature to me, like having a built-in lie detector.” Dixie’s surrounded with an interesting cast of characters: fireman brother Michael and his undercover-cop lover Paco; Judy, waitress at the Village Diner and friend; Lieutenant Guidry, officer in charge of the murder investigation and potential romantic interest. It should be interesting to see them develop.

Sense of place is well developed, with atmosphere used to add insight into Dixie’s character: “Sunshine sparkled diamonds off the glittering waves. In the distance, triangular sails moved slowly along the horizon. A few shorebirds were leaving tracks down on the sand. A snowy egret, perched on one leg on a mooring post, was blissfully turned the wrong way to the breeze so his feathers could ruffle. From the rooftop, a pelican sailed to the edge of the shore and gulped something from the lapping water. No matter what happened in the world, the ocean keeps rolling. It’s the one thing you can depend on.”

CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT SITTER is a good start to what I hope will be a strong series. (B+)
 
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