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Readingomnivore Reviews

Carol Shenold’ PRIVY TO MURDER is the first in her Tali Cates Paranormal Mystery series, published in 2012 as a free or inexpensive Kindle download. I normally steer clear of mysteries in which the paranormal is a prominent feature, but this was set in Love, Texas, and it had good reviews. I wish I’d paid attention to my prejudice.

Tali Cates, divorced by her husband Brian, who’s come out of the closet and is now living with a male lover, is left literally standing by the road in the rain with their two children Cass, a rebellious teenager, and ten-year-old Sean, a severe asthmatic. With little money and no place to go, Tali and the children have returned to her mother Mumsie (Lucinda Marie Carter-Downs) and her hometown. Mumsie does Tarot readings and speaks to spirit guide Amen Ka; Tali has psychic powers that freaked out Brian, who’s threatening a battle for permanent custody of Sean. Tali and best friend Renee start Party On: Entertainment Texas Style, a party-planning company, to make a living. At their first party, the hostess Mag “the Terror” Tannehill is stabbed to death, and her ghost keeps appearing to Tali, wanting her to solve the murder.

*****SPOILERS*****SPOILERS*****

I don’t know where to start. To begin with, there’s a major coincidence in Mag’s daughter Donna getting involved with an ex-con who’d vowed vengeance on Tali for serving on the jury that convicted him of embezzlement years before in Dallas . It’s another major coincidence that the ex-con Keith Atkins is Mag’s husband Frank’s long-lost son by his first marriage. It’s also unlikely that in a small town like Love, that Frank Tannehill would have a son that no one knew about.

Small town police work often is rudimentary, but Sheriff J. T. Bellows’s operation is sloppy beyond belief. In the search following Mag’s stabbing death at the at the outdoor party, they overlook a crumpled gift bag containing the murder weapon, leaving it for Tali to find and to destroy chain of evidence by taking it to J. T. instead of calling for help. Apparently no further search is made, because she later finds one of the disposable cameras with which all the party guests had been provided. Did they make any attempt to obtain and examine the pictures, some of which Donna later takes to J. T. to incriminate her step-father Frank Tannehill? Does the Love jail allow prisoners to keep cell phones? After Frank is arrested on the strength of Donna’s pictures, he’s able to call Tali to tell her when Donna will be out of the house so Tali can snoop for clues. (Another problem with that is, as soon as Tali realizes Frank has been arrested, she goes to the jail to see him, and she’s on his visitor’s list. The last time she’d seen Frank, he’d been drunk, made a physical move on her, and threatened her when she rejected him. Why would she be on his visitor’s list?)

Characterization is a major problem. Shenold seems determined to introduce every potential inhabitant of Love, Texas. Most are just names with little function in advancing the plot. At least one, Laurel McIntyre, new “Editor-girl” of the Love Patriot News, is hostile to Tali from the first for no apparent reason and does her best to shaft Party On. J. T. Bellows is obviously intended as romantic interest for Tali--they’d dated briefly in high school--but his attitude toward her and her intrusions into the investigation vacillates. Mumsie, the most important character after Tali, never comes into focus.

Tali Cates herself is inconsistent. One the one hand, she’s used her “powers” to help friends and neighbors in Dallas. Apparently there she was happy and accepted, but she lets Brian (circumstances never explained) dump her with no child support of any kind or division of property? Texas is a community property state. But when she moves back to Love, she’s fighting the idea of any psychic gifts, doesn’t want to use them, and resents the family’s reputation. Despite her need to succeed in her business, she operates without signed written contracts. She pulls many TSTL stunts. She doesn’t tell J. T. when she’s run off the road soon after Mag’s murder, or when she’s shoved down the stairs at Frank’s house, or when she gets hate e-mail. She stays late, alone, after the Calf-roping Ball, walking down by the lake with her cell phone in the truck--is anyone surprised that she’s run off he road again, kidnapped, and nearly killed?

Inconsistencies abound. Sean is supposedly off for week with his father, but then he’s supposedly at a Scout campout. His bicycle is taken to pieces and smashed by a vandal, yet with no provision of a new machine, he’s off biking with a friend.

Mumsie’s house is described as having pecans and a catalpa tree in the yard, but when it is vandalized, there’s a palm tree down. In North Texas, really? Love as a setting never crystalizes. It’s never clear how large Love is supposed to be, but it does not have the atmosphere common to small towns everywhere, of all the natives being more or less acquainted with each other and aware of each other’s business. Laurel is able to cancel Tali’s order for flowers for the Ball by pretending to be her assistant? The people with whom Tali does business would know better. Most importantly, there’s no sense of a Southern or Western voice, not in Tali telling the story or in the speech patterns of the characters.

Sorry for the length--this one hit way too many of my buttons. The sad thing is, the story and characters have potential. (D--) :buttrock
 
SLIPPERY SLOPES AND OTHER DEADLY THINGS is one of Nancy Tesler’s mystery series featuring Carrie Carlin, a biofeedback specialist who works with psychologists and other mental health professionals. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2003.

Carrie Carlin is in Snowridge, Vermont, attending a conference of the International Association of Biofeedback Practitioners to meet Dr. Hubert Freundlich. Freundlich has made a tremendous breakthrough in proving the efficacy of biofeedback in controlling pain, in which Carrie is most interested, and he’s the keynote speaker. She’s not terribly impressed when he tries to grope her in the hot tub, especially since his wife is sitting next to him at the time. Freundlich’s entourage seem to hero worship him except for Charlie Anders, who’s drunk and muttering about people being taken in by his boss, who’s just replaced him as primary assistant with Kate Donovan, a nubile young thing. Then Charlie is killed during the torchlit parade of ski instructors the following night, after a loud altercation with Freundlich and another with Carrie’s friend Joe Golden. Why? Then Joe is attacked and left to freeze to death in the snow, and Kate Donovan is killed. What’s someone trying to conceal?

Carrie Carlin is a potentially interesting protagonist. At 42 years old, she’s survived a devastating divorce from her serial philanderer husband Rich; she is in a satisfying live-in arrangement with Lieutenant Ted Brodsky of the Bergen County, New Jersey, Violent Crimes Unit; she has a good relationship with her twelve-year-old son and her fourteen-year-old daughter. But she’s naive enough to assume the best about everyone, she is incurably curious (nickname is Curious Georgette), and she pulls major TSTLs in wandering around alone at night in a ski resort where a person could die from exposure even if she doesn’t run into a killer. There’s not much characterization. An example: “I’m a feminist. It infuriates me when someone intimates that a woman has risen in the corporate or academic hierarchy because she’s used her feminine wiles on the boss. But Kate was young, in her early twenties, and she was a knockout. You need to have a lot of power to have someone who’s doing ‘a bang-up job’ bumped from a project. Knowing what I do of Freundlich’s proclivities, though, the thought did cross my mind that Kate’s power may have derived from talents other than those scientific.” Too many characters are extraneous to the needs of the plot, and most never become more than names.

Setting is emphasized less than might be expected, with only occasional passages that evoke a sense of place. “We were standing at the foot of the lift, gazing up at the small wooden shack that marked the mid-station. The night was crystal clear, the storm having worn itself out or moved on to spend its fury on some other hapless skiers. But the frigid temperatures remained. Against the moonlit backdrop of shimmering pines, the motionless lift-chair stood out like battery-dead robots, a reminder that like a book, you should never judge a Currier & Ives greeting card by its peaceful facade.”

The plot involves two motifs that have been used to excess in recent years, “roofies” and academic fraud. The killer’s identity and motive are telegraphed. Attempts at providing believable alternative suspects don’t work for an experienced reader.

SLIPPERY SLOPES AND OTHER DEADLY THINGS is okay, but it’s nothing special. (C)
 
GRACE AGAINST THE CLOCK is the fifth installment in Julie Hyzy’s Manor House mystery series, published in 2014 in print and e-format. It features Grace Wheaton, manager of Marshfield Manor in Emberstowne.

Joyce Swedburg and her ex-husband, noted cardiac surgeon Dr. Leland Keay, have planned a major fundraiser to be held in the basement of Marshfield Manor, to support renovations on Emberstowne landmark, the Promise Clock, a replica of a medieval French installation. At the reception, Dr. Keay dies of massive injections of pure grain alcohol in almost a locked-room area. Several people had cause to want him dead, but access to him that night? Grace, her boss Bennett Marshfield, her assistant Frances, and Detective Flynn discover a secret passage used by the killer. But who?

****SPOILERS****SPOILERS****

The plot in GRACE AGAINST THE CLOCK is definitely least likely suspect, but the ubiquity of the killer leads an experienced reader to the identification and motive well before Grace finally figures it out. Three main elements make up the plot--the death of Dr. Keay, the passageway between Grace’s house and the one next door, and Grace’s relationship with Adam, the rock musician, and with Jack. The passage turns out to be a non-essential red herring. Adam leaves Grace to figure out who she wants, and Grace does conclude that Jack isn’t the man she thought him to be, but she’s still in a relationship stalemate.

The action is over the top. It’s hard to believe that someone with duct-taped wrists facing together behind a chair can get enough leverage to twist the tape loose. Then Grace sprints through town to Joyce Swedburg’s office, then further along to the Promise Clock, and still has energy to foil the killer and save Joyce and Bennett Marchfield. She’s coincidentally saved by Ronny Tooney, the PI who shouldn’t know where she is. It’s unbelievable.

GRACE AGAINST THE CLOCK does not work well as a stand-alone. Allusions to previous cases, characters, and relationships presume familiarity with the entire series. Adam and Frances are never identified with their full names. At the same time, characters are inconsistent with their prior manifestations. Hillary (last name not given), Bennett’s step-daughter who’s renovating Grace’s house, who began as a 24-karat “witch with a b”, is now sticky-sweet and smarmy. Grace herself, who was as independent as a hog on ice, has agreed to let Bennett pay for renovations and redecorating her house; she even allows Hillary to choose the paint colors for her beloved house. I don’t think so.

Marshfield Manor seems to owe much to Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, but there is still no indication of where Emberstowne may be located. Sense of place is missing altogether.

GRACE AGAINST THE CLOCK seems written to fulfill a contractual obligation, not to tell a good story. (D)
 
MR. DARCY’S RESCUE is the second in Jennifer Lang’s Darcy and Elizabeth What If? series. It was published in 2014 in inexpensive e-format.

Elizabeth Bennet’s Uncle Gardiner takes his family to Ramsgate so that he can recover his health in the sea air; first Lizzie, then Jane, is to visit for two weeks each. Lzzie makes the acquaintance of Miss Georgiana Darcy of Pemberley, who’s spending the summer in Ramsgate with her companion Mrs. Younge. Georgiana receives frequent calls from George Wickham, who’s convinced her that his quarrel with her brother has been made up. Elizabeth is immediately suspicious of both Wickham and Mrs. Younge, and she convinces Georgiana to write to Darcy about his visits. The morning that Elizabeth is due to leave Ramsgate, she sees Georgiana, looking frightened, in a speeding carriage with Mrs. Younge and Wickham. Darcy has arrived at Georgiana’ lodgings, and Elizabeth assists him in recovering Georgiana with her reputation intact. Darcy had been outstandingly rude to her, so Elizabeth spares no pains in addressing his character flaws and his overprotectiveness of Georgiana. Fast forward to Charles Bingley’s taking Netherfield Park in Hertfordshire, where Darcy and Georginana are his first non-family house guests. Darcy has long thought about the critique of his behavior from Elizabeth, and he’s pleased to find Georgiana back in the company of a good friend. Neither he nor Elizabeth is indifferent. Elizabeth helps Georgiana face with composure Wickham in Meryton, and they all live happily ever after.

Not bad at all as Austen fan fiction goes. Characters are true to the originals. The variation in the story line is believable. It’s not Austen’s wit or ironic humor, but then it never is. (B+)
 
THE SCENT OF MURDER by Jeffrey Marks was a free or inexpensive Kindle download published in 2008. It features Marissa Scott, cosmetic department manager of Kantor’s Department Store in the Westgate Mall in Cincinnati.

When her ex-husband’s fiancee Tiffany Wong’s body is found in Marissa’s office at Kantor’s, it’s good that she has an airtight alibi, because she’s the obvious suspect. Fortunately, she’d been invited to a seminar promoting the newest unisex perfume Paradise by Carly Spenser, up for promotion to V-P in her company. Carly had hired Tiffany as a perfume model (the women who spritz people with scent as they pass through the cosmetics department), assigning her as Tiffany had requested to a territory that included Marissa’s store. Who wanted Tiffany dead? Then someone murders Tiffany’s stalker ex-boyfriend Billy Chin in store manager David Harper’s office. Why? Are their deaths connected to the series of perfume-y pranks happening in the mall? Because of her previous experience with solving crimes, Marissa is pressured by Harper and by the police to help uncover the murderer.

The plot in THE SCENT OF MURDER is simplistic. An experienced reader should be able to identify the prankster, based on personality and expertise, early on, and the disclosures about Tiffany’s activities make clear who most needed her dead. One would think that the police would have investigated the origin of the perfumery used in the pranks, which would have led directly to the killer. Marissa’s constant analysis of her relationship with ex-husband Dan Scott and her present relationship with Gavin Tish, a homicide detective with the Cincinnati PD, gets almost as much attention as the double murder. It gets old fast.

Marisa’s not a very attractive protagonist. Her default mood seems to be discontent, her default occupation kvetching about everything and everyone. She’s inconsistent in her relationship with Dan, apparently hating his guts but allowing him to stay with her and their son Josh after Tiffany’s murder, even running his errands to the house they’d shared and that he’d subsequently shared with Tiffany; she’s let his payment of child support for Josh fall thousands of dollars behind, at a time when going after deadbeat dads is common. Several characters serve no essential function in the plot. There’s little development of any.

We’re told the setting is Cincinnati, but there’s no sense of physical location or ambiance. THE SCENT OF MURDER doesn’t actually stink, but it’s no rose garden. (C)
 
Marja Mills’s THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR: LIFE WITH HARPER LEE is available in both print and e-book editions. It was published in 2014 and has been the subject of many praise-filled reviews.

Marja Mills met Harper Lee in 2001 when she was assigned an article on her for the Chicago Tribune, since the city-wide reading program featured To Kill a Mockingbird. This initial meeting led to Mills eventually renting the house next door to the Lee sisters’ home in Monroeville, Alabama, and, according to her account, becoming their friend and confidante, recipient of stories and frank opinions on many subjects.

A problem exists. Harper Lee explicitly denied in writing that she had in any way cooperated or authorized THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR: LIFE WITH HARPER LEE.

Unquestionably, there are stories about Nelle Harper and Alice Finch Lee told by friends, a sense of the geography and bits of the history of Monroeville and the surrounding area of Alabama, minutia of trips to McDonald’s and various eating places, feeding the ducks and geese with cracked corn carried in a Cool Whip Free container, and riding out Hurricane Dennis in the basement of the bank, where the last refuge would be the vault if the building started coming apart. It’s interesting reading, if repetitive, and it helps to explain the milieu from which Mockingbird came. Mills says she has “...crates of files, boxes of notes, stacks of taped interviews with Alice and others...” (258) Far be it for me to contradict.

However, no extended stories from either Alice or Nelle Harper Lee are quoted; all quotes from both women are very brief, very general. One of the longest, most personal exchanges between Mills and Nelle involves Truman Capote’s claimed role in writing To Kill a Mockingbird: “As far as she was concerned, Truman lied about people and he didn’t care whom he hurt. ‘Truman was a psychopath, honey.’ That stopped me short. Nelle used language precisely.... ‘You mean in the clinical sense?’ I asked. ‘If I understand the meaning of the term,” she answered. ‘He thought that the rules that apply to everybody else didn’t apply to him.’ “ (169) That’s it, in totality. Mills refers frequently to stories about the sisters being told to her by their friends, but specific details are few. At no point is anything she’s told analyzed or approached critically.

I can’t help wondering how much contact Mills had with Nelle Harper Lee in total. THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR reads as if they were in and out of each other’s houses on a daily basis. But by her own account, Mills was suffering from chronic lupus with frequent flare-ups throughout the time she lived in Monroesville. She often spent days at a time in bed. She was in delirium from an acute lups episode complicated by dehydration when she was returned to Chicago so that she could be seen by her own doctors. In addition to Mills’s health issues, Alice Lee was profoundly deaf and Nelle Harper Lee moderately deaf. How much time did they share, to reach the level of intimacy implied?

THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR: LIFE WITH HARPER LEE reminds me very much of a paper I wrote for a graduate seminar in State and Local History, a sketch of my great-grandfather Ephriam Gold Dillard. I had basic genealogical information on him, including his Confederate military service and some scattered references to family stories, but very little personal information. So I padded everywhere I could with other sources. I used a regimental history to expound on the battles in which he fought; I used descriptions of care of the wounded in Civil War hospitals to fill out his experience after being wounded at Chickamauga; I wrote about Primitive Baptist beliefs to supplement his having been a deacon in the church; I used economic history for problems faced post-War by small farmers in the South. I got an A+ on the paper, but the content specific to my great-grandfather was skimpy. Thus it is with THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR.

THE MOCKINGBIRD NEXT DOOR: LIFE WITH HARPER LEE is fascinating because Lee’s aversion to publicity has created such a mystique. (At one point, Mills quotes Lee as saying she’s Boo Radley.) Just don’t read it expecting any critical or even very personal information about the Lee family in general or Nelle Harper Lee in particular. (B)
 
Jonnie Jacobs’s SHADOW OF DOUBT was originally published in 1996 but reissued as a free or inexpensive e-format title in 2012.

SHADOW OF DOUBT features Kali O’Brien, hotshot attorney in the offices of Goldman & Latham in San Francisco; she’s a senior associate on the fast track to partnership, dating the firm’s chief litigator Ken Levitt. When she returns home to Silver Creek for her father’s funeral and to settle his estate, she’s caught up in the murder of high-school classmate and now coach Eddie Marrero, married to her best friend from those days Jannine Greeley. Jannine is the chief suspect. Kali’s trying to find an alternative suspect leads to discovery of embezzlement, an illegitimate child, sexual predation, and secrets from her own family’s past.

The plot of SHADOW OF DOUBT is appropriately supported with foreshadowing, though Jacobs provides good misdirection to focus readers’ attention away from the killer and the motive. The climax is a bit too dependent on a tell-all confession and a fortuitous intervention, but it’s well done.

Kali as first person narrator is believably human, somewhat estranged from her father and siblings, preoccupied with climbing the partnership ladder yet somewhat doubtful about the whole process, ambivalent about her relationship with Ken Levitt. Her decision to help Jannine shows integrity: “There was such trepidation in her [Jannine’s] voice I couldn’t refuse. Besides, I owed Nona [Jannine’s mother] and Jannine. Owed them far more than I would ever be able to repay. They’d been there for me when no one else was. They’d seen me through the tumultuous period of my mother’s death, when I’d felt abandoned and unloved and cheated by life itself. They’d been there in the years that followed as well, offering the affection and warmth my father was incapable of. Now it was my turn.” Kali does pull major TSTLs: she breaks and enters Eddie Marrero’s office at the high school; she doesn’t report an attempt by a car to run her down; she doesn’t report vandalization of her car to the police until after the killer is captured; when a teenaged girl in the case steals her beloved new BMW, she goes after her rather than calling the police. Kali ignores chain of evidence and her oath as an officer of the court. Other characters, while less developed, are individual.

Locations are specified in the physical setting, and Jacobs does a good job of using atmosphere to reveal personality: “As the night wore on, I moved toward the edge of things, and let the drone of muted conversation roll over me like the gentle summer breeze. The night was warm, and the air thick with the sweet scent of prairie grass. It was the kind of evening we rarely get in the Bay Area, where the fog usually rolled in before sunset. I watched Jannine’s two middle girls straddle the beam at the top of the play structure, and wondered what my life would have been if I’d never left Silver Creek. It’s a peculiar feeling, finding yourself face to face with your past like that, reconciling what might have been with what is, especially when you find the neat little pictures in your head unexpectedly askew.”

SHADOW OF DOUBT is a strong opener in a sizable series, one that I’ll be reading. (B+)
 
MIDSOMER MURDERS, Set 23, was broadcast first in 2012. It features Neil Dudgeon as Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby, Jason Hughes as Sergeant Ben Jones, Fiona Dolman as Sarah Barnaby, and Tamzin Malleson as Medical Examiner Dr. Kate Wilding. One of the great pleasures of this series is the quality of the acting, since it regularly features Britain’s best character actors as killers, victims, and suspects. Set 23 contains three episodes: THE DARK RIDER, MURDER OF INNOCENCE, and DEATH AND THE DIVAS.

THE DARK RIDER involves a feud between the DeQuetteville and the Fleetwood families dating back to the English Civil War and visits from the ghost of Sir Geoffrey DeQuetteville (1605-1645). The DeQuetteville who sees the headless rider upon a grey horse will die. In rapid order Bentham DeQuetteville, brother of the present owner; his oldest nephew Julian DeQuettevlle, heir to the estate; and Sir Ludo DeQuetteville see the ghost and are killed. Matters are complicated since the surviving twin Toby, now the heir, is ineffectual, ruled by his wife Betty (played ably by Kerry Fox); Julian’s widow Diana is out to preserve her role as mistress of the estate; and the Fleetwoods are trying to buy out the whole estate. Eleanor Bron, who seems to specialize in austere aristocratic ladies plays Lady Isabella DeQuetteville; James Callis plays the dual role of Toby and Julian DeQuetteville, giving each a distinct personality and carriage; James Clay, who plays youngest son Simon DeQuetteville, is an actor to watch for. (A-)

MURDER OF INNOCENCE goes back to one of the first murder cases in Ben Jones’s career, when Grady Felton (played by Jack Pierce) was convicted of the murder of teenager Daniel Denning, who’d caught him poaching. All the evidence pointed to Felton, but he insisted he was innocent. Felton has now served his sentence and returned to Binwell to sell his cottage, but people who had been on a death-list supposedly written by Felton after his conviction begin dying. Felton’s cottage is set on fire, he’s almost killed by smoke inhalation but survives to be murdered in hospital. The situation only becomes more obscure when two different sets of fingerprints show up for Felton, and the DNA from the dead man is totally unknown. The plot twists are not foreshadowed, coming only when the killer reveals himself in setting up the death of Ted Denning (played by Ian Redford) and Jones. Another actor to enjoy is Jamie Michie. (B-)

DEATH AND THE DIVAS involves the Midsomer Langley Film Festival set up by Colin Yule, president of the film society, to honor local horror film star from the 1960s, Stella Harris (played by Sinead Cusack). Her sister, the much-better- known Hollywood star Diana Davenport (played by Harriet Walter) shows up just in time to spoil her moment of triumph. Eve Lomax, a young woman who’d been writing an unauthorized biography of the sisters, is murdered by punctures to the neck which hit the carotid artery, looking remarkably like a vampire bite. Then Diana’s husband, producer Cy Davenport who’d dumped Stella for Diana forty years before, dies as in another of Stella’s films; Colin Yule is “mummified” in bandages and suffocates, as in a third. Add in family secrets, a dysfunctional father and son relationship, divas going full force (Cusack and Walter can tear it and each other up), and an organic vegetable cum escort service for lots of red herrings. Anna Wilson-Jones, who plays Stella’s daughter Emma, is an actress to watch. (B+)

Several Amazon reviewers commented on a darker tone to the episodes in Set 23, and I can’t disagree. An appropriate subtitle might be “All in the Family,” since all three center on family dynamics. The characters remain outstanding, but the level of the plotting seems a bit lessened. Still, well worth the time.
 
THE SEVEN STARS is one of Anthea Fraser’s mystery series featuring DCI David Webb of the Broadshire CID, It was originally published in 1997.

David Webb is divorced but in a discreet long-term relationship with the acting head of the Ashbourne School for Girls, Hannah (last name not given). He’s a gifted amateur artist. “The Governor’s artistic talents, though he rarely spoke of them, were well known at Carrington Street Station. More particularly, they had several times been instrumental in his solving a case, the startlingly lifelife caricatures of the people involved alerting him to some previously unnoticed trait which proved significant. The process was known among his colleagues as the Governor ‘drawing conclusions.’ What they did not know was tha Webb was also the acclaimed cartoonist whose work appeared sporadically in the Broadshire News, signed by an enigmatic ‘S’ in a circle, denoting a spider in a web.” (41)

Helen Campbell discovers The Seven Stars, a bed and breakfast run by Stella Cain and Kate Warren and heir husbands when she loses her way in fog on unfamiliar roads after taking her daughter Pen back to university. She’s made welcome and comfortable, so when she decides to attend there a two-weeks seminar on antiques at nearby Melbray to update her skills preparatory to looking for a job in her old field, she returns to stay at The Seven Stars. But she picks up on a strange atmosphere, one in which her chance remarks are assumed more significant than she knows. There’s something odd about Gordon Cain’s last-minute changes to the daily horoscope predictions he writes for the Evening News, a fellow-guest who takes a bit too much interest in her husband’s work (Andrew Campbell is an insurance loss adjuster whose company is being devastated by a series of stately home robberies stretching back over two years with losses of over ￡1,000,000), and strange short telephone calls. When she accidentally finds a unique button at Beckworth House, where a robbery had been foiled, Helen recognizes it and takes it to the police, beginning the process of unravelling the robbery network.

It’s pretty clear from the outset that something fishy is going on at The Seven Stars, but exactly what emerges slowly. An experienced reader may even discern the identity of Q, the designation for the head of the robbery ring, but there is a deftly contrived final twist. The whole scenario of the stately home robberies isn’t probable in real life, but it fits within the structure of the novel and its characters.

Sense of place is good. “Today, the High Street was practically deserted and, driving leisurely along, [Helen] was able to appreciate the charming haphazardness of its architecture, a reminder that this had once been a small market town. Ancient Tudor buildings, their black ships’ timbers banding the white plaster, nestled against four-storey edifices with wrought-iron balconies and mullion windows in a companionable melding of the centuries. Some, Helen noted, bore the names of well-known chain stores, but, with their modern fashions hidden behind historic frontages, ancient and modern coexisted in a unique blend of individuality. (51)

My reservations about THE SEVEN STARS are two-fold. One is whether DI Chris Ledbetter, after he hears Helen Campbell’s suspicions about those running The Seven Stars and realizes that they must be involved in the robberies, would allow her to return there to stay while the police begin their investigation. The other involves characters. Many are surplus to the requirements of the plot, and few become believably human individuals. Still, a pleasant enough read. (B)
 
Robert Hutchinson’s THE SPANISH ARMADA is a newly-published (2013) history of the events involved in the defeat by the Elizabeth I’s English navy of the great armada sent against her by Philip II of Spain in 1588.

THE SPANISH ARMADA emphasizes just how close-run the English victory was. Many of the ships were rented or conscripted converted merchant vessels; many of its sailors were also conscripted; powder and shot were in short supply throughout the running battle up the English Channel. In addition, should the Armada successfully land in England in force, Catholics (estimated to be half the population, especially strong in the northern parts of England and amongst some of the highest nobility) would rise to support the overthrow of Elizabeth’s Protestant government.

Several major factors defeated the Spanish. The new-built and the older rebuilt ships of the English Royal Navy were race-built, with lower bow and stern gun platforms (“castles”) and a longer, lower gun deck, making them faster and more maneuverable than the traditional galleon. The English ships carried heavier ordinance, able to do major damage at longer range. English battle strategy was to avoid closing with the Spanish ships for hand-to-hand combat between the soldiers and sailors, but to pound enemy ships with their superior firepower. Perhaps no period in English history has been graced with greater numbers of skilled seamen: Lord Admiral Charles Howard (Second Baron of Effingham), Martin Frobisher, John Hawkins, Walter Raleigh (though he did not participate in the fighting, his specially-designed ship, formerly the Ark Raleigh bought and renamed the Ark Royal, was Lord Admiral Howard’s flagship), and Francis Drake, among many others. The raid on Cadiz in 1587 delayed the Armada’s sailing for a year and guaranteed that it would be ill-provisioned; it also gave Hawkins, Walsingham, and Burghley time to better prepare English defenses. The Spanish were plagued with bad luck, some of it caused by Philip’s micomanaging, some by poor communications, and more by poor planning. Most important, regardless of Tudor propaganda, was the weather, part of the changing pattern known as the “Little Ice Age” that caused much greater loss to the Armada than the cannon and fireships of the English Navy.

THE SPANISH ARMADA is popular history done right. The writing style is accessible. Hutchinson does an admirable job of keeping the characters clear. He includes appendices of the Order of Battle of the English Fleet; the Order of Battle for the Spanish Fleet; a detailed chronology; a list of dramatis personae; a glossary of naval terms; extensive notes, mainly to primary sources; and a twenty-page bibliography. Illustrations are well-chosen, and he uses maps of the period. Highly recommended. (A)
 
COUNTDOWN is the latest to date in Susan Rogers Cooper’s long-running mystery series featuring Sheriff Milt Kovak of Prophesy County, Oklahoma. It was published in print and e-format in 2014.

The story opens with the murder of Joynell Blanton by her husband Darrell Blanton. Milt arrests Darrell and puts him in jail but, after eating a pizza in his cell, Darrell inexplicably dies. In the meantime, psychiatrist Dr. Jean McDonnell Kovak and Deputy Jasmine Bodine Hopkins prepare for a surprise bridal shower for Holly Humphries, the sheriff’s department civilian clerk who’s marrying Deputy Dalton Pettigrew. Jean is also expecting a visit from her college roommate and friend from medical school Paula Carmichael, a brilliant student whose career as a cardiac surgeon hasn’t lived up to her promise. Johnny Mac, Jean and Milt’s son, is visiting Milt’s sister Jewel. All are caught up in events beyond their control. Darrell’s mother Eunice takes the women at the shower hostage and promises to kill one every ten minutes if Milt doesn’t release her son within an hour; Milt obviously can’t release a dead man; Johnny Mac and his friends are caught in a tornado. And this is just the first half of the book! After the hostage situation is resolved, Milt still must discover how Darrell died and who killed him. Jean, based on her knowledge of Paula and recognizing her patterns of behavior, concludes Paula had been sexually abused as a child and is determined when she accompanies her body (Paula dies in the hostage situation) home to Kansas City, to discover and expose the person who abused her.

Much of the story is told in first person by Milt, who is believably human. He’s recovered from quadruple by-pass surgery a year before, complaining about no longer being allowed his favorite chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, slightly redneck and politically incorrect despite Jean’s best efforts. “I wasn’t the only one in the department who had qualms about going to Blantonville..., home to more than a few people who were a few tacos shy of a combination plate. In fact, I hadn’t met a Blanton yet who appeared to be playing with all their marbles. But in Blantonville, a Blanton is all you get.” Cooper does a good job of differentiating between Jean’s “voice” in the limited third person sections and Milt’s. I’d have preferred fewer and more developed characters, but many of them have been developed in prior novels.

The plots seem like a lot going on, but that’s the way with small law enforcement departments, everything happens at once. The solutions to the hostage situation and to the death of Darrell Blanton are foreshadowed appropriately, and Cooper uses readers’ preconceptions about child sexual abuse to produce a neat surprise ending to Jean’s mystery.

Sense of place continues strong. “Eunice’s marriage to her cousin [Bruce] was just the way things were done in the township of Blantonville, in the far northeast corner of Prophesy County, Oklahoma. Her sister was married to their uncle, her cousin Ruth was married to Bruce’s brother, who was even stupider than Bruce, and, truth be told, every woman born a Blanton in Blantonville was married to some relative or other. It was their way of keeping only the Blanton name in the town. ... Boys were allowed to go outside of Blantonville to find a wife, as that would not weaken the Blanton name, not to mention the need for a little fresh DNA added to the mix. But girls were forced, most times, to marry within the family.”

COUNTDOWN is a pleasant quick read with characters who’ve become old friends. (B+)
 
THE MONOGRAM MURDERS is Sophie Hannah’s first continuation of Agatha Christie’s beloved Hercule Poirot. It was published in 2014 in print and e-format editions. It’s set in 1929 and mostly narrated in first person by Edward Catchpool, a young (32-year-old) detective at Scotland Yard. He knows Poirot through their both lodging in the home of Mrs. Ursula Unsworth, Catchpool permanently and Poirot for a month, “hibernating” away from his apartment for a rest.

Three people are murdered at the Bloxham Hotel, two women, Mrs. Harriet Sippel and Miss Ida Gransbury, and a man, Richard Negus. All three have been poisoned with cyanide, their bodies laid out in the same manner, each mouth containing a cufflink monogramed PIJ. Poirot, in the meantime having coffee in Pleasant’s Coffee House, is hearing a disjointed story from the frightened Jennie, who expects to be murdered, which she says that she deserves and that she doesn’t want the murderer caught. Investigation ties the three victims and Jennie Hobbs to the village of Great Holling, where sixteen years before, they had all been involved in the slander of Reverend Patrick Ive and the subsequent suicides of Ive’s wife and himself. But who’s responsible for their deaths?

Agatha Christie’s books have always been primarily plot driven, and THE MONOGRAM MURDERS is certainly a puzzle plot reminiscent of her wildest. Possible explanations of what happened and why are repeated to the point that I finally didn’t care who’d committed the murders. Much of the complexity seems padding. In a purely practical sense, the plan itself and its working seem improbable.

Edward Catchpool is an interesting choice for a chronicler of Hercule Poirot’s exploits. He suffers from some PTSD from his being forced as a five-year-old to visit and spend time with his dying, then dead grandfather. Even by the standards of Captain Hastings, despite his being a Scotland Yard detective, he’s amazingly unobservant and unable to reason from his observations. Much of the time, Catchpool doesn’t seem even to approve of Poirot: “Poirot being Poirot, he insisted on telling me his news first, about his finding of the key. All I can say is, in Belgium it is evidently not considered unseemly to gloat. He was quite puffed up with pride.” And “Hercule Poirot will not allow anyone else to dictate to him what his opinion should be; he will, rather, determine to believe the opposite, contrary old cove that he is.” Other characters, particularly those involved in the killings, do not become more than cutouts being moved through the requirements of the plot.

Hannah’s Poirot shares some traits with Christie’s original, and Hannah skillfully uses setting to reinforce details of his character. “The tiny crooked-walled establishment in St. Gregory’s Alley, in a part of London that was far from being the most salubrious, made the best coffee Poirot had tasted anywhere in the world. He would not usually drink a cup before his dinner as well as after it--indeed, such a prospect would horrify him in ordinary circumstances--but every Thursday, when he came to Pleasant’s at 7:30 P.M. precisely, he made an exception to his rule. By now, he regarded this weekly exception as a little tradition. Other traditions of the coffee house he enjoyed rather less: positioning the cutlery, napkin and water glass correctly on his table, having arrived to find everything all askew. The waitresses evidently believed it was sufficient for the items to be somewhere--anywhere--on the table. Poirot disagreed and made a point of imposing order as soon as he arrived.” However, Hannah’s Poirot is a caricature of Christie’s. His pronouncements are even more enigmatic and confusing, apparently deliberately so as he seeks to educate Catchpool as a detective. Poirot talks down to Catchpool even more than Christie’s version did to Hastings and Inspector Japp. Hannah emphasizes his foreign origin, especially through his comments on aspects of English character: “What would Poirot say when I told him about my promise to Margaret Ernst? He would disapprove, for sure, and say something about the English and their foolish sense of honor...” He’s frequently hateful.

I wanted to like THE MONOGRAM MURDERS, I really did. However, it meets my general experience with continuations of characters created by other authors. The continuations are either pale unbelievable copies or they emphasize obvious characteristics of the original too much. THE MONOGRAM MURDERS is overblown. (C)
 
Andrea Frazer’s BELLS AND SMELLS is the twelfth and latest book in her Falconer File mystery series set in various English villages in the area around Market Darley. It was published in 2014 in print and e-book formats. It features Detective Inspector Harry Falconer and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Ralph Orsino “Davey” Carmichael.

Frazer’s books mostly follow a standard arrangement. They open with a prologue and long introduction in which the village, its inhabitants, and its internal dynamics are developed before the first crime is committed. BELLS AND SMELLS is no exception. Reverend Florence “Florrie” Feldman moves into her new parish of St Cuthbert’s Church in Ford Hollow. Coming in with no local information, she finds herself with long-standing church officers and leadership politics. Lay Reader Elodie Sutherland considers herself St Bernard’s moral leader. Yvonne Pooley, organist and choir mistress, rules the musical program absolutely; Albert Burton, 92-year-old head chorister whose long tenure and knowledge of church music is galling to both women. Silas Slater is thurifer who is much involved in the day to day running of the church building; Willard Scardifield, assistant organist and Parish Church Council member, resents Pooley’s control over organ practice. Reverend Monaghan, favorite of the bishop, noted for his High Church proclivities, slovenly dress, body odor, and lechery, makes determined moves on every woman in the congregation. Also causing problems in Ford Hollow is the proposed development of boggy land by Landbank, Ltd., being fought by villagers under the leadership of Yvonne Pooley. She’s convinced that the company is paying off the Planning Council and the chief planning officer. Albert Burton dies first, his neck broken following choir practice in the church; Falconer and Carmichael begin their investigation but, in short order, Yvonne Pooley, then Silas Slater, are both killed in the church. Why are they killed, and by whom?

Frazer does a good job of misdirection, keeping the reader’s attentions focused away from the killer and motive, though an experienced reader may not be fooled. There’s really one character who benefits from the combination of deaths. As always, there is a strong element of humor, with the episode of Falconer at Davey’s uncle Dennis’s kennels--he raises Irish wolfhounds--worth the price of the book. Sense of place is excellent.

Characterization isn’t as crisp as usual in BELLS AND SMELLS, though it does introduce some distinctive inhabitants for Ford Hollow. “The Sutherland woman is the perfect likeness of a sacrificial virgin. She was o angry at not being born male and, therefore, not being able to be a parish priest, that she became a lay rader. Then the church began to ordain women, but she had to stay at home and look after her frail mother. She’s so High Church she even asks for her confession to be heard every now and then.... She’s so close to being a Catholic as makes no difference, but she won’t take the final step and convert. She’s even wangled being made an honorary member of the Mother’s Union, and generally has a finger in every parish pie. All in all, she is a right nosy parker and a spiteful gossip to boot.”

Work-shirking Detective Constable Chris Roberts requests a transfer back to Manchester following a break-in at his home and being mugged, much to Falconer’s satisfaction; ironically, Roberts immediately contracts shingles upon his departure. New Detective Constable Neil Tomlinson seems personable and active, a strong addition to the continuing cast of characters. Other new characters are definitely on the way--Kerry Carmichael is pregnant with twins. Falconer’s old girlfriend, Dr. Hortense “Honey” Dubois, is back and wants to resume their relationship. Change is in the air.

BELLS AND SMELLS is a good read. (B)
 
NO WAY TO DIE by M. D. Grayson was a free or inexpensive Kindle download. It’s set in Seatle, Washington, and involves private detective Danny Logan and his associates in Logan Private Investigations.

Thomas Rasmussen, IT technology genius, dies in Discovery Park of what police rule is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His widow Katherine Berg Rasmussen doesn’t believe her husband committed suicide, despite the physical evidence, so she hires Danny to investigate and, if findings warrant, persuade the police to reopen the case. Rasmussen’s company, Applied Crytographic Solutions (ACS) is on the point of marketing the new Starfire Protocol that will render obsolete almost all current encryption programs used in banking, government, and online. It’s thought to be the forerunner of a new generation of encryption that will be priceless when and if Starfire goes on the market, The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security has already ruled out its sale to an international firm Madoc Secured Technologies. Does someone want the protocol badly enough to kill for it?

There is a fair sense of place. “On a normal day, [Pike Place Market] is buzzing with tourists by eleven and is completely packed by lunch time, but at 7:45 thee was a different sort of buzz. Some of the shore-fronts were just opening; some wouldn’t open until later. Trucks were double-parked, unloading their merchandise for the shop owners. Drivers wheeled hand trucks in and out of the pedestrian traffic. Shop owners cleaned their windows and arranged their displays. The earlyrising customers who wandered about were mostly locals, picking out the freshest and most complete solutions of flowers, ethnic foods, fresh fish, and the other items offered in the market just as they came off the trucks. But despite the relatively uncrowded aisles, the energy level was still high.” (21)

The premise is interesting, but I gave up on NO WAY TO DIE at 30%. The writing style follows a set pattern--introduce a character, give his or her background, then a chunk of exposition that’s more background information on the situation.The plot doesn’t move smoothly,; it limps and lurches. Glitches in formatting t run some words together, often enough to be distracting.

The major problem is the characters. Many of them have no role yet apparent in the plot; none of them are well developed. Danny Logan and his employees are introduced as a group, complete with potted biographies of each, all spectacularly brilliant at what they do, great looking--even their resident IT geek Kenny Hale is wearing a turtleneck to hide a hickey. They’re more like a set of cartoon heroes than real people. My distinct impression is of a novel written to be turned into a screenplay.

No grade because not finished.
 
Mary Jane Hathaway’s PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND CHEESE GRITS is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with Shelby Roswell and Ransom Fielding as rival scholars of the American Civil War at mythical Midlands in Spartainville, Mississippi. In Shelby’s tenure year, Fielding has written a scathing, much quoted review of her first book; he’s is spending a sabbatical year at Midlands from his permanent position at Yale. To add insult to injury, he’s been given the Civil War history class that she’d expected to teach. Fielding is a celebrity lecturer and writer, Shelby a lowly assistant professor. Sparks, both professional and personal, fly.

I just couldn’t take it past 31%. Every chapter contains explicit Christian references that do not add to characterization or plot. Time is supposed to be current, but the attitude toward marriage, especially of Shelby’s mother Florence Roswell, is identical to and even less subtle than that of Mrs. Bennet. Most Southern women of a certain age tend toward steel magnolias, but their methods are seldom so blatant, particularly when dealing with men.

Another problem with the setting is the weather. Clear references to the immediately past summer, to fall term, to two class meetings indicate that the school year has just begun. Yet after a weekend visit to an aunt, Shelby is caught in an ice storm. Classes would begin no later than mid-September, and there are few ice storms in any part of Mississippi in August or September. About the only indication of a Southern setting is the reference to kudzu. Kudzu may be ubiquitous in the South, but it’s not the region’s only distinctive vegetation. Oxford and Jackson are the genuine cities mentioned, but the fictional towns of Flea Bite Creek and Thorny Hollow are not sited in relation to either. Midlands offers graduate degrees, because Shelby is supervising a Master’s thesis, but Shelby refers to it as a liberal arts college. Which?

Why do writers who can’t or won’t do Southern speech and thought patterns insist on writing Southern characters? There are exactly three Southern expressions so far, one of them I’ve never heard (“happy as a dead pig in the sunshine”), apparently thrown in to give a sense of verisimilitude. The farthest north any character originates is Washington, D. C., but none expresses that.

I have major problems with Shelby Roswell. She says she’s 29 years old. She’s in her seventh year, when she must either receive tenure at Midlands or look for another job. This would mean she earned her Ph.D. about age 22, which is closer to the age of someone receiving their Bachelor’s degree. She’s not described as a prodigy. Academic infighting is endemic on college campuses among the graduate students as well as the faculty. Anyone as bright as Shelby would be isn’t likely to be so naive or so impulsive. She acts like a teenager in her contacts with Ransom Fielding. Her relationship with her mother is also inconsistent with her age and career. Shelby simpy isn’t a believable character.

No grade because I’m not going to finish PRIDE, PREJUDICE, AND CHEESE GRITS. I’m also going to delete EMMA, MR. KNIGHTLEY, AND CHILI-SLAW DOGS by Hathaway from my Kindle.
 
I made a couple of poor book choices in a row--I couldn't finish them, as you can see above--so I decided to have a Friday film session.

MIDSOMER MURDERS, Set 24, consists of three episodes broadcast in 2012 and 2013. They feature the usual continuing characters: DCI John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), DS Ben Jones (Jason Hughes), Sarah Barnaby (Fiona Dolman), and Dr. Kate Wilding (Tamzin Malleson). As usual, murderers, victims, and suspects are played by some of the best British character actors. However, there have been significant changes. The theme no longer has the eerie tones produced by the theremin, the part now being played less effectively on a violin. Why? Brian True-May, due to political incorrectness, no longer produces the series, and the quality of the writing has declined.

WRITTEN IN THE STARS was first broadcast 25 September 2012. In it astrology and astronomy collide during a full solar eclipse, after which the body of Jeremy Harper, president of Midsomer Stanton’s amateur astronomy society, is discovered. Someone hit him in the head with a piece of meteorite. He’d been involved with a group of other amateurs who threatened both Lawrence Janson’s professional reputation and his plans for a new observatory on Moonstone Ridge. The body of Mary Dutta, mother of doctoral candidate Gagan Dutta, whose work challenges Janson, had been found there fifteen years before, and the police had never determined if her death had been an accident or a murder. Janson is the logical suspect for the murders of other members of the amateur group until he is killed. Who needed him dead? Two actors to watch are Barnaby Kay, who plays Adrian Sharp, and Ace Bhatti, who plays Gagan’s father Harry Dutta; Maureen Lipman plays astrologer Mags Dormer. Attention is skillfully misdirected throughout. (A-)

THE SICILIAN DEFENSE was first broadcast 9 January 2013. Bishopwood’s only claim to fame is the chess-master great-grandfather of Edward Stannington, so the village sponsors an annual chess tournament as a tourist draw. The previous year, teenager Harriet Farmer (Jo Woodcock--an actor to watch for) is eloping with her boyfriend Finn Robson; she’s struck on the head and left in a coma; he disappears. This year, when Harriet finally awakens from the coma, Stannington is killed, leaving his potty Aunt Vivian (Cheryl Campbell) to inherit. He’s bitter enemies with Alec Robson (Cal Macaninch), millionaire developer of a computer chess program, refuses to help advance the career of his illegitimate son Jamie Carr (John Bell--a young actor to watch for), and refuses to invest in Arthur Potts’s failing hotel. Then Harriet’s father David Farmer (Richard Lumsden who runs the chess tournament, dies. This episode is messy, with a suspected Angel of Death killer, a religious fanatic, stolen intellectual property, kidnapping and imprisonment, and a completely unforeshadowed revenge killer. (C)

SCHOOLED IN MURDER was first broadcast 30 January 2013. It’s set in Midomer Pastures, where the famous Midsomer Blue artisanal cheese is produced. It’s also the home Miss Sylvia Mountford’s exclusive girls’ school, endowed so that the children of the dairy workers who produce the cheese receive scholarships. Too bad that so many of them are expelled. When Debbie Moffett (Martina McCutcheon) threatens to expose the secrets of its Parent Council, she’s killed with a cheese in the ripening caves for the cheese. Things are about to change for the area as the owner’s husband Gregory Brantner contracts for non-local sourcing of milk and mechanizing to increase production. Then local Cheese Board representative Oliver Ordich, who’d been having an affair with Debbie, is murdered, swiftly followed by the stabbing of Gregory Brantner; dairy farmer Holly Caxton and her brother-in-law Jim Caxton, head cheese-maker, die when they’re caught in a herd of stampeded cattle. The cheese factory is common to all the murders, but all the women are former students of Miss Mountford. Is the school the connection? Again, the plot is more chaotic than confusing, what with a strange young man seen in the area, menaces involving two young girls, conspiracy, and bribery. The killer and motive are not foreshadowed. (C)

Plots in Set 24 are simply not as tightly written as earlier in the series. John Barnaby hasn’t developed as a nuanced character, and Ben Jones has made his last appearance, as Jason Hughes is leaving the series. The producer and writers lost a great opportunity to strengthen the series by making Jones a stronger presence; they do not even give him a farewell scene. The ironic dark humor characteristic of MIDSOMER MURDERS is gone. Sykes, Barnaby’s dog, provides most of the humor that’s left, mimicking Sarah Barnaby’s yoga pose, rescuing toys from the household clear-out for charity, swallowing the ring Barnaby’s bought for his and Sarah’s fifteenth anniversary. I’m not sure of the purpose of two filmic references--Barnaby and Sarah do a spoken version of “I Remember It Well” from Gigi as they go through discards, and a replication of the awakening kiss from Sleeping Beauty when Finn and Harriet reunite.

I would rather see MIDSOMER MURDERS ended as a series than see it continue to deteriorate due to poor writing.
 
Maria Hudgins’s DEATH OF A LOVABLE GEEK was a free or inexpensive Kindle edition published in 2008. Its first person narrator is Dorothy “Dotsy” Lamb, professor of ancient and medieval history at a Staunton, Virginia, community college. Interested in the historic Macbeth, she’s in Scotland for a couple of weeks to participate in an archaeology dig in the Highlands at Castle Dunlaggan, where eleventh century remains have been found. She’s accompanied by her friend Lettie Osgood, who’s researching her family history. She and Lettie are staying in Castle Dunlaggan, now a bed and breakfast run by William and Maisie Sinclair; his brother Dr. John Sinclair is director of the dig, he and his wife Fallon live in the castle as if paying guests. When Dylan “Froggy” Quale, the dig’s expert on spores and pollen, is stabbed to death, no one has any idea of a creditable motive. Does it have something to do with a ticket for the months-off Super Bowl that Dotsy found on the stairs in the castle? Then everyone’s taken ill after eating wild mushroom soup, and Dr. John dies. Is his death from natural causes, or was he murdered? And what about the gold coin that may date from Macbeth’s trip to Rome in 1050? Dotsy excavated it, but it’s gone missing from Dr. John’s lock box.

Dotsy Lamb is a believable protagonist and, because everything’s seen through her eyes, the best developed character. She has realistic baggage (money, children, divorce), and she’s a firm friend. When asked by Froggy’s mother, she feels responsible to discover the details of his death. There’s not a great deal of direct characterization, but Hudgins can do it well. Of Maisie Sinclair, Dotsy says, “It was the first time I’d seen Maisie in the library after dinner. By the time she finished washing up in the kitchen, the rest of us had usually toddled off to bed. She set the tray with the coffeepot, cream, sugar, and cups on a sideboard, and then allowed herself to be persuaded to stay and relax a few minutes. She sat lightly on the arm of a chintz-covered chair. ‘Well, inn’t this nice,’ she said, ‘sittin’ here in me own house, just like I belonged here or somethin’.’ We all laughed. ... She held her coffee cup and saucer awkwardly in front of her, as if she were unused to such fine surroundings, but she’d lived here for more than thirty years.” The number of characters exceeds that necessary to carry the plot.

Hudgins plays fair in giving the reader all the information as Dotsy gets it, and she keeps the evidence ephemeral enough to seem logical that Dotsy doesn’t confide in the local police. Hudgins hides killer and motive in plain sight as she focuses attention on the dig with its politics, personal quarrels, romantic entanglements, and magic mushroom party.

Though the exact location of Castle Dunlaggan is never specified, Hudgins creates the sense of a real place: “Castle Dunlaggan was built in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth. It had, over the centuries, been a fortress, a prison, a family seat, and a bed-and-breakfast. tt was one of the few castles in all of Scotland with absolutely no claim to ever having given refuge to either Bonnie Prince Charlie or Mary, Queen of Scots. It had borne witness to the Jacobite Rebellions and the Highland clearances, not to mention countless wars and petty squabbles. The front of the castle, which faced south, was mostly gray Aberdeen granite, except for the new tower (brick) and the square tower (sandstone). The west wing, where all the guest rooms were, was white stucco and granite, and the round tower granite again. The north wing, having been cannibalized to repair other parts, was granite rubble and ruins. The east wing, completely rebuilt in the mid-twentieth century, had expansive modern windows set in mellow sandstone. It was a Rube Goldberg castle in every style from medieval to Charles Rennie Mackintosh.”

I enjoyed DEATH OF A LOVABLE GEEK and will be reading more of the series. (B+)
 
MAUI WIDOW WALTZ is the first book in JoAnn Bassett’s Islands of Aloha mystery series. It was a free or inexpensive Kindle e-book published in 2011. It features Pali (pronounced Polly) Moon, a wedding planner on Maui.

After two months of rain and no wedding business, Pali is almost bankrupt, so when Lisa Marie Prescott shows up to book a somewhat bizarre wedding on Valentine’s Day, Pali agrees. There’s one slight problem--intended groom, computer genius Brad Sanders of DigiSystems, Inc., went missing at sea six days before; he’s presumed dead. Despite this small setback, Lisa Marie intends to go through with the wedding; either Brad will return, or his partner Keith McGillvary, who has his general power of attorney, will marry her by proxy and sign for Brad. Pali is dubious but desperate. Plans for Lisa Marie’s “perfect” beach wedding proceed as Pali deals with all the details demanded by a true Bridezilla. Keith confides in Pali details about a hostile takeover of DigiSystems and about Lisa Marie’s father Marv Prescott’s reputation for removing opponents. Then Keith’s body is found in the surf, dead from massive blunt force trauma to the head. Lisa Marie had quarreled violently with him, and she’s the main suspect. DigiSystems offers Pali a reward for finding out who killed Brad and Keith, and Marv Prescott offers to double it for showing Lisa Marie didn’t kill them. Can she?

Pali Moon as first person narrator is believable, if oddly qualified as a wedding planner. She took criminology classes in college, worked in the tourist industry, trained and worked as a federal air marshal (she quit because it was boring), and earned a black belt in kung fu. Her involvement in the deaths goes deeper than payment: “As I walked out to my car, I felt something shift. Finding out who killed Brad and Kevin was no longer just about collecting some reward money or even making good on my pact with Kevin. I flashed back to my air marshal days--when I imagined myself grabbing a couple of scumbag terrorists by the hair and pitching them out of a plane at thirty-five thousand feet. In my world it’s crucial the good guys win. No, to be truthful, it’s more arrogant than that, in my world I need to make sure the bad guys lose.” (271) She has a self-deprecating sense of humor about her business: “In the scheme of things, a wedding planner is just one tea rose away from a drill sergeant. The job’s mostly kicking butt and taking names.” (71) Other major characters are well-developed.

The plot includes a major surprise ending that, however, an experienced reader may anticipate. Bassett does a good job of keeping Lisa Marie and the wedding craziness at the forefront, but she skillfully plants clues to what is behind the deaths.

The story is full of Maui locations, Hawaiian expressions, Island attitudes: “Since Brad Sanders’ [sic] disappearance had made him something of a local celebrity, I was concerned a public beach would attract the press or curious onlookers. Maui’s notorious for local gossip. If just one vendor slipped up and told his cousin who told his neighbor who told his boss’s wife, a beach parking lot would fill up with looky-loos hours before Lisa Marie’s ‘perfect’ wedding.” (33) Descriptions of scenery and atmosphere are brief.

Two minor editing problems bothered me. On Thursday before the wedding, Lisa Marie takes a lesson from Brittney Spears’s history by shaving her head and eyebrows; on the following Monday, she has eyebrows to spit-groom. The other involves homophones; “peaked” and “piqued” are two different words.

Still, I enjoyed MAUI WIDOW WALTZ and will read more of the series. (B+)
 
I was disappointed in MASTERPIECE MYSTERY’s production of A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY with Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. I do not see the need for many of the changes. In the book, which I taught in English IV, there’s no element of the voodoo and zombie culture so prominent in this adaptation. Victoria does try to blackmail the killer, but she’s no part of the campaign to drive Molly Kendal to suicide. There is a clergyman in the original, but he’s not a young man in love with Molly. Lucky Dyson had been suspected of poisoning Greg Dyson’s first wife, for whom she was a nurse, not a previous husband. Inspector Weston in the original knows of Miss Marple from his training days at Scotland Yard, and there’s no sign of his having such a post-colonial attitude. What is the point of making Ian Fleming and James Bond characters? The business about valuable guano deposits on the island is new. Errol, Victoria’s lover, is apparently introduced to provide another suspect for Victoria’s murder. Jackson, Mr. Rafiel’s nurse, is a shady character, snooping and sneaking about, not a good guy, in the novel.

The biggest change is in Mr. Rafiel. In the original he is most caustic and cutting about Miss Marple, and he does not take her seriously throughout most of the story. Only with great reluctance does he listen to her theories and intervene with the police. In the novel, he’s definitely on the island for his health (he’s expected to die at any time), and he is in no way involved with buying the land. Mr. Rafiel’s best line in A CARIBBEAN MYSTERY is omitted, when he describes Miss Marple as “Nemesis in a fluffy pink shawl.”

Julia McKenzie meets the physical description of Miss Marple in the books, but she lacks the keen steel underlying the dithery exterior of the original. I’m not much impressed with any of the actors. (C)
 
MISS MARPLE: GREENSHAW’S FOLLY is the second episode on MYSTERY aired 21 September 2014 and starring Julia McKenzie as Miss Jane Marple of St. Mary Mead. When Louisa Oxley flees with her son Archie from her abusive husband, she goes to Miss Marple, who takes them to her old friend Miss Katherine Greenshaw (Fiona Shaw). Miss Greenshaw is a noted botanist, living in an architectural extravaganza known as Greenshaw’s Folly, who needs a secretary and can offer secure housing. The Greenshaws are associated with an orphanage run by Father Brophy (Robert Glenister), as are Miss Marple, Cecily Beauclerk (Judy Parfitt), and Grace Ritchie (Joanna David). But there are strange goings on at the Folly--items have gone missing, an architectural historian researching at the Folly disappears in the middle of the night, a suspicious young gardener Albert Pollock (played by Martin Compton--an actor to watch for) is omnipresent, and there seems to be a significant relationship between Miss Greenshaw’s nephew and presumed heir, actor Nat Fletcher, and the housekkeeper, Mrs. Cresswell (Julia Sawala). Then Miss Greenshaw is killed. Will Inspector Welch listen to Miss Marple and uncover the killer?

The plot of GREENSHAW’S FOLLY is a combination of two Miss Marple short stories, given a modern twist with domestic violence (seldom handled as depicted during the time period of the stories) and unauthorized medical experimentation on children from the orphanage. It does keep attention firmly focused away from the motive and killer. Acting is, for the most part, first rate. Interior shots are darkly lit. (A-)
 
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