Book Reviews
BLOOD IN THE WATER by Jane Haddam: Book Review
There’s a lot of back story that I’m not familiar with, as this is the first of Jane Haddam’s novels I’ve read. But it’s safe to say that Gregor is a former FBI agent, is middle-aged, and married to his second wife, his first wife having died some time earlier.
Gregor is a now a consultant to individuals and police departments. In Blood in the Water, he is asked to investigate a case that had seemed open-and-shut to the small town police department of Pineville Station, Pennsylvania. Within Pineville Station’s borders is the upscale, gated community of Waldorf Pines. It’s a rather pretentious place, where the residents live behind security booths and in front of security cameras. They are not the really rich but more the upwardly striving upper-middle-class, and although the Pines boasts mega-mansions, a golf course, a club house, and a heated pool, there’s more surface than substance to many of the amenities.
Martha Heydrich, a universally disliked resident of the Pines, has disappeared, along with another resident, Michael Platte, with whom she’s been rumored to be having an affair. But almost immediately following their disappearance, two bodies are discovered in the pool house, which has been closed for repairs for some weeks. Michael’s body is floating in the pool, while in another room a body burned beyond recognition is found. The chief of police jumps to the conclusion that the burned body is Martha, and he arrests her husband Arthur for the double murder. When the DNA results come back, it’s revealed that the second body is that of a man. So Arthur is released from jail. That’s when Gregor is called by the police to consult.
But there is still plenty of mystery in Waldorf Pines. Why are two women, definitely of the true upper crust and Philadelphia’s Main Line, living in this village under aliases? Why is the Pines’ manager, Horace Wingard, so afraid of any scandal touching his domain? Where is the husband of Fanny Bullman, a man who hasn’t been seen since before the two bodies were found?
Gregor Demarkian is an interesting character. He lives on a street in Philadelphia that could almost be a village in Armenia, with neighbors who have known each other for years, if not decades. Although I’m not familiar with the supporting characters, it’s obvious that each one has a history with Gregor and that their eccentricities and foibles carry on from book to book. There’s the neighbor who brings Gregor food because his wife doesn’t cook for him, the priest, and the recently deceased George, whose passing at age 100 has put Gregor into a melancholy mood that threatens to become an existential crisis.
Blood in the Water is definitely unusual in contemporary mystery novels. It’s not dark or bloody or violent. It’s a well-told story about the secrets that people keep and how those secrets affect their lives and the lives of those around them.
You can read more about Jane Haddam at her web page.
COLD CRUEL WINTER by Chris Nickson: Book Review
In Chris Nickson’s second novel in the Richard Nottingham series, the constable is grieving for his beloved older daughter who died of a fever a few weeks before the book opens. And now the constable must face more deaths, these not due to weather or illness but murder.
Leeds in the 1700s is a city made wealthy by the wool trade, and the mayor and the Corporation that run the city want its citizens, or at least its wealthy and worthy ones, to feel safe and protected. But when John Sedgwick, the constable’s deputy, finds a corpse in the road, the period of relative tranquility is over. Upon closer examination, the body of successful wool merchant Sam Graves has not only been stabbed but skinned, his back unprotected by its natural covering.
Shortly afterwards, constable Nottingham receives a package. In it is a book entitled Journal of a Wronged Man in Four Volumes, and as Nottingham reads it he comes to realize that its binding is the skin of the murdered man. The journal’s author tells of being badly treated years ago by Graves, who was his employer; he was transported to the West Indies for seven years for the crime of stealing from Graves, his attempt at revenge for what he viewed as low wages for a man of his skills. Since this volume states that it is the first of four, it is up to Nottingham to figure out who the other three potential victims are and to protect them.
In addition to the desperate hunt for Sam Graves’ killer, Nottingham has another murder on his hands. This is the murder of Issac the Jew, the only one of his religion in the city. Nottingham quickly learns that two brothers are the guilty ones, but their father is a powerful man in the city’s Corporation who has managed to get many previous charges against his sons dismissed.
The characters in Cold Cruel Winter are strongly drawn. The constable and his deputy, the teenage boy who works for them, the two arrogant Henderson brothers, the city’s pimp whose offered help makes Nottingham nervous, all these come across to the reader as real people. And reading the twisted words in the journal gives one an insight into what has warped its author into the killer that he is.
The city of Leeds, too, comes alive in Cold Cruel Winter. One is taken back to a time when, for the poor, illumination meant a single candle, heat was perhaps some coal dust, and clothing was little more than rags. It was a cruel time indeed.
The Library Journal chose this novel as one of 2011’s best. It’s easy to see why.
You can read more about Chris Nickson at his web site.
ALL CRY CHAOS by Leonard Rosen: Book Review
Leonard Rosen’s fiction debut, All Cry Chaos, is an amazing novel. It brings together the worlds of mass murderers, mathematical geniuses, combative indigenous protestors, Interpol detectives, and Christian believers in the End of Days, and all these worlds fit together perfectly. That’s quite a talent.
Henri Poincare is an inspector with Interpol. Two years before the opening of this novel he was the man who brought Stipo Banovic, a Bosnian convicted of murdering seventy-seven Muslim men and boys during the ethnic wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, to justice. In the years after that conflict Stipo had evaded arrest, married, and fathered two children. When Henri visits him in prison, Stipo threatens him and his family. “You will walk in my shoes,” he tells the inspector.
Henri has been assigned to a new case, a bombing in Amsterdam. A single room in a hotel was blown up, and the only victim was an American mathematician from Harvard, James Fenster. There are two strange things about the explosion. First is the fact that only this single room was damaged, lifted from its surroundings as if by a giant hand; second is the fact that the propellant was rocket fuel, an unusual ingredient in the making of a bomb when there are other ingredients that are more easily obtainable.
James Fenster was working on the chaos theory. According to Margaret Rouse, editorial director of Whatis.com, chaos theory is the study of nonlinear dynamics, in which seemingly random events are actually predictable from simple deterministic equations. Please don’t ask me more than that, but apparently everything in the universe is related. And this has huge implications in our world where economics, mathematics, science, and business all intersect.
When Henri first interviews Madeleine Rainier, who is also staying in Amsterdam, she tells him that she and James were engaged but the engagement was broken off a few weeks earlier; she refuses to say by whom. The next day Henri discovers that Madeleine, who was named in James’ will as next-of-kin, has already cremated his body, and when he returns to her hotel to question her further, he finds she has left with no forwarding address.
At the same time, two other events of major importance are happening in Amsterdam. The World Trade Organization is meeting in the city and security is at an all-time high. The head of the Indigenous Liberation Front, Eduardo Quito, has brought thousands of followers to confront the WTO leaders. A brilliant economist and academician, his political and human rights movement hopes to force the rich nations of the world to share their wealth.
Also in Amsterdam are the Rapturians, an evangelical Christian cult that is counting the weeks to the End of Days. In their philosophy, Jesus will return when the world is in complete chaos. They are working to bring that time closer, orchestrating murders and bombings around the world.
All Cry Chaos brings these disparate characters and groups together, plus others. Leonard Rosen makes us care about them, even perhaps understand them, from Henri to the most minor characters. He even makes the reader care about the chaos theory.
You can read more about Leonard Rosen at his web site.
A RED HERRING WITHOUT MUSTARD by Alan Bradley: Book Review
A Red Herring Without Mustard is the third novel in this series. Flavia, a delightfully precocious eleven year old, lives in the English countryside with her family in the 1950s, although given their lifestyle the book could have been set thirty years earlier. Besides Flavia, the de Luce family consists of her father and her two older sisters, Ophelia (Feely) and Daphne (Daffy). Harriet, the mother of the girls, died in a climbing accident in Tibet when Flavia was a toddler.
The de Luces live at Buckshaw, a magnificent estate, with a cook and a gardener/butler as staff. However, due to ruinous taxes and the death of Harriet who died without leaving a will, the family’s resources are severely strained and the father may have to sell his beloved stamp collection (horrors) to pay the bills. It appears to me that the father does nothing but buy stamps and admire them, and the three girls don’t seem to go to school, but I may have missed something that explained this in an earlier novel.
Feely and Daffy are incredibly mean to Flavia, who thus spends much of her time either cleverly paying them back with even more outrageous tricks or else hiding away in her chemistry laboratory in the east wing of the mansion.
The novel opens with Flavia having her fortune told by a Gypsy woman, Fenella Faa, at the church’s annual fair. When the fortune teller tells Flavia that she “sees” a woman on a mountain who is trying to come home, Flavia is certain that the woman the Gypsy sees is Harriet. Frightened, she upsets a candle on the table in the Gypsy’s tent, starting a fire that destroys the tent. Feeling guilty, Flavia allows Fenella to bring her horse and caravan to the Buckshaw estate for one night, deep in the woods so that Favia’s father won’t see it.
The next morning Flavia stops by to see Fenella and is horrified to find the woman covered with blood and barely breathing. She runs to town and brings a doctor back with her to the encampment, and Fenella is taken to the local hospital. Who could have done such a terrible thing? No one even knew the Gypsy and her caravan were there.
Although the local police are immediately brought into the case, Flavia is certain she can solve the mystery on her own. Hasn’t she already helped solve two previous crimes? And, after all, it was she who invited the woman to stay in the woods of the estate. Guilt, responsibility, and curiosity combine to make Flavia believe that it’s up to her to find the person who brutalized Fenella and left her for dead.
The curious title of the novel is taken from a 16th-century book entitled A Looking Glasse, for London and Englande: “…a cup of ale without a wench, why, alas, ’tis like an egg without salt or a red herring without mustard.” Flavia is definitely the spice in this series, with just enough sugar in her mix to make her someone each reader will want to follow in future novels. She will capture your interest and your heart.
You can read more about Alan Bradley at his web site.
THE LAST KIND WORDS by Tom Piccirilli: Book Review
Note anything about the names that the men have? They are all shortened versions of dogs’ names; it’s a family tradition. There’s Shepherd, Pinscher, Malamute, Greyhound, Collie, and Terrier. Says something about the family’s mindset, doesn’t it?
Oh, yes, there are two women in the story–the mother and the younger sister in the family. The sister’s name is Dale, short for Airedale, I assume. And the Rands have a dog–his name is John F. Kennedy.
The reason Terry has come home after five years out west is due to a phone call from his sister, saying that their brother Collie has asked for him. Although Terry and Collie have always had a difficult relationship, bonds are very strong in the family, so Terry goes to the prison to see what Collie wants. Collie, who admitted his guilt in seven of the murders, has always denied that he killed the eighth victim, a young woman who was killed on the same night he went on his murder spree.
Terry wants to know what difference it makes if his brother is given the needle for eight murders instead of the seven he admitted to, and Collie says that several similar murders have taken place while he’s been in prison. Other young, pretty, brunette women have been murdered, and he thinks he should do something to stop the killings. He’s told the police, but they don’t believe his denial of the eighth murder and don’t accept that these other murders are anything but coincidences. After all, murders of young, pretty women aren’t rare.
Dale is fifteen and on the verge of falling into a life of crime. As if it’s not bad enough that larceny runs in her veins, she’s involved with a young hoodlum who works for the head of the town’s criminal enterprise. He’s planning to rob a jewelry store and has been foolish enough to ask Terry to join his gang, a move that alerted Terry to the path his sister may be on.
The only character in the Rand family who seems to be “straight” is the mother; exactly why she married into the family, knowing what she knew about them, is difficult to fathom. She appears loving and kind, and it’s hard to understand how she’s been able to stay that way after some thirty years of living in the same house with her husband, his two brothers, and their father, criminals all. But then there’s no accounting for love, is there?
The Last Kind Words is a wonderful novel, with fascinating characters and a plot that will keep you reading until the last page. I know there is another Rand family book in the works; I hope Tom Piccirilli writes quickly.
You can read more about Tom Piccirilli at his web site.
THE PROFESSIONALS by Owen Laukkanen: Book Review
In Owen Laukkanen’s debut novel, The Professionals, all goes well for a time, thanks in part to meticulous planning on the part of the group’s leader, Arthur Pender. But when one of the abductions doesn’t work out, they quickly decide to abduct another man in the same city. After all, they’d driven to Detroit to do a job, and they want to do one. So they don’t do their homework, and everything goes wrong. The man they kidnap is the son-in-law of a mob boss, and when one of the gang gets panicked and kills the man, things quickly fall apart. And then they just keep getting worse.
Kirk Stevens of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Carla Windermere of the Federal Bureau of Investigation are working together to find the people responsible for these kidnappings. Kirk is brought into the investigation because a previous abduction, a non-violent one, took place in Minneapolis; when it becomes obvious that the case is bigger than this one crime, the FBI is brought in.
Together they make a very good pairing. Kirk is an experienced veteran, formerly on the Minneapolis police force, and Carla is a lawyer who is relatively new to the F.B.I. The case, which to Kirk had seemed easy at first, veers almost out-of-control as the four kidnappers flee from state to state one step ahead of the investigators. And the gang of four find themselves deeper and deeper into trouble.
The Professionals is a terrific novel for any writer, new or established. It is peopled by fascinating characters, nearly all of whom have a claim on your sympathy. And when four kidnappers and a mob killer can be made sympathetic, for at least part of the time, the author has done an incredible job.
Set in Minnesota at the beginning of the novel, Kirk Stevens remarks several times that there’s not too much crime there. For the sake of Owen Laukkanen’s readers, I hope he’s wrong. I’m looking forward to the next novel in the series featuring Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere, and I hope it’s not too far off.
You can read more about Owen Laukkanen at his web site.
WHERE THE SHADOWS LIE by Michael Ridpath: Book Review
Iceland–a country with a lot of differences from the United States. Police do not carry guns, and there are no handguns in the country; citizens are listed in the phone directory under their first names; most sons have the last name of their father with the addition of “son”–Teddy Douglasson; most daughters are given the last name of their mother with the Icelandic addition of “daughter”–Lyla Suzannedottir (Teddy and Lyla being siblings with the same parents); women keep their original last names after marriage.
Although Magnus Jonson (his American name) knows some of these customs, he’s still feeling a bit off-kilter when he returns to the land of his birth after twenty years in the United States. Actually, Magnus Jonson isn’t even his real name. His real name is Magnus Ragnarsson, since he was the son of Ragnar. But the American bureaucracy couldn’t cope with this when they realized that his father’s name was Ragnar Jonsson and his mother’s name was Margret Hallgrimsdottir–his name should be one of those. So, in desperation, Magnus took Jonson as his last name; sometimes, he thought, it’s just not worth the battle. But upon his return to Iceland, he introduces himself as Magnus Ragnarsson, and the people he meets nod approvingly.
As the novel opens, Magnus is a police detective in Boston who is supposed to testify against three crooked colleagues in his department in a drug-related arrest. There have been two attempts on his life, generally thought to be related to his upcoming testimony. So his supervisor tells him that, in response to a request from the Reykjavik police department for the loan of an experienced homicide detective, Magnus will be going to Iceland until the trial begins. The fact that Magnus speaks Icelandic is definitely an added bonus. Against his will, but understanding the necessity for his transfer, Magnus leaves his adopted home and heads north.
Although crime is rare in Iceland and murder even rarer, there was a murder just days before Magnus arrived in Reykjavik. A university professor was killed at his summer home, and investigation shows that the reason for his death points to his involvement with an ancient Icelandic saga that has been offered for sale. The saga has been handed down from father to eldest son in a family for generations. Now, due to the economic downturn that has hit Iceland hard, Ingileif Asgrimsdottir, the daughter of this family, has reluctantly decided to sell the saga; the professor was very interested in buying it. Her decision brings new deaths and reopens investigations into old ones.
In addition to the saga itself, there is another very important and nearly priceless artifact involved. The family lore is that there is a gold ring that, like the saga, has been passed down from generation to generation, a ring that has unequaled power. It is similar to the gold ring in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and there is correspondence from the author of those books, J. R. R. Tolkien, to an ancestor of Ingileif’s. Her father fell to his death searching for the ring, and she wants no part of it. But it seems as if someone else does.
The plot and characters in this novel are outstanding, and the unusual locale simply adds to the pleasure of reading this book.
Where the Shadows Lie is the first of Michael Ridpath’s Icelandic crime novels. Although it was published in 2010, I just discovered it this month. His second in the “Fire and Ice” series was published as 66 Degrees abroad but may be found under the title Far North in the United States.
You can read more about Michael Ridpath at his web page.
A SIMPLE MURDER by Eleanor Kuhns: Book Review
Eleanor Kuhns takes the reader to post-Revolutionary War Maine, where former soldier William Rees had been a farmer living with his wife Deborah and their young son David. Following Deborah’s death several years before the novel opens, William left his son and his farm in the care of his sister Caroline and her husband with the understanding that the farm and its livestock were to remain as is and that they would take care of David as if he were one of their own children. On his visit to the farm after a year’s absence, William is stunned to learn that thirteen-year-old David has left the farm and gone to the nearby Shaker community and that many of the farm animals have been sold.
The Shakers, also called the United Society of Believers, were a group founded in the 1770s in England who came to America to live in communities where they could freely practice their beliefs. Known for their simple lifestyle, celibacy, and care of orphans, the Shakers lived in enclaves outside cities and towns, but their unique way of life sometimes led to persecution and hostility from their neighbors. Thus William rushes to the Shaker village to make certain his son is there willingly and is safe.
William has became an itinerant weaver in recent years, traveling the northern states and plying his trade. But his freedom has cost him the closeness he would have liked with his son; indeed, when he first sees David the youth wants nothing to do with him.
Assured by an angry and distant David that it was his choice to enter the community, although as yet he has not signed the Covenant to become a full member, William spends the night at a nearby farm and is stunned when approached by the town’s sheriff the following morning and placed under arrest for the murder of a young Shaker woman, Sister Chastity.
The next day, following the farmer’s statement that William had indeed spent the night in his barn and could not possibly have returned to the Shakers and committed a murder, William is released. But then he is asked by Elder White, co-leader of the Shakers, to return to the community and help them find the murderer. When William questions the Elder as to how and why he’s been chosen to do this, White replies that William’s son David has told the Elder that William has solved several murders since his release from the Continental army. Heartened by this show of respect and possible affection by his son, William accepts the commission and returns to Durham to find the culprit.
The young woman who was killed left a prosperous husband to join the Shakers, although some in the community questioned her commitment to them and to the two young children she brought with her. Was there another reason, other than Sister Chastity’s alleged interest in the Shaker faith, that brought her to Durham?
And Lydia Jane Farrell, an attractive woman who lives just outside the Society in a home provided by the Shakers, is another enigma; what is keeping her there? William is faced with many secrets, both within the Shaker community and without.
Eleanor Kuhns’ debut novel is a fascinating read, both because of the time period in which she has set the book and the interesting characters she has created.
You can read more about her at this web site.
BURIED SECRETS by Joseph Finder: Book Review
In Buried Secrets, Nick is approached by an old friend, Marshall Marcus, to rescue Marshall’s teenage daughter Alexa from kidnappers. Nick will do almost anything for Marshall, who gave Nick’s mother a job after her husband ran away to avoid being jailed for financial crimes, but he realizes soon enough that Marshall is holding something, or several somethings, back. However, Nick believes that Marshall truly wants his daughter rescued, even as Nick believes that Marshall’s cold-as-ice wife couldn’t care less about the safety of her stepdaughter.
In addition to Alexa’s abduction, Marshall is facing another problem. His firm lost billion of dollars in investments through the embezzlement of a former employee. Reluctant to admit his firm’s bankruptcy, he had borrowed additional billions from drug dealers and armament dealers in a vain attempt to recoup the funds, and now he’s in a deeper hole than before. So if it’s money the kidnappers want, his daughter Alexa is really in a tight spot.
This is the second time that Alexa has been abducted, although in the first instance she was simply picked up from a shopping mall, driven around Boston for several hours, and then released. There was no ransom demand then, and no explanation for the kidnapping ever surfaced.
The more deeply Nick delves into the case, the more secrets he uncovers. Why, in the first place, does Alexa’s best friend Taylor lie about what happened on the night the two of them went out to a Boston nightclub and Alexa disappeared? Why is FBI agent Gordon Snyder doing everything in his power to keep Nick off the case? Why does the story of how Marshall met his wife change with every telling?
Nick’s only friend at the Boston office of the FBI is his former lover, Diana Madigan. She’s willing to use the information Nick shared with her to help him, but she is not involved in the search for Alexa. However, Diana does tell Nick that the reason Gordon Snyder is so wary of Nick’s interest in the case is that the FBI is doing a major investigation into Marshall Marcus’s firm and financial crimes. And Gordon is afraid that looking for Alexa will compromise that investigation.
As Nick continues his investigation, it gets more and more dangerous. His loft is broken into, he’s tasered, and still his client won’t give him all the information he needs. What is Marshall continuing to hold back, and why?
Buried Secrets is the second in the Nick Heller series. The characters are really well-written, portrayed with their human faults and foibles, and Nick is a fascinating protagonist. Joseph Finder has a very impressive resume that includes a master’s degree from Harvard’s Russian Research Center, and his knowledge of behind-the-scenes international deals seems very accurate. This is definitely a series that I hope will continue.
You can read more about him at his web site.
DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLY by P.D. James: Book Review
The novel opens six years after Elizabeth Bennet’s marriage to Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. They reside at Darcy’s family estate, Pemberly, with their two young sons, surrounded by servants whose parents and grandparents were part of the Darcy family’s retinue. They live close to Elizabeth’s older sister and best friend, Jane, and her husband, Mr. Bingley, Darcy’s closest friend.
The Darcys are preparing for the annual Lady Anne Ball when, amidst the pouring rain and howling wind, a chaise is heard outside the front door. When the group of Darcys, Bingleys, and others go to see who could be arriving in this storm, they are surprised and bewildered to see Elizabeth’s and Jane’s younger sister, Lydia, nearly falling out of the chaise. She cries, “Wickham’s dead. Denny has shot him….” But Lydia has it wrong. It is Captain Dennis who is dead, and George Wickham will be accused of his murder.
Lydia’s elopement with Wickham several years earlier, scandalous in nature, has created a major rift between the sisters. Lydia is reluctantly welcome at Pemberly, but her husband George Wickham is not. Although he was a close childhood friend of Darcy’s, his lies and inappropriate behaviors have ended the friendship between the men, and neither Elizabeth nor Darcy has spoken to him in years.
Darcy and two guests hear from the chaise driver that Wickham and a friend, Captain Dennis, had been in the chaise with Lydia, in the process of dropping her off at Pemberly. There apparently had been a quarrel between the men and Dennis had run out into the woods, closely followed by Wickham, and two or three shots were subsequently heard. Darcy and his two friends quickly leave the house and go into the estate’s woods, where they find Wickham, covered with blood, leaning over the body of his friend, saying, “He’s dead…and I’ve killed him.”
P. D. James’ prose perfectly captures the writing of Jane Austen. So skillful is her style that I believe it would fool the most dedicated Austen scholar. She has captured perfectly the various personalities that appear in Pride and Prejudice–the kind and compassionate Jane, the more volatile Elizabeth, the foolish and vulgar Lydia, the self-contained Darcy, and various other characters, major and minor, who were in Austen’s novel. Even Darcy’s disagreeable maternal aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is perfectly captured in her letter to Elizabeth: “I have never approved of protracted dying. It is an affectation in the aristocracy; in the lower classes it is merely an excuse for avoiding work….People should make up their minds whether to live or to die and do one or the other with the least inconvenience to others.”
The Baroness James of Holland Park will be 92 this August, and her writing is as clever and skillful as it was when I read her book An Unsuitable Job for a Woman more than thirty years ago. How fortunate we are that she continues to write and bring delight to her readers.
You can read more about P.D. James at this web site.
THE NOBODIES ALBUM by Carolyn Parkhurst: Book Review
Carolyn Parkhurst’s third novel is not exactly a crime novel, although there is a murder at the center of it. But it is also a novel about accidents, broken families, and the consequences of things that people do without realizing the far-flung effects they will have.
Otavia Frost is a middle-aged writer of novels; none has become a best seller but all have been respectably received. When the book opens she is bringing her latest work to her editor in New York City. As she’s passing through Times Square in a taxi, she views the giant video screen there and sees the name of her estranged son on it. Getting out of the cab, she is horrified to read “Pareidolia singer Milo Frost arrested for the murder of girlfriend Bettina Moffett.”
Although Milo has totally cut off contact with her, Olivia flies out to San Francisco, the city where her son lives, the following day. She’s not sure exactly why she’s there, as she doesn’t know whether Milo will want to see her, but she feels her place is to be near him. She’s able to contact Milo’s bandmate and friend, Joe Khan, and he agrees to meet her. When they meet, Joe tells Olivia that Milo still doesn’t want to see her, but Joe invites her to his home to meet his girlfriend Chloe and her daughter Lia.
When Octavia arrives and sees Lia, she knows at once that Lia is Milo’s daughter, not Joe’s. Chloe admits this with no hesitation, saying that when she found out she was pregnant she told Milo she would raise the child herself. Milo agreed, and now Lia believes that Joe is her father and Milo is Uncle Milo.
There are parts of Octavia’s own life that she would like to rewrite; this being impossible, she’s done the next best thing and rewritten the final chapters of her novels and sent them off to her publisher to comprise a new book. Perhaps it is her hope that this act will allow her relationship with her son to be rewritten. It is only when the reader is more than halfway through the novel that the reason for Milo’s separation from his mother is revealed. In the meantime, Milo has somewhat unwillingly allowed his mother to re-enter his life, and Octavia is walking on eggs to try to maintain this rapprochement.
The horrific murder of Bettina Moffett has made headlines around the world. Octavia and Milo must cope with the hordes of media pursuing them. Twitter, Facebook, made-up interviews, all of these must be dealt with in today’s instant-access world.
Carolyn Parkhurst has written a moving novel in which her protagonist must look deep into herself to find out the reasons for her son’s wall of silence. Could their shared past have brought him to the point of murder?
You can read more about Carolyn Parkhurst at her web site.
THE RANGER by Ace Atkins: Book Review
Almost as exciting as it is for me to read the debut mystery novel of an author is finding an established author whose books I haven’t read. I’ve found the latter in Ace Atkins, author of The Ranger.
Although Atkins is a mystery writer with eight books prior to this one, I wasn’t familiar with his work until I read that he had been chosen to continue the Spenser novels. But in reading The Ranger, the first of a new series, I’m delighted to have discovered him now.
Quinn Colson is a member of the Army’s elite Rangers. He’s come home to northeast Mississippi for the first time in six years for the funeral of his Uncle Hamp, sheriff in the rural town where Quinn grew up. He’d been very close to his uncle, especially after Quinn’s father deserted the family and his parents divorced, and he’s finding it hard to believe that his uncle put a .44 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. But that’s what everyone tells him.
When Quinn enlisted in the Army, he knew he wanted to be a Ranger. He also wanted to leave as much of his past behind as possible–his missing father, his mother’s obsession with Elvis, his drug-addicted sister, his high-school sweetheart who jilted him while he was in Afghanistan. But, of course, much of that is waiting for him when he returns to Jericho, Tibbehah County, Mississippi.
Quinn’s father is still nowhere around; his mother still plays Elvis’s songs night and day, except when she’s listening to gospel; his sister is turning tricks to pay for her drug habit and has left her toddler son with their mother; and his former sweetheart is married to the town’s very successful doctor. It’s no wonder Quinn stayed away as long as he did.
But things will get even worse before they get better. The land that Hamp owned, which has been in the family for generations, is being claimed by Johnny Stagg, a bully with lots of seedy businesses. Stagg shows Quinn a scrap of paper with Hamp’s signature on it that allegedly makes Stagg the owner of the land in lieu of repayment of a loan. Quinn doesn’t believe that the document is valid, but even if it is he’s determined not to give the land away. “I’d rather burn the house and timber,” he says.
Since Quinn’s father’s disappearance from his life, his uncle had been his mentor and guide. It’s painful for Quinn to hear that corruption had flourished so blatantly while Hamp was sheriff, that he ran up huge gambling debts that he was unable to repay, and that the sleazy Stagg is now a power to be reckoned with in Jericho. What had Hamp been thinking and doing while Quinn was away?
The characters in The Ranger are fascinating. As in real life, some have overcome and some have failed to overcome their problems, and the most sympathetic ones continue to fight to improve their lives. The ones who don’t succeed, like Quinn’s sister, can almost break the reader’s heart when attempt after attempt fails.
Ace Atkins’s second book in the Quinn Colson series, The Lost Ones, has just been published, and you can read more about it on his web site.
PORT CITY SHAKE DOWN by Gerry Boyle: Book Review
A fight at a funeral sets Port City Shake Down in motion. Brandon Blake is a part-time college student. He is riding in a squad car with a veteran police officer as part of a criminology course he’s taking. When a call comes over the police radio about a disturbance at a funeral home, Brandon and the police officer go to the scene.
Several women are kicking, punching, cursing, and biting each other next to the coffin, and Brandon rushes in to separate them. Trying to protect himself as well as stop the fight, he elbows one of the women in the face and breaks her nose. The woman’s son, who is also the grandson of the deceased, handcuffed and with a sheriff’s deputy by his side, tells Brandon, “Eye for an eye, dude…Times (expletive deleted) ten.”
Joel Fuller, the man in handcuffs, gets early release from prison from a sympathetic judge the following day. Now he’s got the chance to make good his threat against Brandon.
Brandon was five when his free-spirited mother left Portland on a boat with three men she had met a few days before. It was supposed to have been a short voyage, but the boat never arrived at its intended port. It was reported lost, no survivors. Brandon’s father is unknown, so it’s always been just Brandon and his grandmother Nella. But Nella hasn’t been the most stable of guardians–she’s never far from a bottle of wine.
Given his background, it’s not surprising that Brandon has always kept to himself and taken care of himself. When his criminology professor asks him why he’s only taking one course, Brandon reluctantly explains that he works at a Portland marina. The professor reminds him there is financial assistance available–loans, grants. But Brandon isn’t having any of that. “I don’t need any help…I pay as I go,” he responds.
But suddenly his life is opening up. Mia, another student in the criminology course, makes it clear she’s interested in Brandon. She’s smart, self-assured, and thinks Brandon is leading an adventurous life very different from her own. Soon they’re a couple, and Brandon has someone in his life with whom to share his thoughts and even his secrets.
Then, as he and Nella are driving around the waterfront, Nella suddenly orders Brandon to stop the car. She has seen, or thinks she has, one of the men on the boat that supposedly went down with everyone aboard, including her daughter. But when Brandon rushes out of the car to find the man Nella calls Lucky, he’s nowhere to be seen. Did she really see him?
I’m always delighted when I come across what is for me a new writer, and that’s what happened in this case. I was ordering a book from Amazon and they suggested, as they always do, that I might also want to purchase Port City Shake Down. I took a chance, and I’m pleased that I did.
Gerry Boyle has created a very interesting protagonist, a young man who has made himself what he is with not much help from anyone. He’s smart, independent, and knows what he wants from life. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, Port City Black and White.
You can read more about Gerry Boyle at his web site.
THE TECHNOLOGISTS by Matthew Pearl: Book Review
The Technologists, Matthew Pearl’s latest historical mystery, takes place in 1868, the year the Institute will hold its first graduation. The middle of the nineteenth century is usually seen as the end of the Industrial Revolution and its incredible technological breakthroughs–the steam engine, the mechanization of cotton mills, the telegraph.
But, of course, these technologies impacted on the lives of workers, many of whom were fearful of losing their livelihood to these improved means of manufacture or transportation. Then there were those who thought all technology and science was the work of the devil and vowed to oppose any advancements. And to add to this mix was the immediate rivalry between Harvard College, then a mature two hundred and twenty years old, and the upstart Institute of Technology.
As the novel opens, the Institute is ready to graduate its first class, but it is rapidly running out of funds, its president will shortly suffer a major stroke, and some of its small faculty want to have the school incorporated into the vastly larger and more prestigious Harvard College. To add to these problems, someone is terrorizing Boston with a series of horrific events–a massive collision of boats in the harbor, glass melting in the windows of the Financial District, deadly explosions on the city’s streets. Many of the citizens of the city are certain that the new Institute is to blame.
Four of the Institute’s students, led by Marcus Mansfield, a “charity scholar” and former worker in the Hammond Locomotive Works, band together to try to use their technical knowledge to find the perpetrator of these crimes. They are a diverse group that, in addition to Marcus, includes his close friend Bob Richards; the lone woman at the Institute, Ellen Swallow; and the student vying for the position of class scholar, Edwin Hoyt. Working secretly in a basement room of the Institute, they race against time and prejudice to discover what is behind the disasters that are plaguing their city.
The Technologists is a fascinating book. The city of Boston comes alive. You can see what life was like in this proud City on a Hill that regarded itself as the Hub of the nation; along with New York, it was the financial center of the country in the nineteenth century. The city was ruled by a small class of people who came to be known as the Boston Brahmins, people of social connections, money, and educational pedigrees, and many of those leaders were proud alumni of Harvard College.
Indeed, one of the themes running through The Technologists is the fact that Marcus Mansfield is a “factory boy” and, regardless of his expected degree from the Institute, he will never be seen as more than that. Certainly not in Boston. And to more than one of the Harvard men, it is inconceivable that Marcus’s friend Bob Richards would have chosen the Institute rather than the College that many of his family had attended.
Matthew Pearl has added to his previous books about Boston–The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens–with this excellent novel. You can read more about him at his web site.
MIDNIGHT IN PEKING by Paul French: Book Review
A dear friend of mine, Deborah Richardson, sent me this book because she thought it would interest me, and she was absolutely right. This work of non-fiction is the spellbinding story of a very turbulent time, not only in China but throughout the world as the Second World War was approaching.
In fact, it was approaching China more rapidly than elsewhere. The Japanese had invaded Manchuria several years earlier, and as this book opens it is 1938 and the Japanese are marching steadily toward Peking. The Chinese, split between communist sympathizers and the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek, was proving ineffective at halting the Japanese. Peking itself, still home to the legations of the British, French, Japanese, and German governments, was powerless. The city was crowded with its own citizens as well as diplomats from the above-mentioned countries and refugees pouring in from Europe–mainly White Russians and Jewish refugees.
On a January morning, an elderly Chinese man came across the body of a young white female. Even a cursory glance was enough to see that she had been badly beaten, stabbed multiple times, and had had some of her clothes torn off. The location of the body was in itself particularly malevolent; it was found at the Fox Tower, which was believed to be haunted by evil fox spirits.
The investigation seemed to be in good hands at first. Colonel Han Shih-ching was a senior detective, and this was not the only foreign corpse he had come across. Although the Fox Tower was in the Chinese section of Peking, since the girl was obviously of European descent Han called the head of the Legation Quarter Administration to view the body and possibly to identify her.
A closer look at the young woman’s body revealed a platinum and diamond wristwatch. This was not the corpse of some penniless waif or prostitute, which had been the first thought of the police responding to the call. Then an elderly white man pushed his way through the crowd. He looked at the broken body, exclaimed “Pamela,” and fell to the ground. It was his daughter, home from school for the Christmas holiday. The man was Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner, a British subject, former diplomat, author, and scholar of Chinese languages and literature.
Shortly afterwards the British diplomatic service loaned Detective Chief Inspector Richard Dennis to the Peking police as a favor, but he had his orders to limit his investigation to the Legation Quarter. However, since the victim was a British subject but Pamela’s body was found outside the Quarter, and since the Fox Tower was under Chinese control but the victim was foreign, Han and Dennis were hindered from the start. It was politics as usual.
How the British and Chinese investigators interacted as they tried both to find the murderer and “save face” and “protect their own,” and how the eccentric Edward Werner refused to accept this flawed investigation as final, is a fascinating read. It involves good will, ill will, corruption, government cover-ups, lies, and more lies. As the French proverb goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Paul French has done a wonderful job portraying the last days of a dissolute, crumbling empire. You can read more about him at this web site.