Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Some authors can write a great mystery series but can’t write a good stand-alone.  Conversely, some authors write terrific stand-alones but can’t sustain a character or characters for multiple books.  Happily, Linda Barnes writes a wonderful series (Carlotta Carlisle) and has just shown that she can write an outstanding stand-alone, The Perfect Ghost.

Em Moore is a graduate student in English and was supposed to co-author, as a ghost writer, an authorized autobiography of Garrett Malcolm, an actor and Oscar-winning director.  But her plan seems to have fallen apart upon the death of her colleague, professor, and lover Teddy Blake, who was killed in a one-car accident on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, right in the middle of conducting multiple interviews for the book. 

Now it’s up to Em, quiet, self-conscious, and insecure to the point of being phobic, to convince their publisher that she’s able to finish the interviews, write the book on her own, and do the necessary publicity afterward to ensure that it becomes a best-seller.  She’s told that if Garrett agrees, she can continue the research and write the book as the sole ghostwriter.

Em heads down from Boston to Cape Cod to interview the handsome, charming, and charismatic Garrett.  Surprising herself yet again, she manages to convince Garrett to continue with the book, albeit with the provisos that he can withdraw his permission at any time and that he has total control over the book’s content.

It doesn’t take too long before Em is swept up by Garrett and, astonishingly, he appears to be equally captivated by her.  She moves into his mansion on the Cape, ostensibly to learn more about him but in actuality to make it easier to continue their whirlwind sexual relationship.

Although Garrett has a well-deserved reputation as a womanizer, he did have a loving relationship with his late wife, the actress Claire Gregory.  Garrett is the third generation of theatrical Malcolms and Claire was a brilliant actress, so it’s not surprising that their only child, Jenna, is an actress.  Em would love to interview Jenna for the book, but she’s out of the country, as she has been for years, touring in England and Australia.

So for now, Em has to make due with Garrett; his cousin James Foley, a former actor currently selling real estate; and Brooklyn Pierce, the sexy actor who starred in three of Garrett’s early films but now is an alcoholic hoping for a comeback.

The Perfect Ghost is told in the first person by Em, through taped interviews Teddy conducted that are now in Em’s possession, and in the official reports written by the detective investigating Teddy’s accident.

Through Em’s narration we can see the changes she undergoes as she becomes more sure of herself and her abilities, and we learn more about her relationship with Teddy.  “Listening” to Teddy’s  tapes with Garrett and various people in his life, we understand more about the actor and his background.  And reading the letters of Detective Russell Snow to his chief of police we are able to follow his investigation into Teddy’s death.

Linda Barnes has once again written an excellent book, with characters who are believable and a plot that, I promise, will keep you in suspense until the very last page. 

You can read more about Linda Barnes at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Many people, myself included, think of the Amish as a people far removed from life as we know it today.  They don’t use electricity, ride in motorized vehicles, play popular music, or continue their education past the eighth grade.  But, however much they don’t want an un-Amish way of life, they cannot protect themselves from the outside world completely.  Amish or not, human nature is human nature.

Gone Missing is the fourth novel in the Kate Burkholder series.  Kate is the chief of police of Painters Mills, a small Ohio community that includes a number of Amish families as well as the “Englischers,” which is what the Amish call all those who are non-Amish.  The Amish try to avoid outsiders as much as possible, particularly those in the police and the legal system, in order to keep to their own way of life.  So it’s a bit surprising to Kate when she gets a call from John Tomasetti, an agent with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, asking for her help with the case of a missing teenager.  Kate says that missing persons cases are not her area of expertise, but John responds, “It is when they’re Amish.”  Born Amish and fluent in the Pennsylvania Dutch tongue that the community speaks, Kate is the go-to person when followers of that religion are involved.

It turns out that there are four teenage Amish girls who are missing, not just one.  Each has gone outside the strict confines of the church–dating non-Amish boys, dressing in non-Amish ways, listening to non-church music.  Each has had problems with her family, but all the parents stress that their daughters are good girls who would never willingly leave home.  So where could they be?

Kate Buckholder understands only too well the temptations these girls face.  She, too, was a wild child who left home at eighteen to become a policewoman, alienating her from her parents and siblings.  But now it is Kate’s sister Sarah who asks for her help, because one of the missing girls, Sadie Miller, is Sarah’s niece.

Several local men are persons of interest, as the police say.  Justin Treece, a teenage boy, is the Englischer boyfriend of one of the girls; he recently spent time in juvenile detention for assaulting his mother.  Stacy Karns is a prize-winning photographer; his most famous photos are of teenage Amish girls who were unknowingly photographed in various stages of undress.  And there’s Gideon Stolzfus, formerly Amish and now the pastor of his own church, who runs a kind of Underground Railroad to help unhappy teenagers leave the Amish way.

Linda Castillo paints a moving, sympathetic portrait of a tight-knit community that wants only to be left alone to keep its ways without the Englischers intruding.  But have the temptations of that world been too much for the teenagers?  Have they been led into danger, perhaps fatally?

Gone Missing is an intriguing portrait of Ohio’s Amish and English communities, living side by side in an uneasy peace.  Linda Castillo brings the various characters, sympathetic and not, to life in a way every reader will recognize, regardless of their own ethnicity.

You can read more about Linda Castillo at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Daniel Palmer’s latest novel, Stolen, opens with a terrifying premise.  Imagine getting the news that a loved one has been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer.  You are devastated, distraught, but you cling to the hope that the drug the doctor has prescribed will cure the disease.

Then you find out that your insurance company will not pay for the brand-name version of this drug; they will only pay for the generic drug.  You explain to the insurance agent that the doctor has told you that the generic drug is not available so that your loved one must take the brand-name one.  Sorry, says the agent, we won’t pay for that.  And the cost of the brand-name drug over the course of treatment will be three hundred thousand dollars.

This is the situation facing John and Ruby Bodine.  Verbilifide is the drug recommended to combat Ruby’s illness, and when John discovers that another insurance company would cover Verbilifide he devises a plan to get that drug.  He’s going to hack into that company’s files and take over the identity of one of its clients.  Then he’ll submit the appropriate forms as that client so that Ruby will get the necessary medication.

John has created a computer game called OneWorld.  He doesn’t charge people to play and makes his money by selling them virtual items that appear online.  While waiting for OneWorld to become a huge success, the couple is paying for Ruby’s schooling plus the usual expenses of housing, food, car insurance.  There’s barely enough money for that; money for Verbilifide simply isn’t there.

Using his computer skills, John creates a new life for himself and Ruby–new names, new apartment, new credit cards.  Ruby doesn’t like this plan, knows it’s dishonest, but as her illness starts taking over she doesn’t have the strength to fight for her point of view.  A few weeks pass, Verbilifide is working, and John and Ruby are now Elliot and Tanya Uretsky, submitting claims to “their” insurer, UniSol.

And then their phone rings.  Who could be calling them at their new, unlisted number; only UniSol has it.  When John picks up the phone, at first there doesn’t appear to be anyone at the other end.  But then a raspy voice begins to talk.  “My name is Elliot Uretsky, and I believe you stole my identity.”

We’ve all heard or read about identity theft.  Perhaps we know someone who was the victim of it, perhaps it even happened to you.  It’s a scary feeling, realizing that someone has tapped into your life, usually for the purpose of taking your money.  Although that isn’t John’s reason for “becoming” Elliot Uretsky, and his reason is a much more benign and understandable one, the reader recognizes that a crime has been committed here.  But when the “real” Elliot Uretsky appears on the scene, one’s sympathies shift entirely in John’s favor.  Mr. Uretsky is not a nice man.

Daniel Palmer has written a true page-turner, a thriller I promise you won’t be able to put down.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

April 13, 2013

Back in December I wrote about the first annual New England Book Fair’s Gala Mystery Night.

I live near the Book Fair, which is in Newton, MA.  The Fair has been under new ownership for the past couple of years, after having been owned by one family for decades.  The new owner, naturally, is interested in putting his own stamp on his business and has been offering presentations by authors for the past several months, something that had not been done before.

When I went to the Gala in December, I had the pleasure of meeting two writers about whom I had blogged:  Len Rosen, author of All Cry Chaos, and Steve Ulfelder, author of Purgatory Chasm and The Whole Lie.  While talking to Len Rosen, he introduced me to another writer, Daniel Palmer.  Daniel was extremely gracious and promised me an advanced reading copy when his latest novel was published.  Frankly, I wondered whether, when the book came out, he would remember his promise; after all, he didn’t really know me, and we had only spoken for a very few minutes.

But to my delight, in February Daniel sent me a copy of Stolen, a nail-biting thriller about stolen identity and its aftermath.  In addition to this About Marilyn column, I’ve written a review of Stolen, which will appear on my blog next week.

My thanks to Daniel Palmer for his kindness in sending me this mystery.  I enjoyed it immensely and feel certain you will too.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Marilyn

In case you haven’t met her already, allow me to introduce Flavia de Luce.  The third daughter of an impoverished British former army officer, she’s a delightful character who appeared fully formed in the first book of Alan Bradley’s series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  Now she’s back in Speaking from Among the Bones.

The de Luce family traces its roots back hundreds of years in England, but they have fallen on hard times.  The estate of Buckshaw, the ancestral home of Harriet de Luce, the girls’ late mother, is in arrears for back taxes that Colonel de Luce is unable to pay.  Harriet went missing, as the British expression goes, on a trek in the Himalayas shortly after Flavia was born twelve years ago.  Although Buckshaw is no longer the elegant country estate it once was, it’s the only home that Flavia and her two sisters, Daphne (Daffy) and Ophelia (Feely) have ever known, and the thought of having it taken away by Inland Revenue is casting a dark shadow over the family.

The village of Bishop’s Lacy, home to the de Luces, is preparing for the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of its patron holy man, St. Tancred.  Exactly why this should necessitate digging up his coffin and removing his bones is unclear, unless it is, as Daffy says to Flavia, to see if his body remains uncorrupted, if he has “the odor of sanctity.”  Whatever the reason, the Church of England authorities gave the vicar of St. Tancred permission to remove his coffin, but now they want to revoke that.   The vicar protests that plans have gone too far, but when the crypt is entered (and Flavia, of course, is present) to unearth the casket, the group finds the much more recent remains of the church’s organist, Chrispin Collicutt, who has been missing for several weeks.

Flavia, of course, wants to be in the midst of everything, reflecting that her past successes with local crimes should entitle her to assist the local police whether they want her help or not.  And her vast knowledge of poisons will come in handy, she is sure, in solving any and all crimes in the village, including that of the murder of Mr. Collicutt.  Astride her trusty bike, Gladys, there’s no stopping her.

Bishop’s Lacey is filled with fascinating characters.  There’s  the church’s vicar and his wife; Miss Tanty, a middle-aged member of the choir who suddenly fancies herself as a detective; Adam Sowerby, a friend of the colonel’s with a business card that identifies him as a horticulturist, flora-archaeologist, and investigator (the last under the somewhat misleading wording of “inquiries”); and the two remaining members of the once-grand Buckshaw staff:  Mrs. Mullet, cook and housekeeper; and Dogger, gardener and general handyman, formerly in the service with Colonel de Luce.

Alan Bradley has written the fifth novel in this delightful series with the same wit and verve as he did with the previous four.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Living near Boston, over the years I’ve followed the news about the art thefts from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with great interest.  Earlier this month the FBI announced that it knows the perpetrators of this crime but is unable to locate the thirteen paintings that were stolen in the middle of the night in March, 1990, paintings that are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.  Strange, but that’s the official line as of now.

In B. A. Shapiro’s thriller, The Art Forger, disgraced artist Claire Roth is approached and asked to make a copy of Edgar Degas’s After the Bath, one of the stolen paintings.  The man who brings Claire the painting, Aidan Markel, is the owner of a prestigious art gallery in Boston.  His plan is to sell the copy that Claire makes to a foreign buyer who has already agreed to purchase it.  Of course, the foreign buyer thinks that what he’s getting is the original, not a twenty-first-century forgery.

Aidan won’t tell Claire how he’s come into possession of the masterpiece, saying only that it’s a win-win situation and that “there are many layers” between the art thieves and the person from whom he received After the Bath.  He tells her that the buyer will be happy, Claire will receive $50,000 for her work, he himself will get his share of the purchase price, and then he will give the original back to the museum.  He never makes clear exactly how this last part will work, but he reassures Claire that there’s no danger for either of them.  And, a huge bonus for Claire, Aidan promises her a one-woman show at his gallery, Markel G.

The reason that Claire is in disgrace in the art world goes back three years before the novel opens.  She was in the midst of a clandestine relationship with her art professor, a well-regarded artist who had been unable to complete a commissioned painting for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Desperate to help Isaac Cullion overcome his mental block, Claire paints a work in his style as he looks on and protests, but when she’s finished he signs his name to it.  And when the MOMA curator sees the work, she pronounces it his best ever and arranges for it to hang in the museum’s show.  But, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and Claire is still feeling the repercussions of her action three years later.

B. A. Shapiro has written a thriller that is true to the name of the genre.  Even as we know Claire is making bad choices, we understand her reasons for doing so.  Part professional pride–could she actually produce a painting that would fool the experts as well as the buyer?  Part economic necessity–living in her art studio, her bed a mattress on the floor, her meals consisting mainly of take-out Thai and cold cereal–she’s behind on her student loans, her rent, and payment for the art supplies she needs to complete her current project.  The temptation is too much to resist.

The Art Forger is a terrific, compelling read, and knowing that the heist is still unsolved after all these years adds to the tension of the novel.  The characters are true-to-life, and their morality, or the lack of it, comes straight from today’s headlines.

You can read more about B. A. Shapiro at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

It can’t be easy to make a hired killer, an assassin, a sympathetic character to the reader.  But Lawrence Block has been doing it for more than twenty years.

Hit Me is a collection of several short stories following Keller, now known as Nicholas Edwards.  He and his wife Julia have relocated from New York to New Orleans with their toddler daughter Jenny, and Keller thought he was out of the killing business permanently.

In the first story he gets a call from Dot, the woman who gives Keller his assignments, asking about his interest in going to Dallas to eliminate a man.  Dot, like Keller, thought she had retired from the business, but when she reentered it she phoned Keller to find out if he too has had a change of heart.  It seems he has, as his formerly flourishing rehab business in the Crescent City has slowed considerably due to the economic downturn.  In addition, Keller has been planning on traveling to Dallas to attend a stamp collecting auction.  When Dot hears this she calls the coincidence “the hand of Providence.”  Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.

Hit Me takes Keller all over, from New Orleans to Dallas to New York City to an ocean liner in the Caribbean to Denver to Cheyenne and finally Buffalo.  It seems that the business of killing people is as remunerative as always, especially for a man who knows his work.

Of course, Keller’s victims are always unpleasant people, although it may be a stretch to say that they all need to be killed.  But a man has to do what a man has to do, doesn’t he?

In the third story in the book, “Keller at Sea,” Keller’s wife Julia becomes an accomplice in her husband’s line of work.  She has obviously suspected something about what he does when he’s away from home, and now it has become clear to her.  But as she tells him, “I know what you do, and I don’t entirely know how I feel about it, but I don’t seem to mind.  I honestly don’t.”  Keller obviously picked the right woman to marry.  And help him she does.

Lawrence Block is an incredibly prolific author.  Although he has written only four previous novels featuring Keller, he is the author of eighteen Matt Scudder novels, ten Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries, eight Evan Tanner books, four featuring Chip Harrison, plus stand-alone novels, short stories, books for writers, and a memoir.  And that’s not the complete list of his works.

I read in a recent article that Mr. Block is contemplating retiring from the writing profession.  Let’s hope he, like his protagonist Keller, has a change of heart.

Spending the day with a hit man may seem like a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure it is.  Lawrence Block’s writing grabs you and doesn’t let you go.  You certainly wouldn’t want to meet Keller on a professional basis, but in a book he’s fascinating.

You can find out more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Linwood Barclay has done it again, creating a fascinating novel that’s nearly impossible to put down.  Actually, Trust Your Eyes is impossible to put down, as is every other Barclay book I’ve read.

Ray Kilbride has returned home to upper New York State after the death of his father, in part to determine what’s best for his younger brother.  Thomas is a high-functioning schizophrenic, obsessed with mapping all the streets in the world; he’s convinced that there will be a catastrophe in which all maps will be destroyed.

When, not if, he believes that will happen, Thomas will be the only one in the world who has the knowledge that the maps had held.  He’s been “in contact” with the CIA and former President Bill Clinton and has assured them of his abilities and cooperation in this matter.  In order to concentrate on this, Thomas has hardly left his house in several years.  He leaves his room only to have three quick meals a day and then returns to continue his memorization project.

One day, while on the web’s Whirl360 site, Thomas sees what looks like a person’s head wrapped in a plastic bag.  For as long as he looks at the window where the head is, it doesn’t move.  Could he possibly be seeing a murder taking place?

In Linwood Barclay’s adept hands, this is the main thread of the mystery but not the only one.  Allison Fitch, a young woman working as a waitress in lower Manhattan, is having money troubles.  Her salary isn’t big enough to cover her part of the rent for the apartment she shares or for all the clothes she buys, so she’s always doing a little creative financing.  At first it’s innocent enough, if not very nice, as she spins a story to her mother in order to get her mother to send her a thousand dollars.  But it turns dangerous when she decides to turn to blackmail to get sufficient funds to finally pay all her debts.

And then there are the political figures, killers-for-hire, and FBI agents coming to the Kilbrides’ house to talk to Thomas about his frequent e-mails to the CIA.  If you think this won’t all hang together to make a fantastic thriller, you obviously don’t know Linwood Barclay.

The characters in Trust Your Eyes are totally believable, as is the plot.  Sometimes the most seemingly innocent or innocuous decisions have grave consequences.  If Ray Kilbride hadn’t come home to straighten out his father’s affairs and decide about his brother’s future, he wouldn’t have seen the Whirl360 web site and gone to Manhattan to investigate what his brother thought was a murder.  If Allison Fitch hadn’t turned the television on at a particular moment, the blackmail plot would never have entered her mind.  And if Nicole had won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics instead of the silver, she might not have become a professional assassin.

Linwood Barclay is a master of his craft.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Jack Swyteck is the attorney for the trial of the twenty-first century in James Grippando’s latest thriller, Blood Money.  The story, which is similar to a spectacular trial that was recently in the headlines, has twists that will keep the reader turning the pages of the novel faster and faster until the ending is reached.

Sydney Bennett is on trial for her life for the murder of her daughter Emma, two years old at the time of her disappearance.  As the prosecution tells it, Sydney liked life in the fast lane, and her young daughter was cramping her style.  After her daughter disappeared from their home, Sydney was photographed drinking and bar-hopping and apparently showing no sorrow.  Then, three years later, Emma’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the Everglades.

Although a time and even a cause of death were never discovered due to the length of time between the child’s disappearance and the discovery of her body, public opinion agrees that Sydney is guilty.  When the book opens, on the day the verdict is to be delivered, hundreds of protestors are outside the courthouse with signs demanding “Justice for Emma,” by which they mean the death penalty for Sydney.

But when the verdict is announced, virtually everyone is stunned–Not Guilty.  And then chaos ensues.

Leading the media frenzy surrounding the arrest and trial is Faith Corso, a former prosecutor and current personality on the BNN network.  Throughout the trial Faith has demonized Sydney, giving her the now-famous nickname of Shot Mom (for the whiskey shots she was photographed drinking after Emma’s disappearance).

It’s easy to hate Sydney, given the severity of the crime she’s accused of, her posturing in court, and her refusal to say anything more to her lawyer than that she’s innocent.  And when she realizes that she and Jack are not on the same page regarding her future–she sees herself giving interviews at one hundred thousand dollars per and perhaps being the subject of a television movie as well–they come to a parting of the ways.  His injunction that Sydney needs to keep a low profile seems to fall on deaf ears.

The picture gets even bleaker.  Jack has arranged for Sydney to leave the Miami-Dade Women’s Correction Center under cover of night, trying to avoid the large crowd that is camped in front of the prison.  Egged on by one of BNN’s reporters, the crowd is hostile and dangerous, waiting for Sydney’s release.  Shouting “no blood money” over and over, the people are whipping themselves into a fever when one of them believes she has spotted Sydney walking out the jail’s door.  The crowd surges over the woman and knocks her to the ground. But when the people are forcibly disbursed by the police, it’s discovered that the woman is not Sydney Bennett but a younger woman who looks much like her, and Sydney is nowhere to be seen.

Many of the novel’s most unpleasant characters, unfortunately, are totally believable.  Sydney, even years after her daughter’s death, expresses nothing that could charitably be called maternal instinct; her only thoughts are how best to promote herself and earn big money.  Her father is a bully who refuses to allow his wife to speak to Jack.  Faith Corso is a media star whose only interest appears to be the story, regardless of whether the story is factual or not.  And the head of the BNN network will literally stop at nothing to boost the ratings of his programs.

Blood Money is the tenth novel in James Grippando’s Jack Swyteck series.  You can read more about the author at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Hush Money/Hush Puppy–it’s the second word that makes all the difference.

Hush Puppy is the name of a champion horse belonging to Sydney Everett, a rich but crude widow who owns horses but doesn’t ride them. When Jack MacTaggart, a recent addition to the very white-shoe Los Angeles law firm of Henley & Hargrove, is asked to take over the insurance case involving the death of Mrs. Everett’s horse, Hush Puppy, he asks, “Why me?  I don’t know a fetlock from a half nelson.”  The reason is that the firm’s attorney who usually handles Mrs. Everett’s business is out of the country, so Jack has to hoof it over (forgive the pun) to the Fielding Riding Club to get the story.

Sydney Everett is the personification of the gauche, nouveau riche trophy wife/widow who is on the prowl for a replacement for her late husband.  Avoiding Sydney’s obvious interest in him, Jack learns from the riding club’s veterinarian, George Wells, that Hush Puppy died of cardiac failure of an unknown cause; it is later discovered that the cause of the heart failure is a virus that poisoned the animal.

Jack is working on another case as well.  His client, a low-income working man named Victor Tazerian, has leukemia that is currently in remission.   A proven treatment has been denied by Victor’s insurance carrier on the grounds that Victor is healthy at the moment. However, when (and it’s a when, not an if) his cancer returns, the treatment will not work.  Jack’s job is to convince the insurance company to pay for the treatment when Victor is healthy so it can be available when he gets ill again.  So far, the venerable Hartford Allied Insurance Company has not agreed to do this.  But Jack has always enjoyed a good fight.

The characters in Hush Money are terrific.  Jack is street-wise, not exactly a perfect fit for his law firm. The stable master he meets at the Fielding Riding Club, Tara Flynn, is an attractive, outgoing young woman; she’s not shy about telling Jack her opinion of everyone in the club, her bosses included.  Russ Dinsmoor, Jack’s mentor and a highly respected attorney in the California legal community, is uneasy about Jack’s deep research into Hush Puppy’s death.  Sydney Everett, Jack’s client, has a secret in her past that is impacting everything about the case.  And the senior partner in Jack’s firm, Morris Henley, and his son Jared are unlikeable in the extreme.  The former is an overbearing, arrogant man who thinks his every word must be obeyed, while the latter much prefers roaming the world to doing actual work at the law firm.

Chuck Greaves was an attorney in Los Angeles for twenty-five years, and the novel is filled with fascinating pieces of legal lore.  He obviously knows the ins-and-outs of the court system, and his writing makes it all accessible to his readers.  And his character Jack MacTaggart is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

The late Magdalen Nabb wrote thirteen mystery novels, and I confess I had not read any of them until this week.  I’d seen her books in my local library and various bookstores, but somehow I never got around to reading one.

Because Ms. Nabb’s books take place in Florence, Italy and I’ll be visiting that beautiful city this spring, I decided it was time to read one of her books, so I picked up Death of an Englishman, the first in her series featuring Marshal Guarnaccia.  I’m sorry and glad–sorry that it took me so long to discover Ms. Nabb’s writing and glad that I finally did.

It’s a few days before Christmas, and people whose homes are in other cities are leaving Florence to go to their families for the holiday.  Everyone except Marshal Guarnaccia, who’s confined to his bed in the police station with influenza instead of being able to head home to Syracuse.  Manning the station’s night shift is Carabiniere Bacci, a recruit with only two months on the job.

The phone jars Bacci awake, and a garbled voice asks for the marshal to report that an Englishman living a few streets away…well, what about him?  The caller can’t bring himself to tell anyone but Guarnaccia, but Guarnaccia is asleep with a fever, so Bacci leaves the station to investigate.

A few minutes later the phone wakes the marshal.  It’s Bacci, reporting that there’s been a murder at number fifty eight Via Maggio, so the marshal forces himself out of bed and walks unsteadily to the address.

It’s Gianpaolo Cippola, the building’s custodian, who has called about the Englishman.  Cippola’s wife had died the night before, and he’s a man in shock dealing with two deaths in two days.  The murder brings two Scotland Yard officers to Florence later that day; it turns out that the Englishman, a Mr. A. Langley-Smythe, is a member of a well-connected British family, and that family wants to make certain that “no unnecessary distress” is caused by the Italian authorities.

The city of Florence is brought to life through Ms. Nabb’s evocative descriptions.  Every sentence has meaning in this short novel; nothing is extraneous.  Even the Italians’ discovery that the Englishman had been living on the ground floor, a cause for much astonishment, means something.

The characters in Death of an Englishman are beautifully drawn.  Marshal Guarnaccia, sick with the flu and afraid that he won’t be able to get home for Christmas; the inexperienced Carabiniere Bacci, fluent enough in English to act as translator for the two Yard detectives but very much aware of his own lack of knowledge of police procedures; the voluble and eccentric elderly English woman, Miss White, who lives in the same building as the deceased and has made her apartment a shrine for the poet Walter Savage Landor; the frightened Cipolla, who wanted to report the death only to the marshal; all of them are real and believable.

Magdalen Nabb died at the age of sixty in 2007, but her admirers have continued to update her web site.  You can read more about her at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

I’ve never been fly fishing, or any other type of fishing to be honest.  But after reading The Royal Wulff Murders, I might just try it.

The book opens on the beautiful Madison River, a body of water that is reputed to have the best trout fishing in Montana.  Rainbow Sam, a grizzly river fishing guide, is there with a client when the client’s line hooks not a coveted rainbow trout but a bloated corpse. 

Sheriff Martha Ettinger is trying to put a name to the body; at first the death appears to have been a tragic accident.   Then the autopsy results show that the victim’s lungs had algae and certain microscopic bugs that are found only in lakes, not rivers.  There’s no good explanation for that finding other than murder.

Sean Stranahan is a newcomer to Bridger, Montana.  He left Boston, his ex-wife, and a minor career as a private investigator in an attempt to find a new, more satisfying life.   Sean’s dream is to support himself as an painter, but since the artistic life isn’t always the most economically feasible, he put “Private Investigations” in small letters on his office door as well as the more hopeful “Blue Ribbon Watercolors” in larger letters.

But, as luck would have it, the small lettering brought in a client, his first.  Sean had seen Vareda Lafayette when she was performing at a local club and was very much attracted by her striking looks and her way with the American songbook.  Perhaps that was what made Sean agree to her very unusual request–to find a specific spot on the Madison where her father fished the day before he died and then to cast his ashes there.  Vareda tells Sean that he’ll know the spot because her father always marked the trout he caught in a certain way before returning them to the water.  Sean is doubtful about the possibility of his finding the right spot and catching a fish so marked, but he agrees to try.

Oh, yes, Vareda tells him, as she prepares to leave his office.  There’s one more thing.  If you see my brother on the river, tell him I said hello and ask him to call me.

Crucial to the novel’s plot is the fact that the rivers of Montana are threatened by the whirling disease, which originated in Germany.  In America, trout are vulnerable and dying in large numbers.  The disease causes malformations in the trout’s skeleton as well as neurological damage and makes the fish whirl instead of swim in a normal way, making it easier for larger fish to catch them.  When Vareda tells Sean that her missing brother last worked in a fish hatchery where he thought something suspicious was going on, Sean begins to connect the dots.

Keith McCafferty is an award-winning journalist, and The Royal Wulff Murders is the first in a series featuring Sean Stranahan.  The author’s love of Montana, its rivers, and fly fishing is evident throughout the novel.  As the Survival and Outdoor Skills editor of Field and Stream, he is a man with a great deal of knowledge about the outdoors and how to live in it, enjoy it, and preserve it for future generations.

You can read more about Keith McCafferty at his web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

My favorite mystery book store, Mainely Murders in Kennebunk, Maine, puts out a terrific monthly newsletter.  One of the books Paula and Ann highlighted for February sounded fascinating, so I ordered it.  The book’s subtitle, The World’s Greatest Mystery Writers on the World’s Greatest Mystery Novels, says it all.

The book begins with The Dupin Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (1841) and ends with The Perk by Mark Gimenez (2008).  There are names familiar to all mystery lovers:  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith; and names not so well known or totally unknown (to me, at least):  Robert Wilson, Peter Temple, Perihan Magden.  There are books from England, France, Italy, South Africa, Switzerland, and of course the United States.

What makes this anthology so interesting to me is that rather than the novels being the choices of only the two editors, Connolly and Burke went to 119 contemporary mystery authors, asking each to choose a mystery that had had a great influence on him or her.  Those writers chose books ranging from the expected (Linda Barnes wrote about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle) to the unexpected (Liza Marklund wrote about The Ghost of Blackwood Hall by Carolyn Keene).

Also interesting to me are which books were chosen and which were not.  I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan, but the two books picked for this anthology, Murder on the Orient Express and Endless Night, would never have made my list; I much prefer The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and And Then There Were None/aka Ten Little Indians.  In addition, Raymond Chandler leaves me cold, yet his Farewell, My Lovely and The Little Sister are on the list.

I can’t decide what is the best part of Books to Die For; whether it reminds me of books I’d read but really would like to re-read (The Steam Pig by James McClure) or books I’d never heard of but sound terrific (The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis).  Either way, thanks to Paula and Ann for alerting me to Books to Die For.  Check out their website (http://www.mainelymurders.com) for everything you want to know about mysteries and sign up for their free monthly newsletter.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

February 2, 2013

This About Marilyn column starts the fourth year of my blog.  I’ve written over 180 posts, including About Marilyn columns, Authors‘ biographies, and columns for Past Masters and Mistresses, Golden Oldies, and of course Book Reviews.  It’s been a delight to write these weekly posts, and I look forward to continuing to write in 2013.

Up until now I haven’t reviewed more than one book by the same author.  One of the reasons I chose to feature a different author with each post is to force myself to search out new authors rather than returning to reliable favorites as soon as they published new mysteries.  But, of course, this meant that I didn’t review excellent novels by authors I’d previously written about.  So this year I’m going to blog about whatever books I feel are worth reading, whether or not I’ve written about the authors before.

Please feel free to send me your thoughts about your favorite books at the Reader’s Recommendations section of the blog.

Marilyn

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Before we get too nostalgic about the “good old days,” perhaps we should reflect for a moment about Victorian England.  No child labor laws meant that children as young as five worked twelve hour days as chimney sweeps and in coal mines, to name just two perilous fields.  Boys were stuffed up chimneys to sweep out the accumulated coal dust; boys and girls spent their working days in the narrow alleys of pitch black mines, waiting to open and close the doors for the coal-laden trolleys.  And girls as young as ten were “tweenies,” maids in well-to-do households who got up before daybreak to light the fireplaces.  Plus there were the “workhouses,” but the less said about them, the better.

It’s the year 1889 in London, in the latter part of Queen Victoria’s reign.  Scotland Yard is trying to recover from the horrific murders committed by the man known as Jack the Ripper.  Morale at the Yard is low, and the public’s opinion of the Yard is even lower.  The new commissioner of police, Sir Edward Bradford, is determined to modernize the force and bring respect back to the institution.

The Yard opens with the discovery of a corpse inside a steamer trunk found in a London railway station. The body is that of Inspector Christian Little, his eyelids and lips sewn shut, and the officers standing by the body are naturally horrified.  The newest detective on the force, Detective Inspector Walter Day, is given the assignment of bringing the killer to justice.  And Dr. Bernard Kingsley, a surgeon who has been giving of his time and knowledge in an effort to bring new forensic practices to Scotland Yard, is joining the effort.

Two lowly constables in the already stretched police force are looking into another crime, one officer reluctantly and one whose background makes the case a personal crusade.  Nevil Hammersmith, remembering only too well his own upbringing as a child laborer, is horrified when he finds a boy’s corpse stuffed inside a chimney in a doctor’s house.  “You must stop thinking of this body as a boy.  This is a laborer….Nobody cares about this body, and it is not our job to take up lost cases,” one of Nevil’s superiors tells him.  But Nevil persists in his efforts to find who left the young boy wedged up the chimney and didn’t care enough to return to get him out before he baked to death.

What struck me most in reading The Yard is how Alex Grecian, a first-time novelist, made each character stand out.  Between the police in the newly formed Murder Squad, the two prostitutes still reeling from the unsolved Jack the Ripper attacks, the forward-thinking doctor and his young daughter who is his assistant, and the force’s official tailor, there are more than a couple of dozen characters to keep track of.  By his skillful writing, the author makes that an easy and pleasurable task.  I found that I cared about or was fascinated by each one of them.  The Yard is a masterful debut.

You can read more about Alex Grecian at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.