Marilyn's Mystery Reads

April 7, 2012

What’s missing and why do I care?

I’m taking two courses at Brandeis’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute this semester, and in one of them a classmate asked an interesting question.  Why, she wanted to know, had the author not included a particular piece of information about the protagonist and his/her history that she wanted to know? She felt it would have greatly enriched the story if she had more information.

After some discussion around the table, the group leader noted that no matter how long any work is, it cannot encompass everything about the characters in the story. It doesn’t matter if the novel is 400 or 4000 pages, he said, something would be left out.  And perhaps, he added, what’s left out is as much a part of the story as what’s put in.

I totally empathize with my fellow student.  I too want to know everything about a character–his family, his past, his goals. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy reading mystery novels rather than the genre’s short stories.  Even if a book doesn’t completely satisfy my curiosity about the detective, I can hope the picture will get clearer in succeeding novels.  But I know that won’t happen to characters in a short story.

Although, of course, as there are exceptions to every rule, there’s an exception to what I just wrote.  Somewhere in the Sherlock Holmes canon there’s a throwaway line about his being distantly related to the French artist Emile Vernet, but there’s really almost nothing else about his family.  It’s not until “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter” that the reader discovers that Sherlock has an older brother, Mycroft.  And aside from telling the reader about Mycroft’s eccentricities, there’s nothing in this story sheds light on Sherlock’s family or his background.

But because Doyle wrote so many stories about Holmes, if you read one after the other, it’s almost as if you’re reading a novel, so there’s the very slight possibility of learning more about Holmes and Watson as you continue to read about them.  But it’s a rare author who has written as many short mystery stories about one character as Doyle had; in fact, I’m sure no other author has.

Given this information gap, does that give the reader permission to, in effect, write his own history? As a friend in my book club has said on more than one occasion, we can only discuss what’s in between the covers of the book.  Anything else is our thought, not the author’s.  It’s only in fairy tales that the story closes with “And they lived happily ever after.”  For everything else we read, we don’t know how things will work out after we close the book, and we simply have to deal with that.

Marilyn

A truly fascinating look into medieval life in England comes through in the series featuring Brother Cadfael of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, at Shrewsbury.

The series begins in the twelfth century at the border between England and Wales.  Brother Cadfael, born in Wales, had traveled the world as a soldier in the first crusade and a sailor in the years following but now has found his calling as a member of the abbey. He is in charge of the abbey’s garden and herbarium, an important position at a time when home-grown medicines were almost the only ones available.

As the novel opens, a civil war between two cousins, Stephen and Maud, has been going on for three years; it eventually lasted nineteen. Henry I, Maud’s father, had named her his heir after the death of his only son, but many nobles rebelled at the thought of a woman leading the kingdom and thus supported the claims of Henry’s nephew, Stephen.  As Stephen comes to Shrewsbury with his forces, aristocrats and soldiers loyal to Maud flee the town to join her in France.

A fellow monk introduces Cadfael to Godric, a “young man” who is willing to help in the garden, but it doesn’t take Cadfael long to realize that Godric is actually a young woman, Godith Adeney by name.  Her father fled to France to support Maud, and if Godith is discovered she will be imprisoned and held for ransom in order to bring her father back to face Stephen.  Cadfael, although not taking sides in the fight for the kingdom, vows to keep Godith’s secret and protect her.

After a battle in which ninety-four of Stephen’s enemies are killed, the abbey’s abbot requests that the men be prepared for a proper Christian burial.  The abbot sends Cadfael to the castle to handle this task, but when the monk counts the dead, he discovers that there is one more body than he had been told. And this man was not killed in battle but strangled by a thin wire from behind.

In One Corpse Too Many we are introduced to Hugh Beringar, a soldier who, in later novels, becomes a close friend of Cadfael’s, and the woman who becomes Hugh’s wife, Lady Aline.  In addition, a number of Cadfael’s fellow monks whom we meet here continue to appear in other novels, while new members of the monastery join the cast of characters in later books.

The late Ellis Peters (real name Edith Mary Pargeter) created the character of Brother Cadfael when she needed “the high equivalent of a mediaeval detective, an observer and agent of justice in the center of the action.” She was a writer of some renown as a translator of Czech literature, but today she is best known for her mystery novels.  Unfortunately, Ms. Peters died shortly after the BBC television series got underway and thus did not see all the books made into television programs, but she was a strong supporter of Derek Jacobi, who played Cadfael with great wit and charm.

There is not a dedicated page for Ellis Peters, but there is a brief biography about her and a summary of all Brother Cadfael’s novels at Philip Grosset’s Clerical Detectives web page.

The Barber family could not be a more typical suburban family. The father is an attorney, the mother a former teacher, the son a fourteen-year-old middle school student.  They live near Boston, have friends, and a generally happy life.  And then the son is accused of murder.

William Landay, himself an attorney in Boston, tells a nail-biting story. Andy Barber is second-in-command in the Boston district attorney’s office and soon will probably be the head honcho.  Of course he and his wife are terribly upset when Ben, a classmate of their son Jacob, is knifed to death in a park on his way to school; after all, Jacob has known Ben since elementary school.  Andy takes over the case, dismissing the district attorney’s slight concerns over a possible conflict of interest.  Andy’s argument is that he, as the father of a fellow student at Ben’s school, has a greater interest in finding the murderer than any other assistant district attorney on the staff, an argument the district attorney reluctantly agrees to.

But then, several days later, Jacob is arrested and charged with the killing.

Of course Andy and his wife are outraged and disbelieving.  It’s true Jacob has had some problems, but they seem like typical adolescent ones–a kind of insolence, lack of respect, withdrawing into silence.  But isn’t that like all teenagers, they ask themselves?  However, the case against Jacob gets stronger with messages on Facebook and twitter.  Then Andy learns that Ben had been bullying Jacob over a period of time and that Jacob had told friends he’d take care of Ben.  But did he mean murder?

Andy has always considered himself an extremely fortunate man.  Married to the woman he fell in love with at first sight when they were both in college, living a comfortable life far different from the one he lived as a child, he seems to be sitting on top of the world.  However, Andy has a secret, one that he has never shared with anyone, even his wife. He comes from a violent family, and his father, whom he hasn’t seen in over forty years, is in prison for murder.

Andy is the book’s narrator.  He is a man who sees himself as strong, as a survivor, but inside him there is a well of fear.  Is it possible that there exists in his family a “murder gene,” something that has bypassed him but can be found in his son?

This is a story about more than a murder–it’s about a family being torn apart, being shunned by the community in which they have lived for years, of having former friends cross the street to avoid speaking to them.  Andy is put on paid leave from his job and Jacob is suspended from school.  And then comes the trial.

William Landay has written a powerful novel about the damage caused by keeping secrets, by ignoring signs of trouble, by pretending all is right when it isn’t. We are privy to Andy’s thoughts and actions, but not, I think, to his deepest feelings.  I wonder if even Andy allows himself to know his own secret thoughts and emotions; his control is so strong that I believe he thinks that if once he lets go he will cease to be the man he has made himself to be.  Behind the man’s strength is actually the vulnerability of the boy.

You can read read more about William Landay at his web site.

I’ve always been fascinated by Gypsy culture. I’ve read a number of books about them over the years, including several by Martin Cruz Smith, and enjoyed them all.  But The Invisible Ones is really special.

Stef Penney tells the story in two voices:  that of Ray Lovell, a private investigator with a Gypsy father and a gorjio mother, and that of JJ, a fourteen-year-old Romany youth with a Gypsy mother and a gorjio father.

Ray is approached by the father of a Gypsy woman who has been missing for seven years. The last time her father saw Rose Janko was at her wedding.  Leon Wood insists there is nothing odd about the fact that his daughter hasn’t been in touch all these years, given the vagaries of Romany life.  He was told by her husband and her father-in-law that she ran off shortly after giving birth to a son who inherited the Janko family disease, as yet undiagnosed, which affects only boys and leads to an early death.  But now, after the death of his own wife, Leon wants to find his daughter, or at least to find out what happened to her.

JJ is the second narrator. He lives on a “site” in a trailer with his mother.  In the neighboring trailers are his grand-uncle, confined to a wheelchair; his grandmother and grandfather; and his cousin Ivo and Ivo’s son Christo, who is six years old and suffers from the hereditary disease.  He’s quite small for his age, weak, and can barely speak, but his sweet disposition has his family longing to help him.  And as the novel opens, they are on their way to Lourdes, looking for a miracle like the one that cured Ivo.

The Janko family is indeed living under a cloud.  One of Ivo’s brothers died of this disease, and his sister was killed in a car crash when the family was returning from the Lourdes trip that saved Ivo.  The Jankos are torn between believing that some good fortune is due to come their way and believing that they are doomed to continue living under this curse.  The precocious JJ tells his family’s story with both the intelligence of a bright teenager and the anger and moodiness of the same.

Finally persuaded by Rose’s father that only a Gypsy, even one not with “pure blood,” will be able to find Rose Janko, Ray takes the case.  But no one really wants to talk to him.  Rose’s two sisters haven’t seen her since the wedding, and Ivo and his father are adamant that she left the family because she couldn’t deal with her son’s illness; they couldn’t care less what has happened to her.  But where could she have gone?  In the Gypsy culture, a married woman belongs to her husband’s family, no matter the circumstances, so her own family would not have welcomed her back.  In addition, Rose was born with a port wine birthmark on her neck, making her, in the Romany culture, less than desirable.  Perhaps that is why her father agreed so readily to her marriage to a man she barely knew.

In addition to being an excellent mystery, there is the added attraction in The Invisible Ones of reading about a way of life that not many of us are familiar with. The reader learns about the family’s fear of living “in brick,” of JJ being the first of the clan to possibly graduate from high school and then go on to university, and the reason why Gypsies don’t have sinks in their kitchens.  (Sorry, but you’ll have to read the book to find out the answer to the sink question.)

You can read more about Stef Penney at her web site.

It’s 1926 in Edinburgh, Scotland, days before the General Strike of 1926. And the wealthy Balfour family is about to get a new lady’s maid.

Dandelion Dahlia Gilver, better known as Dandy, has been approached by Walburga Balfour, better known as Lollie, to protect her from her husband, Philip Balfour, better known as Pip. Pip has turned from the witty, kind man Lollie met at a tennis party to a man who has threatened on numerous occasions to kill her.  Without family or close friends, she has turned to private investigator Dandy for protection and hires her to serve as her maid.

When Dandy meets Pip that first night, she is surprised by his charm and seeming warmth toward his wife.  Dandy notes that his eyes are like a spaniel’s, and “It suddenly seemed very unlikely that a devil could have such brown spaniel eyes.”  But Lollie is convinced that her husband is, in her words, “a monster…beastly…pig.”  So Dandy gets a quick lesson from her own lady’s maid and joins the other eleven servants in the Balfour home (butler, cook, kitchen maid, scullery maid, tweenie, parlour maid, house maid, valet, footman, hall and boot boy, and chauffeur).

But when Dandy wakes the first morning after her arrival, she finds Pip Balfour dead, brutally stabbed in his own bed. And now Dandy’s position in the household is even more precarious; she must continue her role as a servant while trying to discover who the murderer is.  After she and the police inspector have determined that there was no way for an outsider to enter the premises, which were locked and bolted each night, suspicion is limited to the eleven servants, with or without an outside accomplice.  There certainly are enough possibilities, as nearly each of the servants tells of having been severely wronged by Pip.

One of the most fascinating chapters comes near the end, when Dandy and her partner Alec take the teenage hall boy to his home on his day off.  Ordinarily Mattie walks the nine miles each way, carrying a basket of goodies that the Balfour cook gives him, but as Dandy and Alec want to talk to him they give Mattie a ride.  Although Dandy understands that the village will not be like the pretty English places she is used to, she is appalled by a village “unlike any village I had ever seen:  no shops, no real streets, and no church spires nor inns nor schoolhouses–nothing except that three long straight rows (of houses) set down at the edge of the rough.”

Although kindhearted, Dandy has lived in her own comfortable world for so long that she has lost touch with the lives of many of her fellow citizens. Inside Mattie’s house Dandy makes two unthinking blunders–she goes to the sink to fill the tea kettle (no running water) and asks why the family hasn’t heard the news about Pip’s murder on the wireless (no such luxury as a wireless).  She thus begins to have a better understanding of why the General Strike was called by the country’s miners and why it spread to various other trade unions throughout the nation.

Catriona McPherson has written another excellent novel in the Dandy Gilver series. You can read more about her at her web site.

Retired police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is on her way back to Oslo from an appointment with a physician when the train she’s riding on is derailed. Fortunately there is only one casualty, but a fierce snowstorm forces the nearly two hundred passengers to take shelter in the Finse railroad hotel adjoining the tracks.

Confined to a wheelchair after an arrest that went wrong, Hanne is anxious to return home and not anxious to get involved with any of the other passengers or hotel staff.  But when one of the passengers, the Reverend Cato Hammer, is found murdered the morning after the group’s arrival, Hanne is involved whether she wants to be or not.

As might be expected on a train, there are all types of passengers:  a group of Norwegian churchmen, a cult-like author, doctors who were attending a conference, families with young children, a Muslim couple who keep their distance from the other passengers, a teenage boy traveling alone, a goth-type young woman he follows around, and a physician who suffers from dwarfism.

 

The chapters in the novel are each prefaced by a number on the Beaufort Scale, ranging from 0-12, indicating the strength of the snowstorm raging outside.  The scale in the novel goes from calm to hurricane, as the storm and the emotions of the people trapped inside the hotel get increasingly violent.

Although the passengers are protected from the elements and have more than sufficient food and drink, time begins to weigh heavily on them, and by the end of the second day Reverend Hammer is not the only murder victim.  So almost against her will Hanne is drawn into the mystery.

The title, 1222, refers to the location of the Finse railroad station, 1222 meters above sea level.  Although Norway certainly has its share of snowstorms, this is one for the record books, and no cars or planes or helicopters are able to transport the passengers home.

The idea of a group of people away from their homes and unable to return for weather-related reasons certainly is not new to mysteries. Just think And Then There Were None.   But 1222 is given a new twist by the voice of its narrator Hanne.

Hanne Wilhelmsen is a prickly heroine. She has a female partner and they have a young daughter, both of whom Hanne loves very much.  But she obviously is uncomfortable spending time with so many strangers, and she notes frequently how she prefers to be left alone and doesn’t want the help that people offer.  She’d rather be uncomfortable and even in pain than have to ask for assistance.  As she says, “The most important thing about the wheelchair is that it creates distance.”

Anne Holt has been writing the Hanne Wilhelmsen series since the 1990s, but her earlier books are very hard to come by in the United States. Hopefully, the success of 1222 will cause her publisher to reissue the earlier novels in this series.

Although I couldn’t find a dedicated author’s page, Anne Holt has a wonderful interview in The Guardian.

Tessa Leoni is a woman who appears to have a good life. She has a fulfilling job as a Massachusetts state trooper, a husband, and a six-year-old daughter.  But her life wasn’t always so smooth, her past and present are colliding, and the results aren’t pretty.

Love You More has two voices.  This is the first book I’m reviewing having listened to it on cd rather than having read it.  The first voice is that of Tessa, the state trooper, and it is a soft, delicate voice.  The second is that of D. D. Warren, a detective in the Boston police department.  Her voice is louder, tougher.  It’s interesting that not until I had a copy of the book in my hands and read the jacket did I realize that the detective is D. D. Warren rather than the Dee Dee I had thought she was.  Psychologically that seems to make a difference, at least to me.

The book opens with a prologue told in Tessa’s voice.  She’s being asked to choose between her daughter and her husband–whom does she love more?

D. D. Warren enters the picture when she gets a call from her friend and former lover Bobby Dodge, also a state trooper like Tessa.  There’s been an incident–a man dead on a kitchen floor in Boston, a missing child, and both belong to trooper Tessa Leoni.

When the police and troopers arrive at Tessa’s house, the body of her husband, Brian, is on the floor, dead with three shots to his torso. Sophie, Tessa’s daughter, is nowhere to be found.  Tessa’s face is a mass of bruises–shattered cheekbone, black eye, bloody lip.  D. D. and Bobby have a lot of questions, most of which Tessa isn’t answering.  If, as Tessa claims, she had just returned from her overnight shift and come home to find her daughter missing, why hadn’t she used the taser on her state-issued gunbelt to protect herself instead of shooting her husband?  And, if  she’s so concerned about her missing daughter, why did she call her union representative and the union’s lawyer before calling the police?

The past plays a vital role in Love You More. Tessa is very much alone.  She had a brother who died as an infant, and that event destroyed her family.  Her mother went into a deep depression, her father became an alcoholic, and Tessa was left to fend for herself.  Her only friend, Juliana, became her lifeline.  But even that friendship died, and the reason for it is a vital part of the novel.

Tessa is arrested for the murder of her husband.  But meanwhile the search for Sophie Leoni continues, with no leads.  Why is Tessa so reluctant to help the police in their search for her daughter?  Why is she so secretive about her background?  Why does she appear to have no family or friend to turn to in this crisis?

This is the first book I’ve read/listened to by Lisa Gardner, although she has written more than a dozen, including several previous ones in the D. D. Warren series.  Although, as always, I wish I had started the series from the beginning, there is enough background information to get a good sense of D. D. and her outlook on life.

I don’t know if I can properly call a book on cd a “page turner,” but I definitely was reluctant to get out of my car at the end of each trip; the novel is a spellbinder.

As I write this review I’m listening to another book about Detective Warren, this one set before Love You More, so I’ve obviously found another series to enjoy.

You can read more about Lisa Gardner at her web site.

If the mystery novel had been invented in the late 1700s or the early 1800s and Jane Austen had written one, this would have been her book.

Dido Kent is an unmarried woman of “five and thirty,” an age at which a woman’s chances of romance and marriage are virtually nil during this era. Luckily for Dido, she appears to have enough money so that she’s not concerned about her unmarried state; perhaps unluckily, she’s a woman with determination and brains, a combination that is not highly respected in the enclosed society in which she lives.

Dido is visiting her cousin Flora in Richmond when Flora’s neighbor dies suddenly, under somewhat suspicious circumstances.  Mrs. Lansdale, a wealthy middle-aged woman, dies after an argument with her nephew and heir, Henry Lansdale.  He is the gentleman of fortune of the title.

Henry left his aunt’s house against her wishes that night, as did Mrs. Lansdale’s other relation who lives in the house, Miss Neville.  What killed Mrs. Lansdale was an overdose of a sleeping draught (to use the British term), the Kendal Black Drop, four times the usual amount she took, according to the apothecary.

Henry Lansdale is obviously the chief suspect, partly due to the fact that he is his aunt’s only heir and partly due to the vicious gossip of a neighbor, Mrs. Midgely. Why Mrs. Midgely is so determined to blacken Henry’s name is part of the mystery, as she hardly knows him and wouldn’t appear to benefit by his imprisonment.

Henry is in love with Mrs. Midgely’s ward, Mary Bevan, and Mary is about to be sent north to become a governess after having lived with Mrs. Midgely and the late Mr. Midgely for nearly all her life.  Life as a governess is a difficult one, but it is one of only two professions open to decent women, the other being a teacher.  And for a woman who has never worked nor expected to, life as a governess would be a cruel descent down the social ladder.

But Mary has an “out,” another possibility.  Henry has proposed, and after some consideration she has accepted.  However, they need to keep their engagement secret, for public knowledge of it would only fuel the gossip that Henry poisoned his aunt so he could inherit her money and marry Mary.   Since Mary is a young woman without a fortune, she probably would not have been acceptable to the difficult Mrs. Lansdale.

Life at the time of George III was severely restricted. Dido is very circumscribed in trying to find out what happened to her neighbor, as gentlewomen don’t interest themselves in such things.  She’s also somewhat held back by her interest in William Lomax, a man who appears to care for her but not for her unseemly interest in crime.  Should she continue to look for the truth about Mrs. Lansdale’s death and thus possibly incur William’s displeasure, or should she be true to herself and her feeling that she alone cares enough to discover the facts of the case?

A Gentleman of Fortune is a charming mystery. Simply reading the title tells the reader about the time and place and even the circumstances surrounding the crime.  Anna Dean has gone back more than two hundred years to let readers know that with all the differences in society and a woman’s place in it, some things haven’t changed all that much.

You can read more about Anna Dean at her web site.

Salonika, Greece, in October 1940. World War II has been going on for a year, and Greece is not yet involved.  But the population knows that the invasion by the Nazi or Fascist troops cannot be far behind.  By 1941, Germany has overrun Slovakia, Hungary, Roumania (the old spelling), and Bulgaria.  Greece, with its huge coastline and its proximity to the Balkans, cannot be allowed to remain neutral.

Constantine Zannis, known as Costa, is a police detective in the port city of Salonika. He is involved with a British woman who is ostensibly in Salonika to run a ballet school, but that is merely her cover.  In fact, she is an espionage agent, a spy, and she is given orders to return to England as soon as it becomes obvious that Greece will soon by invaded by the Nazis.

Her replacement, Francis Escovil, has heard how Costa was able to help a German-Jewish woman slip two young children out of Germany and into Turkey.  Now Escovil wants Costa to give him the names of people in Germany who are working against the Nazis.  He doesn’t want to apply pressure on Costa, doesn’t think that will work, but he wants those names.  And Costa doesn’t want to give them to him, he just wants to go on helping Jews escape in his own way.

The characters in Spies of the Balkans are international. In addition to Costa (Greek) and his lover Roxanne (British), the reader is introduced to Celebi, the Turkish consul; Emilia Krebs, a Jewish woman helping others out of Germany; Salmi Pal, a Hungarian criminal living in Salonika; Ivan Lazareff, a friend in Bulgaria.  All these disparate people are working willingly or not to stop the Nazis.

Spies of the Balkans is a look back to the beginning of the Second World War in Greece. It was a poor country, very much unprepared to face the enormous armies of Germany and Italy.  But its people were fearless fighters, and the overwhelming odds against them did not stop them from trying to protect their homeland from invasion.

The novel traces the steps taken by the various individuals to get Jews and other resisters out of Germany and the occupied countries.  Money was needed, of course, to obtain forged papers–birth certificates, visas–and to be used for bribes, when necessary.  What is fascinating is those who helped people escape without asking for, or accepting, money.

When Emilia Krebs comes to Costa to ask for his help in getting two children out of Germany and into neutral Turkey, she says, “I can never thank you enough.  For helping me.”  “You don’t have to thank me,” he said.  “Who could say no?”  The goodness and naivete in his statement still resonate more than seventy years later.

Alan Furst has written a book that is difficult to put down. Each clandestine operation that Costa takes part in is different from those before it, and each one depends not only on him but others.   One misreading by Costa of someone he has asked for help and his life and those of the refugees would be forfeit.

Calling Spies of the Balkans a thriller is calling it by its true name. It’s a great read from first page to last, and that’s no hyperbole.  The last page will bring you to tears.

You can read more about Alan Furst at his web site.

February 3, 2012

As I begin my third year writing this mystery blog, I want to thank you all for your support, your readership, and your comments.

I’ve written one hundred and thirty posts–Book Reviews, About Marilyn, Golden Oldies, and Past Masters and Mistresses.  I’ve tried to post one a week, and I’ve pretty much succeeded.

Truly, it’s a labor of love.  Like many other readers, my interest in mysteries started early, and my fascination with books featuring Nancy Drew, Cherry Ames, Beverly Gray, and others led me to find more adult, more sophisticated storytellers.  And, thanks to the encouragement (and pushing) of my son Rich, I decided in February 2010 to start writing this blog.

After I posted a few reviews, my husband Bob suggested that I e-mail the author of each book I was reviewing to let her/him know about the review. I fought this idea for quite a while, not being convinced that these men and women, either first-time authors or well-known writers, would care what I thought.  I’m not writing for a national publication, I told him; my first name is Marilyn, but my last name isn’t Stasio (crime reviewer for The New York Times).

But Bob, like Rich, didn’t give up his idea, and I finally agreed to write to the author whose book I was reviewing that week.  Much to my surprise, the author responded with a kind e-mail, thanking me for the review.  And I’ve been contacting each writer ever since.  I would say about three quarters of the time I receive a response from an author, a number which continues to surprise me to this day.  And to fill me with appreciation for the courtesy of others.  Some responses are a brief thank you, some are more personal, but I appreciate each one.

I plan to continue reading mysteries, of course, and to continue reviewing them.  I hope to introduce those who subscribe to this blog to writers who are unknown to them and to show that despite all the other things that conspire to take up our time, there’s nothing like a good mystery to keep us company.

Marilyn

They called it The Great War or The War to End All Wars, but it was neither. The better name for it, the name that obviously could come only after 1939, was World War I.  It was a horror.  In Great Britain alone, over half a million men died in action or from wounds, and a quarter of a million more were missing in action, their bodies never recovered.

Many men returned home in pitiable condition, with mental and physical problems that British society had difficulty coming to terms with.  One of these men is the one whose name appears in the title of this novel, Captain John Emmett.

As the story opens, Captain Emmett has been dead for several months, dead by his own hand. His sister Mary writes to Laurence Bartram, a former schoolmate and friend of her brother’s, wanting to meet him to see if he can shed some light on why her brother, having endured the war, had to be institutionalized upon his return and then committed suicide.

Faced with his own problems, Laurence Bartram is reluctant to investigate.  While he was at the front, his young wife and their newborn son died in the hospital.   That tragedy propelled Laurence into a mild depression, and he also has a total lack of interest in making any plans for his future.  However, remembering the kindness of the Emmett family when he and John attended the same school as adolescents, Laurence agrees to investigate the circumstances that led to John’s death.

There’s an incredible amount of social and military history in this novel.  I find the era of World War I fascinating, as it led to so many changes in British society. The rigid class system was very much in effect before, during, and even after the war, and it’s amazing to read of the stratification of men according to their birth.  Only men who graduated from “public” schools (which Americans call “private” schools) could become officers, no matter how incompetent they might be or how much more worthy the lower caste men under them might be.

The main issue around Captain John Emmett’s death seems to revolve around the execution he was forced to be part of, the almost unheard execution of an Army officer. Only three British officers were executed during World War I; over 300 British and Commonwealth non-commissioned soldiers were sentenced to death, although most sentences were commuted.  However, the disparity was still great, as if the military minds could barely conceive of an officer doing something that warranted the ultimate punishment.

Laurence’s investigation proves more difficult than he had imagined.  Every person he speaks to in the course of trying to unravel the reason behind John’s death has lost someone in the war–a son, brother, or husband.  Talking about it three years later only reopens the wounds, and many don’t want that.  But Laurence persists, along with his friend Charles, partly because his friend’s sister has asked him to, partly due to guilt over his own relatively safe war, and partly because he has nothing else to occupy his time.  But Laurence finds that his questioning takes him to places he’d rather not go.

Elizabeth Speller’s The Return of Captain John Emmett is a fascinating read. The novel was chosen as one of the Wall Street Journal‘s Top Ten Mysteries of 2011, and it’s easy to see why.  The writing is moving, the book is well researched, and the story of the men who went to war and the families they left behind resonates today.

You can read more about Elizabeth Speller at her web site.

There’s a reason the Mississippi Delta gave birth to The Blues. Rick Gavin’s picture of life there is pretty dismal.  His protagonist, repo man Nick Reid, has given up a job with the police in a small Virginia town for reasons that are not explained.  For another unexplained reason, he’s moved to Indianola, Mississippi, a dismal small Delta town surrounded by towns that are even deeper into poverty and despair.

When Nick goes to the place where Percy Dwayne Dubois lives (calling it a home would be an over-the-top compliment) to repossess a forty-two inch plasma television set on which Percy Dwayne has neglected to make payments, his arrival isn’t greeted happily.  Percy Dwayne hits Nick over the head with a shovel, and while Nick is lying stunned on the kitchen floor, Percy Dwayne’s wife suggests that they should hack him up and pack him off to the woods in a sack.

After tying Nick up, to add insult to injury Percy Dwayne, his wife, and their diaper-clad toddler son make their getaway in the Ranchero, a beautiful 1969 vehicle that Nick borrowed from his landlady. A Ranchero is “sort of a low-slung, boxy coupe in the front and a shallow truck in the back,” and apparently this particular vehicle was in mint condition, its coral-colored paint gleaming as if it had just come off the assembly line at Ford.

Before going off in the Ranchero to repossess the TV, Nick had promised his landlady that he would take scrupulous care of her late husband’s car, and that’s the premise of the novel.  All Nick really wants to do is to recover the car and repossess the television, but life is much more complicated than that.

This is a very low-key premise on which to write a mystery novel–no kidnapping, no murder, no rape.  But in Rick Gavin’s extraordinarily capable hands, there’s as much tension here as in any high-concept novel or movie. And there is an incredible amount of humor as well.

Nick Reid is very much a man of mystery in this first novel, which I hope will soon be followed by others. His new job is definitely a come-down from his previous one, he seems to have no family or friends left behind in Virginia, and the reader doesn’t know anything about his background.  What we do know is that he’s a man who keeps his promises, regardless of the “tussling” it costs him.  He pursues Percy Dwayne across the Delta, meeting up with various characters who make the fugitive seem like a gentleman and a scholar.

The author’s descriptions of the houses and scenery of the Delta are staggering.  Percy Dwayne’s “front room was shin-deep in trash and pieces of cast-off clothing.”  Describing how he got out of the ropes with which the couple had tied him, Nick says, “Because they were shiftless trash, I was almost half a minute working loose.”  And going to find a man named Luther, who may or may not know where Percy Dwayne and his wife have fled, Nick and his friend Desmond drive down Lee Boulevard in Webb, Mississippi, where instead of statues of Confederate luminaries on horseback there are car engines rigged to live oaks with blocks and tackles.

This first novel is too good to put down, so be prepared to read it straight through. Unfortunately, there’s no biography or web page I could find for Rick Gavin, only a brief blurb on the novel’s back cover.  “Rick Gavin frames houses and hangs Sheetrock in Ruston, Louisiana, when he’s not writing.  This is his first novel.”  I’m hoping he puts down his framing tools and goes back to his computer as soon as possible.

When I write about Golden Oldies, the books are usually a few decades old.  Maybe they were written in the fifties, sixties, or seventies and might have fallen out of favor or off the library’s shelves.  But when I say that The Moonstone was written in the sixties, it’s the 1860s I mean.

Hailed by most literary critics, including T. S. Eliot and Dorothy Sayers, as the “first and best” of the English detective novels, The Moonstone introduced a number of literary conventions that are still followed in this genre.  There’s the large, secluded country estate, the closed circle of suspects, the mysterious foreigners (less frequent now than then), the inept local police, and the least-suspected party who turns out to be the villain.

In brief, the moonstone is an incredibly valuable gem stolen from a Hindu (spelled Hindoo in the novel) statue in India by a corrupt English  army officer.  When he returns home, he is shunned by family and former friends for his ungentlemanly ways, and he determines to get his revenge.  Upon his death, the gem is bequeathed to his niece, Rachel Verinder, on her eighteenth birthday.  Although her mother, Lady Verinder, pleads with her not to accept this gift, the young woman is mesmerized by the jewel and insists that she will keep it and indeed will wear it that very night to her birthday dinner.

Although many precautions are taken by Rachel’s cousin, Franklin Blake, and the home’s butler, Gabriel Betteredge, when the morning arrives the moonstone has disappeared from the Indian chest where it was placed by Rachel just before she went to bed. Even more strange than the disappearance is the complete turnaround of emotions by Rachel.  The night of her birthday, it was obvious that she and her cousin Franklin were in love; comes the morning and the jewel’s disappearance, Rachel will no longer speak to her cousin and refuses to help the local police look for the moonstone.

The book has many voices:  Betteredge, the butler; Franklin Blake, Rachel’s cousin who is deeply in love with her; Drusilla Clack, a poor relation of the Verinders and an incorrigible Christian evangelist; and Matthew Bruff, the family’s solicitor.  And it has many unforgettable characters in addition to the narrators:  Rosana  Spearman, a former thief now employed as a second housemaid by Lady Verinder; Geoffrey Abelwhite, another cousin who wishes to marry Rachel; Dr. Candy, the family’s physician who unwittingly plays a major role in the moonstone’s disappearance; and Ezra Jennings, Dr. Candy’s mysterious and disfigured assistant.

And there’s Sergeant Cuff of the London police. Cuff was the prototype of several detectives who followed in his footsteps–Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe coming immediately to mind.  He’s rather odd looking, lean with a face as sharp as a hatchet–(Holmes and his angular profile); he would rather discuss and grow roses than do anything else (Wolfe and his orchids).

Then there’s the opium issue in the novel.  Wilkie Collins was an opium addict; he had begun using it to control back pain but it soon took over his life.  And did not Sherlock Holmes find favor in that drug?

The Moonstone is a mystery that is as fascinating today as it was when it was written. Leave the present for a time and go back to Victorian England.  You’ll enjoy the trip.

You can read more about Wilkie Collins on this web site.

Returning war veteran Spero Lucas is trying to find himself after Iraq. He knows he doesn’t want a nine-to-five job, doesn’t want to return to college, doesn’t want a complex romantic relationship, at least not now.  So what does he want?

While trying to figure that out, Spero takes a job as an unlicensed investigator for a D.C. attorney.  The attorney’s client, Anwan Hawkins, is awaiting trial for selling drugs, but Anwan doesn’t appear to be worried about that.  What he’s worried about is two packages of drugs that have disappeared while under the care of his two subordinates.

Anwan has a scheme going that has worked well until now.  His suppliers send him the drugs via FedEx, to homes that Anwan has previously scouted out as being unoccupied during the day.  The packages are left on porches and are tracked on the Internet by Anwan’s associates; within five minutes of the deliveries they’re picked up.  The owners of the homes never even realize that packages were delivered to their houses; after all, they didn’t order anything.  A foolproof scheme, it would seem, except that these two boxes have been intercepted.

Spero’s cut is forty percent, which in this case would amount to fifty-two thousand dollars per package, not too shabby for what he thinks will be a job that’s not too difficult.  He meets Anwan’s two business associates, young men in their late teens or early twenties–Tavon Lynch and Edwin Davis.

What Spero finds hard to understand is how Anwan’s scenario has unraveled since he’s been jailed. If, as Tavon tells Spero, no one other than himself and Edwin knew about the package deliveries, which they were following via a GPS, how did someone manage to steal the boxes in less than the five minutes it took Tavon and Edwin to get to the houses?

Spero starts investigating and finds a young man who may be a witness to one of the highjackings.  He’s Ernest Lindsay, a student at the high school where Spero’s brother teaches.  When Spero attempts to interview him, Ernest bolts.  But encouraged by Spero’s brother, Ernest agrees to talk to Spero and tell him about the FedEx package he saw taken from a neighbor’s porch.

In Cut, George Pelecanos has introduced an interesting, nuanced protagonist. There’s much to admire about Spero–his devotion to his mother and respect for his brother, his admiration for his late father, and his insistence on seeing the job he was hired for through to the end, even though Anwan tells him he’s done his best and should let it go.  On the other hand, Spero has some less-than-admirable characteristics–his casual approach to the women in his life, his disregard for the law when it suits his purpose.  How much of Spero’s behavior can be attributed to the things he saw in Iraq is hard to know, but that experience certainly had an influence on him.

There’s definitely a wonderful sense of place in this novel. As the author has Spero drive around the capital you can follow him from street to street, almost as if there were a map on the book’s pages.  The scenes of the two young gangsters, in over their heads in an underworld they don’t understand, are extremely well done; even though these two men have broken numerous laws, there’s still a sense of sympathy for the plight in which they find themselves.  They think they’re tough, but they’re babes in the woods compared to others out there.

You can read more about George Pelecanos at his web site.

Mary DiNunzio is a successful lawyer in an all-women law firm in Philadelphia. She’s smart, compassionate, hasn’t forgotten where she came from, and is the rainmaker of the firm.  So why is she so intimidated by a visit from her high school nemesis, Trish Gambone, who led the Mean Girls and made Mary’s life miserable at St. Maria Goretti High?   But then, don’t we all carry our high school memories with us forever?

Trish is in trouble, big time, which is why she found her way to Mary’s office. She’s been living with Bobby, her high school sweetheart for years, but he’s become more and more abusive toward her.  She’d love to leave him, but he’s “connected” (a low-level member of the Philadelphia mob).  And Trish is afraid that Bobby is going to propose tonight, as it’s her birthday.

She’s come to Mary for help, but she doesn’t like the options that Mary offers:  get a restraining order against Bobby or leave Philly for a while in hopes that Bobby will cool off and forget her.  She storms out of the office, leaving a stunned Mary behind.  What Trish doesn’t know is that Mary and Bobby went out together for a short while in high school, and he was Mary’s first love.  Mary’s upset that Bobby has become a brutal man, upset to find out that she’s still afraid of Trish and the Mean Girls, upset to find that she still harbors feelings for Bobby for a reason that doesn’t become clear until well into the novel.

And that night, the night of her birthday, Trish disappears. The remaining three Mean Girls stomp into Mary’s office the next day, furious at Mary for not helping Trish.  They’d gone to the police, but since Trish was an adult and hadn’t been missing for the required forty-eight hours, they couldn’t do anything yet.  So the Mean Girls want Mary to fix everything.  They refuse to admit that Trish might be dead, they just want her found.

Feeling guilty, Mary agrees to help and enlists the M.G.s in her search. But her involvement means putting off several of her clients from her old neighborhood, and before she knows what’s happened her former neighbors are turning against her.  They’re mad she didn’t help Trish, one of their own, and mad that her search for Trish means she’s putting off their cases.  It doesn’t make sense, but then emotions rarely do.

In addition to looking for Trish, Mary is also involved with a young boy who’s being bullied at school and whom his mother feels has significant learning disabilities.  Mary’s attempts to try to find a psychologist to test him speak to the all-too-real inadequacies and limitations of today’s schools, given the economic times and the number of children who need help.

And then there’s the possibility of a romance with the son of a neighbor. Mary’s husband died several years ago, but she’s not sure she’s ready for another romance in her life.  But Anthony is good looking, smart, and a terrific cook.  What should she do?  And why did he have to come along when Mary is frantic over the possibility that she is partly responsible for Trish’s disappearance and possible death?

Lisa Scottoline is a prolific writer, the author of eighteen novels, many featuring the women of Rosato and Associates, the firm where Mary works. She also writes a weekly column called “Chick Wit” for the Philadelphia Inquirer.   Although her books tackle serious subjects, they’re written with a sense of humor that keeps them somewhat closer to the “cozy” path than the “violent” one.

You can read more about Lisa Scottoline at her web site.