Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Not a traditional mystery, not exactly a thriller, I’d Know You Anywhere is a fascinating psychological study of the aftermath of a crime.  Laura Lippman, master storyteller in both the Tess Monaghan series and stand-alone novels, examines life “before and after” the kidnapping of a fifteen-year-old girl more than twenty years before the novel opens.

Elizabeth Benedict is walking along a country road when she comes across Walter Bowman, just a few years older than herself.  Within a couple of minutes he manages to drag her into his truck and drive off with her.  Elizabeth will turn out to be the only girl who survives Walter’s abductions.

All Walter wants is a girlfriend. He’s good-looking, muscular, has green eyes, but yet he can’t seem to attract any girl at all.  But he keeps trying.  He picks up girls on lonely roads, has a few minutes of conversation with them, realizes they’re not interested and are afraid of him, sexually assaults them, and kills them.  It’s not really his fault, he assures himself; if only one had agreed to be his girlfriend, his search would be over and he wouldn’t be forced to keep looking for others.

The novel opens as Eliza (the name she took after her abduction) and family return from several years in London–her husband, Peter; their teenage daughter; and their younger son.  It’s a typical American family living in the suburban Washington area, made even more typical by their visit to a local pound to get a dog.  But only Peter knows Eliza’s history.

Shortly after Eliza’s return to the States, she receives a letter that Walter has written. It’s been forwarded to her by a friend of his, Barbara LaFortuny, who is a vehement opponent of the death penalty.  Walter has been on Virginia’s death row for twenty-two years, a record in that twice he made it as far as the death house, only to receive last-minute reprieves.  Now with Barbara’s aid he reconnects with Eliza, first by writing to her and then by getting her to agree to be on his phone call list.  Walter has a powerful motive–as his only surviving victim, her help will be invaluable in commuting his death sentence once again.  He’s due to be electrocuted the following month, and this time it looks as if the sentence will be carried out–unless he can persuade Eliza to do his bidding.

The novel switches voices many times. First it’s the grown woman Eliza, then the twenty-something Walter, then the teenage Elizabeth, then Barbara, then the inmate Walter.  Adult Eliza would like to put this all behind her, as she has been successful in doing up to this point; teenage Walter wants some girl, blond, slim, and beautiful, to be his girlfriend; teenage Elizabeth wants to placate Walter in order to stay alive; Barbara wants to force Eliza to help commute Walter’s death sentence to life imprisonment; inmate Walter wants to live.

As always, Laura Lippman has written an outstanding novel. Has Eliza’s attempt to keep her past private colored her entire adult life?   Should she agree to be in contact with her kidnapper?  Has Walter ever understood the damage he did to her, as well as to the girls he killed?  Has Barbara’s own experience in being the victim of a crime given her insight into the justice system or simply moved her rigidity from her private life into a more public forum?  The novel asks these questions but leaves it up to the reader to answer them.  Or not.

You can read more about Laura Lippman at her web site.

A man on the ground.  A policeman  stops to see if he needs help.  The man rises and two other men come out of the shadows.  One smashes the cop on the head, another grabs his wallet and his gun, and the third gets ready to give the order to shoot.  Then another man appears.  Seemingly without effort, he disarms the man with the gun and kills all three of the attackers.

Walking Homeless by Al Lamanda takes us on a trip through the Cardboard Box City of Lower Manhattan, the place where the homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted men and women went to live after they were removed from the newly upscale Times Square.  Among these is John Tibbets.  All he knows about himself is his name.  He’s been on the streets for about three years, brought by a doctor to a Catholic shelter where he sleeps, when he’s able to.  He spends his days stopping cars and washing their windshields for pocket money; he spends his nights having violent dreams that always end with people dying.  But why is John having these dreams?  He has no idea.

After saving the policeman’s life, John becomes a media sensation.  Newspapers, magazines, and national television stations all want a piece of him.  And so do several mysterious men.  They want him alive but will take him dead if that’s their only option.

The reader knows there’s something pretty scary about John.  The way he handles himself, his presence of mind under extreme pressure–this is not your average homeless man for sure.  Could he have been a military man before his amnesia set in?  A former policeman?  But his skills seem too extreme for that.  And what about his nightmares?  They are becoming more detailed, less fuzzy, although John is still a long way away from figuring out who he is and why men are after him now.  As we follow his dreams, we know that this is no innocent, that there are things in John’s background that are too painful to face.  But that still doesn’t explain why he’s being followed.

This is an intimate look into the dark side of Manhattan or, for that matter, any city that simply wants to forget its homeless, its mentally ill, its most vulnerable. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the motto of those in charge.  This novel has a strong sociological bent, even with all its violence.  And there’s plenty of that.

Walking Homeless is a stunning book.  Besides being an excellent thriller, its underlying message makes you think about how we, as a society, view the neediest, least capable among us.  It’s not a pretty picture.

Apparently Al Lamanda doesn’t have a web page.  Aside from the fact that the back jacket says he comes from Maine, I couldn’t find out anything about him.  There’s virtually nothing on the Internet.   Could it be that that’s not his real name?  Another mystery to be solved.

There should be a course entitled “How to Get Rid of an Unwanted Love Interest” offered to mystery authors.

Apparently every male detective (barring Catholic clergy and overweight New York eccentrics) needs a girlfriend/wife/love interest to spice up the novel and prove the detective’s masculinity.  That’s all well and good.

But the problem is–how do you get rid of that pesky woman when the author no longer wants/needs her? What to do, what to do.  Well, here are the ways three authors handled it.

Jeremiah Healy took the Road of No Return. When the first John Francis Cuddy novel was published, Cuddy is a newly bereaved man, his young wife having died shortly before the story begins.  After a few books Cuddy becomes romantically involved with another woman, and they have a serious relationship over the next several books.  But then she is killed in a plane crash (never mind all the other people who had to die along with her), and Cuddy is alone again.

William G. Tapply chose to go with Who Can Understand A Woman Anyway? His Boston lawyer/detective is divorced when the series opens and stays unattached for a while.  Brady Coyne finally meets someone special, they are together for a number of books, even moving in together, but in the last novel she leaves him.  No explanation, at least none that made sense to me.

Stuart M. Kaminsky made the hero of the Lew Fonesca books A Man Who Will Hurt Forever. In the first book Lew has just relocated to Florida to escape the memories of his wife’s death by a hit-and-run driver.  Later on, when he does meet a woman, he’s obviously unable to commit to any type of meaningful relationship with her, and eventually she moves away.

I can’t think of similar situations involving female detectives. Sharon McCone starts out single in Marcia Muller’s series but meets and then marries her lover.  And Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) and V. I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky) have had a man or two in their lives, but they don’t become the problem for the women detectives that the women seem to be for the male detectives.

There are definitely exceptions to the male detective generalizations above.  Susan Silverman in the Spenser series, Kerry in the Nameless Detective series, and Zee in the J. W. Jackson series, to name just three.  But still, that being said, female romantic interests in the lives of male detectives don’t seem to hang around for very long.

Ladies, beware!

Marilyn

Whew–I feel as if I just got off a roller coaster going at top speed. That’s the effect that Bad Things Happen had on me.

Harry Dolan’s debut novel will make you hold your breath until the end.

David Loogan, now of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a man without much of a past. Or at least a past he’s willing to share.  He reluctantly takes a job as an editor of a short story crime magazine, Grey Streets, at the urging of its editor, Tom Kristoll.   But shortly afterward, Loogan receives a call from Kristoll asking him to come to his house; when Loogan arrives, there’s a man’s dead body sitting in Kristoll’s study.  Kristoll tells Loogan that this man broke into his house and that he killed the man in self-defense.  Kristoll doesn’t want to go to the police, isn’t sure the police will believe him, and asks for Loogan’s help in disposing of the body.  Loogan reluctantly agrees, and they drive to a field and put the body in a shallow grave.

But then the story starts changing and things get complicated.  Each time Kristoll goes over the story, parts of it change.  Then Loogan begins an affair with Kristoll’s wife, Laura, and things get even more complicated.  And then there are two more deaths.

Elizabeth Waishkey is the detective in charge of the cases. She’s attracted to the mysterious Loogan but keeps trying to tell him that this isn’t a story in Grey Streets but an actual police investigation and that Loogan needs to keep out of it and tell her all he knows.  But Loogan doesn’t want to do that.  Is it because he’s guilty?  Is it because of experiences with the police elsewhere?  Is it because he doesn’t trust the Ann Arbor cops and thinks he is better able to solve the murders that are piling up?  We won’t know the answers to those questions until the end of the novel.

Harry Dolan has crafted an exciting, taut first novel. There are many twists and turns in the plot, what appears plausible in one chapter is explained away in another, and I was always trying to figure out whether this latest version of the story was the truth.  The story is skillfully told, and its characters are appealing.  There are inside jokes, such as the derivation of the hero’s last name, which will either make you feel like an insider or make you feel that you need to go to your local library or bookstore and re-read some of the classics.

I can’t decide if Dolan is planning to make David Loogan the hero of a series or if this is a one-shot deal.  In either case, he has written a first novel well worth reading.

You can read more about Harry Dolan at his web site.

The Great War has been over for fourteen years when this novel opens, but the body of one of its dead soldiers has just been recovered.

Maisie Dobbs, the heroine of The Mapping of Love and Death, was a nurse during the war. After her return to civilian life she became what the British called an “enquiry agent,” their term for a private investigator.  In the first book of the series, Maisie Dobbs, it’s 1929; in the seventh novel, it’s 1932, and Maisie has become a successful businesswoman and sometime consultant to Scotland Yard.

Maisie returns home from the war whole in body, but her emotions and her spirit are badly damaged by the sights she has seen and by the injuries to Simon Lynch, the man she loves, who returned home shellshocked and in a nursing home.

In The Mapping of Love and Death, Maisie receives a letter from an American friend, a physician whom she met during their service in the war, alerting her that an American couple will be contacting her regarding their search for the girlfriend of their late son.  The Cliftons are a very wealthy Boston family whose younger son, Michael, enlisted in the British army at the outset of the Great War, bringing his special talents as a cartographer to the Allies.

Although the parents were informed in 1916 that Michael had been killed, his body has just been discovered in France. Along with his body there were letters written to a woman he apparently was in love with, but there’s no name or address with these letters.  The parents want Maisie to find this woman and perhaps shed some light on the last two years of their son’s life.

Jacqueline Winspear has built a wonderful stage for the Maisie Dobbs’ novels.  The books give a picture of life in England after the war–the difficult economic times, the privations, the soldiers returning wounded in body and/or mind.

Since this is the seventh novel in the series, there’s a great deal of back story that goes with Maisie.  Born into a rural servant family, she is “taken up” by the wealthy Lord and Lady Compton who early on recognize her intelligence and abilities.  She’s had privileges far beyond others in her social class, including an education at Girton, the women’s college at Cambridge.  But given the strict British social class system, Maisie can never be part of the upper class and yet obviously isn’t typical of the working class either.  She’s neither fish nor fowl.

There are numerous recurring characters in the series, and although they are well described and their backgrounds given, I will repeat what I always say–try to read this series from the beginning. Every novel builds on the ones before, and the characters’ lives are so richly drawn that one should get to know them from the start.  There’s Daisy’s father, Frankie, who is in charge of the Comptons’ stables; Priscilla Partridge, a friend from the war, now a society matron with a wounded husband and three sons; Lord and Lady Compton, through whose largesse Maisie was able to further her education; Billy Beale, her office assistant; and most importantly, Dr. Maurice Blanche, who took Maisie under his wing and made her his assistant.  Each one plays an important part in Maisie’s life.

For an insightful look into the mores and times of post-World War I England and an introduction to a strong and interesting heroine, one cannot do better than the Maisie Dobbs series.

You can read more about Jacqueline Winspear at her web site.

Rushmore McKenzie has more lives than a cat. In the first chapter of The Taking of Libbie, SD McKenzie is kidnapped, Tasered, thrown in a trunk, and driven from his home in Minnesota to Libbie, South Dakota, a town whose motto is RULES, REGULATIONS, AND RESPECT.  You think?

Rushmore McKenzie (what were his parents thinking?) is a former policeman who was able to retire when he came into a great deal of money.  Now McKenzie spends his time doing favors for friends, as he puts it.  But was it doing a favor that landed him in Libbie, SD?

It turns out there is a relatively simple explanation for the two men who abducted him and brought him across the state border. Several weeks before, a man using McKenzie’s name had fleeced the small town out of a big chunk of its annual budget, just how much no one will say.  The impostor said his company wanted to build a shopping mall, and the town council and the mayor were only too happy to hand over money to get the ball rolling.  The only problem was that there were no plans to build the mall, and The impostor left town in the middle of the night and hasn’t been seen since.  Two thugs, hired by the town’s arrogant and wealthy mayor, were sent to pick McKenzie up and bring him back to Libbie for justice, but when he was deposited at the police station everyone recognized that he wasn’t the man they were looking for.

You’d think the real McKenzie would head home to the Twin Cities at this point, which he does, but only to say goodbye to his friends and then return to South Dakota.  He’s determined to find the man who used his name so convincingly.

For a small town, there’s a lot going on in Libbie, SD.  Besides the shopping mall fraud, there’s arson, adultery, and agoraphobia, and that’s only the a’s.  When two people are murdered shortly after McKenzie returns, he’s more determined than ever to find out what’s really happening in this town.

David Housewright knows a lot of interesting facts  about life in rural South Dakota.  Never having even passed through that part of the country, the remoteness of it is amazing to me–no clothing stores within five or six hours of this town; entire counties in the state without physicians; college graduates departing the Great Plains for the cities, leaving behind an elderly population having a hard time dealing with things economically and emotionally.  That partially explains the town’s eagerness to invest in the shopping mall scheme–it’s something to bring money and life back to a town with no future.  It’s a sad portrait of a dying part of America.

This ex-cop is a bit different from the usual detective hero, and I like him.  He has a lot of depth, thinks things through, and when he does something that he later feels isn’t right, he suffers for it.  This is the seventh book about Rushmore McKenzie, and I plan to go back to see how he got to be who he is now.

You can read more about David Housewright at his web site.

She’s an ex-West Point cadet and a current bike messenger doing a favor for an old friend that takes her across the border–Hailey Cain’s life is a complicated one. Jodi Compton has made an excellent start in what reads like a new mystery series.

Hailey Cain is a young woman with secrets and baggage.  One secret is why Hailey left West Point two months before she would have graduated; we don’t find that out until the last chapter of the novel.  One piece of baggage is that, through no fault of hers, a year earlier she ran over and killed the young son of a former gang leader; the young boy dropped his nanny’s hand and ran out into the street.  She tries to see the parents and extend her sympathies, but they won’t see her.  Her cousin CJ suggests that she may be the victim of the boy’s father’s revenge and that she should get out of town, so she moves to San Francisco and gets a job as a bike messenger.

Hailey’s tough, but she goes to the Golden Gate bridge at least a couple of times a week trying to persuade would-be jumpers to have breakfast with her and wait at least one more day before ending their lives.  So maybe she’s not so tough after all.

Hailey is approached by a high school friend, the leader of a girls’ gang, whom she hasn’t seen in years.  Serena asks her to drive a young friend to rural Mexico to be with her ill grandmother.  It’s a strange request, given that the girl has family members who could take her, but Hailey’s persuaded to take the job.  On the second day of the trip, Hailey and Nidia are carjacked; Hailey is beaten and left on the side of the road, and when she recovers consciousness Nidia is gone.

There’s a lot of interesting information about Latino gangs, both male and female, in California as Hailey is drawn into that life to find out more about Nidia’s disappearance.  It’s obvious that Hailey wasn’t told the truth about the reason for Nidia’s return to Mexico.  She blames herself for the girl’s disappearance, although there wasn’t anything she could have done to prevent it.  But that doesn’t stop her from digging more deeply into Nidia’s story.

There’s a Mafia component to the story too, which further complicates Hailey’s efforts to protect Nidia.  And there’s a betrayal at the end that shows Hailey that sometimes even the people who have no reason to be disloyal, can be.

Hailey’s War is a fine first novel, and I look forward to Jodi Compton’s second one.

You can read more about Jodi Compton at her web site.

I never knew there were so many colors in the rainbow until I started reading the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald.

Starting in 1964 and continuing until a year before his death in 1987, MacDonald wrote 78 books, 21 featuring that Florida knight-errant, Travis McGee.  How I miss him!

Dress Her in Indigo, A Tan and Sandy Silence, The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, The Empty Copper Sea–those are wonderful titles.

The Travis McGee series was, to my knowledge, the first in what now has become a long line of detective fiction from The Sunshine State:  think Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White,  Stuart M. Kaminsky.  But McGee was not only the first to bring us to Fort Lauderdale, he made it his own.

He lived on The Busted Flush, a houseboat he moored at Slip F-18 in the marina, after he won it in a poker game.  That and Miss Agnes, his ancient Rolls Royce, seemed to be his only material possessions.  There was a perpetual party going on at the marina, with lots of sun bunnies, I think they were called, but McGee was never cavalier or uncaring in his sexual adventures.  They may seem a bit hedonistic now, but I don’t think they were.  It was a more innocent time, and McGee and his romantic adventures were part of it.

People in trouble came to McGee–people who had been scammed, abused, tricked out of what was rightfully theirs. McGee was a “court of last resort”; after all other avenues of justice had been tried and been proven inadequate, McGee rode to the rescue.  He asked a percentage of the “salvage,” what he recovered if it had a monetary value, but that’s not why he did what he did.  He was trying, and succeeding in his small way, to right the wrongs of the world.  He was for the underdog, first and foremost.

John D. MacDonald was years ahead of his time in talking about pollution, greed, and overbuilding in his beloved Florida–things we’re all too familiar with today.  But by making Travis McGee his voice, MacDonald made his points powerfully but without preaching.  McGee loved his state, rarely left it, and railed against the things that were changing it for the worse.  McGee did a lot of thinking about the state of the world, and most of it is as true today as it was when it was written.

I don’t know how easy it is to obtain the Travis McGee series, but you will be doing yourself a favor if you try to track down these books.  They take place in a time before computers, cell phones, and the Internet, but that doesn’t matter.  John D. MacDonald created a timeless series for us to enjoy.

You can read more about John D. MacDonald at this web site.

It’s very exciting when you come upon an enjoyable series strictly by accident. Now that I’ve read the first in Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler mysteries, I plan to read the others as quickly as possible.*

Although this novel is billed as a Simon Serrailler mystery, the English Detective Chief Inspector plays a rather peripheral part.  The novel actually revolves around several other characters, all living in the small English cathedral town of Lafferton.  I do so love British expressions–when would you ever hear an American town or city referred to as a cathedral/temple/ church/mosque/synagogue town?

A number of chapters are written in the first person by the killer.  Other chapters are told from the third-person points of view of Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham, new to the Lafferton police force and coming off an unhappy marriage in London; Catherine Serrailler Deerbon, general practitioner and sister of the Detective Chief Inspector; three women who become victims of the serial killer; and various other members of the town.  As many characters as there are in The Various Haunts of Men, you never lose track of who is who; Susan Hill has an outstanding ability to bring each character to life.

Angela Randall is a middle-aged woman, never married, who works in a facility for elderly people with dementia.  She goes for a run early one morning after completing her tour of duty, and she never returns.  Victim number one.

Debbie Parker is a young woman, unemployed, overweight, and depressed.  She goes for a walk early one morning and never returns.  Victim number two.

And there are others.

The town of Lafferton is small and very close knit.  It’s a refuge for DS Graffham, who eagerly joins the local choir and begins to make friends.  She’s enjoying her new life, until she meets her supervisor who had been on vacation when she was posted there.  Simon Serrailler takes her breath away, and despite herself she falls instantly, and seemingly hopelessly, in love.  She’s warned by a fellow chorister as well as by Catherine, Simon’s sister, that he has left a trail of broken hearts behind him, but Freya is unable to control her thoughts about him.

The plot is a tense one, with things moving swiftly. The characters, as I’ve said, are sharply delineated.  The only false note, I thought, was the instant emotional reaction Freya had to Serrailler; I guess I’m not really a believer in love at first sight, particularly on the part of a professional woman fresh from a disastrous marriage.  But this is truly nit-picking, since Serrailler’s charm and personality are obviously meant to be irresistible.

In a way, he reminded me of a much more modern Sir Peter Whimsey, a man of distinguished background and many talents, who chooses to pursue a career that is slightly “off” what would be expected from one of his class.  In fact, one of the interesting side issues is the estrangement between the Detective Chief Inspector and his father, a man who can’t understand why his son chose to ignore the three generations of physicians in the family and became a policeman instead.

*And I did just that.  One of the things I liked best about this book is the backstory.  I wrote in my About Marilyn post of March 9 how much more enjoyable I find books/series when I know more about the character and how he/she developed.  I said in that post that it’s more important to me when it’s a female character, but now I don’t know if I can stand by that statement.   In the past month, since I wrote the post you’re now reading, I’ve read three more novels in this series.  Each one gave me a deeper insight into Simon Serrailler and his family, and I’ve enjoyed the series more because of it.

The Various Haunts of Men is a compelling mystery with a shocking ending.  Now that I’ve read the three novels that follow it, I can hardly wait to read the fifth book in the series.

You can read more about Susan Hill at her web site.

Hi.  True to my word in my September 6th post, I’m letting you know that there’s a new post in the About Marilyn section of this blog. If you click on About Marilyn under the graphic of me and my imaginary cat, you’ll be able to read my thoughts about starting but not finishing mystery novels.

Marilyn

I am definitely getting less patient as I get older.

I used to think that if I started a book that I had to finish it.  I thought that if the author had spent so much time and energy writing the novel and getting it published that I owed it to him or her to read it even if I wasn’t enjoying it.  But I no longer feel that way.

A few years ago I bought a sweatshirt with the words “So Many Books, So Little Time.” That’s become my mantra.  There are simply too many good, not to say excellent, books available for me to force myself to finish one that I’m not enjoying.  If I’m not “into” the book after a couple of chapters, I’ll put it down and choose another.

It’s a bit like eating a meal in a restaurant or buying a pair of shoes.

You go into a restaurant or shoe store (bookstore or library), look at the menu or the racks (bookshelves), and choose a meal or a pair of shoes (crime novel) you think you want to eat or wear (read).  But when the meal comes or you put the shoes on (start reading) you realize it’s not what you want because the entree is too spicy or the shoes are too tight (or the book is too cozy, too violent, or just boring).

Just like you wouldn’t force yourself to finish a meal that you didn’t like or buy a pair of shoes that didn’t fit, you shouldn’t make yourself finish a book that’s not what you thought it was going to be.

And you shouldn’t feel guilty about it–I don’t.

Marilyn

V. I. Warshawski is back, and that’s great news. The heroine of more than a dozen previous mystery novels, this tough Chicago P.I. never disappoints.

As she’s done in her previous books, Sara Paretsky puts layer on top of layer of motives and crimes for Vic to unpack. Vic’s young cousin Petra, whom we met previously in Hardball, is back.  Petra is young, spoiled, and needy, but she’s a relative, and Vic has a hard time saying “no” to her.  This time Petra has a part-time job at a very edgy nightclub in Chicago that is featuring The Body Artist as its main attraction.

The Body Artist’s act is composed of sitting on a stool on the stage, nude except for a thong and the exquisite artwork that covers much of her body, while erotic photos are flashed across a screen in back of her and two burka-clad figures dance erotically alongside her.  In addition, members of the audience are invited to come up to The Body Artist and paint whatever they wish on her body.

Petra calls on Vic one night saying that someone has just tried to kill the Artist, but when Vic arrives at The Gouge club the Artist isn’t interested in cooperating and the club’s manager is rude and hostile.  The following week Petra visits her again with tales of more unpleasantness at The Gouge–out-of-control young guys at one table, a rough-looking middle-aged man at another who’s trying to literally get into Petra’s pants, and a sliver of glass found in one of The Body Artist’s paintbrushes.  And again neither the Artist nor the club’s manager wants to speak to Vic or the police.

On Vic’s third visit to the club, a distraught young woman goes up to the Artist and paints a design on her body.  When a man in the audience sees the design, he loses all control and tries to confront her.  She flees the club and Vic runs after her,  just in time to see her shot and to cradle her body while she bleeds to death.

A few days later the young man from the club, who has been under suspicion for the murder, is found comatose in his apartment and admitted to the jail’s hospital.  His father comes to Vic’s office to ask her to investigate.  He doesn’t believe his son is guilty, but as the young man is unable to speak and tell his story, Vic needs to investigate.

There are a lot of intersecting story lines. Everyone from an Iraqi veteran with post traumatic stress syndrome, Ukrainian mobsters, a Mexican-American family coping with the death of a daughter, a big-time lawyer with a strange interest in the aforementioned family, and the owner of Club Gouge makes an appearance.  None of them will talk to Vic or even admit there are any problems.

Vic is surrounded by her usual group:  her landlord Mr. Contreras; her physician friend Lotte; her lover Jake.  Lotte in particular wants to know why Vic is always putting herself in danger, and Vic is trying to figure out the answer to that question herself.  Mortality is creeping into Vic’s consciousness.  She’s getting older and more reflective, and she’s wondering why she has this need to fight all the battles of the world.  Is it necessary?  Is it right?  And can she always win, or is it impossible to right all the wrongs she sees?

You can read more about Sara Paretsky at her web site.

I really didn’t want to like this book.  But I couldn’t help it.  And I’ll tell you why.

The title should have given me the hint, but I didn’t get it at first.  There’s a gorgeous cover photo of the head of a dog, a big dog, looking at a butte in the desert.  When you connect the cover to the title, you’ve got it…this “Chet and Bernie Mystery” is about a dog and his man.  Chet is the dog, and he’s also the narrator of Thereby Hangs a Tail.

Wait!  Before you stop reading, let me say that this is one of the cleverest mysteries I’ve read.  I’m not a big fan of books that feature anthropomorphic animals.  If I want animals that talk and think like humans, I’ll watch the Disney channel.  But I fell in love with Chet.  In a big way.

Bernie is a private detective, specializing in missing persons.  He’s asked by a friend on the police force to bodyguard Kingsbury’s First Lady Belle, a.k.a. Princess, a prize-winning dog that is entered in the Balmoral Dog Show that is coming to town.  Her owner received a threatening letter in the mail, and she wants to hire Bernie to guard Princess to the tune of $2000 a day, a hefty sum given the state of Bernie’s finances and his proclivity for investing in Bolivian tin mines.  But before the guarding can actually start, Bernie goes from hired to fired in less than a day, and the following day Princess and her owner are abducted.

All of this is narrated by Chet, a huge dog of mysterious lineage.  He idolizes Bernie and has an uncanny (is that word related to canine?) ability to come up with just the right expressions to put us in the picture.  It’s almost like listening to a person who doesn’t speak English well or is a recent arrival in America trying to figure out the meaning of conversations/slang swirling around him.

When Chet hears someone say, “They didn’t see diddley,” it catches his attention.  “Bernie was a big Bo Diddley fan…Was Bo Diddley a suspect in the…case?”  Bernie says,”They say Wild Bill Hickok rode through here…”  Chet thinks, “Hickok again? Was he the perp?  Perps had a hard time going straight.  That was something you learned in this business.”

Okay, so maybe this book isn’t for you.  But there’s a real mystery here besides the kidnapping of the Countess di Borghese and the dognapping of Princess.  Bernie’s romantic interest, a newspaper reporter, goes missing while following the Princess story; Chet and Bernie are separated and Chet is sold by a pair of wandering, stoned hippies to a man who wants to take him to Alaska; a sheriff and his deputy are being more of a hindrance than a help in the case, and so it goes.

When you get tired of blood and guts, give Slim Jims and dog biscuits a try.  I think you’ll like them.

You can read more about Spencer Quinn at this web site.

Ah, to be French.  Even in the midst of murder, one must eat, drink, and love.

Benoit Courreges, better known as Bruno, is the chief of police of the small town of St. Denis in the heart of rural France.  A decorated soldier who served with the United Nations force in Bosnia, he wants nothing more than to live the quiet life in his village and serve the people there.  But that, naturellement, is not to be.

There’s a small Arab population in St. Denis.  They are ethnic Algerians, some of whom fought for France during the African campaign of World War II and then emigrated to France.  Others fought for France against their countrymen during the Algerian war of the 1950s and ’60s and escaped to France to avoid retribution when the former colony gained independence.

There’s not much overt racism in St. Denis, which is why everyone is taken by surprise when an elderly Arab man, a Resistance fighter in the Second World War and a recipient of the Croix de guerre medal, is brutally murdered in his home.  A swastika is carved into his chest, and the only things that are missing from his house are a photo of the 1940s soccer team of which he was a member and the above-mentioned medal.

Does the swastika mean that it is a racially motivated crime? Was it committed by a villager or someone from the right-wing National Front, famous for its anti-immigrant stance?  But the family of Hamid al-Bakr has been in France for more than fifty years; the victim’s son is a teacher in the local school and his grandson runs a restaurant in town.  What could have caused the murder of this quiet, almost hermit-like man so many years after his arrival in France?

Two suspects are taken into custody almost immediately.  One is the teenage son of the town’s doctor, the other his girlfriend.  Picked up after Bruno sees their photos at a National Front rally on the Internet, both profess innocence but there appear to be no other suspects and no reason for the murder other than racial enmity.  The investigator sent from Paris would like to see this investigation wrapped up quickly and with a good deal of publicity in order to embarrass the Front, but Bruno isn’t at all certain that the teenagers have committed the crime.

This being France, the murder investigation takes frequent pauses for mouth-watering gourmet meals, homemade wines, Champagne, and the introduction of a beautiful investigator from the National Police.  Except for the murder, there’s a serene quality to the novel, with a great deal of description given to the scenery of the surrounding countryside and the delicious meals that Bruno cooks and shares with friends.

Martin Walker has created a most interesting and charming lead character for his series.  You can read more about the author at his web site and more about Bruno, Chief of Police, at his.  Vive la France!

Have you ever thought much about sidekicks? I hadn’t, until recently.

In films and television, sidekicks are the ones who usually aren’t as good-looking as the hero, never or almost never get the girl or guy, and never get the glory.  Think about it.  There’s the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes, Lucy and Ethel.  Am I right?

In mystery novels, things were pretty much the same.  There’s Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, C. Auguste Dupin and Poe’s nameless narrator, Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.  In the last case there’s a bit more equality, but even though Archie is younger, better-looking, and as narrator could emphasize his importance in the case, he’s always a step behind Wolfe.  Yes, in these novels Archie has the girl, but Lily Rowan is more like arm candy than a true love interest, always available to go dancing or have dinner at Rusterman’s, but that’s all.

In earlier books the sidekicks usually were subordinate in every way to the detective, as I mentioned above, especially when it came to who was the toughest guy in the room.  But, interestingly, the sidekick’s role has changed over the years.  I think this began with Spenser and Hawk.  Spenser certainly is tough and knows his way around criminals and low-lifes, but he has a moral center.  Enter Hawk.  When we first meet him, he’s a killer for hire.  And although he’s mellowed in the course of the novels, he still behaves in ways that Spenser can’t or won’t.  Spenser can do breaking and entering, but Hawk can do breaking bones.  That’s why Spenser needs him.

And here’s another facet of the new breed of sidekick.  There was a similarity between the roles of Spenser and Hawk and Elvis Cole and Joe Pike.  Pike’s conscience, like his eyes behind dark sunglasses, is hidden.  There are, or were, things that Cole didn’t do, but Pike did.  Now, however, that Pike has moved on to his own series, he, like Hawk, has gotten softer and isn’t so quick on the trigger.  If Pike is going to be the new hero, he can’t behave like the old sidekick.

We know that certain things, unpleasant and illegal things, may have to be done in order to solve a crime. But we don’t seem to want our hero, and it’s always a hero, not a heroine, to do them.  We don’t want his hands to be so dirty that they can’t be cleaned.  That’s apparently what his sidekick is for.

So what does this say about us as readers of detective novels?

Marilyn