Spade work

The Janus Stone starts with leisurely pace. Bones are found. Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway is called. And then ... we spend several chapters pondering the back story of Galloway, her relationship with Harry Nelson, her relationship with her spiritually-certain parents, and revisiting the events of the first entry in this series. Once the focus returns to the mystery, and that is why readers like me picked up this book in the first place, the pace picks up slightly.

With archaeology-based mysteries the first questions are often who died and when. Once that's sorted out the story moves on to a more traditional whodunit. This one isn't going to break new ground in the genre. Ruth Galloway is reasonably interesting but not fascinating. The cast of supporting characters are nicely drawn but none is outstanding. The old "someone is trying to keep the murder a secret by killing the investigator" cliche is trotted out, which left me wondering as it always does why the murderer thinks that will work. The culprit is unmasked and situations are set up for the next installment.

The Janus Stone does show the full effects of being the second in series. Where the first entry can suffer from the author trying to introduce too many characters and back story in too much detail, a second entry can suffer from too much linking to the previous book. In the hands of a master, like Louise Penny, it can inspire the reader to seek out the earlier books but still enjoy the present book on its own merits. Griffiths is a good writer but her links to Crossing Places were less intriguing hints and more, hey, you're reading this out of order. I haven't read the first book but my advice is to start there and avoid the residual guilt.

This is a slightly frustrating book. The writing and characterizations are good but it is too conscious of being an entry in a series. The narrative trudges along like, well, an archaeologist in well-worn wellingtons but it is written in present tense which struck me as at odds with the slow pace. I'm not a fan of present tense narratives - it is rarely warranted and even less rarely works. It's not a showstopper here but it doesn't add anything.

Overall, if you like mysteries of the Bones variety you'll probably enjoy this book. Recommended for mystery fans.

I Say, Would You Shut Up Already?

One of the enjoyments of a mystery series is meeting familiar characters. Sometimes they evolve over time, sometimes its all about how they don't change. Jill Paton Walsh stays very close to the spirit and the form of the Dorothy L. Sayers characters in The Attenbury Emeralds. Perhaps too close.

I read Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey series when I was a teenager enthralled by Golden Age mysteries. Sayers' mysteries were always less whodunit than howdunit. How did the one of the small group of suspects (the guilty one being easy enough to guess for any self-respecting mystery fan) manage to commit the crime? Another notable aspect of the series was the reliance on dialogue. The books read more like plays with very little non-spoken exposition which means that characters have to deliver often tremendous amounts of background information in the guise of witty repartee. It can get on your nerves.

What can really get on your nerves is Lord Peter himself. If you didn't like the original series you won't like this book. Sure Lord Peter is married with children now but that's never been a very convincing arrangement. Anyone who read the first Wimsey books would be forgiven for assuming that the monocled son of a duke was Out, Loud and Proud. (He still seems better paired with the loyal Bunter but I guess Harriet is a bit masculine so I'll play along.) Walsh tries to update the series by referencing the changes in society - they don't eat in the formal dining room now! - which is fine in small doses.

But she takes is too far. How far? Somewhere around page 80 Walsh blithely mentions that sometimes Bunter the butler and wife sometimes sit down to dinner with the Wimsey family. I'd sooner believe that Harriet and Peter were committed Maoists.

The story is a bit blah. Starting out by having Peter recount his famous first case might not be a bad idea but its told in dialogue form with Harriet making witty comments and Bunter chiming in lugubriously to add an important detail and Peter losing the thread in his usual slapdash way.

It made me want to smack them. Yack, yack, yack. By page 40 I was praying for a murder. By page 50 I was willing to settle for the delayed detonation of a World War 2 bomb somehow left unnoticed in the Wimsey living room. Instead they went for a stroll to look at flowers while Peter kept telling the story and no one emerged to drown them in the Serpentine. There is eventually a murder which let's Peter and Harriet do their stuff: solve the murder while bouncing bon mots back and forth. The Wimsey family encounters a few significant developments, too, which does surprisingly little to dampen the witty repartee.

In summary, I didn't enjoy this book. Walsh is a talented writer but Lord Peter is best left in the inter-war years where class consciousness explains why no one throttles him and everyone can pretend that he isn't as gay as a spring day. If you're a huge fan of the Wimsey series this book might be for you. If you've never read any of Sayers' books then read a sample chapter first. Without the back story this might be an enjoyable mystery.

Edgar Project - Beast in View

For anyone who loves to read, finding a great new author with a nice fat backlist is nirvana. My first find of the year was the amazing Louise Penny and her Inspector Gamache series. Thanks to Lists of Bests I've found another gem: Margaret Millar.

Margaret Millar's Beast in View won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1956 and it took only 5 pages for me to understand why. This is a smart, suspenseful, psychological thriller/mystery. Helen Clarvoe is an unhappy heiress - trapped in the luxury suite she's occupied at a Los Angeles hotel for nearly a year. Helen has been barring her door in more ways than one for years  so when she receives a threatening phone call from an unknown woman she finds she is so isolated that she has no one she can turn to for help. No one except her money manager, Paul Blackshear.

The rest of this short novel speeds along as Blackshear, at first reluctantly, tries to find out who is threatening Helen and why. Millar paints several impressive character portraits of Helen, her self-absorbed Mother, Blackshear and others. The ending is a shocking, twist that never feels false or forced.

How has Margaret Millar has escaped my attention until now? Why isn't she as well-known as Patricia Highsmith? I can't wait to dive in to more of her work. She is an undeservedly little-known genius.

Books I've Finally Managed to Finish

Some books just don't start well for me and it requires an effort to stick with them. Sometimes that effort is rewarded with a great story. Mansfield Park took 100 pages for me to really get into it. Even something as light and fluffy as Spying in High Heels didn't get going for 40 pages or so. I'll take slow start/great ending over great start/bad ending any day.

It doesn't always end well. Sometimes slow start ends in worse ending. Over the past months I've experienced the highs and lows of slow starts.

1. Caribou Island by David Vann   It took 3 false starts to finally finish this one. It never actually sailed along and it is as depressing as a 20 hour Alaskan mid-winter night but I respect it. Great writer. Maybe in need of Prozac or Lexapro; or just a few hours of Chappelle's Show.

2. Deadly Little Secret by Kathryn Casey   Spending over 50 pages with someone who is scared they are going to be murdered and who you know will be murdered is a little ghoulish. That made the first part of this book tougher going than is usual for Kathryn Casey. It definitely improves. This isn't her best but it's still worthy of any true crime fan's time.

3. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen  I've been on a classics kick lately and this is one of the books that's been sitting on my shelf, mocking me, for years. I finally tackled it last month and although it didn't grab me until the end of Volume 1, after that I couldn't put it down. According to the introduction in the edition I read this is Austen's "most complex and least likable novel." I can see why but it is definitely worth reading.

4. Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man's Smile by Gyles Brandreth  How do you make Oscar Wilde boring? If you're looking for lessons on that, and I can't imagine why anyone would, then seek out the first 50 or so pages of this book. Recounting famous incidents from Oscar's life isn't the best idea if you're going to make them dull. The mystery, once it gets going, isn't bad though perhaps needlessly complex and the evocations are 1890s decadence are a hoot.

I'm currently reading (listening to) Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers and it suffers from another complaint: draggy middle section syndrome. The dialogue is snappy, although I don't see how Lord Peter Wimsey makes it through all those books without someone telling him to shut up and the narrator is making the most of it. But page after page about fingerprints - the lifting of them, leaving of them, photographing of them, measuring them, etc - is over the top, and not in a campy way.  Well, it's on the list so I'm going to finish it.

Boredom Comes to the Reader

 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a disappointing book by a beloved author is more depressing than a genuinely bad book by an unknown author.  Death Comes to Pemberley is such a disappointing book. Surprisingly disappointing given my love for P. D. James, especially her Adam Dalgliesh series, and my enjoyment of Jane Austen's books. Jane's suffered more than her share of exploitation of late between mash-ups, story extensions and a series depicting her as busy-body-mystery-solver, and while this latest re-purposing of her characters doesn't involve anything as nutty as sea monsters it is nonetheless a mystifying endeavor

I truly cannot understand why P. D. James felt the need to write this book but my bafflement there is miniscule compared to my total incomprehension of why she felt the need to publish it. I can't understand why, having committed to writing a book based on Pride and Prejudice she felt the need to retell the entire plot of that book in the first 10 pages of this one. Nor can I come up with a reasonable answer as to why an author with a finely honed style like James would want to play ventriloquist with another well-known style.

What really left me staggered in this book is how dull, nay, boring it is. I don't mean slow-moving, I mean actively, aggressively dull. The book focuses on proud, shy and aloof Darcy, which cuts down on the conversational opportunities. The sisters Bennet are barely present and only two of them having anything approaching a conversation. Which made no sense - a murder happens at your sister's house and you don't want to chat it over? The murder isn't interesting and all the opportunities it gives Darcy to plumb the depths of his soul just proves that Darcy isn't all that deep. The absolute nadir, however, involves one character explaining the events of the murder while allowing that another person will probably want to tell their own version. And they do. Except it's pretty much the same version. Just told twice.

To sum up, while this book does not feature zombies, it might as well have been written by one. Avoid this one.

Worst Book of 2011

I may not have posted much last year but I read more books than ever. Even with a larger pool of candidates the worst book of 2011 is easy to name: Ginny Aiken's Design on a Crime. What's staggering is that it is the first in a series, Deadly Decor. Not surprisingly, this book also wins "worst main character of 2011" easily. Haley is one annoying human being. A blurb about the book says the author writes "inspirational fiction." I was inspired to throw my Kindle across the room and plot Haley's gruesome demise. Does that count?

A title that is all too apt

Robert Goddard, where did it all go wrong? We met in South Africa and you kept me company on the long flight home. Then we’d meet up once a year for whirlwind of historically informed adventure. It was great until without warning my sure bet was Found Wanting. But anyone can have a bad day, or a bad book, so I was back for more with Long Time Coming with nary a reservation. I’m sorry to report that this book is the equivalent of having your date to the opera show up wearing a clown suit. It’s stupid and you can’t quite figure out how it got to be that way.

The familiar elements are present: the man at loose ends with pondering his cloudy future, a simple request that is anything but and a secret hidden in historical event. What’s missing is the narrative drive and basic logic.

The first lapse in logic occurs early. When someone is released from prison after several decades and asked to bunk at your place one of the questions one asks is what the prospective house guest did in order to warrant a room at the Grey Bar Hotel. Except in this book. Twenty-five pages in this book started to read like an episode of Get Smart. Would you believe stolen Picassos? Would you believe artistic terrorists? Would you believe clues hidden in paintings? Literally IN a painting.

Long Time Coming reads like two plots spliced together. In the dark. It’s not just stupid it’s boorishly stupid. Unlike Found Wanting Goddard doesn’t blame it all on a character that appears out of nowhere in the last 50 pages. Instead he just grinds on, and on, telling a story that might be bearable if the characters evoked some emotion in the reader. Compassion would be nice but I’d have settled for loathing after 200 pages. They’re worse than cardboard cutouts. They’re uninteresting.

Skip this one, Goddard fans, and the rest of you stay away, too. It won’t even cure insomnia.

Sisterhood of Stupidity

In the realm of pop culture the female offspring with bad taste in men and a propensity for landing in life threatening-peril has a long history. Audra in The Big Valley, Diana Fairgate in Knots Landing, Kim Bauer in 24, to name but a few, inspired in viewers like me a weekly mixture of disappointment and awe. Disappointment that yet another perfectly good to kill them had been squandered and awe that any writer could think stupidity makes compelling entertainment. Into this rich tradition Peter Robinson’s Bad Boy launches DCI Banks’ daughter Tracey Banks, hitherto not renown for her imbecility.

Tracey, however, is a comer. And she’s surrounded by several idiotic characters and situations that serve to vault her own burgeoning dimwittedness into the stratosphere. In the first few chapters we are confronted with England’s dumbest mother – what do you do if you suspect your child is in trouble? Why you toddle down to the local police station; a “gun removal” procedure that despite several characters noting that it is “by the book” strikes me as being taking from the adventures of Larry, Moe and Curly; a cardboard cutout police villain; and Tracey, who has decided to call herself Francesca to spice up her boring life. Is it any wonder that Banks himself would choose to flee the jurisdiction and vacation in California? Sadly, he’s not in search of higher IQs, he’s off searching his soul after the collapse of his relationship with a younger woman and his encounter with MI5. He’s on a California whine tour.

To make matters even more entertaining, Robinson has decided to delete the mystery portion from this installment of this mystery series. You know who did it. Banks knows who did it. The only person who is momentarily dim on this is, you guessed it, Tracey. Her decision to cleave unto the bad boy of the title is one the goofier aspects of the book – he was her friend’s boyfriend, she just fancied him until the cops got involved. Then it’s shopping, trashing Dad’s place and running from the man all day. Like Gym, Tanning and Laundry, only even dumber.

As if this isn’t enough fun, Robinson then tosses in a super-criminal known as The Farmer (cue the foreboding music) and his two psychotic henchmen. Then  he adds a graphic torture tableau. It’s a relief because for the last 20 books I’ve been saying to myself, Excellent characterizations, complex mysteries and genuine moral dilemmas are all fine and good but when is Robinson going to get serious and deliver more gratuitous victimization of women.

I’m not a fan. Robinson can do much, much better than this book that reads more like a plea for a movie deal than an entry into what has been up to know an extremely well-written, well-plotted, thoughtful mystery series. If you’re a fan of Robinson and Banks, you may want to skip this one.

Blood and Innards

A mystery series set in Amish country and featuring a female lapsed-Amish police chief has a lot going for it. A crime taking place in and around this closed community is automatically charged an air of the forbidden. A woman, in this case Kate Burkholder, who leaves a male-dominated culture only to re-enter it in a position of power presents a fascinating set up too. Add to this a writer, Castillo, who can actually write and you have a recipe for success.

Why only 3 stars?

There are a few significant drawbacks for me. The first is that this is not a mystery; it's a thriller. It's not that it's so terribly obvious, it's that Burkholder has a suspect early on and she's right. Then there is the grotesque nature of the crime. Want to read about the murder of an entire Amish family and the sexual torture of their two daughters? Me neither. Castillo doesn't exploit the material she's just too painstakingly detailed for my taste. Finally there's the incredibly weighty back stories of Burkholder and her love interest - more stomach-churning violence - and the fact that the first book of this series had the two investigating a serial murderer. People have moved for far less provocation but these two are hanging around at the scene of multiple crimes. 

Of course, that's challenge of any mystery series. (Who in their right mind would invite Miss Marple over for tea?) But it's an awful lot for book two. 

Castillo makes a few bold choices -  Burkholder's sections are all told in the present tense, all other characters in the past tense - that would fall apart in the hands of a less talented writer. They aren't all successful but Castillo sets a fast pace for the book so that even missteps aren't very noticeable.

For thriller fans who don't mind or enjoy a gory murder, Pray for Silence is worth checking out.

Recent Acquisitions from the Vine

Complaining about the poor selection of free items strikes me as a tad ungrateful yet I have to admit that Amazon’s Vine offerings haven’t been tempting the last few months. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean I have to choose a book that does not interest me – especially when I have to write a review in exchange. But enough whining, in this month’s second batch were too review-worthy books.

 

The Last Talk with Lola Faye by Thomas H. Cook

This is billed as “a novel” despite a plot that involves a man finally meeting the woman he holds responsible for his father’s murder. Less than 300 pages, Lola looks like something best read in one gulp. Perfect for my long awaited vacation this week.

If I like this I’m in luck, it appears that Mr. Cook has written twenty other books.

 

 

Finding Chandra by Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz

The summer of 2001 was the summer of the Chandra Levy case. Then 9/11 happened and pundits were falling all over themselves to say that THIS was real news and didn’t we all feel silly about obsessing over the Levy case. The case was sensationalized by cable news mongrels and it was a typical Missing White Female media frenzy. Fortunately Washington Post reports Higham and Horwitz treated the case as more than the scandal de jour and didn’t settle for sensationalism. Their series of articles, which form the basis of this book, helped to identify the killer.

Jamesian Inquiry Part 2: Unnatural Causes

After spending two books giving the reader glimpses of the soul of her detective, in Unnatural Causes P.D. James pulled him out of his natural environment by sending him on holiday. This means that both James and Dalgliesh can ponder murder and murder investigations from the outside for a change, but ponder it still. James also tackles head on Dalgliesh’s willful solitariness and his peculiar emotional inertia – is he willing to change his life enough to share it permanently with Deborah Riscoe – placing him in a community of self-absorbed writers.

James dissects what it means to be a semi-successful writer from several angles. There’s the romance writer who peddles convention to make a living  and the mystery writer who is past his prime. Both must grapple with the knowledge that their work will not outlast them, that it is not respected and that they are not even successful by their own standards. Publically they guard their own claim to be "artists” while snipping away at one another.

This community of writers is most interested in Dalgliesh because he is a police detective. They don’t seem at all impressed or intrigued that he is also a published poet. It’s such an obvious flip of responses, usually someone has to point out the incongruity of a detective writing poetry, that I had to wonder if James was making a joke. 

Dalgliesh is downright cranky on occasion in Unnatural Causes. James showed up glimpses of his pride and self-regard before but this time she lets him be, well, human. At least on the inside. He’s put out that there’s a murder to contend with during his vacation. He’s annoyed that everyone seems to think he has a part to play in solving the crime. Not that he voices much of this. The hardest thing to like about Adam Dalgliesh is his self-control.

The source of that self-control appears as disinterest to others. The most revered of the writers in Monks Head asserts that Dalgliesh chose his line of work because it gives him permission to be “uninvolved”. This is James striking at the heart of her own character: Dalgliesh wants to investigate murder, he wants to understand the crime and the criminal but he does not want to be involved in it in any meaningful way. He wants to observe, to intellectualize, but not to feel. Placed in proximity to murder but not an  official capacity to investigate it he has to feel his reactions to the suspects and the victim, to resent the official intrusion into his life. What makes James a great writer is that she does this without resorting to making Dalgliesh a suspect. When faced with his aunt’s own calm acceptance that so twisted an evil in the form of the murderer had been part of her daily life Dalgliesh is staggered by what he considers her “uninvolvement.”

James is having fun in Unnatural Causes starting with the obvious homage to Dorothy L Sayers. From the title’s nod to Unnatural Death to comments about “in the teeth of the evidence” to the body on the beach the book is filled with touches that place the book and the series in the Golden Age of Mystery tradition.

What a difference a narrator makes

I’m listening to another audio book version of P.D. James’ Unnatural Causes as part of my revisit of the Adam Dalgliesh series. This one is narrated by Michael Jayston and it’s nearly a completely different book compared to the version narrated by Penelope Dellaporta.  Jayston’s version captures the contradictions that make Adam Dalgliesh a fascinating character. It seems possible that Dalgliesh really is a policeman and a poet – always the toughest part of the character to make believable. He handles Dalgliesh’s frustration at being hounded by murder even on holiday without it coming across as selfish whining. Dellaporta, a skilled reader, makes the same material too prim. Her Dalgliesh isn’t exactly whiney but he is fretful. Too often is sounds like she’s offering knitting advice. Dellaporta strikes me as being perfect for coziness of a Miss Marple story. For P.D. James’ cool yet remorseless assessments of murder and human nature Michael Jayston is THE quintessential reader.

Jamesian Inquiry Part 1: A Mind to Murder

You have to admire someone who creates a workable formula and then sticks to it. P. D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh books are set in a cloistered (in one case truly!) often claustrophobic community. Work is usually the source of the community as well as the source of the tensions and rivalries. Office politics create the initial tensions: who wants whose job, who’s obsession with the rules is making everyone’s life miserable, who is a nasty git, who is a mess, etc.The rules of the profession are up for examination with the definition of success, and what it takes to be successful, playing a major part.

Psychiatry is the profession under examination in A Mind to Murder (AMTM), P. D. James’ second Adam Dalgliesh book published in 1963. The treatments are were up-to-the-minute back in ‘63 but dated today – LSD, deep analysis and out-patient ECT – still it is interesting to see how these treatments are discussed. Compared to her later books, the Steen Clinic is a back drop rather than a vortex. Aside from the hints of  “psychiatrist shrink your own head” James doesn’t say all that much about the profession itself. She does use the conceits of the profession, however, with the doctors feeling themselves perfectly qualified to state a theory of the crime along with conclusions about the identity of the killer.

The crime, the murder of the Miss Bolam, strikes most characters as an annoyance rather than a tragedy. That in itself sets this book apart. While several of the characters harbor a dislike for Miss Bolam none demonstrates a true hatred of her. Sustaining a mystery when the crime itself is so cold blooded isn’t easy, you can’t have a whodunit if it’s a case of who cares. James handles this by making it less about “who would kill Miss Bolam?” and more “who among this bunch could so totally lose their cool?” The who isn’t all that difficult to figure out. James drops several Christie-style hints along the way. There is one deductive leap that Dalgliesh makes that was a bit too wide for my taste. How he went from one phone call to blackmail could have been fleshed out a bit more.

Compared to her later books, AMTM is a lesser effort. The characters are less well-drawn and less compelling but it’s only to be expected that a good writer would strive to get better. There are a few interesting hints of what is to come. A minor scene draws in religion, a subject which features prominently in later books. Two scenes set up Dalgliesh’s relationship with Deborah Riscoe and its eventual demise.

One of the pleasures of a James’ mystery is the attention she pays to the impact of the murder on the other characters. How perfectly reasonable that proximity to a murder and the subsequent investigation would cause an examination of one’s own life. AMTM features an epilogue of sorts with the office busybody filling Adam in all the changes that have taken place since the case wrapped up. It’s a nice touch and although it’s a bit obvious, it reminds me how other Dalgliesh books have left me wondering what became of the characters once the police left.

Seriously Bad Judgment

When reading an Elizabeth George novel one expects a bit of gore. George is one of those mystery novelists who is especially keen to prove she is not in the least cozy. The gore suits George better than it does Martha Grimes, the mystery writer who seems to inhabit much of the territory as she. (I would disagree with that assessment.) I’ve always seen Elizabeth George as striving to have more in common with P. D. James and often succeeding. I give George credit for stopping the endless merry-go-round of romance of the four leads and for taking a major risk is killing off one of the four. Full marks for effort. But George’s previous two books showed a few disturbing fixations (namely, children who kill and deeply unappealing female characters) that come to fruition in This Body of Death and the results left me actually writing the word “ew” in my notes.

(Anyone happening upon this who hasn’t read This Body of Death should stop now because spoilers will abound.)

I thought it would be tough to top Daidre Trahair as least appealing non-murderer in any Elizabeth George book and then along came Isabelle Ardery. So the latest candidate for superintendent is an ambitious woman. A little Prime Suspect but I’ll play along. Isabelle has a drinking problem? More Prime Suspect. Inspector Thomas Lynley coming back to the force to help said alcoholic win the coveted job? Okay. Isabelle turns out to be in over her head and Lynley helps her? A little less ok. Lynley finding Isabelle dead drunk after she effs up the case, tossing her into the shower and then having sex with her? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? WTH? Or as I wrote in my Kindle notes: EWWWWWWW.

I don’t care how much the shower sobered her up, who the hell wants to read about the hero of a series having sex with a woman who’s capacity to consent is even slightly questionable? And why would he be so desperate that he’d have sex with someone he just revived from an alcoholic stupor? She didn’t even brush her teeth. Not to mention, she’s his boss. Are we to believe Lynley’s grief, all of five months old, is so severe he’s forgotten it’s never a good idea to fish off the company pier?

It only got worse when Lynley then covers up for Isabelle so she can keep trying to be superintendent. Because people who drink at work never make bad decisions. Maybe George is trying to go somewhere with this but I have zero interest in signing up for the next installment if she’s going to try to sell a “romance” between this two. Ew.

I’ll write a proper review later. After I’ve had a chance to get over the squick factor.

Tackling a Series

For some reason it’s been years, decades even, since I tackled a mystery series in order from start to finish. Come to think of it, I even went out of order on one of the Harry Potter books. It’s not that I can’t wait to find out how it ends since I rarely ever peek at an ending.

I think it has more to do with not wearing out the characters' and author’s welcome. Taken all at once the mechanics of a series can become obvious, creakingly obvious in some cases. The set pieces become too familiar and the recurring motifs get downright annoying. Martha Grimes’ Richard Jury series is a prime example. Read a year or so apart one doesn’t notice the fact that the last dozen or so books all feature a preternaturally intelligent dog and at least one child, both of which thoroughly befuddle Melrose Plant. You’d think he’d have picked up some pointers by now.

Still I want to tackle P. D. James’ Adam Dalgliesh series in one continuous, if not chronological effort. I’ve already started out of order – Unnatural Death is the third in the series – and I’ll be rereading some of the books. And I’ll be listening to them instead of reading them. Despite all these caveats I’m looking forward to reading the books closely enough together to see the evolution over nearly 50 years. I guess this is my tribute of sorts to P. D. James and her durable series. I’m willing to risk a little over familiarity.

Would You Believe: Swedish Nazis?

Somehow all that free love, sleekly designed furniture and middle-class socialism has blinded me to the fact that Sweden had a Nazi-past of its own. A few passages in Tony Judt’s Post War clued me in to Sweden’s flirtation (if that’s quite the word) with eugenics. Now The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo comes along and tells me about the Swedish Nazi party, unrepentant Nazis and neo-Nazis.

Despite this book being everywhere I didn’t know that much about it before it was picked for my office book club and after that my policy is not to read anything about the book, even a review before forming my own opinion. All I knew was that it was Swedish, featured a female hacker and was all the rage. So the serial killer thing came as a surprise. An unpleasant surprise. I don’t like serial killer books. I don’t find serial killers, real or fictional, to be all that fascinating.

Larsson wrote a satisfyingly twisty mystery. Maybe I’m the only one who enjoyed the scenes of Blomkvist adjusting to life in the frozen north more than the descriptions of the serial killings. To be fair, Larsson doesn’t fetishize the serial killer material and that’s a relief. My only real quarrel with the book, aside from the serial killer part (and that’s a pretty big aside considering it features two of them) is that hero Michael Blomkvist can’t open his front door without women wanting a go with his man parts. Ok, maybe in the aforementioned frozen north where one’s pickings are slim this might happen but I’m guessing that in Stockholm a girl has more options. Whatever, it’s a minor quibble.

Modern American Gothic

If I could praise Carol Goodman for one thing alone it would be for updating the modern gothic. With so much bad writing and worse plotting being inflicted upon readers of popular fiction these days it is a joy to find a capable writer who wants to entertain. Goodman chooses to entertain in a genre I’ve loved since I was eight years old and my older sister started reading me her gothic paperbacks.

As any fan of Doris Miles Disney, Mary Stewart or Phyllis A Whitney knows, Gothics have their requirements. There must be dark secrets from the past, a seemingly all-powerful woman, a large house and a landscape that acts almost as another character in the story. Goodman ticks all the boxes in Arcadia Falls while updating them for the 21st century. The large house is a private school, the powerful woman is the dean and the dark secrets are investigated as part of the heroine’s PhD dissertation. Goodman does all this and for most of the book maintains a narrative drive equal to de Maurier’s Rebecca.

This is an accomplished and entertaining book. When it comes to creating atmosphere Carol Goodman is one of the best popular writers today. Her depiction of the the competing claustrophobia and security of a closed community (both the private school and the artists colony it once was) is as effortless as it is effective. I read Goodman’s first book, The Lake of Dead Languages, a few years ago and its obvious that her skills has only increased in the interim.

Unfortunately, as with her first book Goodman’s biggest challenge remains her endings. The ending is not as satisfying or engrossing as the first three-quarters of the book. I’m sure I won’t be the only reader to spot the twists a mile a way. It’s not awful, just not as good. The romance element feels a bit forced and definitely rushed – I half-wished Goodman would forgo the romance this time. But these minor disappointments compared to the overall strengths of the book.

A highly enjoyable Gothic/Mystery that will satisfy discerning fans of either genre.

Vineyard Chillin’

Philip R. Craig’s reliable murder mystery series is essentially a cozy with a Stateside setting. Small town? Check. Cast of characters featuring a few eccentrics? Check. Non-professional regularly embroiled in murders which he/she solves because of his/her insight into the human condition? Check. At the heart of each installment, however, is a story about the haves versus the have-nots.

This time (A Vineyard Killing) the haves are a group of rapacious land developers from Savannah who also happen to be world-class fencers. Before you can say, “what are the chances”, there’s an attempted murder and J. W. Jackson is right in the middle of it. The mystery itself is satisfying and the main subplot is interesting if a bit predictable toward the end. The pace is as slow as life in a resort area but that’s as it should be. My only quibble is that I would be entirely happy without any more scenes with Jackson’s children. Having them refer to their parents as “Ma” and “Pa” as if the action were taking place in that fabled small abode on the prairie doesn’t fit and the whole “Diana, the Huntress” routine is old. Just how charming is it that a father is constantly remarking on his daughter’s intake of food? But these are minor quibbles.

All in a all a solid installment in a solid series. Recommended for mystery series fans.

Unfortunately Well Titled

With 20 books to his name it’s no surprise that Robert Goddard’s fans each have their favorites and their least favorites. I’ve read them all, pre-ordered half of them from Amazon UK to get my hands on them as soon as they’re published and I’ve always been able to say that while some are better than others none have truly disappointed. Until this one.

Goddard’s territory is the unquiet past. Real historic events and people are often part of the mix, often as a MacGuffin, but prior knowledge of the events is not required for enjoyment. It is no insult to say he has a formula. Beyond the double-crosses and intricate plot twists, Goddard always chooses to keep the stakes high for his lead characters. They’re usually men who’ve either nothing left to lose or who find themselves stripped of all they value in the course of the story.

This time out Goddard sticks with historic events but makes a very odd choice in his lead character. Instead of the usual down on his luck male lead we have Richard Eusden, a man who stands to lose a few days of PTO if things don’t work out. He’s helping out an old friend, Marty, who has all the characteristics of the usual Goddard lead. This isn’t a bold choice, however, it’s mystifying because it never provides anything new just less of what brings readers to Goddard in the first place. The pacing doesn’t make up for the lack of high stakes. The characters can’t take airplanes so the action is frequently broken up for long train rides (locals!) and car trips. The MacGuffin is particularly strained for my taste and the end is, well, found wanting. Goddard throws in a character in the last 50 pages that we’ve heard nothing about before who is the key to it all including the title. This is truly disappointing coming from a master of intricate plotting.

At one point I started to wonder if Goddard wasn’t writing a deliberate parody of his own books. The overwhelming impression left is that Goddard didn’t connect with his chosen material this time out and tried to muddle through anyway. Despite the two stars I’ve given this book I’ll still pre-order Goddard’s next book because when he’s on his game there is no one better at delivering the unexpected jolt. If you are new to Robert Goddard, please don’t start with this book. Try Into the Blue or Painting the Darkness instead.

Starting a Series Out Right

With several active series of detective fiction set in post-World War I Britain it’s impressive that any author would want to launch a new one, especially when the author in question already has one successful series ongoing. The writing team that comprises Charles Todd has gone as far afield from guilt-ridden Inspector Rutledge as imaginable while still staying in familiar territory. I admit my first reaction to the news of this new series was something along the lines of “why bother?” so I’m happy to report that it’s a very good thing that Todd did bother.

A Duty to the Dead handles the business of launching a series with minimal fuss. The introduction of heroine (and military nurse) Bess Crawford - a smart, resourceful heroine without being a screaming anachronism – involves a minimum of exposition and background. Todd’s choice of making Bess being the only child of a Colonel who was raised in colonial India presents many opportunities for the character to comment on a society that she both participates in and observes. It's easy to see that this will serve the series well.

The central plot sees Bess going to visit the family of a man who died under her care to deliver his last message to them. There’s plenty of English cozy-genre trappings complete with addled vicar, misunderstood town doctor and family secrets. Bess can’t so much as take a walk without someone in the town needing immediate nursing assistance or wanting to confide in her. And yet the clichés and the creaks didn’t bother me because Todd kept the story going at a good pace. The mystery itself is satisfying without being too convoluted.

This isn’t a perfect book but it is enjoyable. Some will compare it to Todd’s Inspector Rutledge books – for me this stacks up well against the first entry in that series A Test of Wills. Others may compare it to Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs – I’ll take Bess Crawford over Maisie any day. Where Maisie is a humorless paragon of perfection, Bess is no nonsense and human. To each there own. If you’re a fan of either series or Rennie Airth’s fine DI Madden series, A Duty to the Dead is a sure bet.