jennaria | Jul. 31st, 2010

Jul. 31st, 2010

THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE, by Agatha Christie

Cover copy: The murder of Colonel Protheroe was a shock to everyone in St. Mary Mead, though hardly an unpleasant one. Even Vicar Clement had declared that killing the hated Protheroe would be a service to the world. Not only the vicar, but his young wife, the object of endless village gossip, could be considered suspects. And what about the faithless Mrs. Protheroe, or her love, the young artist Lawrence Redding? The baffled police are even more astonished when a demure spinster, Miss Jane Marple, confidently announces her plan to capture the murderer - and blithely solves her first case.

Gender of the detective: Female

I wonder what the cover copy on the first printing of this said. Probably much the same: back covers are notorious for giving away plot twists and putting the emphasis on something that isn't all that important in the book itself. In this case, Miss Marple is the twist: we're going along, no clear detective unless it's the vicar (who narrates the book in first person), and then this little old lady, whom the vicar and everyone else had dismissed as nothing but a nosy old biddy like several others in the parish, sits down and lays out exactly whodunnit and how to catch them.

That's the thing with Agatha Christie, though: she's very formulaic, but she knows how to use the formula. Yes, she uses stereotypes freely, and her characters tend to acquire depth through accretion more than through her writing. But because she's using the formula, she knows what the readers are expecting, and she knows how to yank the rug out from under us without cheating. (Cheating being an admittedly subjective term in this case.) And this particular formula is the sort that suits Christie best: such things as the vague narrative distrust of both the young and the modern age, which is one of Christie's abiding writing sins, make better sense in the sort of village that would produce sweet, maidenly, Victorian Miss Marple than they do in the presumably more cosmopolitan Poirot.

This isn't, admittedly, her best. But it's hard to really judge a series that's just starting out.

*

Our fuzzy apartment mascot is nowhere to be found (probably sleeping), but Stef and I have settled in with laptops and tea and little plastic buckets of numbers so we know what we're writing about next. It's a beautiful day, nice and cool and not at all like the usual end of July. Apparently the powers in charge of weather are kind to poor bloggers who have their computers on their laps.

Team Mariposa, Blogathon 2010 (sponsor me). Here goes nothing.

HER HIGHNESS' FIRST MURDER, by Peg Herring

Cover copy: In London, several beautiful women are found dead, their heads missing and their blood-soaked corpses dressed as nuns. The first victims are prostitutes, but later murders demonstrate that high-born women are in danger too. As the body count rises, terror reigns. Henry VIII is anxious to end the crimes, which are not only horrible in themselves but also serve as reminders of two wives he sent to the execution block.

When one of her own ladies becomes a victim, the Princess Elizabeth decides to act. To bring the killer to justice she recruits Simon, a crippled young man who sometimes keeps her company, and Hugh, a captain of her father's trusted Welsh Guard. Since the king would be furious if he knew his daughter was aiding a murder investigation, Elizabeth's involvement is a secret among the three of them. Together they work to discover who is killing women and why.

Possibilities abound: is it one of the handsome courtiers in Henry's circle, the unsavory clerk who keeps financial accounts, the madman found inside the castle gates, or even Elizabeth's own castellan? As the princess, Simon, and Hugh close in on the depraved killer, he turns his focus on them. He's clever, cunning, and dangerous, and suddenly, unless three work together, two of them will not survive the chase. After all, death is no respecter of social class, and murder can visit even Her Highness...

Gender of the detective: one male, one female

The most recent fiction I've read about this era was, sadly, Phillipa Gregory, which means that I came into this with her highly sexed Elizabeth as my default. Thankfully, this Elizabeth (in addition to being, y'know, thirteen) isn't highly sexed at all: she's living off on her own with her ladies in waiting, treading the eternal tightrope of court politics. Her relationship with Mary is a plot point. So is her relationship with her father, and with her most recent stepmother. She takes up the mystery because one of her ladies dies (and doesn't even know about it until then, despite the cover copy's implications), but there's a feeling of relief: here's something she can do, something productive. Which in turn lends itself a little too easily to some heavy-handed foreshadowing of the You Will Be Queen Some Day variety, but any sort of dodging the subject would've been equally obvious. Eh.

Elizabeth is technically only one of the detectives. Hugh does a large part of the footwork (because this book, unlike some others I'll be discussing, recognizes the restrictions on women's public roles, and thus where and what Elizabeth could reasonably go and do), but he's less of a detective as such. Simon is actually the one who figures out who did it. On the other hand, Simon winds up needing to be rescued. On the other other hand, so does Elizabeth (or rather Elizabeth's servant who realized it was a trap in time to take Elizabeth's place), and it's Simon (having been rescued) who rescues Elizabeth's servant. I'm really not sure where this leaves me in regard to gender roles, detecting, and needing to be rescued.

Final thing of note: one of the key elements of the book, and indeed sometime suspect, is left out entirely from the cover copy -- Peto, a gentleman rogue sort who befriends Simon, and indeed is the one responsible for rescuing Simon when he needs it. I know that cover copy is a tricky thing to write, but speaking as someone with a weakness for gentleman rogues, it seems sort of odd to leave him off. Maybe they were afraid people would write slashfic with Peto and Simon. Sheesh.

*

Mariposa has emerged long enough to mew demandingly at my elbow. Attempts to explain that no, seriously, I'm typing, have met only with disdain. Meanwhile, Kris is reading in peace on the futon. How does this make sense?

THE CEMETARY YEW, by Cynthia Riggs.

Cover copy: There's more than one reason the new West Tisbury police chief official made ninety-two-year-old Victoria Trumbull her deputy. For one thing, Victoria knows just about everything about everyone in town, and a lot about the rest of the Martha's Vineyard year-round population as well - not to mention their ancestors. Victoria may be afflicted with the usual aches and pains that descend on nonagenarians (she has a cut-off shoe to accommodate her bunion and a stout stick to help her on her walks through fields and woods). But she is as sharp and as sharp-eyed as the proverbial tack. So when Victoria is the only one who spots something amiss among the gravestones of the West Tisbury cemetery, it's no surprise when the chief listens.

Something is indeed amiss. First comes a request by presumed relatives in the Midwest to disinter a coffin for reburying elsewhere. Then things go wrong from there. The driver of the hearse coming to collect the coffin disappears during the island ferry trip in a rainstorm. Other deaths - some of them irrefutably murder, the others suspicious - follow. And when as a last measure the coffin is found, dug up and opened, it does not contain the expected body. Then the coffin itself disappears.

Meanwhile, the available bedroom for rent in Victoria's house has been taken over by a female relative of one of the neighbors and her raucous toucan, a bird as spoiled as the most bratty millionaire's heir. Victoria is gracious to her unwanted boarders, but they do interfere with the column she writes for the local newspaper and with her efforts to discover whether the strange antics of the coffin are related to the murders.

Victoria is the most realistic and delightful nonagenarian in mystery fiction. Her years have not blunted her intelligence and her sharp wit. We're lucky she's still around and seems to be set for a long time.

Gender of detective: female

The first of many inspired-by-Miss-Marples - although this one has plenty of other identifiable influences as well. There was a spate of herbalists right after the run on mysteries with recipes included, while the column-writing I suspect can be traced to THE CAT WHO... series. At least we don't get excerpts from said column.

The book isn't nearly as much about Victoria as you might think from the cover copy. It's more about her boarder, and some about the mysterious boyfriend of another of the town officials, and the growing realization (by the reader) that the both of them are involved in whatever is happening here. I'll admit that I didn't particularly like the boarder to begin with. The boyfriend was actually even more frustrating: it felt like the writer couldn't quite decide whether he was supposed to be James Bond-ish, or more of a trickster, or something in between. I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy to write a trickster character, but this seemed to want him to be more appealing than I found him.

Victoria isn't much easier to judge. The cover copy would have it that she's the canny sort who knows, or can figure out, all. Certainly she's the one who pegs that somethings up, because she knows there was no suicide in the family claimed, and thus no body to be dug up. But she fails to suspect certain people for a long time after the reader is giving them the fish-eye, and even when it comes down to a final confrontation, it's hard to tell how much is a deliberate trap and how much is our (female) detective needing to be rescued at the last minute from her own recklessness. Again.

Yeah, I'm cynical. After reading this many mysteries, you would be too.

*

The really tricky part of this isn't my own writing. It's trying to keep up with everyone else's. Must type faster.

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A CAT UNDER THE MISTLETOE, by Lydia Adamson.

Cover copy: Alice Nestleton -- a professional actress whose day job is cat-sitting -- has solved a dozen fiendishly feline-based crimes since her series began. Her winning personality and expertise at solving murder cases have thrilled her legion of fans. Now this hardcover debut brings Alice back for her thirteenth mystery adventure. Unlucky? Not for readers who look forward to a razor-sharp tale of detection.

It is a few weeks before Christmas, and Alice has a new client, a lovely tortoiseshell cat named Roberta. But Roberta isn't always on her best behavior. Occasionally she turns into the kitty from hell, and one of Alice's tasks is to transport the fickle feline to her therapist. Dr. Wilma Tedescu, an Amazon-size woman, is renowned for soothing many of Manhattan's savage beasties. Unfortunately, on Roberta's very first appointment Alice finds Dr. Tedescu as dead as a Christmas goose.

Dr. Tedescu was at her desk when someone put a bullet behind her ear, proving that cat "shrinks," unlike cats, are decidedly short of nine lives. Almost immediately, suspicion falls on the doctor's hot tempered estranged husband...and then on Alice. The fur flies as Alice sets out to find the real killer.

Past experience leads Alice to look into records of the doctor's other clients: cats with multiple personalities, cats with gender confusion, and cats with litter box phobias. But instinct tells her to investigate the doctor's own secret quirks and some neurotic human clients. Alice's nose for clues and her uncanny curiosity land her a whisker away from a killer who doesn't pussyfoot around with murder.

This is an inimitable Alice Nestleton mystery, complete with feline wit, suspense, romance, danger, and wondrous Christmas ambiance.

Gender of detective: female

Oh, jeez.

I did not like this one. It's in first person, which means you're inside someone's head, and you better damn well think like that person, or be able to enjoy temporarily thinking like that, or else it's just going to get your back up. Unfortunately, the narrative voice here came across as incredibly arch and full of herself. Her boyfriend at one point accuses her of actually changing when she's in the middle of a case, of acting like a different person when she's on the trail of a mystery - and not a person he likes. She gets all huffy and angry at him, rather than stopping to think about what this implies, and it winds up merely being a source of soap-opera-esque drama rather than actual character insight.

Just to add insult to injury, this is another series that dates from the fad for cat mysteries, so the combination of Romantic Drama and cats makes it feel very marketed. I'll grant you this may be my dislike for Alice speaking, but still: firm thumbs down.

*

Hour and a half down, only 22 and a half to go!

CAT IN A SAPPHIRE SLIPPER, by Carole Nelson Douglas.

Cover copy: Las Vegas PR honcho Temple Barr's beloved aunt Kit, romance novelist and hopeless romantic, wants to make sure her niece is on the right road to true love. But she winds up in a real romance of her own when she snags one of the most eligible bachelors on the Strip. Kit has fallen for one of the Fontana brothers, a silver-tongued reputed ex-mobster with a heart of gold.

And so there is to be a wedding - and a Las Vegas wedding at that!

But Vegas's glitz and glamor can conceal danger and darkness, and the Fontana-heavy bachelor party is, alas, no exception. The entire party is hijacked and taken to a remote desert ranch where the women are wild and the sex is legal.

Ill at ease among the raunch is Temple's own Matt Devine, an ex-priest turned talk-show host and Temple's secret fiance. Before Matt and the Fontanas can make their way back to the Strip, Matt unhappily stumbles upon a beautiful young woman who is quite naked and most thoroughly dead.

Given the remoteness of the location and the Fontana' shady reputation, this is a very bad thing indeed.

Luckily, Louie managed to go along for the ride. It's up to that big old tomcat to bail out his humans and save the day.

Gender of detective: one (ex)male, two female

More cats. Then again, there are kind of a lot of cat-related mysteries.

The hook for this entire series is Louie: the alternating first-person narration from either his POV or his daughter's (Midnight Louise, natch), in a very self-consciously film noir, 'I know the savage streets' hardboiled PI sort of voice, and third-person narration from the point of view of the various humans (without the self-consciously hardboiled detective elements). The cats think they're running the whole show, which is...well...not un-feline, anyway.

Honestly, my biggest beef with this book wasn't the cats, or the film noir narration (although I'll admit that hardboiled detectives aren't my thing particularly). It's not even the fact that when the cats solve the crime (as of course they do), it's because they stumble across the murderer talking about it, and then drag out Temple so she, too, can 'stumble' across it before the killer can make a get-away. (And when the killer tries to take her hostage, out come the kitty claws. That part actually kinda makes the book worth it.)

No, my biggest problem actually has to do with this being part of a series. By the time you're somewhere in the middle of a series, you've frequently got a lot of threads woven together. In this case, the previous book evidently left one really big thread dangling, in the shape of the presumed death of a major recurring character. Therefore, in this book, we keep cutting away from the pressure cooker of that distant brothel, to a Mysteriously Amnesiac Person who is recovering from a near-fatal, uh, skiing accident. It's not subtle, and it's not trying to be. It's even interesting (see also: Thia's weakness for trickster characters -- yeah, yeah, predictable, me). But for someone coming in to this series cold, it's also really really distracting.

*

We're being very quiet. I'm not sure how much of that is concentration, how much of that is Kris being polite and watching, uh, whatever she's watching on her computer with headphones, how much of that is Ian not yet being up, and how much of that is due to us not having had enough caffeine yet.

Don't worry. We'll fix that later.

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SCANDAL TAKES A HOLIDAY, by Lindsey Davis.

Cover copy: Set in ancient Rome, the mysteries of Lindsey Davis featuring sleuth Marcus Didius Falco are "one of the best historical series," says the *Detroit Free Press*, filled with "the wisecracking humor, scathing social commentary, and rollicking adventure that are Davis's trademarks." Now, in a new novel, the intrepid Falco lands a case in Rome's squalid port of Ostia and enters a most dark and dangerous place...

Infamia - a pseudonym for the sleazy rascal who writes the gossip colum for Rome's *Daily Gazette* - has vanished while claiming to be visiting an "aunt" in Ostia. With no juicy scandal to print, his employers want him found. It's a perfect job for private eye Marcus Didius Falco.

Falco's best friend, L. Petronius Longus, is already in Ostia on duty with the local vigiles and Falco expects to enjoy some good company and tolerable vino as well. Alas, not only is the wine wretched and the vigiles rowdy, but Petro - deep in amour with Falco's sister Maia - is discovering that the problem with love is the Falco family in-laws who come with it. On the bright side, Falco soon has a lead in Infamia's disappearance.

Following a trail that begins with a little boy whose mother "won't wake up" and a gardener about to be decapitated with some hedge shears, Falco finds that his inquires will put him on a perilous road. Even as his patrician wife and partner, Helena Justina, feels the icy hand of terror, Falco stumbled into something more deadly than a missing person's case. In fact, what lies beneath Infamia's disappearance is an underworld of cutthroat villains and chilling deeds. Now, with his wits and courage tested, Falco may be going to *vitam impedere vero* (stake one's life for the truth), for, like life, this case may end in the cold chambers of the grave...

Gender of detective: male

This should be right up my alley, dammit. I was a Classics major in college (well, Classics and English double major). Rome! Strong female characters! Hell, this installment even has pirates!

And yet, this is the second or third time I've picked up one of the Falco novels, and the second or third time that I've had to push myself to finish it. It's not bad writing, aside from the info-dumps (difficult to avoid, between the first-person narration and the ancient setting). But it's also very much hardboiled detective, both in narrative style and plot construction, and as just discussed, that's not much my thing. Even the pirates aren't the fun, Pirates of the Caribbean sort, but more the dark, nasty, 'kidnap women, hold them for ransom, do nasty things to them in the meantime' sort. Women might be strong, but they're not the prime movers in this universe - which is accurate to both history and genre, but still grinds me like sand in my shoe.

I suspect that in the end, it comes down to whether you enjoy the hardboiled detective style. If you do, don't worry about the Roman part, that'll be explained aplenty. If you don't...well, not even Rome can save it.

*

Part one of an all-Roman hour. Because I like themes, I do. :-)

REQUIEM FOR A SLAVE, by Rosemary Rowe.

Cover copy: Libertus has an important order to fulfill for Quintus Severus who has commissioned a magnificent new mosaic. But when Libertus finds a brutally murdered man in his workshop, and discovers that his faithful slave Minimus has vanished, he is once again dragged into a sinister world of crime and treachery.

Even more mysterious is the sighting of a 'green man' lurking in the vicinity around the time the murder took place. Can Libertus solve Minimus' unexplained disappearance and discover who killed the man in his workshop, and why?

The omens aren't looking good...

Gender of detective: male

This is likewise part of a series, although not one where I needed to have read previous books to understand what the hell was going on (nor one where references to previous novels was, God save the mark, helpfully footnoted with the title of the relevant novel). Libertus is a freedman in Roman Britain, near the end of the Pax Romana - separating him from Falco (Rome-based, end of the Republic) by nearly two hundred years as well as hundreds of miles. And he's a mosaic-maker who, in the grand tradition of mystery novels everywhere, attracts mysteries by some invisible magnet, rather than seeking them out as a private investigator. Neither of these things make him better than Falco: I merely point them out as indicators of the difference.

I did like this book better than SCANDAL TAKES A HOLIDAY, though. It's a much more traditional mystery. It's not without flaws - due to the structure of the plot, Libertus winds up with several sidekicks/people-to-bounce-ideas-off-of during the course of the book, which gives it a slightly disjointed feeling. And the 'green man' clue, combined with the person who gives it, winds up being the key to unlocking the whole mystery - but it's a Sudden Realization sort of unlocking, which is tricky enough to handle in third person, and this is first. Likewise, there are several details which all sort of get bundled together at the end and rattled off as fast as possible, as if to prove the author did know what she was doing and didn't drop any threads.

On the bright side, however, I liked Libertus better than I liked Falco, and the author manages to avoid info dumps (or at least anything that felt like an info-dump). I'm far more willing to pick up another in this series than I am to try Falco again.

*

Stef wants to know what they drank, liquor-wise, in ancient China. Attempts to suggest she Google it have been met with the irrefutable fact of her having no time. See, this is why I pre-prep to the max.

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LAST NOCTURNE, by Marjorie Eccles.

Cover copy: What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death?

These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results.

With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter's night in Vienna.

Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, LAST NOCTURNE is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action.

Gender of detective: male

For the first 80 pages or so of this book, you're left wondering if you're absolutely sure you're in the right novel. There's been one apparent suicide (the gunshot death), but mostly the narrative is focused on his widow, and the daughter of an old friend of hers who dumps her jerk of a fiance to come be the widow's social secretary, and how that's working out for her. Then comes the second seeming suicide, and we start getting flashbacks to Isobel Amberley's past, and the mystery as such starts.

Seriously. 80 pages. Out of a three-hundred-something page book, that's not as much as it could be, but still a significant chunk. And especially when you know there's something more coming, when you know there are links that haven't been drawn yet, it creates the impression that the book is lolly-gagging.

That's the thing: despite the deaths, despite the murders, this comes across as more of a historical novel with romance and mystery elements. It tries - indeed, near the end it seems to finally remember that it is a mystery, and behaves as such. But Isabel's backstory, for all it's necessary to explain the motive behind the murders, is far more concentrated on nothing more murderous than Austrian politics just prior to the second World War (which is admittedly more murderous than some). It's a good book, but I wouldn't go into it expecting a traditional mystery.

*

Mariposa has finally reconciled herself to the idea that sitting and mewing plaintively at her won't get her anything but either mewed back at, or lifted in the air as kitty weights. She's curled up next to me, watching my fingers on the keyboard as if at any minute they might come over and pet her, while Stef and I discuss Stef's next post.

THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY, by Margery Allingham.

Cover copy: A house-party with a glittering guest-list. An imposing country estate with endless shadowy staircases and unused rooms. The breathless period between the two world wars. It's the ideal setting for the classic English murder mystery, and bringing it to perfection is the introduction - in a supporting role, for the first and last time - of Albert Campion, the consummate (if compulsively quipping) Gentleman Sleuth.

The guests take some time to be grateful for Campion's presence: he is a bit peculiar, and they have more than enough distractions, what with various complicated love affairs, a curious ritual involving a jeweled dagger, and a deadly game of hide-and-seek. But the savvy reader will be singing hosannas from Campion's first appearance, knowing that it marks the beginning of one of the most intelligent and delightful series in the history of crime fiction.

Gender of detective: male

And that detective, notwithstanding the back cover, is not Campion. It's someone named George Abbershaw, who supposedly assists Scotland Yard and is a doctor and is alternately Kirk and Spock, metaphorically speaking, depending on the needs of the narration and whether the girl he's madly in love with is around. At first, Campion is just one of several background characters, rather nonsensical, vaguely sketchy, but still background. He gets sketchier as things progress: someone is murdered, something is stolen, they're all being held prisoner in this house by a German whom the narration persists in calling a 'Hun'. (Yes. Well. Dearly though I love Allingham's work, I cannot and will not claim that sensitivity to, well, much of anything is one of her strong points. Even the best of her work tends to include racism, sexism, and classism.)

Finally, about a third of the way into the book, Abbershaw turns to Campion and tells him grandly that he can stop the masquerade, Mr. Mornington Dodd. And Campion blinks at him, smiles, and tells him that he's always like that, no masquerade at all. And here are a couple other aliases that Abbershaw missed. And by the way, here's a quantity of information explaining the situation they're in, which Abbershaw didn't know.

From that point on, until they finally escape the house, it's Campion's show. He's the mastermind behind the escape plan that doesn't work, as well as the escape plan that does: he keeps everyone's spirits up: he faces down the villain with far more equanimity than Abbershaw does. Once they're out of the house, the author quickly shuffles Campion off the scene, as if afraid that Campion would solve the murder, too, given the chance, and leave Abbershaw nothing to do. But by that point, Campion already has the book in his pocket, and we don't particularly care about the murder (which is solved less by logic and more by something Abbershaw chanced to see, but conveniently doubted/forgot until it came time for the end of the novel).

*

We has salads. And chicken. And tea, although I may go for soda instead, just to be different.

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celtic_maenad!).

PRIMITIVE SECRETS: A HAWAIIAN MYSTERY, by Deborah Turrell Atkinson.

Cover copy: When Storm Kayama walks into her lucrative Honolulu law firm on morning, she's shocked -- and grieved -- to find her adopted uncle at his desk, stiff and cold. Years before, Miles Hamasaki had fulfilled a promise to Storm's father and brought her to be raised with his own family. But questions surround Hamasaki's death and her adopted family, though displaying internal rifts begins to close ranks as Storm's suspicions rise.

Heading to the Big Island for a weekend escape from escalating pressures, Storm narrowly escapes a terrible accident en route to her aunt's and uncles mountain home. There, with Maile, a traditional Hawaiian healer, and Keone, a paniolo on the huge Parker Ranch, Storm encounters a legend from her youth and a family totem, or aumakua, which will protect her -- and do it a damn sight better than modern medicine is looking after the firm's clients.

As Storm struggles to heal her own childhood wounds and bring justice to Hamasaki's killer, she also comes to grips with the rifts in her own life and culture.

From the winding cane roads of Hamakua to the seedy side of Honolulu's Chinatown, with a deft juxtaposition of a bustling Honolulu against the island's legends and wild beauty, Atkinson reveals a Hawai'i that few visitors ever see as she unfolds a clever, contemporary plot laced with island lore.

Gender of detective: Female (for a change!)

This one is actually a pleasant surprise, in more ways than one. There are soap opera elements (most notably the heroine's boyfriend discovered to be cheating on her), but while they're handled a bit, mmm, quickly, I still prefer that to it turning into a big Thing that is allowed to excuse the detective from seeing what's right in front of her face. There are supernatural elements, but they're treated with shivering uncertainty, the heroine as reluctant to admit to them as any other normal skeptical person. On the other hand, given that the supernatural elements are based in Hawaiian native legends and myths, they're still treated with respect, rather than making them into the author's plot-puppets.

There are also...how best to put this...a big part of the problems with Storm's adopted family is that one of her adoptive brothers is gay. She finds this out by following him down to the sleezy side of town, where she sees him dressed all in leather, and going into what she knows is a gay bar. And his lover? Is both drug addicted and HIV positive.

Yeah. Well.

The bright side is that this is not a large part of the plot, nor it is so much malicious and hateful as it's just sorta stereotypical. And the rest of the novel, particularly the native Hawaiian elements, is quite well written. It comes down to something similar to the Allingham just reviewed: how sensitive are you to certain subjects, and their being clumsily (if not mis-) handled?

*

Somehow I have been volunteered as Stef's plot bunny generator. Not that I mind, exactly, I'm just bemused.

THE SKY TOOK HIM, by Donis Casey.

Cover copy: It's a sad duty that brings Alafair Tucker to Enid, Oklahoma, in the fall of 1915. Her sister Ruth Ann's husband, Lester, is not long for this world, and the family is gathering to send him to his reward. Alafair's eldest daughter Martha has volunteered to come along and care for toddler Grace, freeing Alafair to comfort the soon-to-be-bereaved.

But where is Kenneth, her niece's irresponsible husband? When it comes to light that Kenneth has been involved in some shady dealing with Buck Collins, the most ruthless businessman in town, everyone is convinced that Collins has done him in. In fact, no other possibility is considered. But Alafair suspects that things are not so simple, and with help from Martha, Grace, and her sister's cat, she sets about to discover the truth about Kenneth's fate.

Over the next few days, Alafair and Martha come face to face with blackmail, intimidation, murder, and family secrets that stretch back over twenty years. And in the process, they discover things about each other that will change their relationship forever.

Gender of detective: female

The cat, incidentally, is not of any help. This isn't one of those sorts of mysteries.

It is, however, the sort of mystery wherein both Alafair and Grace are sorta kinda psychic - not enough to figure out that Kenneth is dead until well after the reader has, but enough to find the body (...well after the reader has, or at least this reader had), and enough to figure out a few key hints regarding the big secret, although that was somewhat predictable as well. Granted, including any aspect of the supernatural in a mystery is a chancy thing: it's all too easy for it to come across as a plot coupon generator. This is neither a shining example nor a total dud.

The part where this novel really shines is in the feeling of a snapshot of time and place. These people had different upbringings and different expectations than I did, and the author conveyed that without lapsing into modernization. World War One is a vague murmur in the background, oil drilling is a matter of firm debate, and Native Americans have no problem taking part in Founders' Day Celebrations of a frontier settlement. ...ye-eah. Um. Okay, so it's not perfect. But that issue was sufficiently low-key that I was willing to forgive it and enjoy the rest for what it was.

*

Ian has headed out to do non-Blogathon things. He has promised to come back with all sorts of ideas for late-night posts. Then again, given him, maybe that was a threat...

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GROUNDS FOR MURDER, by Sandra Balzo.

Cover copy: At a scaldingly competitive trade show in Milwaukee for the coffee industry, egos and tempers are steaming over such burning issues as store rivalries, product quality and employee-poaching. But events reach a head when coffee-house owner Maggy Thorsen discovers a body under a table at the conference centre. As the reluctant conference coordinator - and a potential suspect - Maggy must track the murderer, save her coffeehouse, and - hopefully - put some froth into her love life...

Gender of detective: female

Oy. Save me from Wacky Hijinx.

I freely admit: I grew up on Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, et alia. These are clever people, intelligent people, people who do not bumble unless they're damn well doing it deliberately (see Campion, a few posts previous). But there is a trend, more common with female detectives than male, to have her sort of bumble her way to the solution, Lucy Ramirez as girl detective*. A murder happens! Detective chases around trying to figure stuff out! Wacky Hijinx ensue! And somehow, usually by the detective practically tripping over the solution, she manages to solve the case.

To be fair to this book in particular, once the murder actually happens, about halfway through, the heroine remembers she has a head on her shoulders and behaves accordingly. She even manages to figure out whodunnit on her own, rather than it all being her boyfriend the cop. But the first half is all Wacky Hijinx, with the focus being on the heroine's coffee shop and attempts to make it actually profitable, not helped at all by it being first person. By the time the heroine stopped being a moron, my teeth were ground to a nub and I had very little patience left.

Not worth it. Unless you really, really find coffeeshops fascinating, I suppose.

*Or, for those who know AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER, Ty Lee, except with at least 95% less kick-ass-ness.

*

Stef is talking with her sister on Skype, while Kris tries to persuade LJ to cooperate. Me, I'm just chilling with my Cherry Coke and bucket of numbers.

MURDER 101 by Maggie Barbieri.

Cover copy: Safely away from the chaos of Manhattan, St. Thomas, a small college on the banks of the Hudson River in the Bronx, is supposed to be tranquil, bucolic, and serene. Unfortunately, English professor Alison Bergeron has found it to be anything but. Recently divorced from a fellow professor and even more recently without a car - it was stolen - she has been hoofing it to school. One Friday evening, two NYPD homicide detectives drop by her office. The good news is that they found her beat-up Volvo: the bad news is that the body of one of the students in her Shakespeare seminar was in the trunk.

Not only are Alison's chances of getting the car back bleak, but suddenly she's the primary suspect on a list that includes, among others, the murdered student's drug-dealing boyfriend, Vince, and the girl's father's business rivals (he's head of an old Italian family...)

Accused of a crime that she didn't commit, Alison enlists her best friend, Max's, emotional support and services as an amateur sleuth. Their fumbling efforts to clear Alison's name could land her in even hotter water with Detective Bobby Crawford, the handsome investigating officer (and former alter boy) - not to mention the nuns at St. Thomas...

Maggie Barbieri's charming professor and down-to-earth detective make an unlikely but loveable team in her delightful debut mystery.

Gender of detective: female

To be absolutely fair: there is one instance of Wacky Hijinx right near the beginning. However, it's only the one, and the heroine is heartily sorry for it pretty much immediately and doesn't do it again. Which is surprising, given the way the cover pitches it, but rather a relief (see review immediately preceding this one).

More to the point, we get a reason why the heroine isn't necessarily acting as intelligent as you'd expect from a college professor, and it's a reason I have personal experience with: her divorce has just become final. Which wouldn't be such an issue, except that she was in denial about the divorce happening at all, which means it's all hitting her at once...yeah, been there, done that, helloooooo junior year in high school!

It does mean that she doesn't follow up on something which I, at least, pegged as Possible Important Clue much earlier than she did. But it also means that I'm a lot more forgiving of the lapse than I might be otherwise.

*

Dear red bucket, why do you not give me the numbers of the books I really really want to do? Are you saving them for the wee hours of the night? Or am I just getting randomizer fail?

Team Mariposa, Blogathon 2010, wherein I am already beginning to lose it. Send help! Send caffeine! Send sponsorship!

LITTLE KNELL, by Catherine Aird.

Cover copy: Colonel Caversham, once prominent in the British colonial service, has died and left his large collection of artifacts to the local Calleshire museum. Included in those artifacts is a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy and case, now the responsibility of one Mr. Fixby-Smith, Curator of the Greatorex Museum. What should be a simple moving job, however, is complicated by the local coroner, Mr. Granville Locombe-Stableford, since no body -- no matter how ancient -- can be moved without his consent. Which is how Detective Chief Inspector C.D. Sloan is dragged away from his more pressing concern with the burgeoning local drug problem and sent to the museum to sort out egos and red tape.

When the lid on the mummy case is raised, however, what greets the coroner, curator, and inspector is not what they inspect. Instead of the remains of the ancient Rodoheptah, they found the body of an unidentified young woman who has been dead only a matter of days.

Gender of detective: male

Blah. The twee!

Seriously, this author has fallen in love with her own words, and thinks we should be in love with them too. She has Done Her Research, and wants to show it off, which is bad enough: the fact that she does it as if she were being paid by the word merely makes it worse. It's all very arch, and sly, and coyly self-conscious.

Bah, I say, and Bah again.

It's as much (or more) about the drugs as it is about the murder, which doesn't help any: if one is writing one's best attempt at a proper English cosy murder mystery, then one shouldn't go getting drug-running in it, is all I'm saying. The part where you're not supposed to handle a mummy, because it might give you anthrax! And then, indeed, the murderer is given away because anthrax! Yeah, that's just the cherry on top.

The irony is that I've read a few of her mystery short stories, and the ones that don't feature Sloan tend to be far better than the ones that do. Ironic, given that Sloan himself doesn't suck, it's just everyone else around him.

*

Kris: Hi, Mariposa. Are you here to comfort me for my origami failure, or to taunt me with it?
Thia: Well, it is her.
Kris: True. Probably both, then.

THE CAT WHO WENT UP THE CREEK, by Lilian Jackson Braun.

Cover copy: Pickax's favorite columnist, James Qwilleran, is enjoying a brief vacation at the Nutcracker Inn, in the nearby town of Black Creek -- though his two Siamese, who prefer the spaciousness of their home, beg to differ. At least the many squirrels that have free rein on the grounds of the inn provide some measure of entertainment for Koko and Yum Yum, while Qwill unearths lots of material for his book-in-progress, TALL AND SHORT TALES.

But the tranquility of the place is interrupted by the discovery of a body floating down the creek - the body of a man who had been a guest at the inn. And a possible motive for his murder is suggested when several gold nuggets are found in his possession. Might he have been illegally prospecting for gold in the Black Forest Conservancy, or perhaps beneath the creek? Seems someone else wanted that gold more than he did...

With her twenty-fourth Cat Who.. mystery, Lilian Jackson Braun once again demonstrates why Qwill, Koko, and Yum Yum are purrmanent fixtures in the world of clever and crafty crime-solvers.

Gender of detective: male

Some of the mysteries I read for this bored me. Some irritated me. This is one of the few that actually left me angry. This is a well known author. This is a bestselling series. And this is some of the worst writing I encountered in my survey.

Seriously. Most of the book is spent on being unbearably cutesy: the squirrels are cute ! Koko and Yum Yum are cute! Qwill's writing is cute! The local amateur Gilbert & Sullivan production is cute! The local amateur historical production is cute! None of which has anything to do with any mystery whatsoever, it's just showing off how Qwill and his friends and his locality are Cuter Than You.

Worse, there are bits and bobs and stories dragged in that in a decent mystery would actually have some bearing on something. Here? Nope. At one point, early on, Qwill is headed to a friend's newly refurbished inn, and vaguely remembers there's a story attached to the site. Does he have to research it? Of course not! He goes to his half-written book, and reads the story he's already written up. And the story doesn't even point to a skeleton hidden in the attic, because there are no skeletons. Valuable antique furniture, yes (which is completely legitimately taken out for an exhibit that will profit the inn, all financed by Qwill, who apparently has a trust that lets him spend money like water). But no skeletons.

When the dead body finally turns up, he's all but ignored: it's more important that his death allows Qwill and the cats to move off to the now-vacant cabin, rather than the top floor of the inn. It's not until nearly the end that the book remembers it's supposedly a mystery, and then it lasts only long enough for a second murder to take place, and Qwill to declare, on very little evidence, that X is the killer with Y and Z being factors that the law will also need to take care of. Ta-da, end of book. Confrontation? Arrest? Closure? Why would we need that? Qwill's told us who the bad guys are!

Somebody help me out here, guys. Is the whole series like this, or did the author just have a bad book, or is the series experiencing writing decay? What the hell's up with this?

*

If you're following me, check out my fellow Team Mariposa member as well -- she's writing flash fanfic for the ALS association, and she's much better at writing down our nonsense.

THE ANGEL AND THE JABBERWOCKY MURDERS: AN AUGUSTA GOODNIGHT MYSTERY (WITH HEAVENLY RECIPES), by Mignon F. Ballard.

Cover copy: Augusta Goodnight, heavenly sleuth and guardian angel, is a welcome boarder with longtime resident Lucy Nan Pilgrim in the seemingly tranquil town of Stone's Throw, South Carolina. And Augusta's divine intervention is needed now more than ever. The local college is the kind of safe place where students don't even lock their doors. At least it used to be, until girls started mysteriously disappearing.

When the body of another student, D.C. Hunter, is found in a shed by the lake, Lucy and Augusta must race to figure out if her murder is connected to the deaths of two other girls. Should Augusta focus on the English professor who was having an affair with D.C.? Or on the seemingly cheerful caretaker who happened to discover two of the bodes? And what is the meaning of the "Jabberwocky" clues that keep turning up around campus?

It will take some heavenly help - and a little home cooking - to restore the peace of the town.

Gender of detective: female

For the author's sake, I really really hope it was her editor who added on to her title. It's twee enough to have a guardian angel as your detective, but the addition of the recipes...

Aside from the twee premise, this is actually quite a good 'cosy' sort of mystery. Despite the cover copy, Augusta isn't the detective, not least because most people can't see her. (Apparently. It's a plot point. Who knows.) Augusta mostly serves as backup to Lucy, who's the real detective here, and a well-written one too - asking questions and putting things together without ever reading as nosy or poking in some place where she shouldn't be (an arguably impressive feat for a detective).

I didn't try the recipes. I'm willing to read these books, but I'm trying to lose weight, not gain it, and the selling point of the title recipes ain't their low caloric content.

*

We're eating apples and cheese. Nothing baked at all. However, I am assured that garlic bread is in our future.

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MONDAY MOURNING, by Kathy Reichs.

Cover copy: Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.

She should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in a basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?

Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe's greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones' antiquity.

But something doesn't make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon 14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she's right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.

Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent place in her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.

As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return...Tempe may be next.

With its powerful mix of nail-biting suspense and cutting-edge forensic science, MONDAY MOURNING is the best yet from this superbly gifted, megastar author who as New York Newsday says, is "the real thing."

Gender of detective: female

Yay, Bones!

Er. Ahem. No, there isn't any actual crossover between the television series and the novels, at least not with this novel. As I understand it, it's more of an 'inspired by' sort of situation than any direct adaptation.

The books, for example, are much more careful about their science. Despite the implications of the cover copy, Brennan doesn't do all the science: she's scrupulous about giving credit where credit is due to other labs, other scientists, who can do the tests she can't. This isn't CSI, where they're able to do every test known to man and in triple-time. Reichs is admittedly a little too fond of ending chapters on a "had I but known" sort of note, but she's at least decent at following up with something that would genuinely have been different, had she known, as opposed to something where I can't come up with anything that would have changed.

My one qualm about the book: the first two thirds are spent on evidence and logic, and then they figure out who they're going after and the last third abruptly turns into a suspense thriller, with kidnappings and last-minute rescues and such. Yes, this does mean Tempe needs to get rescued. Boo.

*

Stef's boy is over here, reading manga and grumbling about panels that are out of context and don't make sense. Then again, it is MUSHISHI he's reading.

MURDER ON THE CLIFFS, by Joanna Challis.

Cover copy: Young Daphne du Maurier is headstrong, adventurous, and standing on the cusp of greatness.

Walking on the cliffs in Cornwall on a dark and stormy day just after the Great War has finally come to an end, Daphne stumbles upon the drowned body of a beautiful woman, dressed only in a nightgown, her hair strewn along the rocks, her eyes gazing up to the heavens. Daphne soon learns that the mysterious woman was engaged to marry Lord Hartley of Padthaway, an Elizabethan mansion full of intriguing secrets.

As the daughter of the famous Sir Gerald du Maurier, Daphne is welcomed into the Hartley home, but when the drowning of Miss Victoria Bastion turns out to be murder, Daphne determines to get to the bottom of the mysteries of Padthaway - in part to find fresh inspiration for her writing, and in part because she is irresistably drawn to the romance of grand houses and long-buried secrets.

MURDER ON THE CLIFFS is an enthralling mystery that gives fictional life to the inspiration behind Daphne du Maurier's classic REBECCA.

Gender of detective: female

Everyone always asks authors where they got their ideas. The truth generally has more to do with 'I read this article in the newspaper' or 'this one small thing happened to me, and I extrapolated' or 'well, I was in the shower one day...' Which isn't what they want to hear. We want to hear that authors Actually Experienced something that led to this.

I don't know exactly how true my theory is. But given the number of mysteries, in particular, that feature authors in situations remarkably like the books that would later make the authors famous, I suspect I'm not totally off.

The history in this example of the genre isn't totally accurate. Daphne du Maurier published several books before REBECCA, and the character who is apparently meant to be the man she eventually married has, according to Wikipedia, the wrong first name. But the point of the book isn't historical accuracy. The point is to take Daphne du Maurier and throw her into a situation that is similar to but not exactly the same as REBECCA. The dead first love, the love affair with the man left behind, the house with its possessive housekeeper... I haven't read REBECCA, but even I recognize the elements.

That's probably its greatest weakness as far as I'm concerned, though. I haven't read REBECCA, so I will not and cannot pick up on all the connections. It's not bad, but I suspect I'm missing the part that might make it anything more.

*

Here begins a triple play! Next up, another detective author!

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JANE AND THE WANDERING EYE, by Stephanie Barron.

Cover copy: As Christmas of 1804 approaches, Jane Austen finds herself "insupportably bored with Bath, and the littlenesses of a town," despite the seasonal gaiety, the elegant Assemblies, and the appearance of a celebrated pair of actors at the Theatre Royal. It is with something like relief, then, that she accepts a peculiar commission from her Gentleman Rogue, Lord Harold Trowbridge -- to shadow his niece, Lady Desdemona, who has fled to Bath to avoid the attentions of the arrogant and unsavoury Earl of Swithin.

But at a masquerade thronged with the fashionable and the notorious, Jane's idle diversion suddenly turns deadly. Even as the actor Hugh Conyngham transfixes the guests with his declamation of Macbeth's murderous soliloquy, his theatre manager is discovered stabbed to death in an anteroom. Weeping on his breath is Hugh's sister, the spirited tragedienne Maria Conyngham. And standing by the body, knife in hand, is Desdemona's brother, Simon, Lord Kinsfell. In vain does Simon protest his innocence: he is arrested and charged with murder.

Jane, however, knows that there is more to this fatal drama than meets the eye. And what is one to surmise from the stormy portrait of an eye left lying on the corpse? As Yuletide revels progress, Jane's delicate inquiries expose a bewildering array of suspects and an endlessly shifting pattern of flirtations, amours, and sinister entanglements. And as Jane's fascination with mystery and her fondness for the dramatic arts lead her deeper into the investigation, it becomes clear that she will not uncover the truth without some playacting of her own.

Yet Jane's bravura performance could do more than unmask a killer...it could lead to the ruin of her reputation, or even the loss of her life.

Fiendishly clever and breathlessly diverting, JANE AND THE WANDERING EYE weaves manner, mayhem and murder into a dazzling spectacle of intrigue and suspense.

Gender of detective: female

Right, then, Ms Barron - put down your copy of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, back away slowly, and nobody will get hurt...

Fair's fair: the only reason I recognize the frequent references is because it's my favorite Austen novel, and while I don't know it by heart, I certainly know it well enough to recognize when it's being quoted. Likewise, while the amount of research put in is impressive, I do in fact know someone* who was driven up a wall and back down again by not merely the number, but the relative pointlessness of her footnotes. (For my own part, I'm not sure if it's better or worse to shift one's info-dumps into footnote form as opposed to in-text. Easier to skip, I suppose.)

The mystery itself depends heavily on Actual Regency Historical Persons, which doesn't help, and throws Jane still more into a really questionable situation re: Lord Trowbridge. Jane's actual biography says she was disappointed in love, and so the second book in the series duly had her so disappointed. Unfortunately, as the series progresses, she gets steadily closer and closer to Lord Trowbridge, until one is not merely left wondering why Random Dude From Second Book is supposed to have been her great disappointment, but also how the hell she still has a reputation left, given some of the things Lord Trowbridge has pulled. (No, not that sort of thing. It's not that kind of series.)

In any case. The murderer is caught, and nothing is resolved with Lord Trowbridge because this is a series after all. It's not a bad book -- certainly better than some of the earlier ones I remember reading -- but I'm not sure it's a series I would recommend. Definitely not one I would recommend marathoning. The footnotes might stick somewhere painful.

*For values of 'know' that equal 'have been on each other's f-lists/access lists for several years now, exchange comments, but never met in person or anything'.

*

Garlic has been roasted, and the goulash is being heated, I think. Mmm, goulash. :is part hobbit:

THE MATTER AT MANSFIELD (OR, THE CRAWFORD AFFAIR), by Carrie Bebris.

Cover copy: After their recent adventures with hidden treasure and secrets from the past, Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy are looking forward to enjoying a quiet spell at Pemberley with their new daughter, but their hoped-for peace is short-lived.

Darcy's aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is eager to arrange a lucrative and socially acceptable match for her daughter, Anne. Of course, Lady Catherine has not taken into account such frivolous matters as love or romance, let alone the wishes of her daughter. Needless to say, there is much turmoil when the young bride-to-be elopes.

In pursuit of the headstrong young couple, the Darcys speed to Mansfield Park - where the usually intricate game of marriage machinations becomes even more convoluted by lies and deception. The Darcys know that love and marriage can be a complex and dangerous business - one that can even lead to murder.

Anne's betrothal is further complicated by codes of honor, rival lovers, and mistaken identity. The Darcys must sort out the matters at hand in a manner that is quiet enough to avoid a scandal -- yet swift enough to avert disaster.

The Darcys take center stage as the Regency era's answer to THE THIN MAN's Nick and Nora, searching for truth between teatimes, amidst the social whirl of Jane Austen's England.

Gender of detectives: one male, one female

This is another one that's part of a series - but for this one, I'd argue that it not only isn't necessary to have read the previous books, it's probably better not to. Ms. Bebris likes supernatural elements, see. I had picked up the first two in the series, some time ago, only to find not only the solution to one mystery being 'possession by a possible Satanic ancestor', but Elizabeth being interested in/sensitive to psychic abilities, while Darcy was the complete skeptic. I had been hoping for something considerably more "Nick and Nora"-ish, to borrow from the cover copy, and consequently abandoned the series until now.

This one leaves aside the supernatural elements, in favor of all-Austen crossover elements - the ne'er-do-well with whom Anne de Bourgh elopes is Henry Crawford, from MANSFIELD PARK. This leads to much melodrama, and sadly little interaction between Fanny and Elizabeth, or even Edmund and Darcy. Mostly it's about Henry, and what a scoundrel he is, no really total scoundrel. And then he's dead. And then he isn't. And then he's dead again, which aside from the need to solve the murder is somewhat of a relief, as it clears the way for Colonel Fitzwilliam to marry Anne.

(...I'm pretty sure I've read that fanfic before. Anyway. Carrying on.)

Overall: good idea, not quite as good in the execution. Perhaps only one shake of drama in the stew next time, instead of six or seven.

*

Mariposa has settled in next to me again. I would find this much sweeter if I didn't suspect it's less for love of me and more for love of my body heat, with a side of love for my computer's heat.

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DEATH AT GLAMIS CASTLE, by Robin Paige.

Cover copy: In this stunning new novel by national bestselling author Robin Paige, we are taken back to the turn of the century, to a sumptuously evocative castle beset by centuries of murder...

Lord Charles Sheridan and his American wife, Kate, are on an archaeological dig, excavating sections of Hadrian's Wall, when they receive a mysterious telegram. King Edward has summoned them to Glamis Village, a quaint hamlet north of Edinburgh, without telling them why.

Upon their arrival, they discover that they will be staying at Glamis Castle. Nestled in the rugged Grampian Mountains, it is the most historic castle in all of Scotland, a place teeming with dark secrets and haunting shadows. For Kate, this is the perfect opportunity to gather much-needed inspiration for her next Gothic novel. But while she winds her way through the elaborate manor, gleaning the mysterious histories of those who have dwelt there, Lord Charles discovers the real reason behind their journey to Glamis.

It seems that Prince Eddy, who had been heir to the throne until his purported death in 1892, has actually been alive all these years. Deemed unfit for the throne, he has been living secretly at Glamis under an assumed name. Only now the prince has gone missing - on the very morning that the body of one of his servants was found, her throat slashed in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Ripper's. Now, Charles and his clever Kate must find Eddy and clear his name - while keeping his true identity a secret.

Gender of detectives: one male, one female

This is technically an exception to my 'female authors' rule, as it was written by a husband-and-wife team under a female pseudonym. It does feel like Charles is more of a detective, or at least more of a traditional detective, than his wife: he's the one given all the skinny on what's up with Prince Eddy, and who works logically, while she's left to make personal contacts and work off intuition. (Y helo thar traditional gender-based problem-solving division! Fancy seeing you here!)

Erm. Anyway. Despite the cover's emphasis, the Ripper isn't particularly part of this story, mostly because Charles and Kate tackled that case in a previous book. Prince Eddy is more than a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but he's not the Ripper. Hell, Kate is arguably more insane than he is, given they portray her writer instincts as if they were a completely separate personality.

(As a side note, why are fictional answers to historical mysteries always the most complicated ones, involving royalty if at all possible? Yeah, yeah, it's because it makes the best story. But still, I spent more time rolling my eyes at the Man In The Iron Mask parallels than I should.)

Overall, a little fond of showing off their research skill, but I'm beginning to think it's all but impossible to avoid that in historical mysteries. I'm at least willing to pick up further books in the series.

THE BODY IN THE IVY, by Katherine Hall Page.

Cover copy: In the anticipated follow-up to Katherine Hal Page's Agatha Award-winning novel THE BODY IN THE SNOWDRIFT, Faith Fairchild is lured to a remote island to solve a decades-old mystery with ties to those close to her. In a beautifully crafted homage to Agatha Christie's AND THEN THERE WERE NONE, the island's guests find themselves trapped in an increasingly desperate game of whodunit.

In 1970, a popular, wealthy student, Helene Prince, fell to her death just before her graduation from Pelham College. The police ruled it a suicide, but Prin's twin sister never believed the official account of events. Thirty years later, now an internationally known bestselling suspense writer, she's still yearning for an answer.

Enter Faith Fairchild, a caterer, sometimes sleuth, and most significant in this case, the sister of a Pelham grad. Through the Pelham old-girl network, Faith has been hired for a weeklong reunion of eight classmates on the novelist's very private island. The dream job - the house is a mini-resort with spectacular ocean views - turns into an nightmare when Faith discovers she's trapped not with a group of longtime friends, but a group of suspects. None of the women knew the others were invited - and definitely hadn't stayed in touch. With no phone lines, cell reception, or boat, Faith is caught up in a deadly game of cat and mouse as one by one the alumnae fall prey to a madwoman. A disturbed sister's revenge? Faith must quickly unlock a series of past secrets if she's going to leave the island alive!

Gender of detective: female

Pelham isn't necessarily Wellesley. Wellesley is hardly the only all-women college in Massachusetts, after all, nor the only one with a bell tower. But the urge to make certain connections is strong, even though the flashbacks to Pelham are anything but reminiscent of my own college years. Helene Prince was toxic, systematically smashing each of her supposedly closest friends. It's not so much a question of whether Prin was murdered, but who did it.

Which in turn means that Faith Fairchild was actually hired, not so much to cater as to detect. Not that she's told this until nearly the end (which is very bad planning on her employer's part, given that someone is killing off her guests). Likewise, we're told she figured out who's behind both Prin's murder and the current murders, but we're never actually shown how the hell she figured it out.

I enjoyed this, but it was for not-Wellesley and for Helene Prince, and the vicious joy of watching her get hers. Faith remains rather a non-entity, and I have no particular desire to read more of her. (The fact that apparently she is a minister's wife doesn't help: I grew up in that situation and do not trust fictional representations of same, as they get it wrong too often.)

*

Must go get more soda. And possibly break out the WiiFit and attempt some yoga, in an attempt to unknot myself. Stef has already muttered about how if we're doing this next year, we're hiring a massage therapist for pit crew, dammit.

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INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES, by Jennifer Lee Carrell.

Cover copy: A long-lost work of Shakespeare, newly found...a killer who stages the Bard's extravagant murders as flesh-and-blood realities...a desperate race to find literary gold, and just to stay alive...

On the eve of the Globe's production of HAMLET, Shakespeare scholar Kate Stanley's eccentric mentor gives her a mysterious box, claiming to have made a groundbreaking discovery. Before she can reveal it to Kate, however, terrifying echoes of the past break through to the present: The Globe burns, and a body is found inside - murdered in the strange manner of Hamlet's father. Opening the box, Kate finds the first piece in a Shakespeare puzzle that sets her off on a deadly, high-stakes treasure hunt, racing from England to Spain to America.

An expert in occult Shakespeare, Kate knows better than anyone the many secrets, half-truths, codes, and curses surrounding his life and work. On the trail of a four-hundred-year-old mystery, she soon realizes that the prize at the end promises to unlock literary history's greatest secret.

But Kate is not alone in this hunt, and the buried truth threatens to come at the ultimate cost...

Gender of detective (?) - female

This isn't a murder mystery, this is a thriller - basically THE DA VINCI CODE except with Shakespeare instead of the New Testament. And like THE DA VINCI CODE, it's not enough to chase an abstract: you have to bring in identity.

Officially, Kate is chasing a lost play of Shakespeare's. Unofficially, it rapidly turns into an issue of Who Shakespeare Really Is - to which the answer, of course, is not "the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon". In fact, it's the most complicated possible theory on the subject. (Why...yeah, yeah, I know, I asked this just a few posts ago, and the answer hasn't changed. It's still about the best/most dramatic possible story.) Really unofficially, it turns out that Kate's murdered mentor was related to one of the key players, which is either a very nice tying off of a loose end or that little bit too much that pushes things over the top, depending on your relative tolerance by the time you reach that point of the book.

It's well written - certainly better written than Dan Brown. But it still elicits a certain amount of 'seriously? seriously?' at the conspiracy theories it perforce avows with a straight face.

AUNT DIMITY SLAYS THE DRAGON, by Nancy Atherton.

Cover copy: As her eighth summer in the charming village of Finch approaches, Lori Shepard finds herself craving something to spice up her all-too-familiar routine. Her wish is fulfilled when a rowdy Renaissance festival comes to town, but Lori never anticipated the sort of excitement -- and mystery -- that the fair brings to the otherwise docile English village.

King Wilfred's Faire is unlike anything Lori has ever seen. The age of chivalry lives again within its faux-stone walls; wizards, wenches, magicians, and minstrals provide fairgoers with lighthearted entertainment. Lords quaff, jesters laugh, and knights do battle in the joust arena. Lori's neighbors are enchanted by the pageantry and accept King Wilfred's invitation to join in the fun. While they eat, drink and make merry, Finch is besieged by tipsy tourists, wandering wizards, and bellicose knights who threaten to turn the sleepy village upside down.

As the villagers attempt to rout the rampaging hordes, Lori discovers a dark layer of intrigue lurking beneath the fair's bright surface. Is a sinister figure stalking young Mirabel, the angel-voiced madrigal singer? Has a jealous rival sabotaged the Dragon Knight's weapons? Is an evil assassin trying to murder Good King Wilfred? Or has Lori's imagination run away with her yet again?

Consulting with her dear Aunt Dimity for otherworldly advice, Lori races to save her beloved village - risking her neck in the process - and attempts to keep medieval revelry from ending in modern-day tragedy.

Gender of detective: female

Lori is the sort of person who is repeatedly accused (by herself!) of letting her imagination run away with her. This winds up meaning that she notices something is wrong, and she's the one who gathers the evidence...and then, between jumping to conclusions and second-guessing herself, she completely fails to put everything together. It's her husband who takes the last step, and is actually the one who makes the accusation.

On the bright side, the novel mostly avoids Wacky Hijinx. I'm not sure how, Lord knows. Ironically, maybe the fact that it's told in first person helps: Lori is very self-conscious about her imaginative tendencies, and does her best to rein them in.

Aunt Dimity is a gimmick, nothing more and nothing less. Lori has this book, see, and when she writes in it, someone replies. Fortunately, Aunt Dimity is much more kindly natured than Tom Riddle, and serves as Lori's more prudent side, at least in theory. In practice...well, as I said, she reads as a gimmick, a way for the author to have her ditzy cake and eat it too. There are apparently many, many more in this series, but I don't think I'll be seeking them out.

*

Stef is making whimpery noises. Not so much because the well has run dry as because she's stretching. Tricky thing, stretching.

UNNATURAL DEATH, by Dorothy Sayers.

Cover copy: The wealthy old woman was dead - a trifle sooner than expected. The intricate trail of horror and senseless murder led from a beautiful Hampshire village to a fashionable London flat and a deliberate test of amour - staged by the debonair sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.

Gender of detective: male

"I happened to find out that a young woman had murdered an old one for her money," Peter Wimsey says in the much better-known GAUDY NIGHT. "It didn't matter much: the old woman was dying in any case, and the girl (though she didn't know that) would have inherited the money in any case. As soon as I started to meddle, the girl set to work again, killed two innocent people to cover her tracks and murderously attacked three others. Finally she killed herself. If I'd left her alone, there might have been only one death instead of four."

I was rather surprised to pick up this novel, because I hadn't realized that the summary Winsey gives above was of an actual official (novelized) case. His summary isn't exactly accurate: the whole point of UNNATURAL DEATH is that, due to some then-recent changes in inheritance law, it isn't certain that the girl would have inherited in any case. Likewise, at least one of the attacks pre-dates Wimsey's 'meddling.'

But Wimsey's summary does give a much better sense of the feel of the novel than the back cover does. This is a downright depressing novel, wherein even the best of intentions go astray, culminating in the suicide of the captured murderer rather than face trial and the death penalty. Without the awareness of it being a part of a series - without being able to continue on to GAUDY NIGHT, wherein Peter (and Harriet) face the question of responsiblity for other people's actions, and come out the other side.

Also worth noting: the ambiguously gay relationship between the girl, Mary Whittaker, and her best friend. Miss Climpson, the private investigator that Peter sends down, assesses it as being unhealthily close, a schoolgirl crush that has for some reason outlasted the schoolgirl years. Then again, Miss Climpson also has Firm Ideas about women needing men, and the narrative voice makes a firm point about Miss Climpson not being a Natural Spinster, whatever that might be. It's difficult to judge how much of the subtext is intended, and how much it's simply meant to imply that Mary Whittaker was unnatural (she's also portrayed as trying to seduce Peter Wimsey, and making a bad job of it because she clearly loathes touching him). Mostly this only serves to make an already depressing book even more so.

*

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BURNING LAMP, by Amanda Quick.

Cover copy: In this second novel of the Dreamlight trilogy from New York Times-bestselling author Amanda Quick, psychical power and passion collide as a legendary curse comes to a burn.

The Arcane Society was born in turmoil, when the friendship of its two founders evolved into a fierce rivalry. Nicholas Winters' efforts led to the creation of a device of unknown powers called the Burning Lamp. Each generation, the Winters man who inherits it is destined to develop multiple talents - and the curse of madness.

Plagued by hallucinations and nightmares, the notorious crime lord Griffin Winters is convinced he has been struck with the Winters Curse. By even as he arranged a meeting with the mysterious Adelaide Pyne, he has no idea how closely their fates are bound, for she holds the missing lamp in her possession.

Their dangerous psychical experiment makes them the target of forces both inside and outside the Arcane Society. And though desire strengthens their power, their different lives will keep them apart - if death doesn't take them together.

Gender of detectives: one male, one female

Don't judge me. :-p

Seriously, Amanda Quick is brain candy. You know exactly what you're getting, and she's fairly good at delivering it: the strong woman (but not as strong as the man), the ambiguously dark (but not too dark) man, the Really Fucking Evil villain (who thinks he's stronger than he actually is).

This particular installment reads more like a historical romance with strong mystery sub-plot than a mystery with historical romance sub-plot, but I am willing to be forgiving, not least because her heroine is not a virgin. Usually, despite various poses as being a widow and/or brief stints in a brothel, her heroines are virgins until the hero appears. Having a heroine who takes her 'yes, so, sex can be fun but not necessarily emotional' attitude into a non-theoretical realm is empowering. (This is admittedly because the usual sequence is as follows: heroine explains her attitude, hero has mad passionate sex with her, hero realizes she was a virgin and promptly decides they must marry now, heroine re-explains her attitude with added tremulousness, heroine's objections are overruled and they wind up married.)

There is of course a sequel (see note about 'second in Dreamlight trilogy' above), wherein apparently all the interpersonal gains of this book got wiped out over the next few centuries. But I suppose that's what sequels are for. :cynical:

*

Stef and I may perhaps have been sword-fighting with our little plastic shovels, and Ian may perhaps have recorded it. ...it's not so much the shovel-fighting I regret, it's the victory dance afterwards.

MURDER TALKS TURKEY: A YOOPER MYSTERY, by Deb Baker.

Cover copy: It's finally spring in Michigan [...] and the locals have only one thing on their minds - the turkey-hunting opener.

But for sheer adrenaline value, not even turkey season can compete with the local Credit Union getting held up at gunpoint. Committing a robbery in a town where everyone is armed for combat is not the smartest thing to do, and the gunman is shot dead right her in the Stonely Credit Union lobby. The only problem is, in a room full of camo-wearing, heat-packing witnesses, the stolen money has mysteriously vanished.

Faster than you can say "Tom Turkey," Gertie, Cora Mae, and Kitty are on the case in this hoot of a whodunit.

Gender of detective: female

There is, in fact, something I hate worse than Wacky Hijinx. And that would be Quirky Characters. The kind that do not bother to have an actual personality, or characterization, because they are quirky and therefore loveable. Except that they aren't.

The first person narrator is horrible at her job. Not that this makes her any different from half the rest of the characters, who are likewise horrible at their jobs. The rest are so focused on being Quirky that it's impossible to tell whether they're naturally idiots or just pretending. Makes it difficult to care about your heroine risking her life when you're kind of hoping she'll die, I'll tell you that.

I do not loathe this the way I loathed, say, Lilian Jackson Braun's book. But that's not saying very much.

*

It's a little worrisome when the mere suggestion of a fandom for her next prompt makes your co-blogger laugh so hard she literally falls out of her chair. (Don't worry, she's better now.)

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GAME OF PATIENCE, by Susanne Alleyn.

Cover copy: Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims prove to be Celie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her.

Celie's enigmatic and bitter friend Rosalie Clement provides Aristide with intelligence that steers him toward Philippe Aubry, a young man with a violent past who had been in love with Celie. According to an eyewitness, however, Aubry could not have murdered Celie. As time passes, Aristide finds himself falling in love with Rosalie, albeit reluctantly, as he suspects that she knows more about the murders than she will say.

When Aristide uncovers evidence that points to Rosalie herself, he must learn whom she is protecting and why before he can obtain justice for Celie and save Rosalie from the guillotine. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafes, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of post-revolutionary France, Aristide's investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.

With elaborate French cultural atmosphere, author Susanne Alleyn has created a sophisticated and stylish mystery set in the uneasy and turbulent years between the Terror and the rise of Napoleon.

Gender of detective: male

This is quite good. Admittedly it falls into one of my preferred tropes: Aristide is very much in the style of Sherlock Holmes, capable of emotional connection, but in the end, the puzzle is all. But it's also well-written. It has the same feeling of being a snapshot of time and place, without pointless infodumps, that I've noted elsewhere.

...I will also note, regarding emotional connection, that Aristide develops a friendship with the official Executioner of Paris, which could be read as totally slashy if your mind chooses to go that way, and given the hour, mine kinda is. (Yes, he develops a friendship with Rosalie as well, but there are Other Circumstances afoot there.)

*

Just managed to spill my soda all over myself. But not over my laptop! Am not sure if this exactly counts as a win.

THE TORCH OF TANGIER, by Aileen G Baron.

Cover copy: War time Tangier, policed by Franco's Guardia Civil, thick with many nationalities, including Germans and Allies, bitter with the insults of Colonialism, is a dangerous place. Archaeologist Lily Sampson, recruited from her studies in Chicago to the enigmatic Dr. Drury, finds herself in Morocco digging up Neanderthal artifacts at the Cave of Hercules. Quite soon, she's summoned to help the American Legation with an undercover mission linked to Operation Torch. The target date: November 8, 1942. The mission: to control French Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, squash Rommel, and thrust into Europe's underbelly. Out in the Atlantic, General Eisenhower wil rely on relayed communications. But Lily's mastery of code is interrupted by murder -- not one, but two -- which not only imperils her, but Operation Torch itself.

Aileen Baron introduced Lily in A FLY HAS A HUNDRED EYES (2002), a drama of pre-World War II Jerusalem.

Gender of detective: female

This one, unfortunately, does not get it right. She's done her research - and wants to show it off. She wants both a puzzle-box and fascinating characters, and unfortunately cannot quite keep her footing on the tightrope between.

It's getting late and I'm getting poetic. Let's try this again.

I can't tell how much of the problem is the old series problem of necessary accretion (i.e. Lily would be more real to me if I'd read the previous book), and how much is bad writing. Inasmuch as most of the rest of the characters feel slightly distant, as if they too weren't entirely real, I'm inclined to blame it on the writing. The idea is fascinating: spies! Colonialism! Murder! But in practice, there's no sense of urgency. Of course she will get to where she needs to go in time. Of course she will solve the murder when she needs to. Of course everything will work out right. It just doesn't quite reach where it needs to be.

*

I hope I pull something I can get passionate about, next. Much more of these 'eh' books will put me to sleep, and that would be even worse than spilled soda.

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FITNESS KILLS, by Helen Barer.

Cover copy: Nora Franke is a New York food writer stuck in a rut. Hoping to get rid of a broken heart (and the extra pounds that came with it), she accepts a job as a menu consultant at an elite fitness ranch in Baja. With any luck she'll shed the weight, make some friends, and maybe even find a way to get over her ex-lover.

But Nora soon finds there's more than just yoga classes, morning hikes and liquid fasts among the flowers and herbs - someone's put murder on the menu, and unless she can solve the mystery of who's behind the death of two of the guests, Nora may just be the next victim.

Gender of detective: female

Oh dear God. You know how I said I rarely actually get angry at a book? This is the other exception on my list.

For the first third, it could be pretty much women's fiction, with the exception of a casual mention of a missing man, eventually found and presumed dead in a hiking accident. There's a mild air of Wacky Hijinx, but not unendurable. And then someone dies actually in front of our heroine, and everything goes off the rails.

Seriously. Rather than use her existing skill-set to solve the mystery (food reporter, if you'll remember), our heroine decides that this is the perfect opportunity to prove she has the stuff to be an ace investigative reporter! So she runs around poking her nose into places where it explicitly isn't wanted, pissing people off and not even finding out every much. Her mostly-ex boyfriend comes down, and come to find out he's working with the feds and the local cops and everything she has managed to find out, they already know. And just to top things off, even when she refuses to give up her investigation, she knows she doesn't need to investigate her new friends that she made here at the spa, because she likes them, so they couldn't possibly have done it. No, I am not joking. No, sadly, I'm not exaggerating either.

There is a difference between a detective heroine being a lovable ditz and being a flat-out moron. This one falls so far to the wrong side of that divide that it can't even see the line any more. The sole resemblance to a saving grace that it has is that it doesn't inflict pointless recipes on us.

*

'Heading for the back 9' sounds a lot better when that's not the number of hours until I can sleep. Must make tea, methinks.

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Dreams of Falling

a woman who never dreams goes slowly mad

Jul. 31st, 2010

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