Tag Archives: mystery

Wheels Within Wheels: Gallows Court

18 Monday Oct 2021

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Review: Gallows Court, by Martin Edwards
Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen, 2018. 349 pp. $16

Jacob Flint, a young man on the make in 1930 London, has a way of winding up at murder scenes before the police do. For an ambitious journalist, such luck can be a gold mine, the source of scoops that rock the city and make his name. However, that particular happenstance also rouses suspicions from the police, who, though unimaginative — aren’t they always? — assume it’s no coincidence at all. Further, the perpetrators of these crimes, whoever they are, seem methodical, persistent, and absolutely ruthless, so that witnesses have a way of disappearing. Consequently, Jacob’s good fortune could be hazardous to his health.

Further, as he tries to piece together the killings, which seem to multiply before his eyes in the most unlikely circumstances, he keeps crossing paths with the mysterious Rachel Savernake — or almost does. The wealthy, reclusive Miss Savernake shows her lovely face only when she wishes, for as long as she wishes, and to select few. Jacob tries frequently to get in touch with her, but he succeeds only when she grants permission, and only on her terms.

Fleet Street, London’s traditional home of the print and newspaper industries, as it appeared in 1953, decorated for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation (courtesy Anthony Harrison, geograph.org.uk, via Wikimedia Commons)

Jacob believes she’s the thread that connects the murders; she even presented the solution to one of them to the police. Her ability, intelligence, and boldness make her an object of fear, admiration, and bafflement. Rumor says that as a teenager, she had her half-sister’s parents disposed of, on a whim. So what game is she playing? And why does she take an interest in Jacob, leading him — he thinks — to the scene of the next crime?

This is the elaborate premise for one of the most ingenious, Byzantine mysteries I’ve ever read. Normally I dislike mystery narratives in which bodies fall like overripe apples from a tree, especially if I sense that the story needs another corpse to keep the tension thrumming. Not so, here. Everything fits, and Jacob’s emotional reactions matter, not just how he plans his next move. Edwards doesn’t rush through those emotional transitions, and the novel benefits greatly.

I wouldn’t call Gallows Court character-driven or deeply thoughtful, yet Jacob has an inner life, with ambition warring against a sense of morality and fair play. He has an appealing urge to connect with other humans, even if he doesn’t always know how, and his shock when people in whom he’s placed his trust wind up betraying him feels genuine. When people he knows wind up dead, some of whom he called friend, he takes stock — not for long, necessarily, but so that you see his impulses. He also struggles to put forth his better nature when self-preservation or convenience pulls in another direction, as in this passage, when he visits a dying friend and colleague:

The stench of disinfectant and the coarse noise from the bed made Jacob’s flesh crawl. Not for the first time, he felt pangs of self-disgust. A man who had, in his no-nonsense way, been generous to him was close to death. Yet here he was, averting his eyes, holding his nose, struggling in vain to overcome revulsion. He uttered a silent, selfish prayer that Betts would not die while he sat by his bedside. How could he console the widow if the worst happened? It would seem like his fault.

Rachel’s much harder to figure, and though that follows logically from the author’s need to keep certain secrets, I could better understand Jacob’s fascination with her if her character came across more clearly. As it is, Rachel risks being a trope, the beautiful mastermind whom no one can get around, let alone fathom. She has a mission, it seems — which the reader divines before Jacob does — and which explains the profusion of deaths. That the mission attempts to strike a blow for justice helps some.

More importantly, Rachel provides the overriding sense of the novel, the confusion, uncertainty, and danger infusing the very air of the story. Just when Jacob believes that he sees how the wheels turn, he realizes that there are wheels within wheels. At best, he’s a minor cog, one that may intersect with a larger, more significant mechanism, but only as long as he’s useful. When pursuing a lead based on information given him, he never knows whether his informant has hidden motives or means him ill. This atmosphere of fear and uncertainty feels pervasive, as in Hitchcock, and the ever-present “no — and furthermore” applies the framework. But the workings are entirely psychological.

The last two turns of the wheel feel a little contrived, the only ones that do. Nevertheless, Gallows Court delivers a tense, wild ride, and if the ending seems a bit contrived, it’s also satisfying.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Matchmaking and Mayhem: A Rogue’s Company

11 Monday Oct 2021

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Review: A Rogue’s Company, by Allison Montclair
Minotaur, 2021. 337 pp. $27

London in 1946 is a city struggling to get on its feet again, amid perennial food shortages, all-too-slow postwar reconstruction, and grief over losses. What a perfect time and place for the Right Sort Marriage Bureau, a fledgling business devoted to repopulating a bloodied world.

Iris Sparks, one of its two principals, accustomed to tight spaces and violent men, persuades her partner, (Mrs.) Gwendolyn Bainbridge, war widow, to receive martial arts training. London has mean streets, after all; men are men; and Sparks and Bainbridge have paired up on more than one amateur criminal investigation, so you never know when a well-placed karate chop may come in handy.

Royal Artillery searchlights form part of the Victory Parade, London, June 1946 (courtesy Imperial War Museum via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

No one could provide a more deserving target than Lord Bainbridge, Gwen’s bully of a father-in law, who has just returned from Africa, where he has mining interests. Technically, Gwen’s a member of the board of directors, or should be, having inherited her late husband’s shares. But Lord Bainbridge has taken custody of that inheritance, because his son’s death sent Gwen into a psychological tailspin, and, by court order, a psychiatrist must declare her competent before she may assert control over her assets. That ruling also applies to her seven-year-old son, whom her father-in-law intends to pack off to the same brutal boarding school inflicted on the boy’s father — and Gwen can do nothing to stop this.

A Rogue’s Company takes a minute to percolate the mystery, but no worries, there. Iris and Gwen are characters you’ll enjoy, with wit and verve to spare, and present a contrast in their origins and social views. Both must negotiate their class differences, not only with each other, but their respective friends, and though I would have liked to see more uncertainty in them, questioning whether their connection will last, they’re an interesting mix. Their bond feels genuine. Ironically, neither of them is married, though they have admirers. Gwen still mourns her husband, but you get the idea that she’s in no hurry to become intimate with anybody again.

They do diverge in their toleration for danger. (Hint: Iris, who seems to have been an intelligence operative, craves it.) However, neither fears to upset convention, as when an importunate board member of Bainbridge, Limited, tries to pry into Gwen’s “absence,” the time during which she received psychological treatment. To ward him off, she replies that she went to prison. Why? he asks, astonished. She killed a man, she says. Why? “For asking too many personal questions.” To his credit, the board member laughs; so did I.

Still, you know that the menace circling the Right Sort Marriage Bureau will erupt into action. And when a man’s found dead near the Livingstone Club, where colonials go to drink and disport themselves, the game’s afoot. Before they’re done, financial shenanigans, a kidnapping, and much listening-in on conversations will take place.

The narrative doesn’t take itself too seriously — one of its charms — yet there’s content alongside the entertainment. The story delves a little into race prejudice, gender roles and expectations, and the intersection of pride and violence, treading lightly, to be sure. Sparks and Bainbridge have something to them, in other words, and aren’t merely the framework for a mystery. Montclair’s not in too much of a hurry, and I like that.

I also like the writing, willing to linger on emotional moments and offer physical description with psychological resonance. Here’s one example, as when Iris is driven past Kensington High Street, Kensington Gore, and onto Kensington Road:

Streets are like spies, she thought. They passed through where you live, changing identities according to local customs, and disappear without notice. She tried to remember what a gore was. Something topographical, vaguely triangular, but she couldn’t help imagining the neighborhood steeped in blood every time she traveled through it. She wondered if anyone else made that connection, or if it had just become another name without meaning over time.

The novel (and I) could have done without the prologue — what else is new? — and a couple loose ends affix themselves with perhaps too much ease. One or two of the nastier characters soften a tad, maybe in ways they shouldn’t. I’m also skeptical that Sparks, despite her background, can be so blasé about crime scenes; I think even the hardest-boiled detective (which she isn’t) would at least wince. But A Rogue’s Company, the third installment in the Sparks and Bainbridge series, is an engrossing, delightful book, well worth your time.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

East African Enmities: The Idol of Mombasa

16 Monday Aug 2021

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Review: The Idol of Mombasa, by Annamaria Alfieri
Felony and Mayhem, 2016. 249 pp. $15

When Justin Tolliver and his new bride, Vera, take up residence in Mombasa, British East Africa Protectorate, early in 1912, they have mixed feelings. They have transferred from Nairobi, where Justin, a colonial police officer, enjoyed his position, near where Vera was born, and her beloved father has his mission. But duty calls: Justin has been promoted to assistant district superintendent. Therein lies a source of marital friction, however, for he loves his work, whereas Vera wishes he’d give it up and become a farmer, as so many colonials do.

Justin promises he won’t remain on the force for long — a year at most — but that year promises to be very busy. He’s not even unpacked in Mombasa before a criminal act takes place that has diplomatic implications. The Grand Mufti of Egypt is in town to exhort the faithful of Islam, collect presents from the British, and remind them that their hold on the protectorate is anything but absolute, depending as it does on the Sultan of Zanzibar’s goodwill. And when a slave belonging to a prominent Muslim businessman runs away and is murdered for it, that should prompt soul-searching among the colonials. After all, Britain has outlawed slavery and claims that this “civilizing” influence justifies their empire. Yet political considerations and racism combine to separate the law from justice, at least as it’s practiced on the street.

Mombasa, buying ivory hunted in the East African interior, 1910-1920, Underwood & Underwood (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

This outlook sits poorly with Justin, who believes in the stated moral principle. He also espouses a comparatively liberal outlook concerning the people the British govern. He respects his sergeant, Kwai Libazo, a man half Kikuyu, half Masai, and takes him at his word, an attitude that marks Justin as “soft” among his peers. Back in England, he was a keen sportsman who played games as much for their sense of rules as their competitive aspect. But he’s a newcomer to Mombasa; he must follow orders; and, as an earl’s second son, he faces reverse snobbery, which makes his every move suspect. Other colonials wonder how an English-born aristocrat can even think of being a police officer, while they also turn up their noses at Vera, because he’s married down.

Meanwhile, Vera is fiercely anti-slavery and has far fewer scruples about adopting local customs. She understands that British clothing and manners don’t fit in Africa, and she wants to learn Arabic — imagine! Unlike a proper English wife, she speaks her mind, so Justin hears her views on his moral compromises, another arena of marital conflict. Nevertheless, husband and wife appreciate qualities in the other that they also fear. This setup provides great possibilities.

As befits the British colonial mission, they have their romantic notions about where they are and what they’re doing. For Justin, though Mombasa makes him wrinkle his nose, it also represents an exotic fantasy:

The smell of the salt air called to mind his father’s history books and his own boyhood dreams of adventure. He imagined that this place now smelled much the same as it had to da Gama, aboard the Portuguese carrack São Gabriel when the great explorer entered Mombasa Harbor, the first European to come to this place. This was a reason to be here. This had been a place of adventure for centuries. Whatever else Mombasa was, this was the sort of place that, as a child, he had always longed to be.

If all this seems extraneous to the mystery, rest assured it belongs. Alfieri creates a solid whodunit, with a satisfying ending. Just when you think she’s tipped her hand, she hasn’t. Suspects abound from all cultures and walks of life, including the Reverend Robert Morley and his sister, Katharine. (Is this echo of the actors in The African Queen too cute? Probably.) Still, despite the issues of justice, the marriage subplot, the racial and ethnic hatreds that divide the city, and Mombasa itself, only the mystery kept me reading.

The characters, though they display more than a single trait or two, seem locked into either-or emotional states during conflict, which simplifies them and makes them predictable. Also, Alfieri’s writing style, occasionally repetitive, as in the above example, explains more than it shows and distances me. Sometimes the explanations follow action that’s already clear or restate what’s been narrated before. It’s as though Alfieri or her editor fears that we’ve forgotten the circumstances or motivations and need reminders. Either that, or she doesn’t see how to deepen such moments. It’s too bad, because there’s much on offer, and I applaud the author’s intent and loving portrayal of time, place, and cultural associations. I wish more historical mysteries did that.

Read The Idol of Mombasa, if you will, for the story. But if you’re like me, you’ll wish the rest held up its end as well.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Cult Following: The Prophet

02 Monday Aug 2021

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Review: The Prophet, by Martine Bailey
Severn, 2021. 241 pp. $30

It’s May 1753, and Tabitha De Vallory (née Hart) has every reason to rejoice. A former prostitute turned lady of the manor, Tabitha has found married happiness with Nat, onetime rake and scribbler of scurrilous, lurid tales, now declared heir to a Cheshire estate and the baronetcy that goes with it. Come summer, Tabitha will give birth to their first child.

But when the body of a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl, likely a prostitute, is found beneath the Mandrem Oak, an ancient tree on Nat’s land said to have magical powers, Tabitha sets out to find the killer. Her pregnancy hampers her, not least because Dr. Caldwell insists she remain in bed and refrain from any thought or activity upsetting to her weak feminine constitution. Tabitha wishes she could tell him to stuff it, but despite her natural boldness, she must placate Nat, who fears for her; the servants dedicated to treating her like a human wheelbarrow; and—a nice touch—her own fears and folk beliefs.

Further complicating matters, a charismatic preacher, Baptist Gunn, has gathered a band of believers near the Mondrem Oak. He prophesies a savior to be born that summer and a kingdom free of such annoyances as private property, privileges of birth, or the confines of marriage, all to be found in His Majesty’s colony of Pennsylvania. His followers put their faith in Gunn and the New World he describes, largely turning a blind eye to his habit of lifting every skirt he can get his hands on.

William Hogarth’s painting, An Election Entertainment, 1754-55, helped fuel a legend that riots greeted Britain’s change of calendar in 1753, when it was merely an election issue (courtesy Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

The Prophet is the sequel to The Almanack, and readers of that mystery will find welcome parallels here. As characters with disreputable pasts, Tabitha and Nat must tend their reputations, and the course of their true love travels a bumpy road. I like the hurdles Bailey places in their way, particularly important because Nat, as acting lord of the manor and responsible for catching the murderer, has the physical and moral freedom Tabitha lacks, whereas what secrets he chooses to share (or not) affect domestic bliss.

Readers of the previous tale will also recognize the feminist slant. Nobody understands the sexual double standard better than Tabitha, but, in a further twist, she has to train herself to reach Nat emotionally rather than rely on physical attraction alone. Meanwhile, she suffers the neighbors’ snobbery, endures passes from any man who thinks he can get away with it, and hates being on public display as a child-bearing member of the gentry, rather like a monument about which everyone offers an opinion. The sawbones, whom she heartily dislikes yet also fears, just in case his medical opinions are correct, represents only part of her trials:

Doctor Caldwell was a shambling man of five and thirty; unkempt in his person, with a greasy old cauliflower wig, and the protruding eyes of an overbred pug dog. According to Nat he was an excellent physician, but his manner left Tabitha feeling like a brood mare being assessed for market. First, he inspected her urine in a glass, holding it to the light, then sniffing it, and—rather disgustingly—tasting a few drops on the ends of his fingers. . . . Close up, she was forced to turn her nose from great wafts of his onion breath.

Finally, The Prophet enacts the fascination with folklore that drove The Almanack, and I find that the most appealing part of the current tale. Through Baptist Gunn and his cult followers, and the mysteries and folklore of childbearing and fortune telling, Bailey offers a fine glimpse of everyday Cheshire life. I like how she captures the outlook of people who pretend to be modern but aren’t, nor do they know what modern means, except that it scares them. Nowhere is that more evident than in time keeping, in which a society largely without clocks or authoritative calendars can’t be sure what day it is—especially because the country has just changed systems. That uncertainty affects the story.

However, I find the storytelling and writing less compelling than those of the previous installment. Here, the villains are 100 percent villainous, Gunn’s 100 percent corrupt, and the mystery, 95 percent predictable, the remaining 5 percent accounting for minor detail. As for narrative style, I prefer stories in which authors show rather than tell, particularly when it comes to their characters’ emotions. The Prophet, for all its welcome marital complications between Nat and Tabitha, often resolves them through explanation, or so it seems. I notice many physical descriptions that feel static rather than active, a surefire measure of tell versus show.

I wish I could recommend The Prophet more highly. I hope that future installments reclaim the pleasures of its predecessor.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Love and Murder: Death of a Showman

19 Monday Jul 2021

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Review: Death of a Showman, by Mariah Fredericks
Minotaur, 2021. 276 pp. $27

Jane Prescott, lady’s maid to wealthy socialite Mrs. Louise Tyler, has just returned from an exhausting trip to Europe in June 1914, during which they attended a wedding. Much to Jane’s dismay, the pros and cons of marriage are on her mind, considering that Leo Hirschfeld, a musician who might or might not have been courting her the previous summer, has married, after insisting he wouldn’t. Then too, the Tylers seem, well, maybe not unhappy with each other, but out of sorts. Bored, maybe.

No boredom allowed when Leo invites Mrs. Tyler to a rehearsal of a ragtime musical for which he’s written the score, and whose cast so happens to include his new bride. Mrs. Tyler has no idea she’s being cultivated as a potential investor in the show. But Jane, who wasn’t born yesterday, realizes that the flirtatious Leo, who can’t abide the idea that someone might resent him, especially if she has every reason to, hopes to get back into her good graces.

Naturally, she has no intention of joining Mrs. Tyler at the theater; just as obviously, she must, because her employer needs a chaperone, and Louise relies on her. Further, you know that one visit won’t be enough, so Mrs. Tyler begins regularly attending rehearsals, while Jane works backstage. She also has to sit through watching Leo’s better half, a voluptuous airhead whose only talent seems to be walking downstairs in a suggestive way. Mrs. Tyler really has no idea how much Jane puts up with for her sake.

Readers familiar with the Jane Prescott mystery series know that someone will soon wind up dead, and Jane will solve the crime. You don’t need a crystal ball (or the jacket flap) to guess that the victim will be Sidney Warburton, the show’s producer. A ruthless, exploitive tyrant who takes pride in seducing other men’s wives, Warburton gets shot in a bathroom stall at Rector’s restaurant during a cast party.

This backdrop may sound familiar for a mystery, but Fredericks makes it her own. Warburton’s not a pure monster; he’s helped many people, given them a chance in a cutthroat theatrical world. Not only does his generosity, however self-interested, flesh him out, it complicates the question of motive. Though just about every member of cast and crew has suffered his vitriol and humiliating behavior, he’s also their bread and butter; even, in cases, their rescuer.

For decades, David Belasco was the high priest of the American theater, complete with clerical collar, his trademark. (1909, unattributed; courtesy J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington, Seattle, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Moreover, Fredericks knows her historical and theatrical ground, whether we’re talking about what the theater district looked like in 1914, or what went on there. To this theater historian and lifelong devotee, she’s conjured up what makes actors tick, the glamour and what lies behind it, and an unsophisticated public’s fear (and admiration) of the theater as institution and lifestyle. Several characters’ names or reputations evoke stars from the era. For those readers familiar with that theatrical age, see if you recognize a hint of David Belasco, a hack producer/director and playwright but technological innovator, in this description of Warburton’s theater:

Only seven years old, the Sidney Theater was equipped with the most modern advances — hydraulics, a lighting board, and set workshops on the lower floors with an elevator to carry the results up to the stage — as well as the most lavish of interior design. Its creator had said he wanted the audience to feel as if they were in someone’s home, and so they might, if that someone were a Vanderbilt. Glossy oak paneling shone as red-brown as a setter’s coat, alongside Tiffany stained glass and murals of the more titillating Greek myths.

I like Fredericks’s re-creation of Rector’s (a real place) and the cast-party murder scene, in which the killer must be present, yet plausibly escapes notice. It’s a clever blend of two mystery traditions, the locked room and the clue in plain sight. For further depth, always welcome, the author explores whether love is what it looks like, and whether you can separate it from physical passion. Along the way, the dialogue crackles with wit — I don’t recall laughing as much reading the other Jane Prescott mysteries — as you might expect from theater folk.

Accordingly, Fredericks has loosened Jane’s corset a notch, and though that makes sense for the story, I stumbled over that, remembering her from previous episodes as a more cautious, demure woman of her time. Another significant character reveals a different sort of shift, which feels contrived — a rare slip for the author. The unnecessary, perhaps deliberately misleading, prologue is at least short enough not to annoy too much. And though the narrative includes the approach of the European war, which makes sense, the mixture doesn’t always flow smoothly, nor are the details always historically accurate.

But Death of a Showman remains a delicious, poignant treat, and I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Mayhem in Malaya: The Night Tiger

15 Monday Feb 2021

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Review: The Night Tiger, by Yangsze Choo
Flatiron, 2019. 384 pp. $18

In May 1931, Ren, a young Malay orphan who keeps house for a doctor, receives a request that you know will haunt him and put him in harm’s way. With almost his last breath, the doctor, who’s missing a finger, orders Ren to find that digit and bury it in his grave. The command startles Ren, but not for the reasons you might think. Malay folklore holds that if a dead body isn’t buried whole, the soul will wander forever, so in that sense, the request is perfectly reasonable.

But Dr. MacFarland, as his name suggests, is Scots, and though the dying man has long studied local culture — unusually, for a European — Ren never expected such an assignment. It’s a heavy charge for a ten-year-old, even one who pretends to be thirteen, even though the doctor has shown him great kindness. And he’s got forty-nine days to complete his task, or the doctor’s soul will never rest.

Meanwhile, Ji Lin, a young Chinese woman, has taken a second job to support her mother’s gambling debts at mah-jongg. By regular trade, Ji Lin’s a seamstress’s apprentice, a profession she has little desire for, but the only career her punitive, autocratic stepfather will allow. On the sly, she works for a dance hall as an “instructor,” paid to accompany men who, of course, take whatever liberties they can. If anyone finds out, she’ll be ostracized, not to mention the violent wrath she’ll face at home. But just when she’s hoping to leave the dance hall forever, a greasy businessman she particularly dislikes gets too frisky. In the scuffle, her hand winds up in his pocket and pulls out a glass vial containing a human finger. Despite her instincts, she keeps it without telling him.

The Malaysian tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), has been on the endangered list since 2015. This one lives at the National Zoo Malaysia, Ampang (2011, courtesy Tu7uh via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

From this complex, dizzying, but deftly rendered setup ensues a mystery that’s dark, enthralling, and singular. You know that Ren and Ji Lin will meet sooner or later, but I advise you to make no other assumptions. Many suspicious deaths and strange occurrences happen within each character’s extended circle of acquaintances, though the two circles may or may not connect in expected ways.

The one thing you do find out, because The Night Tiger derives much of its considerable fascination from local culture, is that these two protagonists’ names belong to the Five Confucian Virtues, as do those of — you guessed it — three other characters. The most important of those is Yi, Ren’s twin, who died several years before, and of whom he has frequent, violent dreams. But Yi also provides Ren a sixth sense about how to pursue his quest for the doctor’s missing finger and of danger in general. Further, though it’s not always clear how, some or all of the five have strayed from the virtues they represent, which causes further danger. Accordingly, the narrative becomes a moral tale as well as a mystery, and that uncovering the villains is only half the struggle, the rest having to do with good and evil.

Complicated as this is, I still wish that the author had held that moral theme more firmly to the end. But there’s plenty in this book, starting with the legends of the tiger, hence the title. Like many Malayans, Ren fears and admires that beast, often accused of nighttime rampages among human habitation. Even a tiger rug gives the boy pause:

Despite the indignity of being draped across the floor, its fur worn away in patches, the glaring glass eyes warn him away. Tiger eyes are prized for the hard parts in the center, set in gold as rings and thought to be precious charms, as are the teeth, whiskers, and claws. A dried and powdered liver is worth twice its weight in gold as medicine.

There’s more yet. Aside from beliefs in weretigers (analogous to werewolves) and their alleged crimes, we have cultural obsession with lucky or unlucky omens, forbidden love, and feminism — Ji Lin has always wanted to enter medicine, but that’s reserved for Shin, her stepbrother (whose name reflects another of the Five Virtues). The provincial landscape comes alive, but that’s not all, for you can practically taste the place. Throughout, the food the characters cook, serve, or consume will lose you your mind — rendang, sambal, noodle soups, desserts of coconut and tapioca. I’m looking through my recipe collection.

Normally, I shy away from supernatural influences in fiction, but The Night Tiger wins me over. Not only does the cultural background feel entirely lived-in and essential, the story never relies on the supernatural out of convenience, because little is convenient here. I like less how the mysteries resolve, which seems obvious and predictable, in part. That’s the only aspect that feels less than entirely satisfying, and a bit contrived.

Overall, however, The Night Tiger is immensely satisfying, and I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Murder Among the Four Hundred: An Extravagant Death

01 Monday Feb 2021

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Review: An Extravagant Death, by Charles Finch
Minotaur, 2021. 304 pp. $28

London, 1878. For political reasons, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli asks the most famous detective in Britain, Charles Lenox, to leave the country for a few weeks. But Charles would rather refuse, for his wife has just given birth to their second daughter, and his work has taken him away from home too often. However, he’s always dreamed of travel, and Disraeli is nothing if not persuasive. With his family’s blessing, Charles sets sail.

New York captures his fancy, but it’s on a train to Boston that an importunate, extremely wealthy man named Schermerhorn, of old Knickerbocker lineage, has sent an equally importunate bodyguard to request Charles’s presence in Newport, Rhode Island. A murder has taken place, and Schermerhorn requires his help; Lenox may name his price.

You need not have read any of the prior thirteen installments in the Lenox series to understand that such a peremptory request — delivered at an unscheduled stop on the train, arranged by Schermerhorn — would irritate any English gentleman of breeding. Charles, though liberal-minded about many aspects of life, might have turned away on principle, except that the brightest spot in his trip so far has been Teddy Blaine, a young, would-be detective who’s followed Charles’s cases with keen interest and an even keener mind. Teddy pleads with Lenox to ignore Schermerhorn’s manner and look into the case.

“The” Mrs. Astor, leader of the Four Hundred, née Caroline Webster Schermerhorn. Artist unknown, portrait said to date from 1860, which seems improbably late (source unknown; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

So Charles investigates the death of a beautiful, nineteen-year-old debutante, Lily Allingham, who took a fatal blow to the head. Lily had many suitors, but the two most serious were Schermerhorn’s son and his rival, a Vanderbilt, if you please. Given the immediate circumstances Charles observes in Newport, such as the timing of the death, position of the body, and so forth, he suspects both young men.

Naturally there are lies, other suspects, and inconvenient facts that cloud the picture. But, as with all Lenox novels, Finch has social commentary in mind as well as mystery, and he has a field day here. Even a moderately wealthy English aristocrat can’t fathom the opulence on display in Newport, or square it with the way most people live. For instance, he hears of the “cottages” that front the ocean along a cliff, only to discover that they are thirty-bedroom mansions, decorated with English treasures sold by impecunious dukes.

When he enters Schermerhorn’s “cottage,” he finds it

plain by the palatial standards of this town, but sturdy down to its last nail. The floors of the broad, airy hallways never once creaked; the alabaster walls, hung with portraits of sober old New Yorkers of a different epoch, seemed to whisper a quiet word of demonstration against all things modern, all things adorned, anything but plain wood and white paint.

Yet the plainness is a sham; witness the hundreds of servants on staff, from gardeners to kitchen maids, who make the house run — a summer house, be it known. It’s this world within a world that Lenox must navigate, and though Teddy Blaine helps him (coming from a wealthy family himself), many social or cultural cues go over his head.

For the most part, I like the mystery, cleverly conceived, with plenty of “no — and furthermore,” though I find the political reasons for Charles’s departure from America a bit contrived. More significantly, the surprise resolution devolves into psychological territory I usually think of as a copout, though I will say that Finch comes close to making up for it with a nuanced approach. I can’t recall another Lenox novel with even the whiff of copout, and I’ve read at least a half-dozen.

An Extravagant Death offers many pleasures, however, especially the social scenes, all rendered with authority, whether a meeting with Disraeli or a Caroline Astor soirée, complete in fascinating detail. Regular Lenox readers will wonder, in the first third or so of the book, what happened to the quaint facts that Finch loves to explain; never fear, they’ll come in time. If you’ve ever wondered how such idioms as backlog, grapevine, or white elephant entered the language, or what a calling card with one corner folded down signified, wonder no more. Equally characteristic of the series, each book explores a different, relatively untouched aspect of Charles’s life, in this case, fatherhood. The narrative doesn’t dwell long on this subject, but I like what appears very much, and these scenes also give an idea of how an upper-classic Victorian family viewed children.

Overall, I’d judge An Extravagant Death of lesser note than a couple others in the series, including the previous volume, The Last Passenger. But even a less-than-stellar Lenox tale is very good and well worth your time.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher through my work with Historical Novels Review, where this post appeared in shorter, different form.

Controlling the Heavens: Jade Dragon Mountain

25 Monday Jan 2021

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Review: Jade Dragon Mountain, by Elsa Hart
Minotaur, 2015. 321 pp. $18

In 1708, Li Du, a scholar banished from Beijing for political reasons, enters Dayan (modern-day Lijiang), a major town in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, along the Tea Horse Road, the caravan path by which that all-important beverage travels. It’s a dangerous frontier, where, outside the city, bandits freely ply their trade, and a region only recently brought within Qing imperial power, whose Ming predecessors still inspire loyalty. But Li Du has no intentions of staying there a minute longer than he has to, especially since a cousin of his, Tulishen, serves as magistrate, witness to his family shame of exile.

Ernest Henry Wilson’s 1908 photograph of two men laden with “bricks” of tea, Szechuan Province, China (courtesy Arnold Arboretum Archives, Harvard, via Wikimedia Commons)

However, according to the law, the wandering scholar must present his travel papers to Tulishen, and once he does, he’s drawn into an insidious plot. A Jesuit priest, Father Pieter, is found dead, and Tulishen rather quickly decides that the elderly cleric died of natural causes. Li Du, who met the Jesuit only briefly yet came away impressed, believes the man deserves justice, and when the circumstances point to murder, the exile reasons that his cousin has ample reason to pretend otherwise. The emperor will arrive in Dayan in a week, and Tulishen is responsible for managing the lavish festival of welcome. The magistrate hopes to make such a strong impression that he receives an appointment in Beijing and can leave Dayan, which he detests.

Moreover, the emperor’s visit will coincide with a solar eclipse, which must appear to occur at imperial command (though insiders know that Jesuit astronomers provide him with the calculations and predictions that permit him to act out the charade). Through that, he hopes to consolidate his power in the region. But a suspicious death — especially of a Jesuit astronomer, as Pieter was — would cast an unlucky pall on the festival and the imperial political designs. Nevertheless, you know Li Du will be called upon to investigate, and when he proves foul play to his cousin’s grudging satisfaction, he will be tasked with solving the murder before the emperor arrives.

I admire how Hart fits all the social, cultural, and political pieces together in a cohesive, authoritative whole. As in any good mystery, she has a collection of plausible suspects, each of whom appears in depth through Li Du’s eyes; you know their desires, weaknesses, and strengths. Aside from the protagonist, the many fine characters include the magistrate, his aide, a professional storyteller, the magistrate’s consort, a British envoy, a Jesuit botanist.

The mystery unfolds under a tense, short time frame, and you wonder, as Li Du does, how he can possibly make his deadline. Many complications and difficult characters provide stumbling blocks, and just because he has official sanction to investigate doesn’t mean he hears the truth. On the contrary; everyone has a secret to hide, but whether that vulnerability would motivate murder is another question.

So the novel is a classic mystery in that sense. But the narrative offers much more, because Hart knows the time and place inside out in all its sensations and cultural cues. Consider, for example, Li Du’s recollections of the tea-producing country:

He remembered… the lush mountains in which [the tea leaves] had grown, where heavy flowers stirred like slow fish in the mist. These leaves had been dried, knotted in cloth, and enclosed in bamboo sheathes, ready to be strapped to saddles and taken north by trade caravans.
As they traveled, they would retain the taste of their home, of the flowers, the smoke and metal heat of the fires that had shriveled them. But they would also absorb the scents of the caravan: horse sweat, the musk of meadow herbs, and the frosty loam of the northern forests. The great connoisseurs of tea could take a sip and follow in their mind the entire journey of the leaves, a mapped trajectory of taste and fragrance.

My only complaint about Jade Dragon Mountain is the climactic tell-all scene when Li Du faces a roomful of suspects. By now, I think that convention has tired itself out, and the way in which Li Du lays out his thinking strikes me as overly theatrical, a trait he decidedly does not possess — not to mention the way the suspects, all more powerful than he, somehow sit still for his presentation.

But the novel is a pleasure, from many angles, and though it lacks the humor of Hart’s later book reviewed here, The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, I think I prefer this one.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from bookshop.org, an online retailer that splits its receipts with independent bookstores.

Who Killed Marilyn Sheppard?: Do No Harm

07 Monday Dec 2020

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Review: Do No Harm, by Max Allan Collins
Forge, 2020. 297 pp. $28

This much is history: During the early morning hours of July 4, 1957, someone bludgeons Marilyn Sheppard to death in her suburban Cleveland bedroom after a possible attempted rape, which she seems to have violently resisted. Suspicion immediately falls on her doctor husband, who nevertheless claims he was asleep on a daybed one floor below. He insists he rushed to her aid when he heard her screams and suffered a physical assault from the killer that damaged a vertebra in his neck.

Actor David Janssen playing Dr. Richard Kimble in the final episode of The Fugitive, 1967, a much-acclaimed ABC television series loosely based on the Marilyn Sheppard murder case. My high school classmates often talked about the show (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States, as the image first appeared without a copyright tag)

The crime becomes notorious, largely because a Cleveland newspaper beats the drum for Dr. Sam Sheppard’s conviction even before his trial begins. Other irregularities mark the prosecution, not least the judge’s refusal to grant a change of venue; a lackadaisical approach to forensic evidence that suggests prejudice against the defendant; and testimony that borders on hearsay. Even so, Dr. Sam, as he’s known, behaved strangely right after the murder, and his two brothers, also physicians, tried to shield him in ways that arouse suspicion. Just before Christmas, a court convicts Dr. Sam and sentences him to prison.

Enter Nathan Heller, Chicago private investigator (and Collins’s creation, unlike many characters in this true-crime novel). Having visited the crime scene hours after the killing in the company of his friend Eliot Ness, Nate has glimpsed physical evidence as well as what the police and coroner do or fail to do. Not only that, he’s a hotshot with a national reputation. Consequently, in subsequent years, when the mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason) takes an interest in the case and hopes to discover whether a retrial is warranted, he calls on his friend Nate.

Naturally, the Ohio authorities take a dim view, so Nate must be slicker than Brylcreem if he’s to interview the key players. All fear exposure, in one way or another. But as our hero sifts through the conflicting stories, he faces setbacks, and the trail goes cold over the years. Even so, the narrative that results, the search for new evidence and the real killer—if it’s not Dr. Sam—won’t let you go.

This is where Collins excels. He knows everything there is to know about the case but uses only the most relevant details. The reader follows Nate as he probes one possible suspect, then another, yet the more he learns, the murkier things get. Just when you think he’s nailed down the truth, you find he hasn’t, and not until the very end do you discover the most likely solution.

Collins’s style has been compared to Raymond Chandler’s, and though I won’t go that far, Do No Harm offers its verbal pleasures. A Dictaphone machine “hugged the desk like a frightened time traveler”; “You could have sliced the smoke in here and sold it for bacon”; and “peeling brown paint, like the ugliest suntan in history” decorates one scene of operations. Consider the previous paragraph describing that locale:

To some, the Cleveland Flats, situated on the bottomland of the river’s floodplain, was an industrial wonder — shipyards, foundries, oil refineries, chemical plants, lumber yards, flour mills. To me, the Flats would always be a hellish collection of gin joints and warehouses, where sailors and workingmen wandered in a dank, dark world lit by flickering neon and open flames from gas runoff, the silence broken by honky-tonk music and the fingernails-on-blackboard screeches of factories across the river. Some of these dives dated back to the turn of the century, piles of brick held together by sweat, sawdust and swill.

I recommend reading Do No Harm, but I’m unlikely to try another Nathan Heller novel. When I said the PI had to be slick, that he is. He never makes a mistake, and setbacks don’t throw him. Powerbrokers tell him no or move to block him, but he doesn’t care. You know he’ll work around them if he can’t go through them. Cornered by three punks who’ve gotten the drop on him? Pity them. Attractive women, and there are many, all flirt with him, and he has a way of viewing women as sex objects first and anything else second. Maybe that’s the hard-boiled genre, and it was probably unremarkable in the 1950s, if not the later decade, as the story progresses. But it’s nevertheless distasteful, especially since Nate never has an inconvenient feeling, if any at all, so he seems like a robot wired for high-voltage sex drive.

Given all that, if you read Do No Harm, you know what you’re getting: a throwback, for better and worse, and a ripping good story.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Tormented Souls: The White Feather Killer

30 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: The White Feather Killer, by R. N. Morris
Severn, 2019. 284 pp. $29

Like many young men in London in summer 1914, Felix Simpkins feels the tug to serve king and country by enlisting in the crusade against the Germans. It would be the only individual act Felix can think of, the sole rebellious gesture against his emasculating mother (and typically self-defeating), but he can’t quite bring himself to, which flattens his self-esteem even further and risks public shame. For in these mad days when the populace has become intoxicated by jingoism and xenophobia, women of patriotic temperament press white feathers, a sign of cowardice, into the hands of physically fit men not in uniform.

Edgar J. Kealey’s 1915 recruiting poster contrasts the feminine softness within the window and the hard masculinity outside–and manipulates men and women both (courtesy British Library)

Meanwhile, Detective Chief Inspector Silas Quinn of Scotland Yard feels unsettled too, for other reasons. He’s just returned from psychological sick leave, which has further damaged his reputation among police officers of all ranks, many of whom resent him for his brilliance as a detective, his independent methods, and his insistence on truth rather than convenience. Apparently, the resentment goes right to the top, for Quinn has been relieved from command of a special crimes unit and been relegated to a pen-pushing job in which no one need pay attention to him, except to note his lapses.

Military security now requires keen focus on enemies within. Guilt no longer matters. If a crime takes place, arrest someone of German lineage, connections, or alleged sympathies. Justice will be served, and the public, placated. Naturally, this directive rubs Quinn the wrong way. And when he hears that a minister’s daughter has been killed shortly after a patriotic meeting at her father’s church — at which women collected white feathers to hand out — he itches to solve the case. But he’s forbidden to; and the men who’ve supplanted him are watching, waiting for him to step out of line.

Morris excels at characterization, historical atmosphere, the requisite “no — and furthermore,” and the craft of whodunit, with which he keeps you guessing until the end. So many scenes in his novel start out one way and shoot off unexpectedly in another, the essence of tension, because something touches a nerve in his legion of fragile people. Some readers may find these tortured souls off-putting, and I admit, the near-universal willingness to abuse others creates a bleak mood. But the rewards here are many, not least an unvarnished portrayal of police work in 1914, and a similar depiction of a great metropolis straining at its bounds. The famous English credo of decency and fair play seldom applies; that’s an ideal, existing mostly in Quinn’s mind and nowhere else. But with one notable exception, Morris lets his flawed people strive for connection, which shows their fullness and lets you feel for them.

Exhibit A here is Quinn, who’s difficult in his way, though not cruel. He’d like to unburden himself if he could, and his impulses are decent and generous, but he can’t always express them. A psychologically minded detective among colleagues for whom perception and deduction are blunt instruments, he comes across to them as cocksure, even arrogant, yet inside, he’s anything but. Whether it’s his halting overtures to a pretty police secretary or his reluctance to return to the house of a former landlady who realizes he needs care, Quinn makes an unusual male detective, vulnerable and cerebral at once.

The White Feather Killer also conveys London in war fever, whether it’s spy mania or naked anxiety about the adventure that has just begun:

The world had suddenly become a dangerous and uncertain place. A drastic shift in perspective had brought Death into the foreground; the dim figure on the horizon, drifting in and out of sight, had become an insistent, looming presence, so close its stinking, clammy breath could be felt on the back of the neck. Sons and brothers, husbands and fathers, in answering the call to the colours, had brought this dark stranger into the family.

Morris allows himself deeper, more rounded descriptions and motivations than many mystery writers, yet you never feel disconnected or impatient with the narrative. Quite the contrary; I wish more mystery writers trusted themselves (and their readers) to write like this. My only complaint centers on Coddington, Quinn’s nemesis within the police; he’s the notable exception to the generosity granted the other characters. The psychological portrait remains blurry, so I don’t know much about Coddington, except that he’s unreasonably jealous and pigheaded.

The White Feather Killer delivers a terrific story with fully realized characters and an authentic historical background, depicted with precise care. Bravo.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.