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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.

Who’s a Reliable Narrator?: An Instance of the Fingerpost

21 Monday Sep 2020

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Review: An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears
Berkeley, 1998. 704 pp. $20

As this captivating novel begins, Marco da Cola, a self-described “gentleman of Venice,” offers his account of his visit to England in 1663. Sent by his merchant father to see to business affairs that have gone wrong, da Cola also carries a letter of introduction to notable English scientists, for our Venetian gentleman has interests there too. Accordingly, he travels to Oxford, where he meets Robert Boyle, the famed physicist, among others, and discusses the proper approach to observation and reasoning concerning both accuracy and conformity to God’s laws. Right away, these principles are tested, through an unheard-of medical treatment, a murder, an investigation, and a punishment, in all of which da Cola plays an important role.

Robert Boyle, physicist, chemist, and philosopher, as painted in 1689 (courtesy Science History Institute, Philadelphia, via Wikimedia Commons)

What sounds simple is anything but. These are religious times, dangerous to those who pray or think in unapproved ways; and with Cromwell’s protectorate recently ended, and the Stuarts restored to the throne, suspicion and conspiracy abound. Heed ye these controversies well, gentle reader, for they shape not only what Signor da Cola witnesses, but how others view him, his manuscript, and the events he describes.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is a strongly feminist novel, but by demonstration, not by soapbox. The woman most central to the story possesses a breadth of mind and character surpassing those of anyone else, to which Pears never calls undue attention. Yet how she behaves arouses suspicion, which raises a crucial theme, how men perceive women through the lens of their own weaknesses.

During his sojourn in England, da Cola shows his kind heart, good-natured disposition, ready laugh, and — within the bounds of seventeenth-century attitudes — tolerant outlook. All that makes him a perfect foil for the disagreeable, smug, hidebound, and cruel Englishmen he meets (many of whom are historical figures). His narrative provides an often cheeky commentary, as when he sums up what he sees and judges it freely:

I discovered that, in only a brief space of time, the atmosphere of Oxford has settled on me, rendering me as melancholic as most of its inhabitants. There is something about the place; a dampness which is oppressive to the spirits, which bears down powerfully on the soul. I have for long had a theory about the weather which, if God spares me, I would like to develop one day. I do believe that the weather and grayness of the climate will forever preclude the English for making much of a stir in the world, unless they abandon their island for more sunny climes. Transport them to the Americas or the Indies, and their character is such that they could rule the world; leave them where they are, and they are doomed to sink in lassitude.

However, when da Cola’s narrative breaks off, other witnesses to the same events narrate their view and take great exception to his manuscript. I don’t mean their counterattacks on his character, which confirm their hatred of foreigners, their gloominess, and much else he remarked on. Rather, the Venetian gentleman seems not to have told the truth. The question is why.

The other voices respond to that and much else, recasting the murder by their own lights, as they justify themselves, often with a semblance of truth, but perhaps not. You don’t know whom to believe, or about what. Not only does the narrative framework recall the great Kurosawa film Rashomon, in which a presumably clear-cut criminal act becomes murky when viewed from different perspectives, Pears raises “no — and furthermore” to its most psychologically penetrating form. Just when you think you might grasp how the murder and investigation unfolded, you don’t — though maybe there’s a piece of evidence, viewed differently, that makes sense. And that one piece won’t go away.

Readers of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose will recognize similarities here (as reviewers noted when Fingerpost came out). Crime and its repercussions become inseparable from the way people perceive good and evil, or what it means to think and observe, not to mention how ready they are to detest each other for petty differences in religious doctrine. Like Eco too, Pears renders political, social, and intellectual attitudes with such sureness that you don’t doubt him for a second.

An Instance of the Fingerpost is an enthralling mystery and a chilling exploration of the vicious potential of the human mind.

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

Shelf Death: The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne

10 Monday Aug 2020

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Review: The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, by Elsa Hart
Minotaur, 2020. 341 pp. $27

Lady Cecily Kay doesn’t quite understand why her husband, consul in Smyrna for His Majesty James II, has dispatched her back to England, where she can cause no further trouble. After all, if Cecily didn’t point out the oddities in her husband’s financial ledgers, who would? And why wouldn’t he want the benefit of her sharp eyes?

But despite her humiliating departure from the conjugal nest, Lady Kay’s about to have more adventure than she ever could in Smyrna, and in much the same fashion, asking questions that men don’t wish to answer. (Since it’s 1699, London men expect women to listen like donkeys waiting to have their hind legs talked off, but the devil with that.) So when Cecily tours the famous, coveted collection of Sir Barnaby Mayne, a cornucopia of the natural and folkloric worlds, and someone knifes the collector to death, it’s incumbent on Lady Kay to act. Not only do curiosity and scientific rigor demand no less; justice must be served.

My favorite collector, Joseph Banks, as painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1773. President of the Royal Society for more than forty years, Banks established Kew Gardens as the leading botanical collection in the world (courtesy National Portrait Gallery, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Dinley, Sir Barnaby’s assistant, has confessed to the killing and run away. But anyone with an open mind who’s met him for five minutes would believe he’s innocent. If ever there were a naturalist who cringed and blushed over the red-in-tooth-and-claw aspects of his passion, it would be Dinley—and besides, what motive could he have had? However, since Sir Barnaby was a gentleman of title and property, as are most of the visitors on the tour that day, whereas Dinley’s a nobody, a confession and flight are enough evidence to hang him.

Nobody takes kindly to Lady Kay’s inquiries as to the time of the murder, who was where in the house then, and what may be deduced from such observations. As we’ve seen, though, subtlety’s not her strong point. She does have one ally, however, a childhood friend from a lower social class, who’s temporarily residing in the Mayne manse, working as an illustrator for the collector’s intended catalog. But it takes a while for Cecily to trust Meacan, who, like Cecily, is less than forthcoming—a nice touch, there—and the two never do quite get over their competition to solve the mystery, another nice touch.

They also have different approaches, since Meacan, who’s gone through two husbands, isn’t above using flirtation to surmount an obstacle. I like that too, especially because Hart shows a light hand, not playing that too far. Unfortunately for the two sleuths, however, by the time they decide to let their hair down and join forces, Lady Mayne, the imperious, estranged widow, shows up. The investigation promptly hits a wall, namely, the prohibition to meddle in the constabulary’s business.

Hart constructs her mystery with consummate skill and, as you’ve probably guessed by now, deployed “no—and furthermore” to great advantage. There are many suspects, each with plausible secrets to protect, and the narrative openly reveals all the facts. But unless you’re a better detective than I, you won’t guess the killer’s identity or much else, which keeps the pages turning and offers a satisfying conclusion.

Along the way, Hart casts a keen eye on everything from late-seventeenth-century foppishness to attitudes toward the occult to collecting as blood sport to foodways — imagine, to eat any vegetable raw, especially a radish! Consider this description of Sir Barnaby himself:

Though age had made him frail, thinning his cheeks to translucence and carving furrows around his eyes, the authority projected over the space around him was unambiguous. His shoulders, encased in black velvet, appeared broader than they were, as if they were approaching breadth and volume from the darkness surrounding them. He wore a gray wig that rose high above his brow and fell in luxurious curls down his chest, framing the pristine lace that cascaded from his collar.

Another delight in these pages is the humor. For example, Hart offers us a would-be collector with more money than brains, a sycophant whom everyone quickly learns to avoid. Lady Mayne is a hoot, stiffer alive than her late husband dead, convinced, with barely repressed shudders, that collecting is a godless obsession. But my favorite is a Russian general, whose verbal duels with Lady Kay are hilarious, further evidence in her eyes of what blockheads men can be.

If I have one reservation about this novel, it’s the climactic scene, which invokes more than a couple tropes. But maybe it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, which would fit. The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne is a delight.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book through my work for Historical Novels Review.

Rough Work: The Molten City

29 Monday Jun 2020

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Review: The Molten City, by Chris Nickson
Severn, 2020. 224 pp. $29

When we last met Detective Inspector Tom Harper in these pages, in Gods of Gold, it was 1890. The young man from the Leeds slums worked a grim job in his gritty native city, splitting his energies between keeping watch over the impending violence from a gasworks strike and scrambling to search for a missing child. Harper sympathized with the strikers, but the law was the law and favored gentlemen of property, against which he was helpless; more immediately, he feared that if he didn’t find the child soon, she’d die. Not all was pain and suffering in his life, however. He worked with a devoted sergeant, Billy Reed, who became a friend. And Tom was about to marry a widow, Annabelle, of independent mind and income.

Now, it’s 1908, and Detective Superintendent Harper is the number-two man in the Leeds constabulary. Annabelle and he have a sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary, active in the woman’s suffrage movement, as is her mother. Billy Reed has died. Harper no longer hears as well as he used to, and his reflexes have slowed. But little else in his landscape has changed. Having arranged security for a royal visit — receiving a signed appreciation from His Majesty, Edward VII, no less — his reward is to protect Prime Minister Asquith when he gives a speech in Leeds.

Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith (date unknown), whose face, the historian George Dangerfield later wrote, was “bland and weary . . . in which frankness and reserve had long fought themselves to a stand-still.” (The Strange Death of Liberal England, p. 4; photo courtesy George Grantham Bain collection, Library of Congress; via Wikimedia Commons)

Where few Britons would dare shout insults or complaints at their king and queen, many would jump at the chance to throw brickbats at Mr. Asquith for his broken promises. Poor workingmen and suffragists are the most likely to riot—including Mary, perhaps, or so her parents fear. Meanwhile, Harper has stumbled over evidence that, fifteen years ago, two children were snatched from their parents, perhaps “purchased” to live in a wealthy home where the mistress of the house has been unable to bear her own.

Had I read the intervening volumes since City of Gold, The Molten City might seem like yet another entry in a familiar formula, what some series can devolve into after a while. (Incidentally, all the volumes bear titles with metallic metaphors.) Yet this novel, like its progenitor, has so much going for it that you have to give it, and the author, their due.

First, there’s the atmosphere — political, social, physical, familial, you name it — which, to me, does far more than set the scene. Tom Harper, as the incorruptible, hard-working utterly dedicated police officer, with nary a social prejudice to his name and a firm belief in feminism, at times seems a little too good to be true. However, his feelings for and about Leeds, conveyed through these descriptions, show me that he loves his city and its people, and that his desire to serve is completely genuine. He stands for something.

That makes his perfection easier to swallow, and Nickson takes care not to let Harper’s halo shine among the populace, who wouldn’t see it, anyway. The rich treat him like a hireling, whom they’ll indulge with an audience if it suits them, not acknowledging that a criminal inquiry compels them to; the poor hate him on sight, because coppers are coppers. They’re none of ’em trustworthy.

Nickson uses simple language to set his scenes, with sparing economy:

The smoke and stink from the tanneries and factories rose up the hillside. Identical, anonymous streets of back-to-back houses. Away from the moor, there wasn’t a tree or a splash of colour to be seen. Someone’s washing hung from a line high across the cobbles, already turning grey from the soot in the air.

Attention to the character of Harper’s environment achieves one other storytelling goal of note. Since this is a mystery, which must live on “no — and furthermore,” many such narratives rely on plot points to deliver the obstacles, sometimes smoothly, otherwise seeming contrived. Nickson’s focus on Harper and his city means that the tension need not result from exterior forces, and that what’s within may raise the stakes. For instance, child snatching means more than a morally repugnant crime to Harper’s corps of detectives, several of whom suffered childhoods full of fear and violence that the authorities did nothing to assuage. Finding the missing children therefore becomes a personal quest, not just part of their job.

I also like how Nickson fuses the political and social issues of the day with the crime, his protagonist, and the Harper family. On every page, you see some aspect of how privilege influences or defines justice, and how each Harper works to change that, even as they remain pessimistic, to varying degrees, about the long-term outcome. And while they agree in sum about the importance of social change, the details get in the way, so that though they love one another, they don’t always get along.

As a consequence, The Molten City, despite its heroic paragon, delivers a satisfying mystery and a vivid portrait of a socially fragmented England.

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

Nurses Under Fire: Blame the Dead

25 Monday May 2020

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Review: Blame the Dead, by Ed Ruggero
Forge, 2020. 330 pp. $28

When the army assigns military police Lieutenant Eddie Harkins to investigate a surgeon’s murder at a field hospital outside Palermo, Sicily, in August 1943, it’s the last thing he wants. A former beat cop in Philadelphia, Harkins knows next to nothing about detective work, and the internecine warfare at the hospital threatens to overwhelm him — as if fighting the Germans didn’t cause enough trouble.

No one misses the victim, an arrogant lech who sexually abused the nurses, bunked alone and had no friends, but wielded a scalpel like a genius, which, to the hospital commanding officer, was all that mattered. The all-powerful first sergeant, responsible for making the hospital run, resents Harkins on sight and won’t cooperate with the investigation. The CO wonders why a beat cop should lead the inquiry — couldn’t the provost’s office send anyone better? — and Harkins is inclined to agree.

Nevertheless, orders are orders, and Harkins quickly discovers that wherever he probes, something stinks, which leads him further on. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s say that the surgeon’s murder and the sexual abuse are just the beginning. Working on little sleep and facing obdurate officers who seem to have plenty to hide, Harkins finds his moxie. His stubbornness and sense of justice take hold, and he now insists on solving the case. He fears that if he doesn’t, the corruption will spread, and he gets wind that the brass wants to send him packing. Sensing resistance, he digs in and keeps fighting.

Such headaches have compensations, however. Eddie gets to talk to his older brother, Patrick, chaplain to a nearby regiment, their first conversation in more than a year. Also, a childhood friend, Kathleen Donnelly, is a nurse at the field hospital, and Harkins has always had a thing for her. But the way he recalls her from their school days bears no resemblance to her now:

The woman who let her arms fall from his shoulders looked nothing like he remembered. Her dark hair was chopped short and threaded with dust, a few lonely grays wiring out from her temples. Like every other GI in Sicily, she was drawn and sickly-thin, dirt ground into crow’s-feet beside eyes that did not flash, barely looked blue anymore. She wore a man’s fatigue uniform cinched tight at the waist. The legs of her trousers stood clear of her own legs like stovepipes; the uniform was dirty enough to stand up in a corner on its own.

But that scarecrow is an exceptionally competent, confident professional, and the reader will be awed, just as Harkins is. Her story, and those of the other nurses, is one reason to read Blame the Dead. With impressive authority, Ruggero conveys the impossible conditions in which these women work heroically to save horribly mangled men, only to have to dodge unwanted advances (and worse) by men protected from complaint or protest. As you might imagine, the army is the last place where a woman’s word carries weight, and this is 1943, so forget notions of respect, let alone equality. Whatever happens must be their fault, anyway, saith those in charge.

That authorial authenticity extends to the soldiers’ dialogue and interactions. Ruggero graduated West Point and served as an officer, but he’s also researched his ground thoroughly, re-creating the hierarchy, atmosphere, and workings of a World War II field hospital, as well as the city of Palermo, which emerges vividly. As for “no — and furthermore,” rest assured that nothing comes easily for Harkins, who’s continually out of his depth. The pages turn rapidly. As a sidelight, I also appreciate the criticisms the author has his characters make of General George Patton’s callousness toward his soldiers, for which the field hospital picks up the pieces—literally.

Much as I like the story, though, Blame the Dead feels cluttered, with at least a couple too many voices, nonstop everything, and no time or space to reflect on intense, earth-shaking events. Partly that’s the genre, and Harkins is working under tremendous pressure of time, which Ruggero cleverly squeezes. Yet I hope that in future adventures (this novel promises a series), the author shows the confidence to slow down a little, especially when the addition of still more stuff begins to seem contrived.

The villain’s a contrivance too, unraveling toward the end into lunacy, a cop-out I dislike. As for the villainy, that takes such elaborate, baroque turns that I kept wishing that Occam’s razor, to which one character refers, applied here. Those complications further require the resolution to become a sequence of derring-do that evokes more than one cliché.

That said, I find Blame the Dead an arresting, compelling story, and I hope the sequels find a more compatible balance between character and plot.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book through my work for Historical Novels Review, in which this post appeared in shorter, different form.