Tag Archives: mystery

Washington, 1942: Louise’s War

11 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: Louise’s War, by Sarah B. Shaber
Severn, 2011. 194 pp. $28

American involvement in World War II is six months old, and everybody and her sister flocks to the nation’s capital to find a job. Louise Pearlie, whose husband has died years before and can’t bear to remain in rural North Carolina, has brought her excellent secretarial skills and work experience to the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence organization. Gossip has it that the Allies will invade North Africa within months, hence the OSS search for maps of the coastline and experts who understand the beaches.

A 1943 poster for the Office of War Information by George Rapp (OWI poster 55, courtesy Library of Congress; public domain)

One such authority is Gerald Bloch, a French Jew married to a school friend of Louise’s. From what little news she’s received, Louise gathers that Gerald and Rachel are stuck in Marseilles, while reports say that the Vichy government has made sure that no Jews will receive exit visas. Deportation looms, and Louise, who owes Rachel a huge debt, wishes she could help.

Theoretically, the OSS could claim that Gerald Bloch would provide necessary information concerning the upcoming invasion. But the file on him goes missing during the confusion ensuing from the fatal heart attack suffered by the director of Louise’s section. At first, she thinks nothing of this, but soon, at tremendous risk, she sets out to discover how and why a sensitive dossier could simply vanish, and whether recovering it would save the Blochs.

It’s an excellent premise, if a mite dependent on coincidence, but Shaber’s narrative has a lot going for it. For starters, I like how she’s drawn Louise. Growing up poor and churchy, Louise doesn’t quite know what to make of the big city, where old values get shunted aside in the business of making war. The tremendous crush of people in a hurry and under pressure, with ambition and money to spend, offers temptations she’s not used to, but which attract her. Her parents want her to remarry, but she enjoys her independence, even if she wonders what it would feel like to have the financial security and creature comforts she’d never afford on her own.

That said, Louise also knows that many, if not most, men expect women to keep quiet and use their brains only to help solve male problems, for which, of course, they’ll receive no credit. But her common sense doesn’t prevent her from wanting what might not be good for her. I like that complexity.

The other winning facet of Louise’s War is the atmosphere. Whether it’s fabric shortages, the bus company’s refusal to hire Black drivers, people trying to get around the sugar ration, or the habit of traveling GIs tossing letters out train windows, knowing that someone will stamp and mail them, Shaber knows her ground and deploys details with skill. Here, Louise rolls her eyes at the portrayal of women in a popular magazine:

In its cheerful stories women skipped off to work in full make-up with neatly coiffed hair pulled back in colorful do-rags, carrying lunch pails full of healthy home-made food. Their overalls didn’t get dirty no matter how filthy the job. If they weren’t married with an obliging mother at home caring for their children, they were engaged to a shop foreman or a military officer. None of them were war widows or lived in boarding houses or had to park their children in crowded day nurseries.

Given that keen eye and grasp of psychology, I’m surprised to stumble across a cardinal error. Louise’s first-person narration works just fine, but, for some reason, Shaber shoehorns brief, usually first-person, sections belonging to minor characters, ostensibly to reveal information Louise couldn’t know. Since these look as clumsy as they sound, you have to ask, Does the reader need to know? I doubt it.

Pretty much everything would have kept until Louise manages to discover it, and her ignorance could have heightened the tension, complicating her attempts to parse conflicting evidence. As it is, the story telegraphs answers to a couple major questions when, with little effort, the author might have shaded the account of events to create doubt and keep the reader guessing along with Louise.

Less glaring to the general reader, though unfortunately common in fiction, the Jewish characters don’t feel genuine, which turns them into a narrative convenience. I also object to how certain authors consistently say “Nazis” to identify those who invaded other countries and committed mass murder and expropriation, as though “ordinary” Germans distanced themselves from those crimes.

I can’t help think that the author, or her publisher, wants to separate people we like from those we can hate with abandon. Too bad. Similarly, the novel presents a likable, admirable protagonist, born and raised in North Carolina, who befriends the Black women servants in her boardinghouse without a second thought. That seems a little easy.

Nevertheless, in other ways Louise’s War brilliantly presents a city during conflict, a heroine whose voice draws you in, and a mystery that will keep you turning the pages.

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

Reconstructed Mystery: The Unknown Woman of the Seine

28 Monday Mar 2022

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Review: The Unknown Woman of the Seine, by Brooks Hansen
Delphinium, 2021. 261 pp. $26

This much is true. Sometime during the late nineteenth century, a young woman drowned in the Seine, and the gypsum death mask created to memorialize her face became famous. What a face it was — serene, people said. Others spoke of her innocence, her beauty. The poet Rilke wrote of her deceptive smile and what knowledge might lie behind it. Artists studied the re-created face as a model; copies of her likeness could be found in Parisian studios and academies. Nabokov had a character write a poem about her. Camus, it was said, showed her off at parties. Man Ray photographed her.

Photograph of the famous death mask, ca. 1900, photographer unknown (courtesy http://totenmasken.com/totenmasken/html/body_galerie.html, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

To all, the dead woman’s mask represented a quality that touched them, so they invented her story, a biography, a mystery, and how she might have met her end. That background brings us to the current novel, beguiling, occasionally baffling, which offers a coherent explanation, as tense as any whodunit and as meticulously observed as any narrative of any kind.

Hansen’s story begins with a scene in a morgue, November 1889, after the unknown woman’s body has been on display for a month — yes, they did that, apparently — after which the mask maker plies his craft. It’s a prologue, therefore unfortunate by nature, and a bit confusing, at that. But Hansen skillfully rewinds the intrigue from there, chiefly through the eyes of Émile Brassard, a gendarme who’s had a checkered career, partly because his brilliance upsets people, a circumstance the author understates with deft hand.

In fact, if any single word describes The Unknown Woman of the Seine, it’s understated. I admire novels in which nothing is predictable, yet whose randomness derives entirely from characters with opposing goals (not authorial convenience). I also admire those novels that ask me to draw inferences rather than explain themselves, which involves me in the narrative and lets me meet the story halfway, rather than have it spooned into my mouth.

That said, Hansen demands a lot of his readers, and I’m not always up to it. A dose of bewilderment works wonders, though, for you share Brassard’s curiosity and puzzlement. He first sees the woman in the woods far from Paris, while she’s burying a corpse — and none too deep, because subsequently, the wolves get to it easily. Brassard might arrest her, but he can’t, because he’s applying to be reinstated in the gendarmerie after military service in Indochina, so he’s not officially on duty. Moreover, he’s traveling to his reinstatement hearing, so his time isn’t his own.

Consequently, he must walk a tightrope, following the woman while covering his tracks from both the participants and his superiors. Hansen does a marvelous job integrating his hero’s employment troubles with the mores and politics of the time, folding that into the detective’s quest to figure out who the woman is and why she was burying the dead man. If she killed him, as is likely, Brassard assumes there are extenuating circumstances, and he wants to know the story. So do you.

However, he, and the reader, must have infinite patience before things start to make sense. Also requiring patience are references to images of Buddhist philosophy, which go above my head, and which seem — to me, at least — to have little relation to the story. No doubt I missed something.

But the reader who can stick it out will be well rewarded, especially those who like dogs — Brassard’s is quite the canine investigator, perhaps a little too good to be true, yet their relationship is marvelous. The journey the narrative follows could not be more beautifully rendered, whether Brassard’s thoughts, the landscape, or the city of Paris, particularly the presence of that newly built tower, Eiffel’s monstrosity, as some think of it.

Here, the detective considers his reinstatement, as variable and hard to fathom as the heavens themselves:

If the sun said, All is well, all will turn out in due time, the moon knew better. The moon said, Beware. The moon shed light on the darker and more difficult truths, and he could feel them this evening as he wrote — the low clouds of doubt drifting into his brain, or looking like wolves just behind the tree line, grinning and shimmering with the knowledge that his confidence was without ground; he was fooling himself; the matter of his reinstatement is not nearly as simple or assured as he liked to think.… There were men out there who doubted him, and who made it their business to undermine him.

Such magnificent writing rolls easily into your mind, creating inner life, physical setting, and tension, all at once. The narrative’s final pages lack the clarity I would have liked, but the essentials are there. The manner in which Brassard — and Hansen — pull together the evidence makes for a thoroughly satisfying and remarkable tale of mystery.

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

Bang, You’re It: Scandal in Babylon

28 Monday Feb 2022

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Review: Scandal in Babylon, by Barbara Hambly
Severn, 2021. 233 pp. $27

Camille de la Rose, screen name of Kitty Flint, is the Hollywood “It” girl (a term just come into vogue) of 1924. She couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag, or so thinks her sister-in-law and personal assistant, Emma Blackstone. But that hardly matters. Wherever Kitty goes, whatever she does, her style’s inimitable, and she’s good box office, of course, both on and off the screen.

The 1927 Paramount film that made the phrase “It girl” popular, derived from an Elinor Glyn novel (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

A single glance can render the sexiest men in Hollywood putty in her hands. Burning the candle at both ends, she arrives on set made up to kill, after four hours’ sleep and much alcohol — who cares about Prohibition, anyway? Trouble is, she doesn’t know when to stop, even after snagging the studio head as her lover and a half-dozen other fellows, more than one of whom might suffer from jealousy.

However, Kitty does get down to work, shooting Empress of Babylon, a cast-of-thousands extravaganza, an improbable drama, yet a fine vehicle for her skills. Unfortunately, a man who married her when she was fifteen is found shot dead in her dressing room, carrying a note from her in his pocket.

Emma — remember the sister-in-law? — believes Kitty, who swears she hasn’t seen her ex in years, though it’s just possible he’s technically not her ex, since the divorce may not have been filed. (That lapse might cause problems, considering that Kitty married someone else afterward, though he’s long gone by now.) Nevertheless, Kitty has no convincing explanation for her whereabouts at the time the murder took place, and though it’s ridiculous to accuse her on the face of it, just what she was up to provides yet another mystery.

The police, gossip columnists, and evangelicals looking to sanitize Hollywood seldom agree on anything, but they’d all love to see a star brought low, whether to nurse their resentment or advance their careers. Kitty looks trapped. Even so, a circumstance sticks out. Since the killing appears a clumsy job, almost amateurish — surely, the accusation against her couldn’t stand up in court —Emma suspects that the criminal wishes above all to embarrass Kitty, and that the amateurishness serves a purpose. But what goal could it have? And who would go to all that trouble, and why?

Scandal in Babylon makes a delightful, well-plotted mystery, with enough unexpected edges to keep you turning the pages. Chief among these is sleuth Emma, a widow because of the Great War and an intellectual among the studio Philistines. English to the teeth — several male characters call her “Duchess” — she read classics at Oxford, has a Latin quote for every occasion, and loved participating in digs with her late father, an archaeologist.

When she’s not tending Kitty’s three Pekinese or cleaning up after the star’s messes (physical or diplomatic), she’s charming thugs who might have information about the murder, rewriting scenes a day ahead of filming, and bemoaning the anachronisms the studio inflicts on history. No, she sighs to herself, imperial Roman statuary could not have appeared in ancient Babylon.

This is all great fun, as is the portrayal of the California version of Babylon, with its gangsters, private detectives, studio fixers determined to keep their employer’s reputation clean at any cost, extras, seducers and seductresses, and, at its pinnacle, the star. Here’s Kitty on the movie set, dealing with a brazen invasion by gossip columnist Thelma Turnbit:

As the journalist extended an arm to catch Dirk Silver [Kitty’s costar] by the elbow, Kitty rose with the fluid grace of a dancer and intercepted her, purring, ‘Thelma, darling!’ Her natural baby-coo transmuted seamlessly to the smoky purr of a man-eater who had, over the past four years, devoured the hearts of two dozen cinematic fools for breakfast. She slipped an arm through that of Mrs. Turnbit, and turned her radiant smile upon the approaching guard and the prop man’s assistant.… Her gesture of thanks towards the director was a miniature miracle of gratitude and stubbornness…

I’d have liked to know more about Madge, the leather-lunged director of this celluloid epic. It’s clear she’s got a story, as a woman in what was then a man’s job. I also find Zal, wizard cameraman and Emma’s love interest, too good to be true. Unlike just about every other male in Hollywood, he’s warm, open, kind, sensitive, and not even a blood corpuscle’s worth jealous or territorial. But the other characters work well enough, and the novel rests chiefly on the atmosphere, often hilarious, and the well-tuned story, in which Hambly keeps raising the stakes.

Scandal in Babylon is a hoot and a well-crafted mystery, and I enjoyed it.

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

Muck and Murder: Absence of Mercy

31 Monday Jan 2022

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Review: Absence of Mercy, by S. M. Goodwin
Crooked Lane, 2020. 305 pp. $27

In April 1857, Jasper Lightner, star detective of the London police force and keen student of scientific methods, faces a crisis that threatens his career. His obdurate father, a duke who’s found fault with his second son forever, believes that Jasper’s chosen profession stains the family escutcheon. But since His Lordship can’t deter his wayward progeny by cutting off his allowance — an aunt has conveniently left Jasper a sizable legacy — he applies political pressure instead. The duke gives Jasper an ultimatum: leave the police force or go to (ugh!) New York and teach the colonial upstarts how to sleuth properly, if he likes.

Jasper doesn’t particularly like — his imperious valet, Paisley, likes it even less — but our hero accepts the journey as an adventure. What he doesn’t know and couldn’t possibly anticipate, no sooner has he landed than he realizes he’s walked into a snake pit. Not only does every copper in the city resent him on sight, whether for his nationality (they’re Irish), reverse snobbery about his class, or because they believe that the interloper will expose the incredible corruption they take as their right.

The nonstop political turf war, with gangs, Tammany Hall, and rivalries within the force, may turn violent any second; woe betide the newcomer, who can’t know whose toes he’s just stepped on. And oh, by the way, someone’s cutting through the ranks of the city’s wealthiest men, killing them in copycat fashion, with garrotte and knife. The mayor wants these murders solved yesterday.

Absence of Mercy, the first of a promised series, wades into this donnybrook with gusto. If you like complicated mysteries in which bodies fall by the day, perceptions change by the hour, and the gritty atmosphere could be packed into a ball and used to scrape rust, you’ll find your pleasures here.

A woodcut from 1870 shows the Criminal Court in lower Manhattan. The complex included an infamous prison known as The Tombs, built in 1835. The author of this novel portrays what it was like inside (courtesy Corporation of the City of New York via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

But clever as the plot is — at times, too clever for me to follow — the most winning aspect of this novel is its protagonist. I’ve never encountered a detective like Jasper Lightner, and maybe you haven’t, either. You might suppose that a thumbnail sketch of his past reminds you of a cross-genre James Bond. Handsome? Check. Suave? You got it. Throw in his impeccable manners, refusal to rise to the insults that his legion of enemies hurls at him, and magnetism for women, and you’ve just about spelled trope. Do I need to mention that he’s a veteran of the Crimea, a survivor of the charge of the Light Brigade, and trained to become a doctor, only to abandon his studies shortly before completing them?

But hold on. This paragon stutters, badly, except in the rare moments when he allows himself anger. Paisley, his valet, scares him. Jasper’s former fiancée married his brother. He suffers nightmares because of that infamous charge, and he hates that Tennyson wrote a poem about it. He still carries shrapnel from the battle, and to dull his pains, physical and emotional, he favors madak, tobacco laced with opium. Most importantly, despite his social gifts, sensitivity, and kindness, he can’t abide intimacy:

Surviving childhood with the duke had been very much like protecting a castle from invaders. Over the years Jasper had become an expert at repelling attacks, repairing breaches, and strengthening defenses while he waited his father’s next offensive. Now, in his thirties, his castle walls were impregnable. Thanks to the duke, nothing — and nobody — could ever get close enough to hurt him.

Consequently, Jasper pulls you in thoroughly, and you’ll need that connection as your compass, because Absence of Mercy visits the most degraded locales in a filthy metropolis. Goodwin lovingly portrays the muck, stench, and horror of New York life for the teeming underclass less than a mile from Fifth Avenue, but who might as well inhabit another planet. Life’s hard, and a man like Jasper, who believes in justice, has his work cut out for him.

Aside from occasionally losing the threads tying motive to crime and the timing of who said or did what, when, I find this novel absolutely engrossing. Every once in a while, the diction slips, as Jasper speaks like an American, whereas his American assistant, a detective improbably named Hieronymus (Hy) Law, talks like an Englishman. But despite that, Goodwin’s a careful writer with a gift for creating vivid scenes and a sense of history, for the narrative takes place during the years of the Fugitive Slave Act, which figures in the story and puzzles our English protagonist.

If you go along for the ride, don’t be alarmed if the odd detail puzzles you. Let yourself be swept along, and you’ll be rewarded.

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

The Adamant Sheriff: Nighthawk’s Wing

17 Monday Jan 2022

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Review: Nighthawk’s Wing, by Charles Fergus
Arcade, 2021. 273 pp. $26

Gideon Stoltz, sheriff of (the fictional) Colerain County, Pennsylvania, in 1836, faces long odds in solving his latest case. He suffers headaches and memory loss because he fell off his horse and hit his head. His deputy does his best to cover for him, but Gideon’s boss, an arrogant attorney, openly hopes the voters will turn the young sheriff out of office come autumn. At only twenty-three, Gideon fears for his future, but the present looks pretty dreadful too. His wife, True, locked in grief over their young son’s death from influenza, won’t speak to him or even stir from bed.

But that’s just for starters. A woman said to be a witch has been found dead in Sinking Valley, a farm district more than a day’s ride from Adamant, the town where Gideon lives, and he’s not sure he can manage an extended trip, given his physical ailments. He’s hoping that the rumors of suicide prove true, and that he can investigate briefly and return home.

However, he not only knew the dead woman, Rebecca Kreidler, he has the strongest impression that he visited her on or about the day she died. Could he have killed her? Could he have taken her to bed, even, for, like many men who knew Rebecca, he lusted after her? The notion fills him with shame.

What’s more, when Gideon begins questioning the good folk of Sinking Valley, he uncovers complexities that challenge a verdict of suicide. Rebecca’s beauty aroused desire and envy, and her knowledge of medicinal plants invited both gratitude for her cures and suspicion of witchcraft. Then again, her past preceded her, for a woman who kills her husband — no matter how violent or abusive — has marked herself as an outcast, and her three years in the penitentiary is not considered adequate expiation.

This ingenious framework, and the facets Fergus gives it, make Nighthawk’s Wing compelling reading. Gideon Stoltz is a man first and a detective second, and though the two naturally intertwine, the narrative offers much more than a whodunit — luckily, for reasons I’ll get to. Not only do Gideon’s cognitive difficulties and the various reactions to them provide a touching, unusual background in a mystery, the social atmosphere places the narrative firmly in the central Pennsylvania soil.

This document bound one Henry Mayer as indentured servant to Abraham Hestant of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1738. Many German immigrants to Pennsylvania, erroneously called “Dutch,” bound themselves in this way (courtesy Immigrant Servants Database, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Like many people in Sinking Valley, Gideon’s of German extraction, or, as commonly called, “Dutch,” apparently a corruption of the German word Deitsch, how they describe themselves. Much hated and maligned for being different, they occupy a social position that marks the story. With skillful economy, Fergus deploys the animosity to effect, tracing its roots and consequences, and since Rebecca was Deitsch, Gideon must take that into account.

Another pleasure of Nighthawk’s Wing involves the vivid, very much lived-in picture of early nineteenth-century rural American life. Fergus shows us crafts, like grinding and resetting a millstone, or a blacksmith shoeing a horse, and recounts herbal lore and depicts burial customs. Such authenticity extends to various mounted creatures, for riding a beast requires particular skills or physical heft, and either you have them, or you don’t:

The animal’s long upper lip stated that it grudged being ridden. No saddle. The boy sat on a girthed sheepskin with the fleece side down. He held a loop of rope tied to the bit rings on both sides of the mule’s broad, disgruntled mouth. The boy was small, and his leg stuck out sideways from the mule’s sweat-slick barrel — uncomfortable enough, Gideon thought, even for one so young.

The narrative from Rebecca’s point of view works less well, I think. I believe her portrayal as a psychotic — one of her delusions gives the book its title — but by going back in time to let the now-dead speak feels like a copout, telling us what Gideon couldn’t possibly know. That may not bother other readers; and I may also be alone in my dislike of the supernatural elements that play a strong role, especially toward the end.

But I wonder whether other readers will agree with me that Fergus has tipped his hand concerning the killer’s identity, which I latched onto because of how mystery novels are typically put together. I don’t want to say more, for fear of giving too much away, but despite this drawback, I do believe that Nighthawk’s Wing deserves its audience. I congratulate Fergus for the loving care with which he re-creates the time and place and crafts his characters. If you’re like me, that will justify reading the novel.

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

Damaged Men: Kith and Kin

29 Monday Nov 2021

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Review: Kith and Kin, by Jane A. Adams
Severn, 2018. 218 pp. $29

In December 1928, two bodies wash up in the Kentish marshes, under circumstances anything but clear. But one thing Detective Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone and Detective Sergeant Mickey Hitchens know. They recognize one of the dead as a lieutenant of Josiah Bailey, a London crime boss who inspires such terror that people think twice before uttering his name.

Cliffe Pools, in the North Kent marshes, now cut off from the sea, forms a fleet, a saline waterway (courtesy Clem Rutter, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Johnstone and Hitchens also know that when Bailey gives an order, failure to comply may bring a death sentence, not only to the disobedient, but to their families. As such, the policemen must consider whether Bailey turned on his own loyalists, and why, or whether a rival gang has retaliated for an offense known only to the participants — in which case a turf war may erupt. What a terror that would be.

But to forestall that bloodbath, Hitchens and Johnstone must uncover the tangled roots of the murders, and since the key witnesses have connections to Bailey, no one will talk. Moreover, what the detectives gradually learn (but what the reader knows from the get-go) is that the case stems from a decade-old conflict that involves members of a Gypsy clan. They too are loath to speak up, because dealing with outsiders, especially officialdom, has always ended badly for them. As you might imagine, obstacles abound, the “no — and furthermore” that drives the story at a good clip.

However, this premise, though well executed, is surely not the first exploration of gang warfare in a mystery, nor is it what makes this novel worth reading. Rather, Adams focuses on her characters, starting with her two detectives, who care deeply about one another without ever saying so. They met during the Great War, so they have a bond that goes back, a tacit language. But it’s not just the shared background that makes them friends. Mickey Hitchens understands how the war still plagues Henry Johnstone, for reasons only alluded to (but which may have been explained in the first two installments of the series).

Touchingly, Mickey tries to make sure that Henry, a bachelor, bothers to eat enough and care for himself. But when his friend does something stupid in the line of duty, Hitchens doesn’t hesitate to say, “Lord, but you can be an awkward bastard when the mood takes you.” I can’t recall when I’ve run across such a pair of sleuths, or even a subordinate detective who never utters the word sir — in Britain, no less. The focus on characterization extends to the minor players, as with Henry’s sister, Cynthia; Mickey’s wife; and several witnesses, especially those who don’t belong to the mob. All receive a dash of inner life.

I also like how Adams creates a world of damaged people, about whom she refuses to moralize, and for whom luck and circumstance play a large role in whether they escape the darkness or succumb. Though Henry and his sister number among the escapees, that wasn’t a given, apparently, so he understands Bailey’s henchmen better than they realize, probably:

Childhood, Henry thought, ended all too swiftly for most children, especially the children of the poor. Henry and his sister, though his family had endured no such acute financial pressures, had also had their own childhood curtailed, in their case by a father who saw no value in creatures who could not contribute to his own wellbeing. Then the father had died and it had just been Henry and Cynthia and, all things considered, they had done well; in their case it was better to be parentless than so badly parented.

Adams’s prose reads like this throughout, clear, direct, and spare. Though I like that, sometimes her descriptions sound like laundry lists of detail, when I want evocations. The whodunit facet of the narrative consists largely of dialogue between the detectives, much of which veers into information dumps. To be fair, the two men must compare notes, yet how the author presents this exchange matters to me, and I prefer an indirect approach.

The back story, though essential and crisply told in itself, feels shoehorned in at times, including the prologue. In its defense, however, said prologue has one of the most compelling first sentences you’ll ever see, so I understand why Adams wanted to lead with it. Finally, though the ending satisfies in its realism, the solution fails to match the buildup, which leaves me wanting more.

Consequently, Kith and Kin is a novel greater than the sum of its parts. The characterizations are what command attention, and if I were to read another installment in the series, I’d do so to learn how the two detectives progress in their lives.

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

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.