Author: whatmeread

Day 352: Junkyard Dogs

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Cover for Junkyard DogsI read this novel completely out of order with the others, but then I’ve been reviewing them out of order, too, so I guess that’s irrelevant.

First, old George Stewart, who owns the junkyard in Durant, Wyoming, is dragged behind a Toronado by his granddaughter. Then he is attacked by his neighbor. When Walt finds him in an attempt to investigate the first incident, he is dead, but not from these attacks. Someone has shot him.

Perhaps George’s death has to do with a new housing development next to the junkyard. The developer would like to remove the junkyard from the immediate vicinity of the homes he is building.

In the meantime, Walt is using the investigation of a severed thumb to try to keep his deputy, Santiago Saizarbitoria, who is considering quitting after being shot in the last book. Although Walt already knows that someone has claimed the thumb, he wants to keep Saizarbitoria busy and engaged in the hopes that he will stay.

Walt is also dealing with an eye injury and uncomfortable feelings about his daughter’s upcoming marriage to the brother of his other deputy, Victoria Moretti.

As I have said before, I think Craig Johnson is a great storyteller, and I love the setting of these modern-day western novels. To Junkyard Dogs, Johnson adds a touch of an offbeat sense of humor.

Day 351: The Fixer

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Cover for The FixerBest Book of the Week!

In 1911 Russia, Yakov Bok is tired of his difficult life in the shtetl. So, after his wife leaves him for another man, Yakov travels to Kiev in hopes of making a better living. When he helps a drunken man who is passed out in the snow, Yakov is offered a job supervising a brick yard. However, in order to take this job, Yakov must live in a part of the city forbidden to Jews.

It is this circumstance followed by a series of mishaps that ends up with Yakov being accused of murdering a boy he chased away from the brick yard. As the case continues, it becomes clear that the murder is being used by authorities an an excuse to trump up charges of ritual murder against the Jewish community.

The novel becomes more and more difficult to read as literally everything that happens to Yakov makes things worse for him. The gentiles he knows in Kiev tell lies about him. Once he is in prison, the jailers do everything they can to incriminate him, including trying to entrap him into breaking the rules or admitting his guilt.

Yakov goes into jail a nonpolitical, irreligious, naive man who hopes for justice, and the novel is partially about his development into an angry man who refuses to be beaten. Although almost nothing in the way of plot or action happens from the time he goes to jail, I was absolutely compelled to finish reading.

Written in a storytelling fashion that I associate with the tales of Sholem Aleichem or Isaac Bashevis Singer, this novel is more grim than most of the stories I’ve read by these other writers. However, both The Fixer and The Bloody Hoax, by Aleichem, are based on a true event from 1911 Kiev, called the Beiliss blood libel case.

Day 350: The Man Who Went Up in Smoke

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Cover for The Man Who Went Up in SmokeAt first, I thought this novel, written in 1966, was a little more dated than Roseanna, by the same authors. However, except for the formality in the characters’ dress, it stopped feeling dated after awhile.

Inspector Martin Beck has been on vacation with his family less than a day when he is called back to take charge of an unusual case. A Swedish journalist named Alf Mattson has been reported missing by his editor. The difficulty is that he disappeared in Budapest. There can be no official investigation because the Hungarian police have not received an official request for assistance, so Beck must travel to Budapest unofficially.

In Budapest Beck is able to retrace Mattson’s movements right up until he disappeared, one day after arriving. He visits a youth hostel where Mattson spent the first night and hears through his colleagues back in Sweden that Mattson claimed to have a girlfriend there. But when Beck finds her, she denies knowing Mattson.

Beck feels himself at a loss. His discussions with the Budapest police have not gone very far. The police can’t conduct a full-blown investigation until Mattson’s visa expires, but they have made some inquiries. It is not until Beck is viciously attacked that he understands he is getting somewhere.

Sjöwall and Wahlöö are known for having reinvented the police procedural, and many of its present-day conventions were first used in their novels. The novels are well written and deal with common people more often than with career criminals or gangsters.

Day 349: The Silver Sword

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Cover for The Silver SwordThe introduction of my edition of The Silver Sword says it is a beloved British children’s book that has not been out of print since it was published in 1956. When I began to read it, the names of the characters seemed vaguely familiar, and when I read that it was published in the US as Escape from Warsaw, I realized that I too had read it as a child.

Joseph Balicki is taken away from his family in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation of World War II for the crime of turning Hitler’s picture to the wall during a scripture lesson. He eventually manages to escape from prison and make his way back to Warsaw, only to find his house destroyed, his wife imprisoned, and his children missing.

Since the first days of the war, the family planned that if they ever got separated, they would meet in Switzerland at his wife’s parents’ house. Joseph decides to head for Switzerland, but first he befriends a street urchin named Jan. Joseph gives Jan a trifle belonging to his wife, a silver sword, and asks him if he ever meets his children to tell them to go to Switzerland.

The novel flashes back to when the Balicki’s mother was arrested. After the arrest, Ruth, Edek, and Bronia take to the streets and live through the war in cellars or in the woods outside the city. Edek is taken away to a German labor camp. Finally, at the end of the war, Ruth meets Jan and decides to make the trip to Switzerland. But first, she and Bronia, and Jan, for he comes too, must travel to Germany to find Edek.

The story goes quickly, narrated in a simple manner that does not focus much on emotion or characterization. Serrailler was cognizant of the sensibilities of children and also wanted, in the postwar years, to focus on reconciliation, so there are good people among all the nationalities the children encounter. He tries to show the horror and destruction of war without being too violent.

Perhaps Serailler was unaware that the Russians waited outside of Warsaw hoping that the Polish resistance would be completely wiped out by the Nazis. In any case, he did not express at all how much the Poles feared the arrival of the Russians. The story is probably not going to be very satisfying for an adult to read, from this standpoint and that of the style, but I remember being riveted by it as a child.

Day 348: A Fatal Grace

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Cover for A Fatal GraceIn this second novel of the series, Inspector Gamache is investigating the death of an old bag lady when he is called back to Three Pines to solve the murder of a very unpleasant woman. C C de Poitiers is a minor celebrity who is poison in the village because she treats others so callously. Now she has met an unusual and complicated death, electrocuted while watching a curling game on the day after Christmas.

Gamache has lots of suspects, including the victim’s hen-pecked husband and her daughter, whom she continually heckled about her weight. But as he investigates, he finds that Poitiers was not who she said she was.

In an ongoing plot, Gamache’s career is threatened by an old case where he took down some crooked officers high in the force. He has two new members of his team, local agent Robert Lemieux and agent Yvette Nichol, taken on because he likes to mentor young officers. However, one of them is working for his enemies by helping them sabotage his career.

It is always a pleasure to return to Three Pines, and I like the generous Inspector Gamache. Apparently some readers who were charmed by the picturesque village in the first novel were disenchanted by this sequel, but a mystery series about murders in a small town is bound to affect the atmosphere of the location. My favorite of the series so far is actually the one that took place in Quebec City, and it’s hard to imagine how many more people Penny can kill off in this village, but I still enjoy the series.

Day 347: The Strangled Queen

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Cover for The Strangled QueenBest Book of the Week!

The Strangled Queen is the second in Maurice Druon’s The Accursed Kings series. In The Iron King, King Philippe IV and his progeny were cursed at the stake by the Grand Master of the Knights Templar for conniving with the pope to destroy the knights for their wealth. Now, after the pope and one of the king’s advisors dies, Philippe begins to believe in the curse and dies shortly thereafter, within a year, just as foretold.

His death leaves Philippe’s eldest son, Louis X, on the throne. Louis needs an heir, but his wife, Marguerite of Burgundy, was imprisoned in the Chateau Gaillard for adultery along with her sister-in-law Blanche. He is unable to get a divorce because a new pope has not yet been chosen. He sends Robert of Artois to coerce Marguerite into signing a letter claiming that their marriage was not consummated and their daughter is illegitimate.

In the meantime, Louis is involved in a power struggle against his uncle Charles of Valois. Louis does not know that Robert of Artois has taken his uncle’s side as part of his scheme to reclaim his inheritance, stolen by his aunt Mahaut.

Druon’s historical fiction is powerfully written, elegant and ironic. His novels do not take the point of view of one fictional character, as do most historical novels. All of the characters are actual historical figures, and few of them are sympathetic. The plots are driven forward by the power of the events they relate.

Several years ago, I had a hard time finding this series of books so that I could read it, but I felt that the result was worth the effort. Now, luckily for readers who are interested in the series, a new version of these books is available in paperback.

Day 346: Behold, Here’s Poison

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Cover for Behold Here's PoisonAlthough Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances are some of the best historical fiction around, also entertaining are her few mystery  novels, set in the time period in which they were written (this one in 1936). The only problem with many of them is that the murderer is frequently the only unlikeable character (except the victim, usually) and therefore highly identifiable. However, Heyer’s novels are character driven, and her lifelike and amusing characters are what make them so enjoyable.

There are plenty of characters to dislike in Behold, Here’s Poison. Gregory Matthews is found dead at his country home. His family assumes the death is because of his bad heart, but the police find traces of nicotine poisoning.

Suddenly, all of the surviving Matthews are suspects, including the domineering Aunt Gertrude, hypocritical Zoë Matthews, and malicious nephew Randall. Inspector Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway find that one big stumbling block is their difficulty in figuring out how the poison was administered.

The dialog is especially witty in this novel and the characters lively. As always, Heyer is a brilliant writer.

Day 345: The Chalice

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Cover for The ChaliceI am not sure why I found this novel so irritating. Possibly it is because it is a sequel, but nowhere on the cover is that indicated, and this novel is definitely one that requires knowledge of the previous book, which I have not read.

Joanna Stafford is a former Dominican novice after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. At the beginning of the novel she is in Canterbury with some ex-monks about to commit some serious act, but then the action turns back several months.

Joanna is living in Dartford with her young cousin and her friends Brother Edmund and Sister Winifred, a former monk and nun who are sister and brother. Some of the townspeople are suspicious of the former residents of the priory, but Joanna has plans to continue there and set up a loom to weave tapestries.

Soon, however, her cousins Gertrude and Henry Courtenay arrive to invite her and her cousin Arthur for a visit. Little does Joanna know that Gertrude is aware that Joanna is the subject of a prophecy, which a group of Catholics believe will save Catholicism in England. Apparently, in the previous novel she received a prophecy and was told she would learn it in full after she received three prophecies. Since her family was destroyed as the result of a prophecy, however, she has promised never to dabble in it again. She is soon subject to immense pressure from Gertrude Courtenay and others, including the Lady Mary Tudor and the Spanish ambassador Chapuys, to see a seer.

The novel does not seem very coherent. Joanna is told she must hear the prophecies of her own free will, yet all kinds of pressures and threats are applied to make her hear them. She is refusing to hear the prophecy, then she isn’t. Then we go through the same thing with the next prophecy. Some of her decisions seem completely unlikely for a person who is extremely religious and was previously a novice. At one point in the book she throws herself at two different men within the space of weeks.

It takes an incredibly long time to feel certain that we’ve learned of everything revealed in the first book–new facts keep popping up until nearly halfway through the volume. This is not a stand-alone novel by any means. Whether it would be more satisfying for someone who has read the first book I cannot answer.