Day 258: Busman’s Honeymoon

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Cover for Busman's HoneymoonI have always thought that, with a few exceptions, the arrival of Harriet Vane into the Lord Peter Wimsey series pretty much ruined it. Some of those mysteries are not so bad, and Have His Carcase (wherein Lord Peter meets Harriet) and Gaudy Night (wherein Harriet solves a mystery on her own) are very good, but Busman’s Honeymoon is just too sappy. It is hard to know if Peter and Harriet’s marriage is Sayers’ idea of an ideal relationship or a reflection of some relationship she actually had, but I find that Lord Peter’s galumphing happiness contrasts strangely with Harriet’s odd undertones.

Lord Peter and Harriet are married and travel for their honeymoon to a house they bought in the country. But when they arrive, they find the house is not ready for them and the previous owner, Mr. Noakes, is nowhere to be found–until next morning when Bunter finds him dead in the basement. In the meantime, the servants have been cleaning, and all the clues are gone.

One positive point for the novel is that the Dowager Duchess shows up, a favorite character. We also get a little more background on the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter.

I guess this isn’t the best selection for Valentine’s Day, since I’m criticizing it for sappiness, but if you have different tastes than mine, you might like it. I see that the reviewers on Amazon are remarking at how romantic it is. And also commenting on the subtle humor. Well, I didn’t find it so subtle.

Day 257: Galore

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Cover for GaloreA whale comes ashore at the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, Newfoundland, in the early 19th century. The people, who have been starving all winter, come out to scavenge what they can of the meat. When Devine’s Widow, an old Irish “wise woman,” cuts open the belly of the whale, a man falls out, pale as an albino, mute, but still alive. Although he stinks like a fish, the Devine clan gives him room in a shed and calls him Judah. Nevertheless, he is treated with dread and superstition until he goes out fishing one day with Colum Devine and they take a huge load of fish in waters that have been barren that season.

The Devines have been at odds with the powerful King-Me Sellers since he proposed marriage to a young Irish bondswoman years ago and she refused him rudely, then went off to marry Devine, practically the first young man she met. Their relationship was not improved years later when King-Me’s daughter Lizzy married Colum Devine.

When King-Me’s spite turns against Judah, the only way the Devines can save him is by marrying him to Mary Trephyna Devine, Colum and Lizzy’s daughter and King-Me’s granddaughter.

Michael Crummey’s multigenerational novel captures the relationships between these two families along with the history of the town, with all its eccentric characters, ghost stories, myths, and tall tales. The novel is fascinating, unusual, and beautifully written. I don’t usually enjoy magical realism, but in this novel it is handled so well that I accepted it and was engrossed in the story. Galore is probably unlike any novel you are going to read, although in its focus on a sea-going people and its occasional feel of a sea tale, it reminds me a bit of We, the Drowned  by Carsten Jensen.

Day 256: The Truth-Teller’s Lie

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Cover for The Truth-Teller's LieIn The Truth-Teller’s Lie, Sophie Hannah has written another perplexing, dark tale. (Caution, book buyers: as with some other of Hannah’s book, this one was previously published under another title–Hurting Distance.)

Naomi Jenkins has a secret she has never told anyone–that a few years ago she was viciously raped. Lately, she has been having an affair with a married man, Robert Haworth. When he doesn’t turn up for their weekly meeting, she is convinced that something has happened to him, but she can’t get Detectives Charlie Zailer and Simon Waterhouse to do more than ask his wife about him. So, she decides to tell a bizarre lie–that Robert was the man who raped her.

When Simon searches Robert’s house, he finds him lying bleeding on the bed and his wife Juliet behaving strangely. Juliet refuses to tell what happened. As the police investigate, they begin to think that there is a serial rapist abducting women and raping them in front of an audience and that there is some connection between these incidents and the attack on Robert.

As usual in a Sophie Hannah novel, everyone is a bit strange. Even the innocent parties seem to be quite batty, and the police have their own, very odd problems. But her novels are dark and complex, and that’s what I like about them.

Day 255: Anderby Wold

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Cover for Anderby WoldMary Robson is a young married woman who has been working for years to save her family farm, Anderby Wold. She even married John, her much older husband, whose hard work has kept it going these past years. She is a managing woman who thinks it is her duty to oversee the welfare of the village, making herself disliked by many. Because of her preoccupations, she seems much older than she actually is.

One day she encounters David Rossiter, a young radical journalist who disagrees with everything Mary believes in. David is trying to get farm workers interested in unionizing, and Mary becomes unsuitably obsessed with the younger man. The schoolmaster, Coast, becomes involved in the unionization issue expressly to make trouble for Mary, whom he detests.

Anderby Wold is an interesting slice of Yorkshire life in the 1920’s. It reflects the issues of the times, when farmers were facing increased demand for workers’ rights. Another of Winifred Holtby’s consistent themes that appears here is getting on with life after the death of a loved one. This novel is Holtby’s first, and its realistic depictions of village life of the times reflect her background as a journalist.

Day 254: Vulture Peak

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Cover for Vulture PeakBurdett’s Bangkok series is dark, but Vulture Peak is much more twisted than the others. Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep of the Royal Thai Police is ordered by his powerful superior, Colonel Vikom, to investigate a triple murder in a luxurious villa on Vulture Peak, a steep hill above the seaside town of Phuket.

Sonchai realizes that this investigation is linked to Vikom’s stated intention of wiping out trafficking in body parts, part of his campaign for governor of Bangkok. But Sonchai is puzzled by two things: he has never heard before that Thailand is a center of trafficking for body parts and he doesn’t understand why Vikom wants to be governor. Still, it is certainly true that the three bodies have been harvested of every possible organ, including their faces.

Sonchai believes the murders are connected to a trip he took at Colonel Vikom’s command a few weeks before, during which he was posing as an organ merchant. He was dispatched to Dubai to meet Lily and Polly Yip, a pair of Chinese twins who are rich, spoiled, and very odd–and engaged in organ trafficking.

Soon Sonchai is enmeshed in a complicated case that involves trips to Hong Kong and Shanghai, possible involvement of Colonel Vikom’s biggest rival General Zinna, a wandering lunatic with a badly disfigured face who is raping women in Bangkok, and a schizophrenic Chinese cop.

As usual, the pace is fast, the atmosphere is edgy, the characters are interesting, and the insight into Thai and Buddhist culture fascinating.

Day 253: The Darkest Road

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Cover for The Darkest RoadI guess it’s about time for me to finish The Fionavar Tapestry series by reviewing the last book. I have avoided doing this because my notes mostly consist of comments about who I was sad about (Finn, Tabor, and Diarmuid) and who I didn’t care about (Jennifer, Darien, Dave, Paul, Kevin).

The end of the novel is, of course, an epic battle. I would actually like to read a fantasy novel that doesn’t end with an epic battle. But the crux of the matter lies with the god-child Darien, who has to decide whether he is good like his mother Jennifer or evil like his father Rakoth. Unfortunately, because Kay chose the route of having Jennifer be Queen Guinevere reincarnate, she isn’t allowed to develop as a character but is treated more as a symbol. As I stated before in my review of The Wandering Fire, I think the whole Guinevere/King Arthur/Lancelot plot is completely unnecessary.

My other significant comments are that the pace is very slow and I feel the final book, although affecting, perhaps tied up all the loose ends too neatly. I would like to close, unusually, by quoting a review from Publisher’s Weekly, because it is true and made me laugh. “The exceptionally detailed background of this fantasy would be more impressive if it didn’t suffocate a book already burdened with static narrative and turgid, poetic prose that all too fittingly captures the adolescent posturing of its transplanted college student protagonists.” You might remember my comments about the juvenile characters in my review of  The Summer Tree.

The Fionavar Tapestry is a well-known work by Guy Gavriel Kay, but really, if you want to try reading him, you can do much better. Pretty cover, though.

Day 252: The Demon of Dakar

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Cover for The Demon of DakarA theme of this mystery novel is how crime affects the lives of innocent people. Manuel Alavez’s two younger brothers were lured from rural Oaxaca with the promise of money made by a fat man and a tall thin man from Sweden. Manuel turned down the offer and continued his hard labor on the family farm. His brother Angel was killed in Germany, and Patricio was arrested at the Swedish border carrying drugs he thought were important letters. Now, Manuel has traveled to Sweden to visit Patricio in prison and collect the money that was promised to him even if he failed.

Slobadan Andersson is the fat man, the owner of a restaurant named Dakar in Uppsala. He and his partner Armas, the tall man, also import and sell drugs. But Armas soon goes missing.

Eva Willman is the single mother of two teenage sons. She has been unemployed for a long time, ever since the post office laid her off, but she has heard that there is a waitress position open at Dakar. Shortly after she starts work, feeling a new sense of self-worth, she learns her oldest son Patrik was reported at the scene of the stabbing of a local drug dealer.

Johnny Kvarnheder is a chef who has just left his old life behind to start work at Dakar.

These characters and others are affected by the activities of the drug smugglers and sellers who are trying to open up the drug market in Uppsala. Ann Lindell and a host of her colleagues from several agencies end up trying to find out who murdered Armas, who stabbed the drug seller, and who is responsible for selling drugs to teenagers. At the same time, Ann still misses her ex-lover Edvard and tries to cope with the serious illness of her mentor.

This novel is more of an interesting police procedural than a mystery, since readers know who murdered Armas but don’t understand how all the pieces fit together. The fates of the Mexican men were especially compelling. One caveat is that there were far too many police officers to keep track of, which may be realistic but somewhat impedes the story.

Day 251: The Disorderly Knights

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Cover for The Disorderly KnightsBest Book of the Week!
The Disorderly Knights is the third novel in Dorothy Dunnett’s rousing Lymond Chronicles series. I previously reviewed the first two novels, The Game of Kings and Queen’s Play.

Upon his return to Scotland from his adventures in France, Francis Crawford of Lymond establishes a small fighting force of independent knights and begins training them. As their reputation spreads, the band begins to attract more knights, and he hears that they are to be joined by a renowned fighter, Sir Graham Reid Mallett, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. John. Many of the men who know Reid Mallet consider him almost a living saint. In disposition and talents he seems to be a perfect foil for Lymond, but they clash, and some of Lymond’s men begin to turn against him. As usual, Lymond’s behavior appears to put him in the wrong, and Reid Mallett seems to want to usurp the fighting force.

This conflict eventually leads to Malta, where Lymond arrives just before the Ottoman Turks attack. During the siege, Lymond becomes involved in the political maneuvering and feuds among the various national factions of the declining Order of St. John. He also hears that Oonagh O’Dwyer, the beautiful Irish rebel he encountered in Queen’s Play, is captive in another city on the island. After the siege, he follows her to North Africa in an attempt to free her.

It is difficult to write more about this novel because of spoilers, but also because the plot becomes increasingly complex from this point on, with threads that are not all explained until the sixth book. Suffice it to say that, although this is a slow-starting series, if you get this far, you will be hooked. The novel is suspenseful and exciting, and Lymond makes a complicated and compelling main character, almost an anti-hero at times. These books were written in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and I think the only series to compare with them might be George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice or Dunnett’s own House of Niccolo series.