Review 2123: The Murder Rule

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Hannah has left her alcoholic, dependent mother in Maine for the University of Virginia. There she uses deceit and some dirty tricks to get onto the Innocence Project. In particular, she gets herself onto the case of Michael Dandridge.

Dandridge has been in jail for 11 years, found guilty of rape and murder. However, his sentence has recently been vacated. The original prosecutor is determined to retry him.

Hannah’s goal is to interfere with the project’s defense of Dandridge. We learn why slowly as passages from her mother’s diary are revealed, dated 25 years before.

I wasn’t sure what I thought about McTiernan’s change of locale, her other novels being set in Ireland, but her storytelling took over, and I found myself reading another page-turner. Although I was not sure that things could turn out the way they did, I found the novel thrilling.

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Review 2122: The Mysterious Mr. Badman

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The Mysterious Mr. Badman starts out with an intriguing premise. Athelstan Digby is on holiday in Keldstone waiting for his nephew, Jim Pickering, to be free for a walking trip through Yorkshire. His landlords have to attend a funeral, so Digby offers to watch their bookstore. During the afternoon, three men come in at separate times looking for John Bunyan’s Life and Death of Mr. Badman—the rather shifty looking Reverend Percival Offord, a foxy looking man, and a genial chauffeur. Shortly after Digby has disappointed them, a boy comes in with books to sell, including Life and Death of Mr. Badman.

Naturally, Digby takes the book home. Later that night, someone breaks into the bookstore. Digby confides in his landlord, Mr. Lavender, who suggests they put a note in the bookstore window asking the person who accidentally took the book to return it. That will prevent further break-ins.

The boy who brought the books in says they were given to him by Miss Diane Conyers. Before Digby and Jim have a chance to talk to her, Digby finds a letter in the book that brings to mind a recent crime. A man named Neville Monkbarns was to be hung for murder but he was reprieved and sent to a mental hospital. However, the letter shows that Neville Monkbarns is actually the estranged son of the Home Secretary, Sir Richard Mottram. Sir Richard is Diane’s father, and it’s clear that the letter was going to be used to blackmail him.

Then, the body of the foxy looking man is found on the moor.

If you ignore the unlikelihood that any of the unsavory characters would know about the letter, this situation kicks off a lively and adventurous investigation, with Digby and Jim trying to help Diane protect her father. The main characters are likable and interesting, the dialogue is often amusing, and the book is light and fast-moving. I would like to read more of Digby’s adventures.

The cover explains that the original novel has been exceedingly rare, so I’m glad British Library Crime Classics chose to reprint it.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2121: Young Mungo

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Twice recently I’ve had the same unusual experience with my reading. I was looking forward to reading a second novel by an author who wrote a book that I loved, only to find the second novel seemed to be very much the same as the first, as if the writer was stuck somehow. This happened with Young Mungo.

Mungo is a caring 14-year-old Glaswegian gay boy with an alcoholic mother, a sister planning her escape, and a violent brother. Sound familiar, those of you who have read Shuggie Bain? The novel begins with Mungo being packed off on a camping trip with two men his mother barely knows from her AA meetings. He is poorly clad and equipped, the men are drunk, and a feeling of dread is the immediate effect. In between chapters that continue this story, the novel returns to scenes from Mungo’s past.

Set in the 1990’s, the novel is similar to Shuggie Bain except that Mungo is older and the novel is even more grim and violent at times. Still, it is compelling and becomes less like the other novel as it goes along. I ended up liking it but not so sure I want to visit that world a third time.

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Review 2120: The Rising Tide

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Fifty years ago, a group of students attended a retreat at the urging of their teacher. They were so struck by it that they continued meeting every five years on Lindisfarne. This year, Rick Kelsall, a media star, finds himself in disgrace after one of his staff accused him of inappropriate behavior. He likes attention and the first night of the retreat, tells them all he’s writing a novel based on true events. During the night, he is murdered and left to look like a suicide.

Vera figures the most obvious suspects are the others there for the retreat—Philip, a wild boy turned Anglican vicar; Annie, a divorcee who works at a deli; Lou, who spends most of her time caring for her husband, Ken, stricken with Alzheimers; and Ken. In years past, there were three more participants: Charlotte, Rick’s ex-wife, who was bored by the retreat; Dan, Annie’s ex-husband; and Isobel, who was killed after she had a fight with Rick and drove off onto the causeway when the tide was coming in. Their teacher, Judith, was also at the first retreat.

Vera’s team turns up lots of intriguing information about the retreat participants and their connections. Charlotte, who had been a celebrity, now runs a failing spa. Dan, from a lower social class than the others, is now a wealthy resort owner. Vera is shocked to find out that his partner is Katherine Willmore, the Police and Crime Commissioner. Further, it was her daughter who made the allegation against Rick, which she has not revealed to Vera.

On the team, Holly and Joe are still feeling competitive, but they have started getting along better. And Joe has shown some independence from Vera.

Vera has a notion that the crime has some connection to Isobel’s death years ago. Then another person connected with the group is killed.

As usual, Cleeves has written another tightly plotted, clever mystery. However, for this one, I found the ending incredibly touching.

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Review 2119: The House of Footsteps

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Simon Christie, in his brand new role as an art cataloger, takes his first job for a well-known auction house. He is supposed to evaluate the famous Mortlake collection, rumored to perhaps have even a Da Vinci.

When he arrives at the small village near the Mortlake house, Thistlecrook, he hears rumors about the unpredictable owner, Victor Mortlake, and about a history of violence on the property and deaths in the lake.

Victor Mortlake is unpredictable and the famous art collection is horrifying—images of ghastly acts of violence. Still, because of Simon’s ingratiating behavior, Mortlake seems to believe Simon understands something that he doesn’t.

Then Simon meets Amy in the library, an unexplained and unacknowledged presence in the house. Who is she? And of course he hears footsteps in the house at night.

This novel, set in the mid-1920s, seemed much like a Victorian gothic. I thought it would be the perfect book for me, but it was slow moving and hard to stick with. It is written mostly with description rather than dialogue, much like a Victorian novel. Further, by the end of the novel I still wasn’t quite sure what was going on.

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Review 2118: Afterlives

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An interview I heard with Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah made me interested in reading his latest novel, Afterlives. This novel is set in what once was German East Africa, from the early 1900s to the 1950s.

At first, the novel seems rambling, beginning with one character then moving to another, reminding me a bit of Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, but Gurnah eventually returns to the characters he started with. This novel begins with Khalifa. In Gurnah’s fashion, we first hear all about Khalifa’s family and education before getting down to the story of how he goes to work for the merchant Amur Bi-ashara. They become close, and Khalifa marries Amur’s niece, Asha. Asha’s father was ruined before he died, and Amur bought the house they live in, but he promised the house to Asha. However, he dies before giving it to them, and his son, Nassor Bi-ashara, keeps it. Although Khalifa continues to work for Nassor, resentment is there.

The story moves to Ilyas, who arrives in town for work and befriends Khalifa. Ilyas was stolen away from his family as a child, and so after he is settled, he returns to his village to look for his family. His family is gone except for a much younger sister he didn’t know he had, Afujah, who is living with her uncle and being treated like a slave. Ilyas brings Afujah back to town to live with him for a year, but then he decides to join the askaris in the German army, so he takes her back to her uncle. There she is mistreated until she sends a message to Khalifa, who comes and takes her back to town.

We meet Hamza when he is serving as an askari just before and during World War I. This is the story in which the theme of colonialism really gets going. Hamza eventually meets Khalifa, but much else happens first.

Gurnah employs a detached tale-telling style, which I noticed bothered some Goodreads readers, but he is a true storyteller. The ending seemed a bit of an anticlimax but wrapped up all the story threads.

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Review 2117: Smoke and Mirrors

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Best friends Annie Francis and Mark Webster, aged 13, disappear on the way to the candy store. The search for them is disrupted by a snowstorm, so they’re not found for several days, in a shallow ditch with a trail of candy leading to it. DI Edgar Stephens thinks they were meant to be discovered earlier, but the snow prevented it.

The police find that Annie had written plays performed by younger children on a stage at the home of neighbor Brian Baxter. The early plays were innocuous, but by all accounts the latest is darker. Annie has shown an interest in the real German fairy tales with dark plot lines. Her newest play is called The Stolen Children.

Edgar’s friend Max Mephisto is performing in a pantomime in town, and through him, Edgar hears of a similar murder that took place in 1917. It seems an odd coincidence that some of the older pantomime performers were in town at the time. The murderer was caught and is dead, but could there be a connection?

Edgar gets a call from Daphne Young, a teacher who was helping Annie with her play, saying she’s discovered something. But she is also found murdered before he can talk to her.

I don’t seem to be getting as involved with the Brighton series, set in the 1950’s, as I have with Griffith’s Ruth Galloway or Harbinder Kauer books. However, I like the vaudeville theme and am willing to stick with it for a bit.

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Review 2116: The Unseen

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I have to admit to buying The Unseen because of its cover. I’m glad I did, because before I was halfway through, I was ordering the second book in the Barrøy trilogy. Although I’m not reading the shortlist for the Booker International prize, this novel was shortlisted for it.

After reading much of Halldor Laxson’s Independent People under the belief that it was describing Icelandic life in Medieval times, only to find out it was set in the 20th century, I don’t make assumptions about the times in which novels are set anymore. The Unseen describes a similarly primitive existence, with not many hints to its timeframe, but I finally figured out it begins a few years before World War I.

Ingrid’s family lives on Barrøy, one in an archipelago of many small islands in northern Norway. Each island is occupied by one family, and although the islands are in sight of each other, visits are rare, so the family has to be fairly self-sufficient.

Ingrid’s father, Hans, works hard and dreams of a different life for his family. His immediate dream is for a quay to make it easier for boats to land, so that when Uncle Erling arrives with his large fishing boat each January to pick up Hans for the yearly fishing, he can get off the boat. The novel relates the everyday events of the family’s life—the four-month fishing trips, the haying and fish drying in summer, milking cows, moving livestock from one small island to another for grazing, collecting and cleaning down from the eider ducks. And the big events—births, deaths, expansions and contractions of the residents of the islands.

Written in spare, crystalline prose with an occasionally very dry humor, The Unseen is fascinating. I loved this novel. And here I am reading about islands again.

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Review 2115: Summer Lightning

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I intended to read Summer Lightning for the 1929 Club last fall, but it didn’t arrive in time from the library. It is one of the Blandings books, and I have not read many of those.

The country is buzzing at the news that Galahad Threepwood, that old reprobate, is planning to publish his memoirs. Old men up and down the country are terrified of what he might reveal.

At Blandings Castle, where Galahad has repaired to write, both Mr. Ronald Fish, Lord Emsworth’s nephew, and Miss Millicent Threepwood, a niece, are in love, unfortunately not with each other as their daunting aunt, Lady Constance, intends. Millicent has fallen for Hugo Carmody, Lord Emsworth’s secretary, and Ronnie for Sue Brown, a chorus girl.

As usual, Lord Emsworth is besotted with his pig, the Empress of Blandings. Ronnie gets the idea to steal the Empress and hide her away then pretend to find her, thereby winning Lord Emsworth’s regard.

In the meantime, Hugo has to run up to town and takes the opportunity to go dancing with Sue. Unfortunately, he has promised Millicent he will do no such thing. Mr. Pilbeam, an oily detective, has just accepted a job from Hugo to find the Empress (which he only accepted because someone is paying him a lot of money to steal Galahad’s manuscript) when he comes upon Sue waiting at their table for Hugo. He has been calling her and sending her flowers, to which she hasn’t responded, so he sits at her table uninvited. At that moment, jealous Ronnie appears.

As if this isn’t enough silly fun, Sue impersonates a wealthy American so she can visit Blandings and make things up with Ronnie. The novel also features the reappearance of Baxter, Lord Emsworth’s previous secretary, whom Lord Emsworth thinks is batty. And he’s on the tail of the Empress, too.

I enjoyed this book, but I think the Blandings series is missing something compared to Jeeves and Wooster. That something is Bertie’s insouciant, dim-witted yet witty and kind narrative style.

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