Tag: England

Day 50: Blacklands

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Cover for BlacklandsBest Book of Week 10!

Belinda Bauer was another of my discoveries last year as a new writer of dark, psychologically complex novels. Blacklands is not so much a mystery as a thriller.

Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb’s uncle Billy was murdered as a child by a serial killer, and his grandmother has never gotten over it. Steven’s Nan spends all day looking out the window for her son, whose body was never found. Everyone thinks Billy was murdered by pedophile Arnold Avery, who is serving a life sentence.

Steven decides he will find his uncle’s body and that will fix his family, so he has spent all of his spare time for three years digging up the moor near his house where Avery’s victims were found. Finally he realizes the task is hopeless.

Steven feels that he is so average that he has no talents, so he is pleased when his teacher tells him he writes a good letter. He decides that maybe if he writes to the murderer, Avery will tell him where he buried Uncle Billy.

When Avery realizes that the person who has been writing to him is a boy, he decides that the situation is too delicious and he must escape from prison. Of course, he is successful.

The barren moors of Exmoor are so vividly described that they are almost a character in this chilling, suspenseful novel. At times I wasn’t totally convinced by the depiction of the thinking of the serial killer, but for the most part I was absolutely riveted.

Day 47: Believing the Lie

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Cover for Believing the LieI have been a fan of Elizabeth George’s Detective Inspector Lynley and Detective Sergeant Havers series ever since I read A Great Deliverance, the first one. However, it seems to have gone astray ever since George killed off Lynley’s wife three or four books ago, and I came close to not picking up this one. With Believing the Lie, however, George is slowly returning to form. (Just as a side note, those of you who think you know the series from Masterpiece Mystery are sadly mistaken. I was thrilled to hear they were doing the series but really upset at how they combined books, changed endings to ones that were less effective, and so on.)

Lynley is asked by Assistant Commissioner (and slimy politician) David Hilliard to do him a favor and investigate whether a wealthy industrialist’s nephew died in an accident or was murdered. Of course, a lot is going on with the Fairclough family below the surface.

Since the investigation is unofficial, Lynley takes along his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, who are recurring characters in the series. Simon St. James is a forensic scientist of some note and Deborah is a world-class photographer. Although the nephew’s death has been ruled an accidental drowning, Simon finds some evidence to suggest otherwise.

In investigating Fairclough’s son Nicholas, Deborah becomes involved with his beautiful Argentinian wife, with whom she feels a sympathetic connection, while Lynley and Simon investigate the rest of the family. As family secrets are revealed, things begin to fall apart.

Meanwhile back at home, Havers gets more involved with her neighbor’s family. She has long cared about the little girl next door, Hadiyyah, and her handsome father Taymullah Azhar. Now Azhar’s estranged partner, Angela Upman, has returned to the family. Barbara wants to dislike her because of the pain she has caused her family, but Angela is nice and helps her improve her professional appearance, as she has been ordered to do by her new boss. However, Barbara thinks that something is going on.

I think what makes George’s books outstanding are her writing skills and her ability to create convincing characters. I have said before that I have dropped many series mystery novels, principally because I get tired of the secondary characters, who keep doing the same things over and over. George does a nice job of developing even the minor characters and making them interesting, instead of just using them as plot devices.

That being said, George seems determined to thrust Lynley into a series of romantic disasters. Maybe she should be following a dictum I have heard attributed to P. D. James that it’s not a good idea to mix the romance and detective genres. In the first book, Lynley was madly in love with Deborah as she was marrying Simon. In the second book, he suddenly realized he loved his old friend Helen. Then he spent several books chasing Helen, whom we all loved, and was happily married for one or two books until she was murdered. Since the last book he has been stupidly pursuing an affair with his alcoholic boss. As I said before, I think killing Helen was a big mistake, and judging from some of the comments on Amazon, others agree.

One more caveat to this book. Deborah is starting to have the secondary character problem I described above. She is so obsessed by her conception problems that she thinks she understands Bernard’s wife based upon finding one copy of a brochure in the house. Because she thinks she knows what’s going on, she ignores all evidence that things may not be as she thinks. This misunderstanding has tragic consequences. Deborah has been obsessing over her inability to have a child since the third or fourth book in a long series. I wish George would have her adopt a child and get it over with.

Day 41: Death Comes to Pemberley

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Cover for Death Comes to PemberleyDeath Comes to Pemberley is an unusual attempt by P.D. James, a mystery with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy and their family and friends as characters. P.D. James is, of course, the queen of the mystery novel, but I had to admit to some disappointment with this effort.

On the night before the Darcy’s annual ball, the Darcys, his sister Georgina, the Binghams, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and a suitor of Georgina’s have just finished dinner when a coach careers into the yard containing Lydia Wickham, who says that someone is trying to murder her husband. As you will remember from Pride and Prejudice, Lydia would have been ruined by Wickham had not Darcy paid him to marry her, so the family has been at outs.

The men all go off to find Wickham bending over the body of his friend Major Denny. Although the evidence seems to suggest that Wickham has murdered Denny, he insists that after an argument he left the coach containing the three of them, on their way to crash the Darcy’s ball, and didn’t know what happened to Denny.

Although James is a little more successful at capturing the style and time of an Austen novel than other modern writers who have used the Darcys as characters, she spends no time on character development at all, leaving this to the readers’ knowledge of Pride and Prejudice. Yet, at the same time, she unnecessarily, considering the novel is supposed to take place six years later, has characters rehash the events of the original. Although I cannot recall the details, I also have a note that the novel was repetitive.

I have generally avoided reading the plethora of new books riffing on the reinterest in Austen, but I was looking forward to this one because James is usually so good. Although not at all a bad book, I feel that this was not one of her better efforts.

Day 37: The Notting Hill Mystery

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Cover for Notting Hill MysteryI have always understood that the first mystery novel was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, but last year I read an article that said the first mystery novel was actually The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix (pen name for Charles Warren Adams), which was published serially  in 1862 before being published in a book. Even more interestingly, this article made a good case for the actual author being Benjamin Disraeli, the prime minister of England (that is, for Charles Felix being a pen name for a pen name). Well, of course I had to read it.

Two wealthy sisters have a sympathetic connection that makes them each get ill when the other is ill. The stronger sister is stolen away by gypsies at the age of five.

Years later, the other sister marries a wealthy man, and she and her husband fall under the spell of a mesmerist, the sinister Baron R. He has an assistant who develops a mysterious sympathy with the wife. Baron R. figures out the two are sisters and marries his assistant.

Soon, the Baroness is dead, having apparently swallowed a bottle of acid while sleepwalking in her husband’s laboratory. It looks like an accident until the insurance investigator, Ralph Henderson, learns that Baron R. took out several life insurance policies on his wife. As he investigates, he finds there may actually have been three murders.

If you have read many 19th century mysteries, you’ll know they tend to be overcomplicated, and this one is no exception. Also in common with other early mysteries, it has a strong flavor of the gothic.

The story is narrated entirely as depositions, which makes it seem more removed from the reader. Although Wilkie Collins used a similar device in The Moonstone, his character’s depositions teem with personality, and he is much more skillful at revealing prejudices and flaws.

In addition, the mystery is not very mysterious. Within 40 pages, it was perfectly clear where things were headed. However, as a new representative of a genre, I’m certain the story was blood-curdling to Victorian readers, whose only other exposure might have been to short stories by Edgar Allan Poe featuring detective C. August Dupin. It certainly compares at least equally or even favorably with some of the “Golden Age” mysteries I have read (for example, by John Dickson Carr) that concentrate more on timetables than on character development and motives.

Day 27: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

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Cover for Major Pettigrew's Last StandBest Book of Week 6!

A touching love story, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is also a wry and witty jibe at small village life in England. Major Pettigrew is a proper widower who leads a life of quiet and habit, comfortable in his village and local golf club. Still suffering from the loss of his wife, he has just learned about his brother’s death and he is so shaken by this that he has a dizzy spell. Mrs. Ali, the widow of a Pakistani grocery store owner, has come to his house collecting for charity and helps him recover. The two begin a friendship based around discussions of books.

Besides missing his brother and wife, Major Pettigrew has other worries. He is concerned about his son, who seems only interested in money and prestige, and at times lacks gentility and honor, for which Major Pettigrew cares deeply. He is also concerned about his brother’s greedy wife and daughter, who do not seem likely to honor his father’s request that two valuable heirloom shotguns given to each of the sons be reunited when one of them dies.

Mrs. Ali is having her own battle with relatives. Her husband’s family wants her to give over her store to her religious fundamentalist nephew while she takes her expected widow’s place as a family servant.

Major Pettigrew must navigate the murky waters of village and family disapproval of his relationship because of racism and class snobbery and decide how much he wants to keep his quiet life. Mrs. Ali must in turn decide how much duty she owes to her family.

This novel is charming and delightful, one of my favorite books of 2011. Major Pettigrew’s dry and clever comments amused me throughout. The novel is beautifully written. I have been eagerly waiting to see what Ms. Simonson does next.

Day 23: The Dead Lie Down

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Cover for The Dead Lie DownBest Book of Week 5!

Sophie Hannah is another writer of dark mysteries who I discovered during the past year. The Dead Lie Down was the first of her books that I read, not the first in the series. Be careful if you buy her books as some of them have two titles, depending upon whether you buy the British or the American version. I have bought two copies of the same book by mistake.

Ruth did something bad in the past but was punished far out of proportion to her crime. She is still trying to recover some confidence and self-esteem when she meets Aidan, a picture framer. The night they get engaged, they make a pact to tell each other everything and forgive each other their secrets, with no questions asked. But Ruth is shocked when Aidan confesses he strangled a woman named Mary Trelease years ago. She is even more confused when she realizes that she has met Mary Trelease and she is alive.

Ruth takes her case to Sergeant Charlie Zailer, a recently disgraced police officer, who dismisses it. At the same time, Aidan confesses to Charlie’s fiancé, DC Simon Waterhouse. After further consideration, both of them decide to investigate further, because they feel a sense of dread.

The Dead Lie Down is a compelling novel with a tangled plot. Sophie Hannah follows a convention in her novels of alternating the narrative between a usually victimized character (in this case Ruth) and the police officers. She indicates this alternation by changing the form of the dates that head each chapter. This confused me at first because for every other chapter she was using the European form of putting the day before the month, and I thought the chapters that took place in early March were actually flashbacks to January and February. Just something to keep in mind when you are reading Hannah.

I have found that Hannah’s novels are deliciously dark and always difficult to figure out, even though by now I know the pattern that someone is being deeply deceived. The trick is to figure out who and how. Her police officers are seriously flawed and have a difficult relationship. A bit of narrative that I have had difficulty following is the story of their romance, which is, however, just incidental to the novels. In other respects the books are stand-alone and do not have to be read in order.

Sophie Hannah is another find for those who like edgy, complex mysteries with a touch of the gothic thriller.

Day 21: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

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Cover for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the PieI don’t know that anyone has invented a more delightful heroine than Flavia de Luce, the eleven-year-old sleuth in Alan Bradley’s funny, charming series. I haven’t read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie in a few years, but for series books I am trying to start with the first one, so I’ll do the best I can.

It is 1950’s Britain, and Flavia is an eccentric in a family full of eccentrics. She spends her time cooking up dangerous chemicals in the laboratory she inherited from a great uncle or riding around on her bicycle, Gladys, looking for trouble. Her father is a reclusive widower who stays locked up in the library with his stamp collection and worries about how to support their ramshackle estate. She engages in all-out warfare with her two older sisters, which includes putting poison ivy extract in Ophelia’s lipstick. Her only ally is the Dogger the gardener, her father’s batman from WW II who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

First, Mrs. Mullet the housekeeper finds a dead bird on the porch with a valuable stamp in its beak. Then a mysterious stranger calls upon her father, and they have an argument. Later Flavia finds the stranger dying in the cucumber patch. When her father is arrested for murder, Flavia decides to investigate. She finds out her father may have been involved in the suicide of a former schoolmaster and the theft of a valuable stamp. As Flavia cycles around the village of Bishop’s Lacey looking for clues and interviewing suspects, she may be putting herself in danger.

If you’re looking for a light mystery with plenty of twists and turns that will make you laugh out loud, look no further than any book featuring Flavia de Luce.

Day Fifteen: Britten and Brülightly

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Cover for Britten and BrulightlyAnd now for something completely different!

Britten and Brülightly by Hannah Berry is a noir graphic novel. I haven’t read many graphic novels, but this one seems to be outstanding. Most of them look like superhero comic books to me.

Britten is a depressed detective whose partner is a tea bag (I can’t believe I just got the pun of his name! I am so dense sometimes!) who makes humorous comments from inside the pocket of Britten’s (of course) trench coat. Britten takes a case from Charlotte Maughton, who doesn’t believe her fiancé, Berni Kudos, committed suicide. She is convinced he was actually murdered. Britten begins investigating Kudos’s job at Maughton Publishing, because Charlotte thinks Kudos’s death might be connected to a blackmailing scheme aimed at her father. During the investigation, he begins to uncover family secrets.

Although I became confused by the plethora of characters, I was impressed by the drawings, which are detailed and gorgeous. I am no expert on art, but I think they are stunning. To match with the noir theme, they look like watercolors in shades of gray with muted, subtle touches of color.

Reading this book made me more interested in exploring graphic novels, but so far I haven’t seen anything that looked as interesting. Two other highly lauded graphic novels, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, and Maus, by Art Spiegelman, have compelling themes but much more primitive drawings (in the case of Maus, I couldn’t tell one character of a certain type from another), and I was attracted to Berry’s book mostly by the beautiful art and witty dialogue. Unfortunately, Berry doesn’t seem to have published anything else yet.

Day Ten: Before I Go to Sleep

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Cover for Before I Go to SleepBest Book of Week 2!

Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson is a stunningly creepy novel that successfully creates a sense of growing dread. It is not really a traditional mystery, more like a slow-starting but absorbing thriller.

Every morning Christine awakens not knowing who the man in her bed is and thinking she should be younger, sometimes twenty years younger, sometimes a lot younger than that. Every morning her husband Ben has to explain who he is, show her pictures of their life together, and explain that years before she had a traumatic brain injury that causes her to forget everything when she goes to sleep at night.

A neurologist calls her each day to explain he has been treating her without her husband’s knowledge and reminds her to take out her journal and read it. As she reads and keeps her journal every day, she begins to remember a few things by herself, and she finds her husband is telling lies. She remembers having a baby, but he says they never had children. She has specific memories of a good friend who he claims moved away to Australia, but she finds out she didn’t. Her husband always has good explanations for these lies, but more and more things begin to disturb Christine.

Should she trust her husband or not? Is she falling back into the paranoia that has been a symptom of her illness? And how exactly was she injured in the first place?

Day Nine: Mary Boleyn

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Cover for Mary BoleynIn the introduction to Mary Boleyn, biographer Alison Weir talks about the many misconceptions we have about Anne Boleyn’s less famous sister, which were not only derived from such popular fictions as The Tudors (wildly inaccurate, but I still loved it!) and The Other Boleyn Girl (ditto), but also from biographers and historians over the centuries. Weir calls her book both a biography and a historiography, because she tackles many published statements about Mary’s life and attempts to show the extent of their truth or even likelihood.

Because most of Mary’s life was spent in the background of her glittering, ambitious family, not many actual records or letters that mention her exist, and only a couple of her own letters survive. Even the exact date of her birth is unknown, so that there has been been debate about whether Mary is the older or younger of the two sisters. (Weir makes a good case for older.)

Weir examines Mary’s life from as early as it is known and explores such subjects as whether she had an affair with the King of France (yes, probably a short one), whether she came from that with a ruined reputation, as has been alleged (no, but her family may have sent her away from court), whether she had an affair with Henry VIII (yes, but possibly reluctantly), whether she was then labeled a “famous whore” as has also been alleged (no, hardly anyone knew about it), whether she was married off to an unworthy but complaisant husband as a result (no, she married before the affair to William Carey, a wealthy and influential courtier who was one of Henry VIII’s trusted friends), and so on.

The picture Weir paints is of a woman who has repeatedly been smeared over the centuries. She certainly did not seem to be ambitious, like the rest of her family, because she got very little from her royal lovers. She was almost certainly also not well regarded by her family, probably because she had taken these lovers without gaining an advantage. After her first husband died, she eventually remarried for love, William Stafford, a relatively poor man much lower in status who was 12 years her junior. After she was cut off from her family and court as a result, she described the time of her widowhood as “bondage” and stated in a letter to Thomas Cromwell that no one in the world cared for her except Stafford.

Mary seems to have been slighted by her family for much of her adult life and was finally exiled from them because of her second marriage. This separation may be the only reason she survived her sister and brother.

Weir makes a strong case for Mary’s first child, Katherine Carey, being the unacknowledged daughter of Henry VIII. An appendix relates what happened to Mary’s descendants. Weir remarks that Henry VIII’s line is believed to have died out with Elizabeth I, but assuming she is correct about Katherine’s birth, she provides a fascinating list of some of the famous British people who can trace their lineage back to Mary’s daugher—and so to Henry—including Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Lord Nelson, Vita Sackville-West, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Princess Diana, Camilla Parker-Bowles, and Queen Elizabeth II herself.