Tag: historical mysteries

Review 2656: The Edinburgh Murders

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I still prefer McPherson’s stand-alone thrillers to any of her mystery series, but Helen Crowther is starting to grow on me. This is the second book in the series.

Helen is an almoner serving the poorest neighborhoods in Edinburgh post-World War II. Her title has just been changed to welfare officer, but her job is a lot more hands on than we would expect. So, she is bathing a woman at the public baths when two things happen—first, she spots her father in a booth but it is not the family’s usual night. Then, in the next booth an attendant finds a man who has been boiled to death. Helen, trying to help, notices that although his clothes are those of an abattoir worker, his hands are not those of a working man, and someone has removed his signet ring.

No one comes to identify the body, but Helen thinks her father knows something about it.

Helen’s personal life is complicated. In the first book, she was newly married and wondering why her marriage was not consummated. (Spoiler for the first book.) She has discovered her husband Sandy is in love with a man, Gavin. Now she lives alone in an upstairs apartment with Sandy and Gavin below. Things are going to get more complicated, because Helen is attracted to Billy, a technician in the morgue. Her friend Caroline wants to visit the morgue, so they arrive there to find out that another corpse has arrived, this one forced to eat himself to death and dressed like a tanner with a signet ring missing.

Helen agrees to go ice skating with Billy, Caroline, and Billy’s coworker Tom, and another body is found frozen under the ice. Then there is a fourth.

Helen and Billy begin investigating the murders, which are being blamed on an escapee from a mental hospital. But they don’t think he did it.

In the meantime, Helen and Caroline are arranging a Halloween party for the local kids at an Adventist church. It turns out spookier than they planned.

I like the flavor of Edinburgh in these mysteries, although like her Dandy Gilver series, they are super complicated, without much of a hint about the perpetrators until the end.

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Review 2635: #RIPXX: The Bookseller of Inverness

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Iain MacGillivray was badly injured at Culloden and shipped off to work in indentured servitude in the Americas. In 1752, six years later, he is back and running a bookshop in Inverness. The town is full of British soldiers.

One evening he sees a grubby man who looks vaguely familiar looking through some books that came from Lord Lovat’s estate. It’s closing time, so he forces him out.

Iain hasn’t seen his father, Hector MacGillivray, for years. Hector has been serving King James in France and Italy. He is proscribed, but Iain has believed his father is dead. Now he finds he is in town.

Hector is searching for a book that has been rumored to exist, one that contains a list of traitors to the Jacobite cause. King James is planning another attempt to take back the throne from the Hanoverian king, and they want to make sure they know it’s not going to be betrayed.

By looking through the remaining books from Lord Lovat, they figure out which book it was. Hearing that there is a copy, Iain goes to Lovat’s castle, now occupied by British soldiers, on the pretext of buying some of the books. There he has an unpleasant encounter with the cruel Captain Dunne, who burns part of the book, but Iain is able to get away with the rest.

Hector starts trying to decode the text for names, but before he figures out each of six names, that person is murdered. The killer could be someone getting revenge, or it could be a traitor trying to cover his back.

I found this to be an interesting, fast-moving adventure that seems well researched and steeped in its time. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

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Review 2624: #RIPXX: The Investigator

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Contemporary writer Margarita Khemlin has set this story in 1950s Soviet Ukraine, when reverberations from World War II were still going on.

Police Captain Mikhael Ivanovich Tsupkoy unusually gets the case of the murder of a Jewish woman, Lilia Vorobeichik, who has been stabbed with a knife. The situation is unusual because the protocol for a serious crime is to call in a criminal investigator. However, Tsupkoy is able to wrap the case up immediately because Lilia’s boyfriend, Roman Nikoleyeivich Moiseenko, confesses immediately. When he commits suicide in jail, the case is closed.

Later, Tsupkoy catches a glimpse of someone who he thinks is the dead woman. He returns to her house to find her twin sister, Eva, living there. She and another woman are making matzo, which apparently was illegal at the time, but they claim it’s for feeding the chickens. When he does a recheck the next day, he meets a dressmaker, Polina Lvovna Laevskaya. Tsupkoy becomes interested in what’s going on and seems to be still investigating the case.

Because his friend, Jewish veteran Evsey Gutin, knows everyone in the Jewish community in town, Tsupkoy goes to visit him and his wife Belka to ask Evsey about a name he’s come across. Shortly thereafter, when Tsupkoy is on vacation, he learns that Evsey committed suicide.

I found Tsupkoy’s investigation to be confusing, because he keeps returning to the same large group of people to eke out one more fact. In retrospect, it’s hard to reconstruct the order of things. One important point, though, is that after Polina Laevskaya makes allegations that the investigation into Lilia’s death was perfunctory, she begins spreading rumors designed to ruin Tsupkoy’s reputation. People who previously trusted him begin to avoid him.

This novel seemed rather messy structurally. For one thing, I would have loved to see a list of characters like used to be included at the beginning of many Russian novels, because there are lots of them, and they are referred to inconsistently, sometimes by last name, sometimes by first, but more often by a nickname, and hardly ever by their patronymics, as used to be the case. Also, the later investigation, admittedly not official, seems haphazard. Fairly early on, I had an idea who the murderer might be, and although I doubted myself and didn’t come up with an alternative, I was right.

There often seemed to be something going on in the conversation that was unspoken and that I didn’t understand. Maybe that was because of the times and location. Certainly, there is a lot of tension between the Communist ideals and the realities of the Jewish comrades, as what Tsupkov calls Jewish nationalism (which just refers to their traditions, apparently) is illegal. Ethnic groups are supposed to assimilate—and this fact is important to the plot.

Finally, the motive only comes out in the last few pages, and it’s ambiguous and seems weak. If it had been developed a little more, it might have been stronger, but that may have been difficult to do without revealing the killer.

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Review 2614: Monk’s Hood

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It is autumn 1138, during the war known as the Anarchy. Although King Stephen’s army has withdrawn from Shrewsbury, he is now in control of the area. Abbot Heribert has been recalled to a conference to justify his tenure as abbot. As he didn’t support King Stephen, he does not expect to remain in that position. However, Prior Robert clearly anticipates stepping into his shoes, so most of the monks are depressed.

Because Abbot Heribert has been recalled, he doesn’t feel it would be right to ratify some outstanding agreements before he leaves. One of these is that of Master Bonel, who wants to donate his estate in exchange for lifelong housing and support for himself and his wife at the abbey.

Cadfael takes one of his mixtures to treat an elderly monk with rheumatism. There he meets a young Welsh kinsman of the monk, Meurig, who has been applying some of the mixture to the old man. Cadfael checks that Meurig has been warned to wash his hands and not touch his face before that, as the mixture contains a strong poison, monk’s hood.

Later, Cadfael is urgently summoned to the bedside of Master Bonel, who has been taken ill after dinner. Cadfael recognizes the symptoms of poisoning right away, and by his own embrocation. In the house are Bonel’s wife, Richildi, whom Cadfael recognizes as his old sweethheart; Richildi’s son Edwin by her first marriage; Edwy, Edwin’s lookalike nephew; Aldith, the servant girl related to Richildi; and Meurig, who apprenticed as a carpenter with Richildi’s first husband, whose brother has apprenticed Edwin.

Edwin has been estranged from the household because Master Bonel thinks he spends too much time with lower elements (i. e., Edwin’s relatives). And in fact, Bonel was entering into the agreement with the abbey to disinherit Edwin. He had come to dinner to try to reconcile with Master Bonel, but Bonel began berating him and was trying to make him kneel for forgiveness. Instead, Edwin stormed out. To the sergeant, though, this is enough proof that Edwin is the murderer. Cadfael, who has met both boys, Edwin and Edwy, doesn’t think Edwin did it, but Edwin has fled. Cadfael, helped by his new assistant, Mark, decides to investigate.

I didn’t find this mystery very difficult to solve, but I am liking Cadfael more and more, and Peters has created some vivid characters.

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Review 2602: One Corpse Too Many

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It’s 1138 during the war between King Stephen and Queen Maud, which became known as the Anarchy. King Stephen is besieging Shrewsbury, which is soon to fall. FitzAlan and Adenay, the castle defenders, wait until the last minute to flee with their men, but rumor has it that Adenay’s daughter and FitzAlan’s fortune are still inside the castle.

In the monastery, Cadfael is assigned a new helper, a boy named Godrik, who is a hard worker. It doesn’t take Cadfael long to figure out Godrik is a girl, Adenay’s daughter Godith, whom Stephen is searching for to use as leverage.

Stephen has the remaining defenders of the castle executed after he takes it, and Cadfael takes charge of identifying and burying the bodies. However, he finds there is one corpse too many. In looking more carefully at the corpses, he sees that one man has been garroted. So, he reports to the king the information that someone has tried to hide a murder by mixing the body with the executed and is given permission to try to identify the body.

A young lady of the town, Aline, identifies the body as Nicholas Faintree, a squire of FitzAlan. She has recently also identified one of the executed men as her brother.

Meanwhile, Godrik, whom Cadfael has sent reaping to escape the attentions of a mysterious man, Hugh Beringer, who has been following him, finds a wounded man. It turns out that the wounded man Godith finds is Torond Blunt. He was sent off with Nicholas Faintree to carry FitzAlan’s fortune into Wales. However, they were ambushed at night. Briefly separated, Torond returned to find Nicholas dead and then someone attacked him from behind, but he managed to get away and hide the fortune.

Now Cadfael is hiding Godith and Torond and trying to make arrangements to get them both to Wales along with the fortune. Meanwhile, it’s clear that Beringer is dogging his steps ever since he visited Godith’s old nurse to tell her she is safe. Incidentally, Beringer is engaged to Godith, although they haven’t seen each other for years. And she has fallen in love on sight with Torond.

Beringer seems to be playing a game with Cadfael, so he decides to play back. But is Beringer a friend or foe?

Although this mystery doesn’t really give clues to the murderer’s identity until the end, it does a good job of misdirection. This book is the second of the Cadfael series, which I would describe as Medieval cozy. It has likable characters and seems to be well grounded in its time period.

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Review 2592: Death Comes As the End

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I have been trying to pick off Agatha Christie’s books I haven’t read without looking to see what they are about. So, I was surprised by this one. At first, I thought maybe the ancient Egyptian setting was the introduction to a more modern mystery, but then I realized it wasn’t.

Renisenb has returned with her young daughter to her father’s house on the lower Nile, her husband having died. At first, it seems as if everything is the same. Her father, Imhotep, a property owner and priest, is still watchful of his own authority and eager to have control of everything. Her oldest brother, Yahmose, is still dutiful and careful of Imhotep’s interests—his wife Satipy thinks too much so and nags him to be more assertive. Satipy argues with her sister-in-law Kait over precedence one moment, and they giggle together the next. Kait’s husband Sobek, the younger brother, is still full of big ideas and wasteful of his father’s money. Renisenb’s orphaned nephew Ipy is still young but disrespectful and spoiled by Imhotep. Esa, the grandmother, is frail but sharp.

Renisenb still cannot bring herself to like Henet, the servile but sneaking servant, and she still feels comfortable with Hori, her father’s main scribe. However, when she tells Hori that everything is still the same, he warns her that it is not.

Imhotep goes off on a business trip, and when he comes back he has brought two people—a young concubine named Nofret and a secondary scribe named Kamini, who claims some relationship to the family. It becomes clear that Nofret is malicious and means to make trouble. Almost immediately, she has problems with the two sisters-in-law. Renisenb tries to be friendly to her but feels she dislikes her.

Nofret begins to succeed in dividing Imhotep from his two sons. Imhotep, angry about an incident, threatens to send the sons and their families away. The next thing they know, Nofret is dead, having fallen from the cliff path that goes to the tomb Imhotep is responsible for keeping.

The two sisters-in-law suddenly change behavior. Satipy, formerly shrewish, becomes timid and withdrawn. Kait becomes more forceful. Renisenb and Hori wonder if Nofret’s death was an accident.

The next event seems clearly not an accident. The two brothers are poisoned after drinking some wine. Sobek, having drunk more, dies.

Renisenb, Esa, and Hori get together to try to figure out who the murderer is, but there are more evil events to come.

Christie doesn’t offer many hints to figure out the murderer, and I didn’t guess the solution. However, I also didn’t find this novel as interesting as some of the others. Perhaps Christie was trying a change of pace or just wanting to write something that reflected what she learned on her archaeological digs. Still, it worked almost wholly on an understanding of the characters rather than any real clues.

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Review 2581: Murder at Gulls Nest

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I messed up a bit with this book. What happened was that as soon as I heard about it, I pre-ordered it because I love Jess Kidd’s books. Then a few months later, although I am no longer active on NetGalley, I received an email from a publicist asking if I would like a review copy. I answered, as I have for other books, that I would love to if I could get a paperback rather than an ebook.

As usual when I make this request, I got no reply, so I dismissed it from my mind. Then, when I received a copy quite a bit later, I assumed it was my pre-order, not even noticing that it was a review copy. I put it at the top of my pile, which I have been ignoring while I try to finish A Century of Books (now complete!). I apologize to that publicist, because I have missed the dates. It wasn’t until my pre-order arrived that I realized my mistake, but then I read it immediately. So, here’s my review—better late than never.

It’s the 1950s. Nora Breen, looking disheveled, arrives in a seaside town in winter. She is a middle-aged ex-nun who has renounced her vows, and she has arrived because her friend Frieda, sent from the monastery for her health, has stopped writing. That is unlike Frieda, and Nora is worried about her.

Nora has taken a room at Gulls Nest, a sad rooming house, where she finds she is to occupy Frieda’s room. She learns that Frieda just disappeared one evening, no one apparently being surprised by it.

The occupants of the house are a mixed crew. Helena Wills, a widow, is the owner, but she spends almost all her time in bed and lets Irene Rawlings, the grim housekeeper who has lots of rules, run it. Helena also has a young daughter Dinah, who is all but feral. As she arrives, Nora watches a young couple from afar, Teddy and Stella Atkins, and notices them appearing to quarrel. She also sees another lodger, Karel Ježek, stomp on Teddy’s hat. Other lodgers are Bill Carter, an ex-Navy cook who works as a bartender, and Professor Poppy, an old Punch and Judy puppeteer who is rumored to be an aristocrat.

Although Nora goes immediately to the police, Inspector Rideout thinks there’s nothing unusual about someone who was living at Gulls Nest disappearing without warning. Nora has decided not to reveal to anyone else her friendship with Frieda, hoping she will learn more if no one is aware of it. However, she is feeling frustrated when Teddy is found dead in Poppy’s workshop behind the house, poisoned with cyanide in his coffee. Teddy often had coffee with Poppy before work. Inspector Rideout is thinking suicide, but Stella says not. She has just told him she is pregnant. So, did Teddy commit suicide or was he murdered? If he was murdered, was he the intended victim or was Poppy? Finally, is Teddy’s death related to Frieda’s disappearance?

Like Kidd’s other books, this one has some eccentric characters, although it is perhaps not as unexpected as her others. Still, it has some likable characters and some twists, as Nora begins to blossom out into this new world. A secret about the relationship between two characters was one I guessed fairly quickly, but I was unable to figure out a motive for what turns out to be not just one murder.

Fun stuff!

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

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Review 2573: The Name of the Rose

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Adso of Melk, an elderly monk, feeling he is nearing his death, leaves this manuscript that tells, for the first time, the events of 1327 in an Italian abbey.

It’s been a long time since I read this book, so I remembered more vividly the movie version, which concentrates on the mystery aspects of the novel. But the novel is more about the religious and political upheavals of the time.

As a Benedictine novice, Adso travels into Italy with a learned Franciscan monk, William of Baskerville from Hibernia. William has been asked to mediate an important meeting between two factions of monks—the Franciscans and other Minorite sects who believe in the vow of poverty and are aligned with the French King, and other sects who think the vow is heretical and follow the Pope in Avignon.

Once they arrive at the magnificent abbey high on a mountaintop, the Abbott, Abo, asks William to look into another issue that has recently occurred. Adelmo of Otranto, an illuminator from the scriptorium, has been found dead on the slope below the abbey’s Aedificium, a fortified building that contains the kitchen, the scriptorium above it, and the library above that. It’s not clear whether Adelmo jumped or had help, and Abo wants William to figure out what happened, preferably before others arrive for the meeting. William quickly ascertains that Adelmo must have fallen from the library, but he learns that only the librarian is allowed in the library, a man named Malachy.

Although William has been denied access to the library by Abo, he soon figures out that there is a way to get into it besides the locked entrance. After a visit to the scriptorium, where William and Adso inspect Adelmo’s work area and meet some of the monks, another monk is found dead, Venantius, a Greek scholar. This makes William surer that the deaths have something to do with the library.

He and Adso sneak into the library at night. It is a labyrinth. Moreover, they disturb someone who runs away and are almost poisoned by the air in one of the rooms.

More monks associated with the library die, and William becomes convinced that they are dying because of a secret book. He and Adso must learn the secrets of the library, and William comes to believe that the murders are related to the history of the monastery.

I have concentrated on the mystery, too, but there’s a lot more going on in this book. It is concerned with the conflict between Louis of France and the illegitimate Holy Roman Emperor, between two popes, and the then recent history of the Inquisition against certain heretical religious groups. It has several learned debates, in which the monks disagree about what seem, to the modern eye, to be obscure and trivial issues. And it fully shows the superstitions of even the most learned of men (except William) and the pit of fear that was life in this monastery.

Although the novel seems straightforward, there is a lot more going on. To me, Eco seems to be mocking the beliefs of the church at times—some of the learned disputes make such ridiculous statements (believed at the time) that I couldn’t help laughing. And I couldn’t help noticing that at least two of the characters’ names, William of Baskerville and Adelmo of Otranto, hearken back to previous mystery and gothic fiction.

A New York Times reviewer from 1980 asserts that the entire novel refers to the time when it was written (the 1970s, I assume), so obviously he also found second meanings and playfulness in the novel.

The novel moves you along despite several learned discourses. The medieval mind also seems to like lists, and I have to admit skipping through several of those. This is at once a challenging and compelling read.

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Review 2539: A Morbid Taste for Bones

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I didn’t really like the Cadfael series on TV, and I thought I had read at least one book long ago and decided not to pursue it. However, I saw that the first book filled a hole in my A Century of Books project, so I thought I’d give it another try. Now, I’m not sure I ever read any, because this book is pretty good!

In 1137, Brother Cadfael is a Welsh monk in a Benedictine order in Shrewsbury. He has led an exciting life, but now a quiet one taking care of the monastery garden suits him. He has two young assistants. Brother Columbanus is from a family of high Norman blood who seems almost too devout and eager to please. Brother John is practical and full of mischief.

Brother Columbanus is stricken with something that seems like epilepsy, so Prior Robert, an ambitious, proud man, suggests sending him to the Shrine of Saint Winifred in nearby Wales. When Brother Columbanus is miraculously cured, Prior Robert suggests that what the order needs are some relics, and Saint Winfred’s bones may answer the case.

Although Prior Robert wouldn’t normally include Cadfael in his expedition to get the bones, he needs him as a translator. Brother Columbanus is allowed to go as the subject of the miraculous healing, and Brother John offers to take care of the livestock. After getting permission from the Welsh authorities to remove the bones, the party encounters opposition from Rhisiart, the major landowner in the area, and thus from the rest of the locals.

Prior Robert meets with Rhisiart to try to talk him around, but he mishandles this discussion badly by trying to bribe him. They schedule a second meeting, but Rhisiart never arrives. Once they learn he left home for the meeting and never returned, everyone goes out to look for him. They find him shot in the chest with an arrow that belongs to Engelard, a Saxon boy who wants to marry Sioned, Rhisiart’s only child and his heir.

Suspicion immediately focuses on Engelard, but to Cadfael that doesn’t make sense. Even though Rhisiart opposed the marriage, he has treated Engelard like a son since he arrived, in a country where you usually must belong to a family to get work.

Does the murder have to do with the marriage? with Sioned? a love triangle? the monk’s expedition?

I enjoyed this mystery. It seems well-researched and is written with a wry sense of humor. Although I did guess the murderer, Peters tricked me enough to move my guess to two other people before I returned to my original suspect just about the time Cadfael did.

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Review 2527: The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes

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I knew this book might not be a good fit for me, because I usually feel that mystery short stories are too short to do much but pose puzzles, but more importantly, because I usually think it is unsuccessful when an author continues another author’s work. However, I have generally enjoyed Lyndsay Faye’s books, so I tried this one.

Purporting to be lost stories, notes, and diary entries, most by Dr. Watson but some by Holmes, this book’s 15 stories span the time from before the two met until 1902.

I am not going to run through a description of each story. Instead, I’ll comment on how authentic Faye’s stories seemed as stories about Holmes, keeping in mind that I haven’t read a Holmes story in years.

First, how much like the originals are Faye’s Holmes and Watson? Faye clearly is very familiar with the books (this applies to pretty much all the things I’ll look at, not just this one) because she makes lots of references to other cases and certainly has down Holmes’s characteristics. However, it seemed to me that her Holmes is more of a Benedict Cumberbatch Holmes than an Arthur Conan Doyle one. For one thing, he is much more expressive of emotions, more so even than Cumberbatch, especially as the book goes on. Watson seems himself, only even more flowery of description, but smarter. Also, like in the B. C. version mentioned above, his war service is stressed a lot more.

What about the mysteries? Well, you’re reading the words of a person who never once guessed the solution of a Sherlock Holmes story—until now. On the one hand, Faye’s stories are not nearly as ridiculously overcomplicated and unlikely as Doyle’s (spoilers for ACD!)—teach a snake to crawl down a rope? while dying, say “the speckled band” instead of “a snake bit me”? On the other hand, it seemed ridiculously easy to guess at least portions of the solution for most of the stories (unlike in Faye’s other mysteries—this is what I mean by mystery short stories—they’re either totally opaque or too easy). For instance, in “The Case of Colonel Warburton’s Madness,” I guessed immediately that (spoilers) gaslighting was involved and who was doing it. I just didn’t know how. Later in a story about identical twins, I knew immediately that the twins had switched.

Faye writes well and keeps up the interest. I just wish she’d write more of her own stuff.

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