Tag: historical mysteries

Day 462: The Return of Captain John Emmett

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Cover for The Return of Captain John EmmettThe Return of Captain John Emmett is the first of Elizabeth Speller’s Laurence Bertram mysteries set just after World War I. I previously reviewed the second in the series, The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton.

Laurence Bertram has felt himself at a loss since the war ended. He is haunted by his memories of the war and also by guilt at his lack of grief over the deaths of his wife Louise and baby son, whom he never saw. Ostensibly writing a book about church architecture, he is finding it difficult to work. So, it is with a bit of relief that he responds to a letter from Mary Emmett, the sister of an old school friend John Emmett, in which she asks him to come visit her.

Laurence has fond memories of some school leave visits with the Emmetts after his parents died but feels Mary has misunderstood the depth of his friendship with John, whom he has not seen in years. Of course, he has heard of John’s death, an apparent suicide. Mary explains that John had been staying in a rest home because of mental disturbance following the war. Since he seemed to be improving, she and her mother cannot understand why he committed suicide. She asks John to find out what he can about John’s motives.

Laurence feels uncomfortable but agrees to look into it because he has always been attracted to Mary. With the help of his friend Charles Carfax, who gets his detective skills from reading Agatha Christie books, Laurence investigates the rest home and anything he can find out about John’s state of mind before his death. Included in John’s curious scraps of paper and photos is a list of the beneficiaries of his will, some of whom cannot be identified or located, and some photos from the war.

Laurence comes to believe that John’s death has something to do with his war experience, possibly with an execution over which he was forced to preside. And it seems John may not have committed suicide after all.

Speller takes her time with these mysteries. The settings are beautifully described and the period effectively evoked. A true sense of depth of character emerges. Even though I was about 100 pages ahead of Laurence, not in identifying the perpetrator but in realizing the motive, I enjoyed every bit of this novel.

In the last few months, I have read several historical mysteries where the author did little with the time or place, simply using the historical events to frame the plot. Thankfully, Speller has taken more care with this interesting period of history.

Day 460: March Violets

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Cover for March VioletsThe blurb on Philip Kerr’s collection of three noir mysteries, Berlin Noir, compares him to John Le Carré and Alan Furst. I wouldn’t say that is an apt comparison. For one thing, the other two are writing in a different genre. For another, they are better writers. Still, if you like noir, March Violets has its own qualities.

This novel is the first in a series featuring private detective Bernie Gunther. It bears many of the hallmarks of a typical noir mystery. Its main character is a smart, wise-cracking tough guy who used to be a cop. It features beatings, untrustworthy dames, thugs, and murder. What makes it stand out is its setting in 1936 Berlin.

Bernie is hired by millionaire industrialist Hermann Six to find a family heirloom necklace. It was stolen from the safe of his daughter Grete and her husband Paul Pfarr when the two were brutally murdered in their beds and their bodies burned. Herr Six explicitly instructs Bernie not to look into their deaths but to find the necklace and return it to him. Of course, Bernie begins looking into everything.

Using credentials as a representative of an insurance company investigating the fire, Bernie soon finds out that Pfarr was a member of the SS, with a mission from Himmler to seek out corruption in the labor movement. That mission made him a lot of enemies. He also had some kind of friction with Herr Six, who is rumored to have ties to organized crime. In addition, there were unexplained problems in the Pfarr’s marriage.

Typical of noir fiction, the plot becomes very involved. The setting is convincingly evoked, especially the constant threat of violence for ordinary citizens under the Nazis. Bernie specializes in missing persons, and the novel makes clear that hundreds of people go missing from Berlin daily.

Since I am more familiar with classic noir, the novel occasionally struck me as too coarse, but that didn’t bother me as much as other uses of language. First, idioms with which I am unfamiliar are used constantly. Perhaps they are period German idioms, but they often seem clumsy and inapt, which idiomatic  language seldom does. Also clumsy and inapt are Kerr’s many metaphors, for example:

The butler cruised smoothly into the room like a rubber wheel on a waxed floor and, smelling faintly of sweat and something spicy, he served the coffee, the water and his master’s brandy with the blank look of a man who changes his earplugs six times a day.

Perhaps this style of writing is meant as a send-up of traditional noir style, but it is certainly overblown and irritating. (To be entirely dated in my references, it sometimes reminds me of the passages read by Jeff Goldblum’s character in the old TV series Ten Speed and Brown Shoe, but those were explicitly tongue in cheek, and I’m not as sure about Kerr’s writing style.) Although at one point I considered putting the novel aside, I finally decided to continue, and found the book moderately entertaining.

Day 453: Burial Rites

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Cover for Burial RitesBest Book of the Week!

Based on the true story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland, Burial Rites is an unusual and original novel.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir has been found guilty of the murder of her employer, Natan Ketílsson, and another man when the novel begins. There is no doubt that Fridrik Sigurdsson committed the act, but Agnes and her fellow servant Sigrídur Gudmundsdóttir have also been found guilty on little more evidence than that they were present at the scene. The younger, prettier Sigrídur, who was Natan’s mistress and Fridrik’s fiancée, is being considered for a pardon, but Agnes is not.

Because Iceland does not apparently have facilities for housing criminals at the time, the District Commissioner Björn Blöndal decides to lodge Agnes until her execution at Kórnsa, the farm of the District Officer of Vatnsdalur, Jón Jónsson. Agnes has requested that the young Reverend Thorvardur Jónsson, newly ordained, supervise her spiritual welfare.

Jón Jónsson’s wife and daughter are horrified to learn they are to have a convicted murderess in their house. Reverend Jónsson, known as Tóti, is confused, feeling insufficiently experienced for the task and unaware that he has already met Agnes.

We first see Agnes on her way to Kórnsa. She has been kept in a storeroom, living in filth and seldom fed, since her conviction. When she arrives at the farm, she seems almost subhuman, grimy and greasy and so thirsty that she gulps down some dirty dishwater given her to wash in. Slowly, through her hard work and unobjectionable demeanor and their own basic decency, the family comes to believe Agnes may not be guilty of the crime.

Although the focus of this novel is the life on the farm and the evolving relationship between Agnes and the family of Jón Jónsson, we eventually learn the truth about the crime, as Agnes confides it to Tóti and the family.

Kent’s gift is for depicting the hard life of 19th century Iceland—the merciless fate of itinerant servants, the prevalence of gossip and superstition, the brutal conditions and physically demanding work. Kent also describes the mental landscape of Agnes, her memories, thoughts, and nighttime dreams, and less frequently those of Margrét, Jón Jónsson’s wife, and of Tóti.

This novel is evocatively written in beautiful, spare prose. It tells a heartbreaking and haunting story.

Day 444: Murder at Mansfield Park

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Cover for Murder at Mansfield ParkIt’s hard to explain my fascination with the books of Lynn Shepherd, even to myself, when she repeatedly skewers the books and some of the characters I love with her dark reinterpretations.

The cover of Murder at Mansfield Park quotes the literary critic Lionel Trilling: “Nobody, I believe, has ever found it possible to like the heroine of Mansfield Park.” Apparently, Shepherd shares his views.

That heroine, of course, is Fanny Price, and I have to admit I do like her in the original novel, even though she is not my favorite Austen heroine. Shepherd had to jump through some hoops in her recasting of Fanny, however, to get her to be really unlikable.

In Shepherd’s novel, instead of Fanny Price being the despised, impoverished orphan living with wealthier relatives, Shepherd transforms her into a spoiled heiress, whom the Bertrams and the dreadful Mrs. Norris treat better than their own children. Fanny’s marriage with her cousin Edmund Norris has long been planned, at least by Mrs. Norris.

Mary Crawford in the original novel was the worldly socialite whose lax views eventually shocked Edmund into dropping her, but in Murder at Mansfield Park, she is the heroine. Her brother has been hired to redesign the grounds of Mansfield Park. In this novel, she has switched positions with Fanny Price in that she and her brother have little money, and Mrs. Norris treats them with disdain.

Fanny shows little desire to wed the introverted Edmund and finds entertainment in filching suitors from her cousin Maria Bertram and being nasty to everyone. I would not usually give away an event that occurs well into the novel, but the blurb makes no secret that Fanny is eventually found murdered after going missing for some weeks. Suspects abound. Charles Maddox, Shepherd’s sleuth, arrives to solve the crime.

I don’t think I enjoyed this reimagining of Austen’s novel as much as I have some of Shepherd’s others, even though she is amazingly adept at recreating Austen’s writing style. I think my reaction is because she probably could have achieved a similar effect, more subtly, without changing so many aspects of the original story.

I don’t mean to imply, however, that I didn’t enjoy the novel. Shepherd has made a very interesting career for herself by putting a dark spin on classic novels, and it is always entertaining to read her. She is a wonderful writer, and she gets the period details and style of dialogue correct. I think my favorite of hers, however, is still her chilling rewrite of Bleak House.

Day 435: Literary Wives: The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress

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Cover for The Wife, the Maid, and the MistressToday is another Literary Wives posting, where along with several other bloggers, I post reviews of the same book with the theme of “wives.” For more information, see my Literary Wives page.

The famous disappearance of Judge Crater, who like Jimmy Hoffa was never heard from again, certainly has potential for a noirish whodunnit. I just wasn’t that satisfied with Ariel Lawhon’s version of the story.

For one thing, although the plot has all the elements of a noir mystery, the writing style doesn’t reflect the cold crispness and snappy dialogue I expect from noir. It is merely pedestrian.

At the beginning of the novel, Judge Crater’s wife Stella meets Jude Simon, the detective who was on the case, years later in 1969 to give him a confession. Then we return in time to 1930. The bulk of the novels flits restlessly between different days and times around and before this period, returning occasionally to 1969 to Stella and Jude’s meeting.

This time shifting was one of my problems with the novel. I do not remember dates readily, and it was difficult for me to keep my place in time. Possibly a fault that will be cleared up in the published book (I was reading an advanced reading copy) is the problem of the dates at the beginning of sections, which sometimes are there to signal a change in time and sometimes are not. The first time the time changed with no indication, I thought it was a mistake, but then it happened several more times.

In addition, a few scenes that return to an earlier time have no apparent purpose. Perhaps they are intended to establish something about the Craters’ relationship, but I find them unnecessary to the story. The example that comes to mind is a dinner scene where the judge tells Stella where he wants her to shop from then on.

For the plot, the judge disappears at the beginning of the book. His mistress Ritzi is hiding in the room when he is taken, so it is no surprise to find out who took him. His wife Stella and their maid Maria also have some guilty knowledge. Maria sees her husband Jude plant some money in the house after the judge’s disappearance, and Stella removes money from the house and all their assets from the bank before reporting the judge as missing.

Overall, I found the novel mildly entertaining. It does manage a surprise at the end, which I didn’t expect because the novel seemed otherwise predictable. I also think more could have been done to make the time period and the setting more evocative.

Now to our questions for Literary Wives.

What does this book say about wives or the experience of being a wife?

There are two prominent wives in the novel–Stella and Maria. The judge sees his wife’s role as being an ornament and an asset on his way to the top, and Stella seems to have agreed to take this role, although she obviously has lost her respect for him over time. There are some references to happier times, but we frankly can’t see that he has any redeeming qualities. Stella’s only other concern seems to be to make sure she has money after the judge’s disappearance.

Maria’s relationship is more loving. She seems to see her role as to protect and support her husband and to try to become a mother. However, we don’t really see very much of Jude and Maria together, and Jude seems to be preoccupied with his difficulties at work.

In what way does this woman define “wife” or is defined by “wife”?

Except for one central act, which I don’t want to give away, both women are essentially defined by their roles as wives, which are fairly stereotypical for the time. Stella is the society wife. Maria is the religious little woman. This defining act tells us there is more to both of them, but we don’t really understand these women very well as people, and this act is only revealed at the end of the novel, giving us no opportunity to view them in another way. I think Ritzi is the most fully developed character, and although she is actually a wife as well, that part of her character isn’t really explored.

Be sure to view the posts of the other “wives,” as follows. An interview with Ariel Lawhon is posted on Audra’s blog, Unabridged Chick.

Ariel of One Little Library
Audra of Unabridged Chick
Carolyn of Rosemary and Reading Glasses
Cecilia of Only You
Emily of The Bookshelf of Emily J.
Lynn of Smoke and Mirrors

Day 426: A Fatal Likeness

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Cover for A Fatal LikenessIn A Fatal Likeness, Lynn Shepherd has created her own gothic horror around the mysteries in the real lives of two fans of the gothic, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, the writer Mary Shelley. It is not only a dark story, but some of it is relatively plausible, given the research Shepherd has done into their lives. Ever since I read Shepherd’s astounding reworking of Bleak House, The Solitary House, I have been a fan of her narrative skills, her writing skills, and her imagination.

Shepherd’s detective, Charles Maddox, is summoned to the home of Percy Shelley, the son of the deceased poet. Shelley and his wife have established a shrine to the poet’s memory and say they are worried about some papers someone is offering to sell them. Mrs. Shelley in particular has been responsible for destroying any papers that would tarnish Shelley’s legacy. They hire Charles to find out what is contained in these papers.

Charles has his own reasons for taking the job, for his beloved great-uncle, also Charles Maddox, the master detective who trained him and is his only family, suffered a stroke upon receiving a calling card bearing the name of his client. Charles learns from his assistant Abel that his great-uncle was employed on a case years before for William Godwin, the brilliant philosopher and Mary Shelley’s father. When the file on this case is located, though, some of the pages have been torn out.

Charles takes a room in the home of the person purveying the papers, whom Charles has been told is an Italian man, and it is not long before he realizes his landlady is Clair Clairmont. Clair, the step-sister of Mary Shelley, infamously ran off with Shelley and Mary when both the girls were only sixteen and Shelley was still married to his first wife, Harriet.

Charles is soon to realize that everyone involved in this case has ulterior motives, those of the Shelleys to find out whether a record of the earlier case still exists, as it certainly contains damaging information. With his great-uncle only slowly recovering, it is up to Charles to discover what mysteries lurk in the Shelleys’ past. As he investigates the earlier case, he finds records of an even earlier encounter with his great-uncle.

The Shelleys’ past is a rat’s nest, with two young suicided women, Shelley’s first wife and Mary’s other step-sister, with several dead infants, with Shelley’s own history of delusions, hallucinations, fits, and obsessions. Each person’s story of the fraught years of the Shelleys’ relationship is different, and it is difficult to know what or whom to believe. It is not long before Charles is to think Percy Shelley was something of a monster.

Doubles are a theme throughout the novel. Shelley is always involved with two women at once, two young women commit suicide, Shelley is obsessed with the idea of a doppelganger and thinks he has encountered a monster with his own face. Charles’ great-uncle was partially deceived long ago by the likeness he perceived between the young Mary Godwin and a lost love.

Shepherd’s writing style is distinctive. She writes in limited third person but overlays this voice occasionally with observations from a more knowing narrator of a later time, perhaps the present. The effect is slightly facetious and ironic in tone.

Her research into this time period and into the lives of the Shelleys is clearly extensive. She impressed me with The Solitary House and here she continues to do so with a fascinating, disturbing tale about some turbulent personalities.

Day 425: The Gods of Gotham

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Cover for The Gods of GothamBest Book of the Week!

New York in 1845 is a turbulent city. The political campaign between the Democrats and the Whigs is crooked and violent, and the recent influx of Irish poor is causing some Protestant leaders to preach against Papists. The recent establishment of a police force has been fought against by those claiming it impinges on their civil liberties.

Timothy Wilde is a bartender who has managed to save up $500 and intends to ask the woman he loves, Mercy Underhill, for her hand. A huge fire that ranges more than twenty blocks changes his plans, for his home is burned down with all his money in it and so is his place of work. His face is badly scarred as well, so Timothy believes his future is ruined.

His older brother Valentine, with whom he has a rocky relationship, has plans for him. Val has just been made a captain in the new police force and believes the copper stars–for that is what they are soon called because of their badges–is the place for his brother. Timothy is distrustful of Val’s intentions. His brother is a popular and charismatic leader of the firemen and the Democratic party, but Timothy also knows him as an opium addict and a wild man who hangs out with thugs. Timothy soon finds that the job suits him, however.

He is not long on the job before a child runs into him late one night, hysterical and covered with blood, saying “He’s going to tear him to pieces.” Wilde sees that she is a kinchin mab, or a child prostitute. He brings her home to the Dutch widow who is his new landlady instead of taking her in for questioning. When the girl recovers herself, she identifies herself as Bird and tells him a pack of lies. He soon finds out what she was talking about, however, when the body of a young male child prostitute is found in a trash receptacle.

Timothy’s investigation results in the discovery of a field full of bodies on the edge of the city–a total of 19 dead children with a cross carved into their torsos. Although the authorities try to keep this a secret, the word soon gets out. Then someone begins writing letters blaming the deaths on the Irish. Soon the city is a powder keg.

This novel is even better than Faye’s acclaimed first, Dust and Shadow. It depicts New York in all its grit and dissension and feels historically grounded. It introduces an honest, kind, and clever hero whom I hope we’ll see more of. The plot is full of twists, and although I managed to spot a perpetrator well in advance, the story was much more tangled than I expected. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

Day 419: The Bones of Paris

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Cover for The Bones of ParisHappy Halloween! I tried to select a book that was appropriate for the occasion, although I didn’t have a ghost story lined up.

Laurie R. King’s series about Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes is very popular, but I prefer her Kate Martinelli series or, even better, some of her dark psychological stand-alone novels. Folly is my favorite. With The Bones of Paris, she brings some of that darker sensibility to what looks like the beginning of a new mystery series.

Harris Stuyvesant is an ex-FBI agent who has been scraping a living in Europe by taking private investigation work. Among the hordes of American expatriates in 1929 Paris, he is searching for a young woman, Pip Crosby, whose relatives have not heard from her in months. A cause for possible embarrassment or worse is that Harris met Pip in Nice the year before and had a brief fling with her. Ever since a disastrous incident that ended his career and cost him his fiancée, he has been living an aimless and bohemian existence.

Two of Harris’ first stops in his search for Pip are Pip’s flatmate, Nancy Berger, and the Paris Missing Persons Bureau. Nancy seems to have a hangover but is actually suffering the effects of travel. She just returned from an archaeological dig in Greece and has not seen Pip for months. Harris finds the police officer, Doucet, concerned about what may be a series of killings.

Harris’ attentions soon narrow on three men connected with the art world whose names keep surfacing in connection with Pip and who all have a fascination with the macabre. The artist Man Ray‘s photographs of Pip focus on a gruesome scar from an accident in her youth. Count Dominic de Charmentier is a wealthy patron of the arts who owns a theatre that alternates grotesque and frightening scenes with comic ones. He also hosts parties that feature macabre decorations and terrifying staged events. Didi Moreau is a creepy, disturbing artist who makes displays of found objects, including human bones. Pip has a few of these displays in her room, as well as some of Man Ray’s photographs. When Harris begins investigating these men more closely, he finds to his alarm that his ex-fiancée, Sarah Grey, is working as de Charmentier’s assistant.

King evokes the time and place with mastery, introducing us to a dissolute café culture populated with famous figures such as Cole Porter and Josephine Baker. She also cleverly raises the creep factor by interjecting short chapters about the bones that underlie parts of Paris, foreboding snippets of conversation, and other indications that something monstrous is going on behind the scenes of glittering nightlife.

Day 412: Stone’s Fall

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Cover for Stone's FallBest Book of the Week!
Ever since Iain Pears wrote the stunning An Instance of the Fingerpost, I have been waiting for him to come out with something that could match it for complexity and interest. He has finally achieved this with Stone’s Fall.

Did he fall or was he pushed? might be the question journalist Matthew Braddock is asked to answer when Elizabeth Stone hires him after her husband falls to his death from his office window. Instead, she asks him to find the child John Stone mentioned in his will. Stone’s estate is tied up during the search for this unknown heir, but Elizabeth says she has no ulterior motives except a sincere wish to follow her husband’s wishes. As Stone was an extremely wealthy but private arms manufacturer and the only person who could understand the complex structure of his inter-related companies, many are concerned in his affairs, even the British government.

Completely infatuated with the older woman and feeling wholly unqualified to find the child, Braddock instead concentrates on investigating the last days of Stone’s life and the state of his corporations. In doing so, he finds evidence that Stone’s net worth was not nearly as large as everyone thinks. He also has questions about the involvement of Henry Cort, a mysterious figure believed to work for the Foreign Office. Braddock relates the tale of what he discovered quite some time after his 1909 investigation, in 1953 after Elizabeth Stone’s funeral.

Braddock’s story does not answer many questions even though he believes he has found some facts, but after his narrative, he includes a manuscript sent to him by Henry Cort. Cort takes his own story back further, to events in Paris of 1890, when he befriends Elizabeth after having known her years before.

The final section of the novel takes us to Venice in 1867, when as a young man John Stone meets Cort’s parents and the man who invented the torpedo that began Stone’s empire. It is in this final section of the novel that we begin to understand the answers to the mysteries of John Stone’s life and death.

This series of narratives is like a set of nested gift boxes–as we unwrap each one, we learn more and go deeper into the story, finally beginning to understand the mysterious Stone. The novel is impeccably plotted and beautifully written–a great reading experience for those who appreciate a mystery that is not formulaic.

Day 405: The Child’s Child

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Cover for the Child's ChildEven though The Child’s Child is a relatively short novel, it seems to take a long time to get to the payoff. Although Barbara Vine’s novels are more character studies than thrillers, they always involve a certain amount of suspense.

This book uses a novel-within-a-novel structure, with the exterior novel taking place in 2011 while the interior one begins in 1929. The themes of unwed motherhood and homosexuality and the extent to which both are stigmatized are the same in both stories.

Grace Easton is a graduate student working on a thesis about the portrayal of unwed mothers in literature. She and her brother Andrew have inherited a house and impulsively decide to share it instead of selling it. However, they have not discussed issues such as how to deal with prospective mates, and soon enough Andrew, who is gay, has brought home James, a writer. Grace and James do not get on, and she begins to feel uncomfortable in her own home.

One evening Andrew and James witness a brutal crime against a gay friend, about which they will be called upon to testify. James is extremely upset by this event, and his reaction leads to unforeseen complications.

Grace has promised to read the manuscript (the interior novel) written by an acquaintance’s father with a view to telling the acquaintance whether it is publishable. She has been avoiding reading it while she works on her thesis but finally begins. We are led to understand that, while presented as a novel, it is actually a true story of the writer’s relative.

In the interior novel, Maud Goodwin becomes pregnant at fifteen and is immediately rebuffed by her family, with the exception of her brother John. John has recently taken a new job in a different county, and his solution to his sister’s problem is to set up housekeeping with her, the two of them posing as husband and wife to avoid her shame. John is homosexual, which of course was illegal in those days, and has vowed to remain celibate, so he knows he will never marry.

The interior novel takes up the bulk of the book, which I found unfortunate. I thought John was in some ways foolish, and Maud becomes a bitter, ungrateful woman. My immediate thought, even as John was deciding what to do, was that Maud’s situation could just as effectively and more sensibly have been taken care of by her posing as a widow and sharing a house with her brother.

Sadly, John lacks judgment in where he bestows his affections, and when he chooses a partner he basically seals his fate. I had some sympathy for John, but he exits the novel fairly early on, and I grew to dislike Maud more and more.

It isn’t until the narrative returns to the present time that I feel the novel regains its focus and finally provides some payoff, and the long-anticipated suspense. In addition, sadly, the themes of the novel seem labored and obvious, to the point where the author has characters voicing them instead of letting the reader figure them out. If you want to try Barbara Vine, the name Ruth Rendell uses for her psychological suspense novels, I suggest instead A Dark-Adapted Eye, which is one of my favorites.