Tag: mysteries

Review 2699: The Art School Murders

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In Morosini’s floundering art school, the body of a model, Althea Greville, is found behind the dressing screen. She was apparently murdered just after the life class in which she modeled. Inspector Hugh Collier, brought into the case early on, finds that she had worked for the school the year before, causing some havoc in the hearts of men because of her attractiveness, even though not young. However, now she seemed a little desperate.

Leaving school the day of the murder are two first-year students, Betty and Cherry. Betty runs back to get her scarf and later teases Cherry about something she’s seen but won’t tell her. The next day, Betty skips school to go to the cinema and is found murdered in the balcony.

Finally, after Cherry tells Mr. Kent that Betty may have confided in Emma, her aunt’s servant, Emma is found badly injured. Collier ends up with five suspects, including Mr. Kent, Kent’s sulky nephew Arnold, and Morosini himself.

This book is entertaining and moves along quickly. It isn’t exactly fair to the readers, because there is almost no hint of the motive before the end. However, I still found it fun to read.

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Review 2695: Enter Sir John

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To be frank, I bought this book because on Amazon it looked like it was part of the British Library Crime Classics series, so I thought it was. It turned out to be bare-bones, print-on-demand—but actually quite a surprise.

The amateur sleuth is Sir John Saumarez, a famous actor-manager. But he doesn’t get actively involved until after the trial.

A second- or perhaps third-rate acting company is putting on a play in a town in Wales when Magda Druce, an actress and wife of the manager, is found dead, her head bashed in by a poker. With her and holding the poker is another actress, Martella Baring, who invited Magda for a late supper. She must have murdered Magda, but she seems confused and keeps asking what happened.

At her trial, both the prosecutor and the defense assume Martella did it, but the defense posits that she was in a fugue state. John Saumarez, who vaguely recognizes her name from an interview in which he encouraged her to get more experience, has attended the entire trial. He wonders what emptied the brandy flask, since Martell testifies that neither she nor Magda had any brandy. She is found guilty, but to Sir John, it doesn’t add up.

Sir John summons Novello Markham, the production’s stage manager, to his office, because Markham was one of the first on the scene. Soon, he, Markham, and Markham’s wife, Doucebell Dearing, are on their way back to Wales to investigate. Sir John thinks someone else may have come into the room from the back window. It seems clear that person must be one of two young men in the company—Ion Marion or Handele Fane.

I found this novel surprisingly good. It’s not extremely complicated, as many mysteries written in 1928 seem to be, yet it’s not easy to know who the killer is. The characters are interesting, and the authors seem to know quite a bit about the theatre.

It turns out that Clemence Dane was a successful novelist and screenwriter, an Oscar winner, whereas Helen Simpson won the James Tait Black Prize for fiction in 1932. The two wrote three mysteries, and this is the first. It was made into the movie Murder! by Alfred Hitchcock.

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Review 2692: Death at the Sign of the Rook

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Jackson Brodie is in his 70s now but still working as a private detective. He has taken a case from Hazel and Ian Padgett, who claim their mother Dorothy’s caregiver, Melanie Hope, stole a painting from her after she died, a Renaissance painting that is probably valuable. But Jackson finds something shifty about the Padgetts, not to mention that the painting was hung behind Dorothy’s bedroom door.

Periodically, we depart this story to look in on the community at Barton Makepeace, an estate so encumbered that the new Lord Milton, Piers, is turning part of the house into a hotel and hosting murder mystery weekends. Piers’s son Como has stolen a valuable Renoir to pay his debts, and now Lady Milton’s valued housekeeper, Sophie, has disappeared with one of the remaining valuable paintings, a Turner. Jackson’s friend Sergeant Reggie Carter has been called in on the case, but Jackson starts to think that Sophie and Melanie may be the same woman.

As usual with a Jackson Brodie book, the story meanders around among several characters, especially inhabiting the surrounds of Barton Makepeace, including a one-legged wounded warrior who is having trouble finding his place and a vicar who has lost his faith and his voice.

We learn from the opening that this novel ends in a parody of a country house mystery with the characters trapped in the stately home during the murder mystery play in a snowstorm—oh, and an escaped murderer is on the loose.

My only caveat about this enjoyable novel is that I can no longer remember the plot of the previous book (from five years ago) to understand several references to it. Atkinson’s mysteries aren’t typical of the genre, but they are fun.

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Transcription

Review 2690: The Last Word

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The Last Word is technically the latest Harbinder Kauer novel, although judging by the list of previous books, Griffiths isn’t calling the series by her name, and she is only peripheral to the investigation. Instead, this novel returns to characters who appeared five years ago in The Postscript Murders. This put me off a bit, because I had no memory at all of these characters and had to look up which book they were in, yet Griffiths clearly expects us to remember them.

The characters are Edwin, a gay man in his 80s; Natalka, a young Ukrainian immigrant; and Benedict, Natalka’s boyfriend, who used to be a monk. Natalka runs a care-giving business, but since the events of the previous book, she has also opened a detective agency, and Edwin is her partner. Benedict runs a coffee shop.

Although the death of Melody Chambers has been found to be of natural causes, her daughters hire Natalka to investigate: Minnie and Harmony are convinced their stepfather, Alan Warner, killed Melody by replacing her blood pressure medicine, and they produce as proof a snippet that sounds like she was afraid for her life. The only problem is that Melody was a writer, so the snippet could be part of a novel.

Edwin is an obituary reader, so he has already noticed the death of Malcolm Collins, an obituary writer. As they look into things further, they begin to notice that several writers have died, and they all seem to be linked to a writers’ retreat at Battle. So, Edwin and Benedict sign up for the retreat. On the retreat, another participant, Sue, drowns in the pond. Her fiancé had died a few years before.

I think Griffiths depends a little too much on our memories of these characters to develop them further, and I didn’t have any, although of course things are going on in their private lives. I felt either that I didn’t know them very well or that I was relatively indifferent to them. Also, there are so many suspects in this case that I ended up not even trying to guess what was going on.

I’m beginning to think I’m over Griffiths. She ended the series I liked best, and I just haven’t been that interested in her other ones.

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Review 2685: The Marlow Murder Club

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For some reason, I thought I had read The Marlow Murder Club until I began watching the series on TV. Then I realized I hadn’t.

It begins when Judith Potts, a widow in her 70s who lives on the Thames, is skinny dipping (I believe Brits call it “wild swimming”) near the house of her neighbor, Stefan Dunwoody. She hears someone shout and then a gunshot. She tries to pull herself into a blue canoe at the bank but is unable to, so she returns home and calls the police. They find nothing, and no one appears to be at home. But later, Judith returns to Stefan’s property and finds him near the water, shot in the head.

Detective Sergeant Tanika Malik isn’t quite ready to admit foul play. Perhaps Stefan committed suicide and his gun fell into the water. Judith, we learn, is a crossword setter, so she’s not about to abandon a puzzle. She finds out that Stefan had a dispute with Elliot Howard, an antiques dealer, and was threatening him with the police, although some people seem to believe it’s Stefan who is crooked, not Elliot. In trying to learn more about Elliot, Judith goes to the church, where she meets Becks Starling, the vicar’s wife.

Then another man is killed, Iqbal Kassam, a taxi driver. One murder in Marlow is unusual, two unheard of. Judith thinks they may be linked, especially as there are similarities. At the scene, she meets Suzie Harris, Iqbal’s dog walker. Soon, the three women team up to find the killer.

This novel moves along well enough, but I thought it was just okay. I had a few problems with details—for one thing, why no one could figure out a way to get around a downed tree except pulling it when there was an emergency—climb over it maybe and use someone else’s car to continue? And although the writing was okay, I spotted a couple of redundancies within a short period. I figured out the solution well before the end of the book, and I noticed that at the end, no one had told Suzie what happened, but she behaved as if they had. That is, the author didn’t catch this. Or the editor, maybe.

So, I say ho hum. But short, zippy chapters, sure to appeal to many readers.

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Review 2679: Heaven, My Home

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I’m really liking the Highway 59 series by Attica Locke. I think the mysteries are fully imagined, and black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is interesting and appealing. I have a few problems with some ongoing issues, but I’ll talk about them later.

Nine-year-old Levi King has gone missing, and his father Bill King, a racist and murderer, has written from prison asking for help finding him. Darren’s boss needs him to help out, as there is hope that King can offer insight on other cases.

Levi lives with his mother Marnie, sister, and Aryan Brotherhood wannabe Gil Thomason, Marnie’s boyfriend, in Hopetown on the edge of Caddo Lake, a huge lake that used to be a major transportation route down to Louisiana. Hopetown is barely a crossroads, a trailer park full of racist trailer trash, and closer to the lake, the much nicer homes of the original black and indigenous settlers.

The reactions of some of the people involved to the disappearance are strange. Levi’s mother and sister are clearly upset, but no one else, including Levi’s wealthy grandmother, Rosemary King, seems to be worried. Darren hears that Levi had been harassing the black and Caddo indigenous population, and when he visits Leroy Page, he learns the old black man owns all of the property and hasn’t tossed out the trailer park residents because the lease with Marnie’s recently deceased father, Leroy’s friend, is not up for a year. Leroy isn’t very cooperative, but Darren is disturbed to learn from his best friend Greg, a federal agent, that Leroy Page’s harassment by Levi is being turned around as a motive for murder, especially because Leroy was the last to see Levi. In fact, the Feds want to show the new Trump administration that they are as ready to prosecute black people as white, so they are pushing hard even though there is no proof that Levi is dead.

Darren thinks there is something else going on here, but he has several personal problems in addition to hostility from the local authorities and the federal goals.

The only things I don’t like about this series are the ongoing plot that has Darren suppressing evidence to protect an old family friend and his drinking, which is such a cliché. He is on the wagon and repairing his marriage at the beginning of the novel, but things go south pretty fast (although his wife’s professional goals for him do not match his own, so I don’t prophecy success at that).

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Review 2677: The Frozen People

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I really enjoyed Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series and have liked her Brighton and Harbinder Kauer books well enough, so I was interested in her new series. However, my interest dropped precipitously when on about page 3, I found it involved time travel.

Ali Dawson is a member of a cold case team dealing with top-secret experimental technology—time travel. She is preparing to travel back to 1850 London as part of an investigation requested by Isaac Templeton, a member of Parliament. He wants the team to try to clear the name of his ancestor, Cain Templeton, who was rumored to have murdered three women and belonged to a club the admission to which supposedly involved a dead body.

By coincidence, perhaps, Isaac is the boss of Ali’s son Finn.

Ali travels to 1850 in time to find Cain Templeton standing over the body of a dead woman in the rooming house he owns. He says he did not kill the girl but thinks an artist named Thomas Creek did. Ali is only supposed to be gone an hour, but when she returns to her pickup point, she isn’t picked up. She’s stuck in 1850.

Already I was having problems with this story. What kind of investigation is Ali supposed to conduct with a one-hour time limit? It’s a ridiculous idea.

With Finn having no word from Ali, he begins trying to find her. He discovers that Ali is on a mission originated by his boss and has an argument with him about it. The next day, Isaac is dead and Finn, who spent the evening drinking with Ali’s boss Geoff and the night passed out, is suspected of his murder. Ali returns from several days in 1850 to find him in trouble.

Besides the issue I mentioned, I had several more issues with this book by this time:

  • That the garbled explanation of time travel makes no sense
  • That Cain Templeton would invite Ali, a supposed respectable widow in 1850, to dine at his house alone
  • That Ali, supposedly tutored in Victorian habits and manners, would think it was okay to accept and assume his servants were her chaperones
  • That a winter day in 1850 London would have light skies instead of smoke-filled ones
  • That the British government would fund this project
  • That it would be thought acceptable to take a personal investigation on

The series is clearly set up to continue a plot line involving Thomas Creek and Cain Templeton. My disbelief having refused to suspend, I won’t be following it.

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Review 2668: The Pale Horse

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When an elderly priest is summoned to a woman’s deathbed, she tells him about some wickedness. We readers aren’t told what it is but that she has a list of names. When the priest leaves the deathbed to walk home, he is attacked and killed and his pockets rifled. But because he has a hole in his pocket, he put the list of names in his shoe, so it ends up in the hands of Inspector Lejeune.

Mark Easterbrooke is out one night when he witnesses an altercation between two women, one of them Tommy Tuckerton. A few days later he sees an announcement of her death. Later, a girl he knows makes a strange reference to a place called The Pale Horse, and when he visits a friend, he learns it is the name of the home of two old ladies, supposedly witches. One of them claims the other can predict who is going to die.

Mark begins to put together some odd ideas, which he discusses with Inspector Lejeune, and there he learns of the list. He can identify three names on it, all of whom are of dead people, including Tommy Tuckerton, who had been an heiress, and Lady Hesketh-Dubois, his own godmother. He begins to believe that a murder-for-hire scheme is afoot, and he enlists a friend, Ginger Corrigan, to pretend to be his ex-wife, who wishes he was dead.

This is a pretty far-fetched but entertaining story—and it was perfect for the season when I read it in October. Christie fooled me completely on the identity of the mastermind behind the plot.

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Review 2665: Dean Street December! The Coldstone

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Here’s an old-fashioned mystery/suspense novel that has everything—an ancient secret, rumors of buried treasure, a curse, a possible ghost, and a romance. What more could you want?

When Anthony Colstone unexpectedly inherits Stonegate, he is asked to promise never to move or disturb a ring of standing stones (well, just two of them) in one of his fields. But offered no explanation, Anthony refuses to promise, and of course this request makes him curious about the stones.

One of the first things he does when he arrives is to go look at the stones, about which everyone in the village is suspiciously close-mouthed. He has to plunge through a hedge to see them, and while he is there, he notices a stranger staring at him with a hostile expression.

Anthony is referred for information to his benefactor’s elderly daughters, Miss Agatha and Miss Arabel, but they simply hint at dreadful things and refer him to Susan Bowyer, at more than one hundred, the oldest resident of the village. He doesn’t learn much from her, but he meets her great-granddaughter, Susan, down from London for a visit, and is much struck. We like both Susans immediately but know the younger one has some kind of relationship with the strange man Anthony saw in the field.

Anthony’s first night in the house is disturbed by a feeling that someone else besides the servants is in the house, too. He goes down to the library and is knocked over the head but not before he sees what appears to be the portrait of one of his female ancestors moving her arm. We learn that he saw Susan, and her gasp prevented two housebreakers from breaking his leg.

Anthony awakens in a different room with his head in a woman’s lap, but when he regains consciousness, she runs away. He knows it was Susan, though, because he has noticed her resemblance to the portrait. From her, he learns of a secret passageway between Susan Bowyer’s house and his. He also hears confusing rumors of fire and devils under the altar stone of the standing stones.

What is going on? Certainly, a man named Garry has copied a key to the house and is breaking in. But isn’t the secret hidden out in the field?

This novel turns out to be lots of fun, and it doesn’t fall into the cliché of having Anthony doubt Susan when he realizes she knows Garry.

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Review 2662: The Killing Stones

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Ann Cleeves retired the Jimmy Perez series a while back, so I was delighted to hear she had brought him back. He has moved from the Shetland Islands to the Orkneys—with a milder climate and more pastoral scenery—and lives with his partner and boss, Willow, and their three-year-old son, James. Oh, and it’s the Christmas season. What better time for a mystery than Christmas?

Willow is away from their home on the mainland island when Jimmy gets an urgent call to Westray Island. His good friend Archie Stout, whom he was raised with, is missing. Archie’s wife Vaila says he was on his way to meet pals at the pub but never got there, a concern with Jimmy as there was a big storm that night. Jimmy finds Archie at an old archaeological dig, where his head has been mashed by one of the Westray story stones—two Neolithic stones with Viking inscriptions that Archie’s father helped discover and interpret. Unfortunately, because of the storm, evidence is thin.

Willow takes Jimmy off the lead because he’s too close to the victim and leads the case herself, even though she is on maternity leave and a few weeks out from having their baby. Jimmy returns home to follow up leads on the mainland. They find that Archie was upset because, since his father Magnus’s death, he has found his notebooks showing that Magnus, a self-educated farmer, did most of the work on the Westray stones even though Tony Johnson, a professor who visited occasionally, had taken all the credit, a discovery which launched Tony’s career. Tony and his wife were on the island the day of the murder. But there are other leads, including Archie’s possible affair with his wife’s ex-friend Rosalie Gruman.

Jimmy, following up on the mainland with anyone who had been on Westray the night Archie was killed, has been trying to talk to George Riley, a schoolteacher. But before he can meet him, George is also found dead, killed with the second stone. Jimmy finds out that George was writing a children’s book about the discovery of the stones that alleges Johnson stole Magnus Stout’s work.

If I have any criticism of this book, which moves right along and is certainly perplexing, it’s that Cleeves provides almost no information that could lead readers to the killer until the very end. However, she does a great job at misdirection. I’m not really sure what I think of Willow, who does a lot of the investigating in this one. She appeared in several previous books, but I still don’t have much sense of her.

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