Tag: mysteries

Review 1840: #1954 Club! Destination Unknown

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I read Destination Unknown for the 1954 Club, and it is really more of a suspense/espionage novel seemingly based on Cold War politics than it is one of her usual mysteries. It is also not nearly as effective.

Thomas Betterton is just the latest of a series of scientists and researchers who have seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Although his wife Olive says she doesn’t know where he is, Jepson and his colleagues in a labyrinthian government office building think he has defected. When Olive asks for permission to travel for her health, they decide to have her followed.

Hilary Craven has left England for Morocco in the hope that a change of scenery will lessen her despair after first her husband left her for another woman and then her only child died of meningitis. But it doesn’t help, and she soon is going from pharmacy to pharmacy collecting sleeping pills. She is about to take them when Jepson bursts into her room with an alternative. The plane she was supposed to take to Morocco has crashed. She missed it and got another one, but Olive Betterton was on it. Both women are physically similar and have red hair. Will Hilary take Olive’s place and hope to be contacted, to try to find out where the scientists are even though it’s likely she won’t survive this mission? She agrees.

Although there are some complicated strands to the plot, not only is the novel not a mystery but it doesn’t feature the deft characterization or humor that are usually part of Christie’s books. Not one of her best, I’m afraid.

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Review 1834: Last Rituals

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Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, a Reykyavik attorney, receives an unusual request. A German university student has been found murdered under unusual circumstances, and his family isn’t satisfied with the police investigation. Although the murderer has supposedly been arrested, the family doesn’t think he did it. They want Thóra to work with their German representative, Matthew Reich, to see what she can turn up.

Thóra soon learns that the student, Harald Gottlieb, was obsessed with Medieval witch hunts. His apartment is decorated with bizarre artifacts from his grandfather’s collection of torture instruments and folk spells. His own body is covered with piercings and markings as well as embedded objects. His thesis is supposed to be a comparison of witch burnings in Germany and Iceland, but Thóra and Matthew find his research more scattered.

Despite his appearance and apparently rowdy behavior, Harald seems to have been well-liked by his fellow students although not by all the faculty. He has founded a historical society centered around witchcraft practices, and the members of it all give each other alibis for the night of the murder—they were all out clubbing together.

Although because of its macabre subject matter and occasional creepiness, this mystery seems as if it is going to be fairly grim, I would place it closer to the cozy category. We get to know Thóra’s kids and find a source of humor in Thóra’s surly receptionist Bella (although I thought Sigurdardóttir could have skipped the fat jokes). Also interesting is Thóra’s growing relationship with Matthew.

This is a pretty good mystery, too. I enjoyed this novel and will look for the next one.

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Review 1832: The Lantern Men

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Anthropologist Ruth Galloway has taken a job at Cambridge, and she and her daughter Kate are living with Frank, the American historian she met several books ago. She has made this move for a promotion but also to make a break from Harry Nelson, Kate’s father and her married occasional lover.

But fate pulls her back to Norfolk and the Saltmarsh, which she dearly misses. Nelson has got a conviction against Ivor March for two murders of beautiful tall blond women, but he thinks March murdered two more women whose bodies were never found. Although the two women’s bodies were found in the backyard of March’s girlfriend, Chantal Simmonds, and his DNA found on them, he has insisted he is innocent, and he has several acolytes who believe him.

Now March has told Nelson he will divulge the burial place of the other two women on the condition that Ruth perform the forensics rather than Ruth’s ex-boss Phil. Ruth agrees, and when she disinters the bodies, she finds three, not two.

The deaths seem to center around a group of people who used to live in a commune. The men called themselves the Lantern Men and went out to rescue lost women. But the legend of the Lantern Men is more sinister.

This series continues to be excellent, both in the mysteries and in the private lives of the recurring characters. Although Griffiths pulls a little bit of a fast one in the identity of one character, I didn’t hold it against her. My only regret is that when I read this book I only had one more book to read in the series until the next one came out.

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Review 1829: Insomniacs, Inc.

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Full disclosure: Peggy Schimmelman is my cousin’s wife, and I received an ARC in exchange for a free and fair review.

Jack and Marilyn are a retired couple living in a Northern Californian suburb. They are political conservatives who have lived there many years and are disappointed at the direction the neighborhood is taking as more racially and politically diverse people move out from the city. Alejandra, across the street, has junk collecting on her property and is Hispanic. Jack wonders if she is “an illegal.” Michael is a musician who plays loud music and has people coming and going at all hours. They do not approve of Rachel, a gay woman whose lover recently died, and Lisa, who is closer to their age, seems unfriendly. They can never remember the name of the little old Asian woman who lives next door. Ching? Chang? Chung? (It turns out to be Zhang.)

They are soon appalled to learn that their neighbor Michael is dead. Rumors abound, and they hear that he was murdered—fed a Thai peanut dish when he is allergic to nuts.

Marilyn is not impressed when Detective Andy Thacker appears, especially as his focus seems to be more on dessert than on the crime. But he lets fall several clues about the case, asking about a strip club, an elementary school, and some porn sites. Soon, Marilyn, who begins suffering from insomnia after a prowler is spotted in the neighborhood and Alejandra receives a letter containing racial slurs, finds herself reluctantly teaming up with Alejandra and Rachel, the three meeting in the middle of the night to try to solve the crime.

Insomniacs, Inc. is a light-handed cozy mystery with an engaging heroine that explores the themes of political and racial divisiveness. The novel suffers a bit from its characters’ inability to do much detective work themselves, a problem that pops up occasionally in mystery novels that feature amateur detectives. It also has a little too long of a wrap-up at the end. Overall, however, I found it well-written and entertaining, exploring some important themes of our current times with a light hand. I’m afraid I guessed the culprit fairly early, but there were lots of complications that I didn’t figure out, including motive.

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Review 1817: The Ruin

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Twenty years ago, Cormac Reilly drove out to an isolated cottage on his first call as a policeman. He thought he was doing a welfare check, but because of some muddle, he arrived to find two terrified children, Maude Blake, 15, and her brother Jack, 5, and their mother, dead of an apparent overdose. With no phone service available, Reilly broke protocol and took Maude and her badly injured brother to the hospital. Then Maude disappeared. Reilly has always felt he didn’t do enough for them.

Now Reilly has taken a job in Galway to be with his partner, Emma, who was offered a prestigious position in a lab. This move is a demotion for him, because he had been part of an elite squad in Dublin. There is something not right in the Galway office, though. Instead of taking advantage of his experience, his chief is assigning him cold cases and the officers are treating him oddly with the exception of Danny McIntyre, an old classmate. Soon he hears that someone is spreading false rumors about him.

Then the old case raises its head again with the death of Jack Blake, who apparently drowned himself in the river Corrib. Cormac is not assigned this case, though. After Maude reappears and insists that her brother’s death was not a suicide, he is told to pursue her for her mother’s murder.

McTiernan’s first novel, The Ruin is engaging and atmospheric. I liked it a lot.

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Review 1807: Murder by Matchlight

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It’s 1945, and London is in blackout during the period of the Blitz. Nevertheless, Bruce Malling is out for a stroll in Regent’s Park. He is sitting quietly on a bench near a footbridge when he sees a man pop over the railing and hide under the bridge. A few minutes later, another man strolls onto the bridge, calling out to ask if anyone is there. By the brief flicker of matchlight as the man lights his cigarette, Bruce sees another face above his. Then he hears a thud. Bruce runs up to find the man dead and then catches the other man as he comes up from under the bridge and tries to run away.

A police constable arrives on the scene as does a doctor, who pronounces the man dead. His ID identifies him as John Ward, but when Inspector MacDonald inquires about him, he can find no one who knows anything about him except that he was Irish, was charming, and had no visible means of support. Inquiries at his previous residence then reveal that he was not John Ward at all.

This novel is full of colorful characters that MacDonald meets at the victim’s boarding house. It is an interesting puzzle with lots of secrets. Being part Irish myself, I didn’t appreciate the aspersions cast on them in one passage, but otherwise I enjoyed this mystery.

I received a copy of this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

Murder in the Mill-Race

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The Lost Gallows

Review 1802: White Dog

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In this last of the Jack Irish novels, Linda has just left Jack for a position in London when he accepts a job from his ex-law-partner Drew. Sarah Longmore, an artist, has been accused of murdering her ex-lover Mickey Franklin. Sarah says she didn’t do it, but the prosecution has a witness placing her near the scene, and the murder weapon was a gun Mickey loaned her. Drew wants Jack to look for evidence that she is innocent.

Jack begins poking around but is unable to find out much except that three of Mickey’s former associates are missing. Against his own instincts, Jack and Sarah become lovers, but later when Jack goes to her studio to meet a witness, the building explodes, killing Sarah and badly injuring Jack.

Now that Jack’s client is dead, Jack is more determined than ever to find out who killed Mickey. The novel does not neglect Jack’s sidelines of learning cabinet making, hanging out with the old men Jack calls the Fitzroy Youth Club, and helping Harry Strang and Cam with horse-racing projects.

Again, Temple has produced a suspenseful and exciting novel in his Jack Irish series.

Bad Debts

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Review 1789: The Postscript Murders

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This second Harbinder Kaur novel begins with the apparently natural death of 90-year-old Peggy Smith. Peggy was a sprightly old lady with an interest in crime fiction who used to record everyone who passed her apartment.

Her carer, Natalka, thinks there might be something wrong about Peggy’s death. When she and a neighbor, Benedict, are packing up some of Peggy’s things, they notice that several mystery writers have thanked Peggy for her help. Then someone holds them up with a gun and takes a copy of an old murder mystery.

Dex Challoner is one of the writers who thanked Peggy. Natalka, Benedict, and Peggy’s friend Edwin talk Harbinder into attending a book event for Dex, and he admits that Peggy used to help him come up with interesting murders. He makes an appointment to meet with them later, but the next day he is found dead, shot in the head in his home.

This novel was certainly a page turner, so much so that I read most of it in one day. It has a light cozy feel to it, and clues galore. I found it an enjoyable read.

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Review 1784: Death in Oslo

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I began reading this Norwegian series after watching the Swedish TV show Modus that is based on it. I mentioned that connection before, but while reading this novel, I thought about it a lot.

Helen Bentley, the American president, disappears from her hotel room during a state visit to Norway. Adam Stubo isn’t involved in the case at first, but then FBI agent Warren Seifford requests Adam as a liaison. When Adam’s wife, Johanne Vik, hears this, she demands that he refuse to work with Warren even though she won’t explain why. Then she leaves home with her baby when Adam reports to work.

Perhaps it’s because I watched the Modus version of this book first, which made significant changes, but I found it much less plausible than I have Holt’s other books in the series. I have already noticed, though, that her character Johanne Vik tends to be a little hysterical at times, unlike the calm counterpart in the TV series.

First, I felt that Holt had little grasp of the way politics between the Norwegians and the Americans would play out. Most of the time, she just shows them spinning their wheels in power plays. She, or perhaps the translator, also gets things wrong about American speech. The mistake I can think of offhand has an American on the news call gas “petrol.” Americans don’t use that word. I would think the book was simply translated for a British audience except the word was used in a supposedly verbatim news report from the States. I also noticed a similar error when Warren’s thoughts are revealed.

The TV program has the President stashed in the closet of an abandoned building, but in the novel she is in an apartment basement and just happens to be found by the servant of the woman Johanne Vik goes to stay with. That coincidence is bad enough, but that they don’t immediately call the police is wholly unbelievable.

Finally, there’s the big climax. I don’t want to give too much away, but I have to say that since the person the president thinks is guilty isn’t, what happened to the danger that she was supposedly in? They handled this much better in Modus by having there be actual danger.

So, a bit disappointed here. I’m ahead of the series on the next book, so we’ll see if that makes a difference.

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The Final Murder

The Water’s Edge

Review 1770: The Stone Circle

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Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway is called back out to the wooden circles on the Norfolk coast because bones have been discovered there, along with a hagstone. Ruth thinks they are quite likely those of Margaret Lacey, who went missing at the age of 12 in 1981. And so they prove to be. Ruth is also sure the bones have been moved recently from a more loamy soil.

Ruth has received a letter similar to the ones that arrived during her first case set near the stone circle. So has DCI Nelson, Ruth’s occasional lover and the father of her daughter Kate. Nelson had decided to leave his wife Michelle for Ruth when Michelle announced that she was pregnant. Nelson’s son Charlie has just been born.

One of the suspects in Margaret’s disappearance had been John Mostyn, but his crippled mother gave him an alibi. Now John lives by himself, a hoarder and a collector of stones, but Margaret’s family think he is harmless. Soon, though, he is found murdered.

The Stone Circle is another excellent mystery by Elly Griffiths. I am even more interested in Ruth’s private life, and the mystery itself is a good one.

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