Tag: mysteries

Day 690: Wylding Hall

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Cover for Wylding HallElizabeth Hand’s earlier novel Mortal Love showed she was interested in a connection between inspiration and folklore. Wylding Hall is also an unusual exploration of this theme.

The novel is told as a series of possible interviews, maybe for a documentary, about a 70’s folk group called Windhollow Faire. The group released two albums, but a mystery surrounds the second one, which 20 years later has been re-released as a smashing success.

The novel is narrated by the band members, their manager, and a couple of other people who visited the band during the fateful summer the album was recorded. The band’s manager Tom Haring sets off the action of the novel by renting an old Tudor mansion in a remote rural area for the band to live and work in during the summer. Part of the house has been restored but the rest of it is a rambling wreck. The band works but in a party atmosphere of drugs and booze.

The novel builds up some suspense with the hints of something unusual happening that summer involving Julian Blake, the band’s lead singer and songwriter. He is the only member of the band who is not heard from in the novel. The house is described in a way that is both beautiful and creepy, featuring an old library that cannot always be located and is full of feathers. The local inn also features some folklore and is named after an old song about killing wrens on St. Stephen’s Day.

link to NetgalleyThe locals warn the band members away from the woods around the house, and their superstitious comments add to the hints of darkness in the book. For a short novel in which little actually happens, it creates quite a mood of creepiness.

My only criticism is that most of the band members blurred together for me, because I couldn’t keep them straight. A couple stand out, but most of them are too undefined to be successful characters.

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Day 681: Literary Wives! The Bishop’s Wife

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Cover for The Bishop's Wife

Today is another Literary Wives discussion about the book The Bishop’s Wife by Mette Ivie Harrison.

Be sure to read the reviews and comments of the other wives!

***

Linda Wallheim is the wife of a Mormon bishop. She has no official role in his duties but he occasionally asks her to help him by talking to someone he thinks is troubled. The couple’s lives are busy with many church functions and many visitors for the bishop. But it is one woman who doesn’t come who is soon to cause an uproar.

Jared Helm comes over very early one morning with his five-year-old daughter Kelly to report his wife Carrie missing. He claims she got up in the middle of the night and left. Linda is angered by his crude and sexist remarks about his wife and begins to wonder about his story. She is even more concerned when the Westons, Carrie’s parents, tell Linda and her husband Kurt that Carrie would never have left without Kelly.

Soon, there’s a full-blown police investigation into Carrie’s whereabouts. Although Jared’s father Alex is even less likable and more misogynistic than Jared, Linda tries to stay on pleasant terms with them to look after Kelly.

In the meantime another neighbor finds out suddenly that he is dying. Kurt has noticed that Anna Torstenson has a problem, and Kurt and Linda soon find out that her husband Tobias is dying. Anna loves Tobias, but she is his second wife and he has refused to be sealed in the temple with her, meaning they will not live out eternity together. He has instead often talked about his first wife. As he gets very ill, he wants to visit his first wife’s grave, but neither Anna nor either of Tobias’ grown sons know where she is buried. Upon examination, different people realize they’ve been told different things about the cause of her death.

This novel is fascinating, as much of interest because of the details of life in a modern Mormon ward as for the mystery. Linda is a complex character, always ready to help but sometimes struggling with her role in her husband’s work. The novel is apparently based upon a true case.

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

I think that The Bishop’s Wife is the most complex of the books I have read for this club in its examination of “wifehood.” As in the other books, there are several marriages depicted, some of them quite off-kilter. Linda’s and Kurt’s is very much a partnership. Although her primary role is as a wife and mother, he engages her in his work when he can, even though people’s confidences remain confidential. When he thinks a troubled person might be more likely to confide in his wife, he asks her to visit them. Although they have several disagreements about her involvement in the Helm case, he agrees that she must do as she thinks best.

Anna finds, I think, that she has subsumed some of her own personality to please her husband. It takes her awhile, but she learns to look forward to a new start to her own life after his death.

Some of the other marriages depicted are shaded by childhood trauma or by completely dysfunctional relationships. Linda is sensitive to any hints of sexism, but there appears to be plenty in the community. One of the things I found a little shocking was the speed with which one widower decides to remarry and the acceptance that decision apparently has in the community. And there is another marriage that is entirely shocking.

Literary Wives logoIn what way does this woman define “wife”—or in what way is she defined by “wife”?

The old-fashioned phrase “help meet” seems to describe Linda’s role as wife. She is concerned about the hours Kurt puts into his work without being jealous of the time taken away from her. She and Kurt have a warm give and take of views, and she has a close relationship with her sons. Her biggest regret is the death of her stillborn daughter.

Day 680: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

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Cover for As Chimney SweepersAfter 12-year-old Flavia de Luce’s last adventures, she starts out this most recent novel in the series on her way to Toronto. She has been sent away to school, to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. Lest you worry that this will turn the series into a nonmagical version of Harry Potter, never fear.

Flavia has arrived by boat in the company of Dr. and Mrs. Rainsmith, an unlikable couple who are associated with the school. They drop her there late at night, and true to form, Flavia has discovered a corpse by morning.

Or rather, another of the boarding students by the name of Collingwood has. In an attempt to hide from the headmistress when she is out of her room at night, Collingwood crawls up the chimney in Flavia’s room, only to fall down again along with a desiccated body wrapped in a Union Jack.

Of course, Flavia is soon on the job, trying to identify the body. Several girls are rumored to have disappeared from the school. And then there is the mysterious death of Dr. Rainsmith’s first wife, even though she went overboard during a cruise, which makes the death a little harder to fit.

Although the series has taken a somewhat fantastical turn, with Flavia seemingly being groomed to be some sort of spy, she continues her inimitable self, naive enough to draw some pretty ridiculous conclusions from her evidence but smart enough to find the facts, and entirely neglectful of the school rules. I have to admit, though, that I miss Flavia’s village and the eccentric members of her family.

I’m sure I am not the only one to enjoy Flavia, an expert in chemistry who thrills over an electron microscope but still believes in Santa Claus, as we discovered a few volumes ago.

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Day 674: In a Lonely Place

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Cover for In a Lonely PlaceWhat makes this post-World War II noir crime novel stand out is that it was written by a woman and the crime is solved by two sharp women. Although there are plenty of women mystery writers, it is less common to find women writing noir mysteries at that time. Reminiscent of The Killer Inside Me, In a Lonely Place tells the story of a serial killer of women from the point of view of the killer.

Dix Steele is an ex-pilot being supported by his uncle in Los Angeles while he pretends to write a novel. He is living in a posh apartment of an old Princeton friend, wearing his clothes and driving his car and telling everyone his friend is in Rio. About once a month he picks up a girl at a bus stop or some other lonely place and strangles her.

Dix decides to get in touch with an old friend from the military, Brub Nicholai, but is taken aback to find Brub is now a police detective. Brub has also married, and his wife Sylvia doesn’t like Dix.

Dix meets an attractive redhead, Laurel Gray, who lives in the apartment complex and is divorcing her wealthy husband. Soon they begin a torrid romance.

This novel was convincing in its depiction of a serial killer. Although we see things from Dix’s point of view, we are not drawn into his dilemmas as we are, say, for The Talented Mr. Ripley. We want him to be caught and worry about Laurel or about the next time he is going to find the need to kill.

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Day 670: The Jewels of Paradise

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Cover for The Jewels of ParadiseI have read a few of Donna Leon’s Commisario Brunetti mysteries and liked them well enough. I was intrigued, though, to find The Jewels of Paradise, a recent one-off or perhaps the start of a new series by Leon.

Caterina Pelligrini is an Italian musicologist who has been working as an assistant professor for a university in Manchester. With a doctorate specializing in Baroque opera, she has found employment opportunities hard to come by. She also has not foreseen how much she would miss her home. So, when she hears of an opportunity for a research position in Venice that is to last a few months with the possibility of being extended, she jumps at it.

The position is an unusual one, though, for she knows only that she has been hired to go through some trunks containing recently discovered papers belonging to an unnamed composer. Hired by an impeccable lawyer, Dottor Andrea Moretti, Caterina is employed by two thugs, Scapinella and Stievani. They hope she will find papers showing that one of them has a better claim to the trunks than the other, for they have family legends that this man, a supposedly  rich relative, died with a fortune of jewels.

Caterina is to conduct her research at a foundation that is almost bare of resources. There she finds that the papers belong to Agostino Steffani, a once famous Baroque composer of operas who gave up his career to become a church diplomat. As Caterina investigates, she finds he may have been implicated in the Königsmarck Affair, in which the lover of the wife of the future King George I of England disappeared and was believed to have been murdered.

A faint air of menace haunts the entire project, as Caterina is followed and finds someone has been reading her email. Soon she learns that the position, for which she has moved from England, is only to last a month.

I really enjoyed this tale of mystery in the realm of academic research, although I thought that the physical setting of Venice got short shrift. Still, I find I am drawn to this kind of novel and hope to see more of them from Leon.

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Day 647: Spider Woman’s Daughter

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Cover for Spider Woman's DaughterIn summary, ho hum. I think I’ve read all of Tony Hillerman’s Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee mysteries. I especially like Jim Chee, because he follows the Navajo Way, and I find the information about these customs and beliefs fascinating. I am not so fond, though, of writers picking up other writers’ series after their deaths. However, in the interests of being fair, I decided to try Spider Woman’s Daughter, a Leaphorn and Chee novel by Anne Hillerman, Tony’s daughter.

This novel is written from the point of view of Bernie Manuelito, now Jim Chee’s wife and a Navajo Nation police officer. She is attending a breakfast with retired Lieutenant Leaphorn and some other police officers when she witnesses Leaphorn being shot. In the parking lot of the restaurant in broad daylight, a short hooded figure emerges from the car next to his and shoots him.

Bernie does what she can to help him but feels as if she could have done more if she moved faster. Leaphorn is shot in the head and is moved from Albuquerque to Santa Fe to get care. Bernie is only allowed to follow through to contact relatives and then is off the case because she is a witness. The police are also having trouble finding Louisa, Leaphorn’s partner.

Because of Bernie’s thorough description of the getaway car, the police are able to identify it quickly. But it turns out that many people could have been driving it, as the owner’s son regularly loans it out.

Jim and Bernie become convinced that the attack relates to an old case, but a report is missing for a new case Leaphorn is on, evaluating the documents for a collection of native American artifacts that is being donated to a research facility in Santa Fe.

I was disappointed in this novel. First, except for Bernie, it does almost nothing to develop its characters. Frankly, Jim Chee did not seem like Jim, and Leaphorn was unconscious almost the whole time. The minor characters have little personality.

More importantly, by two thirds of the way through, I knew who the murderer was and why, while it took being abducted for either Chee or Bernie to figure it out. This is too early in the book to be thinking the detectives are idiots. With the old series, I seldom knew the murderer before Hillerman wanted me to, and if I did, I was interested enough in the plot or other details to want to continue.

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Day 642: The Silkworm

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Cover for The SilkwormThe Silkworm is Robert Galbraith’s second Cormoran Strike mystery. It picks up about a year after private investigator Strike solved the murder of the famous supermodel Lula Landry. Since then, he has gained a lot of business, mostly from wealthy or famous clients. So, he does something unexpected when he kicks an entitled client out of his office to take on an apparently simple job of finding the wandering husband of the downtrodden Leonora Quine.

Owen Quine, Cormoran learns quickly, is prone to drama and disputes and is not very likable. He long ago wrote one notable novel but since then has been considered second rate. He is known for his attention-seeking disappearances, but this time Leonora thinks he’s been gone too long, ten days.

Strike finds that Quine disappeared after a loud, public fight with his agent, Elisabeth Tassel. Quine has just finished a book that he considers his masterpiece, Bombyx Mori, named after the silkworm. Leonora reports that Tassel was encouraging Owen and telling him it was his best. But Tassel says that when she read it, she was appalled. It grotesquely defames almost everyone Quine knows in the publishing world, including Tassel herself, Quine’s editor Jerry Waldgreave, a famous writer and ex-friend Michael Fancourt, Quine’s publisher Daniel Chard, Quine’s girlfriend and writer of erotic romances Kathryn Kent, and Quine’s student from a creating writing class, a transgender woman named Pippa Midgely. Although Quine’s manuscript was suppressed, all of these people had an opportunity to read it. Leonora, also ridiculed in the book, is the only one who claims not to have read it.

Cormoran is unable to find a trace of Quine, and he begins to feel odd about the situation. When he learns that Quine co-owns a house with Michael Fancourt that neither of them ever visit, he goes there immediately. He finds the house marred by acid and Quine’s body, tied up and disemboweled.

Strike’s old friend Richard Anstis is head of the investigation, but the police are not happy to have Strike involved since he made them look bad when he solved Lula Landry’s death as a homicide after they declared it a suicide. In any case, Anstis is inclined to suspect Leonora.

Meanwhile, the date of Strike’s assistant Robin Ellacot’s wedding is approaching, and she has still not managed to reconcile her fiancé’s dislike of her job with Strike. She is hoping Strike will train her to be a detective, but she is worried he has relegated her to being a secretary.

In my review of Galbraith’s first novel I complained of a dirty trick. I’m happy to report that there were none in this novel and the murderer was difficult to guess. I haven’t figured out yet how much I like Cormoran Strike, though, and I hope that his yearning after his bitch of an ex-fiancée is not going to continue in every novel. Whether she would follow through with her own wedding was a minor plot point of this novel, but I’m already tired of her and wish she would go away. Ditto with Robin’s tiresomely jealous fiancé.

Rowling as Galbraith continues to be a very good writer who keeps the story moving, but she has not quite engaged me on Strike’s behalf as yet.

Day 638: The Singing Sands

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Cover for The Singing SandsEvery once in awhile, I like to read a classic mystery, and I have only read a few by Josephine Tey. Tey’s novels acted as a bridge between the Golden Age of mysteries and the modern mystery, when the genre moved toward more realism.

The overworked Inspector Grant is on his way to a holiday in Scotland and is concerned because he has developed a debilitating claustrophobia. Upon leaving the train at Euston station, he comes across a porter trying to rouse an apparently inebriated passenger. Grant sees right away that the man is dead. When he examines the body, he drops some of his own papers, and while picking them up, accidentally removes the dead man’s newspaper.

Relaxing at his cousin’s house in the Highlands and preparing to go fishing, Grant checks the paper the next day to see what it says about the dead man. His face has stuck in Grant’s mind. He finds that the man has been identified as a Frenchman named Charles Martin. He has already discovered the man’s newspaper, with some verse scratched on it referring to animals that talk, streams that stand, stones that walk, and singing sand. He recognizes the man’s handwriting as the unformed style learned by British schoolboys, and he can’t imagine that the dead man was French. So, he decides to look into the death a bit more.

Except for The Daughter of Time, Tey’s most well-known book, I have only read a couple of Tey’s one-off novels, not her Inspector Grant mysteries. After reading this one, I think I’ll look for more. Inspector Grant is interesting and likable, as are the relatives he visits. The mystery is involving without being so overcomplicated as to be unlikely, as Golden Age mysteries often are. When Grant travels to the island of Claddagh (referred to as Cladda in the novel) in search of the singing sands, we also get to explore a new landscape.

Day 625: Another Time, Another Life

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Cover for Another Time, Another LifeAnother Time, Another Life is the second book in a trilogy of complex political police procedurals by Leif GW Persson. I reviewed the first book last spring.

At first, it is difficult to see the connection between the two books, but eventually some of the names and events from the previous book re-emerge. Another Time, Another Life begins with two crimes 14 years apart. Like Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End, one of the crimes is based on an actual event, in this case the bombing of the West German embassy in Stockholm in 1975 by German terrorists. Although the Swedish authorities are certain that the Germans must have had help from Swedish citizens, the case is wound up fairly quickly without any indication of who those Swedes might be.

Inspector Bo Jarnebring was on the scene right after the bombing, and 14 years later he is the first to respond to a call for help. A little old lady has overheard an argument in a neighboring apartment and called to report that someone is attacking her neighbor. When Jarnebring and his partner Anna Holt arrive, they find Kjell Göran Eriksson stabbed to death in his living room.

Eriksson turns out to be an unpopular man—no one at his workplace liked him and he had only two friends, both of whom have not seen him in awhile and have alibis. Bäckström, the inspector in charge of the investigation, gets it into his head that the crime involves homosexuality, based solely on there being no evidence that Eriksson had a girlfriend. He has no compunction in using illegal means to make the facts fit his idea of the crime. Jarnebring and Holt are suspicious of the amount of money in Eriksson’s bank account, not justified by his salary or his background. But Bäckström won’t let them pursue their leads, and no suspect is ever identified.

Ten years later, Lars Johansson has just taken a job as head of the Swedish Security Police when he finds some puzzling information in his files. The names of four Swedes suspected of helping the German terrorists in 1975 were redacted from a file, but then two were reinstated. Both men are dead, and one of them was Kjell Göran Eriksson. The other was one of his two friends. This discovery leads Johansson back to his friend Jarnebring and to an official reopening of the Eriksson case and an unofficial reopening of the embassy bombing case.

Having read the first book in this series, I was not surprised to find the case becoming very complex, with important political ramifications. Persson’s work is reminiscent of some of John Le Carré’s political thrillers, although not as exciting and probably not as well written (hard to tell with a translation). The novels are intended more as complex procedurals, though, than thrillers, and they succeed in keeping my attention. As with the first book, Persson seems to delight in depicting incompetence and idiocy in the police and government. Jarnebring and Johansson’s teams are capable and intelligent, though, and for once we meet detectives who are happy with their wives.

Day 619: The Long Way Home

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Cover for The Long Way HomeAfter the traumatic ending to How the Light Gets In, Inspector Armande Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie have retired comfortably to the lovely village of Three Pines. Gamache feels none of the restlessness experienced by retired cops in other crime series, so he is not really pleased when Clara Morrow comes to him, reluctantly, with a problem.

Clara’s difficulties with her husband Peter have been growing throughout the series. The two are both artists, and their relationship was fine as long as he was the more acclaimed. But of late, Clara has gained a reputation that has surpassed Peter’s, and he has been jealous and unsupportive.

A year ago Clara asked him to leave. But she made a date with him to come back in exactly a year to see where their relationship lay. That date has come and gone, and Clara has no idea where he is. She wants Gamache to find him.

Gamache finds it easy enough to trace Peter’s movements to Paris and Venice and then, oddly, Scotland through his credit card use. They find he returned to Toronto a few months ago and then disappeared.

With Clara leading, Gamache, his son-in-law Jean-Guy, and Clara’s friend Myrna set off to find Peter, eventually ending up in a remote village at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. In their quest, they encounter a tale of madness and revenge.

This novel makes an interesting start to a new life for the series. I’m not sure how successfully it will continue, as there have been more murders per capita in Three Pines than just about anywhere. But perhaps basing the series in this small village rather than continually returning there to deal with crimes will work better, because the crimes can take place elsewhere and readers can still visit this peaceful village. I have already enjoyed some of the other novels that were set elsewhere in Canada, usually in gorgeous or interesting locations.