Tag: mysteries

Day 731: Antidote to Venom

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Cover for Antidote to VenomIn this Golden Age mystery written in 1938, Freeman Wills Crofts had the goal of showing both the murder and the investigation. The result is a fascinating psychological mystery.

The first section of the book shows how George Surridge becomes involved in a murder. A mental degradation begins because of monetary difficulties caused by gambling and his attraction to a young woman who is not his wife. He is his elderly aunt’s heir, but when the thought occurs that it would help if she died faster, he pushes that idea out of his mind, thinking that he doesn’t wish her harm.

When his aunt, Miss Lucy Pentland, dies, he feels his troubles are over. His girlfriend loses her job as a companion around the same time, so he anticipates his legacy by buying her a cottage. By coincidence, his aunt’s affairs are being handled by David Capper, the nephew of an old gentleman doing research on snake venom at the Birmingham Zoo, where George is director. But when George visits Capper to find out about his inheritance, Capper admits to having stolen it and lost it all.

George is ready to go to the police, but Capper tells him then he won’t ever see his money if he does so. However, if George would help him with one little thing, the murder of his own uncle, he will get his money. All George has to do is steal a venomous snake from the zoo.

link to NetgalleySo, we see how George is slowly drawn into being an accomplice to murder. The rest of the novel shows how Chief Inspector French first recognizes that the crime is a murder and then solves it.

Although the murder involves a complicated device I couldn’t make hide nor hair of, for a Golden Age mystery it is fairly uncomplicated. I enjoyed this introduction to Croft’s work.

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Day 721: Death in Brittany

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Cover for Death in BrittanyI selected this book just because of its setting, and it certainly makes an effort to impart the scenery and atmosphere of Brittany.

Commissaire Georges Dupin is originally Parisian, but he is enjoying his relocation to Brittany. He is sitting in a cafe with his morning coffee when he is summoned to Pont-Aven, where the 90-year-old owner of the Central Hotel was stabbed to death in the bar. It was Pierre-Louis Pennec’s habit to spend the evening there, sometimes with other people, sometimes alone. The death happened after the restaurant was closed.

No one at the hotel reports anything unusual. Pennec’s life revolved around the hotel, which had been in the family for generations. His grandmother had helped build Pont-Aven’s reputation as an artists’ haven by supporting artists, the most famous of whom was Gaugain. Copies of their paintings hang throughout the restaurant. The only unusual thing Dupin and his team can discover is that Pennec was told that week that he would not live long.

Under suspicion are Pennec’s son and daughter-in-law, but they seem to have no motive. Also under suspicion is Pennec’s estranged half-brother.

The night after the murder someone breaks into the restaurant. But to all appearances, nothing was taken or has changed.

link to NetgalleyI was reading an advance copy and was at first put off by the writing, which was not stellar, particularly overuse of the word “very.” But these problems may be resolved in the published version. One thing Bannelec attempts is to illustrate the beauties of Brittany. Most of this material was interesting, and I appreciated the effort, even though sometimes the novel reads like a travel guide. But I have criticized other novels for not providing a sense of the location, and this one certainly attempts to do so.

The characters aren’t particularly distinctive. I kept confusing two of Dupin’s inspectors and several of the suspects. So, overall, I would rate this novel as just average.

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Day 710: The Kept

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Cover for The KeptBest Book of the Week!
The Kept is a mysterious and darkly moody novel that I found compelling from the first sentences. Elspeth Howell arrives home on a snowy winter day in upstate New York near the turn of the 19th century. She has been away for months working as a midwife. But when she reaches home, she finds that her husband and all of her children that live in the house have been murdered. Only her 12-year-old son Caleb, who has taken to living in the barn, is alive, but he has been hiding in the pantry for days, and when she opens the pantry door, he shoots her in terror.

Caleb spends the next few days alternately trying to take care of his mother and dispose of the bodies of the rest of his family. He cannot bury them in the frozen earth, but in his attempt to burn them, he accidentally burns down the house. He ends up caring for his mother in the barn.

The Howell’s home is isolated and difficult to find. As a young girl, Espeth was driven from her home for having spoken to Jorah, the man she later married, because he was Native American. But there are other reasons for the family’s isolation. In any case, Elspeth thinks the murderers must have sought for their house.

When Elspeth is barely healed, she and Caleb set forth to find the three men who murdered their family, men whom Caleb watched from the barn. They stay briefly with an old couple who have been terrorized by the same three men and who point them in the direction of a town on Lake Erie with a terrible reputation. There, with Elspeth disguised as a man, they go to search for the men.

Beginning as a straightforward revenge novel, the book goes on to explore deeper themes. One of them is that of unintended consequences, as Caleb finds that their troubles result from Elspeth’s own actions years before.

This novel is well written and packed with atmosphere. It is vivid and brutal and beautiful.

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Day 699: Rustication

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Cover for RusticationBest Book of the Week!
I was captured by this dark, twisty novel from the moment I started reading it. I only feared it may eventually disappoint, but it does not.

In winter 1863, Richard Shenstone, 17, appears without warning at his mother’s new home, a large dilapidated house on the southern coast of England. He has been rusticated, sent down from Cambridge for reasons not immediately explained.

Having received word of his father’s death too late for the funeral, he is surprised to find his mother and sister living in apparent poverty. Furthermore, although he doesn’t at first tell them he’s been sent down, his arrival is met by a surprising lack of welcome, indeed hostility on the part of his sister Effie.

There is some mystery about his father’s death, that is clear. His father’s pension has been denied to the family, and Richard’s mother is suing for her father’s estate as well. Effie is also up to something, for he twice sees her out accompanied only by a tall man, not proper behavior for a lady.

Richard is not a pleasant person, obsessed as he is by desire for every girl or young woman he meets and also addicted to opium. The novel is told as excerpts from his journal, interrupted by copies of a series of hateful letters that soon begin arriving at the homes of various people in the district. It is also clear from the beginning that some crime has been committed and the journal is a look back into the past. It is not clear to readers, however, how reliable a narrator Richard is or what’s going on when he roams the countryside at night in his opiated state. Soon the letter writer begins leaving corpses of mutilated sheep behind him.

This novel is atmospheric in the extreme and completely absorbing. As Richard begins trying to figure out who the letter writer is, he finds the finger pointed toward himself. He takes unwarranted leaps of logic that cause him to make many mistakes and ignores some clues that he has. Still, exasperating and unlikable as the main character is, you are urged along to the end of the novel.

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Day 692: The Devil in the Marshalsea

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Cover for The Devil in the MarshalseaTom Hawkins has been leading a dissolute life ever since his ordination ceremony was sabotaged by his stepbrother’s reports of his behavior at school. In a desperate attempt to save himself from debtor’s prison, he goes out gambling with his disapproving friend Charles and manages to win enough money to save himself. But on the way home, he is attacked and robbed of everything. Soon, he is on his way to the Marshalsea.

In 1727, the Marshalsea is not the place Dickens described in Little Dorrit. Although Dickens’ prison was a place of lost hope, in the early 18th century, the Marshalsea is a hell-hole run by a venal and vicious governor, Mr. Acton. Hawkins is astounded to find that it costs more to live in the Marshalsea than it does outside, and if you can’t pay your lodging you will be banished to the horrors of the Common Side, from which bodies are brought out daily. Hawkins has no money at all except what he gets for pawning his mother’s cross and a bit of money from Charles.

To support himself, Hawkins takes on the job of investigating the death of another debtor, Captain Roberts. Although Roberts’ death was deemed a suicide, it was almost certainly a murder, and his ghost is reported as roaming the prison.

Hawkins has taken Roberts’ room, so his roommate is Samuel Fleet, whom all of the prison inhabitants fear. Fleet claims to have been asleep when Roberts’ body was dragged from the room that night. But Hawkins soon observes that Fleet never sleeps.

This novel is terrific. It is thoroughly researched and richly imagined so that both the setting and characters come to life. Hodgson explains at the back of the book that many of the characters are based on actual historical figures. This is Hodgson’s first book, and I’ll be looking for more.

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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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