Tag: mysteries

Day 327: The Five Red Herrings

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Cover for Five Red HerringsAlthough I am normally a fan of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey series, The Five Red Herrings is exactly the novel I’m talking about when I say that I don’t care for the Golden Age mysteries full of railway timetables. This type of novel boils down to a puzzle designed to confuse the reader with a lot of detail. I do like Lord Peter, but I like him better when I have to keep track of fewer things.

Lord Peter is visiting an artists’ colony in Scotland when a painter is found dead. He is Sandy Campbell, a talented artist but one who also has a talent for getting drunk and picking fights. He is found in a stream with his half-finished painting on the bank high above, and the reasonable explanation is that he accidentally fell to his death. However, Lord Peter immediately notices inconsistencies that make it impossible for Campbell to have painted the picture.

Whoever the murderer is, he or she must also have been a talented painter, for the picture is exactly in Campbell’s style. Six other artists in the area who had quarrels with Campbell have enough ability to be the killer. Some of them have convincing alibis, and the solution revolves around–yes–railway timetables.

As usual, Lord Peter is entertaining. His man Bunter is not as much in evidence as in other novels, which is a little disappointing, but Sayers capably depicts a group of colorful suspects.

Day 324: Trick of the Dark

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Cover for Trick of the DarkCharlie Flint is a profiler who is on probation because her testimony freed a man who went on to murder four women. She is asked by Corinna Newsam, her old tutor, to investigate the lesbian lover of the tutor’s daughter, Magda. Corinna Newsam thinks that this lover, Jay Stewart, may be a serial killer, because several people who were in her way conveniently died, including Magda Newsam’s husband on the night of their wedding.

Charlie finds herself attracted to a woman she meets in a seminar. (Spoilers follow in this paragraph and the next. I usually don’t include spoilers, but these are integral to my criticism.) This woman is clearly manipulating her from day one, and in the course of her investigation, Charlie violates the confidentiality of the people she is investigating by confiding in her. Of course, without this happening, there wouldn’t be a plot, but it is still the crux of my problem. I don’t think it would be likely that a person in her position would make the mistake of confiding information on a sensitive case to a new acquaintance, even if she is dating her.

It is the nature of this violation that bothers me most, as it is extremely unprofessional and I felt it unlikely from a profiler. Of course, the woman actually turns out to be connected to the murders, and this coincidence also bothered me.

Finally, I am reluctant to say this for fear it will be misconstrued, but at least five characters are fretting about their sexuality. These characters are lesbians, but I don’t enjoy this kind of emphasis in heterosexual literature either.

I am a big fan of the Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books, and I also like the Kate Brannigan series by McDermid. I know she has a Lindsay Gordon series, but I don’t think I have read any of those. McDermid has written some of the best stand-alone thrillers I have ever read, particularly A Place of Execution. I was disappointed not to enjoy this novel as much.

Day 321: The Dark Horse

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Cover for The Dark HorseSheriff Walt Longmire goes undercover in this exciting entry to the series. Mary Marsad has been sent to the Absaroka County jail after confessing to shooting her husband, Wade, after he burned down the couple’s barn with Mary’s horses in it. Not only has Mary confessed, she was found with the murder weapon and has gunshot residue on her hands.

Even though the case is out of his jurisdiction, Walt feels that Mary may be innocent and has been asked to look into the case by the sheriff of the other county. Walt goes to the town of Absalom posing as an insurance agent to see if he can figure out what happened. He discovers that Absalom holds many secrets, including motives for other people to want Wade Marsad dead.

This novel takes place during two different time frames, while Walt is undercover and two weeks beforehand, showing the reasons why Walt thinks Mary is innocent and why he doesn’t take his friends with him.

As usual, the recurring characters from this series have their places in the story, and we are always pleased to encounter Walt’s best friend, Henry Standing Bear, and his foul-mouthed deputy Victoria Moretti, among others. Johnson is a capable writer who creates convincing characters and vividly evokes the rugged landscape of Wyoming.

Day 320: The Malice of Fortune

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Cover for The Malice of FortuneThe Malice of Fortune follows a current trend of mystery fiction to use actual historical people as detectives. In this case, the novel is set in 16th century Italy, and the historical detective is Niccolò Machiavelli, assisted at times by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is 1502 in the Papal States of Italy, and the infamous Pope Alexander VI, the former Rodrigo Borgia, has received word of his beloved son Juan, who was murdered years before. A woman was found butchered in Imola, and with her body was an amulet Juan always kept with him. The Pope summons the courtesan Damiata, whom he suspects of complicity in Juan’s death, and takes her little son hostage while he dispatches her to investigate.

In Imola, Damiata finds that someone has been murdering and butchering women and then leaving quarters of their bodies around the city. When she travels out to the scene of the latest discovery, she finds that Juan’s brother, the dangerous Duke Cesare (nicknamed Valentino) Borgia, has Leonardo da Vinci on the scene as his investigator. Da Vinci thinks that the killer is playing a game by constructing puzzles for him. At the scene some masked men provide an additional clue by fleeing the investigators.

Damiata also meets Niccolò Machiavelli, who is in town representing the city of Florence, which is afraid that Duke Valentino and his condottieri, or mercenaries, are planning to attack the city. Damiata suspects one of the three condottieri generals of being the murderer, but she does not know which one.

Machiavelli provides a different insight into the murderer. He has made a study of what he calls “the necessity” for each man–what drives him–and he begins trying to discover the murderer’s necessity. Machiavelli and Damiata team up to find the murderer.

This novel has interesting characters and situations, but at some point I felt as if the characters are chasing around too much with little result. Instead of building suspense, the plot seems unplanned and disorganized.

Michael Ennis is a historian, and the historical background is convincing and seems accurate. Compared to his previous novel about medieval Italy, The Duchess of Milan, a straight historical fiction novel about the powerful d’Este family, The Malice of Fortune is a little disappointing.

Day 319: Murder on the Orient Express

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Cover for Murder on the Orient ExpressMurder on the Orient Express is Agatha Christie’s classic mystery featuring Hercule Poirot. Everyone has of course seen the lush 1974 movie featuring a flock of movie stars and Albert Finney as Poirot.

Hercule Poirot is visiting Istanbul when he unexpectedly receives a telegram prompting him to cancel his plans and book a seat on the Orient Express leaving that night. He is able to book a compartment in first class, but only after some difficulty.

Poirot’s fellow passengers include a Russian princess, a Hungarian count and countess, a Swedish missionary, a British colonel, an annoying American widow, and other unusual characters. As always with Christie, her characters are expertly and colorfully drawn.

On board the train, Poirot is approached by the repellent Mr. Ratchett, an American businessman who believes his life is being threatened, asking for protection. Poirot dislikes Ratchett and declines his offer.

After a disturbed night, during which Poirot is awakened by a cry and spies a woman in a lurid silk kimono walking down the hall, Ratchett’s body is found dead in his compartment. He has been stabbed 12 times. The railroad executive traveling on the train begs Poirot to attempt to solve the crime before the train reaches Yugoslavia.

It begins to look as if an intruder disguised in a railway uniform broke into Ratchett’s compartment and murdered him then escaped out into the snow. Poirot’s investigation turns up a suggestion that Ratchett was the leader of a gang who kidnapped and killed the child Daisy Armstrong (a crime based upon that of the Lindbergh kidnapping), resulting in much tragedy for the family. He also begins finding links between some of the passengers and the Armstrongs.

This particular mystery is famous not only for its exotic locales but also for the unusual solution to the murder. Despite my familiarity with the plot, it made enjoyable reading.

Day 317: Medusa

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Cover for MedusaMedusa is the first Aurelio Zen mystery I read after seeing the series on Masterpiece Mystery!, and I found it to be well written and entertaining.

Aurelio Zen is sent north to the Italian Alps, an area on the far reaches of the known universe as far as he is concerned, because a decomposed body of a man was found in a disused military tunnel. The body has a mysterious tattoo, which could be important, but the corpse disappears from the morgue overnight.

Once the body is identified, it turns out to belong to a soldier who supposedly died in a plane crash 30 years ago. It gradually becomes clear that this mystery has to do with events during or just after World War II. To his dismay, the dapper Zen finds himself clambering around in the cave with the Austrian spelunker who discovered the body.

The narrative alternates between Zen’s attempts to unravel a tangle of clues and the thoughts of some older men who know more about what is going on. It appears that someone is trying to protect a secret, and the secret may have to do with a clandestine group that exists within the army.

As always, Zen’s cynicism about the powers that be in the government and the police force (and in this case, the army) is amusing, and Dibdin seems to get a special pleasure from subjecting the finely dressed detective to scenes where he has to climb around in wet, dirty places.

Day 314: The Brutal Telling

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Cover for The Brutal TellingI was unable to judge the difficulty of this mystery because I read its sequel first and therefore knew how the mystery would be solved. The other Louise Penny books are not quite so dependent upon sequence, but I suggest that you read The Brutal Telling before Bury Your Dead, if at all possible.

That being said, I still found the novel to tell a compelling story.

A body is discovered in the bistro/antique shop of the small village of Three Pines. The bistro owners, Gabby and Olivier, are appalled but also confused. No one knows who the man is or where he lives. At least they say they don’t, but the reader knows from the first that Olivier knows more about the man than he is saying.

Inspector Gamache and his team quickly determine that the victim was not killed in the bistro. Soon, they find a cabin deep in the woods that apparently belongs to the man, apparently a hermit. They are amazed to find it stuffed with priceless antiques, first edition books, and treasures from Europe thought to have disappeared during World War II. Gamache begins wondering how Olivier has made such a success of the antiques side of his business. And where did Olivier, or for that matter, the victim, come from in the first place?

Louise Penny’s novels always have more going on in them than the mystery. The setting of the small village is beautiful. The characters are interesting, and we learn more about them with each visit. Gamache is warm and perceptive. As always, I think the covers of the paperback editions should win a prize for most beautiful artwork.

Day 313: Murder on the Eiffel Tower

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Cover for Murder on the Eiffel TowerThis mystery set at the opening of the Eiffel Tower has a nice sense of history and is well written, but like mysteries written early in the genre (which it is not), it depends almost entirely upon determining opportunity. There is no indication of motive until the lengthy written confession at the end of the novel–standard early detective fiction nonsense–that is, charming in earlier fiction, but not so much now. This novel was published in 2009.

People begin being killed by “bee stings” on or near the Eiffel Tower the day before Buffalo Bill arrives in Paris for the opening of the 1889 World Exposition. Bookseller Victor Legris starts looking into these incidents after he notices that Kenji Mori, his father figure and business partner, met with more than one of the victims near the time they were killed. He also begins to fear that the woman to whom he is attracted, Russian illustrator Tasha Kherson, could be involved.

I found Victor to be silly, not very good at investigating, and prone to overlooking clues. Many secondary characters are only sketchily drawn and therefore difficult to keep straight. So for me, despite all its promise and its setting in an exciting period of time, Murder on the Eiffel Tower was not a success.

Day 307: Unnatural Death

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Cover for Unnatural DeathAfter a long battle with cancer, Miss Agatha Dawson dies, leaving her considerable fortune to her great niece, Miss Whittaker. Nothing may be suspicious about this, but a local doctor is uneasy. He did not attend her at her death, but he treated her earlier and distrusts Miss Whittaker. When he cautiously voices his doubts, he is drummed out of the community for blackening Miss Whittaker’s name. So, he turns to Lord Peter Wimsey for assistance.

Miss Dawson’s nurse insists that the old lady was delirious the last month of her life and couldn’t possibly have written a will. The witness to Miss Dawson’s will claims that Miss Dawson did not want to be involved in the signing of the document. This does seem suspicious. Lord Peter is vaguely interested, but when he starts looking into the case, odd things happen. The first is that the maid dies.

Lord Peter and his friend Inspector Parker pursue the case, Lord Peter with his usual humor and urbanity. Lord Peter is an interesting character. A World War I veteran who is still haunted by the events of the war, he hides his nerves with bouts of silliness. He is a collector of rare books and a pianist who also flies his own plane and barrels around the countryside in his motorcar.

By and large, I enjoy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels, although on occasion they get bogged down in a myriad of details, for, as a Golden Age mystery writer, Sayers prefers to present her readers with puzzles rather than motives. However, the complexity in Unnatural Death is created with the plethora of suspects who managed to traipse through the dying woman’s bedroom, all with their own stories–an approach that is more to my taste than complicated railway timetables.

Day 305: The Dark Enquiry

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Cover for The Dark EnquirySome elements of Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey romantic mystery series sometimes get old, such as the debate between Lady Julia and her husband Brisbane about how involved she is allowed to get in his investigations. This debate begins The Dark Enquiry, and eventually Brisbane reluctantly agrees that she can be a partner in his investigations, but not before she discovers for herself that her own proper, conservative brother, Lord Belmont, is being blackmailed. As a government official, he should have known better than to get involved with a lady, but especially to send her love letters. The lady turns out to be working for a foreign government.

In following up her investigation into her brother’s difficulties, Lady Julia disguises herself as a man to go to the Ghost Club, where Madame Séraphine holds nightly séances. There she is discovered by Brisbane. As they sneak back into the club together later in the evening, they are just in time to see Madame Séraphine be murdered by poison.

This novel is peopled with Lady Julia’s eccentric family, but it also features blackmail, gypsies, and spies. Raybourn’s novels are lively, and the dialog is entertaining. If we can just get over the endless debate about Julia’s part in the investigations, the series will continue to be fun to read.