Tag: mysteries

Review 2205: Nemesis

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

Unfortunately, because my husband and I went on a Christie series TV binge last summer, I eventually remembered how Nemesis was going to end. Otherwise, I hadn’t read it before.

Miss Marple reads an obituary for Mr. Rafiel, a wealthy man whose assistance she requested to prevent a murder in A Caribbean Mystery. Some time later, his lawyers summon her. He has left her £20,000 if she will take on a project for him and get a result. The catch is that he doesn’t say what the project is.

She decides to take the project and a few days later receives tickets for a home and garden tour. At one of the stops, she receives an invitation to stay with three sisters, who have invited her at the posthumous urging of Mr. Rafiel. Here, she begins to get a sense of her mission when she learns from another tour participant, Miss Temple, that a former student, Verity Hunt, had been murdered by Michael Rafiel, Mr. Rafiel’s son, and she had been killed by love. Soon after this conversation, Miss Temple is killed by a falling boulder.

Mr. Rafiel wanted to right an injustice, Miss Marple decides. But can she figure out what it is and finish her mission?

I at first thought the writing of this one was a little choppy—lots of subject-verb-object sentences in a row with no variation. But eventually I got caught up into another clever and interesting tale.

Related Posts

A Caribbean Mystery

4:50 from Paddington

At Bertram’s Hotel

Review 2202: Twice Round the Clock

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Young Helen Manning is astonished when Anthony Fane asks her father for her hand and he agrees. Not only does he agree, but he invites the Fanes and their friends over to celebrate.

The reason Helen is astonished is because she has always been terrified of her father. But her friends, Sir Anthony and his wife, daughter Kay, friends Doctor Henderson, Teddy Fraser, and Bill Brent, accompany Tony to the Mannings for dinner.

All the guests find Manning disturbing, especially when the famous scientist shows them an experiment where he brutally poisons a kitten belonging to the cook, Mrs. Geraint. Unfortunately, a tremendous storm strands them all there for the night.

Bill Brent is awakened at four by a noise downstairs in Manning’s office. When he goes down, he finds Manning dead at his desk with a carving knife between his shoulder blades. The French doors behind him are broken, and the room is in chaos.

This is a lively novel that goes some surprising places, including espionage and hidden family relationships. It has some unlikely plot points, and why everyone’s tires are slashed is never explained. But it’s a quick, fun read.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

Related Posts

Jumping Jenny

Death of Jezebel

Thirteen Guests

Review 2190: Bleeding Heart Yard

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Detective Inspector Harbinder Kaur has transferred to London, where she is just meeting her two flatmates and her new team. Then she gets a high-profile case—while attending a school reunion, Conservative MP Garfield Rice, called Gary by his friends, has died of an apparent cocaine overdose. The only thing is, his friends say he doesn’t take drugs.

Attending the reunion are some notable figures—Isabelle Ister, a famous actress; Kris Foster, a rock star; Henry Skep, Labour MP—who used to belong to a popular group in school called The Group. Also members of The Group were Anna Vance, a teacher now living in Italy who is in London caring for her dying mother, and Cassie Fitzberbert, Harbinder’s Detective Sergeant. We know right from the beginning that Cassie believes she killed a boy when she was in school.

Of course, it turns out that Gary was murdered by an injection of insulin. His friends find it hard to believe, because Gary was liked by everyone.

There turns out to be more than one line of inquiry. Gary had received several anonymous letters featuring a bleeding heart, and he was regularly meeting other Conservative leaders at a restaurant in Bleeding Heart Yard. Also, the team learns that during exam week before the reunion attendees graduated years ago, a boy named David died when he fell in front of a train, and Gary was the principal witness. Harbinder wonders if David was actually pushed.

The book alternates narrators with members of The Group in first person and Harbinder in third person. I don’t remember if Griffiths used this form of narration in the other Kaur novels, but it began to irritate me. First, the first-person narrators should each sound different, but they don’t. More importantly, with the narration skipping around across very short chapters, the novel started to feel choppy.

So far, I have enjoyed the Harbinder Kaur series, but I didn’t like this one as much, despite it having an unpredictable ending. I still like Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series best.

Related Posts

The Stranger Diaries

The Postscript Murders

The Locked Room

Review 2178: Triptych

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

I have to admit, I looked for this first Will Trent novel after getting hooked on the TV series. Just a little warning: if you have already watched the series, the TV folks have made one major change from the book that may surprise you.

In Atlanta, young teenage girls have been found after being raped, beaten, and having their tongues either partially or completely bitten off. Detective Michael Ormewood is called out to a similar case, only this time the woman is dead, and she’s not a teenage girl but a middle-aged prostitute.

The next day, Ormewood meets Will Trent, a Special Agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He will be working the case with Ormewood. Will is unusual because he is dyslexic, although he tries to keep this problem a secret.

In the meantime, John Shelley has been recently released from prison, where he served 25 years for a similar crime, committed when he was 16. John has always maintained his innocence, right up to his last parole hearing when he wanted to get out before his mother died of cancer. John has been out for only a short time when he learns that someone has stolen his identity, but curiously, used it to apply for credit cards and buy things while keeping a good credit score.

Angie Polaski, a detective on the vice squad, has gotten peripherally involved in the investigation. She has ties to both Ormewood and Trent that she’s keeping secret.

This is a well-written, fast-paced novel that is part mystery, part thriller. It has interesting characters, and I enjoyed it very much.

Related Posts

The Murder Rule

Back to the Garden

Life Sentences

Review 2174: The Black Spectacles

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Detective Inspector Andrew Elliot is vacationing in Italy when he overhears an English party discussing some poisonings in a town back home. He is struck at first sight by Marjorie Wills. This proves to be unfortunate, because when he returns home, he is assigned the poisoning case and Marjorie is a suspect.

The poisoning case involves someone substituting poisoned chocolates for harmless ones in a local shop. One boy has died. However, this case is soon overshadowed by the murder of Marcus Chesney, Marjorie’s uncle, under bizarre circumstances. Chesney has a hobby horse that people aren’t observant, so he designs a demonstration of his point. During the demonstration, a bizarrely dressed man comes in to the room where Chesney is manipulating objects at a desk and forces a capsule down his throat. Although this is part of the demonstration, it is not part of it for the capsule to be poisoned. Chesney dies and his assistant is found outside bashed over the head. Later, the unconscious assistant is also poisoned.

Present are Chesney’s friend Dr. Ingram, the assistant, Marjorie, and Marjorie’s fianceé, George Harding, whom she met on the trip. Not present is Dr. Joe Chesney, Marcus’s brother, out on a house call.

As Elliot investigates, things keep pointing to Marjorie, but he can’t prove anything. Finally, he asks Gideon Fell for help.

The Black Spectacles is supposedly Carr’s most popular book, even though it doesn’t feature a locked door mystery, his specialty. I enjoyed it a lot, more than the other books I’ve read by Carr, although I immediately picked out the killer and never wavered. Still, I never figured out exactly what was going on during the demonstration.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

Related Posts

The Seat of the Scornful

The Lost Gallows

Sad Cypress

Review 2166: In Place of Fear

~ whatmeread ~ 10 Comments

It’s 1948 Edinburgh, and it’s Helen Downie’s first day in her job as almoner for the brand new National Health Service. Her bosses are young Dr. Strasser and Dr. Deuchar—previously the partner of Dr. Strasser’s father—who share a house and a practice. Although Dr. Deuchar is friendly and humorous, Dr. Strasser is abrupt and sometimes rude. However, Dr. Strasser unexpectedly gives Helen and her husband Sandy a place to live—a flat in a house that was used as a fever hospital during the war. That’s good, because just that morning Helen’s quarrelsome mother threw them out.

Helen completes her first busy day and is delighted with the upstairs flat, which is clean, bright, and has an inside bathroom. When she and Sandy are trying to pull together a few odds and ends to make the flat minimally habitable, Helen finds the body of a young woman out back in the Anderson shelter. She thinks the woman is Fiona Sinclair, the daughter of her benefactor, Mrs. Sinclair.

After she alerts the police, Dr. Deuchar says the woman died from poisoning herself. He and Helen go to notify Mrs. Sinclair, but Fiona is okay. Then Helen thinks the body might be her other daughter, Caroline. She and Dr. Deuchar try to find the misidentified body but are told it was sent to Glasgow because it was the body of a notorious Glasgow criminal. However, on a second visit to the morgue, Helen learns that the girl was hanged, not poisoned, and a famous criminal by the name she was given is unknown in Glasgow.

Persistent Helen begins to uncover widespread corruption involving leading citizens in the city. Something is going on very close to home.

It wasn’t clear to me whether this book marks the start to another series by McPherson, but it has hallmarks of it. Helen is a feisty and likable heroine, and although I thought she was blind to the identity of the killer, what was actually going on in the city was harder to figure out. If this is a series, I’m looking forward to seeing more of Helen.

Related Posts

The Turning Tide

Strangers at the Gate

The Mirror Dance

Review 2154: #1940 Club! Sad Cypress

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

Elinor Carlisle is on trial for murdering Mary Gerrard at the beginning of this Christie novel. A doctor who knows her hires Hercule Poirot to find some evidence that will save her.

It all begins when Elinor receives an anonymous letter telling her that her inheritance from her Aunt Laura may be in jeopardy. Elinor isn’t really worried about that, since she and her cousin Roddy have long understood from her aunt that they will inherit. However, she realizes she should go down for a visit because her aunt is not well, and Roddy goes with her. They have always planned to marry, no matter who gets the money, and they decide to become formally engaged.

The note warned against Mary Gerrard, a lodge keeper’s daughter, whom Aunt Laura has had educated. Mary has been visiting Aunt Laura frequently since she returned from school. No sooner does Roddy see Mary than he falls in love with her. Elinor, who has always hidden how much she loves Roddy, sees this and breaks the engagement.

When Elinor is there on another visit, summoned because her aunt has had another stroke, the county nurse misses a vial of morphine. Aunt Laura asks Elinor to summon her lawyer, but she dies that night.

Elinor is surprised to learn that Aunt Laura died intestate and that as her closest relative, she gets everything. However, she gives £2000 to Mary and tries to give money to Roddy, but he won’t take it. When she is there to go through her aunt’s things, Mary is poisoned while eating sandwiches with Elinor and the county nurse, and dies.

Things look bad for Elinor, and at first everything Poirot can discover seems to point to her guilt. But the answer may lie in the past.

I began to have an inkling of the truth but not until the very end of the novel. However, I was sympathetic to Elinor and wanted her to be innocent. This was a Christie I hadn’t come across before and may not have read had it not been for the 1940 Club.

Related Posts

Death on the Nile

Sleeping Murder

4:50 from Paddington

Review 2148: The Wintringham Mystery

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Stephen Munro has been living on a small legacy since he left the army, but the money has run out. Stephen has been looking for a job, but all he can find is a position as a footman in Wintringham. He finds he has nothing to offer the girl he’s in love with, Pauline Mainwaring.

When Stephen begins his position working for Lady Susan Carey, he finds his work is made more difficult because he knows some of the guests at a house party. They keep treating him as a guest rather than a servant. He is especially discomposed when Pauline appears, accompanied by Sir Julius Hammerstein, a financier who turns out to be Pauline’s fiancé.

Lady Susan lives with her niece, Millicent, and is often visited by Cicely Vernon, a favored daughter of a friend. Other guests include Freddie Venables, Lady Susan’s nephew and Stephen’s friend; Colonel Uffculme, a friend of Lady Susan’s; and other friends of Millicent. Later that evening, Cicely vanishes from the drawing room after playing a game where the lights are put out.

At first, it seems that Cicely is playing a prank, but when time passes and she doesn’t reappear, Stephen decides to figure out what happened. Odd events are going on in the house.

I found this novel to be clever and amusing. Lots of things are going on, and the mystery of what happened to Cicely is just one of them. Pauline makes an able fellow detective, and the characters are interesting and believable. This book was one of my favorites of the Golden Age novels I’ve been reading.

Related Posts

Jumping Jenny

Thirteen Guests

Weekend at Thrackley

Review 2147: Confidence

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Confidence revisits Anna and Fin, the two protagonists of Conviction, now working together on a crime podcast. Anna, who lived under an assumed name for years after her accusations of gang rape against members of a popular football team were met with disbelief and threats of violence, has had her new identity revealed and faces questions from her daughter about it. Fin, an ex-rock star with eating issues, is dating Sofia, a bitchy Italian woman who came out with the story in front of the girls during a horrible vacation together.

Anna and Fin get interested in a podcast by Lisa Lee, a Scottish girl who explores abandoned places. She breaks into a chateau in France that is decrepit and falling apart but full of dusty, beautiful things. In a secret room that she accidentally discovers, she finds a silver box, Roman, with an inscription that indicates that Pontius Pilate converted to Christianity. It is sealed shut.

Lisa belongs to a group whose motto is “Take nothing and leave nothing,” but it gets about that the box is missing from the room. Soon, Lisa goes missing too, having gone to the door when a pizza arrived and then vanished. Fin decides their next project will be to find Lisa.

When they look into the history of the box, they find it was discovered in a plot in Cold War Hungary that a girl was clearing to plant a garden. After she and her mother consulted with their priest, Eugene Lamberg, she apparently sold it but then was murdered, presumably by the Hungarian secret police. Since then, every person who had the box was murdered until the box disappeared.

Anna and Fin’s search for Lisa is co-opted when they meet Bram VanWyk, a South African antiques dealer and confidence man. He needs to find the box to trade it for a small Monet painting that he stole, apparently from someone he is scared of. He is traveling around with his eleven-year-old son Marcos, whom he just met.

This novel is like a fast-paced confidence shuffle where you never quite know what’s going on. Fin and Anna are likable protagonists and their investigation leads them in quite a dance.

Related Posts

Conviction

The Less Dead

The Red Road

Review 2145: The Locked Room

~ whatmeread ~ Leave a comment

Just before the Covid lockdown in 2020, the attention of Harry Nelson’s team turns to an apparent suicide. Although they can’t find anything about it that points to murder, another “suicide” that is similar involves the bedroom door being locked from the outside. Harry tells his team to look at all recent suicides.

At the isolated three cottages where Ruth Galloway and her daughter Kate live, they have a new neighbor, a nurse named Zoe who seems disposed to be friendly. And speaking of the cottage, Ruth finds a photo of it in her mother’s things, which she is sorting. Ruth is surprised to find the photo, as her mother disliked the cottage. Then she realizes it is painted the wrong color and marked “Dawn 1963,” years before Ruth was born.

While Ruth is investigating the cottage’s past and Nelson’s team is looking for links between the apparent suicides of several middle-aged or older women, Covid hits and a lockdown begins.

Although several characters flagrantly break Covid restructions, this is another exciting entry in the series, featuring a new member on Harry’s team, several disappearing characters, a woman imprisoned in a locked room, a discovery about Ruth’s family, the possibility of Nelson leaving Michell, a threat to an important characters, and a true reflection of the difficulties of the lockdown.

Related Posts

The Night Hawks

The Lantern Men

The Stone Circle