Tag: mystery

Review 2717: Death in Ambush

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I think I intended to review this book at Christmastime, but somehow it got lost in the pile.

Death in Ambush is particularly enjoyable, because it is narrated by Lee Crauford with a particularly light touch. She has apparently been a major character in at least one other mystery by Gilruth at the start of this novel.

Lee’s friend Betty Sandys invites her and her husband Bob for Christmas, but Bob can’t leave work until Christmas Eve, so Lee goes on ahead. On her first evening at Staple Green, Lee meets several people at a cocktail party. They are Betty’s good friend Lady Metcalfe, Diana, whom everyone likes, and her much older husband Judge Metcalfe, whom everyone dislikes for his general rudeness and cruelty to Diana. There is Judge Metcalfe’s son Michael, who wants to be an actor against his father’s will, and his fiancée, Ann Quathough, who is an actress and has an unguarded and sometimes nasty tongue. Ann’s father Lewis Quathough, an eccentric art dealer, is there, as well as John Wickham, the Metcalfe’s agent, whom everyone knows adores Diana. Finally, Sonia Phillips, a new arrival in town and a quite glamorous woman, appears late and comes in through the surgery, as Howard Sandys is a doctor. There is a lot of wandering around that evening, and sure enough, Judge Metcalfe becomes ill of an apparent stroke and dies a few days later. But Howard has his doubts, and it turns out Metcalfe was poisoned with morphine, apparently at the party.

Soon Lee’s friend Detective-Inspector Hugh Gordon is on the case. Things begin looking bad for Diana even though everyone who knows her insists she couldn’t have done it.

I was fairly sure I knew who did, although I couldn’t puzzle out the alibi issue, and I was right. But I think it was more of an instinctual than reasoning guess, and once one character was ruled out, I knew I was right. But this is a mystery with a really light touch and mostly likeable characters. I enjoyed it very much. Interestingly, Lee’s husband Bob doesn’t even appear in the book, and there are some hints that the detective is in love with her. I would quite like to see where this goes, if anywhere, but I understand that Gilruth’s books are hard to find. And indeed, Abebooks only has this edition.

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Review 2094: The Book of Cold Cases

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I had to read The Book of Cold Cases as soon as I received it, because there’s no one better than Simone St. James when it comes to a combination of mystery and the supernatural. It did not disappoint.

Twenty years ago, nine-year-old Shea got into a serial killer’s car. She survived, but the experience left her with several phobias and a great deal of fear. It also left her with a fascination for true crime, which she feeds by keeping a true-crime blog called The Book of Cold Cases.

At work one morning, She recognizes Beth Greer, a wealthy woman who was tried but not convicted of the murders of two men in 1973. Most people in their small Oregon town think she’s the first woman serial killer. She has never agreed to an interview, but after she catches Shea following her, she agrees to one.

Shea meets her in Greer’s parents’ home, an ugly mansion above the town with the ocean a sheer drop beneath a small lawn. Oddly, it is still decorated as her parents left it. Before the murders, her father was found dead in the kitchen, having been shot in the face by an apparent burglar. The manner of death was the same as that of two men shot several years later with the same caliber bullet, which was some of the evidence used against Beth.

Beth begins to tell Shea part of what she knows about the case, and Shea decides that although she doesn’t think Beth murdered the men, she knows more than she is telling. Then during a break, a weird thing happens. Shea goes to the kitchen and bathroom. First, all the taps turn back on after she turns them off, then all the kitchen cupboard doors open when she has her back turned to them.

When Shea tells Michael, her private investigator, what happened, he thinks Beth could have rigged up some kind of mechanism. But Shea isn’t so sure. Then when she is playing back her recording of the interview, she hears in the background the faint voice of a woman repeating, “I’m still here.” After she’s heard the voice, her phone dies and the recording disappears.

As Shea investigates the case, the novel moves back in time to events of 1973 and further back to Beth’s childhood to show what happened.

This is a great combination—mystery, thriller, and ghost story. St. James has always been good at what she does, but this book and her last were excellent.

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Day 1262: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

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Cover for The Disappearance of Ademe BedeauThe R.I.P. challenge surprised me this year, so I thought I’d look at what I already planned to review that would fit the category. The first book was this one. The idea is to spend September and October reading books that fit into specific categories, and mine are most likely to be mystery, suspense, or thriller, but a horror book or gothic novel might creep in there.

* * *

The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau is an unusual character study wrapped around a semblance of a murder mystery. Although it is labeled Inspector Gorski on Goodreads, much of it is concerned with the actions and thoughts of Manfred Baumann.

Manfred is a bank manager in Saint-Louis, a small town in the Alsace region of France. He leads an isolated life of extreme regularity, spending every evening at the Restaurant de la Cloche. He has no friends and spends most of his time by himself.

Manfred does not really date. He takes care of his needs in a weekly trip to a brothel. But he has become fascinated by surreptitiously observing the waitress at the restaurant, Adèle Bedeau, a sulky teenager with a well-developed figure. He even goes so far as to follow her when she meets her boyfriend.

Then Adèle goes missing. Inspector Gorsky can find no evidence of a crime, but he fastens on Manfred because he tells some lies. As far as the reader knows, he has not harmed Adèle, but maybe Raymond Brunet, the fictitious author of this novel, isn’t telling us everything.

Gorski begins to feel there is a connection with another crime years earlier, his first, for which a culprit was identified and convicted. Gorski was never satisfied, however, that they got the right man.

The depth of character portrayal of both Manfred and Gorski is what makes this novel stand out. It is portraying a creepy and paranoid guy in Manfred, however, and that may affect how much you enjoy the novel.

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