I resisted Harry Potter at first because I'm not a fantasy reader. Once the series ended, I realized that they're really a multi-installment mystery wrapped in fantasy cosplay. Needless to say, I was not surprised to find out that JK Rowling moved to the mystery genre (under a pseudonym) when she started writing adult novels.
The Cuckoo's Calling does not start out on a promising note. Robin Ellacott is young, gorgeous, and mentally reliving last night's romantic proposal as she realizes on the way to her latest temp assignment that it's with Cormoran Strike's private investigation agency. Beautiful, in love, and on the way to an adventure with a war scarred (physically and mentally) "tough guy" - it's a cliche cyclone. And it gets worse when her boss's new client is the brother of one of Strike's childhood friends, asking him to investigate the death of his younger sister, a model who apparently committed suicide.
The novel is better than the set-up. Robin shows herself to be the right assistant for Cormoran, a smart and creative researcher as well as able to role-play when necessary to get information out of a witness. Cormoran may be damaged, but he's also a good investigator who through both groundwork and intuition solves a plot twist worthy of Agatha Christie. I doubt this series will become the cultural phenomenon that Harry Potter is (and perhaps they'll go out of print in 20 years), but I enjoyed The Cuckoo's Calling and plan to read the rest of the series.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Monday, December 9, 2019
Crooked House
Published in 1949, Crooked House is Agatha Christie's first fully post-war mystery. Charles Hayward met Sophia Leonides during the war and decided to marry her. Once home, he invites her to dinner and when she appears, she tells him that she, and her entire family, are under surveillance because someone killed her grandfather. Aristide Leonides was a wealthy man, the founder of a food supply and restaurant empire, and his crooked, three-sectioned house, overflowed with suspects. The son who took over the business and his scientist wife, the other son (Sophia's father) who writes books no one reads and his actress wife, Sophia, her younger brother and sister, the children's schoolmaster, Aristide's much younger second wife, and his first wife's sister all had the opportunity to put ersinine in his insulin vial, and all have motives. It's classic Christie, with a twist ending that is shocking in 2019 and must have been scandalous in 1949.
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Walking Shadows
I read Faye Kellerman's most recent Decker/Lazarus mystery, Walking Shadows, with bittersweet frustration. I didn't quite get the sense that the series is winding down, as in Diane Mott Davidson's The Whole Enchilada or in Marcia Muller's most recent books (with Sue Grafton's death - I still haven't brought myself to read Y Is for Yesterday because I know there will be no Z Is for Zero - Sara Paretsky is the only founding mother of the female PI genre still writing). In Kellerman's case, it's less a fear that she's going to end a series I've read since the mid-90s but a feeling that she should.
Kellerman coped with Peter Decker's retirement from the LAPD by moving him to a small town in upstate New York, and it hasn't quite worked. She's now set four books on the East Coast and what strikes me is how much the native Californian doesn't have a feel for the place (or the geography - at least she only set a few chapters in her funhouse version of Philadelphia). That, and how she has to stretch to place such gory murders in a small college town.
Walking Shadows opens with the discovery of Brady Neil's body. He's a fairly nondescript guy, works in the warehouse at a Walmart type place, and has never been in trouble. It turns out that his father is serving a life sentence for robbing and murdering a couple who owned a jewelry store in the adjacent small city. Decker and his partner Tyler McAdams (who has completed law school but not yet gotten his bar results) eventually piece together how the father's crime led to the son's death, but it's not neat. Kellerman introduces characters and motives but none of them feel natural. It's a sloppily edited book (a salad changes from one type to another in a single paragraph), and maybe that's the problem. Whether it's a case of an author getting tired of her characters or a publisher cutting back too far on editing, even though I enjoyed Walking Shadows, I did so with an uncomfortable feeling that it should have been much better.
Kellerman coped with Peter Decker's retirement from the LAPD by moving him to a small town in upstate New York, and it hasn't quite worked. She's now set four books on the East Coast and what strikes me is how much the native Californian doesn't have a feel for the place (or the geography - at least she only set a few chapters in her funhouse version of Philadelphia). That, and how she has to stretch to place such gory murders in a small college town.
Walking Shadows opens with the discovery of Brady Neil's body. He's a fairly nondescript guy, works in the warehouse at a Walmart type place, and has never been in trouble. It turns out that his father is serving a life sentence for robbing and murdering a couple who owned a jewelry store in the adjacent small city. Decker and his partner Tyler McAdams (who has completed law school but not yet gotten his bar results) eventually piece together how the father's crime led to the son's death, but it's not neat. Kellerman introduces characters and motives but none of them feel natural. It's a sloppily edited book (a salad changes from one type to another in a single paragraph), and maybe that's the problem. Whether it's a case of an author getting tired of her characters or a publisher cutting back too far on editing, even though I enjoyed Walking Shadows, I did so with an uncomfortable feeling that it should have been much better.
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Hallowe'en Party
Never kill a child or a pet
That's standard advice from the plotting panels at mystery conventions, but if you're Agatha Christie, you can violate that twice in a single novel. The first victim, Joyce Reynolds, is an unpleasant tween, the sort of girl who borrows adventures she hears and embellishes then when they become her own. Naturally, when she's drowned in the apple-bobbing basin during a community Halloween party, the investigation centers on Joyce's earlier claim of having seen a murder once.
The problem is, no one can remember a murder. Well, there was that au pair who disappeared a year or so earlier, but she wasn't murdered, was she? Luckily, Ariadne Oliver happened to be at the party (she was visiting a friend, the mother of one of the other tweens at the party), and she calls Hercule Poirot who solves the mystery just in time to save a third child from death. Written in the mid-60s, Hallowe'en Party feels a little more comfortable with the era than Third Girl, largely because "mod" influences are made in passing rather than being a central part of the story. It's a good late Christie, but because it's missing the broad near-misses that evoke the years shortly before I was born, it's not one of my frequent re-reads.
Friday, November 1, 2019
A Case of Spirits
It's been three years since I read one of Peter Lovesy's Sergeant Cribb books. The policeman's adventures are light and diverting, and more interesting as a glimpse into certain aspects of late Victorian life than as straight mysteries. Here, Cribb finds himself immersed in the spiritualism fad because several seance-goers have been burgled while communing with the dead. When an up-and-coming medium dies while in an electrified chair (an instrument to contact the world of the beyond), Cribb and his plodding assistant Constable Thackery change their investigatory focus from burglary to murder. A Case of Spirits is a passable mystery with several amusing character sketches, particularly that of a well-born spinster who turns out to be more important to the plot than one would guess upon first meeting her.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America
My first grade school was part of the (now almost forgotten) religious left. When it closed, I ended up on the other end of the spectrum, and I didn't understand it. How could people who wear their Catholicism on their sleeves be so enthusiastic for Reagan and for shredding the social safety net? How did "freedom of religion" come to mean "you must practice some form of monotheistic religion, preferably Christianity but Judaism might be OK?"
Kevin Kruse traces our public and somewhat skewed view of religion to the corporate reaction to FDR's Depression and WWII programs. FDR used some liberal theology to support his creation of the New Deal, and the businessmen who felt he went too far used theology to claim the programs were not only unnecessary but harmful. This occurred during a time of increasing religious affiliation and attendance to record levels which we now think of as a historical norm.
The new religiosity may have started in the 1930s, but it didn't take hold until the 1950s. Promoted by a handful of ministers (including Billy Graham), an outwardly religious (but unaffiliated in early 1953) President Eisenhower, and the best minds of Madison Avenue, we became a "Christian nation" with public prayers and the insertion of "under god" into the Pledge of Allegiance. As one would expect from a religious movement led by millionaires and advertising executives, it focused on power over mercy, and the separation of church and state became almost blasphemous to both. Kruse devotes the third section of his book to the fallout, the lawsuits and eventual culture war that was inevitable when people began to question authoritarian public piety.
Kevin Kruse traces our public and somewhat skewed view of religion to the corporate reaction to FDR's Depression and WWII programs. FDR used some liberal theology to support his creation of the New Deal, and the businessmen who felt he went too far used theology to claim the programs were not only unnecessary but harmful. This occurred during a time of increasing religious affiliation and attendance to record levels which we now think of as a historical norm.
The new religiosity may have started in the 1930s, but it didn't take hold until the 1950s. Promoted by a handful of ministers (including Billy Graham), an outwardly religious (but unaffiliated in early 1953) President Eisenhower, and the best minds of Madison Avenue, we became a "Christian nation" with public prayers and the insertion of "under god" into the Pledge of Allegiance. As one would expect from a religious movement led by millionaires and advertising executives, it focused on power over mercy, and the separation of church and state became almost blasphemous to both. Kruse devotes the third section of his book to the fallout, the lawsuits and eventual culture war that was inevitable when people began to question authoritarian public piety.
Elizabeth Regina
I remember learning that England's victory over the Spanish Armada was a triumph which cemented the island as a world power and laid the seeds for its global empire of the 19th Century. What I didn't realize (and I don't remember being in my textbooks) was that it was the demarcation between Elizabeth I's Gloriana years and her time as an aging monarch without a recognized heir. The last installment in Alison Plowden's Elizabeth quartet has a somber feel. Her not-quite-lover Robert Dudley is dead, and most of her original advisers have died or retired. England has achieved the sort of peace and prosperity her father could never have achieved, but Elizabeth finds herself surrounded by lesser advisors and for practical reasons unable to officially name James VI of Scotland as her heir until shortly before her death. Elizabeth remained fascinating until the end, but Elizabeth Regina feels subdued, as if the Queen was going quietly to her death.
Monday, August 26, 2019
A Brief History of How the Industrial Revolution Changed the World
Well, at least there wasn't any false advertising. A Brief History of How the Industrial Revolution Changed the World was brief. It was also shallow, focusing on the industry and not on its effects. Neither enlightening nor entertainingly written, it's a book destined for the donation box.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
I've been an urban legend enthusiast since I bought a book called Rumor as a fifteenth birthday present to myself. A few years later, I discovered alt.folklore.urban, where we'd collect and debunk various legends or cite Jan Harold Brunvand's books on the topics. Back then, we talked about things like whether it's illegal to drive while barefoot (at the time, it was in two states - like many legend, there's a grain of truth to that one) or whether acid washed jeans fall apart in the dryer because they can't get all the acid out after the dying process (thanks to my lab partner, I could tell everyone what happens if you wash a pair of jeans with a few drops of HCl dried into the thighs). In the last days of Usnet, the myths were changing to black helicopters and new world orders, but they were still mostly for fun.
25 years later, urban legends, which have always had a nasty thread, have devolved into toxic hoaxes. Aided by US and foreign political operatives who have an interest in chaos and the amorphous nature of the internet, they've become a way of accusing political opponents of heinous crimes and recruiting for hate groups.
Anna Merlan began exploring these groups when she reported on the Conspira-Sea, a cruise for UFO researchers and other conspiracy theorists. When the 2016 Presidential campaign became rife with rumors (none of which stand up to the slightest bit of analysis and some of which can be traced back, as Brunvand did in his books, to earlier rumors and legends). Ranging from the relatively harmless world of UFO investigators through Pizzagate and into the sordid world of white supremacists, she not only describes what these groups do but also how they appeal to others. It's simple, really, as it's always been. We're psychologically programmed to see patterns, and it's more comforting to think that there's a reason for everything - even something horrible - than to think it just happened. Seeing an attack as a "false flag" with "crisis actors" gives those who see the "truth" a perverse sense of superiority. They're not torturing the parents of children who were murdered in their first grade classrooms, but fighters for the truth. The internet makes it easier for these groups to find each other, but Merlan shows how it didn't create them.
Merlan also shows a deft touch in her exposing and debunking of these toxic tales. We can't leave these groups and stories completely in the dark because then they have a chance to expand, but we have to be careful not to help them spread. Merlan uses a clinical tone to explain how these hoaxes developed, puts them in a cultural context, and all along repeats that they are not true, and that they're harmful. Republic of Lies is what we need right now - a book that exposes and calmly debunks the toxic tales that are undermining our society.
25 years later, urban legends, which have always had a nasty thread, have devolved into toxic hoaxes. Aided by US and foreign political operatives who have an interest in chaos and the amorphous nature of the internet, they've become a way of accusing political opponents of heinous crimes and recruiting for hate groups.
Anna Merlan began exploring these groups when she reported on the Conspira-Sea, a cruise for UFO researchers and other conspiracy theorists. When the 2016 Presidential campaign became rife with rumors (none of which stand up to the slightest bit of analysis and some of which can be traced back, as Brunvand did in his books, to earlier rumors and legends). Ranging from the relatively harmless world of UFO investigators through Pizzagate and into the sordid world of white supremacists, she not only describes what these groups do but also how they appeal to others. It's simple, really, as it's always been. We're psychologically programmed to see patterns, and it's more comforting to think that there's a reason for everything - even something horrible - than to think it just happened. Seeing an attack as a "false flag" with "crisis actors" gives those who see the "truth" a perverse sense of superiority. They're not torturing the parents of children who were murdered in their first grade classrooms, but fighters for the truth. The internet makes it easier for these groups to find each other, but Merlan shows how it didn't create them.
Merlan also shows a deft touch in her exposing and debunking of these toxic tales. We can't leave these groups and stories completely in the dark because then they have a chance to expand, but we have to be careful not to help them spread. Merlan uses a clinical tone to explain how these hoaxes developed, puts them in a cultural context, and all along repeats that they are not true, and that they're harmful. Republic of Lies is what we need right now - a book that exposes and calmly debunks the toxic tales that are undermining our society.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
And This Is Laura
I donated almost all my children's books to The Book Corner when I graduated from college. I just didn't have the room, and I wasn't going to read them again. A few years later, I regretted donating a few, and fondly remembered several others, some of which I began to take out of the library.
And This Is Laura was one I had the nagging desire to re-read, and the realization that she has a lot in common with Ron Weasley finally pushed me to download a copy. Laura Hoffman is a normal 12-year-old - too normal, in fact, for her family. Her mother Maggie was a Hollywood contract player in the 1950s and twenty years later writes westerns and gothic romances (two of each annually) for a Harlequin-like syndicate. Her father Basil is a scientific genius who has his own lab and an unlimited budget at Bell Labs or a similar place. Her older brother Doug is a pianist, composer, and champion debater while her older sister Jill is the captain of the bowling team and perpetual star of school plays. Even her little brother Dennis stands out, although his memorization and recitation of commercials strikes me as more annoying than commendable. Still, with a family like that, who's going to notice a 12-year-old popular, nearly straight-A student with excellent people skills and a creative streak?
Laura doesn't think she has a chance. As much as she loves her family, she feels like a hanger-on and perpetually overshadowed. Laura expects to be completely overshadowed by Jill's reputation when she joins the junior high drama club, but while she's not (yet?) as good as her sister, she's better than she thinks. More importantly, she meets her new and almost instant best friend Beth. Beth's a flautist and possibly as talented an actress as Jill, so when she visits the Hoffmans for the first time, she fits in, perhaps even better than Laura does.
During Beth's first dinner at the Hoffman's, Laura gets her first vision. Her father will solve the problem he's stuck on at work once the man with the white shirt stops by his lab. When Dr. Hoffman does hit on a solution after a visit from a white-shirted colleague, Laura doesn't think much of it, but Beth does (Laura sees her starring in the next school play). Beth also tells Jamie (a classmate who probably became an agent) and soon Laura is doing readings for most of the school. Most of them are the sort you'd expect from that age group - making the basketball team, being asked to a dance - but after seeing both her little brother's disappearance and the apparent death of her classmate Steve in short order, she's relieved when a classmate's policeman father tells her she has to close her business. It's just as well, because she's got a part in the play and is understudying Beth who's the second lead. With lines to learn and absolutely no confidence in her ability, she just doesn't have the time. And as long as Steve is alive and Beth isn't the star, Dennis will be safe.
But then Steve's family is in a car accident - Laura didn't see his funeral but his being carried on a stretcher - and his sister is too badly injured to keep her role in the play so Beth is now the star. While panicking over her unwarranted certainty that she'll ruin the play, she has another vision about Dennis's disappearance. Rather than worry her parents, she tells Jill and the two of them promise to keep an eye on him. And it works, through play practice and a successful performance in which Laura shows a flair for comedy, at least until one afternoon when Maggie Hoffman loses track of time while wrestling with a plot point.
Once Dennis is missing, Laura admits to the visions, and when her the officer sent to the Hoffman house turns out to be Laura's friend's father, she tries to visualize where her brother is. Once again, Laura is right - he's at the mall, dozing in front of a TV display, and for once, she feels special. When she tearfully admits this to her parents, they're confused. A tween wouldn't realize this, but parents love their kids because they're them, not because they're talented or special. And maybe Laura's problem is that she's too good at too many things - a top student who is a good actress and has a knack with people, she's top-five at everything when everyone else is #1 at one or two things but middle of the pack in everything else. She is special, but tweens just don't have the perspective to see themselves as they are.
Since I have more perspective at fifty than I did at twelve, I also see more in And This Is Laura than I did when I first read it. I saw how Beth and Laura became almost instant friends and felt it more nostalgically now than when I was at an age where such things happened naturally. I also saw Laura's talents where she couldn't, and how her talented family put in more effort than she thought (both parents wrestle with work problems, and both Jill and Doug are almost always practicing). I also noticed the almost jealousy Laura felt towards Beth (her parents are lawyers and she only has one younger brother so the house is quiet and cleaned by a housekeeper) and Beth felt towards Laura (who comes from a big family with a comfortable, slightly chaotic house). Both come from loving families and love their families, but they both feel the other has the better deal. My memory was of an entertaining book about a psychic girl who gets a part in the school play, but And This Is Laura is considerably deeper.
And This Is Laura was one I had the nagging desire to re-read, and the realization that she has a lot in common with Ron Weasley finally pushed me to download a copy. Laura Hoffman is a normal 12-year-old - too normal, in fact, for her family. Her mother Maggie was a Hollywood contract player in the 1950s and twenty years later writes westerns and gothic romances (two of each annually) for a Harlequin-like syndicate. Her father Basil is a scientific genius who has his own lab and an unlimited budget at Bell Labs or a similar place. Her older brother Doug is a pianist, composer, and champion debater while her older sister Jill is the captain of the bowling team and perpetual star of school plays. Even her little brother Dennis stands out, although his memorization and recitation of commercials strikes me as more annoying than commendable. Still, with a family like that, who's going to notice a 12-year-old popular, nearly straight-A student with excellent people skills and a creative streak?
Laura doesn't think she has a chance. As much as she loves her family, she feels like a hanger-on and perpetually overshadowed. Laura expects to be completely overshadowed by Jill's reputation when she joins the junior high drama club, but while she's not (yet?) as good as her sister, she's better than she thinks. More importantly, she meets her new and almost instant best friend Beth. Beth's a flautist and possibly as talented an actress as Jill, so when she visits the Hoffmans for the first time, she fits in, perhaps even better than Laura does.
During Beth's first dinner at the Hoffman's, Laura gets her first vision. Her father will solve the problem he's stuck on at work once the man with the white shirt stops by his lab. When Dr. Hoffman does hit on a solution after a visit from a white-shirted colleague, Laura doesn't think much of it, but Beth does (Laura sees her starring in the next school play). Beth also tells Jamie (a classmate who probably became an agent) and soon Laura is doing readings for most of the school. Most of them are the sort you'd expect from that age group - making the basketball team, being asked to a dance - but after seeing both her little brother's disappearance and the apparent death of her classmate Steve in short order, she's relieved when a classmate's policeman father tells her she has to close her business. It's just as well, because she's got a part in the play and is understudying Beth who's the second lead. With lines to learn and absolutely no confidence in her ability, she just doesn't have the time. And as long as Steve is alive and Beth isn't the star, Dennis will be safe.
But then Steve's family is in a car accident - Laura didn't see his funeral but his being carried on a stretcher - and his sister is too badly injured to keep her role in the play so Beth is now the star. While panicking over her unwarranted certainty that she'll ruin the play, she has another vision about Dennis's disappearance. Rather than worry her parents, she tells Jill and the two of them promise to keep an eye on him. And it works, through play practice and a successful performance in which Laura shows a flair for comedy, at least until one afternoon when Maggie Hoffman loses track of time while wrestling with a plot point.
Once Dennis is missing, Laura admits to the visions, and when her the officer sent to the Hoffman house turns out to be Laura's friend's father, she tries to visualize where her brother is. Once again, Laura is right - he's at the mall, dozing in front of a TV display, and for once, she feels special. When she tearfully admits this to her parents, they're confused. A tween wouldn't realize this, but parents love their kids because they're them, not because they're talented or special. And maybe Laura's problem is that she's too good at too many things - a top student who is a good actress and has a knack with people, she's top-five at everything when everyone else is #1 at one or two things but middle of the pack in everything else. She is special, but tweens just don't have the perspective to see themselves as they are.
Since I have more perspective at fifty than I did at twelve, I also see more in And This Is Laura than I did when I first read it. I saw how Beth and Laura became almost instant friends and felt it more nostalgically now than when I was at an age where such things happened naturally. I also saw Laura's talents where she couldn't, and how her talented family put in more effort than she thought (both parents wrestle with work problems, and both Jill and Doug are almost always practicing). I also noticed the almost jealousy Laura felt towards Beth (her parents are lawyers and she only has one younger brother so the house is quiet and cleaned by a housekeeper) and Beth felt towards Laura (who comes from a big family with a comfortable, slightly chaotic house). Both come from loving families and love their families, but they both feel the other has the better deal. My memory was of an entertaining book about a psychic girl who gets a part in the school play, but And This Is Laura is considerably deeper.
Monday, July 22, 2019
Lucky You
Carl Hiaasen was a guest at Bouchercon 1998. I wasn't really familiar with him back then, but a few months later I read the copy of Lucky You that had been in the goody bag and may have been given a slightly wider berth on SEPTA that week. I then handed it to my parents who were packing for a cruise, and both separately learned that they couldn't read it in public areas because of the looks they got. Particularly my dad,who had a distinctive, obnoxious, and loud laugh. Did I enjoy it as much twenty years later?
JoLayne Lucks lives in a town full of questionable miracles and adjacent to a privately owned (but for sale) wilderness. When she wins the Florida lottery (well, half of it) features writer Tom Krome reluctantly goes to interview her. He finds that she's been beaten by the two-man self-proclaimed militia who won the other half of the jackpot and that she wants the money to protect the baby turtles who live in the tentatively sold wetlands. I remember all that, plus the evolution of Turtle Boy, the militia's kidnapping of a Hooters waitress, and the fact that JoLayne reclaimed her ticket. I did not remember Krome's soon-to-be-ex-wife (an actress who'd creatively avoided service of the divorce papers for two years), Krome's girlfriend and her husband (a murderous judge with a dim clerk), or the fact that a money-laundering mobster had put in a bid for JoLayne's wetlands. Hiaasen follows his typical formula - quotable and witty descriptions of bizarre, only-in-Florida crimes and characters - but he didn't tie the subplots together as tightly as he does now, either thematically or chronologically (the main plot ends with about 50 pages left in the novel). Anti-government militias, even incompetent two-man outfits, are a bit darker than they were in 1998, so I cringed a bit as I laughed -but I still laughed. Maybe not as loud and as obnoxiously as my dad did, but enough that I didn't pull the book out if the train was crowded.
JoLayne Lucks lives in a town full of questionable miracles and adjacent to a privately owned (but for sale) wilderness. When she wins the Florida lottery (well, half of it) features writer Tom Krome reluctantly goes to interview her. He finds that she's been beaten by the two-man self-proclaimed militia who won the other half of the jackpot and that she wants the money to protect the baby turtles who live in the tentatively sold wetlands. I remember all that, plus the evolution of Turtle Boy, the militia's kidnapping of a Hooters waitress, and the fact that JoLayne reclaimed her ticket. I did not remember Krome's soon-to-be-ex-wife (an actress who'd creatively avoided service of the divorce papers for two years), Krome's girlfriend and her husband (a murderous judge with a dim clerk), or the fact that a money-laundering mobster had put in a bid for JoLayne's wetlands. Hiaasen follows his typical formula - quotable and witty descriptions of bizarre, only-in-Florida crimes and characters - but he didn't tie the subplots together as tightly as he does now, either thematically or chronologically (the main plot ends with about 50 pages left in the novel). Anti-government militias, even incompetent two-man outfits, are a bit darker than they were in 1998, so I cringed a bit as I laughed -but I still laughed. Maybe not as loud and as obnoxiously as my dad did, but enough that I didn't pull the book out if the train was crowded.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Kissed a Sad Goodbye
*Warning - minor character spoilers*
I'm reading Deborah Crombie's books as backlist, and I enjoy watching Gemma's and Duncan's relationship unfold. Now officially a couple (although still partnered at work), they're still working out the details of their relationship. Duncan is also tentatively building a relation ship with the son he didn't know he had until his ex-wife's murder in Dreaming of the Bones.
Kit comes up from Cambridge to spend the weekend with Duncan, whom he thinks is just a friend, and the rare adult who won't let him down. Duncan, of course, ends up being called out on a case, the murder of a Annabelle Hammond, whose body was left on a footpath in a gentrifying section of London. She's the CEO of a tea company with warehouses on the Isle of Dogs, and suspicion falls on Lewis Finch, the developer responsible for most of the local redevelopment. As fits with a mystery set against shifting present-day relationships, the motive is more visceral. Annabelle's father William and Lewis Finch were evacuees together during WWII, and Crombie shifts between the current crime and the men's adolescence in a rural mansion, and we learn that the roots of both their estrangement and Annabelle's death can be found in a 1945 tragedy.
I'm reading Deborah Crombie's books as backlist, and I enjoy watching Gemma's and Duncan's relationship unfold. Now officially a couple (although still partnered at work), they're still working out the details of their relationship. Duncan is also tentatively building a relation ship with the son he didn't know he had until his ex-wife's murder in Dreaming of the Bones.
Kit comes up from Cambridge to spend the weekend with Duncan, whom he thinks is just a friend, and the rare adult who won't let him down. Duncan, of course, ends up being called out on a case, the murder of a Annabelle Hammond, whose body was left on a footpath in a gentrifying section of London. She's the CEO of a tea company with warehouses on the Isle of Dogs, and suspicion falls on Lewis Finch, the developer responsible for most of the local redevelopment. As fits with a mystery set against shifting present-day relationships, the motive is more visceral. Annabelle's father William and Lewis Finch were evacuees together during WWII, and Crombie shifts between the current crime and the men's adolescence in a rural mansion, and we learn that the roots of both their estrangement and Annabelle's death can be found in a 1945 tragedy.
The Hollow
Agatha Christie wrote The Hollow shortly after WWII. That was her most productive period, and she generally receive good reviews. She was also tiring of Hercule Poirot and began to experiment with ways of including him without highlighting him. He bores me a bit too, but the problem here is one I've complained about with other authors - too many poorly integrated subplots.
The Hollow takes place in a stereotypical Christie setting, a country house party given by Lady Angkatell, and the party includes the property's heir, a doctor and his wife, the doctor's lover Henrietta, an impoverished relative, and another young man with ties to several guests. One evening, a new neighbor stops by to borrow matches. She's a movie star who the doctor was in love with before she left for Hollywood. The next morning, when no member of the party has an alibi, the doctor's wife Gerda shoots him to death by the pool.
Or did she? This, after all, is a Christie novel and things are not necessarily as they seem. Garda may have been framed, and the inquest is inconclusive. Since Hercule Poirot was on the scene (he's taken a nearby cottage as a country retreat and had been invited to lunch on the day of the murder), Henrietta asks him to investigate. He reluctantly takes on the case, and the result isn't totally satisfying for anyone involved. Christie constructed a good puzzle, but the book is weak, with unrequited loves, conflicting careers, and an unexpected and not quite believable breakdown.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974
I'm not sure I'm ready for 1974 to be history, because I remember it quite clearly. OK, so I remember t things like learning how to roller skate, starting first grade, and getting a bike for Christmas more than I remember politics (other than Nixon's resignation, which my parents made me watch because it was history - the same parents who kept 6-month-old me awake so I could say I saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon). As I read Fault Lines, I remembered where I was, or what I was doing when I heard about the events of the last 45 years. The section on Phyllis Schlafly brought back memories of being a tween feminist at a conservative school, and the fall of the Berlin Wall coincided with an all-nighter (history paper and Calculus test). I graduated into the early 90s recession, and a decade later had friends caught up when the dot-com bubble burst. When I watched Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech with my dad, he was an obscure Illinois candidate - how can it be that he left the White House over three years ago, and that my dad is gone? Kruse and Zelizer wrote an engaging overview of recent history, although it reads too much like a survey course. I would have liked a deeper analysis and a bit more attention to non-political culture, but that would require 3580 pages, instead of the more practical 358.
The Shakespeare Wars
I need to read more Shakespeare. Maybe then I'll appreciate The Shakespeare Wars more thoroughly. That's not to say it wasn't interesting with my scattershot knowledge of his works, because it was. Ron Rosenbaum started out as an English department grad student but changed to journalism because he didn't quite fit into a department run by one of the acknowledged Bardologists. A few years later, Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which rekindled his interest. Decades later, Rosenbaum used Shakespeare as a palate cleanser after a particularly grueling assignment and The Shakespeare Wars is the result.
Rosenbaum wanders through the plays, spending a few chapters on the three versions of Hamlet and how different scholars reconcile them. He explores the plays through the eyes of actor Steven Berkoff and director Peter Brook, and explains how attempts to scrub The Merchant of Venice of its anti-Semitism actually makes it more anti-semetic. It's all fascinating, but I felt at times like I hadn't done the required reading.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession
Alison Weir's second installment in her Six English Queens series presents at technical problem. How can you write a compelling and original novel about whom there's very little reliable documentary evidence but scores of previous fictional portrayals? Weir draws on her previous biographies of Anne and her sister Mary, and fills in the rest with reasonable speculation.
What we do know about Anne is that she was an intelligent woman with ambitious parents. That led to her positions in European courts where she acquired polish, and learned about both courtly love and the new learning from her first mistress, Regent Margaret. her frivolous sister Mary, who joined her when Anne moved to the French court of Henry VIII's sister Mary, did not learn these lessons but still did not deserve to be raped by one king and to become the unwilling mistress of another. Using, in part, her sister's fate, Anne focused on fending off Henry's advances when she came to court as one of Catherine's Maids of Honor
Here Weir departs from the popular, romantic view of Anne's relationship with Henry. As the title says, Henry was obsessed with Anne, and she didn't love him. She held off his advances until, in a particularly manipulative move, Henry explains his theological qualms about his marriage to Catherine and convinces Anne to accept his proposal
As she waits for Henry's annulment, we see Anne change from the well liked lady she'd been to the suspicious, imperious woman who had little support available when she needed it. Elizabeth's birth and a stillborn son leave Henry without the male heir he wants and needs, so he begins to doubt the validity of this marriage as well. Anne becomes desperate, but her vindictive treatment of Catherine and Mary, along with her increasingly imperious behavior, leave her with little support. After two miscarriages, both of male fetuses, Anne finds herself accused of adultery with several men, including her brother George. As Weir outlined in The Lady in the Tower, most of these charges were impossible because Anne and the men in question weren't in the same place at the time of the alleged encounters and because Anne was pregnant or recovering from giving birth during at least half of them. The executioner had already been sent for, though, and it would be a waste not to convict. Weir ends her novel with a few seconds of Anne's final thoughts, where she rightly takes credit for some of Henry's religious reforms. Anne Boleyn proves herself no less compelling than Catherine of Aragon.
What we do know about Anne is that she was an intelligent woman with ambitious parents. That led to her positions in European courts where she acquired polish, and learned about both courtly love and the new learning from her first mistress, Regent Margaret. her frivolous sister Mary, who joined her when Anne moved to the French court of Henry VIII's sister Mary, did not learn these lessons but still did not deserve to be raped by one king and to become the unwilling mistress of another. Using, in part, her sister's fate, Anne focused on fending off Henry's advances when she came to court as one of Catherine's Maids of Honor
Here Weir departs from the popular, romantic view of Anne's relationship with Henry. As the title says, Henry was obsessed with Anne, and she didn't love him. She held off his advances until, in a particularly manipulative move, Henry explains his theological qualms about his marriage to Catherine and convinces Anne to accept his proposal
As she waits for Henry's annulment, we see Anne change from the well liked lady she'd been to the suspicious, imperious woman who had little support available when she needed it. Elizabeth's birth and a stillborn son leave Henry without the male heir he wants and needs, so he begins to doubt the validity of this marriage as well. Anne becomes desperate, but her vindictive treatment of Catherine and Mary, along with her increasingly imperious behavior, leave her with little support. After two miscarriages, both of male fetuses, Anne finds herself accused of adultery with several men, including her brother George. As Weir outlined in The Lady in the Tower, most of these charges were impossible because Anne and the men in question weren't in the same place at the time of the alleged encounters and because Anne was pregnant or recovering from giving birth during at least half of them. The executioner had already been sent for, though, and it would be a waste not to convict. Weir ends her novel with a few seconds of Anne's final thoughts, where she rightly takes credit for some of Henry's religious reforms. Anne Boleyn proves herself no less compelling than Catherine of Aragon.
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Im' not a comic book fan (which greatly limits my movie going at the moment). Wonder woman has an extra impediment. I can't erase my memories of the cheesy, cartoon-but-serious Lynda Carter series. My cousin loved it (and would strip down to her Wonder Woman Underoos in public, at least partially to embarrass me), but even at 7 or 8, I was more of an art house movie girl. I also didn't see the connection to feminism.
Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman reclaimed the character's feminist roots, which had been buried since shortly after World War II. Created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist better at self promotion than keeping a job, Wonder Woman was a strong, independent woman behind the kinky costume and frequent bondage references. He based her on his wives, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway (Betty Marston) and Olive Byrne.
Yes, wives. He was "married" to two women who supported him, Betty Financially and Olive by running the unconventional household. Both were intelligent and educated (Betty met Marston at age 13 and held an LLB and an MA in psychology; Olive was one of his grad students who dropped out of her Ph.D program to raise their children - two by each wife), and yet they spent decades catering to a man who claimed to be a feminist. It makes me wonder (as does Wonder Woman's outfit) how deep his views went, and whether they only existed as much as they could serve his interests.
Everything, though, Marston did was to his advantage, and Lepore's research couldn't untangle all the lies he told about himself. Some stories turned out to be true (he had written a few silent movies), but even then the reasons were unclear (did he need tuition money because his father's business was in trouble, or because he had gambling debts?). Marston's serial failures (businesses that lasted a few months, a decade-long slip down the academic ladder, a fraud conviction) and perpetual self-promotion don't lend themselves to a coherent story and it shows in the first half of the book. People appear and disappear, as I'm sure they did in Marston's life, leading to a disjointed narrative. Lenore's attempts to tie in Margaret Sanger's life (she was Olive's aunt) feel like padding and could have been handled in occasional paragraphs rather than chapters. Lenore also includes Marston's other claim to fame - his "invention" of a lie detector (using only blood pressure), bolstered by (probably) rigged tests gave us the Frye tests which says that scientific evidence hast o be "generally accepted" before it can be used in court. A test which the later invented polygraph fails. To his death, he touted his invention, which, if accurate, he'd never pass.
So what about Wonder Woman? As interesting as Lepore's explanation of her creator's life was, I'd rather read about her history and influence. She was the first, and most lasting, female superhero. In the bro culture that permeates the genre, we need her, and a better book about he.
Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman reclaimed the character's feminist roots, which had been buried since shortly after World War II. Created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist better at self promotion than keeping a job, Wonder Woman was a strong, independent woman behind the kinky costume and frequent bondage references. He based her on his wives, Sadie Elizabeth Holloway (Betty Marston) and Olive Byrne.
Yes, wives. He was "married" to two women who supported him, Betty Financially and Olive by running the unconventional household. Both were intelligent and educated (Betty met Marston at age 13 and held an LLB and an MA in psychology; Olive was one of his grad students who dropped out of her Ph.D program to raise their children - two by each wife), and yet they spent decades catering to a man who claimed to be a feminist. It makes me wonder (as does Wonder Woman's outfit) how deep his views went, and whether they only existed as much as they could serve his interests.
Everything, though, Marston did was to his advantage, and Lepore's research couldn't untangle all the lies he told about himself. Some stories turned out to be true (he had written a few silent movies), but even then the reasons were unclear (did he need tuition money because his father's business was in trouble, or because he had gambling debts?). Marston's serial failures (businesses that lasted a few months, a decade-long slip down the academic ladder, a fraud conviction) and perpetual self-promotion don't lend themselves to a coherent story and it shows in the first half of the book. People appear and disappear, as I'm sure they did in Marston's life, leading to a disjointed narrative. Lenore's attempts to tie in Margaret Sanger's life (she was Olive's aunt) feel like padding and could have been handled in occasional paragraphs rather than chapters. Lenore also includes Marston's other claim to fame - his "invention" of a lie detector (using only blood pressure), bolstered by (probably) rigged tests gave us the Frye tests which says that scientific evidence hast o be "generally accepted" before it can be used in court. A test which the later invented polygraph fails. To his death, he touted his invention, which, if accurate, he'd never pass.
So what about Wonder Woman? As interesting as Lepore's explanation of her creator's life was, I'd rather read about her history and influence. She was the first, and most lasting, female superhero. In the bro culture that permeates the genre, we need her, and a better book about he.
Monday, June 10, 2019
The Suspicion at Sanditon (Or, The Disappearance of Lady Denham)
I held off reading Carrie Bebris's last (?) Mr. and Mrs. Darcy mystery because I'd never read Sanditon. That literary fragment doesn't give much to Bebris other than a setting and some character names, freeing the author to place Lizzie and Darcy in the middle of a cross between a mystery and a screwball comedy, in a setting reminiscent of the house party that inspired Frankenstein.
The Darcys find themselves in Sanditon to investigate a land deal on behalf of Colonel Fitzwilliam. After a few chapters in which we meet the major characters (Mr. Parker's siblings, Lady Denham and her poor relations, a ghost, Charlotte Heywood, Mr. Grenville, and the mysterious Mr. Hollis), the group assemble for a dinner party - but Lady Denham never appears. While a storm rages outside, the group split up in search of their missing hostess...and the single ladies who also disappear one by one. As with Bebris's earlier novels, the mystery is not as good as the novel, but the novel is entertaining. I suspect that she used the mystery as a hook to publish what's essentially well-done Jane Austen fan fiction. I've enjoyed the light, entertaining series, but I'm not particularly sorry that it's now complete.
The Darcys find themselves in Sanditon to investigate a land deal on behalf of Colonel Fitzwilliam. After a few chapters in which we meet the major characters (Mr. Parker's siblings, Lady Denham and her poor relations, a ghost, Charlotte Heywood, Mr. Grenville, and the mysterious Mr. Hollis), the group assemble for a dinner party - but Lady Denham never appears. While a storm rages outside, the group split up in search of their missing hostess...and the single ladies who also disappear one by one. As with Bebris's earlier novels, the mystery is not as good as the novel, but the novel is entertaining. I suspect that she used the mystery as a hook to publish what's essentially well-done Jane Austen fan fiction. I've enjoyed the light, entertaining series, but I'm not particularly sorry that it's now complete.
No More Dying Then
Ruth Rendell's Wexford novels are a bit like Law & Order - not particularly interested in the characters' personal lives, but over the course of the series, you realize you know them fairly well. Before 1971's No More Dying Then, Wexford's partner Mike Burden was a by-the-book, somewhat prudish policeman. Unlike his superior, he's not a reader and Wexford's literary allusions are lost on him. Like Wexford, he was happily married with two children.
The Burden we meet in No More Dying Then is a changed man. As the desk sergeant says in the opening chapter, Jean Burden had been healthy a year earlier and dead by Christmas. In the intervening 10 months, Burden had a near-breakdown and then buried himself in his work, ignoring his pre-teen children and taking Jean's sister Grace, who'd taken a leave of a absence from her nursing career to help out, for granted.
When 5-year-old John Lawrence disappears, Burden disapprovingly interviews his mother. She's a single mother and former bit-part actress, but more than that, she's wearing patchwork dresses and long hair and wrapping herself in shawls. In other words, she doesn't look totally unlike my vague 1971 memories of my grad-student mother. while Burden becomes too enmeshed in Mrs. Lawernce's life, Wexford tries to find a link between John Lawrence's disappearance and that of Stella Rivers. Wexford can't get past his suspicions of Stella's stepfather, Ivor Swan. Information from local criminal Monkey Matthews leaves Wexford to an unexpected solution while Burden solves his case through a forgivable coincidence. I'm looking foraged to the next Wexford novel, not just because Rendell creates intriguing quizzes, but because I want to know what comes next for Mike Burden.
The Burden we meet in No More Dying Then is a changed man. As the desk sergeant says in the opening chapter, Jean Burden had been healthy a year earlier and dead by Christmas. In the intervening 10 months, Burden had a near-breakdown and then buried himself in his work, ignoring his pre-teen children and taking Jean's sister Grace, who'd taken a leave of a absence from her nursing career to help out, for granted.
When 5-year-old John Lawrence disappears, Burden disapprovingly interviews his mother. She's a single mother and former bit-part actress, but more than that, she's wearing patchwork dresses and long hair and wrapping herself in shawls. In other words, she doesn't look totally unlike my vague 1971 memories of my grad-student mother. while Burden becomes too enmeshed in Mrs. Lawernce's life, Wexford tries to find a link between John Lawrence's disappearance and that of Stella Rivers. Wexford can't get past his suspicions of Stella's stepfather, Ivor Swan. Information from local criminal Monkey Matthews leaves Wexford to an unexpected solution while Burden solves his case through a forgivable coincidence. I'm looking foraged to the next Wexford novel, not just because Rendell creates intriguing quizzes, but because I want to know what comes next for Mike Burden.
Sunday, June 2, 2019
The Good Girls' Revolt
We've made progress since 1970, but how much. 40 years after female "researches" sued Newsweek for employment discrimination, the hard sexism of job restrictions (Seven Sisters educated women with reporting experience stuck in jobs as fact checkers for Ivy League men with no experience) was replaced with the soft sexism of frat boy patter. In 2010, three young Newsweek reporters, Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison,and Sarah Bell were fed up with having to fight for what was handed to their male colleagues, and putting up with broism on top of it. so they wrote about their experiences for Newsweek, and while researching, found out that 40 years earlier, 46 women sued the magazine for workplace discrimination.
Lynne Povich was one of those women. Although her father was a reporter (Shirly Povich, legendary sports columnist for the Washington Post), she'd never thought about being a writer. She just wanted to live in France, and a secretarial job with Newsweek's Paris bureau was how she could achieve that. After two years, she landed in New York City,, where women (some of them later famous, including Nora Ephron and Jane Bryant Quinn) collected clippings and checked facts for men who got bylines. It was tradition, and by 19645 it was illegal.
Led by Judy Gingold, Margaret Montague, and Lucy Howard, the group grew through ladies' room conversations and lunches at The Women's Exchange. On the day Newsweek published a cover story (written by an external writer because Povich was one of only two women writers, and neither had the experience for a cover story) on the women's movement, the 46 women filed their suit. ACLU attorney Eleanor Holmes Norton negotiated a settlement, but two years later, all that had happened was there were men in the research department and a few women and been set up to fail in their trials as writers. Since Holmes Norton was now on the New York Human Rights Division, the women turned to Harrie Rabb and the employment clinic at Columbia University. This time, they won lasting concessions which led to, among other things, Povich becoming the first female editor at Newsweek and Eleanor Clift the first woman to cover the White House for a major news organization. Not all of the women became writers or remained in the media, but those who did (and those who didn't) opened the door a crack.
Lynne Povich was one of those women. Although her father was a reporter (Shirly Povich, legendary sports columnist for the Washington Post), she'd never thought about being a writer. She just wanted to live in France, and a secretarial job with Newsweek's Paris bureau was how she could achieve that. After two years, she landed in New York City,, where women (some of them later famous, including Nora Ephron and Jane Bryant Quinn) collected clippings and checked facts for men who got bylines. It was tradition, and by 19645 it was illegal.
Led by Judy Gingold, Margaret Montague, and Lucy Howard, the group grew through ladies' room conversations and lunches at The Women's Exchange. On the day Newsweek published a cover story (written by an external writer because Povich was one of only two women writers, and neither had the experience for a cover story) on the women's movement, the 46 women filed their suit. ACLU attorney Eleanor Holmes Norton negotiated a settlement, but two years later, all that had happened was there were men in the research department and a few women and been set up to fail in their trials as writers. Since Holmes Norton was now on the New York Human Rights Division, the women turned to Harrie Rabb and the employment clinic at Columbia University. This time, they won lasting concessions which led to, among other things, Povich becoming the first female editor at Newsweek and Eleanor Clift the first woman to cover the White House for a major news organization. Not all of the women became writers or remained in the media, but those who did (and those who didn't) opened the door a crack.
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
The Sunne in Splendour
We were reading Romeo and Juliet, not Richard III, but Sr. Maureen Christi told us that we can't trust Shakespeare's depiction of Richard because he wrote to please his politically savvy patron, Elizabeth. Granddaughter of Richard's deposer, she'd want popular culture to enhance, not diminish, her sometimes questioned reign. Maybe Sr. Christi had read the recently published The Sunne in Splendour when she told us Richard III probably wasn't quite the villain he'd been made out to be although I doubt it (she said she never read anything unless it had been written at least 20 years earlier, to be sure it was enduring and therefore literature). Still, I wonder, because in 1982 Richard had not yet started the rehabilitation project that tells us now he was a skilled commander with moderate scoliosis who ended up buried under a car park.
Sharon Kay Penman's book wasn't the fist to portray Richard III sympathetically, but unlike Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time, she covers Richard's life from age 8, not just his reign and the question of nephews' deaths. We first meet Richard as a boy awed by his charismatic brother Edward (and we first meet Edward seducing Richard's pretty, red-haired nurse). Sons of the Duke of York, they're on one side of the confusing Wars of the Roses, battling the addled Henry VI and his tactical skilled wife, Margarita of Anjou. She's fighting for her son, the Yorks are fighting for a crown they believe should be theirs, and the Duke of Warwick is fighting for himself.
After an exile forced by Lancaster's victories and the deaths of his father and brother Edmund, Richard comes of age in the glare of his brother Edward's reign. Ned takes the Sunne in Splendour as his badge after an atmospheric refraction makes it appear there are three suns at the climax of his crown-winning battle, in which Richard shows his tactical skills. He also falls in love with Warwick's daughter, a love apparently thwarted when Warwick switches sides, along with Ned's and Dickon's middle brother, George, Duke of Clarence. (If this seems confusing, it is. I recommend keeping a genealogy chart and chronology open while reading about the Wars of the Roses). Warwick marries Anne to Henry VI's son Edward, then loses to Ned after George switches sides again. Despite attempted interventions from George and from Ned's Queen, Katherine Woodville, Richard and Anne marry.
Their marriage is happy (as with her Welsh trilogy, Penman skillfully welds romance and medieval warfare and politics), but times are not. York and Lancaster both district the Queen's relatives, and the Queen herself. Katherine Woodville comes across as a scheming, calculating, power-hungry social climber - totally unsympathetic and completely compelling. I wonder how much of this portrayal, taken from the historical record, is accurate and how much is public scorn for forceful women. Her political machinations come to the forefront towards the end of the book, after Ned has burned himself out with his excesses. She, her brothers, and her sons by her marriage to Lord Grey scheme to take the regency of her son Edward V from Richard. She'd already pushed Ned to execute unreliable George of Clarence, so what would she do as Edward V's regent, monarch in all but name?
Richard holds onto his regency, then lets his council convince him to take the crown. This leads to two years of perpetual tragedy for Richard while rumors swirl about the fate of his nephews (Penman gives a plausible, non-Shakespearean fate for them). Broken and perhaps suicidal, Richard's fate on Bosworth Field is almost a given. The Tudors brought peace, and eventually prosperity to England, and in the final chapters Penman hints at how Richard's reputation will be altered for nearly 500 years by politically motivated authors. Penman's first novel sprawls across over 900 pages and I wanted to read it in a single sitting.
Sharon Kay Penman's book wasn't the fist to portray Richard III sympathetically, but unlike Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time, she covers Richard's life from age 8, not just his reign and the question of nephews' deaths. We first meet Richard as a boy awed by his charismatic brother Edward (and we first meet Edward seducing Richard's pretty, red-haired nurse). Sons of the Duke of York, they're on one side of the confusing Wars of the Roses, battling the addled Henry VI and his tactical skilled wife, Margarita of Anjou. She's fighting for her son, the Yorks are fighting for a crown they believe should be theirs, and the Duke of Warwick is fighting for himself.
After an exile forced by Lancaster's victories and the deaths of his father and brother Edmund, Richard comes of age in the glare of his brother Edward's reign. Ned takes the Sunne in Splendour as his badge after an atmospheric refraction makes it appear there are three suns at the climax of his crown-winning battle, in which Richard shows his tactical skills. He also falls in love with Warwick's daughter, a love apparently thwarted when Warwick switches sides, along with Ned's and Dickon's middle brother, George, Duke of Clarence. (If this seems confusing, it is. I recommend keeping a genealogy chart and chronology open while reading about the Wars of the Roses). Warwick marries Anne to Henry VI's son Edward, then loses to Ned after George switches sides again. Despite attempted interventions from George and from Ned's Queen, Katherine Woodville, Richard and Anne marry.
Their marriage is happy (as with her Welsh trilogy, Penman skillfully welds romance and medieval warfare and politics), but times are not. York and Lancaster both district the Queen's relatives, and the Queen herself. Katherine Woodville comes across as a scheming, calculating, power-hungry social climber - totally unsympathetic and completely compelling. I wonder how much of this portrayal, taken from the historical record, is accurate and how much is public scorn for forceful women. Her political machinations come to the forefront towards the end of the book, after Ned has burned himself out with his excesses. She, her brothers, and her sons by her marriage to Lord Grey scheme to take the regency of her son Edward V from Richard. She'd already pushed Ned to execute unreliable George of Clarence, so what would she do as Edward V's regent, monarch in all but name?
Richard holds onto his regency, then lets his council convince him to take the crown. This leads to two years of perpetual tragedy for Richard while rumors swirl about the fate of his nephews (Penman gives a plausible, non-Shakespearean fate for them). Broken and perhaps suicidal, Richard's fate on Bosworth Field is almost a given. The Tudors brought peace, and eventually prosperity to England, and in the final chapters Penman hints at how Richard's reputation will be altered for nearly 500 years by politically motivated authors. Penman's first novel sprawls across over 900 pages and I wanted to read it in a single sitting.
Tuesday, May 28, 2019
The Habit of Murder
Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew books now span twelve of his years and twenty-three volumes. When a series gets this long, I start to worry about its ending. Particularly since Matt's coming wedding will end his association with Michaelhouse College. The ending, though, hints at a possible loophole.
The Habit of Murder has a very modern feel, despite it's 14th Century setting. Matt, Brother Michael, and college head Langelee set out to pay their respects to (and hope for a bequest from) the Lady of Clare. They're accompanied by scholars from her wealthy namesake college and from St. Thomas (Swinecroft), including the now bitter man who founded the former and heads the latter.
The Lady, as it turns out, is not dead, but the village is in turmoil. Just like Cambridge, there's conflict between the townsfolk and the supporting institution, in this case the Lady's castle. The central cause appears to be the local church, the fan vaulted nave of which has been appropriated by the Lady, and the new south wing of which has been left to the town. Also like Cambridge, there seem to be a lot of unexpected deaths (or maybe Matt just has the bad luck to frequently encounter corpses). The chief mason, a local lord, and various people from the castle recently died under suspicious circumstances. Add in a vicar and an entire abbey of monks who are former warriors (one a former associate of Langelee), a sociable hermit (who reminds me of the Monty Python sketch - "The thing about being a hermit is that you get to meet people"), a comfort and gossip loving "holy" anchorite walled up in the church, and the castle's steward's 24-year-old prankster twins and it looks like Gregory is in a comic mood.
Then someone murders one of the Cambridge delegation, along with the steward's wife (she's one of the few good people in the town or castle). We learn that Anne, the anchorite, did not choose her calling but was the castle nurse banished for performing an abortion on a rape victim, and that she'd provided her (relatively) safe services on other women seduced and abandoned, or raped, by the castle squires. Published as #MeToo was peaking, this feels prescient, and Matt's focus on the danger rather than the ethics of abortion echoes modern discussions of the risks of legal restrictions driving abortion underground.
These plot lines all seem to be going in different directions until the last 40 pages, when Matt and Michael find the truly surprising cause linking the dates. They bring peace to Clare after a scene worthy of a modern action movie, but with a loss to Michaelhosue. A loss, however, that may lead to a more stable future for the institution which has been on the edge of dissolution since A Vein of Deceit.
The Habit of Murder has a very modern feel, despite it's 14th Century setting. Matt, Brother Michael, and college head Langelee set out to pay their respects to (and hope for a bequest from) the Lady of Clare. They're accompanied by scholars from her wealthy namesake college and from St. Thomas (Swinecroft), including the now bitter man who founded the former and heads the latter.
The Lady, as it turns out, is not dead, but the village is in turmoil. Just like Cambridge, there's conflict between the townsfolk and the supporting institution, in this case the Lady's castle. The central cause appears to be the local church, the fan vaulted nave of which has been appropriated by the Lady, and the new south wing of which has been left to the town. Also like Cambridge, there seem to be a lot of unexpected deaths (or maybe Matt just has the bad luck to frequently encounter corpses). The chief mason, a local lord, and various people from the castle recently died under suspicious circumstances. Add in a vicar and an entire abbey of monks who are former warriors (one a former associate of Langelee), a sociable hermit (who reminds me of the Monty Python sketch - "The thing about being a hermit is that you get to meet people"), a comfort and gossip loving "holy" anchorite walled up in the church, and the castle's steward's 24-year-old prankster twins and it looks like Gregory is in a comic mood.
Then someone murders one of the Cambridge delegation, along with the steward's wife (she's one of the few good people in the town or castle). We learn that Anne, the anchorite, did not choose her calling but was the castle nurse banished for performing an abortion on a rape victim, and that she'd provided her (relatively) safe services on other women seduced and abandoned, or raped, by the castle squires. Published as #MeToo was peaking, this feels prescient, and Matt's focus on the danger rather than the ethics of abortion echoes modern discussions of the risks of legal restrictions driving abortion underground.
These plot lines all seem to be going in different directions until the last 40 pages, when Matt and Michael find the truly surprising cause linking the dates. They bring peace to Clare after a scene worthy of a modern action movie, but with a loss to Michaelhosue. A loss, however, that may lead to a more stable future for the institution which has been on the edge of dissolution since A Vein of Deceit.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Just One Evil Act
Warning - potential spoiler
She's back on probation. The best way I can describe Just One Evil Act is a total mess in which George defies logic to make life hell for Barbara Havers. The book opens a few hours after Believing the Lie ends, as Barbara frantically calls Lynley for help. Her 9-year-old neighbor, Hidayyah Azhar has been kidnapped by her mother, Angela Uppman. Taymullah Azhar and Angela had never married (because he'd never divorced his wife who lives with their children and her parents in another part of London) and there's no father listed on Hidayyah's birth certificate. Lynley confirms that there's nothing the police can do, so Barbara and Azhar hire a private investigator, who also claims to be unable to find Hidayyah. A few months later, Angela and her Italian partner show up in London - someone kidnapped Hidayyah again, and of course they suspect her father. After a few hundred pages of shifting POV between Barbara, Lynley, Hidayyah's captor, and an Italian policeman, George returns a frightened but otherwise unharmed Hidayyah to her parents and they appear to work out a custody agreement.
If George had left it there, she'd have a mediocre mystery novel half as long as the incoherent doorstopper I slogged through. Angela dies from an e. coli infection about a week after Hidayyah's rescue, and Barbara learns from the quintuple-crossing (I think - I lost track of their deceptions) private investigators that Azhar (a microbiologist) had deceived her. I figured out the method and true culprit almost immediately, and found the motive contrived. I also thought Lynley's subplot (a romance with a veterinarian who also skates for Birmingham's roller derby team) was unnecessary and uninvolving.
The worst part, though, was how George treated Barbara Havers. Barbara has always been rough-edged, poorly dressed, and full of attitude. This time, George went out of her way to describe her, and to do so as completely unattractive. She's shifted Havers from merely prickly to obnoxiously insubordinate and deserving of the termination we spend the book expecting. As I've said in prior reviews, Barbara is a more interesting character - and better detective - than her aristocratic boss. So why did George decide to, well, trash her while perhaps permanently damaging her growing friendship with her neighbors? I already have the next installment, so I'll probably read it. I'm not looking forward to it, because I'm afraid it's the last Lynley/Havers book I'll read.
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat
John McQuaid's Tasty starts with the discredited taste map of the tongue and travels through super tasters, cultural culinary differences, the Scoville scale and the quest for the world's hottest pepper, our taste for sweetness, and a handful of other topics. It's a good overview of the science and history of what and how we eat, and an almost ideal commute book.
Mary Tudor: England's First Queen
England's first Queen is in some ways England's forgotten Queen. It's easy to find biographies of Elizabeth I and Henry VIII, but even Alison Weir hasn't paid much attention to Mary Tudor. I can understand why, because she's more of a reactive character and a pawn than her imperious father and politically astute half-sister. Intelligent but shunted aside for much of her life and used as a weapon against her mother, she made religious orthodoxy and the unsuccessful attempt to bear and heir the focus of her reign. Whitelock brings this overlooked woman to life, though, making her more compelling than one would expect of someone so thwarted by history.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
A Bone of Contention
I try to start mystery series with the first book, but 20-odd years ago, I started the Matthew Bartholomew series with the third chronicle, A Bone of Contention. Looking at my reviews of the re-reads of the first two books, I'm glad I did. By the third book, Susanna Gregory had a better feel for Matt's character and his relationships with his colleagues, particularly Brother Michael. She'd also started to introduce the humor that has kept my interest through the occasional sub-par mysteries.
The mystery in A Bone of Contention is well constructed. Someone is exacerbating the ongoing town/gown disputes of 1352 Cambridge into outright riots, and it somehow ties to both the death of a local man-turned-crusader-turned-villain who's legend has become that of a hero/saint and the family problems of the head of one of the colleges. Interspersed with comic scenes of Matt unconsciously attracting the attention of a pair of competitive sisters and the debauchery of a Michaelhouse feast, the book stands up after 20 years. Gregory's books are hard to find in the US, which is a shame. Local readers are definitely missing out.
The mystery in A Bone of Contention is well constructed. Someone is exacerbating the ongoing town/gown disputes of 1352 Cambridge into outright riots, and it somehow ties to both the death of a local man-turned-crusader-turned-villain who's legend has become that of a hero/saint and the family problems of the head of one of the colleges. Interspersed with comic scenes of Matt unconsciously attracting the attention of a pair of competitive sisters and the debauchery of a Michaelhouse feast, the book stands up after 20 years. Gregory's books are hard to find in the US, which is a shame. Local readers are definitely missing out.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Wheel of Fate
I can't believe it's been five years since I last read one of Kate Sedley's Roger the Chapman mysteries. As I hoped, Wheel of Fate brings Roger out of political intrigue (although the political situation has become very interesting indeed, with the Duke of Gloucester acting as advisor and regent for his young nephew, Edward V) and presents him with a personal mystery. The novel starts with Roger returning to an empty home and gossipy neighbors hinting as to why his wife and children have left town. He finds his daughter at her grandmother's house, and Margaret Walker tells her former son-in-law that Adela has taken the boys to visit distant relatives in London. Hoping to clear up the misunderstanding that led Adela to leave (and hoping that she will not learn of his actual indiscretion while in service to the Duke), Roger follows with his daughter.
Once in London, Adela easily forgives Roger, and presents him with a mystery. One of her Godslove cousins recently died mysteriously, and two others have had near misses. She promises them that Roger can solve the mystery, and he does - in a way that makes him look even more intelligent and intuitive than he actually is. With only three more installments in the series, and the Duke of Gloucester's reign as Richard III imminent, I suspect that Roger will be dragged back into the political world. For now, I'm just enjoying his return to civilian life and looking forward to re-reading the series from the beginning.
Once in London, Adela easily forgives Roger, and presents him with a mystery. One of her Godslove cousins recently died mysteriously, and two others have had near misses. She promises them that Roger can solve the mystery, and he does - in a way that makes him look even more intelligent and intuitive than he actually is. With only three more installments in the series, and the Duke of Gloucester's reign as Richard III imminent, I suspect that Roger will be dragged back into the political world. For now, I'm just enjoying his return to civilian life and looking forward to re-reading the series from the beginning.
The Moving Finger
The Moving Finger is technically a Miss Marple mystery, but Jane doesn't show up until the last third of the novel. The main character (and incompetent detective) is Jerry Burton, a pilot who's convalescing after a severe accident. He and his sister have taken a house in a village which is being plagued by poison pen letters. It's the usual Marple-style set-up, only without Aunt Jane. Until, that is, the local solicitor's wife dies suspiciously and suspicion falls upon, well, several people. Mrs. Dane Calthrop, the vicar's wife, calls her friend Jane who visits, solves the mystery, and leaves with justice served and two couples paired off. In other words, classic Christie.
Black and Blue
I'm not sure how I feel about Black and Blue. Ian Rankin's 8th mystery featuring John Rebus was a very good novel, but the mystery didn't quite work. Exiled to a particularly downtrodden Edinburgh police station, Rebus gets assigned to the murder of an oil worker. Somehow, this connects to environmental protesters, drug dealing in Aberdeen, and an old case (one of Rebus's first) which has resurfaced, putting Rebus under investigation (again). I never managed to tie the threads together, but I enjoyed my time with John Rebus, depressed - and to be honest, depressing - as he is.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
Falling Upwards: How we Took to the Air
I've never been up in a hot air balloon, and should probably do something about that, because Richard Holmes makes ballooning sound exciting and exotic. Falling Upwards seamlessly threads through the history of ballooning from its early, daredevil days (including the horrific death of one of the sport's early stars), through its military applications in the American Civil War and in mid-19th Century France, and into the modern era where pressurized cabins allow balloons to fly high enough to circumnavigate the world. Along the way, there are foiled polar explorers, scientific experiments, mail delivery, and pleasant excursions gone horribly wrong. The only thing that connects the stories is that they involve balloons, and Holmes's skillful depiction.
A Sight for Sore Eyes
When I first started reading the non-Wexford books Ruth Rendell wrote under her own name rather than as Barbara Vine, I thought that the distinction between the two was that the Vine books were weirder, perhaps a bit creepy. A Sight for Sore Eyes breaks that theory - it's the strangest of the books I've read so far by her, under either name, and Teddy Brex is possibly the creepiest protagonist I've met.
Teddy's parents married because his mother found a ring. Raised (barely) in squalor by his scrounging, apathetic parents and co-existing with his uncle, his fastidiousness goes unobserved, even by the neighbor who inspires his artistic talents. At a graduation exhibition, he meets Francine Hill who at 7 was the earwitness to her mother's murder and has since come under the control of her father's second wife, a psychologist who'd quit before being struck off. Her stepmother's obsessive protection leads Francine into a relationship with Teddy, and it's not a surprise to find out that this relationship leads to several deaths, including one of the most surprising twists I've read in a long time.
Teddy's parents married because his mother found a ring. Raised (barely) in squalor by his scrounging, apathetic parents and co-existing with his uncle, his fastidiousness goes unobserved, even by the neighbor who inspires his artistic talents. At a graduation exhibition, he meets Francine Hill who at 7 was the earwitness to her mother's murder and has since come under the control of her father's second wife, a psychologist who'd quit before being struck off. Her stepmother's obsessive protection leads Francine into a relationship with Teddy, and it's not a surprise to find out that this relationship leads to several deaths, including one of the most surprising twists I've read in a long time.
Twilight of the Elites
How did our meritocracy get us into the mess we're in? Chris Hayes explains it by saying that we're not as much of a meritocracy as we claim to be, and for the most part I agree with him. He starts out with a profile of his selective public high school, which chooses students entirely on a single high-pressure test. Not completely fair, but one can argue that a test (like the SAT) evens out some of the societal inequities and at the very least cuts out nepotism and outright racial and ethnic discrimination. Unfortunately, there's a closer tie to economic status than to intelligence in standardized test scores, and that's gotten worse with the advent of test prep (required now if you want to get into an Ivy League school, but when I graduated from high school in 1986 only about a third of my private college-prep classmates bothered with the class offered after school, and at least some of them because they'd underperformed, often through nerves, on their first try).
Hayes is on weaker ground when he blames "elites" for systematic failures such as the 2007-08 housing market collapse and corporate corruption such as at Enron. Yes, the "best and the brightest" were in charge, and the conventional wisdom they spread and the standard sources amplified was absolutely, dangerously wrong. I disagree, though, that it was because they were the elite. Those catastrophes weren't created by smart, credentialed people so much as by smart, credentialed crooks. There, and in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, smart people fudged data or outright lied - nothing to do with being elite and everything to do with forcing their view on a system. I have trouble considering these examples of the elite screwing things up when their lies and manipulation, in my opinion, knock them off that tower.
There's another risk to denigrating those we consider elite. If taken too far, we begin to disregard education, experience, and intellectual analysis. We get the President we "want to have a beer with" (or the one who panders to our worst selves) rather than the one who understands that the world is complex and has the education, experience, and wisdom to work through to the best solution. I'd like to discuss Twilight of the Elites with Hayes, particularly in light of what's happened in the six years since it was published, and perhaps also after re-reading Simplexity.
Hayes is on weaker ground when he blames "elites" for systematic failures such as the 2007-08 housing market collapse and corporate corruption such as at Enron. Yes, the "best and the brightest" were in charge, and the conventional wisdom they spread and the standard sources amplified was absolutely, dangerously wrong. I disagree, though, that it was because they were the elite. Those catastrophes weren't created by smart, credentialed people so much as by smart, credentialed crooks. There, and in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, smart people fudged data or outright lied - nothing to do with being elite and everything to do with forcing their view on a system. I have trouble considering these examples of the elite screwing things up when their lies and manipulation, in my opinion, knock them off that tower.
There's another risk to denigrating those we consider elite. If taken too far, we begin to disregard education, experience, and intellectual analysis. We get the President we "want to have a beer with" (or the one who panders to our worst selves) rather than the one who understands that the world is complex and has the education, experience, and wisdom to work through to the best solution. I'd like to discuss Twilight of the Elites with Hayes, particularly in light of what's happened in the six years since it was published, and perhaps also after re-reading Simplexity.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius who Solved ht Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Navigation is so easy today (well, except for the directionally challenged, like me, who have an unfailing ability to make the wrong turn). 400 years ago, as commercial fleets began their exploratory voyages, sailors had to depend on the stars and luck, and the further south you were, the more a miscalculation in latitude would send you from your destination. Dava Sobol's slim but engrossing book tells how a clockmaker (his previous major project - still working four centuries later - was a wooden clock) not only developed a way to determine longitude but also a clock that neither gained nor lost time and was not disturbed by harsh weather or the swells of the sea. His invention was a success, but full recognition (and the full cash prize from the Longitude Committee) eluded him, thanks to one of the pettier scientific disputes of history.
Friday, March 8, 2019
Look Alive Twenty-Five
Stephanie Plum is perpetually 32, one missed FTA away from not paying rent on her outdated apartment, and has dinner with her entire family on the calendar. If that weren't enough, her cousin/boss Vinnie Plum has made her the manager of the deli his father-in-law and bankroller, Harry the Hammer, now owns. Normally, "deli manager" is a safer job than "bounty hunter," but as we learn in the first chapter of Look Alive Twenty-Five, the last three manager mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a shoe by the dumpster.
That's really all you need to know. Janet Evanovich hasn't been concerned with her plots since the early double-digit installments of the series. The last dozen or so have just been an excuse to string together comic destruction of cars and/or buildings, slapstick incompetence by Steph and her sidekick Lula, the cupcake-or-babe question of whether she should be with Joe or Ranger, and general weirdness. The books have become routine, but they're still funny enough that reading them in public puts you on the receiving end of serious side-eye, and Twenty-Five's plot is a bit tighter than the last few. It's a good beach read or antidote to crappy winter weather.
That's really all you need to know. Janet Evanovich hasn't been concerned with her plots since the early double-digit installments of the series. The last dozen or so have just been an excuse to string together comic destruction of cars and/or buildings, slapstick incompetence by Steph and her sidekick Lula, the cupcake-or-babe question of whether she should be with Joe or Ranger, and general weirdness. The books have become routine, but they're still funny enough that reading them in public puts you on the receiving end of serious side-eye, and Twenty-Five's plot is a bit tighter than the last few. It's a good beach read or antidote to crappy winter weather.
Henrietta Marie: Charles I's Indomitable Queen
Maybe it's time for me to admit that the Stuarts and the English Civil War don't interest me as much as the periods which precede and follow them. I've enjoyed Alison Plowmen's biography of Queen Victoria and (so far) 3/4 of her quartet on Elizabeth I, but Women All on Fire wasn't particularly memorable, and neither were Antonia Fraser's books on the era. Perhaps I should free up some shelf space for Plantagenets or Hanoverians.
Henrietta Marie should have been interesting. Her political match with Charles I started badly due to her advisors, but it soon blossomed into a love match in which she was a trusted advisor. Unfortunately, Charles I was politically tone deaf and Henrietta's advisors wanted her to return Catholicism to a country which thought that Elizabeth's Anglican compromise wasn't pure enough. I admire Henrietta's will and wiles during her exile, but I just wasn't compelled by her story. It's not Plowden's fault - I'd rather read about the artistic and social changes of the era than the political lives of the 17th Century royal family.
Henrietta Marie should have been interesting. Her political match with Charles I started badly due to her advisors, but it soon blossomed into a love match in which she was a trusted advisor. Unfortunately, Charles I was politically tone deaf and Henrietta's advisors wanted her to return Catholicism to a country which thought that Elizabeth's Anglican compromise wasn't pure enough. I admire Henrietta's will and wiles during her exile, but I just wasn't compelled by her story. It's not Plowden's fault - I'd rather read about the artistic and social changes of the era than the political lives of the 17th Century royal family.
Dreaming of the Bones
Warning - minor character spoiler
Deborah Crombie didn't tell us much about Duncan Kincaid's ex-wife in the first few installments of the series he shares with Gemma James, so we are as surprised as he is when Victoria calls him. She's a Cambridge professor, working on a biography of local poet Lydia Brooke who died by suicide in the mid-80s. Victoria's research has led her to believe that Brooke was murdered, buy by whom and why? She's interviewed Brooke's friends but they fall into two categories - intentionally unhelpful (a local headmistress, Victoria's pretentious colleague) and honestly uninformed (Brooke's angry artist ex-husband, Victoria's neighbor). Duncan agrees to meet her, but thinks it's pointless to open a decades old suicide case.
Until Victoria's tween son finds her dead. Her death appears natural, except she was a healthy woman in her late 30s with no pre-existing conditions and no sign of trauma. Was she killed because she was about to discover that Lydia Brook was murdered - and the reason why? Crombie, like Tasha Alexander, uses an interleaved parallel narrative to solve the mystery of Lydia Brook, and from there I found Victoria's murderer at about the same time as Duncan and Gemma. Fleshed out with the growth of the police partners' personal relationship and a few complications regarding the familiar air around Victoria's son Kit, Dreaming of the Bones succeeds as both a novel and a puzzle.
Deborah Crombie didn't tell us much about Duncan Kincaid's ex-wife in the first few installments of the series he shares with Gemma James, so we are as surprised as he is when Victoria calls him. She's a Cambridge professor, working on a biography of local poet Lydia Brooke who died by suicide in the mid-80s. Victoria's research has led her to believe that Brooke was murdered, buy by whom and why? She's interviewed Brooke's friends but they fall into two categories - intentionally unhelpful (a local headmistress, Victoria's pretentious colleague) and honestly uninformed (Brooke's angry artist ex-husband, Victoria's neighbor). Duncan agrees to meet her, but thinks it's pointless to open a decades old suicide case.
Until Victoria's tween son finds her dead. Her death appears natural, except she was a healthy woman in her late 30s with no pre-existing conditions and no sign of trauma. Was she killed because she was about to discover that Lydia Brook was murdered - and the reason why? Crombie, like Tasha Alexander, uses an interleaved parallel narrative to solve the mystery of Lydia Brook, and from there I found Victoria's murderer at about the same time as Duncan and Gemma. Fleshed out with the growth of the police partners' personal relationship and a few complications regarding the familiar air around Victoria's son Kit, Dreaming of the Bones succeeds as both a novel and a puzzle.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
The ABC Murders
I looked back at some of my earlier Agatha Christie reviews, and several mention books that have stayed on my shelf for 30 years. It's now closer to 40 for some of them, like The ABC Murders. It's got a stamp from The Book Swap, which closed before I graduated from high school, and above the stamp there's the name of the original owner and "November 1st, 1977." I wonder what I would have thought of it as a teenager? Although written only about 20 years into Hercule Poirot's 50 year career, he's showing his age, admitting to Hastings that he dyes his hair and being dismissed by the young policeman assigned to help him.
Someone killed Mrs. Asher in her Andover candy shop and left an ABC guide on the counter. Poirot got involved because someone sent him a letter announcing the murder. Soon, another announced murder happens, of Betty Bernard in Bexhill-on-Sea. Eventually Sir Carmichael Clarke's body is found in Churston, and the murder taunts Poirot with the threat of another death soon, in Dorchester. It's a classic Christie, with red herrings and obvious suspects, but there's also a slightly melancholy hint. Poirot was never a young character, but both he and Hastings are aging and there's a sense of the world changing. 35 years ago, I would have only seen the well crafted puzzle. Now, I see the emotional shades.
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Death in St. Petersburg
Ballet, murder, and revolution come together in Tasha Alexander's Death in St. Petersburg. Shortly after Christmas, 1899, Colin Hargraves traveled to St. Petersburg on business, and a few days later Lady Emily and her friend Cecile du Lac followed to welcome in 1900 a second time (Russia still used he Julian calendar at the time). After a performance of Swan Lake, they discover why Nemesteva's understudy (and childhood friend) Katenka performed the final act; the star ballerina's body is lying in a pool of blood near the theater's back entrance. Did Katenka kill her rival/friend? Or was it her brother, Nemesteva's former lover? Perhaps the killer is one of the revolutionaries Colin is tracking at the behest of Queen Victoria (grandmother of the Czarina). Once again, Alexander uses parallel narratives (here, the second narrative is Katenka's diary) to dole out clues and motivations, creating a well-supported solution that the reader solves at about the same time as Colin and Emily.
Quarrel with the King: The Story of an English Family on the High Road to Civil War
Quarrel with the King was both interesting and vaguely unsatisfying. Covering both the changes to society and the nobility during the reigns of James I, Charles I, and the Republic and the history of the Earls of Pembroke, Adam Nicolson's book never seemed to fully connect the two threads. This short book gives only surface treatment to two (perhaps not as intertwined as the author thought) tales which deserve deeper treatment.
Notes from the Underwire: Adventures from My Awkward and Lovely Life
Despite some highly publicized tragedies, I've never bought the Broken Child Star myth. I've always thought that most of those who don't transition to an adult role (sometimes behind the scenes) in the entertainment industry live somewhat ordinary lives. Quinn Cummings is one of those former stars now living as normal a life as anyone with a sense of humor and a job as a free lance writer can. Tales from the Underwire, her first book, describes her life and how she got there. Obtaining a cow's heart for her daughter to dissect, fighting off a catnip-addled cat while trying to sleep on the sofa, or fearing that she's about to walk into the cold open of Law & Order while posting fundraiser notices, she navigates modern life with an eye for everyday absurdities. It's the perfect commute book, segmented enough that you can put it down, but entertaining enough that you don't want to.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
Cat Among the Pigeons
By 1959, Agatha Christie had gotten tired of Hercule Poirot, but her fans hadn't. One way she balanced her desires against that of her readers was to restrict Poirot to the last few chapters of "his" novels. Cat Among the Pigeons starts with Ali Yusef, an English-educated Middle Eastern prince trying to escape from a revolution along with his pilot and school friend, Bob Rawlinson. They die in a sabotage-induced crash, but not before Bob manages to hide Ali's jewels *somewhere* in Bob's sister's luggage.
A few months later, Rawlinson's niece Jennifer enrolls in a girl's school and distinguishes herself in nothing but tennis. She does, however make friends with Julia, whose mother was in British Intelligence during the war, and it's Julia who contacts Hercule Poirot after a student disappears and a teacher is found murdered. Poirot gets the credit for solving the mystery, but it's really Julia and her mother who figure it out. I think Cat Among the Pigeons would have been better without Poirot, and would have liked to have seen a bit more of the workings of the school.
A few months later, Rawlinson's niece Jennifer enrolls in a girl's school and distinguishes herself in nothing but tennis. She does, however make friends with Julia, whose mother was in British Intelligence during the war, and it's Julia who contacts Hercule Poirot after a student disappears and a teacher is found murdered. Poirot gets the credit for solving the mystery, but it's really Julia and her mother who figure it out. I think Cat Among the Pigeons would have been better without Poirot, and would have liked to have seen a bit more of the workings of the school.
Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren't Your Best Source of Health Information
Paul Offit takes a slightly different tack with his latest book, Bad Advice. He's still crusading against medical quackery and scientific woo, but instead of presenting new cases, he revisits the world of anti-vaxxers and supplement advocates with tips on how to properly argue for science. There's not much new (other than the news that Andrew Wakefield has been reduced to the conspiracy theorist circuit), but this time Offit explains how he and others have effectively refuted bad science. Offit also describes some of the dangers (lawsuits, stalking, death threats) that come with fighting for science and against public opinion and has enough of a sense of humor to dissect some of his least successful media appearances - and to admit that the most frightening audience he ever faced was his daughter's 8th grade class.
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