Mary, Queen of Scots

I enjoy books - not just reading, the physical objects.  I like seeing how styles have changed over the years, and trying to guess the print date of a particular edition from the typeface illustrations on the cover.  My copy of Mary, Queen of Scots is very clearly an old copy.  For one thing, it's a pocket sized paperback - non-fiction hasn't been published like that in decades (to the chagrin of those of us who prefer paperbacks because they can be slipped into a pocket).  There's also the price ($1.50), the photo of Lady Antonia Fraser on the back (with a bouffant, heavy eye makeup, and large rings, making her look a bit like the character Jo Grant from Doctor Who) and the page advertising Deliverance, which is "Soon to be a major motion picture."  There's also my grandmother's name in pencil inside the back cover, with the date "3/18/71."  My grandmother died in 1983, so this book has sat on my shelf for more than twice as long as it sat on hers.

Mary, Queen of Scots was Fraser's first book, launching a career which includes an almost equal number of biographies and mystery novels, and she writes more like a novelist than a historian.  I mean that as a complement - I've read two of her other biographies and her style is clear and compelling, no matter how dry the details of royal ancestry may be.  Here, she vividly portrays Mary Stuart as both a headstrong young woman and a political pawn.  Like her cousin Elizabeth, Mary was a symbol of her faith in a time of religious upheaval but maintained a 'live and let live' attitude towards others' beliefs.  Mary, however, did not have the luxury of ruling a fairly powerful state or the education and brilliance of the English Queen.  Mary was bright and well read, if perhaps not well-taught in the art of statecraft, but Elizabeth was an extraordinary intellect who benefited from a comprehensive education.  

Mary also married three times, once as a child and twice due to poor judgment.  Crowned Queen of Scotland as a newborn, Mary was betrothed to the French Dauphin and sent to France at age 5 to be raised in the French court.  Her fiance, Francis, was a weak, unpleasant boy, probably unequal to the task of ruling one country, let alone two.  Two years after they married and after a year as Consort of France, Mary was Queen Dowager and soon returned to her own kingdom.

The Scotland Mary returned to rule in 1561 was not the same country she left.  The Protestant Reformation had taken hold in Edinburgh, and the mostly Protestant nobility did not want a Catholic (and to a lesser extent a woman) ruling their country.  Mary's attitude was more modern - she considered faith a private matter and was willing to let Scotland remain predominantly Protestant but tolerant of Catholics like herself.  As I read these passages, I couldn't understand how she was seen as a threat to the Protestant majority.  Maybe her years in France and the expectation that Francis would be the de facto ruler of Scotland left her unable to effectively communicate her temperate views, or maybe John Knox was just too powerful of a personality.  Regardless, Mary come across as more of a victim than a perpetrator of interfaith political battles.

Elizabeth I understood the pitfalls of marriage, especially for a queen, and managed to steer clear.  Mary, though, impulsively fell in love with and married her pretty-boy cousin, Henry, Lord Darnley.  Henry was petty, vain, and promiscuous.  The couple essentially separated when Mary was pregnant with the future James VI/I, after he was involved in the murder of her private secretary, David Rizzio.  Henry, who showed even less talent for conspiracy than Mary, betrayed the Protestant nobles behind the plot but the marriage was essentially over from that point.  Mary and her counsellors explored the possibility of divorce, but Henry was murdered while escaping from a castle which was blown up by political enemies.  One of those men, Lord Bothwell, then abducted and raped Mary, and then forced her to marry him.  Shortly afterwards, she was forced to abdicate her thrown and tried to escape to England.  There she became the tragic figure of history, the Queen locked in a tower until she was deemed too much of a threat to Queen Elizabeth's power and was tried for treason and convicted on the basis of intentionally misinterpreted and mistranslated letters.

Fatally Flaky

Diane Mott Davidson will never go on probation - her Goldy Schultz series is light enough that even the sub-par entries are pleasant, and the recipes always make me drool.  Fatally Flaky, the 15th Goldy novel, is one of the better ones.  Goldy is catering a wedding for Bridezilla Billie - a rich and unpleasant young woman who doesn't need reality TV editing to make her into a nightmare.  The book doesn't start with Billie's wedding, though - it starts with the wedding of a sweet young woman who has asked a beloved local GP to give her away and make the first toast.  Doc Finn is also Goldy's recently relocated godfather's best friend, and when the doctor dies in a suspicious car accident on his way to the catering hall, Jack is understandably distressed.  And suspicious - suspicions which lead to his being attacked and Goldy's undercover assignment at a local health spa.  For me, the mystery was an 80% solve - I figured out "who" fairly early on, but most of the "how" remained unknown until the final chapters.  I really enjoyed my time with Goldy and her family, though, and the recipes include one that my pork-loving parents will absolutely love.

The Triumph of Caesar

Gordianus, I thought you were dead.

So did I.  Saylor's previous novel, The Judgment of Caesar, ended with Gordianus walking into the Nile.  Two years later, he is clearly alive and has returned to Rome and his unconventional family with Bethesda.  Although his son Eco has taken over his detective business, Gordianus finds that he cannot refuse a commission from Caesar's wife Calpurnia who fears her husband will be assassinated during his triumph celebrating his victories in Gaul, Egypt, and Asia.  Nor can he resist solving the mystery of who killed Hieronymus, the former Scapegoat of Massalia who saved Gordianus's life and then followed him to Rome.  

Saylor leads Gordanius through meeting with the political elite and walks through the less fashionable suburbs of Rome, and gives us a good seat for the pageantry of Rome at its most excessive.  Along the way, we see that Gordianus's daughter Diana is (as we suspected) a natural in the family business and, yes, find the murderer.  I've mentioned before that I've read enough mysteries that I usually figure out 'whodunnit' and The Triumph of Caesar was no exception.  Saylor sufficiently obscured the murder's identity without cheating, so I was satisfied with the outcome.  Most importantly, Saylor transported me into a different world - for a few minutes, I wasn't sitting on a commuter train but watching a mob gasp in awe at shiny armor and exotic animals.

North and South

I haven't read much Victorian fiction, and I haven't particularly enjoyed much of what I have read.  It's too sentimental, with neon-outlined lessons on behavior.  I prefer something a bit more subtle and less self conscious.  North and South both confirms and confounds my prejudices.  The rich are so because they're better people, the poor are either vulgar or victims, the 'good' are clearly rewarded, and every action is ponderously presented - at least on the surface.  Gaskell places several compelling plots against this backdrop and draws her characters with a nuanced hand.  

Margaret Hale has been raised as the 'companion' to a richer and prettier cousin but has an independent mind and inner compass.  Shortly after her return to her family, her father, a country vicar, has to give up his post because of his religious doubts, and the family moves from rural southern England to Manchester (renamed Milton-Northern) where he will support the family as a private tutor.  Once settled, Margaret begins to adapt to her surroundings and sees that class structures are beginning to change.  John Thornton, the mill owner, is not a gentleman in the sense of being a self-supporting member of the gentry, but he's financially well off.  The Hales, in contrast, were at least on the fringes of Society but in Milton Northern, their low income puts them down a few rungs on the social ladder.  This leads to a number of misunderstandings between Margaret and John and their families of the sort that would fuel the plot of 1930s screwball comedies but here come across just seriously enough to retain the slightly medicinal flavor of a Victorian lesson.  

The working class characters aren't quite as fully drawn.  Shortly after moving to Milton Northern, Margaret meets Bessy Higgins, a young woman dying from industrial asthma and probably TB, and her father Nicholas.  Bessy is a stereotypical young victim - saintly, and despairing over her father's atheism.  Nicholas is a bit more complex - he's one of the leaders of a nascent labor movement which Gaskell views with favor - but he still borders on cartoon.  The Higgins's neighbors are crude and uneducated, and the strikebreakers are nothing more than faceless, superstitious, Irish thugs.

I generally enjoyed North and South.  Margaret is an interesting character who grows over the course of the novel, and the plots tie together neatly but not too neatly.  I found the ending to be a bit rushed, and a bit too neat, although that is due at least in part to Gaskell's publisher truncating the final third of the novel.  

The Snow Empress

I'm not sure what Laura Joh Rowland has in mind for her characters.  Three books ago, she promoted Sano Ichiro to Chamberlain, where he spends less time investigating and more time watching his back in the political shark tank of the Tokagawa Shogunate.  This leaves Lady Reiko fewer chances to act as an unofficial detective and his former assistant, Hirata, as the Shogun's chief investigator.  Hirata, however, was injured, and as part of his training to recover has become quite mystical.  All these changes are believable in the framework of the series, and while I'm not sure where Rowland is taking them, I'm enjoying the journey.

The Snow Empress focuses on a journey to the northern reaches of Japan.  Lord Matsudaira has kidnapped Sano's and Reiko's son Masahiro, causing Reiko to withdraw within her sorrow.  Matsudaira has hidden Masahiro in Ezogashima, where Lord Matsudaira sends Sano to find out why the local lord has not made his required annual trip to Edo.  Once the party arrives, they discover that Lord Matsumae has had a mental breakdown following the murder of his native mistress, Tekare.  As Reiko searches for her son, Sano and Hirata try to solve Tekare's murder, a task complicated by how different she appeared to everyone who knew her.  (Yes, I know this review is begging for a Rashomon reference, but I've never seen that movie, so I'll refrain.)  Logic, legwork, a bit of Hirata's new-found mysticism, and Lord Matsumae's rage avenge Tekare's death, allowing Sano to return to the familiar but uncertain environment of the Shogun's court.

Dirty Blonde

I miss Rosato & Associates.  The last few Lisa Scottoline books I've read haven't been part of her series-that-isn't-a-series involving Philadelphia's only all-female litigation firm.  The titular Dirty Blonde is Cate Fante, a newly appointed judge originally from Centralia PA.  Cate is reliably smart - and smart-mouthed - as all Scottoline heroines are, but I just couldn't get involved in her story.  I think Scottoline might have had the same problem, or maybe she realized that there are only so many times she can make her protagonist the target of a stalker.  

Dirty Blonde is full of witty dialogue, well-drawn settings (as a native Philadelphian, I mentally penciled in street names and landmarks as Cate drove around town), and daring escapes.  What's missing is a strong central plot.  Scottoline has thrown in too many subplots, including Cate's best friend and her autistic toddler, Cate's habit of picking up men in dive bars, and Cate's trip back to her burning, abandoned home town, and they all distract from the intertwined problems of Cate's stalking and the murder of a plaintiff Cate has ruled against.  

The Typhoon Lover

In her early twenties, Japanese-American Rei Shimura fell into two careers - one as an antiques expert and one as a detective.  A decade and eight novels later, Rei is now 30 and Sujita Massey has solved the problem of how to explain why a woman in a seemingly genteel job keeps coming across dead bodies.  The day after Rei's surprise 30th birthday party (thrown at a hot new club by her on-and-off fiance, Hugh), she drags herself to a 9 am interview at the Smithsonian...except it's at rather than with the museum.  Rei's former lover, Takedo, has apparently become involved in smuggling antiquities out of Iraq and the CIA thinks Rei can use him to recover an ancient ewer.  

Maybe Rei fell for the bait (she's been barred from traveling to Japan and if she takes this job, the State Department will end that), or maybe she realizes that her relationship with Hugh (described as arguments punctuated by great sex) is falling apart.  Either way, she did not expect to find Takeo engaged to a high-strung girl from a political family or that she and Takeo would have a one night stand in the middle of a storm.  After some dead ends, Rei finds that the smuggler is much closer than she though.

The Butcher of St. Peter's

I have mixed feelings about prolific series-bases writers.  Michael Jecks produces a mystery about every nine months, which means that I usually have more than one of his titles in my infrequent amazon.co.uk deliveries, and if I were to stop importing paperbacks, I'd still have half a dozen Sir Baldwin mysteries sitting on my shelf.

Unfortunately, The Butcher of St. Peter's is far from the best novel in the series.  Jecks seems to be in a bit of a lull, writing less vividly than he did a dozen years and 15 or 16 books ago.  The Keeper of the King's Peace, Sir Baldwin Furnshill, has been called to Exeter to solve a dispute over the estate and remains of a wealthy man.  As he and Bailiff Simon Puttock try to untangle this complicated and uninvolving problem, they are drawn into the murder of a prominent citizen.  We should suspect the titular butcher, but we don't - like the people of Exeter, we know he's a broken but ultimately harmless man.  Unfortunately, I didn't care who committed the murder, or the resolution of Sir Henry's estate and burial, or the actions of a medieval crime lord.  It's a kitchen sink of a novel, in which these three minor mysteries are mixed with Sir Baldwin's guilt over his brief encounter (while shipwrecked) with another woman, his wife Jeanne's fear that she has lost her husband's love, and the preening of Sir Baldwin's nemesis, Sir Perigrine de Barnstaple.  I enjoy spending time with these characters, but I wish Jecks had devised a stronger plot.

Perfect Figures

I think I bought Perfect Figures because it's about math.  In retrospect, I think I pulled it off the shelf at Daedalus because of the author.  If someone is willing to be known, not just personally but also professionally as Bunny Crumpacker, well, I just have to buy the book.   Crumpacker lives up to her name - Perfect Figures is a fluffy bunny of a book, the first math-related book I've ever read that would be more enjoyable accompanied by a neon-colored drink garnished with an umbrella.  A little math, a little history, some folklore, and a bit of rhapsodizing over the shape of 8 makes for an enjoyable but ultimately ephemeral experience.