The Case of the Missing Servant

I try to read series in order.  OK, I'm a bit obsessive about it.  If I'm binge-reading an older series, I'll stop (for months, years even) before jumping a gap on my shelf.  Sometimes, though (usually when my mom has discovered a new author), I start with the second or third book in a series.  That's how I discovered Tarquin Hall's Vish Puri, Delhi-based private investigator and chow hound.  Hall is a mid-list author, though, so it took me a while to find the first book in the series.

It was worth waiting for The Case of the Missing Servant.  Like most first installments, it's a bit heavy on exposition, but Vish Puri, his operatives Tubelight, Facecream, and Flush, and Mummy-Ji appear fully developed in their first appearances, and unlike several other books I've reviewed, Tarquin Hall knows how to handle a subplot.

Brahmin judge Ajay Kasliwal's maid Mary has disappeared, and he's been accused of killing her.  He's innocent, but he also doesn't know where Mary is, or even if she's alive.  Puri sends Facecream into the Kasilwal home as Mary's replacement where she learns the household's secrets.  Adding this information to the rumors Tubelight overhears and his own information from the local police, Puri tracks down Mary and serves justice with kindness.  All while dealing with an attempt on his life and  fielding angry calls from another client, a general who wants him to investigate his on-the-shelf daughter's noveau riche fiancé.  Puri handles this case with discretion, while Mummy-Ji (as usual) goes against her son's wishes to solve the more personal crime.

Tarquin Hall has written four Vish Puri novels so far, and the two I've read have contained well-plotted mysteries and some light domestic comedy.  They're well-balanced books, neither total fluff nor serious books which require deep concentration, so I hope the series becomes a long-runner.

Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster

Katherine Swynford presented Alison Weir with a problem which the author mentioned in her introduction.  Although she's the direct ancestor of every British monarch since Henry VII, 6 US Presidents, and Winston Churchill (among other illustrious figures), we know almost nothing about her.  Her family was gentry but not notable; her father was a foreign knight and Katherine came to Britain to serve in the household of John of Gaunt's first wife Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster.  Katherine married another knight, and after her husband and Blanche died, she became governess to Blanche's two daughters.  She also became John of Gaunt's, by then married to Constance of Castille mistress, eventually giving birth to four of his children.

Royal men frequently took mistresses and provided for their children.  What they did not do was flaunt their affairs.  John's public acknowledgement of Katherine created a scandal; a scandal which increased during the early years of Richard II's reign.  Katherine and John parted amicably, and she managed the estates inherited from her husband while John tried to bring Castille under the English Crown.  Eventually Constance died and John did the unthinkable - he married his mistress and spent the last few years of his life with her.

Katherine seems to be a very lucky woman, always in the right place at the right time.  There's so little information about her because she wasn't remarkable, but her descendants founded a dynasty.  It's as if Lizzie Bennet were Queen Victoria's grandmother.  Weir doesn't exactly explain how Katherine gained her status, but she demonstrated that Katherine was intelligent and well-liked, as well as strikingly beautiful.  Charm, brains, warmth, and a little bit of luck can bring you far in life.  In Katherine's case, they brought her into the royal family, and even helped her brother-in-law, a low-born poet and courtier named Geoffrey Chaucer, rise in the royal household.

Gentleman Rogues & WIcked Ladies: A Guide to British Highwaymen & Highwaywomen

I'm in a different kind of reading rut - I keep picking up books that don't engage me.  Gentlemen Rouges & Wicked Ladies looked interesting in the Daedalus catalog, but it's all surface and no analysis.  After a quick description of the typical highwayman (which comes to the conclusion that there was no "typical" highwayman), Fiona McDonald provides biographical sketches of several famous ones.  Unfortunately, there's not a lot of documentation for most of these men and women, so most sketches amount to a page or two of speculation and rumor, one or two notorious crimes, and execution.  It's not a bad book, and might be a decent commute book, but it's far from memorable.

Re-reading Mysteries

Last year, one of my online groups read A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susannah Gregory.  I was thrilled, because I love that series and wanted to see how the characters had changed in the 15 or so real years (and fictional decade) since the first installment.  14th Century Cambridge doctor Matthew Bartholomew was more naïve but essentially the same person I’d just seen in book 15, and Cynric and Brother Michael were rough sketches of their future selves.

They were the only important recurring characters I met. I thought I’d remembered the book well (I have fond memories of reading it), but fifteen years and nearly nine hundred intervening books later, I’d forgotten everything but the plague.  The mystery plot was a fresh puzzle and the students and faculty I’d come to know hadn’t yet appeared at the fictional Michaelhouse College.

This is why I reread mysteries.  Some people may think it’s strange, but I’ve had that habit my entire adult life.  Mysteries aren’t just puzzles, or at least good ones aren’t.  Genre novels have to succeed as fiction first; only then do I care “whodunit.”  Revisiting a series gives me a chance to enjoy the language and to catch literary or historical references I may have missed the first time around.  I see how the characters have evolved and either faded or moved to the front.  And, maybe, if it’s been long enough since I last read it, I’ll get to solve the mystery again.

Older books also act as a time capsule.  The world is very different than it was in the 80s and early 90s.  Answering machines weren’t yet universal when I was in college, and even a geeky engineering student couldn’t access e-mail at home.  Detectives had to go to a library or courthouse to find public information.  Early V. I. Warshawski or Sharon McCone mysteries remind me of the world I grew up in, and when contrasted with later books show their characters’ and creators’ adaptive skills.

Sometimes, though, I just want the literary equivalent of comfort food and a broken-in pair of jeans.  That’s when I reach for one of four or five Agatha Christies.  Most of them aren’t classics (although I think The Pale Horse should be better known), and I know every twist and turn.  Reading one of these old friends wraps me in comfort, or brings me back to a vacation (which I almost extended indefinitely when I didn’t hear my flight announcement), or just reminds me that as bad as my week has been, I can still find some pleasure on a 4x7 inch page.

The Coffee Trader

Several years ago at Bouchercon, a panel discussed the placement of mysteries in their own section as opposed to the general fiction section.  That's when I came up with the theory of Popular De-Genrefication.  Once an author reliably reaches the top of the best seller list, his or her genre novels appear on the general fiction shelves.  David Liss's The Coffee Trader exemplifies this in reverse.  It's a literary novel (and a dozen years after its initial publication, probably obscure) but I found it in the mystery section of Borders.  There's some intrigue, but I'd classify it as a straight novel.

Miguel Lienzo, a 17th Century Portugese Converso, relocated to Amsterdam and made (and lost) his living on the futures market.  Due to one of those losses, he's living in his brother's house and being stalked by a former business partner.  His current partner, a Dutch widow named Geertruid convinces him to enter the coffee trade while his brother, at the behest of the local religious authorities, warns him away.  And I didn't care.  I loved Liss's language, but couldn't get involved in the plot or bring my self to care about the characters.  Maybe that's why The Coffee Trader sat unread on my shelf for the decade since I'd read Liss's first novel, A Conspiracy of Paper.  I have two more of his books waiting, but they're unlikely to rise to the top of the To Be Read list.

Hew, Screw, & Glue

Take How It's Made, throw in listicles, a handful of questionably accurate legends, and simplify the language.  Add a series of small, attractive illustrations to each chapter and you have Hew, Screw, & Glue.  Cute, but it doesn't even rise to the level of a commute book.  Sometimes when I buy something from Deadalus based on the catalog description, I strike out.  At least it was cheap.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal.
      - 1848 Seneca Falls Convention keynote address

My 5th and 6th grade Language Arts teacher added public speaking to the curriculum.  We had monthly poetry competitions (the winner got to wear a pin on her sweater until the next unit) and in 6th grade we chose famous speeches to memorize and present.  Inspired by a YA biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I picked her 1848 Seneca Falls keynote address.  I've spent most of my life wondering why she's not as famous today as her friend and writing partner, Susan B. Anthony.  Lori D. Ginzberg's biography provides a potential answer.  Anthony was a more public face, and more constant  and pragmatic campaigner for women's rights; Stanton was a firebrand thinker with little patience for public speeches and the tedious follow-up.  They worked well together, but Anthony's activities were more obvious.

Stanton's personality may have also gotten in the way of her fame.  She was a bit vain, somewhat prickly, and possessed a level of arrogance not unexpected in the daughter of a wealthy and prominent family.  As a child, Elizabeth Cady pushed to get a "boy's" education, and went on to the Troy Seminary which was the closest thing to a college education available to American women in the 1830s.  She met and married Henry Stanton, an anti-slavery activist, and though him was introduced to the abolitionist women who founded the women's suffrage movement.

Abolition also figures into why Stanton's modern fame may not match her early contributions to the women's movement.  Although the movement grew out of and remained closely linked to the abolition movement, the Civil War and Reconstruction led to a split.  Some believed that abolition and gaining the vote for former slaves should take priority, while others thought that women's suffrage could be accomplished simultaneously.  Stanton belonged to a third faction, one which prioritized votes for women and she made some frankly racist and anti-immigrant statements.  Even without those statements, I wonder whether the split in the suffrage movement delayed the amendment so long than only one woman who attended the 1848 Seneca Falls convention was still alive to vote legally.  Or did Stanton's (and others') relentless ideology prevent the movement from being pushed aside?  Ginzberg doesn't answer that, but she does provide a clear, if somewhat dryly written, picture of a complicated activist.

From Doon With Death

I'm a Bad Mystery Fan.  I've only read a few Sherlock Holmes stories.  The only book I've read by PD James was Death Comes to Pemberly.  And until a few weeks ago, I hadn't read the books Ruth Rendell wrote under her own name (although I've read most of the books she wrote as Barbara Vine).

I like to read series in order, so I bought  From Doon With Death at the Book Corner a few months ago, and it quickly floated to the top of the pile.  One evening, Ronald Parsons asked his neighbor, Detective Mike Burden, to find his wife.  Margaret Parsons had not come home from her daily errands, and the next morning her body is found in a wooded area.  Why would anyone want to kill a dowdy, downmarket woman with no family other than her husband?  The only clue is a series of love notes hidden in a trove of books Inspector Wexford finds in the Parsons's attic.  They're signed "Doon" and while Doon's identity was probably shocking in 1964, I figured out who the murder was pretty quickly.  Rendell rightly gets some credit for raising the mystery genre from a simple "whodunnit" to the more complex psychological study that merits reviews in serious periodicals, but the motives feel almost as dated as the linoleum in the Parsons's kitchen.  I enjoyed From Doon With Death but it's not up to the level of the Barbara Vine novels.

A Vote for Old "Technology"

I read hard-copy books.  I’m more net addict than Luddite, and I don’t have a strange affection for the smell of old paperbacks.  E-books just don’t appeal to me.  They only deliver the bare content, and that just flattens the experience too much for me.

Holding a screen feels different, hard and stiff, than holding a paperback.  I can’t use one tablet to prop up another, and if I want to check something from an earlier chapter, I can visually estimate where I need to go.  

Books just aren’t the stories they contain.  My copy of Remembered Death doesn’t just tell the story of Rosemary Barton’s murder.  I pick it up and I’m briefly a teenager sprawled on the sofa while babysitting the kids across the street, or a college student decompressing after a fluid mechanics exam, or maybe even the woman having a Panini in a now-closed coffee shop.    

My paperbacks don’t only trace my personal history, but have a history themselves.  I can look at a long running series, like Diane Mott Davidson’s Goldy Schultz mysteries, and see five distinct cover styles over the 17 volumes.  I glance at the shelf and see that Elizabeth George’s novels grew into doorstoppers over time, and my James Bond and Peter Wimsey novels (removed from my parents’ shelves) are non-traditional heirlooms.  Those series, and my motley collection of Agatha Christie, provide an index of post-1950 typefaces and cover art styles.

There’s also the communal experience.  When I see someone reading Hot Six on the train, I can ask if the carpet car has appeared yet, or if Bob the dog has attacked Stephanie’s groceries.  That doesn’t happen with an e-book – no one knows what you’re reading.  It’s also harder to share an e-book, and that’s a real loss.  I have lunch with my friend Michelle every few months and passing books we’ve recently read and enjoyed across the table is part of the fun.   I grew up watching my parents pass books back and forth; the first time my mom handed me a book after she finished it was a step towards adulthood.

Finally, without physical books there can’t be any used bookstores.  As much as I love a smooth, shiny cover and unbroken spine, there’s something adventurous about used bookstores. There’s the thrill of the hunt – maybe I’ll find an out of print book to complete a series, or an edition that was published as a movie tie in years ago with a now nearly forgotten star in a glamour shot on the cover.  The reading-list novel may have marginalia, class notes and personal commentary, and a thick history may have a magazine insert or store receipt once used as a bookmark and now forgotten.  With an e-book, there’s no mystery about who read that book before, or what else may have been going on in their lives.

I know these factors don’t outweigh the convenience of e-books for most people.  Maybe I’ll change my mind some day and no longer consider how heavy a book is before choosing it for my commute.  For now, though, I’m sticking with paper.