Just One Evil Act

Warning - potential spoiler

When an author I've loved disappoints me, I put them on probation.  I read a book or two (or more - Mary Higgins Clark teased me for nearly a decade with one good book out of every three), and if the series doesn't improve, I stop reading and donate my collection to the Free Library of Philadelphia. Some authors I give a little more leeway, like Elizabeth George.  Playing for the Ashes and For the Sake of Elena were so good that I gave her an extra book to redeem herself, and with Careless in Red, she showed that she deserved it.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.