Appointment With Death

 You do see, don't you, that she has to be killed?

Those words drift though Hercule Poirot's window as he's traveling in the Middle East. We (and he) don't know this, but the words were part of a conversation between Raymond and Carol Boynton and aimed at their stepmother. Mrs. Boynton the second wife of a rich man, and has completely cowed her three stepchildren and made her daughter Genevra appear to be mentally unstable. The only person who appears able to stand up to her is daughter-in-law, Lennox's wife Nadine. We first see Mrs. Boynton through the eyes of two doctors, newly qualified Sarah King and prominent psychologist Dr. Gerard, and as they analyze the family we know Mrs. Boynton will not live past page 75 and that everyone around her will have a different motive for killing her. This is Agatha Christie, though, and she's got some surprises up her sleeve. The murderer is *not* one of the obvious subjects, but there are just enough clues scattered across the narrative so that the solution doesn't come across as a cheat. Christie even supplies us with a happy ending.

Dead Souls

 Dead Souls is dark, even for Ian Rankin, with several plots which connect in unexpected ways. It begins with a policeman's suicide and quickly moves on to Rebus's botched attempt to catch someone who's been poisoning animals at the zoo. Botched because Rebus sees a released sex offender and chases after him. His unauthorized investigation into the parolee leads him to an old case involving sexual abuse at a reformatory, which may or may not involve a murderer returned from Montana where he's been released on a technicality. And in his spare time, Rebus is investigating the disappearance of his high school girlfriend's 20-something son and worrying about his daughter, still unable to walk after the accident in The Hanging Garden. It's a lot, and as usual Rankin doesn't give anyone an unqualified happy ending, but it's also interesting, believable, and well written. Just not something to read in January when we need a bit of a lift.

The Christmas Wassail

 It's Christmas 1483 and people are beginning to wonder where Richard's nephews are. Roger the Chapman, occasional investigator for the King tries to ignore the rumors (and the implications that he's in the King's service). Sedley's last novel returns Roger to non political matters when he comes across the corpse of a thoroughly unpleasant man who happens to be both the head of a squabbling family and one of Bristol's leaders. When another prominent man dies violently, Roger takes up the task of solving they mystery, all while celebrating the holiday and taking his children to see the visiting troupe of mummers who have a secret past. The novel ends with Roger leaving on another trip to sell his wares, and with me ready to re-read his first adventure because I'm going to miss him.

Lady Mary

 I've enjoyed the first two YA historical novels I've read from Lucy Worsley, so Lady Mary was a bit of a letdown. Using a real and well known person rather than a witness to history, Worsley is constrained by the facts of Mary Tudor's adolescence. Watching her parents marriage dissolve and spending years in increasingly desperate isolation just isn't as dramatic as being companion to a volatile Princess Victoria or seeing your friend Catherine become Henry VIII's fifth wife. Like all of Worsley's books it's entertaining, but nothing special. 

A Piece of Justice

 There's a bit of uncanny valley reading books written during my early adulthood. The 1990s are far enough back now that a new book set there would technically be a historical, and I can't help placing myself in the context of the book. Jill Paton Walsh's second mystery, A Piece of Justice was published in 1995, otherwise known as the Time Before Cell Phones, and Imogen Quy, nurse for St. Agatha's College, Cambridge, might have continued her medical studies rather than giving them up for her former fiance if she's been born in the late 60s instead of the mid 50s. Imogen rents rooms in the house she inherited from her parents and one of her boarders takes on the biography of a deceased Cambridge mathematician. One researcher has died and another disappeared and it appears that the widow is behind the crimes. Imogen solves the mystery with a bit of coincidence, a quilt, and a trip to Wales. It's a quick read (under 200 pages), and a good way to spend a cozy afternoon. 

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

 I spent my early years in the Catholic wing of the Religious Left, and when my first grade school closed ended up in the rising Religious Right so I've been less surprised by some of the religious/political developments of the last three decades than most people of my political persuasion. I don't understand it - to me, the Religious Right views religion as based in hate rather than love - but it rarely surprises me. Even when they chose a promiscuous, foul-mouthed, bullying, avaricious con-man who bragged about sexual assault as their political savior, something in the back of my mind said, "Yeah, I get it."

Kristen Kobes DuMez offers a more inside view of this development in American religious practices. As Kevin Kruse did in One Nation, Under God she finds the roots of the movement in the backlash to integration. Her book focuses more on the causes than the results, going back to the early Twentieth Century to show revivalists (like those parodied by Sinclair Lewis) preached muscular Christianity and the condescending protectiveness it brought. From there, Christian sects gravitated towards power rather than mercy, convincing themselves that God wants strength and retribution. They began to follow preachers rather than the actual bible, leading to a surprising ignorance of scripture, and spread their views into all walks of life, particularly the military. DuMez follows different threads in each chapter - home schooling, anti-feminism, fear of societal change, love of violence - but doesn't quite tie everything together. I think that's the point, though. She's telling the origin story of a movement we already know.

Skeleton Keys

 Sometimes my "Hey, that looks interesting" method of book selection misfires. I bought Skeleton Keys thinking it would be anatomical, but instead it was anthropological. Written by a paleontologist, it provides a rough history of the human skeleton and tales of how anthropology has been misused. Not bad, but not what I expected and far from memorable.

Here, Right Matters

 I usually don't read recent or as-it-happened political books (I made an exception for A Higher Ground because James Comey was my Trial Advocacy professor), but reserved Here, Right Matters after hearing  an interview with Alexander Vindman. I remember listening to his testimony and seeing the pictures of him entering the hearing room with his identical twin Eugene, also a Lt. Colonel, in their dress uniforms. He came across as honest and earnest, a professional who was doing his job and doing what he believed was right for his country. 

As a writer, he's engaging and surprisingly funny in the book he wisely made more of a memoir than a political tome. Born in the USSR, his and Eugene's earliest memories are of an abusive foster home where they lived while their mother was in hospice care, and within two years they, along with their father (an engineer), older brother, and maternal grandmother, were refugees in Brooklyn. I don't feel like he exactly glossed over how hard life must have been for his family, but he doesn't dwell on it. He mentions his father's initial job as a manual laborer while he studied for the Civil Service exam and the long days his father worked once he was hired by the water department, but he focuses on the mischief he and Eugene got into as the black sheep of the extended family - daredevils who were intelligent but didn't apply themselves to what didn't interest them and who fed off each others's schemes and energy. He initially joined ROTC to emulate his older brother (Leonid Vindman served in the Army Reserves), but found his passion while serving, first in Korea, then in Afghanistan (where he earned a Purple Heart), and eventually using his language skills as a member of the National Security Council. 

There, in a job usually taken by someone of much higher rank, he sat in on a routine phone call between Donald Trump and the recently elected president of Ukraine. When Trump asked for a "favor," Vindman reported this to the NSC's ethics officer (coincidentally his twin) and through the proper channels. From that point on, he started to experience professional slights, apparently orchestrated from the highest echelons and aided by an office mate with whom he had a mutual dislike and distrust. We know the public side of this story, so other than pointing out that his mid-level position allowed him to avoid recognition until shortly before his hearing, he focuses on how this affected him and his family. His father, like many Russian emigres, was a strong Trump supporter and his daughter, while not old enough to understand the politics was old enough to be affected by the upheaval. Tacitly admitting that his former boss, Dr. Fiona Hill, was right in considering him a bit naive when it comes to politics, he relies on his wife Rachel and his twin (whom he calls his inner voice) to help him realize that his best course is to retire from the Army. Now a free agent (in his words), he's forging a path to continue his service as a civilian.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

 I'm writing this as the Senate is considering a pair of infrastructure bills, one of which focuses on "human infrastructure" - child care, elder care, education, and health benefits. Those vital but intangible benefits have been cut underfunded at least since Ronald Reagan used the budget and tax code as a way to convince the middle and working class that "those people" are getting more than they deserve. That philosophy was supposed to bring an economic windfall that would help everyone, but instead it hollowed out the middle class while enriching the already wealthy. 

Heather McGhee argues in The Sum of Us that it's not tax cuts and lean budgets that "raise all boats" but investment in human infrastructure. The former head of Demos, she begins by covering much of the same ground as Richard Rotstein did in The Color of Law. White families have more wealth, even when you adjust for income, because of the discriminatory housing policies and practices of the mid-20th Century. She traces the resistance to social programs which help everyone to the dismantling of pools and parks when they were required to desegregate in the 1950s and 60s. The next step was to underfunding schools, particularly as cities became less white and white students moved to private schools. Along the way, blatant racism (claiming that non-whites are inherently inferior) was replaced with cultural blame ("they" don't respect education or family or hard work, or whatever excuse seems believable).

McGhee explains how some of the largest current social problems hit the African American community first. Even adjusting for income, non-white students carry considerably more debt than white students, so it became unmanageable a decade before our current crisis - and cuts to higher education and the switch from grants to loans accelerated this process. The housing crash hit everyone - but the history of redlining and the practice (which doesn't fall directly under any laws or regulations) of selling sub-prime rates to non-whites whose credit qualified them for regular loans meant those communities had less equity and a smaller margin for error. But politicians feel they have to dial back any program to ameliorate these problems because "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" constituents won't stand for them. Like my former co-worker who didn't want the state to help Philadelphia's public schools because it might cut the advantage his sons got from living in Delaware County, even if something doesn't harm them (or even helps them), too many people afraid that helping the community as a whole will end up hurting them.

I know this sounds depressing, but The Sum of Us is an optimistic book. McGhee's final chapter describes a trip to Lewiston, Maine. It's the second largest city in the oldest, whitest, and one of the poorest states. Like West Virginia (where Joe Manchin is currently harming his constituents at their request) and post-COVID Alabama they record more deaths than births. Parts of Lewiston, though are thriving thanks to 20 years of immigration, mostly from Africa. McGee shows us a place where refugees have found a new life, and the old residents have benefited as well. An older woman who regretted losing her French Canadian roots reclaimed her language with Francophone African immigrants, a chance meeting between a parolee and a Muslim woman brining halal food to the prison started a friendship and brought him into social activism. The seemingly unlikely coalitions formed in Lewiston worked to expand Medicaid by ballot measure (then Governor Paul LePage rejected expansion multiple times using racial scare terms, even though the number of Mainers who live in poverty is twice the number of non-white resident), and provide hope going forward. These coalitions shouldn't be rare, because studies show that integrated groups solve problems more quickly and creatively. If we only realized that we all benefit when we work together.