Irish Magic

False Mermaid [by] Erin Hart

New York; Scribner [2010]

978-1-4165-6376-1; $26.00

Nora Gavin’s sister Tríona Hallett was murdered, and suspicion has fallen on her husband, Peter Hallett, but not enough evidence has surfaced to make the accusations stick.  Nora left her home in St. Paul, MN to find peace in Ireland, but the long-sought peace has not come.  Leaving a budding romance in Ireland, she goes back home, planning to put the death of her sister behind her by solving the crime.  She contacts the detective who had worked on the case, Frank Corodva.

All that had been clear about Tríona’s death was that it had happened in a swampy place near the Mississippi River.  A new body, a woman named Natalie Russo, has been found at a place called Hidden Falls, another one of those swampy places.  Frank calls Nora in on the case, and shows her the evidence gathered with the body.  Nora contacts a friend of hers, a forensic botanist, to look at the plant matter, especially the seeds, found with both the latest body, and with Tríona.  The botanist especially notices the seeds of a plant called False Mermaid.

Nora also finds clues that she had not seen before – it’s almost a new case, as she tries to contact homeless people who may have been unwilling witnesses, but who have reasons, by their own lights, to lie.  Going to the place where Tríona’s body was found, a parking garage, she falls under the notice of security guard Truman Stark, who had stalked Tríona, and also begins to stalk Nora.  He also has secrets.

 Nora, who has been estranged from her family, primarily because, like everyone else, including her former fiancé, Mark Staunton, they did not believe Tríona’s husband could be guilty of such a heinous crime – he’s such a nice guy – comes home to her parents, discovering that her mother has come around to her way of thinking, her father, not so much yet.  Totally by accident, Nora finds a tape in her sister’s old room with her and her sister singing an old Irish song on it.  She takes it home to the carriage house she has rented, and puts it in her tape player.  Rather than hearing the song, she hears her sister’s voice – the second side of the tape.  Her sister tells her there are clues in a special hiding place, also at the parents’ house.  She takes these things to Frank.  They include newspaper clippings about other murders, bloody clothing, and notes.

Meanwhile, things are happening elsewhere.  Back in Ireland, the lover left behind, Cormac, has bought a plane ticket to come to the States to help Nora search for her sister’s killer, but he is unable to use it.  He visits his father, whom he has not seen since his childhood, and he finds out that his father has a new girlfriend, one of his colleagues from University.  Then his father has a stroke.  The girlfriend stays on with Cormac, for she is studying the lore of the selkies, the Celtic merpeople who are found when their sealskins are stolen. The father wakes briefly, and can’t remember her at all.

And closer to home, Frank is in crisis.  He dwells on a brief sexual fling that happened between him and Nora, which she doesn’t want to resume, his failures in the search for Tríona’s killer, and the death of his disabled twin brother.  He also struggles in a rather detrimental relationship with his partner.  But he is progressing, albeit slowly, on the Russo killing.

Tríona’s husband Peter, an architect, has moved to Seattle with his and Tríona’s daughter Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is a sea-lover, and is not happy that her father is taking her back to St. Paul.  Her father is preparing to marry Miranda Staunton, the sister of Nora’s former fiancé, and they are going to honeymoon in Ireland.  Nora and her parents worry about Elizabeth, and expect that she will be staying with the grandparents, while her father and his new wife are in Ireland.  But when the time comes, Elizabeth is virtually kidnapped to Ireland.

Elizabeth has been teased for reasons she doesn’t understand, but when she sneaks a peak at her dad’s computer, she discovers that her mother was murdered.  She knew nothing about this, except that her mother was dead – her Aunt Nora had explained that.  But now she knows her father might be guilty.  When they get to Dublin, she runs away, going to the address she had for her Aunt in Dublin.  The friends there phone Nora and she flies right out to get her.  She takes her to Cormac’s.

The many strands come together on the beach in County Donegal, where Elizabeth sees a seal quite like the one she saw off the coast in Seattle.  It would seem that the seal saves Elizabeth, at the expense of others. The selkie lore permeates the story, with songs, poetry, and quotations from Irish texts, making the story quite magical.  However, underneath it all, there is solid police procedure, as well as engaging characters, and a many-layered story.  Excellent, and highly recommended. ~ lss-r

______________________

Book from my Public Library.

Everyone's Always Running, Running, Running

Ran Away [by] Barbara Hambly

[Surry, Eng.] Severn House [2011]

978-0-7278-8082-6; $28.95

When Ben January fled to Paris, from New Orleans, seeking to escape its racism, he eked out a living as a musician while he studied medicine. He met, fell in love with, and married, Ayasha, a Berber dressmaker.  One night, in October of the year 1827, she entreats him to help out Shamira, a sick, pregnant concubine in the household of Hüseyin Pasha, a wealthy Turk. Ben is assisted by the Pasha’s first wife, Jamilla.  He discovers that Shamira has been poisoned, and it looks like the culprit is the lesser wife, Utba, who is also pregnant, but with a girl.

Shamira runs away, and January and Ayasha become involved in her plight, which centers on the enmity between Pasha and Sabid al-Muffazar, a former favorite of the Sultan, but now disgraced. When Ayasha is abducted and Shamira’s fate necessitates exchanging her infant son for her freedom, Ben comes to believe Pasha honorable and trustworthy.

Which is why, ten years later, back home in New Orleans, after Ayasha’s death from cholera, Ben disputes the findings that declare that Pasha, now underwriting failing banks in Louisiana, tossed two of his concubines, Noura and Karida, from an upper-story window of his house. Despite even eyewitness reports that Hüseyin Pasha himself did this, Ben knows this behavior is not in the heart of the man that he knows.  He visits Pasha, now imprisoned in the Cabildo, under the sharp eye of his friend, Abishag Shaw of the City Guard.  Ben also visits the Pasha’s home, where he reacquaints himself with the lady Jamilla and her servant Ra’eesa.  He feels like he has gone back in time, which causes him to dream of his first wife.  He then wakes up to his second wife, Rose, and feels ashamed.

But time is a-wasting and Ben must get to the bottom of the case soon.  It appears some things are not what they seem: the livery stable that backs up to the Pasha’s house is run by a man, who has not been seen for a while.  It turns out that he is dead and his children and slaves have buried him under the floor, and his eldest daughter is masquerading as his eldest son, in charge of the place.  The mysterious man named Smith, who came to see Hüseyin the night the women were thrown out the window, cannot be found.  Two preachers are feuding, but they seem to have secrets beyond that.  And someone is trying to discredit January by leaving stolen, but easily-recognizable goods, at his house.  The apothecary who lives near Pasha’s is poisoning the lady Jamilla with opium.  It’s found out that the two women Pasha supposedly killed were stealing from him.  And as background to it all, there are slaves moving through on the Underground Railway, which has a station right below January’s house.

With the assistance of his current wife Rose and his friend, ex-opium addict Hannibal the fiddler, Ben finally steps in to prove Pasha innocent of murder, stealing him right off the ship of the Sultan’s representative, who is a fake, and none other than Hüseyin Pasha’s archenemy, Sabid al-Muffazar. Matters are finally resolved, as they should be in a good mystery, even the feelings Ben has for his dead wife.  A really good entry in an historic mystery series full of good entries.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

____________________ 

Book borrowed from my public library.

A Precocious Childhood Romp

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie [by] Alan Bradley

[New York] Delacorte Press [2009]

978-0-385-34230-8; $23.00

Welcome to Buckshaw, the crumbling grand home of the de Luce family!  It is a halcyon summer in the fifth decade of the Twentieth Century.  Father is playing with his stamp collection in his study and 11-year-old Flavia, our heroine, is plotting revenge on her two older sisters from the inside of a closet, where they have locked her.

Flavia is quite a heroine, in the mold of great heroines of children’s books such as Jo March, Laura Ingalls, Sarah Carew, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Nancy Drew, and all of the girls who empowered us as children.  Flavia is a self-taught chemist, with a passion for poisons, and a well-stocked chemistry lab on the Third Floor, courtesy of an ancestor of like mind.  I have heard there are those who cannot believe there could ever be such a child, but I know a woman who, if she could have been, would have been, such a child. I had no trouble accepting Flavia as heroine.  If others need to willingly suspend their disbelief, so be it.  Flavia is fun!

Especially when compared to her sisters, Ophelia and Daphne, whom she calls Feely and Daffy, thus poking holes in their inflated views of themselves.  Feely plays the piano beautifully, and spends much time gazing at herself in reflective surfaces.  Daffy reads Bulwer-Lytton and authors of that ilk for fun. Flavia doesn’t conform to the outmoded standards of girlish gentility to which her sisters aspire – her model is her adventuress-mother, who disappeared mountaineering in Tibet and is presumed dead.  She envies her sisters, who knew their mother much longer than she did, and she is almost destroyed when they tell her that she was adopted, and not really related to the sainted Harriet, whom the whole family has placed on a pedestal and behind locked doors in time-stopped rooms.

A dead bird is found on the kitchen doorstep at Buckshaw, with a stamp stuck on its beak.  Colonel de Luce, a dedicated philatelist, reacts violently, then takes the stamp, asking the cook to get rid of the bird.  This all happens in Flavia’s presence.  Later that night, she hears a man talking to her father in his study – they seem to be arguing.  The estate gardener, Dogger, who once saved the Colonel’s life during the war, and whom the Colonel cares for now as he suffers from post-traumatic stress from being a P.O.W., shoos Flavia back to bed.

The next morning, Flavia discovers the strange visitor dead in the garden.  Actually, he is in the act of dying, which Flavia watches with curiosity – a new life experience to be cataloged in her journal.  Then she calls Dogger, and then the Police. Inspector Hewitt comes with his assistants to see into the situation, and the Inspector learns that Flavia is quite a fund of information, both a help and an impediment.

The Police eventually arrest the Colonel.  The older sisters can do nothing but weep and wail at home, but Flavia goes to visit her father in jail.  There the unraveling of history begins, as the Colonel tells of his misspent youth in the Magic Circle at Greyminster, his boarding school nearby, which culminated in the death of a teacher, and the theft of a rare stamp.  It is up to Flavia to ferret out the killer.  She spends hours on her trusty old bicycle “Gladys,” visiting the public library, the school, and those beyond her father, who might have knowledge of the situation. She has an amazing vocabulary, as might be expected, and she has an uncanny read on human nature.  She is also naïve and sheltered, with the touching innocence of childhood. Perhaps because she’s never been in an institutional situation, such as school, she is utterly unfettered and fearless.  Her investigations place her in serious jeopardy on more than one occasion, but we never doubt that she’ll be the one to expose the culprit and reveal the whole story.

And so she does, putting her world back into the order that she understands as ordinary.  It is the world of classic children’s stories, where fathers are distant, mothers are dead, and little girls may show professional police how to do their work.  It is the world that the child in all of us adults needs to revisit once-in-a-while, and I, for one, enjoyed cycling the rural British countryside with Flavia, and look forward to doing it again soon.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

______________

This book is mine.

Fishing in a Pool of Perps

Dead Tease [by] Victoria Houston

[Blue Ash, OH] Tyrus Books [2012]

978-1-4405-3312-9; $24.95

Dead Tease is the 12^th book in a great series by Victoria Houston, which you may not have heard of, until now.  Her mysteries take place in the small Wisconsin town of Loon Lake, and are all named for fishing lures.  The series “stars” are Doc, Dr. Paul Osborne, a retired dentist and the forensic odontologist who helps the police department as Assistant Coroner, in the absence of the perpetually drunk Coroner, brother-in-law of the mayor, and Lew, Police Chief Lewellyn Ferris.  Both are dedicated fisher folk, and an “item” about town.

The very attractive 26-year-old graphics designer at the new clinic, Jen Williams, is knifed on the heart when she stops at her mailbox on her way home from work.  She is one of three women intimately familiar with John McNeill, the CEO of the clinic.  The other two women are his wife, Leigh, who believes someone is stalking her, and the strikingly lovely physician, Dr. Cynthia Daniels.  The suspicion falls about equally on the two.

Dr. Daniels has a definitely nasty side, which she show to Lew and Doc when she is questioned – she has very little nice to say about any of her colleagues, especially the dead designer.  Since she grew up in town, where Doc has lived all of his life, he remembers her as a teen – not a happy memory, which is confirmed by his grown daughter, who had been a victim of Cynthia when in school.  Her mother is also a “piece of work” in the same vein.

A forensics tech comes from the State Lab in Wausau to take charge of things, and he asks for Ray Pradt, a fishing guide who wears a dead trout on his head, but is an amazing tracker, to help him.  They find clues, but nothing substantial enough to make an arrest.  Doc, who can’t tell when his granddaughter is withholding information, has a pretty good sense of when the adults in the case are lying – and they’re all lying.

Meanwhile, Lew gets a phone call that there has been a break-in at the McNeill house.  Broken glass yields a blood sample, and there is a nice, clear footprint on the top of the basement washer, right under the broken window.  Someone has been in their house – maybe Leigh McNeill isn’t crazy after all.  Ray puts up the cameras he uses in the fall to track deer, and they ultimately produce images of a person-sized silhouette lurking outside the house.  There is a stalker at the house!

Then the mayor, an expert in nepotism (see above), suggests strongly to Lew that she should retire, since he wants his son to take over the police department.  Lew hopes that a speedy and successful end to this investigation will save her job.

The team has put in long hours, and they are all exhausted.  But Ray, ever looking for another scheme to make money, wants them to try fishing from a kayak.  The guy who has recruited Ray for this work suggests a nearby river, which Ray has never tried – nor have the others, because they fish the lake, rather than the rivers.  It ends up being too much for these beginning kayakers, who are almost swept away, but gives them the opening they need to break the case.

It’s always a treat to spend time with Doc and Lew at Loon Lake.  A most readable and enjoyable cozy police procedural in a long line, which this reviewer hopes gets longer and longer.  I wonder how many lure names there are…

Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

_______________________________

Book borrowed from my public library.

A Lesson in Forensics



The Bone Collector [by] Jeffrey Deaver

[New York; New American Library, 1998]

0-451-18845-4; $6.99

Lincoln Rhyme has become a classic thriller hero, and this book is one of the quintessential novels in this genre.  It is the first of the series, and doesn’t pull any punches.  It is shocking, brutal, and extremely absorbing – a real page-turner.

Lincoln Rhyme, the former head of NYPD Forensics, was the nation’s foremost criminologist – a man who could work a crime scene, reading the clues left behind, and come up with a perfect profile of the killer.  But a horrendous accident – a building fell on him in the line of duty – has made him a quadriplegic, a man who can only move his left ring finger.  He is now a great mind, strapped to his bed, mulish and sarcastic, hiding from a life he no longer wants to live.

But his attention is drawn to a new crime, just committed. His old partner comes calling with a file, which he wants Rhyme to take a look at and explain to him. A corpse is found buried alongside a virtually deserted West Side railroad track, its bloody hand rising from the dirt. It belonged to a man who got into a cab at the airport and never got out. Reluctantly, Lincoln Rhyme abandons retirement to track down a clever killer.

He is also attracted to the gutsy patrol officer who secures the crime scene by stopping traffic not only on the two adjacent, and well-travelled streets, but also on the Amtrak line that goes past the body.

Amelia Sachs has been walking a beat, which plays havoc with her arthritis, but she is looking forward to a new position with the NYPD’s Publicity Department, when she is hijacked by Rhyme for his team.  Her chutzpah reminds him of himself, and he begins to train her to be his eyes, ears, hands and legs – he teaches her to work the scene of the crime.

The victim of this first heinous crime had a colleague, a woman, who had gotten into the cab at the airport with him.  She is still missing, although her diamond ring is on the first victim’s finger.  Rhyme directs Amelia to find not only the physical evidence left at the crime scene by a very careful criminal, but also the specific and ingenious clues he has left behind to help them find his next victim — if Rhyme can decipher them in time.

The woman is found, but they are too late – she is dead, scalded by the steam sent back through the system by the City of New York, after work has been done on the pipes.  Clues are left to guide Amelia and Rhyme and their team of forensic technicians, detectives, and FBI agents.  A German tourist, an older man, and a mother and daughter also become victims of the killer.  As they amass clues about him, they discover that he is following a pattern that is based on crimes of a century before.

The killer is obsessed with the past, and has called a couple of the victims by names which are not theirs.  His safe house is a brownstone-and-marble Federal-style building.  He seems to specialize in basements and tunnels in the old parts of the city.  By putting together a chart of things they know about him, they discover more and more about the person they call the Bone Collector.  Still, when the villain is finally unmasked, it is a shock.  There are incredible twists and turns in this story, and both Sachs and Rhyme are put in incredible danger before the Collector is put out of business.

In the process, Rhyme finds that he still loves the exacting work that he used to love more than anything else.  He has been tempted by the thoughts of suicide, but turned from that by the actions of his team, and especially his new partner.  There is still a savory quality to life that he has found lacking up until now, but now Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs will work together again to solve the forensic puzzles that come their way – at least 9 more books to date.

This is a gripping tale, told by an expert storyteller, complete with a glossary of forensic vocabulary (from the 4^th edition of Rhymes’ book) so that you won’t get lost. Highly recommended, but not for the squeamish. ~ lss-r

_____________________________________________________

This book belongs to my husband, who graciously let me read it.

Ill Winds Blow No Good



Desert Wind [by] Betty Webb

[Scottsdale, AZ] Poisoned Pen Press [2012]

978-1-59058-979-3; $24.95

Lena Jones goes to work at Desert Investigations, the P.I. firm she has built with her Pima Indian partner, Jimmy Sisiwan, in Scottsdale, AZ, only to find that Jimmy isn’t there, and nobody is telling her where he is, or why he’s gone there.  Although Lena isn’t as good searching the internet as Jimmy is, her minimal skills root out the fact that Jimmy’s adopted brother, Ted Olmstead, has been arrested in the shooting death of Ike Donohue in the remote northern Arizona town of Walapai Flats.  Then, she discovers that Jimmy has also been arrested.  Lena packs up her Trailblazer and heads on out.

She discovers that the whole town is up-in-arms.  Some are upset about the opening of a new uranium mine, just 10 miles from the Grand Canyon, to be run by a man who has already severely injured one Indian tribe with his negligent practices at another uranium mine on the Navajo Reservation.  In fact, Ted Olmstead’s wife, the head of Victims of Uranium Mining (V.U.M.) has already been mysteriously killed some months before for her political activism against the mine.  Curiously enough, the P.R. director for the mine is the man who has been killed.  There are folks who think that Donohue’s death was mighty well deserved. Others are angry, because they see the mine as a source of badly-needed jobs and a boost to the economy of the area, which is built primarily on tourism – after all, movies were made there, a cash cow they don’t want to see run away because of the shootings, rallies, and other negative things happening in town.

Jimmy and his proud adopted family are not happy that Lena has come to help, but they accept her help, because there doesn’t seem to be another way.   She meets most of the important people in town and at the rich enclave that has been built up around an artificial oasis by developers and others in Donohue’s social set.  She makes friends with Donohue’s widow and with an Eastern journalist.  She also interviews members of Jimmy’s family and other natives of the area.  She has a run-in with a deputy sheriff, whom she suspects of beating his wife.  Lena calls him “Deputy Smiley Face.

Soon it looks like Lena’s questions are hitting close to someone, because someone takes shots at her when she is out in the desert.  And shots ring out for others, too.  The new owner-manager of the Mine is killed, as is Deputy Smiley Face.  But the linchpin that seems to hold everything together, and who may have the answers that Lena seeks, is old Gabe Boone, a wrangler who worked on the 1954 filming of one of John Wayne’s worst movies, “The Conqueror,” in which the Duke played Genghis Khan.  If she can penetrate his defenses, she may find out the tragic secret that everyone in Walapai Flats is unwilling to talk about.

Betty Webb has a background as a journalist, and her Desert Series opens her readers’ eyes to many secrets that the desert holds.  The quotation that opens this book is from William Faulkner:  “The past is never dead.  It is not even past.”  This proves to be quite true, as she delves into the sad stories of the people of the region, both famous and not, both fictional and real.  Historical notes and a bibliography are appended.

But this is not just a book with an ax to grind.  It is also a very deep story of love and relationships, heroism in small ways, and the ways that attitudes like “the only people there are farmers and Indians” can betray humanity both in the past and in the years to come.  The descriptions of the beauty of the desert and the ravages of its “civilizing” are wonderful, the plotting is superb (the criminal is a big surprise), and the characters, even the minor ones are top notch.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

_______________

This book is mine.

The Death of a Deserving Rat

Death in a Scarlet Coat [by] David Dickinson

London; Constable [2011]

978-1-56947-912-4; $25.00

The Master of the Hunt, the Fifteenth Earl of Candlesby, comes to lead his riders once again.  But he is late – they have been waiting in the cold for a long time.  And, when he arrives, wrapped in blankets across his horse, he is dead.  Only a corner of his scarlet coat is visible. Three men see his body.  Then one dies, one vanishes, with his whole family, and only one man is left who knows how he died.

Meanwhile, Lord Francis Powerscourt and his wife have been stranded in Candlesby, due to a car accident.  Lord Francis meets the one man left, Dr. Theodore Miller, fatally-ill, and conscience-stricken, who confesses to the detective that he had signed a death certificate that the Fifteenth Earl died of natural causes, which he did not.  The Earl’s sons pressured him into this, and he is feeling guilty.  The head of the earl has suffered horrific injuries, which  –  when they finally see it, point to foul play. 

There is no shortage of possible suspects.  Powerscourt, with the help of his assistant, uncovers a tangled web of jealousy, revenge, and hatred.  The Fifteenth Earl has left a trail of dueling, theft, murder, and adultery across the county of Lincolnshire.  The sons are just as dangerous and dissolute as their father.  The crumbling estate he left behind is exemplary of the family he founded.

This is a lovely historical whodunit, taking place in 1909.  The author is very good at describing the people, the scenery, food and drink, and other aspects of the period.  He includes historical persons as background characters, adding to the verisimilitude of the story –   there is quite a political background to the story, as well as the personal attributes of the family at its center.  Characterization is very strong, and the reasons for the death of the Earl, as well as the subsequent deaths, are well established within the characters who caused them.  The final deadly chase is quite exciting, proving that historical mysteries do not have to be deadly dull!

I found this mystery, the first I’d read by this author, to be well-plotted and well worth reading.  I look forward to his next one, which has just come out: Death at the Jesus Hospital.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

___________________

This book is mine.



“Gone West” really does mean “Dead”

Gone West [by] Carola Dunn

New York; Minotaur [2011]

978-0-312-67548-6

Daisy Dalrymple has been solving crimes even before she married a Detective Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard, and in this case, she even beat her husband to the crime scene.  She has braved the wilds of Derbyshire at the behest of her old school friend Sybil.  For six or seven years, Sybil has made her home at the country estate of Humphrey Birtwhistle, her employer.  She has concerns about his health, for he is not getting any better after a bout with pneumonia.  She fears that someone is poisoning him, and she wants Daisy to check it out.

Humphrey ran away from home as a young man, finding nothing about his father’s sheep farm to keep himself occupied.  He finds great joy in the American West, where he also marries former school teacher, Ruby.  When his father dies, he returns, bride in tow, to the ancestral home, much to the disgruntlement of his brother and sister, to take up a third of the inheritance.  He settles down to write Westerns under a pseudonym.  His brother Norman runs the farm, which supplies a large part of the groceries for the family, sister Lorna and wife Ruby share the cooking and housekeeping with two girls from one of the tenant farms, and Herbert brings in most of the money with thrice-yearly books.  Sybil has been typing the manuscripts for him until he fell ill.

During his illness, Sybil’s job took on more importance.  She began to rewrite some of the dialogue and improve on other parts of the stories.  Using Birtwhistle’s storylines, she has actually been writing the novels that are published under the name Eli Hawke.  The sales increased, as did the money for the writer and his so-called assistant.  Not everyone knows that Sybil is responsible, and she worries that it will come out.  She also worries that someone is trying to keep Humphrey ill, so that she will continue to ghostwrite, thus making more money for all of them to spend.

When Daisy gets there, it is as if there were a great houseparty underway.  Not only are the two brothers, the sister, the wife, and the secretary living there, but also the son, Simon, who has aspirations of being a writer – literary, not popular fiction, a young lady, Myra, with ties to the family, and the spirit of the Twenties, gadding about like a social butterfly.  Simon and Myra are very good at spending Humphrey’s hard-earned cash.  Beautiful Myra has attracted a snobbish suitor, Walter Ilkton, who is crazy about her, following her around like a besotted puppy, and an Irish playwright named Neil Carey, who also finds himself attracted to her, although he is actually Simon’s friend.  Tangentially attached to the family is Humphrey’s doctor, who is smitten with Sybil.  Daisy joins the family at dinner, and finds herself quite welcome by most but Norman and Lorna are taciturn, with an undercurrent of anger and martyrdom.  Humphrey is delighted with her, and gets rather overworked, which causes him to decline somewhat and take to his bed again.

The second day Daisy is there, she joins most of them in a visit to the local village, which also has a spa, where an elderly relation of Ilkton’s is a resident.  She shops with Myra, while Ruby and Lorna do some shopping for the household.  Simon grabs a beer at the pub, and Neil takes Myra for a motorcycle ride.  Then they all return to the house for tea and then dinner.  After dinner, Humphrey goes to bed, and a few minutes later his wife returns with the news that he has collapsed and died.  The weather outside is extremely foggy, causing everyone to be marooned at the home.  The police are called, and the locals call for D.C.I. Alec Fletcher, Daisy’s husband.  He is not happy!

But this is standard.  Alec is never happy when Daisy’s involved, but he does ask her to remember all the actions of the various people, who are now suspects, and to take notes when he interviews said suspects.  With the vast pool of suspects, they have their work cut out for them, but, in the end, they prevail and solve the crimes.

The rich characterizations, locations, and descriptions really do evoke England between the wars, and it’s always fun to visit Daisy and her husband.  Even though this is not as strong as others in the series, it’s still a worthwhile read.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

______________________________

This book is from my Public Library. 



Murder and Rape in Sacramento

Blaize of Glory [by] Louise Crawford                                                         Unity, ME; Five Star [2001]                                                                       0-7862-3013-4

Ex-PI-turned-psychologist Blaize McCue is forced to face painful memories when former high school friend Sunny Wright returns to town. Sunny has been receiving threatening notes from a man who calls himself "Mac the Knife." When they were 16, Sunny and Blaize were raped by a man they called ‘Mac the Knife.” He's apparently back in town and wants to finish what he started.   Blaize doesn’t want to deal with those memories, so she fobs her school friend off on her former employer (and boyfriend) Ross, who provides a bodyguard.

Blaize’s friend and current employer, Maria, confesses to her that the girl she has brought to her for counseling is actually her daughter, the product of a teen seduction by her father’s prize student, who is now a State Assemblyman, with a family and a campaign to run.  Blaize relives her own rape through Connie Donovan’s rape story.  The next day Maria calls Blaize to tell her Connie’s gone missing, and would Blaize look for her?  Blaize’s comment that she’s no longer a PI falls on deaf ears.

When Connie’s body is found, brutally murdered, Blaize swears to bring her killer to justice.  Then her school friend Sunny is likewise murdered and Blaize senses that “Mac the Knife,” her own worse nightmare, is back in town, and that she will be next on his list.  The pace picks up when she begins to get threatening notes, like Sunny, and whispering phone calls, even at her new boyfriend’s house.

Blaize tries to search for clues, but is ineffectual until a friend on the force brings her into contact with the devastatingly attractive (and patient) Detective Stephanos Zoloski, who helps her overcome her insecurities as he becomes her new lover.  Together and separately they pursue clues and interview suspects, traveling across the City of Sacramento and down the State of California.

Twice Blaize comes in contact with the killer, with Zoloski bringing the Cavalry in just in time to save the day.  Effortless prose, good storytelling, a solid plot line, and steamy romance all contribute to a very satisfying mystery.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

_________________________

Book is from my Public Library.

E-X-T-E-R-M-I-N-A-T-O-R!!!!

Pest Control [by] Bill Fitzhugh

[New York] Avon Books [1996]

0-380-78868-3; $7.50

Bob Dillon just can’t get a break.  A down-on-his-luck exterminator, all he wants is his own shiny new truck with a big fiberglass bug on top, and success with his radically-new, environmentally-friendly pest-killing technique – deadly strains of cross-bred insects, the arch-enemies of the all-too-prevalent cockroach.

As the story opens, Bob has quit his job with his bug-killing employer, who is prone to using great quantities of poisons.  He is behind in his rent, and his landlord is threatening to throw him out.  Finally, as his first job on his own fails, his wife leaves him, going to stay with her mother, taking their daughter with her.

Bob, wearing a hat that says “Exterminator,” has a picture taken of himself, and puts together a flyer with this picture on it.  The flyer says:

PROFESSIONAL EXTERMINATOR

FIFTEEN YEARS FIELD EXPERIENCE

GONE PRIVATE WITH LETHAL NEW

CONCEPT!  NO PEST LEFT ALIVE!

Unfortunately, one of these flyers falls into the hands of Marcel, a man in Paris looking for a contract killer to handle a million-dollar job.  Suddenly, the unwitting bug-killer from Queens enters the world of assassins-for-hire.  Bob’s target is cooperative enough to go off and die all by himself, and Bob’s credit as the rubber-out of inconvenient people soars.  The word is out all over the world, and Bob is credited with more assassinations.  Soon the greatest assassins in the world are hunting for him!  And they still don’t know that his specialty is bugs!

Bob’s wife and daughter return, just as Bob, and his new friend Klaus, who had originally come to kill him, but changes his mind, are running from the other top assassins in the world:  a homicidal transvestite dwarf; an incredibly sexy and exotic femme fatale, who leaves a white chocolate truffle as a calling card;  a cowboy who’s a butchering maniac; a grandfatherly Chinese man with killer throwing stars; a bloodthirsty Nigerian;  as well as other gun-wielding bad guys, street punks with no clue, cabbies packing serious heat, and shadowy CIA agents with interesting agendas.  The City of New York stars in one of its grittiest roles, even becoming a weapon for Bob and Klaus.

In the end, Bob’s optimism carries him through, the landlord gets his appropriate comeuppance, Klaus becomes a real asset, and he rides off into the sunset with the Dillon family, to a new life.  This is a wonderful comedic romp, with a real heart at its center.  The mystery – to me, anyway, is why this hilarious adventure tale, full of great characters, incredible scenes (How can Bob be so brilliant?  How can the bad guys be so dumb?  How will they get away now?  Who will do what to whom next?), which was written first as a screenplay, was never made into a movie!   This is not a new book, but it has the kind of timelessness that all great comedies have.  Many people have said that they read this book over and over, and they still laugh.  My husband is such a person, and he has been after me to read it for a long time.  If you need a good laugh, I recommend picking this book up.  It’s truly a gem.        ~ lss-r

__________________________________

My husband graciously let me read his copy!

__________________________________