Original Skin, by David Mark

9780399158650
blue rider press/Penguin, 2013
427 pp

(my copy from the publisher -- thank you!)

[reposted at the crime segments page of my reading journal ]

Last November when I read David Mark's crime fiction book called  The Dark Winter , I was surprised at how very good it was for a first novel. Now, with  Original Skin, Mark has kicked things up a few notches to create an even better second series installment, set in the Hull, West Yorkshire area of England.

 His protagonist, Aector McAvoy, is a  member of the specialized squad known as the Serious and Organized Crime Unit, under the direction of McAvoy's boss Trish Pharaoh.  The unit is currently under fire from the Humberside Police Authority because of the rise of violent crime statistics, not helped much by the crimes of a gang viciously attacking and torturing smaller growers as a means of taking over their farms and intimidating them. After doing his best to convince the Police Authority committee members that the unit is working hard to solve the case, McAvoy decompresses by  taking a walk along the towpath by the Humber, where a) he sees two people talking that may be committee members, and b) in the water among the litter of supermarket carts, bottles, mattress springs etc., he finds a cell phone and picks it up. Curious, he picks it up, thinking he might be able to fix it.  What he finds on the phone starts another investigation rolling, one that leads to a very clever and rather nasty killer whose first crime, as it turns out,  was written off as a suicide. If what I've written so far doesn't spark your interest (although for serious crime readers it should whet some measure of curiosity), and you're more of a Fifty Shades of Gray type person, you can add  into the mix a young woman with a unique tattoo who belongs to the world of swinging sex parties, sexual submission  and sex for thrills with people she's only met online. 

Keeping the action up over 427 pages in any novel of crime fiction is a tough job, but the author does not disappoint.   With his excellent characterizations, a well-plotted and rather twisty core murder mystery and his look at how the local area is primed for "high crime --  for example, the decline of local industry, lack of investment, lack of "impetus on education," and the geographical "sense of isolation,"  -- all working together harmoniously, the 400+ pages fly by in no time.  My own small niggle here is the amount of time spent with Aector's home life, but that's a personal issue, because I'm more about the crime, less about crying babies keeping both parents awake over several nights. It's all about character development, but I'm an impatient reader.

 While McAvoy is a gentle giant of a policeman and a family man, the author takes him down some very dark paths in this book, so I'd recommend it to fans of more darkly-oriented police procedurals.  While cozy readers may find this book a bit overwhelming, readers who enjoy more serious crime will definitely be glued.  Do not, however, start the series with this novel, but instead with Dark Winter, as things in Original Skin build from the first book.  Overall -- much better than the first book and an intriguing read any serious crime reader will want to read. 

Third Girl, by Agatha Christie

0002318075

HarperCollins, 2002

originally published 1966

Hercule Poirot is now in his 35th adventure; after this one, he has only three more contemporary appearances -- in Hallow'een Party, Elephants Can Remember, and Curtain.

Third Girl is set smack in the mid-sixties.  It's a time when men are wearing such clothes as  "elaborate velvet waistcoat[s], skin-tight pants," and wearing their hair long in "rich curls of chestnut," while women were wearing

"the clothes of their generation: black high leather boots, white open-work stockings of doubtful cleanliness, a skimpy skirt and a long and sloppy pullover of heavy wool".

The Beatles proclaim in 1966 that they're more popular than Jesus. The younger generation is experimenting with drugs and getting high. Girls aren't staying at home much after leaving school, going off to the cities to find jobs and live in apartments, often doubling up or adding a "third" girl to help with the rent.  It is just such a "third girl," Norma Restarick, who early one morning finds herself with Hercule Poirot, to tell him that she might have committed a murder, but then proclaims Poirot too old, and disappears. He's obviously intrigued, and finds out the girl's identity only when Ariadne Oliver, the mystery novelist, begins discussing a party she'd been to earlier where she'd met this young woman. From that point, the two begin investigating Norma's past and present, trying to discover if she's unbalanced, or if there's someone that might mean her harm. Poirot looks for patterns & death, and Ariadne tries methods that her detective, Sven Hjerson, might use in her popular mystery books.

As usual, there are plenty of suspects and red herrings throughout the novel, and this time Christie puts a secret up her sleeve that she doesn't reveal until the end -- a bit of duplicity on her part which wasn't really fair, but worked.  I thought the final solution was well done and although the clues were there all along, I still managed to be surprised by the ending,  which a) I felt was quite satisfying and b) I should have figured out after the breadcrumb trail of clues Christie left behind. And while the story may seem a bit muddled from time to time, it's still well worth the read. 

Poirot, without a doubt, is one of my favorite detectives ever, with his fastidious mannerisms and personality.  Even toward the end of his career his little grey cells are as busy and sharp as ever; Miss Lemon,  the secretary par excellence,  makes an appearance, always a step ahead of Poirot, and then there's Ariadne Oliver, a rather unique character, often living off of her intuition or using her mystery novelist skills to offer help in Poirot's investigation.  While she does provide some comic relief and comes off as a bit of a bumbler from time to time, she actually manages to also provide a few valuable clues to Poirot from time to time. 

At first I was a bit unsure as to whether or not I would enjoy this novel, but it ended up being a treat. This must be one that either I read eons ago and have totally forgotten, or that somehow I managed to miss until now. I can recommend it, definitely, BUT ... if you're looking for the recently televised Third Girl, you'll find that there's quite a difference between page and screen.

fiction from England

A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie

0007120915
HarperCollins
2002
Originally published 1964
224 pp.

"Like to see the picture of a murderer?"

Major Palgrave was the man with a million stories, and everyone vacationing at the lovely Golden Palm Hotel on the Caribbean island of St. Honoré tried to avoid him like the plague. Once he got started, he never stopped. His latest victim, so to speak, was Jane Marple, who had come to the Golden Palm to recuperate after a serious bout of pneumonia. Knitting bag in hand, Miss Marple was sitting, half listening and making polite replies once in a while, until Major Palgrave started speaking about her favorite topic: murder.  He begins to tell her a rather unusual story about a man who got away with murder more than once, and when Palgrave asks her if she wanted to see a picture of a murderer, the knitting stops and she's all eyes and ears.  But after he fishes through his wallet for the photo, he suddenly stops and changes the subject rather abruptly and rather loudly. Taken aback, Miss Marple looks up to see why and sees several people nearby.  Although curious, she goes right back to her knitting. The next day, when one of the maids finds Major Palgrave dead in his room, apparently from natural causes, Miss Marple can't help but wonder if all is as it seems.  When she creates a clever story to retrieve the photograph Palgrave was about to show her, it's gone, and now she's interested.

Miss Marple is the perfect detective. When people look at her they see "all knitting wool and tittle-tattle," and she becomes more or less invisible that way, easily dismissed by most of the players. But one man, wealthy businessman Jason Rafiel, sees right through her. And since Jane is not in St. Mary Mead at the moment, with no help from the likes of Sir Henry Clithering, it is Rafiel to whom she turns in hopes of preventing more death.

 A Caribbean Mystery is lighter in tone than some of her other Marple mysteries, slowly paced and there are spots where my interest definitely flagged.  The mystery plotline was good, although a bit predictable. The ocean, the sand, the palms and the steel band music definitely brought the Caribbean to mind while reading, since I've been there a number of times.   And although this isn't one of my favorites in the Marple series, I couldn't help but enjoy watching her brain at work.

My advice to potential Christie readers: put this one somewhere in the middle of your reading schedule and start with some of the other Marple stories.  

as an aside:
This book has been adapted for television twice:
1) with Joan Hickson as Miss Marple
2) with Helen Hayes as Miss Marple

fiction from England

*Deadwater, by Sean Burke

 1852426934
Serpent's Tail Publishing
2002
186 pp

 It's 1989, the scene is the Cardiff (Wales) docklands area of Butetown, a small community commonly known as Tiger Bay. A prostitute who had been slated to testify against two rather nasty brothers -- Tony and Carl Baja -- has been killed in her apartment after changing her mind and returning home. The next day Jack Farrisey, a local pharmacist, wakes up covered in blood with no recollection of anything that had happened the night before, since he was in an alcohol-induced amnesiac state. The local police want this crime solved, because as of two years earlier, the docklands area had been slated for regeneration and redevelopment, so  unsolved murders or murders in general would not be drawing new businesses to the area. The police latch onto the Baja Brothers, who swear their innocence,  but Farrisey still needs to know exactly what happened to him that night, and he has to rely on his friend Jess for answers. But Jess is chasing his own demons that deal with Jack and his pregnant wife.  Both make statements to the police, along with some other members of the community. But to make matters even more complicated, Jack's wife, an attorney, has decided to take the brothers' case to try to prove they didn't do it.

While Deadwater is a novel of crime fiction, it's also an examination of impending loss and futility.   As a child Jack lived in and fully  experienced the community and its "spectacular noise, of cockatoos, penny-slot pianos, of hurdie-gurdies, irrepressible Breton onion sellers, West Indian newspaper touts and stentorian fish hawkers." He spent time with his dad down on the docks. On the other hand, he also remembered the 1960s, when ethnic groups were relocated in an attempt to clear out the area slums because authorities feared

the sight of a creole community evolving its own way of being, its own ethics of spontaneity, respect and cheerfulness -- without need of statute, politician or book..

And now, with redevelopment and change looming over this area that Jack calls home, the very identity and future of the Butetown/Tiger Bay community is at stake:

The promise of redevelopment seemed less an attempt to rejuvenate than to raze a community with its own, self-regulating and irregular forms of justice and peacekeeping.

Mirroring the community's impending decline and the futility of any kind of hope for its future is the downward spiral of Jack's friendship with Jess, as  it leads him down a path that will ultimately end in betrayal and worse.

Deadwater is not a feel-good kind of novel at all, and stays that way right up until the last word. It is bleak and despairing, dark and gloomy. In tone it reminded me a little bit of Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor novels, in which the reader feels like he or she is watching a train wreck about to happen but is somehow glued to the spot and can't look away.  Sean Burke is a wonderful writer whose prose seems a bit out of place in a crime fiction novel because it is so descriptively lyrical (Yes, I know that "lyrical" for prose is one of those words that is way overdone, but it actually fits here). He's established such a forceful sense of place that it is not difficult to imagine the loud pubs, the dark streets, and the docks while you read. There is nothing to distract from the plotlines, and Jack's character is well defined to the point where he becomes real for the duration.

This is one of those novels that are not for the casual mystery reader - it is filled with tragedy and is definitely not for the faint at heart or people who think there is some measure of redemption in any situation. At the same time, I couldn't help but be blown away by Burke's rather heady writing which captured my attention from the outset and never let me down. I would recommend it, definitely, but beware the darkness.

fiction from Wales

The Secret of Chimneys AND how the heck did Jane Marple get there?

9780312979744
McMillan/Minotaur
2001
288 pp.
originally published 1925

As the novel opens, one Anthony Cade, is working as a tour guide in Africa. At a bar one day Cade meets an old buddy, James McGrath, who has been tasked with the delivery of the memoirs of the now-dead Count Stylptitch of Herzoslovakia to a London publishing firm. But McGrath has decided to seek his fortune in the gold fields, and offers Cade a tidy sum to go to England with the memoirs and a stash of letters that could be blackmail fodder for an unsuspecting Virginia Revel. Cade is off to England, and finds himself caught up between two sides of a touchy political situation. He also finds that he is a target of some very nasty people who are trying to get both the memoirs and the letters. The situation leads him to a house called Chimneys, the home of Lord Caterham, his daughter Bundle, and various diplomats and others interested in the political situation in Herzoslovakia. Upon his arrival, Cade finds himself as a chief suspect in the death of Prince Michael Obolovitch, the heir to the Herzoslovakian throne and negotiator of British oil interests in that country. Enter Superintendent Battle and the hunt for the murderer begins.

As with most Christie novels, there are plenty of suspects, an abundance of motives, and an interesting array of lead characters. Unlike most of her stories, this one is filled with political intrigue, and the reader has to digest the background story of the country of Herzoslovakia before really delving into the mystery. This may be a bit off-putting to regular Christie readers, but it's worth the time and effort to get the story and the list of who's who regarding that nation as it sets an important backdrop to the various criminal activity throughout the book.  It is rather complicated and at times convoluted, but still an interesting read, with a lovely twist at the end. 

If I were a reader who has decided that he or she would like to read through the Christie novels, I would not want to start with this one, since imho, it doesn't deliver the best Christie has to offer. My advice: read through the Poirots and the Marples, then tackle the others for something just a bit different.

Having said all of that, my local PBS station is airing "The Secret of Chimneys" as part of the Masterpiece Mystery! series, which is set to TiVo from my television this evening. For me, there is absolutely nothing like reading a book and then watching it come to life on the screen (in that order).  So wondering who's going to play whom, I went over to the PBS website and discovered that lo and behold, the star of this program is Miss Jane Marple, you know, the newest one, Julia McKenzie.  And then I said "what?????"  Okay, actually my "what" was more like WTF -- this isn't a Miss Marple mystery at all! How does it happen that this nice little old lady from St. Mary Mead is dropped into a murder mystery at an English country home filled with political intrigue and some pretty rotten bad guys when she wasn't even in Christie's original story? And why does the blurb say "based on the novel by Agatha Christie?"

I wonder if the writers of the screenplay (John Strickland, Paul Rutman) were sitting around one day thinking that they ought to throw in Miss Marple just for the heck of it, because surely they actually read the original story.  But perhaps not -- it seems that Miss Marple has shown up in a Tommy and Tuppence adventure as well. As a Christie purist, this really upsets me and takes out some of the fun of watching the televised Secret of Chimneys because I know that Chimneys didn't really host Miss Marple, so what is she doing there? Maybe the screenwriters thought no one actually reads Agatha Christie any more and that no one would notice.

Not that this issue will consume my entire day, but it is rather annoying. Is it too much to ask, do you think, that screenwriters at least get the characters straight? I like my screen adaptations to be adapted -- not made up. Maybe I'll drop a line and see if I get an answer!

 fiction from England

*Taken at the Flood, by Agatha Christie

0007121016

HarperCollins (Masterpiece edition)

2008, 224 pp

originally published 1948

apa: There is a Tide

  In 1944, as the German bombs are falling, Hercule Poirot is safely ensconced in the Coronation Club, when he first hears of the Cloade family. It seems the family patriarch & millionaire, Gordon, was killed when a bomb hit his London home, but his young wife was spared. As it turns out, the wife had previously been married to a Robert Underhay, who had mysteriously disappeared in Africa and was presumed dead. Two years later, Poirot receives a strange visit from one of the Cloade family of Warmsley Vale who has received a message from the spirit world that Robert Underhay is not really dead.  Not long after, he reads about  the death of an Enoch Arden in the same village.

Christie then takes the story to Warmsley Vale, and introduces the Cloade family. It seems that all of them were financially dependent on Gordon Cloade, and that this young wife, Rosaleen, has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench into the situation. Living now in Gordon's home with her brother David, Rosaleen was the sole beneficiary to Gordon's vast estate, and David stands between the family and financial assistance. Rosaleen, it seems, is eager to help, but David despises the rest of the Cloades and refuses to lend them a penny. Things go from bad to worse when a mysterious stranger, one Enoch Arden (the namesake of a poem from Tennyson) appears with a bizarre story about Robert Underhay. Pretty soon someone ends up dead. It is Poirot's job to not only figure out who the murderer is, but to get to the bottom of the whole mess. This won't be a simple task.

With several suspects to choose from, Taken at the Flood is one of those stories where the truth is unraveled bit by bit, so that the reader is not really sure of the whodunit until the end. There are plenty of red herrings to sort through -- and just when you think you know who it is, something else pops up to make you think again. Throughout the novel there is a buildup of suspense as you wonder what is really going on here.

Not my favorite of Agatha Christie's novels, it is still an enjoyable read. There is a small peek at some of the hardships of postwar British life that enhances the sense of the desperation of these characters, and Christie manages to keep the underlying tension running throughout the novel.

Taken at the Flood is Poirot's 27th adventure - and he's still going strong, although the earlier Poirot novels of the 20s & 30s were more to my liking. Recommended for fans of Poirot and for Agatha Christie readers in general - these books may be old, but they're still worth reading.

 fiction from England

*Fox Evil, by Minette Walters

Fox Evil is the ninth book by this author, and it won the CWA Gold Dagger award in 2003.


At the root of this mystery is the question of who killed Ailsa Lockyer-Fox. Set in the small village of Shenstead in Dorset, Fox Evil attempts to sort it all out.  Ailsa was found by her husband James outside their home in the freezing cold weather, wearing only a nightgown. Obviously, she hadn't intended on staying outside for any length of time. To add to the mystery, bloodstains were also found, but Ailsa had no visible wounds which would have caused them. To further whet the reader's appetite for clues, the door going back into the house was locked, and her husband James, seemingly slept on while the murder and mayhem were occurring. The coroner's report cleared James of any wrongdoing. So who killed Ailsa?

Fox Evil is rather cluttered, suffering from too much going on all at the same time. First, James gets his solicitor to track down his long-lost and grown-up granddaughter, Lizzie's daughter from a fling she had some time back, having been adopted when she was a baby. Then there's a matter of a vicious campaign of anonymous callers, accusing James of horrible things. Not to mention the band of travellers who decide to make a certain stretch of woodland their home and their leader, who goes by the name of Fox.  Add into that a mix of neighbors with their own petty problems,  and pretty soon you need a scorecard to keep track of it all.

My preference in mystery novels is for a book in which there are enough suspects who all have really good motives to kill someone, a few really good red herrings that might lead me down the wrong path, and a wowser of a revelation at the end. And although I generally like Minette Walters' writing (The Ice House, The Scold's Bridle and The Breaker  were absolute gems), there was just way too much happening here.  Of course, this book got many 5-star reviews, so it might just be me. I'd recommend it to people who have already read books by this author, but it's definitely not one of my personal favorites.

not actually in the reading plan, but oh well: A Great Deliverance, by Elizabeth George

Well, I hadn't actually intended to read anything not in the plan for this month, but this one literally "jumped out" at me. I was futzing around with my books in the British Reading Room, and this book fell to the floor. I picked it up and walked off with it, and I couldn't help myself. I've actually read this one before, but had totally spaced what went on here.


In London, Scotland Yard is searching desperately for a killer known as The Ripper, who seeks and takes victims at railway stations.   But in York, a crime of a different sort has occurred: a young girl, overweight and unattractive, has been found in the barn next to her house with a dead dog and her father’s decapitated body.   The girl, Roberta, has as much as admitted that she did it, but the local priest isn’t sure and contacts Scotland Yard.  Enter Inspector Lynley and his newly-appointed partner, Barbara Havers, and off to York they go.  The investigation isn’t easy: the only eyewitness, Roberta, is in a mental institution where she refuses to talk.  Havers and Lynley must piece together what might have happened — but it’s not going to be an easy task.

So much for the summary.  Now here’s what I think. The author did a good job with the crime per se, and the core mystery is good, handled well under the circumstances (which I cannot mention because it would wreck it for others).  Aside from that, though, there’s way too much personal angst among the main characters, so much so that you wonder how this mystery ever got solved.  Lynley is an aristocrat who started with the police to give something back to the community, was in love with another one of the characters, Deborah, who ultimately married his friend Simon.   So on top of solving this rather brutal crime, he has to stop and sort out his feelings for Deborah.  A bit out of place, but whatever.  Then there’s Havers. She is described as being from working-class stock, rather dumpy with a poor sense of how to dress, and she has it in for Lynley and his friends because they’re from the upper crust of society.    Her anger and resentment strikes at odd places in this story, which is a bit distracting.  Lady Helen, one of Lynley's friends,  I could actually take or leave.

Having said all of this, you’d probably think I didn’t care for the book, but I did. I like a well-crafted and well-plotted mystery novel, and aside from the main characters having to sort through their spontaneous crises at times, it was a good story.  My experience with first novels in mystery series is that they are probably not the best that the author has to give.  I would recommend this book, certainly, for people who enjoy UK crime fiction.  Not a cozy at all, but rather dark and broody, it’s a good mystery read.

No Birds Sing, by Jo Bannister

No Birds Sing is #4 in Jo Bannister's Castlemere series.  The series began with A Bleeding of Innocents, where we met the main characters Frank Shapiro, Liz Graham and Cal Donovan, all of the Castlemere police.

Although Castlemere is a small town, it seems to get its share of crime. This time around it's train robbing, dog fights, ram raiding (in which the criminals plow their car into a store window, grab the loot and scurry off), and sadly, a series of rapes directed at 40-ish, professional women.  The team certainly has its hands full, trying to stave off this wave of crime, but for two of the team things spin out of control, making their jobs even more difficult.

The opening sequence of the train robbery in this book is very well done, but the rest of the book is just so-so, definitely not one of my favorites by this author. Nor is it one of my favorites in the world of British police procedurals. What is has going for it is the author's positive views on the post-rape experience,but the rest is pretty much formulaic and predictable, with not a lot of oomph mystery-wise or plot wise. 

I would recommend the book to people who have started the series and are intent on seeing it through to the end, but probably not to anyone else.  There are much better police procedurals out there that are more worth the reading time. 

*The Red Dahlia, by Lynda LaPlante

The Red Dahlia is second in a series to feature DI Anna Travis, behind Above Suspicion, which I own but haven't yet read, although I don't think I missed anything.  This was an outstanding mystery novel...perfect pace, building suspense throughout, characters that seemed real, and a story that kept me reading until I finished the book.

While out delivering the last of his newspapers, a young boy makes a gruesome discovery.  The police arrive and discover the body of a young woman, severed in half, bloodless, and with grotesque cuts on either side of her mouth.  One of the local newspapers gets an anonymous letter that relates the case to the old unsolved case of the Black Dahlia in Los Angeles, and Anna Travis and her team realize that they have their work cut out for them. Anna's gov, Morgan, is hospitalized, and DCI James Langton, with whom Anna had worked before and with whom she had some history, takes the lead in investigating the case. A profiler brought in to help realizes that the killer is going to strike again if the police do not find him, but the police have their hands full just trying to find out about the victim. 

The novel is absolutely a mystery lover's novel. The first half of the book involves the team getting up to speed with the Black Dahlia case and trying to find out as much as they can about the victim, while the second half is all about locating the killer after an anonymous caller reluctantly leaves information about the murder.  The mystery is very tightly plotted and the writing is excellent.  LaPlante's characterizations are very well drawn, never being dragged down to the level of cardboard cutouts, the action never stops and the payoff is worth the 400+ pages of reading. I can most highly recommend this book -- it is probably one of my favorite mystery reads in a while.

*A Splash of Red, by Antonia Fraser

This book is number three in the series that features Jemima Shore, writer and star of her own television show, Jemima Shore Investigates  -- a kind of news program. In this installment, Jemima has decided to disappear for a while so that she can get some research done, and is invited to stay in a flat owned by Chloe Fontaine, who is a well-known writer herself. Chloe, it seems, is going off on a short trip to write an article for a trendy magazine, so Jemima can have the place all to herself. No one knows she's there, so it seems perfect.  But not too long after Chloe makes her departure, Jemima receives a mysterious phone call.  And then another. And then she finds out that Chloe has disappeared, and that no one knows where she is.  As Jemima is contemplating all of this strangeness, she happens to return to the flat after some time off to do research at the British Library's reading room, and finds Chloe dead in the bed.  So who killed her? Jemima has plenty of people in mind as suspects and wants to get to the bottom of it all.

This series isn't my favorite, and this book was just okay. Antonia Fraser is a good writer, but she's better at nonfiction, I think. Her novels tend to be a bit wordy.  I never did guess who the culprit was, so that's a plus, but it seemed so long until we actually got around to it that by the end I just really didn't care. That's a minus. The story moved at a rather slow pace, which was very detracting. Plus something bothered me -- there was one character who was quite violent toward Jemima, hitting her, and then she went and made coffee for him. Not real, not even for the time in which it was written, in the 1980s. You'd think someone as intelligent and as independent as Jemima Shore would have raised a stink or acted differently, but no.

I don't know that I'd recommend this book for readers of modern-day mysteries -- the pace is very slow, the solution isn't very satisfying and it's an effort to slog through the over-wordiness of it all. I'll try more of Jemima Shore's adventures (since I have the whole series here), but it may be awhile.

*The Red Widow Murders, by Carter Dickson

my edition

I happen to really enjoy these old books and have spent a lifetime collecting them. My take on books is this: just because a book hasn't been published in the last two or three years doesn't mean it's not necessarily great.  Just because books show up as bestsellers doesn't mean they're necessarily good.  And just because everyone reads something new and they say it's terrific doesn't mean everyone will like it.  There are so many older books that deserve a read but are overlooked -- often highly intelligent mysteries or novels that are written for people with a brain.  Sadly, there are too many of them that just fall by the wayside. Personally, I think that's a crime.  This series is one that true (and I mean true) mystery aficionados should not miss.

The Red Widow Murders is book three in the series featuring Sir Henry Merrivale (HM to his friends). And this one is a doosie. It seems that a group of people have gathered at the home of Lord Mantling, where nine of them draw cards to see who will spend a few hours alone in the so-called Red Widow's room, the scene of unexplained deaths going back to 1803. The cards are revealed, and it is one Mr. Bender who goes off to spend the night alone. Every fifteen minutes someone asks if he's okay, and he always answers. When time's up the other 8 people open the door, and there lies Bender, dead. But there was no way in or out of that room, and he'd been answering their queries the entire time. So how could this happen? Sir Henry Merrivale to the rescue, to uncover the truth.

Fun fun fun! There's something to be said about the pleasure of reading these old, vintage mystery novels, with their often elaborately-plotted crimes and solutions that even if you tried, you couldn't guess. Especially in this one, where there are a number of suspects, plenty of clues, and an equal number of red herrings left for the reader to sift through. The Red Widow Murders also offers its readers a great backstory which in and of itself is a bit chilling.

Unlike some of his other works, The Red Widow Murders isn't weighted down by a lot of archaisms, and it moves at a very nice pace. The characters are well drawn, the atmosphere is perfect, the story is a good one, and the mystery will leave you hanging until the very end. This one I can definitely recommend, especially to fans of golden-age mystery novels and of John Dickson Carr in particular. It's not a cozy novel by any stretch, and modern readers of mystery may find it a bit slow considering the fast pace of novels nowadays. However, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool fan of vintage crime, like me, it really is worth every minute you put into it.

The White Priory Murders, by Carter Dickson

Carter Dickson is the pseudonym for John Dickson Carr, who was a beyond-prolific author of golden-age mysteries.  As Carter Dickson, he wrote several books featuring the character Sir Henry Merrivale, HM to his friends, who manages to get caught up in the weirdest mysteries and impossible crimes.  This book is the second in the series; the first was The Plague Court Murders, which was actually quite good. I have a review of that book here.

The White Priory Murders begins with the death of an actress. She is found in a building close to an English country house, but here's the thing: the murderer left his or her footprints in the snow going in, but none ever came out. This fact, plus a few other simple clues, lead to a mystery where everyone has a motive, but everyone also has an alibi. Once the local police have a go, it will be up to HM to solve the case.

I love these old books, but they're so incredibly verbose as to at times become distracting. The murder mystery itself, however, is good and solid. There are plenty of suspects, plenty of motives, and thus a lot of red herrings for the reader to sort through. HM's unraveling of the whole thing at the end was very well done.

If you like golden-age mysteries, you should put this one on your reading list, or if you're a fan of John Dickson Carr and haven't yet read this one, you will want to do so. Modern mystery readers might become a bit impatient due to the overdone verbiage, but on the other hand, that's kind of a signature trademark with Carr in most of his books.

Overall, not bad, not one of my favorites of Carr's books, but still a pretty good read.

*Dupe, by Liza Cody

my edition

subtitled: a kind of vegetarian mystery, meaning, one without meat.

Dupe is the first book of a series featuring private investigator Anna Lee. Anna was a cop, then realized that she was going nowhere (this was in the 80s, mind you) with her career, and she got a job with the Brierly security company as an investigator.  Her boss reluctantly assigns her to the case of Deirdre Jackson, who was found dead in a car accident. There seemed to be no hint of foul play, but the parents a) don't believe it for a minute and b) want to know what their close-mouthed little darling had been up to in the months previous to her death. So off Anna goes, and her investigations take her inside the cinematic world, where at least one person wants her off the case, and others have many secrets they're not giving up.

Anna is a kind of gutsy girl, and considering this was written in 1980, was a strong character for the time. Of course now we are reading about the guts and glory of Lisbeth Salander (from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fame) so to us, Anna is a bit tame, but still, within the context of the time, a pretty rare kind of heroine. The supporting characters all have their own idiosyncracies (especially her boss and his assistant), and for a first effort, not bad. What I didn't really like was that probably about the first three-fourths of the book were all about Anna asking questions...very little action to speak of.  That only happens toward the very end, when things finally heat up and we get a clue that maybe Anna's put her nose somewhere where it don't belongs and someone's trying to stop her from asking more questions.  But I'll chalk this up to the book being the first in the series -- normally they're never as good as what follows.

Kind of dated, but I'd recommend it to people who read UK Crime fiction and who have maybe missed this one. Not a cozy, by any stretch, but it's also not a police procedural.  Overall -- not bad, not great, just average.

*Exile, by Denise Mina (the Garnethill Trilogy, Book 2)

my edition

Exile is the second installment of Denise Mina’s Garnethill trilogy, which begins with Garnethill and ends with Resolution (which I have not yet read).  If you do not read Garnethill prior to this book, you will be a bit lost, both in terms of characters, and in terms of the main character’s (Maureen O’Donnell) background. And this is critical. These are excellent books, and I most highly recommend them.

As the action begins, Maureen, who works at a battered women’s shelter, is drawn into the disappearance of Ann Harris, a resident of the place, who told everyone that her husband Jimmy constantly beat and abused her. Quickly she learns that the London police have discovered a disfigured body wearing a piece of Ann's jewelry, and that they are out to find her killer. Maureen meets up with Jimmy and realizes that he’s just a quiet man trying to take care of four small children and wasn’t involved in Ann’s disappearance.  However, if she doesn’t figure out what happened to Ann, more than likely it will be Jimmy that’s off to prison.  Her desire to help Jimmy sets her on a very dangerous path where she will meet up with some very rough characters who aren’t so happy that a foreigner has come asking questions.

But aside from the crime element, Maureen as a person is worth the reading time alone. She’s got a lot on her shoulders and struggles inwardly with her past as well as her extremely dysfunctional family. Now she’s got new worries that pick up where the first book (Garnethill) left off.  I really enjoy her character and I’m really sad there are only three books about her. I also enjoy Denise Mina’s writing…it is excellent, and not just in the sense that she’s a good writer of crime fiction. She can write, and after I finish this trilogy I will be reading anything I can of hers.

Highly recommended, but as noted above, please do start with the first in the series.  On to the third book, and very soon.  If you like UK crime fiction and strong women characters, you will really like this book. This is no ordinary “mystery” series by any stretch of the imagination.