Readingomnivore Reviews

Sandra Parshall’s BROKEN PLACES is one of a mystery series featuring Rachel Goddard, a veterinarian in Mason County, Virginia. It was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2010.

Rachel Goddard discovers the body of local newspaperman Cam Taylor in the woods following his altercation with her friend, cartoonist and artist Ben Hern. Cam Taylor, his wife Meredith, Ben’s mother Karen Richardson, and Joanna McKendrick had all served in Mason County in the late 1960s as members of Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA). Cam’s threatening revelations about their past unless he gets the money to keep his paper afloat. Captain Tom Bridger of the Sheriff’s Department, Rachel’s lover, suspects Ben; he’s upset because Rachel defends Ben, with whom she’d grown up. When he goes to notify Meredith Taylor of her husband’s death, he finds the Taylors’ house burning; Meredith’s body, shot in the head, is in the ashes. Bridger had been involved with the Taylors’ daughter Lindsay, who sees her parents’ deaths as a vehicle for reestablishing their relationship. Someone breaks into Rachel’s house and turns on the gas in an attempt to remove her as a possible witness. Lloyd Wilson, the Taylors’ nearest neighbor, tells Bridger about a clandestine relationship between Meredith and Scotty Ragsdale and about seeing cars at the Taylor house. Lloyd’s shot to death, and Karen Richardson Hernandez is missing. What is going on in Mason County?

The plot in BROKEN PLACES has a neat surprise ending, with good misdirection, but the book is longer than the story. At 298 pages, judicious cutting by fifty pages could have heightened the action. Hints at undisclosed secrets in the past of all major characters impede the current mystery, then we’re told to read another book to discover Rachel’s great secret. Not fair. With Bridger’s previous relationship with Lindsay Taylor, would he have been allowed to remain as lead investigator on the case?

Characterization is nothing special. Tom Bridger is an unusual protagonist because he’s identified as Melungeon (a tri-racial isolate group in the Appalachians said to predate European settlement), but nothing is made of this. He’s supposed to be a good cop, and he does solve the mystery in time to rescue Rachel from the killer, but he’s astonishingly naive about Lindsay Taylor and her motivations. Rachel Goddard has little reason to continue her direct involvement with the case, but she pulls a major TSTL when she follows Lindsay and puts herself in harm’s way.

Despite the setting in Mason County, Virginia, there’s little ambiance of either the mountains or the South. It’s a shame that BROKEN PLACES didn’t receive another editing to maximize its excellent potential. (C)

Lexi Revellian’s REMIX was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2010. It is set in London and features Caz Tallis, a young woman who restores antique and builds modern rocking horses.

One June morning, Caz goes onto her terrace overlooking the area of Hoxton Square to discover “Joe” sleeping on her new sofa. She feeds him and his dog, Dog, breakfast and drives him to a friend’s house, giving him £20. She convinces herself that “Joe” is Ric Kealey, lead singer of The Voices, who was arrested for the murder of bandmate Bryan Orr three years before. But Ric Kealey was declared dead after the Cessna he was illegally flying crashed into the ocean en route to France. Did he die? Apparently not, and he shows back up for Caz’s help in finding Orr’s killer.

Like the Queen in Through the Looking Glass, I can sometimes believe six impossible things before breakfast, but I’m giving up on REMIX at 19%. It’s so improbable that I can’t get my head around it.

No formal review, just thoughts as they occur. First, Ric climbs up the outside of her building to reach and sleep on Caz’s terrace. Really? Why her terrace? Why would young woman in robe, on rooftop terrace, not call the police on a stranger sleeping on that terrace? Granting him charisma, why would she take him into her home, feed him, and drive him to his destination?

Why would seeing a poster of Ric Kealey, when she’d NOT been a fan of The Voices, lead her to conclude Joe is Ric Kealey returned from the dead? How probable is it that arrested for murder, even on £2,000,000 bail, Ric would have been released without police surveillance to avoid his flight? How likely is it that Ric would return three years later determined to clear himself by finding who killed Orr? Or that he would choose a young woman of no expertise in investigation or law to question his “friends” who would recognize him? How likely is it that Caz, who’s supposed to be a savvy businesswoman, would get involved with this?

While I’m often willing to suspend disbelief in the interest of a well-told story, REMIX is so far out in left field that it’s a home run. No grade because not finished.

Adam David Russ’s BLOODHOUND IN BLUE: THE TRUE TALE OF POLICE DOG JJ AND HIS TWO-LEGGED PARTNER was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2013. It is the story of Officer Mike Serio and JJ, the first bloodhound K-9 officer in Utah.

Serio initially chose JJ as a pet after noting his curiosity and tenacity as a puppy. As JJ matured, Serio became interested in training him, still as pet owner rather than as K-9; Serio was a rookie night-shift patrol officer at the time, ineligible for and uninterested in traditional police K-9 status. As he realizeed JJ’s exceptional nose and found additional training, Serio began trying to interest the Salt Lake City Police Department in adding a bloodhound to the unit. He finally got a contract as an independent contractor for six months in which to demonstrate JJ’s value in tracking criminals and missing persons; despite initial opposition from the traditional K-9 officers used to working with German shepherds, JJ’s success rate led to his full status as a member of the department. At the time of publication, sixteen bloodhounds were K-9 officers.

BLOODHOUND IN BLUE gives many examples of successful tracking by Serio and JJ, but one of the most touching stories is of a failure. JJ was one of the search tools used when Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped. JJ had picked up the scent and followed it, signaling with his distinctive bay that he was hot on the trail. Because JJ’s nose didn’t follow the logic of humans directing the search as to where the kidnapper would have gone, JJ was called off. Months later, when Elizabeth Smart was interviewed after being freed, she spoke of hearing him baying on their trail. Her not being found the day after she was kidnapped wasn’t JJ’s fault. He had her trail.

BLOODHOUND IN BLUE is a pleasant short read, touching in the love it portrays between man and dog, together a team much greater than the sum of its parts. It’s also about working hard to achieve goals and how much difference one individual can make. Recommended. (A)

J J Salkeld’s “The Two Towns” is the short story prequel to the Lakeland Murders mystery series, introducing the CID team of the Cumbria Constabulary in Kendal: Detective Inspector Andy Hall, Detective Sergeant Ian Mann, Detective Constable Ray Dixon, and newly-promoted incomer Detective Constable Jane Francis. It was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2014.

Jane Francis, formerly of the Manchester police force, has moved from uniform to CID and transferred to Kendal. In her first week on the job, she’s involved with Ray Dixon, an oldtimer who’s counting the days--literally--to his pension, but who’s still a good detective, on a missing person case. The missing boy Johnny Graham is fourteen years old, the only child from a well-known petty criminal family who’s trying to get an education and to stay out of trouble. One older brother is already in prison, the other heading that way rapidly. Searching his telephone and computer, Jane believes the boy ran away, trying to escape pressure from his mother and brother Peter to get involved in their activities. Jane’s insight into Johnny’s frame of mind and Hall’s local knowledge locate him unhurt, and they act to protect him. Hall gives Jane a year-old case to review, one in which everyone feels certain the husband Phil Clark is guilty of murdering his wife, but there’s absolutely no proof. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning when a potato was stuck over the outside vent of a caravan heater; several others, fortunately empty, had been vandalized the same way. She reaches the same conclusion but assures Phil Clark that the case will never be closed as long as any of the people involved remain alive.

This is a series I will definitely be reading. The characters are well drawn, individual enough to be genuine; they function as a successful team. It is a group that it will be good to get to know. The plots are realistic. Sense of place is developed, especially when the short story length is considered. Recommended. (A)

Ola Wegner’s AUGUST IN DERBYSHIRE is an alternative story line to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, published in e-book format in 2014.

On August 14, Fitzwilliam Darcy, traveling alone from London to Pemberley ahead of his guests Caroline and Charles Bingley and his sister Georgiana, stops for refreshment at the inn in Lambton, where he accidentally encounters Elizabeth Bennet. She and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner are visiting Derbyshire on holiday. It is four months after Darcy’s disastrous proposal to Elizabeth in April, and he has chanced his attitude but not his heart. He goes out of his way to welcome Elizabeth and her family to Pemberley, and Elizabeth takes the lead by apologizing to Darcy for her mistaken trust in the lies told by Wickham. Darcy apologizes for his arrogance. They are obviously attracted to each other. When news of Lydia’s elopement with Wickham reaches Lambton, Darcy insists that he will see that Lydia is safely married within the month, pointing out his involvement would be perfectly acceptable if he and Elizabeth were engaged. He proposes, she accepts. Mr. Gardiner and Darcy head off to London to find Wickham, while the pregnant Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth remain at Pemberley. Two weeks later, Darcy returns with the Wickhams safely married. One year to the day later, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, Elizabeth now pregnant with their first child, take tea at the inn in Lambton to commemorate the meeting that changed their lives.

Ola Wegner writes some of the best Austen fan fiction. She’s good with maintaining the characters as Austen created them, and usually her plots do not involve drastic or unreasonable changes to the story lines. I do have a couple of problems with AUGUST IN DERBYSHIRE however. One is the now-required scene (Colin Firth has much to answer for) in which Elizabeth sees Darcy without his shirt and is appropriately stunned by his male perfection. The other is her seeing him in the first place, because she is alone with him in his bedroom while he’s washing himself. Even if they are engaged, perhaps especially because they are engaged, this contravenes all standards of decorum for a young woman of good family, as would her spending time alone with him in his bedroom after dinner. Wegner doesn’t say or even imply any sexual activity, but the their being alone in a bedroom is a serious anachronism. (B)

Patricia Wentworth’s LONESOME ROAD is one of her mystery series featuring Mss Maud Silver, retired governess who’s now a successful private detective. It was originally published in 1939 and issued in e-book format in 2011.

Rachel Treherne, younger daughter of multimillionaire Rollo Treherne, inherited control of his entire fortune but feels bound to follow his dying wishes for treatment of the family. She’s stuck with her older hypochondriac sister Mabel Wadlow; Mabel’s dilettante writer husband Ernest, so eager to help Rachel with her financial responsibilities; their son Maurice Wadlow, who expects Rachel to support his Socialist/Communist fantasies; their daughter Cherry Wadlow, party girl with no morals; Richard Treherne, young architect cousin; Ella Compartod, cousin whose fundraising for charity is suspect; Cosmo Frith, another cousin with expensive tastes and no money; and Caroline Ponsonby, in love with Richard but hiding something. When Rachel receives threatening letters, then suffers three near misses on her person, she goes to Miss Silver for help. Before Miss Silver arrives at Whincliff Edge, Rachel’s home, someone pushes Rachel over the cliff; only by sheerest accident does she escape death. Is Gale Brandon, who says he loves Rachel, the person he seems? Who needs Rachel dead?

LONESOME ROAD opens with a long introduction of characters and problem that isn’t particularly effective, though it does set the stage for the cliff-edge attack on Rachel. The motif of the evil influence of money on members of an extended family is one Wentworth used several times. Wentworth plays fair with clues and manages a neat surprise in the author and motive of the earlier attempts on Rachel, but the conclusion is carefully crafted to get around the lack of definitive evidence against Rachel’s would-be killer. There’s also a strong element of the “had she but told” about Caroline Ponsonby’s innocent involvement that’s offputting.

Characterization is better than average in mysteries of this vintage. I particularly like the way in which Wenworth reveals Mabel: “Mabel Wadlow went on talking about her powders, and her pulse, and what she felt like when she woke up in the night, and what Dr. Levitas had said about her constitution, and how terribly bad it was for her to be worried and wasn’t it quite inconceivable that one’s own sister should allow one to have financial embarrassments when she could so easily remove them by simply writing a cheque?”

Wentworth manages some good atmospherics: “[Rachel] walked a few paces and stood at the edge of the path looking out over the sea. It was a high tide and far in, but only the very highest tide with a winter gale behind it ever reached the foot of the cliffs. Black ridges of rock ran down into black water. They were scarcely visible darker shadows in a general gloom, but she knew that they were there. Over them and over the cliff the wind blew cold. It had voce enough to drown the sound of the oncoming footsteps.”

LONESOME ROAD isn’t one of the best Miss Silver novels, but it’s a good read. (C+)

Diana Xarissa’s AUNT BESSIE ASSUMES is the first in her Isle of Man cozy mystery series. It was published as a free or inexpensive e-book in 2014. It features Elizabeth “Bessie” Cubbon.

When Bessie goes for her daily walk on the beach early one morning in March 1998, she finds the body of an unknown man. He’s been stabbed in the chest. The man is Daniel Pierce, Jr., Danny, whose family owns a mansion in Laxey, a village on the Isle of Man. Bessie’s good friend Doona is the dispatcher at Laxey Neighbourhood Policing, and young officer Hugh Watterson is one of the children who came to Bessie for tea and sympathy, so she’s in the loop for what’s going on. There’s rivalry between Detective Inspector Patrick Kelly, who’s in charge of the station in Laxey, and Detective Inspector John Rockwell, who’s head of CID in Ramsey, the next larger community and claims precedence. There’s no apparent motive for Danny Pierce’s murder, but none of his family, including his wife of two days Vikky, has an alibi. Then Samantha Blake, girlfriend of brother Donny Pierce, who’s displaying unseemly interest in the widowed Vikky, makes an appointment to talk with Bessie. Bessie finds her dead, also stabbed. Donny tells the police and his family that Danny had been addicted to drugs, focusing attention on a drug deal gone bad. When Bessie is pushed down steps leading to the beach, which could have killed her, she, Doona, and Hugh come up with a plan to trap the killer.

I wanted to like AUNT BESSIE ASSUMES, I really did. Unfortunately, it’s as bland as cold unseasoned grits. There’s not so much actually wrong with it, just nothing particularly right. Aunt Bessie really has no reason except for rampant curiosity for being involved. I find it difficult to believe that Inspector Rockwell would have regular meetings over dinner with her, Doona, and Hugh to discuss the case (though, to be fair, he listens to his local sources more than talks). I find it difficult to believe that three reasonable adults would fail to see the dangers in their plan to use Bessie as bait for the murderer. None of the characters are much developed. The circle of suspects is too small to generate much suspense so that, after Samantha’s death, only two possibles are left, and it’s clear that they’d worked together on at least part of what had happened. Worst of all, nothing is made of the setting of the Isle of Man, surely an unusual one in detective fiction.

There are just too many better books to use time on. (C-)

Agatha Christie’s novella HERCULE POIROT AND THE GREENSHORE FOLLY was recently published for in the first time in e-book format. It dates from 1954, when Christie promised the proceeds from its sale for installation of stained glass windows in the chancel of her parish church of Churston Ferrars. Because of its length, the novella did not sell, and she reclaimed it for recycling into the novel DEAD MAN’S FOLLY. She replaced it with a purpose-written Miss Marple short story “Greenshaw’s Folly” in 1956.

Ariadne Oliver has been called to design and stage a murder hunt for the Fete on the grounds of Greenshore House, in Lapton, Devon, by Sir George and Lady Stubbs; she thinks she’s being manipulated, so she calls Hercule Poirot and enlists him as prize-giver for the murder hunt. She wants his impression of the people and events in Lapton. Lady Hattie Stubbs is much younger than Sir George, quite beautiful, and mentally challenged. She’d been chaperoned for a London season by Mrs. Amy Folliat, whose late husband’s family had owned Greenshore since 1598; she sold the estate to Sir George Stubbs, who allows her to live in the Lodge. Mrs. Folliat encouraged Hattie, penniless, to marry Sir George, who loves Hattie and lavishes her with jewelry. The afternoon of the Fete, Lady Stubbs’s cousin Paul Lopez, who’s not seen her since she was fifteen years old, arrives for a visit. Poirot and Mrs. Oliver find Marlene Tucker, the intended victim of the murder hunt, dead in the boathouse, and Lady Stubbs missing. Two months later, she’s presumed dead because her distinctive coolie hat was found floating in the river Dart; Old Merdle, Marlene’s grandfather, drowned when he fell off the quay into the river when he was drunk; and Marlene’s murder is unsolved. Mrs. Oliver’s offhand remark about why women wear hats nowadays puts Poirot on the right track to uncover desertion, faked death, theft, impersonation, and multiple murder.

Christie plays fair in providing clues to the eventual surprise ending, the most persistent of which reminds me of Cold Comfort Farm’s “there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm.” Poirot is told repeatedly that “there will always be Folliats at Greenshore.”

Characterization is better developed than in many of Christie’s novels. “Only Poirot remained detached, watching the slim exotic figure [Lady Stubbs] at the head of the table. He wondered just what was going on in her mind. At that very moment her eyes came up and cast a swift glance along the table to where he sat. It was a look so shrewd and appraising that he was startled. As their eyes met, the shrewd expression vanished--emptiness returned. But that other look had been there, cold, calculating, watchful.”

Description of Greenshore House is limited, but the sense of English country house is strong. The time period is reflected in Christie’s repeated use of “feeble-minded” to describe Lady Stubbs. Still, a solid read. (B)

Charles Dayton’s COME HELL OR HIGH WATER was an inexpensive or free e-book published in 2011. It is set in Sienna, in California, on the Maidu River. Its first person narrator is Lew Travis, a 72-year-old mostly retiree who still occasionally does investigative reports for the Sienna Sentinel.

When Jackson Cole, prominent Sienna attorney, is pulled dead from the Maidu River after being missing for a weekend, Lew Travis is curious about the death. Cole had killed Travis’s wife Mary in a head-on collision when Cole was driving under the influence, and he’d gotten away with it. With a retrospective article on Cole’s life and career as access, Travis investigates Cole’s death, discovering quite a few secrets: Cole has deposited several hundred thousands of dollars in his account and has been spending money like a drunk sailor; he’s been going at it hot and heavy with a blonde young enough to be his daughter, Louanne Reed; he’s written a threatening letter to Duncan Nash, his wife’s lover and head of a conversationist group, Allies of the Earth, opposed by Cole; he’s further antagonized his gay son Robbie, who hates him. On the periphery of all this lie Louanne’s ex-boyfriend, biker type Snake Sullivan, and rumors of a treasure in high-grade gold nuggets hidden in the Cole house, which had been built at the time of the Gold Rush. Who wanted Jackson Cole dead bad enough to kill him?

Because he is the first person narrator, Lew Travis is the best developed of the characters. He’s been stuck since his wife’s death ten years before, existing but not living. His poking around in Cole’s death is a means of closure for himself, so he ignores good advice to stay out, going so far as to break and enter Duncan Nash’s house to look for evidence, harbor Louanne Reed when he knows the police are looking for her, withhold evidence from the police, and pay his IT expert Zane, a local high school student, to hack Diane Cole’s e-mail. He pulls TSTL moments when he has the chance to exit Nash’s house and nearly gets caught when he doesn’t go and when he goes to Diane Cole’s home late at night to meet with her and Robbie Cole without telling anyone.

Several things about the plot bother me. For one thing, I don’t see the police department in a case of suspicious death allowing anyone, reporter or not, the kind of information and the lack of pressure to divulge his findings that Travis receives. Another is a feeling of being cheated with the ultimate conclusion of the plot. It’s not well set up and feels like a cop out. Too much depends on coincidence and Travis’s just accidentally knowing somebody who knows something. There’s a fine line between advocacy of a cause in a mystery and preaching; with environmental concerns and the effect of the Gold Rush on the native tribes, Dayton crosses it. The slight supernatural element is not a good fit for the rest of the book.

A few scenic descriptions and discussion of the divergent views of the area’s inhabitants help, but there’s not much sense of place. COME HELL OR HIGH WATER isn’t bad; it’s just not very good. (C)

DEATH DANCE is one of Geraldine Evans’s Rafferty and Llewellyn mystery series set in Elmhurst, a market town in Essex. It was published in 2010 in e-book format and features Detective Inspector Joseph Rafferty and Detective Sergeant Dafyd Llewellyn.

DI Rafferty and his fiancee Abra Anne Kearney are at the church, rehearsing for their wedding coming up in three weeks when the call comes in that John Staveley has discovered the strangled body of his wife Adrienne Staveley in their home. There are few clues, but plenty of motives. Adrienne had been an unsympathetic wife, not wanting to cut back on finances or sell their house after her husband had been made redundant six months before; she dislikes and is disliked intensely by both her stepson Kyle and her mother-in-law Mrs. Amy Staveley; she’s having affairs with both Gary Oldfield and Michael Peacock, pressuring Oldfield to leave his rich girlfriend Diane Rexton so they can move in together; she’s leading her brother-in-law David Ayling on and meeting him secretly to get back at her sister-in-law Helen Staveley Ayling. No progress seems possible, and Rafferty is sweating out the possibility of having to cancel his honeymoon if he doesn’t solve the case. Then a male invades Mrs. Amy Staveley’s home and tries to strangle her. Same person? Random violence?

I enjoy police procedurals, particularly when there is an interesting relationship between members of the police team. I was hoping that this would be a new series to explore. Don’t think so.

****SPOILERS****SPOILERS****

For one thing, I don’t find Rafferty very appealing. He’s impulsive, makes up his mind ahead of the evidence and then looks for data to support it; he even admits arresting a man first and looking for evidence later in his last case. The only reason he doesn’t do it in DEATH DANCE is because he got caught out the last time. He’s from a large Irish clan, most of whom are given to sharp practices and buying things that fell off the back of lorries. He drinks too much and feels superior to his much better organized partner; he’s disrespectful to and about his boss, Superintendent Bradley. Even worse, he’s not terribly swift in chasing down information on the case. He never questions about John Staveley’s first marriage; it takes days before he tries to find witnesses to John and Kyle Staveley’s statements that they were wandering around Elmhurst at the time Adrienne Staveley was killed; it takes two weeks for him to have CCTV tapes checked for Gary Oldfield’s driving a car from the lot where he sells used cars, when an informer had told him days before that Oldfield made a habit of using them. It’s a complete surprise to him when he finds out that the Staveleys’ house has been up for sale, so Adrienne had been seeing all sorts of persons viewing the house. He never confronts his fiancee Abra when a belated fingerprinting of the house shows her fingerprints in every room of the house; instead he assumes she’d had an affair with Staveley or his wife. (Abra had been viewing the house as a potential purchaser.) Sorry, I just don’t like him.

To say that the plot is glacially slow is to denigrate glaciers. Some glaciers are positively frisky in comparison. For one thing, at least as much attention goes to Rafferty’s wedding plans, wedding doubts, bad decisions about booking the honeymoon through his shyster cousin Nigel, drinking, sale of flats, stag nights, and other elements of personal life as to the murder case. There’s never any sense of urgency (except to keep from having to postpone the honeymoon). Rafferty and Llewellyn question suspects repeatedly without doing a thorough job of it, and they make elementary mistakes. They forget that, when two people alibi each other, both are covered, and part of the alibi could be a lie. When examining CCTV tapes and finding one car from Oldfield’s lot where it shouldn’t be, they don’t look for any other cars from the lot.

There are geographic details but not much in the way of atmosphere. The text needed to be proofread for homophones as well as spell-checked. DEATH DANCE just didn’t make it for me. (F)

David E. Fessenden’s THE CASE OF THE EXPLODING SPEAKEASY was published in 2013 as a free or inexpensive e-book. It is set in Philadelphia in 1926; its first person narrator is Thomas Watson, cub reporter for the Philadelphia Herald and son of Dr. John Watson who recounted the adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Disgraced British butler Basil Meridan works as a waiter at Harry Ragan’s speakeasy. Taking a tray of drinks to the back room where Ragan and his guests are involved in their regular Monday night poker game, he finds the door locked. Looking in, he sees Ragan with a fixed expression of rage on his face; then the back room explodes, and the four men inside are dead. They weren’t, however, killed by the explosion but were asphyxiated. Thomas Watson comes upon the speakeasy shortly after the explosion, hears Basil’s story, and sees it as his chance to move up as a full-fledged reporter. That same day, Watson finds that his father has died in London, leaving him his entire estate; Mycroft Holmes, with whom Dr. Watson had been living, has come to Philadelphia as executor of the will to explain. Basil knows Mycroft Holmes from his tenure as a waiter at the Diogenes Club, and the three men move in together as they work together to solve the mystery of Ragan’s death. Is it, as the police say, a mob killing? Or is it something personal?

The plot is fairly laid out, though Painless (person referred to in Ragan’s ledger as owing him large amounts of money) is obviously the killer. The conclusion is satisfactory, despite Thomas’s pulling a TSTL by going off on his own to investigate a lead and having to be rescued.

Characters are attractive, with good preservation of Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, and Dr. John Watson as presented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Fessenden is good at using atmosphere to reveal character: “From my nearly bare cupboard I managed to cobble together an unimpressive tea--a can of beans and a tin of corned beef, which I served over toast, made from the only two slices of bread I had left. I cleared away a mound of books and papers, and set my rickety kitchen table with the only dishes I had--a slightly chipped set I acquired from a secondhand store, with a gaudy red-and-orange floral design. Mycroft raised his eyebrows, but said nothing, and he consumed his meager portion as if he were dining on pheasant under glass at the Diogenes Club.” (19)

Sense of place is good. THE CASE OF THE EXPLODING SPEAKEASY is solidly constructed. (B+)

LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, Vintage 2002, is the latest release in the DVD series of the popular, long-running Brit com. Its major stars are Peter Sallis (Norman Clegg) and Frank Thornton (Herbert Truelove, “Truly of the Yard”). All the series regulars are present for most of the episodes. The series never fully recovered from the loss of Bill Own, who played the irrepressible Compo Simmonite, but the quality remained far better than average, especially when compared with most American TV.

Writer Roy Clarke used a basic formula in which he rang endless changes. There are always several brief storylines that come together in a comedy of errors. One of them involves Barry (Mike Grady) and his desire to move up in the building society, leading him into situations in which he tries to become more executive and managerial, his desire to impress the golf club captain (Trevor Bannister), and his longing for adventure. A second involves Auntie Wainwright (Jean Alexander) and her incessant salesmanship, often at the expense of Clegg who’s terrified of her. Another is the Howard (Robert Fyfe), Marina (Jean Fergusson), and Pearl (Juliette Kaplan) triangle, with all Howard’s plans for alone time with Marina, which often involves Clegg who’s terrified of Marina. A fourth involves Billy Hardcastle (Keith Clifford) and his delusions based on his belief that he’s a direct descendant of Robin ‘Ood, through his mother who was a Bristow. Yet another involves Tom Simmonite (Bill Owen’s son Tom Owen), his working for Auntie Wainwright with Smiler (Stephen Lewis), his would-be show biz career as ventriloquist for Waldo, and his con-man schemes. Running gags include Edie Pegden’s (Dame Thora Hird) driving; synchronized tea-drinking by the women; Nora Batty’s (Kathy Staff) hats; Ivy’s (Jane Freeman) attitude toward customers at the cafe; Glenda’s (Sarah Thomas) bragging and worrying about Barry; and incredible machines, explosions, and cap-on-fire incidents at Wesley Pegden’s (Gordon Wharmby) shed.

Clarke used the holiday special to introduce new characters for the upcoming season. In 2002, this is a Yorkshire Chinese electrician from Hull, Entwhistle (Burt Kwouk); he confesses that his family changed their name to Entwhistle because they kept being mistaken for Scots. “A Musical Passing for a Miserable Muscroft” also features Sir Norman Wisdom in a recurring role as Billy Ingleton, of musical persuasion, who’s bought a van equipped with a pipe organ. Trying to get it operational in time for the ladies’ charitable do at the Huddersfield Fair, he instead winds up providing music for Muscroft’s funeral.

LAST OF THE SUMMER WINE, Vintage 2002, is a good year. (A-)

Jenna Harte’s DEADLY VALENTINE was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2012. It’s the first in her Valentine Mystery series. It features Tess Madison, a 29-year-old lawyer who’d moved from DC back to her home in Jefferson Tavern, Virginia, after life-altering events three years before. The decision involved Jack Valentine, millionaire computer security and technology guru and major stud muffin, who’s now come back into her life. Both turn up at Asa Worthington’s for a dinner, Tess as a guest and Jack to negotiate a business deal. Tess is coming down with the flu, Jack quarrels with Asa, and Tess finds Asa’s body in his study. Jack is the police’s main person of interest, and Tess agrees to represent him.

I’m giving up at 26%. There’s nothing much wrong, except it’s much more romance than suspense. I don’t get any Southern ambiance from the setting. Neither protagonist is individual, and it seems likely that their three years apart will turn out to be a gross misunderstanding that a frank conversation could have prevented. Life’s too short. No grade because not finished.

Maria Hudgins’s SCORPION HOUSE was a free or inexpensive e-book featuring Dr. Lacy Glass, a physiologist [?] with a background in chemistry, an expert in pigments. She and four colleagues from Wythe College in Virginia start a three-month project in Egypt in December 2009, in which physical scientists will investigate the contents of a newly-discovered tomb in the Valley of Nobles, that of Kheti, an official whose lifetime overlapped the reign of Akhenaten. They are joining a former Wythe biologist Dr. Horace Lanier, who’s researching and recreating the herbal and medical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians. But Lacey’s friend and mentor Dr. Joel Friedman dies their first night at the expedition house of an apparent heart attack; the next night, just after changing sleeping rooms with Dr. Susan Donohoe, director of the project, Lacy finds a scorpion in her bed. Tensions abound within the group; Lanier is hiding a major archaeological find; and Lacy is convinced that Friedman was murdered. What on earth is going on?

I’m giving up at 33%. I’ve never been to Egypt or on a dig, but I don’t think any modern archaeological dig in Egypt occurs like the one described in SCORPION HOUSE. For one thing, there are only three, possibly four, Egyptians involved in the entire dig, one as a driver, one as a surveyor, and the third as a night watchman; Hudgins does not give the ethnicity of conservator Kathleen Hassan. Even the cook Bay is an American, an elderly woman who’s convinced she’s the reincarnation of Hatshepsut’s daughter. There’s no mention of graduate students, workmen who’d do most of the physical labor, technicians, tourists, all the people who’d normally be associated with a dig. Lanier manages to find an important, huge (it’s at least five feet long) papyrus scroll and conceal it for two seasons; there’s no conservation for the scroll. He unrolls three feet of it without damage, but he’s forced to cut the scroll and rehydrate the remaining two feet or more to flatten it to be read. He’s able successfully to do this despite all his training being in biology. Really?

The premise of the project seems a bit off to me also. Would Egyptian authorities allow a tomb, even a non-royal one, be excavated with only one Egyptologist? All the others are various sorts of physical scientists, the hypothesis being that objective analysis of the tomb contents, uncontaminated by preconceptions about Egyptian history and culture, will give new insights. Physical scientists do consult on specialities but within the context.

Would the death of any American in Egypt pass with so little attention from Egyptian authorities or American officials? The body is autopsied, but there’s absolutely no police involvement, and it’s up to Lacy to make all the arrangements about notifying Mrs. Friedman and getting her to Egypt. There is, however, a possible CIA presence in Dr. Paul Hannah, whose speciality is supposed to be the origins of civilization--the changeover from hunter-gatherer into agricultural peoples with the growth of cities--but who’s now off on a tangent trying to find out who the Hyskos were, a completely unrelated topic. Real archaeologists don’t jump around like that.

Hudgins also hits one of my pet peeves--none of her characters who are supposed to be long-time residents of Virginia or Graham and Shelley Clark who’re supposed to be natives, sound like it. No grade because not finished.

Jonnie Jacobs’s MOTION TO DISMISS was originally published in 1999 and re-issued in e-book format in 2013. It is the second in her Kali O’Brien mystery series.

Kali O’Brien is covering the practice of her former law-school roommate Nina Barrett. Nina is pregnant and has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease; she’s confined to bed, unable to begin chemo until her baby’s developed enough to survive on his own. Her handsome, wealthy husband Grady Barrett, head of ComTecLtd that’s about to go public, is accused of date rape by Deidre Nichols, met at an engagement party for a ComTec employee. Grady doesn’t deny sex with her, but says it had been consensual. Madeleine Rivera, the prosecutor assigned to the case, is determined to carry through. Then Deidre is murdered, thrown off the elevated deck of a home where she is housesitting; her daughter Adrianna, who’s a school friend of Nina’s daughter Emily, tells police that she’d seen Grady’s silver Mercedes convertible at the house about the time of death. Grady’s arrested for murder, and he’s clearly not telling Kali and Marc Griffin, Nina’s law partner and company attorney for ComTec, the whole truth. Checking on Deidre’s background leads to her stormy relationship with Tony Rodale, an investment counselor with a history of domestic violence and rumors of non-kosher business interests, and a complicated relationship with her older sister Sheila Barlow, with whom she and Adrianna often lived. Private investigator Hal Fisher, who’s been Kali’s friend for ten years, tells he’s discovered ties between Rodale and Marc, information that affects Grady’s defense, but he’s shot to death. There’s a break-in at the law offices; Marc is attacked, then he disappears. Kali’s left alone to cover Grady’s preliminary hearing and faces an unexpected witness who puts Grady a few minutes away from the scene and time of Deidre’s death. Can Kali save Grady?

The plot in MOTION TO DISMISS is fairly laid out with appropriate foreshadowing of the identity of the killer, but Jacobs misdirects attention skillfully from actual motive and possible guilty parties. It focuses on the idea of the police identifying most likely suspect and ignoring all others, and the conclusion is more Perry Mason than literally what’s apt to happen at a preliminary hearing. The amount of legwork Kali does on her own (Marc’s busy with the public offering and trying to save it, and the only staff is a receptionist) before she hires Hal Fisher seems unrealistic.

Kali as first person narrator is the best developed of the characters, though most are reasonably individual. She’s not very believable in her relationship with Marc, with whom she’d been lovers while in second-year law school. He’d been engaged to someone else at the time, without telling Kali; yet she’s still attracted to him, still feels doubts about his behavior and motivations, and eventually sleeps with him again. It’s also hard to believe that a hotshot CEO of major IT company would be as naive and plain stupid about the stories he tells the police and his attorney.

Sense of place is nothing special. MOTION TO DISMISS is okay, but it’s not memorable. (C)

Miranda James’s BLESS HER DEAD LITTLE HEART is the first in her Southern Ladies Series. It was published in e-book format in 2014. It features elderly sisters Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce Ducote of Athena, Mississippi, and Diesel, Charlie Harris’s Maine Coon cat from James’s Cat in the Stacks series.

When sorority sister Rosabelle Sultan arrives unexpectedly, having driven from California because she claims someone in her family is trying to kill her, she asks for sanctuary from the Ductoe sisters at Riverhill, their ancestral home. In short order, Rosabelle’s uncouth son Wade Thurmond, his horrible wife Marla Stephens, and her son Beny arrive, arrive and move in for an indefinite stay. They are followed by Rosabelle’s older children, Maudine Pittman and Bernice Cameron; Maudine’s ineffectual son Junior and Bernice’s daughter Junaita accompany them, and all move into Riverhill. Before the dust settles from the accusations of attempted murder and mental incompetence, Marla falls down the marble staircase at Riverhill and dies of a broken neck. Water had been placed on the marble steps, Vaseline smeared on the bannister, just as previous attempts had been made on Rosabelle. Chief Deputy Kanesha Berry of the Athena County Sheriff’s Department has known the sisters since she was a small girl; she doesn’t suspect them, and she’s determined to keep them safe. She asks that they allow their guests to remain at Riverhill while she investigates. In short order, Rosabell’s third husband Antonio Mingione, Conte di San Lorenzo, whom Rosabelle said had died a year before, shows up for a romantic reconciliation with his much-older wife. Maudine, even more unpleasant than her half brother, is frightened into a heart attack which kills her. What on earth is going on at Riverhill, and who’s responsible?

The plot in BLESS HER DEAD LITTLE HEART is based on greed, one of the basic causes for murder, but the exact provisions of the various trust documents involved never becomes clear. This makes the identification of the killer more problematical than need be, had they been better spelled out. An experienced reader may well pick up on the identity anyway.

Sense of place is strong. There’s little to no physical description of the area, minimal description of the Ducotes’ house Riverview, though presumably it’s in the Mississippi Delta. The story-telling voice, with point of view moving between Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce, is authentic Southern, as are their speech patterns. Southern attitudes toward good manners and hospitality are spot on.

Characterization, particularly of the Ducoe sisters, is strong. Miss An’gel is the older, 84 years old, more head than heart: “All at once An’gel felt tired, so she went over and sat on the bed. Maybe Dickce had been right to suggest that she throw the whole clan out. Why had she even agreed to let them stay in the first place? Because I am accustomed to thinking that I can fix anything I set my mind to, she acknowledged ruefully to herself. And in my arrogance I just might have mixed Sister and me up in something nasty.” Miss Dickce, only 80 years old, is heart-ruled: “...Clementine [housekeeper], one of the most kindhearted women she knw, would look after Benjy. Dickce wasn’t sure why she herself was so determined to see to the boy’s welfare. She had always liked young people and occasionally regretted that neither she nor her sister had married and had children of their own. You are not taking that child to raise. She could hear An’gel scolding her already. She had no intention of taking Benjy to raise, but she didn’t see how any harm in keeping an eye on him. Nobody else was, so far as she could tell, and he was too young to weather all of this on his own. If An’gel made an issue of it, that was exactly what Dickce would tell her.”

I enjoyed BLESS HER DEAD LITTLE HEART thoroughly. (A-)

Joyce and Jim Lavene’s GLORY’S LAST VICTIM was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2004. It features Sherif Sharyn Howard of Montgomery County, North Caolina.

I’m giving up at 10%. So far all that’s happened is catching two purse snatchers at the local mall, an undercover operation that involved the sheriff, the chief deputy, and two other deputies; the introduction of a minimum of twenty characters (by actual count); a surprise birthday party that’s three days early; and references to at least two previous unresolved cases, presumably recounted in earlier books. Even worse in my book is the lack of any sense of being in the South. Why do authors insist on using a Southern setting when they can’t or won’t or don’t build the geographical details and ambiance of their location?

No grade because not finished.

Sorry, folks, but this one pushed one of my major buttons.

“The Mystery of the Last Line” is a short story by M. Pepper Langlinais featuring Sherlock Holmes. It was published in 2012 in e-format. The story is set in Yorkshire a month following the death of Mycroft Holmes.

****SPOILERS****SPOILERS****

Holmes abruptly decides to return to his family home Holmesweald, taking with him Dr. John Watson and Mrs. Hudson. To honor his brother’s final request, Holmes plans to end his addiction to cocaine. While there, he digs up a skeleton buried in the orchard, taking his mother’s wedding band which had been stuffed in her throat; he reveals to Watson that his father Reginald Siger Holmes had killed his mother Adrienne with Mycroft as a distant witness.

Watson’s investigations as Holmes suffers through withdrawal leads him to events in Holmes’s childhood that create more mystery than is ever explained in the story. Watson finds Adrienne Holme’s diary. At nine years of age Sherlock, who’d been an avid rider, gives up riding, refusing even to enter the stables, and takes to almost obsessive washing of his body. Adrienne’s diary shows her moving from indifference to distaste for her husband; she’s planning to run away with Sherlock’s tutor, M. Gustin, when she’s killed. Watson uncovers the name Lord Llewellyn, who’d been a friend of Holmes Sr., in connection with whatever happened when Sherlock was nine. He also finds a cache of love letters and photos hidden in a box in Mycroft’s room, apparently from Nicholas Mabry to Mycroft. Mabry had been engaged to Alice Wyndham, who drowned herself, leaving a suicide note for Sherlock Holmes.

End of story. No conclusion, no developing of story lines, nada. This reminds me of the much anthologized short story by Frank Stockton, “The Lady, or the Tiger?” in which the conclusion is up to the reader.. The implication is that the events Watson uncovers are the source for Holmes’s psychological quirks and his addiction. But this is never stated, nor is the meaning of what Watson found. Frankly, I consider this a cop-out on Langlinais’s part. If Holmes is a victim of childhood sexual abuse, if Mycroft is gay, if Holmes Sr. is a murderer, say so and don’t just hint. Please note--I’m not incensed at the implications as much as the “hint, hint, nudge, nudge” manner. (F)

Peter Maughan’s SIR HUMPHREY OF BATCH HALL PLUS THE FAMOUS CRICKET MATCH is the second in his Batch Magna series. It consists of two parts, the novel SIR HUMPHREY OF BATCH HALL and the short story “The Famous Cricket Match.” They feature the same cast of characters as THE CUCKOOS OF BATCH MAGNA, most notably Phineas Cook and the other inhabitants of the houseboats moored at Batch Hall on the Cluny River: the Owen family, Commander and Priny Cunningham, and Jasmine Roberts with her horde of children.

SIR HUMPHREY OF BATCH HALL opens with the celebration of the marriage of Sir Humphrey Franklin T. Strange, 9th baronet, to the Honorable Clementine Wroxley, eldest daughter of a Shropshire baron and master of the local hunt. Plans are afoot to keep Batch Hall, the dilapidated estate, going, what with rearing pheasants for October shooting parties, bespoke fishing trips under the expert guidance of Owain Owen, opening the house to the public (when it’s in good enough repair), and selling Shelly’s famous Coney Island hotdogs to the expected crowds. But life intrudes. There’s the Battle of Cutterbach Wood, in which Humph, as he prefers to be called, and Sion Owen take on badger baiters and rout them thoroughly. There’s the literal overturning of Phineas’s contribution to reviving the economy of Batch Magna--romantic punting expeditions by moonlight on the Cluny. Bag snatchers grab Clem’s handbag and with it the Hawis Stone, a fire opal necklace whose loss will doom the Strange family to losing the lHall. Sure enough, someone poisons the pheasant poults with DDT, and a large stretch of the river is killed off by high levels of organic toxins. But dotty Miss Wyndham puts in place the recovery of the Hawis Stone, and events take a turn for the better.

“The Famous Cricket Match” puts the men of Batch Magna against “the French”--the men of Blurford Village--in what Commander Cunningham thinks almost as important as Agincourt. Batch Magna is headed down to accustomed defeat when Phineas manages to put in a ringer, Sir Humph of Batch Hall, noted sandlot baseball player from the Bronx.

Maughan’s Batch Magna is England as it probably never was in reality but that exists in the minds of literary Anglophiles everywhere--a blend of Neverland and Wonderland. “Welcome to Batch Magna. A village sitting out the centuries in a river valley in the Welsh Marches. The forgotten country, it’s been called, the England that is half in Wales, and the Wales that is half in England. A place on a road to nowhere in particular and in no particular hurry to get there, and where the world is always elsewhere, over there somewhere, beyond the blue hills of their valley.”

Atmospheric description abounds: “...[Rain fell] on the tall, star-shaped chimneys and red sandstone-flagged roofs of its manor house, Batch Hall, home to the Strange family for over four hundred years, set with Elizabethan ornateness in what was left of its park. A striped black and white confection of half-timber and grand gable-ends that ge had settled out of true, giving the whole a tipsy look, a foolishly happy, disreputable air, suggestive of a down-at-hells aristocrat, ruined but jaunty in a battered silk topper and with a bottle in his pocket.”

Maughan also excels at succinct characterization: “...now four mscreants, four outsiders, were brazenly strolling in to reap the benefit, to steal the fruits of other people’s labour. Miss Wyndham’s view of life had a robust simplicity to it. There were those who worked and those who didn’t. those who put in and those who took out. And it made her mad. She had no idea what she intended doing about it--had no idea what she could do, which didn’t of course stop her trying to do it.”
She calls upon Sion Owen: “Sion was shorter than the American [Humph] but as wide in the shoulders, a compact Welsh bullock in the scrum when he turned out for Bannog Rugby Club, and an enthusiastic veteran of pub brawls either side of the border, which to him, full of Saturday night beer and the sort of energy that had to go somewhere, had been just another form of contact sport.”

Welcome to Batch Magna. (A-)

THE WOMAN FROM THE BLUE LIAS is D. E. Mitchell’s free or inexpensive e-book published in 2013. The title refers to the limestone-shale cliffs at Lyme Regis, in Dorset, known as the Jurassic Coast for its richness of fossil remains; the stone is referred to as “Blue Lias.”

Toby Turner is a rather gormless used bookstore owner in Lyme Regis, barely holding on financially and perhaps engaged to Trisha, who wants to change him. Walking on Monmouth Beach, he finds the skeleton of a murdered woman, apparently buried on the cliffs in the 1970s and released from them in one of the landfalls for which they are famous. Thereafter, he begins to see a woman, beautiful, young, dressed in the style of the 1970s, that no one else sees and who appears and disappears abruptly. She tells Toby her name is Madeline, and he becomes convinced she’s the ghost of the murdered woman. He falls in love with her and obsesses over finding out what happened. He thinks the death connected to the old Belle Vue Hotel, abandoned and finally swept off the cliffs by a landfall in the 1980s; when Toby talks to Steely Jacobs, has-been rock musician from the 1970s and former handyman at the hotel, Steely dies in what the police rule an accidental or deliberate overdose. Toby’s friend from childhood Mark Boothman has a file of girls who’ve disappeared since the 1990s, he obsessed with the murder of a girl-friend for which he’d been accused; he’s found hanging in his home, with evidence of financial difficulties and a suicide note. How are these current deaths tied to a murder in 1978? And who or what is Madeline?

Mitchell’s plot is obvious. An experienced reader will probably pick up on what’s going on and who’s responsible much sooner than Toby. One of its motifs is that there’s nothing new under the sun, especially in human depravity. Despite Toby’s soul searching and angst, the plot moves briskly. Toby does pull TSTLs by not going to the police with what he’s learned following Steely’s death and again when he receives a parcel of information after Mark’s death. The climax is a bit of a cop out but believable. What isn’t quite so realistic is the lack of police involvement in the investigation of the deaths.

Characterization is strong. Mitchell is admirably parsimonious in introducing characters. Each one serves a distinct essential purpose in advancing the plot. Toby, as first person narrator, is the best realized. “I could find out what happened to her myself, carry out my own investigations, I thought. After all, if she [Madeline] really was the ghost of the woman from the Blue Lias then I had the best witness to the murder that anyone could ever have. The victim herself. But how do you quiz a ghost that doesn’t known it is dead without upsetting it, or even letting on that it’s dead? I never thought I’d ever have to consider that kind of thing. But I was determined to find out who murdered her.” (69) Mitchell is also adept at using atmosphere to reveal character: “I never look forward to winter evenings. It’s almost as if there’s a trace of something ancient lurking inside me, when nightfall meant retreating to your log fires and never venturing too far from their heat and light, the dark land beyond their small, crackling rings of safety filled with unimaginable horrors, with wild creatures, with the roaming spirits of the dead, with demons and trolls and creatures of the night.” (156)

Sense of place is outstanding. “I headed for Monmouth Beach, past the beach huts, soon to be removed for the winter, past the beach of soft French sand, past the harbour and the now deserted Cobb, past the yachts and small boats hauled onto dry land, where the wind rattling their lines made a mournful moaning, clanking sound, past the locked boatyard whose large double door were always open in summer so that you could see men going about their magical art of crafting small boats, and smell the wood shavings that carried over to you, and finally across the white pebbles and onto Monmouth Beach itself.” (14)

I’d not heard of D. M. Mitchell’s work, but I’ll definitely be looking for more. (B+)