Mystery Review: The Only Good Secretary is a fine example of the mystery genre known as domestic suspense or domestic noir. In domestic noir the mystery is usually solved, whether largely or wholly, by the ordinary people involved rather than by some genius detective, hardboiled private eye, or a meticulous police procedural. Seeing the events through the eyes of those directly affected, family, friends, or as here, co-workers, is a refreshing change and more relatable. In many domestic suspense novels, as here, I feel the ghost of Shirley Jackson hovering above, the verisimilitude strong until it takes a turn and the whole world shifts on its axis. This is a well-plotted mystery with surprises as co-workers, roommates, exes, and others (not so much the police) try to figure out who killed the boss's secretary. Another excellent reprint (available as a twofer along with Potts' 1957 mystery The Man with the Cane) from Stark House Mystery Classics. A good lost novel found again, which always makes me happy. [4★]
Short Story Review: "The Manchester Marriage" is not a story about a United fan married to a City supporter as one might think. Instead it's intended as a tear jerker (if it succeeds depends on whether the reader has a heart of stone). Just a bit of melodrama, with everyone simply human, no villains, nobody doing wrong, and everyone doing their duty as best they can despite the hap of life. To live is to serve. Some characters have to be able to change, and just who does so makes up part of the surprise at the end. The story turns on the twist of a secret with serious legal and psychological consequences. Times change, and what was a matter of life and death in 1858 would be the subject of a screwball comedy with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant in 1940. The first twist was predictable, though the ending not so much, and the resolution was both sad and gratifying. [3★]
Short Story Review: "Eveline's Visitant" is a short ghost story about two cousins who engage in a duel over a nameless woman, which ends in the death of one (André) and a curse on the other (Hector). Even though Hector is instantly remorseful, this is a tale of Gothic horror. If the curse seems unfair, too bad, equity is not be a requisite element of curses. André was a ladies' man, a "favourite of women," who treacherously stole a woman away from his cousin. In revenge, André's ghost seduces Hector's (later) wife, just as he seduced women when alive. At first glance it seems wrong the sweet and much-loved Eveline should suffer for her husband's youthful crime. So often it's the innocent who suffer most and most unfairly. But was she guiltless in her relationship with the ghost? The reader can't help but wonder why Eveline suffers so much trauma that she wastes away and dies. Braddon leaves a suggestion that Eveline entered into some form of supernatural infidelity, in which case she is punished sure enough for her wavering loyalty. There are even intimations of some erotic attachment between the ghost of Andre and Eveline. She confesses that the ghost "plucked all old familiar joys out of my heart, and left in it but one weird, unholy pleasure -- the delight of his presence ... I have striven against this wickedness in vain." Ironically, she asks her husband to curse her for this sin. "Eveline's Visitant" is a tale of the other side of this life, where the world is harsh, evil happens, and mortals suffer. Mary Elizabeth Braddon was famous for writing "sensation novels," her best known being Lady Audley's Secret (1862). [3★]
Short Story Review: "The Mortal Immortal" is a short, supernatural tale about a young man's confrontation with the perils of immortality and the limits of love. As with Frankenstein, Shelley investigates the boundaries of science (alchemy) and the fearful consequences of experimentation. She attempts to find the line where knowledge challenges the natural order and interferes with what is moral or human, and becomes a blessing and a curse. The irony being that in seeking longer life, one becomes removed from normal life. While inventive and engaging, Shelley develops no radical or startling response to these themes. As a fairy tale this would fall into the "be careful what you wish for" category. Notably, this Gothic tale has a contemporary setting with an emphasis on the psychological; Mary Shelley, ever imaginative. [3★]
Mystery Review: The Spoiler combines America's two national pastimes: baseball and murder. Frank Lofton is short, balding, in his late thirties, thinks too much and consistently makes poor decisions. He doesn't know his son by his first marriage, his second marriage has fallen apart, his career as a reporter is marginal, and he's chasing a story in which people who know too much are dying. Did I mention he makes poor decisions? Seems his only joy in life is going to the ballpark to watch the Holyoke Redwings lose ballgames. Frank is the unlikely hero of this introspective, noir, and hardboiled mystery about a Massachusetts town with dying industry and too many abandoned warehouses burning. The story is a slow build. Stansberry paints a careful portrait of town and characters, as Frank spends many pages mulling over the ramifications of the many moving parts he's discovered. Typically for noir there's an aptly named femme fatale, though unusually the reader gets to share some of her thoughts. After a lengthy set-up, the ending comes fast, furious, and unexpected. The Spoiler was the first novel by Domenic Stansberry, who's written a number of other mysteries, including The Confession (2004), from the popular Hard Case Crime series. Stansberry dedicated The Spoiler to Adam Hammer, a surrealist poet and talented baseball player who died in a car accident three years before the novel was published. Adam's book of poetry, Deja Everything, is reviewed on GR (3.75) and Amazon (5.0). [4★]
Story Review: "The Avenging Chance" is the original kernel of Anthony Berkeley's much expanded novel The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929). In both a man's wife dies after inadvertently receiving a poisoned box of chocolates. The novel has a different solution than the short story (and different character names). In fact, the novel lavishly provides no less than six reasonable explanations to the mystery, including the resolution from "The Avenging Chance," which is one of the "wrong" theories. Unlike the novel, the story is short, concise, and to the point, efficiently wrapping up a perfect enigma. Oddly, the story and the novel were published the same year, but the novel though written second was apparently published first. A shame since the story provides a sort of red herring for the novel. In a more perfect world "The Avenging Chance" and The Poisoned Chocolates Case would always be published together. [4★]
Mystery Review: Two-Way Murder was apparently written around 1956, but "lost" until it was published by the British Library in 2021 as by E.C.R. Lorac (1884-1958), although she'd planned to use the name "Mary Le Bourne." Thanks to Martin Edwards for his helpful Introduction. This novel doesn't feature either of her long time series detectives Inspector Macdonald or Julian Rivers. Instead we have a duo of Inspector Turner and Inspector Waring from the local police, making it the odd standalone for Lorac (or her alter ego, Carol Carnac). The novel appears at least somewhat unfinished in that it could have used a final good editing to remove the last-draft evidences. Two-Way Murder also desperately needed a map of the region as much of the novel consists of repeatedly driving though a maze of roads and country lanes in a way that quickly becomes complicated. The novel was a step forward for Lorac in technique. She uses a shifting narrator or "detective," turning from Macbane to Waring to feisty housekeeper Alice Ridley, all of whom dig into the mystery. She also uses sets of "doubles," balancing the Rosemary Reeve a powerful and terrible termagant with Dilys Maine, the quiet and obedient. There's also Inspector Turner who operates by the book, one step at a time, in comparison and contrast with Inspector Waring who's instinctive and holistic. Two-Way Murder is a clever mystery, with an interesting cast of characters, family difficulties and a little romance along with a theme on the ethics of withholding information from the police. This fits well with the work of the Golden Age group Allingham, Christie, Marsh, and Sayers, and perhaps others like Christianna Brand, Gladys Mitchell, and Mary Roberts Rinehart are due for a rediscovery. And that's just the women! Lorac's books are a little less tidy and tight than Christie's, but she can certainly be spoken about in the greater list of UK (and US) mystery writers. [4★]
Mystery Review: Murder by Matchlight has Chief Inspector Macdonald (in his 26th book) investigating a murder that occurred in front of witnesses of a victim who doesn't exist. E.C.R. Lorac (1894-1958) vividly captures the war's effects on London, the Blitz and combined feelings of fear and defiance, the blackouts and sudden deaths and bombed-out streets. This isn't simply a setting but inextricably intertwined with the stories of the characters' lives and integral to the mystery itself. There are a lot of coincidences in this rather Baroque mystery well balanced by the interesting and idiosyncratic characters. In Murder by Matchlight we learn that Macdonald was an Oxford man as were so many of his detecting peers, such as Wimsey, Fell, and Alleyn. As usual Lorac also brings forth a philosophical theme for the reader to ponder while reading, here the validity of vigilantism. Whether it's ever acceptable to take the law into our own hands, whether the death of a bad person is no loss, whether the end justifies the means. In each of her books Lorac develops a moral issue for consideration. Her books always begin better than they end and there are some clumsy moments in Murder by Matchlight -- Lorac's plots are never as tidy as Christie's, but whose are, anyway. This volume also includes a very short story by Lorac from 1953, "Permanent Policeman," that turns on a matter of hairdressing that's less revelatory and relevant now, and has been used by others since. [3½★]
Mystery Review: All the Sinners Bleed starts with a school shooting and quickly escalates from there. This is the fourth crime novel by S.A. Cosby (my second) and it's another intense, tough, and compelling story confirming Faulkner's statement about the past. Not a mystery, more a thriller and police procedural that mixes in-depth characters with occasional graphic violence. Cosby wonderfully evokes the landscape and way of life in rural Virginia, though some of the characters are like no one you'd ever find there. In an interview Cosby noted being concerned that his writing might be too "country" to get published. That wasn't the problem with All the Sinners Bleed; the "country" was the best part. No, some of the narrative is more preachy, politically correct, and "city" than you'd ever find in the Virginia backwaters. Compare "Scott was the type of man who complained about the world being too sensitive these days without ever acknowledging the irony of his own fragility or privilege" with "Titus thought Scott was a spoiled brat." Which sounds more like rural Virginia? Any thoughts about "identity" and culture wars there are well-hidden beneath a thick crust of insular Southern suspicion. (Yes, I suffered serious trauma in rural Virginia.) But it's easy to overlook the odd break of verisimilitude in All the Sinners Bleed when the story keeps propelling the reader nonstop to the next page. I only complain because all the rest of the book is of such high quality that I expected more of the same. I have two more books by Cosby to read and then I'll be waiting impatiently for the next, along with everyone else. [4★]
Mystery Review: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, a collection of 14 stories by female authors published between 1943 and 1977, warns us that things are not what they seem to be and people are not who we think they are. This is often true in mysteries when the truth is obscured until the end. In the best of these stories, however, some mystery, the "why," still remains. These tales of "domestic suspense" lean toward the dark, creepy, demented, even mildly supernatural. The "twisted" of the title, hinting at psychopathy, is appropriate even though the stories are based on family, or the lack thereof, and rooted in the mundane, everyday lives of middle America (mostly). The narratives here are less predictable and formulaic than usually found in the crime genre. Although the stories span four decades only one was published in the Fifties, which seems the height of the domestic suspense era, but maybe that's just in the movies. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives features notable names like Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson, along with some of my personal favorites such as Dorothy B, Hughes and Margaret Millar, middling-known writers such as Vera Caspary (author of Laura), Charlotte Armstrong, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and Celia Fremlin. The other five authors were new to me but no less interesting. As with any selection there are hits and misses with two or three being a bit simple or just whooshed me entirely. "Louisa, Please Come Home," "Lavender Lady," "Sugar and Spice," "The Purple Shroud," and "The Stranger in the Car" were the stories I particularly enjoyed, but I easily could see readers picking five others as their favorites. Margaret Millar's "The People Across the Canyon" seemed a perfect Shirley Jackson pastiche. What also struck me about Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives is just how professional the writing is, how well-written in structure and tone. These people wrote for a living. A job well done. [4★]
Mystery Review: Razorblade Tears is the third of S.A. Cosby's four crime novels (my first). The book, though a thriller as much as a mystery, is heavy on characterization without the typical quirky clichés and explores genuine issues of family, race, and sexuality. There's some graphic violence thrown in among more sensitive moments of loss and love (while being circumspect about the sex). This is an accomplished and successful novel. Cosby has mentioned influences such as Walter Mosley (Easy Rawlins comes in for a shout out), Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Ross Macdonald, and John D. MacDonald, not to mention Chandler, Hammett, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Pretty good company and some influences are more visible than others. I see a bit of Jim Thompson as well, but whether he's an influence I see Cosby as an heir to James Crumley (that's a compliment, see The Last Good Kiss) in his ability to balance thoughtful insights with graphic violence along with a certain level of alcoholism. Crumley was far heavier on the wish-fulfillment sex and (slapstick) humor, but Cosby's portrayal is a heckuva a lot more realistic. One caveat is a jarring note of piously woke preachiness, okay in its place but is at odds with rednecks and vigilante violence in Southern backwaters while breaking fingers, putting a corpse through a chipper, and some gay-panic-defense-level brutality. It's hard to see "a hell-raising, whiskey-drinking, hard-loving redneck son of a bitch" saying "Thank God for white privilege." These folks just aren't high on the wokeness quotient. But maybe that was required in 2021. Other than that Razorblade Tears contains a high level of writing and plotting throughout. No meandering and meaningless plot points to fill out the story. One character says, "Folks like to talk about revenge like it's a righteous thing but it's just hate in a nicer suit." Anger is also omnipresent, with some stemming from the two father's self-hatred for not reconciling with their sons before their deaths. The rattlesnake wariness of the bromance between the two fathers in the strong core of the novel: "Had he really called Buddy Lee his friend ... they'd killed a man together, so they were more than acquaintances, but ... ." Razorblade Tears is just the first. I'll definitely be reading Cosby's other three books. [4★]
Mystery Review: The Hunter was a new kind of novel, and whether that was a good thing is open to debate. This was the introduction of the mononymic Parker: hard-boiled, ruthless, amoral, a professional thief who lives well on the proceeds of a few big capers a year. He's not a detective. He's a bad guy, a strong arm robber who doesn't necessarily enjoy killing but doesn't avoid it either. Typically his story is of one bad guy wronged by other bad guys. The Hunter was made into the movies Point Blank (1967) and Payback (1999), both of which are excellent (the first has a sterling reputation; I'm unsure why the second gets so much grief). The novel has almost no extraneous detail, virtually all the writing is either dialog or description of people interacting. Little is wasted on pondering and description and the book reads like a runaway freight. If a field is described it's because Parker has to crawl through it. Here we get the violent end of Spillane melded into the Jim Thompson school of rough trade with just a touch of Simenon. I don't know if Parker is an anti-hero but he's certainly the protagonist as bad guy while he seeks revenge on the accomplices who betrayed him. At the end of The Hunter Parker is traveling to Omaha to get plastic surgery to change his appearance. The author was Donald E. Westlake under the oddly appropriate pseudonym Richard Stark, as the writing is uniquely severe and bare. He wrote 23 more installments of the Parker saga. Maybe it's not okay for the reader to be rooting for the bad guy to get away with it, but it sure is transgressively enjoyable and engrossing. [4★]
Book Review: A View of the Harbour is a book of which the reader may say: nothing happens, there's no plot, there's simply description. I've dismissed such books as over my head, too elusive, just not for me. But I sat back and read A View of the Harbour as if viewing an impressionist painting, just to appreciate the descriptions and absorb the emotions. The story is bits and pieces put together, in a way that's not quite clear, not sharply delineated, but consists of a few events, the feelings of the characters, the shaded emotions, small moments created, so the reader can let the scenes accumulate, accrete, gather together to form a blurred whole. It's quiet, subtle, thoughtful. There is little plot. The movement, the action, occurs in the thoughts, worries, emotions of the characters. Their feelings carry and propel the story, always musing, reflecting, considering. There's a whole lot of fretting going on. In the discussion of "likable" and "unlikable" characters, Taylor's are always both. Each character contains something appealing and something disagreeable or objectionable, just like most people. My favorite character was a precocious and incisive small girl, Stevie, who was also an enormous brat. In A View of the Harbour the Second World War is over and life is worse than before. Now there are all the lonely women, with the men distant, apparently okay, more easily satisfied. But the women are yearning, seeking, desperate. The story reminded me of Patrick Hamilton's The Slaves of Solitude published the same year, also in the aftermath of the War. I took awhile getting into the novel, to get a fix on the many characters, get a sense of all that was going on, but when I did suddenly everything became richer and rewarding. Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75) sees the sharp edges of human observation and interaction, how we all skirt around the edges of other people, and how we pass judgment on each other. She can write gorgeous sentences forever, as when she writes of "the pigeon-coloured evening." Aging characters are "not in any safe harbour, but thrust out to sea with none of the brave equipment of youth to buoy them up." Taylor jumps deep inside people's heads to capture the tragedy and comedy of life, while content to let the plot run behind trying to catch up. [4★]
Mystery Review: Trent's Last Case is actually the first case for Philip Trent, famous artist, journalist, and amateur solver of crime problems. For those who felt Sherlock Holmes was too affected, arrogant, or simply annoying, Trent was an antidote. More human and fallible, someone who enjoys a good meal and a glass of wine even as he brilliantly proposes the wrong solution and falls madly in love with the chief suspect -- he's certainly no Holmes. Trent relies on fingerprints, footprints, and examines crime scenes with a painter's gimlet eye. The story and tone veer wildly, however, as if Bentley was trying to figure out what kind of story he wanted to write even as he was writing it. Trent's Last Case has a healthy dose of romance, interesting comparisons of Britons and Americans, and piles twist on twist in a messy ending. The original title was The Woman in Black (suggesting an entirely different focus) for the first edition, but has been Trent's Last Case ever since. Even though titled the "last case" it was followed by two more outings for Trent decades later in another novel and a short story collection. Intended by its author as "not so much a detective story as an exposure of detective stories." Perhaps it was a mild satire, but has been accepted as a classic in the genre, and a precursor of the Golden Age of mystery novels, offering an alternative to the more Holmesian (and more or less obnoxious) detectives that sprang up later like Poirot (1920), Wimsey (1923), Vance (1926), and Queen (1929). In intending to gently mock the genre in Trent's Last Case, Bentley in fact modernized and liberated the style with his more human detective. The novel is a little of its time in terminology, unfortunately. [3½★]
Mystery Review: The Wintringham Mystery centers on the disappearance of a guest at a country house party. Our amateur sleuth moves careers quickly from former soldier of independent means to footman to weekend guest of rich but exceedingly kind old lady (acting as fairy godmother) who happens to have known said sleuth's mother -- whenever obstacles arise the deus ex machina quickly descends. Handy coincidences abound in addition to priest holes and secret passages in this English country house, closed-circle mystery reminiscent of Agatha Christie (including some thinly veiled anti-Semitism, also à la Agatha). The story isn't stunning but The Wintringham Mystery is determinedly entertaining with some interesting "time machine" moments from 1927: a beautiful young woman proposes to the sleuth, shocking given the time -- those Roaring Twenties! In most novels of earlier times the servants aren't even granted a name, but here the reader gets a front row seat to the burdens and working conditions of the servant class when our penniless hero needs a job and becomes a footman (had no idea what that was till I read this). The Wintringham Mystery is a delightful mix of mystery and romance, almost a cozy. The one death occurs off stage. A compelling page turner until the end, which is somewhat anti-climactic and probably unguessable. I did get bits and pieces and the sleuth (wrongly) proposed my theory at one point, so it was obviously a red herring. Entertaining nonetheless and I look forward to tracking down more of the underappreciated Berkeley's mysteries. Originally titled Cicely Disappears under the pseudonym A. Monmouth Platts. [4★]
Short Story Review: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" has become a celebrated short story and ethics 101 exercise, even appearing in The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story (2021). At once both one of the most misunderstood and least subtle stories ever written, as we learn that no one walks away from Omelas despite our best intentions. The story echoes sentiments from Dostoyevsky and Henry James and is similar in theme to the Friedrich Dürrenmatt play, Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956). Very much and deliberately an allegory, seemingly a repositioning of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948). But where that piece drew the reader into depths of literary and intellectual ambiguity, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" aims aslant, satisfied to be as obvious and pointed as a high school newspaper. Most simply, the piece is an inquiry into whether it's acceptable for the many to benefit from the suffering of the few, or even the one. In our time that question has been definitively resolved with a resounding: "Yes, it is." The story is easily extrapolated to address income and social inequality, that the wealth of the few depends on the exploitation of the masses. More broadly, that the greed of many is paid for by many more -- here presented as the population of Omelas benefiting from the suffering of one. The secret is we're all living in Omelas and we're not the one. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a product of its time. Le Guin wrote the story amidst the counterculture and hippies, Woodstock and communes, when some people tried to drop out and live outside the prevailing norms. We still see pale reflections of that today, perhaps the Occupy movement, or when people live within the dominant culture, but attempt to mitigate their footprint through fair trade, recycling, carbon free, electric vehicles, solar panels, products that benefit former prisoners. But Le Guin was thinking of something more extreme. Those walking away would not have a cell phone or wear fast fashion. They would make their own clothes and live outside the dominant paradigm. Musician Richard Thompson recently wrote of his friends in the late Sixties who were "more about escaping society than confronting it head-on ... dropped out ... sought alternative lifestyles, lived in hippie communes ... carved out a life selling food or leather goods ... and broadly rejected the path of normality." In this story Le Guin wouldn't have us accept the compromises that we make to live with our consciences. Obviously this is a political story, but can we balance the message and the medium. Does the quality of a work of literature addressing an important issue rest more on the art or the issue. With Fahrenheit 451, which I think clunkily written, I leaned more toward the importance of the message. With "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which I also consider clunkily written, I lean more toward the lack of art presented here, especially as the author is capable of creating whole civilizations with numerous layers of social nuance. Here she leaves much unexamined with "I don't know" and "I can't explain." Just an observation of the times. On the other hand, the story has the power to raise valuable questions and create meaningful discussion. But Le Guin didn't intend readers to get a cheap and easy "feel good" moment accompanied by dramatic virtue signaling when they brag: "I would walk away." Because we're all continuing to live here in Omelas, consuming the products of slave and exploited labor, and none of us are walking away. She knew we all make that child suffer. [4★]
Mystery Review: The Poisoned Chocolates Case once again demonstrates that Anthony Berkeley (1893-1971) is a too little known and appreciated member of the Golden Age of mystery writing. Each of his books is uniquely interesting and determinedly different, and all are written with a light touch of humor. The Poisoned Chocolates Case is the epitome of a "puzzle" mystery story, intricately and persuasively worked out and presented. Here Berkeley introduces the six members of the "Crimes Circle" group, each of whom try to solve a notorious contemporary murder involving the poisoning of a wealthy women that has stumped Scotland Yard. The Crimes Circle was paralleled in real life by "The Detection Club" with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers as well as Berkeley. Adding to the puzzle are the six "detectives" testing their theories, each with a different focus, solved in a different way, each identifying a different suspect. The Poisoned Chocolates Case features two of Berkeley's series detectives, polar opposites Ambrose Chitterwick and Roger Sheringham. The novel is reminiscent of The Benson Murder Case (1923), a tour de force in which Philo Vance solves a murder six different ways, once for each of the six suspects. There might also be a hint of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot short story "The Chocolate Box," first published in 1923. For puzzle mystery fans this is a must-read. [4 ★]
Mystery Review: Murder in the Basement again demonstrates that Anthony Berkeley (also known as Francis Iles) was one of the more clever and creative writers of Golden Age mysteries, although unknown today. In Part I a body is found and must be identified with no clues. In Part II the reader is presented with the draft of an unfinished mystery novel containing a lengthy description of various teachers at a private school and must discern how it relates (as far as victim and murderer) to what was learned in the first part. Part III brings everything together after first enduring the requisite twists. The three sections of Murder in the Basement are essentially presented out of order, including a story within a story (which wasn't necessary!), making it all that much more of a challenge for the happy reader. The eighth Roger Sheringham mystery. Sheringham is a novelist who often strays into murders, usually with friend Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard. Murder in the Basement was addictive and the perfect distraction from waiting rooms and other annoyances. As is so often the case, the ending is a matter of taste. [4★]
