The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (1942)

The body of a pretty, blonde dancer is found in a traditional, English country pile.

Mystery Review: The Body in the Library is the second novel featuring the delightful Miss Marple and is vaguely reminiscent of Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body? (1923), in which an anonymous corpse appears where no body should be. Unlike the first Marple novel, Murder at the Vicarage, written in the first person (of the vicar), The Body in the Library is presented by an omniscient narrator. The story is plot heavy more than character driven, Christie's people being described and expressed in a few words, often an identifiable quirk or trait. For instance one character is described as being "shrewd without being intellectual" by two different people. My only complaint is that Miss Marple appears far too little, as Christie is skilled at leaving us wanting more. One bit of fun is that a character who's an avid fan of mystery novels has read "Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and Dickson Carr and H.C. Bailey." The Body in the Library is an enjoyable mystery that doesn't make the reader work too hard, without being too much more than that.  [3★]

Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette (1976)

An average joe becomes a target for the criminal underworld.

Mystery Review: Three to Kill is the story of hapless hunters hunting the hapless hunted. The story starts slow with our middle-management, chess-playing, corporate cog ("someone who doesn't remotely want adventures"), but when it gets going try to hang on as gangsters and hitmen join the fray. Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) knows how to tell a tale. Told by an extremely omniscient narrator in a cinematic style Three to Kill is just good fun meant to be enjoyed. A neo-noir and thriller, there are moments of violence and gore, but they pale compared to the cogent character studies and the reader can almost hear the soundtrack of west coast jazz, with scads of hip musicians cited. The French title seems to be something like "Little West Coast Blues." Cars, guns, alcohol, and films are near and dear to Manchette and always come in for proper names and specifics from the narrator (at one point a Ford Taunus is introduced; if you think that's a misprint for Taurus it's not, there's a German car of that name (after a German mountain range)). As always with Manchette there's a political underlay to everything, but it never gets in the way being more food-for-thought than diatribe. Three to Kill (the English title is also a plot summary) is a short, entertaining, thrill ride for any reader of physical mysteries, but doesn't skimp on the cerebral.  [4★]

The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler (1943)

Marlowe is hired to find a missing wife; he finds much more.

Mystery Review: The Lady in the Lake is the fourth Philip Marlowe outing and although there are no characters that leap off the page to lodge in the reader's memory, they're uniformly vivid and believable. The exception being the memorable, continuing saga of Marlowe himself, as he's beginning to feel the weariness of age. "I brushed my hair and looked at the gray in it. There was getting to be plenty of gray in it. The face under the hair had a sick look. I didn't like the face at all." There's less of the wisecracking and snappy patter, but the cynicism remains. And the crooked Bay City (read Santa Monica) cops are still doing their thing. "Well, I hate to think the police are not honest ... but these things are done, and everybody knows it." The Lady in the Lake is as perfectly paced, plotted, and written as any of the Marlowe books. If you like one of the others you'll enjoy this clever addition to the series. This is one of the key books on which Raymond Chandler's reputation rests. The Lady in the Lake was also filmed in 1946 with Robert Montgomery in the lead role (and directing). While he's not my idea of Marlowe, as the movie uses a "subjective camera" or first person point of view, breaking the fourth wall, you don't see him much anyway. One minor note: my copy was printed in England with British spellings occasionally substituted: petrol, tyres, kerb. Although interesting and entertaining, this read reinforced for me the utter nonsense of such "translations," as when the Harry Potter books were Americanized. I'd much rather have the author's words. This is an excellent novel with just the right hint of tough guy noir. I'm envious that this was the quality of literature stuffed into bus station book racks for 25¢ in the 1940s.  [4★]

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950)

Two men meet on a train and drunkenly discuss murder.

Mystery Review: Strangers on a Train may be better known as an Alfred Hitchcock film (1951 -- haven't seen it), but it was also the first novel by Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), of Ripley and The Price of Salt fame. There must be some rule that when writing about being bored the writing shouldn't be boring. Or when writing about tedium the prose shouldn't be tedious. The author needs to impart the sensation of boredom or tedium without being boring or tedious. Perhaps in part because the plot of Strangers on a Train is a matter of public knowledge (it's almost a noir archetype), the background seemed to go on for far too long. Which weakens the tension. The intense focus on inner thoughts and vacillations without plot movement became repetitious. Highsmith is her usual brilliant self at psychological suspense: she creates curious but credible and complex characters. Her alcoholic antagonist is addictive; creepy, but addictive. She shows how people can be driven to extremes, how evil can triumph over good (or at least the weak), how decent people can lose in the end. All well done except for the length. As if Strangers on a Train were a short story with a pituitary problem. Perhaps as this was her debut novel Highsmith hadn't quite gotten control over pace and plot. Well worth reading, but she wasn't yet the Patricia Highsmith she was to become.  [3★]

Summer by Ali Smith (2020)

People living through the time of Brexit, which has become so much more.

Book Review: Summer is the fourth and final installment in Ali Smith's "Seasonal" series, a sort of experiment in writing an annual about current events. The sequence began with Autumn, inspired by Brexit, a novel of our times but then blindly crashed into a turbulence of viewpoints of which proto-fascism, anti-immigrant bigotry, and striving for racial justice, all exacerbated by a pandemic, are only an interrelated part. Facing mortality (our own or that of loved ones) has put societal conflict in high relief. And the immediate tragic consequences of Brexit, the initial impetus, have paled as the political dickering dawdled. She includes this insight: "A too-late response from a useless and distracted government who never thought ... they'd end up governing anything ... who thought it was all going to be such a blast, being in power, making lots of money for themselves and their pals." For me, all four books were worth reading, but each declined slightly, with Autumn being my favorite. In producing four books in five years at times the subsequent books seemed rushed or unfinished and my secret hope is that Smith will go back and re-edit the series to clean up some hurried writing and loose ends. This might defeat the purpose of writing contemporaneous books, but would create a more lasting and consequential work. There's so much to celebrate in Ali Smith's efforts. She is a wonderful storyteller who would've sat at a choice spot around the fire in any time. Her compassionate humanity enriches her stories, showing which is the right side of history (we hope). I view all four novels as one (as Elena Ferrante did with her Neapolitan Quartet). Each book builds on the preceding and explores lingering themes even as the times changed. Smith has worked to insert recurring characters, events, and references to the other books in the series. She's carefully constructed a jigsaw puzzle specifically mixing in each episode elements of art, references to Charlie Chaplin, intertwined plot lines, the cyclic nature of history, Dickens' novels, extended rhetorical flourishes, fences and internment, moments from decades past and moments in contemporary politics, overlooked female artists, seasonal meditations, Shakespeare plays, and ruminations on time, among others. Her references are wide-ranging (she includes a reference to Irmgard Keun, one of my favorite unknown authors). Some seemingly significant characters disappear. From Ulysses to Infinite Jest to Game of Thrones, however, I've never enjoyed turning literature into a search for Easter eggs, making novels into puzzle boxes, games, or tests more than stories. Seeing how many hints and clues readers can find to demonstrate their cleverness at the next cocktail party. While a tour de force, a praise-worthy achievement, it also seems premeditated, calculated and considered, self-conscious. As one of her characters says, "I really believed I could hold all the knowledge in me, all the narratives, all the poems, all the art, all the learning -- and that this gathering and holding of all these things meant I now owned these things." On the other hand, these kind of Pokemon searches are just what some readers live for. To do the quartet justice at some point, however, I need to go back and re-read the books together, rather than annually as I have been. I want to see if my uncertainty about the series is fair. One problem is that history was moving too quickly, and Summer barely touches on the Black Lives Matter movement that shook our cities, and doesn't capture the isolation and desperation caused by the virus. Although her focus was on Brexit and immigration (and those issues slowed) failing to encompass these other moments (among others, such as technology) at times made the books feel outdated on publication. Like sitting down to dinner while ignoring the body bleeding on the floor. I was also confused by what seemed an endless series of stories loosely connected by too-witty characters. Having read the series over five years I'm certain to have lost some threads and connections. At a time in history when the two sides are starkly drawn, themes may become clearer on re-reading. The individual stories are intelligent, but too often instead of saying "this book is so clever" I found myself thinking "look how clever Ali Smith can be." Regardless of any carping, since with Summer we have all four books together we can now enjoy them as the four chapters of a single story, as the actual seasons are in our lives.  [3★]

The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1967)

Summer in Stockholm finds that someone is murdering children in the parks.

Mystery Review: The Man on the Balcony, the third Martin Beck outing, is very much a police procedural, calmly and carefully documenting steps the Stockholm police take as they search for the perpetrator of a series of child murders. The result is plain, gray, and mostly unemotional. The story doesn't go deep into personalities. There are few moments of excitement. Rarely do we see passion except that stemming from exhaustion. Some of the Stockholm officers we know from previous books, some are new. They don't always work well together, don't seem to like each other much, and are all too clearly human. They work slowly: quiet, methodical, deliberate. There are dead ends, wrong turns, chance plays a big part. As Beck notes: "He also knew that when the murderer was caught ... it would look like luck ... but it was a case of giving luck a helping hand, of making the net of circumstance ... as fine-meshed as possible." Some clues fall into their lap from unlikely sources, which they don't always recognize or connect at the time. There is nothing super human about these detectives, there's no Holmes, Poirot, or even a Veronica Mars in their ranks. I'm unsure how much of this reflects a Swedish personality and how much is simply steady police work. The Man on the Balcony is more than just a story, as Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö also make it a vehicle for social commentary: "Stockholm is a city in which many thousands of people sleep out of doors in the summer. Not only tramps, junkies and alcoholics but also a large number of visitors who who cannot get hotel rooms and just as many homeless people who, though fit for work ... cannot find anywhere to live, since bungled community planning has has resulted in an acute housing shortage."  I don't know what their political viewpoint was, but they definitely have one. The Man on the Balcony, despite the lack of lightning bolts and fireworks, is a solid page-turner.  [3★]

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (1947)

An angry, misogynist veteran back from the war battles his emotions.

Mystery Review: In a Lonely Place is often close to poetry, even as it plumbs the mind of an aggrieved and resentful man back from the war, living on the edge and bordering on violence: "an outcast in a strange, cold world." That's a creepy place to be, and Dickson Steele is unpredictable yet credible, perhaps a sociopath but that's not the focus of the discussion. Less attention is paid to motivations (except subtly) than what is. At greater length it's a battle between the reader and an unreliable narrator: although in third person the voice stays within Steele's head. As an angry, misogynist (is that redundant?) he's never as smart as he thinks he is nor is his view of the world as accurate. There's a hole inside him and though he's found someone who can fill that void, his own self-destructive elements and paranoia repeatedly interfere. Dorothy Belle Hughes (1904-93) is too much forgotten and underrated and should have her place as one of the very best writers in the hard-boiled/noir genre. David Goodis is another writer I think of in that category, but I think Hughes is better. Posing as a mystery writer, in a bit of an in-joke, the protagonist name-checks Chandler and Hammett, as well as Ellery Queen, John Dickson (hmm?) Carr and Erle Stanley Gardner. At times In a Lonely Place feels as if Bret Easton Ellis rewrote a Jim Thompson novel and Patricia Highsmith dropped in to give it a good edit. But actually it's just Dorothy B. Hughes writing brilliantly as she does and dragging us along with her. For the discriminating, in a virtuoso performance all the violence takes place off-stage. You may still want to take a shower after reading it. In a Lonely Place is the kind of book that gets deep into your head well after you've stopped reading. Similar to, but quite different than the 1950 black and white, movie version with Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart. Both are classics.  [5★]