Bodies from the Library 1 (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

Rather than create a separate post for each short story, I’m appending them under the anthology title as I read them.  Older short stores will be behind the ‘read more’.

Bodies from the Library 1Bodies from the Library 1
by Tony Medawar (editor)
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780008289225
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
Pages: 324
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Collins Crime Club

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 16 tales by masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Agatha Christie crime story that has not been seen since 1922.
At a time when crime and thriller writing has once again overtaken the sales of general and literary fiction, Bodies from the Library unearths lost stories from the Golden Age, that period between the World Wars when detective fiction captured the public’s imagination and saw the emergence of some of the world’s cleverest and most popular storytellers.

Each of these 16 forgotten tales have either been published only once before – perhaps in a newspaper or rare magazine – or have never before appeared in print. From a previously unpublished 1917 script featuring Ernest Bramah’s blind detective Max Carrados, to early 1950s crime stories written for London’s Evening Standard by Cyril Hare, Freeman Wills Crofts and A.A. Milne, it spans five decades of writing by masters of the Golden Age.

Most anticipated of all are the contributions by women writers: the first detective story by Georgette Heyer, unseen since 1923; an unpublished story by Christianna Brand, creator of Nanny McPhee; and a dark tale by Agatha Christie published only in an Australian journal in 1922 during her ‘Grand Tour’ of the British Empire.

With other stories by Detection Club stalwarts Anthony Berkeley, H.C. Bailey, J.J. Connington, John Rhode and Nicholas Blake, plus Vincent Cornier, Leo Bruce, Roy Vickers and Arthur Upfield, this essential collection harks back to a time before forensic science – when murder was a complex business.


The Inverness Cape by  Leo Bruce: ✭✭✭½  (12 March, 2023)

I’ve read at least one other full-length Leo Bruce novel (Death on Allhallowe’en) and liked it quite a bit.  This short story was clever, although not complex.  Told as a memory of a past case, but still structured as a mystery (the guilty party isn’t named until the end).  I liked the subtle tip-o-the-hat to Doyle and Holmes.  Well, maybe it’s not subtle, but it’s a tip-o-the-hat to his existence and eminence, and perhaps it’s done in a sly sort of way.  As I said, it’s not a complicated mystery, but it’s a short-short story and it’s done well for the few pages it occupies.

 

 

Continue reading Bodies from the Library 1 (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

The Murder of Mr. Wickham

The Murder of Mr. WickhamThe Murder of Mr. Wickham
by Claudia Gray
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780593313817
Publication Date: May 2, 2022
Pages: 382
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Vintage Books

The happily married Mr. Knightley and Emma are throwing a house party, bringing together distant relatives and new acquaintances—characters beloved by Jane Austen fans. Definitely not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him an even broader array of enemies. As tempers flare and secrets are revealed, it’s clear that everyone would be happier if Mr. Wickham got his comeuppance. Yet they’re all shocked when Wickham turns up murdered—except, of course, for the killer hidden in their midst.

Nearly everyone at the house party is a suspect, so it falls to the party’s two youngest guests to solve the mystery: Juliet Tilney, the smart and resourceful daughter of Catherine and Henry, eager for adventure beyond Northanger Abbey; and Jonathan Darcy, the Darcys’ eldest son, whose adherence to propriety makes his father seem almost relaxed. The unlikely pair must put aside their own poor first impressions and uncover the guilty party—before an innocent person is sentenced to hang.


I’m conflicted about this book.  On the one hand, the mystery was very good (although the ending was somewhat predictable, not because of bad plotting at all, but because of who the suspects are).  On the other hand, Gray is trying to write Austen’s characters, which for some of them, I can’t say she succeeded overmuch.

Gray was smart; she wrote the book from the POV of all the characters, so she never has to spend too much time with any of Austen’s creations.  This keeps her from straying too far outside the lines of their personalities as written by JA.  The MCs, on the other hand, are the offspring of the Darcys and the Tilneys (the Tilneys are the only ones that do not appear in the book; instead they are represented by their daughter).  This leaves Gray free to develop these characters while remaining true to Austen’s generation.

But, when she does spend time with those characters, she takes some liberties that I’m not entirely comfortable with.  She makes Fanny and Edmund so holier than thou – although they are sincere, I’ll give her that.  She also takes a HUGE liberty with Fanny’s brother William, in an effort, I suppose, to make the book more socially relevant to today’s audience.  It gives Fanny a weakness that can be exploited by Wickham, sure, but its execution is entirely implausible. View Spoiler »

Overall, it’s an excellent mystery and probably an enjoyable read for anyone who hasn’t read Austen’s books more than once.  For those of us who have, the same caveats apply to this book as any other work that uses classic characters and reimagines them.

In the Shadow of Agatha Christie (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

In the Shadow of Agatha ChristieIn the Shadow of Agatha Christie
by Leslie S. Klinger (editor)
isbn: 9781681776309
Publication Date: January 1, 2018
Pages: 328
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Pegasus Crime

Before Agatha Christie became the world's Queen of Crime, she stood on the talented shoulders of the female crime authors who came before her. This splendid new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger brings these exceptional writers out of her shadow and back into the spotlight they deserve. Agatha Christie is undoubtedly the world's best-selling mystery author, hailed as the "Queen of Crime", with worldwide sales in the billions. Christie burst onto the literary scene in 1920, with The Mysterious Affair at Styles; her last novel was published in 1976, a career longer than even Conan Doyle's forty-year span. The truth is that it was due to the success of writers like Anna Katherine Green in America; L. T. Meade, C. L. Pirkis, the Baroness Orczy and Elizabeth Corbett in England; and Mary Fortune in Australia that the doors were finally opened for women crime-writers. Authors who followed them, such as Patricia Wentworth, Dorothy Sayers and, of course, Agatha Christie would not have thrived without the bold, fearless work of their predecessors and the genre would be much poorer for their absence.

So while Agatha Christie may still reign supreme, it is important to remember that she did not ascend that throne except on the shoulders of the women who came before her and inspired her and who are now removed from her shadow once and for all by this superb new anthology by Leslie S. Klinger.


I read these stories as part of my 2023 short story challenge.  I am also going to append all my short story/individual reviews for this specific anthology to this post (in the order they’re read) so that upon completion it will serve as a review of the whole of the book.

March 12, 2023

The Blood-red Necklace by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace ✭✭✭½:

A mystery, sort of, but definitely a complete story about a string of incredibly valuable pearls, an upcoming wedding and a Moriarity-like villainess of crime.  The method was diabolical, but the doe-like innocence of the bride to be was too child-like, and she was constantly referred to as a child, so that the whole thing just felt tainted by fumes of pedophilia.  She was of an age of consent, but still, the fact that I had to keep reminding myself of that kept me from fully enjoying what was a really well written story.

 

Previously posted comments about other stories are behind the break.

Continue reading In the Shadow of Agatha Christie (MbD’s Deal-me-in Challenge)

The Case of the Gilded Fly (Gervase Fen, #1)

The Case of the Gilded FlyThe Case of the Gilded Fly
by Edmund Crispin
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 0140117717
Series: Gervase Fen #1
Publication Date: January 1, 1971
Pages: 208
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Penguin Books

Yseut Haskell, a pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for destroying men's lives, is found dead in a college room just metres from the office of unconventional Oxford don and amateur detective, Gervase Fen. The victim is found wearing an unusual ring, a reproduction of a piece in the British Museum featuring a gold gilded fly but does this shed any light on her murder? As they delve deeper into Yseut's unhappy life the police soon realise that anyone who knew her would have shot her, but can Fen discover who could have shot her? Erudite, eccentric and entirely delightful - Before Morse, Oxford's murders were solved by Gervase Fen, the most unpredictable detective in classic crime fiction.


It took me 128 days to read this book.  I can’t say exactly why, as I enjoy Crispin’s work – what I’ve read of it so far – but I started this on October 6th, put it down after about 5 chapters, and didn’t pick it up again until earlier this week.  Perhaps because it centres around the theater – a setting that doesn’t do much for me at all – or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

This is the first Fen mystery, and I suspect that’s part of what I found tedious, along with the setting.  I was also annoyed with Fen saying, at the half way mark, that he knew who the murderer was; as soon as he said that, all I could think was ‘why do I have to read as many pages again before I find out?’

But I loved the way Crispin sort of did a Jasper Fforde with this book (and yes, I realise it’s properly Jasper Fforde doing a Crispin with his Tuesday Next books, but go with it, please).  The characters all have an awareness that they are, in fact, fictional characters living within the confines of the story, and the small asides that let the reader in on this knowledge are often subtle, but they always made me smile when I came across them.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Crispin’s sly humor in his other books and this one was no different, but I do think this might have made a better short story than a full-length novel.

Clarke

ClarkeClarke
by Holly Throsby
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9781760878740
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
Pages: 406
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Allen & Unwin

On a hot morning in 1991 in the regional town of Clarke, Barney Clarke (no relation) is woken by the unexpected arrival of many policemen: they are going to search his backyard for the body of a missing woman.

Next door, Leonie Wallace and little Joe watch the police cars through their kitchen window. Leonie has been waiting six years for this day. She is certain that her friend Ginny Lawson is buried in that backyard.

But the fate of Ginny Lawson is not the only mystery in Clarke. Barney lives alone in a rented house with a ring on his finger, but where is Barney's wife? Leonie lives with four-year-old Joe, but where is Joe's mother?

Clarke is a story of family and violence, of identity and longing, of unlikely connections and the comedy of everyday life. At its centre stands Leonie Wallace, a travel agent who has never travelled, a warm woman full of love and hope and grief, who would do anything in the world for Joe.


This is Throsby’s third book, and, I think, the … not weakest, but least complicated, in terms of story.  It’s also probably the most accessible in terms of vernacular; a few things were purely Aussie, but understandable in context.  I didn’t need my handy-dandy MT-dictionary to decipher cultural references or some of the more obscure slang.

Unlike in the previous books, that where the stories were more centred on the community, Clarke focuses on two people, neighbours but strangers, both of whom are deeply damaged people after suffering significant tragedies.  When the police show up to Barney’s newly rented home with a warrant to search for the body of a missing woman who lived there 6 years previous, Barney is forced out of his shell, and he begins to interact with his neighbours Leonie.

Throsby weaves the memories of each of their tragedies throughout the narrative, so that the real stories behind each unfurl every so slowly, as the search for Ginny Lawson’s body continues on.  It’s a bit maddening, but worthwhile at the end as she brings everything together.  It’s not a story with a happy ending, but it at least ends on a hopeful note.  Throsby does something a little different, too, as she leaves the reader with more information than the characters have, and I think it works.

The tag line on the cover isn’t really good marketing; this really isn’t a mystery.  But it is a very good story, that just happens to center on the search for a body.

Murder at the Serpentine Bridge (Wrexford & Sloane Mystery, #6)

Murder at the Serpentine BridgeMurder at the Serpentine Bridge
by Andrea Penrose
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781496732538
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #6
Publication Date: September 27, 2022
Pages: 361
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Kensington

Charlotte, now the Countess of Wrexford, would like nothing more than a summer of peace and quiet with her new husband and their unconventional family and friends. Still, some social obligations must be honored, especially with the grand Peace Celebrations unfolding throughout London to honor victory over Napoleon.

But when Wrexford and their two young wards, Raven and Hawk, discover a body floating in Hyde Park’s famous lake, that newfound peace looks to be at risk. The late Jeremiah Willis was the engineering genius behind a new design for a top-secret weapon, and the prototype is missing from the Royal Armory’s laboratory. Wrexford is tasked with retrieving it before it falls into the wrong hands. But there are unsettling complications to the case—including a family connection.

Soon, old secrets are tangling with new betrayals, and as Charlotte and Wrexford spin through a web of international intrigue and sumptuous parties, they must race against time to save their loved ones from harm—and keep the weapon from igniting a new war . . .


Is platitudinal a word?  My spell checker thinks it is, but when I ask it to define it, I get the definition for latitudinal.

Anyway, this book is platitudinal, as in full of the platitudes.  All about love, and family, and friendship, which is all very nice, but not why I read mysteries.  Still, this book was better than the last one, which just about put me off the series entirely.  This one featured a plot of international intrigue entering around the London Peace Celebrations that took place after the Napoleonic war ended.  Penrose was clever; she wrote the story in such a way that I was sure it was transparent and I was going to be annoyed … but while I did figure out one part of the solution, I was totally wrong about the other.  There was also some double crossing and double dealing going on that made the whole thing more complicated than it looked.  Overall, it was a decent story, but not as compelling as the earliest entries.

At the end the author includes a note that clearly delineates what is historically factual and what she made up (which was actually not as much as I’d have guessed).

A Hard Day for a Hangover

A Hard Day for a HangoverA Hard Day for a Hangover
by Darynda Jones
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781250233141
Series: Sunshine Vicram #3
Publication Date: December 6, 2022
Pages: 343
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Some people greet the day with open arms. Sheriff Sunshine Vicram would rather give it a hearty shove and get back into bed, because there’s just too much going on right now. There’s a series of women going missing, and Sunny feels powerless to stop it. There’s her persistent and awesomely-rebellious daughter Auri, who’s out to singlehandedly become Del Sol’s youngest and fiercest investigator. And then there’s drama with Levi Ravinder—the guy she’s loved and lusted after for years. The guy who might just be her one and only. The guy who comes from a family of disingenuous vipers looking to oust him—and Sunshine—for good.

Like we said, the new day can take a hike.


This third and last instalment wraps up every last little story arc and has a few stand alone mini plots as well.  Everyone is back – even the racoon – and the pace is as fast as the first two books.  Jones can be frank and pragmatic with her characters, but she can also be sentimental as all get-out and sometimes she walks that fine line between sentimental and saccharine, although rarely crosses it.  Auri remains just that little bit too good to be true, as do most of the children in Jones’ books but she’s not unbearable at all.

I like what Jones did with the main stand-alone story arc, involving a series of missing women.  It went in a slightly unorthodox direction, and I liked it, if ‘like’ is the right word to use.  About mid-way through it becomes a bit transparent, but waiting to find out how it would unfold and how she’d handle it, made up for that.

I am so sorry to see this series end.  I love these characters and the town of Del Sol, and I’m going to miss them.

 

When Gods Die (Sebastian St. Cyr, #2)

When Gods DieWhen Gods Die
by C.S. Harris
Rating: ★★★½
isbn: 9780451219688
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #2
Publication Date: January 1, 2006
Pages: 338
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: NAL Hardcover

The young wife of an aging marquis is found murdered in the arms of the Prince Regent. Around her neck lies a necklace said to have been worn by Druid priestesses-that is, until it was lost at sea with its last owner, Sebastian St. Cyr’s mother. Now Sebastian is lured into a dangerous investigation of the marchioness’s death-and his mother’s uncertain fate.

As he edges closer to the truth-and one murder follows another-he confronts a conspiracy that imperils those nearest him and threatens to bring down the monarchy.


Much better than the first one, What Angels Fear, in that it is a far less graphically violent story line, which allowed me to thoroughly enjoy this one in a way I could not with the first.

I really like Sebastian, but as I mentioned in my thoughts on the first book, he needs his friends around more; Harris wrote a nice scene at the start of the first book with some banter between St. Cyr and his friend that I’d like to see more of in future books.  While this book isn’t weighty and depressing, it could use some lightness that friends would bring to the table.  As it is, When Gods Die is a very earnest read that gets a little bogged down in the forbidden-love dynamic between  St. Cyr and his love interest, Kat.

The mystery was good though – extremely well plotted and the motivation not at all clear.

I’ll definitely be checking out more of this series from my library.

Buried in a Good Book (By the Book Mysteries, #1)

 

I saw this in my local bookshop last week and almost fell over in shock – I’ve never seen a cozy – especially not a mass market cozy – for sale in an Australian bookstore before.  It sounded promising, and I want to encourage bookstores here to embrace a wider variety of sub genres, so I picked it up.

It wasn’t bad – I’ll happily read the second one – but it wasn’t without its problems.  The MC thinks she’s going to be more capable of solving the crime than the local sheriff, which is always a turn off for me.  I dislike arrogance in my amateur detectives unless their names are Sherlock Holmes.  But on the plus side, she’s humbled a time or two and she’s graceful about it.  The dynamic between her and her ex-husband was a bit cliche, as was the tension between herself and the sheriff.

The plotting was ambitious; Berry made it work, but it was just this side of a stretch even for cozy mysteries.

There is a second one out now and I’ll happily give it a try to see if the kinks in characterisation is worked out, but it definitely has potential.

For Pete’s Sake

For Pete's SakeFor Pete's Sake
by Geri Buckley
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9780425201534
Publication Date: January 1, 2005
Pages: 304
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Berkley

Pietra Pete Lang is a modern-day Southern belle who's busy trying to keep her eccentric family from falling into dysfunction. But her mettle is about to be tested--along with her heart--when fireworks ignite between Pete and her brother's divorce attorney.


This is a re-read I’ve had for so long that I have no notes from the original read, I only remember that I really enjoyed it as a rom-com sort of book.

While it’s definitely a rom-com, it’s also definitely dated.  The difference just under two decades can make is startling.  I spent a lot of time thinking ‘you could not get away with saying that now’, and the total lack of subtlety often made this a trying re-read.  But the Florida setting was still enjoyable, as were the eccentric characters in Pete’s family, even if the plot was thin.