In the eleventh outing in Bruce Beckham’s enjoyable Inspector Skelgill series, the author once again plays with old detective story tropes. Murder Mystery Weekend has a setting right out of Agatha Christie – a castle in Cumberland, where a millionaire has gathered a group of friends to celebrate his birthday with a “murder mystery weekend” game. Only before the festivities can start, his young, beautiful wife is dead – hanging from a hook in the bathroom. It looks like suicide – but what reason did she have to kill herself? Inspector Skelgill is called in to investigate, and soon begins to suspect foul play.
These old friends, it turns out, have complicated
relationships – including a tradition of mate-swapping. The millionaire host is
not as beloved as initial reports said, and his deceased wife had a checkered
history of her own.
It’s not Skelgill’s preferred kind of case – he much prefers
something less psychological, set in the outdoors. But he’s up to the
challenge, supported by his subordinates, female DS Jones and male DS Leyton.
The secrets will come out, and Skelgill will fish deep to bring up the truth.
Very enjoyable, like all the books in the series.
Recommended.
Turns out I’d missed a couple books in the Inspector Skelgill series by Bruce Beckham. But no matter. The continuing characters and Cumberland setting remain much the same, barring Skelgill’s gradual retirement from his fell running hobby, which just leaves him more time for his fishing.
Murder at Dead Crags seems to be a sort of tribute to The Hound of the Baskervilles. Antonia Crow, co-owner of a wild animal zoo, has been found dead at the foot of Dead Crags, an ill-omened local landmark. Antonia is the descendent of Piet Crow, a big game hunter who long ago returned from South Africa to establish the zoo. He owned a terrifying large black dog, and local legend says the dog still walks the fells, seeking to waylay nighttime walkers.
When Antonia’s sister Vivienne is nearly killed by a high
caliber rifle bullet, Inspector Skelgill looks for more prosaic motives and
perpetrators. There are a couple bidders who’d love to get their hands on the
Crows’ land, and an animal rights group has set up a camp to protest the zoo
itself (Skelgill’s female subordinate, DS Jones, is working undercover among
them). When the culprit is revealed, both their lives will be in peril.
The Skelgill books are a lot of fun, though Skelgill can be
a tad annoying – especially in his denial of his mutual attraction to DS Jones.
I would say the animal rights people don’t come off terribly well in this book,
but on the other side of the balance there’s a predatory real estate developer
who is clearly a caricature of Donald Trump. So we’re all even, more or less.
Recommended, and the author himself admits he edits his dialogue
to soften bad language.
Keith Moray’s Torquil McKinnon series is a pleasant and atmospheric set of “cozy” police procedurals that play out on the fictional island of West Uist in the Scottish Hebrides. I’ve been following them with enjoyment, and Death in Transit was an enjoyable addition.
This time around, the remote island is once again the center
of international attention, due to an astronomical event, “the conjunction of
Venus and Mercury and the transit of Mercury,” clearly visible from there. The
phenomenon attracts an odd assortment of outsiders – media people, a noted
astronomer, and a motley group of New Agers with astrological pretentions. But
the discovery of a murdered body floating in the harbor dampens the excitement,
and a further murder raises apprehensions. Pressured, as always, by his
unsympathetic off-island superior, Inspector Torquil McKinnon will have to
uncover old secrets, resentments, and rivalries before the true killer is
revealed.
There was nothing very novel about Death in Transit, which put the likeable regular cast through its usual paces among fondly described characters and locations. But it was fun, like all the books in the series. Recommended, with no important reservations for language or content that I can recall.
This has been the longest year of my life, and it’s not yet October. I could tell you the details, but I usually shy away from that; I mean, we’ve never shaken hands, bought each other coffee, or sung a hymn together. We wouldn’t recognize each other if we were in the same room. But I don’t mind talking about books with you, and that brings to this 800-pager.
My hardbound copy is like this but red.
I started reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Suzanna Clarke early in the year, and though I liked the story, I put it down in favor of — I don’t know, maybe I was making money at something (that’s a nice thought). The story progresses slowly, not diverting onto rabbit trails so much as taking time to set new stages and bring in dialogue. There was a chapter toward the end I thought could be cut to a couple sentences, but most of the time I wished the pace would pick up even though I was enjoying the scene before me.
Of course, I’m not like Lars. On Monday he can tell you he’s reading a 3,000 page book that will take him a while to review, and on Friday you’ll have that review. I take eight months to get through 800 pages. That’s not a tweetable goal. Follow me on Goodreads; you won’t be inspired.
The novel begins with Mr. Norrell, who wants to crush the dreams of all would-be magicians and remake English magic after his own image. He is naturally a stuffy academic in his manner of thought and speech, but his passion is to use magic properly and practically, keeping it away from theoretical magicians who do nothing but talk over poorly written books. He opposes people like the president of the York Society of Magicians, who says, “Magicians … study magic which was done long ago. Why should any one expect more [that is, to do magic today]”?
Norrell gains a good reputation and important connections in London before Strange shows up, and in advancing his career he sets the plot of the whole book in motion. This is an laudable point in Clarke’s storytelling. She could have had the rise of Norrell and Strange’s fame in England be the provocation for the villains that come; instead she has Norrell conduct a work of magic he knows to be risky that opens the door to a great deal of trouble.
The gray sky, which often broke up or dissolved by midmorning, remained as solid as fresh paint.
I had read and reviewed a previous novel in Scott William Carter’s Garrison Gage mystery series, and decided not to read any more. I don’t clearly recall why; it likely had something to do with the main character’s open (though not obnoxious) atheism. But Bury the Dead in Driftwood sounded intriguing, and I bought it. I have to admit, it was pretty good.
Garrison Gage is a small-time private eye who relocated to
Barnacle Bluffs, a town on the Oregon coast, to get away from his past. He
walks with a limp (often with a cane), due to an old knee injury. A widower, he
has adopted a daughter, who is now away in college. He finds, to his amusement,
that he’s become a local character, “the detective.”
He didn’t know Harriet Abel, the high school teacher whose
body was found under a pile of driftwood on the beach. But she had his name on
a piece of paper in her possession, and apparently wanted to hire him. Gage is
curious what she wanted from him, and impressed with the universal respect she
seemed to command. So he decides to investigate, even without a client.
Property and development money will appear as motives, but things
aren’t as simple as they appear. Amusingly, Gage finds beautiful women –
including the police chief’s daughter – throwing themselves at him in an almost
embarrassing way. A mysterious professional killer appears to make chilling
threats. And the one woman Gage cares about more than life itself – his adopted
daughter – refuses to keep a safe distance.
I enjoyed Bury the Dead in Driftwood far more than I expected. The one scene involving religion – in a syncretistic Universalist church – took no skin off my nose. The multiple women with Gage in their sights worked up to a very funny scene of embarrassment. And at the end, Gage was able to deliver a fairly non-PC defense of a man’s sense of obligation to protect women.
Mark Twain said of Huckleberry Finn that he had attempted to do a book without weather. Bury the Dead in Driftwood is nothing like that. The weather and geography of coastal Oregon are active characters in this book, beautifully described. Readers will feel as if they’ve been there.
Cautions for the usual, including one “sex” scene that
actually involves no sex at all. Pretty good.
I took a chance on the first novel in an unfamiliar detective series, Bad to the Bones, Book 1 of James Harper’s Evan Buckley series.
It held some interest, but didn’t work for me.
Private Eye Evan Buckley (I never really noticed where he
lives) suffers a shock and vows to end his meat and potatoes work –
investigating unfaithful spouses for divorce cases. His original motivation for
becoming a PI was to find missing people, like his own wife who disappeared
without explanation. A (surprisingly) friendly police detective refers him to a
woman whose son and husband both disappeared some years earlier. She believes
the police found an easy explanation and dropped the case without really
solving it. Evan vows to discover the truth for her.
Which he does. But the journey to the explanation seemed
weird to me. Character relationships struck me as unrealistic – people start by
snarling at each other, then suddenly become bosom buddies. The police don’t
operate like real police at all.
And the final “resolution” was so horrific that I couldn’t
at all comprehend the sense of closure we’re supposed to believe both Buckley
and his client feel at the end.
So I don’t really recommend Bad to the Bones. I saw potential in the author, so maybe the following books will be better.
There really isn’t much to say about a new Gray Man novel, except that it’s a Gray Man novel. One knows what to expect – rising levels of implausible, cinematic action, improbable endurance of injuries by the hero, and a running cast of characters who, if not profoundly portrayed, are interesting and amusing.
Mission Critical (Number 8 in the series) offers a couple fresh elements – new developments in the Romeo-and-Juliet-with-guns romance between hero Court Gentry and the former Russian agent Zoya Zakharova, and the introduction of a new villain whom Court, with all his skills, actually fears.
Court is catching a ride on a CIA transport flight when a
covert team transporting a hooded prisoner comes on board. Later, when the
prisoner is being transferred on a tarmac in England, the team is attacked by
unknown foreign agents – Court kills some of them, and is then sent by his
handlers to try to retrieve the prisoner.
Meanwhile Zoya, still being “debriefed” in a safe house in
the US, learns that her Russian spy father, whom she had believed dead, is
still alive. She makes a snap decision to escape and find him – thus narrowly
avoiding an attack on the house by hired assassins. Now she’s in the wind, and
the CIA is uncertain whether to consider her friendly or hostile.
There’s a big plot underway to deliver a devastating blow to
the intelligence services of all the English-speaking nations at a conference
in Scotland. It will take all Court, Zoya, and their teammates can do to stop
it – and there will be a price to pay.
Mission Critical was as good as any book in the Gray Man series, and they’ve all been good. High in entertainment value. The usual cautions apply for language, violence, and sexual situations.
The second season of the Icelandic miniseries, Trapped, (I reviewed Season One below) was – in some ways – superior to the first (in my view). There were parts I didn’t care for, but I admit that was mostly due to my personal opinions and tastes.
Two years have passed since we last saw our bearded hero,
Andri Olafsson (Olafur Darri Olafsson). He’s moved back to Reykjavik to be a
cop there again, one assumes to be close to his daughters, who were living with
his ex-wife. Only the older one, Thorhildur, has returned to the small town of
Siglufjordur to be close to her friends – especially a particular boy. She is
now a rebellious teenager, and in the tradition of teenaged girls in thrillers,
is a complete idiot when it comes to her personal safety.
Andri is called back to Siglufjordur when a local farmer one
day appears near Parliament in Reykjavik, sets himself on fire, and tries to
ignite the Minister of Industries along with himself. She is, in fact, his twin
sister, a Siglufjordur native who long ago turned her back on the place. He had
been involved in protests against the expansion of an aluminum plant near his
home, as well as with right-wing nationalist groups. Shortly after Andri is
reunited with his old team of local cops, a manager at the plant is murdered,
setting off a string of crimes and arrests that culminate in a kidnapping and a
pursuit across the heaths.
There were several elements in the series that rubbed me the
wrong way. One was the involvement of right-wing groups – though when I think
of it, they were treated with surprising understanding. Another was the cliché of
the predatory industry that thinks it can make money by killing its customers.
Most uncomfortable of all was a subplot about homosexuals. Instead of the brief
heterosexual sex scene we saw in the first series, this time we got two men
involved in displays of affection – at one point in bed together. These are my
principles – I care about whether homosexuals live or die. I care that they not
be railroaded for crimes they didn’t commit. But I cannot be made to care whether
the boy gets the boy. There is no microscope sensitive enough to detect my
interest in that subject.
Another problem is the family relationships. Most of the
suspects (and victims) are bound (in classic saga style, I’ll admit) by a bewildering
tangle of marriages, divorces, and irregular liaisons. Everybody is a cousin or
an in-law of all the others, and for the life of me I couldn’t keep it all straight.
On the other hand, there were some fine elements here.
Because this story is set in the fall, we lose the claustrophobia of the snowed-in
town that so permeated Season One. Now we’re treated to vistas of Icelandic
heaths and mountains, herds of horses and flocks of sheep. Conscious tribute is
paid to the sagas, especially in a plot thread where a local boy flees the
police on horseback across the fells, looking for all the world like an outlaw
of old.
The resolution worked out in the same spirit as Season One –
the mystery is solved, the hostage rescued, but in a general environment of
ancient injuries, unhealed psychological wounds, and the shock of an Episode 8
plot development that blindsided me (at least).
All in all, fascinating TV, and pretty watchable. Cautions
for language and all the stuff I talked about.
My part-time job keeps me generally aware of Scandinavian miniseries, but somehow this Icelandic one, a few years old now, had escaped my notice. Trapped (Ófærð) is a crime series that has much in common with so many European crime series these days (except that the main character, instead of being a plucky single mother, is a plucky single father). But it‘s interesting in its own right, and the locations are fresh and scenic.
On a winter‘s day in the small northern Iceland town of Siglufjordur, a headless, limbless torso is fished out of the fjord. Since the ferry from Denmark just came in, the police have to detain the boat and all its passengers – displeasing the passengers, the crew, and the Danish government. The “big boys“ from the Reykjavik police are supposed to come in to investigate, but a sudden blizzard grounds all aircraft and road travel. So the responsibility falls on the three-person local force, most especially on the chief, Andri Olafsson (played by Olafur Darri Olafsson, surely a contender for some award for the most generously bearded TV detective in recent memory).
But Andri’s problems aren’t limited to solving the torso murder. There are the difficulties associated with the blizzard, as well as an avalanche that follows. Questions arise anew over a crime from the past – the death of Andri’s ex-wife’s sister in a fire in a fish factory, for which a young man went to prison (unjustly). There’s also a human trafficking investigation, involving two young Nigerian girls wandering lost in the snow. And there is political chicanery on the part of the town’s governing authorities, all involved in a shady land scheme with the Chinese.
It all works out to be pretty fascinating. The main character is a compelling and principled presence on screen, and the production values are high (this was the most expensive miniseries ever made in Iceland). The resolution ties up loose ends pretty well, though it’s typically Scandinavian in being rather downbeat and bleak. The Icelandic title has a broader meaning than the English word – it also refers to a blocked road. A running theme is the discontent of the town’s young people, who feel trapped in one of the remotest towns in a generally remote country.
But I enjoyed Trapped, and recommend it, with cautions for language, sex, brief nudity, and disturbing themes. There’s a second season, too.
I think I tried to watch one episode of the long-running BBC series, “Dalziel and Pascoe,” based on Reginald Hill’s mystery novels. It just didn’t grab me. But I thought I’d try one of the original books, to see if I caught the magic there. The formula’s pretty familiar – old, grizzled detective teamed with young, callow detective – only these books are old enough that the young detective is allowed to be male.
An Advancement of Learning (the title comes from a book by Sir Francis Bacon) takes place at Holm Coultram College, a fictional school in Yorkshire. A statue is being moved from the spot where it has stood for five years, when human bones are discovered under its base. They turn out to be those of the former Principal of the College, Alison Girling, who was assumed to have died in an avalanche in Switzerland, also about five years ago. Detective Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his assistant Peter Pascoe are assigned the case. Dalziel is an old working-class type, contemptuous of intellectuals and the academic life. Pascoe is a college graduate who once considered a scholar’s life – indeed an old college girlfriend turns out to be on the faculty here. They will encounter partisan instructors, politically radical students (who seem pretty mild by current standards – this was the early ‘70s), drugs and satanic rituals. And there will be more murders. All in all, Dalziel’s view of academics seems to be validated when all is revealed.
There were things I liked about An Advancement of Learning. It was written long enough ago that social norms were a little more conventional – homosexuality is still scandalous, and most people seem to be nominally Christian (though the only vocal Christian in the book is pretty unattractive).
But I didn’t care for author Hill’s writing technique. He spends a lot of pages telling us people’s thoughts. I’ve learned to expect to see plot advanced through dialogue and conflict, rather than interior monologue. So I found it kind of slow going. Also, although I was prepared to like Insp. Dalziel, I didn’t. His personality didn’t seem to go very deep. The ending was moderately satisfactory, though.
You may like this book more than I did. The language was pretty mild, and the violence and sex were mostly off stage.
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