NIGHT FROST by R.D. Wingfield

There won't be enough Jack Frost books. I'll run out of books before I'm ready to be finished reading. The books are that good. 

In Night Frost, Detective Inspector Jack Frost and his new assistant, Sergeant Frank Gilmore, work nights during a flu epidemic. 

Over one week's time, they investigate an impossible array of crimes. Someone sends vicious, threatening notes to seemingly innocent victims. Someone else murders a teenaged newspaper carrier. A serial murderer knifes old women. A teenaged girl commits suicide. And someone kills a victim/suspect by clubbing him almost to death, then burning him up in a fire.

At the same time, gangs destroy a local pub. Frost and Gilmore stumble onto a pornography ring run by a prominent member of the police commission. And Frost and Gilmore, along with the other non-flu victims on the night shift, deal with all the ordinary things cops face.

Frost's superiors are stupidly bureaucratic. Frost himself is cynical, but not uncaring. He arranges things to spare the parents of one of his young victims. He hides the awful details of her death. 

Many mystery lovers know Jack Frost from books or TV. A Colombo-like character who is often a slob, he is actually a caring cynic. He still does what he can to protect the vulnerable and weak.

I've read a lot of police procedurals over the years. They are probably my favorites in the mystery genre.

What sets the Jack Frost books apart is that they give a sense of the impossibility of police work. The crimes keep coming. Police families sometimes fall apart.

I'm reminded of my work in the ministry (from which I'm now retired). There are those weeks with tree funerals, six people in big city hospitals, and some other kinds of things I can't mention. Non-ministers can't understand the stress. And I'm sure other jobs are the same. 

The Jack Frost books show the stress of police work. Frost is unorthodox. Sometimes it stretches my belief how he can bully a murderer to confess, but. . . . 

As I said at the beginning, I will run out of these books before I am ready to be finished reading about Jack Frost.

SUNDAY QUOTE

"Nothing is repeatable. Not even the moments that we relive a thousand times."
             

COLD SERVICE by Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker’s Cold Service is Hawk’s story.

Members of the Ukrainian mob shoot Hawk in the back while Hawk is protecting another mobster. Hawk barely survives.

Then, acting on the old saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Hawk and Spenser set out to kill the Ukrainians.

The story involves their complex plot that sets Boston-area mobs against one another. Spenser works with The Gray Man. The Gray Man almost killed Spenser in Small Vices.

This time The Gray Man is on Spenser’s side, or at least The Gray Man is working for someone whose interests coincide with Spenser’s interests.

Parker fills the book with introspective talk about what it means to be a killer. Hawk’s lover Cecile struggles with Hawk’s willingness to kill.

I suspect Cold Service is a book most readers either like or hate. There’s little in-between. The dialogue is rife with psychological introspection. Susan attempts to explain why she stays with Spenser. Some may believe Parker stereotypes races and certain kinds of women.

I tend to take stories as they are. This book has the same sharp, conversational style Spenser stories always have. I could do with less psychology, but I liked the book.

THE SNACK THIEF by Andrea Camilleri

     There comes a moment--he thought--when you realize your life has changed. But when did it happen? you ask yourself. And you have no answer. Unnoticed events kept accumulating until, one day, a transformation occurred--or perhaps they were perfectly visible events, whose importance and consequences, however, you never took into account. You ask yourself over and over, but the answer to that "when" never comes. As if it mattered!
     Montalbano, for his part, has a precise answer to that question. My life changed, he would have said, on the twelfth of May.

---------------

Andrea Camilleri’s The Snack Thief is one of the best books in the Montalbano series.

Inspector Montalbano and his crew investigate two crimes. Someone knifes an old man in an elevator. And the crew of a Tunisian patrol boat machine gun an Italian fishing trawler in international waters. They kill one person.

Montalbano and his crew find the two events to be connected, though not directly related.

As the story unfolds, Montalbano’s life changes. He reveals more of his personal life, his growing up years, than ever before. And he takes on more personal responsibility.

He still disguises his humanity with a harder, practical outer shell, but he is even more human, more caring and fallible, than I remembered him to be.

The story hinges on an abandoned little boy who steals snacks to live. Montalbano himself comes to love the child. He makes a massive change in his own life to save the child.

The Snack Thief is somewhat different than the other books. It still has the wonderful meals, the ins and outs of Italian bureaucracy (even the secret service), the Sicilian humor, the hard, practical detective. And it still has Salvo Montalbano, the ethical cop who follows his own strangely-caring code. But this time the story is more personal. It shows us something extra about a man who was already one of my favorite police procedural heroes.

I always look forward to reading about Salvo Montalbano.

--------
Stephen Sartarelli translated this book.

SUNDAY QUOTE

"If fantasy has somehow coincided with reality, the blame, in my opinion, lies with reality.
 From the Author's Note in Andrea Camilleri's The Snack Thief

A CLUBBABLE WOMAN by Reginald Hill

          “Sergeant,” he said quietly, “is there anything we’ve left undone which we ought to have done”

          “I don’t think so, Sir.”

          “Right. Then somewhere in the area we are covering or have covered lies the clue.”

          “The clue?”

          “There’s always a clue, boy. Don’t you read the Sunday papers?”

--------------

Reginald Hill’s A Clubbable Woman is the first in a memorable series.

Yorkshire Police Superintendent Fat Andy Dalziel and his Sergeant, Peter Pascoe, investigate Mary Connon’s murder. Someone killed her at home. The killer could have been a disenchanted lover.

Mary was a clubbable woman. She was one of many female hangers-on at the club. She ended up marrying the former star of the team. After that, she did not attend the club, and she tried to get her husband to quit going.

Mary’s murder leads Dalziel and Pascoe to probe the liaisons, sexual and otherwise, in the rugby club. It also leads them to investigate the neighbors and to delve into the histories of the families involved.

Other seemingly-unrelated events in this Christmas-time story work together to help the two men solve the murder.

Most reviews of this book say it is a good beginning. They say it is not the best book in the series. I have a different take. I think this book is a classic example of how to write an interesting one-murder police procedural.

Many modern books use murders to advance the plot. If you come to a stopping place, just dream up another murder (or an act of arson or an eighty-car pileup on the freeway). Reginald Hill is a better writer than that.

Hill describes human relationships in a compelling way. 

His later books might more clearly show this, but this book shows it too.

YOU'VE GOT MURDER by Karin Tabke and Edie Ramer

I thought You’ve Got Murder was funny.

Karin Tabke and Edie Ramer didn’t write the book for old men like me. Their story is nothing more than a series of emails, instant messages, and texts between the members of a critique group. The women in the group write mystery stories. Some are successful authors.

One young woman is new to the group. She won a contest to join the group. As they email back and forth, there come to be actual murders, and the story goes from there.

Their correspondence involves all kinds of things--their sex lives, their own histories (some of which involve abuse), even a decision to try to commune with spirits to try to solve one murder. Group members are among the murder suspects.

All of this involves the kind of zany, sex-talk-filled communications only such a group might have. (Like I said, the authors didn’t write this book for old men like me!)

The email format became fragmented and tiresome about two-thirds through. This is the one weakness I saw in an otherwise light, humorous mystery story.

You've Got Murder is an electronic book available on Kindle. It is a good example of the kind of unusual book which might fall through the cracks in today’s James Patterson/J.D. Robb publishing world. I’m glad I ran across it in Edie Ramer’s blog.

SUNDAY QUOTE

February 26, 2012

How can you have a scandal in an age which has abolished responsibility?

CAST A BLUE SHADOW by P.L. Gaus

P.L.Gaus’ Cast a Blue Shadow started slow but got better about two-thirds in.

I read these stories because of the Amish country setting and because of the relationship between the four main characters.

Gaius foregoes both of these in the first two-thirds of the book. 

Someone murders Juliet Favor, a wealthy Millersburg College patron. Juliet is evil, dedicated to money and power. She uses her incredible wealth to set people against one another. She destroys everything she touches.

When she dies, there are a host of suspects. These include a young break-away Amish girl engaged to Juliet’s son.

The investigation centers on the Favor mansion and the area around. There is little interesting interaction between the three main characters.

Professor Michael Brandon, Sheriff Bruce Robertson and Pastor Caleb Troyer grew up together. The three of them, along with Brandon’s wife Caroline, form an interesting team. This time, Gaus’ story fragments the team. 

Overall, I found this to be the weakest of the Amish Country books I’ve read so far.

MY OWN READING

I've said it a lot, but I will say it again. 

This blog is just a record of my reading. And I read whatever I want to read.

We went to the used book store yesterday. I came home with a bunch of books about Fat Andy. I've read a lot of those over the years, but I have more of them to get through. I have catching up to do.

We have a couple more Jack Frosts sitting on our computer room table now. And I plan to order more. There are only six or seven in that series.

I greatly appreciate bloggers for the books they suggest. But in the last year or so, I've come to read a greater percentage of older books because I know what I am getting. I read for pleasure. Not to write this blog.

Some authors have a high percentage of hits with me, and I'm likely to go back to them.

When I finish reading through the Spenser series, I've thought about going back and rereading Ed McBain. He is my favorite mystery-police procedural writer of all time. 

So you may get a heavier mix of my old favorites here. But I will still read new books too.

COFFIN MAN by James D. Doss

To enjoy books like James D. Doss’ Coffin Man you have to enjoy slow, meandering stories.

Sometimes I wonder if Doss’ storytelling style is not what Daisy Perika’s storytelling style would be. Daisy is Charlie Moon’s aunt. According to this story, she is now the oldest living Southern Ute tribal elder. Charlie Moon is a well-off rancher whose best friend is Sheriff Scott Parris.

So don’t expect this book to be slam-bang reading. But given that, I enjoyed the story.

Someone kills the cemetery caretaker. Charlie ties the crime to a runaway pregnant teenager and her mother. And all of this leads Daisy and her great-niece Sarah Frank to the cemetery and to the Coffin Man.

Sarah meets her first ghost.

Sarah will be the one to inherit Aunt Daisy’s ability to commune with spirits. When that first happens for her, she doesn’t know she’s talking with a ghost. It is not time yet for Sarah. Daisy takes her power back from Sarah, knowing that the time will come when Daisy crosses the river. Sarah will become the shaman then.

Some people compare James Doss’ writing to Tony Hillerman’s

For me, they don’t have much in common. I love the Hillerman stories, but Hillerman was a well-known journalist before he took up fiction. He writes like someone trained to write clearly.

As I see it, Doss truly is trying to replicate a Native American storytelling style. So a lot of us non-Natives have mixed feelings about him. Look him up on Amazon and you get some five-star ratings, but you get some one- and two-star ratings too. Some people say he is the worst writer they have ever read.

I see it differently. His is a different storytelling style. He has grown into it as the books have gone on. He wrote more clearly in the early books.

Native storytellers who tell folk stories often string the stories out, take whatever tangent happens to occur to them at the time. As they tell the story, they address the audience. They jump from one part of the story to another, sometimes with great gaps in between. They give little asides.

That’s what I see Doss doing.

When I caught on, I came to like it. Not that I didn’t get bored sometimes. Not that I didn’t always understand that the story is under the storyteller’s control, not mine. What I want is not the issue.

But if you can get into this different kind of storytelling, you might well like James D. Doss.

SUNDAY QUOTE

You see, but you do not observe.
     

SEA CHANGE by Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker’s Sea Change is a straight-through book.

A drowned woman’s rotting body washes into a cove in Jesse Stone’s town, Paradise Massachusetts.

Because no one reported her missing, Sheriff Stone suspects someone murdered her. 

His investigation leads him to the seamy sexual underworld of the annual Paradise yacht races. It also leads him to the victim’s family. And all of this causes him to consider his connection to his ex-wife Jenn as they work to reconcile.

Jesse has been off the bottle almost year. As always, he is persistent and agonizingly self-analytical.

As I said in the beginning, this is a straight-through story, eighty percent conversation, the kind of quick entertainment I enjoy with Parker.

What saves the story from its sordid subject matter is Jesse Stone’s underlying morality, what I’ve come to see as the Parker code. Stone recognizes the base nature of the sexual understory.

Many cops would have let this murder ride. At first glance, the woman seems hardly worth the effort it will take to catch her murderer. Only in the end do we understand why Jesse Stone was right to persist. 

ONE TRUE SENTENCE by Craig McDonald

Craig McDonald’s One True Sentence is another of his fascinating period pieces.

While living in Paris in 1924, mystery writer Hector Lassiter and his friend Ernest Hemingway investigate a series of murders. Someone is killing the editors of the city’s struggling little literary magazines. Lassiter sets out to find the murderer.

Along the way Lassiter falls in love. He learns about the characters’ unexpected back stories. He loses more than one of the people he tries to save. And he struggles against a hellish literary cult.

All this takes place in the context of the beautiful people who surrounded Gertrude Stein. McDonald fills the book with fictional references to famous people.

I like these books for their clear writing and interesting setting. For me, there’s no getting lost in the story. I can read straight through.

What fascinates me about these books is the characters’ hubris. They think they are geniuses waiting for the world to find them. And some are, I guess.

I often wonder what role luck plays in literary success. These people don’t credit luck at all. By and large, they see themselves as brilliant writers whose time is yet to come. Or at least they fool themselves into thinking that’s what they believe. Some already know they will fail.

I enjoy these books for their setting and characters.

MY MONDAY

A reflection in a puddle on a snow-lined street.

Snow on a retaining wall.

I took all these pictures on the property owned by the retirement center where we live.
Click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

SUNDAY QUOTE

February 12, 2012

In any war, some people die, 

       some people make money.
        

BURIED STRANGERS by Leighton Gage

Leighton Gage’s Buried Strangers is a bone-chilling book. If you are into cozies, this would not be your fare.

Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team investigate a secret cemetery. Set in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the story involves the mass murder of mostly indigenous people of all ages.

Someone has hidden the cemetery in a rain forest-like park where it is hard to find.

A wayward dog leaves his owner, goes into the forest, and returns with a human bone.  That bone leads to dozens of buried bodies. Those bodies lead to a complex plot, and the complex plot finally involves one of the most well-known mass murderers of all time.

Along the way, Silva works within the incredible corruption of the Brazilian police. He watches his immediate superior worry about inconsequential interdepartmental politics while Silva deals with the cold-blooded murder of men, women, children, police colleagues, and others connected with the plot.

Readers need to experience the specific details of the story for themselves. It is enough for me to say that this book was powerful, chilling, and difficult for me to read. But it was excellent. I am glad I read it.

Once in a while, I found myself putting the book away. I needed to rest from both the gruesome nature of the story and my intense response.

I had heard that Leighton Gage wrote powerfully, that his books were well worth reading. My sources were correct.

SUNDAY QUOTE

Man dwindles into dust, less than sand; only the sea and sky stay the same.

THE SANDBURG CONNECTION by Mark de Castrique

 

For me, Mark de Castrique’s The Sandburg Connection was a mixed bag.

I struggle with books where characters spend forever talking about clues and possible solutions.

But the book’s back story kept me reading. Detectives Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertson investigate the probable murder of college history professor Janice Wainwright.   

Professor Wainwright thought she had made a valuable historic find. Sandburg’s interest in folk music gave Professor Wainwright the clues she needed to find the treasure.

Someone killed her as she searched the grounds of Carl Sandburg’s home, Connemara.

As Sam and Nakayla investigate, they learn about Sandburg, the Sandburg home, Sandburg’s wife's Nubian goats, and much more.

De Castrique gives fictionalized versions of a few actual people. Among them are one of Sandburg’s secretaries and a relative of one of the former owners of the house.

This is a fascinating book for its historical content alone.

THE CROSSING PLACES by Elly Griffiths

Crossing places are places where the temporal and eternal meet.

According to Elly Griffiths’ The Crossing Places, crossing places are often sacrificial sites at the edge of the sea.

Henges such as Stonehenge can be crossing places. The cross in Christianity is an actual and, later, a symbolic crossing place. Other religions have their crossing places too.

When archaeologist Ruth Galloway agrees to help Inspector Harry Nelson find two missing girls, they explore an ancient crossing place.

Saltmarsh near Norfolk has marked paths leading to a Bronze Age henge. Ruth believes they will find both girls' bodies on the marsh. One girl was recently-kidnapped and one has been missing ten years.

As the story unfolds, it involves Ruth’s history.

Ruth’s archaeological past, her love life, and her unmet need to be a mother all come into play.

This is a well-told story. It has elements of mystery and horror. It closes with two deaths. Along the way, Ruth has reason to be terrified.

The marsh itself, with its uncertain tides and areas of quicksand, takes lives.

Archaeology is more than just a setting for this book. Archaeology is at the heart of the story.

This story kept me reading. I plan to read more books about Ruth Galloway.

SUNDAY QUOTE

January 29, 2012

Siri Paiboun on facing death--

When you're cool, death doesn't seem that final.

A TOUCH OF FROST by R. D. Wingfield

“Just a few minor points if you don’t mind, Mr. Miller,” said Frost, whose finger had directed Webster to stand in front of the door, blocking their exit. “Please sit down. It shouldn’t take long.” He gave them a disarming smile as they returned to their chairs. “My trouble is gentlemen, I’m not very bright. There are a couple of things in your statements that don’t seem to add up. I’m sure it’s my stupidity, so if you could see your way clear to explaining . . .”

_____

How could I have missed Jack Frost?

R.D. Wingfield’s A Touch of Frost is a police procedural with an unusual central character.

In about four days, Jack Frost and his assistant Webster investigate a mind-numbing series of crimes. First, they find a murdered drug addict in a filthy toilet. Then they investigate the latest in a string of serial rapes, the theft of money from a mob figure who runs a strip club, and the hit-and-run of an old man late at night.

They also look into the theft of a woman’s life savings all in gold sovereigns, an armed robbery in a local pawnshop, and the murder of a policeman.

Frost offends a rich and powerful British legislator. Then Frost does his best to save the life of a left-out, lowlife type that he knows did not commit murder.

In all my years of reading, how could I have missed all that?

Frost is a wonderful character, crude, and, to some extent incompetent. He knows his beat and the people of Denton well. He is insightful almost to a fault. He puts off paperwork, risking his colleagues' overtime pay. And he is ethical where there is every motivation not to be. In other words, he is not a crooked cop.

Others on the force become mired in sucking up to the powerful, trying to exploit their fellow cops to get ahead, and even more terrible things. Frost blunders through and does what is right.

I loved this book with its especially strong ending.

When I looked it up in other places, I found it is a classic of sorts, well-known, and long ago made into TV movies.

As I said at the first, how could I have missed Jack Frost?

But I did miss him, until now. Thanks to a blogger friend, I read my first Jack Frost. I guarantee. It will not be the last.

SUNDAY QUOTE

January 22, 2012

When in doubt, cook something and eat it. 

                    --Spenser.    

SLASH AND BURN by Collin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill’s Slash and Burn is the weakest of the Siri Paiboun books so far.

The story doesn’t start until about page seventy-five on my electronic reader. Even then, the story bogs down in detail.

Siri and his crew join an American team to search for an MIA. The missing man happens to be the son of a prominent U.S. senator. The senator, who is a horse’s ass, funneled U.S. aid to Laos to bribe the Laotians to do the mission.

Someone murders a member of the American team along the way.

Siri and his group help solve the crime.  They work among themselves and with Siri's spirit guides to find the sordid back story.

As always, the setting and characters are interesting. We as Americans lost sight of Laos by 1978. Many 1978 Laotians hold Americans in contempt. They see them as defeated fools. And, in a way, they are correct.

Minor characters often star in these books. In Slash and Burn, Auntie Bpoo steals the show.

So this is the book I’ve been dreading. It is a weak entry in a strong series.

Of course, these comments are my opinion. You might disagree.

I will keep reading Siri Paiboun. The books have been too good not to expect another powerful book along the way.