Joe Barone's Blog

THE SANDBURG CONNECTION by Mark de Castrique

2012-02-01T08:55:00.000-06:00

For me, Mark de Castrique’sThe Sandburg Connection was a mixedbag.

I struggle withbooks where characters spend forever talking about clues and possiblesolutions.

But the book’s backstory kept me reading. Detectives Sam Blackman and Nakayla Robertsoninvestigate the probable murder of college history professor Janice Wainwright.

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

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

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

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

This is afascinating book for its historical content alone.

THE CROSSING PLACES by Elly Griffiths

2012-01-29T17:02:00.002-06:00

Crossing placesare places where the temporal and eternal meet.

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

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

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

Saltmarsh nearNorfolk has marked paths leading to a Bronze Age henge. Ruth believes they willfind both girls' bodies on themarsh. One girl was recently-kidnapped and one has been missing ten years.

As the storyunfolds, it involves Ruth’s history.

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

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

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

Archaeology ismore than just a setting for this book. Archaeology is at the heart of thestory.

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

SUNDAY QUOTE

2012-01-28T11:08:00.001-06:00

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

2012-01-27T12:16:00.000-06:00

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

_____

How could I havemissed Jack Frost?

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

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

They also lookinto the theft of a woman’s life savings all in gold sovereigns, an armedrobbery in a local pawnshop, and the murder of a policeman.

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

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

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

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

I loved this bookwith its especially strong ending.

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

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

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

SUNDAY QUOTE

2012-01-21T16:47:00.001-06:00

January 22, 2012

When in doubt, cook something and eat it.

--Spenser.

SLASH AND BURN by Collin Cotterill

2012-01-20T09:20:00.000-06:00

Colin Cotterill’sSlash and Burn is the weakest of theSiri Paiboun books so far.

The story doesn’tstart until about page seventy-five on my electronic reader. Even then, thestory bogs down in detail.

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

Someone murders amember of the American team along the way.

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

As always, thesetting and characters are interesting. We as Americans lost sight of Laos by1978. Many 1978 Laotians hold Americans in contempt. They see them as defeatedfools. And, in a way, they are correct.

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

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

Of course, thesecomments are my opinion. You might disagree.

I will keepreading Siri Paiboun. The books have been too good not to expect anotherpowerful book along the way.

THE MERRY MISOGYNIST by Colin Cotterill

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-06:00

In ColinCotterill’s The Merry Misogynist, Dr.Siri Paiboun again shows his strength, his stubbornness, and his concern forpeople.

I love thesebooks. Set in Laos in the late 1970s, they are a delight when it comes tocharacter and setting.

The Merry Misogynist has three mainstories. Laos’ only coroner, Dr. Paiboun, and his staff do the autopsy on a horriblysexually mutilated woman. The corpse is just one in a string of similarly abusedcorpses Paiboun expects to find strung across the countryside.

Because of thenature of the back country, a serial murderer can hide his murders. And this serial killer is clever in a special way.

At the same time,Paiboun’s assistant Dtui is pregnant with her first child. And Paiboun’sapparently-homeless friend is missing.

This third storyleads to one example of Cotterill’s trademark humor. Paiboun’s wife holds aknife on an excited Buddhist monk. The bizarre scene gives Paiboun the time heneeds to rescue his homeless friend.

Again in thisstory, Paiboun struggles with government officials. The irony is never lost onhim. He suffered hardship to put these people in power.

This time the housingauthority tries to put him out of his home because he takes in hurting people.

Paiboun himselflives with his wife over her noodle shop. He has found true love in the twilightof his life. He and Madame Daeng the noodle maker have one of the great lovesin the mystery novels I read.

Along with its humorand compelling story, this is a book that promotes women’s rights. Paiboun works withthe women’s league to find the killer. All but one of the story lines dealswith women’s issues.

Discriminationagainst women is rampant in 1978 Laos. The government nominally gives women theright to vote, but no women hold positions of authority. Things haven’tchanged except that they have changed for Siri Paiboun. He refuses to ignore theexploitations of rural Laotian women. Their best hope is to marry a wealthy manwho will whisk them away. That makes them vulnerable to serial murderers likethe one Siri brings to justice.

As most oftenhappens with these books, the story ends with action.

These books filla special niche for me. I enjoy the setting and the characters. I have yet toread a boring Siri Paiboun book.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2012-01-14T17:10:00.000-06:00

January 14, 2012

If anyone grabs you from behind, don't think, give 'em the heel and the elbow.
--Andy Dalziel

BAD BUSINESS by Robert B. Parker

2012-01-11T09:50:00.001-06:00

“Adele looked at Susan. “What is this?” shesaid. “Some sort of secret society?”

“Yes,” Susan said. “That’s exactly what itis. Full of unsaid rules and regulations which none of them will even admit toknowing.”

“Is it just the three of them?” Adele said.

No,” Susan said.

She looked at me.

“Who else is a member?” she said.

“This is your hypothesis,” I said.

“Okay,” Susan said. “Well, there’s somecops. Quirk, Belson, a detective named Lee Farrell; the state police person,Healy.”

Susan took a lady-like slug of herCosmopolitan.

“And a man named Chollo from Los Angeles,and a man named Tedi Sapp from Georgia. Anybody else?”

“Bobby Horse,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Susan said, “the Native Americangentleman.”

“Kiowa,” I said.

“Kiowa, of course,” Susan said.

“Little dude from Vegas,” Vinnie said.

“Bernard J. Fortunato,” I said.

“See,” Susan said, “if you lull them into itthey’ll admit to the existence.”

“And what are you?” Adele said, “that youknow all this, den mother?”

Susan laughed and had a little more of herpink drink.

“I’m scoring the club president,” she said. “Givesme special status.”

_____

Robert B. Parker’sBad Business is a prescient book.

First publishedin 2005, the book deals with a financial scam much like the scams that broughtthe recent great recession.

Spenserinvestigates a well-known energy firm. Their company is on the edgeof bankruptcy. They hide the company’s financial condition by setting up “specialpurpose entities,” an accounting trick to make debts look like assets.

Does that sound familiar? It did tome.

I don’t want tomake this book sound boring. It is a typical Spenser. It has humor, the usual wittyconversation, and many of the usual characters.

The financialscam is just a part of the story. There is also a free-love group tied to thecompany.

Spenser becomesinvolved when the wife of one of the executives hires him to do divorce work,to get the goods on her husband and his free-love partner. Never mind that shehas the same kind of free-love relationship with the husband of her husband’slover.

“Oh what atangled web we weave/ When first we practice to deceive!”

And of course, there are several murders.

For me, this bookbrought back an unusual memory. My wife and I were on a long trip in the carlistening to PBS. They played a covertly-taped phone conversation in which the executivesof a well-known energy company were talking about moving energy around. Theyhad electric power California needed. They moved it from one state to another, taking aprofit with every move. If I remember right, by the time it got to Californiait cost sometime like fourteen to twenty times what it had started out to cost.And they had profited every step of the way.

That companyfinally came under federal scrutiny. The feds convicted one of its mainofficers of a crime.

The people on thephone were laughing at how they were getting rich. They saw the people they hadcheated as rubes.

Like thefinancial managers who used an unregulated system to take us all for a ride andcause the great recession, they thought their victims were fools.

Parker’s bookdisplays that attitude clearly. These people think they are superior. Theybelong to clubs were Spenser needs permission every time he enters anotherelevator.

Common peoplehave lost all control.

So I found thisto be a special book indeed, probably one of the two best Spenser books in theseries as I’ve read it so far, not counting the first few books where Parkerset up the premise and introduced the people.

Various reviewershave had various reactions to BadBusiness. My reaction—Robert B. Parker was smarter than Ithought. He looked at chicanery in one energy company. Then he wrote a book which foreshadowed later deceptions that could have caused a second great depression. And he did it while he was telling a good story too.

--------
P.S. Writer's aside. " Never mind that shehas the same kind of free-love relationship with the husband of her husband’slover." Try writing a sentence like that without getting your husbands and wives mixed up!

BACK STORY by Robert B. Parker

2012-01-09T08:48:00.001-06:00

Robert B. Parker’s back Story is the 30^th of theSpenser books. For me, it was one of the better later entries in the series.

A friend of Paul’s,a young woman who is a fellow dancer-actor, asks Spenser to find who killedher mother.

The crime happenedtwenty-eight years ago during a bank robbery.

Supposedly, thekilling involved a radical group robbing banks as a social statement.

Of course, thereis more than that involved. Spenser and Hawk end up killing several thugs. Thelocal mob threatens Susan. Everything about the murder turns out NOT to be asit seemed.

This story hassome milestones, most notably the introduction of Pearl II, the second of Spenserand Susan’s dogs.

Spenser and Hawkwork with Jesse Stone, Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief. As most know, Stoneis the main character in another Parker series.

If you like clearjustice in your detective stories, this book will not satisfy. There are at least twomajor principles in the Spenser series: (1) Spenser “solves” the caseby pushing in and blundering through; and (2) Things don’t always turn out in aneat, packaged way.

I admire RobertB. Parker. His Spenser books became more routine as the series progressed, but theywere still good reading. When you bought a Spenser you knew what kind of plotand style you would get. And you could enjoy them within that context.

Few writers buildthe kind of legacy Robert B. Parker built.

THE LAST WORD by Ellery Adams

2012-01-08T08:41:00.000-06:00

Ellery Adams' The Last Word bristles with action.

After a leisurelystart, the book’s protagonist Olivia Limoges investigates the source of a valuable painting. Shehelps her sister-in-law and half-brother face a medical crisis for their newbornson. She works to open a new restaurant. And she finds the body of afamous author who has been murdered.

Set in OysterBay, North Carolina, the present story ties back to events in a North Carolina GermanPOW camp during WWII. Two unlikely people fall in love, and their love touches OysterBay today.

Then just to addto the mix, Olivia pursues her relationship with the local sheriff. She fendsoff a couple of other inappropriate love relationships for friends. She helpsone good friend strengthen her marriage and another good friend find love.

The story endswith a Louise Penny-like small-towns-have-their-share-of-dark-secrets ending.

Olivia is a busyperson.

The Last Word is a fun book to read.

Admittedly,Ellery Adams didn’t write this book for the likes of me. That makes me a littlecavalier about the story, but the truth is, I enjoyed the book. I found thecharacters interesting. And, though I struggled to keep everyone straight, Ithought the backstory was unique and intriguing.

When I read about the next Olivia Limoges book in Lesa’s Book Critiques, I’ll probably buy it and read it too.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2012-01-07T12:18:00.002-06:00

January 8, 2012

They had a limited range of knowledge, like the product of all the wealthiest schools.

MOTOR CITY BLUE by Loren D. Estleman

2012-01-02T17:13:00.002-06:00

Motor City Blue is the first of Loren D.Estleman’s Amos Walker books I’ve ever read.

The book involveswhat seem to be three separate cases. An aging Detroit mob boss hires Walker tofind his missing stepdaughter. The police investigate the murder of a prominentunion politician. And two men murder Walker’s old Vietnam commander.

Walker playsagainst, not just the police, but also army intelligence.

As the complexstory unfolds, the three cases intertwine. They lead Walker into the world ofprostitution and pornography.

For me, thesolution was a genuine surprise.

This story hasseveral chase scenes. Different bad guys get the drop on Walker more than once.And the book contains one murder after another, I have no idea how many.

In other words,it is non-stop action of the private-eye type.

I don’t know whereI’ve been all of Loren D. Estleman’s writing life. The Walker books are popular,and Estleman has written a lot of them, but for some reason, I never picked oneup.

I have somecatching up to do.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011-12-31T08:21:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year to all.

I will begin posting my regular one or two books a week starting next week.

BLESSINGS TO ALL!

2011-12-23T10:40:00.000-06:00

In memory of our brother John.

THE ROMAN HAT MYSTERY by Ellery Queen

2011-12-21T09:00:00.000-06:00

The current vogue in detective literature isall for the practice of placing the reader in the position of chief sleuth. Ihave prevailed upon Mr. Ellery Queen to permit at this point in THE ROMAN HATMYSTERY the interpolation of a challenge to the reader. . . . “Who killed Monte Field?” “How was the murderaccomplished?" … Mr. Queen agrees with me that the alert student of mysterytales, now being in possession of all the pertinent facts, should at this stateof the story have reached definite conclusions on the questions propounded.

_____

I confess. Thisis the first Ellery Queen mystery I ever read.

I think I triedone in my youth and put it aside.

The Roman Hat Mystery is a straight puzzlecozy. The authors set up the characters for the puzzle. The characters have little value inthemselves. And the fun (if you find it so), is in solving the murder beforeInspector Queen gives the answer.

This book hasless character development than an Agatha Christie book would have. No MissMarples here.

That’s not to saythis is a bad book. It is very readable. I like Ellery’s style (whichever ofthe two authors was Ellery in the writing). But I also know why I picked up anEllery Queen book in my youth, then put it aside before I finished it.

Strictly puzzlestories are not my cup of tea. I read for people and for plot that developscharacter. I like some feeling in my stories.

In this book, someonekills a nefarious lawyer in a crowded theater. His hat is missing. InspectorRichard Queen thinks the hat holds the key to the case. And his son Ellery tagsalong, all the time wanting to go to a bookstore and buy a rare book.

Queen gathers theclues, interrogates the suspects, creates the time line, and discerns who islying and who is telling the truth. Then he challenges the reader to solve thecrime.

When the readercan’t (at least I couldn’t, though intuitively I thought I knew), he revealsthe truth.

One thing I dowhen I write these comments: I try to make them so you get a sense of thenature of the book. You might like or not like a book I liked or didn’t like.My opinion is not really of much value to you. But for me to give you enough ofa sense of the story to decide for yourself could be of value.

If you like veryclever puzzle mysteries, you might well like The Roman Hat Mystery.

------

This is the first of the Ellery Queen mysteries. It was published in 1929.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-12-18T01:00:00.000-06:00

The most important things you learn in a homicide investigation you can't see or touch. It's how people feel."

ADVENT OF DYING BY Sister Carol Anne O’Marie

2011-12-11T08:43:00.001-06:00

Sister Carol AnneO’Marie’s Advent of Dying is aroutine cozy with a special Christmas twist.

Sister Mary Helenand Police Inspector Kate Murphy work to solve the murder of Mary Helen’ssecretary.

The young womanhas a veiled past. It takes Mary Helen, Sister Eileen, and Sister Anne (amodern-thinking novice) to ferret out her history.

The thing thatmakes this book a little different is the way it treats Christmas. O’Mariebases the chapters on the days of Advent. She quotes parts of the morning andevening liturgies, including parts of Scripture. As we read this Christmasmystery, we don’t spend our time watching elves cavort through Wonderland or workingwith the heroine to put lighted Santa Clauses in the windows of quaint small-townshops.

The Sister Mary Helenbooks are humorous. They usually have well-written descriptions of SanFrancisco. We always get to watch the characters develop. In this book, Kateand her husband disagree. He wants them to conceive their first child. Shewants to wait. (Appropriate for Christmas, right?)

This book is forthose looking for a good cozy with a positive religious setting. This book hasa light sprinkling of mild profanity. Carol Anne O’Marie has become adventurouswhen it comes to language.

The author, CarolAnne O'Marie, died at 75 in 2009, but there are a number of the Sister Mary Helenbooks. In so far as I know, they are all available in electronic form.

I will keep reading Sister Mary Helen.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-12-11T01:00:00.000-06:00

Fat Andy's Dalziel's axiom-
"If it moves, arrest it.
If it stands still, suspect it."

A PINCH OF SNUFF by Reginald Hill

2011-12-06T08:38:00.001-06:00

It seems like it hasbeen forever since I’ve read about Fat Andy and the gang.

Reginald Hill’s 1978A Pinch of Snuff is the fifth book inthe series.

Someone kills theowner of the Calliope Kinema Club, a club-theater which shows legal pornographicfilms.

Detective PeterPascoe’s dentist tells Pascoe he thinks he has seen an actual killing in onefilm. When the club owner is murdered and the film destroyed, the dentist is alogical suspect.

Pascoe’ssuperior Fat Andy Dalziel is just Fat Andy. He leads Pascoe on several wildgoose chases. He knows more about what’s happening than Pascoe does. He manipulatesPascoe and everyone else in the story to solve the crime. And he does all this withhis usual cheeky, boorish behavior.

These stories arewhat one reviewer calls “classic British” mysteries taken to a new level. Thereis no character in all the books I’ve read like Fat Andy Dalziel. The storiesthemselves are complex. There’s no having someone like Hercule Poirot standaround and elucidate the clues. The clues are given and worked out in action.

This story endswith a series of frenetic scenes involving all kinds of characters.

Different authorshave different gifts. Some are especially good at point of view. (I think ofMegan Abbott.) Some are especially good at setting. (Colin Cotterill's late 1970's Laos comes tomind.) Reginald Hill creates characters like none I’ve ever known. And they arealways true to themselves.

I liked the earlybooks the best. (This is one of them.) It was hard for me to watch these folksget old. But I’ve never picked up a book about Fat Andy Dalziel and thosearound him without being well-rewarded.

If you haven’tread it, you might want to try Reginald Hill’s A Pinch of Snuff.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-12-04T00:00:00.000-06:00

I felt her loss like the departure of an aspiration you'd yearned for but never seriously considered.

LIST WEDNESDAY--Parker's Spenser

2011-11-30T08:18:00.000-06:00

The Robert B. Parker Spenser series.

Spenser
1. The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)
2. God Save the Child (1974)
3. Mortal Stakes (1975)
4. Promised Land (1976)
5. The Judas Goat (1978)
6. Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980)
7. Early Autumn (1980)
8. A Savage Place (1981)
9. Ceremony (1982)
10. The Widening Gyre (1983)
11. Valediction (1984)
12. A Catskill Eagle (1985)
13. Taming a Seahorse (1986)
14. Pale Kings and Princes (1987)
15. Crimson Joy (1988)
16. Playmates (1989)
17. Stardust (1990)
18. Pastime (1991)
19. Double Deuce (1992)
20. Paper Doll (1993)
21. Walking Shadow (1994)
22. Thin Air (1995)
23. Chance (1996)
24. Small Vices (1997)
25. Sudden Mischief (1998)
26. Hush Money (1999)
27. Hugger Mugger (2000)
28. Potshot (2001)
29. Widow's Walk (2002)
30. Back Story (2003)
31. Bad Business (2004)
32. Cold Service (2005)
33. School Days (2005)
34. Dream Girl (2006)
aka Hundred-Dollar Baby
35. Now and Then (2007)
36. Rough Weather (2008)
37. Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel (2009)
38. The Professional (2009)
39. Painted Ladies (2010)
40. Sixkill (2011)

2011-11-28T07:26:00.001-06:00

“For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. . . .”(Romans 3:22-23, NRSV, in part).

------

In Headstone, Ken Bruen never quotes Paul’swords from Romans, but Bruen’s book illustrates the Scripture.

Reading Ken Bruenis like reading brutal poetry. He writes that well.

Jack Taylor takeson a megalomaniac. The young man and his entranced followers plan a community-changingmass murder. They prepare with individual murders. They mutilate Jack, toy withhim, change his life forever.

Jack takes onseveral cases. He is swimming in money, most of it tainted.

As usual withJack Taylor, the book seethes with anger at the abuses of the Irish RomanCatholic Church. It also acknowledges that occasionally the church helps peopletouch the face of God. Even Jack lights the church's candles and puts large sums ofmoney in the poor box.

Jack Taylor faceswhat is happening with his usual mix of drive and addiction. Most of whathappens in Jack’s world is clearly evil. Very little is good.

Jack loses theonly hope he has had since he babysat a young Down's syndrome child. He suffers physically and psychologically.He kills several people. It doesn’t pay to be Jack’s friend.

The Ken Bruen-JackTaylor books are the best of all the books I read. Headstone continues the tradition.

LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE by Colin Cotterill

2011-11-27T06:20:00.001-06:00

“There was something sinister about thiscountry. It wasn’t a comic parody of a socialist state, it was a deadly seriousparody. It was as if they believed that this was how it was supposed to look.They’d read The Communist Manifestoand missed the point. Just as Christian and Muslim extremists found hatred andvengeance that didn’t exist in their respective manuals, these Red Khmerbelieved Marx and Lenin had called for the obliteration of personality and pleasureand free thought. Believed that blind allegiance was the only way toproliferate their doctrines. Civilai had never read it that way because that wasn't how it had been written.”

-----

Colin Cotterill’sLove Songs from a Shallow Grave is acompelling story with a historically unique setting.

Cotterill writestwo stories intertwined. One is the story of Laotian Coroner Dr. Siri Paibounin Laos. Dr. Siri and his friends work to solve three murders. Someone killsthree young women with unusual fencing swords.

The second storytells of Dr. Siri imprisoned in Communist Cambodia at the time of The KillingFields (1978). This part is harrowing. Siri goes on a worthless diplomaticmission. Cambodian officials accuse him of spying. They imprison him in a caveof horrors. Even his captors kill each other.

“There’s alwayssomeone worse off than you,” Siri says, “unless you’re Cambodian.” This is in1978.

Love Songs from a Shallow Grave starklydescribes one of the most terrible times and places in all of human history.

The mystery inthe novel has an unexpected resolution. And we learn more about the lives ofSiri’s friends. They are the kind of people my father used to call, “fundamentallyfine people.”

I can’t sayenough good things about this book. For me, it worked on every level.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-11-26T09:29:00.001-06:00

"I haven't got anything against cats. I haven't got anything against elk either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep one in the store so I'll have a place to hang my hat."

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

2011-11-24T08:29:00.001-06:00

From Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation--

October 3, 1863

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great [blessings]. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

MERRY, MERRY GHOST by Carolyn Hart

2011-11-21T11:16:00.001-06:00

In Carolyn Hart’smerry, merry Ghost, character trumpsplot.

Wiggins, thecelestial heavenly rescue-train coordinator, sends ghost detective Bailey RuthRaeburn back to earth to protect a little boy.

Because the child’sgrandmother is wealthy, almost the whole family and a few employees want tokill her. And someone does.

All this revolvesaround the grandmother’s impending will. She plans to change her will in favorof the child. The child is a new addition to her life.

There is a lovestory in this traditional cozy.

The book itselfis wonderful, filled with Christmas good feeling. It has its greedy people anda murderer, but the overall tone is an It’s a Wonderful Life-type Christmastone.

The plot itself isboth unusual and ordinary. It is fun to watch how Bailey Ruth works thingsaround to have the grandmother’s ghost enact a deathbed will. And what happensto the will is unexpected. But the author lists the suspects over and overagain. (She doesn’t seem to think I can remember.)

I can’t believethe police would have been so careless in their search for the lost will. And thereare no clear clues for the reader, no way to figure out which of the many suspectsmight be the killer.

This is awonderful book. But, by and large, the wonder is not in the plot, especially inthe last one hundred pages. The wonder is in Bailey Ruth, Wiggins, Johnny, Peg,Keith, Leon, Chief Cobb and several other characters. They were enough for me.

-----------

NOTE: Thename Bailey Ruth fascinated me. It made me think of Ruth Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (as it was supposed to, I suspect).

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-11-19T12:50:00.001-06:00

....a great actress can never be greater than when she's starring in her own life.
--Flavia in I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

WIDOW'S WALK by Robert B. Parker

2011-11-19T10:35:00.001-06:00

The cover of thepaperback edition of Robert B. Parker’s Widow’sWalk had this quote from People magazine--“Delicious fun…Spenseris back.”

People is wrong. This book is not a “merrywidow,” as People said in anotherplace.

Widow’s Walk is violent. There are six or seven murders including themurder of one innocent woman. Her only connection with the crime is that shetalked to Spenser.

One of Susan’sclients kills himself.

Through RitaFiore, the widow of a rich banker hires Parker to find out who murdered him.

The widow herselfis so dumb as to be uninteresting. And Spenser’s only investigative techniqueis the usual. Blunder around until someone shows his/her hand.

One problem withthe Spenser books is that Parker’s cryptic style sometimes makes it hard torelate to the people. That’s especially true in this book. I was moved or sadfor just one person, the innocent woman victim.

As usual, thisbook is quick reading.

I admire Parkerfor the body of his work. You always know what you are going to get withParker. That was true of this book too. Widow’sWalk is not the best in the Spenser series, but it was vintage Parker.

I AM HALF-SICK OF SHADOWS by Alan Bradley

2011-11-16T09:27:00.001-06:00

Alan Bradley’s I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is the bestFlavia de Luce story yet.

To make money,eleven-year-old Flavia’s impoverished father rents Buckshaw, their run-downmansion, for a movie-shoot at Christmas.

Movie star PhyllisWyvern, there to take the movie’s lead, agrees to perform a scene from Romeo and Juliet. The vicar sellstickets to half the town, raising money for the roof fund at his church.

The snowsets in, stranding the whole group, town and all, at Buckshaw. Then there is a murder.

As usual, Flaviais up to her chemical shenanigans. She is trying to trap Father Christmas witha sticky substance painted on the main chimney. That substance, and hersecretly-planned fireworks display, brings the story to a crashing climax.

If it all soundsfantastic (in the dictionary sense of "fanciful and unrealistic"), it is, but that didn't matter much to me.

This is a funstory, the kind of story I’ve come to expect from Flavia de Luce.

------

I ordered this book from The Mystery Guild.

RASHOMON GATE by I.J. Parker

2011-11-13T08:07:00.007-06:00

I had a friend one time who used to say, “You shouldn’t go to sleep each night until you’ve learned something.” She was a wonderful, wise lady, now deceased.

In the last couple months, I’ve learned about traditional oriental mysteries, probably just enough to be dangerous.

In such stories, the detective is a government official. He solves several mysteries. One of the mysteries is a locked room-type story. And often, in their modern versions, the author patterns some of the stories on existing ancient mystery stories.

So it is with I.J. Parker’s Rashomon Gate.

Parker sets Rashomon Gate in ancient Japan. Sugawara Akitada, a low level official in the Department of Justice, is the detective. He solves three major crimes: (1) The murder of a young woman and a beggar; (2) The murder of a wealthy nobleman; and (3) The murder of his mentor who has asked him to come to the University to investigate a blackmail plot.

Akitada works with an intelligent, but lower-class, assistant. Everything is predicated on social class. Your position in society determines your power.

This book is well worth reading. Parker knows the ancient setting. The story includes a love story. Akitada proposes to his future wife, and, of course, that doesn’t all go well.

The Sugawara Akitada stories are for those who like historical novels with strong, interesting characters.

I see two special strengths in this series: (1) The author knows her subject well; And (2) She writes this fairly long book in a way that’s fun to read.

This is the third of these books I have read. I will read more.

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Special note for those with Kindles--Recently Rashomon Gate became available in a lower priced Kindle edition.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-11-12T12:50:00.001-06:00

Over the years I'd found that stirring things up was better than not. When things got into motion I accomplished more.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-11-05T10:58:00.002-05:00

[Confucius] never paused long enough to realize that the more he did the less he achieved, and the more he acquired, the less he possessed.

AS THE PIG TURNS by M.C. Beaton

2011-11-04T09:14:00.003-05:00

Oh, my! What fun.M.C. Beaton’s As the Pig Turns isanother foray into the whacky world of Agatha Raisin.

This time, anunpopular policeman ends up barbecued on a spit. There are unusual touches ofviolence. Someone sends Agatha the man’s frozen head. Whoever killed him cutoff his head, sewed a pig’s head in its place, and brought him to the publicbarbecue. Then later, the murderer sent Agatha the actual head.

The book has theusual cast of characters. All the men with which Agatha surrounds herself arethere. So is Toni (one of her young assistants), Mrs. Bloxby, and the others. Thestory even includes a new beau at the end, another man to add to her menagerie.

For me, there isno detective quite like Agatha. She is funnier than Stephanie Plum. (In herearlier incarnations, I liked Stephanie too.)

Agatha is self-centered,stubborn, and able to stumble into the most unlikely places.

Overall, Agathahas aged better than Stephanie. Agatha is well-worth reading.

A CHRISTMAS HOMECOMING by Anne Perry

2011-10-30T09:30:00.000-05:00

“Surely Christmas is the season in which tobelieve in miracles? The Son of God came to earth as a little child, helpless anddependent, just as we all are, even when we least think so. Does it not followthat the creatures of evil must also be knocking at the door, waiting forsomeone to allow them in?”

---

Anne Perry’s A Christmas Homecoming celebrates astrong woman in an unusual setting.

Caroline Fielding,her husband Joshua, and his troop of actors agree to stage an adaptation ofBram Stoker’s Dracula during theChristmas season. They travel to a mansion in Whitby, not far from where thefictional Dracula’s coffin washed ashore.

A snow storm setsin, trapping them, the family, and the family’s servants in the mansion. A strandedvisitor appears. He is subsequently murdered. And this leaves Caroline Fielding, Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Pitt's mother-in-law, to solvethe crime.

“Do we not allfeed upon each other, at times, in some fashion?” one character asks, and that’swhat happens in this novel.

As the actingtroop works out the play, they delve into the dramatic nature of evil. Then actual evilcomes to visit.

This evil was among them all along. It had rested in a nasty backstory.And it had found its way into the open at Christmas.

Somewhere in thestory, a character quotes Yeats: “And what rough beast, its hour come round atlast,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” When I went back to pinpoint the quote in Perry's novel, it eluded me. But Yeats’ quote summarizes this story.

Anne Perry is amarvel. She writes such a variety of Christmas stories. This brief book isamong her most unusual.

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I ordered this book from The Mystery Guild.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-10-29T18:29:00.002-05:00

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.
--Agatha Christie

CURSE OF THE POGO STICK by Colin Cotterill

2011-10-29T10:35:00.002-05:00

Dr. Siri Paiboun isa good man.

In ColinCotterill’s Curse of the Pogo Stick, Paibounexorcises a demon from a Hmong loved-one. Never mind that he uses his medicalskill to do it. And never mind that the Hmong are a dying Laotian hill tribePaiboun’s Communists want to destroy.

Curse of the Pogo Stick tells twoparallel stories: Paiboun’s story, and the story of Paiboun’s nurse Dtui andthose around her. The Hmong kidnap Paiboun, the national coroner of Laos. Becausehe hosts an ancient spirit, Yeh Ming, they think he can heal their leader’s demon-possesseddaughter.

Meanwhile, Dtui,Dtui’s husband, and Paiboun’s fiancée face a different kind of attack. Someonesends a bobby-trapped corpse to the morgue. The whole thing turns out to be aRoyalist plot. Paiboun’s associates are cleverer than they appear, so finally,all is well.

By the close ofthe book Paiboun marries his fiancée who gleefully acknowledges that she iswilling to share him with another woman who loves him too. (No kidding! That’s where this story comesout.)

The Dr. SiriPaiboun books are wonderful books. At first I enjoyed them for their unusuallate-1970s Laotian setting. Now I have come to admire Paiboun and his friends.

Irecommend the Dr. Siri Paiboun series.

A BRIEF THANK YOU

2011-10-27T13:17:00.001-05:00

I’ve quit readingmovie reviews in the Kansas City Star.Previously, Robert Butler did the Star’sreviews.

I seldom agreedwith him, but I had read him enough to be able to tell, from his review,whether I would like the movie.

Now, the Star uses a variety of reviewers. I don’thave the Robert Butler frame of reference, so I skip the Star’s movie reviews.

I feel the sameway about blogs. I click on the blogs in the right column regularly. Certainblogs, especially, lead me to good books.

I write my ownblog for myself. But I am grateful for the rest of you who write blogs whichlead me to good books.

For some reason,today, as I skipped another printed movie review, I thought of all of you,and I was thankful.

BAD FAITH by Aimee and David Thurlo

2011-10-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

Aimee and DavidThurlo’s Bad Faith was a good book toread while traveling.

Father Anselm ispoisoned as he prepares to say mass at New Mexico's Our Lady of Hope Monastery.The murderer uses a contact poison available from a common plant in thearea.

Maybe the murdereronly meant to make the priest ill.

In any case, SisterAgatha, an extern nun in the cloistered order, is on the case. She has hersidekick Pax, a retired police dog.

As an extern, Sister Agatha is one of two nuns who can go into the world. It is her world.The sheriff is a former boyfriend. They had more than a Platonic relationship.

I read the story inbits and pieces as we traveled. A simple story, it was easy to keep track of.At least a part of the solution became clear early in the book. The authorsfilled the book with character-giving details. Sister Agatha drives a souped-upmotorcycle with a sidecar for Pax. They call the monastery’s dilapidated car theanti-Chrysler.

The monasteryfaces money problems. Its main ways of supporting itself--baking communion breadand copying old manuscripts--are tenuous. Their ovens and computers are alwaysbreaking down.

For me, this wasa classic cozy with the added benefit of a look into cloistered life. The storyis simple, somewhat contrived, but fun to read.

As I said, thiswas the perfect book to read during the breaks while traveling.

POTSHOT by Robert B. Parker

2011-10-17T16:24:00.001-05:00

"We’re all gathering. It’ll be like
TheBig Chill,” [I said].

“Justlike,” Hawk said.

-----

Spenser has beenat this a long time. Publication date for the first Spenser novel, The Godwulf Manuscript, was 1973. Potshot, the twenty-eighth book in the series,came out in 2001.

In Potshot, Mary Lou Buckman hires Spenserto run a brutal gang out of Potshot, Arizona. According to Mary Lou, the gangkilled her husband Steve because he refused to pay extortion.

Spenser gathers thugfriends from across the country. He starts with Hawk, but he goes to othersidekicks from several of the books along the way. Each sidekick is unique. Someof them will not come out of the final fight unscathed.

When Spenser andhis sidekicks get to Potshot, things are not what they seem. The story ends upinvolving the Los Angeles mob, several people who have moved to Potshot, and abackstory having to do with the town itself.

Spenser refusesto take the simple way. He stubbornly risks the lives of his own people to runthe shootout by the Spenser code.

The story has theusual almost-unique-to-Parker dialogue. Susan plays a small part. At one point,Spenser puts her at risk unnecessarily. (This is my opinion, you understand! IfI were Spenser, my love for Susan might be among the last things I would wantthe bad guys to know.)

I have two briefcomments about Potshot: (1) It seemsto be a kind of summing up, bringing together characters and memories fromseveral books. (2) In some ways, the book seems more related to Parker’s Westernnovels than to his Spenser series. These are a bunch of gunslingers doing theirwork.

For me, Potshot was quick and entertainingreading.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-10-15T13:22:00.002-05:00

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The silences of mafiosi often say much more than words could ever do.

THE POTTER'S FIELD by Andrea Camilleri

2011-10-14T16:37:00.000-05:00

“Some time ago [Montalbano] had read thetitle, and only the title, of an essay called: ‘God Is Tired.’ Livia had onceasked him provocatively if he thought he was God. A fourth rate, minor god, hehad thought at the time. But, as the years passed, he’d become convinced hewasn’t even a back row god, but only the poor puppeteer of a wretched puppettheater. A puppeteer who struggled to bring off the performances as best he knewhow. And for each new performance he managed to bring to a close, the strugglebecame greater, more wearisome. How much longer could he keep it up?”

-----

When I read thosewords, I prayed they applied to Montalbano and not to Andrea Camilleri, theauthor of The Potter’s Field.

This is anexceptional book. Montalbano is funny, clever, and loyal. He does everything hecan to protect his own.

The story beginswhen a land owner finds a hacked up corpse in the Potter’s Field near Vigàta.Cut into thirty pieces, the corpse leads Montalbano to the Mafia and the Bible.

The corpse alsoleads Montalbano to one of his own staff.

To protect thatman, Montalbano does something uncharacteristic of him. He lets go, at leastseemingly. He stays in the background. But he does more than “solve the case.”He manipulates what is happening in such a way as to protect his own.

I’ve said thisbefore. I see Inspector Montalbano as the quintessential Sicilian, much like myfather. My grandmother gave birth to my father a day or two after she got offthe boat from Sicily. My father was excitable; he loved to eat good Italianfood; and he knew people. He could see what was happening when others didn’t.

And so it is withMontalbano.

This is the 13^thbook in the Montalbano series. I’m aware that Camilleri started writing thesein his “retirement.” I trust he has more books in him. But when the time comesthat he doesn’t, I will owe him a great debt of gratitude. His books will havefilled my life with pleasure.

FRIDAY'S FORGOTTEN BOOKS

2011-10-14T13:16:00.001-05:00

If you are not aware of pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books, click here. At the bottom of Patti's blog, you will find a list of blogs that review or summarize older books. I have found good reading by checking out Friday's Forgotten Books each week.

THE CHINESE MAZE MYSTERIES by Robert van Gulik

2011-10-10T10:02:00.001-05:00

Robert van Gulik’s The Chinese Maze Murders wasan interesting book, but for different reasons than you might expect.

According to the author’s Postscript, he wrote thebook in the style of an ancient Chinese mystery story.

The traditional detective, in this case Judge Dee, isa magistrate. The magistrate administers a town province. He is the court judgeand the commanding officer of the town’s militia. He reports to higherauthorities who report to higher authorities who report to higher authorities.This interlocking maze of bureaucrats is the way ancient Chinese governmentworked.

The magistrate solves at least three cases. In thisbook, these included: (1) Solving thelocked-room murder of the prominent general; (2) Finding a missing will; and (3)Locating a beautiful kidnapped woman.

When Judge Dee first comes to the town he saves thetown from the tyranny of a brutal bully. Later, he saves the town from beingoverrun by barbarians.

As a part of his investigations, he finds clues inworks of art, and he masters the mystery of the Chinese maze.

At first, the formal writing style and Judge Dee’salmost infinite wisdom make the story seem routine. There are few actualobstacles to overcome. But by the end of the story, violence reigns. There is aterrible murder. Judge Dee solves all the cases. He convicts the murderers and witnessestheir executions.

The ChineseMaze Murders describes the executionsin detail, something traditional Chinese mystery writing requires.

Gulik says that according to Chinese law at the time, thecriminal had to confess for a judge to convict him. If the judge believes the personto be guilty, he can torture the criminal to elicit a confession.

In the midst of his investigation, Judge Dee consults aseer. This too, is a part of the tradition.

The author bases this book on at least three ancientChinese stories adapted for this novel. As you might expect, the role of womenis different in this culture than in ours. Vastly different. But the evildescribed is much the same as you would find today.

I found the story interesting. It was somewhat routineand tedious in the middle, and it ended more violently than I expected.

I’m glad I read this book.

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

I received this book as a free electronic edition fromThe University of Chicago Press. As I have said before, I receive one freeebook from this group each month. They send these books, not just to bloggers,but to a wide variety of individuals. A few of the books are mysteries. Most areart, biography, or history. I suppose they are hoping people will read thebooks and write reviews for book store pages and the like.

Ordinarily I don’t accept free books for this blog.All the books I write about I’ve bought or borrowed from a library. I made anexception in this case.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-10-08T12:53:00.002-05:00

October 9, 2011

People ought to retire at forty when they feel overused and go back to work at sixty-five when they feel useless.

HUGGER MUGGER by Robert B. Parker

2011-10-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

Robert B. Parker’sHugger Mugger is a routine Spenserbook with an abrupt ending.

Spenser agrees tofind out who is attacking millionaire Walter Clive’s horses.

So far, someonehas shot three minor horses. One of them died. Clive’s fear is that the assailantwill attack Hugger Mugger, his prize horse. There has been one unsuccessfulattempt on Hugger Mugger already.

Of course, thereal issue is money and the dysfunctional Clive family. When the patriarch WalterClive is killed, the plot thickens. And Spenser keeps pushing.

Spenser’s techniqueis the same as always. He bulls in to see what happens.

There is no Hawkin this book. Spenser’s sidekick for this novel is a gay weightlifter namedTedy Sapp.

The book hasParker’s trademark pithy conversations, almost to a fault. But Hugger Mugger is what I read the later Spensernovels for--quick, entertaining reading.

The concludingaction scene seems contrived. It was hard for me to believe Spenser’s attackerscould have been so dumb and fallen so easily.

This is far fromthe best of the Spenser books, but I enjoyed reading it.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-10-01T10:13:00.003-05:00

Nature is talking to us all the time. It's just hearing that's
the problem.

A TRICK OF THE LIGHT by Louise Penny

2011-09-25T20:21:00.006-05:00

Louise Penny’s A Trick of the Light is another penetrating character study.

The body of Lillian Dyson turns up in the Morrow garden in Three Pines. Clara and Peter Morrow find the body of Clara’s long-lost friend/enemy the day after their party to celebrate Clara’s artistic breakthrough. The Musée in Montreal chose Clara’s paintings for a one-woman show, an incredible honor for a long-term artist whose work had, up to this time, been ignored.

All but one of the reviews of Clara’s paintings are overwhelmingly good. Critics from the best newspapers in the world see Clara as a genius. But her success widens the rift in her marriage. It also brings up again the simmering anger which came about when Lillian Dyson betrayed her friend Clara and many other artists. And it forms the setting for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his crew to learn about the greed and envy which permeates much of the art world.

The victim, Lillian Dyson, was a recovering alcoholic. As a part of their investigation, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his assistant Jean-Guy Beauvoir attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

The two men learn about some of the surprising people who are alcoholics. They also learn about the simmering resentments which often lie behind addiction and alcoholism. They learn about the twelve steps and about when and when not to seek forgiveness.

Both men have their own issues. They have not “healed” from the emotional wounds surrounding a brutal gun battle chronicled in previous books. Gamache still has an enemy in the Sûreté du Québec. Penny leaves that story line to be resolved in a later book.

Gamache’s assistant Jean-Guy Beauvoir is divorcing his wife. He loves someone whom it might not be appropriate to love. And he is becoming addicted to pain killers prescribed to deal with the continuing pain from his now-healed physical wounds from the previous gun battle.

In other words, this is a typical Louise Penny.

I’ve come to see Louise Penny’s books, not as mystery stories, but as character studies, psychological novels with a penetrating twenty-first century twist.

The mysteries themselves are often open-ended. There is little way for the reader to have “figured it out.” The murderer could reasonably have been one of a whole series of people. You only know when Gamache gives the explanation.

But the books are terrific. Penny knows about human nature in a way few writers do. Her books are sometimes hard to read because of that. They strike too close to the bone.

This is another excellent Louise Penny novel. I recommend it.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-09-24T13:56:00.001-05:00

"Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence."
— Ross Macdonald

THE BALLAD OF TOM DOOLEY by Sharyn McCrumb

2011-09-21T13:48:00.009-05:00

As soon as I see a new Sharyn McCrumb, I grab it up. I’m talking about The Ballad Novels, powerful stories based on events from America’s past.

As a college student, I sometimes drove home (four hours) on weekends. My most enduring memory of those drives is listening to the radio, hearing the Kingston Trio sing “The Ballad of Tom Dooley.”

I surely heard a lot of songs, but, after more than fifty years, the Kingston Trio’s “Tom Dooley” is the only song I remember from those drives.

Sharyn McCrumb’s The Ballad of Tom Dooley is a novel, not a “mystery” story. In her “Afterword,” McCrumb writes--

“I‘m sure that a great many superficial readers will see this work as a crime story and spout a lot of nonsense about ‘solving the case,’ as if it were an episode of CSI, but I wish they wouldn’t. It can hardly be a mystery when practically anybody in Wilkes Country will tell you on first acquaintance [who did it]. I agree. So there was no case to solve. My concerns lay elsewhere.”

McCrumb’s concerns lay with her narrator, whom she calls (in the “Afterword”) a sociopath, and with another character she calls a narcissist. Their interaction leads to murder.

McCrumb writes about life in North Carolina after the Civil War. The events and the memory of the Civil War shade everything in Pauline Foster’s world.

We tend to think that horror stories have vampires and the like, but the truth is, most often the real horror rests in human minds.

That’s the way it is here. To call the narrator Pauline Foster a sociopath is almost a kindness. She is among the most chilling characters I’ve ever known. And her cousin Ann has a kind of narcissism which makes her immune to human feeling too.

There are redeeming characters in this book including Zebulon Vance, the former Confederate governor of North Carolina who helped defend Tom Dula (Tom Dooley is a corruption of the name). I admired James Melton, Ann’s husband, and another character, a freed slave.

But the heart of the story is Pauline Foster’s chilling manipulations to cause murder.

McCrumb is clear that The Ballad of Tom Dooley is a fictionalized retelling of the tale based on her careful research.

The story represents her reconstruction of motivations and states of mind that she can’t prove. Others have seen different motivations. But the bulk of the details (if not the motivations attributed to them) are factual.

My reading of this book led me to know the people behind a song, parts of which I still remember.

So I highly recommend The Ballad of Tom Dooley. In fact, I recommend all of McCrumb’s Ballad Novels. They bring something different to my reading, as I think they will to yours.

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I ordered this book from Mystery Guild.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-09-17T09:54:00.004-05:00

"Whatever you have to do to survive shouldn't count as a sin. It don't seem fair to me that soldiers get forgiven their trespasses after the peace treaty is signed but the rest of us are condemned to eternal guilt by the long memories of our neighbors."
--Pauline Foster

LIST WEDNESDAY--Ohio Amish Mysteries

2011-09-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

I have become a fan of P. L. Gaus’ Ohio Amish Mysteries. Here is a list of them so far.

Ohio Amish Mystery

1. Blood Of The Prodigal (1998)

2. Broken English (2000)

3. Clouds Without Rain (2001)

4. Cast a Blue Shadow (2003)

5. A Prayer for the Night (2006)

6. Separate from the World (2008)

7. Harmless as Doves (2011)

I have linked the ones already cited in this blog.

DEATH OF THE MANTIS by Michael Stanley

2011-09-13T11:54:00.004-05:00

Michael Stanley’s Death of the Mantis starts slowly but ends powerfully.

Caught up by a massive change in Botswana’s culture, “Kubu,” Detective David Bengu, makes a terrible mistake. He takes on an investigation not his own. He allows a Bushman friend to enmesh him in the historic racial prejudices against the Bushmen and the hatreds those racial prejudices leave behind.

Kubu's decisions cause friends to suffer and die. He puts everyone at risk.

It all starts with a murder in the bush. The policeman in charge believes the Bushmen found around the body committed the murder. Bushmen, by culture, are peaceful. For them to kill someone would be unlikely. Kubu lets a Bushman friend enmesh him in the case.

The investigation is more complex than it seems. The book’s title Death of the Mantis refers to the Bushman creation story. The Mantis created the earth and its first people, the Bushmen.

By nature peaceful, taking only what it needs, the Mantis has taught the Bushmen to melt into the bush rather than fight. They see all creation working out in such a way that even when they kill an animal to eat, they thank the spirit of the animal. They never take more game or water than they need, leaving the remainder for the next person who wanders by.

The Bushmen welcome strangers and give wayfarers enough to help them on their way. Bushmen have no understanding of the concept of private property. They believe the whole earth is to share without greed.

But their culture is dying. Many Bushmen now live in towns and cities. They no longer remember how to thank the animals, track men and game from the least of signs, and endure the blazing desert sun. The few desert Bushmen who remain struggle to survive.

Into this there comes a murderer. The murderer ends up hastening the death of the Mantis. His psychotic vision makes him a serial killer whose hatred threatens everyone including Kubu and his family.

This is a powerful book. Many have already said that. But it is also a book which encompasses the pain that happens when a way of life is dying. The death of native culture brings grief beyond explaining.

As I read the early pages, I thought Death of the Mantis was going to be an ordinary book, the most “usual” of the Kubu offerings, but farther in, I learned I was wrong. The book will surely become a classic of its sort. I recommend it highly.

DISCO FOR THE DEPARTED by Colin Cotterill

2011-09-12T08:21:00.000-05:00

Colin Cotterill’s Disco for the Departed continues the tradition of the two earlier books.

Set in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos in 1977, the book finds Laos’ only coroner, the aging Dr Siri Paiboun, investigating the murder of a man encased in concrete.

The man seems to be Cuban, one of a group sent over to aid the struggling Laotian Communist government.

The Laotian revolution has failed. The dirt-poor are still dirt-poor. Most of the Communist leaders are like the royals had been, entitled and seeking privilege. The government is mired in red tape. Every action, even permission to break open the cement block with the body in it, requires that you fill out a form.

The officer in charge of the investigation is incompetent. He depends on the old coroner to solve the case.

And all of this becomes involved with magic, some of it black magic.

Paiboun himself channels a spirit seeking to find rest. In the midst of the story, another spirit infects him. One of Paiboun’s main accomplishments in the story is to get the second spirit into a place where it can bring justice for the wrong committed on it.

There are spiritual marriages and human sacrifice. Places which were bomb shelters in the war have now been turned into sites for ritual magic.

Dr. Paiboun has trouble sleeping because every night he hears music from an amphitheater which has become the disco for the dead.

Paiboun reconnects with old soldier acquaintances and friends. And all along, he tries to bring peace and justice to the pain and grief of the crumbling world around him.

Meanwhile, the incompetent officer above Paiboun arranges to have Geung, Paiboun’s mentally-handicapped lab assistant, kidnapped and spirited away. Geung has to fight to find his way cross-country back to the lab.

I love these books. They tell strong stories. They take me to a unique place and into a unique culture. The main characters are good, but struggling, people. The setting is a setting I knew little about until I started reading Colin Cotterill.

My recommendation: If you think you might like to try the Siri Paiboun stories, start with the first one in the series, The Coroner’s Lunch, and then go from there.

TODAY

2011-09-11T09:51:00.003-05:00

September 11, 2011

Ten years ago today was a Tuesday. A minister friend and I were doing our regular Tuesday one-hour Bible study when a congregant knocked on the office door. "You need to get to a TV," she told us. "Something big is happening."

We prayed, as we always did, and then went to a TV, and, like the rest of the nation, we watched.

The next day the civic club I was part of in our small town put up the U.S. flags. On July 4 and other special days we put U.S. flags in front of every business. That day, all we knew to do was to put up the flags.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-09-10T12:39:00.002-05:00

"Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner."
--Oscar Wilde

LIST WEDNESDAY--Dr. Siri Paiboun

2011-09-06T16:01:00.002-05:00

Set in Laos, Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun series is delightful. Here is that list.

Dr. Siri Paiboun

1. The Coroner's Lunch (2004)

2. Thirty-Three Teeth (2005)

3. Disco for the Departed (2006)

4. Anarchy and Old Dogs (2007)

5. Curse of the Pogo Stick (2008)

6. The Merry Misogynist (2009)

7. Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010)

8. Slash and Burn (2011)

A RULE AGAINST MURDER by Louise Penny

2011-09-06T09:26:00.011-05:00

For me, Louise Penny’s A Rule Against Murder was a mixed bag.

The book had Penny’s usual stellar writing. It had her sharp insights, quotes from classics, and deep psychological probing, but . . . .

This was the story of the Morrow family. While on vacation, Inspector Armand Gamache comes upon Peter Morrow’s family reunion.

Morrow’s family is more than dysfunctional. They trash one another with every word.

The family’s dysfunction causes Gamache to consider his own family, and to see them as healthy and loving even though a part of the Morrow family attack on Gamache comes from Morrows who knew Gamache’s father.

In my Sunday Quote this week, I used a quotation from Penny’s The Cruelest Month: “Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.”

That quote could be the hallmark of A Rule Against Murder, and that was the problem for me. I got tired of the Morrow family’s incessant harping, using words to destroy one another. In excess of two hundred pages of family fighting was more than I could enjoyably read.

Only one Morrow family in-law and a child had redeeming qualities.

Not that the family arguments didn’t embody the kind of evil often present in dysfunctional families. They did. People hide illnesses and other secrets. They hold grudges. They attack one another mercilessly in a myriad of ways.

When someone murders a Morrow, the murder had to come from within the family.

But my thought was, “I’ve read enough of this. I could have gotten the point in a book that was one hundred pages shorter.”

Not that my feeling about the book will keep me from reading the new Louise Penny. I know what you get with Louise Penny. You get psychology, murder based on feelings as Gamache often says. And I know the books are excellent, including this one.

Penny’s books are character studies. The mystery in this one is first in how the murderer committed the crime. Penny shields the method almost to the end. And Penny meticulously plants the clues.

So the book is high quality, just as always. My feeling about it is my feeling.

I admire Louise Penny. Her books are one story with book-length episodes. This episode gave us blinding insight into the artist Peter Morrow and his family.

It will be interesting to see what the new book brings.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-09-03T12:52:00.004-05:00

Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages.

Not a mystery--GIRLS LIKE US by Rachel Lloyd

2011-09-02T16:46:00.002-05:00

“I don’t care what you call it, Rachel, sexual exploitation and all that but to everyone else, we still hos.”

---

Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd--

Every US adult should read this book.

We all have stereotypes about commercial sexual exploitation. Even our name for the women involved in the trade, “prostitutes,” is part of the stereotype.

Prostitutes are what they are by choice, at least as many law enforcement officials, legislators, and ordinary people see it. Their families and their living situations might have forced these young women out on the streets at ten-, eleven-, or twelve years old. They might have sought the only ones who seemed to love them, care for them, or give them a chance at survival and family, abusive pimps. And even recovering adult women might suffer PTSD. But still we blame them.

Rachel understands. Her street story starts at thirteen.

That she was able to somehow survive and, finally, to found GEMS, a New York City non-profit which attempts to provide a safe place for exploited women, is a miracle. And she admits it.

GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Service) gives these women voice. By the end of the book, they are speaking for themselves, not just through the book, but to the New York Legislature and in other public places.

This is a starkly honest book. It describes families, pimps, johns, exploited women and all the rest with a level of honesty that made it hard for me to read.

The book breaks stereotypes and teaches us about another world.

To give one example of the writing, Rachel describes the power of a pimp over the women he has subjugated. Even after Rachel broke away, she felt the compulsion to go back. She describes it this way--

“Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. Even though it takes me years to actually be able to say omniscient properly--I’ll call it omniscience--I know exactly what it means, both the dictionary definition, ‘having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding,’ and how it plays out in my real life. I know that he knows everything about me, past, present, and future. I now that he is all of the ‘omnis,’ he’s all-powerful, all-knowing, and no matter where I go he’s there. Even when I run away he finds me, and either punishes me or cajoles me into ‘forgiving’ him. He feels like a part of my skin, he’s in my bloodstream. When he tells me that even if I get married, have children, and am gone for ten years, he’ll find me, I believe him. When he says that I’ll have no choice but to go with him, that I’ll always belong to him, that I was born to be his, I believe him.”

I learned about this book from a commentary in The New York Times.

This book is realistic but positive in its conclusion. It tells the stories of women who returned to the streets, who ended up enslaved or dead, but it also tells the stories of women who survived to become strong leaders, people who saved others.

You don’t give up on anyone, Rachel says. You keep trying to help them find their voices.

I recommend this book.

THE SCORE by Richard Stark

2011-09-02T08:40:00.008-05:00

In the 1950’s and 60’s I loved to read paperbacks because they were short. I could read one in an evening. Whether it was a book like Richard Stark’s The Score, something by Erle Stanley Gardner, or an Ed McBain, I usually finished it in one or two sittings.

Then paperback books became expensive. Publishers seemed to think they needed to offer you more pages for your money and most mystery novels went longer.

Stark’s The Score is the story of Parker and eleven others who shut down a town. They plan to rob payroll from a local factory and then to blow their way into safes in the town’s banks and savings and loan companies.

The plan goes flawlessly until human nature intervenes.

Stark writes the book in sections, one for planning the heist, one for acquiring the things needed to do the job, etc. It all goes flawlessly. We see their meticulous planning in detail.

All the time, we know something has to go wrong, and at one point I thought I saw it happening. But I was wrong. Finally, the whole story came back to human nature.

As most mystery readers know, Richard Stark is one of Donald E. Westlake’s pseudonyms. Like other writers in the 50s and 60s, Westlake thought he needed to use a pseudonym so as not to water down his brand. He thought too many books by Donald E. Westlake might make it seem like he was churning them out.

Tell that to James Patterson or J.D. Robb today!

I enjoyed reading this book. I did read it in one sitting, just as in the old days. It was meticulously written as all Westlake stories are. And, as the events worked out, it all came down to our human inability to let things go perfectly.

Even among crooks, it is what they are as human beings that ends up getting them killed or caught.

FAMILY HONOR by Robert B. Parker

2011-09-01T09:15:00.028-05:00

Robert B. Parker’s Family Honor is the first in the Sunny Randall series.

Sunny is the daughter of a retired cop. She is an ex-cop herself who is now a private eye.

A prominent Boston family hires her to find their runaway daughter Millicent. In doing so, Sunny uncovers the family’s secrets, works with the mob and the police, kills a man, and saves the girl.

She also learns that she still loves her ex-husband, himself a member of a prominent mob family, though she is emotionally unable to be married to him.

Sunny’s Hawk is a gay man named Spike.

The title Family Honor applies to the client family, to her own cop family, and to the mob family with which Sunny connects through her ex-husband.

To me, this was a typical Parker book with a different hero. It was fun, a “quick read” (though I listened to an audio version). It was another outlet for Parker’s well-polished skills when it comes to writing about Boston private eyes. Parker portrays the Boston scene in detail.

Sunny may be too dependent on the men around her to please many women readers. I haven’t read reviews of the book, but I would expect that might be a criticism.

I got this audio-book as an electronic checkout from the local library.

LIST WEDNESDAY--Inspector Montalbano

2011-08-30T14:54:00.001-05:00

Andrea Camilleri

Series

Inspector Montalbano

1. The Shape of Water (2002)

2. The Terra-Cotta Dog (2002)

3. The Snack Thief (2003)

4. Voice of the Violin (2003)

5. The Excursion To Tindari (2005)

6. The Smell of the Night (2005)

aka The Scent of the Night

7. Rounding the Mark (2006)

8. The Patience of the Spider (2007)

9. The Paper Moon (2008)

10. August Heat (2008)

11. The Wings of the Sphinx (2009)

12. The Track of Sand (2010)

13. The Potter's Field (2011)

(I have linked books mentioned in this blog.)

THE CRUELEST MONTH by Louise Penny

2011-08-29T08:38:00.002-05:00

Louise Penny’s The Cruelest Month is Gamache’s story.

Attacked by friends, his family facing smears and troubles, Gamache responds in the same deeply thoughtful way he responds to murder. He remembers those whom he serves. He stands up for the victims, not protecting brutal cops, and he is willing to suffer to be ethical, to do things in the right way.

If Gamache sounds like Superman, he’s not. He struggles and has pain. He refuses to see the truth because he is too trusting. He almost resigns his position. And he faces one of the most terrible things he has ever had to face, a breach in a long-term friendship.

The story begins with the death of a popular Three Pines resident during a Séance.

To solve the crime, which turns out to be a murder, Gamache and his team have to dig into the history of the people of Three Pines. They visit the schools the people attended, look at old yearbooks, and talk about what happened in the past.

Everyone could have committed the crime. In the Poirot-like denouncement held in the same seemingly-haunted house in which the murder occurred, Gamache enumerates the suspects, basically almost everybody involved.

Meanwhile, “friends” in Sûreté du Québec attack Gamache, trying, not just to get him to resign, but to destroy him.

The murder story itself seems too fantastical. I found myself struggling to believe the murder could have been committed in the way it was. I also struggled with other plot elements. But that didn’t matter. Louise Penny deals in character.

It was clear early on who was on Gamache’s side though I could never tell whether Gamache knew that.

I read this book to get ready for Penny’s new book. Her writing is not separate stories. It is more one story told in episodes, the books themselves. This book has foreshadowing of what will happen with characters in later books. It portrays people as they are, not as we might want them.

Again, Ruth the poet, though she was a minor character in this book, still fascinates. I see her as one of the most striking characters in all of mystery literature. For me, Gamache grew into a full-blooded person in this story.

I have one more Louise Penny to read to have read the whole series so far and to be ready for the upcoming book. I’ve put off a book or two because I enjoy them. I didn’t want to use them up.

This series of semi-cozy mystery novels is among the best on-going series I have ever read.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-08-27T12:56:00.000-05:00

August 27, 2011

"Don't mistake dramatics for a conscience."

LIST WEDNESDAY: I.J. Parker--Sugawara Akitada

2011-08-23T15:14:00.001-05:00

I.J. Parker list - Sugawara Akitada

I.J. Parker has recently published several of these on Kindle. Click here to find them.

1. Rashomon Gate (2002)

2. The Hell Screen (2003)

3. The Dragon Scroll (2005)

4. Black Arrow (2006)

5. Island of Exiles (2007)

6. TheConvict's Sword (2009)

7. The Fires of the Gods (2010)

8. The Masuda Affair (2011)

Short Stories

"Death and Cherry Blossoms" (2006)

(I have linked books mentioned in this blog.)

WHAT IS LIST WEDNESDAY?

2011-08-21T10:45:00.001-05:00

I write this blog for myself. It is the way I can check if I have read a book. It also jogs my memory, helps me recall a book I've read some time ago.

Of course, I am pleased when others check in or even choose to try a book because of what I've written here.

One thing I'm doing is trying to read through a few of my favorite series--the Spenser series and the Montalbano series, as examples.

With that in mind, I decided to do occasional "List Wednesdays." Those days I will print a series list so I can keep track of where I am in my reading on that series.

The lists come from the web, usually Fantastic Fiction (where you can find wonderful lists). The difference is that by putting my personal series reading lists on this blog, I can link the books I've read which are talked about in the blog, and I can keep track for myself.

So, List Wednesday is mostly for me, but I invite you to use it if it helps you.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-08-20T10:39:00.000-05:00

August 20, 2011

It is impossible for any Sherlock Holmes story not to have at least one marvelous scene.

--Rex Stout

CHILDREN OF THE STREETS by Kwei Quartey

2011-08-16T11:00:00.005-05:00

“Accra is a perfect place for murder. It is so dark and so quiet at night. Street people are sleeping everywhere. Who knows they are there, and who cares about them? Who will report anything? Everyone fears you, the police. They say if you go to report something to the police, you are the one who they will arrest. I could kill one of these rubbish children around the corner from where the other ones sleep and I could walk away without worrying. No one will care.”

-----

These words from a serial killer explain how the killer got away with killing homeless children. The killer threw their bodies in the most terrible places: filthy latrines, sewers, and dumps.

Set in Ghana, Kwei Quartey’s Children of the Street is the second of Quartey’s Inspector Darko Dawson police procedurals.

Quartey’s matter-of-fact writing style perfectly describes the city’s squalor.

Darko Dawson is a wonderful character. He grieves as his young son Hosiah wastes away because of a congenital heart defect. He is a policeman married to a school teacher. He and his wife Christine live on the edge of poverty. They can’t afford their son's needed operation. Every day brings anguish as their son’s health declines.

Along the way, Dawson’s personal situation causes him to make mistakes, blunders of the heart. He loses his temper with witnesses and suspects. He cares too much. He accuses the wrong people. He struggles to keep from smoking Marijuana, a practice he is working hard to overcome.

Dawson faces departmental politics. He learns his assistant is a better man than Dawson thought he was. And he finds others in the police department who are willing to help him face his son's illness.

Darko Dawson cares for the children of the street. He sees them for what they are, coming down hard on the seemingly incorrigible ones, but helping the trapped. He helps them one at a time, the only way he has to do it.

This is a quality book. It describes a kind of pain and struggle which the world ignores.

Such homelessness, using children in the sex trade and other ways, is not unique to Ghana. Right now I’m reading a book that describes the sex trade in young women on the streets of New York City.

I could feel Kwei Quartey’s indignation at the abominations he describes. His very style bristles with truth and quiet anger.

Kwei Quartey is a medical doctor. The book reflects that, not in a technical way, but in the way it describes things. The author names Hosiah’s heart defect and explains the needed operation.

If you haven’t yet met Darko Dawson, you might want to.

SUNDAY QUOTE

2011-08-13T09:17:00.000-05:00

"What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of not recognizing Paradise."

ANARCHY AND OLD DOGS by Colin Cotterill

2011-08-10T18:26:00.002-05:00

Colin Cotterill’s Anarchy and Old Dogs is another in his Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery series.

Set in the 1970s, the series follows two old revolutionaries in what is now Communist Laos.

The nation is falling apart. The revolution hasn’t worked. All the new government can do is blunder around inefficiently.

As the story starts, the 70-year-old Paiboun, the national coroner of Laos (the only one!), autopsies a blind dentist run down by a driverless truck. The autopsy would be routine, except he finds a coded note on the old man’s body.

Working out the code leads Paiboun to learn about a conspiracy to overthrow Laos’ fledgling Communist government. And Paiboun works to keep the overthrow from happening.

Dr. Paiboun does his work in a quiet way. Along the way, he learns that sometimes your best work happens in “small” things.

At one point, a friend from the revolution, a woman who makes the best noodles in Laos, asks Paiboun, “‘Is leading an army that wins a war really that much more satisfying than teaching a four-year-old to ride a bicycle? At our age,’ she said, ‘you go for the small things and you do them as well as you can.’”

The small thing Paiboun does is to try to unravel the cause of an impoverished child's death. His family found the boy drowned in unusual circumstances. But Paiboun also works to thwart the planned revolution with the help of his assistants at the mortuary.

As always with the Paiboun books, the reader comes to love several of the characters. The setting is so clear. For those of us who grew up in the Vietnam War era, the book clarifies what the people in the region thought they were doing when they fought that war.

But the book doesn’t glorify Communism. Even in its early stages, the Laotian government is a failure. It is people like Paiboun and several others who do the good and reasoned work to make things happen. Most other government officials bumble around.

At first, I thought the book was slow. I prepared myself to be disappointed with the first weak Paiboun book I’ve read. But did it pick up! By the end, I was more-than-intrigued by the characters and more-than-hooked by the book’s unexpected ending.

Paiboun has prescient dreams. He communes with spirits, and he consults a card-reading fortune teller along the way.

If you like mystery stories set in strange places, the kinds of stories where you learn about a foreign country while you pursue a well-written mystery, the Siri Paiboun mysteries might be good books for you.

-----------

These books, with their interlocking characters, build on one another. You would get even more out of this book if you read a couple of the earlier ones first.

Not a Mystery--THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE MOON by Tom Spanbauer

2011-08-09T18:21:00.003-05:00

Surely Tom Spanbauer’s The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon is a classic in its genre. It is that good.

The author saturates the book with stories.

Story, point of view, and character meld. Lately, the closest thing to this book that I’ve read is a very different novel, Megan Abbott’s The End of EVERYTHING.

The book’s first-person-point-of-view character is Shed. As he grew up in Excellent, Idaho, they called him Shed because he lived in a shed.

A bisexual, he became a male prostitute at something like fourteen. Since he is half-indian, he works out of the shed in back of Excellent’s pink brothel. Indians don’t mix with white people, even in brothels. They may serve white people of both sexes, but they don’t mix with them.

This book is earthy. Before I tell you a bit about the plot, I thought I ought to say that. It might be too down-to-earth for some of my friends who read this blog. The main character is bisexual. He is not shy. He describes all kinds of things explicitly.

The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon divides into three sections. The first section deals with Shed’s growing up in Excellent. The man who murders his mother rapes him, and the local madam Ida Richilieu takes him under her wing in a more or less protective way. Shed also learns to love the mountain that isn’t a mountain which hovers over Excellent. He finds a special place there.

The second section tells the story of Shed leaving Excellent to find his Indian heritage. He becomes attached to Dellwood Barker, a man who converses with the moon. Dellwood takes Shed to his secret place, a place where the rocks form the rough shape of a buffalo’s head.

And the third section deals with Shed’s return to Excellent, his reconnection with Ida Richilieu and another prostitute Alma Hatch.

All this ends tragically, as you might expect. Ida fights with the Mormons who are taking over Excellent, and that fight ends in several deaths. It also ends with Shed learning exactly who he is and what his relationship is to many different people.

All this might sound somewhat mundane, but it is not. The story is violent but filled with love and caring. It is a coming-of-age story. Shed and the people around him have a deep, practical kind of wisdom which can’t help but make you consider all kinds of things about your own life.

The New York Times reviewer quoted on the back of this book says the book “obliges us to rethink our whole idea of narration and history and myth. . . .” He is right, but the book is a better book than that.

I can’t think of any reason someone would ask, but if someone were to ask me the key to good fiction writing, I’d say, “Don’t skimp on story. Every word should have a story in it. Good books are not style, development, one clue after another, or whatever. Those might add to the whole thing, but every word in a good book tells a compelling story.”

This book fills that bill.

THE TRACK OF SAND by Andrea Camilleri

2011-08-02T09:41:00.002-05:00

The Inspector Montalbano novels are humorous police procedurals.

It is the humor that catches me.

The humor comes, not out of situations, but out of the characters, especially Montalbano. Sometimes he is inept, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes just Sicilian, just a volatile personality. He spends most days eating huge meals, and he always has an active sex life.

In the 12^th book in the series, The Track of Sand, Montalbano finds a beaten dead horse on his beachfront. His anger at the crime causes him to decide he’ll find out who did it. While he is inside arranging to have the horse hauled away, the horse’s carcass disappears.

Never mind that someone stole the horse in another jurisdiction. Never mind that responsibility to investigate lies in other hands. Montalbano doesn’t tell that jurisdiction about finding the horse or its later disappearance. All they know is that someone stole the horse (in fact two horses) in the first place.

The ins and outs of the bureaucracy are a major theme in these stories. Montalbano is a genius at manipulating the stuffed-shirts above him.

Along the way, Montalbano balances connections with three beautiful women and deals with his own house almost being torched. He thinks about a Mafia case in which he has to testify, and, finally, he sets up a clever frame to convict the horse-killer of a crime he didn’t commit.

Meanwhile, Montalbano eats great meals, liberally drinks good alcohol, attends the races (where he is uncomfortable), and entertains himself in other ways.

Whenever I write about these books, I feel the need to mention their translator Stephen Sartarelli. I have no way of evaluating the translation except to know that I enjoy the books, and Mr. Sartarelli surely has a great part in that.

I will probably go back and read this series through.