Each of Parker’s three novels about former pugilist, Marine, cop, and, at present, PI Roland Ford has been better than the last. Part of it is a sort of cozy quality that increases the more we learn about his friends and relatives who live in casitas on his compound in Fallbrook, California. (They’re reminiscent of the folks who inhabit Louise Penny’s Three Pines, minus the squawking duck.) Part of it is Parker’s ability to create a literary portrait of the section of southern California where he lives. Past that, the plots seem to be ever more tighter and gripping. Here, a rather strange woman, Penelope Rideout, hires Ford to find her barely teenage sister, Daley, who’s been in her charge since their parents’ death. Penelope says her sis has been kidnapped, but, as Ford quickly discovers, Daley seems to have a precocious fondness for older men, among them a smarmy evangelist with a vast following of white supremacists. Regardless of what the situation really is, Ford is the kind of white knight who won’t stop until the girl is safe, and this is after he’s been so badly beaten that, unlike just about every other private eye on record, he’s forced to take time out to heal. Damron’s narration, which initially struck me as too soft and youthful for Ford, seems to have matured to the point where it’s just about right. This has turned into an event series.
Sandford’s novels featuring Virgil Flowers can be counted on to deliver the laughs, and entry No. 12 is no exception. On assignment to assist the Minneapolis police department in solving the murder of an unpopular professor on the University of Minnesota campus, a reluctant Flowers gets caught in the middle of a science vs. culture battle. But first he must win over the city’s toughest policewoman who resents his interference. The investigation is filled with situations both deadly serious and laugh-out-loud hilarious. The suspects range from members of the victim’s family to assorted scholastic types, a shrewd hooker, and several bloviating lawyers. Reader Conger covers all with the bemused-but-ready-for-anything approach with which Flowers powers through. That includes Virgil’s easygoing reaction to a friendly barfly who tries to convince him to use the sleuthing technique followed by Jethro Gibbs, the Navy investigator played by Mark Harmon on NCIS. He should realize that the killer is always somebody Gibbs has met in the course of the investigation but passed over in favor of someone else. Virgil shines the guy on, but, of course, that’s precisely how things work out. (I suppose this and other dialogue about Harmon’s football prowess may be playful references to the fact that the actor once portrayed Sandford’s other hero, Lucas Davenport, in a TV-movie pilot that failed to make it to series. But whether it’s a tip of the hat or a kick in the pants is anybody’s guess.)
Though earlier Lagercrantz novels, after the late Stieg Larsson’s original Millennium trio, have been listenable, this series actually ran out of steam right around the time Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, defeated her monster half-brother in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Previously, she’d set fire to her loathsome father. Wasn’t much left for her to do after that, so, in book four, a twin sister, briefly mentioned in Larsson’s novels, was introduced in all her evil fury. The battle of the twins continues here, but it’s not what one would call compelling or even interesting. Actually, most of the book focuses on Salander’s semi-platonic pal journalist Mikael Blomkvist as he ignores his assigned articles in favor of a search for the history of a homeless man, a former Mt. Everest guide, who may or may not have committed suicide. It’s a meandering quest that will get him into a perilous situation, with a resulting rescue that is as silly and incredible as, well, an evil twin sister. The disappointing audio is no fault of reader Vance, who, with his splendid, ultra-British delivery, narrates with all the skill and enthusiasm he brought to Larsson’s vastly superior originals.
This is another winner in a consistently excellent reference series. Though most of her often theatrical novels about Scotland Yard’s Roderick Alleyn are set in London, Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealander and maintained a relationship to her native country throughout her life. Author Harding is the curator of the Ngaio Marsh House in Christchurch.
As usual entries are alphabetical by titles of books and other writings, characters, themes, subject matter, places, family and associates, and other allusions. In thorough summaries of the novels, Harding includes quotes from reviews, sometimes with his own critical comments. Fore matter lists Marsh’s works both chronologically and alphabetically, followed by a brief biography and career chronology. End matter offers 13 pages of the author’s interviews with his subject, conducted in 1978 (in part, it’s two New Zealanders discussing their country, not always in entirely complimentary terms), and an excellent 18-page annotated bibliography.
The time range of this very useful survey is 500 to 1500 AD/CE, between the fall of Rome and “European ‘discovery’ of the Americas”; the geographical scope is generally confined to Western Europe. After an introductory chapter with an extended discussion of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, the organization is “structured around the identity and generic type of detective rather than geographical or temporal locations,” with separate chapters on secular males, religious males, and female sleuths in either category. Among the authors and characters given extended treatment are Bernard Knight’s Crowner John, Michael Jecks’ Sir Baldwin Furnshill, Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, Peter Tremaine’s Sister Fidelma, Sharan Newman’s Catherine LeVendeur, and Margaret Frazer’s Dame Frevisse, originally created by the team of Gail Frazer and Mary Monica Pulver. A chapter on Jews, anti-Semitism, and the blood libel identifies Carolyn Roe’s Isaac of Girona as the only Jewish sleuth in Medieval detective fiction. Among historical figures recast as fictional detectives are Chaucer in a series by Jeri Westerson and as a secondary character in Candace Robb’s Owen Archer books, Chaucer’s poet contemporary John Gower in novels by Bruce Holsinger, Leonardo da Vinci in separate series by Diane D.A. Stuckert, and the team of Martin Woodhouse and Robert Ross, and Dante Alighieri in books by Italian professor Giulio Leoni.
Readable style and forthright critical assessments make this a good reference for readers seeking new authors to try. Many more than those noted above are discussed briefly, and a four-page appendix lists authors of medieval crime fiction with their characters and settings, including those not discussed in the book.
All of Penzler’s massive Big Book anthologies have included knowledgeable historical and biographical information on the stories and their authors. This one, in common with The Big Book of Jack the Ripper, has an extra layer of reference value. Each story is identified as the literary source of a a feature film, some famous or even classic (Witness for the Prosecution, The Lodger, Psycho, On the Waterfront, Freaks), others more obscure (Fear in the Night, The Guilty, Thirteen Lead Soldiers, The Mark of the Whistler). Authors represented cover a wide variety of times and genres, including Charlotte Armstrong, Joyce Carol Oates, Daphne du Maurier, Robert Louis Stevenson, Stanley Ellin, Irwin Shaw, O. Henry, Aldous Huxley, Sinclair Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Dennis Lehane, Edgar Allan Poe, and Budd Schulberg. The writer leaving the biggest footprint on crime film must be Cornell Woolrich, represented here by no fewer than eight stories. Distant runners-up are Dashiell Hammett and Stuart Palmer (three each), and several others represented twice (John and Ward Hawkins, W. Somerset Maugham, Edgar Wallace, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Richard Connell).
Each introduction includes the source of original publication and first book publication, biographical information on the author, brief synopsis of the plot, summary of the film adaptation (more often than not with a different title from the story) with basic information (studio, screenwriters, producer, director, principal performers) and accounts of other visual adaptations where applicable. Differences between original and adaptation are also noted.
Not all the films discussed closely follow the source material per Penzler’s annotations: the James Bond movie A View to a Kill “has as great a similarity to Fleming’s short story as it does to a Miss Marple novel,” and the 1947 film Blind Spot bears as much resemblance to Gone With the Wind as it does to Barry Perowne’s short story “The Blind Spot.” But while Robert Bloch’s great story “The Real Bad Friend” has neither Norman Bates nor any other character from his novel Psycho or Hitchcock’s film, it clearly is a trial balloon for the basic plot. Penzler is almost always scrupulously accurate on factual matters, but I caught one error in my advance proof that may or may not have been corrected in the final book: in three Bulldog Drummond films released in 1937 and 1938, though top-billed in deference to his fame, John Barrymore plays not Drummond but the secondary character Colonel Nielson. The Bulldog himself is played in these films by John Howard.
In a mostly laudatory review of Martin’s 2015 book Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me (in Mystery Scene No. 144), I added a caveat: “Be warned that there is a great deal of padding and tangential nonsense. Inevitably given the format, the author, who is not as interesting as his subject, inserts himself throughout. Arguably, a substantial magazine article might have done the job.” These reservations apply even more strongly to the self-indulgent sequel, a mishmash of short vignettes that see Martin following Child around during the publication, promotion, and reception of Make Me and the writing of its immediate follow-up, Night School. There are some amusing bits, but the latest Reacher novel Blue Moon will be a far more rewarding use of the reader’s time.
Cutting Edge, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, is an important anthology featuring 15 tales and a handful of poems—all by Margaret Atwood—of female noir. It’s a subgenre Oates describes as: “[A] populist sort of tragic vision, making of a man’s infatuation with a woman, in traditional noir, something richly ironic and often lethal—not profound, as in classic tragedy, but a confirmation of the way the (actual) world is: deceptive, punishing.”
The traditional form of noir is from the male perspective, but these stories are alluringly female and fit nicely inside Oates’ broad description of noir. Livia Llewellyn’s “One of These Nights” is a dark and twisted view of a father’s sexuality and his murderous daughter. The ending is perfectly ironic, and almost redemptive, with its impending and wholesome revenge aimed (finally) at the justified target. “Too Many Lunatics” by Lucy Taylor is a bleak and regret-filled story about adult sisters, drugs, a deadbeat mother, and a wounded and hurtful father. S.A. Solomon’s “Impala” is a dark tale about a young woman escaping her old life—with an alcoholic uncle turned born-again fundamentalist—only to find a serial killer and a well-aimed tire iron.
Cutting Edge is an above-average anthology; the first several, and the last few, stories approach brilliance. The tales are stylistically eclectic, but they share a thematic bleakness that is, at times, hard to read. The payoff, however, is always worth those gut-wrenching moments of realistic and hate-fueled violence.
The Big Book of Reel Murders, edited by Otto Penzler, is a welcome addition for every reader of short mystery fiction. There are 61 stories that have inspired films—some obscure and others famous—and every tale is worthy of a modern reading audience. It’s not a book to be devoured in a few sittings, but rather it’s the type of anthology to be read over a long period, two or three stories at a time. Penzler provides context, linking the fictional tale to the film, with instructive introductions for each story.
There are eight surprising tales by Cornell Woolrich—surprising because none are the stories you would expect. The best are “The Boy Cried Murder,” filmed as The Window, “Face Work,” filmed as Convicted, and “He Looked Like Murder,” filmed as The Guilty. Howard Breslin’s hardboiled and violent story “Bad Time at Honda,” which was adapted, and faithfully too, into the brilliant film Bad Day at Black Rock, is a treasure of suspense and fear.
Robert Bloch’s “The Real Bad Friend” wasn’t the inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, but it shared a theme with Bloch’s 1959 novel titled Psycho—a psychotic multi-personality antagonist—and it is seen by many, myself included, as a building block towards Bloch’s brilliant novel. There are stories from Agatha Christie (“The Witness for the Prosecution”), Jack Finney (“The House of Numbers”), Joyce Carol Oates (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been,” filmed as Smooth Talk), Dennis Lehane, (“Animal Rescue,” filmed as The Drop), Aldous Huxley (“The Giaconda Smile,” filmed as A Woman’s Vengeance), Fredric Brown (“Madman’s Holiday,” filmed as Crack-Up), Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, W. Somerset Maugham, and so many others I’m embarrassed to omit.
The Last Séance: Tales of the Supernatural, by Agatha Christie, is a pedestrian, but entertaining collection of Christie’s less famous stories of the macabre. The 16 stories feature psychic visions, haunted houses, werewolves, body-switching, and one tale each starring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. It will appeal more to the Christie enthusiast than the casual reader, but Christie’s trademarks are in every story—including her ability to build suspense by creating multiple solutions to every problem and her sharp and complex plotting.
The title story, “The Last Séance,” is an off-kilter mystery with a psychic, a client, a greedy fiancé, revenge, and a darkly humorous ending. “In a Glass Darkly” is a nicely executed story about jealousy, love, and misunderstanding. “S.O.S.” is a haunted-house tale that is less supernatural than it is detective story and the conclusion, if not surprising, is fun.
A collection of paperback writer Gil Brewer’s unpublished short stories, Death Is a Private Eye, edited by David Rachels, is an intriguing walk through Brewer’s unpublished stories that were written after his star as a commercial writer had faded. Brewer, a lifelong alcoholic, made it big in the 1950s with his novel 13 French Street (a million-copy seller), but his work fell out of favor with publishers and readers as the market moved away from his style of hardboiled noir. And Brewer was unwilling to adjust his writing for the changing market. As David Rachels writes in his excellent introduction: “The reason these stories are being published only now, rather than 40 or more years ago when they were first written, is that Gil Brewer’s markets have come back to him.”
Death Is a Private Eye includes 22 stories—two are novellas—and each tale delivers a delectable slice of that darkness Joyce Carol Oates described as “a confirmation of the way the (actual) world is: deceptive, punishing.” And Gil Brewer, as these stories attest, did this working-class tragedy, this noir, as well as anyone ever has.
Billed as “A Havana Mystery,” Queen of Bones paints a vivid portrait of Cuba’s capital, where Juan Chiong has returned after fleeing 20 years earlier by raft. He’s accompanied by his American wife, who is tasked with making sense of the unfamiliar environs—and the motivations behind her husband’s decision to journey home.
Juan left behind a tangle of romantic relationships and a friend who knew of them. Reuniting with his pal, he discovers that Victor has become Victoria–a maricon (queer) who dresses and identifies as a woman. Victoria is a symbol of the changes that have taken place in Cuba in the decades since Juan’s departure. (Through Victoria, Juan learns that Mariela Castro, niece of Fidel, pushed for the opening of the country’s National Center for Sex Education and for free gender reassignment surgeries.) Victoria is bighearted. But she clearly has an agenda when she arranges a meeting between Juan and his former sweetheart-turned-power broker, Elsa.
A mysterious death leads to Juan’s reunion with another former flame. Rosita is a mortician and a worshipper of Oyá, an orisha (spirit) in the religion of Santería, a fusion of Catholicism and Yoruba folk beliefs.
Police get involved. So does a detective called Padrino—who is also a Santería priest with close ties to several characters we meet.
If only we cared about these characters. But we never become invested in them. (Does Juan even feel anything for that American wife of his?) When the narrative shifts from third person to first, more than 100 pages into the book, we’re uncertain about that storyteller’s reliability.
Teresa Dovalpage, a Cuban who makes her home in New Mexico, has crafted a colorful travelogue. (Google some of the hotel names and check out the Yara, the Havana movie theater that gets a shout-out.) The Santería details are intriguing—as are the nods to Lydia Cabrera’s landmark book El Monte about Santería and other religions. Did you know that in Chinese witchcraft, a paste of bat meat made with ground bat eyes and brains can help preserve sight? Avid readers concerned about their eyesight should take note!
Damien Angelica Walters is an award-winning short-story writer, and her writing talent and horror roots are on display in her first novel, The Dead Girls Club. The first-person narrative is split between Heather Cole’s present and past, and the two versions of her are different enough to seem like separate characters. The reason isn’t a secret. From the very start, the reader is aware that Heather killed her best friend Becca and that death changed Heather to the core. Though Heather’s managed to continue with her life, marrying a contractor, working as a psychiatrist for troubled children, and even volunteering at a drug treatment facility, when someone sends her Becca’s necklace—one that should have been buried with Becca’s body—she is thrown back into her girlhood horror story.
The title of the novel comes from Heather’s young circle of friends, who were obsessed with the victims of grisly murders, the ones overlooked due to society’s morbid fascination with the serial killers themselves. Everyone knows Ted Bundy’s name, but few remember the names of his victims. The Dead Girls Club began with the intent to honor the forgotten, but soon became preoccupied with the lurid details of killing. Slowly Becca, the most creative of the bunch, begins telling stories of her own invention. The most gruesome is the tale of the Red Lady, a wronged witch returned from the grave to seek revenge on the people who killed her and who is said to help those who need her—for a price. As Becca becomes convinced that the Red Lady is real, and the only one who can release her from her problematic home life, the other girls are drawn into her delusion and its deadly conclusion.
The Gordian knot of Becca’s unsolved murder unravels slowly. Heather’s recollections of the event itself are hazy. What really happened that night? Why did her anonymous tormenter wait so long to act? While the adult Heather uncovers the past piece by piece as the threats to her hard-won, peaceful life escalate, it’s the perspective of young Heather and her traumatic coming-of-age tale that makes for the most compelling voice of the novel.
The book maintains an admirable tension between the natural and the supernatural, between what is real and what is imagined. It’s up to the reader to decide if the Red Lady was anything more than a story, but regardless, the tragic death of Becca lingers in this solid debut mystery.
Six-year-old Aoife Joan Scott doesn’t understand a lot of what happens in the adult world, but she knows there are plenty of things that grown-ups don’t always get right. Her name, for starters. It’s pronounced EE-fah, as she must patiently explain to every new person she meets.
When her mother is suddenly hospitalized after a mental breakdown, Aoife’s whole world is turned upside down. Uncle Donny, who is funny because he says a lot of bad words, comes to stay with Aoife, but no one seems to know for sure when her beloved Mama will be able to come home. Aoife is certain that if only she can find out the truth about who murdered her older brother Theo, Mama will be happy again and not confused anymore. Together with her mischievous imaginary friend Teddy and Hannah, the eight-year-old girl next door, Aoife is determined to unravel the mystery of what happened to Theo. Then her mother can come home in time to see the fireworks at the lake, a promised event that Aoife has been eagerly looking forward to all summer.
Aoife’s determination to be as brave as her favorite saint, Joan of Arc (whose saint’s day is her birthday), keeps her going even when she’s in a scary situation. And she “knows how to keep a secret, just like a grown-up.” Aoife perseveres, undaunted, through a car ride with one of her murder suspects, an interview with child protective services, a séance, and a midnight excursion around the neighborhood all by herself, finding clues in unexpected places.
Both precocious and plucky, Aoife is a winning and memorable heroine. Her story, told in her own unique and sweetly funny voice, illuminates the conflicting feelings that bind—and separate—family members and complicate communication. She begins to learn that truth has many facets (especially for grown-ups), that some secrets are worth keeping, but others hurt until they’re shared. Her journey toward understanding the tragedy that transformed her family and helping its members begin to heal is deeply moving. All That’s Bright and Gone is an impressive debut filled with true-to-life characters.
For those unfamiliar with the British Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery series, the police department here investigates very unusual criminal cases, and none are as odd and perplexing as this one that begins when the body of a London cab driver is found hanging upside down in a forest, his throat fatally pierced by a sharp object, and the ground around it scattered with weird dolls and candles. Initially thought to be a one-off revenge killing, it turns out to be the first of a series of murders using the same weapon and each occurring at 4 am. How are the victims chosen and what, if anything, connects them? What follows is a complex mystery that immediately captured my interest and maintained it for the full 433 pages.
Heading up the investigation are Detective Chief Inspectors Arthur Bryant and John May. Bryant is one of the most interesting characters in British detective fiction, a unique combination of Sherlock Holmes and W.C. Fields. He sees clues that no one else does, and he’s a loud, boisterous social misfit who somehow manages to endear himself to most of his subordinates as he seemingly bumbles his way through to successful conclusions. His partner and best friend, May, is almost the complete opposite: neat, low-key, and effective.
Breaking up the mounting suspense is the comedic interplay between Bryant and most of his associates, particularly his “boss” (in name only), Raymond Land, a pencil pusher over whom he runs roughshod, as well as the dregs of London’s criminal society, many of whom he knows from his long tenure on the police force and who prove helpful in solving the mystery.
The ending is both surprising and shocking, and I can’t wait for the next entry in this series to answer some of the important questions about the health of John May and that of the unique organization itself.
A Noël Killing is M. L. Longworth’s eighth Provençal mystery, featuring the examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque and his delightful wife and law school professor Marine Bonnet. Christmas is uncomfortable for Verlaque. The streets of Aix-en-Provence, a small town near Marseille, are annoyingly busy, as are the restaurants, and worse, the festivities remind Verlaque of his own disappointing childhood.
This year, Marine has an unfathomable desire—unfathomable to Verlaque anyway—to attend the Cathedral Saint Sauveur’s annual carol sing. As part of the celebration, vendors from Aix’s sister cities in Europe, Africa, and North America prepare a celebratory buffet. While the dinner is in full swing, an American expatriate, Cole Hainsby, drops dead from what appears to be a heart attack, but the coroner quickly determines the cause was poison. The suspect list is as long as the buffet line. Hainsby owed money to a Marseille hood, his wife’s boss is shadier than an acacia tree, and the organizer of the carol sing is a woman with an old grudge against him.
A Noël Killing is a delightful cozy mystery. Its French Mediterranean setting is rich with local color and foods and wines. Verlaque’s style is good-natured and his detection is almost whimsical. The clues are few and there are times when Verlaque stops questioning a witness just as he’s arriving at a crucial fact. Marine’s role is limited, but she acts as a sounding board and as Verlaque’s conscience. She also knows a great wine and how to pick a fine restaurant. A Noël Killing is an entertaining novel that will appeal as much to the armchair traveler as to readers of erudite mysteries.
When James Sallis’ engrossing Sarah Jane begins, the eponymous protagonist, Sarah Jane Pullman, has already been through a lot and will endure a great deal more before her story is finished.
Told in an engaging first-person narrative, the novel details her early life on a chicken farm, her deployment to an “all-forsaken foreign desert” war, and her brief marriage to an abusive blowhard. But the bulk of this slim, compelling foray into memory, atonement, and retribution focuses primarily on her accidental employment as a deputy sheriff in a small town in middle America.
Many of her life-altering experiences are the result of fateful encounters. After a run-in with the law, a judge offers her the choice between jail or joining the armed services. In the war zone, she suffers the painful loss of a fellow soldier. Romantic relationships are fractured by partners’ nervous breakdowns or domestic violence.
The unexpected job as deputy sheriff in the rural town of Farr appears to be her salvation. It is the “kind of place that has gingerbread houses shouldered up against modern cookie-cutters, where hardware stores and gas-and-live-bait shops cling to town’s edge, where you hear the whisper of old-country vowels in local speech.” She soon discovers that she has been hired to replace a sheriff who has disappeared, and she is expected to find him. Coming from “good hillbilly stock” where Tennessee meets Alabama has provided her with a fiercely independent spirit that serves her well in her new post.
Much of the novel consists of thumbnail sketches of the routine “quarrel, gritch, [and] grieve” of the rustic community: convenience-store robberies, break-ins, tagging kids, homeless men, and foraging women. Not so commonplace are the characters themselves. Sarah develops friendships with a mentally challenged young man orphaned after the murder of his entire family, a dying widow at the senior center, a teenager who is the caretaker of a much older woman, and several of her staff of detectives.
This last group becomes particularly important when undisclosed elements of Sarah’s past surface and begin to haunt her. The investigator becomes the investigated, even bringing in the FBI.
Sallis has been gone too long. Sarah Jane is an atypical mystery, centering more on characters than crimes. At one point, Sarah concludes that perhaps “we’re all percipient witnesses to our own lives.” Sallis proves once again that he is an acute chronicler of humanity.
Set in 1919 Paris, the 11th in Charles Todd’s Bess Crawford series finds the war at an end, but the effects on soldiers and nurses from the front still being felt. Bess feels at a loose end as she doesn’t want to leave nursing, but there seems to be a surplus of nurses after the war. When she’s called to the office of her boss (aka Matron) she’s worried she’s going to be dismissed, but Matron has a different request: Will Bess go to Paris to look for her son, Lieutenant Lawrence Minton, who has disappeared?
His disappearance is not only worrying, but could affect his career and the peace summit work he was doing. Bess, of course, agrees and she’s off to Paris on the next boat. She does track Lieutenant Minton down and what she finds is more than disturbing. He’s staying in a small village with a friend, Marina, who is doing her best to care for him–he’s suicidal and a laudanum addict. Bess waits to alert Matron to her son’s whereabouts as Bess and Marina attempt to help. And then Lawrence disappears.
When Bess finds Lawrence again, he’s been beaten within an inch of his life. This is where the story really becomes a mystery, as Bess searches to discover not only who is out to hurt Lawrence, but why he is an addict. Bess is exceedingly compassionate and independent. Both of these things serve her well as both a nurse and a detective.
The Todds (Charles Todd is the pen name of Caroline and Charles Todd) as writers are expert at several things. One is delicate psychological analysis of their characters, and often, they tie the particular psychological disturbance to incidents in the characters’ pasts, which turns out to be the case here. They are expert as well in depicting their setting and time period in a compelling way—as you read, you can feel the characters reacting to the various situations of their time, which are different from the ones we face today. Or are they? I heard Laurie R. King say once that writing about the past is really writing about the present, and the theme of addiction tackled here is one that is sadly all too relevant. I agree with King, it’s just a shift of the mirror. Sometimes shifting that mirror to the past makes the present more clear.
In wrapping up the heartbreaking story of The Cruel Deception, the Todds, pure mystery writers and talented psychologists, leave a hanging thread for Bess to follow into their next story about her. This is bravura work from two of the masters of historical fiction.
Today’s blog is written by a special guest, South Florida theater critic Bill Hirschman, chief critic and editor of floridatheateronstage.com.
As an internationally popular writer with 28 New York Times bestselling mystery novels, James Grippando is usually focused on whodunits.
But the award-winning Florida author is about to see the world premiere of his first playscript, Watson, at GableStage this weekend–as much a howdunit and whydunit that ask questions about technology, capitalism and responsibility–as well as the interpersonal relationships explored in mysteries these days.
Set against the corporate world of America in the 1930s and then the Holocaust in Germany, Grippando says the true-life tale may be “the first personal information disaster” in modern story–a theme that obviously resonates with the most current headlines today.
Although the story is told through the American head of IBM, Thomas J. Watson Sr., the underlying premise has several steps. In the 1930s, IBM developed a punch card non-computer tabulating technology that could catalog and track people. A subsidiary sold many of these to the German government, which then used it to conduct a detailed census. That census recorded many details, but, on point here, religion.
When Hitler came to power, the database was used to identify and round up Jews for the concentration camp. At the camps, the detailed information about skills and the like was used to determine who could be useful temporarily and who to kill immediately.
The question–raised in a 2001 lawsuit about the company’s complicity in the horror, as well as the subject of articles and a book–is how much did Watson know what it was being used for. In 1937, he became the first American to receive the German Merit Cross, one of highest honors that Hitler bestowed on a non-German. Then in 1940, before American entered World War II, stories about the roundups and concentration camps were emerging. Watson returned the medal under significant pressure from friends and Jewish leaders.
“Was it true crisis of conscience crisis or was it a good business decision for him to issue a press release saying I gave back the medal,” Grippando said, “It certainly raises questions about morality versus obligations to your shareholders.”
Watson was a classic 20th century businessman who saw himself as one of the greatest capitalist who ever lived, but was convicted in 1912 under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act when he ran NCR. Throughout the play, his decisions and life, is being judged by his son, Thomas Watson Jr., in a contentious and complex relationship.
“They loved each other but they just went to war all the time, and in some ways, it's a tragedy really. Mr. Watson had an image of himself of what he wanted to be and particularly a relationship that he wanted with his son that never really materialized because of his own hubris.”
Grippando, a lawyer from Coral Springs, has always been fascinated by theater, but primarily as a patron of GableStage among other theaters and as a lawyer for Broadway producer Seth Greenleaf, who is a mutual friend with Producing Artistic Director Joseph Adler.
In fact, Grippando’s sole previous effort at writing for theater occurred a few years ago as the result of research he originally did as back story for a novel, a 1944 incident in which a 15-year-old boy was lynched in Florida. It didn’t quite work.
Grippando had heard of the 2001 lawsuit filed by Holocaust survivors against IBM, which was later dismissed because the statute of limitations had run out. But Adler had heard of it independently and asked Grippando about 18 months ago to see if there was a play in there.
Adler wrote in between rehearsals this week, “I thought it had the makings of an important play: the fact that an American corporation like IBM had cooperated with the German government by sharing important technology with them leading up to and during World War II. “
There was no immediate pressure. So Grippando spent six months on and off in research. The veteran storyteller said “It didn't strike me as a story. Joe and I bandied it back and forth for several months.
Then, he realized that Watson himself and his relationship with his son provided the necessary throughline and posed the crucial questions.
“I mean he, to the day he died, he never admitted he ever did anything wrong. So his conduct was, I would say, ambiguous. I think the audience will draw their own conclusions.”
After four very different drafts, he showed one to Adler a few months ago.
Adler recalled, “When we finally reached the point where it truly came alive, I was so excited that I made an immediate decision to put it in our very first slot. He scrapped announced plans to open his season with the political play Hillary and Clinton. “Needless to say, making a sudden change like that on such short notice presents many challenges. However, I can say with absolute certainty that the theater gods were smiling on us because it has all worked out beyond my greatest expectations.”
The two spoke on the phone and met regularly sometimes for days at a time reshaping and tweaking.
Adler said, “It has been an absolute pleasure to collaborate with James. His talent and professionalism–coupled with the fact that he works faster than anyone I have ever known–has made this everything I had hoped it would be from the moment we’ve started.”
Grippando is in no rush to tackle another play quite yet. But the experience has had some side benefits to his day job, especially when faced with some of the region’s best actors: Stephen G. Anthony as Watson Sr., Iain Batchelor as Watson Jr., plus a blue-ribbon troupe of South Florida actors playing multiple roles: Peter Galman, Diana Garle, Peter Haig, Margot Moreland and Barry Tarallo.
They provided Grippando with a humbling experience, he recalled with a laugh. “The first fatal mistake: watching an actor stumble over a piece of dialogue that you've written that you thought it was so beautifully written, that doesn't go off the tongue at all.”
Now it’s back to his prolific output as a mystery novelist, especially his series about Miami lawyer Jack Swytek, the latest of which is The Girl In the Glass Box.
“This is going to really take me up a notch just in writing great dialogue,” he added.
Watson runs Nov. 23-Dec. 22 at GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables, inside the Biltmore Hotel. Performances 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday. No performance Thursday, 28. For tickets and more information, call 305-445-1119 or visit GableStage.org.
Photos: Top: James Grippando; photo courtesy Harper; second photo: Iain Batchelor gets lectured by his father played by Stephen G. Anthony as the titular character in the world premiere play Watson at GableStage; bottom photo: Margot Moreland , Peter Haig, Stephen G. Anthony and Iain Batchelor / photos by George Schiavone
A few things readers of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series can depend on: Reacher will be minding his own business as he wanders hither and yon, trouble will invariably find him, a lot of action will ensue, and a beautiful woman will inevitably join forces and share a bed with him.
Nothing much changes in Blue Moon. Reacher is on a bus and notices an elderly man sleeping. Protruding from his pocket is an overstuffed envelope—the kind banks give customers when they make a cash withdrawal—and a disreputable-looking guy is eyeing it. When the bus stops in an unnamed city, Disreputable Guy follows Elderly Man off the bus. Reacher follows them and rescues Elderly Man, Aaron Shevick. After taking the man home, Reacher learns he and his wife are in insurmountable debt to loan sharks for money they borrowed to pay their daughter’s medical bills. Reacher agrees to impersonate Shevick to the loan sharks, and soon finds himself embroiled in a bitter and bloody war between the town’s Albanian and Ukrainian gangs.
He’s joined by a capable group of helpers, including two ex-military types and the pixie-ish Abby Gibson, a cocktail waitress who’s fed up with the control the gangs exert over the town’s citizens. As they try to stay three steps ahead of the gangs, who believe Reacher is a Russian operative, they find the noose tightening and look to Reacher to save them, something he’s unsure he can do.
Lee Child, the bestselling author of 24 Reacher books, has taken Reacher on a more violent and bloody path than normal, not that readers don’t expect the six-foot-four, ex-MP to dirty his hands. Still, in inevitable fashion, he gets the job done. Another great, if a little disturbing, outing for Reacher.
Following the events of Michael Connelly’s Dark Sacred Night, Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard reached a tentative if unofficial partnership. As The Night Fire opens, however, the two are occupied with their own separate work.
After attending the funeral of the man who mentored him when he first made detective, Bosch is told by the man’s widow that her husband left something behind for him. The “gift” turns out to be a murder book, an unsolved case from their days together on the force.
Given Bosch’s outsider status with LAPD, he reaches out to Ballard for help on investigating the murder file he was given. But confusion sets in when they realize that Bosch’s mentor never actually did any work on the case. Why did he take the file if not to work on solving it? Meanwhile, he’s also investigating the murder of a judge, a case brought to his attention by his brother, lawyer Mickey Haller. This particular investigative path leads to conflict with the case’s official detectives and soon there’s much more to the story than anyone could’ve foreseen.
Ballard also continues working “the late show” overnight shift, where she responds to a call about a homeless man who was burned to death inside his tent. It seems a cut-and-dried case and she passes it off to the fire department investigators. What neither Ballard nor Bosch can know until they start making progress in their under-the-radar investigation is that the past may very well have something to do with their present.
There’s a whole lot of disparate subplots running throughout The Night Fire, but each of these threads build skillfully to intertwine and tie everything together. It’s a busy plot to be sure, but readers never feel like there’s too much going on. Connelly introduces new troubles in Harry’s life (which in its way, scared the heck out of me), and forces Renee to once again confront the officer who torpedoed her career. That was a particularly involving subplot because of how the two parties despise each other, but become dependent on the other for survival.
It borders on repetition, but with The Night Fire, Michael Connelly continues to develop the Bosch-Ballard pairing. Their partnership remains a work in progress with some rough edges to smooth out. But when the chips are down, they can both count on the other. This makes the book, once more, a perfect thrilling experience for the reader, and that’s what it’s all about, right?
In The Second Sleep, Robert Harris turns his formidable talent for writing compelling novels about mysterious and original subjects to a dystopian post-technological world where the Church is the law and its only guidelines are superstition and fear.
A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, is sent to the small rural village of Addicott St. George to perform the funeral rites of Father Lacy, the local parish priest who died in a fall. When Fairfax arrives, he discovers a set of heretical tomes belonging to the late priest from the outlawed Society of Antiquaries—a group determined to find the truth of the past through archaeology and science. At Lacy’s funeral a stranger asserts that Lacy’s death was intentional. Much like Lacy’s heretical books, murder is something Fairfax would rather not consider. But when he is trapped in Addicott by a storm, Fairfax becomes an unwilling investigator into Lacy’s death and the much larger questions surrounding it.
The Second Sleep is a satisfying novel on multiple levels. It has the flash and bang of a thriller—mystery, suspense, and intrigue—and its ideas are poignant and thought-provoking, especially in our current climate when liberal democratic ideals are seemingly under assault from an international populist movement. It details a second Dark Age brought about by human fear and hubris, but the story is played as a tight mystery whodunit that flawlessly plants clues many readers may miss the first time around. The Second Sleep has appealing characters, led by Fairfax and the charming and intelligent Lady Durston, who pushes Fairfax past where he would otherwise have gone. The understated prose is the perfect companion for the tale, both its blisteringly clear large-world ideas and the nuts-and-bolts mystery. The Second Sleep is a smart and engaging novel.
You would think that inheriting a million-dollar mansion in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood would be the most exciting thing to happen in a young woman’s life. But when Libby Jones, 25, finds out that she is the sole inheritor of the abandoned home where three dead bodies were found decades before, it’s only the start of the roller-coaster ride her life will become.
Along with the home comes a mystery: How did the previous owners die, and where did the four children who used to live there go? While one story line follows Libby’s quest for answers, and another follows a woman named Lucy and her two children, a third tells the story of what actually happened in the house, as narrated by Henry, one of the original children in the home.
Through his eyes, the reader watches how his parents are manipulated by David, a cultlike leader who has moved his family into the mansion under the pretense of helping Henry’s ill father. As David begins to exert his power, it leaves both the children and the reader feeling helpless as the family becomes more and more isolated, and their punishments more severe.
This novel is addicting and there are many layers to unravel. Author Lisa Jewell doles out information bit by bit, leaving the reader anxiously trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together. The measured pacing of the story adds to the mounting terror, and her use of Henry, an odd and rather stilted narrator, provides the perfect voice to convey the suffocating feel of growing up in a prison of his parents’ making. Part murder mystery, part gothic horror story, and part psychological thriller, The Family Upstairs offers all the suspense a reader could want—and also serves as a cautionary tale about just whom one should let into their home.
Claire North’s spy and horror thriller is a sprawling tale about morality that attempts to explore the complicated truths of the human heart. William Abbey, a young doctor, witnesses the lynching of a young boy in South Africa in the 1880s–and does nothing to stop it. The boy’s angry, grieving mother curses William, and for the rest of his life the spirit of murdered Langa is to haunt him and keep him always running.
The curse has a very clear set of rules. The shadow, or ghost, slowly but relentlessly pursues the person carrying its curse. As it draws nearer, a shadow’s presence allows the cursed one to see increasingly into other men’s hearts–a curse or a boon depending, and the reason cursed ones are also called “truth seekers.” But when and if your shadow finally reaches you, it will kill the person you love most within 24 hours.
The grit of the narrative comes when William is forcibly hired as a spy for the British government. They know of his curse and its powers, and want to use it for their own purposes. At first, he thinks he’s finally doing the right thing, using his curse to serve his country, but slowly it becomes apparent that what he’s accomplishing is far from good. Feeling increasingly lost, he struggles throughout the novel to recognize what he wants and how he should be using his unusual “skill.”
As the story progresses, it turns out there are more people like William. Some chose it, some caused it, others, like William, happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are a lot of characters in this book. Some are the cursed. Some are the soon-to-be dead. Some are William’s employers, ever changing, or the people whose truths he is unearthing. Only a select few are truly important to William, though, including rebellious Margot, a fellow truth seeker and love interest.
William comes to know deep, dark secrets about all those around him, but it takes him much longer to learn the truth within himself. The Pursuit of William Abbey is a thought-provoking tale, creatively told and a fine example of North’s intellectual prose. Though there are hints that there may be a cure for William’s condition if he could just try to understand the culture it came from, one is never found. Perhaps most unsettling of all, William’s own story and his deepest questions remain unresolved. Instead, he simply walks away and on and on and on—as any truth teller must do to protect the ones they love.
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