Crimes Against Nature

Activism in the 1970s brought us Earth Day, a day to celebrate and appreciate our planet. In the USA, it is today, April 22. The Free Love era also brought us sit-ins and love-ins, but even then I was more interested in the where- and why-fors of how victims got done in.

If you would like to read about murderous sit-ins, grab Catherine Aird's Parting Breath, in which a local university student would have lived longer had he avoided the protest and stayed home.

On the other hand, if you want to celebrate Mother Nature in an armchair sort of way, over the years there has been an explosion of mystery books that use the environment and other ecological concerns as backdrops for crimes that upset the balance of nature.

What makes for a good story is conflict, and there is certainly many a disagreement between the Green Peacers, the tree huggers, the loggers, the conservationists, the farmers, the hunters, the fishermen and the environment.

One of my favorite authors, Tony Hillerman, set his Navajo series in the Southwest, and he used environmental themes as a basis for intricate plots. His eighth novel, A Thief of Time, was published in 1988. In it, he makes the point that the ability to understand the past is lost when anthropological sites are destroyed. While his mysteries are always intriguing, it is his settings that leave a lasting memory. In fact, one way to really enjoy a Hillerman book is to have by your side a photographic companion volume with pictures taken by Tony's brother, Barney Hillerman. It's titled Hillerman Country.

Another series, which highlights some of the best and most beautiful ecological gems in this country, is the Nevada Barr series featuring park ranger Anna Pigeon. Anna has 18 cases to her credit, as she has solved crimes set in different United States National Parks, from Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico to Isle Royale in Michigan.

Track of the Cat, the 1993 novel that introduces Anna, is set in the Guadeloupe Mountains of Texas. Author Nevada Barr draws from her own experiences as a park ranger, and she always leaves the reader better informed about nature in its many guises.

Many writers have followed in Barr's footsteps. Dana Stabenow writes about Alaska, Sandra Brannan writes about South Dakota, Suzanne Arruda about Africa, Sandi Ault about northern New Mexico, and Sarah Andrews about Wyoming. In these series, there is a wealth of clashes between humans and the environment to stimulate the imagination.

Wildlife conservation is the theme of Jessica Speart's 1997 novel, Gator Aide, and she showcases different endangered species in each book of her series. Her protagonist, one–time actress Rachel Porter, leaves New York to become a US Fish and Wildlife agent. Before she realizes it, she is chasing down poachers in the Louisiana Bayous or looking for endangered tortoises in the desert. These books are fun.

Many writers have tackled environmental issues from a birdwatcher's perspective. I seem to be drawn to these twitchers, as they are called. Ann Cleeves's latest books are set in areas well known for their bird populations, such as Northumberland and the Shetland Islands. But her first books recount the birding adventures of George Palmer-Jones, an amateur birder who always finds himself involved in murders. Even twitchers can resort to violence when avian habitats are endangered. Palmer-Jones birds in Surrey, England. These early books are hard to come by, but worth looking for.

Christine Goff wrote a series of birdwatcher mysteries set in the Rocky Mountains. The series begins with A Rant of Ravens, and all books focus on the environment and the concerns of the aviary population.

Clearing out some books recently, I was re-attracted to J. S. Borthwick's The Case of the Hook-Billed Kites, which is about birding and crime in Central Texas. I enjoyed the re-read and passed the book on.

When it comes to the piscatorial denizens of the lakes and rivers, look to Victoria Houston for a good fish story. Chief of Police Lewellyn Ferris and her pal, Paul ("Doc") Osborne, are ardent environmentalists in Loon Lake, Wisconsin. They love the art of fly-fishing, which seems to lead them to dead bodies.

Glyn Carr's novels explore the beauties of nature in the thin air. His protagonist, Sir Abercrombie ("Filthy") Lewker, solves tricky crimes of the locked-room variety that come to pass in the difficult terrains of mountains from the Alps to Wales.

Mary Daheim also takes the high road and pits her newspaper owner and editor, Emma Lord, against California land developers who want to change a mountain into a luxury spa in The Alpine Gamble. There is no end to the havoc that ensues when tempers flare.

Take your pick, choose a side, and take a stance on global warming.

Better yet, just go outside today. Take a deep breath and walk a ways while you are deciding what your next literary adventure will be. If it has an ecological theme, let us know about it.

Spring Preview 2015: Part Seven

Reykjavik

Is it feed a fever and starve a cold? Well, if the adage fits, I have a few good ways to feed a cabin fever, starting with a tale from the top of the world.

Inspector Erlendur has always been a gloomy Gus; right from the day he was presented in Jar City, the first book in Arnaldur Indriðason's Icelandic series. His personality seemed to reflect the winters of the Arctic Circle. Those who have experienced the polar vortex of '14 and the polar vortex redux of '15 would know that this explained a lot. But you couldn't help but like him, because he was also a sensible, dogged detective who tended to solve his cases. One of his endearing characteristics was his compassion, and the seeds of this lay deep in his past, stemming form the day he lost he brother in a blizzard when their palms were wrenched apart.

The most recent novel in the series, Strange Shores, was to be Erlendur's final story, but Indriðason has been able to bring us a few tales, which take place early in the career of Erlendur Sveinsson. In all the books I’ve read in this series, this is the first time I have been aware of his last name. Although not the first prequel in print, Reykjavik Nights (Minotaur, April 21) is the first one translated.

As a young cop, Erlendur goes on routine patrol in all the seedy parts of town and becomes acquainted with a tramp named Hannibal. Hannibal dies, supposedly of natural causes, but which Erlender begins to investigate on own his time. In the course of this sleuthing, he realizes his desire to be a detective. He finds connections to another death, that of a young woman. The story takes place in 1974, during a time when Reykjavik is gearing up for the festival celebrating the 1100th anniversary of the settlement of Iceland. I am waiting eagerly for a chance to meet the young, hopefully less somber Erlendur.

There's not a more pleasant place on the East Coast to spend the summer than eastern Long Island. Christopher Bollen sets his second novel, Orient (Harper, May 5,) on a small historic town on the Island's north fork.

Orient, as the town is called, was once a quiet place, whose local flavor is now changing, with the influx of moneyed Manhattanites both arty and crafty. Not one of these types is another newcomer, Mills Chivern, a young loner who has blown in from the west and made himself at home. Toward the end of the summer, a local man is found dead in the open water at the same time that a humongous bloated animal corpse is found on the beach. It is presumed to be a product of a nearby research lab. Because he feels he has to save his own skin, Mills joins Beth, an Orient native, to find the killer as the bodies pile up. I am imagining Jaws vs. The Amityville Horror, and if you are looking for thrills, this one seems to be a good bet.

And now, for a bit of fun, try Josh Cook's An Exaggerated Murder (Melville House, March 3).

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes)

Trike Augustine is a PI who feels his deductive skills may rival the great Holmes, but they don't seem to be any help in the case of a missing moneybags. For one thing, the clues are pathetically obscure. What can you intuit about a dead pig in the living room? It might help if Trike's two Watsons––Max, the former FBI agent, and Lola, the artist––had a clue between them. This book is touted to be funny, but I'll reserve judgment.

Josh Cook is a writer from Boston who works in a bookstore while he writes. From this clue, I deduce that I just might like this book, whether it's funny or not.

In Spider Woman’s Daughter (Harper, 2014), Anne Hillerman breathed new life into her father Tony Hillerman's wonderful characters, Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Sgt. Jim Chee, and fleshed out Bernadette ("Bernie") Manualito, who became Chee's love interest as they solved crimes in Navajo Territory.

In Rock with Wings (Harper, May 5), Anne Hillerman continues the series and, by focusing on Officer Manuelito, who is now married to Chee, she tells the story from a female point of view. Bernadette, like many women, plays a dual role; taking care of family, which also includes an aging mother and a troublesome younger sister, while trying to do her job, which at the present seems to be a collection of unrelated incidents.

Chee is working on his own set of crimes. Even though he has retired, Joe Leaphorn still plays a role, because he is the guru to whom the younger police officers turn to help them make sense of what clues they find in their search for the answers.

Hillerman père et Hillerman fille both bring more to the story than just the facts, ma'am, and I look forward to spending some time with this book.

The action takes place near the Rock with Wings, as the Navajo call the Shiprock Monument in New Mexico in the center of the Navajo Reservation. It is a monument of special meaning to the Diné, as the Navajo refer to their people. Hillerman takes the reader to a place with grand vistas and she does my cabin fever good.

Over the years, Salvo Montalbano has had a good angel on one shoulder, reminding him of the right thing to do, and its opposite number on the other shoulder, tempting and teasing. In all the years I've been reading about Andrea Camilleri's police detective, the good angel has won out––except for a flirt with infidelity in Camilleri's last book, Angelica’s Smile (Penguin, 2014). His self-control is beginning to slip again in his latest, Game of Mirrors (translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli; Penguin, March 31).

Rescuing his neighbor from a car that needed CPR, Salvo becomes intrigued with Liliana Lombardo and he finds that his rift with longtime girlfriend, Livia, is giving him a little leeway for romantic dalliance. Some bombing of local warehouses is keeping him occupied and, while looking into the motives for the bombings (because nothing is ever simple in Sicily), Montalbano wants to listen to his bad angel. But he is a wily character himself and, as he closes in on the criminals, Liliana disappears.

Then it's a case of cerca donna (cherchez la femme). These books are a lot of fun and I am glad to say that there are at least four more waiting in the wings for translation.

Jimmy Perez of the Shetland Island police, and his colleague, Sandy Wilson, are also out cherchez-ing la femme in Ann Cleeves's latest, Thin Air (Minotour, May 5).

In northern Scotland, there is a peculiar phenomenon near the time of the summer solstice that the Shetlanders call the summer dim. It is into this strange, almost hallucinogenic light of the midnight sun, that a young woman, Eleanor, walks out and disappears into thin air.

Eleanor is one of a group of young people who were friends at university and who have come to Unst, the northernmost of the Shetland Isles. They have taken a holiday cottage and plan to stay for a week, while two of their group celebrate their marriage with local hamefarin dance. Eleanor seemingly sends a text telling her friends not to look for. But, of course, they do––and find her body in a pool of water, looking posed.

Ann Cleeves looks deep into the souls of both the characters visiting and the protagonists investigating, and also into the hearts and minds of the native islanders, making this book quite a feast. A nice way  to keep from starving for reading material in the cold.

Justice Disguised as a Bag Lady: Vera Stanhope

Who's that detective with the droopy raincoat of uncertain vintage? You know, the one with the slouch hat that saw Margaret Thatcher come into office? Is it Columbo? Or is it Wingfield's Jack Frost? Try again. That's right––it's Vera Stanhope! Ann Cleeves introduced her in The Crow Trap. I have been an avid fan ever since.

A crow trap is a large wire mesh cage with a funnel inserted into the top. Inside is placed a live tame crow that dances and flutters about, inviting any other crow to come in and defend its territory. Once in through the funnel there is no way out.

On a windy April day, three women meet for the first time at Baikie's Cottage in the North Pennines. This cottage had been owned by a naturalist and illustrator, Constance Baikie, who once walked through these hills in search of inspiration. In her will, she launched a charitable trust to encourage environmental education and research, and donated the cottage to that end. The three women visiting Baikie's Cottage are all scientists; Rachel is an expert in bird life, Annie is a botanist and Grace is a zoologist.

Their purpose for visiting the cottage is to do a survey for an environmental concern, prompted by a developer's desire to buy the land for a quarry. The land is next to a farm known as Black Law Farm. Rachel visits the farm and discovers the body of a friend of hers, Bella, with a suicide note. Rachel believes a look beyond the obvious is called for.

Before long, there is another death, a murder, and Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope enters the case. Vera is a native to this part of the country and she is unlike any police inspector these women have ever seen. As a matter of fact, she knew the original Constance Baikie and attended Bella's funeral. When she did so, the women all took her for a bag lady. Vera is large and dresses in loose-fitting clothing because she suffers from eczema. She is always barelegged and wears sandals in all weather because of her condition. No one would realize that she is very well regarded in the Northumbria police and heads her own murder squad.

She is obsessive about her work, and is driven by her own demons. Her associates accept her bad temper and cutting sarcasm because she is quite intuitive. Her trusted and long-suffering colleague is Detective Sergeant (DS) Joe Ashworth, her sometimes right-hand man and occasional surrogate son.

These women all have more in common than they realize. Life has treated none of them gently; more specifically, men in one way or another have betrayed them all. But they are all insightful and can see through facades more easily than others. Vera Stanhope is also very good at her job and, while she lacks for romance in her life, she usually gets her man––in the police sense of the word.

Vera theorizes that if the women stay at the cottage, the murderer will be drawn back and will be bait––like the crow in a trap. Is she doing the right thing? Rachel recognizes the ploy right away; after all, she is an expert on the avian psychology.

There are many currents swirling below the surface of this story. Some locals don't want the quarry.  The local landowners have dirty little secrets, as is always the case. Bella, the suicide victim, is not at all what she seemed, Annie had secrets, and Annie's husband had secrets, Grace had secrets and Rachel’s mother had secrets. It is an excellent start to a gripping series.

In the fifth series book, 2012's The Glass Room, Cleeves joins the ranks of those writers who turn the spotlight back in their own direction and write about writers and writing.

It all begins when a tired Inspector Vera Stanhope drives home, trying to appreciate what remains of a perfect October day. The views are one of the reasons she lives far from people of any kind, except for a couple who are living nearby in a back-to-the-land, sort-of-hippie fashion. She is astounded to find that Jack, one of these neighbors, has Goldilocked his way into her chair in front of her own fire and then proceeds to loudly wail that his wife is missing.

On her own time, Vera tracks her down to a retreat for writers of all sorts. It belonged to Miranda Barton, a once-successful author who now owns a large rambling house, in which Miranda puts on a number of residential courses for writers with different levels of experience. She calls her place The Writer's House, and she and her son Alex provide excellent experiences for small groups of writers. For any given event, there several well-known authors as tutors, and others in the business who can provide connections to publishers as well as a good word. The current course is directed to the wannabe crime writers.

Before Vera gets her foot through the door, she is recognized as police and she is escorted directly to a recently murdered guest, found knifed to death in a glass conservatory. By the time her partner, Joe, arrives Vera has had a good look around, also managing to find the errant wife, Joanna. The writers have locked Joanna in a room because she was seen coming out of the conservatory, knife in hand.

While Vera realizes that it would be appropriate to excuse herself from the case because of her acquaintance with the suspect, she has her own definition of appropriate. She has always plowed ahead and little gets in her way. Courage mixed with guile is stock in trade for Vera.

The victim was well-known critic and teacher, Tony Ferdinand. He was a man with such power in literary circles that a word from him could guarantee success in getting published and in getting read. If only he hadn't abused this power, he wouldn't be lying dead with few to mourn him.

The murder itself was unusual, not only in its setting but in the critical way it was staged. Vera sees the killer as creative and detail oriented, with a flair for the dramatic. It is clear to Vera that neighbor Joanna has been set up.

Cleeves has depicted a cast of very well drawn and interesting characters, and the story moves along at a rapid pace. Vera uses her murder squad for the details, but it is her insight into the workings of murderous minds that brings this story to life.

Cleeves has been writing clever mysteries, with birds as a backdrop, since the mid-1980s. She started with George Palmer-Jones, who was an amateur bird watcher in Surrey, England. I still have a few of those, although they are yellowed and dry. I also follow the Jimmy Perez Shetland Island series.

In 2011, British television launched the series Vera. For public viewing, they cleaned Vera up a little. I suppose the bag lady, homely, eczema-ridden Vera just wouldn't make it on TV. But her essential character translates very well to the screen, and series five has been promised for 2015.

The latest book in Cleeves's Vera Stanhope series, Harbour Street, was just released in Great Britain and I hope the US debut won't be far behind.

If It's Not One Thing, It's the Weather

I get plenty of opportunities to exchange small talk with people. Usually I start the conversational ball rolling if I can comment on the book I see in a person’s hand. If I were keeping a record these days, Nora Roberts would be way ahead in the category of book I take with me to appointments.

In these cases and in situations where there is no book, what people want to talk about is the weather. There are bunches of TV viewers who rarely move beyond The Weather Channel when they turn on their sets. Are you one of these? Well, lately I have been reading a few books in which the weather plays a major role. You could almost call it one of the characters in the play. Be it a fog or mist, a blizzard, tornado, torrential rain or heat wave, it is Mother Nature who forces the situations and directs the action.

Fog sets a certain mood. The inability to see things clearly and the danger inherent in the poor visibility create a sense of fear, of claustrophobia and a sense of helplessness.

In Red Bones, by Ann Cleeves, the discovery of the body of an elderly woman on a mist-shrouded night began the mystery. Dense fog was not an uncommon event on Whalsay, one of the smaller Shetland Islands. Those mists often covered the terrain, so that only people very familiar with it could get around.

Sandy Wilson, at home for a visit on Whalsay, is dismayed and shocked to find it is his grandmother Mima on the ground, and when he brings her inside he realizes she has been shot. Sandy is a policeman who works for Jimmy Perez of the Shetland police and he has already disturbed the scene of the crime.

In a few days, there is another death. Again, the facts are hazy. The victim is a young girl, Hattie, on the island doing an archaeological dig for her Ph.D. She and her assistant, Sophie, were working on a dig abutting Mima’s croft, and Hattie had become friends with her.

In this mystery, the mist may be a metaphor for haziness surrounding the cause of the two deaths. Murder, manslaughter, or freak accident are considered in the case of Mima, and the facts of murder or suicide in Hattie’s death are tossed back and forth and left unsettled. Sophie says that once the fog rolls in, the outside world doesn’t matter at all. People lose any sense of proportion. Tiny incidents that happened years ago fester and take over their lives.

The truth is that some of the incidents of the past were not so tiny. People on this little island were very active in the Norwegian resistance during WWII, as part of what was known as the Shetland Bus. This involved crafting small boats that could get in and out of the fjords. Shetland, specifically Whalsay, men delivered these boats across the North Sea. There are still some murky secrets about this time.

Jimmy, in his quiet way, teases out small wisps of information that lead him to the realization that, while appearing close-knit to an outsider, these Shetlanders feel enmity from old rivalries and there were motives for murder. As the mists and fogs disperse, Jimmy also finds light being shed on the crimes he is being pushed to solve.

This is a slow burning story, much like the peat fires that warm the crofts of these desolate but beautiful places. But no matter where you find them, people are not so very different and, while the ending is beautifully suited to the time and place, it would have worked as well in a Greek tragedy.

Water, not fog, can be a problem for people in more southern climes. It is the 1966 flood of the Arno that people still remember all too clearly in Florence, Italy. This disaster killed many people and destroyed a great amount of beautiful art and many precious rare books. Buildings along the street have high water markers, which clearly show the level the water reached that terrible time.

It is a cold, raining November in The Drowning River, by Christobel Kent, and Florentines have been suffering from persistent rain, which is bringing the flood of 1966 up in conversations and memories. Ex-police detective Sandro Cellini paces through his new office, waiting for customers. This office has been found for him by his wife, Luisa. He has set himself up as a private investigator, after two years of depression and aimlessness. Sandro left his job at the police on bad terms and has the mopes about it, to the point that he has taken two years to get some perspective.

One day, two cases come to Cellini, one about a missing art student and one about the death of an old man who seemingly committed suicide. The old man, Claudio Gentileschi, was a well-known artist and architect and his wife, Lucia, can't accept his death without knowing more about it.

Here is where the story gets a little murky, and the reader feels like he or she is walking through the rain. Luisa and Lucia get mixed up a lot as the story changes POV every few pages. The visibility worsens a bit when, at the art school, we run into two characters, Anna and Antonella, who we have to keep separated. They are a bit easier to keep straight, and we are grateful that the author chose not to give Antonella a nickname, like Anni or such.

The river is rising as Sandro, who is still unhappy and quite insecure, tries to find his feet with the waters swirling around them. Iris, the roommate of the missing art student, isn't sure what she should tell the police because, while she did not care for her friend deeply, there is still a certain loyalty. Iris and Sandro spend a lot of time investigating in the unrelenting rain and, when Sandro finally shakes the mud off his feet, the story picks up. I always enjoy books published by Felony and Mayhem, so I hope the next in the series is a little more on firm ground.

The major event in Craig Johnson’s Hell Is Empty is a killer blizzard that shuts down everything in Absaroka County, Wyoming, except for Sheriff Walt Longmire and the bad men he is tracking. One of these is a dangerous, evil sociopath who has taken off into the Bighorn Mountains. Aptly named Raynaud Shade, he has promised to lead the authorities to the grave of a young 10-year-old boy he had killed. The time of year is early May, a time that I think of as colored by azaleas, lilies and late tulips; not a vast expanse of snow, ice and more of the same.

For Dante in his Inferno, the ninth and the last circle of Hell is where Satan is buried waist high in ice, and bitter cold winds scarify the zone. It is in this circle that traitors are tortured and punished. The journey through the Inferno is not only about growing more distant from God, but also getting further away from humanity.

The characters in this book are on this same journey. As Walt trudges, struggles, climbs and crawls through the Wyoming Siberia, all he has is a copy of Dante’s Inferno and a small backpack of minimal survival gear. If he is going to survive and accomplish his mission, he has to rely on help from those with greater power than his.

It took me a while to shake this book off. I prefer his previous outings, where there is less weather and his gang is more in on the action.

If there is one series where heat envelops the reader it is in Robert Wilson’s West Africa series featuring Bruce Medway, a British expatriate who lives in Benin, but travels back and forth across the armpit of Africa, as it is called, because there are several counties nestling closely under the arm of the continent as it juts out into the Atlantic. Medway is a fixer; a facilitator who tries to make a living by helping people out, providing they are not criminals. Unfortunately, he doesn’t exactly have a good nose for scenting out who are the good guys.

The first in the series is Instruments of Darkness, and Bruce starts out simply trying to facilitate the sale of some rice, but ends up looking for another Englishman who was working in the shea butter trade and is missing. Benin, Ghana and Togo are in turmoil, and Medway has to stay on the right side of the law, which fluctuates day by day.

The stories in Wilson’s African quartet are fast-paced, occasionally violent, but there are flashes of humor to temper it. Wilson has a way with descriptions that resonated with me and I recall them from time to time because they are so apt, like the girl with the sputnik hair. Sometimes it is so hot, the people move at  a slow pace, and the vultures look at each other as if to say "Dinner soon." This is really weather worth talking about. Whether you want to experience it is up to you. I will appreciate it vicariously.