Spring Preview 2015: Part Two

As I sit here watching the icicles form on the holly bushes and birdhouses just outside my window, it seems my spring reading list is skewing just a little bit to novels that are taking place where ice cleats are not de rigueur. At least some of my favorite authors are brightening the reading landscape this spring.

Even though in Six and a Half Deadly Sins (Soho Crime, May 19), Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun has already retired twice from his post as the National Coroner of Laos and left 70 far behind, he is intrigued by an unusual package that arrives in the mail. It is not exactly a present; it's more like an invitation to solve a puzzle. The first clue is the remnants of a human finger sewn into a garment worn in northern Laos.

This is, after all, the 1970s, and Vietnam is invading Cambodia. With more than that going on, Siri hastens north with his usual coterie: invaluable Nurse Dtui and her husband, Inspector Phosy; Mr. Geung, the lab assistant, who has Down's Syndrome; Ugly the Dog; and, most important of all, Mrs. Paiboun to keep them all straight.

This is an addictive series, both unusual and endearing, and best started from the beginning with The Coroner's Lunch (see review here).

Quite the opposite from Siri Paiboun is Estelle Reyes-Guzman, in a long-running series by Steven F. Havill, which takes place in the southwestern state of New Mexico. Estelle is a young woman who is the undersheriff in Posadas County. She has a busy job and a lively family. In Blood Sweep (Poison Pen, April 7), Estelle is torn between her duties as a mother and those of her job. Her eldest son, Francisco, is a gifted pianist, and he is touring parts of the country under the auspices of his music school. Estelle is concerned when she learns the tour has also taken Francisco to some crime-ridden areas of Mexico, but she is tied down with other responsibilities.

At the same time, the other main series characters have their own problems. Sheriff Bobby Torrez is in danger, and something has happened to old standby Bill Gastner. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Havill's characters always take the calm, reasoned approach to problems and never fly off half-cocked. Estelle will save the day. I have this book on order as we speak!

Now, if you need something more calming because your doctor doesn't like your erratic blood pressure or the way your eyes keep popping in and out, it's time for a little Alexander McCall Smith. You might know him from his Botswana mysteries featuring the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, his Sunday Philosophy Club mysteries with Isabel Dalhousie; or even his 44 Scotland Street series with six-year old Bertie Pollock, who has more fans than almost anyone else in Scotland––maybe more than Smith himself.

Have you heard of the Austen Project? Briefly, six current bestselling authors were paired with Jane Austen's six novels. The authors are to rewrite Austen's works with their own spin on the basic core of the plot. Sense and Sensibility was done by Joanna Trollope, and Val McDermid took on Northanger Abbey. I confess that I've read neither. But when I heard Alexander McCall Smith was tapped to do Emma: A Modern Retelling (Pantheon, April 7) in his inimitable way, I could hardly wait to see the results.

Emma is a young woman so self-possessed she is convinced her gift is to straighten out the messes others have made of their lives––but in the nicest way possible, of course. McCall Smith is a writer whose pen has the ability to draw the most accurate of portraits with gentle humor, penetrating insight and enough acumen to allow a reader to appreciate the trying aspects, as well as the strong points, of even the most difficult of characters.

I am not sure if "gastroporn" is on my Dictionary Word of the Day app, but I got an inkling about what it means when I read what Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges does to a chicken as he prepares one of his scratch meals in Martin Walker's The Devil's Cave. All of Walker's books are filled with the delectable culinary adventures of the man who would make a great husband and father, but who so far spends his time taking care of his town and a few women who wander in and out of his life. If he can't be with the one he loves, he'll love the one he's with, as the Stephen Stills song goes.

So I am eager to read the American release of Walker's upcoming book, The Children Return (Knopf, April 28). (Walker's website states that this title was published in the UK as Children of War (Quercus, 2014).) The theme of this mystery is very topical because it is about an autistic youth from St. Denis, Sami, who has been kidnapped by Islamic extremists. Or did he go willingly? The fear is that he is going to be exploited because he is a genius with technology, and he has gathered an invaluable store of al-Qaeda intel.

Walker does his usual brilliant job of translating international events to a local rural French jargon and makes it all plausible and understandable––hopefully, even resulting in a resolution.

P. L. Gaus has been writing a series based in Ohio Amish country for the past 15 years. One of his central themes has been how modern life intrudes on the quiet, ordered lives of the Plain people. While some of the crimes Gaus writes about are the usual murder, mayhem, grievous bodily harm, theft and the like, the way the crimes are handled––both by the sheriff and the victims––are not the usual. The sheriff is not Amish, but he works closely with the church elders and community leaders. In a place where the tenets of "turn the other cheek" and "forgive thy transgressor" abide, law enforcement takes on another meaning.

But when drug dealers and reluctant Amish drug mules enter the picture, creative measures are needed. Whiskers of the Lion (Plume, March 31) follows closely on his previous book, The Names of Our Tears, since both are related to protecting victims of a vengeful drug contact. Fannie, a young girl on the run, doesn't know whom to trust any more, and she will not be easy to help.

After all this, you need a cup of tea. Try some unusual blend and settle in with Laura Childs's Ming Tea Murder (Berkley, May 5). Theodosia Browning owns a shop that caters to the most exotics tastes in tea if you are lucky enough to live in Charleston, South Carolina. At a gala evening celebrating an exhibit of a genuine 18th-century Chinese teahouse, Theodosia's boyfriend, Max, asks her to check out a photo booth across the banquet hall while he speaks to a museum sponsor.

She meanders across the hall. When she gets to the booth, she finds it occupied by the self-same museum sponsor––definitely dead, the blood already pooling, already congealing. Although Theodosia is no stranger to corpses (this is Book 16 in the series!), she screams bloody murder. Time travel? Scotty's Star Trek transporter? Chinese mysticism? Is there something in the tea?

What’s Amiss With the Amish?

As I go through my day, I have the pleasure of seeing what different sorts of books people are reading. Along the way, I get hints about what’s hot and what’s trendy. One of the recent trends that I have been noticing in the past year is the upsurge in the sub-genre of novels about the Amish. Much of what I see being read are stories about plucky heroines living through some sort of life-affirming change. Hmmm. Naturally, my interests being somewhat murkier, I have plenty of questions for these readers.

None of the subjects of my third degrees actually want to be Amish; they just admire what they think they know about that way of life. Mainly, they are interested in books they can rely on not to be filled with gore or blue language. They usually can expect not to run into graphic violence or sexual behavior in the Amish books they're reading. The Amish culture is tantalizingly unknown to most of the readers as well. They are intrigued by the culture of a people that sets itself apart from the mainstream in dress, language and lifestyle. This type of novel is known as "bonnet fiction." I wondered if there were murder mysteries in this category. There were.

One of the series that I looked into, read and liked was P. L. Gaus's Michael Branden series. It begins with Blood of the Prodigal, which takes place in Ohio, where many of the Amish-flavored books are centered. The Amish (or “plain people") and the English (or "vain ones") share a county. Most of the time the Amish keep to themselves and solve their own problems, but when a 10-year-old boy is missing, the local police are called in at the behest of Bishop Eli Miller. A local pastor, Caleb Troyer, and college professor Michael Branden help the Sheriff investigate.

In Broken English, the next in the series, the violence escalates a little as felon Jesse Sands, after serving a sentence of 25 years in a New Jersey prison, is released and quickly heads across Pennsylvania and West Virginia towards Ohio. Behind him he leaves a wide swath of murder and destruction as he exacts a harsh measure of revenge on every innocent who helps him. On a rainy night in Millersburg, he looks for shelter and for something to steal, for he is running out of money. He is surprised by a young woman who has time to dial 911 before she is shot and killed by Sands. Sands is accosted outside the house as he leaves and is arrested.

Later the girl’s father, David Hawkins, asks to see the prisoner and his wish is granted. He has come to forgive Sands in the Amish way. After Hawkins tells Sands that he forgives him, Sands whispers something that makes Hawkins go berserk and nearly throttle the murderer before he is restrained. Hawkins manages to take down the deputy who restrained him and then he leaves. Now no one can find him.

David Hawkins was once a soldier who was trained to kill by the U.S. military. In order to gain some measure of tranquility he contacted an Amish friend of his and did what was necessary to join the Amish community. He had been among the "plain people" for seven years when the tragedy of his daughter's murder struck him. A basic part of the Amish belief is that vengeance belongs to God and He will deal with it in time. Everybody is afraid that David has cracked and reverted to his old way of life, but David’s closest friends have grim faith that he is still abiding by the Amish pacifist ways.

A few days later, another murder takes place and a reporter who had been looking into David Hawkins’s background is found shot in the head. Now the sheriff is confident that David Hawkins has reverted to the military killer that he once was. Professor Michael Branden of the local college and Pastor Caleb Troyer are usually the sheriff’s allies, but now they feel there is more to this story and they begin to build a very different case.

Paul Louis Gaus lives in Wooster, Ohio, a few miles north of Holmes County, where the world’s largest and most varied settlement of Amish and Mennonite people reside. His knowledge of the "plain people" comes from exploring narrow blacktop roads and gravel lanes of the communities whose members live close to the "English" non -Amish people. There are seven books in this series so far.

Now, I have suggested that in Amish-themed stories there is likely to be less graphic violence. Well, that is definitely not the case in Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo.

While also taking place in bucolic areas of Ohio, the story begins with a flashback a description of the actions of a madman known as "The Slaughterhouse Killer" so graphic that is best read with your eyes averted. Unfortunately, what you miss on the first go-round is bound to pop up again and again for your edification. The lone survivor of that years-earlier series of brutal murders was Kate Burkholder, then a young Amish girl who left the faith and her home after the killings. Kate went into law enforcement in the city before returning to her home town of Painter’s Mill as Chief of Police. One snowy day, another body is found with all the hallmarks of a maniacal killing dealt by the Slaughterhouse Killer. Kate has to reconnect with her Amish family in order to solve this case before more girls are killed. In this novel, there is no respite from violence, four-letter words and the only sex is criminal. There are three novels in the Silence series; the next is Pray for Silence and new this year is Breaking Silence.

In a somewhat feminine homage to the movie Witness, Karen Harper has written a story that takes place in, where else, Ohio. Dark Harvest is about an Amish community under siege from an unknown foe. At first, they were targeted by mean-spirited pranks such as the spray painting of quilts hanging on clotheslines. The leaders of the community do not report these things to the authorities because they believe that they are under God’s protection. But when some of the pranks become more dangerous and the lives of children may be at stake, Luke Brand, the son of the ailing current bishop asks the local authorities for help. Into the community comes Kat Lindley, masquerading as Luke’s fiancée. Kat is a policewoman recuperating from an injury and now she is on hand to observe whether the pranksters are local militia who are anti-everything, local carpenters who dislike the Amish carpenters or, even worse, ostensible friends to the Amish. The deaths of two bishops escalate the fears in the community and Kat finds herself in some dangerous situations before she is able to hone in on the culprits. The excellent cooking of her Amish hosts is one perk of the job that is changing the way she looks at herself–but not in a mirror of course, since that is forbidden vanity. This story is the second in a trilogy, bookended by Dark Road Home and Dark Angel, and Harper has started a second Amish series featuring an artist who paints murals on barns in her Amish community.

Most of the stories I have read include a good dollop of Amish culture, but some of them really gloss over the hard parts, or parts you may not agree with, such as the limited education allowed. Still, there is usually a good look at some realities we among the "English" would find hard to adjust to. Hardships from my point of view would be the underwear, or lack thereof (no bras), the eighth-grade end to school, and outhouses. Worst-case scenario would be little light to read by and no time or need to read in any case. No, I would not make it in this life.

The Amish do have groups with varying strictness about certain aspects of their culture; no two sects are exactly the same, except in the basic religious beliefs. But, as one character puts it, we are human too. This aspect is dealt with by the Rumspringa, which allows adolescents a period of time to cut loose without condemnation, so that they can then make a decision to leave the community or choose a life commitment to the faith (as most do).

We all know from current events that despite the efforts a community makes to preserve a way of life, evil people and evil deeds break down the walls. So murder mysteries and crime stories revolving around a reclusive pacifist sect or culture are bound to be written, read and enjoyed for many different reasons. Human frailty spares no one and that is the grist of fiction writing. I avoided reading that nonfiction book about the true crime murders in the Amish schoolhouse. Fiction I can handle; reality, not so much.