There's no rapture for these crime fiction characters

I'm home from work with the flu. My coughing and sneezing are too much for my dogs, who have disappeared under the bed, leaving me alone to binge watch The Leftovers, whose characters live in a world after a Rapture-like event caused many people to vanish. I can't tell if I'm running a fever or if this TV series, based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, is just downright weird. I'll see if I can collect my thoughts enough to tell you about a couple of books whose characters have their hands full sans a mass disappearance.

A man who's falling from his fifth-floor window windmills his way to the ground in the opening of Maurizio de Giovanni's The Bottom of Your Heart: Inferno for Commissario Ricciardi (translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar; Europa Editions, November 2015). It's a beautiful piece of descriptive writing in a book replete with lively descriptions of life in the sweltering summer of 1939 Italy under Mussolini. The point of view leaps among various short first-person narrations, but it focuses primarily on a third-person omniscient narrator's account of the investigation of Commissario Luigi Ricciardi and Brigadier Raffaele Maione into the death of Professor Tullio Iovine del Castello, chair of gynecology at a university hospital in Naples. There is no shortage of suspects if Dr. Iovine was pushed or thrown; the victim repeatedly flunked an old professional rival's son in his medical school classes, was having an extramarital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and had enraged a ferocious gangster who swore revenge.

The Botom of Your Heart is the seventh book in this series, and characters from previous books reappear. Ricciardi, who fears for his sanity and keeps himself aloof since "the Deed" that allows him to hear the final thoughts and to see the ghostly shades of people who have died by violence (see Maltese Condor's review here), is still single in his 30s and is living with his beloved tata, now in deteriorating health, and her niece, Nelide. The lonely Commissario also has the affections of Enrica, the shy teacher who lives with her family across the street; Livia Vezzi, a beautiful social butterfly and widow of Italy's most famous tenor; Dr. Modo, the irascible medical examiner; and, of course, his loyal and tireless Brigadier, whose own secrets make him particularly impatient with his informant, Bambinella, a transvestite prostitute. This entertaining series is for people who enjoy crime fiction with a literary bent, keeping track of an ensemble cast of characters, and an Italian setting that's brought to life by its characters' concerns and the author's vivid writing. A reader can begin anywhere in this series, but for the full backstory, start with the first book, I Will Have Vengeance: The Winter of Commissario Ricciardi.

The Italians in de Giovanni's series are natural philosophers. Even sassy private eye Kinsey Millhone is becoming more reflective in Sue Grafton's X (Marian Wood Books/Putnam, August 2015), the 24th book in the alphabet series set in the fictional town of Santa Teresa, California. Unlike other titles in the series (see my review of W Is for Wasted here), this "X" doesn't specifically stand for anything; however, one can find all sorts of Xs (symbolic and real), in the book: Teddy Xanakis, kisses, ex-husbands and wives, mistakes, the missing, a place locator, and unknowns.

In reading X, one gets the sense that things are beginning to wind up for Kinsey. The woman who trims her own hair with a fingernail scissors and has one dress hanging in her closet is financially secure, at least for a while; she can pick and choose her cases. Kinsey agrees to find an ex-con just released from prison only when Hallie Bettancourt says she was referred by one of Kinsey's friends, and Kinsey becomes involved in Pete Wolinsky's old case only when his widow, Ruthie, asks for help in locating financial records for an IRS audit. This isn't one of Grafton's strongest books; the plot feels somewhat contrived, and I was at times annoyed by Grafton's excessive attention to detail (Kinsey doesn't just make coffee, she turns on the machine, adds the coffee, watches the water heat...). Still, it's worthwhile to revisit Santa Teresa to see how one of mysterydom's most likable female sleuths is doing, and we won't have many more chances. Grafton does a great job of conveying what it's like to live on California's Central Coast; here, in 1989. Kinsey still goes to the library to look for old records and composes her case summaries on a Smith & Corona typewriter. She and her 89-year-old landlord and neighbor, Henry, are dealing with some new neighbors and the drought. (Was this timely reading!) In this 24th book, Kinsey seems less inclined to get into trouble, but when the searches for the ex-con and the financial records open cans of worms, she can't help but start digging. By the end, she's learned a thing or two and made her peace with the fact that justice isn't always cut-and-dried.

Review of Sue Grafton's W Is for Wasted

W Is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

For me, reading a Sue Grafton alphabet series book is like slipping on a pair of comfortable old slippers. I live on the central California coast where the series is set (fictional Santa Teresa and ritzy Montebello are really Santa Barbara and pricey Montecito), and Grafton is meticulous when describing the area's lifestyles, geography, and history. I've known protagonist Kinsey Millhone, now in her late 30s, since A Is for Alibi was published in 1982. Obviously, Kinsey isn't aging as fast as I am.

Raised by a strict maiden aunt after her parents died in a car accident when she was five, Kinsey likes the stability of rules, although she often breaks them. She can be a smartass and lies easily. After a few years on the police force, she's now a private eye who's been married and divorced twice.

Kinsey is a cheapskate who cuts her own hair with a fingernail scissors and lives in scuffed boots and jeans unless something more formal is required; then, she drags out that one black dress hanging in her closet. After a bomb destroyed her old place, home is now a compact apartment fitted out like a ship's cabin, courtesy of her landlord, neighbor, and good friend, 88-year-old Henry Pitts. Henry, his older brother William, and William's Hungarian wife, Rosie, who runs her own restaurant (currently closed for fumigation), are like family to Kinsey. A few years ago, Kinsey was flabbergasted to learn her mother's relatives live in nearby Lompoc. Apparently, her wealthy grandmother was estranged from Kinsey's mother when she married Kinsey's dad; Kinsey is as eager to establish a close relationship with her mother's family as she is to walk across a minefield.

The joys and heartaches unique to family ties, the ways we damage ourselves by deceiving others, miscarriage of justice, the devastation of addiction, searching for meaning in a materialistic society, and contrasts between haves and have-nots are familiar themes in Grafton's series. In W Is for Wasted (September 2013, Putnam), these themes run through two narratives that ultimately connect two men, both dead at the book's beginning. Kinsey knew one of them: unscrupulous private detective Pete Wolinsky, shot late at night near the bird sanctuary.

Kinsey doesn't recognize the other man when a coroner's investigator asks her to view a corpse with no ID at the morgue. He was a homeless man found dead on a Santa Teresa beach. Such are the oddities of life, that a scrap of paper bearing the words "Millhone Investigations" found in a dead man's pocket makes Kinsey's life intersect with that of a morgue's John Doe. How the Kinsey who loves lying and snooping through a suspect's dresser drawers always feels compelled to do the right thing has always interested me. Somehow, she feels honor bound to find out who he is and why he needed a private investigator. Kinsey begins by tracking down his homeless companions, Pearl, Felix, and Dandy.

The character portraits of these Central Coast homeless are one of this book's strengths. And so is the look at Kinsey as she follows clues to a will, an old wrong, and new family connections before discovering the nature of the ties that bind her John Doe to private eye Pete Wolinsky.

It's sleuth work 1988 style, and it's comforting to see Kinsey still using index cards, a Smith-Corona typewriter, crisscross telephone directories (some decades-old telephone directories even include occupation and spouse's name for each listed address and phone number!), face-to-face interviews, pay phones, and folded paper maps. Narrator Kinsey is still witty and engaging, although somewhat more contemplative and subdued than usual. Dialogue, especially between squabbling family members, is terrific and sounds like something I'd actually overhear. There's a reunion atmosphere as familiar series names such as cops Jonah Robb and Con Dolan, attorney Lonnie Kingman, and private eye Morley Shine pop up. Kinsey's old beaus Cheney Phillips (does he ever drive anything but this year's red Mercedes?) and Robert Deitz make an appearance, and a Japanese bobtail joins the cast of characters.

It's enjoyable stuff, although some of the  connections between people stretch coincidence, and plot lines bringing old characters in feel manufactured, even if welcome. And, at 484 pages, it reminded me a bit of the old Hillary Waugh police procedural classic, 30 Manhattan East: A Case for Homicide North, in which the reader watches Det. Lt. Frank Sessions open the drawer of his desk, take out a pencil, sharpen it, chew the eraser, lean back in his chair.... In other words, there is much extraneous detail.

In any case, Grafton's alphabet books are popular for good reason: Kinsey is darned likable. I had fun seeing her and the regulars again and thinking about all the ways in which "W" is for wasted: wasted lives, wasted hopes, people who are "wasted" on drugs or killed. I'll be sorry when the alphabet ends.

Murder by the Numbers

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when readers who were completists, like myself, used to have to resort to reading the list printed in the first few pages of a book to see what other books an author had written and in which order. It did not take long to find that the flaw in this system was such that the list was frequently not in any particular order. Besides that, where I grew up you had to read just what was available.

One of the little solutions to this problem was to read books whose sequence was evident from the title; for instance, in series following the days of the week or months of the year. The first of these that I recall was the wonderful series by Harry Kemelman that began in 1964 with Friday the Rabbi Slept Late. The Rabbi was David Small, who lived in Barnard's Crossing, Massachusetts. Interesting cases came across his path and he was an excellent sleuth as well. What I recollect most clearly was his subtle education of the reader about some of the fine points of Judaism. I still have some of these old novels in paperback on my shelf and would like to reread them. There were seven days of the week before the Rabbi just solved cases on different days, completing the series more than thirty years later.

Perhaps better known and quite easy to read sequentially is Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series about a female private eye in Santa Teresa, California. A Is for Alibi began the run of alphabetical titles, which now is at V Is for Vengeance. Kinsey is an iconic heroine (when her story began we still used this term) who was raised by a no-nonsense aunt, and who was a police officer briefly before settling into career as a PI. She is a tough cookie who lives a minimalist lifestyle and has few––but very faithful––friends. The series began in 1982, the same year that V. I. Warshawski, the brainchild of Sara Paretsky, came to print. Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone pre-dates Kinsey by five years, first published in 1977. I enjoyed this series quite a bit but I am stalled at N.

In the late '80s, I found M. J. Adamson's series featuring Balthazar Marten. It began with Not Till a Hot January. It was a bitter cold January in New York and Det. Marten was being bored to icicles at his desk job that has kept him working and his mind partially off his personal problems. Balthazar has never totally recuperated from the bomb blast almost a year ago that killed his wife and ruined his leg. Now he has a new assignment that he really wished would have passed him by, but that was not to be. He is headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, to help with the problems a new casino is having with organized crime.

Marten was well known for his recent work in the River Rat case, in which a serial killer was tracked and caught.  He did speak a good college Spanish and had a partner in the past who had helped him with the language and was Puerto Rican himself. So the powers that be thought he was the right man for the job.

Before he even gets settled in his hotel room by the beautiful harbor, he finds that he has been reassigned to new case of a possible serial killer of young women. This is considered by some a very un-Puerto Rican crime because the case, as it began, seemed very well planned and executed. On the island, murders were usually spontaneous. As a matter of fact, in San Juan they had two distinct homicide divisions. Homicide One, where the killer was unknown––and these crimes were rare––and a larger Homicide Two, for cases where the assailant was known soon after the murder; spouse or other family member, for example. I enjoyed this series because of the great sense of place, interesting and different types of crimes and because it is the only series I have read that takes place in Puerto Rico.

A second series featuring the months of the year is written by Jess Lourey. These are more contemporary and feature a somewhat disgruntled assistant librarian in Battle Lake, Michigan. In the first, May Day, Mira James is consistently foolish, which made it hard to admire her. Some of her cracks were witty and funny, but they were quite mean at the same time. There were many snide remarks when referring to the blue hair, raisin ranch, Q-Tip (white hair, white sneakers) generation. It might have been nice if there was one senior citizen she admired.

The first numerical series I completed was a short one by Donald E. Westlake, writing under the pen name Sam Holt, that was also published in the late '80s. Westlake explains in the preface of One of Us Is Wrong, that he wanted to try something different from his usual successful characters, so he arranged with his publisher this short series featuring Sam Holt, actor/sleuth. His publisher foiled him at the store when he found his books displayed as the author Sam Holt aka Donald Westlake. He never finished the series, stopping at The Fourth Dimension Is Death.

In What I Tell You Three Times Is False, Westlake takes our hero to an isolated location that Agatha Christie would envy. On a small island in the Caribbean, a group of actors and a director have been called together to do a pro bono effort intended to raise money for the American Cancer Society. They have been given the use of a large tower, once owned by a drug baron now in jail. Now it's owned by two movie producers, who have promised to do a certain amount of goodwill work. The idea is to do a "find a cure for cancer" commercial, and they have brought together a cast of exemplary fictional detectives. There is Sherlock Holmes, played for many years by Clement Hasbrouck, who lately has also been dubbed "Clement Hasbeen." Miss Jane Marple is also at hand and of late has been portrayed by Harriet Fitzgerald. The part of Charlie Chan is covered by a true Asian, Fred Li. The most current is TV detective Jack Packard, 6-foot-6, a criminologist, college professor, karate black belt and amateur detective with lots of skills and talents, played by the author Sam Holt. In real life (real life in the book, that is), the only thing that Sam shares with Jack is his height and his experience as a lowly traffic cop years ago.

Once on the island, a severe tropical storm cuts off all the inhabitants from the mainland. Naturally, in cases such as these, dire things happen to the radio as well and  communications are severed completely. This is a skillful retelling of the And Then There Were None type of story, or the cut-off-by-a-storm story, and some clues are obvious and then you talk yourself out of them. Naturally, in this case your money is on Jack Packard.

Two other numerical series I have tried are Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, beginning with One for the Money, and James Patterson's The Women’s Murder Club series, starting with 1st to Die. In both of these series, one was enough. On the other hand, Elizabeth Gunn's numerical series using sports metaphors and beginning with Triple Play in 1997, features Jake Hines, a police detective in Rutherford, Minnesota. These are fast-paced police procedurals with an interesting protagonist and a slightly unusual location.

There are other sequential series I am sure that might be in my future reading. These days, though, with websites like Stop, You're Killing Me! and Fantastic Fiction, I have no problem with finding what else an author has published and in what order. If anyone has some suggestions of mysteries written in a chronological or temporal pattern I would love to hear about them.