If It's Not One Thing It's Your Mother

One of the rites of spring that I always enjoy is the opening day for Little League baseball and softball.  My town begins the season with a parade down the main street, and while there are many more marching in the parade than there are watching, it it is fun to see such happy faces on the kids and their parents. Just the names of the teams––like River Bandits and Sand Gnats––are enough to lift the spirits. Hats off to all the Little League dads and moms who are great volunteers.

Mothers and their influences have been a topic in my reading lately as well.

Will Schwalbe was working in the publishing world when his mother received the grim diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Mary Anne Schwalbe had always lead a very active life, which at this point in time revolved around the treatment of refugees in war torn countries. It was not unusual for her to arrive home in poor health, after having contacted some kind of infection from living in poor sanitary conditions.

This time, when she arrived home from Afghanistan in early 2007, she was obviously ill. Despite seeing doctors, it took several months to pinpoint the cause of her symptoms, as is often the case with this particular malignancy. When she was given her final diagnosis, her condition was too far advanced for surgery, and her hope was for successful chemotherapy to prolong her life––but not save it.

Mary Anne's family rallied around to keep her company during the chemo infusion sessions that could last for hours. Will and his mother had always enjoyed reading and talking about books, and these discussions now morphed into a book club meant for two. There was no particular pattern in their reading choices; one or the other would mention a book they were reading or wanted to read and they both read it and shared their thoughts about it.

The End of Your Life Book Club (Knopf, 2012), written by Will Schwalbe, is the chronicle of the last months of his mother's life and how reading eased her way through a difficult time.

Over the course of the next year, this pair read books of varied genres, from mysteries like Brat Farrar to books with a psychological bent, such as John Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living. Most of the books seemed to fall into the category that exemplifies the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, whether it was by cancer, imprisonment, war or other deprivations. No subject was too forbidding, too depressing or too violent for Mary Anne.

Mary Anne did not like silly books, however. One of Mary Anne's peculiarities was that she always read the end of the book first and then started at the beginning. In this way, she could get through the difficult and horrifying parts of books because she already knew how everything turned out.

One of their favorites was Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner, about the lifelong friendship of two couples, which was being changed because one of the women was dying of cancer. Another was The Savage Detectives, an ambitious novel by Roberto Bolaño, a Chilean poet and novelist, who died from liver disease before his book was translated to English. A book I would also like to read was Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, which is a narration by John Ames, an elderly preacher who has lived almost all of his life in Gilead, Iowa. He is writing a letter to his seven-year-old son, summing up the blessings of his life. Robinson writes the story as a meditation on fathers and children, particularly sons, on faith, and on the imperfections of man.

The Painted Veil, by W. Somerset Maugham, is another I added to my TBR. It is about the realization that finally comes to a self-absorbed young woman, that there are better goals in life for a woman than focusing on personal appearance and catching a mate.

Most of the books the pair read are covered cursorily in The End of Your Life Book Club, because the story is actually about the journey a son takes to become close to the mother who seemed at times to neglect her own children in her attempt to improve the lives of those children in other worlds of misery.

Mothers are a big influence in a person's life not only in the real world, but in fiction.

For Ellie Rush, the main protagonist in Naomi Hirahara's first of a new series, Murder on Bamboo Lane (Berkley, April 1, 2014), the problem is that she has been a big disappointment to her mother. Despite her mother's grand expectations, Ellie has joined the LAPD.

Ellie is half-white and half-Japanese, and she accepts the fact that she is never seen as white by whites or Japanese by the Japanese. Currently, just off probation, she has a very unglamorous job as a bicycle cop taking complaints, writing up tickets, and hearing more complaints.

While patrolling the porta-potty area during the Chinese New Year parade, Ellie is one of the first officers to come across a dead body in an alley. She is dismayed to find that the experience much worse that she thought it could be, and it was made more shocking by the fact that she recognized the body as a girl she knew in college.

Ellie has the ambition to be a detective in the homicide division, and she doesn't mind taking on menial duties that will help her career. She eagerly helps the homicide detectives, who appreciate her inside information of the suspects in the case.

This case is one that will really test her loyalties, because her friends now see her as one of "them." She has an aunt who holds a very high position in the LAPD and who expects her help, but her co-workers resent her assignment to the murder investigation.

This is an enjoyable story about a young woman at the beginning of her career who is torn over how to be a good friend as well as a good officer. She is also trying to be a good family member, but she still feels compelled to bring her pothead brother to task. Of course, in the end, Ellie's mom is beginning to take pride in her daughter's choices.

Naomi Hirahara is better known for her Mas Arai series. Arai is a Los Angeles gardener in his seventies who, as a boy, survived the atom bomb attack on Hiroshima. Blood Hina is the fourth of this series, in which Arai is aging and financially struggling, but the main problem in his life is that he is supposed to be best man at the wedding of an old friend, Haruo, and Haruo's fiancée, Spoon. Arai takes his responsibilities quite seriously. He has known Haruo for a long time and he bonded with him because they both survived Hiroshima, which left Haruo disfigured. Aside from fumbling and losing the wedding ring in a koi pond, Mas foresees trouble in this new marriage, especially between Haruo and Spoon's daughter. His foreboding is on the money because the wedding is called off when some Hina dolls are stolen from Spoon's home and Haruo is blamed.

What drew me to this mystery is that it revolves around some old and interesting Japanese customs. Rather than celebrating mothers and fathers in a festival, they honor children.

Girl's Day is a special day in Japan, celebrated on March 3, the third day of the third month. It is called Hinamaturi and it is also known as Doll's Day because the tradition of displaying Hina dolls on a tiered stand, covered by a red carpet, at the top of which are the Emperor and Empress.

It is some of these sometimes quite valuable dolls that are missing in Blood Hina, and Mas Arai knows he has to find them if his friend Haruo is to be happy. Arai must juggle his amateur sleuthing with the demands of multiple gardening clients while trying to solve a few murders at the same time.

May 5 is Boy's Day in Japan, and it always falls on the fifth day of the fifth month. Also known as the Feast of Banners, it is celebrated by banners symbolizing the family. One of the themes for the day is that of respect for the individual personalities of children.

In 1948, the government decreed this day to be a national holiday called Children's Day. It celebrates the happiness of all children and expresses gratitude to mothers.

Daughters Galore

And then there was the matter of skin. When I look back on it now, when I look back on the girl on the dusty road carrying a newborn baby and a bucket, I now realize I knew nothing about skin. Skin touched me only lightly within Cradock House. It was only beyond its walls that the world divided itself so strictly between black and white, with coloured falling awkwardly in between. Yet I thought I understood those grades of colour. I thought I could even manage under the new word called apartheid. Only once I came to live across the river did I realize I was wrong.

In 1919, gentle Cathleen Moore left Ireland to sail for South Africa, where she was to marry her fiancé, Edward Harrington, whom she had not seen for five years. Their home was to be in the Karoo, a semi-desert territory far from the coast. Before long, the family had grown to include Miss Rosemary and young Master Phil. Miriam was their housemaid, and in 1930 she gave birth to a little girl named Ada, after Madam's sister in Ireland. She was welcomed into the household. The Housemaid's Daughter, by Barbara Mutch, is the story of Ada.

From the beginning, Ada felt like part of the family. She helped her mother with her work around the house––cleaning, ironing and polishing––but, at the same time, Cathleen quietly began to teach her to read, and because Cathleen's daughter Rosemary showed no interest, Cathleen also began to teach Ada to play the piano. There are strict conventions about how Mistress and maids are to interact, but Cathleen gets around most of them. Subtly, Cathleen opens her heart to Ada, as she accidentally-on-purpose leaves her journal out for Ada to read and learn from.

Ada grows up alone; isolated from exposure to other children like her. And so she has no real sense of what the world is like.  She is naïve, innocent and at the same time strong and resilient, as she struggles to understand things. She tries to get a grip on wars, which can leave some wounds only on the inside, as happened with Master Phil in North Africa in World War II. She struggles to understand the new fears of apartheid, which strangle the area in the 1950s, and finally she has to come to grips with a terrible thing that happened to her that has her in fear for her life and those of people she cares about.

What is at the root of this fear came down from the mixing of blood within a single family. It had terrible power, this difference in skin between mother and child. It became another kind of war; one that forced disputes among people, divided old friends and turned strangers into enemies. She also had a shame that she would carry all the days of her life.

Music had been the source of Ada's strength throughout the years. She used it to bring peace and comfort to her family, and it enabled her to make a living when otherwise she might have starved. Ada spoke the language of music. She could hear Grieg in the ripple of a river like Cathleen did, yet she she could recognize Township Bach in the rough-and-tumble life of the people. She played it all and and more. Mutch has a poetic way with words, and her descriptions of Africa, the Karoo and the people evoke many strong emotions. Keep a hankie on hand.

Ada was a special daughter and she had a special daughter. But that may be another story. I keep coming across these stories about unusual daughters.

Rei Shimura is a prototypical American daughter in that she, too, is of mixed ancestry and this is far from unusual in a melting-pot country. Her father is Japanese, while her mother is of European extraction. Rei grew up in San Francisco, but has more an affinity for the Japanese side of her heritage and had lived for some time in a small apartment in North Tokyo. The Samurai's Daughter, by Sujata Massey, tells about Rei's line of work, which is in the Japanese antique trade. At present, Rei is taking a sabbatical to take on a personal history project. She hopes to make a record of the style in which the Shimuras had lived before the massive modernization of the 1960s. She was interested in the artifacts of that life, such as the cooking pots, the quilt designs and garden patterns.

She knew that her father had sold several artifacts from his past in order to be able to buy a large house in San Francisco, but she also wanted to understand why her father had gotten rid of some of the more valuable items the family owned, and was puzzled by his negative attitude about them. One artifact he sold was a letter from the Emperor Hirohito himself. Rei flies off the handle easily, so she doesn't communicate easily with either of her parents and she doesn't get the answers she seeks from them. Her hope is to recoup some of the items.

Rei's fiancé, Hugh Glendenning, is a lawyer involved in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people forced to engage in slave labor for Japanese companies in World War II. They are hoping for recompense, since it was their hard work that gave the now-successful companies a good start. One of these clients is in San Francisco, and is brutally murdered. Rei gets drawn into this case, as her research delves into the war years as well.

One thing that Rei learns is that although she may look Japanese, speak Japanese and live in Japan, she has much to learn about the culture and the deep, hidden fears and sentiments that persist despite modern times. Rei is somewhat like a Samurai warrior ancestor herself, in that she is combative, resilient and traditional. There are 10 books in the Rei Shimura series and they are educational as well as entertaining. Massey's latest book is The Sleeping Dictionary, first in the Daughters of Bengal series, published by Gallery Books in August 2013. I hope to review this book about a daughter soon.

Sometimes, after reading of very dark deeds, I like to lighten my spirit with something from Michael Pearce. One of these is The Snake Catcher's Daughter. Pearce's mysteries take place in early 20th-century Egypt, when that country was governed by the British, the Egyptians following the code of the French, the Sultan was under the influence of the Ottomans and, of course, there were many other miscellaneous fingers in the pie.

There were those who appreciated the changes the British made, such as abolishing the kurbash, which was a whip used for punishment and extracting confessions, but there were those who liked the old ways better––especially the lucrative methods of job advancement by bribery rather than performance. Garth Owen, the Mamur Zapt in charge of the political crimes section of the government, becomes aware of a plot to discredit many of the British officials and cause them to lose their jobs.

One such man, a policeman, is found drugged in a snake pit and this is leading to all sorts of rumors of untoward behavior. The wily Mamur Zapt has to keep one step ahead of the nefarious plotters and he does this with the help of a young girl who has learned her father's trade, since he is too drunk to take care of business himself. She provides an all-too-necessary service in the land of the Nile. She is a snake catcher. She helps Owen catch the snakes he is after as well.

The list of books about daughters goes on and on, and I can't wait to read Laura Joh Rowland's The Shogun's Daughter (September 2013, Minotaur), a historical novel that takes place in ancient Japan. Another historical novel is The Kingmaker's Daughter, by Philippa Gregory, which chronicles Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, and how he used his daughters politically. Linda Lafferty's The Bloodletter's Daughter is another book about violent ancient times. Bad boys have daughters too, as is seen in The Con Man's Daughter by Ed Dee. In this book, ex-cop Eddie Dunne runs from the Russian mob, the FBI and more while trying to save his daughter. One of my favorite Suzanne Arruda books is The Serpent's Daughter, in which Jade del Cameron must save her own mother from evil forces in exotic 1920s Morocco. Maybe the book that started my interest in daughters of crime fiction is Bootlegger's Daughter, the beginning of the Deborah Knott series, by Margaret Maron. Knott is an attorney looking to be a judge in North Carolina, who gets involved in southern politics and crime.

Now, for books about sons, you'll have to wait for a future post.

Here's to You, Dad

A new tie. Hand-lettered cards. Blueberry pancakes served in bed. Yep, it's Father's Day today.

I make no accusations, but my daughter's flu is well timed. I'll take her place in the obligatory Father's Day golf game with her dad; Dear Hubby's tact will get a lot of exercise. After dinner, we'll grab bowls of popcorn and watch the 1944 movie Laura, in which a homicide detective falls for the woman whose murder he's investigating.

Throughout the day, my thoughts will drift to my own dad. We were close and shared a love of dogs, horses, wildlife, baseball, and reading. When I contemplate the books below, his voice is in my ears.

"Let's practice staying out of trouble." Compared to Adrian McKinty's Michael Forsythe, I need practice getting into trouble.

Adrian McKinty: Dead I Well May Be (2003). A vengeance-filled tale confided by Michael, a young thug who reluctantly flees the Troubles of Belfast in 1992 for New York City, where his fighting skills and cool head come in handy against Dominicans encroaching on the drug turf of Irish gangster Darkey White. All goes swimmingly until Michael can't stay away from Bridget, White's girl. White does something about this, forcing Michael to do something about that. This great series debut is darker and more violent than Dennis Lehane's Depression-era mobsters book, Live by Night (see here for review).

"She looks like she's been dragged through the hedge backwards." I'm sure Deon Meyer's Emma le Roux feels that way, too.

Deon Meyer: Blood Safari (2009). A tense standalone thriller, set primarily in South Africa's wildlife preserves, exploring that country's contemporary social issues and political history. Narrator Lemmer is a tough professional bodyguard who's never (1) lost a client, or (2) become personally involved with one. His record is challenged when he's hired by Emma, a Cape Town ad consultant recently targeted by violence, as she investigates the identity of a man wanted for the murder of four poachers. She thinks it could be her brother Jacobus, who disappeared from Kruger National Park 20 years ago. Writer Meyer's exotic landscape is populated by strong characters, vividly described.

"I'm not sleeping; I'm just resting my eyes." Take a gander at a Kafkaesque insomniac who has vanished from his Paris apartment.

Georges Perec: A Void (1994). You'll have to read it to believe it, but Frenchman Perec, a member of Oulipo, a group of mathematicians and writers who put constraints on their work to foster creativity, used no letter "e" in his 300-page book, and translator Gilbert Adair managed the same astonishing feat in English. This has amusing consequences, as the friends of missing Anton Vowl search for clues in his diary and notebooks, which contain e-less excerpts from Hamlet's soliloquies ("Living or not living: that is what I ask") and Poe ("Quoth that Black Bird, 'Not Again'"). Their investigations—interrupted by deaths—provide very satisfying entertainment for people who love words and highly original writing.

"You kids learn to get along." This was difficult for us war-mongering siblings; however, tattling or whining to Mom or Dad was discouraged by them and strictly taboo among us. If threatened by outside disaster, we sibs always closed ranks.

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō: The Makioka Sisters (Japan, serially in the 1940s; the USA, 1957). Set against the backdrop of the Second Sino-Japanese War and pending World War II, this is the poignant tale of a wealthy Osaka family who tries to find an acceptable husband for the third sister, as Japan modernizes and their finances and social standing decline. According to custom, Yukiko Makioka, a shy and obedient woman now age 30, must wed before the much more westernized and rebellious fourth sister, Taeko, who already has a secret, unsuitable boyfriend. Both Yukiko and Taeko live with second sister Sachiko, a very caring woman, and her husband; the oldest sister, Tsuroko, refuses to acknowledge her family's deteriorating fortunes while she and her husband move to Tokyo. Watching these sisters maneuver through these perilously changing times makes unforgettable reading.

My dad had so many admonitions for me involving my mother, ranging from "Don't talk back to your mother" to "Ask your mother," I hardly know which to choose. I'll settle for one of my favs, "We won't worry your mother about this." She would think this book very strange.

Sergio De La Pava: A Naked Singularity (self-published, 2008; Univ. of Chicago, 2012). At the center of this nearly 700-page book of difficult-to-convey bizarreness is the son of Colombian immigrants, our narrator Casi, a perfectionistic and obsessional New York public defender, who has never lost in court. Then he does, and a lawyer colleague has an interesting proposition. In a way, this novel is a compelling––albeit satiric––legal thriller, as Casi grasps at justice for his beleaguered clients and works on behalf of a mentally handicapped man sitting on death row in Alabama; yet, as if our justice system doesn't contain enough room for all the absurdity and existential angst, there are many, many digressions into philosophy, television, boxing, and who knows what all. I'm still reading it, but I can tell you this: it's an entertaining book for those who enjoy unconventional writing and unique voices. For fans of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon et al. If it takes a straightforward plot to please you, look elsewhere for fun.

"I'm not going to tell you again." But he did. Certain issues came up over and over. Man, considering our incorrigible natures, my patient, yet determined dad did wonders with his kids.

S. T. Haymon: Ritual Murder (1982). Haymon's writing is always clear and elegant; she liked to juxtapose an odd murder and an alien setting, such as a stately home, a cathedral, or a museum. In this second series book, Haymon creates copy-cat victims separated by centuries when the mutilated body of Anglebury choirboy Arthur Cossey is found in the excavated tomb of Little St. Ulf, a 12th-century victim of ritual murder. Appealing Det. Inspector Ben Jurnet, who's preparing to marry Miriam and despises the nickname "Valentino," and his Welsh sergeant begin with the question of child molestation before their suspenseful investigation moves to issues of anti-Semitism and drug trafficking. Fans of Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, Batya Gur, Deborah Crombie, or Caroline Graham should check out the Jurnet series, which begins with Death and the Pregnant Virgin.

"Good night, sleep tight./ Don’t let the bedbugs bite./ And if they do/ Then take your shoe/ And knock 'em 'til/ They’re black and blue!" Dad, I wish you could have met hit woman Clara Rinker.

John Sandford: Mortal Prey (2002). We follow two story lines in a furious game of cat-and-mouse between a smart and lucky lawman and an obsessed, cold-eyed killer, who've met and like each other. After nearly killing Minneapolis cop Lucas Davenport in 1999's Certain Prey, Clara ends up in Mexico. A botched attempt to kill her is fatal to her fiancé and unborn child. Assuming the triggerman was hired by four old employers, a seething Clara sets on a rampage through St. Louis, Missouri. The FBI drags Lucas away from his preparations for a new job, house construction, and wedding to aid their agents there. This is the 13th book in Sandford's Prey series, but there's not a speck of staleness to be found. Gotta love Lucas, a warm and generous hulk, who sold the role-playing game he developed, and now drives a Porsche and indulges his taste in clothes. I rooted for Lucas and Clara, as I did for both cat and mouse in Owen Laukkanen's 2012 debut, The Professionals (see review here), featuring young kidnappers also pursued by a likable Minneapolis detective and the FBI.

"Did I raise you in a barn?" After I pointed out that, yes, I mostly was raised in our barn, my dad switched to, "Were you raised by wolves?" Got me there, Dad.

Joe R. Lansdale: The Bottoms (2000). Narrator Harry Crane, now in his 80s and confined to a nursing-home bed, looks back at Depression-era East Texas when he was 13, and he and sister Tom (short for Thomasina) roamed the woods, scaring each other with stories about the Goat Man. One day they discover the disfigured body of a young black woman hanging by wire from a tree in the creek area called "the Bottoms." Their father, Jacob—town barber and constable—attempts an investigation that encounters extreme racism and provokes violence. As more corpses come to light, Jacob takes to drink. The combination of innocent children coming of age in the South, a crime involving race, and a parent who tries to do the right thing is reminiscent of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, but this beautifully written book, which won an Edgar and was nominated for numerous other crime-fiction awards, is much more unsettling and violent than Lee's novel or Lansdale's Hap Collins/Leonard Pine books.

I hope fathers are enjoying a wonderful Father's Day with their families. If you're remembering your father, as I am mine, I hope your memories warm you.

A Stranger and a Thief

This has been a peaceful day. Or maybe a better way of putting it is to say that I have made peace with what I haven't done and still have time to do before Christmas. Somehow time slips away, especially if I'm trotting the globe in my reading.

Based on its themes, Andrea Camilleri's The Potter's Field is a better book for reading at Easter than at Christmas but that's not to say I'd suggest putting it off until then. The Bible's New Testament states that temple elders used the 30 pieces of silver given them by Judas, after he betrayed Christ, to purchase the potter's field for a burial spot for strangers. In this thirteenth Inspector Salvo Montalbano book, a garbage bag containing the dismembered body of an unknown man is found at the place called 'u critaru (Sicilian for the clay field). The plot also employs biblical themes of betrayal, prophetic dreams, feuds, rains that mimic the Great Flood and sins of lust and murder.

There is often friction between Montalbano and his men of the Vigàta police precinct, but for the past few months Inspector Mimì Arguello has been unusually short-tempered and Fazio and Catarella are barely coping with him. Montalbano hasn't noticed. He's been too busy feeling his age, ignoring telephone calls, feuding with the press, walking on the beach and ensuring his appetite is satisfied. Now he has no choice but to pay attention to the murder investigation and unhappiness of those around him.

The Potter's Field was translated from the Italian by Stephen Sartarelli and published by Penguin Books in 2011. As usual with this series, the Sicilian food is mouth watering, Montalbano's "bullshitter extraordinaire" moments are entertaining, the characters are colorful and the plotting is good. It was awarded the 2012 International Dagger Award.

Camilleri's Sicily is a feast for the senses. The Tokyo of Fuminori Nakamura's The Thief isn't the city of jostling crowds and neon lights. It's the anonymity and gloom of subway stations and dark alleys. The narrator is a pickpocket (his name, Nishimura, is mentioned once) who has been stealing since he was very young. He is an expert at assessing wealth by apparel. Nishimura dresses to blend in with the crowd. He is never more alive than when he gets close to his mark and uses two fingers to lift a wallet. Then a quiver goes up his arm and the tension in his body leaks into the air. Sometimes Nishimura finds wallets he has no memory of taking in the inner pockets of his suit and he sees towers where there aren't any. (When he was young, there was always a tower in the distance.)

At one time Nishimura worked with a partner, but now he and Ishiwaka are just friends. He has begun a friendship with a nameless prostitute, whom he spots shoplifting in a store, and her nameless young son, who is beginning to steal, when Ishiwaka recruits him for a home robbery planned by a criminal called Kizaki. This is a bad mistake and Nishimura will need all the skills he can muster.

This isn't typical noir. It's not easy to convey its strangeness. It's as if it's narrated by an emotionally claustrophobic being. At the same time it's compulsive reading. Nishimura's voice is spare and cryptic, the pace is fast and unusual details are the usual. When Nishimura buys cigarettes and coffee at a convenience store, "the clerk bellowed, 'Thank you very much!' like he was insane." I enjoyed this story of an alienated thief whose main connectedness with other people is the moment at which he's lifting their wallets from their pockets. What does this say about the society in which Nishamura lives? The Thief was translated from the Japanese by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates and published in 2012 by Soho Crime. It won Japan's 2009 Oe Prize.  I will look forward to more from this young writer.

I'll tell you about James Church's A Drop of Chinese Blood next time. Have a very Merry Christmas.

The Badification of Love

Valentine's Day is Tuesday, February 14th. It's a time for celebrating love with greeting cards, gifts, champagne toasts and kisses. That's tomorrow.

This is today, at Read Me Deadly. It's a time for observing the badification of love in crime fiction. Let's look at some good books involving love that's unrequited, gone missing, gone awry, gone belly up . . . . In other words, love that's gone bad.

Unrequited or obsessional love has inspired many rock 'n' roll songs, and Eric Clapton's "Layla" is one of the best. You might want to play it while we think about books such as John Fowles's The Collector, in which a lonely young butterfly collector named Frederick Clegg kidnaps his beloved Miranda Grey and keeps her captive in the hopes that she will come to love him. Or Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's disturbing 1955 masterpiece about Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who falls in love with 12-year-old Dolores Haze, and then marries her mother.

Of course, unrequited love doesn't always inspire a crime. It may merely burrow into the heart of a criminal or a sleuth, making his or her life more or less miserable and leading readers to groan in empathy. In David Liss's wonderful historical fiction set in 18th-century London, Benjamin Weaver unrequitedly loves the very beautiful Miriam Lienzo, but he is a Jewish ex-prizefighter, and his ethnicity prevents his entry into higher society. He makes a living finding thieves and debtors for the wealthy. In A Conspiracy of Paper, the first book in this literary series, Weaver is hired to find the murderer of a client's father, and his search becomes a Russian nesting doll of financial jiggery-pokery and murderous intrigue.

Keigo Higashino creates a nightmare for his characters when brilliant high-school math teacher Ishigami hankers after his apartment-house neighbor Yasuko Hanaoka in the riveting 2011 book The Devotion of Suspect X. When Yasuko kills her cruel ex-husband, Ishigami leaps to help her dispose of the body and to fix an alibi. The body is discovered and identified, and the police are quickly led to Yasuko and Ishigami. A cat-and-mouse game that becomes increasingly complex develops between the police and Ishigami.

Sometimes the unresolved nature of unrequited love makes it haunt a heart forever. Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides involves the five young and lovely Lisbon sisters, who committed suicide one after another, and the mesmerizing effect these deaths have on their hometown of Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Hannah Pittard's Nora Lindell is 16 years old when she goes missing in The Fates Will Find Their Way and, in a similar way, this event stuns some adolescent boys. Nora's disappearance still preoccupies them 25 years later.

In 1962, Ben Wade was a Choctaw, Alabama, teenager secretly in love with a beautiful classmate, Kelli Troy, who had recently arrived from Maryland. It was the early days of desegregation, and Kelli was outspoken in her support of it. Then Kelli was murdered. In Breakheart Hill, by Thomas H. Cook, Wade, now a middle-aged physician, looks back at the days leading up to Kelli's death and its shattering aftermath. His halting narrative that dances around the facts reminds me of Ford Maddox Ford's John Dowell, who slowly teases out the surprising truth of his marriage in The Good Soldier.

Sometimes the death of a loved one creates a terrible void. So terrible for Frank Cairns, that he feels compelled to do something criminal about it. In Nicholas Blake's 1938 book, The Beast Must Die, Cairns begins with a vow: "I am going to kill a man. I don't know his name. I don't know where he lives, I have no idea what he looks like. But I am going to find him and kill him." This unknown man is the hit-and-run driver who killed his seven-year-old son. The police have run out of leads, so Cairns builds some information and logical leaps into a case against a man whom he befriends in order to better plot his revenge. The Beast Must Die is both serious and lighthearted, full of twists and turns, and the fourth Nigel Strangeways book written by Nicholas Blake, the pen name of Cecil Day-Lewis, England's Poet Laureate and father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Edward Elgar, British ecclesiastical composer

Authors sometimes fill death's lonely void with a ghost, which the book's characters don't always appreciate. British fiction writers cannot leave Edward Elgar alone. The last time I saw this British composer, he was taking a fictional trip up the Amazon in James Hamilton-Paterson's Gerontius. (That is a stunning book, by the way, and I recommend it.) Now, Phil Rickman puts a dead Elgar to work as a ghost, haunting his beloved Malvern Hills, in The Remains of an Altar, the eighth Merrily Watkins book. When does this poor man get to retire? Merrily, Anglican vicar of Ledwardine, has been asked in her role of Deliverance Consultant to the Diocese of Hereford to exorcise the bike-riding Elgar, who is causing road accidents. Proposed development on a Wychehill hillside possibly sacred to the Druids, Merrily's 17-year-old daughter Jane's activism, a new night club, and the ambitions of the church choirmaster are a troublesome stew coming to the boil. Rickman's series is an entertaining blend of historical research, mystery, and horror.

What does love got to do with it? Even if singer Tina Turner is less than thrilled with love, P. D. James's Cmdr. Adam Dalgliesh is clear about its role in murder. Early in his career, he learned that all the motives for murder could be covered by the four L's: love, lust, lucre, and loathing. Check out these two traditional books of crime fiction, written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, that have the L's pretty well covered:

Bill Crider's eleventh Dan Rhodes book, the charming A Romantic Way to Die, finds Obert College the site of a romance writers' workshop. Townspeople of Clearview, Texas, are thrilled that local-boy-turned-famous-Fabio-dude Terry Don Coslin is back in town. Terry Don's aim is to appear on the cover of every single romance novel published. Given his pecs ("hard enough to strike a match on"), his flowing locks and his handsome face, this is a real possibility. Several local residents are also attending the workshop, including newly-published author, Vernell Lindsey. A well-known New York agent is even scheduling appointments at Obert. It's a cryin' shame when the conference is interrupted by a death, and laid-back Sheriff Rhodes must investigate.

Elizabeth Peters's Die for Love, third book in her entertaining Jacqueline Kirby series about a college librarian, is set at a New York City convention for historical romance writers and their fans. The enterprising Kirby wants an escape from Nebraska, so she travels to New York for this convention, where she poses as an author so she can write off the trip on her tax return. When a murder takes place, the always-curious Kirby feels compelled to investigate despite the warnings of a very attractive cop. D'oh!

Listening to the Righteous Brothers always makes me sing in the shower. I'd be curious to know if  "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" inspires you in that way, too. Maybe you'll feel inspired to read one of these books about love that's wandered away.

Dick Lochte's hardboiled novel Sleeping Dog is teeming with lost love and the just plain lost. The narrative alternates between Serendipity Dahlquist, the teenage granddaughter of a Los Angeles soap star, who prides herself on her worldiness and intelligence, and a tired but dedicated ex-cop turned private detective named Leo Bloodworth, aka "The Bloodhound." Serendipity is referred to Bloodworth when her dog Groucho is stolen, but they have barely met before Bloodworth's smarmy office mate is murdered. The two mismatched sleuths set off on a complicated trail. (Note: there is some material in this book that is painful reading for animal lovers, but I read it with a hand over one eye and the other eye half closed, and I survived.)

Drink to Yesterday by Manning Coles opens at a coroner's inquest in a small town in Hampshire, England, on July 19, 1924. A well-liked garage proprietor has been found dead in his home. After the jury reaches its verdict, the story looks back at Chappell's School in the spring of 1914, where a pump and some rubber tubing have been sitting in a lab for simply ages, just waiting to be used by some bored school boys to inject air into the gas line that lights their school. During the months that follow, teachers and staff disappear into the war effort, and one of the gas-line pranksters follows as well. The result is a grim, realistic story set behind German lines in 1941, but told in such a graceful way that it is a bittersweet pleasure to read. The spies are casual about their braveness, but they are very brave indeed. The people back home who love them need to be brave, too, because as Tommy Hambledon tells his young recruit, "Once the job has taken hold you'll find that nothing else in life has any kick in it, and apart from the job you're dead. Neither the fields of home nor the arts of peace nor the love of women will suffice." Being a spy can be heart breaking, and we're not talking about James Bond here.

What would crime fiction be without dangerous women who need a man's help? Ask private eye Sam Spade in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, insurance salesman Walter Neff in James M. Cain's Double Indemnity or Korean-American investigator Allen Choice in Leonard Chang's Fade to Clear. In the first Allen Choice book, Over the Shoulder, San Jose Sentinel reporter Linda Maldonado saw Choice through a horrific sequence of events, including his being framed for murder. The two became lovers, but then Linda called it off. Now, in Fade to Clear, the intriguing third book, she tells Choice her nine-year-old niece has been kidnapped by the girl's father, Frank Staunton, who is in the middle of a divorce from Linda's sister. The father and daughter have disappeared. Will Choice help? This is trouble all around for Choice, since Staunton is a real badass, Choice's current girlfriend will not appreciate his involvement in Linda's case, and Linda herself presents a problem. But Choice doesn't have a choice. (Oh come on, you completely saw that coming!) This is no place for a discussion of fate and free will. The point is, for better or worse, Choice doesn't stop thinking in Fade to Clear.

Now that we've whetted your appetite for some crime fiction involving love and warned you about the approach of Valentine's Day, you can't say that you don't see it coming TOMORROW. Don't forget your sweetie, family, pets, friends, and the people at work who make it bearable. You can be nice tomorrow. Today, after your Valentine's Day preparations are finished, you can kiss it all off by treating yourself to a nice book about crime.