A Holiday Getaway with Charlotte MacLeod

When holiday pressures seem overwhelming and the people with whom you spend your holidays start to wear, spending a few hours with some of Charlotte MacLeod's over-the-top characters and zany plots can help to cleanse your mental palate and recover your sense of humor and holiday spirit.

In The Family Vault, members of the illustrious but eccentric Kelling family of Boston tend to marry each other––mostly, young Sarah Kelling (née Kelling) suspects, to keep the money in the family. When Sarah––who had been educated at home like a prim Victorian lady––was orphaned, the family couldn't wait to marry her off to her devastatingly handsome fifth cousin and guardian, Alexander, who still treated her more like a beloved adolescent daughter than a wife. Her father's will had left all her assets in Alexander's hands until she turned 27, and he was to give her "whatever allowance he saw fit" until that time.

One bitter morning, Sarah waits in one of Boston's historic graveyards for her cousin Dolph and the representative of the Historical Society. Recently deceased Great-Uncle Frederick had insisted on being buried in the old family vault, unused for over a hundred years. To the surprise of all concerned, the vault holds the uncoffined body of a notorious burlesque performer named Ruby Redd, adored by several generations of Kelling men, who had disappeared 30 years earlier. The skeleton is still clad in Ruby's corset and red high-heeled boots, and its teeth inset with her trademark rubies. As one witness reminisces, "I ain't never seen anybody else struttin' down Washington Street with a grin on her puss like a row of taillights on a wet night."

This is the readers' first introduction to the disparate Kelling and Bittersohn clans. Inbred Back Bay Boston will never be the same when the cash-strapped Sarah converts her heavily-mortgaged mansion into an upscale boarding house, complete with part-time butler, Charles (a "resting" actor). The setting and characters provide endless opportunities for murderous plots and well intentioned cultural misunderstandings. While the stories are light, and rife with over-the-top characters, MacLeod doesn't hesitate to pile on the bodies in this first in a memorable series.

Peter Shandy, plant geneticist and professor at Balaclava Agricultural College in rural Massachusetts, is probably MacLeod's best-known protagonist. In Rest You Merry, bachelor Peter, who has for years resisted the pressure of the ladies of the Grand Illumination Committee to turn his house into a Christmas wonderland, finally yields with a vengeance. After hiring a service to turn his house into a tasteless extravaganza complete with waving Santas and obnoxious carols played very loudly, he escapes to a tramp steamer for a quiet holiday. When the steamer breaks down and naval rescue is required, he ruefully arrives home on Christmas night––only to discover his neighbor, head of the Illumination Committee and wife of his best friend, dead on his living-room floor.

Campus police and the sheriff believe that Jemima's death was the result of a fall from a stepladder, as she attempted to remove some of his more gaudy decorations, but Peter and her husband Tim think otherwise. The tall woman, they agreed, could easily have reached the decorations without the stepladder. And a bowl of 33 marbles, given to Peter––a compulsive counter––by a niece, had been knocked from a display shelf across the room. Only 32 marbles were recovered; where was the missing one? No one had seen Jemima for several days, but it wasn't unusual for her to flit around the neighborhood at all hours, organizing everything and everyone. Tim had been curious when she hadn't shown up Christmas morning to exchange presents, but not worried. Not until there is another death are the police willing to listen to Peter.

While MacLeod, who also wrote under the name Alisa Craig, published her last book in 1998 and died in 2005, new readers continue to stumble on her zany mysteries and improbable characters with cries of glee. Her plots are always well constructed and clues are offered for the attentive reader, but I usually miss them because I am enjoying the characters too much. Both of these series––many books long out of print––are finally available as ebooks, and have I begun to rebuild my rogues' gallery of this gentle but very humorous author's characters. Her characters make even my more exotic relations seem relatively sane and tame!

"Go to Heaven for the Climate, Hell for the Company" (Mark Twain)

Use your imagination to populate this picture of Heaven

Mark Twain must have spent a lake vacation with my family, our friends and miscellaneous pets. As soon as we got out of the cars and smelled the water, we all ran completely wild. It was so much fun. There is nothing like spending time with friends and family you love. The books I read during the past few weeks have characters with special relationships, too. Let me tell you about some of them.

Author Edward Conlon's dad, grandfather and uncle were cops. Conlon graduated from Harvard, but his blood runs cop-uniform blue and he became a NYPD detective. Red on Red is his first novel and it's a doozy; a literary book you don't have to be a mystery fan to love. It's about two NYPD detectives, protagonist Nick Meehan and "Espo" Esposito, who became partners five months earlier. Nick, desperate for a transfer, agreed to take a look at Espo for the Internal Affairs Bureau. The two men are very different, but a close relationship or good partnership doesn't have to begin with a likeness, a shared past or shared tastes. It can begin with unlikeness that leads to thrilling epiphanies of jokes and actions one wouldn't have thought of but the other one did. During the first night a reader spends with them, they discover an unidentifiable woman hanging from a tree in the rain at Inwood Hill Park. The mysterious witness who called the cops and the odd scene appeal to Nick, who likes cases with "funny things or lucky things, glimpses of archaic wonder and terror, where life seemed to have a hidden order, a rhyme." They are also called to the scene of a shotgun victim, probably the result of a drugs turf war, that the aggressive and competitive Espo will handle. Espo and Nick accidentally cause a death to round out their shift. Fabulous characterization, setting, plot, humor and insight. I can't recommend this 2011 book, nominated for an Edgar First Novel, highly enough.

William Landay's Defending Jacob is set among the Barber family. Andy Barber couldn't believe his luck when Laurie, his dream girl, married him. He's happy at home and at the DA's office in Newton, Massachusetts, where he's been the top assistant DA for more than 20 years. When 14-year-old Ben Rifkin is found, stabbed to death on his walk to school, Andy expects to prosecute the case. These plans are turned upside down when Andy's son, Jacob, is accused of the crime. Jacob says he is innocent and Andy insists that it's his duty as a father to believe him. Laurie, reeling from the criminal charges against Jacob and the flabbergasting revelations from Andy, isn't so sure. This book has been described as a Greek tragedy. I'll say. It's both thought-provoking and suspenseful. Author Landay is a former district attorney and a Dagger Award-winner for Mission Flats. Defending Jacob, published in 2012 by Delacorte, is his third outstanding non-series novel. If you like books by Scott Turow, you'll like this one.

Austalian writer Garry Disher's Port Vila Blues was originally published in 1995 and will be re-released by Soho Crime tomorrow. In a nutshell, here's the scoop. Wyatt, a cool-headed career thief, has once again joined forces with his old crime-planner and trusted friend, Jardine. Six months earlier, Jardine was grazed by a bullet above his ear, suffered a stroke and hasn't been the same since. He directs Wyatt to a house with a stash of cash. Along with the cash, Wyatt finds a diamond-studded Tiffany brooch. He and Jardine then seek a fence. Unknown to them, the brooch was stolen before. When its original thieves hear it's turned up again, they assume someone among them is cheating the rest. This is not a comfortable state of affairs because they are very enterprising and ruthless corrupt cops. They set out to investigate their fellow friends-in-crime and Jardine and Wyatt. Port Vila Blues, the fifth in the Wyatt series, is set in various cities of Australia and on the island of Vanuatu. I'm not sure why it reminds me of those old Spy Versus Spy cartoons in Mad Magazine. It's not a book of espionage. Maybe because of the murderous scheming and betrayals among colleagues and friends. Chasing the determined crooks are determined cops. The book's ending makes me anxious to read others in this series, especially the next, The Fallout.

Shawn Maguire is ex-CIA. He was kicked out for his violent behavior, his insufficiently brown-nose-ish attitude and his drinking. He's now living in rural England so he can be near the grave of his wife. Other than attending meetings for sex addicts and running out of money, he's not doing much. An arms dealer asks him to look into the disappearance of Darius Osmani, whom the CIA suspects of being a Middle Eastern terrorist with information about a nuclear device. Although he hopes to be reinstated in the CIA, Maguire agrees to accept this freelance job. He heads to Paris, where he meets Osmani's beautiful wife, Danielle Baptiste. This isn't a thriller of blood-pressure-raising action, although Maguire and Danielle track Osmani, who's being flown from one black hole to another, courtesy of the CIA. Instead, it's a look at Maguire's history as a CIA operative in the Middle East during the war, CIA renditions and the short-sighted American practice of throwing money at problems and taking a hand in other countries' elections. The flashbacks within flashbacks can get a little confusing. Maybe that's appropriate. In Gerard Macdonald's The Prisoner's Wife, published in May 2012 by Dunne/St. Martin's, it's confusing to figure out who's a friend and who's an enemy, because sometimes it depends on the time and place. I enjoyed the quietly beautiful writing and Maguire, an appealing and complex protagonist. I hope to see him again soon.

There you go. I enjoyed my time at the lake with family and friends. After reading these books, I realized how lucky I am not to worry about which friends might sell me out or try to kill me. I don't suspect my kids of any serious crimes and I doubt my husband will drop a bomb on me. Now I hope you'll read these books in a heavenly place and the hellishly good company of the fictional characters will kindle your enjoyment.

Home again and needing a vacation

A Battle Between Good and Evil

Well, all right, I know we're not talking about THE battle between good and evil, okay? We're also not talking about a battle between the sexes, planets, nations, political philosophies or parties, superheroes and supervillains, man and nature, man and machine, predators and prey or natural enemies such as cats and dogs.

We're not even talking about the battle between dirt and cleanliness so extraordinary one can pretty darn well semi-safely eat off the floor if the floor owner is your German or Swiss grandmother or other nationality that has raised cleanliness next to godliness or maybe not, but you're up to date on your vaccinations such as tetanus, one hopes, or hope to God your luck holds, and don't ask yourself why in the world you don't pick up the food, shake it off, and stick it on a plate for pete's sake unless maybe you're out of plates because you're a bit behind on washing up or you're lying on the floor any way, and you just so happen to see something lying down there, uneaten for who knows why by the family dog or cat or your spouse or kids.

And we're not talking about sports that rightfully have umpteen billions of fans like soccer, known in most parts of the world as football or fútbol or whatever other name your native language calls it. (Pause for a breath and to mention writer Leighton Gage's blog about one of the sport's most wonderful players on and off the field, Socrates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira.)

No.

No, we're talking here about the American sport of football, and its Great Big Day, Super Bowl Sunday. THIS SUNDAY. When the New England Patriots, ably led by quarterback Tom Brady, meet the New York Giants, I hope less ably led by quarterback Eli Manning, in Indianapolis, Indiana. While the Patriots and the Giants crack heads in Lucas Oil Stadium in Super Bowl XLVI, fans at home will (again, I hope) not crack heads over bowls of guacamole and chips and bottles of beer or Coca-Cola. Even people who aren't football fans will be watching, because this is the day that ad agencies try to outdo themselves and each other in debuting creative TV commercials (yes, "creative TV commercials" is too frequently an oxymoron), and Madonna, of all people, who in the world chose her to sing I'd like to know, tries to outdo herself and previous performers in entertaining us viewers at halftime.

Americans who aren't watching the Super Bowl will find shopping malls happily drained and ski slopes tantalizingly bare during the game. On the other hand, they will be tragically unable to compare favorite commercials (mine is always the Budweiser beer Clydesdales), intelligently criticize Madonna or argue bone-headed Super Bowl plays at the office water cooler on Monday.

If you can't bring yourself to watch the biggest football game of the year, you can excuse yourself by watching Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl VIII.

Or by reading one of these good mysteries, in which sleuths and criminals butt heads and engage in battle:

Bill Eidson's The Repo is set in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where former DEA agent Jack Merchant now lives on his sloop, The Lila. Sarah Ballard, who makes a living repossessing boats for banks, hires him to look for a missing couple and their yacht. It's an action-packed book with well-drawn characters. The Mayday is the next Ballard/Merchant book.

Walking Shadow, by Robert B. Parker, is the 21st appearance by Spenser, ex-boxer, ex-cop turned Boston private eye. In this book, Spenser is asked by his girlfriend to investigate the stalking of a theater company director. Fists fly and bodies pile up, but Spenser handles all of this with his usual aplomb and rustles up gourmet dinners at the same time. Some of the Spenser books are a little phoned in, but not this one.

Brattleboro, Vermont, is the ultimate New England town for artists and eccentrics. In Archer Mayor's Surrogate Thief, a gun involved in a shooting is linked to a robbery/murder that cop Joe Gunther handled 30 years ago as a rookie. This is a great small-town police procedural, and you don't have to begin at the series beginning.

Jane Langton's God in Concord is set in the town of Concord, Massachustts, home of Thoreau's Walden Pond and destination of Paul Revere's midnight ride in 1775. Developer Jefferson Grandison wants to build on the edge of Walden Pond. This doesn't sit well with everyone. This is the ninth book in the traditional mystery series featuring lawyer and ex-cop, now Harvard professor Homer Kelly. It contains Langton's charming line drawings.

Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are about as good as it gets when it comes to a pair of New England hardboiled private detectives. Begin the series with A Drink Before the War, in which Kenzie and Gennaro look for a cleaning woman who took some papers belonging to a senator. Some terrific Lehane standalones include Mystic River, Coronado (a book of short stories), and The Given Day (a book of historical fiction).

There you are, a bunch of good mysteries set in the beautiful northeastern states of the USA, home of the New England Patriots. At about oh, say, 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, I'll be happy to read a good book set in New York, home of the New York Giants. I'll leave it to a Giants fan or someone else to suggest some. Right now I need to rustle up some snacks for Super Bowl Sunday.

Murder Most Fowl

For those who have never been there, Plimouth Plantation, site of the village built by the Pilgrims upon arrival in the New World, is a living history open-air museum near Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Each actor, or "interpreter," represents as faithfully as possible the life of one of the actual residents of the Plymouth Colony in 1627. It can't be compared to a glitzy theme park or a Murder Weekend; in fact, it feels so authentic that it can be a bit disconcerting to visitors. Chickens and children on stilts or rolling hoops mingle with visitors and characters in the only street. Any character will gladly speak with visitors and try to answer their questions, but only in the framework and words of their character and period. Often they will let young visitors help to knead bread, saw logs, or husk corn.

When my daughter was around six we took her for the first time, although our already Epcot-saturated sophisticate was sure it would be a terrible bore. When the blunderbuss-carrying "guard" at the gate greeted us in friendly but archaic terms, she offered him a stick of gum. His response was perfect; he stared at it in wonder, asked what it was, then started to put it, still wrapped, into his mouth. By the time they found enough common language to explain (he seemed to think a wrapper was a garment), she was shaken entirely out of her complacency and prepared for the wonders to come. She watched beading and clam digging, and we finally had to drag her out of the apothecary's when the place was closing.

Near the Pilgrim village, you can visit the small 17th-century Indian settlement where actual descendants of the Wampanoags and other local tribes practice the ancestral skills of farming, fishing, beading, and boat building (hollowing out logs by burning) as practiced by their ancestors. It is well worth a visit at any time of year, although autumn is best.

Murder at Plimouth Plantation, by Leslie Wheeler, captures a bit of that enchantment. Eighteen-year-old Caroline, niece of protagonist Miranda Lewis, has come from her California home to spend a season at the Plantation "interpreting" Mistress Fear Allerton, a young wife and mother of the Colony. When Miranda, who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, calls to check on her niece, Caroline bursts into tears and hangs up on her aunt.

Miranda drives down posthaste from Cambridge, but Caroline won't discuss her problem. Next morning, the very real severed head of the ex-policeman who plays Myles Standish appears in Mistress Allerton's work basket, and Caroline becomes the prime suspect.

The story is somewhat confusing, overrun with red herrings and several TSTL* moments for both Miranda and Caroline, but the descriptions of the setting and history are accurate and fascinating.

In Sarah R. Shaber's Snipe Hunt, recently divorced Simon Shaw is invited to spend a laid-back Thanksgiving weekend at a friend's cottage on North Carolina's rugged Outer Banks. He jumps at the offer–Marcus has a stellar collection of classic paperback mysteries he hopes to explore and three charming children who call Simon "Uncle." An archaeologist friend, David Morgan, has a dig in the area, so Simon travels down in advance and slovenly comfort in Morgan's RV to help sift through what a dredge is bringing up, looking for Indian artifacts.

When the dredge pulls up a barnacle-covered body in a World War II-era wetsuit, Morgan persuades the police chief to let him clean and classify the contents of the rubber collecting bucket congealed to the dead man's wetsuit. The body is identified as a local Navy frogman, member of the island's premier family, who vanished in 1942 when German U-Boats regularly patrolled the shoreline, spreading fear of enemy invasion.

The man turns out to have been stabbed to death, not drowned, and his collection bucket contained a small fortune in Confederate gold coins, apparently from one of the many wrecked ships just offshore. The story's combination of Civil War-era treasure, World War II local history, and current-day murder make quick and interesting reading. Forensic historian Simon doesn't get the restful long weekend he had hoped for in this well-written second in a series.

Whether you share your Thanksgiving feast with one or 30 people, at the beach or a crowded family table, watching (or participating in) a parade or football game, may it be bounteous with food, rich with friends and family, and sparkling with conversation. And maybe sometime over the weekend, with some time to pick up and enjoy a good book.

*Too stupid to live

The Goldilocks Principle

You probably remember the fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I recently read in Wikipedia about the original 1837 tale by British poet Robert Southey:

"In Southey's tale, three anthropomorphic male bears – 'a Little, Small, Wee Bear, a Middle-sized Bear, and a Great, Huge Bear' – live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. Each bear has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed. One day they take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. An old woman (who is described at various points in the story as impudent, bad, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction) discovers the bears' dwelling. She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. Assured that no one is home, she walks in. The old woman eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Prowling about, she finds the bear's beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The climax of the tale is reached when the bears return. Wee Bear finds the old woman in his bed and cries, 'Somebody has been lying in my bed, – and here she is!' The old woman starts up, jumps from the window, and runs away never to be seen again."

The version of the fairy tale I'm familiar with, and I'd bet you are, too, features a little girl instead of an old woman who visits the house. The little girl, in addition to being very curious, is very fussy and she tests three bowls of porridge, three chairs and three beds before deciding in each case that the Wee Bear's is just right.

The Goldilocks Principle (the condition of being just right) applies to my reading, too. This can create some real problems, trying to find a book that feels like the perfect fit for my mood. A few weeks ago, Georgette suggested using fortune cookie fortunes to find that book and I enjoyed trying that method. Usually, however, I employ the same method Goldilocks used, trying some on for size until I find the right one. Given one situation, here is a book that was just right for me.

I had a draining day at work. After dinner, my two boys backtalked when I told them it was time for homework. I wanted to respond with a little impudence of my own but instead I picked up a book by George V. Higgins, Penance for Jerry Kennedy, and vicariously enjoyed all the adult sass.

Higgins was an assistant U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts and dealt with organized crime. He later worked as a criminal defense lawyer, defending clients such as Eldridge Cleaver and G. Gordon Liddy. As a writer, he is most famous for his books about Boston's lowlife, including The Friends of Eddie Coyle (which I'll tell you about on Saturday), The Digger's Game and Cogan's Trade.

He also wrote a series about a nice guy named Jerry Kennedy, whose criminal-defense practice after 20 years is repetitive. Kennedy says, "Half of what it repeats, from my clients' mouths and mine, can be reduced to those two short words: 'Big money, Mister Kennedy, he promised me big money.' The other half, or roughly that, is people who have created their own troubles with some kind of intoxicants, either because they did not get their big money or because they in fact did.... For me, in my middle age, child molesters and wife-beaters are a welcome change, people who did evil things because of warped passions that did not involve money. And, of course, I meet them all because I'm out for their money."

In the second book of the series, Penance for Jerry Kennedy, Kennedy's client, personal accountant and good friend Lou Schwartz, has been convicted for his income-tax preparation for mobster Nunzio Dinapola. Schwartz refused to cooperate with the prosecutor's scheme to nail Dinapola, so Schwartz was prosecuted instead. Kennedy admits he is not at his best when he puts on a show that he wouldn't believe were he the one watching it and therefore he couldn't convince the jury that Schwartz didn't lie when he signed Dinapola's 1040 form claiming that as the tax preparer, he believed the numbers and sources of income to be true and accurate. (As Schwartz tells Kennedy, "You think Nunzio is going to tell me to put down the barbut games? You think I would ask him where he got the money? You think I would like him to have me killed? Of course it is lies.") Schwartz is going to jail for two years and Kennedy is miserable about it. To add to his unhappiness, the IRS is now turning its attention to him because he's Schwartz's attorney; his wife Mack is arguing with him about money; his secretary is procrastinating; and his mentor, big-shot lawyer Frank McDonald, isn't eager to help him. Kennedy, in his search for a new accountant, falls into the hands of Bertram Magazu, which may not be a good thing.

Higgins's ear for dialogue, ability to create an entertaining courtroom setting and skill at characterization are remarkable. He can define characters in just a line—"David is the sort of guy that you jab every chance that you get, just because he deserves so many more shots than he'll ever get in this world that God would punish you for wasting one." His plots are sometimes filtered through a torrential digression of dialogue and the narrator's internal musings but then one doesn't read Higgins's books for plot alone. If you appreciate a quick-witted, insightful, somewhat world-weary but Mr. Nice Guy narrator, these Jerry Kennedy books are for you. They're not for readers who can't tolerate X-rated talk. For readers who can, they will make you laugh out loud. You don't have to be a legal mysteries fan to enjoy them. I particularly recommend them to people who like Michael Connelly's sleazy lawyer Mickey Haller. Start with the entertaining first book in the series, Kennedy for the Defense.

I'd love to hear about an experience that prompted your attempt to nail down that just-right book. What did you end up reading?