Fall Preview 2014: Part Seven

British crime mysteries have always charmed me. They have a very distinctive flavor and atmosphere. For one thing, all the different regions have different characteristics, in both geography and personality. My fall selections for this category take place in such locations as the Outer Hebrides off northern Scotland, as well as on the south coast and over in the Midlands.

One of Peter May's most intriguing series is a trilogy that takes place on the Isle of Lewis, part of the archipelago of the Outer Hebrides. The central character is Edinburgh Police Detective Inspector Fin Macleod. Fin left Lewis 18 years earlier, returning once only for the funeral of the aunt he lived with for several years. He had never looked back until he was sent to solve a murder that may have involved old friends and auld acquaintances he had not forgotten.

As the second book in the trilogy, The Lewis Man (Quercus, September 2) begins, Fin has come to the realization that he and his police career are not a good fit, so he packs up his belongings and moves back to Lewis. He is camping out and living rough while he restores his parents' derelict cottage, when there is a bit of excitement on the island. Changed little over the centuries, the custom of harvesting peat for fuel can, on occasion, yield secrets from the past. Now, a thin brown arm reaching out of the bog seems to be attached to an ancient Celt, because it is withered and deeply brown. But there is a cute little tattoo of Elvis on it. And the rest of the remains point to a tortured end.

Well, that was then, but now we have DNA and these double helices from the Lewis Man are a sibling match to someone on the island. This someone is an elderly farmer, Tormod Macdonald, whom Fin had known for years and who always claimed to be an only child. But Tormod is now suffering from dementia, and spending great amounts of time living in his head, revisiting his past. His was one of those childhoods spent in care and under the heavy hand of keepers, whose main job descriptions were sadists with sticks. One of Fin's other aims in returning to the island was to repair fences and reestablish old relationships. So when Tormod's family asks for help in this matter, because the local police are looking hard at the Lewis Man's only connection, Fin agrees to help. Fin has always had difficulty leaving his own past behind, but he tracks Tormod's secrets. Naturally, he turns over stones that are hiding surprises, mysteries and evil things that scuttle away trying to remain buried in the sand before he is finished.

The story is as captivating and forbidding as the Hebrides themselves. I read it when it came out in the UK in 2012.

Periphera and Sister Mary Murderous have mentioned G. M. Malliet's Max Tudor adventures before (see here, here, and here). Tudor is a vicar at St. Edwold's, in the not-always-tranquil village of Nether Monkslip in rural England. But once upon a time, Max worked for MI5 and, for one reason or another, he seems to need the skills useful in his previous life more than he could ever imagine.

Max and the villagers have been through A Wicked Autumn (followed by A Fatal Winter and A Pagan Spring) and they are now looking forward to A Demon Summer (Minotaur, October 7), the fourth book in the series. One of the problems this summer arises from local Lord Lilselivet, the 15th Earl in that lineage, who had never met a person he couldn't dislike––and the feeling was usually mutual.

One day, an ill-wisher slips him a dose of gastric discomfort encased in a fruitcake made by the Handmaids of St. Lucy of Monkbury Abbey. The earl's ire results in the bishop asking for help from Max Tudor––which is a turnabout, because he usually is counseling Max to stay away from murder investigations. This is a good thing, because at this abbey there also turns out to be a corpse in the cloister. Max is back again in MI5 mode.

Max wants to put this case to rest, because he is looking forward to his own good fortune, in the form of marriage to a lovely lady who is not exactly the ideal vicar's wife in the eyes of some in the village because of her independent beliefs.

Malliet always provides an interesting tale with characters you can identify with and root for.

It seems that earls just like to cause trouble. In Sally Spencer's eighth book featuring DCI Monika Paniatowski, Supping with the Devil (Severn House, October 1), there's the Earl of Ridley, who is planning to hold a rock festival on his vast grounds. This is the 1970s, Monika has some of the few XX chromosome pairs on the police force and she's not particularly welcome. She recognizes that the move by the Chief Constable to make her an advisor to the earl is really an attempt to wreck her career.

One of the earl's novel moves has given her some concern. He has chosen to employ the notorious Devil's Disciples motorcycle gang to provide the security for the festival. Added to this is the fact that the earl's mother is also outraged enough to want to throw a spanner in the works.

When the body of a tabloid journalist is discovered, the CC excludes Monika from the case, but he may find to his detriment that you can't keep a good woman down.

This is a story that takes on Monika after she has been around a while, so her back story may be a little vague, but the threads of the plot are laced with some humor and unexpected complications. I am really looking forward to this one. It's a bit of déjà vu for mem perhaps.

A little lighter fare is this debut novel by a young librarianm Ashley Weaver, Murder at the Brightwell (Minotaur, October 14). If you enjoy the Georgette Heyer mysteries, or the Dolores Gordon-Smith Jack Haldean series, this may a nice choice for a fall read.

Amory Ames is a wealthy young woman who has a rickety marriage to a young playboy, Milo, so she takes the opportunity for a trip with an old friend who is going to a luxury hotel, the Brightwell. This friend also happens to be ex-fiancé Gil Trent, who is trying to stop his sister from marrying a wastrel. Seeing a reflection of her own marital woes, Amory is happy to help. But when the disreputable ladies' man, Rupert, sticks his spoon in the wall (a Georgette Heyer phrase meaning "kicks the bucket") and Gil is arrested, Amory is determined to prove his innocence.

This becomes complicated when Milo turns up and Amory enlists his help in her investigation. Although theirs is an uneasy alliance, the stakes are high and the lines between the friends and enemies are blurred. A little romance, high society gone awry and murder, what more can you ask for? By the way, if you haven't read Gordon-Smith's Haldean series, you are in for a treat. He is an interesting and complex aviator who flew in World War I and is now a private detective.

Back in 2008, in John Harvey's Cold in Hand, Charlie Resnick went through a particularly distressing time and then must have gone into hibernation or retirement. But now he's back, in what is supposed to be the final Charlie Resnick book, Darkness, Darkness (Pegasus, September 15). Charlie Resnick is famous for his love of Dagwood sandwiches, jazz and his cats named after jazz greats, Dizzy, Miles and Pepper.

Charlie worked out of the Nottingham district and had an excellent squad working under him, and is now asked to return to active duty when a cold case heats up. The original crime was the disappearance of a woman during the Miners' Strike of 1984-85, which tore the country apart with civil discord and turned friend against friend and fathers against sons. Some of these enmities still exist. At that time, Resnick had recently been promoted to Inspector and he played a peripheral role in the case.

The case is slow moving, but the most intriguing part of the story is the flashes back and forth through the years, which meld the past and present of Resnick's life. Another book, which uses the Miners' Strike as a backdrop for murder, is Reginald Hill's exciting Underworld, a Dalziel and Pascoe adventure.

I have been a longtime fan of Charlie Resnick and I am sorry to see him go, but he deserves to sit back with his cup of coffee and his Thelonious Monk or Bessie Smith album and put his feet up. Harvey reports that this is certainly the last crime novel that he is going to write. I will keep up with John Harvey through his blog on Goodreads.

Finally, if you enjoy reading mysteries going a bit further back in time, with a sharp eye for period detail, take a look at Charles Finch's latest, The Laws of Murder (Minotaur, November 11), which takes place in 1876.

Charles Lenox is a Victorian gentleman who enjoys exploring via armchair, and relaxing in his study, reading quietly, and sipping tea. But there is another side to Lenox. He can't pass up a mystery, and at one time he could be found looking for clues throughout London; in Mayfair, in pubs, in the halls of parliament and beyond into the rarefied airs of Oxford.

But more recently, he has been a sedate Member of Parliament until he realized his calling was to do something a little more active. Lenox joins a group of friends in a new venture––a detective agency. He hopes he still has all his sleuthing faculties and will get a chance to prove this when a friend, a member of Scotland Yard, is shot and killed near Regent's Park. He is on the case to prove his mettle.

The clues are quite intriguing: an unlaced boot, a recent wound, and a mysterious luggage ticket––untraceable. Sherlock would have loved the case. Mostly, Lenox reads the message in the clues as danger ahead, but he is ready for anything!

In a few days, I would like to share with you some stories of home-grown crime that top off my fall reading selections.

Review of Peter May's Entry Island

Entry Island by Peter May

As I watch the intrepid athletes compete in the Sochi Olympics, I know that some would give anything for a "do over." It is a fantastic concept, but it is one that is only acceptable in children's games––and then only when played among forgiving friends. Real life is not forgiving. On the other hand, in fiction the rules can be bent and sometimes downright broken! Peter May teases us with this notion in his latest book Entry Island (Quercus, 2013).

"There has been a murder on the Magdalen Islands, out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence," are the first words that Sime Mackenzie hears after another tortuous night of twisting-and-turning insomnia. He is to be part of the investigation team sent from the Montreal police. This was the first murder in these islands since living memory. It took place on l'Île d'Entrée, better known to its inhabitants as Entry Island.

The Madelinots are French-speaking for the most part, but on Entry Island they speak only English. This explained Sime's inclusion on the team, because he was equally at home with French or English. Entry Island is about 900 miles from Montreal, although it is still part of the province of Québec. The police team must make the final leg of the trip by boat.

The victim, James Cowell, was a native of the Islands (called the Magdalens by the French speakers and the Madeleines by the English speakers) and a wealthy businessman who, among other things, ran half the lobster boats in the Madeleines. His wife Kirsty claimed there was an intruder in a mask who attacked her and, when Cowell came to help her, he was stabbed several times.  Most of the team thinks this will be an open-and-shut case, but Sime is unsure because, for one thing, Kirsty looks very familiar to him and she does look as if she has been beaten up.

Sime (pronounced Sheem) is not at the top of his game, because his personal problems are overwhelming him in his sleepless state, and when he does sleep, he is disturbed by vivid recollections of stories read to him by his grandmother, triggered by meeting Kirsty. His grandmother read these stories from an old family journal written by a Simon Mackenzie, written in the mid-1800s when the lands in the Outer Hebrides were being cleared of the starving, poverty-stricken Scottish sharecroppers by the English lords so they could raise sheep. What was it about this remote location that was triggering these memories of the Highland clearances?

There wasn't much on Entry Island except a dwindling population of about one hundred people, a few stores, a church, a school and a post office. So when Kirsty claims she has not left the island for 10 years, and says she never wants to leave, no one believes her. And since the area is so hard to get to, the police doubt the talk about an intruder.  The spotlight is focused solely on Kirsty, particularly when there is another disappearance and possible death of another of the island's inhabitants.

Remnants of a hurricane are barreling down on the islands, and the weather becomes a character in itself as it wreaks havoc, with mighty and furious winds and burning, spitting rain. Entry Island is temporarily cut off from the world as it hunkers down in the storm. I myself felt cold, damp and miserable as I was caught up in the descriptions of the tempest.

Peter May has written several very successful series. His first featured Li Yan, a detective in the Beijing police who has partnered with an American pathologist, Margaret Campbell, to solve some very unusual cases. Then May moved onto France, where Enzo Macleod, a Scottish biologist, took on several amazing cold cases. My favorite series has been the Lewis trilogy, in which Fin Macleod, a Detective Inspector in Edinburgh, returns to his birthplace on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

Entry Island is somewhat of a departure for Peter May, because the murder mystery takes a back seat to the history of the settlement of some of the Madeleine Islands. There is a focus on the very bad old days of the times between the forced dispersal of the Scots to the New World and the difficulties the immigrants faced when their welcome was not to be counted on. The story moves on at a slow pace, as Sime has repeated flashbacks to the days of his ancestors. I believe May's descriptions of the injustices and the inhumanity of the past kept my blood on the boil. It was due to the same Scot in me that makes me shiver when I hear the bagpipes.

Despite an exotic location and the distinctive individuals involved in the crime, the motives for murder are not that unusual. Sime Mackenzie faces a conflict between his professional duty and his personal desires and he is led down a path he could never have foreseen. If you enjoy your crime novels with connections to another time this book would be a great addition to a TBR pile.

My Native Land

Independence Day baubles, bangles and beads are catching my eye everywhere I go. Already travelers are grousing about how long it will take them to get to their July 4th celebration. It is a memorable day, and in my family our annual ritual is to rewatch 1776, the musical.

When I was growing up in a far-away place, the Fourth of July was not exactly a day like any other, but of course it was not a holiday and I went to school as usual. But since I was an American citizen, through my parents, and there were many others like me we did celebrate. Our heritage was important to us and when we sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" we sang all four verses and we knew all the words. In fact, we knew all the words to a few other patriotic songs as well. We stayed connected while in our home away from home.

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand? (Sir Walter Scott)

There are American expats all over the place, and these days we like to remember our members in uniform among them. Martin Limón reminds us about the US Army in Korea in Slicky Boys.

George Sueño and his partner, Ernie Bascom, are both grateful to the army. What for? For George it is because he has a real life, money coming in, and a job to do. He and Ernie are CID investigators for the 8th United States Army in Seoul, Korea. They wear suits and do important work, something George never thought he would do growing up in East LA. Ernie's Chicago youth also left much to be desired.

8th Army PX

After work, these two friends and partners spend their free time in Itaewon, a seedy part of town filled with bars and businesswomen. On this occasion, they do a favor for one of the girls they meet and it results in the death of a British soldier. It turned out that he was a little shady, and as the CID investigators they need to find his murderer before they themselves are in hot water for perhaps leading him to his death.

Part of the investigation reveals connection to a widespread systematic thievery of the American enclaves. After the devastation of the Korean War 20 years before, people were desperate and starving. In the middle of these wastelands were American military settlements surrounded by barbed wire, and these were the only places with food, clothing and shelter. The people would barter with the GIs for the wealth they held, be it so small as a used bar of soap. Others were more aggressive, using thievery. "Slick boys" is what the GIs called them, and the Koreans softened it to "slicky boys." Many were exactly that; boys of 6 to 10 years old. They would slip through the wire and take anything that could fit in their pockets.

Itaewon

In George Sueño's time, they seemed very organized and he wanted to find out just how much. What he found impressed him, because in a way there was a certain honor, since the losses to the American compounds were always kept just below what the US Government allotted for. No greed was permitted. In this way, they also hid from investigations.

As Sueño's investigation proceeds, he feels that he is becoming wrapped in the tentacles of a giant squid. There are more brutal murders and the partners find far-reaching fingers in the pie, such as the North Koreans, the Korean Police, and the Korean and the US Navy. The case is dragging them down to the depths of evil. On the surface, at least part of the problem is the loss of military secrets.

Sueño has to lower himself to abide by the dictates of common thieves, but this did not really bother him. He was from East LA and he had been fighting his way up from the bottom all his life. His strength in his relations with the Koreans is that he is one of the few who bothered to learn the language, to learn about the culture and to understand the desperate circumstances that force people into certain ways of life.

Martin Limón takes us to a Korea that is fascinating, exciting and complex. He uses a bit of the history of the people he writes about to make us appreciate a very different culture that has suffered for the last centuries.

Peter May writes an excellent China series featuring an American pathologist who gets involved in unusual murders. The Fou4th Sacrifice is the second of the series.

In Beijing, one does not have to look far to find a contradiction or a contrast. There is one on every corner. The nearest street vendor might well be a learned ex-university professor who has been transformed by the cultural revolution into a producer of wonderful jian bing, a breakfast pancake, as well as riddles for Li Yan, a senior detective with the Beijing Municipal Police as he rides his bike to work.

"If a man walks in a straight line without turning his head, how can he continue to see everything he has walked past? There are no mirrors involved." asks Mei Yuan.

Today Li Yan has been called to what appears to be a ritual killing. A man had been beheaded, as he knelt with his hands tied behind his back with a silk cord. He has a placard around his neck with an apparent nickname on it, scored through by a single line and the number three. He is the fourth victim found in these circumstances.

The main difference is that this man is an expat American. He has returned to China after many years of living and working in the United States at a prestigious university and has taken a lowly job at the US embassy, going through visas. Another part of the mystery is that he is found at an apartment of his own, not the one given to him by the embassy.

US Embassy, Beijing

The American Embassy has requested that Dr. Margaret Campbell assist in the autopsy of the sacrificial victim. The Chinese are not especially happy about this, but they accept with good grace because Margaret Campbell has helped them before. They know that she sees things with a different and perceptive eye, which gives them a distinct edge in solving the crime. Li Yan, on the other hand is perturbed because he has had feeling for Margaret that developed during a previous case and had been warned that he must avoid any kind of a relationship with her.

Margaret does the postmortem on this last murder victim and does indeed open new avenues of investigation. She also begins to pursue a new relationship with an American archeologist working in China who is intent on soothing the feeling Li Yan has trampled. The American Embassy is interested in assisting in the investigation and wrangles Margaret onto the investigating team as well.

Another stress is placed on Li as his sister abandons her daughter and leaves her with him as she goes off to a secret location to have a forbidden second child, a boy. Li loves the little girl and is grateful that she does not suffer from a new Chinese syndrome known as "the little emperor"––quite commonly seen nowadays as the one child allotted to Chinese families is quite doted upon and very spoiled. These children are acting like––oh no!!––Western children. But at the same time, they are also growing up without cousins, aunts, uncles or extended families. The young men are increasing in preponderance, as girls are not wanted because they are seen as not being there to help in the parents' old age.

The answer to the street vendor's riddle is that the man is walking backwards. Just as to solve this crime, the investigators have to look to the past for clues to solve a murder that is based very much in the present.

Elizabeth Peters has a series involving another expat American. While it doesn’t capture the imagination like the Amelia Peabody series does, it is a lot of fun.

In Street of the Five Moons, corn on the cob and fireworks are theoretically not on the menu. Doctor Vicky Bliss is an art historian from the Midwest, specializing in medieval art and working at the National Museum in Munich. She is tall and eye-catching, so she has had to fight an uphill battle to have herself considered a brain rather than a beauty.

As the book opens, a dead man has been found on the streets of Munich, with a rare jewel sewn into his clothing. It appears to be an artistic masterpiece called the Charlemagne Talisman, one of the treasures of the museum. Except it really isn't. It is a near-perfect copy.

The important questions are, who made the copy and where did it come from? The next questions are, how was someone able to copy the piece so very perfectly and what was the purpose for it? Was someone planning to steal the museum's treasure and replace it with the copy?

These are the questions that appeal to the spy persona in Schmidt, Vicky's boss, and to Vicky herself. Schmidt convinces Vicky to take on the task of tracing the copy and finding out who made it––and what that person is up to. The beginning of the trail takes Vicky to Rome, to the Street of the Five Moons. It is here that she meets John Smythe, a mysterious man, and the fireworks begin.

Wherever you live may there be fireworks in your future!

Note: Versions of these reviews may appear on Amazon, Goodreads and other reviewing sites under my user names there.