What's the Point? Crossbow Murders

Have you ever noticed that when something unusual comes to your attention, it suddenly seems to pop up everywhere? During a recent show on the 2500-year-old tomb of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the narrator mentioned that the invention of the crossbow was likely an important factor in his bloody unification of China in the 5th century BCE. Apparently, crossbows provide a more stable aiming platform and a stronger pull with less effort than traditional bows. This enabled men of lesser skill and strength to become competent archers. Nearly a thousand clay bowmen are among the massive army of terracotta warriors protecting this first emperor of China for eternity.

To me, crossbows are particularly horrible weapons, much more terrifying than knives or even guns, and the thought of someone being killed with one makes my fingernails curl. Perhaps because I was nearly struck by one many years ago, on a fog-shrouded South Carolina beach. That peculiar thwock sound and the still-quivering bolt two feet in front of my face have featured in several Fellini-esque nightmares over the years since. The shooter couldn't possibly have even seen the target he was aiming at in the dense fog. My outraged yell earned a gruff "Sorry," and I dimly saw the backs of two teenage boys leaving the beach at a dead run.

A crossbow bolt fired from within a limousine into the neck of the driver marks the first of a bizarre string of murders in Indulgence in Death, the 31st entry in J. D. Robb's Eve Dallas series. The book opens with a heartwarming chapter of Eve and her mysterious billionaire husband, Roarke, visiting his extended family in the Irish countryside before getting down to the serious business of the serial murders back home in New York. Each murder is performed with a different exotic instrument, all requiring some skill to operate. It gradually becomes clear that the end target of this nasty game will be Eve herself.

Somehow, these police procedurals laced with mild erotica and some weak sci-fi elements always leave me faintly underwhelmed. The author has developed a formula that works well for her, but it varies very little from book to book. Still, she churns out two Eve Dallas books a year in addition to those she writes as Nora Roberts, so some shortcuts are obviously necessary. These books makes for quick light reading.

Moving from theater snacks to a five-course meal, the first mystery in Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series, Still Life, is still a delight after two previous readings. Her books are as much character studies as mysteries, most set in a charmingly improbable location. Jane Neal, retired teacher in the Canadian village of Three Pines, had witnessed three teenage boys in ski masks throwing dung at the bistro owned by Olivier and his partner Gabri and screaming "Fags, Queers." She scolded them by name, causing them to run away. Then Jane, who has never shown her work to anyone, finally offers one of her paintings for a local show. A few mornings later, she is found in the woods––killed by an arrow through the heart.

Gamache and his team are called to the remote village––not on any map––to investigate. The book offers an interesting, if slightly unsettling, discussion of arrowheads designed for competition versus those for hunting, and the wound patterns left by each. Penny's books are excellent to reread, because even absent the suspense of that first reading, there is a great deal of thought-provoking content to linger over and enjoy.

The murder of a police detective in a posh convalescent center for injured police officers opens Watching the Dark, the twentieth in Peter Robinson's Alan Banks series. DI Bill Quinn, strolling around the grounds, is shot through the heart with an arrow from a crossbow. DCI Alan Banks is called to investigate, and among the victim's effects he finds pictures of the victim in compromising positions with a girl who has been missing for six years. DI Quinn had handled the investigation, never solved, into her disappearance.

The Professional Standards Unit is alerted, and they assign DI Joanna Passero to Banks's team to investigate the possibility of corruption on the part of the late DI Quinn. When the case requires Banks to travel to Estonia, much to his disgust he is accompanied by the humorless Passero while Annie Cabot, Banks's usual partner, handles the UK end of the case. While far from the best in the series, this is still a very good mystery, if a little heavy on the travelogue. I enjoy DCI Banks more when he works closer to home, with his own team around him.

Am I alone in my horror of crossbows? Knives, guns, even pitchforks, all make very effective  and fatal weapons in mystery novels without my batting an eyelash. But a crossbow introduced into the story immediately sharpens my attention. What particular murder weapon or weapons makes your hair stand on end?

Meanwhile, Across the Pond . . .

You all know I read a lot of European crime novels. Mostly British mystery, but also Nordic crime fiction, along with some French and a smattering of other countries. I like to read Karen Meeks's Eurocrime blog to keep up on what's being published, but sometimes it's an exercise in frustration. Often, a book I'm anxious to read will be published in the UK many months before it's available in the US––and might not be published in the US at all.

I wish someone would explain to me why, in the supposed global economy, it takes so long for books (and TV series) to be shared between the UK and the US. The wildly popular Downton Abbey's third season is being broadcast in the UK now, but won't make its appearance here until next year. At least Foyle's War, beloved by so many mystery fans, looks like an exception. Filming has begun on a new arc of three two-hour episodes, with Foyle moving into Cold War intelligence at MI5 and Sam married to an MP. It will be broadcast at similar times in the US and UK. PBS has announced that it will be on US screens next summer.

But back to books. Here are some upcoming Eurocrime titles and their waiting times for US availability:

Peter Robinson: Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks #20)
UK: August 16, 2012
Canada: August 28, 2012
US: January 8, 2013

Ian Rankin: Standing in Another Man's Shoes (featuring Malcolm Fox and John Rebus)
UK: November 8, 2012
US: January 15, 2013



Arnaldur Indridason: Black Skies
UK: July 9, 2012
US: Unscheduled

Jo Nesbø: The Bat (#1 in the Harry Hole series, finally translated into English)
UK: October 11, 2012
US: Unscheduled

Fabrice Bourland: Dream Killer of Paris
UK: August 13, 2012
US: Unscheduled (This is #2 in the Singleton & Trelawney series, mysteries with supernatural elements, set in the 1930s. The Baker Street Phantom, the first book, was published in the UK in 2010 and still hasn't been published in the US.)

Marek Krajewski: The Minotaur's Head (Eberhard Mock #6)
UK: April 1, 2012
US: Unscheduled

Fred Vargas: The Ghost Riders of Ordebec (Commissaire Adamsberg #7)
UK: March 7, 2013
US: April 23, 2013

So what is an impatient reader (like me, for example) to do? There are some options. Buying the UK book is, of course, one of them. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Abebooks, Alibris and other US online booksellers often list UK editions for sale to US buyers. Often, the prices are high and so are the shipping costs. Still, this is always worth checking.

Buying from Amazon UK is just not an option for a skinflint like me. Their shipping prices are outrageous. I used to buy European titles quite often from the Book Depository in Gloucestershire. Their prices are converted to US dollars on their website and they offer free shipping anywhere in the world. Fantastic! But then they were acquired by Amazon and now, whenever I look for a book not yet published in the US, it's listed on the Book Depository site as "currently unavailable." I'm no tin-hat conspiracy theorist, but I can't help but think this has something to do with their new Amazon overlords. Especially when I find the book listed on Abebooks as being available for sale from––you guessed it, the Book Depository. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I placed an order for the book from the Book Depository via Abebooks and we'll see what happens.

In many cases, books are published in Canada at about the same time as in the UK. But it turns out that doesn't mean it's a reasonable option to buy from Canada. Amazon Canada charges $7.99 (Canadian, but the US and Canadian dollars are very close right now) per shipment, plus $1.99 per item. Canada's independent bookstore chain, McNally Robinson, charges $10.99 (Canadian) for shipping. In addition, shipments to the US from Canada can be insanely slow, because of US customs. I ordered an item (not a book) from Canada recently and it languished in customs for nearly a month. So unless you're actually going to be in Canada, our neighbors to the north aren't a solution to the problem.

Like any good mystery fan, I couldn't let my quest stop here. I wanted to locate somebody who would send UK books to the US at a reasonable price and without outrageous shipping charges. My search led me to Kennys Bookshop in Galway, Ireland. Their website will display prices in US dollars and they have free worldwide shipping. I've only ordered a couple of books from there as yet (shortly after Amazon took over the Book Depository), but I received the books in a reasonable time and the prices were as advertised.

Just to figure out where to buy one of these books is a fair amount of work, what with having to look up different availability dates, prices, shipping fees and then, in some cases, convert foreign prices to US dollars. It just goes to show you how impatient I am that I am willing to do all this. To give you an idea of the full drill on the process, here's what I looked at for Peter Robinson's Watching the Dark. Note that all prices are expressed in US dollars, with any necessary currency conversions done on the xe.com foreign exchange website on September 23.

Amazon UK: $16.98 for the book, $11.33 for shipping, for a total of $28.31.
Amazon Canada: $19.35 for the book, $10.22 for shipping, for a total of $29.57.
McNally Robinson: $21.50 for the book, $11.26 for shipping, for a total of $32.76
The Book Depository: $19.34 with free shipping shown on Abebooks, though the book is shown as currently unavailable on the bookdepository.com website.
Kennys Bookshop: $16.28 with free shipping
Amazon US: $16.11, but you have to wait until this coming January

So why did I order it from the Book Depository (via Abebooks) instead of Kennys? Two reasons: I had a 10%-off coupon from Abebooks that made the prices very close, but the real reason is that I just have to know whether the Book Depository will send the book even though their website says it's unavailable.  [Update:  The book showed up 10 days after I ordered it. So now we know this is another way to get books from the UK.]

What I haven't mentioned in all of this is the option of buying the UK Kindle version of a book. As many of you probably know already, a UK Kindle title cannot be purchased from a US-registered device. If you're web browsing from the US and/or from a US-registered device, Amazon UK doesn't event display the UK Kindle information. A number of (non-Amazon) website discussions describe workarounds, but the steps and issues involved are beyond the scope of this post.

Does anybody else have some good intelligence on the different publication dates in the US and UK––and how to get UK publications in the US without paying outrageous prices? (Or do you all just think I'm nuts to care so much about a book I can just get the easy way by waiting few months?)

Ah, Not-So-Sweet Mystery of Life

If you're reading this, we don't have to tell you that the mystery genre has been a hit from the beginning and seems to gain in popularity all the time. There's a lot of theorizing out there about why mysteries are so popular. Most of the theories are pretty high-falutin' stuff. The real reason might be simpler; like that book mysteries are so much better than the many other mysteries we have to deal with every day.

Georgette Spelvin: I'll go along with this reasoning, because the last time I tried to invoke Freud and Jung to explain why mystery reading is so addicting, you asked me what I'd been smoking, Sister.

Sister Mary Murderous: In real life, men are mysterious to women and women are mysterious to men. But on a day-to-day basis, the man/woman mysteries can be pretty pedestrian. Like: Why can't my husband find anything in the refrigerator or figure out where half the stuff goes when we unload the dishwasher? To be fair, I should talk about the things he finds inexplicable about me. But, hey, it's my blog and who says I have to be fair?

Georgette Spelvin: Not I. Life isn't fair. Just read any book of crime fiction to discover an innocent decision that leads to Big Trouble. Simply renting a place to live is disastrous in Ruth Rendell's A Demon in My View and Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Circular Staircase. The decision to eat a chocolate brings death in Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case. I guess you could call this a sweet mystery of death.

Maltese Condor: Ah, sweet mystery of life! I believe, according to Bing Crosby in the song of the same name, the main mystery is falling in love. Carl Sandburg, who wrote, in his poem, Explanations of Love, "There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming is a mystery" would agree with Bing. Your mysteries are more tangible, Sister.

Sister Mary Murderous: If you're a parent, you know all about cracking alibis, following a trail and ultimately solving the crime. But, let's face it, the kids aren't exactly criminal masterminds, so breaking their alibis doesn't take a super-sleuth. Following a trail isn't too tough either, since it's usually made up of mucky footmarks and sticky fingerprints. The only real challenge is subjecting the convicted culprit to a punishment that (a) is inventive, (b) is effective, and (c) isn't so inventive and effective that child protective services gets involved.

Maltese Condor: Peter Robinson's Close To Home tells the story of the deaths of two 15-year-old boys, decades apart. The cases would have been much easier to solve if the water hadn't been muddied by the fact that at least in one case, other boys––rascals and scamps, the bunch of them––hadn't felt that there were some things they couldn't tell their parents, such as playing hooky and problems with dirty old men. One of the scamps, Alan Banks, learned the value of the truth in his later years as a CID Inspector. Frankly, some parents tend to down-pedal much of what of their offspring tell them about their activities.

Georgette Spelvin: Yes, some parents are guilty of doing that. Then there are some parents who usher their kids into criminal behavior. We all remember Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Maybe you haven't read the hilarious "coming-of-legal-incarceration-age" story narrated by Luke Fulmer in Dallas Hudgens's Drive Like Hell, in which the 10-year-old Luke meets his dad Lyndell for the first time when he shows up in Luke's bedroom in the middle of the night. A few hours later, Luke is crawling through the doggie door of an auto supplies store to steal a distributor cap and an oil filter at Lyndell's request and driving the car while Lyndell rides shotgun "with a Kool snagged in his teeth and a pint of Motlow between his legs." I wasn't raised in the South by redneck parents like Luke, but I felt I was tagging along with Luke while I read this fabulous book.

Della Streetwise: Here's another guy who was born to bend the law. Nick Harkaway's Joe Spork is the son of a London gangster and holds down a job as an antique clocks restorer. While working on a decades-old mechanism for an old intelligence agent, he activates a doomsday device from the Cold War days. This sets off a race to nab it by individuals and organizations of all stripes. Joe decides not to cower behind the aspidistra. It's no mystery that Harkaway is John le Carré's son. His brand-new book, Angelmaker, is an exhilarating and funny chase between many spies and I loved it.

Currently I'm reading Fannie Flagg's Standing in the Rainbow. Thanks for the intro to this author, Sister MM. How I got along without reading her is a mystery to me.

Georgette Spelvin: Right now, I'm accompanying Minnesota Det. Sarah Pribek as she searches for her missing husband in Jodi Compton's terrific The 37th Hour.

Sister Mary Murderous: While your book sleuth is out and about, interviewing witnesses and suspects, we're at home, pursuing our own mysteries. Instead of a missing-persons case, we're tracking down the ever-elusive socks that disappear from the laundry. For those of us over 40, we're in hot pursuit of our reading glasses. (Hint: Try the top of your head.)

Maltese Condor: I am reminded of the series about the Peculiar Crimes Unit, featuring aging detectives John May and Arthur Bryant, who won't hang up their hats. They can find solutions to the most complex puzzling crimes, but one of them (I can't remember which!) can't ever find his glasses.

As far as I know, the mystery of the lost socks has been solved. Jerry Seinfeld has revealed that these are not losses but, rather, well-coordinated escapes, planned while in the paired state. Many a sock marriage has gone down the tubes and I won't go into incompatibility, because that is a sock of a different stripe.

Georgette Spelvin: My family members could mystify competitively. I mean, how can a kid's usual good sense develop the hiccups, allowing initials to be carved into the door of a brand-new car, or a twig to be employed as a pick-lock to completely jam a locked front door? But it's inanimate objects that really make me shake my head. How is it that inanimate objects sniff out occasions when you're vulnerable? Like:

• The spilled glass of milk that lands, not on the floor, but on the back of your dog, so he can run madly all over the house, shaking himself and rolling on the carpet;
• The paper cup of coffee that explodes all over your shirt-front as you're getting up to speak to a room full of people; and
• The house door that locks itself at 6:00 a.m., when you're outside in the dark, dragging the garbage can to the curb, dressed in your rattiest pajamas and your husband's hiking boots––and, of course, not carrying keys or a cellphone.

Sister Mary Murderous: On the home front, we use forensic investigation techniques, but they involve things like trying to figure out what's in that Tupperware bowl under the green fuzz, whether that smell means the leftover Chinese food is no good anymore or if that shirt can be worn again before it's laundered.

Periphera: What is that disturbing sticky crud that forms on the bottom of dining tables? Lunching at a restaurant, I accidentally brushed the underside of a very clean-looking table and immediately had to go wash my hands. Came home and crawled around wiping furniture from the underside.

Sister Mary Murderous: And then there are puzzle mysteries. I love puzzle mysteries. The book has maps, a limited universe of suspects, timetables, alibis, witness statements and the like, and if you put your mind to it, you can actually figure whodunnit, how, where and when. But in real life, you just get to solve the puzzle of how you can get to work, run your errands, make your meetings and appointments and other obligations on time and still maybe have some time for yourself at the end of the day.

Maltese Condor: Parnell Hall has a bunch of mysteries relating to actual puzzles. He's also well-known for his YouTube musical diatribe about the mysteries of the publishing world.

Crosswords are supposed to make you smarter and ward off Alzheimer's disease, but sudoku puzzles just make me feel like an idiot who still has problems with the numbers one to nine.

Sister Mary Murderous: Another problem with the mysteries of life is that unlike books, there is no solution. There is no point even pursuing questions like:*

• Why does my spouse think we have to clean the house before the cleaners get here?
• Why am I always having to tell Joe in Accounting, "My eyes are up here, Joe"?
• How come my appliance/vehicle falls apart just after the warranty runs out?
• Speaking of cars, you know the trouble signals that show you pictograms intended to alert you that your washer fluid is low, your headlight is out, you need oil, or whatever? Why do they look nothing like what they're supposed to be signaling? They all look like they're trying to warn of an alien invasion or an oil rig explosion.
• How is it possible that I have 500 TV channels but nothing to watch?
• Am I turning into my mother?



Dick Vitale

• When we have company, how does the cat immediately choose the one cat-hater in the crowd to get all friendly with?
• At golf tournaments, why are there so many idiots who scream "Get in the hole!" as soon as the golfer's club hits the ball––even when the guy is teeing off a 600-yard par-5 hole?
• Does anybody think Dick Vitale is a good, interesting or even bearable sports announcer? 
• The Kardashians. Why? And here's a sports/reality TV crossover mystery: What the heck is up with Bruce Jenner's face?

* Not that any of these questions are ones I've ever pondered personally!

Maltese Condor: I can sympathize with anyone who wants to clean up before the cleaners come in, because they might have house cleaner like sharp-eyed Lily Bard, from Charlaine Harris's series in the not-so-sleepy little town of Shakespeare, Arkansas. 

Or how about sharp-tongued Blanche White, from Barbara Neely's excellent series about a middle-aged domestic worker? Blanche is a women who's had bad times and, in Blanche On the Lam, we find her under suspicion for murder. Fortunately, she's in a great position to ferret out the clues she needs to find the true culprit.

Georgette Spelvin: MC, your talk about being in a great position for ferreting out clues reminds me of Ray Milland in The Big Clock, a noir movie based on the 1946 book by Kenneth Fearing. Or how about James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window? In that movie, Stewart is confined to a wheelchair, and he's in a uniquely good position for spying on his neighbors. The first time I saw it, it scared the daylights out of me because Raymond Burr is so darned creepy. Watching it still makes getting to sleep later a mysterious process.

Sister, we're making a rule that there's to be no more mention of the Kardashians on Read Me Deadly Ever Again.

The Material Witnesses: Got any imponderable mysteries of life to lay on us?

Book Review of Peter Robinson's Before the Poison

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson

Chris Lowndes is a Yorkshireman who has made a successful Oscar-winning career in Hollywood, writing music for the movies. But he's always dreamed of one day returning to live in the Yorkshire Dales, and his beloved wife, Laura, was happy to agree. When cancer takes Laura, the devastated Chris decides to continue with the plan, spending the next year making arrangements, including buying a house, called Kilnsgate, in the countryside.

Meeting up with Heather, his attractive realtor, upon arriving at Kilnsgate for the first time, Chris notices she seems a little cagey about the house's history. He soon learns that Heather somehow neglected to tell him that the house has a deadly past. During a Christmas holiday dinner with friends in 1953, a blizzard snows everyone in. Late that night, the host, Doctor Fox, died of an apparent heart attack. But, upon investigation, it is ruled that the true cause of death was poison. Rumors swirl that Fox's wife––and nurse in his medical practice––was having an affair with a much younger man from the village and that she did away with Fox so that she could be with her lover. In short order, and with very little actual evidence, Grace Fox is convicted of murder and becomes the next-to-last woman hanged in England.

At first simply curious to find out more about the house's history, its residents and the murder, Chris soon becomes nearly obsessed, almost literally haunted by Grace and determined to find out what really happened that fateful winter night in 1953. Chris's investigation takes him to France and South Africa to talk to people who knew Grace, including her lover and people who served with her in the nursing services under nightmarish conditions during World War II in the Pacific.

When he is in Yorkshire, Chris works to make the new life that he and Laura had planned. He settles into the house and village, making new friends, taking long walks and enjoying the beauty of the Dales. When he is alone, he devotes much of his time to composing a sonata to honor Laura's memory and trying to come to terms with her death.

Chris's preoccupation with Grace and Laura brought to mind Vera Caspary's book, Laura––and the movie adaptation starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney––in which a private detective becomes obsessed with the dead Laura, whose death he is investigating. Chris is tormented by his own dead Laura and, in the dreams that come to him nearly every night, Grace and Laura become confused.

Peter Robinson is best known for his long-running police procedural series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. If you are familiar with that series, you'll find this book to be very much a departure from its style. This is not a police procedural. It's a first-person narrative in two senses: Chris's story and the interspersed excerpts from Grace's diary of her harrowing experiences in the Far East and in France during the war. The narratives give the book a feeling of immediacy and intimacy. In the first part of the novel, there are also excerpts from a book describing Grace's trial. These excerpts are chilling, because they show how her conviction was based on prejudice and help us identify with Chris's compulsion to investigate.

The contemporary story is set in late autumn and winter, and Robinson paints a vivid picture of Chris's new home; the beauty of the countryside, the quiet of falling snow, the warmth and conviviality of an evening in the local pub or at home enjoying good food and drink with family and friends. He brings Grace poignantly to life through her diary and the stories her old acquaintances tell Chris, and his descriptions of Grace's wartime experiences and of Yorkshire in the 1950s will make you feel you are there.

The book has some weaknesses. Its ending was abrupt, and Robinson includes a budding romance between Chris and Heather that is unconvincing because his characterization of Heather didn't convey anything that made her seem attractive. And that's even if you ignore her trying to pull a fast one on him about the house's history. But these problems are fairly minor and don't stand in the way of my recommending the book. I'm glad Peter Robinson took a break from the Alan Banks series to bring us this moving and involving story.

Note: I received a free review copy of this book. A version of this review appears on the Amazon product page, under my Amazon username.