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.

It Oughta Be a Law

I'm a mostly-retired lawyer. When I began practicing law in 1985, it was at a big firm, just at the start of the go-go era. The law practice soon became all about billing the maximum number of hours possible, accounting for every minute of the day, working long days six days a week and never feeling like my time was my own. (I know, I know, you're just overcome with sympathy for lawyers.)

I blame the concept of law as a business, which became popular at that time, and which displaced the notion of law as a learned profession. As a result of my experiences, I don't have much interest in legal mysteries. It's sort of like that old saw about how you'll never eat sausage again once you've seen how they're made. But there is one exception to my aversion toward legal mysteries: I'm a sucker for British mysteries about lawyers practicing in the good old days. Why? Let me count the ways.

Trials are over in nothing flat.

This makes life a lot easier for lawyers. I do see, though, that it's not necessarily such a bonus for the parties in interest, especially defendants. Take Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison, for example. Harriet Vane is on trial for killing her lover, Philip Boyes, and it looks like she is only days away from a date with the hangman. Fortunately, Lord Peter Wimsey's sometime agent, Miss Climpson, is on the jury and she holds out against the other jurors' guilty verdict. The hung jury gives Lord Peter the time to find the real culprit and save Harriet's neck.

A defendant lucky enough to be a member of the House of Lords could escape the potential pitfalls of the British criminal court system by demanding a trial by his peers; which, in that case, meant Peers of the Realm. The law was changed in 1948, but when Lord Peter's brother, the Duke of Denver, was accused of murder in Clouds of Witness, the law was still in force. The trial in the House is quite a scene, with 300 members of the House of Lords entering the chamber two by two, wearing robes with ermine rows on their shoulders. Instead of a drab bailiff droning out the particulars of the charge, the Sergeant-At-Arms and the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery hand around a Commission and a Staff of Office and then read the Certiorari and Return, including a "long, sonorous rigmarole" that ends in the reading of the charge of murder against "the most noble and puissant prince Gerald Christian Wimsey, Viscount St. George, Duke of Denver, a Peer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

Whew! After all that, the trial is almost an anticlimax. But when Sir Impey Biggs (one of the great character names) gives his final speech for the defense, he not only asks for a finding of Not Guilty, but notes that with it will come the restoration to the Duke of the "traditional symbols of his exalted rank." I suppose that means that he gets back his nobility and his puissance, whatever that means.

British barristers and judges wear nifty wigs and robes.

Having a bad hair day? Not a problem if you're a barrister or judge. Just pop on your wig and nobody will ever know. And those robes will hide gravy stains, missing buttons and any number of other crimes against fashion. Of course, some lawyers are less likely to need the camouflage than others. Frances Fyfield created the character of Helen West who, like herself, has a career as a lawyer for the Metropolitan Police and, later, for the Crown Prosecution Service. Although Helen deals with some very gritty crimes and many deeply dubious individuals, she is no fashion criminal. Some of Fyfield's award-winning Helen West novels include A Question of Guilt, Not That Kind of Place and Deep Sleep.

British court rules allow judges to question witnesses and to comment on the evidence to the jury.

Wouldn't this make being a judge a thousand times more fun than it is in the US in the present day? It would be like being Judge Judy, only for real––and with higher-toned rhetoric and better costumes. Although I think this judicial ability to shoot your mouth off whenever you want would make being a judge much more appealing to the kind of ego-driven person who is drawn to the law (yes, I said it), that power doesn't seem to make it all that worthwhile to some British judges. Take the poor Magistrate in Henry Cecil's Settled Out of Court, who is having a bad morning with a particularly full-of-himself and long-winded barrister named Tewkesbury:

MR. TEWKESBURY: Now, officer, I want you to follow this next question very closely.
CONSTABLE: I try to follow all your questions closely.
TEWKESBURY: And to what measure of success?
MAGISTRATE: You needn't answer that question.
TEWKESBURY: But, sir, with the greatest possible respect, am I not entitled to an answer?
MAGISTRATE: No.
TEWKESBURY: But, sir, unless I know the measure of success which the officer has in following my questions, it becomes more difficult for me to frame the next question.
MAGISTRATE: So far you seem to have overcome your difficulties most manfully. I have observed no lack of questions.
TEWKESBURY: Your Worship's courtesy overwhelms me.
MAGISTRATE (to himself): I wish it would.
TEWKESBURY: Is it now convenient, sir, that I should resume my cross-examination where I left off?
MAGISTRATE: Very well.
TEWKESBURY: Well then, officer, would you be kind enough to tell me the measure of success with which you have understood my previous questions?
MAGISTRATE: I've just said he needn't answer that question.
TEWKESBURY: But, sir, did I not understand you to change your mind and say that I may ask it? If I may say so, the greatest judges change their minds. Judex mutabilis, judex amabilis, if I may say so.
MAGISTRATE: Mr. Tewkesbury, would you kindly continue your cross-examination of this witness? I've fifty summonses to hear after this.
TEWKESBURY: I don't know how your Worship does it and retains your good humour.
MAGISTRATE (quietly, to his clerk): I've about had enough of this. Is he sober?

Georgette is a devotée of Henry Cecil's books and, doubtless, could contribute many more stories about judges and lawyers in Cecil's world.

John Mortimer's Horace Rumpole is of the view that judges seem to live only to undermine him by interrupting his witness examination in order to inject their own probing questions and by casting aspersions on his arguments when they give instructions to the jury. It's clearly a wonderful power for the judge, but not so much for its target, Rumpole. In the story "Rumpole on Trial," Rumpole complains that one of his regular nemeses, Judge "Ollie" Oliphant, sighs and rolls his eyes when Rumpole sums up the case for the defense and responds to Rumpole's arguments by telling the jury: "Of course, you can believe that if you like, Members of the Jury, but use your common sense, why don't you?"

British coroners have a power similar to judges to guide the outcome of cases. In Colin Watson's Flaxborough novels, longtime Coroner Albert Amblesby conducts inquests with an iron fist and a lot of sardonic comment. You get the impression that nothing ever happens in an inquest that isn't orchestrated by Amblesby. If you haven't read any Flaxborough novels, give Lonelyheart 4122 a try first. I think it's the funniest, and it features one of the great side characters in crime fiction, the deceptively genteel-appearing con-woman Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime.

Legal research was a piece of cake.

Statutes, regulations, administrative rulings, case precedents and all manner of legal authorities can take forever to slog through. The amount of material increases at a dizzying pace. But in Delano Ames's She Shall Have Murder, published in 1948 (see a full review at the end of this post), it was a much simpler matter. Law clerk Jane Hamish goes into the office of solicitor and senior partner Mr. Playfair to ask him about a matter of company law. Playfair responds: "In answer to Sir John's inquiry, Miss Hamish, quote to him paragraph twelve of the Companies Act of 1929. You'll find it in the fifth volume on the left there on the top shelf, page 116." Just imagine having all the law you need, right there in your office and, apparently, memorizable.

Speaking of cake, how about the snacks in the office?

I don't want to sound like a whiner, but our idea of a snack at the office was some scorched coffee from the Bunn-O-Matic, a candy bar from the newsstand downstairs or, if you could spare a little more time, a dash out to the coffee shop for a cookie. But in these old British mysteries, the lawyers seem to spend almost as much time taking breaks for tea, coffee and biscuits as they do working.

When I was reading She Shall Have Murder, it seemed like I was always hungry. It must have something to do with the fact that the staff spent so much time in the kitchen, boiling up hot water for tea, getting plates of buns and biscuits, opening tins of sardines and making sandwiches.

Forget the snacks, how about the drinks?

Even better than always having tea and biscuits in the office, the lawyers go out for long lunches, always seem to have a bottle of sherry (or something stronger) in their cupboards and, by 5:00 pm, you can usually find them propping up the bar at their favorite watering hole. In Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar series, the lawyers at 62 New Square seem to think that being "called to the Bar" means the siren song of their local wine bar, the Corkscrew, where they crack open bottles of Nierstein as often as they crack open law books.

Horace Rumpole, the most famous tippling barrister, can be found most evenings at Pommeroy's Wine Bar, a glass of what author John Mortimer calls Chateau Fleet Street or Chateau Thames Embankment in hand. I never thought about it before, but it does seem that in crime fiction, English lawyers drink wine, while police detectives seem to prefer beer and whisky. Is it a class thing or does it just go with the job? Maybe I should check and see what Elizabeth George's Thomas Lynley drinks. (I think wine, but I'm not sure.) Lynley is both a police detective and the 8th Earl of Asherton, so his choice of tipple might be something of an indicator whether the British character's drink of choice is based on class or profession. Or, maybe not, since Elizabeth George is an American.

* * *

Reading these books could just about ruin the practice of law for anybody trying to do the job these days. Hmm. Maybe I'll forward some of these books to some of today's law-as-a-business types and show them how much more fun it was (and could be?) to practice law as a learned profession.

If you'd like to read other classic mysteries featuring British lawyers, here are some suggestions:

Cyril Hare's Francis Pettigrew series, beginning with Tragedy At Law

Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale series

R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke series

Michael Underwood's Rosa Epton series

Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair

Michael Gilbert's Smallbone Deceased, Death Has Deep Roots, The Crack In the Teacup and Flash Point

Agatha Christie's "Witness For the Prosecution" (and the film of the same name, starring Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power and Elsa Lanchester)

Check out this annotated edition
from Manor Minor Press!

Review of Delano Ames's She Shall Have Murder

There are few things I enjoy more than a good, old-fashioned British puzzle mystery. The kind with a limited number of suspects, and whose solution depends largely upon figuring out times and places, and picking up on small clues dropped in dialog. But the mystery also has to have an appealing sleuth. Delano Ames gives us all the elements of an excellent classic mystery, along with a bonus: two appealing sleuths.

Jane Hamish is a law clerk at the small London firm of Playfair & Son. Her fiancé, Dagobert Brown, is currently unemployed. A regular client, the extremely paranoid Mrs. Robjohn, has been found dead in her apartment. The death is ruled accidental, the result of the gas jet in the gas heater going on in the middle of the night when gas service is restored after an outage. Dagobert, who visited Mrs. Robjohn earlier that evening with Jane, realizes that the death was actually a murder. With his plentiful spare time, he begins an investigation.

Over drinks, tea and dinners, Jane and Dagobert compare notes about his sleuthing and what she has been able to find out in the office. They have quite a few suspects: Mrs. Robjohn's son, Douglas; his secret fiancée and Jane's office co-worker Sarah; Major Stewart, one of the law firm partners; Rosemary, another co-worker and someone who shares a secret with Major Stewart; Oates, the light-fingered office runner with apparent underworld connections; and old Mr. Playfair himself. Figuring out the culprit will take a lot of devious tricks by Dagobert, and some risky ploys by Jane.

Delano Ames's writing is delightfully wry, and Dagobert and Jane are a lively, smart-talking pair. They're not unlike Nick and Nora Charles in some ways. Dagobert delights in tricking suspects and driving them a little crazy with his antics, while Jane often tries to puncture Dagobert's bumptiousness with a well-placed dart or two. But, unlike Nora, Jane is an active partner in the sleuthing; a supremely intelligent young woman who is up to the challenge of solving the crime.

Note: A version of this review appears on Amazon, under my username there.

The Shirty Thirties: Tongue-in-Cheek Cozies

England's gracious country manors have probably hosted more fictional murders than the mean streets of any major city. They're just more discreet about them; preferring to sweep such embarrassing incidents under the rug, or at least keep them out of the newspapers! Like many readers, I can't seem to get enough of these nostalgic tales of luxurious lifestyles and leisurely weekends that aren't there any more, and was delighted recently to find a couple of new-to-me offerings.

A book tabled outside a used bookstore introduced me to the work of British author James Anderson and his lugubrious Detective Inspector Wilkins. Wilkins is a kind of counterpoint to Christie's Poirot: openly sure that he has been promoted beyond his ability and "not sanguine, not sanguine at all, M'Lord" about his ability to resolve the case at hand. After which, of course, he solves the crime quite handily through a series of brilliant Poirot-like deductions. The crimes take place at Alderly, the small (a mere dozen guest rooms, imagine!) but lovely manor house of George Saunders, 12th Earl of Burford, his wife Lavinia, and their daughter Gerry.

In The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cozy, Gerry invites her orphaned and impecunious friend Jane Clifton for a long weekend even as her Uncle Richard, a government minister, is preparing to conduct secret negotiations with representatives of a foreign power at Alderly. The Earl has invited a Texas millionaire and fellow gun collector with his wife and secretary, and the Countess expects a notorious sponger who "hangs around like a flu bug" according to the Earl, as well as an author researching Gracious Country Homes of Britain for an upcoming book.

Full house at Alderly this weekend, and a very odd mix, thinks the venerable butler Merryweather as he scans the guest list. And 13 at dinner, how very unfortunate. But as it happens, a French baroness traveling past has a fortuitous road accident and is invited to stay while her car is repaired. Poor Lord Burford is greatly relieved that he won't have to plead illness and dine alone in his bedroom to even the table after all!

Between the open-handed affability of the Earl and the social skills of his Countess, Alderly prides itself on its hospitality. However, its lavender-scented linen-clad beds must be pretty uncomfortable––or perhaps it was the thunderstorm?––but on Saturday night it seemed nearly everyone was creeping around the dark halls on clandestine errands, bumping and thumping each other, none of them on the, er, usual romantic business. The Sunday sun rises on two fewer guests, one found shot in the lake and the other found equally dead in a well-publicized secret passage. A fortune in jewels and a pair of rare dueling pistols have also disappeared.

This book is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek romp through mystery's Golden Age, with frequent allusions, both direct and subtle, to the famous fictional detectives and mysteries of the period. It has everything a proper country house-party needs: spies, thieves, blackmailers, murderers, as well as a very creative method of disposing of a body. The book included a map, but I really needed a list of the characters and a flowchart to keep track of the action. Who done it came as a complete surprise to me.

A true confession: Regency romances, aside from Austen's, bore me to tears. I overdosed so badly in my teens that the sight of an empire waistline on a book cover can drive me straight to another aisle. Despite this, I picked up regency queen Georgette Heyer's Why Shoot a Butler? for the charming vintage––and definitely not Regency––cover.

Frank Amberly is motoring to Graythorne, his uncle's country place, for a long weekend and gets exasperatingly lost in the dark and mist. Finally passing an Austin pulled over by the side of the road, he asks rather rudely for directions. An equally rude young woman standing by the car directs him back the way he had come.

As he cautiously turns the Bentley in the narrow lane, his headlights pick up a man slumped behind the starred windscreen of the Austin, his shirt bloody. The young woman won't give her name or come with him to the police station to report the death. While she is carrying a gun, Amberly determines that it has not been recently fired, so he leave her there and gallantly doesn't mention her presence at the scene to the police.

While the story line here was a little different from one of Heyer's romances, the villains were obvious and odious, and the love-hate relationship developing between Amberly and one of the suspects took up quite a bit of the book. Not a keeper for me, or an author I'll look for again.

Now I'm torn. How to spend the afternoon? Tennis, or maybe golf? Or curl up with a cozy fire and a book in the dear old library with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves? Darling, please ring for tea. We'll have it in here, not in the drawing room––so cozy, isn't it?

A Fireside Chat with a Hot Female Shamus

During these cold winter evenings, it's a luxury to sit by the fire and escape into a book, especially if the book comes equipped with a tough, pool-playing shamus named Alessandra Martillo.

Al is of Puerto Rican heritage. She grew up in New York City's public housing. Her father, a military man, was largely absent although he made sure his 6-year-old daughter knew how to defend herself and drummed it into her head that men are only after one thing. Al was sent to live with an aunt after her mother committed suicide when she was 10 years old. She ran away and lived on the streets for a year until she was rescued by her Tío Bobby. A career in the NYPD evaporated when Al was thrown out of the police academy. Al has serious problems with authority.

When Norman Green's The Last Gig begins, Al is working for PI Marty Stiles, an ex-cop who knows his stuff, but who's not above getting his hands dirty for his clients. Neither is he above having the hots for his employee. Even though Al made it clear she's not interested, he still can't keep his cool around her. When she wears low-rise jeans, "his tongue hangs out so far you could put a knot in it and call it a tie."

Stiles has an acquaintance, Daniel Caughlan, an Irish mobster and trucking company owner. Someone is hijacking his trucks, possibly for transporting drugs. Caughlin suspects he's being set up for a fall and someone close to him is involved. Although Stiles has had Al handling only minor investigations such as car repossessions, Caughlan hires Al because she's smart, stubborn, doesn't scare and "can take a punch." He wants her to name the traitor. It doesn't take long before Al is digging into the death of Caughlan's musician son 6 months earlier and she realizes it's much less straightforward than Caughlin thinks. It's also very dangerous for Al.

It's hard to imagine a situation that Al would consider too dangerous. She's courageous to the point of foolhardiness, probably because she's stronger and more coordinated than most men. Al is also beautiful. She's not a Barbie doll but "the kind of broad who could pitch a shutout against your softball team, hit one out herself, then drink you under the table after the game."

These same traits that make Al an exciting heroine in the style of Lisbeth Salander and Kathleen Mallory can also be a source of eye rolling and tedium when all the reminders of her attractiveness and strength start piling up. Still, as long as the reader accepts a near-superhuman heroine, it's easy to root for Al and enjoy Green's book. The author has a detailed knowledge of his characters' city and the music industry that employs some of them. Other than Al, the characters are believable people. The plot is engrossing and it moves at a satisfactory pace, but what makes the book is Alessandra Martillo. She's da bomb and I'll read the sequel, Sick Like That.

I'm not sure when I'll get to that sequel, because I have some other books on a shelf near the fireplace. I'm anxious to go back to the Philippines via reading Alexander Yates's Moondogs. Kirkus Reviews describes the book in this way: "The kidnapping of an American businessman in the Philippines sets in motion an odd series of events involving his estranged son, a hard-boiled cop who inspired a hugely popular film series and a ragtag strike force with special powers." That sounds good to me.

But before visiting the Philippines, I'm enjoying China with Qui Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine. This is a book with another irresistible protagonist, Chief Inspector Chen Cao, head of the Shanghai Police Bureau's Special Case Squad. Dick Adler of the Chicago Tribune says, "Blends history, plenty of poetry and a compelling mystery: the murder of Guan Hongying, a former national role-model worker, a beautiful young woman who slipped from patriotic fame into loneliness and depravity... We get to see, smell, taste and hear an amazingly evocative portrait of a country."

I hope that wherever you are, you are safe and warm and have a good book to read.

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.

Book Review of Leighton Gage's A Vine in the Blood

A Vine in the Blood by Leighton Gage

"Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood" (Ezekiel 19:10)

The blood-red tint of bougainvilleas is the main concern of an unusual color-blind gardener named Luca Vas when he arrives at the São Paolo home of Juraci Santos. Santos is a vindictive, distrustful woman who just happens to be the mother of the greatest, as well as most famous, fútbol player in the world. Luca wants to stay on her good side, so he is making some changes in the garden. Luca does not expect to find actual red blood, the color of which he can only imagine, and in such a way that he will never forget. Murder has been done and Juraci Santos is missing.

Tico "The Artist" Santos is the principal striker for the Brazilian team, which has been favored to win the FIFA Fútbol World Cup, the most highly anticipated sporting event on earth, which is being hosted by Brazil and is slated to start in three weeks. Whereas for many fútbol lovers, the game is their main love, for The Artist, elite though he may be, his mother is more important.

São Paulo

Fútbol is better known to us as soccer, but the rest of the world prefers the original name because it is a game matching balls and feet. I was fascinated by the little tidbit Gage dropped in the story that the English brought the game to Brazil. It took off in such a way that the prophetic words of Ezekiel can equally be rephrased to say, "Fútbol is like a vine in the blood" because it takes hold of a fan to the point of mania. Thus, there is a national push to get this crime solved as quickly as possible. Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his crack team from the federal police are summoned to São Paulo and the game is afoot. (I couldn't resist that).

It is immediately obvious that there is a long list of people who might want to keep The Artist off the field when Brazil goes for its sixth World Cup title. The motives could be personal, or business, or even nationalistic. Could this be the work of Argentina, Brazil’s most bitter rival? Perhaps the culprits are trying to ruin the bookmaking odds or it might even be the work of someone who just would like Juraci out of her son's life. Whatever the reasons, The Artist is definitely not focused on his game.

I was caught up in the fútbol fever within a few pages of opening the book. Leighton Gage paces this interesting, exciting story just like the build-up to a big game. There is a rhythm behind the scenes that suggests a drumbeat––like that of the samba inexorably drawing the reader in to become part of the common denominator that unifies all strata of Brazilian society, from the President to the peon. Inspector Mario Silva's mandate is clear: he is to find Juraci Santos alive and before the World Cup begins. All of Brazil is depending on it. He has 13 days.

Murder mysteries are my main reading and it is always exciting to find a novel that takes me to an interesting locale and that is an original, exotic and stimulating story. The finale of this complex tale was not what I expected, but it made sense. This is the fifth of the Mario Silva series. As it has progressed, the characters and their personal lives are being fleshed out, which adds to the story without diluting the action. Though part of a series, this book can be read as a standalone because it is complete within itself. You can read it while others are watching the Super Bowl if American football is not your cup of coffee––Brazilian coffee, of course. In the end it was GOAL!! Leighton Gage.