Published 2015
Characters: Vera Stanhope, detective
Holly and Joe, her asssistants
Lizzie Redhead, a young offender whose parents live in the converted farmhouse near where the murders take place
Percy, a local man is driving home from the pub when he stops to answer the call of nature. Off the side of the road he finds the body of a young man, a house-sitter for the big house, Gilswick Hall, whose owners are visiting Australia where they are about to become grand-parents. Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene and then takes Percy to the home he shares with his daughter Susan. She goes into the big house once a week to clean and has a key, which Vera takes, and with Joe they head to the house itself for clues to the identity of the deceased. They let themselves in through the kitchen and explore the area, only to find the body of another, older man in the apartment where the house sitter lived. Both of these men turn out to be avid students of moths and at first the team can find no other connection between the two. The nearest inhabitants to the crime scene are some retired couples who live in an old farm house that’s been converted to modern apartments. Lizzie Redhead’s parents live in one apartment and they are anxiously awaiting her return home from prison. Lizzie had served time for attacking a young woman with a knife and her parents are understandably uneasy about having her back home with them, although they love their daughter, they don’t know how to handle her. She was locked up when the murders took place, but she may have known the killer.
mystery
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Published 2013
This is a long story, over 700 pages, which takes place in New Zealand during the time of the gold rush. As one might imagine there’s plenty of wheeling and dealing and added to it are some tales of the opium trade, its origins in China and a few of the men, both English and Chinese, who were caught up in it there. In this story they brought the trade with them to New Zealand.
What a tangled web the lust for gold is in Catton’s story. Walter Moody, a well-educated young man from England, is newly arrived on the coast and has had a very rough crossing, one so rough he feels lucky to be alive. Still stunned by the ordeal and by a man, phantom or real, he still can’t make out, he makes his way to the smoking room at the Crown Hotel. Unbeknownst to him, a dozen local men have gathered for a meeting about the death of Crosbie Wells, a local hermit. At the same time the wealthy prospector Emory Stains has disappeared and is feared dead. On the same day Anna Wetherell, the most popular whore in town is beaten so severely she collapses and ends up in jail, which it turns out is a far better place to be than the local hospital. A fortune in gold is found Crosbie Wells’ cabin after his death, and a smaller amount of gold is found sewn into the seams of Anna’s dress. Moody learns bits and pieces of the story and gets drawn into it further by relating that he was brought to shore by a ship captained by Francis Carver, who was Emory Staines’ business partner. The characters are inviting and the story kept me looking forward to my next chapter.
Ms. Catton includes in the book illustrations and mentions of astrological signs and meanings that I admit were completely lost on me. I know that for someone who keeps up with astrology more than I do, the novel would take on a whole new depth of meaning, but I managed to enjoy the book immensely without it.
The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury
Published 2005
Since the publication of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code, any book mentioning the Knights Templar is bound to intrigue. The story begins with the fall of Acre and the Templar’s last stand in the holy city in 1291. A band of knights escapes from the battle carrying a small chest wrapped in velvet, its contents a well-kept secret, even from all but a few of the Templars themselves. They make their way to the Falcon Temple, a galley ship waiting in the harbor.
Moving forward to the 21st century, four horsemen dressed as Templars ride out of Central Park and into, literally, the Metropolitan Museum of Art where, guns blazing, still astride their horses, they steal several of the items on display at a special showing of Treasures of the Vatican. Witnessing the theft of an unusual object from behind untouched exhibits, Tess Chaykin, is terrified. After the fact, and reunited with her daughter and mother, who had been in the ladies’ room during the commotion, Tess is intrigued. The daughter of a well-known archeologist, and a trained archeologist herself Tess begins to wonder why this particular object was taken.
Sean Reilly is the FBI agent in charge of the investigation. When he questions Tess regarding the incident he realizes that she is holding back something, but doesn’t know what. Tess calls on experts she knows in the field and discovers that the object taken from the exhibit was an encoder, an ingenious device which the Templars used to code messages making them indecipherable to anyone else, even within the Catholic Church. What she and Reilly find out later is that one of the horsemen has discovered one of these messages and needs the device to break the code. Meanwhile the other three horsemen are dropping dead like flies, presumably killed by their leader.
The story continues to flash back to the events immediately after the knight’s escape from Jerusalem in 1291, the path of a small band of knights, the sinking of the Falcon Temple during a storm, the enigmatic reason behind the Knight Templar’s rise to power and subsequent fall. Tess and Reilly, for different reasons, try to stay a step ahead of the lone horseman’s quest to unearth the mysteries of that last ill-fated journey out of the holy land.
Precious and Grace, by Alexander McCall Smith
Published 2016
This book begins with Mma Ramotswe (Precious) driving her beat-up white van in to work at the Ladies Number One Detective Agency and thinking of all the categories of people in her life. First, she divides the group into those who are still present, and those who are late. Among the latter is her dear departed father, whose death she likens to the sun going out of the sky. Then she divides the group into various subgroups, family, friends and colleagues. She is fortunate to have a wonderful husband and two foster children. Then she considers enemies, which she admits she does have at least one, but with whom she would rather be friends than not. She decides she is really an enemy by association, by virtue of her colleague, Mma Makutsi (Grace), who willingly accepts the adversarial status of Violet Sephotho. All of this while driving in to work and to an appointment with a new client who has come to the Ladies Number One Detective Agency on a matter of some delicacy.
The client, Susan is a young woman who was born in Botswana but whose Canadian family moved back to North America when she was eight years old. She is trying to find the woman who was her childhood nanny when she lived in Botswana. She only has a blurry photograph taken thirty years ago, and a general idea of the neighborhood. She does not know the nanny’s name nor the address or even the name of the street of her old home, nothing besides the poor photograph. Decades have passed and many changes have come to the area but Precious and Grace do not say no to this woman, even though the odds are heavily against finding much after such a long period of time. All that Mma Ramotswe will say is that they will try. And try they do, but Mma Makutsi expresses her doubts about the motives of their new client as well as some of the women who answer their ad regarding the nanny of old.
The Ladies Number One Detective Agency shares a building with Mma Ramotswe’s husband’s business, the Tlokweng Speedy Motors Garage. One of his employees, Fanwell runs over a dog out on the road, and since it is only slightly hurt and not late, brings it to the garage to make sure it is alright. What is to be done with him? She and Fanwell try finding the owner but with no positive results. Precious adds this problem to her list of responsibilities. And what is to be done for poor Mr. Polopetsi, her part time employee who has gotten involved in a money making scheme which smells fishy at best.
This is the second book in the series I have read by this author and I enjoyed both of them. One thing that I especially like is the slower pace of life in these books. Time is taken to speak to neighbors and to have tea. This is a land where traditional teas, like traditionally built ladies, are held in high esteem. Tea is a good time to sit down with a friend just to chat or talk about more serious matters, such as advising against Mr. Polopetsi’s investment proposals. The ladies of the Number 1 Detective Agency, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are hard at work again with surprising ingenuity, patience, and gracefulness when dealing with all the troubles which have landed on their doorstep.
Fatal Pursuit, by Martin Walker
Published 2016
This novel takes place in St. Denis in the Dordogne in France and incorporates a wonderful rural life of friends, family and especially food. Horses and dogs, ducks, chickens and geese, especially geese, have their place as well. Bruno, chief of police is called on at the last moment to navigate for his friend, Annette in a cross-country auto race which brings visitors in the form of expensive cars and the foreigners who race them to their quiet village. Two of these foreigners are hot on the trail of an unbelievably valuable Bugatti race car which disappeared near the village during WWII. While Bruno goes about his daily routine of dealing with petty thieves, truant teenagers and exercising his horse, Hector and Bassett hound Balzac, he comes across clues to the automobile’s fate. Meanwhile a new love interest enters his life in the form of a young lady home from London to visit her parents who are feuding with their wealthy relative over property rights and whether the area will host luxury apartments or stay the rural countryside they prefer. Bruno’s old flame Isabelle returns with evidence that links the race drivers to international money laundering and terrorist support.
A fun and well written novel, with so many elements that I enjoy: gardening, cooking, farm animals, horses and dogs, and mystery as well. I plan on reading other novels in the Bruno, Chief of Police series soon.
Surrender, New York, by Caleb Carr
Published 2016
Characters:
Dr. Trajan Jones, psychological profiler
Dr. Michael Li, trace evidence expert
Clarissa Jones, Trajan’s great aunt
Marcianna, Trajan’s ‘wild African dog’, which is another name for a cheetah
Lucas, Derek and Amber, locals whose parents have left them for a better life
I’m not really sure if there’s such a place as Surrender, New York, or if there is, it is anything like the town described in this novel. There, Dr. Trajan Jones, a psychological profiler and Dr. Mike Li, a trace evidence expert, are called in to assist in what looks like a murder investigation. A ‘throwaway’ child’s body is discovered in an abandoned house, but the doctors are not convinced that it was murder. A couple of local law enforcement officers call in the doctors because they have doubts about the official cause of death too. Is it a suicide? Or is it murder. Dr. Jones and Dr. Li had illustrious careers in New York City before running afoul of some big time politicians who effectively ended their careers in forensics in the big city. They have retreated to Aunt Clarissa’s dairy farm in upstate New York and there they teach online courses in criminal profiling. They set up shop in an old war plane housed in a hangar that belonged to Trajan Jones’ grandfather. A nearby enclosure houses Dr. Jones’ rescued cheetah, Marcianna who endured torture and abuse at a now-defunct petting zoo. They keep themselves to themselves but soon become involved with a couple of live throwaway children, Lucas and Derek. When Lucas’ parents up and left he went to live with his blind older sister, Ambyr. Later on she took in his friend Derek and became the boys guardian. The doctors begin to realize that there’s something of an epidemic of throwaway children. They are left behind when their parents, many of whom become addicted to drugs after failing to find sustainable work in the area, leave for warmer climes. When the team is called in they soon realize that this is not the first death, but one in a string of deaths of these unfortunate young kids. The doctors recruit Lucas and Derek to try to find out about other abandoned kids at their school in hopes that some questions that came about as a result of their highly professional forensic skills have uncovered. Trajan and Mike come to believe that the string of deaths are suicides, that the children have been lured to New York City by someone, or a group of someones, and that only after they make the trip do they return to upstate New York and end their lives.
The tale is fairly long and complex but well worth the read. No easy solutions are found in Surrender, New York.