Mysteries: Cosy, Cats, Capers, Historical, Medical, Procedural and everything in between

[Zorral]

Don Winslow's second volume in his Irish gangster-Italian Mafia-FBI "Cities" novels, City of Dreams (2023). City on Fire came out last year.  I believe I read somewhere these are to become movies -- or a television series. 

[Castellan]

On 4/14/2023 at 4:04 AM, dog-days said:

For readers of Anne Perry, how do you rate her as a writer?  She had name-recognition for me, but nothing more, and it was a surprise to find out about her history in the obituaries.

I read Anne Perry books as they were being published, so its a long time, although I think I also reread them. Anyway, I decided to shell out the money to get some on my kindle, and I went for the first three William Monk books, because I couldn't remember them as well as those with Inspector Pitt and his wife.

With the little discussion about her past on my mind, I couldn't help noticing the possible connections I could see between her life and these books. I read a couple of interviews with her and some obituaries and the first thing I noticed is that William Monk is someone whose past has been erased, due to amnesia, but has to struggle on not knowing basic things about himself. His complete loneliness and the erasure of all connections seemed like a parallel to her situation of serving a term of imprisonment, then being released and going to another country (USA) as a young woman with a new name and taking a series of entry level jobs, the gradually finding a niche writing, in the UK.

This sort of space around the main character corresponds with the way she was later absolutely shattered when the film was released because she got no forewarning - because I suppose she had remade herself in a rather fragile way in that she would have been shattered to live with the shame and public knowledge of who she was. She apparently explained to her editor that she had not formed a relationship - ie love relationship in her life because she knew once it got to a certain point she'd have to tell the person about her crime and could not bear to or to discover their reaction.

Also, William Monk has many thoughts along the lines of 'what kind of person am I?' when trying to carry on in the vacuum of amnesia. He is ashamed to see that his subordinates fear him, that he is not generally liked although not hated, more seen as harsh and eccentric. I presume contemplating having committed such a crime, and looking back at what must have been the crazy emotions involved, would make you ask the same kinds of questions about yourself.

I don't usually look for these kinds of parallels they just jumped out at me after I had read just the first couple of chapters.

 

 

 

[Zorral]

15 hours ago, Castellan said:

She apparently explained to her editor that she had not formed a relationship - ie love relationship in her life because she knew once it got to a certain point she'd have to tell the person about her crime and could not bear to or to discover their reaction.

I just ripped through a 1935 British Library Crime Classics/Poison Pen Press novel, The Chianti Flask, by Marie Belloc Lowndes, which grapples with this, though we don't know it until the end.  However, the author didn't have this horror in her own life, and was happily married, and had many dear friends.

I've commenced with Lindsey Davis's Didius Falco novels, finally.  For now anyway, while the world is All Way Too Much.  I won't read them all, surely. But they are nice to do on my fone, as today, when I finished up The Dying of Light In Corduba (because, you know, southern Spain!) which is #8 in this long series, while going through the process at the pharmacy of getting my second bivalent vaccination (this makes the 5th time I've been jabbed for covid -- but, otoh, I haven't gotten covid).

 

[Castellan]

I have been reading Ashley Gardner's Leonidas the Gladiator novels. There are only a few so far. The interest for me is the sympathetic main characters, a freed gladiator and an educated woman slave, who do some detecting. Also the detail of Rome, he spends a lot of time roaming the streets and visits rich and poor. The author establishes their role by simply having a mysterious benefactor free Leonidas and give him some basic accommodation and the woman as an assistant and let him work out what he'd supposed to do. So that saved a lot of realistic plotting I suppose.

I liked this author's Captain Lacey's regency mysteries series, they have a similar tone and main character. The author writes under 3 names and has written over a 100 books, she must really churn them out. The Captain Lacey were a slow burner that surprised her, I think.

[Datepalm]

I'm currently reading A Murder of Magpies, by Judith Flanders (who I think is the same person as the historian of victorian capitalism and domesticity) about a middle-aged London book editor who gets caught up in a murder mystery when one of her authors is killed. Not to be confused with The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz, about a middle-aged London book editor who gets caught up in a murder mystery when one of her authors is killed.

Otherwise slightly alarmed by how many mysteries I've read since last posting at the end of December, since it's generally been a response either to stress or COVID -

...also not to be confused with Magpie Lane, Lucy Atkins - not strictly a murder, but a nice messy missing child story with wildly unreliable narrators and an academic setting. It's unsettling and debatable, much like her other academia-set unreliable history between very different women, the Night Visitor, which I also really enjoyed.

The Golden Spoon, Jessa Maxwell - a murder at the Great British Bakeoff filming (well, strictly it's a fictional American version, but it took me like fifty pages to notice it's in Vermont.) TBH, the baking bits were significantly better than the murder/plot/whatever bits, just a little bit acidic in breaking down the hunger for reality tv glory as expressed by choices of pie fillings.

I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai - deconstructiveish sort of thing about a 20 year old murder at a boarding school which current and former students are caught up in solving when they create a podcast. A bit of Gen X/Gen Z side-eying, which apparently has now replaced Boomer/Millennial side-eyeing? Yay? Fairly generous and fun though.

High Country, Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon #12 - I periodically  pick up the next one of these and they;re a nice enough groove. The mystery here felt a little underbaked and the National Park Setting - Yosemite - somehow seedier than most, more about the tourist facilities and grotty parties than the great outdoors. The inevitable extensive sequence of Anna going through gruesome pain and exposure is especially long and grim in this one (easily a third of the whole book) after it seemed like maybe she was finally toning it down in previous books. I'm still baffled by the extensiveness, brutality and sadism of these sequences in each book (not to mention lack of realism - she should just be dead) and wish someone would like write a paper about it. (They haven't, I've checked.)

Not a Happy Family - Shari Lapena - wealthy couple murdered in upstate New York, did one of the kids do it for the money? Actively bad, truly terrible writing, cheap pov manipulation to drag out the mystery, everyone is incredibly annoying.

The Last Remains - Elly Griffiths - good (probably) ending! Otherwise, reliably more of same - bodies, ruins, sea, marsh, cat, etc.

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels - Janice Hallett - I love this kind of stuff - epistolary story-within-a-story, unreliable narrators, etc - and I thought this was even a step up from the Twyford Code (that was maybe a little too twisty?) though not quite as acerbic as The Appeal.

Daisy Darker - Alice Feeney - family twist on And Then There Were None - a bit ridiculous and overlong.

The Last Party - Claire Makintosh - small town detective dealing with a celebrity death in a lakeside Welsh village, past secrets are revealed, serviceable.

The Resemblance - Lauren Nossett - University of Georgia-set, I think, murder of a frat boy. The book is more interested in the detectives various childhood traumas, which are less interesting than the murder.

 

 

 

 

[Zorral]

On 5/18/2023 at 9:27 PM, Datepalm said:

'm currently reading A Murder of Magpies, by Judith Flanders (who I think is the same person as the historian of victorian capitalism and domesticity) about a middle-aged London book editor who gets caught up in a murder mystery when one of her authors is killed. Not to be confused with The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz, about a middle-aged London book editor who gets caught up in a murder mystery when one of her authors is killed.

 

[Zorral]

The library yielded up three mysteries today.

The 100th volume in the British Library Crime Classics, Death of A Bookseller (1956) by Bernard J. Farmer;

The latest Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery, Who Cries for the Lost (2023) by C.S. Harris;

The latest Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, So Shall You Reap (2023) by Donna Leon.  Two of our oldest friends are spending the summer in Venice due to an art project. They asked me for a list of books to read about Venice and its history, and any fiction I might think of.  I put the four latest Leon titles on the list, along with Henry James's Aspern Papers, rather than Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

 

[Zorral]

James, P.D. (2008) The Private Patient #14, and final novel in her Dalgliesh series.  I hadn’t read this one. Lots going on to deal with 2008.

Maybe James always did this, but I am noticing her careful set-up with all the clues and information including timelines, that we get from the narratives in the British Crime Library Classics line.  Also classic murder in old family pile country house. The twist is the house is now the site of a private cosmetic surgery clinic and after care. Much indictment within the narrative of the NHS, for whom James worked for decades.  These are the sorts of things that wouldn't have / didn't register with me in the years if reading James.  I didn't find her novels until long, long after she'd been publishing her Dalgliesh books -- the first of which, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962!

The entire first half of the book is the victim-to-be, which we are told is the victim-to-be in the first chapter's first sentence, so this is not a spoiler, the roster of suspects, and the location. This section concludes with the murder.

Second part brings us Dalgliesh, now engaged to be married to a second wife, much younger than he (first wife died in childbirth, off stage, before the novels begin, and long running previous love interest moved on some 3 - 4 novels previously.

James died in 2014, so when writing this novel, she still had the dreadful Death Comes to Pemberly ahead of her, in 2011. It, like her other novels, was translated into an equally dreadful television series. Television hasn't managed Dalgliesh all that well, not back in the day, and not presently.

 

[Wall Flower]

On 6/14/2023 at 4:29 AM, Zorral said:

James, P.D. (2008) The Private Patient #14, and final novel in her Dalgliesh series.  I hadn’t read this one. Lots going on to deal with 2008.

Maybe James always did this, but I am noticing her careful set-up with all the clues and information including timelines, that we get from the narratives in the British Crime Library Classics line.  Also classic murder in old family pile country house. The twist is the house is now the site of a private cosmetic surgery clinic and after care. Much indictment within the narrative of the NHS, for whom James worked for decades.  These are the sorts of things that wouldn't have / didn't register with me in the years if reading James.  I didn't find her novels until long, long after she'd been publishing her Dalgliesh books -- the first of which, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962!

The entire first half of the book is the victim-to-be, which we are told is the victim-to-be in the first chapter's first sentence, so this is not a spoiler, the roster of suspects, and the location. This section concludes with the murder.

Second part brings us Dalgliesh, now engaged to be married to a second wife, much younger than he (first wife died in childbirth, off stage, before the novels begin, and long running previous love interest moved on some 3 - 4 novels previously.

James died in 2014, so when writing this novel, she still had the dreadful Death Comes to Pemberly ahead of her, in 2011. It, like her other novels, was translated into an equally dreadful television series. Television hasn't managed Dalgliesh all that well, not back in the day, and not presently.

 

I was thinking of checking out the current Dalgliesh series but you don't seem too impressed.

Cover Her Face is one in the series that I haven't read, even though I was lucky enough to find an illustrated Folio Society edition at my local second-hand bookshop. Thanks for the reminder that I need to get to it!

[Zorral]

5 minutes ago, Wall Flower said:

I was thinking of checking out the current Dalgliesh series but you don't seem too impressed.

The few I was able to see here made in the first television adaptions were not really bad, it just the Dalgliesh character is so ... impeccable, you know?  But this second attempt, not only dull, but quite dreary too.   Or so they seemed to me.  We all see things differently!

[Wall Flower]

38 minutes ago, Zorral said:

The few I was able to see here made in the first television adaptions were not really bad, it just the Dalgliesh character is so ... impeccable, you know?  But this second attempt, not only dull, but quite dreary too.   Or so they seemed to me.  We all see things differently!

Thanks. I've seen two earlier versions, one in maybe the nineties and a later couple of TV movies with Martin Shaw (from the George Gently series, if you've seen that).  I agree that Dalgliesh seems a hard character to capture in adaptations.

[A wilding]

7 hours ago, Zorral said:

The few I was able to see here made in the first television adaptions were not really bad, it just the Dalgliesh character is so ... impeccable, you know?

I remember an entertaining review of the series that said "Roy Marsden underplays Dalgliesh to the point of making him nearly invisible."

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

the George Gently series,

I loved the George Gently series, and that character.

There was an Agatha Christie adaptation -- I can't remember which one, but it is a Poroit -- in which Shaw plays the Bad -- and such a rich, slick, gentleman Bad -- it was shocking, like an entirely different person.  Which, of course it is Shaw's job to be! 

Edited June 15, 2023 by Zorral

[James Arryn]

On 6/15/2023 at 11:33 AM, Zorral said:

I loved the George Gently series, and that character.

There was an Agatha Christie adaptation -- I can't remember which one, but it is a Poroit -- in which Shaw plays the Bad -- and such a rich, slick, gentleman Bad -- it was shocking, like an entirely different person.  Which, of course it is Shaw's job to be! 

Death in Three Acts, or similar. I LOVE the new series of Dalgliesh. I found/marathoned the first series when we first moved in here…remember watching it on breaks from painting, and when the rooms were basically empty, and loved the length and depth of the adaptations, though a bit dated. Really wish more book adaptations took that long, but anyways, I think he’s a difficult character and whoever plays him is doing a lot with very little. Marsden was a bit too built along the lines of Sean Connery to me, though his acting was great, but his innate physicality didn’t suit the character because in the books he’s only ever intimidating with his intelligence and meticulous control over his behaviour…Marsden would have been immediately intimidating physically, which is never hinted at by anyone, and that physical presence got in the way of the mental/emotional presence which defines the character almost in negative form. Shaw was also good, but much more ebullient and at ease, his sensitivity much less well hidden. It worked, so no complaints, just a slightly different tack than I’d imagined reading. 
 

But imo Carvel instead fits better. He chooses his words and when to speak them very carefully and that plus his presence has affects on other characters…immediate authority for one thing. Haven’t seen him have to raise his voice yet, he does a lot with mostly silent subtle acting (so did Shah and at times Marsden). For example it’s completely clear he ~ values but mostly can’t stand one of his officers, and that’s made very apparent pretty quickly in the way he…does the same things as with everyone else (very reserved but perceptive, quiet, intense, focused, well mannered, thoughtlessly authoritative)…in other words all the same things he is almost all the time, but because of the subtle acting it screams at the viewers that_____ is not his kind of person/detective, though that does not affect his assessment and he still does credit him with the skills/nous he has. Conversely he demonstrates a compassionate care with another officer, though there it is made more explicit in the dialogue, but even there he imbues what might be awkward or ~ empty words with a sense that _____ getting what they deserve has become very important to him.

 

That was always an issue with Dalgliesh…he’s too Swiss clock, he’s too letter perfect, almost always in total control, wielding prolonged silences like rapiers…though James does not give him Holmes or even poirot’s almost superhuman brains, he does not often make huge deductive leaps, but rather just grinds away, meticulously, until he gets there. It’s his ability to pretty completely control himself and others, and his ability to keep all elements of the crime in mind pretty constantly, so that his new information is always taken in in full context. Another aspect…maybe the one that makes him remotely sympathetic to me…is that he really does care about people, generally and specifically the victims.

This comes across in little ways…for example he always finds little ways to help people in need, and his reactions to the crimes are always first about the person, the life, that someone chose to end. He thinks of them/asks about them always as he would a living being,  and I think the combination serves to give us the understanding that his control is so constant and unrelenting because he feels that’s what the victim/murderer deserve, that’s how he fuels his work with his outrage. I think Carvel is conveying it very well, but that means a lot of silences/non-verbal aciting and an emphasis on atmosphere and that’s not everyone’s bag.

And my major complaint is the show appears to be falling into the trap of every two single adults of compatible persuasions who like each other MUST explore that through the romance lens…though in this case they are, I think, intending to keep that aspect very one-sided and possibly un revealed. That’s better, but no romance between colleagues who get along would be even more refreshing. 

 

Edited June 19, 2023 by James Arryn

[Zorral]

43 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Marsden would have been immediately intimidating physically, which is never hinted at by anyone, and that physical presence got in the way of the mental/emotional presence which defines the character almost in negative form. Shaw was also good, but much more ebullient and at ease,

I agree.

I'm sorry I never have seen a Shaw Dagliesh.  Gotta say how much Shaw enjoyed playing the Bad in the Poirot show was a delight in itself.  It may be the true delight of that one!

45 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

James does not give him Holmes or even poirot’s almost superhuman brains, he does not often make huge deductive leaps, but rather just grinds away, meticulously, until he gets there.

That's what I was referring to with the comment that I was seeing the structures and organization of classic mystery fiction in this final P.D. James Dalglish.  It was in the others too, of course, but I didn't recognize it as such.  This approach seems to have fit with James's own character to a Tee -- whereas not so much, say, with semi-contemporaries such as Ruth Rendall or Carolyn Higgens Clark -- though all three do share to some degree the 'thriller' / 'suspense' designation of at least some of their work.

49 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

no romance between colleagues who get along would be even more refreshing. 

Wholeheartedly agree.  One of the reasons McDonald & Dodds is terrific.  That was something I didn't like about James's The Private Patient -- the yearning of Kate for this man she can't have, will not ever have, who is marrying his love at the end of the book.  She and he, and the other member of the team worked so well together -- it's so unlikely they could have if, you know, romance.  Why we liked the Lynley and Havers relationship so much in Elizabeth George's series.

And speaking of the British Library Crime Classics reprints, and the terrific regenerated interest in these books the line and others like that too -- here is Farmer, Bernard J. (1956) Death of a Bookseller. British Library Crime Classics. A cop whose hobby is a being a bookman, is drafted to investigate the murder of another bookman, the one who trained him. I read that a couple of weeks ago.

Just now, and I have it, here is a Slater, Alice (2023) Death of a Bookseller.  A goth sort of author, with 2 protagonists, a goth sort serial killer obsessive and a poetry writing golden girl whose mom was killed by a serial killer in the London area where they both live, work and were brought up. They are booksellers in the same book store. The obsessive gets hot and bothered by serial murder of women, whereas the other wants to focus, as in her poetry, only on the victims, to resurrect them, so speak, with respect.  Or so it seems, so far.  Naturally the obsessive turns her obsession on the poet, start stalking her and so on. Interspersed are a touring team of True Crime pod casters who are received everywhere like rock stars.   It is creepy in the extreme, and I've hardly started the thing.  I may just stop reading it.

 

 

[Zorral]

OK.  A novel series for this summer.  The first Banks was published in 1984 (1997 here). while the latest title, which is the final one, this year. Back in the 1980's wasn't reading mysteries and crime, or watching tv, still It's hard to believe that I've never read any of the 28 Peter Robinson's D.C.I. Banks novels.  I really appreciated the television adaptation, so my thinking was, "I'm watching / watched these, so don't muck up that experience with book versions."  Books and tv can be very different in my experience, even when one can like both very much. So it's best to leave a goodly amount time between embarking on the version one hasn't yet experienced.

At the end of last week I picked a title at random, The Final Account. Published in 1994, a long time ago, now, in which Banks and the force are still just getting used to using computers and their programs, and learning what they can do for law enforcement and for criminal activity, but there aren't cell fones yet. I remember the Midsomer Murders season when this began -- it became a trope for a lot crime and police fiction, and I read / watched these installments long after we all moved to living virtually. Ha!  However, what there is, already, is snark about the UK's health system, and about the European Union!

This is why it's good for historians to look at art and other entertainments of a period, and not just read historical documents.  There's a whole lot of information there that an historian isn't going to find otherwise.

Nice to have a dependable series to depend on for light reading!

However, before I embark on my next D.C.I. Banks selection, I currently am ripping through British Library Crime Classics, Green for Danger (1944) a WWII hospital setting in Kent, in the first year of the war, by Christianna Brand.  This one is a superior among all the superiors the line publishes.

 

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Zorral

[Wall Flower]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

OK.  A novel series for this summer.  The first Banks was published in 1984 (1997 here). while the latest title, which is the final one, this year. Back in the 1980's wasn't reading mysteries and crime, or watching tv, still It's hard to believe that I've never read any of the 28 Peter Robinson's D.C.I. Banks novels.  I really appreciated the television adaptation, so my thinking was, "I'm watching / watched these, so don't muck up that experience with book versions."  Books and tv can be very different in my experience, even when one can like both very much. So it's best to leave a goodly amount time between embarking on the version one hasn't yet experienced.

At the end of last week I picked a title at random, The Final Account. Published in 1994, a long time ago, now, in which Banks and the force are still just getting used to using computers and their programs, and learning what they can do for law enforcement and for criminal activity, but there aren't cell fones yet. I remember the Midsomer Murders season when this began -- it became a trope for a lot crime and police fiction, and I read / watched these installments long after we all moved to living virtually. Ha!  However, what there is, already, is snark about the UK's health system, and about the European Union!

This is why it's good for historians to look at art and other entertainments of a period, and not just read historical documents.  There's a whole lot of information there that an historian isn't going to find otherwise.

Nice to have a dependable series to depend on for light reading!

However, before I embark on my next D.C.I. Banks selection, I currently am ripping through British Library Crime Classics, Green for Danger (1944) a WWII hospital setting in Kent, in the first year of the war, by Christianna Brand.  This one is a superior among all the superiors the line publishes.

 

 

I've read a couple of random books in the DCI Banks series over the years from the library but never in any order. I was able to pick up the first two from my reliable second-hand bookshop so I've added it to my list of god knows how many series that I'm working my way through.

I remember really enjoying Green for Danger. I loved the WW11 setting, the way the murder was staged and the motive really worked for me too. If you like old movies, there's a 1940's movie of the novel that you might enjoy.

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

there's a 1940's movie of the novel that you might enjoy.

So the Intro tells us.  I don't know where I'd find that film though; it doesn't seem a likely candidate for the Criterian Channel or TCM. 

I finished Green for Danger last night!

[Zorral]

Receiving the unpleasant impression while reading this 2019 D.C.I. Banks' Careless Love, the second Banks novel I've picked up, that the author has Banks mirroring himself, who is, it looks more and more, a flamin' tory.  Plus is self-congratulation as to his great literary and musical taste and understanding, which like all men of this type he's determined to ramble on about relentlessly at every moment, boring everyone around him, i.e. the readers, is getting very tiresome.  And this is only less than 50 pages into the novel.

The next Banks I have scheduled is the first one, from 1987, I'm going to check out, and thus be able to definitively see whether these tedious tendentious characteristics are present from the very beginning. It didn't seem nearly as bad in the first one I read, from 1994.  These aspects were erased from tv Banks.

If the earlier books are less this way than this 2019 novel, I may continue with those earlier volumes.  Otherwise, I'm dumping this author and his series.

[maarsen]

On 6/30/2023 at 1:05 PM, Zorral said:

Receiving the unpleasant impression while reading this 2019 D.C.I. Banks' Careless Love, the second Banks novel I've picked up, that the author has Banks mirroring himself, who is, it looks more and more, a flamin' tory.  Plus is self-congratulation as to his great literary and musical taste and understanding, which like all men of this type he's determined to ramble on about relentlessly at every moment, boring everyone around him, i.e. the readers, is getting very tiresome.  And this is only less than 50 pages into the novel.

The next Banks I have scheduled is the first one, from 1987, I'm going to check out, and thus be able to definitively see whether these tedious tendentious characteristics are present from the very beginning. It didn't seem nearly as bad in the first one I read, from 1994.  These aspects were erased from tv Banks.

If the earlier books are less this way than this 2019 novel, I may continue with those earlier volumes.  Otherwise, I'm dumping this author and his series.

I have read a few over the years and he does go on a lot about his musical taste and such. Him being Canadian, he was always being touted up here but I rarely go out of my way to peruse his books, earning the wrath of the Canadian literati.