Published just this month, The 17th Letter is my introduction to the work of Dorothy Cameron Disney. She was the author of nine novels, written between 1936 and 1949; The 17th Letter comes in at number seven. According to the introduction in this Stark House edition by Curtis Evans, the novel "draws heavily" from the real-life story of Franz von Werra, a German prisoner of war in England who, after being transferred to Ontario, Canada along with other prisoners, escaped by jumping out of the window of a train and eventually made his way back to Nazi Germany. The 17th Letter is, as Evans says, a "flight-and-pursuit thriller," and somewhat of a departure for the author, whose previous books were more in the "classic style of mystery godmother Mary Roberts Rinehart." For someone like me who devours vintage crime, that departure and the turn to something different is most welcome.
The main characters in this novel are Mary and Paul Strong, two journalists who live in a New York apartment overlooking Washington Square. The story begins when their friend, another journalist Max Ferris, fails to return home after completing a news assignment and being stuck in Iceland for six weeks just waiting for a way to get back to the US. He'd been sending his friends a series of letters, sixteen in total, with a number denoting their order on the envelopes. Paul believes that only something important would have kept him off of his flight back, and his suspicion increases when he and Mary receive a cable from their friend telling them that there will be a seventeenth letter in the mail, and that they should "be understanding." The weirdest part of the message is in Max's signature, where he adds a strange middle name -- Icarus. The promised missive arrives, but again it's obvious that something out of the ordinary is going on, since all it contains is a theater program for a show that had run five months earlier. Add to all of this the theft of some of Max's letters, new neighbors in the building, a strange man in the park who seems to know a great deal about Paul and Mary and finally some devastating news about Max, and Paul decides that it's time to go and find out what's going on with their friend, setting off aboard a ship. Mary, who has been left behind, stumbles upon some sensitive information that she knows she needs to report immediately, and finds herself with her husband, as a stowaway. But the action really picks up when the ship reaches Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the two find themselves in serious jeopardy.
I love espionage stories, especially those set during the first and second world wars as well as the cold war era. Here, Disney starts with a strange mystery which leads to a slow-building suspense before moving on into full-blown page-turner mode. I have to share that while reading The 17th Letter, I had to employ the old suspension of disbelief here and there, and I noticed myself doing the inner eye roll at the coincidences that pop up, but when all is said and done, this story worked well for me. What comes through very strongly is the wartime setting which highlights the urgency of the Strongs' plight as they desperately try to find anyone in authority they can trust to share the information they carry, all the while trying to prevent themselves being captured. And finally, who wouldn't love a dog named Bosco?
I can recommend this one to people who are looking for something a bit off the beaten path in vintage crime, or to those who would like to read more by lesser-known American women mystery writers, or to people who enjoy books featuring husband-and-wife crime-solving teams. My review copy came from the publishers, to whom I owe many thanks -- hopefully there will be more books by this author in the works....more
Murder Will Speak (1938) is book number thirteen of eighteen in author J.J. Connington's series featuring Chief Constable Clinton Driffield. It is my first outing with this author, even though I have three more Coachwhip publications by Connington sitting on my shelves at the moment. After finishing this one, I bought two more, trying to line up as much of the series as possible for future reading in order.
The blurb on the back cover of this edition hints somewhat cryptically at what the reader is about to encounter:
"A Poison Pen, ubiquitous, outspoken -- A murder (or was it suicide?) -- A suicide (or was it murder?) -- Who? -- Why? -- and Why? --"
It's the poison pen aspect of this novel that grabbed me from the outset. Someone has been sending "the most awful anonymous letters" that say the "most dreadful things." There has been so many in fact, that one character describes it as a "perfect epidemic," bad enough to have garnered the attention of the Investigation Branch (IB) of the General Post Office (GPO), under the supervision of a man named Duncannon. According to him, the "poison-pen affair" has grown "to such major proportions" that it's time for "all hands to the pumps." As he also notes, if the IB doesn't clear it up, "some really bad damage may be done." As it turns out, he's completely right, but he has no clue of how "really bad" that damage may be. While the GPO is running its operation trying to find the poison-pen writer, the police find themselves in the thick of their own investigations after two deaths.
I quite enjoyed this book, and even though Sir Clinton wasn't what I would call an exciting sleuth, he is extremely thorough in his methods, taking time to slowly layer what clues he has so that by the end, there is little room for doubt as to what happened, why, and by whom. It was rather fun to watch this process; on the other hand, I didn't find it too difficult to figure out the identity of the poison-pen author because it was just way too easy. Unfortunately, figuring out the solution to the murder here before the Chief Constable did wasn't too hard either. There was actually one point where I page tabbed a brief bit of conversation that pretty much gave away the show and once that was stuck in my head, I started to have a bare inkling of how the killer was able to pull it off and then come up with what seems to be an air-tight alibi. All of that was fine though, in comparison to how the author deals with the women in this story, with some pretty awful (and extremely dated) psychological hypotheses about what makes them tick. While I won't go into detail here, some of these parts were just cringeworthy, to be honest, but then again, the novel was published in 1938 so I'm not really all that surprised.
As a whole, I can certainly recommend this book to readers of vintage crime/mystery and readers who enjoy a good story centered around the havoc that is wreaked when a twisted mind has little else to do but to disrupt the lives of others via the poison pen. I love this stuff.
By the way, do not miss Curtis Evans' most informative introduction to this edition -- while he goes into some great detail about the author, he doesn't give away too much about the mysteries in this book so it's perfect.
between a 4 and a 4.5 -- not perfect but seriously strong writing. (read earlier this month -- full post at my reading journal here: https://www.readinbetween a 4 and a 4.5 -- not perfect but seriously strong writing. (read earlier this month -- full post at my reading journal here: https://www.readingavidly.com/2024/07...)
In the author's Afterword, she notes that the idea for this book came to her while having her students read various works by Rodolfo Walsh. One of these, "Letter to my Friends" as she says, "in which he recounts the death of his daughter, it struck me that concealed within this extraordinary text lay subtle elements from which a full history could be imagined."
Rodolfo Walsh was a crime novelist/detective story writer who went on to become an investigative journalist, an activist and eventually the chief intelligence officer for the Montoneros, who were, in a nutshell (and for this novel's purposes) left-wing Peronist guerillas active in their opposition to the right-wing military dictatorship in Argentina. His book Operation Massacre (1957) had broken new ground in (as a back-cover blurb of my copy from Seven Stories Press notes) "personal investigative journalism." Walsh had also founded the clandestine news agency ANCLA in 1976 as a response to government censorship as well as the "Information Chain," which produced pamphlets of information meant for "hand-to-hand" distribution." In this story, the author imagines Walsh as a "protagonist living in those times, a detective, an artist and a militant," saying that he was "all those things" ...
"doing what he always did, intervening in events the only way he knew how: as a detective in search of the truth."
Here, that search for truth is paramount as Walsh sets out to investigate reports of his daughter's death.
While it may be set up as a sort of detective story, Rodolfo Walsh's Last Case is a solid piece of historical fiction, set during one of Argentina's darkest times, and the author has captured the danger, the insecurities and the uncertainties of the period as well as the fault lines that are developing among various sections of society, including Walsh's own Montoneros. The green Ford Falcons slowly making their way through the streets of Buenos Aires are constant reminders of state surveillance, and anyone at any time could be in danger of being picked up, carted away and tortured, killed or disappeared by government agents. At the same time, the novel probes the psychological effects of people caught up in this maelstrom, as the author explores the internal contradictions of the main characters, which takes this book in a direction I did not expect. Due to the subject matter it's a difficult story to read at times, but to her credit, Drucaroff never veers off into the sentimental, nor does she load the novel down with standard detective-story fare.
Considering I chose this book completely at random, it turned out to be powerful and compelling, a novel I couldn't stop reading, and one I can certainly recommend to readers who have an interest in this time period....more
This is book #3 in the stack of mysteries I'm reading this year that involve poison pen letters, but calling it a crime or mystery novel is a bit of a stretch. In the realm of books centered around poison pen letters it's something new and different. One, we know who sent these letters around the small village of Lush Mellish; two, we know that the perpetrator had served time behind bars for her crime, and three, it all comes out of the mind of the letter writer via a very long flashback. It is, as author Henrietta Clandon (aka John George Haslette Vahey (1881 - 1938) aka several other psedonyms) writes in the foreword, a "story told from the inside; a story which has already been told from the outside by the newspapers."
Arriving in the village of Lush Mellish with her dog and a determination to be an active part of village life, Miss Edna Alice immediately finds fault with the several visitors who call on her. Although she goes on to form and to join several circles in the community, it doesn't take long before she is finding fault and pointing out a number of problems within each group -- in her mind, she's just trying to offer helpful suggestions or to offer the benefit of her experience. Needless to say, neither her presence nor her help are appreciated, and eventually she begins to find it "strange" that her "efforts to help people, and give them a life, led to ingratitude and offensiveness." She is never at fault, her beloved dogs can do no wrong, and according to Miss Alice, it must be the case that there is a "campaign to wound and hurt" her, one to bring her name "down into the dust" and get her to leave. After some time, as a number of incidents involving Miss Alice pile up and she gets no satisfaction from the police or anyone else, she begins her own campaign, secretly and anonymously, to "morally and socially" rejuvenate Lush Mellish doing her "good by stealth," and the letter writing begins.
The fact that there isn't much of a mystery at all is okay, because what it turns out to be is a most unusual and captivating character study capturing the workings of the mind of a woman whose world and her reaction to it exists in a singular, narrow point of view. While it's impossible to discount that there just may be a kernel of truth in what she has to say about her fellow villagers, any sympathy I have for Miss Alice comes only in minute, tiny amounts, and that only in connection with her dogs. On the other hand, the book made me laugh out loud here and there and roll my eyes often because of the sheer hypocrisy involved, and it was absolutely fun to read. A unique perspective on the poison-pen-letter novel, this is one I can definitely recommend to readers of vintage crime/mystery fiction.
It's no secret that Mark Valentine is one of my favorite writers and now, with Swan River's publication of his Lost Estates, I've added another gem ofIt's no secret that Mark Valentine is one of my favorite writers and now, with Swan River's publication of his Lost Estates, I've added another gem of a book to my collection of his works. If you haven't yet bought a copy, go get one now. Seriously.
In an insightful and informative conversation between this author and writer John Kenny, Valentine pleads "not guilty" to labeling the stories in this collection as "folk horror." He would rather use the term "borderland" or "otherworld" stories, which he
"came upon in contemporary 1923 reviews of Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair and Visible and Invisible by E.F. Benson,"
saying that these were "terms then in use and understood for occult and supernatural fiction." In Valentine's opinion, "they do convey better the sense that can sometimes be felt in certain places of being close to a different realm." I like it. It fits.
It's not long into the first story before this notion of "being close to a different realm" makes itself known. "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" finds our narrator leaving the train at Abbotsbury, where he has come at the invitation of a Mr. Winterbourne, with whom he had been corresponding about Winterbourne's "house and its particular custom" as part of his research. The train was only the first part of the journey; he still has a five-mile walk to make, which he doesn't mind. It is as "the grey chalk of dust" was being drawn across the day" that he felt not only a "change come over the country" through which he was traveling, but also a gradual sense of passing "into a different sort of space, a pause in the usual order of things." The feeling lasts for only a moment, but "the impression lingered..." He eventually makes his way via the hand-drawn map he was given to an old and somewhat shabby Georgian house where he and the owner discuss the unusual "rent" on the place. It seems that that his family holds this place "from the King in return for a service or duty." The narrator offers his opinions about the history of this particular sort of "custom," but what he doesn't realize is that before his visit ends, the rent is about to come due. This story is absolutely fascinating, not just for the weird elements and the lore, but for me it's much more about the historical components and especially (with a nod to Jamie Walsh) the yews.
The blurb for Lost Estates notes that these tales offer "antiquarian mysteries, book-collecting adventures, and otherworldly encounters," as well as "mysterious landscapes, places of legend, and secret history." Valentine has an incredible abundance of knowledge about ancient customs, history and lore that inform his stories; the joy is in seeing the connections he forges between that knowledge and the characters who interact with the landscapes which he so expertly renders here, either rural or city. The stories themselves have a truly special quality that I appreciate, meaning that once I start one, I'm deep into it and the outside world just vanishes. He makes me feel like I am right there with the characters as they approach that (as the dustjacket blurb states) "unusual terrain," making it beyond difficult to put this book down at any time during the reading. And if you get a Machen vibe, well ...
Very highly recommended -- Lost Estates is one of the best collections by this author I've read....more
Wandering through my bookshelves one afternoon looking for something off the beaten path, I found this book, which I'd completely forgotten that I owned. I picked it up, started reading and completed it almost overnight because I couldn't put it down. It goes well beyond mere crime fiction, moving into a realm of its own.
While "All the characters are imaginary," as the author notes before the novel even begins, "Some of the events described herein are real." The real-life inspiration for The Dead Girls is the story of the Poquianchis, four sisters, who like the Baladro sisters in the book, owned several brothels. During the course of their operations between 1945 and 1964, they are known to have been responsible for 91 deaths, although the body count might actually be as high as 150. Ibargeüngoitia's version of the story is not simply a retelling, as he has constructed a narrative moving back and forth in time, incorporating testimony, police reports, interrogations and other forms of reportage that give the novel a sort of true-crime feel, while at the same time bringing into focus the corruption and other factors that allowed it all to happen. It's a dark book, to be sure, but while reading it's almost impossible not to laugh at some points. It has a sort of absurdist, black-comedy aspect that made me feel horribly guilty every time I'd feel a chuckle coming on. In its own way, it also offers more than a bit of stinging social criticism, examining issues that continue to plague Mexico today.
I can most definitely recommend The Dead Girls to readers who want more out of their crime fiction and who enjoy books based on real events, as well as to readers who, like me, enjoy Latin American literature in general. I loved this book....more
I don't remember where I first heard about this book but I was so excited for its release that I preordered it back in December of 2023. Through the Night Like a Snake is a volume of ten dark and beyond-edgy stories written by "an ensemble cast of contemporary Latin American writers," with each translator's name featured prominently at the beginning of each new tale. It is also the ninth in the Calico series of books published by Two Lines Press, which as posted at the blog at the Center for Translation, is
"dedicated to capturing vanguard works of translated literature -- curated around a particular theme, region, language, historical moment or style ..."
As also stated on that blog post, the series is an opportunity to learn from translators "what's being left unread by English readers," which is truly the bottom-line draw for me. In the editor's introduction to this volume (not included in the finished product but so generously provided by Kelsey at Two Lines Press via PDF), Sarah Coolidge refers to a subgenre called "narrativa de lo inusual," a phrase coined by literature professor Carmen Alemany Bay. I'd come across this term last year while reading Mariana Enriquez's Our Share of Night, while looking up different articles about the author. Alemany Bay is quoted by Benjamin Russell in his 2022 article in the New York Times entitled "Women, Horror and Fantasy Capture Everyday Struggle," saying that the "depictions of normal life" offered by these writers "aren't intended to heighten the effect of the fantastic or supernatural; instead the unreal is used to sharpen readers' view of what's true."
I've always believed that an anthology should start with an offering that points to what a reader can expect from the rest, and if the idea here is to examine modern anxieties of the realities of life in different parts of Latin America, then "Bone Animals" by Tomas Downey (translated by Sarah Moses) definitely succeeds. After reading that one, I couldn't wait to get on with the rest. In this story, a family has been "moving from village to village" over several months, "unable to find shelter or work," and they've just been asked to leave the school where they've been sleeping. Luckily, they are told about a shack that doesn't belong to anyone -- a "single room, just a roof over our heads, really." They survive by living off the nearby land, and soon discover a "small, carved animal, almost hidden ..." at first a bobcat, then a piranha, which "could have only been carved by an impossibly skilled hand." They are cleaned, collected and displayed in a corner, and soon multiply with more discoveries. However, as the collection begins to grow, things begin to take a dark, thoroughly unexpected and frightening turn. My favorite story here is "The House of Compassion" by Camila Sosa Villada, translated by Kit Maude. It starts on a normal note, but then takes off in a direction that I guarantee nobody will expect. I was so in awe of this the author's writing that I immediately bought two of her books, I'm a Fool to Want You and Bad Girls, also translated by Kit Maude. Flor de Ceibo (named after the national flower of Argentina) is a travesti sex worker in a rural area on the Córdoba Pampas, where the highway is plagued by a large number of car crashes; as we're told, "the side of the road is littered in crosses." After getting caught robbing her clients one day, they come after her, and during a chase through a cornfield, she collapses. The next thing she knows, she is waking up at the convent of the Sisters of Compassion, where the nuns are taking care of her and also a number of dogs -- evidently the convent doubles as a sort of dog sanctuary. When she's feeling better and is ready to leave, the dog Nené has asked the nuns to keep her there is not allowed to go. Believe it or not, it gets weirder and more mystical/horrific from there.
Considering that there are only ten stories in this book, these authors manage to cover a wide scope of issues that range from the political to the personal, engaging with issues that are not only relevant within geographical boundaries, but which also, in some cases, take on universal importance, especially for women. At the same time, the actual horror content is solid enough to please readers of more sophisticated work in the genre, so it's a win-win all around.
Most definitely and very highly recommended. I loved it....more
I first came across the author when I read her novel The Hole a few years ago and I've been buying her books ever since. That novel was absolutely chilling, not only in the telling but also in its implications once that last page had been turned. Her latest novel, published last year is The Owl Cries, which like The Hole, involves a master of manipulation.
A man's (Ha-in Lee) search for his missing brother Gyeong-in is what launches this story. Gyeong-in had a job at a mountain forest as a ranger, but when he leaves behind a bizarre phone call to both his brother and his mother and they never hear from him again, the mom becomes worried and thus Ha-in steps in to look for him. Traveling to where he was last known to be and in speaking to the current forest ranger, In-su Park, who hasn't been there very long, he discovers that In-su knows nothing about his predecessor. As Ha-in goes into the small village at the bottom of this mountain, it seems the villagers can't recall anything about his brother either. By now though, In-su makes a strange discovery that also sets him on the path of the missing Gyeong-in, while Ha-in's search is abruptly ended. From there, strangeness ensues ...
I liked this book, didn't love it. What I did enjoy very much is the author's beautiful descriptions of the landscape and her portrayal of the monstrous (albeit very human, not supernatural) presence who looms over this story, extremely skilled in the art of manipulation and the exercising of power, preying upon others for his own purposes. I love when authors spend time on examining psychologies and she is so very good at that here. On the other hand, The Owl Cries didn't get tiptop reviews on goodreads or at any of the usual places, and I can sort of understand why. For one thing, whoever was in charge of the dustjacket blurb overdid it with the comparisons to "Stephen King, David Lynch, and the nightmare dystopias of Franz Kafka." I know from reading about the author that King and Kafka are two authors whose work has been an influence on her own, but really, what is written here is overhyping the novel's content, kind of setting up false expectations. (I keep swearing to myself that I will stop reading these blurbs, but I do it anyway, and in some instances it is to my own detriment as a reader.) And while I normally don't mind bleak, this book has absolutely no breaks in the darkness, and it is more than a bit on the murky side heading into the reveals so that even though answers came, for some reason the experience was less than fulfilling. I know it's unfair to compare books, but The Hole was so bloody good that I supposed I expected more of the same here, and it was a bit of a disappointment when The Owl Cries just didn't measure up. I feel bad about saying that, but, well, there it is. It actually killed me not to love this novel, but I can't help it.
That's not to say someone else may not enjoy it; I'm a bit on the demanding side as a reader. I'll try again with her Law of Lines which I haven't yet read, although it will be a while. ...more
I'll just say that I enjoyed this book so much that I immediately grabbed Matsumoto's A Quiet Place (also from Europa) off of my shelf to read just as soon as I'd finished Point Zero. I also watched the 1961 film based on this novel via the Criterion Channel, and I am rather impatiently awaiting the arrival of the 2009 version DVD as well.
Although Teiko Itane had received marriage proposals in the past, she'd turned them all down. Her situation changes when she receives a proposal from a certain Kenichi Uhara via a matchmaker. Uhara is the manager of the Hokuriku branch of a major advertising firm, spending twenty days a month at the office in Kanazawa City and ten days in Tokyo. That arrangement is of particular concern to Teiko's mother, but it seems that the company has been trying to get him to move to Tokyo for a while and he's finally agreed, using the opportunity to finally get married as well. Even though they hadn't spent any time alone together, Teiko decides to accept the proposal, and also believes that whatever life he'd had in the past should stay in the past. This decision will come back to bite her later, but for the moment, aside from some sort of unspoken "complexity" within Kenichi that she senses, the few early days of the marriage that they share aren't so bad for either of them. She's made friends with Kenichi's brother's family (who live in the Aoyama neighborhood of Tokyo) and after the honeymoon, the plan is for Kenichi to make his final trip to Kanazawa to hand over the job to his successor, a certain Yoshio Honda, who will be accompanying him on the train journey. As she watches the train pull out of the station, she has no clue that this will be "the last time Teiko ever saw her husband." What follows is her search for her now-missing husband, and after the first bit of information comes as a shock to her, it is just the opening salvo of many more surprises to come, including a series of unexpected deaths and a ruthless killer who is determined not to be caught. The question that drives Teiko here is just how these deaths are connected. She also realizes that "Her husband had a secret. What was it?" Beginning her quest with only two photos of two different houses that might possibly be some sort of clue, finding the answers becomes for Teiko nearly a full-time occupation.
The novel is utterly twisty, full of betrayals and secrets which eventually are unraveled to take the reader to another time and place entirely. All of the above makes for a solid mystery at the core of this novel, and I seriously had trouble putting it down once I'd started. I have a great love for Japanese crime authors who use their writing to explore human nature and troubled psyches, and Point Zero certainly appeals on that level as well. What elevates it beyond ordinary is Matsumoto's ability to set the crime not only within historical context but in a changing social context as well. This one I can certainly and highly recommend, especially to readers of vintage Japanese crime fiction. I loved it. ...more
I'm currently going through a stack of books I've taken off of my home library shelves that all have to do with one of my favorite devices in mystery I'm currently going through a stack of books I've taken off of my home library shelves that all have to do with one of my favorite devices in mystery novels, the infamous poison pen letter. I'm taking them in publication date order, beginning with Ethel Lina White's Fear Stalks the Village. I really have no clue why I have this sort of bee in my bonnet about these books, but hey -- it's a good way to read novels I've owned forever that are just sitting here unread and unloved.
I read this book earlier this month but as is the case with the other books I've read and stacked up next to my tablet, it's hectic around here leaving very little me time for posting my thoughts and likely to stay that way until the second week of April. Gaudy Night arrives late in Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series, and because I'd forgotten what happens in nearly every book to this point, I've had to do a massive (and quick) reread of all that came before. Well, not all actually; I skipped the short story collections and The Five Red Herrings after diving into it for a bit and got back on the track leading to Gaudy Night, promising myself I'd go back and pick them up another time, along with Busman's Honeymoon, the final original Wimsey novel. If the length of this book seems a bit on the daunting side, I was surprised at how quickly the five hundred-plus pages went by.
The very first thing that anyone familiar with the earlier Wimsey novels will notice is that Gaudy Night is very different in comparison to those which came before. While Harriet Vane had earlier appeared in both Strong Poison (where she first meets Lord Peter while on trial for murder) and Have His Carcase (during which she comes across a body on a rock along the coast, beginning one of the strangest cases of the lot), here she takes center stage. The action in this novel stems from her attendance at a reunion at her Oxford College (the "gaudy" of the title), after which she is appealed to by the Dean for help and "advice about a most unpleasant thing" that has been going on there. It seems they have been "victimized by a cross between a Poltergeist and a Poison-Pen." The letters are easy to ignore, but not the "wanton destruction of property," the "last outbreak" having been "so abominable that something really must be done about it."
I went into Gaudy Night for the poison pen letters and came out with something completely unexpected. At the core of this novel, well beyond the mystery of the Shrewsbury poltergeist, is Harriet's introspective look at herself on both the intellectual and personal fronts, which made me think that Sayers had invested much of herself in her character, an idea I couldn't shake even after finishing the book. So I looked online to see what others had thought. I found several people whose commentary was well worth reading, but maybe Lucy Worsley, in an excerpt from her A Very British Murder summed it up for me best when she quotes Sayers as revealing that in writing Gaudy Night, she was finally able to say "the things, that, in a confused way, I had been wanting to say all my life."
My advice: read the series up to that point, especially the other books with Harriet Vane, before you start this novel -- you'll definitely want the backstory and for the most part, they make for fun reading. Gaudy Night was, as I mentioned, written in the 1930s so you get that sort of heavier style you often find in novels of the period, but once you get to the hub of this story you won't be able to put it down. A definite standout among them all, and as I see it, Gaudy Night is definitely still relevant in so many ways. Recommended. ...more
I'm not a big true crime reader, but I had seen this story portrayed on American Justice on A&E some time ago so I was very interested when contacted about reading this book since there's always more to the story than a one-hour television show can offer. I was right in this case. A new release from Citadel Press, Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom is a compelling read that shines a spotlight on a sadly all too-common occurrence: an overzealous police detective and a district attorney who, without any real evidence, charged an innocent, eccentric man by the name of Alvin Ridley with the murder of his wife and put him on trial. Let me just say that while I've tagged this book as "true crime," there is actually no crime here unless you want to count that particular rush to judgment; Zenith Man is very much a cautionary tale at its heart. In fact, the book as a whole is much more than just another true crime account. Mr. Poston's patience, his efforts to understand how Alvin Ridley thought and his ability to treat him as a human being rather than simply a client is illuminated in this story, his empathy contrasted with the rush to judgment by others who simply jumped to their own conclusions about him because he was an eccentric loner and social outcast. As it turns out, Ridley would later be diagnosed with (as noted on the jacket blurb so not a spoiler) autism spectrum disorder, which helps to explain his behavior. Honestly, had Alvin not had Mr. Poston as his attorney, I believe he might just be sitting in prison to this day. As Mr. Poston says on his own goodreads review, there are "millions of other adults out there still not yet diagnosed, interacting with the criminal justice system," which, when you think about it, is more than a bit depressing -- how many more innocent people like Alvin just might end up (or are currently) imprisoned for the wrong reasons? The book also highlights how Ridley and Poston's relationship helped Poston in his own life, making it a very human story all around.
Released just recently, this two-books-in-one edition from Stark House features the work of a woman whose work may not be a household name among mystery readers, but deserves to be brought back into the light. Elizabeth Fenwick (1916-1996), aka E.P. Fenwick, wrote her first novel just after high school. It was rejected upon submission, and she moved on to other things, including French translations. Evidently she wasn't one to give up -- in 1943 Farrar and Rinehart published her An Inconvenient Corpse and two more crime novels under the E.P. Fenwick pseudonym in 1944 and 1945. She would return to crime fiction again in 1957 with Poor Harriet, but she hadn't sat idle in between, having written three non-crime books (and evidently a very busy life, according to Curtis Evans' introduction to this volume) before returning to the genre.
I absolutely loved Poor Harriet, which, although written over sixty years ago, still sadly has great relevance to our own time with its frank depiction of domestic abuse/violence against women and the tragedy of mental illness, made even more heartbreaking because in this particular case there is no help in sight. The core mystery is nicely done as well; I eventually figured out the who but not until very close to the end. Unlike most of the time when I guess the culprit, I didn't care about that -- what captured me most was the depth of humanity Fenwick managed to infuse into the character of "Poor Harriet." Mysteries come and go but Harriet (and this book) I won't soon forget. The Silent Cousin is also nicely done; like Poor Harriet, this novel also has an intense, psychological depth to it, in this case examining the effects of the burdens people silently carry for those they love, even in situations that are destined to end in failure. It also has a chilling ending and a reveal that I never saw coming. Both books are two examples of the type of crime I love to read, with the author's intense psychological scrutiny of her characters at work in and around the mysteries that are there to be solved. Fenwick was a wonderful writer, and I will look forward to any of her work published in the future. Do not let the publication dates of these novels deter you -- her subject matter is still highly relevant and she can weave a hell of a tale together, keeping you hanging until the last page is turned. Recommended for true-blue mystery/crime readers of the period (like me!) as well as to readers who appreciate some truly good writing. ...more
Ahhhhh. My reading has once again returned me to the tranquil English village of the interwar years, one of my favorite settings for British crime fiction. This book features another personal favorite, the dreaded poison pen letter. In this case, it's not just one -- as the back-cover blurb info notes, there is a veritable "spate" of them going around the village. As the reader is about to discover, though, this is no ordinary poison-pen case, but rather one that threatens the very stability of the established social order.
What makes Fear Stalks the Village work well is in the way the author lays the foundation of the harmony and more importantly, the equilibrium defining this village prior to the introduction of both poison pen letters and Fear (the word capitalized throughout the novel). Once things begin to happen, it is that highly-important baseline that directs reader focus to the threat of loss of this long-established order as it begins to crumble. The core mystery is good, but it's the psychological aspects of this story that kept me turning pages, both individual and societal. And then, of course, who couldn't love a dog by the name of Charles Dickens?
Given the time in which this novel was written, it may seem a bit on the slow side as the author sets forth the atmosphere of the village (down to the flowers) and introduces us to the characters, but once again, it's a matter of patient reading that will get you to the point of being completely wrapped up in things long before the end is in sight. While this isn't my favorite novel of those I've read by Ethel Lina White (that one is her Wax from 1935), it's pretty darn good. It's also a book I can definitely recommend for Golden Age mystery fans and readers who enjoy their crime set in an English village, as well as to those people (like myself) who are studious collectors of the British Library Crime Classics.
I've described this book to friends as a demanding novel due to its style, but once you get used to the way it is written, it becomes unputdownable. It's also a story that eventually began to fry my nerves until the last page, and I have to admit that more than once I was beyond tempted to just take a peek to make sure everything came out okay. I didn't, of course, but I really, REALLY wanted to. I've seen this book described as a "thriller," a genre I don't particularly care for, but here it serves more as a vehicle that allows for examining human nature under extreme duress.
The story covers two days in the lives of four people who live in a small hamlet in France, in a cluster of three homes not very close to anyone else. During the first day, the author allows his characters to go about their business of every day life while allowing the reader a glimpse into the tensions that exist among them, while in the second he moves them into full-on crisis mode. The action is slow and very controlled, with the narrative moving from character to character without wrecking the reading flow as the pressure intensifies from moment to moment. The back blurb notes that the story is a "deft unraveling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves," which it is in part, but I see it more as an intense character study examining lives that are already on the edge as they become pushed into a situation well beyond their control.
Labeled as a "gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present," it's easy to understand why this book has been described by so many readers as a thriller -- it is definitely a nailbiter, and I have to say that the author does a fine job of leaving the answer to the key question of "why" all of this is happening until almost the very end, a factor that keeps the pages turning. The Birthday Party may be frustrating for some people who like swift action, or who don't particularly care for long, streaming paragraphs, but as I noted earlier, once I got the reading rhythm under my belt I did not want to put it down. I do think though, for reasons I won't get into here, that whoever decided on the English title should have used the translated original, as it makes so much more sense and adds another layer of depth to the story as a whole.
The Remains of the Day was the reading choice for my IRL book group for January 2024. We'd read a couple of Ishiguro's novels prior to this one, starting with Never Let Me Go and more recently, Klara and the Sun, but of the three, The Remains of the Day is one that that most fully captured my heart, although a couple of our members found it to be on the level of snoozefest or not interesting because they couldn't relate to any of the characters. Invisible eyeroll from me -- I loved this book.
I have to say that this is one of those rare books that will stay with me always, largely due to Ishiguro's ability to make Stevens so incredibly human to the point where it's impossible not to find some measure of grief for the man. It reminds me more than a bit of his Artist of the Floating World , which is also set in a time frame of values shifts in which the main character takes a step back for reflection, a novel of both memory and tragedy. Both are beautifully written, but Remains of the Day edges out on top. Very highly, highly recommended. If you have a chance to view the film, please take it -- it's also quite good. ...more
I bought this novel to read over Christmas week, but as happens a lot around here, I had to put if off for a while, just finishing it this week. Not a problem -- while the action in this story takes place during the Christmas season, The Long Shadow is a book that is good for reading any time of year.
The book jacket of this particular edition is a bit misleading, with drops of blood suggesting some sort of murderous activity to be found in this story. While there are certainly a few mysteries to solve here, they are woven into and around Fremlin's examination of narrator Imogen's new widowhood and her grief. She undergoes "a sense of loss, total and irretrievable," but at the same time hasn't forgotten her deceased husband's "vast, irrepressible ego" that makes her pray that God doesn't let her "ever forget what a bastard he could be." She loved and misses him but she's also a realist at heart, and as time goes on, she begins to truly realize just how thoroughly (and often dangerously) Ivor's larger-than-life personality and his charisma had drawn people under the long shadow he cast while alive. Fremlin offers a powerful character study here, putting family dynamics under the microscope while building and escalating an atmosphere of tension that lasts right up until the last moment. At the same time, she injects enough humor to keep things lively and entertaining, no small feat given the intense subject matter.
The Long Shadow was an unputdownable read for me, perfect for cold-weather, gray-skies reading (yes, we actually do have winter in South Florida) all snuggled up in a blanket with cup of hot tea in hand. I've only read one other Fremlin novel, The Hours Before Dawn, which is also readworthy, enough in my case that I ended up putting it on my IRL book group's list a couple of years ago. I will definitely be reading more of her work, and a shout out to Faber for putting this book back into print.
Recommended, with the caveat that it may not be a mystery novel for everyone; I actually prefer mysteries that delve into the psyche but I also know that many readers do not, preferring instead a standard crime-solving story. I'll read her books any time. ...more
"These occult things can't always be told of, even when they are known."
I first got a bee in my bonnet about author Robert Hichens after reading his short story "The Face of the Monk" (1897; included in this volume) some time ago, so when I saw that Stark House Press had published two volumes of his short stories, I had to have them. There is now a third, so I'm reading all three consecutively. Although he might be a bit purply in the prose department and long in the writing, Robert Hichens (whose name also pops up as Robert Smythe-Hitchens to distance himself from the quartermaster who was at the helm of the Titanic when it hit the iceberg) could definitely spin a fine yarn. He also excels in troubled souls -- this book is riddled with them.
While all of these tales are great fun to read, the title story is outstanding, as is the final story in this book, "Sea Change." I have to offer major applause to Stark House for putting these stories back into print. The Black Spaniel and Other Strange Stories is a delight for fans of older darkness (especially the title story), and while the writing is definitely best left to the most patient readers and true-blue admirers of the strange, the stories themselves are created such that the horror contained within them slowly escalates, drawing the reader in deeper and deeper by the moment. They also delve deeply into the inner realm of the human psyche, which may be just as frightening as anything on the supernatural side. It does take some time to get fully into these stories before the weirdness begins, but I didn't mind at all -- the wait was well worth it. I can most certainly recommend this volume very highly....more
In this volume of Hichens tales published by Stark House, S.T. Joshi notes in his introduction that these stories seem to hinge on a "crucial, life-altering decision" made by certain characters and the responses of the people in their immediate orbits. The theme carries throughout, highlighting a number of very troubled psyches, more than a couple of supernatural happenings and several people in crisis.
Although all are quite good, the best of this bunch of seven tales is the title story. Professor Frederic Guildea is a "hardworking, eminently successful man of big brain and bold heart," but he has "neither time nor inclination for sentimentality" and a "poor opinion of most things, but especially of women." His friend Father Murchison is the opposite, with a "special sentiment for all, whether he knew them or not." In conversation with Guildea, Murchison points out that "those who do not want things often get them, while those who seek them vehemently are disappointed in their search," to which the professor answers that he "ought to have affection poured upon me," because he hates it. And that's exactly what happens, but with a catch: he can't see who it is that has invaded his home and loves him so desperately, or perhaps what it is. To offer more about this story would just be wrong, except to say that given certain clues offered throughout the narrative (and after a second read), I have to disagree with ST Joshi's interpretation in his introduction that it is "the ghost of a woman" whose love so irritates and haunts the Professor.
Once again, the stories in this volume may read on the long-winded side and can be bit overblown on the prose, which, given the time in which they were written should not be surprising, but as I said to someone just yesterday, the reward is in honing in on the story itself. I happen to enjoy these older tales so very much that doing that is not too difficult, although I must admit that of the two of these volumes I've read so far, my preference is still The Black Spaniel and Other Strange Stories. Not to worry though; How Love Came to Professor Guildea and Other Uncanny Tales is close on its tail, and I can certainly recommend it to like-minded readers of the weird and the strange. My many thanks to Stark House for reviving these tales and putting them into book form. ...more
I have to say that I read this book in March, and that it haunted me for days after turning the last page. In this book, the author's words speak volumes in a short space, which is for me a true measure of a person who is well in control of his or her craft. Confession is not a long novel, coming in at less than two hundred pages, but its short length disguises the complexity within. It also has a shocker of an ending that completely rattled me. Related in three interconnected parts, the author sets this novel timewise over three periods: before, during and after Argentina's military dictatorship that existed between 1976 and 1983.
I am drawn to books set during this period of Argentina's history and Confession left me absolutely stunned. Reflecting on it now brings back all of the feelings it produced the first time around, and it's likely I will never forget it. Each section of this novel focuses on some aspect of secrets that are held, thoughts or deeds that are left unspoken, things that are both known and unknown -- and what happens when those make their way to the surface. The author also explores the continuing impact of the past on the present, most especially in the ways in which ordinary lives are often randomly caught up in or bound to history. It is one of the best books I've read this year, and without hesitation I can definitely recommend it....more
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