Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for July, 2015

Is it blasphemy for me to say that I enjoyed The Late Scholar, a novel by Jill Paton Walsh based on the characters of Dorothy L. Sayers, more than the works of Ms. Sayers herself? 

Decades ago, I read all of the original Lord Peter Wimsey novels and short stories and enjoyed them.  But trying to re-read them years later, I couldn’t do it.  They seemed so dated, so annoying to me, that I soon gave up and put them in a mental bookcase along with the works of Freeman Wills Crofts, Gladys Mitchell, Father Reginald Knox, and other Golden Age mystery writers whose works are no longer read by many fans of the genre.

That being said, Lord Peter has survived better than most of his generation, and he has been wonderfully revived, and to my mind greatly improved, by Jill Paton Walsh.  The fourth book in Ms. Walsh’s series brings Peter, now the Duke of Denver due to the death of his older brother, and his wife Harriet Vane to 1953.

The dukes of the Wimsey family have been Visitors for St. Severin’s College, Oxford dating back to the seventeenth century, and now Peter must take on that responsibility.  One of the Visitor’s duties is to act as the arbiter when the Warden (dean) and the Fellows of the College cannot agree on an issue.  This is currently the case, for Lord Peter has been called to St. Severin’s to decide an urgent matter.  The College has a manuscript ascribed to King Alfred the Great, and it has caused a great division among the members of the college.

The college is in dire financial straits, and one group of the Fellows believes that the only way to obtain sufficient funds is to sell the manuscript.  By doing this, St. Severin’s would have the money to buy a large tract of land nearby, which they would then be able to sell later at a large profit and thus secure the finances of the college.  The problem is that an equal number of Fellows are opposed to selling the work; vote after vote has resulted in a tie.  The Warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but now the Warden is missing.  Thus the need for the Visitor to decide the issue.

So Peter, Harriet, and Bunter leave home and head to the college, only to encounter several deaths that seem to be related to the manuscript.  But can such high feelings actually be due to a manuscript a thousand years old, Peter wonders.  Or is there a more mundane reason for the emotions and deaths at St. Severin’s?

Jill Paton Walsh has done a wonderful job in bringing Dorothy L. Sayers’ characters into the second half of the twentieth century without losing what made them significant in the first place.  She has made them stronger, more believable, and, to my mind, more interesting than they were before.  The Late Scholar is an excellent addition to the Lord Peter Wimsey series.

You can read more about Jill Paton Walsh at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Life in Hollywood must be great, right?  Your friends, or the friends of your parents, are famous actors and actresses, known around the world.  You’re invited into their homes, swim in their pools, are friends with their families.  What could be better?

Actually, a lot of things.  When Deirdre Unger reluctantly drives to her father’s Hollywood home to help him put it on the market, her mind is filled with memories of her parents and of her own childhood.  Arthur and Gloria Unger had been successful screenwriters, maybe not at the top of the list but not too far from it.

But for some years now Arthur’s career has been stalled, he and his wife are divorced, and it’s time for him to sell the house and downsize, that hated word.  However, before his daughter arrives, Arthur will take his regular nighttime swim in the pool.  He was always a good swimmer, and he wants to indulge himself before he has to sell the house.  One final indulgence, and it proves to be his last.

Deirdre arrives at the home that her father and brother share, but at first no one answers the door.  When her brother finally lets her in, they start to look for their father.  And then they find him, down at the bottom of the deep end of the pool.  Who could have made certain Arthur never surfaced?  And why?

When Deirdre was a teenager, her best friend was Joelen Nichol, daughter of the beautiful actress Elenor “Bunny” Nichol.  The two girls spent days together and often had sleepovers at each other’s houses.  They were together the night that changed the lives of both of them forever.

Bunny had thrown one of her famous parties, and after it was over she and her live-in boyfriend, Tito Acevedo, got into a fight.  Deirdre and Joelen heard angry words, glass being broken.  Joelen went to the kitchen, picked up a knife, and climbed the stairs to her mother’s bedroom.  Then she plunged the weapon into Tito’s chest.

Deirdre was driven home after the police and ambulance arrived.  On the way, the car went off the road; Deirdre was severely injured and is unable to walk without crutches.  While Deirdre was in the hospital, Joelen was put on trial for Tito’s death.  The verdict was justifiable homicide.  First Joelen was sent to a juvenile facility and then went to live with her aunt out of state.  By the time Deirdre was released from the hospital after her first operation, she wasn’t able to find her friend.

But apparently Arthur knew, or had known, where Joelen was.  Because Joelen is the real estate agent Arthur was using to sell his house, and  now she and Deirdre have their first face-to-face meeting in more than twenty years.

Night Night, Sleep Tight is loosely based on the true story of Hollywood star Lana Turner, her daughter Cheryl Crane, and Turner’s lover Johnny Stompanato, a reputed mobster.  Hallie Ephron has brought to life the Hollywood of the 1980s, its famous and its flawed.  It’s an exciting read, with fascinating characters, written by a woman who herself was the daughter of movie scriptwriters as well as a neighbor of Turner’s.  Fiction based on real life doesn’t get more compelling than this.

You can read more about Hallie Ephron at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

July 11, 2015

Something to wonder about when you can’t sleep.  Why is it that an author can have two or three series with different characters but only one catches the imagination of thousands of readers?

Do you know the creators of the following protagonists?  Tecumseh Fox was a private detective working in Westchester County, New York.  The author’s most famous characters are a pair of Manhattan private investigators who began their careers in the 1930s.*  Were you aware that district attorney Doug Selby came from the imagination of a man who was the best-selling writer in America at the time of his death?**  Or that the person who is still the world’s third best-selling author (after Shakespeare and the Bible) wrote a series of books featuring a husband-and-wife spy duo that is barely read today?***

Why does a certain character capture readers’ interest while another, created by the same man or woman, doesn’t?  I’m guessing it’s not the writing style or the plot, since that author has already shown mastery in those areas, so what is it?

I think that some characters are so strong, so vibrant, that they almost transcend the page.  Not every character that an author presents is that successful, as evidenced by the second paragraph of this post.  These characters might interest readers for a novel or two, but after that affection for them flags.  And I use the word affection deliberately because I think that’s what keeps a series alive.

If you look at it objectively, the pairing of an overweight Manhattan P.I. and his wise-ass sidekick wouldn’t seem to have anything over a Westchester detective.  But Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were in thirty-three novels while Tecumseh Fox was featured in only three.  Doug Selby is the protagonist in nine of Gardner’s mysteries, while Perry Mason defended clients in over eighty, not counting his television appearances.  And Tuppence and Tommy Beresford were featured in four of Agatha Christie’s works, while Hercule Poirot appeared in thirty-three books, plus many TV shows.

When I mentioned this post to my husband, he said that perhaps the reviews of the other series by these successful writers weren’t good.  That’s definitely a possibility, but even so the question remains why?  If a writer can write multiple books featuring certain protagonists that capture the public’s interest and get good reviews, why can’t that writer do it with all her/his other characters?

Just asking, that’s all.

*Rex Stout   **Earle Stanley Gardner   ***Agatha Christie

Marilyn

Two young musicians are hitchhiking home from a gig in London.  It’s pouring, but cars keep passing them by until a white van stops in front of them.  The woman at the wheel beckons them to come inside, then offers the couple a thermos of coffee to ward off the chill.  The next thing Amy and Sam know, they’re in a drained swimming pool, fifteen feet below its rim, with no way of climbing out.

Then the cell phone that’s been left on the pool’s floor rings.  A woman’s voice calls Amy by name, telling her there is one way, and only one way, out of their prison.  One of them has to pick up the gun, also lying on the pool’s bottom, and use it to kill the other one.  Then the survivor will live.

Eeny Meeny is a thriller in every sense of the word.  For no apparent reason, twosomes are being picked up by a woman, drugged, and abandoned without food or water at totally inaccessible locations.  Hours after they’re left there, a call comes in on a cell phone left at the site, telling whichever one of them answers what the conditions are–one must kill the other, the survivor will be rescued.  No killing, no rescue–they’ll both die.

It’s obvious that these crimes are not spur-of-the-moment ones.  Careful planning has gone into them, from knowing the schedules of the people chosen, picking the remote and secure places to hide them, and being able to rescue the survivors from their prisons.  Why would someone go to so much trouble to target these unlikely victims?

Helen Grace is a Detective Inspector of the Southampton Police, the officer in charge of what will become the hunt for a serial predator.  The  unknown suspect is not doing the killing herself, she is arranging for someone to do the killing for her.  As the abductions continue and the death toll rises, there seems to be no reason, no motive.  Until D. I. Grace discovers one.

Although Eeny Meeny is the first in a series, a lot of background is given to acquaint the reader with Helen Grace.  We learn early on that her job is her life.  She is “…six feet of driving ambition.  Never late, never hungover, never sick.  She lived and breathed her job….”  That seems admirable, until one asks why is her life so empty otherwise?  And there’s a good, if unnerving, reason for that.

Helen’s colleagues form an interesting group.  There’s Detective Sergeant Mark Fuller, formerly her most trusted assistant, now reeling from a nasty divorce which has separated him not only from his former wife but also from his young daughter.  Detective Charlene “Charlie” Brooks is the newcomer on the team, determined to prove her worth as an officer but holding onto her own personality by wearing her not-according-to-regulation outfits on the job.  And there’s Detective Superintendent Whittaker, annoyed at Helen’s outstanding record of arrests and convictions, just waiting for a reason to take her off the case.

Warning:  don’t start Eeny Meeny before bedtime if you want a good night’s sleep.  But definitely do start it; you won’t be able to put it down.

You can read more about M. J. Arlidge at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.