Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for September, 2024

When Frances, Emily, and Rose decide to visit Madame Peony Lane’s fortune teller’s tent, it seems like a lark.  The woman is so cheesy, so stereotypical with her tasteless silk turban and phony raspy voice, that no one could take her predictions seriously.  No one, that is, except Frances Adams.

Frances is overwhelmed by the fortune she’s told, namely, that “all signs point to your murder.”  It’s certainly not a pleasant forecast, and the impact it has on the teenager is hard to overstate.  She spends her entire life looking for and finding scary meanings in the most ordinary things, and when she dies, years later, the prediction appears to have come true.

Half a century after that fateful day, her great-niece Annie Adams receives a letter from Walter Gordon, a solicitor in the small town where Frances spent her entire life.  He informs her that she will be the sole beneficiary of Frances’ estate and assets after the latter’s death and that she needs to meet with her elderly great-aunt as soon as possible.  Annie is stunned by the news of her eventual inheritance, especially since she has never met Frances, and she travels to the Dorset village to discuss the will and its implications.

Once there, she’s introduced to Gordon and the other interested parties–Elva, Frances’ niece by marriage; Saxon, Elva’s son; and Oliver, the solicitor’s son.  Although the original missive from Gordon said he and Annie would be meeting Frances at his office, he now says Frances has changed her mind and wants the group, minus Saxon, who will join them later, to meet at Gravesend Hall, the Adamses’ ancestral home.  When the four of them arrive, they find Great-Aunt Frances’ corpse on the library floor.

Using the familiar trope of an unexpected inheritance, a small town, and a group of people related to or close to the deceased, Kristen Ferrin has created a wonderfully original mystery.  As Frances’ entire life has revolved around the fortune teller’s cryptic words, there is a great deal for the police to discover and for Annie to try to understand.  What was meant by the psychic’s pronouncements that “Your future contains dry bones…Beware the bird…for it will betray you…there’s no coming back…daughters are the key to justice”?

As Annie extends her stay in the village and becomes more familiar with its inhabitants, she becomes aware that people are hiding a great many secrets, some of which go back in time to the day at the fair when Frances heard the prediction that will rule her life.

Kristen Ferrin has written an engaging, unique mystery with a cast of characters reminiscent of those featured in novels of the Golden Age but with a modern twist and a resourceful heroine.  It’s a book that is a delight from start to finish.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels

One might be forgiven for thinking that being an antiques dealer is not a dangerous profession.  After all, the objects that the dealer handles are generally 100 years old or even older, and thus the original purchasers are long gone, along with their feelings of possession and ownership.  But all too often an aura surrounds the item that can last to the present day, bringing forth feelings of envy, desire, and covetousness among those who want it.

American Kate Hamilton and her British husband Tom Mallory are on their honeymoon in Devon.  Tom is a detective inspector in the Suffolk Constabulary, and their choice of a honeymoon location is serving a double purpose.  In addition to exploring the beautiful landscape of mountains, moors, and rivers with his bride, he is also mulling over a change in careers, leaving the police force and joining a firm of private investigators.  Kate is an antiques dealer, and now the interests of both coincide, as Tom has been hired to document the provenance of a nineteenth-century dress that may have a connection to a case that’s never been solved.

The dress will be on display shortly at the Museum of Devon Life as part of a fund-raising drive.  When Kate and Tom arrive at the museum, they are met by its director, Hugo Hawksworthy, who is more than happy to show them around.  Hawksworthy introduces the couple to Julia Kelly, the museum’s conservator, who is working on the dress that was worn by Nancy Thorne, a local woman whose sister was a well-regarded seamstress.  It’s obvious that the dress is beautifully made, but its front is marred by a huge bloodstain, which is part of the Thorne mystery.  Nancy and her sister lived together until the night Nancy went out and returned wearing this dress, claiming total amnesia of what had happened to her while she was away from their home.

Kate and Tom are invited to the museum’s gala, along with a crowd of Devon’s citizens, and they meet two of its most important ones.  First is Gideon Littlejohn, the man who donated the dress to the museum, an eccentric who dresses and lives as if he were in Victorian times.  The second is Teddy Pearce, a local member of Parliament and a former juvenile delinquent.  As all are listening to Hawksworthy impressing the audience with the importance of the museum’s place in the community, a shot is heard.  No one is injured, but Pearce says he was the target.  Was he?

The morning after the event, Kate and Tom go as planned to the Old Merchant’s House, home to Littlejohn, to learn more about the dress and other antiques he’s purchased.  As they knock, they hear a bloodcurdling scream, and entering the house they find Littlejohn’s housekeeper, Beryl Grey, with her hands covered in blood.  “It’s Mr. Littlejohn,” she tells them.  “He’s dead.”

A Collection of Lies is the fifth mystery in the Kate Hamilton series, and it’s an excellent one.  Kate and Tom are a delightful couple–smart, interesting, and enjoying the beginning of their new life together.  Plus the descriptions of Devon, its beautiful scenery and ancient historical sites, will have readers making plans to visit it on their next vacation.

You can read more about Connie Berry at this site.

In 1947 New York City, Lillian Pentecost owns a private investigation agency along with her assistant Willowjean Parker.  The two have solved a series of baffling crimes and have a good reputation.  However, when Forest Whitsun enters their office, his story is definitely something the two women haven’t heard before.

Whitsun is a high-powered criminal defense attorney who used to work for a “white shoe” law firm that specialized in successful, professional clients.  After Whitsun saved a falsely accused low-level criminal from a life sentence in prison, the two partners of the Boekbinder and Gimbal law firm strongly suggested that his talents would be put to better use outside their firm.

Now Forest is defending people his former firm wouldn’t have as clients, and his success has made him a household name.  However, he himself is now the client, and what brings him to Pentecost and Parker is a most unusual story.

Perseverance Bodine, better known as Vera, was a long-time secretary at Whitsun’s former firm before she retired.  She was known for her phenomenal memory; it was said that she never, ever forgot anything, be it a person in a photograph she had seen twenty years earlier or an obscure legal reference that the firm’s attorneys couldn’t recall.

Once she retired, Whitsun kept in touch with her sporadically.  Eventually Vera no longer wanted to leave her apartment, so he started bringing her groceries and other necessities.

On his last visit he was horrified to see her apartment–newspapers stacked higher than her head, dirty clothes and congealing food on dishes everywhere.  Vera didn’t want his help cleaning up, obviously was distressed, and after some prodding she confided the reason for her agoraphobia and hoarding.

During the war she had been approached by the FBI in their hunt for Nazis in the New York area.  With her incredible memory she was able to help them, using documents and photographs, to identify a number of spies and bring them to justice.  All this, however, brought with it a great deal of psychological pressure that manifested itself in her mental issues.  She eventually stopped allowing Whitsun to enter her apartment, making him leave the items he brought for her outside her door.

The last two times he stopped by, Vera didn’t answer the door or her phone.  He’s certain, given her phobias, that she didn’t leave her home, and she had no relatives he could contact.  Given his long friendship with Vera, he wants Lillian and Willowjean to investigate.

Forest’s case is not the only item on the agency’s agenda.  Responding to what appeared to be a sexual attack under the Coney Island boardwalk, Willowjean is attacked by the couple, and her purse containing her professional license and her Colt is missing.  She’s embarrassed that she fell for the twosome’s phony ploy, resolving to find the man and woman and retrieve what belongs to her without Lillian’s assistance.

Lillian is dealing with a secret of her own, something from her past that is being held over her by Jessup Quincannon, a bizarre multimillionaire with a penchant for collecting items relating to murders.

Pentecost and Parker make a perfect investigating pair, reminiscent of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.  Stephen Spotswood’s series, of which this mystery is the fourth volume, has a clever plot and intriguing protagonists, and I recommend putting Pentecost and Parker on your autumn reading list.

You can read more about the author at this website.

If you are ever asked whether you can learn anything from mystery novels, just say absolutely and direct them to Katie Tietjen’s excellent debut novel Death in the Details.

The novel is based in part on the true story of Frances Glessner Lee’s life and how she created “Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” miniature recreations of crime scenes to help homicide detectives in their pursuits of criminals.  Those “nutshells” are still in use today.  Glessner Lee went on to help create the science of forensic medicine in the United States, helped establish the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard, and became the first female police captain in the country.

Death in the Details is as fascinating as Glessner Lee’s own life was.  The novel takes place in 1946 in the small town of Elderberry, Vermont, where Mabel “Maple” Bishop had moved shortly after her marriage to Bill Bishop and where he started his medical practice after the retirement of the town’s previous physician, his close friend and mentor Dr. Murphy.

Bill volunteered for army service, even though he was over draft age.  He was killed in the war, and now Maple is completely alone.  She’s also close to destitute, because although her late husband had a busy practice, the townspeople tended to pay their bills “in kind” rather than cash—chickens, home baked bread, and casseroles regularly appeared on their doorstep in place of the money they didn’t have.

Although Maple is a law school graduate, no one is willing to hire a “woman lawyer.”  She doesn’t think she has any other marketable skills until she realizes that in fact she does—she makes miniature dollhouses filled with tiny people, minute furniture, and decorated walls.

Ben Crenshaw, owner of Elderberry’s hardware store, comes up with an idea that he hopes will benefit them both.  He suggests that she build and sell her dollhouses in the shop’s front window, thus bringing additional customers into the store to purchase them and hopefully to buy his wares as well.

Her first customer is Angela Wallace, who tells Maple that she’d like to purchase a dollhouse decorated like the house in which she and her sister lived as children.  Her unpleasant husband reluctantly agrees to the sale, giving Maple a down payment and saying it must be completed by the next day for her to get the balance.

When Maple arrives at the farmhouse the following morning, no one answers the front door.  Thinking that the couple might be in their barn, she pushes the wheelbarrow containing the dollhouse there and sees Elijah Wallace hanging from the barn’s hay hoist.  She rushes into the house and calls the police.  When they arrive, her observations and thoughts about Wallace’s death are brusquely dismissed.  “What’s to investigate?” Sheriff Scott asks.  In his mind, Maple’s concerns are baseless and that it’s a case of suicide.

Maple’s fight to convince the sheriff that her “nutshell” can be valuable in the investigation, her sometime alliance with the young deputy sheriff, and her determination to keep working on the case although she’s repeatedly warned off by Detective Scott make this mystery a fascinating one.

With a heroine combining a strong resolve not to give up until the truth comes out and a group of townspeople who may or may not be helping her, Death in the Details is an outstanding debut novel.  You can read more about Katie Tietjen at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.