Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Past Masters and Mistresses

Keigo Higashino, the Japanese author whose books were read around the globe, died on July 23 at age 68.

Mr. Higashino, one of my favorite authors, wrote over 100 novels in the genres of mystery, science fiction, and parody.  His works appeared in over 40 countries and were translated into English, French, Chinese, and Korean, among other languages.

His most famous creation is Detective Galileo, featured in The Devotion of Suspect X, a physicist whose name is actually Manabu Yukawa and who helps police solve murder cases.  The Devotion of Suspect X was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 best mysteries of all time.  However, my favorite character is Detective Kaga of the Tokyo police force, a man my husband refers to as the Japanese Columbo.  

Portraying the human condition was at the heart of his writing, he noted.  On a television program in 1999, Mr. Higashino said, “Whenever I write a novel, what I really want to portray is human nature.”

Mr. Higashino admitted that he was not an avid reader as a child.  When he won the Naoki Prize in 2006, he commented, “What I always think about is wanting to write novels that even my book-hating self from back then would enjoy reading.”

I have reviewed seven of his books on this blog, the most recent being Guilt on March 20th.  His final novel,  Eternal Memory, will be published this month.  I think that’s a fitting title to Mr. Higashino’s legacy.

This is the second Past Masters and Mistresses I’ve written in the past two months, and I hope I won’t have to write another one for a long, long time.

Thomas Perry passed away on September 15 in Los Angeles, age 78.

Thomas Perry was born in Tonawanda, New York.  He received his B.A. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Rochester.   Before starting his writing career he worked as a laborer, maintenance man, commercial fisherman, weapons mechanic, university administrator, and teacher.

His debut novel, The Butcher’s Boy, won the 1983 Edgar Allan Poe award for Best First Novel, and he went on to write three more books in the series that features a professional assassin.  He then created the Jane Whitefield series about a Native American woman who gives people in trouble new identities and assists them in starting their new lives.  Mr. Perry also wrote stand-alone thrillers, for a total of 32 novels.  In addition, he wrote and produced television episodes of “Simon & Simon,” “Snoops,” “The Oldest Rookie,” and “Sidekicks” with his wife, Jo Lee Perry.

Earlier this year, in an interview with Writers’ Digest, an excerpt of which appears in his obituary in the Boston Globe, Mr. Perry said, “I’ve been working at developing narratives in which we see and understand the complexity of motive, temperament, and history that a character brings when he comes into collision with other characters.”

He was greatly admired by his peers.  Robert B. Parker called him “quite simply, brilliant“; Stephen King said he was a writer “who can be depended upon to deliver high voltage shocks, vivid, sympathetic characters, and compelling narratives”; and Lawrence Block commented, “No one makes killing bad guys more fun.”

The Tree of Life and Flowers, the author’s final book, will be published posthumously in February.

Mr. Perry received numerous honors and awards, including the Barry Award and the Anthony Award.  In closing, I will quote Booklist: Mr. Perry is “the ultimate thinking person’s writer.”  He was surely a writer’s writer, and he will be missed.

This column, Past Masters and Mistresses, is very difficult to write for obvious reasons.  When someone appears here, it’s a final farewell.  There will be no more books by that author.

Martin Cruz Smith died on July 11, leaving behind a rich legacy of unforgettable characters and a penetrating and clear-eyed look into Russian history.

I discovered Mr. Smith in 1972 when I came across Canto for a Gypsy in my local library.  I loved it,  but  sadly for me, Canto was the second and last book in that brief series, and I don’t think I read any more of his books until Gorky Park was published in 1982.  Then I was not the only reader to follow him voraciously, waiting eagerly for Arkady Renko’s next adventure.  Time magazine called this novel “the first thriller of the ’80s,” and it won the Gold Dagger award from the British Crime Writers’ Association.  Nine other Renko novels followed, and the last, Hotel Ukraine, was published just three days before Mr. Smith’s death.

Renko was an incorruptible hero in a very corrupt Russian society.  Years after the book was published, when Mr. Smith applied for a visa to visit the Soviet Union it was denied.  Obviously those in charge had read the novel.  In later years, however, he was able to travel to Russia multiple times to do additional research.

One can actually follow the history of the Soviet Union/Russia through Mr. Smith’s novels.  He described the collapse of the Soviet Union (Red Square), the toll of the Chechen War (Stalin’s Ghost), and finally concluded with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Hotel Ukraine).

Martin Cruz Smith has left readers a wonderful legacy of novels to be read and reread, combining the importance of history with outstanding prose.  He will be missed.

I had never heard of the English mystery author Susie Steiner until her untimely death last month.  Then I read about her in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, and many online sites.  The writers of the various obituaries wrote so glowingly about her talent and her fortitude in the face of devastating illnesses that I decided I had to read her first mystery, Missing, Presumed.

In the opening chapter, we meet Ms. Steiner’s heroine Manon Bradshaw, a detective sergeant (DS) on the Cambridgeshire police force.  She’s thirty-nine years of age and is rapidly losing hope of finding Mr. Right, or even Mr. Almost-Right.  She’s on a date with a man whose name she can’t quite recall–it “might be Brian but could equally be Keith”–as the waiter brings the bill to the table.  Brian/Keith/? decides they should split the bill, although “to be fair” he didn’t have any wine, so he pays for only what he ate and she pays for her wine and food.

But even more upsetting than that, at least to me, is that she invites him back to her flat!  I just wanted to shake her, but instead I devoured the rest of the novel.  And I loved it!  I can’t wait to read the next (and sadly the last) two books in the series.

In childhood Ms. Steiner was diagnosed with a hereditary and degenerative sight condition, retinitis pigmentosa, and she lost her eyesight completely in 2013.  Then in 2016 it was discovered she had grade 4 glioblastoma, a brain tumor.  Incredibly, the three Manon Bradshaw mysteries were written after that.

The literary world is definitely poorer following the death of Susie Steiner, who died at the age of 51.  Her talent was amazing, her resilience even more so.

Such a sad way for mystery fans to greet the New Year, with the death of Sue Grafton.  As a reader who has read the Kinsey Millhone series from the beginning, it’s hard to imagine that this is the end of the alphabet.

A is for Alibi was published in 1982, and although it was not Ms. Grafton’s first work, it was the first stop on her road to literary fame.  It received widespread publicity and acknowledgement as one of the earliest mystery series to feature the new type of female protagonist–independent, tough, smart, and sure enough of herself (most of the time) to believe she could make it in the mostly male world of private investigators.

Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone series debuted in 1977, and that helped pave the way for Kinsey.  Right from A is for Alibi Kinsey is upfront about who she is–twice-divorced, no children, no family (although she finds relatives much later in the alphabet), unconcerned about her physical appearance but dedicated to jogging to keep herself in shape.  She gives the reader the impression of “take it or leave it,” this is who I am.

In my opinion, it was Sue Grafton’s writing style that made her a reader’s favorite.  She had a knack of drawing you into the story immediately, and you were rooting for Kinsey all the way.  Kinsey wasn’t fearless and she made mistakes and misjudgments along the way, but you felt her heart was always in the right place.

Halfway through the series, when she meets her mother’s birth family (whom she hadn’t known existed, much less that they were practically neighbors), her sense of their betrayal of her mother is so strong that you understand why she has no desire to become a part of the clan, even knowing that some benefits might come with belonging.  She feels that it would be disloyal to her late mother to forgive, or at least to forgive easily.  Kinsey is never a cardboard character simply working her way through the plot; she has feelings the reader can emphasize with and understand.

In a loving tribute to her mother, Jamie Clark wrote on Sue Grafton’s Facebook page that “as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y.”  Amen to that.

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.

Just over four years ago I wrote a review of one of my favorite Golden Oldies, From Doon With Death, by Ruth Rendell.  As I wrote in that May 2011 post, I first read the novel more than thirty years ago, and I vividly remembered what an impressive debut it was.

Ms. Rendell died last month at age 85.  Of course I didn’t know her personally, but I imagine that she must have been, in addition to her obvious literary talents, an interesting lady.  She started out as a journalist, was assigned to cover a local meeting, and wrote the story.  The problem was that Ms. Rendell hadn’t attended the meeting and thus didn’t know that the night’s speaker had died suddenly in the middle of the talk he was giving; not surprisingly, she was fired.  Not quite an auspicious career beginning.

However, she had more success with her first Inspector Wexford novel, the above-mentioned From Doon With Death, and it was followed by twenty additional Wexford novels.  The author said that her protagonist was modeled after herself, although he was a police detective and she became, in 1997, a lifetime peer, the Baroness of Babergh.  In a Simon & Schuster video she said, “I’m not creating a character so much as putting myself as a man on the page.”  Not something, certainly, that every female author could do, or could do with such authority.

In addition to the Wexford mysteries, Ms. Rendell wrote under the pen name Barbara Vine.  Those novels were darker, more terror-inspiring, perhaps because, as she told the Associated Press, “I don’t think the world is a particularly pleasant place.”

Perhaps not, but certainly Ruth Rendell made it a much more exciting place for the millions of readers who enjoyed her books, which were translated into over twenty languages.  On the Wikipedia short biography page about her, she is placed, under the heading “People also search for,” alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Patricia Highsmith, and Elizabeth George.  Heady company indeed, but very well-deserved.

Ms. Rendell was the recipient of three Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America plus four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger from England’s Crime Writers’ Association.

Ruth Rendell’s last book, Dark Corners, will be published in October.  How caring of her to have left us a final gift.

In the midst of getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, I heard the news of the death of P. D. James.  Although at age 94 her passing was certainly not unexpected, it still saddens me to think that no more of her wonderful mysteries will be forthcoming.

Amid all the personal remembrances that have been written just since her death yesterday and all the other yet to come, I’d like to add my own.  I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. James more than thirty years ago at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, which I believe was one of the first stores of its type, specializing in all forms of mystery and suspense novels. 

Kate Mattes hosted many authors over the years, both novices to the publishing world and famous ones, including Robert B. Parker, Sara Paretsky, and of course Ms. James.  To me Ms. James was the epitome of the English writer.  I remember her as petite, with brown hair and wearing what the British call a “twin set,” also brown.  I can’t remember if she wore pearls, but I’ve added them to the picture of her in my mind.  Of course I still have the book she inscribed to me, Innocent Blood.  “To Marilyn, With every good wish from the author, P. D. James.”

Like many other readers, I was an immediate fan after reading her first novel, Cover Her Face.  But I must confess that her two novels featuring private investigator Cordelia Gray were my favorites.  From interviews the authors gave, she stopped writing about the P.I. because she wanted a more authentic protagonist, and at that time there were no women detectives in Scotland Yard.  Thus Adam Dalgliesh became her best-known creation.  However, I still retain a special warm spot for the inexperienced but intrepid Cordelia Gray.

Baroness James of Holland Park, as she was known after receiving a life peerage in 1991, did not have an easy life.  Her husband, a physician, returned from World War II with mental problems, leaving Ms. James to support their young family as well as dealing with his frequent stays in psychiatric hospitals.   She worked for many years for the British government and finally achieved great fame years after her husband’s early death.  Her novels were all carefully plotted, totally believable, and featured both settings and characters that held the reader from the first page to the last.  They were a joy to read and re-read.

If there was one more thing to be thankful for yesterday, it was having had the works of Phyllis Dorothy James to read over these past decades.

You can read more about P. D. James at this web site.

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

A few months ago I was looking through my bookshelves for a mystery to re-read, and I came across the several Jeremiah Healy books I own.  I remember wondering why there hadn’t been a new John Francis Cuddy book in a number of years; when I checked Mr. Healy’s website I realized it had been more than a decade.

I actually toyed with the idea of contacting him through his website to ask whether his readers could expect another in the Cuddy series anytime soon.  But, like many other good intentions, that idea got lost among numerous things I had to think about or do, so I never attempted to contact him.

Reading about Jeremiah Healy’s death last month, I felt so sad.  He was a talented writer who made his Boston-based private investigator stand out from the crowd.  John Francis Cuddy was a veteran, a law school dropout, a widower at a very young age, and a really nice guy.  His compassion and kindness, as well as his toughness when necessary, are evident in each of the dozen books in which he appears.

Mr. Healy’s private life had its own difficulties.  He battled depression for years and apparently had a drinking problem.  Despite this, he had successful careers before beginning writing mysteries; he was an attorney in private practice and later taught at a Boston law school.  

It seems unbearably cruel that such a talented and well-liked man (glowing epitaphs from such authors as Harlan Coben and Lawrence Block) felt so overwhelmed by depression that he took his own life.  But as Cuddy’s late wife, Beth, told Cuddy, “If you’re waiting for life to be fair, John, I think you’re in for a very long siege.”

What is fair, though, as well as true, is that Jeremiah Healy will be remembered by his many fans as a outstanding writer who created an original character and brought reading enjoyment to many.