The Yard – Alex Grecian

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London 1889. Jack the Ripper hasn’t murdered for a while but his identity is still a mystery and the city’s residents have lost faith in the police. Scotland Yard is trapped in old-fashioned police protocols but a new Commissioner just back from India, a new Inspector in Murder just promoted up from Devon and a newly-discovered dismembered body in a trunk at Euston Square Station are about to change that.

Alex Grecian’s Victorian police procedural introduces a terrific pair of sleuths—Inspector Walter Day and Constable Hammersmith are a little uncertain they will manage the overwhelming case loads and win the trust of their fellow officers. But both are unafraid to operate out of integrity and neither has the good sense to go home when a gruesome case remains tantalizingly unsolved. They have plenty of work.

The body is a fellow murder detective and what has been done to him is sickening and inexplicable. The story is larded with gory detail—a major character is the self-appointed medical examiner, a doctor with a jones for the newly emerging discipline of forensic science. He’s a keeper–very colorful and intrepid man with a strong backstory and an even stronger appeal in the middle of a homicide investigation. No dull characters in this novel—chimney sweeps to frenzied, bloodthirsty maniacs are feisty, lurid, eccentric, certifiably mad, unaccountably sane, courtly, deadly and every iteration of unexpected human being. Grecian’s characterization skills are cinematic.

The plots–and there are several that intersect, veer off and unspool into a bizarre tangle in the end–are logical and terrible. London is grubby, smelly, murderous, streaked in blood, gore and horse manure. Threats abound and none are idle. The cops are so inundated with crimes they can never catch up and big clues fall between the cracks as they land on the wrong desk—or in the trash can.

But the new team is good at seeing connections and unafraid to consider patterns of criminal behavior that haven’t been part of a detective’s arsenal before. There’s a great introduction to the questionable idea of finger printing and a willingness to examine psychological profiling as London seems in the grip of multiple serial killers. Kid victims, cop victims, lady victims and sadistic killers are tucked behind every door and most of the doors are closed–but not for long.

The Yard is gritty, sort of disgusting, convincing and gripping. I liked the characters at least as much as the plot. I would pick up a sequel to Grecian’s debut novel—and I suspect, from the way this one leaves off, Inspector Day and his tough, humane sidekick Hammersmith will be back in trouble and in print soon enough.

The Yard   Alex Grecian | Putnam 2012

The Likeness – Tana French

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Tana French writes many-layered psychological suspense novels that feature appealing (and appalling) characters, fluid prose and complex, imaginative and improbable plots. The Likeness, with a slightly unlikely core premise, is a stay-up-late que pasó that requires a large measure of the willing suspension of disbelief.

Cassie Maddox, a Dublin detective who is a repeat protagonist in French’s fiction, is pulled back into undercover work when a corpse is discovered in a tumbled-down “hunger cottage” in the countryside outside Dublin. The dead woman has Cassie’s exact face and goes by the fictional identity Cassie created (and has since retired) for her undercover work infiltrating universities in pursuit of drug dealers. The similarities are weird—and so is Cassie’s feeling about the idea of assuming the made-up life of a woman whose identity and death are unexplained.

She is lured back in, despite the misgivings of her serious boyfriend, a murder detective who has an impressive solve rate, the lead detective on the case. Soon enough her diabolical former boss from undercover is co-director of the homicide team. Cassie moves into an old Irish estate house with four roommates, assuming the identity of Lexie Madison, with a story about being stabbed, falling into a coma, nearly dying, and developing amnesia. She pulls it off and is in place to find out what really happened and who killed the mysterious “Lexie.”

Here’s where you might phone up Tana French and say “What?” How does a cop fool longtime roommates who live in close daily proximity and emotional intimacy and who have heard (and maybe seen) that their real roommate is dead? Why does Cassie take such an improbable assignment and almost immediately fall under the spell of the victim’s odd living arrangements? And when does a professional detective withhold critical evidence from her superiors for no defensible reason?  

But pretend none of this matters and you can enjoy the marvelous prose. There is a lot of it. The novel is well over 400 pages and, despite the gorgeous writing, could have been a lot shorter. There is enough introspection to fill two novels—just sayin’. It’s pretty good but maybe not important enough to earn that amount of ink, paper and reading time.

Okay, what happens: Cassie is drawn into the emotional environment of the house—the shared domicile of a bunch of PhD-candidate eccentrics who have no TV, home Internet connection or PCs (they work online on campus), or contact with hostile neighbors in the tiny village abutting the estate. The house is falling down and the five bond over shared renovation projects to clean it up. They play cards and board games by the fire at night and read, play musical instruments and restore the ancient herb garden. And, little-by-little, hairline cracks become visible fissures as Cassie apparently succeeds at impersonating the dead woman and begins to connect to the life at Whitethorn House.

The dangers of her situation intensify as she draws closer to understanding what might have happened to Lexie. Her own life starts to fray around the edges and her team in the Murder division digs up more and more information about Lexie, the four roommates, the threats and vandalism to the house, several possible villains antagonistic to the residents of Whitethorn House, and the complex web of relationships that set the stage for a bewildering homicide. If the maturity and basic mental health of these housemates weren’t significant questions, it might have been tougher to work out the rough details of the murder—or at least the rough details of the motive. I did stay up late to read it and it was good when I remembered to check my analytical brain at the door. Tana French is an amazing writer. The Likeness is a flawed but still engaging book.

The Likeness: A Novel   Tana French  -  Viking  2008

The House of Silk – Anthony Horowitz

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Anthony Horowitz inhabits the memories and pen of Dr.Watson in his Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk. It seems very Holmesian to me, although I would have to have recently imbibed a number of Arthur Conan Doyle’s originals to pick it apart on style.

In this story, embargoed for a century by Watson whose first-person voice relates the whole affair, Holmes is approached by an art dealer with a lethal problem. The wild goose chases that ensue are mostly fatal ones and the first crime is compounded by so many more that an entirely new level of depravity is uncovered.

The destruction of irreplaceable masterpieces leads to the decimation of a marauding Irish gang in America, the murder of a Boston Brahmin, a dead man in a cheap London hotel, a family coming undone in one of London’s fancier enclaves, many fascinating excursions through the mind of the great sleuth, and the brutal death of two children. Holmes is implicated, falsely and fairly, in puzzling homicides and he is framed and imprisoned for murder after walking deliberately into a trap.

Things get pretty wild. It’s entertaining. Some important plot points are so similar to the underlying evil in other murder mysteries I’ve read on this book-a-day hamster-wheel that I guessed what was going on earlier than I might have otherwise. But that shouldn’t spoil it for anyone. The House of Silk pays homage to Holmes and Conan Doyle quite elegantly. Horowitz was approved by the estate to write this book, probably on the strength of his other best selling mystery work. Holmes would likely find little fault with it.

The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel   Anthony Horowitz | Little, Brown and Company  2011

Dorchester Terrace – Anne Perry

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Thomas Pitt has been promoted to head of the Special Branch and there are some questions—a few in his own mind—about whether he is up to the task. Pitt is a brilliant detective but his new role as Commander requires diplomacy, tact, social graces and an instinct for intrigue. In addition, he will hold the fate of many people in his hands—his decisions will be life and death in circumstances that are often ambiguous.

When he learns of suspicious questions about train crossings from Dover to London and then discovers that a Habsburg is scheduled to take that route on a visit to Kensington Palace, he may or may not be onto the early stages of a disastrous political plot. The Foreign Secretary is contemptuous and other complications create awkward situations that frustrate Pitt and may endanger scores of innocent civilians.

Add to this stew a once fabulous elderly revolutionary, a woman whose valiant and colorful exploits were matched only by the roster of her illustrious lovers during a time of unrest and rebellion in the Austrian Empire. Serafina Montserrat was legendary but now she is frail and forgetful, terrified that her ramblings may reveal secrets that can still incite murder and international mayhem. Serafina lives on Dorchester Terrace, confined to bed and the ministrations of a resentful niece, a faithful servant and visits from old friends and acquaintances—until she dies of a massive overdose of laudanum.

Anne Perry’s Dorchester Terrace reignited my interest in Thomas and Charlotte Pitt. The elevated venue in which the Pitts now solve mysteries is more interesting than the former more mundane puzzles I’ve read with the two sleuths. So I suppose I will once again pull this Anne Perry series off the shelf when I come across a few—Perry is a convincing writer with an obsessive tendency to weave detailed history in and out of her stories. The history in this book, a fictional foreshadowing of the events that triggered World War I, is fascinating and at least as interesting as the plot.    

Dorchester Terrace: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel   Anne Perry | Ballantine  2012

Cain His Brother – Anne Perry

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William Monk has been busted out of the police force in Victorian London and, with no other skills but detective work, set himself up as a private eye. When Genevieve Stonefield comes to him with a desperate tale of a missing husband, he suspects a fiscal or romantic entanglement. But Angus, the missing man, seems to have been a model of rectitude and there is no mistaking his wife’s distress. She believes he went to the Limehouse section of town where his wastrel twin brother Caleb haunts the docks and alleys, a fearsome murderous criminal.

As Monk sets off to find Caleb and determine if and how Angus has met with foul play, typhoid fever sweeps through the slums and Hester Latterly and several wealthy patrons convert an old warehouse into a makeshift hospital. Hester and Monk have some history but it is as much antagonism as attraction and they spend this book sparring relentlessly. Monk has reasons to visit the typhoid shelter and Heather has emergency nursing duties for one of her helpers who succumbs to the fever. The woman is the wife of Lord Rathbone, Angus and Caleb Stonefield’s childhood guardian—the plot thickens.

So, we have Cain and Abel—er, Caleb and Angus—plenty of excuses for Monk’s and Hester’s paths to cross on a regular basis, a seedy waterfront setting and a hunt for a missing identical twin. Alas, I figured out a major, major plot point before the fever had even taken hold in the filthy back alleys of London. But Anne Perry pulls out her usual bag of tricks and surprises in Cain His Brother and suspecting what really happens does not dim the pleasure in tracking what is happening. Monk is framed by a beautiful woman who accuses him publicly of attacking her, a charge that will ruin him and make it impossible for him to work. Certain society matrons have rather colorful and extremely veiled pedigrees. Perry throws in her version of the movie car chase—a wild hunt for a vicious perp on and along the Thames, on foot and on barges.

The William Monk mysteries are reliably satisfying. The sights and sounds of Victorian London, especially its seedier environs, are vivid and convincing. Hester and Monk’s wary circling is acerbic and fun to watch. I ran out of hours trying to keep up with overscheduled life and a seriously long YA book that is also a very good read, so I jumped into the polluted Thames with Monk, who can always be counted on for a thrill ride and a complex, twisted plot. Even knowing the key to the riddle of the disappearance didn’t help me to unravel all of it. I did, however, slide into the last chapter well before midnight. Murder mysteries will probably get me through the year.

Cain His Brother: A William Monk Novel (Mortalis)   Anne Perry | Ballantine Books  2010

A River in the Sky – Elizabeth Peters

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The Emerson family, the brightest and bossiest collection of human beings to grace early 1900s archaeology, has been unleashed on another artifact-rich region. This time the delightful and troublesome Ramses is a young man—he’s an admirable young man but I love him as the hell-on-wheels six-year-old in older Egyptian adventures—and there is an adopted daughter, Nefret, whose acquisition must have been the fascinating topic of another book.

A River in the Sky tracks Amelia Peabody Emerson, her blustery, adoring and brilliant Egyptologist husband, Nefret and a motley crew of friends, servants and hangers-on to Jerusalem where a bumbling amateur intends to dig for the Ark of the Covenant at one of the holiest sites in Palestine. Ramses is already in Palestine on another dig, getting himself perilously involved in a murderous intrigue. The Germans are planning a railroad and an eventual occupation of the region. Turkish soldiers of the Ottoman Empire don’t bother with niceties when keeping order. Weird characters abound and many of them might be spies or other nefarious villains.

As ever, Amelia is brusque, intelligent, competent, attracted to the most dangerous sites and the possibilities of a dig to clear up some historical mysteries. But this time an added complication is the apparent disappearance of Ramses who has failed to show up as directed and join his parents’ dig. The Crown has set the Emersons loose in Palestine to uncover a plot to destabilize the precarious peace among conflicting religions in the tinderbox of Jerusalem. Much more than the discovery of new artifacts is at stake. Things get complicated before the expedition sets one foot out of England.

Elizabeth Peters delivers her razor-sharp, contentious, funny and historically-lavish typical Amelia Peabody mystery. The repartee between the Emersons is quick and clever. The plots and subplots twist into a satisfying tangle. You can’t entirely guess at the resolution but you are happy to be led to it, enjoying the adventure along the way. There are no false notes in these stories. The times, the trickery and the players all make sense in a believable world. My only regret was the absence of De Cat Bastet and that wicked little boy who bedevils everyone and saves the day hilariously in earlier books.

A River in the Sky: An Amelia Peabody Novel of Suspense   Elizabeth Peters | HarperCollins   2010

Tigerlily’s Orchids – Ruth Rendell

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Ruth Rendell’s Tigerlily’s Orchids was a disappointment. The story wanders around the apartments in one building in a neighborhood outside central London—the novel is half-over before anyone dies and you don’t much care when they do. The flats are occupied by a motley bunch of losers, students, suicidal alcoholics, pedophiles, hapless naifs and hippies way past their primes. (Sigh.)

The intrigue isn’t very intriguing, the crimes are pedestrian and sort of grimy—murder excepted. But the main victim fails to elicit much sympathy, the second corpse has already taken too long to die by the time it’s toes-up, much about the lives of the inhabitants is sordid or just relentlessly banal. None of the large cast seems to have much future—or much present, for that matter.

I was bored. But I did learn something–I figured out why some books work for me and some don’t, even in the same genre and even when the authors are well-regarded. When I don’t like a book it is often because the characters are unappealing, do stupid things that will cause them foreseeable problems and don’t have anything I would find interesting to look forward to. I just can’t care about dull-witted characters. Personal failure of imagination, no doubt.

So, Ruth Rendell may be a genius of crime novels but Tigerlily’s Orchids had no orchids, no Tigerlily, a flaccid plot and a double-decker busload of forgettable people. I’ve read books that are really bad and this wasn’t one. But I wouldn’t have pushed through it if I’d had time to crack another novel and finish by day’s end.   

Tigerlily’s Orchids: A Novel   Ruth Rendell | Scribner   2011

Acceptable Loss – Anne Perry

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I’ve been reading a lot of Anne Perry novels and come to some conclusions about this best-selling author of historical crime fiction. She writes several series with dedicated characters situated in specific venues for their exploits. By far I prefer her William and Hester Monk books. Acceptable Loss is the latest of these and they are so good I will reserve as many as the New York Public Library has so I can read all of them.

Monk shares top billing with Hester who is a strong heroine, smart sleuth, fearless investigator and highly principled woman essential to the solving of morally repugnant crimes along the Thames in Victorian London. Acceptable Loss picks up where Execution Dock left off—the pornography ring and floating salons of sexual abuse that serve as prisons for young boys is still very much alive. Even the murder-suicide of the owner of one of the boats and the prominent judge who was his customer hasn’t slowed the traffic. Monk and Hester have taken in a mudlark, Scuff, a kid who lived by his wits on the lawless banks of the Thames and was nearly destroyed by the horrible business. As Acceptable Loss opens, they know that Scuff still doesn’t feel safe and won’t until they do something to uncover the money and power behind the sex salons and the extortion ring they fuel.

When the body of a boat owner farther upriver washes ashore, Monk and his deputy find another slave ship crammed with five- and six-year-old boys. The hunt is on for the real puppet-masters, complicated by the charge that the upper-class father-in-law of London’s most prominent barrister, a close friend of both Hester and Monk, has something to do with the revolting trade in children’s flesh. Monk’s investigation threatens a major patron of Hester’s clinic for prostitutes and poor women, and makes an enemy of the barrister’s wife, a clinic volunteer and friend of Hester’s who is also the daughter of the chief suspect.

The forensics are terrific; the suspects are plentiful; the stakes couldn’t be higher; the moral questions are fierce; the courage required to pursue faint and dangerous leads to the truth is exceptional. So is the novel. I think the Monk books are by far Perry’s best and my guess is that the characters and the issues are richer and more compelling than those in her other mysteries. London’s seedy waterfront spawns an inexhaustible number of colorful individuals. The crime is cinematic; the narrow alleyways are stifling; the poverty is grinding and grimy; the gap between rich and poor is stark; the self-doubt that plagues the protagonists at key points in the crime-solving isn’t based on poor self-image but on a refusal to settle for anything less than absolute integrity.

I wonder if Monk and his cohorts are Anne Perry’s favorite creations? In my estimation, they benefit from the lion’s share of her talent. I have yet to read any of her WWI books, although I am told those are among her best. So I’ll reserve final judgment until I’ve had the chance to sample all the dishes in this literary banquet. But Monk and Hester are the go-to team for times when I want a reliable, satisfying read—one that could compel you to stay up way too late so you can finish it. Which I did.

Acceptable Loss: A William Monk Novel   Anne Perry | Ballantine Books  2011

Buckingham Palace Gardens – Anne Perry

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I’m still not sure why this Victorian murder mystery is named Buckingham Palace Gardens—it takes place mostly inside Buckingham Palace and there doesn’t seem to be much to do with the gardens. But Anne Perry weaves a suitably wicked plot inside the palace walls and her sleuths, Thomas Pitt and his household servant Gracie, do range from the wine cellar to the kitchens to the guest wing and the Queen’s bedchamber in search of a vicious killer.

At a house party to hammer out details of a grand venture to build a railroad the length of Africa and expand the Empire, a collection of diplomats, bankers, visionaries, Africa hands and desperately unhappy upper class people are wined and dined by the Prince of Wales. But festivities come to an abrupt end when the horribly mutilated nude body of a prostitute is found stuffed in the royal linen closet. Pitt and his superior in Special Services are called in to solve the crime. Gracie is added, posing undercover as a new palace maid, to pick up whatever intelligence she can from the servants.

The crime is a tough puzzle. There are inexplicable details, no apparent motive, missing clues that will prove vital and no witnesses. Everyone but the houseguests has a solid alibi and palace security means the culprit must be one of them. Anne Perry uses the claustrophobic setting to explore the connections, frustrations and secret longings of several of the guests. No one seems to be in love with the one they’re with—in fact, most of them are covertly or openly lusting after someone else’s partner. That goes on a bit and gets revisited more than I thought was good for the pace of the story. I got really tired of the interior monologue of one character who was miserable but couldn’t be sure the son-in-law she always meant to marry herself was a worthy object of her affection.

Random clues stay random; Gracie discovers more than the cops; the nobility and the elite are less than admirable. The dead woman isn’t placed and her clothes are never found. Odd comings and goings, blood traces, broken pottery and other seemingly haphazard bits of information don’t add up to a motive or a suspect. And then another corpse is discovered and chunks of the puzzle start to snap into place.

Reasonably good book, hard to guess, although a reader is led astray pretty often with clues that dead end after a while. I’ve liked other Anne Perry books better than this one but it was cleverly done, even if the emo content verged on the obsessive or maudlin from time to time. Buckingham Palace Gardens is one of Perry’s Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mysteries but Charlotte doesn’t make an appearance. Gracie is good though. I wouldn’t mind another mystery with Gracie reprising her role as sleuth—she’s a great character.

Buckingham Palace Gardens: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt Novels)   Anne Perry | Ballantine Books  2008

A Christmas Homecoming – Anne Perry

Well, it was a rough week. The brain did not engage this morning so I defaulted to the last of the Anne Perry mysteries I collected at the library—a slender episode in her holiday series. It seemed like a more practical choice than finishing Luminarium, a good book but much more work. A Christmas Homecoming is a classic cozy—an acting troupe snowed-in at a country estate, a storm-stranded stranger who is given shelter until the blizzard abates, loads of personality clashes, shifting relationships and a horrible murder that had to be committed by someone in the snowbound house.

A light read. Caroline Fielding has married a much younger actor, the head of the repertory company who travels to Yorkshire to put on a performance of an adaptation of Dracula written by a patron’s daughter. It is a house at war with itself—the décor and shadow of a domineering mother-in-law still inhabits the rooms. It is magnificent but dark and somber despite the efforts of Eliza Netheridge, its current mistress. Charles Netheridge, the self-made millionaire who owns the estate, is humoring his daughter Alice who wants to be a playwright. He has scheduled a performance of her play for Boxing Day in the house’s theatre.

Jealousies, flirtations, poisonous repartee, a truly awful script and the dire necessity to fix it while not alienating the wealthy host, the surprisingly astute observations of the stranded guest and Caroline’s attempts to smooth things to protect her husband Joshua build to a gruesome discovery at midnight—and then an even more gruesome discovery as Caroline sets out to solve the crime. Suspicion is bound to fall on the members of the traveling theater troupe, who are the unknowns in the fishing village of Whitby.Whitby happens to be where Dracula first set foot on English soil and some of the housebound believe that vampires might be real and that one may be among them.

There are some interesting discussions of the nature of evil to enjoy but A Christmas Homecoming is not a hold-your-breath novel. It has its grim moments and ugly surprises and it is convincing and solidly crafted. Just what a brain-dead writer and daily book devourer needed to refocus on how, some days, even the simple stories can save us.

A Christmas Homecoming: A Novel   Anne Perry | Ballantine Books   2011