JUNKYARD DOGS

CRAIG JOHNSON

As a suffocating heat wave wraps it’s humid tentacles around the denizens of the middle latitudes and winter is thankfully a dim memory one can imaginatively slide into a Wyoming bone chilling winter along with Walt Longmire and his crew of friends and fellow law enforcement officers of Absaroka County.

As in any town there are people who actions defy belief but that make perfect sense to them and the story begins with Walt trying to figure out why a grandfather in his seventies has ended up in a ditch after having been towed a few miles by a car. I know people like this, you know people like this and so you settle in for this winter’s tale.

Walt is tired and as cold as the winter for several reasons. His daughter Cady had returned to the east to plan her wedding, for some reason leaving him out of the loop, one of his best officers is having second thoughts about his career, he has worries about his health that he is trying to suppress and lastly he won’t let go and have the relationship he wants and needs in his love life. As always he suppresses all his concerns in the job and the job always comes through.

The case this time involves an unusual death at a junkyard guarded by two vicious animals of great reputation. The corpse is old George Stewart himself who was recently smacked in the head by a golf club swung by an irate neighbor who lost his temper. But this isn’t what killed the old man. Before many days follow the bodies are dropping like dominoes and the thread that ties them together is hard to find.

Walt has to look within families to try and find connections and he unearths secrets that are deeply hidden. 

There are always many kinds of people that live in any community. Those that have been there for ages and those who saw the potential of the area and come to change it. This does not always make for peace. The way to make progress is to try to appreciate the things that look good on the surface but are not what they seem.

As in any community there is that ubiquitous junkyard surrounded by that chicken wire fence that is an eyesore but it provides an essential service. No one wants it in his or her neighborhood and everyone is afraid of the guard dogs. It is a symbol of the other side of the tracks. This sounds more like a big city or town concept, at least a place with tracks, not the wide-open spaces of Wyoming kind of separation. But people are the same everywhere with a Craig Johnson kind of twist.

There is a moral to this story. It is that problems are best faced straight on whether they be people with criminal tendencies, family difficulties, physical problems, medical issues or junkyard dogs or you may get bitten in the a$$.

I can always count on Craig Johnson to tell a great tale and bring me into his Wyoming world for several hours. This was a great trip.

TWO O’CLOCK,  EASTERN WARTIME

John Dunning

Jack Dulaney, who was deaf in one ear and so was not eligible for the draft was making living walking horses at racetracks on the west coast during the early years of the war. Bur after Pearl Harbor the government were shutting down the racing and were using the stables at the race tracks as internment camps for the American Japanese citizens who lived on the west coast.

Jack was write who had published a novel but it was no enough of a moneymaker to bring bread to the table. He had come to the west coast to try to forget about the girl he loved Holly Carnahan. She was the girl friend of his best friend Tom and although he knew that Holly had had feelings for him as well he could not be a part of what would happen so he left. Sadly, Tom was now dead at Pearl Harbor now too.

Jack, then gets into a bar fight and ends up in Jail, but get a SOS letter from Holly so escapes from a chain gang and heads east. He ends up on the Jersey shore where there is an extraordinary radio station WHAR. These are the days prior to practical television when many thought that the TV images were just a fad and that nothing would come of them. But Jack had found a home. He changed his name to Jordan Ten Eyck and became someone new.

There was strict government control of the airwaves at the time and much of went on the air was censored and watered down but still many felt that Radio was a great medium and that the great days of radio were yet to come. The feeling was that much more could be done on radio than ever could be done on TV. Daily shows of great drama and music were possible if only ideas like controversial subjects of race, government controls, sex, incest and the like could be covered. The more things change the more things stay the same.

There were the same types of arguments of what types of music could the American public understand, or even what kind of music should they be allowed to hear. Live radio, what an exciting time it was. Jack was in his element because he had found his métier! His words flowed like water. His scripts were gems.

Behind the scenes however were the usual turbulent times of German spies, murdered and lost loves, twisted pasts that have been hidden all roiling just beneath the surface just like the radio soaps. Holly Carnahan is here under a different name; there are buried bodies, barbed wire on the beach, dead bodies washing up on the shore from downed submarines. The one flaw I saw was that Jack spoke as if he knew in whose favor the war would be resolved. 


These days  you can listen to some of the shows available in the forties on satellite radio on stations called Classic Radio. Here again the shows are the ones that stood the test of time and progressed on to television. There seems to be a preponderance of half hour comedies and detective dramas and what strikes me are the tones of the women's voices. What was popular for the female chanteuse as well as the female house wife type  is one not heard often today. Main male characters voices seem a little higher as well in register. This was considered less threatening perhaps.


I was not there but it is sad to think that those lofty dreams never came to pass.

THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN

P. D. JAMES

Clarissa Lisle the actress is to play the leading role in a production of The Duchess of Malfi. The play is to be done in Victorian Dress and will take place on Courcy Island off the Dorset coast. The owner of the island whose name is Ambrose Gorringe has restored a small Victorian theater, which was first built by his great- grandfather. The performance is very important to Miss Lisle because she needs it to restore her confidence.

For the past several years every time she begins a performance she has been receiving notes that she interprets as death threats and this results in her drying up on stage and losing the part in which she is acting. On their own the notes merely mention death but put together as a pattern and combined with the fashion in which they are delivered shortly after beginning each new role it has ruined her career and frightened her badly.

Her third husband, Sir George Ralston decided to hire Private Detective Cordelia Gray to act as Miss Lisle’s secretary/companion while she is on Courcy Island to protect the actress as well as solve the case of the mysterious letters. He has given Cordelia all of the letters he has on hand. There are more than twenty of them. They are all written on different machines and they all have small drawings of either skulls or coffins on them. It appears that Miss Lisle had met Cordelia once and was impressed by her.

While on the island the members of the party will be staying at the castle owned by Ambrose Gorringe. Other members of the party include Tolly, Miss Lisle’s, dresser, Roma Lisle her cousin, Simon her stepson and a drama critic Ivo Whittingham. There are also two servants, the Butler names Munter who fancies himself a Jeeves, and his wife.

With the group coming over to the island on the first trip comes the mail and in the bag is the first letter:

  Call upon our dame aloud,                                                                                                   

And bid her quickly don her shroud!

By the time Cordelia is on the island for a few hours more letters are found and it is clear that the writer is one of this small group. As Cordelia becomes acquainted with her fellow houseguests she realizes that there are plenty of reasons for people to have dislike if not hatred for this actress and that it would take very little for those feelings to progress towards murder!

While we might wish it was Adam Dalgleish who comes when needed instead of Sgt. Gordon, it is still Cordelia's game in the end and the subtile twists and turns are no match for her. I just wish there were more cases with her in them.


This is the last os the P.D, James Books I had left on my shelf to read. This ended the quest I had to reread them all for a group read of  THE BLACK TOWER. Many questions came up such as which was my favorite read and what did I think of James as a whole and so forth. There are very few authors I read from beginning to end much less reread and she is one of the favorites. I don't have one that  stands out in my mind. I don't know that I will reread her again at this stage in my life but I am surely holding onto all her books.

Stain on the Berry

A Russel Quant Mystery

 Anthony Bidulka

It’s a beautiful July in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan a Canadian prairie city and Russell Quant is sleeping soundly when a disturbing phone call yanks him into partial consciousness. All he hears is a frightened voice saying,” He’s coming to get me…I don’t know why… but I can’t take it any more!” The woman, for the voice sounds female ends the call without telling Quant her name.

Quant, who was once a policeman, is now a Private Investigator in Saskatoon, a city of about 200,000.  One of its outstanding features is that it purports to have more restaurants per capital than any other in North America. It is a beautiful city on the Saskatchewan River. Usually in the summer things are quite, the population is almost comatose according to Quant who could use a case.

 

It is discovered the next day that the caller was Tanya Cullinare, who after calling Russell jumped from an eighth floor balcony leaving Russell’s business card by her phone. The police determine that it was indeed suicide. Subsequently Tanya’s family contact Quant and ask him to investigate the situation. They has been out of touch with Tanya for a while and wanted to know if it was suicide, why Tanya jumped.

Quant begins his investigation and finds that Tanya’s best friend also died a suspicious death and that several people in a chorus that Tanya belonged to are being stalked and harassed by phone calls and messages that merely say BOO! The harassment escalates to property damage and people are frightened, some enough to leave the country but the police have nothing to go on.

Russell Quant finds out that the ’boogeyman” began his work in the early month’s of the year. When there are several near death experiences and one of Quant’s friends is cruelly injured the detective works feverishly to find this spook.

Anthony Bidulka tells a great tale with any easy style and amazingly subtle humor. His series which begins with Amuse Bouche is one I highly recommend.

 THE LOST ART OF GRATITUDE


ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

We are first introduced to Isabel Dalhousie in THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB in which she witnesses a young man fall from an upper balcony after a performance of the Reykjavik Symphony in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.  Against the advice of friends and family Isabel feels morally obligated to find out what happened. She often gets involved in things that others consider none of her business.  She has the sense that she has a moral obligation to set certain matters straight if she can. She believes this because she was the last person the young man saw before he died.

 Isabel is a quiet woman of independent means who is in her early forties. She is also a philosopher who edits a journal called The Review of Applied Ethics and she quite often has interior monologues about sticky moral problems that are always very interesting.  She may consider for instance the question of distant wrongs. Do past wrongs seem less wrong to us because they are less vivid? Or when one is led to a buffet bar and told to help themselves what exactly does that mean. It doesn’t mean fill a suitcase full of food surely!

As Isabel’s series progresses she moves from juicy dilemma to philosophical quandary and back again. Her personal life moves along as well.  

Motherhood takes up much of her time, but as the owner and publisher of the Review of Applied Ethics, she is quite busy.  When she gets a threatening letter that tries to force her out of the editorial position by two of its previous  quarrelsome directors, Professors Dove and Lettuce,  she has an additional challenge. Isabel finds satisfying ways of dealing with these setbacks with recourse to courts and lawyers.

In THE LOST ART OF GRATITUDE Isabel comes into the sphere once again of Minty Auchterlonie, a highflying financier who runs her own bank. In her past dealings with her Isabel categorized Minty as one of those people to whom the idea of a moral sense seemed to be quite alien. But it has been several years since they have met and they both have small children of about the same age and Isabel wants to suppress the past in thinking that anyone with maternal feelings can’t be as evil as she remembers Minty to be.

Minty manipulates Isabel into a difficult situation that tests her moral courage but she is strong as usual. This is a very strong series that teaches the reader in every book. In this book I learned whom I would save if two people I disliked were in danger of drowning and I could choose only one. Isabel teaches the reader how to approach important problems such as this as well as how to have patience until the next book in the series is available.

 CHASING THE DEVIL’S TAIL

 David Fulmer

One book that sat for a while on my shelf but aged well was CHASING THE DEVIL'S TAIL by David Fulmer. It is called a mystery of Storyville, New Orleans. Storyville is a section of NO that is definitely not about fairy tales. Rather in 1907 when the tale begins is is a raucous red-light district. This is a time when cocaine is OTC and the whiskey runs like water. The protagonist is a Creole/Italian Valentin St. Cyr an ex-policeman who now works for the political boss of Storyville, Tom Anderson.

At it's heart the mystery is about yet another serial killer of women. (A very worn out plot line IMHO) This killer leaves a black rose by the corpse. Valentin tries to find the killer because everybody would be happy to pin it on his friend jazz great Buddy Bolden, who is slowly going mad through his use of drugs. Jelly Roll Morton is also a character in the book. As the book says" a portrait of genius and self -destruction, set at the very moment when Jazz was born."

The story is filled with jazz talk, music to some but somewhat Greek to me , like 'blowing his horn so deep blue it was almost black, so hot it was like the pit of a burning coal'. But I learned that the music was like chatter and the French for chatter is jaser, So was Buddy was doing was jassing.

The time, the tempo, the people of New Orleans come alive in this story of Storyville.

Dark Horse  
by Craig Johnson

 Dark horse: noun   A usually little known contender that makes an unexpectedly good showing

              Walt Longmire has been the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming for many years and as the time for re-election is at hand he is confronted by an active campaign by a newcomer who claims to be a man “ wants to make a difference”.  Longmire is the kind of man who has always made a difference but after 25 years on the job he finds himself at a crossroads. He has had a difficult few years helping his only daughter get on her feet again after a brush with death and he is reluctantly becoming emotionally entangled with Victoria his under sheriff.

A prisoner has been delivered to his jail that has confessed in triplicate to the murder of her husband who was reported to having locked up all her prized horses in a barn and set it on fire. But Longmire believes in her innocence. This woman who is utterly indifferent to her fate strikes a chord in the sheriff because after all is said and done what is important to him is that his job is to protect the innocent.

For this reason he goes undercover as an insurance agent to the county where he grew up, where his parents had their ranch and crosses a broken down bridge into a town with the biblical name of Absalom, a very unfriendly town, a town without pity. Naturally it is not too long before his cover is blown.

 


So who are the other players? Is it Walt’s old friend Bill, or the old ranch hand who idolized Mary, or the bar owner, or the drunken cowboy who keeps threatening to beat Walt up?

In Absalom, Walt is out of his natural element, and away from his resources, which amplifies the feelings of helplessness sometimes felt in law enforcement. Fortunately his friend Henry Standing Bear has come to town to be some support.


Longmire  realizes that the key to the entire scenario is the manipulation of Mary in some way. There are other people in the town that considered the death a happy and welcome event. Most of these have past lie detector rests. But Mary was not herself because she had routinely taking Ambien, a sleeping medication known to be dangerous, with drawn at one point by the FD and then rereleased with stronger warnings similar to Lunesta. This was because people behave aberrantly while on it, sleep walking, driving cars while asleep and other bizarre behavior

He is drawn into several dangerous situations in which he has to call upon his police training and that of certain parts of his youth and past which stand him in good stead.  Following his instincts he sorts through the clues, straightens out the twists and turns, and plays the cowboy in the end to catch the bad guy.

When asked, Craig Johnson says that if Gary Cooper would answer his call, he would make a good Walt Longmire on the screen. In these stories the laconic wit and muted sarcasm raise the prose out of the ordinary. A man of few words, Longmire can sing if he has to. He likes Tex Owens  CATTLE CALL.

DEADLY SLIPPER   A Novel of Death in the Dordogne

   By Michelle Wan 

Slipper Orchid

Julian Wood is pottering in his workroom when he gets a call from a woman who needs his botanical expertise, particularly his knowledge of orchids. Twenty years ago, Bedie a young woman hiking in the forest in the southwestern forest  of France in the area of the Dordogne disappeared. The only clue in all those years to finally come to light is a camera with the film still intact. The girl’s twin sister, Mara has had the film developed and it reveals a series of landscapes and very good pictures of orchids. One orchid in particular has never been seen in this area before.  This series of pictures might help in the location of Bedie’s last day if the area of the orchids can be identified.

Aside from the exotic plants the countryside is peopled with eccentric characters. There is a woman nicknamed ‘hoe’ because she was lethal with one in her hand, with a hulk of a son who communicated with few words and is thought to be unusual. There is a local well-known family who live in the ‘chateau’ with a sad history and the locals are protective of them. There are others who have lived in the area since the time of Bedie’s disappearance. Of course Julian himself has been somewhat of a hermit and he does have an interest in horticulture and orchids.

The book is rich with descriptions of the Dordogne and is spiced up with savory details of French cooking.  The theme ultimately is one of the serial killer preying on young women and Mara does not know whom to trust. But for a killer to hide so well in plain sight he must have on very good camouflage. You or I would possibly think him very like able, non?

Michelle Wan was born in China, grew up in the US, and has lived in India, England, France and Brazil. She lives now in Canada and visits the Dordogne yearly visiting to photograph and chart wild orchids. The next in her series is THE ORCHID SHROUD.

                     


DEATH 
       BY
           WATER


KERRY GREENWOOD

Since there is a bit of upheaval in her home at 221B St. Hilda’s, Phryne Fisher announces that she is going on a luxury cruise around the island of New Zealand. In her capacity as a private investigator she has been ask to try and solve a series of  jewel thefts that have been plaguing the passengers of the SS Hinemoa.  On several recent trips there has been a case of theft on the high seas, always taken is the most valuable set of gems on board. Since the ship and the crew are carefully searched it seems likely that the thief is a passenger.

Phryne, who is a beautiful woman with dark hair, fair skin and cupid’s bow lips, is able to mingle freely with the upper class passengers. She will take with her the Great Queen of Sapphires, the Maharani as bait.

As on every cruise there is a cross section of characters, parties, excitement, wonderful scenery and shipboard romances.  Phryne is shrewd and is able to keep the sapphire safe but the thief is getting desperate which leads to attempted murder and finally murder itself.

Royal Victoria Hospital

I first encountered Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher when she took her first ocean voyage in COCAINE BLUES.  This mystery introduced Phryne as a wealthy young woman with some relation to the British nobility. It was the decade of the 1920’s and Phryne was at loose ends in London. She is given the commission by relatives of a young woman to come to Australia to determine if her husband was poisoning her. They live in Melbourne. It was in this city that Phryne was born and grew up in poverty until her father was found to be next in line for a title and wealth.

One of the characters she meets a is woman Doctor on board ship who is working at the Royal Victoria hospital for women, her companion Dot she rescues from a dire situation and she becomes known to the local constabulary. She gets herself a beautiful Hispano-Suiza the only one in Australia and she is a woman on the move. Greenwood makes the twenties seem a great time to be alive if you are Phryne Fisher.

Hispano Suiza

Fisher’s character is developed further in FLYING TOO HIGH in which we learn she can pilot a plane as well as look for kidnapped children and solve murders. She has purchased a house in Melbourne with the number 221B and has clients clamoring for her services.

Fokker

The Fisher stories are always well done, never predictable and are always served with a dollop of history, which makes a nice icing on the cake. The cast of characters is pretty stable and one gets to know and like them. There are still a few more in ths series that I am saving for a rainy day. I don’t want to think about not having a Kerry Greenwood book on tap for my enjoyment.

A DEAD MAN IN ATHENS by Michael Pearce

There are some novels that one cannot read with our recourse to Google and Wikipedia unless one is a history buff. One of these is the mystery by Michael Pearce A DEAD MAN IN ATHENS My eyebrows first went up when I read the back cover where it began with the words ‘Athens, 1912 and the country is on the brink of war.’ I felt like Colonel Klink! I know nothing!

Athens

As soon as I opened the book the story began talking about a sultan living in Greece. Again I knew nothing! How exciting this mystery was going to be. The war in question was the first Balkan war, which was to begin in the autumn of 1912. During the course of the Balkan wars the Balkan League that consisted of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece first conquered the Ottoman held Macedonia and most of Thrace and then fell out over division of the spoils.

 

The Sultan in question was Abdul Hamid II who was deposed and had come to live in Greece with some of his wives. He was slightly paranoid about assassination attempts. He had been deposed after the Young Turk revolution in or around 1908.

Sandor Seymour is possibly the only member of Scotland Yard’s truly flying squad of the 1912’s. Because of his facility with languages that he picked up on the East End in London so he gets sent to out lots of exotic locations to sort out political situations. In this particular case it appears that there has been the poisoning of a cat. The cat was the favorite of an exiled sultan but still! The British Embassy felt that this must be a precursor to the poisoning of the Sultan so had asked for help.

Sultan's place Athens

As Seymour begins to do his interviews he finds he has to do them in a harem speaking to shadows behind screens, through interpreters because even though he may speak the language he is not allowed to speak to the principals. It is heavy going. There is always a great deal of intrigue in a harem with here wives in this case jockeying for position, hidden prejudices, loyalties and secrets.

Bleriot Airplane

In his free time he meets people who are very taken with a new sensation, the new flying machine, the Bleriot Airplane. There is great discussion about its uses for adventure and even more debate about whether it can be useful in the upcoming war. Some say it is only good for reconnaissance, how safe it would be to be a pilot. Others say is that all it takes is two Greeks and that is all you need for a race! It is a toy.

One Greek recalls the story of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus built wings so that man could fly. And he went up with his Icarus so that he could show them. But they went too near the sun and the wax holding the wings on melted.  Icarus fell into the sea and was drowned. And Daedalus who had thought it all up landed safely.

But someone has sabotaged one of the three planes in Athens, and then a man is killed. Sandor Seymour has something more substantial to investigate. There is a tread that ties the death of the cat and the man together and Seymour will find it because aside from his facility with languages he tries to understand people as well.

I brought a lot away from this book apart from the mystery and that is why I choose Michael Pearce.

History + Mystery = Fiction + Satisfaction