Windows To The World

L.C. Tyler said it best in his book THE HERRING SELLER'S APPRENTICE  " There is an important difference between fiction and real life. Fiction has to be believable." In the past couple days I have read a few of my favorite authors whose premises I just did not believe. 

   


 The first was Steven F. Havill’s RED, GREEN OR MURDER in which an elderly man with a known severe heart problem, requiring oxygen and who has been feeling quite poorly for a few days is found dead at home. The only anomaly is a slight extra amount of mucous. Estelle Reyes-Guzman and Bill Gastner are known for their acute sense of wrong but this one was too much for me. Had the victim been even feeling well that day, I might have been happier.


Aside from this Havill is still one of my favorite authors. Estelle is astute, Bill is wise, the storys always move ahead at a good pace and I look forward to SCAVENGERS the next in the series.

The book I read right after this was THE CHINESE PARROT by Earl Derr Biggers. Charlie Chan has brought an exquisite pearl necklace to the mainland from Hawaii at the behest of a friend. It is the last object of value that a once wealthy woman has and she is selling it for the benefit of her profligate son who can't get the money quickly enough.  A wealthy man is willing to buy the necklace slightly under full value but under strange conditions and Charlie is suspicious and suspects a trap. Charlie masquerades as a houseboy at a western ranch for days and there is pussyfooting around like Tom and Jerry with the necklace until you are ready to throw the book out. The dénouement saves the book and the case. There is something else you can count on Biggers for. This book was first published in 1926 and he has a female physician in this western town who has an excellent reputation. Her name is Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,  not really it is Whitcomb but this is as unusual as a Chinese detective.

Finally in THE MYSTERY OF CAPE COD TAVERN by Phoebe Atwood Taylor there is the mystery of a woman that was described as a person that you could like as much as you could like any one and the next you could stick pins into her. It was really no mystery that she was murdered because most everyone wanted to at one time or another. Sadly, there were many people so broke they depended on her, and others she was a guardian angel to.  Angel or devil. A character too hard to believe in. It was also a story of inconceivably stupid corrupt cops. They arrested the first person they came across and they put more time into framing her than solving the case. Asey Mayo's broken English bothered more in this book than in others, nunno for I don't know, nen for then, but only some of the time. Asey does one thing consistently in the few books I've read. he works with an older woman to solve his cases. Not always the same one. As I read more books It may become more clear why he does this.