The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald A. Knox

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ronald A Knox  was a mystery writer in the early part of the 20th century who belonged to a club peopled by such writers as Christie, Sayers and G. K Chesterton. He made a list of the ten commandments of detective fiction which includes such gems as
1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story
2. No supernatural explanations
and 3. No Chinaman must figure in the story which may mean a foreign servant or passerby. He also says at #10 that if twins or doubles are used in the story the reader must be prepared in advance for them.

In this mystery there are two young men who do indeed bear a mild resemblance to each other but he doesn't break any of his rules. The story is about the disappearance of one young man while on a rowing trip up the Thames with the other.  This is one of those delicious tales where you have to decide who is really the victim .

Most of Knox's commandments have become outdated in modern crime writing, especially #2. and #4 which calls for the exclusion of unknown poisons and the use of any appliance which requires a long scientific explanation at the end. In this story the setting is a river, a boat  and some oars.

Marshal Makes His Report by Magdalen Nabb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Marshall, whose name is Salvatore Guarnaccia, although the author never uses it , referring to him all the time as The Marshall, gets called to the site where a dead body has been found.  The place is an ancient Florentine castle and the corpse was once Buongiannini Corsi a wealthy producer of a famous aperitif and the husband to Marchesa Ulderighi a member of the onetime ruling classes.





The Marshall had been watching the uniquely violent Florentine football which resembled a melee between aggressive males fighting almost to the death with no holds barred. The only restriction is that one player may not kick another in the head. These games are preceded by great pagentry because they originated centuries ago at a time when the players were mostly sons of the nobility. From Sicily himself, the Marshal doesn't understand Florentine ways and wonders if all the participants in the game should be arrested for assault.




So the Marshall doesn't appreciate the game and any diversion is acceptable. But from the moment the Marshall enters the castle he gets a feeling of claustrophobia and a foreboding of evil. A young man explains to him that this feeling is quite the norm inside these palaces in Florence. They were built to keep people out, rather than invite them in. It is one city where the great houses have their backs on the streets and the facade and gardens on the inside. The Marshall also has the feeling that he is observed at all times.


The Marshall is asked to make a report on the death and he fears that because he is dealing with very powerful people his job and life here in Florence is at risk. The Marchesa won't condescend to answer questions. The scion of the family is a young man who has ailed most of his life but he is quite intuitive, intelligent and simplistic. He holds the answer to many of the questions the Marshall has but he is guarded well. Only the tenants are willing to give information. They are here because the family rents out some apartments in order to make some money.

The Marshal goes forward in the routine of investigation and uncovers secrets that have existed in the  long past and exist in the present.

The facts are straight foreword, but the people are not and Magdalen Nabb tells an excellent story with a wonderful atmosphere and a inevitable conclusion. The Marshall and his cases are addicting.

Frozen Assets by Quentin Bates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gunnhilder Gisladottir known as Gunna the cop, is the head of a two person police force in a small town about an hour from Reykjavik, Iceland. A body is fished out of the waters in her town and while it seems that he fell into the water after over imbibing . Gunna is being pressed by her superiors in Reykjavik to accept this scenario but she feels that unless he had wings there was no way from him to have travelled to her locality on foot. Murder, then is what she begins to investigate getting resistance from everyone she interviews as well as her boss.




Gunna has two children and lost her husband  several years before in an incident she refuses to discuss. She is no push over. When a second man is found dead she moves into higher gear and begins to realize that she is on the trail of a cunning cold-blooded killer.

Despite the fact that the murderer is elusive and crafty she is soon on his trail a and the authorities are forced to fall in behind her even though what she is really following is also a trail to high level corruption.



The book is billed as a thriller. I found it to be a leisurely walk that begins to pick up pace toward the end of the story. I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading COLD COMFORT the next in the series.

This is from the desk of Bob Mankoff of the New Yorker Did you ever have a blog that you just couldn’t put down? Well, you’ve got one now: The New Yorker’sPage-Turner launched yesterday, a literary blog of criticism,

contention,

conversation,

and staff recommendations.

As well as updates from the publishing world,

interviews with writers,

Stormy Weather

It is the flood of 1966 of the Arno  that people still remember all too clearly in Florence Italy.  This  disaster killed many people and destroyed  a great amount of beautiful art and  many precious rare books. Many buildings along the street have high water markers which clearly show the level the water reached that terrible time.

It is a cold raining November  in THE DROWNING RIVER by Christobel Kent and Florentines have been suffering from persistent rain which is bringing the flood of 1966 up in conversations and old memories.

It is during this miserable time that ex-police detective Sandro Cellini paces through his new office waiting for customers. This office has been found for him by his wife Luisa.  He has set himself up as a private investigator after two years of depression and aimlessness. Sandro was sent from disgrace from his previous career after letting his subconscious get the hand over his better judgement and a vicious killer was brought to heavenly justice before he could be punished by the state. I can't be more vague than that, but what I am really saying is that there are those who would not think what Sandro did  was so bad. But Sandro has the mopes about it to the point that he has taken two years to get some perspective.

One day two cases come to Cellini, one about a missing art student and one about the death of an old man who seemingly committed suicide. Claudio Gentileschi was a well known artist and architect and his wife Lucia  can't accept his death with out knowing more about it.

Here is where the story gets a little murky and the reader feels like he or she is walking through the rain. Luisa, Lucia get mixed up a lot as the story changes POV every few pages. The visibility worsens a bit when at the art school we run into two characters Anna and Antonella who we have to keep separated. They are a bit easier and we are grateful that the author chose not to  give Antonella a nickname like Anni or such.

So the river is rising as Sandro who is still unhappy and quite insecure tries to find his feet as the waters swirl around them. He is worried that he has forgotten even such basics as  the interviewing techniques he has used for twenty plus years. Iris, the roommate of the missing art student isn't sure what she should tell the police because while she did not care for her friend deeply there is still certain loyalty.  Iris starts to investigate a little on her own but she is frightened about her own safety.


 Iris and Sandro spend a lot of time investigating in the unrelenting rain and when Sandro finally shakes the mud off his feet the story picks up. I always enjoy Felony and Mayhem book so I hope the next in the series is a little more on firm ground.

Red Bones

Sometimes in a story every thing revolves around a central character whose actions seems to direct all other movement. Occasionally that pervasive influence is the weather.  Be it a fog or mist, a blizzard, tornado, torrential rain or heat wave it is Mother Nature that forces the situations and directs the action.

When fog is the weather element it sets a very specific mood. The inability to see things clearly and the danger inherent in the poor visibility create a sense of fear, of claustrophobia and a sense of helplessness.

 Red Bones by Ann Cleeves

The discovery of the body of an elderly woman on a mist-shrouded night is where this mystery began. Dense fog was not an uncommon event on Whalsay, one of the smaller Shetland Islands. Those misty incursions often covered the terrain so that only people very familiar with it could get around in it.

Sandy Wilson, at home for a visit on Whalsay was coming to visit his grandmother Mima in this dense haze to sober up a bit before going home to his parents house and at first he thinks that he sees a coat on the ground. He is dismayed and shocked to find it is his grandmother and when he brings her inside he realizes she has been shot.  Sandy is a policeman who works for Jimmy Perez of the Shetland police and he calls his boss knowing he has already disturbed the scene of the crime.

At first it seems that the shooter is a close friend of Sandy’s who was rabbit hunting but little details don’t add up and with in a few days there is another death.  Again the facts are hazy and hard to see clearly. The victim is a young girl, Hattie on the island doing an archeological dig on the island for her PHD. She and her assistant Sophie had made some finds that might lead to  greater future developments . This dig was abutting Mima’s croft and Hattie had become friends with her so the death of the old Islander affected her badly, in addition she had also been acting a little oddly herself recently. She has been afraid and worried.

In this mystery the mist may be a metaphor for haziness surrounding the cause of the two deaths. Murder, manslaughter, or freak accident are considered in the case of Mima, and the facts of murder or suicide in Hattie’s death are tossed back and forth and left unsettled.

Sophie says that once the fog rolls in you feel as if the outside world doesn’t matter at all. People here lose any sense of proportion. Tiny incidents that happened years ago fester and take over their lives.

The truth is that some of the incidents of the past were not so tiny. People on this little island were very active in the Norwegian resistance during WWII as part of what was known as the Shetland Bus. This involved crafting small boats that could get in and out of the fjords. Shetland, specifically Whalsay men delivered these boats across the North Sea. There are still some murky secrets about this time.

There is also a fog in Jimmy Perez’s mind as he frequently ruminates about his future with his girl friend Fran who is only peripherally present in this book. Repetitively he questions himself about what he wants, and what she will accept.

Jimmy in his quiet persistent way teases out the tangles and follows small wisps of information that lead him to the realization that while appearing close knit to an outsider, envy, distrust and enmity from old rivalries crept insidiously into the relationships of these Shetlanders and there were motives to murder.  As the mists and fogs disperse Jimmy also finds light being shed on the crimes he is being pushed to solve.

 

This is a slow burning story, much like the peat fires that warm the crofts of these desolate but beautiful places places. But no matter where you find them people are not so very different and while the ending is beautifully suited to the time and place, it would have worked as well in a Greek tragedy.