The Quilter’s Apprentice

By Jennifer Chiaverini

I have always been fascinated by quilts and have tried a small amount  of quilting for a family tradition quilt. In our family when a girl reaches sixteen all the women do a quilt square for the sweet sixteener.  In this story a young woman learns to quilt by doing a sampler quilt. I wish I had someone to teach me or even that there were groups that I could learn from. In this case the stories about the quilt squares were what I took home.

The Log Cabin Quilt

It was supposedly invented to honor Abraham Lincoln. The quilter should always put a red square in the middle to symbolize the hearth or a yellow square to represent a light in the cabin window.

If there is a black square in the center it was a signal that this was a stop on the Underground Railroad. If an escaped slave saw a log cabin quilt hanging on a wash line, it was a sign that it was safe to knock on the door.

A Chimney and Cornerstone Quilt

Each of the red squares is a fire in the fireplace to warm a person after a weary journey home. One half of the block is dark fabric and the other half is light fabric. The dark half represents the sorrows in a life and the light colors represent the joys. Since there are many red blocks in a row there will always be more joys than sorrows as the home fires keep burning.

This last quilt square featured in the story as a nickname. The Bachelor's Puzzle is what it as called. I could not find a story for it out side of the novel but it was eye catching.

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.

  In this story Montalbano is determined to resign from the police force. There have been some police actions in Genoa in 2001, which were highlighted by brutal police tactics and resulted in many high-ranking police being brought to trial. What angered Montalbano was that much of the evidence used by the police in their defence was fabricated indicating falsely that the children that they injured were dangerous. Montalbano took this personally; it shamed him and reflected poorly on the integrity he had brought to his job all the years he had been in the police force.

I understand his position well. There is a physician pedophile in the news that has destroyed the respect many people have had for their doctors. I am a physician and I am in the position that Montalbano was in. The integrity most physicians bring to the job is damaged. The legislators in my state now even consider me a latent felon and I am required to get a background check and fingerprints on a regular basis. I can be fined for a very long list of infractions of not turning in my fellow physicians on any mere suspicion of misdoings even not washing hands between patients. These are the draconian Bradley laws and they are not done yet.  

But the worst is the shame I feel that such a man was in the practice of medicine and that he escaped unnoticed for so long. Patients have been betrayed, but so have doctors.

ROUNDING THE MARK

Andrea Camilleri

So Salvo goes for a long swim, as is his wont when he needs to get away and think. He bumps into someone when he is floating then realizes that this person has been floating for a long time and is actually coming apart at the seams. Montalbano puts his bathing suit around the body's arm and slowly drags him to shore. There is not much left of the stranger but Montalbano’s team of detectives and their contacts begin to figure out the ways and means a man can end up in the ocean like this body did.

At about the same time Montalbano is called to the docks on a simple errand and he catches a little runaway boy and returns him to his mother, but he doesn’t seem happy to go and this gnaws at Salvo as well. There was a lot of pandemonium because this was a boatload of immigrants showing up in Sicily.

Montalbano realized later that  he had turned the little boy over to the wrong people, human traffickers. How could he know? Well, the signs were there, the boy was running away, he was not happy to return, and he couldn’t speak the language. Small children are brought in for uses as beggars, sex objects, organ donors and are put down as being with their parents, but are orphans, or stolen or sold. A case of things are not what they seem. Now it is time for Montalbano to act, but it is too late. Too late for him, but there are always others.

Camilleri’s mysteries always echo life and despite the seriousness of the subject matter he does it in an uplifting manner. It is miraculous in a way. There will sadly always be other little boys and other Bradleys and Montalbano as well as we are left in the middle. Legislators who bluster and want to be heard will be there too. Not that something doesn’t have to be done; it is either too little too late or over the top.

Danube Stations

J. D. Mallinson

It was a hot July during the time of the cold war and those who were able to went on vacation. Inspector George Mason of Scotland Yard was pushed onto vacation by his boss because it was felt that he needed a complete rest from his usual course of duties.  Mason left London by boat train to journey to Vienna; from whence he would join the Orsova for a two-week cruise of the Danube. During this trip he would have nothing more strenuous to do than visit several European capitols.

Budapest

After embarking he found that there was a small group of Brits on board along with the citizens of many of the central European countries.  This pleased him since there some pretty girls in the group, which would make a vacation more enjoyable.  He intended to avoid most groups as a whole and he wanted to explore for himself so he had purchased a Bannerman’s Guide. Bannerman’s was a more esoteric travel guide than most and he was surprised to find that two other members of the British group had similar copies.

Belgrade

The first port of call was Budapest, Hungary. In was in this beautiful city that both his travel guide and one other were stolen. Mason did not want to see coincidences where there were none, but this was pretty odd.  It was also odd that in Belgrade, the capitol of Yugoslavia Mason ran into the same person who stole his Bannerman’s and Mason knew there was a game afoot.

This was a fast paced mystery, quite fun and very interesting. There was a nicely done travelogue along with the plot. I had to consult my Google more than once to see some of the sights that George Mason was seeing because Mallinson made it so evocative.

Bucharest

I liked this story. It was not at all deep, but perfect for a hot July day where one is traveling or just daydreaming about a cruise along the Danube.

THE CROW TRAP

by Ann Cleeves

Crow trap

A crow trap is a large wire mesh cage with a funnel inserted into the top. Inside is placed a live large tame crow which dances and flutters about, inviting  any other crow to come in and defend it's territory. Once in through the funnel there is no way out.  Since crows are territorial they need to be moved around a bit.

On a windy April day three women, all of whom are scientists meet for the first time at Baikie's Cottage in the  North Pennines. This cottage had once been owned by a naturalist and illustrator Constance Baikie who had once walked through the hills in search of inspiration but obesity soon restricted her to an armchair and only drawing the birds, plants and insects she could see from her window. Her work sold for s quite large amounts. She received many visitors. In her will she launched a charitable trust to encourage environmental education and research and donated the cottage to that end.  Rachel was an expert in bird life, Annie was a botanist and Grace was a zoologist.

Heather

Their purpose in the cottage is to a survey for an environmental concern because a developer wants to buy the land to put in a large quarry. The land is next to a farm known as Black Law Farm. Rachel has visited Baikie’s cottage often and is very close to Bella who lives on Black Law Farm On this occasion when she gets to the cottage she finds that Bella has committed suicide and left a note. Rachel cannot accept this suicide because she thought she knew Bella. She realizes there must be more going on and she wants to find out what is going on.  

Before long there is another murder and Inspector Vera Stanhope enters the case. Vera is a native to this part of the country and she is unlike any police Inspector these women have ever seen. As a matter of fact she knew the original Constance Baikie and attended Bella’s funeral. When she did so the women all took her for a bag lady.

Otter

These women all have more in common than they realize. Life has treated none of them gently; more specifically men in one way or another have betrayed them all. But they are all intelligent and can see through facades more easily than others now. Vera Stanhope is very good at her job, and while she lacks for romance in her life she always gets her man in the police sense of the word.

Vera theorizes that if the women stay at the cottage the murderer will bill drawn back, they will be bait like the crow in a trap. Is she doing the right thing? Rachel recognizes the ploy right away; after all she is an expert on the avian psychology.

 There are many current swirling below the surface. Some locals don’t want the quarry.  The local landowners have dirty little secrets, as is always the case. Bella, the suicide victim is not at all what she seemed, Annie had secrets, and Annie’s husband had secrets, Grace had secrets and Rachel’s mother had secrets.

Ann Cleeves has been writing clever mysteries with birds as a backdrop since the mid 1980’s. She stated with George Palmer-Jones who was an amateur bird watcher in Surrey, England. I still have a few of those although they are yellowed and dry.

North Pennines

Better known are Cleeves’ excellent Shetland Island Jimmy Perez series of which there are four and I recommend highly

There are four in the Vera Stanhope series. The second is TELLING TALES followed by HIDDEN DEPTHS and SILENT VOICES, which just came out.

The TV series VERA will be available on DVD fore the US in late August. From the pictures it looked like they cleaned Vera up a little. I suppose the bag lady, homely eczema ridden Vera just couldn’t make it on TV.

One thing is always guaranteed. Ann Cleeves can tell a wonderful believable story.

North Pennines

                   MURDER
                      on the 
                      MOOR


 by C.S. Challinor












It was summer in the highlands, but the only way you would know it was if you looked at a calendar. The temperatures and the inclement weather combined were proof that if you wanted summer maybe you had better go to North Carolina.


Rex Graves, a Scottish barrister is the proud new owner of the Gleneagle lodge. He had purchased it as a getaway for himself and his girl friend Helen D'Arcy. When he was having some sort of mental fit which as we know all lawyers are subject to he had invited a few guests for dinner  and some to stay a few days to inaugurate the place. One of the guests was his friend and colleague Alistair Frazer who had recently suffered the loss in court in the prosecution of a child killer who was released because he seemed to have the perfect alibi. Frazer was taking this loss very personally.

After all the guests had settled in at the lodge, all seven of them, a wicked storm submerged them in a deluge of tremendous proportions. Then there came a knocking at the door, it was an uninvited guest and of all people it was Rex's ex-girl friend Moira. Moira had been a rescue worker in Iraq, had dumped Rex in a brutal fashion and later rued her decision. Moira, for one thing, was a leetle crazy having suffered from PTSD and had somewhat stalked Rex in the past. This brought the complement of people at the lodge to ten. Like ten little indians.







Before the night is over one of the guests is murdered and the body is found floating in the lake. The storm has cut the denizens of Gleneagle off from the town. The land lines are down as well. In this party there are several cell phone forgetters, a few cell phone losers and finally a few dead cell phone owners . Talk about your coincidences! The police are too busy to came anyway because a child has been found dead on the moor as well and a massive manhunt is on. Naturally all the  auto tires are slashed and holy Christie there are only nine people left.






Rex is no stranger to murder; he has solved a few in his day and he sets about finding the weak links in every bodies story. His idyllic retreat is already tarnished by murder and he wants Helen to stay safe, Alistair to find some peace of mind  and especially he wants to be able to send everybody home. To add to the mix the owners of a nearby hotel are raising ideas about a monster in their lake , a cousin of Nessie called Lizzie. They want to show that Rex, himself has a monster in his small loch. It's purported name is Bessie. As much as Rex deplores the ideas of  tribes of Nessie Lizzie Bessie seekers it is the real monster that he is trailing.


What Rex is hoping that he catches the killer, and as for future corpses he hopes there will be none.


I always enjoy Challinor's mysteries. They are well plotted, quick paced and the characters are well done. This is the fourth in the Rex Graves series and there is an allusion to a fifth on the way in which Rex marries. It is MURDER UNVEILED.

The Definition of Wind

Ellen Block

Abigail Harker who is a transplant from New England can’t believe how hot it is in North Carolina in the very beginnings of July. The fourth of July is just around the corner and Abigail has pulled her head out of the sand just long enough to see that the tourists have arrived. She preferred the peace and quiet and had never experienced the transformation of Chapel Isle, a barrier island off the North Carolina coast, from a peaceful backwater to a little city of rampaging maniacal people looking for peace and quiet but wreaking havoc everywhere. At least that is how Abby sees it now that her favorite parking spot is gone.

In The Language of Sand Abigail’s story begins to unfold as she rents a lonely caretaker’s cottage attached to the island's now defunct lighthouse. Her landlord is a con artist liar when it comes to describing her properties and when Abigail tries simplifies her life, become Abby and attempts to find her new feet after she was struck by tragedy she must contend with living in a dilapidated dump. The hard work of making it habitable and coming to know the island’s year-round residents pulls Abby from day to day as she does encounter a little murder and mayhem in her path as well.

Abby was once a lexicographer. She loved words, their derivations, their subtle variations of meaning and the weight each word carries. She has left that part of her life behind as well but during times of stress still finds it comforting to conjugate Latin verbs. Order, logic and reason were always her guideposts.  She used to kid her husband who was a mathematician that it was his brain that was so attractive to her.

But summer and heat and tourists are an entirely new experience. A recurring theme for those accustomed to the influx are the small groups of divers that come every summer looking for buried treasure. It was known that these barrier islands were home to many pirates of the past. The shoals off the coast of Chapel Isle is exceedingly treacherous and many a ship had gone down taking with it it’s cargo bound either for the new world or old.

Abby realizes it takes more than a few months of living in this lovely but lonely place off-season to be accepted as one of the locals. She is slowly fed clues as to what is expected of her if she wants true friendship.  She looks to the future but often dreams her way back to her past.

Another little fact that her landlord forgot to mention is that the treasure hunters are pretty sure that they might get the clues they need about buried caches of gold and silver from hiding places in the lighthouse, and perhaps from the caretaker cottage itself. So she is subject to possible break-ins and more.

All Abby really knows is that you can’t see a breeze, but you know it is there, it is hard to put into words how it makes you feel. She has to come to terms of where she is in her path back to life. Should she stay here or should she go?

I was drawn to these book at first by the simple elegant titles, then the summery covers, but it was the excellent quality of the writing that kept me.  The story has it's sad moments but they are spoken with out pathos or melodrama, yet they do reach the reader deeply. It is because nothing here is sensationalized and any hand wringing is not required. What is required is some peaceful , quiet moments to yourself to savor these books and take a little mental trip to the barrier islands of North Carolina, while you are on your staycation on veranda beach.

Geogette Heyer

 I was looking for some fiction to read when I was a senior in college, so a friend who was a history major handed me my first Georgette Heyer. It might have been THE CORINTHIAN. I found the story interesting but I can recall thinking that the conversations very all very long winded, verbose and in cases somewhat full of prattle. But I was drawn into another world of the regency romance. Shortly I was asking if she had more. There was such a blend of sarcasm, wit and humor that the stories were delightful.
Over the years I read Georgette Heyer when ever nothing else would suit me. I owned many of the titles in several editions, though not at one time.

This first novel  by Heyer written in 1921 was written at the age of 15 to amuse her convalescent brother. While most of her books are stand alones there are two books that she wrote that use the same characters as the The Black Moth. These were These old Shades and The Devil's Cub. Her last book was My Lord John. My favorite of her historical novels is The Conqueror written in 1931 about William the Conqueror and the battle of Hastings and all that lead up to it as Willam grew and became the historical figure that he was. Heyer made it come alive, exciting and fascinating. It was almost as good as fiction. I had never really enjoyed historical books prior to this unless they were quite fictionalized. Heyer did fictionalize  hers as well, but subtly so.

Those were the days when you took a book in any order that you found it on the shelf. There was none of this wonderful indulgence for the obsessive reader compulsive reader of sites like Fantastic Fiction and Stop,You're Killing Me! which lists the correct order in which the books were written and printed. At that time we went by the list in the front of the book and it was only later after buying the book that you realized that the order was inaccurate.

I graduated from the university in the late sixties and went on with my education but still needed mental easing by Georgette Heyer. I thought, wrong again, that I had read and reread and reread everything she had written until the days of Amazon and the WWW. It was in 2007 I got a complete matching set. set of all Heyer's books and began at the beginning. There were some novels that were not included in this set. One such as HELEN, which I purchased as a very old HB. I have not read it yet.

 

There are two of the histories I have been waiting to read and about three of the mysteries left. But the regencies were the first in line. I have been rereading COTILLION for a reading group and it is surely one of the best. It is her 23 book written about thirty years after her first. Heyer was so successful with these novels that she sparked a great trend called the regency romance novel. She was emulated by dozens of authors. There was a time when you could go into a bookstore and there would be a special shelf dedicated to the genre. She thought she was being plagiarized but of course imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Heyer herself, would have preferred to write her historicals but I for one am glad she gave us her regencies. She died in 1974 at the age of 71. Everybody says the same thing about her. She was intensely private and she did not give interviews. She spent her time writing books which have certainly enlivened my life.

Bamboo and Blood

At a time when we are celebrating  our freedom with picnics characterized by plenty of food I think of this book and the people in this country, North Korea who treat each other to a cup of hot water which they serve cold because they have no fuel. But it is home to them and they celebrate their holidays as well and would not leave if they could. Not that they wouldn't like one of our type of picnics with their own favored cuisine of course.




bamboo

  and

blood 

James Church

James Church is the pseudonym of a former member of a western intelligence organization.† Church creates an atmosphere that is almost without color. It is cold and the reader can feel it. In one book, Inspector O (  O  is a pseudonym of a sort itself) meets a foreign dignitary in a hotel in Pyongyang that is reserved for visitors. The food and the wine are good and plentiful. Later, O goes into a coffee shop to get a hot drink; he is served a cup of hot water. There is more food in Pyongyang than in the rural areas but everyone is suffering from the famine. Church makes the poverty and the cold and the hunger a part of the stories. Yet his characters a not weighed down by hopelessness. The books are police procedurals; Inspector O is a police officer like those everywhere in the world. His job is to solve crimes and he does his job as best he can with the basic tools he has available to him. 


BAMBOO AND BLOOD is the third in the Inspector O series but it is a prequel beginning in the winter of 1997. North Korea is in the midst of a famine that is devastating the country. The very young and the very old are dying and only people of strong will are likely to survive until the spring. Restaurants serve hot water as the beverage to accompany meals of soup made by cooking a bit of wood in more hot water.


The country is hiding its desperation from the rest of the world so it is a great surprise to Inspector O when he is asked to play host to an Israeli agent who is able to come and go seemingly at will into a society that is a mystery to its own people.


Jeno O's boss introduces information about the death in Pakistan of the wife of a North Korean diplomat. O is assigned to investigate and told not to look at things too closely and to avoid any discussions about missiles. O knows nothing about missiles and doesn't understand what he is being sent to investigate but suddenly he is given a passport and a plane ticket. Inspector O finds Jeno always nearby as he travels from Pyongyang, to a nearly abandoned factory in the countryside, to New York city, to Geneva. There O finds himself attached to a diplomatic mission about which he knows little, meets a Swiss security officer, M. Beret, and realizes that someone, perhaps his own brother, is trying to kill him.


Inspector O is a great find. He is a simple man who lives quietly, is proud of his heritage and the memory of his deceased grandfather, a hero of the revolution. He always carries with him pieces of wood, small pieces that he uses like worry beads.  "I might as well have a piece of wood that would help me sort through the case. Something pragmatic. Elm was good that way. Most trees succumb to nonsense at some point in their lives. They get top heavy. They forget their roots. Not elms. From beginning to end, they remain stately and pragmatic.

Elm Tree

O could be talking about himself. He is worth meeting.

Cutting Edge

It was a happy day a few years ago that I began to read John Harvey. This is the favorite of my series.

Cutting Edge


John Harvey


After a long shift at the hospital Doctor Tim Fletcher is exhausted but is looking forward to spending time with his girl friend  Karen. He knows that he is late so he stops to make a call to her at a telephone near the exit door of the hospital. There is no answer but Fletcher quickly makes his way to the house that Karen shares. He puts on the earphones from his Walkman and strides across a pedestrian bridge singing along with the  opera music he is listening to not hearing the foot steps behind him that will change his life forever. He is struck from behind and mutilated by the very instrument of his own trade.




 Another music lover Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick who favors jazz and has named his four cats after jazz greats, Miles, Dizzy, Bud and Pepper is also finishing up a long day and rescuing rescuing people at a center from an axe wielding drunk who used to be a well known jazz player. He will be called in in on the Fletcher case which will be only the first in a series of brutal assaults on hospital  personnel which involve people from all levels of the staff. 

It's autumn in the midlands and Resnick's staff is busy with other assorted investigations as well as their personal troubles, but Resnick keeps his troops well in hand. This is the third book in this series and the reader is getting very familiar with the characters and it like dropping in for a welcome visit. Graham Millington and Diptak Patel were working on a robbery ring, Mark Divine had a personality that is a major stumbling block, Lynn Kellogg is a very promising young officer with a lot to offer, Kevin Naylor's wife is sufering from  post natal depression, and is making every one's life a misery because Kevin transmits his blues like the flu.

Resnick has personal problems of his own. He was once married but his wife left him for a prosperous real estate agent. He has made a life for himself staving off loneliness with his music and some rare nights out at the local polish club, and warding off hunger with the erection of of the most marvelous sandwiches which  rival those of Dagwood. But he had been receiving some mail from his wife that he has been destroying without reading it because he fears it's destructive powers and now she has taken to calling him and he has managed to miss these calls as well. he is not certain that he is doing the right thing by avoiding his past. From every thing that Resnick can ascertain the seeds of the motive behind the viscious attacks on the medical staff must arise from something that happened in the past as well. The connections between the victims are very obscure.

John Harvey is masterful in creating that atmosphere and sense of place that is so realistic yet humane that you can read one book after another and really get to appreciate all the characters with all their foibles, weak and strong that makes them individuals that you would find anywhere. The Bloody Brits Editions are of s high quality that the act of holding the book is part of the pleasure of reading this book. This is my second reading of this series, not my last I am sure.