Two Phoebes

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

I was struck by the symbolism of the names used by the author Benjamin Black in his novel The Silver Swan. His main protagonist is Dr. Garrett Quirke, who was introduced in Christine Falls, a story about a "fallen" (like a soldier is fallen) woman. He is a pathologist in 1950s Dublin, Ireland, who has a great thing for the bottle. As do babies, quips a friend of his. He describes himself as having a quirk––he suffers from an incurable curiosity, so when a friend of his named Billy Hunt from the early days of medical school comes to him with the story about his wife's death by suicide, and asks that he not do an autopsy, Quirke does just the opposite.

He searches just a bit, finds a single needle injection site on the victim's arm, does an autopsy and suddenly drops the case. For a while. Quirke has discovered that the victim, Deirdre, has transformed herself into Laura Swan and, as such, had been dealing with a man of ill-repute, Mr. White, snowy of hair and attire, as well as with a Dr. Kreutz, a cross between bad medicine and good spiritual advice.

What concerns Quirke at present is trying to reestablish his relationship with his daughter, Phoebe, who has only recently discovered her relationship with him. She is not particularly happy with it, but she dines with him weekly. Quirke is now on the wagon, except for these weekly meals, where he is down to one glass of wine.

When Phoebe flies into the path of Mr. White, Quirke fears for her safety, and it is only then that he awakes to the danger around her. Quirke does too little, too late, because he is afraid to make waves, and it is left to others to save the day. I found the book a letdown. The characters' names tell you everything you need to know, including who the killer is.

There is another Phoebe who is in danger in Safe from Harm, by Stephanie Jaye Evans. One October night, Pastor Walker "Bear" Wells is enjoying an evening out with his wife when he gets a terse text from his 15-year-old daughter Jo saying come home. They never expect to see their teenage girl cradling the body of a dead friend, Phoebe.

Actually, it would be more accurate to call this girl an ex-friend. She was as different from Jo as it was possible to be. On the one hand, Phoebe seems to want to model herself after the girl with the dragon tattoo. She has dyed her once-blonde hair a crow black that leaves her blonde roots yearning to show themselves, and her skin is bedecked with piercings like the little air vents on a Corvette. One of her worst characteristics is that she seems to be one of those people who  always need to do you one better. She has been to a more exotic location, she has had a better ballet teacher and she plans to attend the Air Force Academy, among other things. Don't we all know people like that? I have not wanted to murder one yet, but I have come close!

The problem with this is that none of it makes sense, because Phoebe comes from a poor background, has been living in a trailer park and has been taking care of a terminally-ill mother, while her father lives in the lap of luxury with his new wife and two children. At first, Jo's tender heart took pity on her, but then these discrepancies and Phoebe's utter dependence on Jo caused a parting of the ways, and they hadn't seen each other for weeks.

Phoebe had recently lost her mother and moved in with her dad and his new family. Now, by all appearances, this troubled young woman had taken her own life.

After calling 911, as well as an acquaintance, Detective James Wanderley, Bear waits and thinks about Phoebe's parents. Phoebe’s father and stepmother had moved to the upscale area of Sugar Land, Texas and were living in one of the more wealthy enclaves. They were members of Bear's church. While the family seemed well-constructed on the outside, attending church, and successful at work, on closer examination it was clear that the picture was flawed.

Bear was glad he was not a cop, because it was the lot of a policeman to look for the worst in people, while he was always able to look for the best. Sometimes, this made for an adversarial relationship, especially when Wanderley assumed that Jo had to be a drug pusher and perhaps a user as well, until proven otherwise, preacher's daughter not withstanding.

What bothered Jo, though, was that she knew that Phoebe was a fighter above all things, and that not only did she not use drugs, she would not have committed suicide. Jo takes it upon herself to prove her case.

In an insightful way, Evans shows with subtle humor that just as being in a garage for a long time doesn't make something a car, spending an appropriate time in church doesn't make a person a Christian. There may be twisted personalities and murderers lurking among the pews.

There are many layers to this story, and because there are twists and turns that will catch the reader unaware, I don't want to give anything away. Certainly, Jo Wells is the smartest––if a bit foolhardy––heroine I have pinned my hopes on in a long time.

Phoebe bird

A Phoebe is a little brown bird. Both of these Phoebes were living out of sync with their families. They had that in common. They differed, in that one could have died to experience freedom from the nest, and one would have loved to be in a nest once again.

In the cases of the two Phoebes, one bird got what she wanted and one didn't.

But one had Jo on her side. I recommend this book!
I have or will publish these reviews or parts of them on other blogs and Goodreads.

The Blackhouse

'For the things we hope in the secrets of our hearts. If they were realized, would they really be the answer we'd prayed for?'


The Blackhouse by Peter  May


Detective Inspector Fin MacLeod of the Edinburgh police is at a low point in his life. He is suffering from depression for multiple reasons when his bosses called him in and tell him it's time to shape up or ship out in a manner of speaking. The case they give him will sent him back to the Isle of Lewis which is part of the archipelago of the Outer Hebrides.



Fin left Lewis eighteen years ago returning once only for the funeral of the aunt he lived with for several years. He had never looked back since. MacLeod had felt a great sense of freedom and lightening of the spirit once he came to the city. Many of his friends had also wanted to leave but circumstances has kept them home. One can never predict how ones childhood friends will turn out when they grow up.

Fin tries to reconnect with his past but he finds this difficult since his friends have altered mostly for the worse. Artair his closest childhood friend is a very bitter drunk, Donald once a free spirit is now a forbidding minister and his old girl fried, married with a child is almost unrecognizable.

Now perhaps one of them was the perpetrator of the brutal murder of a bully from childhood to the present. Was Fin wearing blinders then and is he wearing them still? One thing is sure and that is he has to accept what kind of a person he was then and sonsider if he has changed for the better or the worse.

Peter May takes Fin back in his memories through a first person POV and the reader sees that there was a lot of sadness in Fin's life. Fin appears to be an inconsistent character at times but as his journey into his past is revealed  he makes more and more sense. The community in which he grew up helped hide his skeletons and permitted him to survive.

The murder may seem to be a side issue at times but solving it sheds light on all the mysteries in Fin's life. This was a great read.

Death at the Chateau Bremont

In the lovely area just north of Marseilles is Aix-en-Provence lived two brothers descended from a noble family. One was all the good and the other was all the bad in the family. Étienne was the first to die and he met his end by falling out of an attic window of the Bremont estate that was as familiar to him as his childhood. François, his brother was found murdered in a fountain days later.

Charismatic Antoine Verlaque is the Chief Investigating magistrate of Aix and he begins to unravel the lives of these siblings. He calls on an old friend of his, a law professor, Marine Bonnet who knew these boys when they were growing up. As is often the case there was still much to be discovered about the lives of these men, their recent pasts and the reality of who was the good, or bad even ugly.

It seems these days that the influences of the Russian mafia in the Côte d'Azur and the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles have the crime of these areas sewn up and it seems both brothers had fingers getting burnt in dangerous pies.

There is an excellent sense of place and times in this book. The characters are very well drawn and likable although none are presented without flaws. They seemed all the more real because of them. The policing and judicial system in France is complex and Verlaque's job is an example of that. He began as a prosecutor and moved to head district judge in a brief time. He is considered incorruptible and at 41 years old is comparatively young for his position. Examining magistrates are entitled to take a hands-on role in investigations although most don't.

Aix is a gem of a town and the descriptions of it's celebrated main street with its canopy of  branches makes one want to visit and sit at a café along the boulevard. The spires of Sainte-Jean-de-Malte tree are a calming influence on the denizens of the city as well.

Mr. Wong Goes West

 by Nury Vittachi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mr. Wong has been expanding his Feng Shui practice by setting propitious meeting places up that will be helpful in smoothing business transactions. He is hired usually by the person who wants a certain deal to be resolved in their favor.  When one such meeting goes awry Mr. Wong is left holding the bag and in debt to a big time local gangster belonging to the Chinese mafia in Singapore.



Meanwhile his young Australian assistant Joyce has accept a plum of a job for him which will take them both to Hong Kong. He has been asked by associate of the British Royal family to do Feng Shui on a big new air jet which will be used for business conferences while in flight. It is a unique craft with the setup of a small town with bed rooms, movie sections and even a small store as well as large conference rooms. When he is done he is supposed to go on it to England and work on Buckingham Palace to help control some of the misfortunes that have been happening to the royal family.

Before he can begin his work on the plane a murder takes place on board. As this intrepid duo of Wong and McQuinnie  begins their work which now involves a murder investigation this begin to go awry. MR. Wong predicted there would be trouble and as a serious of events unfold which could lead to short lives for all on board and now the reader waits for Mr. Wong to pull salvation out of a hat!

Vittachi's books are always very well done and they include interesting plots unlike others and wonderful characters which all give the reader a smile.

Mr. Churchill's Secretary

 by Susan Elia MacNeal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Maggie Hope is an English girl who was orphaned at a young age. She was sent to an aunt in New England and was raised there. Maggie is an intrepid young woman who is a math whiz and is taking a relatively unprecedented step in going for her doctorate in mathematics at a prestigious university. When she is bequeathed her grandmothers house in London she planned on making a quick trip across the pond to sell it and get back to her life. The house proves hard to sell and Maggie keeps it open by renting rooms and gets herself a job.

One day an American friend whom she knew in college and who also lodges with her tells her about a secretarial job at 10 Downing Street with the then Prime Minister Mr. Churchill. This kind of a job  won't use any of Maggie's talents but she takes it anyway.

In the next few months Maggie begins to learn that there are mysteries about her past as well as plenty of mysterious things going on at work. WWII has begun and Britain has joined they fray. The problems confronting England are the rapid advancement of the Germans on one front that has all worried about invasion, while on the other hand the IRA is stepping up it's terroristic activities in order to help out the Germans.

The story is intricate, fascinating and well done. There are plenty of small details that MacNeal includes about the daily life that added to the ambience. For instance in getting London ready for a possible invasion all the dogs were sent to the countryside or euthanized for the fear that barking would alert the invading forces to the presence of the the citizens. Just imagining the attention to the small problems the British aside from rationing, blackout curtains and fear gave the story depth.

Postcards From The Dead

Postcards from the Dead, by Laura Childs, evokes some of these memories with her scrapbooking series that takes place in the French Quarter.

Carmela Bertrand finds herself packed into an elegant, but aging, suite in a New Orleans French Quarter hotel. She is the owner of Memory Mine, a scrapbooking shop located on a nearby street. There is an excited buzz among all the people crowded into this room, because the countdown for Mardi Gras is on and the denizens of New Orleans are all shaking off their shackles and getting ready to "laissez les bon temps rouler." Outside, the sound of a passing parade is deafening.

Carmela is approaching her thirties, and is making a life for herself after a divorce from a husband who is one of the NOLA elite. In her married days, Carmela lived in a large house in the famed, beautiful Garden District. Now she has a small apartment, with a faithful mutt to keep her company and loyal friends who care for her. She is present at this gathering because she is one of several people who is to be interviewed by a not-so-friendly newscaster, Kimber Breeze.

Carmela is waiting her turn with Kimber, who is out on a balcony that overlooks one of the many parades filling the street in the days leading up to Shrove Tuesday. Carmela is talking to one of the cameramen, who is having trouble eliciting a response from Kimber. Carmela dashes out to the balcony to confront a gruesome sight. Drunken revelers? No, much worse, and she is too late to help Kimber. The potential witnesses find every way out of the room, as well as out of the hotel, and leave Carmela and her friend Ava to talk to the police.

Early the next morning, on top of the newspaper at her door, Carmela finds a postcard that seemingly comes from Kimber. Carmela is a little freaked out when she later gets another that has been left on her desk at the shop. Someone knows where she lives and works, and though she feels threatened, Carmela can't really convince herself she should report this.

There are those who think the police are all right in their place, and Carmela is one of them––as a matter of fact, she dates a homicide detective. But when it comes to sleuthing, the amateur seems to have the edge, since she is closer to real clues, the background information, and the gossip that may contain the key to a murder. Detective Babcock of the NOPD, as a professional investigator, not to mention as Carmela's boyfriend, takes the stance that Carmela should stick to her own job. But Carmela does have an entrée into some of the exclusive social venues where some of the key suspects will be present.

As a matter of fact, Memory Mine is extremely busy as N'awlins is a party town––particularly during this season of celebration. All kinds of ideas for place cards, invitations, and table decorations are being brought to the shop, to be produced in the traditional Mardi Gras colors. These are purple for justice, gold for power and green for faith. I must admit that listening to the descriptions of the stock in this store, including all kinds of exotic papers, unusual stamps and many other little bits, stirred my creative juices––such as they are.

What I liked about Carmela was that she is very down to earth; not quirky at all. She dresses conservatively and behaves much like most 20-something women. Although she runs a shop, she is able to pursue her investigation without distractions like frenetically trying to run errands, do housework and shop. Descriptions of sidetracks like these exhaust me as a reader.

She does have some lively friends and co-workers, who provide the quirk and there were a few times when I thought that with friends like these, who needs enemies? But they do provide a balance, for, as Ava ripostes when Carmela tells her she worries too much: "sometimes you don’t worry enough."

My main concern with Carmela is that once she went into the Café du Monde and came out with coffee but no beignets! She redeemed herself another time by buying some but ate only one. This suggests a woman with great control. This is a woman to emulate, but I probably won't the next time I visit the Café du Monde.

Childs presents The City That Care Forgot in a very inviting way. I was drawn to the characters and would like to read more about them. I will be reading the omnibus that introduces these protagonists in the near future. Maybe there I'll learn Babcock's first name.

The Murder on the Links

The Murder on the Links is the second of Christie's Poirot  series and from it a better picture of what this Belgian detective is like. The thing that struck me was that he might be a precursor to the man known in the current day as Mr. Adrian Monk. Hercule Poirot comes into a room and immediately looks around and if he can he will begin to straighten up  the pictures on the wall, align edges of things out of place and generally look for what is out of order. This is basically the method to his madness as the saying goes.

Poirot's second characteristic is that he leaves forensic details to others because he can't waste time on clues like cigarette butts or blades of grass because frankly he knows nothing about them and he refuses to make himself look ridiculous moving his nose across the ground like a hound dog. Leave that for the dogs he says.

Poirot gets a frantic letter from France where a Mr. Renauld is in fear for his life. Despite leaving immediately with his friend Captain Hastings, he arrives too late.  Renauld has been found in an open grave on a golf course wearing an overcoat  which is too large for him over his underwear. The corpse has a look of absolute amazement and terror. Poirot makes the fantastic statement that he could see by the victims face that he was stabbed in the back.

There are many entangled threads involving several mysterious characters that Poirot teases out in a delicate fashion all the while poor Captain Hasting is totally lost at sea. He is a lot more that a day late and a dollar short. It made me wonder just why Poirot puts up with him. A young French detective named Giraud is on the case. He is apparently the best thing to be had in Paris. He is a young rapidly rising star in fact. His method is that of investigating the little clues of spent cigarettes, footprints and the like. He barely hides his contempt for Poirot when Hercule refuses to jump to conclusions. Naturally Poirot has the last laugh while the Frenchman rushes back to Paris  with a little less luster on his star.

I like the early Poirot books the best because as yet you don't get tired of the little grey cells comments.

The Eye of Jade

Private detectives are banned in China but Mei Wang, who once had a stable job in the Ministry of Public Security thought that there was a need for the services she could provide. In Beijing there many small crimes that the police will not involve themselves with and in the new millennium divorce is becoming more common place so Mei could find independence as a business woman. All she had to do was market herself as an Information Consultant.

One of Mei Wang's earliest memories is of her life in a labor camp with her father who was an intellectual condemned for his idealism to hard labor for the rest of his life. One day her mother came and got her and bore her away on a bus while she waved goodbye to her father, not realizing that she would never see him again.



Then she lived a hard scrabble life with her mother Ling Bai who struggled to put food on the table for Mei and her younger sister Lu. After the end of the Cultural Revolution Ling Bai was able to get a permanent job and the family's situation improved..  Mei Wang went to University after which she got a job and an apartment that went with it  at the Ministry of Public Security, a higher echelon of the police department akin to Scotland Yard.

She became disillusioned with her work at the MPS and left their although her family was aghast at her decision to leave the security off a government job and all the perks that went with it. Her mother's position was that she was throwing away her future because what mattered in China was not money but power. None the less  Mei liked her independence and she determined not to brood about the past.

One day a Mr. Chen Jitian made an appointment to see her. She knew him better as Uncle Chen a great friend of her mother over the years. He came to see her and told a story that began in the winter of 1968 when the country was being terrorized by the Red Guard. These roving bands of "patriots ' including homes, stores and even museums from which they destroyed the relics and burned everything by building great bonfires and feeding them with all the artwork, documents and records.

Now, in the present some of these artifacts are surfacing, in particular an ancient ceremonial bowl. It appears that someone had stolen some things before everything was destroyed.  Now the bowl had been sold to an antique dealer. Uncle Chen is looking for a jade seal  belonging to a long ago Chinese ruler that he thinks was taken from a museum at the same time as the bowl. He asks Mei to find it for him.

The first thing Mei does is find search for the person who sold the bowl, but when she finds him he has  just been murdered. Interestingly, although she has discovered a dead body she is never interviewed by the authorities. But now the game is afoot and Mei backtracks through recent history to find the connections that will lead her to the stolen artifacts as well as to a new understanding of her own past. The era of the cultural revolution was filled with death, destruction and secrets.

Mei is very enterprising and energetic as she pursues the Jade object through the years but she is very conflicted about what she also discovers about her own past life. It takes an illness in a loved one for her to try to reconnect some of the fractured pictures of what really happened to her family.
This is a very interesting book that is the start of a series and I recommend it to all who like stories with a backdrop of history and a fascinating locale.

The Hollow Hills

Merlin believes that his main purpose in life is to help bring into the world and then bring into power a man who can truly unite Britain. He is convinced that this purpose is why he has been given his magical powers from God in the first place. This is the basic story of THE HOLLOW HILLS.  The great warriors, Ambrosius, Merlin's father and Uther Pendragon, his uncle have paved the way for a new era and Arthur, Uther's son steps up with all the qualities appropriate for a great leader .

Mary Stewart makes it all seem so real, as if it were truly a history of the past that she is reciting. I am enjoying this series tremendously.

Tintagel Castle, Cornwall

The story tells of Arthur's birth at Tintagel Castle on a cold Christmas eve and how Merlin took him from his mother Igraine and hid him in plain sight elsewhere in England. Uther did not want the child around and had great expectations of having other male heirs. He already had one daughter, Morgous from another of his paramours and he and his new wife were young and healthy. Tintagel is a real place and remnants of it exist today.

Merlin knew that Arthur had many other enemies, others who had pretensions to the throne and who wouldn't hesitate at infanticide.Once he feels the child is safe Merlin began to travel to throw people off scent by keeping a low profile. He visited countries like Egypt and some in the far east where he learned a great deal about medicine and other esoteric subjects.

By the time Arthur was fourteen much had changed. Uther had no other male heirs, just a daughter Morgause who was illegitimate, and  Morgana and so the king called for Merlin to bring him his son. The story of the sword in the stone as told by Stewart is intricate and compelling as the readers follows this well known story written by and enthralling story teller.

The next in the series is The Last Enchantment and I am looking forward to it.

The Moonspinners

by Mary Stewart
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was happy to be able to enjoy this book again after reading it first almost half a century ago. It has stood the test of time pretty well. I was tickled to read little passages that were so important to many of us young girls at the time, particularly the author reinforcing the idea that women were not to be considered weak, helpless and good for nothing much.

It was a battle for the heroine of the book Nicola Ferris to be taken seriously on the one hand, while on the other she was able to accomplish quite a bit just because she was underestimated as a woman! After coming across an injured man she goes looking for his brother who is possible a hostage held in secret and thus she explores the area and it's small buildings.

I was not as impressed by the romance as I was on the initial reading. Nicola seemed a bit gullible and she wore her heart on her sleeve after meeting a poor sick and injured individual, Mark who was far from his best. Not that we were given much detail about Mark's character.


Nicola was living an adventurous life because she had left her home country England and was working in a very minor capacity at the British Embassy in Athens. She travels to different parts of Greece when ever she gets so time off. Now in the spring she takes a trip to Crete where she is going to meet up with an aunt of hers who is also travelling in the area. She has made reservations in a new small hotel in a little town on the coast. Stewart draws a very nice picture of the location emphasizing the wildlife and the and the flowers. Here swift references to Google images helped me get a better idea what was being described.

I will look forward to reading one or two more of these stories!