Vodka Neat

Vodka Neat   

By Anna Blundy

Faith Zanetti is returning to Moscow after a hiatus of fifteen years. It is far from her first visit. When she first came here it was as a young girl on a school trip during which she met her future husband Dimitri in a romantic fashion outside the Bolshoi Ballet.

She returned to marry Dimitri who was a charmer and she was very happy with him and her life in Russia. But when she was nineteen there was a brutal double murder of a man and woman in the apartment next to them and by then she had realized that she could not make a life in Russia and she left to later become an investigative journalist and war correspondent.

After a mental breakdown coming after the death of her mother she is sent back to Moscow away from the front lines and is immediately accused by the Russian authorities of the crime in the next-door apartment that happened fifteen years before. She is told that her husband has been in the psychiatric prison Oryol for many years because he confessed to the crime but that he has now recanted and has blamed her, saying that he only confessed to protect her at the time.

Faith travels the distance to the desolate area where Oryol is located and finds that not only if the man in the prison not her husband, he is Adrian, an American who has been masquerading as a Russian and has been forced by Dimitri to confess to this crime in order to protect his family and he tells her Dimitri is dead. He begs for Faith’s help. Before the day is over Adrian is dead, supposedly by his own hand.  Faith knows that this is impossible and that the truth must something she has not wanted to see before. Faith now suspects she never really knew Dimitri; he has become a shadowy figure in her mind. She does believe though that Dimitri is alive and must be found if she is to be found innocent of murder.

AnnaBlundy describes a very beautiful and different Russia. She evokes the sentiments of hope that many of the people had for a new beginning and a different way of life that ended in a great disappointment. Despite the lack of material goods and services there were still upbeat moments in people’s lives at the Bolshoi, at the Ukraine Hotel and at Gorky Park. Blundy also introduces the reader to the vastness of Russia as well as the bleakness that is present in many of the areas that is reflected in the soul of the inhabitants. This is the third in her Faith Zanetti series.

The suspense builds slowly as the characters as well as Russia is revealed and Zanetti is intrepid as she moves toward the point where her past catches up with her and bites her. Faith is a wonderful anti-heroine in her sagas, which begin with THE BAD NEWS BIBLE.  Try it, you will like it! 

An Embarrassment of Corpses

An Embarrassment of Corpses

by Alan Beechey





Oliver Swithin  is a children's author who writes about a fiendish ferret of a wandering  nature while he  whiles away his time at a do nothing job. After finding a friend dead in a fountain at Trafalgar Square he is first arrested and then asked by his uncle who is a Detective Chief Inspector to help solve a series of crimes that at first seemly are just accidents.

It appears that as more bodies are found patterns appear, one if which that the corpses are either marked or have a note set by them related to the signs of the zodiac. There is a race to discover the culprit before there are twelve bodies at hand.

The story is very interesting, fast paced with excellent characters. The best part of it all is the humor which lifted my spirits. I highly recommend this book, the first is a too short series of two. I can't wait to find the next one.

Every Bitter Thing 

    Leighton Gage

A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation by Leighton Gage


Mario Silva a Chief Inspector of the Brazilian Federal Police is called by his superiors to a very nice apartment in Brazilia. It was the home of the son of the Venezuelan Foreign Minister who has been found dead behind a couch viciously murdered.


While the first investigators at the scene immediately jump to the conclusion that is was a crime of passion with the murderer close at hand, Silva advises caution because he knows immediately that things are not what they seem.


Silva has access to a centralized computer system that allows him to search for similar crimes and there appear to be several killings done in different areas of the country with similar, perhaps identical MO’s. Maria and his excellent team set out to investigate all these deaths in order to see if they can be connected. The main similarity is that they were all traveling together on the same airplane.

 Astute detective work on the part of the Federal Police team inexorably leads to an understanding about the possible motives as well as the people involved. When it becomes clear that there is a possibility of warning future victims this action is taken. With this method Gage explores the varying human responses to a dire warning.


Long before the denouement one is completely engrossed in the story and there was a point in the story for me where I developed murderous tendencies vicariously. The revelations came smoothly and were paced beautifully. There was no rehashing of old clues or alibi's. In short this mystery was revealed as the core of a rose is revealed one layer at a time until the golden center is visible but not perhaps not exactly what was expecting.


The title of the book is taken from the bible

“To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.” Proverbs 27:7

There is bitter and sweet through out this book, in the descriptions of Brazil, in the solving of the crime as well as in the feelings one has when the last phrase is reached.

Kindness Goes unpunished

 Kindness goes Unpunished          

                 Craig Johnson

Sheriff Walt Longmire from Absaroka Couny inWyoming is looking forward to a trip east to visit his daughter Cady. He has not seen her in some time and he knows that she is getting serious about a young man, Devon Conliff. Cady, a lawyer in Philadelphia, lovingly called "the best legal mind in the East" by those who are close to here hasn’t been that forthcoming about her boy friend.

Longmire is travelling East by car with his friend Henry Standing Bear, who needs to go to Philadelphia because he is putting on a museum exhibit there and he hates to fly.

When they get to Philadelphia Cady is too busy to talk to her Dad on the phone and as Walt is settling into her apartment he gets a call that she has been seriously injured and left for dead. With the help of his Deputy Vic Moretti’s originally from Philly mother he gets to UPenn hospital to find Cady in a coma with severe brain damage. It appears that it was her erstwhile fiancé who has done the damage and subsequently fled the scene. Later Devon is found dead after he has been thrown of a bridge. Walt is naturally under suspicion but not for long.

During this series one becomes familiar with all these characters and one cares about them.  The investigations done primarily by Philadelphia's finest among who are many members of Vic’s family. but Walt makes himself part of the investigation  and is instrumental in rounding up the suspects.

Craig Johnson makes you long for the next in the series. He does not often have his characters leave Wyoming but this was a good trip. I am rereading these from the beginning for the second time.

Arctic Chill

Arctic Chill 

by Arnaldur Indrisdason

On a bitter cold January day a young ten year
 old boy is found dead and frozen to the ground
 not far from the school yard where he spent his
days, and not far from the apartment he called
 home.
He was the second son of a Thai woman who
had come from her native land in marriage to a
local man in Reykjavik, Iceland. He was a happy
child for the most part who did well in school,
made friends easily, and whose life should not
 have ended in a pool of blood.

Immigrants to Iceland were becoming more numerous
 as they are in many parts of the world where there are available jobs. Similarly in Iceland the natives of the
country have mixed feeling about the influx of foreign
languages and cultures. Could this crime be racially motivated is asked again and again without much results. If not, how could this death be explained.

Erlendur and his team have to scratch the surface of a seemingly polite society to see what is not so obvious.

Meanwhile dealing with the death of a young boy, a
second son reminds him of the death of his own brother
as a child, lost in a blizzard, for which he still has not forgiven himself



This mystery is billed as a thriller, but I found the pace, the police procedural aspect of the unveiling of the facts to be slow and steady. The story is sensitively done and a very nice glimpse of the realities of life in Iceland.

Elspeth Huxley

Elspeth Huxley

Elspeth Huxley is best known for her excellent work THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA that described her childhood growing up on a coffee farm in Kenya.

When she was 5, her family moved to Kenya, taking possession of a 500-acre coffee farm that her father Major Grant had bought on a whim in the bar of a Nairobi hotel. They arrived on an ox cart, worked full time on the plantation and had major swings in financial fortune. She began her illustrious writing career of about 30 books with three excellent mysteries after one book about Lord Delamere and the settlement of Kenya.

Murder at Government House (1937)

This was an exploration into the social and political machinations of Kenyan politics during the empire, when there was talk of joining colonies under one administration. This story involved interesting characters, the sometimes oddball, sometimes absolutely correct characters who lived and governed in Kenya before independence. Elspeth Huxley wrote a mystery based on her knowledge of Kenya and its inhabitants, and the machinations of the society. She called the country in her stories Chania.

Murder on Safari (1938) involved wealthy colonizers at play in Chania (Kenya) during the bad old days. "Great white hunter" Danny de Mare persuades CID Superintendent Vachell to join Lord and Lady Baradale's safari when someone steals the lady's jewels from the portable safe in her tent. Posing as an extra guide, Vachell observes members of the party closely, finding no clues although he has several suspects: a titled "pansy," Sir Gordon Catchpole, whose engagement to flighty Cara was arranged by the Lady Baradale, her stepmother; Cara's preferred lover, fired for his attentions to the girl. Even her father is under suspicion, but not lovely Chris Davis, attached to the safari as an aviator (a character clearly influenced by famous Beryl Markham).

Death of an Aryan [UK]; The African Poison Murders [US] (1939) takes place in the exotic, pre-World War II country of Chania, East Africa. Policeman Vachell stays on the farm of the next-door neighbors of the universally detested German, Karl Munson, in order to keep an eye on him. While there, Vachell hears and witnesses evidence of nocturnal animal mutilations and falls for the wife of his host. A day later, he must investigate the death of Munson. Munson had a reputation as a womanizer; he'd made a strong play for Janice West of the farm next door. He also virtually disinherited his wife and children and may have been a blackmailer.

Red Square

Red Square    

                                  by Martin Cruz Smith

Red Square is a  mystery, set in Russia in the year 1991. It is a sequel to Gorky Park and Polar Star and features the Investigator Arkady Renko, taking place during the period of the collapse of the Soviet Union.[

As the existing social and economic structure of the Soviet Union breaks down, Arkady Renko has been reinstated as an Investigator in the police force. He is trying to clear up a nest of illicit traders when his chief informant dies in a horrific fireball. At the late informer's flat, his fax machine keeps asking the apparently meaningless question, "Where is Red Square?"

The question does not pertain to a location, but to a painting by Malevich, which has resurfaced on the black market after being lost since WWII. Martin Cruz Smith has created a remarkable character in his redoubtable Russian policeman Arkady Renko, the protagonist of GORKY PARK and POLAR STAR. The rejected son of a famous Russian military officer who became a brutal wartime hero of the Communist Party, Renko is a brilliant investigator with a skeptical and independent point of view. Having earlier sacrificed himself for his dissident lover, Irina Asanova, suffering imprisonment and exile for helping her escape, he returns to Moscow on the brink of political and social dissolution. It appears that corrupt officials and black marketers run the country while organized crime has replaced the Party as the controlling force in Russian society.

Smith brings all of these elements together in this story, which covers two weeks in August 1991, a time leading up to the attempted coup of August 21.  There is an informative back story describing the history of the Chechens and their relationship with Russia. The suicide of Renko’s father brings a personal note to the story. The murder trail leads both to the Russian mafia and to criminal connections in Munich. Renko has been listening to Radio Liberty on a borrowed radio and has heard Irina’s voice. When circumstances seem to fit he gets himself to Munich and finds Irina. Renko finds that his perceived duty to his homeland conflicts with his personal desires, that by solving the case (which has now cost the life of a fellow investigator) he may again lose Irina.

Although the plot of this detective novel is carefully and complexly constructed, Smith’s primary interest is in the character development of his subtle protagonist. Renko is a tormented hero, a man of conscience. Revenge for the death of his informant and for other deaths sit quietly on his mind as well. Smith’s portrayal of Renko’s navigation through a collapsing world is compelling and draws one into the empty stores of Moscow, the endless lines, and into the lives of the suffering Muscovites .


The biggest mystery to me is why this painting of which there are apparently two versions is worth five million dollars. Who can say what it is supposedly  valued at today.

                              A Broken Vessel
                                                    by KateRoss

No detection team was ever more mismatched: Julian Kestrel, the debonair and elegant regency dandy, and Sally Stokes, a bold and bewitching Cockney prostitute and thief. But one night fate throws them together, giving them the only clue that can unmask a diabolical killer.

It all starts in London's notorious Haymarket District, where Sally picks up three men one after the other and nicknames them Bristles, Blue Eyes, and Blinkers. From each of them Sally steals a handkerchief -- and from one she mistakenly steals a letter that contains an urgent appeal for help as well. But which man did she get the letter from? Who is the distraught young woman who wrote it? And where is she being held against her will? These questions take on a new urgency when Sally finds the writer of the letter -- dead.

Luckily, Sally's brother is none other than Dipper, reformed pickpocket and now valet to gifted amateur sleuth Julian Kestrel. The authorities dismiss the girl's death as suicide, but to Kestrel it looks more like murder. To prove it, he must track down Bristles, Blue Eyes, and Blinkers, and find out which of them had the dead girl's letter. Sally uses all her ingenuity and daring to help Kestrel solve his case. 

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A Broken Vessel was the 1994 winner of the Historicon's Gargoyle Award for Best Historical Mystery.

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Kate is very clear on why she was intrigued by the Regency Period. "The 1820's in England marks a fascinating transition between the swashbuckling 1700s and the workaday Victorian world. In addition, the dandy of the period -- elegant, observant, witty, detail-oriented, and cool under fire -- makes a terrific sleuth. Finally, 1820s England is a good hunting ground for an amateur detective because of the lack of a professional police. I do, however, hope to take the series to the founding of Scotland Yard's Metropolitan Police in 1829."

Katherine (Kate) Ross was the author of the successful Julian Kestrel mystery series, a graduate of Wellesley College and theYale law school, and was a trial lawyer for the Boston law firm of Sullivan & Worcester. After a long battle with cancer, Kate passed away on March 12, 1998.  There are four novels: Cut To The Quick, A Broken Vessel, Whom The Gods Love and The Devil In Music. A fifth was in the works at the time of her passing.

The Birth of Roderick Alleyn

Ngaio Marsh

He was born with the rank of Detective Inspector CID on a very wet Saturday afternoon in a basement flat off Sloane Square in London. The year was 1931.

Ngaio Marsh had been reading a mystery novel either a Christie or a Sayers. It was the time in London when the Murder Game was popular and Marsh began to think of a character that would be a solver of crimes. At that time there were many detectives identifiable by their mannerisms. There was Hercule Poirot with his moustaches and grey cells, Peter Wimsey, excruciatingly facetious, Reggie Fortune a character of H.C. Baileys who repeated “My dear chap, Oh, my dear chap”, and Philo Vance who spoke in a strange language attributed to Balliol College, Oxford.

March hoped to avoid mannerisms and wanted him to be a civilized, attractive man with whom it would be pleasant to talk but much less pleasant to fall out. That is a nice chap with more edge to him than met the eye. She also tried to avoid the issue of age. Hercule Poirot by ordinary reckoning was 122 when he died.

His name was not too difficult. Her father was an old boy of Dulwich College, an English public school. Old boys were called old Alleynians. Now for a resounding first name, something Scottish -Roderick.

 

Roderick Alleyn, Detective Inspector CID yes!

The Nursing Home Murder

 The Nursing Home Murder   by Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh's third mystery takes place in a peculiarly English setting, a private nursing home.The Home Secretary Sir Derek O'Callaghan who has been suffering from a previously unknown illness has been diagnosed with a ruptured appendix and peritonitis. Considered to be a friend of his, Sir John Phillips has been called upon to do the operation at this private nursing home.

The Home Secretary has been instrumental is writing and passing an important bill in Parliament and has been receiving threatening letters from members of the local communist party. He has also received death threats from a former mistress as well as the eminent surgeon as well.

Present during the operation are the authors of two of the letters and at least two more people who wish him ill. Close to him before the operation were the wife he had been cheating on and a hypochodriacal sister who has been pushing multiple patent  medicine concoctions on him ever since Sir Derek began complaining of problems. These nostrums were made for her by a friendly pharmacist who was also a member of the communist party.

Detective Chief Inspector Alleyn has been called into the case and it has been found that Sir Derek was poisoned by an overdose of Hyoscine. As the story evolves there are a surfeit of suspects. But sharp eyed Roderick Alleyn has his ducks in a row before too long.

This is a vintage mystery published around 1935. The medicine is archaic. They no longer use or inject camphor as a stimulant after surgery. Hyoscine, better known as scopalamine and used as a transdermal patch for motion sickness was used to decrease gastric or other secretions during surgery. There don't seem to be IV lines of any sort, these were not commonly used until the 1950's mostly because they did not have safe IV fluids. They were a source of infection. There were no post op ICUs. Blood tests are not ordered nor was there things like EKGs which were used in the US during the 1920's. The feeling was that the clinical exam was more trustworthy.American medicine was more scientifically curious and Xrays were used first here at UPenn in 1925. Xrays are mentioned in other European works such as THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by Thomas Mann written before this novel.

Sir Derek was expected to survive this operation none the less. This he did but he died a few hours later. They don't mention CPR.

                        The Pot Thief 

     Who Studied Pythagoras

                                      By J. Michael Orenduff

 

Herbert Schuze is an archeologist who specializes in ceramic pots of the indigenous cultures of the Southwest. He has his own code of conduct with regard to the ownership of buried ceramics. He believes that is they pieces are on public lands, as part of the public he is as entitled to them as anyone. He knows that the actual owners and their progeny are long gone.

 

Hubert is minding his own business tending his shop where he occasionally sells the pots he has acquired, when a shady character offers him a great deal of money to steal a thousand year old pot from a local museum. This is not the kind of chicanery Hubert wants to get involved with but before much time has passed he is accused not only of thievery but also of murder.

Before he was an archeologist Hubert studies mathematics, and recently he picked up a book on Pythagoras and is reacquainting himself with that great scholar. Every one is taught the Pythagorean theorem which states that the sum of the squares of the two short sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the long side. This is also a case for seeing things from a different perspective and checking out all the angles.

       INÉS OF MY SOUL  

                    by Isabel Allende

This is the history of Inés Suarez a poor seamstress in Spain whose husband went to the Americas to seek his fortune after hearing about the wondrous possibilities being opened up by Francisco Pizarro in Peru. After he disappears, she gets royal permission to search for him and sails to the New World to discover he had been killed in a military skirmish fighting with Pizarro’s brother.

She settles in Cuzco and ekes out a living as a seamstress and cooking wondrous empanadas.  It is here that she falls passionately in love with the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia who has been a great ally of Pizarro’s. His dream is to conquer Chile, an area with fierce indigenous tribes who have held off others who have attempted to colonize them. Diego de Almagro had led an expedition as far south as the River Bio Bio crossing the fierce Andes and the driest desert in the world only to crumble under the forces of the Mapuche warriors and had to return to Peru his forces decimated and demoralized.

 

Chile was given it’s name by Diego de Almagro since this is what is was called by the Incas from the Mapuche word for “where the land ends.

Pedro de Valdivia wants glory, but more than that he foresees a land where there can be honor, tolerance, justice and a place where native and Spaniard can co exist amicably if treated appropriately. With Ines and her sword at his side, Valdivia leads his conquistadors south from Peru, carving out a new country in the process. They founded the now capital Santiago, the cities Valdivia as well as Conception.

Valdivia and Inés succeed in much of what they start out to do but ideas of egalitarianism and glory don’t always successfully coexist and great ideals fall by the wayside. Valdivia was married and he was forced to give up Inés as well. Inés was then married to Rodrigo Quiroga who was a second of Valdivia’s as well as a great friend of Inés’ and the two end up with different destinies.

The story is told by Inés as a very old woman at the end of her life to a younger woman Isabel who is like a daughter to her. The struggle of the establishment of the Spaniards in Chile is epic, violent and prolonged. It is a story well worth telling.