Tag:

Mystery & Detective

Review

The Heron’s Cry

by Brian Kenney

Subtle and nuanced, this novel is the prolific Cleeves at the top of her game. Detective Matthew Venn is called to a sort of artist commune, where a body has been found in one of the studios with a large shard of glass protruding from its neck. The victim, Dr. Nigel Yeo, is the loving father of Eve, a glassmaker who lives and works in the commune. This sets in motion an investigation that gains urgency as the days pass and the bodies begin to stack up. Cleeves takes on some tough issues here—including suicide—and it’s one of her darker books. But as always with this author, the murder narrative is delightfully punctuated with insights into the lives of Venn—still recovering from his evangelical upraising—his husband Jonathan, fellow detectives, and even several of the suspects. Cleeves is the author of the hugely popular Vera and Shetland series, the latter now finished. Broadchurch viewers should appreciate Cleeves’ wide-angle lens and focus on community.

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Review

The Return of the Pharaoh

by Henrietta Thornton

It’s controversial, but I often enjoy reincarnations of classics more than the originals. For example, Sophie Hannah’s Agatha Christie novels feature the same kinds of characters and plots as the originals but leave out the originals’ antisemitism. Arthur Conan Doyle’s works are less cruel than Christie’s, but they’re still steeped in an English class system that, at best, dismisses women and anyone not white. Nicholas Meyer’s revival, à la Hannah’s Poirot, features the best of the old and makes the stories kinder, yet still imparts the flavor of the beloved detective and his admiring sidekick. In this tale, which follows Meyer’s The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols, Watson again narrates, taking readers to Egypt, where his wife is recovering from TB while the intrepid detectives seek the Duke of Uxbridge, who has gone missing while seeking a pharaoh’s gold. Meyer explores the politics of Egyptology and of nineteenth-century Egypt, where local, Ottoman, and British interests met and clashed, while serving the expected crackling mystery and haughty characters waiting to be brought down. A must for fans of the series and of thoughtful historical fiction.

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Review

The Corpse Flower

by Henrietta Thornton

Although I’m on a break from Scandinavian authors, I tried Hancock’s debut anyway, attracted by the no-girl-in-the-title title and the promise of a journalist sleuth. It was the right decision, as the violent rage that seeps out of Stieg Larsson’s work and its ilk is here mostly transformed into determination with dashes of scathing honesty, friendship, and love. The misogyny is tempered too: the woman journalist who’s investigating a murderer in parallel with the police is middle-aged (refreshing!), sometimes weary, but realistically tough when it counts. The target of her investigation is also refreshing: a woman on the run for the murder she committed years before of a wealthy young man who, as far as investigators can tell, was a stranger to her. Letters from the fugitive mention a rare flower that smells like death; how this connects to her crime and why she’s remorseless are revealed in an understated way that stops short of the bleakness we’ve come to expect from Scandinavian works. Sure to leave readers wanting more from Hancock.

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Review

Murder at Mallowan Hall

by Brian Kenney

Christie fans, rejoice! This fall will see the publication of not one but two novels set in Christie’s Devon country home. Cambridge’s Murder at Mallowan Hall is a near-perfect traditional mystery—the first body is found in the library, stabbed in the neck by a fountain pen—set during a house party in the early 1930s. But Cambridge flips the paradigm and instead of focusing on the posh guests, tells the story from the perspective of the help, most notably Phyllida Bright, housekeeper extraordinaire. Bright, a friend of Christie as well as an employee, models her investigation on Poirot, right down to the classic denouement delivered by Bright in the library. Gender roles, sexual harassment, and same-sex love are key elements, but Cambridge succeeds in keeping the novel squarely in its era. Two words describe this book: absolutely delicious. Greenway was the real name of Christie’s Devon estate, and Rader-Day’s Death at Greenway is painstakingly realistic. The book opens in London during the Blitz—which is wonderfully described—and we meet Bridey Kelly, a nurse trainee who has made a fatal mistake and is banished to the countryside with 10 young children escaping the bombing. Their destination is Greenway, which Christie and her husband have given over to the evacuees. But the Devon countryside offers little solace, with standoffish residents, a coast too close to the war, and the corpse of someone who was clearly murdered. Deeply suspenseful, this novel brilliantly captures the horrors of the war years and how individuals managed to survive through hardships both physical and emotional.

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