Six Degrees of Separation for February 2020

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting point this month is Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. As usual, I know very little about this book. It came out in 2019, and it was a very successful debut novel. It explores marriage and divorce.

My first link is to A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin. Published in 1956, it was also a very successful debut novel. I read it for the first time this month. Too tense for me, but a well-written book.

Which leads me to another suspense novel. Queenpin by Megan Abbott gave  me the same feelings of tension and dread while reading the book. Set in the 1940s or 50s, in the world of gangsters and gamblers, with two women as the main characters, a young woman learning the ropes from an older woman.

My next link is to A Night of Long Knives by Rebecca Cantrell, also a historical mystery and also featuring a strong female protagonist. The setting is 1930's Germany.

Still in Germany, or at least another version of Germany, is SS-GB, by Len Deighton, an alternate history, set in a world where Germany won World War II and the UK is invaded. Although Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors, I still haven't read this book.

Another alternate history / mystery novel is The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. This one is set around the same time but the story is quite different. In this book, Jewish refugees settled in Sitka, Alaska rather than Israel following World War II. An unusual and fascinating book.

And the location of the previous book took me to my last link in the chain, The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley, also set in Sitka. This was the first book in a series featuring Cecil Younger as a private investigator.

It has been several months since I last participated in Six Degrees meme, and I enjoyed doing again. My chain this month mainly used links to locations. With the exception of Fleishman is in Trouble, and SS-GB, I have read all of the books and enjoyed them.

Next month the meme will start with Lucy Treloar’s Wolfe Island.

Frederica: Georgette Heyer

I have never considered Georgette Heyer to be a forgotten author, but she is included in The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler (which I am currently reading). Until now I have only read her mystery novels, and they are not that well-known. But I have always thought that her romances are fairly popular. Recently I decided that I had to give them a try. I lucked into finding a copy of Frederica, one of her best liked Regency romances, last September at the annual book sale I go to every year.

The Regency romances are set in England during the time that King George III's son reigned as Prince Regent (1811-1820). The title character is the eldest in a family of five children. Both parents are dead, and Frederica brings her three youngest siblings to London to secure a husband for her sister, who is young, shy, beautiful, not very bright but a talented dressmaker. Frederica seeks out their distant cousin Vernon Dauntry, the Marquis of Alverstoke to help introduce them into society.

Frederica is close to 25 years old and considers herself to be past marriageable age. She has a younger brother who sees himself as the head of the family but is really much less responsible than Frederica (and off at school). It is important to Frederika that Charis marries well, and her intention is to ask Alverstoke to introduce her sister to high society. The extended conversation between Frederica and Lord Alverstoke when they first meet to discuss that possibility is very entertaining.

Alverstoke is a genial man when he wants to be and quite impressed with Frederica and her younger sister, Charis, but he is well-known for being self-centered and not interested in doing favors for others. He has already refused to help his sister's daughter who will be coming out at the same time. So people are very surprised when he begins spending a good bit of time with various members of the Merrivale family.

This book is full of likable characters. Frederica is of course a wonderful heroine, but she is so focused on doing anything she can to improve the situation of her family that she seemed to miss a lot of what was going on around her. So, she is a realistic character, not idealized. Felix Merrivale, at 12, is very interested in new technology and mechanical inventions. Jessamy, 16, is very serious about his studies but loves horses. They also have a wonderful dog. There are also some unsympathetic characters, such as Alverstoke's sister who doesn't approve of his behavior but is willing to use him and his money for her own purposes. But even those characters are fun.

This was not the type of romance I was expecting, but then I have little experience with romance novels so have nothing to compare against. For me, this book was about Alverstoke's growth as a person.  He is in his late thirties and not at all looking for any serious relationship or anything to tie him down. He starts out as a selfish, thoughtless cad, very sought after because of his wealth, and ends up helping out the family in many ways. I was disappointed that Charis's talent at dressmaking was not more a part of the story. It does turn out that, shy as she is, she has a mind of her own.

In summary, Frederica was an engaging book, and I learned a lot about Regency England. I plan to read more of Heyer's Regency romances over time, starting with recommendations  at Yvette's In My Own Words. I already have a copy of The Grand Sophy (which includes a glossary of Regency slang).

See reviews at Pining for the West and Tor.com.


 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2009 (orig. publ. 1965)
Length:     437 pages
Format:    Trade paperback
Setting:     London
Genre:      Regency Romance
Source:     Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2019.

Back to the Classics Challenge 2020

I am joining the Back to the Classics Challenge for 2020. I am hoping it will help keep me moving along on my Classics Club List. The challenge is hosted by Books and Chocolate and is in its 7th year.

This is similar to another Classics Challenge I signed up for this year, and some of the categories do overlap. For this one I can go for 6 classics, or 9, or all 12.

I have listed possibilities for books I may read but I am not committed to those choices. In some cases there are many possibilities on my Classics Club List to fulfill the category description.

1. 19th Century Classic.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Sign of the Four (1890)

2. 20th Century Classic.

Ira Levin – A Kiss Before Dying (1953)

3. Classic by a Woman Author.

Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

4. Classic in Translation.

Mikhail Bulgarov – The Master and Margarita (1967)   

5. Classic by a Person of Color.

Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)

6. A Genre Classic. Any classic novel that falls into a genre category -- fantasy, science fiction, Western, romance, crime, horror, etc.

Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None  (1939)

7. Classic with a Person's Name in the Title. First name, last name or both.

Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre (1847)

8. Classic with a Place in the Title. Any classic with the proper name of a place (real or fictional) - a country, region, city, town, village, street, building, etc.

Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)

9. Classic with Nature in the Title. A classic with any element of nature in the title (not including animals).

Kenneth Grahame –  The Wind in the Willows (1908)

10. Classic About a Family. This classic should have multiple members of the same family as principal characters, either from the same generation or multiple different generations.  Updated: Family members in the title are also acceptable.

Elizabeth Gaskell –  Wives and Daughters (1863)

11. Abandoned Classic. Choose a classic that you started and just never got around to finishing, whether you didn't like it at or just didn't get around to it. Now is the time to give it another try.

I think this category may doom me to not completing all twelve categories (although I probably won't anyway). I cannot remember a classic that I have abandoned. I have only read classics in my younger years (too long ago to remember definitively) and in the last few years. There are many classics I have rejected (too scary or just not my thing or too long), but none I have started and not finished.

12. Classic Adaptation. Any classic that's been adapted as a movie or TV series.

So many possibilities on my list. Maybe:  Bram Stoker – Dracula (1897)

The Last Defector: Tony Cape

I read Tony Cape's first book featuring Derek Smailes, The Cambridge Theorum,  almost exactly eight years ago, right before I started blogging. I liked it a lot and I was grateful that Felony and Mayhem had published a new edition of that book.

In the first book, Derek Smailes is a detective sergeant in Cambridge. He investigates the suicide of a student at the university who was researching the possibility of a fifth Cambridge spy. That book begins as a police procedural and morphs into spy fiction. Set in the 1980s, it was first published in 1989.

In the follow-up to that first novel, Derek has been offered a position in MI-5, and has decided to accept it because he will be sent to New York for his first assignment. He has always had an interest in the US and its culture and he is delighted to be able to experience it directly. He has a junior position as a security officer at the British Mission to the UN. The story is set when the Cold War is coming to an end and disarmament talks are going on (late 1980s).

Based on a recording recovered from a listening device, Derek's superiors plan to try to convince a Soviet citizen also working at the UN to defect and provide information on disarmament plans in Russia. They decide to use Derek as the contact point for the mission, and allow him to plan the approach. The setup of the scheme to soften up the Russian for defection is complex and intriguing. A secondary plot in The Last Defector takes place in the Soviet Union, and follows a conspiracy to take over the government due to dissatisfaction with the current leader.

Initially the planned defection goes well, but as things start to fall apart, Derek ends up suspecting just about everyone he is working with of treachery, even the woman he wants to marry. He is a more realistic protagonist than some I have encountered in spy fiction. He is eager to take on a challenging assignment that could give his career a quick shot in the arm, but has doubts about his abilities and whether he and his group are doing the right thing.

I found this second book in the Derek Smailes series to be a worthy successor to the first. The plot was complex but not confusing. There were a lot of characters to keep track of, but that wasn't a problem either. The people he works with are well developed characters, with different personalities, but the officials back in Russia are more stereotypical. However, that seems to be true in many spy books I have read.

As with the first book, it was the development of the main character, Derek, and his new relationships in his job and with his ex-wife and daughter back in England, that made this book especially enjoyable to read. I like it when espionage stories explore the characters personal lives and motives, and I was happy that I made the effort to find a copy of the second book in this series.

This biographical information is available at Felony and Mayhem:

Tony Cape was born in Wales and grew up in Yorkshire before attending Cambridge University. After working as a journalist in Northern Ireland and England he moved to the United States in 1977 to join the Buddhist community of Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. In the 1990s, he published a series of spy novels featuring Derek Smailes, a former police detective turned counterintelligence officer. The first of these, The Cambridge Theorem, became a bestseller in Britain and Italy, and was re-released by Felony and Mayhem Press in 2006.

See my review of The Cambridge Theorem.


-----------------------------

Publisher:  Doubleday, 1991.
Length:      390 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Derek Smailes, #2
Setting:      New York City, US; UK
Genre:       Spy fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy in 2013.

A Kiss Before Dying: Ira Levin

I read this novel for the Classics Club Spin #22. Previously, I had avoided reading anything by Ira Levin because his books are mostly horror and very tense. But I am finding it easier to try new things in my reading. For me it was not a fun read, but it was rewarding.

The story starts with a young man and woman, both college students, discussing their future. She is pregnant, and she wants to get married immediately. He doesn't. That doesn't sound too unusual, but in this case the situation eventually leads to the young woman's death.

The young man in this story is a World War II veteran with dreams and ambitions, but he wants to take short cuts to get to his goal. He doesn't want to finish college and find a job and work his way up the ladder. He wants to marry a young woman who has lots of money. That becomes his goal in life and he will let nothing get in his way of getting what he wants.

That is all I want to say about the plot because it is best to come into this story knowing very little.

My thoughts:

I don't do well with psychological suspense. This book was very intense for me, and there was a point where I just wanted to stop reading it. But I persevered and shortly after that it got less tense and more interesting.

The story is divided into three sections and each has a different feel, or mood, even though the main character remains constant throughout. There is tension in each part of the story, but handled in a different way, and I admired the author's ability to do this. The story has a fantastic twist, and it happens midway through the book. It  took my breath away.

More about the book and the author:

In a New York Times review of A Kiss Before Dying, Anthony Boucher wrote that “Levin combines great talent for pure novel writing -- full-bodied characterization, subtle psychological exploration, vivid evocation of locale -- with strict technical whodunit tricks as dazzling as anything ever brought off by Carr, Rawson, Queen or Christie.”

The New Yorker said:
"A remarkably constructed story depicting an inconceivably vicious character in episodes of thrilling horror."

A Kiss Before Dying has been adapted for the screen twice. The 1956 adaptation starred Robert Wagner, Virginia Leith, Joanne Woodward, and Mary Astor. The second adaptation was produced in 1991 and starred Matt Dillon, Sean Young, Diane Ladd, and Max von Sydow. I haven't seen either of the films but I understand that the 1956 film adhered closer to the plot in the book.

Ira Levin wrote a total of seven novels. Among them were: Rosemary's Baby (1967), The Stepford Wives (1972), and The Boys from Brazil (1976)... all of those also had film adaptations. He also wrote plays, several of which had film adaptations.

These reviews have more details about the plot:

• At Mysteries Ahoy!
• At Existential Ennui

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Publisher:  Pegasus Books, 2011 (orig. publ. 1953)
Length:      265 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Setting:      USA
Genre:       Suspense / Inverted Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy in June 2018.

Charlie M: Brian Freemantle

I have wanted to read the Charlie Muffin series for years. The books in this series about a British intelligence agent were published between 1977 and 2013. Charlie M is the first in the series, and I only had an ebook copy, so I finally broke down and read the book in that format in October 2019. It was all I had hoped for.

Description of Charlie M at Open Road Media:

Charlie Muffin is an anachronism. He came into the intelligence service in the early 1950s, when the government, desperate for foot soldiers in the impending Cold War, dipped into the middle class for the first time. Despite a lack of upper-class bearing, Charlie survived twenty-five years on the espionage battle’s front line: Berlin. 

But times have changed: The boys from Oxford and Cambridge are running the shop again, and they want to get rid of the middle-class spy who’s a thorn in their side. They have decided that it’s time for Charlie to be sacrificed. But Charlie Muffin didn’t survive two decades in Berlin by being a pushover. He intends to go on protecting the realm, and won’t let anyone from his own organization get in his way. 

Charlie Muffin does not fit in with the rest of the men he works with. They look down on  him and consider him "a disposable embarrassment, with his scuffed suede Hush Puppies, the Marks and Spencer shirts he didn’t change daily and the flat, Mancunian accent." And they underestimate his abilities.

Charlie's boss, Sir Henry Cuthbertson, has learned that an important Russian KGB official, General Valery Kalenin, wants to defect. He and his team start plotting to set up the defection, excluding Charlie. The CIA finds out about the scheme and insist on being part of the plan. Things start to go badly with Cuthbertson's scheme, and they are forced to use Charlie in the end.

As you can probably tell from the description, the Charlie Muffin books are closer to the Nameless Spy series by Len Deighton than the James Bond type of espionage. This is the kind of Cold War spy fiction I enjoy, and I hope the rest of the series is as entertaining.

There is a very unexpected ending (at least for me) and I don't know exactly how the series can continue, but there are 15 more books in the series, so somehow it does.

The ebook I read features an interesting biography of Brian Freemantle with photographs from the author’s personal collection.

See also Col's review at Col's Criminal Library.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Open Road Media, 2011 (orig. publ. 1977)
Length:       207 pages
Format:      ebook

Series:       Charlie Muffin, #1
Setting:      UK, Germany, Russia
Genre:        Espionage fiction
Source:      On my Kindle since 2013.

My Reading: December 2019

I read ten books in December 2019; most were crime fiction, but I started off the month with a book outside of that genre: Crazy Rich Asians. I read a few crime novels set in December, around Christmas, some of them with a Christmassy feel and some not. I ended the month with several mysteries that had been on my TBR for years. All in all, a very good month.

Of my crime fiction reads, four were published between 1930 and 1940 and the other five were published between 1979 and 2007.

Fiction 

Crazy Rich Asians (2013) by Kevin Kwan

I am not sure how to categorize Crazy Rich Asians; some call it a romance, or a romantic comedy, or even chick lit. It is about extremely rich Chinese families in Singapore, and a young American-born Chinese woman who is dating the son of one of the families. I hadn't been interested in this book until I read a review at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan. I knew if Bill could read this book and enjoy it, I could too. 

There were many things about the story I found impossible to believe (even though I am sure many of them are very true) but even so, I just settled in and enjoyed the ride. I was thinking of describing this book as a fairy tale, but it is also a soap opera, and both of those can be very entertaining.

Crime Fiction

Crime at Christmas (1934) by C.H.B. Kitchin

A mystery set at a large home in London where a group of people have gathered for Christmas celebrations. The protagonist is a young stockbroker, Malcolm Warren, who featured in three other mystery novels by Kitchin. See my review here.

This Gun for Hire (1936) by Graham Greene

I haven't read that much by Graham Greene and it has been a while, so I have nothing to compare this too, but other reviews say it is not his best work. It was written before World War II started in Europe and it shows that people are fearing another war. Raven is hired to kill a foreign government official, and then is paid off in stolen bills, so that he will be caught by the police. He finds he has been double crossed and seeks revenge on the people who hired him. Along the way he takes a young woman hostage, and she feels compassion for his plight. I liked the story very much. I thought it was told in a brilliant way and the characters were well done.

The  original title in the UK was A Gun for Sale. The novel was adapted as a film with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, titled This Gun for Hire. My paperback edition has one of the weirdest covers I have seen.

Cold Light (1994) by John Harvey

I read the first three books in the Charlie Resnick series years ago and I remember liking them a lot. Resnick is a detective inspector based in Nottingham, England. In November I read Off Minor (4th book) and now I have read Cold Light (6th book), set during the Christmas season. These two books seemed a bit darker than I remembered. I really like Charlie's character, with his love for jazz and his four cats. He is a middle-aged man trying to do his best in his job.

The Twelve Deaths Of Christmas (1979) by Marian Babson

Another Christmas mystery. I usually read too many of them and cannot review them all but I did pretty well this year. The Twelve Deaths of Christmas is set in a boarding house, and based on the title it sounds grim. But it is more of suspenseful, cozy mystery, with many deaths throughout. My review is here.

The Shop Window Murder (1930) by Vernon Loder

Mander’s Department Store in London is well known for its elaborate window displays. A new one is  revealed every Monday morning. Several weeks before Christmas, the crowd gathered to see the unveiling realizes that the elaborate new window design includes a dead body. And shortly afterward, a second body is discovered. One of the bodies is the store’s owner Tobias Mander and the other is Miss Effie Tumour, a chief buyer for the store. It is a good puzzle mystery and a very interesting picture of a department store of that period, but I could not get too excited about the characters. 

A Fête Worse Than Death (2007) by Dolores Gordon-Smith

This is the first book in the Jack Haldean mystery series, set in the early 1920s. Jack was a fighter pilot in World War I and is now an author of detective stories. He is currently staying with his cousins at their country house in Sussex, when a man he knew during the war is murdered at the local fête. This was a fun book with a clever mystery, and I am sorry it took me so long to get to it.

Death in Blue Folders (1985) by Margaret Maron

Before her well-known Judge Deborah Knott series, Margaret Maron wrote a series about Sigrid Harold, New York City homicide detective. This is the third book in that series; I loved it and I will continue reading the series. See my review here.

Murder At Madingley Grange (1990) by Caroline Graham

This was not at all what I thought it would be, but it turned out to be even better than expected in the end. Madingley Grange is the perfect setting for a 1930s murder-mystery weekend; thus Simon Hannaford plots to convince his half-sister to let him use their aunt's home for a money-making scheme while she is away on vacation. This reminded me a bit of a Peter Dickinson style plot, with many layers and hidden agendas and more than one twist. 

The Dog Who Bit a Policeman (1998) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart Kaminsky's Inspector Rostnikov series is one of my favorite series, and now I only have four books left to read. The stories are set in Russia in the years between 1981 and 2009. When the series started Russia was still part of the USSR. With each new book in the series, the characters have aged and developed. Kaminsky showed the changes in Russia as the USSR dissolved and new people and groups are in power. This is the 12th book in the series. In most of the books, there are several cases that Rostnikov and his team are working on. A warning, one case in this book centers on an unpleasant subject, dog-fighting, with some graphic scenes included. 

Death in Blue Folders: Margaret Maron

I usually write a post mid-week for the Friday's Forgotten Books meme originated by Patricia Abbott at her blog pattinase and now hosted by Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom. The book I am featuring today is Death in Blue Folders by Margaret Maron. Obviously Maron is far from a forgotten author, but this book is part of her first series about Sigrid Harold, New York City detective. Maron's other series, featuring Judge Deborah Knott, is much better known.

Shortly after a successful lawyer, Clayton Gladwell, decides to retire, he is murdered in his office, in the evening after the rest of his staff has left for the day. Before the killer left the office, he attempted to burn Gladwell's special blue folders, which the police determine contained information that Gladwell was using to blackmail some of his clients. The police are able to salvage some charred remains from the folders and the search begins for all the clients who had blue folders...

Part of the mystery is tracking down who was being blackmailed and why. Of course, the suspects don't want to reveal damaging facts about themselves. The story behind each folder is interesting, but in some cases it is not clear why the secrets would lead to murder.

This is the third book in the Sigrid Harald series. The story focuses on the murder and the search for the culprit, but Sigrid's background and her life away from work are also part of the story. She is not the typical gorgeous, assured policewoman. She is quiet, shy, serious, and has a cool, reserved demeanor. But the series does show growth and change in the characters. In this story, Sigrid searches for a new apartment that she can afford in New York, with the help of her current roommate, Roman Tramegra. She has a tentative relationship with a well-known artist, Oscar Nauman, who is a good bit older than her. The author achieves a good balance between the mystery plot and the personal aspects of Sigrid's life.

I thought the ending was fairly obvious, or at least the only solution that would make sense, but that in no way spoiled my enjoyment... partly because I always suspect the author is leading me in the wrong direction anyway. It is sort of a sad ending, with some threads left hanging.

It has been nearly six years since I read the 2nd book in this series, and I won't wait that long to read another one. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Margaret Maron's writing. The dialog is very realistic and convincing. The characters are fleshed out and believable. I will continue this series, because I want to see where it takes Sigrid Harald. I may also return to the Deborah Knott series.

The Sigrid Harald series was written (mostly) in the 1980s and the Deborah Knott series started in 1992. A character from Death in Blue Folders, Kate Honeycutt, turns up as a continuing character in the Deborah Knott series. Later in the Deborah Knott series, Sigrid and Deborah meet (in Three Day Town) and they work together in the next novel in the series.

I have also read and reviewed:
One Coffee With (1981)
Death of a Butterfly (1984)


 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Ocanee Spirit Press, 2013. (orig. publ. 1985)
Length:  203 pages
Format:  Trade Paperback
Series:   Lt. Sigrid Harald, homicide detective
Setting:  New York City
Genre:   Mystery, Police Procedural
Source:  I purchased this book (in 2013).

More 2020 Reading Goals

I have decided to take part in a few more challenges and put them all in one post.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2020
Hosted by My Reader's Block
January 2020 kicks off the ninth year for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

I have participated before but it has been a few years and I need some motivation to focus on the TBR books I own, rather than getting books from other sources.

A few of the rules:
*Books must be owned by you prior to January 1, 2020. Items requested or ordered prior to January 1, may count even if they arrive in the new year. Audio books and E-books may count assuming you own them.
*A blog and reviews are not necessary to participate.

There are challenge levels. I am going for Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR pile/s.




Japanese Literature Challenge 13
Hosted by Dolce Bellezza

The guidelines are simple:

The Challenge only lasts for thee months.
It runs from January 1, 2020 through March 31, 2020.
Read and review one or more books which have originally been written in Japanese.
There is a separate review site for the Japanese Literature Challenge 13 to add links to reviews.

I will read: The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura.
I also have books by Seichō Matsumoto  and Keigo Higashino.

2020 Victorian Reading Challenge
Host: Becky's Book Reviews
Duration: January - December 2020
Goal: Read between 4 to 6 Books (4 minimum)

There are two options:  the basic challenge (quarterly) or the advanced challenge (themed months). This is described in more detail here.
All books must fall into the "Victorian" category being either a) books originally published between 1837 and 1901 b) books originally written (but not published) between 1837 and 1901 c) general nonfiction about the Victorian era (the times, the culture, the people, the events) d) biographies of Victorians.

MY GOAL:  4 books

2020 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
Hosted by Passages to the Past

Any sub-genre of historical fiction is accepted (Historical Romance, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy, Young Adult, History/Non-Fiction, etc.)

Each month, a new post dedicated to the HF Challenge will be created to share links to reviews. However, you don't have to have a blog to participate.

Duration: January - December 2020

You can pick different reading levels, from 2 books to 50+ books.
I choose the Victorian Reader level = 5 books. I will probably read more.

The Twelve Deaths of Christmas: Marian Babson

I am still in a holiday mood on the 2nd day of the new year, so I am writing about my last Christmas read from mid-December. The Twelve Deaths of Christmas is set in a boarding house, and based on the title it sounds grim. But it is more of cozy mystery, although there are many deaths throughout. Published in 1979, the story is old-fashioned and I liked that. Random deaths are taking place all over London, although the police suspect that one person is causing all the deaths.

The story is told from several points of view. From the point of view of the boarders at Maude's boarding house. From the point of view of the killer, told in first person. And from the point of view of the policemen investigating the crime. Thus this story is part psychological suspense and part police procedural. The reader knows from early in the book that the killer lives in Maude Daneson's boarding house (but not the identity, of course).

Most of the narrative is focused on Christmas preparations and plans at the boarding house and the killer's thoughts and and activities. The killings are haphazard, not usually planned in advance, so the series of deaths seem to be the perfect crime with no links to the killer.

Iris Loring, a freelance artist, serves as the character who introduces the tenants of the house. As a distant relative of Maude, she has her room for free in exchange for serving as the housekeeper. As the tenants enter and return to the building each day Iris meets then as she does her chores and decorates the hallway for Christmas.

Again the style of each chapter feeding hints about the villain but leaving the reader dangling annoyed me (as in The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley), but overall the story is a page turner and a fun Christmas read (and short). The setting of the boarding house is an appealing one. A group of disparate persons, some young, some older and retired, provide some interesting characters and relationships. The policemen on the case do not play a large part, but the characterization of the two men is very well done.

My impression is that Marian Babson wrote many mysteries, but with variations in style, so I think it will be worthwhile to follow up on some of her other books. They don't show up a lot at the book sale so I shall have to make and effort to find some. (Any suggestions are welcome.)

Curt Evans at The Passing Tramp has written a couple of very informative posts with an overview of Babson's career and a focus on one of her novels.

See reviews from Richard Robinson at The Broken Bulhorn and Kate at Mystery Please.


 -----------------------------

Publisher: Dell, 1985 (first published 1979).
Length:    192 pages
Format:    Paperback
Setting:    London
Genre:     Mystery

Source:    Purchased at Planned Parenthood Book Sale, 2006.