We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Shirley Jackson

 

This is the first paragraph of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. It establishes the narrator and tells us a good bit about her. 

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”

I think this type of book is best experienced when you know little about it, and I enjoyed going into it that way. Although I might have read it sooner if I had read more reviews. Thus my description and comments will be brief. 

As this short novel starts, Mary Katherine (also known as Merricat) lives with her older sister, Constance, and her Uncle Julian in a very large but run down house. The reader learns shortly that everyone else in the family died from poisoning when eating a meal. For several years after the poisoning, Merricat was the only one who left the house. She would walk to the nearby village twice a week to do the shopping and get books from the library. Constance never left the house, and Uncle Julian was confined to a wheel chair.

 

My goal in reading this book was to read a Gothic novel, since I don't go for that genre much, and to read more by Shirley Jackson. Up to now I have only read a few of her short stories.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. This story was not nearly as scary or tense as I expected it to be. There was a sense of foreboding and waiting for something horrible to happen. 

I liked Merricat's narration, and the depiction of their lives before and after the rest of the family died. I liked the way the ending was handled. The beauty of the story was in the way Jackson very slowly reveals small bits of the plot.

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Publisher: Penguin Books, 2006 (orig. pub. 1962).
Length:    146 pages
Format:    Trade Paperback
Setting:    Vermont, US
Genre:     Gothic, Classic
Source:    I purchased this book in 2017.

Short Story Wednesday: Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King

Lily King is a new author for me. She has written several novels, but she came to my attention when I read about her short story book, Five Tuesdays in Winter, at Patricia Abbott's blog in 2022.

This week I read four stories (of ten) from that book. All of them were very good. Each story focuses on a specific incident or series of events, but as the story is told, much more is revealed about the characters. The stories have so much depth.

"Creature"

This story was forty pages long and it overwhelmed me (in a good way). A woman describes her experiences when she took a job as a teenager (14 years old). She was a live-in babysitter for a well-to-do family for a few weeks. The kids were young, both under six. The kids' uncle is visiting; he is married but arrived alone. And he is young enough to be attractive to the babysitter. That is the setup for the story, but I can't say much more about it. The writing is beautiful, the events and feelings are described well and feel real. 

“Five Tuesdays in Winter”

This one is easy to describe, and it was just as good as the first one. It is a love story, plain and simple, and it is a lovely one. The characters are a reticent bookstore owner, his twelve-year-old daughter, and a woman who has recently been hired to work at the store. 

This quote from the story reveals a bit of his character:

"Mitchell's daughter, who was twelve, accused him of loving his books but hating his customers. He didn't hate them. He just didn't like having to chat with them or lead them to very clearly marked sections – if they couldn't read signs, why were they buying books? – while they complained that nothing was arranged by title. He would have liked to have a bouncer at the door, a man with a rippled neck who would turn people away or quietly remove them when they revealed too much ignorance."

"North Sea"

This story is about grief and the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Oda's husband died unexpectedly, leaving her and her young daughter with very little money. Since his death, their relationship has been strained. Oda plans a vacation in hopes of mending their relationship. I liked the story but it was bleaker than the others.

“When in the Dordogne”

The first three stories I read featured young girls, either preteens or early teens. I read a fourth story to see if each story in the book was going to follow this pattern. But in “When in the Dordogne,” the main character and narrator is a fourteen-year-old boy. His parents go on an extended summer vacation because his father has had a breakdown and needs relaxation. 

The first paragraph:

"The summer of 1986, the summer I was fourteen, my parents went to the Dordogne for eight weeks. My father had been unwell, and it was thought that France, where he had studied as a young man, would enable his recovery. Through the university’s employment office, my mother hired two sophomores to house-sit for the time they would be out of the country. As I came with the house, these two college boys were obliged to take care of me, too."

Right there I knew it was going to be a great story and I was right. 

Books Read in November 2024

 

November was a very good reading month; I enjoyed reading all the books. I finished an excellent nonfiction history book that I had started in early September. I read a romantic comedy / chick lit book that was way outside of my normal reading. And five crime fiction books, all very good. 

Nonfiction / History

Tudors (2012) by Peter Ackroyd

I read this book because I wanted to know more about the Tudors. The subtitle is "The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I." I had read novels that covered the Tudor years but those focused on specific events or people, such as the Wolf Hall Trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII. In this nonfiction book, I learned a lot about Henry VIII, including more about each wife and the religious turmoil at the time. I was surprised by many things that happened Elizabeth's reign. This was a great overview and I will look for more to read on the subject.

Fiction

The Rosie Project (2013) by Graeme Simsion

This novel is about a socially challenged genetics professor, Don Tillotson. He has Asperger's Syndrome, although that is never stated in the book. He lives an orderly life, planned to the last detail, but he has few friends. He decides he would like to find a wife, so he comes up with a questionnaire to eliminate women with habits or interests he could not tolerate. The story is unrealistic but lots of fun. I don't usually read romantic comedies, and I didn't really realize that this was one when I started it, but I liked it anyway. 

Crime Fiction

Two Nights in Lisbon (2022) by Chris Pavone

This is not a spy thriller but it sure feels like one. The reader and the characters don't know who to trust. I did not know what was going on most of the time. Well, I knew the basic plot (a couple goes to Lisbon on business and there is a kidnapping) but it was clear from the beginning that a lot was being withheld from the reader. I loved it, but I have loved all of Chris Pavone's novels, so I am prejudiced.

Alias Emma (2022) by Ava Glass

This is the first book in a relatively new spy fiction series. Emma Makepeace has always wanted to be a spy. Her father, who died before she was born, was a spy, and she idolizes him. Emma's first important assignment is to bring Michael Primalova, the son of Russian dissidents, across London to a safehouse, so that he and his parents can be put in protective custody. My review here.

Three Men Out (1954) by Rex Stout

I am working my way through the novella collections in the Nero Wolfe series. All of them are rereads. The stories are  "This Won't Kill You", "Invitation to Murder" and "The Zero Clue". The stories were first published in The American Magazine. 

Deadland (2019) by William Shaw

Deadland is the second book in the DS Alexandra Cupidi series, but there is a book written earlier that introduced Cupidi, so I consider this the third book. There are multiple plotlines. Two teenagers steal a phone from a very dangerous man. They end up running and hiding to avoid him, because he wants to kill them. DS Cupidi's case revolves around a human arm found in a valuable vase in an art gallery. She has to determine whether the arm is part of a dead body, or if somehow the person is still alive. Both the main characters and the secondary characters are well defined and interesting and the mystery plots are good too. If I had any complaint is was that it felt long. 

A Darker Domain (2008) by Val McDermid

This book is the second book in the Karen Pirie series. Detective Inspector Karen Pirie is in charge of the Cold Case department in Fife, Scotland. First, a woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984.  Shortly after that, new information shows up in Italy related to a kidnapping that also took place in 1984 in Fife, and that case is added to Karen's workload. See my review.

Currently Reading

Actually, I will start reading this one tonight. Between 1952 and 1968, James Yaffe published eight short stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In each story, Dave, a detective in the New York Homicide Squad, and his wife Shirley visit his mother and they discuss one of his cases over dinner. She asks some pertinent questions and solves the case; Dave is afraid that his coworkers are going to find out that his success rate with cases is due to his mother's help. Between 1988 and 1992, Yaffe wrote four mystery novels about Dave and his Mom. The four novels are set in Colorado, not New York.  Mom Meets Her Maker is the 2nd of the four novels. The book is set at Christmas, and I think it will be a perfect read for this time of year. 

The photo at the top of the post is a pot of succulents in our back fenced-in area in 2008. The photos immediately above were also taken in 2008, in Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden. The photos were taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Late Mistaken" by Dino Buzzati

 

"The Late Mistaken" 

This is one of the stories in The Bewitched Bourgeois by Dino Buzzati, which will be published next month by New York Review Books. Translated by Lawrence Venuti.

In this story, the noted painter Lucio Predonzani, who had retired to his country house in Vimercate, opened the newspaper to discover an announcement of his death. The headline said: "Italian Art World in Mourning; Painter Predonzani is dead."

He tells his wife, then rushes to the city to confront the editor of the paper. The editor is surprised but protests that this could be a good thing for Predonzani. If he pretends to be dead, his paintings will go up in value after his death and he could make money on that. He decides to do exactly that, with the cooperation of the newspaper editor, who would provide publicity for gallery showings of his works. 

The rest of the story is about what happens after that.

This is a very short story about an extremely absurd situation. It is humorous at times. I was intrigued, and would like to try more stories by Buzzati.

Per Wikipedia, Buzzati was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet who was born in 1906 and died in 1972.

I read this story in the December 2024 issue of Harper's Magazine. It can be read online here; Harper's Magazine allows two free articles a month.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Sandwich to The Wheel Spins

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 books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Sandwich by Catherine Newman, which I have not read... but I do have a copy that I am planning to read. The story takes place during an annual family visit to Cape Cod.

1st degree:

My first link is to The Cape Cod Mystery, published in 1931 by Phoebe Atwood Taylor. It is the first book in the Asey Mayo series. In the middle of a sweltering hot summer on Cape Cod, a man's body is discovered in a cottage. A sheriff arrests Bill Porter for murder, based on circumstantial evidence. Bill asks his friend, Asey Mayo, to find out who really committed the crime. The author knew Cape Cod quite well, and her depiction of it in this book is humorous and entertaining.

2nd degree:

Death in the Off-Season is a much more recent mystery set on Nantucket, an island about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. Merry Folger is a new detective in the Nantucket police, working under her father. This novel is the first book in the Merry Folger Nantucket Mystery series and was first published in 1994. Later it was republished by Soho in 2016, with edits to bring the series up to modern times. That worked well for me, and I liked the characters and the setting.

3rd degree:

The previous book was a police procedural and that is a favorite subgenre for me. Diamond Solitaire by Peter Lovesey is also part of a police procedural series, this time set in London and featuring Peter Diamond. But as this third book in the series begins, the police detective is no longer in the police, and is working as a security guard at Harrods in London. This wonderful story takes the reader to New York and then to Japan as the protagonist goes in search of the identity of a young Japanese girl.

4th degree:

So now I move to a police procedural set in Japan, Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino. This book starts out as a police procedural, then turns into something else. Detective Sasagaki is investigating the death of a man in an empty building. He starts with the victim's family, a wife and a son about 10 years old, and his place of business, a pawnshop. The case is dropped for lack of evidence although Sasagaki continues to look for more information related to the crime. The middle section of the book follows the lives of people related to the victim in the years leading up to the death. As the story gets closer to the end, Detective Sasagaki comes back into the story and the crime is solved. This book was originally published in 1999, and the novel portrays life in Japan in the 1970s to the 1990s, with changing fads, various stages of education, office life, and characters at various economic levels.

5th degree:

Staying with Japan and police procedurals, I turn to Tokyo Express, Seichō Matsumoto's first novel, published in 1958. In this novel, two detectives in different cities in Japan investigate the same crime and collaborate, sharing their thoughts and discoveries. A man and a woman are found dead on a beach in Kashii, and the police assume that it is a double suicide. The alibis of their suspects depend on train schedules, so a good amount of time is spent on that aspect of the alleged crime. This is a good picture of Japan after World War II; it was first published in English translation as Points and Lines.

6th degree:

Picking up on the emphasis on trains in the last book, I am moving to The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, which takes place primarily on a train. This book was filmed as The Lady Vanishes, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A young woman, Iris, meets an older lady while traveling on a train in Europe. They have tea and talk for a while, and then, Iris takes a nap. When she awakens, Miss Froy, the older woman, has disappeared, and the other people in the same carriage deny that there ever was a Miss Froy in the  carriage. The Wheel Spins was published in 1936, and is an excellent picture of the tensions in Europe in the 1930s.

My Six Degrees took me from Cape Cod and other coastal areas in the US, on to the UK and Japan, and finally to an unnamed area in Europe prior to World War II.  If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your chain take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on January 4th, 2025 and the starting book will be the 2024 Booker winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey.

Short Story Wednesday: "A Scandal in Brooklyn" by Lauren Wilkinson

 

The description of this story at Goodreads starts out with...

"A classic Holmesian detective untangles a locked-room mystery with a very modern twist in this venomously diverting short story by Lauren Wilkinson, the Washington Post bestselling author of American Spy."

But to be honest, I really did not connect the story to a Holmes pastiche until I was at least halfway through reading it. That might be because I haven't read that much fiction by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and I have read very few pastiches of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The title of the story and a super-intelligent protagonist named "Irene Adler" does point in that direction. There are other connections. Bees figure into the story. There is a character named Shinwell Johnson (which I only remembered from the TV series Elementary).

The setup:

Irene Adler requests that Tommy Diaz, the narrator of the story, meet her and her friend Priya, whose husband has been missing for four days. The husband works for a large multinational tech corporation and had been part of a secret project before his disappearance. Due to Irene's connections with the owner of the corporation (the owner is her husband and they are negotiating a divorce), Irene, Priya, Tommy are able to gain admission to the warehouse where the project is taking place. Almost immediately after they arrive, Priya's husband is found dead in a room set up to look like a clearing the woods.

My Thoughts:

• I think if this had not been a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, I would have dismissed it as too long (46 pages), too many characters that I could not keep track of, and no real depth to the plot. On the other hand, it was not boring, the solution to the puzzle was clever, and clues were supplied; but it was all solved too quickly at the end. 
• The reader is just dropped into the story; the back story of the main characters was too sparse. More information on how Tony and Irene met or previously worked together might have smoothed the way for me. I can see that a series of these stories which each included a little more background or development of the main characters could work well but this story by itself was lacking.
• The story is full of technology and AI references; I think it's possible that younger readers would enjoy this story more than I did (although I usually enjoy stories with AI characters).  
• I really need to read more Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and some pastiches in short story form.

This short story was published in 2022 by Amazon Original Stories. I read the story because I was familiar with the author, Lauren Wilkinson, and I enjoyed her espionage thriller, American Spy, in 2019. In addition to being a spy fiction story, it is an exploration of family dynamics and influences, and how the past shapes us.

Alias Emma: Ava Glass

Alias Emma is the first book in a relatively new spy fiction series. Emma Makepeace has always wanted to be a spy. Her father who died before she was born was a spy, and she idolizes him. She gets her wish when she enters the military and catches the attention of the leader of a department in the Secret Service. After some training exercises, Emma is given an important assignment to bring Michael Primalova, the son of Russian dissidents, across London to a safehouse, so that he and his parents can be put in protective custody. 

Michael is a doctor, a pediatric oncologist, and initially he is reluctant to go with her and leave his patients behind. But he soon sees how much danger he is in from assassins who want to kill him. The biggest problem they face is that the Russians have hacked the CCTV cameras in London and any actions that Emma and Michael take will be known to them. 

My thoughts...

The story alternates between the action (getting Michael to the safehouse) and flashbacks to Emma's life before spying, her training, and how she became a spy. This isn't good or bad, but it does mean that — in a book of 269 pages — the actual spying part is thin. The background information is not padding, it is useful and necessary to give us more information about the characters. It will be interesting to see if the next book in the series is structured in a similar way.

Emma is a strong female protagonist, very serious about her job and learning her way as she goes. Some reviews or blurbs compare Emma to James Bond; I don't consider this a compliment. It isn't that I don't like the James Bond books by Ian Fleming; I have read most of the books, some in my youth and several since I started blogging. The original Bond series is really a mixed bag; some of the books are serious, others seem like comedies. 

This is a fine beginning to an espionage series, and two more books have already been published. I was entertained the whole time, and the pacing is very good. My only real quibble was that there was too much of a romantic vibe. The story doesn't go overboard in that direction, but even the hint of it did not add anything to the story in my opinion.

This book was recommended to me by Constance at Staircase Wit. See her review for more details, especially about the author.

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Publisher:   Bantam Books, New York, 2023 (orig. publ. 2022)
Length:      269 pages 
Format:      Trade Paper
Series:       Alias Emma #1
Setting:      UK
Genre:       Espionage Thriller
Source:      Purchased in November 2023.

A Darker Domain: Val McDermid

This book is the second book in the Karen Pirie series. Detective Inspector Karen Pirie is in charge of the Cold Case department in Fife, Scotland; she works primarily with Detective Sergeant Phil Parhatka. A woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984.  At the time they thought he had deserted the family and gone to Nottingham to work the mines there; as a result the family was shunned by the community. But now the daughter needs to find her father because her son is dying and in need of a bone marrow transplant. This investigation doesn't really fit into the Cold Case criteria for Karen's department, but she takes it on anyway. Shortly after that, new information shows up in Italy related to a kidnapping that also took place in 1984 in Fife, and that case is added to Karen's workload.

My Thoughts...

• I liked that the story went back and forth between 1984 and 2007. For some readers, this would be a negative and it can be confusing. There are no chapter breaks, but it is clear when the story transitions to a new location or time, so I was OK with that.
• I was especially interested in the strike and what it did to the mining community. I have read a Reginald Hill novel, Under World, from 1988, that is about the aftermath of the strike. Another book about the strike is GB84 by David Peace, which I have not read.
• There are many interesting secondary characters. The kidnapped woman was the daughter of a very important man in Scotland, Sir Broderick Maclennan Grant. His daughter was killed and her infant son was never seen again after a botched ransom exchange. He wants to find his grandson, but he also is very controlling and manipulative and expects the police to bow to his will. Investigative journalist Bel Richmond is the one who finds the clue in modern-day Tuscany, and she is the one who does the sleuthing in Italy.  And then there is Sergeant Phil Parhatka, a very likable character and the perfect working partner for Karen.
• After all the investigative work comes together, the ending is kind of abrupt. Some reviewers complained about this, but it worked perfectly for me. The book was already long enough, I did not need any further results spelled out for me.
• I was very impressed with this book. The subject is serious, and Karen takes her responsibilities seriously, but there is plenty of humor in the story. At this point I think A Darker Domain will be one of my top books of 2024.

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Publisher:   Harper Perennial, 2010 (Orig. pub. 2008)
Length:       368 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:        Karen Pirie, #2
Setting:      Scotland and Italy
Genre:       Police Procedural
Source:      On my TBR pile since 2017.

Books Read in September and October 2024

I read 12 books in September and October. I enjoyed all of them. Seven of the books were mysteries; five were in other genres.

Humor / Cartoon Collection

A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection (2020) by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin

In this book, Steve Martin partnered with the cartoonist Harry Bliss to create a collection of cartoons and comic strips. Steve provided caption and cartoon ideas, and Harry created the artwork. It was a fun read.

Fiction

My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather

The story, which is narrated by Jim Burden, focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. Jim and Ántonia were both children when they arrived in Nebraska, on the same train. See my review here.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) by Maria Semple

Bernadette Fox and Elgin Branch have promised their daughter a trip to Antarctica if she makes excellent grades. She succeeds, but unfortunately Bernadette get so mired down in the preparations that everything falls to pieces in their already precarious marriage. This is a real mishmash of a book, and there were many times that I was totally lost. Fortunately, it was worth the effort getting to the end. Bee Branch, their daughter, was my favorite character. The story is told partially through emails and documents.

Orbital (2023) by Samantha Harvey

Although I did have a few nitpicks when reading this book, I loved it. I was very pleased and surprised when it won the Booker Prize. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the space station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen. It is short, about 200 pages, and very meditative. It inspired me to read more about the space station, and I wish it had been longer.

Fiction / Short Stories

Ladies' Lunch: and Other Stories (2017) by Lore Segal

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. Ten of the sixteen stories in the book are about a group of older women, now in their 90s, who have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more. See my review here.

Crime Fiction

The White Lioness (1993) by Henning Mankell

This is the third book in the acclaimed Kurt Wallander series. Henning Mankell is a Swedish author. This book is set mostly in Sweden but there are also sections of the book set in South Africa. See my review here.

Silent Voices (2011) by Ann Cleeves

This is the fourth book in the Vera Stanhope series. DI Vera Stanhope is relaxing in the spa of a health club, after swimming laps in the pool. I know this doesn't sound like Vera at all but her doctor has strongly recommended some exercise, and this is what she can manage. She discovers the dead body of a woman in the spa with her. This series has great characters; I like Vera's relationship with Sergeant Joe Ashworth, her 2nd in command, and the way she works with her team of investigators. The setting is very nice too.

The Mayors of New York (2023) by S.J. Rozan

I am a big fan of Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series, totaling 15 books; this is the newest one. The first book was published in 1994. I started reading the books in 2008; since then I have read all the books in the series. See my review here.

Winter Work (2022) by Dan Fesperman

I regret not having the time to review Winter Work. This is the third book to feature Claire Saylor, an agent for the CIA. Safe Houses was the first book in the series, set in 1979 (Berlin)and 2014 (US), and it was fantastic. The second book, The Cover Wife is set in 1999. This book goes back to 1990; it is set in Berlin after the fall of Berlin Wall. The trilogy features strong female characters and intelligent plots.

The Hamlet Trap (1987) by Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm, who wrote both science fiction and mysteries, published her first novels in the 1960s and published her last novel in 2017. She was married to Damon Knight, a well-known science fiction author. This book is the first one in the Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn mystery series. The story is set in Ashland, Oregon and the story revolves around preparation for a play to be performed there, and the people involved in creating it, the author, director, set designers, etc. The story is excellent, very complex, with lots of characters. I have two more books in the series to read.

Then We Take Berlin (2013) by John Lawton

This is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. Wilderness's real name is John Holderness; he is sometimes an agent for MI6 and sometimes a con-man and thief. I learned a lot about Berlin during the time immediately following World War II, when the city was divided up into four sectors. It was a good, although very confusing, story up until the end, which was a cliffhanger. I will be reading book 2 in the series.

Big Sky (2019) by Kate Atkinson

This is the 5th book in the Jackson Brodie series. Reading mysteries by Atkinson can be confounding. They just seem to meander along and several unrelated threads come together to resolve themselves. Nevertheless, I love them. The fourth books in the series, Started Early, Took My Dog, was published in 2010, and I read it in 2011. Big Sky did not come out until 2019, and I just read it this year, so after 14 years I had forgotten a lot about the series. But I settled into Atkinson's quirky approach very easily, and was certain that I would be satisfied with the experience and the ending. It was a wonderful book full of eccentric characters and I have bought the 6th book, Death at the Sign of the Rook, to read sometime in 2025.

Currently reading

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid, the second book in the Inspector Karen Pirie series. Karen Pirie investigates cold cases. I am about a third of the way in, and I am loving the book. It grabbed me immediately. In 2007, a woman reports that her father has been missing for over 20 years, from the time of the Miner’s Strike of 1984. At the time he left, the family thought that he had deserted the family and did not look for him, but now she needs to find him desperately because her son is dying. 

The three photos at the beginning and end of this post are ones my husband took while we were walking around in downtown Santa Barbara. The ones directly above are from a bridal shop in 2014. The top photo was taken in 2010. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Short Story Wednesday: Deadly Anniversaries

 

Three years ago I purchased Deadly Anniversaries, edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, so that I could read "Chin Yong-Yun Sets the Date" by S.J. Rozan. Chin Yong-Yun is Lydia Chin's mother in the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith series. My thoughts on that story are in this post. So, now I am finally getting around to reading more stories in that book.

Description from the cover of the book:

Deadly Anniversaries celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Mystery Writers of America with a collection of stories from some of the top names in crime fiction. An anniversary can honor many things: a birth, a wedding and sometimes even a death. 

Each author puts their own unique spin on what it means to recognize a certain day or event each year. These nineteen stories travel across a wide range of historical and contemporary settings and remind readers of how broad the mystery writing tradition can be, encompassing detective tales, domestic intrigue, psychological suspense, black humor and thrilling action. 

Here is a list of the stories in the book:

• "If You Want Something Done Right. . ." by Sue Grafton
• "Ten Years On" by Laurie R. King
• "Normal in Every Way" by Lee Child
• "The Replacement" by Margaret Maron
• "Chin Yong-Yun Sets the Date" by S. J. Rozan
• "Amazing Grace" by Max Allan Collins
• "Ten Years, Two Days, Six Hours" by Wendy Hornsby
• "The Anniversary Gift" by Jeffery Deaver
• "The Last Dive Bar" by Bill Pronzini
• "Case Open" by Carolyn Hart
• "The Bitter Truth" by Peter Lovesey
• "Unknown Caller" by Meg Gardiner
• "April 13" by Marcia Muller
• "Whodat Heist" by Julie Smith
• "Blue Moon" by William Kent Krueger
• "Aqua Vita" by Peter Robinson
• "The Last Hibakusha" by Naomi Hirahara
• "30 and Out" by Doug Allyn
• "The Fixer" by Alison Gaylin and Laura Lippman

In the last couple of days, I read stories by Lee Child, Margaret Maron, Max Allan Collins, and William Kent Krueger. 

Max Allan Collin's story, "Amazing Grace", was my favorite of those four.  

In 1960, Grace Rushmore is eighty years old and has been married to her husband Lem for fifty years. He has never been a very good husband; he married her for her money and never contributed to the business of the farm that had supported them. They had ended up selling the farm and opened up a bakery in town, and Grace baked wedding cakes as her specialty. Now Grace has four children, twelve grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. All of the children and their families are coming home for a big 50th anniversary celebration. Grace bakes a huge Lemon Layer Cake for the party. 

I really liked the ending of this story. A recipe for Lemon Layer Cake is included following the story.

The Mayors of New York: S.J. Rozan

I am a big fan of S. J. Rozan's Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series. I started reading the books in the series in 2008 and by the middle of 2009 I had read all the books available at that time. Since then I have read all the books in the series. This is the latest book in the series, which now consists of 15 books.

The two main characters in the series are Bill Smith and Lydia Chin. Bill is a white private investigator in his forties who lives in Manhattan; Lydia is an American-born Chinese private investigator in her late twenties who lives in New York’s Chinatown with her mother. They are not partners but they often work together on cases. The element that I have always liked about this series is that the narrator of the books alternates between Lydia and Bill. The first book was narrated by Lydia; the second book was narrated by Bill; and so on.

Most of the books narrated by Lydia are set in Chinatown. Bill's stories are usually set in other part of New York City.

Summary of The Mayors of New York from Simon and Schuster:

In January, New York City inaugurates its first female mayor. In April, her son disappears.

Called in by the mayor's chief aide—a former girlfriend of private investigator Bill Smith’s—to find the missing fifteen-year-old, Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, are told the boy has run away. Neither the press nor the NYPD know that he’s missing, and the mayor wants him back before a headstrong child turns into a political catastrophe. But as Bill and Lydia investigate, they turn up more questions than answers.

Why did the boy leave? Who else is searching for him, and why? What is his twin sister hiding?

My thoughts:

The series is still going strong after 15 books. If anything, the stories are getting better and better. The pacing and tension in this story is very well-done.

The characterization is very strong. Lydia and Bill each have their own opinions and strengths; neither fits the stereotype of a private eye. I like the relationship that has grown between the two over the series. 

Also, the secondary characters come alive in this book. There is Aubrey Hamilton, also known as "Bree," the mayor's assistant. At one time she had a relationship with Bill, which ended badly, and she is the one that recommended him to the mayor. They are constantly sparring in this story. The mayor’s son is an appealing character, even though he isn't on the page a lot, since the point is to find him. The twin sister of the missing boy is a real pain, very snarky and dismissive, but concerned about her brother.

The New York setting is very well done. In this story, the focus is not on Chinatown. This book features many other neighborhoods in NYC, as Lydia and Bill search the city for information about the missing teenager.

The series does not have to be read in order. I did, and I loved the early books in the series, but many readers stress that this book is a perfect jumping in point, and there are few (if any) references to earlier cases in the books. 

Another review to check out:

Please see the review of The Mayors of New York by Aubrey Hamilton at Kevin Tipple's blog, Kevin's Corner.

Aubrey Hamilton is a blogger (at Happiness is a Book) who specializes in reviewing older mysteries, many written before World War II. Her reviews often include interesting information on the author's background. You should check out her blog. She won a character name in this book by S.J. Rozan. As she notes in the comments below, she was pleased that the character had such a prominent role.

Short Story Wednesday: Two Novellas by Rex Stout

 

In early October I reviewed "This Won't Kill You", a novella in Three Men Out by Rex Stout. Today I am discussing the other two novellas in that book: "Invitation to Murder" and "The Zero Clue". Both of those stories were first published in The American Magazine in 1953.

For a brief introduction to the series of books and novellas:

Nero Wolfe is an armchair detective, preferring to do all his detecting from home. He is a genius, a lover of orchids and fine food, who supports himself (and his household) as a private detective. Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, is both his assistant and a private investigator, and he does most of the legwork. They live in a New York brownstone and share the house with Theodore, a plant expert who cares for Wolfe's orchids, and Felix, Wolfe's cook. 

"Invitation to Murder"

Herman Lewent wants Nero Wolfe to investigate Theodore Huck and the three women that he employees at his mansion. Huck was married to Herman Lewent's sister, who died a year earlier. Lewent had received $1000 a month from his sister since their father died and left his estate to her. Huck had continued to give him that money, but Lewent thinks he deserves more. However, what he really wants Wolfe to figure out is whether one of Huck's employees killed his sister, who died of Ptomaine poisoning. Lewent believes that all three women (a housekeeper, a nurse, and a secretary) would be interested in marrying Huck, and one of them murdered his sister to get her out of the way. Wolfe won't leave his home to investigate but he allows Archie to go in his mansion, to scope out the household and see if there is any basis for the accusation.

Eventually Archie decides that Wolfe really needs to be at Huck's mansion, so he tricks him into coming there. And, of course, the case is solved. 

This is an old-fashioned puzzle mystery, and in this case Stout clearly provides clues to what happened, although I am sure I did not figure out the first time I read it. In these shorter works by Stout, I primarily enjoy Archie's narration and the story telling. 

"The Zero Clue" 

Leo Heller is a professor of mathematics who specializes in probability and has made a lot of money using his talents in that area. Wolfe had some dealings with him earlier and despises the man. When Heller wants help from Wolfe to determine if one of his clients committed murder, Wolfe refuses. But Archie decides to go talk to Heller at his office, in an attempt to gather information that will convince Wolfe to take the case.

When Archie arrives at Heller's office, there are several people there waiting to see Heller either in the lobby of the building or in Heller's waiting room on the fifth floor. Archie goes into Heller's office, finds it empty, and snoops around a bit while he waits. Heller does not show up and Archie leaves. Later in the day, the police discover Heller's dead body in the closet of the office, and they find out that Archie was there. Thus, Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide shows up at Wolfe's door. 

Most of this story is about Wolfe interviewing six suspects to get more information about their business with Leo Heller while Inspector Cramer listens in. Cramer is one of my favorite characters in the Nero Wolfe stories, so I always enjoy it when he shows up. This time Wolfe and Cramer get along pretty well. 

This story also has clues to the solution, but the reader has to know some obscure mathematical facts to be able to catch them, so I am not sure it counts as playing fair with the reader. Not that I think Rex Stout put much emphasis on that part of mystery plots.

I enjoyed learning more about mathematics. My major was mathematics in college but I am sure I did not know the arcane facts that Wolfe uses to make the deduction before I read that story for the first time. Regardless, "The Zero Clue" was my favorite between these two novellas, because I think it is a very clever and entertaining story.

Annual Book Sale 2024: My Husband's Books

Every year in September we attend the Planned Parenthood book sale, which lasts ten days. We usually visit a minimum of five times. This year our visits were curtailed because my husband and I had Covid when the sale began. 

Nevertheless, we did find many books to add to our collection. These are six of the books my husband found. As you can see from this list, he enjoys reading about social history.

My husband purchased the following three books about daily life in various historical periods in England. The author is Elizabeth Burton. The three books were published between 1958 and 1972, and all of them have lovely illustrations by Felix Kelly. In the 1940s she published 6 novels as Susan Alice Kerby. Wikipedia describes them as comic fantasy novels. 

The Elizabethans at Home by Elizabeth Burton.

First published in 1958. This edition is a reprint from 1970.

From the dust jacket:

In this reissue of Miss Burton's highly praised and highly successful domestic history of the Elizabethans, she draws most entertainingly on a wealth of contemporary sources. How did the Elizabethans really live? What was ordinary existence like for the Elizabethan man and woman? What sort of furniture did they use? What were their staple diets? What sort of remedies did they keep in their medicine chests? How did they get their news? What games did they play? These and other questions are answered in this fascinating account which is illuminated by the superb drawings of Felix Kelly.

The Georgians at Home by Elizabeth Burton

Published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1967.

From the dust jacket:

In The Georgians at Home, she covers the period from the accession of George the First to the death of George the Fourth, and from a mass of sources, many of them unpublished, she presents a fascinating and remarkably complete picture of Georgian domestic life in all its detail.

She is as interested in the chattels and hovels of the poor as she is in the architecture, gardens, furniture and interior decoration of the great houses built by Kent, Gibbs, Adam, Holland, Nash, Soane and others of a glorious age. Cooking and food; glass, china and utensils; the relative cost of living; the bizarre and often horrifying medical remedies of doctors and quacks, the use of cosmetics; travel, transport and amusements–from Elizabeth Burton's meticulous research into such minutiae a whole way of life emerges.

The Early Victorians at Home by Elizabeth Burton

Published by Longmans, Green & Co., 1972.

From the dust jacket:

The Early Victorians at Home gives a wonderfully detailed account of the domestic lives of our ancestors–their houses, furniture, food, medicine, recreations, gardens–with numerous sidelights on the minutiae of every day life at all levels of society.

The Last Country Houses by Charles Aslet

From the Goodreads description:

The magnificent country houses built in Britain between 1890 and 1939 were the last monuments to a vanishing age. Many of these great mammoths of domestic architecture were unsuited to the changes in economic and social priorities that followed the two world wars, and rapidly became extinct. Those that survive, however, provide tangible evidence of the life and death if an extraordinarily prosperous age. This book recounts the architectural and social history of this era, describing the clients, the architects, the styles and accoutrements of the country houses. 

Nature's Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present by Philipp Blom

From the Goodreads description:

Although hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, the temperature by the end of the sixteenth century plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and “frost fairs” were erected on a frozen Thames–with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city.

Recounting the deep legacy and far-ranging consequences of this “Little Ice Age,” acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had suddenly, but ineradicably, changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, they gave rise to the growth of European cities, the emergence of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A timely examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.

 

McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories by Michael Chabon (editor),  Mike Mignola  (Illustrator)

From the Goodreads description:

Michael Chabon is back with a brand-new collection that reinvigorates the stay-up-all-night, edge-of-the seat, fingernail-biting, page-turning tradition of literary short stories, featuring Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Peter Straub, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, Heidi Julavits, Roddy Doyle, and more!

A complete list of the authors and their stories:

• Margaret Atwood - Lusus Naturae
• David Mitchell - What You Do Not Know You Want
• Jonathan Lethem - Vivian Relf
• Ayelet Waldman - Minnow
• Steve Erickson - Zeroville
• Stephen King - Lisey and the Madman
• Jason Roberts - 7C
• Heidi Julavits - The Miniaturist
• Roddy Doyle - The Child
• Daniel Handler - Delmonico
• Charles D’Ambrosio - The Scheme of Things
• Poppy Z. Brite - The Devil of Delery Street
• China Mieville - Reports of Certain Events in London
• Joyce Carol Oates - The Fabled Light-house at Viña del Mar
• Peter Straub - Mr. Aickman’s Air Rifle