Ninefox Gambit: Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee is the first book in the Machineries of Empire trilogy. This is the summary of the book at the author's website:

Kel Cheris, a disgraced captain of the hexarchate, is given the opportunity to redeem herself by recapturing the formidable Fortress of Scattered Needles from heretics. Cheris requests—and receives—a single devastating weapon to aid her in her task: the revived, near-immortal traitor, General Shuos Jedao. Feared throughout the stars and undefeated in battle, he is the perfect weapon. But Jedao is gripped by a madness that saw him massacre two armies in his first life—one of them his own. Preserved for his brilliance and tamed by his handlers, no one knows how long his good behaviour will last. Cheris must work with the mass murderer to destroy the heresy and save the hexarchate—before he destroys her…

A tale of math, madness, and massacres in outer space.

My Thoughts:

This is a science fiction book and specifically a military space opera. In many ways, it feels as much like fantasy as science fiction. Here the reader is dropped into a universe where the scientific laws that govern the universe are based on a "calendrical" mathematics system that seems more like magic. There are groups of heretics who refuse to follow the accepted mathematics systems. However, there is no attempt to explain all of this to the reader. For at least the first third of this book I had no idea what was going on.

On top of that, there were no characters that I cared about or could invest in. 

At the point that I was about to give up on the book, I read a review that called this book "brain-breaking" but also said to just hang in there and it would be worth it. That reviewer was right and it was worth reading. I finally caught onto the general idea of what was going on, and was hoping that the author was going to give me a satisfactory ending. And I did get it. I was invested in the two main characters; the ending was amazing. That is good, because I already have a copy of the second book in this series, Raven Strategy. 

So, if you like science fiction, you might want to try this series, or at least read a few reviews of the book to get other opinions.

Additional notes:

I have read military science fiction before; John Scalzi's Old Man's War series is an example. But those stories are remarkably easy to read compared to this one. 

Apparently there are a lot of science fiction books / series that start out like this series, throwing the reader into an imaginary setting with little explanation. Readers are divided on whether they like that or not. And now I can think of mystery novels (with sort of a science fiction or fantasy flavor) that are this way too. For example, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

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Publisher:   Solaris Books, 2016
Length:      384 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       Machineries of Empire, #1
Setting:      Outer Space
Genre:       Science Fiction 
Source:      On my TBR since 2020.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Safekeep to Tales of the South Pacific

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 The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden. The book is set in 1961 Netherlands; Isabel is living in the family home alone, when her brother asks her to let his girlfriend Eva move in with her. This book won the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction.

1st degree:

Using the title of the starting book, but inverting it in a way, I have chosen I'll Keep You Safe by Peter May as my first book in the chain. It is a crime fiction novel mostly set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Niamh and Ruairidh Macfarlane are on a business trip to Paris to promote their luxury brand of tweed, when Ruairidh is killed by a car bomb. After talking to the police, Niamh is allowed to return to Lewis. The story focuses on Niamh's life in Lewis following her husband's death, and the policewoman who is investigating the crime. I am a fan of Peter May's books but I have not read this one.

2nd degree:

I have read another book by Peter May set on the Isle of Lewis. It is the first book in the The Lewis Trilogy, The Blackhouse. In this book, Fin Macleod, a detective from Edinburgh, is sent to the Isle of Lewis because of previous connections to a similar crime. He does not want to return to the island because he grew up there. This was the first book I read by Peter May.

3rd degree:

For my third link, I am sticking with Peter May and another book he wrote which is set on two islands. Entry Island blends historical fiction with a present-day police procedural. Both stories come together in the end, as one would expect. The historical focus is on the Highland Clearances which take place on the Isle of Lewis and Harris in Scotland. The current investigation centers on a death on a small Canadian island, which is a part of the Magdalen Islands, in the province of Quebec. This was an unusual and compelling story.

4th degree:

I am liking the focus on islands, but I will move on to a different author. The next book is Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby, set at a spiritual retreat on one of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. The island in the book is a fictionalized version of a real island. This is an unusual mystery with a unique sleuth and a different approach, sort of a cozy. The protagonist is a female butler, and I enjoyed learning about Buddhist beliefs and what today's butlers do in their jobs.

5th degree:

White Heat by M. J. McGrath is set on Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost and third largest island. The heroine is an Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk. When a man is shot and killed on an Arctic adventure that she is leading, the murder is investigated by police sergeant Derek Palliser. I enjoyed reading about this part of Canada, and the mystery was good too.

6th degree:

The last link is to Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener, a collection of short stories set during World War II, loosely connected to each other by recurring characters in the stories. The events take place on islands in the South Pacific, especially around the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and the stories focus both on the people of the islands and the servicemen stationed there. I have not read this book, but we have a copy that I will be reading.

In my Six Degrees, I visited islands in different parts of the world, starting with Scotland, going next to Canada, and finally to islands in the South Pacific. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on September 6, 2025 and the starting book will be the winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Ghost Cities by Siang Lu.

Short Story Wednesday: "I Am Not Fluffy" by Liza Cody

I have only read one novel by Liza Cody, Dupe, the first book in her Anna Lee detective series. I also read one of her short stories. In both cases, I was very impressed with her writing. So when I noticed that she had published a second collection of short stories, My People And Other Crime Stories, I purchased it. 

"I Am Not Fluffy" is the first story in the new collection. It is about a woman who supported her husband by working as a hostess and greeter at a restaurant for six nights a week for five years while he qualified to be a tax lawyer. All the while he was having an affair with her best friend, Alicia. Now he is making lots of money and wants a divorce, so he can marry Alicia. He sends his wife papers to sign, requesting a no contest divorce. She will get no compensation for all the time she supported him. 

The heroine of this story is a prostitute. She stopped working at the restaurant and moved to working as a prostitute because she needs enough money to pay a lawyer to help her contest the divorce. So this isn't a pretty story. It is about a woman fighting back to prove that she deserves some respect and she doesn't want to be used. 

This story was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 142 #6, December 2013. 

Martin Edwards wrote about Liza Cody's My People And Other Crime Stories at his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name? It is a great article.

Books Read in June 2025

 

I read six books in June, and all of them were from my 20 Books of Summer list. I liked all the books; four of them were upbeat and fun; two of them were more serious and somewhat depressing.

Fiction 

Table for Two (2024) by Amor Towles

This is a short story collection. There are six stories plus one 220 page novella. The short stories are all set in New York City. See my post on some of the short stories here.

In the novella, "Eve in Hollywood," Towles returns to a character in his first novel, Rules of Civility. I did read that book, but I don't think you need to have read it to enjoy the story. "Eve in Hollywood" is set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and it features Olivia de Havilland as a character. I enjoyed the novella very much.

The Burgess Boys (2013) by Elizabeth Strout

I have read four books by Elizabeth Strout, and I have rated all very highly, but they are always difficult reads, with hard to like characters and family difficulties. This one is my favorite so far. My review here.

Fantasy / Time Travel

Oona Out of Order (2020) by Margarita Montidore

I read this book because I like time travel books and this one was on a list of "time loop" novels (the film Groundhog Day is a good example of a time loop). In this book, Oona jumps from one year to another year in her life, randomly. I liked it. I have been thinking about it off and on since I read it. But it can be frustrating. My review here.

Crime Fiction

Death by Accident (1998) by Bill Crider

This book was my first read for 20 Books of Summer. The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series by Bill Crider is set in a small town in Blacklin County, a fictional county in Texas. It is a cozy series; Sheriff Rhodes solves crime mostly with his intuition and avoids computers where possible. Death by Accident is the 9th book in the series. See my review.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

This story takes place at a remote ski resort in Australia, where Ern Cunningham's family is having a family reunion. They are coming together because Ern's brother is getting out of prison, after having killed a man. Family relationships are strained. Shortly after the majority of the family arrives, a man's frozen body is found near the resort,  and the weather begins to get very bad, threatening to snow in all the guests.

This is a very unusual mystery. Ern Cunningham, who is narrating the story, writes books about how to write mysteries. The books starts with a list of classic rules for mysteries as published by Ronald Knox in 1929. So it is a traditional fair play mystery, but of course there is lots of misdirection in the clues, and for the most part the author kept me fooled for most of the book. I enjoyed the book, although I sometimes got frustrated with the repetition of the "rules." I liked it enough so that I will read the next one to see how it goes.

A Death in Summer (2011) by Benjamin Black

This is the fourth book in the Quirke series written by John Banville, under the name Benjamin Black. Quirke is a pathologist in Dublin, Ireland in the 1950s. He often is called in to examine dead bodies before they are moved, and to perform autopsies. Inspector Hackett will sometimes seek his advice on crimes, when he thinks the case is tricky. I like the slow pace of the writing and the emphasis on the characters as much or more than the crime investigation. I like the continuing characters. This one was about a sordid subject, and depressing. Yet I will persist and read more of them. 

The photos at the top and bottom of this post are recent pictures of plants in our back yard patio area. The top photo is of a cuphea plant (on the left) and a blue sage plant that are hummingbird attractors. They have been doing a good job of attracting hummingbirds and bees.

The two photos below are closer shots of blue sage plants. We have two other pots of those plants in the back. I love the little buds on the blue sage. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Spell the Month in Books — July 2025

Spell the Month in Books is a monthly meme hosted by Jana at Reviews from the Stacks. The link up post is posted on the first Saturday of each month. Each month one or two themes are suggested for the books that are chosen. The theme for July is “set in a fantasy world or fictional place!”

This is the first time I have done this meme, and I am very late. 

 

J is for Just One Damned Thing after Another by Jodi Taylor

This is the first book in a time-travel series. The main protagonists are historians from St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. Each has a special area of expertise but the assignments may take them to any time in the past. The story carries you along pell mell through adventure after adventure, and the historians find out that there are lots of challenges ahead.  I think that there are now 14 books in the series, and I have read the first two books. 

U is for Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. 

Terry Pratchett is well-known for his fantasy books set in the Discworld Universe. I am no expert on the books in this series; I have only read two of them. But I did enjoy those. I read The Light Fantastic, the second book in the series. Later I read Mort, the first book in the Death Series. Unseen Academicals is set at a university where the wizards must win a game of football without using magic. It is a later book in the series, #37.

L is for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. 

This is a space opera. To get away from an unhappy event in her past, Rosemary Harper joins the small crew of a ship that creates tunnels through space for faster travel. She is the clerk, taking care of ordering and forms and such. Some of the crew is human and others are various types of aliens.

I liked the various aliens and their different gifts, needs and culture. The author did a great job with differentiating between the characters. Many of the characters are quirky and everyone has to learn to accept the quirks on a long journey in a small ship.

Y is for The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon.

This novel crosses genres, being both an alternate history and a mystery, with elements of a conspiracy thriller. This book came to my attention via my husband, who read it first and recommended it to me. The setting is an alternate universe where Jewish refugees and their descendants have been allowed to in live the Federal District of Sitka, in Alaska. At the point the novel begins, the District is about to revert to Alaskan control.

Short Story Wednesday: More Stories from Five Tuesdays in Winter

 

In December 2024, I read the first four stories in Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King. I liked them all; check out my thoughts on those stories here. I liked the characterizations; the stories were serious but ended on an upbeat note.

This week I read the remaining six stories in the book. Many of these stories are slice-of-life stories, and I had never really understood what that meant before. They take some brief time in a person's life and just describe the events, the emotions, etc. Some were about depressing subjects, but what I like about these stories is that you feel that life will go on with these people and they will have better days.

"South" was the ninth story in the book. Marie-Claude is driving from Baltimore, Maryland to Hatteras (Hatteras Island, North Carolina). Her two children are in the car, an obviously young son and an older daughter, age not specified. Marie-Claude and the children's father have recently separated. The mother and daughter talk and the daughter asks questions about the failure of the marriage that Marie-Claude does not want to answer or even think about. Even though the story itself is on the sad side, like most of the stories in this book, the ending leaves us with hope. 

The last story was "The Man at the Door." I noticed that many readers that reviewed this book did not like that story at all, and I am not sure why. It read like a dream sequence to me. A mother with a young baby who is still nursing (and not napping enough) is trying to find some time to write. Her husband and two older children are not in the house. The baby wakes up; she tries to write while nursing him. Then a man comes to the door and insists on being let in. There is nothing at all realistic about this story; he keeps changing form and giving her advice on writing. It was very different from the other stories but still I enjoyed it. NOTE: After I wrote this, I saw several reviews which described this story as magical realism. I have had mixed reactions to magical realism in some books I have read, but this story was fine.

Oona Out of Order: Margarita Montimore

This story starts on New Year's Eve 1982; at the stroke of midnight, Oona will turn 19. She expects to be making a decision about whether to go to school in London the next year or stay in Brooklyn and tour for a year with the band she and her boyfriend are in. But when midnight comes, Oona is jerked out of her current situation. She awakens in a lovely house, in her 51st year. She is appalled to see how old she is, and that she is overweight. 

Oona is living one year of her life at a time, but out of order (hence the title). She has awakened in 2015. Fortunately, there is a man waiting there for her to explain the situation, and she is living in a gorgeous home. The man is Kenzie and he introduces himself as her personal assistant and friend. She freaks out and he does his best to calm her down. 

After that, every year at midnight on New Year's Eve, the same thing happens; Oona either jumps ahead to a future year or goes back to an earlier year that she has not experienced before.  It makes poor Oona very cranky to be jerked off to a different year in her life every New Year's Eve.

This is a time travel book, but there is no explanation of why this phenomenon is happening to her, thus it is more fantasy than science fiction. I enjoyed this a lot while I was reading it; I gave it five stars, and I still think it deserves that rating, but I am pretty generous with my ratings. So as far as entertainment value goes, it did very well. 

Family is a recurring theme in this book. Of course, I loved that part of it. Most of the time I liked Oona's mother Madeleine and Kenzie better than I liked the lead character. Oona is often bratty and immature. She may look older at times but she hasn't had that many years of actual living to mature. 

I was frustrated that not that many years in Oona's life are covered. In a way, each year was approached as if it was a short story and you are getting a glimpse of her life. But because she has no memory of any year that she leaves behind... the reader sometimes knows more that she does. 

In summary, I liked the premise of this book and it was fun and the writing was well done. As with many time travel books, I was confused at times. It was 340 pages long and it was the rare book that I wish was much longer.

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Publisher:  Flatiron Books, 2020.
Length:      336 pages
Format:     Trade Paper
Setting:      New York City
Genre:       Fantasy / Time Travel
Source:     I purchased my copy in 2024.

The Burgess Boys: Elizabeth Strout

In a short prologue, the Burgess family is introduced, focusing mainly on the two boys, Jim and Bob. They both have legal careers and left their home town of Shirley Falls, Maine, to pursue their careers. Bob has always been the lesser brother, the one who plods along but did not succeed spectacularly like his older brother. But he also is the one who every one likes, who is nice and kind and thinks well of people.

Then an incident happens in Shirley Falls, Maine, where Susan, their sister, still lives. Susan's nineteen-year-old son, Zach, commits a crime and the Burgess boys feel like they have to go back to their home town to help her. Jim is going on a vacation with his wife and another couple and he drafts Bob to go and help. But Bob doesn't handle the situation very well and Jim is bent out of shape.

I like books about families and this is a very unusual family. There is a tragedy in their past which has affected all of the relationships in the family. The children's father was killed when they were all under ten years of age; although he was only four years old at the time, Bob was blamed for his father's death and it has affected his self-image, to put it mildly. The dynamics within the family are strange. Jim, the older brother, is needlessly cruel to his brother, taunting him mercilessly. Most of the time this just rolls off of Bob. Susan is Bob's twin, but she is also often disparaging of Bob and his abilities. 

The rest of the story is about how Zack's problems are handled, and the effects these events have on all of their lives.

My thoughts:

• I liked how parts of the story are told from the point of view of characters outside the main family:  Abdikarim Ahmed, a member of the Somali community in Shirley Falls, who testifies against Zack at his hearing; Bob's ex-wife, Pam, who left him because they could not have children;  and Helen Burgess, Jim's wife, who is having problems with an empty nest after her children leave home.
• The majority of the characters in this book are unlikable, but I continued to be interested in reading about all of them. This was partly due to the author's writing style, but also because I was sure that I was going to learn more about them and be able to figure out why they were so disagreeable or unappealing. 
• Coincidentally, the two fiction books I read prior to this one were kind of downers, and this one continued that trend. Unexpectedly, this book probably had a more optimistic outcome towards the end than those books. And certainly this one was more upbeat than the other books by Strout I have read (Olive Kitteridge, My Name is Lucy Barton, and Anything is Possible). 
• This was a compelling read but not an easy read. My description above leaves so much out. That is intentional, so as not to spoil the reading experience. The novel is very rich with important themes and topics.

John Grant wrote a very detailed review of this book in 2019, which can be read either at his blog, Noirish, or on Goodreads.

Short Story Wednesday: "Immune to Murder" by Rex Stout

 

Today I am continuing my reread of Rex Stout's novellas. The Nero Wolfe / Archie Goodwin series was published between 1934 and 1975. First I will give a brief overview of the series...

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 Fritz, Wolfe's cook.

 

"Immune to Murder" is a 66-page novella, one of three stories in Three for the Chair, published in 1957.

When I reread one of these novella collections, I always read my favorite story first. "Immune to Murder" is a favorite because it takes Wolfe and Archie out of the brownstone to a remote rural setting, and it involves food, which is a common theme of the series.

Wolfe has been invited to cook for a visiting ambassador at a retreat set in the Adirondack Mountains. The visiting dignitary wanted to fish for American brook trout and he wanted it cooked straight from the brook by Nero Wolfe. 

On the morning following Wolfe and Archie's arrival at the lodge, the other guests go out to fish for bass for three hours. Archie has been given permission to go fishing along the same route they used, after they return, and he does this. (There is a lot of fishing lingo in this story.) Unfortunately, along the way he discovers the dead body of one of the guests. He goes back to report this to Wolfe first, then lets the rest of the group know. And of course, Wolfe ends up solving the crime, reluctantly.

"Immune to Murder" was first published in the November 1955 issue of The American Magazine.

It was also adapted for A&E’s Nero Wolfe Mystery TV series starring Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Theory & Practice to The Paris Diversion

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 Theory & Practice  by Michelle de Kretser. This book won the Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and championing diversity and cultural change. Theory & Practice is described as autofiction; thus it is a blend between autobiography and fiction. When I was looking into this subgenre of fiction, I was both confused and interested in all the descriptions and various interpretations. 

1st degree:

My first link will be to Outline by Rachel Cusk, which is also described as autofiction. I have that book on my shelves, unread. So I hope to give it a try soon.

The main character in Outline is a novelist who goes to Athens, Greece to teach a writing course during the summer. She has ten conversations with people she meets on the way to Athens and during her stay there.

2nd degree:

The second link is to The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi. This book takes place mainly on the fictional Greek island, Thiminos. A woman is found dead at the bottom of a cliff; the local police call it an accident. Then a stranger comes to Thiminos from Athens, with the intention of solving her murder.

This is another book I have on my bookshelves. The Greek Detective series gets good reviews and I should read it soon.

3rd degree:

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler starts in Athens and ends up in Turkey.  Arthur Simpson, thief and con man, is hired to drive a car to Turkey. He does not know that he is smuggling illegal weapons in the car, and he is caught by border guards. The authorities force him to deliver the weapons to the people who hired him, in order to uncover their nefarious plans. 

The book was adapted to screen as Topkapi. Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred.

4th degree:

The James Bond spy thriller From Russia with Love (1957, Ian Fleming) is set in Instanbul, Turkey. The Russians plot to rid themselves of James Bond by faking the defection of a female cipher clerk. Bond is sent to Istanbul to help the defector escape. They take the Orient Express from Istanbul to Paris, where the story ends. Also made into a very successful film, starring Sean Connery.

5th degree:

A good portion of the last book took place on a train and it ended in Paris. That takes me to The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, a French author, screenwriter and film director. This novel was first published in French in 1962. The night train from Marseilles arrives in Paris. In the sleeping car, the body of a young woman is found dead. This is a police procedural and the investigation takes place in Paris.

6th degree:

My last link is to a book that also takes place in Paris. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. This is a very fast-paced thriller (at times) but the story is told very well.

This is another Six Degrees where I rediscovered some books on my own shelves that I have not read yet. 

My Six Degrees took me from Athens, Greece to Turkey and then ended up in Paris, France. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on August 2, 2025, and the starting book will be the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

  

Death by Accident: Bill Crider

The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series by Bill Crider is set in a small town in Blacklin County, a fictional county in Texas. It is a cozy series; Sheriff Rhodes solves crime mostly with his intuition and avoids computers where possible. He and his second wife are in their fifties. He loves Dr. Pepper in glass bottles and junk food for lunch, which his wife disapproves of. Death by Accident was published in 1998.

Two men die mysteriously in or near Clearview, Texas – one explodes, and the other is found drowned in a swimming pool. Sheriff Dan Rhodes cannot prove that those occurrences are not accidents, but he can feel it in his bones. He quietly investigates this theory, talking to people who knew those who died. Not long after these deaths, a third man is killed in a hit and run. A hit and run is a crime, but the death could have been an accident. Nevertheless, three unexplained deaths in such a short time convinces Rhodes that he is on the right track.

Often these books have a subplot going on. In Death by Accident, there are issues related to the competition between two historical societies in Clearview – the Clearview Sons and Daughters of Texas and the Clearview Historical Society. The Sons and Daughters group maintains the site where the swimming pool-related death took place. The other group wants to physically remove a historic building from that site. Sheriff Rhodes doesn't really think that anyone in those two groups is plotting murder, but there is a lot of mayhem and subterfuge going on. Because Rhodes has only a small staff, all of this keeps him busy. Along the way in this story Rhodes adds a new dog to the family and acquires an Edsel that needs to be refurbished.

I only have 16 books to go to finish this series. The last book in the series was published in 2019, so I imagine that Rhodes has to start using computers sometime along the way. We'll see. But I continue to enjoy police procedurals and other mysteries that were written at a time when technology was not so prevalent. And Dan Rhodes is one of my favorite fictional sheriffs.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   St. Martin's Press, 1998
Length:      277 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Sheriff Dan Rhodes, #9
Setting:      Texas
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Dust jacket painting by Alan Dingman.

Short Story Wednesday: "One Morning They'll Hang Him" by Margery Allingham

 

I have long been a fan of Margery Allingham's novels. I read most of the books in the Albert Campion series when I was much younger, and once I started blogging in 2012, I began rereading them in order (mostly) starting with Death of a Ghost. 

Today I am sharing my thoughts on one of her short stories.

"One Morning They'll Hang Him"

This is an Albert Campion short story. Chief Inspector Kenny is visiting Mr. Campion in his home, asking for his help in solving a murder. He is very sure he has the murderer in custody but he does not have a crucial piece of evidence in order to take the case to trial.

Campion asks for more information about the case. Kenny describes the victim, an elderly rich woman who lives in a big house on Barraclough road with her companion / housekeeper. Her only living relative is her nephew, who visited her often in his childhood. He returned from the war with mental problems following an injury when a bridge blew up with him on it. He has returned to London with his wife of  six weeks and has a job. They need a place to live, and the nephew and his aunt have an argument when he asks her if they can live in a couple of her rooms upstairs. The couple were having dinner at the aunt's house when they argued, and they left shortly afterwards. The nephew is accused of returning to the house and shooting her with his gun; he was seen in the neighborhood shortly after she was shot.

The problem with Inspector Kenny's case is that he cannot find the gun and that is a necessary part of the evidence. The police have searched all areas where it could have been left behind or hidden. Inspector Kenny wants Campion to find the gun.

I will admit that this is not my favorite type of mystery short story, because the focus is on the puzzle. But I enjoyed it very much, and it was the combination of Margery Allingham's writing and Campion's character that made it work well for me.

"One Morning They'll Hang Him" was originally published in the August 1950 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but I encountered the story when I started reading the short story anthology Mysterious Pleasures, A Celebration of the Crime Writers' Association 50th Anniversary, published in 2003. I have many more stories to read in that anthology. 

See this article at Martin Edwards website for a description of how he assembled that anthology. It also lists the other stories and authors included in the book.

Books Read in May 2025

 

I read seven very good books in May. Six crime fiction books, including one spy fiction thriller, plus one science fiction novella. Looking back, I was surprised to see that five of the authors were new to me. 

Science Fiction

Exit Strategy (2018) by Martha Wells

This is the fourth entry in the Murderbot Diaries series. The main character, Murderbot, is partly robotic and partly human. This novella concludes a story arc concerning Murderbot and Dr. Mensah and her scientific research team. It would spoil too much to tell much about this story, so I will just say that I have enjoyed the first four books and intend to continue reading the series. I found each book a fun read because Murderbot is such a good narrator. This was the perfect time to read this book because the new Murderbot TV series premiered in May. See my review of the first book in the series, All Systems Red.

Crime Fiction

The Charm School (1988) by Nelson DeMille

This is the first book I have read by Nelson DeMille. It is a spy fiction novel set in the USSR, first published in 1988, not long before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The copy I read, a trade paper reissue published in 2017, includes a very good introduction by the author. The most interesting thing about this novel for me was seeing a portrayal of political and diplomatic relations between Russia and the US at that time. The setting is primarily in Moscow. The Charm School is a secret facility that was training Russian operatives to infiltrate the US and live there as US citizens. If you like spy fiction, I would recommend trying this, even though it is 750 pages long. I enjoyed reading it very much.

Common or Garden Crime (1945) by Sheila Pim

This is a cozy mystery published in 1945 and set in 1943 in Ireland. Gardening is a central theme in the story.  I like the characters and the village setting, and the story was told with subtle humor. See my review.

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (2011) by Sara Gran

This was another very different mystery novel with a strange private detective. I read this book because it was compared to The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz, and there are similarities; for example, a detective who is driven and doesn't fit in with others. Claire DeWitt describes herself as the best detective in the world, and she is very expensive. She returns to New Orleans, where she was mentored by a rich female detective for several years, to attempt to find a man who disappeared at the same time as Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Everyone assumes he is dead, but his nephew wants to find out for sure. There are flashbacks to Claire's earlier years in New Orleans; a multitude of quotes from a French detective, Jacques Silette; and several strange dream sequences. I liked the setting of New Orleans, a couple of years after Katrina, showing how much the area was affected. I borrowed the book from my husband and he has the other two in the series, so I will read more of them.

Thursday Night Widows (2005) by Claudia Piñeiro

I was introduced to this book by author and blogger Margot Kinberg. This book by Argentinean novelist Claudia Piñeiro is set in a secluded elite community thirty miles outside of Buenos Aires, where only the wealthy are able to live. The crime that occurs is revealed in a limited way at the beginning of the book, then the story starts again from when the main characters buy into the neighborhood. The story is told from multiple viewpoints. One notable feature is that several chapters are told in 1st person plural, which combines the voices of multiple women who live in the community. That works well to convey certain information, but can be confusing, especially the first few times it is encountered. The relationships within the community begin to fall apart when the changing economy in the early 2000s affects people's jobs and income. This novel is focused on what leads up to the crime and not on who did it. Thursday Night Widows is an excellent book and I will be looking for more books by this author.

A Meditation on Murder (2024) by Susan Juby

This is the second book in the Helen Thorpe mystery series, following Mindful of Murder. The author is Canadian and the setting is British Columbia. The main character is a former Buddhist nun, currently working as a butler. Helen isn't really a sleuth, but more or less solves the crimes accidentally, and helps people out along the way. In this book she is working for a very rich couple who loan her out to an impossibly cranky rich man who needs help with his daughter, who has used her money to get involved with a group of social media influencers. Helen starts out knowing about as little about influencers and social media as I do. This is not a thriller by any stretch of the imagination, but tension is provided by the cutthroat behavior of the influencers and two murders of people associated with the influencers.

My favorite part of the book is the mindfulness theme. Helen is a very appealing character, who is (almost) never ruffled by anything. I was introduced to the series by Bill Selnes at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.

Star of the North (2018) by D.B. John

This is a thriller that mostly takes place in North Korea. The story revolves around three characters: a Korean American woman whose sister went missing when she was spending her gap year in South Korea; a highly placed official in North Korea who goes to the US for a diplomatic mission; and an older peasant woman who is living and barely surviving in a North Korean penal colony. See my review.

The photos at the top and bottom of this post were taken at the Santa Barbara I Madonnari Street Painting Festival, which takes place every Memorial Day weekend. I plan to share more photos from the event in a future post. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

 

Common or Garden Crime: Sheila Pim

 

This is the perfect book for me. A beautiful skull on the cover, the theme related to gardening, published in 1945 and set in 1943 in Ireland. It is a very cozy mystery and I enjoyed it very much. I like the characters and the village setting, and the story was told with subtle humor.

On the cover of Rue Morgue Press edition that I have, the book is described as "An Irish village gardening mystery set during World War II."  A lot of the action in the book centers around a flower show that all the characters are involved with in some way. The setting is a village called Clonmeen, situated on the outskirts of Dublin. 

There is, of course, a murder... and the protagonist, Lucy Bex, is instrumental in finding the solution to the crime, but the mystery plot does not have as much prominence as in most mysteries. That did not bother me but it could be considered a negative for some.

The setting in Ireland during the war was very interesting, since Ireland was neutral during World War II. I liked especially that the author was writing the story based on her own experiences at the time. In this book the war is referred to as the Emergency and many items were restricted. Lucy's nephew was an officer in the British military and comes home to stay with Lucy when he is on leave. 

I mention that this is the first book in a series. Sheila Pim's four mystery novels are referred to as of the Irish Gardening Mystery series both on Fantastic Fiction and Goodreads, but it appears that each book really works as a standalone and the cast of characters is different in each. They mainly share the Irish setting and the theme of gardening.

I rediscovered this book (and others in the series) when I saw a post at Moira's Clothes in Books blog. I had seen reviews years before but it had slipped my mind. Moira's post sent me immediately to investigate how to get copies of the books. I bought the first three books in the Irish Gardening Mystery series before I even read the first one. (That might have been because of the skulls on the covers.) 

Other reviews for this book: 

• At Furrowed Middlebrow
• At Clothes in Books
• At Dead Yesterday
• At Happiness is a Book

Below is the cover of the first hardcover edition of Common or Garden Crime. It is lovely, and also features a skull.