The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars: Maurice Dekobra

Summary from the back of the Melville House edition:

One of the biggest bestsellers of all time, and one of the first and most influential spy novels of the twentieth century, this delightful romp is now back in print after fifty years.

Taking place after the Russian Revolution shook Europe to its core, it tells the story of Lady Diana Wynham, who relishes trampling on the sensibilities of British Society, and her secretary, Prince Gerard Séliman, the perfect gentleman, equally at home in an Istanbul bazaar or a London charity matinée.

Faced with the prospect of financial ruin, Lady Diana launches a plan to regain control of her inheritance, a field of oil wells seized by the Soviets. She dispatches Gerard on the Orient Express to take care of the matter.

This was one of the books from my 20 Books of Summer list; it was the second book I read in August, just over two months ago.

I want to start out by saying that this is not a bad book; it is fun and entertaining at times, and at only 250 pages it was a fast read. However, it did not live up to my expectations at all.

My thoughts:

• The novel is billed as a spy novel but seems much more like an adventure story to me. There is a good bit of political intrigue, and the part that was set in Russia was interesting, but I have no idea how accurate it was. 
• It was less realistic than the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming (which have a lot of variation within the series so that a few are realistic and several are more on the fluffy side). The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars was published in 1925, was very successful at that time, and was exploring issues such as women's roles in society. I would have been more impressed with that if everyone in the book had not been rich or had a title. 
• Just the fact that a woman is in charge and directing her male secretary to make the dangerous trip into Soviet Russia makes this an unusual novel for the time it was written. And the main villain among the Soviets is a beautiful female spy, Irina Mouravieff.
• A minor point: the title was misleading. The implication is that there is much traveling on trains; if so, I missed it, and Lady Diana stays behind in any case.
• I did not have any problem finishing the book, it is very readable, but I did not care for any of the characters. Most were rich and entitled.

I have two copies of this book: the Dell Mapback edition, a reprint from 1948, and the Melville House edition, published in 2012. The latter has an interesting afterword by René Steinke.

I will point you to a more favorable review at A Work in Progress.

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Publisher:   Melville House, 2012 (orig. pub. 1925)
Translator:  Neal Wainwright
Length:       320 pages
Format:       Trade Paper
Setting:       London, Soviet Russia
Genre:        Thriller
Source:       Purchased in 2013.

Short Story Wednesday: Ladies' Lunch by Lore Segal

 

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. It consists of 16 stories; 10 of them are about the "Ladies' Lunch" group. This group of older women, now in their 90s, have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more, usually at the home of one of the group. There are five ladies named as the main group (Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, and Bessie) but others are mentioned in later stories. Obviously over time their health and abilities have been affected by age, and at this point they often think of "how they will shuffle off this mortal coil."

Some of the stories are sad but not all of them. Most of them had a humorous element also.

My favorite stories were...

• "Ladies' Lunch" is focused on Lotte, as several stories are. This one is about Lotte's move to a care home, Green Trees, because she requires care and she cannot get along with any of her live-in caregivers.
• "Making Good" is not a Ladies' Lunch story. A group of people, half Jewish Holocaust survivors and half people from Vienna who were Nazi supporters during the war, or their descendants, take part in a Bridge Building Workshop to reconcile their differences. This was one of the longer stories in the book at 23 pages.
• "Pneumonia Chronicles" is an autobiographical story based on the time when the author was in the hospital for two weeks during the Covid pandemic. She had pneumonia, not Covid, but her children could not visit her when she was hospitalized.

I enjoy collections with stories that are linked and create an overall story when read together. As with any collection, there are some outstanding stories and some that did not do that much for me. I know I will reread this book and find more to enjoy in the stories.

I finished reading this book on Monday, October 7, and later in the day I learned that Lore Segal had died on that day, at age 96.

The stories in Lore Segal's Ladies' Lunch were recommended by Jeff Meyerson who comments on Short Story Wednesday posts at Patricia Abbott's blog. I thank Jeff for this recommendation and many others that I followed up on.

Birdcage: Victor Canning

Birdcage is about the machinations of a British intelligence agency, referred to as "Birdcage" because its offices are in Birdcage Walk in London. There is very little oversight of this covert security group and the agents are generally amoral, although they believe that their mission is important to the welfare of the country. In reality, the higher ups are just trying to protect the government in question which they serve blindly.

This story is set in Portugal, Gloucester, and London. A young nun leaves her Portuguese monastery, feeling that she has betrayed her vows. She attempts to drown herself in the sea but by some miracle is rescued at the last minute. The man who rescues her is a regular guy, easygoing and not ambitious. 

We soon find out that the nun's real name is Sarah Branton, daughter of Lady Jean Branton, a former agent for the Birdcage group. Lady Jean is dead, but the Birdcage agents are keeping an eye on Sarah to make sure that she doesn't have damaging information about their group.

This is the fifth book in a very loose series about the Birdcage group. Especially in the first few books in the series, it is hard to see any connections between the books; there are no repeating characters for example. The tone is the same, and the department is unnamed in the early books. But as the series continues some of the agents feature in multiple books. However, my point here is that though I may be reading them as a series, they easily can be read as standalone books. 

It only recently occurred to me that this series often has a psychological / romantic suspense plot running through it. In fitting with the espionage aspects of the story, the outcome of these romantic plots are entirely unpredictable; sometimes there is a happy, optimistic ending ... sometimes not. This one is even more obviously of that type, since Sarah Branton and the man who rescues her quickly develop a bond and a growing attraction to each other.

I enjoy the glimpses of nature, and especially birds, running through all the stories. The sense of place is very prominent. I think this might be distracting to some readers, but it is one of the elements that keeps me coming back for more. The stories in this series can be very dark.

Victor Canning is one of my favorite authors. He wrote a lot of books starting in the 1930s and through the 1980s, some general fiction, some children's fiction and some spy fiction. I have stuck with his spy fiction or mystery novels so far, but I want to try some of his general fiction too. 

Today I was reading about Canning's life, and discovered that he was friends with Eric Ambler, another espionage author whose books I enjoy. This information was in a book by John Higgins, A Birdcage Companion. Per Higgins' website:

In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. We get a glimpse of Canning in those years from Eric Ambler's autobiography, Here Lies Eric Ambler.

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Publisher:   Heinemann, 1978
Length:       233 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Birdcage books #3
Setting:      Portugal and the UK
Genre:       Espionage fiction
Source:      Purchased in December, 2023.

Short Story Wednesday: "This Won't Kill You" by Rex Stout

"This Won't Kill You" is a 60-page Nero Wolfe mystery novelette by Rex Stout. It was first published in the September 1952 issue of The American Magazine. It later appeared in book form in the short-story collection Three Men Out, published by Viking Press in 1954. 

I have read this story many times and it is one of my favorite novelettes in the Nero Wolfe series. It is very different from the normal short fiction in that series. For one thing, at the beginning of the story Nero Wolfe is attending a baseball game, which means he had to leave his home, which is very unusual. And in addition the story starts out being typical detection by Nero Wolfe, and then takes a turn into an adventure segment with Archie saving the day. 

Wolfe and Archie are at a baseball game because Wolfe's friend Pierre Mondor, a famous chef from Paris, is visiting  and has asked to see a baseball game. Wolfe feels he must oblige as Mondor's host, and being Wolfe he has a grateful client who can supply tickets. It soon becomes clear that the game is going very wrong; one player is missing and several of them cannot play their usual game. I won't go further into the story because I would spoil it. 

Amazingly I have found a good number of reviews of this story, and about half agree with me that this is a excellent story and half don't like it all because it is so untypical. 

There are two other novelettes in Three Men Out: "Invitation to Murder" and "The Zero Clue". I don't remember much about those stories but I will be reading them soon.

A Great Reckoning: Louise Penny

Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series is now up to 19 books, with the latest book due to be published October 29, 2024. When I began reading the series, it was primarily a police procedural series, with Gamache as a Chief Inspector of the Surêté du Québec. 

This book is the 12th in the series, and in a previous book in the series, Gamache left his position as head of homicide. At least two of the books after that focus on mysteries not related to Gamache's role as a policeman. But both he and his wife knew that he would someday look for a new career and return to active work. At the beginning of this story, Gamache has made that decision and accepted an offer to become the head of the Sûreté Academy. In the past, the Sûreté had become filled with corrupt officials and the Academy still shows the results of that influence. Gamache hopes to correct that, but he knows it will take time.

Thus this book is primarily set at the Sûreté Academy, and that is an interesting setting. But Armand and his wife Reine-Marie now live in Three Pines, so a good amount of time is also spent there. I like the books no matter where they are set, but when they are in Three Pines, it means that some of the interesting characters who live there will be featured: Ruth, Clara, Olivier and Gabriel, and Myrna at the bookstore.

Not long after Gamache comes to the Academy in his new position, an instructor at the Academy is killed. And Gamache is one of the suspects, although no one believes that it could be him. Clearly Gamache cannot run the investigation of the crime, but he is involved in the investigation as much as possible. 

There are several smaller mysteries in this story. One is why Gamache decided to approve Amelia Choquet for admission to the academy. She is a misfit, has been in trouble with the law and has obvious tattoos and piercings. He obviously feels some connection to her. 

There is another mystery around an old map found in the walls of Olivier and Gabriel's bistro in Three Pines. It turns out to be an orienteering map; some cadets from the Academy and the residents of Three Pines work together to figure out its origins.

At this point in the series, I have a hard time reviewing the books because going into much detail can spoil plot points of earlier books in the series. I also think that reading the books in order is important because some of characters just seem needlessly quirky and irritating without know some of their background.

The mysteries in this series are always rewarding. Usually very complex and sometimes circuitous and perplexing, they keep me guessing. I never even came close to suspecting the perpetrator in this book.

Louise Penny is very good at creating characters we want to read about. She also continues to develop the characters, both the main characters and the continuing secondary characters in Three Pines. It is hard to look back and compare all the books, but I think this is my favorite book so far. 

See other reviews at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan and Mysteries in Paradise.

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Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2016 
Length:      386 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Armand Gamache, #12
Setting:      Quebec, Canada
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased this book.

Short Story Wednesday: Fantasy and Science Fiction

At the Planned Parenthood Book Sale last year, I found two groups of science fiction and fantasy magazines tied together, for sale for a few dollars per bundle. This week I pulled out one of those and read some stories from it.

These stories come from the October/November 2000 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. 

"Dreamseed" by Carolyn Ives Gilman

This is a novelette about the discovery of a young man found in a box in a warehouse, hidden there for fifteen years, placed in a induced state of perpetual sleep. His name is Aspen, and he is the son of Dr. Semic, who developed a theory of dreams and how people could share dreams and develop realities in their sleep. But while Aspen has been dreaming all these years the world has been taken over by a contagion that has caused conflict between different groups. 

This was my first story by Gilman, but I am definitely interested in reading more by her. Per Goodreads, in her professional career, "Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history."

"The Devil Disinvests" by Scott Bradfield

A very fun short story in which the Devil decides to leave his business of torturing and bartering for souls and live a normal life in a beachfront cottage in California. He falls in love, marries, and has two kids. One of his disgruntled ex-employees comes back for revenge.

"Earth's Blood" by Kate Wilhelm

This is the story I was most interested in. Kate Wilhelm has written two mystery series and many stand alone novels in the mystery and science fiction genres. She was married to Damon Knight, also a very well-known author of science fiction. Yet this is the first piece of writing I have read by Kate Wilhelm. Kate Wilhelm's fiction was first recommended to me by Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom.

"Earth's Blood", a novelette, did not disappoint. The protagonist is a down on his luck photographer who picks up a low-paying job to scout for a suitable location for a low-budget horror story. He is looking for a ghost town with a good setting. The build-up seems like the story will be about ghosts and horror, but the plot goes in a different direction. The story has lots of depth and detail and a great ending.

"Magic, Maples and Maryanne" by Robert Sheckley

This was another humorous short story, about a man who worked in a department store and practiced magic at night, alone in his home. The floor manager at the department store catches him doing some magic at work, and persuades him to let a few friends make some money on the magic.

"Auspicious Eggs" by James Morrow

This is a much darker story, a novelette that mixes technology, religious beliefs, and reproductive rights and ends up being a very uncomfortable story. Interesting but I would not want to read it again.

My Ántonia: Willa Cather

 

This is the first book I have read by Willa Cather and I now understand why other readers are so effusive in their praise for the book. The book was published in 1918 and begins in the 1890s, at a period when immigrant families were settling on homesteads on the prairies.

The story focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. The Shimerda family doesn't have much money and suffer from inadequate shelter and food the first year they are at the farm. The nearest family is the Burdens. Jim Burden arrived in Nebraska on the same train as Ántonia and her family. His parents had both died in the previous year, and his cousins sent him to live with his grandparents. The house the Burdens live in is a wooden frame house, with a basement, and a floor and a half built above the basement. The Shimerda's home is basically a cave in the earth, but they hope to eventually build a house to take its place. The Burdens are the Shimerda's closest neighbors and they try to help the Bohemian family as much as possible.

There are so many interesting aspects to this book that I could never cover them all. The descriptions of backbreaking work on a farm; the difficulties of the immigrants, most of which cannot speak much English; life on the prairies and in the small towns. Ántonia is a girl full of life; she and Jim have adventures while still on the farm, and develop a lifelong friendship. He would like their relationship to be more than that.

The story is narrated by Jim Burden starting when he is about ten and meets Ántonia and her family. He likes Ántonia immediately and volunteers to teach her to read. Both Ántonia and Jim have to do work on their farms, but Ántonia must contribute much more just to help her family survive. As she grows older she takes on more and more of the heavy farm work, trying to compete with her older brother Ambrosch. 

A few years later the Burdens move to Black Hawk, buying a house and renting their farm. Jim's grandparents want him to go to school. Mrs. Burden worries about Ántonia laboring on the farm, and finds her a place to work as a housekeeper with one of their neighbors. This brings positive changes into Antonia's life. 

The book is divided into five sections. Book I is "The Shimerdas"; Book II is "The Hired Girls"; Book III is "Lena Lingard"; Book IV is "The Pioneer Woman's Story"; and Book V is "Cuzak's Boys". After the first longer section dealing with the years that the Shimerdas and the Burdens are neighbors out on the prairie, the following sections are vignettes that follow portions of Jim's and Ántonia's lives after adulthood.

In "The Hired Girls", various of the immigrant farm girls are hired by families in Black Hawk, the nearby town, and learn new skills and make their own way in the world. 

Book III follows the career of Lena Lingard, a Norwegian immigrant who has learned dressmaking skills and has set up a shop in Black Hawk. She is a liberated woman who is not interested in marriage or a family, and plays a big part in Jim's development. This was one of my favorite parts of the book and Lena is a wonderful character. 

"The Pioneer Woman's Story" is very brief and brings Jim and the reader up to date on Antonia's life at that point. I was not prepared for how emotionally I would react to the last section, "Cuzak's Boys", when Jim sees Ántonia for the first time in many years.

As I noted above, there are many things I loved about this book. This was set in an area and a time that I have little experience or knowledge about. But the best parts were how well all of the characters are described and developed throughout the book; and the beauty of the writing and the descriptions of nature.

Short Story Wednesday: Stories from Fire Watch by Connie Willis

 

Back in August 2022, I read the novelette, "Fire Watch," by Connie Willis. It was published in a collection with the same title, and was part of the same universe as Willis's Oxford Time Travel series: Doomsday Book (1992), To Say Nothing of the Dog (1995), Blackout (2010), and All Clear (2010). I liked "Fire Watch" a lot but I did think that it might not be too clear if the reader had not read at least one of the books in her time travel series.

After reading an additional three stories from Fire Watch last week, I hesitated to write a post about them. Mainly because I found the stories confusing, and two of them I did not really understand at all. 

"Service for the Burial of the Dead"

This one was pretty good. It is a ghost story, set in the 1800s (I am guessing). A young woman is shunned by her neighbors because she has had an affair with a young man. He dies and she dares to attend the funeral. Embarrassed, she leaves the chapel and goes into a room nearby. To her surprise her lover is there, and says he won't reveal himself to any one else until the father of his fiancee settles his debts. The story is somewhat open ended.

"Lost and Found"

An apocalyptic story about cults and the state stealing treasures from the churches. It isn't that this story is totally unclear, it is more that I wanted some more concrete information on what is going on.

"All My Darling Daughters"

This story was long and very icky, but I could not stop reading it. I was hoping there would be some resolution that would make it worth reading. It is science fiction and it concerns a school (on a large space craft). It was about sex and fathers and implied rape and incest. Some reviewers loved this story and others hated it, so don't take my reaction too seriously.

"Blued Moon"

I did not want to give up on the stories in this book and only report on ones that I had mixed reactions to. The fourth story I read was "Blued Moon." It was a highly recommended story by Willis. It was undoubtedly the best story of these four. It is a romantic comedy and a fun and humorous read. It involves a project to restore the ozone layer, which may or may not have disastrous results.

There are seven more stories left in this book and I will persevere,  plus I have two more books of Willis's short stories to read.

Two Novels by Raymond Chandler

 

Raymond Chandler is a very well-known and highly regarded author of hard-boiled mysteries featuring Philip Marlowe. He was also a major influence on future writers in that subgenre. I have read five of the Philip Marlowe novels and I rate all of them very highly. However, it is not the mystery plots that keep me coming back, it is Chandler's writing style that I love.

The Lady in the Lake

Philip Marlowe, a private detective with an office in Hollywood, is hired by Derace Kingsley to find his wife, who has been missing for about a month. The marriage was on shaky ground anyway, and he had received a telegram that she was going to Mexico to get a divorce and marry another man, Chris Lavery. Then a few weeks later, he is told that her car had been left unclaimed at a San Bernardino hotel. He is mostly concerned that she is going to cause some kind of scandal and he will lose his job. 

The plot does get very complex. Kingsley has a cabin on a private lake in the mountains near San Bernardino. Bill Chess is the caretaker for the cabins on the lake; his wife, Muriel, left him about the same time Kingsley's wife supposedly left for Mexico. When Marlowe goes to the lake to interview Chess, they find a decomposed dead body in the lake. Chess assumes it is his wife. There are many characters involved, and an excess of suspects. 

In addition to the beautiful writing and the terrific dialogue, there were several appealing things about The Lady in the Lake. The book was published in 1943, and it was written after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The US was involved in World War II and there is evidence of this throughout the book. This book also seemed to have more humor than other books in the series.

The edition above of The Lady in the Lake is my favorite. It has cover art by Tom Adams, who also illustrated the covers for many paperback editions of Agatha Cristie's mysteries. 

The Long Goodbye

I read The Long Goodbye over two years ago, in 2022. I didn't write a full review at the time and I decided this would be a good time to review it.

In this book Philip Marlow gets involved with two very messed-up men, both alcoholics. Terry Lennox hires Marlowe to drive him to Mexico, no questions asked, and Marlowe goes along with it, because he trusts Lennox. When he gets back to L.A. he finds that Lennox's wife is dead and the police think that Lennox killed her. Following this, Marlowe is hired to find a once successful author, Roger Wade, who has been missing for three days. He finds him and returns him to his wife at their beach house. They want Marlowe to stay with them and keep Wade sober and working on his book. Marlowe doesn't want to get involved with that situation but he keeps getting dragged back into it. That doesn't sound like a complex story but there are many characters, and the two "cases" start to merge. 

These are my notes from two years ago shortly after I read the book:

The writing is beautiful. The reading experience was wonderful, even if the plot confused me (and defies description without spoiling the story). This seemed very different from the first three books. Marlowe never has a real client in this one. He tries to help two different people, over several months time, and neither one seems to deserve his help. The whole experience seems aimless but all the threads come together in the end, with some surprises. 

The Long Goodbye was published in 1953, 10 years after The Lady in the Lake was published. It is the 6th book in the series. 

Short Story Wednesday: "Scribbling" by Helen DeWitt

"Scribbling" by Helen DeWitt was published in the July 18, 2024 issue of The New York Review of Books. The story was fun to read but in the end I did not know what to think of it. It seemed to me to be full of whimsy, but whimsy has never really appealed to me, so why did I like it so much? It is impossible to describe adequately, and so short that I do not want to retell the story.

The premise:

A woman, Flip, is hounded by a New York agent to send him a manuscript. This irritates her husband to no end, and he is uncooperative in every way. Eventually she succeeds in sending a manuscript to get the agent off her back. The agent is thrilled and wants to discuss it. Through a series of mishaps, she finally gets to New York to meet the agent.  

I had to read the story twice, because the first time through I was trying to focus on the sequence of events, and there is much more to it than that. The next time through I focused on the writing style, which is a little over my head. I think I could re-read the story many times.

From the little I have read about Helen DeWitt, I understand that she has had problems with getting published; thus this story could certainly be poking fun at that process. 

If anyone can shed light on this story or other writing by Helen DeWitt, I would love more information on that subject.

Books Read in July 2024

 

I am so far behind on my monthly reading lists; I am writing this summary of July reading in early September. Looking back on July, there was a good bit of variety in my reading. Only three of the seven books I read were crime fiction, which is unusual. The five novels were from my 20 Books of Summer list but the two nonfiction books were not.

So here are the books I read in July...

Nonfiction / Books about Books

More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (2005) by Nancy Pearl

This book is part of Nancy Pearl's Book Lust series, which includes Book Lust and Book Lust to Go. I have read all three of these books multiple times, and I believe this was my fourth time to read More Book Lust. One of the limitations of this book is that it was published almost 20 years ago and so could be considered out of date. For me, that doesn't matter, as I want to know about older authors as well as newer ones. The book is divided into various topics. Many of the topics include mystery and crime fiction suggestions, which I appreciate. And each time I reread the books, I discover new books and authors.

Nonfiction / Travel / Adventure

Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories (2002) Alexandra Pratt 

The subtitle of this book is "A Woman's Journey into the Heart of Labrador." Pratt describes a challenging canoeing expedition that she took with a native guide (of the Innu tribe) on a series of rivers in Labrador. It was an amazing journey. See my review.

Science Fiction

A Closed and Common Orbit (2016) by Becky Chambers

This is the second book in the Wayfarers series; the first two books are only loosely connected. The only characters shared between the two books are Pepper, an engineer, and Lovelace, an AI that ran the ship in the first book. I loved the writing and the story telling and the world building.

Fantasy

The Dead Fathers Club (2006) by Matt Haig

This is a modern retelling of Hamlet. The main character and narrator is 11-year-old Philip Noble whose father recently died in a car accident. I am not sure if it was aimed at adults or young adults, and I am still not sure what I think of it. I liked it, mostly, and it definitely wasn't boring. It was very funny at times and I was pleased with the ending.

Crime Fiction

A Cast of Falcons (2016) by Steve Burrows

Steve Burrows is a Canadian author and this was the first book I read for the Canadian Reading Challenge. A Cast of Falcons is the third book in Burrow's Birder Murder Mystery series. See my review.

War Game (1976) by Anthony Price

Anthony Price published 19 novels; all featured David Audley, a British spy during the Cold War. The focus in this espionage series is on characterization and intellect, not action, although there is some of that present. Most of the books in this series have historical events infused into a present day story (keeping in mind that they were written between 1970 and 1990). In Other Paths to Glory, which won the Gold Dagger in 1974, it was World War I and the battlefields of the Somme. In Colonel Butler's Wolf, the site of the story is Hadrian's Wall. War Game is the seventh book in the series and centers around the English Civil War and events in 1643. I love this series, but I need to read them closer together because I forget who the continuing characters are, except for David Audley.

Dark Fire (2004) by C.J. Sansom

This is a historical mystery set in London in 1540; it is the second book in a series of seven featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake as the protagonist. In the first book, Dissolution, Shardlake was working for Thomas Cromwell, helping with the dissolution of the monasteries. In this book, it is three years later, and he is again working for Thomas Cromwell, this time under duress. See my review.

Currently reading

I am now reading The White Lioness by Henning Mankell, the 3rd book in the Wallander series. It was published in 1993. It is the story of a murder in Sweden that has its roots in South Africa, and it addresses the issues of Apartheid at that time.

 

The two photos at the top of the post were taken in our back fenced-in area in 2010. They are motivating me to spend more time cleaning up the back yard and potting up more plants. The photo immediately above is Rosie the cat, taken in 2013, the year that she came to live with us. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Dark Fire: C.J. Sansom

Description from the back of my book:

In 1540 Henry VIII has been on the throne for thirty-one years. Lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been called upon to help a young girl accused of murder who refused to speak in her own defense even when threatened with torture. On the verge of losing his case, Shardlake is suddenly granted a reprieve. His benefactor is Thomas Cromwell, the king's feared vicar general, who offers him two more weeks to investigate the murder. In exchange, Shardlake must find a lost cache of "Dark Fire," an ancient weapon of mass destruction. 

My thoughts...

Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom is a historical mystery set in London in 1540; it is the second book in a series of seven featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake as the protagonist. In the first book, Dissolution, Shardlake was working for Thomas Cromwell, helping with the dissolution of the monasteries. In this book, it is three years later, and he is again working for Thomas Cromwell, this time under duress. 

I have read a good bit about Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel's series that starts with Wolf Hall, so I was familiar with Cromwell's career. It was interesting to see Cromwell in this book, at the point in his life when he was falling out of favor with Henry VIII. But Cromwell plays a relatively minor role in the story, and I don't think any prior knowledge is necessary to enjoy the novel.

This book is excellent historical fiction, very well written; the historical setting is described in detail but the reader is not lectured to. I was mesmerized by the story in the first chapter and stayed engaged throughout. The story is very dense, filled with action and interesting developments. The characters are all very well developed, even the secondary characters.

Dark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA).

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Publisher:   Penguin Books, 2006 (orig. publ. 2004)
Length:       501 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       Matthew Shardlake #2
Setting:      England, 1540
Genre:       Historical Mystery
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, 2019.

Short Story Wednesday: "Bullet for One" by Rex Stout

"Bullet for One" is a 68-page novella in the Nero Wolfe series, and was first published in The American Magazine in July 1948, the year of my birth. It is one of three stories in Curtains for Three, published in 1950. 

As usual, Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's assistant, narrates the story. Some semi-regular characters are included: Saul Panzer and Orrie Cather, freelance detectives; and Inspector Cramer of the NYC police. Lily Rowan, Archie's sometimes female companion, makes a brief appearance.

This story features five people who are suspected of murdering Sigmund Keyes, an industrial designer who was shot while riding horseback in New York's Central Park. These five people gather at Nero Wolfe's office to hire him to prove that another person, Victor Talbott, is guilty. Victor Talbott was Keyes' sales agent, and is in love with his daughter. He also has the best alibi of all of the suspects. The five suspects that Wolfe is working for are three people who worked in the same office with Keyes, plus his daughter, Dorothy Keyes, and a stable hand at the Riding Academy near Central Park. 

This was a funny story, and I think it was more humorous because it included some of the regular characters in addition to Archie and Wolfe. Archie gets his feeling hurt because Wolfe assigns all the interesting jobs to Saul and Orrie. Wolfe is mainly concerned with food and his orchids while he sends others off to do research. Although some of the facts are hidden from the reader until close to the end, it was a clever ending.

I read another story in the book recently also, but it is a hard one for me to review. It may be my favorite story in this book.

"The Gun with Wings" is about two lovers who come to Wolfe with a problem. They know that the woman's husband was killed and they haven't told anyone what they know, because each of them is afraid that the other might be the murderer. (Her husband was a piece of work.) They want Wolfe to find out who the murderer is so that they can get married. Now that is an unusual problem. 

I reviewed "Disguise for Murder," the third story in Curtains for Three, in April of this year.

Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories: Alexandra Pratt

  

Cath at Read-Warbler recommended Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories to me. The subtitle of the book is "A Woman's Journey into the Heart of Labrador." Alexandra Pratt tells her story of an ambitious trip on a river that not many have traveled.

I purchased this book in July 2020, during the pandemic. Like many of the books I bought that year, I had plans to read the book soon but put it on a shelf and it did not surface again until four years later when I decided to participate in the Canadian Reading Challenge again. 

I know very little about Labrador. Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada; it is made up of the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador. Per Wikipedia, Labrador "constitutes 71% of the province's area but is home to only 6% of its population. It is separated from the island of Newfoundland by the Strait of Belle Isle." Reading Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories was a small step towards understanding more about Labrador, and I do think it gave a better picture of that area. But I have a long way to go.

In 1903 two men, Leonidas Hubbard and Dillon Wallace, attempted to travel 600 miles through the interior of Labrador with a native guide, George Elson. None of them made it to their destination; Hubbard died but Wallace and Elson survived, although Wallace suffered from frostbite and gangrene. Two years later, Mina Hubbard, Leonidas's wife, and Dillon Wallace went on separate expeditions to try to accomplish the original goal of reaching Ungava Bay at the mouth of the George River. Both Mina Hubbard and Dillon Wallace succeeded but they took different routes and Wallace took 60 days longer to complete the trip.

In 1997, Alexandra Pratt read excerpts of Mina Hubbard's diary in an issue of National Geographic magazine and was inspired to attempt to recreate the trip. In this book, Pratt describes the harrowing canoe trip that she and her Innu guide took down some of the same rivers that Mina traveled. Not only did Pratt have to prepare physically to be able to survive such a demanding trip, she spent a lot of time up front acquiring funding and gathering information about supplies and support that such a trip would require.  

In the intervening years between Mina's expedition and Pratt's trip, there had been changes to the terrain along the rivers. The Churchill Falls hydroelectric plant was constructed which caused the water level to be lowered in the rivers. It seemed to me that this had both positive and negative impacts on Pratt's trip compared to Mina's.

The team that Mina Hubbard took had two canoes and four native guides, so that Mina had to bear less of the physical burden of rowing the huge canoes that they used. Pratt's trip involved only two persons, herself and Jean Pierre Ashini, thus there was no backup if either of them was injured. Once I realized how many dangers they could encounter along the way, it seemed to be a terrifying trip to attempt. 

The details of ending the day by setting up camp on the riverbank, building a shelter, and preparing food were impressive as was the stamina and determination necessary to keep paddling the canoe steadily day after day. When they were in camp at night, Pratt's guide, Jean Pierre Ashini, would tell her stories about his life and experiences. This was one of the most interesting parts for me. He was forty when they went on this expedition. He had lived almost thirty years of his life living in the traditional ways as a hunter. He told of the ways the Innu have had to change just within his lifetime and the effect on their culture. 

Pratt tells the story of her adventures and struggles very well, and describes the beauty of the landscape along their route. She mingles descriptions of Mina Hubbard's original trip with her own, and that added depth to the story. This is a fascinating book and I learned a lot about Labrador, but I would have liked to have maps and more photos to help me visualize the trip. I read the paperback edition and the original hardback had a map on the end papers.  

Books Read in June 2024

 

I read eleven books in June and that was many more books than I expected to read, considering that I had cataract surgery in the middle of the month. I ended up having more time to read and not much energy or motivation for anything else, including blogging. Nine of the books read in June were from my 20 Books of Summer list. Unfortunately I am very late in posting about my reading for June but I hope to catch up more in the next few weeks.

Graphic memoir

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2003) by Marjane Satrapi; Mattias Ripa (Translator)

This graphic memoir tells the story of the author's life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, from the point when the Shah is overthrown through the war with Iraq. Reading about those times from the viewpoint of a child is interesting and entertaining. The story is continued in a second volume, and I will be reading that too.

Fiction

The Lonely Hearts Book Club (2023) by Lucy Gilmore

This story has a book club theme, and it also has romance, dysfunctional families, and lonely people making friends. See my thoughts here.

Redhead by the Side of the Road (2020) by Anne Tyler

Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit; he wants everyday to be the same. He has been with his girlfriend for three years. Two new events happen in his life that shake up his normal life. I liked the story a lot, the length was perfect at under 200 pages, and I want to read more of Anne Tyler's books.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (2014) by Gabrielle Zevin

This book is centered around a bookstore and of course books are discussed throughout. This was a lovely story with a little bit of romance and a lot about relationships, friends, and community. See my review.

Fantasy, Time Travel

Tales from the Café (2017) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

This is the second in a series of five books about time travel that takes place in a café in Tokyo which has been serving a special coffee for more than one hundred years.  There are four connected stories in this book. The stories of the people who run the café are just as interesting as the time travel stories. The first book in the series is Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

Crime Fiction

Skeleton-in-Waiting (1989) by Peter Dickinson

Peter Dickinson is one of my favorite authors. I prefer his mysteries, but he also wrote children's books and fantasies. This is the second book in a duology, set in an alternate Britain with a very alternate royal family. The first book is King and Joker, and in that book the two main characters (Prince Albert and Princess Louise) are teenagers. This book takes place over ten years later and both Albert and Louise have married and have children. This was a reread, and this time around I was more impressed with the story and enjoyed it very much. 

Nearly Nero (2017) by Loren D. Estleman

Between 2008 and 2016, Estleman wrote nine humorous short stories about Claudius Lyon, a man who is obsessed with emulating Nero Wolfe in all ways, and his assistant, Arnie Woodbine. Most of these stories were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. This book includes all of the stories. I reviewed the stories here and here.

Family Business (2021) by S.J. Rozan

S.J. Rozan won the 2022 Shamus Award for this novel, her 14th book starring New York City private eyes Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. When the powerful Chinatown crime boss Big Brother Choi dies, he leaves the Tong headquarters building to his niece, Mel, who hires Lydia and Bill to accompany her to inspect it. They discover the body of another Tong member in Choi's living quarters. I will be reading the latest book in the series, The Mayors of New York, very soon.

In the Midst of Death (1976) by Lawrence Block

This is an early book in the Matthew Scudder series.  Scudder is an ex-cop who works as an unlicensed private detective. In this case he is helping out an old friend on the police force who is accused of murdering a prostitute.  I liked the book but it was very dark, especially the ending. 

The Cipher Garden (2005) by Martin Edwards

The books in this series are set in Cumbria, England's Lake District, and feature Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind. DCI Scarlett heads the cold case division. Here, an old cold case involving the death of a gardener is reopened because of poison pen letters sent to the police and to people involved in the crime. I like the mystery plot but could do without the romantic subplot.

A Caribbean Mystery (1964) by Agatha Christie

This is the 9th book in Christie's Jane Marple series. It is not set in Miss Marple's village of St. Mary Mead and I missed that setting. On the other hand it has a nice depiction of a Caribbean island vacation spot and any Miss Marple story is going to be entertaining. Another elderly visitor to St. Honoré, Major Palgrave, has been monopolizing Miss Marple's time, telling stories of his adventures during his travels. At one point he tells her about a murderer he met, starts to show her a picture, then gets interrupted. Shortly after that Major Palgrave dies, seemingly of natural causes. We just watched the film adaptation starring Helen Hayes tonight, and saw another adaptation with Joan Hickson a couple of weeks ago. Both were good.

Currently reading

I have just started reading A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny, the 12th book in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels. The story begins with Gamache taking on a new job and the discovery of an old intricate map. 

The subject of the photos at the top and bottom of this post is our cat, Rosie. At the top, Rosie is helping me read. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Short Story Wednesday: 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

 

100 Years of the Best American Short Stories was published in 2015 and was edited by Lorrie Moore (Editor) and Heidi Pitlor (Series Editor).

Last week I wrote a post on the first short story in this book, "The Gay Old Dog" by Edna Ferber. This week I decided to post about the book, listing all the short stories in the book. It will be a useful list for me to refer back to. This book has been on my Kindle since August 2021, so it is time for me to read more of these stories. 

There is an introduction for the whole book, written by Lorrie Moore, and an introduction for the section about each decade, written by Heidi Pitlor. The years covered are 1915 - 2015. 

Towards the end of the introduction to the book, Lorrie Moore discusses the limitations in selecting short stories for an anthology with this scope. John Updike and Katrina Kenison published The Best American Short Stories of the Century in 2000, and Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor decided to have no overlaps between the two books. (Both were published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.) All the stories were selected from the Best American Short Stories series published annually.

So, here is a list of all the stories in the book:

1915-1920

• The Gay Old Dog / Edna Ferber

1920-1930

• Brothers / Sherwood Anderson
• My Old  Man / Ernest Hemingway
• Haircut / Ring Lardner 

1930-1940

• Babylon Revisited / F. Scott Fitzgerald 
• The Cracked Looking-Glass / Katherine Anne Porter
• That Will Be Fine / William Faulkner

1940-1950

• Those Are as Brothers / Nancy Hale
• The Whole World Knows / Eudora Welty 
• The Enormous Radio / John Cheever

1950-1960

• I Stand Here Ironing / Tillie Olsen 
• Sonny's Blues / James Baldwin 
• The Conversion of the Jews / Philip Roth

1960-1970

• Everything That Rises Must Converge / Flannery O'Connor 
• Pigeon Feathers / John Updike 
• Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / Raymond Carver 
• By the River / Joyce Carol Oates

1970-1980 

• The School / Donald Barthelme 
• The Conventional Wisdom / Stanley Elkin

1980-1990

• Friends / Grace Paley 
• Harmony of the World / Charles Baxter
• Lawns / Mona Simpson 
• Communist / Richard Ford 
• Helping / Robert Stone 
• Displacement / David Wong Louie

1990-2000

• Friend of My Youth / Alice Munro 
• The Girl on the Plane / Mary Gaitskill 
• Xuela / Jamaica Kincaid 
• If You Sing Like That for Me / Akhil Sharma 
• Fiesta, 1980 / Junot Díaz

2000-2010

• The Third and Final Continent / Jhumpa Lahiri 
• Brownies / ZZ Packer 
• What You Pawn I Will Redeem / Sherman Alexie 
• Old Boys, Old Girls / Edward P. Jones 
• Refresh, Refresh / Benjamin Percy 
• Awaiting Orders / Tobias Wolff

2010-2015

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank / Nathan Englander 
• Diem Perdidi / Julie Otsuka 
• The Semplica-Girl Diaries / George Saunders 
• At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners / Lauren Groff

Some of these authors I am familiar with, some not. Other than the first story in the book, I haven't read any of the stories. 

Many reviews of the anthology note that the story by Nathan Englander is very good. I find it interesting that there are only two stories from the decade 1970-1980 and five stories from the following decade.

I would love to hear if anyone else has had experience with these stories or authors.

The Lonely Hearts Book Club: Lucy Gilmore

 

Sloane Parker is a librarian; she is engaged to be married to a chiropractor. At work she meets Arthur McLachlan, an elderly curmudgeon who goes out of his way to be snarky and rude to people. He comes in to use the library every day and he and Sloane often argue about various topics related to books. So one day when he doesn't come in, she is concerned. She has come to enjoy their daily interchanges. When she finds out that he was in the hospital but is now home, and relying on home help people assigned to him, who keep quitting, she decides she has to help him out. Maisey, who lives next door, gives her support. And gradually others get pulled into Arthur's support group, and they end up starting a book club...

I had difficulty putting together a review for this book, even though I enjoyed it very much. So what follows are just some random thoughts.

I was attracted to this book because of the book club theme and positive reviews from other bloggers. I have recently discovered that I like "feel good" books; many of the books I have read and enjoyed in the last year could be described as sappy but I haven't found that to be a bad thing. The books have made me happy, and occasionally sad. 

In addition to discussions of books and their merits or drawbacks, this book also had romance, dysfunctional families, and lonely people making friends. 

The story is sentimental, and sometimes predictable, but there are no guaranteed happy endings at the end of the book.

The writing pulled me into the story. The story is told by multiple narrators. Each of their background stories is revealed very slowly. I liked that a lot. Stories told from various viewpoints appeal to me, but I will admit this one gets confusing at times. Nevertheless, I loved it. 

These are the books that were discussed in more detail:

• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (haven't read)
• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (have read)
• Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery (haven't read)

Amazingly, after all these years, reading this book really motivates me to find a copy of Anne of Green Gables and read it.

See these reviews at Lark Writes on books and life and at The New York Journal of Books.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2023
Length:     353 pages
Format:    Trade paperback
Setting:     Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
Genre:      Books about Books, Contemporary Fiction
Source:     Purchased in December 2023.

Short Story Wednesday: "The Gay Old Dog" by Edna Ferber

 

"The Gay Old Dog" by Edna Ferber was first published in 1917 in the Metropolitan Magazine. It is the first story I read in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, published in  2015, edited by Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor.

The story starts out describing Jo Hertz as "a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving- eyed, and kindly man, clutching vainly at the garments of a youth that had long slipped past him." He is quite well-to-do and he goes out at night in search of happiness. The setting is Chicago, Illinois.

Next we learn of Jo Hertz's more youthful years, starting when his mother was on her deathbed and he promised her that he would not marry until all three of his sisters were provided for.  The story relates how this promise affected the rest of Jo's life. He is a good man, he is a kind man, but not a happy one. 

I enjoyed this story, but I did not get emotionally involved with any of the characters. We often get stories of women forced to give up their lives and marriage for their mothers or their siblings, but this one shows a man doing that. The story of the hardships of Jo's early life and how his fortunes change is interesting. I also liked the picture of the times. Some reviewers described it as a "time capsule." 

This is a very good quote from the story:

"Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the living."

The short story is available online here.

The story was adapted to film in 1919; it was directed by Hobert Henley.