Skeleton Key: Jane Haddam

This book is the 16th book in the Gregor Demarkian series by Jane Haddam. I read this book in October because the story is set at Halloween. It starts on October 27th and continues through to the end of October, so the holiday atmosphere is there although not necessarily any celebrations. So it really wasn't very Halloweeny, not spooky or creepy, but a good mystery. This was a reread and it was a good choice from the series. 

Kayla Anson is a very very rich 19-year-old heiress; her father left his entire fortune to her, writing her mother, Margaret Anson, out of the will. She lives with her mother in a mansion, but only until she can get away to college. She and her mother hate each other. Bennis Hannaford, a well-known fantasy writer, also from a very rich family, is visiting Margaret to request the loan of a piece of art for a showing in Philadelphia. Bennis doesn't like Margaret very much either. While staying at Margaret's house, Bennis finds Kayla's dead body in the Anson's garage. So Bennis is stuck in Litchfield, Connecticut for a while, although it is pretty clear she had nothing to do with the death.

Bennis calls in Gregor Demarkian, her lover, and volunteers him to work with the Resident Trooper in Littlefield to be a consultant on the investigation. Gregor is a well-known retired ex-FBI profiler, so he is always welcome as a consultant. 

This series started out sort of on the cozy side, with some kind of focus on a holiday in each book, but later in the series the books became darker and more focused on issues. Skeleton Key is the last book (I think) to have a holiday focus. Bennis's and Gregor's continuing relationship always plays a part. They both live in the Armenian-American neighborhood in Philadelphia that he grew up in, and that area is sometimes a focus of the books, but not this one.

Except for the first book, Not a Creature was Stirring, every book in the series starts with several vignettes featuring characters who are prominent in the story and may or may not be suspects. Thus we get an introduction early in the book to the key players. Unusually, in this case, the lead up to the murder takes place in that first section, and Bennis and Gregor are involved from the very beginning. 

The setting in this case is a small town in Connecticut, but this small town has a lot of rich residents, and the country club is the focus of the social life of those people. Young female friends of Kayla Anson are at the age to be debutantes but their parents are more excited about that than the girls. Because of the small town setting, there is a good cross-section of character types involved in the crime, if only on the periphery of it. And that is fascinating. 

In the end, Gregor is able to identify the person guilty of the crime and knows why, but there is no evidence to convict the culprit. This is probably fairly realistic but not very satisfying. Still, the other elements of the story are entertaining and kept me interested until the end. Fortunately I remembered none of the story so it all felt new to me.

I started reading this series in 2005 and read the first twenty books in a short time. Since then I have only read four more in the series. There are six books left and I want to read more of them. 

Jane Haddam is the pseudonym of Orania Papazoglou. She wrote five novels in a different series and two standalone novels under that name. She was married to William L. DeAndrea, who also wrote several mystery series and standalone novels.

Another good read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

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Publisher:   St. Martin's Press, 2001 (orig. pub. 2000)
Length:      359 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       Gregor Demarkian, #16
Setting:      Litchfield, Connecticut
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Something Wicked This Way Comes: Ray Bradbury

Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade are young boys, aged thirteen years old, and ready for some new experiences. Will is more cautious, Jim is willing to take chances. When a carnival arrives in town after midnight, they escape from their bedrooms and watch it being set up. They gradually see the evil in the carnival that can change people and transform them into unrecognizable versions of themselves. 

The carnival that threatens the town is Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, and the main antagonist is Mr. Dark, or the Illustrated Man, who can control the freaks in the carnival via his tattoos. He works in league with the Dust Witch, and their goal is to gather more souls to power the carnival. And the carnival has an especially scary merry-go-round that can add or take away years from a person's life.

Will's dad, Mr. Charles Halloway, is a quiet and melancholic man. On this occasion he steps up and helps the boys and the town out of a very scary situation. 

My Thoughts...

The set up of the situation in the first half of this book did not hold my interest. It was too poetic and too drawn out. At the middle point as the situation turns from bad to worse and Mr. Halloway is alerted to the problem, I got more interested and the story finally pulled me in. However, I never did get fully immersed and sense the horror of the situation.

I liked the themes of childhood, aging, parenthood. Although books are not a big part of the story, scenes set at the library where Will's dad works are prominent in the story.

This is my husband's book and he loves it. The gorgeous, poetic descriptions work very well for him. He especially likes the small town setting in autumn.

What I learned from reading this: I should have started with another novel or a book of short stories from Bradbury's works. In a Reading Pathways article for Bradbury works, Something Wicked this Way Comes was the last book on the list due to its difficulty and complexity. The first book on the list was The Halloween Tree, a children's book by Bradbury, which I read and reviewed three years ago. It was also more on the poetic side but a lovely children's story. Many years ago I read Fahrenheit 451, but I have forgotten much about it and plan to reread it. 

Next year maybe I will try some of Bradbury's short stories, such as The October Country (suggested by Rick Robinson at Tip the Wink) or The Martian Chronicles.

Another good read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

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Publisher:  William Morrow, 2001. Orig. pub. 1962.
Length:     289 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     Illinois
Genre:      Fantasy / Horror
Source:     Borrowed from my husband.

The Thirteenth Tale: Diane Setterfield

Vida Winter is an author who has had much success in her writing. She has also always concealed the truth about her past–her birth, her childhood, and how she escaped her past. At the time this novel begins, she is old and facing death, and she has decided to tell the true story of her origins. She picks Margaret Lea to write the story. Margaret has written short biographies of a few authors; Vida has researched her and thinks that they could work well together. 

Margaret lives with her mother and father and works in her father's antiquarian book store in London. She enjoys what she does and has not looked for any life outside of the book store and her family, even though she and her mother have a strained relationship. 

Vida Winter writes to Margaret requesting that she write her biography. Margaret visits Vida at her home in Yorkshire. The project is intriguing, but Margaret does not know how much to trust to Vida's veracity. She knows that Vida has invented many stories about her life. Margaret also has mysteries in her life, mysteries she would like to solve. Eventually she is convinced to write Vida's biography and to live with her while they are working on it.

There are two narratives in The Thirteenth Tale. Vida narrates the story of her family and her childhood during sessions with Margaret. Margaret narrates her story of working with Vida to write the biography and her separate research on Vida's past and her home, Angelfield, plus her research into the mysteries in her own life. 

My thoughts:

I have long had the idea that I don't like gothic novels. Maybe my tastes have changed or broadened, but lately I have read several books with gothic elements and enjoyed them a lot. The Thirteenth Tale was a page turner, although parts of it moved slowly. It took me a while to read although it was only a bit over 400 pages long. I loved the journey that Margaret takes to uncover the mysteries in her life and in Vida's, and I loved the ending. It was a very emotional reading experience for me. And the writing was very good; it was a joy to read.

I have read that this book borrows heavily from several classic books (such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Rebecca). Any of those that I read were read long ago, so I did not recognize this. And I am not sure why this would be a bad thing. Obviously, with one main character being a writer and the other working in a book store (and very serious about her reading time), this is a book that will appeal to book lovers, with lots of references to books and authors. 

I was not sure which genre this book fits in. I think it was marketed as a mystery and many readers at Goodreads categorize it that way. There are mysterious elements and there is a crime, but there is no investigation of a crime. There are elements of romance, but that element doesn't overwhelm the story. Just enough romance for me. 

This was another good read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

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Publisher:  Atria Books, 2006.
Length:    406 pages
Format:    Hardcover
Setting:    UK, London, Yorkshire
Genre:     Gothic Mystery
Source:    On my TBR for 15 years.

Short Story Wednesday: "Lantern Marsh" by Poppy Z. Brite

This is my kind of sweet, tame Halloween tale. Not too scary, but a little creepy. And with an environmental message on the side.

The story begins:

"The marsh brooded on the outskirts of town. We children sometimes played there during the day, poling flat-bottomed boats through the dark water, choked with swamp hyacinth, stranding ourselves on any of the hundreds of tiny islands. By day the marsh was a place of filtering, shifting patches of sunlight, cypress and live oak bearded with Spanish moss...

At night the lanterns took over."

Three kids (Bronwen, Phil, and Noel) live in Lantern Marsh, a town near a beautiful marsh. All of them are intrigued by the marsh, but Noel is obsessed with the marsh and its lights. Every night the lights hover above the marsh. The teachers say that it is caused by marsh gas, but none of the kids believes that.

Noel also despises a local businessman, Mr. Prudhomme, who owns half the marsh and wants to take it over and develop the land. Years later, when they go off to college, Mr. Prudhomme very nearly succeeds at doing this, but Nick carries through on his promise to stop the development. The ending is mildly creepy.

I read this story in Halloween Horrors. That book is a 2010 reprint of October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween, ed. by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish, published in 2000.

I also read a few more stories from this anthology, but none of those engaged me. They were not bad, just not the type of story I enjoy. Some combine horror with sadness, some were bland and somewhat silly. I will probably put this book on the shelf and try more stories in it next year.

#1976Club: A Little Local Murder

Robert Barnard (1936 – 2013) was a British author who published mysteries from 1974 through 2012. He wrote over 40 novels and I have read about half of them. A Little Local Murder was his second novel. I selected it for the 1976 Club because I want to compare it to books he wrote after 2000. 

From the Pan Macmillan website, here is a description for a 2016 reprint of A Little Local Murder:

The news that Radio Broadwich is to make a documentary on Twytching for broadcast in America spreads through the small village like wildfire. Mrs Deborah Withens, Twytching's resident doyenne and arbiter of good taste, takes it upon herself to control the presentation of her 'county town' and assumes responsibility for picking those that will take part, provoking fierce rivalry amongst the villagers.

One resident who is reticent to participate in the fuss is Inspector George Parrish . . . until the murder of the first villager chosen, and a rash of poison pen letters uncovering secrets Twytching's leading citizens had fervently hoped were buried, force him to get involved. 

Mrs. Withins, the snobby wife of the Council Chairman, is determined that Twytching should be considered a town, not a village, but this is the quintessential village mystery. The village is filled with characters from a Midsomer Murders episode – gossips, a dotty vicar, and my favorite, a snarky supercilious school teacher. And this book was written well before Caroline Graham's books or the TV show. (Note: I do love Midsomer Murders; we are rewatching the entire series for the third time.) 

My favorite characters in this story are the policemen in the village – Inspector Parrish, Sergeant Stephen Feathers, and Sergeant Betty Underwood. That may be because the reader gets more insight into those characters, especially Inspector Parrish. None of them have a lot of experience with murder cases and they make a few mistakes along the way, but Inspector Parrish has a good handle on the case and the people he is dealing with. The process of tracking down those who received the poison pen letters and their connection to the murder was quite entertaining.

Barnard has written many different kinds of standalone mysteries. Some are satires and more humorous and light; some are serious and dark. Often the characters are quirky and somewhat unsympathetic, as in this book. But almost always the ending is a complete surprise. And this one has a fantastic ending, very unexpected and chilling.

Barnard also wrote two mystery series, both police procedurals. I have enjoyed books from both of those series.

Thanks to Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings for hosting the 1976 Club this week.

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Publisher:   Charles Scribner's Sons, 1983 (orig. publ. 1976)
Length:      190 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Setting:      UK, a small village
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Classics Club Spin #28

The latest Classics Club Spin has been announced. I have chosen twenty books from my classics list. This list of twenty books is the same as my last Spin List, with only one addition to replace the book I read for the last spin. 

It may be difficult for me to fit in a book from my classics list during November because I am going to be focusing on novellas for Novellas in November. Most of the books on this list of twenty are short, quick reads, so maybe that won't be a problem.

On Sunday 17th October, 2021, the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The goal is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by 12th December, 2021.

So, here is my list of 20 books for the spin.

1. Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe   [209 pages]
2. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) by Patricia Highsmith [249 pages]
3. Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier  [410 pages]
4. The Sign of Four (1890) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [167 pages]
5. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Quiet American (1958) by Graham Greene   [180 pages]
8. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
9. The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame 
10. A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle
11. Beast In View (1955) by Margaret Millar
12. The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy   [200 pages]
13. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) by Roald Dahl
14. My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
15. Goodbye to Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood
16. Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker    [420 pages]
17. Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
18. The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James Cain
19. The Invisible Man (1897) by H.G. Wells
20. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson