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Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
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As Agatha Christie Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009) gets underway with this latest slice of Golden Age detective fiction, we’re suddenly transfixed by the appearance of a number of “old stalwarts”. Well, perhaps “transfixed” is not quite doing justice to the moment. I confess to being stunned and amazed Joan Collins is still going strong. Born in 1933, she contrives to look younger than Julia McKenzie and Penelope Wilton. For the record, both the book and this script require all three to be approximately the same age, having attended the same school. I’m not sure how she’s managing to preserve her youthfulness but, if Joan Collins could put it in a bottle, she would make millions more than her acting career has so far delivered. This only leaves the problem of her screen presence which is what you might might call idiosyncratic. I suspect she’s always been less an actor and more a personality. Even at the height of her popularity in Dynasty, there’s a magnificently artificial quality about her. In this performance, she’s definitely not in the business of acting “with” Julia McKenzie. They both just happen to be on the screen at the same time. There’s also something distinctly weird about the accent adopted by Penelope Wilton. Not only is it uncertain what she’s supposed to be aiming at, the goalposts keep moving as her voice trembles into a different variation for every scene.
So where are we with this adaptation? In terms of fidelity to the book, we’re fairly accurate with two variations. In the novel, a part of the mansion has been turned over to house delinquent boys, whereas in this adaptation, we see a compound in the grounds for the rehabilitation of adult offenders. The second is a redesign of the group scene when Lewis Serrocold (Brian Cox) and Edgar Lawson (Tom Payne) have their argument — the body of Christian Gulbrandsen being found almost immediately afterwards. On balance, I think this an improvement over the book. What actually works well on the page might not look quite so good on the small screen. Whereas this rather cleverly preserves the spirit of the original while making it visually arresting and spreading the degree of uncertainty about who might have committed the murder. The arrival of Johnny Restarick (Ian Ogilvy) is also pleasing, allowing us to see the outside of the mansion from his perspective in flashback as he approached through the early evening mist.
Julia McKenzie and Joan Collins as “old friends”
For once, keeping the ending the same also works well given this motive for the murders. There’s considerable pathos in seeing this acted out. However the other elements of the ending are definitely not even vaguely realistic. The failed marriage between Gina Elsworth (Emma Griffiths Malin) and Wally Hudd (Elliot Cowan) has been nicely shown. She’s shamelessly flirting with all and sundry while he stares morosely into his morning porridge. Then, miraculously she’s reformed and goes off to produce multiple babies to populate a house on the prairies. It’s wholly incredible. I’m also not sure about the character of Mildred (Sarah Smart). Even allowing for the fact her mother is shown as a complete failure in the parenting stakes, she’s grown up into an embittered religious fanatic, considered somewhat loopy by everyone. To have her reconcile with her mother and essentially become “normal” is stretching credibility. Finally, we come to the core “romance” between the Serrocolds. Given this version of the story, their relationship is supposed to be deeply loving where he would do almost anything for her. Frankly, I think these parts fundamentally miscast or the director is seriously at fault. Penelope Wilton comes across as almost completely self-absorbed with little or no empathy as a parent or wife. After seeing him play an endless sequence of villains, it’s fun to see Brian Cox try to appear somewhat more normal. But this performance fails to show any affection. Although couples who have been married for a few years can lack the more obvious signs of passion, this couple just seems to be sharing occupation of the house and an interest in rehabilitating criminals. They’re more like colleagues than lovers.
The result of all this musing is another failure. I’m still not convinced by Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. She doesn’t feel proactive enough. When Joan Hickson was on the case, you felt a judge and jury had walked on to the screen to weigh the wickedness around her. For all her faults, Geraldine McEwan had a certain self-mockery about her performance, being fairly dotty and not averse to trying to matchmake when there was a young couple to push in the right direction. In this story, Miss Marple is supposed to walk into the household and take command to ensure nothing happens to her lifelong friend. Sadly, there’s absolutely no sign of that at all. So with all the weak performances and a fairly indifferent plot, Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors is showing every sign of continuing the decline of the series into oblivion.
For reviews of other Agatha Christie stories and novels, see:
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004) — the first three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2005) — the second set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2006) — the third set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2007) — the final set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Case of the Missing Will (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Chocolate Box (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Clocks (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hallowe’en Party (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (2011)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Underdog (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Yellow Iris (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009)
Well the first in this new series of Golden Age detective fiction gave us our first view of Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple but she was kept rather in the background. This adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009) keeps the character front and centre, offering us a better chance to evaluate the performance. The experience here is somewhat like watching Doctor Who, a character played by many actors over the years. This was always faintly disconcerting because, as each regeneration came, we got major shifts in age and attitude. Miss Marple, on the other hand, must always be reasonably old although even this was slightly bent out of shape by Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack’d (1980). The perennial problem of how to portray her lies in understanding her methodology. Once people huddle together into villages, they get sucked into the communal life. One of the most consistent characters is the gossip. This person is usually female and she prides herself on being able to ferret out who’s doing what to whom and why just by sitting in small groups and listening. In many communities where privacy is more highly valued, village gossips are rather disliked and, in some cases, feared.
Hence, when it comes to presenting a gossip on the screen as the heroine of a long-running series, the temptation is always to make her more likeable. Yet to defang her is to reduce her capacity for investigation. As drawn by Agatha Christie, this is a woman of intelligence who has observed life. She’s usually full of anecdotes about what the butcher did with his thumb when weighing the meat, and how many others whom she has known engaged in different types of dishonesty. She can be a little fierce sometimes. And herein lies the problem with Julia McKenzie. I think she’s altogether to pallid. Yes, you have the sense she’s intelligent, but there’s a lack of steel in her. This is a more passive Miss Marple, lacking any kind of quirkiness or eccentricity. She’s not even bumbling. The very least she could do is drop her ball of wool while knitting except we’re yet to see her knit. How is she supposed to eavesdrop on people in conversations if she can’t disappear into the background by appearing to concentrate on knit one, pearl one? If she’s supposed to be able to wangle information out of people, she should be more quickly able to blend into a conversation. In the first two episodes, there are too many silences and moments of slight awkwardness as she meets and talks with new people. I’m not convinced this is a good version of Miss Marple. I still prefer Joan Hickson with Margaret Rutherford a close second.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Julia McKenzie making short work of the mystery
As originally written, this is not a Miss Marple mystery. It features a free-standing Luke Fitzwilliam (Benedict Cumberbatch) who’s returned from distant parts of the Empire where he was a police officer. After a casual meeting with a woman on the train, he’s the one who goes to the archetypal village to unmask the killer and fall in love. It’s one of these slightly wishy-washy stories in which mystery and romance go hand-in-hand through a serial killer case in a class-ridden village where there’s a faintly supernatural element in play — the local Lord is into sacrificing hens in pagan rituals. What we are presented with here is not simply a reworking of the story to introduce Miss Marple, but a wholesale revision of the story. This not only removes some characters and introduces new ones, but it also completely changes the motive for the murders — it even changes some of murder methods, e.g. from a hit-and-run car accident to pushing the victim down a long escalator on the London Underground.
I need to be clear on the basis for this review. I’m simply noting that this is nothing like the Christie original but judging the episode as presented on the screen. The first problem is in the number of men on display. If this is supposed to be just after the Second World War, most villages were predominantly female. Local land owners, being mostly Conservative in outlook and patriotic by disposition, had gone off the war. Many had failed to return. There were also not enough children in view. Babies were booming at this time as those men who had either avoided the call to duty or had managed to avoid death set out to repopulate the land. This version has Miss Marple, Luke Fitzwilliam and the local PC Terence Reed (Russell Tovey) combine to investigate. The presence of the PC gives a veneer of official approval for the investigation but, as written, there’s no consistency in the Constable who veers violently between being almost completely dim to being able to attribute a quote to Edmund Burke. As to the rest of the cast, it was pleasing in a good way to see Sylvia Syms and Tim Brooke-Taylor — I always fear old “friends” have died. Shirley Henderson does well as a younger version of Honoria Waynflete. Everyone else lurks in the background or keels over dead with the customary style. I was very surprised at the darkness of the motive for all the murders. It’s certainly not something that Agatha Christie would ever have introduced. I feel those adapting an old book for a modern audience have an obligation to keep motives consistent with the morality of the times shown. Although the biblical disposition of the child was not unreasonable, I’m not convinced the concealment of this set of circumstances would have led to so many deaths. In the original, the murderer was less than sane. The murderer in this version seems to have killed so many out of an excess of caution — something I find less than credible. So, overall, I find Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy disappointing.
For reviews of other Agatha Christie stories and novels, see:
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004) — the first three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2005) — the second set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2006) — the third set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2007) — the final set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Case of the Missing Will (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Chocolate Box (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Clocks (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hallowe’en Party (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (2011)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Underdog (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Yellow Iris (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008)
Perhaps I’m just getting old and so more often find myself out of sympathy with television representations of the times from my youth. Although I failed to arrange being born into a rich family with a large country estate, we were on the periphery of the county set and I observed many people of the type we see on display in these period adaptations. The book on which Marple: A Pocket Full of Rye (2008) is based was written and set in the 1950s and, as the title suggests, was another of these plots recycling nursery rhymes. At this point I need to distinguish between the source material and the most recent adaptation. I read this when it first came out in paperback around 1958 and, like many books by Agatha Christie, the actual characters are fairly irrelevant. They are the standard stereotypes who do what’s necessary to advance the plot. The basis of enjoyment lies in the rather nice construction of the puzzle. As is always the case when the reader is given a clue in the title, the question is whether the author is playing fair or the clue is actually a bluff. If it’s a bluff, whose bluff is it. The author could be setting out to mislead us from the moment we open the book or the murderer could be using the rhyme for a particular purpose. When I sat down to watch this, I confess I could not remember it. Many of the Agatha Christies have blurred together into a kind of generic lump of Golden Age Detective Fiction. Of all the authors who came to prominence in the 1920s and 30s, she proved to be the best at the mystery three-card-trick. You take a limited number of people, shuffle them around and then devise a set of circumstances in which a different person is the murderer for each book. It can even be everyone or the detective or, in one case, the first-person narrator. Everyone gets to play the part on the whim of the Queen of Crime. The result is there’s little memorable about the individual stories. What we tend to remember are the broad brushstrokes of the detectives and their immediate entourage, and occasional solutions which were outstandingly spectacular.
Ralf Little, Julia McKenzie and Matthew Macfadyen looking to investigate
So here we are with another actress drafted in to play Miss Marple (I suppose Geraldine McEwan was just a little too long in the tooth as she approached her 80th birthday). This time, we’re off with Julia McKenzie. For the record, Joan Hickson featured in an adaptation of this novel that was shown in 1985. So those of you with memories like an elephant or a comprehensive set of DVDs can compare interpretations. This strikes me a somewhat bland but, in part, that’s because she shares the detecting spotlight with Inspector Neele (Matthew Macfadyen) and his faintly comic sidekick Sergeant Pickford (Ralf Little). Perhaps if she was allowed the starring role, we might see her performance in a better light.
As to the plot, we start off with the murder of Rex Fortescue (Kenneth Cranham). Have you noticed how often Agatha Christie gets the ball rolling by killing a bullying patriarch? It’s probably terribly Freudian that these guys always deserve to die. They are usually slightly on the upper side of middle class, reasonably wealthy but ultimately convinced the rest of the world contains an inferior species. In this case, he’s somewhat loopy which is not a desirable mental state for a man running an investment bank. He’s been moving out of all the good, safe bonds into new derivatives and other casino style financial products. This has been driving his son Percival (Ben Miles) nuts. The family were watching their wealth go down the toilet but would the old boy listen? So they were rescued when someone poisoned the idiot and left the rye in his pocket. Naturally Miss Marple is not a little upset when her ex-maid is also slaughtered while hanging out the clothes in the garden. That just leaves the queen to die in the parlour and the rhyme is complete.
Rupert Grave as the black sheep of the family
The problem with this adaptation is that the characters are either the servants (the drunk butler and prickly cook) who are easy to spot, or generic wealthy middle class types, often with rather less middle class accents to show their feet of clay. Yes, wealthy people did marry beneath themselves in those days. A fact made embarrassingly obvious in this production by their low class accents and potentially boorish behaviour. And that’s what really depresses me about this adaptation. The class-based drama focuses on the pursuit of money and status. This unhappy shower may have acquired the money but they certainly have not acquired any manners to go with them. This is the noveau riche trying to live the life of the old money, upper class. Percival is the miser son, counting every penny. Lance Fortescue (Rupert Graves) flies in from Paris after his father’s death so he stands out a little as having a little more style. But then the black sheep of the family do tend to be charismatic.
Even though it relies on one person being extraordinarily stupid, I suppose the plot is one of the better ones with the way in which the evidence emerges staying true to the book. I’m going to reserve judgement on Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple. We just don’t see enough of her in this episode. So A Pocket Full of Rye is reasonably entertaining for a show of this type if you can stand being cooped up with this group of rather unpleasant figures for two hours.
For reviews of other Agatha Christie stories and novels, see:
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2004) — the first three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2005) — the second set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2006) — the third set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple (2007) — the final set of three episodes
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Murder is Easy (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: They Do It with Mirrors (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Marple: Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Adventure of the Italian Nobleman (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Case of the Missing Will (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Chocolate Box (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Clocks (2009)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Hallowe’en Party (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express (2010)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Three Act Tragedy (2011)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Underdog (1993)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Yellow Iris (1993)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: Shoscombe Old Place (1991)
More by an accident of arcane knowledge than any superior kind of deductive reasoning power, I knew who had committed the crime within the first ten minutes. I claim no credit. It simply represents a sometimes misspent youth during which I seem to have picked up a vast array of information only useful when teaming up in a pub quiz, or solving crosswords and television crime cases. Alternatively, my Alzheimer’s is kicking in and, even though I’m often not entirely sure what day of the week it is, I’m suddenly able to remember stories that I read more than fifty years ago. That said, the adaptation of Shoscombe Old Place by Gary Hopkins is crisp and to the point (The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Season 1, episode 3). There’s only a little padding and the 50 minutes plus ads passed quite satisfactorily until I was able to pop the champagne along with Mrs Hudson (Rosalie Williams). We’d both used inside information to back the right horse.
Frank Grimes introduces Jude Law before he was famous
So what’s the story? Well, here’s Sir Robert Norberton (Robert Ellis), a trainer with a stable full of potentially great horses at Shoscombe Old Place except, despite all the fertiliser in the stables, not all is roses in the garden. The trainer is up to his eyes in debt and being harassed by his creditors. He needs a win win to avoid financial disaster. If there’s a silver lining in all this, it’s that he’s not the owner of the rather fine hall, the stables or the horses. His sister, Lady Beatrice Falder (Elizabeth Weaver) has a life interest in the all the property with the title then passing over to another relative. To some extent, a personal bankruptcy would not unduly damage his family’s position. Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) gets involved because John Mason (Frank Grimes), a concerned head of stable, hears that Samuel Brewer (James Coyle), one key creditor, has gone missing. When allied to other information, there’s clear evidence suggesting that Sir Robert may have killed Brewer. Apart from this speculation, life at Shoscombe proceeds more or less as normal except for the dismissal of one of the servants, allegedly for stealing, and the banishment of the dog. Lady Beatrice and her maid, Carrie Evans (Denise Black) are routinely seen by the indoor staff and on their daily carriage ride around the estate. We should also note an early screen appearance for Jude Law as Joe Barnes, a wannabe jockey.
Jeremy Brett thinking
So what we have is Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke displaced out of London to Dunham Massey Hall near Altrincham disguised as Shoscombe. Having installed themselves at a local pub, they acquire the banished dog and enjoy scenic walks around the countryside. There are tendencies to the Gothic as a ruined Church is given a “reputation” by the superstitious locals (reinforced by Patrick Lau, the director insisting on candid shots of gargoyles and muffled fiendish laughter from stage left). All of which means Shoscombe Old Place is reasonably entertaining once you look past the showiness of some of the direction.
For reviews of the series, see:
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (1991)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Problem of Thor Bridge (1991)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: Shoscombe Old Place (1991)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Problem of Thor Bridge (1991)
The Problem of Thor Bridge (1991) is a slight story that is spun out to an hour by Granada TV but fails to hold attention. It’s from The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes which, in publication terms, represents the final twelve short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring our famous detective and, in television terms, is Season 1, episode 2. My sympathies are with Jeremy Paul who drew the short straw of adapting this for the screen. The script is actually quite faithfully to the original although it features quite long sequences where figures stride about the landscape looking distraught but, for the most part, not saying anything to each other. I understand the game that must be played to try to fill the screen with interesting action. To that extent, the arrival of the horseless carriage in Baker Street is a masterstroke. Indeed, the appearances of this wonderful machine brightened my day significantly. More to the point, it was just the kind of showy extravagance that a nouveau riche American would make a point of being seen in while abroad in London. It would have been considered tasteless by conventional society, but given him a significant boost among the other arrivistes.
Daniel Massey in confrontational mode
So, if we put the performances of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke to one side, the whole shooting match stands or falls on the characterisation of this jumped-up American by Daniel Massey. In his day, Massey would have been considered one of our leading actors, perhaps surprisingly, being nominated for an Oscar and winning the Golden Globe for his role in Star! I suppose his good looks and natural charm won everyone over — being the godchild of Noel Coward also probably helped. Anyway, what with the success of Dominic West in The Wire, Hugh Laurie in House, and Matthew Rhys in Brothers and Sisters, we’ve grown more used to seeing our British stars making a hit on US TV (except for people like Joely Richardson in Nip/Tuck who fail to move their accents across the Atlantic). Massey’s attempt is one of these magnificent failures. He blusters and stomps his feet, waving his arms around when all else fails. Sadly, none of these physical efforts can distract from the stagey awfulness of the accent. Since his role is pivotal, it leads us down the path to melodrama. Maria Gibson (Celia Gregory) wears her slightly revealing dress with great style and walks around the country house hoping to find a welcoming smile, but she knows in her foreign heart that her husband no longer loves her. He’s in the thralls of that prim-looking Grace Dunbar (Catherine Russell) Ay, caramba! or whatever the Brazilian women spurned say at this point in their lives.
Celia Gregory with a wild foreign look
So then on to the bridge itself and, from the outset, we all know the alleged seductress didn’t do it. Poor Grace is locked away in a cell, but still manages to look fresh and strangely unabashed. To get to the answer, all you have to do is ask a couple of questions based on some simple facts. We start with a matched pair of guns in an easily accessible box in the house. Maria is found shot in the head. There’s no gun beside her. A gun is found in Grace’s wardrobe. The other gun in the pair is missing from the box. If you are in need of inspiration, the CSI episode in Season 5 where a Sherlock Holmes impersonator is shot will supply the answer.
The magnificent car that steals every scene it’s in
Put all this together and The Problem of Thor Bridge (1991) is very poor value. When distilled to its essence, we have a bullying Yank who’s quick to fall in love with a Brazilian beauty and then, with equal suddenness, drops her in favour of the English governess. Even at the best of times, Victorian and Edwardian servants were victimised by despotic landowners and their sons, and this poor English rose is no exception. Quite what she sees in this appalling man is never clarified although, I suppose, she may be thinking she can defend the children. Whatever the reason, she endures jail and then submissively consents to be taken away from it all by this dangerously unreliable man. Not even the great Jeremy Brett can save this melodramatic rubbish from sinking into oblivion.
For reviews of the series, see:
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (1991)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Problem of Thor Bridge (1991)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: Shoscombe Old Place (1991)
Plunder by Mary Anna Evans
book
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against reading legal tracts. Indeed, I’ve just finished a consultancy job involving American insurance law and practice — if someone offers to cross my palm with silver, my mercenary streak kicks in even though I’m officially retired. But I usually balk at reading law for fun. Indeed, by coincidence, I’ve just waded through a courtroom drama full of people spouting law given half the chance which was a less than enjoyable experience. So early on, I realise the outcome of Plunder by Mary Anna Evans (Poisoned Pen Press, 2012) is going to depend on the law of usufruct as practised in Louisiana. Now I used to have some passing familiarity with this concept in Roman law as later applied in France, but Louisiana was always too far off the map for me to bother with. Now, however, all readers of this book have to wrestle with some of the detail of this obscure remnant of Roman law. Those damned French settlers abandoned it in the bit of the south they owned before selling it to the US. If you want to sort out the motive for these murders, some familiarity with the local law of inheritance is a must. I do not exaggerate when I tell you this requires considerable intestinal fortitude. Fortunately, the rest of the book is a more than adequate counterbalance.
When you start reading a book, all the usual prejudices kick in as you begin to explore an author new to you and to understand the characters. The first impression is mixed (ignoring the legal track mentioned above). We’re into the world of archaeology in service of the environment. Our late-blooming Faye Longchamp is using her knowledge to survey the Mississippi delta before any oil arrives from the loss of The Deepwater Horizon. This involves people walking the recorded sites of interest that may be at risk should the oil come into the delta and then onshore. The project is overseen by Faye and Joe Wolf Mantooth, her Native American husband, who relies on his tracker skills to spot the odd piece of potentially interesting stuff sticking out of the ground. But their task is complicated by the presence of Michael, their baby son. Initially, they rely on Dauphine but, when she’s injured, they are short one nanny. I propose to ignore the temptation to discuss whether responsible parents should be traipsing their infant around this area, notorious for its snakes, alligators and other dangerous creatures. Go out into the salt water and there are sharks. Let’s put all this to one side because a murder interrupts their life of commercial enterprise. Yes, you guessed it. In her six previous adventures, Faye Longchamp has demonstrated she enjoys a good murder. She’s got one of these analytical minds that digs down into the morass of facts and pulls out just the right pieces of information to solve the crime — with some help from Joe, of course.
Mary Anna Evans looking like an oracle in a Greek temple
I should say a few words about Joe. He’s one of these strong silent types you would always prefer to have on your side if there should be a fight. In terms of stereotype, there’s a fierce warrior under a calm exterior and, like Tonto, he’s happy to play second fiddle to his wife as the one with the credentials and the earning capacity. Fortunately, the stereotype suits him to her work which, in this instance, is the preservation of the environment and respect for the past and the places important to the Native American ancestors. I’ve already mentioned his ability as a tracker. To my mind, it’s an almost perfect stereotype.
Anyway, the murder is an excuse to meet the victim’s family which includes the sixteen-year-old Amande. She lives on a houseboat with her grandmère Miranda — because this is Louisiana, the dear old stick is a voodoo practitioner and much respected in the local community. This girl is a perfect candidate for nanny. When Miranda is also found floating in the bayou (couldn’t resist including this word even though this part of the Mississippi is not a bayou), and a dispute arises over who should take over parental responsibility, her post as nanny is a lock-in. The list of suspects narrows down to the relatives and others who might have a claim in the estate. Given that Faye is an archaeologist and a number of treasure ships sank or pirates buried their loot in this area, the biggest clue could lie in whatever land is included in the estate. As you will expect, there’s a scuba diver lurking and checking out all the local maps. He’s obviously convinced there’s something to be found — a fact made more likely by the silver coins Amande has already picked up.
So where are we in all this? After a slightly slow start, Plunder turns into a very interesting mystery for Faye Longchamp to solve with a particularly ingenious solution to the archaeological puzzle at the end. Although I’m not complaining, there’s also a shift in the subgenre from amateur detective mystery to thriller as we come into the final furlong. Suffice it to say the child welfare department might have some input after reading this account of Faye’s exploits. Taken altogether, Plunder has plenty of local colour and interestingly venal family members looking for their share in whatever’s going, making this an entertaining read for those who enjoy watching clever people think through a problem to its solution.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
23 Shades of Black by Kenneth Wishnia
One of the perks of reviewing is I get to read the work of many writers I’ve never heard of. Even at my advanced age, it’s actually fun to add new “persons of interest” to the Ten Most Wanted posters on my walls. So imagine my joy in picking up 23 Shades of Black by Kenneth Wishnia (PM Press, 2012). I read the title verso (doesn’t everyone) and discover this presumptuous author has included the words of the Tenth Psalm “Reprinted by permission of God”. This is auspicious and suggests we share the same world view. The introduction by the redoubtable Barbara D’Amato fills in the gaps in my knowledge (ask me about science fiction, fantasy and horror and I’m reasonably encyclopaedic, but American police procedurals are a relatively new territory for me). It seems our author grew tired of rejections and self-published this book in 1997. It was immediately shortlisted for both the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the Anthony Award. Which just goes to show that, sometimes, authors are an excellent judge of the quality of the work they produce and know more than the agents and publishers. Indeed, within ten pages, I’m hooked and sad that I’ve missed out on the four books in the series that have followed this.
So what’s so wonderful about this book? Welcome to the world of Filomena Buscarsela. Like many heroines in police procedurals, she’s the eternal victim in the unrelenting world of aggressive sexual harassment. Just as one example, they send her out on rape patrol to walk the park in the hope she will lure out a predator male. Two police officers are supposedly seconds away, ready to rush in to arrest the perp the moment they hear the attack over the wire she’s carrying. Except all the male officers in this particular part of New York have been betting on whether she will defend herself or be raped. This leads to delays in her rescuers’ arrival. Ah, such are the pranks officers play on each other. For all involved, it’s just one laugh after another.
Kenneth Wishnia and his muse
Mentioning laughs brings me to the tone of the book. You might think from the rape jape that this is a dark book whereas it’s actually “funny”. Yes, yes, I know I’ve been harping on about the hole in my head after the humour lobotomy, but I really did find passages in this book amusing. There’s a world-weary wit about the way our first-person heroine describes the crass awfulness of the world around her. In part, this comes from her background. She’s arrived in the US from Ecuador having grown up under the military juntas. We now find her in the 1980s when President Reagan is the Man in Charge, struggling to overcome discrimination and make it into the ranks of the detectives. Except, as mentioned, everything that can go wrong with this ambition does go wrong. This leaves her with a dilemma. She can either subside with whatever grace she can muster and live a “quiet life” as the butt of everyone’s jokes. Or she can go out of her way to investigate cases on her own and break through the glass ceiling by main force. Fortunately for us, she adopts the latter strategy and we soon see she would make a phenomenal detective. Except, of course, it all goes pear-shaped as the fix goes in to curtail her private investigation before it gets too dangerous for the “men at the top”. Suddenly, there’s an adverse drug test and questions being asked about the amount of alcohol she drinks. All these problems might go away if she would just accept “guidance”.
We have to remember this is a woman whose family died in Ecuador, who grew up seeing far worse corruption. Yet she wavers because, one-by-one, all the people who were supportive seem to lose their enthusiasm. Perhaps the big corporation she thinks is involved really can buy everyone else off. But not our Filomena. She’s going to get to the bottom of this even if it kills her. Which brings me to the ending which is not the usual feel-good effort that comes in the majority of mainstream books. All things considered, it feels pleasingly realistic. As a real-world comparison, Erin Brockovich might have won a settlement from Pacific Gas and Electric Company but, despite a non-related bankruptcy, it continues to trade. Fighting a large corporation as a white knight only rarely slays the corporate dragon and, more often than not, leaves the person in the can crisped when the flames lick around the armour. So it is we leave Filomena somewhat the worse for wear after her encounter with corporate power.
Kudos to PM Press for bringing this back into print. 23 Shades of Black, a reference to a painting she comes across during the course of her investigation, is a wonderful read and I unhesitatingly recommend it to everyone, regardless of their usual genre preferences.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Cloudland by Joseph Olshan
Well here we go with another beautifully written book. The prose is just a delight to read as you’d expect from an author who has won “awards”. The protagonist in this new novel Cloudland by Joseph Olshan (Minotaur Books, 2012) mirrors the author’s own career experiences as a journalist and a teacher of writing in higher education. Except she’s given up the high life and now files copy in a folksy vein. Perhaps a little bit of wish-fulfillment there — except for the involvement in a murder investigation, of course.
So, we’re off into the depths of the rural countryside where everyone knows everyone else, or at least thinks they do. I suppose this is a quintessentially American phenomenon where small groups of people huddle together as self-reliant individuals in a somewhat hostile environment. This part of Vermont is locked in winter for long periods fore and aft of Christmas. Particularly when the snow comes and shuts down the roads, the predominant feelings of loneliness and alienation grow more acute. For those off the beaten track like the three families living along the dirt road forming the titular Cloudland, winter can mean quite long periods cut off from the world until the snow ploughs finish clearing the blacktopped roads. Here lives Catherine Winslow with her two ageing dogs and guard pig. A little further along, we find Anthony Waite, a psychologist whose marriage is in trouble, and Paul Winter, a reasonably famous artist with an adopted son who lives in the nearby village/township. This is the upper class end of the community which encompasses a complete social scale down to one of the most essential roles in a truly rural community: the knacker who hauls the dead animals away and boils them down.
As the snow melts, Catherine finds a body that had been covered by the drifts. She recognises the woman and calls the local police. The investigation links this death to others. More disconcertingly, there may be a connection to a book she owns. As a collector, she has many rare and obscure volumes including a fragment by Wilkie Collins. The facts suggest the killer may have read this Victorian outline, yet that would mean Catherine would probably know the killer. Adding to the complications, a young man with whom she had a passionate affair now contacts her and asks to come back into her life. This faces her with a real emotional problem. She still has feelings the man but, when she was terminating the relationship two years earlier, he attacked her. Having had a cooling-off period of no contact other than a few letters, are there any circumstances in which a woman abused should even want to meet with someone who made a violent attack upon her?
Joseph Olshan barking up the wrong tree
I found the emotional core of the book to be reasonably credible. In a long life, I’ve known one or two women in Catherine’s position and recognise the dilemma. The responses of her daughter and local friends also feel right. But I have two problems with the plot as it develops. The first is her reaction when she’s actually invited to be involved in the investigation. Having been a journalist on a national newspaper, you would expect her to be a lot more proactive. Why, you might ask yourself, would an investigative journalist make a good amateur detective? The answer is a journalist has to be scrupulously careful because, any mistake can lead to complete loss of reputation and a big civil action for defamation. Except, instead of bringing her undoubted expertise to bear, she’s quite passive, preferring to leave Anthony Waite to make the running. Even when those with experience of criminal matters point out she may be a target, there’s no real sign of panic. She’s very slow to leave the isolated house to stay with her daughter. It’s convenient for the author but not completely in character unless we want to put it down to the damage to her self-confidence caused by the attack on her. Then we come to my own personal experience as a life-long book collector. I have never ever loaned one of my more rare first editions to anyone. The mere thought someone might not treat it with reverence or, worse, “forget” to return it to me is enough of a deterrent. Yet we’re supposed to believe that Catherine not only freely loaned this book out but cannot remember to whom to gave the book. Remember, we’re talking about one of five copies in North America. No self-respecting collector would let anyone touch this book unsupervised. I understand why the plot has to be this way but, to me, it makes absolutely no sense.
If you’re prepared to look past the problems, Cloudland is a fascinating study of an abused woman struggling to deal with a new situation that seems to be forcing her to look with suspicion at the people in her local community. Having had trust issues in the past, the evolving situation becomes increasingly challenging. On balance, I’m prepared to say the combination of a superior prose style and a reasonable murder investigation makes for a very good outcome. Had Joseph Olshan come up with a plot that offered a slightly better tie between the murder(s) and the intended victim(s), we would have been looking at another award winner.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge by Cara Black
When you set any book in an environment unfamiliar to readers, authors can panic and insert large descriptive passages and infodumps, hoping to give all-comers a reasonable insight into the context for the action. For these purposes, there’s no difference between genres. A romance can be set in any country, a historical novel in any century, a science fiction novel on any planet, and so on. The question is how to strike a balance between the need to move the story forward and the need for readers to understand the difference between the world they are familiar with and the world in which the book is set. Most readers in the West might find the setting in, say, Kolkata (Calcutta) or Bangkok as alien as one set on a hypothetical Mars. Equally, in these days of globalised markets, a book written by an American for the American market can turn up on the shelves of bookshops in Huddersfield and Kuala Lumpur. The experience for a British or Malaysian reader is to be plunged into an alien world where the culture is radically different and not explained. Not unnaturally, the American author expects the American readers to know and understand how life works in their home country. Yet, American authors also realise a significant portion of their readers are somewhat parochial and have little or no knowledge of life outside America. So, when American authors write about life in Paris, they tend to oversupply details of the physical and cultural environment. British readers have been jaunting across the Channel for centuries and have a more detailed understanding of the French and their capital city. Malaysians would still be lost.
From all this, you will deduce that Murder at the Lanterne Rouge by Cara Black (Soho Press, 2012) starts slowly as the author tries valiantly to bring American readers up-to-speed on all things Gallic. I was fascinated to see what an American author believes, (a) it’s important for her readers to know about life in Paris, and (b) by implication, how little she believes they actually know. This is the kind of book people will call atmospheric because it spends a considerable amount of time describing the air the characters breathe. This is not to unfairly criticise any of those involved. Sometimes the best way to educate people is through entertainment. Americans taking the time to absorb the detail contained in this book will emerge more knowledgeable. All praise to President Obama who’s obviously recruiting authors into a revamped Head Start plan to enhance adult education levels — note to publisher: perhaps a world map showing where France is would complete the package.
Cara Black comfortable in the boulevard café milieu
So here I make an apology. There have been rather a lot of books featuring Aimée Leduc and her business partner René Friant, but this is my first. As a stand-alone, it works well although, from many of the events, it’s obvious I would have enjoyed it more if I had understood how everyone fits together. As a series character, Aimée Leduc is both a throw-back and a modern woman. In the period just before World War II, there were number of French heroines like Simone Darthel who enjoyed the life of the rich while solving crimes and fighting for justice. Two features are relevant. All the details of their wardrobes were offered up as advice to their female readers. Second, they were aspirational figures showing that modern women could have better lives as independent individuals, holding down exciting jobs and proving they were equal, if not superior to, the men who desired them as they moved casually through the cafés and restaurants in their designer clothes (in search of criminals, of course). In more modern times, we have figures like Nikita as initially developed by Luc Besson and then transformed into a television character where, in a noirish way, our female secret agent/assassin fights terrorism and confronts a brutal world while trying to retain some sense of her own morality.
I mention this because although Aimée Leduc works as a private investigator specialising in IT security, she’s very much wrapped up in the word of spies and their handlers. That forces her to deal with both the local Parisienne police (courtesy of her French father) and the acronym-infested world of espionage (thanks to her American mother). Although she doesn’t quite have Nikita-level physical combat skills, she’s more than able to look after herself and, even though she picks up damage, is tough enough to keep going until she’s seen off the threat. As to the story itself, we’re quickly into the scandal-ridden world of the illegal immigrants from China and the sweatshops that provide stock to both legitimate and counterfeit fashion outlets in Europe. For such a subculture to survive, there has to be corruption both in the police and the relevant government departments charged with tax collection and the enforcement of labour laws. Cara Black gives us a whistle-stop tour and then dives into the more rarified world of the Guild system, life in the grandes écoles, life as it was in the 14th Century, life in the world of high technology. In other words, when it comes to research, she’s in part rerunning the Dan Brown trope of great truth buried in history — all it takes is a skilled detective with academic skills to dig it out.
So there we have it. I thought the opening third was overburdened with facts about life in Paris but, once the plot really gets started, Murder at the Lanterne Rouge becomes one of the best of the thrillerish PI novels of the year so far. There’s genuine interest and excitement as the focus slowly shifts away from the somewhat clichéd Chinatown subculture thread and becomes a more intense race to unravel the high technology conspiracy. Those of you who are unfamiliar with life in Paris may well find all the facts offer plenty of local colour and enhance your general understanding of life outside your city. This would make the book double-plus good for you. Coming new to Cara Black, there’s sufficient here for me to want to read more. As and when I have the time, I’ll start browsing through one or two of the eleven previous Aimée Leduc titles to see if they are as good.
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
Herring on the Nile by L C Tyler
As a reviewer, I try to read without any prejudices so one of the more intriguing aspects of the task comes after I finish a book and pick up the press pack sent with it. I say “pack” in the more general sense of the word because, in most cases, it’s only a single sheet of paper. But the norm is for there to be a brief synopsis and then talking points, focusing the reviewer’s attention on the features the marketers wish me to highlight. These are usually hyperbolic. For example, you may read that, “Jack Sunderland’s latest blockbuster will leave readers gasping for breath as the excitement rolls over them like a juggernaut”, or “Mary Dunstable’s work has a luminous and transcendent quality that makes her a major British voice”. Not that blurbs actually have to mean anything, of course. All they are supposed to do is hit a minimum number of key words that will produce a high google ranking if they appear in a website review.
So you can imagine, after finishing Herring on the Nile by L C Tyler (Felony & Mayhem Press, 2012), I was more than a little disconcerted to read the press pack headline, “Killingly funny!” I’ve made no secret of the fact my sense of humour quotient is usually zero. All the more interesting, therefore, to find the magic page listing previous books by this author and their nominations for “funniest book of the year” awards. It seems our author has a reputation for producing books leaving his readers gasping desperately for breath after laughing uncontrollably for several hours. For the record, this book was shortlisted for the GOLDSBORO LAST LAUGH AWARD 2011 so, yet again, I find myself cut off from mainstream reaction to a written source, although I draw minimal comfort from the fact it did not win (I capitalised the award title so you would be more impressed). Perhaps significantly, I was like the dog reading in the night and managed nothing approximating even hollow laughter.
I do confess to being nicely appreciative of the attacks on Dan Brown. I’m always fascinated to see what the libel laws currently allow us critics to say about another’s work and avoid civil action for damages. On this occasion, it continues to be acceptable to suggest this New York Times Bestseller Listed author can’t write for toffee. And the running “joke” based on our poor hero’s need to complete interview forms for various local newspapers did provide some interesting insights into his state of mind and immediate predicament. But looking back over the text, I’m stunned to discover this is supposed to be a comic novel.
L C Tyler (Len to his friends) doing his Tommy Cooper impression
So if Herring on the Nile is not going to leave you rolling in the aisles demanding more, is it worth reading? The answer is that, as a detective novel, it’s a rather clever puzzle and, although I think it’s fairly obvious whodunnit (although not why), I read through to the end in a single sitting with considerable curiosity to see how it all turned out. Our hero is Ethelred Tressider. He’s a third-rate author who, when the creditors become too importunate to ignore, churns out another crime novel (he has two pseudonyms) or a romance (using a third female pseudonym to blend into the landscape). The literary agent who has the thankless task of selling these books and their translation rights is Elsie Thirkettle. For reasons I will not bore you with, our joined-at-the-financial-hip couple (that’s not a romantic joining, you understand) end up on a mechanically-challenged paddle steamer making unsteady progress on the Nile (no-one seems very sure whether it’s moving up or down the river except, at one point when the engines fail, it definitely drifts out of control downstream). On board are the usual assortment of eccentric types most often associated with Agatha Christie novels. Needless to say none of them are what they appear to be although some of them are who they say they are and others may actually be better detectives than our heroic couple given that at least one other person works out whodunnit it before the penny drops for Ethelred. Frankly, I neither know nor particularly care whether Ethelred then tells Elsie. Not that any of the people astute or lucky enough to identify the killer(s) are at risk. The Egyptian and British authorities are convinced they know exactly what happened and would never reopen the case. The killer(s) has/have no reason to silence the amateur detectives. Indeed, doing so would alert the authorities to the idea their assessment of guilt was wrong.
So now your decision: this is a rerunning of the Agatha Christie jaunt on the Nile and it does its best to drag herrings of various hues across the trail to muddy the waters. You may be lucky and find it hilarious, but don’t bank on it. If you are going to read it, expect a clever puzzle to solve, some mild wit and fairly engaging characters who are initially intent on a holiday, but then find themselves in a genuinely dangerous situation. Why, you wonder, did I neglect to mention real danger until this dying gasp? Well, if L C Tyler is trying to write a comic novel, there can’t be anything even vaguely frightening. Even the Empress of Blandings could read this without losing her equanimity (assuming Monica Simmons was on hand to turn the pages, of course).
A copy of this book was sent to me for review.
