Strike Two

I tried another Ngaio Marsh mystery, The Nursing-Home Murder.

Roderick Alleyn decides, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, to recreate the crime.

At the recreation, a supporting character--entirely by accident--nearly knocks over a piece of equipment.

This reveals the killer's identity and method.

Also, the killer's motive makes absolutely no sense. He's a fanatical eugenicist, but the victim neither has, nor has any prospect of having, children. (highlight to view)

Concerning Dame Ngaio Marsh

 Recently a close friend forwarded this review to me:

Every Roderick Alleyn Novel (Fiction, Ngaio Marsh, 1934-1982) Roderick Alleyn, the Shakespeare-quoting, handsome, aristocratic Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard, spans the gap between Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and P.D. James’ Adam Dalgleish. Not as inventive (in plot or dialogue) as Sayers, and not as deep (in character and psychology) as James, Marsh still easily beats Christie for human stories, and her puzzles are reliably honest legerdemain, the best kind. The early novels have a Sayers-Wodehouse sort of air, and she never approaches the psychological starkness of late Allingham, but at her best (Surfeit of Lampreys, Scales of Justice, and the near folk-horror of Dead Water, all Recommended) she combines knowing lightness, humanity, and cruelty better than most mystery writers. Many Alleyn novels have a theatrical setting, combining two hothouse genres with general success. –KH

Now, I am well known as a swooning devotee of the traditional whodunit mystery, featuring puzzles and clues and stuff. There are very few practitioners of the art nowadays, although I would be remiss not to cite the inimitable Steve Hockensmith and the always-excellent Aaron and Charlotte Elkins. (Although, come to think of it, I myself have imitated Hockensmith, so maybe he's only mostly inimitable.) I'm always searching for new authors in the classic mold. So nothing would please me more, at least within the confines of the literary universe, than to find that I'd unjustly overlooked Ngaio Marsh.

The thing is, I've never thought much of her. Her writing style is good, but her plotting always struck me as pedestrian at best. On the other hand, my wife likes her, and brought a dozen Marshes to our library. So I resolved to try again. I picked out one of the books I hadn't read, Death in Ecstasy.

Here's what happens:

1. A woman is poisoned while attending a peculiar religious service.
   
2. Ordinary police work reveals that she had a serious quarrel with someone, regarding the theft of some bonds which she had given to the sect. 
3. It's not clear with whom she quarreled, but it's presumed that that's who killed her.
   
4. One of the suspects actually overheard the quarrel, but he won't tell the police who the other party was.
5. Except that, a couple chapters later, he does tell them who it was, and that's your murderer.
6. The end.

There are a lot of melodramatic trappings, but that's it. That's the mystery.

Ngaio Marsh fans, please tell me: what am I missing?

Book Review: The Line Upon a Wind

The Line Upon a Wind: The Great War at Sea, 1793-1815
Noel Mostert
History

When you start reading a book that's 800 pages long, you kind of know what you're in for. You know, for example, that it's not going to be a general overview for the novice. You also know that the quality of the writing will make a difference: 800 pages of good writing can be a challenge,  but 800 pages of dull writing is torture.

By this measure, The Line Upon a Wind qualifies as "good enough." I'm a non-specialist, and I finished it. I didn't rush through it in big gulps, but I didn't stall out either.

Having said that, you need at least a Horatio Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin level of engagement before you start TLUaW. There's a certain amount of nautical terminology, for instance, that isn't always explained. There are a lot of characters. There are descriptions of battles, but not enough maps of same, and those that there are aren't terribly good.

Moreover, you need a certain level of tolerance for the Great Man School of History. In Noel Mostert's case, the Great Man is Horatio Nelson. When Nelson is on-stage, the book leaps; when he isn't, it tends to plod. Since the book has ten years left in it when Nelson dies, the wind (as it were) rather goes out of its sails in the last third. There are a couple of chapters, intriguing in themselves, that nonetheless read like outtakes from other books (e.g., the material on discipline in the R.N.). Nor does the whole thing add up to a cohesive geopolitical synthesis.

I'd describe the result, then, as useful background reading. If you want to get a lot of information, newspaper-style, The Line Upon a Wind delivers. It won't kill you to skip it, though.

Book Review: The Story of Greece and Rome

The Story of Greece and Rome
Tony Spawforth
History

It's an expansive title, but it's not a very thick book. You might suspect, then, that The Story of Greece and Rome would be a general overview without much depth. And you would be correct. It's not the Cliff Notes version, but it's necessarily a synopsis.

This would be a good book for someone who didn't know much of the history in question. I know a fair amount, so I'm not the ideal reader. I enjoyed it, though, for what that's worth. The Story of Greece and Rome does what it sets out to do, and does it pretty well. Tony Spawforth is good at drawing parallels and contrasts between his two titular civilizations. He's also good at providing understandable summaries of complex questions, and scrupulous about indicating where academics disagree. The writing is both clear and learned--I suppose it would be too much to expect that it would be witty as well, but it's at least never dull.

So: a perfectly decent read for the knowledgeable, and a valuable introduction for the curious. The Story of Greece and Rome doesn't quite achieve must-read status, but it's a pretty decent achievement.

Book Review: The Mysterious Commission

The Mysterious Commission
Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart)
Mystery

There were quite a few respectable mid-century Englishpersons who moonlighted as detective novelists. "Nicholas Blake", for example, was actually Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate (and father of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis). To this tribe belongs "Michael Innes": J.I.M. Stewart, academic literary critic and student of J. R. R. Tolkien at Oxford.

The "Innes" novels, from early to late--and this one is quite late--all have a certain flavor to them. It's not easy to describe. Irony is a big part of it, but it's an understated irony. Imagination, sometimes run wild, is there too. I'm tempted to call the writing "urbane", but that sounds a little too mannered. It's a little bit gently snobbish, quite witty, and even  . . . gulp . . . cozy. That latter word has been co-opted latterly by a mystery subgenre that would mostly be better described as "cutesy", which is a pity, because otherwise it would fit the Innes model well.

That aside, The Mysterious Commission is an enjoyable little book. The protagonist is a portrait painter, rather than Innes's usual Sir John Appleby, and the artistic side of the story is nicely handled. There's some good puzzlement and some funny bits. The air goes out a little bit in the last chapter, for the simple reason that the baddies could have accomplished their goals in a much more straightforward fashion. Getting there, however, is at least half the fun. The writing is usually good enough to carry an Innes novel even when the premise is a little lacking in credibility. This one isn't a classic, not even a minor classic, but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless.

Book Review: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes
Loren Estleman
Mystery

While this is written in an acceptably Watsonian style, it adds absolutely nothing to Stevenson's story. It's nothing more than a rewrite of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Holmes and Watson stuck into it. Every single development in the original is here. "Watson's" introduction promises that this book reveals hidden and shocking depths behind the published version . . . which is exactly what it fails to do! There's one trivial addendum near the end. Unless you've somehow managed to avoid knowing the Big Reveal in Dr. J. and Mr. H.--in which case, I want to know how--you've already read this book. 

Loren Estleman was a noted Sherlockian. He should have known better.

Book Review: The Best American Science and Nature Writing

The Best American Science and Nature Writing (2018)
Sam Kean (editor)
Science

I had read a number of these pieces before, particularly in The Atlantic. Is there no great but little-known writing out there that this series could promote? The book opens with some editorial political rants, which I largely agree with but which could have been dropped. (That said, the piece on Scott Pruitt's dysfunctional EPA is predictably infuriating.)

The articles themselves are, not shockingly, good. I can't say that any of them stood out particularly, although Ross Anderson's "Welcome to Pleistocene Park" is jaw-dropping in its scope.

Book Review: Death at Breakfast

Death at Breakfast
John Rhodes
Mystery

Death at Breakfast is very much a matter of taste (har har!). To put it another way, it's a mixed bag. How much you'll like it will depend mostly on what kind of mystery reader you are.

Specifically, Death at Breakfast is a Golden-Age mystery of a fairly standard sort. A puzzle is given, characters move around asking questions, and a solution is revealed. If you're looking for depth of characterization, this is not the book for you; the detective character isn't even described, and the other characters are absolutely flat. A few hints at a love element are not an asset.

Nor, to be honest, is the puzzle especially startling. A reader well-versed in this subgenre will recognize a good many familiar elements. Applying meta-textual thinking will tell you who the killer is, too.

What remains is a reasonably enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. There are some ingenious clues, reliable pacing, and a clear explanation. I like this sort of thing; ergo, in spite of its limitations, I rather liked the book. I won't go out of my way to search down more John Rhodes, but I'll read him if I get the chance.

Book Review: The Roman Hat Mystery

The Roman Hat Mystery
Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee)
Mystery

The first Ellery Queen mystery; comments here apply equally. The titular hat is rather cleverly resolved, though.

Book Review: Under the Knife

Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations
Arnold van de Laar
Medicine

Even allowing that Under the Knife is a translation, and even allowing that it's really a collection of essays, this is a book that's unskillfully written and composed. Information is repeated. Chapters come in random order. The prose style is serviceable, no more.

Most irritatingly, the individual chapters themselves are disorganized. The chapter on anesthesia veers off, on the next-to-last-page, into Ignaz Semmelweis The transitioning sentence: "Anaesthesia was a revolution in surgery; the next step was the introduction of hygiene." This diversion lasts for precisely one long paragraph before returning, with no explanation or connection, to chlofoform.

Or take the discussion of vascular surgery, which includes this:

In the twentieth century, the crossectomy was combined with "stripping", a method by which the GSV can be removed subcutaneously completely and in one go. This was--and remained until around 2005--the standard procedure for treating varicose veins, the whole operation taking no more than fifteen minutes per leg. Theodor Billroth, one of the greatest names in the whole history of surgery, was vehemently opposed to varicose vein operations, without bothering to explain why.

What? Where did Billroth come into this? What does his distaste for varicose vein surgery in general have to do with the topic of this paragraph, which is the crossectomy? Nor does Billroth resurface later in the chapter; the next paragraph is about the successor procedure.

These solecisms (and many more) give Under the Knife a random, disconnected quality. You never quite know where a chapter is going, regardless of its title or opening paragraph. The anecdotes about the titular operations are quite interesting, in fact, but van de Laar never figures out how to follow up on them. Look, people, if you're going to write nonfiction, you need to understand that there are rules for doing it--just as there are rules in fiction--and that you violate them at your peril.

---

Good biomedical essayists include Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell) and, more tangentially, Loren Eisley and Stephen Jay Gould. For one excellent take on how to write nonfiction well, see Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd's Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.

Book Review: The Devil's Dinner

The Devil's Dinner: A Gastronomic and Cultural History of Chili Peppers
Stuart Walton
History, food

What irritated me most about The Devil's Dinner was the organization. The chapters are arranged without any real narrative flow, information is sometimes repeated, and the whole thing comes off as something of a muddle. Nor did I think that the research that went into the book was especially deep or complete; Walton seems to have relied heavily on a small number of interviews and a lot of second-hand reportage.

That said, there's some interesting stuff in here. The "burning" sensation of chili, for example, really does activate some of the same neural pathways as actual burning. Also, there's a real thing out there called Male Idiot Theory, which has been used to explain chili-eating contests. I'll buy it.

Rather surprisingly, there's no recipe section.

Overall verdict: mildly interesting. But with a title and topic like this, "mild" shouldn't be the descriptor! I'd pay good money to see John McPhee do for the chili pepper what he did for Oranges, for example.

Book Review: Early Riser

Early Riser
Jasper Fforde
Science fiction

Early Riser is totally unlike anything else, including other books by Jasper Fforde, in such a way that it could only have been written by Jasper Fforde. There's what we might dub a Ffordean Ffamily Resemblance to the author's other books, in that Early Riser is (a) deeply strange, (b) wildly creative, (c) funny, and (d) intriguing. But its particular strangenesses are not the strangenesses of other Ffordiana, except in the broadest sense.

More precisely, Fforde's specialty is in creating worlds that mirror ours in some way, but veer wildly off-kilter in others. (I refer the interested reader to his "Nursery Crimes" series, for example; The Big Over Easy is an--ahem--hard-boiled mystery about who killed Humpty Dumpty.) In Early Riser, the difference is that winters are killingly harsh and that, in consequence, humans hibernate. Around this premise Fforde builds up a decidedly peculiar yet compelling milieu. I won't try to describe it, except to note that it has zombies, English aristocrats gone feral (but of course in a very civilized fashion, dear chap), and monsters that may not exist. 

Granted, it doesn't really make much sense. Those who are looking for a consistent picture of what the world might actually be like will be disappointed; various brands, signifiers, history, and features of our own world appear largely unchanged. And the ultimate plot--a sort of thriller--is not, once it's been divested of its more outré trappings, particularly hard to anticipate. To indulge in a very very slight spoiler by way of example, the Sinister Corporate Oligarchy [highlight to reveal] is something of a Fforde standby.

I didn't think this was Fforde's very best work, but I still liked it a lot. Whether you, Dear Reader, will like it, I can hardly speculate. If you like Jasper Fforde, you're on solid ground. If you've never tried him, there are worse places to start; Early Riser is a standalone. Just don't blame me if you end up sitting there, dazed, trying to glue your brain back together.

Book Review: Finder

Finder
Suzanne Palmer
Science fiction

Look, I can't even pretend to be objective about this one. Suzanne is a friend of mine. Moreover, I had the privilege of reading and commenting on an earlier draft of Finder. So I'll just say that this is a fun, fast-paced, engaging space opera with:

• A cool setting
• Excellent worldbuilding
• Great, fast pacing
• Space War!
• An appealing reluctant-hero protagonist
• An eminently hateable villain
• Aliens
• Really weird aliens
• Offbeat humor (we are talking, after all, about the author of the short story "Zombie Cabana Boy")
• Meatcubes

No, I'm not going to explain the last one. Read the book.

Book Review: The Dutch Shoe Mystery

The Dutch Shoe Mystery
Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee)
Mystery

All the early Ellery Queen books--those with titles following the The Nationality Object Mystery--are much of a muchness. The clues are placed fairly. The deductions are clever, if occasionally wafer-thin. The characterization is perfunctory. The dialogue is dated. And the detective, Ellery Queen himself, is insufferable.

Yes, insufferable. Dannay and Lee, as the intro to this volume points out, were imitating Philo Vance, whom Raymond Chandler called "the most asinine character in detective fiction". (Or, as Ogden Nash put it, "Philo Vance/Needs a kick in the pance.") Ellery Queen is less a character than a collection of mannerisms. What character he does have consists mainly of supercilious tics and pretentious allusions.

Having said that, The Dutch Shoe Mystery is a workable puzzle. If you can stomach Ellery Queen (by regarding him as a plot device, is the way I did it), it's a decent enough read for those who like this sort of thing.

---

In justice, I should point out that:

• Ellery Queen the character got a lot better over time.
• "Ellery Queen" the authors were true giants of the 20th-century mystery scene; nobody in the U.S. did more for the genre.

Book Review: The Franchise Affair

The Franchise Affair
Josephine Tey
Mystery

[WARNING: Contrary to my usual practice, this review contains spoilers.]

Josephine Tey isn't as widely known as some other Golden-Age mystery writers, but her reputation among the cognoscenti is very high. The Daughter of Time and Brat Farrar and Miss Pym Disposes are all considered classics--and rightly so.

The Franchise Affair, regrettably, is nowhere near that quality. At best, it's aged poorly. Tey's virtues as a writer--characterization, in particular--are present, but they're eclipsed by a pervasive and quite nasty snobbery.

The story is a rather simple one. Robert Blair, a middle-aged lawyer with a settled life and no great passion, is called to assist one Marion Sharpe, who's been accused of kidnapping and beating a teenager named Betty Kane. In the process of finding out the truth, Blair accidentally falls in love with Marion, to his own mild confusion (this, by the way, is by far the best aspect of the book).

This being a mystery, it should surprise nobody that the heroine is innocent. What's rather disgusting is how Tey displays her class prejudices. Blair believes Marion at once because, basically, she's part of his social class--and according to Tey he's right to do so. In Tey's world, Our Sort of People are simply better than the common folk (who are all right as long as they Know Their Place). Our Sort of People can make pronouncements to the effect that you can always tell a criminal by the set of his eyes, or indeed that you can tell someone's character by the color of their eyes, and of course they're correct, because Our Sort of People just know these things. Old Colonel Whittaker pronounces Betty Kane a liar because she reminds him of this lance-corporal (not an officer, obviously!) he knew in India who was a Rank Bad Hat. Robert Blair knows that a certain witness is a liar because of, I kid you not, "the vulgar perfection of her teeth." Blair, indeed, expresses a repellent desire not merely to prove his client innocent, but to actually make Betty Kane suffer--because, I suppose, she's No Better Than She Should Be. It's all down to Breeding, you see, combined with mollycoddling the Criminal Elements among the lower classes. 

Frankly, by the middle of the book I was positively rooting for Marion Sharpe to be found guilty and sent to prison. Of course, that doesn't happen, nor is there any real suspense that it might happen (because Marion Sharp is Our Sort of People, while Betty Kane is ex hypothesi a Nasty Piece of Work). I could maybe forgive the unpleasant attitudes if the plot were a real corker, but in fact Robert Blair does absolutely nothing effective, there are no surprises or twists, and the conclusive evidence is delivered out of the blue by a random hotel owner who happened to see Betty Kane's picture in the newspaper.

Now, class prejudice in older fiction (and non-fiction) is hardly news. This particular iteration expresses the anxiety of the British upper-middle classes at losing of their privileges after World War II. That fear is perhaps the difference between forgivable and not. I'm strongly reminded of the frenzy of certain insecure males about the #MeToo movement, who are convinced that Conniving Women will be coming out of the woodwork to Threaten Their Masculinity with malicious and unfounded accusations. That's Tey's perspective the lower classes. 

By comparison, the snobbery found in Christie and (especially) Sayers is positively benign. Sayers certainly maintains the distinction between Our Sort of People and the rest, but the rest aren't considered to be inherently vicious and threatening and Other; indeed, when she's not being comic, she allows them their own kind of dignity, as with the Thodays in The Nine Tailors or the professional dancer Antoine in Have His Carcase.

Not recommended.

Book Review: The World of the Shining Prince

The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan
Ivan Morris
History, Sociology

An extraordinarily complete and encompassing view of something odd and beautiful. Heian-period Japan--c. AD 1000--developed a court society that was, in some ways, unique. For the tiny aristocratic elite, what counted was aesthetics (and lineage, but that's not the unique part). Not the warrior virtues, not competence, not money, not power, but beauty and culture were the currency. The nominal government didn't govern. The police and the army were largely ineffectual. Nobles spent their days in composing poems for one another, judging perfumes, conducting polygamous affairs (according to ritualized patterns), and honing their appreciation of the transitory nature of life. I find it hard to imagine that such a society could have survived long except on an island.

Ivan Morris's prose isn't brilliant, but it's serviceable. He does an amazing job bringing the Heian court to life in all of its details; you can open to any random page and find something worth knowing. Page 137: "One of the most important and active offices in the Ministry of Central Affairs was the Bureau of Divination". Page 80: "Emperor Ichijo's pet cat was awarded the theoretical privilege of wearing the head-dress (koburi) reserved for members of the Fifth Rank and above." Page 235: "The official concubine may be chosen in various ways." Morris is also pretty good at pointing out parallels from more familiar Western examples, as well as pointing out where the parallels are misleading or nonexistent.

I read The World of the Shining Prince because I was going to see an exhibition on The Tale of Genji (he's the Shining Prince, for those of you keeping score at home). It didn't make my must-recommend list, but for anyone trying to understand Heian Japan it's indispensable.

Book Review: For the Sake of the Game

For the Sake of the Game: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon
Laurie R. King, Leslie S. Klinger (editors)
Mystery

Meh.

I wanted to make that the whole review. I would be remiss, however, if I didn't also point out that several of these stories appear to be dross that the authors had lying around, with a few Sherlock Holmes references hastily stuffed in after the fact.

Oh, and it's been done (ahem) better.

Other than that: meh.

Book Review: A Revolution in Color

A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley
Biography
Jane Kamensky

Maybe it's the title. I wanted A Revolution in Color to do something, well, revolutionary--or, at least, revelatory. Something about Copley's painting, perhaps, comparable to the outstanding Eye of the Beholder. Or something about his life, or his times, or politics, or art, or . . . something about something, anyway.

Instead, A Revolution in Color is a basic standard biography. If Copley had kept a diary, and Kamensky had written a book based on it, this is more or less what you'd get. Date, event, painting, reaction, marriage, interaction, repeat. It's mildly interesting to read about Revolutionary-era Boston through a comparatively conservative lens--although I think Kamensky overstates the latter--but that doesn't particularly require, or shed light on, Copley's art.

Every so often it looks like Kamensky is trying to establish a theme around African-Americans (and African-Britons). She makes repeated references to black people's experiences, their presence in Copley's life, their presentation in art, and so forth. To the extent that this rescues the black experience from enforced anonymity, that's great. But in the context of A Revolution in Color, none of it adds up to anything. Kamensky never sustains the subject, nor does she bring to it a coherent story of what it meant to Copley. Yes, he would have known black people. Yes, he sometimes depicted them. Yes, they were unjustly enslaved and erased from history. And . . . ?

Also, Kamensky's writing is not flawless. Late in the book she shifts repeatedly between the past tense and the presence, to no very good effect. She also needs to learn the use of "would" rather than "will" to indicate that an event is in the reader's past but in the future of the moment she's describing. (Example: "In 1905 Einstein published a paper on the photoelectric effect; he would win the Nobel Prize for it in 1922.")

This isn't to say A Revolution in Color is valueless. It's an OK resource for learning about Copley and about his artistic milieu. As anything more than that, it doesn't live up to the title.

Book Review: Death in Captivity

Death in Captivity
Michael Gilbert
Mystery, adventure

This is something of a minor gem. It's both a murder mystery and a prison-camp escape adventure, and both sides are treated quite well. The setting is reminiscent of the classics The Great Escape and Von Ryan's Express. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone seeking a dose of literary greatness, but any aficionado of classic mystery should give it a whirl. 

This is another entry in the British Library Crime Classics series, by the way, which--although not all of the books have aged well--is an invaluable and highly laudable endeavor.

---

If you haven't read Von Ryan's Express, go do it now. (There's also a movie version, which is somewhat better-known but not nearly as good.)

Book Review: Bibliomysteries, Volume 2

Bibliomysteries, Volume Two: Stories of Crime in the World of Books and Bookstores
Otto Penzler (editor)
Mystery

It'd take a concerted effort to get me to actively dislike a collection such as this one. Thankfully, Bibliomysteries is pretty good--much better than the usual mixed bag of minor stories by major writers, unsold shorts by minor writers, and whatnot. There's only one real stinker (by a writer whom I once advised on Amazon to switch to writing romances; nothing has changed since then). Of the rest:

• "Mystery, Inc.", a slightly predictable but very effective Poe-esque offering from Joyce Carol Oates, is probably the best. 
• Thomas Perry’s "The Book of the Lion" is an enjoyable take on a familiar setup. 
• Stephen Hunter's "Citadel" is not very believable, but the pacing is excellent and the characters nicely cinematic.

The range of sub-genres is very impressive and the writing standard surprisingly high. Recommended for book-loving mystery fans.