Books to the Ceiling

I just finished listening to the latest in the No.1 Ladies’ Detective series, The Miracle at Speedy Motors. As always, with Lisette Lecat’s subtle and sensitive reading, it was pure delight. Alexander McCall Smith’s gentle humor is mixed with a sadness just as gentle. As he charts the lives of his characters, some feckless, some reserved to the point of timidity, the author’s love of Africa in general and Botswana in particular shines through.

But meanwhile, it’s business as usual for Mma Ramotswe, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Makutsi, Mr. Polopetsi, and the rest of the cast of characters at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors (which also houses the office of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency). Mma Ramotswe receives mysterious letters containing veiled - and not so veiled - threats. A woman in search of her family comes to the agency and asks for help. Mma Makutsi and her fiance Phuti Radiphuti, proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, make a fateful purchase together: a spacious bed, with a spectacular headboard shaped like a large heart and upholstered in bright red velvet.

And most poignantly, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni goes in search of a cure for the paralysis of Motholeli, the foster daughter that he and Mma Ramotswe are raising in their modest home on Zebra Drive.

One of my favorite scenes in the book occurs as a heavy rain is tapering off:

“Flying ants. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the air was filling with flying ants, rising up from their secret burrows in the rain-softened ground, gaining altitude on beating wings, dipping down again. It was a familiar sight following the rains, one of those sights that took one back to childhood no matter what age one was, and brought to mind memories of chasing these ants, grabbing them from the air, and then eating them, for their peanut-butter taste and crunchiness.

Toward the end of this luminous novel, Mma Ramotswe speaks of ordinary miracles that occur every day. And I couldn’t help thinking of the fact that I was called to fill in at the last minute at my alma mater, the Central Library, Wednesday night - and who should appear but a patron I hadn’t seen a long time who just happens to share my love of British police procedurals!

Okay, maybe not a miracle - but certainly a fortuitous meeting. We fans of that crime fiction category constitute a somewhat small group. For most American readers, familiarity with this subgenre begins and ends with Elizabeth George. Ah, but there is so much more!

Doing readers’ advisory for this patron is a real challenge, as she’s well up on most of the luminaries in the field: Reginald Hill, Ruth Rendell, Peter Robinson, et. al. She hadn’t read John Harvey for a while, so I urged to try his latest, as well as Peter Lovesey’s. And I recommended wholeheartedly The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill.* Finally, I hope she tunes into this blog, because for some inexplicable reason, I forgot to tell her about Peter Turnbull! For me, the great challenge of readers’ advisory has always been the need to summon up titles and authors from out of thin air. I keep a running list, and Turnbull is most certainly on it - plus I just wrote a review of Once a Biker **- but still, he didn’t come to mind while the patron was standing in front of me. Only later, when I was back home, did I remember..ah, well, I believe the expression for that is “l’esprit d’escalier” - the perfect riposte you think of as you’re climbing the stairs and heading off to bed.

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I find the simple goodness of Precious Ramotswe, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and Motholeli deeply moving. And Alexander McCall Smith’s uncanny ability to depict that goodness in a way that is neither cloying nor sentimental is - well, a miracle.

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* I was rather amused to read the following in a review of The Various Haunts of Men, the novel that precedes The Pure in Heart in the Simon Serraiiler series:

“I confess that I had not paid any attention to [Susan Hill] because of her seemingly plain name, which did not cause me to sit up and take notice. Now that I’ve read her, I realize that her name belies her literary complexity.

Well said! And what a refreshingly candid admission from George Easter, the reviewer and the editor/publisher of Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.

** Since I posted the review of Once a Biker, Martin Edwards has comtributed a thoughful comment. One of the things that has really impressed me in meeting with British writers of crime fiction is their tremendous generosity toward one another.

Once a Biker is the sixteenth entry in Peter Turnbull’s series of procedurals featuring Chief Inspector George Hennessey and Detective Sergeant Somerled Yellich. This outing begins with a cold case: a disappearance from years past that turns out to have been a murder.

The novel opens with 45-year old Tony Wells unburdening himself to social worker Gillian Stoneman. Wells used to run with a motorcycle gang called the Dungeon Masters. It has been two decades since the gang’s leader ordered the murder of one of its members, Terry North, and his girlfriend. The girlfriend’s body had been found shortly after the crime was committed; not so with Terry North. Now, dying of cancer, Tony Wells feels the need to reveal a secret: where Terry North is concerned, he quite literally knows where the body is buried. A subsequent search in a place called Foxfoot Wood bears out Wells’s revelation.

Hennessey and Yellich have been led to the victim but not to the perpetrator(s). And thus begins an investigation that will take them, along with junior officers Thompson Ventnor and Reginald Webster, deep into the history and the heart of the Dungeon Masters.

Now, if you had told me that I would be fascinated to learn the mores and folkways of a motorcycle gang, I would have laughed in a suitably deprecating manner. But it is these revelations, rather than the actual homicide investigation, that kept me riveted to Once A Biker. Turnbull goes deeper than the surface bravado - and the rather shocking degradation of female members - to explore the odd combination of hubris, vulnerability, and unwritten yet binding rules that accounts for the tight cohesion of a gang like the Dungeon Masters.

Peter Turnbull’s novels have some unique features that I always enjoy. For instance, chapter headings are reminiscent of Victorian novels - or even 18th century novels like those of Henry Fielding. Here’s the heading for Chapter Three: “Tuesday ,18 June, 12.15 hours - Wednesday, 19 June, 01.35 hours in which a bedroom yields dark secrets and both Ventnor and Webster are at home to the gentle reader.” Later, in Chapter Five “…useful information is obtained from an apostate and George Hennessey is at home to the gracious reader.” In chapters such as these, we are afforded a tantalizing glimpse into the private lives of series regulars. Surprises often lurk there.

For a novel about a motorcycle gang, Once a Biker contains some curiously formal, almost antiquated dialog. The diction in these passages adds poignancy to a situation which often involves the delivery of bad news. Here, Hennessey and Yellich are talking to Garry Wells, Tony’s embittered father. Hennessey assures him that for several years prior to his death, Tony had been living as a law-abiding citizen. Garry responds:

“Well, thank you for saying that but…well…he was a very selfish person. He wanted everything and he wanted it yesterday. He was our son, he died young in life of a cruel illness, but he was no saint. But your kind words are welcome, sir. Thank you.

This series benefits greatly from its setting in the ancient northern city of York. We accompany Hennessey as he walks along the medieval walls - something I myself was thrilled to do three years ago. At one point, the Chief Inspector gazes up in wonder at York’s incredible Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. ( I can’t imagine living in such close proximity to this sublime edifice. I think I would feel blessed every minute of my life! )

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Peter Turnbull treads lightly - very lightly - on the internet. From the extemely brief biography on Tangled Web UK, I learned that Turnbull was a social worker for some years in Glasgow before returning to his native Yorkshire. From the Gale Database Literature Resource Center we learn, among other things, that this author was born in 1950 and that his father was an engineer and his mother, a nurse. Turnbull earned degrees at various institutions of higher learning in England and Wales. He has worked as a steelworker and a crematorium assistant in Sheffield and in London; in addition, he has been a social worker in Brooklyn, New York. ( I must admit that last bit really made me want to know more about him!)

There’s a sad little twist at the end of Once a Biker that caught me completely by surprise. I’ll say no more about it at present…

In a quote cited in Literature Resource Center, Emily Melton of Booklist Magazine observes that “This low-key Scottish author writes refreshingly intelligent books that are an absorbing blend of gritty murder mystery, human-interest story, psychological profile, and wry social commentary.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I always look forward to the new Peter Lovesey because I know I am virtually guaranteed to enjoy an engrossing story, intriguing characters, lots of atmosphere, and exceptionally fine writing. The Headhunters delivers on all those expectations, and then some.

Often in good series fiction, the reader encounters at least one variation on a theme in each series entry. In this novel, we get to know Jo Stevens and her friends Gemma, Rick, and Jake well before the police come into the story. Jo is an earnest, decent young woman who is somewhat confused as to what shape her life is going to assume. One thing she does know: she is attracted to the taciturn, somewhat mysterious Jake Kernow. Jake works in a nature preserve located near the Selsey beach. Not long after their first meeting, Jo takes a walk on the beach hoping to run into him, but instead, she makes a terrible discovery: a woman’s body floating in the shadow of a breakwater.

This gruesome find precipitates Jo’s first encounter with the Chichester police. It’s an offputting experience; Jo finds herself on the defensive, although she has done nothing except act the part of a public-spirited citizen. She is then asked to come to the station in order to observe a group of men in an identification parade (Britspeak for line-up). She agrees, with great reluctance, to this request. Sure enough, her part in this proceeding upsets her even more - and with good reason.

What’s interesting here is that my sympathies were enlisted so strongly on Jo’s behalf that I found myself sharing her fear and resentment of the police, with their aggressive interrogations and frightening insinuations. To me, they didn’t seem like the heroes of the story - at least, not at first.

But eventually, as they showed themselves capable of both subtlety and compassion, Henrietta “Hen” Mallin and her team grew on me. Mallin first appeared in The House Sitter, where she supported an investigation headed up by Lovesey’s series protagonist Peter Diamond. Then, in The Circle, their roles were reversed. Peter Diamond does not appear at all in The Headhunters.

In yet another change, the series venue has moved from Bath to Chichester, a cathedral city located in West Sussex, in the South of England. This is an area rich in both history and legend. Early in their acquaintance, as they walk along the beach, Jake tells Jo something about those legends:

“He stretched out his arm and made a sweeping movement in the direction of the sea. ‘Somewhere out there is a deer park’

She laughed. ‘Oh, yes?’

But he was serious. ‘In the time of Henry VIII, it was hunting country. Fisherman still call that stretch of sea “‘the park.’”

‘Hard to imagine.’

‘And still further out is a cathedral, they say.’”

Jo is understandably incredulous, especially about this latter tale, but Jake is dead serious. Later he tells her that over the years, people claim to have heard church bells at low tide!

( I’ve expended a good deal of effort trying to obtain further information about the legend of the sunken cathedral off Selsey Bill in West Sussex. Information was elusive; I felt as though I were going around in circles. The Wikipedia entry on Selsey has a short section entitled “Early history, prior to inundation.” Also I kept encountering references to the lost city of Ys, which was supposedly built on the coast of Brittany and then swallowed up by the sea. Here’s how that legend goes.

All the while I was doing this research I kept hearing in my head the haunting strains of “La Cathedrale Engloutie” by one of my favorite composers, Claude Debussy. This work was inspired by the legend of the city of Ys.

Click here for the sound file. )

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I love it when writers of fiction reference the history and lore that’s connected to the setting of their work. In Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, the village of Ewelme in South Oxfordshire appears briefly in the novel’s narrative; the author throws in, almost as a careless aside, that the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Ewelme is where the poet Geoffrey Chaucer’s granddaughter Alice lies buried. One feels instantly thrown back to a time several centuries distant.

[Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Ewelme]

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As more killings occur, the plot of The Headhunters becomes increasingly convoluted; at the same time, the sense of urgency is greatly heightened. But the murderer’s identity is only part of what makes this novel suspenseful. One of the problems Jo Stevens has with the local police is that they persist in their belief that the culprit is Jake Kernow. Jake is an interesting character, a shy introvert whose passion for the natural world could not be more genuine. Jo’s unshakeable faith in his goodness is the lodestar of this novel. And yet, as I read, I became increasingly anxious: is Jo in fact right about Jake? Is she willing to stake her life on her conviction? This is the point of tension that kept me glued to the pages of this novel right up to its harrowing conclusion.

Ever since Martin Edwards started Do You Write Under Your Own Name in October of last year, it has been one of my favorite destinations in the blogosphere. If you love crime fiction, this is a site to die for! But even if that genre is not one you favor, you can still enjoy Martin’s thoughtful observations of the cultural scene in the UK. Of course, the writing is wonderful - Martin himself writes crime fiction. If you have yet to read the three titles (so far) in his series set in England’s gorgeous Lake District, then you should rush out and get them ASAP!

Here are some of the delights you can expect to encounter on Martin’s blog:

1. Unjustly forgotten writers from the past. This entry on Margot Bennett will make you want to read her as soon as possible. Good luck trying, though; the books are out of print, at least in the U.S., and our library does not carry them. Ah, well, abebooks or interlibary loan - here I come!

2. Praise for his contemporaries. I really enjoyed this post on Simon Brett. Brett entertained us wonderfully at Claridge’s in London during our Smithsonian Mystery Tour in 2006. I enjoy his Charles Parris series; I especially recommend Murder Unprompted, which, besides being hugely entertaining, offers intriguing insights into the theater scene in England.

3. Appreciation for those writers who have recently left us. Here’s his memorial for Edward D. Hoch. Although Hoch had been writing for decades and was named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2001, he’s never been that well known. This, I think, his because he wrote primarily short stories rather than novels. Now crime fiction lovers have simply GOT to realize that many mystery short stories are absolute jewels and eminently worthy of your attention. (It’s so much fun to get into finger-wagging nanny mode once in a while!) Writing this has reminded me of all the terrific stories I read while I was teaching a class on mystery fiction at the local community college. (Now I think about it, I kind of miss doing that…) I’ve written about Best American Mystery Stories of the Century and The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps; in addition, I posted Mystery short stories: classics, with links to the full text of those famous tales. Here are some other anthologies that I used in that class:

The World’s Finest Mystery & Crime Stories: Second Annual Collection, edited by Ed Gorman. I particularly liked “Spinning” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, about an obese young woman’s struggle to lose weight. A big part of her effort involves attending a “spinning (cycling) class. She describes how when she first joins the group, member stared at her grotesquely overweight body with ill-concealed disgust. At one point in her struggle, “She wanted a piece of chocolate cake so badly that it hurt….Comfort food. She wanted comfort food because she needed comforting.” Do I empathize with this poor girl or what?!

“Spinning” is the first story in this generous volume. Other outstanding entries are “Let’s Get Lost” by Lawrence Block, a true master of the form; and “The Country of the Blind” by Doug Allyn, which will appeal to fans of medieval history.

Writers of short stories can be remarkably resourceful when evoking past eras and bringing them to life in the space of relatively few pages. Anthologist Mike Ashley has been collecting these tales for a number of years in the “Mammoth”series published by Carroll & Graf. I’m especially partial to The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, published in 1993. The book is divided into four sections: The Ancient World, The Middle Ages, Regency and Gaslight, and Holmes and Beyond. Some of the standouts in this collection:

The Ancient World: “The High King’s Sword” by Peter Tremayne, and “He Came with the Rain” by Robert Hans Van Gulik, who, in addition to writing detective fiction, was an artist, translator, and celebrated Sinologist. Van Gulik’s tales of Judge Dee, an actual historical personage who was a magistrate in eighth century China, are simply astonishing. (For a great listening experience, get the recordings made by Frank Muller.)

[Judge Dee, as rendered in pen and ink by Robert van Gulik]

The Middle Ages: “The Price of Light” by Ellis Peters, of fond memory. (This is an early Brother Cadfael story.)

[Ellis Peters, with Sir Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael]

Regency and Gaslight: “Murder Lock’d In” by Lillian de la Torre, whose tales, now almost impossible to find, recreate the life and times of the famed eighteenth century lexicographer Samuel Johnson; “The Doomdorf Mystery” by Melville Davisson Post; and one of my all time favorites, “The Gentleman from Paris” by the endlessly cunning John Dickson Carr.

Finally, there’s The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories edited by Patricia Craig, who also contributes an insightful and enlightening introduction. The first story in this collection, “The Stir Outside the Cafe Royal,” was written around the turn of the twentieth century and concerns a female police officer who goes under cover in order to facilitate the arrest of a criminal for whom she harbors a personal animus. Clarence Rook, the (rather obscure) author, is described in Gale’s Contemporary Authors Online as “…a shadowy figure whose writing rested uneasily between fiction and journalism.”

Many splendid stories fill out this fine anthology. Arthur Morrison’s “The case of Laker, Absconded” depicts in careful detail the way in routine banking transactions were carried out in the early part of the last century. (Yes, you have to trust me here - this really is interesting!) Other stories of note: “The Oracle of the Dog” a lovely, poignant tale by G.K. Chesterton, featuring one of the earliest of the clerical detectives, Father Brown; Agatha Christie’s sensational courtroom drama “The Witness for the Prosecution;” and “Thornapple,” one of the most chilling tales ever written by that past master of the dreaded - and dreadful - outcome, Ruth Rendell.

Finally, to return to Edward D. Hoch: “Anything in the Dark,” which appears in Crime Through Time (a collection edited by Miriam Grace Monfredo and Sharan Newman) is a miniature tour de force in which the author contrives to solve two mysteries in the space of just a few pages: the disappearance of British envoy Benjamin Bathurst in Perleberg, a small city near Berlin, in 1809, and the death of Meriwether Lewis in the same year in Tennessee.

Okay - end of digression! Martin Edwards’s blog, on which you’ll also find news about crime shows on television and reflections on trends in crime fiction. And here’s a video clip of an interview with Martin about The Arsenic Labyrinth.

I’d like to thank Lourdes of Lost in Books for pointing me to this video, and also for the many terrific news items, reviews, and recommendations regularly found on her blog. And I do love the quote from Louisa May Alcott: “She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” Ah, so that’s my problem…

A goodly number of police procedurals are slated for publication in the next few months, with quite a few coming from some of our favorite writers of crime fiction.

Here’s some of what he can look forward to. (I’ve provided dates for U.S. publication, as near as I can determine them. Also, I have linked to reviews previously posted of other books by these authors.)

Deborah Crombie: Where Memories Lie (Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid). June 24

Martin Edwards: Waterloo Sunset (Harry Devlin). April 15

Frances Fyfield: Blood from a Stone (This actually looks more like a legal thriller, and I’m not sure if any of Fyfield’s regular series characters make an appearance.) Published in the UK on March 6; I’m still looking for a U.S. pub. date.

Elizabeth George: Careless in Red (Havers and Lynley). May 6

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles: Game Over (Bill Slider - Hurray!!). June 19

John Harvey: Cold In Hand (Lynn Kellogg and Charlie Resnick - welcome back, Charlie!). April 22

Reginald Hill: A Cure for All Diseases (Dalziel and Pascoe, one of my all-time favorite detecting duos!) October 7

P.D. James: The Private Patient (Adam Dalgliesh, praise be!) To be published in the UK in September, but we should be getting it not too long afterward. Here’s the scoop from the Eurocrime blog.

Ruth Rendell: Not in the Flesh (Yes - it’s a Wexford - O frabjous day!). June 10

Peter Robinson: All the Colors of Darkness (Alan Banks, and it’s a good thing, too - I’m dying to know the latest on his love life!) Coming out in the UK in August and in Canada in September.

Some of the sites that helped me pull this list together are Fantastic Fiction, Stop! You’re Killing Me, Eurocrime, and of course Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. And I have a friend who forwards choice posts to me from the venerable DorothyL discussion list. Finally, keep in mind that often the most helpful place to go for series information is to the author’s own website. While I’m on that subject, I highly recommend an essay posted on Elizabeth George Online. In it, George deals in a forthright and eloquent manner with the traumatic - and traumatizing - event that was central to the plot of the novel With No One As Witness.

In his essay “The Guilty Vicarage,” W.H. Auden asserts the following with regard to the ideal setting for a murder mystery: “Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder…The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet.”

(Auden begins this essay, which he wrote in 1946, with a “confession,” to wit: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol.” Oh, Wystan Hugh, How do I love thee; let me count the ways…but alas, I’ll have to count them in another blog post!)

The shocking, even revolting crime scene is a frequent feature in the work of P.D. James. In an interview that appeared in Salon Magazine several years ago, Baroness James cites the Auden essay and adds that she relies on the horror of the murder scene to bring out “…the contrast between the awfulness of the deed and perhaps the beauty of what’s surrounding it.”

Friend of the Devil begins with a murder scene that I won’t soon forget:

“She might have been staring out to sea, at the blurred line where the gray water meets the gray sky. The same salt wind that rushed the waves to shore lifted a lock of her dry hair and let it fall against her cheek. But she felt nothing; she just sat there, her expressionless face pale and puffy, clouded black eyes wide open.” Soon we discover more about the woman who sits motionless at the edge of the cliff. As the novel proceeds, however, we find ourselves further from the truth instead of closer to it. DI Annie Cabot, temporarily seconded to Eastern Area Headquarters, is an indefatigable investigator, but this crime tests her resources as never before. And it doesn’t help that her personal life is in crisis. For one thing, she’s skating close to the edge where drinking is concerned; incipient alcoholism is partly to blame for a shocking lapse of judgment that she seems to be paying for over and over again.

Annie’s opposite number in Western Area is Chief Inspector Alan Banks. Banks and Annie used to be lovers. The affair has cooled, but they remain friends, at least, on the surface. Meanwhile, Banks is pursuing a murder inquiry that has him equally baffled. An attractive college student has been murdered, and pressure is on the police to find the perpetrator. Banks is able to rule out many suspects until the pool becomes very narrow, but it’s a grueling slog and takes a lot out of him. Fortunately, he can always be consoled and strengthened by his love of music. One of the endearing things about this series, and this character in particular, is that Robinson is always very specific about which music Banks selects in any given situation. He understands how powerfully music can summon a state of mind, evoke vivid recollections - or console the distraught listener.

Eastern Area, Annie Cabot temporary berth, covers Yorkshire’s picturesque coastal area, including Robin Hood’s Bay, and the towns of Scarborough and Whitby. We were in Whitby this fall, and it was a deeply moving experience. The ruins of Whitby Abbey stand starkly upon a headland looking out to sea. This is the place where, in 664 AD, the Synod of Whitby convened. Its members resolved to align their Christian practice with Rome rather than with the Irish church. This crucial decision altered the course of Christianity in England and in so doing, profoundly affected the history of the island nation.

[ The town of Whitby, with the Abbey ruins looming above in the distance]

[ Hard by the Abbey is St. Mary's church, with its curious box pews]

I’ve had the pleasure of following the Alan Banks series from its beginning, starting with 1987 publication of Gallows View. Since that time, Peter Robinson has gone from strength strength. His plotting ever more cunning, his characters subtly delineated, his dialog natural and unforced. Friend of the Devil is the seventeenth book in the series and possibly the best yet.

John Harvey is one of Great Britain’s most accomplished writers of crime fiction. His earlier series featured Nottingham’s jazz-loving cop Charlie Resnick and gained him many fans among those of us who are addicted to British police procedurals. In 1998, Harvey closed that series out and began another one featuring the recently retired Frank Elder and set in Cornwall. Gone to Ground featured neither of the above two protagonist; instead, we’re introduced to Detective Will Grayson and DS Helen Walker, who are based in Cambridgeshire.

As the novel opens, Will and Helen have been called to the scene of a murder. Stephen Bryan, a teacher of film studies at a local university (not the fabled Cambridge) has been brutally knifed in his own home. It’s the sort of crime where you’d expect to find plenty of forensic evidence, but the investigative team is disappointed in that regard. When it is revealed that Bryan was gay, the question arises: Was this a hate crime?

I loved the way this investigation proceeded, with Will and Helen being diverted by numerous red herrings. Will is married with two young children. His wife Lorraine is chomping at the bit; she feels a desperate need to return to work in the outside world, a move that Will wants her to delay a bit longer.. Meanwhile, Helen is fighting to stay clear of Andrew, a former lover who keeps reappearing in her life. He’s bad news and she knows it, but at the same time she is irresistibly drawn to him. The suspense in this novel derives as much from the difficulties in the officers’ private lives as it does from the crimes they’re working to solve. But personal troubles do not overwhelm the narrative, and soap opera elements are kept to a minimum.

Gone to Ground features numerous intriguing, complex minor characters: Stephen’s embittered discarded lover Mark McKusick, construction industry titan Howard Prince and his slightly daffy, hyperactive actress daughter Natalie, and Stephen Bryan’s grief-stricken and grimly determined sister Lesley. Harvey writes great dialog; it serves to bring all these characters to vivid life. There’s quite a bit of interesting film lore thrown in as well.

My only reservation about the novel concerns the crime’s ultimate solution. I was somewhat bewildered by it, but maybe that was just me. Also, I don’t understand Harvey’s choice of title. I still recommend Gone to Ground: the plot was absorbing, the characters empathetic, and the writing first rate. These are all qualities I’ve come to expect from John Harvey.

Oh - and here’s a late-breaking bulletin: Harvey’s website informs us that Cold in Hand, the first novel to “strongly feature Charlie Resnick in 10 years,” has recently been published in the UK. According to Amazon, it is due out here in April. You heard it here first, folks!

The Lost Luggage Porter by Andrew Martin is a most unusual work of crime fiction; or at least, it seems so to me. It is 1906, and Jim Stringer has just taken up his position as railway detective in York, in the north of England. Jim had formerly been employed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, but an accident, for which he was unfailrly blamed, caused him to be terminated. Now, he is back, albeit in a different capacity, and he feels out of his depth. He goes nowhere without his copy of the Railway Police Manual, studying it at every opportunity.

When he reports to Chief Inspector Saul Weatherill, he is astonished to find himself ordered to go undercover immediately. Rumors are being bruited about to the effect that a major heist of railway property is being planned. Jim’s assignment: infiltrate the gang of would-be thieves before they can put the plan into action. Being newly arrived in York, and not yet a well known face in the area, he is, the Chief, believes, ideal for the job. The Railway Police Manual has little to offer in the way of advice regarding this extremely dangerous undertaking; Chief Inspector Weatherill offers even less. Jim Stringer is left to fly by the seat of his pants.

He meets up almost at once with the gang in question. Getting in proves to be relatively easy. But getting out? It’s hard to see how - unless you consider sudden death an exit strategy! But Jim cherishes life, as well he should: his wife Lydia, a feisty suffragist, will soon give birth to their first child.

I have high requirements for historical fiction. I want to feel transported to whatever time and place the author seeks to re-create. The dialogue in particular has to convince me. It must be as free as possible of ticks and anachronisms. Andrew Martin must have read many books set in turn-of-the -century Britain; I say this because the dialogue he writes and the slang he employs ring absolutely true. For example, rather than saying, “‘It’s going to rain,” one of the characters observes, “‘It’s coming on to rain.” To my ear, that locution seems right on the mark.

As Jim Stringer gets in deeper with the gang of thugs, he must improvise more and more. He is faced with excruciating moral dilemmas - in order to carry out his impersonation in a convincing manner, he finds himself committing, or at the very least sanctioning, acts he would ordinarily abhor. At every new turn, he is faced with the question: do I turn them in now, or stay with them in order to make sure they get caught? As it turns out, he stays with them far longer than he had ever intended to, because there is always some reason why, at any given moment, he cannot break free. He becomes a veritable Hamlet of the underworld.

The Lost Luggage Porter clocks in at just under 300 pages, but it is not a fast read. There is suspense, but of an attenuated sort. The writing is excellent; the characters are indelibly sketched, especially the Dickensian bad guys. At the heart of this novel is the sometimes clueless but always courageous Jim Stringer, whose love of railways and everything connected to them probably mirrors the author’s own.

Highly recommended.

[The Lost Luggage Porter is the third Jim Stringer novel by Andrew Martin. It follows The Necropolis Railway and The Blackpool Highflyer.]

I’m speechless. (Not me - not possible!) Okay - very nearly speechless. I do wish I had some fresh superlatives. Because I just finished a novel that is nothing short of superb.

Susan Hill’s procedural begins atypically: Simon Serrailler is being ferried around Venice by his friend Ernesto. Serailler carries with him an artist’s portfolio; he is searching for subjects to sketch. The scene has a slightly unworldly, timeless quality. I came to this novel under the misapprehension that the action took place in the 19th cenury. I was quickly disabused of this notion when Simon was referred to as Detective Chief Inspector.

Simon’s quest for artistic inspiration is interrupted when he is summoned back home to England by his cold, imperious father. His severely disabled sister Martha is critically ill with pneumonia. Simon’s love for Martha is deep and unfeigned; without hesitation, he rushes back to her.

Martha recovers and is returned to life in a care home. We also meet another of Simon’s sisters: Cat, a physician who is expecting her third child. Cat’s husband Chris Deerbon is also a doctor, as are both of Simon’s parents. In fact, part of the problem between Simon and his father is that the elder Serrailler has never approved of his son’s choice of profession. (There is a fourth sibling, Ivo, who lives in Australia - deliberately far, one suspects, from the madding crowd of his family.)

In addition to being a novel of crime, The Pure in Heart is very much a family story. The Serraillers, wealthy and refined, are a kind of medical aristocracy. Simon himself strikes me as a cross between Thomas Lynley and Adam Dalgliesh: he can be remote and moody at one moment, kind and generous at another. Both Dalgliesh and Simon Serrailer have esthetic gifts that they nurture as a kind of counterweight to their work in law enforcement. Dalgliesh is a published poet; Simon Serrailler is an artist.

After Martha’s recovery, Simon goes back to work without using the rest of his leave. It is just as well he decides to do this: a nine-year-old boy, David Angus, has gone missing. In a small village like Lafferton, this is an unusual, not to mention extremely upsetting event. But the feelings of bystanders are as nothing compared to the effect their son’s disappearance has on Marilyn and Alan Angus and their other child, Lucy.

Susan Hill takes us deep into the Hell that this family’s existence becomes. For some readers, it may be too deep. Very little physical violence is depicted in The Pure in Heart, but the damage to hearts and minds is described in excruciating, unsparing detail. I have not empathized so strongly with the pain of characters in a novel since I read Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories.

The first entry in this series is called The Various Haunts of Men. I may go back and read it, although I rather wish I had read it first.

I’m not giving anything away when I say that at the conclusion of The Pure in Heart, several crucial plot points are left unresolved. This was one of the many things I loved about this deeply intelligent, beautifully written book.

[Here is the entry for Susan Hill on the British Council's Contemporary Writers in the UK. This is a really useful site which, among other things, gives you author contact information.]

From time to time I start to feel panicky about the British police procedural. The cause of the panic is my fear that I’ll run out of them! I’m actually talking about a particular type of procedural - almost a subgenre of this subgenre! These books are short, hovering around 200 pages. The plots are relatively uncomplicated; teamwork is emphasized. (The buccaneering loner is accordingly de-emphasized.) The writing is good - sometimes exceptionally so. We may get some insight into the personal lives of the more prominent officers, but this is not dwelt upon at any length; there isn’t the space in which to do so. They are set primarily, though not exclusively, in the small towns and villages scattered throughout the English countryside. This does not necessarily make them cozies.

Now the subject of cozies is a whole other kettle of fish, one I don’t want to flail around in at the moment. (Can one flail around in a kettle - of fish, or of anything else?) I think of cozies as being relatively low on violence; at least, the author endeavors to keep the violence offstage and allude to it in general terms, omitting the lurid particulars. The books I’m talking about can feature some rather shocking, explicitly described crime scenes. (My current favorite writer of the short, tight procedural is Peter Turnbull.)

Oh well - enough generalities; let’s proceed to the specifics - or, to one specific: The Edge by Clare Curzon. Ned Barton is the farm manager for the Hoads, who live in the property’s elegant manor house. One night, as a storm rages outside, Ned and his wife are awakened by the banging of the stable door. When Ned goes to investigate, he finds Jennifer Hoad on the stable floor surrounded by bales of hay. She has been savagely murdered.

There’s worse to come. Superintendent Mike Yeadings and his team from the Thames Valley Police (shades of Morse!) arrive at the manor house and find three more bodies. One of this group of victims is Jennifer’s husband Frederick. Two schoolgirls are also found dead in their beds. Further investigation reveals that they are the Hoads’ daughter Angela and her friend Monica. Their son Daniel is nowhere to be found.

Thus the scene is set for the case to go forward - only at the beginning, it pretty much goes nowhere, due to the paucity of crime scene evidence and the lack of witnesses. Jennifer Hoad’s mother Anna Plumley, a retired R.A.F. officer arrives but is initially not very helpful. It seems she has been somewhat estranged from the family due to persistent friction between herself and her daughter. Then Daniel turns up, already in plenty of trouble, aside from the carnage at the manor house. His grandmother enfolds him in a fiercely protective embrace, although she is by no means blind to his flaws - flaws which are glaringly obvious right from the outset.

The relationship between Anna Plumley and her grandson is the chief element that lifts this novel above the ordinary run of procedurals. That, and the extraordinary grace of Curzon’s prose. Oh - and she spins a riveting story. I’ve mentioned in previous crime fiction reviews that I’m sometimes “in it” for the setting, the characters, etc., even if I couldn’t quite get my mind around the intricacies of the plot. Well, not only was I able to follow this novel’s plot -I was totally absorbed by it, puzzled by it - and stunned by the ending. So, a big thumbs up for The Edge by Clare Curzon!

["Clare Curzon" is one of several pseudonyms used by Marie Buchanan. Born in Hastings in 1922, she describes herself as 'A typical British mongrel: British, Welsh, and Viking ancestry.' " Author information from Literature Resource Center, a Gale database]