O Baltimore! Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman
I had fun reading this novel, mainly due to all the references to sixties era Baltimore, and especially to its Jewish population. Several Yiddish expressions appear in the text: shidduch (matchmaking – see Fiddler on the Roof) and shanda (a shame or a scandal) are examples. Mention is made of Chizuk Amuno Congregation, which in the time frame of the novel was getting ready to move out of the city to a new building in Baltimore County. The Gilbert branch of my family have been members of this congregation for many years.
Here’s the building:
The distinctive shape of this edifice has been likened to that of a certain marine mammal “(very like a whale,” as Hamlet would have said). This makes me think of my Uncle Hal, of blessed memory, who frequently referred to Chizuk Amuno “a whale of a schul.” (‘Schul’ or ‘shul’ denotes a synagogue, or any Jewish place of worship. Yiddish is written using the Hebrew alphabet. For more on the language, click here.)
Numerous other Baltimore streets and place names appear in this novel. One of the more curious street names is Auchentoroly Terrace. According to the Baltimore Sun:
The word derives from an old estate, Auchentorlie, that once stood nearby. The name has a Scottish origin and refers to a flower similar to heather.
There are two Baltimore places that figure importantly in this narrative: the lake in Druid Hill Park and Cylburn Arboretum. They are directly involved in the two fatalities that are crucial to The Lady in the Lake.
The William Wallace monument in Druid Hill Park [Click to enlarge]
Cylburn Arboretum [Click to enlarge]
(To read an article about the actual crimes that inform Lady in the Lake, click here.)
With regard to the plots of her novels, Lippman insists on the difference between ‘based on’ as opposed to ‘inspired by.’ She clarifies the distinction in this video:
In Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman weaves an intriguing tale. Early on, Madeline Schwartz, the main character who’s in search of gainful employment, becomes a newspaper reporter. This is a world that Lippman knows well and she portrays it in a convincing and entertaining manner. However, I have to say that the way in which she’s chosen to structure her narrative made for a challenging reading experience. In particular, in the earlier sections, there’s a frequent switching out of first person narrators that, at least for this reader, seriously impeded the flow of the story. Some of these narrators were of only tangential importance to the tale being told. Why did we have to hear from them? I got impatient with this technique, and was relieved that as I turned the pages, these interruptions became less frequent and the narrative became more tightly focused.
At one point, Madeline – pretty much always called ‘Maddie’ – inveigles her way into the morgue in order to see the body of one of the victims. It is, predictably, a harrowing experience.
Nature was vicious. When Marilyn Monroe had died four years ago, people had said she was undone by her age, her fading looks, that she wanted to leave a beautiful corpse. No one leaves a beautiful corpse.
I had a strange and startling experience myself while reading this novel. At one point, in the course of her independent investigation, Maddie visits a medium with a bad cold. She thinks to herself, ‘Madame Claire has a cold’ and is immediately pleased at her ability to come with this allusion to T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” At the same time, she’s frustrated because she cannot come up with the name of the clairvoyant in Eliot’s poem.
I have not sat down and read all the way through that poem in a very long time. But as soon as I read the above passage, I whispered softly, ‘Madame Sosotris? No, Madame Sosostris.’ I quickly verified this via google. The second guess was exactly right. I had no idea that this obscure bit of knowledge resided still in my memory, from all those years – decades- ago, when I took a graduate school seminar in the works of T.S. Eliot at Georgetown University, taught precisely and perceptively by Father Bishoff.
I don’t want to conclude without mentioning that Laura Lippman has dedicated Lady in the Lake to the memory of five of her fellow journalists at The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, who were gunned down in a mass shooting on June 28, 2018:
Rob Hiassen
Gerald Fischman
John McNamara
Rebecca Smith
Wendi Winters
Killing with Confetti by Peter Lovesey
To begin with, this title required some patience on my part. Peter Diamond doesn’t appear until page 77. I wasn’t sure I was all that fascinated by what was going on while I awaited his entrance into the narrative.
Well – O ye of little faith! The story took off like a race horse. And I was so glad once again to be among the usual cast of characters. Peter’s team consists of Keith Halliwell, his second in command, Ingeborg Smith, and John Leaman. All three are distinct individuals with a wide array of skills; in addition, they are excellent investigators. Other officers are available for support and assistance. I enjoy spending time with all of them.
Peter occasionally locks horns with his immediate superior, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore. For her part, ACC Dallymore has a way of toadying in the presence of Deputy Chief Constable George Brace, her own superior, that is positively revolting! DCC Brace’s son is in the midst of planning his wedding, and there are issues with this event, to put it mildly. Unfortunately for Peter, DCC Dallymore has volunteered him for chief of security in regard to the upcoming nuptials. It’s an assignmemt that he’d do anything to avoid, but alas, there’s no way out.
As usual, this latest Peter Diamond outing is a mix of humor and suspense. And Lovesey takes full advantage of the wonderful setting of Bath. This time, the action centers on Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths.
Bath Abbey
Roman Baths
Peter Lovesey is surely one of the wittiest, most adept, most literary practitioners of crime fiction writing today. He’s had a long and deservedly successful run; I am already looking forward to the next Peter Diamond adventure!
Peter Lovesey
‘His cursor hovered over the send button for a moment and then, with the terrified bravery of a defeated general plunging his sword into his own abdomen, he clicked it.’ –A Philosophy of Ruin by Nicholas Mancusi
Oscar Boatwright is a 29-yearold professor of philosophy at an unnamed California college. He is single and lives in a small apartment. It’s a frugal, almost ascetic existence, in which nothing very dramatic occurs. Then things begin to happen.
This is the novel’s opening sentence:
Oscar Boatwright’s mother had died in her seat during a flight from Hawaii to California, and his father had been made to sit for three hours in the same aircraft as her cooling body.
Every traveler’s nightmare, right? This awful happening and Oscar’s grief over it underlie all that happens next. And as if this is not enough, his father has some disturbing revelations to impart.
But this is not what the novel is actually about, or not entirely. Oscar flies back home to Indiana with his father (also accompanied by his mother’s ‘remains’). After the funeral, he returns to California. He is still disoriented by grief. Over the weekend, after a short stint at a bar, he takes a comely young woman home. He doesn’t actually know her. He beds her, and the sex is great. (I’d like to note at this point that the erotic passages in this book are beautifully written, no mean feat, as we all know.)
On Monday, Oscar returns to teaching. The semester is just beginning. It’s an Introduction to Philosophy class. He stands in front of the room, surveying the group. A disturbing revelation awaits him.
Now at this point, I thought I knew where the story was headed. I was wrong – very wrong. The narrative careens forward at a frenzied pace, toward developments that are completely unanticipated, at least by me.. The tension was so great that I had to keep putting the book down, in order to regain some semblance of equilibrium. And all this time, the writing is replete with the kind of figurative language that I’m glad writers still know how to deploy.. It’s like firecrackers going off at irregular intervals. Oh, and there is humor, also, albeit of the darkest hue.
Oscar could feel a great force amassing itself just outside his city walls, just beyond his perception, and for an instant he was able to appreciate the inevitability of his own destruction, truly understood with a loving acceptance, but the it was gone.
****************
Even when during the day he paused to suss out a point in a paper he was reading or to spar with an astute student (in other words, when he was “doing philosophy”), his thoughts had a way of functioning alongside language: solving problems, achieving tasks, figuring things out through dialectic. But in the dark, his thoughts became unhinged from physical or linguistic application and floated above him as a meaningless terror.
(That is some powerful cogitation. No wonder he grabbed a beer right afterwards.)
***************
A line of Schopenhauer returned to him, one that he had committed to memory as an undergraduate: “Does it not look as if existence were an error the consequences of which gradually grow more and more manifest?” Once, he had found it funny.
**************
It is nighttime, like now, and the stars are even brighter, not yet robbed by science of their mystery….
********
Oscar understood that he was having one of those moments, he figured you might only get one in each epoch of your life, where the massive clockwork that ticks just outside the boundaries of perception in order to maintain the motion of reality is revealed for a single instant, and something totally inexplicable and impossible becomes perfectly, obviously clear.
*************
The issue of free will versus determinism keeps percolating to the surface of this novel. Oscar has actually written a paper on combatibilism, a school of though which seeks to reconcile the two.
As I was reading this novel, I kept recalling the opening sentence of Dickens’s David Copperfield:
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
In my estimation, A Philosophy of Ruin is a bravura performance. I hope for more from this exceptionally gifted author.
Nicholas Mancusi
A Sultry Month by Alethea Hayter
One of my favorite books from the past few years is a nonfiction work entitled: A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846.
To begin with, Alethea Hayter’s powers of description are formidable. They are shown in full spate in this passage, in which she brings the Duke of Wellington’s annual Waterloo Banquet to vivid life:
The low sunset light of that fiercely hot day came in through the six westward-facing windows of the Waterloo Gallery, competing with the light of the serried candles in the candelabra of the huge silver-gilt Portuguese Service, crowded with dancing nymphs, allegorical figures of the Continents, camels, horses, scorpions, which stretched the whole length of the table. The colors were all fierce and bright–scarlet uniforms, shining white tablecloth, harsh yellow damask on the walls staring out between the crowded frames of the pictures captured in Joseph Bonaparte’s carriage at the Battle of Vittoria.
There was gold and sheen everywhere–gilding on the doors and ceiling, shutters lines with looking-glass, epaulettes, decanters, medals, picture frames, chandeliers, everything glared and glittered….
A Sultry Month has a wonderful cast of characters: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, poets who against all odds made their love triumphant; John Keats, whose brief stay on Earth left us with much memorable verse; the Carlyles, Jane and Thomas, William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb – the list goes on. But perhaps the most memorable among them is a painter of whom I had not previously heard. His name is Benjamin Robert Haydon.
There is a genre of painting called history painting. The term refers not only to depictions of historical events but also to scenes from mythology and religion. The works were usually large, colorful, and action-packed. The Abduction of the Sabine Women (1635-1640) by Peter Paul Rubens is a good example:
By the nineteenth century, this type of subject matter was increasingly deemed outmoded, especially in England, where it had never really taken hold to begin with. But Benjamin Robert Haydon believed passionately in its relevance and its rightness. He worked steadily and, some would say, stubbornly to embody the best aspects of history painting in his own art.
In 1817, Haydon gave a dinner party which, over the years has achieved a unique sort of fame. In attendance at this gathering were all of the luminaries mentioned above: Keats, Wordsworth, the Lambs brother and sister, the Carlyles, and others. Haydon had two purposes in presenting this entertainment. He wanted to introduce young Keats to the venerable Wordsworth, and he wanted all the guests to see his rather fabulous, if somewhat bizarre, canvas entitled Christ Entering Jerusalem.
The bizarre aspect stems from the fact that Haydon has included small portraits of his present day friends in this work. If you look closely at the three men at the extreme right, you can see Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, and Keats. (I’m pretty sure that the figure with the slightly bowed head is Wordsworth.) Apparently other of Haydon’s friends and acquaintances are also represented therein. Few of these individuals were particularly religious.
The occasion was a great success, at least in the eyes of the host. This is what he wrote about it later in his autobiography:
It was indeed an immortal evening. Wordsworth’s fine intonation as he quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats’ eager inspired look, Lamb’s quaint sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of conversation, that in my life I never passed a more delightful time. All our fun was within bounds. Not a word passed that an apostle might not have listened to. It was a night worthy of the Elizabethan age, and my solemn Jerusalem flashing up by the flame of the fire, with Christ hanging over us like a vision, all made up a picture which will long glow upon
“that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.”
Haydon began writing his autobiography in 1839. He was still working on it at the time of his death in 1846. I think it quite marvelous that he quotes from “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” also known as “Daffodils,” a poem written by his friend Wordsworth in 1804.
Portrait of Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1842
Manuscript copy of “Daffodils,” held at the British Museum
There are at least two other books about Haydon’s “Immortal Dinner:” The Immortal Evening: A Legendary Dinner with Keats, Wordsworth, and Lamb by Stanley Plumly (2014), and The Immortal Dinner: A Famous Evening of Genius and Laughter in Literary London, 1817, by Penelope Hughes-Hallett (2002).
[A footnote, but an interesting one: Charles Lamb was a distinguished essayist. He is probably best remembered today for Tales of Shakespeare, on which he collaborated with his sister Mary. Mary was mentally unstable; in 1796, while experiencing a severe breakdown – what today we would probably call a psychotic break – she stabbed her mother to death with a kitchen knife. Charles remained devoted to his sister until his death in 1834. Peter Ackroyd’s novel The Lambs of London vividly recreates the turbulent events surrounding this calamity.]
I was completely spellbound by A Sultry Month; I look forward to reading it again.
Mystery news and views: the Dagger Award nominations
Here are the shortlisted nominees for the 2019 Dagger Award, given by the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain:
Diamond Dagger Recipient: Robert Goddard
CWA Gold Dagger:
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Puppet Show, by M.W. Craven: (Constable)
• What We Did, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)
• Unto Us a Son Is Given, by Donna Leon (Heinemann)
• American by Day, by Derek B Miller (Doubleday)
• A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better, by Benjamin Wood (Scribner)CWA John Creasey (New Blood):
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Boy at the Door, by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus)
• Scrublands, by Chris Hammer (Wildfire)
• Turn a Blind Eye, by Vicky Newham (HQ)
• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
• Overkill, by Vanda Symon (Orenda)CWA ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-fiction:
• All That Remains: A Life in Death, by Sue Black (Doubleday)
• Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime,
by Claire Harman (Viking)
• The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century, by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Hutchinson)
• An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere,
by Mikita Brottman (Viking)
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold (Doubleday)
• The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre (Viking)CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger:
• Give Me Your Hand, by Megan Abbott (Picador)
• Safe Houses, by Dan Fesperman (Head of Zeus)
• Killing Eve: No Tomorrow, by Luke Jennings (John Murray)
• Lives Laid Away, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime)
• To the Lions, by Holly Watt (Bloomsbury)
• Memo from Turner, by Tim Willocks (Jonathan Cape)CWA Sapere Books Historical Dagger:
• The Quaker, by Liam McIlvanney (Harper Fiction)
• Destroying Angel, by S.G. MacLean: (Quercus)
• Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• The House on Half Moon Street, by Alex Reeve (Raven)
• Tombland, by C.J. Sansom: (Mantle)
• Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)CWA International Dagger:
• A Long Night in Paris, by Dov Alfon;
translated by Daniella Zamir (Maclehose Press)
• Weeping Waters, by Karin Brynard;
translated by Maya Fowler and Isobel Dixon (World Noir)
• The Cold Summer, by Gianrico Carofiglio;
translated by Howard Curtis (Bitter Lemon Press)
• Newcomer, by Keigo Higashino;
translated by Giles Murray (Little, Brown)
• The Root of Evil, by Håkan Nesser;
translated by Sarah Death (Mantle)
• The Forger, by Cay Rademacher;
translated by Peter Millar (Arcadia)CWA Short Story Dagger:
• “Strangers in a Pub,” by Martin Edwards (from Ten Year Stretch, edited by Martin Edwards and Adrian Muller; No Exit Press)
• “Death Becomes Her,” by Syd Moore (from The Strange Casebook,
by Syd Moore; Point Blank Books)
• “The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing,” by Danuta Reah (from The Dummies’ Guide to Serial Killing and Other Fantastic Female Fables,
by Danuta Reah [aka Danuta Kot]; Fantastic)
• “I Detest Mozart,” by Teresa Solana (from The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and Other Stories, by Teresa Solana; Bitter Lemon Press)
• “Bag Man,” by Lavie Tidhar (from The Outcast Hours,
edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin; Solaris)Dagger in the Library:
• M.C. Beaton
• Mark Billingham
• John Connolly
• Kate Ellis
• C.J. Sansom
• Cath StaincliffeDebut Dagger
(for the opening of a crime novel by an uncontracted writer):
• Wake, by Shelley Burr
• The Mourning Light, by Jerry Krause
• Hardways, by Catherine Hendricks
• The Firefly, by David Smith
• A Thin Sharp Blade, by Fran Smith
Let me say right off the bat that I’m delighted to see Robert Goddard being honored in this way. I read his first novel, Past Caring, when it came out here in 1986 and recognized at once that he was an excellent new talent. Since then, he’s written twenty-six more novels, of which I’ve read some twelve or thirteen.
Goddard’s books are not conventional mysteries; rather, they’re a blend of some of the elements of crime fiction and those of espionage, novels, international intrigue, and often historical fiction as well. They’re gracefully written and not fiendishly complicated or stuffed with extraneous characters. There’s often a love story, either incipient or well under way.
Goddard’s oeuvre constitutes a mix a mix of stand-alones and limited series. Into the Blue, one of three novels featuring Harry Barnett, was filmed with John Thaw in the starring role.
Of the titles I’ve read, I’d especially recommend these:
For a complete list, click here.
I’ve read just a few of the fiction titles on this list. The Donna Leon – Well, I love every one of the Guido Brunetti novels, and as for as I’m concerned, Unto Us a Son Is Given is just as good as its predecessors. Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott and Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman are both excellent. And a special shout out for C.J. Sansom’s Tombland, a marvelous, sprawling historical novel that had me so absorbed that I fairly flew through its 880 pages – no problem.
Finally, the category of non-fiction is where I’ve read the most. Murder by the Book: A Sensational Chapter in Victorian Crime by Claire Harman was interesting, though for me, it fell short of being truly gripping. I was intrigued, though by the description of the public’s fevered obsession with the crime – the murder of an elderly aristocrat by one of his servants. It showed that today’s intense absorption in true crime is really nothing new, although on this particular morning, after a horrible bloody weekend in this country, people might be more inclined to turn away from the subject.
I know that The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson got excellent reviews, but for whatever reason it did not work for me. I got about fifty pages in and then gave up. All That Remains: A Life in Death, by Sue Black looks really good. I hadn’t heard of it before; at present, it resides on my already groaning night stand.
An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere by Mikita Brottman. I was really pleased to see that this book made the cut. The unexplained death in the title refers to the body of a young man, inexplicably found on a section of roofing of Brottman’s own apartment complex in Baltimore. Her investigation takes some strange turns until she reaches a conclusion. The book was riveting.
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre. Yet another terrific read. I’m not sure how or when I became so interested in espionage, both fictional and actual, but I’ve had some excellent reading in the field in recent years. One of the best was also written by Macintyre: A Spy Among Friends, the story of the perpetually notorious traitor Kim Philby. The Spy and the Traitor is Philby in reverse: it’s the story of Oleg Gordievsky, who, during the Cold War, repeatedly risked his life to inform on his Russian spymasters for the benefit of British intelligence. The story of his exfiltration is as suspenseful as anything Le Carre ever dreamed up. (Charlotte Philby, granddaughter of Kim, has just published a novel entitled The Most Difficult Thing.)
Finally, there is Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five, in which the lives of each of Jack the Ripper’s five victims are explored and revealed in detail. This book to my mind is a triumph. These women are worth knowing about as distinct individuals who struggled constantly with poverty, displacement, and an uncaring environment. While reading this saga, I had to keep reminding myself that this was Victoria’s England, where royalty and aristocrats lived in splendor and had their every want and need catered to.
What a prodigious feat of research this book is! For my money, it should win every award in the book, and then some.
And before I close, I want to recommend Michael Dirda’s recent piece in the Washington Post on Somerset Maugham‘s Ashenden stories. Dirda says this about Maugham’s style:
While no one denies Maugham’s gifts as a storyteller, his prose has regularly been dismissed as pedestrian. Not so. It is plain, direct, natural, the language of a well-educated, civilized Englishman. If you would write perfectly, Maugham once declared, you should write as clearly, as urbanely as Voltaire, which is just what he himself tries to do.
When I read that, I wanted to stand up and cheer! (In fact, I may have actually done so. Husband Ron is indulgent of such occasional outbursts; the last one occurred when Alice Munro won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.)
Ever since reading the 2009 biography of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings – reviewed and recommended by Michael Dirda in the Post – I’ve been delving into his novels and stories at regular intervals. I have to say, though, that Ashenden: or the British Agent is well overdue a definitive new edition by a major publishing house. Knopf, New York Review Books, are you listening?
Click here to read “‘Ashenden’: the Perfect Late Summer Escape Read, and a Classic.”
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Dead Man’s Mistress by David Housewright
This is a nifty little caper novel in which an unlicensed private eye goes in search of three valuable paintings. The art works were boosted from the home of one Louise Wykoff, usually referred to as “that Wykoff Woman.” Now Louise was a sometime model and sometime lover of the artist, Randolph McInnis. Also in the picture is Mary Ann McInnis, widow of Randolph and enthusiastic hater of Louise.
Louise however, had no documentation as to their provenance of the paintings; and nor were they insured. Add to that, Louise, a painter herself, is a dab hand at mimicking Randolph’s style. So: who actually made this art? And to whom does it belong, stolen or not?
Enter the rather uniquely named Rushmore McKenzie, described in the jacket copy as “an occasional unlicensed private investigator.” Called simply McKenzie by just about everyone, he’s been asked to look into the theft. Soon he finds himself looking into a murder as well, one in which he himself is initially implicated.
Anyway, the cast of characters keeps getting larger, thus providing both McKenzie and the local police with plenty of suspects. Although cleared of involvement in the homicide, McKenzie is not necessarily cleared of suspicion. Why, you might ask, is McKenzie not licensed? The reason is that he’s been made independently wealthy by a generous legal settlement. He detects out of a genuine desire to help people and also for the sheer pleasure of it, not for the money. (This reminded me of Andy Carpenter the lawyer in the David Rosenfelt series, although in Andy’s case, his comfortable situation has been facilitated by a hefty inheritance.)
Dead Man’s Mistress has lots of snappy dialog in the tried and true gumshoe tradition. (I invariably come back to the classic line, spoken by Sam Spade, from The Maltese Falcon: “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”) The novel is lightweight and breezy and zips right along. And unexpectedly, it has a nicely realized sense of place. Most of the action takes place in and around Grand Marais, Minnesota. This is a recreational area that caters primarily to tourists. (That’s during the summer, of course – we are, after all, speaking of Minnesota.) I even learned of an actual yearly event that sounds rather wonderful:
Every August, reenactors from across the country dress in period attire and gather at the post for what is called the Grand Rendezvouz and pretend for three days to be living in the late eighteenth century.
This is just the kind of thing I love.
I liked McKenzie, and as I was reading, I kept trying to recall who he reminded me of. Then I remembered: Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, of blessed memory.
Books to the Ceiling 