Crime fiction

Review: How the Light Gets In

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How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Gamache #9), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Press, 2013.

Summary: The murder of the last Ouellet quintuplet, a former client and friend of Myrna’s brings Gamache back to Three Pines which serves as a hidden base of operations as Sylvain Francoeur’s efforts to destroy Gamache comes to a head.

Chief Superintendent Sylvain Francoeur as taken away Gamache’s right hand man, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, transferred out his department’s best agents, filling their slots with the indifferent or corrupt. Is it simply the fact that Gamache had arrested former Chief Superintendent Arnot? Or is there, as Gamache suspects, something more going on?

Amid the increasing pressure on Gamache, he continues to do his job. And that job takes him back to Three Pines. A former client who had become a friend of Myrna Landers was supposed to come for a Christmas visit but fails to turn up. Gamache investigates and finds her dead in her home, killed by a head blow from a lamp as she was packing. One of the most startling discoveries was that she was Constance Ouellet, the last of the Ouellet quintuplets, considered a true miracle at their birth, exploited by a doctor who had not even been at the delivery, and used by the government to create a fairy-tale story. Who would have a motive to kill her? It turns out that Constance has left clues, unrecognized by those around her.

The murder allows Gamache, through a combination of misdirection and shrewd preparation, to turn Three Pines into a base of operations to ferret out what Francoeur is trying to do, along with Yvette Nichol, who has been spending years in the basement of the Surete learning to listen, and Jerome and Assistant Superintendent Therese Brunel. Jerome has been covertly infiltrating the Surete’s systems until he found a name that scared him. It’s time for the Brunels to flee, ostensibly to Vancouver, but actually to Three Pines.

One problem. When they find what they are looking for, they will be found, jeopardizing the whole village. It comes down to who will outmaneuver who? And the wild card is Beauvoir, who knows Gamache and in his drug addiction is tied to Francoeur.

One other piece. A woman in the Transportation Ministry, Audrey Villeneuve was found dead at the base of the most heavily-traveled bridge in Montreal. Her car was on the bridge and her death was ruled as a suicide. The book opens with her distraught drive onto the bridge. Let’s just say it’s not irrelevant.

The story line leaves us wondering at times if Gamache is paranoid, seeing conspiracies where there are none and becoming unhinged. Does he love and then leave as Beauvoir believes, or is there love that persists even when denied? And was inviting Nichol a good idea? Is this an one of Gamache’s redemption efforts that will put them all at risk? Penny quotes a poem, “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen, with these words “There’s a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.” In this novel, we see in Gamache who believes in the foolish wisdom that to risk loving and trusting is the crack that lets the light in. The question is whether this will prevail over the earthly wisdom of power. Many lives and a hidden village hang in the balance.

Review: Death of a Peer (Surfeit of Lampreys)

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Death of a Peer (Surfeit of Lampreys), Ngaio Marsh. New York, Harper Collins: New York, 2009.

Summary: A New Zealander’s visit to a happy-go-lucky English family is interrupted by the gruesome murder of Lord Charles’ brother in the elevator serving their flat, making the family prime suspects for Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn

Ngaio Marsh, along with Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Margerie Allingham, was one of the crime queens of the golden age of British crime fiction. She wrote a total of 32 Roderick Alleyn mysteries. This one is a special treat, both because of the unusual family, and connected characters, most of whom are possible suspects in a murder.

Death of a Peer is narrated largely through the eyes of a young girl from New Zealand, Roberta “Robin” Grey, who met the family, the Lampreys, while they tried their hands at becoming New Zealand landowners. Even then, what stands out is that this fun-loving family never really seems to apply itself to anything, is always in financial straits, and never takes this too seriously. After they returned to London, Robin is invited to stay with an aunt, but due to the aunt’s health, first stays with the Lampreys. Oh, what fun–especially with the eldest son Henry, to whom she is drawn.

Maybe not so much. Once again the Lampreys are up to their ears in debt and being hounded by debt collectors. Lord Charles, the head of the family hopes to get a bailout from his older brother, Gabriel, Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune. Uncle Gabriel and his wife, Aunt V. agree to a visit. Aunt V. is a witch and an eccentric, mentally unstable character. While Aunt V. visits with the women, the children listen in the next room as Uncle G. refuses the loan and the two brothers exchange harsh words. He leaves, sits down in the lift awaiting his wife, calls out to her twice, then they depart, helped by one of the twins.

Robin hears all this and then a loud shrieking as the lift comes back to the third floor. The doors open, Aunt V staggers out, beside herself, and the family sees a slumped over Uncle G., dying of fatal and gruesome wound from a skewer, earlier used in a skit put on by the children.

Enter Roderick Alleyn, whose challenge is made more difficult by this family who presents a united front. The identical twins, Colin and Stephen will not reveal which of them went to the elevator. Lord Charles stands to inherit, but the whole family has an interest. None of them, including the charming Henry holds down a job. Most helpful to Alleyn are the young child Michael and Robin, in her memory of the movements of various people, including Baskett, the butler, Giggles, the chauffer, and Tinkerton, Aunt V.’s attendant. This is despite her lie about the outcome of the meeting between Lord Charles and Gabriel.

This has it all, including an edge-of-the-seat ending, intricate plot, fascinating unusual characters, and the modest Alleyn who patiently works to connect all the dots. These books have been out of print (my copy was an old paperback literally falling apart) but have recently come on the market as e-books. Each of the “crime queens” have their own style. If you like this period, be sure to try out Ngaio Marsh. This one is a good place to start.

Review: The Lost Get-Back Boogie

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The Lost Get-Back Boogie, James Lee Burke. New York: Pocket Star, 2006 (first published 1986).

Summary: On release from prison, Iry Paret leaves Louisiana for Montana for a new start with his prisonmate, Buddy Riordan, only to find he has landed in the midst of new troubles.

Iry Paret has been released from Angola after his sentence for killing a man in a bar fight. He arrives home just in time to be with his father in his last days. He survived Korea, with a Purple Heart. He survived the brutalities of Angola. Despite offers from the family and some inherited land, he decides to leave Louisiana, with the permission of his parole board to start life anew with his prisonmate, Buddy Riordan, who lives on his father Frank’s ranch near Missoula, Montana.

Iry is a dobro and guitar player, a blues player. He hopes for a new start, with music gigs to supplement whatever he can make at the ranch. It seems possible, amid fresh fish from the river and spectacular views. He discovers instead that he has landed himself in the midst of trouble both of, and not of his own making.

Frank Riordan has alienated himself from the rest of the people in his community in his efforts to prevent paper companies from spewing foul smelling pollutants into the pristine air. To most people who either are loggers or work in the paper mills, that is the smell of money. Anyone connected to Frank faces the cold shoulder, or worse, including Iry. The town sheriff has it out for him and would just as soon send him back to Angola. Then he discovers his friend Buddy isn’t doing so well. His difficult relationship with his father and the other perceived failures including his failed marriage to Beth, result in periods of self-medicated oblivion or mania. To top it off, Beth comes on to Iry, who is equally attracted to Beth, and he ends up cuckolding his friend while he lives with him.

And the Lost Get Back Boogie? It’s a song Iry tries to write through much of the book but can never quite get the words for. It seems to represent the longing of this blues player to somehow “get back.” Get back to what? Maybe to life before the memories of the war? To life before Angola? And yet that life seems lost in fresh troubles, and the words don’t come.

This is James Lee Burke before Robicheaux, one of his early works. Yet it already bears the trademarks of his future works. Vivid descriptions of place, albeit of the rugged landscape of Montana rather than the lush Louisiana bayous. Characters torn between longing for peace, a sense of justice, and trouble that dogs their ways. A plot where trouble brews and grows from a number of directions.

This is a book for James Lee Burke fans who discovered him through his Robicheaux stories. As it turns out, he was writing good stories well before Robicheaux. Actually, this was the last novel before Robicheaux and the various Holland stories. It might be a good place to get to know James Lee Burke again for the first time.

Review: The Nature of the Beast

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the nature of the beast

The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Gamache #11), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2016.

Summary: A young boy from Three Pines, prone to fantastic tales, reports seeing a big gun with a strange symbol, and then is found dead, setting off a search for a murderer, and an effort to thwart a global threat.

I never knew about Louise Penny until a year ago. One of the benefits of hosting an online book page is you learn of interesting authors you’ve not heard of. I’ve always loved classic crime fiction, and a great detective. I’ve been converted. Louise Penny’s works, and her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache belong with this group.

I made a mistake and bought number eleven in the series, thinking it was the first. At this point, Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie are retired in the idyllic village of Three Pines in eastern Quebec, a place seemingly forgotten by GPS systems. A local theatre group is rehearsing a play by an unnamed author, She Sat Down and Wept. Gamache and a number of friends, including his successor Isabel Lacoste and his son-in-law Jean Guy are relaxing in a local bistro when Laurent LePage, a nine year old boy prone to telling tall tales bursts in with another one of a huge gun in the forest with a picture of a scary woman being drawn by seven horses on it. No one believes him and Gamache drives him home to his parents, Al and Evie, aging hippies (he, a supposed draft dodger) with a farm on the edge of town.

The next day, Laurent goes missing, and is found dead off the side of the road, apparently having lost control of his bicycle, falling and striking his head on a rock–or so it seems to all but Gamache. Something is not right about the position of the body, but no one buys it. Then Gamache realizes something else–Laurent’s favorite stick (his “gun”) is nowhere to be found. A search in the woods for the “gun” leads to a much bigger gun, hidden in camouflage for years. On it, an engraving of the whore of Babylon, being drawn by seven furious steeds. At it’s base, Laurent’s favorite stick. Laurent was telling the truth, which he paid for with his life. And no one, not even Gamache had believed him. Actually someone did, the murderer.

The story gets more complicated as an elderly physicist and two intelligence agents (“file clerks”) who all had been investigating this weapon for years, descend on the quiet village and join in a quest to unravel the tale of its makers, seeking to find the plans for this weapon, which, in the wrong hands, could bring untold devastation and global conflict.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the author of the play is a wicked, sadistic serial murderer, John Fleming, with whom Gamache has a secret, and haunting connection that has been brought back to life. That is not his only connection to Three Pines. A batty old poet and kindly old grocer also carry haunting memories of this man.

Penny does so many things so well in this book. The setting is one I’ve seen a number of people say they would love to live in. The characters have depth, especially Gamache, but also Reine-Marie, Jean-Beauvoir, Lacoste, and even Ruth Zardo, the batty old poet. Gamache at this stage is deeply conflicted, wounded and weary from his efforts to cleanse the Sureté, yet ambivalent about really calling Three Pines and retired life the only life he will know. The unsolved murder of the boy he did not believe awakens all of this. Combine all this with superb writing and an ever-more suspenseful plot and you have all the ingredients of great crime fiction.

As I write, there are fifteen books in this series with a sixteenth due in September 2020. Temptation, thy name is Gamache! I suspect this won’t be the last review of a Louise Penny work you see here.

Review: Choosing Community

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choosing community

Choosing Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy L Sayers, Christine A. Colón. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.

Summary: A compilation of three lectures and responses on the theme of community running through the works of Dorothy L. Sayers.

Dorothy L. Sayers experienced real pain in her relationship with the community of the church. Yet, as Walter Hansen, in the introduction to this book notes, this was not reflected in the love of community reflected both in Sayers’ life and work. This work, drawn from the Ken and Jean Hansen Lectures at Wheaton College, examines the embrace of community reflected in Sayers work in the form of action, faith, and joy. One lecture addresses each of these followed by a brief response.

The first lecture looks at the idea of communities of action. Colón traces the development of her detective fiction, as she moves from solving a crime perpetrated by an individual and solved by a detective, a classic crime fiction trope, to a much more complex vision of community, deeply impacted by crime, and restored by the communal action of people of good will (Lord Peter, Harriet Vane, Bunter, and Inspector Parker, for example), each pursuing with diligence and collegiality their particular roles, serving the wider community.

Communities of faith are the focus of the second lecture. Colón turns to the plays of Sayers for this lecture, showing how these portray the disintegration of community, the formation of communities of faith in The Emperor Constantine and the necessity of atonement in her play The Just Vengeance. Even as Colón considers the plays, she also reflects on Sayers’ love of the players, of how the theater was a kind of community of faith for Sayers–particularly the quality of unflinching devotion to “the show must go on” no matter the personal circumstances of the players–a kind of devotion to one another and a greater purpose she longed for in the body of Christ.

Dorothy Sayers is portrayed by Colón as a joyful woman, delighting in her work, her comrades, sometimes in plain silliness, revealed in facsimiles of correspondence reproduced in the third chapter. She delighted in her associations with theater companies and the Detective Club, communities that combined serious work and celebration. She then turns back to the detective stories, Sayers development of Harriet Vane, and her finding of joy in return to her academic community in Gaudy Night, and in her marriage to Peter and return to the community of her youth in Busman’s Holiday.

Colón introduces us to a vision of community that is not sentimental but one that confronts evil, that gathers around serious work, that involves responsible action on the part of each person, that is formed around faith and devotion, and that is grounded in an undercurrent of deep joy. The responses are marked for brevity, grace, and brief expansions on each of the idea Colón introduces, reflecting the community of which Colón writes.

This is a valuable work for anyone who has enjoyed the writings of Dorothy L. Sayers. If you’ve only sampled the dramas, or the essays, or the detective stories, it takes you into the breadth of Sayers work (apart from her translations of The Divine Comedy and The Song of Roland). I came away wanting to read more of her dramatic works, having mostly read the detective stories and her theological works. It also probes our understanding of community, inviting us into both the responsibilities and possibilities open to communities of faith.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Elephants Can Remember

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elephants can remember

Elephants Can Remember (Hercule Poirot #37), Agatha Christie. New York: Harper Collins, 2011 (first published 1972).

Summary: Poirot and crime writer Ariadne Oliver team up at the request of a mother and young couple, to learn the truth about an unexplained double suicide many years earlier.

Celia Ravenscroft and Desmond Burton-Cox want to marry. Desmond’s mother by adoption, looking for cause to oppose it, seeks out the help of crime writer Ariadne Oliver, who is Celia’s godmother. Celia’s parents died years ago in what authorities determined to be a suicide pact. Mrs. Burton-Cox want to know who killed who, and if there is a streak of mental instability that Celia might inherit. Celia and Desmond wish the truth as well.

Oliver enlists her old friend Poirot, and the two of them go in search of “the elephants,” those who remember crucial facts that might bring to light what truly happened, and incidentally, why Mrs. Burton-Cox is really so bent on discouraging the marriage. Along the way, we learn of Mrs. Ravenscroft’s deranged identical twin sister, who died by falling from the same cliffs where the Ravenscrofts took their lives three weeks later. Poirot wonders about the exceptional number of wigs worn by Mrs Ravenscroft, despite a healthy head of hair. What did French au pair know, who was staying at the time of their deaths? Finally, we wonder about the affectionate dog that inexplicably bit.

Reading the story, I was curious how much of Agatha Christie is written into the character of Ariadne Oliver. It was fun to envision Agatha going about with Poirot crime solving. I have to admit that the solution was fairly apparent before the denouement. What I liked about this story was the diverse set of characters Christie offers us: the somewhat eccentric Ariadne Oliver, the strong-willed Celia, the determined Desmond, the unlikable Mrs. Burton-Cox, and the au pair torn by love and the promise to keep a secret. We also encounter an older Poirot, one who sits and thinks even more. We wonder, as does Ariadne at one point, whether he still has his edge. As always, we discover his edge is to listen, to observe, to wait, and to think, drawing on his insights into human nature, until the pieces fall in place.

I didn’t think this was Christie at her best. She left too many clues, too few red herrings. Yet I found the story a pleasant diversion, with a great mix of characters and good pacing. This was published less than four years before her death. Some have speculated that she was struggling with the onset of some form of dementia when she wrote Elephants Can Remember. Perhaps the title was a valiant attempt to say “I’ve still got what it takes!” She was in her early 80’s when she wrote this–and still capable of writing circles around younger writers!