Goldilocks by Ed McBain

The not-87th Precinct books - well, at least the Matthew Hope books, have fairy tale or nursery rhyme titles - well, at least the first eleven of them do - then we have Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear and the very last one The Last Best Hope, which came out in 1998. That was late enough that the title could have come from the opening voice-over on Babylon 5, but a little research found that the phrase apparently originated in a speech by Abraham Lincoln. All that has nothing much to do with Goldilocks, the book in question at the moment, but it does open a realm of speculation. He continued writing 87th Precinct books for another seven years, but that is the last Matthew Hope book. Do you suppose he kills him off? I guess I will have to keep reading.

Goldilocks is the tag which the scorned first wife hung on the second. Goldilocks (actually Maureen) is found by her husband hacked to death along with their two daughters, aged four and six or thereabouts. All the usual suspects: husband, ex-wife, adult children of ex, etc. The surprise in the context of the genre is a confession early on, but in the tradition of the genre - the one that confesses is not actually the murderer. I'm really not giving anything away, any semi-experienced reader of detective fiction will know immediately - if for no reason than it comes too early in the book. Now - that gives me an idea for a plot ---

The theme of marital infidelity plays across the entire book, virtually everybody is playing around - including Mr. Hope, himself.

I enjoyed it - perhaps not as much as Gladly - but this is the first book in the series, the character and general framework have not really settled in. Besides, in either the end notes or the preface to Cop Hater Hunter/McBain discusses the fact that he has difficulty dealing with the idea of non-police detectives - something on the lines of "who actually would go to a white-haired old lady who is constantly knitting" to solve a murder. Obviously, he reconciled himself to the amateur detective well enough to keep it up for thirteen novels.

Cop Hater by Ed McBain

Finished on 17Feb.

This was short. And today was a holiday. I haven't been doing two in a day here lately. Actually, I finished the Fyfield book early this morning before I went to bed, and I just finished this one early before going to bed. It's all right, tomorrow is one of my late days - a student day instead of a teacher day.

I enjoyed Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear so much that I decided to try more of McBain. My minimal research revealed why I had him pegged with the "tough" mysteries - it seems that his best known works are those in his "87th Precinct" series. I have liked police procedurals, so I decided to give those a try as well as getting the first of the Matthew Hope series in which Gladly is a late entrant.

It appears that McBain created the police procedural genre and the ensemble cast concept which has had great success in television. I think it likely (at least possible) that the "87th Precinct" books are the model for "Hill Street Blues," one of my all-time favorite TV cop shows. And naturally I'm trying to compare it to the Dell Shannon police procedurals which I have read and reread. This book appeared in 1956 and is a little dated technologically, but that is inevitable given the changes of the last sixty years, I did not find that a problem in the reading.

He did use a "trick" which bugs me. The book opens with a cop getting up to go to work, pausing to check up on each of his children and to admire his sleeping wife. A page or so later, after the unsuspecting reader (such as me) decides that this guy is going to make a good primary character, McBain blows him away. Shock value, certainly, and feasible with the ensemble format, but was it really necessary? Maybe so. Background information suggests that the detective that survives the book (which is littered with widows) continues to be a focal character throughout the series. I certainly hope so - he has just married a remarkable girl, and I like them both!

A Clear Conscience by Frances Fyfield

Finished on 17Feb.

Because I found this together with the other of her books that I have, I mistakenly assumed that they were contiguous in the series. Not so much. There are four or five books between them. I ordered the second book, which is only available in paper, and mistakenly had it sent to my sister. Some days ...

I did enjoy the second book in spite of all the tension of a relationship at the critical point where it either disintegrates or becomes permanent. That was particularly uncomfortable because I like both Helen and Geoff.

This series of crimes is even closer to home than the murder in the first book. I am really curious about the books between to see if this is actually part of Fyfield's pattern, or if I just happened to pull the two that play out that way. And now, of course, the next book is headed to central Texas instead of here.

The crime is fairly simple, but Fyfield brings in the thoughts and motivations of all the principals. And since the theme is spousal abuse quite a lot of that is very dark indeed. I thought I had this one all figured out, wrong again.

I was at least trying to read for problems of style. I mentioned with the first one that it was so British in places that it was literally incomprehensible, and my sister thought that her sentence structure was ponderous and convoluted. I didn't notice any of that in this book - of course, I hadn't noticed writing style issues the first time around - maybe I have been reading too much academic stuff.

The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin

Finished on 14Feb.

My friend said that this book was being compared to The Help. So all the way through I tried to find points of comparison. It is set in approximately the same time frame and more or less the same location: Mississippi in the sixties. Both are carried on in the context of the racial tensions of the period. Aside from that - not much in common. As I recall (you know my talent for forgetting almost everything about a book once I close the cover), The Help is set in Jackson and is about (to oversimplify) the relationships between the young women of the Junior League and the black women without whom their lives would cease to function. Women of privilege who were reared by black women and have turned their own children over to black women who raise them and neglect their own.

This story is set in a small Mississippi factory town and is about a young girl and the people who let her down - her mother who married beneath her, her father who is a vicious predator, her grandmother who in punishing her daughter for her mesalliance permits her granddaughter to be exposed to unspeakable situations. What stability there is in young Florence's life comes from Zenie, her grandmother's maid and her family, although they are limited in what security they can provide because of the dangerous racial tensions of the time and place.

Zenie's full name is Zenobia, after the once Queen of Palmyra and she regales young Florence with tales of the deeds of Queenie. Florence inserts herself into these stories - as well as the stories of Uncle Wiggly - the favorites of her grandfather.

Florence's mother abandons her - once by running their old car into a train and then by simply walking away while on leave from the mental institute where she is incarcerated after her suicide attempt. She saved herself from her brutal and abusive husband, but left Florence in his hands. The father molests her and takes her to clan meetings where she is passed around the entire group. The grandmother retreats into a bottle.

Florence's disfunctional life is set against the racial violence of the period, but it is primarily the story of one young girl. Her sudden recall as an adult of a brutal crime which she witnessed seems almost inevitable rather than climactic in the general setting of her life.

First Dawn by Mike Moscoe/Shepherd

Finished on 11Feb.

The others of his I've read I judged to be fun if derivative and simplistic - space opera - this one is sloppy and annoying, don't let me forget repetitive - I lost count of the number of wolves some man or other had stared down. Bad grammar and spelling infuriate me - I do understand that the method for turning print into electronic text has some peculiarities - but not such as to turn "courts martial" into "courts marshal." I can't cite all the grammar problems - "the path they had rode that morning" sticks in my mind. I also am fully aware that none of us is perfect, and even the best of editors will occasionally miss something. This, however, is utterly absurd. I have read better from high school sophomores.

So much for mechanics. The word choice and usage is so poor ("they were just falling the tree") that I have formed a theory. Moscoe's eleven-year-old daughter wrote it; alternatively, Moscoe himself wrote it when he was eleven. To a pre-adolescent, even a fairly well-read pre-adolescent "falling a tree" might make more sense than "felling a tree" and said pre-adolescent would quite likely never have encountered the word "martial" in print but would have heard it and formed an image in the form of a western marshal or today's federal marshal. He/she probably has a mental image of a courtroom peopled by federal agents.

I have let pass many peculiarities such as those mentioned above - but can't let this lie. Down toward the end - at 92% - Location 5212 - he calls his heroine by the name of his other heroine. Lt. Launa becomes Kris, really? Somehow I can't dismiss that as a digital transcription error.

Then there is the utter idiocy of the science - or lack thereof. What, me worry about time anomalies? Why ever do a thing like that? And, despite characters tromping heedlessly about changing the past, the epilogue returns to the "present" where, although LA is missing from its former location - the same characters with the same names are hanging around. Oh well. At least the experimental dog turns up.

The Search Committee by Ralph McInerny

Finished on 10Feb.

Nice language usage. The setting, of course, is intriguing given where I found the book. The chancellor of a smallish, out-of-the-way, unimpressive midwestern university creates a scandal - he was drunk and fled from the police on his way home from a massage parlor and rolled his vehicle in the course of the chase. He is persuaded to resign and the fun begins. I realize that I don't actually know how this sort of thing is generally handled. I would have thought that if our president resigned that the Board of Regents (almost certainly under pressure from the governor) would have the responsibility of choosing his successor. Here, everyone else wants in on the process - including faculty and students. And we have people actually campaigning for the job. Seems unlikely.

All that notwithstanding, there were a few passages that simply delighted me, so rather than analyze the story any further, I will share them ...

"The fundamental assumption of all this folderol is that it makes a difference who is chancellor of the University of Ohio at Fort Elbow. Think of it. We are now two weeks into our great crisis. Classes meet, students are filled with misinformation as before, payrolls are met, one cannot find a parking space, the ineffable student paper appears daily. If this episode proves anything it is the total unimportance of the chancellor."

"Peter Kessel and Manuel Cerrado were a study in denim when they met in the office of the assistant to the chancellor. Peter's outfit had cost the better part of three hundred dollars, the fabric artificially aged as fake antiques are distressed by dealers. Cerrado's work shirt and trousers were from K-Mart at best and had faded honestly after many washings."

And my personal favorite "a parody of higher education."

Flight of a Witch by Ellis Peters

Finished on 8Feb. That is today - being grounded by the side-effects of heavy-duty antibiotics may have some advantages.

While waiting for my ride in the lobby of the condemned dorm where our department offices currently reside, I checked out the contents of the dean's loaner shelf. It is in the same general vicinity as the freebie table, but the principle is slightly different - "read and return" rather than "you like it - it's yours." I found about twenty books which I had erroneously written off as Reader's Digest Condensed Books. These are twenty-plus year old volumes from the Detective Book Club. Some most respectable names appear on the bindings, such as Ellis Peters (well, duh) and Ralph McInerny (of whom more later, when I finish his book). Of course, I suppose many of the names on the bindings of Reader's Digest Condensed Books are respectable as well ...

Most of my reading of Ellis Peters has been the Brother Cadfael books. I had read a couple of the Inspector Felse books, but never considered them quite as much fun. Can't say this changed my opinion about the fun part, but this was well constructed and she didn't cheat at all with the clues.

Some of my observations of this one are going to call for some orderly rereading. The story opens from the point of view of a young schoolmaster at the local boys public school and runs there for long enough that I was almost surprised when Inspector Felse entered the scene. Did she do that all along?

The "witch" is the daughter of the house where the schoolmaster lodges, and who has a striking effect on a good number of young men - including the schoolmaster. Unfortunately, with the current popularity of the occult, some might pick this up assuming that sense of the word and be greatly disappointed to find that it is used in the sense of a "bewitching" beauty --- no evil and satanic rites on the Hallowmount.

Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear by Ed McBain

Finished on 4Feb.

See, I'm back to dating my list - and I was so determined to keep current. Sic transit New year's resolutions.

I loved this. For some reason, I have never read Ed McBain. I had him mentally classed with the "hard-boiled" detective thrillers. Actually, I'm not sure what that means. Oh well. I bought it solely because of the title; a book named Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear has to have some potential. It turns out that Gladly is a teddy bear with magic glasses which correct his crossed eyes and is the subject of a patent infringement case. Her name arises from a childish misreading of a line from a hymn - "Gladly his cross I'd bear." Even better.

The main character is Matthew Hope, the somewhat self-deprecating attorney representing one of the contenders in the lawsuit. His associates are an eclectic crew and the setting is somewhere in Florida, southern Florida, I believe. Hope was shot in the previous book (I assume) and is grumpy about concern over his recovery after some time spent in a coma. "You try getting shot sometime, and I'll write you a letter when you refuse to come out of a goddamn coma. --- Then again, people keep telling me I seem a bit crotchety since I woke up."

McBain's language usage is wonderful. Hope and his opposite number are listening to the judge drone on about the nature of the proceedings. "I was thinking that everyone in the world already knew all this, at least insofar as it bore similarities to criminal law. Everyone in the world had watched the Simpson trial for the past twenty-two years, six months, three weeks and twelve days and knew all this procedure stuff even better than I myself did." A little crotchety?

Of course, we do end up with murder and mayhem and such, wouldn't want it otherwise. There are sixteen of his books on the shelf in the hall, but I swear I never have read them - I don't know where they came from. I may never know where they came from, but that "never read them" thing I shall correct shortly.

The Seventh Day by Scott Shepherd

Those kindle cheap books ---

I think my sister bought this one. There was a special offer of SF/Fantasy by new authors for those who had ever purchased any - you never know when the next great talent may appear.

Given the format, this was ok - but I don't think he is going to replace any of the pantheon of fantasy writers already in place. It read rather like a screenplay. This is understandable, since, according to the endnotes, it was a proposal for a TV series that no one picked up, then it became an Amazon serial. Now it is glued together into a novel.

It is post-apocalyptic, with the apocalypse a deus ex machina descent of some unknown and departed aliens who simply snatched up everything and almost everybody and went away. Only they left some people with "gifts" - random psi powers or super strength or x-ray vision or such. And don't forget the fire-breathing horses.

Then he leaves it with a hellacious cliff-hanger. Capital letters/Neon lights/"buy my next book'- a practice which I find deplorable.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

I read a story about Eggers in Smithsonian and was intrigued enough to buy one of his books. He runs a publishing enterprise called Voice of Witness. They focus on telling the stories of cataclysmic events in human history through the victims rather than the military or political leaders. This one is the story of one of the "lost boys" of Sudan.

The title comes from a Dinka legend. God (by whatever name) offers the First Dinka their choice between the cow and the what. They consider the unanswerable question and choose the cow, which remains the basis of their economy to this day. That is, what is left of their economy and way of life, which isn't much.

In the turmoil of war, Achak becomes one of thousands of young boys who trek across Sudan to Ethopia. Young boys, preteen boys. I was left with a vision of a trailing line of children stretching for all those hundreds of miles with gaps where one is taken by a lion or sits down to rest and never gets up again.

The story of this lost childhood is framed by events after he is "rescued" and relocated to the United States - where he was still a lost boy.

I didn't expect this to be a comfortable read and it certainly met my expectations on that point, but I am thankful that someone is out there telling the stories from the point of view of those who experience these events rather than that of observers.

A Question of Guilt by Frances Fyfield

Another semirandom kindle cheap book. This appears to be British to the point of refusing to admit the possibility of an American audience. There are bits of dialogue and discourse which are frankly incomprehensible because they are so imbedded in local slang. Still, the characters are appealing and the crime is intriguing. There is never any mystery about whodunit - the problem is proving it. Murder for hire, and the hatchet man freely giving up his contractor, but she has protected herself very well.

The principal character is Helen West, a Crown Prosecutor, I read this as the British equivalent of an Assistant District Attorney. At least, she is billed as the principal character ("a Helen West novel"). This one seems to center more on Detective Superintendent Geoffrey Bailey. Their romance is still mostly in potential stages at the end of the book.

The characters in and surrounding the crime itself receive far more attention that either of the detecting team. They are a seriously messed up bunch.

I think I will try another one or two. I really liked Helen and Geoff.

They Also Serve by Mike Moscoe

These are fun, but I would like them better if Mr. Moscoe/Shepherd would try a different plot. On the other hand - space opera is space opera. It is what it is and why expect more?

Ray Longknife leaves his pregnant wife and goes forth on a diplomatic mission. This time the miscalculated wormhole jump is the result of sabotage. I wonder why he doesn't call them wormholes like everybody else. And Ray and his crew are taken to a world occupied by the descendants of the crew of a jump ship that never returned about three hundred years earlier. It's a small galaxy and a plot which he recycles in one of the few others which I have read.

While his ship's captain is searching for the combination for a return to their home space, Ray and his team are planetside dealing with the locals.

Turns out that the planet was colonized millenia earlier by some folks who constructed a computer system made of the material of the planet itself but eventually went off and left it on its own, and human activity is interfering with its functions. The computer/planet quite understandably is fighting back. However, in the meantime it cures Ray of the residual effects of his military engagement with troops under the command of his now loyal chief of staff (in this universe, peace makes stranger bedfellows than war).

I think that Moscoe/Shepherd must have read Lem's Solaris at some point in his misspent youth - or at least seen one of the movies. I suppose it is possible that he came up with the sentient computer/planet on his own - but somehow I doubt it.

The Safe Bridge by Frances Parkinson Keyes

I hadn't read one of these in many years, I have nearly a full shelf of them back in the hall, but hadn't done more than think of them fondly from time to time. There was Came a Cavalier, the one that my grandmother wanted to reread shortly before her death. That was quite an exercise, she was very nearly blind - but she really wanted to read it herself rather than have it read to her, although my sister and I were on hand to have done it. So I sacrificed my paperback to the cause and scanned it page by page into high resolution pdfs and my sister printed the pages out - the book is long since out of print and I suppose Keyes was never popular enough to make the transition to electronic format. Dinner at Antoine's is the one I knew best, all about old New Orleans, but I would have sworn that I read them all -- with the exception of this one.

This one was originally released in 1934 and rereleased in paper in 1965. It is set in colonial New England and is the slightly fictionalized story of a young woman who is sent away to America in disgrace by her Scottish family. High drama - as her ship sails, she sees on shore the procession of her own funeral. When she arrives in New England she is abandoned by even her servants with a family being well-paid to keep her, and so begins the transition from a favored daughter of the aristocracy to a young woman without family in a harsh frontier community. The original of the character, Elizabeth Burr, is one Elizabeth Todd and most of the events of her life are recorded with reasonable faithfulness.

The style is a little dated perhaps, and the story has decided moralistic overtones, but I enjoyed it. I might not have if I hadn't read all of those stories back when I was in college - nothing like a little nostalgia.

The Danger by Dick Francis

Does the man never miss? I guess I consider that Russian one a miss, but he is definitely back on the game. The increased depth and character development in these later books is more noticeable as they continue.

This time our hero, Andrew Douglas, works for a firm that handles kidnappings. From the rescue end, of course. It opens as he has been sent to settle the kidnapping of an Italian girl who happens to be the best female jockey in Europe. In spite of a potential disaster created by a carabinieri officer who refuses to follow directions, the girl is rescued after being held for five weeks. And when the next kidnap victim is the small son of the owner of the horse of the year, a pattern of connection to horse racing appears.

The predictable romance between Andrew and the girl jockey is nicely understated. The dramatic relationship is the one that develops between Andrew and the kidnapping mastermind.

Avishag by Yael Lotan

Not only did I read this some time ago - I wrote the following notes some time ago. It was even some time after I had read the book and those following - somewhere down the line I started dating the reads again. This is turning into an awkward semester as far as time is concerned.

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Interesting. Love those low-price kindle book offers. I suppose it would be even cheaper to go to the library, but even my friend who has fussed about my book buying habit for years has gotten much much quieter about it since she got her own kindle.

This is a story (obviously - enough years of Sunday School and you should recognize the name, even with this alternate transliteration) about the young girl that they brought to David to warm his bed in his dotage. Avishag (otherwise known as Abishag) in this no doubt highly romanticized version becomes an extremely powerful personage in a kingdom scarcely recognizable from the highly romanticized traditional version of King David. Definitely different romances. I suspect this is a more accurate version of the fundamental tribal society of the day .

Can you tell that school has started? I did read this early in the weeks preceding this date, but duty has preempted a massive amount of my time - not the teaching, that's fun - it is the "other stuff" ...