TITLES P - Q - R

The Pale Horse
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 5
Dodd, Mead
1961


Mrs. Davis calls for a priest, so Father Gorman goes to her rented rooms, just before she dies unexpectedly after a brief illness. She gives Father Gorman a list of names, which he is supposed to do something with, but unfortunately, the good Father is killed after he leaves Mrs. Davis’ flat. Inspector Lejeune and Dr. Corrigan, the Police Pathologist, begin investigating the list, which was found in the Priest’s shoe. Dr. Corrigan runs into his old school chum, Mark Easterbrook, and they fall to talking about the case – it turns out they both know different parts of the same thing. Mark knows two people on the list who recently died under non-mysterious circumstances. But Mark has been to The Pale Horse, where the mysterious women there claim they can kill someone by “remote control.” Mark and his friend Ginger Corrigan come up with a plan to pose as a potential client and the victim, to see if they can expose the whole operation. (One name on the list is “Corrigan” so both Ginger and Dr. Corrigan have a good reason to figure out what’s really going on.) Mark makes the arrangements with the go-between, Mr. Bradley, claiming to be a man looking to marry, whose estranged wife is making difficulties. (Ginger is playing the part of the wife, taking a flat in London and using a disguise.) Realizing the risk Ginger is taking, Mark explains the plan to Inspector Lejeune. At first, Ginger seems fine, but then she develops a cold that turns into pneumonia, and she just seems to go from bad to worse. The book has a bang-up ending, like boxcars piling up in a train wreck, and a lot of things happening at once. It turns out the mastermind behind the scheme is mild-mannered Pharmacist Mr. Osborne, who pretends to have seen the murderer of Father Gorman (actually, he murdered the Padre) and tries in vain to pin it on the mysterious Mr. Venables, who apparently is just a red herring. A person looking to “remove” an inconvenient obstacle visits Mr. Bradley, who quite legally, arranges a “wager” that the victim will die by a certain date, opposed to the client, who bets otherwise. The client then attends a seance at The Pale Horse, where they promise supernatural means will do in the victim. What actually happens is that an apparently reputable consumer survey company sends a surveyor to the neighborhood, including the victim, and asks questions about household products they use. Mr. Osborne then adds Thallium to a product that the victim already uses, disguises himself as a meter reader or repairman, gains access to the victim’s home and switches the regular product with the tainted one. After a few weeks, the victim starts to exhibit vague symptoms that may turn into a variety of serious complaints. Fortunately, a common thread among the victims is their hair falls out easily, which is an indication of Thallium poisoning – so they were able to save Ginger before it was too late. They discover that the late Mrs. Davis, who started all of this, was one of the surveyors, and she uncovered something, so she was eliminated. This is a rip-roaring, cracker-jack mystery with a lot of very likable characters, atmosphere and an extremely clever plot. (The only part that doesn’t hold together is that it was never established how Mr. Osborne knew Mr. Venables to pick him as the fall guy.) Also in the book is an exquisite self-parody, Mrs. Oliver, who is a somewhat ditzy and befuddled mystery writer. She is sharply drawn and a true joy. An excellent book, entertaining throughout, without a wrong note. One of this author’s best, from a master of the genre.


Pale Kings And Princes
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Bantam Doubleday Dell
1987



Boston Private Investigator Spenser is hired by a newspaper to probe the death of one of their reporters who was doing a drug investigation. When he arrives in the small backwoods town, he is stone-walled by the Police and hindered by the other authorities. When he must spend more time in the town investigating, he invites Susan and Hawk along for help and company. The story gets pretty complicated among the drug dealers, the crooked cops, local rednecks and illegal immigrants, but like all these books, it’s well-written in a lively, entertaining style. And of course, Spenser and Hawk defeat the bad guys in the end.


Panic in Box C
John Dickson Carr
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Harper & Row
1966



This book begins on an ocean liner from England to New York. Amateur sleuth Dr. Fell is speaking with author Philip Knox about fellow passenger actress Margery Vane. Many years before, she and her partner Adam Cayley, started a repertory company in Richbell (standing in for Larchmont) but he died on opening night and the company disbanded. She is coming back now to try again with a new company, but things start going wrong almost at once. Of course everyone in the company is either obnoxious or obviously hiding something. Then during a dress rehearsal, someone murders Margery while she is alone locked in Box C. The second half of the book is spent examining everyone’s means, opportunities and motives to commit the crime. Although the writer is famous for dozens of “locked-room mysteries,” I found the characters uniformly unappealing and the dialogue confusing, contrived and grating. In the end, it turns out Margery was killed by Bess Harkness, her long-time companion (only the biggest cliche in the world) for ruining the career of an actor that Bess idolized. She is killed by the police while attempting a second murder. A pleasant aside to this story is the reconciliation of Philip Knox with his estranged wife, and although they are the most likable people in this tale, that still does not do them all that much credit. It also has one priceless gem discussing towns in lower Westchester County that almost makes up for the rest of this over-blown mish-mash.


Paper Doll
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 2
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1993



Loudon Tripp hires Boston Private Investigator Spenser to find the killer of his wife when the Police are stymied. There seem to be no clues in her recent life as a wealthy socialite, so Spenser probes into her past in South Carolina. It turns out the real Olivia Nelson married an African when she was in the Peace Corps and settled in Nairobi. It was an illegitimate daughter of her father’s that pretended to be Olivia Nelson, the wealthy socialite who married into Boston society. But they spent more money than they had, and her plan to blackmail her father (another tycoon who had since lost everything) was ruined when she was killed by her father’s long-time manservant. The whole thing was so utterly pathetic that Spenser decided against pursuing it further. Susan and Martin Quirk make it into this story (also Pearl the Wonder Dog) but not Hawk.


Paper Lion
George Plimpton
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Harper & Row
1964



Born to wealth and privilege, this author dabbles in many different fields, trying to be a kind of “everyman observer” and writing about his experiences from an insider’s perspective. In other books, he writes about pitching with the New York Yankees and boxing with Archie Moore. This book describes his quarterbacking stint with the Detroit Lions. He begins by recounting his various attempts, through several years, of getting a football team to allow him to participate. His first rejection was by the coach of the Western Conference in the Pro Bowl, followed quickly by the New York Giants. He appeared to be making some progress with the New York Titans, and then the Baltimore Colts, but both eventually fizzled. Finally, the owner of the Lions seemed taken with the idea, and invited him to join their training camp in July 1963. So he finds himself in Cranbrook, a boys academy in the outskirts of Detroit, where the Lions train. He meets the coaching staff and other team staff, plus the players, including Terry Barr, Joe Schmidt, Earl Morrall and Night Train Lane, who was married to singer Dinah Washington. He was in a unique position to get along with everyone, and he did. Because he was older than most players, the coaches felt comfortable socializing with him. The regular players didn’t consider him a threat to their jobs, so they were generally friendly and gracious toward him. Even the rookies felt a kinship with him, since he was newer to this than they were. The book very closely examines the real nuts-&-bolts day-to-day workings of a professional football team, and it can’t help but be interesting, like peeking behind a curtain. The players and coaches are a never-ending source of anecdotes about each other, other teams and former players, notably Bobby Layne and Alex Karras. Because everything is so new, the writing never lags, and simply bounds along on its own energy. In training camp, he spends most of his time with the offense, but he also sits in with the defense and special teams, to gain a better understanding of the team as a whole. He learns a few plays and practices them as hard as he can. But after weeks in camp, his debut in an inter-squad game is a disaster. Played at a nearby high school and a very popular local event, his plays are a series of mix-ups, fumbles and miscues, losing 30 yards in the bargain. Leaving the field, he is given a warm reception by the crowd, which he feels has been vindicated in its impression that football is too difficult for an amateur to do well. He leaves shortly after, although there is an epilogue that recounts other stories afterward, many of them sad. This book overall is interesting enough, but it has several problems. The writing is not especially lively or engaging, and it often deteriorates into the petulant whining of a spoiled boy at camp, who feels his is treated badly by his bunkmates. It also suffers from page after page of the most egregious typos I have ever seen in a reputable book, and they’re so distracting that they can’t help but mar the enjoyment of it. The book is nearly redeemed by some hilarious anecdotes and evocative descriptions of events like Rookie Night, Alex Karras playing Toastmaster, and rookies singing their school song. My favorite was when he described a disastrous production of “Macbeth” from his school days, and it was such a howl that you wished for a whole book like that. It’s entertaining enough in its own way, but it doesn’t resonate, and the ending is wistful and sloppy.


The Partner
John Grisham
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Island Books / Dell Publishing
A Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell
1997

Lawyer Patrick Lanigan apparently fakes his own death and then contrives to steal $90 million paid as a fee to his law firm. The firm hires a bounty hunter to find him, which they do, four years later in Brazil. But Patrick has an accomplice, Eva, who when she realizes that he’s been snatched, she transfers all of his funds elsewhere, and she goes into hiding. But first, she notifies the FBI in the hopes that they can rescue Patrick from the bounty hunter’s torture squad before it’s too late. They do, and bring Patrick back to face murder charges (the dead body assumed to be his) and grand larceny. Everyone wants a piece of this case, from the law firm wanting their money back, to the insurance company who paid Patrick’s “widow” Trudy $2.5 million on his “death” – and who has been living happily high on the hog with her sleazy boyfriend all this time. Meanwhile, the bounty hunters are doing their best to locate Eva, hiding in Europe, since she holds the key to the missing $90 million. Sandy McDermott, Patrick’s pal from law school, is retained as his lawyer, and his first job is to sue the FBI for torturing Patrick, complete with gruesome pictures of his wounds splashed all over the media. The next thing is the divorce from Trudy, who agrees to waive any claims to his (possible) assets when confronted with the information from Patrick’s private investigator, with detailed evidence of her infidelity, and DNA proof that her daughter is not Patrick’s child. Little by little, as the lawyers take depositions, we begin to hear details of the various crimes. How Benny Aricia blew the whistle on his company bilking the government on military contracts, and the $90 million was the settlement he was to receive and split with Patrick’s law firm. How the law firm was planning to divide the money up, leaving out Patrick, even though he was a partner. How he bugged the phones and offices at the law firm, so he knew to show up where the money was being transferred, pretending to be the senior partner, and authorized another transfer into an account of his own. How he faked his own death by rolling his car over in a ditch and setting it on fire. How the bounty hunters spent millions and countless man-hours to track him down. Suddenly the bounty hunters snatch Eva’s father, trying to bring her to them, so Sandy leans on the FBI to make them release her father. But once the FBI knows who she is, they grab her instead for questioning. Next, Sandy cuts deals with the major players because Patrick has documentation that the whistle-blower case was a fraud perpetrated by Benny Aricia and the law firm, the FBI drops their charges against him in exchange for returning the $90 million (less four years of interest) and Patrick’s evidence. Plus they release Eva and keep her protected. The insurance companies behind the bounty hunters, who don’t want to be implicated in the business of Patrick’s torture, agree to let his ex-wife keep her insurance money and set up a trust fund for her daughter. That leaves only the state murder charge, reduced to manslaughter because the body remains unidentified. (The state lacks evidence because the accident was not originally investigated as a murder.) The supposed victim is a young local ne’er-do-well named Pepper Scarboro, who Patrick says he helped assume a new identity and star afresh on the west coast. Finally Patrick tells Sandy the story about an elderly man he had befriended following an injury case, who was estranged from his family, and when he died, Patrick used his body in the crash. Sandy made a generous settlement with the family so they wouldn’t sue, and that was the last prop holding up the state’s case against Patrick. So he pleads guilty to a charge of mutilating a corpse (the state digs up the deceased’s coffin to make sure he’s not in there) and the state gives him a deal for a suspended sentence and no jail time. He walks out of court free (and wealthy) and plans to meet Eva in France. This is when he tells Sandy that he was the one who tipped off the bounty hunters, so he could finally escape from a life of running. Unfortunately, when he gets to France, he finds that Eva is already one step ahead of him and has disappeared with all of his money, and that’s where the book ends. I suppose anyone might think this was an appropriate ending, where Patrick gets his come-uppance, and also the crooks, but it’s still ultimately unsatisfying. It actually starts out as a crackerjack thriller and grabs you right on the first page, being well-written and taut, like all of this author’s books. But it reminds me a lot of “Dirty Tricks” in the sense that all of the characters are either sketchy or obnoxious, so you really don’t care what happens to them. The supposed love angle between Patrick and Eva is implausible, and in the end, the motivations lack realism. This is plain formulaic story-telling with a trick ending that is much too simplistic for all of the intricate and ponderous build-up. A shorter version of this might have had merit, but as it is, it’s a long-winded and melodramatic pot-boiler with a bad ending.


Partners in Crime
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Dell Publishing
1981
Dodd, Mead
1929



Tommy and Tuppence Beresford appear in several books over the years and this is early in their career. He has a desk job with the Secret Service and they also do some sub-rosa amateur sleuthing. In this book, they’ve taken over a disreputable detective agency (so the “Feds” can keep an eye on their suspicious clients) and it’s actually a series of two-minute mysteries woven together in the overall plot of what’s behind this dubious operation. Their career as private detectives starts off with a bang when Tuppence locates a missing fiancée - but it turned out that she had concocted the whole thing to drum up business, convincing the young lady to pretend to be missing so her boyfriend would hire them to find her. Next, they’re called to an estate where some jewelry is missing and the two most obvious suspects are busy making aliases for each other, which they needn’t bother since it turned out to be a visitors maid. After that, they have a visit from an unsavory customer of the original proprietor, something to do with Russian military secrets or something, but luckily they outsmart him and his smooth partner pretending to be a Scotland Yard inspector. Then they attend a costume party where a woman is killed, ostensibly by her two-timing lover, but they discover it was instead her jealous husband dressed in the same costume. Next comes a funny vignette of a young lady who has disappeared from her fiancé returning from abroad, although they suspect foul play, has gone to a fat farm before he comes back. In between cases, they practice playing famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes or Thornley Colton (who happened to be blind) from mystery fiction. While Tommy is pretending to be a blind detective, he is abducted by two unsavory gentlemen with ties to the original agency and they try to kill him on an electrified floor, using his blind man’s eyeshade, not realizing it that is a phony that Tommy can see through, so he foils their plans. Then they stumble upon a famous actress, whose husband from an ill-advised early marriage won’t agree to a divorce and when she turns up dead, no one suspects the husband since he’s the policeman who turns up conveniently at the scene. After that, their contact at Scotland Yard asks them to infiltrate a high society bunch of fast livers who keep passing counterfeit bank notes and the mastermind turns out to be the supposed yokel from Alabama instead of the more obvious suspects. Once again in between cases, they attack a sensational case from the newspaper about Captain Sessle being murdered on the golf course with a hat pin. They realize the mysterious woman in brown is not only the son of Sessle’s crooked partner, but also played the part of Sessle himself by switching clothes with the victim and finishing his round with no one close enough to see it was Sessle’s clothes only. Next they get a very confused case of attempted poisonings in a big estate with relatives angling for their inheritance, an it turns out to be the aged companion of the original mistress who had built up an immunity to the drug and was poisonings everyone between her and the family fortune. A young man asks them to help win a bet with his fiancée who claims to have an unshakable alibi being in two places at once, naturally with the help of her unknown twin sister. Then they help a poor minister’s daughter unearth her late aunt’s fortune, which has been buried in the vegetable garden. Next is another confused tale of mixed-up luggage, which leads to a drug-smuggling gang. In the last story, they finally meet the mysterious Russian agent who was behind the whole detective agency facade, and it nearly proves to be their undoing, because he sneaks Tuppence away from under their noses, using a series of seemingly unconnected hotel rooms and accomplices acting as decoys and fortunately they catch him disguised as an American woman before he has a chance to harm Tuppence. Which is a good thing, because she announces that they will have to retire from being detectives, for their new job as expectant parents. It’s a cute ending to a very entertaining book. The mysteries are all interesting, although sometimes a little too mysterious for their own good, as the explanations, hastily delivered, fail entirely to disperse the confusion. The conceit of pretending to be other fictitious detectives might work better with better-known characters than the ones they refer to, although that’s a small point. One tiresome aspect is how it’s continually drummed into the reader how very special and sophisticated is this young couple (a la Nick and Nora Charles of “The Thin Man”) but for all of this insistence, they never come across that way. But still, they’re a jolly and game couple, evenly matched, and the writing in lively and engaging as expected and it moves along effortlessly with no lags. A very pleasant trifle from the master of the genre.


Pastime
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 4
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1991



In “Early Autumn,” Boston Private Investigator Spenser rescued young Paul Giacomin from his warring parents, and became in effect his guardian. Ten years later, Paul asks him to locate his mother who has disappeared. It turns out her boyfriend was involved in some scheme with local gangster Joe Broz, also coming back from previous books, with son Gerry and right-hand man Vinnie Morris. This story also includes a lot of biographical information about Spenser, which is interesting without being intrusive. In the end, Spenser and Hawk rescue Paul’s mother, and Vinnie leaves Joe Broz after Gerry and Spenser have a few run-ins. A real winner of this series. This story introduces Pearl the Wonder Dog.


The Pelican Brief
John Grisham
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Doubleday
1992


Two Supreme Court justices have been murdered. Law student Darby Shaw stumbles onto the truth, so of course she has the bad guys, the CIA, the FBI and the media all chasing her. Not to mention, the famous police protection. She’s working with a journalist, Gray Grantham, and they end up together at the end. This is well-written and taut, like all of Grisham’s, but the chase genre is getting tired. Also made as a movie with Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington.


The Penthouse Mystery
Ellery Queen
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Pyramid Books
1941



Mystery writer Ellery Queen and his father, Police Inspector Queen, get mixed up in the murder of Gordon Cobb, a traveling ventriloquist. Upon his return to New York from a visit to China, he was murdered in his hotel room. It turns out that he was working with a pro-China underground group smuggling jewelry out of China to the U.S. to raise funds for relief efforts. However, with his murder, the location of the jewelry becomes a mystery. It turns out that his manager and some card sharps were working together to steal the jewelry and keep the money themselves. However, the scheme came a cropper and two murders later, the jewelry is still nowhere to be found. Eventually, Ellery locates the ventriloquist dummy, which has the information about finding the jewelry. These stories are typically well-written in a jaunty informal style, but they also tend to be hopelessly over-plotted and dense.


The Plague and I
Betty MacDonald
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
J.B. Lippincott Company
1948



This author also wrote the auto-biographical “The Egg and I” which was later turned into a movie with Claudette Colbert. This book takes a sharp but light-hearted look at that period in her adult life when she had tuberculosis and stayed in a sanatorium. She likens getting TB at mid-life with going downtown to do a bunch of urgent errands, and getting hit by a bus. At this time, she was divorced and living with her mother, along with her two young daughters. She worked for the government and in fact, a number of people there were infected with TB from a co-worker – a fact which the government regarded with bored indifference. She is devastated at the news of her diagnosis and doesn’t know how she will afford the cure. She feels fortunate when a relative pulls some strings and gets her into “The Pines,” a well-regarded free sanatorium with a long waiting list. After she gets there, it’s hard for her to feel quite so fortunate – the staff is brusque, almost rude, the regimen Spartan and inflexible, and the other patients seem defeated and maudlin. She discovers how difficult it can be, taking a bunch of total strangers, plucked out of the middle of their busy lives, and plunk them in a room together, all day, every day with no privacy, and expect them to stay quietly in their beds with no talking, reading, moving around or any other activities. She has a series of roommates who are a real mixed bag, and she describes them in unflinching terms. After being there three months and having a couple of minor procedures to make her lungs stronger, she has improved to the point that she is allowed more “up” time and activities. Her descriptions of physical and occupational therapy are hilarious and priceless. After another three months as an ambulant patient, finally the big day arrives and she is discharged. It turns out to be just as big an adjustment getting out of the sanatorium, as it was going in. She feels overwhelmed, overly sensitive, vulnerable and very noticeable. She seems to think that no one understands her, and apparently this is a common trait among the patients, so they spend most of their time socializing with former patients and staff from the sanatorium. Eventually, she feels independent enough to take a course to brush up her shorthand, and finally talks herself into looking for a job. Instead, she runs into an old friend of her sister’s, who it turns out is desperate to hire a secretary, and there she is. This is a sprightly, charming book, written with sparkling wit and great tenderness. It is so cleverly written that it manages to be funny without being phony, and gentle without being sentimental. The writing is lively and informal, and really makes you feel you’re right there with all of them. Highly entertaining and delightful throughout.


Plum Island
Nelson DeMille
Crime Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Warner Books
1997


NYC Homicide detective John Corey, injured on the job, is recovering at his uncle’s beach house in Southold, in Suffolk County on Long Island. Nearby Plum Island is a top-secret federal animal disease research facility. Two scientists from there, Tom and Judy Gordon, are murdered on their deck, and officials investigating immediately assume is has something to do with their work on viruses. The local police request his help as a favor, and also because he knew the victims. John Corey is written almost as a mirror-image of Robert B. Parker’s “Spenser” – tough but intelligent, hard-boiled yet moral – with lots of detailed descriptions of clothes and food. But he is much more obnoxious, low-class and doesn’t have Spenser’s redeeming wit and snappy banter. The story really bogs down once it is established that the crime was not committed for viruses, but rather for buried pirate treasure. A local businessman and bon vivant, Frederic Tobin, cultivated the Gordons to retrieve the treasure from Plum Island (where it would be government property) to their own property, where they agreed to split the proceeds. Of course, there was a falling-out among thieves, and Tobin killed them. John Corey is the only person who figured this out, and while he was investigating the case, he spoke to some local people who were in turn killed by Tobin in an effort to thwart the investigation. The denouement where Corey catches Tobin during a hurricane is so contrived, like a bad “Police Woman” episode. The ending, where he retires from the force and becomes a professor, and begins a tentative relationship with Beth Penrose, another detective, is oddly depressing. Interesting but derivative, done better before and since.


Pride and Joy
Terri Casey
Reference
Non-Fiction
Rating 2
Beyond Words Publishing
1998


It is the author’s contention that women without children are subject to cultural stereotypes, and perceived as unhappy, unfulfilled, selfish, unfeminine, immature, short-sighted and uncaring. It was her intention to write a book showing the wide diversity of women who have made that choice, and how their lives are anything but selfish and unfulfilled. To that end, she interviewed 25 women from all over the country, and a variety of backgrounds, socially, ethnically, economically and sexual orientation. It’s a noble effort, and the book fairly reeks of ponderous importance and social significance. Unfortunately, in spite of the diversity of the subjects, the interviews uniformly suffer from a tedious sameness that is as unexpected as it is unwelcome. An additional drawback to the book is that it is written in a horrible typeface, small and faint, that is not only annoying but hard to read. The author insists the interviews were all fascinating and energizing, but none of that comes through in this dull and lifeless book. How much it would have gained from pictures, or even illustrations, to break up the pages of text, and breathe some life into these life-stories of what should be interesting and admirable successful women. But alas, there’s nothing but bad chapter quotes besides the interviews, making it very slow going, not to mention, tedious and unilluminating. Because statistically, women without children are better educated than the norm, things quickly degenerate into a exercise in navel-gazing that is not only tiresome, but utterly defeats the book’s purpose of making these women seem interesting and sympathetic. It just continues on and on and on, like a broken record, utterly failing to strike any spark or cover any new ground. One big problem is that although the interviewees range in age from their 20's to their 80's, the bulk of them are in their 30's and 40's, by a very wide margin Of 25 interviews, only six women are older than 50, and technically speaking, women under 50 could certainly still have children, so it can’t be said that the door has shut completely on all of their stories. It would have helped to “punch up” this book, in my opinion, to include a few famous women (famous people are inescapably interesting, all by themselves) or more very old women (whose child-free status is incontrovertible, not like the 20-year-olds) and who remained childless at a time in society when it was virtually unheard of. This is typical of a “vanity press” edition, which cried out for an editor ro maximize its good points, and more importantly, address its considerable short-comings. The whole book gets blown completely out of the water in the bibliography, when in spite of the author’s assertion that this book needed to be written to shed light on this phenomenon, she manages to list 12 earlier books on the same subject, not to mention, magazine articles and web sites. Well-meaning, but ultimately self-indulgent and disappointing. Also comes with a mission statement that is uproariously bad by any standards.


Promised Land
Robert B. Parker
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Dell Publishing / Bantam Doubleday Dell
1976

This is an early entry in the Spenser series by this author, of the erudite Private Investigator from Boston. Harvey Shepard comes to his new office and hires Spenser to find his runaway wife, Pam, who left him and three teenagers in Hyannis. At their house, Spenser runs into Hawk, who he had known years earlier when they were both boxing, and who now is working as an enforcer for a loan shark named King Powers. Spenser suspects that Shepard owes money to him, and if Hawk is coming around, he has more problems than just his missing wife. Besides the family, Spenser questions the Barnstable Police and locals, trying to get a bead on where Pam may have gone. He finds her at a sort of “safe house” full of feminists in a run-down neighborhood (in fact, one of them gets into a fistfight with him) and although she seems unhappy, she’s not being held against her will. She doesn’t want to go home, so Spenser leaves her there, and he won’t tell her husband where she is, so he fires him and demands his advance money back. Although no longer technically on any case, Spenser is dis-satisfied with the situation, especially since Hawk has roughed up Shepard, so he meets with Deke Slade at the Police, and they swap information. Suddenly, Pam Shepard calls him up in a panic because some of the feminists held up a bank and killed a guard, and now she’s in all sorts of trouble. Spenser hides her at his apartment while he tries to figure out how to help her. Next, her husband calls Spenser in a panic because the loan shark he borrowed the money from wants to muscle in on his real estate dealings, and he can’t square things without losing all of his investment or going to jail or both. Spenser cooks up a hare-brained scheme to trap King Powers and the feminists in an illegal weapons deal, using the bank robbery money, and figuring that he can solve two problems at once. He enlists the help of the New Bedford Police to oversee the operation, in exchange for keeping the Shepards out of it. Any idiot could tell that was never going to work, and not just people who read a lot of detective stories. Miraculously, it does actually work, the bad guys (and gals) get nabbed, the bank money is recovered, no one gets hurt, and Pam goes back to her husband. Unfortunately, King Powers is out on bail later, and brings his henchmen to the Shepards and roughs them up. When Spenser shows up, there’s the usual melee, and for a while it appears that Powers has him seriously outnumbered, if not out-strategized. But because Spenser warned Hawk out of the gun deal trap, Hawk won’t kill Spenser when Powers tells him to. The other henchmen flee, and Spenser roughs up Powers a bit so he leaves the Shepards alone. This is a really lively and engaging story in this series, and being so early of the group, it seems dewy fresh and uncluttered. His relationship with Susan is young and full of promise, and this book basically introduces Hawk as his equal and counterpart. Because of the times, the story suffers from some rather dated psycho-babble about sexism, racism, rights, stereotypes, morality, equality and self-actualization. But Parker is too good a writer to get bogged down in trivialities, and for the most part, the story charges along at a good clip and doesn’t lag. Interesting and entertaining throughout, and well-written as they all are in a punchy and informal style.


The Queen of Hearts
Michelle Martin
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Ballantine Books
1994



The elder Lord Cartwright kills himself, leaving his wife and family in financial ruin, and bequeathing the dower house on their property to Lady Samantha Adamson, the daughter of his old flame. This free-spirited young lady, now orphaned, arrives from abroad with her two young wards to live in the house, throwing the Cartwrights into a spin. This is especially true of Simon, the new Lord Cartwright, whose father’s death dropped the responsibility of the family onto his young shoulders. Since Simon has necessarily become suddenly serious and severe, he finds Samantha wild, uncivilized and downright radical. Meanwhile, she finds him arrogant and patronizing. Since she lives on their property, he feels obligated to prevent her from scandalizing polite society. He alternately thwarts and rescues her from a string of misadventures and she is alternately furious or grateful. There are many wonderful and picaresque characters and sub-plots – not too many, but just enough to keep things interesting. In the end, her ward Christina marries Simon’s younger brother, his mother elopes with one of Samantha’s oldest friends (they also find a better match for Simon’s stuffy fiancee) and of course Simon and Samantha get together after all. Well-written in a lively, engaging style, it makes you want to spend more time with these people.


The Rake’s Mistake
Gail Eastwood
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / New American Library, Div. Penguin Putnam
2002



Archer Drake, Lord Ramsdale, returns to London from being exiled to the West Indies by his family due to youthful indescretions. He becomes instantly enchanted by Lady Daphne Wetherell, a widow who is considered a notorious woman and shunned by society. While his mother and sisters attempt to make a suitable match for him, and his friend Peter Hollyfield tells scandalous tales about her, everything he hears only serves to make her all the more enticing. He discovers her step-son Robert has fallen in with a bad crowd, and he manages to lose to him at cards, giving him the opportunity to call on the Wetherells to settle his debts. Daphne is so relieved that he is not a creditor, or another odious Lord offering his “protection,” and they even discover a common interest in art. (Daphne and her late father both paint.) Since Archer is competing in a yacht race, he persuades Daphne to join him in a sail on the river for practice, and they wind up at his great-uncle’s estate for lunch, and she has such a lovely time that she can’t help being attracted to him, in spite of her best efforts. Because of their shared interest in maritime art, he shows her his collection, including his prized Dutch Master, which she spots at once as a copy. They return to her house to compare it with her late husband’s original, only to find her step-son has sold it to cover his gambling debts. She asks Archer to bring her to Lord Ainshaw’s, who bought the painting, so she can examine it there, although she recognizes the danger to his family’s standing if he socializes with her. When they go, Ainshaw is predictably rude to her, although a bigger problem is that painting turns out to be a copy also. They go to the art dealer who handled both transactions, a friend of her later father, and he seems eager to help, although Archer wonders if he might be in on it. He hires someone to investigate the background of the phony paintings transactions, and in case the crooks get any ideas, he hires a fellow just to watch over Daphne wherever she is. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help her when the gallery owner sets a trap for her and accuses her of snooping in his confidential files. But he leaps into action when a disgruntled former student of her father’s kills the gallery owner and spirits Daphne away on a fast boat bound for sea. When Archer gets word of what’s happened, he breaks up the most important race of the season by taking all the boats with him to rescue Daphne, which they do, but at the cost of Archers’ beloved Mist, which is destroyed in the effort. It turns out this disgruntled student blackmailed Daphne’s father into painting the phony pictures and then had him killed when he would do no more. When Daphne rebuffed his advances, he spread lies about her until she was shunned by society, even though none of it was true. In the end, even the dour Lady Ramsdale agrees to welcome Daphne as her son’s bride, and it all ends very happily. Well-written and interesting throughout, although way over-plotted for a Regency romance, and a bit too verbose and melodramatic to be really entertaining. But the characters are likable for the most part, and the descriptive passages are interesting and evocative. A little too tense for a real romance, and not overly romantic, but good enough of this type.


Return to Thrush Green
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Michael Joseph
1978



This is one in a series of sweet and gentle books set in the English countryside. This is rather a compendium of inter-related anecdotes about the residents, such as the doctor, church sexton, merchants and others. Among the tales told is about city dwellers who summer in the village, then move there permanently. The characters are all finely drawn but with more kindness than cunning. The stories are all charming and are woven together effortlessly into a pleasing whole. Although there are many comings and goings, and a lot of situations being changed around, everything has a happy ending, and things seem to work out for the best after all.


Ride With Me
Thomas B. Costain
Historical Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Doubleday & Company
1944



This author is famous for weaving a fictional story through actual historical events to very entertaining effect. Here in the early 1800s, we meet the Ellery family in London, owners of the newspaper The Tablet. Oldest son Francis longed for a great military career, but a childhood accident that left him with a limp dashed those hopes. His brother Carradoc has political ambitions, and is maneuvering for an advantageous marriage that will bring him the money and influence he craves. (The widowed Mrs. Ellery favors him over the others, which causes some tensions among the family.) Youngest son Humphrey is with a regiment in India, while Napoleon Bonaparte is making hay throughout the continent. Francis meets a group of French emigres from the aristocracy living in shabby gentility as exiles in London, and he falls hard for Gabrielle de Salle, although he realizes she is way out of his social circle. Then he meets Robert Wilson, notorious Soldier of Fortune, who warns him of the danger of invasion by the French. Francis makes a deal with his mother and brother to give up certain properties they want, to attract a suitable heiress, in exchange for their voting rights on the newspaper, so he can use The Tablet as a platform to educate the public about the threat. This works only too well, as merchants pull their ads, the government refuses them access to foreign news, and finally the King has him tossed in prison. It’s only the personal savings of his favorite Aunt Francie that keeps the paper afloat when everyone else deserts them. At the same time, Francis finds out that Carradoc is dallying with his beloved Gabrielle, which is an even more bitter pill to swallow. When Bonaparte invades Spain, Robert Wilson goes there with a regiment of irregulars. Francis (now calling himself Frank) tags along to avoid a summons (his mother and brother’s attempt to oust him from editorial control of the newspaper) and files dispatches with all the details, thus inventing the war correspondent. This innovation almost immediately turns around the fortunes of The Tablet, as news of the exploits from the peninsula is eagerly snapped up in London. Robert Wilson cooks up a scheme to create a mock military camp on a hill, headed by Frank and some English refugees. This has the desired effect of convincing the French General in the area that there is a larger British military presence than actual, and prevents him from attacking Wilson’s true positions. This works so well that the French Army stays bottled up until the British can send the rest of their forces and save the day in the peninsula. When Frank returns to London, he is elated to find The Tablet doing better than ever, but he is dashed to discover his beloved Gabrielle engaged to his brother Carradoc. When her brother is implicated in a spy scandal, Frank must work fast to spirit her out of the country. His brother drops her like a hot potato, fearful that the scandal will hurt his career, and settles down instead with a more suitable neighborhood heiress. Later, Frank is despondent to learn that Gabrielle has married another of the French exiles who returned to Paris, and then moved to Russia with the diplomatic corps. When Napoleon declares war on Russia instead, Frank hurries to Russia to make sure that she gets out safely. She refuses to leave, believing that she will be safer when Napoleon defeats the Russians. He doesn’t, of course, and as the dreaded Russian winter closes in, she is left behind to starve or be killed by the Russians. He rescues her in the nick of time, and they ride out the storm in an abandoned villa that was ransacked by the French Army, but provided at least rudimentary shelter and broken furniture for firewood. Under these inauspicious circumstances, they become intimate, and while Frank sees this as a significant turning point in their relationship, Gabrielle is more resistant to that idea. When they finally reach Poland, Frank is distraught to learn of Gabrielle’s plans to return to Napoleon’s court in Paris, and he sails back to England in a dejected mood. Then Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo, and the French monarchy is restored, so once again Gabrielle and her fellow Bonapartists find themselves in peril. Meanwhile, Gabrielle’s mousy cousin Margot has blossomed into a great beauty, and because she never affiliated herself with Napoleon’s cause, when the monarchy is restored, she inherited her parents’ vast estates. All Paris is at her feet, and even Frank is attracted to her, in spite of himself. Gabrielle, who had gone into hiding, re-appears when her husband and other Bonapartists are killed by the new regime, and publicly insults King Louis XVIII, bringing Frank and also Robert Wilson to her rescue from the angry mobs. When they arrange the escape of a condemned compatriot from prison, it becomes dangerous for all of them to remain in Paris. Wilson arranges for Frank and Gabrielle to leave the country secretly, which they do, and they even decide to elope as long as their luck is holding up. Unfortunately, the rest of the conspirators do not fare as well, and find themselves imprisoned by a vengeful monarchy. Fortunately they are released after a few months, and the book pretty much ends right there. It’s a good book, well-written and lively throughout, and just brimming (maybe too brimming) with interesting historical facts. The author is a good writer and has written many worthwhile books. I found this one did not hold together so well, as a combination of heroic military adventure, old-fashioned romance and history textbook. It wavered along an uneasy line between the three, sometimes with flashes of excitement, sometimes overly melodramatic, and other times dry and boring. The ending was too precipitous to be really satisfying, as these stories often are when they’re trying to do too much at once, and don’t really know where they’re going. But it was entertaining nonetheless, with characters that were genuine, and if not exactly likable, at least bearable.


Rose In Bloom
Louisa M. Alcott
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Orchard House Edition / Little, Brown & Company
1876



This is a sequel to “Eight Cousins” and begins with Rose and her Uncle Alec and Phebe returning home after some years abroad. The cousins have all grown up into young men and young ladies, instead of the gadabout youngsters they once were, and that makes it a little awkward at first. Rose returns with the same kindly disposition, but strong-minded and determined to be independent, to the amusement of her cousins, who are used to young ladies being more traditional. This irks cousin Charlie who had decided to be Rose’s match, although growing up without proper guidance has made him rather head-strong and idle. Another disappointment to the forthright Rose is discovering the duplicitousness of people who pretend to be her friends, since she has come into her parent’s fortune. The family thinks a safe match for Rose would be the steadfast Archie, although unbeknownst to all, he has developed a tendre for Phebe, who has blossomed into a fine young woman under Uncle Alec’s care. Rose begins to chafe under Charlie’s presumptuousness of their pairing, and in retaliation, presses into service as an escort her awkward cousin Mac, the bookworm, who is more earnest than accomplished, and who creates no end of social faux pas for the family to chortle over. A family crisis ensues when Archie proposes to Phebe, and although she tuns him down, the family is turned all topsy-turvy. Phebe sets off to make her name as a singer, leaving Rose without her dearest friend in the world, and poor Archie inconsolable. Then Rose finally hands Charlie his hat and he is much chastened by her rebuke. Like the first one, this book also spends pages moaning over bad literature, fast living by young men and ridiculous vanities of young ladies, as if complaining about it would have any effect on it. Next, cousin Steve proposes to Kitty, a nice girl from a good family and everyone rejoices. Although they seem a little immature and frivolous, especially compared to the earnest Rose and down-to-earth Archie, they’re both good-hearted youngsters and determined to be a credit to their families. Although Charlie tries his best to mend his profligate ways for Rose’s sake, he is not up to the task and in a tragic accident, the author manages to kill off cousin Charlie and his horse all in one stroke. Next, cousin Mac promises a dying woman to care for her infant, to the horror of his parents, but fortunately the resourceful Rose takes the baby under her wing, to the improvement of both. This selfless gesture so touches the sensitive Mac that he blurts out his previously unexpressed deep and abiding love for her. Rose is completely taken aback with surprise and wonder, and insists that he go away and study, thinking that like Archie and Phebe, time and distance will prove if the love is constant and true. (It is in the latter’s case, as they have continued to communicate during their separation.) Then Uncle Alec travels to visit Phebe and while there falls desperately ill with only Phebe to care for him at the risk of her own life. When he recovers at last, the family is ready to welcome her back with open arms. It all ends very nicely with the three happy couples planning their futures. Compared to the first book, which was sweetly sentimental and full of simple pleasures, this story brims with youthful angst, melodrama and tragedy. It leave an unpleasant aftertaste of disillusionment, dashed hopes and lowered expectations. It is still very well-written and the characters are genuine and finely drawn, although with warts and all. But the overall effect is dreary and demoralizing, in spite of the author’s best efforts to paint a pretty face on it. If there was a third book in this series, this story wouldn’t encourage anyone to want to read it.

Rum & Razors
Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Group
1995



This is another in a series of books based on the hit TV show “Murder, She Wrote” featuring mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher. In this story, Jessica finishes her latest book and then heads to St. Thomas for some vacation time away from the horrible winter weather at home in Cabot Cove, Maine. Two expatriates from her home town, Laurie and Walter Marschalk, have opened an upscale resort on the lagoon and invite her to stay. However, all is not perfect in paradise – the large resort behind theirs lost their water access when they opened, so there was always bad blood there. The other resort accused them of bribing local officials and killing a local land-owner in order to buy the property, and they vowed to put them out of business. Then Walter’s body is discovered in the lagoon with his throat slit. It’s very easy for Jessica to discover that Walter was almost universally despised, and so there is no lack of suspects, including the ubiquitous disgruntled former employee. The police arrest the former employee, but Jessica is convinced that he is innocent. She also discovers that Walter had many girlfriends, and in a particularly grisly case of horribly bad timing, a process server delivers divorce papers after he’s dead. Laurie admits to Jessica that she was aware of Walter’s infidelity, but even Jessica is surprised when Laurie and the owner of the competing resort announce a merger, not 48 hours after Walter’s death. Then Jessica stumbles on Laurie and ex-Senator Bobby Jensen in a clinch – he was reportedly the official who accepted bribes to facilitate their purchase of the property. Jessica is able to help Jacob, the arrested employee, remember that his phone call to Dr. Silber should provide an alibi for him – so it comes as a big shock the next day when the police tell her that Jacob killed himself in his cell. Then Dr. Silber suddenly retires and moves to America. Jessica begins to comprehend that larger forces are at work here. She happens upon a gathering of Laurie, her business partner Chris Webb and two other people, Jennifer and Fred, who claimed to have written Walter’s travel books. She follows them to a dock where they meet Mark, the owner of the other resort, and some of them leave on a boat, even though there is a bad storm. Jessica hires a boat to follow them and so is able to rescue Jacob when they throw him overboard. Later, all of the bad guys drown when their boat capsizes. It turns out that Fred killed Walter in a fight over payment for his ghost-writing, and Mark and Senator Jensen pulled the strings to implicate Jacob, fake his suicide and then attempt to silence him permanently. Although these books are always entertaining and well-written, this one seems much more muddled and haphazard than usual. It has moments that are nothing but “filler” and other moments where the dialogue or motivations are completely incomprehensible. The characters are uniformly unlikable and the story gets hopelessly bogged down in its own labyrinths. It would be impossible for a book in this series to be really bad, but this one is certainly not up to their usual standards. Somewhat disappointing, especially the ending, which is inexplicable.

The Runaway Jury
John Grisham
Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Bantam Doubleday Dell
1996


Another in a series of legal thrillers from this author, who is a former lawyer turned writer. His first book, “The Firm,” was one of the best books I’ve ever read. Since then, they’ve tended to be formulaic, melodramatic and implausible. This one has one of my favorite titles of all time. The story concerns a trial in Biloxi, Mississippi, of the widow of an ex-smoker who sued the tobacco company. Both sides regard this trial as a watershed – either discouraging further lawsuits against the industry, or opening the floodgates for such litigation, depending on the verdict. Consequently, both sides have spent millions of dollars on research, experts, jury analysts – and myriad other illegal, immoral and unsavory activities. Rankin Fitch is the orchestrator of the defense team, and he has all the money and ruthlessness to do whatever it takes to protect the industry. Nicholas Easter and his girlfriend Marlee (assumed names for both) arrange for Nicholas to get on the jury and then swing a deal with Fitch to influence the jury into returning the verdict desired. Fitch finds out too late that Marlee is really Gabrielle Brant and both of her parents died young of lung cancer. Their plan all along was to take the tobacco money and then double-cross Fitch and find for the plaintiff with large punitive damages. Their real intention was to use the $10,000,000 payoff making a killing in the stock market, short-selling tobacco stocks as the shares tumble after the verdict. They do this and then return the $10,000,000 to Fitch’s secret back account. So in the end, Marlee and Nicholas retire in luxury to Europe – but they were never more than ciphers throughout the book, and so you really can’t care what happens to them. Because they were supposed to be shadowy figures all along, they never became fleshed-out characters like Fitch, so their victory is hollow and irrelevant. Very well-written in a punchy and engaging style – it charges along breathlessly from the first page to the last. Grisham has a lot going for him, but he can’t seem to get all of his best elements to come together at the same time.

TITLES N - O

N or M?
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead
1941



Tommy and Tuppence Beresford are a sensible middle-aged couple who do a little sleuthing. They find themselves, separately, in Leahampton, checking on some Nazi spies. They’re after N or M, code names for the leader. Of course, there’s a full kettle of suspects at the resort, especially Carl von Deinim who left Germany just before the war. In the end, it turns out to be Mrs. Sprot, who kidnaped a baby as the ultimate camouflage.


The Nabob’s Daughter
Dawn Lindsey
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Signet / Penguin Putnam
2000



Viscount Stone Chance and his impetuous half-sister Georgiana Hughendon attend a ball and encounter the heiress du jour, Anjalie Cantrell. Although her father is a merchant, the fortune-hunters are tripping over each other to meet her, due to her family’s vast holdings in Jamaica. Meanwhile, Georgiana wants to meet her because her erstwhile fiancé, Guy Ludlow, is in Jamaica and she has plans to follow him there, in spite of the Viscount’s objections. Anjalie has been all over the world with her father, and has only come to England out of curiosity to see the homeland of her parents, because she finds the conventions and mores antiquated and oppressive. But everyone assumes she has come for the sole purpose of making an advantageous match, with a title to give respectability to her fortune, no matter what she tells them otherwise. She decides instead to have a little fun at their expense, by seeing how much outrageous behavior society will overlook because of her great wealth, or as the Viscount maintains, her only purpose in coming was to vex him. (Her actual purpose was to buy horses for a possible breeding business back home, where she longs to return and quickly.) On a routine visit to Lord Sedgeburrow, one of Jamaica’s notorious absentee landlords, Anjalie discovers that he has taken advantage of a fallen woman and made her his virtual slave and captive after her family disowns her. Anjalie shocks everyone when she decides to rescue the young woman and infant from the odious Lord, even the Viscount who figured himself beyond being shocked any longer. In fact, when an old family friend arrives from Jamaica and helps her with her schemes, instead of being relieved, the Viscount feels strangely envious. He begins to feel more sentimental about Anjalie and appreciate her high spirits, independence and intelligence, compared to the prissy and empty-headed misses chasing after him in London. So he feels doubly betrayed when he discovers that his impossible sister has made her escape on the same ship to Jamaica as the young mother and infant, plus Adam Trelawney, Mr. Cantrell’s Agent, and roundly blames Anjalie for being the brains behind the operation, never believing his sister to have enough shrewdness on her own. Naturally he hires the first ship going to Jamaica to chase after her, and naturally Anjalie is also on board, so it promises to be a stormy voyage indeed. In fact, that’s exactly what happens when they run into a bad squall before they reach port and have to abandon ship. The longboat with Anjalie and the Viscount gets inadvertently separated from the others before the sailors can board, so they ride out the storm together, with the Viscount refusing to panic in the face of Anjalie’s rugged determination. Fortunately, the favorable trade winds land them at Jamaica, although on the uninhabited north shore. After a long and arduous trek through the interior, they at long last arrive at the Cantrell plantation. Here they discover that the boat did in fact limp into port, but with the grim report of their disappearance at sea, so it was a very happy reunion at home when they wander dirty and bedraggled out of the jungle. By now, the Viscount realizes he’s hopelessly in love with Anjalie and grateful for the adventure, after his empty and pointless existence in England. For her part, she admires his pluck through it all and realizes he’s more than just the stuck-up stuffed shirt she first met in London. So it ends very happily, with them planning to split their time between England and Jamaica, in spite of their recent mishap at sea. In an interesting sub-plot, the Viscount’s step-sister finally wises up and decides to marry Adam Trelawney, Mr. Cantrell’s Agent, rather than her former beau, which she now sees in a whole new light. Way over-plotted for the typical historical romance, but entertaining throughout. Well-written in a breezy and informal style, it moves along briskly and never flags.


Naked Came The Manatee
Dave Barry
Carl Hiaasen
Elmore Leonard
James W. Hall
Edna Buchanan
Les Standiford
Paul Levine
Brian Antoni
Tananarive Due
John Dufresne
Vicki Hendricks
Carolina Hospital
Evelyn Mayerson
Crime drama
Fiction
Rating 3
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1995



This book is attempting to be a crime drama spoof, in itself a take-off on the earlier “Naked Came The Stranger.” The Miami Herald assembled this collection of Florida writers, and asked them each to contribute one chapter in a serialized story, which they printed in their magazine section. Like any compilation of different authors, the writing varies widely between chapters. On the whole, however, it holds together in terms of plot, more than you would expect. The story involves Fidel Castro and his look-alikes, plus a few look-alike heads in metal canisters, a newspaper reporter, small-time crooks, the Free Cuba Underground in Miami, an actor on location, local residents and a manatee named Booger. Wry without being actually funny, the story moves along in a haphazard way from one confrontation, car chase, speedboat chase or murder to another.

No Holly for Miss Quinn
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Houghton Mifflin
1976



This is another in a series by this author, who writes charming tales of village life in the English countryside. This story begins mostly about a cottage built in 1773, which is nestled in a secluded curve of the road between the bustling town of Caxley and the quiet hamlet of Beech Green. The cottage has many tales to tell, and finally it gets to modern times belonging to a widow, and she has let out the annex (a sort of attached efficiency apartment) to Miriam Quinn. Miss Quinn is a sensible young woman, raised in the country, but now running a busy office in Caxley. She loves the solitude of the cottage, and revels in the peace of the country. She resists all efforts to rope her into the various committees and civic groups that abound in the village, and in fact, sometimes finds the widow’s friendly chattering and invitations to be an intrusion. As much as she tries to be nice, she prefers her own company, and for a young person, is very set in her ways. As it gets nearer to the holidays, more than ever she craves the serenity and isolation of her cottage, so she can enjoy the holiday in her own way, but it is not to be – her brother calls and asks her to stay with him, and look after the children while his wife is in the hospital. So she packs up and goes there instantly, for she and her brother are very close. But she finds the three youngsters very high-spirited, and the whole household is messy and disorganized, which makes her feel put-out and discouraged. But she soon has everything orderly and neat, which makes her feel better, while for the first time she really appreciates how hard mothers work, and she begins to realize that with a growing family and all the hustle and bustle, there are things that are more important than perfect housekeeping. The blissful innocence of the children helps her to see the fun of letting things go, taking it as it comes, and going where the day leads you. She and her brother do all they can to make it a happy Christmas for the children – and they reminisce about their own Christmases growing up in the country. Finally her sister-in-law comes home from the hospital, and the day helper returns from holiday, so Miss Quinn is free to go. And she does leave, but reluctantly, and with a sense that she gained more from the experience than she contributed. But after all, she is a young woman of precise and orderly nature, who enjoys her own company and likes things just so, and returning to her own quiet cottage is a special treat. Even a possibly renewed acquaintance with an old flame doesn’t hold as much appeal as a soft chair by her own fireplace. And that’s where it stops, leaving Miss Quinn alone with her thoughts. These stories are all well-written in an easy conversational style, and the characters are so real, you feel as if you know them. They are all finely drawn, but with tenderness, even with warts and all. The descriptions are effortless and genuine, so you seem to be right there with them. All of the stories are entertaining and enjoyable, without a false note or contrived plot devices. But this one seems rather wistful, almost melancholy, and certainly not the warm and sentimental “happily ever after” confection that you would want for the holidays.


North and South
John Jakes
Drama
Fiction
Rating 2
Dell Publishing / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
1982



This author is famous for his historical novels, especially the multi-volume Kent Family Chronicles. This story begins, as these stories often do, in 1686 Scotland with young Joseph Moffat and his poor widowed mother – when his evil step-father inadvertently causes his mother’s death and he then kills him, it becomes necessary for him to flee to America, pretending to be Joseph Hazard, the nephew of a close neighbor. Meanwhile, Charles de Main leaves France due to religious persecution, and settles in the new Carolina colony, with a small trading outpost. In 1844, George Hazard and Orry Main (one from a wealthy Pennsylvania manufacturing family and the other from a sprawling Southern plantation) meet as new plebes at West Point. Among their classmates are people who would later become famous during the Civil War, for instance, Grant, Pickett and Jackson. Once their class graduates from West Point, they are sent to Mexico, where the two countries are fighting over Texas. Orry, who had wanted to be a career soldier, loses an arm in battle and is sent home, disillusioned and bitter. George’s father dies suddenly, so George resigns his commission to return home. On the way, he stops to visit Orry, but while he’s there, they have a falling out over a runaway slave. When George gets home, he finds his sister Virgilia has become an ardent Abolitionist. George’s mother splits the responsibility for running the family iron business between George and his brother Stanley – this doesn’t sit well with Stanley and his wife Isabel, especially when George marries Constance Flynn, an Irish Catholic he met in Texas. Eventually, the brothers have a falling out and George takes complete control of the company, while Stanley angles for a political appointment. Over the years, the Hazards visit the Mains at Mont Royal, and the Mains and Hazards summer together in Newport. During a visit to Mont Royal, Virgilia helps a runaway slave named Grady escape from a neighboring plantation, and this causes some bad blood between the families. Meanwhile, young Billy Hazard is nearly seduced by the scheming Ashton Main, but instead pledges himself to her sensible younger sister, Brett. Ashton then marries James Huntoon and pushes him to be a success, with the intention of her becoming a great Southern lady with power and influence. Without knowing it, Billy and Brett have a dangerous enemy in Ashton. When they are old enough, Billy Hazard and Orry’s cousin Charles Main enlist at West Point, one year apart. Billy graduates with honors and is posted to the Engineers in New York. Charles is no scholar, but an excellent equestrian, so he finds himself assigned to the 2nd Cavalry in Texas. There, he runs afoul of the evil Captain Bent, who had previously bedeviled George and Orry when they were together at West Point. In 1857, on a visit to Pennsylvania, George and Orry’s differences of opinion about slavery finally erupt into a full-blown fight; as a result, Orry withholds his permission for Billy and Brett to marry, especially after the Harper’s Ferry incident. With the abysmal timing typical of these types of stories, George visits Mont Royal and Orry gives his permission for Billy and Brett to wed, just as South Carolina approves the Proclamation to Secede from the Union. After Lincoln is inaugurated, other Southern states follow suit, and in the military, Southern soldiers are torn between their obligations to the Union and loyalty to their home states. Charles resigns his commission and heads home, while Billy and other Engineers are virtual prisoners at Fort Sumter, since the federal sovereignty of the fort is no longer recognized by the seceded states. When Billy is ordered to Washington with important dispatches, he and Brett take the opportunity to get married first and then travel north together. Unfortunately, Ashton picks this time to exact her revenge on the hapless couple, and sends an accomplice to ambush them on the road. Luckily, Charles gets wind of it and breaks it up. After that, the story lurches to a halt, with a sort of pseudo-epilogue that shows all of the various characters preparing for war, and their tortured concerns about the future. Apparently, it’s only in the Afterword that you find out this is Book One in a series of three about the Civil War – it says nothing about that on the cover, or in the front, and the jacket leaves no doubt that this book is about the war, not just the period leading up to it. Because the villains are so miserably despicable, and even the supposedly heroic characters are so unlikable, it’s hard to believe that anybody would want to follow these people through 3 books. It also suffers from a common malady among books of this type, that the writing is so crammed with details, background, anecdotes and descriptions, that it takes scores and scores of pages for the story to get anywhere. This is a true potboiler in every sense of the word. This author has apparently lost the ability to write with any sense of proportion or understatement, and every page screams with hyperbole and melodrama. There’s so much gratuitous sex all over the place, you think it’s a modern-day Harold Robbins novel instead of a supposed period piece. Drawn-out, uninteresting and not up to the standard of his previous Kent Family Chronicles.


Oh Sir, You’ve Shot Her!
Benjamin Jacobsen
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
1958



This is an adorable and delightful memoir of a family in turn-of-the-century Copenhagen, very reminiscent of “Life With Father.” The escapades of the Jacobsen family, as recounted by the oldest son, are alternately charming and hilarious. The characters are all finely drawn, in a sweetly humorous way, but with warts and all nonetheless. The anecdotes range from the whimsical, to incomprehensible, to laugh-out-loud hysterical. My favorites included the boys’ attempt to sell their annoying sister to a supposed white slaver, the inadvertent chocolate-covered boar misfire and the tame lion who stopped by for hazelnuts. Jolly and eccentric, like a favorite uncle, full of holiday calamities, failed schemes and travel disasters, related with wit and disarming candor. Written in a lively, engaging style (even the grandmother’s demise is treated in a light-hearted way) it leaves you wishing for more.


The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens
Drama
Rating 3
Wordsworth Editions Ltd.
1998
(Originally published, 1841)



Little Nell Trent lives with her grandfather who runs a “curiosity shop” (what we would call a thrift shop) in 1800's London. They are poor, but dear Nell is happy just to be of service to her grandfather. Kit Nubbles is a neighbor who cares for Nell and looks after them, though his family is just as poor. There is some trouble with the shop’s landlord, evil Mr. Quilp, and Nell and her grandfather flee out of town at night, and take their chances traveling in the country. Her grandfather loses his grip somewhat, and feels that he can only provide for her future by winning money at cards – but of course, he loses instead, and they must keep running ahead of trouble. Meanwhile, Mr. Quilp and some lawyers named Brass, plus Dick Swiveller keep watch on a shadowy gentleman who seems intent on finding the missing pair. As usual with Dickens’ serialized works, the story bogs down in meandering sub-plots, superfluous characters and excessively wordy descriptive passages. In the end, Quilp drowns, the lawyers are ruined, Dick Swiveller comes into an inheritance, Kit marries into a good family, and the gentleman at last finds Nell and her grandfather – but just too late, as poor Nell has passed away from years of hardship. This book is typically long-winded and rambling – it would have been more depressing except that the surprise of Nell’s demise is revealed in the foreword of the book!


The Old Testament For us
Gustav K. Wiencke
Charles M. Cooper
History
Non-Fiction
Rating 4
Lutheran Church Press

This is actually a text book in the LCA Sunday Church School series, but the writers are to be congratulated for making it interesting, coherent and eminently readable. It explains the Old Testament in chronological sequence, and also the historical context in which the events happened. It begins by explaining that in 587 BC, the Babylonians (or Chaldeans) under King Nebuchadnezzar, attacked Jerusalem after a long siege and destroyed it, carrying the inhabitants off to Babylon as captives. It was during this captivity that scribes began writing the pages that would become the books of the Old Testament, so the younger generations, growing up in a foreign land, would understand their religion, history and heritage. Chronologically, the writers of the Old Testament began with Abraham around 2,000 BC, who was famous for his unswerving faith in God. His story includes his nephew Lot, the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah, and his only son Isaac. Isaac and his wife had twin boys named Jacob and Esau. Even 2,000 years ago, there was sibling rivalry, and Jacob cheated Esau out of his inheritance. But the story goes on to show that even with flawed and rebellious people, God can accomplish His purposes through them. For instance, Jacob had twelve sons, including his favorite, Joseph. His older brothers detested him, and secretly sold him into slavery. He ended up in Egypt, second in power only to Pharaoh. When years of famine overtook the land, his brothers came to Pharaoh to beg for grain, and imagine their surprise finding their little brother willing to help them. Next we come to Moses, when the Hebrews were living in Egypt. Because the Egyptians were treating them badly, God called Moses to lead them out to the Promised Land, and he made a covenant with them. Of course, they didn’t obey, and faced many trials and obstacles with the Egyptians and in the wilderness. In spite of amazing signs (like parting the Red Sea, or “Sea of Reeds”) the people were still rebellious, even after the Ten Commandments had been given to Moses. Finally, after the Exodus and 40 years in the wilderness, they arrive at Canaan, the Promised Land. Luckily they had Joshua (interestingly, his name in Hebrew is the same as Jesus’) and he was a skilled campaigner who quickly routed the locals. Even after thy settled in Canaan, they continued to have problems with nearby inhabitants, and during this time between Joshua and Samuel, the “Judges” or military leaders kept the Hebrews safe. Perhaps too safe – without depending on God’s protection, the Hebrews became lax in their practices, and even worshiped other gods. After the Judges began the reign of Kings, beginning with Saul and David. It was at this time that the kingdom split into two parts, Judah in the south and Israel in the north. David established his capital in Jerusalem, which was in neither territory. (Eventually, only the southern kingdom of Judah remained. Israel was over-run by the Assyrians in 721 BC.) After David were hundreds of years of Kings, both good and bad. It was at this time that the prophets gained importance, reminding people of God’s covenant. Usually no one listened to the prophets, but their written records are an important witness. It was the prophets who wrote down the stories of the Creation, the Flood, Cain and Abel, and the Tower of Babel, as instructions for the Hebrews. Describing the prophets together, it shows their similarities and differences in a very interesting way. Suddenly it’s 587 BC, and the Babylonian captivity. One good thing to come out if this is the written records that became the Old Testament. In about 525 BC, a small band of Hebrews went back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple, and turn the “Remnant” back into God’s chosen people. Here is when they instituted their most stringent and exclusive practices, to keep their members pure and unsullied by foreign influences. Unfortunately, over time the strict adherence to the Law became more important than God, and it was into this haughty and intolerant environment that Jesus’ message could not gain acceptance. There are also chapters about the Psalms and Proverbs, explaining their significance and meaning. The very last part of the book is the most interesting, and concerns the Apocrypha, books written between the end of the Old Testament (around 500 BC) and the beginning of the New Testament (approximately 50 BC) which are included in ancient Latin and modern Catholic Bibles, but not Hebrew or Protestant Bibles. They include many wonderful stories of heroism and great faith, including the Maccabees and the beginning of Chanukah. There are also collections of proverbs and prophecies of things to come. Even though this is a historical reference work, it is anything but dry and boring. On the contrary, the facile writing makes the characters leap off the page and engage the imagination. The style is never pedantic or verbose, and somehow manages to be concise without leaving out vital information. It excels at explaining ancient situations in modern context, and doesn’t try to “explain away” the distasteful aspects. It may still be too abstract for young people to grasp completely, but I found it fascinating, comprehensive and edifying throughout.


One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross
Harry Kemelman
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 3
William Morrow & Company
1987



Here is another in a series of books by this author, featuring Rabbi David Small as an amateur sleuth in his spare time from tending his flock in Barnard’s Crossing, Massachusetts. When an elderly congregant asks the Rabbi to join him in Jerusalem and perform a proper bar mitzvah for him at the Wailing Wall, he refuses – but then finds himself vacationing in Israel anyway, as the guest of his wife’s aunt Gittel. Meanwhile, the Arab Professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard is trying to help some group of Arabs dig up a hidden stash of munitions using a hapless colleague from North Haven as his stooge carrying messages to Israel. Naturally, many players in the drama are being watched by covert agents of Mossad and others. This story has a little trouble getting off the ground, and by page 100, there’s still no crime to solve. But it’s interesting nonetheless, with many informative discussions about religion, philosophy, politics and history. Then an American businessman named Skinner, who lives next to a radical Yeshiva, has some plumbing excavation in his back yard, and later, who turns up dead in the filled-in trench but the North Haven professor. The Shin Bet (like the FBI) believe they know who he is, because he was reported missing from his hotel, but they can’t seem to find anyone who can identify him independently. Knowing he was from Barnard’s Crossing, the Shin Bet head (who knows David Small from previous books) calls on the Rabbi to see if he can identify his photo. Rabbi Small explains that their town has over 20,000 people and he doesn’t recognize the man. He tells the Chief of some other people in Jerusalem from Barnard’s Crossing that he might also ask, including a young man at the Yeshiva, who conveniently had a falling out with the professor at school years ago. Although the autopsy shows an aneurysm as the cause of death, the Police believe it was precipitated by an altercation between the two men, so they hold the student in custody while they conduct their investigations. In the end, it turns out to be Skinner, of course, whose presence on the plane, at the Yeshiva, hotel and secret meeting place were all too coincidental to be coincidence. Apparently he was trying to intercept the message coming to the professor and when he leaned on him a little too hard, and the professor unexpectedly dropped dead, he decided to impersonate him at the hotel to pick up the letter. The ending is more complicated than it needs to be, involving a lot of political wrangling and inter-departmental rivalry. The congregation pitches in to send the student back to his family (although he gets waylaid by a bunch of Hassids along the way) and even Rabbi Small makes an effort to mend some fences with the members. Good of this type and well-written enough with a sort of folksy charm and no sharp edges. Although interesting, it is slow to get under weigh and the central characters seem to be only peripherally involved in the main plot. The characters are genuine and likable enough, but the story is not completely engaging and instead comes across as confusing, over-populated and unnecessarily complicated. Not quite a match for the best of this series.


Only A Dream
Barbara Cartland
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Jove Books / Berkley Publishing
1988


Young Isla takes care of her ne’er-do-well father in Regency London – he’s a music hall performer who tends to drink away all the money he makes, especially since his wife’s death. Isla’s mother very carefully protected her from her father’s acquaintances, and the seamy underside of his profession, sending her to private schools and exposing her to classical art and culture. But one evening, there is a special benefit show, and her father’s regular partner falls ill, so she persuades him to let her fill in for his specialty number. They are a great success, and the extra money helps her pay off a number of their debts. Even though he rushed her right home after the show, she has made a big impression, especially on the men in the audience. One of the more odious ones, Lord Polegate, insists that her father attend his party after the show – but it proves too much for him, and he collapses there. Lord Polegate rounds up Isla and brings her to his townhouse, where her father is resting. He appears to show the utmost concern for Isla and her father, but it is obvious to the meanest intelligence that his intentions toward Isla are abominable. Since her father is unconscious and under the care of a well-respected doctor, Lord Polegate persuades Isla against her better judgment to join him for a ride to his country house. Although she tries to be polite and enjoy his attentions, she would prefer to remain at her father’s bedside. Suddenly after dinner, his lascivious intentions become all too clear, and Isla barely escapes from the house with her virtue intact. She jumps into the first carriage to come along, and throws herself on the mercy of the Marquis of Longridge. A neighbor of Polegate’s, the Marquis is already familiar with his unsavory behavior. Longridge immediately feels protective of Isla, and determines to shield her from all unpleasantness. After spending some time together, he realizes her beauty, her innocence and her strength of character have made him fall in love with her. At once, he realizes it would be an impossibly unsuitable match, since she is, after all, the daughter of a music hall performer. Suddenly, they get the news that Isla’s father has died without regaining consciousness, and there she is, left all alone in the world. Longridge promises that he will take care of all of the arrangements, and sends her back to her little house to collect her belongings. While cleaning out the writing desk, she finds an envelope addressed to her that says to be read in the event of her parents’ deaths. It turns out to be a letter from her mother, explaining that she was in fact married to the Earl of Strathyre, who is actually Isla’s father, and she ran off when she fell in love with Isla’s supposed father, the famous performer. Of course, the family was scandalized, so Isla never had any contact with any of her relatives. But, her mother writes, if she is orphaned and needs help, she should present herself at the Earl’s townhouse, and presumably some arrangements would be made for her. At this bizarre turn of events, Isla sends a note to Longride saying that she no longer requires his protection, and not wishing to be a burden to him, she sets off for Strathyre House by herself. There she meets her long-lost brother Iain, the new Earl, and he is delighted, because he has always known about her, as she has not known about him. He gets carried away with great plans of her helping him re-decorate the manor house and all sorts of parties they will have. She tries hard to be as enthusiastic about it as he is, but she realizes with a pang that she has fallen in love with the Marquis, and can think of nothing but him. And then suddenly he appears (the sensible thing would be for him to have found the driver who brought her there, but instead, there’s some incomprehensible claptrap that makes no sense) but anyway, they finally recognize that their love is far greater than whatever obstacles there might be, and it all ends very happily. Barbara Cartland is famous for her wide-ranging activities, apart from being a prodigious writer, whose output is celebrated in record books. Her writing style is somewhat breathless, with some trite devices that tend to wear thin. But still, you can’t argue with success, and this is a very sweet book with a nice story and a happy ending. Of course it’s formulaic, but it is all one can ask for in a Regency romance.


Orchid Beach
Stuart Woods
Crime Drama
Fiction
Rating 4
Harper Collins
1998



Holly Barker, a career Army officer, runs afoul of a superior, and when she brings him up on charges of sexual misconduct and he is exonerated, she has no choice but to resign her commission. A friend of her father’s picks her to succeed him as Chief of Police in sleepy Orchid Beach, just off the eastern coast of Florida. Unfortunately, just as she reports to work, she finds the Chief has been shot and critically wounded, plus a close friend of his has been killed. The police arrest a vagrant who they find with the Chief’s pistol, but can’t make any charges stick. In the bargain, the Chief’s dead friend (also another Army buddy of her father’s) leaves behind Daisy, a highly trained Doberman, who Holly takes in. Daisy turns out to be a rare find, warning Holly of danger – especially when someone tries to burn down her house trailer. The Chief had warned her that he didn’t trust everyone on the police force, so Holly is afraid to confide in anyone, and does a lot of her own sleuthing. She discovers Palmetto Gardens, a very isolated community ostensibly for wealthy vacationers, but she finds they have their own water, electricity, telephone and security force, heavily armed. In a sweetheart deal with the city council, they were allowed to cut themselves off from all community service, close adjacent roads and use non-local contractors. All of the staff stays inside the complex, except the domestics, who are bussed in from the slums. Holly wangles an invitation out of Barney Noble, head of security, for a cursory tour and a round of golf for her and her father. Ham Barker, suddenly retired from the Army and moved in with his daughter – when the Chief dies of his injuries without regaining consciousness, they discover the Chief’s property falls to his dead friend and then Ham. So he moves into the Chief’s house determined to “help” with the investigation. Holly also finds herself romantically involved with Jackson Oxenhandler, the public defender who cleared the vagrant accused of shooting the Chief. Together, they stumble across the fact that the staff at Palmetto Gardens licensed for firearms have clean records in the Florida state files, but serious criminal records in the national crime files. Jackson contacts a friend at the FBI and they start taking a closer look at Palmetto Gardens. When monitoring their communication transmissions, they discover encrypted micro-bursts between seemingly ordinary messages. The FBI sends an agent in disguised as a domestic, but she gets caught planting a recording device and is killed. This makes the FBI mad, so they launch a full-scale assault on the complex, cutting the power and back-up power, jamming radios and telephones, and taking everyone by surprise. It turns out to be an elaborate international system of drug pay-offs, not smuggling, and the complex was hiding details on all of the transactions plus several billion dollars in cash and gems. Somehow, Barney Noble escapes and Holly knows that he killed the Chief and his friend, because one of her detectives squealed. Later, she realizes the other leak was Jane, the Chief’s secretary, who was Barney’s ex-wife. When she goes to Jane’s house to confront her, she finds Barney there – he kills Jane before Holly and Daisy can subdue him. This book, like all of this author’s work, is a wild ride – it grabs you by the lapels on the first page, and drags you along, tense and breathless, all the way to the very end. A taut and gripping page-turner, it is so well-written that it seems like you’re watching it instead of reading it. All of the characters and realistic and interesting, and the story has no false notes or excess baggage. It even has a happy ending, as Holly and Jackson decide to get married.


Ordeal By Innocence
Agatha Christie
Mystery
Fiction
Rating 4
Dodd, Mead
1958


Wealthy Rachel Argyle is murdered in her house. One of her adopted children is convicted of the crime. He is sentenced to prison, where he becomes ill and dies. Two years later, Dr. Calgary returns from a polar expedition, and realizes that he would have been the young man’s alibi, making it impossible for him to have committed the crime. The police re-open the case, throwing the family into a spin, since no one is now sure who the murderer was. After another murder and near-miss, the perpetrator is revealed as Kirsten Lindstrom, the Swedish housekeeper. It even has a surprise happy ending.


The Other Side of Midnight
Sidney Sheldon
Drama
Fiction
Rating 1
Dell Publishing
1973



Beautiful Noelle Page, born in France, becomes famous as a sometimes actress, courtesan and jet-setter. She falls in love with American Larry Douglas, who leaves her and marries someone else. She devotes her life to destroying him. She takes up with Greek tycoon Constantin Demiris, who hires Larry as a pilot. Noelle and Larry fall in love again, and plot to murder his wife, however they do not succeed. Unbeknownst to them, she is spirited away to a convent by Demiris, while Noelle and Larry are tried and convicted for the murder. They are executed in the end. I consider this a pointless and wasted excuse for a book. A co-worker talked me into reading it, saying it wasn’t a typical potboiler (which I can’t stand) but that’s exactly what it is, and in spades. It also has a companion book that delves deeper into the backgrounds of the characters before and after this part of the story. Good for people who like this sort of thing, and they’re welcome to it.


Our Hearts Were Young & Gay
Emily Kimbrough
Cornelia Otis Skinner
Biography
Non-Fiction
Rating 5
Dodd, Mead & Company
1942



The authors are famous writers, performers, fashion editors and high society bon vivants. In the early 1920's, when they were 19, they scraped together $80.00 for a very inexpensive passage to Europe so they could spend three months abroad. Cornelia says Emily “attracts trouble the way blue serge attracts lint,” but it was the Skinner’s who decided to go abroad at the same time – although on different ships, so as not to cramp the girls’ style. Their adventures begin before they even sail, when Emily inadvertently enters the wrong hotel room and walks in on an older man, completely naked. Their first day out aboard the Montcalm from Quebec, the ship runs aground and all the passengers are removed by tenders. But not before a man falls overboard and Emily trying to be helpful, knocks him unconscious by throwing him a deck chair. They spend a week in Quebec enjoying the hospitality of an old friend of the Skinner’s, until the Empress of France was ready to sail. Once under weigh, they have what for them is an uneventful passage, apart from Emily hitting a titled gentleman in the face with a deck tennis quoit. Somehow Cornelia comes down with measles just before they dock, and must be smuggled ashore or else face weeks in quarantine. They spend a boring two weeks in Southampton while Cornelia recovers from the measles in her parent’s care. Then they head off to London, where they have arranged to stay in what turns out to be a grimy flat in a bad neighborhood, while the Skinner’s are staying in a luxurious hotel. It doesn’t take long for the girls to realize they would be better off staying with them, and joining them for meals as well. They take in the sights, and even visit the estate of writer H.G. Wells, who knows Mr. Skinner. Next, it’s off to France where the girls enjoy the countryside in St. Valery and Rouen before going on to Paris. Once in Paris, they keep running into people they know from home, as well as old school-mates. They spend the summer in France, seeing all there is to see. They also take some summer courses at the Sorbonne, and even have a few elocution lessons with some famous French actors who take private students. During their sojourn, they had many of their usual mishaps, for which they were becoming famous, and all of them amusingly recounted in vivid detail. Finally, the summer draws to a close, and they realize wistfully that not only do they have to go home again, but if ever they go abroad again, it would never again be like this first time. And that makes them sad, so the end of the book is a little bittersweet. But it’s a wonderful book, delightful and entertaining throughout, a wild and rollicking ride with laugh-out-loud anecdotes. (My favorites might have been Emily eating a sandwich including the decorative ribbon around it, trying to explain their problem with bedbugs, or when they inadvertently lodged at what turned out to be a “house of ill-repute.”) The writing style is lively and informal, and pulls you breathlessly along from one misadventure to the next. When it’s over, you can’t believe you have to leave these fascinating people, and all of their acquaintances, because you feel that you really know them. A true gem, where everything comes together to make one perfectly delectable treat.


The Outrageous Lady
Barbara Cartland
Romance
Fiction
Rating 3
Bantam Books
1977


Just after their marriage, old Lord Roysdon suffered a stroke, leaving the young and pretty Galatea adrift in society. She was taken under the wing of the worldly D’Arcy, Earl of Sheringham, and although he sometimes led her into questionable pursuits, his standing was sufficient protection against public censure. But after five years married to an invalid, Galatea realizes this protection has come with a high price – the Earl treats her as if she belongs to him, and will marry him when her husband dies. One night at a party, she escapes from the Earl by taking her carriage through a back road, and is held up by a well-dressed highwayman. He takes her jewels, except for a ring of her late mother’s, which she wears for sentimental reasons. He seems uncommonly well-bred and polite, and when he unexpectedly kisses her, she realizes later that she can’t stop thinking about him. When she finds out that her dear but penniless friend has had her only valuable necklace “appropriated” by her dastardly brother-in-law, Galatea tracks down the highwayman and gets him to steal it back for her. This he does and more besides, and she uses the extra booty to set up a trust fund for her friend and two daughters, so they won’t be at the mercy of her late husband’s rotten brother. Galatea is so taken with the highwayman that she agrees to meet him secretly for dinner. She finds out that he is actually Sir Just Trevena of Cornwall, and has been following her escapades for years, since he first saw her and became smitten with her good looks and high spirits. In fact, he placed one of his gang in her household as a groom (Jake) to make it easier to hold up her carriage and meet her at last. The next day, she discovers that the Earl of Sheringham has been trailing her, and had his henchmen pick up Sir Just and hold him captive. Galatea has to think fast to get him sprung, and then helps him escape back to Cornwall before the Prince of Wales’ soldiers can arrive. Shortly after, she gets a message that her husband’s condition has worsened, and she returns to London, where he dies quietly, and she does the appropriate things for the funeral, and working out details with the new Lord Roysdon, her husband’s nephew. Once a suitable time passes, she packs up her few personal belongings, wipes the dust of London from her feet, and heads for Cornwall as fast as horses will carry her. She and Just are married by the Vicar in the chapel at Trevena Priory, and who can doubt but they will live happily ever after. This was a strange and almost unsettling book, which is not uncommon with this author. It manages to be tedious and over-plotted by turns, which is not easy to do. It’s far too mawkish to be a good adventure story, but it’s also too hectic and scary to be a good romances, and manages to combine the worst elements of both genres in one sorry hash. The writing has that over-blown, breathless quality that fails to engage, and the story is alternately so deeply bogged down in details, or else completely oblivious to them. It has moments of interest, but disappointing overall.


Over The Gate
Miss Read
Drama
Fiction
Rating 3
Academy Chicago Publishers / Houghton Mifflin
1988



This is another in a series of books by this author, which depict English country life in the small village of Fairacre. The stories do not follow consecutively, but rather fit together like a tapestry made from the details of ordinary lives. This book is not exactly a novel, but more a series of vignettes, tied together by Miss Read, the Head Mistress of the tiny village school. As she goes along in her daily routine, certain events recall tales from the past, which are recounted by neighbors or visitors. The church Sexton, Mr. Willet, tells the tale of stout Sally Gray, who believed that she uncovered an old recipe for weight loss – but instead, it made her weightless and she floated around. Miss Clare recalled two neighbors, Bertha Foster and Polly Norton, who had a famous falling-out because Mrs. Norton copied everything Mrs. Foster ever did, from her furniture and garden, right down to the children’s clothes. Mrs. Willet dives in with the story about war-time Londoners billeted in Thrush Green, and the pitched battle between local Mrs. Pringle and visitor Mrs. Jarman, culminating with Mrs. Jarman contriving to ruin Mrs. Pringle’s Christmas pudding. In between these recollections, Miss Read describes life around the village and happenings at the school throughout the year. These books are uniformly lively, well-written and engaging, and reading them is like having a jolly visit with a good friend. Although idyllic, they are never idealized, and while the characters are treated with kindness, they are sharply drawn with warts and all. Some of the vignettes are sad, and some of them are funny, some of them are fantastic, but all of them are interesting. The characters are all true-to-life, and the descriptive passages make you feel as if you’re really there, without being dull or intrusive. This is a great series of books and all of them are charming and enjoyable.