Tag: Mystery

Contemporary Mystery Review: Janice Hallett’s THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE ALPERTON ANGELS

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Mysterious_Case_Alperton_AngelsThe first time I tried to read Hallet’s Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, I failed, her writerly choices leaving me nonplussed. But I then listened to the NYT’s books podcast praising it to high heaven. The reviewer said she bought FOUR copies and lent them to make sure people were reading Alperton Angels! Most read till the wee hours…’fession, I did too.

Why? Because Hallett’s is no ordinary straight-telling mystery: the how she tells the story is as compelling, though disorienting, as the mystery. Readers of Hallett’s previous two books (now in the Gargantuan TBR) may be old hands at her unique narrative choices, but I was taken in, fascinated, and ready to do it again.

Centred on true crime writer Amanda Bailey as she gathers material to complete her book on the Alperton Angels, the narrative is made up of snail and e-mail, text and Whatsapp messages, interview and podcast transcripts, quasi-fictional accounts, old documentaries, an unproduced movie script, even a YA fantasy novel. Characters are as diverse: police, witnesses, family members, podsters, authors, nurses, even amateur true crime club members. The effect is compelling, disorienting, fragmentary. As Amanda puts the pieces together, so does the reader (I’m vain enough to say I guessed one part of the mystery correctly… but there were surprises too. Clever Hallett: we aren’t privy to motivation.)    (more…)

Historical Murder Mystery Review: Ray Celestin’s THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ (The City Blues Quartet #1)

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Axeman_JazzNow that I’ve begun the year with an end to a beloved mystery series, I’ll continue by the start of another. While Celestin’s Axeman’s Jazz kept me glued to it pages, it can’t become “beloved.” It’s a harsh, difficult read, written with the argot of its time and place, but it is compelling. I’m definitely reading the rest of the quartet. The series concept is original: four cities, four decades, four crimes, four seasons, four musical compositions, linked by the same detecting figures.

The Axeman’s Jazz takes place in 1919 New Orleans and the setting is one of several reasons to recommend it, the others being the historical context and interesting characters, including appearances by a young, yet-unknown Lewis (aka Louis) Armstrong. The publisher’s blurb fills in further details: 

New Orleans, 1919.

As a dark serial killer — the Axeman — stalks the city, three individuals set out to unmask him.

Detective Michael Talbot, heading up the official investigation, is struggling to find leads and is harbouring his own grave secret.

Former detective Luca D’Andrea finds himself working for the Mafia, whose need to solve the mystery of the Axeman is every bit as urgent as that of the authorities.

And Ida, a secretary at the Pinkerton Detective Agency, stumbles across a clue that lures her and her musician friend, Louis Armstrong, to the case and into terrible danger…

As Michael, Luca and Ida each draw closer to discovering the killer’s identity, the Axeman himself will issue a challenge to the people of New Orleans: play jazz or risk becoming the next victim. (more…)

Contemporary Murder Mystery Review: alas, Elly Griffiths’s final Ruth Galloway mystery, THE LAST REMAINS (#15)

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Last_RemainsI thought I’d start the year with an end, the final book in my favourite contemporary mystery series. Sigh. Ruth and Kate, Nelson and Michelle, Cathbad and Judy, Cloughie, Tanya, Super-Jo, Tony and many more…the lovable or villainous characters I’ve spent 15-books-worth of time with, thanks to Elly Griffiths. I hoarded the final volume till I could have a full uninterrupted reading day and it was a glorious boxing day gift to myself.

Griffiths says this is the last; given its perfect ending, I don’t see how she would go back on that. (Except there’s always another murder, more forensic work for Ruth, Nelson’s Jesus is still weeping, and Kate is growing up.) Whether we see Kate, Ruth, and Nelson again in another book (*prayerful hands emoji*), I can only hope. What I do know is how I teared up reading The Last Remains‘s last 25 pages, much as Nelson and Ruth often do in this final volume (rarely sentimental, they’re softies here). I shall miss these characters and the Norfolk-world Griffiths created, grateful though I am for 15-books-worth.

In The Last Remains, Ruth and Nelson et al. are on another case, the publisher’s blurb to orient us:

When builders renovating a café in King’s Lynn find a human skeleton behind a wall, they call for DCI Harry Nelson and Dr Ruth Galloway, Head of Archaeology at the nearby University of North Norfolk. Ruth is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with Nelson. However, she agrees to look at the case.

Ruth sees at once that the bones are modern. They are identified as the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in the 1990s. Emily attended a course run by her Cambridge tutor. Suspicion falls on him and also on another course member – Ruth’s friend Cathbad, who is still frail following his near death from Covid.

As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the student group and the adults leading them. What was the link between the group and the King’s Lynn café where Emily’s bones were found?

Then, just when the team seem to be making progress, Cathbad disappears. Was it guilt that led him to flee?

The trail leads Ruth and Nelson to the Neolithic flint mines in Grimes Graves which are as spooky as their name. The race is on, first to find Cathbad and then to exonerate him, but will Ruth and Nelson uncover the truth in time to save their friend?

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REVIEW: Simone St. James’s SILENCE FOR THE DEAD, Or Crossing No Man’s Land

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Silence_For_the_DeadWhen Miss Bates was in graduate school many years ago, she read Paul Fussell’s Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between the Wars.  She went on to read Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory, (which she still counts among her favourite books) and all of Wilfred Owen’s poetry.  As she completed her graduate studies, Pat Barker’s World War I trilogy was published, Regeneration, The Eye In the Door, and The Ghost Road, and Miss Bates devoured them in singular sittings.  “The Great War” was a line in the sand in Western history and we experience its repercussions still.  Her reading and rereading of these great books and fascination with the era and its aftermath remain.  It follows that she was disposed to be interested in, if not to like, Simone St. James’s post-Great-War mystery-ghost-story-historical-romance Silence For the Dead.  She found that she loved it!  Its echo of history’s ghosts, their haunting of us, the experience of ordinary, working-class people, the crossing of the dividing-line between classes that the trenches entailed, the walking wounded that are its legacy … all of that and more is in St. James’s hybrid novel of romantic suspense, closed-room mystery, ghost story, and one gloriously rendered romance of friendship, respect, love, humour, and desire.  Like most thrillers, it lost some of these wonderful threads in the solving of the mystery as it lapsed into sensationalism, a niggling point in light of its wunder-HEA, however. 😉 If you read one mystery with really “strong romantic elements” this year, it should be this one. Continue reading, but there’ll be more lauding