An Embarrassment of Riches

Mysterious Characters - by Felicia

I love a good mystery. You know, one that draws you in from page one and keeps you guessing until the end. I have a few authors that I follow faithfully. These are a few of my favorites:

Michael Connelly’s Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch character really interests me. (He is named after the 15th century Dutch artist). He first appears in The Black Echo and he’s still going strong 15 novels later. I like Harry because he’s very human. It doesn’t hurt that he also works as a detective in modern-day Los Angeles, so we can picture many of the places in the novels. He’s what we all know about cops – hard-nosed, arrogant, gritty. But he also loves jazz, believes in doing what’s right and fights to bring criminals to justice. The series takes us through complex, cases and introduces us to Harry’s fellow policeman, some savory FBI agents and shows us the side of police work that will make us wonder about the motives behind their actions. These novels will make you angry at Harry sometimes. At other times, you will want to buy him a drink.

Walter Mosley introduces us to Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins in Devil in a Blue Dress (I also highly recommend the movie with Denzel Washington), who lives in Southern California in the 1940s. An ex-Army man, Easy sees the injustices of being a black man during this time. By taking an assignment from a white man to find a woman, Easy’s career as a detective is launched. His sidekick, Mouse, is a small man with a taste for violence and death. But we like him. His hilarious commentaries and loyal demeanor endear him to us in a strange way. Every book in this series takes you through a story layered in seduction, murder, suspense and humor. I love this series.

Patricia Cornwell writes a wonderful series with Kay Scarpetta. Post-Mortem, the first in the series, introduces us to Kay, the chief medical examiner in Richmond, Virginia. I really enjoy this character because she is strong, yet very sensitive. Each book takes us through a case from a forensic perspective, while also drawing in the other characters. We get to meet Detective Marino, who struggles with his feelings for Kay; Lucy, Kay’s brilliant niece, whose character goes through some traumatic and devastating events as the series progresses; and Benton, an FBI profiler and Kay’s love interest. A few books in the series will disappoint, but overall it is well-done.

James Patterson brings Alex Cross to life in Along Came a Spider. His novels tend to be fast-paced and simply written. They’re not what you would call meaty. Although at times I find it a bit hard to believe some of the dialogue, the story lines are compelling. Alex is a Washington, DC, homicide detective and forensic psychologist. Each novel presents a new case that he must solve, and the series gets most interesting when his family becomes involved – his grandmother and two children. The criminals always seem to be larger than life, but Patterson always manages to make you feel like they could actually be walking amongst us.

Mystery on Martha's Vineyard - by Helen

Several summers ago, our friends invited us to spend a week with them on Martha's Vineyard. They rent the Joshua Slocum house for the month of August. I have since discovered the mysteries of two of the island's writers, the late Philip R. Craig and Cynthia Riggs.

Solving the mystery is not the point of these stories. Learning the lore of the Vineyard is. I find it fun to read references to the beetlebung tree, West Tisbury, East Chop, the ferry to Chappaquiddick and all the little ponds and side roads that are so much a part of the island.

Craig writes with a touch of humor and real love of the island, the fishing, and the swarms of summer visitors that clog the roads. His main character J. W. Jackson, a retired Boston cop, now lives year around on the island and does odd jobs to support his wife and two children. He loves to fish and to cook and to sit on the balcony with drink in hand watching the ocean. Jackson's signature saying is delish (either preceded or followed by a recipe).

In one of the books, Jackson drops by Victoria Trumbull's house to check on her reaction to a case that he is investigating. Victoria Trumbull is the 92-year-old detective in the mysteries by Cynthia Riggs. Victoria is a feisty character who uses her knowledge of  the feuds and families and forebears of the residents of West Tisbury to help out the local police.

In his latest book, Third Strike, Philip Craig has teamed up with William G. Tapply, author of the Brady Coyne mysteries. Brady, a Boston lawyer, gets a call from a former client who tells him about mysterious crates loaded and unloaded at midnight on the island. Coyne and Jackson team up to crack the case of a crime with international ramifications.

Delish!

The Highly Introspective Detective - by Helen

Richard Yancey, author of The Highly Effective Detective has now written a sequel featuring his laughable, lovable, compassionate and bumbling private investigator, Teddy Ruzak. In The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs, Teddy's business is closed down by the state of Tennessee because he has failed to pass the P.I. test.

He befriends a homeless man and gives him his hat, which changes both of their lives. The next day Teddy discovers the body of this same homeless man in an alley outside his office and his conscience leads him to investigate the death. But it is not the investigation that intrigued me. Teddy is such a marvelous creation with a brain full of miscellaneous trivia, a habit of speaking in non-sequiturs, and a strong appreciation of the odd ball characters that he meets.

His interactions with his long suffering secretary, his wanting to adopt a stray dog, his questions and doubts about God and his care and compassion for the eighty-plus, Eunice Shriver, who has attached herself to him in order to write his biography, make him an endearing character.

Teddy says:

"I pulled a random page from Eunice Shriver's manuscript and read this:  
    You would think living alone would free me from all the normal burdens of responsibility that people complain or worry about, but all living alone does is increase your psychological weight, as if your soul were living on Jupiter. It tends to make you more important to yourself and exaggerate your problems to the point that they're insurmountable afflictions.
The passage got my heart rate up. Not only did it strike me as eerily prescient, it even sounded like something I would say. Either Eunice Shriver had found her way into my head or I had indeed found my way into hers."

Later, observing the big brown eyes of his adopted dog, Archie, Teddy muses, "I had read somewhere that God is to us as we are to dogs, that the gulf separating our intellects must be, if God is God, wider than the universe. Archie sensed I cared for him. He sensed his entire existence relied upon my tender feelings. But my thoughts were unfathomable, unknowable, and so he stared, unable to reach me except through signals as easily interpretable to me as mine were ineffable to him."
    
An unknown caller with possible information about the murder keeps calling Teddy, but remains silent. "'You know', I said into the phone, 'this is a little like praying. I talk and hope you are listening, and I don't expect a reply. At least, not a direct one. Look, I can't help you and you can't help me -- or yourself -- unless you tell me what you want. What do you want?'"

In trying to solve the murder, Teddy remarks, "I ascribed meaning to everything, even to things that had no meaning or no potential meaning…Life is pretty damned random, and maybe it was the randomness that terrified me."

I can sympathize. I spent a fun evening musing along with Teddy Ruzak, the highly effective detective.

    

Let's See...Old Mother Hubbard... - by Nicola

…went to the cupboard to eat her curds and whey. Wait, that’s not right!  Well, it has been a very long time since I've even thought about nursery rhymes, but I did think about them a lot while reading two books in the Nursery Crimes series by Jasper Fforde (pronounced “ford” like the car).  Are these books even for adults?  Oh yes!  Many children would have trouble with all of the nuances Fforde inserts into his whimsical stories. The Big Over Easy is the first title in the series. The main characters, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary, are head of the Nursery Crimes Division of the local police constabulary in Reading, England. Their assignment is to investigate the death of Humpty Dumpty. The second  book in the series is The Fourth Bear.  Was there a fourth bear?  Why didn’t Mama Bear and Papa Bear sleep in the same bed?  And how could Jack Spratt not look for the violent Gingerbreadman who had just escaped from the supposedly secure mental hospital?  Well, mystery readers won't be surprised that Jack will not forget the Gingerbreadman is on the loose, even though he has been suspended for screwing up another assignment involving Red Riding Hood.

Jasper Fforde’s highly imaginative books are not for everyone, but those with a sense of fun will enjoy going along for the ride with him wherever his mind takes them.  

Ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties - by Alison

I'm unfortunate in that I like a good scary movie. Unfortunate because they come along so rarely. I can't get behind those slasher sort of films where someone leaps out from behind a door and the audience sees a knife plunging up and down to the strains of a badly tuned orchestra. No. Give me movies with a bit of mystery. A creepy old house is good, hopefully one with a troubled history. A ghost -- or I should say -- the suggestion of a ghost -- is even better. And ideally, the protagonist will have to go to the local library to research the events that took place in this strange little town back in 1890 or whenever. And may I say that looking for this information on a microfiche reader is just so much more atmospheric than seeing our protagonist jump on the internet and google "mysterious circumstances in Creepyville". In my opinion one of the best of these was The Changeling. If you were around at the time, perhaps you remember the ads for the movie which showed a creaky wooden wheelchair, unoccupied, chasing one of the characters down a long hall. George C. Scott played the unsuspecting man who moves into the house, only to find that someone is still living there. Sadly, the library no longer owns the movie, and I suspect it is long out of print. Add to that The Watcher in the Woods (a Disney film no less) and The Lady in White about a boy who gets locked in the school cloakroom on Halloween night and sees a murder from the past replayed before him. Alas! They don't make them like that anymore.

But hey, wait! They do! I recently watched Guillermo Del Toro's (Pan's Labyrinth) The Orphanage. A woman and her husband have purchased the orphange where she grew up with the idea of making a home for disabled children. Their son, Simon, soon begins telling his parents about his new friends. A sensitive kid, an old house with a past, mysterious visitors, bumps in the night, what's not to love? Though some of the reviews were less than glowing, sometimes all you want is a good atmospheric movie, someone to watch it with, and a blanket with which to cover your head.