Firecrackers for the Fourth of July

Do I need to remind you this Friday is the Fourth of July? Many of us Americans will be celebrating our country's birthday by hitting the road for a three-day weekend. Packing a terrific book is crucial, and do I have a few sure-fire reads for you!

Let's begin with the trip itself. We'll assume you're traveling with an adult companion. To pass the time, you could jointly tackle one of those impossible British cryptic crossword puzzles. If that attempt fizzles, and your conversation falters, fuel it with a controversy. Note I said "fuel," not "use flamethrower." Keep in mind that topics such as "your no-good cousin, the one we have to keep bailing out of jail" or "your rotten taste in men that always gets you in trouble" could ruin the trip before you reach the destination. A better choice for a delectable bone of contention is provided by Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, edited by Joe Levy and published by Wenner Books in 2005. Where would you rank albums by Elvis Presley, the Stones, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry?

Maybe you and your travel mate would rather sing songs instead of merely talk about them (hopefully, you're belting out lyrics in your car and not on my Southwest flight to Portland, Oregon). Take along Reading Lyrics, edited by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball. It covers more than 1,000 lyrics, by more than 100 American and British song writers, from 1900 to 1975. It's a book you can use once you reach your destination, too. Hand it to your significant other while you slip into the shower. He or she can sit braced against the shower door and feed you lyrics. The two of you can warble a duet à la Natalie Cole and her father, Nat King Cole, with "Unforgettable."

Alternatively, loll in the tub with mai tais and accompany lyrics from the musical South Pacific with rhythmic splashing and drumming toes. Create some personal fireworks and then towel off to "People Will Say We're in Love" from the Broadway hit Oklahoma!. Or, commemorate American independence with a bathtub reenactment of the Boston Tea Party (Twinings English Breakfast tea would be ideal here) and a spirited rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner." (Note: This last suggestion is open to suitable modification. If you're an American in the tub with a Brit, this scenario will work well; if your tub mate is French, pay tribute to Lafayette, the aristocratic French general who fought on the Americans' side in the Revolutionary War, with beaucoup toasts of champagne. If you're sharing the tub with a fellow American of the opposite political party, display patriotism as currently practiced in the United States by trying to drown each other.)

If you're alone in the tub, there's no better place to begin Terry Hayes's I Am Pilgrim (Emily Bestler Books/Atria, May 27, 2014), which opens with a brilliant forensics expert, whom we come to know as Scott Murdoch (aka the Pilgrim), prowling around a squalid Manhattan hotel room, while an unidentifiable young woman lies in a bathtub full of acid. She appears to be the victim of a perfect, albeit gruesome, murder, but the roles she, the killer, and NYPD homicide detective Ben Bradley play in the multi-layered plot will only fully be revealed much later in this book of 600+ pages.

Meanwhile, we weave in and out of a jumble of Scott's troubled memories of people and places, piecing together his relationship with his folks, his recruitment into espionage by the Division, and his duties as a federal agent policing American spies in Europe and Asia before 9/11. Scott has barely taken early retirement when he is asked to investigate evidence of a terrorist plot found in Afghanistan. There is plenty of foreshadowing, but we readers are already following the separate story thread of a determined jihadi, codenamed "the Saracen," as he witnesses his father's beheading in Saudi Arabia, moves with his stricken mother and sisters to Bahrain, and forms the belief that the way to strike back at Saudi rulers is through their enablers in the West. It's a fascinating to and fro, watching Saracen's unfolding plot and Pilgrim's attempts to identify and stop him.

By the time we reach the ticking-clock finale, we've visited many locations, watched ingenious maneuvering and deductions, and met a host of complex characters. We may not be rooting for Saracen, but we understand him. The book could have used some trimming, and there are some exceedingly grisly scenes. But this first in an anticipated trilogy by Hayes, a movie screenwriter and producer of Payback and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, is a highly entertaining espionage thriller I was reluctant to put down.

Speaking of highly entertaining, let me tell you about Lenny Kleinfeld's wild and witty Some Dead Genius (Niaux-Noir Books, May 30, 2014), which forced me to repeatedly put the book down, squeeze my eyes shut, clamp my lips closed, and re-route laughter through my nose out of courtesy to other people on the train.

This hardboiled black comedy involves a series of artists' murders investigated by the pair of smart, but cynical Chicago cops we first met in Shooters & Chasers (see review here): Mark Bergman, a 35-year-old hunk who goes through women like a dolphin goes through waves, and John "Doonie" Dunegan, a happily married family man. In Some Dead Genius, which can be read as a standalone, they're joined by a cast of colorful characters that includes mobsters, artists, politicians, and journalists. The book is R-rated for violence, sex, and language. Its structure allows a reader to tag along with the criminals, one of whom is so racked with guilt, I had to root for him; as well as watch Doonie and Mark chase the clues (I rooted for them, too). Chicago locations are put to good use; at one point, the cops pursue the killers through the Art Institute in an extended cinematic scene that could have been choreographed by Quentin Tarantino, had he channeled the Marx Brothers.

I've been a Kleinfeld fan since the late Leighton Gage raved about him after judging books for the Best First Novel Edgar. Kleinfeld's fast-paced books are likely to appeal to fans of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, but it's difficult to convey the high energy and originality of the prose without a sample, so here you go:

Tesca [a "semi-simian" loan shark] grabbed Dale's ear and dragged the squealing art dealer past forlorn walls pimpled with empty picture hooks, up a short set of stairs to a sleeping loft. Only thing in it was an air mattress, lost inside the imprint left by a king-size bed; Dale's furniture had marched out the door months ago. Tesca kicked the air mattress out of the way as he strode to the closet, with Dale's ear and what was attached to it lurching after him.

Some Dead Genius would make a very fun vacation companion this weekend.

I'll be back on Thursday to tell you about a few more good weekend reads: Josh Malerman's Bird Box and Adam Brookes's Night Heron.

Note: I received a free advance review copy of Some Dead Genius from the author.

Review of Robert Galbraith's The Silkworm

The Silkworm, by Robert Galbraith (pseudonym of J. K. Rowling)

Do you remember when, about this time a year ago, Robert Galbraith, the author of the debut mystery, The Cuckoo's Calling, was revealed to be a pen name for J. K. Rowling, author of the ridiculously best-selling Harry Potter series? The Cuckoo's Calling had received respectable reviews, if not big sales, but the sales rocketed when the public learned that Rowling was the real author. Like most mystery fans, I read the book after the revelation and thought it was a more than respectable detective story by this masterful storyteller. My friend Maltese Condor gives a full review of The Cuckoo's Calling here.

There was a good deal of speculation last year about how the leak occurred. Months later, we learned that a partner in Rowling's solicitor's office blabbed about it "in confidence" to a friend of his wife's, and that was that. (Can you believe the idiocy of that lawyer? He's been fined and rebuked by his professional society, and Rowling won damages against his firm––which she donated to charity––so maybe that will wise him up.) Some suspected that Rowling herself had something to do with the leak, wanting to increase sales of the first book and later books she planned to write in the series. As I'll explain later, I think that's unlikely.

First, let's focus on the new Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott book, The Silkworm. As the story begins, Cormoran Strike's private detective business is booming––quite a contrast to its sad state at the beginning of the previous book. True, a lot of the new business is spying on straying spouses and lovers, but it pays the bills. And that's important, since Cormoran is anxious to repay the money he reluctantly borrowed from Johnny Rokeby, his rock-star father, the man who fathered him via a fling with Cormoran's groupie mother and who refused to acknowledge paternity until the DNA test came through. Cormoran's only seen Rokeby twice and doesn't feel any desire to see him ever again, but he resorted to borrowing the money from him to get the detective agency started.

As usual, Cormoran's knee is bothering him. He's a sizable man (Cormoran is the name of a Welsh giant, after all) and the prosthesis he swapped for his lower leg via an IED in Afghanistan can be rough on his stump. So he was not in the best mood when one of his corporate clients is rude to him and his assistant, Robin, in his waiting room. Then, the frumpy, down-at-heel Leonora Quine refuses to leave the waiting room until she can be added to Strike's client list. Cormoran, being the contrarian––and good guy––that he is, fires the monied corporate client and takes on Leonora.

Leonora asks Strike to find her writer husband, Owen Quine. Quine's made a habit over the years of going walkabout, but now he's been gone a good 10 days and Leonora wants him back. Not that she misses him, unfaithful and egomaniacal as he is, but he does pay the bills and the Quines have a developmentally disabled daughter, Orlando––who does miss her father.

Cormoran and Robin get on the case immediately, even though they sincerely doubt Leonora's blithe assurance that Quine's agent will pay their fees. Robin is eager to learn more about the detective trade; she's been studying hard and wants to do more than be a general office assistant. After all, she could do PA work at a company that could pay twice as much as Strike can afford, as her fiancé, Matthew, reminds her regularly. Matthew would much prefer that Robin get a better-paying job, especially since it would remove her from Cormoran, because Matthew can't disguise that he is jealous and suspicious of Cormoran.

Cormoran soon finds that there may be good reason for Quine's deciding to lie low. He's written a novel full of graphic sex, violence and bodily functions that also libels everybody in his professional and personal life through its barely disguised characters. A lot of people don't want that manuscript––or Quine––to see the light of day. And, thus, this soon turns into a murder investigation case, and a particularly horrific one.

Plots about the publishing world are a dime a dozen, but when the story is told by such a hugely successful author as J. K. Rowling, it feels more scandalously revelatory. Writers, agents, editors and publishers in the book are almost universally self-centered, and several are personally repulsive and/or nasty pieces of work. And, wow, are they chiselers! No doubt they all make more money than Cormoran, but whenever they agree to answer some of his questions, they insist it be at some pricey restaurant and that he foot the bill.

The book also includes some serious jabs at new authors and self-published writers. One character observes that there are too many writers and not enough readers. Quine's agent complains that it seems like everybody thinks they can write, but she's inundated with manuscripts that are just "unimaginable shit."

I couldn't help thinking that Rowling would much have preferred that these observations on the publishing world and the people in it be attributed to that Robert Galbraith guy whom nobody knows. I got a kick out of Rowling's jaundiced view of the world she's found herself in, but I'm guessing there will be some negative fallout for her. And that's why I very much doubt she had anything to do with the leaking of her identity as the writer behind Robert Galbraith.

For the reader, knowing that Rowling is the real author of The Silkworm does give it a bit of the flavor of an exposé of the publishing industry. But, much as I enjoyed that, I didn't find that it distracted from or lessened the impact of the detective story. The mystery was well constructed, with numerous clues dropped along the way. For those who want to try to solve the mystery while they read, I won't spoil it, but I will say that in addition to the usual physical clues, Rowling tends to favor clues that arise from the way people act or have acted. The climax was both creepily suspenseful and then filled with action and danger.

As we'd expect from Rowling, the best part of the book is its characters. We're learning more of the background of Cormoran and Robin, and of their current life situations. Cormoran struggles with his emotions about the upcoming marriage of his ex-girlfriend, Charlotte, to a wealthy peer. Given Matthew's animosity to Cormoran, Robin is reluctant to talk to him about how much she wants to become a detective. We're also introduced to other friends and family of the pair, and I have a feeling we'll be seeing some of them in the future, especially Cormoran's younger half-brother Al, one of Johnny Rokeby's legitimate kids.

One sure sign that The Silkworm is a good read is the letdown I felt when I finished it. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Cormoran and Robin just yet. All I can do for now, though, is to add this series to my must-read list and hope that "Robert Galbraith" continues with it for a good long time.

Note: Portions of this review may appear on Amazon and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Review of Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman's The Golem of Hollywood

The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman

When a bestselling father and a son building a very credible reputation as a novelist decide to collaborate on a book, the results can be quite different from anything either has published. The Golem of Hollywood is an astonishing departure for both Jonathan Kellerman and his son Jesse; a gritty procedural wrapped in an ancient Hebrew myth with supernatural elements. According to Jewish legend, in the late 16th century Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel of Prague created the Golem out of straw and mud, to protect the Jews of the city from persecution. Some say the Golem is still hidden in the attic of a synagogue there, waiting to be awakened to prowl the streets of Prague again.

In the Kellermans' book, centuries later, Jacob Lev's late mother had earned quite a following with her molded clay figures. Jacob, an alcoholic detective and fallen-away Orthodox Jew, is at extreme risk of being fired. He has been busted down to Traffic Division when he is suddenly transferred into a top secret "Special Projects" Unit. It is so secret that he must work from home, entirely alone, although two muscular men show up at intervals––usually when he is in danger. He is given the use of a car and a credit card (that sometimes works), as well as a phone and computer. The first case he is assigned involves a beheading, with only the head found. On a counter near the head the Hebrew word for "Justice" has been burned into the surface. When the DNA of the head is found to match that of a serial killer who had apparently operated for several years in countries around the world without being caught, Jacob's search widens, taking him first to Prague, then to Oxford, in search of answers.

The biblical story of Cain and Abel is an integral thread that weaves throughout this novel. These first sons of Adam and Eve had taken offerings to the Lord. Cain, a farmer, took fruits and grain. Abel, a shepherd, sacrificed a lamb. God was pleased with Abel's gift, but not with that of his brother. (So much for vegetarianism!) Cain, in a fit of jealousy, killed Abel with the jawbone of an ox, thus becoming the first recorded murderer. The authors have carried this story further along, in the person of a sister who was very fond of her brother Cain. She tracks him from place to place, finally catching up with him in a city he has built and rules. Chapters relating this extension of the biblical story are interspersed throughout the contemporary mystery for quite some time before the story lines finally connect. This secondary story is nearly as interesting as the first, and I sometimes had trouble disconnecting and reconnecting with the contemporary tale.

There are other minor threads, one of which recounts the tale of the creation of the Golem. In this book, all roads lead to Prague, and it is there that Jacob's connection with the biblical part of the story begins, centuries ago. I suspect that the beautiful beetle that can become a woman who follows Jacob throughout his adventures is entirely a product of the authors' imaginations, rather than part of the legend, but I am not sure.

At 560 pages, The Golem of Hollywood is a long book; part mystery, part supernatural, and part mythic. I suspect the authors are well versed in both classical literature and Judaic legend, and had a lot of fun weaving these disparate stories together. For me, as one unversed in this rich tradition, it was a bit like looking at a Chagall painting: brilliant and jeweled, but the deeper context may be out of my grasp. It is a more complex and deeper book than I have read from either author, and much better than even their well-written mysteries. A sequel is planned for next year, tentatively called The Golem of Paris. I am looking forward to reading it.

Note: I received a free advance review copy of The Golem of Hollywood, which will be released by Putnam Adult/Penguin Group (USA) on September 16, 2014.

Answers to Friday's Quiz

I hope you enjoyed testing your mystery knowledge with our quiz.

Curious to know the details behind the quiz questions––and the answers? The correct answer is highlighted in red below. An explanation follows each question.

1. Which of these well-known authors did not write a mystery?

A. A. Milne
J. K. Rowling
William Faulkner
John Updike
Roald Dahl

Most famous for Winnie the Pooh, Milne also wrote The Red House Mystery. J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, was outed as the pen behind Robert Galbraith, the ostensible author of last year's The Cuckoo's Calling mystery and the upcoming The Silkworm. William Faulkner wrote Knight's Gambit, a collection of six mystery stories. The prolific Roald Dahl wrote the classic mystery story, Lamb to the Slaughter.

2. Which of these is not a person who appears occasionally in a mystery series?

Sir Impey Biggs
Mrs. Merdle
Marko Vukčić
Lin Chung
Nigel Bathgate

Mrs. Merdle does appear occasionally in Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey series, but she's a car, not a person. Sir Impey Biggs is a lawyer who appears from time to time in the same series. Marko Vukčić is the owner of Nero Wolfe's favorite Rusterman's restaurant. Lin Chung is Phryne Fisher's semi-regular lover in Kerry Greenwood's books. Nigel Bathgate is a sometime Watson to Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn.

3. Which of these authors does not write his or her mysteries in a Scandinavian language?

Kjell Eriksson
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Jarkko Sipilä
Anne Holt
Jo Nesbø

Anne Holt and Jo Nesbø write in Norwegian. Kjell Eriksson writes in Swedish, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir in Icelandic and Jarkko Sipilä in Finnish. According to linguistics classification of languages, all but Finnish are Scandinavian, or northern Germanic, languages. Finnish belongs to the Finno-Ugric group, along with Estonian––and Hungarian!

4. Which of these has not been used as a murder weapon in a well-known mystery?

an egg
a leg of lamb
a vacuum cleaner
a bottle of champagne
a bed

Warning: Don't read this answer if you want to avoid spoilers as to some Golden Age books/stories. In Dorothy L. Sayers's Strong Poison, a cracked egg is the vehicle for poison. A frozen leg of lamb makes an easily-concealed murder weapon for a wronged wife to use on her philandering husband in Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter. A jeroboam of champagne is tragically wasted when it's used to kill in Ngaio Marsh's Vintage Murder. In Ronald Knox's Solved By Inspection, a bed is made into an unlikely murder weapon. The bed is raised (using ropes) up to the ceiling of a rich man's private gymnasium, and he starves with a laden buffet of food below, because he is too afraid of heights to chance escape.

Although I seem to recall that a vacuum cleaner is used to rather gruesome effect in Jo Nesbø's The Redeemer, I don't think it's been used as a murder weapon. Correct me if I'm wrong!

5. Which of these detectives is not age appropriate for the group?

Dr. Siri Palboun
Arthur Bryant
Hildegarde Withers
Buck Schatz
Flavia de Luce

Flavia is a pre-teen chemistry whiz and busybody in Alan Bradley's series. All the other characters listed are senior citizens. Dr. Siri Palboun is a coroner in 1970s Laos in Colin Cotterill's series. Arthur Bryant is the not-so-natty half of the Bryant and May team in Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit series. Hildegarde Withers is a New York schoolteacher retired to Los Angeles in Stuart Palmers series, written from the 1930s to 1960s, some of which were made into films (most notably starring Edna Mae Oliver). (Withers was 39 at the start of the series, so not a senior citizen at that point, but she was certainly no pre-teen.) Buck Schatz is a retired Memphis cop––and the plague of his assisted living center––in Daniel Friedman's series.

6. Which of these sleuths does not share a profession with the others?

Philip Trent
Jim Qwilleran
Jack Parlabane
Jack McMorrow
Jack Swyteck

All are journalists, except for Swyteck, who is a lawyer in James Grippando's books. Trent is E. C. Bentley's creation; Qwilleran is Lilian Jackson Braun's; Parlabane is Christopher Brookmyre's; McMorrow is Gerry Boyle's.

7. Which of these mystery authors was not married to one of the other authors listed?

Ross Macdonald
Margery Allingham
Philip Youngman Carter
Ngaio Marsh
Margaret Millar

Ross Macdonald is the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar. He adopted a pseudonym because his wife, Margaret Millar, achieved success before he did. Margery Allingham's husband, Philip Youngman Carter, collaborated with her on her early Campion novels, finished her last one from the uncompleted manuscript she left at her death, and wrote two continuation Campion novels. He wrote a number of his own mystery stories and designed book covers for many mystery writers, including Allingham.

8. Which one of these is a murder mystery?

The Cradle Will Fall
Gaudy Night
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Franchise Affair
The Belting Inheritance

Some of the best crime fiction novels don't include murder. Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night involves poison pen letters and dirty tricks at a fictional Oxford women's college. G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday involves an anarchist plot. In Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair, a teenage girl accuses two elderly ladies of having abducted her and forced her into involuntary servitude. Julian Symons's The Belting Inheritance involves a surprise claimant to an estate. But Mary Higgins Clark's The Cradle Will Fall is, despite that innocent-sounding title, decidedly a murder mystery.

9. Which of these is not one of Ronald Knox's commandments for detective novelists?

• Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable
• The detective must not himself commit the crime
• Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
• No lady, especially a lady of high birth, may take on the role of detective.
• The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

What can I say?  I just made up that rule about ladies. But it seemed to me to be just the kind of rule that fuddy-duddy Knox would dream up.

10. Which of these mystery characters performs a different type of role from the others?

Casper Gutman
Magersfontein Lugg
Carl Peterson
Arnold Zeck
Tom Ripley

Though he was once a burglar (in his slimmer days), in Margery Allingham's Campion novels, Lugg is a law-abiding sidekick.  It's all those other guys who are crime fiction villains. Casper Gutman is the superficially amiable man who desperately covets the black bird in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. Carl Peterson is Bulldog Drummond's nemesis. Arnold Zeck is a criminal mastermind and Nero Wolfe nemesis. Tom Ripley is the sociopathic protagonist of several Patricia Highsmith noir novels.

Quiz: One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

As promised yesterday, we have a quiz for you.

For each of the 10 questions below, one of the provided options does not fit. Identify the odd one out and send your 10 answers to us at materialwitnesses@gmail.com, no later than 8:00 pm EDT on Sunday, June 22. The winning entrant may choose between Vikas Swarup's Six Suspects (Minotaur, 2009) and The Accidental Apprentice (Minotaur, July 8, 2014). (The copy of Six Suspects is autographed by the author.) The runner-up will receive the book not chosen by the winner. (Anyone may enter, but we are able to send books to mailing addresses in the United States and Canada only.)

In case of ties, the entry with the earliest e-mail timestamp in our inbox will win.

1. Which of these well-known authors did not write a mystery?

A. A. Milne
J. K. Rowling
William Faulkner
John Updike
Roald Dahl

2. Which of these is not a person who appears occasionally in a mystery series?

Sir Impey Biggs
Mrs. Merdle
Marko Vukcic
Lin Chung
Nigel Bathgate

3. Which of these authors does not write his or her mysteries in a Scandinavian language?

Kjell Eriksson
Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
Jarkko Sipilä
Anne Holt
Jo Nesbø

4. Which of these has not been used as a murder weapon in a well-known mystery?

an egg
a leg of lamb
a vacuum cleaner
a bottle of champagne
a bed

5. Which of these detectives is not age appropriate for the group?

Dr. Siri Palboun
Arthur Bryant
Hildegarde Withers
Buck Schatz
Flavia de Luce

6. Which of these sleuths does not share a profession with the others?

Philip Trent
Jim Qwilleran
Jack Parlabane
Jack McMorrow
Jack Swyteck

7. Which of these mystery authors was not married to one of the other authors listed?

Ross Macdonald
Margery Allingham
Philip Youngman Carter
Ngaio Marsh
Margaret Millar

8. Which one of these is a murder mystery?

The Cradle Will Fall
Gaudy Night
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Franchise Affair
The Belting Inheritance

9. Which of these is not one of Ronald Knox's commandments for detective novelists?

• Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable
• The detective must not himself commit the crime
• Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
• No lady, especially a lady of high birth, may take on the role of detective.
• The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

10. Which of these mystery characters performs a different type of role from the others?

Casper Gutman
Magersfontein Lugg
Carl Peterson
Arnold Zeck
Tom Ripley

Good luck!

Feeling Quizzical?

How would you like to win a book by Vikas Swarup? Don't say "who?," because if you saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire, you know Swarup's work. The movie was based on Swarup's debut 2006 novel, Q&A, and tells the tale of Ram, a lowly waiter who becomes the biggest-ever winner on an Indian quiz show. But Ram is accused of cheating––on no evidence whatever––and is banged up in jail awaiting trial. That gives him the chance to tell the colorful story of his life to his lawyer.

Swarup's next novel, Six Suspects, is a very nontraditional murder mystery. Vivek ("Vicky") Rai is the playboy son of the gangster-turned-politician Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Vicky is used to being able to do exactly as he pleases, and he uses his money and his father's position to get away with any crime he chooses to commit, including murder. At a party he throws to celebrate his acquittal in a case in which he murdered a young woman in front of dozens of witnesses, the lights go out and Vicky is shot dead. Six of the guests are found to have guns, and it remains only to determine which one was used to shoot the fatal bullet straight through Vicky's body.

Means and opportunity are the same for the suspects, so Swarup spends most of the book delving into the lives of each of the suspects and compellingly showing how each came to have an excellent motive for plugging Vicky. Just as in Q&A, wildly improbable events occur for good and ill, and they bring each character to Vicky Rai's party on that fateful night.

Swarup's books depict India at a critical time in its social history. The class/caste system is still in place, but it's threatened by entertainment and tech cultures that can elevate someone far beyond his or her class. Corruption is rampant, and there are vast chasms between rich and poor. The cities are ridiculously dense, with shantytowns and skyscrapers practically rubbing shoulders. Swarup uses different characters in each story so that he can expose the dizzying diversity of life in modern India.

In Swarup's most recent book, The Accidental Apprentice, he gives us a twist on those television shows giving striving young businesspeople a chance to latch on to an opportunity with some big company or mogul. Swarup's protagonist, Sapna Sinha, works at an electronics store in Delhi and, like so many of his characters, is downtrodden but determined to make a success of life. Out of nowhere, one of India's most powerful CEOs approaches Sapna and offers to make her his successor––provided that she can pass his seven tests of life. Sapna's handling of each of the tests makes its own short story and illuminates yet another slice of Indian life.

Courtesy of our friends at Minotaur Books, we have available one copy of The Accidental Apprentice and a signed copy of Six Suspects. We'd like to give them away to our readers, but you'll have to work for them. Like Ram in Q&A, you'll have to take a quiz. Instead of being jailed, the winner will get to pick one of these two books. The runner-up will receive the other book.

The quiz will test your mystery knowledge. Check in here tomorrow at 10:00am EDT to see the quiz and complete rules for entry.

Note: Portions of the description of Six Suspects appear in my review on Amazon, under my username there.

Not Quite Famous

In April, Periphera gave us a delicious peek into the Golden Age of Mystery. It is fascinating to realize that almost a hundred years have passed, and this genre is as popular now as it was then. It might be because certain commandments had to be obeyed to the letter. Ronald Knox set these out in 1929.

1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
3. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
4. No Chinaman must figure in the story. [My apologies; unfortunately, Knox really did write this.]
5. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition, which proves to be right.
6. The detective himself must not commit the crime.
7. The detective is bound to declare any clues, which he may discover.
8. The "sidekick" of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts, which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
9. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

The names of the Queens and Kings of Crime during this era are familiar to us all. Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham are all household names. So are John Dickson Carr, Anthony Berkeley and Freeman Wills Crofts. These were all British, of course, but Earl Derr Biggers, Ellery Queen and Mary Roberts Rinehart were prolific writers on this side of the Atlantic.

My interest has been in some of the mysteries written by the lesser lights of the time. There are several publishers who have made a great effort to keep some of these authors in print.

I really love books released by Felony & Mayhem Press. These are such high quality softcover books that it is a pleasure just to handle them, as well as read them. This press has republished many classic mysteries by well-known authors from several different ages. I have been rereading some of the Ngaio Marsh series, which features Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard. Marsh was from New Zealand and could not resist setting several murders on her home islands that required Alleyn's expertise. More than once, Alleyn would just pop over to the other side of the world to help the New Zealand police.

In Overture to Death, Marsh follows the Knox recipe very well. Take one Squire, one Parson, one Parson's daughter, one Squire's son, throw in a couple of nosey-parker biddies and stir well. The background of the story is a local theatrical production that arouses all the emotions likely to cause trouble: envy, pride, vanity and hatred.

I am not as fond of Margery Allingham's Albert Campion, but since Felony & Mayhem has printed more of this author than any other, I look forward to trying a few more in the series.

Books put out by the Rue Morgue Press, run by Tom and (the late) Enid Schantz of Lyons, Colorado, are also keepers. I have collected and read most of them.

In the beginning of each book, the Schantzes include a comprehensive and entertaining essay about the author's works and life. Sadly, Enid succumbed to cancer in 2011, and Tom may be slowing down as well, because the quarterly newsletter has not been in the mail for some time.

One of the first of the Rue Morgue list that I read was The Chinese Chop by Juanita Sheridan. Sheridan led a very colorful life, and she used her experiences to broaden the lives of her readers. In The Chinese Chop, she introduces Lily Wu, a young Chinese-American woman; beautiful, intelligent and a sleuth as well. She partners up with Janice Cameron, a Hawaiian-born writer, to solve crimes.

The first of the four novels in the Lily Wu Quartet takes place at the end of World War II. The author does an excellent job of depicting the housing shortage in New York and there is an excellent feel for the customs, the clothing, and the lives of those uprooted by the war. The mystery deals with a murder in a rooming house that began life as a mansion.

The rest of the series is set in Hawaii, and here, as well, there is a wonderful sense of time and place.

By the way, a Chinese chop is actually a seal to sign documents and important paperwork.

One of my recent finds is the Resurrected Press. They have a list of books by authors who are new to me, and some of whom have been almost entirely forgotten. One such case is that of Archibald Fielding. Fielding's books are quintessential Golden Age British mysteries and they include the country houses, the list of eccentric characters and, of course, the astute detective––Chief Inspector Pointer in this case. But even more mysterious is the actual identity of the author. Even though more than 20 novels were published under this name, any records regarding A. E. Fielding were presumably lost during World War II. For a long time, the works were attributed to a middle-aged woman named Dorothy Fielding. Researches have found the woman in records, but no evidence that she ever wrote or published anything.

In Mystery at the Rectory, Fielding plots the tale of a well-loved rector who is murdered after delivering an unusual extemporaneous sermon. The clue to his death might be found in these last words.

In Murder in a Library, by Charles J. Dutton, there is the seemingly motiveless murder of a librarian in the library––not with a candlestick, however. In this case, Harley Manners, professor of abnormal psychology, is called upon with the hopes that he can shed light on the matter.

Resurrected Press has a long list of obscure authors whose works I am looking forward to sampling.

The British Library also has a nice line in republished crime mysteries, in its British Library Crime Classics series. I started with The Lake District Murder, by John Bude, one of several rural mysteries that take place in locations far from London.

In this story, the detective interest is split between the police professionals and a very likable pair of amateurs, a vicar and a doctor. This is a tale about a farmer who is on his way home one night when he runs out of gas. When he reaches a garage to fill up his gas can, he finds one of the garage owners dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. It is one of those murder-versus-suicide plots, but Inspector Meredith of the county police force doesn't accept the idea of suicide. The focus is on the process by which the police reconstruct the modus operandi.

There are two others in my vacation reading basket from the British Library Crime Classics collection. Murder Underground, and Death on the Cherwell, which are both by Mavis Doriel Hay. Hay attended Oxford, like Dorothy Sayers, and this latter book takes place at a fictional Oxford college. I don't suppose that either will be as well-crafted as a Christie or a Sayers, but I hope they will be entertaining.

Last, but not least, I want to include an Australian writer who deserves a little credit for her work; she is Mary Fortune.

Twenty years before the adventures of Sherlock Holmes were published, Aussie readers were treated to a serial featuring Detective Mark Sinclair, which appeared in the Australian Journal. This sleuth, like the more recent Ellery Queen, was the result of collaboration by two writers. Waif Wander and John Borlase put out nine stories in 1865, before their partnership broke up. The Journal began releasing more episodes of the Sinclair saga in 1868, and the series ran for several decades. At first, readers assumed that Waif Wander was the author of these cases, because the stories were attributed to W.W.

But almost a century later, in 1950, the true identity of the author was uncovered. She was Mary Fortune, who was born in Ireland, grew up in Canada, and moved to Australia in mid-century with her father, who went down under for the gold rush.

Mary married a policeman who patrolled the goldfields. She was a poet, a journalist and a prolific short story writer who eventually died in obscurity, circa 1910. One of her early stories was republished in the September, 2014 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Titled "Traces of Crime," the story takes place at the height of the gold rush. This quaint tale is about an assault on a "female of a character so diabolical in itself, as to have aroused the utmost anxiety in the public as well as in the police." The unfortunate woman was so injured and abused that "her life was despaired of." Detective Sinclair goes undercover, and uses great ingenuity and perspicacity to catch the perpetrator of the crime.

There are several other fairly obscure authors flying under the radar who are favorites of mine: J.J. Marric, Nicholas Blake, Richard Bachman, Samuel Holt, Glyn Carr, Barbara Vine, Bernard Bastable, Salvatore Lombino and Robert Galbraith. Of course, the last of these is familiar as the pseudonym of J. K. Rowling. The others are all pseudonyms as well. Do you know their more famous monikers?

Review of Jill Paton Walsh's The Late Scholar

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh

First off, I should say that Dorothy L. Sayers is my all-time favorite mystery writer and her Gaudy Night, set at Oxford University, is the one mystery that I re-read regularly. Despite those things, I don't object to the idea of someone else coming along and continuing the story of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, or of setting one of those continuations at Oxford, which Sayers brought so powerfully to life in Gaudy Night.

The Trustees of Dorothy L. Sayers's estate gave permission to Jill Paton Walsh to continue the Wimsey/Vale series, and The Late Scholar (Minotaur Books, June 17, 2014) is the fourth book she's published in the series since 1998. Maybe it's because Paton Walsh is herself a graduate of Oxford University that I found this book to be the most assured of all of her continuation books.  But more than that, this book is heartfelt and has a comfortable feeling. Those may be odd adjectives to apply to a murder mystery, but they really do apply here.

Lord Peter, who is now the Duke of Denver, is by hereditary gift the Visitor of the college of St. Severin's at Oxford. He is a Balliol College (at Oxford) man himself, and his wife, mystery writer Harriet Vane, is a graduate of Oxford's (fictional) Shrewsbury College. When Peter is called upon as Visitor to settle a dispute over whether St. Severin's should sell a manuscript and buy land with the proceeds, he and Harriet use this as a good excuse to spend some time at their alma mater.

One of the initially troubling aspects of St. Severin's calling on Peter to step in is that the voting about the matter is deadlocked because the college's Warden has gone missing. Peter learns that there have been other attacks on college dons with voting rights on the issue––and soon there are still more. (It reminded me of that great title, Landscape with Dead Dons, from Robert Robinson (1956).) Clearly, some sleuthing is in order and that's what Peter, Harriet and Peter's man Bunter set out to do.

The investigation is carried out in that good, old-fashioned Golden Age tradition of the "fair play" mystery novel. Pay close attention and you can put the clues together along with the detective.  Meanwhile, though, you will also get to listen in on learned academic discussions about the manuscript; experience dinner at the college's high table; visit with Harriet's eccentric old colleagues at Shrewsbury College, whom you will remember from Gaudy Night; enjoy a couple of river walks and views out over Oxford's famous dreaming spires; and even spend a little time with Peter's delightfully dotty old mother.

It's the pleasure of a fair play mystery and of feeling at home again in Lord Peter and Harriet's Oxford that made this such a comfortable read. And heartfelt not only because Paton Walsh has such respect for Lord Peter (whom she has called "the best company who has ever lived in my inner world"), but because she, like Dorothy L. Sayers, portrays murder as a tragedy and a waste, and its perpetrator as a damaged person who has lost a moral compass.

Purists might find it annoying that Paton Walsh writes with a more modern sensibility, by which I mean that even if Sayers had written a Wimsey/Vane book in the 1950s, when this one is set, she almost certainly wouldn't have included a reference to the couple spending a romantic afternoon in bed, and she wouldn't have had Bunter sitting down at the table with Peter and Harriet. But I'm not a purist and I'm not bothered by these scenes, which are a very minor part of the novel anyway.

I do have some small quibbles. There is a large group of college fellows who are part of the plot and it isn't always easy to keep them straight or remember who is on which side of the manuscript controversy. Bunter isn't as much a part of the detection work as in the Sayers books, and I felt his relative absence. The poetry-quoting and learned banter between Peter and Harriet felt less natural and lively than it does in the Sayers books. But I didn't find these quibbles detracted much from the pleasure of the book.

Is this as good a read as a Dorothy L. Sayers original in the Lord Peter/Harriet Vane series?  I'd say certainly not as good as Strong Poison, Gaudy Night or Busman's Honeymoon, but better than Have His Carcase. But since we're not ever going to get more Dorothy L. Sayers books, I'm happy to have Jill Paton Walsh's books. And this is the best of them so far.

Note: I received an advance reviewing copy of this book. Versions of this review may appear on other reviewing sites under my usernames there.