A Moment on the Edge

This is an anthology of short stories compiled by Elizabeth George, providing a reading journey through crime fiction written by British and American women authors over the past century. Here is Booklist's summary and glowing conclusion: "Well known for her Inspector Lynley series, George here collects short mysteries by women, bracketing the 26 entries with two tales about the death of abusive husbands, written more than 80 years apart. Between them springs an entertaining assortment of locked-room murders, theatrical whodunits, white-collar-crime and detective stories, and psychological puzzlers, each headed by revealing author notes. Agatha Christie, praised by George in the volume's enlightening introduction, isn't represented, but her contemporaries in the Golden Age of Mystery in Great Britain are: Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Dorothy Davis, Charlotte Armstrong, Minette Walters, and Ruth Rendell are here as well, and sleuths Sharon McCone, Jemima Shore, and V. I. Warshawski, each one now a star of her own long-running detective series, make appearances. Here, too, are writers not associated primarily with the genre, including Joyce Carol Oates and Nadine Gordimer, whose tragic tale about the consequences of an interracial affair in South Africa is both mystery and political fiction. From start to finish, a first-rate anthology." 

Library Journal opens their review with: "In her lively, informative introduction to this collection of 26 stories, mystery author George... ably defends the oft-maligned genre of crime fiction...the chronological arrangement gives the reader a feel for the evolution of crime fiction over the past century." and closes with "George's popularity will ensure fan interest and perhaps introduce readers to some unfamiliar women writers." 

What I most enjoyed were the short biographies of the women writers that George provided preceding each story. I found several of the stories more creepy (psychologically) than mysterious.

The Winter Sea

When I first saw the length of this book, I was a bit daunted, but once I started, I could hardly put it down. Author Susanna Kearsley tells a story within a story, Her protagonist, Carrie McClelland, is a successful writer of historical novels and has come to the northwest coast of Scotland, both to visit her agent, Jane, who has a new baby, and also to pursue her research on a book she wants to write about the Jacobite effort in the spring of 1708 to bring the younger James back from exile in France to take his rightful place as their king. Carrie decides on Jane's advice to tell the story from a woman's viewpoint and so Carrie creates Sophia, an orphan who has been taken in by a distant relative, the Countess of Slains Castle, which Carrie has chosen for the setting of her novel. In fact, Carrie has rented a cottage in the town closest to the ruins of that castle to inspire her writing. "The chapters are intermingled throughout the book with numerical designations such as chapter 1, 2, 3, etc. for the present and Roman numerals for the historical segments such as I, II, III, etc." (NY Journal of Books).

I love the way that the New York Review of Books opens their summary and review. "The Winter Sea ... is a creative tour de force. Sometimes an author catches lightning in a bottle, and Susanna Kearsley has done just that." They go on to conclude, "The title—The Winter Sea—is also quite moving. When Sophia is alone and worried that she will never see Moray [her husband] again, his Uncle Graeme reminds her that without the desolation of winter there can be no ever-renewing hope of spring. It is a hard lesson about accepting the bad in order to appreciate the good, but it is a lesson worth learning and relearning throughout life."

Similarly, the Historical Novel Society offers this praise, "Kearsley handles modern Scots dialects adroitly... Overall, skillful writing and research make The Winter Sea more historical novel than romance. Although Cassie’s choices are at times predictable, readers will not be disappointed in Sophia’s enthralling story. Highly recommended."

Secrets Typed in Blood

This is the 3rd installment of the "Parker and Pentecost" series by Stephen Spotswood. Although I read this book several months ago, I apparently failed to write a blog post, so here I am trying to catch up. See my posts for the previous 2 books if you want more background on this  pair of unique women detectives (Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin). 

Here's a plot summary and review from Publishers Weekly: "It's 1947 in Spotswood's strong third mystery featuring Lillian Pentecost, 'the greatest detective in New York City,' and her assistant, Willowjean 'Will' Parker (after 2021's Murder Under Her Skin), and the duo's newest client, Holly Quick, arrives with a particularly knotty problem. 'Somebody is stealing my murders,' Holly declares. A prolific writer for a pulp magazine called Strange Crimes, she's certain that someone is using the details in the stories she pens under the name Horace Bellow as the basis for three recent murders. Indeed, the descriptions of a hanging in Stuyvesant Square, a stabbing in Sunnyside, and a suspicious death at an antique shop on the Upper East Side all closely match her stories. Holly wants the detectives to investigate, but without tipping their hand to the cops, as it seems she has some secrets of her own to protect. Spotswood plays fair with readers in a complex plot offering plenty of vivid characters, clever dialogue, and plausible suspects. Pentecost and Parker are a great crime-fighting partnership..."

Kirkus had both positive and negative things to say about this installment and concluded, "Untidy but undeniably engaging." The New York Times reviewer was somewhat more effusive on the plus side: "'Secrets Typed in Blood' reads as easy as fine whiskey goes down. Even when I guessed a plot twist, surprises awaited a few pages later. Mostly I was keen to spend time in Pentecost and Parker’s company. I urge every mystery lover to get acquainted with them." Similarly, the Star Tribune praises, "Spotswood's third Pentecost and Parker adventure is a constant delight...Spotswood allows his heroines to shine...The dialogue crackles, the mysteries intrigue and there is an abundance of wit and grit. This is a rollicking ride with a class double-act.."

The Ghostwriter

This novel by Alessandra Torre (who has written 23 novels) was chosen by my mystery book group for this month's (Oct. 2021) read. Protagonist Helena Ross is a famous and successful romance writer who has lost both her husband and her daughter. She lives alone in their huge house with almost no furniture and never sees anyone. She communicates only by email with her agent, Kate. But a diagnosis of terminal cancer will change all that. There is one last story she must tell before her 3 months is up and she quickly figures out that, given her failing body and mind, she can't do it alone. So she commands her agent to contact the author with whom Helena has had a running feud for over a decade. Although Helena despises Marka Vantly's trashy pornographic books, Helena recognizes an ability in Marka to imbue her characters, and therefore her readers, with real emotion. She wants Marka to be her ghost writer. This final book will be Helena's confession. We figure out early on that she probably killed her husband somehow, but the extent of her guilt is not revealed until the end; the attempt at suspense is dragged out far too long in my opinion. The ghost writer turns out to be a surprise and is probably the more engaging character. Helena herself is a miserable being and, although one can feel sad for her, it's hard to like her. It is well written otherwise, with well-developed and credible characters.

A Kind of Grief

I read A Small Death in the Great Glen, the first book by A. D. Scott in the Joanne Ross/ Highland Gazette series, set in 1950's Scotland. This is the sixth book in the series and I felt like it was a real spoiler for earlier books, although I will still go back and read them. Kirkus introduces us to the protagonist in the book this way, "Joanne Ross still suffers from low self-esteem caused by a bullying father, an abusive former husband, and a near-death experience at the hands of a colleague. Now married to John McAllister, editor of the Highland Gazette, she’s given up her job, but not her curiosity...In 1959, life in the Scottish Highlands remains old-fashioned in many ways, so Joanne’s not entirely surprised to read about a woman tried and acquitted for witchcraft." Joanne is intrigued and makes her way to the woman's remote cottage in a beautiful glen with hopes of interviewing her. The woman, Alice Ramsey, refuses but invites Joanne in for a cup of tea and they make a connection. When Joanne inadvertently reveals information about Alice to an unscrupulous journalist, Alice cuts off all communication. When Alice is later found dead, apparently a suicide, Joanne is not only filled with grief but with guilt and begins to dig into the story in spite of her husband's concerns that it may be dangerous. When representatives of Britain's secret service also threaten her and her husband, she is not deterred. Kirkus concludes, "Scott ...skillfully uses the beauty of the Highlands as a backdrop for an entrancing mystery whose characters repeatedly and pleasurably upstage its action." Publishers Weekly agrees and notes, "Scott ably integrates the period’s Cold War intrigues into a story about the power of small communities both to sustain and to sabotage lives."

Hotel du Lac

This is Anita Brookner's Booker Prize (1984) winning novel about women. London-based, 39-year old romance writer, Edith Hope, has been temporarily exiled by her publisher and closest friends to an elegant but "stolid" old hotel on a lake in Switzerland after she inexcusably--according to them--backed out of her wedding, leaving her safe and respectable but not very exciting groom thoroughly humiliated. According to the Kirkus reviewer, "this Jamesian, Woolfian heroine is unmarried, wary, cerebral--torn between involvement and detachment, self-dramatization and self-deprecation." They go on to conclude, ""In many ways, this sad little comedy is less subtle, more artificial than Brookner's three previous, similar character-portraits: the themes are laid on thick, starting right off with Edith's surname and occupation; the James/Woolf echoes are blatantly arranged; the players (including Edith herself) are more types than credible characters. Still, for readers who relish a blend of extra-dry humor, tartly wistful introspection, and literary self-consciousness, this small entertainment--winner of England's Booker Prize--will be a delicate, provocative pleasure."

There was, apparently, quite a controversy about her winning the Booker and many thought that other books nominated that year were more deserving. Here is an excerpt from The Guardian: "Malcolm Bradbury called her winning novel, Hotel du Lac, "parochial", and thundered that it was not the sort of book that should have won the Booker. The New Statesman said it was "pretentious" although did at least do Brookner the kindness of noting that "it wasn't her fault that she won the prize." The author herself half-apologised that her books are "quite nice but unimportant" and suggested it might have been better if Empire Of The Sun had won in its place. She was right. Both from the point of view that Empire Of The Sun is so very good, but also because of the anger her victory provoked. The sense of outraged justice created by the perception that Hotel du Lac usurped Ballard's crown is unfortunate. This is not a book that should enrage. It is actually one that should be admired and enjoyed. Quietly maybe, but still fervently....Brookner's prose is so splendid in its own right that Hotel du Lac never felt less than impressive to me. But the understated and all too realistic discomfort of the opening gives way to something more overwrought. After pages and pages of delightfully painful getting-to-know-you small talk the characters suddenly seem to know each other far too well....plunging the reader out of the suspension of disbelief and making a previously very natural narrative seem contrived. It's hard to take Edith and her world entirely seriously from this point on and the ending, although elegant and enjoyably provocative, doesn't quite ring true." They go on to conclude that, "it's worth saying again that this is a book to enjoy for what it is rather than what it isn't. It's a funny, flawed, but still beautifully written study in melancholy. A pleasure. Even if it isn't as good as Empire Of The Sun."

My problem was that I just didn't like any of these people very much. While the dilemma Edith faces is, of course, huge for her, it seems too small to have the story revolve around it.  Also it made the story seem dated in a way I don't usually associate with historical novels. 

Two for Sorrow

This is actually the 3rd in the Josephine Tey series by Nicola Upson, but our library let me down by not having the 2nd in the series, Angel with Two Faces. I am having a bit of a time trying to figure out how to use my iPad mini to write and post this blog, but here goes. BTW there is already a post for the first book by Upson, An Expert in Murder.
Josephine is back in London staying quietly at her professional women's club, The Cowdray, while she does research for a new book based on the true life criminals Amelia Sach and Annie Walters. Nicola Upson has done her research on the crimes and has her writer protagonist do the same.  There are a few "draft" chapters of the book interspersed with chapters in which the characters are developed and the plot moved forward. In the book,  Josephine is able to actually interview some people who were involved in various ways with the two women before they were executed in 1903 and, it turns out, she actually went to school with the daughter of Amelia Sach without having known it at the time. In fact, the book relies perhaps a bit too much on several of the characters having connections to the crime Josephine is writing about and so bringing the old crimes and the new ones together. People have changed their identities to protect themselves from the harassment that followed publicity about the murders of babies and the eventual double hanging of the two women. And there are some other surprises about who people really are.
Friend Archie gets involved initially because there have been some minor thefts and some poison pen letters sent to members of the Cowdray Club. But then, one of the seamstresses working for the Motley sisters is murdered in a most gruesome fashion and the message sent by the method suggests she was talking too much. She had also been a former petty thief jailed at the same place the baby farmers had been imprisoned, Holloway Gaol. The Motley sisters have agreed to outfit the Board of the Cowdray Club for a benefit gala so they move into the club to complete the final work, having been barred from the site of the murder, their work rooms.
There are developments along a romantic line as well. Marta resurfaces with a surprising revelation and Archie is pushed into saying things that also rock the boat for Josephine. The characters in these books are complex and there are not necessarily happy endings or tidy solutions to the problems presented by messy human relationships. But they are very well wrought, capturing the essence of post WWI London, and I will undoubtedly finish out the series.