Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Right Sort of Man by Allison Montclair

The fantastic members of the Crime Thru Time historical mystery online discussion group drew my attention to a new series set in one of my chronological times of interest, the 1940s. I felt compelled to investigate. The Right Sort of Man (Minotaur, 2019) is set in London in the aftermath of World War II, before rebuilding commenced and rationing was still very much a part of everyday life. Author Allison Montclair is apparently a pseudonym of Alan Gordon, the author of the Fools’ Guild historical mystery series set in the 13^th century. See the footnote on Montclair’s entry on the website Stop! You’re Killing Me.

Miss Iris Sparks, who is secretive about her participation in the recently ended war, and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a war widow living with her obnoxious mother-in-law, are both at loose ends. They decide to open a marriage bureau in Mayfair and after three months are pleased with their modest success. Their budding matchmaking careers are jeopardized though when one of their clients is murdered, and Scotland Yard decides the man Iris and Gwen set her up with is the culprit. Gwen, whose accurate assessment of people is awe-inspiring, knows the mild accountant is not guilty. Iris uses her war contacts to look into the dead girl’s background and finds some questionable activity. The pair delves into the alibis of her associates, which leads them into some hair-raising encounters with purveyors of black-market stockings and clothing coupons.

Secondary plots involve Gwen’s intense grief at the loss of her husband and her attempts to detach from her controlling mother-in-law. Iris has her own set of deep regrets about the war, which aren’t helped by encountering a former fiancé who is now with Scotland Yard. The mother-in-law is masterfully drawn as someone we all would despise. Another fine character is Sally, their debt collector, who is actually an actor and budding playwright.

Perhaps one of the best parts of this story is the authenticity with which postwar London is portrayed. References to the shattered buildings, the stories of nights sheltering in the Underground, and the basic deprivations are worked unobtrusively but authoritatively in and around the story line. And the reminders of the loss of sons, brothers, husbands, comrades, not just numbers but lives that were dear to the people they left, are always there.

Fortunately, my local library has purchased both books issued so far. I didn’t have to wait long for the first title and I was number #32 on the waiting list for the second one when I last checked. Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus and selection as the best mystery of 2020 by the American Library Association’s Reading List make this book a must-read for traditional and historical mystery fans.

·         Hardcover : 336 pages

·         ISBN-10 : 1250178363

·         ISBN-13 : 978-1250178367

·         Publisher : Minotaur Books (June 4, 2019)

·         Language: : English

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Crime City Review: The Missing American by Kwei Quartey

Crime City Review: The Missing American by Kwei Quartey 

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan

Dervla McTiernan is an Irish lawyer who emigrated to Australia about 10 years ago where she took to crime fiction writing. Her first book about Cormac Reilly, The Ruin, was published in 2018 and became a top seller in Australia and Ireland and an Amazon book of the year in the US. The Scholar (Penguin, 2019) continues the story of Cormac Reilly, a sergeant in the Mill Street Garda Station of the Dublin police. He ticked the Superintendent off awhile back and has been assigned to cold cases since then, allowing his excellent skills to rust and the least experienced of the sergeants to carry the bulk of the investigative load.

Carrie O’Halloran, the most junior sergeant, appeals to the Superintendent to offload some of her work to Reilly. While they are discussing the logistics of moving the cases, Reilly receives a telephone call from his live-in girlfriend, Emma Sweeney, who has found a body in the street, clearly the victim of a hit and run. Both O’Halloran and Reilly rush to the scene, the university campus where Sweeney works.

The student identification card found in the victim’s pocket says she was the granddaughter of the owner of the huge global pharma company in whose on-site laboratory Sweeney works. Anticipating the media fireworks that were sure to follow, Reilly loses no time in alerting the Superintendent, who makes some calls to the family while Reilly goes to the granddaughter’s apartment to find someone who might be able to identify the badly damaged body. The Superintendent regretted his haste when Reilly finds the granddaughter quite alive and well in her apartment.

Discovering just who the victim is consumed everyone’s time over the next several days. The granddaughter denied knowing the victim and or how her ID card came to be in the victim’s pocket. The absence of any other identification or personal possessions on the victim led the police to think the death was deliberate rather than accidental.

The mistaken identification is a nice twist in the book that occurs almost immediately and creates an opportunity to delve into the police procedures for determining identity. The relationships among the police at the station and their procedures made this story a good read. The puzzle part was surprisingly thin. I realized what the motive was about halfway through and, since only a couple of people could have that motive, it wasn’t hard to see who the killer was. I am not one who tries to figure out the killer in advance, I like to let the author tell me, so for me to like this book as much as I did is a little surprising. But like it I did. Recommended for readers of police procedurals and character-driven mysteries.

·         Paperback: 384 pages

·         Publisher: Penguin Books (May 14, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0143133691

·         ISBN-13: 978-0143133698

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Dead Man’s Mistress by David Housewright

Rushmore McKenzie, created by David Housewright, is one of my favorite fictional characters. Pleasantly self-indulgent and not especially energetic, he is still willing to do favors for his friends, as well as for friends of friends, which is often how he gets into situations where his ribs are cracked and the police are asking him awkward questions.

In Dead Man’s Mistress (Minotaur, 2019), the 16^th of Mac’s adventures, the director of a local museum whom he helped in the past asks Mac to help a friend locate some paintings that have been stolen. Mac of course can’t say no, especially when he learns that it’s not just any friend, it’s Louise Wyckoff, the reclusive yet famous subject of dozens of paintings by the world-famous artist Randolph McInnis.

The discovery of the paintings with Louise came as a shock to the world and to McInnis’s wife after McInnis’s death in a traffic accident. Think back to the furor over Wyeth’s paintings of Helga. There was much speculation as to the exact relationship between McInnis and the much younger Louise, which Louise has steadfastly declined to explain. Now, some 35 years after his death, Louise reveals that McInnis gave her three paintings, previously unknown to exist and worth millions, and that someone has stolen them from her house in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

Louise teaches art in her home, and any number of people have reason to be there. Mac starts checking into all her visitors to identify the likely candidates for theft and almost immediately the name of David Montgomery, a handyman who was in Louise’s house multiple times during the week in question, pops up. When Mac goes to Montgomery’s house to interview him, Mac finds Montgomery shot to death in what could be a suicide but maybe not. The local police are interested in Mac, since he found the body, and also are not especially happy to learn he’s carrying out an investigation on their turf of a major theft they didn’t know about.

Mac manages to placate the police and goes about his inquiries, managing to incur the ire of some local thugs who follow him across the border into Canada. Fisticuffs and gunfire take place, and the hoodlums are taken into a custody in a country other than their own. The ensuing quick tutorial in the gun laws of Canada was fascinating.

Of course it’s all more complicated than that, as usual in this series. Another fine entry, with the next one to be released in July 2020. One point against it: The typos in the book jerked me out of the story more than once. “Publicaly”? “Indentify”? Come on, Minotaur, you’re falling down on the job.

·         Hardcover: 320 pages

·         Publisher: Minotaur Books (May 21, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1250212154

·         ISBN-13: 978-1250212153

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster, 2019) is a deceptively strong mystery. Like its protagonist, it has hidden depths. It’s billed as a thriller but it isn’t. It is a mystery with an amateur sleuth who is pulled into investigating a supposed suicide to save herself. It started slowly but by a third of the way through, I became engaged.

The small coastal town of Littleport, Maine, relies heavily on the summer tourist trade for its economic viability. Many of the restaurants and small businesses operate for the four-month vacation season and close or reduce their operations for the rest of the year. Avery Greer grew up in Littleport and was fully familiar with the summer cycle of vacationers who appeared at the beginning of the season and disappeared at the end. Generally the locals and the temporary residents did not form friendships but in her late teens, she met Sadie Loman, the only daughter of the real estate Lomans, who had been buying up rental properties, diverting what had been a local source of cash flow to an out-of-state corporation. They developed a bond that aroused suspicion in the locals and in Sadie’s family because the line between the tourists and the locals had always been set. Through Sadie, Avery was given a job managing the Loman’s Littleport property.

At the end of one summer, the weekend after Labor Day, Sadie drowned. The police assumed that she had jumped from a cliff into the ocean below. Avery and the Lomans are shattered. A year later they are still coming to terms with their loss when Avery is stunned to find Sadie’s cell phone, which was assumed to have gone into the ocean with her, in a blanket chest in one of the rental units. As the implications of this discovery sink in, she begins to search for more clues that might show Sadie was murdered. Unfortunately, every clue she finds can be directed back at her.

The story moves back and forth between the time of Sadie’s death to a year later. This lack of linear timeframe is always irritating to me but it supports the slowly building suspense that is subtly woven into the storytelling. Layer after layer is smoothly revealed until the last two pages, which drop a bombshell. A satisfying mystery along with an interesting character study.

Starred review from Publishers Weekly.

·         Hardcover: 352 pages

·         Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 18, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1501165372

·         ISBN-13: 978-1501165375

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Elephant of Surprise by Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale is a prolific and diverse writer, publishing nearly 50 novels and stories in a range of genres including mystery, suspense, horror, science fiction, Western, and comics. His stories have won an Edgar Award, a Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award, ten Bram Stoker Awards, a British Fantasy Award, a World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, a Sugarprize, a Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and a Spur Award. His series about Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, unconventional PIs in eastern Texas, was adapted for television on the SundanceTV channel and ran for three seasons.

Hap and Leonard’s latest adventure The Elephant of Surprise (Mulholland Books, 2019) is a rock ‘em-sock ‘em sequence of skirmishes between our heroes and a group of racketeers intent on ridding the world of these two PIs who have stumbled into the mobsters’ path. Hap and Leonard are driving home in a pounding rain storm after a long stake-out, when Leonard glimpses the figure of a woman staggering across the road. They take her, drenched to the bone, into the car and learn she’s seriously wounded. They head to the nearest hospital, only to be confronted on the road by an oversized thug who wants the victim they’ve rescued and doesn’t mind killing Hap and Leonard to get her. From that point forward, between the hoodlums and the rain, wind, and tornadoes, the momentum seems unrelenting. For authors wanting to learn how to write shootout or fight scenes, this book is a great primer.

I enjoyed this story, more of a thriller than a mystery, a lot. What little mystery there is to begin with is soon sorted out when the mobsters’ original victim, the woman on the road, is well enough to talk. The rest of the suspense lies in watching to see how the bad guys will be brought to justice, and how Hap and Leonard will manage to save their skins. While it doesn’t hurt to have read earlier books in the series, enough backstory is provided along the way to make previous acquaintance with the characters unnecessary. Crackling action, snappy dialogue. Recommended.

·         Hardcover: 256 pages

·         Publisher: Mulholland Books; First Edition/First Printing (March 19, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 031647987X

·         ISBN-13: 978-0316479875

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Clockmaker by Jane A. Adams

Jane A. Adams is an active British mystery author with some 30 or 35 novels to her credit. She has created five series characters since 1995, all set in England: Mike Croft, a detective inspector; Ray Flowers, a former police sergeant turned private investigator; Naomi Blake, a blind ex-policewoman; Rina Martin, an actress who played a private investigator in a television series; and Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone of Scotland Yard, beginning in the late 1920s.

The Clockmaker (Severn House, 2019) is the fourth title in the Johnstone series. Chief Inspector Johnstone met clockmaker Abraham Levy on an earlier case, and now Levy has come to him for help in locating his nephew. Joseph Levy was last seen on 3 February 1929 boarding a train in Lincoln to return to his home in London. On 20 February Levy approaches Scotland Yard, believing his family’s concerns have been dismissed by the local police and that his nephew is dead. Johnstone points out that he only works on homicide cases and a missing person does not qualify but he and his sergeant Mickey Hitchens agree to review the file. About a week after Johnstone asked the various police forces along the train line to look again for any trace of the nephew, the clockmaker’s prediction turns out to be right and Joseph Levy’s body is found near where he was last seen.

The subsequent investigation is hampered by Joseph’s family, who are evasive about their business affairs, and the inexplicable interest of the leader of the gang who runs the area where the clockmaker lives and works. Then Johnstone discovers Abraham Levy has something of a reputation as a rabble-rouser, consorting with known Communists and union organizers, which makes Johnstone wonder about his associates. An interesting subplot involves Johnstone’s sister who tries to disentangle her husband’s investments to protect them from the coming economic crisis.

A well-written, methodical police procedural that speaks to the time and the place. I was particularly impressed with how subtly Adams sets the stage. Less experienced authors reference newspaper headlines or songs on the radio to evoke an historical period. Adams is far more indirect, with a secondary character mentioning the names of Germany’s governing officials in passing and another making a glancing allusion to how recent World War I was. The train ride from Lincoln to London is described as long by more than one character; however, the distance between the two is about 150 miles, some three hours by automobile in 2020. The blatant anti-Semitism, the gangs presiding over neighborhoods and demanding protection payments with the compliance of the police, the anti-unionism, all are woven into the background of the investigation, describing the timeframe with a minimum of detail. For readers of historical mysteries and police procedurals.

·         Hardcover: 224 pages

·         Publisher: Severn House Publishers; first edition (September 3, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0727888889

·         ISBN-13: 978-0727888884

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Game of Snipers by Stephen Hunter

Game of  Snipers by Stephen Hunter (Putnam, 2019) is the latest thriller in his series about Bob Lee Swagger, a retired sniper of renown in certain circles. Stephen Hunter is a Pulitzer Prize winner and the former film critic of The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post, with some 25 novels to his credit. He is also a gun and shooting enthusiast, which shows clearly in this particular book. There is a significant amount of data about the technical aspects of long-range shooting and the work of rewickering ammunition to ensure that it travels the maximum distance possible.

Bob Lee Swagger is enjoying the scenery from his front porch in Idaho when a woman unknown to him arrives to request his assistance in finding and assassinating the Middle Eastern sniper who killed her son during his deployment to Baghdad. Her account of her efforts to locate the sniper is startling, as it involves multiple trips to the Middle East after the CIA has written her off as a lunatic. While Swagger declines her request to murder the sniper, he is impressed enough with her courage and investigative skills that he offers to introduce her to a Mossad operative, where her information is likely to be of interest. Mossad is definitely interested in meeting the sniper, since they have a few scores to settle with him, as Swagger suspected, and the chase is on.

As it turns out, there is little data about the sniper; he is careful to limit himself to any kind of exposure. No law enforcement agency has a photograph or his fingerprints. He is in perpetual movement from one country to another. A night raid on a rural house where the sniper is believed to be hiding results in fragments of information about the sniper’s next target, which appears to be an unnamed prominent public figure. This intel is the impetus for immediate action, creating much of the tension in the story.

This book reminds me of The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. Fast-paced, tightly plotted, creative characterization. It was difficult to put down. A thumping good read. Starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly.

·         Hardcover: 400 pages

·         Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons; First Edition/First Printing (July 30, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0399574573

·         ISBN-13: 978-0399574573

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Murder in Belgravia by Lynn Brittney

Murder in Belgravia  by Lynn Brittney (Crooked Lane, 2019) is set in World War I London in 1915, the first of a series. Chief Inspector Beech is investigating the murder of Lord Murcheson at his home in Belgravia. His young wife Lady Harriet has confessed to the murder but will not discuss it further with the inspector. In addition, she will not move from the chair she’s sitting in and appears to be in great pain. Her bloody clothes speak for themselves. She has asked to talk to a woman of her class, and Beech calls on his childhood friend Caroline Allardyce, a physician at the Women’s Hospital on Euston Road, to interview Lady Harriet and treat her.

Caroline is so successful in extracting information from Lady Harriet that Beech asks his superior for permission to set up an investigative team with Caroline and her lawyer friend as well as a couple of hand-picked members of the police force. Permission is granted as long as Beech does not expect to put the women on the payroll and no one finds out women are involved in police business.

The butler and the scullery maid have disappeared, and the accounts of the remaining staff are disjointed. It’s clear though that the injuries Lord Murcheson sustained during the early days of the war were so severe that he turned to alcohol and opiates for relief,  resulting in frequent violent episodes. While many of the narcotic potions he took were available over the counter, identifying Murcheson’s source of heroin became a major concern of Beech and his team. This line of inquiry takes the team to the offices of Harley Street consultants, brothels, and the lairs of criminal gangs.

The story gives a good overview of London during the war up to and including the first Zeppelin attack. Multiple references are made to the expectation that women will have to step in at home to take the place of men on the front. Beech and his supervisor agree on the need for women on the police force and also agree the time is not yet right for them to be accepted.

A good read but I am not convinced that the attitudes of the time toward women are accurately captured. This war was indeed pivotal for women, as it took nearly an entire generation of English men, leaving women to lives they were not prepared for but did people realize it at the time? The online historical mystery discussion group Crime Through Time has been talking about anachronisms in dealing with women. Someone pointed out that strong independent women were simply not that common during most of history. Perhaps World War I was the turning point, when women were forced to find a way to support themselves outside marriage.

There’s at least one point which has to be wrong: when Beech expresses surprise after Caroline says Harriet will not be the first upper-class victim of sexual assault she has treated. Surely he saw violence at all levels of society when he was walking the beat and investigating crimes as a homicide inspector and knows domestic abuse occurs at all levels of society.

How this series unfolds will be interesting.

 

·         Hardcover: 288 pages

·         Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (March 13, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1683318935

·         ISBN-13: 978-1683318934

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Colours of Murder by Ali Carter

The Colours of Murder by Ali Carter (Oneworld Publications, June 2019) is the follow-up appearance of Susie Mahl, after her introduction in A Brush with Death (2018). Susie is an artist whose work appears in the Tate Art Gallery and who also accepts commissions for pet portraits. She is in Norfolk for a couple of weeks, doing the ground work for six drawings of racehorses. Her mother has told a cousin with connections in the area that Susie is visiting, and the cousin’s connections get her a last-minute invitation to join the weekend house party of the Honourable Archibald Cooke Wellingham. Susie knows no one in this group of upper-crust folks but she accepts the invitation anyway.

After a long evening of drinking a burglar alarm wakens the household in the early hours of the next day, and that’s when the other outsider in the party, American Hailey Dune, is discovered dead. The police decide the death is due to natural causes but Susie’s intuition tells her otherwise. She continues to ask questions and report her findings to the detective inspector in charge, who displays great patience with her. A would-be boyfriend is not as tolerant.

P.G. Wodehouse echoes faintly throughout this book. I am not sure if it’s the almost too silly to be real names, the flippant prose, the over-the-top mannerisms of the gentry, or a combination thereof, but after a few pages I would not have been surprised to see Bertie Wooster walk in.

This story is more of a cozy mystery than I usually read these days, and I found the lack of adherence to standard police procedure hard to work through. The in-depth look at country house parties and horse racing was interesting, and of course there were dogs, horses, and a nice cat to attract my attention.

Reviews suggest the previous book is a stronger story than this one. Both are recommended for cozy readers who are looking for a new series that is a bit different.

 

·         Paperback: 320 pages

·         Publisher: Oneworld Publications (June 11, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1786075601

·         ISBN-13: 978-1786075604

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (Morrow, 2019) is an updated form of the classic country house mystery at Christmas. Every year a group of friends who bonded while they attended Oxford spend New Year’s Eve together. This outing, the tenth holiday they’ve spent together, was planned by Emma, the most recent addition to the group via her relationship with Mark. Emma found a beautiful lodge in an isolated part of Scotland, so remote there is no wireless signal. The group takes a train north, and some cracks in the long-running friendships become visible during the trip. Miranda and Julien, the golden couple, are plainly having problems; Katie, the only singleton left, is distracted; Giles and Samira brought their new baby and are engrossed in her, not their friends.

The setting is exquisite: mountains, waterfalls, forests, wildlife. It sounds like a lovely vacation place in the summer, not so much in the winter. In addition, the possibility of a serial killer in the neighborhood pops up every two or three chapters, adding a level of anxiety to the country noises the city dwellers aren’t used to. In the time-honored fashion of country house mysteries, two days after the group arrives, a record-setting snowfall cuts them off from the rest of the world, and one of their group disappears after a long night of drinking.

The lodge handyman discovers the body. The site manager agrees the injuries visible means the death can’t be accidental and calls the police to report what is obviously a homicide. The weather prevents the police from rushing to the lodge as well as keeping anyone from leaving it, heightening the worry of the group.

The story is told from the perspective of the lodge manager, the handyman, and four of the group of friends. It is a little curious that we don’t find out what the others are thinking. In addition to the frequent changes in point of view, the timeline moves from the beginning of the trip to the discovery of the body and back again, often in chapters of only two or three pages. It is a highly effective way to build suspense but I found it disorienting. The first part of the book is mostly predictable, adding to the intensity of the surprises in the last chapters.

·         Hardcover: 336 pages

·         Publisher: William Morrow (February 12, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 006286890X

·         ISBN-13: 978-0062868909

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.