The Giveaway for Murder, Sweet Murder, ends next Tuesday so be sure and join the lottery. I am giving away ten copies of the hardcover book.
I had a wonderful interview with Fran Lewis on May 25. I always enjoy talking to her and she asks such great questions. The second link is to her review of the book. Thank you Fran!
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/fran-lewis/2022/05/26/murder-sweet-murder
Review: https://tillie49.wordpress.com/2022/05/26/murder-sweet-murder/
Week of May 21
I read three good books this week, all purchased at Malice in April.
First up, Watch her by Edwin Hill.
The second Hester Thursby mystery. Hest, and her friend Detective Angela White are at a university function when another guest, Jennifer Mason, mentions their mansion has been broken into. Hester and Angela investigate and Hester begins to doubt the Matsons’s story. Investigation into finances connected to the university reveals financial malfeasance. How are they linked? A murder ramps up the urgency.
I really enjoy these mysteries, not least because Hester does a lot of research (she is a researcher) that reminds me strongly of library reference work.
The second book I read is An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris. I have enjoyed all of her works and this one does not disappoint.
The former United States has been broken up into five regions: Britannia (still allied with Great Britain), Dixie (the Southern States), Texoma (Texas and environs), New America, and the Holy Russian Empire (California, Oregon and Washington State). Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie from Texoma, a hired gun that signs onto crews tasked with transporting refugees from Texoma through the a bandit-ridden land to New America. This trip goes sideways and she is the only one remaining of the crew. She rescues the cargo and gets all of them but two alive to New America. Home again, she is hired for another job by rigors (Russian magic users) to find a descendent of Rasputin. A gory adventure. Highly recommended.
Finally, I read The Bone Track, the second in Sara E. Johnson’s New Zealand mysteries.
Alexa Glock is on vacation with her brother Charlie hiking in Fiordland National Park. They are independent hikers, hiking from hut to hut, under rainy conditions with regular landslides.
If that were not excitement enough, Alexa, running from a landslide, stumbles across a body revealed by the shifting early. She goes into forensic investigator mode and photographs the skeleton and takes evidence. While she is so involved, a helicopter carrying a bag of bulk rocks tries to kill her by dropping the bulk bag on her.
Simultaneously, one of the luxe hikers is missing. Alexa and her brother find it smashed on the rocks below a swing bridge over a gorge. Then Alexa discovers the marks of hiking poles used to push the victim off the cliff in her back.
Highly Recommended for both the mystery and the setting.
My weaver/detective Will Rees frequently refers to Philip, his Native American friend who has taught him to look for tracks and identify some of them. So Rees can tell the difference between boots and shoes, and usually the gender of the wearer. He examines cart wheel tracks and hoof prints and can identify the horse if one of the horseshoes is damaged. He can see if a victim’s blood is drying or has petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes. Other than that, unless there is an obvious rope burn or bruises around the neck or stab wounds, he has very little to help solve the case. The discovery of DNA is almost 300 years in the future.
In 1800 and before, forensics was not in its infancy, it was nonexistent.
Take fingerprints, a staple of crime fiction for the last 200 years. In 1822, Johannes Purkinje, establishes the nine basic patterns of fingerprints and creates a classification system. It wasn’t until 1880 that Henry Faulds wrote that fingerprints could be used for identification and also suggested that powder could expose latent fingerprints.
AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) so beloved of the crime shows on TV did not come about until the 1960s. By then, most stories featured smart criminals who wore gloves or used other methods to hide their prints.
What about blood and bloodstains? Blood grouping was not discovered until 1901. Since then, grouping has been refined so that blood can by typed very accurately. In 1800, a detective could not be 100% sure a dark brown stain was blood – it could be coffee or chocolate. Flourescein, the first of the chemicals that reacts with blood, was not used since the early 1900’s. It reacts with the hemoglobin and glows under UV light. Luminol does the same thing but a clever murderer can destroy it with bleach.
Also, without the presence of a human body, the blood could not be identified as human. It could be animal blood. Not chemical tests can quickly identify the blood as human or animal, right down to the species.
Blood spatter and drip patterns, however, was mentioned in writing in 1514 so this is something Rees COULD notice. Of course, it might or might not be helpful.
So, how does Will Rees or any other early detective solve murders without the tools we take for granted? Ratiocination or the ‘little gray cells’. One of the things I love about writing historical mysteries is the slow unraveling of the puzzle, step by careful step, until the final conclusion is reached.
Week of May 8. I read the fourth Ozark mystery by Nancy Allen – The Wolf in the Woods, and my first Heather Weidner The Tulip Shirt Murders.
In the Wolf in The Woods,
Elsie’s friend Bree’s daughter is swept up in a human trafficking scheme. Elsie goes undercover and puts herself in danger to rescue Taylor and her friend. This is the fourth of the Ozark series, and there are several threads left unresolved. Unfortunately, there is not a fifth. I really enjoyed these mysteries even though Elsie, a flawed character, really needs to grow up.
While at Malice Domestic, I purchased the Tulip Shirt Murders.
Written in an episodic manner, the mystery follows the daily activities of Melanie Fitzgerald, P.I. The murders are not front and center, but a part of the many cases Delainie and her partner Duncan investigate. Very cozy. After reading this book, I am convinced I am not suited to be a private investigator.
The rise of the modern police force in a relatively modern phenomenon. Policing in early America was a hodgepodge of constables, sheriffs , night watchmen and justices of the peace. The Boston Night Watch was established in 1631. These were usually poorly paid and untrained. Moreover, although they were paid, it was more of a stipend than a salary. All officers had to have another profession that put food on the table. In my Will Rees series, series, Rouge runs a tavern.
Bands of citizens, like a more powerful Neighborhood watch, was another system employed to keep order. Too often, they became groups of zealots who went after anyone of whom they disapproved.
As the populations increased, especially cities like Boston and New York, port cities where immigrants arrived, these patchwork systems were quickly overwhelmed.
Attempts as establishing some kind of security force were tried. The wealthy usually hired their own men to protect themselves and their possessions. A system that paid the men with rewards was also tried. But abuse was rampant. Innocent men were hanged for crimes so the ‘detective’ could collect the reward.
London was the first city to set up a trained, professional force: the Metropolitan Police. This was a country-wide force with trained officers and it quickly became a model for the United States. New York City became the first police force modeled on the ‘bobbies’. (The American system, however, was decentralized. Politicians chose the officers and they reported to a neighborhood precinct house. Cronyism and corruption were constant problems.) The police did not wear uniforms until 1853, in New York City.
Boston began experimenting with a police force modeled on the British in 1837. By 1860, all large American cities had established full time police forces.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, when Rees is investigating, there was no such thing as a police force.
Week of May 2. This week I read The Wages of Sin, by Nancy Allen, Death at Chinatown by Frances McNamara and Death and Hard Cider by Barbara Hambly.
In Wages of Sin, Elsie works on a case in which a man batters his 8 month old pregnant wife to death with a baseball bat.
Of course, the case is more complicated that it first appears, involving a meth lab and a traumatized young girl. Elsie is also negotiating her on/off relationship with Detective Ashcroft. Now that he has taken in his son, Ashcroft has been given a list of rules by his ex-wife and it is seriously impacting his relationship with Elsie. I really enjoy these books although they are dark, and Elsie’s success in court is never assured. Recommended.
The second book I read is Death at Chinatown, a book I picked up at Malice Domestic.
Emily Cabot Chapman is drawn into the murder of a Chinese herbalist in Chinatown. A woman doctor from China has been accused of the murder. The tension in the Chinese community between the traditionalists, (there is a description of some young women with bound feet) and those who want to see China progress – but not always with Western ideals. As in Death at the Homefront, which described the prejudice against the Germans, this book deals with the prejudice against the Chinese.
At the same time, Emily, who has two small children, is trying to balance her responsibilities as a wife and mother with Stephen’s urging for her to go back to work – and the conflict that causes.
Another good mystery, well-researched. I do wish I’d read it in order, though.
Finally, I read Death and Hard Cider. Barbara Hambly is one of my favorite authors. I began reading her when she wrote science fiction and moved with her when she began her Benjamin January mysteries.
It is 1840 and William Henry Harrison (Tippencanoe and Tyler too) is running for President. Henry Clay and his son James visit New Orleans. After one of the many events, a beautiful young girl is found shot to death. One of January’s friends, a former placee, is arrested for the murder. January and his friend Shaw are not satisfied and begin to look into the murder.
As always, the characters and the setting are top rate. I always feel as though I am right there, with the heat and the smell of the swamp and the constant danger of being a black man, although free, in a slave owning community. Highly recommended.
The short comment on the title is that women had none. Although I would expect that wives had some input in their married lives and the lives of their children, legally they had none.
Women could not vote. The only people who could were white men, and white men with property at that. Women could not inherit from their husbands unless specifically mentioned in a husband’s will. If he did not mention her, she became the responsibility of her son. If the relationship was poor, he could, and frequently did, turn her own to starve on the road.
Women owned nothing. Although a woman might bring a dowry to a marriage, property of such, as soon as the marriage took place, the property became her husband’s. He could spend it as he wished, including on other women. If he chose to gamble it away, she had no legal recourse. (This, by the way, is a common trope in Regency and romance fiction.) One of the sources I read described a case of divorce. When the woman wished to remarry, she had to do so in her petticoat. Even the clothing on her back belonged to her husband and he refused to give her any of it. (This is why the farm Lydia owns becomes Rees’s after their marriage.)
Even her children belonged to her husband. In a dispute, he might remove them and forbid her to see them again. He usually chose his children’s spouses and determined where and when they were apprenticed.
Domestic abuse was not a crime. Although it was expected a husband would not beat his wife to death, English common law gave him the right to beat her with a stick no bigger than his thumb.
This is not a world I would ever wish to return to and it is certainly unfortunate that some people seem to think this is still the way the world should work.
One of the wonderfully progressive facts about the Shakers is that they believed in equality between the sexes. Although their work was divided by gender, and followed along traditional gender roles, women bore a equal share in the governance of the community. Education as well was offered to both boys and girls, a rarity at that time.
There was so much going on this week, I only managed to read one book. But a good one it is. Murder in Second Position by Lori Robbins is the sequel to Murder in First Position (read last week.)
As in the first book, Leah Sidorova is faced with murder at the American Ballet Company. First to be found dead is Pavel, a new, and universally disliked, director. Leah founds him dead at the foot of the stairs and instantly comes under suspicion.
The administrative assistant, Savannah, is particularly nasty. Even Leah’s friend Olivia seems distant.
At the same time, the company is preparing for a new production. Besides practicing well known ballets, they are trying to learn a new, and in Leah’s opinion, mediocre dance. Several dancers wipe out and Leah begins to wonder if someone is targeting the company. When Savannah is murdered and then the Business Manager is attacked.
But Leah devises a way to reveal the malefactor with the assistance of her mother, her friend Gabi, Madame, and three balletomanes Leah affectionately calls the Weird Sister.
As with the first book, the birds-eyed view of the ballet world is fascinating. Recommended.
I urge everyone to attend Malice Domestic. It is not just for writers but for fans as well. Here, fans can meet their favorite authors and have their books signed.
A wonderful feature of Malice is the panels.I did not the pictures of all the panels I attended; I thought of it too late. But I do have a few.
One of the panels, on the Role of Identity in your characters, sourced quite dry. But it turned out to be fascinating.
Malice 2023 will be held in late April in North Bethesda, Maryland.
Although I spent this past weekend in North Bethesda, MD for Malice Domestic, I still managed to read two books. The first was Ninja’s Blade by Tori Eldridge, the second in her Lily Wong series. The second was a book I bought at Malice. Murder in First Position, by Lori Robbins, features a ballerina as the main protagonist/detective.
Ninja’s Blade is even more exciting than Ninja’s Daughter.
Lily Wong is hired to find a young woman, Emma, who was rescued from the streets and prostitution. While Lily is searching, she becomes aware of the trafficking of minors. Dolla is a recruiter for Manolo, a really terrifying pimp. Lily struggles to find out what she needs to know and finally goes undercover as a streetwalker to rescue the girls. Exciting and gritty. Highly recommended but Not for the faint of heart.
The second mystery was Murder in First Position.
Leah Siderova is coming back from a serious knee injury. She is in competition for a lead role but when her rival is found stabbed with a pair of scissors, she goes from ballerina to murder suspect. Former friends and fellow dancers treat her like a pariah. When the police are poised to arrest her, Leah goes on the run. She finds new friends in a band of ladies on their way to Atlantic City. Leah’s sister plays decoy and in a final scene at the theater the murderer is finally revealed.
What an interesting, albeit disheartening, view of the ballet world. Rivalry, backstabbing, out and out cruelty. And the ballerina’s struggles to stay at ninety pounds certainly put my diet struggles in perspective. Recommended.