Peter Diamond Gets a Private Eye, in Peter Lovesey's 20th in Series, DIAMOND AND THE EYE

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Every private eye from Sherlock Holmes to Matt Scudder needs a line into the factory. Sam Spade had his tame sergeant, Tom Polhaus. Philip Marlowe had Officer Randall from Central Homicide. It comes with the territory.”

Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond investigation series is in its 20th full-length title, and with age comes the privilege of taking things very lightly – so Diamond and the Eye is an almost nonstop giggle, as well as a classic police detection episode with this British Detective Superintendent. It’s the perfect prescription for those who’ve been taking their lives (or their crime fiction reading) too seriously.

From the very start, Diamond is fed up with a private investigator—the private “Eye” of the title—crashing into his Friday evening, and then a missing person case as well. Diamond’s perception of PI Johnny Getz (a nom-de-dick for the job) tells it all: “The stranger’s voice was throaty, the accent faux American from a grainy black-and-white film a lifetime ago. This Bogart impersonator was plainly as English as a cricket bat. His face wasn’t Bogart’s and he wasn’t talking through tobacco smoke, but he held a cocktail stick between two fingers as if it was a cigarette … he was dressed in a pale grey suit and floral shirt open at the neck to display a miniature magnifying glass on a leather cord.”

From calling Diamond “bud,” to speaking of him as “Pete” to colleagues, Johnny Getz is a man without boundaries—but with a determination to get his first and only PI job done for his relatively trashy client, Ruby, daughter of an antiquities dealer named Seppy Hubbard. Seppy’s vanished, Getz is supposed to find him or find out what happened to him, and Diamond, fighting back as hard as he can be bothered to do, soon discovers there’s been at least one murder involved, with every reason to bring in his team.

But there’s nothing straightforward about tracking down a missing (perhaps dead) dealer, when Johnny Getz keeps butting in. Peter Diamond’s Detective Sergeant Ingeborg Smith attempts to keep the peace, assuring Diamond that Getz won’t stay involved: “He’s out of his depth now. Private eyes don’t investigate homicides except in books. A missing person case, maybe, but not a killing.” But once Ingeborg does meet “Johnny,” she’s got to admit he’s going to stick around as they work this case.

Johnny Getz litters his conversation and his performance with references to PIs of the past, all in books. Readers of classic detective fiction can giggle and guffaw as they ride shotgun with this new wacky character, recognizing his American PI heroes well before the British police team grapples with what Johnny’s attempting to copy. Finally, Ingeborg feels the need to take a stand: “Don’t knock my guv’nor,” she warns Getz. His response is to tell her how much he values Diamond. Why, after mentally calling the DS a fat slob? It’s simple: “Every private eye from Sherlock Holmes to Matt Scudder needs a line into the factory. Sam Spade had his tame sergeant, Tom Polhaus. Philip Marlowe had Officer Randall from Central Homicide. It comes with the territory.”

Though Ingeborg protests that PIs belong in a different country and a different century, far from 21st-century Bath in Britain, she doesn’t have a chance of talking Johnny Getz out of getting his man, so to speak. And getting paid.

Through the nonstop campy humor runs a solid and clever little mystery, with some great red herrings and a fine twist before solution. The one part unresolved by the end of Diamond and the Eye is whether Johnny Getz will now leave “Pete” alone.

It’s the nature of a series to leave the reader suspecting there is more to come of this frustrating and funny pairing, in Peter Lovesey’s books ahead. 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Tis the Season for Classic Detection Stories, in A SURPRISE FOR CHRISTMAS AND OTHER CHRISTMAS MYSTERIES

Martin  Edwards has a marvelous mystery series of his own, featuring Rachel Savernake, set in the Golden Age. A perfect transformation has turned him into the editor of several collections of detective stories brought out by British Library Crime Classics (Poisoned Pen Press, a Sourcebooks imprint). 

A SURPRISE FOR CHRISTMAS, released last week, is the fourth anthology in this series of "classic crime stories with a wintry theme" -- or, as Edwards also calls them, "detective stories in the classic vein." Scanning the author names for the dozen tales gave me shivers: among them Ngaio Marsh, G.K. Chesterton, Carter Dickson, Ernest Dudley, and Margery Allingham. Some of their stories may be almost unknown, even to those who have read the full-length crime novels from this pantheon of writers. As a Chesterton fanatic, I know I'd read "The Hole in the Wall," but so long ago that I'd forgotten the critical twist until I was several pages in. Cyril Hare's "A Surprise for Christmas" is morbidly funny; "Give Me a Ring" from Anthony Gilbert, one of the longer stories in the collection, has a sweet air of old-fashioned threat, from the days before risk and danger had to be garbed in gore or psychosis.

Adding to the delight of this collection are short forwards to the stories, recapping each author's presence in the Golden Age and noted sleuths. But often the stories presented come from outside the commonly known work of these authors. For example, the one from Ngaio Marsh does not feature Roderick Alleyn — but for "Death on the Air," which was published just three years later than Alleyn's first exposure in print, Marsh presents a classic "closed-circle detective story of the period," says the story's introduction. 

The tales also vary enormously in length, adding to the feel of opening a range of holiday gifts. With, of course, the advantage of no torn paper or ribbons to clear away afterward.

There is perhaps one drawback to A SURPRISE FOR CHRISTMAS: Any passionate reader of the authors collected here will need to purchase two copies ... one to savor as the days grow shorter, and one to give to the very best of friends.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Elderly and Wicked! Darkly Funny Murder from Helene Tursten in AN ELDERLY LADY MUST NOT BE CROSSED

 

[Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“If you’re looking for distinctive international bouquet in your “Scandi noir,” this isn’t going to fit your shelf. Instead, it will be a dandy holiday gift, pocket size, darkly light-hearted, and a quick and easy introduction to the tongue-in-cheek side of one of today’s leading Swedish crime novelists.”

HeleneTursten summons her two established Swedish sleuths from two different series, Irene Huss and Embla Nyström, to tackle the wicked machinations of 88-year-old Maud in An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed, a holiday treat that will make a great stocking stuffer. Maud’s debut appearance in 2018’s An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good demonstrated that a stack of cleverly twisted short stories can comprise a delightful book. Tursten’s choice to pit her two detectives against this frankly wicked old lady adds to the dark humor of her newest tales.

For Maud, the pressure applied by the two police investigators as a team is the last straw: She’s successfully gotten away with murder in her own home, but it’s taken quite a lot of scheming and arranging, and she’d like a break. Why not treat herself to a luxury trip to South Africa, be wined and dined, see amazing wildlife, all while disguising her cleverness under the deceptive appearance of aging into confusion? People do so much work for you if you appear to be frail and needy, don’t they?

After the first tale, “An Elderly Lady Begins to Remember Her Past,” these dryly funny and dark stories form a mostly chronological sequence—starting with Maud as a child, caretaker of an 11-years-older sister with increasingly odd habits. Not that Maud herself is particularly normal! As she reflects during her flight to Africa, “Memories rise to the surface. That’s what happens when you get older.” We find the grim smiles of “little Maud” executing a trap for bullies; we also find her smiling as she rehearses her father’s fishing methods while making sure a competitive colleague will have a terrible accident.

“No point in brooding over the past,” Maud reassures herself. “Sometimes a person had to do certain things in order to survive the hard life of a single woman with a heavy responsibility to bear.”

In delightfully creepy steps, Maud develops her murderous personality through this set of six revelatory narratives. And if the ending is perhaps a little more sweet than an aging Maud has led us to anticipate, don’t neglect the pair of cookie recipes at the end of An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed. Innocent and sweet as they appear, one of them has been a murder weapon in Maud’s hands. But only, of course, because she was forced to use it!

Marlaine Delargy’s translation never gets in the way of the action in Tursten’s stories. On the other hand, it has little Swedish flavor to it, so if you’re looking for distinctive international bouquet in your “Scandi noir,” this isn’t going to fit your shelf. Instead, it will be a dandy holiday gift, pocket size, darkly light-hearted, and a quick and easy introduction to the tongue-in-cheek side of one of today’s leading Swedish crime novelists.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Intense and Chilling Thriller Set in Vermont, I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM by Eric Rickstad

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“When Wayland becomes convinced that he’s witnessed some sleight of hand—that the death he witnessed was not his father’s but someone else’s—his passionate defense of the theory is based on the mysterious message he’d found.”

EricRickstad’s latest Vermont thriller presents a psychological mystery with stunning twists—perfectly paced and carefully constructed so that each startling new direction fits perfectly with what’s gone before, yet feels utterly unpredictable. That’s the ideal balance for this can’t-put-it-down novel crammed with sinister foreboding and family trauma.

I Am Not Who You Think I Am is titled with the words that eight-year-old Wayland Maynard discovers, in his father’s handwriting after he sees his father kill himself. Or is that what he’s actually seen? With age and maturity come questioning, and soon Wayland has a set of alternatives he’s desperate to prove and explain.

A child’s view provides an ultimately unreliable narrator, and at first, Wayland’s first-person narrative reveals the affection between his parents, and a possible weakness in his father. “I have pieced together enough to know that what happened on the day of the Incident was not done because he was a bad man. A bad father. It was done because … well, we’ll get to that. This isn’t some magic trick where the secret machinations are kept hidden. No. This is all about the reveal. The truth.”

But which parts of the child’s memories are relevant truths? Is it the tall threatening man who visited his father’s barber shop? “My father’s shears nicked my ear. I yelped. Blood trickled from my notched flesh. My father didn’t notice. His eyes were locked on the figure in the doorway. Dead leaves danced around the stranger’s feet. I felt a chill from the air that carried the tang of autumnal decay.”

Though Rickstad declares this novel to be a new direction for him, the vivid portrayal of place and threat will be familiar to those who’ve read his other books, like The Silent Girls. The tale quickly complicates as Wayland begins to share his investigation with Juliette, who sets his adolescent hormones and perceptions spinning and who is at least as strange and prone to vanishing as his family. When Wayland becomes convinced that he’s witnessed some sleight of hand—that the death he witnessed was not his father’s but someone else’s—his passionate defense of the theory is based on the mysterious message he’d found. And he poses the most critical issue: “Q: If it wasn’t your father, where is your father now? A: I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. Find out what they did to him.”

Some of the answers seem to be in the hands of the town’s most wealthy and reclusive citizens, and Wayland places himself in extreme danger, trying to discover the secrets he knows they are keeping from him. When the final twist arrive, it’s not just Wayland who will be shocked—and the mood of love mingled with deception never lets up for a moment.

Rickstad makes it clear that it took both The Story Factory and the unusual tilt of Blackstone Books to allow him to swerve into this powerful diversion of narrative and suspended disbelief. Three more books are promised. Which should be, in fact, as good a return on investment as young Wayland will get for his desperate investigation.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Rock Music, Suspense, Dark Thriller: HOLD ME DOWN by Clea Simon

Clea Simon's deep dives into the crime, pain, and heroics of Boston's club music world gave a fierce and dark passion to her crime novel World Enough (2017). With HOLD ME  DOWN, Simon goes multiple layers deeper and darker—thanks to the persona of Gal, a scarred and angry woman who has held crowds in the palm of her hand as she belted out the lyrics of her own top songs, mic stand and the strings of the bass as much a part of her as her own vocal cords and rough screams of rage and sexuality.

For Gal, a Boston return, 20 years later, is fraught with potential failure. Taking a cameo role in a club performance, she falters at first, realizing the guitarist is "all metal and speed, still" -- can Gal keep up? But she finds out right away: "The move centers her ... belting out the chorus as well as she knows the tattoo on her wrist—an F clef, faded blue—as the song pours out of her, the words coming easily now. Winding up to the hook. The line with the hiccup. One extra beat that makes the rhyme different." And she's back in charge of the image she's been ready to project, of a woman and a band grown tougher with age, "blooded, in ways they can only imagine." It's about power, sexuality, control.

And then, with one tricky glimpse for a moment of a face in the crowd, she's rubbed raw again, and in danger.

Scenes of touring, of the drug-supported physical challenge of performing for one crowd after another, clawing up the charts, the band becoming a life form of its own: Simon peels these like layers of a sharp onion, tears and rage starting to flow with Gal's slow recognition of the deep punishment she's sustained in her life. Her best songs—including the iconic "Hold Me Down"—root in that festering pain and anger that only her closest friends have even a hint of. 

"That song, 'Hold Me Down,' had been their breakout. Their hit, even in the rough four-track version they'd recorded down at Randy's, burning up the college stations with a waiting list for the single. Fans asking at the record store whenever she dropped back in to pick up a shift. It was why the suits had come calling, taking the shuttle up from New York to hear them at the Rat, the Channel, Taji's."

With the "suits" had come the controllers, the people who shoved the band at a pace beyond human capacity, drugging them as needed, pressing them into alcohol and drug abuse and a demand for performance that's deadly in its effects.

As the 20-years-later brutal murder of one of the team confronts her, so long after the band's success, Gal slowly admits to herself why the killing happened and who has deliberately done damage to her and the others. Then the police get involved, demanding that she reveal information she's barely coming to terms with. "You could come in and speak with us, if you'd like. Or should I send someone to get you?" That's the investigator. And Gal replies that she'll come in, without being dragged—admitting, in that moment, that her choices are "all about control."

But you can't control what brutal crime does to you. You can only cling to your friends and what's left of who you thought you were, and keep going. Or not. 

Simon's pacing in this crime thriller offers more than plot and character: She reincarnates the demanding sexuality of the rock underground with the costs of fame and addiction. Page by page, scene by traumatic scene, there's no guarantee that Gal can even perceive a safe harbor. 

Anyone who's dreamed of the power of being a rock performer will get double the emotional kick from this raw and compelling suspense novel. Simon's particular genius in HOLD ME DOWN is shining her light into the world of tough, struggling, and brilliant women—a side of the rock world rarely acknowledged or envisioned. HOLD ME DOWN is a heartache packed into 248 pages, with the possibility of breaking always just within reach.

After multiple genres of mysteries and crime novels, this Boston-area author has come into her own, so that Gal yells the words so many have had in the back of their throats, an accusation: "You wanna, you wanna hold me down." It's all about how we fight back. Can Gal do it—and survive?

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.