Sara Paretsky Shares Years of Stories in LOVE & OTHER CRIMES

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Issued as a paperback original, Love & Other Crimes is a perfect match for summer’s relaxing moments, whether they are long ones on vacation or short breathers between home-based never-ending gig economy labors.”

Just in time for slipping a paperback of short stories into a beach bag (or toting it to the back yard reading chair) comes the collection Love & Other Crimes from Sara Paretsky. This is more than a gathering of short fiction from an acknowledged Grand Master of Mystery—Paretsky delights fans of her V.I. Warshawski detective series by dipping back in time into Vic’s own past on the South Side of Chicago for three of the 14 stories.

In addition, the collection includes Paretsky’s personal homages to such Golden Age of Detective Fiction authors as Agatha Christie and Anna Katharine Green. And of course there’s a Sherlock Holmes pastiche to round out the fun.

As Paretsky writes in her introduction, “We kill out of passion, we kill out of love—love of money, but also love of family, a desire to protect our reputations, to protect property; we kill out of a narcissistic wound when we’ve been betrayed or abandoned. We kill for revenge.”

The title story, “Love & Other Crimes,” opens with a challenge to detective V.I. Warshawski:

"’They’re trying to frame Gregory,’ she announced baldly.

‘Who are ‘they,’ who is Gregory, and what are ‘they’ saying he did?’ I asked.

‘F***ing Warshawki snob,’ she said. ‘I might have known. Like your mother, too good to walk around the planet with the ordinary mortals.’”

Even V.I., confronted with this complicated and patently untrue assertion, has to take a moment to figure out who’s in her office and why. Turns out it’s Sonia Litvak, a neighbor from when Vic was a kid, one who’s still wearing the chip on her shoulder she had back then. And the crime(s) involved can’t be separated from Vic’s own past. Paretsky packs a novel’s worth of family friction and underworld finagling into 35 pages.

That’s long for a “short” story, and it’s part of what makes this collection such a good read: Paretsky takes the time to frame setting and character, even dividing many of the stories into mini chapters of their own. There’s a paragraph after each tale where Paretsky opens up its backstory, and these add tasty seasoning to the book. For example, “Is It Justice?” is a gift back to readers of her book Critical Mass (2013), as “a lot of readers” of that novel objected to character Cordell Breen’s escape. “Flash Point” was drafted to fit the Fifty Shades of Grey craze. “Trial by Fire” takes historical crime into noir terrain. And “Wildcat” turns out to lay “the groundwork” for Paretsky’s 2009 crime novel Hardball, which has a backstory in the riots of 1966.

Obviously, readers already somewhat familiar with Paretsky’s works will get extra pleasure from this gathering that stitches together so much of her previous writing, as well as revealing personal and professional motives to her storytelling. Those meeting V.I. Warshawski for the first time here, though, can enjoy knowing this author has a backlist of more than 20 other crime novels to dive into afterward.

Issued as a paperback original, Love & Other Crimes is a perfect match for summer’s relaxing moments, whether they are long ones on vacation or short breathers between home-based never-ending gig economy labors. Each story brings a change of pace, a clever crime, and a burning sense of what human justice demands. Which, of course, is exactly what one would expect from a Grand Master of Mystery.

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

World War II Policing in Detroit: DETROIT IS OUR BEAT, Loren D. Estleman

This is a hot time for World War I and  World War II mysteries set in Europe, especially England and France -- and Italy, come to think of it. And there are also some series set between the wars. It's a great time to probe the complications of two terrible conflicts, through crime fiction.

But what about on the home front? Yes, the U S of A, where in the 1940s there was rationing of gasoline and tires, changes of car manufacturing lines to build tanks instead, and a certain patriotism in women pretending they wore stockings, while actually giving them up, for the war effort.

By zeroing in on this era in Detroit, the Motor City (yes, that's where Motown came from, too), prolific author Loren D. Estleman takes a walk on the dark side -- because this was a period of stunningly brutal policing, where the criminal enterprises and the cops stayed connected, and brass knuckles were as much a tool of law enforcement as they were of crime and bar fights.

Estleman's Amos Walker series (1980-2014 and continuing) is set here; so is his "Detroit series" (published from 1990 to 1999), which sets out to tell a significant part of the American story through the history  of crime, gently fictionalized, in a quintessential American city. In addition to his novels, though, Estleman has steadily provided short stories set in Detroit, especially for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, edited by Linda Landrigan.

For his new release from Tyrus Books, DETROIT IS OUR BEAT, Estleman rounds up nine of these tales of his "Racket Squad" -- a plainclothes detective squad of four, showing what it means to be tough on crime under wartime conditions (not enough men, not enough gasoline, and so on). Lieutenant Zagreb, Sergeant Canal, and Officers McReary and Burke are loyal to each other and to getting the job done. But don't count on rules being followed in the process.

For instance, take their arrival at Frankie Orr's suite, on a mission to protect Frank Sinatra, The Voice, from a threat. The Four Horsemen aren't much impressed with Orr's on-the-spot protection team:

The bodyguard tried to roll with the blow and reached under the sagging side of his coat. McReary, stationed on that side, slid the blackjack out of his sleeve and flicked it at the back of the man's hand as it emerged. The big semiautomatic pistol thumped to the carpet. Burke kicked it away.

"Just like Busby Berkeley," Zagren said. "Show some manners. Knock on the door."

The bodyguard, bleeding from the temple, ungripped his injured hand and complied.

Right, so this isn't sweet stuff (and it's from those classic years, too) ... but there's plenty of squad loyalty, lots of dark humor, and a heaping helping of city police life from the wild days of wartime.

So if you'd like to round out your "wartime" crime fiction reading, grab a copy of DETROIT IS OUR BEAT. Hard to tell what the release dates are for the various versions of the book (hardcover and paperback are both listed for May 2 at one online site, but Tyrus released at least one version last October). But if you like American noir with a lot of style from the glory days of the gangsters, tuck this one into your beach bag or briefcase and, as Estleman suggests, "It's the 1940s, gate. Don't be a moldy fig. Get hep, jump to the jive, ring your favorite Jane up on the Ameche, and don't spare the horses."

Diversion: The War Memoir That Tells It All -- MY LIFE AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY, Brian Turner

Can we make it a military rule from now on, that every large group of soldiers include an embedded poet? Incognito, of course -- Brian Turner kept his poetry writing to himself while he led missions. It wouldn't have fit the persona that he needed to convey as a leader under fire.

But now, 11 years after "Sergeant T" departed with his men for the Iraqui desert, this highly trained observer and wordsmith gives us the reality of war. The exhilaration of enlisting into a (mostly) male experience that your older, battle-experienced relatives will now share with you. The joy of feeling competent, and the goofiness of being "boys" with girlie magazines, guns to shoot, silly secrets. And the horror of death -- including potentially your own.

Turner gives us the men as they prepare to invade a presumed insurgent's family home:

The drivers will fire up their engines and check their gauges. Across town, a small child kisses her father on his cheek. The soldiers inhale the harsh smoke, lean their heads back and exhale up toward the dead surface of the moon. And -- though they darken into silhouettes as the night draws on -- the soldiers brighten inside. They crackle in nerve and flame. The gas stations and Laundromats and unemployment lines and hardware stores of America disappear. For now, they are soldiers. They are giants standing over the model of someone else's life. Humming with adrenaline, they stand in the great sweep of history -- past, passing and yet to come -- and take it all in.

That's right, MY LIFE AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY is written in prose. The stories follow each other, rooted in daily life on base, in trucks, behind guns ... and even when Turner stacks the segments on top of each other, pushing the despair and craziness into a ladder to that darkening dead moon, he's telling stories.

Except every now and then, just the way he does right after this passage, he turns the words into something like a pounding drum, when he writes: "The soldiers enter the house, the soldiers enter the house."

There's immense love in here, as well as carefully chosen words and images that bring hard choices to life. In a way that only the return from, and processing of, Vietnam could allow, Turner also opens up the view of what it's like to "come home" -- carrying indelible memories of pain and risk and loss and fear, endless fear, from a battleground where a child or a gift can disguise a deadly threat.

I'm not, in general, a fan of war stories. But this potent braid of necessity, excitement, and guilt and grief -- this is worth reading more than once. This is what a poem that learns to be a long, long story becomes, and lingers. Grandfather, father, and soldier son -- and more.

If only it were a real rule: Tell the truth, the way a really fine poet must always strive for.

Oh yes, you can read this without knowing Brian Turner's war poetry. But I've been a fan of all his work -- poems, New York Times blog, more poems, and now this memoir. For some perspective, click here for more discussion of Brian Turner's writing.

Most of all, after reading MY LIFE AS A FOREIGN COUNTRY: What story would you share if someone asked you what your war was like?

Sherlock Holmes in Fresh Fiction: Two Baker Street Gems

There are four major sources of literary common ground that I've watched people build from, for friendships or long conversations. The two classics are the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare; the third links two or even three generations through J. R. R. Tolkien; and the fourth, peculiar to a subgroup but ardently dissected and repeated, is the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

The more I think about what goes into an American or European mystery, the more I see the Holmes stories as a pattern that's still in use, or still being inverted, depending on the feel of the tale. And there have been many take-offs from the classic stories of Holmes and Watson and the Baker Street Irregulars. Laurie R. King writes one of the better known series today, featuring a late-in-life wife of the great detective -- a woman partner in detection, sometimes ahead of her husband's perceptions, sometimes rapidly catching up, and always close in some fashion.

But because the original Arthur Conan Doyle tales are so well known and so identifiable, it's challenging to write "continuations."

Even Holmes-related humor writing can fall flat, easily.

So I was very pleased to find two new Sherlock books this year that engrossed me and gave me moments of thinking, "Yes, this sounds almost right -- and I'll keep reading!" (In my opinion, "almost right" is the closest anyone can get to Doyle's voice. So far, anyway.)

The first, BASKERVILLE: THE MYSTERIOUS TALE OF SHERLOCK'S RETURN by John O'Connell, is a particularly clever because it's not in the voice of either Holmes or Dr. Watson, but rather that of Bertram Fletcher Robinson -- a man who meets the author "Dr Arthur Conan Doyle" while waiting to board a steamship, to sail from Cape Town, South Africa, back to England. Robinson is headed "home" to become managing editor of the Daily Express. At that time, Holmes was known world-wide to have died while in pursuit of his arch enemy -- yet Doyle on shipboard reveals to Robinson that the great detective has merely retired. And of course, one might return to work, not caring for retirement's pace, yes? By the time the two reach Southampton, they have a bond as writers. And Robinson embraces a chance to work with the famous Doyle in creating, together, a new Holmes tale.

What I didn't realize until the end of the book, when I found the Afterword, is that this fiction is based on recorded events. There was indeed a potential co-author named Robinson, and there has been a steady thud of rumors that "The Hound of the Baskervilles" might have been his work in the main. At least, some of the names in it belong to Robinson's life and location. Much controversy erupted and continues.

For me, as a Sherlock Holmes fan, the true pleasure was in following O'Connell's sideways entrance into this detection epic. I enjoyed the book, and found it surprisingly close to that Baker Street life that I've explored so often through the original Sherlock Holmes books.

Second, I welcome a collection edited by the prodigious Loren D. Estleman: SONS OF MORIARTY AND MORE STORIES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Some of the six stories and one novella collected here will be familiar to modern Baker Street fans -- such as "The Case of the Double-Bogey Man: by Robert L. Fish, featuring his entertaining buffoon Mr Schlock Homes and his sidekick Watney (and brother Criscroft!). Others, although published earlier, hadn't crossed my own path: I liked the tale by John Lutz, "The Infernal Machine," and the Solar Pons story from August Derleth, "The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet." Estleman's own novella, "Sons of Moriarty," incorporates an admirable twist.

The other authors with material in this collection are Anne Perry, Al Sarrantonio, and Lenore Carroll -- whose "Before the Adventures" struck me as so enjoyable that I rambled online, seeking her other work. SONS OF MORIARTY is going on my "read it again" shelf -- and with the weather changing so rapidly, I look forward to long evenings in which to indulge that comforting journey to Holmes's world once again.

[A note to collectors: BASKERVILLE by O'Connell is the same book that was released in 2011 in the UK under the title The Baskerville Legacy.]