Thu 26 Mar 2020
Archived PI Mystery Review: M. K. WREN – Seasons of Death.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
M. K. WREN – Seasons of Death. Conan Flagg #5. Doubleday/Crime Club, hardcover 1981. Ballantine, paperback, 1989.
This was the fifth adventure of PI/bookseller Conan Flagg. It came out in 1981, but for some reason there has been only one since, unless I’ve lost track. [This was written in 1989, and I hadn’t.] Conan, half Indian/half Irish, lives in Oregon, and is wealthy enough to be selective on the cases he accepts.
He spends all his time in an isolated corner of Idaho in this one, though, trying to solve a murder committed 40 years before. As he does so, what author M. K. Wren [the pen name of Martha Kay Renfroe] does, and most acceptably so, is combine the PI story with the “cozy†mystery, however it is you define “cozy.â€
PostScript: Since you asked, and most politely, too, I’ll see if I can explain. It’s the type of timeless story filled with the kind of people and locals you feel at home with, along with the added comfort of realizing that problems are meant to be solved. (Truth doesn’t always equal happiness, true, but in the end, everyone accepts it as preferable to the alternative.)
The Conan Flagg series –
1. Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat (1973)
2. A Multitude of Sins (1975)
3. Oh, Bury Me Not (1976)
4. Nothing’s Certain But Death (1978)
5. Seasons of Death (1981)
6. Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey (1984)
7. Dead Matter (1993)
8. King of the Mountain (1994)
March 27th, 2020 at 5:32 pm
I found most of these books at a library sale last year and read through them.
The first book is a bit of an oddity. It is basically a cold war espionage tale with minor cozy mystery touches. The rest of the series is more consistent focusing on various murder investigations that spring up around the protagonist.
Overall I thought the writing was good. The idea of packaging them with cats on the paperback covers is a bit misleading. True, Conan Flagg does own a cat which lives in the bookstore Conan owns and runs but the cat is a fairly minor device. As far as being “cozy” anyone expecting a cast of oddball eccentric townsfolk who bumble through crime solving is going to be disappointed. These contain more standard investigation fare but are overall well done.
March 27th, 2020 at 6:00 pm
More a sort of soft boiled Travis McGee than truly cozy despite the covers. Currently they are available in omnibus editions as ebooks.
The writing is usually good, and though I liked one of two much less than others overall it’s a good series.
It’s a bit of an odd series, soft boiled, semi cozy, and regional, but not quite any one of those things. A few of them are quite good though and Flagg an attractive sleuth.
March 27th, 2020 at 6:23 pm
David and David.
I agree with you both on the merits of the series. I read perhaps half of the series before moving on to newer ones. Flagg is a character I’m going to have to go back and spend more time with. It’s won’t be difficult to do. While spending more time than usual indoors at home, I recently came across one of them. You can’t deny fate like that!
March 27th, 2020 at 6:57 pm
And here it is:
March 27th, 2020 at 9:27 pm
Someone came up with this definition of “cozy”:
It’s a mystery where somebody gets killed, but nobody gets hurt.
Most such stories are comedies, written that way, and enjoyed as such.
I take it that this series is not comedic in intent.
Now you’ve got me interested …
March 28th, 2020 at 9:06 am
That’s a great definition of a “cozy,” Mike. I hadn’t seen that one before.
I think the Flagg books are cozies only when he hangs out in and around his bookstore. Otherwise not. I’m 50 pages into KING OF THE MOUNTAIN, and Flagg is attending a a very dysfunctional family reunion in an isolated mountaintop manor in eastern Oregon. Not at all cozy.
April 9th, 2020 at 8:31 am
[…] happened to find my copy of this one soon after posting my archived review of Seasons of Death, number five in the series. Some of the discussion that took place in the […]