JOHN J. LAMB – The Mournful Teddy

Berkley 21112; paperback original. First printing: August 2006.

   Speaking of cozies, as I was just a book or so ago, take one look at the cover and the title of this book and what would you think? I’ll get back to that in a minute.

   This is the second mystery written by John J. Lamb, a retired homicide detective from San Diego County who pulled up stakes and moved back east to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where he now lives and attends teddy bear shows with his wife, among other activities. His first book, Echoes of the Lost Order (Five Star, hardcover, 2005) sounds as though it might be the first of a totally different series, one that takes place in Talmine, a small Virginia Tidewater town, where a murder is solved by the town’s chief of police, Steve MacKinnon, and his wife, Victoria, a former police crime analyst.

   Looking back at that paragraph, I see that I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The Mournful Teddy is already the first in a series, even though it’s the only one that’s been published so far. Coming up in May 2007 is The False-Hearted Teddy, and according to his website, the author is now hard at work on The Crafty Teddy.

   And I’m still ahead of myself, or I’ve swung off sideways, and I really have to get back on track. The protagonists in all three of these “Bear Collector’s Mysteries” are retired San Francisco P. D. homicide inspector Brad Lyon and his wife, Ashleigh, a teddy bear collector (and creator), now living along the Shenandoah River in rural Virginia. One senses a pattern at work here.

   Which is hardly bad news, and the even better news is that The Mournful Teddy became Number One on the Independent Mystery Bookseller Association’s best-seller list for August 2006. Who among mystery readers can resist a work of detective fiction that involves teddy bears? (When beanie babies were hot hobby items, was there a mystery that involved beanie babies? If not, someone missed a good opportunity, as beanie babies hardly have the mass appeal they had at one time, do they?)

   But teddy bears? They never go out of fashion, and I think this series of mysteries that Mr. Lamb has concocted and devised could go on for quite a while. It begins with Lyon finding a body in the Shenandoah outside his home, a male body that the local sheriff and ambulance crew seem to recognize without even turning him over. They also quickly invite Lyon to mind his own business, which of course rankles the retired homicide detective.

   Also worked into the tale, as of course you were wondering, is a valuable teddy bear with connections to the Titanic. Make that extremely valuable.

   After a slow opening, the story gradually picks up speed, and the antagonistic behavior of the local law enforcement officers gives it an even bigger boost. As an investigator, which he has been for a long time, Lyon is a good interviewer, and he is especially good with hostile witnesses. But even with so many facets to the mystery, it is one that is surprisingly easy to solve, with at least one of the bad guys caving in all too easily and not really (as it turns out) perhaps not that bad at all. Some of them certainly are, however – do not get me wrong – and they are not necessarily all guys, either, in case you were trying to read something into my words that I didn’t mean for you to pick up on.

   Overall? Everyone reading this will either (a) read the book or (b) not, no matter what my recommendation might be, so I won’t say anything further, nor do I think I need to.

   But here’s a quote from page 88 that I thought was amusing, and since it’s about mysteries, I thought perhaps you might also:

   Ouch. Nothing like that in this one, but still. Ouch.