LOUIS TRACY – A Mysterious Disappearance. First published as The Strange Disappearance of Lady Delia Pearson, UK, hardcover, 1901; Street & Smith, US, 1909. Reprints, with the characters’ names changed & the new title: Clode, US, hc, 1905, as by Gordon Holmes; hardcover: Grosset & Dunlap, US, no date (shown); Hodder, UK, hardcover, 1928.

   For reasons known only to herself, Alisia, Lady Dene, goes out one foggy night and disappears. Barrister and amateur criminologist Claude Bruce is the last known person to see her.

   When he undertakes to find out what happened to her, he and Scotland Yard become convinced that a body found three weeks after her disappearance is Lady Dene’s, although the corpse cannot be identified.

   Finding her killer then becomes Bruce’s goal, a difficult one to achieve since motive, method, and locale are unknown. A pedestrian mystery, the pedestrian having fallen arches and bunions.

LISA TURNER – A Little Death in Dixie. Bell Bridge Books, trade paperback, June 2010.

    Mysteries set in the South invariably indulge in what I call Southern Gothic, a mix of jazz riffs, blues, country western music, Ante Bellum atmosphere, eccentric characters, and police caught between violent rednecks, distrustful minorities, political corruption, the conflict between the Old and New South, and a sprinkling of exotic crime and Elvis impersonators.

    When the setting for the novel is Memphis you have to expect all of the above. Detective Sergeant Billy Able has just caught a homicide, an elderly black man, Mr. Tuggle, lying in a bed of marigolds outside his clapboard house, shot by his mentally impaired wife. It’s a humid August day ( “Hot, flat, tornado bait.”), but then it is always summer in Southern mysteries it seems.

    Able is a thirty-something Mississippian with “the good looks of the Southern aristocracy gone to seed,” and teamed up with dapper slightly burned out, recently divorced, Lou Nevers, who objects to Billy’s second hand suits, and is behaving erratically.

    Buck Overton is a Criminal Court judge with a taste for horses and croquet ( “He believed the only true crime a man could commit was to get caught.”) who requests Billy Able’s and Lou Nevers look into a missing person case involving Sophia Dupree, an old flame of Billy’s.

    Overton has ties with the dapper Nevers who is headed for a wall at top speed and might take others with him:

    Meanwhile Billy meets Sophia’s sister Mercy Snow and begins to put together the ties between Buck Overton and Sophia, and why Sophia might decide to disappear, especially when a woman found in the river is mistakenly reported as being her.

    Exactly how all this comes together, along with Lou Nevers borderline nervous breakdown, is the bulk of Lisa Turner’s novel, which does a Southern variation on the eccentric Joe Waumbaugh style cop novel.

    A Little Death in Dixie has some (I presume) first novel problems, and the plot is a bit transparent — you’ll likely figure out what is going on well ahead of the characters, but the writing isn’t bad, and needs only a little paring of overused TV cop cliches to be first rate.

    Billy Able is an attractive protagonist, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of him and Turner if she continues to be this good and is able to up the ante a little.

    She does the Memphis background well, and she has done her research regarding the police and the way they think and act. But what she needs is a bit more depth in the plot and the characters and a little less of the feel of an episode of an above average cop show.

    There is promise here, and even as it stands, A Little Death in Dixie is entertaining. With a little work Billy Able might graduate to a character to watch out for.

M. R. HALL – The Disappeared. Simon & Schuster, hardcover, December 2009; trade paperback, April 2011. Macmillan, UK, hardcover/softcover, January, 2010.

Genre:   Licensed investigator. Leading character:  Jenny Cooper; 2nd in series. Setting:   England.

First Sentence:   During her six months as coroner for the Severn Vale District, Jenny Cooper had known only a handful of corpses remain unidentified for more than a day or two.

    Coroner Jenny Cooper is contacted by the mother of a British Muslim student for a formal inquest on her son. He and his friend both disappeared from their college dorm rooms seven years ago. The authorities claim they went to Afghanistan for terrorist training and failed to do a thorough investigation.

    Jenny also has a unidentified Jane Doe in the morgue whose body is stolen but traces of radioactivity left behind. How are the two cases linked and why are the authorities trying so hard to suppress the inquest?

    It is very difficult when you really like an author’s first book, yet find their second book so disappointing. What worked well in Hall’s first book, The Coroner (reviewed here ), seemed to come completely undone in this second one.

    The protagonist, Jenny Cooper, moved from being a woman finding strength in spite of her issues, to an insipid woman influenced and overwhelmed by everyone; her son, her clerk, her sometimes boyfriend, the police and some rather mysterious lawyer.

   Rather than being sympathetic, I found her annoying. At times, her emotional problems notwithstanding, her behavior was so unconscionable it wasn’t even excusable by being fictional. None of the characters were fully developed. Worse yet, I found I didn’t care about or feel connected to any of them.

   The only exception was the boy’s mother, Mrs. Jamal, and she was poorly used by the story. There was a sense of place but not strong enough to give me a visual sense of where the story occurred. The author does have a good ear for dialogue but that’s rather damning with faint praise.

   The plot seemed to plod on with little sense of tension or suspense. Even the courtroom scenes, so effectively done in her first book, lacked punch or luster. The whole thing felt as though it was a collection news-story ideas (Muslims, terrorists, conspiracies) looking for a cohesive book plot.

   The deal-breaker for me was the particularly annoying “you’ll have to read-the-next-book” ending. More than one author has lost me for doing that and Mr. Hall may well be the newest on that list.

   The book just doesn’t ever quite work. I did read it all the way through and I don’t mean to say it was absolutely awful; but it wasn’t good either. I shall have to give serious thought as to whether I continue reading this series.

Rating:   Poor.

SARAH RAYNE – Tower of Silence. Simon & Schuster, UK, softcover, August 2003; reprint edition: Pocket, UK, July 2009.

   Something of a modern Gothic thriller, with long-buried secrets that are teasingly hinted at throughout the novel.

   Selina March has lived by herself in a “remote Scottish hamlet” since the death of her uncle and two aunts, but when she accepts a paying boarder, crime novelist Joanna Saville, her secluded life will be significantly altered.

   Saville has come to interview inmates of Moy, an asylum for the criminally insane. Moy’s most notorious resident is Mary Maskelyne, who, as an adolescent, murdered three people.

   Mary is cunning and resourceful, and when she, predictably, escapes, she sets in motion events that will precipitate buried secrets into the light where long-ago events will finally be brought to a climax and resolved.

      Bibliography [Novels] —

Tower of Silence (2003)
A Dark Dividing (2004)

Roots of Evil (2005)
Spider Light (2007)
The Death Chamber (2007)

Ghost Song (2009)
House of the Lost (2010)
What Lies Beneath (2011)

ANNELISE RYAN – Working Stiff. Kensington, paperback reprint, August 2010. Hardcover edition: September 2009.

   The first few lines may set you back on your heels a little:

   No, this isn’t the next take-off on Patricia Cornwell’s line of books, it really is a cozy, as I thought when I opened it to start reading. Telling the story in the first of a new series is Mattie Winston, former nurse and now the new deputy coroner for Sorenson, a smallish town somewhere in Wisconsin. (Not on any map I’ve found.)

   It turns out that Mattie quit her former job when she found her husband, a doctor at the same hospital, having an affair with another nurse. Make that soon to be ex-husband.

   But when that other nurse is found murdered, and the unfaithful Dr. Winston is a chief suspect, it is up to Mattie to put on her sleuthing shoes and see if she can’t clear his name. Complicating matters is that Steve Hurley, the hunky policeman in charge of the case is exactly that, hunky.

   How long does it take before you, the reader, that this a cozy, not a Cornwell look-alike? Not long at all. Soon after that first paragraph above — which tells you something in and of itself — we learn that the coroner’s name is Izzy and he’s five foot tall, while Mattie is something like six (five foot twelve, she says).

   And at the crime scene Mattie loses her panties and kicks them under a chair, she having been called on the case in the middle of night and having neglected to dress as carefully as she might have during the day.

   My opinion, as always is that more than 320 pages is also more than enough to conduct a murder investigation, even one with as many tangents as this (such as getting a fashion makeover from the beautician at a local funeral parlor).

   You’d like to think, though, that there would also be time enough to add a few clues to the puzzle, but no, while entertaining enough in other ways (we are as eager as Hurley is to learn about Mattie’s famous nipple incident, which happened not so long ago in her past), the investigation goes here and there and finally ends about the same time as the book does.

   Coming next, book two in the series: Scared Stiff (September 2010).

HARRY WHITTINGTON – Desert Stake-Out. Gold Medal s1123, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1961. Reprinted at least once by Gold Medal; plus: Avon, paperback, 1989.

   Speaking of wasting a few hours enjoyably, Harry Whittington was a cut above the average paperback hack, and Desert Stake-Out is a cut above the average Whittington.

   The story of a lone rider bent on vengeance thrown into uneasy alliance with three outlaws and a callow married couple reads like one of those marvelous Boetticher/Scott westerns of the period, and in fact, Stake-Out is dedicated to Harry Joe Brown, the producer of that series.

   Whittington doesn’t break any new ground, but he plows the old fields affectionately enough to yield a crop. Hero Blade Merrick (I guess some folks don’t care what they name their kids) is appropriately terse and hard-bitten, the outlaws are well-realized characters who engage our sympathy even while terrorizing the good folks, and if the sexy heroine and her weakling husband seem a bit pat, they at least serve their function.

   Whittington (at his best) had a way with tight writing and fast action, and he serves this up entertainingly.

MARTHA GRIMES – The Black Cat. Viking, hardcover, April 2010. Reprint paperback: Signet, February 2011.

   Superintendent Richard Jury is called in by the Thames Valley Police when a woman is found shot to death in the outdoor seating area of a pub called The Black Cat in Chesham.

   The woman is identified as Mariah Cox, a local librarian, but she was found wearing designer clothes and very expensive shoes and with her hair dyed as if she was attending a party given by the local hoi polloi being held that night.

   It’s soon discovered she was leading a double life: during the week a librarian engaged to the local florist, on the weekends, usually spent in London, a highly paid professional escort using the name Stacy Storm. Which woman was the intended victim?

   Jury discovers that one of the guests at the party was Harry Johnson, a man Jury knows but cannot prove is a murderer. Jury knows that Harry is the sort of man who might commit murder just to get under Jury’s skin. Did he commit this one?

   Meanwhile, the little girl whose aunt is working at The Black Cat claims that her black cat has been kidnapped and replaced by another black cat and wants Jury to find it.

   Then another escort, Kate Banks, is shot to death in London. Though two different guns were used, Jury is convinced the killings are connected. Then a third escort is murdered.

   It’s a satisfying and well done mystery for the fans of Grimes’ Jury series except for a couple of drawbacks. Steve Lewis said in his review of The Case Is Altered that if you don’t start by reading Grimes’ Jury series from the beginning you won’t know the background of some of the recurring characters who, again, make an appearance in this novel.

   The other drawback is that several chapters are devoted to a dog and cat communicating with each other, so be warned if that sort of thing irritates you.

JO BANNISTER – A Bleeding of Innocents. Frank Shapiro & Liz Graham #1. St. Martin’s Press, US, hardcover, 1993. Macmillan, UK, hc, 1993. Worldwide Library, paperback, 1997.

   Jo Bannister has written other mysteries, and won an EQMM prize, but this is the first of her work that I’ve read. It’s also the first in a new series.

   The police force in Castlemere, England is in disarray. A Detective Inspector has been killed and a Detective Sergeant injured in what may have been a hit and run; or may, as the Sergeant believes, been a deliberate murder engineered by a local racketeer.

   Chief Inspector Shapiro brings in an old colleague, DI Liz Graham, to temporarily replace the slain DI, and she is greeted by the shotgun murder of a retirement home nurse. At the same time, she must try to work with the injured Sergeant, a difficult person who had a close relationship with his slain boss, and who is determined to pin the death on the racketeer he suspects.

   I have a predilection for British police stories, and I’m happy to say that this is a pretty good one. It isn’t of John Harvey or Reginald Hill caliber, but it’s competently done and well written. The third person narrative is straightforward, and shifts among the three police officers.

   Characterization is not really in depth, but sharp enough that Graham and the Sergeant are brought to life decently, though Shapiro was less well developed. The plot was the weakest link, but tolerable.

   I did think that the book ran on a bit at the end after the real denouement, with perhaps a little too much talk, but that’s a minor cavil. On limited exposure, I think Bannister fits comfortably in the middle of the pack with which she’s chosen to run.

       The Shapiro & Graham “Castlemere” series —

1. A Bleeding of Innocents (1993)
2. Sins of the Heart (1994) aka Charisma (US)

3. Burning Desires (1995) aka A Taste for Burning (US)

4. No Birds Sing (1996)
5. Broken Lines (1998)
6. The Hireling’s Tale (1999)
7. Changelings (2000)

   Jo Bannister has also written four books in her Dr Clio Rees (Marsh) and Harry Marsh series; two books with Mickey Flynn; two in a series about columnist Primrose “Rosie” Holland; and nine books featuring Brodie Farrell, a woman who “finds things for a living.” She’s also written nine standalone novels, not all of which are crime related.

ELSIE N. WRIGHT – Strange Murders at Greystones. International Fiction Library, US, hardcover, 1931.

   As Holmes has warned us, it is unwise to theorize without facts. Nevertheless, I am tempted to speculate that someone, either an enemy or a practical joker, told Wright she should write a book.

   That same someone may also have suggested to International Fiction Library that it should publish a book regardless of merit. Unfortunately, the twain met.

   Of course, it’s possible the typesetter had a hand in the confusion. The many typos, particularly the missing and misplaced quotation marks, provide some confirmation of this hypothesis.

   Perhaps the typesetter forgot to include a few of the manuscript pages, thus leading to at least this reader’s confusion.

   Anyhow, Thatcher Graham, master of Greystokes and an absolute rotter, is found dead in his library with the back of his head bashed in. Apparently, let me hasten to say; this, as well as other alleged facts presented by the author, is not definite.

   Inspector Kelley comes to investigate. Kelley, the author tells us, is a keen and intelligent detective who has worked his way up the ranks. As portrayed, however, he is an utter buffoon who solves most of his cases by beating confessions out of suspected crooks and browbeating witnesses.

   His working principle is that anyone with an alibi is probably guilty — why else have need for an alibi? — and anyone without an alibi is patently guilty.

   Arresting the fiancé of Graham’s daughter is the only wise move Kelley makes. Dumb as he is, he almost had to do it. But then Sergeant Brock, who has been left in the house for no particular reason except the author’s need, is killed, somehow, by a creature with “piercing green eyes.”

   The police are called again, they arrive, they search the grounds, they depart. What about Brock’s death? Oh, it’s mentioned a few pages later that the police are upset about Brock’s being killed, but that’s it.

   Our hero, Jack Pelton, whom Kelley still suspects even after Brock’s death, gets out of jail. Arriving at Greystones, he and his fiancee, Polly, go out to search the grounds. Polly says that the police already have done so. Jack says they didn’t know what they were looking for but he does. What is it? Neither he nor the author says; indeed, no search is made of the grounds.

   Jack does find a bloody dagger — by sitting on it. This weapon is important to two people, both of whom crave it. Why? After burning incense and checking chicken entrails, I must conclude that it is the only sharp instrument on the estate. There’s no other apparent reason for wanting it.

   Approaching the dog kennels during their non-search of the grounds, Jack and Polly spot the green-eyed creature entering the kennels. When they go in, the creature has disappeared and there are bloodstains, which leads Polly to conclude, on no other evidence, that a dog has been killed.

   Inspector Kelley comes wandering by, and they all go in to lunch, without a word being said about the creature or the dog.

      A new cook is hired. Why? Apparently the author felt she needed alleged comic relief, so she introduces a black who talks about the “debbil” and “hants” and has hysterics. What happened to the other cook? Probably only the typesetter knows.

   Searching subterranean tunnels with Polly, our hero notices that she is shaking badly. Bravely — oh, he’s brave but not bright — he gives her a revolver and walks in front of her. Later he fires that same revolver that she had not given back.

   Inspector Kelley had provided the revolver, apparently carrying two for those occasions when he might need to give one away. The next time he comes, however, and two guns are needed, he has only one.

   Kelley is also cheap, for the pistol contains but a single bullet. Our hero had examined it earlier and had no complaints, but if he’d had more than one bullet the novel might have ended too soon — that is, for the author’s and publisher’s purpose.

   He discovers the single bullet when he wisely is “trying the revolver to see if it had jammed.” Later Kelley’s revolver, most unusually, does jam.

   Wright is unstinting in her use of verbal and plot cliches. The word horror appears at least 50 times, she being unable to convey the real or imagined item. There are numerous “blood curdling” laughs, an idiot who utters “gutteral” — is the author or the typesetter toying with us here? — cries, trapdoors, a butler who acts strangely, a dotty housekeeper with a secret, concealed passages, and a genuine, unadulterated mad scientist with a 20-year grudge.

   This is Wright’s first and only mystery. Wisely she wrote no more. What could she have done for an encore?

ANN PARKER – Silver Lies. Poisoned Pen Press, hardcover, September 2003; trade paperback, April 2006.

   A first novel, and for a mystery, it’s a long one, some 420 pages, but for a work of historical fiction, the page count might be about right. It’s 1879, and Leadville is a booming small metropolis in Colorado, the inhabitants of which are afflicted with “ever-present cold, lingering homesickness, and the pangs of silver fever.”

   Inez Stannert is one of the few women in the town, co-owner of a flourishing saloon, and since the town marshal seems to be totally uninterested, she’s also the only person willing to investigate the possible murder of the town’s assayer, who’s been found trampled to death on the frigid muck of a nearby street.

   Adding to Inez’ concerns is her husband, who’s been missing for several months, but the new minister in town seems more than willing to help her forget. The legendary Bat Masterton also makes an appearance, but it’s little more than a cameo, as Inez and the Reverend J.B. Sands end up doing all of the heavy lifting.

   As a mystery, it’s adequate. It works better as a historical novel — life in this rough-and-tumble corner of the world is brought to life quite effectively in two quite opposite and surprising ways: the scenic wonder of 19th century Colorado and the wretched environment it had to have been for anyone actually trying to live there.

   The story in Silver Lies is less effective as far as the romantic elements are concerned, falling prey to some fairly stand-by cliches, and much of the author’s work is undone, paradoxically, by some better-than-average characterization that has to be retrofitted, and abruptly so, to make the rather lurid conclusion work.

   Acceptable, and maybe more so, depending on where your interests lie, but if there’s a paperback forthcoming, you might choose to put it off till then.

Note: This review has been revised slightly since it first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

       The Inez Stannert “Silver Rush Mystery” series —

1. Silver Lies (2003)
2. Iron Ties (2006)

3. Leaden Skies (2009)