Pick Up Sticks by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Emma Lathen was the pen-name for two Boston businesswomen , Mary J. Latsis and Martha Hennissart. Their entertaining mystery series blended Wall Street characters with either blue collar crimes or white collar schemes that lead up to a murder or two. Their novels were solid sellers from 1961 to 1997 (when Ms. Latsis passed away).

The series hero is John Thatcher Putnam, who is a VP at the Sloan Bank. In these Seventies and Eighties novels he is senior enough to remember the 1929 crash and not be surprised at anything the Street gets up to. He’s as sharp as a tack, though, a keen observer and rational thinker. Follow the money. Who benefits? He’s that rarity in any walk of life: somebody who combines knowledge of how money works with how human beings tick.

In this one, first published in 1970, the authors mildly satirize the real-estate business, specifically the hard-sell techniques relentlessly aimed at potential buyers thinking of a second home in the country or on a lake. Our hero is hiking the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire with his busy-body buddy Henry Morland. They run into a young couple who have gotten lost because they have wandered away from a housing development Fiord Haven, although it is nowhere near the sea. After Henry and John realize the couple can’t tell east from west, Henry goes to get help. Henry returns with two state policemen who are severely interested in a quartet that were around when a murdered body was discovered.

Henry is an enthusiast so he is bent on finding the killer. John is less so. The contrast between the two as they interview persons of interest is pretty funny. Lathen examines the personality of the victim, concluding that such an obnoxious guy would exasperate a saint. His first wife observes that he always took the side of the exploited underdog but always let her do the dishes. Such were the thrusts and jabs readers of a certain age will fondly remember from the women’s liberation movement circa 1970.

Explaining too much of the action would spoil the mystery. So I will only recommend this one as highly as I have others by Emma Lathen (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Certainly the business environment has changed. But the three doors to hell – anger, lust, and good old greed – have not changed though they do get repainted in colors that go in and out of fashion. And Lathen’s witty writing style still stands up, besides providing unwittingly nostalgic asides for readers who think 40 is young.

The Rasp by Philip MacDonald

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

MacDonald is known among film buffs for his screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s version of du Maurier’s Rebecca. His first novel The Rasp came out in 1924 and was the debut of his series detective, Colonel Anthony Gethryn (but don’t call him “Colonel,” the Great War gave him a limp and stressed him out and he doesn’t want to be reminded).

This novel will please fans who liked The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. It has a cerebral detective, a brutal murder in the study of a mansion, not too intense suspense, excellent scene setting, and a love interest with attitudes of bygone days. This, between Gethryn and the love interest, the widow Lucia in a drawing room:

For a moment his eyes closed. Behind the lids there arose a picture of her face – a picture strangely more clear than any given by actual sight.

“You,” said Lucia, “ought to be asleep. Yes, you ought! Not tiring yourself out to make conversation for a hysterical woman that can’t keep her emotions under control.”

“The closing of the eyes,” Anthony said, opening them, “merely indicates that the great detective is what we call thrashing out a knotty problem. He always closes his eyes you know. He couldn’t do anything with ’em open.”

She smiled. “I’m afraid I don’t believe you, you know. I think you’ve simply done so much to-day that you’re simply tired out.”

“Really, I assure you, no. We never sleep until a case is finished. Never.”

Not for everybody but readers like us can read anything. Anything. The “rules” of whodunnits were not in place yet so Gethryn sits on a lot of information until near the end. The culprit is revealed, then we get 58 pages of a letter that Gethryn sends to the police, which outlines his justification and logic. 58 pages, after you know who done it. Aye carumba. If nothing else, this novel has uniqueness value and would be of interest to reading gluttons – me, us – who are interested the development of the whodunnit.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

Review by Gail P. (TinkerPirate)

I approached The Women in the Castle with great personal interest.  The story is set in my husband’s homeland – Germany.  He was born in Berlin two months after V-E Day.  His Mutti was born and raised in Berlin.  While she tells “family” stories, she doesn’t like to talk about what Germany was like during the rise of Hitler and only a little more about what it was like to live in East Berlin following the war. I thought the book might provide some insight into her early adulthood.   

The book opens at a party in an old castle in Bavaria.  Germany is finally recovering from the World War.  Instead of a complete feeling of hopefulness for the future, you find under tones of conflict.  Uniformed Nazis stand beside others who sense Hitler is a danger to Germany and their way of life.  Lines are being drawn between support or resistance to Hitler.  

The castle is the once grand home of Albrecht von Lingenfels’ family.  He, his wife, Marianne, and their three children are attending the party.  Also attending is Marianne’s childhood friend, Martin Constantine (“Connie”) Fledermann, and his fiancée, Benita.  During a quiet moment of the party, they discuss where they stand.  Albrecht and Connie will take active roles in the resistance and Marianne will be the “Commander of Wives and Children”.  She chafes at the title thinking it is a passive role.  

Several years later, after Albrecht and Connie are hung for their participation in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, Marianne discovers her role is much more active and emotionally demanding than she had once thought.  Finding and protecting fellow resistance widows and their children is not easy.  It will take all of her determination, stamina, and wits to carry out her assignment.

Marianne first finds Martin, Connie and Benita’s son in a Nazi reeducation home.  Together, they find his mother in the bombed out remains of a Berlin apartment house where she has been kept by Russian soldiers who used her body for entertainment.  Despite all her efforts, Marianne was only able to locate one other resistance widow, Ania, and her two children, who are rescued from a camp for displaced persons.  The three widows and their six children eke out a life in the remains of the von Lingenfels castle.  

Marianne believes their shared losses will allow them to face an uncertain future united.  But, each of the widows have their individual way of handling daily interact with people who were once Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.  Through a series of flashbacks, you learn the back story of Marianne, Benita, and Ania which allows you to understand the differences in how they moved forward.

The three eventually go their separate ways.  Marianne feels betrayed by the choice Benita makes and actions Ania takes.  Benita and Ania feel judged by Marianne’s strict black-and-white view of the world.  In the end, Marianne understands the part she played in the destruction of her makeshift family and a partial reconciliation is achieved with the help of their children.

In addition to providing a compelling story, the book also offers two additional things. First, it offers its readers an opportunity to reflect on how they would maintain their own humanity in the face of fear, personal harm, and human atrocities.  Secondly, readers are offered an opportunity to compare that with a narrative demonstrating how good people can become Nazis.  

Did it provide insight into what my Mutti-in-Law experienced? No. But, it made me look at myself and the world differently and I hope I am a better person for it. 

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Historians of the whodunit called this well-known novel the first mystery. The central crime is a theft, with a killing only near the end, but the novel introduced hallmarks that the genre later became famous for: plot and action over characterization or theme; the shrewd sowing of clues; the wacky detective; the amateur sleuths making a hash of the investigation; a suspenseful working up to the exciting reveal.

One attraction of the novel is that it begins in the genial voice of an old house-steward. He is the kind of the reader who reads over and over one book, Robinson Crusoe, like Reginald Hill’s Andy Dalziel has The Last Days of Pompeii. Then the second part is a completely different voice, that of religious hypocrite spinster. The rest of the novel is also told in eight other first-person voices, showing Collins’ willingness to challenge himself in his craft.

Another plus: Collins consciously wrote with female readership in mind, like Rex Stout and Erle Stanley Gardner. Mystery luminary Dorothy Sayers said he was “one of the very few male writers who can write realistically about women without prejudice and about sex without exaggeration.”

The downsides are three and do not outweigh the pleasure of reading. The plot hinges on an improbable event. It is rather slow at the two-thirds point. It lacks a really strong female character and a rip-roaring villain. So no Marian Halcombe or Count Fosco as in The Woman in White. No Magdalen Vanstone, no Captain Horatio Wragge as in No Name.

The Moonstone was written when Collins was at his peak, the late 1860s, after The Woman in White (1860), No Name (1862), Armadale (1866) and before Man and Wife (1870). After 1870, his health suffered and he became opioid-dependent. Though he never wrote a barking bad novel, his work suffered and his later novels are read only by hardcore readers like us.

Like The Woman in White, this novel was immensely popular in its own day, the late 1860s. It lives in the present day, with over 50,000 ratings and almost 3,000 reviews at Goodreads. The Moonstone has survived because of discerning readers like us, who read for the sheer pleasure of it.