The Case of the Waylaid Wolf by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In his father’s company, rich and spoiled playboy Loring Lamont keeps an eye peeled for attractive female employees. He tricks stenographer Arlene Ferris into coming to his father’s cabin hideaway. They cozily cook ham and eggs together. Lamont moves in. Arlene, however, is decidedly not, as they used to say in 1960, “a broad-minded girl with a tolerant view of life.”

His moves change from an unwanted advance into a violent attempted date rape. Arlene flees the cabin, but the wolf pursues the pretty lamb through the woods. Shrewdly running an end-around, she “borrows” his car in order to get back to town, though in a mocking touch she does end up parking it outside his apartment by a fire hydrant.

The next morning Arlene visits lawyer Perry Mason to discuss filing charges against the player. Set in the late 1950s, this book is set before the enactment of rape shield laws. In the bad old days, with impunity defenders of accused rapists would relentlessly drag the reputations of rape complainants through the mud. Mason points out the rich Lamont family would sic detectives on her private life. Arlene, a fighter, retains Mason to pursue the case because she wants Lamont’s predatory behavior stopped. If she can save just one woman the anguish of her experience with Lamont, the risks of a suit would be worth it.

As it turns out, though, Arlene faces legal trouble because after her departure from the cabin, somebody stabbed Lamont to death with a butcher knife. Homicide detective Lt. Tragg and DA Hamilton Burger are grimly certain unlucky Arlene lead Lamont on and stabbed him to death for the thrill of it.

This is the 100th book in Gardner’s long successful career. So Gardner confidently and deftly gets all his ducks in a row. For instance, Gardner likes to fog things up with pairs. Two cars confuse a police officer. Two skirts confuse Lt. Tragg. Looking similar enough to confuse hopelessly a record store owner are Arlene and her friend Madge (the retro names are always fun in Gardner).

Also, Gardner tests Perry Mason’s prime directive “Always trust your client” because the evidence against Arlene indicates she’s being economical with the truth.

Finally, Gardner’s realism is matter-of-fact, the product of a lifetime of asking questions, listening, reading, and writing about our system of criminal justice, police procedures and proclivities, and the fallibility and waywardness of us ordinary people.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

RINGWORLD, published in 1970 by Larry Niven, is one of the classics of science fiction.  It won the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards and it’s still well worth reading today. It generated several sequels (although Ringworld was meant as a standalone), then more prequels, and an entire multiverse of spin-offs in novels and games. Niven co-wrote a number of those and licensed other authors as well.

Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday and feeling a bit bored. But into his party pops a Pierson’s puppeteer – an alien so reclusive and outlandish they are practically myth. Nessus has a job offer for Louis, a trip to a world that defies imagination – an immense ring created around a sun. It is so immense it could hold millions of Earths and the idea that it could be a created object is incredibly frightening – what species could do such a thing? Louis accepts and in short order is joined by Speaker To Animals, a ferocious feline-like alien Kzinti, and Teela Brown, a human woman who is supposedly the luckiest person on Earth. Nessus has his reasons for picking each of them and their relationships are a highlight of the story.

The trip will first take them to the Puppeteer’s homeworld, its location a closely held secret, and then to the Ringworld. But a catastrophe occurs and they crash-land  Their only hope is to attempt to travel to the rim of the world, thousands and thousands of miles away, and get help from the engineers who must live there. It will take months, but fortunately they have flycycles and matter converters, so they can travel quickly and won’t run out of food. As they travel though, they begin to notice some very alarming signs.  And they’re not exactly working well as a team, either.

Niven’s alien characters do feel  alien even if not super well-fleshed out; we get some nuances, but not too much besides Puppeteer cowardice and Kzinti ferocity. But the big flaw is the female characters. There’s only two – one is 18-yr-old Teela, who can do nothing because she’s always been so lucky she didn’t need to (but she can have sex with 200-yr-old Louis, eww), and the other is a prostitute.  Gee, what other roles could there be for women… In 1970s male-dominated SF this didn’t raise a lot of flags. Today, well, it’s pretty irritating.

Niven’s idea of the Ringworld is actually kind of plausible; a lot of physics thinking went into it.  The descriptions are fabulous; your mind boggles trying to comprehend the immensity of this artifact. The various environments, the inhabitants, the shadow squares…I could go on, but there are just some great ideas. Puppeteer manipulation of both human and Kzinti species, that was pretty funny.  Louis himself is rather amusing, it’s mostly told from his POV and he gets some pretty snappy dialogue.

If you want hard science fiction with big ideas and a journey through alien landscapes you’ll totally love it. If you want thoughtful human interaction and emotional content, not so much. But any science-fiction reader should put this on their list, if they haven’t already.  It had a tremendous influence on the SF field, it’s still in print 50 years later, and despite its flaws it’s very good.

My Brother’s Killer by D.M. Devine

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Though written in 1961, this English mystery uses to excellent effect the tried-and-true devices of whodunits during their Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s. Think of Freeman Wills Crofts and his alibis, time-tables, and accounting for everybody’s movements. No wonder Agatha Christie highly praised this story.

The mystery is told in first-person by Simon, the brother of the victim Oliver Barnett. Both brothers are solicitors in their family practice. Simon can’t believe that, given his war record, Oliver could have taken his own life, as the crime scene seems to indicate. Both Simon and the Superintendent in charge of the investigation come to the conclusion it was murder. Instead playing the stock character of the thick flat-foot, Superintendent Garland, the lead detective, is as sharp as Simon.

Simon assembles a team to investigate murder. The narrative features the traditional plot twists and red herrings. As Simon and his mates peel the onion of Oliver’s life, however, it’s enough to make Simon cry to find out how many people would relish seeing Oliver roasting in his Eternal Just Deserts.

D. M. Devine (1920-1980), the Scottish author of 13 crime novels, was very popular in his time as a master of the classic detective story. This classic was re-released by Arcturus Publishing in 2012 as part of its program of re-issues of forgotten masterpieces.

The Far Sands by Andrew Garve

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This novel from 1960 is a thriller.

A British Foreign Office diplomat meets an attractive woman on vacation. Love blooms. They marry hastily. Dip meets the sister- and brother-in-law. Charming people. Newly Mrs. Diplomat and her sister are identical twins.

But in a shocking turn of events the brother-in-law is seemingly done to death by the sister-in-law. Evidence says she did it but Mrs. Dip can’t believe it and works to clear dead sis’s name. Mr. Dip is between a rock and a hard place: the clear evidence versus his bride’s determination and ingenuity. But they get a line on the possible murderer!

Garve wrote tight mysteries with not a word out of place, not a word wasted. Excellent novels to read while traveling.

Murder Times Six: The True Story of the Wells Gray Murders by Alan R Warren

Review by jjares

This story tells about the murder of three generations of a family in Wells Gray Park in Canada in the 1980s. It is well-researched and written engagingly. However, no words can whitewash the horrific murders of a pair of grandparents, parents, and two girls while camping. David Shearing shot the four adults because he wanted the two girls. The girls had gone to sleep in their tent while the adults were sitting around the campfire chatting.
When apprehended, David admitted to the killings (but the police knew he kept something back). For the six murders, David was sentenced to six concurrent terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 25 years. After he admitted he was guilty in court (and nothing more could be done to him), David admitted to the horrific details of the girl’s last days. He did not kill the girls immediately but took them away and kept them alive for several days. During that time, he raped and then murdered the girls. They were eleven and thirteen years old.
To hide his crimes, David put the six bodies in one car and incinerated them. When the vehicle was found, the bodies had been cremated. There was only enough matter left to fill one baby’s coffin. Once David learned how vehemently British Columbians hated him, he changed his last name to his mother’s Ennis.
Then, this true crime book takes an unusual turn. David was only twenty-four at the time of the murders. This book highlights the Canadian prison system and some of its quirks. David was able to marry while in prison. He also has the right to conjugal visits of 72 hours (in a prison home). In 2008, David was first eligible for parole. When the community that the Johnsons and Bentleys came from discovered the possibility of parole, they gathered together and got about 10,000 signatures to protest it.
Unfortunately, the victim’s families must undergo a parole hearing every two years. So they come in force and give poignant victim statements to the Parole Board. One thing the author highlights (and readers rarely consider) is that the younger family members were victims too. Their parents were too afraid to allow them outside alone; they’d spent their lives afraid.
There is a previous book, THE SEVENTH SHADOW. It was written by the (now retired) Mounted Police Sgt. Michael Eastham. In that book, Eastham outlined the difficulties (using tracking dogs, helicopters, and an extensive workforce) the police had in capturing David Shearing. MURDER TIMES SIX summarizes Eastham’s information and then moves on.
The emphasis of this book (as well as Eastham’s) is that David Shearing Ennis should never be released. Eastham stated he was sure that if David were released, he would kill again.

Right on the Money by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Given the background of this 1993 mystery is a corporate merger, I couldn’t blame a reader thinking that reading this oldie would offer as much excitement as changing a duvet cover. In fact the author makes the merger the stuff of drama, with fatal flaws like pride and fear of the future bringing about tragedy.

In the 22nd mystery starring John Putnam Thatcher, the banker and amateur detective has to get the bottom of the murder of a loudmouth so ambitious for attention and promotions that an insurance adjustor expresses surprise that the vic made it as far as 32 years of age.

Aqua Supplies, Inc. (ASI) is too big, too bureaucratic, and too complacent to fire anybody and so not able to develop new kitchen appliances that female consumers may actually want to buy. So it fixes to merge – that is, gobble up whole without so much as a belch – with Ecker, a small family-owned and operated designer and maker of nifty percolators and such. Since the disability retirement of the Ecker heir, the main assets there are its ageing founder and its highly talented female CFO.

ASI assistant division manager Victor Hunnicut rolls his eyes at the kool-aid stand ways of Ecker. His skill set, he realizes, would not make him a candidate for running Ecker so he puts his ambition above the interests of his employer and makes plans to quash the merger plans. He fears that other middle managers will leapfrog over him, thus cutting him off from chances to shine for his superiors. While giving Ecker a get-acquainted tour, the hotshot intimates to Ken Nicholls that factions in both companies are duking it out over the merger plans. Ken Nicholls is a junior banking exec who’s often sent by hero John Putnam Thatcher to gather information.

After the tour, things start to get criminous. The quaint old mill that stored Ecker’s financial computers and files for research and development is torched by an arsonist. Go-getter Vic Hunnicut is murdered at the annual trade show.

Emma Lathen was the pen name of Mary Latsis (economic analyst) and Martha Hennissart (attorney). Both knew the worlds of business at all levels from clerks to CEOs, so they felt at home in a constantly changing business environment and the variety of personalities to be found in the private sector. Sure, the business environment has changed in the last 35 years, but human nature has not. For instance, as old-school feminists, they have acerbic fun satirizing businessmen who are buoyed up by secretaries but who attribute their success to their own intelligence and diligence.