Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER by Jodi Taylor is the first in a long series; as I write this there are about 14 entries.  This start is a very fun time-travel fantasy, with a minimum of technical jargon and a maximum of action-filled trips into the past.

Dr. Madeline Maxwell (Max) an historian who’s more than a little prickly, not inclined to trust authority, but very smart,  is recruited by her old professor to interview at St. Mary’s which is dedicated to historical research. But as they walk through on the way to her interview, Mrs De Winter repeats to everyone they see that Max “hasn’t had the interview yet”. Max is understandably confused. Why would that be so important? Why does a historical research university have – wait, blast doors? What’s going on?

It turns out time travel is a real thing, and that’s what St Mary’s does. And it’s a secret, of course. It’s understood that you can’t change the past. History won’t let you – should someone attempt, even inadvertently, to make a change that affects the future, history will drop a convenient rock on you.  At any rate, you can’t make changes and you can’t bring anything back. (Right. They always say that.) But Max is in, she’s hooked, no one is getting her out of there. This is a dream come true and she will do anything to be part of it.

It’s very dangerous though, there’s a wall of  honor for the historicans who have lost their lives on missions. As the book opens, St Mary’s is pretty short on historians as there have been a number of deaths, oops…mishaps. Out of each new class, only about 40% graduate, but Max is determined she’s going to be there. As it turns out – of course – there is more danger behind St Mary’s walls than she knows. Not everyone wants it to succeed.

Taylor has done a wonderful job building this world, I can see it in my mind’s eye. It moves at a breakneck pace. Max is a very engaging protagonist and the book is told from her POV. Not all the characters feel completely 3D, but most are good. Don’t think too much about the time-travel paradoxes, that’s not the point here, and Taylor winks at them in passing. There’s time travel, and romance and love and betrayal, and blasters, and dinosaurs! Very entertaining and I have already put the next on my reading list.

Death by Water aka Appleby at Allington by Michael Innes

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1968 whodunnit is as light as a feather. It finds series hero Sir John Appleby in retirement from Scotland Yard. He and his sculptor wife Judith trade witty observations, as if Nick and Nora Charles had aged into not drinking anything stronger than sherry.

Sir John has an odd dinner with a new neighbor who presses him to examine the elaborate electrical system that ran a recent outdoor lightshow on the grounds of the estate. This is 1968, recall, when psychedelic lightshows were all the rage for both the cheery squares and tripping hippies. Besides, who doesn’t like pretty lights?

Anyway, in the operations center they discover a corpse. This, however, does not stop the operations center turned crime scene from being dismantled for a charity fete to be held on the same grounds the next day. Nothing stops the traditional village festival on the estate, after all, lest the meaning of “this green and sceptered isle” be lost forever.

The action focuses on the-pain-in-the-neck family of the owner and unfolding of startling incidents. The families are genially satirized as athletic parents who are philistines worried that their bookworm children will develop imaginations and independent ways of thought. Innes is a writer for unapologetically bookish people.

Readers that like Patricia Highsmith, Nicholas Blake, Cyril Hare, and Josephine Tey will like the intelligent, deftly written, and short mysteries of Michael Innes. New readers of Innes would do better to test the early ones such as Hamlet, Revenge!, Lament for a Maker or Stop Press; fans of Innes – hardcore readers – will like this lesser, late-career work regardless.

Witches in Red by Barb Hendee

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

WITCHES IN RED is the second in the Mist-Torn Witches series by Barb Hendee. As in the first, there is a mystery to solve. I think a new reader could start with this one, as Hendee gives plenty of backstory to fill in about the sisters and how they got to where they are.

Sisters Celine and Amelie are settling in to their new home, the apocethery shop given them by Prince Anton.  Celine can see a person’s future by touching them, and Amelie can see their past. They solved the murders of several young women just a few months ago by using those talents, but they just want some peace and quiet. Such is not to be.

A messenger rides in from the prince’s father with an important request. In a remote forest, in his silver mines, soldiers are inexplicably turning into ravening wolf-monsters and slaughtering their fellow men. The Prince knows about the two seers and wants Anton to send them to solve this issue and get the silver mines back up and running. Or, he threatens, he’ll give the job to Anton’s brother, the wicked Prince Damek. Anton really, really wants to be dad’s chosen heir so of course he agrees. Celine and Amelie – especially Amelie – are not happy, but off they go along with Lt Jaromir and others of his men.

It’s a complicated scenario at the mine, with soldiers suddenly turning into monsters plus a comically evil officer in charge who’s effectively enslaved most of the mine workers and earned the contempt of his men.  Even though the workers don’t have the means to leave, they’re not about to head into the mines where they might be attacked at any moment. The soldiers now regard everyone with suspicion.

Celine and Amelie find that some of the mine workers are their own people, the gypsy-like Mondyalitko, and one of them has some special powers too. But the main focus is finding what’s happening to the soldiers.

Style-wise, this is much the same book as the last. There’s not much natural flow to Hendee’s writing and I think some of the descriptions are lifted verbatim out of the last book (I did not check, so that’s just my impression).  I felt her imagery was a little better though, I had a good mental picture of the surroundings and the characters.  The sisters remain easy to like with distinguishable strengths and weaknesses, and Lt Jaromir has both good and bad traits. Plus we learn something about Rurik.  I didn’t guess the murderer, although the motive became clear pretty quickly.  The action scenes are fine but once again, it all screeches to a stop when Amelie goes into a person’s past.  Mercedes’ story was long enough, but the part devoted to the murderer seemed to go on forever.  There is an undertone of romance here but the dynamics remain as they were in the first book.

This may be a series that’s better with a longer break between the books.  In fantasy, I’m looking for prose that makes me feel something and excites my imagination. So far Hendee is doing a lot of telling and very little showing.  I’m still interested enough in this world that I’ll look for book #3, and after that who knows.

 The I-5 Killer by Ann Rule

Review by jjares

Go Gently, Gaijin by James Melville

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1986 mystery is the eighth of 13 novels starring Japanese police inspector Tetsuo Otani. His base is the city of Kobe, a port in Hyogo prefecture.

Otani’s team is investigating the hit-and-run killing of one Arab outside the mosque in Kobe and the suicide of another Arab at a hot-spring resort hotel. Otani, like Inspector Maigret, has loyal and capable subordinates. Officer Kimura uses his ability in English and intercultural skills to advantage though he is a ladies man. Officer Hara is the brainy one and Noguchi is the brawny one. Noguchi’s loyalty, strength, and silence call to mind the folklore hero Benkei. Hara and Noguchi, however, hit it off in the kind of unlikely friendship that English writers can pull off so well (e.g. Darcy and Bingley, Albus and Scorpius, Eeyore and Pooh).

The investigation takes Otani to well-known spots and attractions that will resonate with readers who have visited or lived in the Kansai region. Otani passes through Tor Road, home of shops selling wares from fashionable clothes to antiques and many kissaten (tearooms) and restaurants. The hot-spring is the real Arima hot-spring on the other side of Mount Rokko from Kobe city. Otani also takes in the all-female theatrical troupe at the Takarazuka Revue. A certain kind of reader will get a nostalgic feeling reading about these settings.

Although Melville was a fiction writer, his bursting sentences bring to mind academese. They are lengthened to the point of dismay by prepositional phrases and relative clauses. The mystery takes a back seat to setting and characters, which is not a bad thing when it comes to mysteries set outside of the US and UK. Melville is gently satirical and never snarky about Japanese people and their culture, which may or may not be a draw, depending on the depth of experience the reader has had with this delightful and exasperating people.

Words for Murder Perhaps by Edward Candy

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1971 mystery stars a teacher of English literature, with the backdrop of evening classes in adult education. The realistic setting sounds anything but glamorous but this is in fact an enjoyable read.

Our hero Gregory “Rob” Roberts has a past. His wife ran off with his best friend, a poet and scholar. At the time, poor Rob made an attempt on his own life and spent a couple months in a rest home.

At the start of this story, stone-cold Audrey, Rob’s ex-wife, receives in the mail an anonymous note that quotes a poetic elegy. Since Rob is a literary guy, she assumes he sent it, to mock her over the disappearance of the best friend-hubby. She reports the disappearance to the authorities and kindly mentions her literary ex-husband’s note. Sure enough, Rob is questioned by the police, refreshingly characterized not as ominous bullies but as serious professionals getting on with the job.

But to add to Rob’s troubles, a famous professor of Egyptology is poisoned after his lecture at the school. Another poetic elegy is found. And then two more murders occur, both with poetic elegies. The series hero Superintendent Burnivel and his assistant Hunt get on with the job.

Red herrings abound in this relatively short novel. We meet the tried and true devices such as the seemingly obvious culprit, the obnoxious colleague, the budding romance, and the scam, all of which provide motives for murder. We also have a mystery author referring by name to Wilkie Collins, Agatha Christie, Michael Innes, and Michael Gilbert, which will tickle us hardcore mystery fanciers.

I recommend this one. Given the mundane setting and believable grown-ups, it feels like P.D. James-lite. The language settles down to highly literate and readable after starting off a bit superior and superficial.

Edward Candy was the pseudonym of Barbara Alison Neville (1925-1993). She was born in London and educated in Hampstead and University College, and later earned a medical degree. She practiced medicine and had a family of five children while writing about a dozen books, three of which are medical mysteries, besides this one, Which Doctor and Bones of Contention. All are well worth reading.