Bachelors Get Lonely by A. A. Fair (aka Erle Stanley Gardner)

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1961 outing is an enjoyable Bertha Cool / Donald Lam mystery.

Bertha, the owner-operator of a PI agency is elated that the firm is attracting clients. She’s a comic miser in the mold of Uncle Scrooge and Mr. Crab so she takes on jobs that stretch the resources of her partner Donald. In this one, in his efforts to do right by damsels in distress, Donald finds himself almost out of his depth with the cops and their annoying wish to charge him with murder.

As in the other novels in the 30-book series, every babe that crosses Donald’s path falls for him (including a stripper named Daffodil) but he’s a gentleman all the way, except when he’s ignoring his secretary Elsie Brand’s “come-hither” ways and calling her “Sister.”

Also as usual, the cops are contemptuous of constitutional rights. This gives Gardner a chance to pass along advice on how to deal (to whit: “I refuse to talk to you, I will remain silent, until I consult with an attorney”) if life plays a dirty trick on you.

The plot and wrap-up are not quite as outlandish as a Perry Mason story. The dialog is snappy with plenty of antique turns of phrase and only rarely does a character use a big word.

The Smiler with the Knife by Nicholas Blake

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In this 1939 spy thriller, the series hero Nigel Strangeways stays in the background while his wife, Georgia Cavendish, takes on a dangerous assignment from Nigel’s Scotland Yard Uncle John. A renowned traveler, Georgia is eminently qualified to be an adventure heroine. She’s brave and resourceful. She’s quick-thinking enough to be able to draw mental maps of the lay of the land and to make snap judgements of whether people are trustworthy.

Uncle John Strangeways is head of domestic counter-intelligence for Scotland Yard. He has grave concerns that a secret group called English Banner has plans to foment economic and civil unrest, undermine the confidence of the people in democracy and install a strongman.

Uncle recruits Georgia to infiltrate the group. “It’s somewhere among the rich families that we’ve got to look for the centre of the movement,” Sir John says. “You’re a legend yourself: this movement would be glad to make use of you.” Though she hates pretending to break up with her husband, she loves her country and so agrees to infiltrate the dangerous fascist group.

Georgia is a great character, fully realized in her ability to keep cool even while tired and hard-pressed. The other finely drawn character is the leader of the fascist group. His egoism doesn’t stop him being cunning and charismatic. Other vivid characters are a reporter and a cricket star who help Georgia fight the enemy.

Taking a cue from writers of adventure tales like Rider Haggard and John Buchan, Blake effectively propels the story, moving deftly between scenes of action. The fascists have an uncanny ability to track Georgia as they pursue her across Northern England. The chase scenes really are a cut above most mystery thrillers and Blake’s own fiction.

I highly recommend this WWII-era thriller. It a satisfying blend of characterization, plotting and exciting incident.

A Beam of Light by Andrea Camilleri

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Released in 2012, this book recounts the nineteenth investigation by Commissioner Salvo Montalbano in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata. We long-time readers of the series are happy to meet the usual characters and the usual situations which, after all, combine to make the series enjoyable and successful. We fans like Officer Catarella’s inability to communicate, Fazio’s fussy enthusiasm for accuracy and completeness, Augello’s winning ways with females, and foodie Salvo’s dinners by housekeeper Adelina and lunches at Enzo’s followed by his walk on the jetty to play with the crabs.

The core of the narrative sees the skillful intertwining of three stories in which Montalbano is involved in a more or less direct way, but to which he must try to devise an explanation. The main thriller comes from the robbery of a beautiful young woman married to a wealthy middle-aged jealous man. A second story line is the hunt for three Tunisian immigrants suspected of arms trafficking. Again the characterization is economical and convincing.

The third story line is the love affair of Salvo with Marian, a fascinating gallery owner. Salvo feels guilty about cheating on his long-time GF Livia. No ninny, Livia has realized on some paranormal level that she has lost something. She then falls into depression marked by isolation, disturbed sleep, fatigue, loss of appetite, and slow-moving concentration and activity. Alarmingly to readers but not to Salvo the Knuckle-head, she also suffers the classic anxiety symptom of feeling that something dreadful is going to happen. Poor Livia! Dense Salvo!

The ending is a bit forced but Camilleri’s writing is so engaging the reader doesn’t care. Salvo is a brilliant character because he gets easily distracted and he does things his own way. Montalbano is an ordinary guy thrust into nutty situations brought on by other fallible humans.

The Case of the Daring Divorcee by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

The 72nd Perry Mason novel (1964) has its funny moments and the usual two-guns shenanigans. But you can hear the gears grinding. It’s too complicated for easy understanding, the dialogue is stiff, it hides crucial information, and it goes over a minor sequence of events three times.

A woman wearing big sunglasses leaves in Mason’s office Adelle Hastings’ purse with $3,000 and a recently fired .38 with two spent shells. When Mason tracks Adelle down, she explains that her purse was stolen from her car. Adelle explains that she, the third wife of Garvin Hastings, is in the process of obtaining a divorce. Garvin wants to keep things amicable even to the point of acting in such a way that it seems he’s having second thoughts about asking Adelle to go to Las Vegas for a quickie divorce.

The bullets from those two shells are found, one in poor Garvin’s brain pan, and the other having passed through his skull into the bed where he was sleeping. Both of his exes have shaky alibis and plenty of red herrings flop around on the dock.

The fun highlight is when Detective Tragg wants Mason’s receptionist Gertie to identify Adelle. Mason has her put on her big dark glasses while Della ushers in six women also with dark glasses for a surprise line-up. Tragg is mighty sore at Mason’s tactic.

Murder without Icing by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Given the reputation Wall Street bankers have in our more savvy era, it’s hard to sell a mystery series starring a vice-president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust. But having read about half of the 37 books starring John Putnam Thatcher, I like them because they are set in various industries: real estate, garment making, and fast food franchising, to name just a couple, so there’s a strong feeling ‘this is the way the world works – or used to, anyway.’

In this 1972 mystery, the bank has changed its usual sponsorship from a symphony to a hockey team. When a potential partner of the team is killed at the airport after the team deplanes, the police get involved and Thatcher has to identify the perp.

This was written just a bit before the sports industry became the cultural and economic behemoth that it is today. So it is just as interesting to read as a cultural artifact – a shard of pottery, as it were – besides as a mystery. Recommended to fans of boxing on ice too, especially ones who know who Rocket and Pocket Rocket are.

Murder Being Once Done by Ruth Rendell

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

A cemetery caretaker finds the body of the young woman in a vault, lying slumped between two stone sarcophagi. The corpse of a strangled girl is a grisly discovery, even for a neglected graveyard in a part of London that has seen much better days.

Countryman Reg Wexford, also a police inspector, finds himself convalescing in London after a health scare. Back in 1972, it seems, there was not a lot specialists could do for a thrombosis (clot) in the eye beyond prescribing rest and a punishing regimen of lo-cal food and – horrors – no alcohol.

So Reg and his wife Dora are staying with Reg’s nephew Howard Fortune, a homicide detective assigned to investigate the killing of the young woman. The nephew is over-cautious about Reg’s rest and doesn’t mention the case while Reg is annoyed and insecure by the zealous caregiving and condescension with which he is treated due to his health. Anybody who has gone through a health crisis will be able to connect with the discouragement that Reg has to bring his powers of resilience to resist.

Rendell’s mysteries hold their attractions for their blend of the timeless and the nostalgic. We have the broken families and lost youth we expect to find in classics. But these elements are clothed in mod 1960s garb, with the older generation all in a twist over the muddled, footloose lives the younger generation lead.

Rendell is never cynical or callous but she has a candid realism about unchanging human nature. More than most mystery writers, she fleshes out the background and behavior of the victim in order to give a strong sense of why-dunnint. Her characters are excellently drawn. She examines the harmless obsession of the antiquary Dearborn and the cluelessness about the world of someone raised in a narrow milieu. And, bravely for 1972, she has the openly gay character Ivan Teal deploy unkind sarcasms against Reg the Cop over the treatment of gays at the hands of the Metro Police.

And what a strange, sinister affair the story turns out to be. Reg and his London colleagues find no way to get any information about the victim. To all appearances, she had no friends, no money, no family, living in a crummy apartment under an assumed name. Nothing tangible to start the investigation. As if the stranger from the vault was just a ghost.

Written in 1972, this was the seventh mystery starring Inspector Wexford. There were to be 16 more, all solid sellers and many adapted into TV episodes.

The Worm of Death by Nicholas Blake

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Cecil Day-Lewis, classics prof and poet laureate, didn’t take seriously the 20 or so detective novels he wrote as Nicholas Blake. This does not mean they deserve their neglected status nowadays. In fact, this novel is gloomy enough to appeal to post-modern readers who like dark mysteries.

This 1961 story, the 14th featuring series hero Nigel Strangeways, opens with PI Strangeways and his artist wife Clare Massinger having dinner with a troubled family. The head of the household Piers Louden, a doctor, is sarcastic and tyrannical. Daughter Rebecca longs to be free to marry her artist BF whom her father dislikes. Son James, also a doctor, fears making a misstep that will hurt his reputation. His other son Harold is a flash businessman and his trophy wife Sharon is as flirty as we’d expect. The favorite son, Graham, has the air of an ‘old lag’ (ex-con) in Strangeways’ canny eye.

The setting of docks, alleys, barges, and the Isle of Dogs in the East End of London is the main attraction here. Greenwich was a shabby part of London in the early Sixties. We readers walk in the February chill and fog along the banks of the River Thames. It’s the perfect backdrop for Father Piers to go missing and then turn up dead in Thames clad only in a tweed coat. Son James hires Strangeways to investigate which he does with the help of Inspector Wright. They narrow the circle of suspects down to members of the unhappy family.

Blake’s dark realism is decidedly not cozy. The reveal chills us readers with its plausibility. Blake makes the convincing claim that WWII claimed its victims even after the cessation of hostilities in 1945.