Appleby and Honeybath by Michael Innes

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1983 mystery features Michael Innes’ series heroes in the same novel. The setting is a country house with weekend guests. The squire is a ruffian who hates his well-stocked library. He amazed and appalled that buzzing around with requests are literature scholars, art historians and auctioneers that want to explore its treasures to extend knowledge, build reputations, and stuff their wallets. This gives Innes a chance to tweak the landed gentry for their philistinism, scholars for their pride, and hustlers for their greed. All in hilarious ink-horn terms like “inchoate,” “’velleities,” and “pernoctate.” An Oxford literature don remarks, ”An unresolved fatality is an unsatisfactory thing to leave behind one after a quiet weekend in the country.” Indubitably. This is a light mystery to read between more serious works or more grisly tales of murder.

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires: A Novel
by Grady Hendrix

Review by Cyn F. (Cyn-Sama)

I think the southern Gothic setting just works for a story about vampires. The lush, dense heat of a summer night, and something rotten seeping into a otherwise perfect town. Maybe it has something to do with my first introductions to literary vampires was Interview With a Vampire by Anne Rice, and Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite. Of course, those books showed vampires in a sympathetic light. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires takes the concept of vampires, and brings them back to their horrific roots.

Patricia Campbell’s life is a small, quiet one. Her husband is distracted with his work, her children are becoming more and more distant. Her monthly book club is supposed to be a shining moment, a chance to get out of the house. Only problem is, no one wants to read the titles that are assigned.

Some of the disgruntled book club members decide to form their own book club, where they can read what ever they want. Including a boat load of classic true crime masterpieces.

Then, strange things begin to happen.

Patricia looses a large chunk of an ear to a rabid neighbor.

Intriguingly a stranger moves into the neighborhood, and children start to go missing. Is there a connection? Or have they all been reading too many sensational novels?

Being a bigger fan of novels where the vampires are the heroes, I was not sure I was going to like this book. I have to say, that I was a fan.

It was nice to go back to the roots of horror, and read something that creeped me out a bit. Plus, I loved the setting. I like seeing these supposedly perfect families succumb to the rot within. Most of the rot was there before there was a vampire, it just all rose to the surface the more these ladies investigated.

If the rest of Grady Hendrix’s work is of this caliber, I will be seeking out more of his books.

The Veiled One by Ruth Rendell

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Rather more violent than the usual Reg Wexford outing. A housewife is strangled with a garrot, of all the horrible things. And a car bomb explosion puts our series hero Reg into hospital. His high-strung but likeable partner Mike Burden stands in. He takes aim at a suspect but can’t get him to talk. When Rendell is on a roll, as she is in this 1988 mystery, she is spellbinding.

The Arena by William Haggard

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In this crime and spy novel from 1961, the merchant bank known as Bonavias is declining. However, a upstart competitor approaches them, offering an amount 20% over Bonavias’ market value. Series hero Col. Russell must become interested when he learns that also part of the deal is a research start-up called Radarmic. There is suspicion that an unfriendly power wants access to the radar technology Radarmic is developing. The rep of the unfriendly power would stoop to criminal violent means to take over the bank and the start-up.

Haggard, an Englishman, was an intelligence officer in India during WWII and then worked in Whitehall after the war. So he has the knowledge and experience that we trust in a writer of intelligent crime and espionage stories. Back in the day, Haggard’s novels were not popular in the US, though critics often praised his work as “James Bond for adults.”

Like William F. Buckley’s series hero Blackford Oakes, hero Col. Charles Russell, head of the Security Executive is a “man of the right.” The department minds odd security issues that fall in the grey areas where no clear authority to act exists. Russell is a cheerful conservative who maintains his cool in stressful situations. Russell doesn’t do much except think and talk to people in posh clubs and stuffy offices. He spends much time being perplexed. I don’t know how Haggard makes this fascinating and un-put-downable. But he does.

Haggard’s ability to take the reader into the closed worlds of research, government, criminal syndicates and spy agencies is irresistible. At least to readers who like John le Carré, John Bingham, Emma Lathen, or Alan Furst.

There’s Something in a Sunday by Marcia Muller

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

After a friend of her boss is murdered, female PI Sharon McCone finds herself drawn into a case that takes her to a ranch, a mansion, and skid row, all of which have well-conveyed atmosphere. Another strength is in the believable characters, from homeless people to hypocritical yuppies to friends on the way to becoming alcoholics. I hope I do not make this outstanding mystery sound like a downer, because it’s not. McCone mysteries end on an upbeat note, leaving the reader looking forward to the next one. Readers into old-school Seventies mysteries can’t go wrong with Marcia Muller.

The Case of the Buried Clock by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In the 22nd novel starring the lawyer with super-powers and his trusty sidekicks Della Street and Paul Drake, Gardner shows that he’d mastered his way with punchy dialogue. Plenty of clues make the plot elaborate but not bewilderingly complicated: a clock set to sidereal time; the “truth serum” scopolamine in the vic’s body; an uncertain time of death; and finally Gardner’s trusty old “two revolvers” confusion.

The Mason novels that Gardner published during WWII make passing references to war-time culture, such as blackouts, tire rationing, frugality with gasoline, and internment of Japanese-Americans (it was California, after all).

Also, readers who’ve read many of his novels will recall that Gardner tended to look at reality with no illusions. For instance, in this one Gardner tweaks home-front pieties when the returning veteran says that instead of giving a “flag-waving” speech at a luncheon, he bluntly told them that winning the war was going to take a lot of hard work and that the US could be defeated in the conflict. Even more shockingly, Mason bluntly asserts that there are no ethics when dealing with the police.

Perry Mason fans regard this 1942 mystery as one of their favorites. The plot is crystal clear, and for once, he plays fair with the reader, laying out all the clues.