The Private Wound by Nicholas Blake

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Yessir, from page one we get Anglo-Irish poet and classicist meets The Postman Always Rings Twice:

When I remember that marvelous summer of 1939, in the West of Ireland almost thirty years ago, one picture always slips to the front of my mind. I am lying on a bed drenched with our sweat. She is standing by the open window to cool herself in the moonlight. I see again the hour-glass figure, the sloping shoulders, the rather short legs, that disturbing groove of the spine halfway hidden by her dark red hair which the moonlight has turned black. The fuchsia below the window will have turned to gouts of black blood. The river beyond is talking in its sleep. She is naked.

I’m always game for a mystery melodrama if it is as well-written as this. And the writing ought to be fluent and engaging since Nicholas Blake was the pen-name of Cecil Day-Lewis, who wrote this, his last novel, while he was Poet-Laureate of the UK in 1968.

Last novels are occasionally sad products of exhausted creative energies, but this is worth reading and savoring. A young writer wants to save his pennies and pounds so he rents a house in rural Eire. He knows the war is inevitable and he wants to get one more book out. He meets his neighbor’s wife, an attractive, sexually insatiable and deceitful woman.

I’m saying as little about the story as possible. But know that the local scenery, the national character of the Irish at the time, and the theme of being a foreigner (aka the object of intense curiosity) all contribute effectively to the mystery story.

The Pew Group by Anthony Oliver 

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This genial whodunit was the 1980 debut novel of an art historian who was an expert in pottery. Oliver literally wrote the book on The Victorian Staffordshire Figure. Before his early death in the late Eighties, he wrote four mysteries, in which he used his knowledge of the business and obsession of collecting antique pottery.

More lust and bawdy couplings than is usual in a cozy mystery do lead to lapses in taste. However, far outweighing this quibble is that this is a genuinely British comic mystery. That is, it features eccentric characters in the English village of Flaxfield, an irrepressible Welshwoman, and a scamp of an Irish tinker. Other funny characters in the Dickensy tradition include a vicar that does spend awful lot of time in conservations with the Creator; a randy spinster; a widow who got that way through murder; gay partners in an antique shop, one of whom is nicknamed “Betsey” Trotwood; and an American millionaire who’s mad about a fabulously valuable Staffordshire figurine called The Pew Group.

The Pew Group goes missing during a wake, which in my English is the feasting and drinking held after the funeral and burial, not the vigil held at the bedside of somebody who has died. Inspector Webber, born in Flaxfield, has returned there for a rest cure and a vacation from a shaky marriage. He teams up with Mrs. Thomas, the incorrigible woman from Cardiff, to identify the thief.

In the first quarter or so of the book the tone is more tetchy and acerbic than I like. The waspishness brought to my mind Robert Barnard, whom I don’t read anymore because his parodies of the conventions of the cozy mystery seem mean-spirited. However, to my relief, Oliver’s tone got more amiable as the book went on. It’s more in the English spirit to be nice, as this reader is totally down with Big Bang Theory Bernadette’s motto, “Being mean is lame, what’s cool is being nice!”

Oliver is a clever, imaginative, and first-rate storyteller. I highly recommend this literate mystery.

The Track of Sand by Andrea Camilleri

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

I hesitated to read The Track of Sand, a 2008 mystery that is the twelfth in the series of mysteries starring a Sicilian police inspector. The reason is that the one previous, The Wings of the Sphinx, was so weak. The recurring themes – Salvo’s rocky romance with Livia, globalization as criminal enterprise – felt stale, so I wondered if the series, like The Big Bang Theory, was just going through the motions.

I was pleasantly surprised that international crooks play no part in The Track of Sand. The series hero Salvo Montalbano wakes up one morning to find in his yard the battered carcass of a horse that was beaten to death. Salvo feels admirable grief for the horse and rage at the evil-doing perps. His half-official investigation delves in Mafia schemes and the lifestyles of the filthy rich. A new character, the lovely Rachele Esterman, adds to Salvo’s diversions.

The sense of place still feels authentic and familiar, with Salvo walking on his jetty and sitting on his rock. He still eats local cuisine at Enzo’s trattoria. The translation is extremely smooth and readable, with helpful cultural notes at the end. Camilleri handles skillfully the spectrum of life, from the funny to the horrible, often following each other only in minutes.

The plot, however, is thin and the reveal has a tacked-on feeling. There’s no harm reading this one if human interest and like of characters outplay plot and detecting, but I advise readers new to Camillieri to read – in order, please – The Shape of Water, The Terracotta Dog, The Snack Thief, The Voice of the Violin and Excursion to Tindari.

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Epitaph for a Lobbyist by R. B. Dominic

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

An indiscreet memo leaked to the papers by her own daughter implicates Shirley Knapp, lobbyist for energy and oil companies, in a possible case of bribery. The vote to kill a pollution control provision in a new law cost $50,000 in 1974, which would be about $235,000 in today’s purchasing power. Series hero Congressman Ben Safford (D, OH) is named chair of the committee to investigate the charge of bribery.

When Shirley Knapp is found shot to death in her car, Ben leads his committee members as they formally and informally investigate the bribery, which they assume is linked to Knapp’s murder. House members Val Oakes and Lou Flecker are veterans of politics, both conservative, though in different parties. Elsie Hollenbach is a California liberal, moralistic but politically canny. Tony Martinelli is machine Democrat from RI, practical and realistic. Their conversations are intelligent and plausible.

Suspicion falls on the three congressmen that voted to kill the proviso. Although this really limits the number of suspects, I didn’t see whodunit until the reveal. The fair play really is amazing. We are indeed given all we need to know. The reveal proves that we missed the obvious as do our hero congress members. It is often the case that the really sophisticated can be in the end very simple.

The authors of this book were Mary Jane Latsis, an economist, and Martha Henissart, an economic analyst. Both knew from their professional experience that astute people will in fact get distracted and miss what is staring them in the face. They know how people at all levels think and act in business and government. Obviously specific conditions are dated (e.g., the non-partisan respect the politicians have for each other), but classic are the treatments of how people with agile minds and deep experience deal with novel situations. That timelessness is what makes these R.B. Dominic novels – there are seven –worth reading still.

These authors also wrote a couple dozen business mysteries under the pen name of Emma Lathen. Perhaps to distinguish the style of R. B. Dominic, they have the mildly annoying wont of always modifying a verb meaning “say” with an adverb or adverbial phrase: “said reminiscently” or “roared in anger.” Also, people don’t just say things they “mutter,” “interject,” “murmur,” “bleat” and so on. It’s a defect we expect from a whodunnit writer of the 1920s.

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