Fifth Grave Past the Light by Darynda Jones

Review by reacherfan1909

Darynda Jones hit the book market in 2011 with First Grave on the Right and gave paranormal and UF authors a bad case of author envy.  Charley Davidson and Reyes Farrow are easily two of the most original characters in a long time.  Ms Jones also hit the high notes for strong, well-developed prose, fast pacing that never feels rushed, and dual plots line – one is the plot that is the mystery in the book that is resolved within each book.  The other is the over-arching plot about Charley herself and Reyes Farrow and just what they are to each other – and to the universe.  And she does this with an odd mixture of humor, and horror, and mystery that shouldn’t work, but does so splendidly and with such verve, wit, and style it’s a delight to read.

In Fifth Grave Past the Light, Charley and the now released Reyes Farrow, are neighbors.  And she wants to be a lot more, but how can the son of Satan and a Grim Reaper (actually a portal for souls – a kind of beacon and doorway for the dead to pass through to reach heaven) who is the daughter of light ever manage to get together?

It isn’t unusual for Charley to wake up and find ghosts in her apartment.  After all, Mr Wong has been there the whole time.  And not all ghosts are ready to pass.  Not only can they see her, some are quite chatty.  But having a ghost that stutters try and buy you a drink in your Dad’s bar?  That’s awkward.  Especially since it’s a cop bar and they tend to notice people talking to themselves.  Even worse when your former high school BFF turned nemesis sits with her friends mocking you and making you feel 15 again.  Hell had just come to Earth.  Even worse, Charley was in her ‘available slut’ outfit trying to attract Marvin Tidwell, suspected cheating husband.  Turns out, Marvin has a ‘type’, and Charley is NOT it.  But Cookie, her zaftig secretary, BFF, and neighbor is.  So Charley calls for reinforcements.  A nervous Cookie seems to be doing so well, until Marvin spots the microphone and Cookie, scared, grabs for her gun.  But Marvin manages to point the gun at Charley and time slows – as it always does for her – as she sees the bullet leave the barrel, tries to move, but can’t move fast enough and knows she’s about to die.  Then Reyes is there, as he has been so many times in the past, and literally takes a bullet for her.

Oh, her apartment has a frightened young girl hiding under the bed who places 3 scratches down Charley’s face.  And then there’s all these women, victims of a serial killer, so traumatized they can’t even help Charley find out what’s keeping them from passing thru to the light.  And her sister has her going to see a psychologist for PTSD after what happened with Earl Walker  – AND she told the psychologist Charley’s secret.  And she needs Gerald Swopes’ help with doing background checks on Marvin – only the last time he helped her, he died and Reyes sent him to spend some quality time with Dad – AKA Lucifer.  And a key and note from Reyes – “Use the key.”  But does it open his apartment?  Or something else?

Throw in a nurse who sees the future and visits Charley I spectral form yet has no memory of it, a police captain who wants to see just how Charley works to help her Uncle Bob have the highest clearance rate in the whole department, Cookie taking gun safety classes, the mother of her ghostly teenage assistant wanting to know why she keeps depositing $500 a month in her bank account.  It’s a tough few days.

As always, despite the many threads in the story, the Darynda Jones not only manages to weave them all together into an engaging tale that moves at a breakneck pace, she brilliantly walks the line between laughs and a dark, grim reality – with one notable flaw, one that has cropped up in earlier books.  The author has to introduce a lot of information, kind of a data dump, to move the over-riding story arc along.  This isn’t easy, so she often has a character handle this in a single fell swoop toward the end of the book.  This time she selected Swopes, and used his time with Satan as they way to get the information in.  But suddenly Swopes has all these additional sources and the scene, a key one to the continuing story arc – get a very ‘deus ex machina’ feel to it.  Of all the things that happened in the book, it was the one that seemed to not quite work.  Maybe because I found the choice of character for the ‘big reveal’ didn’t quite fit.  I think it might have worked had she introduced a different, new, enigmatic character to handle it with Swopes.

Fifth Grave Past the Light remains an excellent read and gets a A- (4.5*) from me, a very rare high rating.  As a series, the Charley Davidson books are highly recommended reading for paranormal fans. This series should be read in order to follow the storyline.

In addition to the Charley Davidson series, I recommend, Kelly Gay’s Charlie Madigan series, Suzanne Johnson’s Sentinel’s of New Orleans series, Cecy Robson’s Weird Sisters series, and Kalayna Price’s Grave Witch series.

Tour De Force by Christianna Brand

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Like Cyril Hare, who wrote only about 10 mysteries before he died young, Christianna Brand wrote only eight whodunnits in the 1940s and early 1950s before raising a family became a bigger priority. Prior to this one, I’d read only Green for Danger (review here), regarded as a classic novel and movie.

As in Green for Danger, Tour De Force features a small group, any member of which had more or less the same motive and opportunity to do in the vic. Brand’s cat and mouse game involves giving the reader fair clues all the way down the line, so it’s excellent for readers who enjoy puzzlers.

Her series character is Detective Inspector Cockrill, nicknamed Cockie, which is as well since we never find out his first name. Bird-like but tough, ironic, mercifully quirk-free but middle-aged enough to be tender-hearted, his base is Kent, but in Tour De Force, he is  vacationing solo to San Juan el Pirata (John the Pirate). He is tired of his fellow tourists on the package tour even before he disembarks, and about a third into the novel is he tired of abroad as well.

Indeed, the tourists run the gamut. Cecil Prout is a fashion designer who doesn’t seem to mind who knows he’s gay. Miss Trapp is a lonely woman who is getting the glad eye from Fernando, a Spanish-British tour guide from Gibraltar. Leo Rodd used to be a concert pianist before he lost an arm and his wife Helen helps him so much that she gets on his nerves. A young woman with red hair and lots of flash, Louvaine Barker is in fact a noted novelist. Vanda Lane is a reclusive young woman who is man-hunting. All the characters are well-developed and convincing.

A member of the group turns out to be a blackmailer and ends up with a knife in the chest. Strangely, the suspects were on the beach in plain view of Inspector Cockrill. The local police, smugglers one and all, need a patsy to appease touristic opinion so anybody will do, evidence be damned. Cockie, then, must act to protect his fellow nationals from the horror of injustice at the hands of feudal  and sinister foreigners. Underling the farcical aspects of the incidents in the story, Cockie must don the “hapless overseas” mask in a funny scene hinging on the language barrier.

I must confess that at more than 250 pages any mystery starts to weary me and this was no exception. But that’s just me. The reveal is truly a rocker. Justifying the gutsy choice of a title for this novel. I’m sure that readers who like puzzlers a la Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr would get a kick out of this story.

Untimely Death by Cyril Hare

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Hare’s series amateur, Francis Pettigrew, appears solo in some of the stories but acts in concert with Inspector Mallett in others. A Thurberesque male at odds with inanimate objects, bolting ponies, and incalculable females, Pettigrew works as a barrister and finds himself dragged into murder cases much against his will and inclination. Inspector Mallet is a “beefy man with a nimble brain.”

Untimely Death was last of the books featuring the detecting team Pettigrew and Mallett. Pettigrew, retired and vacationing with his wife, stays at a bread and breakfast in Exmoor, the same neighborhood in which as a boy he was frightened by finding a corpse. Unluckily enough history repeats itself as Pettigrew finds another corpse. When he returns to the scene of the crime with members of the local hunt club, however, the body has vanished. His new-age wife convinces him that it was pre-cogniton – a vision of future events – so he doesn’t inform the cops.

This sin of omission and the deaths that occur in the village during their vacation comes back to haunt him after he returns home. Mallett, also retired, is called in to act as a PI for people involved in a lawsuit concerning a death. Due to his efforts, Pettigrew is subpoenaed as a witness in a Chancery case about an unusual legal point arising out of the death. In other books, too, such as the stand-alone mystery An English Murder, the case hinges on legal point. Hare in real life worked as Judge Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark.

One hesitates to criticize “last books” since authors are facing The Big Sleep falter (See Chandler’s Playback or Gardner’s All Grass Isn’t Green). But the story and characterization seem thin in this one. Easy to read, with a tight plot, enjoying this would be readers who like amateur and professional duos and the familiar elements of cozy mysteries such as descriptions of the Somerset and Devon countryside, stag hunts on the moors, crazy wills, and eccentric judges wearing little wigs. Hare also presents provocative asides about memory and middle-age.

Engaged to Murder by M.V. Heberden, 1949

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This mystery is set in Buenos Aries, Argentina and concerns PI Rick Vanner’s investigation into the murder of a French diplomat and then another murder to silence one who knew too much about said killing.

The setting is so well done that one wonders if Heberden in fact had deeper experience overseas than just as a tourist. Local color seems authentic with polite servants, goofy traffic, sharp business practices, and dodgy police. The native English speakers divide into two camps, the native-born to Argentina with roots in the UK and the expatriates such as dips and business executives.

Also interesting is the backdrop of WWII. The series hero Vanner worked for Naval Intelligence during the war and turned his skills to the private sector, helping multi-national companies fix their problems in the horror of abroad. The chief suspect worked with Vanner in the Navy. Other suspects carry literal and figurative scars from living in France during the Nazi occupation. Heberden serves up serious points about resistance and collaboration which are telling without being somber or distracting from the mystery plot.

I found plot, incident, and characterization all plausible. The reveal depended on the familiar device of gathering all suspects in a room. Heberden’s readable prose is clear and concise, never perfunctory. The M.V. stands for Mary Violet so readers looking for pre-Paretisky, pre-Muller female mystery writer should check her out.

Master of the Day of Judgment by Leo Perutz

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This classic fantastic mystery by Leo Perutz is set in Vienna in the early 20^th century. The themes and devices will be familiar to us post-modern readers. A romantic triangle in the era of the late Hapsburgs as in Sándor Márai’s Embers. Guilt over sexual transgressions as in Arthur Schnitzler’s stories from decadent Vienna.  The secret revealed in a manuscript as in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The phantasmagoric atmosphere as in William Kotzwinkle’s Fata Morgana. The unreliability of an unsympathetic narrator – well, name your favorite modernist writer from the early 20^th century.

Our narrator, the often ruthless and brutal Baron Yosch, narrates the events surrounding the suicide of actor Eugene Bischoff, the latest in a mysterious series of suicides. His chronicle is plagued by semi-confessed guilt over adultery. We readers receive tantalizing hints as to who is behind the eponymous “The Master of the Day of Judgment.” As the amateur detectives Solgrub and Gorsky reconstruct the dead man’s final hours, we realize we have to read this slowly so as not to be more confused than the author intends us to be.

Pretty creepy, with a surprise ending. Readers looking for a slightly lighter Kafkaesque mystery won’t go wrong.