The heroine of the story, Marta Nederman, was part of the Polish resistance during WWII. She suffers brutal interrogation at a Nazi concentration camp before being rescued by an American soldier, Paul, as the war ends. Barely alive, she is sent to a camp just outside Salzburg to recover. There she meets Paul again and the two are able to spend some time together, enough in fact, for her to get pregnant. When a friend’s visa becomes available the head nurse urges her to take the visa and get to London. Marta’s family is gone, she can’t go back to Poland, and by now she and Paul have plans to marry and live in America. She goes on to London, but Paul’s plane crashes and he is killed before they can marry. Marta finds work at the Embassy and marries a diplomat there, but it is a marriage of convenience for there is no love between them. However, when her past becomes known she is asked to go under cover to root out a spy within the service. What begins as a few days of travel becomes much more of an adventure than she dared dream possible.
The Dirty South, by John Connelly
This is my first novel by this author but will most likely not be my last. Charlie Parker, a former detective from New York, has gone on a mission to find the man who murdered his wife and daughter. In order to find him he has asked friends in law enforcement to send him information regarding ritualized killings they come across. Some of these lead him to Cargill, Arkansas, where police chief Griffin has a second teenage girl’s murder to solve. Or possibly a third. Parker starts out by angering Griffin who puts him in jail overnight but then realizes he’s made a mistake. Parker leaves town but then decides to return, providing outside eyes for a series of crimes that have been hushed up by the sheriff’s department over the last several years. Enter William Jefferson Clinton, newly elected president of the US, who is pulling all the strings he can to raise up Arkansas out of poverty. The Cade family, one of whom is the deputy sheriff, owns most of the land worth anything, and is looking to profit from new industry all but set to sign on the dotted line. News of young girls, even if African American being murdered will send that industry to Texas just as sure as the world. Parker doubts this killer is the same one he is looking for, but stays anyway. Good thing he does, for a lot of reasons.
Valentine, by Elizabeth Wetmore
I grew up in the Deep South during the civil rights movement so I am well acquainted with racism. Ms. Wetmore’s tale about a young Latino girl in Odessa, TX during the mid 70’s when oil was booming in the area exposes racism of another kind. Gloria Ramirez gets into the pickup of a young white man, Dale Strickland, on Saturday night, admittedly hoping to have some fun. He drives her out to an oil patch, rapes her and plans to frighten her into silence or kill her but she escapes by walking to a farmhouse while he is passed out in the truck. Gloria’s arrival at the farm of Mary Rose Whitehead creates a crisis within her family that spreads throughout the town. Mary Rose has a daughter already and is seven months pregnant. She takes Gloria in and hides her when she sees Dale’s pickup truck coming up the road. All this is a story in itself but what happens afterwards, Mary Rose’s terror that the same thing will happen to her own daughter, living out in the fields with her husband out tending their cattle for what is almost every waking moment, her move into town, the friends and enemies she makes as they await the trial. Gloria’s mother is deported before she is reunited with her daughter, and her Uncle Victor takes Gloria away from town to heal from her ordeal.
Good story, highly recommended.
The Gift of the Magpie, by Donna Andrews
Meg Langslow’s job as coordinator for the Helping Hands in small town Virginia leads the team to assist Harvey the Hoarder with his cluttered house. Harvey is about to be evicted due to complaints by his nosy neighbors, and some second cousins who seem very interested in his house, but don’t care anything about Harvey. The poor man ends up murdered just as Helping Hands has started to make a dent on his decades long practice of saving every item that crosses his path. In this close-knit community Meg digs into the room full of papers Harvey kept as well as some online hoarder help groups.
Reading this book makes me wish that societies functioned as well as they do in Ms. Andrew’s world. The Helping Hands is an interfaith organization that helps with anything their neighbors might need, building a handicap ramp, finishing a quilt, de-cluttering a house, putting in a security system, all with just a phone call or text saying it needs doing. In my experience the real world doesn’t work that way so much, but it’s nice to imagine.
I am so glad to have found this author of lighthearted mysteries. With the state of the world being what it is I think we all can use some escape to a brighter side of life, even with murder in the equation.
The Double Comfort Safari Club, by Alexander McCall Smith
One of the advertising blurbs on the back cover of this book describes McCall Smith’s novels as gentle and that describes the Ladies #1 Detective Agency series to a T. Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi are contacted by an American lawyer who wants to bequeath a sum of money to a very kind guide at one of Botswana’s safari clubs. The only thing he knows about the man in question is that he works at a club with the name of an animal or a bird in it, and acted as a guide for an American lady who is now late (even the term for having died is gentle). Not much to go on! But Mma Ramotswe is not deterred, she will see what she can do. It is nice to be delivering good news to someone, rather than the usual fare of husbands cheating on wives and vice versa. Grace Makutsi is engaged to be married but when her fiance suffers an accident the #1 Aunty tries to block her from seeing her betrothed. And succeeds until friends intervene on her behalf.
If ever you want to read a ‘gentle’ book about these ladies whose detective agency in is Gabarone, Botswana, try any of this series. It will gladden your heart.
My Name Is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout
Published 2016
Lucy tells us a story, in first person, about a time when she had to stay in the hospital for several weeks. Lucy is a writer who grew up in the Midwest but now lives in NYC with her husband and two girls. Lucy’s story is mainly about her mother coming to stay with her in the hospital for a week, her mother who has never met her granddaughters. To say that Lucy’s family was not a close one is sadly an understatement. The details of her upbringing slip into the story as she reflects on the week spent with her mother sitting beside her hospital bed.
It quickly becomes apparent that childhood was a very unhappy affair for Lucy. She had no television, no newspapers, no magazines and no books in her home. There was only one mirror that was high up above the kitchen sink, one supposes for her father to shave with. There are no neighbors, the only other house in sight belonged to the Pederson’s who raised pigs. Corn and soybean fields surround their small dwelling. Lucy thinks of a solitary oak tree as her friend, which is sad in itself, that your only childhood friend is a tree.
One of Sherlock Holmes’ comments to Watson, I forget which case he was solving at the time, that it’s out in the rural areas, in isolation, that the worst crimes take place. In the city people stay packed in close, so someone’s bound to hear abuse or violence, someone can see or take notice of what is going on. What Lucy endures as a child, and how it affects her in her adult life will stay with you for a good long while, I’m willing to bet. Ms. Strout’s style of writing is as bare as can be; she does not waste words. Another good tale by this author.