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A Well-Behaved Woman

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By Therese Anne Fowler

Alva Vanderbilt is the woman in question and the story follows her as she sets her cap for W.K. Vanderbilt in spite of society spurning his family due to shenanigans involving his grandfather. Alva’s mother died before a suitable match could be made for her. Her father’s health was in decline and his income from the cotton plantations that were so reliable before the Civil War have now dried up. But Alva’s closest friend, Consuela Yznaga, is steering her in the right direction and finagles the introduction to W.K. It seems he is uninterested and spends his time with other beauties at the society functions. But before long he approaches Alva and with hardly any courtship, asks her to be his wife. Of course she says yes. No more money worries. Apparently at the time, which is late nineteenth century, the husband paid the wife’s family as part of the arrangement, so Alva’s father and sisters were taken care of.

Alva wonders what her wedding night will be like. She waits in a state of anxiety, not knowing what to expect, but nothing happens. Then finally, very late at night after she had already fallen asleep her new husband appears and the marriage is consummated in an almost formal act. Because of the way she was raised Alva supposes this is normal behavior and it takes years of marriage before she realizes that W.K. is having flings with other women. Alva finds herself attracted to Oliver Belmont but restrains herself and doesn’t allow her feelings to move her to any action beyond friendship, in spite of her husband’s infidelities. She names her daughter after her best friend Consuela.

The Vanderbilt’s fortunes continue to rise and they indulge in building sprees in NYC and in the countryside. This helps their social status as they spare no expense on their homes and entertaining. Alva oversees many of the projects herself even though she has no formal architectural education. In later years she will support women’s right to vote.

A turning point comes in Alva’s life when her dearest friend, now Lady Mandeville, sends a letter revealing her affair with W.K. which has gone on for years. Alva does not respond but soon confronts her husband. She demands a divorce, the country house and an annual income for her and their children. W.K. does not fight this and Alva finds herself a divorced woman, who although still very wealthy, is no longer at the center of New York society. She has lost her closest friend and never can bring herself to forgive Lady C. After living in a loveless marriage for so many years she finally married Oliver Belmont and has a happy life until his early death from appendicitis. Her daughter Consuela has married into the Churchill family in England but the marriage doesn’t last. Alva worries that she had pushed her daughter into a marriage she didn’t want, as opposed to letting her marry a man much older than herself whom Consuela was in love with. But Consuela now realizes that her mother did have her best interests at heart and the life she has been able to lead was so much more than she would’ve had with the gold digger she had wanted to marry when she was twenty.

Lots of name dropping in this story about a woman who was able to put herself in a position to make changes in her world, the world of New York society in the nineteenth century.

Ed King, by David Guterson

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Published 2011

Ed King is an orphan. He didn’t find this out until his younger brother Simon was diagnosed with prostate cancer and Ed gets genome tested. Although he is an orphan, Ed has developed the premier search engine on the planet. He has a personal assistant (virtual) named Cybil whom he relies on for hashing through information. Cybil is the one who tells him, after her analysis, that he and Simon are not biologically related.

The book starts out with Ed’s parents, a married man whose wife has been hospitalized and the au pair who comes to take charge of the house and two children during her absence. Diane is just a teenager, an exchange student from Britain whose mum was a prostitute and whose dad she never knew. The married man, Walter Cousins, has a good job and knows better but succumbs to the enticement of a young girl in his house day after day. After a few months the wife comes home and Diane is no longer needed. But by this time she is pregnant with Walter’s child. He makes arrangements for her to deliver the baby and give it up for adoption. She has a couple of days to make her final decision, and during this time she leaves the hospital and then abandons the child on someone’s doorstep in an upscale neighborhood. She writes Walter demanding that he provide for his child by sending her two hundred and fifty dollars every month to a post office box. She then finds a cheap place to live and watches for her next opportunity.

Ed, meanwhile, is adopted by loving parents and has a good life until, during his wild teenage years he runs a car off the road in the middle of now where and the man in it is killed. It happens to be Walter Cousins, his father, although he has no idea of the relationship. This brings Ed’s wild days to a screeching stop and he begins college in earnest. No one knows about how the accident happened and Ed carries this with him eventually relying on prescription drugs to bring him out of his fog.

Time marches on and Diane goes from high class prostitute to the wife of a wealthy man. All she has to do is keep herself looking good and she does this with so much gusto that she eventually goes to the hospital for plastic surgery. For nine years she has been married and has told her husband that she is not able to have children. While she is in the hospital he sees that she is on the pill, and has been lying to him all along. So ends her lush life, with a small settlement and the money she’s saved from Walter’s extortion she sets up again and starts dealing cocaine, never taking it herself but supplying to a higher end clientelle.

As unlikely as it seems, Diane eventually meets up with Ed King and they fall in love. I’m going to leave the story there because the ending is worth reading through for. I am not sure I can quite believe it, but it’s interesting and possibly plausible.

A Banquet of Consequences, by Elizabeth George

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Published 2015

Poor Will. His talent for creating beautiful gardens has not been enough to overcome the mental health issues he has had all of his life. His partner, Lily Foster and he try to make a life in London where Lily is a tattoo artist but the stress is just too much for Will. Lily leaves him, he has a complete breakdown and his mother and stepfather arrive on the scene to take him home. His mother, Caroline, blames Will’s condition on his father, a plastic surgeon who refused to do surgery on his badly deformed ear when he was a child. Caroline divorces him, marries again to Alistair and convinces him to take her and the boys to Dorset where he buys a bakery. The bakery does well and Alistair is soon running a thriving business with multiple sites. Charlie has set up practice as a psychotherapist and Will, after a brief stay with his parents moves further away to the coast in Seatown. When he tries to convince Lily Foster to join him there things take a drastic turn for the worse, Will commits suicide while she is there for a visit.

Caroline takes a job working for a famous feminist Clare Abbott, whose new book has just come out to great popular success. Caroline starts out as a housekeeper but soon takes on more responsibility, writing correspondence, shopping and handling much of Clare’s every day chores. Clare’s friend and editor, Rory Statham, can’t figure out why Clare keeps Caroline around. She is toxic much of the time and unpleasant all of the time, but Clare explains it as helping out a woman who’s lost a son. It’s much more complicated than that.

Into this mess wanders Detective Sargent Barbara Havers, on a tight leash these days because Isabelle Ardery is trying to get her transferred to the boondocks. She already has a signed request for transfer to hold over Barbara’s head if she steps out of line by even a hair. Barbara is trying to tow the line by palling around with a co-worker, Dorothea Harriman, who tries to take Barb under her wing and get her in the good graces of the boss. While they are at an outing Barbara sees Clare at a book signing and decides to buy a copy to give to Dorothea, kind of a ‘instead of me looking for a man to solve my problems, why don’t you realize that a man is not what is needed’ gesture. Clare and Barbara have a conversation, Clare admiring Barbara’s tee shirt which states, ‘And on the Sixth Day, God Made Bacon’. Clare asks her where she got it and Barb says she’ll get one for Clare, but make it clotted cream. Clare gives Barb her card but then as she’s leaving Caroline runs after he and tells her that she needs the card back, that she’s employed to keep Clare from becoming too chummy with her fans. Rory witnesses this interaction and approaches Barbara again, to give her another card and tell her not to mind about Caroline.

The encounter with Barbara ends up saving Rory’s life. When Clare dies suddenly, Rory is devastated and just can’t believe that the coroner’s verdict of a heart attack is correct. She asks Barbara if it’s possible to do another autopsy and when the results come back, she phones Rory to make an appointment for the next morning. When she arrives something is clearly amiss. Rory’s support dog, Arlo, is barking inside the flat but no one comes to the door. Havers ends up having to kind of break in, but she saves Rory’s life. Rory has been poisoned by the same substance that killed Clare Abbott.

Meanwhile Alistair has found true love at last with a co-worker, or employee would be the more accurate term so multiple suspects are on the scene. Lily Foster has a restraining order against her regarding Caroline, whom she blames for Will’s suicide. Caroline is just bat crazy and so evil that I found myself wanting her to take the blame for Clare’s death even if she didn’t do it.

Great story, love the writing, but as with all of Elizabeth George’s novels, there’s too much graphic sex. I find it unnecessary but still, her stories are about much more than that. A good read, not quick as it’s several hundred pages.

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

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I found this book on my bookshelf and I’m not sure where it came from. There was a time when I collected leather bound books at estate sales and it may have come from there. Whenever I start a book I always check the copyright page to see the date of publication. This book has no copyright page at all, which is very unusual. So I don’t know when it was published. the story takes place I would say early twentieth century. Lily Bart is a beautiful young woman in New York society who has had several opportunities to marry well but has never done so. Her parents are deceased and she lives with her aunt who provides her with expensive clothing but no money of her own. With only a small stipend to pay her expenses, she lives a life of high society staying with wealthy friends most of the year in country houses, invited for her beauty and charm. When we enter the story she has set her cap for a wealthy but dull young man, Percy, who is astonished that a girl so beautiful and sophisticated would even notice him. It doesn’t take much for Lily to ensnare him, her plan is that once married she will coax him into the expensive lifesyle she dreams of with elegant houses and entertainment for the rest of her days. But just at the moment she should be finalizing the deal by going to church with him and a group of house guests, she instead pleads ill and then goes off for a walk with a man whom she truly likes, maybe even loves, but who has little in the way of money, Lawrence Seldon. Because she didn’t go, Percy meets a wealthy heiress who is quite plain, and soon they are engaged to be married.

The list of eligible men is dwindling rapidly. Lily spends time with a married couple and rides out one day with the husband, who takes pity on Lily’s plight and offers to invest her small amount of savings so that she receives some return on the investment. Soon Lily has received several thousand dollars from this scheme. This allows her to pay off her debts and spend freely for a while, which she enjoys immensely. She even pays a charwoman who has collected some letters from a married woman to Lawrence Seldon, to keep quiet. Lily keeps the letters secret. She also gives a small amount to Gerty Farish, Seldon’s relation, who is in straightened financial circumstances but has learned to live a more frugal life and spends her time working with poor women in the community. But what Lily regards as a pure investment situation becomes something far more serious. The husband who made the investment invites Lily to his home one evening, pretending that his wife is the one who has asked her to call. His wife is not even in London and the husband is demanding his payment, not in cash, for services rendered. Although Lily manages to extricate herself from the situation, she does not go unseen, leaving the house late at night when everyone knows she is alone with the man. She vows to pay the money back but has no way to do so. Just as she is about to be forced to do something drastic, another married couple asks her to take a cruise to the Mediterranean and she is gone the next morning. But this proves to be a very bad choice as the wife has asked Lily to entertain her husband while she pursues another love interest. Lily is again compromised and with the help of Lawrence, who was also traveling in the area on business, goes home to her aunt.

When she arrives home, her aunt has passed away. But unbeknowst to Lily her aunt has changed her will and the bulk of the estate, which was to have come to her upon her aunt’s death, now goes to another relative and Lily is to receive ten thousand dollars, which is just enough to settle her debt from the so-called investment. To make matters even worse, she will not receive the money for almost a year due to the slow legal processes of the time. A few friends try to help her, setting her up as a private secretary to aspiring new-money society ladies, trying to get invitations to the cultured society events that Lily is part of. A wealthy business man is also pursuing her, he has enough money to give her whatever her heart desires and is in love with her but Lily detests him and can’t bring herself to consider a relationship with him, even though it would mean the end of her financial woes for good. But as her place in society sinks lower and lower, he no longer is willing to marry her. He knows about the letters she has in her possession and advises her to in a way, blackmail the woman who wrote them. This is the wife of the man who invested her money and is snubbing Lily in a very public manner. Lily realizes it’s not because there was anything romantic about their relationship, it’s because the man gave her money. The wealthy suitor advises that she merely let the woman know she has the letters and come to an understanding that she will be welcomed in high society again and Lily will keep the letters secret. This will fulfil her wealthy suitor’s ambitions, he has enough money to set Lily up as the hostess with the mostest, so to speak but wants the high society to go with it. Lily, who has by now resorted to taking laudanum in order to sleep, and is suffering from exhaustion, decides she must do as her suitor suggests and takes the letters with the intention of securing her place in society by paying a visit to her former friend. On the way she gets caught in a downpour and finds herself at Lawrence Seldon’s apartment. He takes her in, seeing that she is in crisis, and gives her tea to try to help settle her. While there Lily realizes she can’t subject this man, who she probably loves if she could ever admit in, to the insult of making use of his letters to blackmail her former friend. Lily asks him to build up the fire and while he’s not looking, burns the packet in his fireplace.

Lily makes her way home and finds to her surprise that the check for ten thousand dollars has arrived, the lawyers have concluded their work early. She writes a check to the investor for nine thousand dollars, the amount she received from the investment and leaves the checks on her desk. Unable to sleep again, she takes the laudanum which she has become reliant on for chasing away the nightly fears. next morning Seldon makes his way to her boarding house only to find Gerty there, Lily has overdosed and died.

Such a sad story and yet if at any time Lily had come to grips with her situation and learned to control herself she could’ve had a happy life. But her beauty made her the plaything of society. Her only safe harbor was marriage to either wealthy men whom she abhorred, or to a good man who had nothing and where her only talents, which are for society life, would be useless.

Believing the Lie, by Elizabeth George

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Inspector Lynley is called upon by his boss’s boss to investigate an accidental drowning at a wealthy businessman’s estate. It’s all on the hush-hush and he can’t tell his immediate supervisor where he’s going or what he’s doing. This would in itself be a problem but it becomes much more complex because he and his boss are having an affair. Given the awkward situation he asks his friends the St. James to travel to the country and help him. One is a forensic pathologist and the other is a photographer. The businessman’s son is a prime suspect for the death of his cousin, Ian who ran the family business of selling toilets. The son, Nick, is a ne’er do well addict and troublemaker who has married a beautiful wife from South America and returned home to turn over a new leaf and rebuild his life while helping older homeless men out of their addictions and vagrancy. While Lynley and St. James investigate the boathouse where the accident occurred, St. James’ wife Deborah goes to meet the son and his wife at home. While having tea she notices a magazine on conception, childbirth on the table and flipping through it, sees several pages torn from the back. Deborah herself is interested in this magazine because she and St. James have been unable to have a child of their own, she will never be able to carry a baby to term. So she tries every way she can to make friends with this beautiful South American woman who she feels she can establish a bond with over their shared problems with starting a family.

Lynley also enlists Barbara Havers, his work partner to do some digging back in London. She finds every one of the family, all their history, some good, some bad, but can’t find anything on Nick’s wife, no photos, no history except a family name that comes up as the mayor of a small town in Argentina. When she contacts them, it appears they recognize her name but because of the language barrier (Barbara does not speak Spanish except maybe to order a beer) she can’t make out what they’re saying.

The plot has a lot of twists and turns. The man who died had left his wife for his male lover some time ago and now his teenage son and young daughter are left living with the latter after the death of their father. Their mother apparently wants nothing to do with the children. Tim, the teenage boy, is in bad shape, enrolled in a school for troubled youth but bound and determined to take out his rage on something, and soon. He is self-destructive and when his aunt tries to help he ends up attacking her. The aunt, Manette, is in the middle of a family crisis herself, having divorced her husband, Freddie who still lives in the same house, but who has decided to start dating again. He finds that today’s dates often want to find out if they’re sexually compatible right away, because what’s the point if not, right? So she would readily take the children but she can’t given that her husband is regularly sleeping out all night or having potential mates show up at the house. This family is a mess. Freddie starts looking at the business accounts that Ian was managing up until his death, and finds all sorts of money being paid out to children, former employees, and Nick’s projects. It has to come to an end and he calls on his in-laws with Manette and they begin discussing these payments. The matriarch of the family is still head of the board of directors, her husband started out at the firm and worked his way to the top as well as into the family which he now heads. Lynley by now has been identified as the inspector he really is, and a lot of truths come crawling out of the woodwork. The husband has been having affairs for years and one of the daughters, Mignon, has been blackmailing him, threatening to tell her mother not only about the woman but also about the child she has with him. and as it turns out, as far as Lynley and St. James can tell, there was nothing suspicious about the cousin’s death. It was an accident due to loose stones on the dock in the boathouse. The mother requested her husband to call in Scotland Yard to investigate because she wanted to find out about her husband. She saw it as an opportunity to find out the truth under guise of foul play in Ian’s death. But what no one realized was that another secret was hidden at Nick’s home, his wife had been born a male and had fled to Mexico, where he became the lover of a wealthy man who paid for surgery to become a female. She then fled to the United States to begin her life as a woman in body and spirit, where she met Nick during his wild days in the western US. They fell in love and she never told him the truth, just that she used to pose for underwear magazines and was involved with the Mexican tycoon and so didn’t want any photos of her to be published, afraid that he would look her up and ruin her life with Nick. Deborah St. James’ efforts to find out about this woman caused her to panic. She knew Deborah wasn’t being truthful, and had hooked up with a young reporter from a tabloid magazine. She thought the two of them were out to expose her and went out on the flats to try to run away, but was caught in quick sand and the incoming tide, lost in a fog that had swept in ahead of the tidal bore. Deborah confronted the woman just before she panicked and would always know that she had caused her death. Especially when her husband and Lynley both had asked, begged, and demanded, as much as they could, to let it drop. She finally realized that it was her own longing for a child that had made her want to be friends with this woman. She could never have a child herself, but had found a woman who would carry a baby for her, they planned to go abroad for a time before the birth and she would return with the infant her husband so wanted. A foolish plan these days, since DNA testing would show that neither father or mother carried the same genes. What a mess. It was a good story, very intriguing and I stayed up way too late one Saturday night reading the end of it.

I do enjoy Elizabeth George’s work, the plots are always interesting, the only thing I don’t like is the use of so much explicit sex in her stories. I guess I’m old fashioned enough to wish the implication not be so very well spelled out, but that’s the norm these days. I guess books don’t sell unless they’ve got plenty of sexy details on display. Still a good read though.

Paw and Order, by Spencer Quinn

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Published 2014

A Chet and Bernie Mystery

Bernie Little and his canine, Chet travel to Washington, D.C. to see Bernie’s girl, Suzie Sanchez. But when they arrive, Bernie driving the Porsche and Chet riding shotgun, as he calls it, they see Suzie with another man, who is leaving her carriage house apartment. Bernie doesn’t know what to think. A little while later, this same man is found dead in his office. Politics are involved, as you would expect in D.C., and Suzie being a journalist for the Washington Post, is eager for the scoop that will propel her to the top of the news scene. If she can get the news early on a potential presidential candidate announcing his bid for the White House it could be her ticket out of the lifestyle section and into the headlines. This eagerness could endanger her life, if she didn’t have Bernie and Chet there to get to the bottom of who murdered her friend.

These are lighthearted books and the best part is, they are narrated by a dog! Chet fills us in on how much better his nose is than ours and how confusing it is, for instance when a biker calls Bernie ‘yellow’. Chet is not good with colors but he’s sure that Bernie, the best human in the world, bar none, is not that color. Chet has been K9 trained but never did make it into the police academy, which has turned out to be a good thing because now he’s partners with Bernie in the Little Detective Agency. Chet’s inner dog world turns out to be a very interesting one but mostly, it’s happy. Chet can’t remember lots of things and it seems that’s fine with him since lots of things are not so great to remember anyway. And even when things are looking their worst the simplest thing will have Chet back on cloud nine.

I love the idea of these books, Chet is one of my favorites.