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Murder

Don’t Believe a Word, by Patricia McDonald

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Characters:
Eden Radley, an editor for a publishing house in New York City, whose Mother Tara, has committed suicide after murdering her son, Eden’s half-brother Jeremy, who has an incurable disease.
Flynn Darby, the father of Jeremy and husband of Tara, and an author
Hugh Radley, Eden’s father

Eden Radley does not have a good relationship with her mother, Tara. Eden has never forgiven Tara for abandoning her and her father and marrying her ‘soulmate’, Flynn Darby when Eden is still a young girl. After her new marriage Tara has a child, a buy named Jeremy who sadly is afflicted with a fatal disease. The family moves to Cleveland so that Jeremy can receive treatment from a renowned doctor there. But Eden receives the news that her mother has killed her son and taken her own life at the family’s home, while the father was out of town. Eden takes time off from her job as an editor at a publishing house in New York City and goes to Cleveland for the funeral. What she finds there is anything but a clear case of murder/suicide.
This book kept me guessing the whole time. Was it the father/husband or even Eden’s father? Was it a jealous lover? While the plot did some stretching of what I would think was entirely possible, if you’re willing to go along with that, it was very intriguing. Lots of suspects in a story about a girl who wants to find the truth and also come to terms with her sad relationship with her mother. Finding out what happened becomes a way for Eden to make up for her coldness towards Tara and the brother she refused to acknowledge while he was alive.

Dictator, by Robert Harris

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Published 2016

Characters

Tiro, Cicero’s private secretary
Cicero
Cato
Caesar
Brutus
Atticus

This is a surprisingly good book, especially if you remember a lot of the characters from Latin class, which I did. It tells the story of Cicero, from the time he is exiled from Rome until his death many years later. Tiro, who is one of Cicero’s slaves who also acts as his personal secretary, is the narrator. Tiro has developed a short hand system for recording Cicero during his speeches and work in the law courts. He also helps Cicero with his letters and later on with his works on philosophy. After decades together, Tiro is finally granted his freedom and is given a small farm outside Rome for his services to his master. If it were just a story about these two, it might still be interesting, but all of the old Roman masters are there; Pompey, Cato, Brutus, Cassius, Mark Antony and Cleopatra. It is more a story about the Roman Republic during the time of Cicero’s later life, after his children are grown and Julius Caesar has gained power. Mr. Harris is able to make the story interesting whereas reading it during history class is rather dull I think. What struck me most about the book is how brutal the culture was at the time. I guess they try to keep you from knowing about that as a teenager, but many times the members of the Senate were unable to leave their homes for fear of being butchered in the streets by their opponents or even by the populace. Gladiators are employed to protect them when they traveled from place to place within the Roman Empire. When I first picked up this book I wasn’t even sure that I would read the whole thing. I thought I would give it a try and if I didn’t like it I would read something else. I was very pleasantly surprised by the story telling and readability of the book. I found that I looked forward to picking it up and continuing the journey. I now feel that I know Cicero personally, and could speak with him about his friends and enemies were we to ever meet someday. I highly recommend this book and will search out the others in the series for future reading.

Desperate Measures, by Jo Bannister

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Published 2015

Characters Gabriel Ash, the father, intelligence officer
Cathy Ash, his wife, who’s been kidnapped and held captive with their two sons, Guy and Gilbert for four years in Somalia

Hazel Best, the constable on leave who befriends Gabriel after his wife and children’s abduction

At the beginning of this tale, Gabriel Ash is meeting with his psychiatrist, Laura Fry in the presence of Hazel Best, a friend and police officer, after just discovering that his wife, whom he believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by Somali pirates, is alive. He has just talked to her via computer and is convinced that she is alive and well. It turns out that his two sons are also alive, but what he has to do to get them back safely to England is ghastly. He has been instructed by the pirates that he must kill himself live on the internet before they can be sent home. The two women advise him to call the police but he refuses to do so, saying that leaving the police out of it is part of the deal. However, Hazel is still a member of the police force, although persona-non-grata at the moment, so some collaboration is done. There is another female present at the meeting in the form of Gabriel’s dog, a lurcher named Patience. Lurchers are apparently a cross-breed dog found in Britain between a sight hound, usually a greyhound, and some type of terrier or collie. Patience is taken in by Hazel after Gabriel carries out the demands of the kidnappers but she isn’t your average dog. As Hazel puts it, Patience can say more with the angle of her nose than can be expressed in an essay. But the plot in this story has lots of twists and turns as Hazel is determined to find the pirates responsible for her friend’s death even after his wife and boys are safely home in Norbold. Gabriel’s wife won’t have a dog in her house so Hazel keeps her even though it means she will have to move out of her rented flat and into a small house. Now that she has the extra room, Hazel also takes in a young homeless man called Saturday, a nickname given to him while in care by the other kids, because being Jewish, he was ‘excused on Saturdays’. As Saturday tries to clean up his act Hazel keeps puzzling out the threads of what actually happened to Cathy Ash and the two boys and why her story doesn’t quite add up.
An interesting and readable book and even thought the plot takes some fairly wild turns I found it completely believable due to the skill of the writer’s story telling.

The Outlander, by Gil Adamson

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Published 2007

A truly enjoyable book, the Outlander, by Gillian Adamson tells the story of a young widow’s flight from the avengers of her husband’s murderer. From the very beginning of the book the widow is declared to be the murderer, but just what happened is not clear. The widow doesn’t flee immediately but waits until the murder of her husband is discovered and she is blamed. At the beginning of the novel she is being pursued by her husband’s brothers, two red headed twins who become almost evil itself throughout the chapters of the book. Against all odds the widow manages to escape, leaving the reader hopeful at the close of each terrifying, breathless effort that she will find civilization and someone to help her. This appears to be the case when she is taken in by an elderly, wealthy mad woman she meets in a church, who is willing to harbor her, but who cannot withstand the might of the brothers who track her to the woman’s house. As the widow flees again and again, more of her past is revealed. In flashbacks we are told about her innocent upbringing by her widowed lawyer father and her paternal grandmother, a wealthy life which does not prepare her for the one she endures after her ill-thought-out marriage to her husband. Right away she is taken to a floorless hut without even a window, in a wilderness which had been described to her family as a fine house. Here she struggles to scrub and cook for a man who takes no more thought for her than if she were another mule added to his list of assets. After their baby dies within a few weeks of being born in the same bed he was conceived in, the widow is afflicted with madness. But while the widow is undeniably mentally disturbed in some respects, in others the craziness of her thoughts may lead to her salvation.
Adamson’s poetry is very evident in the writing of the book and although some of the words were lost on me, the writing is compelling. The style of beginning in the middle, during the flight of the widow, and then telling the beginning as the book proceeds along to its end is thoughtful and intriguing. One doesn’t know what actually happened regarding the murder until near the end of the book, lending it the air of a mystery as well as drama.
I can highly recommend this book, you will enjoy it.

After the Crash by Michel Bussi

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Published 2012

Characters
Lylie Vitral, the Miracle Baby who survived a plane crash in 1980
Mark Vitral, her older brother who does not believe she is really his sister
Mathilde de Carville, the matron of a wealthy family whose grand daughter was also on the plane
Malvina de Carville, the older sister of the baby killed in the crash
Credule Grand Duc, a detective hired by Mathilde to find out the truth about the crash.

This is a remarkable story about the aftermath of a plane crash which occurred just before Christmas, 1980. Everyone on board was killed when the plane travelling from Istanbul to Paris crashed into Mont Terri, except for one baby girl. Miraculously, this baby was thrown far enough away from the crash to avoid the fire but was near enough to be warmed by it until rescuers reached the crash site. However, there were two baby girls on that flight, born within two days of each other. Since both sets of parents were dead no one knew for sure whose child she was. The two families involved, one extremely wealthy and the other of modest means, both claimed that the grandchild was theirs. A judge made the final decision, giving the child, Lylie, to the Vitral family based on the clothes she was wearing and the absence of a gold bracelet which should’ve been on the wrist of the wealthy family’s granddaughter. When we arrive on the scene Lylie has just turned eighteen and has come into a sizable amount of money put aside in a bank account by Mathilde de Carville, just in case the judge had been wrong and the girl really was her grand daughter. Mathilde had also hired a detective, Credule Grand Duc, who has been investigating the case for eighteen years, following every lead, looking into every possible clue to prove once and for all whose child Lylie really is. But he has not been able to discover the truth until the night before Lylie’s eighteenth birthday. He calls Mathilde to tell her he has found the answer but needs a couple of days to make sure, and then disappears. He has given Lylie a notebook with all of the information he has dug up through the years, and after reading it herself she gives the notebook to her brother, Marc to read. Then she too disappears. Marc is worried about Lylie and in trying to track her down goes first to Credule’s house and then to the de Carville’s mansion, reading the detective’s notebook while riding the train to his destinations. Malvina, who is now almost certifiably crazy, keeps a Mauzer in her purse and isn’t afraid to use it, tries to get the notebook from Marc, pretending to aid him in his quest to find Lylie. Marc is afraid that his sister is about to do something drastic, even commit suicide. He feels he is racing against time, reading the notebook for any clues it can give, travelling across France to find her.
A very intriguing book, After the Crash keeps the pieces of the puzzle quietly snapping into place with each chapter. I won’t spoil the ending!

The Moth Catcher, by Ann Cleeves

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Published 2015
Characters: Vera Stanhope, detective
Holly and Joe, her asssistants
Lizzie Redhead, a young offender whose parents live in the converted farmhouse near where the murders take place
Percy, a local man is driving home from the pub when he stops to answer the call of nature. Off the side of the road he finds the body of a young man, a house-sitter for the big house, Gilswick Hall, whose owners are visiting Australia where they are about to become grand-parents. Vera Stanhope arrives on the scene and then takes Percy to the home he shares with his daughter Susan. She goes into the big house once a week to clean and has a key, which Vera takes, and with Joe they head to the house itself for clues to the identity of the deceased. They let themselves in through the kitchen and explore the area, only to find the body of another, older man in the apartment where the house sitter lived. Both of these men turn out to be avid students of moths and at first the team can find no other connection between the two. The nearest inhabitants to the crime scene are some retired couples who live in an old farm house that’s been converted to modern apartments. Lizzie Redhead’s parents live in one apartment and they are anxiously awaiting her return home from prison. Lizzie had served time for attacking a young woman with a knife and her parents are understandably uneasy about having her back home with them, although they love their daughter, they don’t know how to handle her. She was locked up when the murders took place, but she may have known the killer.