Beyond Grimm, edited by Deborah J. Ross and Phyllis Irene Radford, joins a growing list of anthologies in which contemporary authors take on ancient fairy tales and give them a modern twist. As with all such anthologies, some stories are better than others; this particular volume comes to us (in e-book form only) from Book View Cafe, which is described as "a professional authors' cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world." I presume this means that the authors represented in this book are members of the coop; at any rate, there are a fair number of new-to-me authors listed. I initially thought these stories would be of the slight and humourous variety, as the opening stories ("Hair Raising," by Pati Nagle, a fun take on Rapunzel; "No Newt Taxes," by Patricia Rice, a Snow White remake; "Of Rats and Cats and Teenagers," by Irene Radford, concerning a fairy godsister's tasks) are all quite funny and silly; but then along comes Vonda N. McIntyre's "Elfleda," about genetically modified humans who have become creatures of mythology - mermaids, centaurs, unicorns - and that story just broke my heart. This is an uneven collection, and it's also a mixture of previously published stories and brand new ones, which is a little puzzling; in addition, the authors' "biographies" at the back of the book are all whimsical and fairy-tale based, which is kind of annoying. I'm also a bit suspicious when the editors of volumes like these include not one, but two stories written by themselves; it's a bit self-aggrandizing to do that, I think. I'm glad I read some of the stories, however, and on that basis I would mildly recommend it to people who enjoy re-imagined fairy tales.
In Carnival for the Dead, by David Hewson, Roman forensic pathologist Teresa Lupo travels to Venice to try to find out what has happened to her bohemian aunt, Sofia, who has mysteriously vanished. Almost as soon as she arrives at Sofia's apartment, she starts to receive strange communications, in the form of short stories that feature both Sofia and herself, along with a number of the people she encounters in Venice. The stories are cryptic and the author unknown, but Teresa is sure that they somehow hold the key to Sofia's whereabouts. Now if only she can figure out the clues before too many bodies start piling up.... This is a sort of side entry in Hewson's Nic Costa series in that Teresa is a secondary character in those books, but although referred to in this story none of the main characters in that series put in an appearance here. The Venice of this story is quite unsettling too, somewhat murky and menacing, an interesting contrast to the city as it is portrayed, say, in Donna Leon's series; for me, this added to the semi-dreaminess of the tale (especially in the short stories that Teresa receives) as well as to the sense of lurking menace. The mystery is fairly clued, but up to the very end I had no idea who was behind the stories or the events taking place in Teresa's "real" world, which for me is always a sign of an excellent mystery. You don't need to have read the Nic Costa series to appreciate this novel, although they are a lot of fun on their own. Recommended.
Beastly Things is, I believe, the 21st novel in Donna Leon's long-running Commissario Guido Brunetti series set in contemporary Venice. In this installment, the body of a man is pulled from an out-of-the-way canal, but he is found to have been stabbed to death, not drowned by accident. There is no clue as to his identity except that he seems to have a strange bodily malformation, a very swollen chest and neck. This fact leads Brunetti to the man's identity; he was a veterinarian who also worked as an inspector at a slaughterhouse, inspecting the live animals to be certain that they're healthy and then inspecting samples of the resulting meat to make sure it's not contaminated. All is not as it seems at the abbatoir, however, and soon Brunetti finds himself questioning the very food he eats.... As always, it is a delight to enter Leon's Venice - having never been there, I have no idea if it's an accurate representation, but I love the way Brunetti and his colleagues and family go about their lives in this enchanted place that is so very familiar to them. And Brunetti remains one of the most thoughtful, philosophical even, detectives in all of modern detective literature; he, and the other main characters, are so finely drawn and such real, complex human beings that one hopes to visit Venice one day and have a prosecco with them all. I am sad that I received this book yesterday (as I write this) and finished it today, even though I tried very hard to draw out the reading experience; it means another year or so before a new novel in the series arrives to delight me all over again. Reading this book just may make the reader consider becoming a vegetarian (which I am not - at present), be warned that there are some graphic scenes of the work inside an abbatoir. Aside from that squeamishness, this book is highly, highly recommended.
Vendetta is the second novel in Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series. Once again the transplanted Venetian is sent from Rome to a remote corner of Italy, in this case Sardinia. A wealthy construction magnate and his wife and guests have been brutally murdered at his ostentatious (and hyper-secure) villa, a massacre that was caught by one of the ubiquitous camera that his security team had set all over the property; yet the perpetrator managed to remain out of camera sight throughout the event. A suspect is quickly arrested, but that individual has close ties to one of the political parties currently in (coalition) power and members of that outfit arrange for Zen to go out to the island and pin the crime on another potential suspect. In the meantime, Zen's colleagues mostly resent him and one in particular has it in for him, and it's quite possible that this colleague can ruin his life - assuming he survives Sardinia, that is.... As with the first novel in this series, Ratking, there is a huge amount of tension building throughout Vendetta; although Zen has more support this time than he did previously, he is still essentially thrown into a very dangerous situation with little information and with the awareness that the people who sent him there don't really care if he lives or dies. I found his character more fleshed out than in the first book, which makes sense as we readers are getting to know him a little bit better with each book in the series; I would have liked there to have been perhaps a few more characters who are friendly to him, as in this novel it seems almost everybody is outright hostile toward our hero, but other than that quibble, I found the novel quite absorbing and tense. Recommended!
Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit series is a mix of serious crime, strange personalities, impossible events and great humour; and the most recent in the series, The Memory of Blood, brings all those elements together in a unique brew. The Peculiar Crimes Unit, led by octogenarians John May and Arthur Bryant, is called upon to investigate a crime in which an infant is killed and thrown out of a window from an apparently locked and empty room; the only clue is the positioning of a valuable Punch doll that appears to have committed the crime. The adults in the house were giving a party to celebrate the success of a new play at the time of the crime, and the actors, crew and critics at the party are all potential suspects, not to mention the wayward daughter of a prominent government official. As the bodies pile up, it's left to Bryant and May to understand the significance of the Punch and Judy plays if they want to solve the crimes.... Arthur Bryant and John May create one of the most endearing partnerships in all of crime fiction, the former being as eccentric as they come and the latter representing the suave, sophisticated face of London. They and their team seem to be phased by nothing, even when it appears that only a supernatural explanation can solve the crime, and they go about their investigations with doggedness and good humour. You don't need to have read the eight earlier novels in the series to enjoy The Memory of Blood, but you'll get more out of the relationships and personalities involved if you do. Recommended.
London Under, by Peter Ackroyd, is a compendium of trivia about what lies underneath the ground of London, England. Items ranging from Bronze Age relics to Roman tiles to Anglo-Saxon graves are to be found, as are the choked remains of numerous springs, wells and rivers. Early stations of the Underground can be found, as can Victorian sewer systems and, of course, any number of tunnels for the housing of gas and water pipes, electric and telephone wires, and so on. It's interesting because the city is so old and the land thereabouts has been occupied by humans for so long, but the details are likely only to be of interest to Londoners or others who are intimately familiar with the city; to someone who's only visited there a few times, like me, the information concerning the exact location of certain items is meaningless because I have no idea where those locations are. Still, there's a certain fascination in the realization that the many streets, alleys and roads in London that have "spring" or "well" in their names are, in fact, marking an area where once a spring or well existed.
The Floating Admiral is an early (1932) collaborative novel written by a number of different authors, each contributing a chapter to the story and a suggested solution to the crime. A corpse is unexpectedly found in the bottom of a floating rowing boat on a tidal river in a sleepy seaside town, and Inspector Rudge is assigned to investigate. The body turns out to be that of a retired Admiral who has only recently moved to the area, but there seem to be a remarkable number of potential suspects despite the fact that hardly anybody knows him! There's his niece, there's the Vicar, there's a retired seaman, there's the possibly fortune-hunting suitor... The list goes on and on, and only Inspector Rudge can make sense of it all.... The Detection Club was formed in England in the late 1920s or early 1930s, existing "chiefly for the purpose of eating dinners together at suitable intervals and of talking illimitable shop" in the words of Simon Brett in the introduction to this 2011 reissue, and at the time of this novel, that club included such luminaries as G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. All contribute to this tale, along with 10 other authors whose names will not be so familiar to today's readers. Each writes a chapter that either illuminates the case further or further confuses it; there is an appendix in which most of the authors also provide the solution that each has decided s/he would use if each were writing the entire novel alone, which is most entertaining. Given that this was written in the early 1930s, there's a bit of casual racism (one "n" word reference, the characterizing of some people in Hong Kong as "coolies") and a good deal of sexism, but if you can get past those sins of past times, this is quite an entertaining read - and I was kept guessing until the very end, always a good sign in a murder mystery! Recommended.
Cabal is Michael Dibdin's third entry in his Aurelio Zen series, and like the previous two, it features the assumption by Zen's superiors and other people in power that he can be relied to do what he is asked to do because he is as thoroughly corrupt as they are. Of course, Zen is anything but corrupt, but that perception turns out to be quite handy at times.... In this novel, Zen is called in to "investigate" following the death of a prominent figure, a Prince who has apparently committed suicide by throwing himself from high in the basilica of St. Peter's in the Vatican. Because the Vatican is a separate "country" in the midst of Italian Rome, the Italians have no authority over the case, but to avoid the possibility that others might think the Vatican is covering up a crime, Zen is asked to look into it as an "independent" investigator and, of course, to find what the authorities want him to find, that the man killed himself. But the man did not kill himself, and quickly Zen finds himself mired in a conspiracy that seems to take in Italian judges, the Vatican and a mysterious entity known only as the Cabal.... As with most of my favourite mystery series, Zen's personal life advances from book to book even as his professional career takes him into heady waters. I'm enjoying my discovery of Dibdin's characters, particularly this complex man, and I find the plots to be fascinating, particularly in their glimpses into the dark side of Italian policing and politics. Recommended!
Mumbai Noir, edited by Altaf Tyrewala, is one of a series of original anthologies being published by Akashic Books, in which authors from or associated with a given locale write short mystery stories, focusing on the noir end of the spectrum. This volume contains original stories by Riaz Mulla, Paromita Vohra, Devashish Makhija, Abbas Tyrewala, Ahmed Bunglowala, Smita Harish Jain, Annie Zaidi, R. Raj Rao, Avtar Singh, Altaf Tyrewala, Sonia Faleiro, Namita Devidayal, Kalpish Ratna and Jerry Pinto; I was not familiar with any of these authors, but some are quite well known in India. As always, I preferred some stories to others, but the quality was quite high throughout the volume and several of the stories were up there with anything I've ever read. I was especially taken with Ratna's "At Leopold Cafe," with its mix of past and present such that you're never sure if the characters in the "now" parts are the same as those in the "then" sections; Zaidi's "A Suitable Girl" was quite frightening in its stalker tropes; and "By Two" by Davashish Makhija, about twins, one of whom is mute, just absolutely blew me away. I was a bit surprised by the high percentage of stories dealing with Mumbai's transgender and/or eunich population, which I knew (and know) nothing about. There were also a fair number of stories concerning relations between Hindi and Muslim characters, which is more of an issue in India than appears in Western news media. The book helpfully includes a map of Mumbai with locations of the stories marked, a short glossary of some (but not all) terms used in the book, and brief biographies of the authors, with photos. I very much enjoyed this glimpse into one dark subsection of the vast Mumbai population, and definitely recommend it to readers of mysteries in general and noir in particular.
And finishing up the month with that lovely standby, Rex Stout. I'm reading Gambit, the umpteenth gazillion in his Nero Wolfe series, this time set in, I think, the early to mid 1960s, somewhere in there. As always, good fun!
- Current Mood:
happy - Current Music:"Dedicated to the One I Love," in my head
