Behold, Here's Poison

I reread the classic Georgette Heyer mystery, Behold, Here's Poison, this weekend. This one was written in 1936 so is one of her early mysteries. Gregory Matthews dies of what the doctor calls a heart attack. His family who disliked the head of the family accepts this verdict until his oldest sister insists on an autopsy. No one really believes it's murder, they just think that Gertrude is interfering. In Heyer's mysteries, she emphasizes characters. Aunt Harriet is a wonderful character, Gregory's sister, who has done his housekeeping for years, and has a mania for saving money. She is pitted against, Mrs. Matthews, Gregory's sister-in-law, who sees the best in everyone and manages to get her way no matter what. The real detecting is done by the younger generation of Matthews. The detective, Detective-Superintendent Hannasyde, is almost an afterthought. (In later Heyer mysteries, the police have a much more important role.)

A fun read. Heyer's mysteries can be read in any order so don't look for the first one to start reading. (Her first two are her worst.)

Death and the Hubcap

The second in the Trudy Roundtree mystery series, Death and the Hubcap, lives up to the promise of Linda Berry's first book. Trudy becomes more of a distinct character. The mystery is a good one. Trudy's cousin Hen, in keeping with his attitudes about a woman police officer, assigns her to a kooky report of a man run over by a car. The fun is that the man who claims he ran over the victim, Tanner Whitcomb, has an imaginary car that he steers with a hubcap. It turns out that there really was someone run over and it was murder, so Trudy has her second murder case. The book leads to the art world and the fascinating concept of junk sculptures. The sculptures sound so wonderful, you wish you could see them.

I love the town of Ogeechee and the people who live there. The characters do not fall into stereotypes. Berry paints the characters she introduced in the first book with more details in this book. The book in some ways reminds me of Deborah Adams's mysteries and the characters that she wrote about in her small southern town. (Whatever happened to that wonderful series?) The mystery is a good one. I look forward with pleasure to the next book.

Sand Sharks

We've had technical difficulties at home (and I'm not going to the office much until closer until school starts) that have kept me from posting. But it hasn't kept me from reading. I read Sand Sharks by Margaret Maron. It's the latest in the Deborah Knott mystery series. Deborah is at a conference of North Carolina judges held at the beach in NC. As always, I enjoyed this series. Maron's strengths are her characters and the fun court cases that Deborah has to deal with. Because Deborah is on vacation, we see less of her very extended family than we do in other books. However we learn about some of her early life including her disasterous first marriage which will be fun for longtime readers. The mystery isn't her best -- I didn't find the murderer's motives convincing. And figuring out who all the judges are is tricky. But the characters are wonderful and the portrait of the judges convincing.

It's a fun read but don't start with this book if you haven't read others in the series.

More on Sanditon

I just checked Amazon. It looks like the version of Sanditon that I like so much has been republished in paperback. I just ordered the version finished by Juliette Shapiro and one entitled The Brothers (which was Jane Austen's title for her manuscript) that was finished by Helen Baker. I'll see how the versions compare.

Sanditon

I reread this book just after coming home from the beach. It's Jane Austen's beach novel. It was the last book she ever wrote and was unfinished when she became ill prior to her death. The version I read is titled Sanditon, a novel by Jane Austen and Another Lady published in 1975. According to Wikipedia, the other lady has been identified as Marie Dobbs which may be a pseudonym for Anne Telscombe or both may be a pseudonym for yet another name. (According to Wikipedia the book has also been finished by other authors, I might have to investigate.)

The first 11 chapters are written by Jane Austen. They are excellent. We meet several wonderful characters such as the eldest Mr. Parker who lives and breathes for Sanditon to become a well-known beach resort and Sir Edward Denham, a foolish young man who has read too many novels and quotes from them indiscriminately. He believes that he has been born to be seductive.

The book has barely started before the Other Lady takes over. We've met our main characters who are Charlotte Heywood and the second Mr. Parker. It's an excellent completion of the novel. The Other Lady keeps Jane Austen's tone and most the characters stay true to how Jane Austen introduced them. (Though I'm not sure how Jane Austen would have handled the "mulatto" woman that Jane introduced and I'm pretty sure she would not have had her turn out the way the Other Lady had her.)

It's a delightful read. The continuation has some wonderful scenes such as the trip to Brinshore with every character at their comic best. I highly recommend this version of the book.

Lost Among the Angels

I'm going to try to keep up with posting about my current reading so I don't get further and further behind. I'll post about beach reads in between. I just finished Lost Among the Angels by Alice Duncan. I assume I bought this because someone on DorothyL said something about the series. It's a fun read. The protagonist is Mercy Alcutt, a Boston Brahmin, who has come to Los Angeles to live with her sister and brother-in-law. The time is 1926. Mercy is a protected rich girl who doesn't want to live in her ivory tower anymore. So she gets a job as a secretary to a private detective, Ernest Templeton. Templeton is a not very successful detective, a former police officer who had to leave the force because he was too honest. He deals with crimes on the seedy side of LA; the world of gangsters and molls. Generally I don't like mysteries in that world but this is an exception.

I always enjoy a funny mystery and this is one. A lot of the humor in this book is Mercy's reaction to a world that she doesn't know. You are often ahead of her because you know what the slang refers to. (I was ahead of her on figuring out the bad guys too.) Mercy is a plucky woman who throws herself into her new job. She doesn't want to be a secretary, she wants to be Templeton's assistant. Fun to read. I will look for the next in the series with pleasure.

Wit's End

Just before I went to the beach, I read Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler. This book is about a young woman named Rima Lansill who comes to visit her godmother, Addison Early, a mystery writer, at her home in Santa Cruz, California. Rima is recently orphaned and there is a mystery about the relationship between her godmother, her father, and one of the Addison's book where a man with her father's name was the murderer. I'd call this book a near miss. The atmosphere for this book was great -- I loved the setting. There are very interesting characters. There are many twists and turns in the book. However, it didn't jell for me. I didn't like Rima much. The central mystery didn't come together for me. I'm not even sure what the central mystery was.
One of the difficulties was that Fowler had some plots from Addison's books and some plots from Rima's reality. I couldn't keep them straight. There was a lot of blurring of reality between those strands and it didn't work for me.

One of the themes about the book is about the use of the Internet and virtual reality games. That should have appealed to me more than it did. I did enjoy the fictional books and the fictional detective.

I wish I had been able to post my opinion immediately after I read it because I've forgotten a lot about the book. I had trouble putting it down but my immediate reaction after finishing it was disappointment.