“The Locked Room (Ruth Galloway Mysteries #14)” by Elly Griffiths

I didn’t MEAN to read this book! I had work to do! Obligations! Even a deadline… But I’m totally hooked on this mystery series. Why would I want to read a book set early in the Covid pandemic, see my favorite characters face lock-down? I read it anyway…

A few years have passed, and Ruth Galloway’s daughter Kate is growing up fast. Ruth and Kate discover a family secret that astonishes and then delights them. Cathbad (everybody’s favorite Druid) gets a severe case of Covid. Kate’s father Nelson gets knocked unconscious, and the two meet on the astral plain (or something like that) and save each other’s lives. 

Elly Griffiths has announced there will be only one more Ruth Galloway mystery, to be released in Spring of 2023. Too bad! But I can’t wait to find out what Griffiths decides to write in the future. 

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“Talking Mysteries – A Conversation with Tony Hillerman” by Tony Hillerman and Ernie Bulow

Tony Hillerman (1925 – 2008) is one of my favorite authors. His books prove that novels and mysteries need not be placed in two separate categories. I can’t define “literature”, but I know it when I read it.

Talking Mysteries was published in 1991, when Hillerman was about halfway through his eighteen book Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mystery series. He had already received the award he valued most, the Special Friends of the Dineh from the Navajo Nation Council. 

Talking Mysteries is the kind of book publishers throw together when they realize they have a winner in their midst. A few interviews, a short story. Some commentary… 

Who was Ernie Bulow? A man of many trades (including trader), he wrote (including a book called Navajo Taboos and two other books of “conversations”) , taught and practiced the arts of photography and silver smithing.

The icing on this cake is a set of sketches from Navajo artist Ernest Franklin, who illustrated some of Hillerman’s novels. On line, I found the even more exciting paintings by Franklin. My thanks to Parrish Books for the thumbnail image reproduced above.

Hillerman was a prolific writer, and we are fortunate he wrote an autobiography called Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir seven years before his death. I recommend it highly. 

“The Blood Card – A Magic Man Mystery” by Elly Griffiths

I read Elly Griffiths’ other mystery series (about forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway) in it’s entirety, but had dropped the Magic Man series because I didn’t like the first book that much. 

I picked up The Blood Card (aka Brighton Mysteries Book 3) by mistake, but totally enjoyed it. 

It takes place in 1952, during the days leading up to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Griffiths makes much of the emerging role of TV in this event. Post war England was embroiled in controversy. Should a woman ascend to the throne? Who needed monarchy, anyway? Why were the rich SO rich, while the commoners who had fought and won World War II struggled with rationing? Who was a communist? WHAT was an anarchist? And how was the entertainment world going to cope with “home entertainment”, aka television?

Having constructed a pleasingly eccentric cast of characters (including a gypsy fortune teller) and drawn them all to a big, old London theatre, Griffiths lets us know that the threat of an anarchist bombing is serious and immediate. Ultimately, the bomb itself is on stage in front of the audience. 

At this point, I had absolutely NO IDEA how the plot would be resolved and the book would end! Who was the bad guy? I was engaged and delighted. Reading The Blood Card was so much fun!

Rather than stay up and rush through it (very tempting), I went to bed and saved the end for the following day. It was highly satisfying. 

“The Crossing Places”, “The House at Sea’s End” and “A Room Full of Bones” by Elly Griffiths

These books are #1, #3 and #4 in Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway novels, a mystery series set in Norfolk, England. Now I can read the rest of these books in order. The Library already has my requests.

Ruth Galloway is an interesting protagonist. A hard working, unmarried university professor, she has fallen for a married police detective. Their relationship unfolds as they work together on various criminal cases.

I just finished the fourth book in this series. Loved it! Griffiths finds ways to move into and out of different world views, including, for example Indigenous Australians and modern-day Druids. In contemporary England, she likes academics (mostly) and has reservations about the rich and/or titled.

I think these books would make wonderful movies or TV series.

“The Janus Stone” by Elly Griffiths – A Ruth Galloway Mystery

How often does anyone write fiction about an academic forensic archaeologist? And female, no less? Griffiths’ protagonist, Dr. Ruth Galloway, kind of spooked me at first. I mean, she’s got the same first name as my sister, and her last name is my hometown! But the setting is in England, so I soon forgot about those two coincidences.

Dr. Galloway is an expert on bones who lives in a part of England littered with archeological sites. The timing is contemporary. Two locations are involved – one out in the country, the other in a small city where a developer needs archeological clearance to tear down an old mansion and erect luxury apartments. (Griffiths is not a fan of developers.)

Griffiths offers us a fairly convincing lunatic, plus other outside-the-box characters. There’s plenty of action, references to mythical figures (like Janus, the two faced god), and some romance. A winning combination!

Griffiths has written two mystery series (totaling 19 titles) and a handful of books under her REAL name, Domenica De Rosa. Looks like she can keep me entertained for a long time!

“Away with the Fairies” and “Unnatural Habits”, Phrynne Fisher Mysteries by Kerry Greenwood

My concentration was greatly impaired by the onset of the Corona pandemic, so I didn’t charge through these books as fast as I normally would. But they were great fun and provided the distraction I needed. Phrynne Fisher is entertaining, and Greenwood has assembled a robust collection of supporting characters.

Greenwood is an Australian author with a law degree and thirty or more books to her credit, of which I have read half a dozen. Recurring themes are feminism and social justice. In Unnatural Habits, Greenwood takes on the Catholic church. Unlike most writers in the mystery genre, her books include bibliographies, which is good because some plotlines strain credulity, and it’s worthwhile to learn what stimulated Greenwood’s imagination.

Unnatural Habits also includes an Afterword, in which she describes her uncanny personal experience in a convent she used as a setting. On its grounds, “…I walked into the most dreadful concentrated suicidal despair I have ever felt. Someone had stood at that window and really wanted to die. I ran.” How many authors share something like THAT?! Out of curiosity, I Googled Abbotsford Convent, now a conference/cultural center. It looks decidedly unhaunted, and is sorrowfully announcing temporary closure due to Corona virus. But where are the nuns? Not a habit in sight!

Ms Greenwood also writes Young Adult novels and science fiction. I’ll give them a try.

“Cocaine Blues” – Book 1 of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (aka A Phryne Fisher Mystery) by Kerry Greenwood, 2006

This book is the first in a series of mysteries. The tone is madcap. Phryne Fischer sometimes (annoyingly) reminds me of Catherine Hepburn in the early scenes of the movie “Bringing up Baby”. A real bitch. Entitled, as we say in the year 2020. A queen of conspicuous consumption. Fortunately, there’s more to Phryne.

The book takes place in Australia during the 1920s. Two prominent themes are drugs (cocaine, mostly) and illegal abortion. Fischer tackles both, and manages to get the better of some nasty bad guys.

A great book to read when you’re in the mood for a sassy heroine.

“Earthly Delights” by Kerry Greenwood

Corinna Chapman Mysteries Book 1 – 2004 (First US Edition 2007)

This entertaining mystery takes place in Melbourne, Australia. Kerry Greenwood is like Janet Evanovich (author of the wacky Stephanie Plum novels, set in Trenton, NJ) but on uppers. Crazier, and lots of fun. The title “Earthly Delights” refers to Corinna’s business, a successful bakery. In place of Stephanie Plum’s idiosyncratic extended Italian family, Corinna lives in an apartment building full of (mostly) loveable eccentrics. She takes up stray teenagers and seemingly lost causes with gusto, and in the end, the good guys win. There are seven Corinna Chapman mysteries, the most recent published in 2018. I probably doesn’t matter what order I read them in.

Greenwood has published dozens of books. I’ve heard her Phryne Fisher historical mysteries series highly praised, so maybe I’ll try them next.

“The Department of Sensitive Crimes – A Detective Varg Novel (1)” by Alexander McCall Smith

This is McCall Smith’s first novel set in Sweden, introducing a new protagonist, detective Ulf Varg. Why Sweden? McCall Smith has so many other irons in the fire! In books like the Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, the reader feels like he knows his territory (as well as his characters) so intimately. You can’t help but love Mma Ramotswe and Botswana. Does McCall Smith really know Sweden equally well? Or has he found a formula he plans to extend to new countries at random?

Indulge me while I ponder the matter of cultural appropriation. Again, why Sweden? Admittedly, McCall Smith’s novels deal with the interior life – the thoughts, feelings, joys and sorrows of his characters. So maybe it doesn’t matter where they are set. But will Swedes find his portrayal of their country sympathetic? Or condescending? Possibly stereotypical? And (getting down to the tiniest detail…) whence came the umlaut (double dot) over the “A” in McCall Smith’s name (see cover above). Sorry, Sir, you can’t just help yourself to an umlaut! That’s linguistic appropriation. Stay in your own lane, as we say in the USA. (This may prove that I have NO sense of humor.)

The plot deals with a series of criminal investigations, and with the interactions between a group of co-workers (and one “outsider”). Also included is Ulf Varg’s psychoanalyst, who conveniently illuminates the disorder afflicting a person targeted in one investigation, clinical lycanthropy. In other words, the overwhelming that delusion that one is, in fact, a werewolf. Clinical lycanthropy is NOT a crime.

I enjoyed the end  of this book (when a romance emerges) more than the beginning, so perhaps I will continue to read about Detective Varg. He and the other characters may grow on me.

“The Case of the Felonious Friend” and “The Question of the Dead Mistress” – Asperger’s Mysteries by EJ Copperman and Jeff Cohen

 

Among the forms of “identity politics” emerging in American culture is the “disability” subculture. The Americans with Disabilities Act (now almost 30 years old) prohibited discrimination based on disability and codified the concepts of accommodation and accessibility. As always, the devil is in the details. The past three decades have been spent working them out, and along with this has come a cultural shift in how “disabled” people see themselves and interact with others. So, logically, a genre of “disability literature” is appearing.

I stumbled on the Asperger’s Mystery series at the Library. The series dates from 2014 and the books I read are #2 and #5 (I think).

When I started reading The Case of the Felonious Friend, I found the language, which is in the first person from an Asperger’s point of view, to be unpleasantly choppy. But an early plot twist caught my attention and I got used to the author’s cadence. A very good mystery read, with the advantage of being set in New Jersey, which I found amusing!

The protagonist, Samuel Hoenig, has spent his life learning how to get along with “neurotypicals”, that is, those of us who aren’t on the Asperger’s/autism spectrum. It’s a struggle, and he works hard at it, with help from his mother and a psychologist. He owns a successful business called Questions Answered. He has two close neurotypical friends (his work partner and a taxi driver named Mike). Samuel is the only character with Asperger’s in The Question of the Dead Mistress. There’s a romance in the works. If this series unfolds like other mystery series (for example, Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone books), it could go on for MANY more volumes.

I’m not giving the plots away. If you like mysteries, read these books! Another good series with an Asperger’s protagonist is Graeme Simsion’s Don Tillman/Rosie series. That’s romantic comedy, not mystery. I reviewed one of these here.

A young person with Asperger’s syndrome is much in the news recently – Greta Thunberg of Sweden, 16 year old climate activist. She has kicked the conversation on climate change to a new level (crisis), addressing international bodies with an enviable level of composure. She’s a notable leader in our difficult times.

So what does it mean to be neurotypical? Hard to say, when “normal” cannot be defined. Usually, it refers to anyone NOT on the autism spectrum. But a new concept, that of “neurological diversity” is emerging, and it is broader. It might include brain injury survivors and stoke victims, who think and function differently from their earlier baselines, and who may (or may not) consider themselves to be disabled. It might include dyslexics. Oliver Sachs wrote about many people whose brains seem to operate “differently”.

I recommend the Asperger’s Mysteries for mystery lovers and anyone looking for new and interesting avenues in contemporary fiction.