The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley

Here is one of my favorite pianists, Glenn Gould playing J.S. Bach, the Well-Tempered Clavier.

This was such a fun read, I raced through it.

Sir Eustace is sent a sample box of chocolates to his club. He is disgusted anyone would send him something so trite, especially since he doesn't like chocolates. Next to him is Mr. Bendix. Mr. Bendix has lost a bet with his wife and owes her a box of chocolates. Might he nab the box and give it to her? Why not save a few pounds, he figures.

Sir Eustace gladly gives him the chocolates and Mr. Bendix takes them home and gives them to his wife who proceeds to help herself, insisting that her husband eat a couple, which he does out of politeness. He does not care for chocolates.

On his way back to work, Mr. Bendix becomes violently ill and ends up in the hospital. When he finally is released, he discovers his wife is dead.

The chocolates were laced with poison and the immediate conclusion is, who was trying to kill Sir Eustace? After all, they were sent to him.

The police investigate but come to a dead end.

Enter a criminologists club. This is a group of men and women who solve murders as a hobby. One member is a lawyer, but the rest are mystery writers.

What ensues is a couple of chapters devoted to each member as they solved the crime. Not only do they solve it to their satisfaction, but they also demolish each other's theories to their own satisfaction.

However, one of them turns out to be right and the ending is satisfyingly unexpected.

Dark Passage by David Goodis

Here Sarah Chang plays Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor

Josh and I attended friends of ours' 30th wedding anniversary at a rather swank restaurant Friday.  This fellow presided over the festivities.

Call me weird, but I love cows.  I think they're beautiful and I have my eye on a book that I will be buying and reviewing before the year is out.

Well, I hope he led a good life before he met his maker.

Dark Passage by David Goodis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
David Goodis is a recent discovery and a happy one at that. I had read Shoot the Piano Player in an anthology so I was encouraged to give more of his stories a try. This one, in my opinion, surpasses Shoot the Piano Player in story and character development, suspense, and looking into the dark corners of the human soul.

Vincent Parry is condemned to life in San Quentin for killing his wife. He claims he is innocent, but his wife's dying words were that he did it. The prosecuting lawyer persuades the jury more by slaughtering the man's character than providing concrete proof.

Through a series of fortunate events, Parry manages to escape from prison and, after several close calls goes into hiding. But if he didn't kill his wife, who did?

There are many characters in this book, many suspects, and every chapter ends with a close call, leading the reader to believe it's all over for Parry.

The characters are very interesting, each of them believable, but also representing a type of person:

The woman who believes in him and wants to help him.

The woman who is psychotically obsessed with him and wants to destroy everyone and everything she can't have.

The woman who held him in contempt, even up to her dying breath, accusing him of her murder.

The man who seems to want to help him, but actually has ulterior motives.

The men who are in power to turn him in, but show a compassionate side and a surprising amount of insight and accurate measuring up of a man's real character.

Then those that are caught in the cross fire of Parry's drama and end up dead or desperate.

Goodis, himself was a desperate man. His characters are outcasts, innocent people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Loners who must escape their misfortunes.

The best part is the writing. Parry thinks a lot and at a gun fire pace. We read his stream of consciousness throughout the book, since it is all from his point of view in limited third person.

Even though Goodis will never be ranked with Hemingway, I found his writing to be comparable and often surreal.

A movies was made of this novel, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I remember seeing it, but I don't remember how it ended. I guess I'll have to watch it again.

Goodis also wrote The Fugitive, which was made into a TV series and also a movie, starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.

Goodis was a kind of fugitive himself. He lived with his parents and schizophrenic brother and would haunt the seedy neighborhoods of Philadelphia. His last slumming escapade ended with him getting badly assaulted. He died shortly after. Maybe Goodis wrote himself into all of his stories.

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False Scent by Ngaio Marsh

Listening to Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 3 or the "Rock 3" as they referred to it in the movie, "Shine" starring Geoffrey Rush.  This one is performed by Vladimir Horowitz, a personal favorite and the greatest pianist of the 20th century.

As many of you know I have just got back from Israel.  I took a ton of photos so I will impose them on you a little at a time.  Our first stop was New York city where we stayed over night.  Unfortunately it was Columbus Day so all my favorite art museums were closed.

So we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge.  I naively thought it would just be a romantic stroll, just me and my hubby.  No, there were thousands and thousands of people with us. We were practically the only ones crossing into Manhattan.  Most were coming from Manhattan into Brooklyn.  So we were an hour pushing our way through the crowds like Salmon swimming upstream, and often getting pushed into the bicycle lane, which took up half the walkway.

One aggressive cyclist growled at me to move over.  After jumping up like a startled Armadillo getting shot at, I spent a good amount of time on the bridge thinking of all the things I could have said or did to that jerk:  stuck a stick in his wheels, screamed back...instead I had to let it go.  "Let it go, let it go..."

On the Manhattan side we went to see some of my favorite buildings.  The first one is the Flat Iron Building.  I have a large photo book of it's history through the eyes of famous photographers.

Of course the Empire State Building

And also the Chelsea Hotel.

We finished the day off at a Thai Restaurant Josh had learned about on one of the many foodie videos he watches on Youtube: Kum Gang San.

And here's my hubby as we wait for the train back to Brooklyn.  We leave the next morning for the Ukraine and then Israel.  He is holding my purse as I do something I can't remember what.  As you can see he is secure in his manhood.  He said he is going to carry a "murse" (man purse) when we get to Israel.

False Scent by Ngaio Marsh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the first novel I have read of Ngaio Marsh. I hesitated for a while because I had read a short story by her and was not all that impressed. This novel, however, has changed my mind dramatically.

An aging actress is having a birthday party. We meet her and the various people that play roles in her life. I will not say more than that because there are several elements of surprise. You'll have to read the book to find out who is murdered, why anyone would want to murder this person (hint: there are ample reasons, or rather one profound reason many people would be motivated to do away with this individual) and all the clues and details that add up to a well-planned and subtle executing of a crime that no one, including the reader, regrets.

I thought Marsh's writing style was outstanding. Her characters all have strong voices and convincing personalities. I relished her dialogue and narration. The mystery was fine as mysteries go and Marsh certainly deserves her place in the Golden Era of Detective Author's Hall of Fame, but it was that beautiful writing, the descriptions that packed force, but never overly described that sell this book.

Her method of allowing us to see everyone's emotions and thoughts and motives was eloquent as well as effective in moving the storyline forward.

I hope to read many more of Marsh's books.

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Expect more Ngaio Marsh reviews.  My husband, who loves me, won a bid on eBay acquiring all but three of her books for 25 bucks.

A postcard I sent.  A work by Joan Miro.

Maigret and the Wine Merchant by Georges Simenon

Faure is one of my favorite composers.  I love French music in general, but his vocal music has such a wistful, haunting quality to it.  I have played the piano part of this song with many singers over the years.  Here is Claire de Lune by Gabriel Faure.

Maigret and the Wine Merchant by Georges Simenon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another good mystery by the French master, Georges Simenon. Briefly, a wine merchant is murdered. Maigret must find out who did it. That, of course, is the premise of every murder mystery.

Where Simenon makes the mystery genre his own is how he develops his story, his characters and the psychology of a murderer.

The wine merchant is a case study by himself. As Simenon interviews the people who knew him, he finds a man who felt that since he could not make people love him, he could at least make them hate him. This he went about doing with great effectiveness. He made men hate him by sleeping with their wives. He made the women hate him by treating them like dirt. He made his employees hate him by doing both of the above and acting as loathsome as possible.

Then there are the others. The wine merchant's wife who decides that her husband is who he is and she will live her life to the fullest in spite of him. Taking her own lovers, she quite happily lives her life with him and without him, too, when he is dead.

There is one young woman who loves the murdered man, even though he treated her as callously as everyone else. Why? It was all she got and she accepted that.

So who murdered him? Is there one person who has more motive than the others? Or less stable a temperament? Maybe other pressures that finally push him (or her) over the edge?

It turns out there is, but you must read the book to discover who.

This books was a good entertaining read, but also thought provocative as I thought of the reasons people might allow themselves to be used, abused, and then someone who decided otherwise.



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Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

For all you Baroque lovers out there (of which I am one) here is one by Georg PhillipTeleman:  his Suite for Flute and Orchestra in A Minor.  Jean-Pierre Rampal is the soloist and conductor; the orchestra is the Jerusalem Music Center Chamber Orchestra.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I rarely read modern mysteries. There is usually too much perfunctory sex, violence and language. I understand that for some people that makes the novel, but I prefer good writing.

However, I really enjoyed Foyle's War on TV and Horowitz was the screen writer so I was willing to give his novel a try. Do I like it as well as my long time favorites written in the first half of the twentieth century? Not really. Did Horowitz write a good mystery. Yes, I would say so. There were things I liked and things I did not like.

Before continuing know that I am going to be providing a few spoilers, not the murderer(s) or anything, but plot developments that you might not want to know before reading the book for yourself.

First a summary: Susan Ryeland is an editor for a publishing company and has settled down in her apartment for the weekend to read the latest murder mystery from one of their authors.

As the reader, I found this mystery interesting, even if the characters were a little flat. Everybody was unpleasant except for the detective, Atticus Pund and his assistant Jason Fraser. Even so, the story moved along and I was looking forward to finding out "whodunnit".

But this is not to be. The last chapter is missing. Ryeland is as disappointed as we are and tries to contact her publisher as well as the author to find out where the rest of the story is.

That Monday when she gets to work she finds out that the author, Alan Conway, is dead from an apparent suicide. Ryeland finds herself examining Conway's suicide letter and the circumstances and arrives at the conclusion that he did not necessarily kill himself, that there is good chance he was murdered.

So we leave the first mystery and spend the middle part of the book running around with the editor as she attempts to uncover this second mystery. In the end, both mysteries are solved.

What I liked? Both mysteries were pretty good. Overall I enjoyed reading it. Interestingly, the characters in the second mystery were more interesting and likeable than the ones in the first mystery. They seemed to have flesh and blood while the first ones seemed gray and unreal.

Was this on purpose? It's a clever bit of writing if it is.

What did I not like? I was enjoying the first mystery and just when we arrive at the conclusion, we are jolted out of that reality and into a "greater" reality, the one where we have the author who supposedly wrote the first story and now a second mystery. I really did not enjoy that and frankly, maybe it is an original idea, but it added nothing to either story, in my opinion.

Horowitz also includes sections with different styles of writing, showing us what is good writing and what is bad writing. While I admire his ability, this felt a little bit like showing off. He even has two scripts of the same story, showing how one man wrote it badly and another one wrote it well.

Other than the jarring experience of the fourth wall of a fictional story being suddenly removed, the stories were good.

But I'm going back to my Stout, Sayers, Tey and Vickers.



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The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey

I previously had linked to Morten Lauridsin's choral work O Magnum Mysterium.  Here is another soul-subduing piece written for James Agee's poem, "Sure on this Shining Night."

The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every time I read a book by Josephine Tey I think, "This is my favorite mystery by Tey!" Well, this one so far is my favorite.

Inspector Alan Grant is on leave due to burn out and an unexpected development of claustrophobia due to work stress. He is traveling by train to Scotland where he plans to relax with a cousin's family and fish. In his compartment on the train he fights a burning desire to open the door to escape an ever growing feeling of strangulation.

Finally, he comes to his stop and walks down the train aisle to leave. He passes another compartment to see the porter shaking a man to rouse him and tell him he needs to leave.

Grant enters the compartment straightens the man up and asks the porter, "Don't you recognize a dead man when you see one?" Then he leaves the sputtering porter to call the police (he's on vacation!) and goes to a restaurant in town for lunch. He opens the paper he carried out with him from the train to find a strange poem.

"The beasts that talk
The streams that stand,
The stones that walk,
The singing sand,

That guard the way
To Paradise..."

Grant realizes this is the paper that the dead man had under his arm. Without thinking he had picked it up while taking the dead man out of the clutches of the porter.

What was supposed to be a vacation turns out to be a quest to solve a mystery.

As usual, Tey's stories are interesting for their psychological portrait of the different characters and all of us Tey fans enjoy Inspector Grant. Not that he shows up in predictable ways in her stories. None of Tey's stories follow a formula which keep the reader guessing as to the outcome.

Unlike Agatha Christie, whose characters I find often flat and unsympathetic (sorry Christie fans), Tey draws characters that are overall nice, normal people. Not perfect but not un-dimensionally ugly. I like Tey's people. With the exception of Hercule Pierrot, I find it hard to care about any of Christie's.

Not to say that the reason Tey is good is because Christie is bad, but I guess we find it hard not to create a point of reference. Tey's stories would be wonderful even if Miss Marple, Hercule Pierrot or Mr. and Mrs.Beresford never existed.

I just find reading Tey to be a light-hearted and even touching experience. Her characters are living and breathing and have blood in their veins, not ice.

And she flat out writes a darn good mystery.



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The Case of the Empty Tin by Erle Stanley Gardner

 

A symphony is playing on our local APR station.  Sounds like Beethoven. My mistake.  It's Brahms Symphony Number Four performed here by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Solti.  Ah, that brings back the memories.  When I was a graduate student at Roosevelt University, I would buy canceled tickets to see performances at Orchestra Hall (now the Chicago Symphony Center) an hour or two before a performance.  It was great; the tickets were for ten dollars back then and sometimes I got a front row center seat, like the time I got to hear Radu Lupu perform Liszt's Symphonic Variations (it's not Radu Lupu on this link; I couldn't find a recording of him performing them).  Other times I got a seat behind a pole, so it was luck of the draw, although usually I could move after intermission.

I've opened the windows of my house because, even though it is slightly chilly and wet outside, the breeze is freshening up my house and keeping it pleasantly cool.  I put my guinea pigs outside just to give them some air.  Even though the ground is a little wet, the clover is green and they enjoy nibbling on it.  They need a bath anyway.

The Case of the Empty Tin by Erle Stanley Gardner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The perfect book for a rainy day weekend, which this last weekend was. I curled up in my favorite chair next to the French Doors with a perfect view of the rain coming down in the backyard, making the lawn green.

Florence Gentrie is a loving, doting mother and a conscientious manager of household affairs. In the middle of the night she hears a shot. Worried, she investigates. She looks in the cellar and around the house but sees nothing amiss. Well, one thing is amiss and it really bothers her (anything not in order really bothers her). Among her rows of canned preserves is a tin that doesn't belong there. She picks it up and is surprised to find it is empty, even though it is sealed. Puzzled, she leaves the tin and moves on.

She checks on her son, Junior, who should be back from work, but when she gets to his bedroom, he's not there. Troubled, she goes back to bed.

Perry Mason is pouring over legal books preparing for a case when his secretary, Della Street, tells him a young man wants him to come with him, because his rich uncle wants to talk with him over an incident.

The old man, Elston A. Kaar, is wheelchair bound. He tells Perry that he heard a shot in the apartment below and he doesn't know what happened. He isn't concerned about what happened, he just wants the whole thing to be kept quiet because he is keeping a low profile and doesn't want the publicity.

Incidentally, Kaar lives next door to Mrs. Gentrie.

The man, a Mr. Hocksley, who lives beneath Kaar has subsequently disappeared.

What has this got to do with the empty tin? Has Hocksley been murdered? Has he murdered someone? Why does Kaar wish to avoid publicity? Is there a connection between Kaar, Hocksley, and the Gentrie household?

I'm not going to tell you because I don't want to ruin the story.

This so far is my favorite Mason novel. The facts of the case are measured out spoonful by spoonful. Just enough to give you a good appetite for what is happening. The story builds up nicely, keeping the reader's curiosity whetted leading into a satisfactory conclusion.

I recommend it as a good, cozy read.



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Question for you:  what did you read this past week that you really enjoyed?

Deadlock by Ruth Fenisong

Today was a sad weekend.  Lately I have had a horrible time keeping my boy guinea pigs in their pen outside.  Somehow they were breaking out and finding their way to the girl guinea pig pens.  No doubt the girls are pregnant and this has also made the boys aggressive with each other.

So, with heavy heart, I gave the girls away to a family with middle school children who are excited about caring for them and are delighted that they are pregnant.  A teenage boy took Bosephus Hambone.  Thank you Craigslist.

So goodbye Bosephus

 Goodbye Henrietta Sweet Pea

And goodbye my little Nellybelle

That leaves me with my two original piggies, Percy and Little Bear.  I combined the pens and they now have a lot of room to run around in.  They seem to have accepted that the girls are gone and have settled down.

 Appropriately, I am listening to some poignant music:  the Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor Mov. IV by Gustav Mahler

I may have mentioned that I read nonfiction and fiction during the week, but weekends are for fun and that usually means a mystery novel.  Today's review is on what I read this past weekend by a new (to me) author.

Deadlock by Ruth Fenisong

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I had never read anything by Ruth Fenisong before. She has not lasted as Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, or Erle Stanley Gardner have (not to mention Josephine Tey and Agatha Christie) and maybe with good reason.

Her writing is definitely dated, which is not a bad thing in that it can give the reader a taste of a writing style that speaks of a certain era, even if it is archaic. In this case the style is one that was popular in the fifties.

The mystery is not extraordinarily profound although it does keep the reader moving to the end.

What I liked especially was that none of the characters were one dimensional or hateful. Each person was presented in a way that allowed the reader to feel a certain amount of compassion for them.

From the get go the murder victim, Glen Williams, is not shown to be a sympathetic character. Before we turn the first page we know that he is a drug addict and trafficker and a very wealthy one. Or is he?

As the story develops we learn through the various suspects and eyewitnesses that Glen was someone who created an image for himself as very important person who had all sorts of terribly "high up" connections that he was going to use to "help" all his new friends become "hugely successful". As we learn through the other characters, perhaps Glen was not rich or particularly important, in fact maybe he created this legend of himself in order to manipulate other people.

But why? The people he manipulated were just every day people, usually struggling in the world trying to make ends meet. What purpose did it serve to deceive these people? They had no money or connections themselves? Was it just a fantasy world that he wrapped himself up in?

The motive is not immediately apparent. Unlike Agatha Christie whose normal formula was to make the victim someone whom everyone would like dead, we don't see at first what the motive for murder would be.

And, as I said, the other characters, while not perfect, certainly don't seem capable of murdering anyone. So who did it?

All of the above makes a decent story but what sold me and what inspires me to read more stories by Fenisong (she was rather prolific so there's plenty of her material to be had) is that the police aren't stooges to be outwitted by a brilliant detective (think Nero Wolfe or Nick Charles) but decent, intelligent people who care about getting home to have supper with their wives while getting to the bottom of the mystery instead of plowing over everybody to get a verdict. This really appeals to me and why I like Josephine Tey's Inspector Grant so much.

The ending might be considered by some a little hokey but I didn't mind it.

Since finishing Deadlock I have bought two more Fenisong mysteries. Josh said I could break the book fast and buy three books, one for each pig I gave up.



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Hercule Parroh has taken the departure of the pigs more philosophically than me.  "Just a few less ears to nip."