Reviews by T de V

I’ve just finished Leighton Gage’s A VINE IN THE BLOOD which is a marvelous crime story which takes place in Brazil. Sometimes in stories told in locations with cultures with which I’m not familiar, I end up feeling disoriented—I have no sense of what should be familiar—and so I lose the immediate connection with the story, but there was no such feeling with A VINE IN THE BLOOD. Not being interested in spectator sports, I noticed the populace in Brazil loves futebol (known to Americans and Canadians as soccer) with about the same interest I have for American sports events. It’s awkward describing a story by what it is not, but both of these characteristics would presuppose my negative response to the story, but I loved it!

Someone has been terribly clever. That’s what you’ll think moments after the show begins. The Real Inspector Hound, a farce written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Steve Hill, asserts that fiction is make believe and anything goes. There’s a double-meaning to most parts, like a drawing which is both a representation of a real thing as well as a pattern on the page.

DorothyL is a 20+ year old mailing list which goes to ~3K addresses of people in 25+ countries who are interested in mystery, suspense, & crime fiction. Click DorothyL to start at the top of the DorothyL section on this site (i.e. the underlined and highlighted word). This link will give you some extra information about the group of DorothyLers.

THE HOLY THIEF by William Ryan © 2010 was captivating with some clever twists.

P.I. Scott Riker has been uprooted from the Southwest and transplanted to Québec City at the tail end of winter, so he has a fine appreciation for the nuances of weather. The story is told in the first person, so we hear his thoughts as he perambulates through his concerns. As an American anglophone, he introduces us to French Canadian culture in ways which joyfully celebrate its oddities and underscore his strangeness. He’s an outsider observing and his worldview is often sardonic and amusing. This story presents one element I particularly like in fiction: threaded through the story is meaningful commentary on our world by a strong character with a humble, appraising self-view. Piquant!

TREACHERY IN THE YARD by Adimchinma Ibe is a Nigerian noir police procedural. The story, a short novel (160 pages), broke my reading slump. In the normal course, I don’t like this type of book. People are mostly bad, doing bad things. Politics and corruption are probably similar throughout the world. There’s a high body count and quite a lot of violence, but it’s mostly off-scene.

However, in TREACHERY IN THE YARD, I was intrigued.

Once I got over the shoddy details of the ebook format, Margaret Koch’s BLONDE JOKE was a highly enjoyable read. A side effect of the sloppy epub construction was that I skipped the prologue entirely. Skipping the prologue is recommended as it leaves the guilt of some characters unresolved which I feel makes the story stronger and more interesting. Of course, you will have to mimic my habits of not reading any synopsis of the story as this case illustrates my oft-lamented claim that synopses kill half the mystery of a story.

VIENNA TWILIGHT is a very satisfactory fifth addition to the series written by Frank Tallis. However, if you’re unfamiliar with the series, my remark won’t mean much, so here’s a taste of the novels.

If one takes the large view, a well done cozy mystery is about the characters whose lives and personalities are revealed in the story; the crime(s) themselves sink into the background, like stones at the bottom of a smooth, swiftly flowing creek—a pleasurable, slightly bumpy ride. Such is the case with THE SQUARE ROOT OF MURDER by Ada Madison (aka Camille Minichino).

MIRROR IMAGE by Dennis Palumbo has nice imagery. With just a few words, the author turns the story tactile.

Daniel Rinaldi is a psychologist who specializes in treating victims of violent crime. He’s a bit of an insufferable prig, but he genuinely cares for lots of people, even his enemies, and some of his thoughts are admirable. A few of his self-revelations are piquant though there felt too few of them (I seem to appreciate self-discovery).