Moriarty Meets His Match - Anna Castle

   2016; 290 pages.  Book 1 (out of 4) in the “Professor & Mrs. Moriarty Mystery” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Historical British Mysteries; Sherlock Holmes.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

 

    You could call it “Professional Jealousy”.  Professor James Moriarty admits that.

 

    But he has a degree in mathematics.  And a job as an assistant patent examiner.  And he’s frankly convinced that Teaberry & Company’s new-fangled, recently patented “Compact Spherical Engine” has some serious flaws, particularly as far as fuel efficiency goes.

 

    So when it’s announced the engine will be showcased at the 1885 London International Inventions Exhibition, Moriarty sneaks in the night before and secretly “adds” a little fuel gauge to it.

 

    Unfortunately for him, the next day, when the Compact Spherical Engine is fired up, it explodes, killing its operator.  Was that due to a design flaw, or did someone sabotage it?  Unfortunately for Moriarty, Scotland Yard is bringing in a consulting specialist to investigate.

 

    Whose name is Sherlock Holmes.

 

What’s To Like...

    Moriarty Meets His Match is a reimagining of two of the main characters in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, but this time around, top billing is given to Moriarty.  Holmes still plays a prominent role, and there are at least three others that reprise their roles here: Dr. Watson, Mrs. Hudson, and Inspector Gregson.  Both Moriarty and Holmes are still incredibly brilliant, and I liked that Anna Castle makes both of their characters a bit more “gray.”

 

    There are three main storylines.  First and foremost is the parallel investigations by the two protagonists into the exploding spherical engine.  The second involves a new character, Angelina Gould, and her efforts to find and recover some incriminating letters penned by her brother, Sebastian.  Those sound like very disparate plot threads, but the author manages to deftly make them converge.

 

    The third plotline is hinted at in the series title.  There is no “Mrs. Moriarty” at the start of the story, and it is quite entertaining to watch as the super-nerd Professor Moriarty struggles to cope with his own feelings and the delightful attentions of a attractive woman.  We won’t reveal who she is, but it doesn't take very long to figure it out.

 

    I thought the world-building was expertly done.  Like a Conan Doyle episode, I got a great “feel” for London in the 1880s.  The “musical jump-rope” was a fascinating (and presumably factual) recreation, and I had to look up who “Sheridan La Fanu” was.  I learned the correct pronunciation of “Miswell” (it rhymes with ‘drizzle’) and am still trying to figure out what a “front-sheeter” is.

 

    The ending is suitably logical, which I expected since two geniuses are investigating.  Holmes and Moriarty still don’t like each other, but at least they respect each other’s sleuthing.  A couple of dei ex machina provide key breaks, but it’s still a challenge to properly evaluate them.  Things close with a crafty impersonation plot twist.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.2*/5, based on 1,640 ratings and 211 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.95*/5, based on 1,034 ratings and 115 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Grizzled (adj.) : having or streaked with gray hair.

Others: Moil (n.); Delimited (adj.); Spunks (n.); Frowsty (adj.).

 

Excerpts...

    “Why the deuce did you let Hainstone trick me into judging that plump baby contest, Ramsay?  Can’t abide the little buggers!  How am I to tell one from the other?”

    The secretary answered him in soothing tones.  “The name of both mother and baby are right here in this envelope, my lord.  You need only read them off.  The village doctor selects them in advance.  Part of the British Mothers Health and Wellness Program.  It’s good for you, politically, my lord.  It shows your concern for the people.”

    Nettlefield snorted.  (pg. 196)

 

    Moriarty kissed the little curl on her temple.  He worshipped that curl.  “You should marry me because without you my life can never again have a meaning.  You are more beautiful than the arrangement of binomial coefficients in Pascal’s triangle.  You mean more to me than Euclid’s postulates of plane geometry.”

    She frowned.  He loved it when she frowned.  She licked her rosy lips and said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

    “It’s the highest praise I have to offer.”   (pg. 261)

 

Kindle Details…

    Moriarty Meets His Match sells for $4.99 right now at Amazon, as do the other three books in the series.  Anna Castle’s “Francis Bacon Mystery” series has eight volumes with prices ranging from free to $4.99.

 

“A secret can only be kept by two people if one of them is dead.”  (pg. 145)

    There’s very little profanity in Moriarty Meets His Match; I noted only four instances in the first 33% of the book, and all of them were of the milder eschatological ilk.  One adult situation is mentioned later on.  I noted just one typo: entrée/entry, so kudos to whoever did the editing.

 

    Some reviewers didn’t like that Sherlock Holmes is cast in a somewhat unfavorable light, but I thought it was a refreshingly new angle.  At one point in the story, Holmes admits that Dr. Watson has a habit of portraying his detective prowess far more brilliantly that it actually is.  To boot, this is a four-book (and presumably completed) series, and I'm anticipating that Moriarty and Holmes will develop a closer professional relationship as the series progresses.

 

    I’ve read two of Anna Castle’s “Francis Bacon Mysteries” series; and liked them both.  I was curious to see how her “Professor and Mrs. Moriarty” books would measure up against Sir Francis Bacon’s endeavors, and I’m happy to report that both series are page-turners for anyone who, like me, loves to read Historical Mysteries.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last quibble.  While I loved the inclusion of several characters from the Arthur Conan Doyle series, there was one glaring omission.  There’s no Mycroft Holmes!  He's Sherlock’s brother and makes his sibling look like an observational amateur.  Here’s hoping he shows up at some point in the next three books, even if it’s just a cameo appearance.

The Last Moriarty - Charles Veley

   2015; 292 pages.  Book 1 (out of 36) in the “Sherlock Holmes and Lucy James Mystery” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Historical Mystery; Thriller; Sherlock Holmes.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    Frederick Foster fell to his death from the Westminster Bridge last night.  Or maybe he jumped.  Or maybe someone pushed him.  Mr. Foster was an American.  A business card found on his body identifies him as an employee of the Standard Oil Corporation.

 

    Sherlock Holmes has been summoned rather early in the morning to come to St. Thomas Hospital to examine the corpse.  His faithful aide, Dr. Watson, is invited to come along.

 

     Several important people have also journeyed to the hospital to hear what Holmes has to say about whether this was an accident, a suicide, or a murder.  They include England’s First Lord of the Admiralty, the Lord Chancellor of Her Majesty’s courts, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner of London, and the Secretary of State for War’s chief of staff.  Oh yeah, and the Prime Minister himself, Lord Salisbury.

 

    Now why would such a bunch of high muckamucks be interested about the death of an American businessman?

 

What’s To Like...

    The Last Moriarty is set in November, 1895 in the classic setting for Sherlock Holmes stories: the greater London area.  The tale is presented the traditional way: via Dr. Watson’s journal.  A number of characters from the Arthur Conan Doyle series also show up here, including Inspector Lestrade, the Baker Street Irregulars, and my personal favorite, Mycroft Holmes.

 

    There are also lots of new people introduced: some good guys, others baddies, but all of them interesting to meet.  Two of them, Zoe Rosario and Lucy James, I feel certain will be sharing the spotlight with Holmes and Watson in future tales.

 

    I was impressed with how adeptly Charles Veley can spin a story in “Watson-esque” style.  The storyline quickly gets more complicated, and plot twists abound.  There are even several instances of Sherlock making those incredible deductions when meeting someone, with onlookers gasping at how he could do that, and Holmes then explaining what observations clued him in.  I loved those interludes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories.

 

    Everything builds to an exciting ending.  The bad guys’ ultimate intentions are revealed and seemingly have things completely in their control.  Their nefarious plans will fail, of course, but the fun is seeing just how that somehow transpires.

    The chapters are short, with 66 of them covering 292 pages, and The Last Moriarty is both a standalone novel and part of a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 5,461 ratings and 761 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.20/5 based on 4,030 ratings and 312 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Moriarty was both physically unattractive—‘reptilian,’ as you have described him, Dr. Watson—and also entirely lacking in ability to perform a musical composition in the spirit intended by the composer.  Due to his mathematical gifts he was able to grasp the theoretical aspects of a composition instantly, that much is true.  But he had no feel, no heart, to understand and project the emotion of the composer, which is, of course, the sole reason for the existence of any musical performance.”  (loc. 1482)

 

    Holmes would be accused of placing a personal relationship above matters of national importance.  I recalled an ironic poem by Mr. Kipling, the gist of which was that we ordinary people frequently take an attitude of superiority to soldiers, until the shooting starts and we need them to protect us.  The critics of Holmes, I thought, would not hesitate to turn on him if he failed in his mission.  (loc. 2294)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Last Moriarty sells for $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The other e-books in this 36-book series are all priced within the $2.99-$4.99 range.

 

She appeared to be in radiant health, possibly due to the beneficial effects of frequent exposure to music.  (loc. 577)

      I didn’t note any cusswords at all in The Last Moriarty, and that always impresses me.  There’s action and intrigue aplenty, yet I don’t recall any "adult situations."

 

    A number of Sherlock Holmes series have cropped up over the last couple decades, due to the copyrights expiring on the characters in the series.  I’ve sampled several of them, and their quality ranges from “pretty good” (including one co-written by Kareem Abdul Jabbar) to “downright amateurish” (we’ll not name names).

 

    The Last Moriarty comes closer to duplicating Arthur Conan Doyle’s style of writing and storytelling than any other series I’ve read, and that's a giant plus.  Book Two, The Wilhelm Conspiracy, is on my Kindle and I’m eager to see how it compares to Book One.  Stay tuned.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  I loved seeing chemistry play an important part of the storyline.  White phosphorus, chloroform, and hyoscine all crop up, much to my delight.  Okay, full disclosure, I am a career chemist, so I’m a bit prejudiced about this.  But still, when chemicals are involved in the tale, it means that the author has done a bunch of research.

Mycroft and Sherlock - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

   2018; 411 pages.  New Author(s)? : No.  Book 2 (out of 3) in the Mycroft Holmes series.  Genres : Historical Mysteries; Victorian England; British Detectives.  Overall Rating:  8*/10.

 

    London in November 1872.  For Mycroft Holmes, it’s good to be back home after a thrilling adventure in the New World on the island of Trinidad.  Now he’s got a comfortable government job as “Special Consul to the Secretary of State for War".

 

    A pair of friends that Mycroft met in Trinidad have also accompanied him back to England and are loving it.  Cyrus Douglas now runs an apprentice school catering to street urchins.  And Huan is happily employed by Mycroft as both his carriage driver and bodyguard.

 

    Yes, life is good for Mycroft right now.  Indeed, his biggest source of stress is his somewhat wayward younger brother, Sherlock, who’s everything Mycroft is not: energetic, lanky in build, rash in temperament, and bored silly with having to study the musty old language of Latin.

 

    But there’s murder afoot in Victorian London: someone is gruesomely slicing up various lowlifes in the local Chinese community in Savage Gardens.  Sherlock finds the killings worthy of cogitation, but Mycroft doesn’t, since violent deaths in the slums of London are not that uncommon.

 

    But then one of Cyrus Douglas’s students ends up dead from a drug overdose, and the two Holmes brothers jump into action.  It’s a pity though, that they both pursue their investigation separately, and neither one wants to share their findings with the other.

 

    Such lack of communication could be deadly.

 

What’s To Like...

    Mycroft and Sherlock is the second Holmesian collaboration between Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, but unlike the first book (reviewed here) where Mycroft was the featured protagonist, now he and Sherlock get equal billing.

 

    The storyline quickly becomes more complex.  Beyond investigating the "whodunit" of the abovementioned murders, Mycroft and Sherlock now have to:

    a.) deal with the Queen wanting Mycroft to “fix” an upcoming soccer match,

    b.) determine the tangled web of reasons behind the killing of the young student,

    c.) look into a suspicious shipwreck in Dorset, although Cyrus will do that, as the cargo that was lost in the accident was owned by him,

    d.) try to decipher fifteen mysterious “codes” scratched on subway walls in various subway stations.

    Woven throughout all of these plotlines is a trail of drug usage, which is not a spoiler since there’s an image of a hypodermic needle on the book cover, as well as at the start of every chapter.

 

    I loved the tie-ins to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle series.  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse present plausible backstories for things like Sherlock’s opium habit, why he plays the violin, how he came to organize the “Baker Street Irregulars”, and why Mycroft leads such a sedentary lifestyle.  We even get our first glimpse of Sherlock’s future landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

 

    I liked the “feel” of Victorian-era London, especially since I presume both authors are American.  The colloquialisms of that time were also fun, such as a “jimmy-grant” (immigrant), “bruvver-in-loss”, “fresh squab and mash”, “peeler” (cop), and my favorite, a “knocker-upper”, which turns out to be a window-cleaner.

 

    Along the way, we learn a little chemistry (how to make a more potent opiate), a little Latin (as does Sherlock), and a little Mandarin Chinese (“shòu-shòu”).  We visit an opium den, and read the Agony Columns in the newspaper, and, best of all, are treated to numerous instances of startling observations and deductions by both Holmes brothers.  Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud.

 

    The ending is suitably complex and exciting.  It’s not particularly twisty, but hey, if the sleuthing is done right, there shouldn't be any unplanned turns of events.  The final chapter is a revealing Epilogue, containing a bunch of explanations about the whys and wherefores of Mycroft and Sherlock solving the case.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Autodidact (n.) : a self-taught person.

Others: Chockablock (adj.).

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “I wants to be a knocker-upper, Mr. Capps, cuz I already knows how to count to twelve.”  (pg. 60)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 338 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.02*/5, based on 2,404 ratings and 349 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “They find it [the corpse] just this morning,” Huan added,

    “Ah.  And who is the ‘they’ who found it?” Mycroft asked.

    “A publican,” Huan replied.  “Closing shop, two in the night it was, good working man, walking home, and he go falling over a body in the dark!”

    “Dear, I hope he was not injured,” Mycroft replied.

    “Oh no, he was dead.  Cut up in four pieces!”

    “No, I mean the publican.”  (pg. 14)

 

    “I am coming with you, of course!”

    “Thank you, no,” Douglas replied.

    “Mr. Douglas.  You are fatigued and lack proper nourishment.  You have also abused your tendons and muscles most unmercifully.  And I can glean from how you sit that your lower back and right hip are in some distress.  Not to mention that your left cornea has been scratched by sand –“

    “Does this soliloquy have a point?” Douglas interrupted, inadvertently rubbing his injured left eye while hating himself for proving the smug little sot correct.  (pg. 93)

 

“What harm could one more night of Latin possibly do?”  (pg. 302)

    There’s not much to nitpick about in Mycroft and Sherlock.  Some of the plotline tangents seemed a bit awkward, such as the soccer match meddling by Mycroft.  It was hard to see how that contributed to the tale, other than showing how the Holmes brothers’ brilliant deductive reasoning can be utilized in areas other than crime-solving.

 

   Ditto for the Royal Adelaide shipwreck.  Yes, it provided an important clue, but its timing seemed incredibly opportunistic, enabling Sherlock to become actively involved in Cyrus’s apprentice school.

 

    For me, the London setting wasn’t nearly as exotic as Book One’s Trinidad locale.  Also, I still find Mycroft more fascinating than Sherlock, but I recognize the need to bring the more famous brother into the series, and it must be admitted that the authors did a wonderful job of doing so.

 

    That’s about it.  Overall, Mycroft and Sherlock kept my interest from start to finish, and I still think Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse do the best job of replicating the spirit and tone of the Arthur Conan Doyle series.  Lord knows, there are lots of poor imitations out there.

 

    8 Stars.  Book One, Mycroft Holmes, came out in 2016.  This book followed in 2018, and the third one, Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage was published in 2019.  Alas, since then. there have been no more installments, which leads me to wonder if Kareem and Anna have moved on to other projects.  I, for one, would be bummed if that's the casen my opinion, that would be a real bummer.

Old Bones - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2019; 369 pages.  New Authors? : No.  Genre : Archaeology; Action-Intrigue; Historical Mystery.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    The ill-fated Donner expedition achieved dubious but lasting fame when they became stranded in the high Sierra Nevada mountains during the brutal winter of 1846-47 and had to resort to cannibalism to keep from starving.

    Based on information supplied by a direct descendant of one of those pioneers, archaeologist Dr. Nora Kelly has applied for a grant to search for the campsite of a small group of the Donner party that splintered off.  Grants are generally hard to get, but Nora is optimistic since there are  rumors that one of the settlers was carrying a chest of gold coins on the trip, with a present-day worth of twenty million dollars.  Greed creates grant money.

    Meanwhile, newly-graduated FBI Agent Corrie Swanson grows weary of her agency apprenticeship, and has finally been given an investigation of her own to pursue.  Someone has dug up an old historical grave and made off with the upper half of the corpse.  The graveyard is on Federal land, and that means the FBI has jurisdiction.

    Nora and Corrie don’t know it, but they’ve both worked in the past with another FBI guy – Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.  That might be an ice-breaker when the two of them cross paths in the Sierra Nevada wilderness and are forced to team up.

    But both have headstrong personalities and they might find each other to be uncooperative and arrogant. I wonder how Aloysius would handle this.

What’s To Like...

    Both Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson have previously been protagonists in Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child novels, Nora in Thunderhead (reviewed here), and Corrie in White Fire (reviewed here).  In Old Bones they now seem to be “promoted” to a series of their own, one that will presumably have a heavy emphasis on archaeology, which I count as a plus.  It will be interesting to see how Preston and Child come up with enough old ruins and baddies to keep our two protagonists busy.

    There's a bunch of mysteries and intrigue here to keep your interest.  Will the “Lost Camp” of the Donner party be found?  Was there really a chest of gold, and if so, will it be found?  What does a murder in Paris in the prologue have to do with anything?  Who’s stealing the corpses, and why?  And finally, why are people in Nora’s archaeological expedition turning up dead?

    I like the initial interplay between Nora and Corrie when they meet.  You’d expect them to be palsy-walsy right away, and that isn’t the case.  Neither one of them “plays well with others”, especially with their underlings and overlings.  Yet I felt that Old Bones portrays both characters at their best (so far), and I’m guessing they both will be learning tact and finesse as the series progresses.  

    The mention of New Hampshire’s “The Old Man of the Mountain” brought back pleasant childhood memories.  It’s a shame that it has since fallen down.  You'll l;earn a little bit of French from the story, including a cuss phrase.  There’s even a small amount of the patented Preston-&-Child motif “is it natural or supernatural?”  No one does that better than those guys.

    The ending is somewhat predictable yet suitably exciting.  There were a couple of plot twists to keep me on my toes, and I was only half-right about who the perp was.  Aloysius Pendergast only has a small cameo appearance, and it isn’t until the epilogue.  His main purpose seems to be toquickly and cerebrally solve the remaining unresolved puzzles.

Excerpts...

    “How is it possible,” he asked, “that a man as experienced in the wilderness as Peel would fall off a cliff like this?”

    “Late at night,” Wiggett replied.  “The moon had set.  He’s collecting rocks for his grave.  He’s agitated, upset, not thinking clearly.”

    “Maybe even had a drink or two,” Clive added.

    “Peel didn’t drink.”  (pg. 226)

    He raised his head and cleared his throat.  “Samantha Carvilleae ossua heic.  Fortuna spondet multa multis, preastat nemini, vive in dies et horas, nam proprium est nihil.”

    Corrie looked at Pendergast.  “What exactly does that mean?”

    “Here lie the bones of Samantha Carville.  Fortune makes promises to many, keeps them to none.  Live for each day, live for the hours, since nothing is forever yours.”

    “That’s rather dark,” said Corrie.

    “It’s a favorite quote of my ward, Constance.  Besides, the graveside is no place for pleasantries.”  (pg. 362)

“You grow up thinking everything’s fine and bad things happen to other people, and then, out of the blue, life drops a piano on you.”  (pg. 147 )

    There are a couple of things to nitpick about.  There’s some cussing in any Preston & Child novel, but here it felt excessive, especially in the early chapters.  I didn’t feel like it added much to the book’s “feel”, and I'm wondering if the authors are trying to establish a "tone" for the series.

    Also, it seemed like it took a while for the storyline to get going.  The archaeology doesn’t start until page 143, and the first small bit of gold isn’t found until several pages after that.  But perhaps this is inevitable when starting a new series.  Characters need to introduced, their backstories need to be recounted, and settings need to be described.  But in any event, after the first gold coin is found, everything picks up nicely.

    I also would’ve appreciated a “what’s real and what’s fiction” section at the end of the book.  There is a short “Note To The Reader” section included, but in a nutshell, it says some of this is true, some of this is made-up, go look it up yourself.  Which I did.

    Overall, I think Old Bones is a solid start to new series by these two writers.  It won't outshine their Agent Pendergast series, but it's better than their Gideon Crew tales.  If you can make it through the first 150 pages of requisite world-building, you'll find the rest of the story to be of vintage Preston & Child quality.

    7½ Stars.  If you’re not familiar with it, the “Donner history” is given in chapter 4.  I was surprised to learn that there were quite a few survivors.  The Wikipedia article (the link is here) says 48 out of 87 lived through it.  So while some cannibalism certainly occurred, it never got down to a “just the two of us left, and one of us needs to eat the other” dilemma.  Too bad.  That might have made for a fascinating story.

Lion In The Valley - Elizabeth Peters

   1986; 418 pages.  Book 4 (out of 20) of the “Amelia Peabody” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Historical Mystery; Murder Mystery; Crime Fiction.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    It’s a new year, and for the husband and wife team of archaeologists, Amelia Peabody Emerson and Professor Radcliffe Emerson, that means heading back to Egypt from their home in England to explore a new pyramid – two of them, actually.

    This is going to involve crawling around in stifling, bat-infested corridors of the larger of the two pyramids, and mucking through the muddy, flooded burial chamber of the smaller one.  There’s also the challenges of the Saharan heat, the blowing sand, the omnipresent dust, and the Bedouin tribesmen roaming the nearby dunes, all the while trying in vain to keep track of their eight-year-old son, Ramses, a youngster who has a phenomenal talent for getting in trouble, getting lost, and always finding a tenable defense to justify his antics.

    Still, things can’t help but go better than last year, when the Emerson family crossed paths with the notorious “Master Criminal” (nobody knows his true name), and only survived due to some heroics by Ramses.  Surely that’s all over and forgotten now, and this year they can concentrate on the excavations.

    Yet it is a curious fact that Amelia and Radcliffe never need to go looking for trouble.  It always seems to find them.

What’s To Like...

    Lion In The Valley was my introduction to Elizabeth Peters and her Amelia Peabody Historical Mystery series.  This story is set in 1895/96 when Egypt was a British protectorate.  Amelia gets top billing, primarily because the story is written in the form of a journal, in the First Person POV, and being penned by her.  But her husband and son play equally prominent parts in the story.

    The book is a vocabularian’s delight.  Amelia writes in a flowery style, and young Ramses delights in awing adults around him with his fustian.  Wikpedia correctly terms this a “Historical Mystery”, and it was fun to see Elizabeth Peters insert real archaeologists from that time period (including Howard Carter, ho of King Tut’s Tomb fame), and real archaeological sites, such as the Dahshoor (“Dahshur” if you want to find it in Wikipedia) pyramids that our protagonists are about to dig into.

   I would classify Lion In The Valley as a Cozy Mystery.  Yes, there are two bodies to be discovered, but we aren't witness to the actual killings.  Radcliffe might let slip an occasional “damn”, but Amelia is there to nag him into eschewing such language in front of Ramses.  Amelia the diarist is also resourceful in finding tasteful words to describe her and Radcliffe’s frequent “bouts of passion”.

    There are a bunch of Arabic expressions sprinkled throughout the text, and that was a treat for me.  The ending has a couple neat twists in it, and is suitably suspenseful, but also has a WTF which makes it somewhat hard to believe.  Lion In The Valley is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.

    Elizabeth Peters is the pen name of one Barbara Mertz, who also wrote under the name of Barbara Michaels.  She received a PhD in Egyptology from the University in Chicago in 1952.  All of which means she paints a very realistic picture of life in Egypt in the 1890’s.

Kewlest New Word ...

Contumely (n) : insolent or insulting language or treatment.

Others : Gazette (as a verb); Haut Monde (n.; phrase); Syllogism (n.); Ensorcelled (v.).

Excerpts...

    As we waited for the workmen to arrive, Emerson said, “You were restless last night, Peabody.”

    “So would you have been had you been wakened hourly, as I was, by someone prowling round the tent.”

    “You talked in your sleep.”

    “Nonsense, Emerson.  I never talk in my sleep.  It is a sign of mental instability.  What did I say?”  (loc. 2646)

   “Peabody,” he said.

    “Yes, my dear Emerson?”

    “Are we surrounded by hostile Bedouin on the verge of a murderous attack?”

    “Why no, Emerson, I don’t think so.”

    “Did a shadowy figure creep into the tent, brandishing a knife?”

    “No.”

    “A mummified hand, perhaps?  Slipping through the gap between the tent wall and the canvas floor, groping for your throat?”

    “Emerson, you are particularly annoying when you try to be sarcastic.”  (loc. 3766)

Kindle Details...

    Lion In The Valley sells for $8.99 at Amazon.  The other 19 books in the series range in price from $1.99 to $9.99.   Individual books in the series are frequently offered at temporarily lower prices, usually $1.99.  Your local digital library is another good place to find copies, both in electronic and "real" formats.

 “Watch your dipthongs, Ramses.”  (loc. 547)

    There were some things that I was mildly disappointed in.

    First of all, both adult protagonists are archaeologists, so I was looking forward to digging and scraping and uncovering and cataloging.  But the storyline is virtually devoid of archaeological details.  Our heroes go off towards work, almost always get sidetracked by visitors or malefactors, and almost never find time to do the excavating they came to Egypt to do.

    The second issue is the Murder-Mystery portions.  If you’re hoping to solve the crimes alongside Amelia, you’ll be disappointed.  Things do eventually get resolved, but it doesn’t come via sleuthing, and its outcome is conveniently tailored to fit in with the personal storylines, not the crimes themselves.

    Finally, Ramses can get very annoying quite quickly with his adult-like vocabulary, convoluted lines of reasoning, and all-around obnoxiousness.  Simply put, his character isn’t believable for an 8-year-old..

    But hey, this was my introduction to Elizabeth Peters.  Lion In The Valley is an early entry, so maybe things get more believable as the series progresses.  Or maybe I haven’t yet grasped the tone and style the author is aiming for here.  That has happened before, with Ruth Downie’s Medicus series, and I eventually warmed up to her books.  We shall see.  I have at least two more Amelia Peabody books on my TBR shelf.

    7 Stars.  Add 1 star if you like Lilian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who ...” books.  The structure of the Historical Mystery in Lion In the Valley is very similar to that used by Ms. Braun and frankly, IMO, Elizabeth Peters does it much better.

The Confession of Brother Haluin - Ellis Peters

   1988; 196 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 15 (out of 20) of the “Brother Cadfael” series. Genre : Murder-Mystery, Historical Fiction, Cozy Mystery.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Ah, yes.  Those deathbed confessions.  They’re good for your soul.  Especially when you’ve been carrying around an unconfessed sin for close to 20 years.

    Such is the burden Brother Haluin’s bearing.  But he’s slipped from the icy roof of the abbey’s guest hall while trying to clear the snowfall off.  It was a 40 foot drop, and now he lays at death’s door.  Best to confess the grievous transgression that drove him to take up the cloth in the first place.

    As head of the abbey, Abbot Radulfus is duly called to hear Brother Haluin’s final confession.  Brother Cadfael is also present, since Haluin says the sin was also against him, even though Cadfael was unaware of it.  And it is indeed a vile misdeed, something that definitely needed to be gotten off one's chest before approaching the pearly gates.  There’s just one problem.

    What do you do about it when, against all odds, Brother Haluin makes a dramatic recovery?

What’s To Like...

    The Confession of Brother Haluin is the ninth book I’ve read in this series, so I’m about halfway in completing it.  The plotlines are by-and-large formulaic: there’s always a heartwarming-but-forbidden love, somebody gets murdered, one or the other of the lovebirds gets accused, and Brother Cadfael saves the day via 12^th-century sleuthing.

    This book is no exception to this format, but the first half of the story is mostly about Haluin resolving to undertake a pilgrimage of penance, despite being unable to walk without crutches.  By page 100, I was muttering “Where’s the Murder?”  and “Where’s the Romance?”  I shouldn’t’ve fretted.  Both show up shortly thereafter, and things hum along swimmingly through the rest of the pages.

    Ellis Peters tackles some controversial issues here – abortion and incest – and I was wondering how she planned on resolving both while still maintaining the “cozy mystery” style.  Well, she managed this quite successfully and with impressive plausibility.

    All Brother Cadfael books are a vocabularian’s delight.  The best words of the bunch are listed below, and I was proud that my brain is retaining some of the medieval words, such as “lief” and “assart”.  The use of the word “solar” as a noun was totally new to me.

    The settings for the story are somewhat unusual in that very little takes place at the abbey and the nearby town of Shrewsbury.  Haluin makes his pilgrimage to a place somewhat removed from the abbey, and Cadfael accompanies him.  So most of the regulars are either missing or have only minor roles.  Ah, but this meant meeting lots of new people and going to lots of new places, and I enjoyed that.

   I also liked that none of the characters were totally black or white, not even those who perpetrated the murder.  Even Cadfael has some moments of self-doubt, such as when he reflects on his “meddling” in the past.  Everything builds to great, and somewhat surprising ending which, like any cozy should, will leave the reader with a warm and fuzzy feeling, despite a loose thread or two.

Kewlest New Word...

Solar (n., Middle English) : a loft or upper chamber forming the private accommodation of the head of the household in a medieval hall.

Others: Chilblained (adj.); Elegiac (adj.); Garth (n.); Colloquy (n.); Advowson (n.).

Excerpts...

    “You do know about my marriage – that Jean comes here today?”

    “Your brother has told us,” said Cadfael, watching the features of her oval face emerge softly from shadow, every plaintive, ingenuous line testifying to her youth.  “But there are things he could not tell us,” he said, watching her intently, “except by hearsay.  Only you can tell us whether this match has your consent, freely given, or no.”  (…)

    “If we do anything freely, once we are grown,” she said, “then yes, this I do freely.  There are rules that must be kept.  There are others in the world who have rights and needs, and we are all bound.”  (pg. 106)

    It is a terrible responsibility, thought Cadfael, who had never aspired to ordination, to have the grace of God committed to a man’s hands, to be privileged and burdened to play a part in other people’s lives, to promise them salvation in baptism, to lock their lives together in matrimony, to hold the key to purgatory at their departing.  If I have meddled, he thought devoutly, and God knows I have, when need was and there was no better man to attempt it, at least I have meddled only as a fellow sinner, tramping the same road, not as a viscount of heaven, stooping to raise up.  (pg. 114)

 Murder brings out into the open many matters no less painful, while itself still lurking in the dark.  (pg. 128)

    The quibbles are negligible.

    I‘m getting to the point, having read so many of these Brother Cadfael books, that I can anticipate the plot twists coming up.  But I still marvel at how plausible Ellis Peters makes them seem.

    Also, the pacing of the first half of the book kinda dawdles for a while as Cadfael and Haluin traipse around, and the reader waits for someone to get killed.  Plus, there were one or two incredible coincidences that strained my bridge of believability, but it has to be said they served to move the story along.

    Last, and least, if you like cozies but don’t like historical fiction, this series may not be your cup of tea.  Cadfael and the sheriff Hugh Beringar spend about 10 pages at the beginning discussing the ongoing civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud (yes, England did have an Empress once upon a time).   I love history, and so for me this was fascinating.  But for those who aren’t history buffs, it may be a bit tedious.

    8 Stars.  At Book 15 out of 20, The Confession of Brother Haluin comes rather late in the series, and most of the ones I’ve read so far are earlier entries.  So it was a nice surprise to see the series hadn’t lost any of its luster as it aged.

A Provençal Mystery - Ann Elwood

   2012; 233 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Historical Mystery; Murder Mystery.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    For California historian Pandora (“Dory”) Ryan, it is an amazing find.  There, in the musty shelves of Avignon’s Archives de Vaucluse, she comes across a centuries-old diary of a local nun.  It is truly a noteworthy find, since nuns were forbidden to keep diaries in the Middle Ages; writing about one’s life was viewed as a sin of pride.

    Unfortunately, the diary cuts off in mid-sentence, almost like someone didn’t want the ending to be read.  Now, hundreds of years later, where could one even hope to find the rest of the narrative?  And besides some strange goings-on in the convent (the Mother Superior is entirely too fond of self-flagellation), the diary speaks of a murder of one of the sisters.

    So it is quite a shock to Dory, when one her fellow, modern-day researchers, Sister Agatha, dies on-the job, since she too was a nun at the still-in-operation Our Lady of Mercy convent.  It happened right there at the Archives, in a back room, while everyone else was engaged in their various research projects.

   Well, except for one of them, who apparently was busy murdering Sister Agatha, since her death is anything but an accident.

What’s To Like...

    A Provençal Mystery is an ambitious tale of murders and mysteries, spanning three different time periods – 1944, 1990, and 1659.  Ann Elwood’s descriptions of Provençe in those three eras is quite good, albeit the 1944 Nazi-occupied one is brief, and the 17^th-Century one is by-and-large limited to the confines of the convent.  But I frankly had no trouble following the three plotlines as the story jumped from one to another.

    For both murder-mysteries, Ann Elwood introduces us to a variety of characters, and kind of allows them to take turns being the prime suspects in the two cases.  The book is almost completely in the first person – Dory in 1990, and Sister Rose, the diary-keeper, in 1659.

    The story takes place entirely in the Provençe section of France, and I'm always partial to that setting.  The author sprinkles in a lot of French phrases, which is also a plus, although they felt awkward a lot of the time.  And suspect.  When one character said, “Je suis Martin Fitzroy”, I winced.  The correct French expression is “Je m’appelle Martin Fitzroy.”  True, Mr. Fitzroy is an American, so he might be excused for the slip, but anyone’s who taken French 101 will know the proper way to introduce oneself.

    There is a supernatural element that seems to tie the two murders together.  But while it certainly intrigued me, it is never fully resolved.  Ditto for some plot holes. Including a literal one.  At one point, Dory excavates a wall in the convent. But apparently it gets overlooked by the convent nuns.

Kewlest New Word…

Insouciance (n.) : a casual lack of concern; indifference.

Excerpts...

    Professor Martin Fitzroy.  A handsome and formidable man, who knew he was a handsome and formidable man.  He marched up to Chateaublanc’s desk with what I could only call an “air” – an air of superiority, an air of expecting that superiority to be recognized.  It was clear that he knew all too well that he was eminent.  I had read his books on the history of purgatory and knew that he deserved his eminence.  He had broken new ground and done it with elegance.  (loc. 1177)

   Academics frown on genealogists – they are too interested in the stories of their own families.  Doing history is not supposed to be about telling stories, unless you are an antiquarian, who by definition has no talent for theory, and there is nothing worse than that.  Historians look down upon antiquarians and genealogists because they never, in historians’ minds, wrestle with “big ideas.”  (loc. 2067)

Kindle Details...

    A Provençal Mystery presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon.  Ann Elwood has a bunch of other books available, but most of them are not in e-book format.  Of the few that are available for the Kindle, none appear to be in this genre.

 “There is something strange about a religion that saves the body parts of dead holy people and encases them in boxes.”  (loc. 3608)

    There are some weaknesses.  The ending seems rushed, and lacking any twists.  It’s simply a matter of one of the several plausible motives/suspects panning out in the main plotline.  The perpetrator needlessly leaves a lot of clues around, and seems too easily persuaded to confess.  It's as if he wants to be caught.

   The 1659 murder is never fully resolved, although realistically that’s kinda expected.  Still, this is fiction, the storyline links the two crimes, and as a reader, I was anticipating a resolution of some sort.

    Finally, the book is in bad need of an editor.  I tend to forgive spellchecker errors (loose/lose, for/fro, etc.), but when one of the diary entries gets the year wrong, that’s just sloppiness.  And yet…

    For all the negatives, I still found myself staying up late and turning the pages to get in just one more chapter.  The story and its writing may have some flaws, but the fact that it’s so ambitious apparently drew me in.

    7 Stars.  This book wasn’t what I expected it to be.  I sorta assumed it was going to be akin to a Brother Cadfael mystery, entirely set in the distant past.  But it’s still a worthwhile read, especially if you have a soft spot in your heart for all things French, like I do.