The Summons (1995) by Peter Lovesey

Last year, I read the first book in Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series, The Last Detective. And I didn’t like it. The mystery was merely okay and I found Diamond insufferable. It put me off both the character and the author for a time. However, I’ve been getting back into Lovesey recently, and so I decided to return…for the third book in the series. I read a review of the second, Diamond Solitaire, that was pretty negative, and Lovesey himself seemed to be struggling for what to do with the series, based on an essay of his that I read. So I skipped ahead to the third book, The Summons.

The book opens with the daring prison escape of John Mountjoy. He’s been imprisoned for four years for the murder of Britt Strand, an investigative journalist who was on the verge of exposing a scam he was running at his school. Combined with his history of violence towards women and the fact that he was the last to see her alive, he was the obvious suspect. Now he’s free, and he’s kidnapped the daughter of Assistant Chief Constable Tott. He wants to speak to the man who arrested him in the first place: Peter Diamond.

Problem: Diamond left (i.e. quit) the force. The police are able to wrestle him into helping long enough to meet with Mountjoy and lay out his demands: Find the actual killer. An absurd request, but Peter has to admit that this is a lot of effort when he could easily have gone underground. And the police never did find the murder weapon. Nor did they find out who ordered the red roses found in Britt’s bedroom and stuffed down her throat…

So Peter teams up with DI Julie Hargreaves to track down the old witnesses and go over the evidence again before the trigger-happy brass find Mountjoy themselves. Could the killer have been one of Britt’s other boyfriends? Could the police have missed one? Maybe it has something to do with one of her final projects: a report on a group of “crusties” squatting in an abandoned home. As the two dig deeper, Peter starts to remember how much he loved his old job…

I admit, I went in expecting not to like this book after bouncing off the first so bad. So I was surprised to find myself pretty quickly invested in the plot. The mystery is pretty interesting, and Lovesey wastes little time in getting to the point. Diamond and Hargreaves make a great team as well. When Diamond is focusing on the investigation, he’s great, a dogged detective with a good mix of charm and intimidation depending on who he’s talking to. Of course, when he’s taking advantage of this situation to get his job back, I wanted someone to sock him in the jaw, though thankfully this is a small portion of the book. The bulk is focused on the mystery.

Of course, this is a police procedural like the Kate Ellis I reviewed earlier this month. But there’s more cluing here. The key information is only discovered pretty late in the book, but there are clues pointing to some of the conclusions Diamond comes to throughout the book. With a little more work, this could have been a really good mystery novel. But I don’t want to take away from what’s here, which is still a very solid police procedural with plenty of twists and turns along the way. And finally, the reason for the roses is pretty good.

All in all, I really liked this book. I really expected this to be a slog on my way to the locked room mystery Bloodhounds, but now I’m not only looking forward to that book, but to others in this series. In light of that, I can only say that this is Recommended. 

Other Reviews: Mystery*File.

Turnabout Pairs (2012) by Bad Player and Blackrune

A few years ago, I binged a bunch of Ace Attorney fancases, hoping to pick out some good ones to review. Ultimately, I didn’t go through with that until recently. Part of it was me feeling that some of the cases were too reliant on AA knowledge to be really satisfying. Some weren’t that good. And then there were some that were good, but I thought would be frustrating to someone who wasn’t a hardcore AA fan. One of those fancases was Turnabout of Courage.

Courage is one of the most infamous fancases in Ace Attorney history. It’s a brutal, difficult case that delights in messing with you, the player, personally. After playing it, I decided that, while the mystery was good, the case as a whole was too irritating to recommend. But I kept it in mind. And I knew there was an “independent sequel” that I wanted to play. That brings us to Turnabout Pairs, by Bad Player and Blackrune.

I should note that while Pairs doesn’t explicitly spoil Courage, there are some key twists that would be very clear if you played Pairs first. So keep that in mind.

I should also note that this was the winner of a competition dedicated to troll cases. So keep that in mind too.

Pairs opens with attorney Mia Fey heading to Embassy Hotel to meet with a client, prosecutor Klavier Gavin. Klavier is in a legal dispute with his brother, Kristoph, over their father’s inheritance. Mia arrives and joins a maid, Maria, bringing room service, but finds that Klavier’s door has been locked, the key still inside. Mia and Maria manage to get the door open, where they find Klavier’s body, with a bloody knife on the floor! And yet, Klavier has been shot to death…

A suspect is soon arrested. Ron DeLite, a shy, retiring man staying in the room next door. Not that the prosecution is explaining how he’s supposed to have committed the crime. Mia investigates for his trial when she learns that Kristoph is staying at the same hotel, on the opposite side of his brother. Mia goes there with another employee, but this door is locked too. No surprise what they find on the other side. Except for the twist that Kristoph has been stabbed to death, even though the gun that killed Klavier is lying on the floor next to him...“It’s just like Kristoph killed Klavier. But it’s also almost as if Klavier killed Kristoph.”

And so, Mia heads off to court to defend Ron on the double murder, little realizing the disaster she’s about to walk into…

To be clear, Pairs is very much a hard case too. It’s just less aggressive with its trolling than Courage. Courage was willing to pull the rug out from under you at a moment’s notice, constantly shifting the “facts” of the case whenever you got a handle on them. It was happy to waste your time, as a joke. Here, the difficulty comes from the case genuinely being very complex, and you having to fight for every little contradiction…that seems to make no impact on the case against your client. There’s nothing like the nightmare of Luna von Doppelbohringen here. (Although one testimony is clearly a callback, it is, in my view, easier and less inclined to mess with you when you make a mistake.) One infamous instance of trolling from Courage gets reused as more of a plot twist here, for example, making it feel less like the case playing games with you and more an obstacle you’ve overcome.

The locked rooms are pretty good. If someone wanted to quibble with them, they could point out how there’s no grand trick here, but a serious of smaller ones linked together. I don’t mind that too much, and the central mystery is still a meaty one to ponder, with plenty of moving parts. The only real issue I have is that the clue that tips Mia off as to what really happened is A. something she only discovers through a massive coincidence and B. a really minor bit that she blows up for all its worth. Sure, the best Ace Attorney cases hinge on the implications of small details, but this feels like a lot to base your case-winning theory on.

And yet, I enjoyed this case. In fairness, I made heavy use of the provided walkthrough, or “Invisiclues,” which do a good job at guiding the player’s logic and making clear what the developers were thinking with the puzzles and contradictions. Most of them made sense. There were a couple where you’re presenting an alternative theory or a possibility, instead of pointing out a contradiction, and I found these a little more frustrating since it wasn’t always clear when that was intended. But if you can put up with the rest of this case, you can put up with that.

So all in all, I do think that Turnabout Pairs is worth a shot. If you have no Ace Attorney experience, then, unlike the previous fancases I’ve reviewed, maybe you shouldn’t dive right into it, but if you do and want a challenge, this is worth your time. Recommended. But you probably should play Turnabout of Courage first. Just have a walkthrough open. Keep that in mind too.

You can find the case here.

The Murder at the Vicarage (1930) by Agatha Christie

I read this for the Honkaku Discord server’s bookclub.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Miss Marple.

The Murder at the Vicarage is set in the small village of St. Mary Mead. Nothing really happens here. The worst crime is poaching. Even the last murder was fifteen years ago. Life in the village is simple, only occasionally broken up by a bit of local drama, like the archeologist hunting for artifacts. Most news is transmitted by the local gossip circles, of whom Miss Marple,“the worst cat in the village,” is a leading member. The only blemish on the peaceful life here is Colonel Protheroe, a magistrate. Devoid of mercy and almost taking pride in how disliked he is, the colonel is currently raising a fuss about some allegedly missing money from the church offering plate, an act that’s so gotten under the skin of Vicar Clement that even he grumbles at lunch that“anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world at large a service.”

He will eat his words when he’s decoyed out of his house, and returns to find the colonel shot at his writing desk.

Murder at the Vicarage is charming. That’s the best way of putting it. This is one of the most well-known village mysteries of all time, and Christie does an excellent job at capturing the feel of a small English village. There’s plenty of gossip floating around, like how Dr. Stone’s assistant is obviously angling for marriage. Of course, one of the themes of the Marple stories is that humans are much the same everywhere, and that sin and vice are just as present in small villages as they are in the city. So there’s plenty of drama and skullduggery afoot, even outside of the murder. The vicar walks in on the colonel’s wife, Anne, in bed with traveling artist Lawrence Redding. The colonel’s daughter, Lettuce, hates her stepmother. The new curate, Hawes, has been bullied by the colonel over his High Church beliefs. So there’s plenty of people who would have very good motive to kill the colonel.

The best part of this book is hands down Vicar Clement. Christie peaked with narrators here. Poirot should have fired Hastings and replaced him with this guy. Clement is the idea Watson: observant enough about the evidence and the relationships between the villagers, but lacking that needed insight into human nature to put the pieces together. He’s also very witty. I couldn’t get enough of him. Maybe it’s a bit unlikely that the police would keep him so close to the investigation (in spite of the murder occurring in his home he’s not treated as a serious suspect), but we accept that in other stories. The relationship between him and his wife is good too.

Of course, this means he overshadows Miss Marple a bit as well. While she’s present, she actually doesn’t get all that much page time. Don’t get me wrong, she gets all the best lines, and her role as a witness means she’s very involved even before she “officially” starts investigating. Once she quits observing and starts making her deductions known, she’s great. But again, she’s not the central figure here. I’ve heard it argued (by Robert Barnard, at least), that Miss Marple underwent “flufflification” shortly after her debut, going from a snoop and gossip into a more gentle, grandmotherly figure, her sharp views about human nature blunted in later books. I admit I don’t see that. Miss Marple is more proactive about getting information than in later books, but she’s still the same character, in my view. And while her view of human nature is quite caustic, I don’t read it as harsher than later books, though keep in mind it’s been year since I’ve read those books.

Moving onto the murder, that’s handled well. The case is complicated by a speedy clock, two dramatic yet disproven confessions, as well as the general skullduggery that everyone in the village gets up to around the time of the murder. For the most part, this works. The central idea behind the murder is quite clever, hinging less on physical tricks and more on psychology. There are some physical aspects to the crime, but they’re secondary to that central idea. Still, I can see some readers not liking it. This is one of those Christies where a bunch of people get up to some minor crimes that don’t really intersect with the central murder at all. Some of the characters are pretty minor as well. There’s a reason most of the adaptations cut Dr. Stone, for example. Combine that with some clues that are introduced late (and one of which isn’t even mentioned until the summation!) and some weaker minor elements (the gunshot), and I’m open to arguments that this isn’t top-tier Christie.

Still, I think it would be wrong to deny it a place of honor in the Christie pantheon. Complaints aside, this is a great village mystery that has both a strong village and a strong mystery. I know, saying that a book Christie wrote in the 30s, and that brought Miss Marple to the novel to boot, is a good one is kind of a given. But it is very good. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Ah, Sweet Mystery! (longer post with spoilers), Beneath the Stains of Time, The Grandest Game in the World (contains spoilers), FictionFan's Book Reviews, My Reader's Block, Countdown John's Christie Journal (second post with spoilers), Mysteries Ahoy! (audiobook review), Crossexaminingcrime (behind Patreon).

An Unhallowed Grave (1999) by Kate Ellis

Like Dolores Gordon-Smith, Kate Ellis is another author I was introduced to by the Puzzle Doctor of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. She sounded right up my alley: good storytelling, complex plotting, and mysterious crimes in the past. So I decided to pick up one of her books from the library and finally give her a shot.

An Unhallowed Grave is the third book in her Wesley Peterson series. Peterson is a Black police detective who has just been transferred to the quiet village of Stokeworthy. It’s a cozy little place. The only real excitement comes from the increasing development, which is bringing in tourists who disrupt the quiet, to the frustration of the locals. The lord of the local manor is trying to push more development, but is stymied by protestors and by an archeological dig held on the grounds. But again, this is a quiet place where the worst crimes are drug-taking by the local teens. The book opens on two of them creeping into the churchyard at night to do a ritual to see their true loves…but they see a body hanging from a tree instead.

The doctor on scene quickly realizes that the woman hasn’t been hanged but strangled and hung after death. She’s identified at Pauline Brent, a doctor’s receptionist. She’s lived in the village for fifteen years, and is liked by everyone, but no one was really close to her, nor did they really know anything about her. Piecing together her past is the major hurdle for Peterson and his fellow officers to overcome. Of course, readers will already know that the prologue features a young girl being arrested on the charge of murder…

Meanwhile, the dig stumbles on two discoveries in rapid succession. One is a collection of sculptures that formed a Jesse Tree—a design tracking the ancestors of Christ, rising up from Jesse, the father of King David—which have been buried since the Reformation. Also unearthed is the skeleton of another young woman, who’s also been hanged, professionally. Wesley’s college friend Neil Watson is heading the dig, and dives into the local manor records to figure out who this woman was and what she did.

This tying in of a long-distant case to the present is the main hook for the Peterson books, and I liked it here. Obviously, considering the distance, the cases aren’t directly connected, but there are parallels with both deaths that get drawn out throughout the book. The blurb mentions that Ellis is fascinated by “‘armchair archeology” and it shows. These aren’t the only plot threads in the book. Some are more personal, like Wesley’s wife’s search for a nanny for their son. Some are criminal, like the thief stealing items from local churches only to return them a couple of weeks later. It’s to Ellis’s credit that most of these threads end up tying together. Like the two deaths, sometimes the connections are thematic, but they are there. Only the bit with the church thefts doesn’t, to my eyes, go much of anywhere beyond some criminal activity for one of the suspects. Said suspects range from an artist acting shady on the night of the murder to an outsider who threatened the victim to a local politician who seems uninvolved but proves to be deeper in this than it seems.

Wesley is pleasant company. Him and his fellow officers (as for once the protagonist isn’t the one in charge) are well-characterized, and if they aren’t ground-breaking characters they at least stand out (though the one guy trying to sleep with teenagers to the mild annoyance of his colleagues wasn’t great. At least he contributes to the investigation.) The tone is pretty light, actually. That’s not to say that Ellis shies away from human evil, but this is a book where most of the characters are halfway pleasant and where the author isn’t setting up strawmen to knock down. The best example of this comes when Wesley and his boss have to go to a nursing home to talk to Pauline’s former employer. Wesley (and the reader!) except to find a nightmare house where bored, uncaring employees ignore the elderly wasting away, body and mind…and instead are greeted with a pleasant young woman who takes them to the witness, who’s living his best life with mystery novels and his own computer. Wesley is kicking himself.

However, this is a police procedural, not a fair-play mystery. There is some foreshadowing to the killer’s identity, but not much cluing. The end of the book has our heroes switching between two suspects not because of Queenian interpretation and reinterpretation of evidence they already have, but because of new information and some of the characters admitting they lied. It’s a good solution that fits with the book and makes sense, but it’s not something you can really deduce. And, in spite of some good speculation about why the killer would do that, the reason the victim was hanged is disappointing,

And yet, I liked this book. I’m a sucker for any sort of crime influenced by past events, and so I liked seeing everything come together. Ellis is a good writer, and I really enjoyed my time with her. I get why the Puzzle Doctor likes her so much, and I’ll be checking her out again in the future. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.