The Pegnitz Junction (Gallant, 1982)

Mavis Gallant. The Pegnitz Junction. (1982) The title novella plus five short stories, all about post-war Germany. They have the ring of truth; Gallant knows herself, and so knows the human heart and mind. She notes the small gestures, the shifts in voice and posture that express emotions and hint at thoughts, the conventional speech that hides true feelings. She is a writer “on whom nothing is lost”. She has a subtle and ruthless moral sensibility, presenting us with characters who condemn themselves with their words and actions.

Post-war Germany was unmoored, aware of but unwilling to face its past, unable to do more than reconstruct a material prosperity that served as a shield against unpleasant thoughts and memories. Austria also was mired in this moral vagueness and ambiguity. That’s likely why I found these stories strangely familiar and unsurprising.

An early collection, before Gallant’s skill and artistry were widely recognised. Recommended. ****

The Defiant Agents (Norton, 1962)

Andre Norton. The Defiant Agents. (1962) From the back-cover blurb: “Travis Fox, once the unwilling captive of the run-away spaceship Galactic Derelict, has volunteered - eagerly - for the mission to colonize Topaz....” Some kind of mind-alteration reverts the colonists to their Apache ancestry. A similar technique has reverted a rival group of Russians to their Mongol ancestry, and so we have a conflict. The Russians are also subject to vicious mind-control which makes them robot-like slaves to their (unchanged) Russian masters. The assumption that far future space travel would be dominated by the rival USA and USSR demonstrates the common argument that5 SF is about the present. The mind-altering  element recalls the Cold War fear of "brain washing".

There are also mysterious ruins left behind by previous occupants of the planet. This subplot is scanted, I think because pulp publishers wanted short books.

Norton has worked out most of the glitches in this set-up, and provides a typical mid-century pulp entertainment, weak on character and ambience, but strong on plot. It reads like a magazine serial. A pleasant entertainment for SF fans, this is an early work. Norton became one of the masters. **

Q is for Quarry (Grafton 2002)

 Sue Grafton. Q is for Quarry. (2002) Two retired detectives ask Kinsey to help them solve a cold case. They can flash their badges, and call in favours from old colleagues and have new evidence processed, but Kinsey can get unforced and therefore likely more truthful evidence from the people who may be involved.

About twenty years earlier, an unidentified girl’s body was found at the edge of a quarry. The task seems simple: find out who she was, and the murderer should be easy to find.

The quarry happens to be on land belonging to Kinsey’s family; the subplot of her still unwilling response to her relatives’ fence-mending attempts isn’t needed to make a good story, but Grafton’s fans want to know more about Kinsey, and Grafton (and her publisher) are happy to oblige.

A well done puzzle. The basic facts are real: there really was an unknown girl found near Santa Barbara. Grafton’s solution is ingenious, plausible, and entirely fictional. Wikipedia has the current status of the still unsolved cold case.

Recommended. ***

Boomps-A-Daisy Timing Solves the Crime (Death and the Dancing Footman, Ngaio Marsh 1942)

Ngaio Marsh. Death and the Dancing Footman (1942). A re-read, and more enjoyable because this time I could see how Marsh constructed the puzzle and developed characters just enough to engage our sympathies. She’s good at using stereotypes for ambience. This novel is now an historic document showing what the readers of the time expected by way of comic relief, and what they took for granted about the social fabric of their time.

The puzzle centres on a radio used to provide an alibi. Times are of the essence, and the footman’s dance, executed when he hears a popular song on the radio, crystallises the timetable. A suitable mix of motives, past griefs and conflicts, and present evils complicates Alleyn’s work, and provides the narrative texture that satisfies the reader. Me, in this case.

Recommended. ***

The Singing Detective (1988)

 

 Dennis Potter. The Singing Detective. (1988) Script of the TV series, which we enjoyed very much. Reading this, I realised how much I’d forgotten or missed. The detective figures in the fictions of a writer hospitalised for severe psoriasis. There are both fictional and real-life mysteries, the central one being how and why they intersect in the writer’s memory, and how real life translates into fiction. Potter layers present and past, memory and reality, songs and stories, family and social connections, acceptance and refusal of the truth (such as it is). The TV series is available online (recommended). I found this book resolved some puzzles, but mostly showed me how little I had absorbed the first time round.

Recommended. ***

Wagontrain Shenanigans (Westward the Tide, L'Amour 1977)

 Louis L’Amour. Westward the Tide. (1977) Matt Bardoul signs on with a wagon train despite whispered warnings conveyed to him in the darkened livery stable. One of the two main organisers of the trek has evil designs on the settlers and their wealth. There’s betrayals and fistfights and gunfights and such, but in the end Matt defeats the enemy and wins the girl. All very satisfactory.

L’Amour allows himself some extended ruminations on the history of settlement in the West. Like many commentators of the time, he thought of the West as empty country, and idealises the hardy pioneers who created a productive agricultural paradise out of windswept prairie. The story and these ruminations alternate, which makes for an odd experience: I wanted him to get on with it, and untangle the plot knots. Not his best work. **

Repressed Spinsters (Overture to Death, Marsh 1939)

Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1939) Winton St Giles parish hall needs a new piano. The fundraiser will be a play. The cast comprises the squire Jocelyn Jerningham, his son Henry, his spinster cousin Eleanor Prentice, the Vicar’s daughter Diana Copeland, Doctor Templett and his mistress Selia Ross, and the other spinster, Idris Campanula. She’s the victim, shot through head when she stomps on the soft pedal on the old piano, which, via a series of pulleys and twine, pulls the trigger of a gun wedged into the old instrument for just this purpose.

Alleyn and crew have to pick their way though the usual mix of relevant and irrelevant information. The novel is really a study of Freudian repressions. The two spinsters loathe each other, but are united in their fascination with and censure of other people’s sex lives. Both have designs on the vicar. And so on. Marsh is very good at depicting hypocrisy and other evils. This makes her books more than mere puzzles to be solved.

Recommended. ***