P D James Short Stories (The Mistletoe Marder, 2016)

P. D. James. The Mistletoe Murder (2016) ... and other stories. Like other successful mystery writers, P D James was asked to contribute to Christmas mystery story collections. Here we have four examples, and a short essay on the short story. The stories are nicely constructed, with plausible crimes and well paced discoveries of the perpetrators. As in James’s novels, the denouements are psychologically nuanced. James understood that the reasons for crime are more interesting than the crimes themselves. The artistic problem in writing a short story is to sketch the characters well enough that they are believable criminals. James also knows that discovering the criminal does not bring what’s labelled “closure”. The effects of crime spread like a stain though the family and community, and will affect lives long after the case files are closed. In one story, a death caused in all innocence leads to blackmail that lasts a lifetime.

A very good read. A nicely designed and made book, too. ****

Scams (Lapham's Quarterly 8-02, Swindle & Fraud)

Lapham’s Quarterly 8-02: Swindle & Fraud (2015). An entertaining read, and for that reason

possibly a misleading one. It’s fun to read about how swindles and frauds work, about how greedy people fall for a con, how clever the swindlers have been. It may fool one into believing that these insights will make us immune. Which is of course not so.

Every successful swindle relies on our propensity to deceive ourselves. We want something for nothing, or as close as we can get to it. We want to be insiders, a member of that exclusive group that knows better than everybody else. We believe we are smarter than the average bear and can spot opportunities for profit that escape everyone else. We are sure that we can tell the truth from falsehood, that we know enough about the real world that we can tell when someone is blowing smoke in our ears. And we are wrong on all these counts.

I hope that reading this wonderful collection will continue to remind me that I’m as likely to fall for a scam as everyone else. It just takes someone to figure out what buttons to push.

Recommended. ****

Dave Cooks the turkey and other mishaps (Home From the Vinyl Café, 1998)

Stuart McLean. Home from the Vinyl Café. (1998) The second collection. It begins with Dave Cooks The Turkey, which has become a fixture on CBC's  As It Happens during the week leading up to Christmas Eve, when they play Alan Maitland reading The Shepherd. It’s as funny on the page as in the audio. The rest of the stories are the same quality. They have the ring of truth, no matter how bizarrely the situation develops. As in Laurel and Hardy movies each consequence follows logically from the previous one, driven by circumstances and character, and ends in bizarre catastrophe. The stories are also elegies for a way of life that’s past, a way of life that never existed, except in the rosy-dark memories of our childhoods and youth. Nostalgia is the common leavening of these tales. They evoke wry smiles and bitter-sweet memories.

Recommended. ****

Travels Across Canada: Stuart McLean's Welcome Home (1992)

Stuart McLean. Welcome Home. (1992) McLean took a few trips across the country, and stayed in several small towns. Then he wrote this elegy for what was already rapidly disappearing 30+ years ago. It’s pretty well gone.

Relevant anecdote: In 2023, we had a family reunion in Donalda, Alberta. The town no longer has a grocery store. It does have a hotel with a bar and a restaurant that serves meals on weekends. When I first went there in the 1950s, the town had a bank, a couple of service stations, a dairy, a grocery store, a school, a railroad line that served the grain elevators, and so on. Most of the businesses are gone or have been converted into homes. The town is now a suburb for Camrose, about 3/4 hour away, a typical commute these days. They have a community hall, where the local caterers served us several excellent meals. We had a good time.

McLean has the gift of the telling detail that concentrates the meanings of his story in one memorable moment. The people in these towns know that their way of life is ending, but they refuse to capitulate. Community is strong, and as long as you have family and friends, life is worth living. It's over thirty years since McLean's tour of Canada. It would be a gift for another one, but I don't know of anyone who could do it.

Highly recommended. ****