Ian Stewart. Nature’s Numbers (1995)

     Ian Stewart. Nature’s Numbers (1995) A survey of how mathematics not only informs but enables our understanding of the world. One may read this book as an extended gloss on Wigner’s essay, “On the unreasonable success of mathematics...” Stewart aims at the educated lay person, but does not assume technical mathematical skill or knowledge. Occasionally, that results in rather less detail than one would wish. The book could also do with more illustrations, especially since Stewart emphasises that modern mathematics concerns itself more with shape than with number. Not his best work, but still pretty good. **½ (2004)

Ngaio Marsh. Photo Finish (1980)

     Ngaio Marsh. Photo Finish (1980) The Alleyns are invited to New Zealand, she to paint a portrait of opera singer La Sommita, he to investigate possible drug trafficking. La Sommita ends up dead, with a picture pinned to her dead body with a stiletto. Since a convenient storm has isolated the Alleyns and the suspects on an island in a lake, he must investigate. He solves the case almost singlehandedly, handing it over for the denouement to the NZ police (who are unconvincingly complimentary: there was and is strong territoriality among police forces the world over). The characters matter more than the puzzle, which includes some rather melodramatic elements, but all in all this is a satisfying read. Marsh is mildly satirical about theatre people and their hangers on. **½ (2004)

Eric Wright. Always Give a Penny to a Blind man (1999)

     Eric Wright. Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man (1999) Eric Wright has written a number of well-done and surprisingly amiable crime novels about Charlie Salter of the Toronto Police, which I’ve reviewed in earlier years. I’ve liked them because of the narrator’s voice, which is mildly cynical, humane, and able to convey an interest and liking for the characters. This memoir shows us that Eric Wright’s narrator is Eric Wright himself.
     The reminiscences of his childhood in London, one of ten children of a who earned his living driving a horse-drawn van, and a tailoress (she could produce a suit) who devoted her life to raising her children and ensuring they had a proper start in life, by which she meant that they were well-equipped to rise in the social scale. Eric himself got a scholarship to a grammar school and eventually achieved a degree at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. He never saw his parents again after he emigrated, something he doesn’t go on about (it would not be proper to do so), but which I think affected him strongly.
     At any rate, the book as a whole gives us a picture of man with his share of weaknesses, but one who follows his interest and passions wherever they lead him. He’s the kind of man that one would like to share a pint or two with. He’s a raconteur, the kind that somehow engages you in his experience. The book ends with stories about his first few years in Winnipeg and “up north” in Churchill, where he earned enough to finance his University studies.
     The book for me is a heavy dose of nostalgia. The England he describes is the England I knew myself before I came to Canada: the pre-war values and mores lingered well into the 1960s. I suspect it’s the subterranean layers of Englishness in the Charlie Salter novels that make them attractive to me.
     Good book, worth reading, even as merely a record of a way of life and immigrant experience that no longer exist. ***

Selena Gray The Aliens Survival Manual (1992)

     Selena Gray The Aliens Survival Manual (1992) Nicely done variation on The Hitchhiker’s Guide, occasionally rising to the level of Adams’ brilliant nonsense, but mostly a mildly satiric look at humans (mostly men). It feels piecey, probably because much of it first appeared in mass-market magazines. Still, Gray has an eye (and ear) for the hypocrisy and lunacy that marks our species, and some of the comments have a very sharp edge. The best items are stories told by aliens. For example, the piece about “shopping” display’s an insider’s knowledge of the peculiarly female version of that sport. The traveller’s tale is a traditional mode of social criticism. Gray does an above average job of it. **½

Ross Macdonald. Find a Victim (1954)

    Ross Macdonald. Find a Victim (1954) One of the earliest Lew Archers, published before Macdonald had made his reputation, which may account for the impression that this book was edited down to fit a smaller format (160pp). The story feels cramped, as if Macdonald didn’t have enough space to develop the characters as he wished. Archer finds a dying man by the roadside, and eventually discovers the man’s murderer. Puzzle is creaky, and solution weak; but an interesting read nevertheless, as it displays all the features that Macdonald develops so well later on. ** (2004)

Walter Gratzer, ed. Eurekas and Euphorias (2002)

     Walter Gratzer, ed. Eurekas and Euphorias (2002) A collection of anecdotes, mostly mildly amusing, about scientists, who turn out to be just as human as the rest of us, although perhaps a little more obsessive and absent-minded than most. Reading the book in large chunks is like eating too many potato chips. Along the way one learns a good deal about the history of science, and Gratzer’s context-setting interpolations of scientific concepts and facts impress with their brevity and clarity. This book should be on every high school teacher’s shelf, and University lecturers would do well to consult it for entertaining additions to their lectures. **½ (2004)

Ngaio Marsh. The Nursing Home Murder (1935)

      Ngaio Marsh. The Nursing Home Murder (1935) Another of the early, pre-Troy Alleyn stories, in which Alleyn must once again uncover not only the murderer, but also an implausibly ingenious method of committing the crime; a vintage puzzle mystery, in other words. But the atmosphere is right, the characters of sufficient substance to sustain interest, and only the mawkishness of the love story that seems to provide motive for the murder flaws an otherwise well-constructed and -told classic whodunit. In reading these early Alleyns, one tends to forget that they were contemporary books, not historical novels, which they have become by the passage of 60 or more years. *** (2004)

Ruth Rendell. From Doon with Death (1964)

     Ruth Rendell. From Doon with Death (1964) First of the Wexfords; it shows Rendell’s fascination with deviant behaviour, her skill at plotting, and her ability to make even outlandish motivations seem plausible. Neither Wexford nor Burden are fully developed here (their personal lives form a perfunctory backdrop to the puzzle and its solution), but their basic characters are clear enough and their later development is consistent with what we see here: a stolidly conservative temperament crossed with the tolerance that comes from wide experience in Wexford, and a narrower emotional range in Burden, who can still be surprised as well as shocked by the vagaries of human nature. The reader solves the puzzle well before the coppers do, but Rendell’s skill at trailing red herrings across the 'tec's path is already evident. *** (2004)

Ngaio Marsh. Death in Ecstasy (1936)

 

     Ngaio Marsh. Death in Ecstasy (1936) Bathgate, bored, walks in on a murder in a weird sect. Alleyn (pre-Troy) and the imperturbable Fox tease out the threads of truth, discover the usual almost-impossible method of murder, and find the murderer. A classic puzzle from the classic period of English puzzle mysteries. Marsh, like Christie, moves her story forward by means of dialogue; unlike Christie, she invents characters with some substance to them, but she sticks pretty close to formula all the same. In later books, she exploits the social comedy aspects of crime fiction, and develops her characters in some depth; here, she is still finding out what she can do with the mystery form. Aunt Rosemary gave me this book to fill out my collection; it was printed in 1941, on cheap newsprint that has held up remarkably well, and the author’s note indicates she had written only half a dozen or so of the series that later earned her a comfortable income and enabled her to devote herself to fostering theatre in New Zealand. **½ (2004)

Gregory Benford. Matter’s End (1995)

     Gregory Benford. Matter’s End (1995) A collection of Benford’s short stories, some dating back to the 60s, and most featuring straight SF, done with an engineer’s and physicist’s knowledge. Benford, as befits a modern physicist, likes to play with reality: in several of his stories realities turn in on themselves and fold over one another. He also manages to give his characters enough solidity that we believe the society which shapes them. The title story raises some nice philosophical issues about the relationship of the observer (us) to the universe, and how our supposed knowledge of reality may in fact shape it. I didn’t know much of Benford before reading this collection; I will look at a couple of his novels. ** to **** (2004)

Sparkle Hayter. Nice Girls Finish Last (1996)

     Sparkle Hayter. Nice Girls Finish Last (1996) A mystery of sorts, told in a coyly naughty way that lives down to the author’s name. Forgettable. (2004) Update 2013: And totally forgotten. the only reason I include this note is because I wrote it.

Edgar Wallace. The Twister (1928)

     Edgar Wallace. The Twister (1928) OK, so I read another one. The title character seems to be a villain, but the denouement (after a cleaner plot than usual for Wallace, involving business and diamonds as well as crooked chemistry and stupid crooks) reveals him as a true blue gentleman, despite his foreign origins. Wallace also avoids the more blatant racism and jingoism of his books (or else it’s been edited out to allay modern squeamishness), but his adolescent treatment of love and “honour” mars an otherwise enjoyable adventure fantasy. ** (2004)

R. D. Wingfield. Hard Frost (1995)

 

R. D. Wingfield. Hard Frost (1995) Frost has to tackle several cases at once (what else is new), and keep Mullet and an envious ambitious colleague at bay. He succeeds despite himself, as usual. The cases seem related, which tangles the investigation into an almost untyable knot. A couple of cases are solved inadvertently, and only because Mullet shoves off all the picayune stuff onto Frost. These picayune cases also provide the key to the child murder that propels and unifies the story. The TV Frost is a nicer, more likeable man than the one in the book, with a more interesting love life. Still, these books do the job they are intended for: they provide a way to while away the hours of international air travel (what a misnomer for being stuck in an aluminum alloy tube with a couple hundred fellow sufferers for half a day or so). **½ (2004)

Update 2021 April 19: I reread this book yesterday, a page turner, but not Wingfield's best. Structured like a TV script, with scenes moving the plots forward at more or less the same pace. Frost is a much rougher character than in the TV series. The other characters are 1.5 dimensional, with Mullet and Cassidy nasty careerists and little else. As with many second-rate fictions, dramatisation improves the story: script writers and actors can add the visual clues that the fiction writer has to include as asides and  descriptive detail. In a complex multi-plot tale such as this, those touches could bloat the book beyond enduring. I now rate the book a mere **.