W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin (1986)

     W. J. Burley. Wycliffe and the Quiet Virgin (1986) The virgin in question is a schoolgirl who impresses with her portrayal of Mary in a Christmas pageant. Then she disappears. As Wycliffe is visiting in the neighbourhood, he gets the search in motion. Shortly afterwards the girl’s mother is found murdered. The usual long-buried family secrets prove to be the keys to the crimes, which Wycliffe solves with his usual combination of donkey work and intuition. Well done entertainment, but the TV series was IMO more effective. **½ (2008)

Howard Engel. A Victim Must be Found (1988)

     Howard Engel. A Victim Must be Found (1988) Pambos Kiriakis hires Cooperman to find a list of paintings loaned by a dead art dealer who was sloppy with his paperwork. In fact, Pambos wants Cooperman to sniff out theft and a possible murder, an aim that costs Pambos his life. One of the possible thieves (according to Pambos) hires Cooperman to finish the investigation, and Benny not only finds out the list was bogus, he ties it all up neatly for Chris Savas, his friend on the Niagara Regional Police force. He also meets Anne Abraham. **½. (2008)

Howard Engel. The Ransom Game (1981)

     Howard Engel. The Ransom Game (1981) In a bleak February, Benny Cooperman gets the job of finding a disappeared ex-con who knows where the $500K ransom money is stashed. A week and two corpses later, Cooperman has solved the case, which involves a few nasties in high places, ancient double crosses, and a dysfunctional family. As usual, Engel is good on Cooperman, less so on the other characters. His mild send-up of tough PI talk continues to amuse, but the puzzle is less than satisfactory; the final solution has not been fully clued, although the real villain has been signalled quite early on. Benny’s romance with Anne is proceeding, albeit slowly A good entertainment nevertheless. **½ (2008)

Colin Dexter. The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983)

    Colin Dexter. The Riddle of the Third Mile (1983) Another over-elaborate crime. There are five corpses, three murdered, one a suicide, and one dead of natural causes. The mess includes mistakes about past events, excessive ambition, academic feuds, a Soho nightclub, erotica, conspiracy to commit murder, University examinations, red herrings strewn about by the conspirators,  and  the usual bit players. Dexter’s trademark characterisation-by-tic is front and centre here, as is his schtick of anticipating events. “Little did he know...” that this would begin to wear down my patience. I mentally rewrote a couple of the short chapters omitting those foreshadowings, and felt a bit better.
     Still, by giving us the unriddling via Morse’s and Lewis’s peregrinations, false starts, discovery of small details, and sudden shifts of view, Dexter compels us to read on. The solution is, as already mentioned, too complicated by half. That the perpetrators won’t be brought to justice because they’re all dead is just another twist in an overly twisted tale. **

Anne Perry. The Carter Street Hangmen (1979)

     Anne Perry. The Carter Street Hangmen (1979) The first in the Charlotte Ellison & Thomas Pitt novels, in which they meet because of the murders mentioned in the title, and end up in each other’s arms and with an “understanding”. Perry is better than most authors at producing a Victorian pastiche, mostly because she doesn’t try too hard. She’s more concerned with serving up Victorian attitudes and values than with imitating Victorian prose. A pleasant entertainment, very much in the Harlequin romance mode, but without that genre’s excessive focus on the heroine’s emotions, and with accurate period detail. Perry’s exploration of character nudges the book towards the psychological end of the crime novel spectrum, but since she doesn’t want to give away the perp too soon, she focusses more the effects of the crimes on the Ellison family than on the clues. Good, but not a keeper. **½ (2007)

Mordecai Richler. Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang (1975)

     Mordecai Richler. Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang (1975) I finally read this book, years after it appeared and made a splash. It’s awful. If this book were written by anyone other than Richler, it would not have been published, or else it would have been heavily edited. The ostensible audience is children from K to about grade 2, which means it must sound well read aloud. It doesn’t. Richler seems to think that funny names, CAPITAL LETTERS, and elaborate explanations of the obvious are the difference between adult and children’s books. Not so. The plot of this book is lame, the style is pedestrian, the characterisation is cardboardy as can be. If this book resulted from Richler’s attempts at bed-time stories for his children, too bad for his kids. Ugh! (2007)

Howard Haycraft and John Beecroft, eds. Three Times Three (1964)

     Howard Haycraft and John Beecroft, eds. Three Times Three (1964) Three crime omnibuses bound together, each containing a short novel, a novelette (or long short story), and three short stories. I read all except the Marsh novel, which I’d read recently, and the Geoffrey Household novel, a tediously detailed “suspense” story whose narrator fancies himself a hunter. It’s an example of gore-porn. The short stories are nicely done examples of the crime shaggy-dog story, a very popular genre before the days of TV. Good entertainment, but not a keeper. 0 to *** (2007)