Hazel Holt. Mrs Malory and No Cure for Death (2005)

     Hazel Holt. Mrs Malory and No Cure for Death (2005) A chatty, light-weight mystery set in a west-country village near the Cornish coast. Widowed Sheila Malory lives a comfortable and busy life. Her gift for gossip helps the local constabulary (a DCI she knew when he was still a boy) find the perp. A doc with a mysterious past and an aloof manner is stabbed to death in his clinic office. Nicely done until the end. The solution, when it comes, is kinda lame, involving past deceptions and lies. It explains everything, but the psychology is pat, superficial, and includes facts that should have been alluded to throughout the book. Holt devised a too complicated plot, I think, with too many plausible suspects. Unsatisfying. I suspect that her connections in publishing (she was Barbara Pym’s advisor and biographer) eased publication of this third-rate book.
     This Signet paperback is published by Penguin Group: the cover design echoes the old penguin covers, which IMO is a cheat. This is nowhere near the standards of those venerable (and now disintegrating) volumes. * (2010)

Stella Margetson. Leisure and Pleasure in the Nineteenth Century (1969)

     Stella Margetson. Leisure and Pleasure in the Nineteenth Century (1969) I was about to put this book in a box destined for U. Vic’s book sale when I started leafing through it. Then I read it. A pleasure to read, filled with interesting anecdotes that taken together trace the history denoted on the title, from the easy liberty (and licentiousness) of the Regency through the narrowing of moral strictures during Victoria’s long widowhood (measured among other things by the tightening of corsets and increased layering of underclothes), to the loosening of behaviour (and clothes) in the last years of her reign and the ascendancy of the Edwardians. Margetson’s style is easy and straightforward. She’s especially good at linking what are in fact disparate stories. The only serious fault is that there are not nearly enough pictures. I won’t keep it, but I’m glad I read it. ** (2010)

Eric Wright. Buried in Stone (1997)

      Eric Wright. Buried in Stone (1997) Offered as the first Mel Pickett story, it’s really the second, as we first met Mel in A Fine Italian Hand, in which he helped Charlie Salter. Retired to Larch River, about three hours drive north of Toronto, Mel is nice guy, and much shrewder than his avuncular, vaguely rural externals suggest. But he can’t avoid being drawn into the case of a local thug’s murder. His legwork includes a welcome train ride to Winnipeg and drive to Kenora, where he finds proof of a crucial falsification of dates. The upshot is that Lyman Caxton, the local police chief, loses his woman, who has helped hide the thug (her brother) from the law. Pickett ends up about to marry Charlotte Mercer, the waitress/cook at the local café, with whom he has been spending pleasant Sunday afternoons in bed and at table.
     All in all, a satisfying read; the crime and its solution provide an excuse for a portrait of rural Ontario that has the ring of truth despite its somewhat sentimental point of view. The byplay between the OPP, Mel, and Caxton is nicely done: the combination of mutual respect, wariness of treading on foreign turf, and professional procedure feels right. **½ (2010)

Eric Wright. Death by Degrees (1993)

     Eric Wright. Death by Degrees (1993) Salter’s father suffers a stroke, and partly to distract himself from his anxieties, and partly to delay the boredom of writing a report on gambling, Salter takes on a case of poison-pen letters implying that the death of a recently elected college dean is murder, and not the side effect of a botched robbery. Salter’s investigation turns up a nasty mess of campus politics, which suggests there may have been a murder. Which it was.

     Wright’s dissection of academia, though set in a mere technical college, is clear-eyed and somewhat gentler than I would expect (he was a teacher at Ryerson for many years). He has a knack for quick character sketches that leave us with the impression of more than what was shown to us. Salter’s on-going family soap opera is dealt with a little more thoroughly than in other books. His relationship with his father is not resolved into sweetness and forgiving delight, but remains touchy and mutually armoured to the end (he will go home to be tended by May, his common-law wife). Annie and Charlie do what they have to do, because the old man is family; Charlie eventually can forgive himself for not having the kind of mutually affectionate relationship with his father that Seth has with his grandfather. A good read. *** (2010)

Jay Ingram. The Science of Everyday Life (1989)

     Jay Ingram. The Science of Everyday Life (1989) Ingram was the host of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks for many years. This is one of several books that indirectly came out of that show: a collection of bite-size explanations of common experiences, ranging from yawning to the change in pitch when you stir cream into your coffee to the mathematics of parties. He takes care to provide the latest and best research, with references. Better yet, he indicates when the phenomena are still not fully understood.
      Fun, enlightening, and above all an excellent primer in the scientific stance: The world is marvellous place, and asking questions about it makes it more marvellous still. That’s a great antidote to the pseudo-romantic notion that science destroys the mysteries of the cosmos. Actually, it replaces mystery with wonder, and the answers almost always add even more mysteries. Science is a journey without end.
     This book is out of print, but it’s worth searching for. ***

Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Rashomon and Other Stories (1959)

     Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Rashomon and Other Stories (1959) Specially translated for the Bantam Classics series, this is a good introduction to Akutagawa’s work. The introductory essay reprises his life, and places him in the Japanese tradition. It appears that Japanese writers often lifted stories from old books; their skill lies in the reworking of the story to suit both the reader’s tastes and their own preoccupations and weltanschauung. In this, Japanese literature resembles that of Europe before the Renascence, after which authorial originality became an admirable feature rather than a defect. It’s no accident, I think, that the shift towards the personal in art and literature coincides with the shift towards new discoveries in the sciences and technologies. I gather from reading the occasional review that Japanese literature is becoming “modern” in the same way. These stories not only offer a few hours entertainment but also insight into a different view of the world. **½ (2010)

Alan Coren, ed. Punch Book of Crime (1976)

     Alan Coren, ed. Punch Book of Crime (1976) Towards the end of its long run, Punch’s essays became more and more serious. At times, they sounded like leaders in the Guardian. Even the few fictional pieces in this collection exude a rage at a broken and barbarous system that fails to rehabilitate and punishes prisoners gratuitously merely for the misdeed of being cooped up. The cartoons are up to the old and rarely equalled standard, but the prose by turns enrages and nauseates, not by its style, but by its subjects. ** (2010)