A Death in Venice: Brunetti on the case

    Donna Leon Death at La Fenice (1992) The first in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series, reprinted in 2004. I’d heard of it, but paid no attention. Now I will read them all, in order if possible. The setting is the La Fenice opera house in Venice, the victim is the world-famous conductor Helmut Wellauer, the suspects include some singers, the director, musicians, assorted lovers, journalists and gossips, and of course the widow. Politics as well as standard Italian-style corruption, Wellauer’s history, Brunetti’s family, and Venice itself make for a wonderful mix. Leon’s forte is the casually inserted detail and stray thought, which create character, setting, and ambience. The resolution is satisfactory, and the long and winding road to it is a delight to follow. Brunetti is professional, humane, and persistent. His love for his family is believable, as are his partly cynical and partly collegial relationships with his fellow cops. Recommended. ****

The Ruins of Earth: gloomy forecasts of the End.

    Thomas M. Disch. The Ruins of Earth (1973) A collection of short stores about how and why Earth is doomed. At the time, the “population bomb” was on everyone’s mind, and Harry Harrison’s “Roommates” illustrates an extrapolation of its effects. He later expanded it into a novel, which was adapted into the movie Soylent Green. The time scale was off, but Harrison’s ideas if anything underestimate what will likely happen when the climate tips. Climate change is a side-effect of our overpopulation: at present, our annual consumption of renewable resources is about 1.25 times as much resources as the planet’s systems can replace. In addition, we are adding CO2 and other pollutants to the atmosphere faster than the planet’s systems can process them. Disaster is inevitable. The only uncertainty is about the scale and rate of the disaster, and whether or not we can adapt in time to prevent extinction.
     All the stories are worth reading. Most are satires, albeit not particularly funny ones. ** to ***

Rumpole Wins, Again and Again (Rumpole Rests His Case, Rumpole a la Carte)

     John Mortimer. Rumpole Rests His Case (2001) Seven tales illustrating Rumpole’s forensic skills and his firm conviction that banging up fellow citizens is bad, no matter how badly they have misbehaved. The tone of these stories is more elegiac than ever. Mortimer’s stories glance at contemporary politics, the shenanigans that respectable people get up to, the weaknesses and frailties of human beings. In “The Old Familiar Faces”, Rumpole does some good outside the courtroom by using a bit of discreet blackmail on villains who have hidden their naughty pasts under a cloak of respectability. “The Actor Laddie” muses on the sometimes surprising results of ego-sustaining vanities, when Rumpole’s aging-actor client pleads guilty to theft merely because he wants to make a grand speech to the Jury. The title story shows Rumpole in hospital and demonstrating a ward-mate’s innocence to the satisfaction of the Jury consisting of the other patients.
     The stories maintain the genial surface of the series, but there’s a darkness beneath it. Rumpole wants to prevent miscarriages of justice. His notions of good and evil are that we are all sinners. The best we can hope for is that the small pleasures of life will offset the darkness.
     Mortimer was a lawyer, his stories have the ring of truth, and remind us that the justice system is not about justice but about keeping crime in check. Especially crime committed by the lower classes. As always, a pleasure to read, but disturbing to contemplate. ***

     John Mortimer. Rumpole a la Carte (1990) In the title story, Rumpole sucessfully defends a restaurateur against a charge of maintaining a filthy insalubrious establishment. He wins all his other cases, too, including the informal ones within Chambers. But the victories are often bitter-sweet, what with the frailties of homo sapiens unlikely to disappear. In the last story, he prosecutes, and ends up defending the accused. The judge is not impressed, although a conviction would have been a grave miscarriage of justice. Recommended. ***

Donald Lam and the Case of Poisoned Anchovy Paste

     A. A. Fair. Fools Die on Friday (1947) One of Erle Stanley Gardner’s pseudonymous soft-boiled PI tales featuring and narrated by Donald Lam, partner with Bertha Cool in a detective agency. Snappy dialogue, adequate characterisation, a nicely twisted plot involving poisoned anchovy paste, well-done ambience, and hints of noir make for a fast-moving entertainment. It’s set in the immediate post-war period with its housing shortages, and women used to independence and no longer entirely happy with remarks about good legs. The cops are disdainful of Donald Lam, but not hostile, and happy to get whatever help he gives them. Bertha Cool is irritatingly one-dimensional. The other women range from barely articulate scenery to people that matter to Lam. Ditto for the men. Even Lam, the most fully realised character of all, is a cardboard cut out with a Technicolor front and a pasteboard-grey back.
     Pulp fiction, but a cut or two above average. Gardner’s Perry Mason series differs only in more carefully imagined characters. **½

Det. Chief Inspector Banks First Case

     Peter Robinson. Gallows View (1987) The first Inspector Banks novel. A number of break-ins victimising elderly ladies, a murder, a peeping tom, and eventually more violent aggro add up to almost more crime than Banks, recently moved north from London, can handle. Assorted personal and professional complications round out the story. Robinson shows us all the criminals before Banks can suss them, making the police procedure more believable. It’s clear that a combination of slogging, sifting of details, and sheer luck solve crimes and bring the perps to whatever justice can be wrung out of the tangle of motives, cross-purposes, and twisted psychology.
     Robinson’s strengths are character and setting. I’ve read a couple of other Banks novels, so I know that his private life becomes rather messy. I intend to read the remaining books in order. Recommended. I’ve also seen some of the TV series episodes. Also recommended. ***

Cooperman investigates a scam, discovers Murder

     Howard Engel. A City Called July (1986) A crooked lawyer disappears with $2.6 million worth of his clients’ savings. The rabbi and the president of the congregation ask Benny Cooperman to look into it. The case becomes complicated when the lawyer’s younger brother dies of a stab wound to his belly. Then a homeless man who knew something dies by the same method. Finally, the lawyer’s body is discovered. Who done all this evil, and why? Cooperman tells the story as it unfolds, complete with his wry asides and random observations of his world. Family secrets, corruption in high places, and cops that either tolerate or like Cooperman make up the tasty mix we’ve come to expect in hard-boiled PI fiction. Except that Cooperman is a soft-boiled egg. You like mysteries? This one’s well crafted, but you will probably unravel the knot before Cooperman does. You like well-written stories that give you vivid characters and a well-detailed world? Engel delivers. Recommended. ***

How the other animals live

 

 Pat Senson. Nasty, Brutish and Short (2010) A compilation of oddball facts about animals as recounted on Quirks and Quarks, CBC radio’s science news show. It demonstrates that no matter how sure we are that we know what’s natural and what isn’t, Mother Nature has a habit of confounding our prejudices. What’s refreshing, compared to TV, is the willingness to admit that just why animals do some of the weird things they do isn’t understood. There are a few attempts at just-so stories, mostly in terms of probable odds of survival, but without more data, most of these remain merely interesting speculation.
     I learned a lot, but very little of it has stuck. A random dive into the book reveals that alligators can move their internal airbag around, which shifts the centre of gravity, and so enables silent, almost ripple-free diving and surfacing. Which is why alligators are more dangerous than crocodiles, who have to use their feet and tails to do that, and so tend to announce their presence in the water. Or maybe alligators’ sneakiness just makes them seem more dangerous.
     A nice potato chip book which should please anybody who wants to know weird stuff about critters. Senson finishes off every mini-essay with a lame joke, which I found somewhat irritating, and costs the book ½ a star. You can find Quirks and Quarks podcasts here.**½

Update 2023-03-20: The painting is The Peaceable Kingdom, by  Edward Hicks.