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Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

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Silent in the Grave, Deanna Raybourn’s debut effort, opens with the death of Lady Julia (née March) Grey’s husband, Edward. Edward had been sickly since a child, so his death was expected. What was not expected, however, was a private investigator named Nicholas Brisbane telling Lady Julia that her husband did not, in fact, die of natural causes. He was murdered.

Before his death, Edward had been receiving threatening notes using quotations from the Bible, including the one from which the novel gets its title: Psalm 31:17 – Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. Edward had hired Brisbane to determine the source of the notes and hopefully prevent the violence they implied. Julia is at first disbelieving, but when confronted with one of the notes, she chooses to keep Brisbane in her hire in order to determine if Edward was indeed murdered and if so, who the culprit is.

As Julia and Brisbane dive headlong into the mystery, they uncover all sorts of secrets – about Edward, about Julia’s household servants, and about Brisbane himself. This being a book from MIRA, an imprint of Harlequin, there’s a fair amount of romantic tension between the two leads, but this is a mystery first and foremost.

And it’s a great one. Julia is a terrific protagonist – a little snobby, but broad-minded enough to be relatable to a modern audience. She’s plucky, headstrong, smart, and funny, and Brisbane is wonderful as her enigmatic partner in sleuthing. Raybourn pours on the historical details, but it never becomes tedious. Instead, it makes the period come alive, elegance and decay alike. And the plots and subplots and sub-subplots are twisty and surprising and always interesting to read about.

There are some hitches. At times, characters’ actions or words will contradict. For example, Julia tells the reader how much she preferred the late Edward’s blonde good looks, and a few pages later remarks that her teenage fantasies always involved dark, brooding men – exactly the opposite of Edward. I understand that this helps develop Julia’s character and her budding romance with Brisbane, who is very much a dark, brooding man, but it seems clunky.

Additionally, characters often act in what seems to be an anachronistic way. The March family speaks rather freely about sexual affairs, homosexuality, prostitution, and other topics we modern readers tend to believe just weren’t discussed openly in prim and proper Victorian times. Julia’s elder sister Portia is, for all intents and purposes, a fully out lesbian and lives with her lover Jane, and the family doesn’t seem to suffer much socially for it. Of course these things did go on then as they do now, but the way the characters react to it strains credulity. Their sensibilities are a bit too modern to be believable.

These are minor quibbles in an otherwise fantastic story. Silent in the Grave has everything required for a nearly perfect romantic historical mystery: lots of witty banter, a solid (and wonderfully salacious) central mystery, a large and colorful cast of characters, plenty of period detail, and several subplots to keep you interested in case you solve the main mystery before the sleuth does. Plus, Raybourn resolves mostly everything but leaves one small thread purposefully dangling so you’ll be eager to pick up the sequel once you’ve finished. Which I promptly did.

Borrowed from my local library.

Love Lies Bleeding by Jess McConkey

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Jess McConkey’s novel Love Lies Bleeding is only the second adult book I’ve read this year (not including audiobooks and comics). The first one was Jennifer McMahon’s Don’t Breathe a Word, a book I received from Harper Paperbacks that impressed me quite a lot. Based on Don’t Breathe a Word, Harper does quite well with female-driven thrillers and mysteries, so I was pleased to receive another book in the same vein – Jess McConkey’s debut (this one from William Morrow, another paperback imprint of Harper Collins).
The books share some similarities – both involve 30-something female protagonists who become caught up in a mystery that may or may not have otherworldly explanations. Beyond that, though, the similarities end. While McMahon’s novel was well-written with compelling characters and a nicely spooky tone, I found McConkey’s writing sub-par. The suspenseful plot was there, but it lacked almost everything else required for a great read.
The first problem is the characters. Our protagonist is Samantha Moore, a thirty-five year old woman who was brutally attacked in a parking lot one night and has been sent by her overbearing father and fiance to recuperate in a cabin in rural Minnesota. Her father hires a nurse, Anne Weaver, to care for her, which includes monitoring her medication and administering physical therapy. Sam has a few neighbors in the town, and it quickly becomes apparent that these neighbors have a lot to hide – and the secrets all seem to involve a woman named Blanche who used to live at the cabin Sam now inhabits.
Sam’s situation should have created automatic sympathy for her on the part of the reader. Instead, she’s almost unbearable. It’s understandable that she should be experiencing a fair amount of self-pity after what happened to her, but it’s taken to extremes here. What really bothered me was her relationship with her father and her fiance, Jackson. Sam allows them to micromanage her life and her recovery and then acts like she has no power over the situation, which is completely false. She’s not a minor with no legal way of taking control of her own life – she’s an adult with a fair amount of money and the ability to take care of herself. But she doesn’t. She prefers to whine. I understand that characters must begin somewhere small so they can grow over the course of the novel, but Sam is just unbelievable as a grown-up. When teenagers act like teenagers, it’s good writing. When thirty-five year old women act like teenagers, it’s just annoying.
Sam was the biggest problem, but not the only one. The level of the writing overall was poor. Characters say things that contradict their earlier actions, sentences feel awkward or too simplistic, and McConkey inserts clumsy chapters told from the unnamed bad guy’s point of view that muddle things up and make the red herring glaringly obvious. It felt like the work of an amateur. When writing is great, it’s easy to tell. The writing here is not great.
I had a few other minor complaints (subplots are left unresolved and some characters are hard to distinguish from one another), but poor writing and an unlikable protagonist (whom the author wants so badly to be likable) are enough to damn any novel. That said, I did find the overall plot compelling enough to make me finish the book. I wanted to know whodunnit, and in making me want that, McConkey accomplished at least one thing that she set out to do. I’ll look for more suspense novels from William Morrow, but I’ll probably pass on anything else by McConkey.
Copy received from the publisher. Love Lies Bleeding will be on shelves July 26.

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd (audiobook)

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When Ted and Kat’s cousin Salim comes to visit them in London, Ted immediately wants to take Salim on his favorite London attraction, the London Eye, a large bicycle wheel-like contraption with tiny pods for people to ride in, towering high over the city of London. Salim and his mother, Ted and Kat’s Aunt Gloria, are visiting briefly, stopping over before their move from Manchester, England, to New York City. Ted, who struggles with a disorder on the autism spectrum (which is never labeled outright but is most likely Asperger’s Syndrome), is excited to share the experience of The London Eye with Salim, as Salim’s interest in him has immediately shot his cousin onto his list of friends, after his mom, dad, and his teacher. However, as the children are waiting in an excruciatingly long line to buy tickets, a man approaches them, claiming a case of claustrophobia and offering Salim his ticket for free. As Ted and Kat watch their cousin enter the London Eye and then track his pod throughout the precise thirty-minute ride, they are flummoxed when Salim doesn’t exit the ride. As the adults contact the police, Ted and Kat team up to investigate what happened. Could their cousin have actually vanished into thin air? Since Ted’s brain works differently than everyone’s around him, he may just have an edge on figuring out the truth of his cousin’s disappearance.

While I’ve been eying The London Eye Mystery ever since it came out in 2007, I often resisted picking it up, due to the recent publishing trend of protagonists with autism and Asperger’s Disease, in which the plots often failed to distinguish themselves from each other for me. However, I am thrilled that I finally picked this book up on audio. Narrator Alex Kalajzic masterfully brings the voice of Ted to life. Ted is a well-rounded character, who is never solely defined by his “syndrome,” as he calls it. He is 100% aware that he is different than other people, and often remarks upon the adjustments and observations that his teacher has instructed him to do: what different facial expressions denote, and when to smile at others. Yet he is still entirely himself, entirely focused on what makes him happy. Ted has an obsessive love for meteorology, listens to the shipping and weather forecast late at night to help him sleep, and thinks of weather patterns when he becomes anxious. Dowd often remarks upon the flapping motion that Ted’s hand makes when he is feeling heavy emotion, a small detail that broke my heart while reading. Yet regardless of Ted’s difficulty with emotions and physical contact, you can tell he still loves his family. He is excited to finally become ‘friends’ with Kat throughout their investigation, and he instantly bonds with Salim.

Besides Ted and Kat’s evolving relationship, the family dynamics in The London Eye Mystery are also stellar, all of which Ted views with a detached eye. Ted’s mom and Kat constantly clash, Aunt Gloria and her ex-husband Rashid have a typically antagonistic yet supportive relationship, and Ted’s father is exasperated with Aunt Gloria. I also have to say that I never guessed exactly how Salim disappeared, although I did predict an aspect that would be involved (yes, I’m being quite vague here!). Dowd’s mystery is compelling and smart, and the resolution is satisfying. It’s incredibly sad that this talented author won’t get the opportunity to provide us with more books.

While I’m sure I would have enjoyed The London Eye Mystery in print, narrator Alex Kalajzic’s matter-of-fact yet warm tone truly drew me in to Ted’s inner life. A wonderful listen!

Clarity by Kim Harrington

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I have to preface this review with a little description of the weather in East Texas. This past weekend was a beautiful one: highs in the mid 70s to low 80s, sunny without the kind of heat that bakes your skin, a light breeze. I took Friday off from work and set up my hammock in my backyard, between two trees that provide the perfect amount of shade. And I proceeded to spend approximately three hours zipping through Kim Harrington’s debut novel Clarity in that hammock, in my shorts and tank top, blissful and happy.
I say this not only to make you people who live in the frigid north jealous (how many inches of snow did you get this week?) but also to point out Clarity was a book written for hammock-reading. It’s a mystery with a paranormal twist set in New England during the summer. There’s frequent talks of beach visits and swimsuits and vacation spots. It’s the best kind of popcorn book: well-written with an engaging plot, interesting characters, a witty first-person narrative, and nothing too depressing to darken your sunny skies (metaphorically, of course, since the sun just wouldn’t go away last weekend. Your envy sustains me.).
Our protagonist is named Clarity, and surprisingly she’s not the character in the book with the most unfortunate name. (That honor belongs to her brother, Periwinkle, or Perry for short). Clarity goes by Clare (and wouldn’t you go by Clare too?) and belongs to a family of gifted people. Clare is psychic, her brother Perry is a medium, and her mother can read minds. (Can you think of a worse ability for your mother to have?) Her father left them long ago.
As a family, they run a business where they tell tourists about their lives – they can’t tell the future, but they are able to tell the tourists things like “Your husband is sleeping with his secretary.” Of course, they only relate negative news when they don’t care about being paid. They are not particularly well-regarded by the other people in town, who view them as frauds or freaks. Clare’s particular psychic ability doesn’t mean that she is all-knowing. Instead, she can touch an item and see the events associated with that item. For example, she’d be able to touch a knife and know it was used to kill someone.
Which brings us to our murder. Clare’s town is a vacation hot spot, and one of its visitors has the misfortune to be murdered in her hotel room. This has nothing to do with Clare, until her brother tells her that he had hooked up with the murdered girl the night she was killed. This makes Perry a suspect, and suddenly the murder is very personal.
And then her ex-boyfriend, the son of the mayor, asks her to help him solve the case using her special abilities. Clare and said ex-boyfriend are exes because she touched his jacket and discovered he had cheated on her with her arch-nemesis, a girl named Tiffany (arch-nemeses are almost always named Tiffany, aren’t they?). But he convinces her to help in the name of justice…and the fact that she’d also be working with Gabriel, the hot son of the new police chief, doesn’t hurt. Love triangle: there is one. It’s cute, but it doesn’t overwhelm the story. The mystery is central, and it’s a good one.
One of the things I liked best about Clarity is Clare’s voice. She’s snarky without coming across as rude or mean, and she wisecracks constantly. She’s got such a wonderfully sarcastic sense of humor. I laughed out loud three times during the first fifty pages.
Clare is a very likable protagonist, and Harrington uses this to her advantage when she writes about Clare’s relationships with others in the story, in particular her brother. Because Clare is so likable, we want to trust the people she trusts, which makes it even more wrenching when Perry is suspected. It was really nice to read a story where brother and sister are friends with each other, but the sister doesn’t necessarily idolize the older brother. Clare recognizes her brother’s faults – he tends to love and leave women, which doesn’t put him in a good place when the girl is murdered. Clare is torn between revealing Perry’s hookup to the police and keeping it secret. She knows the police don’t always arrest the correct person, and her family is already regarded as liars and frauds by the townspeople.
I wasn’t terribly surprised by the identity of the killer, but that didn’t matter a whole lot. The book kept me guessing long enough, and even if I had known from the beginning, Clarity would have been a treat to read due to the sheer awesomeness of Clare’s narrative style. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a story where the narrative voice is so distinctive and entertaining.
Clarity is very obviously the first in a series of books, but the mystery genre has always done series best. This book, like others in its genre, neatly wraps up the murder mystery but leaves open a few threads about Clare’s family and her abilities that I anticipate will be explored in future books. It all adds up to a satisfying read that also leaves you wanting more. That, my friends, is the right way to do a series.
Copy checked out from my local library.

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley

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A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley is the third in a series of mystery novels featuring precocious eleven year old amateur detective Flavia de Luce. Despite the age of the protagonist, the books are written for an adult audience, although they do have great crossover appeal. They’ve garnered a lot of acclaim, and it’s well deserved. Even if you’re not particularly interested in mysteries, if you like a quirky character, you’d enjoy reading about Flavia’s adventures.
Flavia is a special sort of child. She’s more interested in her dead uncle Tarquin’s chemistry laboratory than any other more normal childish pursuit (although she does enjoy flitting about the town on her bicycle, Gladys). Her specialty is poisons, and she often uses these (non-fatally, of course) against her two older sisters as vengeance for their mean-spirited pranks. (Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s not vengeance for anything, sometimes it’s just to torment them.) She also has a penchant for discovering dead bodies, and like any good character in a mystery novel, she ensures she’s involved in solving the crime.
Flavia lives with her sisters and father (her mother died when she was a baby in a climbing accident) in 1950s England, in the de Luce family’s sprawling estate of Buckshaw. Her father’s been a bit remote since the death of her mother, and her two sisters, while once close to her, now make it a habit of torturing her (a favorite taunt is that Flavia is a changeling, a fairy swapped out for the real human child as a baby). Buckshaw sits in a peculiar little English town called Bishop’s Lacey – a town full of colorful characters and an alarming number of murders. The town and time period lend the stories much of their charm.
What makes these books truly entertaining is Flavia’s voice. She’s got a tremendous amount of character and it’s remarkable that Bradley, a grown man, is able to write her voice so convincingly. It helps that Flavia is very deliberately not your typical eleven year old. She’s resourceful, cheeky, intelligent beyond her years, and treats adults as her peers. She’s also frequently selfish, petulant, mean-spirited, and foolish. Despite all that (or perhaps because of these failings), she’s also always likable. As a reader, I never felt left behind by Flavia’s sleuthing nor did I find that I was miles ahead of her. She treats the reader as her confidant and makes numerous (often very amusing) asides that allow us to get into her head.
A Red Herring Without Mustard involves a gypsy, a lost baby, and a ring of forgers. Its predecessor, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, finds Flavia investigating the death of a famous puppeteer, and the first in the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, involves a dead philatelist (that’s stamp collector to the uninitiated) on Buckshaw’s lawn. The mysteries are all good, by which I mean they always make sense, there are not gaping plot holes, and they move along at a fair clip without forcing the reader to slog through boring bits. They’re also different than what you tend to find in your usual mystery fare (dead lovers and the like). So while each book is rather long, clocking in at 400 pages or more, they never feel so and can be read in a couple lazy afternoons.
Each book is a distinct mystery unto itself, so they can theoretically be read out of order, but I wouldn’t recommend it. One of Bradley’s talents as a storyteller is to let his characters grow from book to book. Flavia’s relationships with her father and sisters change over the course of the three novels, as does her understanding of her mother and the people in Bishop’s Lacey. By the end of the third novel, I was left with the knowledge that the de Luce family dynamic is much more complex (and therefore richer) than I realized in the first novel.
I’ve heard that the audios are really good with spot-on narration for Flavia’s voice. I think these are books that would do well on re-read (or re-listen) – even though I know whodunnit, there’s enough humor in Flavia’s irresistible voice to keep me interested a second time around.
Copy checked out from my local library.