Category: Krimi

María Angélica Bosco, Death Going Down (1954).

Good Reads meta-data is 160 pages, rated 3.10 by 379 litizens. 

DNA: Argentine.

Verdict: Meh.

Tagline: Not sure I care.

Winter in Buenos Aires is wet and windy, when a resident of a small apartment block returns home late at night from the pub, well and truly tanked, to find the lift occupied by…a corpse. Befuddled he does some stupid things.

There follows a police procedural confined largely to this building where each apartment occupies a floor. Several of the residents are European flotsam and jetsam from the war. The corpse was not a resident and yet seemed to have had a key to the front door. Does the European past hold the key to this mystery.  Doh!  

I chose it for the setting but, well, I got little of post war Buenos Aires since the story unfolds mainly in the building. The translation was cryptic, or perhaps that is the original, and this reader found it hard to follow and hard to develop an interest in, or to keep straight, the characters. Ergo, be your own judge.   

It is one of eighteen or so in a series from this writer who is described as the Agatha Christie of Argentina.  I couldn’t see why.  But then one of the other Good Readers compared her Raymond Chandler and that seemed idiotic for even a Good Reader.  

Emily Brightwell, Mrs Jeffries Stands Corrected (1996).

Good Reads meta-data is 233 pages rated 3.99 by 1,204 litizens.

Genre: krimi; Species: period.

DNA: England; Victorian.

Verdict: Cute but slow.  

Tagline: He did it!  What a surprise.  

Mr Obnoxious is stabbed in the back during a party celebrating the opening of his new very posh pub. Since he was universally disliked, despised, and hated as everyone from his wife, brother, sister, and the family dog is quick to say, there is no shortage of suspects.  In addition there are all the people whom he has shortchanged, cheated, and stole from in his pursuit of free marketeering.  

By a quirk of fate a not very sharp tool at Scotland Yard has inherited, not only a grand house, but a housekeeper and her staff.  While Inspector Dull bumbles around, Mrs Jeffries and her associates get to work and uncover clues to place in his path, some of which he notices.  Others not.  Some he understands, others not.  

With this invisible help he meets with success, a surprise to him and to others, and so he muddles through. 

However, in this outing the worm turns.  Slightly.  There is a nice plot twist at the end, but it was a tedious trip to get there.  I all but drowned in the blue herrings.   

This is number nine (9) in the sequence which has, sit down, more than thirty titles. I bought in Canowindra in 2025.

There a similar spin on Sherlock Holmes with Mrs Hudson, see Martin Davies, Mrs Hudson and the Malabar Rose (2005) and more.

Giulio Leoni, Crusade of Darkness (2007). 

Good Reads meta-data is 560 pages, rated 2.84 by 87 litizens.

Genre: Krimi; Species: Period (Medieval).

DNA: Italian.

Verdict: Suffocating detail. 

Tagline:  Spoiler: she Pope.  

October 1301 the Florentine Council sends Dante (Durante) Alighieri to Rome to assess and, if possible, negotiate with Pope Boniface, who was busy redefining papal corruption.  An uneasy peace exits in Florence between the Little-enders and the Big-enders, while Rome is seething.  While he waits for an audience Dante falls into company of an affable, wealthy Senator with a comely daughter.  Dante often has trouble keeping it in his robe.

In this heady atmosphere, strange things emerge.  Very strange.  That a representative of the Inquisition wants to hush things up, stimulates Dante to find out more with a great deal of to’ing and fro’ing in ruined Rome. Much. Too much. 

A fantastic plot is slowly revealed.  

This is the third and final instalment of the English translation of this series.  There remain several untranslated titles in the original Italian.

I delitti della Medusa (Book 1)

The Mosaic Crimes (or I delitti del mosaico) (Book 2)

The Kingdom of Light (or Los crímenes de la luz) (Book 3)

La Crociata delle Tenebre (or La croisade des ténèbres) (Book 4)

La regola delle ombre (Book 5)

L’ultimo segreto di Dante (Book 8)

Good Reads meta-data is 398 pages, rated 2.85 by 220 litizens.

Genre: krimi; Species: medieval period.

DNA: Italian; Species: Firenze; Sub-species: Dante.

Verdict: Second time around.

Tagline: Stupidity is god’s will. (That explains a lot.)

It is a world where whatever happens is god’s will, and that is that.  Any further consideration is blasphemous. Faith not reason prevails…for most.  In this stifling and stultifying milieu Messer Durante is an exception, one of only a few, who looks beneath this sanctimonious carpet to the see the warp and weft that weave the  Church’s hypocrisy. According to Dante (1265-1321), god means for us men (but not women) to make full use of our abilities. But this makes him a non-Believer or worse in the eyes of most others. In short, it all has a contemporary resonance. 

Dante is a Prior for a two-month term of office.  Six priors comprise the executive of the city-state government of Florence, and during their two-month terms, they live in the office dormitory. The short term is to discourage strong government by promoting rotation of the office, and the residency requirement makes it a full time job: Those are the fictions. This duty is unwelcome to those with a business to manage, a farm to tend, a sick wife to mind, or travel to do and they try to avoid the call to duty. Ergo, often the incumbents are layabouts with none of those concerns. The priors are nominees of the guilds that dominate local commerce and that commerce dominates the secular city. The historic Dante was a prior from the apothecary guild.  He had qualified for this guild because it was relatively easy, he had an interested in science, and it afforded prestige for which he was hungry from go-to-whoa. But no, he was not a drug dealer.  

In this story most of the priors are timeservers, some reluctant, others more willing, but Dante takes it very seriously when the dead start to pile up in the strangest places and in the strangest ways.  Those who answer god’s telephone tell him to back off, but he keeps going through the murk of Guelph, Ghibelline, greed, graft, and grievance.  

Confession.  I never did understand how the woman in the box worked or what the eight-sided hall of mirrors had to do with anything.  Maybe you do.  Inform me at your leisure. 

***

I have read this before but was moved to do it again after reading a biography of the poet discussed elsewhere on this blog because now I thought I now know him better. 

Good Reads meta data is 320 pages, 3.35 rated by 342 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

DNA: Yankee.

Verdict: ‘Looking, Garv.’

Tagline: the squirrel did it!

Taxidermy is a dangerous trade, but Garv was not warned of this peril when he learned the business.  Now he knows.  He survives the mobsters, psychopaths, MAGAs, and more through the combined efforts of (Y)Angie his de facto wife who is an inveterate love tackler; Otto the Russian imp who honed his survival skills in the Gulag whom they shelter from ICE, his criminal brother who is less of crook than the police and lawyers after them.  Oh, and the sacrifice of Fred, the tame, because stuffed lion, in the living room.  Fortunately, it turns out the venom in a dead snake’s fangs is still toxic. Who knew.  

This is a re-read.  

Japanese anime (1978-9) 52 half-hour TV episodes rated 7.9 by 1,700 cineastes.  These were also screened throughout Europe at the time, as witnessed by the German and Spanish reviews on the IMDb.  

Genre: SyFy.

DNA: Japan.

Verdict: More, please.

Tagline: Holy Jupiter!

Between 1940 and 1951 Captain Future policed the nine planets in radio plays, pulp magazines, and even pulpier paperback books in the United States. There were further adaptations, like the Japanese series noted above.  

Seventeen of his 45-minute adventures were available from Radio Archives the last time I looked. Recommended to all SyFy nerdlngs.  These radio plays were written by Edmond Hamilton and voiced by Milton Bagby who does a marvellous job.  

Captain Future is Curtis Newton who is the most scientific of all scientists in the Solar System, where all nine planets, some moons, and a few asteroids and a comet or two are inhabited, and even some pinheads, mostly by humanoids, along with the required monsters for Curtis to tame, bamboozle, trap, or slay.

In his mission of mayhem he is aided by a living brain in a self-propelled glass box with waldos, being the last of Dr Simon Wright whose science is second only to that of Curtis; Grag the giant metal manling; Otho the rubber android, and assorted others.  See the Wikipedia entry for details.  

Nothing stops Captain Future: when villains maroon him on an uninhabited asteroid in a space suit with two hours of air, using the metals of the asteroid and his handy sonic screwdriver borrowed from Dr Who, he promptly builds a nuclear reactor to turn the rock itself into a space ship. Likewise the dreaded demons who dwell in the Great Red Fire Sea on Jupiter are no match for this wizard of science.

Sorting out the Solar System is a big job, to be sure, but Curt is an even bigger sort-outer than that, and in the later stories he extends his crusade against wrongdoers to time travel as well as interstellar and intermolecular space. This crusader needs no cape when he has science on his side.  

I heard some of these stories as a child, syndicated to a local radio station, and now I listen to them on my daily walks as a holiday from the unrelieved idiocy of contemporary events. 

Good Reads meta-data is 203 pages, rated 4.22 by 2403 litizens. 

Genre: Krimi; Species: Holmes.  

DNA: Edwardian England.

Verdict:  Poof!  

Tagline: Now you see him, now you don’t.

Erik Weisz (1874-1926) of Appleton Wisconsin is wrongly accused of murder, melée, and mayhem but Sherlock comes to the rescue as only he can, his Boswell at hand. You know Erik, that is, Harry Houdini stunt performer, illusionist, and escapologist extraordinaire. 

With a few of the tricks of his trade, Houdini assists Sherlock in identifying and apprehending the villain.  Most amusing is Watson’s first airplane ride. Indeed.  Of course there is no end to Sherlock’s wiles and the conclusion is foregone, though there are some nice and neat twists and turns along the way that confirm his nostrum: when all possibilities have been eliminated the impossible remains, or something like that.  

No trade secrets are revealed and I never did find out how Harry  got through that wall. 

***

The lengthy entry on Erik in Wikipedia makes for good reading.  There I note that after World War I he devoted a great deal of his time, effort, and reputation to debunking fraudulent spiritualists. He became a member of the editorial board of the Scientific American as a result.

This is a title in the series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which books, mostly reprints, are by a different authors.  In this one there are several typos, e.g., ‘wanned’ for ‘warmed’ and some formatting errors.  I expect the text was converted to digital for the Kindle by an A.I. that couldn’t read.  

Good Reads meta-data is 192 pages, rated 4.08 by 695 litizens.  

Genre: krimi; Species: Holmes.

Verdict: Stilted. 

Tagline: Bully!  

What chance do villains have when a young Sherlock Holmes is on the case? Even less when he is abetted and assisted by a young Theodore Roosevelt.  

Holmes is in a company of British actors touring the USA so he can learn the tricks of the thespian trade: make-up, disguise, voice changes, posture, accents, and costumery.  A brash Roosevelt had written him a fan letter after reading one of his early monographs on ash or something and they meet in New York City.  No sooner than they do, than a man is shot and off they go in pursuit, this dynamic duo.  

To the police this is a mugging gone wrong, but in it Holmes sees an ocean or more exactly a political assassination in the making.  

Thanks to the intervention of Holmes, President Rutherford Hayes is not assassinated.  His one-time Democratic rival Samuel Tilden figures in the investigation, as does a later Vice-President, Chester Arthur, and an elusive Charles Guiteau. A student of US presidential history will see in this list a connect the dots picture.  In a corrupt election Hayes defeated Tilden, who, to his credit, accepted the result for the sake and peace and quiet.  Later, Guiteau shot President Garfield, while proclaiming he was a Stalwart, the name of a political sect. The result was that Arthur, likewise a Stalwart, became president.  Hmmm.  The rug of history has been pulled over this for centuries.  

Until the current incumbent caused the question of corruption to be reopened, historians had regarded Arthur to be the most venal president. He will now have to cede that title to the Felon-in-Chief. 

Footnote: Guiteau had a brush with utopianism in that he joined Noyes’s Oneida Community for several years, but was banished.  The details are salacious. The brief biography of his miserable specimen reminded me of many holders of high office in the news today.

I said ‘stilted’ above because it is written as if it were from Roosevelt’s diary and so imitates his laboured styled.  And I guess it is successful in that imitation because it certainly is laboured.  

***

Stimulated by this reading I once again sought a biography of Tilden.  No recent one exists, as I discovered the last time I tried to find one about ten years ago.  There is a gap in the literature then, but this time I did find one published in 1939 and will acquire and read that as the world turns.  

I formed a very high opinion of Theodore Roosevelt in reading Edmund Morris’s three volume biography of the man some years ago. Highly recommend to biographistas.  

This book is a volume in the series of more than thirty reprints as ‘The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.’ I have read several others, each by a different author.  

Good Reads meta-data is 262 pages, rated 3.89 by 815 litizens.

Genre: Krimi, Species: Sherlock. 

DNA:  Holmes.

Verdict: More please. 

Tagline:  The impossible takes a little longer.

By hook and crook, Holmes and Watson find themselves in Egypt pursuing a wayward Duke at the behest of Mrs Duke.  Much colourful to’ing and fro’ing in 1904 Egypt in company of Howard Carter follows. Yes, that Howard Carter.  

No adventure in Egypt is completed without a sandstorm and so…. Then there is the Valley of the Kings….   Oops don’t forget the bent pyramid.  We also have the relief of the Nile, and a luxury hotel.  

In short, it is a gripping ripping yarn.  

A Study in Crimson (2020) by Robert J. Harris 

Good Reads meta-data is 290 pages, rated 3.75 by 921 litizens.  

Genre: Krimi; Species: Sherlock.  

DNA: Holmes. 

Verdict:  I ate it with a spoon. 

Tagline: ‘He’s back!’  

There is a subtitle: Sherlock Holmes 1942 because this is a tribute to Basil Rathbone’s embodiment of Sherlock in the 1942 film The Voice of Terror.  For those whose first Holmes was Rathbone, he remains the standard against whom all others are measured.

During London wartime blackouts, four disconnected women have been murdered and mutilated.  Baffled, as usual, the plod calls in the ageless Sherlock with his Boswell, this Watson is not the avuncular buffoon of Nigel Bruce’s portrayal, but still none too bright.  While the war explains the blackout it does not figure in the story in any other way. Except…well, it turns out to be the key to the plot.  Nicely done that.   

There are many red herrings and blue cods, while the least likely is per genre the villain.  

***

I bought a paper copy of this book at Abbey’s while we were on a staycation at that art deco palace, the Grace Hotel. I read it in a single rainy day there, and a rainy night, to be sure.  Very diverting.