Category: Krimi

Goodreads metadata is 273 pages, rated 3.73 by 453 citizens.

Genre: Cold War espionage fiction.

In 1949 West Germany entered its first post-war democratic election with an unspoken bipartisan agreement not to mention the only issue that mattered: reunification.  Incumbent chancellor by appointment Konrad Adenauer, der Alte, was expected to win easily.  Into this milieu Blackford Oakes (aka the alter ego of William Buckley, Jr.) is dropped.  

Start with that name: Blackford Oakes, a New England wanna be aristocrat who is suave, so resourceful that he makes MacGyver look like a boy scout, a lady killer in every way, and never, ever at a loss.  (See his Wikipedia entry for more hyperbole.)  He is tall, lanky, handsome, multi-lingual, and just about perfect for a CIA agent.  James Bond is an uncouth oaf in comparison.  Oh, and Blackford is humourless, unlike Mr. Bond.

The neatly arranged German apple cart is threatened by Prussian Count Axel Wintergrin who has formed a reunification movement and could well best Der Alte at the polls. Such an outcome might prompt the Soviets to intercede.  As always, Washington decides to interfere. The D.C. intercession has three parts: (1) diplomatic as the USA tries to convince the USSR to accept the situation, (2) while itself working feverishly to discredit Wintergrin with all kinds of Pox News from this spotless past (he sat out the war in far north Norway), and (3) by inserting the polymath BO into his entourage as an engineer employed through a Marshall Plan grant to restore the Wintergrins’ private chapel. BO is the backstop if all else fails.  See that coming…?

The reader realises far sooner than the smug and self-confident BO that the final phase of the Washington plan will be to murder Wintergrin to keep the Soviets from invading.  BO finally does figure this out and there are pages and pages of his crisis of conscience.  He likes, he respects, he has a man-crush on Wintergrin and the prospect of pulling the trigger on him gives him sleepless nights. Let us pause here and reflect.

Wintergrin is a mirror for BO: two peas in two pods.  Both devastatingly attractive, omni-competent, far-seeing, in short, god-like.  If Wintergrin had been a working class stiff, say like the real German opponent of Der Alte, Kurt Schumacher, it seems doubtful to this reader that BO would have thought twice about murdering him for the greater good. By the way Adenauer is named in the novel, but the Socialist Party leader is made fictional, and not named as Schumacher. Go figure. I read a biography of Schumacher so long ago I have forgotten whatever I learned from it. 

Spoiler.  In the end all of BO’s posturing is pointless since his superiors, after having wasted much time and effort in priming him, arranged another end for Wintergrin, whose omniscience extended to his own Christ-like death.   

Loose ends are many:  the resident KGB agent is left in place, the nuclear weapon Wintergrin had purloined are not retrieved, the election outcome is not mentioned (Der Alte won by a whisker), and Wintergrin was wrong about his own death. Yet the closing is reverential. This is the second in a series of ten of these potboilers.  Not sure I can brook another bout of BO’s smug complacence. Far better on a similar theme is A Small Town in Germany (1968) by John le Carré.      

In fact, I read this one eons ago and forgot it, until I read Buckley’s Unmaking of a Mayor.  That prompted me to try again with the same reaction: what a tiresome prat is BO.   

GoodReads meta-data is 186 pages, rated 3.70 by 165 litizens.

Genre: krimi

Verdict:  Action!

Charles Paris is fifty something, living alone in a bedsit, scraping a living by acting in provincial theatres and anywhere else there is a fee.  He frequently thinks of contacting his ex-wife with a view to reconciliation.  But.., well, the time never seems right what with drinks after work or drinks before work or drinks with no work, and then there are the ingénues about, and Charles is ever hopeful and occasionally lucky.  

In this outing his ship has come in, and he is contracted as a continuing, albeit very minor character, in a television situation comedy that – with its all-star cast (a list that certainly does not include Charles) –  is sure to be a hit. With this income, Charles is expansive, and optimistic, in a guarded way.  Sure enough it is all too good to be true.  The tyrannical floor manager falls down stairs and dies. Too much drink ruled the police.  See above about drinks before, during, and after work. She was a dragon but she did the job well. leaving singed egos behind.  Still the show had to go on, and it did after a two-day gap.  

Then the annoying director, who seemed to think this sit-com would show Michelangelo Antonioni a thing or two with pretentious camera angles and artistic pauses, totalled his brand new Porsche and himself with it. Another hiatus for sure, but a new director is found – one who by contrast is no nonsense and with his four-letter word impetus the time lost is regained (eh Marcel) and the show keeps going on.  In each episode Charles has three or four lines and one or two movements as a golf club barman (seen only from the waist up).  

He passes the time on the set while others work by watching the mechanics of filming and thinking about those two deaths, when ….   Yep there is a third.  A light standard fell on the writer. Wallop! Sad and bad, but well there are plenty more sit-com writers out there and a husband-and-wife team come on board to do that duty, proving to be even more annoying to one and all than the late director.  Not all the clowns are in the circus. Why did they remind me of the repute of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson?

The mechanics of television making are well integrated into the plot and characters of the protagonists.  And fascinating in their own right. 

On each occasion plod rules the death an accident and leaves it at that, though in the last case plod briefly makes an effort to implicate a well known local stirrer but to no avail.  All those cameras on the location shoot clearly show he was never anywhere near the light standard.  The failure to bang him up irritates the plod so much its members are even less inclined that usual to entertain Charles’s suggestion that all these accidents are not accidents but are connected in some way.  

The plot is a corker: this jaded hack did not see it coming until it came.  

Punctuated throughout in his alcoholic reveries are reviews of past productions that mention him, e.g., 

‘Charles Paris makes a nearly passable Estragon,’ Sudbury Chronicle. 

‘Charles Paris played Baron Hardup, and lost,’ Worthing Herald.

‘It was hard to tell whether Charles Paris’s curled nostril was a response to the farmyard smells or to the script,’ Hampstead and Highgate Express.

‘Charles Paris seemed unsure as to whether he was Rosencrantz or Guildenstern and, quite honestly, the way he played the part, who cared?’ Romford Recorder. 

‘Charles Paris’s character died of a heart attack towards the end of Act One – a merciful release for all concerned,’ Malvern Gazette.

‘Charles Paris’s accent kept slipping like a recalcitrant bra-strap,’ Teeside Evening Gazette.

‘With Charles Paris representing the Soviet opposition, democracy will be safe for a good few years,’ Observer.

‘Charles Paris looked as if he’d wandered in from another show (and would rather be back there),’ Eastbourne Herald. 

Ah, but they all mention his name and that in itself is good publicity.  

This is seventh in a long running series about the (mis)adventures of Charles in the theatrical world of England, Scotland, and Wales.  He has yet to make it to Northern Ireland in my ken. I have read several over the years and always enjoy the thespian environment, Charles’s modesty, and the ingenious plotting. He acts in television commercials, television sitcoms, movies, radio and tv commercials, audio tapes, radio dramas, corporate events, on site, in studios, on location, in the West End, in the provinces wherever there is a cheque to be had.  

But I do find his love affair with scotch repetitive and boring padding. 

Simon Brett is a one-man industry with at least four other multi-volume sequences with other protagonists and other settings.  

Ellery Queen (EQ) started work in 1929 and has little rest since then.  Frederic Danny and Manfred Lee wrote more than thirty novels and scores of short stories featuring Ellery Queen until 1971. Then ghost writers took over the franchise. Then there have been radio, film and television adaptations. These are puzzle mysteries, locked rooms, disappearing items, and the like.  

Confession:  I have not read word one. I know Ellery Queen only from the air.  

Radio: 

The Adventures of Ellery Queen 1939-1949 on CBS, NBC, and then ABC voiced by Hugh Marlowe and others.

Here are some of the television series:

The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-1952) with Richard Hunt/Lee Bowman/Hugh Marlowe

The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen (1958-1959) with George Nader

Ellery Queen (1975-1976) with Jim Hutton

Films:

The Spanish Cape Mystery 1935 Donald Cook

The Mandarin Mystery 1936 with Eddie Quillan

Ellery Queen, Master Detective 1940 with Ralph Bellamy and Margaret Lindsay

Ellery Queen’s Penthouse Mystery 1941 with Ralph Bellamy and Margaret Lindsay

Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime 1941 with Ralph Bellamy and Margaret Lindsay

Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring 1941 with Ralph Bellamy and Margaret Lindsay

A Close Call for Ellery Queen 1942 with William Gargan and Margaret Lindsay

Enemy Agents meet Ellery Queen 1942 William Gargan and Margaret Lindsay

A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen1942 with William Gargan and Margaret Lindsay

Ellery Queen Don’t Look Behind You 1971 with Peter Lawford

Too Many Suspects 1975 with Jim Hutton

Nor should we overlook the Ellery Queen(‘) Mystery Magazine (1941+). It started with the possessive comma which it has since shed. It seems to be digital as well as print now, but it continues with an official web site where officiating occurs.

I rather liked best the sophomoric enthusiasm of Eddie Quillan. He projected energy, wit, and tenacity.  The staging of Hutton’s television series was engaging and some episodes can be found on You Tube and Daily Motion.    

Iowa’s Margaret Lindsay played Ellery Queen’s typist seven straight times and steals the show when the opportunity occurs. She is bright, energetic, and engaging unlike the catatonic Ralph Bellamy and the comatose William Gargan, but in the conventions of the time, often she is confined largely to the screaming and fainting duties.

Nota Bene, Ralph Bellamy is credited with keeping the ravening beast HUAC off Broadway later during his tenure as President of the actors guild. The easy success of dividing and pillorying Hollywood for headlines tempted the cannibals of HUAC turn east for more flesh to eat but Bellamy secured a nearly unanimous front of Broadway actors, producers, directors, and investors to refuse to cooperate. That must have taken some doing among all those enemies, rivalries, and egos. Read the details in his biography on Wikipedia.

GoodReads meta-data is 180 pages, rated 3.71 by 1376 litizens. 

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Midsomeresque.

Contemporary outsized, lumpy vicar Annabel Dixon cannot resist a mystery in picturesque England today. When Sir John Many Pounds buys a mansion in the woods she sets off to snoop, and welcome him to Upton Saint Mary in Cornwall.  No sooner does she arrive at the mansion than Sir is shot dead with a crossbow arrow. (Turns out everyone in rural England is a dab hand at a crossbow.)

When not salivating over men in uniform, Vicar finds clues and then Plod arrests the most likely suspect and repeatedly ask him to confess which he does.  End.    

I liked the rural setting, the jolly Vicar (though not her constant swooning over men in blue), the village gossips, the cup cakes, and the cat, aptly named Biscuit, but not the plot.  Do English courts really send blonde, blue-eyed, attractive, youthful men and women to prison for pilfering, when there are so many immigrants to slam-up. Do not the fairest of them all get off with words of warning, while the immigrants do porridge?  

Do suspects confess when asked nicely to do so?  Are there no lawyers in rustic England?  This is the first of series.

GoodReads meta-data is 292 pages, rated 3.71 by 1399 litizens.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Elik (Elle + IKEA).

The setting is grand but underdeveloped in preference to descriptions of the clothes worn by everyone who passes over the page and even more detailed descriptions of furnishings and fittings of homes, offices, and elevators, but strangely — mercifully — not cars.  All of that pointless detail puffs up the book far beyond plot or character.

The plot is good, too:  all those items in storage a museum never has occasion to display are tempting for a thief with inside assistance who plays a long game.  

But do people repeatedly tell others they have something of the utmost importance to tell them…next Friday at 3 pm.  Or do they just blurt it out; do they just tell them right now! That starts it off on the wrong credibility foot and it stays that way.

An enormous red herring is so conspicuous that he could not possibly be guilty. Near the beginning there is a nice but underdeveloped incident in the First Ladies exhibit. I like some of the coming and going in DC but there is little of it. There is a distracting sidebar about a nutter claiming to be James Smithson’s heir.  It adds nothing to the plot, ambience, or character.  Though it does remind us that not all the idiots are in the White House.

This title is one of a series by Truman, daughter of Harry, set in D.C. For example, Murder at ….the Library of Congress, National Gallery, National Cathedral, Pentagon, Kennedy Center, Washington Tribune, and Ford’s Theatre.

GoodReads meta-data is 304 pages rated 3.51 by 9272 litizens.    

Genre: krimi, pastiche.

Verdict: Bromance.

Confession: I gulped it down a day.

In retirement Joe Biden is restless and bored, and more than a little miffed that his through-thick-and-thin buddy Barry has cut him loose. Then one night out walking with the dog, Joe sees a dark figure in the gloaming.  That’s Barry, who is always dark!  

Barack has broken his long silence to deliver in person some bad news.  Gulp.

Aside, Joe Biden’s only claim to fame is that he rode the Amtrak back and forth to DC from Wilmington Delaware most days for thirty-six years while has was a US Senator.  Joe knows Amtrak, and all who work the early and late trains he used to take. Turns out one of those workers is dead, a conductor who always had a good word, and in his pocket was a print from online telephone book of Joe’s home address. Was that the start of a call for help?

The emotional, impulsive Joe is a whirlpool of reactions.  He is glad to see his BFF Barry and pissed off he hasn’t seen him a lot sooner and in better circumstances.  He is stunned by the death of his nodding acquaintance and perplexed, even more than usual, as he acknowledges, by the address.  

A good Irish Catholic Union man is dead in strange circumstances, and Joe does what Joe always does – the instincts of a democratic politician run deep – he dusts off the black suit and goes to the funeral.  Brief discussions there with mourners and family compound the mystery.  

Joe does what Joe always does and plunges ahead…into trouble and more trouble.  However, before it gets too deep that black man in black reappears with his pet Secret Service agent to bail Joe out.  By now Joe is in too deep to get out and Barry, well Barry, is curious about what is going on, and Joe always stood by him when the going got tough, so he joins in, albeit on his own inscrutable terms. Yoda is a transparent blabber mouth compared to this guy. 

What follows is a rollicking ride involving the DEA, corrupt men in blue (good Italian Catholics though they may be), incorruptible and uncommunicative cops, mad and bad bikers, Little Beast, Navy Seal Team 4 (sorta), Steve the unflappable one-man Secret Service detail grudgingly allowed by the Thief-in-Chief, a largely absent but still influential Jill, Champ the wonder dog, a wily insurance investigator, and assorted First Staters.

The plotting is ingenious and slowly ties everything up.  Maybe the tying is more attenuated than some readers might like but it is complete (down to the wig [whew!]) and there is after all no rush to the finish line.  

While Joe does what Joe does and rushes about, well, as a senior citizen he hobbles about mostly, without a plan, Barry is the chess player who is seldom seen but always ten moves ahead of the game.  The characterisations of these two is nicely done by the author, a journalist, who had the chance to observe them for years and did so, rather than simply react the way most mediaistas do.  Biden wears his heart on his sleeve, while Obama is detached and analytic.  Biden is obvious and a terrible liar.  Obama is aloof and distant. 

There is a lot about Wilmington and Amtrak and amid all the hurly-burly a certain amount of unexpected but effective pathos, too.  

Needless to say, Pox News has attacked the book with blazing incoherence.

I could not deny myself the pleasure of reading some of troll droppings on GoodReads.  My, my how the anger grows out of nothing.  Lear had that wrong.  Well, I assume it is anger but that is guessing from the incoherent tweeting.  Though there were some letters from the alphabet.  

GoodReads meta-data is 260 pages, rated 4.07 by 2934 litizens. 

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Golden Retrievers rule!

Six years after the guilty verdict, lawyer Andy is sure that loser Joey is innocent and by a strange coincidence in which his best friend, Tara the Golden Retriever, figures 

Andy finds a way to re-open the case.  

Mafia, drugs, arms smuggling, cartels, nut jobs, and frontmen are all involved and the body count increases, believe it or not, past 20,000.  Subtle it is not.  

Andy is droll, self-deprecating, and frequently wishes he had not gone to law school. He has a lower case a-team to help his investigations, and then there is the one-man army, Marcus of few to no words, a body guard hired by Mrs. Andy to look her investment in Andy.  Does he ever.  

Tara makes a good listener when Andy tries to work out what is going on.  There are some loose ends, like how both the Montana letter and phone call were lost, who was bugging Nicky Fats (both the FBI and Iuoto?), why was Joey so convincing in the first place?  

When the mechanical Kindle Turk recommended it I was curious about the bounding dog on the cover and tried a sample, and kept going.  It is more violent than my usual fare but the canine element and good humour overcame my doubts.  It is the tenth title in a long running series and I expect to read another when I am ready for another Nordic noir blood bath.  

Moriarty Meets His Match (2016) by Anna Castle

GoodReads meta-data is 303 pages, rated 3.97 by 452 litizens.  

Genre:  chick krimi 

Verdict:  Well, I nivver!

James Moriarty is in his cups, having lost his job as a professor of mathematics at Durham University, he now works at a patent office in the Big Smoke.  He had clashed with Lord Professor God at a scientific society meeting, and Lord Professor God set about ruining Moriarty by starting rumours of homosexuality.  

When Lord Professor God is about to demonstrate his latest invention, Morrie goes to watch.  There is plenty to see because it goes BOOM, killing the chairman of board, a man whom no one mourns, and injuring others. Was this by accident or design?  In the confusion after the kaboom, Morrie meets Scrumptious, and can seldom think of anything else thereafter.  She has earls, lords, dukes, and sirs in pursuit but finds them all to be pretentious airheads.  They must be if a chrome-dome, unemployed professor looks good to her.

Since Morrie had a history with Lord God, Plod settles on him as the culprit in the blow-up, and to clear himself he must investigate. With this familiar trope on the table, proceedings begin. By planning and by chance his path frequently crosses that of Scrumptious, and also that of an annoying prat called Sherlock Holmes who works with Plod to fit up Morrie for the crime he did not commit.  

Only when other murders occur related to the first (though quite how escaped this reader) does Plod release Morrie so he can pursue Scrumptious again. In time he learns that she has own agenda, and a team at work on it.  

These lovers are star-crossed but as the subtitle indicates, all’s well that ends well. (I omitted the subtitle above to suck the reader in. Did it work?)

Moriarty is a victim here and is clever enough to find his way out of the trap with the help of Scrumptious.  Holmes is an annoying blow-fly with his amanuensis Watson in tow.  

There is much about how Scrumptious and Morrie misunderstand each other.  Much.  Maybe too much hence the label above ‘chick krimi.’  That is relieved by a great deal of to’ing and fro’ing.  Again maybe too much.  There are so many incidents that this reader got the feeling that they inserted because the author thought of them, and not because they added anything to plot or character.  

Quibbling aside, it moves right along with a varied and interesting cast of characters, and it is plain that Morrie is Scrumptious whipped.  He has no will of his own where she is concerned. It is first in a series and I expect to read another.