The June Books!

There are months when you read and everything was good, satisfying. June was one of those months. There was a nice mix of contemporary and vintage mysteries, a novel and a wonderful memoir. Any one of these would make for a good summer read.

"Black Beadle" by E.C.R. Lorac

 

Consider the competition among men for the same position in 1939 London's banking industry, very different men in background and how they approach their lives. This scenario forms the basis for Lorac's look at what happens when tactics get underhanded -- and somebody dies.

Patricia Marsham is having a party in her new home, attracting some of London's well-to-do from the worlds of the law, banking and commerce. Among her guests are Sir John Soane (not to be confused with the real-life architect), Gilbert Mantland and Barry Revian (competitors for a newly formed position), and Mark Garlandt, a financier known for his integrity and skill.

Sir John has established a Board of Industrial Relations. He will need to pick someone as its chairman. Both Revian and Mantland have the right qualifications in both personality and experience. But, as Soane's friend confides, Revian has a charming personality but a story of some sort in his past that may be scandalous. 

Garlandt clearly prefers Mantland, believing that Revian came from a background of class and privilege. He was a Tory at heart and Garlandt knows if push comes to shove, that he will back Fascism and be soft on the issues affecting Germany. He believes that Revian is anti-Semitic and, as a political Jew who  is more than aware of how Fascism has affected his friends and colleagues in Germany, he is determined to do what he can to prevent him from getting the influential position.

Serendipitously, after the party ends, Garlandt notes someone who has been watching the guests exit. Feeling the man may be there with an agenda, he follows him and when "discovered," strikes up a conversation. It seems the fellow has a sideline and blackmail is involved.

But when the man is murdered, not far into his investigation, with Revian's name in his pocket (and killed by Revian's car in a hit-and-run), the accident becomes a murder case -- with more than a few suspects. It is baffling, high profile and a case for Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard.

Lorac has never disappointed me and she doesn't here, either. But readers should be aware that she was writing this one in 1939 and addresses prejudice in British society during that period. There are stereotypes that I felt a bit uncomfortable with in terms of the dialogue of some characters. 

"The Bookshop of Buried Pasts" by Sarah Clutton

 

This is a book with a format I greatly dislike -- chapters that bounce back and forth in place (Australia and England) and time (1960s to present day). And, it is predictable enough that by page 52, I pretty much knew 95 percent of how it would play out (and I hated that I was right).

That said, it's not a bad book and not badly written. I whipped right through it -- all 360 pages of it. 

Lottie, a young woman in her early 20s, works in her grandmother Phyllida's bookshop in a small town in Australia. Her father, Phyllida's son, died before she was born, but it is clear that David was deeply, almost obsessively, loved by his mother, who continues to mourn his death decades later. Depressed and concerned, having found a lump, she decides to kill herself using pills. It is only by sheer luck that her neighbor Mary finds her and she ends up in critical condition in the hospital. 

Lottie is left to run the store, enlisting the help of her father's friend, Roddy, and Sienna, a young girl who is is more connected to her phone than the antiquarian books Lottie sells. When Lottie finds a letter written by Phyllida before her planned death, it reads "Find Francis."

Who is Francis? Lottie and Roddy have no idea. But, with Sienna's tech mind, they begin a search, trying to piece together Phyllida's life before coming to Australia -- and in doing so, discover the elusive Francis.

It's a good premise for a book and it works, going back and forth between the trio's quest for answers and Phyllida's story about her life in England decades before. As pieces of the puzzle come into place, thanks in part to Lottie discovering a box of unsent letters to Francis hidden in the store's cellar, it becomes a race against time to find Francis before the time Phyllida might die.

Despite my issues with the format (just a personal thing with me), I know others like this set-up, and despite figuring out what would happen so early in the book, I rather enjoyed it. The characters and relationships are well drawn and there are lovely little bits as those characters are revealed, even as far as the last few chapters. 

"Bleeding Heart Yard" by Elly Griffiths

 

Elly Griffiths, who brought us the "Ruth Galloway" series of mysteries, could well have another hit series on her hands if she continues to write about Met detective inspector Harbinder Kaur, new to the London scene and on her first case with her new team.

Manor Park school is having its twenty-first class reunion and "The Group" -- a group of six fellow students who bonded during their teen years -- will all be in attendance. There is Cassie, a police sergeant from Harbinder's team, who has three children with her husband Pete; Gary, a conservative MP; Henry, a liberal MP; Chris, now a celebrated pop music star; Izzy, who has become a well known and lauded actress; and Anna, a would-be writer who never wrote her novel and now lives in Italy.  

The Group comes with their own histories -- relationships of the past and affairs of the present. It also shares the disturbing history of the murder of their classmate David, who had raped Cassie and nearly raped Anna. Their plan to teach David a lesson had resulted in his death, although it had been reported and treated as an accident.

Twenty-one years later, the incident comes back into focus when Gary is overheard saying "I know who did it" -- and later, is found dead.

The book follows may of the group's members as well as Harbinder Kaur, ferreting out information on them all with her fellow DI Kim and the rest of her team. At first, Gary's death is a baffling murder, but as the death of David is brought into play, it begins to be the thread that not only links them all but begins to unravel the events of both past and present. 

This is a good one. The characters are, for the most part, likeable and while you know someone you have "met" in the story must have killed Gary, you really don't want it to be any of them. (The least likeable character, Gary, is out of the book in the early pages.) And Harbinder is a compelling character, new to the team, both eager to prove herself in her role as boss but wanting to be thorough, not make embarrassing mistakes.

I have to say, I had my own ideas within the first 75 pages of the book -- and I was excited to see I was right. But while my deduction was based on my gut alone, Harbinder and her team went on evidence  and incidents in the powerful conclusion. Yes, if Griffiths continues with this series, I'll look forward to it!

"The Seagull" by Ann Cleeves

 

When Vera Stanhope goes to speak to a prisoner's group, she is surprised to see a former detective inspector there, listening to the lecture from his wheelchair. He is John Brace, who was sent up for a variety of crimes some years before. After the talk, he asks her to please check on his daughter, whose marriage is poor at best. He promises that if she does so, he'll tell her where the body of one of his former partners in crime is buried, and perhaps more. With the temptation of solving a cold case, Vera reluctantly agrees.

It turns out that Patti, Brace's daughter, was given away sometime after her birth by her heroin-addicted, prostitute mother who has long since disappeared. This makes Vera curious and she goes in search of Mary Frances Luscoala.

There is yet another reason Vera pursues the case. John Brace is not only part of Vera's policing past but was a dear friend of her father, part of a self-named "Gang of Four" who robbed nests of their eggs and sold them illegally for exorbitant prices. 

Vera holds her part of the bargain and he releases the information. At first it seems like there is little to see or learn -- until the team dig up the site and discover not one but two bodies. Who is the second -- and more important, who killed them.

Vera's team -- Joe, Holly and Charlie -- have many threads to unravel, threads that lead them deep into the past, into the lives of the remaining Gang of Four members and into times many decades past, much of which centered around an elegant seaside restaurant called The Seagull. 

Ann Cleeves knows the area well (she lives in this part of England) and her writing combines both atmosphere and a challenging, multi-layered plot, creating a gripping mystery. Following Vera's relationships with her team members over time is fun for series readers, but you could also read this cold and miss nothing. Highly recommended for mystery fans. 

"Chita: A Memoir" by Chita Rivera and Patrick Pacheco

 

Google "Chita Rivera" on youtube and you will see clips of a triple threat that I have admired since the day I heard the original Broadway cast recording of "West Side Story" for the first time. That was followed by numerous musicals, including "Chicago," "Bye Bye Birdie," "Nine," and the two for which she won Tony Awards, "The Rink" and "Kiss of the Spiderwoman." A singer/dancer/actress (she would put "dancer" first in that trifecta), her memoir, "Chita," is an entertaining account of a decades-long career and life onstage and off. 

Rivera was still a teen when accepted into George Balanchine's School of American Ballet, but it was when she did her first musical, "Call Me Madam" with Ethel Merman, then Elaine Stritch, that she found her home on the Broadway stage. In this look back, she takes you behind the scenes of many of the shows she was known for -- from the rehearsal room to opening nights and beyond. Along the way, you meet those who influenced her and played major roles in her career, including: Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon; songwriting team John Kander and Fred Ebb; Dick Van Dyke, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr, and many others.

You don't have to be a Broadway fan to find this one interesting. The book is well written, giving a lively perspective on Rivera's personality -- the talented, accommodating and agreeable Chita and her alter-ego, Dolores, who appears when Rivera is forced to stand up for herself or others. A passionate advocate for fairness and justice and committed to social causes, Dolores is the inner voice we polite and self contained people share have when we have to speak up to help right justice and sometimes get a little tough. It's delightful reading about how just what things triggered "her" appearances.

Rivera died in 2024. I'm glad she and co-author Pacheco were able to collaborate on this collection of memories that was published the year before her death. It's the kind of book that makes you wish you knew that person in real life -- not for what she did, but for who she was as a person.

"The Waters of Eternal Youth" by Donna Leon

 

Things have been slow at Venice's Questura (police station) where Guido Brunetti works. When a Contessa, who is a friend of his mother-in-law's, asks him to look into an accident fifteen years earlier, Bruno agrees. The event caused a brain injury, leaving fifteen-year-old Manuela, the Contessa's granddaughter, to revert to about the age of seven. Manuela had nearly drowned and was rescued by a street drunk who saved her life. The Contessa wondered how this could have happened to a girl so afraid of water that she would do anything she could to circumvent the city's numerous canals.

Brunetti tricks his supervisor, Vice-Questore Patta, to allow him to handle the investigation, a challenging cold case that even, if it should turn out that Manuela's fall into the river was a case of attempted murder, would not be eligible for prosecution due to statute of limitations. As he investigates, he finds that events leading up to the accident dated back to Manuela's years as a teen who adored horseback riding and her horse Petunia. Apparently, an employee of the stables had been dismissed after allegations of harassing the then-15-year-old woman. 

Bringing his colleague Claudia Griffoni into the case, the two are stumped by the lack of evidence over the decades. Manuela can't tell them anything, and the drunk who rescued her is unreliable at best. But when Brunetti gets the doctor's report following the accident indicating assault, they are determined to get justice for the young woman. It isn't even until page 181 that a murder occurs. Just good police work.

I think this may be my favorite of the 25 Brunetti mysteries I have read. (And, you needn't have read others in the series to enjoy this one.) There is such heart and compassion here, both in the quests the duo have to help Manuela and the cleverness in which the solution is revealed. The final few chapters were so riveting I knew I had to finish NOW! And, the last two pages found me reading through eyes starting to well up with tears. 

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