The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman

 

9781984880963

Viking, 2020

355 pp

hardcover

I genuinely hope there is another book after this one, since I really enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club.  Obviously I'm a reader who is much more into the dark/bleak side of crime, but sometimes I just feel this need to go light for a change, a sort of palate cleanser/brain relaxer if you will.  The trick is in finding just the right book without falling deep into cozyland or cutesyville, neither of which I like.   I bought this book because my spouse and I are huge Richard Osman fans after watching way too many British TV quiz shows, and I figured that this book had to be good because he is so witty and snarky funny.  I made a good decision here: the mystery is rather slow burning, without the usual pileup of clues that would normally titillate my inner armchair detective, but here it's much more about the cast of characters that make up the Thursday Murder Club, as well as the members of the police department they've sort of co-opted into the group.  Prepare to giggle, but keep a tissue by your side. 

The Thursday Murder Club is a group of four friends who meet every Thursday in the Jigsaw Room at Coopers Chase Retirement Village ("You can't move here until you're over sixty-five").  It had originally been started by retired Kent Police inspector Penny Gray and the mysterious Elizabeth; sadly, Penny now lays dying in the Village's nursing home, Willows.  When she'd left the police force, she'd brought with her a number of files of unsolved murder cases, and she and Elizabeth would pore over them, looking for anything that may have been missed.  Two other members soon came along, Ibrahim and Ron, and with Penny out, Joyce has stepped in to become the fourth.  They continue to go over old cases from Penny's files, but they up their game with a real murder that hits close to home.  It seems that the builder of Coopers Chase has been bludgeoned to death, and that the killer has left behind only a photograph.   Elizabeth wants to investigate the murder, but the problem is that they "have no access to any case files, witness statements, any forensics."  What they do have, though, is PC Donna De Freitas, who gives lectures at Coopers Chase, and who would rather be out solving this murder instead of bringing teas to the officers working on it in the incident room.  Elizabeth finagles her way into visiting PC De Freitas at the local station, where she asks Donna point blank if she wouldn't rather be "part of it."   There's nothing Donna would like more, and the group members manipulate things so that Inspector Chris Hudson puts her on the team, making it easier for the Thursday Murder Club to know what's going on as the case progresses and to provide information they think worthy of turning over -- when they're ready.    When a second murder hits, the Thursday Murder Club moves into even higher gear.  

The book is related from two perpectives. First, there's Joyce's diary, where she not only talks about what's happening with the group, but also through her writing provides insight into the members' histories including her own.  She also offers glimpses here and there of what living in this community is like, and through her, the author has written compassionately about these older people and how they cope with aging or finding themselves alone without family or widowed.  Her diaries produce alternating bouts of giggles and sadness that wells up without warning, When we're not reading Joyce's diary entries, the story is related in a standard style, incorporating other characters and moving the mystery and its solution forward.  There's always more than a tinge of humor to be found here, and the ending allows the reader to consider the true nature of justice, which isn't always as black and white as one might believe. 

The dustjacket blurber has absolutely nailed it, saying that

"Richard Osman has employed all of his considerable wit and intelligence to give us just the curl-up-and-read novel we need right now."

This book was, as the blurber stated,  "pure enjoyment," and a "flat-out pleasure of a book," precisely what the doctor ordered during our strange present time.   I also agree with author Val McDermid's blurb when she says that The Thursday Murder Club is  a "warm, wise, and witty warning never to underestimate the elderly."  Sadly not only are senior citizens too often underestimated, but ignored as well. And even though this book isn't my usual sort of reading material, it was such a pleasure to have read this novel: it is truly the "curl-up-and-read novel we need right now" that the description promises. 

Absolutely delightful. To Richard Osman: Thank you so very much and let's have another!! 

 

 

and thus we come to the end: White Jazz, by James Ellroy

 

 " ... it's dues time." 

White Jazz closes out Ellroy's LA Quartet, and in doing so, takes us into the life of  Dave Klein, Ad Vice lieutenant in the LAPD.   Unlike The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere and LA Confidential, Ellroy's writing style is dialed up full throttle, set at pure, raw energy here as he moves his reader into Klein's head 

"his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing -- taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and pervision."

Klein is telling this story years after the events of White Jazz, looking backward with his beginning in the fall of 1958:

"Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events -- so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down -- the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell." 

Afraid he'll forget: 

"I killed innocent men. I betrayed sacred oaths. I reaped profit from horror. Fever -- that time burning. I want to go with the music -- spin fall with it."

 Mind you, we haven't moved into the actual story yet and right away we have a preview of not only what's coming down the pike for Klein, who lived to tell the tale if one could actually call it living,    but of Ellroy's superb jazzed-up prose style as well.  

Aside from his police job, Klein has ties to local bad guy Mickey Cohen, Howard Hughes and mobster Sam Giancana. He is paid well to work as hit man, strike breaker, or to kneecap someone if necessary. He's also a slumlord and a law-school grad.  After the death of a federal witness in Klein's custody,  the case that takes center stage in White Jazz, one which will eventually take everyone involved to places they couldn't possibly have foreseen as ""the City of Angels begins to seem like the City of the Devils," starts with a burglary and the murder of two Dobermans at the home of JC Kafesjian, "LAPD's sanctioned pusher," and the owner of a chain of dry-cleaning establishments.  He is protected by Dan Wilhite of Narco;  Klein is called in "to square things," as Kafesjian insists on no investigation.  Ed Exley, now Chief of Detectives, decides otherwise, and Klein is partnered with Sgt. George "Junior" Stemmons to take care of it.   Away from the job, he is hired by Howard Hughes to keep tabs on a young actress by the name of Glenda Bledsoe, "with an eye toward securing contract-violating information."  In the meantime, as if this all wasn't enough, the  Justice Department investigators are beginning a " 'minutely detailed, complex and far reaching' probe into racketeering in South-Central Los Angeles," part of which would involve rumors of the LAPD allowing vice to flourish and rarely investigating "homicides involving both Negro victims and perpetrators."  Eventually Klein will come to realize that he's been tagged as scapegoat by the powers that be who want to keep their secrets to themselves.  He also knows that he's being used as a pawn in a much bigger rivalry.   He's not going to take either of these lying down -- as the back cover says, for Klein, "it's dues time."  

I really don't want to reveal  anything more about this book plotwise because at this juncture getting into the nitty-gritty of things would just kill it for anyone who hasn't read this book and may want to do so down the road.  There's also the fact that to try to enumerate the subplots found here would just be folly, and there's no way I can possibly describe the bleakness tied to the characters or the way in which things spiral out of control throughout the story.  I will say that while the books that came before this one were dark, this one is downright claustrophobic, a connected web of murder, revenge, sick and damaged souls, making the reader wonder if there is any possibility of justice at all in this hellish vision of LA.   

It also ends the LA Quartet, picking up the speed toward the finish in a way that only Ellroy could make happen as he moved across twelve years from 1947 to 1959.  More accurately it ends what is often labeled as the Dudley Smith Trio that had its roots in The Big Nowhere and comes to a head in White Jazz; although   The Black Dahlia  has little to do with the characters of the three novels that follow, it is most certainly the foundation of Ellroy's vision and as such necessary to understand many of the themes that make their way through all four books.  Word to the wise: do not under any circumstances make White Jazz your starting point -- you will be lost.  

 I think there have only been two other series I've read that have come close to this one in terms of sheer darkness of vision and which out-noir noir,  Derek Raymond's Factory series and David Peace's Red Riding Quartet.   While Ellroy's Quartet novels are, as I've been saying all along, not easy to get through on a number of different levels,  reading these four novels has been an experience in itself and I wouldn't have missed it.  I'm genuinely sad that it's over.  

happier reads now, I think! 

L.A. Confidential, by James Ellroy

 

-- read earlier

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime case and the price for clearing it was very, very high."

I'm one of those weirdos who actually preferred the novel to the film adaptation, and I think it's because it had been so long since I'd seen the movie that it I'd forgotten about it.   I recently watched the film again after finishing the novel and was a bit thrown off -- not only had the story been cut, which due to its complexity I'd expected, but parts of the plot were changed as well, even down to who was killed in the Nite Owl Coffee Shop.   James Ellroy himself said about the film that it was "about as deep as a tortilla." 

Luckily that's not the case with the novel. There is nothing shallow about  LA Confidential, which goes straight for the jugular and doesn't let go.   

As was the case in The Big Nowhere, three police officers are at the center of the story. Sgt. Jack Vincennes  has fifteen years on the force, yet he is not well respected by his superiors.  He was given a fitness rating of D+ by his own supervisor who also remarked that he is "barely adequate."  Jack has a side gig as technical advisor to a TV cop show (think Jack Webb and Dragnet) and also provides celebrity fodder for Sid Hughes' tabloid Hush-Hush, giving Sid the heads up when an arrest is about to be made allowing the magazine a leg up on press scoops. He also wants to leave Ad Vice and return to Narco before he retires,  and is told that if he can "make a major case," in a "Picture-book smut" investigation he'll get his wish.  Like many of Ellroy's tormented characters, Jack has a secret from his past which if uncovered would cost him everything.  Wendell "Bud" White has no use for men who beat women; as a boy he witnessed his mother's murder at the hands of his father.  Lieutenant Ed Exley, former war hero,  lives in the shadow of his father, a retired legendary cop now construction bigwig who is currently bringing a Disneyland-type park and a freeway to Los Angeles.  Exley "works poorly with partners and well by himself;" he is also regarded as a "coward" because he does not use violence against suspects.  Aside from his inner rivalry with his father, he too harbors a secret that he would prefer to keep hidden, and after he rats out the culprit in a jail beatdown by cops during a drunken Christmas Eve party, everyone hates him.  

The main case at the novel's  heart is the shooting at the Nite Owl Coffee Shop, "The first all-Bureau call-in in history."  Six people died when at 3 a.m. three men entered and shot the place up. The police have one hot lead on the case: over the previous two weeks, three men had been seen "discharging shotguns" into the air at Griffith Park.  They had been seen driving a purple Mercury coupe at the time and it was a purple Mercury coupe that a witness had seen parked across from the coffee shop at the same time the massacre went down.  But since this is James Ellroy we're talking about there, this case will quickly unfurl well beyond its center and as it spins, it will drag the three cops along with it, catching up to them in ways no one could predict.   And that's an understatement.  

LA Confidential has been criticized by readers for its rather labyrinthine complexity involving numerous subplots, but I didn't have an issue with it and frankly, could care less, since after having read its predecessors The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere, I've become used to Ellroy's penchant for grandiose, and I was caught up in each and every turn taken by this story.  What I really want to say is that it's a firecracker of a  read that sucked me so far down the rabbit hole of Ellroy's 1950s Los Angeles that is was a relief when I finally got out.   Again, not perfect, but pretty damn close.  

It's another book that is uberbleak, not for the squeamish, should come with warning labels, and yes, it's long in the reading, but I enjoyed every second of it.  Every nanosecond of it.  

The Big Nowhere, by James Ellroy

With two books left to read in  the LA Quartet, after finishing The Black Dahlia and Big Nowhere I had to take a break.  They're excellent novels, but even I, someone who lives on a steady reading diet of bleak,  had to take a break before going on.  I didn't stay away for too long though -- these novels are like serious noir-reading crack.

It's 1950, and just three hours into the new year, acting watch commander Detective Deputy Sheriff Danny Upshaw ("a rookie squadroom dick") has already decided that the 1950s "were going to be a shit show."  He eventually becomes caught up in investigating a series of grisly, sexually-motivated murders, all the while fighting the territorial rivalry between the LAPD and the LASD as well as a department that doesn't want too much public attention called to these killings. Upshaw believes that solving this case will "make his name as a cop," but he has to make a deal to work as lead  jointly with both departments, bringing him into a team tasked with getting the goods on "lefties" associated with Communism in Los Angeles, specifically targeting the United Alliance of Extras and Stagehands. The task force  consists of  Lieutenant Mal Considine from the DA's Criminal Investigation Bureau and Turner "Buzz" Meeks, an ex- Narco division cop, now "Fixer, errand boy, hatchet wielder" for gangster Mickey Cohen and head of security at Hughes Aircraft, where his real work is as a "glorified pimp for Howard Hughes."   Lieutenant Dudley Smith of the LAPD is also attached to the team, serving along with Mal as a chief investigator.  The novel follows these two threads as they slowly intersect, moving outward into various connecting subplots while moving inward deep into the minds of the three main characters to reveal how, as the back-cover blurb notes, "All three men have purchased tickets to a nightmare."  

Once again Ellroy brings us into an LA that is based on a foundation of fact, allowing him to construct his fiction around reality.  It's genius, really, when you think about it.   But in trying to describe this book or the others, the truth is as Tom Nolan says in his introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of The LA Quartet,  "Thumbnail sketches do not suffice" (xii).    With The Big Nowhere there is no possible way to encapsulate Ellroy's characterizations,  for example, or the movement toward the intersection of the lives of the three main players who all have their own their personal demons to confront while all the while having to contend with forces from the outside.  Without giving anything away, it's so hard not to feel some measure of sympathy for each and everyone of the these three people, despite what they've done.    It is a book that you feel rather than simply read, and it's visceral. 

 The Big Nowhere is not perfect, but it is a hell of a ride.  Definitely not for the faint of heart.  It is  not a book I'd choose as an initial leap into noir;  it's bleaker than bleak, twisted, unbelievably intense and difficult to read,  but I have nothing but serious praise for this novel. 

 

The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy

"...our partnership was nothing but a bungling road to the Dahlia. And in the end, she was to own the two of us completely." 

 In the Afterword section of this book, Ellroy says the following: 

"A personal story attends the Black Dahlia, both novel and film. It inextricably links me to two women savaged eleven years apart."

Those two women  are his mother  (Geneva) Jean Hilliker, who was raped and murdered by an unknown killer who then left her body in a Los Angeles roadside in 1958, and Elisabeth Short, aka "The Black Dahlia" whose body in 1947 was discovered in a lot on an LA street after having been horrifically murdered and mutilated.  Ellroy had first encountered Elisabeth Short's story at the age of eleven, after his mother's death, while reading Jack Webb's The Badge, and from there,  "Jean Hilliker and Betty Short" became "one in transmogrification." Over the years this "Jean-Betty confluence" led to the writing of The Black Dahlia, in which Ellroy, as noted in a 2006 article in Slate,   

"transformed the murky facts surrounding Short's life and death into art, the unknown 'dead white woman' becoming a tabula rasa on which the author could wrestle with his anger and affection toward his mother." 

The Black Dahlia not only lays bare Ellroy's demons, but in his version of the Black Dahlia case, it turns out that no one involved is left unscathed.  

Just briefly so as not to ruin it for potential readers,  it's 1946.  The promise of a coveted spot in LAPD's Warrants Division as well as chance to be a department hero prompts Officer  Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert to agree to a boxing match  that will hopefully result in good PR and a five-million dollar bond for the LAPD.  His opponent is Officer Lee Blanchard; together they become known (appropriately)  as Mr. Fire and Mr. Ice.   A solid partnership builds between the two men, who also become close friends as Bleichert eventually finds himself teamed with Blanchard in Warrants.  Fast forward to January 15, 1947 when the partners get info about a guy they've been trying to find and arrest.  Arriving at the place he's supposed to be, the bust gets sidelined when Bleichert looks out a window and notices a lot of police activity down below at 39th and Norton.   When they go to check it out, Bucky sees a cop "knocking back a drink in full view of a half dozen officers," and "glimpsed horror in his eyes."   It is, as he hears, "the worst crime on a woman" any of the cops have seen.  They have found the body of a young woman who had been bisected at the waist, obviously tortured and horribly mutilated, with her mouth, "cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you," and Bucky tells himself that he would "carry that smile" to his grave.  

The body belongs to Elisabeth Short, who will in time be dubbed "The Black Dahlia" by the press.  Even though they're not working Homicide, Bleichert and Blanchard are pulled into the investigation, although it isn't too long before Bleichert wants out.  For various reasons peculiar to each of these men, the horrific death of Elisabeth Short becomes an obsession; eventually,  as Bleichert reveals in the prelude to this novel, The Dahlia "was to own the two of us completely."  Set against the backdrop of an emerging, post-WWII  Los Angeles, it is this obsession with her death and her life that Ellroy explores in this novel,  as well as the psychological and other repercussions that move from character to character.  

The Black Dahlia is book one of four in Ellroy's LA Quartet.  An excellent blend of fiction and reality, it  messed with my head, kept me awake and chilled me to the bone.  As dark and disturbing as it is, and while in my opinion it falters a bit in the reveal, it is also one of the best crime novels I've ever read, and I knew immediately that there was no way that I was not going to read the remaining three books.  More on those to come. 

After reading this one, find a place outside to let the sun shine down on you.  You'll need it.  

Maigret, again: The Grand Banks Café and The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin

"...understand and judge not." 

I've recently been making my way through Ellroy's LA Quartet, and after finishing The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere, I grabbed LA Confidential  from the shelf, opened to page one and just put it back.  I think my brain was telling me that I'd had too much for the moment and that it was time to take a break.  I knew exactly what I wanted to read -- Maigret.  These books are like reading comfort food for me.  

9780141393506

Penguin, 2014

originally published as Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas, 1931

translated by David Coward

154 pp

paperback

"If anyone asked me what the distinctive feature of this case is...I'd say it has the mark of rage on it."

It's June, which is normally vacation time for the Maigrets.  Every year they make their way to a village in Alsace, where La Madame spends her time with family "making jam and plum brandy."  There's a change of plan this year though,  as Maigret asks his wife what she thinks about making a trip and staying by the sea.  The destination he has in mind is Fécamp, a small seaside town north of Le Havre, and he tells his wife that they'll be "able to just take it easy at Fécamp as anywhere else."  While "objections were raised,"  it's a done deal: Maigret has received a letter from an old friend there asking for help for a former pupil of his, Pierre Le Clinche, who has been arrested for the murder of a ship's captain. 

Once in Fécamp, Maigret makes his way to the Grand Banks Cafe, where he finds the crew of the recently-returned Océan, whose captain had been found floating in the harbour just hours after the ship had docked.  He learns that the "evil eye" had been cast over the ship even before it had sailed -- a sailor had broken a leg while waving goodbye to his wife, the ship's boy was "washed overboard by a wave," the captain had seemingly gone mad, along with other disasters including rotting cod.  The sailors, however, are reluctant to talk to Maigret about their voyage; he is told only that it might not be a bad idea to  "chercher la femme," which, without spoiling anything here, turns out be sound advice.    It seems that other than picking up a couple of scattered clues here and there,  Maigret is stumped -- no one even remotely involved with the case, including Le Clinche,  will say anything.  The only thing he knows is that the case "has the mark of rage on it." 

The answers, when they come, are put together slowly; once again, the focus is more on the "why" of it all rather than the who, one of the key characteristics of a Maigret novel, or at least of those I've read so far.  As with all of these books, Simenon, via his detective, ventures into the often dark territory of human nature and psychology to arrive at his conclusion.  This time around the "why" is a true jaw dropper, and once the answer is revealed, the question to be asked here centers around the nature of guilt.  This one is well worth your time; don't breeze through it even though it's a scant 153 pages. 

9780141393520
Penguin, 2014
originally published as La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin, 1931
translated by Siân Reynolds
153 pp, paperback

"It's a banal case, in spite of its morbid nature and apparent complexity." 

As much as I enjoyed The Grand Banks Cafe, the better book is The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin, which completely threw me off pretty much from the start for more than one reason, and goes to show that sometimes going rogue is not a bad thing.  

There's something about a crime novel set in the seedier parts of a city that appeals, and this one is no exception.  Here it's the seamier side of Liège, which in real life is Simenon's home town, where the action takes place.  A plot to rob the till after everyone leaves the club Gai-Moulin goes awry when two teens, Delfosse and Chabot, stumble over a body on the floor of the club in the darkness.  A match is lit, and they are sure the body is that of the obviously-wealthy man they referred to as "the Turk", a stranger who had come into the club earlier that night, had bought champagne, and had been entertained by the dancer Adèle.    Needless to say they're petrified and take off.  The next day, a very rattled Chabot happens to see a newspaper article about a body found in a laundry basket on the lawn of the Botanical Gardens; surprised to say the very least,  the two meet up.  It's then that they realize they're being followed, but they make their way to the Gai-Moulin, as it would be completely normal for them to be there.   Strangely they discover that everything is like it always is, but they make yet another plan which very quickly goes horribly awry.  That is really all I'm going to say about plot because really, to know any more ahead of time will completely spoil the enjoyment of reading this book, which is so very different from all of the Maigret novels preceeding this one.   

While Simenon's series novels tend to get middling ratings from many readers, he's one of my favorite crime writers ever.   When I want to read something deeply noirish, I turn to his romans durs, but when I want something a bit on the lighter side it's definitely Maigret.   With Dancer at the Gai-Moulin, he offers a plot that may be somewhat incredulous, but when it comes right down to it, I just didn't care that he wasn't exactly following the mechanics of the typical detective/police novel. In fact, using the term "typical" in describing Maigret just seems wrong.     I was much more taken with the very clever  twists in the story as well as the seedy, noir ambience Simenon paints here, down to the "crimson plush" upholstery of a banquette in the club and the "shabby peignoir" and mules worn by Adèle in her room.   And that reminds me:  don't kid yourself that Adèle, the titular dancer at the Gai-Moulin,  has only a small part to play here.  She may not show up often, but she really does take center stage.   

Only 65 more to go!  I'll get there and probably love every second of  the journey.  

Dolores Hitchens X 2: Footsteps in the Night and Beat Back the Tide

(read in July -- I'm so slow these days)

In this perfect pairing of perplexing puzzlers from Stark House Press published in July,  murder rattles skeletons in a number of closets, unlocking and shaking loose secrets both present and past. 

97819944520939

Stark House Press, 2020

277 pp

paperback 

"These people are all strangers."

Footsteps in the Night (1961) is a whodunit, set in a new housing development in Southern California, more specifically in the hills overlooking Pomona.  It's so new that not all of the houses have been finished, and "everything that's completed or even near it" has been sold.   It seems like an ordinary, upscale neighborhood on the outside, but as Hitchens takes us inside into the lives of some of Dellwood's residents, we discover that there is nothing ordinary about these people at all. Like most people, their secrets are normally kept behind their closed doors, but nothing stays hidden when a young teenaged girl disappears, later to turn up dead.  It also seems as if everyone has made up their minds about who did it,  so it will take a clever Sheriff's lieutenant to not only  sort through and make sense of  the scant clues, but also to weave his way through the secret lives of the Dellwood community to prevent a terrible injustice. 

This is a slow-building, suspenseful and most compelling mystery,  and I changed my mind as to the who more than once before all was revealed.  However, it's the uncovering of everyone's deepest secrets that is the big draw, as the focus here is mainly on the characters.  Some of these people you can feel sorry for, whereas for some of the others, well, let's just say they are likely not people you'd want as your friends.   As Nicholas Litchfield notes in his introduction, there's a wide range including

"... a sex fiend with a conniving, sadistic wife; a bothersome, goofy old grandfather; a middle-aged spinster with a young gigolo for a lover; a sour, short-tempered developer; and a reclusive investment banker and his melancholic, crippled son..."

1961 cover, photo from Amazon

 who "spy on each other, prying into each other's personal business," while dwelling on "their own inadequacies."    And even though there is only one murderer,  as the blurb says, "They're all guilty of something."

sadly and oops, I closed the window (accidently) on the source page for this photo, but I'd found it via ebay/PicClic. 

On to Beat Back the Tide now, which would have made a great film in its day (black and white a plus).   As in Footsteps of the Night,  this story also takes place in Southern California but further south along the coast, and opens with the arrival of young Francesca Warne, a "former schoolteacher, now a nurse," who has come to act as a sort of governess to Jamie Glazer.  The Glazer home sits at the top of a cliff, making it private "for everybody except someone on a ship at sea with a spyglass."  Glazer, a widower,  is a contractor and does very well for himself; as far as Mrs. Warne goes, what he expects from her is a "robot-like efficiency and stamina, and an unrobotlike warmth toward his son.  Just that."  But just after a week, strange incidents occur that upset the household and make Glazer rethink her presence there as he ponders the "disturbing quality about her. An aura, a miasma, of disaster. "  While he tells himself that "she did not appeal to him," he also knows he doesn't really want her to leave, realizing a "bleak solitariness of himself" that "had a kind of death in it."

 I have to say that up to this point (some thirty pages in),  I thought that this novel just  might be taking a bit of a gothic-ish sort of a turn (like those books my mom used to read by Phyllis A. Whitney years ago), but that idea was quickly let go of with the coming of the meat and potatoes of this story:  it seems that Mrs. Warne's husband had been murdered on the beach below the cliff, evidently having been shot from above.  She has come to the Glazer home to learn the truth about her husband's death, about how he was killed and by whom.   Glazer warns her about opening "old wounds," but she reaches out to him for help in solving the murder.  As he begins to look into the murder of Adam Warne, he realizes that pretty much everyone who knew him hated him, so that his killer is not going to be easy to pin down, not to mention that some people believe that the past is the past so Glazer shouldn't be making waves by stirring it all up again.

 I chose the words "perfect pairing" beginning this post on purpose -- in both there is a murder shaking loose a lot of secrets that everyone involved wants to keep hidden; in both there are shifts in points of view from character to character that add insight to respective situations and respective personalities.  In both there are also numerous possible suspects with different motives, and both books have an ending that I didn't see coming.  And oh yes -- both books were selected for the Doubleday Crime Club.    Do not miss author and editor Nicholas Litchfield's most enlightening introduction, where he concludes that these " 'skeletons in the closet' mysteries showcase the author at her very finest."

Recommended to readers of vintage crime, and to readers like myself who truly love discovering women writers not previously read.  I've already started another book from Stark House by Ruth Sawtell Wallis, but we'll save that for when it's published.

********

My very grateful thanks to the powers that be at Stark House -- you people rock.