A Christmas poem

Christmas Sparrow

Billy Collins

The first thing I heard this morning
was a soft, insistent rustle,
the rapid flapping of wings
against glass as it turned out,

a small bird rioting
in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.

A noise in the throat of the cat
hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap in a basement door,
and later released from the soft clench of teeth.

Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a small towel and carried it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.

But outside, it burst
from my uncupped hands into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.

Still, for the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms whenever I thought
about the hours the bird must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,

its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked into a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

Will Thomas, Old Scores
St. Martins/Minotaur Books © 2017 Will Thomas
ISBN 978-1-250-07796-7

Japan has sent a delegation (including an Ambassador, representatives of the army, navy, ministry of trade, and a cultural attaché) to London; the year is 1890.  And, thirty-some years after U.S. warships forced Japan to open itself to the rest of the world, the ruling class in Japan wants to play a major role in the world—and not as a subordinate country to anyone, and especially not in Asia.  Cyrus Barker, a private inquiry agent, becomes involved because members of the delegation have asked to see his (recreation of a) Japanese garden.

That night, Barker has gone to the house which is being used by the Japanese as their embassy—and was outside when the Japanese ambassador was shot.  He has, or course, been arrested.  (His assistant, Thomas Llewellyn discovers this when he realizes Barker is not in his house and decides to look for him at the embassy; Llewellyn is also arrested.)

Subsequently, following their release, Barker is summoned to the embassy and is asked to investigate the murder of the ambassador.  Despite the inherent difficulties of this task, he accepts.  After a long series of twists and turns, involving two rivals in the Chinese community in London, the disappearance—and reappearance—of one of the ambassador’s bodyguards, and much more, Barker is able to uncover the source of the murder.  We do not, however, reach what can be called a happy ending.  Although it is actually remarkably well-suited to the situation and the persons involved.

This is the ninth book in the series, and all have been very good.  In some ways, this is not as strong an entry.  In part, this is because the author spends a good deal of time in the first half of the book providing us with substantial exposition about Japan.  The information is important, and useful as we move through the events, but the fact that it is essentially a data dump slows the narrative considerably.  But the second half of the book is extraordinary.  And along the way, we learn a good deal about Barker’s background, and everything we learn is germane.  So in saying it might not be as strong as the previous books, I am far from attempting to discourage you.  It seems to me that, as the series continues, what we have learned, and what the characters have experienced on this book, will be of ongoing importance.

DorothyL

The mystery listserv DorothyL (you can subscribe here)  asks its members  to submit their best books read--not necessarily published--during the year.  With  couple of weeks to go, here are my best reads of 2017, alphabetically by author, with links to the reviews I wrote about them.  (The year in which the book was published is in parentheses.)

Allebury, Ted, The Twentieth Day of January (1980)
Collins, Max, The Best of Crime and Detection TV (criticism) (1988)
Copperman, E.J., Edited Out  (2017)
Copperman, E.J, and Cohen, Jeff, The Question of the Absentee Father (2017)
Crider, Bill, Eight Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (short stories)  (2016)
Crider, Bill, Dead, To Begin With, (2017)
Lawton, John, Then We Take Berlin 2013
LeCarre, John, A Legacy of Spies (2017) (By far, the best book I read in 2017.)
Lee, M.J., Samuel Pepys and the Stolen Diary (2016)
Muller, Marcia and Pronzini, Bill, The Body Snatcher Affair (2015)
Pryor, Mark, The Bookseller (2008)
Pryor, Mark, The Blood Promise (2014)
Tyler, L.C., A Masterpiece of Corruption (2016)

Just a note...about comments

I don't get a lot of comments here, which is fine.  But there are few enough that I tend to forget how BlogSpot works--it doesn't handle comments very well (which is to say, it doesn't do a good job of telling me that there are comments.  I'll try to do better...

Steve Hockensmith with Lisa Falco, Fool Me Once

Steve Hockensmith with Lisa Falco, Fool Me Once
Midnight Ink © 2015 Steve Hockensmith & Lisa Falco
ISBN 978-0-7387-4223-6

In the follow-up to 2014’s The White Magic Five and Dine, Alanis McLachlan is continuing her effort to use her inheritance of The White Magic Five and Dime (in Berdache, AZ) to pay back all—or as many of them as she can find—the people swindled by her mother…who has more names than the population of Berdache.  Mom was a con-woman, who, with her partner Biddle, moved frequently (so Alanis moved frequently until she broke away), finally ending up, and dying in Arizona.  This is not an inheritance Alanis is very happy about; she was also surprised to discover that she has a much younger half-sister, Clarice (who’s still in high school).

As this book opens, Alanis has been trying to do two things:  Pay back Marsha Riggs and help her develop enough self-confidence to leave her abusive husband Billy.  Things immediately go wrong—Billy is murdered, and Marsha is arrested for the crime.  So now, Alanis has to try to find the real killer and help Marsha turn her life around.  In this undertaking she has the assistance (willing or not) of three men:  Her lawyer Eugene, whom she has hired to defend Marsha; her friend Victor (high school teacher and wresting coach), who is very fond of Alanis, but also very conventional/conservative; and George Washington Fletcher (GW to his friends, who may (or may not) be living outside the law.

And the first step is to try to determine what Billy was into that could have gotten him killed.  The second is to make contact with a killer-for-hire (whom Marsha has been in email contact with).  And try to keep The White Dime in business.  The investigation leads her to break into the Riggs home (Billy’s dead and Marsha’s in jail), with GW’s assistance, to look for clues; to try, also (with Victor’s help) to figure out what sort of scam is going on at the resort community development where Billy worked as a salesman; and figure out what’s going on in her own personal life.  With Clarice’s help, she locates the killer (and that’s an interesting adventure). 

I enjoyed the ride, although the digressions (as far as I was concerned) into Tarot readings were too frequent and didn’t really seem to advance the story very much.  And the third in the series came out earlier this year (Give the Devil His Due, which I read out of order, and reviewed.   So far this is a strong beginning to what might become a long-lasting series. 

Alan Melville, Quick Curtain

Alan Melville, Quick Curtain

Poisoned Pen Press 2017 (Reprint of 1934 edition)
© 2015 Estate of Alan Melville
ISBN 978-1-4642-0870-6

Alan Melville, who (according to Martin Edwards’ introduction) had a long and fairly distinguished career as a playwright and with the BBC (radio and then television) from the 1930s to the 1960s, provides us with a light, satiric look at the state of English theatre in the 1930s, with an improbable murder tossed in for additional fun.  The book revolves around the opening of a new musical comedy, Blue Music, produced by the famous producer Douglas B, Douglas starring Brandon Baker and Gwen Astle (both of whom have appeared in many DBD productions, and written by Ivor Watcyns, whose work never fails to amuse.  Everything appears in place for another commercial triumph (let’s ignore artistic considerations).

Among others in attendance at the opening are CID Inspector Wilson and his son, Derek (a journalist).  (I particularly liked the description of one of the theatre critics, James Amethyst, who has written—and turned in—his review before arriving at the theatre.)  The first act passes off rather well, as does most of Act II, Scene 1…until the very end, when a gunshot (which is supposed to be fired by a prop gun (with no ammunition) in fact leads to the actual shooting, and death, of Mr. Blake.  Inspector Wilson takes charge, with his son Derek acting as his Watson, and the investigation begins.  And shortly, a second death occurs—the actor (J. Hilary Foster) who fired the gun is found dead, hanging from the ceiling, in his dressing room.

Part of the charm of the book comes from the interplay between Wilson pere and Wilson fil, and Derek carries out quite a bit of the actual investigation.  (For one thing, he is dispatched to a small town in the north, which results both in some important discoveries and occurrences, but also in an exchange of amusing telegrams between the Wilsons.

Well.  It appears we have a solution to the crimes, and Inspector Wilson is set to make his arrest during the first performance of Blue Magic since the tragic events of the premiere.  Justice triumphs, and all is well.  Or not.  There is, as it happens, a final series of disclosures…

This is not a masterpiece; it’s light (well, as light as a book with multiple murders can be), and I particularly enjoyed the relationship between the Wilsons.  It’s a pleasant way to spend a few hours, and, if you do, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Mark Pryor; The Blood Promise

Mark Pryor; The Blood Promise

Seventh Street Books © 2014 Mark Pryor
ISBN 978-1-16164-815-7

The book begins in Paris, in 1795, with a letter being written, and with a burial. 

Then, still in Paris, but in  the present, Hugo Marston (head of security for the US Embassy) has been handed the job of helping coordinate security for a US Senator, Charles Lake, who is arriving in Paris to negotiate with the French about a tiny island in the Caribbean, (the island is French territory, but both its inhabitants and the US government want sovereignty to be yielded to the US).  Lake has aspirations for the presidency and is very much concerned to reduce the US commitments to the outside world.

The negotiations are to occur in an old mansion, the property of the Tourville family; Henri Tourville has a position near the top of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.  His sister Alexie, who occasionally lectures in history, has a special interest in (and business investigating) genealogy.  On the first night after negotiations begin. Lake believes that he has been drugged and that someone has entered his room at the chateau.  Marston (and everyone else) is skeptical.  (I should mention one thing, that really did not strike me as soon as it should have.  The US negotiating team was a bit weird, consisting solely of the Senator—no one from the State Department, no assistants or communications people or note takers, no support staff at all.  These folks need not have been significant to the story, but some of them ought to have been there.)

We eavesdrop, in a sense, on a theft at another chateau, and on a murder that occurs in the course of it.  This becomes important when a fingerprint taken at the scene matches a fingerprint found in the Senator’s bedroom.

As has been the case in the three prior books (chronologically in the series narrative, if not in order of publication), Marston winds up working closely with Raul Garcia, a high-ranking Parisian cop, and Tom Green, a CIA agent and long-time friend.  As things develop, Lake disappears for a day, occasioning a bit of panic, and refuses to say where he was or why he disappeared (he left his cell phone behind to prevent being tracked).  And while the murder investigation seems not to be progressing, it’s also the case that the negotiations (which occur off-screen) also seem not to be achieving much.

Pryor’s narrative unfolds very nicely, and we become even more invested in the continuing characters in the series.  The twists of the plot occur almost naturally, if (in at least one case) in wholly unexpected ways.  And the denouements—there are two, really—flow almost seamlessly from the story.  I don’t know how well this series is doing commercially, but I guarantee that it is doing very well artistically.  I strongly recommend these books.