Mark Kurlansky, Ready for a Brand New Beat

Mark Kurlansky. Ready for a Brand Ne Beat: How “Dancing in the Street” became the Anthem for a Changing America
Copyright © 2031 M rk Kurlansky
 Riverhead Books/Penguin Books
ISBN 978-59448-722-4

I finished reading Mark Kurlansky’s Ready for a Brand New Beat, his attempt to convince us (and, perhaps,, himself)of the cultural and political importance of a pop-rock song, “Dancing in the Street.  Composed by a team of Motown songwriters (Marvin Gays, Willian “Mickey” Stevenson, and Ivy Jo Hunter) and initially released by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.  Clocking in at 2:46, it peaked at #4 on the pop charts and was #17 on the 1964 year-end rankings according to Billboard.  Looking at the 1964 year-end list, I think there is a case to be made for it (although I personally would pick The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk,” which Billboard has at #20.  (It’s clearly a better song than any of the top 100 from 1963, although Sam Cooke’s “It’s Another Saturday Night” is terrific.  I’d put two songs from 1965 ahead of it-The Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction (#3 for the year) and Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (#41). Still, “Dancing in the Street” is a remarkable song and deserves the praise it gets.
Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1964 - Wikipedia
Martha & The Vandellas "Dancing in the Streets" - YouTube

Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1963 - Wikipedia
Sam Cooke - Another Saturday Night (Official Lyric Video) - YouTube


Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1965 - Wikipedia
[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - YouTube
Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone (Audio) - YouTube

But Kurlansky wants to do much more than assert the musical merits of “Dancing in the Street.”  His thesis is that “Dancing…” is much more than a great rock song.  It is, he argues, a song whose origins (consciously or not) come out of the political and civic unrest that marked the summer of 1964 and that it continued to resonate in the summers that follow.  An important part of this part of the story is white flight generally and the very real destruction of Detroit as a major American city.  He also, I think, wants to make a case for the importance of Motown (and by extension Berry Gordy) in changing the musical world and providing the soundtrack to the social and political changes that became clear in 1964 and shaped a narrative that helped define the ‘60s.

Detroit got its nickname (The Motor City) because the growth of the population, and the wealth (largely of whites) were driven by the automobile industry.  IN 1880, the population of Detroit was about 116,000.  It nearly triples—to 285,000—in 1900, nearly doubled between 1900 and 1910, doubled again by 1920 (now over 900,000), and, although the city’s growth slowed, it doubled again by 1950 (reaching 1,8 million,  .That, again, is the city of Detroit.  After 1950, the city has shrunk,, almost as fast as it grew; the 2020 Census puts the city’s population at 670,000.  The Detroit metropolitan area has continued to grow.  At 3 million (about 1.1 million outside the city limits) in 1950 (the earliest official data), it’s now at 5.3 million (about 4.6 million outside the city limits.  The city is majority Black, while the suburbs are mostly white.

Kurlansky doesn’t treat this population changes in much detail, although he does sketch the outlines.

The Motown story is actually pretty amazing on its own, without any of the political weight that Kurlansky adds to it.  The incredible blossoming of talent, and the ability of that talent to break out of being only a niche of the music business—the breakthrough of Black music and performers into the pop charts is an important story, and he tells it well.  And telling it requires making it clear that Gordy made household names out of an extraordinary group of talented men and women.  Here, he makes it clear than Gordy did not treat his talent very well, leaving some of the most talented basically in poverty while he got rich (at least for a while).

But Kurlansky wants to do much more than tell the story of Motown and the story of a song.  He wants to convince us that the song was a catalyst for the rise of a political movement—a galvanizing force behind at least part of the civil rights movement.  Especially of the Freedom Rides and the struggle to force states in the south to allow Blacks to register and vote.  The outlines of the events themselves are pretty well handled, and, if that part of the struggle obviously continues (with 30or more states now trying to make voter registration and actual voting harder—and not just in the south).  I don’t think he makes his case.  The argument is that “Dancing in the Street” was heard as (whether it was intended to be heard this way is a much harder case) a call to activism, even to violence.  That “dancing in the street” was not—was not thought to be by political activists in 1964 and later to be a nice dance song, but was, indeed, a call to revolution.  He cites a few activists who claim (if only in hindsight) to see it that way.  But it reads as a stretch, not as an evident truth.

The strangest part of the book is his discussion of the huge number of recorded versions of the song (including, somewhat weirdly, David Bowie and Mick Jagger doing a duet).  I think he’s trying to make a claim for the continued vitality of the song.  And it has been covered and recorded over and over again.  Including a number of weird attempts (the Mamas and Papas?  I don’t recommend it.  Van Halen?  Don’t recommend that either.  The Grateful Dead?).  I can’t find even an estimate of the number of recorded versions, but it seems to be in the hundreds.

I was absorbed by the book, even as I argued with it frequently.  “Dancing in the Street” is a seminal achievement in rock literature.  Bu in the end it’s just a great song.  It did not change the world.  It did not even, really, change the music business.  It probably did not make the singers and players rich.  But it was an important moment for Motown, making the label ubiquitous and helping to make Berry Gordy rich.

Dolores Gordon-Smith, As If By Magic

 Dolores Gordon-Smith, As If By Magic
Copyright © 2009
Constable & Robinson Ltd.

The 3rd of (so far) 10 mysteries featuring Jack Haldean, who, following his service in the Great War, is making a (surprisingly good) living as a writer.  He becomes involved in actual mysteries, working with his friend Chief Detective Inspector Bill Rackham.  In this case, George Lassiter, whom Haldean met during the War, is the catalyst for his involvement.

Lassiter has come to England to find out what has happened to a legacy he should have received—but appears to have been stolen.  Broke, suffering from malnutrition and recurrent bouts of malaria and shell-shock, he breaks into a home after watching the servants leave to see a play.  And he falls asleep/passes out in the warmth of the kitchen.  He awakens, but, hearing voiced, he hides until he can leave without being discovered.  As he prepares to leave, he sees a young woman on the floor of the kitchen—apparently dead.  As he hurries out of the house, he encounters the police, tries to convince them that there’s a death in the house.  But there is no body.

And, instead of arresting him, he winds up in the hospital, suffering from malnutrition and malaria and (so they thing) hallucinations.  He is released into the custody of Haldean until he has recovered sufficiently to be on his own.

The home he invaded is, as it turns out, owned by his grandfather and occupied by the old man, two of his sons, and the widow of a third son.  The family is involved in the nascent airplane business, and is in the process of building a large plane capable of long distance fights (the project is building up to a flight (not non-stop) to India,  Also involved in the business—indeed, its chief executive, is Alexander Culverton, who has disappeared—until reappearing as a corpse in the Thames.  Rackham is on the case (which he thinks might be linked to a series of “Jack the Ripper” slayings of young women, also found in the Thames.

Rackham makes little progress.  And much of the narrative revolves around preparations for the test flight of the airplane (aeroplane?), including a lavish dinner and test flight for the press.  As Rackham deals with both the “Ripper” killings and Culverton’s death, Haldean’s role is to keep George out of trouble, while trying to do his own writing.  He is, unsurprisingly, swept into the investigations.

The story moves briskly enough, but I found myself less interested than I had expected to be.  The theft of George’s legacy is resolved, and in a not very startling coincidence, ties into the machinations over control of the airplane business.  A lengthy “adventure” sequence that ties a number of things up seemed to me to be unnecessary, and, essentially, an excuse for the inclusion of some not very interesting sex scenes.  And hypnotism plays a significant role in the denouement.  More than anything else, reading As If By Magic reminded me why I had not picked it up before (I have also read, some years ago, the first two books in the series). 

Iain Pears, Death and Restoration

 Iain Pears, Death and Restoration
Copyright © 1996 Iain Pears
Berkley Prime Crime Books (reprint)
ISBN0-425-19042-0

I’ve been re-reading, and in some cases reading for the first time, Iain Pears’ series of art world mysteries, of which there are, regrettably, only seven (Iain Pears (stopyourekillingme.com).  I have, I think, only two more to read:  The Last Judgment and The Immaculate Deception.  There are three principal characters:  Jonathon Argyll, an art historian and occasional dealer; Flavia Di Stefano, an officer in Rome’s art crimes division; and Taddeo Bottano, the head of the art squad.  Bottano has only a fleeting role in this story, as he is involved in the possible creation of a continent-wide art theft bureau (Di Stefano is the acting head of the Rome operation).

This is, I think, the longest of these art mysteries, and perhaps the best. 

Early one morning, one of the priests of the monastery San Giovanni has been assaulted and a 15^th century icon has vanished.  Di Stefano, in place of Bottano, has to deal with it.  And, as old icons are a hot item on the art market (licit and illicit), this icon could have great monetary value.  It already has great religious significance to many of the people in the area, who view the icon (of St. Teresa and the baby Jesus) as the protector of their part of Rome.

And, recently arrived from England, is Mary Verney, whom Argyll and Di Stefano encountered in an earlier adventure set in the English countryside (Giotto’s Hand).  Verny has something of a checkered past, and her presence in Rome poses some issues for Di Stefano.  I I must not overlook the organized crime family from Greece, the Charanis clan.  Argyll has given up his “career” as a dealer and has become an academic, teaching art history to a class of less than enthusiastic students.  And he and Di Stefano have too little time together.  And I should not overlook the art scholar and restoration guy, Dan Menzies, who is restoring some works at San Giovanni, and becomes enmeshed with the theft and recovery of the icon/

Early on, an art dealer (whose business ethics might be all they should be) is murdered.  Verney’s granddaughter has been kidnapped, and she is being coerced into stealing the icon from San Giovanni.  The monastery faces a financial (and spiritual) crisis.  Di Stefano feels over-worked and perhaps in over her head.  Argyll takes on the task of tracing (with the assistance of an elderly monk whose mental state is unsteady) the history of the icon.  Rome itself is a character, focusing mostly—not exclusively--on the neighborhood around the monastery.  [I have spent some time in Rome, mostly not in the lower income parts of the city; it is my favorite city, and, if I spoke Italian—and had a somewhat larger income (the cost of living in Rome is, well, maybe less than New York, but not by much), I think we’d be living there.)

I love the characters, and I love the setting,  And Pears’ ability to weave contemporary Rome with the collapse of the Constantinople is a key element of what happened in the 15^th century and what has just happened. 

Walter Mosley, Blood Grove

Walter Mosley, Blood Grove
Copyright © 2021 The Thing Itself, Inc.
Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company
ISBN978-0-316-49118-1

Ezekiel (Easy) Rawlins is, in 1969, a success, running his own investigations firm (with a handful of employees), driving in a Rolls Royce (not his but collateral for payment), and with a teenage step-daughter.  As it happens, everyone else in the agency is out of the office when Craig Killian, a veteran of the war in Viet Nam and suffering the after-effects of his time there, comes in, to ask for Rawlins’ help.  He’s afraid that he may have killed a man in a blood orange grove and he needs to know.  Rawlins, who had served in World War II, in the ETO, and who knows what traumas can linger, takes the case.

Rawlins narrates the events, from what might be years after the events.  And it is a complicated story.  In addition to this investigation, he’s responsible for his adopted teenage daughter Feather, and has to cope with her (early 20s uncle Milo showing up).  And that’s not the end of the complications, which include the LAPD (which does not come off well—and, from everything I have read about the LAPD in the 1960s and later, is deserved).

And “complicated” is perhaps an understatement.  The cast of characters is large and varied, and Mosley handles it well.  The investigation itself—which turns out to involve an armored-car heist (and, it seems, the murder of the guards) of something around a half a million dollars (about $4 million, these days, adjusted for inflation).  His client dies, but he feels an obligation to continue the investigation.  He is threatened by a…well, I guess psychotic mob boss is perhaps the best description, for one thing.  And even finding a thread to begin his investigation seems all but impossible.

Maybe not a masterpiece, but a book I found hard to put down, and people who will, for good or evil, remain in my memory.  This pretty well sums things up:  “Every now and then I think that the closest I ever came to death was at the hands of that woman.  She was a nearly perfect predator in a world that scared the shit out of me.” 

Rex Stout, Too Many Women (not for the first time)

 Rex Stout, Too Many Women
© 1947 Estate of Rex Stout
ASIN : B004SOQ0A8Some

Rex Stout is without question my favorite writer of mysteries; I have read all of the novels and novellas multiple times, and, with few exceptions, find re-reading them a pleasurable experience.  Some months ago I began a chronological re-reading of the novels, and have reached, and read, the 8^th novel in the series, Too Many Women.  The basic plot is perfectly acceptable.  But I always find the treatment of many of the characters difficult at best for a modern audience; I would not be surprised if it was also difficult for many readers on its initial publication (in 1947

An employee (Waldo Moore) of a civil engineering company (Naylor- Kerr, Inc.) has been killed (nearly four months prior to Wolfe’s becoming involved.  Wolfe is hired by the firm’s president, Jasper Pine, to investigate an allegation that Moore was murdered, not simply killed in a hit-and-rum auto accident, because rumors that it was murder are rampant and are disrupting the corporation.(Left unsaid is the implication that his murder, if such it was, is somehow related to his employment.)  In order to pursue the investigation, Archie Goodwin is “hired,” as a personnel expert, to look into the corporation’s excessive turnover rate, especially among the clerical workforce.  According to Pine, Moore’s presence—he seems to be extremely attractive to the women in the place (although Archie’s description of him does not help the reader understand why that should be the case.  He is there using an alias (Peter Truett).

Archie seems inordinately struck by the physical attractiveness of the clerical staff (especially three of them, Rosa Bendini, Gwen Ferris, and Hester Livsey (who had been engaged to marry Moore).  And he also learns fairly quickly that Moore was disliked by many of the professional staff and considered redundant by his supervisor.  He also has to cope with Mr. Kerr Naylor (the son of one of the firm’s founders and named for the other—and the source of the murder allegation) and Jasper Pine’s wife Cecily (sister of Kerr Naylor).  In fact, much of his investigation seems to consist of dining and dancing with two of the women (Bendini and Ferris).

And the investigation seems to be getting nowhere, until Kerr Naylor tells Archie, in circumstances that preclude his following it up, that, in addition to knowing that Moore was murdered, he knows who the murderer is.  An additional complication is that Cecily Pine is (as she is referred to in the book) a “chronic befriender” of young men, and that Moore, after his stint as a befriendee has ended, gets hired by the firm.  She has, as we learn, a motive for this.  Things heat up when there is a second death, obviously murder, and in a fashion that makes it clear that Moore’s death was emphatically not an accident. 

The conclusion is not exactly surprising, and “justice,” of a sort, prevails.  It is, however, an instance of it being extremely unlikely that anyone could be convicted of the murders, given what we know and the police would be able to prove. 

So why do I find the book so difficult?  From the first time I read it—in the early 1970s (this was not an easy book to find, even in libraries, then, and it has remained hard to find since)…Well.  Let me put it this way:  Archie’s attitude toward and behavior with the three women at Naylor-Kerr with whom Archie becomes involved is barely short of deplorable.  He presents them to us basically as sex objects, beings in whom he can only be interested because they arouse him sexually.  And he treats them, essentially, that way, and none of them seem to mind.  As a result, this is the book I have read least often of any of them (although there is another one…but I’ll get to that in a couple of months).  In my opinion—and a lot of people do disagree with me—the one glaring weakness in Stout’s writing is his attitude toward the women in his books.  And this is the book in which that attitude is most clearly on display.

Marbury v. Madison and Stuart V Laird

 

Cliff Sloan and David McKean, The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court
Copyright © Cliff Sloan and David McKean 2019
Public Affairs/Perseus Books
ISBN 9-781-586-4842-262

I have finished The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court, which focuses on the lead-up to the decision by the Supreme Court in the case of Marbury v. Madison (the Madison in question was James Madison) and its aftermath. Theauthors case is this (at least as I read it):

Congress enacts laws. The presumption is that those laws are both Constitutional and good policy.

The President either signs into law or vetoes legislation passed by Congress. The presumption is that legislation signed into law is both Constitutional and good policy. If the President vetoes legislation passed be Congress, the President is asserting that the legislation is EITHER un-Constitutional, OR bad policy, or both. The veto message should make clear which.

Congress may vote to override the veto (which requires a supermajority), which is telling the President, again, that the legislation is both Constitutional and good policy. And it becomes law.

Note that, at least formally, Congress has the ultimate power.

There is nothing in the Constitution explicitly assigning any regarding the legitimacy of laws—constitutional? unconstitutional?)--role to the Supreme Court.

But, in what was in reality a very minor legal issue--Marbury v. Madison, the Court concluded that a law governing appointments to executive branch offices violated the Constitution and the law was therefore void. (The case involved appointments of four men to the position of justices of the peace.

(Just to be clear, this is my understanding of what I have read so far.  As I reach the end, I have to retract much of that comment on the power of the Court of that.  What the Court did was make explicit that the laws of the United States apply to the president as much as they do to the rest of us.  It's still the case tha Marbury v. Madison was a relatively minor matter.)

Now I first knew anything about Marbury v. Madison was probably in U.S. history in high school. But the underlying issue as never actually mentioned, nor was the controversy over the Constitutional action of the Court.

This sort of stuff keeps me awake at night.

The book, by the way, takes its time getting around to the legal issues. More than the first half of the book is introducing the characters and providing background. (Which gets us to p. 103 of 191, at which point the Court has rendered its decision.)  So what is the background, and what can we conclude about a Supreme Court decision that has, for over 200 years, been seen as one of the defining moments in U.S, Constitutional jurisprudence and history?

This is, actually, the story of two cases, Marbury v. Madison and Stuart v. Laird.

At issue in Marbury v. Madison was the question of whether, and to what extent, the President is bound by the law.  The background, briefly, is this.  John Adams has been defeated for re-election (in 1800), and Thomas Jefferson is to be inaugurate on 4 March 1801.  This leaves a fairly large gap between the election and the transfer of presidential authority to the incoming President.  Adams took advantage of this time lag to appoint scores of people to positions which it was the president’s responsibility to fill.  The making of these appointments continued until lite in the night of 3 March.  Among the appointments were a number of appointments to the position of justice of the peace.  One of those appointees was William Marbury (the other three men who were to receive appointments somehow have had their names dropped from history).  There were, essentially four steps to the appointment:  The president makes the appointment; the appointment is confirmed by the Senate; the president signs the appointment and affixes the Great Seal of the United States; and the letter of appointment (signed and sealed) is delivered to the appointee.  Adams completed the first three of these steps.  James Madison (as Secretary oi State, and acting on Jefferson’s instructions) did not deliver the appointment.  Marbury filed an action (a writ of mandamus) with the Supreme Court to compel the delivery.  The case was finally argued and a decision rendered more than two years later.

(A writ of mandamus is a court order requiring that a specific action be taken—in this case, the delivery of Marbury’s appointment,)

The second case, also argued and decided in1803, Stuart v. Laird, arose from the controversy surrounding the enactment in 1801 and the repeal in 1803 of the Judiciary Act of 1801.  (A good enough discussion is here: Stuart v. Laird - Wikipedia).  Briefly, the Act created a number of new judgeships (which Adams filled as promptly as he could before Jefferson was inaugurated) and allowed the Justices of the Supreme Court to cease “circuit riding.”  When, in 1803, Congress repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, it abolished those juddgeships and required tha the Justices resume circuit riding (which they all loathed, unsurprisingly).  Stuart, who had been appointed to one of the new positions, filed suit asking that the repeal be set aside, because federal judgeships conferred lifetime appointments, that repealing the act and allowing the cancellation of the judgeships unconstitutionally deprived the newly-appointed judges of positions to which they had been lawfully appointed.

So, what happened?

In Marbury v. Madison, the Court agreed that the letter of appointment was illegally withheld (i.e., that the President of the United States was subject to the laws of the United States) but that Marbury had erred by bringing an action directly to the Supreme Court rather than to the Federal district court which would have jurisdiction.  Simply, the Court dismissed Marbury’s action—and it was, apparently, never refined in a federal district court.  But Marshall, in his decision made it quite clear that the president had violated the law, that the law was constitutional, and, had Marbury’s case been brought as an appeal from a district court, the Supreme Court would have sided with him.  The Court did not directly a constitutional issue, but made it clear that the president is as much a subject under the law as anyone.

In short, the president is not above the law.  And, as a side issue, the Supreme Court indicated that (despite there being no explicit language in the Constitution saying so) that the Curt was an equal partner (with the Congress and the President) in determining what is and is not constitutional.

In Stuart v. Laird, the Court ruled that, as the Constitution gave Congress the power to create judicial positions (including, as had already happed, changing the number of Justices on the Supreme Court, as stated in Article III, Section 1:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

(Interestingly, the Constitution does not explicitly say the appointments are lifetime; that is an inference from there being no fixed term of service stated.)

What the Court made clear was that, if Congress could create judgeships, it could also eliminate = them.  And, if the judgeship was eliminated, there was no explicit or implicit grant of continued employment for judges whose positions might be eliminated—no judgeship, no right to a position (or salary).  Again, but implicitly, the Court was claiming the right ti interpret the Constitution, and, in fact, that its interpretation was binding on the other two branches.  (Also, by making clear the authority of Congress both to create and to eliminate judgeships, it also made clear that Congress, which had eliminated circuit-riding in the 1801 Actt could, and did, in repealing the act, reinstate circuit-riding as a part of the Justices’ job.

I think the authors were right in linking these two cases.  By addressing these issues pretty much simultaneously, the Court made a fairly expansive assertion of authority, an authority that has not been challenged seriously since.

Iain Pears, The Titian Committee

 Iain Pears, The Titian Committee
copytivht © 1991 Iain Pears
Berkeley Prime Crime
ISBN 0-425-18544-1

{n their second outing*, General Taddeo Bottando, his assistant Flavia di Stefano, and Jonthan Argyll (currently employed by an art gallery, but maybe not for long) become embroiled in murder and the complexities of dealing with old masters.  Bottando does not really care that much about the murder and still less about the people involved; he is concerned about his department’s budget, and continued existence.  In this instance, diStefano is sent to Venice to help investigate the murder of Louise Masterson, Ph.D., an art historian and member of the titular Titian committee.  (The committee has six members—well, five now.  It was established by an eminent Italian art historian, Georges Bralle (who retired because of disagreements about how the committee should operate).  The remaining members, art historians all, are Roberts. Kollmar, Van Heteren, Miller, and Lorenzo.

Masterson was murdered in the Gardenetti Reali, a public garden, around midnight.  The first question, of course, is whether the murderer had a personal motive or was a thief for whom things got out of hand.  (This being a mystery novel, we all know how that will play out.  And, given that the motive was personal, and suspicion is likely to fall on the members of the Titian Committee, which of them might have had a motive sufficient to lead to murder.  The initial investigation, conducted by a Venetian policeman, Bovolo (who only really wants  the whole thing to go away), reaches the easy (and quick and safe) conclusion that it was a theft gone wrong.  But, it was, of course, not that easy.

Meanwhile, and more or less by chance, Argyll is in Venice trying to pry a batch of paintings away from the Marchesa du Mulino, to be sent to London and sold at auction.  And the negotiations are not going well.  He runs into di Stefano** at a restaurant, and they wind up working together on her murder and his attempt to sell so he can keep his job.

Nothing, of course, comes easily.  It seems that Masterson had irritated all of the other members of the Titian Committee (but to the point of murder), that one of the members of the committee that another member badly needhas been engaged in somewhat unethical attributions of paintings references to support his application for tenure, that yet a third member (the nephew of the Marchesa, who really wants to get his hands on her paintings); and still another is deeply in love with Masterson, who has been paying to little attention to him.

And, in the midst of all this, Argyll thinks he has found, in a small, rundown church, an actual Titian.  More?  General Bottando shows up in Venice to help things along.  And more people die. 

I must admit to having had some difficulty keeping all the actors clear in my mind, and that the final explication of the who and how and why of things was also a very tangled tale.  So tangled that di Stefano’s explanation left both Bottando and Argyll confused, that Bottando’s clarificaion left both di Stefano and Argyll confused, and that Argyll’s revelations about his findings about his Titian, the Marchesa’s collection, and his commentary on the explanations of the other two leave them confused.  (As an aside, I love Italy—at least the parts I have visited, and this book did not make me particularly eager to travel to Venice.)  Having said that, I will say, again, that this is a marvelous series with characters I enjoy spending time with; my chief regret is that there are only seven books.

 

*The Raphael Affair (set in Rome) was the first, and I have already reported on #3, The Bernini Bust (set in LA).

**They met in The Rafael Affair and have remained close.