Tag Archives: Mystery

Crunch Time, Diane Mott Davidson #50BookPledge

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I’m a huge Goldy Schulz fan, so when I saw Diane Mott Davidson finally had a new book out, I pre-ordered the e-book immediately. Unfortunately, I did not like Crunch Time. I suppose I should have been warned by “A Novel of Suspense” on the cover. Goldy Schulz novels have never been about the thrills – they’re about the warmth, the humour, and yes, the food. Crunch Time tries so hard to be about the “suspense” that it ends up with a whole lot of half-developed plot points, frenetic plot twists and new characters who just don’t make me care.

Ernest, a private investigator, is killed, and his live-in cook Yolanda and her great-aunt Ferdinanda are friends of Goldy, so they come to live with her while looking for a new place. Ernest was working on several cases (a fishy dog breeding mill, a divorce case involving possible adultery, a generations-old stolen diamonds case, and Yolanda’s abusive, stalker ex-husband), so he had quite a list of people who’d wanted him dead. Yolanda is a suspect and Goldy, being Goldy, decides to help her out by finding the real killer. Classic Goldy Schulz plot.

Here are the problems. Yolanda and Ferdinanda are just plain annoying. Ferdinanda is the classic feisty elderly lady. She talks non-stop, she takes over Goldy’s kitchen, and she confidently wields a baton against men. She does have her likable moments, but for the most part, I felt more sympathy for the man she was yelling at or whacking with the baton. Yolanda claims her ex-husband abused her (again a classic theme in Goldy Schulz novels), and so is understandably jumpy. Unfortunately, Davidson handled this type of character much better with Goldy (whose fear made her sympathetic) and Marla (whose spunk made her admirable), mostly because we saw just how bad their ex-husband, the Jerk, could be. Yolanda’s ex is barely developed and even Goldy sometimes questions whether Yolanda has even been abused in the first place, so Yolanda just comes off as hysterical. Characters in fiction need not be likable, but if the lovable protagonist risks herself and her equally lovable family for them, they should at least be likable enough to be worth that risk.

Other minor characters irked me as well. One suspect for example is a man who literally faints at the sight of blood. He had at least three scenes of blood-related fainting incidents, which I personally thought was at least two too many. The first time was surprising, and somewhat amusing. After a while, it turned into slapstick that tried too hard either to be funny or to establish that this character is a wimp.

Also, I don’t know if Goldy’s nosiness has always been this annoying, or if I just don’t think this case is worth her meddling. I’ve always found Goldy charming – I like how she mostly just wants a quiet life as a caterer, and yet ends up embroiled in mysteries because she or a good friend (like Julian Teller) or family member (like the Jerk) is accused of a crime. Because the stakes are usually so high and she tries to find an answer quickly so she can get back to her usual life, I cheer her on when she bends the rules, ignores police warnings and gets into dangerous situations. In Crunch Time, Goldy seems to have developed a taste for detecting, and has morphed from an ordinary mother/caterer into a wannabe cop/busybody. At one point, she enlists someone’s help to drug a suspect so she can collect evidence, then later fabricates evidence to collect even more evidence. This type of mystery always requires a suspension of disbelief when it comes to chains of evidence, but even I couldn’t swallow all that. Nor could I help thinking, Goldy’s police officer husband Tom seems more than capable, why not tell him what she knows and let him handle things?

The plot twists and red herrings in this book just pile up, and it wasn’t so much confusing at it was unnecessary. Davidson emphasizes the most random things, which make me think they are significant, but end up being just bits of colour to add to characters. At least two people for example ask Yolanda why she calls Ferdinanda Aunt instead of Great Aunt. In real life, I just don’t see people caring about that, so I thought the inconsistency would mean something later on. Spoiler: either it didn’t, or I missed it completely. Later on, Ferdinanda hangs a Santeria mask on Goldy’s door, which makes Tom protest. Santeria masks do play a role later on, but the fact that Ferdinanda insisted on hanging the mask up despite Tom’s (the house owner’s!) objections meant nothing at all, from what I could tell.

It was good seeing old favourites again, and I love seeing Goldy’s son Arch, whom I first met as a shy, awkward eleven year old, now a popular, confident athletic sixteen year old. So he’s a fencer, which isn’t exactly the height of cool, from what I can remember of high school, but still, it’s nice to see him all grown up. The always entertaining Marla was, like Goldy, more annoyingly gossipy here, but even worse, she was barely involved at all in the case. Even an annoying Marla is much better as Goldy’s sidekick than Yolanda and Ferdinanda. Tom and Goldy’s relationship has progressed somewhat, and it’s nice seeing them having sex more often than in previous books. They’re a cute couple, and I like seeing them happy.

Finally, and I admit this should a minor, ridiculous gripe, I miss Goldy’s constant cooking. In previous books, she cooks every time she gets stressed out (which is often), and Davidson describes the most mouth watering recipes in these scenes. Goldy still does cook, and Davidson does include a list of recipes, but at least half the time in this book, when Goldy goes to the kitchen, she finds that Ferdinanda has already cooked something sumptuous. We still get the description of how heavenly Ferdinanda’s meals are, but it isn’t quite the same as seeing the meal created.

Minor question to Goldy Schulz fans – how religious was she in previous books, beyond teaching Sunday school and catering church functions? She just seemed very preachy here (commenting about sins and commandments), and the scene where she is stressed out and goes to light candles in church rather than cook surprised me. Not a big deal, and certainly, a character can change. Just struck me as odd.

A Question of Belief, Donna Leon #50BookPledge

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Rarely do I highlight an e-book as often as I do Donna Leon’s. A quick glance shows a total of twenty-six highlights, two of which I shared on Twitter. Not bad for a book of only two hundred and eighty-eight pages in the print copy. And every one of those passages is something I’d love to read aloud and sigh over with other Donna Leon fans. Like the eighteen previous Commissario Guido Brunetti novels, A Question of Belief is more than just a mystery – it’s a foodie travelogue of Venice, a series of references to classic literature, a commentary on Italian politics, and, above all, another few hours with the charming, honourable, family man Guido Brunetti.

There’s a heat wave in Venice, and Brunetti’s team barely has enough energy to solve a murder, look into courthouse corruption, and investigate a con man ripping off old ladies. A lot of what I love about the Brunetti novels are the scenes Brunetti spends having lunch with his family – it’s nice seeing a detective who is also a dedicated husband and father, and his wife Paolo makes the most mouth watering meals. For classic Nancy Drew fans who may remember Hannah Gruen’s meals, imagine those with a contemporary Italian twist. Unfortunately, Brunetti’s family goes on vacation to escape the heat, so we don’t see them as much here as we do in other novels. Bright side, Leon gives us such gems as Paola and Brunetti’s phone conversations, and this wonderful description of Paola: “Brunetti had managed to marry a woman who looked forward to going to bed at ten o’ clock with Henry James. Or, when driven by wild passions she was ashamed to reveal to her husband, with Henry James and his brother.”

Paola appears a bit more jaded here than in past books, and Leon really gives us a sense of how tiresome it is for Paola and Guido to live in a city with such corruption, and for Guido in particular to have to deal with so many lies from witnesses: “He realized, as he said it, that his soul was tired of backstairs gossip, tired of listening from the eaves and consorting with informers. Ask them directly and have done with it.”

Of course, the main draw of any Brunetti novel is Brunetti himself, a detective with whom a reader can fall in love. His co-worker Signorina Elettra says, “A man without a sense of fashion is a man without a soul,” and Brunetti is, quite definitely, a man with a soul. At one point, he notes that a character’s husband must have decorated their house, because “no one who wore that blouse could have chosen those curtains.” He also clearly appreciates his co-workers, calling Signorina Elettra simply “Much, much, too, very” after explaining it is an expression of happiness he culled from his daughter’s friend.

The mysteries are compelling as well, especially because you care for the characters. You care for example that the con man is caught so he’ll stop defrauding the aunt of Brunetti’s partner Vianello. Brunetti’s strength as a detective is his ability to read people, similar to Hercule Poirot’s focus on human psychology rather than CSI-type evidence. When speaking to a witness, Brunetti realizes that with other people, at hearing a certain tone, he would have placed “a comforting hand on the arm of the speaker,” yet is reluctant to do so with this particular person. His analysis of his own reluctance reveals something important about that speaker that he then uses in his investigation.

Long story short, I love Question of Belief. Leon’s next book, Drawing Conclusions, is already on my e-reader, and I’m definitely excited to read it.

The Baker Street Letters, Michael Robertson #50BookPledge

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As a major Sherlock Holmes fan, this title grabbed my attention immediately. I picked it up, even though a rational part of me warned it was probably a coincidence, and Baker Street Letters had nothing to do with the detective at 221B Baker St at all. To my delight, the summary on the book cover promised a story about a pair of lawyer brothers who happen to lease 221B Baker Street and so receive letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes. I thought this book would be a Sherlockian tale, and I was both excited to read something Sherlockian and wary that Robertson would screw up his treatment of such an icon.

Fair warning: it has absolutely nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes other than the Baker Street address. That being said, it’s a solid enough mystery, with likable enough characters. Twenty years ago, an eight-year-old girl writes to ask Sherlock Holmes for help in finding her missing father. Family black sheep Nigel Heath decides to track the letter writer down. When he is suspected of murder, his rich, successful brother Reggie follows him to LA, and also gets involved in the case. Reggie’s on-again/off-again girlfriend Laura, an actress who is by far the most intelligent in their detective team, also comes to LA to help out. The letter writer’s father had been a geological surveyor investigating possible subway tunnel routes, and there are people who seem desperate to get the documents from the father that the girl had included in her letter to Sherlock Holmes.

It’s not spectacular, and if I decide to read the next book in the series, The Brothers of Baker Street, I’ll borrow it from the library. I don’t think it’s even that I was disappointed that the Sherlock Holmes connection was ultimately nothing more than a gimmick (story would so worked equally well if the eight-year-old girl had written to Nancy Drew or Hercule Poirot or even sent a message in a bottle). I love all sorts of mysteries, ranging from Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie to Diane Mott Davidson (Goldy Schulz’s catering mysteries) and Laura Levine (the hilarious Jaine Austen series). Baker Street Letters is definitely an enjoyable read, but it’s not a series I’ll keep my eye on.

The best part of Baker Street Letters is the relationship between the Heath brothers – Reggie and Nigel clearly have an intense rivalry, but just as clearly feel genuine concern and affection for each other. Laura is an engaging character, and her romance with Reggie (and past potential for romance with Nigel!) is a fun little subplot that really just makes you realize how dense Reggie is when it comes to love. The secondary characters are interesting enough, and in fact, my favourite character is probably a female grad student who helps Reggie out. The mystery is convoluted enough that I didn’t guess the answer till fairly close to the big reveal scene. Decent book, overall.