Review: THE CASE OF THE VELVET CLAWS, Erle Stanley Gardner

• format Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 544 KB
• Print Length: 261 pages
• Publisher: Della Street Press (September 27, 2011)
  first published 1933
• Publication Date: September 27, 2011
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005QE7XPK
• #1 in the Perry Mason series 

Synopsis  (Amazon)

Thanks to a bungled robbery at a fancy hotel, the already-married Eva Griffin has been caught in the company of a prominent congressman. To protect the politico, Eva's ready to pay the editor of a sleazy tabloid his hush money. But Perry Mason has other plans. He tracks down the phantom fat cat who secretly runs the blackmailing tabloid -- only to discover a shocking scoop.

By the time Mason's comely client finally comes clean, her husband has taken a bullet in the heart. Now Perry Mason has two choices: represent the cunning widow in her wrangle for the dead man's money -- or take the rap for murder.

My take

Unlike many others in the Perry Mason series, this novel is not centred on a court room drama, but it does introduce the characters who featured in most other novels in the series: his secretary Della Street, a young woman at this time, and obviously in love with her boss; and private eye Paul Drake who hunts down the facts to back up Perry Mason's quirky theories.

It was hard not to see, in my mind's eye, the bulky Raymond Burr who played Perry Mason in the long running television series. And yet, somehow, the central character in this novel does not quite match that tv character.

I can see why, even over 80 years on, why this novel was a winner with readers. The characters are well drawn, the action fast-paced and the plot is full of unexpected twists and turns. Perry Mason points out to his client. who constantly lies to him, that he is hardly a novice. He already has files from hundreds of previous cases in his filing cabinets, and he expects to have many more. He specialises in getting people out of holes. Most of the cases he has been involved in are murder cases, and mostly he gets people off. So here is a lawyer who takes on clients regardless of how much they can pay for his services. See more at Wikipedia.

THE CASE OF THE VELVET CLAWS was made into a film in 1936. 


A good read.

My rating:  4.4

About the author

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889-1970) is a prolific American author best known for his works centered on the lawyer-detective Perry Mason. At the time of his death in March of 1970, in Ventura, California, Gardner was "the most widely read of all American writers" and "the most widely translated author in the world," according to social historian Russell Nye. The first Perry Mason novel, The Case of The Velvet Claws, published in 1933, had sold twenty-eight million copies in its first fifteen years. In the mid-1950s, the Perry Mason novels were selling at the rate of twenty thousand copies a day. There have been six motion pictures based on his work and the hugely popular Perry Mason television series starring Raymond Burr, which aired for nine years and 271 episodes. 

Review: OLMEC OBITUARY, L.J.M. Owen

• This edition published by Echo Publishing Australia in 2015
• 259 pages
• ISBN 978-1-76006-878-3
• source: review copy provided by the publisher
• Available on Amazon for Kindle

Synopsis (Publisher)

Yearning for her former life as an archaeologist, Australian librarian Dr. Elizabeth Pimms is struggling with a job she doesn't want, a family she both loves and resents, and enforced separation from her boyfriend.

A royal Olmec cemetery is discovered deep in the Mexican jungle, containing the earliest writing in all the Americas. Dr. Pimms is elated to join the team investigating these Aztec ancestors. Triumph is short-lived, however, as Elizabeth's position on the team is threatened by a volatile excavation director, contradictory evidence, and hostile colleagues. With everything working against her, will Dr Pimms find the cause of death for a 3,000-year-old athlete and those buried with her?

With the archaeological intrigue of Elizabeth Peters, forensic insight of Kathy Reichs, and comfort of a cosy mystery, Olmec Obituary is the first novel in a fascinating new series: Dr Pimms, Intermillennial Sleuth. Really cold cases.

My Take

Her father's unexpected and untimely death means that Dr Elizabeth Pimms, forensic archaeologist and Egyptologist, has to abandon work she is doing in Egypt to return to her family in Canberra and take work as a librarian, so that she can provide financial support for her brother and sister and extended family.

She is approached to do some voluntary weekend work in Canberra working on the bones of 17 skeletons retrieved from an Olmec cave in Mexico. Her work is to be unpaid because the supervisor says basically that she needs to prove herself before he will consider remuneration. Elizabeth finds this difficult to understand because he has already obviously spent considerable funds on the work in Mexico. He and she have a falling out however on the first day when Elizabeth challenges some of the conclusions he wants to publish about the remains.

The reader is given background story to the events which have resulted in the burial of the bodies. These are details that Elizabeth has no way of knowing because there are no written records relating to this site. I am not sure about the wisdom of this as a plot structure.

Elizabeth has a personal mystery to unravel related to the death of her mother in a car crash nearly a decade earlier. She has to admit that she has been wrong in her assumptions about what caused the crash. But jumping to the wrong conclusions seems to be pretty par for the course for Elizabeth.

There is a lot going on in this book but my enjoyment of it was not helped by the fact that I didn't particularly warm to Elizabeth herself. I thought I found some inconsistencies in the background details about Elizabeth: later in the book the family celebrates her 26th birthday, but in the Prologue we are told "after twenty years of yearning, planning and dedicated study she was finally here... a skilled archaeologist and knowledgeable Egyptologist". I found it difficult to juggle her expertise against her age, and would have been more comfortable if she had just been a few years older.

Nevertheless, it is always interesting to find a new female Australian author, with a very different scenario, leading me into a world I am not really familiar with.

A second book in the series is promised: MAYAN MENDACITY. Elements of the story from OLMEC OBITUARY are left unresolved, so this should help link the two.

My rating: 4.4


About the author
L.J.M. Owen drew extensively on her education and experience when developing the novel. Relevant qualifications include an undergraduate degree in archaeology and a PhD in palaeogenetics from ANU, and a graduate diploma in library management from Curtin University. See more information on her website.

Review: THE UNFUR-TUNATE VALENTINE'S SCAM, Alannah Rogers

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 329 KB
• Print Length: 94 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publication Date: January 21, 2016
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0192DPPBO
• source: review copy from author 

Synopsis (Amazon)

When Abigail Freedman, Beatrice Young's sworn rival, approaches her with a case she's too curious not to take it on. As it turns out, Abby has a very modern romantic conundrum: her Internet boyfriend may be the love of her life ... or a scammer who wants to suck her bank account dry.

It's up to the 62-year-old Cozy Cat Cafe owner and her three crime-solving cats to find this Romeo's identity. Too bad Hamish, Petunia, and Lucky can't help Bee with an even bigger problem: how to sort out her new feelings for ex-husband and best friend Matthew.

No matter what happens, things are about to get romantic in Ashbrook, New Hampshire...

This book will be 50% longer than previous Beatrice Young mysteries.

The Unfur-tunate Valentine's Scam is the sixth book in the Beatrice Young cozy cat mystery series. These books can be read in any order but are extra delightful when enjoyed in sequence.

My Take

If you are looking for a short cozy to read, and love cats, then this novella may be just the thing.

Beatrice Young spends so much of her time solving local mysteries, in cahoots with her three cats and the local sheriff, that she is thinking of setting up office as a private investigator.

This story is a cozy without a body, but there is still a serious theme: someone seems to be preying, via an internet dating site on lonely senior women, with the ultimate aim of asking them for money. Abigail Freedman, Beatrice's rival in the cafe business, has been trying to meet the Lothario she has been corresponding with but he always has an excuse. So far he hasn't asked for money... yet.

And there is another theme too: Beatrice has always remained friendly with her first husband Matt but recently she has detected a change in her feelings. A story for those who know that life doesn't end at 60!

My rating:  4.2

About the author:
Alannah Rogers is a retired librarian living in rural New Hampshire. She has three cats, all named after authors: Charlie, Wilkie, and Jane.
Alannah is an obsessive knitter and Scrabble player who loves a strong cup of English Breakfast tea. She makes a mean strawberry rhubarb pie and enjoys tinkering in her garden when time permits.

Review: VENGEANCE IS MINE, Joanne Fluke

• first published in 1986, and now re-published by Kensington Publishing Company, 2015
• also available for Kindle on Amazon
• ISBN 978-0-7582-8981-0
• 278 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Amazon)

As a family clinic administrator, Michele Layton has seen her share of suffering. But never anything like this. Not here in St. Cloud, Minnesota. A local activist has been found murdered, his body frozen like a statue and placed in a Winter Carnival ice sculpture display. Next a vicious hate crime puts a man in the ICU. And locked away in the Holy Rest mental ward, a deranged man of the cloth prays for more sinners to be punished—and waits for a sign from above. These seemingly random acts lead police chief Steve Radke to Michele, who could be the next pawn in a madman’s chess game of life and death, good versus evil…

My Take

Set in St. Cloud Minnesota February 1985.  A small group of prominent citizens, who are also good friends, is putting together some winter games for the local community, to raise money for a centre for the gay and lesbian people. The committee includes the Mayor and his wife, the host of the local television station, the acting chief of police, and the manager of a family clinic, as well as representatives of GALA (the Gay and Lesbian community). But not everybody is comfortable with coming events, and the associated publicity makes these citizens easy targets.

The first to die is a member of the committee, a business man who has been active in his support for GALA. As yet another dies, and then another, with not even any idea what the murder weapon could be, the people of St. Cloud begin to stay at home and the WinterGame looks doomed to failure. Steve Radke, acting police chief, needs to hold the community together, and prevent mass hysteria.

I had some trouble in separating out the main characters at the beginning of the book although there was plenty of information, perhaps the problem was too much, about each of them. By about a third of the way through though I had them all sorted and I was able to appreciate the complexity of the plotting, and also the romance between two of the characters.

We know almost from the very beginning who is responsible for the murders, and it seemed just a matter of time before they were caught. It takes the police four murders before they develop a theory about how the victims have been selected, but they still don't know who the perpetrator is.

An interesting read.

My rating: 4.2


I've also read
3.5, PLUM PUDDING MURDER
Joanne Fluke is a well-established and quite prolific writer, publishing over 30 novels since 1980. See the list at Fantastic Fiction. 

review: THE CRIME AND THE CRYSTAL, Elizabeth Ferrars

• first published 1985
  
• this edition published in 1986 by Ulverscroft in large print edition
• #3 in the Andrew Basnett series
• ISBN 0-7089-1485-3
• 303 pages (large print)
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Christmas in Adelaide promises to be a pleasant vacation for Andrew Basnett, retired professor of botany and amateur sleuth. But the shadow of an unsolved murder hangs over the lives of his hosts, Tony and Jan Gardiner. The police still suspect Jan of her first husband's murder - and then a second killing takes place under the same bizarre circumstances. What can a guest do in such a case but try to clear the name of his hostess and solve the crime?

My Take

I'm not sure what actually led me to select this novel from my local library but it came as a pleasant surprise to find that it was set in my home city of Adelaide.

Andrew Basnett comes to Adelaide to spend Christmas with his former student Tony Gardiner. Tony has recently married and he and his wife Jan live in the fictitious seaside suburb of Betty Hills, which I decided was probably either Brighton or Hove. Twelve months earlier Jan's first husband had been murdered at a local quarry and she and Tony had married within a few months. Jan's sister Kay has also recently married and she and her husband live nearby, a little closer to the beach.

At first I suspected that the author had got most of the details for her setting from travel brochures but then discovered she had actually lived in Adelaide for a short time (see about the author below). I'm not sure why the suburb was named Betty Hills, possibly because it is a combo of the features of more than one of the southern suburbs. Basnett takes a ride on the Glenelg Tram, visits Botanic Park, and refers to The City of Churches.

Basnett thinks things are pretty strained between Tony and his new wife, a little more than is usual in the case of relative newly weds. On Christmas Day a second murder takes place and Jan disappears. Similarities between this murder and the earlier one make it likely that the murderer is the same person.

There is nothing really remarkable about this novel, plenty of allusions to Adelaide's tourist attractions, filling in the setting of a comfortable cozy. It does make me curious about what the other settings of the Basnett series were like:
Andrew Basnett
Something Wicked (1983)
Root of All Evil (1984)
The Crime and the Crystal (1985)
The Other Devil's Name (1986)
A Murder Too Many (1988)
Smoke Without Fire (1990)
A Hobby of Murder (1994)
A Choice of Evils (1995)
They were all published in the last 12 years of Ferrars' life.

My rating: 4.2

I've also read
THE SWAYING PILLARS
4.4, GIVE A CORPSE A BAD NAME

About the author 1907-1995 (Wikipedia)
Her extraordinary output owes a great deal to considerable self-discipline and diligent method. Her plots were worked out in detail in hand-written notebooks before being filled out in typed manuscript; she said that they were worked backwards from the denouement. Like every writer, she based characters and situations on people she knew and things she had seen in real life. She travelled with her husband when his academic career required, for example to Adelaide where he was a visiting professor at the University of South Australia.

Review: DUCK SEASON DEATH, June Wright

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 911 KB
• Print Length: 192 pages
• Publisher: Dark Passage (December 21, 2014)
  Originally written sometime in the 1950s
• Publication Date: December 21, 2014
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00N01TQOW

Synopsis (Amazon)

June Wright wrote this lost gem in the mid-1950s, but consigned it to her bottom drawer after her publisher foolishly rejected it. Perhaps it was a little ahead of its time?

Because while it’s a tour de force of the classic ‘country house’ murder mystery, it’s also a delightful romp, poking fun at the conventions of the genre. When someone takes advantage of a duck hunt to murder publisher Athol Sefton at a remote hunting inn, it soon turns out that virtually everyone, guests and staff alike, had a good reason for shooting him. Sefton’s nephew Charles thinks he can solve the crime by applying the “rules of the game” he’s absorbed from his years as a reviewer of detective fiction – only the killer evidently isn’t playing by those rules.

Duck Season Death is a both a fiendishly clever whodunit and a marvellous entertainment.

My take:

What the blurb above does not say is that the main reason this novel was "consigned to her bottom drawer" was that the author's usual publisher rejected this offering in the 1950s because of negative reviews by three of their pre-publishing readers.

I can understand what attracted scathing comments from these readers. First of all I think Wright meant this as a spoof on the genre. The murder victim is a publisher known for his scathing comments about would-be authors and the books they gave him to read, but also an unlikeable person who tried his invective out on most of those who  came within range. The amateur sleuth who thinks the murder is not accidental is his nephew, but he didn't like Athol Sefton any more than most people. He just thinks the local doctor and policeman are bumbling idiots.

Enter an odd plot strand - the victim himself was under observation by the Victoria police for the murder of his wife, actually a cold case, with the second suspect being the nephew who used to send her boxes of chocolates.

The style in which all this is written is, at first, a bit hard to take. She writes as if she has swallowed the dictionary, a rather pompous version of English which I think was supposed to point the finger at more academic writers from the Golden Age- lots of five syllable words appear in the narrative. The style changes a little for the better in the latter half of the novel. I think it was supposed to imitate the thinking style of the voice of the narrator which did change from section to section of the novel, but was nearly always that of the nephew.

So there we have it - a country house murder set in the style of Agatha Christie (to whom there is the odd reference), located in rural Victoria in the 1950s. The location is near the Murray River at a hotel called The Duck and Dog Inn. The timing: the opening of theduck shooting season.

I spent some time considering whether I thought Wright intended this as a spoof or not, and therefore how I should rate it. I think she did, but her original readers misunderstood, or disapproved. Other bits of humour emerge, even a romantic element. So it may well have been "ahead of its time", but she doesn't quite pull it off.

My rating: 3.5


I've also reviewed 4.1, MURDER IN THE TELEPHONE EXCHANGE

See another review

Review: ONLY TIME WILL TELL, Jeffrey Archer

• published 2011 by Macmillan
• ISBN 978-0-230-74822-4
• 388 pages
• source: a friend
• #1 in the Clifton series

Synopsis ( Macmillan)

The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1919, in the backstreets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father.

Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler's Germany.

In Jeffrey Archer's masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won't want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton could ever have anticipated.

Only Time Will Tell is part of The Clifton Chronicles series, but can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel.

My take

I read this because first of all a friend loaded four of the books onto me just before Christmas, and secondly, because I have read some Jeffrey Archer novels and short stories quite a long time ago and enjoyed them.

Crimes are committed and there is mystery but this book is on the very edge of the crime fiction genre (you will see from my labels that I have allowed myself to label it "not crime fiction"). To my mind it is more a historical saga focussing on the life of Harry Clifton.

Harry is always told his father was killed in the Great War, but he himself was born in 1920, so he knows that just can't be true. Harry has "the voice of an angel" and that becomes his passport into a choral scholarship and a good education. Harry is a quick, intelligent child, who endears many people to himself, and behind the scenes they contribute to the costs of keeping him at school. And then what really happened to his father has left many people feeling guilty and they also keep a watchful eye on his progress. Ironically Harry's life becomes inextricably linked to the lives of the family who have done him the most damage.

So here I am having enjoyed the first in the Clifton series and with the second ready at hand. The ending of the first has left me hooked to know what happens in the second.

My rating: 4.5


THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES SERIES
BOOK 1: Only Time Will Tell
BOOK 2: The Sins of the Father
BOOK 3: Best Kept Secret
BOOK 4: Be Careful What You Wish For
BOOK 5: Mightier Than The Sword
BOOK 6: Cometh The Hour

I have also read
A TWIST IN THE TALE