January, 2002
Someone To Watch Over
Me
by Jill Churchill
In these days of feelings worn exposed I think back to the days of World
War II, when everyone had a theme song shared with his or her—I was about
to say significant other. But in those days we did not have a significant
other. If you were a girl, you had a guy. A guy, a girl. Significant others
were yet to be born. Theme songs were in. Those same theme songs are back
; do they strike a mythic chord we key into when we hear the words “I’ve
Got You Under My Skin”. The music plays in our brain and we secretly move
to that beguin rhythm. Today television shows such as “Ally McBeal” feature
such tunes as “The Way You Look Tonight” and “All theThings You Are.”
As we did. One big favorite of couples separated by oceans was “You'll
Never Know”. Which seems like a perfect segue into the best winter mysteries.
Someone
To Watch Over Me, the Gershwin ballad from “Oh, Kay!” is the title
of a Grace & Favor mystery by Jill Churchill (Wm. Morrow;$24.00; 230
pages). It is Depression-era New York State, where sister and brother
Lily and Robert Brewster now live in the sprawling Grace and Favor estate
on the banks of the Hudson River near Hyde Park. (ThinkRhinebeck). Here
they make ends meet by having various townspeople rent rooms from them.
While Lily goes into town to Do Good Works, Robert begins to make renovations
to the house that will be their own in ten years. His first project; to
tear down an ancient ice house in the woods back of their house. In it,
Robert stumbles upon the mummified corpse of a nameless cadaver, dressed
in upscale ‘burial clothes.’ Another body, that of a World War I veteran
shows up in the regular ice house, and Robert is off to New York City
to try to discover the identity of the first John Doe while Lily works
hand in hand with the attractive Police Chief, Howard Walker. A look at
a small town trying to scrape by in the Depression in the next town to
the Roosevelts (he is still Governor Roosevelt). Nothing too taxing here;
a pleasant afternoon
treat in the Hudson Valley. Two former mysteries by the same author: Anything
Goes and In the Still of the Night.
The Next Accident by New England writer Lisa Gardner (Bantam; $23.95; 339 pages) is more suspenseful. Suspenseful isn’t quite the right word; a chapter or two in this book of a psychopathic killer gone haywire actually filled me with sheer terror. FBI profiler Pierce Quincy is tryng to discover who the killer is who saw to it that Quincy’s daughter was killed in an accident. Quincy calls on Rainie Conner to help him. The two have been paired professionally—and personally—on a previous case. Quincy had helped Rainie get over her harrowing past that put her career on a slow track; but he trusts her judgement. What do you do when as a profiler you can see that the sadistic killer you’re tracking knows the thoughts of each of his victims and can reach them just before they can be warned? As Quincy’s daughter and his ex-wife die and his Alzheimer-ridden father is kidnapped, he can only plot frantically to protect his only other family member; his younger daughter.
September 11 is a day that changed each of us forever. At least two writers had an idea where our next arch villain would come from. Ed McBain weighed in with a new tale of the 87th Precinct called Money, Money, Money (Mysterious Press; $25.00; 269 pages) in which the money laundering antics of a high-stakes Mideastern coalition is traced back and forth across oceans; in and out of offshore repositories, all with McBain’s characters with their usual good humor working in and around the harbor of the 87th’s city, which sounds a great deal like New York.
One of the more interesting tasks Miss Pym undertook this past year was as a committee member judging the Edgar Allan Poe award for Best Novel of the Year, to be announced at an Edgar ceremony this upcoming May. Jury is still out, but some of the best: Tell No One by Harlan Coban(Delacorte Press; $22.95; 339 words); prolific writer Lawrence Block with Hopeto Die (Wm. Morrow; $25.00; 320 pages, a new Matt Scudder novel; TheJudgement, by D. W. Buffa (Warner Books; $24.95; 418 pages.)
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