Spring, 2004
How do you choose
a new mystery to read. Many people read the first paragraph;
many more read the first few pages. Being an aficionado of the English
Cosy School, I am beguiled into buying a book by the presence of a map
between the covers. Here’s a beaut! It’s called “Dissolution” by
English lawyer C. J.Sansom and it’s a novel of Tudor England at
the time of1537, when England is divided into those who continued to be
faithful to the Catholic Church, and those loyal to Henry V111 and the
newly established Church of England and his despised vicar general, Thomas
Cromwell who crusaded against the old church with vicious new laws and
rigged trials and a closing of the monasteries, the better to pillage
lands for the Crown. First-time writer Sansom, before sending the
book to publishers first sent it to P. D. James, Baroness James of Holland
Park. Since it’s the sort of book she adores and writes, she wasted
no time in finding a publisher for it.(Viking Penguin; $24.95).The
time and place is beautifully researched, as is the hero-lawyer one Matthew
Shardlake, hunch-back, and his young clerk, Mark Poer. Henry V111 has
just had his wife beheaded and Royalty and those who would keep their
heads are bent on closing the Catholic keeps, who have always handled
their own moneys andfiefdoms (some pretty crooked). Cromwell, sends
Shardlake andMark to solve the murder of a king’s counselor at the monastery
of St. Donatus.You won’t be able to resist those maps between the book’s
covers, like an earlier day Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick.
You’ll understand what The Vegetable Garden is, but the Reredorter?
The Dovecotes? The Buttery? Enjoy!
“Nighttime is My Time” (Simon&Schuster; $29.95;) arrives on booksellers’
shelves from the indomitable Mary Higgins Clark, along with the time change
and the daffodils and a salute to upcoming Mothers Day. ‘Mary’s
Little Lambs’, usually refer to her spring offering, since Clark’s stories
often have a child in peril as a theme. Here, Jean Sheridan, a prominent
historian and author, is driving to the twenty-year class reunion at the
exclusive Stonecraft Academy in Cornwall on Hudson, New Yorkk,where she
is one of six honorees. She has decided to go to the reunion, in
honor of one of her friends from the class, Alison Kendall, a high-powered
talent agent recently drowned in her Hollywood pool..the fifth of seven
women graduates in this class who have met a sudden and tragic end. ”I
am the Owl”, the killer would whisper as he ended the lives of his victims,
and leave with the bodies a small pewter owl.
On arriving at the Stonecraft Inn,Jean receives a fax about her
receipt recently of a small hairbrush containing strands of hair, from
a mysterious source claiming this belonged to Lily, the daughter she had
at 18 and given up at birth for adoption. Jean had conceived Lily
in a romance with a West Point cadet killed by a hit-and-run driver a
week before his graduation. Lily, Jean discovers, is now named Meredith,
and is a West Point cadet. Meredith now receives a phonecall from
someone saying he had a personal note to deliver to her from her birth
mother, attempting to lure her to the Storm King Lookout—and to come alone.
Add to all the Clark fans, those who might have ‘dragged’ at West Point
and looked forward to weekends at the Thayer Hotel and those who are intrigued
by the adoption laws of the states,know that the original printing of
700,000books will go fast. And to the widening fans of Book Audio,
“Nighttime is My Time” is also available on both cassettes and CD’s. Looking
at all Mary’s titles named for songs (“RememberMe”; “The Second
Time Around” “Deck the Halls”) I am wondering about “Nighttime is
My Time”..is it a line from“Love Me or Leave Me”, that ancient Ruth Etting
number from “Whoopee?”
“Black Dog” lives in the deep pit of the human soul. (Isn’t
that the way Winston Churchill described his own bouts of depression?)
In this new novel featuring Jimmy Parisi, the Chicago detective is fighting
desolation and depression and his latest case isn’t contributing to his
mental health at all. The killer is draining the blood from young
women. Satanic ritual? Vampire cult? Two killers to
catch, a family tragedy to get through. Will Parisi be standing
at the end of it all? English writer Thomas Lairdis responsible
for Parisi, his friends and his nightmares (Carroll&Graf; $25.00)
The third cleverly plottedBailey Wiggins mystery provides a juicy
insight into the well-to-do matrons of tony Greenwich, Connecticut in
“Til Death Do Us Part” (Warner Books;$24.00) Bailey, creation of
Kate White,the editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, is the true crime reporter
of Gloss Magazine and was described by EntertainmentMagazine as
‘fun and frivolous as a champagne facial’. This smart, sexy heroine
has been optioned by Touchstone and Mark Platt Productions for an hour-long
ABC-TV pilot called “Bailey Wiggins” and can replace all those tiresome
reality shows as quickly as possible for me.