Book Review: The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly

One of the best things about “traveling by fiction” is that I can experience a different time as well as an unfamiliar place through a story’s setting. Barbara Cleverly’s first mystery in the Inspector Joe Sandilands series is an evocative introduction to the India of 1922. 

Sandilands, a dashing survivor of the trenches of World War I France,  is a Scotland Yard Inspector on loan to the government of Calcutta. He is just about to escape from what he considers a hellish country when he is dispatched to investigate the latest in a string of mysterious deaths on a British army outpost.

The victims have all been wives of British officers, all dying under strange circumstances in the month of March. The murders are strung out so much over time -- the serial murderer apparently interrupted by the advent of World War I, among other things -- that the first thing Sandilands must establish is that they were, indeed, murders. This he does with the able assistance of the woman who drew him into the mystery and Naurung, an extremely engaging and capable young native Indian police officer who becomes the Inspector’s sidekick.

The book held some disappointments and frustrations for me. I wanted a glossary to define unfamiliar terms that were used without explanation, such as “nabob.” The secondary and tertiary characters tended towards caricatures, to the extent that I had a hard time keeping the bereaved husbands straight. I was also disappointed at how easily Sandilands was manipulated by the young woman who drew him into the mystery. And I never completely bought his change of heart from a desperate desire to head home to England at the story’s opening to a growing emotional attachment to India by the end of it.

In spite of these flaws, the story kept me engaged, in large part because of the descriptions of the exotic location and the mores of a fascinating era.

About halfway through the story, Sandilands travels to Calcutta in search of the husband of one of the victims. “Initially, brass plates discreetly announced the presence of banks, insurance companies, the Calcutta office of internationally known trading houses, engineers, architects, and solicitors. But soon the brass plates got smaller as the number increased. Brass plates gave way to cards. The number of bell pushes multiplied. Names appeared on upper windows, front doors stood open. Kites circled the damp air and crows pecked crumbling cornices.”

Later he explores the countryside on horseback. “Topping a jungle-clad ridge, their road turned downwards towards a village presided over by a rhythmically creaking water wheel, turning and turning and lifting buckets to send a flush of water down the many irrigation channels. Thirty or so mud-walled houses with thatched roofs huddled companionably together, set out to no obvious plan and with no eye for drainage or ventilation as far as Joe could make out, but scattered, it seemed, haphazardly about a central square in which stood a venerable peepul tree. In the windless day spires of smoke rose from many households, bringing with them the sharp smell of dung fires and cooking.”

I’m glad I read the entire story, because the end was unexpected but logical and satisfying, hinging on the brilliant motivation of the seemingly unlikely killer.

Book Review: Lie Down with the Devil by Linda Barnes

I enjoyed Linda Barnes’ early Carlotta Carlyle mysteries, but haven’t followed the series in recent years. Having finished Lie Down with the Devil, the 12th mystery featuring the Boston-based Private Investigator, I can’t wait to go back and read the ones I missed.

Carlotta’s at her best in this book: smart, courageous, and persistent. Her actions are gutsy, but measured rather than incautious. The action moves from downtown Boston to a shooting range on the Harbor Islands to a pastoral mental health institute to Cape Cod. Barnes’ deft descriptions bring these settings to life in a way that makes you feel you are right beside Carlotta as she teases apart and clears away layers of mystery.

Early in the story, Carlotta tracks her long-time friend Mooney to the Boston Police Department’s firing range on Moon Island. “Pulling into a space in the level gravel lot, I opened the cab door and sniffed an unexpectedly salty breeze. Living in Cambridge, the way I do, you can almost forget the proximity of the Atlantic. I inhaled the sea air gratefully. There’s something cleansing about the ocean, all that green water licking the shore, endless and timeless, soothing and hypnotizing...” Her relationship with Mooney, who is her former boss, proves both a help and a distraction as her newest case unfolds.

Also distracting Carlotta is the mystery surrounding her runaway fiance, mobster Sam Gianelli. She misses him and wants to help him, but also resents being kept in the dark about his “situation.” At one point she considers “borrowing” his Jaguar, but “The Jag would have been a lousy tail car. Too conspicuous, I told myself, scrunched behind the wheel of another aged Ford cab. The bucket seat in Sam’s car would have put me instantly to sleep, and the heating unit that kept it toasty under your butt, who needed it? The musky smell would have made me nostalgic and I didn’t need that either. The Spartan chill of Gloria’s cabs would keep me alert...”

Even as she takes on the new case, Carlotta realizes her judgement is not entirely trustworthy, because she is angst-ridden over the still unfolding recovery of her “little sister” Paolina. Recently retrieved by Carlotta from a kidnapper, the teenager is in a mental health institution for her own safety, and refuses to speak to Carlotta. The private investigator’s distraction with Paolina and her daily check-in calls become a factor in the story when Carlotta takes a few missteps.

In pursuit of the true identity of a client who lied to her, Carlotta finds herself parked in a run-down part of Boston. “Two overturned plastic chairs decorated the weedy yard of a two-family with peeling beige paint. The adjoining house was green with unfortunate yellow trim. The high, narrow structures, too close to the street and too close to each other, had stingy lawns and forbidding chain-link fences.”

Later, on the run from both the good guys and the bad, she holes up in a shack on Cape Cod. “There were two main rooms, one up, one down, connected by a contraption that was more ladder than staircase. The room on the bottom level had a tiny bathroom in a curtained alcove. The top room had a galley kitchen against a narrow wall, a child-sized refrigerator, a two-burner stove.”

The pace starts out a bit slow due to the intertwining threads of the case at hand and Carlotta’s multiple distractions, but it soon picks up. The reader learns more about Carlotta’s past, and by the time the story ends and all the loose threads are tied up, has great hopes for Carlotta’s future.

Wright's Lake: Moonrise, Perseids, and Lasers

My husband Morgan Conrad's photo of the moon rising over Wright's Lake in August 2008.

While camping at Wright’s Lake, we saw several night sky shows, natural and man-made.

Tuesday morning everyone except Ellie piled out of our tents at 4 am and went down to the pier to see the Perseid Meteor Shower. The display was not quite as spectacular as last year -- I think the best viewing would have been a couple hours earlier, but the moon was too high and bright this year -- but we saw about 20 meteors while we stood around for 45 minutes or so. Several of them were quite spectacular and left a glowing trail in the sky, but most were quick and faint.

Tuesday night we noticed bizarre green lights flashing all over the lake surface from our campfire, so the kids and I abandoned our s’mores (temporarily) to investigate. 

There was an extended family from another campsite down on the pier, and the uncle had two bright green lasers he was using to make a light show. He told us they were very dangerous -- he bought them in China, because it is illegal to sell (but not buy!) them here in the U.S. He claimed they are so bright that they can burn your eye and cause blindness in 1/100th of a second! 

He then showed us how he can point out astronomical features in the night sky -- he pointed out Jupiter, and showed us Andromeda -- and then did another short laser show, flashing the lasers over the surface of the lake (wonder how many blind fish are in there now?) and up into the sky. It was really neat, although not quite as amazing as the Perseids.

Wright’s Lake: A Kayak is Just a Big Dog Toy

During our week of camping at Wright's Lake, Boomer fell in love with our inflatable kayak. 

When we got back from our swim across the lake, Ellie and I took the kayak out and encountered Alison and Ron finishing up their hike around the lake with both dogs. Boomer wanted desperately to get into the water, so I told Ron to let him go. He flung himself off the pier and momentarily disappeared, came up spluttering, and made a beeline for us in the kayak. He then proceeded to swim around and around us as we paddled along the shore, trying to get him to go back to the shallows where he could stand and catch his breath. 

Several times he scrabbled against the gunwale or bow with his front paws, so we decided he must want to come up in the boat with us. I couldn’t lift his 70-pound bulk from above, but Morgan waded out and heaved him in. 

Boomer sat in the center position, butt on one gunwale and front paws on the other, and let us paddle him around for a few minutes. Then he launched himself off the kayak into the water with a big splash, rocking the boat so much that water slopped into it. He continued to chase after us, trying to climb in, and we finally had to have Morgan drag him away on his leash before Ellie and I could paddle off on a tour of the entire lake!

The next day we had the foresight to put Boomer in his PFD (also known as a doggie lifevest) before bringing him down to the lake. He once again chased us all over in the kayak, and rode with us several times. He seemed to stay a little longer with each ride, as though he was getting more comfortable with it, and he learned to jump in more gracefully, so he didn’t threaten to capsize us.

Later in the day we encountered another family with a couple of inflatable rafts and canoes, and Boomer swam over to try to climb up and ride around with them.

Wright's Lake August 10-17, 2008

About an hour west of South Lake Tahoe off Hwy 50, Wright’s Lake is nestled in a depression high in the Sierra mountains. We arrived late on August 10th with our friends Alison, Ellie, Ron, and Sam following closely in their own gear-crammed vehicle. (Their dog Aztec kept our dog Boomer company in our back seat on the drive up from the San Francisco Bay Area.) 

Warm and shallow, Wright’s Lake is surrounded by primitive camp sites and long-lease cabins and cottages that have no electricity. No motors are allowed on the lake, and there are no RV hookups, so it’s a splendidly quiet spot. The ground is covered with a thick cushion of evergreen needles, and every step you take releases a wonderful scent into the dry mountain air. Nearly every camp site seems to have a dog, and they are as welcome as humans to swim and hike around the lake.  The lake itself is small and can be easily hiked around in an hour.

Various configurations of our party -- me, Morgan, and Ellie; me, Morgan, and Sam; me, Ellie, and Sam; me, Ellie, and Boomer (who again and again jumped out after 90 seconds, then insisted on being hoisted back aboard); Ellie and Sam; Ron and Sam; Ron and Ellie; Ron and Ellie and Sam; Ron and Alison; Ellie and Alison; me and Morgan; and each of us alone -- spent time in our two-person inflatable kayak at all hours. 

One day Sam and I swam across the lake while Morgan and Ellie paddled alongside for safety. Then Sam rode back, perched like an Indian Chief on the bow of the kayak. 

Alison had never been kayaking before, so she asked her 10-year-old daughter Ellie, who had a whole week of kayak camp earlier in the summer, to take her out on a tour of the lake. Before they left shore, I supervised while Ellie gave Alison some instructions on how to handle the paddle. They had a fun time and Alison said that Ellie was a thoughtful and excellent tour guide and kayaking instructor.

Although from the kayak we saw fish lurking on the bottom and leaping out to snag bugs morning, noon, and night, our human fisherfolk had no luck with their fishing poles.

A pair of osprey living nearby had better luck -- or better skills. Several of us witnessed an osprey catching a fish: folding wings and plummeting to the lake's surface, snagging the prey with strong talons, and lifting it out of the water with strong wing beats. The osprey flew right overhead once, giving us a magnificent view of its straining wings and the fish held so carefully fore-and-aft, still wiggling in an attempt to break free.

Ducks, squirrels, and chipmunks were abundant, and a lone bald eagle often sat on a snag overlooking the lake or soared above. When we hiked to Dark Lake, Boomer flushed a mule deer buck with an impressive rack. One night just at sunset I went down to the edge of the lake and was mesmerized by a dozen or so bats swooping out of the trees to catch insects buzzing just above the surface of the lake. I sat and watched for half-an-hour, listening to the soft flap of bat wings and marveling at the flying mammals' aerobatic ability; again and again they dove and veered and skimmed and I just didn't see how they could keep from plunging into the lake. 

Another evening I took the kayak out just before sunset and was half-way down the lake when a screeching ruckus drew my attention. Looking up, I saw an osprey in hot pursuit of the bald eagle. The osprey, which was far smaller than the eagle, flew above and behind, diving at the eagle repeatedly and screeching. I sat back in the kayak and stared in open-mouthed wonder until long after the eagle had vanished into the trees on the far side of the lake and the osprey had winged its way home.

Happy New Year

I took a break from Wish You Were Here while traveling in the summer of 2008 and never really got back into the groove of posting regularly.

Well, new year, new year's resolution: POST MORE FREQUENTLY! And I will try to keep my posts shorter, too!

Book Review: First the Dead by Tim Downs

The third book chronicling the adventures of forensic entomologist Dr. Nick Polchak, First the Dead is set in New Orleans during and just after Hurricane Katrina. Author Tim Downs draws a convincing portrait of the devastated city and the tireless rescue workers braving horrifying conditions to bring in the last the survivors of the storm.

Polchak and his friend Jerry Kibbee are part of a team that usually arrives in the wake of a disaster to process and identify the dead. Deployed to a small town outside New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina hits, the team is told in no uncertain terms that they must set aside their usual work and spend the first few days of Katrina’s aftermath in rescue work: “first the living” is to be their temporary new mantra.

Polchak, a brilliant and driven scientist, believes that someone is using the flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward to hide a series of murders. He is convinced that all forensic evidence of these murders will be lost before his team can recover it. With the help of his easy-going friend Jerry and J.T., a young African-American boy they rescue from roof on their first day in the Lower Ninth Ward, Polchak sets out to find and preserve the evidence. He soon finds himself the target of the killer.

Downs’ descriptions of the destruction wrought by Katrina are compelling. On the first day the Lower Ninth Ward is nearly deserted as Polchak steers his small boat down inundated streets and alleys. Families too large to fit into his craft choose to stay on their griddle-hot roofs rather than risk being separated. His boat gets hung up in tree branches.

At one point Polchak makes use of a flooded hospital lab. “In the doorway he stopped and looked back. The scene was utterly surreal: a medical laboratory half filled with water and a fishing boat floating in the center. Beyond the boat was a window with no glass; outside the window was an endless black lake.”

The search for J.T.’s father takes them to the Superdome, which is being used as an emergency shelter. “...the air reeked of sweat, and feces, and rotting food. The stench was nauseating...The noise was nearly deafening, and the buses only made it worse.”

At one point Polchak is trapped in a flooded house. “The lukewarm water was choked with particulate matter swirling around him like leaves on a windy day; he clutched at the largest pieces and felt nothing but clumps of soggy cardboard and waterlogged wood.”

Downs also does a great job of showcasing the chaos endured by the rescue workers in the first days after the storm. He immerses the reader in the military-issue “meals ready to eat” that the hungry J.T. devours. Polchak and his sidekicks sleep in an air-conditioned morgue truck to escape the oppressive heat and humidity. They scrounge rides in emergency supply trucks and hide their rescue boat to keep it safe from thieves and looters. Cell phones don’t work, patients die in the upper floors of hospitals because their life-support machines have no power, and nobody seems to be in charge.

It’s this lack of leadership that compels Polchak to reject the idea of “first the living,” and it’s this same vacuum that lets him get away with his renegade behavior. Like many brilliant scientist characters, Polchak comes off as a cold, distant wise-cracker. His few moments of warmth are short-lived, and he’s not a character who I want to spend a lot of time with.

Another character in the book, psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Woodbridge, was sometimes Polchak’s foe and sometimes his friend, sometimes his superior and sometimes his partner. Although there was the hint of a romantic relationship there, I found myself wondering why any woman as together as Woodbridge would bother with someone as maddening as Polchak.

What made this book a success for me were the challenges Polchak had to overcome to keep his investigation going and his genial entourage. I didn’t ultimately care very much about what happened to Polchak or his precious evidence; but I did want to follow the stories of easy-going Jerry and bright and courageous young J.T.

This is the third book in a series, and given my reluctance to spend time with the main character, I’m uncertain if I’ll go back to explore the first two.