Review of Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

I read a number of mysteries in October, and Among the Mad was the standout. 

In this sixth Maisie Dobbs mystery, the psychologist and sleuth -- and the rest of London -- is still dealing with the aftermath of WWI. Although the tale is historical, set in London as 1931 draws to a close, its disabled soldiers, disgruntled workforce, and depressed populace resonate with today's world.

Maisie is drawn into working with the police on a high-profile case that could jeopardize tens or even hundreds of people if they can't catch the culprits in time. At the same time, she must help her assistant, Billy, deal with his wife's hospitalization and caring for his children. I really enjoyed seeing more of Billy's life, although the situation was heart-wrenching. I also loved Maisie's new sense of self-confidence as an accomplished career woman, and liked seeing her lighten up a little bit.

I've never been to London, and I can't say that Winspear's version of the city sets me on fire to visit it -- she paints a bleak cityscape inhabited by a downtrodden people, caught between the horrifying memories of WWI and the gathering clouds of WWII. But the setting is superbly crafted and had me shivering even on Indian Summer days.

I find the Maisie Dobbs series a bit uneven, but this is one of its stronger books, highly recommended.

Review of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Precocious 11-year-old narrator Flavia de Luce is the highlight of this crime novel, the first in a series intended for adults, although middle-grade readers might also enjoy it. Ignored by her family and the adults around her, she takes solace in chemistry, spending hours in her glassware-filled laboratory at the top of her family’s mansion in the English countryside. When she stumbles upon a corpse in the garden, she sets herself the task of finding the murderer -- or at least saving her father, even if he is guilty, from going to prison for the crime.

I finished this book largely because I found Flavia’s voice so enjoyable. The setting was a disappointment in that the descriptions lacked the telling details that make you feel like you’re right there. I often had a hard time remembering whether the story unfolded in 1950s England, or some decades earlier.  

Most scenes had a sketchy, dreamy quality that failed to transport me into our heroine’s reality; the only moments when I felt like I was with Flavia were when she was visiting her dead mother’s mothballed car in the estate’s carriage house, and when she was in the defunct garage that had been pressed into use by the village library for storing overflow materials. 

I had a hard time picturing a lake with an island you could wade to, and never had a good picture in my mind of what the rooms of Flavia’s house looked like, or even whether the manor was well-maintained or going to seed. 

I figured out early on who the murderer was, also a disappointment. Flavia’s unravelling of her father’s secrets during the course of the investigation was interesting but not terribly compelling. 

Unfortunately I found the depictions of all of the other characters, with the exception of the inspector Flavia butts heads with, mere caricatures. Although I never really did understand the inspector’s quote that gave the book its title, I liked the way their relationship grew, and hope that the inspector will become something of a mentor for Flavia in future adventures.

In spite of all my criticisms, I look forward to Flavia’s next adventure, because her voice is so unique and her perspective on life so enjoyable.

Book Review: The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan

This ninth book in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series is told from Private Investigator Lydia’s point of view, and is centered in her Chinatown community. The story has all the elements I’ve grown accustomed to from S.J. Rozan: wonderful characterization, interesting twists in a compelling plot, and evocative scene-setting.

A surprise element was a fascinating historical component to the mystery. Using letters and many interviews with “old Chinese men,” as a tea-bloated Lydia refers to them affectionately, Rozan deftly tells the history of tens of thousands of Jews who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Shanghai at the outset of World War II. Letters written by 18-year-old refugee Rosalie Gilder bring to life her flight from Europe aboard a steamer bound for Shanghai, the ups and downs of life in a Shanghai ghetto, and the drama of forging new family bonds against a backdrop of war and oppression.

The letters and history are woven in among scenes and events in Lydia’s private and professional life, and the quaint mystery of a valuable long-lost jewel takes on urgency when it becomes the key to the murder of one of Lydia’s colleagues. Lydia’s unique voice is strengthened by her warring impatience with and appreciation for her own cultural background. 

With help from her on-again, off-again partner Bill Smith, Lydia unravels the mysteries within mysteries and brings several wrongdoers to justice. During the investigation, Lydia scorns herself for getting so involved and caring so much about these people whose lives were in the past. I sympathized with her reading Rosalie’s letters late into the night, eagerly reaching for the next one to find out what happened next, since I was doing the same, neglecting sleep and chores in favor of devouring chapter after chapter of The Shanghai Moon, wanting to know what happened with both Rosalie and Lydia.

Through Lydia, Rozan brings to life contemporary New York: Chinatown bustling with people and redolent of noodles and exotic tea, the Diamond District full of couples gazing at engagement rings, suburbs with their small houses set in neat yards. Through Rosalie and her descendants, she brings to life the Shanghai of decades past, from walled gardens and plush restaurants to stinking wharves and crowded ghettoes. And as their stories intertwine, Rozan, Lydia, and the reader explore themes of separation and togetherness, family and belonging, cross-cultural relationships, and deception.

This story’s only real shortcoming for me -- and it’s a minor one -- was a lack of imminent peril; even when one of the bad guys is shoving a gun into Lydia’s face, the conversation is so civilized that I couldn’t bring myself to fear for Lydia’s welfare. Nevertheless, this latest installment in the Lydia Chin and Bill Smith mystery series is a wonderfully complex novel that leaves the reader wanting more.

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.