More mayhem in old New York

I have another addition to my post about murder mysteries set in old New York.  I started a series in the middle. Seven for a Secret by Lindsay Faye is the second in her series.  The first is The Gods of Gotham which I must pick up this week. 


By now, we have all read or seen Solomon Northup's moving account in Twelve Years a Slave.  Sadly, Mr. Northup's experience was not an isolated incident.  In 1846, slave catching was not a crime, it was law enforcement.  In the years before the Civil War, slave catchers made it a practice to capture black citizens in New York City.  The only defense for these unfortunate victims was Freedom Papers which could be lost, forged,  or ignored. Free black people in New York formed secret Committees of Vigilance to protect themselves.


The New York City Police Department was founded in 1845.  At the time, the newly minted police officers were greeted with  disdain and hostility from the public.


Into this scene, steps Timothy Wilde a new "copper star" or police detective who tries to protect those who cannot protect themselves. As a man with abolitionist sentiment, he is requested to locate the missing family of an African-American woman posing as a white woman. Timothy is hampered in his investigation by social and political events such as police corruption, political corruption, Tammany Hall, the arrival of Irish following the potato famine, prostitution, the sex trade, racial tension, and his irascible brother Valentine.


Adding to the book's interest is the inclusion of George Matsell's Flash Terminology or the language of the streets some of which has become part of our language.


I hope  you enjoy this one!

Murder, Mystery and Mayhem in old New York

There are three fabulous new historical novels about old New York,  When I say old, I mean old as in New Amsterdam in the 1600's.


First in order of history.


The Orphanmaster by Jean Zimmerman (2013)


The year is 1663. The Dutch are barely eking out an existence at the tip of Manhattan Island.  The British are set to invade and the Indians are not always friendly. Into this precarious world, Blandine  von Couvering a young female trader makes her living.  Surprisingly, Dutch women at this time had many more rights than their British counterparts.  But Bandine is faced with more challenges than making a living.  She realizes that orphans are disappearing and she suspects foul play.  Aided by dashing English spy Edward Drummond, Blandine sets about discovering the fate of the missing orphans and in doing so uncovers a very early serial killer.




Americans have always loved sensational trials.  Before OJ, there was Levi Weeks. Of course you never heard of Levi Weeks.  But  you have heard of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Paul Collins'  Duel with the Devil takes us back to the year 1800 when Americans were wrapped up in the trail of Levi Weeks accused of murdering a young Quaker woman Elma Sands whose body was discovered in a well.  Levi Weeks's defending attorneys were no less than Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Collins takes us back to 1800 to a Hamilton and Burr we never learned about in school.  The two men were loyal patriots, brilliant attorneys, passionate politicians and flat broke.  Indeed the well in which the body was found was part of Burr's get rich quick schemes.  Tragically, the two defense attorney met in a duel a short time later.  Great courtroom drama and insightful history.


Caleb Carr's The Alienist (2006) is an oldie, but goody.  The year is 1896 and New York is plagued by a grisly murder. Police chief Theodore Roosevelt enlists the aid of New York Times reporter  and Dr. Laszlo Kreizler a psychologist or alienist as he was called in his time.  The two men create a profile of the murderer and take us through New York's  underbelly of crime, prostitution and drugs.




Alice Hoffmann is a prolific writer of historical novels with a touch of the supernatural.  Her novels such as The Probable Future, The Red Garden, Here on Earth and the Dovekeepers have earned rave reviews.  Her latest novel The Museum of Extraordinary Things is set in New York in 1911. It is the year of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the fire at Coney Island.  It is the ending of an era when the sturgeon still ran in the Hudson River and there were still wild areas in the northern part of Manhattan.  Eddie Cohen is a photography who is running from the grinding poverty of his youth as well as the Orthodox Judaism of his father. Coralie Sardie is a young woman swimmer whose magician father has a Svengali-like hold on her. The two meet in this lovely novel of mystery, tragedy, murder and finally love and forgiveness.  It is truly a gem.

A Classic

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a book discussion on one of my favorite classics, Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier.  If you read the book in  high school, it is definitely worth a second read.  Du Mauieir's characters,  Rebecca, Max deWinter and the evil Mrs. Danvers could put Downton Abbey to shame.  In how many novels, does the narrator remain nameless?  The opening sentence alone grabs you on the first page. The overshadowing of disaster and evil is worthy of Hitchcock.  He did make a movie.  Mrs. Danvers is one of the most consummately evil characters in literature.  Rebecca is a classic romance/mystery/suspense novel.   If you have not read it, the ending is a complete surprise. Some participants in our discussion group thought the author put in too much description.  However, I think you really got a picture of the estate and the English countryside. One of our participants was a law enforcement officer with a refreshing insight on guilt and motive. If your book group is looking for a classic, try Rebecca. It is an excellent choice for a contemporary discussion.

Moved, Unpacked and Reading Again...

Wow! It has been nearly a month since I have posted anything.  On March 1, we successfully moved from Pennsylvania to Hampton, NH.  We took two trucks because the first truck was not big enough.  Oh well, in the spirit of Yankee thriftiness, we moved ourselves. We spent the month of March  unpacking, unloading and putting things away.  We are enjoying out new home  very much. Despite the cold weather, I have been waling 1-3 miles every day.  You know what Nietzsche said, "that which does not kill us makes us stronger."  We won't comment on the fact that Nietzsche died a raving lunatic chained to his bed.


I did read three new books during the mover.


First, John Grisham's Sycamore Row is a riveting courtroom drama in true Grisham style.  It is a sequel to John Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill.


Robert Harries is one of my favorite authors.  He writes historical fiction about some lesser know incidents in history. For example, his Enigma brought us back to the code breakers of England during the Second World War.  Fatherland is an alternative reality in which the Nazis win. His latest novel is An Officer and a Spy.  It describes the Dreyfus affair in 19th century France which was immortalized by Emile Zola in J'Accuse. Alfred Dreyfus was an Army officer accused and convicted of treason on circumstantial evidence.  In actuality, Dreyfus was Jewish and he was a victim of virulent anti-Semitism in the French Army. Harris' latest novel details the courageous efforts of a young Army colonel who risks his own life and career to correct a miscarriage of justice.


Diane Setterfield's previous novel The Thirteenth Tale was a bestseller. Her latest book Bellman and Black is a mystery with overtures of the supernatural.  As a ten year old child, William Bellman killed a bird.  He grows up to become a respected member of the community, happily married with four young children.  Yet, something overshadows his life - guilt? revenge? something supernatural?
Setterfield's novel is reminiscent of Hitchcock. This book would work very well as a horror movie with the right director.


Cheers and happy reading!

I am a little behind on my bestseller reading.  There are a few items on the NYT bestseller list that I am looking forward to.  The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd is an historical fiction about a woman who grew up to become a prominent abolitionist, but who was given the gift of a slave girl for her 11th birthday.  Nancy Horan has written another book about a famous couple.  She had previously given us Loving Frank about the architect Frank Lloyd Wright.  This year, she has published Under the Wide and Starry Sky about Robert Louis Stevenson's troubled marriage.  Stephen King has a new release for all of us who were terrified by The Shining.  Doctor Sleep is his newest book which continues the life of Dan the boy with powers in The Shining as a grown up.
For those of you who like British mysteries, Alan Bradley has a new book in the Flavia DeLuce series The Dead in their Vaulted Arches.  After all, who would not like a detective who is a 12 year old prodigy with an interest in poison?
If it keeps snowing, I will keep reading!

Back in the USSR.....
Watching the Sochi Olympics made me reach for one of my favorite authors.  Martin Cruz Smith published a new thriller in the Arkady Renko series.  Tatiana is his latest addition to this series featuring detective Arkady Renko.  We met Arkady in 2007 in Smith's first novel in the series Gorky Park.  Renko is a police detective in Moscow.  He has survived bullets, corruption, the evolution into the new Russia and the remnants of the Great Patriotic War. If we were to make a movie, we would need to revive Humphrey Bogart to play Arkady. Only he could match cynicism with a moral compass like Rick in Casablanca.  In Tatiana, Renko is suspicious about the supposed suicide of an  investigative reporter and the assassination of a Russian crime lord.  His investigations take him to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Coast where he encounters organized crime, a murderous butcher, a secret code, children searching for amber on the coast and a government cover-up of epic proportions. Smith captures contemporary geopolitics with a thriller that will have you guessing.

International Detectives

The detective story is an American invention pioneered by Edgar Allen Poe in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Poe's Auguste Dupin was the first detective in popular literature.  He was followed in short order by our cousins across the pond with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.  The United States has enough regional differences to warrant local detective series and we have everything from Dana Stabenow's mysteries set in Alaska to Tony Hillerman's Navaho Nation novels.  But the world is a global community and other authors in other countries have been developing the  detective novel set in their local community.  Beside the entertainment value, many of these novels offer the reader insight into the political social and cultural features of other countries.


Oh, those Scandinavians...


I do not know if it is the cold, the rain or the limited daylight that makes Scandinavian authors create detectives who are dark, flawed and in some cases anti-heroes. If you ever find a copy of Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow (1994)  on a used book rack, buy it. Smilla is half Danish and half native Greenlander.  She is a scientist whose knowledge of ice and snow and determination lead her to crime and betrayal above the Arctic Circle.  Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole battles his own demons as well as crime.  Henning Mankell brought us Kurt Wallander.  Karin Fossum's has Inspector Sejer.  Which of us will ever forget Lisbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?


And of course, the Germans...
Not to be outdone, German author Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die  recently won rave reviews in Europe and in the US.


Not really Israeli, but close enough...
American author Daniel Silva created the character of Gabriel Allon, an art-restorer and assassin for the Israeli government.  The Allon series brings you through museums, and galleries through Europe.  When he is not restoring works of art, Allon is exacting revenge on terrorists.


Straddling two worlds...
Istanbul has been described as the literal  and metaphorical bridge between east and west, Christian and Islam, tradition and technology.  Barbara Nadel has crafted a series of books with Inspector Ikmen who like his country straddles two worlds.  Nadel's descriptions of Istanbul will appeal to anyone who has traveled in that part off the world.


The sunny south...
Italian authors have been at the detective genre for a long time.  Andrea Camilleri 's Inspector Montalbano takes us through the intricacies of fighting crime in Sicily. New author Marco Vichi's Inspector Bordelli investigates Death in Sardinia.
But, my all-time favorite Italian detective is Commisario Guido Brunetti who investigates crime in the exotic city of Venice. Written by Donna Leon, the Brunetti series does not hesitate to cover Italy's social ills, poor economy, organized crime, environmental issues and relations with guest workers. Of course, it is easy to read books where Brunetti retreats to his loving home with his wife Paola who cooks wonderful meals and just happens to be a university professor and a descendent of Venice's aristocracy.


The Middle East...
If you can find them, pick up Zoe Ferraris's Finding Nouf and City of Veils. Her books are set in Saudi Arabia and give amazing insight into the society of Saudi's and Bedouins.


Finally, Africa...
Alexander McCall Smith has created a series of mysteries set in Botswana.  Okay, I will admit that I needed an atlas to remind me where Botswana is located.  McCall Smith's detective is a "woman of tribal proportions" Prescious Ramotse who is the proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  Mme. Ramotse solves crimes with wisdom and insight into the human heart. After one or two of these books, you can appreciate the fragile beauty of the Okavanga Delta and you come away with admiration for the citizens of Botswana whose pride in their county and traditions is a welcome respite from much of the violence in Africa.


Translated from Afrikaaner, Deon Meier has a series of novels set in South Africa. His books are violent and graphic, but he brings us through the many levels of society and culture in South Africa.  His characters are fascinating, but flawed. Often battling alcoholism, past lives of crime and overall corruption, his various detectives will grip the reader with their intensity.


I seem to be missing works from Asia and Latin America.  If anyone has some authors to add, I would love to hear from you.