December  Reviews

Kinsey Millhone is back with us again, this time investigating something that could be seen a case of delayed memory. In addition to that, she discovers another chunk of her own hitherto unknown childhood.

The book opens with Kinsey acquiring a new client, one Michael Sutton. He is obviously of the upper crust, and cites his prep school background, which tends to confirm Kinseyís opinion of him. He has a strange tale to tell. When he was a young child, he watched two men, whom he describes as ìpiratesî, dig a largish hole. It is only in the immediate past that he links the date to that of his sixth birthday and realises that it was two days after the kidnapping of a young girl. Now he feels that the two men must have been burying the body of the young girl, Mary Claire Fitzhugh. Sutton has already been to the police, who have forwarded him on to Kinsey. Kinsey decides she can spare a day to investigate.

On her family front, Kinsey has received an invitation to a family do. She is still not comfortable with the people she feels ignored her for most of her life. She doesnít really know them and doesnít feel impelled to get to know them better.

The action moves from 1988 to 1963, where Deborah Unruh is attempting to come to grips with the fact that her son, Greg, has taken up with a pregnant woman named Shelly. Deborah feels she cannot, in all conscience, throw the little family out before the child is born. Shelly also has a son named Shawn, the identity of whose father she claims not to know. When the baby, a little girl named Rain, is born,  Shelly happily discards the child, leaving her with Deborah and her husband Patrick, where Rain enjoys a far better upbringing than she would with her natural (or unnatural) mother.

Iíve always enjoyed Sue Graftonís work and this volume is no exception to the rule. I found the plotting of the murder to be quite credible as well as involving. Kinseyís personal and family history is also very interesting. She is something of an abrasive character, but understandably so. The villains of the piece, greedy and ruthless, are all too credible and Michael Sutton, while perhaps not quite the translucently good creature he first appears to be, still doesnít deserve the reward that is meted out to him.

Grafton is coming perilously close to the end of the alphabet, although there are still a few good years perhaps waiting for Kinsey to solve mysteries. I just hope they will all be as good as the remainder of the alphabet has proved to be.
TOO MANY MURDERS
by Colleen McCullough
ISBN 9780732287214
384 pages
HARPERCOLLINS
December 1 2009
$32.99
reviewed by Denise Pickles
December 10 2009

This is a Carmine Delmonico adventure, set in 1967. It features quite a few corpses, all against the background of the Cold War.

The book begins with the answer to a blackmail demand, written by someone styling himself ìMotor Mouthî. He addresses it to Evan Pugh, a student at Chubb University in Holloman, Conn. Motor Mouth explains that Pugh should forget about attempting to extort more money as his, Motor Mouthís, pockets are empty. Of course, in the ordinary way of things, Evan would not cease his blackmail demands, but this is not in the ordinary way of things. In fact, the payoff is so arranged that when Pugh attempts to grasp his prize, he, instead, becomes painfully seized in the jaws of a bear trap, after which he takes two hours to die.

Carmine Delmonico investigates. This murder makes a total of twelve within eighteen hours, some, such as the bear trap, particularly gruesome. Mind, Pughís good looking, jock roommate Tom makes no bones about the fact that he did not like Evan and he would be no great loss.

Before a description of the remaining murders, the author introduces Carmine Delmonicoís family, his very tall wife Desdemona and his delightful daughter Sophia. They are preparing dinner, and Carmine loses the battle of naming his fifteen month-old son, who is now to be known as Julian.

At a meeting of the police, the cases are listed. The first body to be found was that of a Downís Syndrome toddler, about eighteen months old. Mr Gerald Cartwright reported the poisoning death of his wife and the absence of his Downís Syndrome son. A prostitute, Dee-Dee Hall, was found with her throat cut. Shortly after that, the death of Peter Norton was reported, just after he had drunk a glass of orange juice. So much for the health giving properties of that beverage!  Soon after that, the rape  and torture murder of Bianco Tolano is reported. Subsequent to that comes the shooting murders of a black cleaning woman and two black students.

In addition to these cases were the poisoning murders of Dean John Kirkbride and  Desmond Skeps, the head of the prestigious Cornucopia company.

Some of t he murders are easily solved and peripheral to the main case, but some are caught up with Russian spying.

I didnít feel that this book was up to McCulloughís usual standard. I did, however, bear in mind that the lady has been suffering from trigeminal neuralgia, so the pain she was experiencing whilst writing this novel must have been excruciating. I would imagine that would be quite a good reason for my not thinking this book was anywhere near her best.
THE LOVELY BONES
by Alice Sebold
ISBN 9780330457729
328 pages
PICADOR
December 1 2009
$22.99
reviewed by Denise Pickles
December 18 2009

This is not your common or garden crime fiction; in fact, it seems to me more like mainstream fiction with something of a twist. I was interested, too, to note that it is not a recent work but had, in fact, first been published in 2002. Somehow, I missed reading it the first time around.

In the first paragraph, Susie Salmon announces that she was murdered in December of 1973. She was fourteen years old. No doubt Susie had been given all the usual talks about stranger danger, when she was growing up, but Mr. Harvey was a neighbour and he had talked to her father about fertiliser, so seems acceptable to Susie, as she walks home from school. He lures Susie into a dugout he had constructed, where he rapes and murders her. He also cuts her body up, but, when disposing of it, somehow misses an elbow. When the elbow is found by a neighbourís dog, Susieís death is obvious.

Susieís spirit, meanwhile, has gone into he version of heaven. She discovers that everyone has an individual idea of heaven and some peopleís ideas overlap, so they inhabit heavens that share certain characteristics. Susie even has a room mate and a counsellor.

The people Susie leaves behind are devastated by her death, some more than others. The boy who, had she lived, would have been her boyfriend, Ray, was at first suspected of her murder, but, fortunately, he was giving a lecture so had plenty of witnesses to a solid alibi.

Detective Len Fenerman breaks the news to Susieís parents that their daughter must be dead. Later in the novel, his relationship with one of the parents changes.

The family is, of course, devastated and there are, inevitably, changes wrought by it.

This is an intriguing book. I enjoyed the characterisation, although at times Susie seemed just a bit too naive for a fourteen year-old. Sometimes, too, the depiction of the adults seemed just a bit ìoffî.

The crumbling of the family unit at the tragedy of Susieís death seems all too likely, given what one frequently sees in Real Life.

I suppose itís not giving too much away to say the book has a happy ending. The kind of happy ending is what I shanít indicate, since that is what would spoil the suspense.