A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb

(40. - 1223.) A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb - Arthur Barry was an altar server in a stable working class family in Worchester, Massachusetts in the early 1900’s. At 13 he was big for his age - 5’ 8”. He attributes his size to
his downfall. He looked and acted older than his age. He enjoyed “amusing himself” by vandalism. A veteran safecracker, Lowell Jack, turned nitroglycerine maker hired the young Arthur to deliver nitro. A life of crime was well underway. He was subsequently prosecuted as being a “stubborn child”.

After serving honourably in the American army as a medic during WW I, Arthur makes his home in New York City where he swiftly becomes in the words of Hercule Poirot a “.... thief of distinction”. 

He steals from the rich. Arthur rationalizes:

“People rich enough to own jewels,” he reasoned, “never had to worry about their next meal.” And they would no doubt have an insurance policy to cover their losses.

Arthur carefully plans his thefts. Still I was amazed at his steely nerves. Most of his robberies take place while the victims are in the house.

Among the most striking of his thefts is the robbery at the Long Island estate of Joshua and Nellie Cosden while they are hosting Lord Louis and Lady Edwina Mountbatten. After everyone has retired he climbs a rose trellis and slips into the house. He steals the jewelry Nellie had on that night that she had left on a dressing table. He enters the Mountbatten bedroom and takes jewelry Edwina had left in a tray. Mountbatten awakes and turns on a light. Arthur, in a movie scene, hides behind a curtain until Mountbatten turns off the light and goes back to sleep. He steals jewels worth $172,000 that night. He fences them for about $17,000.

Arthur is about to face a determined foe. Nassau County on Long Island organizes a County Police Department and the determined Harold King is appointed Chief of Detectives. He is known as the “scholarly cop”.

Arthur often wears a suit on his thefts. He is careful to always wear gloves so that he leaves no fingerprints. 

Chased from a home by two servants and recognizing the growing risk from police and homeowners, Arthur decides in the mid-1920’s to engage an accomplice. He choses a former Worchester resident, James Monahan. 

It was inevitable that he would be arrested. The circumstances of his arrest and questioning were remarkable.

There is abundant drama in his downfall.

I have written Jobb about Arthur’s interactions with the legal system and lawyers. The letter and reply, if he responds and consents to his answers being posted, will form another post.

Jobb is a brilliant narrator. He has the gift of storytelling. He keeps the story moving while inserting vivid word illustrations of events. I prefer non-fiction to proceed chronologically. Jobb follows that approach setting out Arthur’s life story as it happened. I was drawn along, wanting impatiently to find out what happened next in his life. That feeling happens regularly when I read fiction but it is rare that a writer of non-fiction can pull me that deeply into the story. A Gentleman and a Thief is a great book.

Ocean Drive by Sam Wiebe

(41. - 1224.) Ocean Drive by Sam Wiebe - Cameron “Cam” Shaw is released from the Kent Penitentiary on parole having served 7 years of a 10 year sentence for manslaughter. He beat a drunk man to death with a hammer. The man had hit him with a stainless steel trimguard.

He returns to White Rock near Vancouver. He finds employers are not hiring ex-cons with work experience in construction but no certificates.

At 29, with no prospects, he rejects an offer from Zoe Prentice of Prentice & Associates, wanting information on the League of Nations which is composed of white and South Asian gangsters. They are a “feeder group, street level associates, of the Heaven’s Exiles Motorcycle Club”. The League handles cross-border narcotics trafficking and is engaged in other illegal activities. Ratting on the League will be dangerous work. The League’s motto is “Thrive or Die”.

Staff Sergeant Meghan Quick of the White Rock RCMP detachment is at a house fire on Marine Drive. It is efficiently put out. The fire appears to be a routine situation until the body of a young woman is found in the house.

Quick, divorced from Rhonda, grew up in White Rock and knew the Reed family who owned the house. She is saddened when it is determined that Alexa Reed is the deceased. Her neck was broken before the fire was started.

Reading comments on social media from Alexa that no one cares and no one pays attention to what is happening in White Rock, Quick vows:

“I am now,” ….. “Sorry it took so long.”

Cam, after a confrontation at a warehouse with members of the League, re-considers his refusal of Prentice's offer.

Cam, using his manslaughter qualifications, edges into the League. A gang leader,Tito, likes the reserved Cam who wastes no words.

Quick wants to see him when she realizes that Cam killed Roger Garrick whose wife, Liz, is Alexa’s cousin and that he was released from prison just before the fire.

Following a fundamental principle of investigating, Quick gets surprising information by following up on the finances of Alexa’s parents, Emily and Richie.

How far will Cam go as a gang associate? He is not a violent man at heart.

The Vipers gang with its pair of suburban brothers is clearly inspired by a real life gang and brothers who created havoc in Vancouver.

As with almost all of us there are trials and tribulations that drag down Quick. She has her own means of coping:

Whiskey and pills she thought. This heady connection was believed by superstitious middle-aged divorced lesbian police  officers to contain miraculous curative properties. Often paired with cigarettes and reasonably fresh coffee …

Life is harder for Cam. He is ill-suited for the gang lifestyle. With little money, little employment and no family beyond a semi-estranged uncle his prospects are bleak.

There is more violence and more violence.

The plot is a little disjointed with the mysterious Prentice not having a presence for over 200 pages of the book. I thought the book would have worked better without this mysterious subplot.

Wiebe has become a literary craftsman improving his writing from book to book. Ocean Drive moves swiftly and smoothly. The characters are believable. He draws the reader into the somewhat shabby White Rock and its enclaves of wealth. Drugs infest White Rock. 

Cam and Meghan are excellent characters. I hope they appear again. 

****

Wiebe, Sam - (2015) - Last of the Independents and The Unhanged Arthur Award; (2016) - Invisible Dead and Sam Wiebe on His Sleuths; (2018) - Cut You Down and Sam Wiebe on Dave Wakeland; (2021) - Hell and Gone andA Vulnerable Tough Guy; (2023) - Sunset and Jericho

Black Diamond by Martin Walker

(38. - 1221.) Black Diamond by Martin Walker (2010) - It is late November and truffle season has begun. Police Chief Bruno Courrèges has noticed the small black fly that signals truffles about the “alley of white oaks” he had planted 10 years ago when he bought his property. He has a few brumales, second grade truffles, for sale. He has hopes in December of finding one or more of “the real black diamond, the melanosporum” which “could go for more than a thousand euros a kilo”. The sales “would never come to the attention of the tax man”.

In neighbouring St. Alvère there is a weekly market in truffles that now includes an  online market. Bruno’s friend, Hercule Vendrot, advises him that he fears inferior Chinese truffles are being passed off as French truffles. If true, the truffle market would be devastated just when its business is growing with new plantations of white oaks.

At the same time there is tension in St. Denis. A court has ordered, for enviornmental reasons, the closure of the local sawmill which is the main employer in town. While a new mill is being built not far away the ècolos are resented.

The issue is also very personal. Guillaume, who wants to be called Bill, Pons is the estranged son of the owner of the mill, Boniface Pons. Guillaume is leading the local ècolos and financed the lawsuit against the mill.

There is a physical confrontation between father and son that is swiftly escalating when Bruno, the mayor and fire chief get between the combatants and a brawl is prevented.

Bruno keeps in touch with the pulse of the community through personal contact. At the weekly market he visits each stall holder. He aids the mayor in collecting money for a party for the children of the unemployed or on minimum wage. It is the best of community policing.

Dressed as Father Christmas, to aid in collecting for the party, he is embroiled in an attack upon the stall of a Viet couple. A pair of young Chinese men vandalize the stall. Bruno is knocked out by a stun grenade. A young Chinese man who is one of the attackers is captured. He is in France on a student visa.

Chinese restaurants in the region are firebombed.

The baron and Bruno find Hercule near their hunting hide (shack). He has been tortured and hung by his wrists. As a barbouze (literally translated as a person with a false beard), he had been a part of French security forces dealing with issues involving Indochina and Algeria and the OAS. When Bruno calls a brigadier he knows in French Intelligence he is instructed to take his gun and guard Hercule’s home and deny entrance to everyone until security officers arrive. Why would an old intelligence officer, retired for almost 40 years, be tortured and killed?

Bruno’s former lover, Isabelle, is sent from Paris to look into Hercule’s records. Current lover, Pamela, is enjoying life at St. Denis, and is running for town council as a member of the Greens / Socialists coalition.

Fellow hunters and friends of Hercule gather to eat and honour his life. Bruno prepares a feast for the wake. There is a soup of turnips, leeks and potatoes made in stock from wild boar bones. Bruno shaves a black diamond truffle he found that day into the soup.

Bruno makes a rich venison casserole.  

In the fireplace over a bed of red ashes, at the baron’s chartreuse, a dozen pigeons for the dozen men are roasted.

There is pâté which Hercule had helped to make with his friends.

Salad with Sergeant Jules special vinaigrette and pommes sarladaises complete the meal.

Bruno creates a truffle creme brûlée for dessert using one of his own truffles.

Guests bring fine wine and champagne. Some bottles cost over 100 euros each.

There has never been a male gathering I have experienced in Canada with such a menu. I do not know a group of Canadian men who are no chefs who could prepare such a meal.

Once again a current case draws Bruno into the complexities of French history. Wars continue long after there are public resolutions of the conflicts. As always, the food is amazing.

****

Walker, Martin - (2019) - Bruno, Chief of Police and The Magic of St. Denis and Three Pines; (2023) - The Dark Vineyard

Damascus Station by David McCloskey

(37. - 1220.) Damascus Station by David McCloskey - Sam Joseph has been a CIA agent for 10 years. He is exceptionally skilled at recruitment. He has an easy charm that lets him make strangers feel instantly at ease. He is fluent in Arabic.

Early in the Syrian Civil War, around 2011, America has few assets in the Syrian governing elite. Driven by the consequences of a failed mission in Damscus he seeks out a mission to recruit Mariam Haddad, a political counselor at the Palace. Her father is a general. Her Christian family is at the heart of the Syrian establishment. She is a “real daughter of the regime”. However, her cousin, Razan, was brutalized by a member of the mukhabarat, one of the many Syrian security forces.

Miram is to be a Syrian developmental.

An operation is set up for Paris where she is recruiting, through intimidation, a dissident and supporter of the rebellion, Fatimah Wael, to return to Syria. Mariam provides a paper listing 22 relatives starting with Fatimah’s mother that the regime will arrest if Wael does not comply with its demands. Fatimah says no - “I intend to stay free”.

In Syria the mukhabarat use terror, often arresting and torturing and killing, to preserve government authority. They have no concern whether the arrested are guilty of anything.

The book reminded me that there was and is a significant Christian minority in Syria which is allied with the Assad regime. They know they will be harshly treated if the fundamentalist Muslim jihadis gain power.

Sam contrives to meet the beautiful Mariam at a reception and sets up a date where he gently establishes a relationship.

Mariam knows Sam is not a diplomat.

They meet again on the Riviera and everything blows up.

Mariam becomes a highly prized asset.

Knowing she will be tortured and executed if discovered versus his modest risks, Mariam tells Sam she expects more from their relationship than professional support and comradeship.

In Syria information comes from Russian intelligence that the Americans have a new asset in Syria.

Mariam is excited about being an agent while constantly fearing discovery.

How Mariam and Sam exchange information in Syria was fascinating and detailed.

I was surprised once again how many people receive confidential information about sources in the West. While possibly helpful in assessing credibility the risk of exposure to the source is immense.

The U.S. had a self-proclaimed red line that it would react if Assad uses poison gas. Assad has a large quantity of sarin.

Inside Syria there is justifiable paranoia for everyone. The war / rebellion is vicious. At the same time all are weary. Among the leadership, secrets are shared. Secrets on all sides are compromised by humans. Plots abound.

The real life storming of the American Embassy by a “mob” is replayed in fiction.

McCloskey has written an excellent thriller. He drives the narrative accelerating to the end. Damascus Station was recommended to me by Marian at the Sleuth of Baker Street bookstore. The violence is significant and the body count substantial but no more than the average current thriller. It is an impressive debut by the former CIA analyst. His story was vetted by the CIA to ensure he did not compromise systems or individuals. I look forward to reading his next book, Moscow X.