Glory Daze by Daniele Arceneaux

(33. - 1276.) Glory Daze by Danielle Arceneaux - Glory Beverly Broussard is a bookie in Lafayette, Louisiana. She is doing well with NFL playoff games underway. Her work, church and the Red Hat Society of Acadiana occupy her time.

Her contentment is upset when Valerie LeBlanc asks Glory to help find her missing husband, Sterling, who is Gloria’s unlamented, repeatedly unfaithful ex. Glory snaps out her refusal and Valerie says she hopes Glory will help for the sake of Delphine, the daughter of Glory and Sterling.

A fuming Glory finds Sterling at his private hideaway. He is dead with a knife sticking from his chest.

Delphine, a lawyer, flies home from New York City. Delphine and Sylvia convince Glory to find Sterling’s killer. Glory has achieved local fame for solving a murder a few months ago.

Glory is a methodical woman with a talent for numbers. She makes a comfortable living as an independent bookie because of her ability to analyze football and prepare her own betting lines.

Glory would prefer to investigate alone but reluctantly accepts the participation of Valerie and Delphine. It pains her when Valerie proves helpful.

The women of Glory Daze are vivid characters. The men are interesting but the women drive the story.

The investigation takes Glory to the casino where Sterling was working when he died. Most of her conversations are with women who work there in lower paying positions such as blackjack dealer and cashier.

Glory is a woman who speaks her mind including talking directly to God. A staunch member of St. Agnes parish she frankly states what is on her mind to the Lord. At least in the book it is a one way conversation.

While a staunch Catholic Glory has a a 6’7” associate who assists with collections when necessary.

Amidst the investigation Glory is also caught up in the demanding preparations for Mardi Gras. The Red Hat Ladies of Arcadiana take their role in the celebration very seriously. As Mardi Gras nears their preparations intensify. They are so determined to be perfect that on a Sunday before Mardi Gras they skip Mass to ensure everything is in order.

Most members of the Lafayette Police Department resent Glory for having previously solved a murder they had deemed a suicide. She will not be intimidated. 

There is a great scene where Glory, Delphine and Justice visit a world famous chef knife maker:

A pit of fire was the first thing that Glory noticed. Orange flames leap like trained gymnasts inside a shoulder-height cauldron …. Dozens of knives clung to a magnetic wall …. Some had handles of ebony or rosewood. Others, mahogany. Each had carvings of his signature celestial designs, though no design was exactly the same.

I love Glory. What a remarkable woman and sleuth. She is Black and proud to be Black. 

Stone Cross by Marc Cameron

(34. - 1277.) Stone Cross by Marc Cameron - Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Arliss Cutter has a “natural aversion to smiling”. A solid 220 pounds he has an intimidating physical presence. Cutter is adjusting to the “chill of Alaska” after working as a member of the Florida Marine Patrol. He is the leader of the Alaska Fugitive Task Force working with Cook Islander Lola Teariki pursuing fugitives in and out of Anchorage.

Cutter’s deft use of a rock draws out a hulking fugitive from Nevada named Twig Ripley. Twig’s arrest goes badly for him when he hits a police dog with a crowbar.

Cutter has come to Alaska to help his widowed sister-in-law, Mim, with her twin 7 year old boys, Michael and Mathew, and her 15 year old daughter, Constance. Ordinarily he resembles his taciturn grandfather who was nicknamed Grumpy. With his nephews and niece his personality lightens. Cutter is professionally successful and a multiple failure at marriage.

As the story proceeds a darkness in Cutter’s psyche festers.

When a handwritten, badly spelled, threat is sent to Federal Court Judge, J. Anthony Markham, Cutter and Teariki are assigned to accompany the judge to Stone Cross five hundred miles from Anchorage. The independent, oft imperious judge, grudgingly accepts their presence. Their official assignment is to enforce a warrant for the most minor of charges, public urination in a national park.

The Yup’ik people of Stone Cross, mostly Russian Orthodox believers, await the judge who will be deciding ownership of a valuable spit of land by the airport.

Birdie Pingayak’s life is a mixture of the traditional and current lifestyles. She has a chin tattoo following her maternal ancestors. She has gone to university and is principal, at 31, of the local school. She is a wonderful character who has faced great adversity in her life.

Life in bush Alaska is hard. Isolation, poverty, harsh weather and a demanding landscape are too much for many urban dwellers who come to work there. Violence is common.

Cutter and Teariki learn the threat reaches back decades and involves Markham as a young government lawyer. There is significant complexity involving Yup’ik people and the white establishment.

While at the village the Marshalls are drawn into a murky murder and abduction from a fishing lodge.

There is a remarkable chase in the wilderness involving dogsleds during a blizzard. I could feel the wind and cold I have experienced in a Saskatchewan storm. I was reminded of the dog sled race in Murder in a Cold Climate by Scott Young in which Inspector Matthew "Matteesie" Kitogitak of the RCMP engages in a dog sled search in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Each pursuit was dramatic and a reminder of the history of the North.

It should have been no surprise, since he is a fugitive hunter, but I was caught off-guard at Cutter’s skill in tracking. He can deduce a great deal from a careful examination of the ground.

As I started the book I thought it might follow the pattern of many American mystery thrillers with a double digit body count, little subtlety and a predictable ending. I was wrong.

Stone Cross blends a strong mystery with an unflinching look at life in rural Alaska. While the book is set in southwest Alaska I was reminded of the Nathan Active novels by Stan Jones set on the northwest coast of Alaska in another indigenous village. I want to read more of Arliss Cutter.

Gallows Court by Martin Edwards

(32. - 1275.) Gallows Court by Martin Edwards - Rachel Savernake is a dangerous woman if you are a murderer. The elegant daughter of the late Judge Savernake has moved to London from the family home on the bleak isle of Gaunt in the Irish Sea. She has abundant money living in a fine home and being chauffeured in a Rolls Royce.

Eminent banker, Lawrence Pardoe, kills himself in his study after writing a suicide note confessing to the murder, including decapitation, of Mary-Jane Hayes.

An intrepid young crime reporter for the Clarion newspaper, Jacob Flint, is insatiably curious. He wants to understand how Pardoe became a murdering monster after a life of respectability.

The lead crime reporter at the Clarion was Tom Betts. Badly injured by being struck by a car the prognosis is grim. Seeking information about Savernake who he knows is fascinated by murder Flint goes to the hospital. Betts whispers a name.

Savernake has a tart tongue with no patience for the assumed superiority of the English male elite. 

A respected private detective with an amazing name, Leviticus Shoemaker, makes inquiries for Savernake.

Flint is tenacious, refusing to give up on the story despite warnings to move on.

As Flint struggled to determine Savernake’s goals I was equally adrift trying to figure out what Savernake was doing in London. She is sparing with information. 

Who are the shadowy figures behind multiple murders in London? It can be hard for a reader when a conspiracy is engaged.

Savernake tells Flint she “is full of surprises”. Both Flint and I agreed with the statement. The book is more thriller than mystery.

The owner of the Inanity Theatre, William Kearey, is incinerated during an illusion. It is a brutal and creative form of murder.

The investigation leads to the secretive Damnation Society.

Gallows Court is a wonderful title. In the book it was a small courtyard in London with several law offices. It can also refer to a hanging court. The death penalty is very much a punishment in the England of 1930.

Savernake is a ruthless woman. She is a true avenging angel. She is not disturbed by collateral damage in her polished schemes. 

Gallows Court is the first Rachel Savernake mystery. I read the second, Mortmain Hall, before Gallows Court. I wished I had read them in order. I find it is a rare series that is better read out of order.

I thought Gallows Court a good book and Mortmain Hall a great book. Ultimately, I find it hard to enjoy vigilante justice and I think there were too many bodies in Gallows Court. My preferred number of the deceased is in the low single digits with one the most preferred. I shall now have to read the third in the series, Blackstone Fell.

****

Edwards, Martin - (2018) - All the Lonely People and A Dislike of Cynical Lawyers; (2020) - Mortmain Hall and A Real Life Case and Mortmain Hall and An Exchange with Martin Edwards on Mortmain Hall

How to Face Death

As set out in my review of The Sixth Lamentation by William Brodrick, Agnes Embleton, born Aubert, considers how to die as motor neurone disease inexorably consumes her.

Her son, Freddie, does not want Agnes to suffer. He wants professional care for her.

Agnes is determined to die on her own terms. She will stay at home. She will draw on the assistance of government provided home care. She has asked a homeless woman, Wilma, that she befriended to live with her to help her through the nights. Family can help but she is not relying on them.

Lucy does not want her Gran to die. Agnes replies:

“I have to, Lucy. Death is like the past. We can’t change either of them. We have to make friends with them both.”

Agnes reminds me of Jenny, the disabled dancer with terminal bowel cancer in The Discourtesy of Death, a later Father Anselm mystery. 

Jenny explains her embrace of her life:

‘Now? she replied. ‘I want my life. I was ready to die before but now I want my life. I know that in one way it’s broken, disappointing, limited, worthless, empty and insignificant … but it’s mine. It’s all I’ve got. I’m still me. And I know it will soon become messy and painful and frightening, but I still want it. I want to live what I’ve got … do you understand? It’s as valuable to me now as it ever was. I’m still … full of something … and it can be exhilarating, despairing, violent and peaceful - every state you can think of - and I just want to keep hold of it … for as long as possible.’

Jenny and Agnes are both determined that it is their life to live as they die. Neither will accelerate the end.

In posts on Louise Penny’s book, The Madness of Crowds, and my niece, Alanna, I wrote of my conviction that all lives have meaning. Because a person is dying does not diminish their dignity and the importance of their life.

Late in the book Agnes can no longer leave her bed. She cannot move her legs or arms. She can move her eyes. She studies her room until there is nothing left to learn. She can still use her mind. She lets her imagination take her into the air and she becomes a bird looking down upon the world. She goes back to WW II swooping into a collaborator’s office and diving through his iris into his brain.

As the end nears, Agnes communicates by pointing to the letters on an alphabet card. Every word is meaningful. The emotions are extraordinary.

Lucy tells Agnes of the trial evidence. Will she live long enough to hear the truths revealed in and out of court?

Brodrick’s powers of description are excellent:

She was fed by drip now, procured by Freddie when he insisted his mother would not die in a hospital bed, but in her home. Everyone diligently fussed over her needs, not realisng that Agnes didn’t care, knowing nothing of the carnival that raged out of sight.

As she lays in her bed going through her memories Agnes loves listening to her favourite piece of music, the powerful and poignant Romance sans paroles Op.17, No. 3 by Gabriel Fauré, which she played for decades on the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plKLrnRcVwc&list=RDplKLrnRcVwc&start_radio=1

****

Brodrick, William - (2023) - The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life; (2025) The 6th Lamentation and Reflecting on the 6th Lamentation in the 6th Lamentation

Reflecting on the 6th Lamenation in the 6th Lamentation

In my last post I reviewed The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick. The title of the book is striking.

In the story a former SS officer, Eduard Schwermann known in England as Nightingale, seeks sanctuary at the Gilbertine priory of Lakewood in England in 1995. He is alleged to have been a leader in the deportation of Jews from Paris in 1942. 

Brodrick could not have known when The 6th Lamentation was published in 2003 how the concept of sanctuary would become such a fraught issue 22 years later, especially in the America of Donald Trump.

As set out in my review Schwermann was granted sanctuary. While there has been no legal right of sanctuary in England since 1675, the authorities of 2003 did not enter the monastery to arrest Schwermann.

Who should have the right to claim sanctuary? 

While Schwermann is at Lakewood a French man, Salomon Lachaise, comes to the Lakewood Priory and confronts Schewermann:

With one great savage movement, Salomon Lachaise, tore open his shirt from top to bottom, both hands ripping the fabric apart, exclaiming in a loud voice, “I am the son of the Sixth Lamentation.”

Lachaise is a medievalist, a professor of history at the University of Zurich. 

In 1942 Lachaise and his mother were taken from Paris to Switzerland by a smuggling ring of young people in their 20’s called The Round Table evoking Arthurian images. They were saved from the Holocaust. The other members of their family are taken to the death camps and killed.

In the Bible, Jeremiah has five lamentations “each mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, each placing absolute trust in its sworn Protector”.

The Fifth Lamentation ends:

20. Why have you utterly forgotten us, 

Forsaken us for so long?

21. Bring us back to you, LORD, that we may return:

Renew our days as of old.

22. For now you have indeed rejected us

and utterly turned your wrath against us.

The agony of those powerful words must have felt personal for many Jewish people caught up in the Holocaust. Calling the Holocaust the Sixth Lamentation is visceral and vivid.

Lachaise thinks of the lamentations of the Jewish people at the hands of the church over the centuries. He sees the irony in the mythical Knights of the Round Table being re-surrected to save Jewish children as a small effort of atonement for the persecution of Jews by the Church over the centuries but now “the person who broke it apart” is protected by the Church. The betrayal of the Round Table caused lifetime guilt in the betrayer.

Lachaise reflects to Anselm on how God in the Bible, “made covenant with Abram and he became Abraham …. The change of name obliterates the past, bestowing a blessed future.” Brodrick took my breath away when Lachaise, speaking of Schwermann added:

“So, who was it that dared to take the place of God and give that man across the lake a new name, a new life?” 

****

The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life; (2025) The 6th Lamentation

The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick

(30. - 1273.) The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick - How does God call us? For Anselm it was a sense of unease in his barrister’s robes, a “restlessness” in which he began “to feel out of place”. The feelings were “vaguely religious”. They crystallized when he sat down one day in Westminister Cathedral and prayed. He was being called to the religious life of a monk. Anselm joins the Gilbertine Order at Larkwood Priory.

In the spring of 1995 Agnes Embleton, born Aubret, is diagnosed with a terminal neurological condition. She has been a cipher to her children and granddaughter. She refuses to talk about what happened to her in France during the Nazi occupation and her subsequent experiences in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. She has abrupt impenetrable withdrawals from “ordinary life”. Only her husband, Arthur Embleton, can ease her back. Now Arthur is gone from a stroke and Agnes is facing her end.

At the same time Agnes contemplates dying there is a crisis at Larkwood Priory. A man, Eduard Walter Schwermann now known as Nightingale, has claimed sanctuary. He was a “low ranking SS officer based in Paris during the war. He’s incriminated in the deportation of thousands of Jews to the death camps”. He had come to England in 1945 with a French collaborator, Victor Brionne, known after the war as Berkeley. 

The monks gather in Chapter, community meeting, to decide if Schwermann will be allowed to stay. There are conflicting positions within and without the community. The British government and the Vatican want him to stay while the allegations are investigated. 

The Prior, Father Andrew, makes the decision. Schwermann can stay.

In his dozen years at the Priory Anselm has become a priest. He has found all the emotions of life are present in monastic life. It is a life of “evolving contentment”.

Agnes writes  her memories and gives the journal to her granddaughter, Lucy, to read.

The journal of Agnes is set out in the book. Agnes was involved in a student group, the Round Table, smuggling Jewish children to safety. She was arrested and sent to the concentration camps. Her story is devastating and wrenching. It is no surprise the trauma has affected her deeply.

Anselm is called to Rome to meet Beniamino Cardinal Vincenzi, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. Anselem is tasked with finding Victor Brione and finding out what happened near the end of the war when Schwermann and Brione came to a Gilbertine priory in France.

The time of Occupation still creates turmoil 50 years later in France.

What will be done by the political establishment in London and the religious establishment in Rome to avoid further embarrassment concerning Schwermann and where does Larkwood fit in this most awkward situation? Anselm is in deep waters of intrigue. 

Anselm is a rarity in fictional sleuths. He is a patient man. He does not feel a need to aggressively pursue information. He is willing to let others pursue threads he has identified.

Anselm is a subtle man, trained as a barrister to appear in court and as a priest to hear confessions. He is exceptional at listening. He lets men and women talk to him. He does not demand their stories.

The disparate parties start coming together. Brodrick is brilliant in connecting the streams of knowledge.

After a year at the Priory, Schwermann goes on trial for murder for his role in deporting Jews from Paris to Auschwitz. The Crown prosecutor, Oliver Penshaw,  recites the roundup of 12,884 Jews, including 4,051 children, in July of 1942 and their transportation to Auschwitz. Few survived.

Penshaw says that, though his rank was SS-Untescharführer, Schwermann was a leader in organizing the roundup of Jews and overseeing their shipment to Auschwitz.

The trial has the quiet intensity I have experienced in Canadian courts. Cross-examination is precise and devastating. There are none of the histronics of some American fictional trials.

Defence counsel, Mr. Bartlett, delves into the distinctions in France between refugee Jews and French born Jews, the latter often assimilated.

He examines the knowledge of French officials in 1942 on what was to happen to the refugee Jews when they were transported East to be “re-settled”.

The Holocaust is not doubted but there are challenging questions on when it was known. What can be proven as known by Schwermann in 1942?

Contemplating the trial, one of the monks, thinking of the real life Paul Touvier, reflected that it was only the collaborators who could bargain with the Nazis to save some lives.

I thought of Kastner's train. In 1944 Rudolph Kastner, a Jewish man, negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to allow 1,670 Hungarian Jews to travel from Hungary to Switzerland. Kastner, a lawyer and journalist, knew that the Hungarian Jews in the hundreds of thousands being deported to Auschwitz would be killed. His actions remain controversial today. Did he sell his soul to the devil?

Outside the trial, what happened in France during WW II is gradually revealed. Who betrayed the Round Table? Was it treachery in the Priory or in Paris? 

Among the many issues Anselm is pondering is what the Vatican knew in 1944.

The answers to Anselm’s questions and the resolution of the trial are confounding and thought provoking. The 6th Lamentation is an amazing book. To say all I want about the book will take another two posts.

****

Brodrick, William - (2023) - The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life (2025) Reflecting on the 6th Lamentation in the 6th Lamentation

Thinking About Legal Assistants

While reading An Insignificant Case by Phillip Margolin I was struck by the character Elin Crane. In the book “average” lawyer Charlie Webb is defending the eccentric Lawrence Weiss who calls himself Guido Sabatani. Weiss is certain that he is the re-incarnation of a Renaissance painter.

Webb is feeling overwhelmed when Sabatani refuses to have anyone except Webb defend him on charges of murdering the restauranteur, Gretchen Hall, from whom he took back a painting he sold her because she did not display it publicly, and Yuri Makarov, the bodyguard of movie producer, Leon Golden.

Webb’s modest legal practice has not needed an assistant. He rents space in a suite of offices where there is a slot outside each office door for a lawyer’s card reflecting the constant turnover of lawyers in the building.

Now he is dealing with a case with a huge amount of information.

Webb is grateful when an attractive young woman, Crane, volunteers to help him.

It turns out Crane has personal reasons and motivations for becoming Webb’s assistant. She is far from the woman he thought she was when she joined him.

Webb does not do a background check upon her. He is happy to have an unpaid assistant.

Crane’s deceit prompted me to think about hiring assistants in the real world. At our law office in Melfort when hiring we rely on resumes, interviews and calls to past employers. We explain the need for confidentiality to prospective assistants.

Legal assistants, especially in small offices, must have access to confidential information to do their jobs. They are trusted to be responsible and not disclose office information.

Our experience has been that our assistants have been reliable and discreet.

In Escape Velocity by Susan Wolfe, a legal mystery set in Silicon Valley, the lead character is Georgia Griffin, a paralegal in the firm. When I asked Wolfe in an email exchange why Griffin was a paralegal rather than a lawyer she advised:

That was strictly dictated by my plot. I needed to have a main character whom other people would underestimate, even forget about, because that allowed her to be a fly on the wall for many very senior meetings she would otherwise not have access to. The executives treated her as invisible. I don’t believe they would have treated even the most junior lawyer in such a dismissive manner.

We work hard in our office not to treat staff as “invisble” but recognize they are usually in the background.

I would say virtually every law office is vulnerable should an assistant be unscrupulous.

The vulnerability of law offices was further illustrated in Proof by Jon Cowan. Grace Jamieson, a paralegal at the Los Angeles law firm of Thompson West, leaves the firm to join fired senior partner, Jake West, in his quest to solve murders that are connected to Thompson West. Her inside knowledge of the firm is used in ways that are definitely unethical and, probably legally wrong.

In An Insignificant Case, Webb is blind sided when Crane reveals she has been using her position for her own purposes.

Using office information for personal reasons would destroy an assistant’s career but to the dishonest that would be of no concern.

I will continue to be confident that our office can rely on the integrity of our assistants while recognizing as a blogger and a reader there are abundant fictional opportunities for authors to create unreliable assistants. 

****

Margolin, Phillip - (2025) - An Insignificant Case