"T" is for Donald Serrell Thomas

It is late in the week but I have a posting for “T” in The Alphabet in Crime Fiction meme of Kerrie Smith at her blog, Mysteries in Paradise. I am profiling the English author, Donald Serrell Thomas.

Born in 1926 Thomas has been and remains a prolific author. He has written fiction, non-fiction (history and academic) and poetry. He has edited books and been translator of a French book. Wikipedia lists him as the author of over 50 books.

He was a professor of English Literature and is currently a Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University.

For an academic and author of his distinction I had difficulty finding articles and images of him. The photo that accompanies this post was the only one I could find and comes from the Cardiff University website and only remained recognizable in the original size.

He is an authority on Victorian England. Wikipedia states:

He has written a number of books, mostly novels, on a variety of subjects predominantly set in Victorian England. He has also written a small number of non-fiction works dealing with similar subjects/settings, among them a study of the Victorian underworld, and biographies of Robert Browning, the Marquis de Sade, Henry Fielding, and Lewis Carroll.

His 1978 (rev. ed. 2001) biography of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald highlights the characteristics of that individual which served in large part as inspiration both for C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, and for Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey.

He is noted for his knowledge of the English criminal underworld from the Victorian era to the present.

He wrote both fiction and non-fiction under the pseudonym, Francis Selwyn.

In crime fiction Wikipedia cites “three series featuring the main characters of:

Alfred Swain, an inspector of Scotland Yard.

Sonny Tarrant, a "gangland capo", and

Sgt. William Clarence Verity, a "Sergeant in Scotland Yard's 'Private Clothes Detail'" who investigates the Victorian criminal underground of London, c.1850.”

The Verity series was written under the Selwyn pseudonym.

I have read one of his most recent books, The Execution of Sherlock Holmes, a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories published in 2007.

In my review I stated:

Arthur Conan Doyle’s combination of penetrating observations, clever deductions, forensic analysis and bold confident actions are skillfully continued by Thomas. It was

I found myself enjoying the Holmes stories and concluded that I liked Holmes better in stories than full length books.

New to Me Authors (July to September of 2012)

At the end of March I participated in Kerrie Smith’s meme, New to Me Authors, that she hosts at her Mysteries in Paradise blog. I did not put up a post for mid-year but am back with a post for the 3^rd quarter of the year.

For July, August and September my new to me authors were:

1.) Slaughter Falls by Alix Bosco (New Zealand)

2.) Before the Poison by Peter Robinson (Canada)

3.) Blessed Are the Dead by Malla Nunn (Australia)

4.) The Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson (England)

5.) Writing on the Wall by Gunnar Staalesen (Norway)

6.) The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri (Italy)

7.) The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton (Canada)

Where I read 5 new authors in the 1st quarter I read 7 new authors in the 3^rd quarter.

I was interested to see that I read authors from 6 different countries with Canada being the only country from which I read 2 new authors. Being a blogger has definitely widened my mystery reading scope. Without the recommendations of fellow bloggers I would not have read Bosco, Nunn and Camilleri.

Out of 7 good mysteries two stood above the rest for me. Blessed Are the Dead and The Water Rat of Wanchai are exceptional mysteries. They are very different books.

Blessed Are the Dead is set in the 1950’s South Africa with a direct examination of the prejudices of the early apartheid era through Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper and Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala.

The Water Rat of Wanchai takes place in several world locations – Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand, Guyana and the British Virgin Islands – in our current time period. Sleuth, Ava Lee, is a gay Chinese forensic accountant highly skilled in an ancient Chinese martial art, bek mei.

I liked them for different reasons.

In Blessed Are the Dead I was drawn in the land, a beautiful valley, and exploration of the history of the era through portraying the culture of that time.

Ava made The Water Rat of Wanchai a special book. She impacted me in the same way when I first read Lisbeth Salander. Ava is a unique personality that does not fit into contemporary society. Both Lisbeth and Ava also break female stereotypes. Each is very proficient in a field traditionally associated with men. Lisbeth is an excellent computer hacker. Ava is talented in finding out where money taken has been concealed.

Reading the above Magnificent Seven reminds me there are so many wonderful mystery authors to be found.

Taken by Robert Crais

Taken by Robert Crais – Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are back in action together. Nita Morales, an illegal Mexican immigrant who is successfully running a clothing business, calls Elvis to find her missing daughter, Krista Morales. Being a college student who has gone to Palm Springs with her boyfriend Jack Berman for the weekend but not yet returned the police doubt she is actually missing.

We know from the start that Krista and Jack have been kidnapped by some group that is involved with the smuggling of people into the United States.

The structure of the book is a different form of narrative. At the start not only do we know Krista and Jack have been abducted. We know Elvis has been taken and Joe is after those who have Elvis. No one should want Joe hunting them.

The book then moves back to before Elvis was captured and the plot proceeds forward.

Krista and Jack have been kidnapped by bajadores. (I was not familiar with the word. It describes gangs who steal the people smuggler gangs are illegally bringing into America and then extort money from their families.)

The bajadores are among the most vicious gangs in the world prying money out of families who have already used their resources on the smugglers.

The book is only barely a mystery. It is actually a thriller in which the action is non-stop. Unlike most of the books involving Elvis there is little character development. I regret there is little humour. Once in awhile Elvis is funny but much less than the earlier books in the series. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the body count builds through the book. I like Elvis better when he is detecting. I expect action from Joe. It is an above average thriller. It is not a challenge to the mind. It is a book for the senses. It does produce an appreciation of the cruelty of human trafficking, especially as done through Mexico. I hope Elvis is back to being the World’s Greatest Detective in the next book I read from Crais. (Sept. 8/12)

"S" is for Josef Škvorecký

The end of the alphabet is in sight on The Alphabet in Crime Fiction 2012 meme of Kerrie Smith at her blog Mysteries in Paradise. After looking through a significant number of “S” authors I have chosen to profile Josef Škvorecký, a Czech writer who, after fleeing Czechoslovkia in 1968, moved to Canada. He died in 2012. For this profile I am going to draw on the numerous obituaries on the internet of Škvorecký for their assessments of this distinguished author and publisher.

From The Telegraph newspaper:

Most of Skvorecky's books are available in English. He also wrote for film, television and radio, and had a passion for jazz (like his hero Smiricky, he played the saxophone). He once declared: "To me, literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone, singing about your homeland when in the schizophrenia of the times you find yourself in a land that lies over the ocean, a land – no matter how hospitable and friendly – where your heart is not, because you landed on those shores too late."

From his translator, Paul Wilson, in The Guardian newspaper:

One of my fondest memories of him is a conference held in Náchod in 2004 to celebrate his 80th birthday. Dozens of scholars and translators from all over the world converged on the small town to discuss his work. The highlight was a literary tour of the area, and as the guide walked us through Náchod, pointing out places where Josef had set crucial scenes from his novels, I realised for the first time how thin was the line between his reality and his fiction, and how deeply he had written himself into the life of his country.

The last stop on the tour was a pub called The Port Arthur, where the jazz band Josef had played for in his youth, Red Music, had often performed, and which was one of the locales in his early and most controversial novel, The Cowards. While a youthful jazz trio struck up a swing classic, Josef and Zdena sat at a table surrounded by a group of friends whom he introduced to us as the real-life models for some of the characters in his books. It was a deeply moving encounter: they, like their author, had grown old but would live on through his stories.

In The National Post newspaper obituary he is quoted as saying in 1981 years before the collapse of Eastern European communism:

“Frankly, I feel frustrated whenever I have to talk about revolution for the benefit of people who have never been through one,” he said. “They are — if you’ll excuse the platitude — like a child who doesn’t believe that fire hurts, until he burns himself. I, my generation, my nation, have been involuntarily through two revolutions, both of them socialist: one of the right variety, one of the left. Together they destroyed my peripheral vision.”

From The Globe and Mail newspaper:

Against communism Skvorecky’s writing offers a skepticism about ideologues and ideologies, an insistence on liberal freedoms, an aversion to revolutions, and a “suspicion that capitalism is probably good, liberalism may be right, and democracy is the closest approximation” that we have to an ideal government. Though Skvorecky’s writing is permeated by politics, he often joked that he belonged to the non-political “Party of Moderate Progress within the Bounds of the Law.” He borrowed the concept from the great Czech humorist, Jaroslav Hasek, the author of The Good Soldier Svejk.

From The Atlantic magazine:

Skvorecky left no shortage of legacies to remember him by, but one of the more notable themes in his nonfiction writing is an emphasis on, as Welch puts it, "the oftentime minute similarities between applied fascism and communism." And some of Skvorecky's more notable variations on that theme in turn are found in his recollections and insights on the common totalitarian hatred of, among all things, jazz.

I would not have read him but for another of Kerrie’s memes. Last year I for the meme, Crime Fiction on a EuroPass, I was looking for a Czech mystery and came across Škvorecký.

I read The Miracle Game which is not a conventional mystery but does have within the story the investigation of a mystery on whether there was a miracle or a hoax over a religious statute bowing to the congregation during Mass. Until I read obituaries I did not realize it was based on a real life event.

Škvorecký’s character, Daniel Smiricky, has been described as his alter ego.

Škvorecký is a talented writer and I would like to read another of his books. They are not swift easy reads. They challenge the reader. I was not surprised to read he was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Not many writers who include mystery fiction in their writing are so nominated.

The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton

 34. – 666.) The Water Rat of Wanchai by Ian Hamilton – There is a new tough girl in Canada and she is an accountant – a forensic accountant to be exact. Ava Lee forsakes the genteel world of office accounting to join her “Uncle” Chow (an uncle by Chinese relationship rather than by blood) in the collection business. They specialize in collecting money for and from Chinese individuals residing around the world when all conventional methods have failed.

Uncle and Ava work on a simple principle. They pay expenses and take 1/3 of what they recover. Ava is a salvage expert in the mould of McGee. Ava, like Travis, is a mixture of brains and muscle. While she is only 5’3” and 115 pounds her training in the Chinese martial art of bak mei makes her a formidable foe in a fight. (Bak mei was a martial art of which I had not heard before reading the book. It is aggressive and not suitable for sport as the moves are intended to cause serious injury.) I was reminded of Lisbeth Salander if she had been trained in a martial art. Considering Lisbeth’s personality it is best she remained untrained.

They deal with the cases where fraud has been committed and the money has disappeared or placed beyond reach of traditional recovery. Ava’s accounting skills allow her to evaluate how the money was taken and trace where it has gone. Once found she seeks to persuade the fraudster to return the funds. If verbal persuasion should fail alternative methods will be undertaken.

Ava lives happily in a luxury condo in an exclusive area of downtown Toronto on Bloor Street. She travels the world in her work. She has the largest passport Canada issues because of the number of entry stamps.

She comes from an unusual relationship by Canadian standards. Her mother is her Chinese father’s second wife. He established a marital relationship with her while remaining married and living with his first wife. The second wife and children are recognized but do not have the same rights as the first wife and children.

There is more character development than the average thriller.

Uncle and Ava agree to seek the return of $5,000,000 which has been taken from businessman, Andrew Tam. He has been financing the purchase and sale of seafood when he is caught in a skilful scam.

The investigation sees Ava traveling to Hong Kong, Thailand, Guyana and the British Virgin Islands. In her journeys outside Canada to distant locales I was reminded of Anthony Bidulka’s gay sleuth, Russell Quant, who leaves Saskatoon for faraway places in each mystery. Adding to the comparison Ava is a lesbian though, unlike Russell, her sexuality does not play a significant role in this mystery.

I also thought of Jill Edmondson’s tough girl, Sasha Jackson, another female Toronto sleuth. Ava neither has Sasha’s biting tongue nor is she constantly swearing.

The trip to Guyana is unlikely to encourage any reader to head to that South American country. Dysfunctional is too modest a term for the nation mired in poverty and violence.

The reader is drawn swiftly along through the book. I completed it during an 8 hour flight from Europe to North America.

What struck me in the end is that Ava, like McGee, while living by a strong moral code engages in amoral, even criminal acts, in her salvage operations.

The book was a worthy winner of a 2012 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Fiction. I probably would not have read the book without the award because of the title. A title should not sway me but a book with “rat” in the title does not appeal to me.

Ava is one of the best new characters I have read this year. I will never think of forensic accountants the same. I am headed to the bookstore this weekend to look for the second in the series. (Sept. 23/12)

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow

53. – 463.) The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow – A companion book to the video of Randy’s last lecture at Carnegie Mellon University. Most last university lectures are a form of retirement lecture for a professor talking about their university lives and offering thoughts on life and education but this was a true last lecture. Suffering from pancreatic cancer, with only months to live, Randy gave a powerful evocative lecture on realizing childhood dreams. The book supplements the lecture beautifully. He hesitated to give the lecture as Jai (his wife) did not want him to waste precious family time in preparation. There was no plan to make the lecture a worldwide event. Her comment, only disclosed in the book, when they embraced on stage after he surprised her with a birthday cake, of “please don’t die” brought tears to my eyes and a special poignancy to the visual moment. He did not discuss their relationship in the lecture as he thought it too emotional. In their relationship she had initially drawn away from him and he wooed her. His parents’ encouragement and expectations were highlighted. It remains startling that they allowed him, as a child, to draw and paint on his bedroom walls and ceiling. There is a vivid story on the benefits of unexpected kindness. Disneyland replaced a salt and pepper shaker for young Randy and his sister which they had dropped and broken a few minutes after purchase. It led to his family spending over $100,000 in Disney attractions during his lifetime. He illustrated his belief that brick walls in life are only there to see how hard you want to get past them. He phoned the admissions department at Brown University every day until he was admitted from the waiting list. He was rejected from Carnegie Mellon’s Ph.D. program but was granted an interview with the aid of his first mentor, Professor Andy van Dam, from Brown. In dealing with his fatal illness the first round of surgery and treatment for the pancreatic cancer seemed successful but while he and Jai were waiting for the doctor on a review they realized it had metastasized. He remains private about his religious beliefs but it is clear he is a Christian and probably a Presbyterian. His use of aphorisms and clichés to promote team building is emphasized. Randy expected only 150 to come to hear a computer science professor talk about his life. 300 jammed the lecture theatre and there was an overflow crowd. Zaslow came on his own, without expenses, from the Wall Street Journal. His article started spreading the word about this truly special last lecture. The internet carried it around the world. Carnegie Mellon did not copyright the video of the lecture. (A brilliant decision as it has gained incredible goodwill and free publicity.) Millions have watched the “Last Lecture” and there is now a website through the university about Randy which includes the lecture. The ending of the book with Randy’s tender comments on how he remembers his children was wrenching and beautiful. (Dec. 27/08) (2nd Best Non-fiction of 2008)

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I encourage anyone who has not watched the video to take 1 ½ hours of your life for a lecture you will never forget. I know I benefited from watching the video and reflecting on its messages.

"R" is for Robert Rotenberg

Moving through the second half of the alphabet we have reached “R” on Kerrie Smith’s The Alphabet in Crime Fiction 2012 meme at Mysteries in Paradise. I am glad to profile another Canadian lawyer in his 50’s who practises criminal law – Robert Rotenberg.

He has acquired numerous life experiences beyond being a lawyer. As set out on his website he undertook numerous types of work seeking to avoid the practice of law. He has driven a cab, edited an English magazine in Paris called Passion, co-created and published a magazine back in Canada called T.O. – The Magazine of Toronto, been a film producer and worked as radio producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Finally at 37 broke again (he had never succeeded in doing better than surviving) and a child on the way he became a lawyer.

While practising law he channelled his writing passions into a film script and then fiction. He was not an overnight success. He says on his website:

My first book was good enough to get me an agent in New York. But not good enough. The day I was told it hadn’t sold, I immediately started Old City Hall. It was 2001. By 2004 I’d hit a wall, with the book half done. I took a nine-day writing course at Humber College and worked with two talented writers, David Bezmozgis and Michelle Berry, who were most generous with their time.

He gained a publisher through the aid of another author, Douglas Preston, who had married his wife’s best friend. Rotenberg and Preston became friends. When Preston read the completed Old City Hall he was impressed and helped find a major literary agent who liked the book and engineered a bidding war between publishers.

Among Rotenberg’s most interesting characteristics are his strong opinions.

From the Canadian magazine, McLeans’ on interviewing new clients charged with crimes:

That’s because everybody lies, although mostly by omission, because everybody has something or someone to protect, he says, and at first they think they can. “When people come to my office, they’re in shock, and I don’t let them talk about their case at all, which drives them crazy because that’s all they want to talk about. But I don’t want them to commit to their stories. It takes a while before they learn that in the criminal justice system you can’t have any secrets.”

From the newspaper, The Toronto Star, on information from clients:

"You know, Mark Twain once said – and it's a great line – `People are like the moon. You only see half of them.'"

Also from The Toronto Star on the judicial system:

But it is also a place where truth and justice are not always possible, given human nature, he suggests. "We live in a world where everyone wants answers for everything. And we want the justice system to provide all the answers. But the reality is, we live in an ambiguous world."

With regard to seeing clients charged with family abuse he said in the newspaper, The Globe and Mail:

"For the first 72 hours, I would say every man who contacts me is in extreme shock and depression," Mr. Rotenberg says. "A lot of them are suicidal. These are normal people who love their children. Their lives have been ripped apart. The criminal justice system is a sledgehammer. When it gets involved in people's lives, it is as if you've dropped a bomb into their marriage. You have marriages ending after 18 years because someone reached out and grabbed an arm."

He is far from politically correct continuing:

"There is zero tolerance for men, but there is no zero tolerance for women," Mr. Rotenberg asserts. "Police are reluctant to charge women. In fact, I can't remember a women being charged unless there was a physical injury. Whereas, men are charged all the time without there being a physical injury."

I have enjoyed all 3 of his books – Old City Hall, The Guilty Plea and Stray Bullets. He is among the most realistic of writers of legal fiction about what really happens in and out of the courtroom. Those writers who bend or break the rules of what happens in court or preparation for court would do well to read Rotenberg. His books are full of drama while remaining accurate.

You can find links to his books and some very candid Q and A by clicking on either the Rest of Canada or Legal Mysteries.

Of the trio I think Old City Hall is best. It was 2^nd on my Best of 2012 for fiction.

The Shape of the Water by Andrea Camilleri (1994)

The Shape of the Water by Andrea Camilleri (1994) – The first Inspector Salvo Montalbano swiftly took me deep into the machinations of Sicilian life. Montalbano is advised he has a client (a term for the dead that will remain with me).

All levels of officialdom are instantly alerted when the client is identified as Silvio Lupanello, best known as “the Engineer”. Lupanello, heir to a construction dynasty, has spent his adult life in the shadows manipulating the local party in perpetual power to gain 80% of the government contracts. Only a few days before his death he moved into the position of provincial secretary for the party.

The establishment becomes agitated as it learns of the details of Lupanello’s death. He has been found in his car in an area of Vigata known as the “Pasture”. It is the place to go for all types of prostitutes. Not surprisingly Lupanello has been found in a compromising position.

An autopsy reveals death from natural causes. Religious and civil authorities lean on Montalbano to swiftly close the investigation and avoid all publicity about Lupanello’s manner of death.

Montalbano carefully asks for some time to assure the public there has been a proper investigation of a distinguished member of society. He is given a brief amount of time with emphasis on brief.

There are questions in his mind starting with why the car was driven over a very rough river bed that damaged the suspension to get to the Pasture.

Carefully examining the area of the death and questioning the government cleaners he comes up with a pivotal clue whose exploration leads him on an unpredictable journey through Sicilian society.

Montalbano proves as gifted manipulator as those attempting to control him. The truth is elusive in a society that is determined to preserve appearances. The title fits perfectly with the story. The author explains that on its own water has no shape. We make it the shape we want for our own purposes.

He develops an investigation that is ambiguous in nature. It is officially unofficial but he uses the power of his police position to gain information and conduct interviews.

The book slides smoothly. Author and translator have the knack of drawing the reader through the novel. I also want to taste the baby octopus dish that captivated Montalbano.

I will read more in the series. (Sept. 17/12)