This is All Around the World

This is All Around the World* - From Margot Kinberg's fine blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, I am re-blogging a post about Petrona Remembered.

 

Hello, All,

 

One of the best things about the online crime fiction community is sharing books we’ve loved, and getting ideas from others’ top reads. In that spirit, I’d like to remind you if you did know, and tell you if you didn’t, about Petrona Remembered. 

 

Petrona Remembered is a blog dedicated to the memory of the late and much-missed Maxine Clarke, a true friend of the crime fiction community. The aim of the blog is to develop a resource of great crime novels that crime fiction fans can use to broaden their horizons, and that those new to the genre can use to get started on their own crime-fictional journeys. I’ve no doubt Maxine would have been pleased at the idea of a blog that gathers posts by crime fiction lovers from all over the world.

 

Now that you’ve got the background, here’s some exciting news about the blog. Thanks to a terrific idea from Bill Selnes at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan,we’ll be continuing to honour Maxine’s memory and continuing to build the virtual library, and you’re invited to be a part of it. Here’s Bill’s idea: Contributors will write an annual post on an excellent crime novel they’ve read that year, and would recommend to Maxine. If you never got the opportunity to meet Maxine either in real life or online, feel free to check out the About section of Petrona Remembered. That’ll give you a clear idea of the sort of reader she was. Each contributor’s post will go up simultaneously on the blogger’s site and on Petrona Remembered. Each blogger chooses a month, so that Petrona Remembered can offer great recommendations all year long.

 

We’ll be starting on 15 July with a post from Bill Selnes. He’ll do a similar post next July. In August, I’ll take my turn. Get the idea? Want to be a part of it yourself? Sure you do!! Just let us know which month you’d like and of course, let us know if you have any questions.

 

Also, if you’re interested in being a part of Petrona Remembered, please consider re-posting this announcement and add in your own plan for taking part or for letting others know. Thanks!

 

Here’s to lots of fine crime fiction for all of us!

 

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I hope lots of mystery review bloggers will drop over to Margot's blog to sign up to post an annual recommendation from their reading in the past year that they would like to have recommended to Maxine. It would be great to fill up all the months of the year more than once.

 

 

 

New to Me Authors for April to June of 2014

Half of 2014 is gone. The first six months of the year have raced by for me. With regard to reading in the second quarter of the year I have read 6 new authors for me. They are:

1.) Defending Jacob by William Landay;

2.) Presto Variations by Lee Lamothe;

3.) Walls of a Mind by John Brooke;

4.) The Ascendant by Drew Chapman;

5.) The Hero of Hopewell Hill by Barbara Martin; and,

6.) An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James.

Of the sextet of newly read there was a clear choice for my favourite new author of the quarter.

The Ascendant captured me and held me to the end of the book. I have not read a book that so cleverly used technology to attack nations.

Walls of a Mind is a very good book and might have the favourite of the quarter but for The Ascendant. Brooke's novel is actually well into the series featuring French Chief Inspector Aliette Nouvelle. She is an engaging character and I plan to read more in the series.

I thank Kerrie Smith at her Mysteries in Paradise blog for continuing to host this meme which has made sure I read new authors every quarter of the year.

Prejudice in Reading Romantic Suspense

RITA Award

While I read a variety of sub-genres of mysteries I have rarely ventured into romantic suspense. As was the situation with my last book, An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James, it is not usually a planned foray. I had decided to read all the books on the shortlist for the 2014 Arthur Ellis Award for the Best Canadian Mystery Novel and An Inquiry into Love and Death was on the list.

The previous book of romantic suspense I had read was In Plain Sight by Tara Taylor Quinn. I needed a book that involved the letter “Q” for the 2013 Alphabet in Crime Fiction meme hosted by Kerrie Smith at her blog, Mysteries in Paradise. I had also set myself a theme of having a personal connection to each post for the meme. In Plain Sight fitted my criteria by featuring lawyers.

Because of my infrequent reading in the sub-genre I have a limited knowledge of even what qualifies as romantic suspense. For guidance in the area I looked to the RITA Awards handed out by the RWA (Romance Writers of America).

The judging guidelines for the category of romantic suspense are:

In this category, the love story is the main focus of the novel, a suspense/mystery/thriller plot is blended with the love story, and the resolution of the romance is emotionally satisfying and optimistic.

I have looked at the RITA award for romantic suspense for the last 10 years and I have not read any of them. I have not read any books by the award winning authors.

My primary reluctance in reading romantic suspense is the statement in the guidelines that “the love story is the main focus of the novel”. I want mysteries to focus on the mystery to be solved. When attention is concentrated on other subjects be it romance or violence or historical events I tend to lose interest.

Yet I have a prejudice against romantic suspense that cannot be explained by the focus of the story. It is a personal discomfort with romance being at the heart of the book. I am confident that I am not alone among males in finding myself ill at ease reading about romance.

Can our hearts be so dark that only noir is acceptable to the male? I say not as I am generally uncomfortable with strongly noir mysteries.

I believe I can relate to romance. I have been married for over three decades. Now it is entering treacherous territory to ask my wife if I am romantic. The word “romance” leaves men stumbling around verbally.

At least Canadian society when I was growing up in the 1950’s and 1960’s strongly saw romance in books as effeminate. Not being masculine it was not reading for guys. I doubt it is much different in the current generation.

The guideline that the “resolution of the romance is emotionally satisfying and optimistic” is a further block for me. While few mysteries do not have a resolution that is “satisfying” in that the mystery is solved and the bad guy/gal apprehended I at least have the illusion in regular mysteries that the ending will be a surprise.

For a reader wanting to explore different sub-genres in mysteries I find myself facing my own biases. I feel I should read mysteries that are well written whether romantic suspense or conventional mysteries.

Mysteries have already been looked down up as formulaic. To be prejudiced against romance suspense is to personally reflect a prejudice against a part of a literary genre I love.

An Inquiry into Love and Death is a well written book. It should be considered as a candidate for the shortlist of best mystery novel. Romantic suspense is a worthy sub-genre.

Yet I doubt I am ready to add books of romantic suspense to my TBR piles. Justified or not my prejudices are going to continue to take me away from the book store shelves which contain romantic suspense. It will take a work of romantic suspense appearing on another shortlist for me to reading romantic suspense again. I am feeling very unromantic at the moment.

An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James

26. – 773.) An Inquiry into Love and Death by Simone St. James – I do not think this book was intended for the average male reader. I can sum up my reasoning in a sentence. The slim lovely Jillian Leigh meets the tall, dark and handsome Inspector Drew Merriken and they encounter ghosts and ….

At their first meeting:

I looked down. His hand was on my arm. Something made my breath stop in my throat. I raised my eyes to his.

And just like that, something arced between us. My body flushed hot. His hand on me felt almost familiar, as if he’d touched me before. His gaze darkened as he looked at me, his grip flexed, and for just a second I felt a pull – so brief I thought I’d imagined it – as if he were about to draw me to him. In that second, I would have gone my body understanding before my mind could protest.

In the early 1920’s Jillian is a student at Somerville College for Women at Oxford. She is called to the village of Rothewell on the western coast of England to identify the body of her deceased uncle Toby and deal with his personal effects.

Toby was a renowned ghost hunter and was in Rothewell pursuing Walking John, a 17^th Century ghost, who has haunted the woods outside the village for almost three centuries. John Barrow had been a smuggler who died in terrible circumstances. No villager will venture into the woods at night.

Toby was staying in Walking John’s home, Barrow House, a lonely stone building on the edge of the woods at the time of his death.  He died from injuries suffered in a fall from the cliffs overlooking Blood Moon Bay.

Drew comes to Barrow House to make inquiries about Toby. There are suspicions his death was neither an accident nor suicide.

A fighter pilot during WW I Drew was emotionally damaged during the war.

With regard to ghosts Jillian approaches her first night alone at Barrow House with conviction:

           I did not believe in ghosts. Of course I didn’t – no

           sane person believed in ghosts. 

I believed in Oxford, and cobblestoned squares, and old bricks thick with ivy, and rainy days curled up reading books. I believed in my mother’s strong coffee and in the lonely, aching scent of early dawn before anyone else in my boardinghouse was awake. I believed in my favourite men’s cardigan and the way the wind felt on the back of my neck. I believed in life as it lay before me, spinning out slowly, day after day of warm springs and thurderstorms and laughter. These were the things I believed in.

Curious about Toby’s ghost hunting instruments she experiments with them especially the galvanscope which measures “the electric current generated by an object’s magnetic field”.

As a storm rages outside the house she is reading Toby’s journal when a crash causes her to jump. The fire wavers, lamps go out and there is another crash. Finding a shutter loose she goes outside. While attaching the shutter she “turned to see the garden gate fly open as if thrown by an unseen hand”. She is “overcome, in slick certainty, with sheer terror”. The shaken Jillian pulls her bed away from the window. Her certainty there are no ghosts has been shattered.

The intrepid Jillian assists the Inspector in his inquiries. There is a strong element of a young woman heading into danger alone.

I know my review reflects a prejudice with regard to romantic suspense and is condescending in tone. In my next post I am going to reflect on those personal issues.

I expect readers who enjoy romantic suspense mysteries will enjoy the book. The book is well written. Jillian is a striking character.

The cover is wonderfully designed combining photos to evoke the mood of the book(June 28/14)

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An Inquiry into Love and Death is my 16^th and final read in the 7^th Canadian Book Challenge which ends in half an hour. Shortly I will be summarizing my reading for the Challenge.

My Personal Connection to Bennett Jones

My last post, a review of The Hero of Hopewell Hill by Barbara Martin, discussed an adventure involving Fenians attacking New Brunswick and the young Richard Bedford Bennett, a future Canadian Prime Minister.

In the book the young Bennett dreams of becoming a schoolteacher and maybe even a lawyer. In real life he was a schoolteacher by the time he was 16, principal of a school at 18 and by 20 was in law school at Dalhousie in Halifax.

He started his legal career in New Brunswick but was lured west to Calgary in the mid-1990’s by James Lougheed, a prominent lawyer. Bennett arrived in mid-January to a classic Western Canadian weather welcome. It was -40.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography ascribes the following traits to the young Bennett:

He was something of an outsider from the very first. Never one to follow the crowd, he neither smoked nor drank and he dressed formally at all times. He could work like a horse, long hours with no play.

He had some classic legal battles with Paddy Nolan who smoked, drank, dressed as he pleased and savoured long hours of play.

Bennett was a good lawyer and a better investor and businessman. He was an early investor in oil, grain, cement and power companies. A staunch Methodist he made a practice of donating 10% of his income each year to charity.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography further describes his character:

He loved hard work for the sheer satisfaction of mastery, in finance, accounting, law. He was a wizard with legal precedents and uncanny with errors in a balance sheet. At the same time he was a sublime egotist, clever, irascible, unsparing of himself or others. Forgiveness was one of the Christian virtues he found difficult to practise. He had a volatile temper, explosive while it lasted. Wound up in the coils of his own nature he seems rarely to have considered the effects of his words and actions. His receiving antennae were weak; sometimes they did not appear even to be deployed. R. B.’s limited receiving capacity was often the source of his strength and courage. His future rival William Lyon Mackenzie King’s sensitive antennae made him timid, his hypocrisy more crafty as he got older. Bennett scorned hypocrisy. He had the dangerous habit of saying what he really thought. What drove Bennett was his own mind, not what others might think of him.

After spending time in federal politics he lost his seat in Parliament and returned to the practice of law. After almost 30 years together there was a messy breakup with Lougheed. As happens too often when law firms separate there was litigation between the partners.

In 1922 Bennett formed a new firm Bennett, Hannah and Sandford with two colleagues from the old firm.

Through various names the firm has endured 92 years with the last three decades being known as Bennett Jones.

It is now Calgary’s largest law firm with hundreds of lawyers.

Considering Bennett’s personal combination of lawyer and businessman I expect he would like the current firm’s motto:

            Your lawyer. Your law firm. Your business adviser.

R.B. Bennett is a Canadian success story growing up in the Maritimes shortly after Confederation and helping develop Western Canada before becoming our 11^th Prime Minister.

I hope his firm likes The Hero of Hopewell Hill. It provides a vivid portrayal of the firm founder as a teenage boy bravely and decisively fighting for Canada.

My personal connection to the firm is that my younger son, Michael, started work there as an articling student two weeks ago.

The Hero of Hopewell Hill by Barbara Martin

25. – 772.) The Hero of Hopewell Hill by Barbara Martin – Richard Bennett, Canada’s 11^th Prime Minister, grew up on a farm near Hopewell Hill on the coast of New Brunswick. He is featured in the 4^th book of the Leaders & Legacies series. Each book is about a future Canadian Prime Minister involved in an adventure when he or she was 12 or 13 years of age. Bennett is 13 in 1883.

Making a living by the 1880's has become a challenge for the Bennett family. The once busy shipyard of Bennett’s grandfather is a lonely place of memories as steel hulled ships have replaced the elegant wooden ships his grandfather built to sail the oceans.

Bennett and his friend, Len Tilley, like all young teenage boys, crave some excitement in their lives and are intrigued by mystery. One night they venture on to the cliff above the Hopewell Rocks to see if a local Indian legend can “be true – that the rocks were the trapped spirits of Indian warriors, waiting to be released”. While no spirits appear they hear sounds of men moving something on the side of the cliffs.

When he returns home, Bennett’s father, Henry, is upset over this foolish escapade. He wants Richard to start working full time on the farm as he is busy as a blacksmith. His mother, Henrietta, is more understanding. Trained as a teacher she understands Bennett’s desire to go to Normal School so he can become a teacher.

In town Bennett encounters the broad shouldered and surly Michael Killian who has been making inquiries about the local militia.

Despite the threat of punishment Bennett and Tilley return to the cliffs by rowboat to find out what has been happening there. Living on the Bay of Fundy they must be wary of the largest tides in the world which rise and fall 2-3 meters an hour to a total of 16 meters.

What they encounter leads them to realize there is a new Fenian threat. Memories are still fresh in Hopewell Hill of the attempted Fenian invasion at Campobello, New Brunswick 17 years previously. The Fenians remain confident Irish Canadians will rise to join them and they can take over New Brunswick. Bennett is determined to do his part to thwart the Fenians.

In challenging the Fenians Bennett displays several character traits that will serve him well as a lawyer and businessman in Calgary and then as Prime Minister. (Bennett, Prime Minister from 1930 – 1935, had the most difficult time to be Canadian Prime Minister as the nation struggles during the Great Depression.)

The teenage Bennett is caring of others. He is quick and decisive in making decisions. He is physically brave and not afraid to take on a tough situation.

As always in the series I learned something of both the future Prime Minister and of aspects of Canadian history. I had not realized the Fenian threat had reached as far east as New Brunswick. I had thought the Fenian attacks on Canada were limited to Upper Canada (Ontario) just after the end of the American Civil War.

It is a good book though I liked the earlier books in the series better than The Hero of Hopewell Hill. I would have preferred a more rounded portrayal of the young Bennett and further information on his family. He is abit too perfect. No flaws beyond stubbornness are set out. I wish his mother, obviously a very important person in his life, had a greater role in the story.

I am glad the series continues to bring to life historic adventures of future Prime Ministers. As the series builds in number young Canadian readers are getting a chance to see how our Prime Ministers have come from many different backgrounds.

My next post will discuss R.B. Bennett's later life and my family connection to his ongoing heritage in Calgary.
 

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The Hero of Hopewell Hill is the 15^th of 13 books I have read during the 7^th Canadian Book Challenge which ends at midnight on next Monday evening. Canada Day, July 1, starts the 8^th annual Challenge for reading Canadian authored books.

 

Murder Trials at the Old Bailey in 1675, 1775 and 1875

In my last post I discussed the Old Bailey Online which contains records of criminal trials at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913. Interested to see how the reporting of trials evolved I took a look at murder trials from July to December in each of 1675, 1775 and 1875.

The 1675 trials were recorded in 1-2 paragraphs clearly being summaries of evidence or assessments of the evidence as set out in this heart rending statement:

J. D. a little boy about 14 years of age, for murthering a Citizen and Silkman in Milk-street, which he confessed: Young in years but old in wickedness: yet had he been older he could not have been more sensible of his fact, nor more apprehensive of his approaching death, nothing more troubled him in the Prison, than that he was so dye so early, and that he had so soon imbru'd his hands in blood, this youth had not many words to express himself, but he supply'd that defect with his tears, weeping continually …..

A century later in 1775 there are actual transcripts with questions and answers recorded.

One trial involved a killing at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. Captain David Roche was acquitted of killing Captain David Fergusson. Probably the most interesting part of the report is the ornate wording of the indictment:

THE Jurors for our lord the King upon their oath present, That David Roche, late of London, gentleman , not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, on the 4th day of September, in the thirteenth year of the reign of our sovereign lord George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, and so forth, with force and arms, at the Cape of Good Hope, on the coast of Africa, in parts beyond the seas without England, feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice aforethought, did make an assault upon John Fergusson, then and there being in the peace of God and our said lord the King; and that the said David Roche with a certain drawn sword, made of iron and steel, of the value of five shillings, which he the said David Roche in his right hand then and there had and held, then and there feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice aforethought, did strike, stab, and thurst the said John Fergusson in and upon the upper part of the breast of him the said John Fergusson , above the left pap of him the said John Fergusson ; and that the said   David Roche , then and there feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice aforethought, did give to him the said John Fergusson, then and there with the drawn sword aforesaid, in and upon the said upper part of the breast of him the said John Fergusson, above the left pap of him the said John Fergusson, one mortal wound of the breadth of half an inch, and of the depth of five inches; of which said mortal wound the said John Fergusson then and there instantly died: and so the Jurors aforesaid, upon their oath aforesaid, do say, that the said David Roche, in manner and form aforesaid, then and there feloniously, wilfully, and of his malice aforethought, did kill and murder the said John Fergusson , against the peace of our lord the King, his crown and dignity.

By 1875 the lawyers representing the Crown and the Defence are set out in the heading to the report of the trial.

How a doctor examines a body in 1875 is considerably different from our current times:

Supposing a fall, the result of a push, I do not think that would cause such injuries as I saw on the head—it would be violence, but not sufficient to produce what I saw—it would depend on the force that came in contact with the body, there should have been some protruding body to have got under the lower jaw to produce what I describe, and I have no evidence to show me that there was anything of the kind—if she was expelled from the house and fell on the edge of a stone step, in my opinion that would not account for the abrasion and discoloration I observed on her head—I do not think that would account for what I saw—I made a careful examination—I did not open the body or head, my opinion was founded on the external appearances—I considered the external examination sufficient to enable me to account for the death—I am a surgeon of twenty years' experience, I have been an army surgeon, and have seen every kind of wound—I have been for many years in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, where we have every kind of injury—I was nine and a half years in the army, and have seen every possible kind of injury that could be inflicted by force—I describe the abrasion as a slight one—the ribbon was tight but not sufficiently tight to—cause strangulation—it was pinned in the ordinary way—I described it as tight before the Magistrate—I should say it fitted accurately round the neck, but not so as to produce any injurious effect—I cannot suppose that it could cause strangulation if she were drunk and rolling about the road, because on removing the ribbon there was no mark of tightening, which must have been there if it had produced any injurious effect—there must have been a regular mark left on the neck, but there was not—there would have been a line all round the neck if it had produced congestion of the upper part of the head—I did not smell her breath, there was no breath to smell, it was all gone—I had no means of ascertaining whether she had been in liquor.

No medical examiner today would be given any credence without conducting an internal as well as an external examination of the body.

As well juries at that time could, as part of the verdict, recommend mercy for the accused.

Currently case reports cover the judgment given by the trial judge. Transcripts of a trial must be ordered and paid for by a Defendant or the Crown wanting a copy. In Saskatchewan court staff will burn a DVD of taped trial evidence (there have been no court reporters taking down evidence in Saskatchewan for three decades) within 1-2 days of evidence being given.

I expect to go back periodically to the Old Bailey Online to sample other trials. It is an immense trove of information on English criminal trials.

Old Bailey Online

 

While looking at the New York Times Online Edition last week I found an article, Computing Crime and Punishment, involving records of trials held at the Old Bailey in London from 1674 to 1913 have now been archived online.

It is an amazing online research resource for English trials for over two centuries:

The corpus includes 121 million words describing 197,000 trials over 239 years. According to researchers, it represents the largest existing body of transcribed trial evidence for historical crime; it is, they say, the most detailed recording of real speech in printed form anywhere in the world.

The article discussed how academics using computers to read the over 2,000,000 words had studied the transformation in England of how crime was treated between the mid-18^th and mid-19^th Centuries.

The article sets out in 1765 you could be hung for stealing “a watch and a hat” and you could be hung for murder.

Within a century picking a pocket would usually involve a fine.

How England approached crime had changed:

In the early 1700s, violence was considered routine. A trial about theft, Dr. DeDeo said, might include testimony “in which people gouge out each other’s eyes, are covered in blood and get killed.” But by the 1820s, the justice system was focused more on containing violence — a development reflected not just in language but also in the professionalization of the justice system. “The changes occurred under the radar,” said Dr. Hitchcock, the British historian.

What was most interesting to me was learning of the immense record of English criminal trials.

Multiple means of searching trials are possible.

Some trials were deemed inappropriate to report as in Oscar Wilde’s misguided decision to prosecute his lover’s father for criminal libel:

336.   JOHN SHOLTO DOUGLAS, MARQUESS OF QUEENSBERRY , was indicted for unlawfully publishing a false, scandalous and malicious libel of and concerning    Oscar  Wilde. To this the defendant pleaded NOT GUILTY, and put in a plea of justification, stating the contents of the alleged libel to be true in substance and in fact, and that it was published for the public benefit.

SIR EDWARD CLARKE , Q.C., MESSRS. CHARLES MATHEWS and TRAVERS HUMPHREYS, Prosecuted; MESSRS. CARSON, Q.C., C. F. GILL and A. GILL, Defended.

The details of the case are unfit for publication.

At the close of the case for the prosecution, and whilst MR. CARSON was opening the defence, SIR EDWARD CLARKE interposed and stated that he had consulted with his client, and was prepared to accept a verdict of NOT GUILTY , which the JURY at once pronounced, adding that they considered that the publication was justified and for the public benefit.

If you want to read the transcripts from that trial they are available on line through the University of Missouri at Kansas City which has a website on the Trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895.

I have dipping into the Old Bailey Online to see how trials were recorded. I looked at murder trials for the same period of the year in 1675 and 1775 and 1875. My next post will provide my comments on the changing of how trials were reported during those 200 years and aspects of the trials.