A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

(1. - 1140.) A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny - Thirty years ago, as a young officer, Armand Gamache responded to the École Polytechnique in Montreal. A lone gunman had killed 14 and wounded 13 engineering students. All were women targeted for wanting to be engineers. He annually joins survivors, family members of victims and other first responders at the Polytechnique on graduation day. (The terrible event took place in 1989.)

Ten years ago Gamache flew hours northeast from Montreal. A woman was dead in a lake. On arrival Gamache met Guy Beauvoir, an insolent young Surete du Quebec officer with a “boulder” on his shoulder.

Gamache takes the responsibility to tell Clothilde Arsenault’s children, 13 year old Fiona, and 10 year old Sam of their mother’s death by murder. It is a harrowing scene made even more intense by Gamache’s recollection of the death of his parents at 9 years of age. 

After their death Gamache had not wanted anything around him to be changed until his grandmother told him:

“They’re here.” Zora touched his head. “And here.” She touched his heart. Then laid her thin hand over her own heart. A house can change. Things get lost or broken. But the love you keep inside you is safe, forever. They’re safe, inside you.”

Gamache is abruptly shaken to his core when he discovers what their mother had done to Fiona and Sam.

And I was swept into the story.

In the present day the village celebrates the graduation from the Polytechnique of two women engineers, Fiona and Harriet (niece of bookshop owner Myrna).

Sam comes to Three Pines for the celebration and Gamache is deeply unsettled. He is not often in such a state of mind.

A day later the residents are shaken when Myrna says that she and Billy Williams are thinking about moving from Three Pines. Clara, desperate to keep them, offers to have them live in her house and she will move to the loft in the bookstore. A series has gripped me when I felt a pang of regret at Myrna’s statement. In real life we have to deal with friends and relatives moving. I do not want it to happen in a favoured fictional village.

There is a secret to the bookstore that has been hidden for 160 years. There is a hidden room. The room was bricked and plastered over in the 19th Century. It is a locked room mystery as to its creation and that inside are several items and a copy of The Paston Treasure painting to which have been added images that range from the 1600’s to our time. A grimoire, a book of spells, from the 17th Century is also found in the room. 

The symbolism within the painting is from the minute to the massive. The symbolic power of the spells is intense. The consequences for those who create symbols and invoke spells has its own symbolism.

As the room, painting and book are examined murder is discovered and a wicked devious plot unfolds. There is mystery within mystery within mystery.

Penny has used history from 100 to 350 years ago to great effect in the series. In A World of Curiosities she once again links events long past with Three Pines.

The book has several references that pick up or refer to events in earlier books or in Penny’s life. An example involves holding hands at death as Penny held Michael’s hand when he died. You need not have read the full series but, for those who have, the references add depth to the book. 

Evil and goodness fill the book. They are not addressed as abstract concepts. Penny says the book is about forgiveness. I found it more about trust and revenge. My next post will address “goodness” in the book and real life.

The ending confounded me. It was too much Hollywood but also contained profound moments. I raced through the final 100 pages. I prefer Penny forgoing Hollywood. A World of Curiosities could have been more than a very good book. (Jan. 9/23)

****

Penny, Louise – (2005) - Still Life; (2006) - Dead Cold (Tied for 3^rd Best fiction of 2006); (2007) - The Cruelest Month; (2009) - The Murder Stone (Tied for 4th Best fiction of 2009); (2010) - The Brutal Telling; (2011) - Bury Your Dead (Best Fiction of 2011); (2011) - A Trick of the Light; (2012) - The Beautiful Mystery (Part I) and The Beautiful Mystery (Part II); (2013) - "P" is for Louise Penny - Movie Producer and Review of the Movie of Still Life; (2013) - How the Light Gets In; (2014) - The Long Way Home; (2014) - The Armand Gamache Series after 10 Mysteries - Part I and Part II; (2015) - The Nature of the Beast (Part I) and The Nature of the Beast (Part II); (2016) - A Great Reckoning - The Academy and Comparisons and The Map; (2016) - Louise Penny and Michael Whitehead Holding Hands; (2017) - Glass Houses - Happiness and Unhappiness and Getting the Law Wrong; (2019) - Kingdom of the Blind and Irreconcilable Dispositions; (2019) - A Better Man; (2020) - All the Devils are Here and Relationship Restaurants in Fiction and Real Life and Reading of the Marais Simultaneously; (2021) - The Madness of Crowds and Responding to Evil and Considering "People"; (2021) - Three Pines - The Amazon Prime Series; (2022) - Season One of Three Pines

The One From the Other by Philip Kerr

(34. - 1139.) The One From the Other by Philip Kerr - What a surreal opening. It is 1937. Berlin private detective, Bernie Gunther, is with Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem and Cairo, He is working for and against Eichmann. I was reminded of Germania where former Jewish police officer, Richard Oppenheimer, worked with Hauptsturmfuhrer Vogler, an SS officer, to find a serial killer. Bernie is also spying on Eichman for the Gestapo.

The story moves to 1949 with Bernie, now living in Dachau in his father-in-law’s shabby hotel. Visitors are rare to a town infamous as the location of a concentration camp. His father-in-law has committed suicide and Bernie’s wife, Kirsten, is in a psychiatric hospital. It was a surprise to see Bernie, a long time Berliner, in Dachau though Kirsten and Bernie had been struggling to get by in the devastation of post-war Berlin.

Kirsten dies and Bernie is alone. No spouse. No children. No colleagues. No friends. Having survived the Eastern Front and a prisoner of war camp he still says every day is a bonus. 

Bernie returns to being a private detective. He quickly returns to searching for missing people. There are millions missing in Germany. He finds a niche in finding people connected to Nazis involved in the Holocaust. 

He finds himself torn between wanting retribution for murdering Nazis and wanting no more involvement in killing. Asked if he has become squeamish he says:

“It could be,” I said. “If I am it’s because I’ve seen men hanged and I’ve seen them shot. I’ve seen them blown to pieces and starved to death, and toasted with a flamethrower, and crushed underneath the tracks of a Panzer tank. It’s a funny thing, but after awhile you realize you’ve seen too much. Things you can’t pretend you didn’t see because they’re always on the insides of your eyelids when you go to sleep at night. And you tell yourself that you’d rather not see any more. Not if you can help it. Which of course you can because none of the old excuses are worth a damn anymore. And it’s simply not good enough to say we can’t help and orders are orders and expect people to swallow that the way they used to. So yes, I suppose I am a little squeamish. After all, just look where ruthless has gotten us.”

I was reminded of the consequences of WW I affecting fictional sleuths such as Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear), Ian Rutledge (Charles Todd), John Madden (Rennie Airth) and Bess Crawfored (Charles Todd). None of them can forget their war experiences.

Bernie's old comrades, whether regular SS or Waffen SS soldiers, maintain their bonds of loyalty. Bernie was sent East in 1941 as a member of an auxiliary police battalion. As set out in my posts on German Police and the Holocaust after reading A German Requiem (links are below), Bernie avoided joining “the special action” killing units of the SS and served in intelligence and investigations during the war. Yet there was an action on the Eastern Front which he led that haunted him. 

With numerous SS members still seeking to escape Europe the “Comradeship” reacts viciously against those probing for information  on old comrades.

The war made Bernie even more cynical than he was as a pre-war Berlin police officer and then a private detective. He has no faith, no confidence in government, no trust to go with the other “no’s” set out above.

Bernie is as tart tongued as ever whether emotionally up or down.

While battered in the war what has endured is his integrity. He will not compromise his principles. Integrity was little valued during Nazi times and is in short supply in post-war Europe.

Too often to his detriment, Bernie’s innate curiosity drives him to find out what happened, especially when an investigation has unanswered issues. He acknowledges he is a dedicated “sniffer” pursuing information.

He learns of SS experiments that sought to develop a vaccine for malaria. The Nazi methods were repulsive. American experiments were little better.

Deception is all around Bernie. I sensed some of the deceit but not the layers Kerr created. There is a brilliant scene where Bernie, in the guise of another man, is interviewed by police searching for Bernie. 

As the truth is revealed Bernie is enraged. He seeks vengeance. I was dismayed expecting a Hollywood finale. Integrity be damned. To my surprise and appreciation it was a subtler, more effective, ending. The conclusion reflected Bernie’s distaste for ruthlessness. Kerr is a talented writer with a deep understanding of the complexities of German life during and after the Third Reich. The mysteries he creates are also brilliant.

****

Kerr, Philip – (2004) - Dark Matter; (2016) - March Violets; (2016) - The Pale Criminal; (2016) - A German Requiem; (2016) - Berlin Police and the Holocaust - Part I and Part II;  (2016) - Comparing Serial Killers in Three Totalitarian States;

Bill's Best of 2022 - Non-Fiction and Most Interesting

My annual double dose of Bill’s Best of the year for the categories of Non-Fiction and Most Interesting. The latter is a list of books that were not favourites of the year in Fiction or Non-Fiction but had qualities that I found intriguing.

2022 was not a great reading year for me. I read few non-fiction books. Thus this year I have chosen 2 instead of 3 books for Best of Non-Fiction.

**** 

NON-FICTION

1.) Defense Lawyer by James Patterson and Benjamin Wallace (review and supplementary review) - After representing people accused of criminal offences for almost 5 decades, I am prejudiced in favour of biographies of defense (defence in Canada) lawyers. 

Barry Slotnick represented accused in New York City from Bullets (a mafia leader’s dog) to Bernhard Goetz (the “subway vigilante”).

Impeccably dressed in $2,500 suits he strode into courtrooms with a presence that claimed the room. He personally carefully prepared the facts for trials. He relied on others to develop the legal arguments to apply to the facts.

In the book the focus is on his two most highly publicized trials. 

In the RICO, racketeering, trial of John “the Teflon Don” Gotti case, he led the defense team while representing a co-accused of Gotti. There were flamboyant moments and gripping evidence in the trial. 

Goetz’s trial was even more of a circus with Slotnick wrestling with a client who loved the limelight and talking about his case.

Patterson and Wallace kept the narrative driving.

2.) Kleptopia by Tom Burgis (review and libel case) - I had but the barest knowledge of the “Trio” - Alexander “Sasha” Machkevitch from Kyrgyzstan, Patokh Chokiev from Uzbekistan and Alijan Ibragimov of Uihghur descent - before reading this book.

They moved vast sums of money from central Asia and Africa through London. Burgis provides fascinating details on how, aided by Western bankers and lawyers, they shifted the money to the West.

Through the book:

I learned the perils of modern black money. Between Western governments constantly investigating and rapacious unreliable colleagues there is constant personal danger. Best to spend the loot.

In a second post I discussed a libel suit against the author. While his defence was successful I was not surprised he did not answer a letter I wrote to him about the book.

MOST INTERESTING

1.) The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizu - My first Japanese locked room mystery, set in 1937, was an excellent read. 

Yokomizu provided a “locked room” that I never figured out. Not a surprise there.

He also introduced an interesting sleuth:

Kosuke Kindaichi, a famed young private detective, is summoned. He is an “unremarkable” looking young man in his mid-20’s - “he seemed stunningly indifferent to his appearance”. Formerly a drug addict he applies “reasoning and logic” to the evidence collected by the police. The narrator associates him with a fictional English detective.

What made it Most Interesting were the references to real crime fiction:

In an intriguing development for mystery book lovers, there is an extensive collection of crime fiction, including locked room mysteries, in the main house. Saburo, who is Kenzo’s younger brother, has assembled the books. Most remarkably, Kindaichi, uses the collection to help him solve the case.

2.) The Silence of the White City by Eva Garcia Saenz and translated by Nick Caistor - I infrequently read crime fiction featuring serial killers but The Silence of the White City was compelling.

The scenario began with a series of killings 20 years earlier:

The first victims had been a pair of newborns, then a boy and girl each 5, then a boy and girl aged 10 and then a boy and girl of 15. 

The killings have begun again in the Basque city of Vitoria with a young man and woman of 20.

I was Most Interested when I learned that bees had been diabolically used to kill the latest victims.

3.) To Those Who Killed Me by J.T. Siemens - In his first novel Siemens creates an amazing sleuth in Sloane Donovan:

The book is at its best exploring the tumultuous Sloane. Constantly on the edge of dysfunction, nightmares of her family past lurking in her “pinballing” mind, she is never at rest but she is resolute and resourceful. 

She finds her friend, Geri Harp, murdered and has to find out “why”. While now working as a fitness trainer she had been a Vancouver police officer.

I summed up the book:

Wild it was and glad I was to have experienced it. The pages raced by in the exhilarating feeling of a great read. No drug or alcohol needed.

3.) The Searcher by Tana French - I have seen many recommendations for French and took this book upon a 34 day cruise last November and early December. It was a good choice.

Former Chicago Police detective, Cal Hooper, is seeking a quiet life in Western Ireland. He finds himself drawn into a quest for a missing teenage boy.

It is a very good story which become one of my Most Interesting because of French’s portrayal of Ireland and the Irish:

French’s lyrical descriptions of the west Irish countryside, its people and their speech drew me into their world. From afar the image of Ireland is of a land of soft greens and misty landscapes. French equally evokes the Ireland of mountains and rocky fields.

I am looking forward to a more productive reading year in 2023. I will be starting with some good books from Christmas.

Bill's Best of 2022 Fiction

I continue to assemble my Best of lists at the end of the calendar year. This post has Bill’s Best of 2022 Fiction. My next post will have Bill’s Best of 2022 Non-Fiction and a personal category of Bill’s Most Interesting of 2022. The lists do include books published earlier than 2022.

For the best of 2022 fiction:

1.) Going to Beautiful by Anthony Bidulka - I have long been a fan of Tony’s books. I especially enjoyed each book in the Russell Quant series. In 2004 his first in the series, Amuse Bouche, was my Most Interesting book of the year. The next year Flight of Aquavit was my choice for 2nd best Fiction. For 2022 Going to Beautiful is my favourite work of fiction. Anthony is the first Saskatchewan writer to be Bill’s No. 1 fiction read of the year. 

In the letter forming my review I described the book as his “masterpiece”. It is a great book that evokes rural Saskatchewan emotionally and physically while providing an intriguing mystery.

I then had the good fortune to be able to attend his book launch in Saskatoon. It is the only time a pair of socks has become a vivid memory for me. As set out in my post, a link is below, the heel came off one of Tony’s shoes so he strode upon the stage in striking pink socks. More memorable was seeing Tony and his mother, Johanna, at the signing table after the launch.

The book has gained major attention through the year. Well done Tony!

2.) Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby - The story of ex-cons, Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee Jenkins, avenging the deaths of their gay sons, Isiah and Derek, was riveting. Both fathers had deep regrets over their treatment of their sons who were gay.

I set out in my review:

Each man lives with the burden of not accepting their sons as gay and letting that disdain govern the relationship. They desperately wish they had given up their prejudices.

Ike weeps alone:

Tears for his son. Tears for his wife. Tears for the little girl they had to raise. Tears for who they were and what they all had lost. Each drop felt like it was slicing his face open like a razorblade.

There is graphic violence. Yet it is not an oxymoron to say the violence was thoughtful.

3.) Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby - Another Canadian book was my choice for 3rd best Fiction of 2022. Helen Thorpe was my favourite new sleuth. She is a skilled butler who effectively uses her training to solve the mystery of the death of her former employer, Edna Todd, What was thought to be suicide was murder.

The setting at a New Age retreat centre on an island just off Vancouver Island was fascinating.

There are excellent secondary characters.

Her butler friends, Murray and Gavin, are suave clever butlers. All three butlers reminded me of the wonderful butlers Sharon and I have had on Oceania ships. A link to a post on butlers is below together with a link to an exchange with the author.

Jenson Riley and Wayfarer are amazing as the instructors of the Arranging Your Inner Flower and Devi Dance courses. I would not have imagined you could gain so much inner knowledge from flowers and dance.

It is a skilled writer who can make a sleuth in an unlikely profession for crime investigation into a memorable character.

If you have not read any of the above, good reading awaits you.

****

Stellar Book Launch for Going to Beautiful

Butlers in Fiction and Real Life and Exchange with Susan

Season One of Three Pines

Watching the series, Three Pines, on Amazon Prime brought instant comparisons with the mental images of the village and characters of the books by Louise Penny.

Seeing Alfred Molina as Armand Gamache, even before he spoke, I thought this man is Gamache. In the movie, Still Life, Nathaniel Parker portrayed Gamache. Parker never felt right as set out in my review of the movie. (A link is below)

While Parker’s English accent is explained by studying at Cambridge it never felt right. Molina equally speaks of being a student at Cambridge but lacks the English accent.

Molina is a solid man in late middle age with a presence about him befitting the Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Quebec.

Guy Beauvoir is the striving young detective of the books.

Agent Yvette Nichol is a somewhat young agent, inexperienced, even bungling. In the books she is malicious. Sarah Booth who portrays Nichol described the new Nichol as awkward and eager” in an interview on the movieweb.com website. 

Unlike the books Isobel Lacoste is indigenous. One of the changes for the T.V. series is the significant presence of indigenous people and a contemporary indigenous subplot. 

There is a shortage of flaws about the four detectives. Only Beauvoir continues to struggle with alcohol.

Among the villagers Clare Coulter as Ruth Zardo is the very image of the eccentric poet spouting obscenities as she carries Rosa, her duck, everywhere. The visual image of the duck sharing her bathtub was unforgettable.

Gabri is a little slimmer and Olivier a touch shorter than my mental images.

Myrna is not as hefty as in the books.

The village houses and shops are what I visualized from the books.

I was startled by the Church. In my mind it was a modest wooden structure. On T.V., it is a large brick church with a soaring spire. While large for the village of the 21st Century many towns and villages have large churches from 100 years ago.

The three majestic pines dominating the centre of the village in the books are more modest in the series.

Through the 8 episodes there is a continuing story of the search for a missing indigenous woman, Blue Two Rivers. It is a departure from the books.

When I wrote my review of the movie 9 years ago I thought it would have been better in a mini-series. Now it is in a mini-series. It works better in this format yet I have some “buts”.    

A murder is solved every two episodes. The first three murders are drawn from the books. I thought the investigations would have been better done over 3 episodes. 

I did not find the Indian Residential School story fitted well. It was tacked on to the murder and missing persons investigations.

The resolution for Two Rivers was very predictable.

The subtleties and complications in village relationships are barely developed. Unlike the books we see little direct contact between the residents of Three Pines. Unless they are interacting with one of the detectives we learn little of their lives.

Molina is riveting as Gamache. He is engaging, thoughtful, humorous and forthright. You want him to be the man investigating the death of a loved one.

Molina moves the series from average to very good. It was too much to ask that it rival the brilliance of the books. At the same time, my wife Sharon, who has listened to several Gamache books and listened to the series with me, thought it was excellent. I expect I am too demanding. Reading the books can be a disadvantage to drama in the T.V. series when you can tell some of the T.V. plots come from the books. 

I am hopeful a second season can be stronger. As of the end of December of 2022 when I am writing this post Amazon has not announced if there will be a second season. Should there be another year I will try harder to let the T.V. series stand on its own and not compare it continuously to the books.

****

Penny, Louise – (2005) - Still Life; (2006) - Dead Cold (Tied for 3^rd Best fiction of 2006); (2007) - The Cruelest Month; (2009) - The Murder Stone (Tied for 4th Best fiction of 2009); (2010) - The Brutal Telling; (2011) - Bury Your Dead (Best Fiction of 2011); (2011) - A Trick of the Light; (2012) - The Beautiful Mystery (Part I) and The Beautiful Mystery (Part II); (2013) - "P" is for Louise Penny - Movie Producer and Review of the Movie of Still Life; (2013) - How the Light Gets In; (2014) - The Long Way Home; (2014) - The Armand Gamache Series after 10 Mysteries - Part I and Part II; (2015) - The Nature of the Beast (Part I) and The Nature of the Beast (Part II); (2016) - A Great Reckoning - The Academy and Comparisons and The Map; (2016) - Louise Penny and Michael Whitehead Holding Hands; (2017) - Glass Houses - Happiness and Unhappiness and Getting the Law Wrong; (2019) - Kingdom of the Blind and Irreconcilable Dispositions; (2019) - A Better Man; (2020) - All the Devils are Here and Relationship Restaurants in Fiction and Real Life and Reading of the Marais Simultaneously; (2021) - The Madness of Crowds and Responding to Evil and Considering "People"; (2021) - Three Pines - The Amazon Prime Series

Deliberate Cruelty by Roseanne Montillo

(33. - 1138.) Deliberate Cruelty by Roseanne Montillo - Ann Woodward was born in 1915 as Angeline Luceic Crowell and grew up in poverty in Kansas. Her prospects were grim but she was blessed with great beauty and great determination to succeed. She renamed herself Ann Eden. Given a chance to model she seized the opportunity to move to New York City.

William “Billy” Woodward Jr., born in 1920, grew up as the privileged heir to a banking fortune. He was indulged and pampered by his mother, Elsie, and older sisters. His distant father, William Woodward Sr., was pre-occupied with race horses and banking.

Truman Streckfus Persons was born in the Deep South in 1924 and spent his early years in Monroville, Alabama. He was disliked because he was short, effeminate and smart. His mother, Lillie Mae, was another beautiful woman.

Ann and Lillie Mae sought to use their beauty to marry up into wealth and security. Ann had the better approach in establishing herself and determining who had real wealth before taking a spouse. Lillie Mae married young at 16 wrongly assuming her husband, Arch, had money because his family was well-to-do.

Shock, frustration and anger dominated Elsie as she contemplated the marriage of Billy to Ann, a nightclub dancer who performed wearing a bunny costume.

It is no surprise that the marriage does not go well. Ann might have made it work had Billy been interested. Their marriage was volatile with frequent emotional confrontations and occasional physical violence. They should have divorced but neither was ready to end the marriage.

Lillie Mae made her way to New York City with determination to rival Ann. She becomes Nina and finds a well-to-do admirer in Joseph Garcia Capone. They marry and she summons Truman from Alabama.

Becoming Truman Capote, the young southerner survives his teenage years and finds success as a writer in his early 20’s. He adopts a lifestyle of night-time writing with pencils in bed and sleeping to noon. He is openly homosexual in the 1940’s.

By 1955 Ann is fed up with the facade that is her marriage and Billy is talking about divorcing her.

In late October of 1955 the Woodward’s were at their weekend home in Long Island. There is tension about because of a neighbourhood prowler

After returning from a party Ann is roused from sleep, grabs the shotgun by her bed and goes to the door of her bedroom. She shoots a naked Billy who has left his bedroom. How dark it was is uncertain.

Ann testifies before a grand jury which refuses to indict her. She is forced into exile.

I was a touch surprised that the sub-title included the phrase “the murder of the century” when Ann was never charged. 

Truman was fascinated by the killing and bitter about Ann making derogatory remarks to him when they encountered each other in Europe in 1956. He never forgot and never forgave.

From 1959 through 1966 he was preoccupied with the killings of the Cutter family in Kansas. He gained fame from the resulting book In Cold Blood.

For his next book Capote dreams of writing Answered Prayers, a novel on New York society in which a socialite murders her husband. He expects it to be his magnum opus rivaling Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. He never completes the book.

Truman was well known for his non-fiction not always being factual. Montillo quotes him from a Cosmopolitan magazine article:

“I just call it making something come alive’. In other words, a form of art. Art and truth are not necessarily compatible bedfellows.”

Truman cultivated beautiful wealthy socialites. He referred to them as his swans and had pet names for his flock.

In 1975 Truman sold a story, La Côte Basque 1965, to Esquire magazine. It is a very thinly disguised version of Ann shooting Billy. 

Shortly before publication a “frenzied” Ann committed suicide. Truman had murdered with words but felt no remorse. 

Had he limited his bile to Ann I expect little would have changed in his world but his venom included the swans who had unwisely confided in him. Their responses shock him.

The book is most alive when discussing Truman. Celebrity gossip is eternally fascinating. I wished there had been more. I raced through the final chapters of the book.

Cruelty to vulnerable women is of no consequence to Truman. Had he the generosity to forgive slights he might not have had a twisted soul.

He could not understand why they would not want their secrets revealed when his life was open. He never understood the distinction between private and published gossip. 

Deliberate Cruelty is a good book. Montillo is clearly a gifted researcher reflecting her work as a research librarian. She writes narrative well, moving the stories of Ann, Billy and Truman steadily forward. Life was interesting, even dramatic around them. I would have been glad had she provided her opinions on the events and personalities of the characters.

Maxine Clarke 10 Years Gone

 

The lovely image from the top of Maxine's blog, Petrona

Yesterday, I was reminded by Margot Kinberg through her blog that our friend and fellow blogger, Maxine Clarke, has been gone for 10 years. Margot posted a lovely letter to Maxine (here is a link - https://margot-kin-berg.com/2022/12/17/ten-years-have-got-behind-you/). It expressed my thoughts.

Maxine's memory has endured. For a time fellow bloggers posted at Petrona Remembered reviews of books they thought Maxine would enjoy.

More lasting has been the Petrona Award established in her memory. It honours the best in translated Scandinavian fiction. I expect it will continue for many years.

Reading Margot's post sent me back to the post I did after Maxine died. I decided to re-post it below.

I miss Maxine. I am glad I had a chance to connect with her through blogging.

Rest in peace dear Maxine.

****

I have given eulogies, written reflections, presided at prayer services, prepared obituaries and expressed my sympathy in letters. Each time it was for someone I knew physically. Tonight I think about a virtual friend, Maxine Clarke, sadly gone.

I wish I could have met her but do not regret not having spent time in her physical presence. She was a friend from the internet. The web has provided new opportunities to make friends around the world.

As I ventured into this new world I soon encountered Maxine. Her formidable knowledge of crime fiction was a touch intimidating for the depth and breadth of her reading was striking.

She was generous in acknowledging fellow bloggers. When she read and reviewed the books of Gail Bowen and Anthony Bidulka from Saskatchewan she always included a reference to my blog and kindly acknowledged she was reading them because of me.

My most direct contact and enduring memories of Maxine come from her comments on my blog. After coming to understand her great learning of crime fiction it was with pride I would see a comment from Maxine on one of my posts.

Many comments are quite general in nature. Maxine was never perfunctory. She had considered the post and reached a conclusion and expressed her opinion clearly. I looked forward to Maxine’s comments.

Her last comment on my blog on Taken by Robert Crais reflected her style:

I agree with your views on this book, Bill. It is certainly a page-turner but there is little character or charm that characterises some of the Elvis books. I thought it went off a bit once Joe went out into the desert. Somewhat of a book for those in love with weapons!

Her knowledge of the genre is readily apparent in her comment to a post I wrote about the first twenty years of Harry Bosch:

This is a great post, Bill. It is fascinating to read your views on the evolution of Bosch. I think this series did go through a bit of a "low" a few years ago, around the time of "Void Moon". It was still pretty good, but not quite up to its own standard. I think that at that time, Connelly was trying to make Bosch a more rounded man via his romances, but those have failed and I think his solution of the daughter as a main character works really well. I know quite a few men who are pretty tough in their professional lives but change completely where their children are concerned.

I agree with you about Bosch as the classic "driven" detective. As Margot has mentioned, in the earlier books (immediately after The Black Echo but before he broke off with The Poet) I think that Bosch found out, or tried to, about his parents. The father theme came out much later also, in The Lincoln Lawyer. As a result of that experience, he became even more alone and isolated professionally, locked into his long-running feud with Irvin Irving. I think your point about Bosch now playing the bureaucracy, instead of simply head-butting with it, is a very astute one. I hadn't picked that up but it rings true.

In crime fiction there is usually some element that I find lets a book down. Usually it is the resolution of the crime plot, which is often forced and unconvincing. Another common failing is the "dramatic ending" with shootouts, hero/heroine in peril (having not called for back up), etc. Connelly avoids both these pitfalls, I think - he does not usually go for the "over the top" elements. I agree that his villains can be weak as characters but personally I don't like reading too much from the "sick mind of the villain" point of view, so I am glad he does not go in for that. One book where I think Connelly did very well on the balance between horrible crimes and not being gratuitious is The Scarecrow.

Overall, Connelly is my favourite crime fiction author and has been for years. He has not let his readers down with fame, but continues to deliver exciting and "different" books, while, as you point out, developing characters very well over a series.

Not many people are mourned round the world. The posts expressing the grief of the crime fiction bloggers span the globe.

I respected Maxine’s knowledge, appreciated her skills with words, admired most of her opinions and am saddened by her death. My virtual world is diminished by her loss.

My sympathy to her husband and family.