Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Ruth Rendell’s newest Inspector Wexford mystery takes us back and forth through the likeable detective’s career.

Wexford has never told anyone of his suspicions that dog-loving entrepreneur Eric Targo is a murderer. He has little evidence to support his theory, beyond his suspicions of the man, and the fact that Targo gives Wexford an unnerving stare.  There are more apparently motiveless murders whenever Targo is around, and Wexford becomes increasingly convinced they are down to Targo.

When Targo returns to the area and another murder occurs, Wexford finally confides his suspicions to his partner, Mike Burden, who dismisses him and his ideas as fantasy, in the same way Wexford has dismissed Burden’s wife of the belief a local Pakistani family is arranging a marriage for their only daughter.

How these two plot lines converge, and eventually involve Wexford’s  wife Dora, are examples of Rendell’s fine sense of story and plot. And along the way, you will find out what ‘the box’ signifies.

This is the 22nd Wexford novel, and if you’ve never read one of Rendell’s  novels, stand-alones or from the Wexford series, start right here and you will learn all you have to know about her compelling protagonist.

Along with PD James and Frances Fyfield, (whom are all friends) Rendell forms the triumvirate of English mystery writers who only get better with age.

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If you’re a lover of crime novels (count me in) and especially those with a heavy emphasis on the psychology of the characters (ditto) you’ll find this list interesting.  Andrew Klavan, author of True Crime, Don’t Say a Word, and the recently published Empire of Lies, has compiled what he believes to be the top five most engrossing crime novels from1866 to1992.  Here are his choices, along with his {edited by me} reasoning:

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Former student Raskolnikov conceives the idea that an “extraordinary man” should be free of socially constructed moral constraints. Working off that theory, he brutally ax-murders a pawnbroker and her sister–and discovers, to his horror, that he has violated not a mere social construct but the unfathomable Moral Law Within. His escape from the crime scene is as suspenseful as anything in Hitchcock. The scenes of his psychological duel with the canny police detective Porfiry Petrovich have been imitated endlessly yet never matched. But if Dosteovsky had written only the heart-wrenching scene in which the prostitute Sonya reads to the murderer from the Gospels, he could have retired after a life’s work well done. {I read this in high school but had forgotten its wonderful scenes. I may have to dig through it again.}

2. The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes: This is a wonderful read and a forgotten genre classic. Two retired servants, The Buntings, find their respectable middle-class London life about to collapse into poverty. Then the same night a serial killer called The Avenger strike again, the mysterious Mr. Sleuth arrives to rent a room. Is it possible their new lodger and the murderous Avenger are one and the same? What’s so mesmerizing here is not just the suspect, but the way Mrs. Bunting’s desperation to hold onto her middle-class respectability compels her to become his tacit accomplice. {I’d never heard of this one but will check it out now.}

3. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain: The gold standard for American noir, this is also a stark, incisive portrayal of human desire stripped of every spiritual gloss. Depression-era drifter Frank Chambers takes one look at diner waitress Cora and falls for her hard. The two want desperately to be together, but there’s the small matter of Cora’s husband. While most of Cain’s work were made into films, such as Double Indemnity, and often improved, this is not the case here. The story is still most powerful in its book form. The murder scene remains shocking. The sex scenes will put starch in your collar with nary a foul word. But it’s the depiction of petty weakness and selfishness as the motivation for unconscionable wrongdoing that’s uncomfortably seductive and reminiscent of our own lives. {Never read the book, just saw the two movie versions. I’ll have to read this now, though.  PS: The title comes from Cain’s own desperation of  the postman’s rings when dropping rejection letters.}

4. The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham: Sweet-natured war widow Meg Elginbrodde is about to marry a self-made millionaire when she receives photos suggesting her first husband migth still be alive. One of Allingham’s Albert Campion mysteries, her usual cast of appealing characters is overshadowed by the murderous treasure-hunter Jack Havoc.  He is the embodiment of a post-WWII atheistic materialism that Allingham understood to be nothing more than a new kind of superstition. Havoc is a remarkably original invention, the prototype of the soulless but philosophical killing machines who populate modern thriller novels and films. His final confrontation with the consequences of his worldview is deep, moving and spectacular. {This is a different twist from Allingham’s pleasant Campion series; reading it you feel the depth of her awareness.}

5. The Secret History by Donna Tartt: I love the scope and vision of this novel, its precise characterization and its beautiful prose. Richard Papen hopes to leave his working-class origins behind when he enrolls at an exclusive college in Vermont. Accepted into an elegant clique that centers on a charismatic Classics professor, the group’s immersion in ancient culture leads them to a moment of Bacchic ecstasy and murder. Erudite and compelling, the book is at once a riveting crime story and, I suspect, a meditation on the famous snowstorm scene in Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain;” a coming-to-terms with the cornerstone of human savagery on which even the greatest civilization stands. {My friend Melissa gave me this one birthday and it was engrossing and hard-hitting.}

Readers: Which ones have you read? Which ones will you give a try?

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Sue Grafton has another successful Kinsey Milhone mystery as she starts the race to the end of the alphabet. Only five books from the end of series, Grafton tells Writers Digest in the February issue that it hasn’t gotten any easier for her.  Grafton started the series in 1982 with A is for Alibi and has produced a new novel about every two years.

She describes the journals she writes for each of her novels, calling them “long, whiney conversations I have with myself about what I’m doing.” She says she thrown out far too many ideas that she decides would not be workable, hoping for inspiration to strike. She also tries very hard to keep the voice she calls “Ego” from taking over her work, preferring to let the voice she’s named “Shadow” to write. “Shadow knows how to write books. . .Shadow is that still, quiet voice in your soul that tells you if you’re on track or off track.”

This newest book has Kinsey’s curiosity roused when a young man presents himself in her office, claiming to have seen two men burying an abducted child when he was a youth. Although Kinsey finds out this fellow is known to stretch the truth, enough of his story checks out to involve her. And she’s off and running. . .

The book has tons of twists and turns, enough to satisfy any Milhone fan.  Grafton says her husband is her first reader, and this is his favorite of the novels. “He loves this book.”

I found it interesting that Grafton admits that this series was born during a brutal divorce, when she imagined various ways to murder said ex!  She found a wealth of ideas to start Kinsey on her adventures.

Grafton says each book has gotten harder and harder to write.  Even as she admits one of her favorite sayings is “trust the process,”  she says she has to keep reminding herself that  writing “should be a form of play.”

As an author awaiting the release of my own first novel, I take great comfort in Grafton’s words:

I keep saying the fate of the free world does not hang in the balance. Even if I write a book that fails, nothing will happen. I’ll be mortified and embarrassed, but lives will not be lost over this.”

Amen to that!

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Author Nina Romano is a prolific and wonderful storyteller.  She has traveled extensively and lived in Italy for twenty years.  She also happens to be a loving, sweet lady and a fantastic cook!

Nina has brought her observations from the coffee shops she visits, along with deeper poems of the heart, to her new collection Coffeehouse Meditations, now available from Kitsune Books.  Author John Dufresne (Florida Power and Light) says: “Reading Coffeehouse Meditations is a joy and an exhilaration. This is work that matters.”

Nina is a member of the Screw Iowa Writers Group, of which Auntie M is also a proud member, and I can attest to the high quality of these poems.  There is something for everyone, from her intense imagery to her exotic use of language. Nina’s poems make you think, bring you places, tell their truths, and leave you wanting more. This is Nina’s second book of poetry and she’s already working on the third.  Her first book ,Cooking Lessons (www.Rock-Press.com), where Nina’s love of food will take you on a whirlwind of Italian life, food and language. As Campbell McGrath said about Cooking Lessons: “…read this book right now, experience it all, and thank Nina Romano for creating a poetic banquet rich enough to feed a tonof hungry readers.”

Auntie M is going to give away a free copy of Coffeehouse Meditations to one lucky random winner between now and next Friday, so leave a comment and tell me why you want to be in the drawing!

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