Cute and Sweet "Cozy" Mystery: SPOON TO BE DEAD by Dana Mentink

I review (and savor) a lot of dark mysteries. Well, the darkness often comes with the nature of crime! But not always ...

Suppose you owned a darling little ice cream shop in, let's say, Oregon -- and winter was around the corner. Would you be worried? Trinidad Jones surely is, as she anticipates a drop in the sales of her very creative specialties. So to make sure the Shimmy and Shake stays in business and her unusual but sweet employees get paid, she'll compete for a catering slot: a holiday party on a steamboat owned by Leonard Pinkerton, who can certainly afford her prices.

In this third in her delicious "Shake Shop Mystery" series, Dana Mentink offers a set-up that's far more complex than just the sugary side of an ice cream business, though. Trinidad is one of three former wives of the charming but cheating Gabe Bigley, who's currently in jail, since his fraudulent dealings extend to more than just these women. Against the odds, the three of them have become friends and all live in the same town. (That's the only thing you really need to know from the two earlier books in the series.)

So when Gabe, apparently paroled, stumbles through the door of the ice cream shop with blood on his clothing and says something about having killed someone—then passes out—the immediate disruption hits a lot of lives all at once. Moments later, the victim turns out to be Trinidad's friend and ally, Oscar.

The day had started out with such promise. Now Oscar had been run down, her ex-husband was involved, and there was an orphaned parrot nesting above her rib cage. Oh my giddy aunt indeed, Trinidad thought as they returned to the Shimmy and Shake Shop.

Mentink offers a network of friendships, sleuthing, and potentially thwarted romance as the small-town mystery leaps toward a dramatic finale. This is a classic "cozy" mystery, packed with as many flavors of sweetness as a banana split. Add it to a stack of books for light and often giggling distraction on a winter afternoon.

Most Unusual Serial Killer Novel Yet: DAUGHTER OF ASHES by Ilaria Tuti

November is almost done; today's unexpected glimpses opf blazing blue skies hint at the brighter, coler weather ahead here in Vermont. Winter is a time to be selective, to pick up only the best mysteries and crime fiction, ones that will pin us into snug reading rooms and give us heartfelt potential growth.

Serial killer crime fiction often settles into one of two categories: either bloody and horrific and terrifying (those Hannibal Lecter types), or hard-pressed beahvioral analysis against a ticking clock (some Jeffery Deaver books, and every episode of Criminal Minds).

Italian author Ilaria Tuti, in a powerful and flowing translation from Ekin Oklap, concludes a remarkable crime fiction / police procedural trilogy with DAUGHTER OF ASHES. Her protagonist is police superintendent Teresa Battaglia, who battled her way to a Northern Italy superintendent slot despite her gender, holding a firm grip on a department of mostly men and using her personal losses as added incentives to break open cases.

As Teresa arrives at a maximum security prison, her staunch ally Inspector Massimo Marini awaits her. The pair haven't seen each other in two weeks, since they broke the case featured in book 2 of the series, The Sleeping Nymph. Their presence at the prison is because serial murderer Giacomo Mainardi wants Teresa's help and has called for her to come see him. After all, he'll never be out of prison—where she helped confine him 27 years earlier.

The narrative alternates between "Today" and "Twenty-seven years ago." Tuti maintains fierce suspense in both timelines, and each offers a poignant sense of loss: Discovering how much Teresa lost in the past won't happen until there's a workable explanation of what Giacomo is up to now, however. And Marini isn't just there to back up his superintendent—Teresa wants him to learn how the brilliantly insightful Giacomo can assess and attack emotionally. It is, after all, the core of how he's chosen his victims and what the coded clues he lays out indicate.

And Teresa wants very much to both teach and protect Marini, who's become part of her "family of choice" (or maybe of necessity) in her later years:

Now that they were finally face to face again, they took a moment to study each other. It had scarcely been twenty days since they'd closed the case of the Sleeping Nymph, and they both still bore its scars: a bout of sciatica for her, a few burns and bruises for Inspector Marini. But how his eyes blazed. Teresa saw in him the young officer she had once been, sleep-deprived and desperately eager to prove herself. He was already primed to dive into a fresh case, and he wanted Teresa to go with him—unaware that she had already fallen into this particular vortex before, nearly thirty years ago.

Although Teresa will struggle throughout this new case with her own ailments, physical, mental, and emotional (doing her best only to reveal the physical), instructing and protecting Marini drives her to keep taking risks. What Marini can't understand or accept, however, is her apparent bond with the killer. Is this what it takes to analyze a serial murderer? He's repulsed by the notion that his policing mentor might think she has something in common with the monster behind bars.

It's increasingly clear that this is likely to be Teresa's final effort on the police force, although how she'll convey the reasons to Marini is still unclear. When Giacomo sends them chasing evidence at an archaeologically significant crypt, she learns how serious her disabilities have already become. But still, she needs Marini to understand Giacomo the way she already does:

"Most people think of Giacomo as a sadist, but I never got that impression." She hadn't spoken at all for the last two hours, not since her blunder at the crypt—a moment which, like all decisive acts, had proven to be revelatory. Her voice sounded hoarse, and guilty. She cleared her throat. "The amputations always occurred after the victim's death; the aim was never to cause suffering, but to take the life of those who were deemed—symbolically—not to deserve life at all."

Not only are readers walking into dark places with this investigator, but she will have to draw Marini along into how she approaches criminal analysis. In the process, she may be forced to reveal her private losses and damage, because they may be part of what drives Giacomo Mainardi. And it seems he has the capacity to keep on killing.

Immaculately plotted and intricate, DAUGHTER OF ASHES sets a new bar for fictional investigations of  murder. Whether Teresa can convince Marini, or us, that empathy for Giacomo is both humane and important to solving his crimes acts as an added strand of powerful suspense, in a book that also probes the most painful and enduring of our losses.

From Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, releasing on December 5.

How Bad Could Things Get? Chris McKinney's WATER CITY Trilogy Tests the Answers

Climate collapse, floods and fires, political divisions, wars and devastation—in America, it's not uncommon for people to feel like it's going to take a great leader to get us safely out of these very hard times.

But that's not where Chris McKinney heads in his WATER CITY trilogy. After the earlier Midnight, Water City and then Eventide, Water City, where a synesthetic former detective's been tackling the crushing issues around him in an effort to save his too-talented daughter from being coopted, McKinney and Soho Press collaborate to move rapidly into the last volume: SUNSET, WATER CITY. 

In a radical switch from the nameless not-quite-hero of the first two books, the third one (set in the year 2160) spins from the point of view of that talented daughter, Ascalon, whose experience at age 19 includes both armed resistance and a lot of forms of tech destruction. Battling both her US neighbors in the toxic lands of the Great Leachate, and the overwhelming technological dominance of the near-deity Akira Kimura, Ascalon's courage and defiance take root in her anger at her father, as well as her love for her vanishing family.

As I read SUNSET, WATER CITY a second time, I thought a lot about trilogies. The one I grew up with was The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien); then there's the Hunger Games trilogy. But also there's a trilogy at the start of Ursula Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea books: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972). And I'm one volume into reading Cixin Xiu's formidable Chinese space trilogy right now.

On reflection, I wonder whether world-building requires a bigger canvas than a single book. Building the pressure points needs to extend beyond that first volume, and the most intriguing and memorable characters, whether heroic (Frodo, Katniss) or antiheroic (Ascalon's father and Akira Kimura herself), need years to mature and deepen, in order to provide a meaningful resolution to another world's issues. And maybe that's especially true when, as with McKinney's trilogy, the issues are so clearly unsolved in our own present time: environment, antagonism, excessive power.

So my second reading of SUNSET, WATER CITY looked for how McKinney (who by the way is a native Hawai'ian with ethnic threads that are Korean, Chinese, and Scottish) asserted the solutions to the trilogy, not just to one book. What I found is that this third volume is as much a statement of human value as it is an adventure. Ascalon asks herself, "It this what it always is to be with other people? To not understand each other? To harbor trauma? To bottle anxiety, probe, and flinch before another even responds? I feel lost." When she decides to tackle the bigger issues of her world, she's aware that it's also an escape from this inner lack of certainty; "I will try to bury my grief and rage for now. I will try to fix this. I will take my father and Jon6J to Ascalon Lee. It's time to return to Water City."

A return to Water City demands unusual physical capacities, and many will feel especially strange to "mainlanders" reading the series -- but less so to those who live with islands and oceans. Over time, the presence of this trilogy and the inevitable film versions to follow may bring Ascalon's adaptations to some level of expected adaptation, like Frodo's interaction with the Ring. But expect a first reading to feel uncomfortable; expect to utilize your capacity to "listen" and to "suspend disbelief." Ascalon's discoveries, at first framed in her perceptions of her father, are worth reaching: "He should've known that it's impossible to sleep to the future to change the future. One needs to be awake to change that."

Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Ascalon clarifies her own motives as she battles for what she feels is right. Unlike the three leaders around her -- her father, her mentor Ascalon Lee, and the overwhelming Akira Kimura -- this young woman intends to protect her world, if she can just figure out which elements of it merit that protection.

In a time of chaos and pain, it may seem counterproductive to dip into a trilogy that proposes that Earth's issues are so extreme that only interplanetary settlement and technological unity will pull us through. But McKinney's narrative is so compelling that it's well worth entering his speculative world and his painfully maturing protagonists. Besides ... isn't it time, after so many decades, to step beyond Frodo and Gandalf's solution for Middle Earth?

[For some extra insight from the author, look here: https://www.watercitytrilogy.com/building-water-city.]

Detroit Crime Novel Sees "the Church" at Fault, in Stephen Mack Jones's 4th August Snow, DEUS X

For me, part of the point of working hard (and creatively) is the pleasure I can take later, collapsing into a fictional world that's totally apart and full of eventual triumph. So a well-plotted crime novel with characters I can care about, well, that can be quite a gift. And it's a thrill to let people know about the award-winning fiction coming from a "Michigander" like Stephen  Mack Jones.

You haven't read his August Snow series yet? Wow, you've got a big treat in store! This ex-cop in Detroit lives at the edge of multiple ethnicities — especially Hispanic and Black — in the Mexicantown neighborhood he and his friends have been steadily rehabbing.

When the local Franciscan priest, Father Michael Grabowski, suddenly retires and appears to be dying, August is convinced there's more at stake than physical illness. Father Grabowski's abrupt withdrawal from friendships and his 40 years of community care signal a spiritual collapse that's got to be related to another nearby priest's suspicious death. 

When August starts probing, he meets his match in a fierce (and armed) investigator from the Vatican who wants the local priest to take all the blame for a string of other abuse and deaths. And that's where the crimesolving rips into action.

Still, the deep pleasure of DEUS X is in Jones's rich descriptions of the neighborhood and of August and his allies, like Tomás: "Tomás handed me a mug. Like me, it was dangerously dark, slightly bitter, yet oh so satisfying." Yes, there's a woman in August's life, Tatina, who feels that way about him, but in this adventure, she's mostly off scene ("Somali and German, living in Norway").

Which is just as well for Tatina's sake, considering what August and Tomás are up against. The Vatican has its own enforcement team? Who knew? Is there a rational explanation for how some of the related menacing men seem to vanish when cornered? Although August tries to reassure himself that real deaths involve physical results, even he is worried about whether there's a scientific or technological explanation: "If not, I'd have to seriously reassess my position as an agnostic Mexican-American Catholic with African-American Baptist metaphysical leanings."

Jones takes this fast-paced crime novel across several boundaries of old magic and traditional healing, as well as Catholic priesthood abuse issues. So it's a compelling page-turner, excellent for a winter weekend of escape and questions, framed in sturdy friendships with plenty of firearms and other defenses. You don't need to read the other three books in the series first, although if you do, this one will resonate more—but you can pick them up afterward, because chances are, August Snow's fierce urban loyalties will leave you wanting more of his adventures.

Digging Into Veterans Day, Poetry Included

Yesterday I spent an important hour with a "poet of war," encouraging more writing, trying to hold some doors open. I hadn't thought of this person with such a category until I got there and began to listen (in person), and then it seemed so clear that I was surprised I hadn't found the term before.

Of course there are many who've written from their war experiences. The one that brought me reality (instead of lines of warnings and mourning) was Brian Turner. Here's the cover of his first collection. He's released three new books this year, all very different from where he'd started, with a richness of music to them. I hope you'll drop in and visit his website.

 

A bit of one of his poems: "A murder of crows looks on in silence / from the eucalyptus trees above / as we stand over the bodies."  Or from another, where a woman at a distance is hanging laundry: "She is dressing the dead, clothing them / as they wait in silence, the pigeons circling / as fumestacks billow a noxious black smoke. / She is welcoming them back to the dry earth, / giving them dresses in tangerine and teal, / woven cotton shirts died blue."

And thinking of those two together -- one local, not-yet-very-published poet, and the nationally and even globally recognized author -- led me to writing my own poem for the moment. There is indeed very gray and cold weather in northeastern Vermont today, with winter (its trials and delights) marching toward us, unstoppable, unbearable at times unless you hold onto love.

Thoughts on Another Veterans Day

 

This is the same wind-tossed gray sky that held in place

at childhood Easter mornings—resurrection arrives small,

one crocus at a time, one purple pod of potential

determined to unfold in any scraps of sun.

 

Now I hesitate on the other side of the year

aware that every small snowfall, every frigid silent night

warns of what’s ahead: Those in shabby housing press

plastic over the windows and grieve the cost of oil.

 

In town, the courthouse flag flaps wildly. Solemn words,

uniforms, a prayer. At the entrance to the grocery store

an old friend sits at a modest table, resting his knees

while reaching out with red paper poppies. Take one.

 

Veterans I have known: An angry man whose letters to

the editor poked like porcupine quills from his raw scraped

skin. A doctor who scrubs her hands too much. Young relative,

prospering, riding between wild lands and profit.

 

My father, who taught us Navy knots. Mom’s father,

arranging his kitchen  for baking bread, typing out

the detailed recipes, mailing them across the ocean.

“Z,” moving up the ranks, her friends lifting a glass.

 

The closer they are, the more personal their survival.

But understanding? For that, I lean on words, which means

that man in the middle distance (who hid his poetry notebook

when leading into battle), pulling me beyond

 

the cost of winter. His reality: first a pause to smile

at children in a desert land; to admire a woman at a well;

to press the love he’d hand-nourished, into another man’s

wounds; strike with a fist his own heart, for the sake of

 

honesty. Which is not at all like a textbook, after all.

Because it bleeds, forms a scar, resists hard rain.

 

-- BK

 

 

 

Dad's Side, Mom's Side, and Poems Linked to Each

Although my parents thought kids should find their own way to religion when they grew up, they each explained briefly their own backgrounds: Dad came from a German Jewish family with little religious attachment (and Dad himself refused any form of belief, he said, due to the Holocaust). Mom grew up with a Quaker mother, valued what she knew of that form of worship, but added that she felt closest to God in her garden. And New England was her core.

For the past couple of decades, as I've investigated Dad's life, with leading questions from my Jewish and much-loved husband Dave, my poems have explored more of Jewish tradition and culture. But when I'm in my garden, I'm my mother's daughter, inhaling the scent of soil and plants.

It seems I've arrived at a life point where I want to probe my mother's side of things more deliberately, so you'll be seeing more of that. In fact, it's sort of obvious in the two poems of mine published this week.

 

Here's one that seeks to find light in the darkness, as Israel and Gaza continue their war -- you'll see it's especially about Dad.

And this one, told from the point of view of Henry David Thoreau's sister Sophia, digs into my mother's New England heart, into the wonders of the natural world, and into the determined sense of women's "agency" that Mom taught me.

Loving November

Center, my grandfather; I'm standing behind my youngest brothers., at the airport.

After a dingy, cloudy final week of October, November has launched here with bright skies and gusts of snowflakes. It's a season full of energy and daring (at least on the best days), and I'm up for it.

My grandfather Ernest's birthday was November 4, and when I was small, birthday phone calls across the Atlantic were costly and had to be booked in advance with an overseas operator. My grandfather sympathized with my parents' tight finances and would place the call from his end. Mom and Dad only needed to stay home and receive his call.

They reminded each other of the date using a British rhyme about Guy Fawkes Day, when bonfires in England declare vengeance on a long-ago traitor. The rhyme says, "Remember, remember, the fifth of November!" (That was the date of Fawkes's treasonous Gunpowder Plot back in 1605.) Ernest's birthday would be the "other date," the fourth.

One November, my folks recited the poem wrong, accidentally saying "remember the fourth of November" instead -- and assuring each other that Ernest's birthday phone call would thus take place on the fifth. So they cheerfully went out to a local hamburger diner on the fourth, and felt terribly embarrassed to miss my grandfather's important phone call after all.

That makes it easy for me to recall the right date now! 

My grandfather Ernest's dual citizenship and cultured awareness enabled him to leave Germany safely before Hitler's "Final Solution" took form. In these days of rising anti-Semitism, it's good to reflect that my father's parents found sufficient haven in England, although I know now that Fascism in London at that time still meant a level of discomfort and fear.

Lucky me: Although I didn't understand my grandfather's life, and I didn't wake up to the questions I could have asked until way too late, I did very much feel his love and support. Now I imagine some conversations we might have had, and they intrigue me.

Cigar Ash on His Tie

 

Nothing pretty about him at seventy: massive hands,

lower lip drooping and deep, reddened, quiet eyes

watching my efforts. Ernst. Grandfather to nine

 

smaller family than his own father’s—yet none of us

starving in a brutal camp, or fleeing to South America

not even exiled to Australia (great-uncle Alfred). We

 

could fit within a single room. Yet Ernst overflowed.

Say “Ernest” in England, banker, explorer, eager lover

of strong women: Some people walk away. Refuse.

 

With long strides he walked toward. What I seize

(years later) must mesh with my early observations, white

cigar ash on his tie, and on his car dashboard too, thick

 

soft, scented, no relation to ashes of war. Symphonies,

portraits, books, the riches of late peace. His early winter

promised French cafés, Dutch museums: In November winds

 

I hear his smoker’s cough, his hawk-fierce whistle, and

welcome my grandfather’s haunting.