Review A DEATH IN DIAMONDS by S.J. Bennett

 

A Death in Diamonds by S.J Bennett

This is the fourth book featuring Queen Elizabeth II as an amateur detective doing murder investigations in Britain in 1957. Bennett gives us a plot focusing on a brutal fetishistic double murder in a London mews house that has been used as an illicit hideaway for upper-crust patrons of an escort agency.

The queen is trying her best to handle the loss of her empire after WWII and suspects that her efforts to renew the reputation of England in foreign lands are being sabotaged by some members of the old guard.  She brings into her staff and her confidence a bright young woman who had a past with the code breakers during WWII, but that does not keep the royal family from being sucked into a possible involvement with the double murders. Scotland Yard moves at a glacial pace, and the security agencies also seem to be lurking about. Several possible solutions pop up, but all end up as red herrings before the final knot is untied in the last few pages.

Bennett has a clever story, yet tells it so deliberately that I found my interest flagging before the next new development arrives. The “mews” twists are interspersed with too many overlong passages on England’s place in the post-war world, palace infighting, and society backbiting.

I love almost anything set in London, but this one leaves me lukewarm rather than wanting to read any more of the series.

I give it a 3 out of 5  

P.S. Another author, Karen Harper, wrote a series of books with the young Elizabeth I as a detective in the early 2000s. The Elizabethan ambiance was more colorfully depicted.   

 

HAIRSPRAY at TCR

 Hairspray, a classic Broadway musical that won eight Tony awards in 2003, has stomped onto the Theatre Cedar Rapids stage with splashy lighting, loud 1960’s music, splendid choreography, and wild costumes.  The matinee crowd was applauding vigorously all afternoon, but saved their biggest ovations for Michael Olinger’s drag performance as Edna Turnblad. He lived up to everything I remember from seeing Harvey Fierstein in the role in New York years ago.

All the majors except perhaps Calvin Boman as Link Larson seemed on target. Belle Canney was both earnest and buoyant. Brandon Burkhardt was oily and smooth. Larson just seemed a bit understated when thrown into the rest of the high-energy cast. He may not have been feeling up to par.

I was particularly impressed by TCR’s vast lighting and costume resources. They were put to the test and succeeded in charging every moment with color and sparkle. Hats off as well to the choreography.  for sure. These folks can dance and they were put through their paces immaculately by Megan Helmers. I have seen musicals--a lot of musicals-- and her work is right up there with anything I have witnessed in New York. 

It is also a pleasure to see that one can still find people with the courage to mount and perform a show that finds pertinence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion despite a government that has tried to eliminate the words from the English language.  The audience was filled with children and adults who didn’t seem to find a drag performance sinful or the participation and defending of protests against the established order unpatriotic.  

This is a show to see if you can. TCR seems to excel in musicals. I know they have to put patrons in seats, but one can only wish they would bring more of the same talents to bear on other kinds of dramatic works.  

 

Daniel Silva The Order

Mr. Silva is an accomplished author of over 20 espionage thrillers. This one seems long and dense--perhaps because I was reading it in a small print paperback edition. You may also not be ready for quite this much medieval church history and some of the political bias that appears. On the other hand, The Order continues to draw you in. The plot centers on the murder of a pope by an ultra-right-wing faction with a plan to take over the entire Catholic church. Silva claims the book is a fictional elegy on the age-old curse that the Jews killed Jesus and it draws heavily on Pius XII’s treatment of the Jews during World War II. The current anger and desperation over the still raging Gaza War also lurks as an undercurrent. 

The savior of the Catholic faith is, ironically, no other than a Jew. Gabriel Allon, master assassin, head of Israeli Intelligence, art restorer, and tender family man is this time summoned from a vacation holiday in Venice to investigate the possible murder of a pope. The mystery is bound up in a literary enigma. There are multiple ancient copies of biblical texts available and whether there is or was a gospel of Pilate, whether it exists but is a forgery, or whether its potential content might be terrible enough to elicit the murder a pope keeps the narrative boiling right down to the very last pages.

This is not an easy read and general critical opinion is mixed, but Silva is a master writer of location detail and Gabriel Allon is a fascinating and complicated character.   

I give it a 4 out of 5

 

Penny, Louise  Still Life

Louise Penny has been one of my go-to mystery writers for several years. How I missed Still Life, which was the first Gamache novel and introduced the hamlet of Three Pines and its residents, I don’t know.  But there it was in an unblemished paperback version on a table at the Marion Library book sale for a buck. 

What a treat it was to read and see how this marvelous writer sets the time, the place, and characters, in an orchestra that is still playing in full throat today.  They’re all there Gabri, Olivier, Clara,  Peter, Myrna, Ruth, and Inspector Armand Gamache. Each now familiar character is born here already imbued with spot-on description, color, clarity, and psychological underpinning. They will all be developed over the next years and right now Penny’s fans are waiting, perhaps even pining, for the latest installment. (Sorry about that!   Her newest book is titled The Black Wolf, and will be published this fall.

In Still Life the corpse of a dearly beloved retired school teacher is discovered in the woods. An arrow has slain her through her heart and all signs point to a local resident. But who? Gamache arrives with his detective crew and begins to ferret out the culprit methodically. Along the way, you can also see how the inspector starts to fall in love with this little village where he and his wife will later move. The plot is intricate, as usual, and grounded in long-hidden secrets.  At least two strong false trails will keep you guessing right up to the final unmasking of the villain.  As noted, I don’t know how I missed this one.

Jim De Young

I give it a 5 out of 5

 

 

Book review Danzy Senna Colored Television

 

 

 

 

Danzy Senna, Colored Television

The title is a clever play on words as the book is about the fate of Mulatto’s in the world of commercial Television i.e. they are neither black or white, brown or white, or oriental or white. They cannot pitch their tents comfortably in either polarity.  The ambiguities of race, sex, education, and social class are all put into a blender and out comes this novel that takes aim at  the futility of serious art and education when pitted against the nasty business of popular TV.  

There are some nice observational nuggets along the way. e.g. “One of the strange parts of being a teacher was how it made time stand still. If you didn’t look in a mirror, you could trick yourself into thinking that time wasn’t passing because your students kept staying young year after year.”  

The main character is Jane, an untenured adjunct English and writing professor at a Los Angeles college. She has published one semi-successful novel and is now married to an African American abstract painter who has not sold a single canvas. Jane is bi-racial and they have two small children who are also mulattos. The family is swamped with credit card debt and barely eking out an existence while she tries to finish a second novel that she hopes will make her a literary name and gain her tenure.  A further complication puts the value of the artistic life to a somber test. Jane’s sees her good friend Bret, a black man who has made millions writing popular TV programs about zombies, as someone who gave up his “promise of glory and immortality to spout drivel in that “land where original ideas come to die.” She was and still wonders whether she married the wrong man.   

Bret goes on a year-long trip to Australia to develop a new show and allows Jane and her husband Lenny to live rent free in his fancy hillside Los Angeles home in his absence.  Lenny can paint and Jane can work on her magnum opus—the major novel that her husband has dubbed her “Muletto War and Peace.  She finally finishes the novel, but her agent says it is unpublishable and the free house comes to an end when Bret, the owner, comes back early.

With two difficult children and a husband who has never sold a painting, Jane finally jumps at what looks like a chance to break into commercial television. She finds another successful black producer and pitches a TV series that will humorously explore the difficult world of Mulatto life.  Will it save the family bacon?  You will have to read it to see.

The book has sardonic humor, a bitter-sweet conclusion, and characters who keep you turning the pages. Most mortals suffer from fame deficiency. Anyone who has dreamed of making it big in art without selling out to popular culture will find something to hang on to here.  It’s not War and Peace, but it is worth a shot.    

I give it a 4 out of 5