Book Review The Lamorna Wink

 

The Lamorna Wink by Martha Grimes

I started my love affair with Martha Grimes when I ran across her early work titled The Dirty Duck. Any theatre nut will immediately recognize that this is one of the names of a pub in Stratford Upon Avon that sits close by the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.  That book puts her major detective, Richard Jury,  in the city and is full of theatrical lore.  From then on, my experience with Grimes has been up and down.

The Lamorna Wink, unfortunately, is one of the downs. Although advertised as a Richard Jury Mystery, this offering leaves Jury out of the picture entirely until the final chapters. Instead, we get the stuffy lump, Melrose Plant, trying his hand at detection.  Plant falls in love with an old mansion in Cornwall and since he has endless money just decides to rent it for a while. The rental includes inheriting the unsolved tragic death of two youngsters in the sea at the bottom of the cliff upon which the house sits. All of Grimes’ skill in description goes for naught as Plant and a few of his Long Piddleton cronies drink their way through the mystery.  Plant and his friends provide humorous counterpoint in the more normal Jury mysteries, but they simply cannot carry a book by themselves—even if it delves into the world of child porn and snuff films.  Don’t bother!

On the other hand this might be the time to urge the theatre folks who might read this to take a look at  Grimes'  The Dirty Duck.

Here is a bit of what I wrote several years ago. 

 What theatre lover doesn’t feel a rise in heartbeat at the mention of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford Upon Avon or the walk along the Avon out to the Holy Trinity Church?   Wouldn’t there be an additional adrenalin rush if there was a nasty Jack the Ripper style killer knocking off American tourists left and right?  Martha Grimes has now written some twenty Richard Jury mysteries.  The Dirty Duck, written in 1984, was the fourth in the series.  Her work, at least in this early effort, lacks the depth of texture found in P.D. James or Elizabeth George, but it does have a headier sense of irony and humor. The characters tend to live in within the more exaggerated stereotypes of Britons and Americans. Names tend to be on the jokey side as in Melrose Plant, or Honey Belle for a woman from the American south. The book takes you to every Shakespeare haunt in Stratford and then adjourns to London for action in the West End, Southwark, and Deptford.  Anyone who has followed a couple of my London Theatre Walks will find themselves in familiar territory.  

The Joy and Light Bus Company REVIEW

 

The Joy and Light Bus Company by Alexander McCall Smith

Fans of the McCall Smith #1 Ladies Detective Agency series will not be disappointed in this addition to his long list of tales about the life and times of Mme Ramotswe, her husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,  her bespectacled and opinionated associate—Mma Makutse, and their friend who runs an orphanage—Mma Potokane.

As usual there are a few side plots, but this outing concentrates on Mr. J.L.B.  Matekoni’s attendance at a business seminar where he touches base with an old school friend, T.K. Molefi, who has had major successes in life.  Mr. Matekoni has been feeling a bit of depression in his middle age and is enticed into a new business opportunity with his old friend. This new business is the title of the book—a bus service that will use Mr. Matekoni’s Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors as the major repair depot. The major stumbling block from his wife's point of view is that the Speedy Motors business and its building will have to serve as collateral for a major bank loan. If things do not work out, it would mean disaster for the repair business as well as Mma Ramotswe’s detective agency.    

That's the central problem and I don't give anything away by saying up front that all the threads are tied up happily at the end.  That does not mean that you cannot continue to savor the nuggets of advice and humor that are peppered throughout.   

Here are a few that I found worth mentioning.  In a discussion of the obligations of the rich there is, “If you drive a Mercedes Benz, you have a duty to do something to make up for it.”

In a conversation about the nature of men, the term “Past Tense Men” is coined. Although there are fewer of them now, they are the men who thought that women were placed on earth to take care of them.  In a similar vein the women discuss how hard it is for men to talk about or share their feelings. Women can pour out their hearts to their friends and have a good cry.  “Men do not like to cry on their friend’s shoulders" says Mma Ramotwe. 

 Bon mots from Mma Ramotswe’s “go to book” Clovis Andersen’s Principles of Detection are dropped in periodically. This funny and sage advice is a good example.  “Never try to reach a conclusion before you reach the conclusion.” Also from Andersen comes the concept of the “crooked timber of humanity.”  Human beings he says are like a piece of wood and they all have their individual grains, knots, and whorls. Observers must accept that and look carefully to find the best parts.

From Mma Makutsi comes a term from her secretarial school--“mitigation of damage.”  She defines it as the ability when you perceive a bad situation developing to immediately take steps to keep it from becoming worse. This advice is quite important in the resolution. Along the same line is an old agricultural axiom that “there is always more than one way to bring in the harvest.”

My eye was particularly caught by the way that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni  will simply not listen to rational arguments when his decision to trust T.K. Molefi is challenged. His faith overshadows all logic. He is impervious to any and all warnings. I'm not sure what McCall Smith was seeing here, but I saw here a contemporary dilemma that is current in today's political climate. Mr. Matekoni's problem is that he has a bit of Trumpism on his brain. Unexamined loyalty is preventing a clear eyed view of the dangers of his actions. 

No matter. Optimism wins. Mma Ramotswe’s sense that “most people are kind—if you give them a chance,” is only slightly tempered by Mma Potokwe’s observation that she wished that it were true. The final words are spoken as the happy-again couple sits on the veranda of their home while the evening falls and the fireflies light up the sky. Mma Ramotwse opines into the darkness "Do what you are doing not what other people think you should do. You should do what you do as well as you possibly can. . . . and you should do it with love.”

 

 

A first line quiz on great plays

 

Here for your entertainment is a slight revision of a quiz I posted some years ago.  It reflects mostly classical and 19^th and 20^th century plays. A reasonably well read theatre goer should have no trouble identifying a fair number of them. Some advantage goes to the Monmouth College grad or older faculty as I directed nine of them there and have taught all of them before I retired in 2002.  One final hint.  None are musicals, not because I don’t like them, but because scripts or published versions are not easily available to double check the accuracy of their first lines.  Here goes:   

11 1. “Nothing to be done.”

2.I2. "If music be the food of love, play on.”

3  "3. "Yes, I have tricks in my pocket; I have things up my sleeve.”

4.   4. "Children, youngest brood of Cadmus the Old, why do you sit here with branches in your hand while the air is heavy with lament?”

5.   5. “The train’s in, thank God. What time is it?”

6.   6. "Willy?”

7.    7. "Who’s there?”

8.    8. "Is that you Petey?” 

9.     9. "Oh my word, I don’t think they are even up yet.”

10 10. "I pray you all give your audience and hear this matter with reverence, by figure a moral play.”

1111. “Oh God for an end to this weary work; a year-long I have watched here--head on arm.”

1212 . “Jesus H. Christ!”

   13.  “Now fair Hippolyta our nuptial hour draws on apace.”

1114. “With one particular horse, called Nugget, he embraces . . .”

1515.  “Septimus, what is carnal embrace?” Your grades:  13-15 Right  ”A” You are a dramaturgical scholar.

Your grade:  

13-15 Right  ”A” You are a dramaturgical scholar.

9-12 Right  “B” Almost at the top.  When I went to college this was still considered an excellent                                  grade.”  

8-11 Right: “C” Still respectable, You probably didn’t take a lot of  theatre history or dramatic literature                      sequences along the way.

5-7 Right: “D” passing but you should probably not try out for Jeopardy. 

Below 5 Right: Get thee to a nunnery as you need to brush up on your Shakespeare, Miller, and                            Williams.  

Answers: 1 Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot  2 Wiliam Shakespeare Twelfth Night 3 Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie 4 Sophocles Oedipus Rex 5 Anton Chekov The Cherry Orchard 6 Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman 7 William Shakespeare Hamlet  8 Harold Pinter The Birthday Party 9 Henrik Ibsen Hedda Gabler  10  Everyman  11 Aeschylus Agamemnon  12 Edward Albee Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf  13  William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream  14  Peter Shaffer Equus  15  Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Fowler's Bryant and May Tackle THE LONELY HOUR

 

Let me admit from the start that I love Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May mysteries. His latest entry, titled Lonely Hour does nothing to change my preference for his dazzling, violent, esoteric fact filled, and dryly humorous depiction of that great city of which you can only be tired of if you are tired of life. Arthur Bryant and John May are aging or elderly, or really old London detectives depending on how you feel about the mantle of years. They work in the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit along with an ethnically diverse group of mainly devoted assistants. Bryant follows cases with his heart and an intellectual breadth that both confuses and boggles the mind of his fellows. He is a loner who often appears befuddled with his lint-tinged pockets filled with candy, his distressing disappearances at critical times, and his conversations with the strange and occult minions of underground London.  For Arthur the city has more dark alleys and tunnels than the tube itself.  Mr. May's sleuthing takes a more rational and technological path, but the mysterious killer who strikes viciously only at 4:00 AM in the morning, confuses both detectives.  Finding a motive when there appears to be no connection between the victims make this a particularly difficult case. 

Solving the crime is imperative in order to keep the Peculiar Crime Unit from extinction.  It is always under fire in the earlier books as well because the higher up's on the command chain cannot tolerate the Unit's ability to manage high solution rates in spite of their unconventional and often illegal methods. 

The plot reveals the identity of the killer early-on though the motives for the killings are obscure. The reader is left with plenty of time to concentrate on the disparate solution methods used by each partner. I will avoid narrating the full carnival of twists and turns that arrive as the finish nears as they depend on the introduction of two modern and difficult social problems.  Talking about them now would let the surprising denouement  out of the bag too soon.  

What I will say is that Fowler peppers his tale with an encyclopedic knowledge of London history and street geography and combines it with an equally deep familiarity with the history and nature of London’s historic theatre scene. As a theatre historian myself, who has written his own book on theatre history walking tours in London*, I can only say that my research background looks like P.T. Barnum’s Tom Thumb in comparison to Fowler’s Paul Bunyan. The only quibble might be that unless you have at least some working knowledge of London you might be lost in the amount of detail. For instance, only someone who has actually traversed those London streets can fully appreciate the wild Bullit/Steve McQueen like vehicle chase that takes two cars and a motorcycle careening along the Embankment, then cutting into Queen Victoria Street, and finally tearing up St. Andrew’s hill toward St. Paul’s . 

In sum, I highly recommend this book. If you like it as much as I do, there are several others in the series waiting to give you many hours of pleasant entertainment.   

*London Theatre Walks by Jim De Young and John Miller was last updated in 2002 and is now out of print, but can be found on Amazon. Some of the streetscapes have changed, but most of the sites covered are still there and the streets themselves remain. It remains the only book that concentrates solely on theatre related sites.  

Thoughts on masks

I am not a poet and haven't tried to write any poetry or should I say faux poetry since I was in college. You will then hopefully forgive me for putting this piece out.  It represents some feelings I have had as the Covid crisis intensifies again and as the arguments over masking continue to rage.  

                                                  Thoughts On a Mask 12/27/21

Behind the cloud is darkness--

Even as eyes flash alive above.

I search for the hidden secrets   

Of hate or love,

Of joy or sorrow,

Of fatigue or desperation,       

Or perhaps nothing at all.

A vacuum may lie   

Under the skin of gauze.

Or is it fear?

The disease days

Press down endlessly.  

Specters in white 

Concerned and pale

Wait for the waning. 

When the cloud will pass,

When the cover can leave.  

When a cry of victory can rise.

 

Will the darkness remain?

Still, but within us,

and not in the mask.   

 

Jim De Young 

Viveca Sten Murder Mysteries #4-8

 

Viveca Sten is a top selling Swedish author who has set her books in the city of Stockholm and the hundreds of islands that compose the Stockholm archipelago. I review Book one last month (Still Waters) and since then I have read and enjoyed several more of her Sandhamn mysteries. They have interesting characters, they evoke Swedish society, and especially the nature of life on the islands that I had never heard of before.   I was going to wait until I read the full series before putting up more comments, but I think I need to move on to some other unfinished books by other authors that are waiting in the wings. So take a peak at my thoughts on four more of her books. 

In #4 Tonight You’re Dead a sadistic drill sergeant in the 1970’s abuses a group of recruits in the Swedish Coastal Guard.  Sten never quite manages to explain why the killer wants to murder all the members of the platoon when the real villain is the Drill Sergeant who trained them. Detective Andreeson is not even fully recovered from his last case before he has to find this villain. I never did get a full l understanding of the whole issue.  All told a bit disappointing that is only partially redeemed by Nora, Detective Andreeson’s childhood friend, finding a new lover to replace the hyper-controlling husband she has divorced.  Her move to independence still seems to be inspired by Ibsen’s Nora in A Doll’s House.

Book #5 titled In The Heat of the Moment and is also disappointing. The death of a young Midsummer Night party goer and drug addict seems to go nowhere with most of the prime suspects seeming to be rich, hapless, drunken  kids. Detective Andreeson and his crew don’t really solve anything as the resolution appears to happen to them rather than through their investigative efforts. Nora’s affair with Jonas, her new squeeze, is put on hold as her ex-husband Henrik seems to have had an unexplained attitudinal turn around after the young woman that engendered his divorce takes a runner on him .

The critical societal issue of adolescents who steal, party, drink themselves into stupor, take drugs, and have constant sex while their moneyed parents remain unconscious and generally unconcerned, not grappled with in any serious way. It is just depicted. I give this one a bare two stars.

In Harm’s Way (Book #6) gets back on track.  A crusading journalist is found dead in the snow just a few yards from the saving comfort of the Sailor’s Inn on the island of Sandhamn.  Motive is key here and Andreeson and his cohort dig into the past to find that the victim’s estranged husband has been in a fight with her over the guardianship of their daughter.  Deeper digging into the growing problem of conservative political thought and anti-immigrant sentiment in Sweden also begins to impact the case and ultimately leads to an exciting conclusion. In a clear reversal the appealing secondary plot line dealing with Andreesen’s friend Nora’s marital and workplace issues finds her new relationship with lover, airline pilot Jonas, seesawing between the new more caring former husband Henrik. It is clear that there is more to come there.  

Book #7 In the Shadow of Power continues to show some back on the track power. It is a year after Book #6 and Detective Thomas Andreesen is having doubts about his career. He has had an offer to join a private security firm and is torn between more money and regular hours and his gut feeling that he is doing an important job for society.  Nora and flyboy Jonas are now living together and have a blended family including all of their children from former marriages. 

Enter the specter of a prosperous business tycoon with anger control issues, a drug habit, and an overall abrasive personality. He has amassed his fortune in other climes and is now looking for a big killing in Russia that will finance his huge new mansion to be built on the island of Sandhamn.  The long-time residents of the island do not take kindly to this noueau riche bully.  

In spite of their disapproval of the man and his project, the locals all turn up at his gala housewarming party. The mystery deepens when a fire reduces the property’s guest house to rubble and turns into murder when an unidentified charred body is found in the ashes. That brings both Detective Andreeson and long time Sandamn resident Nora into the picture. Before this knot is untied there is plenty of excitement and violence. This one rises to a four out of five on my scale.  

Book #8 In the Name of Truth finds Nora in the throes of a major legal case and looking forward to wedding Jonas. Meanwhile, Thomas, who has re-united with his former wife, Pernilla, is having conflicts along the same lines that ended Nora’s marriage to Henrik. It is the modern question of which spouse’s job is more important, which job takes more time away from family responsibilities, and how does pay differential impact everything?    

Into this difficult personal dilemma pops a possible abduction of a young boy from a Sandhamn sailing camp. Thomas is mucho distraught because the boy is about the same age as his daughter.  The story cycles between Nora’s court case and the potential kidnapping until the two cases begin to show connections to each other.  Although the coincidences seem a bit too strained at times, the characters remain interesting and the ambience of the Swedish islands and their watery surroundings evoke an emotionally compelling presence.

Sten’s work is uneven at times, but since you can read them for a song or even borrow them free on Kindle, I have no problem in recommending that you dip into them.

 

 

 

 

  

THE GREAT MOVE

From Garrison Keillor comes the saying, "Serenity at 70; Gaiety at 80."  My wife and I are making an attempt to fulfill that thought this year. We have just deserted our big blue monster of a house in Monmouth, IL  along with all the winter travails that go along with it.

Our new home is a two bedroom apartment at Grand Living at Indian Creek in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  

Iowa wasn't really on our bucket list for exciting retirement abodes, but the time seemed ripe to move nearer to our daughter and to move while we were not facing a major health event. If you would like the new address or phone numbers, please e-mail me at dramajim@gmail.com

If this satisfies your hunger for knowing where we live, you can quit reading now. 

Continuing to scroll will get you more details of our new residence. Grand Living at Indian Creek is a 160 unit senior rental community (no lease or large un-refundable contributions required). It is located on the eastern side of Cedar Rapids, IA.  It has a 24 hour staffed desk at the entrance. Under current Covid rules all staff are  masked and residents are asked to be masked when not in their apartments or eating in the dining room.

To the right of the main entrance is the library. It holds a nice collection of current and classic fiction along with biography and travel books. You can read in the room or take items back to your apartment without charge. There is also a little corner where a jigsaw puzzle is waiting for completion.   

Straight ahead from the reception desk is a public living room where residents and their guests can relax or chat.   

Outside of the double doors at the back of the public space is a patio with tables and chairs. It looks  a bit bleak now, but is a cheery and sunny place to sit when the weather is nice. As you can see the back of the building faces a wooded area.

Also on the first floor is a large meeting room.  It is used for various group activities, meetings, movies, and performances.  It is equipped with a large video screen, some lighting, and a good public address system.

There are two dining areas on the first floor.  Below is the formal dining area for dinner. 

That's where we enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner with a neighbor who also supports our favorite football team.

There is another more informal dining and gathering space. It has not been used for meals during the Covid shutdown, but still does house coffee and social gettogethers as well as some craft activities, 

Finishing out the ground floor are offices, a beauty shop, a fitness center, and an open space for classes such as Yoga, Tai Chi, and Balance. 

Now that you have your bearings you can take an elevator to the fourth floor and visit our apartment. Exit the elevator, walk past a public room that contains a TV and pool table, then down a long hall to this door.

And that's where we live now.

Here's a little look at what we saw when we first looked at it. This is from the kitchen area looking at the living room.

Here's the reverse looking toward the the kitchen.

A close up view of the kitchen after we started to add some clutter to give the space a more lived in look

The kitchen area and island gets plenty of natural light from the screened patio doors that lead out to a small balcony.

The balcony has room for a small table and a couple of chairs. Standing there you can see the rear of the building and 

and also look out at a wooded area. What looks like a dirt road is actually a little walking path that belongs to our building. 

I took this shot on that little path a month ago.

If you look carefully just behind and to the right of the bench, you can see another visiting deer.  

 

From that path you can look back at our whole building and even see our balcony on the far left of the fourth floor. The fenced area is part of the memory care unit.

Back to the interior now. Here is our living room after it was furnished with a new recliner sofa, a new TV, some new tables, and some older items brought from Monmouth. 

It was inspected and found satisfactory by both our daughter and our son and his family when they visited from Finland in October. 

That's our daughter Amy with her little niece Selma. 

The living room has a neat gas fire place and provides a good space for our TV. You will note that the it is playing a Green Bay Packer game. Go Cheeseheads! 

A nice new side table has proved to be just the right spot to display some of our Southwestern pottery and other items from around the world.

The living room is large, comfy, and full of light during the day, but the master bedroom looks elegant too.  We treated ourselves to a new bed after over forty years and some new chests as well.    

The master bath is roomy with a double sink and walk-in shower. 

A huge closet opens off the master bath as well. 

The second bedroom has been converted into my office and study (though Jan has user rights as well).

There are just a few other areas.  Alongside of the the front door is a space for a table and a knick-knack shelf.  There is also a small coat closet in that space.   

As you move past the entrance area you look into a strange little windowless triangle space that the sales people called a den.  We have converted it into a little nook for Jan.  It contains her laptop and her parent's antique desk along with some long term storage.  It still needs some pictures to make it more homey looking. 

Another small space contains my mother's antique chest and two pictures given to us by our artist friend--George Olson. 

And that is that. We are enjoying our new home, the many activities, the caring staff, and the wonderful friends we have already made.   Come visit us if you are in the area.  

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